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On Twitter

August 18, 2009 in internet, social software, tech by spinstah | No comments

I resisted Twitter for a long time, and when I finally signed up I felt a bit sheepish about all my pooh-poohing. So why did I finally sign up? Because friends were having conversations there that they weren’t having via other mediums, like chat and Facebook. I have found that I really like hearing about the stupid annoyances and routine happenings of the lives of folks whom I care about but rarely see. Recently, danah boyd wrote an interesting post that defends the social aspect of Twitter, in the face of a report that finds that the majority of tweets are meaningless blather:

I vote that we stop dismissing Twitter just because the majority of people who are joining its ranks are there to be social. We like the fact that humans are social. It’s good for society. And what they’re doing online is fundamentally a mix of social grooming and maintaining peripheral social awareness. They want to know what the people around them are thinking and doing and feeling, even when co-presence isn’t viable. They want to share their state of mind and status so that others who care about them feel connected.

That is exactly what finally drew me in. Once there was a critical mass of people I cared about on Twitter, I started paying attention to their tweets, and eventually I jumped in myself because it seemed silly to email someone in response to a tweet they had posted Sunday night, which I was seeing in my newsfeeds over lunch on Monday. I still really don’t care about following news organizations or random famous and semi-famous strangers and librarians. To me that’s not what Twitter is for, though it makes sense to use it that way (and I do follow a few of those types of accounts). That’s also partly why I still have my account locked, because I don’t use the service in such a way that I see any reason for some random person I have never met to follow me. To me it’s a social space similar to Facebook, and I apply the same rule of  “do I (or would I if you lived nearby) hang out with you in real life?” before I friend or follow someone.

It strikes me that all this kind of silly stuff we post to Twitter is probably what people who talk on the phone a lot talk about. Despite the fact that I will post it on the Internet, I still won’t pick up the phone and call any of my friends to discuss these kinds of little things.

Politics of Class Online

July 17, 2009 in internet, social software by spinstah | 1 comment

I find Danah Boyd’s work absolutely fascinating. Her application of ethnographic research methods to the technology sphere, and in particular social networking, contributes immensely to my understanding of these technologies and how they’re being used. I just read a transcript of a talk that she gave at the Personal Democracy Forum last month (The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online) and it’s really gotten me thinking. Here, she’s looking at another side of the digital divide which I think gets lost in the conversation:

Social media does not magically eradicate inequality.

When we talk about the digital divide, we’re usually focused on access. Who has access to the web? What kind of access? Is it access they can afford? Is it access that is convenient? Are the speeds at which they can connect fast enough to actually engage with what’s going on? But in my experience, that conversation rarely gets to a point where you’re talking about what they’re doing when they’re online and who they are. Have you ever thought about the fact that there are class and race differences between who is using MySpace and who is using Facebook? As she points out, on the web we (as a society) are essentially replicating all the different social stratifications that exist out on the sidewalk. It makes sense if you think about it — with social networking sites many of us are essentially just recreating our offline social networks. That means you go where your friends are. But how many of us are aware of this, and to what extent?

Anyway, I highly recommend reading through this transcript if you have an interest in social media, social networks, and how people use them. This kind of broader thinking can really help to provide a better context for what’s happening in the different areas in which we’re all focused (for example, I pay attention to reports and information about what undergrads are up to, and  give maybe a cursory glance to the stuff on other age groups).

Sprint WiMax in Baltimore

February 10, 2009 in Baltimore, internet, review, tech by spinstah | 3 comments

After I moved, I decided to set myself up with Sprint’s new WiMax service (Xohm or Clear, depending on which marketing materials you see — shortly after they rolled it out there was a name change). There’s not much out there about the service beyond some random tech blog entries from around the launch, so I thought I’d post on my experiences. (Long story short, it didn’t work out for me.)

Anyway, here’s how it went for me. I decided to go with the WiMax for several reasons: There’s no installation appointment necessary, which is always a good thing. The price was in the range of what I’m willing to pay, and on top of that they have a promotional rate for your first six months. There’s also no contract, so you can cancel at any time. All very good things.

I checked out their coverage map and my new apartment was several blocks within the coverage zone. So far, so good. On to the hardware options, where there was a bit of a disappointment. Currently, only three options are given: a standalone modem, a USB dongle, and an express card (which comes with an adapter for PC card slots). And currently, only one of those is listed as officially being Mac compatible – the standalone modem. I wasn’t really interested in the modem, because I wasn’t sure if my wireless router would work with it (it’s something like three years old at this point, so who knows). In addition the standalone modem is $20 more expensive than the other two options. Read the rest of this entry »

Holiday pics

December 26, 2008 in internet, social software by spinstah | 6 comments

After thinking some more about the question of whether or not to make fewer photos on Flickr public (Privacy on the Internet . . . and Me), I’ve decided that I’m going to make more of them friends & family only, especially those featuring people*. That means you’ll have to make a (free) Flickr account (they’re owned by Yahoo!, so you can use an existing Yahoo! account) and be friended by me in order to see them. And in order to be friended I need to know you in real life. Them’s the breaks.

There are ways that I can share the photos out to people without accounts, so I will probably do that with big events and parties. But for random occasional/incidental photos you’ll need a login. I am toying with the idea of making a guest account — something that folks who don’t have a Flickr accunt and aren’t interested in having one could use to get access to my photos — so let me know if you are intersted in this.

All that’s to say that I started this new system with the family holiday photos I just uploaded. I’m still debating on whether or not I want to go back and change the permissions on photos I’ve already uploaded. (I suspect this will happen some weekend when I’m bored. We’ll see.) So, consider this your warning that at some point, certain of my photo archives will disappear if you are not already a Flickr friend.

*Contributing to this decision was the fact that within a couple of days of writing that post I noticed that a photo of mine had been favorited by someone who was going around making a collection of photos where ladies’ pants were riding a bit on the low side. Luckily the gal in the photo in question was a stranger, but still. It appeared that at some point Flickr had deleted their original account, but they had created a new one and were going back and re-finding all their favorites. Ew.

Privacy on the Internet . . . and me

December 21, 2008 in internet, social software by spinstah | 6 comments

As I was writing the previous post (Privacy on the Internet) it got me thinking about how I approach posting things online. I have a ton of stuff online about myself and am easily findable with a quick Google search. (At the moment 6/10 (without middle initial) and 8/10 (with) of the first page of results are about me.

Even though I’m all over the place, I’m still taking advantage of privacy controls, and I’m trying not to post things that I think could cause me trouble down the line. (There was an exception to that rule for several months.) But I’m finding it increasingly difficult to balance the desire to be out there,  making myself findable and accessible, with the desire to control who can see the details. Read the rest of this entry »

Privacy on the internet

December 20, 2008 in internet, social software by spinstah | 1 comment

Hand-in-hand with my interest in social software and social networking technologies is an interest in privacy on the internet. Slowly but surely, the landscape is changing.

We’ve all seen the news stories about people who have lost their jobs because of a blog post or something on a profile on MySpace or Facebook. But here’s a new twist: earlier this month, Read Write Web reported on a college student who not only lost a student teaching job because of a photo & caption on her MySpace profile, but as a result her college converted some credits to change her degree in education to one in English. I haven’t looked up anything else on this story, but as RWW reports, the situation is a little more complex than a simple matter of the woman in question not using her privacy settings (which she obviously hadn’t been). It sounds like there were some disagreements between her and her supervising teacher, and the article hints at the possibility that the woman either wasn’t cut out for high school teaching, or she didn’t receive the kind of mentoring one would expect while in a student teaching position. Anyway, I can’t really comment on this case much more than that, but Abby and I got to talking about it. Read the rest of this entry »

Google Reader

November 16, 2008 in blogging, internet by spinstah | 2 comments

A couple of days ago, I switched from Bloglines to Google Reader. I had started thinking about it a few weeks ago, when Bloglines was having some weird problems. Then they cleared up, and I stopped thinking about it. And then, of course, late last week there were more weird problems – every feed in my inbox was updating, in some cases showing me hundreds of old posts. This is not the point of an RSS aggregator. I gave up and exported my subscriptions from Bloglines and dumped them into a Google Reader account, and I’ve been using that since I think Thursday.

So far I like it. I like that you can toggle so easily between list view (headlines) and expanded view (stories). I prefer to go through my subscriptions feed by feed, so I tend to skip the homepage, where Reader mixes together all the updates from all your feeds. (I also feel like there is too much stuff on that page. There are three columns — the regular panel on the left with your updated feeds & navigation for Google Reader, the middle column with the stories themselves, and then a right column that has a box recommending new feeds and another box of ‘tips and tricks.’ It seems like I can’t get rid of the right panel. It’s not really busy, per se, but it still feels cramped.) The only ’save’ feature I was using within Bloglines was the ‘keep new’ checkbox, which Google Reader also has.

I can’t see any reason to go back to Bloglines (except to bookmark the few things marked ‘keep new’), which is a shame. It feels like the end of an era, especially since I taught so many of my GSLIS classmates about RSS by getting them started with Bloglines. I hope they haven’t been too frustrated with it, or if they have they’ve given another reader a try.

UPDATE 11/19: Jon points out the Better GReader Firefox addon, which is pretty slick. You can get rid of the nav at the top and also bypass the “add to iGoogle or Reader?” page when you add a new feed. Thanks!

ASIS&T 2008: Tagging as a Communication Device

October 27, 2008 in conferences, internet by spinstah

Tagging as a Communication Device: Every Tag Cloud Has a Silver Lining (name changed)
Presenters: Heather D. Pfeiffer, Emma Tonkin, Mark R. Lindner, Margaret E. I. Kipp, David R. Millen

Read the rest of this entry »

ASIS&T 2008: Plenary

October 26, 2008 in conferences, internet by spinstah | 1 comment

Earlier this afternoon, I arrived in Columbus, OH for ASIS&T 2008. I am staying in the conference hotel (a Hyatt Regency) and feeling totally spoiled as I lean up against a huge stack of pillows on the bed. My flight was fine (love those 1 hour-ish flights) but I spent a lot of time at BWI before takeoff. As in, I arrived at BWI at 7:40am for a 10:25 flight. Not only did Super Shuttle insist on picking me up between 7:25 and 7:40 for the 30 minute drive to BWI (which I think was much quicker on a Sunday morning) but then they showed up 15 minutes early. I was not quite ready yet, but I don’t think I forgot anything too important. I did feel exceedingly vain putting on my makup in the airport ladies’ room, though.

Anyway, I’m going to try some conference blogging since Dr Bunsen Honeydew has much better battery life than Kermit the Gateway Laptop could ever dream of. That said, I didn’t have my computer with me for the plenary, so I’m working off of my notes for this post. And since I didn’t have a notebook and was taking notes on the back of some of the conference materials, that means these notes & thoughts are not necessarily in the order in which they were presented in the session. Anyway, my thoughts & comments are in brackets.

Plenary Session
Genevieve Bell on Transforming the Internet
Respondents: Howard Rheingold and Andrew Keen
(Bios)

Read the rest of this entry »

Podcasts

October 19, 2008 in internet, tech by spinstah | 1 comment

Abby is stuck shelf reading* at her library next week and wants some podcast recommendations. I feel like someone else was asking about this recently, and I have also started trying to find some new ones for the walk to work. Not Martha recently pointed to this Ask MetaFilter post with a bunch of recommendations, and I’ve downloaded a test episode of a few to see how they are. So apparently, podcasts are the new iPhone. Or something.

Recently I have been enjoying (links go to the iTunes store):

I also subscribe to GSLIScast, the podcast of events from my library school. I have grabbed a couple of video podcasts in advance of college hockey season: Boston University Athletics Video Podcast, BU Today Sports Highlights (which may or may not be significantly different) and the College Hockey podcast from CSTV. Not sure how well either of those will work out for me but we’ll see. (As a side note, it makes me sad that when I finally have the time and money, I am so far away that I won’t even be able to watch some of the games on TV, let alone go to any. I just don’t understand why there isn’t something like MLB.TV or Gameday Audio for college hockey. Alums would totally pay for that.)

The Book Review and Gadget Lab podcasts are usually about 15-20 minutes long. The New Yorker podcast can vary — authors are invited to pick a short story from the New Yorker’s archive, read it aloud, and then discuss it with the host. Fascinating. Fresh Air and On Point are generally about 45 minutes, and I pick and choose which ones I listen to based on the descriptions.

For a while in library school I was listening to This Week in Tech, but they go long — like an hour or more, sometimes. I got tired of not being able to finish listening to an entire episode on one leg of my commute to Simmons, which was anywhere from 45 – over an hour door-to-door, depending on the time of day. The Gadget Lab podcast is filling some of that gap, but I still would like to find something that would cover more of the tech news end of the spectrum.

Edited to add: The Simple Dollar posted a list of financial & economics news podcasts just a few days ago.

*Shelf reading is when you systematically go through the stacks to make sure the books are in the correct order. It is not an exciting task.

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