Tag: Social Media

Sunday Paper

The Sunday Reading List was something I wanted to be a regular feature. I wanted to list the articles (long reads) that I had discovered and completed reading during the week; articles that impacted me and may be beneficial for others to read. But I was inconsistent, posting sporadically over the last few years. Well ... I'm starting over.

the great disconnect

The worry related to how irrelevant the Internet makes you feel has to go away. The ‘fear of missing out’ is bullshit. The first time I accessed my Twitter timeline on the iPhone when I returned home, it felt as if nothing had changed. And nothing did. The same kinds of tweets: political satire, stupid nitpicking about first world problems, the same old banter, the same kind of meaningless memes, snarky remarks and subtweets, etc. etc. The first promoted tweet I saw was for some kind of product or service and began as follows: “Work from anywhere with this…” — another trap of this ‘always-on’ lifestyle. Working from anywhere might be convenient for certain people, but if you stop and think hard about it for a moment, it’s insane. These lines dividing work and leisure/time off, getting progressively more blurred to the point of disappearing, are creating a ridiculous, energy-sucking lifestyle. I don’t want to work from anywhere. I don’t want to bring technological gadgets everywhere so that I may do something work-related no matter what time it is or even if I’m technically on holiday. This blending of work/leisure feels more and more unhealthy to me. It’s like wearing a VR headset most of the time. It may be a fun experience when it’s on and you’re sucked in. But who are you, what are you when you remove it and realize just how exhausted you are? And was it really worthwhile?
- the great disconnect

Inside iPhone 7: Why Apple Killed The Headphone Jack

The 3.5-millimeter audio jack, however, is neither inadequate nor in obvious need of replacement. Sure, it is certainly dusty. But it is widely used and unencumbered by patents. You don’t have to pay anyone to use it. The signal it transmits doesn’t need to be decoded. And because it is an analog and not a digital standard, it cannot be locked down with digital rights management (DRM). Like the AC power socket adorning the walls of our homes, the headphone jack is a dumb interface. In Apple parlance, “it just works.” Buy a pair of headphones — from an audiophile store or an airport vending machine — and plug them into a headphone jack and you’ll likely hear whatever it is you were planning on listening to. So why send it off for a dirt nap?
- John Paczkowski, Managing Editor, BuzzFeed San Francisco

building better defaults

Only a fool would deposit $100 into a savings account and come back the next day expecting it to have grown to $200. It’s not until years later that the account begins to see the exponential return on the investment. We know that financial investments and the growth of compound interest takes time — so too the investments we make in the rest of our lives.
- Building Better Defaults

One Size Does Not Fit All

I have taken a hiatus from social media in the past but when I sat down and seriously considered deleting my Twitter and Google+ profiles earlier this year I found I just couldn’t bring myself to pull the trigger and kill that part of me.Colin Walker

I couldn’t delete mine either. I wanted to delete Facebook and Google+. I really did. I suspended my Facebook account for one week and stopped posting to Google+ for a while. Only one person noticed. It was then that I could have silently deleted my account and moved on. But I chose to reduce the amount of time I spent on social media. Facebook is the only way I can share my life with my extended family.

So I made some changes. I spend more time writing and sharing on my blog. I mostly use Twitter as a broadcast channel for blog post and interesting articles. On Google+ I focus on using the communities. I limit my Facebook exposure to just the weekend.

Why do we rush to new services and networks just to reserve our names? Do we need them all or need to share the same information across such a wide spectrum?

For me, it’s the very valid concern that someone will create an account under my name, image etc. and start posting as me. Reputation damage is hard to defend. Once the damage is done to online reputation, it can be challenging to recover. Services exists to help with this but I prefer doing it myself.

In life we are many things to many people depending upon the circumstances in which we encounter them but, by reinforcing a consistent identity across multiple services (or even within different spheres of the same service) we are creating one homogeneous instance of ourselves.

Interestingly I am a different person on Facebook than I am on Google+. My Google+, Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram social graph are wildly different. On Facebook I am a husband, father, friend, family member, and work colleague. Those are the only people I chose to connect with on Facebook. On Google+ and Twitter, I am publicly the geek. I have stopped sharing geeky internet articles on Facebook. It seems very few of my contacts care. But on Google+ and Twitter - more so Google+ -- I can argue and discuss with strangers. The photos I share on Instagram rarely make it to the other social networks. I am always careful to be professional on LinkedIn and share very rarely and the sharing is always in topic with my professional identity.

I maybe one person but I share different aspects of me depending on the social network. I have stopped cross posting.

Is this addiction to identity creating problems we just don’t have solutions to other than to disconnect? When everything is linked and traceable there is nowhere to hide except offline, nowhere that we can forget ourselves or who we are supposed to be.

One can decide to disconnect entirely or choose what you want to share, with whom, and how. I think the personal branding thing started as a way to show employers/clients that we are more then just what they hired us for. I am not just an information security analyst, I also an avid photographer, web developer public speaker, writer etc. In fact, it’s the way we write our 140 character social media profiles. It was meant as a way to differentiate oneself from the other candidates, other profiles and show value. Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the idea?

Vegan Buffalo Wing Sandwich

I took a drive down to Cherry Hill to visit a friend to talk about his website, social media and running a business. I'm no expert, but I provided guidance on using WordPress to host his website content. WordPress is a popular content management system with wide developer and designer support. Choosing a template was the easy part but I went over the basics of creating content as well as some SEO basics.

We talked about social media, something I've worked hard to learn much about over the last few years. I'm getting better at using it and the rewards for a small business can be significant.

As a reward for helping him out my friend packed me some of his restaurant favorites to take home for my family. This vegan buffalo wing sandwich is delicious. The purple cabbage added a nice crunch and texture, and the sandwich has just the right amount of ranch dressing. I'm not vegetarian but if I lived or worked in the Moorestown area I could see myself eating this regularly.