Twitter

At the beginning of this project, I was a bit intimidated about using Twitter. A while later I actually started my own Twitter account, just to see what it was like to use. It wasn't hard to keep it to 140 characters, as there's a countdown ticker right next to the box you type in, which is actually a little distracting! I did find that it was hard to come up with anything worthwhile to say with only 140 characters. Maybe I'm just used to writing and reading long sentences in notebooks and novels, instead of texting, but it hasn't become something I use very often. It seems to be used mostly for quick flashes of self-promotion, so it can be useful if you have something good to promote (like the library), but it sounds like there's a lot of endless mind-looping clutter out there. My husband and I do like to read Bret Easton Ellis's twitter account from time to time (he's the author of American Psycho), he writes short and witty comments on pop culture and seems to have figured out how to use the medium in an intelligent and clever way that conforms to the Twitter restrictions while also keeping the essence of his writing style, which is rare! Most other celebrity twitter accounts I've found seem to be full of conversations between various people (if a Twitter post begins with @username, that means they're addressing this tweet to that specific user) or are full of no doubt interesting links (??) that are hard to follow as an outsider.

This article by Margaret Atwood about how she came to love Twitter shows the good side of the beast:

The Twittersphere is an odd and uncanny place. It’s something like having fairies at the bottom of your garden... a playful but also a helpful group. If you ask them for advice, it’s immediately forthcoming. ... So what’s it all about, this Twitter? Is it signaling, like telegraphs? Is it Zen poetry? Is it jokes scribbled on the washroom wall? Is it John Hearts Mary carved on a tree? Let’s just say it’s communication, and communication is something human beings like to do.

But if the medium is the message, what message is Twitter sending? That communicating can be done in the mysterious grunts and code of shortened URLs and keyboard symbols? That we're too rushed to really spell out what we mean and anyways, you should know all about that by now? Is it a short punch to the ribs of the people nearest you in cyberspace, hey look at me!

I may try Twitter again at some point to see if I can find any book tweeting going on, but it seems very utilitarian to me and without a lot of poetry, beauty or lasting meaning. I could be wrong though.

LibraryThing

I've had a LibraryThing account in the past and am becoming somewhat tempted to create a new one after looking at it again for this assignment! I deleted my account before because I wasn't using it very often and found it a bit clunky and ugly to use (Goodreads and Shelfari are two other similar online book sites where you can list your books, read reviews and find other people who like the same books and they are both more attractively designed.) Also, as I continue to mention, I don't like having so many accounts on different websites! Yes, it's free, but all this freedom comes with a loss of privacy. I sometimes worry about all the forgotten accounts I may have floating around the internet, with I don't know what personal information attached to them. So.

My other complaint with all book sites like this is that it takes a while to load all the books in your collection and pick the right covers for them, give them a rating or review, tag them by subject and sort them into categories (to be read, wish list, that kind of thing), etc. If you get fussy it can become a bit complicated and take time away from reading. On the other hand, it's a great way to network with other booklovers and find great new book recommendations.

I've looked up The Waves by Virginia Woolf on all three online book sites I mentioned, LibraryThing, Goodreads and Shelfari, just to see what information and user content each site had on the same book. LibraryThing had only 19 reviews, with 2000 people who had listed it in their library, and only showed the way others had tagged it, who else had it in their library, with a list of ten similar novels. Goodreads had page after page after page of reviews (it says over 4000 but many of them are just a rating or a very brief comment), with links to discussion posts, lists and groups that had mentioned the novel. Shelfari had 30 reviews, with 1075 people listing it in their library, and it also included a long section with information about the characters, setting, themes and symbolism and included memorable quotes, all of which would be very useful for understanding the book and deciding if you wanted to read it. Shelfari also has the best design of all three (you can see all your books on beautiful virtual bookshelves), although I think the most popular may be Goodreads and that's part of the fun with these sites, being where everyone else is! So now it's just a matter of deciding which site I want to use and when I want to take the time to enter all of my books all over again......

Online Productivity Tools

I've briefly tried out Google's Calendar and I'm sure it's fine, but I far prefer paper. Not only am I tired of giving out my personal information to so many different sites (even though I already have a Google account through Blogger, they still wanted a bit more personal info for the Calendar application and I don't appreciate that or see why it's necessary), but I've used paper daytimers for years, I like writing everything by hand and I find the online calendar to be too big and clunky. Also, since I don't have a cell phone or whathaveyou, I wouldn't be able to access the Calendar while I was on the go and away from a computer. (I know there's environmental downsides to using a lot of paper just as there are for keeping electronic devices on all the time to check your email/calendar/facebook/etc but paper feels more natural. And I'd rather use machines less often.) But the good thing is that at least once you are logged onto Google through Blogger or Gmail or whatever other way they have of dominating the internets and have given them another tiny piece of yourself, you can use the Calendar too. If you want to.

I might be more inclined to use Google Documents, but since I already have (admittedly outdated) Microsoft Word on my laptop and don't use it that often at this point, I'm not interested in it right now, but maybe later I'll check it out. It's good to know it's available if I need it and that I could backup my documents online, especially if my laptop goes down again!

Flickr & YouTube

And now comes my last day attempt to catch up on all of the assignments!

I've used Flickr for years now as a way to host photos in a more professional way than Facebook or Photobucket (another online photo hosting site). The problem with it is that unless you have a paid account, you can only host up to 200 visible photos. The good things are that you can get the photo in three sizes, small, medium and large, which you can't do on other sites, Facebook photos seem to be shrunk, more for family and friends than for something you want to show off to everyone, while Photobucket only preserves the photo at quite large sizes and it takes a while to manually resize it in order to repost it elsewhere on the internet. Flickr is for people who take photography more seriously, who want to share and promote the beautiful images they've captured and who want more than the family photo album feel of Facebook. There are privacy settings you can control on each photo you post to Flickr, whether personal, for other Flickr contacts, or for everyone to see. Nevertheless, I would say if you only want to share pictures of your kids and pets, use Facebook. I've used Flickr in the past as a way to host my photos for blogs, as not all blogging sites host photos for you. I've also joined a few groups on it and found it useful to have an online backup of my best photos when my laptop wasn't working properly.

I occasionally watch videos on YouTube, a few music videos and some book trailers like the one for Sense & Sensibility & Sea Monsters! I'm sometimes annoyed by how often people are beginning to substitute written content on a blog for some video they've found on YouTube, I'd rather read a well written blog post than watch a video. But I seem to be in the minority on that one and I suppose a variety of media can add interest. YouTube is easy to use, I've even watched a whole Jane Austen miniseries on it when I was living in Lake Louise and not near a library!