Some thoughts after using NewTumbl for a bit over a year now

As I mentioned last year in my end of year thoughts and reading list post, I started a blog over at NewTumbl back in June of 2029 to replace the Alchemical Annex, which I closed down from Tumblr. Alchemical Annex for me is mainly a bit of experiment, a bit of free writing and posting, and a bit of stuff for fun. I call it the "refugee from Tumblr" blog since that was the motivation for trying out NewTumbl. Now that I have used it for a year and a half give or take, and I've had time to kick the tires and take it for a ride as they say, I am going to write out some thoughts as an informal review. So, in no particular order, here are my thoughts on the site. 

• A strength of NewTumbl is their ratings for blogs and posts system. The ratings through F (family friendly), O (safe for work), mature (NSFW), X (explicit, really NSFW), and their extreme rating of W (they call it Wow! and not safe for anyone. As I understand this one, this is for stuff even too extreme for X rating but still legal content). You can learn more about their ratings here. Ratings in theory give you a good level of control for your blog content and for what you see on your feeds. Feed is based on tags you choose to follow and users you choose to follow. In practice, getting a formula you are comfortable enough for your blog and your feeds is not as easy as it sounds. Yes, I like the idea you can rate posts, and I like the idea people can then adjust what they see based on ratings. You rate your blog, and others see it or not based on their level of comfort. For example, I now have an X-rated blog (more on that in a moment), which means I can see any blog and its content at X level and below. People with a rating below me would not be able to see any content I rate higher than them. They can see posts I rate at lower levels but nothing higher, so they would only see the parts of the blog that fit their comfort level. 
• As I mentioned, calibrating your comfort level (what you want to see) and your blog level (what you may want others to see of your content) is not easy. I reflected on this on Alchemical Annex back in July 2 and again in July 5 of 2019.
• The ratings system is mostly human based, and to a large measure it does depend on people flagging things if they are not accurate. The results can be inconsistent. For one, I found a lot of people rate lower than they should be, i.e. a post that by definition is likely X gets an M rating because the user may be trying to skirt rules or just trying to get more views (or their threshold is higher despite the definitions from NewTumbl). The result is at times, if you have a lower rating of M for example for your comfort level, X-level stuff slips in because some users are just not scrupulous enough or may not care. This is another reason that getting a good comfort level on NewTumbl is next to impossible short of filtering everything out, but if you do that, you see very little since not many people are rating at the lower levels of F and O. 
• So, why did I end up rating my blog with an X rating? Mainly because I started getting some followers who had a higher level I had, and to see their material, I needed to raise the comfort and blog ratings. A big disadvantage of the higher X rating is that regular viewers may not see parts of the blog unless they are signed into NewTumbl (and they have a high enough rating). However, for posts below X rating, and I think for me that is actually most of my content there, if you have the URL link to the blog, you see that content just fine.  Having an X rating for the blog was not a decision I took lightly, but I felt it put me at a disadvantage. However, it does mean I have to more actively filter my feed because to be honest I do not want to be seeing porn all the time. Hey, I like porn as much as the next healthy male, but I do have my limits. NewTumbl does give you the option to filter the feed by levels, which means I can just tell it to see stuff that is just F and O on the feed and filters the rest out. One thing NewTumbl can do is make users a bit more thoughtful about the content they post and share and have a bit more control on what they see or not. 
• What kind of content do I post? I use the blog as a second place to post my cartomancy content. I do a daily Tarot card pull on Twitter, and I cross post it at Alchemical Annex. It is just another alternative, though those posts get very little views and interactions if any. I also posts or repost memes, some pin ups, other bits and pieces of art, trivia, some vintage things, quotes, i.e. stuff one may keep in a commonplace book. 
• What do other people post? From what I see, you get a lot of memes. All kinds of memes from humor to politics (on both sides of the U.S. spectrum. Don't really see much politics from other places). A lot pictures of things people like. A ton, and I mean a seriously huge amount of porn. NewTumbl basically became the Mecca if you like posting and sharing porn and adult images. Nothing wrong with that. After all, they billed themselves as the adult alternative to Tumblr, as the place that will not censor you (as long as you mind the broad rules), and people have run with it. If you set your comfort level to X, or even M as I mentioned, you will see porn. There is no escaping it. If that is your thing, then this is the place for you. If it is not, I honestly think you should either stay with Tumblr or try someplace else for your microblogging. 
• Features on NewTumbl. I think it is safe to say NewTumbl is a Tumblr clone. It is not the only one, but it was one of the first that has been growing. You can do pretty much anything you might do on Tumblr.
• You can post and repost content from other users. You can also like content from other users and you can mark it as a favorite. If you mark as favorite,  you can then view your favorites in a single feed. This is pretty much as you would do in Tumblr .
• You can set your "home" (where you start when you log in) to your dashboard, which shows activity related to  your blog (any reblogs, likes, favorites, comments, so on you that you've gotten on your blog) or the general feed (shows content based on tags and users you follow). I have mine set up to go to the dashboard when I log in. 
• Types of posts you can do: text posts, photos (and pictures), video, quotes, links, and audio. However, not all of those work. In reality, you can do: 
•  Text posts (which include some limited editing ability; you are not getting anything like a WYSIWYG option, but you can link things in text posts).
• Photos and pictures can be uploaded and you can add text underneath. However, you cannot embed images in a text post. So for example, if you want to make a text post and put a picture in that post with a caption, you cannot do that. 
• Quotes. Sort of a text post. It puts the quote in a bubble when it displays, and gives you space to put in source of a quote. You can also add comment on the quote in text. If you share quotes, say a quote or thought of the day, this may be useful. I suppose you could do the same in a text post but this makes it look nicer. 
• Link. You can post a link to something like a website, a video (the link; you cannot embed videos), or anything else on the web with some comment. 
• Audio. That option is just for looks. Seriously, I have tried it and nothing happens. It looks like they intended to have some way to embed audio but they have not gotten around to it. 
• Video. It supposed to be to either upload a video or embed one from a place like YouTube. The functionality is pretty limited. Embedding from YouTube or such is not working. Like the audio function, it seems to be there for looks. The uploading video function does not seem consistent neither. I honestly do not bother with it. Overall, it is a bit of a fail in usability for NewTumbl.
  
• What you do see often are short animated GIFs (often porn clips) and some very short video clips, which I am guessing people upload since there is no function to link and embed. 
• You can filter types of activity to see on your activity, so basically sort things by just the likes you are getting or any comments. 
• You can follow people, and they can follow you. While NewTumbl claims there is an option to block people you do not want following, in reality it does NOT work. They claim to block someone they have to follow you first, which makes it a joke because more often than not on social media you want to block out anyone who bothers you, who may be offensive to you, or you just do not want to see period. Most social media ranging from Facebook to Twitter have easy blocking options to make things more comfortable for the user. There is NONE of that here. Believe me, I have tried and looked. This is a big failure on the part of NewTumbl when it comes to usability. 
• You can set up a queue of posts so things can post to the blog over time. You can also set the frequency in which those posts in the queue get posted. For example, I have the blog's post with enough content to post once a day. 
• However, another big fail is that there is NO way to schedule posts to specific dates like most other blog platform does. You can just add them to the queue but they post when they post. You can move posts in the queue around a bit so one thing posts before another, but even this process is somewhat difficult. Basically, it is very much a "set it and forget it" kind of thing. Lack of ability to schedule posts on a specific date is a significant limitation. Even Tumblr allowed one to schedule posts on specific dates, like content for Christmas/holiday season.
• You can make posts and save them as drafts. However, the draft queue is not that much better than the queue in terms searching and moving things around to put in certain order. 
• You can hide certain blogs and tags from your feed, though this also works fairly inconsistently. 
• Tagging. You can tag your content. An issue is that a lot of people do not due to laziness or carelessness, so if you want to hide certain posts, many that fit a tag will slip because some  user did not bother to tag things. 
• There is some limited function to personalize the appearance of your blog, things like having an image banner, adding some personal links, a short statement what your blog is about and a title, those kinds of things. 
• Having said that, there are a lot of users that do not bother with any of that and just leave their blogs as untitled. On a related note, a lot of people just set up a blog but not post content of their own, nor do they reblog. They just lurk. To me that is not a big deal, but there are some users who get very anal retentive about disliking followers with no content of their own. Oh well. 
•  You can get post alerts. This usually means you got flagged. This allows you then to revise a post, say change a rating. Until you revise, a flagged post becomes invisible. So for example, if you rate something as M, but it is really X, and you get "caught" (i.e. flagged), you get an alert. You then either revise the post content or change the rating for the post to get back in circulation. Once you learn the feel of the land, at least for me, alerts become rare to non-existent. First few days I got some persnickety monitor that flagged every other thing (not unlike Tumblr, except Tumblr uses their algorithm). Once I learned the ropes, I've not had any issues. The flagging system has its advantages (human based) but also disadvantages (again, human based and now and then you get some fuckbagel who is either way too literal and anal or one that does not have anything better to do than flag to bother people. The latter kind is relatively rare to be honest, so there is that). 
• Speaking of the ratings, they do offer you the option to become a monitor. There is a process to apply, and they review your flags to get you a proficiency rating (i.e. how well you match their ratings rubrics). If you work your way up to "community monitor" there is a small payment that those folks can earn. Some of the information on that program is here.  
• I have given thought to applying and seeing if I can make it to becoming a community monitor. I am sure my librarian skills could help, but realistically speaking I do not have the time to just go around looking for things to flag or not. Having said that, I do appreciate the self policing efforts, which are more than many other sites do. 
• Their search function. This is not very good to be honest, but then again, search functions for most social media are bad. Facebook's search function is notoriously bad for instance. In NewTumbl, you can type in a keyword, say cats, and you first get any blogs that may contain "cats" in title or content, then searches NewTumbl for any posts containing "cats." Notice it is not a matching search. For example, type "tit" and in addition to what you might expect (tits, i.e. female breasts), you can also get things like "unTITled," "TITanic," "TITillate," etc. There is no exact match, and it finds anything containing the set of letters you type. This makes for a pretty poor search function. 
• Speaking of searching, finding anything on your own blog is also next to impossible. You can see your blog, and if you tagged things well, a site search can bring up your posts, well, for the most part. However, there is no specific way to search your blog that is easy if you want to find a specific post. So if you recall you posted a particular post, but do not recall when, search may or not help you find it. At least Tumblr allowed you to see your blog's posted queue by month so you could at least scroll and look. NewTumbl does not even offer that.  
• Advertising. It is a free to use platform, so supported by advertising. The ads show up in your feed and they sort of try to look like other posts, though they are identified as ads. The main issue with the advertising is not that they advertise. It is that they have chosen to use the worst porn ads imaginable. I am talking about the kind of cheesy and ethically dubious porn ads you only see on not so good porn sites and on seedy parts of the Internet: shady personals, the "click here to meet hot women in your area," ads for dubious male enhancement, and other less than tasteful ads. I get the site has to monetize. Believe me, I am not opposed to some ads. But for crying out loud, that is the best they could do? By the way, even if you have your comfort set up to low levels you will still see the porn ads in your feed even if all you set up to see was Dr. Seuss and memes and about cats. Their choice of advertising adds a seriously seedy element to NewTumbl overall. 
• They have a chat function. These are fairly basic chat rooms. Chat rooms can be labeled according to level (F, O, etc.). However, I have no idea who creates chat rooms nor who picks the topics for rooms (assuming people even stick to a topic). I certainly do not have the option to create or set up a chat room. Most chat rooms to be honest are basically sex related and fairly explicit kind of chat rooms, so if that is not your thing, chat rooms will be pretty useless to you. The chat rooms, if there are people in it, do allow you to invite someone to a private chat. However, traffic in chat rooms seems to be fairly low. I personally find the function fairly useless.  This is something they probably could have done without. 
• They also have a trivia competition feature, but I have not tried it out. It appears to be something that may provide some form of micro reward to users. As I said, this is the one feature I have not tried out, so I cannot comment on it. 
• You do have the option to delete an account, and it does not seem difficult. However, there does not seem to be an option to export your blog content should you decide to leave (or if there is, I have no found it, and I did look). Tumblr at least gave you an export function.
  

So let's do the final thoughts. 

If you are into adult content, and you really like your porn, then this is definitely a place for you. 

If you are not into that, you can filter it out when you set up your profile and blog, but odds are content you will see will be much less. There are just not that many people who do "mixed" content or stuff other than posting adult imagery. Practically no one posts any text. Much like Tumblr, images are the main type of post, and they are the post most favored and most likely to get other users' attention.  

In terms of functionalities, NewTumbl does the very basics to be a Tumblr clone. However, there are a few features I feel it should have that they do not have, and that just makes the site less effective and useful. If you want a micro blog for "shits and giggles" as they say, then this is an OK site for that. However, if you were doing OK in Tumblr, at this point in time, even if you hate Tumblr's current owners, you may be happier or more comfortable there. I do not see a reason you would want to move over to NewTumbl unless it is for the adult content. Granted that Tumblr's algorithm is a pain, but if it is not bothering you because your content is relatively safe, I see no reason for making a move. You can do what some people do and keep their Tumblr and open a blog in NewTumbl to test it out, but as I said, if you are happy over there, you may be better staying over there. 

Sense of community is still lacking in NewTumbl. Granted, they are a new site and a small operation, so they do not have the time, reputation, nor resources that Tumblr or other bigger social media sites have. Having said that, community sense is still limited. On the positive, looking for sex friendly (who may or not be sex positive, that is another question) and explicit material loving people, then NewTumbl could be for you. If you have any other interests, you may be better off looking elsewhere. That could change over time if more people come over, although from what I see, I do not see the current patterns expanding anytime soon. If you have more mundane interests like books and reading, you are not going to find enough if any people with similar interests in NewTumbl.

For the moment, I am keeping the blog and account. For the most part, I have the filters set up to something that works for me, but it did take some effort to get there. I am not sure if I would keep it long term given the lack of community and the limitations on some functions, like scheduling posts. In addition, when they were starting out, the owners/producers of the site would update on progress and report on new features, fixes, so on. They have gone awfully quiet, and the site does not seem to be upgrading or updating things much; that video non-function shows no sign of being implemented for instance. So long term, it is possible I abandon the site and end the experiment. It would be nice to export things, but to be honest, if not, it would not bother me. Overall, this is my review based on my experience as a fairly active user of the site.

And that is that. 

An update note (10/8/2022): I went back and checked again ability to upload videos. It seems you can now upload a video, the shorter the better as the upload can be a bit slow. I tried uploading a video I had made from the computer, and it worked OK. Adding a video linked from the web seems uncertain. When I attempted it, it just kept spinning, and it never loaded it. So the feature remains inconsistent at this point, but slightly better than when I first reviewed the site.

Booknote: Words Onscreen

Naomi S. Baron, Words Onscreen: the Fate of Reading in a Digital World. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. ISBN: 9780199315765.

 

Genre: nonfiction

Subgenre: reading, books, library science, literacy, technology, education

Format: hardcover

Source: Hutchins Library, Berea College. It was recommended by a colleague.

 

This book looks at research on reading and how digital texts and devices can and do affect reading ability and habits. The book is arranged as follows: 

• A preface.
• Ten chapters.
• Acknowledgements, notes, and references. 

 

Baron looks at topics such as: texts going digital, how writing is reshaped digitally, physicality of reading, and the future of reading in a digital world. Baron finds that yes, reading digitally is different than reading in print. In simple terms, Baron shows with research that those who read digitally read less deeply and in a less focused way. This has implications for education. One consideration is for higher education where many schools are embracing e-book textbooks to lower costs for students. At least, that is the claim. If you ask some of our students in our campus here, e-book textbooks can be as expensive as print, but that is another subject for another time.  This is where open textbooks are hailed as a cost effective alternative, but again, at what cost to reading skill and focus? Baron looks at this and other reading topics. 

The book covers a lot of ground while keeping the focus on the act of reading. The book looks at various research studies, including Baron's own work, along with stories from various readers. The book itself is interesting, and it is a pretty easy read. This is a book that librarians and educators should read and consider the findings presented. I really liked it and recommend it.

4 out of 5 stars. 

* * * * * 

Additional reading notes: 

What the book asks: 

"Words Onscreen asks if digital reading is reshaping our understanding of what it means to read. The question sounds amorphous, but it has tangible substance and equally real fallout. I will argue that digital reading is fine for many short pieces or for light content we don't intend to analyze or reread. However, if eReading is less well suited for many longer works on ever for short ones requiring serious thought, what happens to reading if we shift from print to screens? Will some of the uses of reading (and, for that matter, writing) fall by the wayside? If so, with what implications for education, culture, and ourselves?" (xii). 

On PowerPoint: 

PowerPoint has had a cumulative effect on how we read onscreen. Experience with the program is leading us to expect that text accessed on any digital device is ephemeral. But (you may be saying), if a person wants to preserve some of that online content in durable form, why not print it out? Too often my answer is, 'Lots of luck'" (99). 

As if you did not have enough reasons to hate Amazon, Kindle, and other eReader services. This is an issue that concerns me, but there is little I can do about it short of just not using ebooks at all, which neither personally not professionally is a realistic option for me: 

"If you are a Kindle reader (or, increasingly these days, a user of almost any eReader), your privacy is compromised at the corporate level. Someone can track every time you open an eBook, every time you turn one of its pages, every time you make an annotation. Here the social reading relationship is not one you asked for but part of the Faustian bargain for reading onscreen" (130). 

More on privacy concerns: 

"What privacy do today's readers have? Given the ubiquity of credit cards, few of us think twice when we swipe our plastic at the physical or virtual register. For print books, at least we retain the option of using cash in a face-to-face transaction (assuming we have the time and shoe leather to track down what we are looking for in a brick-and-mortar store). With eBooks, all privacy bets are off. Someone knows everything you have bought. Amazon and its competitors also have a pretty good sense of what you've read, since they can trace each page you access. And if you take advantage of such handy features as highlighting, underlining, and jotting notes, every make you make is likely in their database" (150). 

 

 

Main purpose of the book: 

 

"The main purpose of this book is to move beyond arguments of nostalgia and habit to figuring out what it is about print and digital platforms that leads us to read on them in particular ways. But another goal is to understand the potential consequences of driving reading from print to screens. As we have seen, one effect seems to be privileging the search for data or information over reading for continuity of argument and reflection.  In the process, we steer readers (and authors) away from long-form writing to shorter pieces. And we replace the notion of owned, tangible documents with ephemeral access" (153). 

Why we need students able to do complex reading: 

"If we want students to be responsible voting citizens, they must be able to grapple with the issues, not just press an electronic lever. If we want them to be active participants in society, they have to understand its cultural and historical underpinnings, including its nuances. And for that, you need to do serious, roll-up-your-sleeves, focus-on-what-you're-doing reading" (168). 

Some books from the references list for my TBR list: 

• Adler, Mortimer, How to read a book. 
• Carr, Nicholas, The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to our Brains.
• Chabris and Simons, The Invisible Gorilla: How our Institutions Deceive Us. 
• Jacobs, Alan, Pleasures of Reading in an Age of Distraction. 
• McGuire and O'Leary, Book: a Futurist's Manifesto. 
• Miedema, John, Slow Reading. 
• Mikics, David, Slow Reading in a Hurried Age.
• Piper, Andrew, Book was There: Reading in Electronic Times. 
• Radway, Janice A.,  A Feeling for Books: the Book-of-the-Month Club, Literary Taste, and Middle Class Desire.
• Turkle, Sherry, Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other. 
• Ulin, David,  Lost Art of Reading.

 

* * * * * 

This book qualifies for the following 2020 Reading Challenge: 

 

 

Booknote: 99 Reasons Everyone Hates Facebook

Purcell, Emmet, 99 Reasons Everyone Hates Facebook. Smith Publicity, 2013.

ISBN: 9781626757547

Genre: Humor
Subgenre: Web 2.0, online social media

Facebook started out as a small college directory, and it has become a big social media behemoth with much to hate. Mr. Purcell has 99 reasons to hate the social site. Let's look at the book then. 

For starters, the book does feel a bit like an extended series of blog posts. I also think some of the reasons presented can be a bit of a stretch. However, Purcell also presents some reasons that I think many Facebook users will identify with, or they will smile when they recognize which friends of theirs are responsible for one Facebook sin or another. 

The book is divided into nine chapters, organizing the grievances against Facebook by themes. Some of the themes featured are: idiots (this includes people who join pointless groups and those who constantly fall for scams online), attention seekers, too much information (for example, see Reason 46: People who won't shut up about having the "world's best girlfriend" -- or boyfriend or spouse), and social harassment.  

Purcell also raises some good points. For example, the way that people grieve on Facebook. For this, see Reason 53: Leaving RIP messages as status updates. I will admit that when someone has a loss, if they post an RIP expression on their Facebook status, then I am willing to cut them some slack. This does not really bother me. However, here is where Purcell's good point comes in: it is not just the RIP statues. He writes, "That's right; your grandmother has just died and somebody 'Liked' it-- does that not bother anyone else?" (96). I know when that happens, it does feel very odd. Then again, it could be Facebook's fault for not having more options besides the "Like" button (and yes, he mentions that as another reason to hate Facebook, see Reason 67). Do note that for the author the rule of not using Facebook for RIP statuses has an exception. He writes that if he dies in a spectacular death, say "killed in some cool volcano/hang gliding combination or a shark attack," then do break  out the RIP statuses on his behalf. There are always exceptions to rules. I will be honest. I think if I were to die in some cool volcano/hang gliding incident, I would want it celebrated too on Facebook. And then, there are some reasons to hate Facebook you may have never heard about until now. For instance, Faceboogling, which is Reason 78. This is "when Facebook users decided to use their Facebook status instead of Google, asking their friends a pertinent, factual question and waiting patiently for responses" (136). 

Overall, this is a short read with some entertaining moments and some less entertaining moments. As I mentioned, some of the reasons seemed a bit of a stretch at times. However, as the saying goes, your mileage may vary. The book does lend itself to browsing and skimming; just find your grievance and read on. Many Facebook users will probably appreciate this, in light of the ways in which Facebook has just been getting more cluttered and difficult (as in a pain in the rear end) over time. If you don't use Facebook, this book could save your life by keeping you away from it.

If I have to give it stars, I'd say 3.5 out of 5. Do note the book is priced at $2.99, so if you want to add something quick to your e-reader, this could work.

If you wish to learn more, the author does have a website.


Disclosure note: I read this book as an e-book via NetGalley. Book was provided by publisher for honest review purposes (there, we have appeased The Man, a.k.a. the FCC once more).

Wired comes up with 7 skills you should have

I started this post merely as a small note about the article for my commonplace blog, Alchemical Thoughts. What started as a small note turned into a short post, so I decided to crosspost it here to share it with my three readers.

* * * * 

I thought this was a pretty neat list. I don’t agree with all of it, but there are some very good items. The two items I would emphasize right away are:
The first one on statistical literacy. This is a must. We need as a society to do a much better job in teaching people about statistics, how to figure basic ones out, and how they are used and misused. I liked the suggested assignment of comparing a liberal blog versus a conservative blog. This assignment is very good, and it should be something an average, well-informed citizen, “well-informed” being the key concept, should be able to do:

Daily Kos Versus BigGovernment.com
Find three examples of the same set of numbers presented in entirely different ways on the liberal blog Daily Kos and Andrew Breitbart’s conservative Big Government site. In each case, show which source is using the more aggressive spin and determine which side—if either—is being more honest in its presentation of the facts.

How often are you watching the news, and you get pundits debating back and forth about the latest numbers of such and such from the CBO (that’s the Congressional Budget Office). You think to yourself, “well, the CBO is nonpartisan, so the numbers must be good.” Sure, the numbers are probably fine, but you have to pay attention to how they are actually being used. And then you have figures and polls from all sorts of agencies, think tanks, nonprofit organizations, so on, which often have a bias or a particular agenda. I am not saying that some of those agendas are bad (personally, I think working towards things like social justice are important), but you still have to keep those things in mind. Expanding on that, this is where I would add a good course on information literacy, where you learn to evaluate information, more than just the statistics. So, if it was me, I would do more than just statistical literacy. We need broad ranging information literacy.
Second, I definitely like the Post-state Diplomacy course. Folks in the U.S. need some serious education on international affairs and how the world works right now. The folks at Wired write:

“Power has always depended on who can provide justice, commerce, and stability. Successful insurgents aren’t just thugs; they offer their members tangible benefits—community, money, education, and a sense of order (even if the rebels are the ones creating disorder in the first place). We must learn how they gain loyalty, even if our goal is to undercut it.”

Again, I don’t think the folks at Wired go far enough. It is not only about diplomacy, although that is extremely important. The statement above is not really a new idea; it is an idea that not many people understand or may be aware of. But we also need coursework on global awareness and citizenship, and I would also add geography.

The rest of the article is worth reading as well. Each skill description does include a “reading list” (I put it in quotes because some of the suggestions may be links to videos or other non-print material) and some questions you may want to consider. Whether you do some of the assignments or not, thinking about them may help you expand your horizons a bit more.
 

Am I Hyperconnected?

My answer is probably no. I recently saw this posting from the "Church of the Customer Blog asking "Are you hyperconnected?" Here is the criteria:

Are you hyperconnected? The magic number for devices is seven. That's seven devices for work or personal use while using at least nine applications like IM, text messaging, web conferencing and social networks.

The author of the post lists her devices, so let me see if I can do mine as well:

• The devices:
  
• Computer at work. I have mine in the office, plus I use the one at the reference desk.
  
• Cell phone. They say to count this. However, I only use my phone for. . .wait for it. . . phone calls. I do not surf the web on it, and if I text message, it's maybe once in a blue moon to the better half. In fact, we use texting so little, we may remove it from our plan on the next cycle. Who knows? I am not one of those over-connected people who need to have everything from the web sent to their cellphone because heaven forbid they miss the latest twit.
  
• Computers at home. I have a laptop in my work station, but it does not leave the house (i.e. I am not one of those self-important people who have to carry a laptop everywhere). There is one other computer the family uses. We only use it as needed. I use mine a bit more for blogging.
  
• Land line. We barely use that, but giving it up for a cellphone would invite all sorts of annoying calls from marketers, spam, etc. Better to screen the calls at home than get some a**hole on your cellphone. And before you point out to the DO NOT CALL list, trust me. We are registered, and we STILL get the a**holes.
  
• Applications (she lists a bunch of stuff like Twitter, which I don't use):
  
• Firefox is my browser of choice.
  
• Yahoo! messenger, though I do not use it a whole lot to be perfectly honest. Unlike a bunch of 2.0 librarians, instant messaging is just something that has not really caught on for me.
  
• Facebook. I have it, but again, another thing that is just there. While I check on it, not something I am terribly active with either.
  
• a few other social apps. that, again, I use only occasionally.
  

In other words, based on that, some people might say I am underconnected. And you know what, that is just fine by me. I know of the applications and tool. I can use them if I need to, but my life sure as hell does not depend on them. When it comes to those hyperconnected people, I agree with Mr. T, "I pity the fools!"

How Facebook Really Works

This is an amusing little video that illustrates how Facebook works. Quite accurate if you ask me as it picks up the annoyance factor. I am still learning about things like FB. Anyhow, go amuse yourselves for a bit.



A hat tip to the Library Garden. I crossposted the video on my Facebook and MySpace pages (too good not to).

You can take this MySpace and. . .

Ok, so maybe there is no need to be that extreme. In the interest of open disclosure, as of this moment, I don't have a MySpace or a Facebook account, and so far, have no plans to have one. It does not mean that could not change, but that is the deal for now. I am intrigued by some of the work librarians have done in such spaces, thus I leave it open for me to try it out sometime. The only reason I have a 360 Yahoo! page is because it pretty much came along with the MyYahoo! I was already using. I doodle in it, but it is certainly nothing essential. Curious readers can click on the link in the margin to see my doodles. At any rate, the reason for this post's title is that the story of Gabe Henderson caught my eye. He is the guy who decided to cancel his MySpace. Yep, you read that right. The Iowa graduate student pulled the plug and is finding more freedom as a result.

Readers can find references to the story from The Wired Campus Blog and from The Kept-Up Academic Librarian.

There has been some recent discussions in the news and in blogs about how some students may be spending too much time on the Internet using services like MySpace, which may take time from some of their other academic endeavors. As I always say, the key is moderation.

Having said that, a recent article from The Washington Post for October 29, 2006, "In Teens' World, MySpace Is So Last Year," is making the rounds of the blogosphere. It seems a lot of teens are getting tired of MySpace and cancelling their accounts. My bet is that once they found out their parents were checking it out, it was time to leave for the next cool place. For some in the article, it boiled down to how much time they used to spend, time that can be well spent doing something else. So apparently, Gabe Henderson is not alone after all. However, detractors should not get too excited. MySpace and its ilk are not about to go away. They still get a lot of traffic and new users, so they will remain along with other newcomers to the social software field. May be interesting to see.

Experimenting with del.icio.us

(Cross-posted from The Gypsy Librarian)

Readers can note that I have placed a small link to my del.icio.us page on the side column under links. There is not many things yet, but it seems to be slowly growing. At the moment, I am trying out as a way to back up bookmarks I have on my computer. It seems to be ok so far. I have not gone about trying the other social things yet, but we'll see. In the meantime, it seems it can certainly work as a good reference tool of things I want to keep track of.