Getting friendly with social software
No, not in that “with privileges” kind of way
I spend a lot of time reading about and playing around with various web 2.0 type stuff. Most of the time, the crap you read about the latest missing-e.com is just that, crap — crap in private beta, no less.
Yet, my affection for web apps is undiminished. Some of these things are actually useful to me. They’re fun. They are why I love the web. (Yes, I’m a big geek. Unless this is your first visit to the blog, you either are a big geek yourself, or you have learned to tolerate and and/or be amused by my kind.) Because it is something I get asked about a fair amount, I thought it would be a good idea to blog what I’m really using, because I think these services are really worth learning about.
The ones I’m obsessed with and see every day
Early this year, I was in a situation where my motherboard might fry itself at any moment (the thinkpad landed on its side while an ethernet cable was plugged in, and bad bendy things happened) so I had to backup my files fast. I realized the single most important data I had was my del.icio.us bookmark info — so I exported it as a file and gmailed it to myself for safekeeping. Then I sent myself the .txt file with username/password combos for a bunch of stuff. Don’t bother to tell me how insecure it is to keep a forgot.txt file, I’m still going to do it.
I love flickr. Love, love, love it. Strangely enough, it is probably the most social thing I do online. I enjoy seeing new photos from my contacts when I log in, I post fairly frequently to a few different pools and discussion threads, and just generally gorge myself on the art. I think it is better than Google’s image search for most of what I’m looking for (whether its the bean or potential places to go when on vacation). Where else can you see everything from flying kittens to beautiful abandoned furniture?
Not to mention my extra bonus love for the whole ecosystem of cool and interesting things built up around flickr: moo cards and Utata.
Shrook is a feedreader client for the Mac, and the website is a service that allows you to sync installations and/or read your feeds online in any browser. Now that I’m all Mac all the time, it offers me the holy grail of feedreading: synchronization that remembers not just what I’ve subscribed to, but which items I’ve actually read. Sorry BlogBridge, but now that I don’t have to worry about crossplatform, I’m saying goodbye.
The ones I see less often, but still love
If you are a book person and you are online, you really should have an account. As I’ve said before, it is my dream web app. It rocks, and Tim is always adding new things — he’s even shaping the future of Maine’s economy.
I never want to write another resume again — I work and live on the web, so just Google me. (It so happens the first two pages of results are all me when you search my name.) The claimID service makes it possible for people who aren’t that googleable to collect all the links about them on one page, and boost their chances of relevant info (collected on their claimID page) turning up when someone does Google them. For me, it is just damn convenient to have one simple URL to point people to when they want my info. I think it is better than my resume, because it is a collection of relevant, living information on the web.
The ones I’m just friends with
Keeps track of comments you leave just about anywhere — on blogs, on flickr. The flickr thing bugged me, so I turned it off, as flickr already lets me follow up with comments I’ve made. If I used this more, I’d probably like it more. Right now, it makes me feel vaguely guilty about the paucity of my comments.
So far, I am only occasionally in-world. The clunkiness of the interface combined with frequent lag on the grid keep me from being as invested as I might. I love the idea of Second Life, but the execution has a long way to go. Remember Gopher? Gopher is to the web today as Second Life is to what virtual worlds will be.
My new crush
Confession time: I work for Intuit, and up until a few days ago, I didn’t think financial management tools could be fun. I so believed this, I didn’t really spend, uh, any time using them. Yes, my bad, I’m going to hell. Wait, no, my group doesn’t work on Quicken, so maybe just purgatory.
But back to my ludicrous point: Wesabe makes money management easy and kind of fun. The suggested tag interface rocks — of course “bastards” is a great way to tag finance charges on your credit card. Others have already raved about it, and how awesome the “I’m freaking out” button is. Uploading your info is a snap (they never have your login info, so you never have to worry about it being compromised) and it is easy to see (for better or worse) how you are spending your money once you tag everything. You can set goals, get or leave tips, and benefit from other people cleaning up bank nonsense like POS PURCHASE GOBBLEDYGOOK turning it into, simply, APPLE COMPUTER. They also have a blog, Wheaties for Your Wallet.
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