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Posts Tagged ‘ technology ’

Taking a break

Do you ever feel like you’re running out of time, but you don’t know what for? I’m sort of in a position with a few things in my life where I’m having to wait…and be patient. Things both professional and personal. I’m such a mover and shaker that being patient can be hard. In the specific situations I’m thinking of, I’ve done the work, I’ve made the right connections, and now I’m just waiting to hear back. And that is an odd state of limbo to be in, where I can’t even really execute (or even start to make) alternative plans since doing so would be counterproductive at this point.

Driving home from band practice tonight, I realized that I like to stay busy so much that I can push myself to the breaking point. As we were rehearsing, my fingers weren’t going to the right frets on my bass guitar, and I just felt off. Afterwards I realized that I have been going nonstop for about six months straight. Working, writing, editing, networking, socializing, rehearsing music, playing shows, socializing, exercising, socializing. Today around 5pm the go go go lifestyle hit me like a prizefighter’s punch. So—to keep with that metaphor—I’m gonna go down for the count…but voluntarily. I have a short vacation that starts tomorrow at 5pm, so I’m gonna go away for a bit.

And as hard as it is, that means a break from social media. This is the first real break I’ve attempted to take since diving into my new career, and it’s gonna be as hard for me not to check my Facebook, blog, email, Twitter or Tumblr from my iPhone as it is for a crack addict not to take a hit from a pipe being handed to him. I’m driving up into the beautiful Rocky Mountains of Colorado, so let’s hope that their majesty can steal my heart away from wanting to tweet about how beautiful it all is…at least until I get back on Monday.

2011: 06/13
CATEGORY: Life
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The next big thing or the next nothing?

Being in the field of online media, I often learn about the “next big thing” pretty quickly after it comes out. The only problem is that, most of the time, the next big thing turns out to be something that didn’t quite go over how some folks had expected. I remember when I first heard about Twitter, I immediately signed up signed up because I figured within a week, all of my friends would be on it and that would become the means by which we communicated the most (this was before Facebook became so dominant). I also initially misunderstood what Twitter offered. I thought it was a service where you’d post “Hey, I’m at such and such coffee shop” then your friends in the area would drop by if they were around. Well, it wasn’t that – though that does exist now with Foursquare and Facebook places (if that one ever really takes off).

All that to say, Posterous is now being touted as that “next big thing” because it allows you to communicate across all the other social network and blogging platforms via email. I’ll admit, it sounds pretty sweet. And it’s one of those things that, even if it doesn’t catch on, may still prove very useful to me. I guess we’ll see.

(p.s. This is my first test-post via Posterous.)

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Addendum:

I guess there are certain dangers and pitfalls to being on the frontier of new technology services. I will tell you this: DO NOT create a Posterous account. I”m not sure exactly what it was doing, but within thirty minutes of me giving the site permission to access this WordPress blog and my Tumblr account, both of them were frozen. I couldn’t even log in to them. Finally, after two hours and a number of page refreshes, I was finally able to log in and change my passwords. Once I did that, both accounts started working perfectly again. I honestly didn’t even know it was possible for a third-party app like that to freeze you out of your accounts even when you try to access them through their own site login pages. And, another thing is that Posterous doesn’t allow you to delete your profile after you created it without emailing them to request the removal of your account.

Despite sounding like a great tool, I’m afraid something fishy (or phishy) is going on there. Moral of the story: don’t use Posterous. Or the moral might be that I should stop signing up for accounts on more sites.

Posterous. Hmpf. More like prePosterous. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

2011: 03/04
CATEGORY: Uncategorized
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Putting the know in technology

Let me tell you one of the reasons I love my job. I’ve always been the kind of guy who likes to know about what is happening slightly before everyone else does – be that an indie band before they make it big, a breaking news story or the latest technological gadget or software. I am very proud that I was in an emo band in 1998, before many people even knew what that meant, and that I started my first blog in 2000. So the fact that I’m getting paid to learn about things like mobile memes, moblogging, CAPTCHA advertising, Slideshare, Pogo and other such innovations fits quite well with my interests and proclivities. And, it makes me feel pretty cool.