birthdays, adventures in blogland

[parthenia]

Birthdays
Happy Birthday to oursin, champion of the IAMC world view (=It's always more complicated', as opposed to IDSR ='It's Dead Simple Really').

Also, unsung creator of literary and academic LOLcats.

U CAN HAS BIRTHDAY NAO.

On being a groan up blogger
I've spent some time recently on making my work blog go live, all in an effort to meet more people in my area and pick up some new clients. I have a del.icio.us account at long last, and I've been playing with feedreaders in order to subscribe to the blogs of other professionals or indeed dilettante wannabees, and so keep abreast of Current Thinking.

It's absolutely exhausting. The things I want to read are hugely scattered across different platforms, so if you ever want to comment you need about a dozen identities - but mostly, with a couple of exceptions, people don't comment to these blogs, ever. Compared to Livejournal, it's like shouting down a well. (Mind you LJ has that quality today) I think people read them - it's just that once they read them, they creep very quietly away on internet tippytoes.

I'm using Wordpress, which feels like a rather cool and moderately trendy café. Wordpress users are clever, articulate and rather lovely young professionals just like me. *cough* Great. But no friendspage, and no threading of comments. Hard work.

I'm also using Facebook a bit. Really, the more I use Facebook, the more it feels like the premise behind a Dr Who episode - you know, one of the ones with the friendly in-your-ear technology which eventually goes postal and reveals itself to be an intergalactic conspiracy led by robots with knives for fingers.

Parthenia: *clicks on shiny pretty widget*
Facebook Widget: "By clicking on this link you agree to share your identity with Cybus Industries who may later shred your brain to ribbons. Proceed? Cancel?"
Parthenia: *runs away widgetless*

It's MySpace for the middle class masses, and those widgets are harvesting your eyeballs, man, for the advertisers. Can't make up my mind if it will collapse in flames or just turn out to be this year's fad. Doesn't mean I won't use it (see IAMC, above).

Feedreaders, RSS aggregators and the like

They absolutely stink. Haven't found anything I really like. GoogleReader crashes me, because I use a different Gmail identity to the fannish one. The others (like Netvibes) seem to load in blocks, and I don't want to read the last 10 headings from one source before another... Any other recommendations? Or should I shell out for another LJ account for CorpoParthenia?

Dear God, I'm dull. Never mind. It will lead to money and fame eventually.

Comments

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Thank you!
(and am so with you on Facebook, which is like a sinisterly jolly adult trying to get shy children to Join In the party fun by making comments suggesting that you're scared to participate in quizzes and that having read a book obligates 'a review')

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I get really, really confused by the settings on Facebook, and it is so much a potential paradise for advertisers that I'm really put off. Took me a while to realise that much of what I did on there could potentially be passed onto my readers, depending on my settings; and the settings are clear as mud.

Yes, I think the widgets are there because there isn't necessarily much conversation otherwise.

[jonem.livejournal.com]

Yes, I think the widgets are there because there isn't necessarily much conversation otherwise

Yes, yes, precisely! If I get another invite to join someone's 'zombie network', 'werewolf army' or the like, I shall scream. I don't really care If I'm on someone's 'Top Friends' or receive gifts if you won' even talk to me...

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

I need your sniffing icon, the lady with the gun scaaaaaares me.

I 'know' a lot of people from my business life who are on there (mostly because it's replaced Second Life as the internet thing that journalists understand/want to talk about), but actually none of them know what to do so they wander around joining groups that no one writes in.

PS If you join a network can they read your profile?

I think I'd prefer FacelessBook. Or FeckBook.

[meredyth-13.livejournal.com]

No, not dull... just... what language are you speaking?

*hides*

Seriously - I'm totally lost. Facebook is a word that keeps popping up on the flist, and without even knowing what it is, I developed this automatic "I'm not going anywhere near that sucker" attitude.

I'm swimming in ignorance throughout this post, but I'm waving anyway because I've been so slack on commenting during my "I'm hiding from the world because communicating takes effort" phase.

*hugs*

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

'I'm not going anywhere near that sucker' is probably the most sensible option, unless you have far flung real life friends that you'd like to play Scrabble with.

Nice to see you...

[lyras.livejournal.com]

*escapes briefly from corporate hell*

You are being professional! I keep thinking I should get around to creating a website for own work, but that's as far as I ever get.

Re feedreaders and blogs, I rather like the Morning Coffee add-on to Firefox, which allows you to bookmark websites and then load them all (or a selection determined by day if you prefer) at the press of a button. It's not as neat as a feedreader, but it's much prettier and more user-friendly, as long as your internet connection doesn't mind 50 websites loading at once.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2677

[parthenia14.livejournal.com]

Ooooh. Well, it might, but that sounds quite nifty. Now that sounds terribly professional, I am a Firefox noob. I use Mozilla for mail though, and that's very nice.