Being Social.

So I haven’t been feeling very social lately, though you would never guess this by my online activity because it seems like yesterday I was checking in all over the place on Foursquare. Many find Foursquare mundane. To tell you the truth, I too find it mundane, for the most part, because whether I’m standing in the middle of a random Dunkin’ Donuts is really going to have no bearing on the big picture of the world, except that I’ll be standing next to a jelly donut or something on that big picture, but I must admit that I get a kick out of seeing others that I recognize from Foursquare checkins. That’s kind of cool to me.

I have been doing some weeding and pruning of my various online social media accounts, trying to see what is going to fit right for what I want to do in the year 2012. I’m not a huge Facebook fan, though I am active on there because many family members, many friends and co-workers and a good chunk of my old high school buddies are on there. My rule of thumb for Facebook is that we have to know each other outside of the internet but if we don’t yet, we are going to meet somewhere, somehow within the next year. I’m not big on numbers, I couldn’t care less as to how many friends I have on Facebook; I’m content to have quality over quantity. My Facebook is, for the most part, intended for general audiences with a rating of PG-13 at the most. I do drop an occasional blue word on there, but not while I’m at the Dew Drop Inn. (And I don’t remember what show that is from, to my horror.)

Twitter is a bit of a different animal. I just honk out updates that are seemingly random. Well that’s because I think my brain acts randomly. I follow news makers, I follow actors, I follow geeks, I follow bears. I actually have a couple of Twitter accounts, including the one under my pr0n name, but it’s usually “TheTechBear” that gets the most activity. That particular account is not pr0n and you won’t see any shots of either my meat or my potatoes.

Since a lot of tech people who feel that they are important are on Google+, I try to maintain a presence on there but it feels like a desolated place. I have a couple of hundred people in my circles but there’s less than a dozen from that group that use that service with any sort of regularity. I keep hearing that Google+ is going to CRUSH Facebook and Twitter, spit them out and then laugh like a monster from Scooby-Doo (complete with bouncing jaw) but I have yet to see any sort of indication that this is what is really going on. I find the Google+ app on the iPhone to be rather annoying because it feels limited; on the iPad it’s just a mobile version of the web site and that’s buggy. In all actuality, I have been moving away from Google provided services over the last couple of weeks, the only thing, other than search and Google+, that I am using the service consistently for is Google Reader, which is maintaining my RSS feeds. They’ll probably get moved to Flipboard, now that Flipboard is available on both iPhone and iPad.

As I mentioned earlier in the post, I use Foursquare for location check-ins. Over the last couple of days I have started using Path 2, a social network designed for “family and close friends”. Path 2 is a gorgeous app and does everything in a timeline view. So far I have three connections on it, and these connections are people that I really like (based on internet interactions over the years) and that I have full intention in meeting very soon. I have yet to get the rest of my family on it, but someday that will happen. The thing I like about Path 2 is that I am able to forward selected information from Path 2 to Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare, so I am able to do things in one spot and then share at will. I like that.

I jumped on the Instagram bandwagon pretty early in the game and I love the service. You can see my Instagram photos in the left hand column of this blog thingee, here. Since I’ve been playing with Instagram I haven’t done much with my Flickr account, but one of my goals of 2012 is to take many, many more photos with my non-iPhone camera equipment, so I’ll probably revive the Flickr account soon. In fact, I have a model that has agreed to pose sometime in January for one of my ideas so I have to admit that I am rather excited about that.

Several weeks ago I completely stopped watching podcasts from the folks at TWiT and therefore I’m off of their IRC channels. I found myself unable to sit through an episode because everyone was trying to ham it up and I just wanted to hear what they had to say about tech and the like. When the producer started chiming in like an off-camera voice from god I decided that was enough and deleted them. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe I’m not interested in folks that are tipping the scales in favor of self-serving behavior. Maybe I’ve just grown tired and need a rest.

So despite all of these connections and networks that I am part of, I haven’t been really feeling that social. I have quite a bit of email to catch up on due to the things that have been going on in our lives over the past couple of weeks. Chatting in realtime is better anyway; though I’m not big on Facebook Messenger (there’s something that creeps me out about it but I couldn’t tell you what exactly), but I like using IM when I am on the computer, it just seems that folks are on differing systems (Skype, Yahoo, MSN, AIM, etc.) so I never know which one to sign into and I don’t want to be signed into a bunch at once. Unlike many of my gay brethren, I’m not looking for pseudo-sexual activity online when I’m logged into chat and I’m not going to go through the effort of getting myself pretty to start up the webcam and perform like a trained seal (I always tell people that I have plenty of benefits at home, thank you and no, Earl isn’t into trained seals).

So let’s recap, just in case I start feeling social again:
Twitter = TheTechBear
Facebook and Google+ = under my name, click the Facebook badge in the left hand column here on the blog
Foursquare = who knows, I think it’s tied to my phone number
Instagram = TheTechBear
Flickr = TheTechBear
Instant messengers = it could be anything. I need to find one service and create an account and go from there. Suggestions? Skype is iMachias.
Oh, and Google Voice (forgot I still use that until just now), in case you want to leave me a voicemail without actually reaching me: (315) 313-4579.

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad