Category: Web/Tech

Have you tried Twitter yet? If you don’t know what it is, it’s "microblogging," where you get 140 characters per post to answer the question, "What are you doing?"

I know, it doesn’t sound all that appealing at first. It also sounds like it could be incredibly time-consuming, which is why I hesitated to join for quite some time. I ended up signing up right around SXSWi this year and was immediately consumed with jealousy that so many Twitter users were there and having a great time while I was at home (sick, actually, so I wouldn’t have enjoyed myself there anyway).

The way Twitter works is that you follow the posts, or "Tweets," of people of interest. In my case, that includes people I know, people whose blogs I read, and miscellaneous bloggers and celebrities I think might be interesting, like @MCHammer and @LeoLaporte, for instance. There are also companies online, like @southwestair. Twitter users you follow can choose to follow you or not. Right now I am following 142 people and I have 152 followers.

You can post your own Tweets about whatever crosses your mind and also respond publicly or privately (when it’s working properly) to other Twitter users by addressing your response to the person’s user name with the "@" sign in front of it.

It’s basically like broadcasting an instant message to a select group of people and it allows for interactions that would never take place any other way.

For example, I recently Tweeted that I was looking for someone to go to lunch with. @cadykansas, whom I had met only once before in real life, responded and we ended up meeting up and having a very nice lunch and chat. (Admittedly, the next time I tried that lunch companion recruiting tactic it didn’t pan out.)

Just this weekend, @deew27 Tweeted that she had an extra Wii that she wanted to sell. I went and picked it up from her on Sunday.

This coming Friday, there’s a Tweetup planned in Kansas City with @QueenofSpain. I watched the planning process bounce around on Twitter until eventually it transpired that the event will be held at my company’s office. If you live in Kansas City and want to meet Erin Kotecki-Vest, let me know and I’ll pass along the details. Oh, and be sure to sign up with Twitter so you don’t miss these things in the future!

Twitter is not without its drawbacks. It crashes…a lot. Its functionality has been reduced for days now, and you never know when it might be down completely. There’s also been an issue with their enforcement of their Terms of Service.

Still, it’s a cool way to communicate online and I hope they manage to work out the bugs as they become more and more popular. If you belong or you end up joining, add me! I’m @average_jane.

First Twitter went into major FAIL mode over the weekend, now I discover that my beloved Gmail has been making my job harder.

I read Seth Godin’s post this morning about Gmail deciding that his Google Checkout orders were spam, and it occurred to me that I hadn’t checked my spam folder lately.

Guess what it was chock-full of? Google Alerts!

Yes, the same Google Alerts I rely on every single day to monitor activity for my clients. Thanks, Google!

Gmail’s decision to spamify my Google Alerts was quite random. I never stopped getting them, I just wasn’t getting as many as I thought I should. I’ve added the Google Alerts e-mail address to my Contacts list, so let’s hope that solves the problem.

Are you dealing with any annoying technological failures lately?

It’s Thursday, which means it’s link blog time! (Or at least, that’s what it means *this* Thursday.)

Here are some things that have caught my eye lately:

• Shift happens – A fascinating video presentation about the future of technology and media. Found via Lip-Sticking – thanks, Yvonne!
• Yoga Action Squad – Namaste, bitches! Found via YogaBeans, another funny yoga-oriented site.
• Dr. Tran – Hilarious, South Park-like cartoon.
  Completely NSFW. Yes, it’s really
  long, but it just keeps getting funnier even though it is oh, so wrong
  in so many ways.

That should be enough to get you into trouble. Enjoy!

In celebration of the last workday of the week, here are some links to sites I’ve been enjoying lately:

• Cracked.com – The online version of Cracked Magazine. Back in the day, I was always more of a Mad Magazine fan, but the latest incarnation of Cracked online contains some good laughs.
• I CAN HAS CHEEZBURGER? – I’m such a sucker for cat photos with gamer-oriented captions. My husband thinks this is proof that I’m going to turn into a crazy cat lady when he dies.
• Grammarphobia.com, The Blog – Daily dissections of English language usage.
• Indexed – The human condition, neatly charted on index cards.

Click away! And have a lovely weekend.

Gmail has been down since yesterday evening and that’s a bad, bad thing. Aside from the Yahoo e-mail account I use for this blog, all of my e-mail accounts are in Gmail.

The worst part is that it seems to be just me. My husband was getting into his account just fine until I tried to log into mine on his computer. Now it’s stuck in Average Jane Denial/Server Error Mode and he’s probably going to have to clear his cache to get back in.

Even though I’m all antsy to be able to check my e-mail, the truth is that I don’t get that many messages every day. However, I do store a lot of stuff that it would be nice to be able to access, so I’m not just whining here.

I guess I’ll have to try again from work and see if I have any better luck on a different network. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the problem goes away.

Update: Woohoo! I’m in. If it still doesn’t work at home, I’m guessing there’s some kind of firewall problem with our network. I sure hope not, but I’m sure IT Hubby can fix it if there is.

Some fun stuff I’ve found online in the last week or so:

• Ladies Rock Camp 2006 – If this didn’t take place on the same weekend as BlogHer, I’d be all over it!
• Make TJ Drink – Mix up various concoctions for the Sonic guys and see what they have to say about them.  My officemate and I played with this for about 15 minutes one morning.
• Hate all your swimsuits?  This week Rozanne posted a link to Poppi Swim and Sport, a boutique in Oregon that custom-makes swimwear at very reasonable prices – and lets you order online.

These days, there’s almost nothing I enjoy more than playing around with various Internet-based services.  I do the majority of my online shopping at Amazon and Ebay.  I try to keep up with BookCrossing, even though I’ve let it slide a bit lately.  If asked, I would gladly pay to use Evite because it works so well for me.  (On the other hand, I cancelled my Meetup.com subscription the instant they decided to start charging for it.)

Those sites are all ancient history by now.  Lately my attention has been drawn to some newer online fun:

• I finally signed up for a Flickr account, mainly to have somewhere to put my camera phone photos.  I’m a rather poor photographer with an unfortunate tendency to take way too many pictures of cats and flowers, but I hope to eventually improve my eye for a good shot along with my technical abilities.  Here are my photos, in case you want to observe the cliche-o-rama for yourself.
• One great new online tool is Backpack.  Backpack gives you the ability to organize a project or some other aspect of your life with online to-do lists, photos, notes and other information.  I’m using it to plan my summer trips to New Orleans and the BlogHer Conference.  I also plan to use it to keep track of all of my household bills that aren’t automatically debited from my checking account.  I use the more robust 37Signals planning software, Basecamp, at work for project organization.
• Last but not least, I’ve mentioned how much I use del.icio.us to keep track of my bookmarks these days.  I have the posting shortcuts saved on every computer I use so I can bookmark any site I find that I think I’d like to visit again.  I use it so much now that I think I need to start using an RSS reader again.  I still have a Bloglines account, and my goal is to get more familiar with the way it works so I don’t waste so much time checking my 100+ favorite blogs for updates every day.

What’s your favorite online service these days?  How has it changed the way you use the web?

I think my laptop has about had it. It’s a Sony Vaio I’ve had since about 2000, and it’s been experiencing what the vet would call a “failure to thrive” for a while now. First the battery went. That’s not too big of a deal since I keep it forever tethered to my desk by its external monitor, keyboard and mouse, like a brain in a jar.

Then it was choked with files and the hard drive was heavily fragmented. Well, that happens when you try to keep years’ worth of e-mail and do lots of big, photo-heavy newsletters. I deleted all non-essential e-mail and archived all the previous years’ newsletters to CD. After defragging nightly for about a month, the hard drive is pretty much as unfragmented as you could ask for.

The last time I did a 20-page newsletter, my desktop publishing program started running so slowly that I began to long for the good old days of a 286 running PageMaker through Windows 3.1. (Now guess how old I am!) Last night I was working on a 4-page newsletter and had such a bad computer hang that I lost an hour of work, much of which should have been saved. Even though I finally recreated everything I’d done and finished the job, the whole process was like wading through molasses. By the end, my computer pretty much said, “You know the version you wanted to create to make into a PDF? Not gonna happen.”

The last time I had similar problems, I just ran the wonder twins: Spybot Search & Destroy and AdAware. It turned out I had a resources-hogging worm that was throwing a wrench into things. This time, the answer doesn’t seem so simple.

My husband has offered to build me a desktop PC that’s faster, has more hard drive space, etc. It’s a very reasonable option since I don’t take the laptop anywhere anyway. (Although if the laptop is salvageable, it would be lovely to get a wireless network card for it so I can surf downstairs while I’m watching TV and not have to borrow hubby’s Mac.) Yes, he’s one of those Apple fanatics and has limited sympathy for the evils that befall PCs, despite being our household tech support guy.

So, that’s my latest tale of woe. I still hold out hope that I can at least get this latest newsletter to the printer today. Luckily, Average Jane can be written anywhere.