Internet Exploring
1) RSS Feeds - This continues on from this post, I suppose. RSS feeds have indeed now found a place in my life. It’s mostly of use when it comes to blogs that I don’t look at all that often, and that use is mainly the fact that I can see straight away when they’ve been updated. When it comes to ones I look at regularly, I haven’t really changed my behaviour. Maybe I will over time. What I’m a-wondering about now is whether or not this will affect my Blogroll down the side there. That’s long needed a bit of thinking about (it doesn’t list all of the blogs I read, and isn’t necessarily even my favourite ones) and a subsequent re-organisation when I’ve decided on a philosophy for it, though.
It’s slight annoying that they don’t display as the original webpages would (is that feed-readers in general, or just Bloglines?), but even that’s not all bad – it’s a positive blessing if the original site has music or videos or whatever-have-you that start to play automatically (I hate all that malarkey). There seem to be a few blogs that just won’t update in the feed-reader (irrespective of which of their feeds I add to it), but I suppose I can live with that.
Ultimately – yes, I like RSS. I haven’t yet found it to be the revolution in internet useage that it’s often described as, but it’s quite handy.
2) Twitter - “if I’m not careful I’ll find myself on effing Twitter or something next” I remarked in that abovelinked post. Turns out I was already signed up to it. I was looking at Jez’ Twitter page and realised that he was following one RussL. After one of those lovely edge-of-desk-gripping knuckles-whitening whattheforksgoingonhere justaminutenowholdup bursts of paranoia that I do so well, I remembered (I genuinely had forgotten) that I’d previously signed up to Twitter for Live Birmingham updates (something that never really took off, sadly).
I decided to have a bit of play with it. For me, Twitter has become the place for ‘little bits that don’t justify a blog post’. I have a vague compulsion to document most of my life (in my saner moments I realize that I probably shouldn’t be encouraged. World At Large: please don’t invent anything else along these lines), but I’m usually sensible enough not to actually make a post on the blog for something like “Just ordered my chicken, lamb & prawn Madras (+ sundries) from The Rowley Village. I’ve been looking forward to this so much”. I can now stick it on Twitter. Other than that, it’s just been replying to other people’s Tweets.
I don’t have other people’s messages sent to my mobile telephone; I find receiving a text message that wasn’t directed specifically to me a strangely invasive experience. Plus there’s the fact that my mobile often sits unchecked in my coat pocket for long lengths of time (and I never turn the sound on) – I’d fish it out to find about 381 out-of-date tweets to have to delete. I have set it up so that I can post messages by text (it took me a few attempts but I got there), but that’ll only happen in a month where I have free ones (every second or third, generally). I can’t imagine spending credit on this, even if it is quite fun.
There you are, then – I’m either a twit or a tweetie-bird. My Twitter page is here, or you can see the last however-many down there in the sidebar.
I can’t believe you get spam ‘followers’ on the bloody thing, though. I mean… what?
