My name is Josh, and this is my corner of the internet.
INTERNETTTTT
Wait for it...
wow.
This is actually for sale on Amazon. Too bad I didn’t find this until after Christmas. I bet I could’ve find a few enemies to spring such a gift on.
Seems like most of the commenters there have caught on to the ruse, if you’re looking to burn 15 minutes with light internet bemusement.
Today’s adventure: Hunting for websites I used to visit in the late 1990’s, that pretty much haven’t been updated since the last time I went there.
and a couple still in use:
What else?
No, fortunately, I didn’t lose my phone. Or drop it in a puddle of beer, or worse, in the urinal while trying to send a text message. Or drunkle it away (Brian’s invention, my definition). No, it’s in fine standing on the kitchen table.
But I did get a Facebook invite today for a phone dropped in the toilet. And a friend lost her phone to the otherwise exhilarating David Guetta concert earlier this week. And one of Zach’s friends destroyed his phone’s screen in a bout of debauchery last night.
The whole Facebook event thing worries me. Not that Facebook doesn’t already have access to an obscene amount of personal and private information, but that folks regularly create events asking their friends for their phone numbers. I’ve never fully understood the true harm in letting a stranger know my phone number, but I inherently feel like it’s not necessarily something I’d like to give away for free – or at least, allowing access to people who aren’t looking for me specifically.
Case in point: I just typed “phone” into the Facebook search, and filtered to Events. To no surprise there’s over 500 pages of “I lost my phone and need your number” or whatever cutesy spin on that that folks like to use. And just like that, I’ve got ten to a hundred phone numbers per page, with a first and last name attached, a decent guess on location based on area code, a decent guess on demographics based on profile picture, and best of all, a few of their friends’ names and corresponding information. Cakewalk for telemarketers: “Hi Chris, your friend Robert Johnson recommended I give you a call and that you’d be interested in….”
And I can only imagine how much of a huge, huge underestimate 500 pages is.
My phone number is available on my Facebook profile page, which is public. And on the Press Releases and Media Kits that Eleven Magazine distributes widely. I hope that if someone is looking to speak to me personally, they’ll be able to do so. But I’m quite skeptical about leaving my number out for vague general consumption in the cloud, like so many other users are doing.
Obvious solution for you: If you’re invited by a friend to one of these “events,” just take out your phone and call them! That’s the point anyway, isn’t it?
I was interviewed and quoted in a St. Louis Beacon article yesterday!
Not often that you get to see your name in print.
…Well…errr…it’s still always nice to see.
I feel like 60 Minutes’ Twitter page should be called “16seconds,” and every tweet should just be “ticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktickticktick.”
Except at 10:00 it goes “It’s 10pm. Do you know where your children are?”
Instead, they just report actual news. Wasted opportunity for humor.
I know I’ve been bad at writing updates.
Instead, for the time being, you should read Kevin’s blog. He’s about as funny as I am, but has a little more free time on his hands to daydream and write. I stand behind everything he says.
…I stand behind nothing he says.
Enjoy, though.
Today’s the special day where, once a year, my email inbox is overrun with silly but happy facebook notifications saying “Zach, Dan, Peter, Elizabeth, Ennio, Julianne, Adam, (etc.), wrote on your wall…” Better hope you don’t have something urgent to write to me.
The new wrinkle (soon, I fear, I’ll hesitate to call it a “wrinkle”) this year: my smartphone is tied to my facebook account, which means that every update leads to a little text message. And given my crippling addiction to Blackberry GPS, I worry that with enough vibrations, the battery might die and leave me stranded somewhere.Although, lost from too many people wishing you a happy birthday is probably the best kind of lost there is. Keep ’em coming, and I’ll try to stay out of bad neighborhoods. Thanks =)
On the heels of my most recent post on travel, I’ve discovered a blog written by Chris Guillebeau called The Art of Nonconformity. Wow.
Chris does an obscene amount of traveling: 25 countries per year, with the goal of visiting every country in the world by his 2013. Holy smokes.
I’m scorching through the archives right now. Here are a few of my favorite pieces:
What’s the sell on Chris’ blog? There really isn’t one. He just writes about what he loves. For those super 5% of his readers who want to go the extra mile, there’s a product or two for sale (your typical salesguy, on the other hand, pitches for the bigger 95%). Chris’ 5% has grown so much that can support himself with an above-average salary.
I’m infatuated with the lifestyle Chris has afforded himself. I’ll see him there, someday.
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I also wanted to thank Brett (of Art of Manliness) again for reaching out to thank me. It’s astounding how easy it is to be social on the internet.
The Art of Manliness really hit the nail on the head for me today, writing an article on the virtues of traveling.
You must know this about me by this point: I love traveling. Live for it, live by it, dream about it. Chortle at people who fear the adventure of an unknown new city, new people, new lifestyle.
The most important subtlety here that AoM really harps on is the experience of traveling – that if you really go on a great vacation, you’ll have a story you can share with your friends for ages. I’m glad that most of my friends had a “fun” time in Santa Fe over spring break, but they’ll never fully understand my experience in traveling into the mouth of hell, which I got to enjoy while driving and boating to Bocas del Toro in Panama.
I’m glad that somebody else in the world gets it.
Here’s my favorite quote:
What vacations do not offer, however, is the critical element provided by real travelling, an authentic experience. You may brag at work for a couple weeks about how many mojitos you drank last spring break, but you’ll be talking about your experience meeting a real Masai [sic] warrior in Kenya or the time you rode on the back of an elephant through the jungles of India for the rest of your life.
Funny, because I’ve actually met Maasai warriors while traveling in Tanzania. I wear the handiwork of one of the warriors’ wives around my neck every day.
From my own experiences: I absolutely love staying in hostels. The author’s right, saying “you are always sure to meet quite a few interesting people in hostels, which only adds to the experience.” Having backpacked around Europe on my own for nearly a month, I can’t stress the value of hostels enough. It takes a special kind of person to stay in a hostel, and you’ll instantly be provided with entertainment, conversation, and if you’re not terribly unlucky, partners in crime adventure. This probably wouldn’t fly well for families, but I’d venture to guess that at that point, you’ve probably got all the adventure you need just in keeping the kids from barreling down flights of stairs (not that I’d know anything about that).
I’d argue the same about trains, though for me it was actually cheaper to fly point-to-point across Europe, thanks to stupidly cheap airline companies like RyanAir, EasyJet, WizzAir (who for some reason let me fly from Berlin to Budapest for a flat $6.00) and price-hunting site skyscanner.net. But talk about experience – for the small price premium of a month-long train ticket, you’d get to see the entire countryside of Europe. I was lucky enough to take the train from Geneve to Interlaken and back, absorbing the gorgeous Swiss countryside with time to go skydiving in between, for kicks. And the train might have even worked out cheaper in the long run, if I was careful to work out overnight flights and shave off a few nights of rent in hostels.
I’ll never understand why my Wash U buddies in Madrid were so disinterested in checking out early and taking the European continent by storm, but I suppose it’s their loss. Some of my other favorite experiences, off the top of my head:
Please, for your next trip, don’t just vacation. Adventure. Experience something totally wild, new, and unimaginable.
Then, tell me all about it.
Twitter is arguably, if not probably, the new internet. I’ll let someone else drool all over you in relaying its benefits.
My disappointment with Twitter stems from the obscene lack of knowledge the site puts on display. It’s evident to me that, say, 80% of Twitter users have absolutely, positively, no idea what the hell they’re doing on the site. Let’s break Twitter users down into four categories:
1. Non-User. Like this guy, who took a completely awesome username off the market and is doing nothing with it.
2. Yeah me too guys, right? Heard that Twitter is the new thing, but has no idea what he’s doing. Probably is of the assumption that having more followers is better, and randomly clicks “follow” on a hundred other Twitter-ers so that they’ll follow him. Has no expectations of actually paying attention to these people, yet for some reason, expects that they’ll give a crap about what he has to say.
I’ll give you a great example: I used to be on Twitter. Over the summer I started a website, which was a ton of fun until schoolwork sort of happened again in the fall. I hopped on the bandwagon like everyone else, and started a Twitter account. Note two things about that link: First, that I was thoughtful enough to write actual posts on occasion, to supplement shamelessly directing followers to read my blog (you’ll probably call me a hypocrite later, anyway). Second, note the date on my most recent update: September 16th, 2008. Nearly 7 months ago. That in mind, here’s a screencap from my email inbox:
Look how popular!!
Like instructions for a Where’s Waldo puzzle, here’s what I want you to look for:
Again, this kind of blind, shameless following does nobody any good. You don’t win at Twitter by having the most followers. You win by getting a few followers who really care about what you have to say. Twitter is like a number of male body parts: It’s not the size that counts, it’s how you use it.
3. Wayyyyy too much personal use. Right, like pre-teen girls needed another means of complaining to everyone who’ll listen about every single menial thing that’s going on in their tiny bubble of a world. Youtube. GroupHug. PostSecret. Fmylife. Xanga. MySpace. [Note, clicking those links is completely voluntary. Save your sanity and just don’t.] Give me a break. The internet should have two websites on it: Wikipedia, and some resource for free pornography. That’s it. Everything else is fluff.
4. The miniscule, miniscule percentage of people who actually grasp what’s going on – and this I’d further divide into two subsections:
4A. Twitter for personal use / fun. Realize that using Twitter is effectively a dolled-up medium for sending public text messages / instant messages. So, instead of sharing this totally awesome link with my buddy Matt, I’ll tweet it so that everyone can see. Or, I’ll direct the tweet at him, and let his followers see how cool and awesome at the internet I am. On occasion, you get people like Eric who are incredibly talented at creating 140-character capsules of the most repulsive and hilarious comments imaginable. I hesitate to link to him, since his material is far, far, far away from PG rated. But if you find him, you’ll understand.
4B. Twitter for Business. I love this one – I’d call it “apparent transparency.” [I’m an alliterary genius] Now, your big ‘ol corporation can make it look like it’s got a human side by opening a Twitter account and interacting with people on a one-on-one basis. They used to have a term for this back in the day… customer service. But why actually invest in human beings to interact with your customers when you can have just one guy feed them information in text message-sized tidbits?
Alternatively, you might read this segment as those companies who acquire hundreds of followers a la category 2, then sending out mass updates about useless crap a la category 3. But still, consumers are buying into it. Hell yeah, I want up-to-date information on what’s going on with M&M’s.
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Perhaps most of all, I’m infuriated by those Twitter users who exclusively use the site as a means to re-direct followers to their own webpage every time they’ve updated it. For two reasons: First, because they’ll use a URL-shortening service like tinyurl.com, or is.gd, and I’ll leave it up to their best judgment as to whether or not I really want to be on that site. You literally have absolutely no idea what to expect if I told you to follow this link: http://tinyurl.com/czmf2c . Is it a Rick Roll? Is it safe for work? Is it a virus? I promise you it’s a link to Eleven’s fancy new website, but do you believe me? Hope so. There are already Twitter viruses going around that are counting on it.
Second, it’s asinine for you to tweet me every time your site updates. That’s just adding a step to a service that’s already readily available on the internet – one that’s a a lot more effective to boot. It’s called an RSS feed. Don’t harass me to follow you. If you’ve got something engaging, intelligent, and worthwhile to say, trust me – I’ll find a way to you.
Don’t buy the Twitter hype. Learn about what an RSS feed is, and sign yourself up for a great (and of course free) RSS Feed reader at Google. It’ll compile everything on the internet that you already like to read, and might even come up with some good suggestions for other stuff you’ll like.
And ultimately, if you liked what you read here, you can subscribe to my posts by following this link.