(The Meaning of Life - 10) = today

I have been blessed with many gifts today.

Air in my lungs, for a start. A beautiful family. A warm, dry place to live and a fun pace to work too.

Loads of Birthday greetings on my Facebook page. Thank you for each and everyone of them.

I got to spend some time with Henry today, for the first time in years. It was great to see him and share stories.

Life is always better with stories.

Some friends sent some fertiliser to South America on my behalf today too. Which was nice. But Oxfam told me where the gift was being given and the impact it had. Through the farmer's story.

Mrs theWeir made some glorious cake (though, technically, I have had that for a couple of days now). Sharing the cake with some folks has led to sharing stories. (Sorry, Mum, it may be all gone by the end of the night).

I got a wide array of gifts too. They made it into my first Blipfoto entry today.

But what really struck me today was Henry saying "wow, I didn't recognise you". It was a bit of a gift.

Why?

I don't want to be a carbon copy of myself year after year. I want to grow. I want to mature. If I don't then perhaps I'm not fully alive.

Being alive is really important.

Liam reminded me of these words last night:

"This is your life, are you who you want to be?". I think that today, I am more of the person I want to be than I was yesterday. How about you?

(here's the band playing the track in session)

it'll only take a minute (and other excuses we tell ourselves)

When out doing a workshop at a local High School in December, I sat down at the computer workstation to perform a short series of simple tasks:

Insert USB memory stick;

Locate specific slideshow;

Launch that file;

Display the slideshow.

Easy. Quick. Done in a few seconds. Then I noticed the workstation. It looked like the picture above.

Other than when in the office at work, or working at home, most casual computing (searching for something, connecting on Twitter or Facebook, playing an online game) is done in an iPhone or iPad. So, I would usually only sit down at a computer to do a longer list of tasks. I would also make sure I was in a good sitting position.

But it wasn't always like that. I used to open the Powerbook just to check something and then still be there an hour later, locked in the same position. How many of us have thought "I'll just go on and do this wee thing and find ourselves off on a Google rabbit trail, or remembering there were 7 other things we *needing* to do on the computer. Funny that.

So it struck me looking at this workstation in a school classroom that when I next sit down to do anything for anytime, make sure you are sitting comfortably. Then you can begin. And have any hope of getting up again without a chiropractor...

Social what?

I wrote this post on 4 February 2010. And it was never posted.

It's funny to see how things have changed in 23 months.

I don't listen to as much of what Chris Brogan or Mitch Joel are saying - mainly as my interest in social media waned a little. Not in the potential of the tools, but perhaps in the incessant need for money to be made. Or people talking about how to make money.

Anyway, I thought I'd post it anyway and see if anyone else found it funny to see how the world has moved on:

Social what?

Some slides explaining what Social Media might be about (first half is good): http://www.slideshare.net/mikefruchter/social-media-1010705

How to get started in Social media: http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/seo-blog/index.php/how-to-get-started-in-social-media/

Some fascinating stats about Social Media: http://brianwlink.wordpress.com/2008/12/17/fascinating-facts-in-social-media/

Top Social Media sites: http://www.prelovac.com/vladimir/top-list-of-social-media-sites

Content:

Food for thought - be a leader by sharing your views, not just name-dropping!: http://www.mpdailyfix.com/2009/03/social_media_a_readers_manifes.html/

RSS:

What is RSS: http://www.commoncraft.com/rss_plain_english

You can get a free RSS reader from Google here: Google Reader. The key here is to keep on top of what you follow... I can have anything from 100 to 1000 unread dependant on how much I have been keeping up with reading. Why? Well, there are so many people making noise, it can be good to listen to a few voices more regularly.

Some feeds to add to your reader for Social Media goodness:

Seth Godin: (a fine example of insight, regular posts and some good ideas!) http://www.sethgodin.com

Mitch Joel: (Canadian, Marketing, Loads of insight on Social Media, Journalism & Publishing): http://www.twistimage.com/blog

Chris Brogan: (Brogan is one of the genuine Social Media consultants, you can see one of his presentations/webinars here: http://www.hubspot.com/smboss/) His blog: http://www.chrisbrogan.com

Jeremiah Owyang: (Social media strategy & an employee of Forrester Research (not his company blog tho!): http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/

track Standard Life on twitter: http://search.twitter.com/search.atom?q=standard+life. you get some nonsense, but some gems: http://twitter.com/wilsonreid/statuses/1628382025,http://twitter.com/Returnedmail/statuses/1597816502

Twitter:

What is twitter: http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter

(I'd recommend most of the content that Commoncraft put out as it's pretty simple to follow and gives great insight too!)

A CEO who uses twitter: http://www.forbes.com/2009/04/22/twitter-ceo-networking-leadership-managing-social.html

This is what can happen if you are active on twitter: http://sesquipedalis.blogspot.com/2009/02/finally-use-for-twitter.html

The search function on twitter is quite something. You can basically search any keywords and see what people are saying. Then add that feed to your RSS reader and get a realtime update as it develops. People use the hashtag principle to categorise content. swineflu is one of the most popular at the moment.

Okay, so it's all within the fishbowl of the userbase, but as the numbers (and demographics) show, this is not a static community. When Oprah got involved the move to mainstream gathered significant momentum.

Alerts:

You can also set up Google Alerts to send you email digests of any mentions of pretty much any keywords. Check here for more: http://www.google.com/alerts

be careful what you ask for

As I spend some time at work (yes, back after a great time enjoying my beautiful family & Speyside), I'm enjoying learning what people think the future will look like.

Here's a blast from the past:

I'd love to get a copy of the soundtrack. That's some crazy trumpet playing! As for the technology - check out that weird "home post office" idea. that'll never take on...

twenty years

Listening to Digital Planet on the way to work this morning (podcast available here) I was thinking about 20 years of the World Wide Web.

In just twenty years the way we catalogue and find data has been radically changed - and the way that people communicate is completely different.

So, here's my earliest memories of computing and communication.

An Olivetti 386SX, 33mHz desktop computer bought for Christmas one year (1993, maybe?) by my Dad as a *family* tool.  I got to use it to play games, create documents for school and all that jazz.

I remember when Dad got Compuserve  - dial-up internet, email and the internet.  I had NO IDEA how it worked, what it could do or what the point was, but hey, it was there.  If I'd paid more attention, maybe I'd be more of a geek than I am now.

I remember trying to use webpages that were full of text (bad layout, crummy images and generally hard to interact with) and simply not really getting the point.  Was only 15 or so... I guess others are more entrepreneurial and I think I can see potential better now than I could then. 

Anyway, I do remember using his email to send messages to people (his email address was a collection of numbers @compuserve.com - and I think he paid a fee every month to have access as well as paying for the dial-up call time.  I remember making up flyers for my band using the PC and putting the email address on the contact details and then wondering if that was too geek-like?!

And how times have changed, and some things haven't.  Sure, Moore's Law has brought us the equivalent of 90's supercomputers in our pockets and we can buy most PC hardware for a fraction of the prices of the mid-90s (thank you, China), but we still pay for access.  Not sure that's a bad thing, but it does have limits.

I wonder what things might be like twenty years from now.  Will connectivity be included in the price of the device - pay £200 for an iPhone 10.0 and do as much as you like?  Will technology fail us and we get back to writing on dead trees?  Will we think that this text-based interface is so old-skool now that we use video to interact and do everything (ordering your shopping by leaving a voice mail?).

I quoted Heraclitus when editing content for David Thomson the other day: Change is the only constant.

What are your earliest memories of the World Wide Web? How has this technology changed your life? What do you think the future might lead to?