This video really highlights why the social web is so disruptive and game changing for both governments and traditional news. The amazing thing is that you can see it happening right now with the Iran situation. If you really want to know what is going on in Iran, your best source for news is Twitter. And that news isn’t being generated by governments or by news organizations. It’s being generated by individuals who are directly involved.

Wordpress just released a new version of their CMS software. So I just upgraded this site to the new version. Enjoy.

If you want to see a quick video of the changes, follow this link. Introducing Wordpress 2.8 Baker

The problem some of us have when it comes to leaving work at the office.

Read this quote today and just had to repost it.

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and trying to put things in it.
– Terry Pratchett

Which got me wondering about what “who my friends are” says about me. Is it something I want said? Would I be proud of what it says about me? Does it say something bad? Does it say something good? I don’t really know, but I do know that it’s something I should be concerned with. And you should be too.

A lot of people use who their friends are to increase their status or their importance. And that isn’t what I’m talking about.

No, what I’m talking about is the people you actually enjoy spending time with. I’m not talking about casual friends or acquaintances. I’m talking about your close friends. The people you call and talk to on a regular basis for no reason. The people who you hang out with regularly. Because those people highlight something about your character and your beliefs. They probably have little or no effect on your status or importance. And chances are that no one cares one way or another that you are friends with them. But that doesn’t change the fact that, even if no one cares that you are friends with those particular people, it still shows something about your character. Something that people will recognize either consciously or unconsciously.

Maybe it shows something good. Something you wouldn’t be ashamed to have people know about you. But maybe it shows something bad. Something you would rather your parents, pastor, or other authority figure didn’t know about you. If that’s the case then maybe it’s time to “fix” that issue in your life. Because who your friends are isn’t the problem. Your friends are just a symptom. The problem is you, and your character flaws.

So who are your friends?

So anyway, back to the article. The gist of it was that in this day and age, if you have a common name, your reputation ends up closely tied to the actions of the “other” you(s) that are out there. This isn’t really a new thing. Throughout the history you can watch the popularity of names rise and fall based on the actions of prominent people. After all, no one wants to be named after a mass murderer or even have themselves associated with one via their name. What makes today’s name associations different from those of the past, is the ease with which those associations can be found.

In the past, it was unlikely that someone(with the same name) else’s actions would ever be noticed by your friends, coworkers, and relatives unless they became famous/infamous for them. These days those other you’s are a simple Google search away. And as people search engines(which I mentioned in a previous post) become more common and better at finding details about individuals, those other people with your name are going to be noticed by you and your friends even more.

So try it. Google your name and see how many other you’s there are in the first two or three pages that come back. Unless you post a lot online under your own name, you will probably be surprised at how many other you’s there are in the first three pages. Now ask yourself, is it likely that people who don’t know you very well or are potential employers likely to be able to tell which of those “you’s” that come back are really you?

One of the things I did, was combine two bedrooms into one to make a master bedroom. Now, initially I wasn’t all that excited about the project. Mainly because it was going to be a lot of work. I had to rip out the wall between the two bedrooms, put in a new door to the bathroom that would be accessible from the bedroom, and build a new wall for the closet. All a rather large quantity of work. And on top of that, I also was replacing all the trim in the rooms. So I had to put up new crown molding, new baseboard, and a chair rail.

Furthermore, that work had to be done after my normal work day in the evenings. That meant I was working late into the night. And I was also using up my weekends on this project. I’m sure that for a professional the whole project would have been done in just a few weekends, but for me a few weekends wasn’t enough time. Hence the long hours.

But now that I’m finally done with the remodeling (still some other projects I want to do before July), I am actually pretty satisfied with the result. And even though the remodeling wasn’t something I was very excited about doing initially, I am very happy I did it now.

The following is a gallery of pictures of the new room. Now you can see what I’ve been doing for the past few months and see why I haven’t been posting here as much.

The commercial got me thinking about how much we use current technology to communicate and how overloaded we (I mean me) are. I’m having serious trouble keeping up with all the communication outputs I currently use. And so I decided to catalog and list all of my direct communication outputs.
Here goes:

• Twitter – Anywhere from 10-20 updates and responses a day. I’m not even going to try to count the incoming feeds from those I follow. I feed my twitter updates directly into Facebook and FreindFeed. So while those get updated and I do occasionally have to respond to people on those systems, I kind of lump them into the same category as the Twitter updates.
• SMS Texts – About 15 outgoing and 30 incoming a day
• Emails -I get 30-40 emails to my personal account a day. I send anywhere from 10-15. A lot of those emails are ones that fall in the gray area of “not spam, but not really anything I want either.” But even if I don’t really want the email, I still have to look at it and see what it is. Work, I get about 20-30 a day and send 5-10. That number is steadily increasing as my responsibilities expand and as more people get to know who I am and what I do at the company.
• Phone Calls – 10-15 calls a day. Most are short(less than 15 minutes), but a few(family members, fiance, etc.) can last an hour or two.
• IM (MSN, Gtalk, AIM) – I use IM at work(and at home) for interoffice communication. So I have it running pretty much whenever my computer is on. Anywhere from 5-10 conversations a day will happen on IM. Most of those are short, but they still have a noticeable affect on my day.

Oh, and did I mention that all of the communication channels I mentioned above come directly to my phone as well. The only one that doesn’t show up on my phone is the IM one. And that is just because Apple hasn’t gotten around to implementing a good “push” protocol for third party developers. Once they do, I’m sure that one will be on my phone as well.

So there you have my two way communications areas. And if you are thinking that is a lot, you should see my incoming RSS feeds. I have a ton of subscriptions to different news and blog feeds. And I regularly comment on those articles and often share them with my friends via twitter or email.

So it’s no wonder that I feel overloaded with connectivity these days. And I’m not even sure that I really need any of these communication tools. But at the same time I’m not sure I want to give any of them up. So I’ll probably keep struggling through and keep trying to keep up. Though keep in mind, if you send me a message and I don’t respond. It’s not that I didn’t want to, it’s probably that your message just got lost in the jumble of all the others. lol

“I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking up something and finding something else on the way.”
Franklin P. Adams

Read the above quote the other day and thought it was particularly true in the Internet Age. How often do you go online to find a bit of info, only to learn 10 different things that you weren’t even looking for?

I know it works that way for me.