{"id":119,"date":"2008-08-12T21:38:03","date_gmt":"2008-08-13T03:38:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/?p=119"},"modified":"2010-09-19T09:52:09","modified_gmt":"2010-09-19T15:52:09","slug":"internetting-as-a-contact-sport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.planetmanuel.com\/dirk\/internetting-as-a-contact-sport\/","title":{"rendered":"Internetting as a Contact Sport"},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve been avoiding the ‘social networking’ sites for a while now (I’m not exactly a social person at the best of times…) but recently I’ve started to feel a bit left out, as everyone else I know seems to be joining in, and my paranoia had me thinking that maybe it’s all\u00c2\u00a0some great club and everyone but me\u00c2\u00a0is having a jolly old time of it all.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t normally make a habit of bowing to peer pressure, but when Farhad told me I needed to sign up for Facebook<\/strong> I thought I may as well jump on the bandwagon.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m still not sure what I (or any of my ‘Friends’) will get out of it, but for now it’s an interesting diversion.<\/p>\n

Actually, I did join MySpace<\/strong> some time back (because I wanted to get hold of someone who was on there and could only see their details if I signed up), but that was all too busy and loud.\u00c2\u00a0 Plus, the only people who wanted to be my ‘Friend’ seemed to be hookers or porn sites (as far as I could tell – their photos usually had them in their underwear, which doesn’t sound like any of my actual friends [sadly or thankfully, depending…]) so I gave up on it.\u00c2\u00a0 I posted a link from\u00c2\u00a0my MySpace\u00c2\u00a0page\u00c2\u00a0to my website, and never logged on again.<\/p>\n

Thankfully, Facebook seems a little more organized – and a lot easier to use.\u00c2\u00a0 It also showcases some pretty interesting technology.\u00c2\u00a0 As with a lot of Web 2.0 applications, there’s lots of plug-ins (‘applications’ in Facebook speak) that you can add to your profile\u00c2\u00a0 content (presumably for the benefit of your friends…if they’re not too busy adding\/customizing their own\u00c2\u00a0applications to visit your profile).\u00c2\u00a0 So far so last year.<\/p>\n

Where things get interesting (to me, anyway…) is being able to hook up to various other Web services.\u00c2\u00a0 I’ve already got a blog and I can’t see myself\u00c2\u00a0writing more stuff just for Facebook, so I configured my Facebook ‘Notes’ page to pull in the latest posts from my blog.\u00c2\u00a0 So I write this, and\u00c2\u00a0it\u00c2\u00a0automatically appears as a\u00c2\u00a0Note\u00c2\u00a0on my\u00c2\u00a0Facebook\u00c2\u00a0profile, without me having to do anything more than I’m doing already (which is pretty much the deciding factor with anything I do (or don’t) these days). \u00c2\u00a0I’ve also started using Twitter<\/strong> recently (it feeds the Microblog<\/em> on my blogsite), but Facebook expects me to also tell it<\/em> what I’m up to (should anyone really care).\u00c2\u00a0 No problem.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00c2\u00a0activated an application that automatically picks up on my ‘tweets’ (as they’re called in Twitter) and uses these to update my Facebook status for me.\u00c2\u00a0 People also tend to list their hobbies, favorite books\/films\/bands, etc. in their Facebook profile.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m too lazy to duplicate effort so I installed a couple of additional apps\u00c2\u00a0that pull my music details from my Last.fm<\/strong> profile, and my\u00c2\u00a0movies from my Flixster<\/strong> account.\u00c2\u00a0 (Actually, Last.fm itself is fed the details from my iPod<\/strong> [via iTunes<\/strong> and then\u00c2\u00a0iSproggler<\/strong>] without me doing anything at all, so that’s entirely<\/em> effort-free.\u00c2\u00a0 Result!).<\/p>\n

What really impresses me is the ease with which all of this can be done.\u00c2\u00a0 Getting Twitter to feed Facebook took me about ten seconds.\u00c2\u00a0 Really.\u00c2\u00a0 I just activated the app, gave it my Twitter Userid, and it was off and running.\u00c2\u00a0 No patching code, or creating watched folders on the server, or updating permissions tables, or any of that old-school effort<\/em>.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 Back in the Eighties I spent six months working on some network security software (IBM’s NetView\/Access Services) that passed the status of one machine back to another machine.\u00c2\u00a0 Six months!\u00c2\u00a0 And all you got was the remote machine’s\u00c2\u00a0name on the gateway server highlighted if the machine was online, and not if it wasn’t.\u00c2\u00a0And we thought it was coolest thing ever!<\/p>\n

Nowadays, one program works out how to connect to another program on its own, the new program will install and configure itself, and the two will start swapping all manner of information about you between themselves like old friends.\u00c2\u00a0 And all without the need for a $1,000 a day ABAP programmer.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Which is pretty impressive when you think about it.\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0Maybe not that impressive to the average kid who has grown up with\u00c2\u00a0things working this way\u00c2\u00a0and assumes it’s always been like this, but for those of us who started out feeding paper tape into a machine the size of a small house that didn’t even have a screen, it’s major<\/em>!\u00c2\u00a0 (Do\u00c2\u00a0‘the kids’ still say that?)<\/p>\n

There’s probably more I could have done with my Facebook profile, but I’ve wasted enough time on all of this already\u00c2\u00a0(maybe that’s the point of it…).\u00c2\u00a0 For now, if you\u00c2\u00a0crave more contact with me than this meager blog can provide, you can poke me\u00c2\u00a0in\u00c2\u00a0my\u00c2\u00a0Facebook.\u00c2\u00a0 Or slap me on MySpace.\u00c2\u00a0 Or you can finger me via LinkedIn<\/strong>, or Plaxo<\/strong> (no, the stuffing was Paxo<\/em>), or whatever other social networking site I get suckered into joining next.\u00c2\u00a0 Or you might not.\u00c2\u00a0 If I log on to Facebook tomorrow and see I’ve still<\/em> got no friends, I only have myself to blame.\u00c2\u00a0 If only I’d been a bit more sociable in the past, instead of spending all of my time in front of my PC marveling at how grand technology is…<\/p>\n

(* Internetting: Singlish for using the Internet.\u00c2\u00a0 I don’t make this stuff up, you know…)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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