sinéad's lifestream

I went along to a Meteor blogger event yesterday where we chatted about their new pay as you go data charges (250mb free if you top up by €20 per month, as well as free  Meteor texts – not bad at all) and us bloggers got to try out all the iPhone alternatives you could shake a stick at. They also sent me home with a HTC Legend.

Only last week I had tweeted about how I really wanted to try out an Android handset to do a compare and contrast against the iPhone. I usually change my phone on a yearly basis, and my iPhone 3G is nearing its first birthday, so trying out an alternative is a great way for me to discover if I should stick with Apple or not.

Before I got my iPhone a year ago I had always been a huge Nokia fan, what changed my mind was trying out Jen’s iPhone (she’s an avid Apple fan, so of course she had one months before me) as I was simply blown away by the web browsing experience, something that previous Nokia smartphones (running the Symbian operating system) I had owned simply didn’t compare to.

First Impressions of Android

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I was quite literally speechless on Saturday night when I heard I was a joint winner for Best Technology Blog at the Irish Blog Awards. I grabbed the fantastic Made In Hollywood “winner” tombstone (celebrating the death of blogging of course) as I was happier to prance away with that and let 3 time nominee, first time winner, Pat Phelan take the trophy home – a really well deserved winner. Though admittedly I’m looking forward to my own trophy making its way home.

In the past year my blog has transitioned from being considered a personal blog to a technology blog, but honestly I don’t think I could ever really separate the two. Since a really young age technology has been an integral part of my daily life and this blog has been my outlet for my passion for all things technology related, especially in the last year what with the publication of my blogging research,  subsequent end of my college course on Cyberpsychology and search for related employment.

I’m completely unable to express my passion for technology during my current full time job and if it wasn’t for blogging I imagine that passion might have wavered. I’m extremely thankful for blogging because of this and also because it has brought me to incredible events like the Irish Blog Awards and allowed me meet so many wonderful people, like the gorgeous ladies in the photo below.

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The Irish Blog Awards finalists list was published last night and I’m delighted to see so many familiar and deserving blogs and bloggers having made it to the final judging round. Next weekend in Galway is going to a lot of fun. I’m pleased to report that my own blog made it to the finals, in the “Best Technology Blog/Blogger” category. The full list of finalists in this category are below, as you’ll see the competition is incredibly tough and I’m proud to be put along side these amazing blogs/bloggers. Thanks to Bitbuzz who are sponsoring the category and thanks to Damien Mulley for organising another piss up awards.

Best Technology Blog/Blogger

– Sponsored by Bitbuzz

• The Gaming Liberty
• Pat Phelan
• Matt Johnston
• Sinead Cochrane
• Web2Ireland

Thanks to Steph for the graphic/badge.

I’m surprised the phrase “Couldn’t sleep last night.” has yet to trend on Twitter, it’s certainly a common tweet I see in the mornings during my commute to work. Not only that, flicking back through the wee hours of my stream it’s also pretty common to see “Still can’t get to sleep.” appearing at 3am.

I would argue that if you’re tweeting, you’re certainly not trying to sleep or doing what’s good for your body in preparation for shutting down for a few hours. I myself have suffered some restless nights and made a real effort to combat the problem, rather than accepting it and suffering through more zombie like days in the office.

Turn Off Your Computer 30 Minutes Before Sleep

If you’re suffering from occasional difficulty getting to sleep at night you should consider the effects of using a computer late at night. Studies have shown that the brain remains stimulated after using a computer (or watching television), which in turn makes your sleep restless. The simple act of shutting down the computer 30 minutes before you’re planning on going to sleep can help relax you.

Research has also shown that the bright light of your computer monitor (let’s also not forget that mobile phone screens also produce a bright light) suppresses the production of our sleep hormone melatonin. If you are suffering from an especially bad case of insomnia then try shutting down the computer at least two hours before planning on going to bed.

Though you may enjoy the calming effects of using the computer, your brain on the other hand is thinking “light = daytime”. Staring at your computer screen means keeping yourself alert and wide-awake and returning online to complain about your inability to sleep is simply aggravating the problem.

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There never seems to be enough time to blog any more. So I’ve installed the WordPress application for the iPhone and I’m going to stop letting my musings get lost in the Twitter stream forever. Should be perfect as a replacement for Twitpic (which I’ve become increasingly tired of) and for posting Spotted posts.

Now if I could just figure out how to make all of this work with Flickr, so I could store uploaded photos there instead of on my server… might be too much of a challenge, but alas, I’m never one to turn away from a challenge.

A few weeks ago I had my first experience of running a Facebook Page, as we wanted to set one up for Culch.ie.

The primary goals of the Facebook Page were going to be the same as our Twitter account:

1. drive traffic to the site by informing followers/fans that a new blog post had been published,

2. tweet/update-status with exclusive competitions,

3. and interact with followers/fans with a little bit of fun and frolics.

These goals have been easily succeeded on Twitter, but the Facebook Page has been far more difficult and it has been a serious source of frustration for me. All of my Facebook Page energy has been spent trying to achieve the first goal. Something easily achieved on Twitter, thanks to Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed syncs our RSS feed with our Twitter account, so every time  one of our many authors updates the blog, the title and a link to the post  is tweeted. A significant amount of traffic for the site comes from Twitter (this is partially down to followers retweeting links) and we had hoped to achieve same on Facebook.

Facebook offers a number of applications for user profiles, but the majority of these will not work with Facebook Pages, including the Twitter application (and other popular apps like Tweetsync). Initially I discovered that the only solution to goal no.1 was to allow Facebook to import blog posts into their notes functionality, but by having your blog posts imported into Facebook your content is being copied into their walled garden, I’ve discussed before about the negative repercussions of this and have been reluctant to allow this to continue. It also gives rise to privacy and content rights concerns.

After trying and testing numerous Facebook applications I finally stumbled upon one that actually works with Facebook Pages, though it requires a less than direct approach.

The Selective Twitter Status application is designed to allow you to update your Facebook status, but only with a tweet ending/starting with the hashtag “#fb”. This proves quite useful when combined with the Twitterfeed option of adding a piece of text to every autotweet. For example you can set it so the text “New Blog Post…” appears at the beginning of each autotweet (so your followers know the link is to your own blog). However, by setting it to post “#fb” to each autotweet, Selective Twitter Status will then recognise the hashtag and push the tweet to your Facebook status. Also, so as to not pollute our main Twitter account with a hashtag meaningless to our followers, a seperate Twitter account was set up for this rss feed alone.

Now that goal no.1 has been succeeded with the Culch.ie Facebook Page there will be far more time/energy for goals 2 and 3, and I’m hoping the fan numbers will soon rival that of the Twitter account.

This is exactly the kind of problem solving I thrive on, so at least the frustration ended in a solution as well as few lesson about Facebook and Twitter along the way. I hope this is of some help to other frustrated Facebook Page users.

Over coffee yesterday Darragh pointed out that he didn’t “Do the Flickr thing.” and I tried to explain why I thought he should. For someone that takes at least one photo a day and posts it to Twitter via a mobile photo sharing site he could greatly benefit from having somewhere like Flickr to permanently store and share his photos.  If it’s interesting enough to tweet then it shouldn’t be allowed to get lost and unshared after the tweet has washed away in the stream.

I myself have been using Twitpic to post the occasional interesting photo from my iPhone, but only when I’m on the move and I usually post these same photos to Flickr at a later date. Recently I’ve had much more free time to take photos with my “real” camera, and many of these photos are now on Flickr. Sometimes I’ll post a favourite photo to my blog and then link to the rest (rather than posting all of them as a long blog post). The reason I do this is the ability to tag, edit, archive and view stats – but there is so much more to it than that.

Flickr allows me to have a space online independent from my blog, my twitter, and my social networking. I have control on how they are displayed and archived (and can be as meticulous about this as I need), I can tell stories that go with the images, I can make notes to focus your attention to something special hidden within, and when I’m feeling nostalgic I can go back and review my own photostream based on tags I’ve created (see my tagcloud here). I can upload the well taken photos, and the badly taken ones too – if they say something that should be retold, they belong on my photostream.

However, what I really want to do with Flickr is share my photos, and see yours too. Today for instance I checked up on David’s travels in Beijing, Rory’s travels in Japan, I also met John’s gorgeous family, laughed at the bizarre mannequin Steph spotted, day-dreamed about Killiney Bay and wondered about the mind of an artist. Flickr can be a wonderful sneak peek into the lives of people you know and even strangers you might one day meet.

At the moment I only have 56 contacts (compare this to the almost 300 people I follow on twitter). I want more.  I want to follow your interesting lives, I want to comment on the things you’ve done and places you’ve seen. Almost every day I login to Flickr and check my contact’s uploads, the same way I login to Google Reader to check my RSS feeds – the difference is, photos can tell a totally different story, and can share the stories we don’t have the time to tell. Many of us lead busy lives, leaving us with not enough time or patience to blog as regularly as we would like, photoblogging is a taken a bit too seriously, but Flickr is a great way of sharing your life online without too much of a time or energy strain.

Plenty of bloggers that I read regularly will occasionally post their photos, but I always wonder about the photos that weren’t “good enough” for a blog post. Also, some bloggers are far better photographers than they realise and it’s a travesty that their incredible photos can disappear, lost in their blog post archives.

If you’re reading this and use Flickr add me. If you’re reading this and you post photos somewhere else, open a Flickr account and let us follow your life, taking a peek with each new upload.

These things usually start out with “I don’t normally do this” but to be honest I liked getting tagged, not because I want/need things to blog about, but because I think it’s a sweet thing to be thought of. Besides, sometimes you learn new and interesting facts about people from a simple meme.

This one involves the number 8, which for the Chinese is a lucky number – because it sounds similar to the word which means “wealth” in Chinese. Not at all like the number 4, which sounds exactly like “death” – I learned this many years ago when I worked in retail, Chinese customers never wanted a phone number with a number 4 anywhere in the digits. Always found that interesting. In some Asian countries there isn’t even a floor no. 4…

This is the 8 things meme…

Eight things I like:

1. Photos.
2. One to one conversations.
3. Really strong coffee.
#. Working with my hands.
5. Learning new words.
6. Solving a problem.
7. Thoughtfulness.
8. Dancing in the kitchen.

Eight things I did yesterday:

1. Got on a train at 7am.
2. Participated in a student showcase.
3. Had lunch with a good friend.
#. Felt bipolar.
5. Talked to a stranger.
6. Thumbed through 100’s of comics.
7. Put together a Chinese 3D wooden puzzle.
8. Laughed so hard I got a stitch in my side.

Eight things I wish I could do:

1. Go into Space.
2. Go Whale Watching.
3. Write a novel.
#. Swim every day.
5. Live in the City.
6. Be my own boss.
7. Remember the lyrics to songs.
8. Have a conversation with my grandparents.

Eight things I don’t like:

1. Personality being used as an excuse for negative behaviour.
2. My groundhog days.
3. Materialism.
#. Nightclubs.
5. Cut and paste personalities.
6. Accidentally drinking cold coffee.
7. Not being taken seriously.
8. Not knowing what’s going to happen next.

Tagging… Curlydena, because she’s new to my rss feed (and twitter!) and I’d like to learn more about the Curly one.

At least he didn’t slice and dice me…

Here are the rules:

1) Put the link of the person who tagged you on your blog.
2) Write the rules.
3) Mention 6 things or habits of no real importance about you.
4) Tag 6 persons adding their links directly.
5) Alert the persons that you tagged them.

1. My alarm is always set for 6.45am but I don’t get out of bed until 7am – it’s a fake 15 minutes extra sleep, or sometimes I just lie there listening to the radio thinking about what I’d do if I had the day off.

2. The first thing I do when I get home from work is go to my desk and press the ON button for my radio – which is always tuned to PhantomFM and doesn’t get turned off till around 10pm.

3. I always get a Metro in the morning, despite knowing that it’s total drivel. I save it for lunchtime to give myself a break from the computer and I always read my horoscope, just so I can scoff at it.

4. The only personal items on my work desk are a “Word Origin of the Day” calendar and an uneaten candycane stuck between some pens in my organiser.

5. It still surprises me when a friend says “I can’t imagine you with long hair”, like I’ve forgotten they’ve not known me forever.

6. I can’t stand the smell of bananas, and it makes me gag to look at them when they’re black.

Tagging Noel-y Pie, Stacey Face, Smiley Eily, Will Knott, Phil and Tommy.

I really liked Jentertainment’s one, especially the part about Elephants – it’s her first meme!

I’ve been a daily user of Google Reader for the past year, using it to keep track of all the blogs I read. Daily use has meant that I’ve been acutely aware of each new feature that has been gradually added over the last few months. Usually these are welcome, but as Google attempts to add more social features I fear they are reducing the ability of authors and readers to follow conversations spawned from blog posts – which is considered a traditional and necessary feature of the blogosphere. That’s not to say that Google are the only ones doing this, both Facebook and Twitter have elements to them that is contributing to this.

For a long time Google Reader has allowed users to share blog posts of interest to friends  that were also using GR and slowly but surely I am starting to build up a list of friends that I share with and they reciprocate in kind. This is a form of social bookmarking, but unlike sites like Digg the author of the blog post cannot track how many times their work is shared, or by whom. GR also now features the ability to leave comments on blog posts and – at least from a blog author’s perspective – is unwelcome, because these conversations are kept private. Private social bookmarking and private blog commenting has negative implications because trackbacks and blog comments are an integral part of the blogging experience and can reinforce an author’s motivation and drive to continue writing.

Facebook and Twitter also provide you with the ability to social bookmark and comment, but again without  direct trackback links, so a blog author can never tell who is linking to their work, and misses out on many of the conversations spawned.

The lack of trackbacks and private blog comment conversations on Google Reader, Facebook and Twitter is  completely irresponsible but is in no way the fault of the reader. Google and Facebook especially understand the value of user generated content, today the most prolific of which is the simple conversation – as demonstrated by the rise of Twitter. By poaching blog comments and putting them behind private walls they are of course trying to keep their users within their own walled networks, which in the long run, could discourage bloggers from continuing to write.

Yes some of us write for ourselves, but many write for an audience, and it would be tragic for a blogger to stop writing because their audience had started privately, rather than publically, encouraging them.