Daily Tech Bits

Reconnect With Old Friends Through Facebook

Have you been thinking about your first girlfriend recently? Wondering what on earth happened to your best friend in kindergarten? Now you can find them and reconnect, with Facebook. If you aren’t already using this tool, you should be, it is an excellent way to catch up with people you thought you’d never see again!

Before you start searching for those long lost crushes, you will want to set up a fairly comprehensive profile so they will know who they are contacting. Include as much information as you feel comfortable with and add at least one photo so they can identify you, sometimes a photo is the only way you can tell who is who from a long list of people with the same name who live in the same area.

Make sure you put down where you are from. If you have a relatively common name, it will be difficult for others to find you and having your location and a photo available means that it is far easier to contact you. This is important because you may have forgotten about someone who ends up doing a search for you. You want them to be able to find you.

Once your profile is up and running, it is time to start searching. If you are like me and can’t remember last names, try digging out those dusty old year books and start looking people up. You can also try unusual names. For example, if you knew someone named “Booger” that would probably turn up immediately! Even without a last name available.

You can also search for groups, so if you are trying to find people from your high school, you can search for the name of your high school and it will turn up any groups that have that name in the title. Look for the year or years that you were there and you can see the people who joined this group. This works for summer camps, missions trips, etc. as well.

When you click on “Add to Friends” beside someone’s picture, make sure you are ready to let them know who you are. There is a space for adding a personal message and I highly recommend you use it, especially if there is a chance that the person you are contacting will not remember you. You might even want to include where you met and why you are contacting the person.

Facebook is constantly growing but not everyone has joined yet. That means you may not find that hot cheerleader from high school but keep checking for the people you really want to connect with again because it’s possible that they will be there in the future.

This is the ideal resource for anyone wanting to reconnect with their past. You will be amazed at how people have changed in the few years since you last saw them!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! I hope everyone has a very happy and safe holiday season.

Twitter Your Way to Freedom

Are you twittering your time away? Or Twittering your way to freedom?

Twitter – the messaging application – is taking the world by storm. So, what’s the big deal, you say? Instant Messaging is nothing new. It’s a way of connecting to friends, co-workers, family, or meeting new people. Popular applications include AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo, MSN, and others. Now, Twitter.com has come out to play and the world is using it to make a difference.

The San Francisco based company Twitter is owned by Obvious.com. This group of individuals’ mission is to create interesting things that matter to the world. Twitter is exactly that. It is an online application that stretches into that precious realm of becoming a medium for its users. It goes so far as to encourage users to separate themselves from their computers and go out in the world. And text about it.

Using mobile texting technology, a Twitter-er can log in and share with anyone who cares to follow what they are doing at any one point of time. A limit of 140 characters blocks the overly verbose from clogging up space. Such posts may have started with banal comments such as, “Yeah. Great choice of plaid shirt with those polka dot pants.” And have grown into using twitter to track the random tasks of everyday school or workday. Users post comments when they take breaks, go to lunch, get stuck in a ridiculous phone meeting, or are online playing solitaire. Be careful what you twitter about!

The good news is that you can see when you are being followed, and have the ability to make your posts private. All diligent Twitter-ers know that privatizing your posts almost defeats the purpose of this budding international community.

Innovative Twitter-ers can utilize guerilla marketing tactics to plant seeds on products. However, with the Public Timeline section refreshing every four minutes, it’s anyone’s guess how Twitter’s success can be measured as a marketing tool. Other users share the world’s tiniest recipes (a real feat – if you have ever tried to write a recipe in 140 characters or less!) The good news is, according to the terms of use, users own their own content. Chat strings can be copyrighted for usage in Blogs and print.

So how will the public make use of such a malleable medium? Twitter has already shown that its audience is willing to grow up when the need arises. With the confusion that abounded during the San Diego wildfires of 2007, Twitter users took things to another level. The scene was of confusion and panic. Twitter created a user-name to follow; suddenly, while news reports were sketchy at best, followers could track and lend tips to ease each other’s fears. This string of comments and notes passed through the smoke was well monitored and thorough.

Conversely, a recent earthquake in San Francisco led to a frenzy of “tweets” as users call them, capturing mostly the abject terror and then triumph of those who experience and find themselves actually enjoying the thrill ride of California living. While informational links were posted – leading to standard USGS quake data, the question arose. With the response given on Twitter for a standard small quake with no damage – will the infrastructure be able to hold up when the big one hits? (Californians all know this is a matter of when and not if).

Twitter makes the world a smaller place. Joining people of many countries, languages, and backgrounds in one online-village we have shown we can work together to help each other. Or just watch what we’re doing. Either way, I’ll be out there tweeting with the rest of them. Whether or not we’re Twittering our way to freedom or frittering time away remains to be seen.