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Someone was remarking at K2 that I'd been quieter than usual online. I think I stared at them through a haze of beer and game rules, and indeed, I do not now remember who they were. However, they were probably correct in terms of output visible to them. It's difficult to keep track of what I'm doing unless you're on all the services I use, and that's not easy either. Further, a lot of my day-to-day communication goes out on an IRC channel with about twelve people on it, and doesn't really get further transmission. Nevertheless, here's my current usage:
Facebook: I'm not really using Facebook, to be honest. I log in once in a while to check the inbox and confirm any friend requests that are not from completely unknown people, and occasionally scan feeds for people I have no other contact with, but I don't read the whole feed.
Livejournal: I read a lot here, though I no longer try to read everything. I've learned to distinguish between the notions of "I want this person to have access to my journal" and "I want to read everything this person writes", and I'm making that distinction. I post when I have something to say that doesn't go on my other blogs.
Twitter: I love Twitter. It's a global chatroom, where I can filter down to the people I want to listen to, and the conversations between them. Twitter is currently my "main input" stream, alongside Google Reader.
Buzz: I am not making much use of Buzz at the moment. This may change once I have time to work out what it does better than Twitter. At the moment, it seems to include material from people I don't know, sometimes in quite long chunks of text, and that's not interesting. Buzz appears to suffer from several of the geek social fallacies, particularly #4.
Google Reader: This is currently one of my two main inputs. RSS feeds into Reader provide me with about two to three hundred chunky items to read every day, which is just about comfortable. My podcasts also come in here, allowing me to pick and choose which episodes I download.
Wave: Wave is great for event planning and project management. It's not a general communications tool, though.
Email, Inbox: Baseline contact form, this. I don't use email for much these days beyond password messages, the occasional newsletter, and very rarely getting in touch with people who don't respond to anything else.
Email, Mailing Lists: I have not looked at mailing lists much in months. They pile up, I occasionally look at them, but mostly, they don't contain content of interest any more.
Text Messages: I'm not sure where I stand on texts. On the one hand, they're a convenient way to get messages in transit. On the other, they're easy to miss unless I'm actually looking at the phone, and most of the time when I'm in transit, I'm not doing so - I'm reading, listening to podcasts, or plotting something nefarious.
Phone Calls: Yurk. The more I use the phone for work - which is quite a lot - the more I dislike it outside of work. Send me a text or email instead, unless you need an answer right now. Also, be aware that if it's between 07:30 and 09:00, or 17:30 and 19:00, I may not hear the phone ringing.
IM: I have an IRC channel populated with a number of my favourite people. This is an excellent thing. Other than that, IM is seeing very little use from me at the moment. It requires attention in the moment - and if I'm at a computer, chances are I am concentrating on something else. In most cases, it falls into the gap between email and phone conversations - if you need an answer now, phone, if not, email will do fine.
MMOs: Of course MMOs are a communications channel. However, I'm not playing much of any of them at the moment, mostly due to not having time to spare. When I am on, it's on EQII, EVE (in brief bursts), occasionally on WoW, and on Allods, when it hasn't broken itself by patching.
Facebook: I'm not really using Facebook, to be honest. I log in once in a while to check the inbox and confirm any friend requests that are not from completely unknown people, and occasionally scan feeds for people I have no other contact with, but I don't read the whole feed.
Livejournal: I read a lot here, though I no longer try to read everything. I've learned to distinguish between the notions of "I want this person to have access to my journal" and "I want to read everything this person writes", and I'm making that distinction. I post when I have something to say that doesn't go on my other blogs.
Twitter: I love Twitter. It's a global chatroom, where I can filter down to the people I want to listen to, and the conversations between them. Twitter is currently my "main input" stream, alongside Google Reader.
Buzz: I am not making much use of Buzz at the moment. This may change once I have time to work out what it does better than Twitter. At the moment, it seems to include material from people I don't know, sometimes in quite long chunks of text, and that's not interesting. Buzz appears to suffer from several of the geek social fallacies, particularly #4.
Google Reader: This is currently one of my two main inputs. RSS feeds into Reader provide me with about two to three hundred chunky items to read every day, which is just about comfortable. My podcasts also come in here, allowing me to pick and choose which episodes I download.
Wave: Wave is great for event planning and project management. It's not a general communications tool, though.
Email, Inbox: Baseline contact form, this. I don't use email for much these days beyond password messages, the occasional newsletter, and very rarely getting in touch with people who don't respond to anything else.
Email, Mailing Lists: I have not looked at mailing lists much in months. They pile up, I occasionally look at them, but mostly, they don't contain content of interest any more.
Text Messages: I'm not sure where I stand on texts. On the one hand, they're a convenient way to get messages in transit. On the other, they're easy to miss unless I'm actually looking at the phone, and most of the time when I'm in transit, I'm not doing so - I'm reading, listening to podcasts, or plotting something nefarious.
Phone Calls: Yurk. The more I use the phone for work - which is quite a lot - the more I dislike it outside of work. Send me a text or email instead, unless you need an answer right now. Also, be aware that if it's between 07:30 and 09:00, or 17:30 and 19:00, I may not hear the phone ringing.
IM: I have an IRC channel populated with a number of my favourite people. This is an excellent thing. Other than that, IM is seeing very little use from me at the moment. It requires attention in the moment - and if I'm at a computer, chances are I am concentrating on something else. In most cases, it falls into the gap between email and phone conversations - if you need an answer now, phone, if not, email will do fine.
MMOs: Of course MMOs are a communications channel. However, I'm not playing much of any of them at the moment, mostly due to not having time to spare. When I am on, it's on EQII, EVE (in brief bursts), occasionally on WoW, and on Allods, when it hasn't broken itself by patching.