Thing 13

The thirteenth thing is called "Online Productivity Tools"--although I must admit that I felt anything but productive as I sampled the various options that I could add to my igoogle page. Would my efficiency on the job really increase because I elect to have the joke of the day at my fingertips? A number of the add-ons seem designed only to increase the mental distance between my wandering attention and whatever it is that I am supposed to be doing.

On the other hand, I did doll up my igoogle page with local weather alerts (a no-brainer since the weather radio keeps going off on this day of unsettled atmospherics--from where I sit I can hear the alarm, but not the announcer's voice giving us the weather particulars), the New York Times leads and a few other relentlessly respectable links. I even added the "great art image of the day" for decoration. A Gaugain Tahitian this morning.

Then I stumbled over the 23 Thing pointer to a website called Zamzar.com According to the blurb,
This program will covert one file type to another. Especially handy in libraries that may not be able to open a student or patron file because it doesn’t have the right software.
Well, son of a gun, if we hadn't just had that situation in the library this morning. I wonder if this would have helped.

I still prefer my personal "starting place" homepage aldaily.com (Arts & Literature Daily from the Chronicle of Higher Education, it's something like the thinking person's Reader's Digest), not because it's useful--it isn't--but because it's really one of the most interesting ways I know to waste time online.

Thing 11 Reddit, Digg etc.

OK, I've reached my limit. Call me an elitist, call me a media snob, but I see absolutely no reason to get my news mediated by the inadequate attention spans of a bunch of witless, post-adolescent cyber-commentators. The so-called social media sites can carry on without me.

When I want to find out what's going on in the world, I want the New York Times straight up. Why on earth would I care to have my news "voted on" by a bunch of underemployed slackers who happen to have some time on their hands in cyberspace? Sorry, but whatever "community" they belong to, count me out.

Thing 10

Honor is served. I have added a comment to our Reference Wiki, thereby observing the letter (if not the spirit) of Thing #10.
My chief difficulty with Wikis is the usual authoritative/egalitarian dilemma. Do I really trust the collective wisdom of the group, unmediated by the editorial voice?

I wonder what the origins of the word "wiki" are, by the way. Oh well, speak but the word, and google gives us the answer. According to computerworld.com, the genesis of "wiki" is just about as banal as you might expect. Somebody vacationing in Hawaii hears "wiki, wiki" (Hawaiian for 'quick') and thinks, "Hey, that's a good name for the software."
The only software name I've ever approved of, really, was the email program Eudora--for obvious literary reasons. (Eudora Welty's short story "Why I Live at the P.O." was the inspiration.)
Oh well, off-topic as usual. I am NOT a 21st century person.

Breaking the digital barrier.

Why is it that some technological innovations seem utterly natural to me? Others, I examine with all the benighted curiosity of the chimp in the famous scene of 2001: A Space Odyssey.

I adapted to email, instant messaging, conference messaging, mapquesting and google in all its various incarnations (movie finder, weather watcher, shopping agent, purchasing point etc. etc. in addition to regular find-anything) with ease and a sigh of satisfaction that my world now included these obviously useful features. I love the fact that I'm able to find long-lost anyone on the 'net and that I'm able to research the background of new acquaintances with just a few keystrokes. My politically prurient side adores the Huffington Post where I can snoop on the political contributions of my relatives. ("How dare my brother lavish thousands of dollars on the GOP? Our socialist mama must be turning in her grave.") My obsessive nature is deeply devoted to runstoppable.org, which allows me to log every foot I've ever jogged.

Text messaging, on the other hand, seems to belong to a world beyond my sluggish opposable thumbs, as does summoning directions to my cellphone via google or creating ingenious mashups of hitherto unrelated datasets. Why do these things? Why, for that matter, create those-- at best indiscreet---at worst, devastating--- little electronic temples to narcissism, the Facebook or MySpace page?

I'm sure part of it has to do with age and deteriorating eyesight. Can anyone with presbyopia fully master the possibilities offered by her cell phone? I can't even read the caller ID information when I'm driving. How am I supposed to summon movie reviews en route? (And, besides, my taste remains so resolutely oddball. The one movie I attempted to locate via cellphone was the well-reviewed Israeli production Jellyfish. With touching--if inaccurate--solicitude, 'call google' attempted to refer me to the nearest Biology Library.)

But it's not my failing eyes that present the greatest barriers. The true deal breaker is the inner restraint that used to go the name of ordinary discretion. It's reflexive in someone of my generation--unknown apparently in those who come after. I would rather undergo unspecified mental torture than reveal the cornucopia of personal details that seem to pass for expected content on blog after homepage after flckr account.

Text Message

I just sent my first. (Or, at least, I tried to). The recipient was my teenage son--the only person I could think of that knows the difference between a text message and a typewriter. It will probably come as a tremendous blow to him to realize that this teenage redoubt is now accessible by his mother!
I even looked up an online glossery of abbreviations, and composed the following message:

AYV MOS

This, to the unitiated, means: Are You Vertical? (a legitimate question given the fact that it is only 1;30 in the afternoon---the break of dawn, in other words, for any teenager in the opening days of summer vacation)
Mother Over Shoulder (the text msg. equivalent of telling him that Big Brother is watching.)

Thing 7

Anyway, at last a tool that I'm familiar with. Email and it's younger stepsister, IM. I thought I'd never prefer IM to picking up the phone, but in fact I switched over with frightening alacrity. Can it be that I'm not a people person after all?

Thing 5

I did not have More Fun with Flickr. Maybe it's because I'm such a non-visual person. I think in words--not images. So I'm completely nonplussed by the opportunity to do "creative things" with flickr images. I don't want to spell my name in pictures or find all the pictures in a particular shade of blue or any of the other proffered "10 Best" flickr applications. Plus, I'm sick of having to correct my typing each time I write f-l-i-c-k-e-r.

I'm sticking with my kid's prom photos, to be updated when my niece gets married next month.