GReactions

I am going through the motions with gReactions right now.  Put it on FireFox 3.5.2, MBP OS x.

The install was smooth.  Mozilla provided precautionary words before download.  Did due diligence.   I do not see any customization capability yet.  That would be nice.  The font is so small it’s just about impossible to read.  Getting a size option on that would be welcome, or at least a bit larger font.  The timeliness of the responses, the dialogue, appears to be instantaneous–the scraping process would be a hoot to check out.  I’m going to get to know that a bit better.

Tracking the sources of the comments is klugy.  These days as well, it seems difficult to find the real source of items–you might need to navigate through a couple of third party syndications before you get to the original post/reaction.  A very high order would be real time refreshing, i.e., a FriendFeed within the results.  I didn’t see how that could be done here–a refresh within Google Reader would either make the item you’re looking at disappear, and or the entire feed would refresh to the most recent item.  The topic gets drowned in all the updated content.

You can filter the responses by the syndication source, this is a useful feature.

Overall it’s a great.  Hey, it’s viewed as Alpha, version 0.1.c.  I’m keeping it in GR.  Can’t wait to see and install updates.

The video was done with local actors by the Gwent police department, to be shown in area schools as part of a 30-minute deterrent movie about “texting while driving.” It’s effective, violent and bloody. That’s probably the point.

Texting While Driving PSA Delivers Bloody, Bone-Crunching Message – Texting – Gizmodo.

WARNING.  Not for the squeamish. I don’t know about you, but I’m sure there are many out there who are very lucky that this has not happened to them. More ADD activities for us, we are concentrating on so many different things simultaneously. Will we have a chance to slow down? Perhaps only when the grid is disrupted. Then we’ll all get back to agriculture, hard copy, and actually communicating.

I think we do need more of this type of PSA in the states.  But who knows, maybe something like this would backfire, the stubborn in us thinking we’d be immune.  Shock and awe in all of its magnificence.  Woah.

One of my reasons to hang with iGoogle — the Motivational Quotes gadget.  And this just popped in from Jim Henson:

“When I was young, my ambition was to be one of the people who made a difference in this world. My hope still is to leave the world a little bit better for my having been here. It’s a wonderful life and I love it.”

The gadget stays at the top left, and this is one of the great reasons why.  I’d love to share the gadget more easily.  Hopefully that will improve.  And with words like Henson’s, we need more of this sharing, big time.

Why iGoogle’s ‘Social Gadgets’ Should Kill Facebook — Datamation.com.

Mike Elgan writes:

iGoogle as a social networking site sits directly between MySpace and Facebook in the area of customizability. It’s more customizable than stodgy, boring Facebook, but less customizable than garish, horrid MySpace.

Strong words, yes.  I somewhat agree with them. I haven’t seen iGoogle yet as social media, more personal homepage. But a clear transformation has been happening; I for one am excited about it.

We have application classes to work with–and understanding them is going to be of assistance in our attempt to accomplish things at any given time.  I’ve noticed more noise in regard to this.  It’s a great question to ask.  Social Networking, Social Media, Personal Home Page, News Reader, Portal, and so on.   At this point, out of all sites and all application types, my home is Google Reader.  I’ve got my sources and I’ve categorized them into groups.  No fuss, no gimmicks.  Just stories and opinions.  This is where morning coffee happens.  Information as far as I see it.  And I chose it over iGoogle–but I’m at iGoogle before long.  I’ve got a Google Reader widget in iGoogle (as well as a twitter gadget and a weather gadget and 20 other of those 60,000), but the widget in too clunky in iGoogle to really get a grip on it.   So I’ll get over to it in a tabbed window and switch around a bit.

We’ll see how iGoogle transforms. It seems with widgets these days, an introvert’s index.html could turn into a social networking site.  Cut and paste some code.  Get some FaceBook connect implementation happening and then promote it.

I’ll be checking out those new igoogle gadgets for sure. I have been an iGoogle user for quite a while now and have preferred iGoogle over FaceBook and MySpace. With the $ at stake, changes are going to be taking place in nanoseconds.  Oh yeah, and good luck killing FaceBook.

A hearty thank you to the inventive, brilliant Dave Winer. His suggestion to do a #blogpostfriday versus a #followfriday is most welcome, and I’m going to follow this new tradition. We have become so used to the short form. 140 characters can convey a good deal, no doubt–especially with hyperlinks. But there must be a place for more thorough thought than this.

It seems that in this day and age we are conditioned to follow.  It’s a snap to follow by clicking and supplying a few grunts and mindless reactions of acceptance, conformity, and compliance.  Will we go beyond that?  We certainly have.  I have been a writer for many years and for many reasons I see it is imperative to continue to put words down at length.  Paper, screen, anyplace–keeping the hands moving, keeping the connection with what goes through my mind, hopefully keeping this brain healthy.

Every Friday,
rain or shine!.

We are focused on those clicks, on catching the latest fad, the latest gadget, the snappiest way to snap our fingers on our MacBooks, Toshibas, iPhones, G1’s, Wings, and other “miracle machines”. We forget about taking the time to think things through, to savor ideas, maybe outline and plan a little bit. We need vehicles to carry our thoughts–so we can save them for ourselves or convey them clearly to others. To have a meaningful exchange.

Dave’s name has appeared quite a bit in my FriendFeed, through his direct posts or through the admiring words of others.  To find out that he was a pioneer of the RSS protocol and more, and he is still continuing to work on ways to enhance these open technologies–these are  noteworthy accomplishments indeed.  How small do you feel when you stand beside the ocean?  How small do you feel when you stand beside one of the inventors of it?!  This is the man PC World calls “The father of modern-day content distribution.”. So when he speaks about blogging, I would be inclined to listen.

This whole world seems ADD’d out to the max.  Focus seems next to impossible in this uber-rapid information age.  I fight for it every moment, for my clients, for my friends, for my wife, for myself.  Let’s say there’s room for improvement.  How about for you?  Are you ready to cast that first stone?

What are we sculpting?  What are we planning?  Is there structure to it, or is it a formless ramble?  I for one see value in randomness, in quick shots, thoughts in spurts–but settling back and really saying something.  That’s what I want to be about.  I want to think.  Complexities abound; shouting as well.  Extended words, built sensibly, with balance, solid construction, direction and detail.  That’s my goal.  At least now and then.

Imagine folks taking time to assemble their thoughts, their responses to events, to stimuli–careful, considered responses.  How much would be different!  The moments to be still and get to know a subject a little bit, to live with the words, chew on them–there’s a novel way to approach the day.  A novel way to approach a Friday–a #blogpostfriday!

Write on.

Getting Things Done, otherwise known as GTD–this is a tool which, hopefully, will help me restore order in my life. As each day comes, as each new piece of information surrounds and drowns, more and more it’s essential to learn how to deal with it, process it. I’ve got the book and am going head first in to making the program work.

GTD seems to be a movement–but is that all social media hype? I first found it on the web. Someone blogged it. Maybe it was a blink, or a digg. Wherever the post was, it proved intriguing, and I researched the program further. The reports and dialogue convinced me to grab the book and the Outlook plugin. The plugin is by no means perfect, but I moved to this after the Franklin Covey PlanPlus Outlook plugin completely bombed for me.

Using the Covey nomenclature, a paradigm shift is definitely in progress. GTD’s author, David Allen, developed a Workflow Diagram, which is on my wall. I refer to it often and will have it memorized soon enough. It helps you deal with overwhelm and develop a trusted system for retrieving the information you need, when you need it. More on this soon. Quite busy building files–and despite the assertion that all of our “stuff” will be electronic, there’s still an abundance of paper in my world. Off to conquer it.

Thought I’d head into a little reading this morning, via my iGoogle setup. Fished around, read a great Frida Kahlo quote via a Motivational Quotes gadget (you’ll need to have iGoogle). Then headed to the Scobleizer feed. In the midst of his recommendation to “turn off the internet”, he linked to a site called twittervision. If there’s anyone whose links I check out, it’s Mr. Scoble.

You could call it a glorified chat room if you’d like, a pointless exercise in assembling feeds, or tweets if you will; but this is an amazing work of technology. A very quick page source view revealed a bunch of javascript links. I was thinking it might be flash (there’s a 3-d view that is Flash, but it appears that “Classic View” is a google maps call). Too funny to call this “classic”. I thought classic meant 25 years old. Tell me this is 25 years old! <lol>

Well, I’ve got to check out more tweets. Hey, it may be easy to impress me–this blows me away. MegaMashup. OK, real work to do now.

I’m del.icio.usly Digging my blinklist feed.

As if enough time isn’t already spent checking out the syndication sites, software, social bookmarking and more. It’s a quest though–see which page, which tool works the best. It requires time to do this, but the effort seems worthwhile. Who will come out on top with the best centralization of all of this? How does one choose the champion? Seems like there’s great opportunity here. The ultimate one stop shop, whether it’s desktop/web.

I’m really not stoned. Just enthusiastic about this technology and all of the brilliant folks assembling it, debugging it, attempting to make it profitable. There’s a win-win here.