Thursday, March 27, 2008

Twitter, feed readers and Grand Central... oh, my!

I joined Twitter yesterday. According to Twitter's FAQ "Twitter is a service for friends, family, and co–workers to communicate and stay connected through the exchange of quick, frequent answers to one simple question: What are you doing? Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool." I call it really short-form blogging. I suspect, as with any of the time saving services I've tried, it will grow on me, and within a month or so, I'll be wondering how I ever lived without it. Pay attention, there is a theme emerging.

I spent some time on Tuesday evening subscribing to the many blogs I read. I used Google's feed reader, mostly because I can access it from my cell phone. I love this feature. It saves me so much time. I just scan through the listed headlines, and if I want to read the entire blog post, CLICK, and there it is.

Tuesday night, in an online chat, another service was brought to my attention - Grand Central. "GrandCentral gives you 'One Number...for Life' -- a phone number that instead of being tied to a device or a location, is tied to you. Use GrandCentral to centralize your communication, customize your callers' experience, and make sure you never miss a call you want to take (or take a call you want to miss)." I'm not so sure I want to jump on this wagon just yet. I'm not so important that I need to be available all the time.

So here is the theme - doesn't all of this technology seem a little redundant? I mean, really, all we need to do is own an I-phone(I-touch?), and have a pocket or purse to carry it, and aren't we available, all the time, all ways, all stations? I'm not saying all of this stuff isn't nifty and cool, but I don't know that it's necessary.

And by the way, does anyone remember what a busy signal sounds like?

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I don't think all this tech is necessarily redundant, but, then again, I'm a bit of a junkie — I'm on Twitter, half a dozen social networks, Grand Central and would not to do without my various Google tools.

But I can also use these tools to do all sorts of things I wouldn't otherwise. I have a stack of recorded interviews on Grand Central that I wouldn't have had any other way to record without carrying around a clunky recorder. With Google Reader, I make it through an obscene number of blogs rapidly — and have an easy way to save posts that spark an idea for a query or a blog post of my own with out having to deal with a bloated file of bookmarks. And Twitter — just think of Twitter as micro-flash-fiction. :)

VirtualWordsmith said...

"And Twitter — just think of Twitter as micro-flash-fiction."

Or micro-flash-non-fiction? LOL!

Thanks for commenting!

political wife said...

Great post. I just became a twitterbug too and OMG it is going to be very dangerous (in a good way). As for a busy signal? Yes...when I call my grandparents. LOL.