Once you have a presence that is all yours and that is not going anywhere then you can sign up for other programs or social networking sites.  These sites often have plug-ins that can be installed on your personal page.  Many of your friends will only participate on Facebook, or Myspace.  Many will only get on Frienfeed, or Twitter.  You can see the dilemma where you find yourself jumping from one site to another.  With the advent of the really simple syndication (RSS) feed, many systems have been established where all social site feeds can be fed together on one site.  Friendfeed is one of these as well as Google Reader.    Facebook is the big rave these days with more than 200 million active users so that is where many people gather.  The problem with that is popularity comes and goes with these sites.  You may remember Xanga.com when it was the big thing.  Then it was Myspace and so on.   It is only a matter of time before Facebook will be supplanted as the number one place.  By having your own page that is always there,  people can find you when one of the social sites goes under.  Secondly, by having your own site, search engines can find you allowing people to search for you.

If you have a Twitter account and use it the way it was intended, you will see that it is far more than just an instant messaging (IM) system.  Most of these social sites have a feature built in that allows your Twitter updates to automatically update your status on their sites.  Twitter is so light weight that you can use it even if you do not have a smart phone, or one capable of data transfer.  They allow you to send text messages to a short number, 40404.  As long as you do not post more than 140 characters in a single message, it will be posted on your Twitter page located http://www.twitter.com/yourusername.  Not only can you follow your updates on the Twitter page in real time, but it also updates other social sites simultaneously.  I have found that with many Twitter updates that I send, I get responses on Facebook, Myspace, and Friendfeed.  Since all of these sites notify you via email when someone responds to you, it makes it easy to immediately respond back.

If you ever find yourself bored at the doctor’s office, you can just send a text message that you are waiting for your doctor and someone on Facebook responds and it starts a conversation.  It helps when you are bored and stuck doing something you are not that excited about doing.  So to ask whether Twitter or Facebook is better, you should be asking how do you use them together.  I have met many ham radio operators online that also communicate using these tools.  It is really fun once you learn how to use them.  I hope this helps to explain a few ways to use them together.

What a pretty morning with the rain coming down.  It is only 64 degrees and rain and I love it.  For once we can turn the air conditioner off and let the outside air in.  Unfortunately having the window open means hearing all the neighbor noises but since it is daytime, I think we can handle it.

To clarify what a DDoS attack is and how it works I will try to explain.  A malicious person will find open computers around the world and upload a “bot”, or a program that runs automatically at set times.  This person will upload these bots onto other computers as they find them open.  These bots will ping a site continuously from many different victim computers sort of like what happens when you are access a web site.  These attempts to reach the site are at such a high volume that it takes up all of their bandwidth preventing legitimate users from being able to access the site.  When I say bandwidth, I am referring to a sort of a pipeline and its size.  The larger the size of pipeline, the more data that can be sent through the pipe.  If all the contents of the pipe are being consumed, then nothing else is left for anyone else.

Twitter still rules the social networking world despite what you may hear from other sites.  The reason I say this is because if you actually go to Friendfeed,  you will find that at least 50% of the traffic on there started by a Twitter post.  Of course from there, people will comment on Friendfeed.  The same can be said for Facebook because most of the traffic that I see are originally posted as Twitter.  Most of these sites have their own features that are very useful but again they depend on the traffic that is generated by Twitter.  With each news story that comes out putting down Twitter, they continue to grow.  In fact their growth is exponential with each story that comes out.  This is probably a result of people’s desire to follow the crowd.  In fact just this morning I un-followed 500 people/bots/strangers.  I will admit that I love the ability to get news from Twitter in real time even before it is on the news.  I can find out when a roll over accident is on the freeway before it is even broadcast on television.

So unless someone can come up with a tool that is so easy to use through short messaging system (SMS) they will continue to rule.  With smart phones becoming more prevalent people can update a news story directly from the site.  Instantly millions of people will know within minutes.  In some cases these posts actually result in the media’s attention instead of the other way around.  Having Twitter is empowering to the individual.  As it has been seen recently, there were individuals in Iran that were posting to the world the violence that was going on.  These Twitter posts were fed into many social networking sites and also to the news media.  In fact every major news entity in the United States has a Twitter page.    I know some people that use them just to follow news sites so that when something happens, they get a message to their phones.  It is inevitable that at some point a new technology will come out and unseat Twitter as the major social tool but for now they remain on top.  I will continue to follow these technologies and see new breakthrough tools as they develop.

My blog keeps the same address and is not subject to the popularity of a particular social network.  Since these networks come and go within a two year period it would be easy to lose contact with some people.  If you do not actively use these networks then you could lose contact with those friends since the popularity of that network could dwindle and its followers would move on to another network.  For those that prefer to use these social networks as their primary interaction with friends, I would suggest you also maintain a domain hosted web site.  This can be a blog or just a static site where you have a permanent address where people can find you.  These addresses are indexed by search engines making them easier to find.  This way as the Facebook of the day give way to the newest social network, people will still be able to find you.

Also one of the benefits of having a blog over a real time social network is that you control the content and the duration of the post.  If you use a social networking site, the content is only visible as long as no one else is posting.  As new items are posted, these posts are moved down on the page giving way for new content.  Eventually your post is moved completely off the page.  In addition to this, there is another benefit to a blog over the social networking site.  Most social sites have limitations to how many characters you can post in a single post.  Like Twitter will only allow you to post 140 characters at one time.  These limitations vary depending on which site you go to but there are limitations.

Another problem with these social networking sites is that there seems to be a erroneous cultural attitude that email is obsolete and going away.  This idea is not very well thought out because email will never go away unless a newer “mail” technology comes into play.  This is because many or maybe I should say most employers require all communications to be made using the company email system.  At my work for example, they block access to all social networking sites and web based email systems.  If you would like to communicate with someone outside the organization, you must use the employer’s email system that is subject to monitoring.  You cannot control the content of a social networking site and therefore not allowed.  For this reason, many of those on social networking sites refuse to check their email.  To them it is an antiquated system that is not worth using.  They fail to realize that every one of these social networking sites requires an email address to confirm their identity.  Email is not going away.  These people discard their email and so you cannot leave them a forwarding address if you move.  By keeping a permanent web site that is available for search engines, you can still be found after several years.  These are just a few of the reasons why blogging is better than social networking. 

If you have not spoken to someone for five years, they can always go to their favorite search engine and search for you.  Your blog or permanent domain will be found in the search engine results while many of the social networking sites may not be.  You may not like to blog but having a permanent web address can be used to point your friends and family to your social networking site that you prefer to use.  I too enjoy using many of these sites and in fact use Twitter every day.  By having my permanent domain, people can find my Twitter page without having to search around all day.  I hope I have been able to explain a few things here so that you will understand why I maintain this blog even though I do not have time to get on it as much as I like.  On a social network, I would not have been able to post my information in such detail.  This makes it easier to fully explain my point.

This weekend I replaced my phone with this Blackberry Curve 8900 from T-Mobile.  This phone while lacking 3G capability is very nice.  I have been torn for sometime about whether I was going to change providers or stay with T-Mobile when my contract ran out.  I think it was my son coming home to live with us that made up my mind because with four phones, the price can be very steep, especially if you have Internet capability.  We have the 1800 minute family myFavs plan with each person being able to select five numbers where they can make or receive unlimited calling.  Also we have unlimited mobile to mobile calling, and unlimited nights and weekends.  We also have unlimited text messaging because after all, I do have teenagers.  I cannot blame them because since I have Twitter, I get just as many texts as they do.

I considered switching to a new carrier but the cost of buying four new phones and the new, more expensive rate plans would have been just too expensive.  Since we have been with T-Mobile since 2000, we have a good history to go on so we decided to stay.  I have had flawless service in the last nine years with them so we decided to stay with them.  When we signed up originally they were not even called T-Mobile but rather Voicestream.

It was going to be a toss up between this phone and the G1 but I finally decided on this one for one reason.  I kept reading about how the G1’s battery life was very short.  Secondly T-Mobile’s 3G rollout for Oklahoma City would not be until August.  The 3G speeds were sure to make the battery run down even faster.

The phone that I settled on is this Blackberry and I love it.  They may say that it has no 3G but the Internet is every bit as fast as my dad’s Iphone and my brother’s Blackberry through Alltel/Verizon.  This phone also has Unlicensed Mobile Access (UMA) through wifi.  The speeds are almost as fast on the mobile EDGE as it is on my home wifi making it very usable.  The one thing that I love about this phone the most is the fact that I can be connected to Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, AOL Messenger, Google Talk, ICQ, and Blackberry Messenger all at the same time.  I have three different email accounts including my University of Oklahoma account.  I have Twitterberry, and the Facebook for Blackberry installed and I can have all these programs running at the same time. 

Of course yesterday was my first full day with this phone and with all the heavy usage on social networking sites and phone calls, the phone is still not dead.  I charged the phone all day Friday and it is now Sunday.  I am very pleased with its performance.  I just love the message notification section where I can check any of those systems and respond to any of them from one spot.  This is pretty amazing how smooth it works.  It is almost as addicting as the computer itself.  I just wanted to share how pleased I am with this new phone.  Do not let the lack of 3G discourage you from this phone because it is quick enough to make it useful.  I would definitely recommend this phone. 

The big argument is that Twitter has become so main stream and on practically every news talk show around while Friendfeed has so many more features.  They are arguing whether Friendfeed will ever overtake Twitter.  I think as of right now, I use Twitter the most.  I also use Twitter to update Facebook.  Friendfeed was the first to be able to allow posting stories, messages and allowing others to post messages to them.  Facebook had included that feature lately and I love that.  Friendfeed now has a notifier so you can read your Friendfeed messages right on your desktop.

I love the live updates on Friendfeed though it is very fast if you follow a lot of people.  If you follow a lot of people, you may want to use the filters or you are going to have a headache trying to follow all the information scrolling across your screen.  The incoherence of this post is a classic example of the information overload.  I am typing this at the same time while listening to the Gilmore Gang podcast, and reading the Friendfeed posts as they pop up on the bottom right side of the screen on the notifier.  I truly love it though I remember the nature and anonymity of Friendfeed in the past where it is very easy to be attacked in a very vicious manner if you post something that is not very popular.  If you have thin skin then you may want to be careful what you post because people are very aggressive when they disagree with  you. 

At the moment, Twitter and Facebook are leading the pack and looking at current trends I would say that Friendfeed would never take the lead.  I do know enough to know that you cannot judge by current trends because there was a time when Google was a small part of Yahoo before Google really took off.  There was a time when America Online dominated the online world and most people thought they would never be surpassed in the online world.  Over time you never know what is going to take off.  All I know is that in the last couple of hours since I saw the new beta Friendfeed, and seeing the rate of information flow, I am scratching my head in amazement.  On this one story, there are new posts appearing at a rate of about two per second.  Absolutely amazing real time information.  If you are one of those that must read every post you will find yourself mesmerized and hypnotized by the information overload.

You could literally spend 24 hours a day on Friendfeed where every news story in the universe is streaming across your screen from both political spectrums at the same time.  You could find yourself involved into a religious or political fight in seconds on Friendfeed.  I do like it though because it allows you to see both perspectives on virtually any topic you can think of.  As I said before you could be in a hostile environment easily so you need to be prepared for that.  Don’t let me give you the idea that everyone is ugly and unfriendly on Friendfeed because that is not the truth.  I am just saying there are thousands of people that actively follow these threads 24 hours a day and anyone can see it.  Due to the very nature of its fast and capable social connection, your posts are read very fast and responded to within seconds at times. 

Again, I think this is an amazing interface and destined to go far.  This has only been out a few hours and the traffic is just phenomenal.  Despite this, I am not likely to try to get all my friends to go to Friendfeed because it took me forever to get some of them to go to Facebook and Twitter.  I love all of them but some people do not like all the overload.  As people drift over, I will add them.  I use all three because there are different audiences.  If you are inclined to try these types of toys, then give it a try.  My Friendfeed URL is http://beta.friendfeed.com/paulmccord.  The one thing that makes Twitter so popular is the SMS, or text messaging feature.  This would be virtually impossible on Friendfeed due to the enormous amount of information. 

Again, I would like to apologize for the incoherence of this post, because I have too much information going on at the same time.  I hope you give it a try and see how you like it.  I think you will be hooked in no time.

Their newest version of Windows Live Messenger has some pretty cool audio and video every bit as comparable to Skype and that is really saying something as you may remember that I have regularly promoted Skype.  Their Windows Live Photo Gallery allows you to edit, catalog, and share your photos online to Windows Live Photos, or even Flickr. Windows Live Maps has become just as good as Google Maps and has sharing capabilities now where you can save your favorite sites, group them and share them. 

There is also a new Windows Live Mail, both online and a downloadable application.  The former Hotmail, is now Windows Live Mail though if you still have a Hotmail address you can still use it.  It now allows an ever growing storage space where you can archive your mails into another folder sort of like Gmail.  This way you never have to delete an email again and you can search for old emails.  Also there is a downloadable version that takes the place of the Outlook Express if you are using Windows XP, or older version.  If you are using Vista, it replaces Windows Mail.  The Vista version of Windows Mail no longer supports http mail support so downloading the Windows Live Mail application allows you to still use http mail, and IMAP, as well as POP mail.  I am very pleased with the new web based Windows Live Mail as well as the downloadable version as well.

The Windows Live Writer is probably the most amazing blogging program ever designed.  In fact I am posting this using Live Writer and I absolutely love it.  I just love how it is a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWG) appearance using the same themes as your actual blog so you can see it exactly how it will appear.  It has tagging features and categorizing.  It is very easy to post pictures, and videos to your blog.  It will let you post on your own blog whether it be on your own domain or any of the free blogging sites like Blogger.com, WordPress, or Typepad, or even your own Windows Live Spaces page.  I have not even mentioned the Windows Live Skydrive.  This is absolutely amazing how they give you 25 gigabytes (GB) of free space to store and share your own files online.  I love this feature as I can upload my Internet Radio Linking Project (IRLP) Files into a central location so the other club officers can all have access to them.  The best part about all these features is they are free!

It has been tough getting my friends to try it because there are so many social sites out there like Myspace, Tumblr, and Facebook.  Just as it has been difficult to get people to try Skype because there are so many choices and people do not see the need to join another one.  I really believe that if people gave Windows Live a chance they would be hooked.  I am pretty excited about how useful the site is and I want to tell others about it so they will know and use it.  I want others to know there are other people using this site so that Windows Live will be a success.  They really do have a lot of features that are totally free to the user and there are no strings attached that users are required to get people to give up their privacy.

The following was written by Ben Stein and recited by him on CBS Sunday Morning Commentary

Herewith at this happy time of year, a few confessions from my beating heart: I have no freaking clue who Nick and Jessica are. I see them on the cover of People and Us constantly when I am buying my dog biscuits and kitty litter. I often ask the checkers at the grocery stores. They never know who Nick and Jessica are either. Who are they? Will it change my life if I know who they are and why they have broken up? Why are they so important?  I don’t know who Lindsay Lohan is either, and I do not care at all about Tom Cruise’s wife.
Am I going to be called before a Senate committee and asked if I am a subversive? Maybe, but I just have no clue who Nick and Jessica are.  If this is what it means to be no longer young. It’s not so bad.

Next confession:
I am a Jew, and every single one of my ancestors was Jewish. And it does not bother me even a little bit when people call those beautiful lit up, bejeweled trees Christmas trees. I don’t feel threatened. I don’ t feel discriminated against. That’s what they are: Christmas trees.  It doesn’t bother me a bit when people say, “Merry Christmas” to me. I don’t think they are slighting me or getting ready to put me in a ghetto. In fact, I kind of like it. It shows that we are all brothers and sisters celebrating this happy time of year. It doesn’t bother me at all that there is a manger scene on display at a key intersection near my beach house in Malibu. If people want a crèche, it’s just as fine with me as is the Menorah a few hundred yards away.  I don’t like getting pushed around for being a Jew, and I don’t think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can’t find it in the Constitution, and I don’t like it being shoved down my throat.  Or maybe I can put it another way: where did the idea come from that we should worship Nick and Jessica and we aren’t allowed to worship God as we understand Him?

I guess that’s a sign that I’m getting old, too.
But there are a lot of us who are wondering where Nick and Jessica came from and where the America we knew went to.  In light of the many jokes we send to one another for a laugh, this is a little different: This is not intended to be a joke; it’s not funny, it’s intended to get you thinking.  Billy Graham’s daughter was interviewed on the Early Show and Jane Clayson asked her “How could God let something like this Happen?” (regarding Katrina)  Anne Graham gave an extremely profound and insightful response. She said, “I believe God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives.

And being the gentleman He is, I believe He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand He leave us alone?”  In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. I think it started when Madeleine Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body found recently) complained she didn’t want prayer in our schools, and we said OK.  Then someone said you better not read the Bible in school. The Bible says thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, and love your neighbor as yourself. And we said OK.

Then Dr. Benjamin Spock said we shouldn’t spank our children when they misbehave because their little personalities would be warped and we might damage their self-esteem (Dr. Spock’s son committed suicide). We said an expert should know what he’s talking about and we said OK.  Now we’re asking ourselves why our children have no conscience, why they don’t know right from wrong, and why it doesn’t bother them to kill strangers, their classmates, and themselves.

Probably, if we think about it long and hard enough, we can figure it out. I think it has a great deal to do with “WE REAP WHAT WE SOW.” Funny how simple it is for people to trash God and then wonder why the world’s going to hell.  Funny how we believe what the newspapers say, but question what the Bible says.  Funny how you can send ‘jokes’ through e-mail and they spread like wildfire but when you start sending messages regarding the Lord, people think twice about sharing.  Funny how lewd, crude, vulgar and obscene articles pass freely through cyberspace, but public discussion of God is suppressed in the school and workplace.

Are you laughing?
Funny how we can be more worried about what other people think of us than what God thinks of us.  You may point your friends to this message or highlight it, cut and paste it to your site or e-mail.

http://valleywag.com/5018410/murdoch-calls-facebook-a-flavor-of-the-month-as-myspace-falls-to-second-place-in-traffic

One of the things that I just love about Facebook is the ability to update my status via Twitter. I also like the ability to combine Facebook, Twitter, Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Google Reader, among others into my Friendfeed. I can even read my friendfeed via Facebook. As most of you know, I love gadgets and I sign up for all of them to see their worth. It seems like on the short term at least, that Facebook, Friendfeed, and Twitter are going to stay for a while.

I really do wish Facebook would add T-Mobile access with SMS capability. That would make this arangement perfect since I have to access via my phone when I am at work. My work blocks access to all social networking sites, web based emails so I have to use my cell phone to access these sites. If I had the ability to update using SMS, then it becomes much easier. The mobile browser is a bit clunky and not very user friendly. I did sign the petition to get T-Mobile added to Facebook but so far no luck. I have been a T-Mobile customer since 2000 when it was Voicestream so I really hate to give them up.

Anyway, it is good to see that Facebook traffic has surpassed MySpace.