“Twitter!”

This post was though meant to be a joke, actually made it on Techmeme, along with about every other tech hobbyist’s site including mine.  I wasn’t sure exactly what it was about until I read his Twitter page.  I would not have posted about it myself except that I love Twitter.  This Memorial Day weekend was a perfect example of how wonderful Twitter is.  We went to Lake Eufaula this weekend to visit with my father in-law.  Although I did have a great time, I was missing my connected life with the Internet.  Even on the third floor of his house, I could not receive any wifi at all.  I felt like a smoker trying to survive the first day of no smoking.  At least I could send and receive Twitter messages through SMS on my cell phone.  Even at the water I could stay in touch with those friends that I have online.  Call me an Internet Junkie but this started way before the Internet.  As a ham radio operator of 25 years, I have been accustomed to communicating to remote places.  Now that the Internet has so many communication tools, it fits right in with me.

As always, you can follow me and my happenings by following my Twitter page.  These tools are becoming so widespread that more and more aggregate readers are coming along.  The newest one that seems to be the rage is Friendfeed.  With this new toy, it creates a news feed with all your Twitter, Pownce, Facebook, Youtube, Flicker, Tumblr, among others.  It is pretty nice as you can see my Friendfeed page here.  With Friendfeed, you can keep in touch with all the social actions a person makes on the Internet.  It seems to be pretty cool.  My favorite is still Twitter because of the SMS (text messaging) capability and it automatically updates my Facebook status.  I like that I can get messages through Skype, Flock, Google Talk (ughh).  If you get tired of all my new toys, you can just follow me on my Friendfeed page because it shows them all.  I guess I have sold out for these new toys and love to be able to communicate while mobile.  I just wish I could settle on just one.

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Tags: socialnetworking, Twitter, Pownce, Flickr, Friendfeed, Tumblr, Skype, Flock, Google Talk, Facebook, SMS

Now as I type this, it is thundering outside and I love it.  As most of you know, I just love weather and particular severe weather.  Do not get me wrong, I do not want anyone hurt, or have their property damaged but I have always been fascinated with severe storms.  This year may be an active  year.  I turned on the television to the weather channel last night and they said that in January there had been 75 tornadoes in the United States and February has had 90 of them.  So far, we in Oklahoma have not had any yet but the fact that we have had a very bad ice storm with lightning and thunder, and now we are having another one, it looks as though it may be active.  I have several friends that likely will not want to hear this information as they have been victims of tornadoes in the past.  As many of you know here in Oklahoma City we have had many large tornadoes including a massive one in 1999 that destroyed thousands of homes.  Lets hope we do not have anything like that.

I am typing this message using the Flock browser and really enjoying all the cool features.  If you are into social networks, you will love this program.  It has a built in blogging program, as well as a Facebook interface.  It also has direct connection to Flickr, YouTube, and Twitter.  We cannot forget Twitter.  I must admit that I am addicted to Twitter.  It is so fun to use by text messaging on my cell phone.  I am amazed how hard it is to get people here in Oklahoma to try it while the rest of the world uses it daily.  I like the way Twitter automatically updates my Facebook status when ever I send a “Tweet”, or message using my cell phone.  I like being able to just read the messages when I am at work on my cell phone.  Okay, I will shut up and let it go.

Those of you that are ham radio operators that follow our Del City Amateur Radio page may be asking what happened to it and the repeaters.  Last Monday, February 5th, I got tired of listening to the hum coming out of the 443.3 repeater as the WIN System would transmit.  I turned it off and then my dad turned off the 145.25 repeater the following day.  I asked him if he would mind if I turned them off for good.  I am tired of the repeaters and we have had a good run.  He understood and said he does not mind.  He does want to hold off on getting rid of the repeaters out right and giving up the coordination.  I wanted to turn them off for good but he is not completely convinced yet.  One thing is for sure, the IRLP is gone for good.  In fact, I have already formatted the 8440 node that was the WIN System. I think that we have had a good run for six years but my dad has put literally thousands of dollars into it when he has not even been able to use the repeaters.  I am not saying the Del City Amateur Radio Club is gone but definitely on hold and possibly gone.  In my opinion it has outlived its time.  I plan on using that node 8440 computer as a media center computer for our music, and picture source for the XBox 360.  I did take the web site down.

I have noticed quite a while back that Oklahoma City’s ham radio culture is vehemently opposed to Internet linking.  I have found that every six months or so, you get a new group of new ham radio operators that come along and think it is really cool for short time, then they meet other hams that are opposed to it, and they dwindle away.  To be quite honest, I do not enjoy it that much myself.    I like to listen more than talk on it.  With my busy life with school, work, and family, I do not have time to be maintaining repeaters that I do not even use.  I think that a huge debt of gratitude is owed to my dad for all he has contributed to this experiment.  My dad, W5QO has forgotten more about electronics and radio than I will ever know.  It may have been my idea to try IRLP, but my dad is the one that financially and technically kept this system going for six years.  He is the true backbone and the trustee of our club.  I also owe a lot to my cousin, Larry, KD5MAF has also contributed a lot in terms of technical support and financial aid.  Again, the repeaters are not gauranteed to be gone forever, that will depend on my dad.

I think that just about covers the events of the day.  I will post more as it comes available.  I am really enjoying the thunderstorm moving through.

Paul, K5GLH

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Tags: Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Flickr, Flock, ham radio, Del City Amateur Radio Club, IRLP, WIN System, XBox 360, thunderstorm, ice storm, leaky roof, K5GLH, W5QO, KD5MAF

Flock has some social networking tools that are pretty amazing at least to me they are. One of the features is blogging. With Flock all you have to do is put the URL of your blog in the block and it will automatically detect the platform your blog is using. Once it determines the type of blog it is, it will prompt you for your user name and password. From that point on, all you have to do if you want to post to a blog of your choice is to click “Tools” then Blog. It will pop up a window for you to type your blog post in. Just give it a title and type your post. Click Publish and you are done. One more thing is that when you publish, the Flock poster will give you an opportunity to add all the Technorati tags you want.

Another fine feature of Flock is the ability to drag and drop photos into your browser to be uploaded into Flickr, a popular photo sharing site. This makes adding photos a breeze and I really love this. I am hoping that support for Zooomr comes soon. Zooomr is another popular photo sharing site.

Since the Flock browser is built on the Firefox engine, it has all the features that Firefox has built right in. The browser also has a cool feature to help you share your photos on popular blogging sites such as MySpace, Blogger, WordPress and others. You can drag and drop your photos and then type your comments into the text block and then click submit. It is that easy. You don’t have to understand HTML or any code. This browser is a social blogger’s dream. You really shoud try this out now. If you blog or would like to blog and have no idea where to start, this is the browser for you.

I cannot say enough good things about Flock so go get it now!

Technorati tags: Flock, browser, Flickr, Zooomr, MySpace, Blogger, WordPress, Firefox, social browser