What do you think: is social media a fad? Many have questioned this for years now.. To answer your thoughts this video might give you a little more insight to how big social media has REALLY become, it sure did for me.
Twitter went down last week on the 8th and is down again for an hour, both were planned. That leaves me wondering what else to do when the fail whale comes up or when Twitter plans scheduled maintenance. Here’s my compiled list of 25 alternative things to do when this happens:
1) Write a blog post about Twitter being down (Ehem, haha)
2) Get on Friendfeed and talk about Twitter being down
3) Get on Facebook and talk about Twitter being down
4) Get on Myspace and talk about Twitter being down (Does anyone use MySpace regularly anymore?)
5) See who else is complaining about Twitter being down
6) Try to remember life before Twitter
7) Read some blog posts from your favorite blogs
8 ) Comment on favorite blog posts
9) Check out new iPhone Apps, like Finger Sprint
10) Rediscover some music in your iTunes library
11) Start watching the TV show that’s in the background
12) Watch a movie that you haven’t seen in forever
13) Find a new game to play online, like Letterbox
14) Upload photos that you’ve forgotten about
15) Check out the explored photos of the day on Flickr
16) Put the computer down and go take some photos
17) Check out Likaholix
18) Get on YouTube and watch videos about Twitter
19) Work on some actual work
20) Visit whentwitterisdown.com to get more ideas
The spoof of Twitter, Flutter, introduces nanoblogging, which takes down the 140 character limit of Twitter down to 26 characters. I mean seriously, who needs vowels?
I signed up to Likaholix yesterday after reading a few tweets about it. This new social network definitely has some potential and is a bit addicting.
So what is this Likaholix that you speak of? Likaholix allows you to share, discuss and discover your likes with people. Essentially, you find things that you enjoy and add them to your profile. The site will ask you to enter the name of an item in the ‘Like Something’ box and then give you options to choose from, or you can add a link to the thing that you like. Then you will be able to add a comment about something particular you like about whatever that thing may be. If other users like the identical thing that I do, they may say that they also like it. This is where you can find people who like the same things and can meet new friends through Likaholix.
Note: There is no hating going on around the site, only positive feedback. Of course you can view a friends profile and always make fun of them if they like something you don’t agree with.
UPDATE: The site is still currently in limited private beta, but I now have a permanent invite code which means all of you readers can now join the site through me using the code. All you have to do is click here to sign up.
[See them side by side]
The next generation of Wordpress has been released, Wordpress 2.7. In case you’re wondering it is named Coltrane after John Willam Coltrane, who is a favorite jazz Saxophonist of Matt Mullenweg. It has been confirmed that it is very stable by being well tested this past week on WordPress.com.
The first thing I noticed was how much the interface has changed and that it customizable by the drag and drop feature. I love being able to customize the more important and my most used items, because it’s different for each user. This feature can be found on each screen, including the post page. In the top rigt corner there is even a screen option pull down where you can select what shows up and what doesn’t. Everything is straight in plain sight now instead of being clicks away, perfect! I can’t wait to use the reply to comments from your dashboard feature! So many new features and neat things, check out the video below for a visual introduction of Coltrane
[Video from official announcement]
The video ”The Matrix Runs on Windows” is from CollegeHumor. This gave me quite the giggle, you’ve gotta love Windows XP and that little paper clip. Well not really, I don’t miss it. =P
After using Hotmail for a couple years when I was younger I discovered Gmail and have been a fan ever since. Today Gmail released integrated themes which makes me a little happy that I won’t be looking at the same bland color scheme anymore. Take a look at the options (Credit: Official Gmail Blog):
I’ve got my eye on the notepad or beachy looking theme. Unfortunately the Themes tab is still not showing up under my settings, but hopefully soon. On the Official Gmail Blog it has been stated, ”To customize your inbox, go to the Themes tab under Settings. We’ll be rolling out themes to everyone over the next couple of days, so if you don’t see them yet, check back soon. As for which theme to choose, don’t ask us. We’re neutral ;)“.
Ah-ha! The Google Mobile iPhone App with search-by-voice is available via the iTunes store now. I downloaded it last night and began playing around with it. I can definitely see it coming handy while being in the car trying to find restaurants in the area or looking up something I can’t figure out.
When I opened the App I was greeted by this boy, I’m assuming he’s hungry for a cheeseburger:
Then I hit the “Voice Search” button and got the “Speak now” screen:
After that it tells you that the App is working and then pops up with the search results. It’s really as easy as they have made it out to be.
Cathryn Gray is a new media chic with many passions and interests, including photography, modeling, blogging, social media, design, gadgets
(especially those Apple ones), traveling and more.
