Tag Archives: Digital Life

Living in the cloud

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I’m no longer on the company computer network. My iMac is one of only a half dozen or so Macs in the building and I made very little use of the network anyway. And it’s something of an experiment.

I had one of the first personal computers in our company. I bought a Zenith back in the late 80’s and used it for word processing and for tracking affiliate stuff. It was connected to no thing and nobody (except my little dot matrix printer)

The first “network” in the company –as far as I can recall– was a peer-to-peer lash-up in the Missourinet newsroom. No network server, just individual PC’s (Compaq’s with 20 MEG hard-drives) talking to each other.

I don’t remember the exact evolution after that but before long the building was networked and as we added offices throughout the country, they came online. And we now have two full-time network administrators and the network has become critical to the operation of our company.

So why did I cut the cord?

As one of the “web guys,” most of my work has been taking place “in the cloud” for some time. I access company email from a web browser and can do just about everything I need to do, without being on the company grid.

Plus, anytime there was a software upgrade, I had to ask someone with admin privileges to do it for me. Sort of like having your mom come unzip your pants so you could pee. Unpleasant for everyone.

When coworkers need to send me a file that is too large to attach to an email, they drop it on one of the network drives I can no longer access from my iMac. I’m working around that and will eventually get them to put it up on my iDisk, Dropbox or drip.io. Which works in the other direction, too.

For me the Net has become the network. Lots of storage, nearly ubiquitous access, great tools. I feel like a dog that chewed through his leash. Woof!

Attachments

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My pal Keith pinged me this morning to let me know there was a problem with this website. I raised the hood to discover that all content (posts, pages, media, etc) was gone. Eight years of posts. About 5,000. I have a back-up from about 3 weeks ago, but still…

Not so long ago this would have sent me to DEFCON 5. But I’ve been reading about ego and how we become attached to and identify with things and ideas, and I found I was eerily calm. What if all my clever posts and the rest vanished forever?

I spent a few minutes considering this and realized they were/are nothing more than footnotes on a past that no longer exists (except in my head). What’s happening this moment is more important (and real).

What have we learned, grasshopper? That we are not our thoughts, OR our blog posts.

Facebook. One more time.

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Yesterday I created a Facebook account. This is the third, possibly the fourth, time I have attempted Facebook. I say “attempted” because I have never quite “gotten” Facebook. I think I understand social networks as well as the next person but this platform has just never been a good fit for me. So why give it another shot?

A couple of reasons. One, I’d like to better understand why FB is home to half a billion people around the world. Two, social networking has become a bigger part of my job and I can’t properly support clients without a feel for Facebook.

Connecting and communicating with people you know seems to be at the core of Facebook. I send you a “Friend Request” and, if you accept it, I can see some for all of what you’re doing on Facebook, depending on how you have your privacy settings configured. If you don’t accept, I’m blocked.

I’ve had lots of conversations with Facebook users in an effort to understand it (without actually using it). A common theme goes something like this:

Jane is miffed that Bill refused to accept (or ignored?) her friend request. He doesn’t want her to be part of his online life and she’s not happy about it. She thought they were, well, friends.

In the next breath, Jane is explaining why she is getting creeped out by the co-worker who keeps sending her friend requests. The irony is completely lost on Jane.

Some Facebook users deal with this by just accepting all friend requests and ignoring the stuff from the not-really-friends. Others just ignore the requests.

I don’t plan on spending any more time on Facebook than is necessary to understand how it works. I’ll auto post from my blog, YouTube, Twitter and all the rest. So, there will be no shortage of stuff on my “wall,” but it all originates from somewhere else where anyone can see what I’m up to. But that’s clearly less convenient that seeing all within the Facebook compound.

How will I handle “friend” requests (assuming I get any)? I’ll probably ignore them unless we already have an online connection (and I probably won’t give you a kidney, either).

So I’m headed off to Facebook with the same enthusiasm as for my first boy-girl dance party mom made me attend (on Bill Wicker’s patio). I didn’t dance there either.

ShowMeGaming.com (3 years later)

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Three years ago I helped my friend LeAnn McCarthy set up a blog to help with her communications efforts as Public Information Officer for the Missouri Gaming Commission.

Last week I sat down with LeAnn to see how the blog was working out. She talked about her target audience(s); content; response (internal and external) and other social media tools.

AUDIO: 10 min MP3