Liz315 » web

Web 2.0, Help My Family

Liz — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 01:20:09 +0000

So, today I started a Google Doc and shared it with some people. This may seem like a normal thing these days – but I realized that this is pretty significant. This particular document was about my family history and I shared it with some family members. I am trying to get as much of my family history as possible captured before it is lost. Conversations aren’t enough. I need to have my relatives review my notes and add their parts. This is an effort that I hope will result in a more complete story of my family. And it will be available to all of us.

I know storytelling is the old-fashioned way – but what do people do now? Are we still mainly relying on storytelling? If so, that seems a bit out-dated. Sure, telephones, email – they help facilitate communication. But shouldn’t we have a better technique by now?

I think social networking sites geared towards families are a great idea and I do hope that they catch on. However, my experience is that the family members that have the expiring information are probably the last ones who will use these sites. It seems to me that we still have at least one generation before those tools are usefully popular.

Web 2.0 and Being One

Liz — Thu, 01 May 2008 01:49:00 +0000

So much of Web 2.0 is fundamentally different then how I remember the web initially. I remember clever screen names, self describing email addresses and having the freedom to represent yourself as whatever online personality you desired. And now, in the era of Web 2.0, we are just online extensions of our regular selves.

However, I like it. Maybe its my personality and my generation but I like that I am one- in that my online me and my real life me are the same. The idea that they blur is comforting…

Social Networking and Personal Websites

Liz — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 17:09:00 +0000

Lately, I have been on a bit of a mission to make my involvement in social networking more complete. (Anyone who actually reads my Blog at this point also notices an increase in recent activity here, too.) I am pretty excited to get all of these networks up to date, considering that I went for about a year being very passive in my involvement. However, the work is a bit overwhelming right now: updating my address book, following up on conversations via email, updating my LinkedIn contacts, adding friends on Facebook, thinking about getting in the habit of using Twitter, getting images up to Flickr, updating my RSS feeds to include new people/blogs and blogging- to name some of the things on my to do list for tonight. And this doesn’t even count the newer services that may be cool to try out and use.

In the midst of all this I still don’t know what to do with my regular old website (www.the315.com). It has had many purposes over the years but with all these other social networking sites and services, where does that leave my personal website? A lame repeat of information? A blog host? A page of links? Just 6 years ago it was getting good traffic as I showcased my design skills and logged my travels with updates and pictures the old-fashioned html way. But for the last 2 years it has been a homepage of links and space to host random things in the background.

I guess I need to dedicate some more effort to this issue. But I can’t imagine that I am the only one that struggles with this. (Has a startup solved this problem for me yet and I just missed the post on TechCrunch!?!)

Generational Digital Divides

Liz — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 15:11:00 +0000

So, being a new aunt I wonder what her generation will experience as far as technical acclimation as second generation of digital natives (I am guessing the namers will come up with something more distinctive). Her parents are somewhat tech savvy as digital immigrants. Although I am generationally considered a digital immigrant, because of education, circumstances and my generational closeness to the brink, I consider myself a digital native. So, as her aunt I hope I can influence her to be on the cutting edge of her generation. And help her parents cope. Maybe it is bridging that generational gap that will make me of more use as an aunt. I am sure she’ll naturally join the digital ranks.

And on a side note, they really should sell Girl Scout cookies online!