I am broken!

So, I broke down and finally did it. I am totally embarrassed by it but I now have a Twitter account. My user name is courtneybis in the event you want to follow me. I have already blocked a few people that tried following me. Of course, on the news this morning was a big story about the Twitter accounts of several celebrities being hacked into. Seriously! Is it an omen?

One thing that I absolutely have to share is my absolute favorite "Thing" of the "Things" I have completed thus far. I am LOVING Google Reader. I love getting blog updates, gossip, and news all in one spot. It is my favorite of all the "Things" we have learned about!

Thing 12 Twitter

AHHHHHHHH! It is taking over. I hear about Twitter, tweets, and tweeting everywhere. It has been something that I have avoided participating in (see Facebook Thing 8 and 9) but have always wondered about.

People that know me would be shocked to know what a huge Howard Stern fan that I am. He has been talking about Twitter a lot lately (like everyone else in the world). I know that he is having his staff tweet during the show to provide details to non-subscribers about what is happening during the show.

Although I am intrigued by the whole idea of it--I am going to impose limits on myself. There is only so much networking and updating I can do while keeping my sanity. I already blame facebook for making me have to have my eyes touched up (LASIK). I don't think they can handle additional computer time. :)

Thing 11 IM

I am not a huge fan of the whole IM thing. Honestly, I don't like people knowing when I am online because I feel bad for ignoring their IM requests. It is easy to ingore phone calls but there is something rude about ignoring an IM. They KNOW that you are there!

I loved the webopedia site. I always have questions about what the heck people are texting, emailing, and IMing.

I will likely remove this download as soon as North Texas 23 is over and am not posting my Username because of privacy issues. My true email has both first/last names so my Talk account has the same.

Ning Thing 10

I did not set up a Ning account due to the controversy associated with it. Plus, I am a loyal Facebook person (see Thing 8 and 9). How many social networking sites can one person keep up with? I know that it is good to have options but I don't want to have to work that hard to keep up with everyone! It is too much to seek some people here and others there. It is like looking people up in a phonebook (remember when you used to use the paper ones?). We have two different versions at my house. One, the companies obviously paid to have their numbers entered, so you could only find particular businesses in there. The other is a collection of all the local businesses. Guess which one I want to use!!

Bottom line: Ning is not for me. Not because of the problems. Call me a loyalist.

Facebook Continued Thing 9

I have 60+ friends on facebook. It is quite sad how much value I put into collecting more friends! :)

I am a member of the ALA group, the UNT SLIS student group, You Can't Scare Me...I am a Mom to Twins group, and various groups that represent my hometown high school.

Facebook is so much fun. I have just figured out how to exclude "friends" from my updates. I have a hard time not becoming friends with someone that requests it but I don't want EVERYONE knowing EVERYTHING that I post about. I especially excluded people that I don't receive updates on. Maybe they had already excluded me? Or, they just don't update? I don't really know or care to ask because they are not real friends. They are just in my collection bag of facebook friends!

Facebook Thing 8

This is one tutorial I do NOT need! I am a facebook fanatic and try converting everyone that is still without facebook friends. I think it is a wonderful social networking opportunity. It is interesting how many people from my past (that I really never thought I would interact with again) I speak to on a regular basis. It is all facebook! It would almost be awkward to see some of these people in the store because we are facebook friends not real face to face friends!

RSS Feeds Things 7

OMG! I have always wondered what those little RSS orange icons are. It is still a little confusing as to how it all works but like the blog says--you don't need to know the technical ins and outs. It is just important to understand how you can use them to save time on the internet. BTW: I love those little Common Craft videos!

Google Reader

How cool is this? I loved it because I forget to regularly check out the blogs that I want to follow. The only thing that kind of bothered me was that I was already subscribed to all of those same blogs through Google Reader! How? I am guessing it is because I have email through Gmail. I guess that there is some connection between the blogs that I had subscribed to on blogger and Gmail. I don't know exactly. But, I had 28 unread items when I logged on. I have seen the Reader link when I am on my email but never clicked it. I think that I will check it regularly now that I know what it is for! :)