What's In A Name?

What's in a name?  Well for me, my name is becoming more and more important, as far as my online identity is concerned. This is because, as social networking starts to take up more of our time and more social networking websites appear, we are looking, as individuals, for consistency by ensuring we have the same online presence throughout.

 

A prime example of how important a name is can be easily found by just looking at Facebook this week. Facebook decided to bring in usernames, simply meaning people could find your profile by typing facebook.com/YOURUSERNAME, because it was a feature of other sites and they don't want to lose visitors, so if you can't beat them you join them (or should I say copy them). With just a few days notice of this happening, Facebook managed to attract 500,000 username registrations with in 15 minutes of going live, 345,000 of which were in the first 7 minutes, and by the time the first hour had passed 1,000,000 usernames had been registered and, at the time of writing this, there had been over 3,000,000 usernames registered. What was even more impressive was that the usernames went active at 5:01am BST on a Saturday morning (9:01pm PDT Friday night) and they still attracted that much traffic, which just demonstrates how important we do find our online identities regardless of if it is our actual name, nickname or online persona.

 

Our online identities has also been on the agenda of Twitter this week, with the planned introduction of Verified Accounts, which is simply a badge as it were on the top of the profile that confirms that the twitter page your looking at is that of the genuine person and not an imposter. What this means to the average user, like you and I, is not a lot at the moment (although possibly will be in the future) as it has initially been targeted towards it's more high profile users, namely celebrities, due to the number of people that have created fake celebrity profiles and are then trying to be pass themselves off as genuine, which could lead to all sorts of accusations being made. An example of this is BBC Radio 1 Breakfast DJ Chris Moyles, who has mentioned a few times during his highly rated show about the twitter imposter's who have even tried to fool some the people that work on the show, that there him, and this is where having 'Verified Account' on your profile would help.

 

If your not a celebrity and want to protect and secure your online identity you have to be registered first, even if you don't intend on using the service straight away. For example, there is a new site called Audioboo that is starting to grow in popularity, due to the Stephan Fry affect, that I registered with a month or so ago, even though I am unable to use the site properly (as you need an iPhone to upload), just so I could makesure I got the username I wanted, for when I either get an iPhone or for when the service is be available on other mobile phones.

 

Ultimately, 'What's In A Name?' is how you define it and, in terms of the Internet, how concerned you are about having consistency between the different site you use.

 

http://www.audioboo.fm

http://www.twitter.com

http://www.facebook.com

Gordonator Salvation

In the week of the local and European elections, you could be forgiven for thinking it is more like a parody of the new Terminator film, with Gordon playing the emotionless tinman doing what he can to survive and a whole cast of MP's playing the resistance, albeit they are more like the resistance from 'Allo 'Allo!, than that of the Terminator franchise, and with the John Connor role yet to be cast.
 
The current battle seems to stem from the fiasco of the MP's expenses, which personally I wasn't surprised to find had been abused to its full extent although I have been surprised by the sheer range of scope there is for the claims that have been made.  The apparent plan of the resistence, is to distract and move the glare of the media from themselves and their expense claims and have the focus clearly on the dark lord himself.  It's not a bad plan, claim the leader you have supported all this time is unfit for purpose and to show how strongly you feel about this by resigning from your post in the cabinet and hope that as a result you have shifted enough of the focus away from the expenses, including your own, and be able to slip into the background and be virtually forgotten by the time the general election arrives in less than a year's time.
 
The main problem with the a plan of this nature is that unless you have a John Connor character who can take on and replace the 'The Gordonator' then you will not get enough support from the rest of the bad bunch to complete the mission and as it currently stands the resistance are more likely employ Rene Artois to lead their fight.
 
So as I write this, which is just before the results of the European elections are announced, there are many questions that will be asked and no doubt answered over the course of the next week and it currently looks like 'The Gordonator' may just win this battle but probably won't win the war and with 'Blair's Babes' being the more prominent people to have jumped ship, as well as the Lieutenant Hubert Gruber of this story played by James Purnell, I wonder who will be providing the material for all the nation's top comics of the next few weeks.
 
It's just a shame that there is only one more episode of the current series of 'Have I Got News For You'.

The Great Social Convergence

Over the last few years, social networking has revolutionised how we communicate with our friends, family, and the outside world.  The revolution first started with websites like FriendsReunited, that for the first time gave users an easy way of getting back in contact with people they had lost touch with, but this was somewhat limited to just a basic profile page and if you wanted to actually get in contact with people you had pay a fee (or try and cleverly add an email or web address into the text of your profile without the administrators finding it).  The problem with paying for social networking is that the masses will look for a free alternative elsewhere and this was the next stage in the revolution, thanks to sites like MySpace and Facebook, with both sites offering fun and free ways to stay in touch, as well as a way to follow your favourite celebrities.

 

Now with the likes of Twitter and the fledgling Audioboo also being added to the mix, you could be forgiven for thinking they will need to ditch one or more of these sites as time constraints mean you can't keep all of your various profiles up to date.  But not to worry, because there is the next stage in the social revolution and it is coming from a convergence of the various social networking and blogging sites, which are making it possible for you to update your status and send pictures to the various sites just the once.  For example, in the last few months I have become a user of Twitter and find it a lot of fun, but as I was already an avid Facebook user, which meant trying to keep both sites with my status.  But thankfully I only need to do this once, because to quote Apple 'There's an App for that', which means anything I post to Twitter (excluding replies to other tweets) appears on Facebook as a normal status update, which is becoming more commonplace between most of the sites

 

A good example of 'The Great Social Convergence' comes from a site called Tumblr, which is a relatively unknown blogging website which lets you update direct with text/photos/audio/video but will also update your blog with RSS feeds, either directly from the link or by entering your username for the sites Tumblr has listed, which you can do for up to 5 different sites.  The end result is that you don't really have to update Tumblr direct at all, because it can just run the feeds from your other networks (so tweets from Twitter, video's from YouTube, your blog from Wordpress, photos from Flickr, the list goes on), which means that you have another complete online social presence which requires next to nothing to maintain, it also generates an RSS feed for your blog which also includes these other feeds.

 

So as we look to the future, I can certainly see social convergence being a bigger selling point for a social network, especially as more and more people are updating on the move from their portable devices.

 

After all, what could be easier than just clicking send once?

Merry Christmas!

I just want to wish everybody a very merry Christmas.

No don't stuff your faces to much!!!

Happy 50th Birthday Dad!!!

I just wanted to say happy birthday to my dad, who has turned the big 50 today!!!

I hope you enjoy being a fully paid up member of Saga!!!

Happy Birthday Bro!!!

Just wanted to say a Happy Birthday to my Brother Andrew, who has turned 27 today!!!

Gladiators Getting Better

After last weeks opening episode of Gladiators I wasn't sure if it was any good but I think the show is getting better after watching the second show, although I still think they should replace the commentator.

What made me laugh was that the winner of the men was complete rubbish and has yet made it through. I am looking forward to seeing how bad he will be in the quarter finals and hope he has to do the gauntlet because that should be funny to see.

Gladiators has certainly made it to my regular Sunday night viewing and with less than an hour before NCIS season 5 starts on FX, it should be a good night in front of the box.