Year: 2012

Social networking reshuffled

OK, now that I’m almost sure that new setup for social networking works, I can give you guys an idea of what I had and how I changed it.  In case you’ll notice any differences between this description and the actual behavior, or if you have any suggestions on how to improve things, please let me know.  Without any further ado …

In my previous setup, I used Twitter as my social glue.  Everything was synchronized with Twitter – my Google Reader, Evernote, delicious, a few RSS feeds, Foursquare, Flickr, YouTube, etc.  Periodically (once a day until recently, now weekly), my tweets were automatically aggregated into a blog post using Twitter Tools plugin for WordPress.  This allowed me to make sure that I had a record of my online activity synced back into my own blog, something that I own, cherish, and backup.

That setup had a serious drawback.  Not everyone is on Twitter.  A lot of people are using Facebook these days.  And while in my previous setup there was an automatic push of tweets to Facebook, it wasn’t ideal.  Tweets are more limited than Facebook posts – in length, previews, and formatting.  Which means that even though something was synced to Facebook, I wasn’t taking a full advantage of Facebook.

From now on I have a different setup.  I’ll still use Twitter as my social glue, but I won’t be limiting myself to only Twitter.  I will push content independently to Facebook and other social networks when appropriate.  I will try to keep Twitter in sync by posting directly to several social networks simultaneously.  My tweets will still be aggregated at my blog on a weekly basis.  But there won’t be any automatic synchronization between Twitter and Facebook anymore.  The con of this setup is that not all content will get pushed everywhere. But it is, I think, fairly compensated by a pro of having tailored content and format for each social network.

Either way, nothing is set in stone yet. And even if it was – things move and change way too often, and I’m just trying to keep it real.  Let me know if notice any issues with these changes, and, especially if you know how to make things better.

P.S.: Yes, if Twitter and Facebook had better integration in terms of links, photos, videos, and locations, none of these would have happened.  “Blame Canada!” (c) South Park.

Trying out Social 2.5

A few days ago, Alex King announced the release of the new version of Social plugin for WordPress.  It’s one of those that can broadcast your blog posts to Twitter and Facebook.  But not only that.  It can also synchronize Twitter re-tweets and replies and Facebook shares and comments back into your blog, as comments.  Now that sounds pretty interesting.

I’ve installed the plugin and connected it to both Twitter and Facebook easily – no need to create your own apps or anything like that.  But given that I already have some sort of synchronization between Twitter and Facebook, I wonder how weird things will go.

This is a test post.

Update #1: Social plugin seems to work really well.

Update #2: Disabling broadcasting to Twitter from Twitter Tools plugin should decrease the amount of dups posted.

Updated #3: It is still not obvious how to keep the synchronization between Twitter and Facebook while avoiding dups.

Weekly digest – 2012-05-27

Живые и мёртвые

Перечитываю “Живые и мётрвые” Симонова. Конечно же я читал это произведение в детстве и, возможно, во время школьной программы.  Но тогда я очевидно не был к нему готов, ибо не запомнилось оно мне ни чем.  Помню, что читал, и помню, что про войну.  А вот в последнее время проснулся у меня некоторый интерес к истории, и особенно к Великой Отечественной войне.  И по этой теме, “Живые и мёртвые” – совершенно замечательное произведение.  Форматом даже немножко нынешние блоги напоминает.  Только происходит там такое, что мало какому блогеру и в кошмарном сне приснится. Однако также, как и блог, даёт неплохое представление о том, чем жили люди, как думали, и за что боролись.   И как и во все времена – были и тогда сволочи и трусы, но были и Люди.

Он поднял докторшу на руки вместе с плащ-палаткой и, не став пристраивать за спиной, понес, как ребенка.
— Может, я еще в дом зайду, разведаю? — остерег Золотарев.
Но Синцов уперся:
— Раз немцев нет, пойдем прямо. Мы люди или не люди?!
Ему вдруг показалось унизительным идти в какую-то еще разведку у себя, на собственной земле, в дом, куда раньше, до войны, он и любой другой человек, не колеблясь, в любую минуту внес бы на руках больную женщину.
— Не верю, чтоб там сволочи были, — сказал он. — А коли сволочи, на сволочей у нас винтовка есть.

Flickchart – your own Top 20 Movies of all times

Flickchart is yet another one of those sites that is supposed to help you choose the next movie to watch, as well as share with your friends the list of movies that you’ve enjoyed.  The interface is somewhat simple and straightforward, even though the functionality is plenty.

Basically, you are presented with the two movies next to each other and you have to click on the one you think is better.  If you haven’t seen either one of the given movies, you can skip it for the next.  Flickchart computes your voting into a Top 20 Movies of all times list, as well as a bunch of other sub-lists – by genre, by decade, etc.

Overall, that’s a much needed site with some really cool features.  There is only one problem with it.  It doesn’t work.  I mean, it doesn’t work as I expected it to.  It keeps throwing unknown weird films that I’ve never heard of at me.  It keeps giving me movies for voting which I clearly marked as I haven’t seen.  And the resulting Top 20 Of All Time list is weird at best.  Some of the movies which I want there – are there, yet not at the places I’d put them manually at.  The other movies seem to not make it there at all.

There is a “By Title” voting mechanism which one could use to move things around, but that is not very useful at this stage either.  For example, I had “Avatar” at position #2.  I thought, even though it’s a nice movie, #2 is a bit too high for it.  So I took the “By Title” tour and in just a five or six clicks “Avatar” ended at #46.  Seriously, WTF is going on?

As much as I’d love to use this site, I think it’s still too early.  I need to give it some time to mature.  But I’ll definitely be back to check out later.  Have you tried it yet?