Too busy to post?

Yeah, the big move, the new job, the househunting... And a new blog, of course. All have taking up a lot of my time - and taken me away from being able to post here.

And I have great new stories to tell you, too: hotel electronic key cards, my wife's GPS navigation system, my hand-held GPS, my new work technology.... But I'm going to have to put this blog on hold for now until things settle down I think. Same goes with my website, which needs updating in a serious way since the job and residency changes....

Could this be the way it begins? I get to "busy" to do about this stuff? Now, in ten years, will I realize I've been too busy for so long that I'm out of the loop? Maybe I've reached my adult-life tipping point...

Tracking visitors and blog hits: Feedburner and Google Analytics

With nearly 50 posts on my blog, I got to wondering if anyone was actually looking at it. Not that that is the point - the point is simply to get into the practice of using Web 2.0 applications and, like the subtitle says, "keep up with new technology and the evolving web." But still, it'd be interesting to know, right? And, investigating how to do it is a learning experience in itself.

After a bit of searching around, I put my blog into Feedburner (another Google aquisition). While I was at it, I also added a bit of HTML code to my www.ericbolstridge.com pages so they can be tracked by Google Analytics. My GoDaddy hosting already supplies decent tracking and report stats, so I don't know how useful that will be, but I signed up for it anyway to see if it would provide any additional information.

Since registering with Feedburner, by the way, my Blog has one hit (and I think that was me).

Follow me on Twitter!

My sister turned me on to Twitter several months ago, but I found it to be pretty dumb and impossibly difficult to update. But just a week or so ago, my old buddy Mike Bush started using it. And then I read that it was possibly being hailed as "The next Facebook." Looks like sis was way ahead of the curve after all.

So, in keeping with the goal stated up there at the top of my Blog, I'm going to start updating my Twitter feed. I'm even delving (yes, delving) into the world of texting (you can update your Twitter feed via text messages). This is definitely a place I'm lacking, anyway, so I'm kinda getting into two things at once. I thought email from my phone was close to texting, but yesterday I read an article in the Washington Post Magazine about evolving technology that included a quote from a teen: "Yeah, I still use email if I'm trying to send a message to an old person, like my teacher or my Uncle." Ouch.

Texting is the way to do it, or, even more current, "broadcast texting" using something like Twitter. So, I suppose in some ways, I'm leaping over "regular" texting and getting right to the new thing.

I added the Twitter app to my Facebook page, too. Follow me on Twitter!

Arlington County is a YouTube Partner!

Well, it all seems kinda shady like a back room deal or something, but I got an email from tha Virginia State Government person today telling me that Arlington County's YouTube account had been upgraded to "Partner" status. I didn't even have do anything since my previous posting where I said I would apply - I guess she just emailed her contact at YouTube and got it done for me. That's great, but at the same time it seems weird that it works that way.

So, now I'm working to design the banner and logos and such that I can add to our page - there's a new section on the Account Management page for "Branding Options." Hopefully I can get something thrown together and put up there soon. The other awesome benefit (in addition to that auto-play that started this whole thing, of course) of being a partner is an increase in the max upload. As a partner, I'm still limited to 1044 MB per video, but there isn't a time restriction.

Using Labels in Blogger

I just realized that all of my tags (or labels as Blogger calls them) weren't working. The labels are the "key words" that appear below each post, which will basically help you, the reader, browse my posts by subject. Anyway, I was just typing them in when I would post - but apparently they need to be separated by a comma.... Ugh, so now I need to go back through all my posts to fix them. Seems stupid that it wouldn't be smart enough to separate them by itself or at least prompt the user a little better as to the preferred format.

More Skype

So I've installed Skype on my PC here at work and it's working like a charm. Trouble is, I can't run my webcam on ericbolstridge.com at the same time as I'm doing video chat with Skype. You'd think that software would be smart enough to split the signal or whatever. So, I think this will create a problem of some sort, since I will be using the webcam more for Skype now and the website won't have a feed. I think I might change the "webcam" page of ericbolstridge.com to a simple invitation for folks to call me on Skype... but that's not really the same as the anonymous looking that a webcam allows...

Anyway, Skype works great, and I even got a microphone working, too. So now I can video chat with my friend down the hall (who is in reality so close I could simply shout, but that's not the point!).

My wife also downloaded Skype and installed it on our home PC. Her webcam is working, too, so now we can see each other with a much much better frame rate then we could using Yahoo! Messenger. I need to get a microphone hooked up at home, still, though. It's a little cumbersome to use, but overall, I say "Yay, Skype!"

Camperino.com goes online

Most of my friends and family like to camp, and back when I was in college I had a Geocities website called "The Camperino Website." I would post stories about camping trips that me and my pals would take and I used the site to semi-coordinate trips with people. Many new friends were made and many adventures were had. But that was
literally 10 years ago.

So, I was talking to one of my best buds about bringing the Camperino website back into existence. Maybe branching off my ericbolstridge.com page. Well, he would have none of that! (this friend does website junk for a living, btw) So, he reached out and grabbed his laptop off the kitchen counter and with a few deft strokes on his keyboard and a mouse click or two, Camperino.com was born!

I think we'll set it up much like the old Camperino website, with blog-type entries, trip announcements, etc. Maybe we'll let anyone post trips and invite folks to come along. Should be fun. I think we'll definitely have it up and running for the 2008 camping season. Yay, internets!

LinkedIn

Yup, I just got a LinkedIn account, too. So now I'm on there. Seems like a lot of stupid social networking crap to me, but what they heck, isn't that the point of this blog? I'm getting too bitter about technology and what folks are doing that I think it's crap? Yeesh, and on top of that, I'm using the word "folks."

Google Reader

After asking around, I realized that I didn't necessarily need to download something new to start enjoying the splendor of RSS feeds - Google has it built in to their suite of apps. So, I signed up for Google Reader, added a handful of RSS feeds from my favorite sites, and I'm rollin'.

I read a comic strip, check bargains, get a couple blog feeds, and even have Snopes.com sending me their feed. Not bad. I'm a fan of the RSS, but it doesn't work well if the site owner doesn't have their feed set up nicely. Like for Snopes, you get the headline of the story and the content, but no photos or handy "genre" icon. But for everything else, I'm no longer going to the original sites at all, just checking the content on my Google Reader. Wow, I'm so mod-er-in.

Why I have a blog

I was in a meeting yesterday and we went off on a tangent about online networking and one of the older folks in the group was all confused and said "what's Friendster?" No big deal, right? Well, after some friendly quizzing, we found out that they were completely bewildered at the very concept of most of the web 2.0 sites. Myself, as well as a couple of other people in the room under the age of 30, tried hard to not be condescending in our explanation of things. As the conversation continued, some of the middle-aged guys in the room remained suspiciously quiet and a couple working moms chimed with comments like "yeah, my 14 year old daughter is on her MySpace all the time! I have no idea what that's all about" and "is it like AOL?"

Is this me in ten years? I think it could be. I'm paying attention to the new stuff, but I'm not quite participating. Whatever it is, it's time to play catch up to make sure that I don't start down that slippery slope to being totally out of touch. Time to take an inventory of things. I'm not too far behind on the curve - I've kept up pretty well: I have a Blackberry, I own a Yahoo! group, I use PayPal, I dropped my Hotmail account for Gmail account back when it was tough to get Gmail account. But this is stuff that's been around for years. Heck, I've been on eBay since 1998.

I need to get on board with the new stuff. I need to jump on this web 2.0 stuff. I don't understand iTunes. I need to buy my domain name, create a MySpace page, get some videos on YouTube, and of course, start a blog.

I don't want to be clueless in 10 years - my kid is going to be zapping pirated media back and forth to his friends and the new guys at work will be laughing at my inability to use the new websites or files or gadgets... I'm not sure if it's a scared of being old thing or a scared of being clueless thing. Maybe the older you get the harder it is to understand this stuff. I guess I'm about to find out.