Striking a Balance

When talking to my computer science-studying, game-loving buddy, Jeremy Pope, I wanted to pick his brain on what websites, apps, and tools that he can’t live without. I got a few cool new ideas from him, but what also came through loud and clear in our conversation is how important it is to set boundaries.

I liked Jeremy’s perspective “The point of technology is to enable us to spend more time doing the things we love. When it goes beyond that it becomes a distraction.”

Being that Jeremy works and studies computers and technology, he has made a conscious effort to set boundaries and pull back, for instance when away from work, he purposely only checks his email a few times per day. He also makes the most of his time on a computer, aiming to be productive for a finite amount of time versus getting lost in the vortex.

On mobile: I asked Jeremy to sell me on a smart phone, and he kind of did (although I don’t have any immediate plans of going out and buying one I definitely see the value). Simply stated, with the iPhone he doesn’t worry about anything because anything he needs to do, he can do on the spot. Jeremy gave me many convincing examples of the iPhone’s utility, especially when traveling, but also spoke about the need to develop self-restraint. (For a review of cool iPhone apps, check out the app trail). Jeremy’s response to my complaint of how people are constantly glued to their phones is that it is just a symptom of the relative newness and novelty of the device and will hopefully fade over time.

On what he can’t live without: Definitely not the iPhone! Jeremy also loves his Google Toolbar for accessing his bookmarks (I wish I tried this before my Delicious.com experiment, it may be more up my alley). He touted the benefits of using Mint.com for money management (I will investigate Mint in a future blog post since I could definitely use help in the budgeting department). He also gave me a little demo of Google Voice (Google’s free voicemail service which miraculously allows you to make free domestic calls, unifies multiple phone lines to one common number, and sends you sms text versions of voicemails among many other benefits) which seems pretty awesome.

On social networks and geo-location social networking: Jeremy relies on Facebook for news and events updates from his friends, which is consistent with how all of my friends engage with Facebook. LinkedIn is the go-to for professionally networking. Most people, including myself, like to keep their professional and personal online worlds separate.

Jeremy toyed around with the geo-location networking application, Foursquare, more so when he was single and out on the town. He enjoyed the fact that it is super real-time, fun, and game-like; “a great example of technology helping you do what you want to do, be with your friends.” Since I don’t have a smart phone I am off the hook for trying geo-location networking apps, phew.

Although Jeremy has briefly tweeted, he now just uses Twitter for finding out about local events through following groups such as “Brooklyn Weekend events”. I may give that a try at some point, but for now I don’t have any trouble finding weekend fun, mainly through word-of-mouth, New York Magazine, and e-newsletters like Daily Candy and Going.

What goes around comes around: Jeremy and I agree that there is a bit of a pullback happening now. People want to get back to what’s real and authentic and are attempting to reconnect to local businesses and agriculture, seeking out the local, fresh, and handmade, to counterbalance the global disconnect from the organic in our fast-paced, technology-driven lives (Brooklyn Flea, anyone?).

“In a way I’m a minor part of this pullback from the digital age where I’ve been so engrossed I’m stepping back now” says Jeremy. For me, I am cautiously exploring, stepping forward, one toe in at a time to see what’s worth my while.

Social Bookmarking: Can You Digg it?

Recently, I started to hear more about social bookmarking sites, however I didn't understand what these sites are, how they work, or why I would want to use one. Wikipedia defines social bookmarking as "a method for Internet users to share, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web resources." According to Wikipedia, the concept of online bookmarking has been around since the mid-nineties, but it didn't really catch on at the time. In 2003, Delicious pioneered tagging and coined the term social bookmarking and it has been taking off like wildfire ever since.

Today, there are dozens of popular bookmarking sites and apparently many great uses for them.

How many of these icons do you recognize?

Use #1 - Marketing: When you submit your business, website, or blog onto a social benchmarking site, you increase the likelihood that search engines will find and index your site. Using bookmarking services is a great strategy for generating traffic and in some instances can work too well and crash your server.

Worth your while? Why not, what do you have to lose?! Social benchmarking sites are free, and fairly easy to use. The downside is that there are so many of them to choose from, and to my knowledge there is not a standard process for submission. You've got to do it the old fashioned way, one at a time.

I'm experimenting with posting my blog on a few directory sites (Yahoo, Bing, and Google blog listings, Blogpulse, Bloglines, and Technorati) to see what will happen. Maybe someone other than my mom, boyfriend, and professors may read it.

Use #2 - Being Social: I have never felt the urge to click a little icon to announce to the world what I've read and whether I dug it (Digg anyone?). I understand that some people enjoy this; we need these people, otherwise these sites wouldn't be worth visiting. Bookmarking and ratings inform us of what is newsworthy at the moment, according to the masses vs. "the man," hence social media. Verdict: Worthwhile for others to post. I will stick to being an occasional voyeur for now.

Use #3 - Organizing yourself: I have been using Internet Explorer for years (and am mildly embarrassed about it). I know there is something better or faster out there, perhaps Chrome or Firefox, so have recently been testing out different browsers. The jury's still out on which I prefer.

One of the reasons I've been reluctant to switch browsers is because I heavily rely on my bookmarks and didn't want to start from scratch with a new browser. I didn't know that I can use a social bookmarking site solely for personal organization. Storing my favorite links online will get me through this fickle phase and will mitigate the multiple computer issue (like Dropbox did for my school files).

Taking action: I just signed up for Delicious and imported all my bookmarks from Internet Explorer to start. This transition will take a fair amount of time up front to get organized, and of course time to get used to the change, but hopefully will be worth it.

I chose Delicious because it was one of of the original bookmarking sites and is still one of the most popular. Delicious is tied to my Yahoo account so it was easy to set up, and it seemed more geared towards personal use than some of the other that I checked out, like Digg and Stumbled Upon.

I am the type of person that doesn't like too many choices; more than three and I am overwhelmed. Just like the web browsers, I am sure there may be better ones out there than Internet Explorer, but it takes a fair amount of time and energy to test drive them all. Delicious will have to do. At least the name sounds kind of cool and sexy.