Tracking where you’ve been through foursquare
A number of month’s ago, on a regular business trip to the west coast of Ireland, I stopped off at a random filling station somewhere between Dublin and Limerick. With the new carrageway opening up in stage’s every month or two it’s easy to get disoriantated on the journey and wonder just where in the midlands you are. Rather than do the ‘scouting thing’ and dig out the map from the boot of my car, I decided to just check in on foursquare which would geo-locate my exact location and publish it not only to the world but for me to glance at it again later on and see just where I had been. Another check in on the road back to Dublin the next day, secured me the mayorship and my place in Toomevara 4sq history.
Yesterday on a similar business trip, I stopped again at the same station and again checked into 4sq to see what had been ‘going on’ since my last visit, I had been outed as Mayor by my arch-nemesis Evert Bopp which is understandable as he lives near by but as I looked through the near by locations, my recent check in’s and where Evert had been checking into recently I began to think, wouldn’t it be great to see all these check in’s on a simple google map ? Perfect for any one who travel’s a lot like myself. (more…)
Hey teacher, leave us kids (Facebook profiles) alone
I am a part time volunteer youth worker and I have many friends who are teachers, there are two schools of thought on weather or not teachers and students can be friends on social media sites.
The first argument is that, Facebook and sites like it are a great way to connect with students out of school. Many teachers use blogs to do this but I have heard of a few recently who have been friending students to update them about classes, news stories and topics of interest. The issue comes when students or teachers start posting personal things on their sites, who they are going out with, what they are getting up, photo’s and the like. Things that could be taken in the wrong context and can personally damage the view of students or the professional life’s of teachers. (more…)
Facebook cans Facebook lite
No, its not a low calorie beer. Facebook lite ‘was’ the slimming down version of Facebook designed for people with low bandwidth and slow Internet connections. The stream you saw when you signed in was status updates, photos and not much else so no Mafia Wars, Farm Town and the various other apps that pollute many peoples Facebook stream.
It was in many respects the Facebook of 2006 before all the changes. It’s simple failure was that no one used it, no one used it because very little people knew about it, it wasn’t advertised, promoted or even really communicated to users. There was no ‘try Facebook Lite’ if your connection was slow or even mention of it on the home page therefor it was destined to fail. (more…)
When Politions try and fail …… to understand social media
Proof read anyone ?
Really, if you don’t get it just stay the hell away from it !
50p Broadband Tax, gone …….. but not forgotten !
I won’t get bogged down with talking about the digital economy bill or whatever other title’s that have been thrown about for what is effectively the EU Data Retention Directive re-packaged to suit the British Government. I can’t, as an ISP, I’m too close to it and the outcome of whatever does eventually pass through law effects not only my company but my clients and end users as well. When the time is right however, you will hear my thoughts !
What I can talk about though is this 50p line rental tax. What Labour proposes is that a tax of 50p per month per line is strapped onto every phone line in the UK, the money it says will fuel a new super fast broadband product available to all, well not quite superfast….. What we are actually talking about here is 2meg minimum in rural areas (that is anyone not in a ‘big’ city) (more…)
Oh how the mighty have fallen – Bebo’s fall from grace
I was an early adopter of Bebo sometime late 05 early 06, so early none of my friends joined it until much later. The new fresh, young energetic site that allowed you to update your status, post things on friends walls, publish blog posts and photos to share with your friends and more. It was really the 2nd ‘social networking’ site to come along on a global scale, after myspace of course and discounting friends re-united which never really left the UK.
What Bebo did, was allowed the masses to connect in a simple format and that is exactly what people did. Bebo was huge in the UK, Ireland and New Zealand and still today Bebo is the 14th busiest website in Ireland. It wasn’t long however until Bebo had a new kid in town to watch out for. Social networking done………… somehow better, that new kid was Facebook.
Bebo failed to capture the hearts of the yanks though, unlike myspace with millions of users and Facebook which recently claimed to have 210million US users, Bebo at its US peak only had 5.8million users. (more…)
Stephen Brown from The Adventure Team talks about Social Media
I met Stephen just over a year ago when he followed me on Twitter. We quickly began exchanging tweets, Facebook messages and texts until we finally met in person some months later and have bumped into each other several times since at various networking events.
As a scouter, his business fascinated me from day one as he basically gets paid to do all the fun stuff we do at scouts…. and he does it full time.
I booked him for a black tie event last year to do some pre-dinner games which turned out to be very novel, great sport and people are still talking about it today!
So what does this have to do with Social Media, well its simple. Stephen started his business (The Adventure Team) just over 12 months ago with virtually no money and absolutely no money for marketing or sales. What Stephen did have though was a computer and he quickly was able to build a large following on Facebook and Twitter. I look forward to Stephen’s daily Facebook update where he talks about what he is going to get up to that day. (more…)
Interesting figures from iBAHN on hotel guest Internet usage
From IHE Recently released data from the world’s largest hospitality Internet network show that, despite challenging business conditions, Internet use by both business and leisure guests at leading hotels, as measured by number of data packets per guest session traveling on iBAHN’s proprietary network, increased more than 50% in 2009.
iBAHN, the worldwide leader in digital entertainment and Internet solutions for the hospitality and meeting industries, has released proprietary data showing two clear trends in hotel Internet usage: first, not only did the amount of data increase by 50% per guest session, but guests are spending 60% more time on the Internet, based on carefully tracked packet and session length information. These data confirm the predictions from an iBAHN-commissioned, 2009 study of frequent business travelers conducted by Ypartnership, author of the closely-watched National Travel Monitor. (more…)
Are you addicted to the Internet ?
Sky News writes about Internet depression and addition.
Whilst I won’t touch on the depression side of things I must look at addition.
The study says
Her team identified a small group of 18 hardcore internet users who spent many hours online each day and were classed as “internet addicted”.
“While many of us use the internet to pay bills, shop and send emails, there is a small subset of the population who find it hard to control how much time they spend online, to the point where it interferes with their daily activities,” said Dr Morrison.
“We now need to consider the wider societal implications of this relationship and establish clearly the effects of excessive internet use on mental health.”
This interested me somewhat and I went on to think about my Internet usage, the past, the present and where it has led me to today. (more…)
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