Forever-Digital is a look inside the life and mind of 
Archive for July, 2007
07.30.2007 | Live Changes
Just an FYI, I’m playing around with the styling of the page, so you may see it flip back and forth from the old dark layout to a newer one in progress. It’ll be happening over the next few days, so please pardon any misalignments, color clashes, etc. as I work out a new design. I’d love any suggestions, too!
07.28.2007 | California State of Mind
I don’t know if this is just the San Francisco Bay Area, or the entire state, but it’s amazing how much the culture of “think green” has influenced my daily life! Let’s take a look at some habits I’ve acquired since I arrived here in early June:
I recycle
I compost
I take public transporation/walk everywhere
I now find it odd when a restaurant doesn’t have recycling
I even bring my own (either canvas or reused paper) bags with me when I go food shopping!
Not to mention, I’ll walk an extra block for coffee instead of the Starbucks on the corner and would take Phoenix Books over Barnes & Noble any day. I’ll wait to go to a farmer’s market instead of buying my fruits and veggies at the grocery store.
Sure, some of these things may seem completely ordinary, but I’ve never really done it before! They just make it so easy out here! I really wish other states would make this much effort to make it so incredibly easy for people to follow the “eco friendly” programs. I’m not really the “treehugger” type, but I do think it’s important to minimize our impact on the environment. Just another reason to get that Prius I’ve been eyeing… or maybe a Vespa?
07.26.2007 | WordCamp 2007 - Day 2
WordCamp Day 2 was a bit like being in school for me. With two of the speakers focusing on social media, networks, usability and user research, I really could have just closed my eyes and put myself back in Ithaca. Personally, I found the talks either really applicable, or really not. I’m not much a fan of playing with databases and things. I like my site to run quickly, but I won’t spend days on end trying to optimize the performace. As long as it doesn’t take more than 3-5 seconds for a page to load, I’m happy.
Two of my favorite talks of the weekend were Rashmi Sinha’s (of SlideShare) and Liz Danzico’s (of Happy Cog). Although I already knew most of what they were talking about (how many classes have I taken that referenced The Wisdom of Crowds
Personally, the talks took a backseat to the socializing on Sunday. I was a bit nervous on Saturday and didn’t really meet as many people as I would have liked to. I think I did a decent job of making up for it on Sunday though. I met a lot of really great folks. To those of you who I had the pleasure of chatting with: I had a great time and I look forward to catching up with you in the near future! To those of you who I didn’t get a chance to meet: please shoot me an email or something! I’d love to meet up with you!
Overall, I think WordCamp was an excellent conference and I would definitely do everything possible to make it back for next year’s! Hopefully there will be a conference on the East Coast before that, but until then I’ll just be putting everything I learned over the course of the weekend to good use. Score one more for living in San Francisco 
07.24.2007 | WordCamp 2007 - Day 1
WordCamp 2007 is really the first “geeky” sort of conference I’ve ever been to. It was strange being in the same room with some people whose blogs I’ve been reading for years, but at the same time it was extremely exciting and inspirational!
I had the opportunity to hear a lot of really great speakers and, even cooler, meet a lot of awesome people! Saturday kicked off as User Day - basically how to cultivate a community around your blog, how to draw traffic, and how to monetize it. Although all of the talks were incredibly informative, my favorites of the day were Lorelle’s, Jeremy Wright’s, and Matt Cutts’.
Lorelle’s talk, Kicking Ass Content Connections was really helpful in making me realize some key features missing on this site and how I can make it better and more enjoyable for me to write and for you to read. Look for some changes around here (although the majority of what I have in mind will be behind the scenes and not completely obvious) and please let me know what you think of them!
Jeremy Wright’s was a talk I wasn’t sure I would benefit from, but even though I don’t monetize this blog, it got me thinking about what I was doing here and what else I can bring to the table. Particularly, he said “there’s nothing worse than being a blogger alone in the desert.” Yeah. No Kidding. At one point during the talk he did have me convinced that I should maybe try to monetize this thing some how. After all, I am a college student who could use a few extra bucks, but I don’t think I’m quite at that point yet. Maybe if I find something that’s minimally invasive (read: not Google AdWords) then I’ll consider it. For now, though, I’ll be funding this out-of-pocket.
Matt Cutts’ SEO (Search Engine Optimization) talk came at the very end of the day. Given that the chairs were probably military torture devices in their former lives, I was NOT happy to have to sit through another talk. Also given that my first internship last summer was doing SEO, I was just about ready to get up and leave. However, Matt’s talk was definitely one worth sitting through. Although I didn’t learn much about SEO itself, I did find out about a lot of useful resources for tracking stats and things like that. I’ve been using Google Analytics for a while now, but I had no idea about Google Webmaster Tools. He also brought a good deal of energy and humor to the table which was particularly necessary at that point in the day.
Other than that, the first day was about mingling, schwag (more on that coming soon), and just enjoying the immensely creative and energizing environment. It was also about a really bad lunch, but I won’t go there.
Stay tuned for a recap of Day 2!
07.23.2007 | Reconsidering Facebook
Late last night as I read through my feeds, I came across a posting on Facebook’s new requirement that you must specify how you know the person you are adding as a friend. At this point, I’ve gotten used to Facebook’s attempts to suck more and more information out of me and just took it with a grain of salt.
Then I went to sleep.
Last night I dreamt that Facebook had decided to implement a new feature that made your Messages part of your profile. Their reasoning was that it would be a great way for people to learn about each other through their communications with others. Kind of like judging the person sitting behind you on the train based on the conversation they’re having with the person next to them. Creepy, right? I think so. So my entire dream was spent with me scouring the Facebook site looking for the privacy feature that would allow me to keep my messages to myself. It’s not that there’s anything I’m embarrassed or ashamed about, it’s the fact that they’re MY messages.
Now, I love the Internet as much as the next geek, but there comes a point where you just have to stop and reevaluate its clutch on your life. That point, for me, is when I’m haunted by a website.
Considering I’ve been here blogging for about 5-6 years now, I’ve gotten over the whole “the entire world could read what I’m writing” paranoia, but at the same time, SOME level of privacy is important. It’s the reason there are only a few pictures of me on my Flickr stream, and I use the same photo for my avatar, and things like that. While I love the openness of the web, I do like to maintain just a tiny bit of anonymity at times.
That’s where Facebook is starting to push my buttons. It was cool when only college students were on it. It was a special club just for us. Then the high schoolers came in. Great. I was fine with that. It meant that I could keep in contact with my younger friends. Then it opened up to the world. No big deal still, because I don’t have anything on my profile that I wouldn’t show to my grandmother. Hell, I don’t do anything that my grandmother wouldn’t approve of anyway. I’m a pretty straight-edge person. But THEN came the open platform…
Those of you who use Facebook and who have been invited to use applications will recognize these lines:
Let’s step back for a moment and think about that. Are you comfortable with these third party apps having access to all of the information you have stored on Facebook? Hell, I don’t even know if I’m comfortable with Facebook knowing all of the information I have stored on Facebook!
I put some thought into it this morning, and it turns out that the only reason I keep my Facebook account is so that my friends can find me if they need me. I don’t use it. I don’t even sign in unless I get an email notification telling me that someone has left a message for me, etc. It’s almost sacreligious for a college student to shun the almighty Facebook, but I think I may experiment with a Facebook-free life for a little while. What’s the worst that could happen?
UPDATE: Mashable now reports that the required relationship step was a bug. That still doesn’t really help their case though. Now they’re trying to suck information from people and they’re being sloppy with it!