Online Addictions and Me

I posted part of this over on Cyber Chocolate, but it fits here, so I'm reposting it and adding to it.


I'm addicted to Pet Society on Facebook. I admit it. I play that damned game every night and when it's not working, I go through withdrawal. It's sad, really. I'm a grown woman, addicted to a silly little animated online game. It's been mostly down the last few days and I seem to have forgotten how I used to spend my time before the game came into my life. Now that's really sad.

So, I was reminded by this how once I spent too many hours reading blogs and writing blog entries. Or the nights I spent making user pics with Photoshop for my LiveJournal. Or cruising flickr, especially reloading Explore/Interestingness over and over and over for hours on end.

One of the appeals of Pet Society for me is the level of interaction. At first, it was the cute graphics, but I quickly realized that my pet seemed to react to me. Sure, it's all programming, but the programmers are clever in how they've conceived the pets. They react to objects when you click on the objects, but also, on their own. When left to their own devices, they'll pick up toys set on the floor and move them around. They hop into the tub for a bath. They "think" in images of food when hungry, sigh heavily when very hungry, and will play with particular items, ie blow on the pinwheel or kick a soccer ball or answer a cell phone without prompting. The game is constantly changing, with new items added weekly.

You can also run races, grow plants, and visit other pets, all of which earn coins which let you buy more things, and Paw Points which help you earn more rooms.

Another appeal for me is the chance to play decorator and earn more rooms to decorate. In a way, it's a virtual dollhouse, and I love (and have) dollhouses. The game is now available on MySpace, but has been on Facebook for over a year now. I've been playing since last fall, but it's been only the past few months that my level of playing has reached addiction proportions. And I love seeing what other people do with their pet homes as I enjoy decorating my own.

At some point, my level of play likely will wane. I wonder what will replace Pet Society as my main online addiction when that happens.

~~~o0o~~~

Gadgets for Blogger

The Blogger Featured Gadget Blog is a good way to keep up with third-party gadgets designed for Blogger blogs. With Blogger encouraging third parties to develop gadgets, there should be a nice selection featured there.

~~~o0o~~~

Copyright and Fair Use

A blog entry on the NY Times site about printing out pics from sites like flickr got folks on flickr up in arms over people stealing their work, using without permission, etc. This follow-up discusses the issue of Fair Use and how the law hasn't yet caught up with the reality of the internet/web. There's no clear answer to this, but my feeling is, and remains, that if you're doing it for your personal use, it's fair use.

The best thing is to always ask permission, or look for a Creative Commons license. I have a CC license on my flickr pics that allow all non-commercial uses, and while I like being asked first, I don't mind when I'm not. Because the reality is, it's easy to make copies without anyone knowing. You can print. You can save. You can do screen caps. You can take photos of the photo. Even with music, if you don't care about the quality, you can stick a microphone next to a speaker and record a song being played, on your computer or from the radio. You have the right to make recordings of TV shows and movies for watching later, and unless the disks have DRM on them to prevent it, it is physically possible to make copies of CDs and DVDs, which many people do.

People today are very accustomed to making copies of things to keep. There are photocopiers to make copies of articles in magazines or chapters in books. You can print from websites, in libraries, as well as at home. You can buy copiers, scanners, and printers to do this in the privacy of your home. When I was a kid, I made lousy recordings from the radio of favorite songs, sitting with the microphone of my little reel-to-reel tape recorder and later, a cassette recorder, hoping to hear a song announced or that I'd recognize it fast enough to hit the record button before too much was missed. Technology since the '60s and '70s has trained us that this is all doable and it's led to a feeling of entitlement, to acceptance of a practice the creators of the works being copied find akin to theft, even if no profit is made from the copying.

I fall into the "don't make a profit and I don't care" camp. If I post it online, it's for the taking, because I know there's no way to prevent it, anyway. If I cared, I wouldn't post it.

The music industry has made a mess of going after music download "thieves." They went after file-sharing Napster. They seem to suddenly see radio, which provides free publicity for music, as the enemy. I've read comments online from photographers who resent those of us who let people use our pics free of charge, claiming we're hurting the photography industry. My take on it is that maybe if they had to pay, they wouldn't even get the pics, or they'd take their own, or they'd buy from the cheapest photographer. Someone who prints a pic out from flickr might not want to pay for it. They'll decorate with something else. Stopping the free stuff doesn't mean sudden sales for the people who charge. The only way to stop the printing and copying would be a Big Brother setup and I'm not willing to go there.

This issue has become a point of contention for libraries which are dedicated to providing materials for free. People hate the sales they lose when people borrow rather than buy. But libraries are one of the biggest sources of sales for midlist and lower books and other materials.

I could say a lot more on this topic, but I'm starting to ramble, so this will have to do for now.

~~~o0o~~~

Future Web

This Wired article about the Facebook/Google war makes for fascinating reading. It boils down to one major difference.

"Today, the Google-Facebook rivalry isn't just going strong, it has evolved into a full-blown battle over the future of the Internet—its structure, design, and utility. For the last decade or so, the Web has been defined by Google's algorithms—rigorous and efficient equations that parse practically every byte of online activity to build a dispassionate atlas of the online world. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions a more personalized, humanized Web, where our network of friends, colleagues, peers, and family is our primary source of information, just as it is offline. In Zuckerberg's vision, users will query this "social graph" to find a doctor, the best camera, or someone to hire—rather than tapping the cold mathematics of a Google search."

And that ties into some thoughts I've recently had about why I like Facebook.

I don't see why both aren't and can't remain relevant, although that might just be my middle-aged perspective and the younger generations might see it much differently. I have two online personas: the mostly anonymous one you see here who also hangs out on message boards, blogs on LiveJournal as well as on Blogger, who uploads pics and joins in on discussions on flickr, tweets updates on Twitter, catalogs her books on Library Thing, and generally roams the web at my leisure & the real me who has a Facebook account that she protects behind restrictions and filters. And while there are people who know me on real life who also read my more anonymous blogs and look at my online pics, I keep ShellyS and the real me as separate as possible. My Twitter tweets show up in sidebar widgets on my blog, but not on Facebook, letting me be a bit more open as ShellyS where certain people aren't likely to find me.

Sure, I have friends on Facebook I really don't know, and I've created friend filters to keep them out of the loop for most of my updates there. I'm friends with them online only. But I've discovered I enjoy the ease of use of Facebook to keep up with real life friends I rarely if ever see in real life. Email is tedious. That sounds so strange, given it takes almost no time at all to go from my gmail account to the recipient, and yet, it requires me to actually write emails to individuals, many of whom I don't have that sort of friendship with. Mass emails are so impersonal and might be interpreted as spam by some email spam filters. Just sending more than a couple of photos at a time to an Earthlink account can cause it to bounce back. And once I do email, I have to wait for a reply. It's just like snail mail, especially if one or both parties aren't the swiftest when it comes to replying.

But on Facebook, I can put pics in albums, tag 'em for my friends on FB who appear in the pics, and they'll get alerts that there are pics to see. I can even leave a status message announcing new pics are available. )I do have my flickr account notify my FB account of new uploads, so there is some overlap, but nothing from FB to other sites.) And I've found I'm more in touch with the few real life friends on FB than I ever was before, provided they, too, use it. I can play word games with them, compare quiz results, indicate I like something they posted, leave comments on their posts and uploaded pics, and generally "be in touch." And they can do the same with me.

Unlike my Twitter page, which rapidly fills up with updates from over a hundred tweets I follow (not unlike all the blog feeds I read over on Bloglines and my LiveJournal friends), I keep my FB newsfeed restricted to the friends I really want to keep up with and the graphic design makes it easy to see not only who's updating (w/avatars, same as on Twitter's site), but with graphics for the various apps, groups, fan pages, etc. Both Twitter and FB have mobile means of updating and reading updates, as well. But I use Twitter to keep up with online friends, real life friends who use it (not many), and actors and other "celebrities" I enjoy knowing about. With Facebook, it's real life friends, plus some groups and fan pages that interest me. There is some overlap as I compare the services and learn how they work best, but mostly, Twitter is for ShellyS and FB is for the real me, if that makes any sense.

FB is fast and easy and people don't have to respond to what I post, but it's nice when they do. But I'm as apt to Google for information, or use trusted, authoritative sites, or more so, than I am to ask a friend on Facebook. So it might be a generational thing and maybe someday, FB's way will be the only way that matters. But for now, I think there are enough of us who enjoy the anonymity we can have online that lets us reach far beyond our sphere of influence while retaining our privacy for Google's way to stay relevant. At least, I hope so, for the next few decades at least. After that, I might just be too old to care.

~~~o0o~~~

Can't Leave Home Without

As I was downloading my first book into my new Kindle 2 last night, I was struck by the thought of all the new electronic toys in my life, as yesterday also marked the arrival of my new digital slr camera. Previously, I traveled light, either in my daily wanderings (for work, play) or on vacation/trips. One small suitcase with change of clothes. I had bottled water, tissues, wallet, keys, a book to read (paperback only). And over the last few years, more and more things have crept in:

• cellphone


• point & shoot pocket digital camera


• phone charger


• camera charger and cable (for trips)


• Kindle

I need a bag just for this stuff when I travel. Then there's the laptop, in its own bag, with its own power cord, as well as an extra battery and a mouse. And I know I'm not carrying nearly as much as other people.

I can't imagine life now without a computer, and while I don't use the cellphone much, it has become a nice, quick way to check email when I'm not near a computer or wifi connection. I still prefer print books, but I can see that the Kindle could become addicting. Life has changed a lot in the past 3-4 years and I suspect it will change even more in the next year or two. To think, I grew up with a rotary phone and a black & white tv the size of a piece of furniture, and I've seen more tech changes in the past decade than my first four. Food for thought.

~~~o0o~~~

Finding Yourself on Facebook

Facebook is now allowing its members to grab personalized URLs; instead of those long numbers that follow the main part of the URL now, you can have actual names. The idea behind it is to make people more discoverable to family and friends searching for them. They've limited it for now to people already FB members to avoid people signing up to snare desireable URLs and other abuses. Plus, certain words/phrases will not be available.

It certainly sounds good and a lot of people have already taken advantage of the offer. But I won't. Because I don't want to be more discoverable. That's why I don't connect my Facebook account with all my other online services and identities (where I'm some version of Shelly or ShellyS). My name is uncommon enough that I am findable if you really know me, which is about all I want.

~~~o0o~~~

Dream Blog

Over on LiveJournal, I heard about a new blogging service called Dreamwidth in beta testing. Some of my LJ friends had gotten invites and in the usual hysteria over LJ (will it be sold again? complaints about the current owners. complaints about ads and things not working?. annoyed with changes.), people are looking to this new service as a backup/place to go if they leave LJ. Before Dreamwidth, many LJers went to Insane Journal as a backup/just in case blog.

LiveJournal is an Open Source, and both Dreamwidth and InsaneJournal use its code, with some tweaking, so it's almost like being on LJ. I tried IJ, but since it was so similar to LJ and I have more faith in LJ than the people prone to panic or who hate change, I don't use it.

But I got curious about Dreamwidth because it's new and they're trying to be ad-free by making money from paid accounts (there is a free version) and it is fun to get in on the ground floor. So, I scored an invite from a friend (and no, I don't have invites yet to give out) and got started, going for a paid account at the limited time frame discount rate. And am less than impressed. They really aren't ready yet for prime time.

There are 4 templates with no themes, although you can customize the colors. If you want to do your own style sheet, you can, but unlike Blogger, but like LJ, you don't work in the actual template code, which I always found confusing in LJ. I can play with colors and such, but really changing a design, even just moving the sidebar, is not something I've been able to figure out. So I need to wait for more templates in the hopes of getting something I like.

They don't have a logged in version of the home page yet. To actually read my own journal, I have to snag the url and bookmark it, wait til I post to get the link to view my journal, or go to my Reading List (a la LJ's Friends' Page) and get the link from the navbar there. There's a choice of color scheme for the site once logged in and neither appealed to me. Both have color combinations that are hard for me to read.

This might be a great blogging platform someday, but they've got a way to go. And I hope they do some serious tweaing/revising of the code. When sites look alike, I get bored. Sure, better service would be a good thing, but I also like sites to distinguish themselves from each other. LJ and other sites using their code should not look like clones. There should be some real differences. Otherwise, why bother.

Oh, right. The people ticked off by LJ need a place to go.

Now I just need to figure out what to do with my Dreamwidth journal.

~~~o0o~~~