Ramsayings

Did something last week that I know most of you will think is crazy: I bought two more years on Flickr. Trust me, I think it’s pretty crazy, too.

I used Instagram for a while, but I realized those pics are trapped in an ecosystem that’s just as complicated as Flickr, but without sets and at much lower resolution.

Privacy is important, too. Flickr offers me options. I don’t need to broadcast everything. If I want to share, I’ll twitpic and be done with it. Filters are nice, but a bit gimmicky and square photos have meant that more than one great image of my son crops his head off when I try to print. Bummer, that.

To top it off, I have a ton of photos hosted on Flickr, going back six years. Do I wish I’d snagged my real name instead of my ’00s alias? Yes, but they’re memories, no matter how silly the permalink.

Am I afraid of what might happen in the near future at Flickr? Of course. The Delicious spinoff went about as badly as possible. But I have to believe that Flickr can be adapted to a more social mobile experience that still delivers what people loved about the service when they first bought a pro account. At least I hope so.

So ‘fess up: who still uses and enjoys Flickr? Let’s connect!

One of my digital New Year’s Resolutions was to “go pro” on Twitter. I’m nearly there and I can tell you it’s not easy. For me it’s meant unfollowing and plugging folks into lists or just disconnecting altogether in order to pay attention to things that are, you know, work-related. In some cases it means severing ties with old co-workers, high school classmates and vibrant locals in exchange for national and regional media, current co-workers and influencers. It’s a window into their process, something that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago, and it’s more important to my work than ever. Thing is, has this transformation sucked all the fun out of Twitter and Facebook? (more…)

Happy New Year! Make any resolutions? One of mine is to streamline participation on certain types of social media. In 2012, I don’t want to feel like I’m doing data entry when I’m trying out a new app; I want social sharing to be fun and open-ended.

I caught this link on The Verge yesterday and took less than two minutes revoking permissions across my preferred social media platforms. Found services that I maybe used once in 2008 still had access to my info! Crazy, right?

Part of not feeling like a data mule is knowing what you’re sharing and with whom. Folks often think that cutting back on joining new services is what matters, but think about all the services you grant access to your Twitter, Facebook and Google accounts. Go look and see for yourself. It’s a little scary.

Now, I love new toys as much as the next guy, but it’s important to be mindful of those permissions. I have no idea how many user agreements I’ve signed online, but I’m sure it’s too many. Stay on top of those items and you’ll do well to lead a cleaner life online in 2012.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back to deleting notification emails…

It was probably three years ago when my friend Roz Duffy introduced me to the phrase “hack your job.” We were both talking about what we’d do differently at work and how we might reimagine what we did every day for eight hours plus. When Roz said “hack your job,” I didn’t even know what she meant. I felt like that was something better left for the folks who built the websites that I populated with copy. (I copy-ulated!)

She urged me to think differently about work. In fact, she suggested that I pursue every opportunity to make my job my dream job. I explained that I’d tried and done and executed any number of things to make my job challenging, including running with a head full of steam into the established order, only to bounce back. She wasn’t accepting excuses. I kept moaning about “burn out” and I started to see what she meant. I needed to look at my job with fresh eyes. If I wanted to remain employed — and you can bet I did — then it would behoove me to really focus on making my job as cool as I imagined it could be.

It’s great advice to anyone looking to realize their profound resolutions going into 2012. One of the things I’ve been able to think about this week are my 2012 goals and how I hope to achieve them. Part of that is rethinking the way I approach my job, the way I interact with my colleagues and the way I go about executing my plans. The devil may be in the details, but you need to think big so those details don’t seem menial. If you find yourself “checking the box,” then maybe it’s time to think about hacking your job.

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Been thinking about Hugh MacLeod’s posts on this subject this week since Jeremiah Owyang brought it up here (and followed up here) and then BOOM here he goes again with another post about what blogging means AND TO WHOM in 2012. Agree completely and I’ll add that while I love Google+ and Twitter and various other networks, I’m still reading blogs with vigor. And a hearty amen to the conversation happening in other places than the comments. Twitter really unleashes their power, for better or worse, no?

And let’s be serious: I’m still following links back to blogs from Twitter. Not everything is being encapsulated 140 characters at a time. Aren’t you?

A short story: tweets like this one bear an eerie resemblance to discourse in the music blogosphere circa 2006. I’ll add that everything went pear-shaped in music blogging right around the time folks started to notice that it wasn’t fun anymore and that first was what mattered most. It’s what drove me to find something else to do as some of my favorite critics did the very same. Once everyone’s talking about what’s wrong, it starts to hurt the product. This is why I find folks like Maura and Chris and Daphne to be so inspirational: they’re sticking it out and still doing great work. If tech bloggers start to feel that the thrill is gone, I’d recommend checking out how Maura and Chris and Daphne are reinventing what it means to be a music critic in a Lady Gaga Pantsless in Paris world.

If you’re a tech blogger or aspire to be one someday, reach out to friends and colleagues who’ve written about music or food for pay online in the past decade or so. If nothing else, they can share more than a few stories about how Web 2.0 transformed the way we blog and how that process keeps iterating to new fields every day.