How Facebook is Impacting Your Relationship

This infographic is an interesting take on how Facebook affects self-esteem. I personally don’t like being Facebook friends with anyone I’m dating or previously dated. I feel that takes the fun out of getting to know each other and certainly speeds the demise of what could have been. If they are busy Facebook or Twitter stalking you then they aren’t really getting to know you, only a portion of yourself you allow the world to see. When you stop dating, should they be privy to the details of your life? What are your thoughts?

Collaboration between All Facebook and Online Dating University

Writing is like Walking Around Naked

On Tuesday night, I went to a storytellers workshop at the Gangplank collaborative space in Chandler, Arizona. I decided to come to this workshop to learn how to become a better writer. The first topic was about writing as social objects and to be perfectly honest I nearly walked out because I had no idea what they were talking about. Most of my writing recounts events in my life, how I felt about it, or what I learned whether it resulted in success or failure. Thankfully, Tyler Hurst who was facilitating, explained the idea of social object when he posed questions to the various people around the table. I sort of felt like the kid who didn’t do the homework, hoping the teacher wouldn’t call on me for my opinion. Needless to say I survived and I grew a little from the experience, since I learned there is structure to good story telling.

The next question was, “Is writing selfish or non-selfish”. Hmmmm, good question, it has to be a selfish, I’m holding you hostage, ummm I mean, captive until you get bored with my ramblings and turn your attention elsewhere.

I am not a trained writer, it wasn’t a life long dream for me to publish my diary for all the world to see. I never wanted to write a book or a screenplay because that takes real writing talent. I share my innermost thoughts through writing because I feel like I can be myself without worry of judgement or getting hurt from behind the shield of my computer screen. When you’re having heart to heart in person you immediately feel the impact of being judged or criticized, your insecurities climb to the surface and prevent you from truly expressing yourself. You have that voice in your head that says, “What if I say something stupid? What if they don’t like me?” In writing, you can edit what you’re saying so that everything comes out brilliant (wishful). Unless you write a comment on my blog, I have no idea what you think of me. I write in a bubble so I can get my thoughts out before any self-doubt has a chance to interfere with expression. Do I prefer that? Not sure…I believe face to face conversations create a deeper bond with people if you can get past superficial questions. The problem is that we don’t have the luxury to sit around for hours to gain each other’s trust enough to bare our innermost secrets.

How do you best communicate your thoughts and feelings? Comment with your answers.

Has Facebook Programmed Us To Like Too Much?

Over the last couple of weeks, I’ve been in the throes of spring cleaning. This year, I decided spring cleaning should apply to my electronic life and once I’m done, my online world should reflect my real world passions. Have you ever looked through the pages you liked on Facebook and thought, “I never use that service or I only liked that page to win something”?

With the introduction of the “like” button, Facebook had us liking status messages, pictures, videos, and articles that flowed by in our news feeds. Then they let websites everywhere add the “like” button to their online destinations. We were free to like articles, videos, and products outside the Facebook sandbox. If you’re anything like me, you see a button and you have a burning desire to push it with the result of liking brands which only hold a passing interest. Sometimes, I wish Staples “easy” button was everywhere so I could click on it and all the ads and clutter from websites would disappear, I digress.
I realized the consequence of clicking on the like button all over the web was creating a mess of my newsfeed within Facebook. Announcements about products or services I have no interest in were overshadowing the status messages of friends and family I really wanted to see.

So one day, I decided to go through all the pages and remove the ones I didn’t absolutely love. I “liked” Corona or Corona Light because if you liked them, they would put your picture on Times Square. I “liked” Bud Light because they had an app that let you show your support for your soccer team in the World Cup. There were several pages I liked to win an iPad that I never won. If you looked at the pages I “liked” you would think I’m a fan huge fan of beer, of which I’m indifferent. These pages were all removed.
There are only about 25 pages I continue to “like”. They are the fan pages of Founder Institute companies, Aston Martin, the Dalai Lama, Engadget, Mashable, TechCrunch, Manny Pacquaio, the UFC, Rafael Marquez, Lionel Messi, FCB Barcelona, and a couple fighters whose news I want to see.

If you were to cut your likes to only the brands and people you love, what would you have left?

Image credit:
http://m.flickr.com/photos/denisdervisevic/4745520501/

From iPhone to Android

Making the switch to Android
Took the plunge and bought my first Android phone, the LG Optimus V on Virgin Mobile. The reason I bought it was it had better battery life than the mifi card and hotspot functionality was easy to turn on using a simple app called Quick Settings. Saving $15/month with a phone/hotspot for the ipod was a no-brainer, plus getting a couple extra hours of battery life was a bonus. The mifi card is going on sale on ebay so I can recoup the cost of the phone and it goes with my anti-hoarder policy of selling one gadget for each one that is purchased. This post was going to have a screenshot of the apps, however, I pushed the power and the home key like on the ipod but I think it turned the thing off instead of took the picture. I guess I need to find an app that lets me take screenshots of the phone screen.

Day 1: Apps downloaded

Advanced Task Killer – Kills apps running in the background to free up memory. This is the first app I downloaded.
Evernote to draft blog posts, voice notes for ideas while I’m driving, and using it now to write this post.
Dropbox to sync files across devices including my ipod.
Track-R to access Pivotal Tracker from an Android phone.
mAnalytics to access Google Analytics.
Hootsuite to manage Twitter and Facebook fan pages.
Google Voice to make and receive calls/texts with the caller ID showing the GV number, it’s more convenient to give out one number and have it ring the various burner phones.
Feedly to access Google Reader and to share articles to Twitter.
Kindle to access and read my books.
Skype for conferencing.
WordPress to create blog posts.
Facebook
Barcode Scanner this was recommended to me, it reads barcodes and QR codes. I’ve yet to try it.
Gowalla to check-in to Facebook, Foursquare, Tumblr, and of course Gowalla in one shot.
Shazam to figure out what that song is on the radio, helps build the playlist on what I want to download.
Kayak to compare prices for travel.
Meebo for unified instant messaging.
Amazon app store to get free [paid] apps daily.

After enabling the hotspot functionality, I found I was often going to the ipod’s version of Hootsuite to type out tweets over using the LG Optimus since I’m more comfortable typing on the iphone keyboard than the Swype keyboard. I also like the slimness of the ipod over the Optimus. This concludes day 1 with an Android phone.

For other noobs, here’s a quick primer on Android 101.

@NickHammond – thanks for your list of must-have apps, I started downloading most of them today.
@digiJustin – I agree, Tweetdeck isn’t as useful on the mobile and dumped it.
@htnguyen – thanks for the comic relief with your #sarcasm. I can always count on you and @vcrazy for that. :p

If you have any recommendations for apps, put them in the comments.

Dropping Knowledge at 3 am

When I was in college, I changed majors three times, either from fear of commitment or boundless curiosity, you pick. At one point, my major was computer engineering because I hated writing. I thought, writing code and commenting didn’t need to be in full sentences. I was wrong and I remember turning in weekly engineering reports with schematics detailing the process for labs. Some of these reports would be over 20 pages and most weeks there were three labs to turn in. I thought I was going to die writing and eventually switched majors to information systems since PowerPoint decks were the deliverables, sweet!

Ironically, since founding Hand Things Down, my co-founder and I started blogging about our startup lessons to help other first time founders with our anecdotes. I suppose it might be easier to video blog, however coherent thought seems to leave my mind the minute I turned on the webcam. You could see a couple of our video blogs on the Cache Crew YouTube channel.

Here are some of the things I’ve done, which would you like as a how to series?
– Moderated a tweetchat on Social Media for Business to Business companies, you can search for it on Twitter using the hashtag #smcphxchat.

– Installed analytics into WordPress blogs to understand which posts were driving traffic for the week. It was eye opening to learn which organic search terms drove people to each site.

– Installed Uservoice to gather feedback and suggestions on the Hand Things Down Facebook page

– Embedded Mailchimp collection into Facebook and on the blogs to collect beta information.

– Moving a Blogger blog into WordPress and making sure to get the 301 redirects right to preserve SEO.

– Creating a comic strip.

I’m inspired to share what I’ve learned, let me know what you would like to see in the comments.

Image credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/philsquires/4097914782/sizes/m/

Lessons from Tim Ferriss

I read the 4 Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss when I worked in a “regular job” and thought, I want my own business so I can do whatever I want whenever I want too! Damn, I was in for a surprise, after co-founding a business, work days turned into nights with gym or dinner breaks to punctuate pauses in the day. I didn’t get to do what I wanted whenever because of deadlines.

I would spend all hours on the computer, setting up WordPress, analytics, blogging, working on spreadsheets or reading legal docs. I also checked Facebook, followed people on Twitter, commented on mommy blogs as part of my social media business responsibilities.

In between was constant instant messaging (IM) or texting with friends and colleagues to ask advice, get feedback or catch up. When I had a deadline, I would put myself on a timeout, which means I didn’t allow myself to login to IM or text until after I finished the project. Magically the project would get done in about a third of the time it normally took when I was IMing, texting, or fielding phone calls. Often times, I would switch from email and IM to Skype in quick succession and before I knew it, lunch had past and my to do list was only getting longer.

Time Management Learned from Tim Ferriss:

Plan and block times for doing important work. I modified this to focus on activities that bring in customers or revenue for the business as the top priorities.
Do the important strategic stuff before delving into email.
Delegate or outsource non strategic, time consuming activities, this is different for every business or person.
When you delegate, give guidelines about what should be escalated to you and then give space for them to execute. No one likes a micro-manager.
Schedule times to check and respond to email. I know that a lot of people treat email like instant messaging to hold a conversation about a topic. It’s often a time-sink if you respond to email as it’s happening because it’s never ending and sometimes a 5 minute call could resolve the issue with a follow-up email summarizing the actions you agreed upon. When you check email at specified times and you’re the decision maker you can read the entire thread with everyone’s input and give the final decision without being distracted with the real-time play-by-play.
Schedule times to return phone calls or call people to clarify cryptic email.
Turn the mobile phone silent without vibration during conference calls to stay focused.
Schedule a morning during the week to catch up with friends using instant messaging. You have to have fun at work too.

These are some of the lessons I’ve learned around time management, so I would have more free time to enjoy the day and still stay super-productive. What are some of your favorite tips from the 4 Hour Workweek?

Note: the link is an affiliate link for the Kindle book.

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