|
Location: Salt Lake City, UT
I’m a big fan of making things that should be easy, easy. One of those things is technology. Technology ought to enhance, enrich, and simplify our lives, not make them more tedious and complex.
I’ve had a website for nearly 8 years now, though the updates have been sporadic at times. My mission at first was to provide biathlon news and information in the English language. I did a really good job of that for a number of years. Then I focused on improving coverage of American and Canadian biathlete, after which I built a parallel, biographical site in order to attract sponsors. Now that I’ve retired from sport more or less, I have kept it running so that I can have a place to relate my ideas to people and an easily accessible and searchable resume.
During this period, we’ve also witnessed the advent of Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, and other semi-networking services like Flickr and Google Maps. As these sites grew, I eventually built a presence in them, too, and would update what I’m up to, pictures, and interact with friends and acquaintances on them. But my status updates, for example, would never transfer from one service to the next.
Until today.
Now my online life has converged!
Here’s how I do it:
Updating Twitter
I update what I’m up to, and attach either a picture, or, by default, my location (which is determined using the nearest cell phone tower, thus giving a nice 1 km margin of error, thwarting stalkers), via the BlackBerry Twitter client Ubertwitter.
Updating Facebook
On Facebook, I have the application Tweetpo.st installed. It follows me like a person or a bot on Twitter, and has permissions to update my Facebook status for me. My Twitter status updates become my Facebook updates. And because of the nice Geotag, it also gives people an idea of where I’m hanging out at that particular moment.
Uploading MOBILE photos to Facebook
The Facebook for BlackBerry app makes it easy to upload grainy versions of my 2 MP mobile pictures to my Facebook albums.
Updating Always-Forward.com with status
Because I would like to update my website more often, but often don’t have the time, or the volume of thought I feel warrants a blog update, I’ve embedded code in the right hand of my page that displays my last 5 Twitter updates. Thus, you can follow what I’m up to, if you’re interested, without using Twitter, via my front page.
Updating Always-Forward.com with photos
Since last year, the photos on my site have run from Flickr, using embedded code, rather than be hosted through my own web account. That allows people to comment on them and take advantage of Flickr’s Geotag features. I’ve been pretty lousy at uploading pictures since August, though.
Updating Always-Forward.com with MOBILE photos
Flickr allows me to upload pictures from my BlackBerry to an album that I have embedded on my website. So once I upload a picture from my phone via the data network to Flickr, it shows up a few minutes later on my website. Like regular images, I haven’t been doing this since last August.
Updating Always-Forward itself
Always-Forward is built upon the Joomla 1.5 Content Management System, which is far easier for me to manage and update than the HTML-based website I used for six years. I can update any aspect of the site via a back-end internet client from anywhere I can get a full-size internet connection. (Unfortunately, the internet browsers on my phone aren’t smart enough to decode this client, so I can’t truly update via my phone.)
Hopefully, that gives some of you an idea of how you can link your online presences together and spend more time doing things that you enjoy (or have to do, as in work), and less time telling people all about it.
 |
