Status quo of my web/net usage

Thursday, May 19. 2011

Status quo of my web/net usage

I abandoned my Skype account very quickly. I’m not with MS.
I deactivated my FB account last week. Regarding FB comment embedding into webpages: I like! So I only have to block a single domain to focus on content. FB is a dedicated platform for wasting one’s time. FB keeps crαp out of the usable web. FB is the people you wished you never went to school with. FB is a hideaway for web illiterates; I had started unfriending fellows who got clickjacked. I do not belong there. I’m with Google.

Of course, it was a great way to keep in touch with non-geeks or relatives or freakin’ everyone I’ve ever met. Well, actually, no, it wasn’t. Without FB Purity, FB was entirely unusable. OTOH, I could so easily show off what nerdy stuff I’m stumbling upon.

I unfollowed ~60 Twitter accounts during the recent time; my own script involving python-twitter (because UnladenFollow.com was down) was of great use to get stats about who spammed my timeline most. But I still follow ~½ of those accounts in a different way: Via Twitter lists or even in an individual TweetDeck column.

I actually abandoned my Identi.ca account, although mainly geeks seem to roam there. However, the flow in Identi.ca groups appears to me like spam.
One can mute Google Buzzers’ imported Twitter stream to avoid duplicity. Though, this can only be done via Gmail, not on their Google profiles.

I unsubscribed from some high-volume news sites’ RSS. I subscribed to some specific low-volume research feeds (about machine learning & computer vision). I’m using Google Reader, btw.
2011: The year the check-in died. Although I still believe that smartphones become a ubiquitous interface for local information, I don’t gain advantages by looking at fellows’ check-ins. The GPS in my smartphone gets restricted to navigational tasks or simple place search.
Hey, Google, forget “social” and build the next generation web—and hire a bunch of good designers!
I abandoned Yahoo’s services already several months ago. Instead of Flickr I’m now showing off my photos on SmugMug. I won’t transfer my Delicious bookmarks to their new owner AVOS; btw, Diigo.com is the best tool I’ve ever used: It unites highlighting, annotating and bookmarking. I’m using it for 2½ years now.

Finally, a prediction: The much-adjured Semantic Web will come... as a layer on top of the current WWW, not built explicitly by humans, but by machines.

Posted by Stephan Paukner in Information Technology at 13:01 | Comments (0) | Trackback (1)

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Status quo of my web usage, II
Changes during the recent months: Deleted accounts Gowalla (meanwhile shut down by FB) Foursquare FootFeed (that combined the above two) FB (after 8 months of deactivation) FriendFeed Flickr and Yahoo—I had already abandoned Flickr in

Weblog: Stephan Paukner :: syslog
Tracked: Mar 17, 21:11

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