IM - Thing 7

Instant messaging has been around for some time! Through instant messaging, folks found that they could talk to others on their own time without being seen or heard on the other end of the conversation. This was all before the world of texting too which is what fascinates me.

Today I use this service to communicate with friends who I cannot speak to anymore easily as they are long distance. Or I use it for short communications to friends while I am logged onto my gmail account. But the service is not as useful for me as it was in the past at home.

At work, I have been ready for a communicating device like the one we have. It works well when we need to speak to one another but not interrupt each other's workflow. I have also seen staff use this service as a tool to make announcements about books being missing and to show where a person is located at what time. I have even had IT take over my computer to make updates using this service which frees up their time needed to walk over and do the updates in person. But again, not all instant messaging services provide for this sort of robust computing.

All in all, I feel instant messaging is useful but as the trend moves to more of us having smart phones, I think the service will change some as people text and use their applications for locating and chatting with one another on their personal phones.

Digg - Thing 6

Digg is somewhat new to me as I have seen people posting items on Facebook and Twitter from Digg. I am fascinated by the theory behind it; that the story becomes popular due to how many people "dig" it.

I tend to have my own theory about the trends of certain subcultures and believe that certain groups tend to follow one news source over another. This aggregator tends to show the really zany or crazy top stories that have emerged in the popular section which is true for some aggregators. This tells me something about the groups that are reading and participating. Cool site that I will look at for news on the fly!