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The below Twitter messages exist just because Twitter exists, and just because one can Twitter, and because one cannot think of any other reason to Twitter, and just to increase Twitter followers³. It seems that the same mentality that has turned innocent blogs into money making professional-services-claiming-to-be-blogs and the non-blog arena into website-filled-with-keywords-and-tags-to-please-search-engines world has also flooded Twitter: people keep describing Twitter and similar services with as many complicated terms and terminologies as possible so that the end result will be more direct or indirect money somehow by making people think “Wow, this is useful because it is sophisticated. I’ma gonna use it! COOL!”

It is as if the fact “Bes eats because there is food” has become the universal law upon which Twittering for many people revolves around. They Twitter because there is Twitter. So I present to you 14 Twitter messages that should help you realize as to what the focus of the message is, and what the real focus should be. Keep in mind that the poster of such messages had no reason behind the message other than to Twitter it. You decide what you would want your focus and reasoning to be for each message if you had a chance.

1. In the bathroom.
2. Out of the bathroom. Realized I only went in there to Twitter that I was in the bathroom.
3. Throwing up while typing this. Food poisoning. Crap got some on the phone
4. She is confused as to why I am Twittering during this interview. Just ask me the questions.
5. This exam sucks and the moderator keeps looking as if I was cheating through my cell phone.
6. Waiting for the cash register to process this sale, holding the customer credit card in my other hand.
7. In police station. Handcuffed. Drunk-driving-over-rabbits-offense. Thank god they didn’t take phone away. I can twitter w/phone behind me.
8. I woke up.
9. Neighbors woke up.
10. With my boy friend. He doesn’t know he is my boy friend yet.
11. Wife woke up. $&^%
12. Following this stranger, a beautiful girl, for hours now. Hope she doesn’t notice; I’m only following to make sure she gets home safe.
13. I am Twittering because this is Twitter.
14. I am Twittering so Bes can talk about me.

There you go, my Twitter loving or Twitter hating or Twitter confused beings⁴. The above Twitter messages, and many other Twitter updates on similar notes have no purpose for them. Many people simply use Twitter to let everyone else know what they are doing, while others do it to gain attention through more Twitter followers or through the stereotype that the more you Twitter, the cooler you are.

Of course, the funniest thing is to see how many Twitter-obsessed people have no communication skills, no interest in making real friends, no interest in the well being of others, and no interest in how to focus on content instead of creating a hype through presentation.

Thank you for reading and not Twittering.

I will stop here please, so I can think of what to Twitter now. I hope I made you pause your Twitter for at least a few moments. Please let me know what you think, if you have any comments, or if you would like to see more of such messages or would like to share your own messages or ideas.

Thank you for reading. You can get back to your pro-Twitter or anti-Twitter activities now. I will go back to being confused and giggling nervously in my head⁵.

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1. How did you start your site? What is it about?

   I guess you could say my blog has its beginnings in late 2002, not long after I found out I was pregnant. I had seen a friend do something similar, and I thought it was a great idea to add a section to my already existing (genealogy) site where friends and relatives who aren’t around can get updates on the pregnancy, photos, etc. This carried on through the whole pregnancy and I sort of quit there.

   But in October 2003 when I had a three-month-old and some extra time on my hands, I thought I’d pick it all back up. I had such great fun at it all that I got the blog its own domain name and as time progressed I was getting more attention from strangers than family and it turned into more of a diary and lifelog than just baby updates and photos.

   Also, when I started, the site was just an html page that I updated with the dates and so there were no direct comments on entries. I had one page where people could leave a message and still have those posts. When I moved to actual blogging, I later had to track down those old posts via archive.org and them. I think I lost some of them in the process.

2. How do readers play a part in your site?

   I think I stand in the middle with this. On one hand, I really do not care if people visit and leave comments - after all, that’s how I started, never dreaming anyone who did not already know me would care and there are lots of things that I post that I just know will bore everyone else but I write them down anyway for me - but on the other hand, it does matter to me. Over the course of time, I’ve met some really great people through this whole blogging thing and I often really desire their input and validation. They
   are real friends to me, not just people who come and go, and I highly value their friendship and opinions.

   There have even been several occasions when I’ve asked for advice regarding my candle business, what scents people would be interested in. Both regular visitors and one-time visitors were very helpful in helping me choose scents to make that would suit a variety of people and not just myself.

3. When you started the site, what did you expect from the readers? Were those expectations met?

   Since I had started it all as a family thing, I had expected my family to at least pay somewhat attention. However, I wasn’t so lucky in that respect, especially after I got the separate domain for the site. My family (this includes uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.) sort of missed the change altogether (not that they had paid attention much past the initial pregnancy updates anyway) and, as far as I’m aware, none of them visit today, or even know the site exists, with the exception of two in-laws. What I ended up with was a couple of visitors for several months until other bloggers began to visit and make their presence known.

4. You get a lot of supportive comments, and you also get a lot of critical comments and comments which attack you personally. You are one of the bloggers who has sparked a lot of opposition due to your posts regarding Geek Squad and DHL. What do you think of the people who support you and the people who disagree with you on posts revolving around those companies? Has any company directly or indirectly retaliated because of your posts?

   When it comes to posting the ugly side of a company or pointing out a company’s mistakes, you’re bound to gather attention. There seems to be four types of people that respond to these posts. There are the friends who know I’m not just making stuff up and they offer their support for me, and indignation towards whatever it may be that has caused my grief.

   The second group is made up of those who have had their own problems with the company. They find me via search engines or other people who have shared their stories and linked me. They tend to just want someone to rant to about their issues, sometimes they want advice on where to turn next; they’re typically the biggest group of the four.

   The third group is typically smallest, the people who say they’ve not had a problem at all with that company, “but, whatever.” The fourth group is usually the most fun. These people are, for some reason or another, outraged that I would dare say anything negative about a large company; many admit to being employees of the company while others’ IP addresses tell on them. While some are nice and can agree to disagree, in my experience, most of these people take it personally and then proceed to act as such. However, they mostly seem to be lone gunmen. I have never had a company directly contact me about my postings nor are my postings wide-spread enough for me to be recognized when I am forced to deal with these companies “in real life” (especially since by the time I’m posting about them, I’m typically already boycotting them).

   I have had two occasions where an employee and then a different employee’s wife went to other, unrelated articles in my blog with other nasty comments but that’s been the worst of it. I don’t really have a general opinion regarding the people who agree or
   disagree with me, they are all given equal chance and profane language is edited out no matter which side of the fence they’re on. Also, I don’t respond to every comment. Sometimes I ignore comments, good or bad, depending on the amount of time I have.

5. Has earning money online played any part in dealing with commentors? For example, would you turn off comments if advertisers paid you to do so, or would you allow certain personal attacking comments if you were paid to leave the comments on and uncensored on some posts?

   I have personally never heard of either of those scenarios and they present an interesting dilemma. I think I would have to take that in a case-by-case basis. How much money are you offering? I really don’t think I could answer this question until I were to know all the specifics.

6. Have your blogging, other online or offline habits or behavior changed because of either the supportive or criticizing comments?

   Someone who visits my blog and calls me a nasty name because of my view of the Geek Squad doesn’t have me lying awake at night upset. At most I may wonder for a few minutes on how I should respond, if at all, but then I move on. However, there have been times where I have taken to heart things that commentors have said. Usually this is in regards to a parenting issue I feel lost at or some other life issue. My actions may be affirmed, and I will continue at how I am behaving, or someone may offer advice and I will try that out, too. The only real things that have changed have been due to an online stalker and a friend whom I had a falling out with.

   Because of those situations, I have taken many things private (only visible to friends and family I trust, or even sometimes just myself) that may have otherwise been posted publicly.

7. How do you deal with such comments, and commentors, that attack you personally?

   I pretty much handle this on a case-by-case basis. I think it also depends on the mood I’m in - haha (I /am/ after all, a woman).
   Typically, because of the moderation rules I employ, these comments will go straight to moderation (dependent upon how old the post is). If I feel I have something substantial or witty to say back to this person (or even if I have nothing to say), I may approve the comment and reply (or say nothing). If I’m unsure about it, I might check to see if they’ve subscribed to the comments or if they’ve left what appears to be a real name, email address, and/or URL.

   In other words, I’m more apt to give answer if they really seem interested in one rather than bash-and-run. If I get the feeling they’re bash-and-run and the comment is extraordinarily mean and/or full of profanity, there’s a good chance I’ll just delete it (especially when they have nothing new to add to the conversation like is common on the Geek Squad thread where they all have the same points/complaints).

From comments to commentors, Spoken-For keeps on speaking

From the above interview and the links presented within it, you can see a lot of trends that go along with that I said in a previous post titled “Disagree with arguments, not with people who argue.” Also, one can see from Valerie’s experience above as to how the shape of a site can change from being a simple website to being a blog, yet the function of the site remains exactly the same: to allow for a place for Valerie to express herself. What do you think?

Do you have any questions?

That is all for this time. Stay tuned for the next part of the interview soon, where I asked Valerie about the possibility of closing down comments section, the comparison between her blog and her online business, online stalkers, and more.

Please let me or Valerie know about any opinions, thoughts, or questions you can think of either by e-mailing me or Valerie, or by leaving a comment below.

Thank you for reading.

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A simple example of an article without a picture is my post “Question: do you like using your real name online?.” Sure, an article may have other pictures like the site name logo on the top of this page, though such pictures may be connected to the site directly and may not necessarily be only applicable or connected to the article in question².

Some benefits of a writing without pictures include:

• No distraction, resulting in full focus on the text
• Better understanding of what is being said because of being able to imagine things, instead of being biased by what the picture may be showing
• Understood by many people, including those who prefer having pictures

Articles with pictures

A good example of a post that uses pictures would be my recent article titled “10 stereotypical elements to offline unprofessionalism.” That article has pictures to give some brief examples of what I am referring to in different areas³.

Some benefits of a writing with pictures include:

• Better understanding of what one may be referring to, specially when the picture may explain things when the author cannot explain easily through text or when the author wishes to explain more through the pictures
• A pictorial or an extra word association with the writing itself⁴
• In some cases, a simple visualization of stuff through a specific picture or a group of pictures, as an alternate to reading the entire text

Do you prefer online articles with or without pictures?

As you may have noticed from the above text, having pictures can help or can cause issues in some cases for different people. There is probably no definite answer to whether or not text with pictures is a good thing. So, do you prefer reading articles with or without pictures?

Please let me know what you think. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

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1. E-mail

   I remember an era during the 90’s when signing up for dozens of e-mail accounts was cool. Having so many e-mail accounts did nothing; sending an e-mail was still sending an e-mail. People back then had Hotmail [now called Windows Live Mail], Coldmail, Yahoo Mail, Mail.com, ICQ mail, and AOL mail. Now, people also have Gmail, self-hosted e-mails on personal domains, and more. Having more e-mail accounts was once considered a status. Now, even though many people do not realize that each existing and additional e-mail account can bring in its own unique benefits and downsides, more and more people still keep opening new e-mail accounts daily.

   Opening e-mail accounts is one of the longest lasting online trends ever, and e-mails are still one of the most widely used online tools, if not the most widely used online tool.

2. Guestbooks

   This trend also started more solidly in the 90’s, and continued all the way until the first year or so after 2000 under the original name “guestbook“, after which the name continued and continues to lose its popularity to other terms and concepts which have been derived from it. The term guestbook came from the actual guestbooks and the same term used to describe books at places like museums, where visitors could leave comments and remarks for others to see, whether anonymously or with any detail. Online, in many cases, the guestbook became more popular than e-mail during its strong day, not in number of users but in actual fame, among many people who had guestbooks like Bravenet Guestbooks.

   Guestbooks paved the way for public comments that we see on blogs today. Overall, Guestbooks are still around in their pure form and in some evolved forms like online blog comments. Original, pure guestbooks themselves have lost a lot of their original popularity. In many cases, guestbooks have lost popularity and ground to the very concepts that were derived from them, like comments and forums.

3. Online diaries, blogs and their variants

   Online diaries were the sites that brought blogs into existence. Technically, blogs are nothing more than diaries. Of course, the concept of blogging has been commercialized and now online diaries, the very sites that started it all, are considered immature and not worthy by many of the blogs that aim to make money through non-personal content. I know many people who had and have different online diaries for different reasons. Many people would simply abandon one online diary for the other, as the concept of deleting online accounts was not considered as important by many people in the mid-90’s.

   Among the other things that online diaries have evolved into, blogs are the new normal craze now. Many people get more excited about having a blog instead of getting excited of what they want to achieve and what they can achieve with a blog. Online diaries have evolved into many things including blogs, networking sites, and more. LiveJournal can probably be considered an evolved example of personal diaries.

   Blogs are thriving, and are continuing to get stronger everyday. According to Technorati, more than 70 millions online blogs existed as of April 2007.

4. Chat and instant messaging accounts

   Instant messaging started mainly during the 2nd half of the 90’s, and to this day is very popular. Instant messaging accounts allow people to instantly chat with someone online. In the 90’s, people used to lure their friends into using ICQ to keep in touch. Slowly, Yahoo Messenger, AIM and MSN Messenger [now called Windows Live Messenger] brought more popularity to the entire instant messaging arena.

   Instant messaging itself got popular because of Internet Relay Chat [IRC]. IRC allowed people to chat instantly and live, and thus allowed them to communicate a bit faster than e-mail, if the people involved were online and using an IRC program at the same time. IRC evolved into different kinds of instant messaging, and instant messaging itself evolved and divided into voice chats, webcam conferences, live chat via e-mail accounts such as in Gmail, and more. In some ways, IRC itself can be considered an evolution of e-mail.

   Instant messaging accounts and online chats are also thriving and getting more popular everyday. At this moment, for the first time in internet history, a growing number of online people are using instant messaging more than e-mail.

5. Networking sites, which include social networking sites

   The latest, youngest and biggest craze right now is to open a social networking account. MySpace, twitter, facebook, linkedin, Bebo and many other networking and social networking sites came out with a big bang at different times during the last 5 years. As of last week, MySpace had over 200 million accounts. If it is assumed that each of those 200 millions accounts is owned by a unique individual, 200 millions MySpace members are almost 1/3rd the size of the entire U.S. population. Many people have multiple accounts on different networking sites, and many people simply delete their online networking accounts so that they can start afresh with new accounts.

   Networking sites are very strong right now, attracting more and more members everyday. At the same time, networking sites are also in their infancy sage. Social networking sites are the least experienced players in the entire online arena compared to the other 4 types [e-mail, guest books, online diaries and instant messaging accounts]. In many ways, networking sites can be considered children of concepts like Yahoo Groups and the original Usenet groups, now part of Google groups.

   The trend of opening networking sites in huge numbers started recently, and is in full force right now, gaining more momentum. It is happening and evolving live as you read this.

There you have it. Listed above are 5 trends of opening up 5 different kinds of accounts. These 5 services have had a historical trend of attracting a crowd that focused hysterically on opening new accounts. E-mail is the oldest and longest running of such trends, and networking sites are the youngest of the bunch.

Can you think of any trend from the above or any other trend you yourself may have been, or are, involved in? Do you have any questions or comments? Please let me know.

Thanks for reading.

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Responding immediately

There can be several benefits of responding to non-critical e-mails immediately. Responding to e-mails immediately results in less tasks that you have to focus on, more free time, taking care of important tasks and communication immediately, not keeping people hanging on, etc.

Responding to non-critical e-mails immediately can also result in a few problems including you making mistakes because of composing a response too fast, forgetting to include something important, responding with something or in a manner that you may regret later because you responded too fast without thinking straight, etc.

Responding later

The benefits of responding to e-mails at a later date can be numerous also, specially when we respond too quickly and make some mistake or forget something. Responding at a later time can result in more time to think of a good response, more flexible time schedule that you can modify to your needs, less sense of panic or hurry when it comes to responding to others, not allowing incoming e-mail to dictate and take over your times, etc.

Responding later to non-critical e-mails can result in a few downsides also, including keeping someone waiting longer even when you did not have to respond immediately, communication between you and someone else going at a very slow rate, the other person losing interest in you or your response or the e-mail topic in question by the time they get your response, etc.

Do you prefer responding to non-critical e-mails right away?

So, do you prefer responding to non-critical e-mails right away?

Please let me know, thanks you.

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Your friend may expect you to comment on their site, whether or not your current friendship with that friend is solely based on the online world. You can talk to your friend via the phone or even chat with them online, but if you do not visit or comment on their site regularly, they may retaliate by not talking to you that much or by talking to someone else who visits and comments on their blog.

It is as if the friendship is solely based on the number of comments you leave on a blog. A blog can be considered someone’s personal property, thus you have to see whether or not your friend is justified in getting upset over you not commenting on their site. Your friend getting upset over the absence of your comments on your site can either be like your friend expecting you to support them in unrelated things in order for the friendship to continue or like your friend expecting you to support them in a passion they may have.

Of course, such confusion can be solved if you ask your friend what they want, or if your friend tells you what they want. However, I wonder if it is always easy for everyone to tell a friend “You know what, I don’t like commenting on your blog or reading it, because of this and this reason. Is that going to upset you?”

Business and non-business contacts expecting comments

Business and non-business contacts can be different than your friends. Sure, more and more people are calling each other friends, but no one is there for each other in anything from which they themselves do not benefit, or when a business deal is not around. Thus, let us briefly focus on the idea of non-friend contacts expecting comments from you: a random person or a business contact may show you their personal or some other blog, and thus may expect you to regularly visit or participate that blog. What happens if you do not fulfill their expectations?

Well, from my personal experience, several things can happen. I have seen business contacts doing less business simply because I do not comment on every post of theirs. I have also seen some very famous business contacts being non-communicative until they need something, which can appear to be beyond unprofessionalism in many cases. I have also heard people complaining about their business contacts becoming more aggressive and unfriendly in business deals if those people post a disagreeing comment about something on a blog. Getting upset in different ways over other contacts not commenting on some site can be signs of people not being able to differentiate between their expectations from their own blogs and their business and other deals with other people.

How do you fix such a thing? You cannot fix such a trend and mentality until you find out what the business or some other deal expects. You entered into a business deal; did it include in any direct or indirect manner your participation on any site? Did the other person get any kind of a hint in the beginning that you will continuously participate on their site? It is best to not mix business with personal life or something like your passion for comments unless you know the people involved in a business deal are willing to be true friends or logical contacts who will not let things get affected by something like the number of comments you post on a blog not related to the business or some other deal in question.

What to do?

It depends. I personally do not want to be obligated to comment on any friend’s or non-friend’s blog. I comment when I want to. Otherwise, I try to communicate with people a lot outside of a blog, like via the phone, e-mail or even chatting online on different im’s. I actually prefer to communicate more offline than online in many cases.

Do you want friendship to continue? Do you want a business or some other contact to continue doing business or remain a contact with you? Do you want a random contact to keep in touch normally? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you can think of ways to come at a solution that satisfied either you, the other person, or both of you. Whatever solution you come up with, you should feel comfortable enough to actually stick to the solution if the other person agrees to the solution also.

What do you think? Please let me know, thank you.

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Viewing online and offline friends as being equal can be different than treating online and offline people equally. I know some people who prefer online friends to offline friends. I know some people who prefer offline friends to online friends. For me, online and offline friends can be equal.

I have a personal preference of wanting to move online friends a little bit into the offline realm, whether it be through face to face interaction, phone calls, text messaging via cell phones or even postal mail. That way, I have both online and offline friends and I can treat them equally and consider both to be important, while preferring the offline world a bit more than the online world, regardless of whether the friend was originally an online or an offline friend.

3 random things online and offline friends can offer

To help you figure out the answer to this question more, I am listing below 3 random things that online and offline friends can offer to you in their respective worlds.

3 random things online friends can offer

1. More privacy
2. More space
3. More ways to listen to you - you can send an e-mail or an online message to a friend anytime, even if they are not online

3 random things offline friends can offer

1. More powerful interaction
2. More physical privacy
3. More powerful ways to listen to you

So, do you consider your online and offline friends to be equally important? If you do not have online or offline friends, would you consider them to be equally important if you ever did have both online and offline friends, or would you prefer one over the other?

Please let me know. Also, if you have more things in mind that I can add to the above “3 random things” lists, please let me know and I will add them to this list and give you credit. Thank you.

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[update September 2nd, 11:35 am PST]
Simonne, in the first comment and answer to this question, said that “The online-offline split is not very clear.” I have added 2 sentences to the end of the 2nd paragraph in this article to briefly explain the difference between the online and offline friends I am referring to. The 2 sentences added are “Also, by an online friend, I am referring to friends we make solely in the online world. By an offline friend, I am referring to friends we make solely in the offline world.” Thank you Simonne.
[end of September 2nd, 11:35 am PST update]

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To help you decide the answer or give you more information about the nature of this question, I would like to present to you 5 random benefits of meeting distant relatives in person and 5 random benefits of meeting them online. If you had to meet your distant relatives in person, your choices could be to walk, drive, take the bus, horse, train, plane, ship, etc. For chatting online, you could type things via chats or e-mails, having voice chats, do webcam, etc. For this question, I would like for you to keep two things in mind.

5 random benefits of meeting distant relatives in person

1. Meeting a distant relative face to face can show your willingness to know them more. Only chatting with them online may show that you do not consider them important enough to go visit them.
2. Can result in more interaction between family members
3. An offline presence can leave a greater memory impact on many people than an online conversation
4. Hanging out with actual family members can also enable one to help them in small ways, like helping in cooking, helping clean, etc, which results in more family bonding

5 random benefits of meeting distant relatives online

1. Can removes a lot of nervousness that may happen because of meeting relatives for the first time, because of past arguments with them, etc
2. Can allow one to talk more informally than is possible online, regardless of the age of the other person
3. Saves time and money, specially if you are not rich or do not have a lot of time to go meet distant relatives at times when they are not doing anything else
4. Online, many awkward situations can be ignored. For example, one can get to know someone online a bit more and then know them online

Do you prefer having your distant relatives live virtually inside your computer, or do you prefer them living in an offline place where you could go meet them in person?

So, do you prefer communicating with your distant relatives online, or do you prefer meeting them in person?

Please let me know what you think. Thank you for reading. I really appreciate it.

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[update August 26th, 2006 - 9:30 pm PST] Ronald asked below in his comment if I meant physical or mental distance by the word “distant relatives.” I have clarified that in the article, thanks. [/update]

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1. Real name builds a name that others can remember you by in both the online and the offline world
2. Real name adds more authenticity on many levels, where you can be considered the same person offline as the one represented online and vice versa
3. Real name allows you to focus less on the differences of your online and offline representation, meaning you can act almost the same in both the online and the offline worlds and not add complication to your own life

3 random drawbacks of using real name online

1. Real name allows people to easily find you online or offline, resulting in unwanted people to find you online or offline easily
2. If your real name is associated with anything bad in either the online or offline world, it can affect your name in both the online and the offline world
3. Real name takes away a lot of privacy from your comments and posts, where you cannot say anything without both offline and online people knowing who you are

Fake online usernames and fake online nicknames may be viewed as being the same

I would like to differentiate between online and offline nicknames: having an offline nickname can sometimes be related to having your real name associated with it. That is why for this question, I would like to ask you specifically if you prefer using your real name from the offline world in the online world, compared to using any fake name. Some may consider a fake online name or a fake online nickname to be the same. I will leave that choice up to you.

A personal example of a drawback of using real name in the online world

Sometimes it is good to use your real name online, and sometimes it can result in bad things. For example, a few years ago I had participated in a major European human rights organization protest against a major international company. I talked about it online and posted a comment and a post using my real name. Last year, while being interviewed by a completely different international company, the topic of my views against the other company were brought up. Why? Because that other company, which had a history of human rights violation, was now a major business partner with the company that was interviewing me.

The result? Well, I will keep the results to myself, but you can see how such a thing can easily be brought up in different ways by very smart companies. Lucky me for having this site, no? “This site is really evil, I tell ya!” Maybe I should change all my names and names online to “hungry-dummy-101.”

Do you love using your real name in both the online and the offline worlds?

So, do you prefer using your real name in the online world?

Please let me know what you think. Thank you.

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I would like to list below 5 random bad trends of online friendships that I have experienced myself directly.

1. Business transaction means a friendship in progress

   Almost every few days I hear people referring to their business partners or people they are doing business with as friends. It is funny how for such people, the existence of money or business contract or knowing someone famous automatically results in a friendship bond being born.

   People do not know each other’s secrets, each other’s good and bad personal things, and people cannot rely on each other outside of business. People do not care about each other’s happiness or suffering, and no one is willing to make any sacrifice. Yet, such people still call their own kind of people online friends. It is hilarious. It is pure nonsense.

2. People do not know what others expect from the friendship

   A lot of time people who are immature or confused or a combination of those things will get into online friendships and not realize what they want. In every friendship, there should be a small sense of what each one expects from the other. Things that can be expected may include, but are not limited to, trusting each other with secrets, having someone to cheer the other one up in bad times, having someone to help each other during bad times, helping each other achieve something, etc.

   Simply texting or writing one another e-mails seems ok, until someone gets upset about something or until boundaries are crossed. Then, instead of knowing how to apologize or how to let the other person know their personal thoughts so that the friendship can continue, people argue while sticking to their pride and while not realizing that their online actions can also hurt others, both in and outside friendships.

3. Good and bad things related to friendship do not get enough attention

   Some people simply ignore the signs of bad things in an online friendship. Similarly, some people simply ignore the good things in an online friendship. While it can be considered all right to ignore things, a friendship cannot continue until different good and bad elements about it are kept in mind.

   Your online friendship may consist of one person feeling really happy, while you may simply act normal. That can hurt the other person. Your online friend may be really sad because of any random factor, even if that sad person is the one who is always cheering something up. If you do not notice such a thing or do not react to it in any manner, then you have to explain to yourself why you consider such a relationship to be an online friendship.

4. People focus on the online mediums of communication, instead of the friendship itself

   Majority of the online people that I see and run into focus more on the online tools of communication instead of friendship. People focus more on MySpace, and not on MySpace friends. If an online friend deletes their social networking site, all their so-called friends stop keeping in touch.

   A person has to focus mainly on the friendship, and not only on the medium of communication in a friendship. Focusing only on the medium of friendship will result in friendship being reduced to only an online way of using communication tools where we all pretend to have friends, when in reality we do not act like friends. Greeting each other is not a sign of friendship, by the way. If you follow that rule, you can automatically realize that majority of the so-called online friendships are in reality mere interaction sessions between strangers and nothing more.

5. People give friendship advice simply because it is easy to do so online

   This can be the most deadly trait of all traits. I am noticing more and more people giving other people friendship and relationship advice. People start giving advice simply because they are asked for advice, or simply because they feel they can type a lot. Any friendship or relationship advice must be carefully thought of. Many people do not realize that giving advice in situations such as online disputes means that we have to consider all sides of the story.

   Many times, people go online and read a supposed friend’s site or something, and start giving advice without asking any questions or without thinking much about it. Even more stupid are the people who actually take such advice. Would you rather think on your own, or would you rather take and follow the advice of an online person who knows nothing about you, who is only giving advice to pass time, and who does not even care about checking later whether or not their advice helped, or whether or not they should feel responsible for something that happened because of their advice.

The above are 5 random bad trends that I am noticing more and more people follow online. From calling people who give us money friends to not knowing what to seek in a friendship, to not paying attention to important things, to focusing more on the online nature of friendships than the friendship itself, and giving advice simply because it is easy to do so, all of these things contribute to the the concept of friendship being abused more and more, resulting in more fake friendships where friends do not sacrifice anything for someone else. Have you noticed anything similar in your own experience?

What do you think? Thanks for reading.

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If you are religious, you may be focusing on applying your religious principles to the online world too. You may also be acting in ways so that your own religious beliefs are supported more through your online activities. Some examples of this could be to avoid going to sites that hate religious people, to blog or have biased opinions against specific religious people because of your own religious affiliation, and to comment on different places and on almost any topic with information that is derived because of your own understanding of your religious beliefs. Any of these examples or any of their variations show that religion may indeed have some kind of an influence on your online activities.

How being non-religious can also result in religion influencing your online activities

You could be anti-religion, and may actually be doing things online that, on purpose, go against the idea of religion, and thus religion, even though you do not believe in it, may have some influence on your online activities. Therefore, even though you may not be religious, you may be doing something to show, on purpose, some anti-religion things. Some examples of this could be to defend such ideas such as gay rights, abortion, etc. Regardless of the validity of any of these ideas, defending or being against such and any similar ideas shows that you are doing something online because of religion’s influence; even doing things against what any religion says means that religion is doing something to prompt and warrant some action or thought from you.

Is there a middle ground?

There is a middle ground where you may not allow, or may do your best to make sure, that religion has no influence on your online activities. This may involve a few things, including not being biased in any religious belief and by considering all the sides of the story in their equal fairness, by not always defending your religious belief simply because it is your religious belief, and by simply not looking at things with the concept of being religious or non-religious as a guiding principle. Thus, it is possible to be online and not have any influence from religion on any of your online activities. It is very hard for many people, and because of its hard nature such a middle ground can be considered impossible by many people. However, such a ground is possible. You can be as influenced or biased as you want, but you can hide from such influence or bias because of religion from your online activities completely. In my view, it all comes down to you, and whether or not you want such a middle ground.

Regardless of what the influence may be or whether such an influence is right or wrong, do you consider religion to have any influence on your online activities?

So, do you consider religion to have any influence in your online activities?

Please let me know what you think. Thank you.

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Following are 6 random benefits of watching movies on your computer:

1. Ability to start or stop the movie at any time
2. Cheaper
3. No advertisements
4. You can do other things on the computer while watching a movie
5. You can relax at home and do other things at home while watching a movie at the computer
6. You save time by not driving or walking to a theatre

Drawbacks of watching movies on a computer instead of in a movie theatre

Similar to benefits, following are 6 random drawbacks to watching movies on your computer:

1. You are limited to staying around your computer
2. Almost no interaction with others
3. No trailers
4. You become less active
5. You miss the movie environment that the movie theatre offers you, like seating, surrounding enclosure, viewing screen size, sound, etc
6. Compared to going to a movie theatre, staying at home can still give you stress or not set you free of the boring environment you may be around, including your computer itself

I prefer movie theatres to computers, when it comes to watching movies

I watch a lot of movies, and I prefer watching movies in a movie theatre. Usually, the only exception to that is when I have seen all the movies at the theatre or when it is past midnight and there are no more open movie theatres that I can go to that very night. In such exceptions, I watch some movie I have downloaded or rented on my computer.

So, do you prefer watching movies on the computer or offline?

As for the “Regal Cinemas” picture above, I took it in Garden Grove, Orange County on March 16th, 2006, because I found the fused light for the number “6” in th sign very interesting. You can see a bigger version of that picture titled “Regal Cinemas lights out on # 6” on my Eyeography site.

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I have an old friend on Skype that I sometimes call or send messages to. She always responds back quickly. So today, I decided to call her since Skype was not working. She did not answer, and I left her a message. She texted me back after about an hour, saying her Skype was not working and thus she could not talk to me. We always talk face to face when we meet, so on initial observations it may not be easy for many to realize why one cannot communicate easily on channels other than in person or through Skype, even though through Skype one usually either talks or simply types. I asked my friend if I could talk mention her situation on my site, and she laughed and told me “sure.” In this case, Skype facilitates and even allows the existence of many messages, specially for my friend.

An example of Skype crippling business communication

Earlier today, around 5 am, I get an international call from a distant friend that I also did business with long time ago. I know him for a few years, and thus once a year or so we like to keep in touch. He told me that his company support systems were down, as they depended solely on Skype and they needed any advice on how to communicate with about 50 of their big and only clients. Those clients were used to opening up Skype from anywhere and being able to reach the customer support for this company at anytime and to be connected live to an actual support person with a webcam, guaranteed. My friend knows a little bit about my background and enough about my skills, so he thought I could somehow come up with a solution that could fix their Skype-based customer support system for them.

Now that Skype was logging out not only my friend’s company but also customers repeatedly, my friend’s company could not simply say to customers “Hey, Skype is down, not our fault“, since the customers could say “Well, why did you choose Skype as your support system over which you have no control over in situations like these? We need support now. Not later, but right now, at this very instant.” The customers would be completely right in this case. So I asked my distant friend about how their support systems depended on Skype, and I told him that if I feel that the explanation will not help me come up with a problem, I will cut him off. He was really desperate for an immediate, so there was no time to lose with formalities or listening to everything.

He started explaining how their customer support systems worked, and after less than 3 minutes of him explaining things, I was really happy to know more about how Skype can actually help complex systems, but at the same time I realized knowing how Skype worked will not help me find the solution. I had to focus on alternatives immediately, that could do an even better job than Skype for the time being. I cut him off, rather abruptly, and told him I had a few solutions for him, and apologized for cutting him off. The way he told me with enthusiasm and delight that he did not mind being cut off showed me that things were really bad for him because of Skype not working. I told him of a few solutions and alternatives, and told him why one of the alternatives I think would work for him immediately, and how. After the entire thing was finished, I asked him if I could write about it on my personal site, since this is a topic that can affect all of us forever [more of it below]. He told me to wait a bit until later, and that he would call me again, at which time I could go ahead with writing about it while I also avoided mentioning any specifics, names or my exact solution [since he plans to use it from now on as the primary backup], so here is what I have on the entire topic.

Skype is a tool to help your message. Skype is not the message.

Skype is there to help you communicate in more ways. Let us read that one more time please. Skype is there to help you communicate in more ways. Skype is not the message; it is the medium. Let me repeat that again in a little bit more enhanced manner please. Skype is not the message; it is a technological tool. In order to communicate, you should at least have the message you want to convey, and you should what you want to convey through the message. If you know the message and know that you want to communicate something through the message, you can easily switch from one medium to another and from one tool to another in order to come up with alternatives to things like Skype.

Skype was known, until today, for almost never having any connection problems. The Skype platform itself is considered very robust and reliable by many, and thus even though it is a severe problem for many that is still happening at the time of this writing, this recent downtime in Skype communications will probably result in many companies and many people seeking out only alternative backups for the future, instead of seeking out complete replacements to be installed right away. Because of such issues, you should always use technology to only help you in communication, instead of define communication. Technology should rely on your message. Your message should not rely on technology. Technology should revolve around your message. Your message should not revolve around technology.

Control the message. Control the tool. Do not let the tool control you or the message.

If you know how to communicate with people, you will not depend on Skype to communicate with them. You will realize how to communicate and talk normally on mediums other than Skype when needed, so that you do not waste other people’s time and so that you do not bring conversations to a standstill, causing others to be uncomfortable and inconvenienced simply because you depend on Skype to feel comfortable when it comes to communication and simply because Skype is not working. For example, if you can communicate perfectly via Skype but do not know how to communicate via e-mail or phone or any other medium even when you are forced to, that means you have focused more on the medium and the tool, like Skype, instead of the message and the concept of communicating that message itself.

If you are used to asking people how their day was via Skype, you should know how to ask the same question via e-mail or over the phone. If you are used to sending information to people via Skype, you should know how to send the information via e-mail or via actual postal mail to people. If you are used to finding out more about people through Skype, you should know how to do the same via other mediums and tools like e-mail or other instant messengers. If you are used to providing help to others via Skype, you should know what the actual help consists of, and offer that help via other mediums and channels, including doing it in person.

Revolve the medium and technology around your message.

Revolve the medium around your message. Revolve technology around your message. Majority of the bloggers and majority of the people in the offline world revolve their message around other things so much, that if anything other than the message changes, the actual message gets affected and changes too. It is like 99% of all PowerPoint presentations at majority of the conferences, where the message revolves around PowerPoint. It is simply nonsense, and it is simply hilarious.

More and more people know how to communicate only through certain tools; they do not know how to communicate a message.

Is it a bad thing for more and more people to know how to communicate only through certain tools and to not know how to communicate a message? For me it is very bad, as it is more important for me to focus on the message and communicating that message, instead of focusing only or more on the communication tool provided. Otherwise, the message revolves around the tool, and thus the message gets limited and changes. As I said above, control the tools, instead of letting the tools control you or the message.

A great example of this? You do not send items that need shipping depending on how they will be shipped. You send whatever item you have that needs shipping. No matter what the item is, you ship it in a rugged piece of cover, whether it is an envelope or a box, so that shipping companies like UPS, DHL, Fed-Ex or USPS can deliver them via a truck, a train, a plane, in person or even on a boat. That is how much importance you should give to the message when it comes to realizing how much focus, compared to the message, you should put on the medium and the tool. The medium and the tool need a lot of focus, but that focus should be less than the original focus that you put on your message and the way you want the message presented or communicated.

What happened to my personal friend and my business friend?

As for my personal friend, Stephanie, if you are reading this, feel free to call me anytime, as doing a voice chat over Skype once a month can be the same as having a conversation over the phone.

As for my distant friend with the business issue, he called me again about an hours ago and told me that he is happy with the solution I offered and that it is helping keep all the customers around, even though Skype is still having issues. He said my alternate solution has literally saved him thousands of dollars per each customer, without considering the costs that the company might have experienced had any customer left the company in the last 12 hours or so. I told him “You better be happy, since it works and I didn’t charge you for it. ” Well, he is so happy, he offered to pay for my entire trip and accommodation if I ever decide to visit him and his company to see if I would want to work there in the future.

Those are some points of one of my small thoughts of the second. Thank you for reading about what happened in an hour or less of my life today. I really appreciate it.

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