Category Archives: Internet

I spend too much time on Facebook. I get alerts on my phone, too many really. There’s no good settings that let me see replies and comments to stuff I post without also seeing people who randomly reply to a friend’s photo that I may have commented on six months ago, but I digress. It’s one of the first sites I check when I log on to my laptop, and then I proceed to check it hundreds of times per day. No lie. Sometimes I log on, see nothing, close the tab and repeat the whole process because I forget that I was just on Facebook.

It’s ridiculous, but I bet it’s pretty common. I know I’m not alone. Dez tells me how she feel Facebook sucks her soul. We wait for clicks and comments and links. Somehow, those stupid red bubbles validate our existence. I’m no fool. I realize how unhealthy this is. I know if I stayed away all day and simply signed on to a couple likes, that would be okay, but the way I check constantly is not. I also know that I am fighting to open Facebook in another tab as  I type this.

It’s part of the Internet addition, but there’s something else with Facebook. The rest of the Internet constantly has new information. I can find facts. Play games. Write blogs. I can look at photography or even porn if I want. The rest of the Internet offers something new, and I only need to find it. Facebook is addicting because it’s personal. I wait for those alerts because I assume they’re about me.

You know the kicker, though? It’s often not. It’s those stupid six month old photo comments. It’s updates from friends that I don’t care about. Sometimes it’s game requests — which I just took the time to block a few. It’s rarely something  I actually want to see. That’s the punch line of this whole thing. I’m sure my brain reacts like I’ve taken a hit of something when I see the little red alert, but then it drops right back down when it’s what it usually is: useless trash.

You see, I’d kind of like to deactivate Facebook. I prefer much of the communication I do on Twitter. I feel like I have more useful conversations. Sure, they’re fewer and farther between, but I also say more with fewer characters. Something inside me suggests that more people on Facebook will see or care, like I’m signal boosting in a way that’s necessary. Usually, I wind up realizing how far I am from emotionally intimate to most of these people or heartbroken when my close friends don’t manage to respond in the right way or a timely manner. Again, not healthy.

Of course, my selfish mind assumes everyone saw and they’re just ignoring me or something else just as ridiculous. It’s not true. Facebook makes it difficult to see updates. Not everyone checks it as frequently as I do. Others might not feel like they can reply to a post, etc. I know that reasonably, but Facebook makes me feel so unreasonable.

As I was saying, deactivation is becoming more and more appealing, but it’s just not an option. I can’t deactivate my personal account and continue to operate the page for Reviews by Cole. And the interactions I have on the page, while sparse, are rewarding. The numbers keep going up. The people who fan me do it because they want to. The groups I’ve joined have been informative if not exactly warm communities. (Many of them are warm, but I have a habit of distancing myself). And Facebook has become a necessary part of my blog’s success.

Regardless, I will attempt to reign in this beast.. right after I check Facebook once more.

Lately, I’ve been describing my day as an adventure, usually in Middle Earth. It’s part of my effort to “write every day as a story.” I’m trying to view my life as an adventure, to describe everyday–and sometimes not-so-everyday–events in an exciting way. I’m trying to psych myself up for my own life and view things with a light heart. Tofa took note of my Lord of the Rings references, and it prompted this entry.

Initially, I wanted to motivate myself to write more blog posts that painted my life as exciting and adventurous, but I just don’t have the time or energy to do that, especially while I’m busy packing and cleaning for a big move. So blog posts have been sparse. So have tweets, to be honest. You don’t need to know how much I am packing and moving and how exhausted I am, but–trust me–I am. One might even say that it’s a little more adventure than I normally like, which is also true.

Perhaps, in the end, this exercise has taught me that not all adventures feel adventurous or fun, and certainly not all quests are ones you have a choice in undertaking. A necessary adventure is still an adventure. Maybe?

Okay.

I’ve seen a pretty steady increase in my Twitter followers lately, as evidenced by each and every annoying little email I get from Twitter. I really ought to turn off those alerts, because I can see new followers on the Twitter apps on my devices.  This recent influx is due to several geeky things I’ve said or done lately, I think. They were all quite accidental, but they all are related to my geekery.

The first bump occured when I replied to Felicia Day’s post about being a woman in geek culture. I only got a few new follows, but I had dozens of replies that day. I had no idea that she would reply, or that others would include me with their conversations with her.

The next group of followers hopped on board, because we were all discussing the Mars rover landing. I happened to tune in as NASA was waiting for the first data from Curiosity, and I had a fantastic time joining in the conversation and experiencing that connection with other people.

Finally, I accidentally expanded my network by vicariously living through friends who had attended this year’s BlogHer convention. Suddenly I was reading the posts of and conversing with other blogging ladies. Is that geeky enough for ya?

I write quite a few articles about social media strategy and SEO, and I know how important engagement is but, to be perfectly honest, I usually only chat on Twitter with people whom I already know. I add existing friends, and while many of them are geeky bloggers, I don’t spend a lot of time concerning myself with the trending topics. My new followers make me think that this might be a mistake, especially if the goal is to strengthen my blogger network. Plus, I’ve really enjoyed those conversations and new topics.

So, there you have it. If you accidentally want a bunch of new followers:

• Tweet a celeb
• Geek out about NASA
• Talk a lot about a convention you’ve never visited

If you’re like me, you might not like signing up for new services. I have hundreds of accounts everywhere, and if something isn’t worth my time, I’d rather skip it. However, Webmaster Tools is one of the things that you absolutely shouldn’t skip. Here’s three reasons why!

Indexing with a Sitemap

Chances are, Google won’t naturally index every page of your site, so Webmaster Tools lets you go in and add a sitemap that lists them all. If your website has several hundred pages, give it a few days. Then, when you log in, you get to see how many pages are indexed. At first, I used my RSS, but I was surprised to see how little this helped. Google only knew about 11 pages. Eleven! I opted for a WordPress sitemap plug-in, instead, and now 1600+ pages are indexed. Nice!

Google won’t miss a page when you add a sitemap

Changing Sitelinks

Sitelinks are what Google calls all those little sublinks under your domain when someone searches for the domain name. Once your pages are all indexed, you’ll start to see them. Google automatically picks ones that work the best, but the search engine isn’t always right. You can log in to Webmaster Tools, click on a property and add certain links to the ignore list, which strongly encourages the search engine to promote other links, instead. It’s not perfect, but it does afford you some control over your website’s appearance in the SERPs.

Fix Those Broken Links

Four oh dear! No one likes a broken link, but I had quite a few, because my site had been around for so long. I’d transferred blog platforms and domains and permalink structures a couple times. For whatever reason, Google was still thinking that pages from six years ago still existed, when they didn’t. I could have saved some hassle if I started it on my broken links after the indexing completed, but I waded in before. Regardless, you can use Webmaster Tools to look for broken links on your own website–and then fix them! It results in a better experience for your users, and those links can help your PageRank in the long run.

The one thing that I would change about my Kindle Fire is the keyboard. The OS doesn’t let me switch to Swype or FlexT9, a similar app that I’ve actually purchased from Amazon’s Appstore. The Kindle’s keyboard isn’t entirely like that on my iPod, but it works better on the iPod, because it’s so much smaller. However, the size of the Kindle Fire keyboard isn’t the only thing that bugs me, it’s the content. The dictionary doesn’t contain basic words like “recognize”. I’m constantly doubting myself because I type a word but it shows the red line indicating that it’s not a real word. Basic works that you would expect a dictionary to know are missing, while it includes hundreds of useless words.

It’s also sexist. What do I mean? The Kindle Fire’s dictionary doesn’t include any word that describes female anatomy. Vagina? Nope. There’s no vulva or clitoris, either. There’s not even any nipples.  Of course, “penis” was in the dictionary. Now, I’m sure it wasn’t Amazon’s intent, but it means that the Kindle fire doesn’t include medical terminology for the human body, but it’s oddly suspicious that it’s only words that describe female anatomy. One could argue that Amazon wants to avoid words for possibly adult terms, but then again there’s that reference to “penis.”

Am I actually offended? Well, no, but I am curious.