Back from a week off I was ready to sink my teeth into some great new Web 2.0 stuff. Not entirely meant to be, I guess.
The first thing I wanted to try was Ping.fm. I am not able to keep up with updating ALL of the sites I’m now trying to test out and follow. Apparently, Ping.fm will do that for me. It’s a great idea – enter your update in one place and it updates many, most, or even all of your social networks.
One problem. Its in beta, and I don’t have a code. Ok, so I dropped a Twitter and asked if someone has a spare code. Then I went to their web page where they basically said one could grovel for a code. No such luck there, either – they’ve taken that down while they play catch-up a bit.
[sigh]
Ok – so what else is on my list?
Mind Mapping. One of my faculty members asked about mind mapping and I recently received a link to a student technology blog that gave a list of some. I went back to check that and there are 8 or 9 options there – too many for me to just arbitrarily start checking. So I dropped another Twitter asking if anyone could recommend one over another.
Last resort, I decided to check out Plurk. I really didn’t want to get into another microblogging site, but one of the faculty here started doing it a month or so ago and I’ve heard a few other folks talking about it. I like the time line idea, so I signed up. I had very little time left to play around with it, but I did post a first post – my user name is sorry-afk for those who want to look me up or friend me there.
I then posted to Twitter that I’d become a Plurker and instantly got the following from someone who follows me on Twitter.
@sorry_afk Nooooooooooooo! (enough said)
Um – ok, so I Twitter back, trying to find out more. We’ll have to see.
I did get an immediate response on Plurk from that faculty member I mentioned. I guess we’ll have to see how that one goes. It will be nice to have someplace to go when Twitter is offline or down, which seems to happen a lot lately. And if I ever got on Ping.fm, maybe I can update both Plurk and Twitter at the same time (as well as Facebook and a few others.)
Do you use Plurk? Or Twitter? Or Both? Any thoughts on either? How about on Microblogging in general?
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Micro-blogging in general? Twitter, Google Reader and my blog tool are the tools I consider to be indispensable pieces of my personal learning/professional development environment.
In regards to a specific tool, I've been using Twitter for more than a year now and recently created a Plurk account to give it a try - more out of being over-exposed to the Twitter-whale than anything else.
My first impression? Plurk is a visual and web usability disaster. First, scrolling left to right is a design and usability no-no. Having to mouse over to see the full text of the Plurk is too much mousework for me (scroll and read is my preference). And, with the Plurks distributed up and down the timeline and then left to right, there's no consistency to the visual alignment of text to be read - also a design issue.
Perhaps I'm the only one so conditioned by 35+ years of reading neatly aligned/formatted text arranged in a simple left-to-right/up-down layout along with 15+ years of reading online where anything I'm meant to see or read fits the *width* of my screen since the only scrolling that should be necessary is up & down.
-Chris
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