Testing

I had a really cool first post from the new WordPress iPhone app all typed out and then the save button disappeared and the app ate it.

Now all you get is this sad little post instead.

Tweet or Feed?

Okay, so there has been this debate of sorts going around the tech/geek community for the last week or more basically paring twitter vs FriendFeed. And like I said on iJustine’s blog about it, I think the entire debate is null because it’s like comparing apples to an entire fruit salad. Twitter is micro blogging and FriendFeed is an aggregate for 41 different applications, including Twitter, with other features like commenting. You really just can’t compare them other than to say that they are both social networking sites but so are MySpace and Facebook and look how different they are. (In case you don’t get how they are different: MySpace sucks balls and Facebook doesn’t. IF YOU LEARN NOTHING ELSE FROM THIS BLOG POST, LEARN THAT!)

The debate is also questioning which one will become mainstream first, if either ever will. My opinion? I don’t really see it happening. When I try and explain the concept of twitter to non-geek folk, they just look at me with a blank stare and inevitably the same response: But, why? They just don’t get the micro blogging community as a whole. Now, compare it to a MySpace bulletin and eyes light up and lights come on and angels sing and THERE IT IS! There’s UNDERSTANDING in the eyes, they get it! Then you say, well just cut out all the spammy shit and do it in less then 140 characters. And THERE IT IS AGAIN, the blank stare.

I think that realistically, twitter stands more of a chance to become mainstream just because FriendFeed has SO MUCH of Teh Geek linked to it. Walk up to your mom, aunt or dentist and ask them what Vimeo is. Or brightkite. Or del.icio.us. Or hell, even Digg. Chance are if you are reading this blog you’ve heard of all or most of those but I bet you that your “mainstream” friends have NO CLUE. So how are they supposed to ever really grasp FriendFeed, which is just an aggregate of all those services?

Anyway, this post was originally going somewhere else and ended up here. So with that I’ll ask your opinion! What are your favorite Social Networking tools? I updated my FriendFeed accout today to include most of them that I use and there are SEVENTEEN accounts.

My FriendFeed account links to:

1. twitter
2. Facebook
3. brightkite
4. del.icio.us
5. Digg
6. Flickr
7. GoogleReader shared items
8. GoogleTalk status changes
9. Intense Debate
10. LinkedIn
11. Pownce
12. StumbleUpon
13. Tumblr
14. Vimeo
15. YouTube
16. Zooomr
17. Aflux’s RSS feed

And that’s just where I got to before I got tired of adding them to FriendFeed. Add me to any or all or none. I’m just kind of interested to see how many of these ACTUALLY get used because on some of them I’ve signed up to secure the name, played with them a bit, then completely forgotten about them. I’m going to pay attention to FriendFeed for the next few days and see how much any of them actually get used and based on your answers to which you use more, see if maybe twitter isn’t as popular as some of these debates would have you think… but I’m skeptical. I get a lot of twitter traffic.

Dear Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda Kotb,

It pains me to write this because I really liked Hoda before today but: What the fuck were you thinking?

Seriously.

I always liked to believe that reporters were given a bad rap. That when people claimed they were taking things out of context, or that practically no background work had been done prior to a segment, that they were just over exaggerating or being whiny jackasses. But today you pretty much proved that the douchebag reporting reputation that has developed on network television is 117% true. You get an extra 17% because seriously, Kathy Lee Gifford? Whoever thought THAT was a good idea deserves an extra 17% of COMPLETE FAIL.

When you interviewed Heather Armstrong today on your show it was clear to me from the very beginning that both of these common failings were true. First Hoda mentioned a passage from one of Heather’s blog posts saying:

Hoda: “You wrote on your blog that you worry that your daughter will resent you because all of her business being put out there…”
Kathy: “Potty training and all those things that are kind of private.”

Well Hoda and Kathy, had you taken time to ACTUALLY READ THAT BLOG POST you’d have quite possibly also mentioned the rest of the passage that explains EXACTLY how Heather feels about it and, in fact, thinks in the long run that Leta will CHERISH all those stories.

From furniture Elhovothat dooce post:

You will resent me for your curfew and the fact that I will not let you leave the house in that mini-skirt. You will resent me for showing up to your school in my pajama bottoms and for raising my hand in a PTA meeting when I hadn’t brushed my hair. You will text message your friends to tell them that I am the most horrible person on the planet because I’m forcing you to study for your exam in the morning. You are going to think that I cannot possibly understand what you are going through, and you will slam the door in my face.

Will you resent me for this website? Absolutely. And I have spent hours and days and months of my life considering this, weighing your resentment against the good that can come from being open and honest about what it’s like to be your mother, the good for you, the good for me, and the good for other women who read what I write here and walk away feeling less alone. And I have every reason to believe that one day you will look at the thousands of pages I have written about my love for you, the thousands of pages other women have written about their own children, and you’re going to be so proud that we were brave enough to do this. We are an army of educated mothers who have finally stood up and said pay attention, this is important work, this is hard, frustrating work and we’re not going to sit around on our hands waiting for permission to do so. We have declared that our voices matter.

If that doesn’t profess the exact opposite of what Kathy Lee was trying not-so-eloquently to imply, that how dare you think about writing about your daughter online and *gasp* POSTING HER PICTURE, I don’t know what could possibly GET IT THROUGH YOUR HEAD short of getting in your face and shouting it through a blow horn.

Had Kathy taken FIFTEEN minutes of her time to ACTUALLY RESEARCH the topic and the person who she was interviewing she might have actually walked away from the interview without looking like the stereotypical, uneducated, assumptive “reporter” that she’s trying to play on TV. And if I had a dollar for every time that I was at my grandmothers and was forced to listen to Kathy talk about her sweet, precious Cody on NATIONAL TELEVISION I too could quit my day job and find something else to pass my time. Like publicly slamming other mothers from my make believe pedestal way up there. *points up*

Both of you are mothers and today you failed your fellow mothers across the nation. You could have turned that segment into a resounding statement about the exploding growth of a community of beautiful, powerful, motivated and brilliant women bloggers. Fellow mothers banding together to form a wave of support for complete strangers, for the mother down the street, for the mother sitting silently on the park bench, for the mother quietly suffering from postpartum depression, for the mother who’s so confused and upset and doesn’t know who to turn to… but instead you chose to go the sensational route.

Seriously. Shame on both of you.

-Anna (proud mommy blogger) Hirsch

If writers stopped writing about what happened to them, then there would be a lot of empty pages.

I am really bad about meme-ing. I hardly ever do them when I’ve been tagged because I can never just give a one word answer, everything requires explanation! And the pressure of having to write is something that seriously feels suffocating to me sometimes. This one has been cool though because it’s only four and the DVR and food questions have been fun to read.

So I catually DID IT! YAY!

Amanda tagged me with this meme…

The meme consists of four questions requiring four answers, and then the tagging of four people.

4 Jobs I’ve Had in My Life:
- Gift wrapper at Sneads! Man, Stephaine and I could even make wrapping boxes in a small cramped room fun.
- Carmel corn bagger/sales associate (HA!) at the great Kern County Fair.
- Computer Sales rep at Best Buy. Please buy the warranty. Please.
- Professional blogger. I think since I’m making money off this site and others now, I can add that to my job list!

4 Shows I DVR
- Big Brother 9
- Lost
- House
- Family Guy

4 Places I’ve Been
(It was hard to pick only FOUR because I was lucky enough to have a Grandma growing up that took us all over the country, literally, when we were growing up. So I picked some of my favorite places.)
- Fombell, PA. I lived there in second grade with my Aunt Cathy, Uncle Larry and cousin Stefanie. Some of my best childhood memories were there. It was like my second home and I miss it dearly sometimes.
- Maui <3
- Washington DC. TWICE! And I can't wait to go back again and getting to take Cassidy with us.
- Mackinac Island, Michigan. I absolutely plan on going back there and staying at the Grand Hotel. It’s on my bucket list.

4 Favorite Foods
- Garlic Chicken Calzone DELUXE from Frugatti’s in Bakersfield
- Any souffle from Bella Vista in the Bay Area
- Clam chowder in a bread bowl from Spash Cafe in Pismo
- Mom: home made fettucini alfredo, Dad: rosemary (fresh of his plant) potatoes and turkey noodle soup (he makes the noodles too).

4 People I Tag
You, you, you and YOU! And Jenn MUST DO IT!! Like, every blogger IN THE WORLD has been tagged with this in the last week. If you aren’t one of them, TAG! You’re it!

*Title Quote: Elaine Liner: We Got Naked, Now What, SXSW 2006

It is bad luck to fall out of a thirteenth story window on Friday

I know that some of you have been twittering for quite some time and some of you have just been recently introduced to the obsession. It doesn’t matter WHEN you started though because the fact is, if you are twittering, you are hooked. You might send a tweet once a day or multiple times an hour, it doesn’t really matter because YOU HAVE BEEN SUCKED IN. MUAHAHAHA. I admit, my obsession has died down some since that first phone bill arrived with all 2,356 text messages listed and Ben was like, “THINK OF THE TREES!”.

I’ve tried to see if I can have just a select few tweets sent to my phone. Like, I don’t need every single one of Scoble‘s tweets (even though I secretly wish I could follow him around from one techy junket to the next) but I would like to get Steen‘s. And Jenn‘s. And Sewwy‘s. (PROPER SEO, Julie! Who, by the way, doesn’t Tweet which makes me sad.) So I think I’ll try when I get home to finally get that all lined up and working properly.

Ben has never really gotten into the whole twittering thing. When he’s seen me send a tweet from the phone or I’ve told him that YOU SO NEED TO TWEET he’s given me his standard “I love you dearly you hot ball of sexyness, but hell to the fuck no” look.

So I have to admit I was a little surprised yesterday the other day when he emailed me a link to a setup that sends you a tweet when your house plant needs to be watered. Surprised because maybe he was suddenly interested in twitter?! NO! Surprised because WE DON’T HAVE ANY HOUSE PLANTS! Well, we do have the one bamboo plant but you pretty much can’t kill those. I mean, you have to TRY and fail them. Maybe Ben would be more interested if there was a way to twitter you when your wife is premenstrual! Dude, somebody should get on that. As long as it doesn’t mean sticking electrodes to my ovaries and stuff. Because, no.

Man, I should really stop blogging when hopped up on Flu medicine.

So um, BLOG GIRLS! Are any of you thinking of attending BlogHer this year in San Francisco? Because it’s SO CLOSE to me. It’s like, right there *points North* and I promised myself last year that I’d attend this year and not be sorry I missed out on all the fun. But the thing is, I’d like to KNOW somebody going. I mean I know OF plenty of people going but I can’t exactly walk up to Heather Amrstong and be all, “HI! I totally stalk, I MEAN READ, your blog and think you are just the bee’s knees and can I sit next to you at the Cool Kid’s table?! Because that would be swell! And you said once that your shampoo smells really good can I just smell your head?! Wait! Where are you going? WHY ARE YOU SPRAYING ME WITH PEPPER SPRAY?!”

Or something.

And all of you who read my blog already know in advance that I’m crazy so it wouldn’t be QUITE as shocking to you. And I’ll probably go regardless but it would be nice to have somebody to hold my hair back after the cocktail parties.

“Do you ever get the feeling that the only reason we have elections is to find out if the polls were right?”

Good lord the amount of money tax payers have had to dish out on Britney Spears in the last few months is a godamn joke. Court costs and armored caravans and paparazzi control. It’s just… blah. At first I thought the whole media circus was kind of LOLful but it’s gotten out of hand. Seriously, they are going back to court AGAIN to fight for “conservatorship” because she apparently hates her dad? Well she’s FUCKING BIPOLAR!! That means she probably loves her dad now and will hate him in 5 minutes. It’s her DAD and he pretty much can’t screw it up because if he so much as buys a pack of gum with her money, the media will alert us in real time. With video.

And it will be BIG NEWS! BREAKING STORY! Jamie Spears bought GUM with Brit Brit’s money! A court hearing is scheduled for 8:00AM tomorrow to BAN HIM FROM HER LIFE. FOREVER.

It’s kind of sad when there are primary elections going on all over the nation but the 5 o’clock news opens with a Britney Spears update.

Speaking of primaries! California’s is tomorrow which means I have about 24 hours to make a final decision between Obama and Clinton. They really are so close on so many topics and on MY “big ones” they’re practically twinsies. When I take those cute little online quizzes there’s a 5-10% split between them so it will basically come down to two things for me:

1) Who do I think is more likely to win against McCain who I think (and hope) will end up winning the Republican nomination.

2) Who do I think will actually keep their campaign promises.

I’m split at this point. I think that Clinton has a lot more experience with this, obviously, and will have the support of a man I already voted for once. And I know that people are saying to judge her separately from Bill’s presidency but realistically, you have to consider that he’ll play a large part in this one too. And also, HELLO! Bush’s DAD was president. Like he’s never turned to pops for advise?

And I think that Obama is a little too “green” to be President. I’m a more than a little wary of putting somebody in office that’s had so little experience, but I do think that he’s probably more likely to beat out a Republican in the general election.

I get all sick and nervous when I have to make a decision about a vote like this because I feel like, what if I choose the wrong person!? I’d feel like I was partly responsible for some kind of failure on a NATIONAL level! Oh, the pressure! And since CA is a blue state it’s even more important! *bites nails*

Okay, I’m going to stop being a melodramatic spaz case now and get back to work.

HAPPY MONDAY, EVERYBODY! I promise not to drink so much RedBull next Monday.

PS – If the comment links aren’t showing up for you a refresh seems to work. Also, you can click the title link to get to the comments. Not sure why they aren’t showing up on the initial page launch and will look into in this evening.