Monday 16 February 2009

IF IT'S GOOD ENOUGH FOR STEPHEN FRY...

Twitter, Twitter, Twitter - it's the phrase on everyone's lips, the next Facebook, a social revolution etc. Stephen Fry and Andy Murray are on there, to name a few celebrities, but the idea is essentially that you post short status updates to tell people what you're doing. I may be mistaken, but I thought this was precisely the point of Facebook updates!

Why would I want to pay 10p a message to tell everyone what I'm doing every hour when I could do it for free by going online a few times every day instead? It beats me, and to be honest my Facebook status updates are usually a shameless plug for my blog, a comment about the sad downfall of Southend or Newcastle United, or my opinion on the news - so not really what I'm doing at that moment.

But although the idea you can follow celebrities around sounds interesting and it's quite cool that I'm snooping on John Cleese and various Guardian journalists, I just think it has limited appeal as it's a poor imitation of Facebook without the bonuses of walls, videos and photos. I could even do my blog on Facebook if I wanted! By combining everything under one roof, you have a much more straightforward outcome.

I own a PDA, DAB radio, FM/AM radio, camera, camcorder, mp3 player, USB pen drive, laptop and various other accessories. Put this all together (with high quality) in a mobile phone and we have lift-off. Until this technology becomes widely affordable, we will continue to use individual gadgets - and it's the same concept for the web. This is how Google plan to dominate the world, as they aim to make it the website for everything. Putting it all together, what have you got? Convergence, my friend. Facebook has a good chance of world dominance too if it can get this right.

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The '25 Random Facts About Me' craze has been sweeping across social networking sites, and even Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg (right) has found time to compile a list. As you would think, this is a game where you list random facts about yourself - and amongst Clegg's 25, you can discover that he has eaten fried bees in China and always consumes biscuits before fruit. How interesting. However instead of listing my own, I thought you would find it far more interesting for me to list the best five from my friends. They shall remain nameless for privacy purposes, but maybe this excercise is about as pointless as playing the real game anyway...
"4. I can write with my feet" (professional musician)

"16. For the last 3 months of 2008 there was an owl in my freezer" (magazine journalist)

"8. I have been air lifted to hospital from a horse ridding accident where I was knocked unconscious and broke a few bones - my shoulder still pops in and out of joint to this day" (Sheffield Wednesday fan)

But my favourite of all from a marketing executive:

"1. Erm"

What does that tell you?! I don't think he'd score high marks for that in any meeting...

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I must recount my epic journey last night, as I'm still getting over it! I was on holiday with the family in Nayland, Suffolk, and mum was driving me to Bury St Edmunds to get the last train back to Sheffield (19:00). However I didn't quite plan the timing very well and ended up missing the train by two minutes. Uh oh.
We decided therefore to drive to Peterborough, where my next connection would be waiting, on the advice of the Bury station manager that it would take about an hour. So we sped up the A14/A1 (not above 70mph of course!) and I made it onto the station platform with two minutes to spare. Phew. Then I found out my ticket was first-class, when I'd actually paid a standard fare. So it wasn't all bad, but I nearly didn't make it back to Sheffield at all! Apologies to mum though, as a trip that should've lasted 1h30m ended up taking 4h30m. As I said on Facebook (not Twitter), she's probably the best female driver in the world :)