Ice cream and some things to catch up on

I didn't plan it to happen this way but a trip to see my sister in the Alpine city of Turin was arranged long before I knew the 23things programme. I'm not sure it's possible to feel alienated by a zeitgeist - the Germanic root of the word leaves me lost for an appropriate metaphor -  but if this geist does have some form of anatomy then it's definitely given me the cold shoulder when it comes to Twitter and LinkedIn. I was relieved to see my trip coincided with these two things and I did a splendid job of putting it off by spending the majority of the last week eating Italian ice cream, drinking Italian coffee, and doing little else.

So now that I have returned from sunny and stormy Italy. Bouyed by some lovely posts from Twinset & Purls, Peter, Oli, and Eliterate I am going to try with these two technologies and I will write it up later in the week.

First some preliminaries.

I've been on Twitter since the start of October and find it reasonably useful for some kinds of information. As usual Phil Bradley is a brilliant resource, as is Ned Potter, I get updates from friends who are not on other social network sites, or use them less frequently, news from my main news providers (El País and the guardian), and Armando Ianucci always makes me laugh. Thanks again to Twinset & Purls [idem] for this presentation by Ned Potter although I am sorry to say that while I am not all that familiar with the "to tweet or not to tweet" debate, it struck me as a series of straw men felled by an ill-fitting slogan (mixing my metaphors), which is a shame because I generally find Ned really encouraging.   

I have never had a problem with character restriction (I send text messages all the time) but I don't like the neologisms or the information overload and while lists help I think you really do exposure and frequent visits to cope. At the moment I think the most important part is selection - both of audience and feeds - but we shall see later in the week.

I joined LinkedIn a while a go but like other people on the programme failed to see the point. It struck me as being rather corporate and soulless. I just carried out a contact search of my gmail account and the people it suggested weren't really who I want to contact through this medium but I will put some more effort into it.