Posts Tagged ‘facebook’

26 Mar

Taking A Break From Facebook: Goodbye For Now

Posted by Douglas in Social Networks, Technology, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , .

I’ve finally done it. I suspended my Facebook account. I’m going to take a break for awhile. Don’t worry, Facebook is still sending me e-mail occasionally so I can still keep in touch somewhat. From their website:

Note: Even after you deactivate, your friends can still invite you to events, tag you in photos, or ask you to join groups. If you opt out, you will NOT receive these email invitations and notifications from your friends.

I thought their account deactivation page was very clever. I’ll share it below:

Don't go, everyone will miss you!

Don’t go, everyone will miss you!

I’ll still see some stuff via e-mail. I’m not sure how long this will stick but I’ve set myself a goal of 30-45 days. We’ll see where it goes from there. If you would like to keep in touch with me until then you can find me on DouglasWard.net, on Google+ or on Twitter. See you soon!

I did it! I'll be back later!

I did it! I’ll be back later!

24 Mar

Taking A Break From Facebook: Downloading Your Archive

Posted by Douglas in Social Networks, Technology, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , .

Facebook has a feature allowing the download of your complete profile. This includes photos, status updates and most of the rest of the information that was uploaded to their website. Since I’ve decided to take a break I thought I would go ahead and download my archive. Just in case I decide to not reactivate my profile I would like to already have my files downloaded.

Start by heading over to Account Settings and clicking on the link to download a copy of your Facebook data.

You can download your entire Facebook Profile!

You can download your entire Facebook Profile!

Click the Start My Archive button to start the process. This is when you start waiting for the archive to process. If you have years of history on Facebook (like I do) then it might take awhile.

Click the button to start the archive process.

Click the button to start the archive process.

No big decisions can happen without being asked twice if you really want to do it.

facebook-download-link-3

Every major question needs to be asked twice, right?

Now we wait for the archive to process. Facebook will send you an email with a download link once the file is ready.

...And now we wait.

…And now we wait.

Facebook also has an option for downloading an expanded archive. This archive contains a lot of the internal system information that Facebook tracks behind the scenes. It includes login times, who you are friends with, etc. This archive processes a lot more quickly but doesn’t contain any of your pictures, status updates or any other personal information.

facebook-download-link-5

The expanded archive includes more technical data than just your posts and photos.

Same prompt as before when you click the button to start creating the archive.

facebook-download-link-6

The screen that you see while waiting is nearly the same as well.

...And now we wait, again!

…And now we wait, again!

That’s about all it takes to get your files (in theory). My archive failed twice. After spending a good deal of time trying to figure it out I gave up. I’ll take another swing at this later and see how it goes. I hope it works better for you!

22 Mar

Taking A Break From Facebook: Decision Time

Posted by Douglas in Social Networks, Technology, Websites. Tagged: , , , , , .

I spend way too much time on Facebook. It’s been bothering me for awhile now but I’ve ignored it. At last count I have 242 friends in that service. With all of the groups that I subscribe to, my likes (and my friend’s likes) and various other interactions there is a lot of background noise on that site. I spend a great deal of time filtering through that noise.

Some of my friends post genuinely funny, witty and relevant content. I love interacting with them and finding out what is going on with them and their families. I also enjoy keeping up with my own family. Facebook keeps me in closer touch with them than I ever was before they started using it. It is a very valuable tool for interacting with the people that I am journeying through this life with.

The rest of the system is a giant noise generation machine. People post the same memes and joke photos repeatedly. Blocking game notifications is a lot like playing whack-a-mole. My likes and my friend’s likes keep cluttering my news feeds with advertisements. I won’t even comment on presidential elections, the gun control debate, how much I love Jesus, support the troops or any other major news story of the day. My news feed settings seem to change from time to time, burying content from the folks that I interact with regularly underneath a digital waterfall. It’s true that everyone is entitled to their own opinion. If you take that one opinion and multiply it by 242 and the sound can be deafening.

I don’t mean this to be a complaint against Facebook. I’ve been using it since it was first released to the public. I still enjoy using it. I just remember when I didn’t need to spend a lot of time every day keeping up with all of that content. I’m burned out. I need a break.

It would seem that the easy solution would be to cut into my friends list. We all have a bunch of folks that we added on a whim, or because it seemed like a good idea at the time. Maybe they were much better friends in the past than they are now. People change. People move on. Paths diverge and people head off in opposite directions. No hard feelings, right? It turns out there are hard feelings after all. Somewhere along the way people started tying their personal identities into their Facebook profiles. Some people (myself included) don’t mind if they get removed from other’s friends lists. It’s nothing personal. After all, it’s just a website, right? Others take it personally. The first time I had to deal with personal fallout from my friends list was an eye-opening experience. Fast forward to today and I’m getting tired of worrying about it. I could hide them from my news feed. I could even limit what they can see. That’s not the point though. It’s my profile, not theirs. When I start feeling like I can’t remove people because of how they will take it then I’ve lost control of my information. I find that to be unsettling.

The fact that I’m tired is also troubling. It means that this social network has become way too heavily integrated in my daily life. I’ve been going back and forth with this decision for a long time now. I’ve finally made up my mind. I’m going to take a break. I’ll write about that process as I work through it. Will it stick? Will I be able to handle the silence? Time will tell. I’ll write more on this decision later. For now though, it feels good to have finally made up my mind. Instead of reading Facebook today I think I’ll read a book!

10 Jun

Social Networks Redirect Issue

Posted by Douglas in Church, Internet, Security, Social Networks. Tagged: , , , , , , , .

While managing the network infrastructure at our Annual Conference I have run across a weird redirect issue.  All of the computers in the News Room running Windows XP, Vista and 7 started redirecting to MySpace pages.  In the beginning it was redirecting to an actual profile.  After an hour or so the website started returning 404 errors (as if they had removed the profile).  We first noticed the issue yesterday but dismissed it as a glitch.  This morning the issue has arisen in full force.  I can’t find much online about the problem but here is what we have done that seems to clear it up for us.  I believe that this issue is spreading through the social networks but I cannot confirm it yet.  Since we are running nearly all of our news coverage through those websites we are sitting ducks.  The latest antivirus definition files from multiple vendors doesn’t seem to help either.  Please be sure to comment if you have any additional info.

Affected browsers: Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari.  All are running the latest patches as of this writing.

Steps to remediate for Windows XP users:

  1. Start – Run
  2. Run the program “cmd” for the command line
  3. Enter “ipconfig /flushdns” and hit Enter
  4. Restart the browser

Steps to remediate for Windows Vista/7 users:

  1. Start – All Programs – Accessories
  2. Right click on command prompt and select Run As Administrator
  3. Enter “ipconfig /flushdns” and hit Enter
  4. Restart the browser

I have seen some small issues with Ubuntu and Mac laptops.  We resolved those by dumping the browser cache, restarting the network connections and restarting the browser.  I will post an update as I learn more.

Update: June 10th @ 5:24 PM

I’ve done a good bit of googling and found out that the issue is most likely linked to our brand spanking new Linksys WRT320N wireless router (relevant threads can be found here and here).  Apparently that entire family of routers has trouble with DNS requests.  I didn’t see a sticker on the box when I bought it that said something along the lines of “I suck at DNS.”  Who knew?  I updated the firmware at our dinner break.  We’ll see how it goes from here.

7 Aug

Ignite Raleigh

Posted by Douglas in Internet, Learning, Social Networks. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Ignite Raleigh

Ignite Raleigh

A good friend of mine invited me to attend the Ignite Raleigh event this week.  Neither of us really knew what to expect but we decided to go anyway.  We had a blast!  The Lincoln Theater was packed with over 500 attendees.  Everyone was walking around with their smart phones out, Facebooking and Twittering the event live as it happened.  It was techie paradise.  Of course yours truly rolled in with a nearly dead Blackberry battery…

The presentation format was the best part of the evening.  All presenters were limited to five minutes.  They could use 20 slides that automatically rotated every 15 seconds.  Anyone that went over their time limit was instantly Rick Rolled.  The presentations were varied and, of course, straight to the point.  The theme for the evening was “enlighten us, but make it quick!”  The tight time limit guaranteed a succinct presentation.  It was refreshing to not get bogged down in details.  We saw some very clever powerpoint presentations.

Some of my favorites:

  • 19 Reasons Why Raleigh Is Better Than the Silicon Valley by Wayne Sutton.  Wayne laid many of the reasons why Raleigh is better than our west coast friends.  Turns out one of the reasons is because we have big nuts!
  • What Would Jesus Tweet? by Derek Brown.  This was a pleasant surprise.  There was an audible groan from the audience when the topic was introduced.  He killed it.  By the end of the presentation he had the attention of everyone in the building.  This one was my favorite of the night.  I hope this video goes online.  If it does I am going to download it and keep it for later.

All of the presenters did a great job.  I hope video will be posted shortly.  When it is I will share some of my favorites here.  You should follow their Facebook page or Twitter page.  I’ll definitely be attending this next time!

11 Jul

Dinosaur Trail Preview

Posted by Douglas in General, Learning, Social Networks. Tagged: , , , , , , .

Peek-A-Boo!

Peek-A-Boo!

The family and I visited the Museum of Life and Science in Durham today to participate in their Dinosaur Trail Preview.  The trail officially opens up on July 25th, but is now open for members and special guests.

A few days ago the museum posted an invitation on their Twitter feed for all bloggers and tweeple to come by for a special sneak peek.  For a few hours this afternoon people were walking around the trail snapping photos and updating their twitter feeds, facebook pages and flickr accounts.  It was a lot of fun seeing some familiar names and placing them with faces.  My children had a blast.  Some parts of the trail were still under construction but the majority of the big exhibits were ready.  We can’t wait to come back again when the trail is completely open!

Here are some of the pictures we took during the trip:

Dinosaur Trail Preview

7 Jul

Rethink Church

Posted by Douglas in Church, Social Networks. Tagged: , , , , , , , , .

whatif

What if this works?

During our annual conference I was heavily exposed for the first time to the new Rethink Church campaign coming from United Methodist Communications (UMCOM).  Being on the conference staff I have heard rumblings about this initiative, but this was the first time I a full presentation.  The communications folks started talking about this months ago when they came back from their big annual meeting.  I watched the presentation on the floor of conference, watched the DVD movie that was passed out and read the fliers.  I met with the UMCOM representatives and discussed the project.  I even discussed it with our own Communications Director.  I realized after doing all of this research that this project may be leaving our people in the local churches wondering what the heck this is all about.  Here’s a summary of the different resources I used to research this big project called Rethink Church.

The new campaign doesn’t seem to be just one website.  It appears to be three different websites and directions.  UMCOM has done significant work on some of their older and more established websites as well as launching completely new ones.  Let’s discuss each one in turn.

Rethink Church
I first started at the Rethink Church website.  The website address redirects to the umcom.org web template.  This site contains the majority of resources for the Rethink Church project.  It fully explains what the advertising campaign is and how it is carried out.  I found the Rethink Church 101 page to be particularly helpful.  The What If video is worth viewing.  How can we propagate it via the social networks without the ability to embed it?

Find-A-Church
My search then brings me to the Find A Church website which had been completely revamped.  This domain name also redirects to the umcom.org web template.  It looked almost nothing like the older site that I was sending people to.  This appears to be a major thrust of the new campaign.  The site has been updated with a new Google Maps widget and links to the appropriate Conference/District websites.  As before the information is as up to date and helpful as the individual church enters into the system.  As long as they enter the information the site is very helpful.  If they don’t participate (or maintain updated data) then the site isn’t very useful.  That’s not a knock on the UMCOM effort however.  The old adage about garbage in/garbage out definitely applies.

Ten Thousand Doors
The last piece of this new campaign is found at the Ten Thousand Doors website.  This site seeks to match up interests with United Methodist churches in the visitors immediate area.  You can pick from a list of multiple attributes such as Advocacy, Hobbies, Family Life and Volunteering.  You then enter your zip code and a mileage radius for the search criteria.  I’m not sure how these attributes are assigned but they are certainly interested.  If I had to guess I would say it was when the church updates their Find A Church information.  This site also integrates with Google Friend Connect and the major social networks.  You can also read news updates from various sources.  Some of them are pulled from United Methodist sources.  I’m not sure where the other news sources are chosen.  They don’t seem to have a whole lot of relevance to UMCOM or Methodism specifically.  The most interesting parts of this website are the comment forums and the ability to find volunteer service opportunities via Google Maps.  These are possibly the two most useful features of the entire campaign.  These sections allow people to communicate with each other as well as easily match up their skills with nearby service opportunities.

Social Networks
You can follow along with the major social networks as well.  These areas are fairly self explanatory for seasoned social network veterans.  I recommend them all.

I wish all of the different domain names were built into the Rethink Church website.  It’s a shame that they redirect away and lose some of the branding.  That may be a technical issue with the back end system but it’s still a shame.  Overall I like the new tools available on the Rethink Church website as well as the revamped Find-A-Church site.  These changes are encouraging.  They seem to be designed for people who are not already exposed to the United Methodist Church.  We’ll see how it goes long term.  I hope the outcome is positive.

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