In a little bit of self-realization, I spend far too much of my free time online. Browsing has replaced much of my other cerebral activities – like reading real paper-based books or watching TV – and is the primary source of my entertainment and daily data loads.
This shift over the past few years has been driven via efficiency gains. It seems sluggish to wait through commercials on the television at pre-defined days/times in order to get a few moments of content. Sure, the shows can be fun to watch, but I’ve grown inpatient with adjusting my personal schedule to be available on Tuesday evening from 7pm to 8pm to catch a specific show.
And books. Yeah, long-form stories are great, but I am either reading or writing all day long and can’t seem to get engaged with a story that takes many hours to read within a dedicated setting. Maybe my brain has been programed via the “MTV Generation” idea of limited attention span and quick bursts of information. But, when I read books, I generally just get sleepy and want to settle down for a nap. When I read a book, I find my whole body shutting down and my eyelids soon start to get really heavy. Maybe I haven’t found the right subject material, but leisure books have become increasingly hard to complete.
When I am online, I’m a little bit of a “new technology” junky. I’ve done a little (not enough) studying about web-based development and have dabbled in a few initiatives at my work and for others regarding web design. The fact that you are reading this post on my dedicated website says something about this passion (although this website has little of my own creativity behind it). I am fascinated by this whole new form of communication and like to try the “latest” gizmos that become available – like Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc – as I am usually a fairly early adopter.
This all leads me to writing this post. I am currently using Google Docs to author this specific post. This application is an online word processor that is a simple editor for storing information. I am running Google Docs from within the Google Chrome browser. I find it a “clean” browser that does only the things I need it to perform, without unnecessary flash and flutter. Within the Google Chrome browser, I almost always have my Google Gmail account open – as it is my primary aggregator for multiple email accounts across several systems.
Picasa is a great tool for turning an ordinary image into something a little unusual
When I am creating/managing the various images that I publish to this site, I will use Google’s Picasa utility to store and manipulate the details to generate the versions you see. In tracking the performance of my website, I will use the Google Analytics tool to gain some insight regarding how people find me and the types of content they tend to read (or ignore). My website feeds are managed using Google’s Feedburner utility – which also gives some nice, simple statistics on the various subscribers to the site.
I am also an avid user of the Google Reader utility for tracking a larger number of websites and their regular updates. I use it to categorize the various feeds so that I know what types of discussions are occurring within a single industry – such as electronic technology, web development, or productivity. I not only use Google Calendar for my own day-to-day needs, but my Ex and I use it for a central calendar in tracking shared details about my daughter. I also have some of the newer Google technology – Google Wave and Google Voice – but have not fully integrated them into my daily lives (although I have a few plans to do so in the near future).
The task to generate this post was identified using Google’s Task List feature – which I will check off as “complete” once I get this post finalized for the website.
If it is not obvious – I have drunk the Kool-Aid that is Google and definitely utilize nearly all of their major products throughout my day. People talk about moving data in “The Cloud” – but I’ve been there for some time and don’t really intend to come back down to Earth.
