How to: follow-up on comments

This time my post does not offer any instructions (unlike last time) but it is a question to you, my dear reader, because I still have not figured out how to do it.

I do read the blogs of several people, more or less regularly. It was very helpful when I discovered that there is such a thing as a blog reader. I used MyYahoo for quite some time (until I discovered that it has problems updating some blog feeds), then I switched to the Google reader, and recently I discovered Netvibes and I just love it. Netvibes has a similar layout like My Yahoo which I really liked. It also includes Facebook and Twitter updates. And I just love the colors.

I do not just read blogs, I also comment on them as this an important part of being an online community. My problem is that I never remember where I have left a comment, even after a short time, and then forget to check back whether the blog owner or somebody else has replied to my comment. Or it takes me a lot of time, retracing my steps and trying to remember where I have written something the day before. Some blogs let you subscribe to the comment feed. I found that really helpful (but don’t know how to set it up on my own blog). Other blogs use different kinds of “connect” software or services (e.g IntenseDebate). Too bad, that that there are so many different ones. I am not sure that I want to subscribe to all of them.

So, my question to you is: How do you remember where you commented so as to come back and see any replies to your comments? How do you do this? Do you just have a phenomenal memory or lots of time? What are your tricks? Please share!

25 random things about me

I’m back after one week of involuntary internet withdrawal. It took me that long to establish an internet connection at my temporary home (for the next half year). During this week (without internet) I was tagged twice on Facebook with the meme “25 random things about me”. Now I will follow Tim’s example and also post it on my blog.

Rules: Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 25 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 25 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

(To do this, go to Facebook “notes” under tabs on your profile page (if it’s not there, use the “+” to get to it), paste these instructions in the body of the note, type your 25 random things, tag 25 people (in the upper right corner of the app) then click publish).

1. I am dyslexic and had a hard time in school with German and English, but was top of the class in Math. I consider it God’s humor that he called me into a language related work. This year I plan to learn my seventh language.

2. I can’t read a book or article without finding spelling mistakes.

3. I was not allowed to speak the local dialect as a child so my pronunciation sounded rather “German” (not Austrian), to the point that some Austrians would not believe me that I am Austrian, especially after 3 years at a Bible college in Germany. For Germans it was always clear that I am not German but Austrian. Talk about identity conflict.

4. I hate traveling but keep doing it a lot for the sake of God’s calling. I have lived in Austria, Germany, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Mexico, France, USA, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Mali. I have visited Italy, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Switzerland, Belgium, Spain, Zaire, Chad, Kenya, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Santa Domingo, Croatia, Greece, and maybe some more which I forgot. I even travelled three times to Eastern Europe as Bible smuggler before the fall of the Iron Curtain.

5. My original training was in plastic engineering, as part of a technical high school, but equivalent to a college degree. I would have needed to work in this domain for two years to obtain my engineers title, which I never did.

6. I am fascinated by other cultures and love to observe and analyze cultural differences. I also love guessing where people in public come from and what language they speak.

7. I am an organizer and love logic puzzles. My love for whodunits probably falls in the same category.

8. I first need a framework before any detail information makes sense to me.

9. I got my first camera at age 14 and loved photography ever since.

10. I am from the tribe of “hunters and gatherers” – in the past this meant catching frogs, lizards, grasshoppers, and collecting stamps, coins, dried plants, books, song texts, poems, etc. – Now most of my collecting is digital: photos, music files, computer programs, song texts, articles, etc). And I no longer put dead mice in my colleague’s in-baskets.

11. Ten years ago I started painting watercolors. I have experimented with a few other painting techniques but haven’t done a lot in recent years.

12. I love all kinds of dancing and started teaching others to dance at age 16. I once opened a ball with the Lutheran Bishop of Austria, Oskar Sakrausky – he was a very good dancer. During a recent furlough I won two tickets for the Concordia Ball, the ball of the Austrian Press club, in the Vienna Rathaus (city hall). It was a challenge to find all the things (dress, shoes, accessories) AND a dance partner within three days but it was great fun.

13. During school I learned playing recorder, during Bible college guitar, and during a recent furlough I started playing clarinet. I did not get very far with playing the pan flute.

14. During the same furlough I took singing classes and even reached the high B. During the next furlough I learned to more use my chest voice. Regrettably I am better in singing along than singing solo.

15. I love musicals and grew up listening to West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Man of La Mancha, Anatevka (Fiddler on the Roof), Porgy and Bess which my father had on tapes – old-fashioned big tapes.

16. I have a large family because my mother had 7 siblings and my grandfather 12. One of my great-grand-fathers was a wood turner. During his journeymanship he travelled all over Europe mostly on foot – Dresden, Vienna, Trieste, Lyon, Paris, London, and eventually got married in Paris with a wife sent from back home. Another line of my ancestors goes back to the Huguenots from France who fled to Czechoslovakia and later came to Austria.

17. I love watching (and photographing) sunsets and other sun atmospheres and clouds. They can calm my spirit in incredible ways. Watching birds from close by touches my heart deeply.

18. I can be very curious. Which really helps with strange food – I have eaten porcupine, snake, bush rat, monkey, gazelle, elephant trunk, elephant guts, cat, giant frog (3kg! photo below for those who can’t believe it), caterpillars, termites, locusts. Elephant trunk is the finest meat and caterpillars with koko leaves in peanut sauce was my favorite dish in CAR.

19. I won a bike with three gears at age 14 in a youth traffic quiz. I had it for may years until it was stolen in the Netherlands.

20. For a real vacation I like to read a lot and swim, preferably in the ocean with lots of surf. A special bonus is when I also have a chance to do windsurfing which unfortunately does not happen very often.

21. I never stick to a recipe but like to change it and call it creativity.

22. I learned the hard way that maintaining relationships is more important than avoiding high telephone costs.

23. I am half-African when it comes to temperatures after living in Africa for 15+ years – I hate the cold, and everything below 26C/80F is cold for me, which does not mean that I like it when it’s too hot, i.e. above 32C/90F.

24. I think that there are no black people, not even in Africa, because even those called black are shades of brown.

25. I love worshiping God through songs and started expressing them through free style worship dance a few years ago.

At first I could not think of so many random facts, but after reading the list of several friends, my own list got longer and longer, until I had to delete a few.  Let me know if you have done a similar list on Facebook.

Information flow on Facebook

Over the last few weeks I had several interesting experiences with the information flow on Facebook. It really amused me how this sometimes goes. Two examples:

- When the earthquake happened in California I knew it withing a few minutes despite me being in “far off” Africa. I got two status messages*, the first one mentioning that it happened, the second one giving even details about its strength. Shortly after I had another friend in California on the Facebook chat, who told me in more detail how it was for her, and that there is no damage on her house.

(*I have the “Facebook Toolbar for Firefox” installed. New status messages appear as pop up in the lower corner, and if I am fast enough I can read them before they disappear – unless the text is too long – without ever leaving the page or application where I am working at that moment.)

- One day a colleague across town mentioned in her status message that a heavy rain nearly spoiled the books they had just loaded onto an open pickup. I was surprised as it had not rained in my neighborhood. Through the comments that you can add now to the status message (when using the new Facebook layout), I discovered that there were even three rains that day on their side of town. The following day I noticed through a status message that another colleague could not go home on his bike because it was raining. Again, I was surprised as it did not rain in my area. Both places are approx 5 km (3 mi) from where I was. Without Facebook I would not have known.

Not that this information are vital, but they help to connect people. There are even companies who use Facebook as their intranet (see interview about Serena’s use of Facebook). They found that the little status messages can help connect people working in different continents who rarely see each other:

“While pictures were the most requested feature of an Intranet at first, status updates quickly took precedence. At any given time I know as much about my colleagues as they want to share via Facebook (e.g. John B. from IT “is sucking on a Starbucks, yummy”, Scott O. from Sales “says don’t mind the smoke, its just my fingers dialing, Peter S. from Support “is gesturing evilly at the rain clouds).

So I now have context when I next speak to each of them. I actually need to call John about a project we are working on later today and I will bring up his Starbucks comment. Peter and I work together quite a bit and he is based in London, so having lived there recently I can commiserate with him about the weather.”

These status messages don’t give you deep insights but they keep people connected. Obviously, it does not take much to connect people. At least it is a starting point for going deeper. They certainly can lower the threshold for reconnecting. We all have experienced that it can take a lot of effort to reconnect with somebody from whom you have not heard for a long time.

The downside of Facebook – the more I am connected with friends on Facebook, the easier I forget to connect with friends who are not on Facebook. This is similar to when I started using e-mail a lot. I found (and still find) it a lot more difficult to keep up with those that do not have e-mail. Still, when I think back to times when I first arrived in Africa and there was no e-mail. Sometimes the answers to my letters took so long that they came at a time when the issue was no longer of interest. One easily felt disconnected from friends back home.

This is one reason for me to really enjoy Facebook and hope that more of my friends (on three continents) will join.

Informationsfluss auf Facebook

Während der letzten Wochen hatte ich ein paar interessante Erlebnisse mit dem Informationsfluss auf Facebook. Ich fand es wirklich amüsant. Hier zwei Beispiele:

- Als in Kalifornien das Erdbeben geschah, wusste ich innerhalb weniger Minuten davon, obwohl ich in Afrika weit ab vom Geschehen war. Ich kriegt zwei Status-Meldungen* – die erste erwähnte, dass das Erdbeben passiert ist, die zweite informierte mich sogar über die Stärke des Erdbebens. Kurz darauf hatte ich mit einer anderen Freundin in Kalifornien Kontakt über das Facebook Chat Fenster. Sie erzählte wie sie es erlebt hat, und dass keine Gebäude beschädigt sind.

(*Ich habe nämlich den „Facebook Werkzeugleiste für Firefox“ installier, und dadurch sind neue Status-Meldungen sofort als kleine Pop-up (Dialog-) Fenster in der unteren Ecke zu sehen. Wenn ich schnell genug bin, kann ich sie lesen bevor sie wieder verschwinden – außer wenn der Text zu lang ist – ohne dass ich das Fenster oder das Programm in dem ich gerade arbeite je verlassen muss.)

- An einem Tag erwähnte eine Kollegin am andern Ende der Stadt in ihrer Status-Meldung, dass ein Regen fast die Bücher erwischt hat, die sie gerade auf einen offenen Kleinlastwagen verladen hatten. Ich war erstaunt, das es in meinem Viertel nicht geregnet hat. Durch die Möglichkeit einen Kommentar zur Status-Meldung zu machen (wenn man das neue Facebook Layout verwendet), erfuhr ich, dass es an dem Tag sogar gleich drei Mal bei ihnen geregnet hat. Am folgenden Tag erfuhr ich auf die gleiche Weise, dass ein andere Kollege nicht heim radeln konnte, weil es dort regnete. Wieder war ich erstaunt, da es bei mir nicht regnete. Beide Orte waren ca. 5 km von mir entfernt. Ohne Facebook hätte ich das nicht erfahren.

Natürlich sind diese Informationen nicht wirklich wichtig, aber sie verbinden Menschen. Es gibt sogar Firmen, die Facebook als internes Netzwerk verwenden (siehe Interview über Serenas Verwendung von Facebook). Sie erlebten, dass diese kleinen Status-Meldungen helfen, Verbundenheit zu schaffen zwischen Mitarbeitern die in verschiedenen Kontinenten arbeiten und einander selten sehen:

“While pictures were the most requested feature of an Intranet at first, status updates quickly took precedence. At any given time I know as much about my colleagues as they want to share via Facebook (e.g. John B. from IT “is sucking on a Starbucks, yummy”, Scott O. from Sales “says don’t mind the smoke, its just my fingers dialing, Peter S. from Support “is gesturing evilly at the rain clouds).
So I now have context when I next speak to each of them. I actually need to call John about a project we are working on later today and I will bring up his Starbucks comment. Peter and I work together quite a bit and he is based in London, so having lived there recently I can commiserate with him about the weather.”

Diese Status-Meldungen vermitteln dir keine tiefen Einsichten aber sie helfen, dass Menschen verbunden sind. Man merkt, dass es dazu nicht sehr viel braucht. Immerhin sind sie ein Ausgangpunkt um tiefer zu gehen. Sie können helfen, die Schwelle zu reduzieren, die man empfindet wenn man schon länger nichts von jemandem gehört hat. Wir haben das wohl alle schon erlebt, dass es manchmal viel Überwindung kostet, einen eingeschlafenen Kontakt wieder auf zu nehmen.

Der Nachteil von Facebook ist – je mehr ich mit Freunden durch Facebook verbunden bin, desto leichter vernachlässige ich die anderen Freunde ohne Facebook. Das erlebe ich ähnlich wie zur Zeit als E-Mail Kontakt immer wichtiger wurde. Ich fand (und finde es oft noch) schwierig, mit denen in Verbindung zu bleiben, die keine E-Mail haben. Anderseits muss man bedenken, wie es damals war als ich das erste Mal nach Afrika ging und es keine E-Mail gab. Manchmal kamen Antworten auf meine Briefe mit so großer Verzögerung, dass der Inhalt schon fast nicht mehr interessant war. Man fühlte sich leicht abgeschnitten von den Freunden daheim.

Das ist für mich ein Grund mich über Facebook zu freuen, und zu hoffen, dass noch mehr meiner Freunde (in drei Kontinenten) davon Gebrauch machen werden.