By Gaby Feile
Geek: A person who is interested in technology, especially computing and new media. Geeks are adept with computers, and use the term hacker in a positive way, though not all are hackers themselves. (source: Wikipedia).
I am not a geek and I am not so sure if I will ever be one. I am also not a wannabe geek who owns all the latest gadgets just because they are in fashion and look good.
I am a responsible, enthusiastic, fascinated end-user of hardware and applications that make my life easier and of new media that make my life more exciting and connect me with interesting people - and geeks. Maybe you would call a person like me a geek follower, geek sympathiser or geek whisperer. I enjoy talking to geeks, learning from them and consulting them when I am about to purchase a gadget or when I am helpless with my existing machines. Luckily, my helpless states have gone down to nearly “never“ since I have bought my MacBook Pro - one of the few gadgets I own and really love.
Anyway, lately I have felt the urgent need to consult my geek friends, their friends and friends of them. Being active on all those social networks, keeping up with my e-mails, blogging, and on top of it being responsible for the social media activities of my employer, I am somehow running out of time. Don‘t get me wrong, I totally enjoy every minute of it and am totally into this new way of communicating. I can even see some withdrawal symptoms when I am off-line. However, the other side of my personality misses personal interactions, joint activities and old-fashioned staff like reading a newspaper (especially during breakfast at the weekends).
So, I am officially consulting all you geeks out there to help me (and maybe millions of “co-sufferers“) out.
As I believe this is how you work, I am giving you a project specification:
Current situation:
- I have three private and one business e-mail addresses
- So far, I have “protected“ myself from 24/7 availability and hence do neither have a Blackberry nor an iPhone
- I own one mobile phone which I only use for phone calls and SMS (for private and business), though I have three sim cards for two different countries
- I write in two languages on two blogs and each blog has approx. 10 extra gadgets to administer, promote and monitor them
- I am owning 2 domains which have not been activated yet
- I have profiles on XING, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, xinterconti, German Emirates Club, TEDx Dubai, Wordpress, Amazon, Google (and whatever belongs to them), some private forums, my local consulate, and various loyalty programs
- My music comes from iTunes, my photos are on iPhoto, Picasa and Facebook
- I have online banking facilities with two banks (on- and offshore)
- I am a subscriber of god knows how many newsletters and blogs
- I am handling the profiles of my employer on Facebook, Twitter, youtube, LinkedIn, Wikipedia, Google, you name it
- In my job I am using a variety of programs and applications
- Some contingency needs to be added to this since for sure there are more places where my personal data is saved
Current challenges:
- I need to keep track of all the different user names, and even more difficult, the passwords. Of course, I am trying to use the same log-ins on all sites. Yet they wouldn‘t always allow this, as you know. The requirements to create passwords come with the same variety as the kids of Angelina and Brad.
- Two thirds of the e-mails in my inbox come from “do-not-reply“-addresses and request me to confirm a new contact, inform me that somebody has confirmed my contact request or is following me, let me know that I have received a message (and not always is this message included), tell me that somebody has reacted to one of my posts, has joined a group or given me a present, it is somebody‘s birthday, or that there is new posts in the forums where I am active.
- If I want to keep up with all those news or even want to react or reply, I need to log-in to the various platforms. And here we are at challenge 1 again plus it costs a lot of time and might cause some more of those messages.
- When some of my personal data changes (or I got a better photo I want to use), I need to update all of those sites manually.
- I have no overview of all the statements I have ever posted and which are visible to the public or at least all the users of the specific sites.
The requested solution:
- Is a platform that links to all my profiles with only ONE log-in
- Is a one-stop solution that updates data and status on all or selected profiles
- Has a dashboard that shows me all that is going on at this very moment or even at past periods including a history of my posts
- Collects all those updates and prioritises them for me to decide which of them I need to react on or read
- Gives alerts for urgent or extremely interesting things
- Just as a Personal Assistant, deletes the things I do not need to know or takes action on my behalf
- Sends me a regular summary of all activities including my blog and website stats (as specified by me)
- Makes my life easier while still keeping up the excitement
- Saves me time and so enables me to do my work, engage in projects, read the newspaper or a book, and meet up with others in real life
And this is what I want to know from you:
- How do you personally handle the information overflow?
- Do you agree that an application like this has a huge demand?
- Or do you think I am crazy, insane or over-reacting?
- Does something like this exist?
- Any idea if something is in the pipelines of Apple, Google or Microsoft?
- Is anyone of you maybe personally working on something similar?
- If so, do you want to hire me as a test user?
- And would you mind if I enthusiastically helped you promoting your gadget on all my sites?
I am really looking forward to the reactions from geeks and non-geeks on this. Posting them here, by the way, is possible without creating an account, and I will not send you an e-mail.
This could be another interested test user (out of this world, though):
ping.fm is exactly what you need if you want to post one update on all services. Downside: duplication if someone is following you on all services...
ReplyDeleteThe other option is to create a "flow" of information. I've posted my flow here: http://friendfeed.com/got-meme/e68c75f3/my-social-flow-yo-meme
Use google analytics for weekly/daily/monthly emailed statistics.
A Google account can be used across multiple services e.g Blogger, Wave, Google Reader (which I use religiously to read feeds).
There is only one thing that all services have in common: email. Setup email notifications for everything and you'll have a central place to view it. Some services even allow you to post back using email.
There are many ways to achieve this ... you'll need to play around with it.
Thank you, Ahsan, for this professional reply.
ReplyDeleteSome of those things I am using already, yet it still is not what I want. The "playing around" is the problem, you know ;-)
I want one dashboard from which I can do everything and am happy to treat all the sites individually.
Am still hoping...
Good thoughts! I've had similar ideas several months ago and also wonder why it is not available yet (at least I haven't heard of a solution yet). I'd love to try and set up a prototype but unfortunately I don't have the time currently. I'm also not sure how much the providers allow to address via interface. Another risk is that if somebody gets access to your overall protal site he'll automatically have access to all your other sites. Anyhow - as everybody is using similar passwords on the different sites it doesn't really matter.
ReplyDeleteI'm interested to see whether somebody else has already found a solution! Or is somebody here interested in trying to set up a prototype together with me? Shared work wouldn't mean too much for the single person!
Dear Marion,
ReplyDeleteThank you for your comments. I am happy that there is people who take the issue as serious as I do. And you seem to be a pro - or a geek :-). Let me post something on Twitter to attract more people to this post and see if we find some who can help. As you know, I would be pleased to be a test user....
Sounds good! I've already spent some time thinking and discussing what Web 3.0 will be like - what will be next steps and solutions. In my opinion we'll get more and more intermodal tools (hardware, software, portals, etc.) connecting everything - but only if you stick with solutions of one company (e. g. Google, Apple, etc.). If you want to stay independent it will take a lot of effort and research.
ReplyDeletePS: I try to be a pro - not a geek ;-)
Used to work on such things several years ago, before switching to logistics which is lots of fun also. Still it wouldn't be bad to do some programming to stay up to date!
One platform to access all id's - OpenID
ReplyDeleteProfile updation- currently under processing, might come from Microsoft, and Facebook
Give alert for urgent things- all means, yes, SMS alerts from gmail, FB, twitter, myspace
No, YOU yourself control your profile, nothing gets deleted on web itself, NOTHING.
Stats- yes, a lot of sites do, some free, some paid, all those you owns a page on facebook can easily tell you how convenient that is.