I thought the Soviet states gained independence fifteen years ago. Anyone? No? Guess I'm alone in that belief. (In other words, revisiting RSS...)

I used Bloglines' search tool, Technorati, Syndic8, and Topix to locate feeds. Bloglines and the two "t"s were the easiest to use, by leaps and bounds. I still don't understand what I was looking at in Syndic8's search results, and the main page was clunky and looked like its HTML had been written by a fourth-grader. I liked the range and organization of Technorati's results, and I appreciated the thoroughness of Topix. The Bloglines search tool allowed me to locate some interesting blogs, including The "M" Word - Marketing Libraries and Tame the Web: Libraries and Technology. I also found the New York Times Book section through a Bloglines search.

I would like to note that I did not add any of these to my Bloglines newsreader account because of my strong anti-newsreader leanings, which I mentioned earlier. But I suppose that's all right; it was not part of the explicit assignment for us to add them to our accounts, only to explore them.

new fascinations

Another film starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano? I'm seriously hoping this could this be a new trend...

No. 8 of the library things: LibraryThing

Doing this from the hotel in Pennsylvania...

Went to LibraryThing and created an account. Added five books to my "library" (just a few favorites, notably Bandits by Elmore Leonard and the Rebecca Miller's screenplay of The Ballad of Jack & Rose). Unless something is wrong with the site (as it was while I was signing up), this should be my public shelf.

LibraryThing was interesting. It reminds me of the Shelfari and the Visual Bookshelf applications on Facebook. My Visual Bookshelf keeps track of books I've read, books I'd like to read, and books I'm reading now. It operates by the same principle as LibraryThing, pulling most of its data from Amazon.com. I can write reviews, recommend books to friends, and even buy books directly from Amazon through the Facebook application. My Visual Bookshelf currently contains 104 books, but I add to that whenever my friends add books to theirs. = )

Something about "RSS" feels vaguely communist, doesn't it? Anyone? No? Guess I'm alone in that feeling.

I have discovered something through this exercise! I don't like Bloglines. In fact, I think my feelings might even be slightly stronger than that. On my laptop, I have one subscription to the one feed I really care about--and the only one on a site which is difficult to navigate when trying to find the updated material--and I check and maintain that through IE, and it works really well for me. In almost all other circumstances, I prefer to visit sites myself. You know, when it comes down to it, I'm a pretty simple kid, and I don't feel like I need some external site metamanaging my interests for me. The truth is, if I need information, I'll seek it out, and if I don't feel like wading through the business/capitalist aspect of the site to find what I need, then I probably haven't needed it badly enough. I feel like Bloglines is a remote control for the Internet--you don't have to get up and change the channel anymore, and neither do you have to navigate away from one site! It's kind of ridiculous. Plus, Bloglines is ridiculously user-unfriendly. And I hate that the feeds show up on the left. What's up with that? I feel like I'm going to get a cramp when I look at the page. So far, I haven't discovered a way to change the layout.

So, despite every fiber of my being screaming for me to stop, I created my very own Bloglines account, and I added five feeds, including two of the recommended ones (I chose BBC [despite not having any need for or interest in BBC news] and a co-worker [my mother]). I'm hoping that means I'm done with Numero Siete.

Facebook vs. MySpace

My favorite of the online social networking sites is, by far, Facebook. I find it much easier to search for people and interests there than on MySpace. For instance, I've never actually been able to search for anyone on MySpace with my last name. Even the three people on there who I know have my last name (my cousins) don't turn up after such a search, whereas they do on Facebook.

As for "famous" people, Kevin Pollack, Jon Lovitz, John McCain, Regina Spektor, and Jill Sobule are all my "friends" on MySpace, although I don't really know them. I have several bands as friends, too, some of which I know personally and some of which I don't. Brian Huskey is one of my MySpace friends, and while he is marginally "famous," I also know him in real life. (Incidentally, more and more "famous" people and bands are branching out to Facebook; Carbon Leaf signed on in February, and with the new Entertainment application available on Facebook, a lot of filmmakers, musicians, and writers can make fan pages to create buzz for their new work.)

As for fan pages, some of my "friends" are actually plays, novels, and literary reviews written by or edited by my friends. The MySpace pages serve as promotional tools for them. A friend of mine had a play in the New York International Fringe Festival, so he created a MySpace page for it. He has a book coming out next June, so he just created another page for that. Both Another Day on Willow Street and Band Fags! are now my "friends."

I am not a member of any groups on MySpace. I don't like the MySpace groups. I much prefer Facebook groups. On Facebook, I am the creator of the groups "The Villagers" (a network group for Bard students, and a group which I have since left...), "The Laurie Duncan Fan Club" (a global group for friends of my awesome friend Laurie), " 'Old School' Isn't Just a Hyphenated Adjective" (a global group created as a gathering place for alumni of GSGIS), and "I still won't say 'Bloody Mary' in dark rooms with mirrors in them" (another global group, created just for fun, and playing off an old superstition which many of us still have). I am also a member of groups such as "You Know You're from Richmond When...," "Barats and Bereta," "1,000,000 Strong for Stephen T Colbert," "El Azteca is the Shit," and "KD Cash Control n tha people who luv them!!!" Some of these are common interest groups, and some of them are fan-club-like groups.

I also prefer the photo album feature on Facebook to the one on MySpace. Recently, I took a hiking trip in the Blue Ridge and posted photos on Facebook. I was then able to send a link to the album to my friends and family, even those who didn't have Facebook accounts.

To sum up, I prefer Facebook, although I preferred it longer ago, before people could sign up without joining a network--this would be before people could sign up in a regional network, and even before people could sign up from high school networks.

What I think is most interesting is how quickly certain Internet sites have become part of the American vernacular--turning with Shakespearean ease into verbs and adjectives. I think we all know what it means "to 'google' something," for instance, and I have said to many a new acquaintance or long lost friend, "Yeah, just facebook me, and we'll get together." I've even told people I would "friend" them on MySpace (a phrase which I think actually comes from the practically defunct Friendster site). Such terms, I think, are becoming as commonplace as Kleenex and Band-Aid, White-Out and Crescent wrench. And so, with all of that said, if any of you reading this are interested, please feel free to facebook me... but good luck trying to find me on MySpace.