Social Media – Page 7

Make Your To-List Into A Game With HabitRPG

February 12, 2013February 12, 2013iOS, Social Media, Technology, Video GamesLeave a Comment

In the past, I have tried so many different to-list programs and apps, but none of those ever worked or I’d forget about them and just resort to the traditional pen and paper. That was until I discovered HabitRPG. I’ve been using them since the beginning of their Kickstarter campaign (which is now more than fully funded) and my productivity has certainly increased.

What’s cool about this to-do list and habit list is that it is like a game. There are a few game-like applications out there, but they are too much game. This one is simple, you gain experience points and gold and silver. These can be used to buy weapons and armour as well as any guilty pleasures you can custom define. For example, you can make that Game of Thrones episode cost 5 gold so you can feel like you earned it.

It runs on an honor system. You check off all the things you do right and take off points for what you do wrong. If you cheat, you’re just cheating yourself anyway. There’s also a Chrome Extension you can use to gain and lose points for vice and productive sites.

The site is still in it’s infancy with more upcoming features and a promised iPhone/Android app. They’ve just introduced a “party” feature so you can compete with your friends and perhaps do group challenges and boss battles in the future.

Trying Out Fiverr

January 29, 2013Social Media, Technology1 Comment

Yesterday I was bored and ended up on Fiverr.com, a site where you can sell services for $5. I decided to make a few of my own gigs for pure entertainment. I will retouch 3 of your photos for $5 or draw you as a cute stick person for $5. I doubt either will get any traction but I thought it was an interesting experiment.

Retouching photos includes any of the following things:
-removing an object from background
-adding filters to image
-removing imperfections
-changing colours

What Was Your First Ever Screen Name?

January 16, 2013January 16, 2013Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

I had a long conversation with someone recently about how stupid our first screen names used to be. Even when I was little, I liked to have all my internet identities fall under the same pseudonym in the off-chance that I might run into someone I knew in a game or IRC chat room. Yeah yeah, I was a nerd as a kid, still am.

Due to my innate desire to have some sort of personal branding as a kid, I actually have not gone through that many reincarnations of nicknames. However my first ever screen name was pikachu12345.

This was probably due to the fact that it was grade 5 and Pokemon was very very popular, and the first time it was introduced in North America. Yahoo mail was actually a thing people used back then and the e-mail was also attached to my beloved Pokemon gifs website hosted on the now defunct Geocities.

After a while, I got bored of the Pokemon gifs site. Well no, I found out too many gifs on a website back then made your computer freeze so I stopped. Hotmail was becoming a popular alternative for Yahoo! and so I switched my username to anime_angel28 because my 13 year old self thought this was cute. I also might have been obsessed with Anime.

Embarrassingly (even though I became less obsessed with Anime), I used this e-mail/username until I went to university when it became commonplace to use your name for things. And so future employers would not think I am some strange Asian freak. In addition, sometime in high school one of my friends gave me teepoo as a nickname, and I begun using that for screen names in games and the newly rising social media networks.

The other nicknames no longer exist (nor do most of the networks I used them on) but I still use teepoo sometimes. When googled, it brings up a few things that are associated with me. An ex.fm account, this WordPress blog and probably some of my past work making anime wallpapers.

Only in the past few years, with the rising of Twitter did I really start using my own name publicly for things. In the era of social media, hiding behind a screen name is a thing of the past. If you’re afraid of people making a connection between your online/offline self than maybe you shouldn’t be on the internet. So, what was your first ever screen name?

Update: After writing this post, I decided to change the logo of the blog to reflect the future.

Who Should Blog?

January 7, 2013February 12, 2013Social Media, Technology3 Comments

A couple weeks ago, I wrote one of my many restaurant experiences on this blog. I hit publish and then proceeded to paste the link on my Facebook wall. Most of my friends enjoy reading of local eats, so I do the occasional share on social networks. A minute later somebody posted this rather passive aggressive Facebook status:

“Unless you know what a mirepoix, paysanne or bain-marie is you shouldn’t write about food. Eating out with a camera doesn’t make you a writer.”

Technically, it wasn’t personally directed at me, but the timing was just too perfect. For the record, I do know what all those things are without looking them up on Wikipedia. I do my fine share of making fried rice, cutting vegetables for stir fry and watching the food network. Anyways, all those things are irrelevant to what makes a blogger.

If you’re reading a food blog, unless it’s a recipe blog, nobody cares if the carrots were julienned. In the Yelp and Foursquare era, people just want to know that things taste good. That is what the food (books and other) posts are for, to give an opinion on something. If you don’t care about my opinion than kindly hit the x at the top right corner (or left if you’re on a Mac). Also, what are you doing here in the first place? I have a modest following of people who do care.

In the internet age, everyone has the right to blog. All food critics probably started out paying for meals themselves and evaluating them. Just like all music bloggers started out paying for concerts and practising their camera shots and reviews. Blogging is not a god-given right to somebody with a pretentious degree in a subject area. In fact I don’t think people would even want to read something with a lot of condescending jargon. Would anybody care if I told you some song had too many parallel 5ths? If you are passionate about a subject, or if you just like sharing things regularly then go ahead and blog.

I lulled on this subject for the past few weeks and then realized. Who cares what one dude thinks? As long as you can maintain readership and a following on your blog (even if it is a few really dedicated fans), then keep writing. You have every right to.

Ps. I love all my followers. Thank you for continuously following my life adventures and nerdism. I promise to bring you a lot more in 2013.

Unplugged For A Day

September 5, 2012September 5, 2012Art, Photography, Social Media, Technology2 Comments

With a view like this. Who needs the internet?

As my previous post mentioned, I went to my uncle’s cottage last weekend. It was 3-4 hours up north, and a boat ride across the lake. I was surrounded by nature and 3G was sparse.

I previously wrote a post, Could You Give Up the Internet for $50 million? where I admitted that I could not give it up. However this weekend unplugged for a day I learned that I was able to (at least for a day). I also realized that there were benefits to it. It was stress-relieving. I didn’t need to constantly check my e-mail, think of what to tweet or give a damn about what my friends were posting on Facebook. I didn’t even have the urge to instagram photos of our BBQ’d food.

Instead I taught Teddy how to swim, went hiking and took some breath taking photos of my surroundings. The only time I did use my 3G was to download Sky Map, an app that names all the constellations in the night sky.

Though I will probably not quit social media or the internet, sometimes I wonder how much of the real world we’re missing as we sit in front of blinking screens.

It’s a big and beautiful world out there.

That Is Old News…

August 22, 2012Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

Yesterday we all learned the existence of Chadvil. An hour later I turned to Nash and said something along the lines of “WHY ON EARTH ARE PEOPLE STILL TALKING ABOUT THIS? IT’S OLD NEWS. WHY ARE THEY JUST FINDING OUT NOW?” Then he asked me how something from an hour ago is considered old news. It made me ponder.

Before social networks the phrase “That’s yesterday’s news” was still a thing. Now with Twitter and Facebook we are inundated with vast amounts of information, and we are able to find out about things almost instantly. It’s scary to think that maybe years from now an hour ago will be too slow. Imagine what our future kids would say. That’s 5 seconds ago’s news.

Whether it’s celebrity deaths, world news, the viral video, they’re instantly forgotten about as soon as they are posted. It also makes me wonder how fast actual news outlets have to be in order for them to survive. That’s a bit frightening.

The People Who Read This Blog (or So I Imagine)

June 21, 2012June 21, 2012Life, Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

I haven’t written here in a while. I was busy attending NXNE last week and catching up on photo editing this week. However, I looked at my WordPress Dashboard today and there was a striking amount of people visiting in the past week or so. I honestly light up when I even know 10 people read this, but the past little while have been in the 400-500s.

I started to ponder, what you all must be like and came up with this list of people who I think read this blog:

Trolls
You people search the internet for random things. Some way or another, your quest to find junk landed you here.

Dog Lovers
My bichon is obviously the most adorable thing in the world. I assume 90% of you follow this just to look at cute puppy photos.

Food Lovers
Maybe you’re a food lover, and you are here for the delicious photos of food. I’m not sure if my recipes are well written enough to warrant anybody following them, but I am going on an adventure to eat all sorts of things!

Adventure Time Fans
I’ve only ever had one post about Adventure Time, but it is the top Google search of all time here.

My Best Friends
Thank you for visiting, just because we’re BFFs. I know you probably think all that on here is terrible, but you’ll come back anyway.

3 Year Twitter Anniversary

April 23, 2012Life, Social Media, TechnologyLeave a Comment

Today marks 3 years for me on Twitter. I joined the social networking site in it’s earlier years, when most people thought it was just a place for glorified Facebook statuses. In the beginning, I probably was even guilty for using it in that way.

However, I realized it was much more. It was a way to keep up with news, read some interesting stories and last but not least, meet some great people. I’ve met some of them offline who were not just local people, but from different parts of the world. I’ve heard and seen some great music that I would not have otherwise.

If I were to give up one social network, it would be Facebook before Twitter. I will be tweeting for many years to come.

5 Types of Really Unnecessary Tweets

April 19, 2012Social Media, Technology1 Comment

I’m reaching my 3 year anniversary soon on Twitter (@tianafeng) and it has become a valuable tool for information, as well as networking with interesting individuals. Unfortunately with that also comes spam, and clutter of people who post things that are well, unnecessary.

1. Tweets about going to the gym. Unless you work in the fitness industry as a trainer or a blogger, I feel like your followers don’t need to know you are trying to work off that burger you instagram’d 10 minutes ago.

2. Retweeting your praises. I already think you are somewhat awesome if I follow you. You don’t need to keep retweeting how much other people think you’re awesome. Does this raise your awesomness level? No. Remember, people who don’t follow you won’t see these anyway and those that do might see you as an egotistic jerk.

3. Tweets about how much your life sucks. Maybe there is a reason your life isn’t turning out the way you want it to, because you enable it to. Broadcasting it to the world isn’t helping you in any way and shuts the doors to any opportunities that may come your way such as new friends or even job openings.

4. Tweets about your crush or the boy/girl you are stalking. Yes, these exist. Whether it’s the attractive person at the coffee shop, or the friend of a friend, don’t do it. You appear excessively creepy, and maybe that’s why you aren’t in a relationship. Stop looking at Craigslist’s Missed Connections and just go talk to the person. The time you spend tweeting about them can be well spent actually talking to them.

5. Passive aggressive messages to a specific person. Whether this person is actually following you or not, these are very unnecessary. If you have a feud in real life, resolve things offline. The online world doesn’t need to know you hold silly grudges. Besides if you post something stupid like “I HATE YOU!!!!”, someone might mistake it as to them.