“Facebook is a social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. People use Facebook to keep up with friends, upload an unlimited number of photos, share links and videos, and learn more about the people they meet.” Basically it’s a site where you upload your picture and profile and then try to find old friends or meet new ones through networks. As I recall it started as something only available to college students or alumni. I joined quite a while ago using my college alumni status and didn’t do much with it since then. Now that it seems to have opened up to everyone and thus is getting a lot more traffic. So far I have had the pleasant surprise to get connected with someone I went to Japan with during college and a guy who was an English teacher with me in Nagano. A really fun surprise to get in contact again with people who I haven’t seen in a long, long time.
Category: Internet
I was surprised today to learn that a colleague of mine knew about this blog. I don’t necessarily hide it from co-workers (it is the internet after all and anyone can see whatever I write if they want), but as it is quite personal content you really have to search to get to it. Or so I thought. Now that I’ve been writing long enough and because I have registered the name “globalflight” in a number of other places, it is quite easy to find my entire presence on the web. Especially if you know my last name, which I purposely don’t post here, this site is the number one hit on Google – i.e. anyone can find it who knows me with about 2 seconds of effort. I know by being out on the internet I choose to expose myself, or at least part of myself, to the world, but it is really so easy now to find out a lot of someone you know with just a click of the button. Have you Googled yourself (or one of your friends) lately?
For whatever reason I (and probably everyone else living in China) am not able to access my Gmail account since last night. If anyone is trying to reach me you can leave a comment on this post and I’ll get back to you.
Not only is Gmail being blocked right now, Google (including even google.com.cn) is also completely blocked for some reason. I wonder what Google did to get the government angry? Or is this just one of those temporary blockages that no one can explain and mysteriously goes away after a few days?
I’ve had good success with Gmail over the past year since moving to China. Until now even when Google.com or Gmail.com have been blocked I have always been able to download my email using a regular email client like Thunderbird. This time – no dice. No access at all and no idea when the situation might improve.
>>> UPDATE: It seems this was a problem with OpenDNS. I turned it off and now both Gmail and Google work. I can’t believe OpenDNS would block Google (that would be suicidal) so I am guessing it was actually due to a conflict between my provider here in China and OpenDNS. China Telecom probably doesn’t like people using DNS other than their own. Who knows.
Do you Jaiku? If not, maybe you should. Can’t figure out what it’s all about? Well, it’s like Twitter but a little different and better (maybe). Don’t know what Twitter is? Well, then you’ve already missed one of the big happenings on the Net over the past couple of months. You may not be trendy enough to keep reading this blog. Just kidding…
Click here to read up on Twitter. Click on this and discover Jaiku. Simply, it’s all about answering the question, “What are you doing?” and bringing together your online presence.
It might just be a trend that dies out in a couple of months, but for now you can find my presence on Jaiku here.
I continue to be in love with Skype. I’ve been a regular user since moving to Shanghai because it has given me consistently better voice and video quality compared to my old friend MSN Messenger. Today I had a 3-way teleconference between myself here in Shanghai, Japan and the USA. It would have been 4-way if my brother’s mic was working. The quality was good and, as we were all using the Skype client on a computer, it was completely FREE. I remember my first years of living overseas and trying to keep in touch with family and friends. It was expensive. One or two hundred bucks a month easily for international phone calling. Now – nearly nothing.
If you haven’t used it before just go to the Skype page and read up on it. Simply put it is free voice, video and instant messaging between Skype users. You can also pay to “Skype Out” and use it to call at very low rates from your computer to any normal phone number. Just be sure to get a headset otherwise the person on the other end might have difficulty hearing you unless the built-in mic on your pc is particularly sensitive.