Tech Talk

Will electronic communications splinter into various fragments, as is currently happening with mass media?  This very question was addressed in today’s Wall Street Journal.

Are the days of e-mail dominance to be replaced with a plethora of social networking tools like Facebook, Twitter and Flickr?

While e-mail will surive into the future, it is clear it will no longer be the dominant form of electronic communications.

In fact, the days in which e-mail dominated the way Person A communicated with Person B are already over.  While I continue to send and receive e-mails every day, I sift through more tweets, Facebook messages, RSS feeds and blog postings.  Heck, you are reading one right now.

E-mail is becoming increasingly obsolete. 

Among the reasons:

• Why do you need to ask someone to send you something that has already been posted? 
• Why do you have to e-mail 30 people something you could post for the world — or make private just for a finite group of people in a matter of clicks? 
• Why do you have to send large attachments through several e-mails when you could just post it all online in a matter of seconds? 
• Why do you have to send updates of a project through multiple e-mails when you could simply update a page or communicate in real-time through a chat?

Social networking allows one person to reach the masses in both real-time as well as when the masses want to be reached. 

Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and Flickr all allow users to check up on what they missed in their own time and without being bombarded.  With e-mail, users have to sift through countless worthless and outdated notes and information around the clock to stay current and still risk missing the information they want.  With the more modern social networks, a user could go straight to the information he or she want.

Of course, the splinter of e-communications has its own inherent risks.  Chief among those, in my opinion, is the real chance Person A will not be able to reach Person B. 

With so many social networks available, it is easy to get lost or not be tuned in to the same ones.  If I send out the cure to cancer on my Twitter account, but no one is listening, does it matter?  At least with e-mail, you could make fairly sure it reaches the person.

In addition, the amount of energy and time necessary to stay abreast of all the social networks can be overwhelming and one’s productivity could suffer in the process.  It takes a lot of time and energy to stay current in all the social networks available.   To be blunt, it’s a huge investment.

While I do not intend on abandoning e-mail anytime soon, I recognize the need to stay relevant, up-to-date and branch out.  This is why I am an active social networker across platforms — and think you should be, too.

I was reading a story recently when a term I had never read before popped out at me: The Fifth Estate.

The term, which was used in a Poynter column, encompassed bloggers and aggregators.

“Don’t be dismissive of the bloggers and aggregators who make up the Fifth Estate. Those nontraditional journalists may be the next generation’s Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow,” the article advised.

The article got me thinking.

For years, some people have criticized the media for lacking accuracy, credibility and ethics.  The claim was bolstered by the argument there’s no one there to keep an eye on the watchdogs of government.  However, now there is a group that is not afraid to speak up. 

If the mainstream media makes a mistake or becomes entangled in corruption, the folks in power or the reporting of mistruths, there is a sizeable and independent segment of society that could sound the alarm. 

I believe this entity, made possible with the latest developments in technology, could ultimately push the collected press to produce stronger, deeper and more accurate stories — and allow the public to rest assured knowing someone is keeping an eye on their sources for news and information.

Exciting news is emerging from the moon.

Three different spacecraft have discovered “unambiguous evidence” of water on the moon, Space.com reports.

The article explains:

The moon remains drier than any desert on Earth, but the water is said to exist on the moon in very small quantities. One ton of the top layer of the lunar surface would hold about 32 ounces of water, researchers said.

A Brown University planetary geologist told the Web site that the revelations “opens a whole new avenue [of lunar research].

The discovery could bring potential future lunar bases closer to reality.

Please click here to read the full report.

Unidentified flying objects have been spotted again on Google’s homepage just after midnight Eastern Time this morning.

This is the third time this month aliens have appeared on the Web site.  When Internet surfers click the image, they are directed to search results pertaining to H.G. Wells, who was born 143 years ago today.

Wells wrote “The War of the Worlds” in 1898 describing a Martian invasion of Earth.

For background, please check out my most recent post on the subject.

I am not sure when I first heard of Delicious, the social bookmarking service that allows users to tag, save, manage, search and share Web sites, but I am sorry I didn’t try it sooner. The site is as practical as it is simple — and a must-use for everyone. 

As a person who regularly uses multiple computers and browsers each day, I have long struggled with what to do with my bookmarks.  I’ve tried storing them in multiple places — including on flash drives and as a Google document.  However, nothing I tried seemed ideal until I tried Delicious.

This site is great.

In addition to serving as a free place to store your bookmarks online, the site makes cataloging and searching them easy.  It also makes finding similar sites simple by checking out the bookmarks of folks who have saved the same sites.

Delicious also offers browser add-ons to make saving and cataloging your bookmarks even simpler.

I intend to utilize Delicious multiple times each day.

To check out my bookmarks, please click here — and connect with me.

The most recent alien sighting at Google

Unidentified flying objects have been spotted around the Google homepage twice this month — giving birth to wild speculation as to what will happen next.

A mysterious Google logo appeared in the form of crop circles suddenly Tuesday morning. Around the same time, coordinates pointing to 51.327629, -0.5616088 were transmitted without warning or explanation through Google’s Twitter account.

Last week’s alien-themed logo depicted a UFO abducting the second of Google’s O’s.  When one clicked the logo, a search page detailing “unexplained phenomenon” emerged.

Many Internet surfers, sci-fi phenatics and followers of Fox Mulder concluded the map coordinates are centered over the very spot in Surrey, England where the first UFOs landed in H.G. Wells’ 1898 “War of the Worlds.”

The first of two UFO sightings at Google this month.

Some conspiracy theorists have deduced that the Googleplex has been taken over by aliens, while others say it is an appropriate means to mark the 143rd anniversary of Wells’ birth, which coincidentally happens to be Monday.

Even National Geographic reported that new crop circles, and provided a little history and perspective.

Several Web sites have reported that a third message could be released next week, at which time the signs may become clear.

The truth is out there, as so much as you want to believe.

Facebook has recently unveiled yet another Twitter-like feature.

Users of the social networking Web site can now tag their friends in their statuses and posts by simply typing @ followed by their friend’s name, Keith Whamond, executive producer of Hearst Connecticut Media Group Interactive, has informed me through, what else, Facebook.

For example, if you would like to tag me in a Facebook post, and we are friends, all you have to do is type @Jamie DeLoma.

You could, for instance, post “Wow, @Jamie DeLoma wrote yet another spectacular blog!”  And, ta da, a link is created just like on Twitter.

While this is clearly a great development, it also demonstrates that Facebook is continuing to play catch-up to Twitter.

Several weeks ago, Facebook announced that it was redesigning its search.  As it rolled out to more and more users, folks instantly compared it to Twitter’s exisiting search.  And then, as I wrote about yesterday, Facebook introduced a cleaner, less cluttered site called Facebook Lite that resembled… Twitter.

While it is good for Web sites, or anybody for that matter, to acknowledge their short-comings and rectify them, it is also important for folks to introduce new, effective features that OTHERS will mirror.

Facebook, are you listening?  Or do you want to become a has-been like MySpace?

The discovery of fake moon rocks in a museum has set off alarms around the world that some of the precious gifts Washington gave out as gifts around the world are lost or missing, the Associated Press reported.

According to the report, nearly 270 rocks were presented to more than 130 countries from the Apollo 11 flight in 1969 and the Apollo 17 flight in 1972.

“There is no doubt in my mind that many moon rocks are lost or stolen and now sitting in private collections,” Joseph Gutheinz, a University of Arizona instructor and former U.S. government investigator who has made a project of tracking down the lunar treasures told the wire service.

One would think that these out-of-this-world souvenirs would be kept under lock and key. Considering that the chances of retrieving additional lunar rubble is at least two decades away, wake-up calls should be sounding around the world to make sure these precious gifts are safe.

On the black market, according to the AP, even the smallest moon rocks go for hundreds of thousands of dollars.

To read the full story, please click here.