Matthew Lang

via FGGT

Netter and netizen are just a couple of the words I've heard used to describe the people on
App.net. The social network (dare I use the term) burst onto the scene in 2012 with promise of being a self sustaining ad-free social network that will be paid for by it's users by an annual subscription fee. I joined in August 2012 and now six months on, I'm still thoroughly enjoying the experience on App.net.

I still have my Twitter account and I now use it purely as a marketing tool for freelancing. I was on Twitter during the week, doing a quick poll from other developers. Within a few minutes of posting my tweet, the first in about a week, I got two follower requests from spam accounts and I also got a couple of replies to my question from spam accounts.That's what really gets me about Twitter. It's the spam. With a majority of the tweets I make, I end up with a couple of new follower requests from vague accounts that I would rather didn't follow me. On App.net though things are a little difference. The subscription fee is the perfect entry barrier to weed out spam accounts. I've never have to block a vague account on App.net.Then there's the people. Okay, I'm missing a few people on App.net that are on Twitter, but then there's people on App.net who aren't on Twitter. It's a whole different crowd. On Twitter I mainly follow other developers who work with the Ruby programming language but on App.net I'm following a wider range of people. A wider range means different content to read on a daily basis.

Finally there's the features that App.net are rolling out. In the past few months, private messaging and file storage have been two big announcements in App.net. Now these might be conceived as typical features for a social network, but where App.net is different is that these features were built to be transparent and easily managed by App.net's users. Take the file storage within App.net. With just a click, I can export all the files I have stored in App.net so that I can take them elsewhere. Yes other social networks might offer this, but App.net built this in from the start. Features are built with the user in mind, not with advertising in mind.I'm glad to be part of a social network that puts its users first. It definitely beats being another cog in an advertising platform.

More time to read, write, code, watch, listen. That's the wish.

Realistically I simply need to acknowledge what's more important at this moment in time.

When the Xbox Kinect first appeared, I was all over it like a rash.  I was a big fan of Nintendo’s Wii before hand, so the progress to a controllerless mode of game play seemed like the next best move for my gaming preferences. I bundled all my Wii stuff together, put it up for sale and used the money to purchase an Xbox Kinect. A couple of years later and it seems that the Kinect has not lived up to my expectations.

When the Kinect first came out I expected games my favourite games to embrace the Kinect technology and provide a different way of playing these games rather than bashing away at a controller and some buttons. This wasn’t to be the case. Since the Kinect’s launch there has been very little big titles launched and so for the last year. Our Kinect sensor has just sat there under the television doing nothing. Another piece of abandoned technology.Until games can be controlled by your thoughts and eyes, I think that gamers and game publishers will continue to favour the hand held controller over any current controllerless technology.​

A few years ago I ran a blog called MindMapSwitch. It ran for a couple of years before I had to give it up due to time constraints with work. It did have a small following of readers during its time, so even when I stopped writing for it, I decided to leave the website up for others to read.Last year though I was saddened to read that the service that MindMapSwitch was hosted on, Posterous, was shutting down for good. I knew then I had to move MindMapSwitch somewhere else but I wasn't too sure where. As MindMapSwitch wasn't on my priority list I decided to leave it for the moment.

Then last week, I received an email from Posterous that the service would shut down at the end in April and all accounts would be deleted. In order to keep the MindMapSwitch content I downloaded a backup of the content of the blog and deleted my account on Posterous until I decided what to do with the content.Today though I was pleased to receive an email from a university professor in Venezuela who has been using the MindMapSwitch content to teach the benefits of mind mapping to his students.

Unfortunately for him, I had deleted the blog, but I was more than happy to oblige him with a copy the backup I had. It's in a friendly format that can be easily distributed to his students.When I first started writing on MindMapSwitch, I never thought for a second that my words would reach that far round the world. I knew that I would be able to build up a number of loyal readers who were interested in mind mapping, but never did I think that it would be used a teaching aid for others to help them in their studies. It just goes to show that your words can reach far.

Nicholas Bate on the importance of being present.

But being where we are, that's another story. In a world of distraction, 'the future is brighter', it's sometimes difficult to just 'be'. To be where you are. In the conversation, in the game of lego, pressing out the weights with focus and concentration at the gym, baking amazing bread, crafting a paragraph, watching the flight of a rare bird and realising it's along way to another planet where you can do that.

— Knowing where are you vs being where you are by Nicholas Bate

Staying connected with family in the modern world is great. Thanks to the Internet, the only thing to stop you contacting family on a different continent is whether it's an inconvenient time. Just recently though I didn't realise how many different ways technology lets me stay in contact with family.

So there's the usual forms of communication like phone, email and video are the most common forms of keeping in touch with family but what else is there?

Apps from social networks offer a very easy way to stay in touch with family, providing their all on the same network of course.

In our family we use Path to stay in touch and share photos and updates. Path's benefit is that it's a private network. Only people that you allow to follow you get to see your updates. Path is so simple that even my parents are on Path as well. It took them a bit of persuading to sign up, but now they can see photos of all their grandchildren at the touch of a button. With my sister in Dublin and my sister-in-law in Toronto it's great having them both on Path so that we share pictures of the kids as they grow up.

At home myself and my wife Jen use an app called Avocado. Getting more smaller and private again, Avocado is a service for just two people. Not only does it let you message each other privately but it also provides a calendar and todo lists which are shared automatically with your other half.

Of course there's the big three of social networks: Google+, Twitter and Facebook. Of these three I'm only on Twitter but these days I mainly use it for just connecting with other developers and not for staying in touch with family.

There's probably many others apps and services you can use, but what's great about technology now is that there are so many more choices.

As a software developer I'm used to making hundreds, well probably thousands of decisions a day. Deciding on variables, class names and how I implement features is just part of the many decisions I make as a software developer on a daily basis. They're all small decisions, but they add up at the end up of the day when a section of code is tested and completed. These are just micro decisions. Really small decisions that I can afford to get wrong as they are easily rectifiable in a really short period of time.As you move up through the scale though, you see that the decisions that you make become less and less frequent as their impact becomes greater and greater.

Right at the top of my tree is a decision to emigrate that will affect me and my family for a time period that can be measured in years. It's a decision that's been on my mind for the last few years, but with every passing year that the decision isn't made, the decision to emigrate becomes harder and harder. Get it right and everything will fall into place as expected. Get it wrong, well I don't really want to dwell on what would happen if we decided to emigrate and it didn't work out.

If only the decision to emigrate was as easy as one of those thousands of decisions I make on daily basis.

... not the beard.

On-one's new 29er looks great.