Nothing makes me happier than reading stories about the imminent demise of ‘social media networking’, even when they’re published in my least favourite newspaper. But wouldn’t you know… just as everyone else is growing out of this puerile nonsense, the World Economic Forum (who are meeting for their annual shin-dig in Davos this week) are embracing it.
This week ‘twitter’ was declared the most popular word for 2009. Meanwhile the Public Administration Select Committee published a report called Bad Language: The Use and Abuse of Official Language. Naturally, working for a government agency and being no stranger to social media networking, I was intrigued. Could there be a connection? › Continue reading
After my trip out last week, I felt that nothing and no one could harm me. My gamble on the hokey pokey ice-cream paid off and taught me a valuable lesson: all this time I’ve been worrying about understanding the words, and the truth is, I probably don’t need to. › Continue reading
I have been trying to work out how to add a blogroll to this page. I thought that after nearly six months of blogging, the language would be familiar to me. Regular readers may recall the angst I suffered last time I tried to engage with the blogosphere. I thought things might be different now, but of course it was just self-delusion.
“Tough on threats. Easy on you.” That’s the strapline for AVG Antivirus and Security Software. Scary name for a company though, isn’t it? Sounds military, which may be why they add the “Easy on you” to the strapline as an afterthought.
I was a fool. I thought the “Easy on you” might mean that the software was easy to use. It seems I never learn. Let me explain. When I switched on my computer this morning a dialogue box kept warning me that I was “not protected” against “online threats”.
I went to a workshop on web 2.0 the other day, at my local library. I thought it might help me manage my blog. And I may have picked up a few useful tips (possibly). Time will tell.
In some ways it was a belittling experience. Of course it was run by geeks – self-proclaimed geeks who were incredibly proud of how geeky they were. They talked about web 2.0 as if they had invented all of what they insisted on calling ‘tools’. They spoke through self-satisfied grins and talked about going on a “social media journey”.
As I’ve been advised to ‘engage with the blogosphere’ I’m thinking of leaving a comment on this webpage. Trouble is it’s so hard to think of anything positive to say.
Digital-Marketing Series: 9 Ways to Reach Digital Natives (and the Rest of Us, Too)
Even if I did like extremely long headings (that one’s the length of a short sentence, for goodness sake) I definitely take exception to the cutesy tone of the first paragraph.
Obviously we all like to share our personal lives online. I know I have shared some of my bitterest and darkest thoughts on this blog, and may be it’s saved me. But really! If my 11-year-old progeny was attending the “Digital Marketing Mixer”, I think I’d keep it to myself.
It turns out that I’m supposed to respond to the comments left on my blog. I wish I’d known about this when I started blogging. There was a time early on in the life of this blog that people did leave interesting comments about language and the way it is used. They don’t any more; probably because I didn’t respond. Now all I get is comments like this:
“Nice post you have here.”
I get really excited only to discover that it’s yet another one from “jndtoebgack” or I click the link and it takes me to a website in Cyrillic script.
I miss the comments that accused me of not knowing what a ‘grammatical imperative’ is. I never knew when I started this that there would be so much to learn about blogging.
So I turned to Wordpress, because if you don’t manage comments properly you can get into all sort of trouble: ‘Trojans’ on your pc for example.
Wordpress manage to give a clear explanation about comment spam, pingbacks and trackbacks in plain English. But I don’t understand it. For once, I do understand the words, but the ideas elude me.
The Wordpress site says that the originators of trackbacks, SixApart, have a good explanation of trackbacks and pingbacks. I decided to read it but it left me none the wiser.
“TrackBack uses a REST model, where requests are made through standard HTTP calls. To send a TrackBack ping, the client makes a standard HTTP request to the server, and receives a response in a simple XML format (see below for more details).”
Not that I’m utterly miserable or anything, but I have spent the whole of this Christmas trying to shift a stubborn cold. I suspect I picked it up at the Woolworths sale. So I haven’t been a very conscientious blogger over the ‘festive’ period.
But I haven’t totally neglected the dangling modifier. I’ve been looking at how I might improve my blog in 2009. Thing is, one of my geek friends told me I needed to interact more with the ‘blogosphere’, so I thought – as this time of year’s so quiet and probably most people are too pissed to bother checking obscure, unknown blogs like mine – it would be a good opportunity to look into adding new features to the blog and making friends with other bloggers.
I started by looking at this fantastic article that my friend recommended:
27+1 Tips for Building and Maintaining a Blog Audience
Obviously I felt bad and inadequate when I read the bit about updating regularly, but then I reminded myself that you are all probably busy with your loved ones. Never mind, I thought, a new year’s resolution. I need one of those now that I finally have given up smoking, so it may as well be about blogging.
But I’m already getting stuck. The tips recommend stuff on tags and social bookmarking. I had to ask another geek about this. He said it should be “easy enough” to find a ‘plug- in’ on Wordpress. So I checked the plug-in page and it said:
“The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize code bloat.”
I’ve given up for now. I’m going to go and eat more mince pies and come back to it later.
They are going to build near my house. When I say ‘they’ of course, I don’t necessarily mean the conspirators, the ones who laugh at editorial staff.
No, this is a whole other ‘they’ – a property developer. So much for the recession. I keep hearing on the radio how badly property developers and the building trade have been hit. Well not round my gaff, they haven’t.
The local council sent me a letter inviting me to comment. It used initial capitals with wild abandon, telling me to:
“Enter the Application Number within the Application Quick Search box and select ‘Search’.”
For a moment I thought I was reading German, but then I realised that I recognised the words and none of them were ‘Achtung’ ‘Nein’ or ‘Delphine’ – the only German words I know.
It was the number of capitals that confused me.
And then the way they said ‘within’ like that… Did they expect me to get inside the Application Quick Search box and enter the application number? I decided to find out and quickly typed in the web address.
As I waited for the webpage to appear, I read more of the letter.
“From within the application details you will also be given a quick way of making representations on the application and sending them directly to us.”
Within the application details? Perhaps I would be able to get into the Quick Search box after all. And if so, no wonder it had initial caps. It was a place name, the name of a wonderland in cyberspace. I assumed that this was technology moving on without me – the technological imperative, I thought – until I looked at the page and realised my mistake. It was just an ordinary online form.