Thursday, July 23, 2009

"New Rules" Article in Wired Magazine

I'm back in sunny Vancouver, for now. Arrived yesterday night to a beautiful sunset and watched Canada's entry in the fireworks competition. It was really, really good.

I purchased a copy of this month's Wired magazine to read on the plane... always such an interesting magazine to read. It had an interesting article on the new rules for managing your life... but they really read to me as online etiquette rules and I was laughing because I think so many of the "rules" where spot on.

Here is a sampling:

Feel Free to BitTorrent: If a movie isn't available at your video store or the store is closed, just download it. While I do no support illegal downloading, I think that in the year 2009 it is acceptable to download a movie under these circumstances.

Online Conversations All About You: this I see all the time, especially on Facebook. People update status and comment only about themselves. Narcissism is one of the main reasons I got off Facebook.

Don't Blog for Tweet anything with over 1/2 million views: This is so true... people send around so much stuff that anyone who is connect has already seen about 1000000000000 times.... this one made me howl.

There's Such Thing as Too Many Friends: This I also agreed with... the article quotes some Facebook research I read in the Economist a while back... basically, people on Facebook may have 400 friends but the average user only really interacts with 10 people... so why pile up friends you will never contact??

Balance: You need to balance out your life... I have a rule that I follow and has served me well. Spend 1/3 of total time that you spend connected, offline. Meaning if you spend 9 hours a day "connected" you should turn off your phone or not touch a computer for 3 hours that day. Works like charm!

The article isn't online yet but keep an eye out for it.

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