Actually, I’m not that cool at all. I’ve always been very backwards when it comes to social interaction, especially when dealing with people I don’t know well.

There are situations that I can do well in, like meetings where I have a good working knowledge of the subject. I can verbalize much easier in that regard than I can in more interpersonal situations.

I find it much easier to communicate in writing. I love email, texts and twitter.  I generally despise actually talking on the phone. I find it difficult to gather my thoughts into words when speaking to other people personally, although I usually do well in a presentation mode (again where I control the subject matter).

In emails, or on social networks, I am much more outgoing (although I still carefully consider my messages that are sent directly to people). I find it much easier to hold a conversation with someone I don’t know well within the confines of email, twitter, or even over SMS.

My wife is the absolute opposite. She does extremely well in social situations, always seems at ease in conversation, and can make fast friends of just about anyone. She is on Facebook, but for the most part, does not get that involved in socializing online, except for the convenience of communicating short messages. She doesn’t Twitter, does not have any interest in getting on Twitter, and really does not understand my fascination with it.

So, blog readers, where do you feel most comfortable socializing? Are you more social online or off? Somewhere in the middle?

For those of you who work a day job at a larger corporation, you have probably run into the web filter from time to time, especially if you are trying to access a site classified as “social networking”.

There are dozens of ways to get around filters, but not all of them are feasible for every environment and some are borderline hacking.  I have no desire to visit Facebook while I am at work (I barely visit when I am home) or to visit Myspace ever, but I am fairly active on Twitter.  Most of the time I keep up with it on my phone, but that is not always feasible.

I recently discovered the twitgether gadget for Gmail, and I’ve been using that as a supplement to my phone for following my twitter time line while at work. (I’m not suggesting that you goof off on Twitter at work. But, if you have created a twitter list with your must read/follow people, you can use this to keep up closer to real time.)

As long as you have access to Gmail at work, you should be able to use this twitter gadget to keep up with your tweets, even if twitter.com is blocked by your internet filters. Here’s how to make it work:

1. Turn on the Add Any Gadget by URL feature in the Labs section in Gmail settings. (It is the last feature on my Labs list.) To enable this feature, toggle the “Enable” radio button next to the feature’s listing, and click “Save settings.”
2. Add the twitgether gadget. In the Gadgets section in Gmail settings, you should now have an “Add a gadget by its URL” box. Put this url [http://twittergadget.appspot.com/gadget-gmail.xml] in the box and click the Add button.
3. Reload Gmail.

You should have a twitter gadget in your Gmail Sidebar now. You’ll need to fill in your twitter account info – the gadget will walk you through that process.  You can update your status by using the input box in the sidebar gadget without opening a full screen. Clicking on the link in the sidebar gadget will open a full screen with your twitter timeline, with options for DM, @ replies, favorites, retweets (you can retweet the new and the old way if you like), lists and search. Clicking to open the full screen gadget obscures your Gmail inbox, though.

If you’re like me, and want immediate availability to your Gmail inbox, you can just open another Gmail session in a new browser tab and open the gadget in the new tab.

Anyone else have any “creative” solutions to getting around an internet filter?

If you’ve attended the sorts of churches that I grew up in, you are very familiar with the “prayer chain.” This was a list of people (usually ladies) who formed a call tree to get people in prayer in the event of an urgent need involving a church member.

Lately, I’ve seen a lot of tweets and re-tweets requesting prayer, and people responding with their prayers. Especially today, when a case of mistaken identity reported that a very well-known blogger was in a car accident with his daughter this morning (as it turns out it was another guy with the same name with a daughter who has a similar name to his). The swiftness and the voracity of the twitter deluge that followed was surprising, with people calling for prayer on behalf of someone they really only know online (well, in most cases). It was somewhat counter productive until the correct information got out, but it was very encouraging to see the care and concern that was shown.

I think twitter is a great medium for the prayer chain for a couple of reasons:

• Information moves really quickly on twitter – the request can reach thousands in a matter of minutes.
• 140 characters is enough to send out a request, but not enough to gossip about it (if you know about old school prayer chains, no explanation required).

What do you think? Is twitter the new prayer chain?

A while back, a friend of mine gave me an iBook (PowerPC 3G-600Mhz, 256MB RAM, 20GB hard drive).  It was in good working condition, running OSX 10.1.

I love technology in all of its forms, so having this as another toy to play with was fun. But I can never leave well enough alone. Since I am a glutton for punishment always up for a challenge, I set out to improve this laptop as much as I could. My goal: to actually make it more useful.

My first order of business was a memory upgrade. The one available memory slot would only accept up to a 512mb so-dimm, so I snagged one from E-bay and installed it.  Next, I attempted an OS upgrade. My research showed that anything above OSX 10.2 was too much for the hardware.  Again, E-bay provided me with a 10.2 install and I upgraded successfully.

What I ended up with at this point, was not really what I was hoping for.  My intention was to have something that would handle light web-surfing and maybe some writing.  Unfortunately, there was not a sufficiently advanced web browser that would run on OSX 10.2. For a moment, I was ready to accept defeat.

There is an unwritten rule that pertains to most all computing devices: If it has a microprocessor, there is a good chance that there is a Linux distribution that will run on it. Some further research pointed me in the direction of the Xubuntu Linux distribution, a derivative of Ubuntu, which had a port for PowerPC processors.  Xubuntu was suggested because the user interface uses less system resources than a standard Ubuntu install.

I was able to download version 9.04 of the Xubuntu distribution for PowerPC processors, which installed flawlessly on my iBook 3G, no configuration file hacking required.  Video display, wireless networking and sound worked with no additional tweaking.  Now I have an up-to-date operating system with the latest version of Firefox, and a ton of productivity applications to boot.  Xubuntu is not terribly resource-hungry either, which makes for a snappier interface than even OSX 10.1 or 10.2 in my experience.

If you’re looking to resurrect some older hardware, but want the modern features of the latest OS, Xubuntu (or many of the other flavors of Linux) may be what you are looking for. Fair warning: if you’ve never attempted a Linux install (or any other OS install for that matter), the effort involved may be more than you bargained for.  On an iBook 3G with similar specifications (or most any other PowerPC based Mac), a novice should be able to follow the prompts and have a successful install. For other hardware, it could get much more complicated, especially getting video, sound and networking operating as it should.  Your mileage may vary, Google is your friend.

Good Luck!