With all of the activity surrounding the holidays, and my family’s traditional holiday vacation trip coming up, there has been no time for crafting my usually deep and thoughtful blog posts.

Tonight (Christmas Eve) my family has our holiday gathering with my wife’s side of the family.  Tomorrow morning we see what Santa brought us. Tomorrow night, yet another holiday gathering with all four of my brothers’ families.

We head out for Disney World on New Year’s Eve for a four night stay.

The Alabama Crimson Tide play for the BCS National Title shortly after we return.

It’s going to be a busy next two weeks or so.  In the interim, I’ll be working on my goals for the blog for next year, possibly writing a few posts to be published later, and hopefully upgrading to Wordpress 2.9.

But, before all of this I wanted to sincerely wish one and all a very Merry Christmas, and blessings for the coming new year. I also want to express my gratitude for the new friends that I have found in the process of blogging and twittering. I look forward to getting to know all of you better this next year, and hopefully reaching one of my 2010 goals: meeting my twitter friends in person (well, at least some of them, anyway).

See You Next Year!

If you blog, post comments on blogs, Twitter, or post on Facebook, inevitably you will face criticism for something you post online.

The easiest route is just to ignore all criticism, but in doing so, you will give the impression that you are above reproach, which is a fast way to lose respect. Besides, by listening to your critics, you could actually learn something.

I don’t think you should listen to all criticism, especially in these cases:

• The criticism consists mainly of attacks against your intelligence and/or character. That’s not really criticism, that’s an insult. Determine if they are criticizing the information, or the person posting the information. Attacks leveled at the person should always be ignored.
• The critic makes no effort to explain their position. A good critic should use established facts and/or relevant experience to validate their claims. If they can’t do that, it’s not worth it to listen.
• The criticism is an obvious emotional reaction, obviously because these rarely contain any intellectual value.

How should you respond to valid criticism?

• Read carefully. Be sure that you have not misread or inferred meaning where there was none.
• Resist the urge to react emotionally. Strong emotional reactions to criticism will impair your ability to analyze it. Never respond to the critic with an emotional backlash. You will regret it later.
• Determine if the criticism is constructive. Is there something that you can take away from it that you can improve upon?
• Try to see the other person’s perspective. It may not change your mind, but it will allow you to think outside of your normal viewpoints, which will improve your ability to empathize with others.
• Disagree? That’s okay too. Criticism will not always bring you to change your mind, and people rarely agree on everything. We should be able to respect another person’s viewpoint, without agreeing with them.
• Always respond positively. Thank the critic for their input. Even if you still disagree, do it respectfully, without insult, and based in facts and/or relevant experiences; not on emotion alone.
• Never take it personally. Don’t invest too much of your self-worth into how well you are received online.

Most importantly, don’t feed the trolls. Some people are just trying to get attention by posting critical and usually insulting responses on blogs, message boards, and the like. Ignore them.

How do you deal with criticism? Do you have any advice to share?

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?

I am an information addict.  There, I said it.  I’m not afraid to admit that I have a problem. I come by it honestly, though, as one of my hobbies as a child was reading encyclopedias (mostly because we didn’t have a television, but that is another blog post).

The Internet is an enabler for someone like me.  Anytime I want to know more about a particular subject, I can google it or hit the wikipedia (which in many cases leads me down a rabbit trail of information discovery).

In way, its not all that bad, because I am continuing to learn, and learning is a key to keeping the brain active and healthy.

Where it did become a problem for me was that a lot of that information came to me in the form of RSS feeds in Google Reader (of course I DID subscribe to them).  I was easily getting upwards of 2000 entries in my Google Reader feed everyday at one point.  Combine that with following several very active twitter users, and I was hitting information overload.

With all of that information capitalizing on my time, just getting through it was taking away from the things that I want to do more, like blogging, for instance.  It was also stressful for me, because an unread item in my feed was to me an undone task on the to-do list. Getting that additional time and lowering the stress level of my life were enough of a motivation to reevaluate my habits.

So I took some steps to start cutting down on the noise.  I realized that there were hundreds of entries that I was never looking at, outside of scrolling past them in the feed. There were several hundred more that were really of no informational value at all (funny pictures or videos, and the like).  And there were several blogs with multiple posts per day, that I was not actually reading, other than skimming through them.  It was wasting my time to bother even scrolling past them.

It was somewhat painful, but I eventually made some very large cuts.  The first thing to go was the junk.  Sure, it was entertaining at times, but not always useful.  Next, I cut out the blogs I wasn’t reading regularly.  I also trimmed down my news feeds to only the top stories from two major sources.

Now, the majority of my feed subscriptions are from people – bloggers that I actually read and interact with through comments – who I feel are making positive impacts, and are sparking valuable conversation.

I’ve also made a personal commitment to continue to fine-tune my information gathering, to make the best use of my time going forward.  It’s an ongoing process, but I am already seeing the results, and if you’re reading this, you are too.

Here you go, more of my favorite links tweeted by my twitter pals:

Interview with the FTC’s Richard Cleland – Blogger Edward Champion questions the FTC’s assertion that bloggers who receive products from companies for review are being compensated when they keep the product they received.

10 Things to Tell People Who Swear You’re the Lennon to their McCartney – A very intelligent response to a common problem for artists and musicians – the uninvited collaborator.

How Much Should You Reveal About Yourself Online? – Being 100% honest without revealing 100%.

My Experience With Commenting – Some advice on the how and how not to comment on blog posts.

Would Mother Teresa Have Used Twitter? – Thoughts on living in an increasingly connected society.

The 46 Stages of Twitter – How you get from Anti-twitter activist to twitter addict.

Here are my favorite links tweeted by my twitter friends today:

Protecting My Teen Daughter: One Dad’s Story

A Secret Your Husband Needs You To Know (But Won’t Tell You)

Popular Logos With Hidden Symbolisms

Five Keys to Building Forever Followers

Seven Ways to Catch Your Breath

Arkansas Football Player Ends Game with Noble Gesture

Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale

Landlord Goes Back to Work to Let Unemployed Tenants Stay Rent-Free

Here is today’s collection of my favorite links tweeted by the folks I follow on twitter:

Joel Rosenburg’s Response to Benjamin Netanyahu’s Speech to the United Nations

Am I Honest Enough to Be Authentic?

Tylenol Recalls Some Children’s and Infant Products

I Am Not Your Personal Tech Support Monkey

Aids Vaccine Shows Some Success in Trials

Tainted Love: A Sneak Peak at HalogenTV’s newest program

Unbelievable Posters Created for the Support of Organizations Fighting Human Trafficking

I have a very particular view on what Twitter should be.  I mean, it is a social network, so the main use of said network should be to connect socially.  Unfortunately, I see a lot of behavior in the twitterverse that, to me, is anti-social.  There are no ‘rules’ when it comes to Twitter, but if you want ME to listen, you may want to take notice.

I’d like to address some of these twitter habits that I see are in bad form.  These are prime examples of ways to make me totally ignore you and/or possibly un-follow you on Twitter.

1. Every tweet is a link. Don’t get me wrong, I like when someone tweets an interesting link.  I’ve even adopted a twitter client on my iPhone to help me manage those links better, and I have been posting the best ones on my blog lately. But, seriously, you’ve tweeted at least 50 times today, and every tweet is a link.  You can get away with this if you’re Mashable, Digg, or another news delivery service, and I would expect that following them. But if you are an individual using twitter personally, this does not lend well to social interaction.

2. Every tweet is a quote from a famous person, you post several of these per day, and most of them are widely known. I enjoy a good quote as much as the next guy, but I’m very well read.  I’ve seen, heard and read most of those many times before.  And I find it a bit disingenuous to be on a ’social network’ spouting cliches.  A few of these quotes are okay, but keep it to a limit, dig a little deeper for something a little less well-known, and join the real conversation once and awhile.

3. Every tweet is a re-tweet of a ‘celebrity’ on twitter. Re-tweeting is fine, especially if a tweet is especially informative or funny.  But some of you and your re-tweeting is looking a lot like celebrity brown-nosing.  Re-tweeting their tweets are not going to make them notice you and/or bring meaning to your existence by them acknowledging you.

4. You tweet the same thing, everyday, several times a day. I’ll give you a pass if your life is boring and repetitive, it’s not you I’m talking to.  I am talking to the people who appear to be trying to show up in certain twitter searches, and the repeating tweets are their ploy to show up near the top.

5. All of your tweets run long and you don’t bother to shorten them or continue them. Most of these I see are notification auto posts from forums or blogs, but there are still those who haven’t caught on to the 140 character limit.  If you are going to have your new blog posts announced on twitter, at least do a twitter friendly excerpt. If your tweets are too long, there are clients that will split them for you, or you can sign up at a service that will link your followers to the rest of your update.

6. You regularly send out a volley of back-to-back-to-back updates. The excessive link sharers are the worst about this, but there are others who do this too.  And when I say back-to-back, I mean within a second, which tells me that they really aren’t doing these updates themselves, they are using some other automated tool to make those updates. If you have important information to get out on Twitter, don’t dump a bunch of back-to-back tweets pointing to the same link/idea with a different spin.  At least put some space between them.  Your followers will see that lump of updates, and roll right by them.

7. Your tweets are full of unintelligible characters. I like to be able to read your tweets, not try to decipher them, like some sort of hieroglyphics.

Now a lot of these behaviors will come from people who are trying to shamelessly self-promote.  To some degree, a little of that is allowed, as long as the personal interaction and conversation is there.  Your network on twitter is full of ‘friends’.  Don’t treat them like consumers.

What twitter habits do you find annoying?