by John D. Harvey on January 14, 2010
This feature has been out since September 2009, but I still occasionally have people ask me about it. Essentially, this is one of the ways where Facebook set out to mimic a very popular Twitter feature.
The ability to tag your friends when you posted photos, videos and notes is not new. But, with the ability to tag in status updates and other posts you can notify specific people of things you want them to see or read.
WHY USE THE “@” TAGGING FEATURE
Generally, status updates reflect thoughts, activities, or link to interesting things found online. Within these updates, you may want to make sure that certain people see them, or give a “shout out” to someone who provided you with the source material for your status update (but there’s a caveat with that last one … more on that later).
HOW TO USE THE “@” TAGGING FEATURE
It’s simple. If you want to tag a friend’s Facebook profile to something you post, just enter the “@” symbol and start typing that person’s name immediately after (no spaces) the symbol. As you type the name, a drop-down menu will appear that allows you to choose from your list of friends and other connections, including groups, events, applications, and pages. Simply use your cursor to select the correct profile from the list. When you finish writing your post and hit the “Share” button, the “@” symbol will not be displayed in the published status update or post. View the thumbnail image below for an example.
Click image for larger view.
HOW THE FACEBOOK “@” TAGGING FEATURE APPEARS
Profiles you tag in your status updates will receive a notification and a Wall post linking them to your update. They also have the option to remove tags of themselves from your posts. Let’s be clear, your status update will be visible on their wall, meaning that all of their Facebook friends can see your status update.
So, please think ahead before you post something like:
“Hey, I have pictures of @John Smith streaking nude in Tijuana right after our naughty antics in a strip club. Geez, you’d never know he’s getting married in a week!”
If John’s Facebook friends include co-workers, professional peers, family, fiancé, and family of fiancé, then you’ve officially made John’s life incredibly complex. And within days, John might be your new (jobless) roommate.
WHEN NOT TO USE THE FACEBOOK “@” TAGGING FEATURE
When a friend posts an image, video, or other piece of media to their own wall, it will show up in your news feed. Using the “Share” button, you can copy that media to your wall and share it with your friends. The “Share” feature also allows you to write your own intro caption to the post, where you do have the ability to use the “@” tagging feature. Except here’s the thing … don’t.
If you write “I got this great video from @John Smith” then your post, including the video, will appear on John’s wall. Meaning, the video will appear twice on his wall. Once when he posted it, and again when you tagged him in your post. This clutters John’s wall with redundant material, and really … hasn’t he suffered enough because of you?
That’s it. Tagging in status updates is a very useful feature, but it does have it’s drawbacks and potential for mischief. I hope this is useful to all of you!
by John D. Harvey on January 3, 2010
So, it’s been a while since I’ve put anything in this blog. That’s mostly because of the life static arising out of the holidays, work, and family. Well, the good news is that two out of those three complicating factors have been eliminated.
Yes … the holidays are over. No … I didn’t kill off my family.
Though, I did get laid off from my full-time job (along with about twenty other people) on December 19. Fa la-la la-la, etc., etc.
While this looks like bad news on the surface, it really isn’t. The fact is that I did not enjoy the work at my former employer. It is safe to say that technical writing does not float my boat. So, I’m looking at 2010 as the year I nail down what I’m going to do when I grow up.
That said, I have put out a shingle as a full-time freelancer in the fields of copywriting, marketing/PR, and web design. Come visit me at http://www.medialogical.com. Oh by the way … if you’re a web developer with proven skills in Wordpress and/or Drupal CMS systems, get in touch. I need to offload a large chunk of the webdev duties so I can concentrate on business development.
I’m also planning out several fiction projects that went from front burner, to back burner, to counter top. In January and February this year, I’m also going to launch two monthly podcasts.
More on that later …
Cheers,
John
by John D. Harvey on November 13, 2009
It’s interesting to watch the migration of genre actors from one geek show to the next geek show. It’s almost like there’s a temp agency in Burbank, CA, that specializes in transitioning our favorite scifi actors. For example:
Hoban “Wash” Washburne (Firefly) begat Dale Maddox (V)
Inara Serra (Firefly) begat Anna (V)
Charlie Pace (Lost) begat Simon (Flashforward)
Penelope Widmore (Lost) begat Dr. Olivia Benford (Flashforward)
Juliet Burke (Lost) begat Erica Evans (V)
Am I missing anyone?
I have to admit that it’s fun watching Tudyk and Baccarin in the same show again (though in wildly different roles). Honestely though, I’m generally happier when I see Baccarin in any form or fashion . Hubba, hubba!
Now, if you want to see Tudyk at his comedic best, then check out Death at a Funeral. Though it has an American director (Frank Oz), I would still consider Death at a Funeral to be a British comedy. Tudyk steals almost every scene he’s in. If you don’t believe me, then the picture below should add some weight to my claim.
by John D. Harvey on November 11, 2009
by John D. Harvey on October 19, 2009
It never ceases to frustrate me that some men insist on talking to me about sports even though they KNOW I don’t follow or even care about sports. The conversation typically goes something like this:
“Hey, did you see the game last night? Wasn’t that play by … ?”
“I don’t like sports. You know this,” says I.
“Yeah, but you should have seen this pass by … !”
“I’ll explain myself AGAIN,” I reply with open annoyance. “I’m not going to recognize any of the names you rattle off. I won’t care about their individual accomplishments with ball or puck. And, I further don’t care how these individual accomplishments help their team get to the spin-offs.”
“Um, play-offs.”
“Play-offs, spin-offs, jack-offs … the point is that I honestly don’t give a flying fuzzy #$%&. The only way I could be convinced to care is if a team spontaneously decided to donate 50% of their collective salaries to the ‘John Harvey Charitable Beer & Kung Fu DVD Fund‘ if they win the play-offs. Even then, I would only watch the final play-off game.”
“Okay. But the thing is this one player got traded and now he’s…”
“Right. The reality we’re slowly spiraling towards is that you have a small, tight bundle of synapses, probably snuggled right up against the pineal gland, that drives you to have this sports conversation with someone penis-endowed. And this drive mimics the brain-stem insistence that forces salmon to spawn up the same stream every year and Joan Rivers to get more plastic surgery.”
Long, introspective pause.
“Yes.”
“Fine,” I say. “Go on then. I’ll just lie back and think of England.”
Bloody hell.
by John D. Harvey on October 10, 2009
My sister, Sharon Harvey (executive director, Cleveland APL), has been very actively campaigning against Proposition 2 in Ohio. This agriculture bill would amend the Ohio state constitution to create a Livestock Board with unchecked power over livestock rules and regulations. While masquerading as an attempt to improve food safety and animal welfare, Issue 2 would give a dozen political appointees broad and unchecked power to decide rules on how animals are raised, tracked, or traced.
The official site for the ‘No’ campaign is here.
This HSUS blog post spells out their position on the issue.
This article posted to the Center of Consumer Freedom (CCF) site is the only ‘pro prop. 2′ statement that I could find. It becomes a bit empty when you realize that CCF is a shell non-profit primarily funded by the thousand-pound gorillas within the tobacco, restaurant, and agriculture industries. See here, and here.
In any case, I know that I have friends, followers, and contacts in Ohio who see these posts via the intertubes. I encourage you to vote NO on Proposition 2.
by John D. Harvey on October 10, 2009
Generally, I don’t put much politics out there on this blog. Perhaps I should. Rumor has it that if you want over a hundred comments on a blog post, you need to either go political or say something bad about Mac computers.
Anywho, this “Bend It Like Beck” clip from the Stephen Colbert is a classic and, in the form of satire, sums up how I feel about all the current “rodeo clowns” (Beck’s term, not mine) posing as conservative political thinkers and commentators. For me, this most prominently includes Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Bill O’Reilly, and Sean Hannity. I place O’Reilly and Hannity at the more sensible end of this spectrum, for what it’s worth. On the other hand, Beck and Limbaugh are crazy people.
What I find most interesting is that you really can’t find anyone on the liberal side of the broadcast media equation who used vitriol, theatrics, and fear-mongering to the degree utilized by these four commentators. People will sometimes mention the names Janeane Garofalo and Al Franken, but even in their “heyday” on Air America Radio, they never approached the audience size garnered by any one of the four conservative commentators mentioned here. Also, Garofalo and Franken bug the hell out of me, too.
Perhaps the best known and most widely watched liberal political commentators are Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart. Here again, I find it interesting to compare what galvanizes liberals in popular culture versus conservatives. Somebody smarter than me should take some time to figure out what makes liberals flock around satire while conservatives seem to be drawn toward shock jockery.
by John D. Harvey on October 3, 2009
So, I logged in to my MySpace account last night for the first time in … ohhh … three months, maybe four, maybe more? I knew I had a bunch of messages, friend requests, and blog subscriptions accumulating in a digital landfill.
Like most people, the first thing that struck me after my long absence was how much MySpace was trying to emulate Facebook. Adding apps, MySpace chat, a new Facebookish friend timeline, etc. All this, but without much effort to spruce up their user interface. In fact, many of the new tools appear shoehorned into MySpace’s GUI, which was never all that user-friendly to begin with.
For perhaps the most telling symptom of their growing failure, look to MySpace’s “Online Friends” indicator which shows how many of your friends are online and available to chat right there and then. It’s the equivalent to Facebook’s “Chat” indicator in the lower right corner of the user interface.
While I was on MySpace last night, I was also logged in to Facebook. On MySpace, I have 886 friends. Meanwhile, on Facebook, I have 554 friends. At that time, out of 554 Facebook friends, over 30 were online. Guess how many of my 886 MySpace friends were online at the same time?
One.
The simple fact is that not a lot of people use or spend a lot of time on MySpace anymore.
The niche market that MySpace still addresses better than Facebook is people who deliver audible media to the public: bands, musicians, singers, stand-up comedians, etc. They don’t measure up quite as well with regards to writers and publishers.
Not that anyone at MySpace is asking for my opinion, but if I were in charge over there, I’d chase that performer market and slowly shed pursuing social networking for average individuals. The simple fact is, they’re not in that game anymore. And they won’t be in in that game every again unless they make some radical changes.
by John D. Harvey on October 1, 2009
There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding ABC’s new paranormal drama series “Flashforward.” And for good reason, if the series pilot is any indication of upcoming quality in the show.
I won’t go into great detail regarding what the show is about. A quick summary though … A mysterious global event causes the entire Earth’s human population to simultaneously lose consciousness for 2 minutes and 17 seconds. During this blackout, everyone sees visions of their lives six months in the future. The event results in massive deaths from accidents and leaves the survivors wondering whether what they saw will happen. It’s a great premise for a show and I look forward to watching it.
What a lot of people don’t know is that “Flashforward” was originally a science fiction novel (of the same name) written by Robert J. Sawyer [wiki | web] in 2000. Interestingly, Sawyer has been involved in the show and will even write at least one of the upcoming episodes.
One of the major, and necessary, differences between the book and the TV series is that in the book the visions show what everyone’s lives will be like in 20 years. This is a major change that Sawyer sees as necessary to adapting the series to TV.
To find out why, you can listen to a couple of good interviews with Robert J. Sawyer about “Flashforward” (both the book and TV series) and his other projects. Just check out these two Farpoint Media podcasts:
Both podcasts are run by author Michael R. Mennenga. They cover a little of the same territory, but not a lot. I enjoyed listening to both podcasts for both the Sawyer interviews and the other show content. In particular, the Dragon Page podcast includes Sawyer talking at length on the craft of screenwriting. I thought he had some interesting insights and recommendations.
I have a good hunch about this show. I hope I’m right.
by John D. Harvey on September 24, 2009
I’d like to encourage everyone to listen to this very informative NPR radio feature story on illegal dog fighting. In this Fresh Air spot, Dave Davies talks with John Goodwin, Humane Society manager of animal-fighting issues, and Sean Moore, a Chicago-based former dog-fighter who works in that city on the Humane Society’s efforts campaign to end dog-fighting in that city.
You should be warned that much of this interview includes some very graphic descriptions of animal cruelty. What is most interesting is that this story puts forward some very startling statistics on how many people are involved in dog fighting. Granted, all those involved admit that it’s nearly impossible to get an accurate count as to how many people are involved in dog fighting.
Also interesting, and thoroughly revolting, is a description of rules, lingo, and rituals involved in organized dog fighting. It also lays out some forms of “cheating” including rubbing poison into a dog’s fur to handicap the opposing dog.
In sum, if just the mere concept of dog fighting enrages you, then this interview will likely put you over the edge. That said, I encourage all of you to listen. It’s important for everyone to know about the many levels of dog fighting ranging from the chaotic world of street fighting to the highly-organized higher echelons of dog fighting.
As much as I know about pit bulls and dog fighting, this interview contained a few nuggets of information that startled me. Give it a listen, and then donate or volunteer for your local pit bull rescue.
Click here to listen to “After Michael Vick, The Battle To Stop Dog-Fighting.”
After Michael Vick, The Battle To Stop Dog-Fighting
