PurpleCar

Blip.fm is a song directory site where you can play music and add those titles to your DJ stream. What’s nice is that you can send songs to friends and you can attach comments to the songs. Today I was discussing Pachelbel’s Canon in a chatroom, so I went over to “blip” it.

Listening to the song, I wrote a small haiku:

a winter wedding
burgundy petals fall in
white snow as she runs

Friend me on Blip.  I’m PurpleCar over there, of course.  Send me your faves!

So the proverbial poop hit the fan today on Twitter. It started with me calling out a new follower on what I thought was an automatic direct message (turns out it wasn’t). If you don’t know what Twitter is, skip this whole blog post.

If you know Twitter but don’t know what an automatic direct message (ADM) is, you’re lucky.  I’m inundated with them.

Here’s how it works: A person follows me. I get the notification in my email. I click on the link that takes me to that person’s Twitter profile. I read some of their tweets. I go to their website if they have one listed. I click on some of the links in their tweets. I usually follow back if they seem interesting and not spammy.

Here’s the part where it gets nasty. As soon as I push their follow button, the little bit and byte elves in the fairy machines in magic Twitterland run and get that user’s pre-made message. This is the dreaded ADM. The elves work their little hands off sending that ADM directly to my direct message inbox.

Mind you, this follower and I have never once conversed. I hardly know this person. And they followed ME first. It becomes evident why next.

They follow me, hoping for a follow-back. Once they get the lovely follow-back, they send a DM with basically the same info in their bio description on their twitter homepage. It’s a link back to their site, which is most likely selling something or promoting some brand or most likely their SEO services.

Sometimes, though rarely, these new followers immediately unfollow me after the ADM is sent. With those people it is evident that they just want to ADM people their websites. I sometimes block them after this depending how I feel that day.

So, back to the poop hitting the fan.

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Tax rebates help.

The people who need this information probably won’t see it on this website or in email.  Please print it out and pass it on to anyone you think may qualify (see the 2nd paragraph to learn who qualifies).  It’s up to us to keep our community healthy.  Let’s look out for each other, especially our elderly.  You can slip it in their mailbox or on their car windshield if you want to remain anonymous.

Property Tax/Rent Rebate deadline approaching

The application deadline for Pennsylvania’s Property Tax/Rent Rebate Program is Dec. 31. The program provides rebates for qualifying Pennsylvanians on the previous year’s property taxes or rent paid based on last year’s income. The program ending on Dec. 31 applies to income for 2007.

To be eligible for the program, you must be 65 or older, a widow or widower 50 or older, or 18 or older with a permanent disability. To qualify for a rebate, your household income [continue reading…]

Via email, from my friend “Alice”:

“Okay people I am counting on you to give me some honest answers.  I keep going back & forth, back & forth about wanting to join Facebook.  There is a huge part of my curiosity that is making me want to join.  There is also a side of me that does not want to worry about people in my past requesting to be my friend.  Basically, there is only 1 person I keep in touch with from high school & that is how I want to keep it.  What is the whole etiquette about denying friend request? Has it been a more positive experience than a negative one? Does it suck up a lot of your time?  I am a computer addict, so I worry that this will be another thing to soak up my time that could be spent elsewhere.”

So many great questions covering so many current issues we all face.  I asked this question on Twitter; my podcasting buddy Michael Gaines (@istarman) reminded me that Alice could avoid her fellow alumni by registering under her married name only.  (Sidenote: Annie Boccio, another Push My Follow podcaster, wrestled with adding her maiden name to Facebook a few weeks ago.  Her high school friends weren’t finding her, so she added it.  On Twitter, she mentioned she felt odd using her maiden name again.)

Alice is not one of us; she is what I call a ‘normal person.’  She isn’t a social media person, but she is Generation X and computer savvy.  She’s a stay-at-home-mom and she is relatively shy and private.  She’d like to use Facebook as a way to keep contact with her real life, intimate friends.

What are your suggestions for Alice?