The Last Time Wasn't Announced

The other day, I started thinking about all the things I used to do that have completely disappeared from my life. Not major life events. Just everyday things that once seemed permanent.

The funny thing is that most of us never know we're doing something for the last time. There wasn't a ceremony when I rented my last movie or printed my last set of directions. One day it happened, and I didn't realize it would be the last.

That's what this week's post is about: some of the things I did for years that quietly disappeared from my life. There was no fanfare when they ended. One day I simply stopped doing them and never realized it was the last time.

Having a newspaper delivered to our home or picking one up at the grocery store was once a normal part of life. I do not recall the last time I bought a newspaper. For that matter, I do not recall the last time I read one. It is one of those activities that ended, and I did not realize it would be the last time. It was so long ago that I do not even remember when it last occurred.

For a while, I had our local paper here in Topeka delivered electronically to my mobile devices. I enjoyed it, but eventually I let the subscription expire and never went back. Where do I get my local news now? I rely on Really Simple Syndication (RSS). No matter where I am or what I am doing, I read through my RSS feeds every morning and throughout the day. I stay current on local, national, and technology news through those feeds.

Reviewing and printing maps for a trip was a process. I can remember having pages printed with a route, notes about what was available along the way, and highlighted directions for the trip. The papers would sit in the passenger seat. If Carrie or someone else was traveling with me, they would be responsible for making sure we stayed on the correct route. If it was a solo trip, I might have to pull off to the side of the road to read through the directions and make sure I was headed the right way. Now, of course, all of that is on our phones, and there is rarely a need to print directions or even look up a trip ahead of time.

One thing I do miss is burning CDs for a trip. I would spend time ahead of a trip compiling songs and carefully selecting music that fit the journey. Once everything was ready, I would burn the songs to a CD and use a Sharpie to label it appropriately for the trip. I would guess that if I went through some of the boxes in our basement, I would still find a few of those old CDs I created for road trips or simply for the fun of having a disc filled with my favorite songs.

As many of you know, I watch a lot of television series and movies. I remember making sure the DVR was set to record a show. If we were away from home and someone mentioned a program that was on that night, there was no way to remotely set the DVR to record it. The technology simply was not there. Recordings had to be planned ahead of time.

I never owned a TiVo, which I know was popular for many people through the years. We used an old-school VCR to record shows and later relied on the DVRs provided by Cox and Dish. It was not until years later that Dish added the ability to schedule a recording through an app while away from home. If a game or another event ran long and I was not home to extend the recording, I would often miss part of whatever I had planned to watch.

Some of the things I've stopped doing have nothing to do with technology. There are restaurants I used to visit regularly. Stores that no longer exist. Routes I drove every day in previous jobs. Even roads and routines that once felt permanent and familiar have faded away.

What strikes me is not that these things disappeared. Change is inevitable.

What fascinates me is how quickly something can move from being an ordinary part of everyday life to becoming a memory. At one point, I could not imagine living without some of these things. Today, I rarely think about them at all.

Working in technology, I spend a lot of time thinking about what is next. Maybe I should spend a little more time noticing what quietly slipped away.

It also makes me wonder what I am doing today that will seem equally outdated twenty years from now. What routines feel permanent today but will quietly disappear without me noticing?

I do not know the answer, but I am pretty sure there will be a last time I do some ordinary thing this week, and I will not realize it until years later.

Until next time, enjoy your routines and reflect on the things you no longer do but never noticed had disappeared. Have a great rest of your Sunday and a wonderful week.

How Do You Automate Your Blog to FaceBook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Others?

 

Like most everyone else on the internet, I have social media sites on a variety of platforms. I use Twitter almost exclusively but for various reasons I also have accounts on FaceBook, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, and Flickr. As I get back into posting regularly to my blog, I am trying to work through the processes of automatically posting to various sites. The sites I have focused on include Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn.

When I was blogging on a regular basis a few years ago, there were different options for auto posting to Twitter and FaceBook, but the services I used before either stopped those options or services such as FaceBook no longer allows for posting to profile but only to a page. So, I created a page on FaceBook and still not really sure what I am doing, but it seems odd as people have to subscribe to the page in order to see the posts. I am simply trying to reach my contacts on FaceBook so they can see my posts that may not normally check other social media sites or following my blog. FaceBook has made the process of sharing content to your own profile a little complicated. It seems odd to me that in order to automate sharing content to FaceBook that I have to do so to a page and not my profile. 

I did find some services that allow for sharing that cost money, but this is a personal blog for fun and I am not interested in paying for any services. I am using IFTTT to post to my FaceBook Page as well as to my LinkedIn profile. I also use dlvr.it for posting to Twitter and just realized I have it set up to post to LinkedIn too. I will probably leave it for this post to see how it works as I set it up earlier this week and had not posted anything to see how it works.

So, with this post, I am checking how various automated postings work that I have tried to change. I am looking to increase followers on various platforms. Finally, I am looking for feedback from various bloggers I follow to get their input on auto sharing to various social media sites. How do you share your content and automate that process?

I look forward to seeing how this works to my social media sites. I am also interested to hear from other bloggers on how they share and automate their site sharing. Please feel free to comment directly on this blog post or on the various social media sites where this is posted.

After Google Reader Left... My Recommendations

I admit that I was one of those that was upset that Google Reader was terminated by Google. I had used Google Reader since it was first introduced. I used it from any web browser and I had even purchased iOS apps to be able to view the feeds without advertisements.  So, of course I was disappointed when Google announced earlier this year that it would discontinue Google Reader as of July 2013.

As it approached the date to discontinue Google Reader, I started looking for other options.  I did the usual of doing searches to find out what others recommended.  I tried out a few and finally settled on two that I would import my feeds to and begin using.  Both of which were web based and could also be accessed via a app on my iPhone.

The first site I tried was Feedly (http://www.feedly.com/). This was one of those sites that was recommended from other sites.  Feedly was preparing for the influx of Google Reader users that would have to find another option to read their feeds.  The other site I tried was the Digg Reader (http://www.digg.com/).  Unlike Feedly that had been around for a while, Digg had not been in the feed game before Google Reader announced they would discontinue their service.  Digg has been around for years as a way to recommend articles, web sites, etc. to others via a social medium.  When Google announced they would discontinue their service, Digg stepped up to build a rss news feed from scratch.

So, I tried both of these for a few weeks.  Both allowed access from a web site and both did have iOS apps (as well as other phone types) for accessing the news.  In the end, I ended up using Feedly as my daily source for news.  It is fast and I can easily share news via Twitter or Facebook.

A friend and I had a discussion about this and he decided to go with one where he pays for the service.  I went the free route simply because it was there and I do not see a need to pay for something that is free.  As he indicated, it is only a matter of time before Feedly, Digg, and others start introducing advertising on their sites.  Google did advertising on their site when accessing through a web browser, but that did not deter me from accessing their site to view the feeds.

If you are looking for a easy to use service for reading your daily news, I recommend checking out Feedly. Happy news reading....