I wonder the same thing about folks who check for new email every 5 minutes, follow 5,000 people on Twitter, or try to do anything sane with 500 RSS feeds.

Some graze unlimited bowls of information by choice. Others claim it’s a necessity of remaining employed, landing sales, or “staying in the loop.” Could be. What about you?

How do you know when you’ve had “enough?”

Not everything, all the time, completely, forever. Just enough. Enough to start, finish, or simply maintain.

(via Enough by Merlin Mann on 43 Folders)

After I read this short essay by Merlin Mann, I got rid of a good handful of the news feeds I was reading in Google Reader. My life already feels better, and has continued to for the week or so since I did it. Turns out I didn’t need up-to-the-minute headlines on Tiger Woods’s love life and fifty funny headlines a day from Fark and The Onion. If I’m aching for a funny headline, I can always peek at the site sometime. But I don’t need it every day. I certainly don’t miss it yet.

I also did a big cleanup on Twitter recently that has made it a simple joy again. Something to fill in gaps for a quick bit of communication or an enjoyable tidbit of a friend’s day. It’s not something I feel like I have to check every five minutes any more just to keep up. Turns out I don’t need to keep up with every move every band and person I know at every moment.

Suggested goal: Sometime before the new year, go through the websites, email newsletters, Twitter accounts, news feeds, newspapers, magazines and social networks that take your attention and ask yourself whether or not each of them is essential to your daily survival. Try to get rid of a third or even just a quarter of it. Then open your eyes to all the things you have time for with those extra moments.

I wonder what would happen if it weren’t considered bragging to tell people about our generosity. Do you think people would see what others are doing and feel the need to “keep up” by being more generous? Would that be generosity in the wrong mindset?

A while back I did this Twitter For Food thing and announced on Twitter that I’d skip lunch and donate $10 to hunger relief instead. I got some semi-negative responses about showing off, but I wasn’t doing it to be proud. I wanted to show other people how easy it is to help.

Today is World Aids Day and, of course, it trended on Twitter with all sorts of people “raising awareness.” But I wonder how often anyone actually acts on that awareness. Then along came Merlin Mann in all his wonder:

Roiling emo outrage over the Human Condition gets way more credible if you quit fucking around on the internet and go DO something.

So, here I am, wondering what to do. Because I do donate money to a fair number of causes and have volunteered countless hours of my time over the years. But I don’t tell people how much I give or to who, really, because that’s common courtesy. And I wonder what would happen if I threw that common courtesy out the window, and others did too, so that we’re using social networks to tell people what we’re actively doing to help instead of just “raising awareness.”

A curmudgeon might reasonably point out, “Why the blue hell do I need to talk about ‘mind grapes’ when the word ‘mind’ is working just fine?” Well, as Cosmo Kramer once asked, “Why go to a fine restaurant when you can just stick something in the microwave? Why go to the park and fly a kite when you can just pop a pill?” Language isn’t always about brevity. People like to be clever, and they like to reference clever shows like 30 Rock. Whether that makes you blurgh or liz is up to you.

(via The Language of 30 Rock)

I love this piece about how 30 Rock invents words that get thrown into our cultural lexicon. I personally love using the term “thoughtsicles” as an alternative to “mind grapes.” Tracy came up with that one, too.

Language is a funny thing. We say all sorts of seemingly useless crap that we get from TV, movies, music, YouTube and Urban Dictionary. A physical printed dictionary could never keep up; it’s a wonder people even care what new words get added to Webster’s list every year.

Side note: I also enjoyed how the article used Twitter as a means to prove their point of real-world usage. Mark that down as another possible purpose for tweeting, or at least the value for researchers found in otherwise inane collections of 140-ish characters.

I’ve talked about Ramit Sethi a few times. And Twitter, too, for that matter. Who knew I’d cover both in the same post?

As a strong advocate for Twitter, I have to say this is the best that’s come of it thus far: after loaning Ramit’s book I Will Teach You to Be Rich to a friend, who subsequently had her purse stolen with the book inside, I tweeted about it and Ramit responded personally, offering to replace my copy of the book and give one to my friend as well.

If I weren’t a fan of his before, I certainly would be now.

Other things Twitter has done for me:

• Gotten a response about a technical issue with Mozy
• Gotten a response from Rhapsody that led to me being included in a private beta of the next version of their player
• Multiple personal responses from record labels and musicians that I respect
• Getting to know my girlfriend better before we started dating
• Learning the power of brevity
• The ability to track last year’s Los Angeles fires in real time for a friend who was visiting me while his family was facing evacuation

If you aren’t using Twitter, maybe now’s a good time to start.

Today my friend (and former boss’s boss) Tim is heading up the charge to bring some attention to world hunger causes by recommending Twitter users skip a meal and donate what they would have spent on food to a world hunger organization.

Join me in a one-meal fast. Let’s see what we can do.

Linkage

• Twitter for Food (includes links to where you can donate)
• #twitterforfood on Twitter

Ever since the iPhone released two summers ago, the mobile world has changed completely. Sure, smart phones existed well before the iPhone, but it was the first time it was sold as something for everyone, not just business users and tech geeks.

Along with the revolution on phone side of things, it seems as though every web service I use has become highly intertwined with mobile media support. I’m a heavy user of Facebook, Twitter and Brightkite. Facebook has a mobile version of the site that feeds the addiction of those of us with mobile web, and both Twitter and Brightkite would be almost completely useless without text messaging and/or mobile web.

I see potential for huge ideas that would only be possible with the help of mobile computing. The trick is having a phone that encourages and contributes to those ideas in a way that is it is easy for the end user to work with and for them to grasp the bigger picture as well.

All that said, I decided to geek out and come up with the ideal mobile phone for my own personal wants. I am currently in the early stages of shopping for a new phone to take me to the next level (beyond just phone calls and text messages, that is). This is also sort of written for my friend Ben Pike, who is the biggest mobile phone geek the world has ever known.

Here are the features I want in my next phone. Obviously I’m dreaming, so the closest I can find will have to do. The rest are just good ideas to shoot for.

Read the rest of this entry »

Twittering stems from a lack of identity. It’s a constant update of who you are, what you are, where you are. Nobody would Twitter if they had a strong sense of identity.

Oliver James, in I Tweet, Therefore I Am, on Gawker

Maybe it’s because there’s 6.7 billion of us.

But really. People say we are far more connected to far more people than ever before, and that we do far more to put ourselves out there. Did anyone stop to consider that maybe it’s to maintain a balanced sense of significance in this world? There are twice as many of us alive right now than there were 40 years ago.

And yet everyone talks about these “cries for attention” and “lack of identity” like Twitter and blogging are the root of the problem (or at least exacerbate it) rather than a symptom of a much larger problem that is beyond our control.

Tonight is the night I see Radiohead. (And Liars!) It’s also the night I get to hang out with Leah and commemorate what would be the birthday of JD Rhea. We’ll both have goosebumps and tears for more reasons than can be counted.

The best part of all this, aside from having the potential to be the most memorable night in recent years, is that there’s a rumor buzzing that video of the show is going to be broadcast online. That means that, by next week, I’ll be able to find a professionally-shot video of the most significant concert I’ve ever attended that I’ll be able to keep forever. Now that’s cool.

If you care to get a play-by-play, you can be watching my Twitter for updates.

This is shaping up to be a wonderful day.