I am officially an old fart...

I use Facebook, but Twitter just seems silly. After reading here and asking around at school (went to visit the ol' place Friday) it seems it's like the Facebook status feature, but that's it. And you can update it from your phone, apparently. Seems to me if you want to know what your friends are doing right at that moment you could use your phone to call them...

And there's plenty of good new music, you're just not hearing any of it, because the radio has been homogenized by Clear Channel Fascists Inc. This has been a rant from your friendly neighborhood music industry, uh, student/can't find a job as an industry professional. Thank you.

I joined the whole Facebook thing in college. I got a MySpace as well sometime back then. Myspace seems to be dying, and Facebook seems to be turning into Myspace, but slower and the features actually seem to work more than 5% of the time.

There is still lots of great music out there. New Wave has had a second coming in the last 5 years, and that's kind of fun because I was too young the first time it came around.

Will wrote:

Appleseed wrote: You're not officially old until you hate all new music. It happened to me around the birth of Emo.

Yup, I think the first time I felt old (I'm 30) was when I realized all my favorite bands are now only played on the flashback lunch hour on KROQ.

Are you from LA? Either that or you listen on line. If you listen on line, you can listen to HD2 with all 80's

Twin_Cam wrote: . And you can update it from your phone, apparently. Seems to me if you want to know what your friends are doing right at that moment you could use your phone to call them...

No, you can't call them. The one feature that seems to be missing from new phones is the ability to talk to another person. I gave out my number to some people so they could call me at work. All I get are cryptic messages that I don't have time to decipher. Please Vanna, give these people some vowels.

gamby wrote: Actively rejecting Facebook (even though that's turned into a 30-something parent-fest)

Mmmmm, restless MILFs posting their restlessness. search by zip code.

Or use it to see if the hotties from high school stayed hot, etc. My 25th reunion is this fall, and that's exactly how i'm going to use it.

My wife set me up with a page and that has been entertaining

While I don't use Twitter myself, I can understand the appeal of it. Yes, it can be used for pretty frivolous things, like telling the world what kind of soup you had for lunch, but there are also plenty of creative and interesting uses as well.

For example, let's pretend that we are all on Twitter, and that all of us GRM-ers keep tabs on each other. I could be in my garage, and in my frustration, post a tweet about how I'm having one hell of a time replacing the top on my Miata. Everyone here would see my tweet; perhaps some of you will tweet me a response, giving me some advice, or if I'm really lucky, offering some help.

Or perhaps you are going to the Challenge, and your car or tow vehicle breaks down. You tweet this to let everyone know that you might not make it. But then, someone else sees your tweet and offers some help so that you can make the Challenge.

I never thought much of Twitter until I saw a friend use it to solve a problem. You can unobtrusively ask a question to a lot of people and get a response. Or have a discussion. Or share something cool, like a deal on race tires. It's like your own personal message board that follows the people and ideas that interest you most, accessible almost anywhere and instantly.

While I don't have a Twitter account, I do follow a couple of friends with RSS. RSS is basically an online newspaper-like subscription. In my RSS reader, I have subscriptions to various car blogs, friend's blogs, Twitters, online comics, and most importantly, any Craigslist posting within 130 miles of me that contain the word "Miata." I can keep tabs on a bunch of stuff without having to visit each individual website.

Tim Baxter wrote: It lets you know the exact moment "hey, I think I'll go have a beer" crosses my mind.

Which would probably lead everyone to believe that I'm a raging alchoholic because that's pretty much all I would use it for, I think.

Clem

Appleseed wrote: Ha! When I heard Pearl Jam on a classic rock station the other day, I almost jerked the wheel into oncoming traffic...

I grew up right in the Pearl Jam era and liked them alot. But, I think if I heard them now, on any station, classic or otherwise, I would swerve into oncoming traffic. Im definitely over Pearl Jam.

And there is alot of good new music. Hank III?

Joey

The day I heard a Muzak version of Ozzy playing in an elevator, I knew I was an old fart. And that was a while back.

I'm starting to miss the Top 40 stuff from the late '90s, before rap started taking over mainstream. Also the stuff before alt rock morphed into emo

For music i mostly listen to show tunes any more.

Edit, OTOH Blink 182 is back so, berkeley yeah

neon4891 wrote: I'm starting to miss the Top 40 stuff from the late '90s, before rap started taking over mainstream. Also the stuff before alt rock morphed into emo For music i mostly listen to show tunes any more.

Check out 97.1 CharlieFM here in Portland

http://www.charliefm.com/

You might like it.

I heard there was a new twitter type service for random questions coming out from Mofocorp...

They will call it twhatter.

Don't get me wrong, there is still new music I dig, but when I can count the number of new bands and/or new albums in a given year on one hand...

So how do I get set up with an RSS feed? This sounds interesting.

Joey

I am 20 and I think I am an old man already. I don't really care about most new music, I have no clue what twitter is, I don't like most new cars and while I have a facebook I never use it.

The best use I've heard of for Twitter was when someone suggested I use it to send updates during the Targa. Okay, that's a legitimate time when people would want rapid updates, even short ones, and it's something I could easily send from a phone instead of carrying a laptop in the rally car. The same goes for other sporting events, or some sort of event where rapid updates would be useful. The rest of the time, it's narcissism.

The reason "tweets" are so short is because they're designed to be sent by phone, and the character message limit for SMS is 140 characters. I don't know this because I'm a twit, but because I used to work in wireless :)

RSS feeds can be found on many web pages - such as this one! If you're using Firefox, you'll see an orange doodad in the address bar. Click on that and you can add it to your RSS reader - I use Google reader because it's easy to understand. I don't know how IE deals with it.

http://www.google.com/reader/

My various car diaries have RSS feeds built into them so people can follow along without having to check the sites. It's pretty convenient, kinda like having a subscription to a magazine instead of having to run to the newsstand and see if there's a new issue out.

Joey, the biggest step is just figuring out HOW you want the feeds to come to you. Like Keith, I use Google Reader, but all the modern browsers can do it, and there's plenty of other ways.

I'd be lost without RSS bringing all my news to me every day.

This site has six or seven different feeds, not counting feeds for each clubs' upcoming events.

By the way, this is the typical RSS symbol:

The internet/music stuff is interesting, but irrelevant to the subject. There is a certain time when you officially become an old fart, which is:

When there is junk mail from AARP in your box 4 days a week. Don't even ask me how I know.