Plurkfiends

One of the many things I like about Plurk is its user interface – it’s a rather grand , interactive, left-right scrolling timeline that allows user to easily see their own Plurks as well as those of their friends, including an easy way to identify Plurks that have been responded to.  I’ve been using Plurk for nigh on eighteen months, having been introduced to it by my online friends that I’ve been in contact with for well over five years.

I’ve tried Twitter -and I still use that for brief contact and posting of links as well as keeping up with various services/organisations that post brief information, often including links – but it’s Plurk that is my preferrred social-networking microblog service.  Plurk is easy to use, easy to understand and easy to communicate with.  Having used Twitter and having had a go at a mutltitude of microblogging services, Plurk stands out way above the crowd.  In short, Plurk rocks.

Like many grand things that rock, it has – unfortunately – been ripped off.  Not just by any company – but by Microsoft China.  A big corporation ripping off a young startup that is doing amazing work.  Surely Microsoft has the resources to do their own work?  One would think so – but one would be wrong.

If you’d like more information on this dastardly deed, please see the post on the Plurk blog entitled Microsoft China rips off Asia’s No. 1 Microblogging Service as well as the followup Plurk’s official response to Microsoft’s apology.

I would like to think – and hope – that this will all be resolved in Plurk‘s favour – time will tell.

I’ve been thinking about this post for all of this month – one year since I entered this place called Plurk.  It’s been an interesting year, catching up with old friends met via other networks and meeting new people many of whom I’m now happy to call plurkfiends and forging new relationships based on learning about and exploring photography.

I first became aware of Plurk via people I’ve known online since 2004 via game called Blog$hares.  There’s a graph in this somewhere charting my increased time in Plurk and my decreased time playing with shares based on blog linkage, but I’ll leave that to @billythekid to blog about and your imagination otherwise.

I was on the Gold Coast last year and caught up with @gcgal and @aussiejohn for my first ever Plurkfest and since then I’ve had a visit from @soulcreates here in Darwin.  These interactions as well as time spent plurking (and via Plurk, flickring) had me thinking that I’d like to have a larger gathering of those I Plurk with and so suggested a gathering.  Plurkfest Oz 2009 will now be happening in November in Adelaide.

Many of my plurkfiends are photographers and/or have a keen interest in photography and I’ve learned much from them over the past year as they also share this mad passion.  Some of the grand photographers that I’ve met whilst Plurking that you might want to check out are murfomurf, eztephen, soulcreates, werewegian and claudecf.

Not a lot of content for having thought about it for most of the past month, is it?  But that is it – I want to get back to Plurking and flickring – much to amuse myself with.  Thanks for dropping by.

You’d probably like to know that this is the (23*3)th post.

I don’t know where I’d be in the world if I hadn’t discovered online ‘Social networking’.

Sites like Plurk (and PlurkFest Oz 2009), Twitter, Facebook, Skype and various other online social-sites have enabled one tenth of the planet to talk to each other via their computers instead of the telephone.

But I do know this: You and I certainly wouldn’t have found Yooouuutuuube.com. Not by accident, not in a million years. I only found it because someone mentioned it on Facebook. Now I am telling everyone about it!

Now I am able to view and watch a wall of ‘With or Without You’ by U2 within my browser.

Long Live the Internet!

The one thing I hate most about bus rides is competing for standing room.

Everyone gets on at each station, pushing and shoving to get personal space. But not before the doors battering our shoulders as inmates either beg to escape or contort limbs into the canister. Like elevators, there should be a capacity limit!

Eventually sitting passengers have to contend with an array of crotches, and those standing have no breathing space. Multiple aromas interact, forming gaseous clouds that explain why the hole in the ozone layer follows buses across the planet. His LYNX plus her CHANEL equals various element missing from the table OR a substance similar to SEMTEX … The volatility caused upon breathing in can set off a brain aneurysm and invoke anger issues that no repression will let you forget.

Any phobia you had of enclosed spaces or crowds is replaced by a rash down your thighs caused by polyestor and cotton threads rubbing together. No two humans should rub together for than fifteen minutes unless they really REALLY like each other! Upon escape, thankfully the smell doesn’t longer too long. Until we do it tonight.

And there are those humans who wake up of a morning with the idea to spike their hair with gel so that it is sharp enough to poke a hole in the sole of sanity! Whilst I might have permed my hair down to my shoulders back in the mid 1980′s, it baffles me why anyone would spend so much money to enhance a feature of their body that grows and dies faster than any other part of their body.

An array of male wannabe-models parade throughout the carriage, their hair spiked skywards , their slacks ironed to within pixels of perfection, shirts with solid collars and cuffs … and shoes that prove that crocodiles must rust after death.

Female bus dwellers must hate casual day of the week. Very few have any discernible sign of uniformity. Multi-coloured shirts, skirts, slacks, hair and handbags, a retailers dream, a marketing manager’s backyard.

Suffering students are the bane of every ride. Between screaming into the next students eardrums through to fits of satanic laughter, the current generation remind me that I really need to top up my superannuation!

Thankfully this ride ended before I could write any more, so this is where I end. Until next I enter Dante‘s other hell.