Simplify, and Get the Most of Your Life Online

We are well into the information age. If you are not yet the interactive type, then you are missing quite a lot. If you are the tech savvy one, then you know that life can be chaotic on and offline.

We all can get obsessive compulsive about collecting and keeping information. It would be well to manage them so they take less of our time and are easier to keep track of. Besides, organizing activities online can be very helpful for business people and professionals on the go. You not only save time that you can devote back to work or other personal commitments, you are likewise kept tuned in to information relevant to you from throughout the globe, as they unfold.

These social media networks channelled correctly can be a valuable tool for marketing or personal branding in the case of today’s professional. But used indiscriminately may cost you valuable time from your work day. As a busy professional consider how much time you’re putting into Social Media and what you’re getting out of it.

Here are some hot tips to simplify your digital life:

• Make your own homepage. A personalized homepage as alternative to traditional web portals can be a great help. There is Netvibes which lets you assemble your favorite websites, blogs, e mail accounts, social networks, search engines, IMs, photos, videos, podcast, you name it. All in one place.
• If you are more often on Yahoo, you can use My Yahoo, or if you love Google, then you can set up an iGoogle. So easy to do, just type in to your searchbar, follow instructions and sign up.
• Subscribe to RSS feeds. Your RSS (Really Simple Syndication) reader program gives you a one-stop place to visit all of the sites that you think are important on the Internet. You follow a site by subscribing to its RSS feed. Instead of using your bookmarks to visit the site you use your RSS reader to keep track of new content.
• For organizing photos, you may use Flckr or Picasa, you can choose only the photos you really want to keep.
• Delete softwares you don’t actually use, it is just taking up space on your hard drive. Software often installs services that run in the background even though you aren’t using it — uninstalling software can make your computer run faster as it frees up memory.
• Unsubscribe from automated emails you don’t read. You can try Gmail which has super-fast search. Delete e mails you are not likely to read again or have need of, or not going to want to re-experience. They’ll be in the trash for 30 days if you change your mind. Use filters and labels to track emails that aren’t urgent.
• Do you twitter? The strength of Twitter is that it is a mesh network of people who find each other interesting. Unfollow people who you don’t have two-way communication with, especially if they’re too prolific.Subscribe to your @replies feed using another service so you don’t miss people communicating with you. Block people who are spamming your @replies.
• Have you signed u p for Facebook yet? It is an essential site not to be missed if you want to be the professional in the stream of things.

Time has come up with a list of 10 essential Sites dubbed Sites We can’t live without and they are as follows:

1. Wikipedia.org
2. Yahoo! Finance
3. Craigslist
4. ESPN
5. Yelp
6. Facebook
7. Digg
8. Google
9. TMZ
10. Flickr

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New Global Media: A Woman’s World?

Remember the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? It’s that popular book written by John Gray in the early ‘90’s offering theories as to how men and women are so differently wired, and how their communication style and emotional needs are poles apart that it would need an understanding of these essential differences for them to co-exist. As the title asserts, men and women are as different as beings from other planets.

An example of the basic theories in the book is that “ women complain about problems because they want their problems to be acknowledged, while men complain about problems because they are asking for solutions.” Coming from different places, right? Other concepts are about the difference between women and men’s point systems and how they react under stress.

This metaphor seem to still inspire some new phenomenon in the participation of men and women in today’s interconnected world. We found some interesting insights in the NYmieg blog of Bill Sobel,

Founded and organized in June 2006, NY:MIEG (The New York Media Information Exchange Group) brings together media, entertainment and financial professionals who meet monthly in New York City to explore ideas and offer wisdom on the profound changes that are forever changing the industry. NY: MIEG provides a forum for continuing education for all professionals who work with media. Bill Sobel seems however very observant of the phenomenal rise of women in positions of influence in media, particularly the new global media.

Bill cited an article from the blog called Summation drawing a Venus-Mars like metaphor for today’s interconnected world: Men are from Video Games, Women are from Social Networks.

Does it come as any shock that even on their online life they are beings from two different planets?

Some interesting insights from the Rafleaf study

• Rapleaf conducted a study of 13.2 million people and how they are using social media. While the trends among the sexes indicate they are both massively using social media, women are far outpacing men.
• For those under 30, women and men are just as likely to be members of social networks. Sites like Facebook, MySpace, and Flixster are extraordinarily popular.
• For those above 30, men – especially married men – aren’t even joining social networks.. With the notable exception of LinkedIn usage
• Women are are joining social networks in droves. In fact, women between the ages 35-50 are the fastest growing segment on social networks, especially on MySpace and Facebook.
• It may be gleaned from the study results that men’s time online comes from spending hours playing video games such as World of Warcraft and many first-person action games. Men also dominate LinkedIn – the most transactional social network (with the exception of AdultFriendFinder). LinkedIn is all about getting information and introductions now.
• Women, on the other, hand are much more relationship driven and less transactional than men. They spend more time on social networks building relationships, communicating with friends, making new friends, and more. Married women put up pictures of their immediate family on social networks and use their social network profile as a family home page to share with friends and relatives.

With all these, trends can possibly be gleaned in the direction that we’re witnessing a burgeoning gender gap.Therefore, they say if you are creating a new Web 2.0 site and you want to go viral, you target women. Women drive virality and so all the new innovations currently on the net are mostly targeted towards them.

Do I hear any objections?