An Unexpected Gift That Brightened My Day

When I arrived home, after a rough day at work, I saw a CafePress box waiting for me. The kids excitedly tried to figure out what was in the box.

In my mind, I kept thinking to myself, “Did I get something and forget?”

Isabelle ran inside and started opening up the package.  She squeals, “Ooohhh…mommy! It’s a cute bear!”

Someone sent me a cute bear with the FriendFeed catchphrase, “DAMN YOU STEVEN PEREZ!”

It shows the wonderful people you can meet online.  I have met people of all kinds, and I have learned something from many of them.  It has helped my writing, career, parenting, self, etc.

I thought it was Steven Perez who sent it, but after speaking to him, it wasn’t him.  Whoever you are, thank you! You really took my mind out off of my rough day.

FriendFeed Ate My Job’s Bandwith, and I Am the One Paying For It

Do you notice anything strange about my Google Chrome front page?

This is what baffled me when I opened it up.  My heart started palpitating, and I started to breath faster.  It better not be what I think it is.  Oh, it was.

MY JOB BLOCKED FRIENDFEED

Some of you might say, “Well, you shouldn’t be on Friendfeed anyway.”  The thing is I am a super fast worker.  I can do something that takes another person eight hours in two hours, so I have six hours where I am not doing anything.  This is where FriendFeed comes in.  It’s my time to catch up with the friends I have made on there; find out what is going on in the world; and have interesting conversations.  What am I going to do now?

This is the message that I got:

Acceptable Use of Company Bandwidth

Employee use of company Internet bandwidth for activities such as downloading TV episodes, videos, and streaming music or news consumes large amounts of valuable bandwidth and thus can have a serious impact on the availability and performance of business-related resources and services. As such, any material use of the company’s Internet bandwidth for these types of non-business related activities falls outside the scope of Acceptable Use. Please do your part to ensure that we are maximizing the benefit derived from [company's] business resources.

Over the past month, we have seen numerous examples of excessive use, including the following: Downloading an episode of a TV series which consumed over 50% of the available bandwidth at one location for over two hours; users watching TV or a “live” news shows (just one user streaming TV or news easily consumes over 50% of the entire bandwidth at one of our standard smaller office Internet connections).

As a reminder, our Acceptable Use (AU) policy (Policy & Guidelines – section 8006) explicitly states that excessive non-work related use of the Internet is a policy violation. The above mentioned (and any similar) examples clearly fall into this category. To reiterate what CEO stated in his earlier message on inappropriate use of[company's]resources, “When in doubt, please exercise good judgment and common sense in the use of [company's]computing resources.”

If you are unsure of an activity, or you feel you have received this message in error, contact the help desk for assistance.

Oh FriendFeed, if it’s true, why are you taking up so much of my company’s bandwith that it made them take notice of you and restrict you?  Don’t you know how torturous it is to now finish up my work and have to twiddle my thumbs waiting for the time that I can leave?  I now have to comment and view you on my Blackberry, which doesn’t give me the convenience of a keyboard.  I have to clumsily type, backspace, and type every comment.

For my company, this is one of the reasons why people start resorting to playing online games and gambling because you begin blocking all the innocent sites.  You don’t block Facebook that I bet more people use, but you block FriendFeed?  I think I am the only person who uses it, and I only come in two-three times a week, so I seriously doubt it’s the bandwith.

As for me, I will have to become “one of those people” who are steadily twiddling with their Blackberry.

Twitter Could Be a Mini FriendFeed

Twitter Real Time Inline Search, originally uploaded by TimCohn.

Last weekend, I got an alert from TwitterMoms, which is a social networking site for mommy bloggers who tweet. It was for a virtual wine tasting via Twitter. How it worked was that you used a hash tag when you posted a tweet related to the wine tasting. In another window, you had a “real-time” search to follow the conversations.

One of my complaints about Twitter is that it is rare when there is a bidirectional conversation. It’s usually one way. Yes, my interactions have gotten better the more people I follow, but it’s still not what I want.

The virtual wine tasting was the first (and only) times that I felt I achieved that. However, I don’t think that Twitter should call it “real time” because it wasn’t. For the early adopters of FriendFeed, it’s like the old “Standard” view. In order to see the new tweets, you had to keep refreshing.

Other than that, I have to say that I was impressed because it showed the potential for Twitter to become a microblogging service with bidirectional conversations. For now, Twitter needs to play catch up.

I am happy that I participated.  I met some great mommy tweeters who I never would have probably found in another way. =D

My Interview with The Bit Boss and on the Top Ten FF People to Follow List

I got interviewed by Craig Sutton, who is an expert on technology, business, and social media. Here is more about him: Interview of Craig from Deb Brown. I tried to ensure that the answers were as entertaining as I found his questions. If you want to learn more about me, definitely read the transcript:

http://thebitboss.com/craigsutton/getting-to-know-shevonne-polastre-dcfemella

Then I got the shock of my life when I got chosen to be on the coveted list from Mike Fruchter called, “10 People to Follow on FriendFeed,” for the month of February on Louis Gray’s blog.

It’s been a great year so far in so many ways.  I am meeting wonderful people, and these great people are also noticing me.  I hope that I can pay it forward in some shape or form.

Friendfeed is Home to the Coolest People You Will Ever Meet

When people think about the people lurking on the internet, they think introverted, crazy people who don’t know how to operate in public. They are seriously WRONG. Yes, there are some out there, but not everyone is like that.

When I was in LA, I headed to a Friendfeed Meetup to hang with some of the people I talk to every day when I am on Friendfeed. They were some of the coolest, genuine people you could ever meet.

If you are able to meet the people you talk to on a social networking site, do it. You might be surprised in a good way.

People who attended: 

1. Anika - http://friendfeed.com/faboomama
2. Adrian - http://friendfeed.com/adrianculici
3. Derrick - http://friendfeed.com/geekandahalf
4. Mark V - http://friendfeed.com/mvandenberg
5. Mark K - http://friendfeed.com/krynsky
6. Amani - http://friendfeed.com/mirthnadir
7. Me – http://friendfeed.com/dcfemella

Befriend them.  They don’t bite.  Believe me, I met them.