Social Nublet...

Id like to begin this weeks Stretched Report by beginning to help define this weeks title.  Urban Dictionary defines Nublet as: "The ultimate form of being noob,newb,nub, etc. This is lower than being nub. You are half of a nub. If you get called this you are not even worth being called a noob." Aka this writer right here, well in my opinion anyway.

The Activity

So this weeks "Challenge", or rather blog activity for Enterprise 2.0 was to choose one of two options, with the first being a beginners option, or for those with a touch more experience with social media tools than myself a tougher second option. From the title I hope that the option that I've chosen should be pretty obvious so off I went to create accounts and investigate further (in other words I'm attempting to come out from the rock which I currently live under).


#NowOnTwitter!

So firstly, twitter here I come! So as per last weeks blog the twitter account which I can spread news, opinions and all matters of my thoughts is @StretchAkAKen although that name may very well change as I may have picked that name on the fly because all other names were chosen, which is not half surprising due to my late arrival to this social party. In lighting quick speed the first tweet was up "Hello Twitter! #myfirstTweet.

Now I ask wtf is hash tagging cause quiet frankly, I see it everywhere but as I haven't previously involved with it.  I had very little idea (hopefully the title of the post is pretty clear here). So I took a trip to Google to do a bit of quick searching, Wikipedia defines it as

"A hastag is a word or an unspaced prhase prefixed with the number sign ("#"). It is a form of metadata tag. Words in messages on microblogging and social networking services such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, VK or Instagram may be tagged by putting "#" before them."

Now of course we all know that Wikipedia isn't the be all and end all of information, and it didn't really explain it how I would have liked so I delved off into further Google search results.  Now what I mean by further searching was simply to click on the next link which took me through to an article written by Rebecca Hiscott (Full article here Beginner's Guide to the Hashtag). She simply explained it to me as a hashtag being a searchable link, where by I could search a certain # to find topics and content based on those keywords. Pretty interesting stuff and proves that you can learn something new every day!

#Interlude!

Now as per the blog activity I didn't stop there with just joining twitter and working out that if I hash tagged something, it wouldn't make me look completely retarded, not that I have a very big social following to look stupid in front of but its that old adage that what's posted on the web, stays on the web foreverrrr (said in a spoooooky voice).

#RSS?

So I decided to check out rss as well, and began by watching the video which was linked on CommonCraft. Now the whole nublet thing really hit home.  Around about the 40sec mark of the video it mentions the "old way" going to your favourite blog site and then onto your favourite news site. The bells in my head were tolling when the video went on to explain a "new and fast way" is when that same information that I had gone out and looked for individually comes to me instead. So as far as social technology goes its a good thing I'm doing Enterprise 2.0.

I also checked out the w3schools information on rss (W3Schools RSS info) as I have used that site many times before for different subjects but mainly to do with accessing correct ways to code and write websites and applications.  It basically reiterated what was covered in the previous video however also gave me a few ideas to incorporate them into possible new web designs.

Now its time for me to stop living under my rock and get myself an rss feed reader. I found on Time magazine's  Matt Peckham a tech guru has listed his top four readers so tonight's adventure will be working out which reader I prefer best and subscribing to a couple of feeds that take my fancy.

#References

Rock Under Rock [img]. Accessed 12/08/2014 from http://www.sodahead.com/united-states/if-we-get-ayman-al-zawahiri-could-it-be-the-end-of-al-qaeda/question-1753289/?link=ibaf&q=&esrc=s

Tall Person Joke [img]. Accessed 12/08/2014 from http://www.tallpeople.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/tumblr_mhw0y5Au6J1r9qk1io1_500.png

Hashtagging. Accessed 12/08/2014 from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashtagging

Hiscott, R. (2013). The Beginner's Guide to the Hashtag. Accessed 12/08/2014 from http://mashable.com/2013/10/08/what-is-hashtag/

Peckham, M. (2013). RIP Google Reader, Hello Four Best RSS-Reader Replacements. Accessed 12/08/2014 from http://techland.time.com/2013/07/01/r-i-p-google-reader-hello-four-best-rss-reader-replacements/