You could have a worse meme maker

I like Facebook as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but all of these Some E Cards knockoffs are killing me. Tonight, after seeing approximately my 14,000th Victorian woman playing racquetball with a quote about how much she likes wine but not your whining I was getting pretty tired of that particular hilarious statement vehicle. 

And this is exactly why I love the internet. Within 2 hours a buddy of mine (and yes, he was an internet friend to start although we have hugged it out in person since we've met) had given me exactly what I needed.

He then gave you all the power you need to put a little Oswald in your internet. He shared his template and his secret sauce on Facebook. 

So now you can feel free to go out and make your own Oswald meme. 

And apparently you can even go out and do it on the go with your iPhone. If you do anything really fun with it, please share in the comments.

P.S. - Big thanks to my pal Greg for taking this meme in the German direction.

Split Personalities

If you haven't been here for long (you know, on this blog, that you most likely found through either Facebook or Twitter) you may not have realized how much I love social media. That said, I do occasionally have to hold myself back. Today is not one of those days.

For a long time I've been trying to maintain my work/life balance with one twitter account. Not really working out for me. As such, I'm splitting my twitter account into @OswaldXXL for my more SAP-related stuff, and @JamieXXL for my suburban/fatherly/alliancey type stuff.

For more info, check out the new online home of The Jamie Oswald Experience.

Tumblr? Damn near killedr

With very little ballyhoo and even less fanfare I deleted my Tumblr account last week. I actually deleted both of them. Bet you didn't even know that I had one.

And how would you? I never really talked it up. And why didn't I talk it up? Because I didn't have time.

Between updating my status on Facebook and Twitter and Google+, checking in on Foursquare and Yelp, putting pictures up on Flickr and videos on YouTube, logging what will no doubt eventually become admissible evidence on Untappd, keeping my resume semi-up-to-date on LinkedIn, blogging for work on the SAP Community Network and ASUG (login required)  and my work intranet site (and don't forget my work-related podcast), I found a lot of my evenings gone. My wife and I agreed that I should probably spend the rest of my non-work time on things like writing this blog and mowing the lawn and making sure my kids can recognize me when I pick them up from daycare. So my Tumblr account(s) had fallen by the wayside, and I decided to kill it off.

But I really feel like that should just be the first step. I should be able to wittle it down to a handful of places that will let me update my status, check in to places, review things I like, and read the statuses, updates, and reviews of those people I like. The problem with that is coverage. I am on 25 different social sites because I HAVE 25 different social networks. Some people are my friend on Facebook but not on Twitter (it's largely a work/personal line, but that line gets blurrier every day). Some people are on Google +, which I kind of like, but it isn't like my Aunt Betty is gonna hop over there anytime soon. If I want to track certain people down, I need a specific checkin site -- and God forbid they'd all use the same one.

The bottom line is that no one social network right now lets me do everything I need to do, and they definitely don't let me do it with all of the people I need to do those things with. Facebook comes closest but has too much Farmville for me to take it seriously, and without hashtagging its too hard to keep up with certain things. Google + has a lot to offer, but its Circles concept is totally upside down right now, and very few people are on it. Twitter hasn't developed anything new since it first came out (besides of course "the new twitter", which is irrelevant since nobody actually uses the Twitter website), so it isn't much of a threat to either Facebook or Google.

In the long run, I'd like to see one unified social messaging system developed, so that I create one message (it could be a blog, a tweet, a check-in, a review, and it could be tagged by me and others for context and relevancy) and have people subscribe to my notes (by tags) and view and interact with them wherever they want. Then I'd like to be able to see all of the engagement for my messages in one place, so that its one big conversation. Right now it's really frustrating to see one message from one person on 5 different networks because they have to blast it out -- worse yet is that any conversation the message starts is then spread out over 5 networks.

In the short run, you'll still be able to find me everywhere. Except of course on Tumblr.

I'm social, let's network

I've seen a lot of blog posts recently about how people use certain social networking sites (the most recent from my dear German friend Natascha). Never one to pass on a meme, I'm going to rehash my thoughts on this subject here. First let me warn you that anything you say on the internet is there forever, and if you think someone won' t know it is you, well, just be prepared to be wrong. All that said, never put anything online (or anywhere else for that matter) if you aren't prepared to defend it, be embarrassed by it, or answer for it in court. So everything I say after this starts with the supposition that you aren't going to say anything too stupid.

I'm a member of lots of big social media/networking sites, but I only use a few. Here is how I use them:

• Facebook - I used to only use Facebook to let people find me. I basically created my profile so people from the past could find me and send me a friend request. Then I'd usually send them an email, catch up, and just forget about it. Lately I've been using it marginally more, reading it when I'm really, really bored, and posting to it occasionally (although mostly I just share my Twitter updates with Facebook when I think it's appropriate for that audience). I'm not even remotely selective here - I can't think of a single request I've turned down besides people named things like Spammy McNotYourFriend.


• LinkedIn - I use LinkedIn sort of like I used to use Facebook, but work-specific. I accept virtually every request I get, I'll respond to direct messages, and I'll look up people's contact information if I need it, but that is just about it. It's a nice way to keep tabs on my network without actually trying to keep up with them. I never read anyone's posts on there, although I sometimes do share tweets with it.


• Google Buzz - This is the only thing Google ever did that I don't absolutely love. Oh, that and the Android platform, which I'm not behind at all. But those are the only two things. This whole thing is just a poorly-executed waste of time. I will say I always get a little tickle when I happen to bump into someone in there.


• SAP Community Network and ASUG.com (login required) - These are strictly work areas. I blog in both spots, and occasionally turn up in the forums, but mostly I use these sites to gather information to make me more perfectly adequate at my job.


• Twitter - My true online love. Sure I'll occasionally tweet about what I ate for breakfast, and read when others do the same, but I like Twitter because I have a lot of friends on there with similar work interests, so I can talk somewhat randomly about life and work and not have to worry about a filter between the two. I like that you have to be clever and concise. I like that you sometimes speak in a sort of secret code that people that aren't in Twitter don't understand. And I like the conversation, which is totally cliché and totally true. Twitter is the one place where I'm selective about who I follow (but not who can follow me) because I simply don't have time to really follow more than 100 people (and I'm up to about 250).

I like social media because it allows me to stay in touch when I don't have time to stay in touch. I can drop out for a few weeks and its not a huge deal. I can participate in the middle of the night whether other people are online and actively participate or not. I can more easily segregate my friends into non-work, work, or both, and I can choose when to interact with each.

And it makes sure I never miss things like VanDerMemes (via @gweiswasser).