As you can no doubt imagine, it’s been a little hectic since the end of the Easter break. The steady flow of coursework deadlines, in-class tests and lab marking sessions has kept everybody on their toes. Whilst we were in the Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief cycle of multiple coursework deadlines, we are now in the Stress-Agony-Panic-Relief cycle of exams. This is worse than being a footie fan.* It’s the equivalent of having several different project deadlines come at once, followed by presentations and examinations of said different projects.<\/p>\n
This has been an interesting exercise of juggling a lot of short-term priorities and picking the appropriate time to pause. Something of which technology has come to the rescue. I think that anybody returning to education should be given a crash course in communications on the edge. This naive idea of using a mobile phone for talking to and texting people is simply not sufficient.<\/p>\n
Things you need to know how to use, if you don’t already:<\/p>\n
1) Facebook<\/a> is a place to post photos, hobbies, histories and other contact info. The establishment of a relation is quite formal since anyone wishing to be known as your “friend” in the Facebook has to be confirmed by you. It is possible to restrict information based on whether people are friends or not.<\/p>\n 2) Twitter<\/a> is a personalised news and noticeboard feed for others to follow. Although control can be afforded to the user to control those who follow, the relation is not so well-defined as is the case with Facebook. The act of posting is ‘to tweet’. Twitter restricts posts to 140 characters, so this promotes short and concise messages.<\/p>\n 3) Instant Messenger have been around for quite some time and fulfils the need of instant communication without starting a vocal conversation. The strength is that conversations via an IM have the benefit that they give the opportunity to compose a response as the conversation remains on screen. Multiple conversations are possible as immediate responses are not necessarily expected. (Incidently if people use MSN and you have a unix box, I’d point you in the direction of aMsn<\/a>.)<\/p>\n The technology for posting information in the first two forms has been around for sometime, however it only now that people have a simplified and standardised form to use. Choice is never bad, however the easy-to-use and popular consistent form is a big win as people have to get familiar with the given form.<\/p>\n How useful can they be? Pretty damn useful. ECSS<\/a> organised a 6-a-side football tournament. Since I was drafted into a team of random people from Electronics, as well as a few from Computer Science. Unfortunately, our manager<\/a> didn’t have direct method, meaning mobile or IM, to contact me. Initial messages got passed by a fellow student via Facebook and managed to co-opt one of my tutor group into being a sub via IM.**<\/p>\n Separately, the Odeon Southampton has this technology to thank for an increase in revenue for the new Star Trek film. A discussion in a pub, which itself was organised over IM, led to the suggestion to see the film. The time was subsequently confirmed over IM, which was followed up a post on twitter by one of the group. The expected number of people was three. Eight showed up as result of the twitter post. Result. Made for a interesting post-film analysis on the 45 minute walk back to our respective halls.<\/p>\n