Time to do a quick update, here at the end of week 7.
For my astronomy, considering that I haven’t actually dug the telescope out and got it set up yet, mostly because I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that I’m a fair-weather (i.e. warm-weather) astronomer only, I’m doing okay. I’ve played around with a few things, even managed to get a photo of the Mars / Venus / Moon conjunction on the weekend. While I had hoped to be doing something astronomy-related at least once a week, I’m at a combined total of 3 so far.
For the kitchen reno, we got going a few weeks ago with our first meeting with the designer, but haven’t heard anything in the last two weeks (contractor needs to come talk to us about moving a wall, see what the options are). I’m going to follow up this week and see about booking them for a specific 2 weeks in the summer.
I managed to sort some of my photos a few weeks back, but then stalled, which is same for my backup schedule. I’ve taken a couple of photos and managed to get a bunch of work done on a photobook, but nothing in the last couple of weeks. I also started on the origami in mid-January, although I originally planned that for later in the year.
Other than that, it’s been a pretty light 7 weeks on blue — nothing on my active use of the tracker, “honey do” list, scanning, ripping, knitting, learning to juggle, or planning for a meteor shower.
Overall, I’d have to rate my progress at a very weak yellow, bordering on red.
I confess, as excited as I am by my year-long quest, I lost faith this weekend. I did, I completely and utterly lost faith. The cause? I got sick.
I’ve been fighting a bit of residual congestion from a cold a few weeks ago, and since meds that I’m on prevent me from taking anything resembling a decent decongestant, I’ve always had trouble clearing congestion anyway, and it lingers. Annoying, energy-sucking, etc, but manageable. Which doesn’t mean I don’t probably whine about it more than I realize. But just annoying.
Saturday was different. Got up, felt relatively okay, climbed in the car and off I went to the Nissan dealership for service. It’s been on the list for a few weeks, but wasn’t urgent. Small rotational noise in the rear passenger tire area, but not affecting driving or anything, just a noise. Turned out to be bent dust plate, nothing of consequence, easily fixed, no charge, probably bent when I had the winter tires put on. I was thinking about getting the car washed, but I was starting to feel a little queasy, so headed back home instead. Went to the washroom, felt really unsteady about 30 minutes later, had to lie down.
That’s when the fever and chills hit. Temp went up, I went down, and I was out for a few hours. Got up, thought I’d have a shower to clear my head, still congested and cold. So I had a really hot shower. Steam bath time practically. Which knocked me on my butt, almost literally. I felt like I couldn’t breathe, like I just wasn’t getting enough air. Of course, man of my age and weight, with a family history of heart disease, doesn’t take the Amazing Kreskin to figure out where my mind was going. Immediately started looking for other signs. Anxiety? Well, I was feeling it now! (Just kidding) Pain? No. None. Nausea? None. Dizziness? Not really. Cough? Not really either. Weakness? Yes, but the shortness of breath was causing that. Anyway, lots going through my head, and I had Andrea come and guide me to the bedroom. As soon as I left the hot steamy shower, I almost instantly started feeling better. I could breathe again, and the fever was still present (39.4) but I just wanted to sleep. Which I did, and woke up feeling hungry. Since I had basically skipped lunch, not surprising, but was still pretty weak sitting up in the chair so had to ask Andrea to make me some soup.
Back to sleeping. I basically slept almost 30 of 48 hours. By Sunday morning, feeling pretty good. Head and chest had cleared, mostly felt ridiculous that the cause of my freak-out was basically a hot steam room. Which isn’t uncommon, I have the same problem at places like Le Nordik. I can’t breathe in them, my lungs really don’t like it for extended periods of time, and I’d just had a long hot shower.
But the faith part goes to the time when I was awake. When I’m sick, or really tired, I find it really hard to keep squirrels at bay. And they are doubting squirrels. Squirrels that sit on my shoulders and mock me. “Really? PolyWogg 4.0? You can’t even perform at 1.0 right now. Look at you…you’re asking your wife to make you soup, go to the basement and get you stuff from the freezer. Hell, why don’t you turn into a complete Neanderthal and tell her to get you a beer or something.” I hate having to depend on others but, more importantly, I really hate having to impose on someone else and ask them to do something that I can’t. I don’t care about simple things like if you’re going upstairs, can you bring me down a sweater. I mean like asking Andrea to go get something from the basement because I’m feeling too weak to try the stairs by myself. Yet I’m also not stupid enough to do it myself just to be stubborn.
At any rate, I lost faith. I started questioning a bunch of things, not so much the writing goal as I’m doing okay on that one but just about everything else that I’ve committed to. Particularly red goals which are more physical since it was the physical that was kicking my butt. Of course, I completely discounted the fact Andrea had it before me and I should have been potentially expecting it. Some of my lost faith was that I just completely lost two whole days more or less. Certainly wasn’t progressing on much on my list while I was sick.
And yet you know what inspired me? Parts of the Super Bowl. I could say it was Chris Matthews, who was picked up by the Seahawks while working at a Foot Locker, who caught his first professional receiving catch on Sunday as practice for his second one which was for a TD in the Super Bowl. He was over 100 yards receiving, might even have been leading receiver for Seahawks for most of the game. Or the rookie Malcolm Butler, who blocked the pass that Krause eventually cradled anyway, and then redeemed himself by stepping in front of Krause to grab the interception that finished the game.
But it wasn’t either of those people. It was Pete Carroll. All over the internet, the blogosphere, the videos, the football pundits, the live game announcers — everyone was calling him an idiot for passing with 1 yard to go rather than having Marshawn Lynch try to punch it in. And yet it was a great call, I don’t care what the Monday morning quarterbacks are saying from their recliners.
He explained it right after the game, exactly as I was expecting him to do. NE Pats were expecting them to run it in, so they sent in their maximum running defence. Carroll had 30 seconds to play with and he called the pass with an expectation that if it didn’t work, he still had a play to run with Marshawn, and the defenders would be one play more tired while Marshawn rested, plus the Pats weren’t set up to defend a pass. Add to that the fact that the short distance decreases the likelihood of an actual interception — maybe a batted down ball, but not an interception, and you have a pretty good chance at two plays, either of which might get you the win. If that pass had landed, Pete Carroll would be the king of the internet today, blogged about all over the place, didn’t take the safe play, gutsy, visionary, whatever. Celebrated. And if it was not caught, he still had Marshawn, who if successful, would have been pointed to as having been fresher, a good strategic rest before plowing into the endzone.
But what happened? The rookie from a school that nobody at the Super Bowl had ever heard of before (Hinds Community College, via West Alabama), Malcolm Butler, saw the play, abandoned his actual receiver, took a huge risk that an experienced veteran probably wouldn’t have but instead would have trusted in the protection routes they were running, and stepped forward, literally knocking the receiver out of the way of the ball and catching it himself. Make no mistake — that was a game-winning TD that was a split-second from making Pete Carroll that guru of football strategists, and Butler jumped in front of that game-winning train and brought it to a grinding, almost bone-crushing stop. If he had merely knocked it down, or just caused the receiver to drop it, the story would be a minor footnote to the next play when Marshawn would have had his shot at greatness.
But Carroll made the call he did based on what he saw before him. Lots of people are ripping him apart in the media world today and will do so for a long time to come. Diehard Seahawk fans are going to want to crucify him perhaps. But what did Carroll do, minutes after the game? He gave an interview where he said almost exactly what I laid out above — he didn’t like the matchup, tried the pass, figured if it failed he would still have 2 more plays with Marshawn to punch it in, let’s go for the win. And then he did the act that restored my faith in my quest.
He displayed 100% integrity and accountability. He said initially “We made the call” to go with the pass, but when he finished, he said, “The decision to go that way was me, it’s all on me.” He took full responsibility and accountability for the loss. Never mind the idiot Bennett working on his defensive line who not only gave Tom Brady a free first down by jumping offside on a 3rd down situation but who also gave up any hope of a touchback at the goal line by giving them another free five yards, after a season where he got dinged 14 times (second only to Browner on NE who had 15 infractions). His teammate was even trying to hold him back from jumping offside on the second-last play of the game, and he STILL went offside. Blown plays, missed opportunities, a whole season coming down to it, and Pete Carroll says, “It’s all on me.”
That’s the kind of faith I can get behind. Because whatever weaknesses I have in my personal arsenal to transform myself, the end result is the same. It’s all on me.
Let the quest continue. I’m not 100% ready to win yet, but I’m ready to keep fighting.
One of my goals for 2015 is to take some online courses, and I already wrote about it earlier. I knew of Coursera, and thought it was one of the few decent “biggies” for massive open online courses (MOOCs). Somehow though I completely skipped over EDX, thinking it had merged with Coursera or all of their courses were included. Apparently not. Let’s see, another 409 courses to consider. Oh joy, oh bliss, oh joyful bliss! 🙂 Let’s see what’s out there:
PSYCHOLOGY: UC Berkeley has one on the “The Science of Happiness”, part of the positive psychology” field that is self-coalescing / emerging. It is self-paced, start anytime, which is attractive;
ECONOMICS: Cornell is offering “Networks, Crowds and Markets”, which combines some of the other areas I looked at earlier – economics, psychology, game theory. It starts in mid-February. Equally, UofT is offering “Behavioural Economics in Action”, although might be just as useful to read one of the texts;
A WIRED WORLD: “Wiretaps to Big Data: Privacy and Surveillance in the Age of Interconnection” looks interesting too, also at Cornell but self-paced. Uof Cambridge has one on “Economics of Cybersecurity” and Notre Dame has “Understanding Wireless: Technology, Economics, and Policy”, but it looks a little basic and dry.
COMPUTING: I already have plans for computing courses, but Harvard has one called “Introduction to Computer Science” that surprisingly uses C, Java, etc. One of Harvard’s largest courses? Ooook.
ASTRONOMY: Near the end of the year, I might aim for “Exoplanets”, a self-paced one offered by Australian National University. It is part of a larger series that starts with “Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe”. There’s also one called “Super-Earths And Life” at Harvard, which is attracting some press as it is one of the new ones with a decent professor.
PERSONAL: I could file this under psychology, but it looks much more like a personal power-type course –> “Unlocking the Immunity to Change: A New Approach to Personal Improvement” from Harvard. Not currently active, unfortunately. I also see a course in “Jazz Appreciation” by UTex @ Austin that looks interesting, but I’ll probably stick with the Great Courses version. Given my interest in stress, there’s an interesting course called “Becoming a Resilient Person – The Science of Stress Management” that could be good, but not completely compelling. Heck, I even might consider doing Dante’s Inferno as a personal study of freedom and identity. It would be on the weird side of the plan though.
I’m blown away by a couple of other things I found though.
First, a brilliant version of something that I’ve seen in amateur or “open source” format of course — an online book club. Namely BerkeleyX Book Club. Except it isn’t wine, noshing and conversation, these are discussions of famous titles led by English profs. For example, The Picture of Dorian Gray or Dracula. Looks like they do one a month, with Jane Eyre for this month. Fascinating model, but none of the books were on my list for this year. Might give it a whirl after September though.
For philanthropy, I’ve been on the LearningbyGiving site in the past, and look, they have a course to take — “Giving With Purpose: How to get the most out of your charitable giving”. Perfect for my goals for the year. Not sure when to do it though.
Finally, there is one that looks relevant to the stuff I want to do, and maybe is a sign as I actually thought earlier today about ditching the area from my official list or at least moving it to the bottom. UofT has an extension course starting in just a couple of weeks called “Library Advocacy Unshushed”. Looks pretty cool. Might have to consider committing to it.
Let’s check in on how I’m doing on my goals…Spoiler alert — the big news is under the yellow goals!
Starting with the Blue / Mind goals, I’ve done a bit on both of my two big goals: re-engaged with astronomy (Mercury and Venus observing with the naked eye, collimated my scope, charged batteries, and sorted out my astro gear) and exchanged emails with the contractor for the kitchen renovation –> green for the past two weeks. On day-to-day stuff, I’ve started using the tracker, organized a photo book, did a partial backup, and enrolled in a Coursera course, but nothing official on the Honey-Do list, photo scanning, or ripping –> yellow for the past two weeks. On my bucket list, I started doing some origami, but nothing on photography, knitting, juggling or the meteor shower –> yellow for the past two weeks. Overall, I’d rate my mind goals at YELLOW for my early progress.
For the Green / Heart goals, my first big one has been re-engaging with Jacob. I have had two Boys Nights with him, although the project one was a bust. I had hoped to make snowflakes with him (construction paper with hole cut out for a picture, trimmed edges, wool on top) but I described the project to him on the weekend, and he did it without me, so he had no interest when it came to Boys Night to do it again. He liked the idea apparently, and couldn’t wait. This past week though we had an impromptu games night while Andrea was at NAC, and when we were done, we talked about what he likes in various games and what he wants in the game we’re going to design together in February. It’s a decent start. But I’m not stepping up for the night-time routine as much as I had intended, so overall of yellow. For the random acts of romance, my second big goal, I have to grade myself a Red so far…Andrea and I have done a few more things together, but it all came to a screeching halt on Saturday night when I was sick, and had to bail on our NAC date. Fortunately, a friend was able to go at the last-minute. Between the two, I’ll give myself an overall yellow so far. For the day-to-day activities, I’ve organized a wings outing for this coming week, updated the AstroPontiac site for the WP software, did a bit of work on my social campaign for November, and researched a bit of my charity plan. Nothing on siblings, corn roast planning –> Overall yellow. Which gives me an overall yellow for the category.
For the Red / Body goals, I pretty much suck. I’m way behind on my exercises and I’ve done almost nothing on organizing my physical journey — overall flaming red. On the day-to-day stuff, I haven’t got myself organized for french nor found a new dentist or doctor, but I did do my sleep test when my squirrels were knocking at the door, so I’m giving myself a yellow. However, I did nothing on organizing myself to give blood, use a rappel/zipline, or for a polar plunge, so again RED. Which leaves me with an overall red for the category.
Despite my “failures” above, I’m not really surprised. My priority for this month so far has been my goals in the Yellow / Soul category. I’ll go in reverse order, as I want to save my writing challenge to the end. I hit the ground running on my creativity challenge in the day-to-day stuff, working on clip art, two goals memes, finding a Daddy and Jacob project, posting photos from December, doing a photobook, and designing trackers for goals and the Creativity Challenge itself. On blogging, my goal was 10 new blogs; I did 32. In 18 days. For reviews of TV episodes, my goal was 10 for the yearly average but my Creativity Challenge boosted that temporarily to 25 for two weeks –> I did 35. With more pending. I’ve only done 4 memes so far, out of my 200 for the year, but I didn’t really expect to start this soon. I’m about 2/3 of the way through the first book (Monogram Murders), I’ve completed 11 entries in my Gratitude Journal with an impressive 8 entries in a row, and I’ve tried out 2 recipes with Andrea. And as mentioned, Jacob and I are working on the game design I wasn’t planning on starting until February. On the other side, nothing on movie reviews or book reviews, or the photography / movie weekend / HR guide. Nor have I done anything on my Spiritual questions quest for the year. Nevertheless, if this was my only progress for the month, I’d still give myself an overall Green. That list alone is enough to give me a sense of accomplishment.
But all of this has been a side-show to the main attraction, which is my ultra-scary, how-the-heck-am-I-going-to-reach “500,000 words” goal. Working it backwards, that’s 10,000 words a week x 50 weeks. So I have to put up about 10K words a week to stay on track.
Week 1 launched with a vengeance — 2 memes, 8 gratitude entries, 9 reviews of TV episodes, 26 posts, 35 e-mails, and innumerable numbers of Facebook posts and some other projects combined to give me, wait for it, 24,620 words, with 19,500 coming just from the blog. Week 2 was a bit slower, and I confess I didn’t meet my writing target — I only accumulated 7054 words, with 5500 coming from the blog and the rest coming from Facebook, emails, TV episode reviews and memes. But overall? My grand total for the two weeks is 31,674. Not including a few reviews and things that will post in the next few days already. That’s two-thirds of my previous total on the blog over the last few years, and way above my yearly average alone. That’s a big GREEN for the category by itself, although the others were already green.
So, summing up, Yellow / Yellow / Red / Green. Since my green is as impressive as my red is sucky, I’m going to call it a very promising yellow so far. I have to admit, I’m surprised. I lost momentum after the first 11 days, as I started week 2. And this week I’ve mailed in my performance in a few places. Yet, overall, it’s already looking promising for my month-end report, with two more weeks of progress to come!
I like this new PolyWogg 4.0. He’s a productive little tadpole. I feel almost giddy! 🙂
Since my big goal for the year is 500,000 words worth of new writing, and I share most of that through my blog, I also need a way to then share stuff through my Facebook profile, Twitter account, and Google+ page if I want to “get the word out” about anything I’m blogging.
There are essentially two ways to do that. First, the manual way, I just paste something into FB, Twitter or G+ to say “hey, here’s a post”, or second, the automated way, which is to use a social media post manager.
A social media manager (SMM) is usually set up as a site or an app that you give permission to so that they can post to your FB, Twitter and G+ profiles/accounts for you. Put simply, you post in the SMM site, and it populates the feeds to FB/Twitter/G+ or a host of other media sites. You choose, you grant permission, you post. Sounds simple enough. But there are three complications to that simplicity. Call them “features”, if you will, as most sites pretend.
First and foremost, if you were only doing it with FB or Twitter or G+, it wouldn’t make much sense to use it (one exception below). Generally you would just go into the main social site and simply post. Easy peasy lemon squeezy. No muss, no fuss, no need for a manager. But if you have more than one social site to target (I have the three I mentioned above), it helps. But with that service comes the complication — cost. You can do it for free on the social site, or pay for options on the manager site. I am not willing now to add much cost to my web presence. I already pay for the internet registration for three sites (PolyWogg, ThePolyBlog, and AstroPontiac) plus a business package for hosting (unlimited sites, unlimited storage, unlimited bandwidth, 24/7 support, unlimited emails) that works for me most of the time (occasional technical limitations). Add in unlimited internet at home, with a decent speed, and some online backup storage, and it adds up. Most of the social media managers run anywhere from $10 to $25 per month to run their full options. So, for me, I had to choose one which had a free option (with all the limitations that go with it).
Second, this won’t apply to most people, but I had to use one that wasn’t likely to end up being blocked by my workplace firewall. From time to time, I suddenly realize that something I posted the night before, and which I thought was ready for “broadcast”, actually has a nuance or something about it that means I need to cancel the post. There are lots of examples online of groups or organizations that ended up with ill-timed posts — maybe announcing Bill Cosby for a fundraising activity on the day the more recent news broke about his alleged sexual transgressions. Maybe it was a “Meet at the top of the tower for a blast!” invitation back on 9/11. Not always “big” oops like that, but just things you don’t want to post because of something else. Or maybe you just realized there’s another angle to something you wrote and you want to stop it going live. Whatever the case, I need to access it via my phone (sometimes limited access for the apps) or if necessary, my desktop at work. One of the managers takes a very different approach from the rest, heavily tied to Google+, might even have been an option except my work blocks G+. No access at all. Not even for me, and I have access to a lot of sites most people don’t. Ergo, not a sustainable option.
Finally, the last complication really comes down to features. I gave a try to four separate social media managers, and here are the results.
I was already using HootSuite. I confess I thought it was “okay”, seemed to be doing the job and I used it easily for a whole week. But there was a problem with the scheduling feature. Most of the sites are somewhat similar in allowing you to “schedule” a post for the future. After all, that’s part of the game. Setting it up so that you don’t send 10 posts out at the same time and look like a spammer. Instead, it spaces them out throughout the day. Some professional sites have it set up really aggressively. For example, a goal-setting site might send out a “start your day right” tip at 6:00 a.m. Maybe then, around 8:00 a.m., it sends out a reminder of anything you entered into their tracker that’s due that day. Going further, at 11:00, it might send you a tip about eating healthy if you follow their “EatRight” twitter account. Late in the day, it then sends you a tip about “What to think about on the drive home”. A communications strategy tied to your day. And almost all the sites allow you to manually set a time and date for a post to go out.
For me, the problem with Hootsuite came in the “after-scheduling” management. Most of them also have an “auto-schedule” feature. You tell it, for instance, you only want to send messages between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and no more than 3 during that time. It will then figure out a good time to send the message in there, auto-scheduling it. If you pre-write five or six on the weekend, and auto schedule them all, it will put the first three on Monday and add the next 2-3 on Wednesday. Easy peasy. But suppose then you decide that you have a NEW one that you really want to send on Monday. This gives you two options — either manually schedule it as a 4th one to send on Monday or schedule it for Monday and reschedule one of the other ones. If you do this latter option, HootSuite fails miserably at the change in schedule. You see, Hootsuite didn’t manage it as #1,2,3 to go on Monday, it manually set the time for those three. So you can’t simply “bump” it down in the queue, you have to edit the time itself. Which if you had them going on Wednesday in a set order (i.e. 1,2,3,4,5 should go in order), then you have to edit #3,4,5 manually. Not a huge deal for some people, but critical for the way I write. I also went in and changed my scheduling to only do 3 a day, only in the afternoon, expecting the auto-scheduled ones to update. They didn’t. I couldn’t find a feature to fix that. I also have some concerns with the way the site handles shortened URLs, but all the sites are the same on that front, so hardly a deal-breaker.
After searching for alternatives, I gave MavSocial a try. Set up was relatively easy for Facebook and Twitter. I ran into a problem with Firefox and my anti-virus that it thought one pop-up looked like MalWare but the scan was clean, and I popped over to Chrome to complete the FB account addition. With paid membership, the site has an interesting collection of extra features such as allowing an RSS feed to be posted automatically (so for example, my blog feed could link to the site and get auto-shared) or managing photos that would go with the posts. They even have options to buy/link to some stock photo sites. A social inbox turns comments and retweets into an email-like interface. Nifty. But auto scheduling is almost non-existent, although it does have manual. A must for me, and the end of its consideration.
FriendsPlus.Me has one of the most interesting approaches of all the social media managers. Rather than give you an interface that has you post your info into the site, it pulls your info from your Google+ page. If that sounds cryptic, here’s the difference. For most sites, you go in, add your accounts, and post on that site instead of G+, Twitter, FB. You post to MavSocial or Hootsuite, and it sends your updates to the other three. For FriendsPlus.Me, it has you enter your posts on your Google+ page, and if you add certain hashtags, it will then pull those posts into F+ and copy them to your other accounts. The benefit is enormous. If you use Google+ for your email, and regular contacts, you’re already on that site or in that app. Once you set up FriendsPlus with the links, you never need to go to that site again until you want to change something. FriendsPlus will just follow you on Google+ and if you put in a special hashtag, it will copy that entry and that entry only to another account.
For example, suppose I only wanted to share my TV reviews to my Twitter account and not my FB account. On FriendsPlus.Me, I would add a control hashtag that said “#TVreviews” for Twitter. Then, when I write a post in Google+, if I add the hashtag “#TVreviews”, F+ will copy that post to Twitter. A very different approach than the other sites. And while I like it, and I might even be willing to try it, it’s a no go for me. Google+ is blocked at work. I can’t access it. So if I wanted to block a post, I would have to do it on my phone only. Equally, it also complicates the scheduling features (since you would set any scheduling on G+, not on F+).
That left me with what some consider the biggest rival for Hootsuite: Buffer. I was a little disappointed with FriendsPlus and MavSocial, so my expectations weren’t high for Buffer either.
Sure, it has a “free” option to get you started. Like most of the sites, it limits how many accounts you can add for free (usually one FB profile, one Twitter account, etc.), but it is usually enough for personal, non-commercial use.
I quickly found a nice feature I wasn’t expecting — it lets you post to Google+ pages. Hootsuite doesn’t. There’s a limitation on the Google API control that won’t allow direct posting to Google+, and most managers are itching for access, but so far they only allow linking to the G+ page and not the full G+ profile. I confess that I haven’t done much about G+ since I started using it. I feel it is a huge untapped resource or channel delivery, but I just haven’t spent the time figuring it out. I kind of feel the same about Pinterest and the new Ello. They’re on my list to check out in more detail this year, see if I want to be involved in any of them.
Buffer also has a pretty simple interface. Not a lot of “extra” features cluttering up the landscape. Almost all of which I don’t need, at least not yet. The sidebar contains your list of accounts, pretty straightforward. Across the top is CONTENT / ANALYTICS / SCHEDULE / SETTINGS, plus your own MY ACCOUNT link and the requisite “click here to upgrade” to a paid option.
In the CONTENT menu, it’s relatively simple too. There’s the list of your scheduled posts — but unlike the other sites, they are in a queue. Not formally scheduled, queued. Which means I can move them around, rearrange order, etc, and it doesn’t affect the overall posting schedule for when SOMETHING goes out — that’s up to another tab to handle. Fantastic option for me. The only downside is if you want to create a custom schedule for certain days (i.e. 2x on Monday, 3x on Wednesday, 1x on Thursday), you have to upgrade for that option. The other limitation is you can only schedule 10 items in the queue. When I’m blogging, that’s not a problem, I wouldn’t have that much content queued. However, the tweet reviews of individual TV episodes don’t take very long, I don’t care exactly when they go out other than not all at once, and I tend to write them in batches as I clear stuff off my PVR. So now, I have about 15 pre-written, ready to go. Except the queue is limited to 10 in total. Small annoyance, easily made up for by the benefit of better management within the queue.
The analytics aren’t terribly useful to me as most of my posts also track the other end at the blog, but if I got into more curation, it might be nice to know how much is being clicked. Not essential though. Under Settings you can customize Link Shortening, using 3 different shorteners. I suspect I’m going to use my own off the PolyWogg domain, but good to know the options there. There have been challenges with both Twitter and Facebook that at different times they have blocked certain links. Not a huge concern for me as there are workarounds (including 3 different types of links to my site just from my site itself), but a cautionary concern. The MY ACCOUNT option allows for email settings (post from email), and some extra browser / phone and tablet app options.
I skipped over a feature that I’ll need to explore … it’s called SUGGESTIONS, and it is links that Buffer suggests I might find interesting. I don’t know if they’re tailored in their recommendations or not, probably not as I just joined, but the list wasn’t bad. Out of 25 suggestions, I saw at least 10 that were of clickable interest to me.
Overall, I think Buffer wins for now. I’ll give it a go this week and see how the bugs shake out. I like the idea of scheduling 3 general posts per day, maybe between noon and 5, and then doing “custom” posts for the 8-12 shift. Haven’t decided yet, and I’m not in full meme mode yet, will have to see if that changes things a lot (the links will go to my PhotoGallery page).
