237 Folks Show You How to Navigate the Conversational Age, All for a Good Cause

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You’ve probably heard the story of how my ego-laden jealousy fit led to participation in a wonderful opportunity.

That, of course, is the honor of contributing to a business book that will be a best seller, help thousands of business people navigate the murky waters of new media, and if that wasn’t enough, all proceeds go to a worthy charity.

The Age of Conversation 2008 edition is now being finalized, and the final names of the 237* authors appearing in it has been posted at Drew McLellan’s site. (He and Gavin Heaton are the books edtiors.)

Now that we have the final tally, I’m looking forward to starting my series about the authors, and attempting to get to know them all.

If you want to get a head start, here’s the list of their sites:

*I’m aware that it says there are 237 authors, but that there are 238 on this list. I’ll have to square that with Drew and Gavin- both this list and that number are from the email all the authors were sent.

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Posted by Tinu Abayomi-Paul on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Filed under social media · Tagged with age '08, age of conversation, ageofconversation, author, authors, books, business, collaboration, Drew McLellan, Gavin Heaton, new media, web

More on Ego Boundaries and Social Media

Matt Williams asked a good question about Ego Boundaries.

What is ego boundaries, and when do you know that you have crossed them?

Here’s my answer, Matt.

photo credit: yummyporky

Learning about the ego is directly related to how we socialize. And socializing online is integral, of course, to social media. So I’ll answer your ego boundary question first, then talk for a sec about how that relates back to when you to check yours in the context of social media.

First, an aside:

I wish I had discovered a lot more about the ego sooner than I did, too. Actually I take that back, because I knew about the issue of the ego, but then I let my ego keep me from learning more. It’s a constant struggle - but it’s one that you struggle less with over time.

Anyway, to answer your question about ego boundaries - I’m no psychologist but here goes. The ego is the self we think we are. So the ego boundary is edge of that false self that tells us, this is me, and everything else is not me.

The reason ego boundaries are important is because they frame our fundamental sense of reality, and how we play the game of life.

When you have an ego that is out of control, or that you overly identify with, you have a tendency to be hyper-protective and threatened by anything that breaches the boundary between the inner voice and the outside world. What we fail to realize is that that inner voice is not really you, but the fact that you think it is you gives it power to be the one running your life.

If you’re a person who feels helplessly under the control of certain emotions, or can’t seem to make certain good decisions even though on a conscious level you Know that what you’re about to do is bad for you, that’s a sign that your ego is in control.

When you have your ego under your control, you can master anything because you can operate beyond those specifications.

For example, “winning” the game of life for a person caught up in their ego is more about protecting and promoting the self we think we are, our egos. But when we understand that we’re not our egos, “winning” the game is about enhancing the life experience of our actual self, which by virtue of discovering the ego, we no longer see as separate from the rest of the world.

Therefore there is nothing to protect - because there is nothing to fear.

There’s nothing that is not under our control to some degree, and at the same time, because of that we don’t need the control. The point becomes experience and mastery, rather than protection of our false sense of identity security.

In social media, you don’t necessarily want to guard against crossing the ego boundary. A peaceful crossing is arguably a good thing. If you’re still in the early stages of dealing with your own ego or having trouble with it getting in the way of your higher purpose, then you want to properly manage it.

You can mostly tell when you’re being overprotective of your ego when you find yourself fighting with yourself over your new objective of being more sharing.

If you’re constantly thinking about whether or not you’ll get enough credit, or thinking it’s a waste of your time or resources to share items, or you become obsessed with when your contribution is going to come back to you in terms of traffic, chances are your ego is becoming a problem.

Now, the ego, in my opinion, isn’t to be completely conquered and decimated. There are good things about having an ego - we just need to stop Identifying the ego as our true selves. Then we stop putting our need to protect our ego above meeting objectives that are for our own good.

When using social media, we have a tendency to think more about how each action will directly result in traffic, rather than taking a long term view of how the situation will benefit us. It’s the reason why so many people only participate when it benefits them directly, or think it’s a waste of resources to cultivate relationships with others through sharing. That fear that what you put in won’t come back to you in some way is all ego.

If you’ve dealt with your ego, it doesn’t matter if it does or not. And, ironically, it increases the likelihood that your efforts will be rewarded with attention dramatically.

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Tool Time Friday | Ever had an ‘All-in-One’?

Well, you’re about to have a chance.

All-in-One Sidebar (AiOS) is an award-winning sidebar control, inspired by Opera’s. It lets you quickly switch between sidebar panels, view dialog windows such as downloads, extensions, and more in the sidebar, or view source or websites in the sidebar.

Click on the left edge of your browser window to open the sidebar and get easy access to all your panels.

You can set the orientation to left or right, set the minimum, default and maximum width and the behavior on browser startup. Furthermore AiOS provides enhancements for many built-in features.

AiOS includes a slide-out button and a toolbar, all of which can be extensively customized.

Enjoy a clear browser window, more toolbar space and much more…

Now, who’s your daddy!?

MorganLighter

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Posted by Morgan on Monday, June 30, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Filed under social media · Tagged with age '08, age of conversation, ageofconversation, author, authors, books, business, collaboration, Drew McLellan, Gavin Heaton, new media, web

Tool Time Friday | I don’t know about you, but sometimes..

..I make a typographical error when I’m typing a URL in the address bar - usually the extension - and it pisses me off.

What’s a fellow to do? Well, let me tell ya’!

Firefox to the rescue!

URL Fixer corrects typos in URLs that you enter in the address bar. For example, if you type google.con, it will correct it to google.com (asking first, if you enable confirmation).

This version will correct common misspellings of .com, .net, .org, .edu, .gov, .mil, and all other mainstream TLDs, as well as the protocol (http:, https:). By right-clicking on the address bar, you can set it to auto-correct your errors, or you can have it ask you before making any corrections.

I am aware that there are similar extensions out there, mainly URLSpell and Firefix. As far as I can tell, URLSpell is completely non-functional, and Firefix only alerts you of possible corrections after a page fails to load, using an extra HTTP request to retrieve its corrections suggestions. URL Fixer’s corrections are immediate and will save you time if you make a common typing error.

Get it - URL Fixer.

MorganLIghter

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Tool Time Friday | You’ve heard of Speed Dial but have you…

…Heard of Fast Dial?

Fast Dial replaces “about:blank” page with a panel of thumbnails of your favorite sites. Click on an empty cell, assign a site URL, click OK - a thumbnail will be generated for a site. You can also add sites opened in browser or existing bookmarks by right-clicking them and choosing “Add to Fast Dial” from context menu.
By checking “Group” checkbox in thumbnail properties you can create groups of nested thumbnails.

You can change thumbnail’s position by drag-n-dropping it. (Hold Ctrl while dragging to move thumbnail into a group).

Left click on a thumbnail title opens “Properties” dialog. Middle click on the thumbnail title runs thumbnail refresh. Alt+ number keyboard opens assigned site.

If you move mouse over thumbnail’s top, a panel of graphic buttons appears. To view zoomed image press left mouse button and hold it for a moment. You can customize Fast Dial page colors & font in Preferences.

So check it out! Fast Dial.

MorganLighter

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There Must Be Some Kind of Mistake…

Because I’d never run for president. Cool though, isn’t it? Click on it to make one for yourself. If anyone knows how to do this flash trick, contact me ASAP. I have at Least one job for you.

(If you’re reading this via feed, and can’t see the video, you’d have to click through and watch it for this to make sense.)

I have to give credit where credit is due - thanks for sending this to me, Mark. I almost didn’t post this because I’m so mad that I didn’t think of it first… And congratulations to the winners of the basketball contest.

But boo Celtics. BOO!

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