Posts from ‘Social Media Stuff’
The thing about the Back to the Future day meme
Many people have already pointed out on Twitter and Facebook the inaccuracy of the meme that is making its rounds claiming:
In ‘Back to the Future’, Doc sets clock in the DeLorean to a day 25 years in the future. TODAY IS THAT DAY!
Nope. It’s not even vaguely right. The first thing is that Doc sets the time machine to go forward thirty years into the future from the year 1985 thus making that date 2015. In fact the actual date featured in Back to the Future 2 is October 21 2015.
The date from Back to the Future 2
The confusion has stemmed from the 25th anniversary of the release of the first Back to the Future which came out on July 3rd 1985 and of course celebrated its anniversary the other day. Someone read about the anniversary and decided that it was the date they talked about in the movie and thought they were being very clever pointing it out. It would have been very clever too in about five years time, so they are just ahead of themselves.
I look forward to celebrating BTTF day on October 21 2015.
I will have a party and we shall watch the trilogy in glorious 4D ultra mega definition with electrodes inserted into our ears for the ultimate in sound quality.
Now for something fun does anyone know the dates in 2010: The Year We Make Contact?
What happens when you take a love of movies and television and then smash that into a service like FourSquare?
Miso.
Miso works pretty much the same way as FourSquare in that you check in and can earn badges (remember I love badges) and so on. Instead of logging locations though you check in to television shows or movies, you can connect Miso to your FourSquare account but I’ve yet to see a reason too for myself since most of my check ins will be from home and I don’t check into home on FourSquare anyway. It would be good to track cinemas if you happen to go between a few but even then I think I visit three different cinemas if that and rarely two of those.
The thing about Miso is that it is in its development stage and is still growing and adding features. Since I’m really interested in this service I thought I might weigh in on some suggestions for them as they mature, of course some of this may already be so and I just don’t know how to do it which might say something in itself…
- Enable users to find and follow others outside their Twitter and Facebook friend groups. Surprisingly enough there are actually people out there that don’t have Twitter or Facebook accounts, I know it’s hard to believe but it’s true. Miso needs to give us the ability to grow our own network within the service without having to use third parties.
- Provide a “back channel” (see various conversations with @anthony_p_c) for especially the television shows where viewers can discuss it. I’d see feeds coming in from Twitter and Facebook (via hashtags and Facebook pages) so you could view in one place the conversations going on about the show and take part.
- Adding and editing shows / movies. To be honest I don’t really know if you can do this, I couldn’t see how instantly on the website just now so I’m assuming you can’t do it yourself. If you can it should certainly be simpler or more obvious.
- Rating system. Everyone likes to pass their judgement on a show or movie and so Miso could tap into this by offering up your personal rating of a show or movie. I’d like to be able to revise the rating as well so I’m not locked into my opinion. More often than not I will change my mind on a series and would like to keep an up to date rating.
- Suggestions. I like the idea of the service after seeing all of the shows and movies that I watch making suggestions for other stuff I might like to watch. After a long time with the service I’d imagine they’d be able to set up a pretty accurate profile of material I might be interested in.
These aren’t a criticism of the service either, merely suggestions that I think would be neat to see in the system in the future. I’m actually loving Miso right now and look forward to seeing where it goes.
You can go to Miso via their iTunes App or their website.
Follow them on Twitter via @misosupport or @gomiso
Sometimes it feels like it is way too hard to keep up with every single new social media network that pops up and they all have their own quirks and gimmicks and now apparently badges, everyone has got to have badges.
Badges? Badges! We don’t need no stinkin badges!!
Well apparently we do and I’m okay with that, being a more or less goal orientated fellow I like the idea of achieving things and I really like the idea of Akoha because it is creative.
So the way that Akoha works is that it’s like any given social network, you have friends, they have friends, you follow people, they follow you it’s like a social network… hang on, I’m pretty certain I said that. The difference here is that it’s based around missions that you can do which are designed to inspire you.
Which I like and can see the value and fun of. Frankly I could do without more social networks but I do really love the idea of this one and I am moved to do a few of the missions.
The first mission I did is called the “Twenty Ten” and it asks you to answer the question:
“If you were alive 100 years ago, what profession would you want to be doing? How about 100 years in the future?”
To which I answered after a little research into the year 1910:
“I think if I were to choose a job 100 years ago, especially knowing what I know today in no small way thanks to Wikipedia. I would go into the gas mask business.
Allow me to explain. When Halley’s Comet was passing the Earth in 1910 apparently the Earth went through the tail and via a spectroscopic analysis of the tail one of the components identified was the toxic gas cyanogen. Now some dude came along and made the statement that the gas from the comet: “would impregnate the atmosphere and possibly snuff out all life on the planet.” And this cause a mad panic in buying gas masks and other craziness.
So I figure knowing that the demand would be there that I could clean up… not that I’m an opportunist… well actually that kind of paints me completely as an opportunist… ummm don’t judge me, I’d use the money for good and who can’t use a good gas mask!?
I think in a 100 years time I would like to be a settler on another planet, with enough technology to be comfortable but still living a fairly simple life growing stuff and establishing a colony… maybe selling gas masks to people scared of comets… (^_-)”
The neat thing about this is that it made me think about the year 1910 and I learned something new about Halley’s Comet that I did not know before, plus if I ever time travel I’ll be set. What was also neat is that there appears to be a very nice community on the site that’s growing and are supportive, I got my first feedback about two hours after posting and a virtual happy hippo.
So if you are looking for a little inspiration and maybe another social network to stick on your social networking utility belt come and take a look at Akoha and you can always take a look and see what I’m doing on there!
