I have thought about this for years now, trying to decide how I should best go on record and give the best way for people to engage with me on the Internet. This is the least terrible option I can think of:
**PS. Order matters in these lists
After trying all of these, putting apps and services through years of exhaustive trials, these are my top ways to do internet things with people. I’m sensing a pattern here… (see below for Honourable Mentions and Things to Avoid)
Ways to send me a message:
- Google Hangouts
- Facebook Messenger
- iMessage (Apple only)
- I guess mention me in a tweet…but really, use one of those three.
Ways to share a link or idea or photos with me:
Ways to store and share photos:
Ways to hear me talk and see my face in digital conversation:
- Google Hangouts (send me a warning message first)
- FaceTime/FaceTime Audio (again, warning would be nice)
- Facebook Calling (little known feature in Facebook Messenger app; message first would be lovely)
Ways to work collaboratively/share documents:
Ways to stream or listen to music:
- Google Music
- iTunes in the Cloud/iTunes Match
- Songza, Rdio, Spotify (US-only), Pandora (US-only), etc., etc., etc. if you don’t want to keep track of a local library.
Ways to search on the internet:
Ways to email stuff:
Ways to browse the web:
- Google Chrome
- Opera/Firefox/Safari (Apple-only) – (All are converging to look and behave more like Chrome)
Honourable Mentions:
- I think Snapchat is really cool, especially the new video calling feature. Still needs work though. (Find me at: Sciencerob)
- Instapaper is a great app for storing links to articles to read them later.
- Google Maps fulfills all your mapping needs. Alternatives are very weak in comparison.
- Apple’s Photo Stream is pretty useful if you have all Apple devices and friends with all Apple devices.
- YouTube is just an incredible video service, nothing else comes close. (+Attrell Update, +Future Tech Chat, +Rob Attrell)
- TeamViewer is a great service allowing you to control another computer’s mouse/keyboard by logging into that computer.
- Tonido is an app that lets you access your computer’s files remotely by login, which is way cooler than I can describe.
- Digg is a really cool app/service that curates news for you from across the web and presents it extremely well.
Things to avoid:
- Voicemail
- SMS Text Messages
- Non-urgent phone calls (unless you let me know it’s coming first)
- Really just sending me messages I can’t access or answer on any computer (see choices above)
- Bing*
- Yahoo*
*Technically these are alternatives to Google’s search, but really, why bother?
Leave a Reply