Digital Integration

IN SHORT:
Inspired by Bobin, I'm undergoing digital integration, linking all my bits on the web together and setting up new ones, including this text feed (or, ahem, 'blog') and the hub at www.aaronboardley.co.uk.

I'm not sure where it's going to take me, but at least it should be easy to follow once it does.

IN LONG:
For a while I...actually, let's go back to the beginning.

Well, not the beginning, that would take considerable time and encompass much debate I'm sure. Not even the beginning of the internet, that's still a bit beyond me. Instead, I shall briefly run through the beginning of my internet days, as some sort of justification for this blog.

In the early days (youngsters, read '20th Century') my internet citizenship was mainly held down by a rather frequent presence on Yahoo Games. Anyone who ever met squareyes_uk in one of the numerous game rooms, doubling as chat rooms: c'etait moi. As the internet and I grew, my presence multiplied. Soon I had moved away from a seldom-used talk21 account to an imaginative Hotmail address (although, almost uniquely, I settled for an initial-underscore-surname style first time round, saving the migration hassle endured by those who later decided that they didn't want to be known as funkybeefmonster87 or similar). I began using eBay, under a shared account with my brother (anyone who finds humour in the account's supposed tribute to James Bond, it was his account first). I got involved in an early Bebo, using what I thought might be a clever psuedonym (I reversed the word 'Knowledge', thinking it had a funny ring and wit to it). I even, in the February half term of 2006, gave in and started properly using MySpace, vowing that I would only get involved on the sole conidtion that my page didn't look as awful as those or most people, a deterrent which had kept me away for a while. My profile actually underwent a number of beautiful transformations, I became reknowned for second-to-none 'About Me' sections with pretentious prose, fantastic poetry, or banter. In short, I was becoming a bit of a world-wide-web getaround.

So when I began university in 2006, I protested against my housemate's call to join Facebook. I wasn't migrating to another social-networking (though I'm not sure that term had yet been used) site with another 'About Me' to fill in, another profile picture to choose, another bunch of messages to check off only a portion of my friends.

But this changed just a couple of weeks into term.

Someone 'tagged' a photo of me! It seemed that you could upload all your photos to Facebook, and via tagging could include others in this sharing experience. This, for a man who became known and loathed for his photography, was big news. I immediately jumped ship. Though it took my friends from Lowestoft longer to migrate, it is hard now to imagine a time at Bath when Facebook was not the de facto method of communcation.

Now, over this time, I would use the odd auxillary application. I had a Last.fm account, for example, but was upset that it could not scrobble from my iPod. One of the biggest problems I found was lack of integration. Five sites would require five visits, and one could not do everything and have a life (although peers might observe that it was the latter I forfeited, I protest this fact). With developments such as Facebook opening up its applications with a platform for all developers (the main product of which has actually been a source of irritation at blocking a vast majority of any requests that come my way), this began to change. Could it be that I could have one base I could interact in any way and it would be accessible for all? My own website was still beyond me, but these kind of apps, plugins and widgets were making it possible.

So, recently, I obtained use of aaronboardley.co.uk. Suddenly, my migration and integration was in full swing. I got me a Twitter account, something I wouldn't bother with in itself, but allowed connection via Facebook and the like as a one-stop update shop*. I finally migrated my email, now being the punchy mail@ the aforementioned doman. I rejoined Last.fm, pleased that it was now able to back-scrobble all the songs I've played since I was on iTunes (although I've just realised that it should've done my Windows Media Player library too, I was a sad man to lose those play counts when I switched over) and keep up to date with what I play on my iPod too. I've even, as you can see, set up this Blogger account - realising that maintaining a blog here will allow me to stick it anywhere. I don't enjoy the phrase 'Web 2.0', but it is true that I can do more now, in more places, with more ease, than ever before, and most importantly can bring it all together in one place.

So what have I done? I've linked it all. Last.fm now scrobbles from Spotify. Twitter updates Facebook. Everything feeds back and forth, and aaronboardley.co.uk is the base from which you can find it all. And this blog? Well, at present, it's not going to be used to detail anything much. I've tried and failed before at maintaining online diaries, or articles of opinion, or disjointed musings, and so don't anticipate this blog to be anything of the sort. It will just be the text base for explaining why the site is developing as it is. Perhaps I'll change it soon, or start different blogs for my various different trains of thought, but don't hold your breath**. I just saw more sense in writing this here than in an html block on the site itself, just in case I want to update in future.

And 'just in case' is the key. No more disjointed accounts with different sites, ill-thought and un-future-proofed. Everything is going to be joined, or ready to be joined. The name? aaronboardley. I can't be bothered with witty psudonyms, they just don't manage to stick to me, at least not the ones that other users haven't already taken.

So, aside from a few internet shopping centres that still see me as a hotmailer, my transition is almost complete. Hopefully, this will be the start of a fruitful development. If not, then at least it's kept me quiet for a bit. Either way, I blame Bobin for refreshing the idea in my mind.

With an as-yet-to-be-determined-signature-signout.

Aaron

*Though I'm not of the opinion of 'EVERYONE WANTS AND NEEDS TO KNOW WHAT I'M UP TO'. My assumption is visitors will be those who know me seeking news anyway. Other visitors are more than welcome, always - but just don't misread my web presence as 'what I have to say is SO worthwhile and important'. It is what it is, take it or leave it.

**Ever. You'll die.