Online friendships

Just an update, the following blogs were added to Ratified Australia

• http://redsultana.com/
• http://2blogornot2blog.wordpress.com
• http://www.duncans.tv

One of the things I enjoy that has driven me to partner with Ratified Australia is being able to keep myself posted on the latest in the blogosphere. Here are some stuff I saw lately:

• There's an article at Imaginif on children learn the cycle of violence from our parenting. I believe every parent desires to be a good one. My worry on that article piece is that the writer may insinuate that he or she is a perfect parent and may alienate readers in getting the message across. Of course, reading it as compared to how it gets presented is different. Perhaps I'm missing some emphatic voice in it. Will have to re-read that sometime again.
  
• Suzie made a post about the Carnivals of Australia. It seems my submission missed the deadline. =( However, the format of the upcoming Australian Blogging Conference gave me an idea on how to improve similar events I organize back home.
• SwollenPickles gave a preview on how the Audi A4 looks like. I wonder if that car feels like a BMW inside. I guess from a passenger point of view, they all feel the same.
  
• Over the weekend, we get to see some birds and I find myself lost in telling the kids what kind they are. Good thing there's Bird Anonymous that helped me in identifying them. I only wish that I'll be successful in taking their pictures next time.
• I just learned from Haalo that there's this presto pasta night and I am thinking of sharing a Filipino style pasta soon.

Stephen made an interesting post about online friendship. I believe that the Internet has allowed us to increase our circle of contacts even more. Depending on our kind of work, some of us will get exposed to a lot of people and keeping up will be hard. I feel kinda bad whenever I receive an e-mail from someone saying they met me years ago and it is likely that I don't remember them anymore. In fact, most of the time, such is true.

When tools like LinkedIn came out, I invited members of my mailing list so I can put a face behind the e-mail addresses. Also in events where I speak, I invite those I met just to keep me posted on their movements. I have at least ten ways of using LinkedIn.

Before Facebook became popular, I'm already using Friendster and use that to monitor friends birthday, announce events once in awhile, and observe what my kids and their friends are up to. ;)

Last April, I also started using Twitter out of curiosity. Definitely, that tool became very important when blog wars started happening in my part of the world.