Marc and his wife write real talk about all areas of relationships, from sex to abuse to pure love and the language of flowers at The Incurable Romantic. Marc is also the author of techne-eikon, a blog about Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing. Follow Marc on FriendFeed and Twitter.

You can also follow Teeg on FriendFeed and Twitter.

FriendFeed for the Socially Inept – Part 2
Read Part 1

Once you have your friends listed in your FF profile, you can start adding the services that you use. The available services are:

* Amazon.com
* Blog
* del.icio.us
* Digg
* Disqus
* Flickr
* Furl
* Gmail/Google Talk
* Goodreads
* Google Reader
* Google Shared Stuff
* iLike
* Jaiku
* Last.fm
* LibraryThing
* LinkedIn
* Ma.gnolia
* Mixx
* Netflix
* Netvibes
* Pandora
* Picasa Web Albums
* Pownce
* Reddit
* Seesmic
* SlideShare
* SmugMug
* StumbleUpon
* Tumblr
* Twitter
* Upcoming
* Vimeo
* Yelp
* YouTube
* Zooomr

Once you’ve done that, your FriendFeed will automagically be updated with all your online activities.

Your friend’s (and their friends’) activities will also be posted to your page for your convenient perusal, and your activities will be posted to theirs (assuming that they have also added you as a friend).

There is one other feature that I just discovered today that I would like to mention: FriendFeed Rooms. FF Rooms are mini FriendFeeds that are usually centered around one topic or group of people, rather than all the diverse activities happening in your network, all at once. I don’t know much about Rooms yet (I did say that I just discovered them today), but I like the idea that I can further refine my FF for certain areas of interest, rather than needing to scroll through multiple pages of updates to find whatever has my ADD fuelled attention at the moment. Rooms can be made public or private, with the public version getting posted to your public feed. There are possibilities here that have me intrigued….

All in all, FriendFeed is wonderful in its simplicity, and does a excellent job of bringing some semblance of order to the chaos that is my online network. I almost feel like I can actually go from socially inept to socially adept, via my FriendFeed profile. Hopefully. Yes, I think that FriendFeed is my newest, bestest friend.

Marc and his wife write real talk about all areas of relationships, from sex to abuse to pure love and the language of flowers at The Incurable Romantic. Marc is also the author of techne-eikon, a blog about Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing. You can also follow Marc on FriendFeed and/or Twitter.

You can also follow Teeg on FriendFeed and Twitter.

FriendFeed for the Socially Inept – Part 1
Read Part 2

As a blogger I am understandably interested in Web 2.0 and online social networks such as StumbleUpon, Digg, and Facebook. Unfortunately, when it comes to these networks I am the very definition of socially inept.

I’m not afraid to admit it: I’m a bad friend. I forget about people and sites and networks and all that. I have online ADD, jumping from one thing to the next, and immediately forgetting what I was just doing. It doesn’t help that in order to maintain my involvement in most of these networks, I have to actually go to the site, log in, and play catch-up. Thumb something up, digg it, and oh yeah, twitter it. Add in forums, groups, chats and RSS feeds, and the information overload becomes unbearable.

It’s a wonder I haven’t thrown my computer out of the window yet.

Enter FriendFeed, my newest friend… FriendFeed is an aggregator for all your online social activities. It brings all your friend’s network activities under one roof, making it easy to keep up with what everybody is doing.

Of course, first you have to add them as friends on FriendFeed, but that is usually just a matter of searching for them, and subscribing to their updates. If there is someone that you want to follow, but they aren’t on FriendFeed, sending them an invitation is as easy as typing in their email address, or having FF import your address book.

This naturally brings up the question, “Must my friends be FF users in order for me to follow them”? Thankfully, they do not. FF has a friends setting called “imaginary friends”, which allows you to follow non-members around as they post stuff to their favourite sites.

Only publicly submitted information is tracked, so your friends won’t think that you are too creepy, which is always a bonus. You can also add their blog’s RSS feed, making the service a simple RSS reader, though if you really use RSS, you may find a dedicated reader a better solution.

Thank you for your patience while I’ve been silent. I’m feeling much better now. Later this week, I have another guest post by Allan Cockerill to share with you, but for today I thought I’d see if I remember how to write. Plus, I really wanted to say thank you to my friends who have stepped in to help while I’ve been absent.

A few years back, when I found out I was pregnant with J, I was put on modified bed rest due to a back injury a year earlier. I could do some stuff, but housework and most other things fell to Ken and W (who was 4 at the time). I was amazed at the friends who came to help, doing everything from actually cleaning my house (hubbies and 4 yr olds don’t usually meet the same standards) to bringing by home-cooked meals, to following me to the gas station and pumping gas for me. One friend would even bring the garbage can to the curb for me if Ken was out of town.

Friends off-line are wonderful. What I never expected though, was to have the same treatment online. Allan Cockerill of Coffee with Allan Cockerill and Ange of Buzzing with Ange both wrote guest posts, and Marc of techne-eikon.com reminded me that he’s promised to write one also.

Thanks so much, all of you! I don’t have words to express how much your friendship and help has meant to me.

Friendship has been on my mind a lot lately. Social websites brought people together who most likely wouldn’t hang out on traditional forums or chat rooms, for example, among my friends online there are people of all ages, and some who are painfully shy, introverts, people with dyslexia, autism, etc. Sites like StumbleUpon, Facebook, etc. make it easy to find others with interests similar to your own, while allowing you to choose the level of interaction you’re comfortable with.

For most of the social sites, you don’t even need to have friends online to start, just sign up and start playing with the site options…friends will come…like writing a blog, people will come to see what you have to say, and if they like it, they’ll stay. Before you know it, you’ll have a whole group of new friends on the site, most with similar interests to your own.

Twitter is one of the few exceptions to this, one of the rare sites where you really do need friends to enjoy it. It’s not hard to make Twitter friends, but it can be slow starting out. If you are trying to get started on Twitter, feel free to add me as a friend. I’d love to know that you visited my blog too, if you want to send me a message.

I sometimes hear people describe off-line friends as “real” and on-line as “virtual.” To me, all my friendships are real, regardless of whether I see them face to face, visit them on a social site, or send letters to a penpal. I wouldn’t even know how to draw a line…perhaps because I met my husband in a chat room and one of my best friends off line was introduced to me by one of my best friends online.

How about you? Is there a difference in your offline and online friendships? What are your thoughts on online friendships and social networks? I’d love to hear them.

Dear Friends, I’m so sorry I haven’t written in a while. After almost a week of internet issues, the sinus infection I’ve had off an on all winter got bad enough that I felt like I had the flu.Finally, Ken decided enough was enough and took me, kicking and screaming, to the doctor, who prescribed antibiotics and a new sinus med, so hopefully soon I’ll be back up and running.

Allan Cockerill, a good friend I’ve mentioned a few times before, noticed that I hadn’t been posting much lately and offered a guest post. I gladly accepted and hope all of you enjoy this review of a recently revised Facebook app.

If you haven’t visited Allan’s blog before, I thoroughly recommend it. Allan is a great writer who talks about Australia, Facebook, Social networking, family, values, videos (most recently, one of my favorite songs by the Eagles), and more on his blog, Coffee with Allan Cockerill.

By the way, if you would like to write a guest post while I’m recovering feel free to send me a message or leave a comment on here, send me a note on StumbleUpon, @me on Twitter, or contact me on Facebook.

By Guest Blogger: Allan Cockerill

A quiet Sunday afternoon in late summer here in Australia, and I received a message with what looked like a nice cold beer from one of my Facebook friends.

He’d found the Cool Greeting cards application and sent me an invitation.

This was one of the applications that has been lambasted in recent times for forcing invitations to friends before being able to access key features.

This requirement has now been dropped, and I’m now happy to recommend it.

I always like to try an application before recommending it to friends.

Realistically, how can I comment on the merit of something, whether it’s an application, movie or restaurant, before trying it myself?

If I like it, I recommend it and invite friends.

Cool Greeting Cards has a range of cards for Christmas, Birthdays and Valetines’ day etc.

There are new cards and images being added regularly, so it is well worth a look if you want to send your Facebook friends something a little bit different.

Cool Greeting Cards can be found by going here!

Did you know that clicking on my Facebook Profile Badge you can go to my profile, and add me as a friend?

I’d love to get to know my readers, as well as friends from other social networking sites on Facebook.

If you’re signed in to Facebook, you will go directly to my public profile, and be able to add me as a friend.

If you’re wondering how to access your own profile badge, wonder no more!

Simply go to the bottom of your profile page, where you will see a couple of links, including the one to the badge, and the profile layout.

Simply click on the badge link, and follow the instructions!

Grab your badge, and paste it into your blog or website.

Now, for a nice, long cold beer…