Hi everyone, I am in Vegas right now. I took the picture on the flight. I love the shadow of the cloud as it actually gives it some substance. The inner 5 year old wanted to scream that it was a spaceship coming to get us from somewhere over the I-15. I mentioned to my wife that I was going to post it on my blog, she rolled her eyes and said that she didn't know how I could find time to keep it going. I guess I have been blogging for a year or so now, and it serves its purpose of letting me vent or kick around ideas.

I read some comments on the discussion board that employing social networking tools and using blogs and such takes too much time. I agree, it does...but there are ways of gently rolling out these tools so that it is less of a pinch on your own time and it can fit in to your day. My blog is just something I keep up to digest thoughts and ideas, like conferences or random things that happen in my life that make me pause a bit. I use MarsEdit though, which makes the process so easy. I don't have to access the site itself and I can save drafts and work on it later, much like composing a well-thought-out email. I am dying to get an iPhone app which will let me do this from my phone though. I know WordPress actually has one out that does this for WordPress blogs.

Social networking sites are just that, networking sites...in more ways than one. You can integrate other applications into your Facebook to get the most out of them. Say you want to have a group on Facebook for your class. Your status updates can be sent through to Facebook with a text message from your cellphone and you can receive group updates in an email when your students update their own profiles. With a little searching on Facebook through your profile you can check out your Notifications tab in your Account Settings to choose what gets sent to you in an email and how often.

You can also update your status messages using a Twitter account. Once you set up a Twitter account link your mobile phone to it. Then go to Facebook and search for the Twitter application to add to your profile.

Now, when you send a text message to Twitter, it will update your status on Facebook. The great part about Twitter is that if you have a smartphone, then you can send links and pictures along with it.

Anyway, those are my 2 cents on the matter. :)