As the author of the blog post, as well as the course instructor, Professor Matthew Nisbet lays out the subjects up for debate in his class. Besides posting about his course on internet social interactions, things get more interesting when he states that students will engage in classroom debate via blog comments. Using blogs as a way to debate online social media is a great way to really capture those conversations. Points that may eventually get lost in an oral debate are retained for posterity and immediately available for all to see in the online realm. Debating in this written manner also allows one to reflect upon his/her statements and make sure to provide compelling evidence to backup the claims.

It also allows those of us no longer in college to see the kinds of views that are held by those in their late teens and early 20's--views that, because they come from a vantage point that may not remember a time without Instant Messaging, Match.com, Myspace, Facebook, blogs, etc. may not realize what an impact they have made on traditional methods of interaction.

Even among those of us who remember the "olden days", we may also be too accustomed to the ease of keeping in touch that technology provides to note the impact it has on face-to-face communication. Does online social interaction detract or enhance traditional interpersonal communications? Only time will tell, and I suspect the debate will still rage on long after the semester ends.

Such is life in the blogosphere. If you only write but never read, the motivation can be lost. If nobody responds to what you have written (ever), the doubt perpetuates. If you don't respond to what anyone else has written, why would you expect others to respond to you? So the question becomes, who's stuff do I read and respond to? Who's conversation should I be listening to?

As I'm always saying to Stepan here (who sits next to Ben, the guy who makes stuff happen), you need to "use the tools." There are a few good ones out there, some of which should be used in conjunction with others. The obejective is to learn what the key influencers are saying about your focus, then consider how you will participate - or as Covey says, "seek first to understand, then to be understood."

At the end of our meeting, I think our new marketing friend was excited about getting her company's blog revived. I'm certain this is a common problem. Is it your problem too JennyU?

Case in point: my 10 year high school reunion was set to happen this year. I was actually looking forward to attending--seeing what my fellow classmates have been up to, who is already successful, and who is still trying to find their way, that sort of thing. The reunion was set to happen earlier this month, but the event was cancelled at the end of October. The reason? The reunion company hired was unable to locate enough classmates.

I was not on the committee, but the organization of the reunion did not appear to have been handled in the best manner. A page just for the reunion was created on Myspace, and many of my classmates friended the profile, but this page was not really used to post or disseminate information. In fact, when the reunion was cancelled, it took weeks for them to post a list of "missing" classmates. When the list was finally posted, at least 1/4 of the people on this list were not only on Myspace, but also a friend of the reunion profile! How can these people be missing when they clearly have a way to be contacted, and have an interest in the reunion if they were a friend of the reunion profile? Just by simply typing in the classmate's name into Myspace, several of the "missing" people could have been found. In the case of those who friended the reunion profile, posting a message asking for contact info might have helped. Why was the list not posted earlier? People cannot provide information if they do not know it is needed--keeping people informed and up-to-date is key in planning events, and with all the bulletin and event features on these networking sites, there is no reason why people couldn't have been kept in the loop.

It just seemed like the committee and reunion company were waiting for the information to come to them, instead of using resources such as Classmates.com, Facebook, and Myspace. No reunion group was set up in Facebook that I was aware of, thus not taking advantage of this popular site either. While Facebook does not turn up as many graduates for my year as Myspace, there are still a few people on there who cannot be found on Myspace.

Adding to the frustration is the fact that, a few days ago, the Myspace profile was deleted, thus increasing the misutilization of this web tool. In the event that the committee tries to plan an 11 year reunion, they will have to try even harder to reach out to the class, since I doubt most people will be motivated now to actively seek out more information.

With the power of the internet allowing people to find information and locate lost friends more easily than ever, it seemed to me that something like a reunion should be a piece of cake to organize. Sadly, this was not the case, and now my class will probably not have one at all. It makes me wonder how on earth these events took place back in the days before technology--perhaps it is a sign that the traditional non-electronic methods are still effective. In reality though, the committee and/or company was probably hoping that everyone would somehow know where to submit their contact info and that there would be no need to search for anyone. While that certainly could have happened, the lack of announcements or notifications alerting people where they could find reunion details or submit their information made it nearly impossible for the "lost" people to be "found"--even those who were never truly lost to begin with.

You can easily share or star an item you just read, go to the next unread item or look through your tags and feeds.

Often times I read and tag blog posts a certain criteria,for example if its something I want to blog about or leave a comment on the author's blog. I like to do those things like an assembly line, first I read all the items that are new or interesting and that's what really takes up most of the time. Next step is to ether write a blog post as a response or to comment on original author's blog linking back to the article I already blogged about. Since most of the reading I do during down times, sometimes being away from the computer, havinggReader on my iPhone is a godsend to productivity. This point brings me to the shortcomings of the app.

The feature to tag posts is missing! I can, of course star an item and come back to it later to figure out why I stared it, but removing that step would be greatly appreciated. Another thing that's blatantly missing is auto-reading the item when you click on the it. I have it set that way on desktop, why isn't it working on my phone? To add the salt on my wounds, when you click "mark item as read" it reloads the whole page, images and all! Ugh, don't add to the hate of the EDGE network speed. The least you guys can do is to send me to the next new item, as that would actually make sense. Last thing that I do not like, and this is purely aesthetic, is howgReader handles unread items in the list view. It would be great to follow the general iPhone look and feel and just add a small dot next to new items, andhighlight the number of new items a bit better than they are now. You can see in the gallery at the end of this post at how they are all the way to the left border of the screen, hardly visible...Whats wrong with them being right next to the item in nice,pleasant iPhone familiar red?

My final verdict is that while its totally awesome that the Google Reader mobile is finally starting to take shape for the iPhone there is still a ton of room for improvement. Keep chugging away Reader team, you got a lot of work to do, still.

For those wondering how gReader looks on the iPhone here is a quick gallery!

P.S Where the hell are my authenticated feeds?

In the case of the above screenshot I'm tracking content relating to "personal finance", so I'm building a resource group to update me on that subject matter.

As part of the Content selection you can choose Member's picks, which is a feature I like and don't like. Hey Guy Kawasaki is in there:

For Delivery you can choose reviewing it online or receiving it via print or email. The cool thing is that you can select delivery days and times too:

It's a disappointment that DailyMe does not offer an RSS delivery option like EPISODr, which can deliver moderated media feeds based on the same selection criteria (day, times, etc.).

Other than the lack of RSS delivery, I'm hopeful of the DailyMe service. I'll keep you posted on how it all plays out and if I can actually pay attention to the content in email format.