My Online Presence - Part I

I knew that my online presence was fairly large but until I gathered this lengthy list of social sites for my Digital Media class, I don't think I realized just how visible I really am.

Here's where to find me and my view of these social media outlets.

Blogs
Gadget Girl's Education 2.0 (Blogger) - Everything having to do with educational technology.
Rockin' Robin (customized Blogger) - My Sun Microsystems blog focusing on Web 2.0, cool stuff that Sun does and more.
Kinderguarded (Wordpress) - The blog and website for my current venture. Kinderguarded is an online safety consulting firm helping families and schools to keep kids safe in the digital world.
Lloyd's Land (Wordpress) - A blog I maintain for my Dad - hosting podcasts of his childhood. He only managed to record one before he passed away in Sept '08 but I promised I'd keep it going and add to it.
On Blogger vs. Wordpress - I really like the ease of use of Blogger and the ability to add lots of different widgets to the site quickly and easily. I chose Wordpress for Kinderguarded solely due to it flexibility in creating multiple pages for a more complete web site approach. Adding new posts in both is very easy, especially when compared to the customized Blogger used at Sun which requires knowledge of HTML to post anything pretty or useful. I also wanted to note that there are some educational specific blog tools that are worth investigating. Edublogger is a for-fee blogger site for teachers and students. Classblogmeister is a free alternative. I have not used either one personally but know of teachers who have and they love it.

MiniBlogs
Robin611 (Twitter) - My main twitter feed, especially focused on ed tech tools.
Kinderguarded (Twitter) - Twitter feed for online safety.
Web2Sun (Twitter) - A twitter feed I just introduced to discuss Web 2.0 at Sun Microsystems.
On Twitter, Twhirl and more - I'm addicted to twitter. I have been since day one. I immediately saw the usefulness, particularly from a professional development standpoint, having made connections with other Ed Tech professionals, teachers and more. I'm still trying to figure out where Twitter might be effective as an educational tool for students. Twitter tools that I use include Twhirl - a desktop application for twitter which really helps me manage the influx of tweets (at least when I'm at my laptop). I have Twitter updates sent to cell phone for robin611 - but unfortunately can't set it up for two twitter accounts to the same number. My twitter feeds are also widgets in 2 of my blogs. Lastly, I use MoTwit on my Palm Centro. It pales in comparison to TwitBerry but I hated the Blackberry and love my PalmOS. I also use TweetScan to find any tweets on educational technology, online safety or other interests. Lastly, because I was tired of missing so many potentially good tweets containing links I wrote a Yahoo Pipe (Twitter_URLs) to capture these links and send it to my Google Reader. Since I thought this might have some value to you, I've published the pipe for your use. You just have to login in to Yahoo, edit the pipe to include your username and password, and select your favorite reader.

Facebook & more
Robin Wilensky - Facebook for friends.
Robin Goldfarb Wilensky - Facebook for work.
On Facebook - Are you sensing a pattern here? I like to keep my online presence separated by life function. No offense, but my work colleagues don't need to know what I'm doing over the weekend or at night and my friends don't need to be bogged down by the trillion Sun annoucements and events that show up in the mini-feed. BTW, I'm also addicted to Facebook. I love reconnecting with old friends and distant family. I've also created a Page for Kinderguarded - become a fan! I also have a MySpace account and a myYearbook account but to be honest I only use these to understand how kids might be vulnerable online and explain to parents how to safeguard the accounts.

Ning - Make your own social networks
Kinderguarded Online Safety - No surprise here. This one I created.
Digital Dialog - Encouraging regular communication about safe, appropriate, and fun uses of digital technologies.
Classroom 2.0 - The community for educators using Web 2.0 and collaborative technologies!
College 2.0 - Online Learning and Web 2.0 in Higher Education, social network with blogs, forums and RSS feeds
Passionate Teachers - A special group of teachers, who consider teaching as a mission and not just a job. Add to it your drop of knowledge.
Sun Alumni - A social network that I was asked to create to facilitate networking among those who were formerly employed by Sun. Yes, I still work there.
Sun-ISIG - A customized Ning site for Sun and it's work with Immersive Education.
On Ning - I have to be a fan of Ning since it was founded by Marc Andreseen, founder of Netscape. It makes a lot of sense to me to form social networks around topics of interest. It's kind of like a virtual Meetup. I've listed the Ning communities that I'm a part of.

Since this post is already quite long, I'm going to end here and pick this up in Part II. But, before signing off you might be wondering why I've labeled this as an Online Safety topic. The reason is that if you are going to keep yourself safe, you'd better start with knowing where you are online. First step: Google yourself. And, women - don't forget to also google your maiden name... :-)