{"id":430,"date":"2008-04-15T19:42:32","date_gmt":"2008-04-16T02:42:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=430"},"modified":"2008-04-15T19:45:21","modified_gmt":"2008-04-16T02:45:21","slug":"liams-sickness-and-the-power-of-social-networking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=430","title":{"rendered":"Liam&#8217;s sickness and the power of social networking"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two interesting parts of my life coincided this week: illness and online social networking.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m notorious for trying out new internet-based services and web sites.   <a title=\"Opens in a new window\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jott.com\" target=\"_blank\">Jott.com<\/a> takes voice notes from my phone and either schedules appointments with my <a title=\"Opens in a new window\" href=\"http:\/\/calendar.google.com\" target=\"_blank\">Google calendar<\/a> or adds them to my to-do list at <a title=\"Opens in a new window\" href=\"http:\/\/rememberthemilk.com\" target=\"_blank\">rememberthemilk.com<\/a>.  Recently, I linked my account at <a title=\"Opens in a new window\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/shinnphoto\" target=\"_blank\">twitter.com<\/a> with my profile on the social networking site <a title=\"Opens in a new window\" href=\"http:\/\/www.facebook.com\/profile.php?id=612812492\" target=\"_blank\">facebook.com<\/a>.  When I tweet (update my current activities on Twitter in 140 characters or less), a widget on my blog updates, my account at <a title=\"Opens in a new window\" href=\"http:\/\/pownce.com\" target=\"_blank\">pownce.com<\/a> updates, and my facebook status updates, as well.<\/p>\n<p>I used to wonder if all this interconnected geekiness held any utility.  After all, most of my posts are pretty mundane, to wit:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"entry-title entry-content\"> Rough day teaching <\/span> <span class=\"meta entry-meta\"> <a class=\"entry-date\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/shinnphoto\/statuses\/786834459\"><abbr class=\"published\" title=\"2008-04-11T00:40:14+00:00\">05:40 PM April 10, 2008<\/abbr><\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/www.twhirl.org\/\">twhirl<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"entry-title entry-content\"> Just finishing church; about to head to Costco. <\/span> <span class=\"meta entry-meta\"> <a class=\"entry-date\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/shinnphoto\/statuses\/788357720\"><abbr class=\"published\" title=\"2008-04-13T17:33:46+00:00\">10:33 AM April 13, 2008<\/abbr><\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.thincloud.com\/\">ThinCloud<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"entry-title entry-content\"> Eating lunch at the Hotel Burgess cafe. <\/span> <span class=\"meta entry-meta\"> <a class=\"entry-date\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/shinnphoto\/statuses\/789156693\"><abbr class=\"published\" title=\"2008-04-14T21:48:27+00:00\">02:48 PM April 14, 2008<\/abbr><\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.thincloud.com\/\">ThinCloud<\/a> <\/span><\/li>\n<li><span class=\"meta entry-meta\"><span id=\"status_actions_789156693\">etc.<br \/>\n<\/span><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Today I stopped wondering about the utility because of this post:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span class=\"entry-title entry-content\"> Awake with a very sick baby. \ud83d\ude41 <\/span> <span class=\"meta entry-meta\"> <a class=\"entry-date\" rel=\"bookmark\" href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/shinnphoto\/statuses\/789439357\"><abbr class=\"published\" title=\"2008-04-15T09:50:41+00:00\">about 16 hours<\/abbr> ago<\/a> from <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.thincloud.com\/\">ThinCloud<\/a><\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Since posting that tweet, I&#8217;ve been contacted by three different people to ask how Liam is doing.  A family member wrote an e-mail because she saw the news on the blog.  A friend sent a text message because he caught the news on twitter.  And another friend stopped by our house because she saw my status on Facebook.<\/p>\n<p>This online social network that is usually just a toy now means something; it&#8217;s extended the awareness of my friends and allowed me to share the smaller news in my life with people I care about but don&#8217;t usually get to see face-to-face.  These aren&#8217;t some random online friends from a chat room somewhere; they are my real-life friends and family with whom I connect via the increasingly digital fabric of our everyday lives.  I may not sit down to coffee with them every day, but we share over HTML tables instead of cafe tables and via Javascript instead of the black caffeinated stuff.<\/p>\n<p>So I challenge you, Shinnfans, <strong>to live the digital life with intentionality<\/strong>.  Take advantage of ever-easier online social tools and use the opportunity to be transparent and share from your life-stream.  Whether you need to e-mail someone an encouraging note or you link with me at twitter.com and sharing your small daily news, be real, caring and Christ-like about it.<\/p>\n<p>And as for Liam, I wish I could report better news.  He&#8217;s a pretty sick little boy right now, and it&#8217;s hard on all of us.  But I guarantee that when I have better news to report, you&#8217;ll see it in one of my data feeds!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two interesting parts of my life coincided this week: illness and online social networking. I&#8217;m notorious for trying out new internet-based services and web sites. Jott.com takes voice notes from my phone and either schedules appointments with my Google calendar or adds them to my to-do list at rememberthemilk.com. Recently, I linked my account at &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/?p=430\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Liam&#8217;s sickness and the power of social networking<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[8,18,6],"tags":[136,134,33,133,135,83],"class_list":["post-430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer","category-culture","category-family-news","tag-analysis","tag-exhortation","tag-liam","tag-social-networking","tag-twittercom","tag-web-20"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pdZlL-6W","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/430\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andrewandlisa.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}