Twitter

[Grandma Ruth]

I'm sure none of us older ones would subscribe to the real "Twitter", but as far as I can gather it's a way of keeping your friends up-to-date with what you're doing. And that's what I'm doing - letting you know that I'm off on holiday for a couple of weeks. I'm going to Chicago so for a while I'll at least be in the same timezone as most people here!
By the way, Happy Birthday, America!

[Grandma Ruth]

Having said that, I have now joined Twitter just to join in with this:
http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23welovethenhs Sorry, Hawk, it's kind of political but it has the support of all the political parties in Britain so we don't think it is, if you see what I mean.

[Hawk]

All I get it the Search page for Twitter when I click on your link.

[Grandma Ruth]

Click on picture to enlarge

Sorry - then you need to click on "welovethenhs"

[Hawk]

Oh well. That didn't do much good. I can't see anything unless I sign up, and I'm not going to do that. I just don't have any trust in these social networking sites so I stay away from them.
I just thought I might be able to read something without having to sign up.

[Grandma Ruth]

That's annoying, isn't it? Why doesn't it work like your site, so you can see everything but not post anything till you've joined? I joined because I wanted to contribute, so I didn't realise that was the way it worked. Pity as it's all very interesting, though you and I have been round and round the garden on this particular topic!

[Knave]

The Wife and I have had a couple of nieces try to sign us up on face book. We don't trust them either. Since they were recently hacked into, that trust wasn't misaligned. We usually apologise to them and explain they will just have to send us a copy of what they post on whatever social site they use. They don't. Oh well.

[Hawk]

though you and I have been round and round the garden on this particular topic!

I was remotely interested in what others in your country had to say about the socialistic life, but it's not that important to me to sign up for one of those sites.
Besides, I didn't really want to hash it out with you again. I like you too much.

[Grandma Ruth]

Quite so!

[WPandP]

One option, I think, is to create an extra email address, one with high spam filtering and preferably on a different domain than your "real" email address, to use just for signing up for things like this. You can always redirect or forward email from that one to your real one if need be, but otherwise it doesn't matter what happens to that account.

It's something I should have done prior to signing up for Facebook; usually I'm smarter than this, but I went ahead and used my regular home email address. My junk email skyrocketed... mostly after I started playing some of the games developed by others (Facebook itself is pretty benign). I haven't hopped onto Twitter yet, largely because I lack a cell phone and thus would miss out on most of its functionality.

[Hawk]

If it was just an email address issue it wouldn't be a problem. With my domain I can create an unlimited number of email addresses. Easily creating 'disposable' addresses.
The main concern on my part is the scripts they use. Most easily hacked by a half way decent hacker.

[Grandma Ruth]

Just another little "tweet" to say real life has kicked in again and I probably won't be around much for a while. I'm going to be made redundant next year so I am starting up my own business and will be pretty busy with that. So don't be surprised if you don't see too much of me for a bit.

[Hawk]

Sorry to hear your employer feels you are redundant. That sucks!

Good luck on your new endeavor.

[nedfumpkin]

Good luck Ruth....you'll never be redundant here.

[Knave]

Never, Ever.

[Hawk]

Let me also add; you will be missed in your temporary absences.