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Let's not forget those of us who check Last.fm profiles religiously.

Both services sound intriguing, and I can definitely see where they would be useful, given a decent number of contacts. So here's a list of reasons for wanting invites, should you be so kind as to grant them:

1) I am a grad student. Therefore, procrastination is an important part of keeping my sanity my life.

2) Having a laptop and wireless Internet means that anything (and everything) online contributes to 1).

3) Most of my friends are also grad students, and, are therefore also in need of sources of procrastination as well as methods of sharing said sources.

4) This semester is so busy that I hardly have a chance to be at my desk in the office, which means I can no longer use the whiteboard system of procrastination that exists in the grad student office.

5) Cornell doesn't allocate as much memory for e-mail as Case did; thus, my inbox is being clogged all the time with e-mails from other grad students with sources of procrastination. Services like these would allow me to retain some space in Thunderbird for all of my advisor's requests for work.

6) Being an experimentalist, I spend a fair chunk of my time taking data in wind tunnels. On data-taking days, I'm stuck in the lab checking readings every couple of minutes and getting up to set up the next stage every half-hour or so. This is not a conducive atmosphere for doing homework or reading academic papers. But--you guessed it!--it's great for browsing the web and distracting other grad students with what I find.

7) Once I get some of my fellow grad students using these methods of communication regularly, it will be much easier for me to invite everyone (in one fell swoop) to weekend social activities. Because, really, we need to get out more.

Congratulations Nicole,
Your invitations have been sent, and I am happy to support your efforts in procrastination. I fear that you may find these tools useful as well as distracting. I think Pownce could actually be a good way to collaborate with researchers from other universities. You can have your own mini discusssion groups and share files. Or you can just babble about anything in the wee hours of the night when you should be sleeping.

p.s. Great way to get out and about near Cornell--pack a picnic and gather a group to go to the wineries. Goosewatch has some great smoked trout (and some quite decent wine), and Hazlitt is a great place to hang out in winter noshing popcorn.

p.p.s. My last.fm profile isn't particularly accurate. I don't sync my Ipod, so my scrobbling is based on my computer which I don't listen to that often.

Yeah pownce and streamy have done wonders for me with all of this social networking going around. With twitter on the sidelines, I think I have the complete package going on.

Thanks, Heidi! I've received the Pownce invite and started an account over there. I think you're right about the potential to be a pretty good research tool, too, provided I could get some of our international colleagues using it. It might work as a means of communication between those of us who are younger, but I can't see my advisor ever using it. Being somewhat older, computing in general can be an issue with him, so he relies almost entirely on e-mail, and getting his grad students to set up and handle anything else, like our weekly teleconference with Goettingen.

P.S. - The wineries around Cayuga are, indeed, a lovely way to spend time. Sometimes it's just hard picking who will be the D.D.! I'm also a fan of the hiking around here. I have gobs of waterfall pictures these days.

P.P.S. - My last.fm profile fell by the wayside for quite some time when I switched to Vista because it took them forever to get a version that worked well under the new OS. But now I'm scrobbling again, and that makes me happy. I do wish that there were some way to scrobble the tracks I play on my Zen Micro, though.

I have nothing witty to add. I am — as of writing this comment — all witty'd out, I'm afraid.

First of all, Nicole, you make being a committed procrastinator look too much like hard work.

Secondly, I'd like to thank Heidi for the mention and hope that her bout of SNF (Social Network Fatigue) clears up sooner rather than later.

I find leaving the cell / mobile at home and going for a long, brisk walk works wonders when wanting away from the world wide web for a while...

Wayne,

I must admit that I probably spent longer than I ought to have making that list. Then again, if just about everything about my life as a grad student is hard work, why shouldn't procrastination be, too?

NO! Wait...maybe. No. OK, yes. Seriously though, no.

I was going to ask to be infected as soon as possible because I thought perhaps a bout of SNF would actually cure me of my need to make 'friends' with people for the most obscurest (love my new word?) of reasons. (eg: In Facebook, I am friends with a young man named Casey Western- for what I hope is an obvious reason; and I've become friends with a young lady because she has one of my favorite Red Sox players in her profile pic and I like seeing him from time to time.) But, then again maybe I could start an SNF group in Facebook... OK, so it's definite I think so. Alright, I'll accept Pownce, if you're willing to oblige me, and let someone else take on the Streamy thing.

I will forever curse your name. (a second time)

"... life as a grad student is hard work, why shouldn't procrastination be, too?"

Todays daydreamers are tomorrows thinkers & doers of great things.

So go for it, Nicole!

"NO! Wait...maybe. No. OK, yes. Seriously though, no."

Sublime. Now, wait! You've been spying on me in meetings, 'coz that's what I do when I'm thinking on my feet.

BTW, the SNF group on Facebook sounds like a great idea.

I'm on Facebook, so I'd sign up! Which come as no surprise, since I did invent the phrase, after all...

Yes, I have been spying on you. Curses, foiled again. Now I'm off to find you on the Fbook! (I just coined that one...don't say you know that unless it becomes very popular.)

"... since I did invent the phrase [social network fatigue], after all."

After a quick ear-bashing by a colleague and a moment or two in front of Google, it appears I had no hand in the origination of that phrase.

Oh well. But at least I did come up with advertorialinsultamercialism...

Ah well, so few ideas are original anyway. But you have helped to propagate it!

Advertorialinsultamercialism really rolls off the tongue.

I was channel hopping over the weekend and saw a nice example of this—a machine you can buy to marinate things. You put your food in a tube and the machine rolls the tube to evenly distribute the marinade. And to think, all these years I've been marinating things in zip lock bags, I've risked serving food that may not be evenly flavored! It's a wonder anyone's eaten at my house more than once.

Reminded me of the tubes we used in printing Cybachrome photos. And yet, I suspect people will buy them.