When I say "the book", you damn well know what I'm talking about & if you don't, then you're clearly not of this world!

I had a friend join Facebook at the start of the year & they sent me a message to join as well. I did so & then forgot about it for a couple of months. I then received another email from someone wanting to add me & I played around for a little while to find who else was investing their employers valuable time in a similarly productive way. I found a few people from work, a few friends, a few enemies & added those who I thought might respond. Again, I forgot about it for a while, until a few responses came back.

Six months down the track, I'm stuggling to find anyone I've ever dealt with who isn't on Facebook & if they aren't today, they most likely will be tomorrow!

So far, it's led to a reunion or two with groups of people I haven't dealt with for years. I've also had contact with friends who moved on decades ago & lost touch. Now, everyone's coming out of the void & it's great to find out where past friends have ended up.

MySpace was already ticking along at a frantic pace before Facebook really got going, but for me it just seemed too crowded with crap & every time you opened someones page, their personal designs tended to cause instant headaches. Don't any of these emo kids know what "tasteful" means?

I had a page under the "sevfive" name, but there's nothing there & I haven't looked at it for a looong time. How the hell do you find anyone when they don't go under their real name anyway?

Needless to say, I'm hooked on the Book & I try to avoid adding every single little application I get invites for. Some are clever, most aren't & being on dial-up keeping it clean & simple is the key. A few of my contacts have installed everything possible & now I get half their page to load before my modem freaks out & I get error messages on screen.

I find things like facebook, flickr & google earth both fascinating & invaluable & wonder what I'd do without them now. But what's around the corner in a few years? I can't wait until Google Earth ends up being real-time satellite images & video calling someone is not some pixellated scratchy vision. Of course, it might help too if I start with basics & get something a bit better than dial-up!