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I have recently reconnected with some of my former classmates after 25 years, and it’s been truly a pleasure. Some of the people were friends in school that I’d lost touch with. Some have been people that I, sure, always liked – but didn’t know well. And I really enjoyed catching up with all of those people and hope to continue to see random glimpses into their lives via the ubiquitous status update. Such is the power of electronic social networking; connecting, reconnecting and learning fascinating things about people, old and new. We are connecting as a society like we never have in history, and I am wildly optimistic about how this is/has/will affect our culture.

….but then someone mentioned the class reunion.  

At first, I was sort of interested in the idea. Then I remembered, “I hated high school.” Okay, that’s not really true. High school was fine, although I’d never do it again. And as I thought through it, I made up my own statistics:

Less than 5% of people think they were popular or well-liked in school. (Those were the arrogant pricks and still are. haha.) 7% think they were not well-liked (and probably were not well-liked) and the remaining 87%   don’t know how other people perceived them, but tend to perceive themselves as less popular than they really were.  So 94% of people have some level of self-consciousness about how they were perceived in high school, but only 7% of those people are justified in having those perceptions.   (+/- 1% margin of error.  Hint about making up believable statistics: use prime numbers and include a margin of error)

So my own popularity perceptions rendered unimportant by fake statistics, the reason I’m going to pass on a high school reunion has to do with Eleanor Roosevelt and a bumper sticker. Eleanor said, “Great minds discuss ideas. Mediocre minds discuss things. Small minds discuss people.” The bumper sticker said, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in a large group.” Not that the people in my high school were stupid, but you get any group of people together that has only a home town in common and the group’s IQ drops to that of the least common denominator. So while I would absolutely LOVE to have dinner and brilliant conversation with any six random people from my high school (or just random people off the street) to talk about ideas, no value will come from 300 people gathering in a room to talk about people and things. The conversation will never get to ideas. And I choose my company these days based on capacity to discuss ideas. (Plus, the geek who wants to talk about ideas at the class reunion is bound to be they guy trapping you in the corner, preventing you from getting another cup of punch and giving a high-five to Schmitty – so you’re welcome.)

Thanks to Facebook (and to a better-marketing-model, worse-business-model extent,  Classmates.com) I can have an online high school reunion the way I want a reunion to be – small, interpersonal and frequent.

Does social networking eliminate the need for in-person meetings?  No – I still prefer to talk with someone in person.  Does social networking eliminate the need for a large gathering of people reminiscing about high school?  Dude – there was never a need for that.

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There’s always something new & fun to play with.. here are my favorite free tools from this year:

OuTwit - Integrates Outlook and Twitter.  I like this app because I can receive tweets in the same console as I receive email (from all of those dinosaurs who still use email!).  I can also set up rules, filters, folders and flags for incoming tweets.  I wouldn’t use it to manage all messages, but it’s great for managing messages from selected contacts.  http://www.techhit.com/OutTwit

Xobni - Xobni is an Outlook plugin that allows me to search and organize by contact. Big woop?!  Well, the search is far superior to Outlook’s, plus it aggregates all of the files exchanged with specific contacts.  Where was that .PPT that George sent me?  I can look at a list of files rather than opening individual emails until I find the right one.  (And it indexes by individual contact, even if you send to a big distribution list.)  It also integrates with LinkedIn profiles.  Check it out: http://www.xobni.com

Picasa - This isn’t really new, but I always assumed that you needed a picasa account, and I’m a diehard flickr user.  This aint no photoshop, but I can easily find photos on my hard drive and batch process them.  I’m never quite satisfied with the contrast level that my camera gives me.  I can adjust all of my recent photos at once with this tool.  It’s lightweight, but its charm is its ability to do quick & simple edits.    http://picasa.google.com

Billeo - I’m still learning about this one.  I know I can use it to pay bills or store a credit card for online shopping.  I’m not yet convinced that it’s the best tool for the job; the paypal widget and my own bank’s online banking services are easier – but this also has a password manager.  And the hook for me is that I can manage passwords among my three or four computers and store them on the cloud.  Integrate that with online bill payment and it might be worth the switch.  http://billeo.com

Pingie - this may be the simplest of my favorite apps.  It takes an RSS feed and sends text messages to my mobile.  I use this sparingly, but if you can construct, filter and pipe feeds for your most critical and relevant information, this is a great way to get them ASAP.  http://pingie.com

+twine - Twine is relatively new – it was in closed beta most of the year and only recently emerged to public beta.  I think of it as a mashup of social bookmarking, blogging and message boards.

It’s a way to aggregate and tag content, but the content can range from a simple link, to a full text post, to a discussion.  So it’s more than an aggregator; it’s a place to create and organize content as well.  Anyway, my favorite tool isn’t necessarily Twine.com – it’s the advanced widget for saving bookmarks. The widget is smart enought to fill in most of the pertinent data – quickly tag it, categorize, add a picture, etc – and get back to what you were doing.

Find me using these tools here:

• http://www.twine.com/user/dave225
• http://flickr.com/photos/ungard/
• http://twitter.com/dave225