Last week when I had trouble sleeping I spent a fair amount of time surfing the internet for whatever I could find. This eventually lead me to Drist’s myspace page where I fully intended on sending them a ‘myspace message’ telling them they had to put some of their songs on RockBand ASAP.

Back up just a bit – for those of you who do not know me, I despise myspace.  I’ve always hated it.  HATED it.  Almost unexplainably.  I can’t even really put my finger on why – but part of it is people that put 8 million pictures/videos/songs on their ‘space’ and crash my dual core 2GB RAM computer.

Anyway – In order to send Drist a message, I would have to take the ultimate plunge of debauchery and create my own ‘space’.  After some reluctance, I did the unthinkable  Vanberge, the eternal hater and shunner of myspace fire death created a myspace account.  I then added Vanbergs as a friend and sent one of my favorite bands in the world a myspace message pleading them to put songs out for RockBand downloadable content.

That was just the beginning…

In the last 4 days I have signed up for and begun using a plethora of online services.  This includes (see sidebar) Digg, Twitter, Last.fm, LinkedIn, and of course… Myspace.

Until now, I’ve really sort of avoided the ‘online community’ side of the internet.  I’ve stuck to things I know and really haven’t tried anything new – primarily I’m an emailer and then I maintain this website – and that’s been it.  And actually, it’s too bad I’ve waited so long to start exploring the further reaches of the internet.  I’ve found myself enjoying embracing these communities and will no doubt continue to do so (well, I may not keep my ‘space’).  But things like last.fm, twitter, and linkedin will probably stay part of my daily web activity for some time to come.

With the expansion into the online world, I began also looking for ways to consolidate my online activity into a more efficient means.  Typing URL after URL into the address bar is a very inefficient means of getting things done online.  Google reader has already helped me with this, but I felt there was more room for improvement.  In the end, I added and reorganized bookmarks into folders that I can easily ‘open all in tabs’.  I then used FoxMarks to continuously sync my bookmarks between all of my firefox browsers (since Google browser sync has been discontinued) – and then finally I downloaded Opera mini, a much improved web browser for my Blackberry 8830 which installs in seconds and absolutely dwarfs the default RIM browser.

Thanks to everyone who no doubt accepted the several invite/friend requests for these various online accounts I’ve finally decided to start using.