I work as an artist and an art and craft teacher. Before starting this task, I considered myself a pen and paper person, but I have come to realize that I already use quite a lot of different digital services. As an artist and teacher, a crucial part of my job is to seek and find new ideas and thoughts. Pinterest and Instagram are examples of such services. I also use ChatGPT for generating ideas. Even though I still create my art in the real world, my job includes creating exhibition posters, for which I usually use Krita or Gimp. Recently, I have also been using Canva to finalize different visual designs. I don’t consider myself particularly good at using image editing software. I should delve deeper into different programs to get more out of them. I have also created small animation clips with Krita and GIF animations with Gimp.
For daily communication, I use WhatsApp, Signal, and (if necessary) Facebook Messenger, along with several different email accounts. I also have my own website, which I built using WordPress, and I try to remember to update it at regular intervals.
Before starting my studies, I hardly used Teams and Zoom. With my studies, I have gradually become accustomed to online meetings and conferences, but I still prefer to meet people in person rather than online.
Issuu
I explored Issuu, a digital publishing and distribution platform. Through Issuu, PDF files can be made into browseable flipbooks. This service might come in handy in the future. There have been times when publishing PDF files this way would have made sense. The service offered both free and paid versions. I found the price of the service quite high, so I wouldn’t be willing to pay for it.
Pi-AI
I have previously used ChatGPT, so I wanted to try out Pi.AI. The service advertised itself as an empathetic AI. You could choose from several different voices for the AI. Pi.AI’s responses were conversational. The experience was mostly confusing. The AI could also converse in Finnish, but it was quite clumsy. I might try Pi.AI again in the future to see what kinds of responses it gives to different problems. The good thing about this service was that you didn’t need to log in to try it out.
Tumblr
Next, I explored Tumblr. According to ChatGPT, Tumblr is popular among young users and subcultures. Unlike Instagram, which is more focused on sharing visual content, Tumblr allows for sharing a variety of different content. Unfortunately, my exploration of the service was very superficial. A deeper exploration would have required logging in, and since I’m particular about which services I log into and what information I link together, I decided not to create a Tumblr account.
Todois
I also explored Todoist. Todoist is a task management and to-do list application. The application seemed very clear and easy to use. In my case, I don’t see any additional benefits from using such a service. I like to make my to-do lists on paper; writing with a pen helps me remember, and I can make the kind of visual additions on paper that help me organize and remember things better. Using such an application might make sense if I were involved in projects with multiple people from different organizations. Through such an application, managing the project might be easier.
Vimeo
The last service I explored was Vimeo. Vimeo is a video sharing service where you can also edit your videos to some extent and view others’ creations. It is popular among professional creative content producers and allows sharing high-quality videos without ads. For a few projects, I have previously shared videos and ended up using YouTube. I believe that if I needed to share more professional videos, I would use Vimeo in the future.
Some thougts
Nowadays, there is an abundance of different social media services available. Different services are designed with slightly different needs and user groups in mind. As I explored different services, I realized that many of them could be useful in different situations. However, the problem is that since there are so many services, it is not resource-efficient to try to utilize all possible services, but rather to focus on a few that are genuinely beneficial to me.
While working on this task, I realized how many different digital services I actually use. Many services are ones that I do not use in my daily life, but only a couple of times a year. I have also often browsed various new services, but I have found it too cumbersome to properly explore them. I find it difficult that you often have to log in to fully explore a service. As a result of this task, I did not adopt any new services, but I believe that in the future, I will be more eager to try something new.