Twitter Obsession Continued… Andrea Kalli Demos How to Use Characters in Tweets

If you’re a fellow twitterholic and want to use those cute alternative characters, like suns and musical notes… check out Andrea Kalli’s thorough tutorials here… she needed two posts as there’s so many to list!

Twitter Special Characters - Part 1

Twitter Special Characters - Part 2

Thanks, Andrea - and happy 4th to all!!

 

 

A Thorough Checklist for Blogsite & Social Media Promotion

Social media marketing expert Chris Brogan posted a thorough to-do list for anyone who’s serious about promoting their business with their blogsite and on social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, etc.. Among the many useful suggestions include checking your site with diagnosis and search tools like WebsiteGrader.com or Summize - and simply posting on other blogs (a tried-and-true traffic building tactic).

Brogan also suggests old-fashioned good manners; avoiding blatant self-aggrandizement and promoting others as you promote yourself among the best ways to build goodwill (much like I’m doing here!).

A terrific article!
100 Personal Branding Tactics Using Social Media

 

 

 

YouSendIt Launches Outlook Plug-In for Large Attachments

Most know that email accounts have some limit on the size of files you can attach to messages - typically it’s less than 10MB…which is not a lot in the world of YouTube and Podcasts. Many (like me) are fans of file transfer services like YouSendIt - which provides “drop box” service for any large file, bypassing the limits of email attachments (and sparing the recipient a clogged mailbox!).

The folks at YouSendIt just launched an Outlook plugin that sets all outbound messages with attachments above a certain size (that you choose) to be routed via the YouSendIt service. This saves time and allows the user to email with abandon without concern about file sizes… a great idea!

Thanks to TechCrunch for the tip.

Avoid “Gadget Graveyard” with TechForward

Anyone who makes their living using computers grapples keeping up with new upgrades I’m on my 7th cell phone, for example). Over time, most develop a vast “gadget graveyard” of once wondrous devices that lost their lustre or just became outdated over time.

What to do? Web Worker Daily profiled a new company called TechForward that has an ingenious idea…sell guaranteed buyback values on a new device (computers, MP3 players monitors and televisions). As long as the item is in good condition and all manuals are kept, you can get a darned good buck for your trade in. TechForward will salvage parts and/or dispose of the item in an environmentally responsible way…a nice reassurance that your gizmo doesn’t end up in a landfill.

It’s a great idea - and definitely an option to consider when I upgrade something (which is likely to be soon).

Free & Low-Cost Alternatives to Microsoft Office: A Free Presentation

A few months ago, I did a teleseminar for members of DVVAA about free and low-cost alternatives to Microsoft Office. There are lots of options out there - and more becoming available every day!

This 32-page presentation provides a nice overview of what’s available for both in-office workers and road warriors. You may be surprised to find that you don’t need to spend hundreds for a full-featured office suite! Here’s a quick preview of the presentation:

Or… get a FREE PDF download! It’s much easier to read. Click the button…

Enjoy!

Digsby Unifies IM And Social Media Messaging

If you struggle with juggling different IM networks and social media and all their applications running on your computer at the same time… do yourself a favor and check out Digsby. Digsby is a single application that delivers all the major IM networks: Google Talk, AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ & Jabber - along with an email notifier AND Twitter, Facebook and MySpace alerts - all in a single interface. Digsby also announced today that it now supports Facebook chat in addition to notifications.

In addition, Digsby offers customizable widgets you can add to your blog or website that allows your visitors to IM you from your website. You can see it in action on this blog —>

Read the C|Net Review of Digsby here.

Late to the party: learning to use Facebook

Late to the party, indeed. I just now am beginning to scratch the surface of Facebook. I spend quite a bit of time on LinkedIn (which I love); but have so far spent no time exploring the capabilities of FB… always assuming it was more of a personal thing. In my ignorance, I never bothered to really see what it can do. And it can do a lot. I am surprised by the number of people that use it excusively (and very effectively) for business and that it’s actually very useful - not merely a social distraction.

Along with my “discovery” of Twitter last week (which is surprisingly addictive), I feel I’m making some social networking progress these days. Next week: Squidoo.

Many thanks to Erin Blaskie - who patiently helped me see the Facebook light.

So - since I’m new, I’m still light on friends… please visit me. ;-)  Anyone else feel behind the curve with Facebook?

RescueTime measures your productivity (do I really want to know this?)

I just installed RescueTime - a free product which aims to provide users with a cold, impartial analysis of how you spend time on your computer - without data entry. RescueTime runs in the background and (basically speaking) tracks the focus of windows on your computer to compile a report which you can have emailed or published in an RSS feed.

You can even define productivity goals and measure your progress! So, if you have decided to spend 50% less time processing email, RescueTime will let you know if you are on track to achieve that goal.

There are obvious privacy concerns with any product that “tracks” activity on your computer. However, RescueTime does a good job of addressing these concerns by providing useful features to whitelist and suspend tracking for activity that you don’t want to include in reports:

What about my privacy?
We take privacy pretty seriously, and it was one of our biggest concerns when we built RescueTime. Our first line of privacy defense is to provide a prominent pause feature that allows you to suspend tracking. Second of all, you can delete any particular data. Finally, we ensure that the only thing we track is the names of the apps and sites you use and the times that you use them. We also offer a “Whitelist” feature that allows you to only track the web sites that you want to. For more details, check out our privacy policy.

RescueTime also offers a paid version that will track the productivity of a workgroup.. so it looks like the product is also aimed at small businesses who are serious about measuring the results of adopting alternative processes and workstyles. It may provide weary commuters everywhere with a great tool to convince management that it’s time to start adopting work-at-home options!

This may be a perfect way to measure once and for all how much time I really spend with email, eBay and celebrity gossip blogs. If my results aren’t too terribly embarrassing, I will post again in a month’s time to share the verdict.

Ok, I get Twitter now.

I spend a lot of time playing with new Web 2.x services and putting them to use. I love finding something that saves me a few minutes or fills a need - a need that sometimes, I didn’t even know I had (Jott.com, comes to mind!).

I never really “got” the phenomenon that is Twitter. I never spent much time with it, as I assumed it was a MySpace-y type app that was for tweens texting one another about prom shoes - but I confess, I never gave it a fair shake. If you aren’t familiar, Twitter allows you to quickly update “what are you doing” and update your website and your “followers” (or all Twitter-ers at large) with brief text messages. These messages are sent to your website, blog, rss (my favorite), phone, etc. - instant broadcast udpates as to your - status/thoughts/etc.. Twitter, however, allows users to restrict updates to approved “followers”, so that you can use Twitter to update family members, workgroups, etc with updates without burning phone minutes or spending time on phonetag calls and voice mail. Useful!

So, as proof that Twitter is more than another teenage tech distraction… here’s a blog post that describes the clever and lifesaving use of Twitter during a recent tornado outbreak in OK.

In case you are wondering - here’s my Twitter page.. there is absolutely nothing of interest there.. but follow me if you like…

Also - please comment if there is something I am missing - or another great way to use Twitter.

Evernote Will Change Your Life

If you ever looked at your browser’s “Favorites” file - its more than likely that it is completely disorganized and out of control. I (like most) had a bad habit of viewing a webpage that I want to revisit - then “adding to favorites” or “bookmarking” - only to discover that I could never find it again in the giant list of pages I tried to save to it over the years. Looking at my “favorites” now in my browser - I dont even know what a lot of it is or why I wanted to save it in the first place. It’s a useless mess.

Enter Evernote. Evernote is an immensely flexible “clipping” tool that works on your desktop, on your phone and on the web. It allows you to save almost any kind of information (webpages, text, sound, pictures and video) and index it any way you like - tags, categories, separate notebooks. Evernote is similar to (also excellent) Google Notebook - only pumped up with an elegant interface and far more flexible features.

… but that’s not all. Evernote also indexes by the content of your notes - including images. So, if you are in the grocery store and you want to save a picture of a cereal box (can’t imagine why you would need to do this, but please humor me here.. ) - text in the picture (Cap’n Crunch, in this example) would be captured and indexed.

So - if you were doing research on the vast health benefits of Cap’n Crunch, and you had saved your assortment of documents, webpages and pictures of Cap’n Crunch resources in Evernote - and you did a search on “Cap’n Crunch” - not only would you get the text and webpages - you would get the images that contained the phrase “Cap’n Crunch”. Incredible!!

Like any great Web 2.0 app, it works with everything else you use. You can easily email notes to and from your Evernote account, and even dictate notes to it using that other spectacular service Jott! (I posted about Jott! on my former blog, but do yourself a favor and visit Jott! right now!)

Evernote is in “private beta” so you do either need an invitation (I have a few left - just email me [mary * at * provirtualsolutions.com] if you would like one) - or you can register for an invitation from Evernote - which may take a few days to a week. It works very smoothly  - so I doubt that it would be in a private beta very much longer.

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