Here’s a great tool: Sue Shellenbarger, over at the Wall Street Journal, has test drove three time management tools for us, so we don’t have to try them ourselves. Talk about time saving. The three tested methods are: • Getting things done. • The Pomodoro Technique. • Franklin Convey’s Focus. Read the article to see what she found. We’ve got lots more ways to get things done and hack your life, too. Permalink | Leave a comment »
Selected by eng1ne
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Holy Kaw!
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How to save time
21 Nov 2009 | 9:25 am -
How to re-imagine the color of your room with no paint
21 Nov 2009 | 9:14 amWant to see what your room would look like with different paint? Check out colorjive.com, a really cool site that takes your pictures and changes the colors of the walls in just a few easy steps. It's fun! And it could save a lot of fails. More cool design sites. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
Common mistakes in social media and other insights on impact
21 Nov 2009 | 9:03 amOver on SmartBlog, Mary Ellen Slayter interviews Olivier Blanchard (above), a seasoned brand strategist at BrandBuilder Marketing. Blanchard delves into his perspective on how businesses can maximize their return on social media. He shares, for instance, three common mistakes companies make when trying to measure the value of social media: Focusing too much on digital measurement. Not understanding the difference between nonfinancial impact and financial impact. Not establishing clear goals and objectives when launching a social media program. How can you avoid this fate, and what other… -
A geography of BBQ
21 Nov 2009 | 8:38 amAs a newcomer to DC, people keep telling me that my BBQ education is about to begin. Though complete strangers and close roommates have preached the glories of BBQ, this article is the clearest introduction to the sauce I’ve seen yet. Did you know there are at least four kinds of sauce? Kansas City Style Sauce Texas Style Sauce North Carolina Style Sauce South Carolina Style Sauce Check out the article to see just how each of them differ. Hungry for more? There’s much more about food and recipes. Permalink | Leave a comment » -
France vs. Ireland controversial goal video
20 Nov 2009 | 10:58 pmIn case you haven’t seen the controversial goal in the France versus Ireland game, here you go. Total coverage of soccer. Permalink | Leave a comment »
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ReadWriteWeb
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Weekly Wrapup: Google Chrome OS, Obama's Twitter, Blogging Statistics, And More...
21 Nov 2009 | 5:00 amIn this edition of the Weekly Wrapup - our newsletter summarizing the top stories of the week - we report on President Obama's (non)-use of Twitter, take a look at the past decade in the media industry, review the latest statistics about blogging, question if Oxford Dictionary should've chosen "unfriend" as its word of the year, and more. We also check in on our two main channels: ReadWriteEnterprise (devoted to 'enterprise 2.0' trends and products) and ReadWriteStart (dedicated to profiling startups and entrepreneurs). Sponsor Subscribe to Weekly Wrapup You can subscribe to the… -
3 Great Light Blogging Tools Compared
20 Nov 2009 | 4:35 pmOnce the service for those serious enough to pay for the privilege to post, TypePad recently released a free "Micro" service. The company made the decision to offer a free product realizing the demand for a platform more formal than Twitter and less formal than Wordpress or Typepad's original product. ReadWriteWeb compared TypePad's Micro against 2 other leading light blogging tools. Below are our thoughts: Sponsor TypePad Micro: In addition to being able to blog via email, iPhone app, "Blog It" bookmarklet and the general WYSIWYG dashboard, this tool also allows users to cross post to… -
An iPhone Visualization App That Syncs with the Cloud
20 Nov 2009 | 3:50 pmRoambi announced a pro version of its iPhone application this week that syncs with Salesforce.com and other cloud-based services or on-premsie sales environments. It's a visualization application, providing mobile workers with a pretty cool way to see sales information. Integration is by far one of the most significant trends we are seeing in the enterprise space. It's a wave, really, marked this week by Salesforce.com and its move to turn the Force.com development platform into a service that makes all of its applications social. Sponsor A good example of this trend are small companies like… -
8tracks to Launch Playback API and Developer Program
20 Nov 2009 | 12:00 pmIt appears that the time for freemium music services in the US has passed. Earlier this week streaming music site Imeem sold to MySpace for under $10 million dollars while laying off a large number of staff. For a company with all four major record labels signed, more than 15 million uniques a month and well over 5 million tracks in its catalogue, it came as a sobering blow to the industry. While many companies move to a subscription model, 8tracks continues to forge along in what some describe as a convenient loophole. As of this weekend the company is publicly launching its API for Boston's… -
Memento: Protocol-Based Time Travel for the Web
20 Nov 2009 | 11:45 amThe Web constantly changes and evolves. That, of course, is what makes the Internet so exciting, but it also means that finding older versions of a website is hard. The current push towards the real-time web is making this problem even more apparent. Memento, a project based at Old Dominion University, wants to make it easier to access older versions of a web page without having to go to the Internet Archive. To do this, the project is using a relatively obscure feature of the hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP). Sponsor The Memento project wants to give browsers a 'time-travel' mode.
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CenterNetworks
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Twitter COO Costolo: Advertising Coming To Twitter Soon
20 Nov 2009 | 9:40 amTwitter COO Dick Costolo was intererviewed today at the real-time crunchup event and part of the discussion centered around how Twitter will (and does) generate revenue. Clearly they are earning revenue from Twitter’s deals with Bing and Google. More importantly, Costolo noted that Twitter will launch an advertising model “soon”. He went on to say that soon means most likely early next year. He continued, “It (the advertising) will be fascinating, non-traditional, and people will love it.” The final comment from Costolo noted that partners like TweetDeck will… -
Today’s Startup and Entrepreneurial Updates
20 Nov 2009 | 4:49 amTGIF! Here are today’s startup and entrepreneurial updates Kaltura Integrates its Open Source Video Platform with Artivision’s Video Monetization Technology – Kaltura Use Centrl to pick a place to meet a friend – Centrl Dual Launch: I Love Traffic and I Hate Traffic – Armor Games (these two are very addictive) Major Update to Glue for Internet Explorer – AdaptiveBlue Getsatisfaction.tv: New Look, New Content, New Feed – GetSatisfaction CenterNetworks Partner: Check out CloudContacts for your business card transcription and scanning needs. -
What’s Up With Yahoo Mail Delivery?
19 Nov 2009 | 6:53 pmI am a happy Yahoo Mail user. I’ve been a Yahoo Mail user since the early days. I also know that I am a bad tech blogger and early adopter because I don’t use (and make love to) Gmail. I regularly get noogies at tech conferences when others learn about my choice. Lately I’ve noticed issues with email delivery to my Yahoo Mail account. Sometimes emails are delivered on time, but many are delivered late. And the delayed delivery seems to vary – I can’t put my finger on it. Even the exact same email can be delivered in real-time on one test but another test takes… -
When A Competitive Ad Goes Wrong
19 Nov 2009 | 1:23 pmThis morning we included a link in our startup updates to a post on the VerticalResponse blog. The company provides email marketing services for businesses. VerticalResponse CEO Janine Popick noted, “I’m all about getting new business, but we’ve tried to steer clear of going after our competitor’s customers because we think there are enough businesses out there that need email marketing services.” I agree with Janine and that’s why you rarely see a post on CN that says x is dead because of y. Janine’s post notes that one of the company’s… -
Today’s Startup and Entrepreneurial Updates
19 Nov 2009 | 4:02 amHere are today’s startup and entrepreneurial updates: Scanning Coke or Water? Why? - Big In Japan New advanced features give you absolute control in analyzing your cash flow – moneyStrands The Do’s and Don’ts of Presentation Fonts – SlideShare Profiting Across Search Networks: Expanding Your Reach to Microsoft adCenter – Clickable A Friendly Suggestion to Our Competitor (this is an awesome post) – VerticalResponse CenterNetworks Partner: Check out CloudContacts for your business card transcription and scanning needs.
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chrisbrogan.com
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The Serendipity Engine – Web 2 Expo Speech
20 Nov 2009 | 1:33 pmThis is my favorite keynote speech yet. It’s just 10 minutes long, and I feel pretty good about it. You’ll recognize bits of my storytelling from the last several conferences tucked into here in a new way, I hope. Enjoy this video. (Can’t see it? Click here) -
How Much Time Should I Spend On Social Media
20 Nov 2009 | 5:33 amHow much time should you spend on social media? In some ways, the answer is: “how long is a piece of string?” And yet, you can set up some simple guidelines. They might be a bit different than you think. By the way, I’m writing these from a business perspective, but remember that I think of religion and nonprofits and all kinds of other applications as business-related, too. Here’s how I look at it: Social Media Time Management The way I’d do it is to break it up into 4 chunks, and then you decide the amount of hours to devote (2 hours a day is a minimum for MOST… -
Start a Moving Business – Overnight Success
18 Nov 2009 | 7:30 pmIn this episode of the Overnight Success series, I’ve got an idea about what makes one successful: moving. But it’s not what you think. If you can’t see the video, click here. What do you think? -
Stop Humping My Leg
18 Nov 2009 | 9:13 amDear people trying to sell me on something new: stop humping my leg. You know what I mean. You’ve seen dogs do this, right? That’s what it feels like when you jump on me breathlessly to share your new product or service when you don’t really much know whether I’m the right guy for your services. I was recently leg-humped at Web 2.0 Expo, by someone I like, and who I think is smart and has a lot of good potential. The thing is, I politely declined a demo, and he persisted. Immediately, I shifted to my back foot. I felt defensive. I rolled up my interest and tucked it… -
Prioritize Your Social Media Efforts
17 Nov 2009 | 10:00 pmThere aren’t enough hours in the day for all the chores that social media puts in front of us. The best writing I’ve found on how to manage your time in social media is via Amber Naslund’s social media time management series. Her efforts in crafting this should become a little ebook that you hand around to everyone. If you skipped over that link, go back, click it to open a new tab/window, and then read it when you’re done with this (or skip mine and read Amber’s- it’s that good). If you’re still with me, here’s what I want to say on the matter.
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trendsspotting blog
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The “unfriend” Social Cycle: Social Networks Beahvior Patterns
18 Nov 2009 | 6:19 amThe New Oxford American Dictionary has chosen ‘unfriend’ as its word of the year. To ‘unfriend’ means to remove someone from your friend list on a social network like Facebook or MySpace (and we extend that to a similar pattern of “unfollow” in Twitter). “Defriend” came in as a close rival, but unfriend takes it one step further by employing a more active and abnormal “verb sense” of the word ‘friend.’ Earlier we had stated some of the facts on Social networks: An average Facebook user has 120 friend. In general he/she general… -
Twitter users share early adopters symptoms
12 Nov 2009 | 10:16 amRecent findings of a Pew Internet study revealed, Twitter is being extensively used as a status update service to keep in touch. Youth (age 18 -44), social network users and users with access to mobile internet show early Twitter adoption symptoms. The study – Twitter and status update, was conducted in September 2009, amongst a sample of 2,253 adults, 18 and older. The key Highlights of the research indicates: 1. One in every Five Internet user Now on Twitter 19% of internet users say they use Twitter or another service to share updates about themselves, or to see updates about others (up… -
For a Better (Digital) World
3 Nov 2009 | 7:00 amIn a beautiful thought-provoking project of Jonathan Harris (creator of We Feel Fine – one of the first social web emotion visualization projects), Harris shares some touching personal insights with artistic inspirations relevant to a digital world. In this “World Building in a Crazy World” – Harris suggests 1-2-3 principals for a world building idea – “a universal idea executed simply, with an element of play, nostalgia or beauty”. Enjoy. Tweet This Post Plurk This Post Buzz This Post Delicious Digg This Post Ping This Post Reddit Stumble This Post -
Halloween through Location Based Applications
1 Nov 2009 | 7:11 amGoogle Latitude or other location based applications working through mobile phones can let you track your kids whereabouts during Halloween. Aside from tracking, many of those applications can be used (note privacy concerns) for sharing the Halloween experience. Locations of retailers selling costumes and decorations can also be found by using applications as Poynt. To improve the Halloween experience, Zillow.com, have created a Trick or Treat Housing Index, which presents the top-five neighborhoods to maximize candy harvesting. The index uses four equally weighted data variables: Zillow… -
Google Wave: Invite Led Viral Campaign
22 Oct 2009 | 2:24 pmSearch Engine giant Google, has shown the world how it is reshaping the way communication happens over the internet with the soft launch of Google Wave. And it has done so in a way it knows best – through invite based viral marketing. The internet witnessed tremors of excitement when 100,000 exclusive invites to Wave were sought after by surfers who were curious, passionate, and addicted to Google. A sense of Déjà vu is hard to avoid. Google sent out similar invites when it launched Gmail in 2007, to build hype. Privileged invites led marketing has been a potent weapon that Google has…
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Scobleizer: Technology, innovation, and geek enthusiasm
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Why Google Chrome OS has already won
20 Nov 2009 | 12:03 pmToday InfoWorld’s Randall Kennedy says that Google’s Chrome OS will fail. What he is missing is he’s looking at the wrong field. Google is playing a different game. Google Chrome OS is NOT about killing Microsoft or Apple. What is it about? Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers. See, what happens if the world goes to Microsoft’s Silverlight, the way that Seesmic did this week? Google is locked out of such a world. Google is in a war over developers with Microsoft. Google wants developers to build for the open web. Microsoft wants developers to… -
Twitter to turn on advertising “you will love” (here’s how: SuperTweet)
20 Nov 2009 | 10:22 amTwitter’s COO, Dick Costolo, today, at the TechCrunch Real Time Crunchup (live video of the conference is live now on building43, there will be lots of news all day long from this event), told the audience that Twitter is, indeed, going to turn on an advertising model. This is a huge shift in what Twitter is saying publicly. But advertising isn’t something many people love. So, how will Twitter make advertising you love? By building a SuperTweet! How can they do that? Well, yesterday, I talked with Likaholix co-founder Bindu Reddy about just that. You can watch our video we… -
In search of the perfect Facebook and Twitter client
17 Nov 2009 | 11:57 pmI use Twitter and Facebook a lot. Probably more than 99.9999% of people in the world. I am in search of the perfect client that will help me use Facebook and, particularly, Twitter (which I use a lot more than Facebook because that is the best place to network with other technology professionals). I am still looking. The perfect client does not exist. First, I use my iPhone (and now my Droid) for Twitter a LOT. My wife, @maryamie, uses Facebook on her iPhone all the time. So, I must have the best possible iPhone client. This week? That’s Tweetie 2.0 for an app and Dabr for a Web page… -
Ray Ozzie is wrong about smartphone apps
17 Nov 2009 | 1:59 pmMicrosoft exec Ray Ozzie, at a lunchtime session with bloggers at its PDC conference told the bloggers that apps won’t be a differentiating factor on smart phones. He is wrong. Totally wrong. Why is Mike Arrington so passionate about his Droid (we argued about it for 39 minutes on the Gillmor Gang last week and then we went to the beach together on Sunday and argued about it some more in private). I’ve talked about this before. Most of what we argue about is apps. Droid is better than iPhone because Droid has Google Voice, Arrington says. iPhone is better than Droid, I say,… -
What is Twitter for? Pimping your blog!
14 Nov 2009 | 1:30 pmAt the Blog World Expo a few weeks ago someone asked what Twitter is for and I answered “pimping your blog.” Hey, it works for TechCrunch and Mashable, why not you? Or me. So, I’ve finally figured out that I was clueless because I didn’t have a Twitter account for my blog. When people say they are unfollowing me because I’m too noisy these feeds are the antidote. scobleblog is for following ONLY my blog. I won’t put anything else on that feed. scoblemedia is for following ONLY when either I post video or am on someone else’s video or audio shows.
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Broadcasting Brain
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How to deserve an audience – revisited
19 Nov 2009 | 9:03 amOne year ago today I wrote a post called how to deserve an audience. The point of the post was to talk about what you as a blogger, social media user, or whatever, should do to deserve an audience. The conclusion was that the best you can do is to provide valuable content. There were a lot of points discussed in the post, so as an experiment I’m going to see if I still stand behind everything that I wrote about exactly one year ago. One thing that bugs me about Twitter is that the term followers, the people who elect to see your microblogging updates, sounds like a cross between a… -
A lesson in which words have multiple meanings = communication failure
18 Nov 2009 | 5:52 pmVS Images by choking sun and psd Hello class. Today’s lesson is about how to communicate poorly while trying to give a humorous speech. Pay close attention, this could be good for you. As I’ve mentioned before I’m a member of Toastmasters. Today was meeting day. I’m working on one of my Advanced Communicator designations and I’m finally trying to complete all of the requirements. It’s been dragging on for far too long. I had an idea for a humorous speech where you’re supposed to tell a couple of funny stories while trying to make a… -
Tweaks not changes
16 Nov 2009 | 5:42 pmI’ve made a couple of minor changes in my social media profiles and the blog that I thought I’d mention. I decided to retire the classic Broadcasting Brain avatar from my Twitter account, at least for now. I’m now using a real picture of myself. I figured it was time for a change – may as well go with my real face. I changed the blog’s tagline from “Using cognitive surplus to create uncanny content” to “Different thoughts about thinking differently”. The new tagline describes this blog better than the old one, I think. I still like… -
Malcolm Gladwell and spaghetti sauce
15 Nov 2009 | 1:55 pmHere’s another link to another TED video. This one is about spaghetti sauce types, as presented by Malcolm Gladwell. Interesting listening, as always. I’ve categorized this entry under creativity because I think there’s a valid point here about creativity and innovation. Sometimes new ideas come from careful analysis of existing data or else from asking the right questions. It’s a good story. -
A video on creativity, fulfillment, and flow
14 Nov 2009 | 4:41 pmTaken from a 2004 TED talk, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi talks about flow, creativity and happiness. I’ve written about Csikszentmihalyi before: his work is fascinating and illuminating. I reviewed his book Flow here. Here’s the video: it’s definitely worth checking out.
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louisgray.com
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Embrace Our Twitter Ad Overlords, Assuming Relevancy
20 Nov 2009 | 1:44 pmThose of you who have some history with the blog know that I am not a huge fan of advertising. I skip commercials on my TiVo. I don't click on banner ads online. I switch stations when listening to the radio, assuming I am not listening to my ad-free iTunes library or ad-free Sirius XM radio app. I once said, to some controversy, that most bloggers don't deserve any ad revenue at all, and also took considerable effort to report many Facebook advertisements as being offensive. But despite all this, with official word from Twitter COO Dick Costolo coming that the service will indeed include… -
The Chrome OS Release Is Not About Now, It's About Next.
20 Nov 2009 | 12:06 pmYesterday, as most tech outlets noted, Google previewed their much-awaited Chrome Operating System - and in parallel released the code for the operating system to the open source community. By the end of the day, sites like Gdgt had compiled virtual machine capable installs of the early alpha system, and geeks, including me, were tinkering with the system. Unsurprisingly, there were near-immediate reviews, and some calling the news a disappointment. But for me, the news was not so much about Chrome OS being ready to go, but instead Google delivering on a promise, and showing its cards, before… -
Technology, Community, Relevancy: The 3 Social Pillars
20 Nov 2009 | 2:06 amWhy do some social sites thrive while others fail? Why do you find some networks have you dedicating hours every day to participate, while others couldn't get you to raise an eyebrow? And why don't your friends see with you eye to eye on what the best services are, even after you've told them about your favorites time and again? The more I am exposed to new sites and social services, it becomes clear to me that there are three core elements that need to be solved to deliver a killer social service - and falling short in just one can mean rapid closure. Meanwhile, even if all three of these… -
Open Web Foundation Speeds Protocols' Legal Contracts
18 Nov 2009 | 2:00 amOn Tuesday, the Open Web Foundation released an agreement aimed to speed new specifications' ability to be adopted by downstream users, with the intent of spreading open tools throughout the Web. Though occupying the always-complicated intersection of both the legal world and the tech world, the agreement is very interesting. The non-profit organization, featuring leading geeks from many of Silicon Valley's best known and most-respected companies, is hoping to promote data portability and open Web standards, no matter their source. Tuesday's agreement makes it easier for others to implement… -
How Facebook's News Feed Failed Me (And My Family)
17 Nov 2009 | 11:32 pmAs more and more people are turning to social networks to share their information, practically all of us are connecting to an ever-increasing number of people, and for the most part, we are updating more frequently, and sharing content from different sources in multiple places. The resulting increase in velocity, often termed noise, has led to practically all tools to try and assist us to find the "most relevant" data, or the "best" information, based either on activity from others in our social graph, or through our own past activity. Sometimes, this works very well, helping to make signal…
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Social Media Rockstar
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11 Ways to Get More RSS Subscribers
16 Nov 2009 | 6:48 pmOne year ago, I started this blog with the goal of improving my writing skills and also my connections in the social media world. I also wanted to practice creating viral content. Out of 48 posts, 12 of them (25%) went viral and got over 200 retweets. Near the end of my first year I had about 2000 RSS subscribers – a modest number. There were an average of average of 9900 monthly unique visitors, with a peak in April of 16,894 unique visitors. While some people have figured out how to get blog subscribers much more quickly, I was more successful than with my other blog – which… -
When TV Product Placement Goes Too Far
26 Oct 2009 | 3:07 pmCalifornication – a prime-time Showtime TV drama – celebrates the womanizing exploits of a lazy rockstar writer named Hank Moody (played David Duchovny). It has some good moments and sharp, engaging dialogue mixed in with the rough. But it jumped the shark for me personally, when it engaged in ultra-sneaky product placement for a social media site that pushed past all known bounds of advertising. Chillin’ and shillin’ with a product placement for Guitar Hero Moody lusts after a hot college student (Eva Amurri) who says she moonlights as a stripper. When he goes to her… -
Interview with Gary Vaynerchuk
12 Oct 2009 | 5:26 amGary Vaynerchuk is ‘the man.’ He’s a 33-year-old, charismatic and slightly over-the-top video blogger who’s managed to grow a multi-million dollar business by mixing his passions for wine and social media marketing. You can join along in his video wine tasting adventures or follow him on Twitter. What excites you the most about social media? “Everything has changed in the last 3 years. The fact that you can use social media for your marketing, and not have to pay millions of dollars, has really, really sent this whole game in a different direction.” Wine 2.0:… -
5 Signs You’re NOT a Social Media Expert, Yet
5 Oct 2009 | 9:48 pmOver the past two years, social media has quickly flown onto mainstream business marketing’s radar. This boom has created thousands of “Social Media Kindergarten Teacher” types with lower-intermediate skills… who get passed off as industry ‘experts’ on unsuspecting novices or clients. Next, there’s a class of smart, relatively advanced social media users who are still learning the professional + business consulting ropes. Above them, there are a handful of true social media experts who personally define the industry’s best practices and train… -
Social Media Interview with Mani Karthik
29 Sep 2009 | 11:19 pmMani Karthik is an India-based professional blogger and SEO consultant. Mani has an insightful daily SEO blog (in English) with over 5,000 subscribers, a team of overseas employees, and world-class level of search + social media skills that distinguish him as one of the very top international web consultants in Asia. You can follow Mani on Twitter or subscribe to his SEO blog. Where do you live, what do you do for work and fun? “I’m from Cochin, India (a tropical city on the southwest coast, in Kerala province). I make a living by helping people sell things online, fine tune their…
