Tag Archives | social

Your Twitter Shoutbox

Jotable Shoutbox in Action I always like looking at ways to add new user functionality to any web site out there, and Jotabl does provide that. How so?  By the power of Twitter (not to be confused with the power of Greyskull) it gives you a free embeddable shoutbox for your web site.

Once the shoutbox is added to your site, messages can be posted in it two different ways.  Your users can include the URL to the shoutbox in their tweet, and Jotabl will pick this up and place it in your shoutbox.  Users can also leave a message by signing into the box via Twitter, with the option to have the message tweeted for them.

You also can remove message and block certain Twitter users if they get too crazy with the shoutbox postings.  Now Jotabl doesn’t re-invent the Web, however it does provide a neat feedback interface for your users.  Give it a shot shout at jotable.com.

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Stand-Alone Facebook Application

Want to keep Facebook in it’s own stand alone application?

Facedesk - a Facebook Adobe Air Application

Facedesk, which sounds like a yoga exercise I do when I don’t get enough coffee in the morning, is that application.  Providing you with a stand-alone way to access your Facebook friends, this is the perfect tool to use if you want to stop using Facebook as a web site, and start using it as an online application.

Once you get it installed, it is just like any other time you’ve used Facebook.  You login, and do things as you normally would.  You can post updates to your profile, go visit friends’ pages, and interact with your little web community.

Using Facedesk in the place of another web browser tab or window will hopefully help you cut down on desktop clutter and keep your PC a little more organized. 

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Another Domain Information Tool

Get more info on any domain name out there.

Looking for a way to get an entire social web site profile of your domain name via one simple online tool?  Buildstats is another domain information tool that does just that.  All you do is insert your domain name, and then you will be taken to a page with tons of information about that previously entered domain name. 

Some of the details you get per domain include:

  • Number of pages indexed via the various search engines
  • Page information
  • Your rank via Pagerank, Technorati, QuantCast and more
  • Social popularity and graphs

Here is the example search I came up with for mitchelaneous.com:

It is a simple web site, that does it’s job well.  Check out Buildstats.com to lookup information on your own domain name of choice.

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Find Your Inter(net)-icon and Socialize It

I have spent some time on finding the right icon and picture for me to use across all the social networks that I am apart of.  Some people might thing it is silly to spend any time on this, however I think it is important to use a graphic that people can easily associate with you.

For example, look at Chris Pirillo and his icon.  If you are a follower of him and what he does, you know when you see this icon:

Chris's Head as an Icon   Chris's Head as... Well, a Head!

That he is associated with it.  No matter if you follow him on his web site, his Twitter page, his Facebook page, you know to associate that with him.  Others have done this too.  BlueFur.com, a Canadian based web host uses their blue monster as their Twitter icon too.

BlueFur.com's Web Site  BlueFur.com's Twitter Page and Icon

Here are a few more tips about the process that you might find useful:

  • Pick something that is unique about yourself or your company
  • Try to use something that is easily recognizable
  • Don’t be afraid to have a little fun with it

With that said, here is what I have currently decided to go with…

My New Social Icon!

I had to update my look, since I cut my hair off – plus I threw my own favicons from my various site in for good measure. 

So as you can see – you might want to give a little more thought when it comes to picking the right picture you want to use across all the web pages you wish to frequent, especially if you want to build a brand around your name or business.

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Send Files via Twitter

Free File Hosting Mixed with Twitter

Want to do a little file sharing via Twitter?  The new service FileTwt does just that.  You can now easily upload and tweet about your files for free.

You can quickly share any file that is up to 20MB in size with your entire Twitter network or just a single follower.  All you do to get things to work is give the FileTwt web site your Twitter details, find the file you want to upload, and then tweet away.  Your newest tweet that you send out will have a special link attached that will let those who got the message download the file in question.

To get started, head over to FileTwt’s web site, and get signed up or try out the limited services for people who do not sign up for the extra features.  File sharing via Twitter has never been easier.

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Google is Connecting Friends

I have seen this Google Friend Connect service coming up more and more via the web sites I visit, so I thought I would look a little more into the service.  Google wants to help you grow traffic by adding social features to your web site.  Now how do you do it?

How Does Google Make Things More Social?

Once you setup a site with Google Friend Connect, you can select from a number of different widgets you can place on your site.  When visitors sign up for your site through the friend connect service, they can do so via their login information with Google, Yahoo, AIM, or their OpenID account. 

The idea here is to make your web site more social.

This video does a good job at giving a good summary of the entire service:

Overall, I think Google Friend Connect is something worth checking out and looking into.  I like the openness of it all, and can’t wait to see more people use it so we can get more widgets developed for it.

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Get Twhirl Setup to Update Ping.fm

You know I am having a good day when I can get two of my favorite services talking to one another.  Another reason why I picked Twhirl as my Twitter client of choice is because of it’s easy integration into another awesome service I love to use, Ping.fm.

So how do you get the two to talking to each other? First, you need to open up Twhirl and wrench icon, which will open up the configuration menu.

Twhirl to Ping.fm - Step One

Now, you will need to go down to where it says, “Post status updates to other services”.  Click on the checkmark box next to Ping.fm.

Twhirl to Ping.fm - Step Two

Click the key icon next to the empty text box to go get your API key from Ping.fm.  Copy it from the Ping.fm web site, paste it into the empty text box and then hit the “Save” button.

Each time you update via Twhirl, your updates should also to to Ping.fm which can in turn update Plurk, LinkedIn, Tumblr, FriendFeed and more.  Now when your all done, you can come follow me @mitchkeeler.

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Get Your Web Site Reviewed (or be a Reviewer)

Rev.iew.me is a very interesting concept on an old idea.  Everybody likes to either give or receive feedback on web sites right? 

I would like to know what you think of my site, and I like to let other people know what I think about their sites.  What Rev.iew.me does is organize all that under one tent.

Get Your Web Site Reviewed!

One thing people will either love or hate though, is you must earn enough points before you can ask for your own site to be reviewed.  I have a feeling this is so people don’t sign up, ask for a review, and then you never see them again.  It forces you to be social!

How do you earn points?

You can get one point for posting a review between 100 and 299 words.  You can earn three points by posting a review between 300 and 999 words or by referring a friend to sign up.  Last but not least, you can earn five points if you post a review over 1000+ words.  You can read more about the points system on the points charter they have posted.

How do you spend the points you have earned?

  • It costs 3 points to plug your site on the rev.iew.me plugboard
  • It costs 5 points to add a site to rev.iew.me
  • It costs 5 points to push your site to the front page spotlight

If you earn big points, you can trade them in for big rewards!

  • For 300 points: get one free .com/.net/.org domain
  • For 500 points: get free Star Membership
  • For 800 points: get 6 months free hosting for your website

So as I said before, this is a very exciting new service that looks like it has a lot to offer from head to toe – as long as you are willing to be a productive member of the society around it.  Want to get your web site reviewed or share your opinions about what other people can do to make their sites better? 

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Much Love for the Hosting Industry Organization

hosting-group

I am really becoming a big fan of the Hosting Industry group on LinkedIn.  When it was first launched, I mentioned it on the Web Hosting Show podcast, however – I had no idea how useful it would be till now, a few months down the road.  Here recently, I used it to get a few guests lined up for future interviews on the Web Hosting Show – and thus far the response has been really superb.

As much as I like the mix of hosting customers and web hosting professionals meeting in one place, the highlight of this group on LinkedIn is that thus far it is only people who are working in the hosting industry in one way, shape or form.  With that said, it kind of blocks out some of the discussions, such as “Is ‘X’ web host any good?” or “Stay away from ‘X’ as a Web Host, they just robbed me!” and well – you get the idea.

If you want to learn more about the Hosting Industry Organization and the LinkedIn group that is related to it, be sure to check out HostingIndustryOrg.com.

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Top Web Apps Mitch Actually Uses

lilcoloredmitch I am like a kid in a candy store when it comes to new tools and applications out there.  I love to try them all.  When push comes to shove though, only a few survive the cut as far as making it to the list of applications I actually use day to day.

Google Calendar – It might not be the prettiest girl at the dance, but boy does she know how to get down with her bad self.  Google Calendar has never won points for beauty, but is more functional than anything else out there today.  I use this one for just about every date reminder there is, from invoice due dates to birthdays.

MooURL – I probably could close my eyes and pick a link shortener out of a hat and come out with a winner.  I won’t lie, I like MooURL.com just because the name makes me giggle.

Gmail – My e-mail situation is kind of oddly setup.  I have all my external POP3 e-mail accounts plugged into Gmail, and then connect from Gmail to Thunderbird via IMAP.  This way I can easily access my mail via the web or desktop, and a few other perks such as double spam filtering (counting what the server side Spam Assassin does, then put Gmail’s spam filtering on top of that).

Google Docs – Google Docs is one thing I just started using again, not too long ago.  I needed to have a few documents easily accessible to me, no mater where I was – and Google Docs made that an easy thing to do.

Instapaper – This awesome site replaced my “read later” bookmark folder in Firefox.  Using a simple bookmarklet, you can save any link to read later and the site itself gives you a neat list of links and the ability to “skip” (mark it read) or to mark the link unread.  Very simple, and because of that, very effective.

Ping.fm – I use this web site to socialize myself.  I can post a message out to Facebook, MySpace, Twitter and every other social network under the sun in one go.  Great for promoting your work, or just to say hello on all the social networking sites  out there.

Google Notebook – This I use a little differently than most.  I store a lot of the information from work on this site, such as FAQ’s and hard to find information.  That way I have it all in one spot (and it is searchable).

Google Reader – Boy, this is turning into an “I love Google” list, isn’t it?  The reason I use Google Reader for all my RSS reading is due to the fact that I can make it “wide view” very easily, and all I need to do to browse the news is scroll down.  Don’t need much else for news reading.

I’m always looking for something new to add to the list.  I think the major problem is there isn’t anybody doing anything drastically new or different.  It is just the different spin on the same idea (no mater what that idea might be).  However, I could just be a picky person.

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