When Mike reviewed social bookmarking, research and collaboration service Diigo last year, he liked its simplicity, its connections with other services, and its wealth of features. Since then, the social bookmarking field has continued to mature; witness the recent purchase of Friendfeed by Facebook, and the numerous ways that bookmarks can be shared on social networks. Even MySpace is getting into the act by syncing posts with Twitter!
So how can a lesser-known app like Diigo compete? The latest version of Diigo has just gone live, and from what I can tell, it’s growing beyond social bookmarking and going for the “kitchen-sink” approach: Add as many features as possible, so that no matter what a user wants, it’ll be there. Among the list of new features are a few that caught my eye: Read the rest of this entry »
I read a lot of online publications, and I like to share interesting articles with clients and friends on Twitter. If you use Google Reader to browse RSS feeds, as I do, it’s now easier to post links to news articles you’ve found in Google Reader to sites like Twitter, Facebook and Digg.
In Google Reader’s Settings, you’ll now find an option called “Send To.” On that screen, you can specify which services you want to be able to post to. Once you’ve set it up, at the bottom of each article in the main Google Reader screen, you’ll see a “Send To” menu.
The system does work, but it’s decidedly low-tech. As an example, if you click “Send to Twitter,” Google Reader brings you to your Twitter account via a popup window, meaning that you’ll need to turn off popup blocking for google.com in your browser — something many people will prefer not to do. Read the rest of this entry »
As a freelancer, I spend most of my time trying to manage information overload. Like Charles, I use spaces to quarantine focused work from other distractions, and I have some tricks for efficient RSS reading, creative uses of RSS to increase efficiency, and filtering techniques to help reduce the time I need to spend consuming information. Despite this obsession with efficiently gathering information, there are also times when I actively seek out information overload.
While a fire hose of notifications and feeds can be too distracting when I’m working on things for client, if I’m looking for inspiration for a new blog post or new venture of some sort, I want to see as much information as possible in the hope that something will catch my eye and provide the inspiration that I need.
Here are a few of my favorite tools for embracing information overload. Please beware that these tools are known to sap productivity and suck up precious hours that can never be regained! Use these techniques at your own risk. Read the rest of this entry »
As social networks have proliferated, it’s sometimes hard to remember where one’s online identities may be found. And if you have a common name, as I do, people sometimes can’t tell which Charles Hamilton I am. (No, I’m not a rap artist!)
Thus, there are a number of sites that are intended to help put all of your online presences in one place. I’ve tried a few of these aggregators. They all have their strengths and weaknesses, so check them out, and see which options might work for you. Read the rest of this entry »
I know, I know — it’s a bit presumptuous of me to think I can write the “10 Golden Rules of Social Media.” Then again, I’ve been online since 1987, consulting clients on the Internet since 1992, on the web since 1994, immersed in working on and speaking about the web since the mid-1990s, so I do feel like I’ve paid some dues and learned some lessons along the way.
So here are my 10 Golden Rules of Social Media to embrace, debate, pass around and refine. Have at it. Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re like me, you’ve got personal web profiles scattered all across the web. Each time I register with a new service, another one is created, and each is a glimpse into my online activities.
One of the challenges is that the connections I’ve made through one service have a hard time finding me on the others. GizaPage, a new service launching in beta today, hopes to make that process easier.
Read the rest of this entry »
Increasingly, social media web sites are becoming much more than places to keep in touch with friends, family and colleagues online. They’re becoming major hubs of information consumption, analysis and distribution as well, so it’s important to understand how this trend is playing out on some of the more popular destinations on the social web.
In fact, social media web sites such as Twitter, FriendFeed and Facebook have the potential to take over many of the functions of RSS readers such as Google Reader, Newsgator and Bloglines.
Twitter
Amidst all the hubbub of Ashton Kutcher and CNN and Oprah Winfrey and Save Chuck, Twitter has become a nifty and dynamic way to receive inbound alerts about news stories and information, giving the ability to turn your Twitter stream into an “RSS reader” of sorts.
There are a few different ways to use Twitter as an RSS reader. The first is to simply follow those users who broadcast links to stories and web sites that you find interesting and relevant (Robert Scoble, for example, when it comes to all things tech, Internet and geek). This is a means of crafting your own “smart people network” that sends the best stories and links to you. As David Drager at systemBash writes, “I find it awesome to be able to see what is going on, without having to manage ‘feeds.’”
Read the rest of this entry »
When Mike reviewed social bookmarking, research and collaboration service Diigo last year, he liked its simplicity, its connections with other services, and its wealth of features. Since then, the social bookmarking field has continued to mature; witness the recent purchase of Friendfeed by Facebook, and the numerous ways that bookmarks can be shared on social networks. Even MySpace is getting into the act by syncing posts with Twitter!
So how can a lesser-known app like Diigo compete? The latest version of Diigo has just gone live, and from what I can tell, it’s growing beyond social bookmarking and going for the “kitchen-sink” approach: Add as many features as possible, so that no matter what a user wants, it’ll be there. Among the list of new features are a few that caught my eye: Read the rest of this entry »
Web Work 101: How To Escape The Cubicle
