Archive for September, 2009

Twitter Tools

September 24th, 2009

Twitter is close to closing another round of financing for a $100,000,000. Companies are beginning to invest more into this tool due to its vast potential. There are various APIs that allow applications to build on top of the Twitter layer to offer additional services. Some of these applications that use the API are listed below.

Tweetgrid – a powerful Twitter Search Dashboard that allows you to search for up to 9 different topics, events, converstations, hashtags, phrases, people, groups, etc in real-time. As new tweets are created, they are automatically updated in the grid. No need to refresh the page. This tool could be used to listen into chatter about your business or track topics that are important to you.

These are just a few of the hundreds of applications using the Twitter tools. Find out more information on some of these applications and more here.

TwitterCal - Twittercal is a service that connects your Twitter account to your Google Calendar and lets you add events easily, directly from your Twitter account. This is a greate way to sychronize your Google Calendar on the go. » Read more: Twitter Tools

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Posted in Grad School

Tags: twitter

Twitter for Business

September 24th, 2009

So apparently Twitter can be very valuable for businesses. It is not just a fun tool used to stalk celebrities it can actually benefit businesses that realize its potential. According to Twitter, as a business, you can use it to quickly share information with people interested in your company, gather real-time market intelligence and feedback, and build relationships with customers, partners and other people who care about your company. As an individual user, you can use Twitter to tell a company (or anyone else) that you’ve had a great—or disappointing—experience with their business, offer product ideas, and learn about great offer. Some of the ways businesses could help a business/organization or event are:

1) Keep track of mentions of business name and competition on the Twitter Network. By “listening” to the chatter about a businesses name, business owners can learn valuable information regarding customer service, new products, feedback on services and possibly do some damage control in some cases. It works as a great opinion poll.

2) Businesses with Twitter accounts can quickly make announcements provide valuable information on sales and other important announcements. Customers can get important information on what you are currently working on and create anticipation for future products. Twitter breaks news even faster than news organizations especially if lot of people are affected by the announcement.

3) Provides a human face to the business. Commenting on others’ tweets, and retweeting what others have posted is a great way to build community.

For more information on how Twitter can help your business visit 50 ideas of using Twitter for business.

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Posted in Business

Tags: twitter for business

Lets do the Tweet

September 23rd, 2009

So I have finally been roped into the twitter craze. Assignment this week is to set up a twitter account and review some of the benefits for businesses. So this should be interesting as I was hoping that this would be a fad I could ignore but it looks like it is going to be around for a while so might as well get my feet wet. I signed up for a twitter account – ehibinitie, please follow me. See the video below from the twitter site on how to “tweet” the right way. More helpful information on what I learned from the help page after the jump.

Some interesting rules and standards I found out about twitter. First of all User name squatting is against the Twitter Rules. According to twitter “Name squatting and “user name for sale” accounts will be permanently suspended. Attempts to sell or extort other forms of payment in exchange for user names will result in account suspension. Accounts that are inactive for more than 6 months may be removed without further notice. Twitter is not currently releasing inactive/squatter accounts unless in cases of infringement. (Hint: no updates/profile image on an account or no intent to mislead usually = no infringement. )”. » Read more: Lets do the Tweet

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The fastest browser in the world!

September 16th, 2009

At least thats what Opera claims. In preparation for our visit tommorow from our visting speaker – Molly Holzschlag – Senior Evangelist with Opera software, we were asked to do some research on the browser and its features. I have very limited interaction with the browser, mostly just for testing web sites once or twice to make sure they don’t look too crazy on there. It turns out I am not alone as only about 2% of all internet users use Opera, most of that percentage comes from European users. The Opera browser never really caught on with most pc users but it appears to be on the verge of staging a comeback with some of its new features including:

Turbo – A means of speeding up the browser on slow networks. When you enable Opera Turbo in Opera 10, it will use their powerful servers to compress Web pages, boosting and accelerating connections to a crowded Wi-Fi in a cafe or a tethered mobile phone.
Speed – Faster overall performance than any of the previous versions.
Tabbed Browsing – Stretch out the tab bar and see a thumbnail of each page you have open.
Web apps integration with web-based email and feed readers.
Improved developer tools (Dragonfly).
Site Compatibility & Features - Opera has continued to add support for newer technologies. » Read more: The fastest browser in the world!

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Posted in Grad School

Remote blogging

September 14th, 2009

Okay so I no longer have any excuse for procrastinating on my blog entries. I discovered Word Press for the iPhone, a free application from the App Store that gives u remote access to your word press blog. I am actually writing this entry from my phone.

The app gives you the ability to post blog entries, create new pages, and approve comments from your phone. It uses XML-RPC which must be enabled on the blog to allow this app access to your web site. Once you have signed into your blog on the iPhone, click on the title not the arrow as that takes you back to you login settings. You will then be taken to a screen that allows you to add/edit new posts, pages, and approve/disapprove comments. Within a post you can add pictures from your camera library on your phone. I added the screenshots here by holding down the home and the on/off key at the same time. The screenshot is then saved to your iPhone library.

You can preview your post, save it as a draft or choose to publish the article immedietly on your blog.

This app gets a 3 1/2 star rating from me. Great utility for word press bloggers. The one thing I look forward to (if there is not some way to do it that I haven’t discovered already) would be the ability to add video to your posts and pages, captured on your iPhone.