Micro Persuasion

Social Networking Demographics: Boomers Jump In, Gen Y Plateaus

There's a common misperception out there that all of the blogging, Twittering and Facebooking is being done by twenty and thirty-somethings. That, in fact, turns out not to be true. Baby Boomers (those born 1946-1964) are the fastest growing users of social networking sites and are also increasingly reading blogs too. Meanwhile, Gen Y interest in these services has plateaued. This all according to the latest Consumer Electronics Usage Survey from Accenture.

According to the study, baby boomers...

• Increased reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67 percent year over year; nearly 80 times faster than Gen Y (1 percent)
• Posted a 59 percent increase in using social networking sites—more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent)
• Increased watching/posting videos on the Internet by 35 percent—while Gen Y usage decreased slightly (-2 percent)
• Accelerated playing video games on the go via mobile devices by 52 percent— 20 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent)
• Increased listening to music on an iPod or other portable music player by 49 percent—more than four times faster than Gen Y (12 percent)

Meanwhile, Gen Y...

• Participation slipped in virtual worlds from 23 percent to 19 percent
• Consumed no more video online than they did last year
• Blogged and contributed to wikis less (it's down from 35 to 33 percent)

The baby boomer results don't surprise me. What does jump out at me is how the most technologically savvy generation we have seen to date is slowing their adoption. Could they be suffering from social fatigue or do they have enough technology in their lives already? Perhaps they are returning toward more face-to-face venues, which anecdotally, I have heard. It will be interesting to see how this progresses next year.

Additional data from the latest Accenture report is summarized here from TWICE.

Social Media in Sixty Seconds

Michael Brito, a social media strategist at Intel, has done probably the best job to date explaining what social media is about - basic common sense. It's about being human. This short video, all of one minute and 12 seconds, stars Michael's daughters and it tells you all you need to know. Kudos to Michael.

Five Digital Trends to Watch for 2009

This has also been cross-posted on the Edelman Digital blog.

In my role as Director of Insights for Edelman Digital I am writing monthly white papers for clients on key trends. Sometimes we will release these broadly. For the first one, I drew on members of the Edelman team, as well as third party research, to highlight five digital trends to watch for 2009. Each includes specific recommended actions.

Even though the economy is slowing, all signs show that audiences are still spending a lot more time on the web. Marketers need to invest to meet them there. However, what's changed today they are smarter about where they focus their time, dollars and energy. Experimentation is giving way to tactics that deliver ROI. These include public engagement, search and social networking — three themes that connect the major macro trends.

There are five trends covered in this white paper...

Satisfaction Guaranteed - Customer care and PR are blending as consumers use social media to demand service

Media Reforestation -  The media is in a constant state of reinvention as it transitions from atoms to bits

Less is the New More - Overload takes its toll. Gorging on media is out. Selective ignorance and friends as filters are in

Corporate All-Stars - Workers flock to social media to build their personal brands, yet offer employers an effective and credible way to market in the downturn

The Power of Pull -  Where push once ruled, it’s now equally important to create digital content that people discover through search

You can download the full paper here(PDF) or simply browse or read it below. I look forward to hearing your feedback.

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Research Business & Legal marketing media

Pew: 11% of Americans Read or Post Status Updates

The Pew Internet for the American Life Project is out today with a new study (PDF) that reveals that 11% of Americans share or read status updates via a micro-blogging social network service such as Twitter, Facebook or Yammer.

However, the brief is somewhat misleading since it seems to hook the story primarily to Twitter, when in fact it can cover lots of sites. I suspect Facebook looms larger here in the survey than Pew lets on. In addition, I would advise reading it closely since the data can be misinterpreted.

In December 2008 Pew asked more than 2700 consumers if they used "Twitter or another 'microblogging' service to share updates about themselves or to see updates about others." According to Pew, 11% responded yes, which is up from 9% in November 2008 and 6% in May of last year. However, read the question closely. Not all of these people are necessarily posting and if they are it can be anywhere, not just Twitter.

Other nuggets from the study...

• Users are young -  Twitter and "similar services" have been most avidly embraced by young adults. Nearly one in five (19%) online adults ages 18 and 24 have "ever used Twitter and its ilk," as have 20% of online adults 25 to 34
• They're not necessarily affluent - Online Americans who live in lower-income households are more likely to use Twitter than more affluent Americans. Some 17% of internet users in households earning less than $30,000 update their status, compared with 10% of those earning more than $75,000 annually, Pew notes
• They are mobile - More than three-quarters (76%) of, again what they are characterizing as "Twitter users" use the internet wirelessly – either on a laptop with a wireless connection, or via PDA, handheld or cell phone

Regardless of the specific watering hole (eg Facebook, Twitter, etc.) I am less impressed with the 11% figure. What I do find more notable is the growth rate. An increase of two percent from a base of nine percent in just a month is quite impressive. But keep in mind, not everyone maybe posting and the base is wide.

Obama's Lessons for PR Professionals and Marketers

These days, it invariably comes up in virtually every client or prospect conversation. I call it TQ - short for "the question." A lot of people want to know: "How can we be like Barack?"

Companies and NGOs are eager for insights into the President Elect's magical marketing formula. They're hungry to study the campaign and apply his methods for building connections through social networks and a broader groundswell of support.

A new book coming out next month breaks the incoming President's approach down into an easy to read format. The book, entitled Barack, Inc.: Winning Business Lessons of the Obama Campaign, is available for pre-order on Amazon. However, if you have a Safari Online account, you can already read online it there, which is what I did today. Snippets are available on Google Book Search. It's overall a quick read.

Barack, Inc. breaks down Obama's strategy to three simple phrases: Be Cool. Be Social. Be the Change. I loved these simple Haiku-like expressions so much that I clipped the graphic off their web site and saved it on my computer. I have it here so you can do the same.

Be Cool means zeroing in problems, developing practical solutions, all while remaining unflappable and undistracted. It explains how the Obama team always focused on its core goal.

Be Social is the part that will interest many of you. It covers how Team Obama cultivated a grassroots following, built MyBarackObama.com into a powerhouse, created outposts in every major social network, leveraged mobile marketing and turned CRM into what they call CMR (customer managed relationships).

Be the Change was easy for Obama. That was his entire platform. But the book explains what this means for businesses - creating a vision and taking on tough issues, both your own challenges and the globe's, in a forthright, authentic way. It also means creating an internal environment that supports multiple points of view, which Obama does well.

Whether you're an Obama fan or not, I recommend the book. It offers a great roadmap for how 21st Century organizations should be run, particularly in these challenging times.

Popurls is My Pick for the Best Web Site of 2008

There were a lot of web sites I really used actively this year - the entire Google network, Techmeme, Friendfeed, Facebook and, of course, Twitter. There's one though that stood out: Popurls. It's a site that people don't talk about enough and that's a shame because there's so much to tout here. Popurls rocked this year and it's my pick for the the best web site of 2008. (Disclaimer: the Popurls page features a link to my most recent blog post but I am not compensated by them in any way nor does Edelman, my employer, represent or currently work with them.)

Popurls calls itself "the dashboard for the latest web-buzz, a single page that encapsulates up-to-the-minute headlines from the most popular sites on the Internet." The site was created by Thomas Marban. What it basiscally does is aggregate web sites all in one place - digg, delicious, news sites, Techmeme, key blogs, media sites (Flickr, YouTube, etc) and much more. The great thing about it is that you can easily personalize it to your tastes. As you use it, the site gets smarter and shows you recommendations. You can view stats for the web site here.

So why am I nuts about Popurls? There are many reasons...

• It's a digital curator that helps mitigate the Attention Crash


• It underscores that the world is flat (Thomas is from Austria)


• Popurls added a ton of features this year: you can sign in with Open ID or your Google Account, sharing, a live view and a cluster view, a deep archive, a zeitgeist and much more. He seems to be adding features as fast as Gmail and Friendfeed.


• They're also on Friendfeed, Twitter, Facebook, mobile devices, the iPhone and even the Wii.


• Popurls Live - track it in real-time like Twittervision.


• And finally, killer search - complete with search feeds.

However, there's an even bigger story here that everyone is missing. Thomas Marban is making money.

Popurls has sponsors. More importantly, the site is represented by Federated Media. Together they have come up with some very clever, deep brand integrations. For example, Populrs and Intel created Popurls Blue for IT managers. It also debuted a partnership with Epson.

It's too bad that Popurls doesn't get the props it deserves from the tech blogging community. It's an important site. They had a banner year and it's easily one of my favorites overall. Congrats to Thomas on a great 2008 and I look forward to seeing more innovation from him in 2009. A next logical step for them would be an API.

Wiki Indexes Social Media Marketing Cases

If you need inspiration for your next planning session, turn to Peter Kim and friends. They have created a terrific wiki of social media marketing case studies. I am sure I will be returning to this site over and again for ideas and to track the industry's progress overall. Kudos to the team that worked on this.

Zinio Inside Opens 50,000 Magazines to Searching and Sharing

Zinio, a digital magazine service I became a fan of as I moved to go media green, just got a whole lot more useful with the addition of awesome search and social sharing capabilities.

The service, called Zinio Inside, opens up 50,000 back issues of popular magazines and newspapers from around the world to full text indexing. Once you find what you're looking for, many of these magazines archived articles can be previewed for free, with individual digital downloads available for purchase in many cases starting at 99 cents. Zinio is also offering free magazine subscription this month through their Read Green program.

Once you find what you're looking for, you can click a button to share a link either on a social network or with a friend via email. For example, this link takes you to the above AdAge story on Richard Edelman, our CEO, which I highlighted in the search above. In addition, they allow you to share it as a widget. (If you're viewing this in a feed reader you may need to click through.)

Great stuff and handy too. And although most news sites offer solid search capes, they don't make it easy for consumers to separate sidebar content and captions. This service does. More info is here. One more chink in the armor of tangible media. Now if they can improve their iPhone service and turn it into an application, this will get even more interesting.

Recession Proof Your Job with Web Based Tools

The economy is the story of the year. And although Congress is poised to pass a $700 billion bailout of the banking industry, we're not out of the woods. Many feel that a deep global recession is imminent. This means there will be layoffs - perhaps lots of them. To protect your job, you need to ensure that you are personally accountable and adding value every day.

Social software and web applications, if applied correctly, are sharp arrows in your quiver. They can also become massive distractions. Here are three techniques using web tools that can help you become more personally accountable in your career.

Track Your Browser Time with PageAddict

Time and attention are finite resources that must be harnessed properly if you want to succeed. Nevertheless, this is not simple in the connected age. Given that many of us work in Internet-related fields, it's easy (and some would argue quite valuable) to spend the entire day in your email inbox or on Friendfeed or Twitter. Problem is, you may not accomplish a thing.

Like my friends Paul Stamatiou and Kevin C. Tofel I spend the vast majority of my computing time "in the cloud." This means my browser, Firefox, is used more than any other application. But recently I have started using PageAddict, a free Firefox extension, to collect data on my Internet usage and I have found it invaluable.

PageAddict monitors the sites you visit and logs your time. You can then tag them into categories. All the data is stored locally on your computer. A similar tool that people love is called RescueTime. However, given that I spend a ton of time in my browser I have found PageAddict more than adequate for my needs.

Above is a screenshot from PageAddict that shows where my time was spent over the last two weeks. Email includes my corporate web-mail and GMail. Soc Nets includes Facebook, Friendfeed and Twitter. While docs covers Google Docs, which I use to write, and Google Spreadsheets, which I use for GTD, goals, projects and ideas.

As you can see almost all of my time online is work related. Still I can see that I need to shrink my social network usage a little bit and increase my time with documents, web applications while also keeping RSS contained. I also need to go through the undefined section to see if there are big groups of sites that can be tagged.

Wrangle RSS

Many of us are RSS addicts. ReadWriteWeb recently did a great job showing how blog reading can help you grow in your career. This has certainly has been true for me and it's why I read 568 feeds, tag much of what I unearth there, file it in Gmail and share it liberally.

Still, as great as RSS is, it can eat your time. I have worked over the last couple of years to a) shift most of my reading to the early mornings or evenings when I have time to really ponder the content and b) use RSS as a knowledge management hub for information that others can use, including you, my colleagues and clients.

Google Reader Trends gives you the data you need to track this over time. You can see how many items you have read, what day/time you consume feeds as well as how many items you have shared. It also shows you the feeds you read the most, even via a mobile device - this is something even RescueTime or PageAddict can't track. Analyze the data and make sure it's aligned with your goals. Below is a screenshot from my reader.

Track All Your Time via a Web Calendar or Online Spreadsheet

In my field we all track our time. In some cases this is how we know what to bill clients for our time. In others, it's to ensure that we aren't over-servicing accounts. However, if you don't have to track your time I highly recommend it since it's a great way to ensure that you are focused and delivering value.

I have been using Google Calendar to track my time. I set up a calendar just for this purpose and use it to log when I start/completed a task. Then I transfer this data to our enterprise-wide time tracking tool. What I like about using GCal is that I can search my time or go back to a specific date to see what I did when. I also use bookmarklets to speed up the logging of my time.

As a next step I may move this to Google Spreadsheets or Zoho since I can generate charts to see where my time is being spent. I also want to think about how to synchronize my logs with PageAddict.

Bonus Tip: Create a Motivation Wall with Picasa or Flickr

This tip isn't really about measurement, but it's a little web app hack that I use to motivate myself. Using Picasa Web Albums I set up a private album called "The Motivation Wall." On the wall I collect images of people - some living, some dead - who achieved greatness. I try to hit this site every so often because I know it will inspire me to do the same.

In the screenshot above you will find some of my heroes - Michael Jordan taking the final shot to seal victory in the 1998 NBA Finals, Michael Phelps winning his seventh gold by a hundredth of a second and Ben Franklin (a tinkerer like me) discovering electricity.

Additional links of note...

23 Personal Tools to Learn More About Yourself

Bytes of Life : For Every Move, Mood and Bodily Function, There's a Web Site to Help You Keep Track

Get Productive with Social Media (and Stay Sane)

Lifehacker is one of my favorite blogs. So when editor Gina Trapani invited me to guest blog about how to be productive with social media, I jumped at the opportunity. Here's the intro and summary. The full essay is here.

Social media is the equivalent of digital food. It's nourishing, tasty and, for many of us, necessary. However, consume too much and you can get sidetracked and create larger consequences. The good news is you can participate in social media in a way that adds value to your life. You just need to know how to manage it so so that it does not devour your attention—the most valuable commodity of the digital age. Here are three simple steps I take.

• Step 1 - Set a North Star
• Step 2 - Apply the Pareto Principle
• Step 3 - Schedule Time to Be Social

Three Little Tips for Capturing Info Bits Quickly

I consume a lot of information - all of it, digitally. In fact, I recently completed the transition a 100% media green state. I continue to use Gmail as a nerve center - my primary capture system. But sometimes, I want to flag something quickly to review later. Usually, these are tiny bits of info - notes or bookmarks - I need to capture very quickly. Here are three ways I do that.

Use the Google Web History for Quick Notes

Google offers a handy history feature that archives all of your searches by date and time. You need to have a Google account and activate it. Once you do, the search engine will remember every search and  search result you clicked. You can star items and even subscribe to either your history or these bookmarks as a feed.

If I am on phone with someone and I have an idea I want to capture real quick, I go to the search box in my browser (which is always open), type in my quick note and search. Now it's archived in my history, which I can always go back and search later.

Annotate Bookmarks and Feeds with a Private Friendfeed Room

Friendfeed has a feature called Rooms that you can use to share links with either the public at large, a small group of friends or just yourself. The feature is great on many levels, but it's especially handy as a private info trapping system. Here are two ways I use it.

The first is to grab this bookmarklet and start capturing stuff you find in the wilds of the web and stuffing it into your private room. You can annotate it in the process. In addition, later on you can go back and leave additional notes as comments. All of this is searchable too via a box in the upper right hand side of the room. In addition, all rooms can be accessed on a mobile device via FFtoGo.

The second way to use this is to start importing RSS feeds into a private room. This essentially sets up a mini private River of News that you can also review, annotate and search later on.

Use a Link-Trapping Service for Reading Lists

The final tip is to use a link-trapping service for compiling articles you want to review later. There are three I have experimented with - Instapaper, Readbag and LaterLoop. Each of these services saves bookmarked articles into reading lists. They offer bookmarklets and other tools for easy flagging, a personalized RSS feed as well as mobile versions that strip down the articles down to just text for low-bandwidth reading on the go.

Of the three, LaterLoop takes the cake for two reasons. First, it keeps a running archive of all the articles you have read. You can go through these and star items for later. Second, it lets you download virtually your entire archive for offline reading. I use this all the time when I am on planes. It's invaluable.

Those are my latest tips. Enjoy!

Measure Traffic with the Google Web Site Trends Bookmarklet

Google yesterday added a significant feature to Google Trends. You can now enter in URLs and get back rather rich site traffic data. Barry Schwartz has a great rundown. I will have more to say about this shortly as I play with it over the weekend. However, in the meantime, I wanted to share this bookmarklet I created.

All you need to do is drag the link below to your bookmarks. If you're on a web site and you want to know its traffic is, just hit the link and if it's big enough to be in the Google Trends database, you will get back data.

Google Web Site Trends This!

Trust in Peers Trumps the "A-List," Study Finds

There's an ongoing debate online and in marketing circles as well over who "matters": the super node influencers or basically anyone that a particular peer group looks to for information, entertainment, inspiration and more.

This meme got kicked around in the 'sphere a few weeks back when Duncan Watts released some research that contradicts Malcolm Gladwell's theory outlined in The Tipping Point. Today, however, there's new data that to me may just reveal that Watts is right. The key factor, once again, all comes down to trust. This comes as more of the action shifts to micro communities like Twitter or Friendfed and the quality of blog content, some say, slides downhill.

Mediapost reports that a new study from Pollara found that people who engage in social networks and communities put far more trust in friends and family who are online than in popular bloggers, or strangers with 10,000 MySpace "friends." Nearly 80% said they were very or somewhat more likely to consider buying products recommended by real-world friends and family, while only 23% reported being very or somewhat likely to consider a product pushed by "well-known bloggers."

This new batch of data largely backs up what my employer's Edelman Trust Barometer found earlier this year. Some 58% of opinion elites 35-64 in 18 countries said they trust "a person like me." Meanwhile, only 14% trust bloggers - a figure that has largely remained flat since 2006. (See chart below from our latest study.)

Source: 2008 Edelman Trust Barometer

On a similar thread, Louis Gray, who's blog by the way is amazing, crunched some numbers and he found that the top tech blogs extended their reach in feed subscribers as well as on the TechMeme leaderboard. That may be true, but who cares?

The question of targeting super nodes vs. smaller groups is all coming down to trust. While the marketplace - both marketers and publishers - continue to focus on reach, they are missing the big picture. Trust is by far a more important metric, one that clearly rules when it comes to influence.

Spring Conference Line-Up

Spring is around the corner and so is the peak conference season. Here's a run down of events at which I will be speaking. Here's hoping that I get to meet some of you at these.

Euroblog 2008 (March 13-15 in Brussels)

This symposium features communication academics and professionals for a discussion of social media and the future of public relations. Edelman is co-sponsoring the event. I will be participating on a few panels. You can register here.

AdAge Digital Conference (March 18-19 in New York)

Great line up of speakers and case studies. This includes a keynote by Jeff Zucker, President and CEO of NBC Universal. I will be moderating a panel on "the next new thing."

PSFK Conference (March 27 in New York)

A day-long event dedicated to trends, ideas and inspiration. This includes a In a 'new guns' versus 'marketing gurus' debate on how the social web will change in 2008 and how companies can best leverage digital.

Next08 (May 15 in Hamburg)

Features entrepreneurs, marketing professionals, consultants, founders, bloggers and venture capitalists and 1,000 participants talking about the future of the web. I will be a keynote speaker.

Mediabistro Circus (May 20-21 in New York)

A two-day summit about the digital platforms and trends that are changing media.

The IABC International Conference (June 22-25 in New York)

Features a great line up of speakers, including Nicholas Negroponte and Seth Godin.

Three Bookmarklets for Happier Mobile Browsing

With smartphone sales soaring and Citigroup projecting year-over-year growth of 50-60%, it's a safe bet that a lot of you are increasingly surfing the web from your mobile devices.

Still, even with the iPhone, the mobile browsing experience leaves lots to be desired because of the bandwidth and reception issues. Enter bookmarklets. These utilities add one-click functionality to your mobile device and they're terrific time savers.

Here are three such links I use constantly on the go. Drag the first two to your bookmarks/favorites and sync them to your device and you're all set. For the final bookmarklet, you need to first visit each service to configure them.

Mobilize This!

Google, Mowser and Skweezer are mobile transcoders that take any URL you throw at it and strip away the graphics for faster browsing. I prefer to use Google's version since it also gives me the option to browse the feed. The next time you want to get to a page quickly and your browser keeps loading the page. Stop it mid-stream and simply tap your Mobilize This! bookmarklet.

Wikipedia This!

Need to settle a bar bet like the name of Boba Fett's dad? Wikipedia of course has all the answers. Access this bookmarklet, enter your search term and you'll be whisked away to the answer.

ToRead and Instapaper

The great thing about the mobile web is that it's always with you. The downside is that sometimes it's hard to read a long story. Enter ToRead.cc and Instapaper. Both of these sites help you bookmark articles for the future. In the case of ToRead, it will email you the full text of the page. Instapaper assembles a reading list you can access from anywhere.

Happy browsing, travelers!

Study: 25% of Entertainment Will Be Created by Peer Groups

A fascinating new study from Nokia predicts that by 2012 a quarter of all entertainment will be created, edited and shared within peer groups rather than coming out of traditional media.

What's unclear in my mind is where the boundaries are. In other words, what constitute peer content vs. pro content when the lines increasingly blur. Still, this is a big number and there's a lot of money at stake here to those who can create sustainable platforms that enable it all while monetizing.

To that point, TV Week conducted an analysis and found that while it's easy to get attention for your work, making money is a tougher climb. This might keep the figure from going higher than 25%.

Simple Ways to Go "Media Green"

Like lots of people I have become more aware of what I can and should be doing to help the environment. (Thanks, Al.) Now I am taking this to the next level by getting toward what I call a "Media Green" state. Basically, I am converting all the media I consume (and there is a lot of it) into the most environmentally friendly format I can find, without sacrificing too much of the experience.

This is the last big piece of my effort to get more green. I bank and pay bills online. Earlier this year I traded in my small SUV for a very efficient hybrid car. Further, I am more conscious of little things that I really ignored until recently - like turning the thermostat off when I leave the apartment.

In addition, thanks to my extensive use (or maybe that's misuse!) of Gmail and IMAP, I have already moved 100% of my work stuff, like meeting notes and documents, to bits. People are amazed when they come into my apartment or office and see no paper at all. I don't even know how to add the network printer at work! Media was the last frontier.

Here are the three steps I took to go "Media Green" ...

In: Audiobooks | Out: Printed Books

I "read" somewhere in the neighborhood of 40-50 books a year - mostly business, nonfiction and sports. However, nowadays I rarely buy printed books and instead download audiobooks from either Audible.com or iTunes. Now that MP3 players are ubiquitous - and cheap - their selection has grown a lot over the years.

For starters, I love that I can carry several audiobooks with me at once. Try that with bound books. You'll break your back. I keep two or three at all times lined up on my iPhone ready to go.

Second, audiobooks fill tons of unusable time - such as when I am waiting on line at Whole Foods or at the security checkpoint at the airport or when I am driving to client meetings. In addition, if you get an Audible subscription they actually cost less over time than hard copy books. I wish publishers made all of their titles available in audio format. Still, many of the more popular books are available as audiobooks.

If you have an iPhone, it gets more fun. Sometimes when commuting by train into the city I take notes via Gmail IMAP about what I am listening to. Of course, you don't need an iPhone to do this. Audible supports tons of devices, including Palm Treos and more.

My next step is to start storing audiobooks in Gmail or Box.net so that I can access them if I am out of content or space on the iPhone.

In: RSS, IMAP-enabled GMail and the iPhone | Out: Printed Magazines and Newspapers

Years ago I used to read three daily newspapers - the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Newsday, my local paper. I also used to buy dozens of magazines on computers, business and sports. I used to store them in a snazzy rack. Of course, I read lots of trade pubs too - AdAge, AdWeek, PR Week, etc. Now, however, I have almost completely ditched print in favor of reading online. (I just have to cancel a few remaining subscriptions.)

I now subscribe to the RSS feeds for every publication mentioned above plus hundreds of blogs. The beauty of this is that I only subscribe to what I care about and ditch the rest. So, for example, for the Times I subscribe to top news, NY, business, tech, NBA and football feeds but not the movie reviews.

Once I find articles I want to read, I clip them by emailing each into the Gmail Personal Nerve Center using a special email address so they get filtered. Then the articles show up in my "Reading" folder on my iPhone as well as on the desktop and web thanks to the new IMAP features in Gmail. This will work with any modern cell phone that supports IMAP, not just the iPhone.

In: XBox Live, DVR, Apple TV/iTunes/iPhone | Out: DVD Movies

I am not a huge movie buff, but I enjoy a flick every now and then. However, I have found that between the three boxes I have connected to my set - an XBox, cable box w/DVR and an Apple TV - I am more than covered. (This tip is not for hardcore movie fans who love DVD extras.)

XBox Live Marketplace (an Edelman client) is one of my favorite services. They have 350 movies for rental with more added all the time (subscribe to the feeds here). Many of them are in HD. Basically, all you need to do is sign up for an account and rent the movies online via the console. Movies begin to download and after about five minutes you can start watching. The rest of the flick downloads as you watch. After a few days, they expire and no longer work. It's a very elegant system and cheap too.

A lot of people have DVRs these days. Here's how I use mine. I scan the listings online a few weeks in advance and flag the movies I want. Then I record them and keep them stored for a rainy day when I want to watch a movie. I keep a library of about five to ten movies. As a next step, I may add additional storage to my DVR.

Last but not least, I have an iPhone and Apple TV. I purchase movies off of iTunes and download them for later viewing. The selection of movies on iTunes is not that great. XBox Live is better. However, I like the convenience of viewing them on my iPhone when I travel. I even take a cable with me so that I can plug my phone into the hotel TV (this works with iPods too). I may also explore storing movies on Box.net so that I basically increase my iPhone storage, provided wifi is plentiful.

These are just three simple steps I took to go "Media Green." If you have other ideas, leave them in the comments.

Search Wikipedia and RSS News Feeds via SMS

Lately I have been experimenting a lot with text messaging services since it's the primary way people interact with data on their cell phones. Plus, as you know, I am into the whole microblogging revolution.

You can do a lot with SMS, including send them from your desktop, query the Web or even use it to find a clean public restroom believe it or not. Here's another one I really like.

GoLiveMobile has set up a way to query Wikipedia via text messages using their Text2WAP technology. All you need to do is send a text message to the number 23907 with the word ABOUT followed by your search topic - e.g. ABOUT WIKIPEDIA. You will then get a link back to a special mobile-friendly version of the Wikipeida entry.

In addition, the company has a news search engine as well that scans RSS feeds. Simply text NEWS [Search Term] - eg NEWS MINNEAPOLIS - to 23907 and you will get back a link to a special formatted web page.

The service is free but typical SMS charges apply. Handy stuff.

Surf Wikipedia with Keyboard Shortcuts

I spend a lot of time on Wikipedia but when I do I use these handy keyboard shortcuts. You don't need Greasemonkey and they work on any browser. In Internet Explorer hit the Alt key followed by the command listed below. In Firefox 2 for Windows, use Alt and Shift. On the Mac hold down the control key.

Key	Command	Description
+	Start a new discussion	Allows you to add a new section (talk pages only)
. (period)	My user page	Opens your user page if logged in
=	Protect	Allows you to protect the current page (sysops only)
	Unprotect	Allows you to unprotect the current page (sysops only)
c	Content page	Shows the content page associated with the current article
d	Delete	Allows you to delete the current page (sysops only)
	Undelete	Allows you to undelete the current page (sysops only)
e	Edit this page	Allows you to edit the current page (non-protected pages)
	View source	Shows the source of the current page (protected pages)
f	Search	Allows you to search Wikipedia
h	History	Shows the current page's history
j	What links here	Shows all of the pages that link to the current one
k	Related changes	Shows recent changes in pages linked to the current one
l	My watchlist	Opens your watchlist (logged-in users only)
m	Move	Allows you to move the current page and its talk page (non-move-protected pages only)
n	My talk	Opens your user's or IP's talk page
p	Show preview	Shows a preview of your changes (on edit pages)
q	Special pages	Shows a list of all special pages
r	Recent changes	Shows a list of recent changes to the Wikipedia
s	Save page	Saves the changes that you have made (on edit pages)
t	Discussion	Opens the current article's talk page
u	Upload file	Allows you to upload images or media files
v	Show changes	Shows what changes you made to the text (on edit pages)
w	Watch	Adds the current page to your watchlist (logged-in users only)
x	Random article	Loads a random article
y	My contributions	Opens a list of your user's or IP's contributions
z	Main Page	Goes to the Main Page

Two New Ways to Mine for Twitter Gold

Two new tools have launched that make it easy to search and mine Twitter for conversation data.

The first, called Twittermittent, pulls geo-tagged data and charts from the last few days. You can also compare terms. Here's a chart I pulled using Twittermittent for the search phrase lunch. Clearly a lot of us like to eat around noon. So Twitter may be bigger on the East Coast than it is on the West.

The second comes via Download Squad from Emily Chang and friends. Twitterverse identifies the biggest memes and organizes them by tags. It too has a search tool.

Both Twittermittent and Twitterverse are useful, however, they only capture a sliver of the micro blogging conversation. Buzz around Jaiku is starting to build significantly. Over time, all of these utilities - including Technorati blog search - will get rolled up under aggregate live web search tools that grab it all. I would bet on one or more of the big players to make that happen through time-based sorting.