Micro Persuasion

WhosTalkin Launches Social Media Search Aggregator

One of my hopes for 2009 is that we'll see greater innovation in the social media search space - both free and premium. I have a bunch that I am trying out now: SM2, Zuula, Blogscope.net and Wikio and others. What follows is a first look at a new site called WhosTalkin that launched its public beta yesterday after seven months of development. (Hat tip to adthinktank.com)

WhosTalking is a metasearch engine that in one place aggregates results from the major free tools for scanning blogs and blog comments, news sites, social networks, video hubs, image, forum and tag sites. It rolls up results from over 60 sites, such as BackType, Technorati, IceRocket, Google Blog Search, Friendfeed, LinkedIn, Twitter, Board Reader and many more.

The site has a nice interface that displays results using frames. Just click on the navigational links on the left hand side and they show up on the right. The quality of the results, I find, is hit or miss depending on the source. For example, Bloglines and Backtype results feel very fresh. However, Twitter search results are lacking compared to what you get from search.twitter.com.

In addition, there are two other major limitations. First, you can't view all results in a single view, even by channel (e.g. blogs, social networks, etc.). The other is that you can't save searches or generate RSS feeds - at least yet. These and other services are forthcoming for paid subscribers. There is also a URL API for developers.

At first glance, I am excited about WhosTalkin. There was a ton of innovation in the social media search space in the middle part of the decade. Then it seems like a lot of people talk their eye off the ball once Google Blog Search launched and when Twitter bought Summize.

Given that WhosTalking is pulling results from other sites, I expect they can improve the quality of results rather quickly. Although you have to wonder how the other sites will feel about having their data scraped.

Still, given the way the landscape continues to expand, I think an aggregated approach like this one is the right way to go. And this is a good first effort. If WhosTalkin can improve the timeliness and relevance across all the engines they crawl, then it could become a serious player since they leverage everyone else's databases.

RetweetRadar Adds Context Around Re-Tweeting

Although there's not a lot of space when it comes to retweeting, you can extract insights from what people are saying around them. That was what many of you said in commenting on my post the other day. That's where Retweetradar comes in.

Using the Google App Engine, Retweet Radar looks for trends in all of the re-tweeting over the last hour and pulls them into a nice tag cloud. It auto-refreshes every two minutes. Click on a term and it will take you to the conversation on search.twitter.com. (One of my hopes in 2009 is that Twitter finally integrates this into the main site.)

Nice effort by Ben Hedrington

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

Make Magic with Metadata in Gmail

Personal knowledge management is becoming one of the most critical skills that information workers like journalists, marketers and PR pros need to succeed today. Specifically, I am talking about the efficient collecting, processing and weeding of massive amounts of data. In this post I want to offer tips on how to take full advantage of tagging information in Gmail. (I have covered Gmail previously in this context in three separate installments.)

Gmail is not just an email client, but a rich, searchable database. Think of it as a data mining system. The more data that you allow to flow into Gmail, the more you'll get out of it - if it's organized.  Even better all of this information is available across any device and even offline using IMAP. As much as I like Evernote, it's lack of offline notes on the iPhone made it a deal killer for me. Plus I already live in Gmail so it was easy to stick wit it.

GMail has labels, which are essentially tags, but they're unwieldy. You need to constantly manage them if you store a lot of info. It's a pain. I prefer to tag on the fly. And using GMail's unlimited plus addressing and filtering capabilities, you can. Here's how.

First, set up a filter in GMail so that all mail from the prefix of your email address to that prefix is auto-archived and marked as read. In my case this means mail from steverubel to steverubel. This will ensure that the emails do not show up in your inbox.

Next, as I find information I want to collect, I email it to myself using Ubiquity, a new extension for Firefox (Google Toolbar offers a similar email capability). However, instead of emailing it to just my regular email address I add a tag to the prefix by tacking a word on to the address with a plus symbol. To add multiple tags I send the message to multiple plus addresses all at once.

For example, Nielsen just published some interesting data about health and social networking. I know I might need this later so I select the article and invoke my email command in Ubiquity and send the message to both steverubel+health@gmail.com and steverubel+socialnetworking@gmail.com. The article never hits my inbox. It gets autoarchived where I can get it later.

Now if I want to find everything I have tagged under health and social networking, all I need to do is search for to:+health or to:+socialnetworking and bingo, the article turns up.

Finally, you need to make your tags easily accessible. Searching for these keywords every time is a pain. The solution is to use GMail Quick Links. For tags I access regularly I pull up the search in GMail and either bookmark them in my browser or add them as a Quick Link in GMail. (Note you need to enable Gmail Labs first in the settings.)

That's all there is to it. Next up I plan to couple this technique with Google Alerts and Newsgator's POP3 capabilities, which comes free with Newsgator Online, and GMail fetching to add have news and RSS flow into GMail that matches certain conditions I set up in advance and have them autotagged.

Comparing SMM SEO and PR Tactics is Pure Poppycock

Last week I wrote about how some in the search engine optimization profession (not all) are openly espousing how to basically turn social media sites into heat seeking missiles for Google Juice - and not much else. Apparently there is a whole cottage industry called "Social Media Marketing" (SMM) that analyzes how to use social media for SEO purposes. That should give anyone pause.

Given my accusations, immediately and understandably many commenters jumped on the public relations industry for also trying to use social media to pull the wool over people's eyes. That's complete poppycock. There is no comparison. The reason is that over the last several years the PR industry has largely learned its lessons - often the hard way.

Call me an optimist, but in 2008 most in the PR business take a clean approach to social media. A key reason is that when our clients engage, their participation needs to be transparent for it to be credible. If they fail at following the common law of the community, which has happened in the past, you'll be the first to know about it. You can't always say the same so-called SMM SEO types. Their work is sometimes far harder to sleuth.

I want to discuss this a bit more by addressing some of the comments about PR that came back in response to my post...

Danny Sullivan: "the next time you're dealing with some client asking for visibility, just tell them that hey, if they have a great brand, good PR will be a byproduct."

Positive PR is definitely an outcome of good products, but not always. Public relations professionals play a key role in helping brands identify their core genius and to tell that story. The ultimate arbiter here is the public - either directly or through the media.

We always need to convince people of a product or service's worth, no matter how good it is. If we're encouraging brands to participate in social networks, blogs and social bookmark sharing sites then the bar is even higher. They must add their value before anyone will care.

Social Media Marketing through SEO, on the other hand, often aims to game the system for Google's sake. It can be difficult for someone to discern the role it played in generating Google Juice.

Aaron Wall: "Since when is a PR guy concerned about how wrong it is to game media? I mean...I spoke at a PR agency once, and their walls were plastered with framed media articles that favored their clients. How is that any different then a blogger linking to my content because they like it?"

Public relations professionals - the ones who do their job well at least - never game the media. In fact, every journalist would take issue with that statement. In the social web, the bar is even higher. If good content attracts legit blog links, then that's a completely valid approach.

Chris Kieff: I think the PR industry is just as dirty as the SEO industry. For every 8 of us good ones in both PR and SEO there are 2 lousy ones who give us all a bad name.

Every profession has people who are white hats and black hats. However, my contention is that it's very hard to uncover the nefarious SEO types while it's pretty easy to do so in PR. Fear of humiliation is acting as a deterrent in PR.

Andy Beal: "What about the multitude of PR firms that flood social media with company profiles of their clients–all with the sole intent of building their brand recognition. They want to 'appear' as if they’re engaging their customers, but really they’re just jumping in so they can figure out how to push their brand on users."

I believe these people will all be exposed if they are not adding value - period. We (the community and the industry) need to police these egregious programs, no matter where they come from. And that's happening.

SEO Shenanigans Pose a Clear and Present Danger to Social Media

As someone who reads a lot of blogs about search and social media (a term I am still not nuts about but has stuck), I have recently witnessed a disturbing trend. Some respected experts are advocating launching social media marketing programs solely for the purpose of influencing search engines, rather than with the intent of fostering collaboration and genuine communication.

This represents a clear and present danger to the fabric of the community. If you care about the social web, then you should be alarmed.

Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals of late seem poised to take over blogs, digg, StumbleUpon and other sites with a range of tactics, some legit, others more questionable with the intent of building Google Juice and nothing more. Read these blogs and you'll see it's often all they're talking about. I am not the only one out there who feels this way.

Consider some of the following blog posts that I found in my Google Reader database...

Boost Organic Results. Link Build with Social Media (Search Engine Watch)

The Inconvienent Truth About Social Media Marketing (Search Engine Land)

Building a Company With Social Media (Search Engine Land)

Realizing SEO benefits through blogging (HitTail)

How to Use Blogs, Podcasts, Wikis and Other Social Media Tools to Find New Clients, Make Money and Create the Lifestyle of Your Dreams (Conference)

To be clear, I do not object to the way that blogs, digg links and Wikipedia rank highly in search results. What does get me hot and bothered is when consultants and bloggers propose launching such an initiatives solely for influencing search. SEO, like word of mouth, should be a byproduct outcome, not a primary objective. Any brand that plays in this space should be aiming to create value. Do that and the other stuff will follow.

But the SEO shenanigans for the sake of SEO has to stop. If you're going to play in our sandbox, follow the community's (unwritten) rules.

Become a Knowledge Management Ninja with Google Reader

In this era of data smog, the knowledge worker who can act like an agile ninja by consuming vast quantities of information, synthesizing it and getting it in the hands of the right people at the right time is invaluable. For knowledge worker ninjas, RSS is your shuriken.

I have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I've tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it's the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

So as 2007 winds down and thoughts turn to productivity and prosperity in the new year, I offer these tips to help. Share your own thoughts in the comments. (Some of these may work with RSS readers from Newsgator, Bloglines and others but they are written with Google in mind.)

This post has several parts ...

* The Core Philosophy: Google Reader is a database and a feed reader
* Continually add tons of feeds in organized, methodical way
* Establish a taxonomy that makes retrieval and sharing easy using on-the-fly tagging
* Annotate your data by connecting Reader to Gmail or Blogger
* Putting it all together - sorting, searching and sharing

The Core Philosophy: Google Reader is a database and a feed reader

Most people who use RSS readers do so with the intent of subscribing to an aggregated river of news feeds, persistent searches and blogs. However with the recent addition of search, the Google Reader became much more. Like Gmail, Reader should be viewed as a database that you can build from scratch and continually hone. I wrote about this in September when the feature launched, but I see far more potential now than I did then. This philosophy is key - Google Reader = news aggregator + custom feed database.

Continually add tons of feeds in organized, methodical way

Second, I encourage you to throw as many feeds as you can at the Google Reader just so you can capture and mine it. This should include relevant feeds that you never have any intention of reading or even scanning. For example, I subscribe to high volume streams like Twitter timelines, AP news syndicates, various digg feeds and more. These generate a torrent of posts but I don't let them get in my way. The key is to add them to a special folder that is separate from other feeds that you actually read or scan. This way, with a click of a button you can clear these items but still cache 'em. However, the great news is that you can always go back and search and/or retrieve them later, as you can see below.

For those feeds you do want to read or scan, I would also suggest filing them away by context as Daniel Miessler recommends here. The great thing that Google Reader does is a allow feeds to sit in multiple folders. This allows me to store some feeds in a "mobile" folder that I have bookmarked on my mobile phone, even as they also reside in a "blogs" folder. Set up folders by context - including computers, contexts (online/offline/etc) and devices.

Establish a taxonomy that makes retrieval and sharing easy using on-the-fly tagging

One of Google's best, yet underutilized features is tagging. This differs from folders. As I mentioned earlier this week, Google let you tag individual posts/items and then easily retrieve these later using the keyboard shortcut. Lifehacker covers all of this here.

Tagging is an incredibly powerful tool for becoming a knowledge management ninja - especially in PR. As you're reading feeds you can tag them for sharing with a select group or for easy retrieval in the future.

For example, let's say your job is to compile a report to your boss at the end of the week. As you scan, simply tag all of the potential items you want to include with "report." Now you can easily retrieve these posts. However, there's more. You can search them too! This is powerful because you are adding a layer of structure to what is basically a giant pile of information that someone else decided to organize for you when the feed was established.

Anotate your data by connecting Reader to Gmail or Blogger

Other than simple tags, Google Reader doesn't let you add notes to your posts or feeds. However, when you email items out of Google Reader you can add up to 1,000 characters. I recommend sending these into your Gmail Personal Nerve Center so that they get filed away with a certain tag. Another option is to email them into a private Blogger blog using their post by email function. Ruud Hein suggests another way of doing this with Feedburner. I would suggest coupling this with tags as opposed to starred items.

Putting it all together - sorting, searching and sharing

Now that you have your personal knowledge management system up and running, you can begin to pull it all together. For example, start filing away items under tags. Share the tag (privately) with colleagues and get this information out more widely. If you want to make this less kludgy, run the feed through Feebdurner as Ruud describes above and let every one subscribe via email.

Here's another idea. If you are tagging items by client name or project name, you can later go back and run a scoped search within that tag. Even better, you can do the same with specific feeds and folders. So if your boss calls you up and asks you how many times The New York Times used the name of your company in a headline, you can easily give him or her an answer.

This is all just the beginning but you can see where I am going. Set this system up in a way that works best for you. Don't be afraid of too much information. Embrace it. Revel in it. But wrangle it like cattle to make it truly work for you. Be a ninja in 08. Go forward and good luck.

How to Share Items in Google Reader and Still Keep Them Private

There's been an uproar in the blogosphere and elsewhere this week over who - by default - can see your Google Reader Shared Items (a new feature). The short answer is anyone you have chatted with over Google Talk.

If this spooks you out there are two widely reported workarounds: a) don't share any items or b) make sure you hide anyone that you don't want to share with. However, there is a third undocumented trick that lets you share items with a private group and no one else. I plan to expand on this with a post later this week about how I am now using Google Reader as a Personal Knowledge Management System to complement my Gmail Personal Nerve Center.

The key is to make use of Google's underutilized tagging feature. At the bottom of any item in your reader you will spot a small link that says "tags." This system overlaps with, yet complements Google Reader folders. Click on the field to create a new tag. To illustrate for this blog post, here I have added the tag "myteam" to a cool post by Paul Stamatiou (which borrows one of my favorite photos of all time).

Next, click on "Settings" at the the top of the Reader interface, then click on Tags. Find the tag you just created and make that tag - and only that tag - public.

Finally, and this is key, share the tag page only with people you trust. They can subscribe to this tag page in Google Reader. Further, this page will not be spidered by any of search engines. What's more, even if someone should find your private Google Reader number (which shared items does expose when you hover over profiles), no one will be able to find this page unless they know the secret tag name.

It would be great if Google would tell people this so I wouldn't have to (and simplified the whole process). Right now, they make it too hard to find. Still, there is a workaround that lets you have your cake and eat it too. UPDATE :: The psychic gang at Google posted this just as I wrote this post.

Celebrities Dominate, But Not on Digg

It never ceases to amaze me just how much we love celebrities. Even the wide river of non-gossip bloggers. However, on digg they like tech a whole lot more.

PC Magazine ran an interesting chart in their latest issue that measures this. They tracked the buzz around the death of Anna Nicole Smith and compared it to the launch of the iPhone. Anna trumped Apple in Google searches, blog posts and news stories by a wide margin. But the iPhone walloped Anna on digg.

There's a bit more here.

New My Yahoo Signals It Has Abandoned the Geeks

Does anyone among the tech influential spend any significant time on Yahoo anymore? I sure don't and for years I did. I have a couple of their news feeds, but for the most part it seems like all the action is on Google and a bunch of startups. The only sites where Yahoo has inroads with geeks are del.icio.us and Flickr and neither of them is monetized. It's obvious they're too nervous about alienating the community, so they play it conservative here.

I remember an era gone by when Yahoo was just like Google. They took chances. They recognized that the "techfluencers" were critical for driving mass adoption. Now it seems like they're a big conservative company that's going straight for Maw and Paw America. That's cool and it plays to their strengths but why own del.icio.us and Flickr? They should flip them to Google. Cut your losses Yahoo and invest in your mainstream winners - like Yahoo Answers. Oh and Yahoo 360 is totally a site that deserves better. It's a ghost town. Sell it to Six Apart. They'll nourish it.

The new My Yahoo is another example of how the portal has turned its back on the geeks. Yahoo had an opportunity here to take widgets - which are popular with the tech elite - and push them mainstream. They have always had a knack for making the geeky easier but the new site is just basically a fresh coat of paint. What a lost opportunity to build on all of the great work Arlo Rose did with Konfabulator and port it to the web. I wonder how he feels living in such a conservative company.

I remember just three years ago how Yahoo had serious Web 2.0 mojo. It took RSS and pushed it far and wide. Now it has turned it's back on RSS like it's a plague. The same goes for blog search too. Yahoo is clearly trying to be the un-Google. They have ceded the war for the geeks to Google. That doesn't bode well for sites like MyBlogLog. And further, it hurts their chance in winning in the Web 2.0 world. We are the ones who set trends. Look no further than Second Life and Twitter.

By the way, this is a smart strategy for Yahoo. It follows their strengths. However it does mean that there's a bunch of Yahoo properties that are not like the others. They stick out like sore thumbs and I bet they will one day be sold.

USAToday.com Refashions Itself as a Social Network

USA Today is unveiling a massive overhaul of their web site that adds a number of great features. The notable additions include: reader comments on every story, the ability to create a profile page that can be shared with others, citizen journalist photos, story tagging and digg-like recommendation buttons.

This is exactly the direction USA Today needs to follow. However, it doesn't go quite far enough. In addition to building these features, the media need to bridge their communities to the ones where we already spend our time. RSS, widgets and embedded content would help here. For example, USA Today should let us add our blog, Twitter or Facebook feeds or even embedded YouTube vids to our profile pages.

Connecting communities is so easy today with web services and it would go a long way toward making the their site - or any site for that matter - stronger. Hopefully we'll see this happen soon.

More Ways to Use Gmail as a Personal Nerve Center

Since my last post about my unorthodox uses of Gmail, I have been thinking there might be more ways I could be using it as my Personal Nerve Center (PNC). And in fact, there are a bunch. Time on the road away from my computer helps! Many of these work well in other web clients too by the way. Here's another round. (Note: as of this writing, Gmail is acting up. Murphy's Law. However, I have found that 99% of the time it is fine.)

* Create a Mobile Searchable Database of PDFs (Gmail + Adobe PDF Conversion by Email)
* Archive Your Weblog and Comments and Make Them Searchable (Gmail + FeedBurner/FeedBlitz)
* Import a Searchable Version of Your Calendar (Gmail + Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar)
* Build a Weather or Sports Almanac (Gmail + Windows Live Alerts)
* A round up of other ideas

Create a Mobile Searchable Database of PDFs (Gmail + Adobe PDF Conversion by Email)
Like many of you, I have gobs of PDFs on my computer. Most of them are research reports written  by analyst firms like eMarketer, Pew and Forrester or even PowerPoints. Sometimes I need to pull up a nugget of information from them in a split second. Often this occurs when I am away from my computer or logged out of the server at work. In fact, my colleague Leah was asking me about one of these nuggets today. Now I have a solution.

Although Google extracts text from attached PDF files, it does not index the contents in the Gmail database. This limits its utility. Thankfully, Adobe (which I should note is an Edelman client) has a free service that will take care of this for you.

All you need to do is email your PDF to pdf2txt@adobe.com and they will send the full text of the PDF back within minutes. These files can be searched from within Gmail. Then set up a filter from the Adobe address (noreply@adobe.com) and have the messages archived and automatically labeled. Now you have a searchable database for your PDFs - oh and it's fully accessible via a mobile too.

Back Up Your Blog and Make it Searchable (Gmail + FeedBurner/FeedBlitz)
Feedburner and other services like Feedblitz can take your RSS feed and convert it into an email newsletter for readers who don't use RSS.

I have been using Feedblitz on my blog for years and I subscribe just to make sure it is working correctly. I used to delete these emails but now I figured out they can actually be quite useful. I set up a filter, as described above, to archive these emails as soon as they arrive. As far as I know, Google doesn't place a limit on the number Gmail filters.  Now I can search my blog quickly from the PNC by using the from:Feedblitz command and my search keyword. Plus, I automatically have a backup for my entire blog.

By the way, if you use Blogger, you can configure it to automatically email your posts once they go up. Here's the result when I searched for from:Feedblitz ajaxy newsgator. (Bonus tip: you can create a searchable archive of all your comments by archiving the email alerts and mining for them later.)

Create a Searchable Version of Your Calendar (Gmail + Google/Yahoo/MSN Calendar)
I don't know about you, but I a few years back I started saving old versions of my calendars - even from when I was in another job. I keep them on my desktop and occasionally search them.  In fact, just the other day I referenced an old calendar to find a hotel I once stayed at in San Francisco.

Archival calendar data on the desktop is useful,  but it's even better on the web and it's awesome when you roll it into your Gmail PNC and it's mobile. So even though I manage my calendar on the desktop, I export it into Google Calendar every few days and make sure that it sends me my daily agenda via email every day. Yahoo and MSN Calendar have similar features. I have a filter whisk these out of site and bingo - I have a quick way to search my calendar right from Gmail - and, most importantly, on the go.

Build a Weather or Sports Almanac (Gmail + Windows Live Alerts)
Quick, what was the score the last time the Bears played the Jets? What is the W-L record of the Dallas Mavericks against the Phoenix Suns the last three years? Finally, what was the weather on your birthday the last five years? If you care about this stuff, set up your Gmail PNC so it can quickly fetch it for you.

The secret is to sign up for alerts and have them archived. In my last post I mentioned Yahoo Alerts. Microsoft has a bunch of good ones too - including Fox Sports - and they are sometimes more reliable. You should configure these to alert via email and for the final score. (Disclosure: Microsoft is an Edelman client.)

For weather, check out Accuweather and Weather.com. They too have email services. You can also take any RSS feed and run it through a service like Rmail to create all sorts of archives.  Once you're set up, all you need to do is filter, archive and search and your good to go.

What other types of information can we store in a Gmail PNC? Some of the ones that come to mind are a but more manual. Movies is a good one. Using the Google Toolbar method described in my last post you could clip and save movie information from a bunch of sites and annotate them with your own reviews. Some folks store recipes in Gmail. Combine this with a recipe-a-day email service and it becomes even more powerful. Share your Gmail PNC ideas in comments.

Turn Gmail Into Your Personal Nerve Center

I was lucky enough to get in on the Gmail beta when it launched and I haven't looked back since. Even though I've had an account  for almost three years and I get over 100 emails a day, I have chewed up only 18% of the generous 2.8 gigabytes of storage.

However, in recent weeks I have started using Gmail as much more than an email host. With its gobs of storage, speed and tremendous search/tagging capabilities, you can transform it into a personal nerve center that's available from any computer or mobile device. When you tap into this power and combine Gmail with some other tools, it is perhaps the most essential site ever developed. Most of the following life hacks have not been documented.

This series has several parts...

• How to turn Gmail into a massive personal database (Gmail + the Google Toolbar)
• How to get real-time news updates in Gmail (Gmail+ Google Talk + Twitter)
• How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail (Gmail + del.icio.us + Yahoo Alerts)
• How to manage Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail (Gmail + Backpack + GCal +  GTalk + iMified)
• How to blog from Gmail (Gmail + Wordpress/TypePad/Blogger + IMified)

Using Gmail as a Massive Database

I revel in information. Can't get enough of it. I like that I get a lot of email. I scan 275 RSS feeds in Google Reader and I use dozens of bookmarklets and shortcuts to help me manage it all.

Everyday I come across something on the web that I want to save for future reference. While previously I was using Yojimbo to manage all of this information, I found the solution wanting since I travel a lot and need to access my bits from a mobile device. Google Notebook also doesn't work on a mobile device and its search functions are rather lacking. Enter Gmail and the Google Toolbar.

The latest version of the Google Toolbar has a send to Gmail function. Select some text or graphics, right click on it and send it to Gmail.  The Toolbar then automatically feeds it into a new message.

Now, when I find something I want to save I use this feature and send it to a secret  contact in my address book. This is basically a steverubel+[secretphrase]@gmail.com email address (Lifehacker explains the value of these here).

Once the article arrives in my Gmail inbox, I have a filter whisk it a way into the archive and tag it with an @Database label. Further, I am toying with having the same filter also forward these to a premium  Google Apps account that has 10 gigs of space. Now all I need to do to call it up later is enter label:@Database and a keyword. Whammo - an instant personal database.

Here's a screenshot of a photo of Steve Ballmer's office that I felt like filing away for inspiration (I was amazed by its size). Note that the Google Toolbar automatically inserts the source URL. I also use this method to store notes, ideas and musings.

 

How to get real-time news updates in Gmail

I usually keep Gmail open in a tab in my browser. I also make heavy use of the integrated Google Talk IM client in Gmail. Further, I have become a fan of Twitter - a micro blogging tool which you can control using Google Talk and other IM clients.

Some enterprising folks have taken data feeds from the BBC and CNN and ported them to Twitter. So, as long as you have Gmail open, Twitter will IM you the latest news when it hits.

As I write this post, Defamer is providing live updates from the Academy Awards and these are streaming into Gmail as IMs. (Be sure to turn off SMS alerts if you use these feeds since they will pile up.)

 

How to automatically store your bookmarks in Gmail

It's easy to bookmark items in Gmail. However, did you know that you can bookmark on del.icio.us and automatically feed these into your Gmail database? In addition, if you're a Google Reader's shared items (yes, you Scoble!) you can feed these into Gmail automatically too. Then your bookmarks are easily mined from your nerve center.

All you need to do is run your del.icio.us or Google Reader shared feed through Yahoo Alerts.  You can opt for as-they-happen or daily emails Then, set up a filter to label these and have them automatically archived. This works for any RSS feed, not just bookmarks.

 

How to Manage Your Calendar and To-Dos in Gmail

Gmail does not have a to-do list feature - yet. Further, the Google Calendar isn't integrated either. However, if you use GCal and either Backpack or Remember the Milk, you can control these with the integrated Google Talk in Gmail and IMified.

All you need to do is add IMified to your Google Talk contact list and you can not only view your calendar and to-do's but add to them and delete items as well.

How to blog from Gmail

Last but not least, you can also blog directly from Gmail. This works if you blog on Blogger, Wordpress, Moveable Type or TypePad. Simply set up your moblogging settings so that your gmail address is recognized. In addition, you can also blog from Gmail using IMified.

This is just the tip of the iceberg of what you can do when you "hack" together a bunch of free tools. Eventually I could run out of space but I suspect Google will offer storage upgrades by the time I come close. What's unmistakable, is that Gmail is really the Internet's version of the Ginsu knife.

Tags: Google, Gmail, IMified, Lifehacks, YahooAlerts, del.icio.us, Backpack, GoogleCalendar, GoogleToolbar

Tagging Gains US Fans

AP reports that Americans love tagging. The Pew Internet & American Life Project found that 28 percent of Internet users have tagged content, and 7 percent have done so on a typical day. Get the full report here.

New Technorati "WTF" Feature Clones Digg

Technorati has launched a new feature called Technorati WTF. No, it doesn't stand for "what the..." It's short for "Where's the Fire?"

Basically, Where's the Fire appears to be a digg clone. It allows users to share what's hot. Then visitors can come a long and vote for the most interesting items.

Here are some screenshots from Technorati WTF. I am not sure I really get it. Why not index digg instead of trying to re-create it? (Disclosure: Technorati and Edelman have a partnership that is wrapping up, but I spotted this with my own two eyes and didn't get advance notice)

LATER:: As of 11 pm eastern the site is down.

EVEN LATER:: According to a comment on TechCrunch, T'Rati announced this on Twitter yesterday and Dorion Caroll blogged it.

Tag Spam Rising

The fine folks at the eBiquity group at the University of Maryland Baltimore County have started to notice that tag spam is on the rise.

The problem is particularly pronounced on del.icio.us. I used to live in my del.icio.us inbox. The tool, if your not familiar with it, lets you subscribe to certain tags. Nowadays it's filled with links to porn sites. And no, this sort of content is not normally found in the tags I am subscribed to!

Tags: spam, del.icio.us

Tagging Site Raw Sugar Tanks, Put Assets Up for Sale

RawSugar, a social bookmark site, has let all of its employees go and has put its core assets up for sale, Haaretz reports. The Israeli startup, which is similar to del.icio.us, digg and other link sharing sites, ran out of resources. The startup was completely self-funded. The RawSugar site remains operational for now. However, according to Haaretz, the founders say it will close in a matter of months.

As history has shown us, the Web is a very transient place. Today's hot site sometimes becomes tomorrow's ghost town. It's hard to maintain leadership. Given today's news and history, it's not that far-fetched for Wired to declare that digg will become the new Friendster. Digg's challenge is to continue to innovate and keep its community in tact. They will have to face the Innovator's Dilemma.

(Special thanks to Rafael Sidi for the link. He's one of my new voices.)

Technorati Tags: digg, Raw Sugar, Transient Web

My New Year's Resolution is to Highlight New Voices

My blogging New Year's resolution is to highlight new blogging voices. If you study the Technorati 100 list in 2003 and today you will notice lots of new names pop up. Still, I'm not satisfied.

More than ever I feel the need to expand my RSS reading horizons beyond the Techmeme crowd and in the process highlight some new blogs. I will link to these throughout 2007 via my del.icio.us database with the tag "newvoices." If you have a blog you think I should look at, please upload it to me on del.icio.us with the following tags - for:steverubel and newvoices. Please don't email it, just use del.icio.us and I will spot it in my RSS reader. The del.icio.us links I file away daily are published in my blog every night. I can't link to them all, but will share the gems.

Technorati Tags: newvoices

Flickr Adds Search Privacy Feature

Flickr has added a clever feature that lets you hide any image from public searches. Simply look for the link next to the other metadata for your image. You can't do this in batch editing mode yet, just on an image by image basis.

It's unclear if this means the image will be hidden from Web search engines as well as Flickr network queries. Still, it's nice to have an image that you want to keep public just not searchable.

This is an option all of the social networks, media sharing and blog publishing platforms should all have. Flickr's corporate cousin, del.icio.us, has a similar private bookmarking feature. Vox gives you the option to decide who sees your blog posts. But I haven't seen anyone add search opt-out.

Tags: vox, flickr, del.icio.us, privacy

Google Reader a Stealth Digg Killer?

Steve Mermelstein wisely states that Google Reader could be a digg killer. The catch is a) people need to be using Google's sharing features and b) they would need to add a feature that displays how many people have shared each post. It occurs to me the same could be said for Google displacing del.icio.us.

I don't see this happening anytime soon, but as Google becomes more integrated in our lives the possibility looks more real. By the way if you want to search your Google Reader feeds you can do so easily using Google Co-op. Handy hack.

Tags: googlereader, google, digg, del.icio.us,