Summary of noteworthy activities:
- Increased followers on twitter from 34 to 94
- New web/social media accounts created:
--- communitystrategist.net Connie Benson's community hub
--- brightkite thanks to Jeff Glasson for the invite!
--- utterz noticed it through Chris Brogan somewhere...
--- lifestream.fm thanks to misterwong_com for the invite!
--- mog
--- ning and made 2 ning sites:
------ tyntinc.ning.com for tynt people
------ bzzagents.ning.com for aspiring keeners (if you're one, join!)
--- my mashable
--- tynt mashable
--- East indian dinner for Diana Bernier's birthday that included at least one member from at least 8 bands (bands include: Günther, TWOMP!, Avec Zhang, Stylee and the Guise, Jay Crocker and The Electric Apes, Meta, Ghostkeeper, Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo, and more I'm sure I'm forgetting)
--- Recording session with Producer John Hornak for the new Avec Zhang release

Sometimes you just need to capture a thought in your head or else it'll be gone forever. There are many ways to record these ideas or brainstorms, but none of them truly take full advantage of the social media and social networking benefits available today. Sure, there are many good mindmapping tools online but none of them work well with mobile devices which is critical when it comes to capturing thoughts wherever and whenever you have them. The process needs to be quick and easy too. Here are some mobile methods for handling your braindumping on the go.

Wridea has just released 2.0 after two long years in Beta. It was previously reveiwed here in the Best Checklist Sites. Judging from my initial experiences with the new look and feel of Wridea's totally overhauled GUI, I have to admit that it is much improved.
Here are some of the key new features:

• Full API support for integrating Wridea with third party projects, systems, websites, desktop and mobile applications
• New user interface for faster idea management
• Improved idea collaboration with friends or other Wridea users
• RSS feeds of your idea pages and idea comments
• Better friend management
• Expandability with Idea Tools

The best feature of Wridea is the ability to send your ideas to your account via your own email address. The format of the email is Idea_username@wridea.com so it's easy to remember. Just add the entry to your cell phone's address book and you will be able to capture your thoughts and ideas anytime, anywhere straight to your wridea account. You can share these entries and collaborate if you want but mostly I think it's best suited for braindumping.

Here are a couple of screencasts of the new and much improved Wridea.
What is Wridea?
What are the best new features of Wridea 2.0?

Jott is an excellent service to use for capturing your ideas thru your cell phone. Unlike Wridea which does this thru the use of a personalized email address that posts to your online account, Jott accomplishes this in a unique manner via your own phone number. Once you call Jott it asks "Who do you want to Jott?" and you simply reply with "Me" to capture thoughts and ideas to your account. The nice thing about this is that Jott also transcribes your audio message to text and emails it to you so it can be copied and pasted as you wish. The accuracy isn't that bad but it isn't 100% either so you must double-check every time. Here's a visual explanation. Here's a list of all the tricks you can do with Jott on your cell phone.

Zoho Planner also allows you to send thoughts and ideas to your online account via your own unique email address. You can then turn those notes into to do items, appointments on your calendar or add them as notes to your planner. While the functions work and come in handy, the interface is gludgy and not very user-friendly.

Remember The Milk is mostly for tracking tasks and appointments but you can very well use it to manage your thoughts and ideas because it also provides you with your own email address. So, you can use your cell phone to send any idea you had right to your RTM account. Another perk is the way that RTM integrates seamlessly with GMail (thanks to Firefox)! Here's a video of how that looks. Here's a tour of what it can do.

Utterz is like a hybrid of Twitter + Seesmic + Tumbler + Jott. It has some new features that allow you to send ideas privately to your utterz account via email (the format is very easy to remember, username@utterz.com). You can record private audio messages on your cell phone and send them to yourself privately to play back later on or make public and embed on your website or in the utterz public timeline.

Final Thoughts on Thought Capturing
Look for this space to continue to catch on fire thanks to the ever increasing popularity of social networking and mobile devices like the iPhone, Blackberry and many others. It will become increasingly easier to capture and share whatever we want, even those thoughts that used to vanish into thin air.

Mobile post sent by paulswansen using Utterz. Replies. mp3 ]]> http://aauwnational.wordpress.com/?p=250 Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:57:53 +0000 lizbolton http://aauwnational.wordpress.com/?p=250 At 4 a.m. one night last week, in a fit of sleeplessness, I couldn’t help drawing some parallels between a recent tubing adventure and a seminar we co-hosted at AAUW.

Last weekend I went tubing with a group of friends on the Potomac River. After a lovely, peaceful, and relaxing first trip, we decided to get back in our tubes and head down again.

It was on this second trip that, for whatever reason—the sun, the early morning—we ran into all kinds of problems. Toward the end of the trip, my friend tried to wave me over to his perch on a rock, but when I got off my tube to walk over to him, I found myself neck deep in quick-moving water.

My tube was pulled away from me, and I got caught up in the current and dragged through several sets of rocks before coming to a stop a few yards later, bruised, shaken, and minus a flip-flop. In a heroic attempt to save me and my shoe, my partner came through the rapids with our tubes, banging his head twice on a rock. We eventually recovered and made it to the end, where I promptly burst into tears at the thought of getting off my tube again.

At the seminar, entitled Using Online Communications to Energize Your Community, Expand Your Audience and Advance Your Mission, the presenters talked about how organizations can and should create online communities to engage with their members and other interested parties. They explained that a necessary component of creating that community is a willingness to give up some control over their message to allow the community members to discuss it fully and engage with the organization.

We even had our own little meeting-style adventure when a panel member recorded Peggy talking about our struggles with the overwhelming response to our Where the Girls Are report. To show us just how amazing technology really is, the panelist posted the recording to her blog as we sat in the meeting.

But we in the Communications Department—the message controllers, if you will—were dismayed that she chose to record and post our challenges in a meeting full of interesting, positive success stories and asked her to take it down. (In fairness, I think timing played some part in her decision; Peggy presented right after we learned what Utterz was.) The panelist later posted a tweet (I learned something!) about us and updated her blog, saying that we didn’t “get it.”

But the problem is that we do get it, maybe a little too well after Where the Girls Are. One minute you’re floating along in the calm, welcoming waters of the blogosphere and the next you’re neck deep in rushing water and your tube is floating away from you as you rapidly approach the white water and all the sharp-edged rocks hidden underneath the surface.

Riding the bus back to our cars on Saturday, wearing one of my own shoes and another I’d found on the riverbank and a band-aid over an ugly cut on my knee, my friend asked if I would ever go tubing again. “Well,” I said, “not tomorrow.”

We’re at the forefront of blogging feminist organizations, and we’re all very much learning as we go. I personally believe, like our critic, that the advantages of a vibrant online community can outweigh the costs and go a long way toward boosting an organization’s integrity, but there’s bound to be some trepidation.

We’re not giving up, though. Check out AAUW Dialog’s Goodreads group, our next baby step into the world of social networking. It’s like tubing in a pond during a drought. But more fun.

Podcasting is really digital video and audio recordings that you make available to others online. Stevie and I will focus on computer based podcasting in this posting series, with sites like Podbean.com, Audacity, Utterz, and Blog Talk Radio.

ITunes is a major podcasters dream along with IPods, IPhones, and your PC.

ITunes is free to download and only takes just a few seconds.

Now, Blog Talk Radio is also free with no download required, but two very different usages here.

ITunes, generally podcasters "take" from this site meaning they download free podcasts, music, movies, TV shows, applications, and audio books from the ITunes Store seven days a week, twenty-four hours a day allowing people to sync their IPhones and IPods or just have the content on their PCs. Where Blog Talk Radios host users, like Stevie and I with Blogs and Social Networks, input good content for others to be able to download and play at their convenience and also download shows as well. So, there is more of a "give" and "take" at Blog Talk Radio than at ITunes. Listeners using Blog Talk Radio for news, information, entertainment, education, and when they find a really great show they want to subscribe to. They can do all of this at ITunes :) See how this all fits together? When you subscribe to a show on Blog Talk Radio using ITunes, you can be alerted or just have the new shows download automatically.

Also, with Blog Talk Radio, there is a free toolbar download option with easy access to log in, what shows are on the air live, whats popular, the best of Blog Talk Shows, and the Featured shows right now. Easy access to your favorites and friends lists on Blog Talk Radio :)

More To Come On Podcasting

Stevie and Stephanie Haile Google Us ;)

Mobile post sent by stshores24 using Utterz.  Replies. ]]> http://paulswansen.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/ice-cream-pedicures/ Mon, 07 Jul 2008 14:12:38 +0000 paulswansen http://paulswansen.wordpress.com/2008/07/07/ice-cream-pedicures/

Mobile post sent by paulswansen using Utterz.  Replies. ]]> http://smalldots.wordpress.com/?p=135 Mon, 07 Jul 2008 04:41:28 +0000 BethDunn http://smalldots.wordpress.com/?p=135 I've got very little time to spare these days and for the next little while, as we are fast approaching the date of my organization's major event on Sunday, August 3, at the same time as we are getting ready to launch our new website (about to launch in beta in about ten days - want to beta test it with us?).

Things are only going to get more hectic over the next few weeks, which has made me think more about my online habits, and specifically, what happens to those habits when I am truly pressed for time.

What happens? I spend much more time sending out short bursts of information, via microblogging like twitter, or audio posts on Utterz.

These are technologies that allow me to broadcast on the fly, and let me just keep folks up to date on what's going on. Useful, very useful, for when times are so busy all I can do is act, not reflect.

It seems to me that blogging is more for reflection, assimilation and synthesis of information, whereas the tools I mentioned just now -- often referred to as lifestreaming tools -- are for real-time updates.

If my life were a baseball game, Twitter and Utterz would be the play-by-play announcer, and my blog is where I write the column for the next day's newspaper.

And Friendfeed? Friendfeed is my wire service.

If you want to watch (and participate in) something really fun and interesting while I am over here going 100 miles an hour, check out the NTEN Be The Media Project (to be renamed soon, we promise). I am participating and contributing to it as I can, but there are bound to be many interesting contributions and discussions over the course of the project (curated by none other than Beth Kanter), so mark it and stay tuned.

In the meantime, I'll be in the play-by-play booth.

Mobile post sent by paulswansen using Utterz.  Replies. ]]>