The Spinning Donut

Below you will find the most popular articles of the past month. Check them out if you missed any.

• Social Networks Will Make You Cool - Another context you can benefit from using the social networking sites is building traffic to your blog, promoting your blog posts and gaining subscribers.
• How To Create StumbleUpon Content - For those of you that have never heard of StumbleUpon, it’s a website that allows you to randomly “Stumble Upon” websites.
• Creating in Firefox - The title of this blog post could certainly be Working in Firefox. However, Creating fits much better since that’s what we want to feel like when we’re “working” and it has a more positive connotation than Working does for some people.
• 22 Terrific Tweets - In my previous post 21 Terrific Tweets, I noted how you can find some good stuff in twitter. This time, here are 22 terrific twitter tweets. I’m tellin’ ya’ - There’s gold in them there tweets.
• WordPress Tags Explained - If you’ve been wondering about WordPress tags and how to use them, then browse over to Ninja Blog Setup where Jon Symons has a free ebook on What Every Blogger Ought to Know About Tags.

photo credit: tristrambrelstaff

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Continuing on with the gold you can find in them there Twitter Tweets, like my previous articles 21 Terrific Tweets and 22 Terrific Tweets hare are 23 more nuggets for you:

1. - del.icio.us is now delicious.com.  We can all stop suffering from typing del.icio.us.  Although clever, it wasn’t fun to type if you didn’t have the site bookmarked.  More importantly they’ve redesigned their site and wrote about the details which include speed, search and design.  And this is a good time to grab the Firefox Delicious Bookmarks add-on. To make it easy for you to share those bookmarks.  Check the delicious tools page for more tools.

2. - Ed Dale started his freely available 30 Day Challenge course – The first lesson started this week.  Some of the good stuff you’ll be doing and learning how to do include finding 5-10 niches to create an online business in.  There are rock solid videos and tasks to get you going in this first lesson.  Highly recommended for beginners and for those of us who need a good swift kick.

3. - Drop.io works with Twitter now - tweet.io.  What does that mean to you?  Well, you can upload a file to drop.io and your twitter will be tweeted.

4. - Ok, this wasn’t so much a tweet but a reminder to check out The Beginner’s Guide to Zen Habits – A Guided Tour.  For folks just starting a blog or need a reminder of some great content and how to write it, this list contains quite a few examples.  Like I’ve suggested before, try to take one of the lists and place content in it that reflects your niche.  This is one way of practicing list-type blog posts.

5. - Ok, this too wasn’t so much a tweet but a reminder to check out How to Write Magnetic Headlines.  Again, for folks just starting a blog or need a reminder of some great content and how to write it, this list contains quite a few examples.  Again, try to place content that reflects your niche in the articles.

6. - Continuing on the blogging side of things, Chris Garrett reminds us of his Killer Flagship Content ebook which is also a great read and re-read along with his latest article Using Flagship Content to Make Sales.

7. - And continuing on again with the blogging tips.  Don’t forget to use HitTail to track your blog and some of The Long Tail suggestions you can use to write for your blog or extend existing blog posts.  Let me know if you need help doing this in the comments.

8. - If you have a tumblr account and link it to your twitter account you’ll have an automagic archiving solution for your tweets.  Sweet!!  

9. - Some very excellent premium WordPress Themes by WooThemes that will make your blog look professional.  I know, I know, you’re asking, “When are you buying one and changing your theme Bill?”  Let me tell you, I’m keepin’ my eye out on the Fresh News Theme with color schemes #1 or #2.  Pretty hot lookin’.  Snap!!

10. - A bit techie but I like this kind of stuff - Inside The Linux Boot Process by IBM

11. - This looks like a good conference to attend and it’s free - the Midwest Unconference in Chicago, Illinois, on October 17-18, 2008.

12. - Social Media Thought Leader Chris Brogan interviewed by Jim Canterucci.

13. - How to Install KDE 4.1 on Ubuntu 8.04 by Marius Nester at Softpedia

14. - Put Twitter in your Firefox sidebar with this add-on - TwitKit

15. - Microsoft offers Overview Series: Windows Vista Performance and Tuning -  Improve Performance Quickly and easily.

16. - Darren Rowse on Monetization, Community, and ProBlogging at Performancing.com

17. - I’ve had trouble with PNGs in IE6 and I found this by accident or a tweet that is - Fix PNGs in IE6 by Unit Interactive

18. - Considering using WordPress for a CMS?  CMS stands for Content Management System.  Check this article out by Devlounge – Things To Consider When Using WordPress as a CMS.  Don’t forget about the gold in the comments.  They’re just as good as the article.

19. - Questioning Bookmarking at mathewingram.com – Delicious 2.0: Who bookmarks any more?

20. - Firebug is a great add-on for Firefox but what if you need it for Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari?  Firebug Lite.

21. - The Most Powerful Female Bloggers on FriendFeed by Profy.com

22. - A Twitter Brand Index by Fluent Simplicity

23. - Keep It Simple Stupid; 48 Super Simple, Clean Websites by Inspiredology

photo credit: Ella’s Dad

Filed Under Social Media | 3 Comments »

In my previous post 21 Terrific Tweets, I noted how you can find some good stuff in twitter. This time, here are 22 terrific twitter tweets. I’m tellin’ ya’ - There’s gold in them there tweets.

1. - Do you want to test iPhone apps or see what the iPhone has to offer? Here’s an easy way. Browse over to TestiPhone.com - iPhone Simulator

2. - Need to email, send messages via SMS and other Social Networks on a timed basis? You might want to take a look at sendible.

3. - Need to setup a customer list using AWeber - Checkout the experience shared at AWeber - 6 Painful Lesson Learned.

4. - Are you a small business who’s trying to make heads and tales of all this social media stuff? Check out The Hierarchy of Social Marketing by Duct Tape Marketing for some guidance.

5. - Blogging - Well, it’s not out yet but I believe Darren Rowse at Problogger is working on an article that talks about dates on blog posts. I’m assuming there will be some good discussion on old blog posts and when to take the dates off so when readers find your old posts, they don’t browse away from it because they automatically think it’s old information.

6. - Is Firefox crashing for you? Read Safe Mode at the Firefox Knowledge Base.

7. - How to Earn Your First Love Dollar by Steve Pavlina

8. - Catorgerized List of Social Media Sites by Traffikd (a continually updated page)

9. - WordPress users - Reader Question: Is WordPress Safe To Use? by Performancing

10. - Copyblogger leaves quotes on Twitter and this latest one is a good one - “a hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.” ~Frank Capra

11. - Productivity on steroids - The List to Beat All Lists: Top 20 Productivity Lists to Rock Your Tasks by ZenHabits

12. - Resources For Web Design

13. - And another Twitter Client - Twitch

14. - SEO discussions with Rae Hoffman, aka Sugarrae and Michael Gray, aka Graywolf started a live stream over at Ustream.tv. Sounds like they’ll be continuing the show.

15. - Get Started With JSON as well as Ruby on Rails for Beginners by Webmonkey

16. - Make and Share a Timeline with dipity

17. - Outlook vs. Gmail - The Definitive Comparison by Lifehacker

18. - From Mark Cuban’s blog - A Couple of My Rules for Startups

19. - Favtape.com - Create & share an instant mixtape of your Pandora bookmarked songs or Last.fm loved tracks.  Um, this one seems hot to me.  If you use Pandora or Last.fm to listen to music, start bookmarking your songs you listen to.  With Favtape.com you can listen to your bookmarked songs forward and backward.  For example, you can’t just keep skipping forward in Pandora, you have to listed to some of the music you select.  You also can’t rewind.  Well, Favtape.com pretty much let’s you do whatever you want with your bookmarked music list.  Nice!!  

20. - Blog Pimping or: Who Do You Want to Delight? by 43 Folders

21. - 45 Excellent Free Web Templates listed at DzineBlog

22. - The Friendfeedization Of Facebook by TechCrunch

I’d be interested in hearing about your links

What links have helped you in the last 24 hours from Twitter?

One final note - I created this blog post in Google Docs and I will probably not do that again.  I hate the HTML that was generated as well as missing all the bolds on the numbers.  All the HTML ended up all packed together.  The permalink was originally 712 instead of 22-terrific-tweets, I know that’s probably not Google Docs job.

I wanted to experiment posting this way but might have to reconsider.  Also, on the initial publish of the post from Google Docs it did not send the title of the article, the title was empty.  So I’ll go back and check out some of the options in Google Docs to see if I missed anything.

photo credit: kevindooley

Filed Under Social Media | 2 Comments »

There’s Gold In Them There Tweets!!

Here are twenty-one tweets in twelve hours from some terrific twitterers. These are links to good stuff from some of the twitterers I follow. I picked out some tweets that provided good information during a 12 hour time period. I hope you enjoy!!

1 - tweetshots
Turns your Tweet into an embeddable screenshot. Don’t know why I’d need this but hey, maybe it will come in useful someday.

2 - Livetweets
Livetweets allows you to tweet an event. It allows folks to follow that event by RSS as well.

3 - Hashtags.org
“Realtime Tracking of Twitter Hashtags” - Use special characters in your tweets to provide “groupings” of tweets. You could use this for an event, like a conference. Everyone who uses Twitter and tweets about #myconf for example, will be able to follow all those tweets on Hashtags.org.

4 – Best Social Media From This Site – A blog post on some of Chris Brogan’s articles listed under these categories:

• Community Development
• Social Networks
• Social Media
• Twitter
• Personal Branding
• Making Media

5 – Free Accounting Software – Gnu Cash

6 - Google For Non-Profits
“You are changing the world. We want to help.” Learn how to use free Google tools to promote your work, raise money, and operate more efficiently.

7 - Digg – Town Hall Meeting #2
A video of the Digg guys talking about - Digg. More importantly the meeting was held on SocialBlade – “Your Social Web Site Tool Kit” and Social News Center - “A Community Gathering Place for Lovers of ALL social news sites”. Streaming video provided by ustream.tv.

8 – Paying for WordPress – Thought provoking

9 – Blip – What are you listening to?
The music equivalent to Twitter

10 – Brand new Google Reader for iPhone

11 – Make the scrapers work for you!

12 – Google brings Friend Connect to the masses

13 – How to Increase Engagement and Authority With Quotations

14 - Increase Conversation on Your WordPress Blog With These Two Free Firefox Tools

15 - Ten Ways to Write a Digg-worthy “Top Ten…” post

16 – BookJetty – Manage and share your reading lists with others

17 – ReadBurner – what’s shared on Google Reader

18 – RSSmeme – Most Popular Stories From The Last 24 Hours

19 - Marketing on a Startup Budget: 101 Free Offers and Coupons to Advertise Your New Site

20 – HelloTxt - is an aggregate of microblogging services through which the user can insert their messages on all main microblogging services in a simply and simultaneous way. Very Cool!!

21 – TweetWire

Filed Under Social Media | 4 Comments »