My Return To Chrome Has Been A Pleasant Surprise

Some months ago, FireFox was running so slow and was so lame for me that I decided to make the switch to Chrome. After working with it a few weeks and finding that there were so many add-ons and intricacies where FireFox worked better for me, I decided to go back to FireFox and see if things had improved. They had but, after my last update, FireFox has been maybe even worse than before. So, back to Chrome and with the improvements I am discovering, and as long as Google doesn’t hose me, I see no reason right now to go back. Here’s what I have discovered since I last used Chrome …..

Good:

1. Chrome is still blazing fast. Sweet!
2. Wisestamp signature lines for Chrome are now available as an extension. Must have! Even better is that there is a hitch in the version for FireFox that automatically inserts a new signature line every time you open a draft. Not a problem with Chrome.
3. Zemanta is now better integrated with Chrome. Perfect!
4. My FaceBook gadget on my iGoogle home page now expands to multiple lines on the update where on FireFox it just kept scrolling on a single line to the point where you could not even remember what you type.
5. A number of my other gadgets on iGoogle appear to be more stable.
6. I had a FireFox add-on that allowed me to reduce tab widths. Chrome’s “pin tab” feature may be even better as it reduces selected tabs to favicons only.
7. I was able to create a universal search box with an extension which was a feature that I had with FireFox and used almost exclusively for LinkedIn people searches.
8. There is actually a LinkedIn extension that displays updates from my network. I did not have this with FireFox. It was a pain to get running as the RSS feed from LinkedIn refused to work (I know this to be a LinkedIn problem) but, after repeated tries, a feed link finally took and it works great!
9. Rapportive for Gmail is now available on Chrome. This gives me a snap shot view of my contact’s social media networks.
10. Every bookmark that I need on my toolbar, particularly those for sharing, are right where they should be.
11. I actually have four different Ning sites and, previously, the editing commands did not play nice with Chrome. That issue has been since resolved.
12. AddToAny is now a Chrome extension. I use this to circumvent WordPress.com and insert the sharing bar found at the end of each of my posts.

Not So Good:

1. I can’t believe this but I cannot get a Gmail for hosted accounts iGoogle gadget to work with Chrome. This sucks. Mostly I want this to see if new items are in my inbox. My work around was to install Better Gmail, which I like, but it was doing funny things. This was yesterday when Gmail was announcing that it was going to a OAuth authorization system. I may have been caught up in that but was able to install the Gmail Notified extension that alerts me to items in my inbox.
2. Sizing images in WordPress.com used to be something where you could select a point on the image and drag it to whatever size. With Chrome I need to manually specify the size needed which is more difficult as I have no visual. If this presents a problem, I can always log back in using FireFox.
3. FireFox was not much good at remembering form-fills and the jury on this is still out on Chrome. However, Chrome is real flaky on remembering passwords. Some sites it does and others it does not. Part of this is form fill. For example, I have three different Zoho CRM accounts and Chrome is not remembering my usernames and passwords for any of them. This really sucks.

Overall, I really am liking Chrome. That being said, I am also quite fickle. We will see what tomorrow brings (smile).

Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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Another “Fish Friday” – Wrap It Up!

Whoa! What a week. Lot’s going on and lot’s to discuss. It was a pretty interesting week in the worlds of social media, NetWorks! Boise / Sales Results LLC,  and technology so maybe we can begin the discussion with …. tech talk.

Virus Alert: Not any particular virus. mind you. Just the one that got in my computer (smile). I was pretty upset as I do pay for a multi-computer license for what I was lead to believe was a pretty robust anti-virus package, Nod32. Not robust enough, apparently (smile). Something grabbed, of all things, my iGoogle gadget for Gmail for hosted domains. I ran multiple scans, tried to block it with filters, deleted the gadget and thought that had taken care of it (it had not) and then finally did a shout out to one of our NetWorks! Boise members, Joe Mikitish at SEN Technologies. Joe is a rock star and an uber geek. He now has me running AVG (paid version) and Malwarebytes (also) paid. Go to Joe’s company site for a link to each under the “support” box.

There is another plus side to all of this. I decided not to reactivate (at least at this time) my iGoogle Gmail gadget and instead just set up a direct link on my FireFox tool bar. One of the things that I don’t like about FireFox is that the tabs it uses are so freakin’ wide that they eat up available space real quickly. There is a FireFox add-on available called Tab Control which allows you to specify minimum and maximum tab widths. I have both set to 150 which makes tabs approximately 1/2 the width of the standard tab.

Zemanta introduced their new version and the interface is beautiful and it works wonderfully with both this blog and with Gmail. Performance appears to have been substantially increased!

Paint Shop Pro X2 from Corel was on sale at Staples last week and I got it for $49.99 after mail in rebate. I’m hoping that if I play with it enough, it will allow me to display sharper screen captures on this site. Actually, I know it will as I have already had some success in improving the look at that was without even reading the book. Yes, it even has a book (smile).

On to Social Media ….

TweetDeck‘s web site is now configured to address the new Twitter List features in great detail.

LinkedIn has a new, very clean, interface that I think I am going to like a lot. I wish FaceBook would follow this lead.

SocialScope Lite’s Twitter and FaceBook client for the BlackBerry just introduced a new version (the first that I have seen since I started using it) and it now includes lists and geo tagging. Good thing that I can pull in my Twitter lists because the group tabs I had set for it did not get carried across in the update procedure. Fortunately, I had those duplicated on my lists within Twitter itself.

One thing I have always coveted for this site was to be able to provide readers with the ability to Tweet or otherwise share articles that they read and like. This site is on a WordPress.com platform and that is not one of the available widgets. Addtoany solved that as is demonstrated by the “Share” badge found at the end of this post.

NetWorks! Boise had its Group #3 pre-launch meeting this past Tuesday and we will be formally starting the group on January 5 with 15-20 members which will bring our total membership in the three groups to well over 50. Time to start planning for Group #4 but I am leaning toward it being a little different. I have another version of NetWorks! Boise that has been previously developed but has never been introduced. Maybe the time is …. now. At any rate, here we are in the middle of the worst economy since the Great Depression and we are doing networking groups that require double the investment of competitive groups, and we are experiencing rapid growth. In fact, seven of our member companies think that the groups are valuable enough that they have chosen to be represented in more than one group. These companies, all of our members, understand the difference between an expense and an investment and recognize the value we provide. If you do not grasp this concept, you don’t belong with us anyway (smile).

Sales Results LLC is the legal entity behind NetWorks! Boise. Very shortly it will become much more as we have several exciting projects and products in the works. I would love to tell you about them now but, that would be premature AND, I would have to kill you (smile). Stay tuned. Subscribe to this blog or get updates via email. Links to do either or both are found on the top right sections of our sidebar.

“Fish Friday”. That’s a wrap! Thank you for visiting!

Craig

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4 Applications That Caught My Interest This Past Week

shutterpoint.com

This is going to be fairly quick post as, frankly, I just don’t have the energy to go too deep into much of anything. Turkey hangover (smile). That being said, here are four social media applications that peeked my curiosity this past week. They are HootSuite, Mr. Tweet, Klout, and Feedly. I have not had much time to play with any of these other than to get them set up and give them a whirl. I would suggest that you do the same as each has some very interesting applications.

HootSuite has been around for some time and has been viewed by many as a very effective Twitter client. Some folks swear by it over more well-known tools like TweetDeck and Seesmic. Well, it just got better. To my knowledge, HootSuite is the first to integrate LinkedIn updates into its feed selection. Mind you, others will follow and will follow quickly now that LinkedIn has opened up its API to developers but, there is something to be said for being first (smile).

Unlike TweetDeck and Seesmic’s Desktop client, there is no software to load. It is entirely web based. You can track both multiple Twitter and FaceBook accounts and will also follow your FaceBook fan pages starting next week. You may display up to 3 columns on a page at any time. However, you can have more columns than that and it is super easy to scroll across the page to reveal the additional columns. Not being able to do that easily is something I have always hated about both TweetDeck and Seesmic. Then again, maybe I’m just stupid and can’t figure it out (smile). In addition to columns, you can also add multiple tabs. So, I have a Twitter tab and one for FaceBook and one for LinkedIn. Each tab can also have columns. Think searches and, yes, it also supports Twitter lists and can import those from your account.  Hootsuite will also let you update to Ping.fm which gives you a variety of other sites that you can send to. For example, I use Ping.fm for Ning.

There are two features about Hootsuite that I have always loved. You do have the ability to send your updates now or at a specified time later. You can even do that with FaceBook. And then there is the Hootlet. This button sits on my toolbar and when I am at I site I find interesting, I can just click on that button and an update is created, the URL is shortenend, I can select any or all of my feed accounts, and decide to send that update now or later. That’s why I call this HootSweeet! Finally, HootSuite will also handle RSS feeds. I am thinking of it as an alternative to Twitterfeed which has been a little bit flaky as of late.

Mr. Tweet is a name that I had seen before but had never investigated. Yesterday I was followed by a local company and received an automated message that they had found me on Mr. Tweet. Hmmmm, said I. So, I went there to take a look. Sign up and Mr. Tweet will go to work analyzing your Twitter account and will direct message you later (about 1/2 hour) when it is prepared to share that information with you. Builds that sense of anticipation and curiosity (smile). Get your notification and follow the link to your page. What it does is analyze who you follow and who follows you and based on a set of algorithms suggests folks that you may wish to follow. If you do, they will get that automated message. It also suggests folks that you seem to engage with a lot and offers you an interface, if you wish, to write them a recommendation. Now, in my humble opinion, if you are out on Twitter and LinkedIn and begging for recommendations, you are truly missing the boat. Nothing makes me feel better than to write a recommendation for somebody who I appreciate and so doing without being asked. And the person that opens that little unexpected present … how do you think they feel about that? Probably the same way (smile).

Klout  is another interesting Twitter analytic tool. It takes your account, analyzes it, and provides a wide range of statistical information in various categories about just what kind of Tweeter you really are. It also makes suggestions on how to improve. Klout also suggests who in your circle are likely influencing you and others in your circle who may be influenced by you. It gives you and overall “Klout Score” which I would interpret as just how much of a Twitter heavyweight you really are. I would suggest that nobody gets “participation points”. Klout is a tough grader. I got a 33 and, yes, that is out of 100 (smile). Another interesting feature is that you can enter anybody’s twitter name and, if they are registered with Klout, you can learn the same things about them. Knowledge is …power (smile).

I’ve heard this name on and off for some time. Most recently, I have seen a number of articles about how this application will soon be available for Chrome and how excited folks are about that and that they may now be willing to switch over from FireFox. Chrome is starting to offer extensions now in case you missed that. At any rate, Feedly works with my Google Reader and presents these articles in a more user-friendly format. I can also share articles to Twitter, FaceBook etc. I can even do this with folks that subscribe to my reader or Feedly account. Feedly also comes with a little toolbar that pops up vertically on the lower right corner of the screen. You can disengage this, by the way. This toolbar is another “sharing tool”. If I like what I am reading on a page, I can click on the Twitter or FaceBook icons to share it our even email it. I really have not played with this app, however, I do have an idea for a business model where it may come into play.

Happy day after Thanksgiving! Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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RSS Feeds – “Really Slick Stuff”

I’m quickly developing some sort of “love affair” with RSS feeds and here is why. There is just so many darn things you can use them for and there are a couple of tools out there that help me to accomplish three of my major goals: my education; sharing great content with other folks through social media outlets like Twitter and FaceBook; and they are now allowing me the capability to further promote our groups, our members, and their companies. Sweet!

My Education: Whenever I encounter a site or a blog that I find interesting, I’m always looking for the “RSS Icon” as shown above. Click on that and I am immediately taken to a screen that allows me to automatically load this feed to my Google Reader. If you don’t see the icon, look for something that says “Subscribe” or words to that effect. Failing that, you can still try to manually feed the URL to your reader and see if it can find the feed from that address. I’d guess that this last-ditch method will work better than 50% of the time. Now that the feed is in your reader, you can peruse articles at your leisure and read the ones you find to be of interest. There are probably well over 500 such articles that go to my reader each day, perhaps closer to 1,000, and it takes me maybe 1/2 hour per day to sift through those. I also use a tool called ReadTwit that takes the links from Tweets of those that I follow and converts and loads them into my reader. In other words, that obscure shortened URL actually converts to something you can read and understand.

Share Content With Followers: From my Google Reader, once I have selected an article to read, I can also choose to send that article out via Twitter or post it to FaceBook. There are other sites that you can share it to as well. If this article was generated by a Tweet, I will typically follow that back to the person who sent the link and then RT (retweet) their update. The only shortcoming with using the reader interface is that it needs to be a separate action for each site you wish to share to. No biggie.

Now, let’s say that I find a site that consistently puts out quality articles. A site that I trust implicitly to be both professional and interesting. Enter Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed allows me to take any RSS feed and set up a system whereby the app will automatically scan each feed on a set schedule to look for new content. When it finds said new content, a tweet is automatically generated along with a content header and a link to that article. It’s a win-win. I am credited with generating and sharing good content and the person who wrote the article is promoted at the same time and it generates hits to his or her site. You can also add standard prefix and suffix language to the tweet not to exceed 20 characters per each. Got to love that!

Promote NetWorks! Boise, Our Members, and Their Companies: I used to have Twitterfeed scan this blog for new articles however, a few months ago WordPress.com added a “publish to Twitter” option that sends the article out immediately. And, I’m an “immediate” kind of guy so I took this off that service. However, I did create a new Twitterfeed account for NetWorks! Boise and added it to that. Follow me as I try to make sense of all of this for both you and me (smile).

NetWorks! Boise is committed to showcasing our members and their companies via any legitimate avenue that we can either find or create. This site, as well as our individual group sites, are examples of this commitment. Social Media is another tool that we have used on a limited basis to accomplish this goal. The goal being … push member information out. So, here are the steps being taken:

1. I have created a new Twitter account, @NetWorks_Boise, for this purpose. At least for now, this account is pretty much going to be fully automated.
2. I have encouraged the members to provide me with links to their, and their company’s, blogs and have been loading those into the new Twitterfeed account along with the feed for this blog.
3. At the same time, I have been also loading these feeds into my existing Twitterfeed account and the reason for that is .. right now @NetWorks_Boise has about a grand total of 5 followers (smile). Once the follower count rises to a reasonable level, I will likely remove these feeds from my main Twitterfeed account.
4. Each of the feeds is prefaced with the member company name or member name and has a suffix reading “NetWorks Boise Mbr”. Remember, a 20 character limitation for both the prefix and the suffix. We promote both the member and the group.
5. Guess what? Our dedicated group pages also have those cute little RSS icons on them. And even in multiple places (smile). I am testing these out now for one group and using two of the separate feeds available: events and group activity. Actually, I learned this trick from Jamie Morgan who runs NetworkInCDA up in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho who is also the individual who introduced me to the Ning platform that we are using. Thanks, Jamie! Follow her @jamiemorgancda. Very smart gal! The result of this will be that whenever new member activity is created on the site, a tweet goes out. Should a member post an event on the site, you guessed it, a tweet goes out.

I’m pretty pumped about all of this and can’t wait to monitor the results. I do know that our member blogs are already getting hits as a result of  this and that’s the goal that we hoped to achieve.

Hey, it’s a Saturday! Don’t say I never gave you anything! (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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My Tech Week In Review – It Sucked (smile)

In a previous post I arrogantly announced that I was kicking FireFox to the curb and switching over to Chrome. Well, I did and now it looks like I may need to make the switch back (smile). Mind you, I like Chrome. It is blazing fast. Perhaps this is due to the fact that it is not loaded up by a lot of available add-ons that reside on my FireFox page. Honestly, I was able to get by without those.

My problems with Chrome center around the fact that it just does not play nice with several programs that I use regularly including: Ning (editing problems), FreeCRM (dumping me out of the software), and WordPress.com (a combination of crashes and editing issues). Unfortunately, those issues outweigh the speed gained. My biggest problem with FireFox remains typing latency. I am hoping that this may be resolved in version 3.6. If you look at the image in the upper left corner of this post, the logo in the middle is a combination FireFox/Chrome icon. I am realizing that this is sometimes what it takes….. two browsers at the call for different applications.

DSL: In another vain attempt to maybe minimize my latency problems. I upgraded my DSL speed today from 1.5 meg to 7. Do I see a huge improvement in terms of speed anywhere? No and that sucks The conversion was also touch and go and I am so grateful that I chose to have the Qwest tech do the installation and can promise you that I made sure I got my money’s worth on that service.

Bing Mobile and Loopt: I installed these apps on my BlackBerry this week. For me at least, Loopt is lame. As for Bing mobile with live search, great idea but I can not seem to figure out an easy way to get the voice search to work. On top of that, both these apps are GPS reliant. Loopt is all GPS. Having those activated proved to be a huge drain on my battery so I removed Loopt altogether and disabled the GPS on Bing. I can activate it if I ever need it.

Google Wave: I am severely underwhelmed by this product. What good is it to provide somebody with an invitation to try Wave and then not provide you with any invitations that you can send to others so that you have somebody to “Wave” to? At best, it strikes me as a fancy hybrid of instant messaging and email. Now, if you and your team were to schedule a time to all meet together on-line for a wave session, I can see the value. Like email, it is totally dependent on having whoever you wish to collaborate with being on board at the same time. I think I have 6 people on my contact list that have it, one of whom I have no idea of who he even is, and even the person who sent me the invite has never responded to my request to collaborate. Same with two others. This tells me that nobody in my small circle is any more excited about this product than I am.

My one bright spot for the week has been threadsy. I requested a private beta invite a few weeks ago and one came in my inbox a few days ago. Think of a Tweetdeck or Seesmic like interface, and it is very pretty, and then throw your email feed(s) along with Twitter and FaceBook. Yes. Multiple emails and multiple Twitter accounts. It get’s better. Your email is not just a feed. You can actually use it to send messages and reply to those received. More on this cool app in an upcoming post.

Well, pretty grumpy this week. That parking ticket on Tuesday didn’t help (smile). Thanks for visiting!

Craig

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