Bookmarklets – Sharing Content Via Your Toolbar

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I was looking at my iGoogle Home Page yesterday and realized that I have a least 10 different ways to share updates and content to the sites I frequent and can do so without every having to leave that page with the exception of when I am visiting a specific website. Even then, my browser toolbars remain stationary. For my purposes, I am pretty much strictly on three social networking sites: Twitter, FaceBook, and LinkedIn. However, at least one of the tools that I am going to discuss on this post will allow me to post to a large variety of other sites if I so desired. Today, we’ll talk about 7 and each is a bookmarklet, or button, on my browser toolbar. For the record, I am still using FireFox 3.1 as 3.5 was causing stability issues with some gadgets and flat out was not compatible with others. A colleague of mine found that he had to delete toolbars altogether to get by similar issues with FireFox 3.5. Having done that, he tells me that it runs flawlessly. Not ready to go that route … yet (smile). Moving from left to right on my FireFox toolbar we have:

Share on LinkedIn: The link to load this bookmarklet can be found at the bottom of your LinkedIn home page. FYI, at the time that I first upgraded to FireFox 3.5, this tool was not compatible and was, therefore, disabled. At any rate, should you see an article that you wish to share on LinkedIn, from the article page itself, click on the bookmarklet and away you go. Please note that sharing articles on LinkedIn is not the same as changing your update. When sharing an article you are actually either posting it to a group page or sending a notice out to your first degree contacts that they may wish to see the article. However, it’s perfect for this task and does allow you to also provide your comments regarding the post.

Hootlet: This button is provided by HootSuite. It is designed to be primarily a Twitter tool. When I say “primarily”, HootSuite will integrate with Ping.fm which gives you the ability to post to multiple sites so you could also use it for that. For Twitter purposes, however, once again from the website page you wish to share, click on the Hootlet button and a Tweet is prepared for you complete with a HootSuite shortened URL (ow.ly format) and the article title. You can also add your comments within the 140 character limit. What is very cool about this tool is that I can choose to send the Tweet now or schedule it to go out later by date and time in 5 minute increments.

Share on Posterous: I’m going to be doing a fairly sizeable post on Posterous maybe later this week but this button is great for posting content directly to your Posterous blog which can then, incidentally, be auto posted (forwarded) to a variety of sites.

Test Drive: Posterous For Audio

I’ve been seeing the name “Posterous” pop up on articles and Tweets for a few weeks now. I had no idea of what it was or what it did. And, as usual, I’m already distracted enough (smile). Then I saw a Tweet from Tac Anderson at NewComm Biz that also mentioned this, talked about “audio blogging” or something to that effect, and had a link. I followed that link to a post on his blog and it was not much more than a link to something called ….”Posterous”. Hmmm. Clicking on the link I was taken to a site that allowed me to play his audio post. Pretty cool. Pretty cutting edge. I had to take a look further and get me some (smile).

Now Posterous, I believe, is another blogging platform. What’s cool is that you send your blogs in via email or you can also pull videos and photos off website and automatically post them using their “Share on Posterous” Firefox add-on. I have seen it compared to Tumblr which, like so many things, I am aware of but know nothing about. At any rate, I am seeing Tac’s post and, combined with my newest toy, WordPress text widget, I’m thinking that it would be pretty cool to integrate an audio welcome into our site sidebar. Man oh man. I had no idea of what I was getting myself into (smile).

I correctly surmised that I would need a microphone and some way to record sound. Duh (smile). I did find a microphone in a box that came with a Dell that I purchased about 8 years ago. I had never even plugged it in. Now for a recorder. Looking through programs on Vista I found one called “Sound Recorder“. Perfect! Or so I thought. Things continued to go down hill from there while picking up speed as I descended to the bottom (smile). I should step back and say that WordPress.com will allow you to post audio files but only if you buy a space upgrade. I was soon to figure out why.