Akron Blogger Community Provided Great Dialogue

Today at our blogging "meet up" session we were all talking and asking questions and explaining and commenting AT THE SAME TIME until finally, Stephen Hopson had to say "STOP!  One at a time!"

Although we had just met a month earlier, clearly the recent decision to meet monthly was a good one because we'd each learned so many new things over four weeks we were fairly busting at the seams to share!

Here are some of the new tools I learned about today.  First off - a bunch of tools for Twitter:

Stephen talked about Summize - the tool you can use to find out who is searching for you on Twitter.  Norma Rist had just mentioned that the other day that unless you know someone's "handle" it is really difficult to find people talking about a specific topic.   Which leads me to the tool Ivana Taylor shared:  Tweet Deck.

Tweet deck allows you to manage your tweets, those who respond to your tweets (so you don't have to go searching through all those comments of the people you are following) but also allows you to create a form of Goggle Alerts for Tweets.  You can set up specific words/topics you are interested in and follow the people writing about them.

I shared my new knowledge of You Send It - the website that allows you to upload large files and email someone (even password protect the data) the file without it going through your server.  Stephen and Ivana also told about Pando - a software you download that can assist with the same issue - transferring large files.

All of us around the table are speakers and Chris Brown shared information about a group called the Association of Associations that has a local chapter in Cleveland.  I can't wait to check out the process for becoming a member - perhaps there will be speaking opportunties available.

Lastly, I learned about Cuil - a new search engine that groups search results in a different manner from Google and is offering an alternative to the behemouth.  Check it out - they even include a photo of the person associated with the site if it is available! 

Wait - that wasn't all - Chris Brown suggested I follow Todd Jordan on Twitter - not just on the cutting edge but perhaps on the "bleeding edge" of online tools. 

I'm not sure that's all we touched on but after a vigorous ninety minutes, my head was spinning!  Great meeting, guys! 

Comments

[deborah]

Hey Ivana - wasn't that an amazing share of information? can't wait to read your post for more juicy details about tweek deck.

Take care.

D

[Ivana Taylor]

Hey Deborah - thanks for the call out and THANKS too for reminding me about all the tools that we pick up along the way.

I've expanded on how to use Tweet Deck for segmentation in today's blog - so thanks for the inspiration.