Question Fifteen

This week our assignment is about web personalisation. We have to take a stand on personalisation and decide whether we are for it or against it. We have to explain our decision and provide evidence to back up our opinion. We have to use our own arguments and thinking and illustrate our points with images and examples and links to websites showing good and/or bad practice.

Web personalisation is a strategy and marketing tool. It is the process of tailoring the presentation of a website’s content to match a specific user’s instructions or preferences. This custom tailoring is accomplished either by the user choosing from a menu of available alternatives or by tracking his or her behaviour (such as which pages the user has accessed and how often) on the website.

Web personalisation models include collaborative filtering. This shows relevant material to customers by combining their own personal preferences with the preferences of like minded others. Collaborative filtering works well for books, music and DVD’s etc, this would therefore work well for my e-commerce business Play.com.

Both of the websites Play.com and Amazon.co.uk use personalisation. They recommend products to shoppers on their sites based on their previous purchases. Amazon makes extensive use of collaborative filtering in its personalisation technology. This can be seen in the screenshot below. When a customer purchases a product from Amazon they will recommend products that other people with similar interests bought.

The next screenshot shows another example of web personalisation. It shows that when you visit Amazon’s website it says “Sign in to get personalised recommendations”, so as soon as the customer has signed in they will be provided with recommended products.

After researching about web personalisation I personally believe that it is a good idea and a very useful tool. There are several advantages with a company using personalisation on their website.

• It tailors the website to the customer’s interests, this can therefore help increase sales for the company.
• Recommends products that customer may be interested in but not know about. For example if a customer bought a CD by a certain artist, the website could recommend another CD by the same artist or a different but similar artist.
• Saves time for the customer. It eliminates repetitive tasks and remembers transaction details. This will help encourage customers to return to the website for more purchases by making the transaction as easy for them as possible.

Does provoking a widespread response automatically equate to success?

The British Humanist Association (BHA) and the Atheist Bus Campaign latest billboard posters against the take over of community schools by faith groups has certainly, once again, brought their campaign to media and public attention.

Billboard campaign against faith schools

The adverts have drawn a positive response from the significant, possibly the majority, proportion of the British public who feel uneasy about schools being subverted to the wider strategic aims of religious organisations, and their fears that children will be coerced and our communities segregated.

Likewise the posters have also provoked a small flurry of negative media commentary that the campaign has had to try and rebut this week.

Media and online responses to the poster are clearly divided, but does this imply success or failure for the poster? This will depend on the strategic aims of the initiative.

On one side the poster is clearly helping a fundraising drive, has energised supporters and helped to keep the issue in the public eye. On the other the poster has equally energised its opponents who, as is life in campaigns, won’t accept the desired framing of the issues at hand and will seek to re-frame the debate.

However, one indicator of relative success is how the campaign seemS to have become synonymous with billboard advertising, in so far as that a search of the term “billboard campaign” on Google brings up BHA and Atheist Bus web pages as the first and third results and a BBC report on the campaign comes in second.

Friday morning will see Darcy and I braving the stage prior to the opening of the annual English Teachers’ Association conference ‘Hit Refresh‘.

Why?

Because for this ETA conference, for the first time, the conference is going web 2.0 – we’re stepping up the interaction, participation, and networking by providing some seriously cool online spaces for teachers to wet their toes in, and hopefully also dive right in to!  So, we’ll be getting up (in our awesome Twitter t-shirts ) to show the folks at the conference how to get involved in communicating with others, and how to use the backchannel.

What is a ‘backchannel’?

You know when you’re sitting, watching a keynote or presentation, and if you know the person in the next seat you might make the odd remark in their ear?  Well, a backchannel is like doing this on a mass scale – it’s like having a silent ‘channel’ on in the background for anyone who wants to make comments or ask questions that the rest of the audience can see, and if they want, silently respond to.

It’s like passing notes for grown-ups.  Ones that you know the teacher can read too if they so choose (so you can be critical, but must also be polite!)

From wikipedia:

The term “backchannel” generally refers to online conversation about the topic or the speaker

…it is the practice of using networked computers to maintain a real-time online conversation alongside live spoken remarks.

What are we using?

The most effective way of paticipating in a live backchannel during the conference is to join Twitter, and post short 140-character messages called ‘tweets’.  Anyone who ‘follows’ you can see your comment or question – and some people might also respond.

Do I have to have a lot of followers for this to work?

(or ‘yikes! but I’m not that famous yet!’)

If you are new to Twitter, never fear.  If you tag your tweet with the ‘hashtag‘ ETAConf09, then the comment that you tweet will also be seen by anyone who has searched for that tag – not just the people who follow you.  This means that even if you have NO FOLLOWERS, you can add to the backchannel discussion, and people can tweet responses to you.  Here is an example:

Wow! I thought Kelli and Darcy did a great job explaining the backchannel! #ETAConf09

To which another user might reply:

Does anyone know where I can find the video they showed at the start? #ETAConf09

You see the potential here?  And it’s easy!

What’s this I hear about a conference ‘Ning’?

‘Ning’ is the cute name that the people over at Ning.com made up to describe their online site that is used for NetworkING.  It’s a very easy site to use, and a great way to introduce yourself to online learning if you haven’t already.

ETA members (all of you – whether you are physically at the conference or not) can join the ETA conference Ning and add comments and questions there too.  Darcy and I will be monitoring the Ning as well, and it is another place that a kind of backchannel will likely spring up.  It’s probably less likely that this will happen during the sessions though.  I imagine a lot of people will be logging into our Ning on Friday and Saturday night, and for awhile after the conference, to send comments to friends, colleagues and presenters, and to share ideas and resources.

For the most effective participation in a LIVE backchannel, I seriously recommend you use Twitter.

Any questions?

If you have any questions, you can post them here as a comment, or ask them on Twitter.  You can find and follow me at http://twitter.com/kmcg2375, or Darcy at http://twitter.com/Darcy1968

See you in the Twitterverse!

Google Trends offers some macro-level information on what searches are popular and how key terms and phrases have trended over time.

For instance, typing in “webex” outputs a fairly flat graph with some sharp peaks and dips, the most notable at point C when Cisco announced its acquistion of the company.

What’s important to note, is that the graph captures (on average) how a search for a particular term performed relative to all possible searches.  So in this example, the total number of searches for “webex” may have increased over this time (it did in fact) but so did the total number of all other possible searches. A more detailed explanation is offered here.

Google Insights takes it one step further to give you a micro-level view of how a search term is doing relative to a specific category.  So, we’ll use the same example but this time we’ll see how the term “webex” performed relative to the “Internet” category.  Now we see sharper peaks and dips and an overall increasing trend.

Google Insights can be useful to determine the success (or failure) of your marketing efforts relative to your industry.  Other filters you can apply for a search term are seasonality (to predict demand), geographic distribution (to know where your customers are), and properties (to compare how you’re doing against other terms or competitors).

Using Google Trends and Google Insights gives you some pretty general info, but you may find that it can complement your own internal tools by providing a pulse on what the search market is doing.

Anyone else using Google tools to monitor their business?  I’d love to hear about it.

A great article about the potential for social media usage within schools, how it encourages collaboration and communication, and real-time feedback, and much more!
http://www.tes.co.uk/article.aspx?…

http://ets.freetranslation.com/

A great article from an inspiring woman. It also shows through using an online learning/exchange platform, a very large intranet (Glow), children can benefit from exchanging and networking with other schools as well as within their own, learning at their pace. A positive step forward, but she also highlights the negatives that are most common all around the UK, schools and teachers finding it difficult embracing ICT cross-curricular, only strengthening the cause to increase training for teachers & schools. One thing Wroxham can agree with what she says is “…education needs to be turned right on its head – it’s time for bottom-up rather than top-down”. Worth a read!
http://www.agent4change.net/index.php?…

http://www.speakeasy.net/speedtest/

http://www.ip-adress.com/speedtest/

http://www.speedtest2.com/

http://www.chasms.com/

http://va.zensupport.co.uk/

http://www.temulator.com/indexBig.php

http://www.simplehelp.net/images/leonetsim/index2.html

http://network-tools.com/

“Creating slideshows can be an excellent way for students to summarize their learning, share their what they’ve learned, and to share their ideas. If you have students that create slideshows that you or they think should be shared with a wider audience than that of their immediate peers in the classroom, the web offers many ways to do that…” Visit the site!
http://www.freetech4teachers.com/2009/11/12…

For me, the best part of Thanksgiving is the pumpkin pie.  I’ve already had a slice and will probably have to go to the store on Wednesday and buy another pie.  This is not helping in my battle to drop some weight.  I’m seriously thinking of Twittering my weight once a week in an effort to provide some external motivation.  What do you think?  Post it here @Teach_J. Now on to the low fat links.  With even more holiday flavor.

1 – I’m not a regular reader or a fan of The Scobleizer (the man with a huge following on Twitter), but this link came via my Twitter feed and I agree with a lot of the premise.  I’ve been lamenting this trend on this blog for some time – the blurring between the ad space and the content space.  The loss of ethics and standards of journalistic conduct.  And if those stories aren’t enough to crush your inner journalist, then watch this video of an LA Times reporter on Dancing With The Stars and wonder where is journalism heading?

Reporting on The Stars?

2 – Is The Internet Dying? Or is it experiencing the same slowdown as the global economy?  Here’s a slideshare that shows Internet traffic is down to a great many sites.  The question is why?  I’m wondering if it is due to mobile devices.  I’m not sure that the google metrics the slideshow uses show mobile hits.

3 – I love guerrilla marketing.  Anything different, outrageous or funny will get people’s attention.  What makes it effective is if you make a point too.   Here are some good examples, now I just want to know how we can take these ideas and translate them into good ideas to sell yearbooks.

4 – If you are like me, you spend a lot of hours in front of a screen both at work and at home.  I really like this Lifehacker article about making your workstation ergonomic.

Make your workspace ergonomic

5 – Thanks to Viewfinder Blues for putting me onto the trail of this gem.  You’ve got to love the pure ’80s schlock value.   Funny, yet satisfying.

6 – The copyblogger has been one of my favorite blogs for a long time.   Short, useful posts like this one are why – The Art of the Paragraph.

7 – Thanks to the wonderful Suzanne Yada for posting this interview with blogger and head TWIT Leo Laporte on the future of journalism.

8 – Copyblogger strikes again with this post about EMINEM and how he is a great storyteller.  I don’t like his music, but there’s no disagreeing with his success as a rap artist, which comes mainly from connecting with his audience.

9 – This next link is just for fun – 8 Video Games that Feature Photographers. My favorite:

10 – Poynter Online has posted a site and a Twitter stream called 100 Things Journalists Should Never Do. Some of it is repetitive, but worth a look.

11 – Advancing The Story has a list of Five Don’ts for Multimedia journalists.  Best take away – Don’t complain about carrying gear. There are hundreds of darn good reporters out there who are carrying resumes right now who would kill to be carrying gear.

12 – DigiDave thinks we can save the communication of information without “Big J Journalism.”   I’m sorry, but I disagree.  I think that without journalists backed with deep pockets, we lose the power of the press to big corporations.  I agree that the current model is broken both at newspapers and broadcast.  People bought the paper for the sports section or the crossword puzzle, the news came as a bonus.  Same with TV, they watch CBS or NBC for the entertainment, but once or twice a day there is also news.  It was good for our democracy.  People were informed by happy coincidence.  Under this new model of the future.  Journalism will be smaller and only found by those looking for it.  Well, as they say, most news is bad news.  Most people would rather not.  The uncoupling of news from everything else in a newspaper or an entertainment source like a TV network will hurt journalism.   It will diminish both the quantity and quality of the news.  The lack of profit will drive talented journalists into other businesses and those few who remain will produce less, thus less news.  Business and government will not care.  There are so many easy ways to spin their PR to the populace.  And now there will be fewer journalists out there to ask the hard questions.

13 – I like this post from the Clever Sheep - Ten Trends for the Classroom of Tomorrow.  But the first one needs to be  getting rid of the Internet nannies in every school IT department.  Otherwise, none of the great Web 2.0 tools will ever see the light of day in a classroom.

Sorry this took so long to get out this week.  I’m on holiday time and that means everything is a little slower.

I write a lot of these, “I hate” posts about social sites, and I don’t usually post them. That’s because a lot of my bitching about some site – while well founded and exceedingly intelligent – are my opinions. I don’t want to keep other people from using what they think is interesting or fun, no matter how wrong about that site they are. (My unpublished scree against Facebook would have certainly gotten me burned as a witch.)

Foursquare is definitely one of these sites that are popular, but flawed, and ultimately not very fun. I’m not trying to sway others away from using it, but I’m definitely out. And here’s why:

1. Foursquare is tough to navigate

My girlfriend puts up with a lot from me and my need to document things via social media. When I tried to explain to her that I had spent 5 minutes just finding the address of the place we were at, so I could enter it as a new locale, check in, and do nothing else, she was floored. I would have done this faster, but it isn’t possible to do this faster. Foursquare doesn’t look at your location and say, “know what? Looks like you’re at Fresh & Easy! Want to check in now?” Instead it makes you jump through hoops just to add a location, or find the one you’re at.

2. Finding ways around the shoddy mobile access resembles “Gaming” the system

Okay, this one is just me getting pissy.

I found that checking into a location was much easier to do once I got home and had time to myself. I didn’t have to ignore my coffee or stand in a busy Target aisle in order to find the mysterious button I needed to press in order to simply say, “I am here.” If I need to add a new place, (which I often do since none of the places I frequent seem to be visited by my fellow geeks,) it takes forever to find the address on Google Maps, type it into the “Add a Location” section of the Android app, all while hoping have a solid connection so it doesn’t time out.

I can do all that, or I can go home and type in the address from my computer. But if I do that I’m not really out in the world, which is what Geosocial pinions on. Also, other users then assume you are playing a trick on the system to get more Foursquare badges.

3. There’s no such thing as a Foursquare badge

Not really, anyway.

Sure, you get these baubles when you check into 10 places, or the same place some number of times, or tag things, (I think – the score card isn’t too clear,) but they only exist on Foursquare, for other Foursquare members to see. And once you are the “Mayor of Xtreme Bean,” which means you’ve checked into Xtreme Bean more than anyone, what have you got? Bragging rights that you go to a coffee shop?

No offense, Foursquare users, but I get trophies for beating levels of Super Smash Brothers too - but I won’t be adding that to my resume either.

4. There isn’t much to do after you’ve checked in

You know all of those asshole reviews of Twitter that bemoan people posting about their meals? Foursquare is the ultimate extension of that, only it doesn’t ask people to post as much as, “I’m eating brisket” – not because that’s uninteresting, but presumably because that’s too much work.

No, Foursquare cuts out the need to type anything, and simply asks you to check in.  Just like Brightkite – the site that also lets you send and recieve messages and photos. With Brightkite, you might also find people in your area to meet. (Which, admittedly, is REALLY uncomfortable if you’ve ever pulled off that hat trick.)

Or there’s Yelp, where you can leave meaningful reviews and find new places. But with Foursquare, the best you can do is leave tips – quick samples of information about a place, but nothing too long or too meaningful.

After that… nothing. No chatting with others, no pictures, no video… At best it works as an add-on for your Twitter account, where you might end up talking to another human.

5. Foursquare is NOT social

Social networking and it’s sister philosophy Social media are grounded in – you guessed it – socialization. Talking, sharing, communicating… you know, that kind of thing.

With this site, the most interaction you have is seeing who’s been at the place you’ve been before, and bumping people out of their “mayorships,” which isn’t the nicest kind of interaction. It feels more like an invitation to a flame war.

“Hey! I’m the master of all things IKEA!”
“Not anymore, jerk!”
“Oh yeah!?! Well I’m going to go there for lunch each day this week and THEN I’ll show YOU!”
“Oh yeah!?! Well I’m going to get a JOB there! For I am the God of IKEA!”

Of course, that would only happen if there was a way to communicate. I’m just extrapolating. My bad. This exchange could only happen on an actual social network. Oh, you can also leave “things to do” at locations, presumably so you can remind yourself and everyone you know that you need to stop at the place you’re leaving that note.

So it is an inovation on, “I’m eating brisket,” as you can now post, “I will soon be eating brisket.” Good job, Foursquare!

“But that’s just me, I could be wrong.”

As I said, if you dig Foursquare, good for you, and have fun. If you are Foursquare, I applaud you for putting out your site. That’s a lot more than I’ve done, as I’ve never put out any social sites. I just use them. Still, having used quite a few, this one has problems.

Which is hardly a unique position for a social site to be in. The list of social networks with big problems is long and distinguished: Facebook, Digg, MySpace, 12seconds, PhotoPhlow, Orkut, Delicious, Utterli, and too many Twitter clones to count.

As such, I think I’m done with Foursquare. When the site becomes more than a check-in game to get electronic badges, let me know.

A twitcam based inter-school exchange of thoughts about learning in the 21st Century.  An event to take place in Feb 2010, run by Stephen Heppell, they are still looking for schools to sign. This will be over 24 hours, and for 48 schools – one scheduled for each half hour using GMT in as many different countries, using video cameras and each school has a chance to show their school to everyone else. Looks like a great idea, what do you think??
http://www.heppell.net/learnover/

Karen Miller Russell with some very useful notes on an US conference session on teaching social media in public relations education.

Bente Kalsne’s list of case studies of how blogs, forums, public data and other online technologies that are being incorporated into Scandinavian politics.

Journalism must be in crisis. Neil Benson editorial director at Trinity Mirror suggests regional newspapers should move into PR services.

Robin Brown 38 invaluable online tools for journalists…or for PRs for that matter.

Greg Mundy the CEO of Aged and Community Services Australia on the power of words and the stereotyping of us all as we age. Greg prefers “seniors” to “the elderly”.

Five lessons to be learned from the recent CharityComms seminar.

Question Fourteen

For our coursework this week we have to construct a list of key phrases that describe our chosen e-commerce business. The final shortlist should be no more than 12 key phrases. We also have to show screenshots of the tools we used to find the keywords relating to our website.

The first linked I used was Google’s search-based keyword tool to provide keyword ideas for my e-commerce business (Play.com). The screenshot below shows that I entered Play.com into the website search box and clicked find keywords.

The following screen appeared which shows a list of keywords (generated by Google) that are related to Play.com. A list of 100 keywords appeared so I looked through them all and narrowed them down to the words I thought were best related to Play.com and that could be used as part of Play.com’s  Adwords campaign.

The next website I looked at was Google Insights. With this website you can compare search volume patterns across specific regions, categories, time frames and properties. I typed Play.com into the search bar and clicked on search.

The following screen appeared which shows 2 images for Play.com. The first is a chart which shows that from 2004 to 2009 interest has increased and is forecasted to keep increasing in 2010.

The 2^nd image shows the usage of Play.com in different countries. It’s clear to see that the top country is the UK, followed by Ireland and Norway.

The next tool I used was Google Adwords. This is a keyword tool that generates new keyword ideas. I typed Play.com into the search bar and I selected the ‘website content’ button and then clicked on ‘get keyword ideas’.

The following screen appeared which showed a large list of 200 related keywords to my website. I looked through these results and tried to pick out the words I thought best matched Play.com.

I also changed the ‘Match Type’ column to see what different results appeared using the three different options ‘ Broad’, ‘Phrase’ and ‘Exact’.

Another website that I used to find keywords relating to Play.com was www.Alexa.com. I typed Play.com into the search bar in the website and it brought back a list of results driving traffic to Play.com from search engines. Examples of these keywords can be seen in the screenshot below.

Chosen list of 12 keywords / phrases relating to Play.com

1. PLAY – This word is nearly the actual website itself and it’s also one of the top/best keywords to appear on Alexa.com.
2. DVD’S - The words DVD’s and DVD are up at the top of all the keywords on both Google Adwords and Alexa. These words are highly relevant to the website as well.
3. BlU RAY – This phrase came very top of Google Adwords and there were also many other keywords appeared relating to blu ray.
4. CD’S - CD’S came up at the top of Alexa and are also probably one of the main reason people visit Play.com.
5. XBOX GAMES – This phrase was high in the list of keywords on Alexa and Google’s search based keyword tool.
6. NINTENDO DS GAMES – This phrase came up near the top in Alexa. It came 8^th in the whole list of keywords.
7. CHEAP DVD’S – This showed up in both Google Adwords and Alexa and is quite a popular keyword relating to Play.com.
8. DVD SHOP – This phrase is similar to both DVD’S and CHEAP DVD’S and it also was highly ranked by Alexa.
9. WII GAMES – This phrase is highly relevant to Play.com and appeared near the top  in Alexa’s top keywords.
10. ELECTRONICS – All the top keywords that appeared in Google Search Based Keywords were electronics and would be a very popular keyword in Play.com.
11. COMPUTERS – This keyword was also up near the top in the list of keywords that Google Search Based Keywords displayed.
12. PS3 – This is the final keyword I have chosen for Play.com. It was ranked highly in Alexa and it is very relevant to the website as well.

I started this post back  in June, but it got stuck in draft mode. This is what I’d written:

Google is changing the rules of internet sometime during this year.
I would argue they HAVE already changed it – they made me watch a 1 HOUR and 20 minutes video of them marketing their latest product.
I ask you – HOW many commercials are allowed to be 1.20 hrs?!

I was skeptical, I really was! And I still am – but just about the release date. I guess I just have to admit to having drunk the Google kool-aid. And it’s okey, because I think ppl who do good marketing are allowed to be successful.

Although I have a hard time doing stuff “half-ass”, I do say: It’s not about KNOWING what you do, it’s about LOOKING as if you know.

So, WHY have I swallowed the Google buzzwords? Because I LOVE technology that allows my messy brain to stay messy. I use Gmail because it group conversations, and because I can search for any keyword and get all matching messages.

And Google “promised” me that Wave would be even better – and since I don’t expect YOU to watch the entire video, here are the goodies:

For some reason I never listed the goodies!! Now I wish I had, because I feel like the dumbest person alive for hyping Wave the way I did, to get the preview and find “poll gadget” and “collaborative sudoko” as the exciting functions.

There IS a way around it, it’s just I haven’t really found it. There are several really good apps/gadgets/add-ons/thingies – it’s just TOO DAMN HARD to come across them.

And for the 3rd time I’m wishing I knew more about writing code – then I could create what I wanted, or at least explain to ppl.

There ARE stuff I like about Wave! Like the fact that there is a “Swedes on Wave” wave created. I mean, things like this can only happen when services are small! Imagine “Swedes on MSN” or “Swedes using email” – those list have probably existed in some form at some point, but WAY before my time. This is realtime history people. And as always, nothing is as straight forward as it will seem looking back.

I’m still effected by the Wave kool-aid and it won’t take much to get me advocating the brand, but it will take a couple of things:

• Speed-it-up! There is just no way around this. The window of opportunity is starting to shut.
  A wave with 300+ user CAN be slow – but not ALL waves! There is just no way for me to internalize wave usage at this point. And there is no way I can leave wave open without it slowing down the entire web browser.
• Gadget URLs – great that I can add them! BUT, once I’ve added a new one, it should really show up in a list of some sort! I mean, there is no way I’ll keep a separate list of URLs for adding to waves. (Taskboardy, Napkin gadget)
• In a long wave – I have to be able to skip all old items and just see the new ones. Maybe I can, I don’t know – maybe it’s just the UI
• If you can’t speed up all of wave, then at least let me see WHAT I’M WRITING! Honestly, it’s cool to see stuff written real time – BUT as a viewer I’ll get annoyed if someone misspells due to not knowing how far he got in the sentence. And as a writer I get even more annoyed, since it’s not real time when you’re forcing me to think and write slower for the system to keep up

I wanted wave to use it as a real time project tool in my small marketing team – but reality hit me and now I’m looking at traditional tools instead. No way to revolutionize the web, if you ask me!

This is an arbitrary list. These are what I basically use/rely on and what I recommend when my students ask. I intend to develop the list and of course all recommendations and comments are welcome:)
1. A blogging software: Blogger or WordPress.com Nowadays, I prefer WordPress. Inbuilt statistics, better templates…
2. A Gmail account. Gmail. All Google Applications require a Gmail account. I wonder why you don’t have one already…
3. Google Docs. It is a great tool to produce collaborative work. It has also Forms to creating surveys..
4. Open Office. In case you are pissed off with Microsoft Office. You can download this Office software which is free. Not as good as Microsoft Office yet but it is still satisfactory. Well, I have written my dissertation by using Google Docs and Open Office programs…
5. Bibme. A free, simple place to create your bibliographies in several Biblio formats. Honestly, I used this to create my bibliography for my dissertation.
6. Paint.Net. A free image editor. That’s the one I use constantly. Some recommend GIMP but I haven’t tested that at all. Let me know if you recommend, too.
7. InfraRecorder. An open source cd burner. That’s what I use for my CDs I listen to when I drive:)
8. For file storage and sharing, in addition to Google Docs, I use Box.net. For a better sharing, I feel like Scribd becomes a better place though…
9. Google Reader. An excellent tool to follow blogs and sites through RSS feeds. I follow more than 400 at the moment and Reader is just great…
10. Tweet Deck. Saved my life. I could not figure out how to use Tweeter more effectively and now I am getting used to Twitter usage:)
11. For microblogging: Twitter and Friendfeed. In Turkey Friendfeed is more popular at the moment. People share great stuff and this becomes a more important source for my blog posts… Friendfeed has some applications so that I can automatically announce my blog posts, youtube activities, last.fm likes at twitter…
12. Youtube. There are many rivals but I still use Youtube. More and more liking its Recommendations… And of course for video hosting it is still a great place…
13. Speaking of recommendations, LastFm is a great music place to find new good musical stuff. Not for downloading but exploration…
14. Speaking of recommendations, Amazon, my beloved, has also great recommendation services based on what you have, what you bought and what you rated.. in books, music, and movies.
15. Speaking of movies, can there be a rival to IMDB, best film database?
16. For music downloads/sharinng. I totally rely on SoulSeek.
17. For a region free open source DVD player software, I use VLC Media Player.
18. For a music player, WinAmp has always been my favorite.
19. In order to bypass Web Censorship in Turkey I rely on Open DNS which worked fine so far… So that I can use YouTube and many hmmm other sites…
20. For free ebook downloads. I start with Aaaarg and PDF Search Engine.
21. For time management, I test Rescue Timeat the moment. Seems cool but I have no final decision yet.
22. In addition to networking, I use Facebook for sharing links and storing my photos online. I could never like much Picasa or Flickr. But these are huge photo storage and sharing places out there… In case you need…
23. In case you want to read some stuff later then here you have InstaPaper. There is a bookmarklet so that when you surf, you can easily mark stuff to read later. Well, so far I bookmarked a lot and did not go back to read but they are there waiting for me:)
24. Do I have to mention Wikipedia. A basic source of knowledge and good to give links to when you write about some stuff your readers may not know…
25. Best social bookmarking site: Delicious.
26. Still testing: Mendeley. Seems to be a great bibliography tool you download and sync with your online profile. Glue. A recommendation service with a pluging to your Firefox.
27. Speaking of Firefox, well my favorite browser. I tried Flock, Chrome and I hate IExplorer and I ended up continuing to use Firefox…
28. For wiki-based work, I use from time to time Wikispaces.
29. Doodle. For event organizations. Decision making about time especially. I used once, it worked fine…