Archive for August 2009

I’m eager to check out Pure Hidden, a hidden object game that has hit the top of the charts. The details:

Open mysterious boxes containing hidden objects, mechanisms, puzzles, logic and manipulation games, and a series of interactive surprises. The game contains over 1000 objects to discover in its peculiar world. Unlock wallpaper images as you dive into the dream-state adventure that is Pure Hidden.

Download the game from Big Fish Games.

Steve Champeon (@schampeo), “first blogger I ever read” and long-time friend, dropped me a line in response to my tweets in Twitter. The gist: twitter isn’t meant for group chats (to distinguish it from standard tweetversations). He likened chatting in Twitter to sending large file attachments in email. “Twitter for reach, other medium (whatever it is) for comprehensive details,” he wrote.

He makes valid points that could’ve converted me. I wasn’t giving up chat because it let me participate in a group discussion without barriers (not counting Twitter’s funky problems). No more “What she say?” “Can you please repeat that?” “I missed it. What??” I believe many people think I’m obtuse when I say that stuff.

In fact, I enjoyed several meetings this week plus the recent conference I attended. I loved hearing what everyone had to say that it tore me to peep those phrases to my luckless friends sitting nearest to me. I wanted to know! But it meant coming across as dense in front of my friends and fellow board members.

I knew Twitter chats aggravated people. Even if you say, “About to chat. Put me on twittersnooze,” not everyone catches it, wants to bother or knows what it is. I’ve lost followers because of my continuous streams of contributions in chats (Believe me, I don’t want to be the only person in someone’s Twitter stream).

I learned my lesson and created a different ID for chats. This helps my followers, but it doesn’t help everyone else who follows the folks partaking in the chat.

Maybe it’s time we do things differently. My first option would to be to create a web-based application for Twitter chats where everyone’s chat IDs would work, but the chat would not appear in the public Twitter page. At least, we’d all have our IDs, bios and Twitter connection intact. Not happening with my help because (1) I know little about application program interface (API) programming, and (2) I don’t have time to manage a project of this sort.

However, two solutions have popped up. Panel chatting and alternative applications.

Panel Chatting with Platformchat

When Christina Katz (@thewritermama), author of Writer Mama and Get Known Before The Book Deal contacted me about doing #platformchat in Twitter after the first session, she wanted to begin with an interview format and then open the floor for questions for the latter part. I wrote her back saying that the successful chats I’ve participated in didn’t work that way. (Hey! It’s experience talking!) Instead, the moderator asked questions and anyone could chime in. In the case of a guest, the guest would answer all questions and everyone else could still tweet thoughts.

Shame on me. I used to work in process management. The whole point of process management is to capture the current process. It doesn’t stop there as continuous process improvement takes over because we know things change or we discover better and faster ways to do the process.

The first official interview-style chat amazed me thanks to Therese Walsh (@ThereseWalsh) and Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman). People hold interviews in Twitter often, but I focused on “chat” rather than interview thinking that experienced chatters (we tend to show up in a few chats) would have trouble adjusting to the different style (in fact, one person stuck out in a recent #platformchat she used the “other way” of chatting.

The advantage of this one is that only the moderator asks the questions and the guests answer rather than the whole group. That eases the pressure on Twitter. The Q&A that happens has, again, only the guests doing the answering.

Happy to admit I was wrong. This chat works like a panel discussion as the moderator asks the questions for part of the panel and then opens it to the audience. Except this is better! Well, for me, anyway because I don’t miss one word.

Alternative Applications

A few of the chats I join have taken this route when Twitter decides it can’t handle its current load and our tweets appear five to ten minutes after the fact. My favorite solution, so far, is FriendFeed thanks to #editorchat with Tim Beyers (@milehighfool) and Lydia Dishman (@lydiabreakfast).

Yes, FriendFeed — the aggregator. It has a feature where the moderator can set up the chat / group and post the original question / topic. Then everyone can reply underneath that. So every new question or topic has all the responses right under it rather than all the replies getting scattered in Twitter. You’ll have people answering the latest questions while some remain on the earlier questions.

You don’t overwhelm anyone’s Twitter stream. The only overwhelming you do is if you feed your FriendFeed into other social networks. I had FriendFeed sending my tweets to Facebook, but stopped that. Few on Facebook know and understand Twitter. That’s overkill for them.

Furthermore, FriendFeed has all of our Twitter IDs keeping us connected that way. We can look up people and follow them back.

Tinychat is my least favorite. You can’t adjust the size of the tiny window and the text. Pausing the chat takes work to figure out. I take that back. Worse than Tinychat was the moderator appearing on a webcam. I couldn’t catch any of the questions and felt like I was in a face-to-face group discussion all over again and missing two-thirds of what people said.

Let’s Change!

If anyone would refuse to change Twitter chats, it’d be me. Remember — no barriers, connections, etc. The message is clear. Twitter chats clog the stream along with the current silly trends that some celebrity urges people to bring to the forefront. A solution is possible. One that connects us Twitter users while relieving Twitter and our followers of the downpour of streams.

Image from Design Reviver

I lived in my first and second houses in Washington, DC. We had to move to a second home because the first had to undergo renovations.  (Why they put us there in the first place, I don’t know.) The second house had a small empty flower bed in the front whereas the first didn’t. So we primed the dirt and planted rose bushes. Why we picked them, I don’t remember.

Those bushes blossomed and then some. They grew unwieldy. Gardening and plants weren’t my forte, so I struggled to figure out how to trim the bushes so they’d take on an uncluttered look. On the other hand, it amazed me that we grew a flower bush.

Bigger Flower Bed, Bigger Troubles

Then we moved into our first owned home. This time, we had two average-sized flower beds. They’ve undergone a couple of landscaping jobs and never to our satisfaction. The latest, we planted too many sage bushes. We love them; they’re great for Texas weather, low watering, stalwart and best of all, they require little care. Of course, you can’t help smile when you see them covered in purple. We miscalculated how big they’d grow.

They overtook our sidewalk in front of our door. Nope, not allowed. Those had to go. When the sages bloom, they scream for the bees to come visit and the bees respond.

With a few allergy sufferers in my household, we don’t care to find out if someone is allergic to bees the hard way. So out went some of those sages. We still have a few — away from the sidewalk. Now both flower beds sit half empty with nothing but rocks.

Unwelcome Visitors

And weeds that broke through the covering and rocks. Those weeds! We had the black covering and everything. They still broke out of their jail of dirt and out into the daylight without a care if it rains or hails. Despite its evil plans for uglifying my flower bed, I admire the weeds’ strength and determination to be prickly and strong.

Think about it. Weeds are simple plants that bug the heck out of us. Its only purpose in life is to come charging out from under the earth despite any walls or coverings in the way. We all experience frustrating days where it feels like one problem appears after another. If weeds can make it, we certainly can and many have.

I’ve heard many stories of how people overcame horrors and barriers in their lives to come out stronger for it and staying positive.

I’d rather substitute weeds with people and that’s a story we can learn from. Besides, people wouldn’t mess with my flower bed.

Flower bed remains a half blank canvas. We’re hoping to figure out a small, simple landscape that needs little watering. Oh, and triple covering.

P.S. The backyard landscaping has zero plants, lots of rocks and some big rocks as decor. And what do you know? Weeds made it through, too.

Robert Hruzek’s What I learned from… inspired this post. Hat tip and thank you, Robert.

The recent trip to Austin for Texas PTA’s awesome leadership seminar and PTA meetings to prepare for packet pickup blanket me with the feeling that school’s almost here. Is it time yet? Three years ago: school would’ve started this week.

But Texas legislature wanted to pump up tourism and cheap employment, it changed the required start date to late August. Thanks. We have bigger problems to worry about than when to start school.

We have a little over two weeks until school starts. We parents and guardians still have to deal with the packet pick up days and registration before then. (Read: write a lot of checks and pay lots of money.) Enough shootin’ and stompin’ and time for linkin’.

• 10 Reasons Twitter Might Actually Matter: For those who don’t want to bother reading the list of 62 ways to use Twitter.
• 30+ Principles to Better Landing Page Design: I happen to be reading and doing an abstract on Landing Page Optimization. Both give you the what and why.
• WebQuest: “A WebQuest is an inquiry-oriented lesson format in which most or all the information that learners work with comes from the web.” [Link: misscj]
• 10 Words I Would Love to See Banned from Press Releases: These are the types of words I tend to delete when I decide to publish a PR.

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• Fancy Fast Food: Food network meets fast food = pretty fast food.
• Tweet song lyrics to @lyricrat of http://lyricrat.com/ to get the title and artist.
• Smokin’ Apps for mobile devices. Be sure to pick something other than “today” because nothing might appear.
• Want a ‘do from the ’80s and be able to fix your way out of trouble? Here’s the salon for you.
• Can it rain clouds? Or did someone have a giant whipped cream machine nearby?

LinkedIn can do more than just grow your connections and look them up. I love using LinkedIn Answers, which gives me an opportunity to ask questions to the vast network. Some of you may not have discovered this feature or realize it can help you with an assignment. Take advantage of LinkedIn and all of your connections.

Your Account

1. Create a complete profile.
2. Enter your @twittername or email address after your last name in your profile so it always shows up. (See mine for an example.)
3. Import blog entries into LinkedIn with BlogLink or WordPress applications.
4. Incorporate Twitter tweets into your profile with the Company Buzz application.
5. List clients, publications and writing work in profile.
6. Link to your other social media accounts so account stays fresh with updates.
7. Set up to receive LinkedIn messages in your inbox so you can respond right away.
8. Publish LinkedIn URL on business cards, email signature, email newsletters, web sites and brochures.
9. Import vCards and contacts from other platforms to find more connections.
10. Export contacts to import into other applications.
11. Join industry and alumni groups related to your writing topic, business and past work.
12. Join writing groups.
13. Avoid hard-sell and marketing when posting in LinkedIn because they’re a turn-off.
14. Update your status with recent work that benefits customers such as “Need ideas on how to use Twitter? Read 50+ Writer Uses for Twitter.”

Content

15. Do market research with Polls.
16. Conduct polls and surveys.
17. Share poll and survey results.
18. Post content with value to show expertise without a hint of self-promotion.
19. Ask questions in Answers to find experts, obtain quotes or learn more about a topic.
20. Post questions in Answers to see what customers and prospects want or think.
21. Link to your other social media accounts so account stays fresh with updates.
22. Combine with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, someone asks question in Twitter, you respond in 160+ characters on LinkedIn and link to it from Twitter.
23. Start and manage group or fan page for book, topic, platform or business.
24. Share links to articles and content posted elsewhere with a summary of why it’s valuable to clients and prospects.
25. Post presentations using a presentation application.
26. List your newsletter subscription information and archives.
27. Use LinkedIn’s search tool to find what you need and specify what you need (people, jobs, groups, etc.).

Connect

28. Use search feature to find people, agents, writers, virtual assistants and experts by company, name, industry and city.
29. Research experts, agents and others before meeting or contacting.
30. Write honest and valuable recommendations.
31. Request a LinkedIn recommendation from happy clients willing to provide testimonials.
32. Check connections’ locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading using My Travel application.
33. Ask your first level contacts for introductions to their first level contacts.
34. Connect clients with your first level contacts.
35. Interact with LinkedIn on a regular basis to reach those who may not see you on other social
36. Find experts and writers to invite them as a guest blogger, speaker, guest, etc.
37. Post job listings to find qualified talent to help with a project or be your backup.
38. Look for connections related to a gig you want.
39. Collaborate with others by sharing files, data and information with applications like Huddle Workspaces.
40. Find vendors and contractors through connections.

Marketing

41. Post discounts and package deals for books, writing services and products.
42. Buy a direct ad that only your target market will see.

ShortURL to this post: http://bit.ly/linkedinwriters

What other ways do you use LinkedIn for writing?

The following games will be discounted next week on Game du Jour, the first ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Sun. August 2nd: 50% off on Mythic Adventure

Mon. August 3rd: 65% off on Bellatorus Deluxe

Tue. August 4th: 50% off on Teen BMX Stunt Bike

Wed. August 5th: 60% off on Room Boom: Suburbia

Thu. August 6th: 50% off on Mugakapu

Fri. August 7th: 50% off on SWAP the Matrix

Sat. August 8th: 50% off on Confronte r: The Tower of Time