I published this blog post over on Direct2Dell.com, Dell’s corporate blog:

Today, we’re pumped to be a part of Twitter’s new “Enhanced Profile Pages” (EPP), a new feature Twitter is launching today with a select handful of partners, including Dell.

Key features of Twitter’s *new* Enhanced Profile Pages:

• “Pinned Tweet”: Ability to choose what Tweet appears at the top of your timeline. (think sticky tweet – great way to feature content!)
• Expandable Media: If the pinned Tweet contains a photo or video, it will auto-expand [as shown below]… rich, in-line media really adds punch to your twitter profile, and
• More branding: via banner @ top of page.

Exclusive partners like Dell will have early access to upcoming product enhancements, features, custom Twitter-produced events and marketing programs. Additionally, Twitter will provide custom 2012 analytics roadmap including online behavior impact studies, sentiment analysis and value of a follower.

Wow, that’s a ton of new, great features! For businesses, these improvements are fantastic. Now we can highlight featured content with rich media clearly displayed at the top of the stream.

For Dell, you’ll see these improvements across the following Dell twitter accounts, starting today:

• @Dell
• @DellOutlet
• @DellEnterprise
• @DellSmbUS
• @DellHomeUS

Here’s a sample mock-up of how our @Dell page could look with these new twitter features (once the page is live, I’ll update this post with a screenshot of it):

Notice how the pinned tweet at top includes an embedded YouTube video, which is playable right on your business profile (great way to keep traffic on your page and drive up engagement).

Be sure to check out Twitter’s blog post announcement today . Twitter will slowly roll out enhanced profile pages to a wide audience of brands in the coming months. Check out http://fly.twitter.com/

I think these enhanced profile page features really up the game when it comes to publishing social business content. No longer do we just see a stream of tweets, now we see vibrant content that is much more engaging!

What do you think of these new features? How do you anticipate businesses will put these new features to work?

More importantly, what do you want to see from Dell for the pinned tweet (featured content)? Do you want to see videos? photos? slideshare decks? whitepapers?

Let us know, we’re listening!! As always, your comments and feedback are welcome here.

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Earlier today, I was inspired by Tris Hussey to provide a comprehensive list of Google Chrome “power extensions.”  So, here is my exhaustive list of forty “must have” Extensions for the Google Chrome browser.  But first, to get started you’ll need to download the Dev version of Chrome (it works great on my new Windows 7 PC laptop).  Mac users can get the mac Dev version here.   Google Chrome is by far the best performing browser ever released to the web.  It will liberate you from the frustration so common with other browsers.

There are hundreds of Google’s extensions, so if you’re looking for something not on my list, then go here and search for it!  Please do let me know if have any feedback to share.  Feel free to recommend different extensions, or perhaps you know of a better version, than I have listed here:

AdBlock
Aviary Screen Capture
Better Gmail

Facebook for Google Chrome

Feedly

FriendFeed
OpenID AutoFill

Docs PDF/PowerPoint Viewer (by Google)
FlashBlock
Fittr Flickr
Google Apps Shortcuts

Google Tasks

Google Voice Notifier (by Google)

Ok, phew you installed all these great extensions!  Ok, now go tweak the “Options” for each extension here –> chrome://extensions/ You can also disable or uninstall extensions.  (I had to disable the “Cool Iris” one as it was crashing too much).

Subscribe to this blog (RSS or email) and follow me on twitter.

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We’ve discovered an adorable yet highly useful little product that could significantly ease some pain and lead to greater levels of productivity for smartphone developers.

It’s ridiculously simple as a concept, yet it allows for more creativity, freedom, and portability than any other tool we’ve seen for mobile developers, hands down. The product of a design shop and a web development lab, both based in Australia, these nifty and inexpensive toys have been popping up in offices all over Silicon Valley. Read on to learn the secret behind your favorite mobile dev’s favorite Christmas present.

It’s made of paper.

Yes, the Notepod is the Moleskine of the digerati, an ingenious little sketchpad shaped like an iPhone. The front of each sheet features “52mm by 77mm of blank space floating in darkness,” and the back of each piece is a blank grid of graph paper, perfect, as the site says, “perfect for notes or jotting down the phone number of a hot geek.”

Notepods each contain 100 pages, and you can snag a 3-pack for around $18USD. Shipping will take between 7 and 12 business days, unless you're lucky enough to live in Australia or New Zealand.

As we all know, the best ideas often hit you at inappropriate or inconvenient times. As Inventive Labs posted, “It’s incredibly fun to come up with an idea in the pub over a few beers;” however, how fun is it to decipher those indecipherable, scrawled-on and soggy cocktail napkins the next morning? Keep one in your bag, one on the nightstand – wherever inspiration strikes. It might be made of paper, but we think smartphone developers will find it a fun and simple productivity tool.

via @rww The Ultimate Gift for the iPhone Developer in Your Life: Notepods.

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As telecommunications and technology changes how we live our lives, it is not inconceivable to think that in the near future, we will control every aspect of our world via social media and personal devices.

Click for larger view

Full article: http://www.americainfra.com/news/future-cities/

via Future Cities by gdsdigital on Flickr.

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Social media is now the #1 method for information sharing via the web. Facebook has surpassed email as the primary means for sharing content – that is simply amazing!

Per AddToAny, a company that provides Web publishers tools to let their users share web content, more people now use Facebook to share links than any other service — including, email.  Check out the charts below which show the breakdown in visual detail:

(click to enlarge image)

- This chart via Silicon Alley Insider: Chart of the Day (data source AddToAny)

Mashable.com - writer @AdamOstrow had an earlier post on this topic with even greater detail and better analysis of the data.  What really caught my eye was this key statement,

“social networking now has more reach than email worldwide.“

Here’s a more comprehensive chart provided in Mashable’s post:

(click to enlarge image)

- This chart via Mashable (data source AddToAny)

Microsoft Office 2010 is lookin’ good!

Check out this cool video.

I *hope* the talented team that created this video is inspiring the work of the new MS Office 2010 Suite product lineup!

YouTube – Office 2010: The Movie.

Google – Social Web Blog: Introducing the ClackPoint gadget

[Google Friend Connect users ....] Now that you’ve added Google Friend Connect to your site and are using some of the great gadgets to develop your community, have you wanted more direct communication with and between community members? Well, ClackPoint gives you exactly this by mixing text chat, conference calling and a dash of document sharing, and presenting it as a gadget for Friend Connect.

The ClackPoint gadget doesn’t just let your users chat live in a text-based chat room, it also lets them dial in and talk either directly from their computer or, if they prefer, by phone. Status icons in the gadget mean that users can see who is dialed in and who is talking, and can poke or mute themselves or each other.

In addition to supporting live text and audio chat, ClackPoint also provides collaboration features, including a shared notepad allowing multiple users to edit simultaneously, and slide sharing for those times when your community needs to present and discuss written information.

We think that integrating online collaboration with Friend Connect makes a lot of sense. Friend Connect is already a great way to extend a website with social features to build a community, and the heart of any community is how it communicates and interacts with itself and others. Bringing live text, voice and document sharing into a website keeps users on that site and strengthens the community built around it.

Developing a gadget for Friend Connect was a great experience. Friend Connect’s use of OpenSocial meant we could target multiple social networks with one code base, greatly accelerating our development.

via googlesocialweb.blogspot.com

Wow, this is awesome!

Posted via web from susanbeebe’s posterous

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via gizmodo.com

From Gizmodo Blog: iPhone OS 3.1 update (cool new features!) “Now that the iPhone OS 3.1 SDK (and accompanying beta firmware) is out in the wild, new features are showing their faces. The update improves video editing and app integration, Voice Control over Bluetooth and a slew of minor tweaks.

Here’s the breakdown, according to people who’ve played with it:

* Video editing on iPhone 3GS wont overwrite the clip over the original when you are editing a clip.
* iPhone will now vibrate whenever you switch to the mode where you can move and arrange icons on the iPhone home screen.
* “Fraud Protection” toggle has been added to settings under Safari.
* iPhone boot time is now faster.
* Voice Control over Bluetooth.
* New APIs to enable third party apps to access videos and edit them.

The changes are decidedly incremental and oriented towards 3GS owners, but I wouldn’t have expected much more from a decimal upgrade. And of course, this isn’t an official feature list, so more changes could come to light soon.

Update: The iPhone Blog has gathered a few more, but nothing huge:

* Updated AT&T profile to 4.2
* Updated modem firmware to 5.08.01
* Improvements to OpenGL and Quartz.

That second bit there could be a hurdle for the Dev Team types; we’ll have to see. [Redmond Pie, iPhone Blog]”

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5305260/iphone-os-31-features-better-video-editing-voice-control-over-bluetooth-and-more#

Posted via web from susanbeebe’s posterous

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LOOK and see the cool, new features over at twitter!

Take a look at the “Followers” and ‘Follows” pages of twitter user profiles… see the changes?!

Here’s a marked-up screen shot which clearly shows the changes…

Now you can perform these actions:

• Turn on SMS
• unfollow
• mention
• block
• direct message
• and “more”

twitter new improvements (click to enlarge)

What do you think of these improvements?
Like them or not?
How would you have designed these features?
What’s your take?

Take a look at the official Twitter Blog announcement regarding their new feature improvements:

Twitter Blog: Following and Followers Page Improvements.

Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Following and Followers Page Improvements

When you click on the Following and Followers links from your Twitter home page, you’ll notice that we’ve upgraded the design of these pages and added features. Instead of a basic list, there are now actions you can perform that provide a better overall experience. For example, you can turn on SMS, unfollow, mention, block, direct message, and more. Tip: You can also view the accounts that someone else is following and follow them yourself.

posted by @Biz at 4:16 PM

UPDATE: Mashable.com (@AdamOstrow)  also just blogged about this topic here.

The Mindjet Blog » Visualize Google Search Results in a Mind Map.

Visualize Google Search Results in a Mind Map

The Google Wonder Wheel

Yesterday, our CEO sent me an article from Lifehacker that announced a new Google experiment, the Google Wonder Wheel. The experiment didn’t actually work on my desktop but the video on YouTube demonstrated the capabilities. It’s just like a mind map that allows you to drill down into deeper search results. The future is getting cooler, right?

Using the wonder wheel made me wonder about MindManager. I realized that we can already do this type of visual searching inside MindManager 8 already. Let me show you how it’s done.

Use Google Search Results Inside of MindManager

While the Google Wheel simply lets you search visually, MindManager lets you use your search results in your work! Here are a few ways that you could leverage this feature today:

• Build a better business plan
• Update your strategy for our tough economic climate
• Track your competition
• Research for a report
• Prepare a presentation
• And more…

Here’s a look at how fast and easy you could start using search results in your map. Start with any map that you’re working on.

Select the topic that you want to search and then use the Google Search map part to perform your search. You can also specify how many results you would like to appear within the map.

MindManager performs the Google Search and returns the results in your map.

Next to each of the results is a summary text note which describes the web page and a hyperlink to the web page. When you click on any of the hyperlinks, you can open up the page inside of MindManager where you can simply cut and paste relevant content into the map that you are working on.

Once you have the search results in your map, there are all sorts of ways that you can leverage them. Here are a few ideas:

• Drag, drop and reorganize the results into your map
• Copy and paste content from within the pages into your map
• Update the text notes with your own comments
• Use icons and tags to categorize the results
• Filter the results to display subsets based on your criteria
• Transform the links into tasks, assigning resources, due dates and % complete

What do you think about the Google Wonder Wheel and mapping out your search results?

About the Author: Michael Deutch is Mindjet’s Chief Evangelist, content contributor for the Mindjet Blog and the Mindjet Connections newsletter. Get more from Michael on Twitter.

Source: http://blog.mindjet.com/2009/05/visualize-google-search-results-in-a-mind-map/trackback/

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