About.Me

I recently posted all of my contact information (email, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr), a short bio and where my writing appears, on About.Me, a personal profile page that points users to my content around the web.

I'd be grateful if you would take a look at it and let me know your thoughts. If you think this might be useful for your personal or professional web presence and decide to create your own About.Me page, please let me know so I can take a look at yours.

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Which Twitter Program Is Best?

Once upon a time, when I was heavily involved in using Twitter, I discovered Tweetdeck and was very happy with it. A few months ago I bought a new laptop after the screen on my old one cracked. Since I wasn't doing a lot of tweeting at the time, other than occasionally checking my iPhone Tweetdeck app, I didn't bother adding Tweetdeck to my new laptop.

Now that I have the blog up and running and am trying to use social media like Facebook and Twitter  more often, I've decided to install a Twitter program on my new laptop. But I'm wondering if there is something newer, shinier and better performing than Tweetdeck, or if it's still the best choice?

What do you use, and what do you like about it?

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Artwiculate

Here's another suggestion my brother sent me that is of particular interest to people who enjoy words and expanding their vocabulary.

Artwiculate is a Twitter-based word of the day competition. To play you just use the word of the day in the proper context in one of your tweets. Other tweeters vote as to how effective your use of the word was in your tweet. You can earn points when people like your use or retweet it. But for wordsmiths, the real fun is in constructing a tweet using the word in the best way possible and in seeing how others use the same word of the day.

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20 Most ReTweetable Words And Phrases

If you are a fan of Twitter and you want to know the best way to get your 140-character gems ReTweeted, Fast Company has posted "Nine Scientifically Proven Ways to Get Retweeted on Twitter" for you. Although there may be some debate about some of their points and charts, I was most interested in their list of the 20 Most ReTweetable Words And Phrases.



I'm not surprised by number one since "you" is a universal word in successful marketing. I WAS surprised that number 8, "free", was not at least number two, if not number one. "Free" is one of the bedrock words in marketing, so to find it in the number 8 slot was a bit confounding.

Personally, I don't think I've ever said anything worth retweeting. But it might be interesting to try to put together something using as many of these 20 Most ReTweetable Words And Phrases as possible to see how often it might get duplicated on Twitter.

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Closing Some Tabs

Too many tabs open in Firefox so it's time to say a bit about them and get them closed.

My friend Michelle wrote a great article about sci-fi themed lodging around the world.

If you are a user of Gmail, GoogleDocs, GoogleCalendar or any of the other free apps that the "Don't be evil" giant offers and ever think the day may come when you'd like to move your data from Google...well Google is ahead of you. They have formed Data Liberation with an eye toward you freeing your data so you can move it into or out of Google whenever you're ready.

About 10 days ago Twitter announced changes to its Terms of Service and Mashable-The Social Media Guide promptly predicted the 10 People You Won't See on Twitter Anymore. I know WilW is much happier.

Over at DIYPhotography.net readers were asked to submit their favorite photography book selections. When the votes were all tallied, the results became 10 Photography Book Recommendations By DIYP Readers. I own several books on photography, but it just so happens I do not own a single one of the recommended books. I believe that may explain my lack of photography skills. Amazon Wish List, here I come!

I happened to catch a bit of "Glee" the other night because Cindy asked me to DVR it so she could see guest star Josh Groban (who didn't even appear until the last 8 minutes). I don't understand the appeal of this show. In my opinion, the Sears Blue Crew commercial was more entertaining.

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Twitter Marketing - Book Review

I was on Twitter a couple of weeks ago and Steve Weber, author of ePublish: Self-Publish Fast and Profitably for Kindle, iPhone, CreateSpace and Print on Demand; eBay 101: Selling on eBay For Part-time or Full-time Income, Beginner to PowerSeller in 90 Days; The Home-Based Bookstore: Start Your Own Business Selling Used Books on Amazon, eBay or Your Own Web Site; Plug Your Book! Online Book Marketing for Authors, Book Publicity through Social Networking; Sell on Amazon: A Guide to Amazon's Marketplace, Seller Central, and Fulfillment by Amazon Programs; and Plug Your Business! Marketing on MySpace, YouTube, blogs and podcasts and other Web 2.0 social networks (WHEW!!) sent out a tweet asking anyone who wanted a free review copy of his latest book, Twitter Marketing: Promote Yourself and Your Business on Earth's Hottest Social Network, to Direct Message him with their mailing address. I'm a sucker for free, love to read and always enjoy writing a book review so I sent my address, received a "Thank you" tweet and found Mr. Weber's book in my mailbox a few days ago.

Twitter Marketing by Steve Weber is an excellent guide for both the new Twitter user and the experienced Twitter addict who is interested in exploring the marketing, promotion and advertising capabilities of the 140 character marvel.

Weber begins by answering the universal question asked by people new to Tweeting, "What good is Twitter?" and points out the benefits to both your personal life (after all, Twitter IS a social media tool) and to your business life, especially if you're in business for yourself. Weber shares a few success stories of businesses that have successfully used Twitter to increase their sales, client base and business presence, just to whet your appetite for what Twitter can help you accomplish.

Before getting into the basics of Twitter, Weber advises those new to the application to stop and think about "why" they want to use this application, pointing out that this simple few moments of reflection will help the user to get off to a good start in using Twitter to his or her best advantage.

After covering the basics of what Twitter does, how to set up an account, how to get the most out of your profile, how to search for people to follow and how to begin sending out Tweets, Weber explains how to personalize your Twitter home page and make it another marketing tool, and how to use several third-party applications to enhance your Twitter experience.

The meat of this book is the marketing aspect and how to build your following. There are certain steps that should be followed and they are all laid out here for the reader's benefit. Weber gives both some common-sense suggestions and some specific guidelines that may not occur to everyone, especially new users who are unfamiliar with what Twitter or some third-party applications can do to enhance marketing efforts.

Twitter Marketing: Promote Yourself and Your Business on Earth's Hottest Social Network by Steve Weber is 114 pages of easy to understand guidelines and suggestions for using Twitter to market your business or personal brand. Published by Weber Books, it has a list price of $14.95 and is available from Amazon at a discount price of $13.45. I've begun to implement some of the ideas in one of my other Twitter accounts and can heartily recommend Twitter Marketing.

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Every Mundane Fact...

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Twitter Abbreviations

This past Thursday was a difficult day for users of Twitter. The service went down early in the morning due to a Denial Of Service attack that left most of us wondering for the first few hours why tweets seemed so slow or even just non-existent.

Tweeting is fun, but sometimes that 140 character limit can make it difficult to get your message across. Sometimes you need to use a lot of abbreviations to fit everything in; but what if you don't know what abbreviations will make sense and which ones will leave people scratching their heads? Or what if you're reading a tweet with a lot of abbreviations that leave YOU scratching your head?

Thankfully, PR Cog's Gear Grinding blog has a post entitled PRCog's Basic Guide To Butchering English For 140 Chars... with all the helpful information you'll need to either use or understand abbreviations in tweets.

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Flying To D.C.

Back on the road...well "in the air" actually, today as I'll be flying to D.C. and then a shuttle bus ride out into the country for a week of advanced training at the isolated "school."

When I was there 18 months ago, the facility had no Internet connection in the dorm rooms or classrooms and cell phone signals were almost non-existent unless you walked to the outer edges of the compound. I've not heard that any of that has changed, so I've already scheduled blog posts for each day that I'll be away. I cannot leave the facility during the week I'm there, so I'll have no opportunity to find a wi-fi signal in a coffee or sandwich shop.

As usual (and if I can find a cellphone signal to use my iPhone) the best way to keep up with me in real time will be through Twitter.

At least it won't be icy cold and snowing like it was when I was there in January of 2008.

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Twitter Police! Freeze!!

This is hilarious!

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Twittering The Atlanta Braves

Yesterday I twittered that I got tickets to the Atlanta Braves' home game Friday night against the Milwaukee Brewers and a few minutes later both the Braves and the Brewers were following me on Twitter.

I hate to tell the Brewers, but I'm a Braves fan, lol.

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Holy Twitter!

Lately I haven't been as active as I usually am on Twitter because I've been so busy working on one assignment in Atlanta and another one in Tennessee. But tonight I decided to glance at my Twitter page and found that I have 117 people following my Tweets! In the Twitterverse that is nothing, but since I never even imagined having more than 50 it's pretty incredible to me.

I'd better crank up my Tweet-rate before I lose some, lol.

Follow me on Twitter.

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Georgia On My Mind...Again

A few hours ago I got the call I had been expecting telling me to report to Atlanta where they're setting up an office for this deployment. I'm flying out from Orlando Monday afternoon around 2pm and arriving in Atlanta just in time to drive through rush hour traffic from the airport to my hotel.

I had thought I might be going back to Valdosta, so I had left my suitcases packed from my last trip up there 10 days ago as if I would be driving back there, but with the office being situated in Atlanta I will have to fly and that means re-packing to bring the weight down so it doesn't cost as much as the plane ticket in luggage surcharges.

The last time I was in Atlanta was June of 2007. I was only there for 3 1/2 weeks for some training, but I did get to see my first live MLB game, as well as touring a nice art museum and taking the CNN behind the scenes tour on my off time. I probably won't have much of that for the first few weeks of this deployment, but perhaps later on I will get a chance to tour the Coca-Cola Museum, something I didn't get to do when I was there almost 2 years ago.

I'll be getting to work with some old friends and some new folks that I've been wanting to work with, so I'm looking forward to this assignment with a little more anticipation (though I love ALL my deployments) than usual.

As usual, I'll be Twittering as much as I can, so that will be a good place to keep up with where I'm at and what I'm doing.

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Twouble In The Twitterverse

One of the best self-cognizant faculties we have is the ability to laugh at ourselves. This had me ROFLMAO at myself.

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Doubletree Twitters Me

So, last Friday I blogged about checking into the Doubletree in Lexington, Kentucky and how happy I was in comparison to the "Hotel-Chain-Which-Must-Not-Be-Named" that I had checked out of a few days earlier.

Here's another example of how cool it is being on Twitter. THE VERY NEXT DAY, I had the following Twitter message waiting for me from Doubletree which, amazingly enough, has its own Twitter account!



If you check their Twitter page you can see they use the app to send nice messages like the one they sent me and to tell their guests in various locations about things going on around the hotel area in which they are staying. Just another way Twitter is functioning as a social media tool and a marketing tool for businesses.

Follow me on Twitter.

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New Media & Social Media Acceptance Growing?

If you're reading this in the morning, please don't read too loud as hopefully I'm still sleeping in on my first day off after 2 weeks and 144 hours of work.

Thanks.

Zzzzzzzz.

On a daily basis, when I am out on assignment around the country, I review news clips that mention our mission. In the past, only those from "official" media outlets have been collected and disseminated. But for the first time this past Tuesday a blog entry was included and on Thursday, lo and behold, a Twitter post appeared. It feels so cool that new media and social media mentions are beginning to be included now and not dismissed as being beneath recognition.

Do you think Obama, with his high visibility of using YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and even placing a blog on the official White House website, might be responsible for that?

New media and social media writers or spokespeople are consistently accused of being unreliable or inaccurate by the "official" media, but we're all very much aware that those so-called "official" media outlets aren't always reliable when it comes to relaying accurate reports either.

In fact, tomorrow's post will highlight some more of those fun spelling errors I see all the time and some of those are from the "Big Boys."

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Semper Gumby

I was so tired and distracted last night when I posted my previous entry that I completely forgot to write about the reason for the title "Always Flexible" so I'll remedy that now.

One of my co-workers sent an e-mail about how crazy things were and that, as our unofficial motto states, we must be flexible and he signed off with the words "Semper Gumby." I meant to tie that at the end of my post to the title and it completely slipped my mind until I was lying in bed about to go to sleep.

Now you are fully informed.

Moved into our new building/offices this morning. I moved my stuff from the old location at 6:30 this morning and drove the 4 miles or so to the new building while it was still dark. That caused a bit of a problem when I was able to get out for lunch later in the daylight because I didn't recognize anything in the light. I uploaded the pics below to TwitPic (see, if you were following me on Twitter you would have seen them before reading this) after a couple of hours in the building. As you can see, there is still a lot of moving-in going on. But by lunch time most everyone was moved in and pretty much up and running.





We're not freezing, we have plenty of room, both organizationally and personally, and we're closer to lots of places to eat. That's important when your work day is 13 hours long and you've got to eat three meals in close proximity to the office.

Speaking of freezing, the temperature here in Frankfort has started to rise and today would not have been bad if the wind had not been so brisk. Forecast is for the area to eventually reach the low 60's by the middle of the week and I can't believe I actually think that is warm but I do after the -1 degree morning we had a few days ago. It's all relative, right? The only downside of the warmer temps is that they will be accompanied by days and nights full of rain. We are worried that the melting snow and ice, combined with the new rains, may pose a threat of flooding in this region.

The wi-fi signal in my current hotel is still hit and miss...with more miss than hit. Rather than fight it over and over trying to get this post uploaded, I've stopped at Panera for dinner and to use their wi-fi signal so you can read my wonderful words. LOL.

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Save The Words

My friend, Mary Ann de Stefano of MAD About Words, Twittered earlier this evening about a really cool site called Save The Words and I thought I'd share it with you.



The basis of Save The Words is that every year words are removed from the dictionary due to lack of use, so if people will adopt these rarely used words and employ them in their writing and conversation they can be "saved" from removal or even reentered into use and the dictionary.

In addition to adopting these words, the site also offers suggestions on how to spread your adopted word in conversation, e-mails, SMS text messages, letters, and even in unusual ways such as sky writing and tattoos. You can also sign up to receive a Word of The Day e-mail to expand your vocabulary.

My adopted word is "plebicolar", because that's how I roll. What's yours?

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Neil Gaiman Wins Newbery Medal

Acclaimed author Neil Gaiman was announced on Monday as the 2009 winner of the prestigious John Newbery Medal for his novel "The Graveyard Book", and it is a more than well-deserved award for the best-selling science fiction and fantasy writer. "The Graveyard Book" is the story of an orphaned boy who is raised by the spirits in a graveyard, a story that Gaiman says was inspired by Kipling's "The Jungle Book", and an occurrence with his own 2 year old son some 20 years ago when he allowed the toddler to ride his tricycle in a cemetery across the road from their home and was inspired to ask, "What if a young boy was raised by dead people?"

I have been a fan of Neil Gaiman's work since his run as writer on DC/Vertigo's "Sandman" comic book series and have been entranced by a host of his novels like "American Gods", "Anansi Boys", "Stardust", "Neverwhere" and many others. He is also a prolific blogger, which is a favorite in my RSS feed, and he has apparently fallen in love with Twitter and delights those who follow him (that would be me as well) on that social-media tool with multiple tweets on a daily basis.

Newbery winners have included such favorites as Louis Sachar's "Holes" and Kate DiCamillo's "The Tale of Despereaux" as well as a favorite of mine from my own childhood, Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle In Time" which won in 1963.

On Gaiman's blog, he writes that "The Graveyard Book" is not just a children's book. It's "a book for pretty much for all ages, although I'm not sure how far down that actually starts. I think I would have loved it when I was eight, but I don't think that all eight-year olds were like me."

No, but some of us were, lol.

Congratulations to Mr. Gaiman on this illustrious award!

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EMPTY Prototype Community Of Tomorrow

My step-son and his fiance are tying the knot in about 6 weeks and they asked if Cindy and I would get their photographers into EPCOT this past Saturday so they could take some pre-wedding photos. It has been quite a while since Cindy and I have had the opportunity to enjoy EPCOT (or ANY of the parks, for that matter) alone so we decided to stay and tour the World Showcase and enjoy a light lunch.

But we really had no idea HOW alone we would be. We have never seen so few people in EPCOT on a Saturday, not even after 9/11. I told Cindy instead of Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow it was EMPTY Prototype Community Of Tomorrow. Look at this sparse street scene in the normally crowded and bustling United Kingdom pavilion.



That was at 2pm in the afternoon, and it was almost like having the park to yourself. I'm NOT complaining as it made the visit much more enjoyable, but I AM stunned at just how few visitors there were that day, not only in the World Showcase but in the Future World area as well.

Here are a few more photos. First up are two picture I took with my BlackBerry and uploaded to TwitPic to share with my Twits who follow me on Twitter; here is Cindy at EPCOT and then me at EPCOT.

Then here is one I shot of Wendy, Jeremy and Cindy when we first arrived at the park before we went our separate ways.



Cindy with Spaceship Earth in the background across the lake.



Finally, just one of my "art" shots, lol.



I was not happy with almost all of my shots because a camera setting was wrong, but I may try to work on them in Photoshop and possibly upload the salvageable ones up to Flickr in the next few days.

We enjoyed a light lunch at Boulangerie Patisserie in the France Pavilion, a quick-service restaurant that dishes up a small assortment of sandwiches, quiches, French pastries and beverages. I had a turkey and cheese on baguette with an apple tart for dessert and Cindy had a ham and cheese croissant with a chocolate eclair for dessert. We sat on the stone planter in the courtyard and watched people (the few there were) walk past us.

It was while watching those people that I observed something I had not seen before and it left me somewhat confused. If you've ever seen what I'm about to describe, I'd be interested in hearing about it. A very attractive young woman and her, I assume, boyfriend, walked past. I could tell she was attractive because she was wearing tight jeans and a form-fitting, low-cut top. The confusing part was she was also wearing the traditional Muslim hijab, but with the front lower portion that would cover her chest thrown back across her shoulder which exposed her cleavage. It was a true clash of values or views or however you'd like to phrase it. The casualness of most Western attire with the symbol of modesty (in this case, almost modesty since the front was thrown back) required of Middle Eastern females appearing in public. Very difficult to reconcile, for me.

Anyone else ever witnessed this or something similar?

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