Becky Holland on Posterous

How Not to Shoot Yourself in the Foot When You’re New to Twitter

By Natalia Sylvester on July 20, 2010

In case I haven’t made this clear before, I’m a huge Twitter fan. Yes, I’m that annoying person who’s always suggesting that my job-seeking friends and entrepreneur friends get on Twitter. Right. Now.

Problem is, they’ll often come back after a few months and say it hasn’t really worked for them. It seemed too time consuming, and they weren’t getting any followers.

But this post isn’t about how to get followers (this one is). It’s about how to make Twitter work for you when you’re a newbie. It’s about how not to mess it up your first 20 Tweets in. Because while it’s true that Twitter doesn’t work for all types of businesses, more often than not it’s because a person isn’t using it right.

So if you’re new to Twitter, or thinking about creating an account, here are some tips to make sure you’re not doing it wrong.

1. Get a Twitter Client, like, yesterday. I know it sounds contradictory, but you won’t be using Twitter to its fullest potential if you’re using it on the website itself. A client like TweetDeck or HootSuite will keep you updated on your replies (so you don’t accidentally ignore  people trying to chat with you). You can create tabs where you can monitor certain keywords, like industry terms, or chats (as indicated by a # sign before a term, like in #brandchat). Because the whole point of Twitter is that there are several conversations being updated in real time—wouldn’t it be best if you sifted through the noise to get to what you want to hear?

2. Don’t make your followers do all the work. If you want to share a link to a blog post you wrote, or a product special on your site, please, please, PLEASE don’t just tweet the link. Give people a reason to click on it. Tell them what’s in it for them; if you ask them to figure it out on their own, they simply won’t.

Don’t make it difficult for someone to RT your messages. Keep them about 20 characters below the 140-character limit so they don’t have to edit your Tweet before sharing it with others.

Don’t Tweet a link to your Facebook status updates. I see people do this all the time, and since Facebook doesn’t have a 140-character limit, their tweet gets cut off and creates a link to Facebook. Twitter-folks don’t like this. It’s like Tweeting a link to another link. We are all busy, and don’t want to go through several hoops to get the info we’re interested in.

3. Don’t send an auto-DM every time a new person follows you. This is, guaranteed, the fastest way to lose new followers. If you want to thank someone for following you, send an @reply and make it personal. Auto-DMs are such a polarizing topic. I can’t stand them, but will quietly roll my eyes upon receiving one instead of unfollowing you. But I’ve seen others get so irritated that they’ll not only unfollow, they’ll announce it with an angry Tweet to all their followers. Yes, it’s extreme, but sometimes, I can’t say I blame them. Auto-DMs are the spam of the Twitterverse. Don’t be a spammer.

I realize this makes Twitter sound like a snarky, unfriendly place. It’s really the opposite, but there’s an etiquette to it just like any other community. So that’s the quick version, the intro. The rest is easy to learn as you go, so long as you stick around enough to find it out. I did, and, several new clients, friends and colleagues later, I can honestly say it’s made a huge difference in my business.

What about you? Are you on Twitter, thinking of joining, totally against it? Leave your tips and questions in the comments below.

Posted in networking, new businesses, online identity, Twitter | Tagged new businesses, online identity, Twitter | 1 Response

This is a great post for those new to Twitter. It can be confusing at first and it's always important to familiarize yourself with a particular sites "rules" of ettiquette before diving in completely. In the real world we do this all the time. You wouldn't show up at a casual party in a tuxedo, and if you were unsure about how to dress you would ask someone. Approaching a new site is similar... if you can't find a great tutorial like this one, just sit back a bit and observe... you will learn what's appropriate and what's not in no time.

The desire for a mentor is deep-seated in the human race. Someone to teach hand-to-hand combat and ancient ninja skills so that we can go on to save the universe would be great, but most people would settle for some guidance with their daily whomp-rat hunting or help teaching bullies a lesson or two.

 Weird Worm Podcast - Ep77 - 7 Movie Mentors Who Failed Miserably [8:14m]: Hide Player | Play in Popup | Download (87)

However, after really taking a look at mentors through a totally unbiased lens (movies), we think we might have to change our minds. Obviously if mentors used their awesome powers to save everyone and never gave their mentees a chance, the movies would get boring and pointless. But did they really have to intentionally withhold universe-saving powers and information in order to teach a lesson to a snot-nosed kid who hardly knows a Sarlacc from a hole in the ground?

1.

Yoda (from the original Star Wars Trilogy)

Live on a depressing, swampy planet and eat snakes, I do. Decide the universe's future, I will.

We’ve (unfortunately) seen from the prequels that Yoda can really kick some bad-Jedi butt when he puts his mind to it. He’s fought off hoards of them over the course of his lifetime. In fact, only nineteen or so years previous to the original trilogy, we see him flying all over the place in so-physically-impossible-only-CGI-could-make-it-happen ways.

If Yoda really is nine hundred years old, nineteen years is nothing. That would be like two in human years. Living things don’t, in general, flip around like gymnasts on meth and then two years later hobble around like cripples one breath away from paraplegia. Aging doesn’t exactly work like that.

The point is this: Yoda let Luke go off to fight Darth Vader, the most dangerous and evil person in the history of ever, after making the kid run half a mile and do some one-handed vertical pushups instead of, say, going himself. Yoda’s got nine centuries of Jedi goodness flowing through his veins, Vader’s got about forty years, and Luke has about five minutes. No matter how much you, as a mentor, are vested in your pupil’s success, you might not want to risk millions of innocent lives and the fate of the universe on his ability to make a pouty face (which is about all he has going for him given his limited training).

2.

Falcor (from The Neverending Story)

The difference between "cute" and "creepy" has a lot to do with size.

Okay, so Falcor is more of an oversized sparkling puppy with creepy eyes than a true mentor, but he’s close enough for our purposes.

Over the course of The Neverending Story, luck dragon Falcor manages to fly in the face of the Nothing, the most powerful force inside Bastian’s head. We even see him as one of the last existing creatures after the rest of the imaginary world falls apart, able to survive after even the world itself is little more than dust. And all of this because, as a luck dragon, he has the power to (mostly) show up just in the nick of time.

So riddle us this: wouldn’t it have been a lot luckier if all of that bad stuff hadn’t happened in the first place? Sure, Bastian had to learn to trust himself and that he had power, blah, blah, blah, but wouldn’t it have been so much easier if Falcor had just flown into the human world (as he demonstrates that he can, when he traumatizes those unfortunate-looking bullies at the end), grabbed Bastian, and whisked him away to Fantastica without all the dying, crying and heart-wrenching despair? Admit it; you know you cried a little when the horse sank into the Swamps of Sorrow.

3.

Gandalf (from the Lord of the Rings trilogy)

When he's not mentoring, he likes to get a good butt-kicking in every now and then.

Now here’s a deus ex machina if ever there was one. We’re not going to say that Tolkien isn’t a genius who changed the face of fantastical fiction forever, and invented several genres single-handedly in the process. However, the character of Gandalf seems to have been used to tidy things up just a tad too conveniently.

The guy can fight a giant fire-rock-monster-demon for weeks, without stopping to eat, drink, or sleep, and come out on the other side of it with a snazzy new hairdo. He can use his staff to make a bright light, and talk to moths, and probably a bunch of other cool things. So why doesn’t he just leap onto an eagle, fly to Mordor himself, and dispose of the ring instead of making everyone’s life suck?

He hides behind this thing that he’s got bigger plans than to save all of humanity, elvendom, dwarf-race and hobbithood from enslavement and genocide. You kind of want to tell him to man up already. Turning a hairy-footed child into a hero who’s so screwed up by the end that he has to take the elf-boat to lala-land is just not worth seeing what the poor guy “is made of”.

4.

Fin Raziel (from Willow)

For a good time... transform into several animal species over the course of a few minutes.

Granted, when Willow Ufgood discovered the good witch, she was quite unfortunately turned into some sort of big-tailed rat creature, (no, not an opossum, thank you very much Wikipedia making it possibly hard to wield any of her usual powers. But was her best bet really to turn to a farmer with no magical training whatsoever?

Seriously. The whole of the world is in danger of being taken over by the evil Bavmorda, and instead of seeking out a real wizard (and we know from earlier scenes that such powerful wizards exist), Fin Raziel puts all her money on a man who has little more going for him than a “big heart.” She’s not a star example of wizardry herself, leading the whole magical battle to be decided by Willow’s silly little magic trick of hiding a baby under a table. A trick which Fin Raziel didn’t even teach him, come to think of it, and that Bavmorda only fell for because apparently she has the attention span of a gnat. You almost wonder if things wouldn’t have been better if Fin Raziel hadn’t been involved at all.

This is mostly just fun and funny to read... but it also brings up a really good point... one that could have been used for a very effective conclusion, since they didn't see fit to include one. We all seek out mentors in our lives and then expect them to hold our hands and do things for us. Truly great mentors don't do that. The great mentors show us what they know and then send us, completely unprepared, into the world to figure it all out for ourselves and save the world with what we've supposedly learned. Have you paid enough attention to your mentors to turn what you've learned into an effective plan to save the world? Your mentor might be there to back you up when you need them, but they are not supposed to di it for you!

Over a year ago my personal branding went through a bit of a change. You see, when I first started using Twitter, I created an account under a variation of my nickname. Later, wanting to change my twitter name  but not really knowing what I was doing, I inadvertently stole the name that I wanted to use from myself.  You can read all about this huge mistake that has taken a year to un-do here.   Digging deep into the posts that I had published over a year ago led me to attempt to get the name that I had wanted to change to, but this time I did it the right way!  Yes-  I had to wait a full year to get the name!!!  So, please learn from my fail and follow these seven simple steps to correctly change your name on twitter.

How to Change

Your Name On Twitter

1. ) Start a new email address - You’ll need this to claim your old name in later steps.

2.) Log-in to your existing twitter.com account.

3.) Click On Settings.

4.) Change you Username to the New Name (it will check the availability)–

In the Username field, change the public profile name to the new account name.  Twitter will tell you whether or not it is available and if it is, you’re in business!

5.) Save the changes — you’ve got your new name, but beware!

Now that you’ve changed your name anyone can claim your old name once you’ve changed away from it.  This is why I had you create a new email address (I just use a new nick name under my google apps user – so that I will get any DMs that come to the old account).  What I recommend that you do now is to claim the old name so that you can point it to the new name.

6.) Log-off of  your newly created Twitter account and  then start a new account as the old name. –You have to use a unique email address, which is why we started a new email account in step one.

7.) Post a new tweet with the  account that uses the old name– This lets everyone know that they can find you at your new name.
I’d also suggest that you update the photo and background to make it look uniform to the main account.

I hope that this as been both educational and… well, at least not too boring.  Changing your twitter name is easy if you do it right the first time. And if you do not, you will have a long wait in which to ponder the error of your ways!

Photo used on post: twitter_Good_Bad by Rosaura Ochoa

Why would you need to change your twitter name?  The process of changing you name gives you the ability to have your branding match your online presence a critical move for every business.

TAGS: Change My Name, How to Change My Name On Twitter, Name Change, Profile Settings, twitter

This entry was posted on Monday, June 7th, 2010 at 11:29 pm and is filed under Featured, Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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If you have ever wanted to change your Twitter name, this tutorial takes you through the process very easily. I've found others, but this is the first one to suggest creating a second email so you can recapture that old twitter account... very important if you've got followers there!!!

We all want to get stuff done, whether it’s the work we have to do so we can get on with what we want to do, or indeed, the projects we feel are our purpose in life. To that end, here’s a collection of 50 hacks, tips, tricks, and mnemonic devices I’ve collected that can help you work better.

1. Most Important Tasks (MITs): At the start of each day (or the night before) highlight the three or four most important things you have to do in the coming day.  Do them first.  If you get nothing else accomplished aside from your MITs, you’ve still had a pretty productive day.
2. Big Rocks: The big projects you’re working on at any given moment. Set aside time every day or week to move your big rocks forward.
3. Inbox Zero: Decide what to do with every email you get, the moment you read it.  If there’s something you need to do, either do it or add it to your todo list and delete or file the email
   
   .  If it’s something you need for reference, file it.  Empty your email inbox every day.
4. Wake up earlier: Add a productive hour to your day by getting up an hour earlier — before everyone else starts imposing on your time.
5. One In, One Out: Avoid clutter by adopting a replacement-only standard.  Every time you but something new, you throw out or donate something old.  For example, you buy a new shirt, you get rid of an old one. (Variation: One in, Two Out — useful when you begin to feel overwhelmed by your possessions.)
6. Brainstorming: The act of generating dozens of ideas without editing or censoring yourself.  Lots of people use mindmaps for this: stick the thing you want to think about in the middle (a problem you need to solve, a theme you want to write about, etc.) and start writing whatever you think of.  Build off of each of the sub-topics, and each of their sub-topics.  Don’t worry about whether the ideas are any good or not — you don’t have to follow through on them, just get them out of your head.  After a while, you’ll start surprising yourself with some really creative concepts.
7. Ubiquitous Capture: Always carry something to take notes with — a pen and paper, a PDA, a stack of index cards.  Capture every thought that comes into your mind, whether it’s an idea for a project you’d like to do, an appointment you need to make, something you need to pick up next time you’re at the store, whatever.  Review it regularly and transfer everything to where it belongs: a todo list, a filing system, a journal, etc.
8. Get more sleep: Sleep is essential to health, learning, and awareness.  Research shows the body goes through a complete sleep cycle in about 90 minutes, so napping for less than that doesn’t have the same effect that real sleep does (although it does make you feel better). Get 8 hours a night, at least. Learn to see sleep as a pleasure, not a necessary evil or a luxury.
9. 10 2*5: Work in short spurts of 10 minutes, interrupted by 2 minute breaks.  Use a timer. Do this 5 times an hour to stay on target without over-taxing your physical and mental resources. Spend those 2 minutes getting a drink, going to the bathroom, or staring out a window.
10. SMART goals: A rubric for creating and pursuing your goals, helping to avoid setting goals that are simply unattainable. Stands for: Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Realistic and Timely.
11. SUCCES: From Chip and Dan Heath’s book, Made to Stick, SUCCES is a set of characteristics that make ideas memorable (“sticky”): sticky ideas are Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credible, Emotional Stories.
12. Eat the Frog: Do your most unpleasant task first. Based on the saying that if the first thing you do in the morning is eat a frog, the day can only get better from then on.
13. 80/20 Rule/Pareto Principle: Generally speaking, the 80/20 Principle says that most of our results come from a small portion of our actual work, and conversely, that we spend most of our energy doing things that aren’t ultimately all that important.  Figure out which part of your work has the greatest results and focus as much of your energy as you can on that part.
14. What’s the Next Action?: Don’t plan out everything you need to do to finish a project, just focus on the very next thing you need to do to move it forward. Usually doing the next, little thing will lead to another, and another, until we’re either done or we run into a block: we need more information, we need someone else to catch up, etc. Be as concrete and discrete as possible: you can’t “install cable”, all you can do is “call the cable company to request cable installation”.
15. The Secret: There is no secret.
16. Slow Down: Make time for yourself. Eat slowly. Enjoy a lazy weekend day. Take the time to do things right, and keep a balance between the rush-rush world of work and the rest of your life.
17. Time Boxing: Assign a set amount of time per day to work on a task or project.  Focus entirely on that one thing during that time. Don’t worry about finishing it, just worry about giving that amount of undivided attention to the project. (Variation: fixed goals.  For example, you don’t get up until you’ve written 1,000 words, or processed 10 orders, or whatever.)
18. Batch Process: Do all your similar tasks together.  For example, don’t deal with emails sporadically throughout the day; instead, set aside an hour to go through your email inbox and respond to emails.  Do the same with voice mail, phone calls, responding to letters, filing, and so on — any routine, repetitive tasks.
19. Covey Quadrants: A system for assigning priorities.  Two axes, one for importance, the other for urgency, intersect.  Tasks are assigned to one of the four quadrants: not important, not urgent; not important, urgent; important, not urgent; and important and urgent.  Purge the tasks that are neither important nor urgent, defer the unimportant but urgent ones, try to avoid letting the important ones become urgent, and as much as possible work on the tasks in the important but not urgent quadrant.
20. Handle Everything Once: Don’t set things aside hoping you’ll have time to deal with them later.  Ask yourself “What do I need to do with this” every time you pick up something from your email list, and either do it, schedule it for later, defer it to someone else, or file it.
21. Don’t Break the Chain: Use a calendar to track your daily goals.  Every day you do something, like working out or writing 1,000 words, make a big red “X”.  Every day the chain will grow longer.  Don’t break the chain! That is, don’t let any non-X days interrupt your chain of successful days.
22. Review: Schedule a time with yourself every week to look over what you’ve done that week and what you want to do the next week. Ask yourself if there are any new projects you should be starting, and if what you’re working on is moving you closer to your goals for your life.
23. Roles: Everyone fills several different roles in their life.  For instance, I’m a teacher, a student, a writer, a step-father, a partner, a brother, a son, an uncle, an anthropologist, and so on. Understanding your different roles and learning to keep them distinct when necessary can help you keep some sense of balance between them.  Make goals around the various roles you fill, and make sure that your goals fit with your goals in other roles.
24. Flow: The flow state happens when you’re so absorbed in whatever you’re doing that you have no awareness of the passing of time and the work just happens automatically. It’s hard to trigger consciously, but you can create the conditions for it by allowing yourself a block of uninterrupted time, minimizing distractions, and calming yourself.
25. Do It Now: Fight procrastination by adopting “do it now!” as your mantra.  Limit yourself to 60 seconds when making a decision, decide what you’re going to do with every input in your life as soon as you encounter it, learn to make bold decisions even when you’re not really sure.  Keep moving forward.
26. Time Log: Lawyers have to track everything they do in the day and how long they do it so they can bill their clients and remain accountable.  You need to be accountable to yourself, so keep track of how much time you really spend on the things that are important to you by tracking your time.
27. Structured Procrastination: A strategy of recognizing and using one’s procrastinating tendencies to get stuff done.  Items at the top of top of the list are avoided by doing seemingly less difficult and less important tasks further down the list — making the procrastinator highly productive.  The trick is to make sure the items at the top are apparently urgent — with pressing deadlines and apparently large consequences.  But, of course, they aren’t really all that urgent.  Structured procrastination requires a masterful skill at self-deception, which fortunately bigtime procrastinators excel at.
28. Personal Mission Statement: Write a personal mission statement, and use it as a guide to set goals. Ask if each goal or activity moves you closer to achieving your mission.  If it doesn’t, eliminate it.  Periodically review and revise your mission statement.
29. Backwards Planning: A planning strategy that works from the goal back to your next action. Start with the end goal in mind.  What do you have to have in place to accomplish it? OK, now what do you have to have in place to accomplish what you have to have in place to accomplish your end goal? And what do you have to have in place to accomplish that? And so on, back to something you already have in place and/or can put in place immediately. That’s your next action.
30. Tune Out: Create a personal privacy zone by wearing headphones. People are much more hesitant to interrupt someone wearing headphones.  Note: actually listening to music through your headphones is optional — nobody knows but you.
31. Write It Down: Don’t rely on your memory as your system. Write down the things you need to do, your schedule, anything you might need to refer to, and every passing thought so you can relax, knowing you won’t forget.  Use your brain for thinking, use paper or your computer for keeping track of stuff.
32. Gap Time: The little blocks of time we have during the day while waiting for the bus, standing in line, waiting for a meeting to start, etc.  Have a list of small, 5-minute tasks that you can do in these moments, or carry something to read or work on to make the most of these spare minutes.
33. Monotasking: We like to think of ourselves as great multitaskers, but we aren’t.  What we do when we multitask is devote tiny slices of time to several tasks in rapid succession.  Since it takes more than a few minutes (research suggests as long as 20) to really get into a task, we end up working worse and more slowly than if we devoted longer blocks of time to each task, worked until it was done, and moved on to the next one.
34. Habits: Habits are as much about the way we see and respond to the world as about the actions we routinely take. Examine your own habits and ask what they say about your relation to the world — and what would have to change to create a worldview in which your goals were attainable.
35. Triggers: Place meaningful reminders around you to help you remember, as well as to help create better habits.  For example, put the books you need to take back to the library in front of the door, so you can’t leave the house without seeing them and remembering they need to go back.
36. Unclutter: Clutter is anything that’s out of place and in the way.  IT’s not necessarily neatness — someone can have a rigorously neat workspace and not be able to get anything done.  It’s being able to access what you need, when you need it, without breaking the flow of your work to find it. Figure out what is “clutter” in your working and living spaces, and fix that.
37. Visualize: Imagine yourself having accomplished your goals.  What is your life like? Are you who you want to be? If not, rethink your goals.  If so, then visualize yourself taking the steps you need to take to get there.  You’ve got yourself a plan; write it down and do it.
38. Tickler File: A set of 43 folders, labeled 1 – 31 and January – December, used to remind us of tasks we need to do on a specific day.  For instance, if you have a trip on March 23rd, you’d put your itinerary, tickets, and other material in the “March” folder. At the start of each month, you move the previous month’s folder to the back. On March 1st, you’d transfer your travel information into the “23″ folder. Each day, you move the previous day’s folder to the back.  On the 23rd, the “23″ folder will be at the front, and everything you need that day will be there for you.
39. ToDon’t List: A list of things not to do — useful for keeping track of habits that lead you to be unproductive, like playing online flash games.
40. Templates: Create templates for repetitive tasks, like letters, customer reply emails, blog posts, etc.
41. Checklists: When planning any big task, make a checklist so you don’t forget the steps while in the busy middle part of doing it.  Keep your checklists so you can use them next time you have to do the same task.
42. No: Learning to say “no” — to new commitments, to interruptions, to anything — is one of the most valuable skills you can develop to keep you focused on your own commitments and give you time to work on them.
43. Unschedule: Schedule all your fun activities and personal life stuff (the stuff you want to do) first. Fill in whatever time’s left over with uninterrupted blocks of work. Write those into your schedule after you’ve completed them. Reward yourself after every block of quality, focused work.
44. Purge: Regularly go through your existing commitments and get rid of anything that is either not helping you advance your own goals or is a regular “sink” of time or energy.
45. One Bucket: Minimize the places you collect new inputs in your life, your “buckets”.  Ideally have one “bucket” where everything goes.  Lots of people experience an incredible sense of relief when everything they need to think about is collected in one place in front of them, no matter how big the pile.
46. 50-30-20: Spend 50% of your working day on tasks that advance your long-term, life goals, spend 30% on tasks that advance your middle-term (2-years or so) goals, and the remaining 20% on things that affect only the next 90 days or so.
47. Timer: Tell yourself you will work on a project or task, and only that project or task, for a set amount of time. Set a timer (use a kitchen timer, or use a countdown timer on your computer), and plug away at your work.  When the timer goes off, you’re done — move on to the next project or task.
48. Do Your Worst: Give yourself permission to suck.  Relieve the pressure of needing to achieve perfection in every task on the first run.  Promise yourself you’ll go back and fix any problems later, but for now, just run wild.
49. Make an Appointment with Yourself: Schedule time every week or so just for you.  Consider the state of your life: what’s working? What isn’t working? what mistakes are you making? what could you change? Give yourself a chance to get to know you.
50. [This space left intentionally blank]: This is a big list, sure, but it’s not an exhaustive one.  The last space is left for you to fill in.  What works for you? What would you like to share with the rest of the lifehack.org community? Let us know in the comments — or write your own list and link back to us!

I absolutely love this list! If you are looking for ways to be more productive and manage your time better... and maybe even have more time for all the fun things in your life... try implementing just a few of these strategies.

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Earlier we saw Facebook related articles such as 10 tips to identify fake profiles on Facebook and steps to report Facebook fake profiles.

Now we are going to see 10 cool tips and tricks for Facebook users.

In this article I mentioned some Facebook tips and tricks which will indeed help you to save your time and to complete your works more efficiently on Facebook. Do tell your opinions in the form of comments..

#1 – Access Facebook Chat Through Your Desktop

Don’t want to go to Facebook.com you can just use the Facebook chat. You can do it right from your desktop using clients like Gabtastik, digsby, social.im, Adium or ChitChat.

#2 – How to Post Your Blog Posts to Your Facebook Wall Automatically

Wordbook allows you to cross-post your blog posts to your Facebook Wall. Your Facebook “Boxes” tab will show your most recent blog posts.

#3 – Search Facebook Like A Pro

Facebook is a very Famous social Networking site. Similar to any large search engine, Facebook search has a lot of advanced options to help you search like a pro. For example,  if you are looking for a person named Ram and filter your results down to only people who are single, you can try name: Ram status:Single. A complete list of search tips for Facebook can be found here.

 

#4 – How To Hide Your Online Status In Facebook For Selected Friends

Facebook has integrated friends list with Chat and you can also choose which of these list members get to see you online.

#5 – How to Download Facebook Photo Albums

FacePAD : Facebook Photo Album Downloader allows you to download your friends’ facebook albums, Events albums, and Group Albums, en masse, with the click of a button.

#6 – Firefox Sidebar Facebook Chat

If you are using the Facebook chat there is an easy way to place the Facebook Chat in your Firefox browser.

For it, you need to go Bookmark “http://www.facebook.com/presence/popout.php” and check the “Load This Bookmark In Sidebar” box. Then, you should go to View->Sidebar->Bookmarks to open the sidebar bookmarks. Choose the page you bookmarked before and there you have it, the Facebook Chat is always in your sidebar, no matter what page you are currently browsing.

#7 – Display Your Facebook Status Upside Down

To display upside down status updates, simply head over to FlipText and type in your status. Then simply click on Flip Text and copy-paste the upside down text into your Facebook status box. Just share your status with a fun

#8 – Schedule Facebook Messages To Be Send Later

If you want to schedule your Facebook messages to be send sometime in the future, Sendible is a great tool to do that. You can also use Sendible to schedule your status updates. You can schedule it when you are in outstation also.

#9 – Download Videos From Facebook

Facebook has one of the largest collection of user uploaded videos.You can download most of the videos from Facebook by using a client like SpeedBit or DownFacbook.

#10 – Access Gmail from Facebook

One of the most useful and simple feature of Facebook is, the you can easily access your Gmail account from your Facebook account. There is a service called Fmail in Facebook, through which you can access your Gmail account.

 

Do tell us which trick you enjoyed the most? Do you know any other tip, please share it here!

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Tagged as: Facebook, Tips and tricks

Ok... now I knew about most of these... including how to make your status appear upside down, but this is just a great list. If you've mastered the basics of Facebook and ready to try a few little ticks... like perhaps scheduled posts... check out these 10 ideas. Which one can you add today?!?

These questions have no right or wrong answers.

Because sometimes asking the right questions is the answer.

1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
2. Which is worse, failing or never trying?
3. If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
4. When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?
5. What is the one thing you’d most like to change about the world?
6. If happiness was the national currency, what kind of work would make you rich?
7. Are you doing what you believe in, or are you settling for what you are doing?
8. If the average human life span was 40 years, how would you live your life differently?
9. To what degree have you actually controlled the course your life has taken?
10. Are you more worried about doing things right, or doing the right things?
11. You’re having lunch with three people you respect and admire.  They all start criticizing a close friend of yours, not knowing she is your friend.  The criticism is distasteful and unjustified.  What do you do?
12. If you could offer a newborn child only one piece of advice, what would it be?
13. Would you break the law to save a loved one?
14. Have you ever seen insanity where you later saw creativity?
15. What’s something you know you do differently than most people?
16. How come the things that make you happy don’t make everyone happy?
17. What one thing have you not done that you really want to do?  What’s holding you back?
18. Are you holding onto something you need to let go of?
19. If you had to move to a state or country besides the one you currently live in, where would you move and why?
20. Do you push the elevator button more than once?  Do you really believe it makes the elevator faster?
21. Would you rather be a worried genius or a joyful simpleton?
22. Why are you, you?
23. Have you been the kind of friend you want as a friend?
24. Which is worse, when a good friend moves away, or losing touch with a good friend who lives right near you?
25. What are you most grateful for?
26. Would you rather lose all of your old memories, or never be able to make new ones?
27. Is is possible to know the truth without challenging it first?
28. Has your greatest fear ever come true?
29. Do you remember that time 5 years ago when you were extremely upset?  Does it really matter now?
30. What is your happiest childhood memory?  What makes it so special?
31. At what time in your recent past have you felt most passionate and alive?
32. If not now, then when?
33. If you haven’t achieved it yet, what do you have to lose?
34. Have you ever been with someone, said nothing, and walked away feeling like you just had the best conversation ever?
35. Why do religions that support love cause so many wars?
36. Is it possible to know, without a doubt, what is good and what is evil?
37. If you just won a million dollars, would you quit your job?
38. Would you rather have less work to do, or more work you actually enjoy doing?
39. Do you feel like you’ve lived this day a hundred times before?
40. When was the last time you marched into the dark with only the soft glow of an idea you strongly believed in?
41. If you knew that everyone you know was going to die tomorrow, who would you visit today?
42. Would you be willing to reduce your life expectancy by 10 years to become extremely attractive or famous?
43. What is the difference between being alive and truly living?
44. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards, and just go ahead and do what you know is right?
45. If we learn from our mistakes, why are we always so afraid to make a mistake?
46. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
47. When was the last time you noticed the sound of your own breathing?
48. What do you love?  Have any of your recent actions openly expressed this love?
49. In 5 years from now, will you remember what you did yesterday?  What about the day before that?  Or the day before that?
50. Decisions are being made right now.  The question is:  Are you making them for yourself, or are you letting others make them for you?

Please share your thoughts with us in the comments section below.

And check out these books for more thought-provoking questions:

• The Book of Questions
• If… (Questions For The Game of Life)
• The Complete Book of Questions: 1001 Conversation Starters for Any Occasion

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93 Comments

Filed under Hacks, Inspiration, Life

These questions are amazing and will really make you stop and think. It could easily be titled "50 Questions That Will Change Your Life". This is an excellent list to really provoke a thought process of change. Marc has combine some silly, some serious, and some very personal questions to create a list that, if answered, will change how you look at life and the world around you.

The other day someone sent me an IM and thanked me for my open source contributions. They then said something about wishing they had my gem/code creation talents. I didn’t miss a beat and informed them that I have no talent.

It is true. I have no talent. What I do have is a lot of practice. And I am not talking about occasionally dabbling in Ruby on the weekends. I am talking about the kind of practice where I beat code that isn’t working into submission (though often times the code wins).

The kind of practice where all of a sudden I realize that it is 2am and I’m exhausted physically so I should go to bed, but mentally I feel on fire so I let the code have me for another hour or two (I imagine this state to be like a marathon runner or ironman near the end of their race).

The kind of practice that leads to a GitHub profile stuffed with code I regret (and am embarrassed about, but don’t delete to remind me of where I once was) and code I am proud of (not near as much as I am embarrassed about though).

Intelligence

I am also not very smart. I have a good memory (though my wife will tell you it has some missing pieces) and I work really hard. Really hard. I get that from my dad. He is also not very smart (his words, not mine), with a good memory and works really hard. :)

I am sick of hearing people say, “Oh, I love your code, I wish I could do that.” You can. The only reason you can’t is because you don’t practice enough. I used to think that I wasn’t smart enough. I was jealous of those that did crazy code stuff that I couldn’t even comprehend. Then, one day, I ran into something I did not understand and instead of giving up, I pushed through. I sat there in front of my computer for hours and wrestled with class and class instance variables.

That day was a turning point for me. It was the last time I thought that whether or not I was successful depended on my talent or intelligence. It really comes down to hard work people. Ever since then, I have attacked each thing that I do not understand until I understand it.

I will close with this. I still suck. There are still so many people out there who are far better than I am, but that does not stop me anymore. I do not measure myself against the programming greats, but against those projects on my Github profile from years ago.

So you don't write code... so what?!?! This post is excellent and can be applied to anything you do in life. Hard work, constant learning and perserverance can take you very far!

If you base any aspect of your business around social media BEWARE.  It makes me shudder when I look at people that have developed an entire business around a single aspect of social media.

Take a look at Facebook’s decision recently to kill off Fan Pages and call them Business Pages or Like Pages.  If you had based your entire business around the word Fan, your business has been stymied in one single swoop.  Were you consulted? No.  What can you do about it?  Not a lot.  Just resposition yourself and get all your marketing, branding and websites updated.  Now that’s a budget blow out no business needs.

I cannot stress to you enough how important it is to be using strategies to drive traffic from your social media pages back to your website or your blog.  At the very least, you should have 2-3 different ways on your social media pages to entice a visitor back to your website or blog.  Minimum.  If you are not doing this, you are wasting your time on social media.  Just one click of a button is all it takes and your page or profile can be gone.

Think it won’t happen to you?  It just happened to me.

I recently created a Business page on Facebook sharing our Melbourne Netwalkers concept.  Each Friday fortnight, we meet and walk around a local park for an hour, chatting and exercising.  It’s a great way to get some fresh air and network with other business owners.  People loved it.  The feedback we got was amazing.  With so many people now working from home, it’s a wonderful way to connect, share ideas, brainstorm and keep moving at the same time.   Or so I thought.  Not so Facebook.  Without warning, the page was taken down with a note telling me that a third party claimed we had infringed on their copyright.  How?  Since when is walking around a park chatting the sole domain of some mysterious, unidentified business?

The point is, someone complained and the page came down.  No questions asked. No warning. Nothing.  What would you do if this happened to your Facebook business page? Or your Facebook Profile?  Your Twitter Profile?  Have you been engaging with the people you meet via social media and taking the conversations off line?  You should be.  Does your business strategy involve different ways to get your social media “friends” to connect with you via your website or blog?  I certainly hope so.

Or are you assuming that “she’ll be right” and you will always have access to the thousands of “friends” and “followers” you’ve accumulated across your various social media platforms?  How long has it taken you to build up your online network?  How much time have you devoted to it?

Remember this … you do not control these Profiles.  In a heartbeat, they could be gone.  Do you really want to be placing the success of your business, all that effort and time invested into building your social media profiles, in the hands of someone else?

You need to review your strategies for building your customer list and driving traffic to your website or blog from your social media profiles right now!  This is why our Social Media Starter Kits are proving to be such a huge success.  Simply put, they work.  Take the action today.

If you have absolutely no idea where to start or what to do, please Contact Us today (or call the office on +61 3 9686 2288 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +61 3 9686 2288      end_of_the_skype_highlighting begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +61 3 9686 2288 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting              +61 3 9686 2288      end_of_the_skype_highlighting      end_of_the_skype_highlighting) and we will work with you on your personalised strategy to build a customer list via your social media pages.  Today.

Remember, it happend to me just this week and it can happen to you too.

By Wendy Moore
Copyright 2010 Savvy Web Women Pty Ltd

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Wendy Moore is the founder of www.savvywebwomen.com and creator of the Web Secrets Success Club - the step-by-step program that shows business owners and entrepreneurs how to better understand the internet to build a highly responsive, targeted list for clients specific to their business niche. To receive your FREE Special Report and weekly how-to articles to expand your online List Building toolkit, visit www.savvywebwomen.com.

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This is must read article for anyone who maintains social media sites!!!! Wendy Moore is exremely knowledgable about list building and highlights some scary and yet very relevant reasons why you should not trust your follower lists to be maintained soley by social media sites. She is one of my favorite experts and someone you should definately become aquainted with at http://www.wendymoore.net/

Going through life without any goals is like getting into a car and driving without having some sort of destination in mind. Think about it, would you get into your car and just start driving, hoping to get somewhere without really not knowing where you want to go, or what route to take to get there? Chances are you’re like most people, and when get into your car you know exactly where you are going and have a pretty good idea of how you are going to get there.

Life in many ways is like driving a car – you need to have a destination in mind. You can’t get somewhere if you don’t know where you’re going, because you will just end up getting nowhere, and then you’ll wonder how you got there in the first place. I have seen people who have lived their lives without having set and achieved any goals, only to realize that where they are now is not where they want to be, and they have no idea how they got there. And the thing is that their frustration continues because they fail to decide where they want to go next.

If you’ve ever been stuck in a goal-less rut like this before, or are stuck in one now, then you probably know the sense of helpless futility that comes with it. You want your life to change, but you feel powerless to do anything about it. You may even find yourself constantly making plans for improvement, but never quite get around to taking action.

Everyone, at some point in their life, has dreamed of achieving something big (big to them). Hitting that game-winning home run; completing that marathon; living a healthy lifestyle; having fulfilling relationships? However, many times our dreams and aspirations remain just that – dreams and aspirations. Instead of experiencing exciting adventures in self actualization, we get caught up in the humdrum of living day-to-day.

One thing that blocks people from achieving their goals is thinking that they are impossible. People tend to get hung up on thinking I can’t do this. It’s too hard. I don’t know where to start. It’s too impossible, one excuse after another. If you limit yourself with this kind of self-doubt, and self-limiting assumptions, you will never be able to break past what you deem impossible.

So now is the time to get into the driver’s seat of your life, and know exactly where you are going. Reignite your goals and start taking steps to achieve them.

Below is a simple exercise, that will jump start your engine, and get you on your way.
Take a piece of paper and draw three columns. Label them ‘goals I know I can achieve’, ‘goals I may be able to achieve’ and ‘goals I think are impossible for me to achieve’. Under the first header, list the goals that ‘you know you can achieve’. Under the second header, list the goals ‘you might be able to achieve.’ And under the third header, list the goals that you think are ‘impossible for you to achieve.’ All goals listed must be realistic.

Now look at the goals listed under the first header. Work every day to accomplish them, and congratulate yourself with each achievement. Chart your progress so that you can see the stages of completion that lead to their actual realization. This also helps to eliminate that feeling of a long and pointless grind towards achieving a goal that seems so far off in the distance.

After you have achieved the goals listed under the first header, start to work your way through the ones under the second (‘goals I may be able to achieve’) header. Thomas Edison once said that genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. No truer statement has been made.

Once you have achieved the goals listed under the second header, take the goals that are under the ‘goals I think are impossible for me to achieve’ header and move them under ‘goals I might be able to do’ header. You can just put them below the goals that are already listed there.

As you go through this process, you will find that the goals you thought were impossible now seem possible after all.

So dream on, know where you are going, and don’t get stopped by perceived limitations.

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Tagged as: goals

I really like this post. I have often used goal setting as a tool, but always listed my goals in 5-year increments… what I can accomplish this year, in 5 years, in 10 years, etc. I really like your idea of separating them into the 3 columns mentioned above. It really helps create focus and focus usually leads to success.

Here's an app that pays for 12 iPads the very first time you use it. Buy one iPad for every single chair in your meeting room... like the projector and the table, it's part of the room.

I recently sat through a 17 hour meeting with 40 people in it (there were actually 40 people, but it only felt like 17 hours.). That's a huge waste of attention and resources.

Here's what the app does (I hope someone will build it): (I know some of these features require a lot of work, and some might require preparation before the meeting. Great! Perhaps then the only meetings we have will be meetings worth having, meetings with an intent to produce an outcome). I can dream...

1. There's an agenda, distributed by the host, visible to everyone, with time of start and stop, and it updates as the meeting progresses.

2. There's a timer, keeping things moving because it sits next to the agenda.

3. The host or presenter can push an image or spreadsheet to each device whenever she chooses.

4. There's an internal back channel that the host can turn on, permitting people in the room to chat privately with each other. (And the whole thing works on internal wifi, so no internet surfing to distract!)

5. There's a big red 'bored' button that each attendee can push anonymously. The presenter can see how many red lights are lighting up at any give time.

6. There's a bigger green 'GO!' button that each attendee can push anonymously. It lets the host or presenter see areas where more depth is wanted.

7. There's a queue for asking questions, so they just don't go to the loudest, bravest or most powerful.

8. There's a voting mechanism.

9. There's a whiteboard so anyone can draw an idea and push it to the group.

10. There's a written record of all activity created, so at the end, everyone who attended can get an email digest of what just occurred. Hey, it could even include who participated the most, who asked questions that others thought were useful, who got the most 'boring' button presses while speaking...

11. There's even a way the host can see who isn't using it actively.

Can you imagine how an hour flies by when everyone has one of these in a meeting? How focused and exhausting it would all be?

$500 each, you'll sell 50,000...

PS no one built the first one yet. Sigh.

Ok... Seth Godin is just a fabulously creative individual, but this idea is awesome! My favorite part of the suggested app is #5... the big, red "BORED" button! I can't tell you how many times I've been in a meeting and wished I had one of those!!! Note to public speakers everywhere... even if your audience isn't equipped with a physical bored button, they've got one in their heads. Keep things concise, relevant and interesting at all times!