In “How to Find Your Tribe in One Word” by Liz Strauss, she wrote about how it is too easy to feel separated from society by the actions often not of our choosing. Lots of folks have lots of reason for feeling we’re on the outside. It’s almost overwhelming. The world can seem to be o...

In October of 2008, I started a series called “Exploring Social Media” on the Blog Herald. The challenge was to dig into the myriad choices and options to dance the social dance online, to network, share, inform, and educate with the various tools available. I began by asking people to d...

Within the last few hours, Robert Scoble announced that “Twitter is broken” on his @Scobelizer Twitter account. @loic: Twitter is broken and we all know it. But we muddle along anyway. Bring us better tools so we can view groups we care about. Scobleizer - Robert Scoble We’ve talke...

Liz Strauss at Successful Blog tackles the tough question of how to define a successful organizational blog. It is Liz’s experience that different people and departments within an organization often have their own ideas of what a successful blog is. According to Liz, the quality of the blog is ult...

I have often wondered how it happens that everyone is always willing to share a piece of two of advice about everything related to the internet and online industry while people will rarely act as experts in other industries - be it nuclear science or construction - without proper training and real k...

As part of my ongoing series on exploring social media tools, I’d like to take a look at the usage of curse words on the web, specifically those tracked by Cursebird. Adult Content Warning: The following includes words that may offend some. Consider yourself warned. A lot of SEO and web strate...

Yesterday, Twitter was used as a real-time news conference podium by the Consulate General of Israel in New York and featured on their Israel news and commentary blog, Israel Politik. In this ongoing series on Exploring Social Media and Social Media Tools, the politics in issue are not up for discus...

“It was an experience. It was a real experience!” That was the proclamation my mother-in-law, Linda Kay VanFossen, used to describe her first visit to the popular Goodwill Outlet store near Portland, Oregon. Known to locals as the “Bins,” this is where local Goodwill thrift s...

In the early days of the telephone, you had one choice. It was big, black, and usually screwed to a wall. As the telephone grew smaller, it left the wall and sat on a desk, then moved from the desk to a bedside table with the popularity of the Princess telephone in 1959. The spinning dial was awkwar...

I’m frequently asked if I prefer Gmail or Outlook Exchange, but I happily use both.  I’m soon posting a thorough comparison between the two products, but the following is how and why I use both. Not only will this explain how I use Gmail and Outlook, but it’ll describe a fair amount of my...