Category Archives: Resources Tools Tips

Social Media and Me

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This post is about which social media sites I’m currently on and which tools I use for my social media presence. I’m very interested in your view and suggestions about where to be and tools to use.

My hardware is a laptop with Windows, an iPhone 3Gs and an iPad 1 (no camera).

My blogs and sites

I intend to be more active in my blogs, I will post there and share it from there to the social media sites. That means I’m building on my own property, should a social media site disappear the content still remains in my own sites.

Key Coaching – Coach Wendel is my business site in English. The blog there is about topics related to leadership, coaching, mentorship, personal development, business and networking. I also have a business site in Swedish that covers the same topics, Key Coaching – Coach Wendel.

Bengt’s Notes is my personal hub. It has links to my sites and online profiles. There is also a blog with the tagline “Discover Your Self”. Core topics are about body mind spirit, self development, presenting and presentations. I also post resources, tools, tips. Occasionally I post about music and fun stuff.

Twitter

On Twitter I have a personal profile at Bengt Wendel and a business profile at Coach Wendel. My activity is currently mainly on my personal profile, the business profile will be more active in the future. Still, my focus on Twitter is my personal brand and profile.

On my laptop I either use the Twitter site in my web browser or TweetDeck. I’m looking for a replacement for Tweetdeck since I’m not keen on Adobe Air that it runs on.

Tweetbot — A Twitter Client with Personality

I noticed that a friend uses Tweetbot for iPad and I got curious. There’s also Tweetbot for iPhone, which is how they started.

After reading some reviews of Tweetbot I was hooked and bought their version for iPad. It’s love at first sight, Twitter becomes fun again now that I have a great tool for it. As it says in one of the reviews I found, Twitter’s own apps are targeted towards new users while Tweetbot is targeted towards power users.

Tweetbot reviews
I found some reviews: Tweetbot for iPad review at TNW, Tweetbot for iPhone review at TNW and Tweetbot — A Twitter Client with Personality for iPad.

Facebook

On Facebook I have a personal profile at Bengt Wendel and a business page at Bengt Wendel – Coach and Mentor. I’m fairly active on my profile, mostly about me and my interest, but need to be more active on my business page.

The tools I use are native, the Facebook site itself in a web browser and Facebook’s apps for iPad and iPhone.

Google+

My personal profile is at Bengt Wendel. Google+ is rather neglected by me, I ought to post more often and connect more there. I really like the site but still, my presence there could be better.

LinkedIn

My profile on LinkedIn is at Bengt Wendel. It’s so far used for building a network. What I intend to do is use it’s status line more, with focus on business related things.

Xing

My profile on Xing is at Bengt Wendel. This site is low priority, I was active in its forums but at present it’s a rather stale profile.

Flickr

On Flickr I have a photostream. It’s not used much though, I should be more active and share my photos here too. I have donwloaded the Flickr app but have not used it yet. See photo sharing below for how I solved my photo sharing problem.

YouTube

My YouTube profile is at btwendel. There’s no media created by me, it’s videos I’ve found and like.

Photo sharing

I got Instagram because I wanted an app that easily allowed me to share photos at several sites at once. Instagram is now set up for Twitter, Facebook and Flickr.

I also got Hipstamatic for iPhone but have not used it yet. Instagram works smoothly and that’s what matters for me.

Multi-site tools

I just bought Sociable for iPhone which enables posting to Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Tumblr accounts at once. It works well, it’s now simple to post to Twitter and Facebook at once. I will add LinkedIn later.

I have tried Hootsuite on the web and on the iPad but I don’t like it.

What about you?

Which social media sites are you on, which ones do you focus on?

Which tools do you use?

How To Set Categories On WordPress Pages

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I have a site, CoachGuiden, where I list coaches and needed to be able to set categories on the coach pages. I found Ninja Page Categories and Tags which is a plugin that solves my problem. CoachGuiden is in Swedish but you’ll be able to see how the plugin works anyway.

On the individual coach-pages, see Bengt Wendel – Key Coaching as an example, the coach categories are listed at the bottom. Clicking on any category will bring up a list with all coaches that are in that category.

I then created a main category page, Coach per kategori where all coach categories are listed and clicking on any of them brings up the coaches in that category.

How to connect Google+ with Evernote

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I am no avid user of Evernote but I want an easy way to save some of the things I read in Google+ somewhere else. +Brian Caldwell posted Share Google+ Content Directly Into Evernote:

1. Open your Evernote desktop application and click…
Mac: Evernote Menu >> Account Info
or
Windows: Tools Menu >> Account Info

2. In Account Info locate your special evernote email address and copy it (you can save it to an Evernote note for future reference)

3. Login to Google+, click the Circles tab and create a new Circle

4. In the Circle creation dialog window…
Name your Circle “Save 2 Evernote” or something you will remember
Click “Add a new person” and paste your unique Evernote email address into the text field
Click “Add ‘EvernoteEmail@m.evernote.com’ by Email”
Click “Create Circle with 1 member” to complete the Circle creation process

5. Share Content: Whenever you want to save something to Evernote, simply share it with the “Save2Evernote” Circle that you just created.

The post has a link to Brian’s shared Evernote-post, there are some images too if you need to see more how it’s done.

How to create your own vanity URL

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Google+ creates long numeric user ID’s and has – at least at present – no way to select your own vanity URL (like your name or nick).

That opens up for services like gplus.to which offers you to create a nick or vanity URL for your Google+ account.

If you have a domain of your own and can modify your htaccess-file then it’s easy to create your own personal vanity URL’s. You simply add code like this:

Redirect 301 /me/gplus	https://plus.google.com/google+idhere
Redirect 301 /me/facebook	http://www.facebook.com/bengt.wendel
Redirect 301 /me/twitter	http://twitter.com/BengtWendel

The code above gives me short links like these:
Google+: http://bengtwendel.com/me/gplus
Twitter: http://bengtwendel.com/me/twitter
Facebook: http://bengtwendel.com/me/facebook

Venn and Euler diagrams

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I find it easier to think in images or graphics, it helps me see how things or topics relate to each other. Mind maps are great but at times I want a single image to show just a few things together. Triangles are easy, three things are related but still separate. Below are two other diagrams that help me sort things out.

Venn-diagrams

A friend mentioned Venn-diagrams. I have seen them before but was not familiar with the name. It’s a great way to show how things relate to each other and that they overlap.

Venn diagrams normally comprise overlapping circles. The interior of the circle symbolically represents the elements of the set, while the exterior represents elements which are not members of the set.

For instance, in a two-set Venn diagram, one circle may represent the group of all wooden objects, while another circle may represent the set of all tables. The overlapping area or intersection would then represent the set of all wooden tables.
Source: Wikipedia Venn diagram

Euler diagrams

Euler diagrams are useful in other contexts. The quote below comes from Wikipedia, Euler diagram. The image below that quote is a great example that includes sets, subsets, intersections and disjointness.

Euler diagrams consist of simple closed curves (usually circles) in the plane that depict sets. The sizes or shapes of the curves are not important, the significance of the diagram is in how they overlap. The spatial relationships between the regions bounded by each curve (overlap, containment or neither) corresponds to set-theoretic relationships (intersection, subset and disjointness).

Each Euler curve divides the plane into two regions or “zones”: the interior, which symbolically represents the elements of the set, and the exterior, which represents all elements that are not members of the set. Curves whose interior zones do not intersect represent disjoint sets. Two curves whose interior zones intersect represent sets that have common elements; the zone inside both curves represents the set of elements common to both sets (the intersection of the sets). A curve that is contained completely within the interior zone of another represents a subset of it.

Digg Digg Social Buttons

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WordPressI have tested several plugins for social bookmarking but found many of them far too bloated and big. The functions included in Jetpack are too basic, otherwise that would have been a great option since I have Jetpack installed already.

I ended up with Digg Digg which has a really nice floating option. It’s set up to only show on pages and singe posts. I changed the positioning of the floating buttons, from -120px to -85px.

For current plugins at this site: see WordPress Plugins I Use.

SugarSync

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I have started to use SugarSync – File Sync & Online Backup.

Access all your data anytime, anywhere, from any device. Now get your own Personal Cloud! File sync and online backup for all your devices including PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, and more!

SugarSync gives we what I need in terms of online backup and file sync, between computers, iPad and iPhone. So far I’m on their free account (4.24 GB) but will upgrade when needed.

SugarSync’s online backup, file sync, and sharing service makes it easy to stay connected. With SugarSync you get secure cloud storage for all your files — documents, music, photos, and videos.

I used Dropbox before but after their security claims fell to pieces I decided to switch.

LibreOffice personal productivity suite

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LibreOffice is a free Open Source personal productivity suite for Windows, Macintosh and Linux. It that gives you six feature-rich applications for all your document production and data processing needs: Writer, Calc, Impress, Draw, Math and Base.

OpenOffice is controled by Oracle (previously by Sun) and I don’t really like that. LibreOffice is a fork of OpenOffice but without Oracle. I’m going to switch from OpenOffice to LibreOffice.

The LibreOffice review at TechWorld says:

The LibreOffice project came about late in 2010 when it became increasingly uncertain what Oracle’s intentions were for OpenOffice.org, which it acquired after purchasing Sun. LibreOffice is overseen by the Document Foundation, which includes open source luminaries such as Red Hat, Ubuntu and even Google.

Linux.com has a Review: Hands on LibreOffice 3.3.