Organize Your Internet with SecondBrain

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With the wealth of social media sites that are coming available to us these days, services that help us organize all that information are going to become more and more valuable. SecondBrain is striving to become the premier service in that department.

Easy Sign Up

Getting started with SecondBrain is a snap. Simply go to the site and select your user name. For example I chose ChrisCree which created my SecondBrain URL of http://ChrisCree.secondbrain.com – easy as typing.

Then just set your password and you can start filling your SecondBrain with content. Right now there are 19 different social media sites that you can dump into your account.

Lars told me this morning that they are working on adding more including the ability to add general RSS feeds like, say, from your blog. He expects they’ll have that functionality in the next month or so.

In addition to the “automatic” content you are free to manual post info and links to your SecondBrain. They even have a handy bookmarklet that you can add to your browser to add sites as you are cruising the web. Once the bookmarklet is installed you can save info to your account that you want to save with just two clicks of the mouse. Very handy. Read more

Competition for Blogs

My good friend Liz Strauss was in the UK recently and shared a little the other day about her experience at City University while she was over there. While she was there she was asked an excellent question.

What is a blog’s competition?

Normally I come up with answers to questions about blogging fairly quickly but this one made me think. Quite a bit.

Because there isn’t one easy answer.

The reason the question isn’t easily answered is that blogs are simply tools. It would be like asking “What is a hammer’s competition?”

Um, it depends… on what you want to accomplish with your hammer.

I went looking in my toolbox out in the garage and I found a cool baker’s dozen hammers in my hammer drawer. (Yes I have a hammer drawer. Give me a Tim Allen grunt!)

Most of these I inherited from my father in law not too long ago. And I confess there are a couple there that I haven’t the slightest idea what they’re for. But I’m sure they may come in handy one day!

Depending on the job at hand the “competition” for a hammer could be a nail gun, a screwdriver, a wrecking ball, a metal stamping machine or even high explosives.

Blogs Are Tools

Like hammers, blogs are tools. Specifically blogs are web publishing platforms. And just like hammers, blogs can be used for vastly different purposes.

Depending on the needs and intention of the blog owner, the blog might be “in competition” with a whole slew of things. For example here are some things I can see a blog possibly “competing” with. Read more

Sneek Peek Inside the Age Of Conversation

In addition to preparing to give a social media talk last week I had to get my chapter in this year’s Age Of Conversation by the Thursday deadline. As I posted a while back, the overarching topic this year is “Why don’t people get it?”

I’m still going to leave it as a surprise as to which of the topic areas inside the main theme that I chose because, well because I’m sneaky that way sometimes.

I will however give you a taste of what I wrote in the exactly 400 words that I submitted. (That was our targeted word count for submission. I love it when a plan comes together!)

…“Don’t ask them to pimp your stuff,” I explain, “especially before you’ve established a relationship with them.” I am approached multiple times a week with requests to promote other folk’s stuff on my blog…

And if you’d like to find out what some of the nearly 300 contributers have to say about the project, just check out the Google Blog Search for “Age of Conversation”.

I’ll be sure to give y’all a shout when the book is released.

Presentation – Blogging and Social Media in Your Business

This past week I gave a presentation on Blogging and Social Media in Your Business to a local group of 60+ entrepreneurs. The talk was sponsored by the ATDC and the Creative Coast here in Savannah.

The talk was designed as an introductory talk for business people who didn’t yet have an understanding of what blogging and social media is all about. Because most of the people in the room were not much beyond the “we’ve hear the terms” phase it meant I had to cram a ton of information into the 30 minutes I was given. (For some reason when preparing I thought I had 45 minutes plus 15 minutes question time not 30/15. Oops.)

I told the folks to buckle their seat belts and hold on ’cause I threw a bunch of information at them very fast.

My hope was that everyone would find at least one nugget to walk away with that they could take back to their own businesses and get thinking about the possibilities.

Here are the slides I presented for any who are interested.

Enjoy!

Definition of Social Media

I’m putting the finishing touches on a presentation I’m giving tomorrow to a group of local entrepreneurs. The subject is Blogging and Social Media in Your Business.

As I was putting it together I discovered that there still isn’t a definition of social media that really hits the mark out there yet. Robert Scoble started a big discussion about the term over a year ago. That post has over 100 comments with all kinds of opinions on the subject.

Wikipedia is often the go-to reference source online these days, and it happens to be a social media site itself. However the Wikipedia definition comes of sounding a bit lofty and I get the feeling that when the average person reads through those two sentences walks away thinking, “Great. But what does that mean?”

Most of the rest of the definitions out there seem to be by marketing types who get fixated on the various tools and technology. The best definition I found was by Isabel Walcott Hilborn. But hers is still missing a piece of the puzzle from my perspective.

Social Media Definition

Here is what I came up with.

Social Media

Communication formats publishing user generated content that allow some level of user interaction.

It is the ability for users to interact with one another over and above their ability to generate content that really makes a media form “social” in my book. And that component has so far been missing from the definitions floating around out there.

Social media seems to pretty much be confined to the internet at this point. I’m not convinced that will necessarily always be the case. It is entirely possible that some new form of technology might be created that allow social media in other realms.

What are your thoughts on social media?

Is that a workable definition or does it still need more work?

Value in Getting Away

Note: This post is part of a group writing project for HighCallingBlogs.com for this month sponsored by Laity Lodge and which we’re hosting here at SuccessCREEations, Inc. The topic is Retreat! Retreat! Retreat! While the main drawing has already happened you can still participate in the writing project until the end of the month and get a discount on selected retreats for you and your readers.

Connectivity Culture

We live in a culture that is continuously connected. I’m as connected as anyone because of what I do here at SuccessCREEations, Inc.

Between blogging, a bunch of email addresses, four instant messaging accounts, Skype, 300+ feeds in my feed reader, and all the various social media sites I’m active on it can be a never ending stream of information.

And it’s getting worse, or better, depending on your viewpoint. With services like Twitter that can follow you around on your cell phone it is easier than ever to keep yourself wired in.

Out of the Vacation Habit

I grew up in a family where most all vacation time was spent going to visit family, usually over holidays. Most of you would probably agree that visiting family often isn’t really a vacation at all. Sometimes it can be even more stressful than every day life!

Gorgeous is from a family that had more healthy vacation habits. But unfortunately in our marriage we’d fallen into my way of doing things what with parental failing health issues and all.

In the ten years of our marriage we can only remember one real vacation where we weren’t visiting family or attending a conference or some such. Read more

But is Twitter Useful?

One of the people that Gorgeous and I connected with in Chicago this past weekend was Christine Kane. It probably didn’t hurt that the three of us were all seated in close proximity to a very wild and obnoxious three year old on the same flight into Chicago. That got diverted to Columbus for more fuel after holding too long for bad weather.

But that’s a story for another time.

I also had the pleasure of sitting at the same table as Christine at the conference. As speakers like Chris Brogan, Liz Strauss, and Terry Starbucker were talking about the people in the room who were using Twitter to communicate with one another (and with folks half a world away) during the conference, Christine would ask the rest of us questions on the side.

They ranged from the basic to the technical, for example…

• What’s the point? to interact with others
• Why would you bother? because I like people
• Can everyone see what I tweet @ someone? Oh, yeah
• How does the direct message thing work? “d your_friends_twittername” and they’ll get a private message

Read more

Down to Business at SOBCon08

Gorgeous and I spent this past weekend at SOBCon in Chicago. It was a tremendous weekend for the both of us.

This years event kept some of the best parts of SOBCon07 and yet was quite different in at least one key element, that of focus. Last year SOBCon was all about community with a little bit of marketing thrown in.

All About Business

This time around SOBCon was all about business. Sure there were several bloggers in the room whose focus was not on making money with their blogs. But having just made the break from corporate life to the entrepreneur world this year, Gorgeous and I were definately focused on business while we were in Chicago.

And we weren’t disappointed.

Still Made Connections

Just like last year we made new connections which will likely produce valuable exchanges to help mutually propel our various businesses forward.

It is interesting to me that the people I made strongest connection with were not the same folks that I set out to get to know. Because I set out with that intentionality I still met the people and started the relationships that may potentially be catalysts for growth in my business. Those connections were just with unexpected people is all. Read more

Retreat! Retreat! Retreat!

Have you ever felt the need to get away from it all?

Have you ever had to chose whether to take some time away or keep pressing on?

Which way did you decide to go?

What happened as a result?

HighCallingBlogs Group Writing Project

This month we’re hosting the HighCallingBlogs Group Writing project here at SuccessCREEations, Inc.

We’re going to take the next few weeks to share some of we learned learned from a time when we decided to get away for a while, or from a time when we decided not to get away (but maybe we thought we should have).

Win Your Own Retreat

Laity Lodge is sponsoring the Group Writing Project this month. That means they are doing 3 things for those who decide to enter a blog post.

• 50% OFF FOR YOU – selected retreats for any participant in this group writing project. (You don’t have to be a member of HighCallingBlogs.com, but we hope you’ll consider it.)
• 25% OFF FOR YOUR READERS – Anyone who reads your blog can register for 25% off. When they call to register, they need to ask for “the HighCallingBlogs.com discount.”
• A FREE RETREAT – On Friday, May 9, at noon Central Time, we’re going to put the names of this Group Writing Project’s participants in a hat and draw one out. The winner gets a free retreat for a married couple or an individual. Marcus will announce the winners that afternoon

How to Enter

To enter for your chance to win, or to just participate in the writing project you need to do three things:

1. Write up a blog post on the importance of retreat
2. Link to the sponsor, Laity Lodge
3. And also link to this post so I know to include your post in the list of submissions that will be accumulating right here.

We’ll also post a link to your post over at HighCallingBlogs.com!

Update: Mark pulled a winner for the free retreat! Check out the video to see who one. But just because the winner has been chosen doesn’t mean that the project is over because we can all still be winners. Remember you can still get 50% off of selected retreats just for submitting your blog post to this group writing project and your readers can still get 25% off. So if you’re like me and haven’t submitted a post yet, there’s still time to be included. Keep writing!

Read more

Brand New Design

If you are a feed subscriber you might not know. But we’ve just launched the redesigned SuccessCREEations, Inc. website. There are still some bugs to work out yet and now I’m in the same boat that my clients often find themselves, a new website just begging to be filled with content.

Upgrading WordPress

The first thing I did was to bring the back end up to date with the latest version of WordPress. SuccessCREEations, Inc. had long been in that classic situation where, “the cobbler’s kids got no shoes.” There was so much work to do for clients and their sites that our own site was, ahem, a few versions back.

I gotta say that the completely redesigned WordPress 2.5 dashboard is very nice to work with. It is different, for sure, and takes a bit of getting used to.

But it took far less time to adjust than I expected, especially considering that I’ve been using WordPress for going on three years now. In fact, after spending less than a day with the new version I went back to the old version and was already forgetting where things were in the old menus.

The new dashboard design is that much better.

Screen Shots

The most obvious change is of course the new look. For you feed readers, here’s a screen shot of the new design.
I had developed the new SuccessCREEations, Inc. logo a while back with the idea of using it as a starting point for a new look to the site. I pulled the gold in the compass rose points and the blue/purple from the logo and used those colors as the starting point. Read more