I recently came across (and started using) a new website called FeaturedUsers.com. They are a Twitter app ad network:
…If you’re a Twitter user, it’s a great way to get more followers and support your favorite Twitter apps. If you’re a Twitter app developer, it’s a simple way to start monetizing your application.
The basic idea is that Twitter users can gain exposure and followers by paying to have their Twitter details show up on various Twitter app websites. The idea is simple, cheap, and will not turn you into a Twitter superstar overnight. However, it’s a great way to help support 3rd party Twitter apps and gain some followers in the process.
As Twitter spam is on the rise, many are quick to denounce anything that even looks like spam on Twitter (and usually with good reason). This kind of Twitter ad network is a great alternative to spamming people directly on Twitter. Advertising yourself here still gets your name in front of a highly targeted audience (Twitter users) without cluttering up people’s tweet streams.
In a way, FeaturedUsers.com helps keep spam out of your twitter stream. And that should make any tweep happy.
Check ‘em out over at FeaturedUsers.com.
Local technology coach and consultant, Mr. Noobie, is giving away a free Nintendo Wii on his site, www.noobie.com. All you need to do is click over and sign-up.
After you sign-up to win, I’d highly recommend browsing the website for a little bit. No matter what your technical skill level is, noobie.com is one website you’ll want to bookmark and return to again and again. Patric has put together one of the few local sites that always makes me pause and think, “wow, he has put a lot of time and effort into building this website.”
From articles and blog posts to events and personal coaching services, Mr. Noobie is full of relevant and easy-to-understand guides to just about anything technology related. If you are the kind of person that likes to figure stuff out on your own, but sometimes needs a little help, I highly recommend noobie.com.
That, and a chance to win a Nintendo Wii… what more excuse do you need?
If you’ve been waiting for a local event to help you learn more about blogging, greatly improve your blogging skills, or to effectively use blogs in your business–your wait is over! Blog Indiana 2008 is a 2-day conference on blogging and social media happening at the IUPUI Campus Center in Indianapolis. If you are new at blogging, a seasoned veteran, or want to learn the best ways to harness the power of blogging in your business, you will not want to miss this conference.
Split into three general categories (Basics, General, and Business), Blog Indiana has something for everyone. The best part is you can attend sessions in any category throughout the conference. With amazing local talent such as Chris Baggott, Jennifer Wagner, Bil Browning, Sarah Robbins, Scott Abel, Ruth Holladay, and many others. Topics covered will include legal issues, corporate blogging, brand consistency, building readership, making money with blogging, politics and blogging, and much more. Check out the sessions page for the complete list.
The conference is taking place at the IUPUI Conference Center in Indianapolis on August 16-17th. This is the first local conference like this and it looks like it will be a very useful and memorable event. Over 25 sessions featuring some great local talent, networking with hundreds of other local bloggers all for $49 makes this a conference you won’t want to miss.
If you register using the special discount code BLOGDISC, you’ll get 15% knocked off the price!
Check out the conference website for more info.
Hope to see you there in August!
If you find yourself having difficulty blogging regularly, I’ve found that sometimes the key is to make the technical part of the act of blogging easier and more convenient. Integrating the ability to blog into applications or websites you normally use can not only make blogging easier, but encourage it.
flickr
My favorite photo sharing website makes it very easy to make a blog post using either one of your photos or someone else’s that is marked as reusable. At the bottom of the “Extending flickr” tab of the “Your Account” page there is a section to add details about your blog (or blogs). If you’ve never done this before, read the simple directions to set things up properly for your type of blog and you’re all set. Once you’ve added at least one blog, a new “Blog This” button will appear above the photos you look at on flickr. Clicking on this button lets you write a blog post about that photo and post it (and the photo) to your blog all from within flickr.com. Once your done, you’re right back to looking at photos on flickr.
Google Docs
I’ve been using Google Docs since it was called Writely and I love it. I store all kinds of information in Docs and having access to it from any computer is very convenient. Today, however, was the first time I noticed that the “Share” button also allows you to post a document as a blog post directly to your blog. There is a similar set up process like flickr and then your able to post. If you already use Google Docs, this is just another reason to keep using it. If not, using Google Docs in this way can allow for more structured storage of drafts (using folders), a more robust WYSIWYG layout interface for your blog posts, versioning and collaborative sharing/writing of your blog posts–to name a few reasons.
There are other great tools that let you interact with your blog such as Windows Live Writer and ScribeFire, which I’ll cover in a future post.
This past weekend, I participated in Bloomington Startup Weekend. And, while I’m not yet allowed to talk specifics about the resulting company/product we created that weekend, I can share what an amazing experience it was. 100 technologists from around the area gathered together to bring their experience, expertise, and talent to produce a company and community in one weekend. Developers, Marketers, Business Developers, Project Managers, Designers, Lawyers, and more spent 52-some hours at City Hall in Bloomington, Indiana working towards the same goal.
It was a truly unique experience that I would highly recommend to anyone with even the slightest interest. It really does give you an idea of what it’s like inside a startup company, only much condensed. There are highs, lows, excitement, tension… it’s a lot of fun. I’ve been describing it as the only time I’ve enjoyed being annoyed. You kinda have to experience it to know what I mean. Hopefully, I should be able to give out the details of the product and company we’ve created in the coming weeks.
With that said, I highly encourage anyone in the Indianapolis region to head over to IndyStartup.com to proclaim your interest in having a Startup Weekend in Indianapolis. That site will also direct you to the Startup Weekend City Vote project where you can vote for Indianapolis to be one of the next locations (very important).
To celebrate 1,000 blog posts, 1,000 daily unique visitors, and 1,000 feed subscribers, Doug has decided to put together a $1,000 giveaway on his blog. For the past month or so, he has been gathering sponsorships from various companies in the form of cash and valuable services. With quite a prize package gathered, the contest is open until November 25th. You can check out posts about each sponsor by looking in my archives for this month.
The first sponsor of the contest was Doug himself. His blog, The Marketing Technology Blog, is a very active and informative blog about the latest trends in not just marketing technology, but new media, blogging, SEO, social networking, web design, and so on. He is a local blogger that I check out several times per week.
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