Archive for the ‘My Favorite Tools’ Category
Thursday, April 19th, 2012
Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Web site to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.
If Twitter is the modern day equivalent of a soapbox, then Muck Rack Pro is the cocktail party (sans drinks and hors d’oeuvres). It’s a virtual forum where you can schmooze and make witty repartee with the press in the room. All you need is a computer or smart phone for Muck Rack Pro to drop you into any number of conversations with thousands of journalists who are tweeting about today’s breaking news or the article they are writing. It’s as if you have a bionic ear. Select a few search terms, and Muck Rack Pro does the eavesdropping then delivers the relevant tweets to your inbox from the far corners of the twittersphere.
Eavesdropping with Muck Rack Pro
I can imagine you might be saying to yourself that you can already find tweets about the topics you’re interested in by searching for key words on Twitter or with tools like HootSuite and Seesmic. This is true, but Muck Rack Pro zeroes in on the journalists who are discussing your topics on Twitter. That means you can be one of the first to hear about story opportunities, jump into the discussion and pitch story angles. (more…)
Posted in My Favorite Tools, News, Social Media | No Comments »
Monday, August 8th, 2011
Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.
I wish I could say my favorite tool of the day is a new discovery. One that will bring you great fame and fortune. I would love nothing better than to promise you a shiny new social media toy that will captivate you for the next few weeks or even months (if your attention span is a little longer than the norm).
But no … If I’m completely honest (and I always am). 
It’s without a doubt, something you’ve been hearing about ad nauseam: Twitter.
I have to admit, I didn’t get the Twitter thing at first. In fact, I sat on my new Twitter account for a good seven months while I “played” with Facebook and LinkedIn. I signed up for Twitter more than three years ago on June 9, 2008, but my first Tweet wasn’t until January 26, 2009. I can assure you that I wasn’t going to tell anybody what I had for lunch or about my latest mundane thought. To the uninitiated, it sometimes seems that is all people talk about on Twitter.
As a PR practitioner, I was feeling growing pressure to get with the Twitter program. The catalyst for me was when one of my enterprise software clients was ready to launch a new Website alerting people to breaking news and commentary on cybercrime. It wasn’t long after that when I began to see how useful it was to my other enterprise clients who were releasing industry trend predictions and writing by-lined articles for the niche trade press. (more…)
Tags: Social Media, Twitter
Posted in My Favorite Tools, News, Public Relations, Social Media | No Comments »
Thursday, November 4th, 2010
Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.
I published an online newsletter today in under a minute. All it took was one stroke of a button and voila I had nine pages beautifully formatted with compelling content neatly filed under nine tabs: headlines, technology, business, stories, arts & entertainment, education, environment, public relations and mobile. You think I’m kidding don’t you?
I’m not! You can do it too if you use Twitter.
Paper.Li is an application that organizes what it deems the “relevant” Tweets and associated links from the people you follow on Twitter into a newspaper layout. I follow 181 people that are mostly writing about technology, public relations and social media so my instant newsletter reflects those interests, but lo and behold it parsed my Twitter feeds into areas that I wouldn’t normally create categories for: arts & entertainment, education and environment. This gives me a new perspective on the information that I am consuming through Twitter. News content can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag, according to Paper.Li. You can select the frequency whether daily, morning or evening or weekly. The funny thing is that I see a lot of content in this newsletter that I missed during my scans of Twitter throughout the day. (more…)
Tags: Facebook, Newspaper, Paper.Li, SmallRivers, Social network, Spanish language, Switzerland, Twitter, Website
Posted in My Favorite Tools | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 18th, 2010
Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.
Email, Tweets, Facebook messages … social media is driving us to distraction! It’s a fact of life that there are days when we are destined to be more productive than others. On those “off” days we run circles around our most pressing tasks. Rationalizing as we go … “I’ll just check Twitter before I start that project … I must clean up my inbox before I can possibly do anything else … if I knock off these easy ‘C’ items on my list then I can plunge into the ‘A’ projects.” Suddenly a long lost friend locates us on Facebook, and we find ourselves crafting an email tome that will bring them up-to-date on our lives.
Aside from a swift kick in the patootie how can we stay on course day in and day out? Why not turn to technology to fight fire with fire? Today my post is about Cohuman, a new kind of productivity tool that coordinates teams and manages projects to keep you and your teams focused on your most pressing tasks. (more…)
Tags: Cohuman, Collaborative software, Gmail Priority Inbox, Google, Google Apps Marketplace, Project management, task priority, Tasks
Posted in My Favorite Tools | 1 Comment »
Monday, October 4th, 2010
Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.
One of the biggest regrets of my life (so far) is that I never mastered a second language. I had plenty of opportunities.
- When I was in Washington DC covering foreign affairs and defense issues across the Asia and Pacific regions my excuse was that there were simply too many languages to master for my beat.
- I spent 10 years of my childhood in Saudi Arabia on the edge of the Rub’ al-Khali, and all I can say today is “As-salaam alaikum” “Shukran,” and “Wahid hamburger.”
- In my teens I spent several years in Iran, and all I can remember is “piaz.” What the heck does that mean? I know it had something to do with my mother haggling over onions in the bazaar. Pathetic.
- I did take four years of French in high school, but I won’t tell you how hard my husband laughed at me when the petite cafe au lait I ordered a few years ago during a trip to Paris found its way to our table as a grande cafe au lait. (Well, you know what they say about those French waiters!)
- I will say that I was rather proud that by the tender age of 22 I was finally able to understand my Grandfather’s heavy Hampshire accent. What? That doesn’t count, you say? Hampshire is a county in England. Ah well, I give up.
Fortunately, for me and the few others out there who are monolingual, there is Google Translate. At the push of a button on my Google toolbar I can suddenly read a multitude of languages including German (without channeling my great grandparents). This isn’t a new offering — it’s been around for a few years — but a lot of people don’t realize they have it in their Google Toolbar or even their Google Chrome browser, I’d wager. Google Translate lets you translate select text or an entire Website. (more…)
Tags: Google Translate
Posted in My Favorite Tools | No Comments »
Monday, August 30th, 2010
Jottings by a tech PR consultant on a tireless quest for the next best tool, application, widget or Website to help “balance” life between the cyber and real worlds.
I came across TweetyMail earlier this month while holed up in a hotel room in Kauai. The Pacific Ocean and sparkling pools outside beckoned, but because I had piggy-backed on my husband’s business trip (finally somewhere other than the Central Valley), and he hadn’t finished his business affairs for the day, I found myself twiddling my thumbs. I decided to tackle Twitter. Oh come on. You know you would too.
Those torrential Twitter streams drive me crazy. I know I shouldn’t complain because I receive a mere fraction of the number of tweets my Twitter addict friends and colleagues get. Still, I try to follow the industry influencers, and I try to be polite and follow the people who follow me. Consequently, I can not keep up with the deluge.
There are times when it has taken me days to discover that someone ”replied” to me in one of their tweets. If I don’t regularly click to see if any replies have come in from the @jagwiregroup username hotlink on my Twitter home page or do a search with Social Mention, I am oblivious. Thankfully, Twitter emails me alerts about direct messages and new followers, but the @ replies where people actually start or continue a conversation with jagwiregroup, just languish in cyberspace until I manually hunt them down.
Who has time to hover over their Twitter page all day long? (more…)
Tags: SocialMention, TweetyMail
Posted in My Favorite Tools | No Comments »
