Whatcha Talkin Bout Willis?

By this time you have probably heard about Twitter.  If not, here is a quick summary.  Twitter is a site where you, and the rest of the world get 140 characters to answer one question “what are you doing?”

Now the common first reaction by someone who discovers Twitter is to scrunch up their face, tilt their head to the side and scratch it, sigh, tilt their head back again, shrug their shoulders and say “huh?”  “What is the big deal?”

Well shortly thereafter you begin to discover that on Twitter people are sharing thoughts and opinions on everything under the sun in a very concise and easy to understand format.  Better yet the format is constantly evolving.  Twitter also makes it possible to follow brilliant thinkers like John Moore, Pete Blackshaw, and Guy Kawaski, as you follow “what they do.”

Still, the whole thing can seem a bit overwhelming and disjointed.  That is where the new Twitter Search (formerly Summize.com) comes into play.  Simply type in a term and you can search in real time what people are talking about.  Search Dayton, or Obama, or McCain, Pizza, Reds, Apple, whatever - Twitter search will aggregate the results so that you can begin to make sense of it all.  Better yet, it is equipped with an RSS feed so that you can track the conversation as it evolves.  Track mentions of your name, your employer, your friends, and on and on.

So do you wonder what Willis is talking about?  Well I am not sure if Willis (Todd Bridges) uses Twitter, but you can find a whole bunch of people talking about him and darn near anything else by using Twitter Search.  Give it a try, and share the interesting things you find with your comments.

Twitter Search

Xpenser + Jott = Expense Reporting Made Easy

Let’s be honest, filling out expense reports is horrible.  They are a necessary evil, often put off until the last possible minute.  When I finally get around to filling mine out, I usually find myself removing a mountain of crumpled receipts from my “George Costanza like” wallet and then trying in vein to make sense of it all.  Hours later I finally get the whole mess put in order, plugged into a spreadsheet, copied, and submitted - cursing all the while as I vow never to put this off until the last minute again.  Of course I do put it off, and monthly the process is repeated.

I believe that I have found the answer in the form of xpenser.com

Xpenser.com is a web based tool that allows you to easily track your expenses.  It features a very simple interface, and a few very powerful features.  There are four fields for entry of expenses - Type, Amount, Notes, and Date.  It is clean and easy.  It will convert miles into dollars automatically and the information can be downloaded in numerous spreadsheet formats.  For me, it took all of about 2 seconds for me to see the value of this tool, and hence it was added immediately to my firefox toolbar. It will email or text updates, and you can enter to it via email, text, twitter or directly through the site itself.   It could not be more easy… or could it?

As it turns out, xpenser.com integrates with another one of my favorite web based tools jott.com.  Thus, when it comes to expense reports you can now literally just phone it in.  Call Jott (number 9 on my speed dial), say the name of your expense, the amount, and any notes, and you are done.  Jott will plug everything into xpenser and send you a confirmation verifying your entry.  This is a great way to make windshield time more valueable - calling in the day’s expenses and mileage as you make the drive home.

This combination of free, web based tools is a simple way to make your life easier.   Give xpenser and jott a try and let me know what you think.

Xpenser - Mobile Expense Tracking and Reporting

3 Free Tools for Great Music on the Web

I love music.  I have spent a good portion of my life writing, singing, playing, and listenting to it.  Regardless of the genre, great music is something I value highly.  So, discovering new music I enjoy and rediscovering long forgotten old favorites from earlier in my life makes me happy.

When I was a young college student, many moons ago, I would spend hours flipping through the racks at CD Connection, searching for that little known Pearl Jam bootleg, or the side project that Mark Arm did, or the CD with Phish jamming with Santana, etc…  Most of my friends did the same thing, and as a result life was filled with great new tunes.  Time was more abundant, and music was a central part of my daily life.  However, with work, family, and the other responsibilities that come with adulthood, it is not as easy as it once was to find great tunes. The internet makes all of that easier.  Here are 3 sites that can help you find great music in a flash.

Pandora - I have written about this site before, but it is worth mentioning again.  Pandora is amazing.  To begin using it, you name your “radio station” (you can have several if you like) and you enter the name of a band or a song you like.  From there Pandora will play that song or artist, and others with similar musical characteristics.  You can rate them based on your preferences, and as you do Pandora learns about you.  Using something called the music genome project, Pandora determines what characteristics you like about music.  It is not just who you like, but what you like and why.  This allows Pandora to regularly surprise you with new music you enjoy, as well as giving it an eery ability to pull classics from the archives that at one time would have been in your favorites.  You can share your station with others, read information about the bands and songs, and link directly to itunes and amazon to make purchases.  I have been using Pandora for several years now, and I am still amazed by its ability to surprise me with great new discoveries.

Songza - Songza is a search engine for music.  Go there, type in a band name or a song title, and it returns numerous results of music tracks.  This is great for the times when you hear that song, but can’t remember the name exactly.  Or, when your nephew or niece, being young and still cool, is kind enough to drop the names of some cool new band they just saw in concert.  Songza is a great tool for researching potential new favorites.  It is also great for when you have a particular song stuck in your head, or the guy in the cube next to you says “no I’ve never heard that song,” and you are desperate to hear it.  Songza puts specific titles right there at your fingertips.

Musicovery - This is a recent find for me, as my brother in law Chad forwarded a link to me.  Musicovery gives you the ability to choose the genres of music you feel like hearing, the time frame or era in which it was recorded, the mood you are in (positive v dark) and (energetic v calm), and the relative popularity of the music it chooses.  This allows you to build a very customized radio station on the fly, based on how you feel at that specific time.  It has a great catalog of tracks, and was amazingly in-tune with what I “felt like listening to.”  It has a very cool interface, and delivers a very engaging user experience.  It is different from Pandora, in that it is more malleable, but it offers less surprise as a tradeoff.  I see it as a great compliment to Pandora, depending on how engaged you want to be in the selection process.  Musicovery also links directly into Amazon, making it easy to buy tracks that you want to own.

Give these sites a shot, and let me know what you think.  Know of other great sites?  Share your knowledge with us by leaving a comment.

Leverage LinkedIn with RSS

What if your number one competitor took away your number one client?  How much would you pay to know that they might be in conversation with one another?  Well, if you use LinkedIn and combine it with RSS you can discover a wealth of information about your friends, your clients, and your colleagues that might have otherwise gone unnoticed - and it will cost you nothing.

Sure, you read the latest updates part of your LinkedIn home page when you visit, but what about the rest of the time.  Certainly much is transpiring while you are away - some of which is important to know.  Here is an easy solution - RSS.  You can very easily use an RSS feed, which is built into LinkedIn, to track each and every change that takes place in your LinkedIn network.  Then you can review and catalog everything at your leisure.

It is as easy as this.

• Go to reader.google.com and sign up for an account
• Go to your LinkedIn homepage
• Look in the address bar and click on the little orange (blue in Firefox 3) box with the dot and 2 lines.
• Subscribe to the RSS feed.

Now, every time someone makes a change you will receive an update, which will appear as an unread item in your RSS feeds in Google Reader.  Now, you can quickly scan through the entire list of updates in one or two minutes.

As you proceed through them, you can mark items of particular interest with a star.  This might apply for people who have been promoted or changed jobs - at which time you might want to send along a nice note of congratulations.

This aggregation of information makes it simple to generate intuitive information from your LinkedIn Network.  Whether you seek competitive intelligence, personal information, or just want to make sure who are keeping up with who knows who, RSS makes it easy.  Did your #1 competitor just connect with your #1 client?  Using this method would let you know.  Is your best employee looking to leave your company?  Again, this might give you some clues if that is the case.  Best of all, you might find out early enough to actually do something about it.  Personally, I can tell you of several people currently in the job market simply based on watching my connections.  They have not contacted me saying “I’m looking” but it does not take much to connect the dots when you pay attention.  This give me an opportunity to help them without having been asked, and to discover more about what is going on in the market in the process.

RSS has so many uses, and using a feed reader like Google Reader, Bloglines, or others can save you valuable time and deliver important information to you that would have otherwise been missed.  Give this LinkedIn tip a try and see if you feel more connected to your network.  I hope this helps.

David E. Bowman - Squidoo Lens Returns

I gave a speech earlier this week to the Dayton LinkedIn Group.  In the speech, I spoke about some easy ways that individuals can use the web to build their personal brand.  One tool I referenced was Squidoo - one of the most useful sites (or grouping of sites) on the web.

Squidoo is a powerful tool for sharing ideas, finding information, and building your personal brand. It is the brainchild of Seth Godin, one of the foremost thinkers in the areas of technology, business, and marketing.  The idea is that everyone is an expert at something, and thus should be able to use the web to help others by sharing that expertise.  Squidoo enables users to easily create a one page web site, called a lens, full of rich content, links, video, notes, polls, rss feeds, and other interesting items.  The beauty of Squidoo is that you don’t have to know anything about writing code to use it, and Google loves it.  It is easy to use, and provides in-depth information on hundreds of thousands of topics, and continues to evolve into a powerful research tool.

Well, many moons ago I built a Squidoo lens about me.  After all, I fugured that if everyone is supposed to be an expert at something, I should be the foremost expert on the subject of me.  It was up on the web for a while, but then I became dissatisfied with it.  As a result I took the site down for a makeover. Then, as happens, I got side tracked with other things, and the lens sat dormant.

Well, after giving my speech, there was a huge interest amongst those who attended in Squidoo.  Most had never heard of it, and many curious people have since emailed me for more information.  All of this reminded me that I still need to bring back the lens about me - and so I did.   View it here or by visiting http://www.squidoo.com/davidebowman.  The lens was very easy to put together, and offers the world a different look at me and some of my work.

They recently rebranded the “people” section of Squidoo - giving it the clever moniker of SquidWho.  Check it out, and let me know what you think.  Then, start building your own lenses.  Share your expertise with the world.

Some other lenses I have built include:

Dayton Marketing Community

Dayton Weblogs - which I need to update

The Epilepsy Foundation of Western Ohio - a work in progress

David E. Bowman

Linking Up with LinkedIn Dayton

Today I was given the distinct honor of addressing the LinkedIn Dayton networking group at Champps in Centerville, Ohio on the topic of leveraging web based tools to build your personal brand.  I want to thank everyone who attended the event.  I hope you found it to be fun and informative. I know that I had a blast and made a number of professional connections in the process.

I was given this opportunity by responding to a call for speakers put out by Joe Durbin and Michael Morley, who organize much of the LinkedIn Dayton group’s actual face to face meetings.  This was the first breakfast meeting, and they sent out an email request for speakers, which I responded to immediately.  I thank them for allowing me to be the first, and hopefully not the last, speaker.

As for the content of the presentation, I offered my 2 cents on how to leverage the emerging web to build your brand and further your career.  I talked about my recent job changes, and the valuable lessons I learned about the importance of both knowing people, and more importantly, being known.  I have given similar presentations before, but have never related the personal history of how I even got into blogging and social networking relative to the crazy events of my life.

My message in a nutshell was this.  We live in a new age.  40 Years of “doing good work and getting a gold watch at the end” are done.  You have to take ownership of your life and your career.  Building a network plays a huge role in determining your ability to control your future.  This applies to all areas of life, not just finance.  The web makes it easier and more affordable to build your brand, and to leverage your strengths to create your future career.

I spoke about how individuals can leverage everything from Microblogs like Twitter and Plurk, to Blogs using Wordpress, Podcasts, Squidoo, Social Networks, and other free and easy tools to join the conversation and establish an area of expertise.  I tried to deliver enough explantion of these tools to make them understandable, without being too technical in how they work.  We discussed numerous ways to utilize LinkedIn, beyond just an online repository for contact information.  (Research Database, Employment Tool, Sales Information, Communication Vehicle, Information Source) In summary, it was a high level overview of a broad swath of web 2.0 tools that can benefit those who seek to leverage the web as a personal branding tool.

Blogging and social media have changed my life in so many ways.  They led me to my current job at LUCRUM - where we use blogs, social networks, wikis, and podcasts to build the company both internally and externally.  They have generated countless connections with other people around the globe, and put me in touch with some of the most brilliant minds on the planet.  I love what I do, and I am delighted that I not only get to do it, but that people are interested in hearing me talk about it too.

Thanks again to all who came to the event today.  If you have questions about anything I covered, or did not cover, in my presentation.  Please drop me a note.  I am happy to help in any way that I can.  I look forward to the next LinkedIn Breakfast, where I will get to eat, socialize, and enjoy watching the speaker.

David E. Bowman - LinkedIn

Get Yourself Connected…

Thanks to Michelle Kaye at Battelle and Battelle, who brought me in today to speak about networking, social media, blogs, networking, and the emerging web to a number of her fellow employees as well as some of the employees of McGohan Brabender.  Originally the event was going to be held at Battelle and Battelle, but because of the large number of people who signed up, it was moved down the street to McGohan Brabender.   I was thrilled that so many would show up to hear me speak.

My presentation revolved around the concept of using the web to connect with others and to create and develop, as Tom Peters would call it, Brand You.  In addition to discussing some general concepts, I spoke specifically about tools like Twitter, Squidoo, WordPress, and LinkedIn - discussing how these tools could be used in conjunction with traditional items like hand written thank you notes and face to face meetings to connect with the world.   We live in a truly amazing time.  Never before have individuals been so empowered to learn, share, and grow both personally and professionally.  I appreciate being given the opportunity to share the little that I know with others.  It was my pleasure, and I hope that those who took the time to listen to me enjoyed my presentation.   Thanks for your hospitality.

McGohan Brabender - Welcome To McGohan Brabender

Is iGoogle the next SharePoint?

Could iGoogle be used as an effective alternative for the Microsoft collaboration tool SharePoint?  Let me qualify that by saying, I don’t mean today - but rather in the not so distant future.  SharePoint is a pretty powerful application.  Still, if you look at what Google is trying to accomplish with web based applications and cloud computing, ask yourself “could iGoogle be developed into a fairly robust collaboration tool.”  It already allows for customization of content, and there are numerous gadgets that deliver everything from email and calendar to ToDo lists and games.  You can also share individual tabs with others - allowing for a shared workspace for small teams.  I have been pondering this for some time, and thought I would put it out there for discussion.  While I think it is a long way from being something that could be rolled out in a large firm, small businesses could absolutely utilize this free tool to communicate with customers and employees alike.  Also, the fact that SharePoint is one of Microsoft’s hottest products, must make it a huge target for companies like Google and others.  You have to think that the people at Google have at least pondered this notion.  So, what do you think?  Could you use iGoogle as an effective collaboration tool?

The Wiggles and The Beastie Boys: Together at Last

Two of my daughter’s favorite bands are The Wiggles and The Beastie Boys. She is 4. We try to carefully monitor how much and what of both bands is appropriate. Of course, I try to steer her towards the Beastie’s, like any good father would. (Please don’t call Children’s Services. We don’t let her listen to all of their songs). Anyway, I always thought that my home would be the only place where I might find these two musical acts living side by side until today that is. Along comes Google with yet another fun surprise - Artist Themes for iGoogle.

Quick note: iGoogle allows you to customize the Google home page by adding content from around the web. Very cool tool, and something that I have integrated into my daily life. Totally worth checking out if this is a new to you. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

iGoogle launched customized themes several months back. These range from scenes of the beach, to an animated bus stop, to a zen garden and so on. This empowered the user to easily change the look and feel of Google. More fun than function, but interesting none the less.

Well, today I discovered something new in Artist Themes for iGoogle. These themes were designed by folks like Todd Oldham, Michael Graves, Coldplay, John Maeda, Jackie Chan, Lance Armstrong and yes… The Beastie Boys and The Wiggles. There are many to choose from, and each has special little surprises within them. Activating them is as easy as finding the one you want and clicking. Done.

Another really fun aspect of this is that iGoogle allows users to create tabs within the home page - each of which can be customized with a different theme. So, for example, I have a page that is my normal home page. When I type in google, it is where I land. It has my gmail, calendar, and other regularly accessed information all in one spot. I have now decorated it with The Beastie Boys. I then have a page titled News. It has headlines from a wide swath of sources giving me the latest and greatest from around the world. It is adorned with “The Wiggles” - reminding me of my daughter. All in all there are 6 pages, each displaying different information, and each with a distinct look and feel.

From search results delivered by Elmer Fudd to the Wiggles and Beastie Boys, Google continues to make it more fun for me to use their products.

iGoogle Artist Themes

3 Free Tech Tools You Need to Use

The internet is full of tools that can make your life easier. Here are 3 of my favorites. If you have not heard of these, please give them a look. They can empower you in ways you would never have imagined.

LinkedIn - If you work for a living, you should use LinkedIn. Plain and simple. LinkedIn is a social networking site that caters to business professionals. It is primarily used as a way to keep tabs on connections new and old, but has countless other applications. From personal branding to market research, to finding a job, to sales support, to ad-hoc help desk, the site’s usefulness grows daily. In 2004 the site had about 500 thousand users. As of 2008 it is estimated to have 21 million. How is that for growth? While there is a paid version of the site that adds functionality, you can do most of what you would need to in the free version. Creating a profile is easy and can be done pretty quickly. This one is a must.

Jott - What if you could call a phone number, speak, and have your words emailed to you in both transcribed text and audio form? What if you could do this for free? You can. Jott offers you the ability to send transcribed voice mail messages to yourself and others at no cost. This one is great for when you have those “great idea” or “damn I better not forget that” moments but don’t the ability to immediately write it down. I put Jott in my speed dial, and with the touch of one key, I can leave myself a message. Within minutes I get an email in my inbox capturing my message. The quality of the transcription is actually very good. Having used this hundreds of times, I can only think of one time that I actually had to play back the audio to understand what my message was. All you need to do to sign up for the service is to go to the site, enter your phone number, enter your email address, and viola - Jott at will. This service has come in handy for me more times than I can count. It is so simple, but so powerful at the same time.

Goog411 - Google on your phone. I am not talking about looking things up on an iPhone or Blackberry, I am talking about calling your search in and having it read back to you over the phone. Need Pizza in Dayton, Ohio? Call 1-800-Goog411 and have the Google search done for you for free. They will even connect you directly or email you a google map right to your chosen destination. It is so simple. This one is perfect for those in sales and other fields with lots of windshield time. Not sure exactly where that customer is? Goog411 can save the day. Need to grab some lunch or find a tow truck? Goog411. Again, this is free. This one is also embedded in my speed dial and used regularly.

These are 3 of my favorite freebies. What 3 free tech tools can’t you live without?

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