Spy Journal 3.0 Filtering the web for you

Following on from the success of the www.qldfloods.org website I have been invited to a number of panels, communities and working groups.

Last night I was asked to take some team photos for the Emergency 2.0 Wiki working group committee of which I am a part.

What a comedy of errors!

I set the camera up on the board room table, pointing at the group at the end with the projector screen at the end, set the timer, pushed the button and headed for the end of the table - only to have to leap cables on the way - i made the first tangled in the second and couldn't stop, dragging the laptop running the projector screen to the floor and severing the connection. Thus the photo is of everybody staring at me (to camera left) and laughing - and a purple screen.

The second photo I got there in time, but Eileen decided to lunge for the water bottle at the last second!

After several more spectacular failures including a shot that was ok but with inexplicably a Facebook login screen in the background, we eventually ended up with the desired result. We were all staring at an iPad that had the meeting agenda on it and trying not to giggle!

BuzzGrowl is a pretty cool plugin that's very easy to install on any website. It creates a floating bottom right corner box that searches for and displays social media commentary about the site you are on. It provides easy ways for people to see the commentary about your site and participate by sharing on Facebook, tweeting or retweeting others comments.

I was able to install it in under 5 minutes, its a simple script that needs to be added to your page. Get your script from BuzzGrowl.

Here's some of what people have been saying about it:

BuzzGrowl is a premium answer to onsite social media engagement. If you're a small blog, you'll love it. - Brad McCarty, Editor, TheNextWeb
Many site owners will be interested in using [Buzz Growl]. Website publishers will love it. - Marshall Kirkpatrick, Co-Editor, ReadWriteWeb

And here is a video about it.

Social media integration - its not just about technology - its also about community.

The biggest buzzword on the web right now and in advertising and marketing is social media integration. I am having more and more meetings each week with clients asking how they do this.

We have a lot of technology that we can throw at this to make it easy to work - and the tech stuff is pretty easy. Most of the major players are now providing "open" or at least partially open access to data.

But none of it is any use if you are not able to make the community part work. Integrating your brand marketing and awareness with social media is not like traditional advertising, where you threw stuff out at people and barely listened to feedback it at all. At most my experience with big brand advertising has been that the feedback loop was filtered through ad campaign managers, 3rd party survey random sample providers and the odd bit of internal email dealing with the one or two very angry customers!

Outlook 2010 has some pretty sweet features. Here are some of the new ones.

Use the Outlook Social Connector with Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace and Windows Live

Today, we are announcing that you can use the Outlook Social Connector with Facebook and Windows Live. Our partners LinkedIn and MySpace are also releasing updates for their providers. All of the latest providers appear on the provider page.

Download the social connector software

Download each of the social connectors

Choosing the right communication modality with the contact card