All reviews will be in Mafia style.

There’s a new movement in shopping started by a group named OpenSky. In case you didn’t know we are big believers in buying from people you know. We shop local as much as posible. We heard about this intriguing new way of shopping with OpenSky,  on people sites and blogs.

Why is it intriguing?

First, because the people involved will review and write about products they have tried. Second, because the technology is very cool.

Don’t you love this idea?  Reading reviews and  researching products before you buy. We do! What better way to buy than from user reviews? If you see the OpenSky shop logo on any site or blog you’ll know that real people have reviewed the products.

Now, the technology. The guys at OpenSky have developed a shopping cart that will appear right on this site. This creates a shop right on the Mafia and best of all gives us complete control over what products appear.

Sign up here before the 10th of August to win a prize, I have no idea what they are giving away so don’t ask. I’ve seen the suppliers whose products I get to test out and review, if the prize is from any of them, it will be good.

Our promise to be truthful stands (I know that made you guys laugh). Considering what you’ve read here,  the general sense of humor being slightly demented,  we are more in danger of pissing off a guy with a bad product any anything else.

For those brave souls who want to come and have  a little dinner with us—and a few margarita’s— send me an email for time, location and directions!

jmb@menopausemafia.com

Alltop is an aggregation site, and quite simple put, it pulls information from all over the internet and organize it.  Alltop is a topical site that pulls information about a flippin’ ton of topics. Check it out I’m sure you’ll think it’s great!

Now, that being said- it’s a cool website I work for during the day (and night and on weekends if something goes wrong) it gives you a simplified look at the news by city. Headlines, weather, movie times, lottery numbers, lowest gas prices and local events all in one place. It makes getting what you need to know much easier. Check it out here at http://shoutback.com and let me know what you think.

Now, for the best part! We have a mascot who goes about chatting up  unprepared citizens. Check out the first video in The Adventures of Shoutback Jack! Watch for more of these little bits of mayhem to come. Be on the look out for Jack in a city near you!

Pandora- This is an Internet radio station that creates stations for you according to your preferences. Pandora has both an iPhone app and a Blackberry app so you can take your stations with you!

My Check Free -To make paying the bills a little easier. This site will do it all for you. Just add your accounts and you will get email notification when you have bills due- then click-click-click- they fly out of your checking account like cucumber out of a salad shooter.

Instant Rim Shot- Go to this site and press button in case of bad joke. Look I’m simple it doesn’t take much to entertain me (evidence of that- my taste in men).

Urban Dictionary- The great source of laughter for the whole office on one of those super boring days. I recommend signing up for the word-of-the-day email (if you are bored grab your address book—sign up grandma and your pastor too).

Snopes- The definitive Internet reference source for urban legends, folklore, myths, rumors, and misinformation. Check out that email about carjacking, cleaning products, possessed cats, whatever before you send it to everyone, please!

What is a gravatar?

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an image that follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you do things. Avatars help identify your posts on blogs and web forums, so why not on any site?

It takes a whole two minutes to sign up, upload a picture and register your email address. Then next time you comment on a blog or site that has Gravatar service your smiling face will show up!

Ever click on it just for a kick and have it lead you somewhere foreign?

Here’s a simple explanation of RSS:

If you want to know when something new is posted or what has been posted to your favorite sites on a daily basis an RSS feed is the nicest tools to use. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. To use an RSS feed you need to click the button on any given site and then add it to a reader like the ones listed below or your google/yahoo/aol home page.

After you have added the feed you will see all of the titles or headlines as they are posted! Enjoy!

More resources:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RSS_(file_format)

www.google.com/reader

10 Top Readers-

http://email.about.com/od/rssreaderswin/tp/top_rss_windows.htm

By now you have figured out how difficult it can be to limit your characters when you are tweeting. It makes most of us work to convey a thought in a simple straight forward way. No fancy prose, no lengthy poetry.

One of the tools you can use to shorten your post is http://tinyurl.com. Say you want t o share a blog post from your favorite writers or a link to a great site you just found, but by the time you include the link you have six characters left- not enough room to explain what you are sharing.  Copy and paste the URL into the little window on the tinyurl site and it will make it smaller for you.

Twitter Applications
There are a few cool applications that aggregate (pull together and organize in one place) Twitter posts. It’s fine if you just want to log in to Twitter.com and see what’s going on but with these applications you can see more at one time.

My personal favorite is http://Tweetdeck.com because you can see a tweet stream that updates on it’s own (no need to refresh the page), a stream of @ replys, a stream of direct messages and then you can use it to search too. There are some instructions on their site but just playing with it is the easiest way to figure it out.  This is a desktop application you have to download along with Adobe Air.

The web-based application you can use is http://hootsuitecom (no downloading) because I can run multiple Twitter profiles at one time. It allows you to tweet to more than one account at a time. This is great if you have a profile for your business, group, blog, and then one for you personally.

Most of these applications have a tool built in to shorten urls with, so there is an added bonus!  There are a million other applications you can use to manage your tweets, followers and all of them have different features-it’s up to you to find the one you like the most!

#Hashtags
One of the things you will see on Twitter is a cryptic set of symbols and letters show up here and there.
Like this:

@Hallock If a person kills their clone is it murder or suicide? #ponder

It took me while to dig up the explanation for the # before a certain word, but it comes down to watching what others are tweeting. I could go into great detail about this subject but someone already has http://twitter.pbwiki.com/Hashtags That page includes a complete explanation plus links to the #hashtag search pages.

On the last post we had some tips from a Social Media Strategist (our buddy @stacijshelton)
Here they are:

Lingo: When twitter encounters a problem you’ll get the FAIL WHALE Screen. Now, it’s become urban slang for any time someone screws up…

Twitter Don’t (s)
- Don’t just post a bunch of links to buy your stuff or get us to visit your blog (FAIL)
- Don’t be on a mission to get followers and just talk about yourself all day (FAIL)
- Don’t get a bunch of followers and never follow anyone back (FAIL).

The last thing I want to tell you about is the Tweet-up. This is a gathering of people in a certain geographical area who are on twitter. We do these every month at Office Space Co-Working (@cowork_akron) in downtown Akron. We get to meet face to face and of course we all bring our laptops and tweet about it!
So if you see that term show in a tweet up you will know you can attend-since most tweetup’s are open to the Twitter public!

Questions class?

What is Twitter? Micro-blogging

Micro-blogging? You have 140 characters to use and that’s it. Micro as in small.

Why 140 characters? I don’t flippin know, I didn’t create the damn thing, try to focus!

Why do people use this? Networking, community, keeping up with friends, sharing of information, looking for jobs and promoting their business.

What do you talk about? Me? Shoes, food, books and why men suck. Just kidding! I talk about what’s I’m reading, or what I’m doing at work, or I ask for recommendations from the 500+people who read my tweets. This is a great source of information!

What’s up with the followers/following? Okay, when you sign up on twitter you will see a page that shows only what you have said-until you follow someone-and then you see what they have said and every time you follow someone you see more “tweets”.

Tweets? When you post something on twitter it’s called a tweet. Again, I don’t make the news I just report it.

Back to the following/followers thing- you follow people that you find interesting, or that have things in common with you. You find people you know by using the twitter search tools located on the FIND PEOPLE link top right hand corner.

When people follow you look at their profiles, are you interested? Follow back- if they are spammers who are trying to sell you something you can ignore them block them.  I block people who have no tweets on their pages, no profiles and they are following 2000 people.

Fat Twitter bird

To write a tweet to someone you put the @ symbol in front of their user name like this—

@stacijshelton Hey Girl! What’s going on today?

—The person you are talking to will see the tweet and know you are talking to them

If someone writes something cool/funny/smart/informative and you want to share it with your followers you put an RT in front of what they wrote and that means it’s a Re-Tweet.

Like this —-  RT@stacijshelton Hey Girl! What’s going on today?

You can also send a private message to someone using that tab on the right side of page.

Here are some sources of information, tools and stuff you can use to get started!

Start here http://news.cnet.com/newbies-guide-to-twitter/

Or here http://www.gissisim.com/2009/03/how-to-twitter-like-a-pro/

Find cool people

What to do on a Follow Friday (you will see this #followfriday show up in tweets) the day fo the week we spend meeting and recommending people.

http://www.stacijshelton.com/2009/03/06/awesome-realtionhip-builders-on-twitter-followfriday/

The Twitter Yellow Pages, search by name or location.

http://twellow.com

There are a million other things I could write about, but this should be enough to get you started. Make sure you follow me! @jodibrooks and @stacijshelton oh! and @shoutback Wait don’t forget @menopausemafia

Fair warning- this is addictive! If you don’t believe me just wait I’m going to have to go to Tweethab and be Tweetoxed!

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