Speaking about “Shiny Objects” at BlogPotomac 2008

Frank Gruber Shares His Love For Shiny Objects of the Web & Social Media at Blog Potomac

Frank Gruber spoke about his social media life and how it has helped get him where he is today at BlogPotomac at the State Theater in Falls Church, Virginia. He also spoke about his love for products or “bright, shiny objects” as he refers to them. Frank did a brain dump of all the products and services he uses routinely – at least once a week (shown below). 

Communications
Gmail – For email that allows away messages
AOL Mail – For email with a personalized domain
Remember the Milk – Enables me to create to-do lists that can be pulled into Gmail or accessed on the iPhone with a pro account
AIM Instant Messenger – For instant messaging using AIM client and within Gmail
AwayFind – Enables people to connect with me quickly via a form that sends a message to my mobile device – more AwayFind details
Facebook – This social utility offers an opportunity to communicate with some of my friends and family
Twitter – This microblogging platform is great for communicating to a larger group of friends like a broadcast instant message both online or via text message

Photos
Flickr – I have a pro account and over 6500 photos uploaded… like this one of my breakfast yesterday. 🙂

Video
TubeMogul – For easy distribution of my video podcast videos onto as many platforms as possible in only a few simple steps – more TubeMogul details
Viddler – A video platform I use which offers a slick video player with inline comments, I use it forSOMEWHAT FRANK TV
Blip.tv – A video platform I use for formulating my video podcast SOMEWHAT FRANK TV feed
YouTube – For online videos shorter than 10 minutes
eyespot – I don’t use this one as much but it is still the only online video product that allows you to edit video and then download the edited video in multiple formats

Blogging or Microblogging
Typepad – A hosted blog platform – SOMEWHAT FRANK, is powered by Typepad
WordPress – An open source blog platform – the TECH cocktail site is powered by WordPress
Tumblr – A microblogging platform – I use it for my personal site, FJ Gruber – more Tumblr details

Storage
Evernote – A digital dropbox with a desktop, Web and mobile component – more Evernote details

Content Discovery & Sharing
Mixx – Social news – more Mixx details
Digg – Social news
Delicious – Social bookmarking
StumbleUpon – Content discovery
Shareaholic – A consolidated sharing extension for Firefox – more Shareaholic details

Analytics
SiteMeter – Offers a snapshot view of daily site traffic and activity
FeedBurner – Analytics for my feeds including number of subscribers – more FeedBurner details
Google Analytics – For deeper site traffic metrics

News & Information Management
myAOL – A personalized startpage and feed reader experience – more myAOL details
FeedHub – Creates a personalized feed list based on your reading habits – more FeedHub details
AideRSS – Ranks items in a feed by popularity – more AideRSS details

Search & Alerts
Summize – Twitter search
Google Alerts – Alerts for monitoring the Web
Filtrbox – New more sophisticated alerts product for monitoring the Web – more Filtrbox details
Lijit – Blog search engine which offers search analytics – more Lijit details

Lifestream Aggregators
SocialThing – Aggregates all your profile updates and your friends into one lifestream – moreSocialThing details
MyBlogLog – Creates a community and lifestream around your blog community contacts – moreMyBlogLog details
FriendFeed – Creates a conversation around your lifestream – I find it a little distracting though
TwitterFeed – Aggregates my items and places them into my Twitter updates automatically – moreTwitterFeed details

Travel
Dopplr – Share your travels with others online – more Dopplr details
Tripit – Organizes your travel plans for you – more Tripit details

Project Management
Basecamp – A project management tool created by 37signals

Finance
Quicken Online – I tried to use Quicken for Mac and it was way too complicated so I gave Quicken Online a shot for managing my financial picture easily in one place.

 

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