Free options:

Kurrently.com – Monitors what is said about you/your brand on Twitter and Facebook.  Allows you to scope your results by either platform or all results. Also allows you to change the search platform. Results are easy to read and straight forward. You can even get them as an RSS feed, if you are willing to pay for it.

SocialOomph.com – Will send you an update of tweets on a topic every 12 or 24 hours. As a free member, you can monitor one keyword set. Paid members have the option to set up more monitors. Also allows you to do auto-posting and scheduled posting to multiple Twitter, Buzz, and StatusNet accounts for free. Paid members can also set up accounts for FaceBook. blogs, and Ping.fm. The auto-posting and click statistics are good. The rest? I can live without it.

SocialMention.com – Live monitoring, plus the option of a daily HTML email. Live monitoring can be done at any time on any search term. Live monitoring is great, when it works. (Sometimes it is slow/incomplete.) If you wish, you can create a CSV file of the results as well as files with the sentiment, keywords, users, and hashtags for your search term. No reply or tracking available. In the past, I have had a problem canceling email alerts. (That may have gotten better lately.) The biggest plus for SocialMention: They attempt to search everywhere. The biggest minus: There is no timeframe given for the results.

Trackur.com – Give them a keyword, filter it as desired, tell it to exclude your own domain (or some other), and set the system searching. Trackur comes back with a dead simple chart of the daily result counts, as well as the most recent results. Filter the results by date or sentiment if you want.  Sort them by influence or sentiment. Export your results to a CSV file so that you can work with them yourself. An added bonus: Save your search and let the site run in your browser. The system will update your results about every 30 minutes.

TweetDeck/CoTweet/HootSuite/Seesmic, etc. – Each of the main Twitter client has built in the ability to perform live searches on keywords. The results are Twitter only. There is no way to save the results. Response is built into each of the clients, but tracking and assigning of items isn’t in TweetDeck.

Paid options:

UberVu.com - UberVu has a limited free option that lets you search for terms and see basic analytics. Terms are monitored over Twitter, WordPress, and Discus for free.  If you are a paid user, you get much better analytics and tracking, better filtering, PDF and Excel exports, assignments for activity, plus additional sources (Facebook, Buzz, MySpace, and more). The site and the data has improved massively over recent months, but the cost has gone up as well.

justSignal.com – A Scottsdale company, justSignal allows you to monitor mentions of individual terms or complex search strings. They cover a wide range of the social web, including Twitter, YouTube, Backtype, blogs, and more. They will set up a trial for you in some circumstances, but they are mostly a paid service.  Using the live monitoring page of the site, you can see a wide range of analytics, as well as three different sets of content details from Twitter, Flickr, blog entries, and blog comments. The one thing I love most about their system? Daily and weekly email PDF reports with charts and analysis of your mentions and reach.

Sysomos.com – Now a part of Marketwire, Sysomos has a monitoring side (Heartbeat) and a tracking side (MAP). The two sides combine are one of the best measurement and monitoring systems that exist. The data is verified and cleaned regularly. The customer support is awesome. The interface is great. The reporting and statistical analysis is better than any other system I have used. There isn’t much not to love about Sysomos. The only reason they aren’t my only solution? The price. They are aimed at the enterprise user (for the most part) and the pricing shows it.

My evaluation

If you are just looking to monitor the mentions of a small product or company, a combination of the free systems will get you where you want to go. They each give you a different picture, so you won’t want to depend on just one of the systems. You will need to do your own measurement and analysis off the results they give, but it is doable.

If you have the money to spend on a paid system, go with the one that best fits your budget. justSignal or Sysomos would be my first choices, but if you can’t afford them… go with UberVu.

Want a test term for your own monitoring system evaluation? Do what I did… search for “OneNote” – the solution for all your note taking needs. Unique term, currently being talked about, and safe for work.

@queenofspain and @aaronvest – Listening to these two is like living with them. They are a real couple fighting battles that everyone is familiar with. They love each other and their kids. They have a shared sense of humor that will make you snort. They are two of the bravest people I know. Follow them.

@shashib – We’ve been here before. He’s just amazing. Follow him if you want to learn what’s what in social media.

@egoldstein and @amplifytheweb -Eric runs Amplify, my newest online addiction. A great site for sharing, commenting, and connecting about web content. Eric is involved in not just the site development, but also the community as well.

@jodijodijodi @leighdow @allroses @chrysohara @gawthrok @spellwight @godaddy @MightyMommy and way too many more for making Wednesday’s #smdayphx so much fun to attend!

@einsteintech for being willing to consider making his great OneNote addin (OneNote calendar) work with the most recent version.

@ehorley @mrexcel and all the other new and renewed Microsoft MVPS

You are all MVPs in my world. Keep rocking the great content!

Two weeks ago, my position with The Social Media Party went away. I was let go with less than 4 days notice. I have been struggling to come to terms with what happened. I have been trying to keep positive as I (yet again) look for new contracts and new work.

It is great to have supportive friends whom I can call on when the edges blur. It is great to have work to do that keeps me moving through these times. Without the connections I have here on the social web and in Phoenix, it would be harder than it is. Without the prayers and support of my family, I wouldn’t know how to move on.

But moving on is what my life has taught me to do. I am not good at pricing what I do for a living. I am not good at asking for help for myself. I am good at getting people what they need and what they desire. Holding on to those skills will keep me going at night.

Moving on means finding a new job. Moving on means finding a way to pay the bills. Moving on means updating all my social web profiles and my resume. Moving on means worrying about myself as much as I worry about others. (In one of life’s great contradictions: Worrying about and sending prayers and strength to those who need it makes handling all this a bit easier.)

The old standbys have helped. I am answering Office questions again – this time out on Microsoft’s Social Answers site. I am playing with and learning all about new social websites. (Tried Amplify? If not – do it.) I am putting the word out that I am available. I am keeping connected to my real world network in Phoenix. I am throwing myself into PodCampAZ preparation and APCUG work. I am putting feelers out for speaking engagements and applying to speak where I can.

And… I am learning:

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

UPDATE: As of today (July 15, 2010), Amplify autoposts to WordPress blogs. So… I have turned off the extra page here on the blog. All Amplify posts will now show both here and on Amplify as regular posts. Enjoy!

What is Amplify?

Amplify is a site where you can share what you are reading on the web, comment on it, and then share those comments to your whole social network. At the same time, you can read what others are checking out and get involved in conversations about those topics as well. Community, connectivity, curation, and content. All in one place.

Why Amplify?

The people I am connecting with over on Amplify are (so far) people I would want to know in real life. They have opinions and want to share them. They like to contribute to each others content and conversation.

It is easy to connect with other users. Find someone whose content you like? Click the follow button. You don’t even have to go to their page – hovering over their name pops up a mini-profile right from what you are reading. Want to connect with others in your social graph?  Got to “Settings” (at the top of every page) and click “Find your Friends”. Easy connection to your connections on Twitter, Facebook, and Gmail.

The site is easy to use. It is based on WordPress, so the interface is one you already know. They provide a clipping tool that lets you add parts of the page content that sparked your idea quickly and easily. Click their tool while browsing a page and then click the paragraphs/headlines/objects/etc. that you want to reference in your new piece.

(Tip: Click in the order you want the content to show in your summary – you can’t change the order later.)

The site is customizable. It is easy to make your amplify look the way you want it to look. Custom headers, custom backgrounds, custom colors… All easy to change. They have also provided easy to use widgets that add your content from connected sites to the right side of your page.  Want to customize the page even further? You can add your own custom CSS and customize the page look to exactly what you want.

Sharing is great. Amplify has built in a way to share your content automatically with many of the major sites on the social web. I write content there, it is automatically sent out to Twitter – FB – Plurk – Tumblr – Friendfeed. (And you have the option of many other sites as well.)

The team is involved. The people who run Amplify are interested in what the community wants to know about. They comment on content and connect with people all day long. At the same time, they are upgrading the site on a regular basis to add new connections and features.

Ok… What’s not to like?

Like any new site, there are a couple of things that you have to watch out for when using Amplify.

There isn’t a built in spell checker or any easy way to do more than the basic formatting on your new content. If you have a spell checker built into your browser, you can live with the first. The second is harder to get around.

• If you add from the widget at the top of your newsfeed page, there isn’t any formatting or titling automatically added. These are supposed to be short pieces (almost like a tweet), so they are supposed to be self explanatory.
• If you add from the “Write” link, there is the very basic formatting that you get with WordPress. You can do more formatting on pieces added via “Write” via HTML, but only if you know it well. Things added via “Write” can be titled, but the title has to be short enough to be tweeted.
• If you add via a clipping, you get a mix of the two. You can give your items a tweetable title, but you don’t have formatting options or the ability to add HTML.

The other annoyance? No automatic way to post my Amplify posts to this blog. That’s why I had to create the page with the iframe to hold the content. You can add a widget to your blog that shows your recent content, but it isn’t the same thing. Hoping this one gets addressed sooner, rather than later.

One other thing to note:

If you are posting via Amplify to other sites, you will need to be aware of which sites post to each other. You will end up with multiple tweets/Facebook posts if you aren’t careful. I am still working out my strategy for this one. I’ll take ideas.

Final Judgement:

For now, it is a win. I am using it and loving it. I find that I am connecting to people and sharing much quicker than if I feel I have to go write a full piece.

Check it out. Let them know what you think. Talk. Get involved. Get connected. After all, isn’t that part of what life is about?

• The gadget in question: An iPad

• Loaned to me by: Symbaloo

Full disclosure time:

Symbaloo is a sister company and client of The Social Media Party, my current employer. That said, I fell in love with Symbaloo on first introduction. I love the concept of the mixes and the implementation. Sharing content from the web just got a lot easier for US netizens. Join me and try it out!

My thoughts

I had use of the iPad for a week. I loved some of it, hated other parts of it. The things that impacted me the most?

What I loved: Symbaloo 2.0 on the iPad

Symbaloo 2.0 allowed me to navigate the web in a natural, consistent, and convenient way. Symbaloo is a site new to the US. They allow you to create landing pages (called mixes) created of tiles. Each tile is linked to another piece of information on the web, such as:

• Web pages

• News or RSS feeds

• Widgets

• Other mixes

Want to learn how easy it is to use Symbaloo 2.0? Kimmie Chann, Symbaloo’s Community Director for the US, has posted a series of videos on how to use it. Check out this one on “How to Edit and Search for Webmixes”:

How to edit and search for webmixes on Symbaloo

Symbaloo 2.0 wasn’t created for the iPad. It just happens that it works there amazingly well. See for yourself!

Symbaloo 2.0 on the iPad

I also found Symbaloo 2.0 a great way to access my feeds through my iPad. I didn’t like any of the free RSS readers I saw in the apps list. Symbaloo 2.0 let me get to the feed content without hassles or expense. I created an RSS tile for the feeds I wanted to read on the iPad and saved the mix. Voila – My own RSS reader!

Symbaloo Mix for Social Media Feeds

See those feeds live via Symbaloo 2.0!

Clicking a link inside one of those tiles gets you to the linked post. Clicking the box itself usually takes you to the home page for the feed. I say usually because some of the feeds are set up to take you to a page where you can auto subscribe. That’s a feature of the feed settings, not Symbaloo 2.0.

Because Symbaloo 2.0 is all tile based, it was easy for me to navigate without typing. Since typing was the one thing that really bugged me on the iPad, finding that Symbaloo 2.0 worked so well was a definite good thing.

I won’t go so far as to say that I would buy an iPad to use Symbaloo 2.0 on it. I might think about it with a 3G iPad, since that would give me anywhere access. What I will say is that after this week of using the iPad, if someone offered me one – I’d keep it. Until then, I will keep using Symbaloo 2.0 on my desktop and my tablet and leave the iPads to the rest of you.

I just had yet another Facebook (FB) crash. I type too fast for FB to keep up in comments and notes. When this happens, the screen dims and I know that the error message isn’t far behind.

Tonight, it happened while I was putting in a comment on a friend’s note containing travel hints. (Which, by the way, I will be adding as a guest post when this post is done.)

Instead of panicking, I thought “Snagit”! My first attempt was a text grab, but the text was too faded. The second attempt was an image grab – that worked. When my browser re-opened, I just set the two windows side by side and re-typed the text. The image I grabbed was:

If I had been thinking, I would have dropped it into OneNote to grab the actual text. It just takes a few moments to drop the image into OneNote, copy the text from the image, paste it on the note page, edit it, and copy paste it to the note after the browser comes back. OneNote did a halfway decent job of recognizing the text, as you can see here:

Has SnagIt saved the day for you? How? Let me know!

(In the interest of full disclosure: TechSmith takes good care of those who help them beta test and discuss thier products. In my case, that good care includes a few great tchotchkes through the year and a paid account on Screencast.com. I regularly tell Betsy Weber that I would write about and talk about the products even without the extras and that they rock. If you think so, you should tell them too!)

The first step is to get the link for your image and decide where in your post you want the image to show. While editing the blog post, switch from the “Visual” tab to the “HTML” tab. Find the place in the post where you want your picture to appear.

Your next step is to put together the code for the picture, the link, and the caption. Start with this code:

[ caption id="Name_Of_Photo" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="Caption_Text </a>" ]<a title=”Hover_Text” href=”LINK_URL”><img src=”Picture_URL” border=”10″ alt=”ALT_Text” width=”500″ height=”350″ />[/caption]

Where:

• Name_Of_Photo is the name of the photo in your graphics library
• Caption_Text is the text you want to show below the photo
• Hover_Text is the text to show on mouse over
• LINK_URL is the link to the page to go to when the picture is clicked
• Picture_URL is the Flickr (or other photo storage) URL for the picture itself
• ALT_Text is the text to show if the picture is not shown or if a screen reader is being used

Please note: In the sample code, I have added an extra space after the “[" and before the "]“. This is so that you can actually see the comment code that makes this trick work.

Let’s see a real example. This HTML:

[ caption id="attachment_31" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="DigiBordMenu" ]<a title=”Picture 1 by kimmie_chann, on Flickr” href=”http://www.symbaloo.com/public/2273/digibordmenu/”><img src=”http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4033/4347211019_2404bed17a.jpg” border=”10″ alt=”Picture 1″ width=”500″ height=”350″ /></a>[/caption]

Picture 2

[ caption id="attachment_31" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption=" lyne fichet" ]<a title=”Picture 3 by kimmie_chann, on Flickr” href=”http://www.symbaloo.com/public/5886/lyne-fichet–mes-bureaux-publics-”><img src=”http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2730/4347958686_6c161c9203.jpg” border=”10″ alt=”Picture 3″ width=”500″ height=”350″ /></a>[/caption]

Gives this result:

DigiBordMenu

Picture 2

lyne fichet

Once you have the HTML added, switch back to the “Visual” tab. You should see the pictures in your post just as they will show in the actual entry.

I hope that makes sense and that you find it useful!

Logistics:

• When: February 20 and 21
• Where: UAT in Tempe AZ (same place we hold PodCampAZ every year)
• Cost: $55 if you pre-register online. $85 at the door

It’s going to be an awesome conference!

Great speakers. Great volunteers organizing and running it. Great location. (Who can resist the Valley of the Sun in late February?)

So, what’s not to work? The conference itself. That’s because we don’t have very many people coming. Less than 100 at this point. I am hoping you will help me to change that.

We’ve got content for almost everyone. Mac people, PC people, new users, IT Pros, security geeks, user group leaders, digital photographers, genealogy geeks, social media geeks.

Speakers? Yeah, we have some good ones there too. Jay Ferron will be speaking on Windows 7 as our opening keynote. Carey Holzman will be talking about free software. Karen Hart will be talking about security. Bruce Jacobs will be talking about disaster recovery.

Sponsors are doing their share too. AiSquared will be there, as will LifeLock. Serving Online Seniors will be talking, as will SoftQue. We have talks by committee members and board members on FireTrust and Roxio. We even have Darin Travis of Microsoft coming to talk about Windows Mobile.

We’ve got some prizes (though we won’t turn down more prize donations), including copies of Camtasia and SnagIt. We’ve got food. We’ve even got a couple of build events – one Saturday to learn how to install Linux on your existing machine and one Friday night to build your own PC.

Did that one get your attention? It isn’t too late to sign up for the Friday night event. Bruce will be stepping the build event participants through building their own machine. Cost for that is an extra $510, but that gets you a great machine, a copy of Windows 7 for the machine, and an understanding of what goes into building one.

The price is more than reasonable too: Register online before the conference starts and it will only cost you $55! That price includes lunches both days, by the way…

So, tell me… why haven’t more people registered? You tell me! This being a volunteer driven event, we can still add more content…. What else should we do to get people to come?

Disclosure: I have a very vested interest in this conference working out. I am the VP of APCUG and one of the original drivers of the conference.

Update: I forgot the link for the conference information http://phoenix.apcug.org/

I get responses on Twitter when I first publish. I get LOTS of comments on some topics on Facebook. In fact, I have some people who only comment on my content via Facebook. I will occasionally get a comment sent to me via email.

I have been asked why should one comment on the blog. From the writer’s perspective, I like comments posted on the blog because it is a visible sign that  what I wrote connected with someone. But if they comment on Facebook, I see that too. So, why do I expect comments on the blog itself?

I think my desire to see comments on the blog is from an outdated sense that the blog itself is where my audience is. Ironic, isn’t that? I know that much more of my community is on Twitter and Facebook. I didn’t connect that fact with the location of the feedback.

Something on Facebook seems to cause people to not only connect with the content, but also with each other. I linked my blog to my notes today. Immediately, a conversation started on the “Guess the airport!” post. I don’t know if it was the timing of the information or if it was the location of the content. I am guessing that the people who commented felt more comfortable  in the Facebook environment. I haven’t yet figured out why, but am hoping they all tell me. (And I don’t care where they tell me!)

I find myself wondering… Where do people comment on your content? Are you looking for the comments actively? Are you finding them all?

A year ago, I was in the midst of moving to the San Francisco area to start a new job and a new life. I was leaving behind Phoenix, my home for almost 18 years. Leaving behind my friends and functions that had been my life. Leaving behind the independent life of a consultant. Leaving behind, temporarily, my husband.

Fast forward a year. Bruce joined me here a few months ago. Life changed in September. This week, we are packing to leave the San Francisco area.

The new start taught me much about myself and about the corporate world. I learned, much to my surprise, that I like working in an office environment more than working at home. I learned, not to my surprise at all, that a one bedroom apartment in an urban environment was not for hubby and I.

This week is Thanksgiving. It’s hard to put into words what I am thankful for right now.

• I am thankful for a car that holds the stuff we need and which will make it to Iowa.
• I am thankful for family that cares and supports in the best ways they know how.
• I am thankful for a community of friends who are always there, no matter where they actually live.
• I am thankful for a skillset that allows me to reach out to those who need help.
• I am thankful to live in a time of hope. Where even if things aren’t what I expected, they are good.

Sharing always makes things easier. What makes you thankful? Join those of us participating in #tweetsgiving at http://tweetsgiving.epicchange.org/

To get you started, check out the “recipe” for tonight’s supper.

Clean out the kitchen soup: Ham Style

Ingredients

• 1 ham bone with some ham still attached
• 1 bag of ham pieces (frozen leftovers from Easter)
• Water
• Misc. herbs – garlic powder, Italian seasonings, etc.
• Can of diced tomatoes
• Half head of garlic
• Can of whole mushrooms
• Can of creamed corn
• Rooster sauce, just a touch

Prep

Put the ham and ham bone in a pot. Cover with water. Add first round of herbs.

Bring the pot to a boil and let it boil for awhile. Stir infrequently.

How long do you let it boil? Until it seems ready…

When you are ready for the next step, remove the ham bone from the pot. Cut off any ham left on the bone and return the meat to the pot.

Place the garlic in a bowl. Sprinkle with oil and microwave for 30 seconds to a minute. Listen for it to start sizzling. When it sizzles, pull it out and remove the paper. Add the garlic to the pot.

Add the canned tomatoes, mushrooms, and creamed corn. Stir the concoction regularly.

Add a dash of rooster sauce if desired.

Let it boil for 30 more minutes. Lower the heat. Taste. Thicken if desired.

Enjoy.