Dec
15

Toute Suite with HootSuite

I just discovered this AWESOME new tool for identity management: HootSuite. For social media users with multiple lifestreams, it is essential to your well-being.

hootsuite

You can tie your Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Ping.fm accounts into the tool and manage then using a variety of options. They just developed Twitter List support, which provides even more functionality. This would be an ideal tool for social media powerhouses who manage multiple Twitter identities. I’ve even set up a number of Twitter searches for specific hashtags and subjects that update continuously.

There’s even an RSS reader from which you can pull in multiple feeds and organize according to your preferences. I haven’t monkeyed around with that one yet, and it looks cool, but I’m a diehard Google Reader user.

Also cool: a built-in URL shortener, an iPhone app (as yet untried), and built-in analytics tools with which one can use to measure each Twitter user, hash or other stream they’ve integrated into the tool.

Also AWESOME: there’s a bookmarklet (the “Hootlet”) that you can embed on your toolbar. As you browse, you can punch that thing and it launches a separate browser box that takes you instantly to a status update poster. You can choose your social media network here and choose to post a link to the page or media file you’re currently browsing or something completely unrelated. GREAT functionality for the power browser.

I’ve been hesitant to adopt a third-party tool to manage my Twitter account primarily because the best of them are desktop downloads (Seesmic, TweetDeck). The great thing about HootSuite is that it’s all web-based. I can’t even tell you how handy it is to have one dashboard from which to manage my outgoing posts/tweets/updates. No more bullshit getting caught between my Twitter audiences and my (profanity-fearing) family networks on Facebook. HootSuite will be even more functional to me once they integrate other social networks I use like Goodreads (hint, hint).

Check it out, social media mofos. I think you’ll like it.

Dec
14

Marvel Digital Comics: An AWESOME Delivery Mechanism for Comics

I am a diehard DC Comics fan. I can remember all the way back to when my dad brought me to the E-Z Mart in Longview, Texas, and bought me my first few comics: a Superman comic; an old Star Trek adaptation; and Legion of Super-Heroes #311, the comic that forever changed my life and turned me into a Legion fan.

That said, I have to give Superfly TNT props to Marvel for its Digital Comics subscription program. I’ve grown lukewarm to the stories and shenanigans Marvel’s pulled over the years, such so that I barely pick up one or two series in print anymore. Because of this, I’ve missed out on a lot of stuff, and it’s great to go back through their digital archives and check out a lot of what I missed. Plus, at the price offered (~$40 on holiday discount for a year), I end up saving tons of cash on expensive hardcover collections I’d otherwise have to buy sight unseen. It’s the ultimate “try before you buy” program.

Image courtesy of dailyskew

Image courtesy of dailyskew

While there are some obvious gaps in the online archives (Marvel tends not to put a lot of new comics online, which I suppose makes sense from a business perspective), there are some pretty good runs on here. I recently finished reading Warren Ellis and Adi Granov’s six-part Iron Man: Extremis, and I’m glad I read it online instead of forking out the cash to buy a trade paperback. It was decent, but not up to the standards I expect of Ellis. But I don’t feel cheated about this since I acquired the story through the Digital Comics subscription.

The digital reader Marvel employs is a little clunky, and I find it crashes or slows down on browsers or systems it wasn’t designed for. Running it on an uncluttered Dell Latitude E5400 with a Chrome browser seems to work pretty well though.

Marvel’s foray into digital comics has had me thinking on the issue of comics distribution for the future. I tend to believe that comics are going to price themselves right out of the industry soon, so that only diehard fans pick up actual print books anymore. For periodical series to survive, companies must turn to digital distribution, where new audiences live. IDW Publishing has stepped up their game in this arena considerably lately by publishing comics directly to the iPhone.

This is good fodder for a future post on digital comics distro. More to follow.

Oct
01

The Awesomeness Manifesto – Worthy of the Title?

Short answer: Pretty much.

Umair Haque over at HarvardBusiness.org beat me to the punch with his Manifesto on Awesomeness. Now, on the whole, I like Umair’s writing. He’s crazy. I mean, look at this guy:

Aaagghhhhh!!!!
Aaagghhhhh!!!!

Dude looks like he’s got so much rumbling around in his brain, rays of badassness might come flying out of his peepers.

Umair argues that the days of innovation are over. Innovation, in Umair’s estimation, is old hat and not inherently COOL ENOUGH to continue to be that shining beacon in the distance that we should all be striving for. Instead, we should be yearning for AWESOMENESS, which he describes thusly:

Awesomeness happens when thick — real, meaningful — value is created by people who love what they do, added to insanely great stuff, and multiplied by communities who are delighted and inspired because they are authentically better off. [Emphasis mine.]

Putting all the other stuff aside, I want to hone in on the two things I highlighted above: love and insanely great stuff. Umair is right on the money in describing something that is AWESOME as something that has been born of love. It is often someone’s passion that produces anything of remarkable import.

From such love, insanely great stuff can come. I think this needs no further explanation. Plenty of other 21st century troubadour poets have said as much more eloquently than I.

Love + insanely great stuff = AWESOME. I can get behind that.

There is a GREAT conversation happening in the comments section of Umair’s post in which I highly encourage everyone to go participate. While I dig the guts of Umair’s manifesto, I still think he’s missed some things. Furthermore, many commenters – including quite a few bean-counting, butt-headed, bitch-assed defenders of Ye Olde Way Of Doing Things – have attacked him, pointing out his assertions’ naivety and the mere GALL – GALL, I tell you – that Umair would use such a silly word like “awesomeness” to replace the sacred golden cow of Innovation.

Umair, like a true son of the Social Media Masses, responded that The Awesomeness Manifesto is open source. That means, YOU can go edit it. Don’t like the concept? FIX IT. Think of a better pillar of Awesomeness that Umair missed? GET IN THERE.

What would NOT be AWESOME, but in fact be kinda LAME, would be if you just said something stupid about it in the comments (mine or Umair’s) and pretended to care. ;)