School Communications 2.0 » feeds

An Interesting Twitter Development…

nylady — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 16:36:23 +0000

OK — this is interesting.

I’m not much of a Twitter user, sending Tweets there a few times a week and scanning the people and groups I follow (Grammar Girl, PROpen Mic, MakeUseOf and a few others) for interesting article and posting ideas.
But last night, I decided to search for Twitterers to follow. My first addition was Barack Obama, who I thought would be a great friend to have on Twitter. Sure enough — less than an hour later, “he” was following me. Or his campaign people were following me, anyway.
This morning, I woke up, signed on to my email account, and saw a notice that Obama Girl was now following me on Twitter. OK — that makes sense. A bit unusual, but now I’m following her as well.

But then — by lunchtime, SarahPalinFeed was following me. Now how the heck did that happen? Somehow, I felt violated.

The beauty of Twitter is that you don’t have to follow someone back.

Swurl — Your Online Presence

nylady — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 23:04:26 +0000

For anyone who’s a Web 2.0 junkie like myself, Swurl is another tool that allows you (nay, encourages you) to follow yourself and your online presence — all on one page. But it’s not just about vanity, folks. It’s also a great tool that provides you with quick links to all your web places — Facebook, blogs, Twitters and more. Swurl gives you two ways to view all your web entries — in list form, which looks like a bookmarking site, or in a cool timeline view. You can see mine here:

Every item is in the small box next to the date, and direct links to those items are in blue. Check it out and see if it works for you.

NSPRA Website

nylady — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 15:48:58 +0000

Image via Wikipedia

Carol Mowen of NSPRA sent me a Facebook post to let us all know that the new NSPRA website will be available at its old URL in a couple of days, after some testing. So you can find it right now at the link I provided in my earlier post, then it will revert back to the old website address. I guess I should start packing…

Using RSS Feeds

nylady — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 15:38:59 +0000

I just wrote a how-to article for eHow about RSS feeds, which provide Web users with a simple way of storing and finding their favorite websites and blogs. You no longer have to depend on your browser’s bookmarking tool, which gets clumsy and disorganized. What’s more, by using web-based RSS readers like iGoogle or Pageflakes, your favorite feeds (which are updated for you) can be read from any computer.

Take a look at my eHow article, which provides you with step-by-step instructions.

Netbytes: The New York Times [via Zemanta]
MAKE RSS feed updates [via Zemanta]

What is Social Media?

nylady — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 20:11:40 +0000

I found an interesting eBook, “What is Social Media,” that’s worth reading when you have time for 40 pages. The good news is that you can come here anytime you want to catch up on your summer reading. It’s a well-organized and easy-to-read guide to the basics — blogs, Youtube, Digg, Delicious, and more. Once you read it, you’ll understand all those crazy terms that have been leaving you behind in the dust!

Using iGoogle to Start Your Day

nylady — Fri, 09 May 2008 04:48:18 +0000

If you don’t have iGoogle set up on your computer, then you might as well start your day an hour later than everyone else. As school communicators and school superintendents, it’s important to get off on the right foot. I will likely spend the new few blog entries showing you how to set up iGoogle as user-designed news and blog feed repository, or in non-geek speak, an easy to use place to store all your favorite websites and blogs. What’s more iGoogle has such an easy user interface you’ll find it a breeze to set up. Stay tuned and I will show you how to accomplish all this in my next post.