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E-mails. News. Facebook. Wikipedia. Do you feel ever feel that there’s just too much information? Do you struggle to keep up with important issues, subject and ideas? Are you drowning in data?

In this age of information overload, a new solution is emerging that could help us cope with the oceans of data surrounding and swamping us. It’s called information visualisation.

The approach is simple: apply the rules of visual design to information – make information into images, rather than text.

from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8381597.stm
recommended by richard

Twitter Novels are one use of Twitter that many of us would never consider – but there’s a growing number of Twitter Novelists exploring the medium. Today Brandon J. Mendelson, author of The Falcon Can Hear The Falconer (a Twitter Novel) gives some tips for writing Twitter Novels.

A word of caution: As far as English language Twitter novels go, this is new territory. Based on early results, as compiled by ReadWriteWeb, there have not been any success stories. RWW never spelled out what would be defined as a success, but I took their comments to assume no Twitter novelists have crossed into the mainstream or made money. It may be only a matter of time before this changes.

What I’m presenting here are suggestions on how to write and operate your new Twitter novel based on my experience writing “The Falcon Can Hear The Falconer”. I hope what I’m proposing will provide a blueprint for interested writers to create successful Twitter novels.

from http://www.twitip.com/how-to-start-a-twitter-novel/

Instead of sentence by sentence, I’m now twittering just the topic sentences for each paragraph. The reason: To get people engaged, the sentence has to state a position and ask for information. A sentence that simply documents a point doesn’t lead to anything. So people are providing the answers for each paragraph themselves.

I’ve done four sentences. Will try to digest it all by tomorrow morning, write the top of the draft, post it, and resume the Twitter exercis
from http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/archives/2008/05/twitter_story_o.html

from http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1124212
recommended by Rich B.

Additional analysis on some of the technologies and trends at the Peak of Inflated Expectations that will reach the plateau in two to five years are included below:

Cloud Computing. As enterprises seek to consume their IT services in the most cost-effective way, interest is growing in drawing a broad range of services (for example, computational power, storage and business applications) from the “cloud,” rather than from on-premises equipment. The levels of hype around cloud computing in the IT industry are deafening, with every vendor expounding its cloud strategy and variations, such as private cloud computing and hybrid approaches, compounding the hype.

E-Book Readers. Sony’s e-book reader and Amazon’s Kindle have attracted a great deal of attention during 2009. However, the devices still suffer from proprietary file formats and digital rights management technologies, which along with price, are limiting their adoption and will drive them into the Trough of Disillusionment.

The following have tipped just past the Peak of Inflated Expectations:

Social Software Suites. Awareness of social technology is high because of the popularity of related consumer social software and Web 2.0 services. Within businesses, there is strong and rapidly growing evidence of experimentation and early production deployments. The movement from point tools to integrated suites has brought broader adoption but also high expectations. Disillusionment is beginning based on the realization that, even with a suite, much work must be done to build an effective social software deployment.

Microblogging. Microblogging, in general, and Twitter, in particular, have exploded in popularity during 2009 to the extent that the inevitable disillusionment around “channel pollution” is beginning. As microblogging becomes a standard feature in enterprise social software platforms, it is earning its place alongside other channels (for example, e-mail, blogging and wikis), enabling new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to-assimilate exchanges.

gnoring Facebook’s privacy options–some of them fairly new and not well known–can trip up the social-networking site’s users in a number of ways. Here are some that everyone who has a Facebook account should be aware of.
Read more http://www.pcworld.com/article/167060/avoid_facebook_disasters.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/8255729.stm

Step One: Define Your Goals and Target Community

Before you launch your presence on Twitter, determine what specific goals and objectives you want to accomplish. Then parlay that into a methodical plan to build a community around that goal, including defining your target audience.

Step Two: Find and Follow Like-Minded Tweeters

Once you’ve set up a Twitter account, use www.Search.Twitter.com, www.Twellow.com, www.TweepSearch.com, www.TweetBeep.com, and similar tools to find other tweeters who share the same interests as you and would appear to make good members of your fledgling community. Then follow them.

Step Three: Read and Learn

For a week or two, read the tweets posted by those whom you are following and learn from them. Understand what their interests are and how they use Twitter to communicate with others. Note which tweets and tweeters are the most appealing to you and why.

Step Four: Create Effective, Compelling Tweets

When you’re ready to begin tweeting, first determine what topics you will write about. One of the most effective strategies is to position yourself as a subject matter expert in one or two areas. Make sure those topics directly relate to the community you’re trying to build. And take a thoughtful approach by writing clever, interesting tweets that are likely to be retweeted by others.

As is the case with pretty much everything on the Internet, content is king on Twitter. Build a strong foundation for your “Twitter brand” and give other tweeters a reason to follow you by adhering to these basic dos and don’ts when composing your tweets…

Do…

· Feature newsworthy items

· Divulge “inside information”

· Share original thoughts and ideas

· Participate in conversations

· Provide useful links

· Ask engaging questions

· Inject personality and humor

· Retweet when appropriate

Don’t…

· Discuss what you had for breakfast

· Tweet too frequently or infrequently

· Ignore questions or comments by other tweeters

· Try to promote your product or service in every tweet

Step Five: Develop Unique Content for Your Community

In addition to writing focused, compelling tweets, another important key to success in building a strong community on Twitter is to create special content that will be of interest to your followers. One of the most effective types of content enables the members of your community to easily find and interact with each other, such as lists of experts and leaders who tweet about subjects that directly pertain to your community. In my case, I developed a series of unique marketing-related lists:

· www.SystemicMarketing.com/top-cmos-on-twitter

· www.SystemicMarketing.com/top-marketing-book-authors-on-twitter

· www.SystemicMarketing.com/top-marketing-professors-on-twitter

more – http://www.social2b.com/index.php/2009/06/15/seven-steps-to-creating-a-b2b-community-on-twitter/

Today, a new website is invisible on the Internet.

Take for example my little fun project, LinksFor.Us, a tool that shows bloggers who is linking to and talking about their posts. Thank God I have no interest in making money with it, but suppose I did.

LinksFor.Us is invisible. How would you find it? Googling “blogs?” Yeah right! All the search engine and AdWords optimization in the world wouldn’t put a new website at the top of a Google search for “links to blogs.”

So what could I do? Take out ads in a magazine that bloggers read? Oops, bloggers don’t read print. Okay I’ll advertise on actual blogs! Oops, bloggers read blogs in RSS readers that (generally) don’t show ads.

LinksFor.Us is invisible. I suppose with enough money anything can be noticed, but in practice it ain’t gonna happen. Certainly not if I wanted to bootstrap a little company from it.

The days of “have a website and advertise” are over. It’s too expensive to be noticed on an Internet that’s already full.

Social media is the only way LinksFor.Us could get traction. If Darren Rowse or Brian Clark talks about it, it’s visible. If it hits the front page of Digg, it’s visible. Once it’s visible, once you have things like incoming links and lots of regular traffic, then you have a shot at using traditional SEO techniques for staying visible. But social media is the only way to overcome static friction (short of spending crazy money).

read more http://blog.asmartbear.com/blog/why-you-have-to-engage-in-social-media-even-if-you-dont-want.html