Twitter Tools and Tips

As Twitter, the microblogging platform we’ve written about here before, gains in popularity, there are more and more people to follow, for personal and professional reasons. As the volume increases, a plenthora of new tools have appeared on the scene to help users sort, categorize and prioritize their Twitter streams.

I use Twitter professionally to learn about useful new tools, blog posts and articles (saving me time, improving quality of the resources I use, and tipping me off to excellent ideas I otherwise would not have known about); to tap into my network to pose questions and get feedback; and to promote events, opportunities and publications. Some examples of these uses are below.

One tool that’s widely used by professional Twitter users (“Tweeples”) is TweetDeck. The blog www.webworkerdaily.com describes it this way:

You can group your followers in a way that makes it easier to consume the information. In my case, I have a group of people that I follow closely. These are people who dont tweet too frequently and who post updates that I never want to miss. While I follow almost 400 people, this smaller group has just over 100 people. I read this group first, and if I have time, I read the other groups.

TweetDeck also has pop-up smart notifications (assuming that you have configured it to notify you) for @replies, direct messages and dynamic, persistent searches. I configure searches for events I am organizing, companies Im involved with, and more.

If you manage more than on Twitter account (for example, my personal account and my @DarimOnline account), you might consider using Twirl, which displays multiple columns, one for each account.

One of the most convenient and powerful features of Twitter is its mobility. By sending a text message from your phone you can “tweet”, and you can choose to receive tweets from some or all of those you follow by txt as well. Many Twitter tools have mobile versions as well, which are full applications that provide much more functionality than just a text message. On my iphone I use Twitterific, though there are many to choose from.

What Twitter tool do you use? Why do you like it? We’d love to hear from you. Share your experience in the comments!

More Twitter aggregators, descriptions and suggestions are here: www.toprankblog.com

The Gift of Time and Organization. For Free! It’s Called RSS.

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. With a name like that, you’d think it would be so simple. While RSS can seem confusing, it really is so simple, and so valuable. Imagine a single newspaper delivered to your door every morning with articles on your favorite topics by your favorite authors. And nothing else to slog through. Welcome to RSS!

Common Craft, a great little firm from Seattle has produced a fun, short video to help us understand RSS:

I use Google Reader. There are many good readers out there, but I’ll use this as an example. Down the left side are all the “feeds” I subscribe to. When I run across a blog that I like, and want to keep up with, I click the “subscribe” button — commonly shown as this orange icon. That blog is then added to my reader.

Each morning when I sit down at my computer, I open my Google Reader. It shows me all my feeds down the left. I’ve organized them into folders by topic. The bold titles are the feeds with new posts. I can then scan the posts in the main part of the window, and click on any headline to open a new window to go directly to the blog. This way, I don’t have to remember all my favorite blogs, and remember to go to my “favorites” and take the time to check on each one, or waste time if there is no new content. It all comes to me.

I scan my feeds — I don’t read every single post of every single feed. And if over the course of time I find I’m skipping more than I’m reading, I can unsubscribe in one click and remove that feed from my reader.

This is a very useful way of organizing your own reading to keep up with the most amount of high quality and useful information in the least amount of time. It is also useful to know that this is how an increasingly large percentage of your constituents are aggregating and consuming content online. By RSS enabling your content, your readers will be alerted every time you post something new.

I add new feeds to my reader regularly, as I’m turned on to a new blog, or a trusted friend makes a recommendation. By pulling all of the greatest content together, it makes catching up on my reading a real treat — sometimes even a reward after I’ve completed a big task. What’s on your RSS reader?

Imagine the uses of the URJ’s “Chai Dictionary”

The URJ is promoting an online dictionary that’s part of their Chai Curriculum. While it’s pretty simple, and not terribly extensive (maybe I should say “there’s room to grow”), it’s a very useful tool for those learning Hebrew, or wanting to brush up before the High Holy Days or for any other reason.

Sample of the Chai Dictionary

Broken into 7 levels, words are listed in alphabetical order (in transliteration – which is exactly the way to do it for the intended audience). It offers the Hebrew spelling with vowels, the translation and… audio! Furthermore, there are notes in some entries about where the word or phrase is found, or contextually used, which is really helpful.

The one thing I wish they included was a search function. For users who have a word in mind but aren’t using this tool specifically with the Chai Curriculum materials, one might need to toggle through the seven levels to a) find the word, or b) determine that it’s not even on the list.

I’ve also found a number of Jewish organizations who employ non-Jews who need a Hebrew tutorial here and there, and interfaith couples where the non-Jewish (or not raised Jewish) spouse is seeking clarification of something. Not to mention the very-common (and exciting, I’ll add) moment when kids come home from Hebrew school knowing something their parents don’t! And I’m sure there are many other uses. How might you use this online audio dictionary? What do you think could make it even more useful?