Dayn W Creative

These are my links for February 22nd through February 24th:

• UNBOUND Technologies – Social Data Append, Leader In Social Network Intelligence, – According to the DishyMix podcast, these guys have developed technology that allows you to identify the influencers in your social graph. That’s the silver bullet for brands engaged in social influence marketing. Identifying influencers has to be one of the most difficult tasks for SIM marketers these days; right up there with showing ROI.
• Review of new “Beachtek DXA-SLR” XLR adaptor for HD-DSLR cameras | Philip Bloom – A new pro audio hardware de facto standard for a 7D workflow.I was wondering when the breakouts for the DSLRs were going to finally make the pro level. This answered everything I wanted to know. Mostly, I feel like I now know what will be the standard for recording pro audio in a 7D workflow.It’s still going to feel funny piping into that mini-jack, no matter how you slice it, though.Oh, and BeachTek: I have mega lust for the DXA-SLR, but please hire a graphic designer for that packaging. Yikes.
• Brad Callen’s PPC Web Spy – Discover your competitor’s AdWords keywords
• SEOmoz | Google Link: Command – Busting the Myths – Don’t take those inbound link search results too literally.
• ROI: How to Measure Return on Investment in Social Media -

Popularity: unranked [?]

If you haven’t yet clicked “Show Options” in the upper left of a search result page on Google, go ahead and do it now. Be prepared to lose an hour exploring the new ways to shake the Google search results tree.

One of the quirky, yet instant friends you’ll make from the Google options sidebar is the Wonder Wheel. Like a wagon wheel with your search term as a hub, Google graphically suggests related search terms at the end of spokes off of your hub. Clicking a spoke term launches a new wheel based off that term, but still leaves your original wheel visible. As you’re busy exploring the spokes, ‘classic’ list style results are being updated in the right column for the current search term.

I’m not sure how many times this process can repeat, but I tested it out to 6 levels, starting with “cycling pants” (which I need for winter commuting) and eventually ending at “surly cross check” (the bike I commute on).

The top feature of the Google Wheel for actually trying to locate information has to be search history. One of the hardest parts about traveling down the search rabbit hole is remembering how you got to the term you just searched for. The Google Wheel makes it easy to see your tunneling path, and you can visually hop back to any wheel you’ve spun off.

Building a keyword list, but not sure what people might be searching for? The Google Wheel can be seeded with a search phrase to see what other phrases are commonly searched related to that phrase. Keep poking at it, and it’s easy to see how this will quickly become an invaluable tool for keyword list makers.

Popularity: 21% [?]

Apple Address Book preference pane enabled to sync with Gmail contacts

I store all of my contacts in Apple Address Book. Some social media sites offer to scan your Gmail address book to see which of your contacts are available to connect with. If your contacts are in Address Book, these services aren’t able to scan your contacts.

Did you know that you can sync your Apple Address Book contacts with your Google Gmail account (or Exchange, or Yahoo mail)? I didn’t until today. From Address Book, select Preferences > General. Check out those slick little checkboxes at the bottom of the preferences pane.

Just need a simple, one time CSV export from Apple Address Book? Try Address Book to CSV Exporter from Antonio Lore’. This handy tool exports your Apple Address Book to a CSV file, ready for import into Gmail or similar. You can customize the output a bit by ticking which fields to include in the export. This option is hidden in a little + (plus sign) button next to the Export button.

Popularity: 26% [?]

How to embed a public Google calendar on your page: Embed on your website

Want to change which month or day the calendar displays on load? I found the answer on this Mark Mail page. Just include date values in the parameter string like so:

...&ctz=America/Los_Angeles&dates=20090901%2F20120901

It also looks like you can pass other parameters to control color, etc.

Popularity: 49% [?]

There are a few web pages that I always have open. Google Reader, Vitalist, and Workamajig (yikes). Sites like Mint and, (shameless plug) Twuffer are even beginning to make the tabs-never-to-be-closed list.

Fluid is written by ex-Apple Dashboard developer Todd Ditchendorf. It allows you to create Site Specific Browsers, or SSBs. Thanks to Fluid, “you can create SSBs to run each of your favorite WebApps as a separate Cocoa desktop application.” It’s Mac OSX Leopard only, so all you Tiger cats need to upgrade.

My immediate goal was to make an SSB of Google Reader. I think of Google Reader as a separate RSS aggregator app anyhow, so why not make it totally separate from the browser? I downloaded Fluid from the site, unpacked it, and moved it to my Apps folder.

Create a Fluid SSB

When you launch Fluid, it asks you for the URL of the site to app-ize (appify?), what you want to call the app, where to put it, and even what you want to use for the app’s icon. If you leave the default on that last option, your app switcher will use a giant, blurry version of the favicon gleaned from the web.

Google Reader SSB. (yes, thats 1000+ unread)

The magic happens, and the next thing you’ll see is your new web app all neatly bundled in it’s own page, complete with it’s own taskbar. To really burn up time that might otherwise be productive, think about your web apps having their own taskbar and what that allows you to do. Super nerds will love the Convert to MenuExtra SSB option so you can drop the app down from next to your clock, then fold it up again. Google Calendar perhaps?

That’s right Gmail fans, you can now participate with your Apple Mail and Outlook cohorts in email client groan fests. And all you protective tweeters out there who like your Twitter in a comfy, toasted, no-butter browser style aesthetic, Fluid was made for you. I’m off to make a stand-alone Twuffer app.

Popularity: 63% [?]

Google auto suggests good keyword phrases for keyword list building

For a real quick and dirty method of building a keyword list, I just use Google’s handy auto suggest.

As you know, Google.com helpfully tries to guess what you’re searching for as you type, even going as far as telling you how many results there are for that phrase. So toss one of the more general keywords relevant to your subject in there, and Google will suggest other phases that are usually related. If the phrase comes up in the auto suggest, you can bet people are searching for it. If it’s a relevant suggestion, it gets added to my keyword list. Poor boy’s list keyword phrase builder.

Popularity: 65% [?]