Facebook Timeline turns your average Facebook profile into a dynamic history of photos, wall posts, life events and more. I’ve had Timeline enabled for a few weeks but today I noticed that quite a few of my friends do not. And it made me wonder…
It made me wonder if it was either too confusing or just didn’t make sense. Because it didn’t make sense to me until I read up on it and then took the time to actually edit my Timeline and put important events that I wanted to share, front and center.
Along with my wondering came, of course, the need to create a screencast to share a few easy ways to make Timeline a fun aspect of Facebook.
Facebook Places gives you a way to virtually check-in to real life locations and see if any of your other Facebook friends are nearby. The catch? You need to have an iPhone or your mobile browser must support HTML 5 and geolocation. The other catch? By default “Places” is enabled in your Facebook privacy settings so even if you are just testing it out you need to check who you’ll be sharing this data with first – unless you don’t care.
It’s a simple fix but something I felt should be addressed. What better way than with a screencast! To learn about Facebook Places and see how to update your privacy settings, watch the screencast below:
The news you create at Paper.li won’t stain your fingers with ink and it might prove more interesting than what you find on your doorstep in the morning. Plus, the newspaper can even be named after you!
Paper.li allows you to take all the recent links from a twitter user and their followers and turn those links into an easy to read newspaper. The paper is divided into sections like articles, media, and photos. You can easily share your daily paper — which is updated every 24 hours — or just retweet certain links from it.
The site also allows you to search for other papers — you can do a search on #oilspill and find papers that have been created related to that tag.
To see Paper.li in action, watch the screencast below:
ShareMyMap is a fun tool that allows you to create maps of customized neighborhoods. It’s free to use and you can have your first map up and running in just minutes.
To create your first map you’ll just need to enter in a general location, like San Francisco, and then you can zoom in as needed to get the default zoom point set. You can then add a title for your map, like ‘Dive Bars’, add a photo, a description, and you can add custom fields that you can fill in for each point of interest.
Once your map is created you can begin adding points to the map with an address, description, tags, and Flickr photos and YouTube videos. Other members can add media too and comment on your points. People can choose to follow your map so they can keep up with new content. You can also choose to sign in with your Facebook or Twitter account and share across those sites as well.
I really like ShareMyMap for the most part but I found myself wanting a little bit more. Here’s my wishlist:
I’d like a way to share my map with anyone with a link or embed code and/or via email
The ability to search for a locations address from within a map – as of now you need to know its exact location
Suggested images from Flickr based on the points name would help eliminate the step of me having to leave the site to do a Flickr search for photos
Collaboration with a private group of people to create a group map for things like reunions and weddings
Revision history so I can find places I may have removed from a map. This would also be helpful when used with my comment above (collaboration).
To see ShareMyMap in action, watch the screencast below:
Flavors.me is a great service for anyone who wants to build their own Website to share all of their profiles on the Web. It allows just about anyone to design a personal site, even those of us without design skills. You can test out Flavors.me for free but for $20.00 a year you can have access to even more design customization, use your own domain and get informative stats on who is visiting your site.
To learn more about Flavors.me, check out the screencast below:
When I logged into Gmail this morning I finally saw what I really wanted to see yesterday afternoon – “Buzz”. It was right where everyone said it would be, under my inbox tab.
After spending a few hours poking around and (unsuccessfully) searching for some help topics on exactly who can see what, I think I finally got the gist of Google Buzz. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, I like it. I like it a lot.
To learn how to get started using Google Buzz, watch the screencast below:
NewsCred is a service that allows you to create customized online newspapers, loaded with only the content that interests you.
To get started you just need to give your paper a name and choose a URL. Then you can search for and select topics that you want included. That’s it. You’ll be taken to your new site with the top nine topics as your front page. Each topic will have the most popular headlines shown and you can click through to view the story. You can customize the look of your paper and discover other users papers to follow. You can also become an editor yourself and write your own news!
If you upgrade to a Pro account you’ll be able to use a custom domain (removing any “NewsCred” branding), run ads to make some cash, and have more control over customization.
To see more of what NewsCred can offer, watch the screencast below:
Readtwit allows you to turn your Twitter stream into an RSS feed. It removes shortened URLs and allows you to read the actual content right in your favorite feed reader.
First you need to connect Readtwit to your Twitter account and then you can easily subscribe to the RSS feed it creates. You can also create filters to remove certain people you follow from your feed as well as remove specific hashtags. The only real feature that I see missing is the ability to create a feed that only includes specific people – or a way to create a feed for a specific list that you’ve created on Twitter.
To see Readtwit in action, watch the screencast below:
(Update: As of now, I no longer have the new Retweet function. Hopefully when it comes back it won’t render my screencast completely useless…)
Over the past few days Twitter has been rolling out the new Retweet functionality and I was finally graced with the controversial feature last night. My first take? I don’t get it. But after spending some time reading about it and clicking various links in my Twitter account, I think I figured it out. Of course, when something takes me a bit of time to understand I immediately realize that there are probably more people like me out there…and that makes it screencast material.
When you opt to click on “Retweet”, the next step is to just select “yes” and that tweet will be forwarded to your followers. I say forwarded because it will take the original users tweet, with their twitter icon and all, and place it in your followers Twitter streams. You’ll be given credit underneath the tweet, but the person who originated the text will get the credit. There’s no more need to alter the original text so that you can fit in, “RT @molzy RT @maureenmcd,” and the content will be delivered to your followers as it was meant to be seen, by the original author. If someone you follow tends to Retweet nonsense that you have no interest in then you can simply visit their profile page and opt out of receiving their Retweets.
I’ve noticed a lot of grumbling about the new Retweet feature and frankly, I don’t see why. You can still Retweet the old way (RT @someone RT @anotherperson RT @thisisgettingconfusing) and you won’t be punished for it. Personally I don’t see why adding unnecessary text to another persons tweet is beneficial. If you didn’t originally write the text, but you think it would be useful to your followers, why not just forward the authors work and be done with it?
If you’re still on the fence about the new feature, or if you simply don’t get it, then check out the screencast below to see my take on the new Twitter Retweet (best viewed in HD in full screen):
Duffel is a trip planning tool that allows you to clip and save ideas and links for places you are planning on visiting or for a vacation that you dream of someday taking.
Creating a Duffel is simple: Select the location of where you want to go, give your trip a name such as, “When I win the lottery,” and then choose to make it private or public. Your Duffel will then be created and open preloaded with suggestions of where to stay, sightseeing attractions, and notes that can be edited.
If you added dates to your Duffel (you don’t have to add dates, which is helpful since most of my trips are wishful thinking) then you can drag and drop notes and activities under each day that you’ll be in a location to create an itinerary. You can also invite friends to join you on Duffel and allow them to collaborate with you. You can add other Duffel users as contacts so that in the future you can easily invite them to collaborate on a trip.
Probably the most useful aspect of Duffel is the bookmarklet. It allows you to add any Web page that you’re viewing to a Duffel and add notes, phone numbers, and addresses. So if I find myself on a Website for a luxurious hotel in Paris, I can simply click on “Add to Duffel” and add it to my “When Pigs Fly” trip. To see Duffel in action, check out the screencast below (best viewed in HD in full screen):
