Archive for the ‘General’ Category

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Twitter-Publisher plugin for Wordpress

Thursday, October 8th, 2009

Twitter-Publisher is a Wordpress plugin to automagically publish a tweet whenever a new post created on our blog. Pretty cool. To hook up Twitter-Publisher on your Wordpress blog, follow these steps.

1. Login as site-admin to your blog
2. On the lefthand menu, choose “Plugins”
3. Then choose “Add New” that expands in the menu
4. In the search box, just enter Twitter-Publisher, it will be found as the first entry.
5. To the right, click on “Install”. Wordpress will do a few things in the background and the plugin will get loaded.
6. Return back to the list of Plugins, and click on Settings under the Twitter-Publisher plugin. Fill out the settings, they are pretty easy to understand. You will need a Twitter account and enter the account credentials here.

Note: for best results, you will want to setup a FREE bit.ly URL shortening account. Just go out to http://bit.ly and fill out a free account. You put the bit.ly credentials (username and API Key) in the Settings page of Twitter-Publisher.

That’s it.

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Improve your Social Networking Profile Pic

Thursday, August 13th, 2009

I was flipping through Popular Photography magazine the other day (amateur photography is one of my hobbies) and I came across software to improve portrait photographs. This software makes you prettier by smoothing out your skin, adjusting your eyes, making your lips fuller, and all the subtle changes defined in what makes a human face beautiful.

http://www.portraitprofessional.com

I downloaded the Trial Version and gave it spin. WOW, it’s really cool software. Basically, it’s like taking everything you can do in Adobe Photoshop and making simple beauty functions out of it. You don’t need to be a wiz at digital photography to use this tool. Just load in your image file, walk through a wizard, tell the software specific points on your face, and voila – your face is much prettier.

The software is marketed at professional glamor studios, but the first thing I thought is how great it would be for social networking profile pics. Let’s face it, there are some ugly mugs out there on Twitter and Facebook.

With social networking, the last thing you want to do is put up a glamor shot you got in the mall. That is not genuine and makes you look like a [insert your own villain here]. But if you can take your current profile pic and make yourself look a tiny bit prettier – well that’s just cool.

The software is $50, and NO, I have not bought it yet. The Trial Version does not let you save files and it puts a big monster “TRIAL” across the output image so you can’t actually use it. But I probably will buy it, at the least to offer as a quick free service for any of my clients.

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Putting the Twitter API to Use

Monday, June 22nd, 2009

How does Twitter help my business? That’s the most common question you see these days in the small business blogs, forums, and LinkedIn.com groups.

The most repeated answer, and generally the most vague, is that Twitter should be part of your overall marketing plan to connect with clients.  Uhhh, what the heck does that mean?  Then, the further you dig, you find everyone has a different answer on how to go about that.

At Carp Data, we wanted to take a slightly different approach.  We are using Twitter as the ubiquitous messaging system that it is.  With the use of the Twitter API, we display our current Tweets on the front page of our website.  And we allow for our clients, whether they have a Twitter account or not, to send us Tweets.  See it here: www.CarpData.com

The Twitter API is a set of tools that talk directly to the back end of Twitter.  Think of a web page as a stage, with all the glitz of lights, props, actors, costumes, etc.  Then think of the API as a backstage pass where you are allowed to meander around and read a copy of the script, sheet music, and so on.  For Twitter’s website, the API is a set of code instructions to access various functions within their site: get tweets, send tweets, follow users, and more.  It’s the basis on how other Twitter tools work, such as TweetDeck and TwitScoop.

The benefits for our approach are twofold.  One, we have a quick and easy way for anyone to see our messages and contact us with short questions.  Second, it demystifies Twitter for many of our clients who have never used the service.  Ok, there’s a third reason, as consultants we use this as a little advertising for our expertise in taking advantage of current trends, social media, and making the most out of online services.

Twitter is evolving everyday.  There will be many more small business uses for its messaging like this one.  And hopefully, many more uses beyond the repeated spam-tweets of “buy my product.”

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Post a Tweet from within Deep Ogon™

Wednesday, May 27th, 2009

So, if you tweet about data, is that called “twata”?

We’ve added a new feature within Deep Ogon™ that allows you to post a link to a Data Page up to your Twitter account.

It works like this: you are in Deep Ogon™ and you’ve discovered some interesting trend in the data. You’ve filtered the data down and came to a meaningful Bar Chart you want to share with folks. Click on the “twitter” link above the data results. A small window will open that allows you to directly create a tweet to Twitter. The link back to DeepOgon.com has already been converted into a TinyURL for you.

It’s very handy.

www.DeepOgon.com

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