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The Honest Scrap Award

July 10, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

Thanks to Jon Buscall for handing me the Honest Scrap Award. :-)
I like little games like that, so here are my answers:

The Rules

1. Thank the person who “nominated” you and link back.
2. “Nominate” seven more bloggers to spread the happiness.
3. Tell ten honest – non business – things about yourself.

The seven bloggers I “nominate” are:

  1. Christian Henner-Fehr (Kulturmanagment)
  2. Karin Janner (Kulturmarketing)
  3. Leander Wattig (book and music business)
  4. Klaus Eck (PR, corporate blogs and online reputation)
  5. Andrea Vascellari (digital marketing)
  6. Jan Leitsch (blogging about my quarter Bonn Beuel)
  7. Graham Lacey (film and music reviews)

Ten Things About Annette Schwindt

  1. I need art and music to survive
  2. anything creative I do is like giving birth and really exhausting
  3. I’ve recently stopped eating meat (not because it is “in” but because meat doesn’t do me good – I love eating fish though)
  4. I’m a family researcher with Danube Swabian roots
  5. my English friends Charlie and Mer got me hooked with the Twilight Saga and now inspiration floods me! (Thanks, ladies!)
  6. I cannot write about things I haven’t experienced, so my prose is always about true stories
  7. I’m a very intuitive and emotional person and rather trust my senses than my rationality
  8. I met my husband in a spinal chord injury chat doing research for that novel I want to write for years now
  9. To me the term “God” is a metaphor for the “We”, developed in ancient times to legitimize the rules for social living
  10. I love children but am not allowed to have any myself because of my cardiac arrhythmia

Posted in Blogging | 1 Comment »

Twitter follow lists with new design but still…

July 1, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

Okay, this is a good start but still not what we were looking for… Twitter might have given the follow lists a more stylish design but still you are not able to sort your lists differently than getting them displayed in revert chronological order.

You can now chose between pure list view…
twitter_list

… or the enlarged version…

twitter_listlarge

… that also shows name, location and – not the bio but the latest tweet!

lasttweetTo read the bio you still have to go to the person’s profile. Of course you should do that anyway if you want to read more than the latest tweet to help you decide whether to refollow that person or not.

Getting the option to to display the lists alphabetically and having the number of followers/followings and number of tweets per person shown would be a good update on this.

Looking at your follower list you’ll see the following icons now:

twittericonsThe left one is for refollowing a person:

follow

The right one is for further options:

twitter1

Once you have followed a person, the left icon changes to:

following

And the menu of the right icon changes to:

twitter2

Btw. the “Block username” option is still leading you to the blocked person’s profile to verify blocking which is still user-unfriendly. this could be made more practical by just having it done within your list.

Conclusion: Stylish new look for these lists but still not as usable as we would like them to be.

What do you think?

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , | 1 Comment »

Facebook name url is here

June 13, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

facebookFor all those who haven’t heard it yet: since this (early!) morning 6.01 a.m. you can set up your own custom url for your facebook profile. No complicated urls with lots of numbers in anymore.

All you need to do is got to http://www.facebook.com/username and chose a username (wich is usually firstname.lastname) for your profile.

So mine is now: http://www.facebook.com/annette.schwindt

If you have linked your old url in your blog, website or wherever and set up a new name url, no need to panic: the link is redirected and still working.

It is also possible to register such name urls for facebook pages now. But for the moment it’s only possible for pages set up before May 31, 2009 and with over 1000 fans.

Have you secured your name url yet?

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , , , | Leave a Comment »

How to code share links

June 10, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

Social media is about sharing and there are different tools out there that help you make your blogposts or website’s pages shareable. But most of them are based on some external script. Moreover someone who has deactivated Java will not be able to use them.

The good news: you don’t have to use scripts to make things shareable. You can also do that with normal html and a few commands inside that. You only have to adapt them to the resp. link you want to share (which you would also have to do if sharing via script).

Make sure you get the quotation marks in the right place and that you add a slash / at the end of a blogpost-url or the .html ending (or.php or .htm or whatever you use) at the end of a website’s url (if you link to an index page, use the complete url like http://www.schwindt-pr.com/index.html).

Ready? Here we go:

————————-

Twitter

Code:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=http://yourlink” title=”Share this on twitter”>Twitter</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/” title=”Share this on twitter”>Twitter</a>

Try it: share this post on Twitter

As for twitter it might be useful to insert not the extended url but to use a never expiring short url (as with tinyurl) instead. And you can also add some more text. Which would make the code change to:

<a href=”http://twitter.com/home?status=Reading how to code share links by @schwindtpr http://tinyurl.com/ngqtfl” title=”Share this on twitter”>Twitter</a>

Try it: share this post on Twitter

————————-

Facebook

Code:

<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://yourlink” title=”Share this on facebook”>Facebook</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://www.facebook.com/share.php?u=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/” title=”Share this on facebook”>Facebook</a>

Try it: share this post on Facebook

————————-

Delicious

Code:

<a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://yourlink&amp;title=Whatever+this+link+is+about” title=”Share this on delicious”>delicious</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://del.icio.us/post?url=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/&amp;title=How+to+code+share+links” title=”Share this on delicious”>delicious</a>

Try it: share this post on delicious

————————-

Friendfeed

Code:

<a href=”http://friendfeed.com/?url=http://yourlink&amp;title=Whatever this link is about” title=”Share this post on friendfeed”>Friendfeed</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://friendfeed.com/?url=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/&amp;title=How to code share links” title=”Share this post on friendfeed”>Friendfeed</a>

Try it: Share this post on Friendfeed

————————-

Stumbleupon

Code:

<a href=”http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://yourlink” title=”Share this on Stumbleupon”>Stumbleupon</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/” title=”Share this on Stumbleupon”>Stumbleupon</a>

Try it: share this post on Stumbleupon

————————-

Digg

Code:

<a href=”http://digg.com/submit?url=http://yourlink&amp;title=How+to+code+share+links” title=”Digg this”>Digg</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://digg.com/submit?url=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/&amp;title=How+to+code+share+links” title=”Digg this”>Digg</a>

Try it: share this post on Digg

————————-

Google

Code:

<a href=”http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&bkmk=http://yourlink” title=”Share this post on Google”>Google</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://www.google.com/bookmarks/mark?op=edit&bkmk=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/” title=”Share this post on Google”>Google</a>

Try it: share this post on Google

————————-

Myspace

Code:

<a href=”http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?l=3&u=http://your link” title=”Share this post on Myspace”>MySpace</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://www.myspace.com/Modules/PostTo/Pages/?l=3&u=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/” title=”Share this post on Myspace”>MySpace</a>

Try it: Share this post on MySpace

————————-

Reddit

Code:

<a href=”http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://yourlink” title=”Share this post on Reddit”>Reddit</a>

Example:

<a href=”http://reddit.com/submit?url=http://blog.schwindt-pr.com/2009/06/10/how-to-code-share-links/” title=”Share this post on Reddit”>Reddit</a>

Try it: share this post on Reddit

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If you considered this blogpost as helpful I’d be happy if you left me a comment here or use one of the try out links in this blogpost to share it. ;-)

Posted in Tutorials | Tagged , , | 2 Comments »

A facebook fanpage for schwindt-pr

May 29, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

Doing research on facebook fanpages yesterday for my German agency blog I decided to open a fanpage for my agency schwindt-pr too:

schwindt-pr fanpage

Everyone who has a facebook account can easily become a fan there and join the conversation about my projects or general communications subjects.

I’m looking forward to hear from you there too! Just click the image above and log in, then click “become a fan” and there you go. :-)

Posted in Communication, schwindt-pr | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment »

How do you deal with translations?

May 24, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

Interestingly it’s the most basic blogposts I write that are the most successful. Like my article about retweeting on twitter that is on top of my statistics for two months now. Today I got a message on facebook from a Brazilian telling me he had translated this very article to Portuguese and published it on his blog. He asked me if this was okay.

I had a look at his blogpost and noticed that although he mentioned the original blogpost he hadn’t linked it or mentioned my name. He also used my graphics without mentioning the source. I asked him politely to change these things and am now hoping for a positive reaction EDIT: and he promptly reacted and changed this (see comment – thanks, Daniel!).

I’ve also asked him to notify me before publishing if he wants to translate something from me again.

How would you have dealt with this?
Would you see this as copyright violation already
or do you think it is okay the way we handled it?

I’m used to see my press releases being published in translations (I wouldn’t be able to write in Japanese, Russian or Dutch) so I don’t mind if someone wants to translate a blogpost of mine. But I prefer to be asked in advance. :-)

Btw. if you would like to have an article of yours translated I’ll gladly help. :-)
I can offer the following translations:

English or French or Italian >>> German
German or Italian >>> English or French
English >>> French
French >>> English

Posted in Communication, Questions | Tagged , | 5 Comments »

That’s not communication!

May 21, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

It’s the same old story again and again… The other day a company owner who had heard about the SEO advantages of a blog contacted me because now he was keen on getting one for his company too. I told him that a blog is first of all a communication tool to start a dialogue with his clients and other people interested in his business. That a blog is offering a possibilty to communicate with him.

He replied: “Oh no, I don’t want to offer a possibility to communicate. I want to get in a top position on Google!”

That’s when this picture came to my mind:

This is not communication

That's not communication!

Yes, I know Germany is known for its bad service, but would this company owner treat someone offline in the same way?

Imagine a client coming to his shop asking for advice and he’d stand there, keeping his eyes closed and covering his ears shouting “BUY! BUY!” to the client instead. That doesn’t only sound like “Bye Bye”, it would most definitely have the same effect!

(EDIT) Or as Todd Defren put it today: “You can’t make someone feel respected if you can’t hear their voice in the first place.”

When will they ever learn?

Drawing: Annette Schwindt

Posted in Communication | Tagged , , , , | 3 Comments »

The day of features taken away? (Friendfeed)

May 13, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

Not long ago I had reported about the way I had created the sidebar widgets on my website with friendfeed and what I like about the new friendfeed. What I had not realised yet is the fact that friendfeed has taken away the feature of creating embeddable widgets by service!

The old friendfeed offered the option to chose between “All services” (all imported feeds) and every single service plus customization of the number of posts displayed per widget. That’s how I had created the dynamic elements in my website’s sidebar.

With the improved layout of the new friendfeed (and its widgets) I wanted to change the code for my widgets too. But to my surprise the new friendfeed has changed the options. At first glance everything looks the same:

ff

You can still chose between 1, 5 or 10 posts displayed in the widget, you can still take away the logo and subscribe-part and customize the width. But while the form “Feed” had contained “All Services” and every single imported service (like: Blogs, Twitter, FlickR etc.) before, it now only shows  “My Feed” and the lists you have created or rooms you have subscribed to.

If you don’t want more than one post per widget to be shown and are only interested in showing updates on friendfeed, twitter or facebook, you can now take the status widget instead. But that’s it.

Seems this is the day of features taken away – and not only on twitter…

Posted in Social Media | Tagged , | Leave a Comment »

What I like about the new friendfeed

May 9, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

A while ago I had written a blogpost about “why I’m more active on facebook than on friendfeed”. With the new friendfeed that is up and running for some days now, my previous headline might get turned around now.

Those of you who are used to facebook and twitter will immediately see a lot of similarities – and advantages that friendfeed offers in comparison to the other two services. A lot has already been written about this (like this article on Techcrunch) so I won’t discuss the pros and cons but only state the facts I particularly like in this new version.

The main reasons why the old friendfeed was less attractive to me than facebook was the variety of mash ups facebook offers, the way groups and fanpages were set up and the design. The new friendfeed has now caught up a lot!

The Design

The feedstream looks similar to the facebook wall or twitter stream now:

friendfeed

Of couse you’re still able to aggregate your different feeds into one, which is the original purpose of this service. There are two  things you’ll notice in comparison to the old friendfeed:

  1. The service icons from each imported post are gone (the source is still mentioned in written though). I have been told the icons have been removed on purpose to encourage people to comment on all posts in the same way no matter from which service they’re imported. (I’d rather decide about commenting on how interesting a post is and not by which service it came from, but hey…)
  2. The link to update a feed has disappeared from the posts. But it hasn’t gone completely, it has only been moved, although this was a bit tricky to find out. Now you have to click on “add/edit services”, then chose the service you want to update and click on “Refresh”.

Twitter inclusive

The big thing is of course the possibility to tweet directly from your friendfeed:

ff_formYou only need to click the Cc: Twitter box and allow friendfeed to access your twitter account:

ff_twitterAs long as the Cc is active, friendfeed will post anything you write there to your twitterfeed and also count the characters you use while you write (to help you match the maximal tweet length):

ff_tweetlength

But be careful! Friendfeed will add a shortlink back to your friendfeed posting after every tweet you’ve sent from here which minimizes your 140 characters to 122! :-)

testtweet_onff

Posting on friendfeed sent to twitter...

ff_testtweet

... and the result on twitter

Also tweet your imported posts

But friendfeed doesn’t only allow you to tweet the manually written posts you make there. It also offers the possibility to tweet the posts from your imported feeds. Once you have set up a twitter account on friendfeed you can go to “settings” (next to the Cc box) and you’ll be shown this:

ff_twitter_set1

If you click on “Advanced options” you can set up your friendfeed in whatever way you like:

ff_advanced_twitter

The list of “Post entries from” varies with the list of services you have imported to your friendfeed of course. And the list of available services is long:

ff_services

Comment, like and share

All posts on friendfeed (the ones written there as well as the imported ones) can be commented, liked and shared. The comments will be displayed under the post like this:

ff_comments

And everytime you comment on something, the whole post with comments will be put into the section “My discussions” that you can access through your friendfeed main menu so you can never miss replies:

ff_menu

Manage your notifications

Friendfeed also allows you to manage the way you want to be notified about updates on your friendfeed and the ones you have subscribed to. Go to “settings” on top right of your friendfeed (under your photo) and you get this:

settings

If you click on Email / IM preferences you’ll come to this page where you can set up which notification to get about what:

notifications

Favorites – my favorite ;-)

There’s a lot more that could be said about the new friendfeed but I’ll finish this post with the one feature I really like! It’s the “Favorite” feed where you can sum up your best of subscribed to feeds so you don’t miss anything from your favorite connections! :-)

favorites

EDIT:

Two more things I’ve forgotten to mention:

  • the option to post photos directly to your friendfeed:

ff_photos

  • the friendfeed widgets for you to use on other sites are still there (in new design too). You find the link to this option at the bottom of your friendfeed now (”Tools & Widgets”).

What are the features you like best on the new friendfeed?
Or are there things you don’t like at all?
Comment here or on my friendfeed. :-)

Posted in Communication, Social Media | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

New widget for NetworkedBlogs

April 27, 2009 by Annette Schwindt

When I had opened a German blog for my agency yesterday I also connected it with my facebook profile via NetworkedBlogs (formerly: Blognetworks).

I’ve described how to do this in a previous post on this blog. But by then the widget had been very text-based and undesigned. You also had to tamper a lot with the code if you wanted it to be displayed differently. If you didn’t the widget was displayed  in facebook blue and white with your customized link color.

New networked blogs widget

As you can see, the new widget doesn’tonly include the logo of  NetworkedBlogs, its content has also been limited to the essential function it has: making people click to follow your blog.

The link color is still inherited from the CSS where you put the widget on. No tampering necessary anymore. For whatever reason though, NetworkedBlogs has customized the widget height to 360px which causes a lot of empty space at the bottom of the widget. So if you don’t want it to waste your sidebar space, just delete the 3 and make it 60px high.

widgetcode

Beginning of the NetworkedBlogs widget code

Where do you get the widget code again?

Just log in to your facebook, go to your NetworkedBlogs blogprofile and click on “widget”:

NetworkedBlogs widget link

Then you get to a page where the new code is given to you that you can use to replace the one of the old widget.

Posted in Blogging, Social Media, Tools | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments »

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