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2 Ways To Chat With Friends On Different Or No IM Networks

 2. Name your site: Drop.io will have a name for your site or "drop" already, but feel free to rename it so you can remember the link to your drop.

Each drop has a storage space limit of 100 MB so you can also upload files and links at this step, or choose to upload and share files later. Notice here I uploaded a file named "resume.doc" for demonstration purposes. You can additionally set up a password to make your drop private (whomever has the link to your drop needs to type in the password to access it; Drop.io does not have a search bar in its site to allow searching through drops and files.) You can also choose to establish an expiration date for your drop (options include 1 day, 1 week, 1 month, and 1 year from either the day you create your drop or from the last time the drop has been accessed.) You can also enable your guests to have the authorizations to add more files, delete and/or download the contents of your drop. Thus, your drop could easily replace your thumb drive (as long as the computer you're using has Internet access.)

 

3. Now, just e-mail your friend with the link of your drop in chat view, which looks like this: "http://drop.io/NAMEOFYOURDROP/chat" where you'll replace NAMEOFYOURDROP with the name that you chose for your drop. You'll get this (click to enlarge on another window):

The users in this chat will be able to edit their usernames and if you chose to enable guests to add files, they can upload files in the chat box or email them to NAMEOFYOURDROP@drop.io. Handy, right?

 Chatting it up in Google (sort of, in GDocs) where you can share web links

 1. I assume most people will have a Google Account, and thus, access to Google Docs, where you can create, upload and/or share documents, spreadsheets, presentations and forms. Once you're signed in to the Google Docs main site, create a new spreadsheet (highlighted in the screenshot below):

 2. Now you'll see another browser window or tab open up with your new, unnamed spreadsheet, which you will now have to, er, name by going to File>Rename.

3. Type in your desired name.

4. Now just get the link to this spreadsheet. You can find this at the top right of your spreadsheet.

5. Check the first option "Allow anyone with the link to view (no sign-in required)," copy and e-mail the link with whomever you need to chat with.

When your friends click on the link of the spreadsheet you shared with them, they'll see this right sidebar chatbox. Chat away!

Comment here

Social Media Categories

When you start working with Social Media Marketing you need to measure it somehow. All sites and statistics need a place or category. It just makes it easier to find or gather together. Danny Sullivan (Guru) made his categorization on his blog. Here hare his subcategories of Social Media • Social News Sites • Social Bookmarking Sites • Social Networking • Social Knowledge • Social Sharing National Geographic’s subcategories of Social Media are quite similar • Social News Sites Digg Reddit Twitter Slashdot Jaiku • Social Bookmarking Sites StumbleUpon Diigo Delicious Meneame.net Propeller.com • Social Networking Facebook MySpace Orkut Care2 • Social Knowledge Wikipedia Yahoo Answers Squidoo Ask Metafilter • Social Media Sharing YouTube Flickr Tumblr DevianArt Recently I made my own categorization of Social Media and it looks like this. • Social Aggregators/Pushers Ping.fm Friendfeed Hello.txt Popurls Posterous Utterli Disqus • Social Bookmarking/Link sharing Diigo Delicious StumbleUpon Mister Wong Yahoo! Bookmarks • Social Collaboration Acrobat Skype • Social Experience Reporting Flixter Digg Reddit Yelp • Social Location Blogloc Fire Eagle IRL Connect Loki Plazes Tripit • Social Media News Chirps Jaiku Koornk Plurk Twitter Wordpress Blogger Xanga • Social Media Sharing 23 72 Photos Bebo.com Blip.tv Buzznet Drop.io Dropshots Fliggo Moblog Twitpic Viddler.com YouTube Zoomin • Social Live Broadcast Ustream Bambuser I will continue to work on my categories and post changes after evaluation. You can also look at the well known “The Coversation Prism” categorys Image address http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3009/2735401175_fcdcd0da03.jpg?v=0 Brians blog http://www.briansolis.com/2008/08/introducing-conversation-prism/

Teaching GenXYZ Style

Thrilled!  

It has been my experience at least that students tend to not read text emails. I thought I would try something more fitting to our evolving attention spans: video emails. I had let them know in advance I would do this. ... Well actually, fellow TAs thought it might be too weird. So I put the question to the students: would they mind or prefer videos. I got smiles, cheers, giggles and a "do it!" So I have done. I use drop.io as our discussion board. I send them a video via the drop telling them what we will be discussing in class and what they should be thinking about as they do the readings. A slightly edited one is here for 9 seconds of your viewing pleasure.

They are to post a response to the readings, and I give them the freedom to choose the type of media they would like to use: video, audio, images... drawings of their own creation, so long as they have some relevant commentary. As many of my students are in their first two weeks ever of college ever, I am hoping this is not too intimidating. So far, and after a couple of kinks, it seems like it's a functional method. Most students opt for text, and I have gotten a few images. But having just checked it, there is now a video! So it seems they could have fun with it once they figure it out. Crossing fingers that the whole enterprise does not crash & burn in a few more weeks. 

[edit/note: Multimedia may be old news to other arts departments, but I teach a history course. They tend to be... well. You know how they tend to be]

 

Affixa - Attachments Made Easy - Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Outlook, Thunderbird, Windows Mail

3 drop.io accounts for Music

Just made 3 drop.io accounts to sustain all the songs from my UT webspace account which will be disabled since I'm not a UT student anymore.

Messing around with drop.io playlists

Check this out.. embed music right from drop.io

You can find out more here http://playlist.io

Drop.io Speeds Up Its File-Sharing And Adds Chat

Tools for (non)productivity

I never got the "Getting Things Done" hype. Bought the book, read it, thought "okay, that's kind of logical" and never truly adapted the GTD way of working. I'm more of a "Getting Things the Fuck Done" person. Henry Rollins Style. Mike Atherton aka Sizemore knows all about it (the image is his design), and just like me he's fat and wears glasses (sorry Mike ;-)). Just get your shit done. That's it.

But the GTD hype does spin off some nice tools to make life a bit easier. Here's a top 3 of tools I dig:

Remember The Milk. Yes, rule nr1 of the GTD is to write shit down. Clear your mind for useful stuff. True, but this attitude is what ruined our educational system and now kids can no longer calculate. Because they used a calculator.. since then you could use your brains for something else. No, try to keep your brain active is more important, I think. Nonetheless, there is only so much you can remember and sometimes there are things you need to do but are not urgent enough to keep in your RAM. This is where RtM is good at. Keep your tasks available. It's online, and gadget freaks like me love the iPhone or mobile interface. Keep it with you all the time, everywhere.

Evernote, another online tool. Not so much to help with organizing your tasks, but you can dump everything in it. Scraps, snapshots etc. I mainly use it to store my registration codes of software and business card snapshots (taken with my iPhone and Griffin iClarifi case, of course). You can share your evernotes too. nice interface, slick use, although the iPhone app could use a speed bump. Evernote has replaced Yojimbo for me.

drop.io, like evernote, you can store everything (almost literally everything). But it goes further than this. People can add anything to your drop as well (if you allow them to). Better yet: drop.io announced that they'll open up a managed drop tool soon, which will make collaboration a breeze. I signed up for their alpha test period and hope to be able to start using drop.io in class or with co-workers and use another drop for photography, etc. It's private, secure, non-searchable by google. Great stuff.

This is my top 3. Do you have any other tools?

Of course this post should not go without mention to posterous.com. The easiest and best blogging system available.