There might be other ways to be using it. You might be hosting weekly chats and/or writing blogs in there, or whatever. That’s all swell. So far, the way that I’m using it differently than email (because NO, I don’t feel it’s a replacement for email – at least not in its current state), is in collaborating on something fluid that will eventually be static.

What’s worked well for me, so far, is as follows.

Tips for Google Wave

• Make two or three “sections” inside the wave, making the “main body” section the “top” one, where all the “official” work goes on.
• Make the “second” section of the wave be the “chat” section, where you talk back and forth “outside” the document.
• Make the “third” section of the wave be the “scratch” section, where you keep bits of ideas.
• Use folders heavily.
• Use tags heavily.
• Keep collaboration down to a few people (too many cooks, that sorta thing).

In this method, I’m working on planning out my new business, working on a new book with Julien, and a few other projects. I did a few proposals with Justin for New Marketing Labs that way, too.

And You?

What’s worked well for you so far?

Julien and I are working on our new book. We decided to dare to try Wave to write the starting parts, like the outline and the big premises. So far, it’s even easier to use as a collaboration tool than Google Docs. But I’m still not there yet.

I found this video on Gizmodo. It’s a Wave preview with Pulp Fiction as the overdub. The language is not safe for work. It’s funny as hell, though. And actually, it taught me something.

Your thoughts on Wave?

(if you can’t see it, click here.)

I got this via Maura’s site after she complimented my recent Twitter avatar.

What’s this have to do with anything? Nothing. Except, maybe, if you think about it: Twitter is a serendipity engine for the web, and maybe there’s a story in understanding that power. There might not always be profit, at least not in the business sense, but maybe there’s a lot more wealth in these hidden kingdoms than what you’re thinking about right away.

Just a thought.

You can buy it here (or find it somewhere else):

Most people use this as a way to share a more enriched experience with friends and colleagues. But I think there’s a business opportunity in using the tool for collaborative business. Remember, Friendfeed can collect your status information, your presence, media from several sources, your bookmarks. There are many ways to use that. Here’s one set of use cases to consider for that purpose.

How to Use Friendfeed as a Collaborative Business Tool

1. Sign up for an account on Friendfeed.
2. On the “me” tab, on the right where it says “services,” click “Edit/add.”
3. Add appropriate accounts. (See below).

Here’s where it gets interesting. You can do lots of things at this point. Let’s list several possible use cases:

• Add any company blogs of relevance.
• Add any external blogs of relevance.
• Add search terms via Technorati and Google Blogsearch.
• Add search terms via Twitter Search (here’s how to search Twitter).
• Add any Flickr (or other web-based) photo groups.
• Add location-based data via Brightkite.
• Add relevant news services using their RSS subscription URLs.
• Add YouTube videos.
• Add Delicious.com for social bookmarks.
• Lots more.

So, pick a few things from the about to think about. If you had lots of people in multiple locations, one way to dashboard their locale would be to have all of them add a Brightkite account, and you could “friend” them and invite them into a group. Pow, instant location-status-presence. There are many ways to configure the 43 or so apps that plug into Friendfeed to be useful for your business.

3. Add your coworkers’ accounts as friends.
4. Create a group and invite those friends to the group.
5. Send private updates to the group. Send more public facing ones to the public timeline.

Friendfeed provides many opportunities to go further than just collecting information in one place. I’m sure there are some other ideas for application of what I’ve just covered that you could improve upon. What do you think? How else could you see this being used?

Photo credit, foundphotoslj

(Hat tip, Web Worker Daily for this info.

LinkedIN is a necessary tool in your business arsenal. It’s a professional-minded social network, centralizing their activity around the “build your profile, and then connect up with people who matter to you” activities. LinkedIN isn’t exactly FUN. It’s business-y, and you can use parts of it to ask questions, develop relationships, fulfill needs, find employment, and more, but if someone says, “Hey, I’m going to spend a half hour working on my LinkedIN profile,” I’d be surprised.

So the fact that they gave themselves a nice facelift, added personal photos to the site, and have quietly added some new functionality, comes as a pleasant bonus.

Social networks are apparently blue. LinkedIN, to their credit, has always been blue. Facebook: blue. MySpace, blue. But did LinkedIN get somehow blue-er? Not sure. The design is clean, crisp, and has just a slight bit of a widget feel to it. I like it.

What I like more? Even more information visible to me.

What’s your take? Have you logged in? Do you like it?

Are we already connected? (If not, you’re invited to email me a connection request).

Love to hear your thoughts.