I’m often asked which software and which websites I use to do my job and live my digital life. A list like this is maybe just a way for you to check yourself, but also you occasionally will find something that catches your eye. I’m sure I’ll miss a few things.

Software I Like

• WordPress – my blogging software.
• Seesmic Desktop – my Twitter client desktop-wide.
• Tweetie – my Twitter client for iPhone.
• YouTube – for videos under 10 minutes.
• Blip.TV – my preferred “full service” video provider.
• Gmail – my email service.
• Adium – my IM client (I rarely use IM).
• BatchBook – my contact database.
• FreshBooks – my personal invoicing software.
• Pipeline Deals – my sales CRM.
• Picnik – my photo editing software. LOVE it.
• Flickr – my photo hosting solution.
• Delicious – my social bookmarking tool.
• Google Reader – my RSS reader (for reading blogs).
• Google Calendar – for calendering.
• Socialcast – (client) for Workstreaming (like Twitter inside work).
• Radian6 – listening software (a client).
• Evernote – my multi-tool of note taking/keeping.
• Blue Sky Factory – my email marketing software.

That’s what I’ve got for now. If you think of something I missed, or have a question on one, feel free. Let’s use this as a discussion starter. Fair?

I’ve been trying out Posterous after reading about it on Steve Rubel’s blog. I’m using it to capture my vacation.

Today, I tried switching to HTML on the website to embed a YouTube video. (Okay, I just lost a few of you, but basically, I was adding a video the “by hand” way). No go. It wouldn’t be recognized.

Solutions: 1.) use the bookmarklet and push the button while on the YouTube site, or 2.) email the URL to Posterous and let THEM do it.

Okay, fine with a YouTube video. The web has TONS of widgets and applets and things that are just simple copy/paste efforts. Posterous is great and handling the simple stuff and I enjoy it as a very simple, lightweight blogging platform, but I’m a little ticked that I can’t muscle down just a hair and add an embed code.

Just thoughts on a service. Am I wrong?

57 Internet Possibilities to Investigate

Streams of Information

1. Think about FriendFeed as your own personal newsroom or communications center.
2. Revisit Reddit as a news source, and also as a roll-your-own tool for information clustering.
3. Use Alltop as an idea-starter, or as competitive analysis of content spaces.
4. Cook up six powerful searches on Twitter Search and add those RSS outputs to your feed reader.
5. Visit Slideshare weekly and search for new presentations to learn from.
6. Use YouTube as a source for lectures and learning. Use Magnify as a curation tool.
7. Rediscover what’s interesting in Delicious/Popular. Go back and find tags that matter more to you.
8. Reconsider your current blog reading list. Do some quick math. If it is more than 60% related to your industry, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Find the outliers.
9. Pick at least one news source from outside your country to monitor information from a different perspective. One of my sources is The Guardian.
10. Subscribe to at least one blog with a strong opposing view. Learn from it. Learn where your position is different. Learn how they say what they say successfully. Discover what has impact and what doesn’t.

Web-Based Work

Quickly, what I mean by this is that you might consider looking for web-based equivalents to most of your applications, or web-desktop hybrids. Here’s a list of applications for your consideration, and how they might fit into your work flow. In almost all cases, the apps mentioned work well on both Mac and PC.

11. Notes and Storage – Evernote
12. Project Management – Pelotonics or BaseCamp, maybe Staction. (Any others you recommend?)
13. Sales CRM – Pipeline Deals (evaluating it now). Contact management – Batchblue.
14. Invoicing – Freshbooks
15. Scheduling – Google Calendar
16. Brief Communications – Tweetdeck for Twitter. If you haven’t tried it, do it. (Requires Adobe Air.)
17. Online documents, spreadsheets, etc – Zoho or Google Docs.
18. Online presentation management – SlideRocket (or if that scares you, Zoho Show).
19. Info storage (wiki) – PBWiki.
20. Instant messaging – Skype (video, chat, audio), Trillian for PC, or Adium for Mac.

The Video Thing

21. Hulu is good. So is Fancast. The new stuff on Fancast is cool. The OLD stuff is amazing. (**Update: Embeds are there. D’oh!)
22. If you’re making and uploading videos and not using TubeMogul, why not?
23. Most responsive to their community – Blip.tv.
24. If you’re not rocking the Flip MinoHD to make portable video easy, why not?
25. Devices like Panasonic’s new line of Viera TVs (not out yet) and the Samsung LN52A650 are not just TVs. They do Internet stuff, and Panasonic’s will offer direct Video On Demand service to Amazon Video.
26. If you’re looking for Netflix instead, check out the Roku box, or check out Boxee.
27. Video as marketing tool is hot again. Check out PermissionTV, for example. Look past the entertainment angle a moment. See?
28. Video meets mobile phone? News says Sling has a SlingPlayer Mobile expansion coming for other networks shortly.
29. I believe (prediction alert) that the 2009 US switch to all digital signals will also shepherd in a huge side-effect shift of high speed Internet adoption. Some of this will be for video.
30. Need to prove something about all this to the boss? Your research paper.

Small and Local

31. Think about EveryBlock. Is there a model there for you? Should you consider your local web presence?
32. Have you looked at Google results lately, if you ask about a location? There’s room for reviews and other information. There are easy tools to submit more search results. What does that mean to you?
33. On a different tack, Google can’t own local, because it doesn’t scale well. What can you do in helping local information and resources flourish? Is there business in that for you?
34. Is your organization growing too large? Have you considered the pirate ship strategy?
35. Have you thought about small communications? What about tools like SocialCast?
36. What does location mean on platforms like Facebook? It serves local ads well. What else?
37. Have you built a small, powerful network for your needs?
38. Have you built a group around your interests like the So Cal Action Sports Network did?
39. What could Flickr be doing for you? Is there value in coming up with projects that draw attention to your efforts?
40. Are you adding your local events to Upcoming and Eventful?

Mobile Applications

41. Explore iPhone apps, even if you don’t have an iPhone. There are ideas there.
42. Keep your eye on BrightKite. It’s a key to the annotated world.
43. Mobile audio is a useful communications tool. Have you tried Utterli? (disclosure: I’m an advisor.)
44. Microcontent is really here. Seen Jesus and Vishnu on Christmas Eve? (YouTube video. Might be offensive on religious grounds.) That’s microcontent. Verizon’s V-Cast is the old thinking, but not far off.
45. If you’re not thinking about games, do. See things like Gameloft and think about the value of the mobile casual games market.
46. Have you seen and thought about Modu? It’s hot. The concept is hot. Can you leapfrog anything with that concept?
47. You think computer viruses are nasty? What about phone viruses?
48. If snaptell doesn’t blow your mind, why not?
49. There is more than beer money to be had in developing applications for mobile devices these days. And there is more exposure to be had with that market.
50. When I say mobile, you think “phone.” Stop. Nike+ is a mobile device. So’s your GPS. So, technically, is a Chumby.

Money

51. Banking on the net is here. Have you tried Mint? Also, if you haven’t broken down and done it, get a PayPal account. Tie it to a small checkings account with limited funds if you want.
52. If you’re hoping to help a charity, try a ChipIn widget to help raise funds. It shows progress nicely.
53. Timing is funny. Christopher S. Penn wrote about money as trust as I was compiling this list. Worth checking out.
54. You should be eagerly awaiting Chris Anderson’s Free: The Past and Future of a Radical Price
55. Explore the Freemium model. See if it makes sense.
56. Affiliate marketing will be a $13 Billion dollar market in 2009. Check it out. (I’m keynoting Affiliate Summit West this fall in New York.)
57. Have you seen StockTwits? Real time stock talk.

That’s all I’ve got. Here’s hoping we get tons of interesting add-on links and ideas on the comments. Oh, don’t forget that comments with URLs often get flagged as spam. Give me a little while to fish you out.

And hey, if you like this post, please subscribe for free to get more information daily (if not more).

They released a fun little video to go along with the news:

I’ve long been a fan of what Zoho does, but with this new Marketplace, I get the feeling that we’re going to inch closer to one of my predictions for the future of social networks: velvet rope social platforms.

By this, I mean to say that Facebook won’t cut it in the near future for professional networks. If you and I are journalists, we’ll want to hang out on a site that has tools that make sense to us, alongside our friending features. If we’re realtors or hoteliers, we’ll want tools specific to our trades. If we’re educators, the same.

Tools like these in the marketplace are a great way for us to move even closer towards that future, as I see them potentially extending into use on various social platforms, if you just squint your eyes a bit.

Check out all the cool apps at Zoho Marketplace, and congrats to the team on yet another launch.

Hello Nick,

I understand that you may have questions about the recent actions taken on your Google Account. We understand and respect your concerns about your account.

Our specialists performed a thorough investigation of your account ID: nick.saber@gmail.com. It appeared that your account was compromised on 08/01, and an unauthorized charge of $490.30 was attempted in your Google Checkout Account. For security purposes, we suspended this account to prevent additional activity and charges.

We’d also like to assure you that the security and confidentiality of your personal information, including your credit card number, is our highest priority. Your information is securely stored on our servers, and won’t be shared with anyone except under the very limited circumstances described
in our Privacy Policy at http://checkout.google.com/files/buyerprivacy.html. To learn more about
the security of your account and personal information, please visit http://checkout.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?answer=29075.

We also understand your concerns regarding your account security. It is difficult to determine the exact nature of your account compromise. Please see below for useful information on safeguarding yourself online.

The rest of the letter reminds us not to fall into phishing scams, etc. Good advice.

But wow. Couldn’t this have started with an email saying, “Looks like someone was messing with your account. We shut it down to investigate.” Seems a little backwards to make Nick sweat for a day and change, only to reveal that someone tried to rip him off, and THAT’S why they shut him down.

Special note: Matt Cutts came by with lots of information once this story broke, and I’m grateful for that. Note to ALL companies: if you don’t have a respected face person like Matt out there, think about it. It does help.

What’s your take? How would you have handled it, if you were Google?

Lastly, I’m going to talk about this a bit more in my next newsletter, so if you’re not already subscribed, hop in!

• A.viary is a hardcore photo editing app, kind of like Photoshop without the price tag and disk install. But it’s way cooler than that. It’s a whole lot of really interesting editing abilities and a whole community of people doing their own thing with the tools that makes this one a great choice. Note: it’s still in an invite-only beta period (when does that end, guys?), but maybe I can score you a few invites, if you’re interested. Let me know in the comments, and I’ll ask the team.

• Picnik is a lightweight photo editing tool that gets me through pretty much all of my needs right now. I use it about twice a day, and have found that it does most everything I need from a photo editor. It’s not really good with batch-based activities, but if you’re into editing things one at a time, this is for you.

• Skitch (the bonus round) acts as a screen capture and annotation tool. It’s super easy to use, has just enough tools to be useful but not so many that you feel bloated and misunderstood. I use it to do lots of odd jobs on capture screens and little images from web pages. Definitely good to have.

More and more, I’m choosing tools and applications that live in the cloud. Why? Because after dropping my laptop the other day and losing every on-disk application, I realized that there are lots of benefits to having my data and my tools available from anywhere there’s a web browser. There are some exceptions, of course, but when I find great web tools, I want to share them.

What about you? What are you using on the web that’s cool?

FriendFeed/AlertThingy makes seeing the larger media output of your friends easier. Does this help you in a given day? Hard to say. But because some of the comments of the web are shifting into FriendFeed and because the audience is becoming more and more atomized, tools like these are becoming important to seeing the larger story.

Presence apps are here. Aggregation apps are here. But when do we get triage and filtering? Attention is scarce, and we’re sacrificing more of it every day. Tools like Alert Thingy are half the solution by putting everything in one place. But who will help us human-filter our sources?

Found via TechCrunch.

Screen caps done with Plasq’s Skitch

One such application is Oprius. If you are a solo practitioner, or work in a small organization, and need to figure out how to build a sales/marketing practice, dOprius might be the right scale marketing campaign platform for you. It does a variety of things in a very integrated fashion, including letting you build call scripts for folks who have to hit the phones.

My favorite part of the application is contained in the graphic above, the “Phone Assistant.” Upon bringing up someone’s contact, there are some other fields for more information, a lot of ways to capture other data about the conversation.

The company is working towards engaging in conversations with their prospective community, so if you have any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments.