April, 2009 | Social Media University, Global (SMUG)

Introducing the SMUG Bookstore

Over the last couple of years I have done several book reviews on this site, and have typically included a link to the book featured on Amazon.com, so SMUGgles interested in reading for themselves could conveniently order it and get what is likely the lowest price available.

But on Saturday I got the idea of creating a virtual bookstore to go with our ethereal campus through the Amazon Associates program. It was really easy to do; the application process took just a couple of minutes, and within a couple of hours I had gotten my confirmation email that I had been accepted.

So from now on, if you click any of the links to Amazon on this site and go on to purchase those books, SMUG will get a referral bonus of 4 to 8 percent of your purchase price.

For example, if you click the link below and purchase a used copy of David Allen’s Getting Things Done for $7.20, Amazon will deposit the princely sum of 29 cents in the linked account. It doesn’t add anything to what you pay for your product; Amazon considers it part of its marketing expense.

So you’ll note there are now links in the top and side navigation to a page called “Bookstore.” That page and its sub-navigation will likely undergo some renovation over the next week or so as I organize and add links to the reviews I’ve previously done.

SMUG isn’t going to become a non-stop book review site; I’ll use this as a show-and-tell learning opportunity, though, creating a course series in the blogging curriculum on implementing the Amazon Associates program in your self-hosted WordPress blog.

Meanwhile, feel free to browse the virtual Bookstore. While we don’t offer comfortable couches or serve Starbucks coffee like a Barnes & Noble, we at least provide free Internet connectivity. 😉

Chancellor’s Choice Award: A Picturesque MacHeist

As I mentioned earlier today, I was alerted to a great deal on a Macintosh software bundle last night via Twitter. With 14 fully functional software programs for $39, it’s hard to see how it could be a bad bargain.

But I still wanted to try a couple of the programs before the clock runs out tonight on the limited-time offer. The Times (retail $30)program, which uses a newspaper metaphor for pulling in RSS feeds, is a nice package. I played with The Hit List (retail $49.95) for a few minutes on the bus, and it’s a promising GTD application that will have a related iPhone version.

And here’s what I was able to do with Picturesque (retail $34.95) to enhance the look of our global map of SMUGgles. Here’s what I did in just about 5 minutes this evening:

I think these three programs alone are worth the $39 price of the MacHeist 3 bundle. But it’s only available until about 10 p.m. CDT today (or 3 more hours.) By the way, 25 percent of the proceeds go to charity, either evenly split among 10 of them or focused on a charity of your choice.

So:

If you’re a Mac user, you should go get this bundle now.

If you’re not a Mac user, please pass this offer along to your friends who are.

Chancellor’s Choice Award: Tweetie

The SMUG Chancellor’s Choice Award is presented occasionally to social media tools that aren’t free but are good values, as judged by the SMUG Chancellor in his sole discretion.

The first category to be presented is Twitter Clients for iPhone, and honorable mention goes to:

Twittelator Pro

I had previously used Twitterific and the free version of Twittelator, but for the $4.99 upgrade the benefits of Twittelator Pro are immense. Among my favorites are support for:

Multiple accounts, which means I can engage with both@leeaase and @mayoclinic tweets, and can switch between the two in a few seconds.
Subgroups, which lets me pull out “Top Tweeps” to follow more closely from among the more than 1,000 I’m following.
Search, which lets me follow relevant tags like #HACon09 or terms like “Mayo Clinic”
Landscape mode Tweeting, which gives me a bigger keyboard for my larger-than-average thumbs.
Segregation of @replies and direct messages, and ability to toggle among them quickly through the bottom navigation.

This upgrade to Twittelator is an excellent value. Still, in the category of Twitter Clients for iPhone, it comes in second to the winner, which is:

Tweetie

Like Twittelator, Tweetie ($2.99) can handle multiple Twitter accounts. One disadvantage is that when you open Tweetie or switch between accounts you don’t see the little red numbers over the Replies or Messages (as you do in Twittelator) that alert you to Tweets in response to or directed to you. Twittelator is therefore a bit faster for quick monitoring of Twitter accounts. No red numbers in Twittelator means no Tweets that need response. In Tweetie you need to check each tab.

Tweetie also lacks the Subgroups feature that Twittelator has. But I expect I will be using Tweetdeck for my “Top Tweeps” monitoring. My iPhone client’s main function should be to enable me to respond to tweets while I’m on the go. And for this, Tweetie has several advantages:

I really like the Tweetie interface. What got me to try it was a tweet from @shelisrael, who said:

Tweetie is just very elegantly designed. It doesn’t seem to have quite as many features as Twittelator, but the ones it has are stunningly simple.

For example, the name of your currently active account is at the top of the screen in Tweetie. That keeps you from mistakenly tweeting a personal message from a work account.

Another thing I love is that I can view followers on Tweetie and make decisions to follow them. Even better, the most recent followers are on top, so I can probably disable the new follower email messages from Twitter, and just do all of my Follower maintenance from Tweetie when I have free moments. That will make my email handling more efficient.

Either Twittelator or Tweetie will make you more productive than the free Twitter clients for iPhone, but the Chancellor’s Choice goes to Tweetie.

Chancellor’s Choice: MacHeist 3

I learned about this last night through Twitter, an opportunity to get 14 high-quality applications for Mac for $39. As I write this, there are about 16 hours left in the offer (and 25 percent of the proceeds go to charity), so check out MacHeist here. Here’s a screen shot of the offer (click to expand):

The retail prices on these packages add up to more than $900, and for the $39 you get the registration codes for the full versions.

It will take me a few weeks to have worked enough with any of these software packages to know for sure how useful they are, but if onl a couple work for me the package will be worthwhile. And since it’s a limited-time offer, I thought I should pass it along to the Mac-using SMUGgles.

Blog Council Names Dell’s Bob Pearson President

I received a note from Andy Sernovitz yesterday, about an exciting new development with the Blog Council, an organization of large business organizations (and not-for-profits like Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente) that are engaged in social media.

Bob Pearson — former vice president of Communities and Conversations at Dell — is joining us as President of the Blog Council. Bob’s experience as one of the first executives to build a full social media function in a global enterprise will add a new level of knowledge and credibility to the team and our industry.

With more than 25 years at three Fortune 500 companies and as one of the pioneers of corporate social media, Bob brings a wealth of experience and knowledge to GasPedal and the Blog Council — and he’s as excited as we are to make our communities a better experience for all of our members.

I think this move is an important signal that social media is going mainstream. Under the duress of Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell,” Bob helped Dell transform itself from a company with a “look, but don’t touch” approach to bloggers to one that actively listens to customers and solicits their ideas. Dell is a different company today because of that experience.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m still a Mac guy. But Dell made important strides under Bob’s leadership, and I believe he’ll champion that same approach in his new role with the Blog Council.

We’re moving beyond the experimental phase in social media. In the near future, a company without a social media strategy will seem seriously antiquated. I’m excited to be part of a group that’s working hard to make sure we do it right, and that we help keep social media in the enterprise from sinking to the level we saw with the email spammers half a generation ago. With Bob’s leadership we’ll continue working to realize the promise of social media, stressing ethics and transparency and proving the benefits of social media done right.

We’re going to have our first Blog Council member call with Bob in his new role on Thursday, and I look forward to what he and Andy have to say about the future direction of the organization, and what that will mean for accelerating adoption of social media in the business world.

Update: The Blog Council’s blog has a post with this announcement and further details.