Corina Mackay | srtOnlineMedia.com

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4 Impressive Twitter Apps for Your Web Browser

May 2, 2012 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Managing, monitoring and updating Twitter accounts takes time and effort. Especially if you’re looking after multiple accounts.

You definitely need a great app on your side to make things as simple and easy as possible.

Today I want to examine the best web-based third-party Twitter clients available.

Let’s take a look at what they have to offer and what’s missing.

#1: HootSuite

Like most social media dashboards, HootSuite uses a simple column layout. The light color scheme makes it easy on the eye and helps links and menu buttons to stand out.

HootSuite's pop-out sidebar menu keeps the main columns clutter-free.

Options for different-sized columns give the user control over the look and feel of the dashboard.

Profile pictures make it easy to tell which account you are sending from.

The Compose box for new updates finds a nice balance in HootSuite. It never disappears completely, so it’s not difficult to find, and yet it remains compact until clicked.

Creating, scheduling and sending updates are a breeze with HootSuite. My only issue with the Compose box is that the profile pictures are quite small and in a separate drop-down box, which makes it fairly easy to forget to check which account you are using.

Keeping an eye on Twitter trends only takes one click.

Powered by What the Trend, HootSuite automatically shows the latest trending topics on Twitter when you click inside the Search box. Searching for a keyword or user will produce a pop-up box showing the results stream. From here you can save the stream to your dashboard or search for other topics.

Not only can you monitor your current Twitter lists, you can create new ones.

HootSuite’s Twitter list integration is excellent, allowing you to create new lists and follow those you have already set up.

Most of these features are similar—if not the same—as those offered by the other apps discussed here. HootSuite’s real standout features are the ability to easily share accounts with other team members and set up various tabs. The ability to create reports and have them sent to you automatically also makes this a great tool for monitoring business accounts.

Killer feature: Tabs. It’s almost like having multiple HootSuite accounts set up within the dashboard. Each tab can have different columns and searches that are saved to your HootSuite account.

Biggest flaw: Design. While HootSuite doesn’t look bad, the design is ordinary compared to TweetDeck and Seesmic. With so many unique features, I would use it exclusively if it looked better.

#2: Seesmic

One app I can’t stay away from despite its flaws is Seesmic. The design isn’t perfect, but it makes a nice change from the busy, boxy look of HootSuite. The color scheme is almost the same, although Seesmic does offer a dark option as well.

Although Seesmic's design is very similar to HootSuite, rounded edges and bigger spaces between elements make for a nicer look.

The option to change color schemes gives the user more variety.

Many social media accounts can be connected to Seesmic, but this platform is best used for managing just one or two. A quick way to switch between accounts like HootSuite’s tab feature would improve the user experience.

Not only does Seesmic offer different-sized columns, you can also switch to a list view, if you prefer to read updates this way.

Killer feature: Design. Color scheme options, rounded edges, better spacing around columns and less clutter across the top of the dashboard make Seesmic more pleasant to use.

Biggest flaw: Lacks features like tabs and analytics, which would make it a more robust option.

#3: TweetDeck

With Twitter’s acquisition of TweetDeck, several things have changed—some better, some not so much.

TweetDeck's column layout is one of the cleaner and simpler dashboards.

The blank space in the screenshot above is one of the “not so much” changes. One of the better-known social media dashboards, and preferred by many Twitter power users, TweetDeck has sadly taken a huge step backwards with its most recent update. Column-sizing issues are a real downer in this version.

On the upside, the addition of two new column types is very handy. The Interactions column shows not only mentions of your Twitter handle, but also retweets of your updates, users who follow you and users who favorite your tweets.

Having all of your interactions in one place makes it easier to keep on top of your account.

The Activity column includes actions from users who you follow. When they follow other users, add them to lists or favorite tweets, this will all show up here.

The new Update box in TweetDeck takes a different approach than Seesmic's and HootSuite's pop-out.

Although hidden behind a single button above TweetDeck’s columns, the bright blue square makes the Update box stand out so you won’t miss it. The box has a simple layout, similar to both Seesmic and HootSuite, although it’s bigger and includes larger profile pictures. Clicking the profile pictures also changes the “from” statement at the top of the update box, making it very clear which account you are using.

TweetDeck's search function allows you to save searches or add them to your dashboard as new columns.

Without tabs or a similar feature, TweetDeck requires a lot of scrolling to see all of your columns. The column buttons across the top of the dashboard make this a lot easier, though. When you hover over one of the column buttons, its title will be shown, allowing you to quickly find and jump to particular columns. This is one feature I’d love to see other dashboard apps integrate.

Each rectangle links to one of the columns you have created.

Killer feature: New Update box. When managing multiple accounts, the easier it is to send off (or schedule) a quick update and ensure it’s being sent from the right account is imperative. TweetDeck has the most user-friendly update process.

Biggest flaw: Lack of features needed to manage multiple accounts. More than two accounts will make a mess of your TweetDeck dashboard. Especially if you are monitoring hashtags, lists and searches, as well as general account activity.

#4: Twimbow

An up-and-comer in the field of social media dashboards is Twimbow. With a focus on colors and heavy on unique features, users of Android Twitter client Twicca will love this one.

Look familiar? Yet another multiple-column layout.

Twimbow’s feature list is impressive, and it offers the user a lot of control over the personalization of the dashboard. Color-coding is preset but adjustable, as are the items that show up in the Personal Buzz column (shown on the left in the screenshot above). With just a click, the user can select (or deselect) any type of activity within the Personal Buzz stream to show only what’s relevant.

Twimbow's monitor stays hidden until clicked to preserve the simplistic layout.

In the monitor, the user can add any kind of column: lists, searches, hashtag streams or even particular user streams. These columns can be moved with a drag-and-drop motion to fit the user’s needs. When not in use, the monitor is shown by a grey bar across the bottom of the dashboard.

Similar to TweetDeck, Twimbow's Update box pops up over the main dashboard area.

Twimbow’s unique features really make it stand out as a great personal dashboard. The color-coding options (applicable to update types, specific users or whole user lists) could make it a useful tool for monitoring business accounts or related updates as well. Of course, color schemes are available—more than any other dashboard I’ve used.

A recent upgrade to Twimbow's music player is quite an impressive feature.

With the music player, you can listen not only to your favorite songs, but also turn on the radio feature to create a playlist of related tracks, see tweets tagged #nowplaying that mention the artist you’re listening to, share the songs on Twitter and track down a copy of the CD online.

Twimbow's built-in RSS reader makes it easy to find share-worthy content without leaving the app.

Browsing Twimbow’s top RSS feeds or adding your personal favorites will make the built-in RSS reader a handy tool for discovering great content to share.

Killer feature: Personalization. Color themes, color-coding, drag-and-drop columns, built-in RSS feeds and a music player. Impressed yet?

Biggest flaw: Hiding the monitor. Although the option to keep the monitor out of the way is great, not being able to have more columns in the main view makes it hard to manage multiple accounts from this dashboard.

Every app has its benefits and flaws, and of course these are just my opinions. I’d love to hear your thoughts, though. Last time I wrote about Twitter apps, the majority of our readers were waiting for something to trump HootSuite.

What do you think? Are you using HootSuite or one of these others? Or something else? Let us know in the comments section below.

Category: corina mackay, dashboard apps, hootsuite, seesmic, Tools, trending topics, tweetdeck, twicca, twimbow, twitter, twitter apps, twitter monitoring, twitter tools, what the trend /

How to Automate Your Social Activities

March 29, 2012 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Are you looking to simplify management of your social activities? If so, then Ifttt is for you.

Don’t be put off by Ifttt’s crazy name. This is one handy tool that you should definitely know about.

Ifttt stands for “If this, then that,” which is a very basic way of explaining the site’s whole premise.

With very little effort on your part, Ifttt will connect your online accounts and services to create triggered events. After setting a trigger from one service, you can create a task to be activated automatically when the trigger goes off.

Ifttt lets us common people work with scary Internet codes like APIs without ever knowing it.

So for example, you might set an RSS feed of local news to trigger an event any time your hometown is mentioned. You can then create a task for Ifttt to perform when this trigger goes off, like sending you an email or text message. Neat, right? This is called a recipe.

Each recipe can be searched, shared and used by anyone on Ifttt.

Personally, I believe Ifttt is incredibly useful if you use it right. It’s one of those services with a lot of potential that could seem useless if you can’t find a need for it. Initially, this is exactly how I felt, but once I found a need for Ifttt, I realized how useful it can be.

Here are some examples of how Ifttt does do the drudgework for you and saves you time and energy.

Share Everywhere

If you manage multiple social media accounts, you’ll appreciate the ease of linking them together. With Ifttt, you can link up your accounts to perform particular actions automatically.

Linking one account to another will allow you to repost updates across different networks. If you only want to do this occasionally, you can create a hashtag to trigger the action.

For those who use Tumblr or a similar media-focused blog platform, Ifttt allows you to automatically post items from RSS feeds, creating a continual stream of shared content on your blog. You can also set your own blog’s RSS feed to automatically post updates on your social media accounts.

If you’re a fan of Buffer, you know how easy it is to add new updates. The process is even simpler with Ifttt, as you can set items starred or labeled with a particular tag to be sent to your Buffer account automatically.

Manage Social Media

Managing your social media accounts is more than just creating and sharing content. Ifttt can help you with administrative tasks such as monitoring and keeping your profiles up to date.

If you like to keep your profile pictures the same across different networks, you can set a trigger to activate when you change a picture on one account to update your other accounts to match.

Keep your profile pictures consistent across networks automatically.

Using Evernote, you can create an archive of your social media updates by sending them to your notebook as soon as they are posted. You can also archive them by date, posting them to your Google Calendar.

Keep your updates safe and searchable by archiving them in your Google Calendar.

If you want to keep track of links you’ve shared online, saving only your updates containing links will help you find them again later. Using Delicious or Evernote, you can keep a searchable archive of all your shared links.

Evernote is also a great place to keep blog post ideas. By setting a tag to send straight to your Evernote account, you can collect ideas from your Google Reader with ease.

Ifttt lets you search recipes for keywords like "calendar" or "Evernote" to save you the effort of setting up your tasks from scratch.

Organize Your Life

The automatic nature of Ifttt keeps you organized even when you’re not. Set these tasks up once and you’ll be surprised at how handy they become.

If you’re a fan of GTD, you can add labels to your Gmail messages to have them sent directly to your Evernote notebooks with tags added. This is handy for getting your to-do list out of your inbox without a lot of extra effort.

Keep track of favorite and important emails by sending them directly to your Evernote account.

Emails can also be used to create calendar events automatically by using labels, message contents or sender details.

One of my favorite uses of Ifttt is the automatic creation of Google Calendar entries according to your emails.

If you use Dropbox, Ifttt can simplify your backup processes by sending documents, pictures, email attachments and more straight to your account. You can also back up images by cross-posting them to different networks. For instance, you might repost all of your Instagram pictures to your Flickr account.

Backing up your photos is easy with all the recipes already available.

Easily my favorite use for Ifttt so far is weather and travel notifications. Ifttt has so many channels set up, you can set notifications to arrive via SMS, email, social networks or even a phone call. Creating a notification for travel delays on your train line or weather warnings in your area can save you time and energy (not to mention a bad hair day if it’s raining!).

Get weather alerts via text, phone calls, email or Twitter to prepare you for the day.

If you need a regular reminder for something, Ifttt can do this too, using the time and date as the trigger. SMS reminders every Monday to put out the garbage or an email on the first of every month to pay the rent will save you the headache of remembering to write these things on your calendar.

The interface of bright colors and big, clear buttons makes Ifttt so easy to use.

It’s likely that you’ve come across some of these features elsewhere already. You might even use them regularly. With Ifttt, all of the possible combinations of triggers and tasks that you can set up will make your life more simple and organized. You can also pause or turn off a task at any time. Having all of this control in one easy-to-use interface makes the process a breeze.

What do you think? What’s your favorite Ifttt recipe? Is there something it can’t do yet that you would like it to? Leave a comment below and let us know.

Category: archive, back up, buffer, corina mackay, Evernote, google calendar, ifttt, ifttt recipes, manage social media, profile pictures, rss feed, Social Media Tool, Tools, triggered events, tumblr /

3 Twitter Browser Extensions for Better Social Management

February 15, 2012 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Do you have more than one Twitter account?

If you use social media for your business or to promote other companies, you probably have many different accounts to keep track of.

Dashboard apps can help you keep tabs on various networks at once and update multiple accounts.

However, when you want an enhanced Twitter experience from your browser, these three free tools can help.

#1: Silver Bird

A feature-packed little extension, Silver Bird offers a multitude of Twitter features in a smart pop-up box.

Main view in Silver Bird's pop-up box.

Silver Bird uses neat tabs to organize separate views of your timeline, mentions, direct messages, favorites and lists. A search box is tucked in between the tabs as well, for quick hashtag or keyword searches.

Extensive options give you complete control.

An extra tab titled “Unified” is a collection of tweets that you choose. This can include mentions, direct messages, lists and your home timeline—or just some of these options—which allows flexibility and control.

A recent update added a trending topics feature.

Silver Bird’s icon changes color to notify you of new tweets, which is an unobtrusive way of keeping you up to date. On the settings page, you can choose which colors the bird will change to, depending on what kind of new tweets come through; for instance, you could make it change to green for mentions and yellow for new tweets in your home tab.

A number icon shows how many new tweets you have.

Composing a tweet in Silver Bird is simple, with the now-standard options of adding media and shortening links included. The compose box stays out of sight until you open it, making for a smoother view of your timeline.

Two clicks to start composing a tweet make this a great tool to share thoughts quickly from within your browser.

Silver Bird has some other handy features that make it extra useful, including a “mark all as read” option, a preview of image links and follow/unfollow features. You can also set on-page pop-up notifications if you find them useful.

Silver Bird is free to download from the Chrome web store.

#2: Tweetings

Tweetings is based on the same open-source Twitter extension as Silver Bird—the no-longer available Chromed Bird. Thus, the two are similar in many ways. The design, however, is much better in Tweetings.

Tweetings uses icons to distinguish each tab.

As you can see, the basic layout is very similar to Silver Bird. Tweetings puts the compose box at the bottom, but keeps it open so you can create an update with just one click. The basic timeline view is very simple to navigate, with unread tweets in bold font to make catching up much easier. As with Silver Bird, you have an option to “mark all as read,” which I find very useful.

Map previews make your Twitter feed more dynamic, without loading extra pages.

Twitter lists, searches and trends are all available in Tweetings, so you can keep up with tweets on any topic. As in Silver Bird, the app comes with detailed settings, including the option to change the color of your icon for notifications.

An extra cool feature in Tweetings is that the icon can show two different colors at once.

This app includes some handy features to stay connected to your Twitter community, such as follow/unfollow features and the ability to view other users’ timelines. One of my favorite features is the auto-completion of usernames, which I use regularly.

Clicking on a username gives you several options to connect with the person.

Lastly, Tweetings offers Windows, Mac, iPad and iPhone versions of its app, which you can sync with the Google Chrome extension. You can grab the extension for free from the Chrome web store, and download full apps from the Tweetings website.

#3: TweetBar

TweetBar takes a very different approach than the full-featured Silver Bird and Tweetings extensions. Simply put, TweetBar lets you send tweets from the URL bar of your Chrome browser. This is certainly one of my favorite additions to Chrome, as there are many times I have wanted to quickly send a tweet without opening a full-fledged Twitter client (probably because I closed them earlier to help me focus!).

Using TweetBar couldn’t be simpler. Once your account is connected, typing “t” and hitting space or tab will let you type in a tweet. Hitting enter sends your message to Twitter. That’s it!

A character count will show up in Chrome's drop-down box when you start typing. Image source: babbl.me

If you often find yourself needing to send a tweet right away, this is the quickest and easiest way I’ve found to do so. Forget opening a new window or even a new tab in your browser—just type and send.

You can download TweetBar from the Chrome web store.

While none of these extensions offer the features (like multiple account support) of full-blown dashboard apps, they are useful to keep on top of a single account, especially if you spend a lot of time working in your browser.

TweetBar is a definite favorite of mine; it certainly fills a need I have. If you’re on the lookout for a specialty app like this, I’d love to hear about it.

What do you think? What features are you looking for in an app that you haven’t found yet? What needs do you have that haven’t been met? I would love to hunt down some tools to help you fill the gaps. Leave a comment below and let’s chat about what you need.

Category: app, browser extensions, chrome, chrome browser, corina mackay, dashboard apps, direct messages, extensions, follow, Free Tools, hashtag, Mentions, messages, searches, silver bird, Tools, tweetbar, tweetings, tweets, twitter, twitter extension, Twitter Lists, twitter timeline, twitter tool, unfollow /

3 New Apps to Manage Your Social Networks

January 26, 2012 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Are you looking for a better way to manage all of your social accounts?

With the growing number of social networks, it can be a pain to keep on top of them all.

Below I’ve highlighted three tools to help you manage your various social networking accounts from one neat dashboard.

#1: Alternion

Just recently out of private beta testing, Alternion packs a punch with the number of networks and social profiles you can manage.

Each profile or account is added by logging into the original site and allowing Alternion to access your account.

From blogging to bookmarking, image-sharing to shopping, Alternion will cover more of your accounts than any other dashboard I’ve tried so far. For business and marketing purposes, you’ll find most of the accounts you would need: Facebook, Twitter, WordPress, Digg, StumbleUpon, Delicious, Vimeo and YouTube are all here.

Alternion also places an emphasis on user privacy, with sharing options available for each linked account (perhaps having learned a lesson from Facebook’s privacy fumbles). You can decide whether to display a link to each account on your Alternion profile, and who can see your updates from a specific network.

Alternion's privacy settings are simple and easy to change.

The main dashboard page is a little reminiscent of Facebook’s once-simple layout—the blue and white design and clean structure make it easy to focus on your data and the task at hand.

Two sidebars keep your main news feed or message stream uncluttered.

Alternion offers three main viewing options: your social news feed, which pulls in updates from your social networks; messages, which allow you to interact with your various email accounts; and contacts, which is fairly self-explanatory.

One great feature that I was surprised to find is the ability to not only edit your Facebook and Twitter lists, but also to create brand-new lists from within the contacts tab.

Alternion also creates a user profile for everyone with an account. On your profile page, you can see updates you have made to any linked social networks, links to your various social profiles, photos and videos you have shared and some basic stats about your activity (number of profiles, number of updates, etc.).

The profile sidebar shows an overview of your activity from all accounts across the web.

Final thoughts:

Alternion wins at offering the most variety in the accounts and networks you can pull in. It also offers full email integration, allowing you to interact with email messages without leaving your dashboard.

If the clean-cut simplicity of the design suits you, and you want to manage a wide variety of social accounts from one place, Alternion is worth a try.

#2: LiveGO

Unlike Alternion, LiveGO focuses on a smaller number of popular social networks like Facebook and Twitter. It also incorporates email accounts and instant messengers such as Gmail’s GTalk and AOL Instant Messenger.

LiveGO aims to be a simple way to communicate with others through email, social networks or instant messages.

LiveGO has several viewing options, allowing you to get an overview of everything at once or focus on a particular area. The standard inbox view shows your email inbox at the top, with mixed social network feeds underneath. Your instant message accounts live in a sidebar to the right, which can be hidden when not in use, giving you more space for other tasks.

Each of your accounts has its own button on the left, with a pop-up menu that makes it easy to switch to specific feeds; for instance, Twitter mentions or email drafts. A menu across the top of the main feeds panel offers different areas of each network, giving you full, integrated access to your account.

The Facebook-specific view has menu options for your news feed, photo albums, messages and more.

Each Twitter account has its own panel as well, showing your main feed, your own tweets, favorites, mentions and direct messages.

LiveGO's integration with Twitter includes the ability to favorite and unfavorite tweets, see conversation threads and follow or unfollow users.

A constant update box sits at the top of the screen, allowing you to update any of your social networks with ease. Choosing the account you are sending from is clear (something I have had issues with in other dashboard apps), and sending the same update to more than one account is an option.

Finally, a couple of unusual features that caught my attention: First, the ability to add special characters (music notes, hearts, arrows) to your updates. Admittedly, this is not something I use often, but is an interesting addition to the update box, especially considering an “add media” button is conspicuously missing. Second, a feature I have never seen before: an automatic collection of updates from the same person. See the image below for an example.

Two recent tweets by the same person were linked automatically by a bracket to show that they came from the same author.

Final thoughts:

The rounded, smooth design of LiveGO is more pleasing to the eye than the plain layout of Alternion, but this may not be enough to win you over. If you want to update many different social networks at once, LiveGO may not be the tool for you.

For keeping on top of several Twitter, Facebook and email accounts, however, LiveGO does a great job of incorporating most of the features of each network, as well as offering instant messaging options to keep you in touch with your contacts in a variety of ways.

#3: Netvibes

Netvibes is more of a monitoring dashboard than an integrated updating tool. With the ability to add several social networking accounts such as Facebook, Twitter, MySpace (yes, really) and email accounts, it offers a good overview of your networks. Its focus is more on monitoring your brand across the web than communication, however.

Netvibes aims to be "everything that matters to you" collected into one dashboard.

With the ability to add several “dashboards” to your account, Netvibes offers a comfortable way to keep different areas of your work separated; for instance, personal and professional accounts or different brands you are monitoring.

Various widgets allow a huge degree of personalization to your dashboard.

Each dashboard view lets you choose widgets to add, which come as specific as the calculator, weather or to-do list widgets, and as indistinct as standard text or HTML widgets.

Social widgets allow you to monitor your email, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts.

Each social networking widget offers standard functionality, such as replies, comments, retweeting and other sharing options. The email widget, however, is disappointing in its lack of features, offering essentially an inbox monitor and nothing else.

Adding widgets is a fairly simple process, with categories to browse at the top of the page. Each widget can fit into different areas of your dashboard, and change size and shape accordingly.

Widget previews show user ratings, image previews and the number of users who have installed the widget.

The one thing Netvibes really does differently is the integration of RSS feeds. With RSS widgets, you can quickly get an overview of recent headlines, and open these in a reader view to see the full article.

RSS feeds can be read without leaving the Netvibes dashboard.

This integration makes Netvibes the perfect place to monitor specific topics across the web, without actually “traveling” across the web.

If you prefer to view the actual website, you still don't have to leave your dashboard.

Netvibes also offers the most extensive personalization options of these three apps, with several themes available to choose from, and color options available for each separate widget.

Final thoughts:

If monitoring—rather than engagement—is what you’re after, Netvibes is for you. Although it offers some social networking functions, its strong points are the integration of various tools such as RSS feeds, social network feeds, weather, news and to-do lists, which make it a one-stop dashboard for all of your monitoring needs.

If you like the sound of Netvibes, you can also sign up for a premium account from $499/month to access detailed analytics features as well.

The Verdict

As always with these roundup posts, your needs will determine which app is of the most benefit to you.

Are you looking for a way to monitor and manage your accounts on various networks across the web? Perhaps Alternion has what you need.

If you want an easy way to keep up with several accounts on Twitter, Facebook Pages and your email, LiveGO can integrate those for you.

Or if you need an easy way to monitor brand mentions or specific topics all in one place, try Netvibes.

What do you think? Let us know which dashboards you’ve tried, and what you like best. What features would you like to see added to your favorite dashboard?

Category: alternion, brand mentions, corina mackay, livego, netvibes, Reviews, social media app, social media dashboard, social media management, social media mentions, social media monitoring, Social Media Tool, social networks, Tools /

3 Tools to Store and Search Your Social Media Activity

December 15, 2011 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Do you struggle to find a useful link you shared on Twitter or Facebook?

When you spend a lot of time online, you’ll inevitably come across too many great things to keep track of.

Whether it’s handy infographics, informative articles or just a hilarious video, it can be a lot of work (and sometimes impossible) to find them again later.

If you’ve been in this situation before, looking for something you saw somewhere online, you’ll love these three tools. Each one offers a different take on collecting your personal information and content you share online into a searchable database.

egoArchive: Everything you see online

egoArchive focuses on everything you read or look at online. It works as an in-depth, searchable dump-bucket of every site you visit.

egoArchive is "your memory in the cloud," so you don't need to remember anything.

egoArchive collects your data in two different ways. Connecting your Twitter, Facebook and Delicious accounts allows your activity on these services to be archived. Browser extensions are also available for Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer. With the browser extension installed, egoArchive can see and archive all of the pages you visit.

Before you decide this is a little too close to an invasion of privacy, there are some safety measures in place. By default, no pages with a secure connection (https://) will be archived, nor will any pages visited while you are using your browser’s incognito mode. There’s also a blacklist feature, which lets you add any URL that you don’t want to be archived.

So, once you’ve got your accounts connected and your browser extension is up and running, you can use egoArchive to search through your data.

Your egoArchive homepage lets you browse the last 24 hours, last week, favorites and shared items.

Searching can be as simple or complex as you like. As well as entering keywords into the search box, you can sort your results by relevance or date, and choose which services to search: web history, Delicious, Facebook and/or Twitter.

Each search result will show a thumbnail of the site, a link and description, and the date and time you viewed it. You also have the options of deleting a result or saving it to favorites, searching only that domain and sharing the link with friends.

Comprehensive search results make it easy to find what you're looking for.

egoArchive is the perfect tool to find blog posts you’ve read online, status updates from Twitter or Facebook, or news articles that you can only vaguely remember. With the comprehensive search options, it can make finding items much faster than a traditional search engine.

egoArchive is currently in private beta, but the founders have been kind enough to offer an invite code for Social Media Examiner’s first 50 readers. Just click this invite link to sign up!

Memolane: Everything you share online

Memolane takes a more personal approach to archiving by focusing on items and content you share online. Known as “the timeline of your life” or “the scrapbook that writes itself,” Memolane is all about organizing and curating the content and updates you are already sharing online.

Here’s a short video to introduce the service:

Memolane offers connections to many social media accounts, from Facebook and Twitter to YouTube and Instagram. For each account that you connect, you can choose a separate privacy setting—private, public or “friends only.” Your updates are then pulled into a “lane,” where they are organized by date.

Updates from all of your connected accounts are aggregated into your personal stream or "lane" and organized by date.

Within a lane, each “memo” (or update) can be viewed specifically, with options to share, change privacy settings and add or remove the memo from your lane. Links in your memos are preserved, so you can revisit links you have shared previously.

Each memo includes the date and time it was posted in the grey bar at the bottom.

In addition to pulling all of your updates into one searchable feed, Memolane offers a similar service for Storify, by allowing you to create separate lanes around specific themes or events. You can then search or browse these lanes, which are limited to updates you have chosen.

Specific lanes can be singular or collaborative efforts, using updates from your choice of networks and time periods.

Memolane is a useful tool to search through updates you have posted and shared. If you like looking back over your activity online, this is a great way to do so, by pulling in updates from many (or all) of your social profiles. Creating separate lanes is a handy feature if you want to curate updates relating to an event, project or short time period.

Memolane accounts are free and you can start building your lane by visiting the sign up page.

Greplin: Everything that’s yours

Unlike Memolane and egoArchive, Greplin isn’t limited to your public updates and activity. Greplin works like Memolane, in that you need to connect the accounts you want to archive before it indexes all of your content. Available connections include Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Gmail.

Several options are available only with a premium account, such as Highrise, Basecamp and Evernote.

Once your services have been added, Greplin will create an index of all of your content, including private items like emails. You can then search separate services, file types or everything at once.

Icons in the bar to the left show which services are being indexed and whether they're up to date.

Searching for content is a quick process. A drop-down box offers each of your accounts to be searched, as well as result types, such as links, events, messages and people. For a quick search of everything, you can leave this set to “all.”

Search results are counted into separate categories such as people, files and streams.

Search results are separated into categories, making it easy to find what you are looking for. Each category shows the first three results with options to show more, each result linking to the original content. Greplin’s clean and simple layout makes it easy to interact with the search functions and find items quickly.

Stream search results offer links to the original content, as well as profile links for the authors.

Integration is a highlight of Greplin, which adds optional search functions to your standard Gmail search bar, and offers browser extensions to search on the go. For a comprehensive search of your public and personal content, as well as items shared on your social networks, Greplin is a winner.

Bonus: Trunk.ly and the future of Delicious

When I began this post, I had planned to highlight one of my favorite archiving apps, Trunk.ly, which Social Media Examiner briefly mentioned in a previous post. Trunk.ly archives all status updates you share online that include links. It’s a fantastic (and passive) way to collect the links you share on social networks and find them again later.

Unfortunately, Trunk.ly is no longer accepting new sign-ups, and will close in the next two months. The good news is that it has been acquired by AVOS, the new owners of Delicious.

So hopefully this means that Delicious will soon offer a similar service. If you already have a Delicious account, I recommend keeping an eye out for this, as it has come in handy many times for me in the past.

What are your thoughts on archiving your online activity? Is it a handy service, or an invasion of privacy? Do you use another tool to back up and search your content? Let us know by leaving your questions and comments in the box below.

Category: archive, archive service, archiving, content curation, corina mackay, data, Database, egoarchive, greplin, information database, memolane, Search, social media archive, social media search, Tools, trunkly /

3 Tools to Store and Search Your Social Media Activity

December 15, 2011 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Do you struggle to find a useful link you shared on Twitter or Facebook?

When you spend a lot of time online, you’ll inevitably come across too many great things to keep track of.

Whether it’s handy infographics, informative articles or just a hilarious video, it can be a lot of work (and sometimes impossible) to find them again later.

egoArchive: Everything you see online

egoArchive focuses on everything you read or look at online. It works as an in-depth, searchable dump-bucket of every site you visit.

egoArchive is "your memory in the cloud," so you don't need to remember anything.

So, once you’ve got your accounts connected and your browser extension is up and running, you can use egoArchive to search through your data.

Your egoArchive homepage lets you browse the last 24 hours, last week, favorites and shared items.

Comprehensive search results make it easy to find what you're looking for.

egoArchive is currently in private beta, but the founders have been kind enough to offer an invite code for Social Media Examiner’s first 50 readers. Just click this invite link to sign up!

Memolane: Everything you share online

Here’s a short video to introduce the service:

Updates from all of your connected accounts are aggregated into your personal stream or "lane" and organized by date.

Each memo includes the date and time it was posted in the grey bar at the bottom.

Specific lanes can be singular or collaborative efforts, using updates from your choice of networks and time periods.

Memolane accounts are free and you can start building your lane by visiting the sign up page.

Greplin: Everything that’s yours

Several options are available only with a premium account, such as Highrise, Basecamp and Evernote.

Icons in the bar to the left show which services are being indexed and whether they're up to date.

Search results are counted into separate categories such as people, files and streams.

Stream search results offer links to the original content, as well as profile links for the authors.

Bonus: Trunk.ly and the future of Delicious

Unfortunately, Trunk.ly is no longer accepting new sign-ups, and will close in the next two months. The good news is that it has been acquired by AVOS, the new owners of Delicious.

3 New Bookmarking Sites and What They Mean for You

November 10, 2011 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Bookmarking is a great way to save things for later follow-up or to revisit on a regular basis.

While your browser’s built-in bookmarks make for a quick and easy visit to your favorite sites, external bookmarking sites can extend to images, quotes, articles and more.

If you use bookmarks often, you may need a better way to organize them and incorporate them effectively into your workday.

In this article I’ll highlight three bookmarking tools that can help boost your productivity.

#1: Licorize

The real difference in Licorize is that it is not only a bookmarking tool, but also a collaborative platform for “web workers” and their teams. Licorize connects to social networks and other web apps to make your life easier and more productive.

Available connections include Evernote, LinkedIn, Instapaper, Twitter, Dropbox, WordPress and Google Reader. You can also import and export bookmarks through Licorize, and add bookmarks on the go to any mobile device that has a browser.

Although Licorize is the only one of these tools that requires a paid account, it’s one of my favorites and therefore is first on the list. After a 7-day free trial, Licorize requires a one-time payment of $14.99 to use it for life. Considering how useful I find this app, I think its well worth the sign-up fee.

Licorize prides itself on being a bookmarking service "for the web worker tribe."

Like some of the other tools noted here, Licorize lets you sort bookmarks by type, although these are geared more to the professional, including types such as reminder, milestone, idea, place and to-do.

In the settings panel, you can choose which bookmark types to show or hide in your browser pop-up window.

A pop-up window used to add bookmarks through your browser offers more in-depth options than most bookmarking apps, but the interface is simple and easy to understand. The URL and title of the page are determined automatically, although you can change these as well as add your own notes.

Notice the colored lines surrounding the title? With one click, you can select any section of text on the page—no need to click and drag.

Although bookmarks (or strips) can be edited once they are saved, the beauty of the browser extension is how quickly you can create or add to a work plan from your browser. After adding the normal details for your bookmark (title, URL, notes and tags), you can choose from a list of projects or create a new one, assign the strip to a team member and choose a level of importance.

See that little smiley face to the right of the notes section? You can even choose an emoticon to show how you feel about this task!

The browser bookmarklet makes adding bookmarks easy, with the pop-up window shown above, but lacks any extra features. With the browser extension, you also get the options of “remind me later” and “read it and store,” as well as opening your strips panel to see bookmarks you have already saved.

The browser extension gives you more options than the bookmarklet, but both offer a quick way to save strips.

Once your bookmarks are saved, you can view and edit them at licorize.com. Bookmarks can be filtered by priority or time, and you can search using tags, calendar dates or just keywords.

Bookmarks in your account can be checked off as “done” or “read,” pinned to the top of your list or deleted. You can also add work log details to an item, showing when you worked on it and for how long.

Each strip shows details of the type of strip and which tags and project it is assigned to.

The weekly review option is a great way to catch up on what has taken place during the week, and what you have left to do. When working with others, this can help you keep on top of your projects and ensure nothing gets overlooked.

Whether you want to review only your to-do strips or everything from the past week, the weekly review option is a handy tool to have at your disposal.

And finally, Licorize lets you bring your bookmarks together and present them as a booklet. When curating content around a project or theme, this is an excellent way to present your findings and share them with others.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8Ah52JImpQ

Watch this video for a quick look at how Licorize can save you time by helping you bookmark only the relevant details of a webpage.

How will it add to your productivity?

Need to collect ideas and inspiration for a project or presentation? Save images, articles, snippets and full web pages under a single project banner, which can then be made into a project booklet.

Want to share information or resources with colleagues? Add them to your team in Licorize and share, collaborate and create together.

Working on a project with someone who’s not around? Add them to your project in Licorize, and share information and bookmarks, create tasks and reminders, add work log details and keep each other in the loop.

#2: Diigo

Diigo is a great tool to keep web page bookmarks organized and searchable. As well as tags and lists for organization, Diigo also offers some snazzy add-on features to make your browsing and bookmarking more efficient, including virtual post-it notes and text highlighting.

Diigo's library view lets you filter your bookmarks by type, tag or list in the left-hand panel, and orders them by date added for easy searching

Adding a bookmark to your Diigo library through its browser extension is simple, given the intuitive options provided. The title and URL are sourced automatically, leaving you to input an optional description and tags.

Diigo offers recommended tags based on the content of the page you're saving.

Collecting your bookmarks into lists makes them easier to find later. Diigo’s list feature is handy for saving sites you go back to often, or ideas and resources for particular projects.

Lists can be private or public for anyone to view.

Viewing your bookmarks in Diigo’s library saves you even more time, with a great preview feature. Clicking on the Preview button shows you the page you added to your bookmarks list, saving you the time and effort of opening up a new tab or window.

Although Diigo has great bookmarking features, there are some even better aspects that set it apart from other bookmarking apps. The bookmarklet and browser extensions offer some outstanding features, including the ability to highlight text on a page and save it to your library.

You can also create virtual sticky notes to leave on a site, which other Diigo users can see and reply to.

Diigo also offers a host of ways to view and add to your library, including apps for iPhone, iPad and Android, as well as the ability to import and export your bookmarks, cross-post to Delicious and save favorite tweets as bookmarks.

How will it add to your productivity?

Are you a compulsive bookmarker in need of organization? Import your bookmarks to Diigo and use lists and tags to get them under control.

Do you have certain bookmarks you visit regularly? Collate them into a list, making them easy to find.

Do you bookmark pages when you really just want to save an image or a quote? Use Diigo’s browser extension to save images and highlight sections of text, rather than saving whole pages.

#3: Pinterest

A different take on bookmarking than most of these tools is Pinterest. This visual bookmarking service offers users an organized way of collecting images and videos.

Pinterest is a clever way of organizing visual bookmarks.

Pinterest profiles are organized into pinboards, a way of organizing “pins”—that is, images and videos—that you save to your account. Pinboards are sorted into categories, and each one has its own URL so you can share it across the web.

Pinterest profiles show a preview of the user's pinboards and their recent activity.

When viewing a specific pin, users can add comments and “like” or “repin” the picture or video. Repinning, like Tumblr‘s reblog feature, re-posts the bookmark to your own profile, with a link to the original. Each pin also comes with options to share via Twitter, Facebook or email and an HTML embed link for your website or blog.

Pinned images and videos offer interactive features: users can like, comment, repin or share via social networks.

Creating a bookmark is easy with only a few clicks. By using Pinterest’s browser extension, users can choose from any images found on the current page and add to an existing pinboard or create a new one.

By using the dollar sign or hash key, you can add searchable tags and price points. Sharing to Twitter and Facebook can be done from the Create Pin pop-up as well.

Using the browser extension allows pins to be added from anywhere on the web with a simple pop-up.

Pinterest also lets you follow other users to keep up with their new pins. Your home page after login will be populated by any recently added bookmarks from people you follow. Even better is the ability to follow just a pinboard, rather than all of a user’s new pins.

Following other users means you won't miss any of their new pins.

Pinterest is a great way to keep images organized. If you enjoy visuals and like to come back to your favorite pictures for inspiration or reminders, keeping them collected in your Pinterest account makes this much easier.

How will it add to your productivity?

All of those infographics you have saved so you can refer to them often? Collect them all together into one pinboard.

Looking for inspiration for your website redesign or a new business card? Explore pins created by web designers, graphic designers or similar businesses to yours.

Have a huge project coming up and need to consolidate ideas? Pin them all together on a pinboard and share the URL with your team.

So, which is the best?

Of course, that depends on what you need. If you’re looking for a free option, Licorize may not be for you. If you work with others often, however, and want to share projects and bookmarks, Licorize is a great choice.

Diigo and Pinterest offer comprehensive organization of your saved items, and make them easy to collect and find.

If none of these take your fancy, you might want to try Delicious, StumbleUpon or one of these niche bookmarking sites.

And of course, let me know what you think! How do you bookmark? Have you tried any of these tools, and what did you think? Join the discussion by leaving a comment in the box below.

Category: booking site, bookmarking app, bookmarking tool, bookmarklet, bookmarks, collaborative platform, content collation, corina mackay, diigo, diigo library, How To, licorize, licorize weekly review, pinboard, pinterest, Share Information, Social Bookmarking, Tools /

5 Ways to Humanize Your Company With Social Media

October 27, 2011 / Corina Mackay / No comments

We call this crazy thing we’re all addicted to social media for a reason: it’s about people. It’s about developing relationships.

So, if you use social media to connect with your customers (or fans, or followers, or tribe…), authenticity is a must.

Keep reading to discover five tips to make your company more “human.”

#1: Use your name

Putting a name (that’s a real, human name) on your blog posts, tweets or status updates shows your audience that you’re not a robot or an automated stream of sales pitches and company news. Using your name when updating social media humanizes your content and makes you relatable for your audience.

If you use a team of people to update your accounts, each one can sign off on his or her contributions. Even if they just use initials to save space when posting to limited-character services like Twitter, this shows your audience that thought and effort have gone into creating and distributing your content.

Comedy duo Hamish & Andy sign off their tweets and status updates to show who contributed the content.

#2: Add a face

Adding a face to your social media accounts works in the same way as adding a name. It humanizes your content and gives your followers an idea of the person behind the keyboard.

If you prefer to use your company logo or a product image as your profile picture, you can still use photos to add real-person value to your presence.

Many companies have “meet the team” pages, with information about the company members and what they do. This is a perfect place to add a team picture or individual photos.

David Hartstein has some great tips for using photos effectively on your Facebook page, which can be equally useful when adding pictures to your website, Google+ account or photo-sharing sites like Flickr.

Maintaining professionalism in your images so they represent your brand well is a must. As you can see below, IdeaPaint balances fun and creativity in its team photo to show off what the brand is about without losing its professionalism.

The IdeaPaint Facebook page features a great team photo.

Adding new photos regularly is a great way to keep people interested in what you’re doing as a brand. You can show the personality behind the logo by adding “behind-the-scenes” photos and sharing your work in the community through pictures.

#3: Connect with people through your writing voice

So now your audience knows your name and what you look like. They feel like they recognize you, but they don’t know you yet.

Adding personality (your voice) to your content creates a whole picture of you as a person. If you want to connect to people (Remember my intro? That’s what social media is all about!), you need to be a person.

People don’t connect to corporations, robots or automated messages.

Aussie bookshop The Nile does a great job of adding personality to tweets.

Your voice is a huge part of drawing in your audience and engaging them. The way you write has to replace facial expressions, body language, physical gestures and tone of voice, all of which help you get your point across and keep your audience interested in face-to-face communication.

That’s a big task for a 400-word blog post. It’s an even bigger task for a 140-character tweet! Which is why analytics and research are so important to companies using social media—we need a way to measure whether our voice is coming across in our content, and whether we are engaging people or turning them off.

Developing your voice takes time and effort (what doesn’t in social media?), especially if you are acting as a channel for your company’s message.

The important thing is not to quash your own personality in favor of your brand’s message. Writing like you talk can be difficult at first, but by free-writing in your spare time, or just through practice, you can incorporate what you sound like in a conversation into the way you write.

Re-reading your work is important here, too. Even a short blog post can give you some great insights into how you sound by reading it aloud or going over it with someone else.

Jeff Goins has some great tips to help you find the things that make you unique, and how to develop your writing voice to reflect who you are.

With a face, a name and a voice full of personality, you are now a fully equipped human being! Exactly the kind of person your audience wants to talk to, which means you can get your brand’s message across more effectively.

Now for a couple of tips on how to interact with your audience using your new-found humanoid existence!

#4: Listen (the great equalizer)

One of my favorite things about social media is that it acts as an equalizer in a way that no other communication channel does. Unlike writing letters, calling a switchboard or emailing a support team, social media can (and often does) give you access to Fortune 500 company CEOs, celebrities, future employers and those amazing people who make it all possible: web developers.

You can use this to your advantage.

By interacting with your audience on their turf, you have already taken the first step. But engaging your followers takes more than being in the right place at the right time.

If you show up on Flickr and try to generate discussions about new home-security equipment, you probably won’t have much luck. Or if you start a Facebook fan page and fill it with legal jargon, your fans will probably dwindle quickly.

Interacting with your audience in the right way is imperative to a successful social media strategy. This is where listening comes in. Listen to your fans; not just to find out what they say about your brand, but also how they say it. How do they interact with you? How do they interact with each other?

Listening has proven to be influential in driving social media campaigns. Listening, as opposed to talking (or selling!), allows you to determine the best way to connect with your audience.

Monitoring mentions of your brand name, your own name, your industry and your competitors shows you where the conversations are happening and what people are saying about you.

Once you’re in the right place, listening to the conversations around you (and about you) will give you the information you need to jump in with a useful comment, propelling the conversation. You can also tailor your content to be more personal and engaging by listening first.

The great thing about social media is that the consumer finally has as much power as the corporation. Your customers will show you how to engage them, if you will just listen.

A company that listens immediately demonstrates genuineness, originality and credibility. And you know what those equal, don’t you?

#5: Determine why you are here

To quote Jay Baer, “for many companies, the conversation has shifted from ‘why’ or ‘should’ we do social media, to ‘where’ and ‘how’ social media should be done.” The only problem is when a company decides they need to “do this social media thing” just because everyone else is.

No matter what your strategy for social media, you must have a reason for it. Otherwise, you’re just adding to the noise.

Having goals for your social media team (or just you!) to work toward will give your content purpose and will give you motivation and clarity in monitoring and updating your accounts. This will eliminate the wishy-washy gap-filler posts that lower your brand’s credibility.

Plus, your audience will be more likely to get on board if you not only create and share great content, but also have a demonstrated purpose behind your actions.

Let’s have a quick recap:

Authenticity is a must for your brand’s social media strategy because social media is about connecting with people. You need to show that you are a real person so your audience can connect to you.
Put a name and face to your brand to humanize your message.
Listen before you join the conversation and it’ll pay off.
Communicate with your audience on their level, in their language and on their turf to show genuineness, originality and credibility. And those equal authenticity.
Interact with your audience in the right way: it’s imperative to a successful social media strategy.
Finally, work out why you’re using social media. What do you want to accomplish? Make sure this comes across in your content.

What do you think? Does your company do a great job of showing authenticity as a brand? Or do you need to adjust your approach? Maybe you have some great tips to add? Leave a comment in the box below and let us know!

Category: corina mackay, How To, humanize, listening, purpose, real name, real person, Social Media Marketing, social media marketing tips, voice /

Augmented Reality: 5 Ways it Can Change Your World

September 20, 2011 / Corina Mackay / No comments

Have you heard of augmented reality? This new technology will have a profound impact on businesses. Keep reading to learn why…

Like social media, augmented reality is a fairly new technology that is still being developed into tools that add some use or productivity to our lives.

At this early stage, it is often found in games, but businesses are slowly adopting the technology and experimenting with it.

If you’re unaware of augmented reality, the basic definition is that it adds something to, improves, or heightens, reality.

Here’s a cool augmented reality video to check out.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGu0N3eL2D0

Have a look at these five examples of what has been achieved using this technology so far and get excited about what this could lead to in the future!

#1: Games

Games are a fairly common use for augmented reality, helped by the popularity of mobile-based gaming.

The following example, however, is an impressive use of the technology, combined with SLAM (Simultaneous Localization and Mapping) technology, created by NASA.

According to 13th Lab, the creators of the iPad 2 game Ball Invasion, NASA’s 3D tracking technology uses the device’s camera to build and track a 3D model of the world around you in real time.

The game is the world's first iPad 2 application based on a 3D tracking technology originally invented by NASA.

This enables the player to use almost any surroundings as the gaming environment, and according to the 13th Lab team, “allows for a much more stable, robust and versatile user experience.” Unlike other augmented reality games, which use GPS or pre-determined markers, this new technology enables the game elements to interact with the environment more realistically.

Watch this video for a look at how the game works:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=WHGtvdxTVZk

#2: Safety

This is something I wouldn’t be quick to associate with the use of augmented reality, but the Moscow Ministry of Internal Affairs has created an app and accompanying website which uses augmented reality to remind drivers and pedestrians of the danger present on Russian streets.

The app uses augmented reality technology to overlay accident markers on real-world surroundings, and allows users to see car-related deaths, accidents and injuries that occurred in that particular area. Users can also view the accident details with photos, videos and information.

The campaign is made up of QR codes placed around Moscow and other large cities in Russia, which, when scanned, show videos, photos and detailed information about traffic accidents that have occurred at that particular location.

Using augmented reality, the app overlays symbols on the user’s surroundings, pointing out where accidents have occurred, and offering graphic details to warn us about safety.

Have a look at this video to see the app in action:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iod7ssaTBT0

#3: Politics

This seems to be an industry that is trying to jump on board with new technologies, and augmented reality is no exception.

The Green Party of Berlin recently released a mobile app in conjunction with its election campaign.

The app has two main features, the first being interactive billboards. When scanned with the app, videos of Green Party speeches appear on your mobile device, laid over the real-world billboards.

This video shows the billboards in action:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gGVBs2bZbP0

The second feature gives the user more input, allowing conversations to be conducted around Berlin, using virtual points of interest (POIs). With the app, you can actively participate in the real public space by posting or interacting with others on topics of interest, such as payable living space, education, energy consumption or production and public transport.

Comments from users are tagged by location on the Green Party's website, so users can continue the conversation from their computers.

The video below shows how comments can be attached to locations around the city and read by others, increasing the conversation about Green Party issues.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdlqtLVdTpw

#4: Art

Art had its turn with augmented reality experimentation recently at the Site Gallery in the UK. A commission project called XYZ developed by Sarah Staton and Chris Hodson used markers placed inside and outside the gallery, as well as throughout the surrounding city, to trigger virtual renders on smartphone screens.

Physical markers around the gallery and surrounding city produced virtual sculptures, viewable on smartphone screens.

The sculptures used in the project were created by Staton, and then interpreted for the virtual space by Hodson. According to the gallery’s website, the project was designed to explore questions about the effects of virtual elements on physical art:

“Sculpture created from accumulations of simple solid forms have been explored extensively in constructivist and minimalist art, with the application of new technologies ’xyz’ will bend, twist and reform these historical precedents into a mediated 3D ephemeral sculpture-scape.”

#5: Sales

This is not an area that has involved augmented reality much so far. Even branding and marketing uses of augmented reality, like Cadbury’s recent use of Blippar, have focused on game-style aspects to get the user involved.

LutinCapuche, however, is using the augmented reality platform Layar to create a virtual shopping experience for her hand-made plush toys.

You can use the Layar platform to create an engaging augmented reality experience within your very own app!

The first, LCPlush Shop, has geolocated stores in Canada and France that customers can actually walk into. Using the augmented reality layer, customers can visit the virtual shop and website on their mobile device; share plushes by email, Facebook or Twitter; and even use the ‘Plushes Maker’ to design their own LCPlush.

The Plushes Maker allows users to design their own custom LCPlush toy.

The second layer, LCPlush Anywhere, allows customers anywhere in the world to visit the virtual shop, explore the products in 3D rendering and make purchases.

Customers around the world can make online purchases in the virtual store.

Although this is still a new space with a lot of development and experimentation taking place, it’s easy to imagine the possibilities for augmented reality in the future.

What do you think of augmented reality so far? Is it too complicated, or fascinating? I’d especially love to hear how you imagine augmented reality could become useful to your business in the future, so imagine the possibilities and leave us a comment in the box below.

Category: ar, Augmented Reality, augmented reality games, ball invasion, corina mackay, green party app, lcplush, lutincapuche, mobile app, qr codes, site garrlery app, social technology, Tools, View Points /

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3 Twitter Browser Extensions for Better Social Management

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#3: TweetBar

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