Read it later

Read it later is an important social media tool because it helps in posting relevant information to your social networks in the form of links to interesting articles. People enjoy following people who are not purely self-serving and who off additional information in their social profiles, not just blog updates. This app allows you to tag articles relevant to your choosen niche market and then, after reading them, provides easy access to posting them to your social profiles. My twitter profile @mikesaunders would not be updated as often if it weren’t for this tool.

Linkedin Home Screen for iPhone

Linkedin

As far as I am aware this is the only iPhone application that allows you to manage your linkedin profile. Therefore it is an important part of your socila media toolset. The Linkedin application has recently been updated and Mashable once again has a great overview of the application:

If you’ve used the previous version of LinkedIn for iPhone, you’ll immediately notice the difference. The new interface is very similar to Facebook 3.0 in that it displays 12 icons on the homepage that provide shortcuts to features like the inbox, invitations, status updates and profiles. The update also improves LinkedIn 3.0’s search interface. The goal is to make it easy for you to find information on anybody you meet by bringing up profile information and mutual connections. There’s also a favorites feature to save profiles you may want to bring up again later.

Perhaps the coolest addition to LinkedIn 3.0 is the “In Person” feature.  Using a bluetooth connection, you can transfer contact information and automatically connect with someone else almost instantly.

This upgrade is worthy of your download: It has a bunch of UI upgrades, added functionality and some really innovative additions.

WordPress

A few months ago I wrote a post on my top ten iphone applications for 2009 which may have been a bit soon to place judgement on future applications coming out in 2009. Now that we have reached the end of this last year I feel a little more equipped to provide a more substantial list of useful apps in the iPhone. So here’s my list for 2009:

Echofon

This is my primary twitter application. It only manages a single profile and therefore allows complete focus on my main profile. I also use twitteriffic to manage my other profiles but I find the UI a bit to complicated. Echofon have done a great job at simpliying the proceeses of twitter and sticking to the neccessities rather than the trinkets.

Hootsuite

Hootsuite as a web-based application has grown leaps and bounds in 2009. Starting off as a way to update Twitter and schedule tweets the software has now extended to faceook, linkedin, ping.fm and a host of other services. The only thing missing (for me) was the iPhone app. I have since installed the app, and although it only allows access to updating twitter accounts for now, it is great to start scheduling tweets on the fly. This has already become a time saver for me.

Facebook

The facebook application needs little introduction as it is the top downloaded app from the appstore. It is most likely that if you own an iPhone you have this app already. In 2009 this application became very useful to Social Media marketers with the ability to manage Facebook Pages, events, chats, friend requests, photo albums and notes.

Hackbitly

A funky little app that lets you get the stats of your it.ly links. Very useful to track the success of your blog posts.

Ego

Aptly named, the Ego application is all about checking on the status of your online ego. How many followers on twitter do you have, has anyone signed up to your feedburner RSS today or ha any visited my webiste. The EGO app will kep you up to date with the latest results of your marketing efforts in a neat and concise manner.

Pingle

Pingle

If you are a ping.fm account holder then this will help alot. It uses a simple and straightforward UI (User Interface) to send an update to your ping.fm account, which in turn updates all of your social networks simultaneously. One update = many updated profiles!!!

Analytics Lite

Google Analytics is the measurement tool of choice for most internet marketers and this application gives you access to your acount. In depth stats can be downloaded quickly and easily. Literally putting all your websites statistical data in your pocket.

Related posts:

1. My Top Ten iPhone Applications for 2009
2. Protect yourself from unwanted apps in iPhone App Store

Read It Later

Still one of my favourite applications. Such a simple concept of being able to tag web-pages to ‘read them later.’ A new update has just been released which see’s the app take on a new look and feel. The app also seems to run faster and smoother than before.

WordPress

The wordpress app was rendered useless once I move over to a self-hosted wordpress platform. This was because the self hosted API did not allow for the remote access that the app needed to mange the blogs from the iPhone. A recent update to wordpress now allows remote access and now this app is back in my good books. I am able to manage and reply to comments, fix spelling errors and even write an entire blog post should I wish (although my html skills are not that great so hyperlinking and rich-text editing becomes a problem.)

Hootsuite

Hootsuite as a web-based application has grown leaps and bounds in 2009. Starting off as a way to update Twitter and schedule tweets the software has now extended to faceook, linkedin, ping.fm and a host of other services. The only thing missing (for me) was the iPhone app. Today I installed the app, and although it only allows access to updating twitter accounts for now it is great to start scheduling tweets on the fly. This has already become a time saver for me.

Shovebox

My new found software friend is Shovebox. Shovebox allows you to shove you ideas into a box for use at a later time. Ideas come to me at any given time and it great to be able to store them in an organised fashion for use at a later time. An example is when I have blog post ideas – I can shove the ideas for another time when I am lacking inspiration. Of course the iPhone addition to this Apple software make my life even easier.

Things

The most useful application I have ever used on the iPhone. It’s desktop counterpart is also the most used software on my mac. Things is the best task management system simply because it allows for complete flexibility, task scheduling, and the classic GTD inbox used to make sure you don’t forget the little things. The iphone app has also seen numerous upgrades in 2009 and has allowed for more and more control over task management straight from the phone. I have actually got to the point where I no longer need to take my laptop into meetings because of this application.

News24

A direct feed of collective news in South Africa. The application allows you to customise your news feed choices and saves you having to buy a newspaper to stay up to date. In addition the app has included sharing links on the news items which brings News24 into the social media realm. Big thumbs up to the News24 team.

Tripometer

An easy to use and intuitive application that keeps track of my milage. I can control both the personal and business milage and there is no guessing the distance as it calculates the milage by using the odometer readings. What would make this app the best, would be if it could calculate your milage without inputting any data and simply measuring the distance in a GPS manner. One can dream can’t he?

Wikipanion

This app is more useful than google because of its focus on providing information rather than general content. Google search will bring you the most relevant webpages in its results, but wikipanion will link to directly to ‘encyclopedia’ type info. I also find that the addition of the ‘wiktionary’ has rendered all other dictionary applications useless.

Remote

This is the most convenient application when I am entertaining at home. I often set my laptop up to play music in the background through my home sound system. With the Remote app I can control the volume and choice of songs from anywhere around my house. Saves me getting up all the time to turn the music down when we start eating etc. Plus it always gets attention when people see it in action.

Spend

Still a great application that helps manage my budgeting needs. I have been able to keep better track on my financial status since using this application.

Logos

A recent introduction to my iPhone. Logos is a bible application that has a stronger search and study function than Bible (the app I was using previously). Logos also includes sharing fuctions to twitter etc which makes life easier in sharing thoughts with my twitter channel @onthingsabove

Look out for the next post outlining my top applications on the iPhone for social media!

Related posts:

1. My Top Ten iPhone Applications for 2009
2. Protect yourself from unwanted apps in iPhone App Store

WordPress is a wonderful blogging tool. After my first experience with it I have subsequently started moving all my blogs across to this platform. It’s been around for ages and stood the test of time, provides a great tool and obviously has an abundance of third party plugins that transform your blog into a powerful beast to promote your articles.

Here are my Top WordPress Plugins to date that I feel every wordpress blog should look into:

1. Feedburner Feedsmith - This is only useful if you are using feedburner to manage and track your feeds. It takes every rss link on the blog and ensures that it redirects to your feedburner RSS feed. Making your RSS tracking more reliable.
2. Google Analytics for WordPress – add your google analytic ID to this plugin and gain more insightful research from the traffic on your bog
3. Google XML Sitemaps - This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
4. Headspace – This is a must have for any blog that is serious about SEO. This allows complete control over all SEO needs such as keywords/tags, titles, description, stylesheets etc.
5. Lightbox 2 - A great plugin that displays images in a lighbox java effect. Gives a nice professional touch to the website.
6. MaxBlogPress Ping Optimiser - This plugin changes the way your wordpress blog pings its search engines. Basically it forces wordpress to become less annoying and more likable by search engine. Without this plugin there is a possibility that your blog gets blacklisted from the Google gods.
7. Sociable - Adding social links to your blog posts making it easier for your fans to share your work with their world.
8. WordPress Download Monitor - Fantastic monitoring of files that you have downloadable off your blog. It’s important to see if people actually download what you put online. This tells you how many downloads you are experiencing on each downloadable file you choose to monitor.
9. WP-ContactForm - Simple and effective form for allowing people to contact you via email.

To download and install these plugin visit http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ and search for the names. This way you are assured of getting the latest update rather than this article linking to old versions of the plugins.

Related posts:

1. Three wordpress plugins that help with viral marketing
2. Research

There are however a few useful and even life altering applications for the iPhone. These are the applications we should all be making a fuss about. So with this in mind here is my list of ‘Top iPhone Apps’ for 2009 on Version2.

1 ) Things

“Things is a beautifully focused and amazingly intuitive task manager.” I run all my tasks from here including complex projects at work. ” Other task managers either oversimplify or are too difficult to use. Either way you are not getting stuff done. Things instead has the right balance between ease of use and powerful features. You can even sync wirelessly with the desktop version of Things using Wi-Fi.” Read more…

2 ) Bloomberg

I use Bloomberg to keep up to date on my stock prices and charts as well as to research new stock options. The app design has used the iPhone strengths well by creating automatic chart views whenever you turn the phone sideways on a stock detail.

3 ) Bible

This application feeds from the website youversion.com. It feeds bible text directly from the website in a variety of bible versions including the NIV. Bible also allows for limited offline bible versions to be downloaded to your phone. Youversion has a unique concept of allowing users to comment and share thoughts on scripture and the application provides easy access to these contributions. The app also includes ‘email to friend’, bookmarking functions and a daily reading plan.

4 ) News24

A direct feed of collective news in South Africa. The application allows you to customise your news feed choices and saves you having to buy a newspaper to stay up to date.

5 ) Spend

This is most likely one of the most important apps I have. I use Spend to run all my budgeting. I have been able to drop my complicated excel budget spreadsheets and use a simpler, more intuitive interface for managing my budgeting and expenses. I now know exactly where I am in my spending all the time.

6 ) Pingle

A great application – simple because I use ping.fm to manage my status updates in the social blogosphere. Now with the Pingle app I have been able to update more regularly and more effectively to my various ping.fm update options.

7 ) WordPress

Using WordPress to run this blog means that an iphone application that allows me to stay up-to-date with comments and posts on my blog. I have found it a great way to load new post ideas as and when I think of them.

8 ) Remote

This is the most convenient application when I am entertaining at home. I often set my laptop up to play music in the background through my home sound system. With the Remote app I can control the volume and choice of songs from anywhere around my house. Saves me getting up all the time to turn the music down when we start eating etc. Plus it always gets attention when people see it in action.

9 ) Delicious

Gain access to you delicious boookmarks at anytime. This app is extremely helpful in the weirdist situations.

10 ) Tripometer

An easy to use and intuitive application that keeps track of my milage. I can control both the personal and business milage and there is no guessing the distance as it calculates the milage by using the odometer readings. What would make this app the best would be if it could calculate your milage without inputting any data and simply measuring the distance in a GPS manner. One can dream can’t he?

Related posts:

1. Top iPhone Apps for South Africans in 2009
2. Top 10 Social Media iPhone Applications

Apple have tried to censor and ban a few apps that have been submitted but it is clear that they are under tons of pressure to release these bans.

Censorship-of-iphone-apps

In the new software update iPhone 3.0. Apple have bought in the option to create censorships or restrictions over which applications can be downloaded. Even though it seems that Apple’s reason for this is so that it can allow adult apps into the App Store, I would still encourage you to make use of this ‘restrictions’ function. Especially if your children own an iPhone!

Click here to find out how to enable this on the iPhone.

I am afraid that once activated the restrictions do not stop the apps showing up in the App Store but it does stop example images from apprearing and the ability to download the application. (Even if it is free)

You will need to select your allowed ratings, so here they are directly from iTunes:

4+: Applications in this category contain no objectionable materials.

9+: Applications in this category may contain mild or infrequent occurrences of cartoon, fantasy or realistic violence, and infrequent or mild mature, suggestive, or horror-themed content which may not be suitable for children under the age of 9.

12+: Applications in this category may also contain infrequent mild language, frequent or intense cartoon, fantasy or realistic violence, and mild or infrequent mature or suggestive themes, and simulated gambling which may not be suitable for children under the age of 12.

17+: You must be at least 17 years old to purchase this application. (emphasis in the original)

Applications in this category may also contain frequent and intense offensive language; frequent and intense cartoon, fantasy or realistic violence; and frequent and intense mature, horror, and suggestive themes; plus sexual content, nudity, alcohol, tobacco, and drugs which may not be suitable for children under the age of 17.

Personally I don’t see any need to own an application that has a restriction higher than 4+.

Related posts:

1. Top iPhone Apps for South Africans in 2009
2. Top 10 Social Media iPhone Applications

www.youversion.com

This time its a website called youversion.com. A simple but effective, and good looking, online bible reader that houses numerous versions of the bible in various languages. I found youversion while I was looking for a good iPhone Bible application. The application Holy Bible proved to be very popular and offered me everything I was looking for in a Bible application.

Contributing to the growth of others
What intrigued me was the ‘contributions’ section of the application. This caused me to do some online research and I found the web version of the iPhone application. The contributions section to youversion is what makes the concept so unique. Users of the bible reader are able to make contributions to the website content. This is a great way to share what God is saying to you about His word. It is also nice to read different points of views on a particular passage of scripture.

It works a bit like twitter where you can follow contributers that you like and others can follow you. For example you can click here to see my profile on youversion and then follow me to stay up to date with any new contributions I may add.

The contributions are added in the form of text, links, images and videos. It looks like they are adding podcast and webcam support in the near future.

I like the idea of being able to share information on the bible like this. It provides a strong platform to promote christian websites and material that is online.

Theological Strength?
Here’s where the debate could go on forever. If anyone can contribute information, how can we be assured of the contents theological foundation and scriptural consistency? The answer is we can’t!

A website like this is about sharing thoughts and ideas and needs to be seen as ‘just that’. A creative and fluid environment of thoughts and ideas that surround God’s word at any given time. A concept like youversion has its value in the testimony and thoughts of others and not in an academic grounding. Although content can be flagged as inappropriate by users it still does not provide enough accreditation that a persons views are completely theologically correct. A website like this should be seen as an incubator as christians work out their faith with each other by sharing their thoughts and opinions. It could never replace the need and value of commentaries, theological study notes and the counsel of wise men and women.

I now use the website to share devotional material from my website www.onthingsabove.co.za and I will certianly use it to promote my podcast when it opens up the podcast support. You see, if God tells you something you should tell everyone you can so that they can benefit from what God told you and showed you. That way we all grow more in God. That is the ultimate aim… is it not?

Well Done YOUVERSION!!

Related posts:

1. My Top Ten iPhone Applications for 2009

I am very deadline orientated and often need to know exactly where I am with each project I am working on. I have often tried different task management systems but found that every system didn’t provide for the flexibility I needed in managing my tasks.
The other thing to remember is that I moved over to the Mac Yuppie lifestyle about 2 years ago so i needed something that would compliment the apple logic.

Things provides the ultimate flexibility in task management while keeping to a GTD process that does not allow for things to get lost.

The Inbox
Throw all your tasks into an “Inbox” and then batch your task management time. Once your tasks are collected in the inbox you are able to re-assign them into ‘area’s', projects and even scheduled and recurring tasks.

Tagging helps batching
My favourite aspect about things is the tagging system, this could be because I enjoy and frequently use applications like del.icio.us. By tagging items with specific keywords I am able to batch all similar tasks across multiple projects together which saves me set up time and searching time for similar tasks.

Example: Every project that I complete needs to be invoiced, by tagging each task that involves invoicing the client, I am able to search the tag “invoice.” With those search results I am able to see every client that I need to invoice. So I only have to open my accounts programme once, instead of a few times a day for separate projects.

Check it out!
But don’t let me tell you more. See for yourself on the Culture Code website.

PS: iPhone
Oh, and they have developed an iPhone app which just makes my life even easier and I can add to and assign my task list / inbox from anywhere.

No related posts.