Other tools and resources for crowdsourcing of emergency and disaster relief:

• CrisisCommons and CrisisCommons Wiki - "CrisisCommons seeks to advance and support the use of open data and volunteer technology communities to catalyze innovation in crisis management and global development."
• InSTEDD - "InSTEDD has a unique niche — we design and use open source technology tools to help partners enhance collaboration and improve information flow and knowledge sharing to better deliver critical services to vulnerable populations."
• Ushahidi - "We built the Ushahidi platform as a tool to easily crowdsource information using multiple channels, including SMS, email, Twitter and the web."

Video - Google I/O 2011: Crisis Response 2.0 – Empowering Developers in Times of Crisis

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Short answer

Save the link below to your bookmarks. When you think of an interesting topic, just write it in the search box and click search. You will get back  videos from across the Web (not only YouTube), published since 2007, and longer than 20 minutes.

Find full length videos

Answer explained

The link above takes you to an advanced search on Google. The results match your search query and the following criteria:

1. Find videos,
2. published since 2007 (this is an arbitrary time frame, you can change it), and that are
3. longer than 20 minutes.

Note that you can search for topics, people, or any other thing that you find interesting.

Some search terms to get you started

Here are some topics I got interesting results for: 

• creativity
• information retrieval
• PayPal
• Lawrence Lessig
• internet future
• Clay Shirky
•  Identity and Trust
•  Social engineering
•  network security
• interpersonal communication
• Wikipedia

image courtesy of Arto Teräs (licensed CC-by-SA)

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Images might change

Instead of just uploading an image and adding it to the email, when you create your rich signature you are asked to give a link to the image (see screenshot below). The link is of a web address, not a location on your computer. When you send an email, the link is a live link.

This mean that whenever someone opens an email you sent, the image is retrieved from it's original location on the web. If the image changed in the meantime – your recipient will see the changed image, and if it no longer exists – he will see no image at all.

This is a Huge problem!  You can't really be safe when using images in your signature: If you host the images on your servers – you will have to keep them alive forever, and if you link to someone else's image (say, on Flickr) – they might decide to change it or remove it one day.

I discovered it the hard way

After using a rich signature for about a month, I noticed that one of the images I used have changed on all the emails I sent(!). It changed to a huge, gray image saying that the the trial period of the image hosting has ended! this happened because I used a link I got from a chrome extension that takes a screenshot and automatically uploads it to the web. It seams that the image was only hosted for a short time. Of course, I did not know that the image is not beeing actually added to the emails I send…

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don’t have a smart phone but you want to know where your friends are? No problem. You can sign in to Foursquare from your desktop computer and find your friends. Then, go to foursquare’s mobile website (still from your desktop computer). There, you’ll see all your friends’ check-ins. That’s it. Quite simple, but it requires  breaking a functional fixation that make you think that you can’t consume location data if you can’t provide location data…

Rename folder on Google Reader

You can now rename folders in Google Reader simply by clicking the little arrow next to them in the  subscriptions list (On the left-hand side of  the screen). See example in the image below.

(Found on DownloadSquad).

Links shortening tip

If you’re not using the Bit.ly sidebar to shorten  your links, here is a another easy way to do it. In the address bar, insert j.mp/ just before the full address you want to shorten. Click enter and you will be redirected to Bitly’s website where, you will find the shortened link. see example image below.

(found on  The Steve Rubel Stream)

Finding top websites and ranking information

Google is publishing a list of the top 1,000 websites with DoubleClick ad planner,  a  tool that helps you plan your media campaigns. you can see it in The 1000 most-visited sites on the web. Note that they have excluded some of their websites (see the top 11 in the image below) .

You can also use DoubleClick to find an estimation of the number of visits to a specific website and other ranking information. Go to DoubleClick ad planner and in enter the  address of the website you are interested in (you don’t have to log in to get information).

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A few months ago when I created an event through one of my fan pages on Facebook, I discovered that I could not send a message to the guests list. After some searching and consulting with friends I found the solution on Facebook's FAQ page:

As the admin of a fan page, you cannot message your guests. You have to appoint someone else to be the admin of the event. Then, he will be able to send the guests a message for you.

(I have no idea why that is, of course). To appoint someone else to be the admin of your event, simply look him up in the guests list and click of the 'Make Admin' button next to his name. Image by Spencer E Holtaway

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Let’s assume you’re looking for a PHP developer for your company. Here’s how you can use linked in to find people to hire:

1. In the search box type in PHP and hit search. The results will display people who mentioned the word PHP in their profile (note that people who are in your network show up first).
2. Refine the results by selecting or typing-in a location in the Location box on the left. Now, you will only see people from that location.
3. To further refine the results, in the groups box choose a group such as “Job networking” (of course you will have to be a member of that group in order to see it). That way you will get back people who are searching for a Job.

I made a video that illustrates how to do that, see it below:

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Now, if it happens to you often, probably the best solution is to pay to upgrade your account. But if you don’t think it will pay off, here is a little built-in hack that can help you overcome this limitation.

The solution

In short – to send almost anyone on linkedin a message, simply join a group he or she is a member of.

Explanation

When you join a group on Linkedin, by default the members of the group can send you messages. Although you can turn this option off (see image below) people usually don’t tend to change default settings. Therefore, usually you will be able to send message to all the other members of the group.

But how will I find what group he is on?

Simply scroll down to the end of the profile of the person you’re interested in. There, under ‘Groups and Associations’ there is a list of the groups this person is a member of.

And then what?

First, you need to submit a request to joint the group. Once you’ve been accepted, you will notice that the link ‘send inMail’ at the top of that person’s profile has changed to ‘send message’.

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Google Reader

• Google Reader Tips and Practices for Power Users
• 4 Steps to Optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader
• Before Google – Use Your RSS Reader as a Search Engine

Gmail

• Top 5 Gmail Keyboard Shortcuts to Boost Your Productivity
• Make Gmail More Secure By Setting It to Use HTTPS Connection
• The Easiest way to Create a New Email Message Instantly

Google labs

• 7 Great Things You Can Do With Gmail Multiple Inboxes
• Google Social Search Makes Your Search Results Personal
• A Quick Guide To Google’s New Search Features

Google all around

• How To Create Shared Collaborative Google Maps
• Discover Google Applications’ Keyboard Shortcuts by Typing Question Mark ‘?’
• Become a Google Search Ninja with Advanced Operators

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File sharing

One of the basic needs of a distributed team is the ability to share files. For ad-hoc teams, who do not work together on a regular basis, Drop.io is a great solution. Drop.io is a private sharing and collaboration web app. It lets you instantly create a mini site, called ‘a drop’, into which you can upload any type of file. You can annotate the file with comments or sections of text and use the chat feature for synchronized work sessions.

Teams who do work together on a regular basis should use Dropbox for file sharing. Dropbox is a software (yes, the kind you download) that creates a synchronization folder on your computer. The folder syncs any file in it with the Dropbox server (making the file always available online) and with a similar folder in your team members’ computers. This allows you to share files just like you would do if you were sitting in the same office and using the same server – in shared folders.

For a more cloud-based collaboration, use Google sites. Setting up a Google site is easy, and it can serve as an assistive tool for projects management and knowledge sharing.

Communication

Try as you might, you will never be able to avoid the need for synchronized work with team members (i.e. meetings). For that task, probably the best solution is Skype, the free voice and video calls software.

If not all the team members use Skype, you can use Tinychat for audio or video meetings. Just enter Tinychat, launch a session and send others the link. All the participants can immediately broadcast from their webcam or microphone, without any downloading. Each session also have a chat room.

To see an example of such sessions just pick one of the public chat rooms currently running in ‘Rooms‘.

Screen sharing

Alongside your call, you can use various tools to make it more productive. ShowDocument is a screen sharing tool that enables co-browsing on document and websites. Create within a single click an environment where you can show others a document, a webpage, or a YouTube video. People with whom you share the session will see your scrolling, mouse pointing and drawing.

For a bit more stable and rich screen sharing you can download Mikogo. Mikogo is an online meeting, web conferencing & remote support tool. It lets you share your screen with up to 10 participants in simultaneously.

Text editing

For instant simulations text editing you can use EtherPad. It is a plain text editor with a very high response time for instant writing tasks.

Alternatively, you can just use Google Docs (which requires all the participants to log in).

Scheduling

Finally, don’t forget to schedule the meeting with an online meeting scheduler, such as When Is Good or Doodle.

If you liked this post you might also want to read 6 Web Apps to Instantly Capture, Share, Display and Meet

image by oldcockatoo

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Google has some advanced search operators that help to refine search queries. You can use them to better focus your queries by specifying things like which sites to search, use placeholders, search for exact matches, and more.

Here is a quick guide to Google's advanced search operators.

Starting with Google's advanced operators

Double quotation marks (" ") for exact much:

When you enclose a phrase in quotation marks, Google returns only pages that contain that exact phrase. The results have to contain all the words and in the exact same order as you wrote them. Search for "The first Twitter user", for example, and you'll only get back pages that contain exactly that phrase. This advanced search feature is one of the most useful in my opinion.

Asterisk (*) is a placeholder for one or more words:

adding * replaces any number of words in your query. Example: let's say you want to find articles that teach Google search practices, like this one. You could use the following query for that task:

"how to Search * with Google"

The quotation marks will make sure that you'll get back pages with that sentence in them. But since there's Asterisk in the query, you'll find different versions of it. So, you might get back this sentence: How to Search Faces with Google, this one: How to SearchEffectively with google, or any other variation that matches the query. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.

(site:) limits the search to specific domain(s):

when you encounter a website that does not have a search box, you can use this operator to search it. Simply add site:www.example.com to the query, where www.example.com is the site's URL. This will tell Google to search only pages within www.example.com. Example: to search information about libraries in Harvard University we can use this query (note that there is a space between the address and the word 'libraries', which is the term we want to find):

site:http://www.harvard.edu/ libraries

Try this query yourself.

You can also use site: to search across websites under the same top level domain (such as .gov or .edu). Example: you can find really interesting information about how government related bodies in the US use twitter, with this query:

site:.gov twitter

The results will include webpages under the .gov domain that related to twitter in some way. See the results in the image below or try the query yourself.

The plus sign (+) disables synonyms:

Google automatically searches for synonyms and similar words to those in your query. To limit this, add + right before the word(s) you which to keep the same (no space between the + and the word). Use the or sign (|) for either one of several possibilities: you can make your searches much more effective and efficient by using the | sign (find it on the same key as the Backslash sign- \). What it tells Google is to search either one of the words attached to it. (Note that you can use OR , with capital letters, instead of using the | sign.) Example: you can combine the following four different queries:

"the Facebook guide"

"the youtube ‎guide"

"the linkedin guide"

"The gmail guide"

Into a single query:

‎"the Facebook|youtube|LinkedIn|gmail guide"‎

See the results in the image below or try the query yourself. Do you have other search tips? Share them with us in the comments!

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site:http://twitter.com

So, for example, to find mentions of this blog, we'll add the word 'productivewise' to the query, as shown below (notice that there is a space between the search term, productivewise, and the sit URL) :

site:http://twitter.com/ productivewise

The results are displayed in the image below.

Click this link to search Google with the above query (opens in a new window).

Search within a specific twitter user tweets

You can also search only within certain user's tweets by using the link to that user's profile (and not to Twitter as a whole). So, to search within my profile, you would use this query:

site:http://twitter.com/Eyalsela

Click this link to search Google with the above query (opens in a new window).

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Real-time search is the latest achievement of web 2.0. Never before was it so easy to speak to the whole world and to be instantly heard. This post overviews the 4 most popular search engines capable of generating fresh results.

It is hard to compare them to choose the best one: there are no winners in this game. They all have some benefits and should be used in particular cases:

Twitter Search

Twitter search is the most popular real-time search engine nowadays for a few good reasons:

• Indexing time: the moment the update goes live, it is already in the index;
• Huge database: everyone seems to be on Twitter by now, therefore the user base is huge as well as the number of results for any topic.

Twitter search offers a few really useful advanced search operators, among them:

• From this person [from:username]
• To this person [to:username]
• Referencing this person [@username]
• Tweets asking the question [include ? to the search results]
• Updates containing positive/negative attitude [include / to the search results]

Let me demonstrate the power of one of the above search operators by the following example: consider searching for negative reviews when researching some product/ service, for example: look for GoDaddy.com dissatisfied customers:

There are plenty of other real-time Twitter-based search engines to check out: CrowdEye, OneRiot, TweetMeme,Collecta

Facebook Search

Facebook search was announced not a long time ago, thus there aren’t as many tools and applications so far as for Twitter search but it is still something that must be given a try. Here’s a quick overview of what you can do with the new facebook search:

• search the last 30 days of your news feed for status updates, photos, links, videos and notes being shared by your friends and the Facebook Pages of which you’re a fan.
• search for status updates, links and notes of other people who are not your friends but who have chosen to make their updates public;

You can also filter results to see only those that contain links, to get only wall posts and status updates or to only search other people’s notes. Here’s an example of search results page giving you an idea of what people on Facebook think about GoDaddy:

Google Search

While Google doesn’t currently offer the real time search in the sense we’ve discussed above, I found it absolutely necessary to mention it here – Google lets you search one-hour-old results (the search option found in the side panel); so let’s call it “near real-time search”

The reason why I think it should be included here is that Google can search within any site in its index. This means, you can turn any site into a near real-time search platform. This turns particularly useful for huge user-edited sites.

Here’s a real-life example for you: I love tracking online deals because they help me save some money; my favorite tool to do that is Buxr. To find its latest updates on, say, laptops, I need:

• To search [site:buxr.com laptops] on Google;
• Then click “More options” to open the side panel and click “Past hour” to see the latest updates.

Now, the most obvious question to ask here is why not to use the site built-in search platform. Google gives many more options than any other known search platform. You can use advanced search and side panel search options to display images from the page, see not yet visited results, get only most recent updates, etc.

FriendFeed

Unlike the above three search engines, Friendfeed largely operates external data bases but it is also quite a powerful real time search tool. It combines multiple social networks to generate recent search results.

Friendfeed streamlines relevant results from a number of social networks including Twitter, Delicious, Identi.ca, StumbleUpon, etc plus numerous other sites added by its users. Its search options are quite limited though: the only thing you can do is to provide a search term and hit “Search”: there are no advanced options, sorting or filtering results, etc:

Similar tool aggregating other networks results to check out: Scoopler

Do you use any real-time search engines? Please share your thoughts in the comments!

The guest post is by Ann Smarty, a social media and search blogger and online entrepreneur.

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Use folders to prioritize your reading

At a certain point you've probably realize that it is just not possible to read all of the new items you get. One possible solution is to use folders to categorize your feeds. Once you categorized all your feeds, you can read prioritize your reading by urgency level. For example, I use a folder called 'Immediate' where I put feeds that I want to read the moment they publish something new because it is important for me to know about them as soon as possible. These could be work related or new trends, usually things that if no read within day or two (sometimes less), they became irrelevant. Other folders I use are 'friends', 'Podcasts', 'Premier Blogs', and some more. I also use a 'must read' folder for things that I want to read sometime, but it doesn't really matter when (such as family blogs or new WordPress plugins).

Eric Friedman's post, 'Prioritizing and Organizing Feeds in Google Reader', shows a similar method of using tiers to prioritize RSS reading on Google reader.

Prefix folders for easier categorization

But now a new problem arises. If you are tagging the items you read, you'll notice that under 'Feed Settings' (where you choose the folders for new feeds) there are tens and even hundreds of folders to choose from. That happens since all the tags and folders are listed in there together. The solution is the artificially separate the folders from the tags by adding an asterisk sign (*) at the beginning of each folder's name. This will make the folders show up at the top of the Feed Setting list, making it easier to find the right folder to put new feeds in.

Prefix feeds for Second level categorization

Sometimes, the first level categorization is not enough and you need a second level categorization. That happens when you need to recognize a specific feed among the other feeds in a folder. It is important to recognize the source of an item since it can get a whole other meaning if it was written by one of Google's blogs or maybe you're competitor's blog. But that doesn't mean you want to create a folder just for them. Yet, you don't want to invest the effort of reading the name of each item's source, in addition to reading its headline. After all, one of the advantages RSS offers is the ability to scan items rapidly without distractions. So, to get a second level categorization, prefix the names of the feeds themselves so that their name will stand out. To change the name of a feed, locate it in the right sidebar (called 'Subscriptions'), click it, and under "Feed settings" choose 'Rename subscription'. Add a unique prefix to the name of the feed. For example, I have prefixed blogs about writing skills with this prefixes: ^^ writing ^^

Optimize your reading list

I believe that it is good practice to subscribe and unsubscribe from feeds as needed. There is no reason to stick to websites that do not provide interesting or useful content; it is reasonable that your tastes and needs will vary over time. Therefore, I have developed a practice that will enable you to optimize Your RSS Subscription List in Google Reader by finding the feeds that are not relevant to you and unsubscribing from them. To optimize your RSS subscription you should first start using the 'star item' feature. Whenever you read an item that you find interesting or useful, star it (it also make it easier to find these items later). After you've been doing it for a few weeks, go to 'trends' and compare the number of stared items with the update frequency of the subscriptions. Relatively, the most frequently updated subscriptions should also be the ones with the highest number of stared items. If you find subscriptions that are updated in high frequency but you did not star a lot of items in them – you should get rid of them. Why? Because the more items a source post, the more stars you would expect it to get. You can read the full post here.

Use automatic sharing to Leverage time spent reading

You can Leverage the time you spend reading by automatically sharing items. The 'Share' feature allows you to publish items to be shared with your friends through Facebook or your readers through your blog or website. When you mark an item as 'shared', what you are actually doing is making it public on your shared Items page (this is my shared items page, by the way). To get the link to your public page, to as follows:

1. Click 'Sharing settings »' in the left sidebar (just above 'subscriptions').
2. Scroll down, and under the 'Your shared items page' section, copy the link that says "Preview your shared items page in a new window"

Now you can add it to Facebook as one of the streams in your profiles. Every time you'll mark item as sheared, all of your friends will see it in your personal stream. To share your shared items in your blog or website – still under 'Sharing settings »', click the link that says "Add a clip to your web site or blog", at the end of the page. Follow the instructions to generate an embed code that will display your latest shared items (you can see my shared items in the news section).

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Aard what?

At the end point (your side, as a user) all that Aardvark does is take a question you submit, find someone who can answer it and send you back the answer. It does that by searching for a user that is online and has knowledge in the field of the question you asked (and preferably, is from your network on Aardvark). Than it sends him or her question. The answer is sent right back to you, usually within few minuets. Often, you get more then one answers from several different people.

If you are not satisfied with the answer you got, you can easily resubmit it for other people to answer it or asked the ones that already did to elaborate.

Aardvark has two main advantages. The first is that it is easy to submit questions. You can submit question through the actual site and Twitter but the best thing is that you can submit questions straight from Gmail Chat, AIM, Messenger, and Windows Live. This integration into the daily workflow is very comfortable.

The second advantage is that you get a fast, personally tailored answer from another person (rather then one That has been written for someone else and you found it, for example).

What should I use Aardvark for?

Aardvark’s FAQ page suggest using it for the following kinds of questions:

Recommendations

Research help

Advice and second opinions

Tips and discoveries

Get started

After you sign up, add Aardvark to your Instant messaging program. To add it to Google Chat, Search for Aardvark and add it as a chat friend (see image below).

To make sure it works, type ‘Help‘. From now on, all that you have to do is write Aardvark any question in plain English, like you would to a friend. Aardvark will find an answer within a few minutes.

Real examples

As default, the questions you ask and answers you get back are visible only to you (and the few people who are asked to answer them). But if you want, you can make them public.

Here is an example of question I’ve asked and the answers I got back:

And here are some more examples:

• My blog comments (Disqus)
• opening an .swf file
• Can you give me examples of sites that look messed up because their are not valid?
• bad screen display

Thanks to Omer Perchik for suggesting Aardvark.

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The presentation describes 20 social media practices that will help you in your daily life. It includes tools to monitor your web presence, ways to track interesting topics and conversations, methods to find people and to get answers, and more.

It revolves around the following seven categories:

1. People Database
2. Keeping in touch and more
3. Conversation
4. Search
5. Collaborating
6. Monitoring and News
7. Self monitoring

I’ll be glad to get your feedback and thoughts about it.

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1. ‘Social Media and the Enterprise’ Explained (Presentation)
2. Announcing a Seminar – ‘Social Media in Day to Day Life’ [15 July, Israel]
3. A Name is No Longer a Name – But a Hyperlink to a Person’s Profile – Social Media in Corporate Settings – a case study

Lecturers:

• Tomer Lichtash @tomerlichtash
• Me (@eyalsela)
• Miriam Schwab (@miriamschwab)
• Gal Mor (@galm)

The Seminar will take Place on July 15th at Tel-Aviv.

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In this post we’ll learn how to built an excel query in a couple of clicks. As an example, I’ve created a single spreadsheet with the top 1,000 twitters (based on data from Twitterholic), which you can download.

Create an excel web query

1. Open a new Excel workbook.
2. Open a website and Select with your mouse the data to import. Copy it, and paste into the workbook.
3. At the lower right end of the pasted area you will see the “Paste Options” button, which looks like that . Click it and choose “Create Refreshable Web Query”.
4. A new window will open, called “New Web Query” (see image below) . Once it is done loading, little yellow boxes with an arrow inside them will show up. Click the arrow next to the data you which to import.


New Web Query window

5. Click “Import“. Within a few seconds, the data from the website will appear in your Excel file.
6. Control the format and layout of the imported data and its refresh rate by right clicking the data area and choosing “Data Range Properties…” .

Repeat this process to import data from different sources or pages in the same website.

Top 1,000 twitters in a single spreadsheet

I used a web query to import the top 1,000 twitters from Twitterholic. You can download the file here: top 1000 twitters . I defined the file to refresh every time it is opened, so it should always be updated. If it doesn’t, simply right click the table and choose “refresh”.

The nice thing about it is that the links to the original data exist, so you’ll get directly to the page of the top twitter you choose from the list.

Do you use excel web query or have interesting uses for it? Tell us in the comments!

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Google responded saying it is “looking into whether it would make sense to turn on HTTPS as the default for all Gmail users”

If you don’t want to wait for Google to take the decision you can change the connection type to the more secure one (HTTPS) by yourself.

Change the connection type to HTTPS

To use always HTTPS connection in Gmail, do as follow:

1. Click ’Settings‘ at the top of any Gmail page.
2. Set ‘Browser Connection‘ to ‘Always use https‘ (see image below)
3. Click ’Save Changes.’

choose ‘always use https‘

After changing the setting you’ll notice that the when in Gmail, the URL always starts with https rather than http (see image below). That indicates that your mail is encrypted when it travels between your web browser and Google’s servers.

the URL always starts with https

Might cause some problems

Using HTTPS have some known undesirable side effects. It causes errors to show up in Gmail for mobile application and Google Toolbar, the Gmail gadget for iGoogle doesn’t work, and Gmail Notifier works only after you download a patch (Learn more in Google’s HTTPS setting help page).

In any case, you can always change the setting back to the previous condition.

Get more tips and best practices about Gmail.

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Features of the new version

• Tweet without leaving the page – Tweet directly from the bit.ly sidebar without leaving the page you are 
• Easily share on other platforms – use the direct links to share the page via email, Gmail, or Facebook.
• Clicks Summary - see a summary of the clicks the page has received (both created by you and the total number of clicks).
• Real time conversations report - see what people are Tweeting and Friendfeeding (?) about the page (updates in real time).

Right click the button below and choose “Bookmark This Link” or just drag and drop it to the bookmarks bar:

(Get other useful bookmarklets)

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This is an excerpt of a guest post I wrote on ReadWriteWeb (by now it got more the 210 tweets). To read the full post visit the online collaboration tools guide.

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