It seems there are too many things going on, but not enough at the same time.  I've been using various social network applications for quite a while, but have never taken any but LinkedIn seriously.  But recently I've decided to up my exposure in a few areas.

I've made an effort to increase my connections in both LinkedIn and Twitter, while pretty much ignoring FaceBook and the rest of the crowd. After all, there are only so many 'communities' you can keep up with. The good thing about this particular group is the ability to link them together. So, I can post a comment on LinkedIn and have it post on Twitter.  My Tweets show up on my blog ( over here >>>), and my Flickr uploads are automatically announced as Tweets.

I've used a couple of services to increase my connections, and to my surprise, they have been working out nicely, and without any problems. For Twitter, I'm using TweetSpinner.com,  a service that lets me identify keywords, and follow those people who's comments include those keywords. I'm using the paid version of the service, and have scheduled the system to run scans every couple hours. Once the system finds matching tweets, it automatically follows them for me. There are other functions on the service too. It allows you to be selective in the geographic area you want to look. In my case, I'm not concerned with the location, but I can see where people might want to use the feature.

By using TweetSpinner and another service, TopFollowed.com, I've run my followers up to around 3,500. It's not a stratospheric number, but it's way more than the 300 or so I had a few weeks ago. That said, there are some down sides to large numbers like that, but I'll go into that later. 

I'm also using  the LinkedIn corrolary to TopFollowed.com, called TopLinked.com. Members of the TopLinked group are LION's - LinkedIn Open Networkers. That means folks on this list will accept membership requests from anyone, and will NEVER click the 'I don't know this person' which would trigger LinkedIn to suspend the user's account. I'm now at just under 2,000 LinkedIn connections using this service.

 So What?
Well, so far the increased numbers have not netted me any jobs, assignments, gigs, or anything monetary. On the other hand, I have had several interesting Tweets with folks I would never have run into otherwise. So, I think the services are serving their purpose - meeting people.

The Flickr connection is interesting as well. Whenever I upload an image to Flickr, the upload component I'm using sends a Tweet with a link to the image, or group of images. I've received immediate feedback from several people (Thanks to you who have responded!!).

I also have functions enabled on my blog and web sites that send out Tweets when new articles are posted. I hope that what I'm sending is of interest to those following me. If not, I expect to lose a few followers. But more importantly, I hope that the  increased number of contacts will at least be entertained, and at best find the information useful. And even better... will find use for some of the services I offer, and assign work to me.

Over all, I think this is a numbers game... a sign of the times where the large employers are becoming fewer and less reliable, and the small shops find ways to meet the needs of a diverse set of customers.

So, what do you think? 

I've been traveling more lately, and that means alternately using my desktop computer when I'm home, and my laptop when I'm not. For years, I simply copied my main work files from one computer to another, going back and forth as necessary... sometimes loosing data, usually not. 

A couple months ago I started to get tired of the dance, but more imporantly, I got tired of the limitations having to plan and execute the updates put on me. For one example, I'm sitting in my living room while I'm writing this. Not such a big deal on the face of it, but normally I would have had to stay at my office to do this because that's where my files were... unless I had taken the time to synch up my laptop before taking it from the office.

I had (and still have, to some extent) several major applications and data structures that needed to be synchronized, and those are the ones I decided to address. Here's the list of applications I need to connect: 

• Email
• Prospects
• Contacts
• Tasks and deadlines
• Projects
• Writing and editing texts
• Social connections

 Some of those structures are housed in a single application, while some are spread over multiple applications housing some portions of the overall data. For example, Email, contacts, and deadlines are stored in Microsoft Outlook. Projects, Tasks, and Prospects are stored in iLore's ProjectTrack. And Writing and editing texts are spread between Microsoft Word, ProjectTrack, and TreePad.

This conglomeration makes synching between two computers a project that takes some time. And even though I've implemented several applications that make the task much less an issue than it was initially, I'm still not able to just pick up my laptop and leave the room at a moment's notice.

The good news is that the limitations have already begun to lift. I've started researching and actually finding solutions to the problems in the  form of combinations of online applications that either synch with my local applications, or replace them, either totally, or in part.

Communications first

I decided to start with my most frequently used, and most heavily relied upon application - Email and Outlook.  There are a few reasons Outlook is the subject of both my love and my frustrations. All my contacts, garnered over years, along with email threads and notes, are stored in Outlook. I always have backups of the PST files, but not so frequently do I archive old data. That means my PST files are large, and the mythical 2 gigabyte file size limit occasionally haunts my thoughts as I continue to save attachments with my emails. 2 gigs is the largely unpublicized, but well known limitation of the typical PST file, before it abruptly disintegrates, rendering its contents a random collection of bits, and often throwing its owner's work life into chaos.

I decided that connecting Outlook with Google's Gmail service, with its practically limitless storage, would allow me to move (if only gradually) my email collection off my local drive, nearly eliminating my reliance on PST files for storing my life's work... or my work life.

It was a simple conversion, but a few tweaks were necessary in order to get it to work as I wanted it to work.

More later...