Cross Post between Facebook and a Personal Blog

 

Why do we need to choose between Facebook and our personal blog? It is obviously painful to post manually the same information on Facebook and on our blog. At the same time we don't want usually to post the same type of information.

On Facebook: Casual post, short and aimed to our tech savvy friends (they need to use Facebook regularly)

In a Personal Blog: Usually longer post targeted to our non tech savvy friends

Bottom line, we need to be able to share content automatically between a Blog and Facebook but not all of it. How can we achieve that?

Let's start with what we cannot do:

1) Share RSS feeds from the Blog to Facebook - It copies *everything* and sometime this is an issue. Not possible to "filter" the feed.

2) Share the RSS Facebook feed in the blog - This is not possible as they change the link all the time! Facebook worked very hard to make the news feed not RSS capable. That is a shame but a reality. And this solution as anyway the same issue than above: it shares *everything* which is not our goal.

So, here is what I am doing now… the solution is different for my laptop and my mobile device (iphone)

On my laptop: I am just using the “share” button on my blogger account as explained here.  With this simple solution, I just publish once and then pick and choose which post I want to share.

on my iphone: I tried Seesmic or ping.fm without success (impossible to download an image on blogger with those apps, I am getting an error message all the time). They should also seriously invest in some documentation for the ping.fm web site. this is *so* confusing. I am now using pixelpipe to cross post with great success.

Organize your contact on Outlook and Iphone

 

A couple of tips to organize your contacts on Outlook and on your iphone.

1) First you need to be able to synchronize your phone and Outlook.
The easiest solution by far is to use Itune: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1386

2) Often, when trying to sync up between those 2 sofwares, you can create duplicate. Here is the best guide on the net to remove duplicate but also to do batch updates on your contacts list (copy one field to another one for part of your contact list for example):
http://www.rimmkaufman.com/rkgblog/2007/07/30/remove-duplicate-outlook-contacts/

3) When you have a huge list of contact on your iphone, it is hard to remember which friends or family you have to call from time to time to keep the relationship going. A nice way to “mark” those contacts is via the “favorite” option on the iphone:
http://www.touchtip.com/iphone-and-ipod-touch/iphone-tips-managing-your-iphone-contacts/

Best Apps for Ipod Touch

I just bought an Iphone 3GS… I know this article is about Ipod Touch. I basically wanted to say farewell to my old companion with this post.

So here it is…

Offmaps – Amazing application for Ipod touch! The power of google map without paying those expensive data plan. A must have for any Ipod touch user.

Keytasks – The application is not free and already End of Life. What a nice advice, thanks Zorba! But the sad truth is there is no replacement yet to sync all the outlook task to the Iphone/Ipod. I am testing toodledoo right now…

Skype – You can transform your Ipod touch in a phone. Plug in the ipod a headset with a mic and it is indeed a skype phone. You can perhaps even try to use the bluetooth chips in it since the last software upgrade. And if your friends are still teasing you with their “real” iphone, you can still use some fake caller. I was using “FAC”.

EverNote - I have done a quick review of Evernote last month. I still think this application sucks on the Ipod touch as the offline mode is really annoying. But it is the only app that can sync text and pictures quickly. I am using it mostly to copy/paste block of google map image before driving somewhere.

iPass – To get access to a wifi network more often

RSSplayer – Not perfect, but still the best around. I am listening to tons of podcast but I don’t sync my ipod regularly. with this small app, I can download the podcast when in a Wifi spot and listen it in my car. Cool.

How do I use Evernote

First of all, I don’t understand why it is not possible to use Evernote offline on Iphone/Ipod touch. Please, Please, Please Evernote add the offline editing capacity on the mobile application of Evernote!

Evernote processing:

1) As part of my regular GTD process, I process all Evernotes notes:

- Each note should have a tag: Temp, meeting, Task, Blog

- meeting notes should be copied on a txt file. I don’t trust Evernote for long term storage.

- Notes with a Tag “task”, should be treated as an “in basket” object (see GTD).

2) In meeting, I am using the Evernote application to take my meeting minutes. The landscape view is perfect for fast typing. I can’t modify my note though which is a pain but I didn’t find another application to do that.

3) On my laptop, quick Notepad application. Shortcut are a big part of it:

A newest version of EverNote had been released, and how it allowed for a couple of interesting global shortcut keys: CTRL+ALT+V and CTRL+ALT+N. The first would allow you to paste the contents of the Windows clipboard into a brand new note. The second would open EverNote and start a brand new note for you.

4) Tracking Blogs Ideas. Everytime I have an idea for a new Blog post, I just add a couple of lines in Evernotes, tag it with “Blog”. I will update the blog post multiple time until I find the quality of the post good enough.

5) In my everything in the cloud personal strategy (perhaps another post about this one day), I use Evenotes as my data hub. This means, if I loose everything, I can go in a cybercafe, log to evernotes and find everything (where to find everything and some login/password).