Technorati Update

Forgot to mention that I finally remembered to go back to Technorati to see if I could actually claim my organization's blogs. Short story - yes, I was able to claim them. Slightly longer but more accurate version: Yes, I was able to claim them but it was mildly painful.

In fact, several of the things that I tried to do earlier on Technorati were ultimately successful yet mildly painful in the short-term. Tried to upload a avatar picture - Oh, sorry, the account section can't be accessed at this time. Please try back! Tried to modify verbiage describing one of the blogs - Oh! Hey, sorry about this but you've been kicked out of your account for no discernible reason. Try back later! I loved. . . L-O-V-E-D that they could make a cute little joke about not uploading any questionable images because it would cut into the time they need to improve the site (seeing as how they'd need to take that time to shut down my account or remove the image) considering that frankly the site does not appear, at this point, to be all that functional to begin with.

OK, I'm calm. I'm cool. I'm collected. And to be fair, it's not like I've tried out the other features that Technorati has to offer. But at this point, do I want to try them?

In the spirit of fairness, I would actually like to hear if anyone has had a good experience on Technorati. So far the most interesting aspect so far (to me) was the fact that you can track rising blog posts.

You can do something similar on Twitter, by the way, using something called TweetDeck. It has a little app called TweetScoop that lets you track Twitter traffic by keyword. Let me be clear, here - I NEVER actually click on the words rising out of the cloud. I use it more like a brain teaser. For example, a couple of weeks ago I was in TweetDeck and I see the word Starbucks in HUGE LETTERS, so I assume something is happening and, given the economy, I'm thinking layoffs. Sure enough I catch the story later on the evening news.

OK, so maybe occasionally I click on the tags in TweetScoop. But frankly TweetDeck has far more to offer than that. Srsly.

Just so I capture it somewhere, here is a link to Twitter slang. I still get confused in Twitter, but some of the people I follow (and some who follow me) are super nice and helpful, so it's all good. I still have a lot to learn, though. I think Twitter has a lot of potential, but I don't know if I have the attention span and/or time to invest to make it work.

And just to make this the longest post EVER, here is something that I discovered from a friend on Twitter: Monitter. It lets you do things like put in a zip code to see what people in your area are Twittering about, or search a keyword like volunteer, etc. Tres cool.

True Colors

If you are interested in appearances (and here I'm talking about the appearance of your online identity, brand, what-have-you) then run, don't walk, and download Colorzilla for your Firefox browser.

This little gem has incredible functionality (according to its website, at any rate), but I am still stuck on the bright, shiny object that is the tiny little color picker down in the lower left hand corner of the browser window. Find a color you like. . . could be from your logo, could be from a random image you find on the web. . . click on the little eyedropper, then click on the color and *BAM* you can now use that color wherever you can insert hex code.

Just double click the eyedropper icon once you've captured your color, and another screen opens up that gives you hue, saturation, etc. plus the hex code. Mischief managed.

Forget the days of eyeballing the color palate to try to match your colors. Been there, done that. I'm no visual genius, but I do like things to look consistent and eyeballing things is not the best way to make this happen. As I said, Colorzilla evidently offers a lot more than this (zoom, analysis, etc.) but in terms of graphic and web-based design, the little eyedropper pretty much rules.

Some other interesting color sites: Colour Scheme Chooser; Color Scheme Designer and Hex Color Codes. Interested in a little theory? Check out Color Matters. Just like everything else, I'm sure you can find countless sites about color on the internet. These are just a few that I found to be useful, so enjoy!