Doing web business in the last 5 years has been challenging, and more complexities are added to our daily routine, and it is likely to get even more complex in the future. It seems to me that these days I need to spend a quality time focussing on small things; yet very critical that was normally missed. We focus so much time on the stuff that needs to go out today that we sometimes forget the little things we should also consider.

For example: is the email link on your blog still working? Is the LinkedIn profile still listing you at your old job? Have I updated my profile that I seem to be making on more and more new social networking sites? Does your Twitter account display your new URL?

The problem is that in today's digital era, one broken link could mean a lost opportunity. Spending some time to correct these is now part of our essential weekly tasks. So basically finding new tools to help our daily job is a good thing. Here are 3 of the tools I have discovered recently: two are in beta and one out already.

Qwiki (Alpha)
This is the one I really want to get my hands on. Qwiki's goal is to improve the way people experience information by presenting it in a completely new way. For example it allows you to evaluate a new restaurant you have not been before, or help you choose when you are planning a vacation/holiday and Qwiki will provide you the information in a much more human way - via storytelling instead of listing it as Google/Bing and the other search engines do. Another word Qwiki transforms static information from multiple data sources into a cohesive, interactive video narrative.

Please note that this approach will not pass accessibility as it is not machine-readable list, But for most it would be fun and extremely memorable.

We've all seen science fiction films (or read novels) where computers are able to collect data on behalf of humans, and present the most important details. This is the goal at Qwiki – to advance information technology to the point it acts human.

Currently, Qwiki's technology has been applied to describe millions of popular topics - but soon we'll do much more on additions for social media users and small businesses. Soon you’ll be able to create your own video Qwiki’s for two distinct purposes: a personal Qwiki that merges your social media data into an embeddable video profile or a merchant Qwiki that aggregates reviews on your business from third-party sites like Yelp (Quoted from Qwiki.com)

Storify
Storify is a way to tell stories using social media such as Tweets, photos and videos. You search multiple social networks from one place, and then drag individual elements into your story. You can re-order the elements and also add text to give context to your story.

It is true that you can do this with your blogging platform. However, you do need to be able to write well and the process does take significant amount of time. Storify allows you to cut and paste text, download and then re-upload photos, copy links to original sources, attempt to format that to look nice by going back and forth between previews and editing modes, etc. We make it easy to do that by just dragging-and-dropping, creating beautiful, simple stories. We preserve all attribution and metadata for each element. We let you notify all the sources quoted in a story with one click, a great way to help it go viral. Stories with Storify are interactive, and your readers can re-Tweet or reply to the people quoted in stories. Also, Storify's API opens up new possibilities for developers to display stories in new ways and on different devices. Storify drag-and-drop interface is ideal for the iPad and touch interfaces and is probably their strongest USP

The best application for Storify is to create a story around an event using social media from people who were there, or put together a story using your own Tweets and photos. If you’re a business, you can use it to compile what people are saying about your product. You can also make an online scrapbook from a wedding or party with posts from your friends.

Storify will have a good API and plans to open up the platform to many other sources. There is already a WordPress Plug-in and we plan to produce one for DotNetNuke.

Storify demo from Burt Herman on Vimeo.

Hashable
Hashable is a fun new way to post meaningful connections with people and see who else in your community is connecting. Hashable is a Union Square Ventures-funded start-up based in New York City.

This is a time-saving approach to professional networking, allowing users to document and track their real-world connections on site, through e-mail or via Twitter with hashtags. For example, if you have a coffee meeting with a new business connection — you could tell Hashable to track the relationship with a simple tweet such as: “#justmet @jbruin and look forward to her response cc @hashable.” The same logic applies for introductions, so if you want to formally introduce people on Twitter, your tweet would read something like: “#intro @friend1 meet @friend2. You guys should connect to discuss biz opps cc @hashable.”

You can use Hashable to document any and all types of real-world exchanges with hashtags such as #meeting, #breakfast, #lunch, #dinner, #drinks, #coffee, #golf, #tennis, #brunch and #thanks. I have tried it on iphone/iPod touch and there is no iPad version yet. But in x2 mode it is just fine in iPad.

Comments

Only registered users may post comments.

About Scifiwood News Reviews and Blogs

These are various short and long News Articles, Reviews and Blogs by Salar Golestanian and employees of SalarO.com as well as contributors of Scifiwood.com. The subject matter are mixed topics with Pure Science to Science Fiction as well as general topics on Web Trends, Technology, Software Engineering genre, or whatever subject that can affect the convergence of today's technology with Science Fiction in any shape or form. These Blogs and Reviews don't have commercial or corporate aspiration, so they are indeed completely independent views. Some of these entries may be short and just link you to the actual news or site that can expand further on the subject of interest. In Phase II we plan to incorporate some Social Networking applications within the portal.