Quite Useful Weekly Roundup

This week we featured two detailed articles on social networking: Twitter for Your Boss and Grow Your Social Network.  Both these articles complement each other and discuss social networking in a professional context.

We also published two reviews: Spotify and Codebase.  Ric’s article on Spotify includes tips on use, so it’s worth reading if you’re already using it.

Hack Your Tumblr Blog is our bumper-guide to enhancing Tumblr: check it out if you use Tumblr for serious blogging.

Is This Down For You?

We launched Is This Down For You? this week, a simple but time-saving tool for checking if a web site’s really down — or if it’s just your ISP being weird!

Birdhive.net

One of the most interesting sites we featured in our Twitter feed this week was Birdhive.  It helps share creative work through Twitter.  The focus on creative work was particularly welcome, as most tools and directories seem to focus on business.  There’s no ads either, so it’s not a gimmicky cash-in site.

Designer and Developer

whobuilt.it is a tool that allows you to claim the sites you’ve worked on.  You get a profile page so people can see what you’ve made.  It’s a great idea, and it seems to be catching on.  It’s often difficult to succinctly communicate all the things you’ve worked on; sharing a whobuilt.it link is easier than listing from your portfolio.

I’m not sure what category E.ggtimer falls into, or how useful it really is, but I liked the design.  Add a duration to the URL and it’ll show you a full-page timer: e.ggtimer.com/10minutes

Social

This week there were dozens of useful social tools.  One that stood out was Googaby - a mac desktop application for managing Google contacts.  I also liked TweetThisText, a bookmarklet that makes sharing quotes on Twitter easier.

Topify allows you to follow people through email, something I often wish I could do when Twitter emails me new follower notifications.

HowSociable? is designed to display your company’s social network footprint.  This could create more ammunition for convincing your boss you need to take social networks seriously.

Excla.im is a Jabber bot that updates your Twitter status.  Technically you could use it with Google Talk as well.