Damien at the Speed of Life – DATSOL

This is a short but sweet review of Digsby. Though I have several other projects vying for my attention, this one takes precedence because Digsby has transformed my view of social media. I have to share the wealth, so to speak.

Before I tell you all about Digsby, have you ever heard of a paella pan? It is used for Mediterranean cooking which is fast catching on here in the States. It is delicious.  These pans are great to have around when doing this style of cooking.  I recommend acquiring one.

Back to the review. Check out the photo below cropped from their front page and then scroll down to read the rest of the post:

I want to thank my friend Justin for showing me this application a month or two ago. Digsby is just like a chat or IM client. If you’ve used AIM, Yahoo! Messenger, ICQ, or GTalk you’ll be at ease with the program. But the interface is where the similarities end. Digsby is like an IM client on steroids. It combines IM, Email, and the Social Networks together in one messaging/notification/composition source. No more “I wonder who’s on MySpace” while you’re on Facebook. You are logged in to both and chatting at the same time on both. Now add nearly every social network you can imagine to those two and you have the power of Digsby.

When I log on in the morning, I get notice of how many Gmails I have in a long window showing who they came from. I also see my Yahoo Mail right there at the same time. I can respond to emails right there or save them for later. I also see all my Facebook, Inlinked, Twitter, and Myspace activity. All in one place.

I’m not very skilled at doing tech reviews so I won’t try to be. I recommend you check Digsby out though and see if you agree it makes social media easier as well as life!

For a long time I’ve wanted a static IM chatbox in my sidebar and today I finally chose one. I tested every one on this list of 10 and found MeeboMe to be the best hands down. It has great features, good looks, and best of all it is integration with the major IM clients. I am a Yahoo! Messenger user myself and the transfer was seamless.

There are many other ways to interact in real time with your visitors besides chat. I also have researched a few ways to properly get “Asides” into my sidebar. I settled on the Twitter Tools Plugin by Alex King. Below is the code I use for that. In the event that Twitter goes under (which people in the industry have speculated might happen) I also have a dormant backup plan to use the Sideblog plugin for wordpress. You can see that option commented out below. I like this option but they stay as posts which can cause future feed and spidering issues. What you see below is from my sidebar directly if you want to grab the idea and make it your own:

I think the future of blogging and web 2.0 is the connections one makes through social media. After that, interaction with the blog owner will be a huge perk for people seeking knowledge and connections in the blogosphere.

A quick post-note: When I write “asides” I recognize that a 20-something created the term. That should be a charge for Matt Mullenwegg knowing he made that a blogging word. Of course, it isn’t quite as cool as how William Shakespeare first coined the term “lonely,” but it ranks up there pretty close ;) Good job Matt.