Filling my online toolbox

Fact: I keep coming across Web and smartphone tools that I’m interested in but forget about shortly after hearing about them.

Fact: When I need a tool, I come up shorthanded.

Fact: I love lists.

So to help me remember all the tools at my disposal, I’ve started a “Tools I Love” list on this site. You can find it above under “dash.”

Five tools that make my job easier

It feels like everyday I come across a new “must-have journalism tool” to add to my ever-growing collection.

The challenge, though, is separating the tools that deserve the time from those that just suck time away.

The following are some that I’ve found worth the investment.

A few are relatively new to the scene, while others are oldies-but-goodies.

They help me make better use of Twitter, Facebook and RSS feeds and help me create smart-phone apps and data visualizations — not too shabby for a programming neophyte.

Let me know about some of your must-haves, and I’ll hopefully get some more to add to my list.

Story ideas with a scone and coffee

In early August, I wrote about California Watch’s Open Newsroom project, in which its reporters spread out around the state and set up shop in wifi-enabled coffeehouses.

The purpose was to mingle with readers, gathering story ideas while promoting California Watch at the same time.

I wanted to do something similar on my new beat covering Oldham County at the Louisville Courier-Journal and am happy to report that earlier this month I did.

The Courier-Journal dubbed the event “C-J on the Go,” and along with promoting the fact that I would be sitting around a coffeehouse for five hours in the newspaper and on my blog, we shot a promotional video, the link to which is happily no longer available online — being on video is not my favorite thing to do — and set up a live blog for me to update throughout the event.

Google Voice helps me look like a local

Google Voice is my new, impressive, close acquaintance who is on the way to becoming a great friend.

I signed up for Google Voice last week, and really started exploring it today. And so far, I like.

(I know I’m probably a little late to the game on this, but I figure that since I didn’t understand all the ins and outs of this until now, there are probably others who still don’t as well.)

Google Voice is free for the most part and allows you to forward calls to any number of phones using a number provided by Google.

I was initially intrigued for these reasons:

• My cell phone number is long distance from where I now live. Having a local number makes it easier for sources with land lines to call me, reiterates that I’m local and beats carrying around two phones or changing the number I’ve had for close to 10 years.

Meeting readers outside the newsroom — a novel idea

I suppose it’s a little insulting that this strikes me and others, including the Nieman Journalism Lab, as innovative.

Going to where the readers are, making yourself available for coffee — groundbreaking to be sure.

But, really, I’m quite taken with this.

Earlier this week, California Watch, an initiative of the nonpartisan Center for Investigative Reporting, had its reporters spread out around the state — and even beyond — and set up shop in wifi-enabled coffeehouses.

They call it Open Newsroom, and this most recent one was its fourth to date. The idea is that reporters mingle with readers, gathering story ideas while promoting California Watch at the same time.

My Morning Jacket gets exposure — by not getting exposure

Since Tuesday I’ve been reading about how My Morning Jacket became one of the first bands to debut a music video on Google+.

The video, which is for “Holdin On To Black Metal,” actually went up Monday, a day before the official release. Since groups, including bands, can’t get pages on Google+ yet, two of the band members, Tom Blankenship and Carl Broemel, posted it on their personal pages.

(Band frontman Jim James doesn’t seem to have a page yet, though a Yim Yames, the pseudonym he used for his solo work, has a bare yet strange profile.)

And the reaction has included fans and others questioning the band’s decision to use Google+, Google’s fledgling social network, for the premiere.

The local Twitterrati offer tips to gain influence

I spent the last week learning about the people behind the tweets I see pop up on my local Twitter feed.

I had set out to find the biggest tweeters in Lexington, Ky., and with the help of Twitter Grader, I found out that a local social media consultant outranks the much beloved and worshipped University of Kentucky men’s basketball coach, or rather the Twitter profile that bears his name — someone else actually tweets for him.

A self-proclaimed iPhone hacker came in at No. 3, and in fourth place was a local sports commentator who is equally loved by Wildcat fans as he is hated by fans of all other schools in Kentucky.

And along with coming away with a great story, I’ve learned more about Twitter, how to write about it and how to be better at it. 

My what-what guide to using social media

Lately I’ve really attempted to try everything I can get my fingertips on the keyboard for regarding social media.

And I’m overwhelmed.

In other words, my status update for Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr and Google+ would be, “I have so many ways 2 share my thoughts that they’re rendering me speechless. Approaching social media overload. Brain is exploding. (X_X).”

Just under 140 characters of course.

I really had this feeling when I was starting a Tumblr account the other night. I kept wondering what the heck am I going to use this for. I get that Tumblr posts are longer than tweets and shorter than Facebook updates but … still.

Not gaga for Google+

OK. I’ll bite. The siren song of a new social media fad beckons, and I can’t avoid its call.

So … I now have a Google+ account.

I signed up last week and have tried to use it more over the last couple of days.

And I respect what Google is going for. It’s like Twitter, Facebook, Skype, Foursquare and probably some other applications I haven’t yet realized all wrapped up into one.

And from a marketing and development standpoint, this seems like a solid idea: Why would anyone use five different sites when they could use just one?

Still, I have my doubts that it will reach the popularity of any of these individual sites, but I’ll save my this-upstart-will-never-make-it-in-the-wide-world-of-social-media rant for the end of this post.

Take part in study on Facebook and mourning

Stacie Jankowski, a very close friend of mine, is recruiting Facebook users to participate in a 10-minute survey about Facebook use after a friend or loved one has died.

Her blog, Buried the Lead, has some information about the survey. You can also directly get to the survey by clicking here.

The survey is part of a doctoral research project, and she especially needs men to take part, she said. Right now, the ladies far outnumber male participants.

Please take part and help out a journalist-turned-researcher!