Cool Tools

It's Remarkable How Much "Stuff" is Out There

Take a trip down the Internet yellow-brick road… the what?

Well, you start in one of the social networking sites, then follow a link that someone has put there. Once you get there, you'll find that there are more links to follow… more sites to discover, products to buy, free things to get, and on and on.

Now, not all of the things you come across are going to be meaningless, uninteresting or things you want to pass by. A lot of the information, products and services are going to draw your attention as something you'd really like to purchase or get involved with.

The unfortunate thing is that getting lost, and going in several different directions at the same time is often the result of heading down this road.

How do you make sure you don't end up lost or out of focus on where you want your business to be? Look at each piece of information or opportunity as how it relates to you and your business. Is it something that you can implement that will help you to grow your business? Or, is it something that you can use personally to grow you?

Not only do you have to determine if it is something that relates to you or your business, you also have to decide if it is something that you can and WILL implement. Even if something appears really cool, you also have to look at the probability of you actually using it.

Think objectively and choose wisely. Look through the hype to how it relates to you and what you are looking to achieve.

One way to physically "see" the relationships between information, courses, offers and the people you meet (physically or online) is to capture it all in a Dynamic Information Map. This is an uber Cool Tool that not only enables you to store and retrieve information and connections, but to actually see the relationships between it all.

To check out this totally Cool Tool and how you can use it to "see" how things relate to you and your business: Go Here!

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

Pat and Lorna Shanks deliver the "COOL" Goods and connections to "COOL" People. They provide tips, tools, education and informative sessions with knowledgeable people that enable entrepreneurs, independent professionals and small business owners to attract more clients and make more money. For more "COOL" tips, tools, knowledge and people, go to www.TheCoolestCouple.com or follow us on Twitter.

BTW - Check out the new Facebook Like Button just below. Click on it to share with your friends.

Filed Under: Cool Tools, Pat and Lorna Shanks Tagged With: Dynamic Information Map, Information, Relationships, Social Networking Sites

Getting Started with Gravatar.com (101)

By Pat & Lorna 28 Comments

This entry is part 1 of 1 in the series Gravatar Tutorials:

In this video we show you how to get started with Gravatar.com. Gravatar allows you to have your image appear beside the blog comments you leave on other people's posts.

To get a basic understanding of Gravatar.com you can review the Wikipedia.org overview of it

You can download our Gravatar.com 101 checklist HERE.

Getting Started with Gravatar.com (101) – Video Tutorial

Click below to watch a larger presentation of the video above:

Action Steps

1) Set up your Gravatar.com Account

1.1 Go to www.Gravatar.com
1.2 Click on "Sign up" => http://en.gravatar.com/site/signup
1.3 Enter your Email
1.4 Click the "Link" in the confirmation Email that you received

2) Upload Your Image

2.1 Go to www.Gravatar.com
2.2 Click on "Log in" => http://en.gravatar.com/site/login

2.2.1 Enter your Email or Username
2.2.2 Enter your Password

2.3 Click on "Add an Image" => http://en.gravatar.com/gravatars/new

Choose where you'd like to get the image from:

My computer's hard drive
An image on the Internet
A webcam attached to your computer
A previously uploaded image

3) Add an Email address

3.1 Go to www.Gravatar.com
3.2 Click on "Add an Email Address" => http://en.gravatar.com/emails/new
3.3 Confirm the Email sent from Gravatar

4) Check your Avatar

4.1 Go to => http://en.gravatar.com/site/check
4.2 Enter an Email address you wish to check

5) Additional Learning Assets
5.1 Download this Checklist => http://TheCoolestCouple.com/Gravatar101
5.2 Check out our tutorial – Gravatar (202) on The Public Profile => http://TheCoolestCouple.com/Gravatar202

To learn more about what we consider the best Tribe Syndication group, check out the Tribe Syndication Association (TSA).

=>>> If you found this post useful, please bookmark, share, comment, like and re-tweet so we can help impact more people's lives

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

BTW - Check out the new Facebook Like Button just below. Click on it to share with your friends.

Filed Under: Cool Tips, Cool Tools, Feature Top, Gravatar, Pat and Lorna Shanks, Tools

The Power of a Tribe… And So Many Connections

By Pat & Lorna 16 Comments

Tribe. The word brings to mind thoughts of a group of people working together for a common goal.

In the online world it is no different. The "goal" or purpose of a syndication tribe is to get the great content and messages of the tribe members spread a lot farther than if they did it on their own.

By having your tribe members comment on your blog, and letting their followers, friends and fans know about your content, the reach of your content grows exponentially. This is a good thing… because people want to associate with people they know, like and trust; and their purchases are based on the same criteria.

Knowing how powerful this is and because we want to help and support others, we joined the Tribe Syndication Association.

Of course, the result of the added exposure from the tribe is a lot more connections and new-found relationships. With all these new connections to people comes the challenge of how to manage them. Basically, how to ensure you keep these relationships viable… that you're connecting with these people on a regular basis, and how and where to connect with them.

Yes, you can bookmark their blog or any of their other social sites, you can put them into a contact organizational tool such as Outlook, or you could enter all their information into a spreadsheet. But keeping track of each of their websites, various social media sites and other modes of contact are difficult and not very easy to retrieve in any of these organizational tools.

But there is a way to store and organize all these contacts and all their relevant information that works the way you think, is visual, and has search features that make information retrieval a piece of cake.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Cool Tools Tagged With: Connections, Dynamic Information Map, Relationships, Syndication, Tribe

Cool Tool – Visual Thesauras

By Pat & Lorna Leave a Comment

Online dictionaries are a dime a dozen these days, but can that also be said about the online thesaurus?

Visual Thesaurus provides a little more innovative and high tech use of displaying words and it's relationships to Nouns, Adjectives, Verbs and Adverbs.

This is a one of a kind experience where you can actually visually see the different related words. For those visually minded people, you will see the words spatially.

Visual thesaurus is $20 per year. It can increase your brain power and give you a whole new outlook on your vocabulary. Great for both children and adults, the Visual Thesaurus is the best online thesaurus resource on the web.

So get rid of that outdated old Thesaurus that is taking precious shelf space (and collecting enough dust bunnies to start a farm) and opt for the best online thesaurus resource at your fingertips.

Check it out at TheCoolestCouple.com/VisualThesaurus

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

BTW - Check out the new Facebook Like Button just below. Click on it to share with your friends.

Filed Under: Cool Tools

Cool Tool – MentionMap

By Pat & Lorna Leave a Comment

Although Twitter is being touted as "the future of the Internet", it does have one major flaw… the interface displays all the tweets in a seemingly endless stream of words.

Mentionmap is designed to solve that specific problem. This tool gives you the ability to visualize your Twitter network in real-time and which people are interacting the most. This gives you amazing insight as to which topics and conversations are generating the most buzz among the people you're interested in hearing from.

This tool analyzes the people and hashtags being mentioned the most in your Twitter network. When someone mentions someone else, a line connects them. When several people are engaged in a cross-conversation, the results appear as a cluster. By hovering over the lines, it brings up detailed information about the subject. The thicker the line, the more frequent the number of cross mentions.

This is a totally Cool Tool, as it shows your networks on Twitter as a dynamic visualization… check it out!

TheCoolestCouple.com/MentionMap

About the Authors

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed.

BTW - Check out the new Facebook Like Button just below. Click on it to share with your friends.

Filed Under: Cool Tools Tagged With: Cool Tools, mentionmap, Twitter