All Things Joey
I am a guy with a blog and a youtube channel, there has to be some tutorials. I am actually surprised how many I have done. Hence the category.
This week I wrote a few posts on how to manage and share your favorite news sources with friends. Here are quick links to the entire series:
Earlier in the week, I told you how to have a much better social reading experience for you and your friends. While researching that article, I came across some next level techniques for more advanced users.
In this article, I will teach you how to use Tumblr to share information across all of your social media accounts. I will also discuss how to use your own custom URL shorten-er with all of these services.
A few things you need to do before we start:
1. Add Tumblr to your share options in Google Reader:
The first article in the series covers how to set up RSS feeds in Google Reader, and the second will tell you what to click on to add various services like Twitter and Facebook. One of the other options is Tumblr. Instead of choosing Facebook or Twitter, pick Tumblr in the options (like the picture above).
Tumblr is more robust than Twitter but still designed to make simple and short posts. It is a great services that allows customization. Here is a quick tutorial on setting up an account:
As mentioned in the earlier post, at the bottom of each article in Google Reader, there will be a share button. When you click on it, the social media options you selected will appear:
When you click on Tumblr, this screen will appear:
You can mess around with more formatting or adding extra information, or you can just click on create post. The screen will wait a few seconds and then close itself.
2. Connecting to your social media accounts:
There are two ways to do this, one simple and one more complicated (but with more metrics).
Simple Method:
If you don’t have a custom URL shorten-er and you don’t care about how many clicks and shares you are getting, you can connect your Tumblr account with Facebook and Twitter:
a. Sign into your tumblr account and go to your news feed blog. Click on “Blog Settings” on the right:
b. Then scroll down to the Facebook and Twitter sections. Click on the check-boxes and then click on the buttons to link your social media accounts and follow the screen instructions:
Your posts to Tumblr (which are fed via your RSS Reader) will now post to social media accounts.
The Complicated Method:
When you create a Tumblr blog, there is a link somewhere on the page for a RSS Feed:
The RSS feed is usually your tumblr blog url with “/rss” at the end.
Example: “http://example.tumblr.com/rss”
a. Once you have your RSS feed url, go to twitterfeed and create a new feed (top right corner). Put your RSS feed in the box:
b. If you want to track your traffic or add your own custom url shorten-er, click on advanced settings in step one:
A few notes on this step:
c. Click “Continue to Step 2”
d. On this screen you can link your Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts to Twitterfeed. As soon as you post something to Tumblr, it will automatically post that link to your social media sites. When you are done authenticating the services you want to use, click “all done”
Conclusion:
I know that was a long post, but once you get this set up, it is really easy to share information with your friends. The added benefits are that they don’t have to share any information about themselves to read your articles, you can see if your posts are actually being read, and you have a repository of all of your shared posts moving forward.
Have you noticed your friends posting news articles on Facebook recently? Have you clicked on said news article and found yourself suddenly asked to give an application access to your personal information? And have you noticed that when you do click yes, every time you read an article about Snookie’s new underwear choices it is plastered all over your facebook wall?
If you haven’t experienced this (or don’t use facebook), good for you. If you are a facebook or social media user and have been trapped in this invasion of privacy, I have a cool alternative. It takes a few steps to set up, but once you do, I honestly think it is WAY better and more functional.
A little background: Personally, I read a ton of news articles in a given week and I like to share the best with friends and followers. I don’t flood my feeds, but there may be three or four items in a given day that I think are worthy of attention. I don’t engage my friends via facebook’s social reader, instead I use a few tools that all talk to each other. Here is how to do it.
1. Gather your news via Google Reader:
I have detailed instructions on how to set up Google Reader, so read that first (and get a gmail account if you don’t have one).
You can populate your RSS Reader with just about any popular new source (including this blog). These are the articles you will share with your audience.
2. Connect Google Reader with Twitter:
a. In Google Reader, look at the upper right corner, you will see a gear icon. Click on the icon and a “Reader Settings” option will be available:
b. At the top of the next screen, there is a tab “Send To”, click on it to select different social media accounts:
c. At this point, you have a few options. If you use both Twitter and Facebook, click on just the twitter check-box. If you only use Facebook, click on that check-box and hit the return to reader link at the top.
NOTE: If you are using only facebook, you are pretty much done. If you want to make automatic posts to both twitter and facebook, keep reading.
d. In your reader, you will now see a “Send To” option at the bottom of each post:
NOTE: I added both Facebook and Twitter, but if you want to use both, you only need twitter here.
e. If you click on the twitter button, a twitter box will open with your post:
You need to do one more thing to make this all work…
3. Connect your Twitter account with your Facebook Account:
a. Go to this link to sync your two accounts: https://apps.facebook.com/twitter/
b. Click on the button that takes you to your account settings.
c. At the bottom of your twitter settings, there is a button that allows you to connect the two services. Push the button and follow the on-screen prompts:
You should be all set! Now you can share posts that you read (without any requests for information via RSS). I know there is a little bit of work up front, but once you get all of this set up, it is a much better way to read, save, and share news that is important to you.
UPDATE: During the writing of this post, I may have come up with a next level method that can allow for metrics and some other custom tweaks. Check back for that post.
( #Skype, #GoogleTalk )
I have been meaning to do a post about video conferencing for the last 2 months but school and work have gotten in the way. With the news about Microsoft buying Skype for $8.5 billion, people are talking about the service and video conferencing in general, so I thought it would be a good time to do a tutorial.
I tried Skype a few years ago and didn’t like it. I was not into the software and I always had problems with the video; but I will accept that things have probably changed a great deal over the last three years (and I suspect Microsoft will add many new features including Xbox functionality). Video conferencing never held much appeal to me until recently: I have a few friends who don’t live close and we video conference a few times a month (or we will let the cameras run while we are watching the same movies so we can see each others reactions).
Since I don’t use Skype, the service I have been using is Google Talk. Besides a small plugin, you don’t have to install any software and works on almost any computer. Additionally, if you have a gmail account, there is no need for additional logins. While this is a really simple set up, I will still walk you through it.
Before we get started, you obviously need a gmail account, if you don’t have one, go sign up and come back.
1. In order to video conference, you need a camera. Most laptops have built in cameras, but if you don’t have one, logitech seems to be the go-to brand for all things web-conferencing. I am currently using the C510
2. Once your camera is sorted out, you need to download the Google Talk Video Chat Plug-In. Click on the “Install Video Chat Plugin” button. Follow the directions based on your operating system (should only take a minute).
3. Once the plugin is loaded, go to gmail and log in. On the left side of the screen you will see the chat section. If you don’t have friends in your chat list, you can invite them by putting in their gmail address (in the text box shown below). If you do have friends in the chat list, look for a video camera icon next to their name – that means they have a computer that can video conference.
4. Click on the person’s name and a new window will pop up (usually in the bottom right corner of gmail). If the person is available for video chat, a button with a video camera will appear in the upper left corner, click on it.
5. You can now video chat:
Skype’s purchase is going to bring attention and improvements to all of the services—this is good news to consumers. I hope this tutorial was helpful and you find excellent ways to video conference. Try to stay off of Chat Roulette!
For those technically inclined, this may seem a little rudimentary, but I cannot tell you how many times I tell people “I found this article in my RSS reader and I thought you would like it” and I get a blank stare back. My motivation for this article comes from Facebook’s ever increasing privacy violations – I am prepping to get away from the service and I plan on taking everyone with me.
Personally – I don’t need Facebook. I have a website where I can publish whatever I want and control how it is viewed. I know most people don’t want to run their own websites and are perfectly content with Twitter or Facebook, but I want to make sure you can keep in touch with… me!
My own ego aside, RSS feeds are a fantastic way to read news, keep tabs on your favorite musicians, and much more. Another great feature is you can mark them as saved and go back later or even share them with friends in a variety of ways.
For this tutorial, we are going to use Google Reader. Yes, I know Google does some semi-creepy stuff with your data, but at least they don’t force you into sharing things you don’t want to (first week of Buzz aside).
INSTRUCTIONS
Update: Google retired their Reader function several years ago, I currently use Feedly as my RSS reader of choice, most of the other instructions apply.
1. You need a Google account. If you don’t have one, go to Gmail.com and sign up for a new account. If you have a Gmail account, skip to step two.
2. (Updated) Once you have signed up, go to Feedly. You will be see a welcome screen…
Note: You can use your Google account to sign in with Feedly (or you can create a separate login)
3. In the top left side of the screen, you will see a button that says “Add a subscription”. Click on that button…
4. Type your favorite blog or website and then click the add button (SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT!)
5. You will see that once you hit add, the blog or website will be added to your “Subscriptions” section
As you read through the posts, the RSS reader will mark that selection as read and the number of unread items highlighted in bold will decline.
6. By default, Google Reader shows all items in your RSS feed all the time. You can change that setting in the upper area of the article window. By clicking on “Show: New Items” the reader will only display new posts. This can be changed back and forth at any time.
7. At the bottom of each article, there is a control panel that will allow you to star, share, email, and do other things with the post. You can look at your starred items in the left side control panel, there is a “Starred Items” Folder (the same goes for shared items)
8. If you look at the left side control panel, you will see “People that you follow”. Click on “Search for some people”. This will take you to a screen where you can put in your friends Gmail addresses and be able to easily see what they are sharing and visa-versa.
That takes us through the basics of setting up RSS feeds. Have fun finding sites to add to your reader.
Before I go – one last hint. Several websites like LifeHacker and even the New York Times have different RSS feeds formatted in different ways. Some sites only give you the headline of the article, other sites give you the full article. Most sites offer both, but you will have to find the link to the full feed. Don’t get frustrated, you should see an RSS feed icon that looks like this:
That should give you the link to the properly formatted RSS feed. But give it a try, you will get the hang of it very quickly.
Last week one of my close friends was asked to interview for a new position at his current employer. Since he knew that I am often asked by my company to run interviews, he wanted to bounce ideas past me. This request turned into a full on mock interview. My friend told me that my advice helped and I wanted to document (some of) it for my readers.
[Behavioral Questions]
I am often asked to run the behavioral interviews; while I follow the rules of the interview process (scoring, feedback, etc), I always rely on my intuition and instinct when recommending a candidate. For me to make a decision, I need to get to know them as well as I can in the 30-60 minutes I am allotted (not just how well they answer canned questions). I level set with the candidates and tell them general things I am NOT looking to hear. I am often asked to interview college hires and they typically use the group project example for overcoming conflict (“someone in our group didn’t do the work and I had to tell my professor/confront the person”). I politely let them know that almost every candidate will use it and they won’t stand out; I then hint at other areas they might use (since they don’t have much experience).
I notice that most people have issues with conflict questions: that is completely understandable due to the corporate world’s focus on teamwork. Most people will avoid conflict at work at all costs, so these questions are difficult to answer. My suggestion is to make up a villain in your head. Don’t pull this person out of thin air, combine a few difficult co-workers and maybe add a dash of an estranged relative or friend to give you something to work with. Think about how you dealt with several uncomfortable situations and turn them into one person. Think about this for a few days before the interview.
The point of any behavioral interview is to understand your thought process. Many of the questions DON’T have a happy ending, the questions just want to see how you can handle a no-win situation. There is no shame is calling out that you can’t satisfy the question as long as you articulate why. Always mention the added impact of attempting futile endeavors (other efforts suffer, stress on resources, etc) – it shows you know when to cut your losses.
General Thoughts:
[Job-Specific Questions]
This section is obviously harder to give advice for since specific details are needed. One of the key things I can’t stress enough for both your resume and interview is to focus on delivery. Have statistics on processes fixed (example: “I reduced customer complains by 35% by doing the following…”), money saved, people mentored… anything that shows you have been keeping track of your own personal job performance (if you are not doing that now – DO IT). When preparing for the interview, think about all the problems you have dealt with or continually face at your current or most recent job – how do you deal with them? Mistakes and problems are how people learn, use that education as the backbone for your discussion – the people you are interviewing with probably have the same problems (any maybe you got to the solution sooner).
For skill gaps, have talking points that discuss how fast you came to speed on stretch assignment at your other jobs. This is not a sure-fire technique because some things are hard requirements, but it’s better than nothing.
[Conclusion]
Keep the first date idea in your head: nobody wants to date someone who is angry about an old flame (or job), egotistical, incompetent, too shy/introverted, or just plan old weird. If you think you are lacking in a certain area, PRACTICE! Get in front of the mirror to work on your delivery and eye contract. Find behavioral questions on the internet and practice answering them (I like to type it all out and keep a database of answers). I love the interview process; if I am the one being asked the questions… being able to prove I am the best person for the job and finding that “Ah-ha” moment in the interviewer’s eyes when they agree is awesome. On the other side, finding a great candidate and helping someone move on with their career is extremely gratifying.
I know it’s hard out there and you might not be doing something you enjoy, but keep working at it by making the steps you need to be where you want. Good luck getting the job you want.