7 Webby Things I Have a Crush On

Chad Norman — Mon, 09 Mar 2009 14:31:00 GMT

If you're a web geek like me, you probably spend every day getting inundated with new tools, services, products, processes, posts, feeds, people, etc - it's mind bending! Finding a useful tool in all that noise sometimes comes down to luck - some weeks nothing will stick, while other weeks it's like having breakthrough after breakthrough. Here are a few helpful webby things that have crossed my screen over the last couple weeks.

BackTweets.com
If your organization is using Twitter to measure engagement, two of the main components worth tracking are retweeting and incoming links to your website. With all the Twitter-friendly URLs being used (tinyurl.com, SnipURL.com, is.gd, etc), search.twitter.com does a poor job of finding people linking to your site. BackTweets solves that by digging into all those short URLs, and returning results showing exactly who is linking to your website. Very cool! www.backtweets.com

Blackbaud iPhone Browser Simulator
A couple weeks ago, Blackbaud CTO Shaun Sullivan released iBBDemo - a demo and test platform for iPhone web content that runs from within Windows. Initially developed to demo iPhone content during presentations, this app is a great tool for any developer working on the platform. Check out Blackbaud Labs for a free download.

The Social Media Elevator Pitch
Whether you're in the nonprofit or for profit world, selling your social media strategy to your internal stakeholders can be a common source of pain. Beth Kanter wrote a great blog post featuring Wendy Harman, the "professional listener" for The American Red Cross, discussing her social media elevator pitch. Social media is still very new, and many executives want to learn why it's important, but need the message to be clear and concise. Check out the post for some great ideas you can use to get your pitch ready.

monitter.com
I'm a huge fan of the real-time social web, and so you can imagine my excitement when a friend turned me onto monitter.com (Thanks, Lindsey!). Monitter is a Twitter aggregator that displays keyword-based tweets in a real-time stream. www.monitter.com

Gmail fixes attachment annoyance
Oh my, some times it's the simple things. Gmail will finally allow you to select and add multiple attachments at one time. Oh yes, that's right. This is one of those features that was painfully missing, and it should make anyone's Gmailing a little more efficient.

N2Y4 Mobile Challenge
Mobile technology is becoming a common partner to social action, and organizations like NetSquared are doing amazing work to see that innovation thrives. The N2Y4 Mobile Challenge brings together mobile tech junkies and social activists for collaboration and competition. And with a target audience of 2.2 billion, a little innovation can go a long way...

Change the Web Challenge
The work Social Actions is doing is changing the way the world acts. The Change the Web Challenge reaches out to the development community to create innovative tools that help people share opportunities with those ready to act. Check out the stuff that's already running on the Social Actions API. If you're interested in the $10,000 prize, you've got until April 3rd to submit your entry.

Chad Norman's Webby Things : Gmail

7 Webby Things I Have a Crush On