I wanted to talk for a moment about something that’s been keeping me sane over the last few years, especially in high-stress times. But first of all, I’d like to tell you a tale to illustrate how much of a muppet I am.

I had the fantastic experience of travelling to Seattle a few months back with my partner in crime Jackie. We got to see PAX (I’m a huge Penny Arcade nerd) and also took a trip up to Vancouver for a couple of days, taking Amtrak there and back.

Because you’re crossing a border between two countries (or, if you prefer, between high fructose corn syrup and maple syrup) you need to present your passport. I kept mine in the webbed pocket of the seat in front of me.

(see if you can see where this is headed)

Being the genius I am, only once we got back to the hotel and Jackie joked about how terrible it would be to forget our passports did I realise that I had no memory of taking my passport out of that webbed pocket. We were flying out the next day, and I did not want to spend my last day in Seattle on the phone to airlines and embassies in abject panic.

There’s this maxim in Hagakure (my personal bible) that goes a little somethin’ like this:

Ikuno Oribe said, “If a retainer will just think about what he is to do for the day at hand, he will be able to do anything. If it is a single day’s work, one should be able to put up with it. Tomorrow, too, is but a single day”

…and it’s a great, and very sensible principle. If you focus on the next thing that needs to get done, rather than fretting about the entire picture, it all looks a lot more achievable. I also like to think of it as the Mal Rule, thanks to the awesome Firefly character. Most particularly from a quote from the series pilot:

“There’s obstacles in our path, and we’re gonna deal with them. One by one.”

(seriously though – the character Mal is written with a great leadership style that ignores what’s not critical at the time)

So that’s exactly what I did when presented with the passport problem, and what I generally tend to do when it’s all Getting A Bit Much. A switch flips in my head, and I go into What’s Next? mode.

What’s Next?
Get in a cab and get back to the train station as quick as you can.
What’s Next?
The train station looks closed for the night. Find someone you can talk to.
What’s Next?
Explain the situation, and see if you can get your passport, and what’s happened to the train you were on.
What’s Next?
Can’t get the passport tonight, so find out when you can come back in the morning and when the train is leaving.
What’s Next?
Get sleep.
What’s Next?
Get to the train station and find the lost property manager.
What’s Next?
The passport hasn’t been turned in, so ask if he can look on the train for you.
What’s Next?
He can’t find it, so plead with him until he lets you look on the train yourself.
What’s Next?
Take an early morning walk home, passport in pocket, feeling extremely lucky and grateful for the kindness of strangers.

I can honestly say that during that process it was only when the next viable step started to look unclear or impossible that panic started to creep in at the edges. Jackie commented when I got back from the station that night without my passport that I seemed impossibly relaxed given the situation. But getting stressed or panicked to the point of not being able to sleep wouldn’t have helped, so I didn’t.

I’m finding that this is helping hugely at the moment in balancing the day job, voice work, and coming over here as often as I can. Particularly when my energy levels start to wane from late nights – just focusing on the next thing that needs to be sorted is a tremendous help in not feeling overwhelmed. There’s an important caveat here though: you do need to make sure that you zoom out when you can to look at the bigger picture, as well.

So how did I get to this point? Well, while I’ve been aware of the maxim for a long time, I think personally I developed it as a coping mechanism. I’ve had some rough times over the last five years involving some family issues and personal grief. And before that, a long stretch of high stress from the day job. Without these external pressures, I doubt I would have adapted.

But I find it definitely does help to focus on that question – What’s Next? – as soon as you realise you’re in a problem situation. And then, whenever your your brain wants to wander off to “What if?” scenarios, gently direct it instead toward problem solving – broadening your options for dealing with the situation. If you’ve got a Plan A & B, try thinking about alternatives for what happens if Plan B falls through.

While all of this makes my life sound a lot more intense than it really is, it’s helped me deal with two serious car accidents, violent confrontations, civil and criminal legal proceedings (starting them, not defending), and let’s not forget, nearly losing my passport in Seattle.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Think of a situation you’ve been in recently where, because of the stakes involved, you got stressed or panicked. Jot down the first three next steps that come to mind you could have used to start dealing with the situation.

Pick the one of those three steps you’d most likely go with, and then think of three possible next steps you’d take once that was done.

Once you’ve done that, you’ve thought through three initial possible plans, and then next steps past those initial plans. Building those those decision trees in your head is (at least in my experience) a big part of fending off the panic that can creep in and shut your brain down.

photo credit: jepoirrier

New readers probably don’t know about Kevin: the smart and super-techy dude who started this shiny website with me just under a year ago. Unfortunately, his Day Job promptly ate him and he’s not been around too much. But magic! here he is.

photo credit: LoopZilla

I’m finally starting to get some traction behind this whole voice work thing, which is a big part of what’s been keeping me away from here of late. The progress on voice work, and a combination of five weeks leave from work has got me looking backwards. The great thing about five weeks leave is that it’s long enough to reinvent yourself – to completely forget the taste and texture of your previous life unless you really dig for it. So it’s got me all retrospective.

One of the things I’ve been thinking about at the moment was what worked to get to make the shift into Serious Gear. One of the big things was plonking down money to get advice and coaching. I think that commitment was a signifier to my brain that I really wanted to make progress. But I don’t want to talk about that right now (although I could talk for hours about how awesome Alexia is) What I want to talk about right now is how doing less helped me do more.

I’m a relatively smart guy. In this august assemblage, I’m very far from the smartest guy in the room, but I punch my weight when I remember to think first and talk second. But here’s the funny thing – smart doesn’t get you anywhere. Catherine’s recent post detailing the mountains she has conquered reminded me of this.

Here’s a quick mental exercise: close your eyes and think of the smartest person you know. The one with the razor-sharp, spring-quick intellect and lateral thinking ability. I’m willing to bet that they’re more like Ethan Hawke in Reality Bites than Ben Stiller – charming, engaging, but quite possibly working a job that drives them nuts, and maybe just a leeetle bit cynical. Personally, I knew someone in High School who would have likely had a genius level intellect if tested, but was completely directionless and content to spend his life playing various flavours of Let’s Pretend.

Smart by itself is neither rare nor helpful. It’s like a bundle of weapons-grade plutonium, lying in the corner. It has the dormant potential to make you a mushroom-cloud-of-awesome-laying-motherfucker, but needs some sophisticated mechanisms surrounding it. The personal trick my brain played was letting me be distracted by everything. Running like a kid on red cordial between twenty different things was great, because I could appreciate the surface level of so many different areas, without ever having to roll up my sleeves and develop skills in any particular one.

Now, my disclaimer is that I’ve never actually read Zen Habits, Leo Babauta’s blog. That may make me sound like an incredible douche right now. But when I read an article about the blog, and the core concept of making significant progress by focusing on a limited set of changes, I had a Moment of Revelation. The idea that that building momentum and success in any one area was a matter of focusing in that one area unfolded before me, and I got it. Or I at least got enough of what Zen Habits was talking about to be of tremendous help to me.

Now, there’s a lot of stuff I want to do with life. But I’ve realised that to make any of those things happen, they need serious focus. So I take things on one at a time, no matter how tempting and fun they seem. And the world is a candy store of Awesome Things To Know.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it:

Sit down and build a list of the projects that you spend time on currently. Pick the one thing you really want to get off the ground, and then start looking at what you can triage for a few months or even until a few years down the track. Be brutal.

If you’d like a little help, Catherine’s offering some great deals on consulting at the moment, and you’d definitely be helping her make the Blogworld trip more manageable.

Bonus Cookie: Whatever it is you’re passionate about, the Open Courseware Consortium is bound to have some great resources. High quality, freely available available to help you learn more about pretty much anything.

What’s your One True Project? Tell us in the comments!

photo credit: Glenn Batuyong

The Problem: Twitter Rations

I loves me some Twitter, I do. But herein lies a problem: I’m finding that having Twitter open while grinding away at the day job isn’t really viable. Y’all are just too distracting. The conversation is bad enough, but then there’s the fascinating links you fine people send on, that inevitable see me skimming articles then realising I’ve just lost fifteen minutes.

Goddamn you all.

There’s a second level to this, as well. As I get further into voice work, it’s important for me to be visible and responsive on Twitter, rather than just throwing tweets into the ether. This puts me into a space I imagine that a number of you are in already, and I know Catherine’s been in in the past. You’ve got the day job, which needs to be looked after, because it pays the bills. And then you’ve got the work you love, and chances are there’s a lot of conversation around that on Twitter.

While there are points in the day where I catch up with Twitter via the deliciousness of Tweetdeck, when I’m on Twitter Rations the problem boils down to this for me:

I want to be able to respond to conversations with me. I don’t want to be That Guy on Twitter who acts like a talking alarm clock.That’s my problem in a nutshell.

Enter The Tweetymail

In short, Tweetymail rocks. It’s made managing Twitter while on Twitter Rations so much easier, by pushing all of your Twitter interactions to your email client. You register one or more email addresses with your Tweetymail account, and then you receive alerts of new Twitter activity via email. New follows, direct messages, mentions, and keyword searches all come straight to your email client.

Here’s a shortlist of the features I’ve found super-valuable:

Email notification when someone mentions you

Every time you’re mentioned on Twitter, you get an email with the full text of the tweet, and handy links to reply or retweet that tweet, or forward it as an email. If you’ve been popular and there’s been several mentions since Tweetymail last checked, you’ll get several tweets together. Here’s an example email:

A mentions email inside Gmail

Far and away, this is the biggest benefit to me. You set it up in Tweetymail via a ‘mentions alert’, and as long as I’m reading email regularly, when my name is invoked I will appear like a swarthy ifrit of legend and reply.

Responding to a tweet via email

No matter whether you’re getting a tweet emailed because you’ve been mentioned, or because you’ve set up a search for certain keywords (which Tweetymail supports very easily) every tweet that comes in via email. Because of those three links in every emailed tweet, no matter whether you’re getting it via a mentions alert, or via a search for certain keywords.

Click the relevant link, and you get a new email message opened. In Gmail, it looks kinda like this:

Replying to a tweet

That makes any action in Twitter possible with two clicks in your email client, which isn’t bad at all.

Tweeting via email

Sending a new tweet is even easier than replying to a tweet via email. It’s done by sending an email to tweet@tweetymail.com from one of your registered addresses.

Those are the core features that sold me on Tweetymail. Now, I’m a a believer (I couldn’t leave her / if I tried) The public beta is over, but you can try the full features of Tweetymail free for a month, and subscription is pretty cheap at $2.99 US per month for full access. Anil Chawla, the developer (@anilchawla on Twitter) is super-responsive, and started a conversation with me on Twitter to clarify my confusion around the limits set in the subscription models after I mentioned Tweetymail. (I’m glad he did, too, or I wouldn’t have signed up)

If your curiosity is peaked, I won’t take poorly if you go check out Tweetymail now. I’ll be here when you get back.

All of this is just scratching the surface of Tweetymail. There’s a host of other features available as well that make managing Twitter easier, including scheduling (which admittedly I don’t have a use for yet myself) Here’s a few more useful features, to my mind. You can also check out the full user guide for more info.

Getting search results via email

Just like the emails you get when you’re mentioned, you can also get results for specific searches, batched up with 20-50 results per email. (you specify how many updates you want between those boundaries) This is a great way to keep a record over time of something you’re interested in, whether it’s a hashtag game, an event hashtag, or just a particular term. (I’ve got a regular search on ‘voice over’ running myself)

Making blocking easier

One thing I’m lousy with is blocking dodgy users – spambots, SEO MARKETING GURUS, or cheap shills for porn websites. One of the great things that Tweety mail does is enhance the regular emails you get for new followers or direct messages by replacing the contact email address you give Twitter with an account-specific email address that Tweetymail gives you. Here’s an example of a new follower notification:

gilydjk is absolutely a Real Human (click for larger image)

It gives you great context on the kind of user who is following you, with their most recent tweets. It also gives you easy one-click emails to send to follow the new user, or more importantly, block them. Guess which one I did with dear gilydjk? It’s nothing you couldn’t do yourself, but it’s just that little bit easier.

Retrying failed tweets

This is one area where the usability really shines. If you send a tweet that’s too long, rather than just getting a ‘tweet failed’ response, you get an email that looks like this:

Out by one lousy character! (click for larger)

It tells you how long your tweet actually was, and gives you an easy link to create a new email containing the old text, so you can trim it down quickly. Now, admittedly you’d get that correct out of the gate with a client like Twhirl or Tweetdeck, but it’s well-thought out functionality for an email cient that makes things just that little bit easier.

So that’s what I’m finding great about Tweetymail so far. Let me know if you’ve got any questions in the comments about the product. Also, I’d love to hear how you’re making managing Twitter easier yourself! Share your most august wisdom in the comments.

As part of the website heresy month, I wanted to talk about a heresy that’s related to the workplace, and to how you help your customers. It’s the principle that you should never make the job you do obsolete. I suspect (and hope) I’m not alone in thinking that making yourself obsolete – working yourself out of a job – is in fact the awesomest thing you can do.

I’ve done work at companies where they’ve had That Guy, ossified into his corner cubicle like one of the crew on The Flying Dutchman, secure in the knowledge that he’ll continue to do the same job for the next twenty years, just the same as he’s been doing that same job for the last twenty years. The Catholics called that Purgatory. If you can avoid it, no one wants to solve the same problem, work at the same task, over and over again for eternity.

If you were a personal trainer, having clients who’d already started to go through a program like Hundred Pushups after an initial consult, and had started to get jazzed by seeing results would have to be a win. Then you could take their blossoming dedication to routine and basic fitness and start molding them into Roman Gladiators.

There’s only one of you, so there’s only so much you can do with your time. Working out ways to deal with these entry-level, starting problems lets you deal with the more interesting problems that you’d move on to after that, as a starting point. It lets you and your customers get to The Next Level.

You? You’re not worried about being obsolete because you’re nimble on your feet, and able to reinvent yourself. Making your old job obsolete is only an issue if you can’t see what the next level is for what you’re doing currently. Hell, the next step might even be doing something different that still helps clients in the same industry. Built To Last is a great book that touches on this area. It talks about examples of companies that have been around for over a hundred years, and how they’ve managed that. And the interesting thing is that some of them have moved into very different industries, or reinventing themselves to adapt to changing markets. IBM is a great example – they started out making glorified calculators.

From experience across IT consulting and commercial voice work, the principle holds true. There’s a core set of values and abilities that can be applied for success across a number of fields.

Don’t do it because you want to stay ahead of the curve, or because Someone Else Will Do It If We Don’t. Do it because it increases the overall Awesomness Quotient.

Your five-minute mission, should you choose to accept it…

Look at the current services you offer to customers, and see if there’s something that can be automated, or made unnecessary by educating your clients. (plumber with too many great clients and too little time? what about putting together a basic leaflet on how to change tap washers?)

The second step is thinking about what you could do for clients with the time you’ve just saved. What’s the Next Level?

Do you have a job you could remove yourself from? Tell us in the comments!

Postscript

Some of you might not be aware of who I am, but I’m the sharply-dressed guy on the left of the banner. Due to a number of factors (mostly work) I haven’t been around as much as you all deserve, so I’m doing the right thing by you all and the site and moving to more of an assisting role. There’s no ugly drama behind this – Catherine and I remain fast friends, and I’m quietly hoping that this shift actually sees me around more in the months to come, not less.

A brief interruption to the Website Heresies…

So, I was having a conversation with Catherine on the weekend about my Bold Plans to put together a new product for Be Awesome Online, with a tech focus. In the midst of discussing three possible plans, Catherine dropped the following question, leaden with purpose.

“Have you asked people what they want?”

That right there is the magic of Catherine, folks. Pointing out the obvious, the necessary, the next step. While your brain (mine, at least) is confecting grand sugar-spun tapestries, she reminds you of the absolutely necessary thing that part of you already knew, but had forgotten. Despite the fact that I’m reading The Four Steps To the Epiphany at the moment (like all the cool kids), I’d completely forgotten to validate the direction I was thinking to boldly start charging in.

So.

The purpose of this post is to correct that oversight. I will pledge my undying love and loyalty forever, if you could drop a comment responding to this post. Let us know where your technical pain is currently. Are there particular questions you’d like answered, or dim areas you’d like illuminated? If the Tech Fairy could wave a wand and fix something for you, what would it be?

I’d originally intended this post to accompany a survey. But after doing some thinking, I suspect the questions I’d put together would still be too far inside the mental box that’s in my head. Let me know your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll use that as my sextant to help you set sail for Tech-Pain-Free Awesome.

photo credit: donakeannadoanek3n4an

Here’s the second half of some tips on personality traits to keep a look out for with techies that you’re considering either hiring or working with over time. You can find the first half here.

It is bad to carry even a good thing too far.
Even concerning things such as Buddhism, Buddhist sermons,
and moral lessons, talking too much will bring harm.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Technical Evangelism: Fixation On One Technology

Technical evangelism is where your techie believes adamantly that the one particular technology they use is the One True Path, and that everything else is utter crap.

For smaller jobs, or a situation where what you need is their pet technology, you might never have a problem with technical evangelism. But if you need to change technologies because you’re changing hosting providers for example (I had the ideal host a few years ago, that would often answer emails at 3 in the morning. They were perfect right up until the point where they disappeared) then your techie might just be the kind of person to turn their nose up at the whole situation, and leave you high and dry. The company I work for has had this happen with our website, even though we’re an IT company. So it can happen to tech-savvy people too.

The other problem, and here’s where I possibly descend into nitpicking, is that it indicates a set of blinkers on how they view the world. There’s this great scene in Ronin where Sean Bean’s character, inexperienced and uncomfortable, tries to show his skill by asking Robert De Niro what kind of gun he prefers, and dissecting the plusses and minuses of different models. And Robert De Niro’s character says (paraphrasing slightly):

“It’s a tool. I take it out of the toolbox. I use it. I put it back”

Checkmate.

There are admittedly some really switched on techies out there who suffer from Technical Evangelism. But unless you’re solving really complex problems, it’s really a matter of choices between solutions that will do the job for you. And almost always, technical evanglists, capable or not, lose sight of the fact that they’re doing work to solve someone’s problem.

What To Do: if your techie has a preference for a particular technology, ask them why. What you’re looking for here is a reasoned explanation or even just a noncommittal shrug of “It’s what I’m used to using”. What you don’t want to here is a diatribe starting with “Because everything else is garbage” or “ARE YOU KIDDING?!?!”

For a samurai, a simple word is important no matter where he may be. By just one
single word martial valor can be made apparent. In peaceful times words show
one’s bravery. In troubled times, too, one knows that by a single word his strength
or cowardice can be seen. This single word is the flower of one’s heart.
It is not something said simply with one’s mouth.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Communication Skills

As a consultant I’m slightly biased here, but communication skills are key. They have nothing to do with technical ability, and in larger organisations there are people with great technical skills who can flourish because they’re kept far, far away from customers. Labouring in dank and secret catacombs, they can produce works of staggering intricacy that us mere mortals cannot fully comprehend.

But that’s no use to you. You need someone who can function in their world of secret handshakes and arcane acronyms, and act as an interpreter to you as well.

It would be unrealistic and unfair to expect your techie to have to explain every decision and relay every choice through you – after all, their primary function is to get a job done. But either you take everything your techie tells you on faith, or there are going to be times where you’re going to need to communicate.

What To Do: If you’re interviewing, pick a relevant skill or technology that’s not terribly clear to you from your techie’s resume, and ask them to explain it. If the initial explanation doesn’t make much sense, ask them to explain it.

Alternatively, if you’re already working with a techie you’ve selected, pick a technical decision at a point where time is not critical, and ask them to explain the reason behind it.

Unlike when we talked about arrogance, what’s important here is not so much the attitude towards explaining (although that’s still important in general) but the ability of your techie to shift down in gears mentally to a slower pace of thought, and explain things in smaller, clearer chunks of information.

There it is, in four key points all up – the key traits I’ve observed over the years that can make it difficult to deal with techies. Thanks for reading!

Have you run into any traits dealing with people outside your profession that have made them problematic to work with? Share your tales of woe (particularly how you’ve worked through those situations) in the comments!

photo credit: donakeannadoanek3n4an

The following is the fruits of seven years or so of having been involved in interviewing and hiring techies, and over ten years of working amongst my own kind and observing. And to clarify, by techies I mean people with specialised computer skills, whether it’s administering servers, developing code for your website, or possibly even doing the visual design and layout for your site. Now, you might find that the majority of jobs you need a techie for are short, clearly defined pieces of work that are well-specified. In which case, the personality and peccadilloes of the techie is less important than their resume or previous work.

All the same, the info here might be useful in determining whether to use someone again and again. So here’s some traits to keep an eye out for, and some possible ways to check for them.

Also, I’ve thrown in some quotes from Hagakure, my favourite book. It’s relevant in a way, given that the book is primarily about the relationship between a retainer and their lord (albeit in feudal Japan) Because fundamentally techies are retainers – well-trained retainers, but retainers all the same. We’re here to serve some fundamental need that is larger than just our work. At any rate, here’s hoping you find the quotes interesting.

Once there was a certain man who was very clever, but it was his character
to always see the negative points of his jobs. In such a way, one will be useless.
If one does not get it into his head from the very beginning that the world is full
of unseemly situations, for the most part his demeanor will be poor and he will not
be believed by others. And if one is not believed by others, no matter how good a
person he may be, he will not have the essence of a good person. This can also
be considered as a blemish.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Arrogance: What’s Their Attitude to Mere Mortals?

If I had a nickel for every time someone I’d worked with on a contract had said “They just don’t get it, man” then… I’d have a very heavy pile of nickels that wouldn’t do me much good in Australia. But it would still be a potent visual reminder that this sure happens a LOT.

A common byproduct of such specialised knowledge, and a genuine love for the field that they work in, which are both laudable traits on their own, is the unfortunate tendency to look down their nose at people who don’t understand and appreciate the inner workings of their field themselves. Which is a shame when it happens.

What To Do: When talking with your potential techie, pick a particular term or technology you’re unfamiliar with, and profess your ignorance. Ask the techie to explain further, and see what happens. Hopefully, they’ll accommodate your request happily, rather than sighing in exasperation. The key thing you’re looking for here is how they react to a lack of understanding from you – what happens to how they interact with you.
When something is said to you by the master, whether it is for your good or bad
fortune, to withdraw in silence shows perplexity. You should have some appropriate
response. It is important to have resolution beforehand.
Moreover, if at the time that you are asked to perform some function you have deep
happiness or great pride, it will show exactly as that on your face. This has been
seen in many people and is rather unbecoming. But another type of person knows his
own defects and thinks, “I’m a clumsy person but I’ve been asked to do this thing
anyway. Now how am I going to go about it? I can see that this is going to be much
trouble and cause for concern.” Though these words are never said, they will appear
on the surface. This shows modesty.
Yamamoto Tsunetomo

Over-promising: Do They Know How To Say No?

On the other side of the fence, one character trait that a lot of techies seem to have is an almost pathological need to please. We like to solve difficult problems for people, and make them happy.

One of the problems that can come with this is a tendency to over-promise – to be rather optimistic about underlying challenges and deadlines, and not want to say no. To be fair as well, deadlines for technical tasks can also end up being unrealistic because of unexpected complexity – kind of like that follow-up phone call from the mechanic where they explain that things are actually going to cost a LOT more, and you really should think about canceling that trip around Europe by the way. Or paying for food for the next month.

Ideally, you want your techie to have the battle scars that give them the instincts to push back on unrealistic deadlines and say no. Because you can’t plan with deadlines that won’t be met. Whatever crucial part of your site they’re putting together for you won’t be ready in time for key tasks, and everything will fall apart.

What To Do: When discussing estimates for a particular task, see what happens if you suggest compressing the time taken by 30%. This is a guesstimate figure because it’s small enough to seem reasonable, but still a big enough chunk of time that it’s unlikely to not have an effect on the work. Ideally, your techie should gently but firmly explain that the task will take a fixed amount of time. Or, they might be willing to compress timelines a little in exchange for other considerations (eg. more money for more stress, or extending other deadlines)

What you don’t want to see is them nodding and saying ‘sure’ with a daredevil adrenaline-junkie glint in their eye, or sighing, slumping in resignation and agreeing to the new timeframe. If you’re given timeframes that match with reality, you can plan around that even if they’re longer than you’d really like.

What you can’t plan around is a constant state of “Just a few more days”.

(Note: tread lightly with this one, as pushing too hard on timelines will give the impression that you either don’t understand the reality of the situation, or you’re unreasonable)

I’ll be back Monday with Part Two. In the meantime, let me know what you think.

Tips on managing troublesome techies, or books/articles you’ve read that have given you great advice? Hit us up in the comments!

Want a few extra tips on being a good Twitter citizen? (note, I refuse to say Twitizen) and getting more out of Twitter? Here’s some quick tips to mull over while you’re waiting for the next batch of Five Minute Missions.

How to leave a trail when replying

Now, you might have picked up this good habit automatically, but it was one I learned through experience myself (and having the habit pointed out indirectly) so I thought it worth a mention.

You can just reply to someone’s tweet by typing their name, and then your reply. What that gets you is a tweet that looks like this:

At the time you send out that tweet, it will make sense to anyone following you and the person you’re replying to. (if someone you’re following sends a reply to someone you’re not following, you won’t see it. So your followers will only see a reply you make to someone they’re following as well. More on this in a second)

If you use the reply link that appears on the webpage, or the appropriate mechanism in your Twitter client, what you get is a tweet that looks like this:

Note the very sexy ‘in reply to’ link under the tweet. This lets readers click the link, and go back to the original tweet being replied to. Super-useful and considerate to your readers. Particularly when you can’t find the spare characters to give some sort of context on what you’re replying to.

How to let everyone see a reply to someone they’re not following

So, if someone is following you on Twitter, they won’t normally see replies you send to people they’re not following. If you’re replying as part of a conversation you want to draw attention to – one you think your followers might be interested in, you can broadcast it by putting characters directly before or after the name of the person you’re replying to. For example:

.@neilhimself Congratulations on the engagement!

Note the ‘.’ right before the Twitter name. That way, your message can reach the five people not following Neil Gaiman on Twitter, and apprise them of Neil’s recently having gotten hitched. All in one handy tweet.

Hashtags

Hashtags are a great way on Twitter of connecting with people talking about the same thing. In addition to whatever you’re tweeting, add a topic prefixed with a ‘#’. Some examples:

#lrnchat – Jane Bozarth, an online learning maven, uses this hashtag each week to run a chat over Twitter about online learning. It’s a deluge of tweets, but really interesting reading.

#dailyawesome – our very own @CatherineCaine uses this to share the little things she finds to rejoice in every day. (she also encourages you to do the same!)

#lofnotc – started by @amandapalmer. It stands for Losers Of Friday Night On Their Computers – it’s a loose party of people hanging out at home, eschewing the outside world and all it has to offer. If you find yourself at home on a Friday night, it’s a good one to use to find random people.

Hashtags also get used a lot in viral games. Because of the wide audience that some tweets get, these games can spread really quickly through Twitter – just like any other kind of information. One of my favourite examples of this (although it’s hard to find search results for it now) is #firstdraftmovielines, where you’d tweet an iconic film line, only more clumsily worded.

Find these extra tips useful? Let us know in the comments.

Also, we’d love to hear your extra strength Twitter kung fu!

Want a stress-free way to upgrade to the latest version of WordPress? WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a wordpress plugin that deals with the hassles and finicky steps involved in upgrading from an older version of WordPress to the latest and greatest.

The video is on the longish side – 20 minutes, broken down into three videos. There’s a bit more to do here than there was with Akismet though. The first part is below, and after that, you can check out part two and part three.

A few quick notes:

When I talk about programs to deal with zip files, I mention Winzip (pretty much the standard solution), WinRAR, and 7-Zip. Except, to earn my Doofus Point for the day, I called 7-Zip 7-Up. Refreshing!

I apologise for the Screentoaster watermark at the bottom right of the video – I’m at a loss as to why this video has it (will dig into it) but it doesn’t obscure any important text, which is a relief. It’s a good chance to mention though that Screentoaster kicks ass! It’s free, creates huge hi-res videos, and is super-easy to use.

A few handy links:

WordPress Automatic Upgrade
FireFTP (the FTP client that runs inside of Firefox)

Let me know what you think of the video, and whether it was helpful or not. A particular WordPress problem you’d like to see a solution for? Let me know in the comments!

So by now you’ve signed up to Twitter, followed ten people, had conversations on Twitter, and updated your bio.

You might have noticed that Twitter is flowing stream of information, and the more people you follow, the faster the current. Each Tweet is a little seed-pod boat flying along, and keeping track of them can be a pain. To stretch the analogy to near breaking, it involves a lot of annoying running up and down the bank of the stream.

This is where using a more powerful client can make life easier.

1. Go to here or here (and click the link for your operating system – or you can just go directly to Windows applications and find a Twitter client you like the sound of.

Personally, I’m a little biased and use and love TweetDeck, so if you don’t want to choose from a large list, you can just grab that.

2. Download and install the Twitter client you’ve chosen. Depending on the client, you might be prompted to install additional software, like Flash or Adobe AIR. That’s completely fine – a lot of the clients use additional tools to look prettier.

3. Log in to Twitter using the client you’ve chosen. (if you’re using Tweetdeck, it give you an ‘Add a Twitter account’ button when you run it after installation) Each client will put the option somewhere different, but they will give you the ability to log in using the same user name and password you’ve used on the Twitter website.

4. Give the client a few minutes to run, and see what you think of the experience compared to using the Twitter website. See how it organises different types of tweet – messages from people you follow, replies to your tweets, and direct messages sent only to you.

5. Let us know how you found the experience, either by leaving a comment here, or starting a tweet with @kapowe or @catherinecaine on Twitter.