Remembering the little things are difficult, but incredibly useful.

Instead of telling you about the features of Google Keep (Which you can watch from the video below), let me tell you how it’s made my life so much simpler by using it every day for several months.

I’ve been using it for quite a long time: since it was codenamed ‘Memento’, and I’m still a daily user even now, when it’s the current Google Keep state, so everything I mention below is what I actually do, not what think the app could be used to do.

So here’s what I’ve been using it for:

1. Record down ideas throughout the day

When do you get your best ideas? It’s not usually ‘brainstrom sessions’, but it’s typically in places where you’re free of distractions, like in the shower, toilet, right before bed etc.

Those are also the times where ideas get lost. Recording down ideas as an when it happens is the best way to make sure you follow up on them. Because Google Keep can be integrated into my phone lockscreen, it just takes me no longer than a swipe and a button press to record an idea.

Having such a low barrier to entry also results in two things. You tend to capture ideas regardless of how strongly you feel about them at that point in time. You don’t limit yourself to capturing the ‘best’ ideas, you just capture ideas, and move on.

It can be pictures, sounds, text, a page in a book, anything.

There is currently no way to sort them, tag them, etc. but you can search, which is what you need 99% of the time, so speeding up the capturing of ideas is a worthy trade off, because things are so much faster. It’s absolutely frictionless.

2. Find Receipts and warranties when you need them

Sorting through mountains of receipts, adds a ton of stress when something breaks down. To solve this, just snap a pic with Google Keep, and label it “blender warranty” (if you bought a blender of course). Then just proceed to move on with life, and when you need it, just search ONCE and find the receipt.

3. Keeping a spare copy of transit maps

I don’t normally take the subway, but when I do, I’d like to use Google Keep to snap a map on my phone just in case I’m in a corner where I can’t see the printed map on the train. Again, this is something I want to find easily, and can pull up in seconds.

4. Making an on-the-fly-to-do-list

For very short term to do’s like making a list of things to buy once you arrived at the store, is something you can easily do, and Google Keep comes complete with checkboxes for easy task management. Dead on easy.

5. Never forget crucial parts of a manual

Manuals, especially for electronics (camera folks – I’m looking at you) tend to be a very extreme dump of information which makes no sense to most people (including me). Most of them are however, smart enough to include a ‘Quick Start’ section which you should read first. If you’re a first time user of the device, it also happens to be most read and used section.

The issue is that in most cases, you’re out and about and you don’t bring that unreasonably large manual with you. Just use Google Keep to keep photos of the parts of the manuals you actually want to read.

These are just the tip of the proverbial iceberg, because I’m sure you’d have much more uses for it in your own life situations.

Try Google Keep, and leave a comment below about what you’re going to use it for!

This is probably the longest hiatus I’ve ever taken from blogging since I started, but I’m really glad to be back – and the regular posts will resume shortly.

Long story short, I collapsed doing a half-marathon on June 24th 2012, and have been recovering ever since. For reasons which are still sketchy, my heart stopped and at one point, I was literally dead for more than 10 minutes. I really have to thank God (and everyone that was praying – including my whole church) that no permanent damage occurred especially to the brain, and I’m on the road to a full recovery (even back at work now).

I just want to say BIG THANK YOU to every one of you for your prayers, visits, gifts, wishes, notes, Facebook, email and Twitter messages (I read them all), and encouragement throughout this whole ordeal. It really meant a lot to me and my family during this tough time, and it helped me recover much faster.

Finally, also big thanks especially to YOU, as reader of my blog. It’s because of people like you who visit my site, that I’ve been able to meet so many new wonderful friends, both online and in real life. Because you read my work, it gives me the drive and passion to keep going on, no matter how busy I have always been, and you’ve changed and shaped my life for the better.

Anyhow, sticking to what I set out to do with this blog in 2005 – I’m truly honored that so many of you have read, and continue to read – and I hope to continue to be helping people “solve everyday problems with simple technology” for a very, very long time :)

With today’s web services becoming more and more niche, web mashups (combining data from two or more services) provide a great way to get amazing things done online.  For example – Portwiture, a cool service which matches photography from Flickr and the content of you most recent Twitter updates – resulting in a visual representation of your Twitter profile.

Now, while mashups like this are very cool, you needed to have some level of web programming knowledge in order to pull something like this together.  Until now that is.

Enter, IFTT (If – this – then – that) – The roll-your-own mashup creator which is incredibly easy to set up – and will make the services you already love – even better!

IFTT combines the power of more than 40 different services to help you automate the web.  For example, if you want to have to backup all your facebook photos to dropbox, just create a task within a few clicks which simply states that IF there’s a new facebook photo, THEN upload it to Dropbox.  That’s it. 

Creating mashups is now as simple as eating cake if you follow the very basic instructions. 

If you want to see how other people have put this service to good use (433,065 good uses to be precise), just head on over to the recipes section where people share their own ways of how they’re using IFTT.

BONUS TIP 1: If you especially like Dropbox, you can try Dropbox Automator for an even more powerful experience.

BONUS TIP 2: Check out Pushing Social’s post on “Why IFTTT Could Be the Best Blogging Tool Ever’”.  Useful reading if you’re a blogger.

Yesterday was an end of an era as Steve Jobs stepped down from Apple as CEO.  Steve is known for many things – Revolutionizing mobile phones, creating amazing portable music devices, coming up with sexy computers, and giving some of the most compelling presentations you’ve ever seen.

My favorite Steve Jobs moment however has little to do with technology.  It is a commencement speech he did back in 2005.  Although I’ve watched it several times, it never fails to resonate with me every time I listen to it. Here are some great snippets from the speech:

Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.

I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.

Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

Watch the video.  No matter where you are in life, I’m sure if will speak to you.  The full transcript is also available online.

As for me I’ll Stay Hungry. I’ll Stay Foolish.

Thank you Steve for everything.  It’s been a blast.

Hey – Google’s new awesome cloud music service is out on closed beta!  It syncs to the cloud so all your music is synchronized across all devices.  It supports both online streaming and offline listening in a very seamless manner.  Create instant play mixes across your whole music selection whenever you want.  That, any many more cool features. 

Chris from the Google Music team does a much better job of explaining it in this video, than I ever will.

Sound good? 

Well it’s currently a closed beta but I have 5 super-exclusive invites to giveaway.  Please note that it’s only open to US based users.

Enough talk – are you going to give them away or what?

Yes – just fulfill this simple criteria:

1. ‘Like’ my facebook fanpage (If you have already liked the page just proceed to step 2)

2. Drop a comment on this blog post saying you want an invite.

At the end of this week, I’ll randomly pick 5 lucky people to get an invite to this closed beta.

Go ahead, join my facebook page and drop a comment :)

UPDATE: 16/8/2011: And the randomly selected people who walk away with a cool and exclusive Google Music Invite are:

1. Scot Merrick
2. Havilson
3. Zeffri
4. Gladys
5. vhick

Congrats to the lucky ones, and to those who participated and didn’t win – thanks for supporting this giveaway. Your participation means a lot to me.

So thumbs up to PayPal for trying.  I appreciate the PR gesture :)

Please watch the video, and if you like it – share it around – and visit their YouTube channel – where they have more songs about other bloggers.  Also, all the songs sound the same (which makes it more cheesy).

I love my 13 inch Macbook Air to death.  I also feel as if I’m blind when I try to read on the damn thing.   

That’s why learning to set the zoom levels on a browser is so valuable.  Most browsers respond to Ctrl + and Ctrl – to zoom in and out of pages (Tip: Press Ctrl 0 to reset zoom to normal levels).  Most of the good ones like Chrome also remember the zoom setting for any particular web page – which is a great if you ever revisit the page again.

The thing is – many a time, you’ll end up on a web page where you’ve never visited before, and then you’ve got to do the zooming song and dance again. 

What a drag.

Now you might be thinking – yeah the text is small, but I can read it, so what’s the big deal? 

Well try zooming in on text just a little bit and you’ll suddenly find that everything’s so much easier to read.  Keep at it a while and you actually feel less tired and more productive. 

So how do you set a DEFAULT zoom level on your browser so that all web pages have a zoom factor already automatically applied to it when it loads?

1. How to set the default zoom level in Chrome

Autozoom is my weapon of choice on Chrome, and this free simple extension will allow you to quickly define how much zoom you want all your pages to have, tweaked right from a discrete button near the address bar. 

2. How to set the default zoom level in Internet Explorer

Interestingly enough, unlike most things involving IE, setting the default zoom on that browser is incredibly simple.  Just find the magnifying glass icon on the bottom right of your browser and select the default zoom. 

3. How to set the default zoom level in Firefox

Default FullZoom Level is probably the most powerful of all the extensions on this list.  Let me tell you why I love this add-on.  Yes, setting zoom levels can easily be set just like on all the other browsers, but here’s what sets it apart: One of the issues most people have when zooming web pages is that images have the potential look incredibly ugly and pixelated once blown up.  To address this, you can configure it to ONLY zoom text, so it leaves your pictures unzoomed.

It also has some nifty features like ˜fit-to-window’ which automatically selects the optimal zoom for that particular web page so you don’t have to bother experimenting.  This extension really gets two thumbs up for ease of use and power.

4. How to set the default zoom level in Opera

Just like IE, you configure the default zoom levels by selecting that same magnifying glass at the bottom right of your browser.  It is slightly more feature filled than IE though and has Fit-to-Width capability as well.

What should your default zoom level be?  This differs from person to person, and really depends on the sites you visit, but I typically set my default zoom at 130%.

Do you use browser zoom to read the web?  Tell us about it in the comments :)

Update: 18/6/2011: Check out this video response!

So I got to see the HP TouchPad in action sometime back in February, and actually played with it for all of 30 seconds before the lady doing the demo realized that I had my grubby hands on it and politely pulled it away.  From my brief time with the device, and the very extensive controlled demos by the presenters – here are my initial thoughts on what I really liked about the TouchPad which HP has just announced will be launched in June. 

I have never been a big fan of the old Palm Pre phones.  Always felt that the phones were much too small, especially when trying to handle all the touch gestures the palm interface demanded in order to use the phone.  The new Pre 3 is a step in the right direction with decent 3.6 inch displaybut the TouchPad however – that’s a different ballgame all-together. 

So why on earth would you ever consider holding out for an iPad 2?   Here’s a few reasons why:

1. You want grouped multi-tasking

Because all smartphones these days handle multi-tasking pretty decently, but handling anything more than a few apps is often a clunky user experience.  
WebOS on the other hand, groups together related apps running in the background. 

How is this useful? 

On other platforms multi tasking is focused on helping you switch between apps quickly, not so much between tasks. 
Some tasks require you to switch between related apps, For example – to calculate expenses you may want to switch between a calculator, notepad, and email app.
On WebOS, because apps are grouped together, you can quickly switch between groups of related apps all at once without hunting around.

Here’s a video which shows you this feature or ˜stacks’ as Palm people call it (Tip: Forward to halfway through the video to see most of the action)

2. You want a wireless charging

Because there’s no more plugging in wires.  Just place it on the dock, and it charges/syncs. 

I don’t think I need to say more.

3. You want an adjustable sized keyboard

Because not all fingers are the same size.  For me, the keyboard is perhaps the most important aspect of any smart device (aside from touchscreen sensitivity), and perhaps one of the most difficult for manufacturers to get right.  Making the on-screen keyboard adjustable really helps eliminate the compromise many keyboards make to get it to a one-size-fits all setup.

4. You don’t want to launch apps

Because you want to just type and go.

A feature called ˜Just Type/Quick Actions’ in webOS 2.0 will allow you to do things in apps, without ever having to launch the app.  Doing things like search, compose email, set alarms, create calendar appointments, Facebook status updates, send text messages, update your blog etc.  from anywhere on your phone without having to open an app and wait for it to load.

How useful this turns out to be though, lies in the hands of developers who build need ˜Quick Actions’ plugins for this to take off.

5. You Want Decent Speakers

Because the iPad 2 has mono speakers.  (Why Apple, why?)

while the TouchPad comes with HP Beats Audio and stereo speakers.  This setup possibly makes it the best audio system you will get for ANY tablet.

6. You want unobtrusive push notifications

Because while the rest of the smartphone world (Palm/Android/BlackBerry) has figured out how to do unobtrusive push notifications, iOS is using the worst push notification system in the world.  It’s in your face, forces you to look at everything, and forces you to unlock the phone to dismiss the notification.

WebOS notifications on the touchpad however are unobtrusive, easily dismissible if you don’t want to attend to it right away, and provides a useful preview to boot, and is very well thought through. 

What could be improved on the TouchPad

1. Really wished it would come with a rear camera.  If you’ve ever used a tablet for annotation, or tried taking photos of text/maps for use on a tablet you’d realize how truly important this is.  Hopefully we’ll see this in the next iteration. 
2. Also, the very obvious hole they have is their distinct lack of apps.  Their porting platform, the WebOS PDK has been around for about a year.  On one hand you’ve got nice testimonials of companies porting over 9 games in 5 weeks.  On the other hand, the reality of the matter is that they have REALLY struggled to get publishers on board, and even the very new Windows Phone 7 Platform which is still extremely raw, has gotten further ahead of the game.
3. Things are moving really slow in terms of product development and launch.  Bear in mind the iPad 2 will take some steam away from the TouchPad launch, and if Apple really shifts their launch cycle for the iPad to ship in time for Christmas, the TouchPad could get swallowed up by iPad 3.

I did talk to Steven MacArthur who’s the SVP of Apps and Services in HP about how slow everything has been moving, but his response was that it was early days in this market and he could afford to go slowly for now saying it did not matter in the grand scheme of things and long term strategy – citing how Apple and Android beat up the smartphone incumbents within a short period of time.  

Truth be told, I disagree with him on this one.  The iPhone was a ridiculously revolutionary device when it launched.  Android bridged the gap and opened up solid smartphone capabilities to a whole other range of manufacturers.

Palm’s devices however are at best incrementally better than existing systems, still has its shortcomings, and they will not license out their OS.  In short – the market will be much less forgiving.  Given that the Pre and Pre 2 hasn’t done spectacularly well so far, this should already be a warning flag.  Also, the unofficial price point is touted to be at the USD$499 point for the 16GB Wifi version which makes it on par with iPad 2 pricing, so it does not look to have an advantage there either.  Meanwhile I’m crossing my fingers that a 3G version will follow quickly.

Hands-on video

Here’s a full hands-on which was demo’ed in Shanghai. It gives a great look at the new WebOS devices which were launched including the TouchPad.

Video courtesy of Lowyat.tv

Conclusion

All that aside.  The TouchPad did seem like a really snappy device.  Interface looked well designed and slick.  More than anything it has bucketloads of potential especially when WebOS starts being integrated into ALL new HP computers starting from next year.  The tablet future certainly looks interesting doesn’t it?

Yet, you can make a choice.  Sit idly by, shake your head, and feel sorry for Japanor do something about it, and drive people to do more about it.  These are a few things I’ve put together which should help you do the latter as a blogger. 

1. Give and get others to give

Just feeling terrible about the situation won’t really change much.  Put your money where your heart is and give.  Friedbeef’s Tech is going to be MATCHING whatever is given by YOU our readers until a USD500 limit. 

All you need to do is:

1. Donate to any organization which is providing relief for the Japan earthquake and tsunami.
2. Send in proof of the said donation to jamesyeang [at] gmail.com . 

All MY matched funds will will be going into Groupon Malaysia’s Red Crescent/Red Cross relief fund which in turn will be REMATCHED again.   So any funds you donate will be multiplied at least 3x.  So follow your heart and give!  *See update below*

Your local area should have their own fund, but you may also donate directly to the Red Cross via Google’s Crisis Relief page. 

After you’ve done it, blog about it, and use whatever influence you have as a blogger – big or small, to drive your readers to give more.

2. Embed a hellobar on your site

A hellobar is a thin horizontal bar which comes up at the top of your blog and provides readers with a simple message.  In this case, we’re adapting it to support Japan relief.  It’s eye-catching, yet does not disrupt your theme, and it’s for a good cause.  That’s all the reasons you’ll ever need to install one. 

Mashable has an excellent set of simple instructions on how to do this in under 5 minutes.

3. Embed a simple tool to help others find and provide information about potential missing Japanese people

Basic communications are down, so Google has put together a Person Finder tool where anyone worried about the their loved ones can look them up by name, and others can submit information as well.  In short, it’s an adhoc database to connect people.  You’re also able able to embed the tool like what I’ve done for this post.

Hope some of these tools help you get started.  Even if you don’t have a blog, please do drive people facebook/twitter account to help so at least the people you know can be drawn to action, not just watch in horror as events continue to unfold.

Update 20/3/2011:

Campaign has ended, in conjunction with Groupon Malaysia reaching their matching limit of RM25,000. We have matched a grand total of USD$242 towards this cause. All proof matching has been sent to individual donors. Please continue to donate directly to Japanese disaster relief.

The everyday problem:

You really like the layout of a web page.  You want to build a wireframe mockup based on it, and it takes too long. 

Why not just screencapture the page?  Mainly because images and text distract your vision when you’re trying to figure out the best layout possible.  You may also want to compare different layouts and having everything mocked up on wireframe instead of screencaptured may provide a more unbiased view of things.

The simple solution:

Wirify is a cross-browser bookmarklet which instantly turns full blown web pages into wireframe mockups with a single click.

Step 1: Visit the Wirify webpage

Step 2: If you’re using Chrome or Firefox, just drag and drop the bookmarket onto your browser bookmark bar.  (If you’re using Internet Explorer switch now for a better experience)

Step 3: Click on the bookmarket whenever you want to turn the website into a wireframe mockup.

That’s it!  So simple :)

Check out the YouTube video below for a step-through Wirify

Hi everyone,

Since it’s 10 days to Christmas, we’ve decided to do something special for the holidays! 

We’ve talked about Kiva on this website before, but for anyone who doesn’t know, Kiva helps 3rd world entrepreneurs through microloans.  It’s our charitable favorite movement here at Friedbeef’s Tech, so we’re setting aside one US dollar (with a limit of 300USD) for every new user who ˜likes’ our facebook page from now until December 25th to help out this great cause. 

Here’s a rough idea how Kiva works, and if you need more info, their ˜about’ page is much more comprehensive.

Anyhowas I write this, the count of people ˜liking’ the facebook page currently stands at 2,552 fans.  So if you haven’t joined us on facebook yet, there’s never been a better time to do so. You can even ‘like’ the page directly in the box below

Update: Project has finished with 209 new fans and USD210 USD set aside for Kiva :)

Finally, if you’re on twitter or facebook, please help me spread this project within your social circle :) 

How to you save the world and get free stuff at the same time?  Well now you can do just that. 

Since past giveaways on this site have been going pretty well, I’ve initiated a new project for Friedbeef’s Tech, and it’s called the 33 trees project.  The mechanics are simple:

1. Sponsor plants 33 trees via Mokugift in exchange for the rights to give something away on this site
2. Readers get free stuff

Objective

Our aim is to plant 1,000 trees by the end of the year – and we need you to help us! 

Reader’s benefit and how you can help

Your benefit as a reader:

• You get to help plant trees.  These giveaways work mainly because sponsors see the demand and exposure it brings them.  The more you participate, the more you support this tree planting project.  Who knows?  Maybe next year this project may just be called the 100 Trees Giveaway Project.
• You get free commercial quality stuff which otherwise would have cost a fair bit of money

How you can help:

Just participate for free :) 

Here are our first two sponsor giveaways: Totaling USD$524 amount in value

They have planted 33 trees each *applause*.  Feel free to participate in either one or both of these giveaways!

• Blinksale – An amazingly simple and elegant online invoicing service
• iTypetoGo – A handy iPhone app which allows you to type while you walk

Would you like to sponsor the planting of 33 trees?  Check out out our project guidelines.

Formatting is contextual.  One style may look great in one place, but look horrible in the next.  Here are a few quick tips on how to remove unwanted formatting from your documents.

1. How to remove unwanted formatting from your email

If you’ve received an email which has been forwarded multiple times, you’d notice that it can be hard to read if every line is prefixed with on more more ˜>’ characters.  Stripmail is a great piece of freeware which will help you strip any unwanted characters from your email and formats it into proper paragraphs and indentation so it’s much easier to read.  Stripmail is a free standalone utility which does not require installation so it’s incredibly light and portable.

2. How to remove unwanted formatting from any text in Google Docs AND MS Word and Powerpoint

Want a quick way to remove formatting in your document? Select the text you want to remove formatting from, and click Alt + Spacebar.  This built-in function will instantly do the job, and will work both in Google Docs and Microsoft Office.

3. How to remove unwanted formatting from Excel

The Alt + Spacebar trick doesn’t work in Excel, so what you can do is select an already unformatted cell, then click on the format painter button, and then select the area which you want unformatted.   

4. How to remove unwanted formatting when pasting web pages into MS Word

Things you copy from the web tend to end up looking really bad when you paste it into an MS Word file.  The way to get around this, once you copy the text, go to MS-Word and click Edit-Paste Special – Unformatted Text.  If you tend to do this very often, check out this excellent video tutorial on how to set up this up as a macro.

5. How to remove unwanted formatting when copying from your web browser

Have you ever copied something from your web browser to Outlook or Office and been annoyed that the text formatting (bold, font size, etc) came with it? Don’t you wish you could just copy the text itself, without having to copy it, paste it into notepad, then copy it again? This firefox extension gives you an option to copy text without the formatting. You can even set it to trim extra space in and around the copied text!

How do you deal with unwanted formatting?  Tell us in the comments!

Twitter is an incredible communication tool which can also be somewhat daunting if you’re not used to a constant stream of information flow.  Here are several ways to make better sense of the Twitter so you’ll enjoy your experience more.

1. How to properly understand #hashtags on Twitter

Ever find yourself looking at Twitter and wondering what all this talk about #motrinmoms means?  or searching Flickr and not understanding why someone would tag their photo #ip4?  Hashtags can be notoriously difficult to keep track of, so Tagalus is a free service which lets users define tags so that others can understand what they’re talking about. 

Other users can even vote on definitions and decide which best describes the given tag.  Tagalus also has a bookmarklet feature so you can lookup hashtags with a single click.

2. How to filter topics in real time on Twitter

Twitter is essentially a sea of conversations, so tracking certain keywords can be very useful especially if you’re trying to find out what people are saying about your company or product.  One of my favorite tools to do this is Monniter. 

This is a free service which lets you track multiple keywords in multiple columns, and it streams in any mention of them in real time.  Which means you can essentially set up a tracker for you and your competition in a jiffy.  If you’re looking at tracking tools, you can also try twendz, and twitterfall.

3. How to find the most popular links on Twitter

If you’re a fan of PopURLs which lists the most popular content on the web, then you’ll certainly enjoy TwitURLs which is essentially all the most popular links, pictures and videos being shared on Twitter and updated every minute – which stays true to Twitter’s real-time nature.

4. How to group your contacts in Twitter

Once you start following a large number of people, conversations come in thick and fast, and it can be overwhelming if you try to keep up. 

One way to get around this is to use a Twitter client like Tweetdeck, where you can group your contacts up in a more organized manner.  For example, you can have all your ex-classmates in one column, and colleagues in another – that way it’s much easier to keep track of certain groups of people.

5. How to understand how much time you’re spending on Twitter

Want to know how much time you’re spending (sorry – investing), on Twitter?  Tweetstats is the perfect tool for analyzing usage patterns to see how you actually go about Tweeting information, how often you do it, when you do it, and what you tend to tweet about.  Another useful stats engine to consider is TwitterAnalyzer. 

6. How to find relevant people to follow on Twitter

Finding and following people outside your usual social circle can be an interesting way to branch out and meet new people.  This however is most useful when you’re connecting to people who have similar or relevant interests to you. 

My favorite is Mr.Tweet where it analyses your profile and helps your discover relevant people to follow.  Other Twitter directories like JustTweetIt, and WeFollow are also excellent ways to find people who match you to follow.

7. How to get Twitter basics right

If you’re completely new to Twitter, this PCMag article on the ˜Top 10 Twitter Tips for Beginners’ is an absolute must read.  This covers all the basics of how to start using Twitter effectively.  This article covers everything from retweeting to mobile tweeting. 

If you’re interested in learning how to build followers, you can always try these tips from Guy Kawasaki of Alltop.com and Kevin Rose of Digg.com.  If you need a twitter dictionary to help you with more twitter terms, try twittionary.

Hope those tips were helpful, and do follow me @friedbeef :)

How often do you tweet, and what do you Tweet about?  Tell us in the comments!

Kiva.org, the Internet’s answer to helping poor people make a better life for themselves, made two significant moves yesterday.  If you don’t know about Kiva – check out this previous post on how it helps change lives. 

1. Loan repayment system faster and better

Kiva will now return repayments to lenders as soon as those repayments are received by Kiva. Because of this change, you’ll be able to re-lend funds right away instead of waiting until the end of the loan term.

This is a huge deal because this liquidity allows lenders to help more people at a faster rate than before.

2. Join a group – make a difference as a team

One of the most powerful things about Kiva is the community of lenders. You now have the option to connect with other lenders.

Members of Kiva Lending Teams continue lending as individuals, but they have the option to count each loan they make towards the overall impact of one of their teams.

Band together and raise your team’s profile within Kiva and build a stronger connection between members.  Whether you’re part of a society, club, company, forum or just part of a local community, banding together for this common good brings us all closer together. 

If you’re Malaysian, you can join the ‘Malaysia’ group that I’ve just set up and help raise Malaysia’s profile within Kiva. 

If you’re not Malaysian, search for like-minded people or people in your area who are active in Kiva.  You can even start your own group!

Make a difference today!

ps. This blog is an ongoing supporter of Kiva with contributions going to poor entrepreneurs in need every month.