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It’s a short show today.  I talked about how to properly store your computer when you’re using it and when you’re traveling a bit.  The biggest issues with computers overheating, the other topic of the day, was addressed with some tips for positioning your machine whether it is a desktop computer or a laptop.  Also, remember to always use the hibernate or shutdown feature so you don’t ruin your hard drives!

TALKBACK:

Do you have any tips tricks or other thoughts that might help the community about cooling your computers and how to store them?

Please drop a line and let us know at collegetechcentral@gmail.com or call the listener hotline at 206.203.1877.

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The Apple World Wide Developer conferecne is a really cool show put on annually by the groovy people at Apple.  Today, we’re talking shop - why you should care about WWDC, what we’re expecting to see coming out of it and how you can keep up with everything that is going on.

NOTE: Steve Jobs‘ Keynote goes off at 10am PST (1pm EST)

TALKBACK:

Do you dig Apple or do you think that they’re a bunch of geeks that have overpriced technogoodies? What are you hoping to see coming out of the conference?  Do you have any predictions?

Please drop a line and let us know at collegetechcentral@gmail.com or call the listener hotline at 206.203.1877.

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Second post for the day - I’m asking for your help.

As part of my time abroad, I am required to do a fair bit of research. I am currently working on a research project looking into a concept known as “student experience” and I need your help. All I’m asking for is that you take 5 minutes to take a very short survey.

URL: Help me with my research

The above URL will bring you to survey monkey where I have put together a 5 minute survey. Please take a few moments to fill it out and help me with my research but also help companies and institutions improve the experience that students, faculty, administrators, and parents have when dealing with the administration. It only takes five minutes or less.

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

Once again, the technology guru, Google, has outdone itself.  Yesterday, Thursday 5 June 2009, Gmail Labs was announced as a feature set within the regular Gmail interface.  Another homerun for the Goog.

Before you start yelling about the fact that there are a hundred other ways to do the same things that Gmail Labs does, remember that this is comin built into the interface.  Other solutions include Greasemonkey and Better Gmail 2 - both run on Firefox as add-ons.  Since these exist in your browser, they don’t transfer to other computers and who out there only use one computer in a day anymore?

I think the greatest part of all this is that these tools are coming from both within Google’s 15% personal project time offered to employees as well as from the outside community.  Soon, one would be able to code their own tool and have it available natively in their Gmail rather than needing to use a browser extension.

So go out and try out some of the new features.  You can access the Gmail Labs interface by clicking the “settings” button in the upper right of your browser and selecting the “Labs” tab.  You can choose from custom quick links, Superstars, Pictures in chat, Fixed width font, custom keyboard shortcuts, mouse gestures, signature tweaks, muzzle, a traditional snake game, and even an option that will lock you out of Gmail and chat for 15 mins for those that are addicted.

After a crazy week of getting kicked out of housing and moving to the opposite side of Dublin, Ireland, I am back at it.  Today we are talking space - Mars landers and space stations to be exact. The biggest issues are those surrounding the need to continue funding and give public support to our National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

I am very sorry for the delay in getting this content out - I will definitely do my best to stay more consistent!

TALKBACK:

Are you a space nut?  Do you love keeping up on our various space programs?  Or maybe you think that NASA is a waste of public funding - if so, please drop a line at collegetechcentral@gmail.com or call the listener hotline at 206.203.1877.

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That’s it for this week - keep an eye here for more great content!

I wanted to throw out a quick update and let everyone know what is going on.

Last week, you may have noticed that we were missing a podcast and a Web 2.0 Survival Guide.  This was entirely my fault as I focused myself on getting moved out of the old apartment and moved into the new apartment.  Additionally, a perfect storm formed over my head and struck the productivity right out of me.

I am working on the material right now so please stay with us and look for content to be coming back to the regularly scheduled program.

When I started to go through my strategy, I realized that what I really needed to do was get started with the plan, and get moving now. The more I waited, the less my message was getting out there on the web. So, I made up a list of all the places I wanted to put my name, developed a common fact sheet for myself, and set myself to work on a few destinations each day.

Get Started Today

The only thing holding back your name from getting out is you. Today, we’re talking about how to get from the planning stage into the action phase and getting your word published online. As I did with my own plan, we’ll go through with the list of destinations, talk about the personal fact sheet, and then discuss blogging as a student.

Identify the Online Destinations and Networks

By figuring out which services you feel fits your needs, you can shape the message that you want to convey. If you want to go for an innocent, law-abiding student, don’t go posting a profile on “imacriminal.com” or something like that. The networks that you subscribe to say just as much about who you are as what you say on those profiles.

There are two different strategies you can use at this point. One where you put your name on every account you can find just to make sure you claim your name and someone else doesn’t. The other is to pick and choose which services you put your name on. I took a hybrid approach where I got an account on every service I could find to secure my name and put up basic information. What distinguishes each service is the level of engagement and interaction that I put into the site. For example, I have a MySpace page but I hate the network and what it represents so all you’ll find there is a VERY basic profile so no one can take my name there.

Here are a few services that you can use to get yourself started:

• ActiveRain
• Bebo
• Blogger
• del.icio.us
• Digg
• DOPPLR
• Facebook
• Flickr
• FriendFeed
• Friendster
• Google Reader
• Jaiku
• Jumpcut
• Kiva
• Last.fm
• LinkedIn
• LiveJournal
• Ma.gnolia
• Multiply
• MySpace
• OpenID
• Plaxo
• Pownce
• Second Life
• Seesmic
• Shelfari
• StumbleUpon
• Technorati
• Tumblr
• Twitter
• Upcoming
• Wakoopa
• Wink
• YouTube
• MyBlogLog

Develop a Personal Fact Sheet

By having one document with your “public information” in an accessible place, you can present a consistent image across many platforms. I will sometimes vet someone against a number of different services before I will interact, follow, etc just to try to get a sense of who they are and what they are about. If they’re two different people (by the way they present themselves) on differing sites, I would be a little leery.

The best thing you could do is to visit the social networking sites that you have now and look at what questions they have on the profile builder now. Then, you’ll make on Word or text document that has titles and the info broken up into groups. From there, you can copy and paste into the pertinent fields within each new service. Some common questions:

• About me
• Favorite movies
• Favorite music
• Favorite TV shows
• Favorite activities
• Favorite quotes
• Favorite interests
• Favorite places
• Education
• Contact Info (include a link to your website, discussed next)
• Photo (can’t be in a text file, obviously but have a headshot consistently across all sites)

Get a Website… NOW!

That’s right, do it right now, there’s no reason not to. You can get a blog for free and trust me; you can leverage a blog the same way if not better than a static website. Free solutions are also called hosted blogs. This means that you sign up with a company to get a blog, usually http://yourusername.blogcompany.com or some derivative of that. In most cases, you can go ahead and buy a domain name and point it to your hosted blog. For example, I could have http://www.jamesmconnors.com point to http://jamesconnors.wordpress.com if I wanted to.

Buying your name as a domain name is another step along this path of personal branding. Using your first and last name will not only solidify your place online but it will keep others from taking it and possibly letting recruiters find another version of you. It is really simple to buy a domain - head to http://www.godaddy.com and register there. Do a search on Godaddy promo code and you’ll find discounts all around for that.

The two sites that have emerged as the leaders in free hosted blogs are http://www.blogger.com powered by Google and http://www.wordpress.com - quite possibly the most popular blogging software out on the market (all free and open source of course). These solutions will get you up and running, give you some layout and image options as well as let you customize some parts of the html/widgets to give it extra functionality.

If you need more options and are ready to deal with hosting your own, http://wordpress.org is one of the most common platforms available. In fact, most hosts can auto-install or one-click install wordpress for you on your new account. I use http://www.bluehost.com for my hosting but Godaddy.com also has hosting available. I will be going into how to use your new blog more in the Friday issue.

TALKBACK

Do you have a blog? What social networks are you on? Do you have any other tips for getting your name out there? Leave a comment here or on the listener hotline at 206.203.1877 and email at collegetechcentral@gmail.com.

On Tuesday, I gave you a tool box of questions to ask yourself to try to hone in on your inner-self as well as develop a strategy by assessing your target audience. Today, I want to share with you my answers to these questions so that you can see an example of what it would look like - maybe get your own thought processes kicked off.

Who am I and why?

• I am a leader because I will talk when no one else will.
• I am student because I try to learn something from everything I do.
• I am a geek because I sometimes enjoy technology more than other “normal” things.
• I am a good person because I always strive to do what is right.
• I am an honest person because my first instinct is to tell the truth and do so.
• I am a protector because I would give my life for those that I love.

What are my core values?
Truth, honesty, reliability, leadership, integrity, achievement, excellence, perseverance, teamwork, courage, loyalty.

What am I passionate about?
Technology, service, podcasting, the outdoors, helping others, listening, camping, baseball, friends, achievement.

What am I good at?
Communication, technical skills, problem solving, listening, project management, leadership, detail orientation, education.

How would you describe your personal brand now? What do you want it to be?
James Connors is a dynamic problem solver with an eye for technology and its positive value. He strives to learn constantly from both resources and personal experience.

What dreams and goals do you have?
Professional: I want to grow into a powerful decision maker within a global corporation or organization, such as a CIO.

Personal: I want to be a loyal friend, a good man, a beloved husband, a positive role-model, and a proud father

What does it mean to you to “live well?”
Living well means having a job that supplies for immediate and future needs and personal wants. Having a lifestyle balanced between work and play. Being able to enjoy time with friends and family - all while being about to walk into work with a smile because I enjoy my job.

What is your personal mission statement?
I will continue to grow and learn in order to make myself a better asset, friend, family member, and man through consistent effort, confronting challenges, and always pushing myself to do better.

Looking, now, to the external factors of your personal brand: the people you want to reach. Again, I will try to address as best I can the basics of audience assessment.

What is their background?
The recruiters are people, educated employees. They are probably used to weeding out those that don’t fit - they look for keywords and congruent experiences. They are paid to find good people to hire. They might work with these people in the future.

What is their motivation?
They are paid to find good people, the people they find may be the future leadership of their company, they are evaluated by peers and leaders for their performance, they want to find the best. They want to understand who you are beyond your resume and they don’t want to work too hard to figure that out.

What are they looking for?
They are looking for someone that is reliable, intelligent, and carries congruent values as their company. They want to find people that fit the job position, that will stay with the company for the foreseeable future, who will reflect well on themselves.

How much effort will they spend looking?
They don’t want to search hard. The easier it is to find that person, the better since it means more time to do other projects. They will make sure that the information they find is actually about you and not another by the same name but they aren’t going to do a full background check.

What information do they value?
They want to know the stuff that isn’t on the resume. Who are you as a person? Do you work well in a team? Do you have other interests beyond work? How do you treat others? How do you treat strangers? Do you know how to hold yourself or market yourself?

Where are they located?
We are in a global society and they can be anywhere. Their culture may hold value on certain characteristics different from my own. They will most likely look for those that are close to the job but may look farther afield for the right candidate. Recruiters may be local to you but placing jobs on the other side of the country/globe.

With whom are you competing for their attention?
Everyone. At least, everyone that is in the same field as I am. They can be from India, Europe, Mexico, or right down the road. They will be just as smart, just as witty, just as intelligent.

How will you attract these people to your message?
I will use all means necessary to get my name out. Placing well in search engines will be key. Claiming my name on every social network they can search will be key. Making sure that people search engines have the right info will be key.

These are works in process and develop over time. So go out and ask yourself these questions - challenge yourself to give honest and complete answers. You’ll learn more than enough, I promise. Once you’ve gone through these exercises, it’s time to put together a full strategy for establishing your personal brand. In the next installment, we’re going to walk through how to get yourself up to the top, make yourself seen, and deliver the message you want to have delivered.

TALKBACK
What sorts of feedback do you have about my answers? Do you see areas that I can improve? Do you want to share your answers, realizations, aha! Moments? Leave a comment, drop an email to collegetechcentral@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at the listener hotline: 206.203.1877.

Personal Branding Mini-Series

The following few articles will be a mini-series within the Student Survival Guide to a Web 2.0 World that have to deal with building out your own personal brand. The basic idea is that we, as students and young professionals, want to build out a portfolio of information that sends the message that we want to send to those that are looking to find us.

Imagine you’re a recruiter looking to fill the a few positions for a summer internship or entry level full time work. You’ve got a stack full of resumes and cover letters that all look the same - they use the same catch phrases, the same GPAs and the same boring story: you need to find the diamond in the rough. Ideally, someone would have stood out by now but that’s probably not the case and so now you need to make some moves.

How are you going to research your applicants? If you’re smart, you’ll probably start at the mother ship, Google. First start with their names; are there any results that are towards the top of the first page that jump out at you? Perhaps a LinkedIn profile, Facebook page, Blogs, Podcasts, or newspaper mentions. What we are going to talk about today is the beginnings of shaping that search, crafting the message that you are sending out.

Thinking About Thinking Personal Branding

Personal branding is a bigger topic within the larger context of surviving on the web these days. Let me break down my view on how to build your own personal brand. The ultimate goal of all this personal branding is to control the message that these people would see online when looking for you. At the same time, this needs to be a real thing for you where your personal brand represents you and you represent your brand.

Whoa, James, this is getting way too real way too fast. In this process of developing your personal brand, you will find that you learn a lot about yourself and can really make some worthwhile changes in your life. Today I’m writing about the three phases of developing your personal branding strategy and changing your life.

Looking Inward Changes What Shows Outward

It is time do to some serious “you” time and really consider what it is that makes up who you are as a person. Do you like those things? Are they what you want to be showing everyone else? Consider the following questions - I actually wrote out answers since seeing the inner thoughts on paper can be a very powerful tool of change:

• Who am I and why?
• What are my core values?
• What am I passionate about?
• What am I good at?
• How would you describe your personal brand now? What do you want it to be?
• What dreams and goals do you have?
• What does it mean to you to “live well”?
• What is your personal mission statement?

You answers to these questions are the basis of moving forward with your personal branding strategy. Really take some time to think through these and look at yourself with an honest interest. As you work through the questions, your answers might change. Simply revise them as you go along - it’s a learning process and I bet that you will be surprised by what you find. I’ll be sharing my experience with all this on the Friday edition so you can see an example of what I went through.

Market Research - Who are you talking to?

Ok, so you have some key insights into what it is to be “you” but now you have to figure out who are the people that are looking for you (the people you’re crafting your message for) and what they are trying to find. This isn’t quite as easy as saying “the recruiters are looking for me” because that’s not really true.

They’re looking to learn more about you - who you are and why you would be an interesting and valuable edition to their organization, firm, or group. Similarly, the personal story you tell to your family isn’t the same as what you would tell to your friends, which isn’t the same story you would tell to a complete stranger. Consider the following questions when thinking about whom your audience is and what they are looking for:

• What is their background?
• What is their motivation?
• What are they looking for?
• How much effort are they going to spend looking?
• What information do they value?
• Where are they located?
• What does their location tell you about their attitudes and opinions?
• Who are you competing against for their attention?
• How will you attract these people to your message?

Take your answer to these questions and roll them into the next phase. If you’re having a hard time coming up with answers yourself or maybe you are not entirely sure what the best answer is, ask someone. For example, I asked Rebecca Corliss about her opinions on the matter as a PR major from Boston University. At the same time, I asked my step father, Brian O’Connell, what he thought as an executive level businessman who has had tons of experience in the field. No one person has the right answer for you but taking many data-points of information will help build your answers.

Showtime - Put the pieces together into a strategy

Some will say that this is the hardest part; others will consider it the easiest. At this point, it is time to take your personal discoveries and merge them into a strategy informed by your market research. One person’s strategy won’t necessarily work for another so make it your own. It’s a bit of an adventure to develop your own thoughts, opinions, best practices, and strategies. Map out the goal of your strategy and then choose the engines you will use to carry out your strategies. Some possible pieces to your strategy include:

• Start a blog - wordpress.com and blogger.com are both good free tools
• Online resume - Google pages are a free solution
• Commenting on other blogs - this gets your name out there and expresses your opinions
• Social media - generate content for YouTube and other services
• Social networking - figure out what you want to do with these services and how you use them to your advantage. TIP: if you’re using Facebook for networking, get rid of the party pictures.
• Join a community - if you’re a blogger etc. get involved with people of similar interests
• Search Engine Optimization - no matter how you put your message out, make sure that Googlebot sees the information it should and not the stuff it shouldn’t.

More tutorials on how to go about some of these will follow in the coming weeks either through the podcast reachable right on this site or through iTunes, as well as in the Friday articles that are part of this survival guide series.

TALKBACK

How do you go about building your strategy? Did you come up with any answers to these questions that surprised you? As always leave comments here at http://www.collegetechcentral.com, call into the listener hotline at 203.206.1877 or email me at collegetechcentral@gmail.com.

This week, we are talking all about how to streamline your online web-surfing by managing your account details. The biggest issue that I face when working through the digital interwebs is that I have too many account names and too many passwords. So, I’ve been using a couple different strategies to try to de-clutter my mind and speed up my surfing. Today’s show goes into two of my favorites that are absolutely free for your to use, Roboform - a account management tool, and ClaimID OpenID and single sign on service, check it out!

I wanted to thank you all who have been commenting and sending in your feedback about the show - I really appreciate it!

TALKBACK:

What are your thoughts about managing your accounts online? Are you having a hard time remembering which username goes with what site or what password you used when you signed up? Do you have any suggestions to share with other listeners? If so, please drop a line at collegetechcentral@gmail.com or call the listener hotline at 206.203.1877.

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Comments to 206-203-1877 e-mail to collegetechcentral@gmail.com

Leave a comment at the website: http://www.collegetechcentral.com

How to Manage your Online Account Details

I walk through two different scenarios to describe your online surfing habits. One solution gives you a single place to manage all of your usernames and passwords while the other attempts to consolidate your identities by providing single sign on capabilities.

AI ROBOFORM

This is the account management tool of choice when it comes to keeping me on the straight and narrow for websurfing. By integrating into the browser, Roboform feels very organic when you’re using it. You can fill in the login fields and submit the form all with a touch of one button in your browser - it is the easiest system I have ever used. I recommend it to everyone. You can even bring your passwords with you when using work machines or public computers with their Robo2Go product. Check them out and forget about writing down your passwords on you hands or putting sticky notes under your keyboard.

CLAIMID

OpenID has been brought to the next level. ClaimID is a service that will verify your identity and then serve as your OpenID authentication server. Yahoo provides this service as do many other sites. What sets ClaimID apart is that your URL is stupid simple and you can add links to your online presence to the authentication page. If you don’t already know, OpenID is a new web standard that allows you to log into compliant websites using a single url and password across multiple sites. No more remembering what the username or password is for that one site. An added bonus is that once you’ve logged into one site, any other OpenID site will recognize you and automatically log you in if you have an account. It’s a great tool and I highly recommend it to anyone wishing to ditch the millions of usernames they’ve had since highschool.

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This show was originally posted at http://www.collegetechcentral.com, please visit the homepage for more information about this show.

That’s it for this week - keep an eye here for more great content!