Friday Fast Five – The Snowmageddon Edition

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF co-chair, Online Managing Editor-Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group

My apologies for missing the usual Friday edition of this weekly column.  But when a massive snow storm comes in, your priorities change–drastically!  So here are your fast five — plus a bonus five — a few days late, but definitely NOT a dollar short.  Enjoy!!

1. Our favorite blog — 10000 Words — tells us about 10 Essential iPhone apps for bloggers and reporters.   I did my post, here, on this topic in December.  And yes, my record of including 10000 Words in every Friday Fast Five continues!
2. For my Twitter users, the Blogging Tips blog shows us 5 More Way to Share Videos on Twitter.
3. The App Storm blog offers the Top 10 Web Based RSS Readers, Plus Some.  Google Reader, of course, is number one on the list.  But there are some pretty good alternatives.
4. I’ve recommended that young  journalists create professional Web sites to showcase their work.  I’m a fan of WordPress, and Blogging Tips has 75 Free WordPress 3 Column Themes for everyone looking for inspiration.
5. Do you want to add time lines to your multimedia stories?  The Networked blog has this tutorial — Create an interactive timeline using Dipity — to show you how.
6. The Mashable blog highlights 7 Ways News Media are Becoming More Collaborative.  And yes, the list does include Google Wave (a post I’m still struggling to write).
7. A columnist on Tech Crunch explains: Twitter and Me! Why It’s The Only Social Media Tool I Use.  It’s not the only tool I use, but it is by far my favorite.
8. And here’s one from Computer World for those of you who are social media junkies, like me: 7 Tools to Better Manage Your Social Networks.
9. One of my New Year’s resolutions is to use video more in my job.  Which makes the Hub Spot blog’s Five Video Projects You Can Do in 25 Minutes or Less right on time for me.
10. The Sparkxoo blog tells us about Using LinkedIn & Twitter to Build a Digital Reputation.

Google Reader Adds New Feature

By Benét J. Wilson, DJTF co-chair, Online Managing Editor-Business Aviation, Aviation Week Group

I currently have subscriptions to more than 100 Web sites via my Google Reader.  I have my folders broken down into Aviation, Business Aviation, Journalism. Multimedia, Social Media and Other.  My Google Reader lets me keep up with all my myriad interests, but it always had one flaw: Web sites without RSS could not be included in your subscriptions.  I was missing out on some great blogs that, for whatever reason, chose not to use  RSS.

Now the official Google Reader blog offers good news: you can now create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don’t have their own feed.  So now I can add even more blogs and Web sites that are of interest to me.  But it’s also probably time for me to go through my subscriptions and weed some sites out.