Seriously? It’s October? How did this happen. There are two great things about October. 1) Today is my anniversary. Sixteen years of wedded bliss. And, 2) My birthday is in October. As if you couldn’t have guessed I was a Libra. And Librans strive for balance and harmony and are happiest when their environment is ordered and serene.

So in that vein, let’s talk some new tools that are worth knowing about for finding balance and harmony in managing your social life online:

Gist for managing your relationships.
GizaPage for managing your content.
Read It Later for managing your reading material.

Read all the details in our latest newsletter.

~Wendy

We see pieces of these all the time. But wouldn’t it be great if someone put together a comprehensive collection of data?

Someone did.

Ignite Social Media has it here for your viewing pleasure.

Ever wish you had the time to track down an extra two tickets to see your favorite band, or find the best deal on a new flat screen, or better yet — the perfect dinner date? Check out Yotify.com. Its a free personal web scouting service you’re going to love. They do all the hard work and all you have to do is look through the results. You plug in all your criteria and Yotify will alert you hourly or daily of new postings from your favorite sites like Craigslist, Flickr, shopping.com, linkedin and more. You can get your friends in on the gig as well. Sweet!

I went to a very fun Jeff Pulver Social Media Breakfast in D.C. recently. While I was there, I met a really interesting guy, Shashi Bellamkonda. We got to talking and before I knew it, he had convinced me (yikes!) to do a video interview.

So, for your viewing pleasure…. (thanks Shashi!)

A loyal reader asks: I am on the road constantly. While I am glad to have the opportunity to go to such amazing international locations, I have to admit that I get a little lonely. Short of sitting with strangers at dinner (which I have been known to do), do you have any suggestions for me to meet people?

Meet people? No, we’re not in that business. But we do have an idea for you.

Dopplr is an online service for intelligent business travelers.

It lets you share your future travel plans privately with friends and colleagues (or those people you hang with on Facebook or LinkedIn or Twitter!). The service then highlights coincidence, for example, telling you that three people you know will be in Paris when you will be there too. You can use Dopplr on your personal computer and mobile phone. It links with online calendars and social networks. Take the tour.

We’ve heard some great things already.

Bon Voyage!

If you are as creeped out by some of the privacy issues online as we are, check out the new MyDataIsMyData Plugin.

Flugpo sponsored the development of the plug-in to help counteract the collection and sale of personal information. According to the developers, “Selling private information for profit unbeknownst to the user’s is an abuse of their trust and MyDataIsMyData.org hopes to empower these user’s by allowing them to control the amount of personal information that they make visible.”

Good deal.

I don’t know if you use Twitter or not. But if you don’t, you may want to reconsider. I definitely have a love-hate relationship with it. It brings out all the worst anxiety-ridden behaviors in me. But on the other hand, I have learned a tremendous amount, seen amazing things I would not have seen, ‘talked’ to people that I would have never met – all things that I believe will help me be better in my work.

That said, yesterday someone posted a link to a directory of analysts on Twitter. What a find!

Okay, so this is really cool.

Help a Reporter Out!

It’s a list – where journalists look for sources. They send requests in and they are distributed to the list. If you can address the need, you can respond. That simple.

So if you’re a PR person, this could be great. And if you’re a journalist, you may have just found a huge time-saver.

There’s a UK service that is similar, Getting Ink, and it has some bells and whistles like widgets for requests and such. It’s been around a little longer.

Don’t you love all this collaborative stuff?

Need a “crash course” on social networking applications? Or just want a way to explain the social media world to your client (or your mother) in really simple terms?

Go to this OpenCourseWare site for blogs, wikis and new media. Here is the course description:

Innovation continues to occur on the internet at an extremely lively pace. What was once the realm of email, FTP, Gopher, and the Web is barely recognizable a mere 10 years later. Keeping up with the speed of innovation and maintaining a familiarity with the most recent tools and capabilities is handy in some professions and absolutely critical in others. This course is designed to help you understand and effectively use a variety of “web 2.0? technologies including blogs, RSS, wikis, social bookmarking tools, photo sharing tools, mapping tools, audio and video podcasts, and screencasts.