I heard about the new book Twitterville a bit ago – I mean, really, if you hang out on Twitter at all, you are bound to have come across it in the past month or so. A few weeks ago, I got an email from the Final Blog Potomac organizers telling me that I’d get a copy of the book at the un-conference. Oh yay! Shel Israel would be speaking there, and he’d be signing books.

Cool. I was going to score a signed copy of Twitterville. Woot!

At the last minute, I decided to go to the pre-Blog Potomac happy hour. What the heck. And I met Shel. I could start now about how I feel about social media being a gateway drug… one that leads to in-person meetings but that’s a post for another time.

But what a nice guy. Okay, I know I sound surprised. Don’t mean to. It’s just that many business authors I’ve met have left me feeling a little… dismissed. You know what I mean?

Anyway, back to the point. Sorry.

I have a signed book to give away. To one of you. I am not kidding.

But first, you have to read The Social Studies Group’s (our sister company) statistical analysis of social mentions of the book for September and October 2009 to humor me. I have included charts, graphs and maps. I love this stuff.

It won’t hurt a bit.

Take me there…..

~ Wendy

Innovation in communication continues to soar. The more that we build and maintain our relationships and manage our lives online, the more we expect from our tools. (I know I do!) Thank goodness those smart developers continue to deliver… This week, we’re sharing three new, particularly innovative tools that we think you’ll be interested in trying.

Read our latest newsletter…

If you love creating press lists, raise your hand!

Not so many, I see.

Fortunately, there are people out there trying to make those media relations jobs just a little bit easier.

If you’re on Twitter (and I bet you are), you can find tons of journalists, as you know. But wouldn’t it be great if there was a list so you could follow some pertinent people in case they ask for exactly what your client has to offer? Or to be there for them when they need help with something that doesn’t even pertain to you, but that would help build a nice relationship?

There is. My Creative Team Wiki has a Media People Using Twitter list. And while I am certain it’s not totally comprehensive, you just may find some people you didn’t have on your list already.

Researchers like us sometimes feel like private investigators. We search, mine, dig for information that is not readily available. And then we summarize, analyze, and bring meaning to it.

Not so different from a P.I., right?

Well, there are some overlaps, perhaps. Way more similarities in my dreams than in reality, I might add. But it fascinates me and I try to keep up on the tools the P.I.’s are using because some are really useful to regular (la-dee-da) researchers like us. PI Buzz is one of the sites I keep in my feed. It’s my Perez Hilton.

Just thought I’d share.

I write about search a lot. Let me clarify that. I write about what can be found with search, not the search itself. I write about techniques and tools.

So it will come as no surprise that I read a huge amount about new search technologies and new tools. A whole honkin’ lot. I used to crack up when I ‘d hear people say honkin’ in my MidWest days But I digress.

Suffice it to say, I read a lot about search.

In the past several weeks, I have seen about a kabillion articles about Wolfram/Alpha – a “computational knowledge engine.” You think I’m exaggerating? Maybe a little, but here are some highlights: Note that this is a small percentage of the stories out there, these are all from this week, and the Google Stories all pin them against W/A. Oh my!

Creating A Mind-Monster Is Harder Than It Looks

I felt so bombarded that I vowed not to write about it.  But today, the highly respected Gary Price of Resourceshelf sent out a brief description and a link to his mini-users-guide and I realized that I was being stubborn (imagine that).

So I’ve given in. Sold out.

I have to admit (reluctantly) that Wolfram Alpha really may be the best thing since sliced bread. Try it (everyone else is). It’s pretty honkin’ amazing.

Go look and take a few minutes and watch the W/A screencast.

When we wrote about this site last month in our newsletter, it was a hit!

So, just in time for Mother’s Day, we thought we’d repost for those who missed it the first time…

This cracked us up. HassleMe. Not drinking enough water? Forgot to call your mother? Need a little help keeping out of the dog house? Tell the nice folks at HassleMe what to bug you about, and they’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals. Nagging. Just like Mama used to do.

We’ve known for a long time that demographics and syndicated media usage studies alone are not enough to understand consumers. This article from AdAge This article suggests that personality tests can be an effective prediction tool for media usage.

In a time when media usage is consistently shifting and is being used simultaneously, in short spurts, and for different objectives, this might be worth watching.

Worth a read.

I loved this article from MediaPost and had to share. I mean, who couldn’t use a good statistical laugh on a Wednesday morning.

20 Funny, Clueless, Weird, And Existential Google Keyword Searches

This cracked us up. HassleMe. Not drinking enough water? Forgot to call your mother? Need a little help keeping out of the dog house? Tell the nice folks at HassleMe what to bug you about, and they’ll nag you via email at semi-unpredictable intervals. Nagging. Just like Mama used to do.

We were fascinated to read this article at Searchengineland and the Hitwise data that was released last week. Seems that more searchers are using complex, longer queries. Great news for efficiency! We are huge fans of searching deeply and saving time!

The Hitwise release also talks about Business and Finance, Sports, Online Video and Social Networking categories showing double-digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines in January 2009 as compared to January 2008.