Big conferences, like SXSW, have come and gone – and if you’re like me – you missed the boat on all of them. As it turns out, you really could have attended – virtually.

Sure, there are a number of web services and sites that give you access to most of the content at conferences, whether you’re there or not. But one service that is pretty eye-catching: Lanyrd.

Lanyrd describes itself as a “social conference directory.” It features a conference coverage aggregator, pulling together notes, posts, slideshows, audio and more.

For instance, the SXSW 2011 page for Lanryd has 80+ slide decks, dozens of write-ups and video – and more. While it’s not a comprehensive list of content for SXSW, Lanyrd is a great place to go to look at some of the panels you missed out on.

What’s even more interesting about Lanyrd is its social function. Simply sign-in using your Twitter account, and suddenly you have access to all of the conferences your contacts are tracking and/or attending. If one of those conferences piques your curiosity, you can track it as well. And, by “tracking,” I mean following that conference on Twitter.

So the next time you can’t scrounge up enough pennies to pay a conference registration fee, head over to Lanyrd.

And, did I mention – it’s free?

Have a nice day!

Oh, if you’d like to check out the iRenew bracelet, go to www.buyirenew.com.

I am going to update this blog post. I should be receiving my iRenew bracelet shortly and will do a full review immediately after I get it.  My review of the iRenew bracelet will be thorough and will talk about everything I have learned after using the iRenew bracelet for a week.  Stay tuned for the review!

Again, this is a test.

WordPress 3.1 admin bar

WordPress is just plain great. It’s so easy to use. Its features help everyone from CEOs and small business owners to busy mothers sitting at their kitchen tables manage their day-to-day blogs and Websites. And, its continual upgrades have given us that much more power over of Web content and design.

But, wait.

The latest version of WordPress – WordPress 3.1 - is even better.

The next time you log into your WordPress dashboard, consider this when you’re stalling to hit the “Please update now“ link.

WordPress 3.1 is offering tremendous new management features. Features like:

Internal linking: A very common practice in blogging is to link to other relevant content from past blog posts. In the past this was accomplished by finding the other post and copying the URL to embed in a link. No big deal unless you’ve got thousands of posts. Now, when you are editing a post in visual editor you have the ability add a link from any page or blog post, including searching through all posts, right from the link editing tool.

Post formatting: WordPress 3.1 has unveiled comes something called Post Formats. Post Formats allow theme designers to create multiple views of a blog post so that sites can have different post layouts inside the same theme for different content.

Theme designers now have the ability to create post formats that include:

- Aside – Typically short pieces of content, published without a title.

- Image Gallery – A collection of pictures in a gallery format.

- Link – A single link.

- Image – A single image.

- Quote – An inspirational or noteworthy quote with a citation.

- Status – Status updates, similar to Facebook and Twitter updates.

- Video – A single video.

- Audio – A single audio clip, like a song or a podcast.

- Chat – An instant message transcript.

Admin bar: Check out the new navigation bar that appears above posts for admins when viewing live content. This features offers easy editing directly from any blog page. And, in case you find this kind of a thing nuisance, you can switch it off by visiting your WordPress account settings.

WordPress never sits stagnant – and neither should your Website. If you haven’t jumped on the WordPress bandwagon yet – do it. Do it now. Sorry Google, but Blogger is dead.

Courtesy: LifeHacker

Social media and networking are no longer just about status updates and sharing information. These days people are just as concerned about visualizing their contacts and connections as they are about hearing what they’re up to.

Twitter has many of its own visualization tools – like Twiangulate and MentionMap. Now, LinkedIn has joined in on the visualization fun by developing what they call InMaps.

If you’ve ever wondered what your personal network looks like – now you can see it. In January, LinkedIn launched InMaps as an experimental project that lets users visualize the connections within their business networks. InMaps technology filters through a users connections to see how everyone knows each other – and then groups people together into network clusters based on their associations.

InMaps can basically shed light on who the major connections and influencers are in your network. People with bigger dots and larger fonts have more connections – and typically more influence.

This application will no doubt help business executives branch out and raise their profiles within certain network clusters. With the help of InMaps, you can make targeted recommendations based on the most influential people identified.

Check it out and see what InMaps reveals about your own business network. What you see may surprise you.

Google has released an *experimental* extension for Chrome that allows users to BLOCK “content farms” from appearing in Google search results.

While they’ve been around, people are just now starting to talk about content farms and the shady nature in which they appear at the top of a list of search results. These websites specialize in producing tons of material – usually bad quality – to maximize their traffic from search queries. They’re suspect – yet quite effective at crowding out better, original material in search results.

Thankfully, people have caught on to content farms’ wiley ways – and so has Google.

Google Chrome’s Personal Blocklist extension lets users eliminate unwanted websites – like content farms – from search results. Users who download the extension also can edit their block lists, if they wish.

Now, here’s the best part – in my opinion.

Google will pay attention to the sites that users block and could *possibly* use the data to revise the quality of its search results.

I believe this extension is a step in the right direction for personalized search, but other tech-watchers aren’t so convinced. TechCrunch writes that most users probably won’t use the extension and also notes the possibility that rival content farms may use it to sabotage each other. VentureBeat adds that users could block sites that are uninteresting to them, rather than target spammy content farm-riddled search results.

I’ll admit that the average person probably doesn’t know how to spot a content farm and may end up flagging a legit Website. But, I have faith that those “in the know” will find this new Google tool helpful and will hopefully use it rid the search engine of spam once and for all.

But what was of real interest to me, and I’m sure a lot of other people, was the new Google Translate app for iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch.

Available for free from the iTunes store, the new app translates voice input for 15 languages!

Google Translate for iOS also translates words or phrases into 50 languages and can read translations aloud in 23 languages.

According to the Google Mobile Blog, “the app also includes all of the major features of the web app, including the ability to view dictionary results for single words, access your starred translations and translation history even when offline, and support romanized text like Pinyin and Romaji.”

In January, Google launched a similar Translate app for Android devices.

Traveling for business or pleasure? Be sure to have Google Translate in your back pocket. This will no doubt be a handy tool for anyone traveling abroad – or even a boardroom businessman who has to communicate via satellite with, let’s say, foreign investors. Just talk right into the phone and have the translation read back to you aloud.

While handy, I do have to say that Search Engine Land may be over-dramatizing the launch of this app just a tad. They call Google Translate “a small glimpse at the future of search” – meaning that Google has broken ground in the new “search for words (and their meanings) in different languages” territory.

That is dicey terrain that will take many, many more years to dissect. Let us, instead, focus on the here-and-now – and use Translate for what it’s intended: Translation.

While we need a password for just about everything these days, chances are you use the same password, or some sort of variant, for every login.

Security experts tell us this is a big “no no” – but do we listen?

No way.

We don’t want to have to actually think when we’re logging in somewhere – we want to get in, and get in quick!

The creators of ObPwd, thankfully, understand our plight. Their unique password generator application promises to give us our security back – and do so without requiring us to use too much brain power.

Here’s how it works.

For starters, ObPwd is a password generator, not an application for storing your passwords. It is available as a free application for computers running Mac OS X and it is a free extension for anyone running Firefox.

ObPwd reads images and will create a unique password based on that image. For example, if you click on a picture of your car, it will generate the same password everytime you click on that particular picture.

Even if you change the name of the image, ObPwd will always generate the same passcode. According to the program’s creators, if you copy images and store them in various locations, the application will still generate the same passwords.

You can also click on images on websites to generate passwords. But, if the image gets replaced, you’re out of luck.

Advantage:

- ObPwd is great for creating a limited number of passwords that you regularly use. Because you need different images for each password, using more than a couple different images could make it difficult to remember which password is used for each purpose.

Disadvantage:

- If you use multiple computers – or a tablet device like an iPad – you need to have all the images available on all computers in order to have your password generated. Difficult? Yes. But, it’s what makes your passwords more secure.

ObPwd may not have the most memorable, user-friendly name for consumers – but its application is unique and provides us with an extra layer of security. It’s probably not the best option for mobile people who need quick access to password-protected sites… but, hey, I’d try it.

I’d try just about anything – once.

Social analytics startup, Viralheat, has just developed a software application that it claims can isolate tweets on Twitter that are potential sales leads. It’s called Human Intent – and it aims to simplify lead generation by helping businesses identify social media users who are on the edge of making purchasing decisions. All the business has to do is set up a keyword search and Human Intent automatically sorts through social media updates to pinpoint those who’re expressing an intent to buy something.

So how does the algorithm work?

Viralheat says it’s a combination of sentiment analysis, language processing and predictive analytics. It identifies people looking to buy something, people complaining about an existing product they own or perhaps looking for a replacement, or anyone who may have an issue with a service they currently use. The algorithm also has built-in filters for intent actions by verticals. Viralheat’s CTO  co-founder Vishal Sankhla notes, “Auto leads are not the same as finance leads, insurance leads, electronic leads, software services leads, etc.”

For higher accuracy, Human Intent includes a spam filter, which removes retweets and mentions that are not relevant. Finally, the algorithm learns through human curation. If it makes a mistake, users can mark tweets that should or should not be identified as leads. As more feedback rolls in, the algorithm improves.

All of Human Intent’s data can be viewed in a dashboard, and can be exported to programs like Excel or Salesforce. Also, since it links directly to consumers’ social updates, businesses using the program can respond to those updates right on the spot.

This is a brilliant idea – as it eliminates the dreary marketing duty of sifting through thousands of tweets and other social updates to determine potential narrow sales leads – which, by the way, I thought was next to impossible on Twitter.

I thought wrong.

Launching in beta next week, Human Intent will only be available to existing Viralheat customers at no additional cost (for now). Once the program launches in full, pricing and availability will be announced, and beta users will receive a discount.

Users of Google’s Tasks app were polled on what they’d like to see next. In other words: What would their dream to-do app do?

This, of course, is a question that has played out in all of our minds. But for those business professionals who need better organizational skills and task management, well, they have more than a few helpful ideas.

One of the common requests from people was a task list that doesn’t always look the same, and one the supports delayed tasks. For instance, if you have a conference call scheduled for next Friday perhaps the app won’t show this task (and offer a completion check) until the day before as opposed to viewing it on the to-do list for an entire week. Basically, people don’t want an app that treats all to-dos as something you can do any time.

Here are some of the other dream to-do app requests:

- Available across platforms (iOS, mac, windows, android, etc…)

- Write note first, categorize later

- Color coding

- Syncing with Google Docs or web interface

- Email functions with enhanced features, like the ability to flag a message for future follow up.

- Quick & intuitive adding and editing of tasks.

- Reasonable security; password protection.

- Ability to turn on/off specific features.

- A task list that is hierarchical and allows projects within projects.

- A notification system alerting when to complete a task (email/notification) – and the subject line of the email needs to be the task.

So there you have it. Sounds easy enough, right?

Developers, now get crackin’.

Ask.com

They were big like 10 years ago, back before “Google” was a verb.

I’ve never really used them before, but may be willing now. Recently, I been searching the Web, not with terms, but with questions. I’ve needed answers to ailments, how to remove three discs stuck in the Wii console (don’t ask), quick fixes for recipes, even grammar questions. Sometimes Google is helpful with my questions. Sometimes not. Ask.com may be just what I’ve needed.

The 15-year-old search engine has undergone a makeover of sorts, now offering a social search and more personalized browsing.

Here’s how it works.

Simply type in your query and Ask.com will direct the question to experts – rather than leaving the answers up to the whole community – and by identifying the users’ interests through their LinkedIn and Facebook profiles.

This new personalized browsing feature – which is available with an Ask.com invite or to Ask’s iPhone app users – helps the site generate its own profile for a user. Give a few pieces of information, along with some Facebook and LinkedIn details, and poof – your Ask.com profile is built. Based on your profile, Ask.com is betting that it’ll know what types of questions you’ll want answered – and, in doing so, will route those questions to someone whose profile shows experience or knowledge related to your query. Does that make them an expert? Probably not.

And here’s where the social aspect comes in.

The personal profile that is created will help Ask.com identify users with similar interests, and users will be able to follow other users.

It does sound like a lot of work just to get a question answered. But, if the Q&A space is something that floats your boat – like it does for me – then the new relaunch of Ask.com is probably worth your while.

No advertising, just information. That’s what I like.