I was turned on to Xobni at the Blogworld Expo in Vegas a few weeks back.  I’ve been using it on my laptop and primary desktop computers, and I think that I really am a little more productive with it. That, and I am a freakshow when it comes to data and graphs and Xobni has plenty of both!

This Windows-only Outlook plugin is a free download and installs quickly and easily, no headaches when I went through it. Sorry Entourage users and others, I see that other platforms are in dev right now so hang tight. So what does it do? Read on.

As a window that sits to the right of my Outlook inbox it is…if nothing else…a nice visual break from the business look of Outlook.  It is more than just another pretty face though, it adds quite a bit of useful utility to my work day.  The first thing I noticed was its incredible tie in to LinkedIn.  When I get an email from somebody that used LinkedIn it previews the email with their public profile picture and allows me to link over to their information easily.  I’ve added a few people to my LinkedIn network this way.

It actually summarizes quite a bit of information about a particular person.  When I click on an email in my inbox it shows me that person’s “network” and allows me to click through to each person.  This has been useful a few times as I’ve needed to dig a bit deeper with somebody and was able to look at their associations.

Another beautiful feature, the one I use the most, is a preview of my conversations with a person (recent emails) and my ability to click thru to them and have a preview show up in the Xobni box.  Very handy.  Although it’s easy enough to search through my inbox and folders, this is even easier.  I love this part of it.  But wait…I’m a data geek right?  Where is the firehose of data?  Xobni installs its own submenu in the main menu, a quick click and selection of “Xobni Analytics” brings me to a place of statistics nirvana.

There are a raft of useful headings here, including “Time To Respond”, “Unique Contacts” and “Follow Up Delay”.  A click on “Mail Traffic” shows me a chart of sent and received emails and time of day.  A historical chart of this is quite helpful to me in terms of how I spend my time.  Also, it helps me to get into a new habit I’m trying to develop: not always having my Outlook opened.  I’m trying to check in every hour or so, but not be a slave to the constant preview pane of new messages.  So far this has been working well for me.

I’ve only scatched the surface of uses for Xobni, you ought to download it and try it yourself.  Of course you would be interested to know that the Xobni crew is on Twitter, they just don’t update too much. Drop me a note if you find Xobni to be useful, I would like to hear about other experiences.  I think a lot of people will like this.  Heck, the Wall Street Journal even does!

There are Twitter utilities for just about everything. You can love, hate, think and feel here.  You can check out politic tweets on each side of the aisle here.  You can search for anything you want here.  What more does the world need?

How about a service that scrapes curse words off of Twitter and posts them in one easy-to-find place?  Cursebird does just that.  I’m not sure if there is any real value to this, other than a good way to embarrass yourself at work, but it just goes to show that there is plenty of innovation left to be had.  Some of it is just a little less high brow than others.

Oh, if you do go visit the site, don’t say I didn’t warn you.   Truly, the only thing it does is aggregate the nastiest words it can find. Proceed at your own peril!

I tweeted about this earlier today, but I think it deserves its own post.  I love fresh and creative ways of spreading content around the web, and AC/DC has put out one bizarre and intriguing product: a music video down in Low Definition Excel!  Yes, that Excel, the spreadsheet program from Microsoft.

I downloaded the .xls file just to see if it work…and it does!  I think this has viral written all over it.  If you don’t have Excel or don’t want to download the file you can watch it on YouTube as well. I’ve embedded it here for your viewing pleasure.

It’s nice to see a band that has been around for a while coming up with really new and creative ways to get some buzz going about their music!

I have a pretty decent amount of experience in business and online community relations. Since the middle of the summer I have been working on a social media project for an international non-profit based here in Los Angeles.  The NPO approached me about designing, building, deploying and marketing an amazing idea that I think would really change the face of what they did all around the world.  We were all quite excited about it, and it was moving along nicely.  Just a couple of weeks ago we got notice that the funding for the project had disolved.  Given the tough economic climate in the U.S. and abroad, this was understandable but disappointing to all involved.

Which brings me to the point of this post.

Until that point I was more than busy with a project for at least the next year.  This scope of this was so great that I wasn’t even considering other companies to work with, I just wasn’t going to be able to spread myself out that much.  Things have changed now, and it appears that I have some time on my hands.

If your company, non-profit, church or cause could use a boost with social media, business management and process or online exposure, please drop me a note or call my office at 323-774-1269. I would love to talk to you about this! If our initial conversation appears to be something we both want to pursue, I will draft a written proposal and get it to you quickly.

I will be building out this site over the next few weeks to reflect the services that I can offer to you and your company, but for a quick look, check out this area which will give you an overview. Thanks! I look forward to hearing from you.

A couple of weeks ago I was hanging out with my friend in his studio and we were talking about his upcoming album release. As the conversation turned naturally to social media (naturally), he showed me a site I hadn’t seen before but have seen several times since…Animoto.

Animoto looks to be a way to end the drab slide shows that people put together to share with family, friends, fans. In a handful of minutes he dragged a folder of pictures to the creation page, added his music and Animoto did the rest. It picked fades and transitions based upon the music, and I have to say it did a great job. Do you make slide shows? Stop it now. Just stop, please. Go to Animoto, sign up for an account and start creating.

Once you have created your file (and seriously, how much easier can they make it for you?) there are a number of ways to share it. Click on the push pin icon at the bottom of the screen and you will be able to automatically post it to any number of services.  You also have the option to grab the embed code, like I did here.

The Animoto crew is rocking, they recently did a bunch of videos for TechCrunch 50.  You shold spend some time considering how using this service can help you promote your own product or service…get creative!

Before you sign up, listen to Theft’s song clip below.  It’s going to be huge, and you can say that you heard it first.

I read an interesting review at Venture Beat about yet another Twitter API service.  Yes, there are dozens and dozens (hundreds? probably) of services that tap into the Twitter API to do a lot of different things.  Qwitter actually has some use I think.

MG Siegler says that he “doesn’t like this idea at all”, and I understand why.  It can actually create a bit of angst to try and guess why somebody stops following you on Twitter.  Qwitter can single handlely cause Twitter insecurity, “why did she quit following me?  Did I say something to offend her?”  Once you sign up for Qwitter, when somebody stops following you via Twittter you will get an email that tells you their Twitter screen name and your last tweet before they quit.  So if you type “I have feelings of insecurity, I think that people don’t like me” and then somebody quits following you, you will get notified. Ironic, huh?

I agree with Siegler if this were just for self-abuse, but I can actually see a useful purpose for this service.  If you are a company, or if you are building a brand (and many social strategists on Twitter are inded building their own brands), then you can use this as an amazing focus group.  You already know that when you talk about the iPhone your follower count goes up.  What happens when you talk about politics?  Maybe you lose followers.  Qwitter will show you what you said just before they leave.  

Personally, I think this is amazingly useful.  I signed up right away, and although I won’t obsess about a follower coming and going, it will be interesting to see if there is a trend as they do follow and unfollow.

If you are the type that live and die as your blog stats rise and fall, this probably isn’t a very good tool for you.  Let’s be honest, Qwitter will leave you sobbing on a daily basis, and probably end more than one friendship.  However,  if you think you can behave yourself and absorb a good dose of market reality that can reveal some very good information, go sign up.  I would love to hear what you think.

Today is Blog Action Day, you can check out the main site here, or follow the Twitter feed here.  The idea behind this movement is to raise awareness of a particular issue by mobalizing bloggers all over the world.  This year that issue is poverty, and it’s something that I can speak to with passion and experience. I’m going to keep this very short, I want you to think about what you might be able to do to help, not read my life story.

For almost 20 years I have been travelling to Northern Mexico with high school kids from all over the West Coast to build homes for the very poor. Along with several partners we have brought youth groups of all sizes to the desert to live in tents in the middle of nowhere, eat food off of a portable stove and work 8-10 hours a day in the scorching heat building houses that are barely larger than your guest room.  

The families that we are building for are often living in nothing more than a box, a lean-to or even an abandoned car when we meet them. Over the course of a week we not only provide realiable shelter, we also get to know the parents and children as real people.  We eat with them, laugh with them, cry with them.  Packing up and leaving at the end of that week is such an emotional challenge, but it’s also satisfying to know that we have given a boost in life to a group of people that otherwise would have nothing.

Over these two decades we have worked in conjuction with Amor Ministries out of San Diego, California.  If a week-long trip like this sounds like something that you would be interested in participating in, you can find out more information by contacting Amor. I assure you, doing this will change your life and the lives of a family forever.

If you do not have the time or the inclination to travel, you can make a huge difference in somebody’s life by sponsoring a child in another country.  I have been sending $32 per month to Compassion International on behalf of a beautiful little girl in Uganda named Olivia.  They make it easy enough for me, the money is automatically debited from my account each month and Olivia benefits by way of food, water and education.  It’s amazing to me that for the price of one nice sushi lunch I can help a child that desperately needs help for an entire month. Olivia writes letters to me and draws pictures, and I do the same for her.  Please, if you can, go over to the Compassion International site and sponsor a child.  The process will only take you a few minutes, but the impact that your simple act will have will change a life.

Thanks for taking the time to read.  I hope that you will do something today to make a step toward ending poverty.  If you do something or know of something that can help, please feel free to talk about it and add links in the comments.

Winner #1: The first account goes to Brad Ruggles!  Congratulations, Brad, you’re going to love it I think.

Winner #2: Angie Swartz! Wahoo!  Let us know how SpinVox helps your with productivity over at the Six Figure Moms Club.

Winner #3: Hurray for Los Angeles!  Jungle[8]’s wonderful Lainie Liberti gets to enjoy this one.  You can find her on Twitter here.

Winner #4: Brent Hodges from the area I grew up, Southern Oregon! You and your Twitter profile are about to love your new visible voicemail!

Winner #5: I just DM’d you on Twitter.  When you reply, the final free account is yours!

Do you want a free, no-strings-attached Spinvox account? It’s simple really, very little action required by you: I will give out a FREE Spinvox account for every 100 50 new followers I get on Twitter, starting when I hit 550. I will then use a program to generate a random number between 1 and 550 (or 600, 650, etc.) and that lucky person will get a free account.  That’s it, nothing else to do.  Simple, isn’t it? If you are already following me then you are already in the running!

These aren’t limited accounts that expire in 15 days, these are full accounts, ready to go with no set limits! A normal Spinvox account that converts 40 voice mails is $10/month, so at the very least each of these is worth $120 a year to you. No, this isn’t some cheap give away, this is the real deal!

If you’ve spent any time around me or have followed me online for a while, at some point or another you have heard me talk about the very best business tool that I have: Spinvox. Simply put, Spinvox is a service that converts your voice mail messages into text and sends them to you via email, SMS or IM. I have been using Spinvox since January 2007 and honestly cannot imagine working without it now.
Typical scenario for me: I’m in a meeting and I want to give my full attention to the person or group I’m with. A call comes in that could be important. What did they say? I don’t have to excuse myself to listen to the voicemail because it comes to my email after just a few minutes. It’s easy enough to scan the message without missing a beat in my current meeting. For me this is a priceless service.
I recently did a write-up about the new partnership between Spinvox and Ping.fm. I got a lot of response via Twitter, people saying they wanted a Spinvox account but were on the fence about paying for it. Let me assure you that the service more than pays for itself…how much is your productivity worth in dollars and cents? That’s for you to decide. If you don’t want to wait around to win, you can go sign up for a new account here, it’s quick and painless and will tell you how to set it up on your phone in just minutes.  BTW, if you do that you can STILL win, just give the account to a friend or colleage.

So…everybody that follows me on Twitter has five chances to win, so get your peeps to follow and maybe YOU will be the next winner.  The only rule is that I won’t give away more than one account to the same person, so don’t create multiple accounts and if you are randomly picked twice, well, I’ll skip you the second time and pick another number.

Questions? Comments? Sarcastic Remarks?  Comment below or email me, matt [at] mattsingley [dot] com.

A big thank you to the fine folks at Spinvox (especially Whatleydude) for the accounts to give away.  You guys rock!

Sorry, I couldn’t help the “talking” pun in the title.  Forgive me.  But it is quite appropriate for this announcement.

I’ve been a fan of Spinvox since I signed up in January 2007.  Since that point I have consistently said, blogged or texted that it is *the best* business tool that I have in my cache.  I still stand by that, having my voicemails turned into text and then emailed and SMSd to me is hands down the most productive thing I have. Don’t take my word for it, Chris Brogan and Guy Kawasaki are both fans as well!

Now Spinvox and the one-stop-status-update service Ping.fm have announced a partnership that rocks.  You can sign up for an account here, and then get to updating.  Here is how it work: you call the phone number assigned to you after your initial sign up, speak your update then hang up.  Through the magic of the internets, all of the social networks that you have assigned to ping.fm will be updated (Twitter, Facebook, WordPress, LiveJournal, Jaiku, etc).  That’s it.  One phone call, everything is up to speed.

I’ve done this a few times, and it works great.  I would like to get the link to the original voice message off of my status updates though, it would save some space.  We’ll see.

Did I mention that you don’t even need a SpinVox account to do this?  It’s true.  Just sign up for the service via Ping.fm and you are set.  Of course, being the thinking person I know you are,you should also sign up for SpinVox because it truly will make your life a lot easier.

Go give this a try, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Google is introducing an interesting new feature to their Gmail…math.

Apparently the working class digerati are notorious enough for sending late night emails while tipsy (especially the Brits) that Google felt it worthy to add some complexity to the process of sending email.  So now (during certain hours…late night and weekends…) you will be required to solve a few moderately complex math problems before the mail will send.

Wow.  I’m not even sure what to say about that.  You can read more info on TechCrunch.