Kwippy is a fun new service that allows you to post comments from Gtalk or Yahoo! It is very easy to get set up on kwippy, which is nice, and makes it a great site for introducing people to microblogging.

So, let’s get started!

Kwippy is in private beta right now. Beta means that the site is running, but might be taken down occasionally for upgrades, changes, etc. Of course, anymore, there’s not a lot of difference between a site that is ready for public use and one that’s in beta. Look at all the updates Microsoft sends out.

A private beta is one where you have to have an invite to join it. On kwippy, an invite has to be mailed to you, so either post a message on here and mention that you’d like an invite, or if you prefer, go to kwippy’s main page and ask for an invite to be sent to you.

Here are a few simple steps to give you a quick start to using kwippy:

1. Once you get your invite, click on the link and go register.
2. After you’ve registered, the next thing you should do is add kwippy to your IM.
   

   Click on Dashboard to bring up the IM instructions. Currently kwippy works with Gtalk and Yahoo! but there are plans for other IMs in the future.

   
3. After you have your IM set up, go back to your kwippy homepage and you’ll be asked if you want to integrate status changes with your kwippy page. Doing this will automatically post on kwippy whenever you make a status change on your IM.
   
   Note that you need to click the X, not the word here.
4. Now you’re ready to post! With kwippy, you have 2 choices. Either send a post to kwippy over your IM or go to your kwippy page and write a post.
   
5. Whenever someone responds to your kwips, you will be notified by IM. You can also choose to be notified by e-mail.
6. You can also respond to others kwips on the website. If you look at the picture above, you’ll see “go comment” underneath each. Clicking on that takes you to a kwip comment page. By the way, don’t worry if you have a lot to say, kwippy doesn’t have a text limit.
   

Now that everything’s set up, here are some other things to check out:

A social site is about friends, and kwippy is no exception. You have unlimited invites if you want to ask all your friends to come play and there are already a lot of great kwippers on the site.

Kwippy has a great search feature that allows you to either search for kwips or for people, so it’s easy to find friends from other sites. By the way, feel free to add me as a friend too.

To add or remove a friend, look to the right on the kwips board, directly underneath “everyone’s kwips” and click to follow or unfollow.

You can also click on change settings on a friend’s page and choose to subscribe to their kwips if you’d like to be notified over IM whenever they make one.

If you want to remember a kwip written either by you or someone else, you can mark it as a favorite. Simply click on the heart icon underneath the kwip.

To view kwips that you’ve marked as favorites, go to your page and look underneath your avatar. Click where it says the number of favorite kwips you have to go to your favorite kwips page. If someone marks one of your kwips as a favorite, you will receive a message letting you know.

You can also visit someone’s page and send a private kwip to them. You will get a notification when they respond to the message you sent, or when someone sends you a private kwip. If you are trying to reach a friend who hasn’t been on lately, you can also send them a Buzz, which is a kwip sent to the person and shows up in their inbox and as an IM message.

Just a couple more items to mention. Just like plurks and tweets, kwips are searchable on Google. They’re not showing up yet, but that’s because kwippy is a new site and likely still getting indexed.

Each page on kwippy can be subscribed to via RSS feed, so you can subscribe to your posts, friends’ posts, or even a single kwip that you want to keep up with the comments on.

In addition to kwippy’s search features, you can also find posts by using the url. Kwippy has one of most unique url set ups that I’ve ever seen, with the goal of making them “human readable”. So, if you know who wrote a kwip and when they wrote it, you can go right where you need to go to find the kwip.

Finally, if you are a fan of ping.fm, you’ll be happy to know that kwippy is there too! If you’re not on ping.fm and want to be, the most current code is “thispingsforyou”.

Welcome to part 2 of the Guide to Plurk. If you missed part 1, you can find it here.

It didn’t take me long once I started using Plurk to realize that I needed karma. Okay, maybe I could actually live without it, but I definitely wanted some, I needed emoticons!

There are a few ways to gain karma on Plurk. One is to write plurks that others respond to (just remember to write 30 or less per day).

Another is to respond to others’ plurks. Inviting friends also adds karma (have I shared my link with you yet? ) as does making new friends who are already on Plurk.

The first thing I tried was transferring all my friends from Twitter. “This will be easy,” I thought as filled in my Twitter information, rubbing my hands with glee at thought of oodles of karma I’d get from adding friends.

Transferring friends from Twitter DOES NOT make you friends on Plurk, I discovered to my dismay. It doesn’t even send your friend a note asking them to confirm your friendship. Instead it adds you as a fan of theirs.

Now I mentioned yesterday how confusing Plurk can be about adding fans and friends. Here’s where the issue gets even murkier. Let’s say I look at my fan list and see Connie as a fan. Well, I know and like Connie, so I want to add her as a friend instead. She’s already a fan, so it’s a simple matter of just adding her, right?

I wish! Unlike every other social site I know of, we can actually be fans of each other…without being friends. Even if Connie is a fan, I have to ask to be her friend and she has to confirm our friendship. Clear as mud, right?

It’s actually not as bad as it sounds, once you start using it. Consider it a double opt in friendship, very similar to the ones you get whenever you sign up on a new mailing list.

After I finally figured out the whole twitter friends/fans thing and added a few real friends, I was ready to start writing some original Plurks and replying to other people’s Plurks. And in the process, make some new friends.

Ready to hear from some other Plurkers?

Felix118 said “I missed the tip on how to link names using the @ command….” If you’ve used twitter, this will be habit for you anyway. Which is actually how I discovered it. I made a twitter post on Plurk, and the @ in front of the name disappeared, but the name turned into a like to that person’s page.

If I Plurked:

says to @butterflylitgirl, How are you today? Hope your day has been wonderful!

What will appear is:

Teeg says to butterflylitgirl, How are you today? Hope your day has been wonderful!

Green_homemaker asked “is there a way to private message on Plurk? That’s my burning Question!”

I’ll admit, I had to ask this one too. Private messaging isn’t intuitive on Plurk (okay most things aren’t intuitive on Plurk).

Thankfully, when I asked how, Dalydose took pity on me, and explained how to do it. “Just click the down arrow next to someone’s username and the option will present itself.”

Sure enough, when I moused over a username, there was a small down arrow. Clicking it gave me some information about the person (in case I hadn’t visited their plurk page), the option to visit their profile, or see their list of friends. And, since yesterday, if you click the arrow on someone’s name, you also have the option to block that person.

Amie mentioned that she wasn’t sure “how to hyperlink text instead of posting urls.”

I can’t remember who it was that taught me how to do this. Wish I could remember so I could give them credit. On Plurk, if you want to link a url, first post your url, then add your link in parenthesis, like this:

I hope no one is disappointed. I just finished part 1 of the http://www.sucomments.com/2008/06/19/10-minute-guide-to-plurk-part-1/ (10 Minute Guide to Plurk). More tomorrow.

Which appears like this:

A nice thing about Plurk, and another huge difference between it and twitter, is that you’re not stuck plurking text. In fact, this is one of the most fun things about Plurk.

On Plurk, I can send a picture or YouTube video and you can see a tiny picture right there on the timeline! And if I use the parenthesis trick above, when you mouse over the picture, you’ll see the title I typed.

Even better, when you click on the picture, it doesn’t take you to another page. Instead, a window opens up and you can view the picture or video right on the page.

On Plurk, more than any other social site I’ve seen since sixdegrees, the saying, “the friend of my friend is my friend” is actually true.

The other day, Dr. Mani (whose blog I thoroughly recommend), joined Plurk. Wanting to help him get started, I introduced him, and within 5 minutes, 9 people had stopped by to say hi, most going on to add him as a friend!

Lest you think this was a special occasion, let me say I’ve introduced several others, every time with similar results. Everyone I’ve met on Plurk so far has been great!

Two more things and then the rest I’ll save for the next post.

RogueTess added the suggestion, “Use MUTE liberally.” Kirako seconded with “Ooh, another [suggestion] would be the muting ability. Not many people see that.”

With so many friendly people on Plurk, and so many from different time zones, it sometimes seems like a third of the plurks say “Good morning” or “Good night.” After repeating myself a couple times on one of these posts, I discovered a perfect use for the mute feature.

When you click on a plurk to reply, if you look to the right, underneath the original plurk, you’ll see a small pink “mute.” (Unfortunately (for this blog post) you can’t mute yourself though.)

I’m jealous! We don’t have Chick-fil-A here, so perfect mute example.

Clicking on this does not affect the status of the poster at all, it doesn’t even affect whether you can respond to the plurk. What it does is stops that plurk from notifying you when it updates. You can still read the updates if you want, but you won’t receive any notification of new responses. Which means if you mute after you greet someone, you won’t accidently repeat your greeting when you’re looking at new updates later.

I guess I should stop here and mention a little cream colored box that you’ll often see on the left side of the page, at the bottom of the scroll bar. Right now, the box is telling me that there are 2 new plurks I haven’t read yet, and 262 new responses. I can click either option in the box to view that option. New plurks will add to the timeline, but if you view responses instead, it will only show the plurks with new responses (ie none of the muted plurks).

Finally tonight, Natashcha suggests I mention “permalinking a plurk. I totally missed the link on the bottom for a long time.”

I did the same thing, Natashcha. And even after I saw it, I wasn’t quite sure what would happened when I clicked “plurk page” so hesitated to use it.

What happens is that the whole conversation goes to a new page with its own url.

You can share that url with friends, refer other plurkers to the conversation (thus allowing more than just your own friends list to reply to a post), bookmark it, and even add it to your RSS reader, which is what I do with plurks I want to save.

Believe it or not, there’s still a lot more about Plurk to discuss. Using cliques (which isn’t as high schoolish as the name implies), using Plurk with your cell phone, and tricks to make it easier to find something on the timeline, plus more Plurkers with questions or suggestions.

By the way, if you have a question about Plurk, feel free to ask it here in the comments or add me as a friend on Plurk and ask there, just make sure to let me know where the question is if I don’t happen to see it.

World – International, National, Local, Editorials, History

Hungry Blues – “My current research and writing is focused mainly on Civil Rights Movement history, racial violence in the South and current efforts to seek justice for those crimes.”

Blog: http://hungryblues.net/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/hungryblues/uKhu

Business/Marketing – Social Media, Internet, Problogging

Every Dot Connects – “At Every Dot Connects we write about the world of social media and how it disrupts – but does not replace – traditional marketing and public relations.”

Blog: http://everydotconnects.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/everydotconnects

Jason Boom – “Jason Boom dot com focuses on blog writing tips, blog marketing, and a series of blogging related reviews entitled Powder Keg Reviews.”

Blog: http://www.jasonboom.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/jasonboom

Search Engine Panel – “My blog is about search engine optimization and search engine marketing. It gets updated at least twice a week with helpful tips and news about the search engine industry.”

Blog: http://www.searchenginepanel.com/
Feed: http://www.searchenginepanel.com/feed/

doshdosh – “A blog offering internet marketing, blogging tips and social media strategies.”

Blog: http://www.doshdosh.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/doshdosh

Stay N’ Alive – “Stay N’ Alive focuses on Social Media technologies including Facebook, Bebo, and OpenSocial. It is about the reflections on Social Media news and technology by Social Media Guru and Author, Jesse Stay.”

Blog: http://www.jessestay.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/StayNAlive

techne-eikon – techne-eikon.com is a site that revolves around Web 2.0 and Internet Marketing Strategies. In it, I attempt to navigate the ever growing world of Web 2.0, and explore how ethical Internet Marketers fit into the grand scheme of it all. Light on news, heavy on commentary and strategy, I strive to bring a bit of sanity amidst all the hype that so many are pushing on us in these exciting new times.

Blog: http://www.techne-eikon.com/
Feed: http://tinyurl.com/2mnv3q

Evolving Web – “Discusses community, technology, management and communication. Amazingly insightful, perhaps one of the best blogs ever written! Wow!”

Blog: http://ourfounder.typepad.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/JLeroy

Technology -

Zero Hour Sleep – Rami Fayoumi co-authors this blog with another IT professional, and they blog about all computer & internet related issues.

Blog: http://www.zerohoursleep.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/ZeroHourSleep

Fractured Bloughts – Despi is a “Delphi developer turned software designer, gone manager for a brief time, and the blog is about whatever strikes his fancy, currently so called “social media” thingies, plus software development, photos, but really anything.”

Blog: http://heszroland.hu/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/heszroland/ratu

Science/Health -

Patrick Curl: Utah’s new biggest Loser! – “My namesake site – where I’m trying to find sponsors to sponsor my weight loss in exchange for promotion and advertising. (I currently weigh 555 lbs and am planning on losing 300 before it’s all over with.).”

Blog: http://www.patrickcurl.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PatrickCurl

Sports

Living – Religion, Food, Advice, Gossip, Education

Brain Foggles – “Brain Foggles is about me, a wife and mom with multiple chronic illnesses. I write about my everyday life with a bit of humor. There’s health info, my Disney fanatic escapades and how I try to juggle family, my church, volunteering and staying awake!”

Blog: http://shawnsbidness.com/blog/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/shawnsbidness/Qkcl

mousewords – “Above everything, I hope to write something that inspires others to believe in the great things within themselves.”

Blog: http://mousewords.wordpress.com/
Feed: http://mousewords.wordpress.com/feed/

Buzzing with Ange – “Buzzing with Ange is where I write articles about personal development and emotional intelligence. I get inspired through books I read, seminars I attend, and the study that I do. When I first came across Jamie McIntyre, I learned to see life through a different perspective and found that you don’t have to be stuck in a 9 – 5 job and just survive. There is another way to create wealth and live the life you love.”

Blog: http://angesbiz.com/
Feed: http://angesbiz.com/feed/

Coffee with Allan Cockerill – “I’m ‘Nicheless in Bathurst’, so I write about a range of things from social networking, to relationships, Facebook, history and social issues. I also write about people that I meet in the Blogosphere, and on Facebook.”

Blog: http://allancockerill.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoffeeWithAllanCockerill

Oza Meilleur (le making of) – A Road Trip through past, present, and future…looking for happiness, making it happen, creating a life of abundance. It’s all about FUN!

Blog: http://ozameilleur.com/blog/
Feed: http://ozameilleur.com/blog/feed/atom

Glenda Watson Hyatt – Glenda Watson Hyatt shares her experiences living with cerebral palsy to motivate and inspire others to think about how they perceive their own situation and their own world around them. She does all this by typing with only her left thumb!

Blog: http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/
Feed: http://www.doitmyselfblog.com/feed/

Entertainment – Humor, Games, Reviews, Comics

The Daily Bitch – “There is no IT, no social media stuff, no news links, no interesting sites to visit (other than my extremely wonderful blogroll), no artsy stuff…I have no ambition to be a writer or photographer. I just have random thoughts that strike me as amusing sometimes. And I go on rampages about things sometimes. People say that I’m pretty funny, but usually I don’t mean to be. I think they’re just too easily
amused.”

Blog: http://brain-soup.blogspot.com/
Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheDailyBitch

Lazylaces is my favorite site for point’n'click games.

Blog: http://www.lazylaces.com/
Feed: http://www.lazylaces.com/rss.asp

Classifieds -

Rizzn’s Shared Items – “An efficient way to evaluate a bunch of different blogs without subscribing to each and every one.”

Feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/RizznNewsFeed

Ooh! Shiny! is a random directory of pretty things Mel finds on-line. Products of all sorts, whether they be pretty, silly, geeky or fun. She has also recently been informed that Ooh! Shiny! is going to be listed in a book as one of the 500 most interesting sites on the web.

Blog: http://ooh-shiny.net/
Feed: http://ooh-shiny.net/?feed=atom

I’m still checking out blogs, so feel free to add yours to the list if you haven’t already.

Edit: I just want to say I love how my reader looks so far. Want to take a peek at it? Here’s the link.

I was going to write an article comparing readers, but came across this post on Digital Inspiration with a good comparison of Newsgator, Bloglines, and Google Reader. For their end conclusion, Bloglines was ahead, but not by much. That’s prety much the conclusion I’d arrived at also. I prefer how Bloglines handles the blogs themselves (I really can read through my whole blog list like I’m reading a newspaper), but for extras, like sharing, although both allow it, Google makes it easier. I also appreciate having the ability to create trash e-mails in Bloglines, a great way to sign up for new sites without having to worry about more spam in your inbox.

Overall, I think all feed readers could still use some improvements. I can easily imagine a reader that learns from Firefox and gives you a plain reader to start out, but with the ability to use add-ons to turn it into exactly what you’re looking for.

One thing I ran into problems with before was how to sort the blogs I added. Since I’ve been using the newspaper analogy, I decided to start sorting blogs along those lines too.

So, I made a list of common newspaper sections. I’m not sure how all of these fit with blogs, but here’s what I have so far. What do you think? Am I missing any sections you’d use?

World: International, National, Local, Editorials
Business
Tech
Science/Health
Sports
Living – Religion, Food, Advice, Gossip, Education
Entertainment – Humor, Games, Reviews, Comics
Classifieds – Not sure about this one. What would you put here?

Now, I need some blogs to add. So add a comment with a link to your blog and a short description about it. I’m interested in all kinds of blogs. And even if I don’t add your site to my reader, someone else might like your description and decide they want to subscribe to it.

I’m looking forward to seeing what you write about!

Edit: Thanks all for the links so far. I’m going to request from now on, in order to have the comment approved, that you add a short description of what your blog is about. It doesn’t have to be long, but it will help me and anyone else who’s reading the comments to find blogs that interest us. Thanks everyone! Looking forward to reading about and visiting your blogs!

As part of my New Year’s resolution to get more organized, I decided to pare down the RSS feeds that I subscribe to and create a “newspaper” that fits my daily needs. To do that, I’m going to delete almost all the feeds that I currently subscribe to, and then look over several of the feed readers, to see which one(s) I like the best.

So how does an RSS reader fit with StumbleUpon or even within the broad scope of social media? It makes life simpler. Seriously. Let’s say there are 250 people on SU whose pages you like. You can add 200 of them as friends and then just keep checking the others, or you can subscribe to their “reviews and blog” which sends everything they add to their page to your RSS reader.

How about with Twitter? Did you know that you can get your twitter chat in an RSS reader? Even better, you can use Twitter tracking to follow certain terms that you’re interested in. Perhaps, like my sons, you’re a Pokemon fanatic and want to see what people are saying. Sending “track Pokemon” will send you all updates that mention “Pokemon.” Then, when you decide Pokemon is passe and Sonic is where it’s at now, you can “untrack Pokemon” and “track Sonic” instead.

Want to keep track of what’s hot on del.icio.us? Afraid your next door neighbor is going to bookmark more sites than you? Want to stay abreast of the sites people send you? RSS reader to the rescue.

And of course, there’s the traditional use, of using RSS to keep track of your favorite blogs…for instance, this one. Want to keep up with my posts? Click on the RSS icon here, the RSS message at the top of this post, or the RSS icon at the side.

So do I have your attention now? Good. Then I’m off to delete the RSS feeds I currently receive and start looking at new ones. Do you have a site you think I should consider adding to my list? Add the link in a comment, along with a short description. If I like the site, I’ll add it, and when I’m finished, I’ll post a list of the sites I’m following, in case you’re interested in seeing who I choose.