• Where any federal agency can download apps at Apps.gov – apps for federal government workers along with social media contacts for each federal agency
• There are lots of innovative uses of Twitter for notification, including this one from the Massachusetts Transportation Agency
• Flickr photo sharing can be used to demonstrate more than just your vacation pictures, including this page that shows you dozens of different screen shots of URL shortening services.  David’s favorite shortening service is bit.ly for the moment. Here is another innovative use by Dell with various picture collections.
• When it comes to recommended frequency of posting on blogs and Twitter,  Paul and David disagree about the specifics, you’ll have to listen to hear why, but you might want to consider timing your Tweets according to the time of day.
• Speaking of which, here are two tools that can schedule your Tweets into the future (there are lots of others and many companies offer mobile phone apps as well):  Tweetdeck and Seesmic
• There are a number of third-party Twitter tools that can help you keep track of statistics, including TweetStats which will graph when you have Tweeted.
• A number of tools can post to multiple sites with a single click or email, including Twitter, WordPress blogs, and You Tube, including Pixelpipe, Ping.fm, and Posterous.
• Some other helpful Twitter tools include Dlvr.it, which picks up RSS feeds and set rules to post to particular sites and Knowem which can help you reserve your name on hundreds of different sites quickly. There is also Tweetmeme and Wefollow, both of which can be used to follow trends and keep track of what is being Tweeted at any particular moment. Twittervision can be used to find people in your local geographic area who are active with Twitter.
• Tools to follow people in a specific industry, or share lists of Twitter users, include Listorious and  Tweepml. It seems that Buzzable has gone out of business, as Paul mentioned in the podcast.
• Quora is a site where you post questions and track answers via Tweets.

There is a lot more suggestions from both hosts. You can download the podcast (21:05) here.

Today, things are very different. Freelance rates have fallen through the floor as publications have shriveled and community journalism operations like Associated Content and Demand Media have brought legions of writers into the market working for pennies on the dollar. They produce a lot of content, but is it any good?

David and Paul are all for media democratization, but they also believe the quality of some of the information we get today has declined precipitously over the past few years. One example is product reviews and analysis. While more people than ever are beating on the new iPad and documenting their experiences these days, few of them apply the methodological rigor and discipline of professional reviewers. It’s easy to get opinions now, but not necessarily opinions you can trust.

Hands-on technical reviews have been a major part of David’s business for a long time, and he’s adjusting to the new world by self-publishing and finding new sponsors for his expertise. Our hosts tackle the pros and cons of freelance destruction. Are we really better off?

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“Attn: BP Employees- Office supplies do not belong to you. Please have some respect for other people’s property. #bpcares” is just one of the more than 400 scathingly funny barbs the prankster has posted over the past three months. On the day the cap was finally put in place, the author wrote, “Well, that wasn’t so hard.”

@BPGlobalPR has amassed a following 10 times larger than @BP_America, which is the oil company’s real Twitter account. What’s more, it now overwhelms BP’s real Twitter presence in search results.

This isn’t the only case in which Twitter squatters have embarrassed major brands. @ATT_Wireless_PR is doing the same thing with less success, at least so far. We discuss what challenges this creates for public relations departments and debate whether the world needs an independent authority to regulate user IDs as well as domains.

Play:

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One of the most remarkable aspects of Twitter is the number of third-party applications that have sprung up, which range from useful services like polling utilities to one that lets you calculate how much time you waste tweeting.

Rather than trying to list these apps individually, here are two massive collections of Twitter applications:

100 Twitter Tools to Help You Achieve All Your Goals

Twitter Fan Wiki

For the record, both our hosts recommend TweetDeck to more efficiently manage the flood of messages. Paul likes Monitter to track hot topics. They also agree that search.twitter.com is a fast and efficient search engine that lets you save results as RSS feeds so you can keep track of what people are saying about you at your own convenience.

(17:35)

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The Traveling Mamas site features a wonderfully homespun and playful voice layered onto the sage experience of people who know how to travel. Fifteen months after launch, it’s getting 50,000 visitors a month and a bouquet of awards, citations and recommendations from media outlets and other bloggers. The four mamas post prodigiously and their audience is  coveted by destination marketers, who compete to get their attention. It’s all rather overwhelming and unexpected.

Shannon is Cajun Mama. She joins us midway through a trip in the Georgia wilderness. In 93 programs, this is the first time David and Paul have ever interviewed someone under these circumstances. Listen to find out more.

Also listen to find out about the nearly disastrous bicycling accident David suffered last week. He’s okay, but instead of sending flowers, he’d like listeners to support his ride for the National MS Society.

Listen to the podcast (17:01) (right click and choose “Save As…” to download)

Hosein believes that in the future media will be atomized and spread among millions of special interest “reporters,” few of whom will call themselves journalists.  This will ultimately be a superior model, but the process of breaking down old institutions and constructing new ones won’t be pretty.  In this interview, he addresses the question of whether journalism is dying and how aggregation may become the journalist’s most important role in the new democratized media.

Listen to the podcast (21:00) (right click and save to download)

Their concerns are certainly valid, but our commentators agree that new sources of trusted information will invariably emerge.  The problem is that we are currently in an uncomfortable netherworld between the decline of the old and the birth of the new.

Listen to the podcast (16:18) (right click and save to download)

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Kelly has both watched and orchestrated these plays throughout his 25-year career in public relations. As a strategist for Oracle  in the late 1990s, he helped that company create an anti–PC message in a bid to position itself as a leading rival to Microsoft. The strategy successfully attracted huge attention.

In 2006, Kelly founded The Playmaker’s Standard, a Washington D.C.-based management consulting and software services firm that helps businesses understand and implement playmaking strategies. The company developed The Playmaker’s Table, a grid similar to the periodic table of the elements that provides a graphical representation of a business’s strategic options and advice on how to counter competitive moves. A clip of one of some of the 25 strategies the firm has identified is at right. Kelly also authored The Elements of Influence, a book that describes the Playmaker’s Standard.

In this interview, Alan Kelly describes the thinking behind The Playmaker’s Standard and offers examples of how it is used in the worlds of business and politics every day. He notes that the strategies are just as applicable to collaborating and managing reputations as they are to competing for market share.

Be sure to check out his Plays of the Day, which analyze current events in the context of the Playmaker’s framework. It’s at www.plays2run.com and on Twitter @playmakeralan.

Download the podcast (19:52)

As complex as search engines are, the trick to getting in their good graces is no trick at all, Moran says.  You need quality content, focused topics and links from other sites on the Internet that have similar characteristics.

But his advice goes beyond simple keywords and page titles.  Search engine optimization is about understanding the motivations and interests of the people you want to visit you, Moran says. It’s like the old line about buyers of drill bits not being in the market for drill bits, but rather for holes.  Marketers often think of keyword strategies in terms of their products, when what visitors want is a solution to problems.  The terms visitors use to define those problems may be completely different from the ones companies use to describe their products. That’s only one of the many thought-provoking ideas in Search Engine Marketing, Inc., which is now in its second edition.

More recently, Moran has published Do It Wrong Quickly: How the Web Changes the Old Marketing Rules, a book that challenges conventional wisdom by encouraging marketers to try lots of ideas, even if many of them don’t pan out. The reason? On the Internet, you can change anything, so don’t be afraid to experiment.

Mike Moran is an expert in Internet marketing, search technology, Web personalization, and Web metrics. He’s also an active blogger on the subject of search and Internet marketing. Since retiring from IBM after 30 years with the title of Distinguished Engineer in 2007, he’s maintained an active consulting and speaking business. He also serves as Chief Strategist for Converseon, a leading digital media marketing agency.

Download the podcast here (20:30)