Do You Have a Digital Business Card? (Register for .tel for free)...

We all want to be found more easily online when our friends, potential clients and employers Google us. We've set up our LinkedIn profiles, started blogging, created websites, invited others to be our friends on Facebook and tweeted like crazy on Twitter. With all of these fragmented presences online, wouldn't it be nice to have a directory of all the places we can be found, plus the option to include our email address, phone number and tags which help the right people find us and get in touch?

Ready for Yet Another Social Platform? Here Comes Google Buzz...

Are you ready for a new social platform? Here comes Google Buzz, which brings social elements right into you Gmail inbox. With so many of us using Gmail, this just might stick. It will be rolling out over the next week. You'll be notified when it is live for your account.

What is Your Favorite “Real-time” Tool?...

The theme of LeWeb '09 was "The Realtime Web," but what exactly "is" realtime? And, at what point, do realtime tools stop being new toys which only geeky people use and start becoming so embedded into our everyday lives that we don't really think about them, but can't imagine living without them?

LeWeb Bingo! Watch and Play Along!...

Here in Paris, the excitement about LeWeb is palpable. While the actual conference will take place over the next two days, there are many pre-conference parties and activities today. For those of you who aren't lucky enough to be here, the entire event will be streamed live. If for any reason, that link doesn't work, just go to the LeWeb homepage, I'm sure there will be an updated link, if needed. Whether you are participating in person or via the web, I invite you to have a little fun with the content by playing LeWeb Bingo. If you've never played bingo, it works like this:

Moments and The Power of Not Laughing...

I didn't know what to expect. The guy was a complete stranger, yet here we were having a delightful and very natural conversation. We talked about our kids, observations about life and social media. A few days prior to our meeting, I saw a tweet from this guy saying he'd be in the Bay Area and asking if anyone wanted to get together.

I’m Engaged! (4 Tales of Accidental Twitter Friends)...

It's true, I'm engaged. No, not that kind of engaged. I'm virtually engaged - listening to conversations and building relationships online. As with other networking platforms, I use Twitter primarily for business purposes. Still, as we all know, even when we network and use social media for business, we don't talk about business 100% of the time, right?

Help Me Help You – When You Have Questions...

If you are online using any sort of social media, you know that it has been a wild roller-coaster lately. The primarily networking platforms which many of us use - Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn - have all undergone huge changes, seemingly at a breakneck pace. Some have been communicated in advance, many weren't. Some have been well-received, many have led to frustration. A few have worked well immediately upon launch, most seem full of bugs and perform inconsistently.

Creating Evangelists: Social Media the Cirque du Soleil Way...

As part of Cirque du Soleil's social media strategy, a number of bloggers attending BlogWorld in Las Vegas were invited to attend one of their fabulous shows. With six completely different Cirque shows in Las Vegas, choosing one proved a daunting task. As a result, I am now official ruined. It is hard to imagine any theatrical experience topping the feast for the senses that is LOVE, Cirque's tribute to The Beatles. It is a high energy show in which cast members defy gravity and the line between performance space and audience members is blurred. It's as if LOVE dug deep into my imagination and created it all on stage, and making it all much cooler and more psychedelic in the process.

Twitter Allows “Real” Connections. I Defy You to Disagree....

If you believe Twitter is a place where only trivial information is shared, I invite you to read the "tweets" posted by Apple engineer, Mike Lee (@bmf) today. Read from the bottom up. Mike's friend, Vinay Venkatesh (@djgraphite) died today as a result of a motorcycle accident here in the Bay Area. I don't know Mike, but his pain is real and palpable. I can't begin to imagine his thoughts as he shared these updates on his friend's condition with anyone who might be listening. As Robert Scoble (@scobleizer) tweeted tonight, "Who the hell said 140 characters can't make a grown man cry?"

Use Social Media to Be Human: Tips from Michael Brito...

Sure, we've seen big brands using social media. We see them online on Facebook and Twitter, though we're not always quite sure what they're doing there. Are they there to sell products? Reply to customer complaints? Monitor our conversations? More importantly, if they are using the tools and platforms sucessfully, is there anything that those of us with small businesses can learn from them? Are the strategies applicable to small businesses without the same brand recognition?