Category — Tech Helps

Whether you are a blogger or someone who forwards YouTube videos to all your friends on your distribution list the following website gives some great tips on how to make YouTube more useful for you.

By adding the following extentions listed in the link to YouTube URL’s you can do such things as have a video start at a specific spot in a video, disable the related video feature, autoloop or autoplay an embedded video.  Great hacks to know

LINK: 10 YouTube URL Tricks You Should Know About

140 characters or less to tell the world what you are doing.  Twitter is being used today by everything from News Media Outlets to bloggers using the network to self-promote (guilty as charged).  Recently Kevin Rose, founder of two of my favorite media outlets digg.com and Revision3, talked about ways to increase your Twitter followers.  Kevin should know a thing or two about this being the #2 most followed person on Twitter behind President Barack Obama only.  Read the full story here.  By the way, you can follow me on Twitter by going to www.twitter.com/jalbright

Thoughts come at the most random times.  For me it is almost always while I am in the shower and while I am driving.  I still have yet to come up with the idea for the shower but I do have a solution for the car or in any other situation where you need to make a hands-free note: Jott.com.

My cell phone is programmed to dial up (866) JOTT-123 anytime I need to make a 15-30 second note to myself or even someone else.  Pulling out of work I will all of the sudden remember that I forgot to get Mr. Portwood the TPS report with the new coversheet on it.  Thats ok – I just dial Jott and say, “First thing in the morning make sure to get Portwood the TPS report.” Jott will then convert my voice into an email that goes straight to my inbox within about 10 minutes.

Until about 3 months ago Jott was completely free, however, most of the services still today come at no cost.  Additional things that I use Jott for are:

Updating my status on Facebook and Twitter

Sending myself a task on Remember the Milk (more on this cool web app later)

Sending someone an email or text message (now part of premium service)

Posting to my blog (tried and tested on Blogger and WordPress)

Give it a test.  Its not always 100% accurate, but I would say that about 90% of my words now are right on.  Do not expect Jott to serve as your personal secretary – the woman on the other line cuts you off at about the 30 second mark so dont expect it to transcribe your entire days notes at that incredibly captivating continuing education course you just sat through.

If you have an iPhone Jott has released a FREE app that will do all the dirty work minus a phone call.