Twitter: the best social network for your business and career

In my humble opinion Twitter is undoubtedly the most deceiving social network in terms of its usefulness. Usually the first reaction when you talk about Twitter is “what a nonsense! Write text messages of just 140 characters so anyone can read them.” I must admit I had the same reaction and it took me quite some time to understand it as a concept. Until I decided to use it completely. Then I discovered a true world of possibilities. Today it is definitely my favorite network, the one that I use most and the one that I can have more advantage of.

If used well, Twitter allows you to keep up in real time with everything that interests you. Greatly facilitates communicating with people (and customers) with the same interests, and monitors what is being said out there about you or your company. It spreads very fast and with a good impact on your organization information. You can contact people with people of the strangest specialties very quickly thanks to the multiplier effect of the network. And much more.

The maximum length of 140 characters for each tweet, which a priori may seem a limitation, actually force you to be very concise and condense a lot of information in a small space or go straight to the point. Thanks to this you can read the tweets of the people you follow very fast and is very easy to find what really interests you.

People who participate in Twitter is usually much more participating and proactive than other social networks. Its importance as a source of global information is growing and it has become popular to the point that even TVs have a “hashtag” to allow anyone to participate through twitter.

Here are a few tips to start using Twitter

1. Pick a good name and profile
   Obviously that is free, but think hard before you decide. The name you choose should reflect your target with good social network. If you have no intention of using it to tweet but rather to follow other people, perhaps the name is not very important. But you never know when you'll want to start being active. Unless you are going to use it as a profile to send comedy tweets (like many people do), a good choice is serious name, and better if it reflects your real name somehow or your company name.
   
   In any case your name should be as short as possible. The longer it is other user will have less space to mention you.Work on your profile, choose a good photo (or at least a nice image) and put a bit about yourself: everyone likes to know who to follow and who follows them. Also, if you put your interests or your job other users are more likely to get interested in you (if that's your intention, of course).
2. Choose thoroughly who you follow
   When you start using Twitter nobody follows you and also you will follow noone. Set aside your friends here (remember that you have Facebook) and think of the people of your interest areas that you think may be on Twitter. Also in enterprises, as it is very likely that the major companies in your area or interest are present in this network. Find all of this possible Twitter users using the search in Twitter directly, or even a search engine with the desired name and then the word Twitter.
   
   If you are not interested in posting, however you want to keep up with those you care about, you just have to worry to follow the right people. There are online directories sorted by categories: wefollow.com, twellow.com are a couple of good starting points to find interesting people to follow. Twitter itself will suggest users constantly. Ah! And check who are following the people you follow, you will always find interesting users.
   
   Check out the "timeline" of those people to see what they have posted in recent days. If you see most of the posts are of the type "I get up", "I'm going to work", "I'm taking a beer" or it is someone that posts something every two minutes, then it is not a good candidate to follow. The important thing is to see they post on a regular basis (but not too much) and what they post is generally related to your interests.
   
   By the way, you can follow me here. I post from a pseudonym as I share the Twitter account with a partner and we post a little of anything, especially links to our recent posts or about the app we are developing.
   
   
3. Post things you that have interest and don't get dispersed
   This advice is actually the same as above but from your point of view. Obviously, as you will not want to follow someone cumbersome, and of course, you don't want that somebody think that about you. For this reason: focus the topics of your posts, share links, "retweet" interesting things to read and, for heaven's sake, avoid FourSquare and similar social networks except that is what you are looking for. If you want people to follow you, you will need to advertise and disseminate your account too, so put it in your email signature, your facebook profile, your blog or personal website, and slowly, if your tweets are interesting you will grow your followers. Be wary of so-called experts that tell you techniques to get hundreds of followers in a few days. Nor is meaningless start following people aimlessly hoping that they follow you automatically. It is way better a few concerned followers that many followers but worthless.
   Moreover, your followers say a lot about you too. In my case, before going to follow someone apart from checking their "timeline" also look who they follow and who follows them. When I meet people who have 30,000 followers, but they still turn to 45,000 is a very bad sign. Most often, the best tweeters to follow just a few people in proportion to the followers they have. If they follow thousands of people, is because they do are not really following their tweets. And those who follow tens of thousands of people, are usually robots or people who have bought their followers in exchange of an automatic follow.
   
   
4. Make lists
   I follow a few people because I'm really interested in what they say. When I tried to follow more than 200 tweeters I could not pay attention. I often check the "timeline" several times a day to see what draws my attention. But I also mane lists (private in my case), classifying people by topics of my interest. You can classify them according to the criteria that best suits you.
   
   The beauty of assigning people to lists is that you don't have to follow them and this does not add "noise" to your "timeline", but at the same time you have it available to check their tweets.
   The lists should not be very large either. Precisely the aim of the lists is that you can visit them from time to time and do not miss interesting tweets from people you care about. If there are too many people on the list will look much like the "timeline" and you'll see a lot of "noise". Keeping them small and selective and avoiding people who do post as submachine guns, you'll find useful information classified into categories that make sense to you.
   
   Another similar utility is the ability to save searches. You can keep searching for words, hashtags, etc ... to consult from time to time and find out news on specific subjects. Do not underestimate this possibility.
   
   
5. Do not use directly Twitter
   Today Twitter essentially provides APIs to manage their information. Though of course you can use Twitter from its interface, it is limited in many things on the market and many applications for all systems and devices that enable richer interact with the service. Thus it will be easier to answer, follow conversation threads, monitor keywords (hashtags) or searches, generate and follow shortened links, etc ... My favorite application is Hootsuite which is free and web based, with versions for iPhone and Android, but there are many more like Seesmic or Tweetdeck to name the best known. Try some of these Twitter clients and see many other possibilities, such as to schedule tweets at a certain time or get detailed statistics about the clicks on the links you've posted.
   
   
6. Use shortened links
   This advice is pretty obvious, since we only have 140 characters available, if you put a long URL then you will not have enough space to share with the text and, in extreme cases, you will not even be able to enter the URL. This services like Bit.ly or Goo.gl, or the ones built-in with some of the tools mentioned in the previous point, offer a simple, convenient way to point to the same pages with very few characters. Twitter offers its own integrated shortener, but I personally do not like it much because it shows part of the URL but uses a different address. Besides you can't get click statistics with it.
   
   As an added benefit the shortening generally provide statistical control of clicks that are made on the links and the "Tweets" made with them, which is very interesting, especially for businesses. Most Twitter clients like those mentioned above, are integrated with a shortening service, which further simplifies the use of these short URLs.
7. Use hashtags to mark the topic
   The "hashtags" are short tags preceded by a "hash" (#) decorating the tweets to tie them to a particular topic. Thus, it is usual to include them in each post to indicate the topic or topics being addressed. These hashtags become links that you can click and view all the tweets on the same topic. You can also search for hashtags, and thus find things that interest us or see what people are saying about it. For example, if you want to search for a new job as a developer you may try to search for "#work #developer".
   
   The hashtags are also used to find real-time information on certain topics. For example, something as prosaic as follow people's comments in a television program, but other as important as following the progression of a catastrophe or any kind of event. This is a real case that happened to me and thousands of other people where the hastags became really useful when, a few years ago, we were stuck all over the world due to the famous volcanic ash cloud from Iceland. It was enough to monitor #ashtag and #ashcloud to be aware in real time of everything that was going on regarding this issue, and the latest news as they are produced. Even to find other travelers trapped to share transportation and get out from Luxembourg (which is where I was).

Conclusions

Indeed, social media can become a scourge for your productivity. But if you use them the right way, in its scope and specific purpose, might be very helpful.

You can use them to keep in touch with friends and family or to enhance your hobbies. We can take advantage in our workplace or to keep up with subjects that interest you, even in real time. It is also possible that your intention is to reach many people and use them as a means of promoting your business or activity.

In any case you must learn to use them well and can go from being a waste of time to be your best allies.

I hope you have served to encourage you to use if you did not, or better use if you were already using it.

Remember to check our timeline in the sidebar and also follow me on @sikkxo
In any case I hope this post was useful and interesting!

Nintendo 3DS, una consola también para adultos

Hace unos días que iba detrás de una 3DS, después de pasar grandes momentos con mi DS Lite ya tocaba hacer una renovación viendo los nuevos juegos que están saliendo se está convirtiendo en la consola más interesante del momento, ante la espera de las nuevas consolas que mejor que algunos juegos portables para pasar ratos perdidos.

Mi juego de referencia es el nuevo Fire Emblem, exclusivo de 3DS. Tras jugar a varios juegos de la saga y ver algunos vídeos y reviews fue el factor que me hizo decidirme a comprar la Nintendo 3DS.

Después de tenerla en las manos sorprende el efecto 3D sin gafas, en los pocos juegos que probado suele estar bien implementado, aunque en algunos deja un poco que desear o en otros llega a marear un poco.

La consola

Primero de todo necesitamos decidirnos si comprar la consola sola o bien optar por uno de los packs que incluyen un juego. Cómo andaba detrás del Fire Emblem vi que estaba en venta un pack de 3DS con el Fire Emblem, por tanto mataba dos pájaros de un tiro. Pero hay un problema, el juego viene instalado en la tarjeta SD de la consola y no en un cartucho, por lo que nos es imposible compartirlo o dejarlo a un amigo. Por ello me decidí por comprar la consola sola.

El cargador

Uno de las pegas que tiene la 3DS es que en ninguno de los packs de la consola se incluye ningún cargador, una medida recaudatoria que en nuestra opinión deja a Nintendo muy mala imagen. Si quieren evitar que tengamos cargadores repetidos lo tienen muy fácil que le pongan un micro-usb que todos tenemos en casa. Tras comprar un cargador compatible en ebay que tan sólo enchufarlo se quemó, os recomiendo comprar uno original en amazon cuando compréis la consola, aunque luego cabe decir que me enviaron otro que funcionó correctamente, dónde lo encontraréis unos euros más barato que en las tiendas, y así evitaréis la odisea de encontrarlo y el precio que tuve que pagar.

El protector de pantalla

En mi DS Lite me recomendaron usar ya el primer día un protector de pantalla, en definitiva una pegatina que protege la pantalla ante arañazos, me recomendaron que ante todo comprara los protectores Hori que en su momento eran de importación japonesa pero que se podían encontrar en tiendas online. Y la verdad comparando mi DS Lite con otras que he visto me hace estar convencido de que fue la mejor decisión, teniendo en cuenta que la sensibilidad de la pantalla táctil no varió en absoluto. Así que pues me decidí a buscar también si existían protectores Hori para 3DS y así es, además parece que son los protectores de pantalla oficiales de Nintendo. No dudéis en gastar los pocos euros que valen para mantener vuestra 3DS en las mejores condiciones posibles.

Los juegos

En cuanto a los juegos, en mi humilde opinión y para mi gusto, no hay muchos que destaquen, por una parte el que ya os he mencionado, el Fire Emblem, por otra el Shin Megami Tensei IV, que todavía no está disponible en europa son mis dos compras seguras. He estado revisando la tienda online y no ofrece ninguna ventaja, es mejor comprarlos en amazon, dónde los precios son mucho más baratos. Lo que tiene de bueno la tienda online es poder descargar, por fin, demos para probar alguno de los juegos que estemos pensando en comprar.

Fire Emblem Awakening

Qué decir más, a parte que es un juego de estrategia por turnos, un juego clásico con las mejoras que tienen los juegos más actuales y para mí el mejor juego de la 3DS del momento.

Bravely Default

Este juego, de los creadores de Final Fantasy, es una mezcla entre RPG clásico y las novedades de los juegos modernos, al igual que comentaba con el Fire Emblem, este más orientado a los fans de los RPG más clásicos. No tenía intención de comprarlo pero tras probar la demo no me he podido resistir, probadlo y veréis como también caeis.

Super Mario 3D Land

Este juego me lo ha dejado un amigo y aunque no soy un gran fan de los juegos de mario, reconozco que es divertido y es fenomenal para dedicarle un ratito a pasar alguna de las pantallas.


Gracias por leernos!

A few thougths about the new console generation and what should we expect

Many of us have talked at length about the new console generation, before and after their release by the end of last year, even many of us did a comparison of their best points, but after a few months, and even the more than successful sales, the new generation has yet to really start.

Why? Many will agree that there is a lack of games that justify the purchase of a PS4 or an Xbox One, this is the main reason really. Yes, these new consoles offer much more, but we buy'em to play and there are no good games to play yet.

But, of course, this step was necessary, the last generation was getting obsolete comparing to the new hardware, but even then, last year last generation's best games were launched, like GTA V: the masterpiece of Rockstar, and good new games also get their PS3 and Xbox 360 version. These makes that a few of us even want to get an old generation's console for cheap, taking advantage of the new generation launch.

But today we are seeing that this generation release was unprepared and hasty, as many games are getting delayed, probably for a lack of development time and experimenting with the new hardware. But we can expect that by the end of year, and especially next year, some good games will appear that will justify the purchase.

Also there will be others who get benefited, for example the PC, with PS3's different architecture and the lack of power compared to today's computers, many good games were not optimized to get the most out of PC possibilities. These makes a good time to get an ssd to upgrade your PC, or even make a components update to start fresh. The second hand market also gets more active in periods where there are more console sales, so this is a good time to check Ebay for offers with Where Should I Buy?, and also other consoles' increase their sales, the 3ds is a good option for adult audience as well.

You can also try Where Should I Buy? a service that gives you the best online stores to buy, check it for a PS4 or an Xbox One.

Thanks for reading!

8 recommendations to buy at amazon from UK

This is a list of recommendations that I can give you from my experiences buying at amazon in the last years:

1. Starting by the most logical buying from UK you should first go to amazon.co.uk, it has a complete selection, maybe not as much as amazon.com. Also you have to take into account that amazon.co.uk offers free shipping for orders with a cost of £10, you can check the detailed info on amazon's deliveries site.
2. Where Should I Buy?, a third party website offers a simple service that searches the best online stores, of course, amazon included, and compares its price for different countries, easy and faster than amazon website.
3. When you want to buy on other amazon locales, look out for the exchange rates and use Amazon Currency Converter, the automatic exchange tool of amazon, so when you are reviewing your order will be in your preferred currency, without bank surprises.
4. Be careful buying at amazon.com, due to customs, as the package will get dispatched from USA, is probable that gets reviewed and hold, although amazon now includes an extra for the customs. If you sum it up with the delivery the price gets too high, that's the main reason why I always have bought in the European amazons.
5. Try to buy products that amazon is the seller, third party products are recommendable always that amazon manages their delivery then you will able to combine the delivery costs for the different products or the delivery is free of charge, else you will have to pay deliveries for each of the articles.
6. Third party product are more recommendable to buy on your country's amazon, to avoid future problems with refunds. Also check thoroughly the delivery costs.
7. Check prices in all European amazons before buying anything, one account can be used in all country's amazons, amazon.de, amazon.it, amazon.fr, amazon.es and amazon.co.uk, put the product on your basket and start confirming your order, in the last step, the review page, you will see the final price in your currency (if you activated the Currency converter), with this price you will be able to make a real comparison between countries.
8. And for last, patience if you want to buy at good prices, keep in mind that at amazon prices oscillate constantly, it may be because the product has not sold very well or it receives many visits, we don't really know the real reasons. But to keep track of the prices we use a windows application to monitor the prices and check its evolution called Wishlist Manager, this way we buy the price when the price is lower.