The latest and greatest digital tool you've found?

The latest digital tool that I have used is a website and app called Basecamp. It is a project management software that we use at my internship. On it you can create projects, tasks/to do lists, have discussions, and check off tasks when completed. It is a great way for us to stay orgainzed and know where all the interns are at on their projects. Rather than having to report back to our director personally/ have a converstaion with her, she receives a daily overview. I recommend this digital tool to help stay orgainzed and on top of things.

A cool tool that I use often is Pulse. It is an app that I use on my phone and they recently have had it updated to be used online as well. Pulse allows me to pick topics of news that intrest me and have articles from across the web come directly to my app. Pulse allows me to find information on relevant topics right when I want to. It pulls articles from sites that actually intrest me so I do not have to search through unwanted materials. 

Soundcloud and Evernote are the latest digital tools I have found the most helpful. For me being a busy student and a fan of cloud-based systems Evernote is the best option. Evernote is a very simplified version of all the other services available. I can access my account from my tablet or smartphone and document any kind of information. Afterwards I can synchronize this information taken in class for instance on all of my devices.

Soundcloud is especially useful for unknown artist or people who like to follow their favorite artists. Many artist also share their music via Soundcloud and connect it to Facebook. Thus they keep their fans updated on new releases. Especially for the music industry this is a very useful tool.

The greatest digital tool that I use in recent is spotify. I've used many music steaming services such as grooveshark, pandora, and 8tracks. I think spotify is the best one, because it is also free and usable in mobile devices. And then, spotify provides own program on computer, so it can be related to iTunes and provide more services than other ones that only available on web page. So, I think spotify will share biggest proportion on music streaming market.

Earlier this year, I discovered DropBox. Its an easy to use online hard drive, essientially. You can sinc it to all of your devices so that you are always logged on and have all your information readily available on your computer, phone, iPad, etc. Additionally, you can share select folders with anyone else on the site. Its great for group projects and meeting new people with common interests (I have found several photography folders to be quite interesting, where the communities encourage members to upload photos within certain guidelines and comment on others). 

The latest digital tool that I have found to be helpful is Hootsuite. Hootsuite is a social media site that that puts all of your social media sites into one dashboard. It includes facebook, twitter, linkedin, youtube, instagram, google plus, tumblr and more. You can track your mentions, schedule things to be posted at specific times, and you can also track the traffic of your social media profiles. I have found this site to be extremely convenient because I can check everything at once and its saves me a lot of time.

The latest and greatest digital tool that I have found that can help others is Evernote. Evernote makes it simple to, "capture everything, access anywhere, and find things fast". It is a free digital tool where you can save things you see and like, and sync these ideas to any sort of mobile device or computer. Evernote allows for users to search for ideas by keyword, tags, and typed or handwritten notes inside images.

I have found SoundCloud very useful for finding new music. This site gives you access to tons of artists and songs. Artist can use the site to post new music for downloads or previews. I notice that my friends who are DJs often use this site to post thier newest music and leak some samples of tracks they are working on. This helps the artist connect with the fans and get feedback. Both artist and fans can benefit from this tool.

One new digital tool that I have discovered and started to use lately is SoundCloud. This is a very cool digital music sharing site. On the site you can sign up with Facebook so you can share music or discover what your firends are listening too. You can use the site like a giant digital library of music and you have acess to the entire sit as long as you are a member. If you are a paying member you can listen to the music ad free and if you want you can share your own music on the site also. It is a great tool to share and learn about yourself, friends and potetntial clients if you are in the entertainment industry.

Like others here, I've recently found out how useful Evernote can be. I have been a heavy user of cloud drive services like Dropbox and Skydrive for years now, but Evernote has proven to be much more than a simple folder. I love how I am able to save virtually anything to my account, whether it's a web page, screenshot, document, or quick idea. I also love that it's on my phone as well as my computer, making it infinitely more useful when I'm away from my laptop. It makes me more productive and helps me organize the important things in my life.

With a recent social media internship, I've been using Hootsuite every week. I am in charge of posting the tweets for LSJ Media every week. It's nice to sit down on a Sunday night and log into Hootsuite and schedule the tweets for the entire week so I don't have to worry about posting them throughout the week. I know this will be a helpful tool in my future, because the advertising industry is correlated so strongly with social media. I have applied to several internships for this summer and some of the positions I have applied for are social media related, and I know my knowledge of Hootsuite will benefit me. Hootsuite allows me to plan each tweet out for the week with exactly what time I want them posted along with which Twitter account to post them on, through Hootsuite I can also post onto our Facebook page as well. It's a great social media tool. 

This class has exposed me to great digital tools I never would have come across or considered. With a new found curiosity for digital tools, I found something called Touristlink. It’s a website that helps travelers research, explore, and plan a trip to any destination around the world. The genius idea though, is it works like a social platform so you get to interact with tourists, locals and travelers. Touristlink is considered the largest social network that connects travelers and locals. It’s a great place to read reviews on places, tours, guides, and discover new trip ideas. The website highlights the top packages and lets you browse the trips locals offer. Each trip is linked to the provider’s social profiles, where reviews and contact information are provided. If you can’t find what you want, or have a specific request for a trip or service, the website allows you to broadcast it across the network and you’ll start getting offers right away! I can only imagine all the ways business can advertise their products and services on this website, and having the opportunity of people endorsing them increases credibility, recognition and awareness.
Learn more about this social platform for travel, where you can meet fellow travelers, share information, suggest new attractions and create lists of your favorite destinations to share with friends.

One of my most favorite digital tools I use is SoundCloud. This is an amazing tool for anyone with an interest in music, whether they create their own or follow other artists. The site allows users to browse though millions of people's profiles that consist of music they have created or reposted from other musicians. This website is my key to finding new great music. I have to say, I spend more time on SoundCloud then any other social media. It allows me to follow my favorite artists and get to see all of their newest releases. SoundCloud is a great tool for the music industry.

A great tool I have been using recently is Evernote, which is a great tool for provding access to notes, documents, and other files across multiple devices such as a laptop, tablet, and smartphone. It is a great tool for staying organized with notes and .pdf files for classes with a great GUI.

A digital tool I recently discovered that looks pretty awesome is Vicelight. Basically Vicelight is a polling system where you can post anything from what outfit you want to wear to what house you should rent. You upload a video or photo with a question and let others help you decide when you can't come to a clear answer on your own. I think this is a great tool for companies to get their consumers involved from picking a new design for their company website or deciding what new product should come out next.

Cutting, Copying, Filming, Flipping and Hacking

Credit must be given where it is due, so thank you to Melissa Silek for suggesting Social Mention. My office is wrestling with monthly costs incurred by a new media clipping service.

While Google Alerts (another good ditigal tool, but not so new) is very good, and free, it doesn't quite scoop up all that we know is out there in the media relations world. The free-of-charge Social Mention, on an all search, found some videos our office wasn't aware of. Plus, it rated strength, sentiment, passion, reach and told the timeframe of the last mention and how many authors were involved. It also delivered -- ta da -- TOP KEYWORDS. These are indeed the keywords we believe we make our "own" especially in this particular event that was videotaped and posted to YouTube.

Local Tool Creates the Buzz

My favorite tool, last year and this year, and this is class- and office useful is Snagit. It's not a mini database or keep-track-of-your-media-tool. It's a screenshot tool that allows images to be saved in a variety of formats and sizing, including high resolution. That makes it useful for print reports as well as blogging, tweeting, facebook posts and other copying duties. TechSmith, right here in town, is the software writer, manufacturer and distributor. You can test it for free for 30 days. The price is not $0, but $45 is affordable in my realm. It works all the time. Easily downloadable and installable. Copies text, iamges, video. Encompasses drawing tools and tags. Allows colors. Image can be emailed and shared. Folks in my office, when I share documents and other materials with such screenshots, want to know: how'd you do that?

TechSmith is also the maker of Jing, another nicely done tool that allows video screenshots to be made with voiceovers. The resulting video can be stored on another server, emailed, shared and re-used. Quick tutorials are easy to follow (in my case over and over again!)

Best of the Web (Measuring Value) Tools

Thanks to one of the resources discovered during readings, I took a whirl on HubShout's services. They are among a myriad of such softwares available, but oddly enough, not quite as vigorously marketed as other web metric software and consulting services. During the course of this course, I'm experimented with mostly personal, rather than corporate forays, into social media.

Now, I'm more willing to shift gears into a more corporate stance, developing a digital marketing strategy for my office (or one of our units) (I hope that's approved of) as part of a more complete and complex integrated marketing strategy for all our units (3-4).

As a result, I'm looking for ROI values and defenders that will encourage director (read that as CEO) buy-in. They are not active in social media, nor do they encourage its use. To the tools: Open Site Explorer, engineered by SEOmoz offered inbound link measures, including a number we have not previously been aware of.

Those can be tapped as lead generators and as opportunities for other engagement -- keywords, outbound personal engagement, news releases, e.g. The free version limits the search to three reports per day, or the pro membership is more powerful.

Back now to HubShout. As the office has a recently updated website, it's appropriate to establish some benchmarks. Using HubShout's monthly traffic values measurement, showing the value of each. The measure also detects more keywords than Social Measure, creates a scatter plot, top ranking content, domain authority, links and other measures for up to three competitors. In this case, I just had to look at one, really:

Now that's the real meat of the matter!

One of my new favorite tools that I use is called Hashtracking. I am an admin for several online profiles at my internship, and we use this tool to help track levels of engagment and group participants in a conversation on Twitter. It allows you to split participants into 4 categories: Leaders, People who were engaged, Just curious, and Wallflowers. It's pretty neat, and really allows you to look at the scope of a conversation. It puts into perspective how interesting the content that you post is, how long your reach is, and what kind of audience you attract. It's definitely something to use in a professional setting. 

It's not necessarily new, but I really enjoy g+. The ability to "hang out" with multiple people and have face to face conversations is exciting! Also having different circles is a great way to see what's happening with people important to you. It also offers great features for staying up on current events. I am happy to have been introduced to Google+ through NMDL.

I personally don't really use any digital tools but I have recently started using LinkedIn and I find it very helpful to start connecting with people I've gone to school with and have a similar career as what I am looking for.  It is also good to connect with family friends who are also in a similar career path that I am in.  I have also connected with companies and people who may help me in finding a summer internship this summer and possibly a career in the future.  I think LinkedIn is a great tool for people to connect on a business level rather than using Facebook which is more personal and sometimes may not reflect what type of business person you are or what you are searching for in a career.

One of the digital tools that I have found myself using more and more is Evernote. It is a great place to keep everything in sync. You are able to access pictures, personal documents, websites, videos and more, all in one place. One way I have used it that really worked to my advantage was when I was working on a group project. The two other people in my group actually had evernote as well and we were able to share all of our information in one place. I really helped us out because we were not able to meet in person as much as we had wanted. Definitely worth checking out!

Even though I haven't personally used Vine yet, I've really enjoyed watching other people's Vine videos more than I expected to when I first heard about it. It's a Twitter app that allows users to create 6 seconds or less of video content that is played on loop. At first I thought 6-second long videos would be really trivial and pointless, but the short time frame actually inspires more creativity I think. I have seen some really funny or sweet videos, like this one: https://vine.co/v/biTaEEwdq2n?1

I'm considering downloading this app soon and experimenting more with capturing short videos. I think it's a cool way to share experiences with friends, like Instagram, but taken to the next level, so it feels like the person watching was actually there.

Suprisingly, I found one of my favorite digital tools through the Communication Facebook Page! Somebody happened to post it in hopes of helping other students organize their hectic lives. Course Hack is an awesome new tool that I happend to stumble upon by accident. It's a free website that is used to help organize assignments and you can even upload your class syllabus to the website and it will organize your very own personal calendar. Course Hack will remind you of deadlines and help keep your life in track. As the website says "Start Hacking" today!

I like to read. I've recently signed up with Shelfari and created a digital bookshelf widget to display books I've read and own on my other networking sites. One great benefit of shelving your library by genre on Goodreads is that it will give you recommendations for further reading based on the contents of each of your shelves and how you've rated them. The recommendations are quite good, and the finer you divide your subgenres, the better they get. Unlike Amazon's "people who bought this also bought..."feature.

I just started to check out Social Mention I like it to check on our brand pages for Moosejaw to see what is happening real time and if our customers are talking about us. What are we doing well or poor? We are going to use it and see if it helps us track metions more often for our social channels.

It's not actually very new but HootSuite is one of my favorite apps to use to monitor social media, I used it for my internship this summer to monitor the company's facebook and twitter. It definitely made my job easier, instead of constantly checking each website, I could check hootsuite whenever I could and see what was being posted on either social media site. 

I think a very cool tool is the use of QR codes for the digital world. I have seen many companies use it, but I have also seen many people use it for personal use. It is very easy to just scan something so it goes directly to where you need it to go. I have seen a resume where you scan the QR on someone headshot photo and you place your phone down on the picture and it directs you to a video where it looks like the person is talking directly to you. QR can be used effectivily and have a different factor appeal to it. I recommened looking into how it can help you market yourself and others. 

As a part of my internship, i have to monitor facebook, two twitter accounts, and 4 different hashtags. This can get extremely difficult and hectic if it's not done right. Because of that, my favorite tool recently is Hootsuite. This allows me to have multiple columns for each of the things i have to monitor. With this, i can also post, reply, and monitor my mentions. Hootsuite also sends analytics, which allows us to see retweets, mentions, locations of our followers, the amount of times our links were opened, etc. I recommend this tool for anybody who needs to monitor social media.

Pegby is an interestingn and useful digital tool I recently use. It helps people organize their daily task. It is set up like a corkboard with index cards stuck to it. The corkboard has three columns. On each column people can place their index cards: a column for things to do, one for things in progress, and another for tasks that are completed. It's a free app and makes people's life more organized. 

While it is not a new website or app, I have found LinkedIn to be very useful lately in my search for a summer internship. I have been able to connect with companies that I admire which has led me to possible internship opportunities. I use the app alot to keep updated with the companies and organizations that I follow and to continually search for job opportunities. I have found many leads to internships through LinkedIn. I attended a seminar a few months back in CAS about LinkedIn and I learned some very valuable LinkedIn tools that I otherwise would not have known existed. If you really take the time to learn and investigate LinkedIn it can be the most valuable tool out there for connecting to job opportunities.

One of the latest and greatest digital tools I have found recently is Kyoo. Kyoo aggregates all the buzz around a specific topic from some of the most popular social mediums. This Web service collects data from Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTUbe, Google News, Google Blog Search and social bookmarking sites such as a Delicious, Digg and Reddit. Check this site out and lessen your time spent on "searching" all the buzz from Facebook, Youtube, and Twitter!!

I believe somebody may have already mentioned this, but I would have to say the square digital card reader that allows people to scan credit cards anywhere. This tool allows businesses a way to cheaply and conveniently process payments anywhere. I can definitely see this becoming the next big trend in payment options, and I think they could eventually integrate with PayPal also. This tool basically allows new, smaller companies more freedom in how they go about business, and with so many tech-driven companies coming out, the need will be prominent.

This isn't a digital tool I use, but I read an article about it a couple months ago and thought it was really interesting. It is called QR Living and they make QR coded wristbands that link to your personalized page for your exclusive social community, where you can share the information most important to you with the people who matter most to you. I’m not sure if this is going to be the next hot trend, but I guess we will find out if everyone starts wearing QR coded bracelets. 

The digital tool that I've been using lately is hootsuite. It's a social media dashboard that allows you to manage and measure all of your different social networks at once. You can schedule messages, posts, and tweets, to be posted at certain times for the future. You can also track mentions and keywords throughout all of your social profiles. There are also tool included that I haven't got to use yet, like a tool for analyzing traffic to your sites and profiles. It's a really conventient way to keep all of your social media in one place.

I like Buzzfeed, because it is a combination of news sharing, celebrity/culture updates, and hilarious videos and lists made by users. It is just a fun site to visit, because you can find something to lighten your mood every time, and occasionally learn something really neat. It could be useful for us if we work for organizations with items or ideas they want to spread to a lot of people. My facebook friends share a lot of stories from Buzzfeed (this is how I found it in the first place), and I think this site will grow in popularity and potentially be very useful for organizations down the road.

The greatest digital tool I have seen is the Square Card Reader. It is a credit card reader that attaches to the headphone jack of your iPhone or iPad. It is great for small businesses because it allows almost anyone to expand their business by not only accepting credit cards but by accepting them anywhere. I can see the store of the future not having cash registers or even counters. Just sales associates with Square devices and iPads walking around and scanning things as you go and then accepting payment anywhere in the store, eliminating lines and long waits. 

One of the latest digital tools that catch my attention is called “Mention”. It is a tool to “create alerts for your brand, your industry, your company, your name or your competitors and be informed in real-time about any mentions on the web and social web. It will be an efficient and useful tool to monitor the online environment for the company. I still remember when I was an intern in Ogilvy, the team leader wanted us give a very urgent overview report of the kidney stone crisis of a milk powder company. We searched Twitter, forum, Google and other online platforms or resources by typing in the key words and using our eyes to select and record the results. It was a very time-consuming and ineffective work, for the information kept updating so we had to do the same searching works again and again. Now “Mention” can give a correct overview in less than one second, and the users can customize the results such as block searching results from certain websites or choose to show positive or negative mentions. I think it is a very useful tool especially for the PR and advertising agencies. 

I think the greatest  digital tool I am using is Linkedin. It allows registered users to maintain a list of contact details of people they know and trust in business. This list can then be used to build business connections, to find jobs, and as a research tool to find out about someone before you do business with them.If your business is recruiting, LinkedIn can provide easy access to potential candidates that fit their required level of expertise.It is the ideal networking site to find the connections you need to grow your business.Linkedin can target a specific audience or audience group easily.It is possible for advertisers to reach their audience on Linkedin easily by talioring ads according to age,gender,group,interest etc.

The digital tool I have been using recently is called StudyBlue. It’s an app and a website where you can make your own flashcards and notes. You can also study other peoples note cards if they make them public. It is beneficial for current students and also for the future business opportunities. For example, if you are presenting, you can practice your speech on your phone while on your way to work.  

The most latest digital tool I am using is Trello. I'm not going to say it is the best becaues compared with other newly developed social media such as Pinterest or Instagram, Trello lags much behind. However, I am using it very often recently. It is a digital tool to record things you want to remind yourself or share tasks with others. It's kind of like Google Drive, in which, every member can edit the content. The benefit of using Trello is, it's very neat and crispy to create a card or a board, and the functions are easy to recognize and get familiar with. What I am doing with it is me and my supervisor are exchanging information on our working procedures in short term, such as what we have done, what we are doing right now, what we need to do next, and the problems in every phases. Technically, Trello does not have too many advantages over other digital tools, but it is a user-friendly tool that can share a market with other tools.

My favorite digital tool is called Cozi. Cozi is an app and website that helps you manage your busy life. Even though it’s designed to be used by families, it’s the perfect tool for me, a college student, to keep my life organized. With Cozi you are able to keep track of schedules, make to do lists and grocery lists, and even plan your meals for the week. Each Monday, Cozi sends me an email with reminders about my schedule for the coming week. Cozi is very user friendly and, best of all, it’s free! I would highly recommend to any who is sick of using iCal or Google calendar.

Although it may not be new, my favorite digital tool will ALWAYS be Zite. Zite is a digital magazine app (for both ipad and iphone) that you can customize based on your interests/your business. You can also post links that you like directly to all of your social sites, and, like Pandora, if you "like" one of the blogs or articles that you've read, your Zite magazine will automatically give you more blogs or articles similar to the one that you liked. 

This is a GREAT resource for anything (and everything) that you're interested in. It also allows you to completely familiarize yourself with the types of blogs in your area of business.

Teux Deux is the latest digital tool I've been using a lot. It's a digital to-do list that helps you to organize your tsks by the day and time. The difference between this tool and others is the easiness to use. You can easily type your list, cross your list off or move your list to other days. This is proving to be my favorite tool as of now, especially with the Android app!

A new digital tool I found is Adforum.  It is great for advertising majors, and has a breakdown of so many different categories of ads.  The best ads the worst ads.  I have found myself on the site for hours just analyzing what ads are good and bad and why.  I would check it out, its a great site. It also lists job oppurtunities and what advertising companies are working on now.  Its very interesting how avdertising has changed so dramatically in the past few years. 

I am obsessed with a site called The Muse. The Muse is a career advice and better job search tool. I am graduating in May so I am always looking for new sites to advance my job search and The Muse does just that. The Muse is used by over 3 million people who are looking to either find a job, get a job, or excel at the job their are already in. 

In one of my advertising classes my professor wants a person to show an "enlighted moment" before each class. One of my classmates used Vine to show the class this new social media application. No one knew about it and I think it was beneficial to show this class this app because it may be a big hit in the future. This app is a great way to advertise for businesses and companies. I think this app will be very beneficial with social networking and with future classes.

I like to keep current with popular topics and infomation and for that reason I recently started using Reddit. I like that they show what topics are trending and its easy way to post content. I like that they are a one stop reference for links to videos and topics posted to other websites. It makes spending too much time looking at videos and memes a little too easy.

The newest digital tool that I have really started getting into is Reddit. While I have known about it for awhile I never really got on the site until recently. I didn't think I would like it, but the interactions are something I have grown to really like.