photo credit: EMMEALCUBO

Today I went with my wife Ruthie to a WordPress Meetup in Dallas that had the largest attendance I have seen yet at this meetup. I know there were over 100 people there, maybe even 120.

Tony Cecala, the organizer of the meetup somehow arranged for us to meet in this great big room at The Art Institute of Dallas. They had great Wifi, provided food and even made all the set-up and everything for the audio and video for the speaker.

The speaker was Giovanni Gallucci, a social media expert. He spoke for about an hour about social media software, building networks the smart way and tricks of the trade. The talk was highly entertaining, as Giovanni has tons of energy and is very easy going. He even brought his young daughter, who helped collect business cards at the end.

I think everyone that attended came away with at least one great new idea to start working on.

Adobe has created a new development platform for developers called Adobe Air that allows you to use small applications independent of your web browser.

So why is this important or useful for the everyday computer user?

Well, when you take an app, say Facebook, and run it from Adobe Air, it is totally independent of the chosen web browser. If Facebook crashes or if another tab on the web browser crashes, you don't have to restart everything.

I discovered Adobe Air when I went to a local DFW Adobe User Group meeting. They kept talking about Air this and Air that, so finally I asked what in the world Adobe Air was.

The explanation I got was that Adobe Air was the ability to take applications on a trip of their own and let them do things by themselves. This sounded kinda cryptic to me, so they said to just go to the Adobe site and check it out for myself.

So when I got home I did and discovered I had already installed Adobe Air when I had installed an app I tried out for Twitter called Twhirl, that lets you run Twitter in its' own little window and that would let you do a lot more with Twitter than you could through the web browser with the app.

On a Mac, how is it different from using an app in Dashboard?

The important things here are that the apps can run on different types of computers, unlike Dashboard apps. So, if by chance you use a PC at work and a Mac at home, the Adobe Air app would be the same on both machines - platform independent.

So how do I use Adobe Air apps in a real world situation?

First off, it is not the best solution for every task. Some tasks are still better off done in a web browser, like using Gmail. I spent a bit of time going through the available (tons) apps and paring the ones I use down to just 23 apps. Of those, I only use a few on a regular basis.

I use Adobe Air apps for things like using a stopwatch to time certain client events like a client phone call. It's a real small quick app that does just that, but does it well. Some other apps I use on a regular basis...

Facedesk (for Facebook)
Flickr Desktop Search
clDesktop (Craigslist)
Analytics Reporting Suite (Google Analytics - very slick interface)
Snippage (Allows you to make your own apps from the web browser)
RoadFinder (Does both Google Maps and Yahoo Maps at once)
Pixus (Measures screen pixels - great for Web Designers)
HTML Scout (Has all sorts of Web Design helper stuff to inspect pages)
Scoop (RSS reader that can sync with Google Reader - just installed and testing)

All of these apps can be found by going to the Adobe Air Marketplace and searching for your next favorite application. Did I mention that all this is FREE!

Anyone wanna share information on what their favorite Air apps are?

For the past six months or so I have been going to a number of Meetup.com group meetings.

I have attended different groups like meetups for eBay, Joomla, WordPress, Adobe and other general groups that were geared towards internet marketing and affiliate marketing. I even joined a different Meetup.com networking group that met to share networking leads.

At the beginning I was real enthusiastic about a number of the groups, especially the internet marketing groups. They were good outlets for networking in my field of web design. I have met a good number of other designers through them.

At some point you have to begin to weed out those that are not meeting your needs because they do take time to go to and there is usually some expense to attending a meeting, even if it is only paying for your meal.

I think I was attending 8 meetups at my peak. Now I have pared that down to 4 meetups I attend on a regular basis. I dropped the group about Joomla because I was not learning as much as I thought I would at the meetings and I use WordPress for my blogs anyways.

I also dropped the networking group because I was spending $20-$24 a month for the meals and never got a single lead. The members were all interested in much larger types of businesses and I never felt it was a worthwhile deal to go to during my business day.

The WordPress group, which I have only attended 1 time, met only to socialize and had no structure, plus it met on Saturday in the middle of the day, which was not a great time for me. I like to spend my weekends with my wife and family. I think I will give them another try though.

The best meetups I have attended are the eBay and the Adobe groups. They both have real structure, learning occurs and the organizers always attend and are real involved in the groups. The internet marketing groups are hit or miss. One month the discussion will be targeted and lively, the next time they will be aimless and have sparse attendance.

I did make a real good association at one of the internet marketing meetups with a nice man named Dan Mason. We have been listing one of his products on my eBay account and they have done fairly well. He imports custom-made products from China that he sells in his business.

Try Meetup.com for yourself. You can search for subjects of interest to you and there are thousands of groups nationwide with tons in every local area.

If you have tried Meetup.com, what groups had you had success with?

Powered by ScribeFire.

Recently I was introduced by a fellow Dallas Web Designer, Kat Rice to a very interesting and useful Free Firefox extension called ScribeFire. I met Kat at a Meetup.com group I attend called Dallas Interactive Marketing & Internet SEO SEM Meetup. Yeah, I know, they really need to shorten that name.

I use WordPress for this blog and for 7 other domains I have in my personal and business web site repertoire. ScribeFire makes it very easy for me to manage all 8 WordPress blogs from one tab of my Firefox web browser without having to go log into 8 different blogs in 8 different tabs of the browser. Not that I really would work on all 8 at once, but with ScribeFire I can if I want to.

The extension currently supports 15 different blogging systems. it does not yet support Joomla.

It installs like any other Firefox plugin and then the fun begins. Once you give the extension all the info for logging into each of your blogs then you can begin using the extension.

This extension allows you to write posts, pages, update posts and pages, save a post as a note (basically a draft), easily insert links, easily insert photos and you have full control over categories and tags from each blog you post on.

There is even a Flickr button to easily allow you to search Flickr for a photo for your post and it puts a link to the Flickr page of the photo's owner, which is an ethical and necessary step for using other people's images on your blog.

I like it because it allows me to post from a central place for all my blogs and sites. You have to try ScribeFire yourself to see the huge benefits for your blogging speed.

There is also an ad program that you can subscribe to. This will allow you to put ads on your blog that are targeted to your content. Sort of like Google Adwords, but with a special twist. I have signed up for that free service, but have yet to find the time to devote to using it.

Powered by ScribeFire.

I live in Dallas, TX and I just wanted to point out a local technology blog that has been started by a friend of mine, Matthew Rogers, called Dallogy.com.

The blog is to kick start a "local conversation" that our meetup.com group is trying to get going in Dallas. The group is called the Dallas Interactive Marketing & Internet SEO SEM Meetup. Yeah, I know, a really long group name, but blame Matthew for that one.

It started in March of 2008 and I have attended all of the meetings since the first one. I guess that makes me a founding member, but I don't really care about stuff like that.

Matthew is trying to create a place where people involved with tech all over the Dallas area can go to discuss, learn and teach tech. The site name is a mix between Dallas and Technology and that's what the group is about.

Powered by ScribeFire.