Some of us who started Tweetdeck groups previously, don’t want to recreate them all over again in a tedious fashion. Thankfully, Tweetdeck has an easier way of exporting these contacts, though it may seem a tad daunting. Here’s a graphical step-by-step on how to do it.

1. Click on the Group name. You will be shown two buttons. Click on “Export Group As List”

2. Name the list (Oh, I found out you cannot start the name with a non-letter). Describe it, if you want, then select whether it’s going to be Private or Public. Then, hit the “Add list members” button

3. By default, all the members in the Tweetdeck group are listed on the right already, but Tweetdeck allows you to add even more from your general list. When done, click “Save List” and wait…

4. Wait… wait… waittttt… When it’s done, your new Twitter list will have been created. You can delete the Tweetdeck group now, if you wish.

Today, the Daily Mail, UK’s 2nd biggest-selling newspaper made a boo boo by quoting a parody Twitter account, thinking it was the REAL Steve Jobs. Many of us who spend copious amounts of time on Twitter are familiar with the popular @ceoSteveJobs account that spews lots of funny one-liners aimed to poke fun at all-things-Apple.

So, what did the parody account say? Just 13 simple words.

We may have to recall the new iPhone. This, I did not expect. – @ceoSteveJobs

Then, the Daily Mail went on to publish the following news piece online.

I can only imagine how embarrassing it must be for the newspaper, when the entire twittersphere picked up on their mistake and started *rolling their eyes* at the gross misreporting.

Soon after, the article was pulled from the Daily Mail, but a copy still remains here at TheBackpackr.com – read it, if you wish. At the same time, a seemingly similar post (view here) with the same imagery was found on the Daily Mail, though dated earlier. Bizarre.

• Timesheets of staff at our digital agency, Integricity
• IT maintenance record logs between our technology boys and the clients
• Finance reporting for certain projects involving various stakeholders
• Self-generation of monthly statements for certain client services
• Holiday itinerary planning between friends

It’s truly revolutionized the way we can be efficient now. Though there is still quite a fair bit that I desire out of Google docs (spreadsheets), such as the ability to control which sheets can be viewed by different parties, locking of certain cells, ability to link between spreadsheets, it’s made it a joy to work.

Today, I noticed a huge notice that states new ways to share your documents (though I saw the functionality several days ago already).

The full list of functionality is written up here by Google themselves but in summary…

• Private: only the creator can view it and people who are specifically invited
• People at your domain with the link: you are part of the same domain (e.g. xyz@thebackpackr.com) and are aware of the link to the document
• Your domain: anyone with a Google acccount with the same domain – you need not know the link to the document
• Anyone with the link: it’s self-explanatory – you have the link, you can access it. Be careful not to allow edit privileges, if you don’t want the data changed by Mr Anonymous!
• Public on the web: I have no need for this, but you may for whatever reason. This document can be searched and listed in Google search results

We’ve just found out via Twitter engineer (@jeanpaul) that the cause of these outages is primarily due to internal sub-networks being over-capacity. He outlines 3 problems and 3 solutions for them. (Read the source article here)

3 PROBLEMS

1. Two critical, fast-growing, high-bandwith components were put on the same segment of the internal
2. The Twitter internal network wasn’t monitored appropriately.
3. Their internal network was temporarily misconfigured.

3 SOLUTIONS

1. Twitter has doubled the capacity of the internal network.
2. They’re improving the monitoring of the internal network.
3. Twitter is rebalancing the traffic on the internal network to redistribute the load.

In case you didn’t know, Twitter has also launched a pretty funky feature to commemorate the World Cup season. It has special pages that filter World Cup related tweets from both teams in play and display them to the audience, LIVE. You can take a look at it here. This surely increases the traffic to Twitter exponentially!

RANDOM FAIL WHALE INFO…

Some enterprising individuals have redrawn variants of the fail whale as shown below. Pretty nifty, huh?

Related articles: High Error Rate on Twitter.com, A Perfect Storm of Whales

News about earthquakes break via Twitter and scientists have actually come up with some correlation between the crowd, the cloud and their (multi-million dollar) scientific equipment. The article is reported in Wired Science.

To show you what some sites have done for their fan pages, here’s a cool website called Facebook Showcase that highlights what’s cool out there. You can even submit your fan page if you think you’re cool enough.

As technology becomes more readily available and the population of Internet users increases, the user group gets more diversified. Different users use the Internet for different reasons, and they have varying browsing requirements. The Maxis communications team performed extensive research and found that Malaysian Internet users generally fall into one of seven categories which they name: Blogger, Traveller, Smart Shopper, Explorer, Online Buddies, Gamer and Entertainment Enthusiast.

Each of these user groups has different characteristics and more often that not, the Internet population will fall within one of these types. Based on these characteristics, Maxis launched  a wide variety of plans to suit these needs (tailored, cost-efficient-only pay for what you need).

As an extension to their campaign, fun interviews were conducted with online personalities which represent the seven key Malaysian Internet users. Being heavily involved in social media and running a digital agency, I was featured in one of their interviews, representing The Explorer.

The talented and beautiful Fiona Oon interviewed me and we had a great time in front of camera. Sure we had several takes, but it worked well.

Here’s a behind the scenes shot of the both of us at the Integricity HQ bar area.

Aside from the videos, Maxis, Integricity and Mindshare collaborated on developing an interactive social game built for Facebook, called Maxis Mission: Possible. Mindshare is the agency overseeing the strategy for Maxis, while Integricity provided the expertise to strategize and develop the Facebook application.

Once again, the seven characters come into play. You pick one, and explore maps for hidden items. It’s an interesting concept as you encounter enemies and bonus items that can give you a speed boost.

Prizes are pretty cool (unfortunately, I’m not allowed to win them since I’m supposedly a friendly party) as you can win a holiday for 2 to the Gold Coast AND RM5,000, an iPhone, Blackberry and more cash prizes. If you do win anything, you HAVE to share the goodies with me, seeing as I pointed you in their direction, huh? Just kidding…

When asked about why Facebook was chosen as a platform for this campaign, Matthew Willsher, CMO of Maxis, said, “The extension to Facebook is a natural move as there are now more than 5.2 million Malaysians on it. We are continuously exploring other engagement opportunities on social media networks such as Facebook and Twitter.” [quote from: marketing-interactive.com]

My take on this campaign is that Maxis is really going all out to secure ground using social media and I am very excited to see the wide adoption of Facebook in their campaigns. This will hopefully serve as a stepping stone for the entire industry to show them how powerful it is to invest and harness sites that are already a phenomenal success.

This iMaxi product with wings is probably slated as a gag that will humiliate that insane Apple fanboy/fangirl in your life who incessantly talks about Apple, Apple, APPLE. It’s fairly cheap to give away as a crazy gift, but I wouldn’t be caught dead with one. If you’re really, really keen on getting one, go on to their store here.

And just in case you haven’t seen one of my favourite spoof ads that came out hours after the launch of the iPad, here it is.

Here’s what I found really handy. (Of course I didn’t install ALL of them! Some are based on findings and recommendations by friends). They’re my unbiased reviews of apps I’ve found. Do feel free to share with others if you have favorite apps of your own.

Clock

Need to find out the time in various parts of the world? Use the in-built World Clock app that comes with all iPhones. Select the cities and countries you’d like to keep tab of and you’re all set. Simple and effective!

Google Maps

It comes installed by default with iPhones and it is simple the best application for locating where you are, restaurants and hotels nearby and so much more. It’s saved me on quite a few occasions. It’s already installed, so use it. The only downside is that you will need to be connected to the Internet to get access to it.

Airline apps – Southwest Airlines, Alaska Airlines

If you’re traveling a lot in the US, these airline specific apps will help you out to no end. For Southwest (my airline of choice! No, they don’t pay me a cent!), you can even make reservations, check-in for flights or get push notifications for special deals. On Alaska Airlines, you can check existing reservations, check-in and view flight schedules.

Booking-related apps – Priceline, Kayak, Travelocity

Find hotels, car rentals and airfares quickly and based on price. These sites compare various vendors and provide you the best possible options. You can even book via these apps.

Unit Conversion – MultiConvert, Currency

Coming from a country that uses the metric system, the US is a nightmare. From kilometers to miles, liters to gallons and shoe sizes that are non-standard! Convert more than 1,000 different measurement units with this nifty app.

And what about converting the cost of an item to your native currency? Is your mushroom soup really worth it? Or should you be buying the seemingly cheap Coach bag from the factory outlet? Find out quickly with Currency – the simplest and FREE app you can find.

Location based recommendations – AroundMe, Local Picks by TripAdvisor

Looking for something to do in your vicinity? Or, looking for great restaurants but don’t know where to start? Local Picks is a service that pulls up restaurants based on the extensive TripAdvisor database and displays it in a manner you choose. Sort by rating, name, distance or price. AroundMe helps find points of interest based on categories, such as banks, gas stations, hospitals, hotels and lots more.

Communication – Fring, Skype

Keep in touch with your office or loved ones with both these apps. Fring will allow you to connect to your existing instant messaging networks for text based chats. If you need to make free Skype-to-Skype calls, or cheap VOIP calls, use Skype and call from the nearest wifi hotspot.

Update your friends – Facebook, WordPress, TweetDeck

Who can live without Facebook these days? We all have an inherent desire to broadcast what we’re doing and brag about the sights and sounds to all those back home, right? Grab this app, and you can update your status and upload photos instantly on-the-go.

If you blog using WordPress, there’s also an app that connects you with your loyal readers. You can upload photos, approve comments and more. Finally, you can leave your notebook behind!

You do know what Twitter is, and you already use TweetDeck on your desktop/notebook, right? Continue using the same familiar software on your iPhone to broadcast your messages and keep in touch.

Travel Organization – TripIt, TripAssist by Expedia

If you’re traveling for a fairly long duration in different cities and hotels, whether for business, pleasure or your honeymoon, you’re better off installing one of these apps. They are gorgeous because they keep tabs on flights you have to catch, hotels you are staying at and more. They also help when you’re doing your pre-travel planning.

Weather – The Weather Channel

Nobody wants to get caught with the wrong clothes while traveling, or plan to go to the beach only to find it pouring! Avoid freezing to death and getting drenched by simply checking on the weather report before you arrive. Thus far, it’s been pretty spot on for us while on our travels. It’s not foolproof, but it does offer some guidelines to follow.

On the street I saw a small girl cold and shivering in a thin dress, with little hope of a decent meal. I became angry and said to God; “Why did you permit this? Why don’t you do something about it?” For a while God said nothing. That night he replied, quite suddenly:

“I certainly did something about it. I made you.”

For many months, I have been silently following a website that is interestingly called InvisiblePeople.tv. It is an interesting play on how humans shun away from looking at something they wish to eradicate from their minds. All too often, we walk quickly past the people begging on the streets, stealing a glance or two from the side of our eyes.

We’re afraid – that’s the truth. Afraid of being asked for donations, afraid to be caught staring, and worst of all, afraid to care.

This project heavily invests in social media and uses it to make the invisible people, visible. Mark Horvath, the man behind this project was once known as the Lizard Man of Hollywood Boulevard, when he himself was once homeless. Mark had strong media beginnings as a Hollywood distribution executive, but lost it all to drugs and alcohol. In a nutshell, thanks to the LA Dream Center, he was set right again and freed from the bondages he once had.

Today, he goes out to the streets armed with a small camcorder, mic, laptop and iPhone. Mark posts raw unedited footage (sometimes deemed too raw) of the people he interacts with as they share their homeless stories with him.

So, how exactly does Mark use social media? Sites that are frequently updated include: his blog, Twitter, Facebook, Whrrl, MySpace, YouTube, uStream, Vimeo and Flickr. They serve as his own broadcasting channels to reach out to the public and update them on-the-go. Through the true-to-life updates, he has caught the attention of many and this has served to further propagate the message and his mission.

Is there any magic to it? From what I see, there isn’t: it’s about being true to your project and being as transparent as possible. Picking the right social platforms is probably very important too, as you would want to target the relevant audience through it. Frequent updates help too, and we can see videos are uploaded very often on the InvisiblePeople.tv site.

With so many platforms to manage, I was very curious as to how Mark manages them and sent him a couple of tweets. Here’s his down-to-earth reply.

Stats to date: CNN reports more than 1,000 videos are watched per week on the Vimeo channels and the project has more than 10,000 followers on both his Twitter accounts (@hardlynormal and @invisiblepeople). Mark has been featured on Huffington Post, CNN and loads more media as a result of him being extremely social with a fantastic mission.

He’s raised sponsorship and donations from many companies amongst which are Ford, Hanes (they give out socks to the homeless) and Virgin Mobile. Truly, it’s a powerful testimony of how one man has shared the stories of hundreds of homeless people with the world and brought smiles to those who are in need.

More importantly, via social media, an entire movement has been formed, out of people who are more aware that these problems exist. To all those who are interested in making a difference, Mark in a very practical way asks them to start helping in their own neighbourhood. There’s little point in helping out halfway across the country when the problems are prevalent in your own backyard.

May the invisible become visible, via the power of social media.