As you may have noticed, Modern Media Mom has been sitting quietly for the last several months. The last actual post I wrote was a “Happy New Year” post.

Not a good thing for a site which touts itself as being a resource for up-to-date tech news. Just sayin’…

While this site has sat silent, I’ve done a lot of thinking about how to expand it to make it even more useful for families and individuals looking to use technology to simplify their hectic lives.

It’s become more important than ever for me to do this in my own life, as it has changed dramatically in the time that I’ve been away. Technology is becoming even more central to my day-to-day life as I prepare for some big personal and professional changes.

Therefore, while my posts will continue to be informative, there will also be more of a personal element to the posts, as many of the things will be tips and ideas that my family and I will have tried out. They won’t just be tips on how to use sites you’ve never heard of, but tips on how to use sites and apps you already use in a different way.

I look forward to sharing these things with you, and I hope that you find them as helpful as I have.

As always, I want to make each of you a part of this site; if you have tips and tricks I’m happy to share them with readers.

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Are you looking for a blogging conference that will cover social media, social networking, the business of blogging and managing your time?

Do the costs of such conferences make you sick to your stomach?

Enter: The Girlfriend’s Guide to the Business of Blogging conference

Learn the ins and outs of Social Marketing. Learn how to set up your blog, the basics of page rank, SEO, ethics, and very basics of business will be discussed. How to’s of offering ads, advanced sponsorship opportunities plus legal and professional insights and much much more. Every session includes actionable take aways, hints and tips you can put to use right now, today to drive traffic, make money and become a success!

This event is totally online. You don’t need to travel and you won’t need accommodations.  The whole event will be broadcast via a webinar type format complete with videos, graphics and more from your session leaders. At the end of each session we’ll offer a question and answer period where you can submit your questions to the speakers directly and get answers.

Cost: $15.00

Date: December 8th, 2009

Wants more details?

Sessions

Speakers (including me)

Register

Social Media and Customer Service are working hand-in-hand, as companies discover new ways to incorporate new media into their marketing and business plans.

Lufthansa Airlines has recently introduced MySkyStatus. When you go to the MySkyStatus page, you simply input your flight information and your Twitter and Facebook pages will be updated automatically with your flight schedule information, including departures and arrivals.

I’m sure it won’t be long before most US airlines implement something similar.

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There are a lot of ways that you can now send emails and update your Twitter, Facebook and blog. Smartphones make it easier to do so when away from your computer. What if you don’t have a smartphone yet, or access to all of the handy apps that are available? Or what if you do, but want a quick easy way to do it?

Dial2Do is a free site that does these things for you. You call a number. Say what you want posted, then finish with “Twitter”, or “email” etc. They transcribe it and take care of the rest.

From the site:

Dial2Do lets you do common tasks by just calling a number and speaking. Use it to send EMAIL or TEXT messages, record REMINDERS to help you remember things, post updates to your TWITTER or JAIKU stream and LISTEN to your favourite internet content. It’s easy and handsfree..

For more info: watch the tutorial video here and read the FAQs.

Note: There are currently 26 countries that this site works in [though it only works in English]. See the listing on the FAQs page.

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Wondering what the trends will be in the Digital world next year?

Here are some ideas from around the web:

1. Facebook Replaces Personal Email (via Marketing Charts)

2. More Flash, Not Less (via Marketing Charts)

3. Brands Must Become More Social Online (via DesignDamage)

4. Marketing Platform Extends to Mobile, Social, and Local in Real-Time (via DesignDamage)

5. Open source software starts making proper money, thanks to the cloud (via Branding Strategy)

Click on the above links to see the lists in their entirety.

What trends do you think will take place in 2010?

TrueTwit is a free site that will attempt to authenticate all followers who request to follow you. If it is recognized as a bot, the request will be rejected. It is only set up to authenticate any requests to follow AFTER you sign up for the service. Any spam accounts that you may already have will need to have a validation request manually sent to them.

It is still possible that a spammer can get through… but:

If a spammer is human, they will get through. The point of TrueTwit is to eliminate automated spam software from grabbing your attention. But as for now, if a user successfully fills out the CAPTCHA, they will be validated. We will be implementing a new feature to help with this issue in the future

It is quite simple to sign up. Simply fill in your Twitter user name and an email address. Then create a password for logging into the TrueTwit site (they do not need or ask for your Twitter password)

According to the About page,

TrueTwit is working on a system that will allow TrueTwit users to check for bots and spammers without using direct messages.  We expect to have this system in place soon.

It’s not perfect yet – there are still some kinks to work out. But it is definitely a step in the right direction. Spam is an unfortunate reality of the internet, and the less we have to deal with it the better.

(look for more answers to your questions on the FAQs page)

According to wiki-pedia, a “denial of service attack” is when hackers saturate a site with traffic to the point that it either slows or crashes the system.

“One common method of attack involves saturating the target (victim) machine with external communications requests, such that it cannot respond to legitimate traffic, or responds so slowly as to be rendered effectively unavailable. In general terms, DoS attacks are implemented by either forcing the targeted computer(s) to reset, or consuming its resources so that it can no longer provide its intended service or obstructing the communication media between the intended users and the victim so that they can no longer communicate adequately.”

Twitter is, obviously, looking for the source cause and is attempting to fix the problem as quickly as possible.

UPDATED: 12:24pm EST – Twitter is up and running again. Things appear to be a bit slow, so be patient, as they are “continuing to defend against and recover from this attack,” according to their latest status update.

TweetDeck is super cool for many reasons – one being that it allows you to create groups. This will filter all of the members tweets into its very own column, allowing you to bypass all of the other stuff being twittered about. (now if I can only learn to stay focused on the one column ;0)

To create a group in TweetDeck:

Click on the “group” button:

Name your group (you may want to group by certain friends, family, interests: ie: foodies…). Be sure to “save”.

You can select members of your group in several different ways:

1) Select members from the list that appears. This list doesn’t include everyone, only the most active users.

2) “Other Actions”

3) the “+” by users names

Each of these actions will have you choose the group that the user will belong to. Check the box and then close it to save.

Social Media is fun. It’s a great way to socialize, stay informed, connect and share. But if you are wanting to limit your time on it and still keep your pulse on things,  and you aren’t using a social media application, you are going to spin your wheels and end up not getting much done.

In the last year, several applications have been released that allow you to keep track of Twitter, Facebook and other outlets all in one place, removing the need to visit many different sites. This increases your productivity by allowing you to search for specific topics and create specific groups that are most relevant to you.

Several to look at:

AlertThingy: Also allows you to integrate business social media sites, such as Yammer and Huddle.

Skimmer: a brand new (released 3/24) addition to the streaming social media sites, it also incorporates YouTube and flickr and Blogger.

If you are looking for a browser that incorporates social media, try Flock. Powered by Mozilla, it is a fantastic browser for anyone with a heavy social media life. All of your social media sites can be updated from within the browser sidebar. There are many extensions that make it even more useful.

If you want to be a part of helping develop the newest applications, SocialThing! is currently in private beta, so if you want to give it a try, shoot them a message.

What have you implemented to make social networking more efficient? Share your advice in comments.

(photo pilipala9)

The current economy has taken its toll on many companies and many people find themselves either looking for a job or looking to change jobs to something more secure.

If your are scouring the newspaper to find your next job, you are only seeing a tiny percentage of the openings out there. It is important to cast your net out as far as possible to find the most relevant and promising openings.

PC Magazine has listed the 20 Best Job Search Web Sites. They go way beyond the obvious sites, like CareerBuilder and Monster.com. Take a look and begin casting that net out further.

(photo: Zhylosa)