On yesterday's micromedia panel here at the Blog World Expo, I said the way that companies can start using microblogging tools is to first be aware of them, and second to monitor them, before jumping in deep with both feet. The idea would be to understand the nature of the community, and to see how your business or industry is being perceived on the service before sending off tweet after tweet. As one of the best tools to follow your company's mentions online is to use Google's News Alerts or Google Blog Search and have them delivered by e-mail, TweetBeep intends to do the same thing - following terms you specify and sending them to your e-mail, either by the hour or by the day.

Using TweetBeep, as you would expect, is fairly simple. Sign up for an account with TweetBeep, and then add alerts, by hour or by day, register your e-mail address, and you will get notified by e-mail when your search terms come up.


Adding a new alert for #bwe (Blog World Expo)


My active TweetBeep alert list
You might be wondering why you would use TweetBeep instead of Twitter Search (formerly Summize), but relying on TweetBeep takes the manual intervention out of it. Instead of searching yourself, the alerts are automatically delivered. And for an enterprise corporate setting, e-mail is easily understood.


TweetBeep delivers results via e-mail
While TweetBeep isn't new, having launched back in May with Orli Yakuel on Go2Web20, there's no doubt this tool is being under-utilized, relative to other alert tools. So if you want to keep track of what's being said about you or your company in the Twitterverse, set up an account and get started. It just might be a tool you can use to get your boss to understand how the microblogging community is thinking about your product in real time.

I bet there's a sliver of the population who thinks Google's already spartan interface is too bright and shiny, with too many colors. This group, who finds anything with a GUI as unnecessary and a waste of pixels, would prefer to run things in the Unix shell or DOS, and is repulsed by Web 2.0 flashiness. The good news is that there is an unofficial Google shell, called "Goosh", authored by Stefan Grothkopp, which behaves just like a Unix terminal, and returns results from the Google search engine.


Logging in to www.goosh.org...
Popular FriendFeeder Mona N has an extensive write-up on the new tool on her blog Pixel Bits: goosh.org: Google’s Un-official Unix Shell, so check that out.

As Mona points out, Goosh essentially puts the power of Google's search into your terminal, with the ability to make specific searches for blogs, feeds, video, wiki, images or the Web at large, just by using command terms, like you would in Unix. For example, you could search, via Goosh, for "apple" and return all results for the term apple via the Web, or search for "feeds louisgray" to see RSS feeds on the Web associated with my name.


Goosh.org results for Apple...


Goosh.org results for Feeds with my name...

All results are clickable, taking you to the desired page.

So if you thought Google was getting too mainstream, and using the once-exclusive search engine didn't give you enough geek cred, there is now a solution. Check out goosh.org, and enter "help" to get a list of commands. You can get your Google geek back. (Hat Tip: Mona on Pixel Bits)

Even as the blog has gotten more visible through the last two years, I've largely stayed behind the scenes (or behind the monitor and keyboard). I haven't attended large industry events, or tried to make the story so much about me. I'd rather keep the highlights on the many services I enjoy and the people making the Web and technology better. But this weekend, the gravity pull from being requested to participate in two panels was too great, and you can now find me at the Blog World Expo in Las Vegas, Nevada, from this afternoon through Sunday.

At the expo, I am participating on two panels, with esteemed peers, including Matt Dickman, Neil Vineberg, Brian Solis and Stowe Boyd, discussing changes in the blogosphere, and how microcommunities are impacting where we participate, share ideas, and communicate.

Panel One:
Micromedia: The Next Big, Small Thing:

Description: "This session shows marketers what the true power of services like Twitter, FriendFeed, Pownce, Flickr and Facebook have on a micro level. Also known as "micro blogging", micromedia has exploded with the growth of mobile technology and lets us look into the future of platform-agnostic marketing. Don't be left behind."

Time: Friday, Sept. 19, 2008: 11:30 AM - 12:45 PM, 222

Panel Two:
Are Bloggers Losing Control? The New World of Distributed Conversations:

Description: "With content spanning across social networks, miro communities, and media aggregators, comments, conversations, and responses are taking place on and around the original blog post. This panel will explore distributed conversations, fragmented expertise, and also the challenge of being everywhere - and whether or not it's not only necessary, but also feasible."

Time: Sunday, Sept. 21, 2008: 12:15 PM - 1:15 PM, 229

Outside of these panels, my schedule is not 100 percent set by any means. I've already started to hear from many online friends who I will be seeing for the first time, and look forward to finding many more, through seeing presentations, walking the exhibits floor, and through getting abused by e-mail and cell phone. If you're going to be attending, it'd be great to see you at either of these panels, or any other time. Please do reach out by phone at 408 646-2759 or by e-mail at [email protected].

My BlogWorld Expo bio can also be found here.

Yesterday evening, at a panel on lifestreaming put on by the MIT/Stanford Venture Lab, Seesmic founder Loic Le Meur introduced the video conversation site as seeing significant growth and part of the real-time Web, utilizing video, for the first time, in an active way, rather than a passive way, as YouTube does. The result is a site that he says is used in more than 40 countries and sees a new video posted every minute, a number which has now reached more than half a million since May, from 30,000 different users. Also, he dropped hints to a new Seesmic client built for Nokia handsets that would enable full video conversations, including replies, to debut today.

I attended the session and took notes via laptop, so all quotes are "best effort."

Le Meur said Seesmic came to life due to a gap between today's text-based social software, including blogs and Facebook, and the more active nature of video. He said that while YouTube offers the ability to post comments and replies to videos, they don't happen all that often, and that through integration with tools like Disqus, Twitter and FriendFeed, Seesmic can power the video conversation.

As he told attendees, half of the service's traffic happens on the Seesmic Web site, and another half occurs through desktop clients, like Thwirl, which he acquired earlier this year. Seesmic is now also installed on 7,000 blogs, including this one, and TechCrunch, enabling visitors to leave video comments on stories, and embed the entire video thread.

Le Meur, who raised $12 million for Seesmic, said the actual costs of the site are relatively small, in the tens of thousands per month. Costs are largely kept low due to users' videos, on average being less than a minute, he said. But plans for revenue include a mix of advertising and pro accounts, which would have greater capability and customization. He also spoke highly of co-branded operations, citing a 20th Century Fox promotion that received 1,600 view replies, and said a new feature, called groups, would debut in coming weeks.

"We were very lucky that we raised $12 million, and we are very cautious," Le Meur said. "We can hold for years."

The goal of growing Seesmic isn't to flip the company and make a quick buck, Le Meur said yesterday, joking about his record of selling four different companies after saying that was a "bad goal to have". Instead, he wants to help power anytime communication by video from anywhere, getting as close to real life as possible, while continuing to learn from the user community as to what features should come next.

"I would like to pursue my vision of a worldwide talk show, where people talk together, no matter where they are, all on video," Le Meur said. "We are building something real different. We wouldn't have done video comments at the beginning, and now we are learning by the community. We have a very active community and get thousands of feature requests."

Le Meur, who has one of the most active, most-followed Twitter accounts in the world, said he saw the real-time nature of the service as incredibly compelling, and that the "instant Web" was changing everything. His goal would be to leverage the power of sites like Twitter and FriendFeed to reach more users and groups of users who find communities online, even if the video quality, so far, isn't the best ever - something that has surprisingly been a boom for online dating sites.

"The good news is that you actually look worse (on Seesmic) than you really are," he said, adding that Seesmic would be branching out to make even more people look worse than they really are, through the release of an updated Nokia client today, which will let Nokia users have a full conversation, including video replies, using only their handsets.