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	<title>S. W. Shinn &#187; Tips</title>
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	<link>http://swshinn.com</link>
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		<title>Google Buzz &#8212; Integrating Facebook, Twitter, Wordpress and Buzz</title>
		<link>http://swshinn.com/writers-tools/google-buzz-integrating-facebook-twitter-wordpress-and-buzz/</link>
		<comments>http://swshinn.com/writers-tools/google-buzz-integrating-facebook-twitter-wordpress-and-buzz/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 11 Feb 2010 00:31:13 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>S. W. Shinn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swshinn.com/?p=902</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[First, follow the instructions on my prior link here:
http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/autopost-to-facebook-and-twitter/
Once you&#8217;ve done the above, you can post to Wordpress blog and it will echo out to both Facebook and Twitter.
Next, manually connect Twitter to your Buzz. Here&#8217;s how:
Log in to Gmail. When you click &#8220;Buzz&#8221; and then click &#8220;Connected Sites&#8221;, you&#8217;ll see the source manager; this [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>First, follow the instructions on my prior link here:</p>
<p><a href="http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/autopost-to-facebook-and-twitter/">http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/autopost-to-facebook-and-twitter/</a></p>
<p>Once you&#8217;ve done the above, you can post to Wordpress blog and it will echo out to both Facebook and Twitter.</p>
<p>Next, manually connect Twitter to your Buzz. Here&#8217;s how:</p>
<p>Log in to Gmail. When you click &#8220;Buzz&#8221; and then click &#8220;Connected Sites&#8221;, you&#8217;ll see the source manager; this lets you control permission levels for each source (in other words, you can set it so that your posts via Twitter are shared with certain people as opposed to your default privacy settings). [Note: controlling this was pretty un-intuitive. You&#8217;d think you could get to this under &#8220;Settings&#8221;, but you can&#8217;t. Bad design.]</p>
<p>That&#8217;s it! Enjoy.</p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<slash:comments>1</slash:comments>
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		<item>
		<title>Google Buzz &#8212; Tips for the Power User</title>
		<link>http://swshinn.com/writers-tools/google-buzz-tips-for-the-power-user/</link>
		<comments>http://swshinn.com/writers-tools/google-buzz-tips-for-the-power-user/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Wed, 10 Feb 2010 21:30:12 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>S. W. Shinn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Tools]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swshinn.com/?p=899</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Is Google&#8217;s new Buzz feature a Facebook / Twitter killer? Time will tell. For the near term though, it&#8217;s probably a good idea to check it out. With Twitter-to-Buzz integration, you can easily set up Buzz to mirror your Twitter posts. In my next post I&#8217;ll show how to integrate Facebook and a Wordpress Blog [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Is Google&#8217;s new Buzz feature a Facebook / Twitter killer? Time will tell. For the near term though, it&#8217;s probably a good idea to check it out. With Twitter-to-Buzz integration, you can easily set up Buzz to mirror your Twitter posts. In my next post I&#8217;ll show how to integrate Facebook and a Wordpress Blog so you can post-once and it will echo out to Twitter, Facebook and Buzz with zero extra steps.</p>
<p>In the meantime, here&#8217;s some Power User Tips:</p>
<p><strong>TWITTER TO BUZZ</strong><br />
You can manually connect Twitter to your Buzz. When you click &#8220;Buzz&#8221; and then click &#8220;Connected Sites&#8221;, you&#8217;ll see the source manager; this lets you control permission levels for each source (in other words, you can set it so that your posts via Twitter are shared with certain people as opposed to your default privacy settings). [Note: controlling this was pretty un-intuitive. You&#8217;d think you could get to this under &#8220;Settings&#8221;, but you can&#8217;t. Bad design.]</p>
<p><strong>@REPLIES</strong><br />
When you&#8217;re entering a comment, your @reply will add people to the post and deliver it to their inbox.  For example, type in &#8220;@mary&#8221; and you&#8217;ll see a list of matches. Note that while this makes it &#8220;private&#8221;, it appears that that person can share your comment with others much as an email may be forwarded, so beware this loophole.</p>
<p><strong>FILTERING</strong><br />
If you&#8217;re a power user already using Gmail filters, note that your regular email filters will apply to Google Buzz messages, so you can control what types of messages you see.</p>
<p><strong>BUZZ DOCUMENTATION</strong><br />
Finding the Buzz documentation was a bit of a chore, so I included the direct link here:<br />
<a href="http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=27291">http://mail.google.com/support/bin/topic.py?topic=27291</a></p>
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		<title>Automatically Post Blog Entries to Facebook and Twitter</title>
		<link>http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/autopost-to-facebook-and-twitter/</link>
		<comments>http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/autopost-to-facebook-and-twitter/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Sun, 24 Jan 2010 01:12:29 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>S. W. Shinn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swshinn.com/?p=887</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[I used to write a blog post, then go to TinyURL.com to get a short link, then I&#8217;d log in to Twitter to tweet about my new blog entry, then I&#8217;d go to Facebook and do the same thing. What a drag. Here&#8217;s how to automate your blog so you write once and publish to [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>I used to write a blog post, then go to <a href="http://TinyURL.com" title="http://TinyURL.com" class="autohyperlink" target="_blank">TinyURL.com</a> to get a short link, then I&#8217;d log in to Twitter to tweet about my new blog entry, then I&#8217;d go to Facebook and do the same thing. What a drag. Here&#8217;s how to automate your blog so you write once and publish to multiple place automatically &#8212; it mirrors the content out to both Twitter and Facebook with no extra work necessary!</p>
<p>This mini-tutorial assumes:</p>
<ol>
<li>You have a Facebook &#8220;page&#8221; set up and a Twitter account.</li>
<li>You have a blog set up on your own domain (mine is <a href="http://swshinn.com" title="http://swshinn.com" class="autohyperlink" target="_blank">swshinn.com</a>) and it uses WordPress software to manage the site.</li>
<li>You (or someone you know) knows how to FTP into your site and install WordPress plugins (it&#8217;s really not that hard &#8212; Google search to find many tutorials on this).</li>
</ol>
<p><strong>Step 1: Getting Wordpress to </strong><strong>automatically </strong><strong> </strong><strong>post to Twitter<br />
</strong></p>
<p>Download and install the &#8220;YOURLS: WordPress To Twitter&#8221;  plugin:</p>
<p><a href="http://planetozh.com/blog/yourls-wordpress-to-twitter-a-short-url-plugin/" title="http://planetozh.com/blog/yourls-wordpress-to-twitter-a-short-url-plugin/" class="autohyperlink" target="_blank">planetozh.com/blog/yourls-wordpress-to-twitter-a-short-url-plugin/</a></p>
<p>Once installed and activated, configure these settings:</p>
<ol>
<li>Under &#8220;URL Shortener Service&#8221; pick a service. I use TinyURL.</li>
<li>Under &#8220;Twitter Settings&#8221; enter the login and password for your Twitter account.</li>
<li>Finally, check the box that says &#8220;  Send a tweet with the short URL&#8221;. This means that every time you submit a blog post, this WordPress plugin will automatically make a short URL for your blog post (in my case, generating a TinyURL) and post the entry to your Twitter account.</li>
</ol>
<p>Here&#8217;s a screenshot of my settings (click the image to enlarge it):<br />
<strong> </strong></p>
<div id="attachment_888" class="wp-caption aligncenter" style="width: 578px"><strong> </strong><strong><a href="http://swshinn.com/uploads/yourls-wordpress-to-twitter.png"><img class="size-large wp-image-888" title="yourls-wordpress-to-twitter" src="http://swshinn.com/uploads/yourls-wordpress-to-twitter-568x1024.png" alt="YOURLS Wordpress To Twitter Plugin" width="568" height="1024" /></a></strong><p class="wp-caption-text">YOURLS Wordpress To Twitter Plugin</p></div>
<p><strong>Step 2: Getting Facebook to automatically list your new blog posts</strong></p>
<p>Assuming you have a Facebook &#8220;page&#8221; (I&#8217;m not sure it would work with a normal Facebook account or Facebook &#8220;group&#8221;; and most authors prefer the &#8220;page&#8221; features), here&#8217;s how you do it.</p>
<ol>
<li>Click on the link to &#8220;Edit&#8221; your page.</li>
<li>Then on the settings page that appears, under &#8220;Notes Settings&#8221; on the right, it gives the option to &#8220;Import a blog.&#8221; Click that link, and then enter the URL for your Wordpress blog&#8217;s RSS feed (by default, this is &#8220;http://yoursite.com/feed&#8221;).</li>
<li>Click on &#8220;Start Importing.&#8221;</li>
</ol>
<p>You&#8217;re done!</p>
<p>In the future, when you post to your Wordpress blog, Wordpress will tweet your post to your Twitter account, and Facebook will grab the entry and post it under your Facebook page notes. Note that Facebook may take a few minutes (maybe even an hour or more) to grab your blog post, so be patient. <img src='http://swshinn.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif' alt=';-)' class='wp-smiley' /> </p>
<p><em>If you liked this article, add me as a &#8220;friend&#8221; on Facebook and Twitter!:</em></p>
<p><em>http://www.facebook.com/pages/S-W-Shinn/197734288134</em></p>
<p><em>http://twitter.com/swshinn</em></p>
]]></content:encoded>
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		<title>2 Hours + 2 Hours is Not Equal to 4 Hours</title>
		<link>http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/2-hours-2-hours-is-not-equal-to-4-hours/</link>
		<comments>http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/2-hours-2-hours-is-not-equal-to-4-hours/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Thu, 07 Aug 2008 16:41:35 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>S. W. Shinn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swshinn.com/?p=176</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[A great quote from Stephenson’s “Why I am a Bad Correspondent” &#8212; why writing is hard work requiring long, uninterrupted spans of time:
Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p><a href="http://swshinn.com/uploads/notebook.png"><img class="alignright size-full wp-image-175" style="float: right;" title="Notebook" src="http://swshinn.com/uploads/notebook.png" alt="" width="239" height="204" /></a>A great quote from <a href="http://www.nealstephenson.com/content/author_bad.htm">Stephenson’s “Why I am a Bad Correspondent”</a> &#8212; why writing is hard work requiring long, uninterrupted spans of time:</p>
<blockquote><p>Writing novels is hard, and requires vast, unbroken slabs of time. Four quiet hours is a resource that I can put to good use. Two slabs of time, each two hours long, might add up to the same four hours, but are not nearly as productive as an unbroken four. If I know that I am going to be interrupted, I can’t concentrate, and if I suspect that I might be interrupted, I can’t do anything at all. Likewise, several consecutive days with four-hour time-slabs in them give me a stretch of time in which I can write a decent book chapter, but the same number of hours spread out across a few weeks, with interruptions in between them, are nearly useless.</p></blockquote>
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		<item>
		<title>Boosting Productivity With a Timer</title>
		<link>http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/boosting-productivity-with-a-timer/</link>
		<comments>http://swshinn.com/writing-tips/boosting-productivity-with-a-timer/#comments</comments>
		<pubDate>Tue, 16 Oct 2007 20:03:14 +0000</pubDate>
		<dc:creator>S. W. Shinn</dc:creator>
				<category><![CDATA[Tips]]></category>
		<category><![CDATA[Writing Process]]></category>

		<guid isPermaLink="false">http://swshinn.com/writing-process/boosting-productivity-with-a-timer/</guid>
		<description><![CDATA[Using a timer for writing? I&#8217;m not sure if it will boost productivity, but at least you can use it to track yourself and measure your progress.
With the introduction of a $10 countdown timer that one can purchase in any housewares department, we can create our own artificial deadlines that create that sense of urgency [...]]]></description>
			<content:encoded><![CDATA[<p>Using a timer for writing? I&#8217;m not sure if it will boost productivity, but at least you can use it to track yourself and measure your progress.</p>
<blockquote><p>With the introduction of a $10 countdown timer that one can purchase in any housewares department, we can create our own artificial deadlines that create that sense of urgency for us. By setting the timer for 15 minutes to allow us to complete a task, it seems easy to focus and weed out the unimportant. When I use this technique, I get much more work done and I hear myself telling others, &#8220;Call me back in 30 minutes. I&#8217;m in the middle of something!&#8221; Productivity soars.</p></blockquote>
<p>Read more at: <a href="http://hwebbjr.typepad.com/openloops/2006/04/boosting_produc.html">Open Loops: Boosting Productivity With a Timer</a></p>
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