@dvocable

• Twe2 – Get your Twitter Alerts via SMS worldwide for Free – Twe2 is Free Twitter SMS alerts that you can use to get free alerts on your mobile phone, and customizable too.
• Twe2 – Get your Twitter Alerts via SMS worldwide for Free – Twe2 is Free Twitter SMS alerts in Europe and beyond.
• Tynt – Tracer – When your content is copied, Tracer automatically adds an attribution link to claim it as yours.
• Twippr – Pledge cash by Tweet – Twippr is an interesting concept where users can use Twitter to pay other Twitter users cash using Twitter. The simplicity might just click.
• feedly: a magazine-like start page – Feedly pulls in your Google Reader List and displays the latest content in a easy to read newspaper style format. Lots of options to play around with. Smooth sharing options to Twitter and other social sites. I’m hooked on to this one.
• TinyChat.com – Create a free chatroom – Meebo changed the chat landscape by allowing users to chat without their desktop IMs, and now Tinychat is doing it again by allowing users to chat without any restriction of user IDs, etc. Simple create a room and start chatting.
• Delicious Toolbox: 80+ Updated Tools and Resources – Here are over 80 tools for everything from your mobile device to your blog, and more, that can help you view your bookmarks in new and unique ways, backup your bookmarks in a secure location, take your bookmarks with you on the go, blog about your most recent saves, and then some.
• How to Get Retweeted – The best measure of someone’s quality as a Twitter user is not the number of followers but the amount of retweets. Guy Kawasaki provides 6 practical tips to get retweeted on Twitter.
• 11 Free And Useful Open-Source Alternatives For Designers – Opensource, Free and Useful Online Resources for Designers and Developers – Listing here 11 Free And Useful Open-Source Alternatives For Designers in which most of them are cross-platform.
• Top 100 Creative Writing Blogs | Best Colleges Online- From blogs that focus on writers still trying to make it in the publishing world to those providing updates from best selling authors, you’ll find all kinds of information geared towards improving and informing your creative writing.
• 18 Tools I use as a Designer & Blogger | Fuel Your Creativity – Cool web tools that you can use to quickly learn web designing and be more creative.
• 15 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started My First Blog – Neil Patel shares 15 tips to remember when you start your blog. A must for every newbie entering the blogoshere and for regular bloggers too.
• 12 Twitter Stream Aggregators To Make You Smarter | Online Marketing Blog – 2 cool Twitter post aggregators to get you smarter on Twitter
• 9 Common Usability Mistakes In Web Design | How-To | Smashing Magazine – ere are 9 usability problems that websites commonly face, and some recommended solutions for each of them.
• HOW TO GUIDE: 60+ Great How To Sites and Resources – Here’s a run-down of more than 60 great how-to sites and guides covering everything from building a mashup to being more productive, creating a website and more.
• 100 Free and Useful Open Courseware Classes for Web Workers – Learn-gasm – These free open courseware classes can help any web worker get a step up on the task with courses including web design skills, media arts, photography and video, writing and communication, technology, and even classes to help freelancers get ahead with marketing and entrepreneurial topics.
• 42 Free Online Magazines for Designers | Graphics - There’s a huge pool of free design magazines on the net; we meant those softcopy magazines you can either browse online or download (.PDF, .SWF) for offline viewing. Not only they have high quality content, each issue released is also free.

Last Friday, I had the pleasure of witnessing a PR crisis spelling out in the western blogosphere. It all started with Gina Trapani, the editor of Lifehacker posting a status on Twitter about a new PR blacklist wiki she has created. She was apparently tired of PR folks sending her irrelevant emails and decided to filter out all emails coming from specific domains of PR agencies.

One of our PR 2.0 guys, Brian Solis replied to her saying ’some of us are trying to help’. Brian posted another tweet soon after – Making Mistakes and Amends in Blogger and Media Relations. Meanwhile Steve Rubel joined in by twitting – @ginatrapani Appreciate your concerns about PR spam but is it really that black and white? Finally Gina tweeted again – PR folks, thanks for your thoughtful replies. Here’s why I filter entire domains. She pointed to this post, which I am sure you will love visiting and reading about the journalist complaining about receiving irrelevant emails from PR people.

All this drama was happening in my Twitterfox right inside by browser. Quite entertaining. While all this time we profess to be PR 2.0 experts, we ended up on the PR blacklist.

So guys, lets try not repeat this in India. Rajesh recently wrote about some PR agency sending some kind of email that he had to sigh. Press releases are not wanted so much anymore by the media today, and especially not by the bloggers. And the copy and paste pitch email mass mailing has to stop. I remember in my early days, I used to send press releases to editors and follow up as well. Lucky me. Phew! The editors were kind enough to day ‘thanks, I will see to it’. I also remember a colleague who had the email addresses of about 500 journalists and he used to mail every press conference invite to all of them.

About journalists, I know one, for whom, in her junior years, I had asked questions to my own client on her behalf because she couldn’t ask any in an interview meeting. Now she is in a hot financial daily and doesn’t seem to recognise me. I also know a journalist who was working in a financial daily with a big shot ‘I hate PR’ attitude, but after she shifted to a daily tabloid recently, she is today the one sending interview requests to PR agencies. Those who used to hate PR yesterday are in corporate communications departments today.

So people, no use trying to wash the dirty laundry in public. Lets just try to make it work together.

Oh about the rest of the weekend, my wife had pretty pink butterfly tattoo done from a parlour at Priya complex in south Delhi. The experience was great (will post a video soon on my personal blog) but funny as well. Funny because the tattoo maker was trying very hard to be cool. Tattoos are cool. So tattoo makers have to be super cool you see.

Now let me shut up.

One last thing, just in case, I tweet at http://twitter.com/palinn