Techmamas

Pearltrees Update 0.7.3: Custom Avatars, Full Screen Videos, Faster Browsing and New Super Embed features

The social curation website Pearltrees just released Update 0.7.3 that has the following new features:

•  Account customization: Custom avatars
• User interface upgrades: Zoom and Full-screen videos
• Collapsable lists of pearltrees
• New Super Embed features
  
• Performance improvements: Faster browsing
• Updates to Firefox addon
  
• Invite feature to invite friends to join you on Pearltrees
  

I use Pearltrees to organize content I find all over the web. As a visual person, Pearltrees has helped me keep track and share important web content. Just a few days ago, I was following all the social media channels for NYC Fashion Week 2010 because I could not be there live. I used Pearltrees to organize the designers that have social media channels:

Disclosure: Beth Blecherman is a Pearltrees Evangelist.

Curating BlogHer10

I am excited to be heading to the BlogHer10 (2010) conference. I will be looking for great links/posts from the conference to share on my BlogHer10 Pearltree. The information shared at BlogHer is always so rich with interesting, informative, inspiring and just plain ole fun - that I decided to curate the info during BlogHer.

Here are two posts about I wrote with details about Pearltrees - a social curation tool: Understanding Pearltrees: A New Way To Organize Web Content. There are also updates to Pearltrees functionality that I will be posting about soon. I will also be visiting Kirtsy and BlogHer to find fun content about BlogHer10.

**Please comment or share your BlogHer10 posts or Pearls/Pearltrees with me!***

Here is my main BlogHer10 Conference info Pearltree:

Here is my BlogHer Day One Agenda:

Here is my BlogHer Day Two Agenda:

I will be speaking with two fab mom bloggers (Kimberley Blaine and Susan Getgood) Day One about Online Branding. The title of the session for BlogHer10 is "Professional: ROYO - Social Media is Bringing Sexy Back to Branding -- Do You Have the Social Media Strategy and Tools for Success?". To collect information for my presentation I created an Online Branding Pearltree.

More to come as I add new content to my Pearltrees during the conference.

Disclosure: I am a Pearltrees Evangalist

Using Pearltrees To Prep For BlogHer 2010

Summer is finally here and it is getting close to my favorite conference of the year (other then the Consumer Electronics Show): BlogHer . This year is "BlogHer10" and it will be held Friday/Saturday August 6/7. BlogHer conferences give me the opportunity to connect "live" with a wide range of interesting and amazing bloggers that I read about online.

I used Pearltrees to starting gathering information for the presentation:

1. A Pearltree on BlogHer Conference Info:

2. The fabulous Kimberly Blaine and Susan Getgood  - and I (Beth Blecherman) are excited to be presenting the following BlogHer10 panel:  "Integrating Your Online Presence Across All Platforms: It Can (And Must) Be Done!" that is part of the Room of Your Own Professional track.

Here is the description: Whether your brand is your personal brand, your small business or your employer's, the plethora of networking tools and opportunities can be overwhelming. Share best practices on building a consistent brand by integrating your efforts across all available platforms, including social networks, traditional media and even offline events.

August 6, 2010 - 2:45pm - 4:00pm

Conference Day: Day 1

To prepare, I am reading up on everything I can about Online Brand(s). I hope to get suggestions for more interesting online branding reads from my community. I created a Pearltree to collect the information I have found so far:

3. I am also starting to refresh my memory of last year's conference by taking a look at some of the Live blog posts from BlogHer09. I just added a few of the liveblogs from last year to start:

Disclosure: I am advising Pearltrees.com

Looking For Parent Bloggers: The Parents Online Content Pearltree

It was at LeWeb in Paris that I first found out about Pearltrees, a great way to organize and share content online. I found Pearltree's format fit with my daily workflow of reading and organizing my content online - and my interest to see things in a visual format  - so I started using it. Now I am advising them.

The Pearltrees social search functionality is also a great feature so I decided it would be fun to have more parent bloggers and parent social media Pearltrees available. So here is my offer - any parent that has a blog or social media website (not product based ONLY content based) and wants to be included in my Parents Online Content Pearltree please do the following:

STEP 1. Create a Pearltree account or log on to your existing Pearltrees account. For those that don't have a Pearltrees account it is a good idea to reserve your brand by using that name for your account (similar to Twitter, once an account name is gone - it is gone).

STEP 2. Create a Pearltree about your blog/website: I recommend to keep the number of Pearls in a Pearltree to a small amount so it is easy to track. A good strategy is to think of a Pearltree like a folder and put sub folders within it (by linking sub-Pearltrees).

What is a Pearl and a Pearltree?

A "pearl" of information is a web page (permalink) that you want to save. For example, if you are collecting blog posts about cyberbullying - you can create a "pearl" for each blog post permalink to save it or organize it for future reference. A "pearltree" is the collection of content/web pages (or pearls) that you want to save or organize. For example, you can name the Pearltree "Cyberbullying" that would have links to web content on cyberbullying (pearls).

Here is a link to my post about understanding Pearltrees (CLICK HERE) for those that want more information. HINT: I installed the Firefox toolbar buttons so it is really easy to "pearl" my content - other browsers also have toolbar button add-ons.

CLICK HERE to visit the PEARLTREES website http://www.pearltrees.com

This can even be a way to create a visual bio of the website or yourself. Here is an example I created for the TechMamas.com website:

STEP 3. Comment below with the permalink to your Pearltree OR a permalink to a blog post with a pearltree embedded and I will add to my Parents Online Content Pearltree (for any parenting content based blog or social media websites - not product websites). To obtain the permalink or embed code, just click once on a Pearltree and then in the "detail" box select either "embed" or "share".  This will also give others a way to click over and view the Pearltrees just by reading this post!

My Parents Online Content Pearltree is just about empty and I can't wait to add Pearltrees to it!! HERE IS THE LINK TO MY PARENTS ONLINE PEARLTREE.http://www.pearltrees.com/techmama/5265976/

NOTE: TO SHARE YOUR PEARLTREE, select the Pearltree in your account by clicking once - with the "detail" box displayed. The detail box will show the share options including embedding or displaying the Pearltree's permalink. Users can also use the Twitter Sync feature to share or organize Pearltrees.

EXCITING NEWS: Pearltrees was named as one of the Launchpad companies for the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco next week. There will be lots of buzz around Pearltrees, so I think it would be great to showcase the amazing array of parents online by showing their Pearltrees. I will be at Web 2.0 to cheer Pearltrees on and pass the word for all the fabulous Parents online by showcasing the amazing mom/dad bloggers in the Pearltree! If any of my readers are attending Web 2.0 in San Francisco, please stop by the Pearltrees booth for more information.

Disclosure: After using Pearltrees I accepted a role as an adviser to the company.

Understanding Pearltrees: A New Way To Organize Web Content

Many people search the web, read content every day and share that content. While advances in search technology has made finding information easier and easier, saving and organizing information in a way that captures a story or conversation can still be very challenging.

I just posted on Techmamas.com about my first experience with Pearltrees.com; I was on a Traveling Geeks trip to LeWeb and Pearltrees was one of the French companies we met. Being a visual person, the Pearltrees online application offered me the tools to capture and organize online information in a visual format that also reflected the storyline behind the issue being discussed. I decided that my next step was to use it and see what happens. What happened - is that adding content to Pearltrees became part of my daily workflow. I now find it to be an essential way to organize the content I view daily, in a way that I can organize, share and embed in my blog. Being a busy mom, Pearltrees saves me the time of going back to capture relevant links or discussions  - because I am now doing it as part of my daily workflow. Simple bookmarking works linearly. Pearltrees enables the story to be told in a more visual way.

I easily created Pearltrees for conversations, issues and topic areas I am researching. My online peeps started taking notice, saying things like "there goes TechMama, creating those pearly things again" and "wow, Pearltrees looks great but I need to learn how to use it".

Months later, when I took on a project as adviser to Pearltrees, I had the opportunity to learn even more about the site and share the information I learned.

WHAT IS PEARLTREES?

The way many people currently organize web content is by using bookmarking sites, which are organized in a linear, menu-style format.  Pearltrees works differently because it is a visual mapping of content that can be "dragged and dropped" into different visual trees. The Pearltrees.com FAQ's describes this process in the following way. "Pearltrees is a collaborative network that lets users create, enrich and share the world of their interests. In Pearltrees, everyone creates a world and uses parts of others' worlds to extend it. By doing so, everyone contributes to the overall project: building the first human organization of the Web."  It is not only a way to "create, enrich and share the world of a user's interests but also keep at hand the great content they find everyday on the web."

A Pearltree is made up of Pearls. A Pearl is simply a link to web content that a user wants to save and organize.  The content can be a blog post, article, Tweet, picture, video or any other online media that has a permalink/URL.

 

Organizing Online Content With Pearltrees

While on the Traveling Geeks trip to Paris, we had the opportunity to meetup with a French company called Pearltrees. This was our first stop on what was a busy day meeting an exciting group of French companies. Beyond hearing about the companies, I was just happy that I made it on and off the Paris Metro without losing my ticket.

Pearltrees is a collaborative way to share interests online. I was intrigued by the concept of a new way to organize (in real time) my content and find additional content online. I also appreciated the visual nature of Pearltrees, each unique content link is considered a "pearl" while groupings of pearls are "pearltrees". I even imagined using Pearltrees to organize the links I share on Twitter and my other social network platforms, to bring life to archived posts on my blogs that have related topics, find new content and organize interesting conversations that take place online. To better understand the functionality, I started using Pearltrees.

Here's the process I followed to explore Pearltrees:

While on the Traveling Geeks trip I decided to use Pearltrees to organize some of the posts about our trip to Paris (I plan to add more):

  

After returning to California, I went back to my Pearltree to find a picture to use on my post of the Traveling Geeks group meeting. I revisted that Pearltree to find more pictures for this post.

  

Not finding the pictures I wanted in my own Flickr set, I then searched Pearltrees for more Traveling Geeks content and found Pearltree stories in English. From that, I found fellow Traveling Geek Olivier Ezratty's Picasso albums. 

  

I could of also found that Pearltree via a Google search for Traveling Geeks. Here are the results when I performed a Google Search on "Traveling Geeks Pearltrees":

"Traveling geeks !!!! by PED - Pearltrees
PED created the pearltree Traveling geeks !!!!. Check out: Pearltrees Beta Launches on Wednesday: Will Let You Archive the // down the avenue: Pearltrees: A ...
www.pearltrees.com/PED/1501612/ - Cached"

I checked those albums and found these pictures of the Traveling Geeks meetup with Pearltrees.

The Traveling Geeks getting ready for the briefing.

 

The briefing started with an explanation of how Pearltrees works from Patrice Lamothe.

 

The Pearltree team and one their workspaces. 

Pearltrees meeting pictures photo credits: Olivier Ezratty . Picture of Paris Metro photo credit Beth Blecherman.       

My next step will be to create some posts with tips on what I have learned about Pearltrees. More to come..

Disclosure: I met the Pearltees team while on the Traveling Geeks trip to Paris/LeWeb where I first started using Pearltrees. Disclosures about the Traveling Geeks can found here. After using Pearltrees, I wanted to learn more so I spent some time using it. Recently I started advising Pearltrees.  What I blog about are my own opinions.