Because I’m so cool, I always make sure I turn up late for the party – In a literal sense anyway.

In the tech and online world however, that just doesn’t cut it – Snooze and you loose!

Over the past few months I’ve been getting into Tumblr. Now I know this isn’t something new, I have dabbled in it before but never really took it seriously.

At first I didn’t get it, it was hard to know what was original content and if there even was any original content on there at all. Once I dived right in though, it became more apparent. It’s not simply about blogging. It’s about currating and sharing.

So I decided to pick a theme for my Tumblr and stick with it. I needed something that was almost effortless with endless content to post. Now I’m massively into my music and I’ve always been slightly obsessed with remixes and cover versions. So that was it.

My theme seemed to go with the nature of Tumblr. I would simply curate videos from YouTube and share them with a little info on my Tumblr.

What surprised me was the instant reception I got for my posts. People were liking and re-blogging my posts straight away. It was great. Maybe I just chose the perfect content or maybe these people were just really nice.

At the moment it’s all a bit of fun but maybe I’ll find a better use for it. Do you have any ideas or experiences you’d like to share?

You can see my collections or mashups, covers and remixes at #CoverMyRemix

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,400 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

I’ve decided to move my blog over to my own site, which is build on WordPress. I wanted to have more control and use my own domain.

I’ll keep everything here as it is for now and if you still want to read my new stuff just head on over to www.markledden.co.uk

There’s many a tool which aims to help you find this balance. What I present here is what I believe to be a perfectly acceptable way to keep track of those who make your Twitter life a little brighter so you can reward them with the all important #FollowFriday at the end of the week.

Most weeks, when Friday does come around I’m either too busy or when I try and put my mind to it I can’t remember who has done what for me to piece together a decent follow Friday. Sorry people

With this method you can start your #FF from the beginning of the week and gradually build up a saved message which you can keep adding to that is setup to post on the Friday of that week.

How to do it

Personally, I’ll be using Hootsuite, as ever. You can use any tool that will let you schedule messages. I choose Hootsuite because it’s what I use everywhere. It also lets you edit pending messages, which is the most important thing here.

1. Schedule Your Message

All you need to do at the beginning of the week is schedule a message to post to your Twitter account on the following Friday (like the word play there?)

Schedule your message using Hootsuite

You’ll then see your pending message in your pending message stream or the fancy, new publisher view.

Your pending #FF in Hootsuite

2. Edit Your Message

If you don’t have anyone to add to it at first just leave it as “#FF” (Remember to delete it it you don’t get round to adding anyone by Friday or it’ll be one sorry looking Tweet!)

As the tweeting week goes on make note of those who you’ve conversed with, learnt from and who have helped you. It’s at that point you should be adding their names to your list. That list being your pending #FF.

Edit your tweet in Hootsuite

3. Sit Back and Relax

Now you can just take it easy, or get back to work! As everything is taken care of. No need to franticly look back through @reply’s and DM’s to figure out who you want to honour with an #FF.

Further Ideas

You could also set up a few different messages. Especially if you have a lot of people to thank. You could have different #FF’s for people who RT you, those you talk to regularly or influencers on various topics.

Hope this is useful to you. Make sure you don’t forget those superstars of Twitter. Also, If anyone is using another way to schedule their messages, I’d like to know how you got on.

On your main Hootsuite dashboard, up in the top right-hand corner you’ll see the magnifying glass icon. This is the search tool. Some of you will already know that (sorry). Now, click on the search icon and you’ll get the dropdown box for your text entry.

For a general search, you would just pop in what you’re looking for and away you go. But if you notice the little crosshairs next to the text box, this allows you to search relative to your current location.

(NB: You’re browser will probably ask for you to give permission to Hootsuite to identify your location)

If you put in your search query then hit the cross-hairs you will get a stream of tweets which match that query and are local to you. You’ll see “geocode:” and a bunch of numbers in the header of the column. This is just the longitude and latitude of your current position.

This could be very useful for local businesses looking for potential customers. I use it sometimes when I travel around with my laptop and I want to see what’s happening on Twitter locally. I just use a location-based search with nothing is the text box. That way I get ALL the tweets which are nearby.

Bonus Tip!

If you want to see local results for a location which you aren’t currently in then all you need is the coordiantes or that location. You can get this information from various sites. Lifehacker have a great trick for getting this information straight from your browser using Google Maps.

Just get the place you want on Google Maps (make sure it’s centred) then drop this code in the address bar and you’ll get a popup with the coordinates.

javascript:void(prompt('',gApplication.getMap().getCenter()));
Pretty cool, hey?

Brizzly is what New Twitter should have been. It’s a single column layout which displays images in video in the timeline, much like the Facebook feed. Come to mention it, it also has Facebook integration.

There are clear indicators when you have mentions, unlike Twitter. And DM’s popup in the corner and take the form of IM chat windows. Very cool.

If your looking for something a bit different than Twitter web and you don’t really want to jump into something more hardcore then Brizzly is definitely worth a try.

First thing you’ll need to do is make the template. Just create a new post as you would with any other. If your post is part of a series you can have some of the title already filled out eg: “One Cool Series of Posts: ____”

I’d also suggest putting TEMPLATE in the start of the title for easy identification. You can then add in any kind of filler you have on this series of posts at the start and end. Say, you have the same opening and closing paragraph for example.

**Hint: WordPress, it would be cool to have a ‘Templates’ tag to keep these posts in, to separate them from drafts etc

When your ready to use your new template, hit ‘Copy a Post’ in the Posts Menu on the dashboard. As shown below. You’ll then be given a list of all your posts which you can use to copy.

Select the post you want and that’s it! You have an exact copy of the original post. In the case of the template for the series of posts; just adjust your title eg. “One Cool Series of Posts: Cool Post Number 3″ (Remember to remove TEMPLATE, of course!). Then just add your content specific to this post and you’re done

I think it’s a great feature for WordPress to implement and I hope some of you find this useful. Another use could be for reversioning a post. You may have done a post on a list of your favourite apps. Some of which may just need bringing a little up to date.

The biggest thing to get over when moving from a fairly standard phone to a full touch screen is the simple lack of buttons. I had huge difficulties at the start finding a comfortable solution to inputing text into my phone. I couldn’t get along with the stock keyboard. My thumbs were just too fat! It even drove me away from texting and any other activity which required the delicate touch I lacked when it came to input on this new breed of phone.

This brings me to probably the most important and underrated app on my phone. Most likely because once it’s there you don’t need to think about it. I probably use it more than anything else and it just makes my phone usable for someone like me. (I even wrote a blog post about it)

#1 – Swype

I started using this in it’s early beta after hearing about it from some blog (no idea which one). In fact it’s still actually in beta but it’s works beautifully and I’ve never had any issues. The concept is quite simple, the keyboard is laid out like any other and all you need to do is drag your finger around over the letters to make the word you want to spell. It doesn’t even have to be that accurate and it does a pretty good job of guessing the word you want.

#2 – Opera Mini

This is a bit of a swiss army knife app. I use it both as a backup browser; when I need something fast (bus/train times, other info etc). I also use it when I’m nearing my data limit as it manages to get you what you need with minimal bandwidth. It acheives this by running all of it’s traffic through Opera’s servers and compressing the web pages, often by as much as 90%. I can’t really get on with it on a full time basis as it’s not overly pretty, lacks some features and because of the compression, pages may not render properly. Though it’s not a huge app but it’s incredibly powerful so it’s always good to have around when you might need it.

#3 – Juice Defender

If you have a samrtphone you’re probably well aware of their terrible battery life. You more than likely plan when your next charge is going to come from and probably stare anxiously at the battery level. Either that or you’re phone is dying in the middle of an important call.

There are a whole host of battery saving/monitoring apps out there. I used to use APN Droid which cuts off all your connectivity apart from calls and SMS. I still do use it for extreme battery levels and times when I know I wont be using my phone but still need it on. I also use it when I need to restrict my data usage.

However there are other occasions where simply cutting off connectivity doesn’t seem to cut it. We’re paying for these 3G data speeds and it kind of defeats the point of having a smartphone if we’re not using them to their full capacity.

The happy medium comes with Juice Defender. It cleverly and comprehensively monitors and restricts battery usage according to a plethora of different settings. It’s aim is to give you the longest life of your battery while still being able to use your phone to it’s full potential. If you go and get this app now you’ll instantly notice a difference.

There really is so much control you can take over what aspects of your phone use up your battery that you’re more likely to get lost in the settings. The free app is enough for most but for those control freaks the paid app is more than worth it.

#4 – EasyTether

This is another one of those ‘emergency apps’. For those occassions when you’re out with your laptop and can’t get any free WiFi but have have your phone in your pocket with super fast connectivity and you desperately need to get some work done. After trying the free app I had to pay for the upgrade to get the https option. It’s probably the cheapest option out there and it’s cross-platform, working great on my Ubuntu netbook and Windows 7 desktop.

There isn’t much to say here as it does exactly what it says on the tin and turns your phone into a modem. I’m very happy with it. If you need a tethering app (without root) this is the one.

#5 – DropBox

This app would probably be on most people’s lists and there’s not a whole lot I can say about it except it’s helped me out of a few tricky situations where I desperately needed a document but had no Internet but my phone. In a way it’s starting to help my phone to act as a USB ‘gateway’ drive (or some similar kind of jiberish). It’s something I’ll always have with me and lets me access important files when I might need them.

Bonus App! – The Trainline

This is a recent little gem I’ve found which has already saved me a bit of money. I do a fair bit of travelling by train and know a few ways of saving money and getting the most out of my tickets. This app has allowed me to buy advanced tickets for the next day or the week ahead at a fraction of the price and at crutial times when I don’t have my laptop with me.

It’s quick, easy and from what I hear, very secure. My only gripe is the booking fee (£1 each time). It’s not huge but on the ocassions when I do have my laptop I’ll always book with Virgin Trains as they don’t charge a booking fee. Virgin Trains say there is an Android app on the way and for that I cannot wait. Until then The Trainline app is great!

So that’s my toolbox of apps I don’t think I could get along without. Are any of these on your list of favourites? Or do you have a few others which you rely on?

For those of you who didn’t know it, last Saturday (the 16^th April) was Record Store Day. This is celebrated across the world and aims to promote and support the independent record stores so many of us rely on.

The main focus of the day is centred around the special release from participating artists. Last year was the first year I took part and was the first I’d ever heard of the event. Being in Manchester I was well aware of Piccadilly Records, being an essential music hub and also one of the major stores participating in the UK.

On my first Record Store Day in 2010, I was queing up outside Piccadilly Records at 7AM. It was 6:30AM this year, who knows what it’ll be next year and the following year! Fair play to these hardy people below who queued up from as early as midnight and brought sleeping bags and picnics. That’s dedication.

I came down to show my support and bag myself some collectables. For me and I’m sure almost everyone there, it’s purely about the music and more specifically the physical format. The iTunes users are at the other end of the scale here and were presumably absent from the queue. There was even a specially made bag on sale which proves my point. Lovely

I still feel listening to the sound generated from the grooves in a record is one of the best listening experiences you can have. And it’s about the collect-ability, you get to hold your music. Here’s what I managed to grab this year. Luckily, as I was so close to the front of the queue I  managed to get everything I wanted.

Last year there was a huge amount of hype over the new Blur single, with it being the first thing they’d released for over ten years. I managed to bag one of those too Here’s some other pieces I picked up.

MP3′s and iPods might hold all the convenience needed for today’s way of life but there’s something about records which is understood by their die-hard fans which will never see them fade away. I’m already looking forward to what next year brings. Keep hold of the physical format, keep those records spinning and support your local independant record store

So here it is, a test post with a little extra. Lets see if this thing actually makes it out to you