Every day I am scouring the web for (or actually aggregators are feeding me and then I am researching) topics to use in the development of RGVPlus.
My personal standard for pursuing further is 1) is it interesting, 2) is it current or new (if you are looking in the right places, you can generally find out things in advance of release, the day of, or soon thereafter) and 3) will it provide some form of utility for the company or our clients.
Running a business however, superimposes another criteria, is it marketable, can we charge for it, will it make the company money.
Many of the subjects I read about have tie-ins to my role as an educator and the changing role of technology in the classroom. These may never rise up to the level of being a money maker, but they still fulfill my personal standard, if not my professional one.
Anyhow, here are highlights of links to topics I researched over the weekend:
Facebook’s new Pipe App to transfer files to friends
PromoSimple, to promote your own contests and giveaways (yes, we are planning some big ones this summer!)
The Story of Stuff Project, working to create a more healthy and just world (thanks Vanessa)
Appify premium WordPress theme (always searching new themes for clients)
http://demo.astoundify.com/switcher/?theme=appify-iphone
Recurring payments on PayPal
https://www.paypal.com/ecrecurringpayments
The commenting system Disqus (signed up just to post a comment, and then decided it may be useful to check out)
I signed up for a Teambox account, which looked to be a promising collaboration tool that ties together Dropbox, Box, and Evernote (but this Monday morning their servers appear to be overloaded)
and Classroom Booksouce, which is a web-based inventory and control program for classroom libraries (yes, I am still functioning in teacher mode!).
http://classroom.booksource.com/
These are the standouts I had open as tabs in my browser (I prefer Chrome because I can see tabs on each of the various devices I have open) and doesn’t even include the various short articles I read from my social media feeds. And trust me, I need my feeds!
I am hoping that I am able to regularly share interesting links on the RGVPlus blog and mostly keep them topical to business or educational applications. If I were to post all the links of what I find interesting, I could be here a long time! In my next post I will share how I use social media aggregators to speed up my research, and not eat up all of my productivity.