LiveMint My Online Life Article: Always Plugged In

Sometime back, I wrote a piece for LiveMint sometime back about the typical online tools I use on a daily basis. It was published today.

Here is the full text of the LiveMint article –

Blogosphere basics: always plugged in

Between my Lenovo Thinkpad X61, Nokia N97, iPod Touch and my Amazon Kindle, and the four data connections I pay for, I am always online

I live my life on the Internet. I write a blog about how the Internet is changing business and society and run a consulting firm that helps clients build and nurture online communities to connect with their customers. Between my Lenovo Thinkpad X61, Nokia N97, iPod Touch and my Amazon Kindle, and the four data connections I pay for (office Wi-Fi, home Wi-Fi, mobile, laptop data card), I am always online.

Essentials

The default tabs open on my browser are www.gmail.com, Google Apps and Basecamp, and all my work happens on them.

All my writing happens on the two blogs www.gauravonomics.com and www.2020social.com. The 20:20 Social email, calendar and shared document folders are on Google Apps. We manage our projects using a mix of Google Apps and Basecamp. Most of our client leads come from my blog, the 20:20 Social website and Twitter. Now we are setting up an internal community for 20:20 Social using SocialText (www.socialtext.com). Apart from this, I have Tweetdeck running all the time. All my conversations happen on Twitter via Tweetdeck.

Both my driver and I are useless at directions, so I use Google Maps (www.maps.google.com) every time I step into my car.

Leisure

In my free time, I read the 200-odd feeds I have subscribed to through Google Reader or download a book from Amazon for my Kindle.

Browser

I use Firefox because its plug-in ecosystem lets me extend it in new and interesting ways. I use AdBlock Plus for locking ads. SearchStatus is good for getting a quick snapshot of how popular a website is. Feedly is another add-on to read my Google Reader feeds in a magazine-style format.

Social networking sites

I am on all social networking sites, but I’m mostly regular on Facebook (www.facebook.com) and Twitter (www.twitter.com). A fourth of the traffic to my blog and client leads comes from Twitter. I met some of my best friends on it. Although Twitter is small in India, compared with Facebook and Orkut, it is very popular among the early adopter crowd.

Applications

I have a Nokia N97 and my favourite app right now is the Twitter app Gravity. The Nokia Ovi app store is a great place to download free and paid apps for your Nokia phones. I also have an iPod Touch and I love the WordPress, Facebook and Evernote apps, even though I don’t use the iPod Touch very often. The iTunes store is a great place for downloading free and paid apps.

Blog

I have a WordPress-based, self-hosted blog at Gauravonomics.com. WordPress is a simple and flexible blogging platform and I highly recommend a self-hosted WordPress blog for all serious bloggers. In the past I have also built blogging and community sites using Drupal and WordPress MU, which are great as multi-blogger platforms. For first-time bloggers, WordPress or Blogger are great out-of-the-box options for starting a blog.

Gaurav Mishra is the CEO of social business strategy firm 20:20 Social and has taught social media at Georgetown University, US, as the 2008-09 Yahoo Fellow.

As told to Varuni Khosla.

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