I have been asked many times how I manage to keep track of all the social networks and services that I have. It is very difficult. Since I also review sites, I am constantly signing up for social networks or services. I think I am the only person that does not have a Myspace account, however, I suspect that many individuals are signed up for quite a few social networks themselves. Fear not! There are a few ways to keep them straight with – yes – another service, however, you will be just a little more organized. Below, I will give you five services that I have tried that are great starts to becoming more socially organized.

1. Profilactic (which sounds like a medicine to me) is a recent favorite of mine and supports Pownce, LinkedIn, Shelfari, and the ability to add more than one account for the same site. At its core, Profilactic does two things: it displays your personal lifestream, which consists of your social networking activity, and a group lifestream from your friends. What it does, it does well. There’s also the option to create clippings – bits and pieces of information from the web; but this option is not really connected to the rest of the features on the site.
2. SocialURL helps you organize your online identity and get back in touch with all of your friends and classmates. It’s a unified profile with support for photo galleries and videos, as well as a central portal with links pointing out to all your other social network profiles. It’s all spiced up with lots of additional features, like on-site email, reminders and bookmarks.
3. Naymz is not so much an organizer but helps in that the service actively monitor certain sites for mention of your name. Naymz also actively promotes your profile by trying to make it more visible on Google.
4. Second Brain takes a radically different approach to aggregation than other apps on this list. You organize your data – this includes data from your social network profiles, like Flickr photos or YouTube videos – into collections. A collection is basically a bunch of links, photos, or other bits and pieces of data thrown onto a dashboard; you can create your own collections or explore what others have collected.
5. MyLifeBrand goes a step further by really integrating various social network sites within a MyLifeBrand frame. Its a pretty great service.

All of these services will help in your quest to be a little more organized in your life online and let’s face it; They all do the same thing, however, each of them have something they do different as well. Something you may like, and something you may not like. Take a look at them all. They all strive to keep your online social life more organized and that is something many of us need these days.

If you answered yes, then I suggest you read on. Remember when I wrote about SpeedDate.com? SpeedDate is a dating site where dates are short, sweet, and one-on-one. SpeedDate.com will match you up based on some basic personality and geographical preferences.

The service is hosting what they call the “Olympic Speed Dating Competition.” What exactly daoes that entail? Do you have the looks, the charm, and all the right moves, but just not competition-ready when it comes to speed, strength, and endurance? If So, SpeedDate.com has the Olympic event for you.

Starting Tuesday, SpeedDate.com is hosting an Olympic-themed online dating competition to determine the world’s best online daters. This event will run all the way through Sunday August 24. SpeedDate will then announce the winners by offering gold, silver, and bronze metals to the men and woman who match with the most other singles.

“SpeedDate.com has millions of eligible and attractive single who’ve got the potential to be the world’s best online dater,” said Dan Abelon, co-founder of SpeedDate.com. To get in the Olympic spirit, SpeedDate will ask questions such as: If you go on a date with any athlete, who would it be? Which sport has the sexiest athletes? Which two athletes would make the best couple? Which Olympic event would you most like to compete in?

If anything, you should check out the site and look around. The site is neat, fresh, and offers you the luxury of dating from home. Brush your teeth, comb your hair, wax those eyebrows, and work on your charming, charismatic conversation in preparation for the Olympic Speed Dating Competition. It is sure-to-be an exciting event! 

If you take a few moments to think about internet technology, you will realize that technological advances have come a very long way. It is amazing. Where has technology taken us? Many places.

The fact that technological advances have tripled within the last 40 years compared to the 40 years before is astounding. While some of these advances may have made distractions at work (I’m guilty) a little more prevalent, it has also opened up the workplace to exciting new ways to conduct business and think about new ways to reach the consumer.

Of course, one of the major advances in the workplace was the everyday usage of the Internet. Although the Internet has been around for decades, it only became a workplace necessity in the 1990s. This is when companies realized that they could much more quickly-and cheaply-reach their target audience than through other traditional media sources.

Even more amazing, technology continues to move outside the traditional office or home environment into more powerful and full-featured mobile computing devices. BlackBerries, iPhones and Windows Mobile devices are showing a trend toward bringing the experiences we are familiar with on a desktop computer and putting them in the palm of our hands. With better devices and technology, other things have to keep up as well. The biggest breakthrough will be in increasing the speed of mobile access to the Internet. In the future, the all-encompassing network of wireless broadband Internet access will rival what we experience today in our wired offices and homes, which will allow users for a more sophisticated browsing experience.

I think in the next 5 years or so, the internet will be looked at as commonplace. Everyone will be connected to everyone else at all times. Perhaps if I take a little bit to think about the future, I  can probably guess that watching TV on the internet will be almost as common enough to not require a local cable service. Most of the shows I watch are broadcast online, sometimes better looking than watching it on cable television and I think more and more people will realize this and it’ll be quite popular. That would mean better innovations and better services on Cable companies’ parts.

It is a never-ending story of internet and the technology behind it, and I am anxious to see the best of it. However, I am an optimist. There are those that are not so anxious and for good reason. We all know that with better technology going into internet and other things, that problems arise and individuals find loopholes, and hackers have that better technology to do “bigger and better things.” There is a not-so-pretty  side of things unfortunately, but we will coupe, and time will tell.

To read a good book about this topic, I recommend  The Future of Internet and How to Stop It  by Jonathan Zittrain and it talks about a lot of interesting topics and ideas. Check it out at your local library or buy it online!

As the battle continues against the ultimate online backup solutions, HP has stepped forth with its service called HP Upline. It is a decent backup product at a good price point, but it has a few frustrating limitations.

The software is simple to get started with and the paid plans provide unlimited storage for your documents, photos, music, and video files. The system checks for new files by default every 15 minutes, and uploads your data to the HP servers in a quiet background process. There is a free version that gives you 1GB of online storage for a year, but if you are serious about backup (like me); you will want one of the paid versions. The least expensive “Home plan” ($59.00/year) gives you the unlimited storage and allows up to three PCs. Family plans and small office plans give you individual storage bins, and the business plans also give you an administrator’s dashboard.

Something I really like is that the product allows for web-based access to your backed-up files, which is very useful if you want a file and not by your computer. You can also share files via e-mail or the publish files for public access. Upline can also back up files to a local device, such as a second hard drive, a server, or a PC on the local network. This is a cool feature and I do not think there is a service out that that does both, local and remote storage options, but I could be wrong.

Now there are some cons to this service. Firstly, if you want to back up your emails, you will not be able to. Not yet, anyway. Secondly, this service is focusing on backing up only and not restoring your system, so if you happen to crash your hard drive, you cannot use Upline to restore the system. Although I think this is a feature that is likely to come in the future. Thirdly, the application does not offer PC-to-PC sync. I feel this is a very important feature, and I would suggest looking at a few of my favorites, FolderShare, BeInSync, and SugarSync.

Lastly, HP Upline is not compatible with Mac. I think it is important to offer for both platforms, especially today, since there seems to be a mixed variety of Mac and PC users. Regardless, HP Upline is a great, promising service and in the onward battle of backup solutions, it is also important to keep a nice price point and at $59/year for unlimited backup, I think they have secured themselves in the battle.

Last year, I wrote about the popular WooMe and people seemed to really enjoy the site. If you just can’t get enough, feast your eyes upon SpeedDate.com. Launched last October, Co-founder Dan Abelon helped to start what now seems to be the biggest trend. SpeedDate.com is exactly what the name implies – fast dating. Similar to WooMe, dates are short, sweet, and one-on-one. SpeedDate.com will match you up based on some basic personality and geographical preferences.

Once you are all registered, you are able to start dating immediately. Unlike any other dating options, SpeedDate.com allows singles to immediately determine if they have real chemistry before taking the time to meet in person. How much time do you have to do this? Three minutes! There are distinguishable “yes” and “no” buttons to note whether or not you enjoyed your time, and would like to setup a real date. Afterwards, you can go back and get in touch with the “yes” daters to arrange a real-world meet-up if both of you clicked the green “yes” button. Clicking the “no” button will end the date and move you on to the next.

I have not been to a real speed-dating event, but I would imagine the process to be similar to SpeedDate.com where sessions are scheduled for an allotted amount of time on a weekly basis to maximize your potential dating pool. At all other times, keeping the browser window open will continue to match you up with new people as they come online.

I tried it out, and although I did not meet the girl of my dreams, I liked the experience. The site is neat, fresh, and offers you the luxury of dating from home. What I find interesting about the site is that it offers all forms of communication. Don’t have a webcam? Not to worry because SpeedDate.com beats the competition by offering voice, video, and text as a means of conversation, meaning if you’re without a Webcam you’re not entirely out of the game. However, I would recommend a webcam. You might get a lot of “no” clicks. It’s also worth noting that SpeedDate.com has recently launched a Facebook application. Smart move considering Facebook is one of the largest social networks on the net.

Years ago, people would have looked at you strange for finding a date online, but it is more accepted now. “It’s amazing to be able to go on 30-40 online dates in an eveing and then pick people you want to get to know better.” says Kelly, a SpeedDate member from California. “I’ve started a relationship that would not have been possible without SpeedDate.” Although you may get an occasional raised eyebrow when telling your friends you met your girl/guy online, you can look at them and laugh knowing you are happy to have met your true love on SpeedDate.com!

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