harder, better, faster, stronger

Well my last post made a liar out of me, but I'm back! Better late than never, right?

Not Martha might not agree with that last statement. She was a speaker at the Harder Better Faster Stronger Blogging panel at Alt Design Summit & is also one of my long-time favorite bloggers. This chick knows a thing or two about blogging & I certainly respect her work.

I did not have the privilege of attending Alt Design Summit or the Harder Better Faster Stronger Blogging panel, but lucky for us, Not Martha was kind enough to give us a recap of some of her favorite online tools: 

• Skitch for screengrabs. Allows you to made edits and draw on top of the image. Jing is another screen capture tool.
• Outbrain for related posts. Works with many blogging platforms, gives you stats on what posts are getting the most attention.
• Evernote for organization. Can organize and sort your information from mobile devices as well. Allows you to save text, images, links and audio notes.
• Pinterest for sourcing and inspiration. Community currated and full of pretty stuff.
• Squarespace for blogging. Allows for non-coders and coders alike to have lots of control of the look. (Full disclosure, Squarespace sponsored the panels. Fact, the Alt Summit website was created and is hosted on Squarespace.)
• Google Alerts to let you see what others might be saying about your site. Sends emails periodically or collects the alerts in a feed. You can monitor any search term.
• Mention Notifier to keep up with Twitter mentions. Sends you an email or text message any time you are mentioned on Twitter, works with any search or hashtag you'd like.
• Zinio app for reading magazines. Lets you read all your magazines on your iPad or iPhone.
• Twitter, obviously. Tweetdeck and Hootsuite were the favorites for the many ways you can sort and organize multiple accounts and searches.
• Photoshop actions for quick image preparation. Setting up your own actions means a photo can be ready for your blog in one click. You can also download actions created by others to get some very pretty looks going on.
• Instapaper to read things later. Saves a long form article in a very readable format and lets you read it later on computer or iPhone, downloads it so you can read when offline (hello air travel).
• Flickr for photos. You can store, share and sort your photos, as well as use search with Creative Commons licenses if you need to find something specific. I've been using it for years and people still regularly find my blog from a photo they saw shared on Flickr.
• RSS Reader to keep you organizes. Google Reader is the favorite choice. Use Helvetireader for a minimalist skin and Feedly provides a magazine like layout.

I've used quite a few of these tools (most notably are: Pinterest, Evernote, Twitter & RSS Readers), but I'm dying to test out some new tools like Skitch & Instapaper.

Big thanks to Not Martha for sharing!

A Commitment

Starting a blog is making a commitment. It's a commitment or time, creativity, regularity. I'm going to be honest and confess that I started this blog as a means to help with my job hunt right out of college. I think it certainly helped, to an extent. Once my job was secured I realized that I loved blogging, but I didn't enjoying blogging regularly on a topic that consumes at least 8 hours of my waking moments. As a result, I let this blog fall wayside and focused my efforts on a more personal, interest driven blog.

I love Easy Tiger. It's a release from the work life and allows me to keep up with the hobbies that interest me most. I think that is important. Far too many people can't separate their work from their real life. While blogging daily can seem like a second job to me at times, I still do it because I love it and I'm enriching my mind on a variety of topics. I also know when to take a break if need be.

That being said, I still see value in Broken Clutter and I feel ashamed that I have kicked it to the curb over the last year. Holiday season is always a little hectic, so don't get angry with me if I get off to a rocky start, but I would like to make a commitment to contribute to this blog at least once a week.

I love my industry and I get exposure to some wonderfully exciting news. It would be shame for me not to share. So mark my words, you can expect to see a lot more of me around here in the future. Get excited!