Today Bloggers Unite for Hunger and Hope, across the Blogosphere.
Hunger and Hope is a cause that involves each and every mouth on this planet.
we added our names to the role and decided this was a perfect time to talk about getting that kitchen and backyard action going. but first we wanted to remind you that every night in america, a child goes to bed hungry. that’s just plain not right, in a nation where so much is wasted by so few. the politics of food is just as complex as the politics of clean water.
people die for food and still they are hungry. think of the lil girl in the picture above and remember that america is a land of plenty, for such a few.
isn’t it time we started examining our realities a little closer..
BILL MOYERS JOURNAL | Hunger in America | PBS
we take a look at the First Families’ Efforts to Return to Kitchen Gardening. Victory Gardening has been around for as long as the whitehouse. Mrs. Obama is the first resident in recent years to bring the garden back, and we think it was high time. we also offer you a look at the Green Revolution, and why Mrs. Obama joined it a long time ago – she knew, Hunger Kills.
First Lady Michele Obama breaks ground for an organic vegetable garden on the White House lawn.
Photo courtesy of The White House
On March 20, 2009, First Lady Michele Obama celebrated the first day of spring by using her famously well-toned biceps to pick up a shovel and break ground for an organic vegetable garden at the White House. (See the official layout [pdf] of the new White House garden.)
Educating Children a Primary Goal of White House Garden
In talking with reporters about the new garden, the first lady got down and dirty about the benefits of good nutrition and the need to educate children, families and whole communities about the importance of a healthful diet, especially at a time when obesity and diabetes have become national health crises.
Twenty-three fifth graders from Bancroft Elementary School in Washington, DC, helped the first lady dig up the 1,100-square-foot garden plot on the south lawn of the White House, which is near the tennis courts and the swing set the Obamas installed for their daughters and can be seen by people passing by on E Street. The plan is to have the students stay involved in planting, tending, harvesting and cooking the presidential produce.
White House Garden to Feed First Family and the Homeless
The Obamas will grow dozens of varieties of vegetables, berries and herbs—a wish list of fresh produce prepared by the White House kitchen staff—and the first lady said that everyone in the first family will help care for the garden. The garden harvest will become part of the Obamas’ daily fare, contribute to state dinners, and be shared with Miriam’s Kitchen, a nearby soup kitchen for the homeless.
The organic vegetable garden will use only natural fertilizers and pest control methods. Two beehives will be installed and tended by a member of the White House staff. The bees will help pollinate the garden and provide honey for the president’s table.
Obamas’ White House Garden Part of a Long Tradition
Planting an organic vegetable garden at the White House is a potent symbol, but it is not a new idea. Gardening and agriculture have been part of the White House culture at many times throughout its history.
Eleanor Roosevelt planted a victory garden on the White House lawn in 1943, inspiring millions of Americans to start their own backyard gardens during World War II. President John Adams, a farmer as well as a lawyer, planted a garden soon after taking office and tended it carefully throughout his presidency. Thomas Jefferson grazed cattle on the White House lawn, Woodrow Wilson kept sheep, and some histories claim that George Washington refused a third term as president in part because he missed his garden at Mount Vernon.
White House Garden Intended to Inspire Americans
Planting an organic vegetable garden at the White House in the midst of a serious recession, and at a time when Americans are increasingly concerned about the environment, sends a powerful message of health, sustainability and self-reliance. The first lady encouraged all Americans to take that message to heart, even if they are unable to plant a garden and grow their own vegetables.
“You can begin in your own cupboard,” she told the New York Times, “by eliminating processed food, trying to cook a meal a little more often, trying to incorporate more fruits and vegetables.”
(end of article clip)
This video is all about the Freedom Garden and the Homegrown Revolution. I suggest We All Join Immediately. the rewards will be greater than you could ever imagine. Good Health, Good Spirit and Good Eating.
Happy Earth Day – we’re participating in our own way. we want to share a few tools with you that allow you more freedom to control your world – Your online world that is . LOL
Firefox: Reload Plus is a small Firefox extension which combines keyboard shortcuts with mouse button combinations to make a huge number of reload options quickly accessible.
The author of the extension designed Reload Plus to replace the functionality he missed from a variety of older extensions and consolidate them into one extension. Reload Plus adds to the reload capabilities of Reload, Show Image, and Show Picture. Here are the following shortcuts it uses:
Left-Click (or F5) = Standard Reload
Ctrl+Left-Click (or Ctrl+F5) = Full Reload
Alt+Left-Click (or Alt+F5) = Load Missing Images
Shift+Left-Click (or Shift+F5) = Google Cache
Middle-Click = Standard Reload (new tab)
Ctrl+Middle-Click = Full Reload (new tab)
Alt+Middle-Click = Reload All Tabs
Shift+Middle-Click = Google Cache (new tab)
For an overview of other handy ways to super charge your refresh-fu in Firefox, check out the some of our previously reviewed solutions like how to reload tabs by double clicking and Reload Every for mass tab reloads. Reload Plus is free and works wherever Firefox does.
Want to add a film to your Netflix queue, book a restaurant reservation, or track a package from a plain old phone? The txtful service connects you to 40 different services without cluttering your contacts.
Txtful doesn’t create new text-message-powered applications for the services it works with, but it does prevent you having to remember, or add to your contacts, all their SMS shortcodes and the context of the text message you have to send out. After signing up with txtful, you drop your web login credentials for tools like Evernote, Netflix, Tumblr, or other sites you use, and create a shortcut name for them. Add txtful’s address to your phone (898385), and send it a message with your shortcut at the front—so, something like “Amazon Herman Miller Aeron” to get pricing on that ever-present success symbol.
Here’s the list of web services txtful supports as of now:
Txtful also allows for shortcut access over email or IM, but if you’re on the web, you’re probably as apt to just pop open a new tab and add a Netflix flick or drop into Evernote. The cell services are where txtful looks to be a unique winner.
Txtful is free to use (while in beta, at least), requires a sign-up.
We’ve always preached about the importance of having a say in what Google says about you, but today Google’s making it easier by integrating your Google profile directly in search results.
Last week we pointed out that the new Google Profile page comes complete with a custom URLs designed to make it easy for people to find your profile. Apparently that was a first step in bringing more prominence to your Google profile; as of today, those profile pages will start appearing on the first page of Google search results.
The explanation we got when we talked to the folks at Google: Google has always been about information. In this case, searching for a person in Google has always been a bit of a black hole—particularly when you have a common name or share a name with someone famous enough to dominate page after page of results. The new profile integration will fix these problems and make it easier to find someone via Google—or at least that’s the idea.
When we asked the obvious question—whether this was Google’s first serious step toward competing with Facebook—we were told that it is not (not that they would have laid out their plans either way). As is, though, Google profile pages certainly don’t tread too much into the social networking realm. What they do is create a personal homepage from which you can link to all of your important information—like your blog, your nameplate site, your Flickr account, or anything else online that represents you.
If you want to search Google profiles specifically, just point your browser to Google Profiles Search and plug in the name of the person you’re looking for. One additional feature for Google profiles: If you were to simply Google “me”, you’ll get instructions on how to create and build out your own profile. (It’s sort of like how “me” always denotes your email in Gmail.)
Twitter has become a nationwide phenomenon, and like any phenom, all the Twitter talk grows quickly tiresome. But despite what you may think, Twitter isn’t just for narcissists; it’s actually insanely useful.
So let’s assume that you already know about the navel-gazing uses of Twitter—the aspects of Twitter that most people criticize when they complain about the site. Discounting Twitter altogether because you think it’s ridiculous that people tweet about what they had for breakfast is like claiming that email is useless because of forward chains. It’s a mistake, and you’d be missing out on a great tool if you let that put you off Twitter completely.
Twitter is as useful as you make it. In fact, Twitter does several very worthwhile things better than any other tool.
1. Instant, Real-Time Search Results
Search is hands down the most useful feature of Twitter—whether or not you actually participate by posting anything to the site. Consider, for example, a very trivial example: I live on the West coast, so when the American Idol results show ends every Wednesday on the East coast, it’s only 7pm here. I could wait two hours, then suffer through another hour of the Wednesday night, up-with-people variety show, but I really just want to know who was voted off. News sites move too slowly, and at one point blogs had aimed to fill this instant-answers void, but guess what: When you want to find out who was voted off Idol as soon as the results are available, Twitter is the quickest and easiest way to get this answer. Try it sometime. Within seconds of the announcement on Idol, Twitter fills with hundreds of posts answering this question for me.
The real-time search applies to so much more. If the signal on my cell phone goes out, I check Twitter to see if there’s some sort of AT&T outage in my area. If I want to know what people are saying about something important to me, I hit up Twitter. What you get is like a centralized, searchable, real-time comment-thread for everything. Yes, like all comment threads, you’ll find a good amount of crap. But that doesn’t render the entire thread worthless. Bookmark Twitter Search now and use it next time Google or your favorite blog search engine fails you.
2. Monitoring Something You Care About
Virtually every company has a Twitter account these days, which means if there’s a product you really care about, following them on Twitter is often the easiest way to stay up to date with the latest developments. But more often than not (in the context of Twitter, at least), the thing we care about most is ourselves. We’ve already shown you how to create an ego search to monitor what’s being said about you on the web, but now Twitter is another must-use tool for getting your ego fix.
Still, even if you’re not an ego-maniac, surely there’s something that you care about that you could monitor on Twitter. Do yourself a favor and download one of the free desktop Twitter clients to help you create persistent Twitter searches so you can keep track of whatever your want without always hitting up the main Twitter search page. We’d recommend checking out TweetDeck or Seesmic Desktop.
3. News Updates
We’ve been using newsreaders to subscribe to RSS feeds for years now, but newsreaders still haven’t completely caught on with the world at large. It seems less manageable to us, but many people are perfectly happy using Twitter as a tool to keep up with the latest news—which is partly why CNN has over 1 million followers. Likewise, re-tweeting (the process of copying and re-posting someone else’s tweet) spreads news like wildfire—so breaking news can reach you on Twitter a million times faster than through any of the old methods. (For what it’s worth, here at Lifehacker we have our own Twitter feed that pushes out all of our top stories.)
4. Instant Communication with Friends
This is closer to what people think about when they think Twitter. But, as I said above, Twitter communication doesn’t have to be a cesspool of “what I ate this morning” and “just flushed the toilet.” You can choose whose updates you want to be notified of and how you get those updates. Upshot: If you and your pals use Twitter well, it can be a fantastic communication tool. If not, of course it’s useless—but that’s not really Twitter’s fault. Also, if privacy is a concern, you can always protect your updates.
5. Twitter as a Productivity Command Line
Whether you want to add a new event to Google Calendar, a new to-do to Remember the Milk, or a new note to Evernote, you can do it all via Twitter. It took us a while to warm up to Twitter from a productivity angle, but this kind of integration made us admit that Twitter may yet boost your productivity, too.
6. Ask Questions, Get Answers
Provided you have enough followers (with enough knowledge), Twitter is also a powerful place to ask questions and get answers. Before I started writing this post, for example, I asked my followers what they think Twitter’s best uses are—the answers to which helped inform this entire post.
We certainly haven’t exhausted all the options, but hopefully this gives you a more balanced look at how Twitter can be useful to you. Of all of these options, Twitter search is far and away the most powerful feature, and one we’d recommend you start using. If you’ve got something worthwhile you use Twitter for that we didn’t cover, let’s hear about it in the comments.
Simple web application TwoGoals keeps you focused on only the most important tasks—by creating a page where you can record your two main objectives.
Using the web application, which requires no account, is as simple as typing your most important goals into the two boxes—they will automatically be saved in a cookie for later viewing the next time you need to regain your focus and clarity, or just set as your browser home page to see the reminder every day.
Internet & Web Site Tips : How to Make Your Web Site Popular With Link Building.
this is the best of the seo tips vids we’ve watched. quick and clear explaination. share it with others who need to understand how to gain page following and ranking quickly.
It’s Freedom Sunday, and we highlight a few Twitter blogging and social communications tools from our friends at Mashable . these are the often desired, easily missed; Must-Haves’. be sure to add us to your twitter list and tweet @ us anytime. click any one of our follow me widgets to let Twitter handle the add me work.
Don’t forget to be a recycler and RETWEET THIS POST !
Social search engine OneRiot is getting into the trendy business of Twitter search, but with a slight twist.
Instead of listing real-time tweets across Twitter for specific queries, OneRiot chooses to focus on the pages being dispersed through the micro-blogosphere. In turn, users can use OneRiot Twitter Search to find and search the Web pages people are tweeting about.
In much the same way that you currently use Twitter Search to view real-time tweets on a specific subject, you can now turn to OneRiot’s search engine for a real-time glimpse at just the Web pages being shared. Search results display the tweet, the full URL for links, the total number of tweets per page, and the twitterer who first found a particular page.
OneRiot’s CEO Kimbal Musk explains, “We’re indexing all the links being shared on Twitter in real-time and allowing users to specifically search for the content that matters most to the Twitter community right now.”
Twitturly does something similar, albeit with a focus on aggregating popular links and with a much different interface that highlights total active tweets and full tweet history for the most popular links on Twitter.
Each approach to filtering tweets based on links offers an informative glimpse for people curious about what content is getting shared and discussed the most on Twitter. We’d love to hear what you think of OneRiot’s approach to Twitter Search in the comments.
1. Twitter Search: The simplest way to see trends on Twitter is on their official search page. Hot trends on Twitter appear on the search page and on the Twitter homepage, and clicking any will bring up a feed of the public conversation.
2. Twist: For those who are visual, Twist provides a graphical interface to see trends and keywords on Twitter. It not only lists out the hot trends over the last few hours, days, and week, but it provides embeddable charts and the ability to compare trends.
3. Monitter: Monitter is one of the best ways to track trends in real-time. Type in keywords and it will automatically update with the most recent tweets containing those terms. Add or remove columns to give you the right amount of information.
4. Hashtags.org: The popular webpage on Twitter hashtags also provides graphs on hashtag use just by hovering over the hashtag. There are also pages that show the most popular and newest hashtags, but their uptime is unreliable.
5. Tweetmeme: Looking for the most popular links on Twitter? Tweetmeme is the epicenter link sharing on the service.
6. Plodt: This website is a user-generated trend tracker based on tagging and ranking your tweets. It requires you to follow the Plodt Twitter account to participate. But even without participating, its timelines, tags, and statistics are still useful and interesting.
7. Twitturly: Twitturly is another way to track top-shared URLs. The interface allows users to see all of the active tweets that have shared a specific link.
8. twithority: Twithority is an easy way to have the most recent Twitter trends tweeted to you. The links provide a view of Twitter trends based on both time and “authority.”
9. TweetingTrends: TweetingTrends is an even simpler way to keep up with Twitter Trends. Links go directly to Twitter Search.
10. PowerSearch: PowerSearch not only tweets about emerging trends, but daily and weekly trends that you may have missed out on.
11. gtrend: gtrend is short for “Google Trend.” It updates users on the most recent trends within Google Search. Follow this account to know about trends across the wider web. No, this doesn’t track Twitter trends, but it’s a great way to compare trends.
iPhone Apps
12. Retweet [iTunes Link]: Retweet, which we have previously reviewed, provides a simple iPhone interface for reading top retweets, links, and retweeting them out yourself. It costs 99 cents.
13. Tweetie () [iTunes Link]: Did you know that this popular Twitter also has a section that displays what is currently trending on Twitter? Not only that, but you can save trending items as well.
14. Twitter Trend [iTunes Link]: This free application provides a simple tag cloud for looking at hot, rising, or emerging trends on Twitter.
15. Summizer [iTunes Link]: Summizer is an advanced query Twitter search tool. It allows users to view trending topics or find specific types of tweets, i.e. Tweets sent by or from a specific person, or tweets that don’t include specific words. Summizer has both a paid and a free version.
Remember how Google reviews conquered the world of search? They figured out a way to tell which web sites are more important than others, by judging how many links are pointing to them, and called it Google PageRank (it’s a bit more complex than that, but it was one of the key parts of Google’s search algorithm).
Now, Tweefind is doing something similar for Twitter – Twitter reviews. It’s a Twitter search engine which returns results based on rank, hopefully returning more relevant results and users on top.
Rank is calculated through several parameters. Creator of Tweefind, luca Filigheddu, lists them:
# followers
# following
# of tweets
# of RT he/she receives
# of replies
# of distinct users who reply
# of distinct users who retweet
# of RT he/she makes
# of links the user shares
This approach raises some interesting questions. Are Twitter users with more followers, tweets, replies or retweets more relevant in the context of real time one-to-many conversations? Is there really a “rank” on Twitter that can be calculated and be useful in real world usage? Could an approach similar to Google’s PR algorithm do for Twitter search what it did for Google?
These questions are definitely worth answering. Yes, if there’s something important happening right now, a quick Twitter search will return a lot of tiny tidbits of info on the subject. But I often feel overwhelmed with the abundance (and similarity) of the results, and I wish there was a way to sift them and find the really relevant tweets.
At the moment, Tweefind does not seem to calculate rank for enough users to answer this question, but in time its results, when compared with standard Twitter search, might prove to be very interesting. Tweefind is also one of those Twitter-related services who are having a go at monetization; in this case it’s a couple of Google ads on top of the page, which luckily aren’t too big of a distraction from the site’s content. If it goes in the right direction, it’ll definitely be a service to watch in the future.
There are a number of ways to promote your Twitter account. You can add yourself to one of the many growing Twitter directories, advertise your brand, or, as I’ll discuss in this post, feature a badge with your Twitter information on your website, blog, or even in your email.
Here are 20 embeddable badges and widgets that you can customize to include your tweets and, in some cases, those of your friends. Have another badge or widget to add to the list? Tell us about it in the comments.
Twitter badges
Chris’ Twitter Badge- A simple HTML badge that comes in the form of raw code you just copy-and-paste while changing a few links. It will show your last four tweets and keeps the basic Twitter branding and logo from the site.
SayTweet - SayTweet allows you to upload a picture of your own, tag the Twitter users shown, and their tweets will show up in speech bubbles on the image as they publish them.
Sigpad - Sigpad asks you to enter your Twitter username and it then creates a bookmarklet you can add to your browser toolbars. Once you’ve done this you can compose emails in AOL, Gmail, Outlook, Windows Live or Yahoo Mail, drag the bookmarklet into the body, and your latest Twitter update will be shown in the email when you send it.
TwitStamp – TwitStamp lets you set up an easy, attractive, and customizable badge that displays your latest tweet. You can select the badge’s size, background and so on. You can also set up a TwitCard that will show your name, avatar, bio, latest tweet, number of followers and more.
Twitter Statuses Badge- A Twitter badge that will show the last few tweets from your account, along with how long ago you posted them and the permalink to them so that people can go to them directly. Can be customized via CSS to better match your blog or site.
Twitterati Badge- A very simple JavaScript solution for your badge needs that will let you set height, width, colors, border and so on. Displays your tweets as well as those of your followers.
TwitterCard- One of the biggest complaints people have about badges for any service is that they don’t fit in with their overall blog design. TwitterCard tackles this complaint head-on by giving you a JavaScript powered badge to show all your Twitter info in the 125X125 format. This will fit in perfectly with your ad units, or just about anywhere on your site without looking the least bit out of place with current design standards. Also has the ability to be implemented via HTML or a WordPress plugin. (please note that the JavaScript was not working when we tested it, but the other methods were).
TwitterMySite- Enter your user name, any extra text you may want and in what color, and simply click “Generate my Button.” You’ll be offered up a selection of different badges, all set with the variables you entered, ready for you to paste into your site.
U Stand Out Twitter Badges- U Stand Out offers up a nice selection of badges you can use for your site or blog that range from artsy to straight-to-the-point.
Vincent Abry Twitter Badges- A collection of Twitter badges for just about every taste in various sizes for all the different blog configurations out there.
WishAFriend.com Twitter Widgets- These Twitter widgets are all flash-based and offer you different themes such as holidays, fun, USA and so on and will display a scrollable selection of your most recent Tweets. Just enter your username and then get the embed code to get started.
Twitter widgets
Bastawhiz’s Twitter Widget- A customizable widget that lets you set the height, width and the number of tweets to display. Each tweet is hyperlinked to the permalink on the Twitter site for easy access.
Blogger Buster Twitter Widget- A Twitter widget built specifically for blogs on Blogger.com. Just enter a title for it, your username and the number of tweets to display and you’re done.
Language Is A Virus- Language Is A Virus offers hundreds of different Twitter widgets that you first choose by the size small, medium or large, and once you’ve selected that, you can sort them by color. Find the one you want and you have it as a badge or a widget, but if you go the widget route it will also display your last 5 tweets.
Official Twitter Widgets- Twitter offers a mixture of Flash and HTML widgets depending on the platform you wish to put them on. Officially supported sites are Blogger, Facebook (via an application), MySpace, and TypePad. Twitter also offers generic widgets for other sites.
Sprout – Ever wanted to build your own widget from the ground up? Well, Sprout will let you build them for several services, but Twitter is probably the most popular. If you’re worried about not knowing anything about programming, Sprout handles that for you by giving you the ability to just drag-and-drop the elements you want, but arranging them easily in the way you want.
TwiBadge – TwiBadge is a WordPress plugin widget that allows you to easily add the official Twitter widget to your site. This allows you to show a group of your most recent tweets, your user name and number of followers, but best of all, it will also enable your readers to login and follow you so they can do everything right from your sidebar.
Twitter Widget – WidgetNest offers up a nice little Twitter widget that keeps the theme of the main site. It displays your name and avatar, and your last several tweets scroll one at a time at a speed of your choice. Coding is available as JavaScript and Flash.
TwitterSalt – TwitterSalt allows you to customize your widget on their site and then just by using a single line of HTML code you can post your updates on sites, on message boards, in emails and more.
WordPress.com Twitter Widget - WordPress.com hosted blogs can’t upload their own plugins, but they’ve been nice enough to add a built-in widget for you to add your tweets to your blog. Just enter a title, your Twitter name and the number of tweets to display, and then you can just add it to your sidebar.
Yeahhhhh… it’s saturday and we stole a video, skrate took it right off the pages of Steven Humor.
You Know Steven Humor ? and Steven Video ?
two of the funniest blogs in Entrecard. this guy gets us everyday
with at least a funny picture or heaven forbid a video.
check this out and you’ll know why we stole it.
WE Read Turnip of Power weekly and tonite we caught this post.
WOW !!! No doubt we shall see this open attack on asian entrecarders rebutted I am sure. Just as soon as some of our more well written Asian Entrecarders See This Post. they will no doubt contact others and compose their own response to the attack, by Entrecard’s CEO Graham Langdon.
“we are going to move as close to a free market as possible, but with the potential to abuse of the drop system, black markets and “farms” in the eastern worldbottomed out the price of credits to about .25 cents per thousand, at which point it became clear that we needed to nationalize until further measures could be taken to safeguard proper issuance of credits.
Sneaky eastern world card dropper caught in the Act
Eastern World, Huh? So apparently some rice farmer in Vietnam destroyed the free market. What kind of racist crap is this? Wouldn’t a “free market” allow everyone to buy and sell credits? Anyone can currently buy and sell US stocks, should we blame those “damn Japs” for our current United States economic issues?
Don’t red blooded Americans also abuse the drop system? Seems to me Entrecard could check the referrers of who is dropping cards. Why don’t they release the stats of who is abusing the drop system? Cournalists should investigate the facts before engaging in such yellow journalism.
Here’s an idea, instead of blaming foreigners for problems you knew existed over a full year ago, for once in your life accept the blame. Your failure to have a proper business model is what screwed up your virtual economy. Your failure to put in a full day of work and rely upon unpaid labor is what filled your network with spam. BTW whiteboy wearing the asshat, there are both American spammers and “Eastern World” spammers clogging your network, in case you never looked at your demographics.
Now I wonder what Graham was referring to when he mentions ”black markets”.
Today Bloggers Unite for Hunger and Hope, across the Blogosphere.
Happy Earth Day – we’re participating in our own way. we want to share a few tools with you that allow you more freedom to control your world – Your online world that is . LOL
Firefox: Reload Plus is a small 
Want to add a film to your Netflix queue, book a restaurant reservation, or track a package from a plain old phone? The txtful service connects you to 40 different services without cluttering your contacts.
We’ve always preached about the importance of 
If you want to search 
We’ve been using newsreaders to subscribe to RSS feeds for years now, but newsreaders still haven’t completely caught on with the world at large. It seems less manageable to us, but many people are perfectly happy using Twitter as a tool to keep up with the latest news—which is partly why CNN has 
This is closer to what people think about when they think Twitter. But, as I said above, Twitter communication doesn’t have to be a cesspool of “what I ate this morning” and “just flushed the toilet.” You can choose whose updates you want to be notified of and how you get those updates. Upshot: If you and your pals use Twitter well, it can be a fantastic communication tool. If not, of course it’s useless—but that’s not really Twitter’s fault. Also, if privacy is a concern, you can always protect your updates.
Provided you have enough followers (with enough knowledge), Twitter is also a powerful place to ask questions and get answers. Before I started writing this post, for example, I asked my followers 
