If you are a heavy Twitter user like I am you know them all. The Hootsuites, the SocialOomph or Tweetdeck scheduling functions. Even though their functions are golden if one isn’t neglecting to engage and participate in the conversation, it is quite a hassle to schedule each tweet individually I found.

So let me therefore introduce you to a new App, which will save you the hassle of time-setting and scheduling once and for all. It’s a very simple tool called Buffer.

The 3 Main Differences to other Apps:

- There is no need to schedule each tweet individually, you simply add to Buffer and your tweets are scheduled for your throughout the day

- You can add tweets to your Buffer from any page you are on with browser extensions (Chrome, Safari, Firefox)

- You receive detailed stats about how well your tweets sent via Buffer performed

Browser extension in action

Whenever you are reading an interesting article you can give it one click on the Buffer icon and add to your Buffer. For example I wanted to share Karen’s post, here is what happens:

Combine Buffer with your favourite Twitter Client

Buffer will enhance your experience on Twitter greatly, by giving you a consistent Twitter stream, which also doesn’t create an information overload for your followers.

In my case, teaming up Tweetdeck and Buffer works wonders, so I believe it is important to point out Buffer is not an “instead of your favourite Twitter client” tool.

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I’m a big fan of TweetDeck and have used it for a while now since I started using Twitter, so it was great to see that TweetDeck is now available as a Google Chrome Extension.

The Chrome Extension is very similar to the TweetDeck desktop software, so it’s easy to grasp, specially when you are used to the using it on your desktop, though there are some noticeable differences, these include the option for Blended Columns, this is where all your conversations etc are all in one column, it can be quite daunting at times, but still very nice. Take a look at the video for more info

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I’ve talked to loads of people who have had problems opening iTunes links in the Google Chrome browser and coming to a brick wall, when clicking on the “Already  have iTunes” button only to be told they haven’t!

So the questions is there a simple solution to this problem?

There are many website giving you tips on how to fix this problem with using IE buttons etc to try to fool iTunes and Chrome to work together, but I think I may have found a simpler solution

It’s a simple Chrome Extension called “iTunes Detection Fix“, just install the Chrome Extension and your away, yes, it’s really that simple.

There do till seem to be some problems with using the iTunes shortcuts, but if you are clicking the “View in iTunes” buttons then 9 times out of 10 it will load up iTunes for you.

Example:

1. Visit http://bit.ly/remergence
2. Click on the View in iTunes Button
3. Now your iTunes should boot up and display the music (hopefully)

Now I’m no saying this is a 100% solution, but hopefully it will work for you

Related articles

• Are There Disadvantages to Using Google Chrome? (lockergnome.com)
• Why Do You Use Google Chrome? (chris.pirillo.com)
• 6 Free Chrome Apps and Extensions for Small Businesses (mashable.com)
• Chrome Browser at Ten Thousand Extensions (dragonblogger.com)

It’s all in a bit of fun and not to be taken seriously or is it?

One True Fan can only be described as a blogging/website game, you the player gain points just by visiting your favourite sites and showing other what you are a One True Fan of.

But even though it is all for fun, One True Fan can be used for its potential backlinks, just imagine people becoming a fan of your blog via the site, at that point a link to your site is placed on their profile page along with pages they have shared from your site and all these links are DoFollow, hmmm tasty.

I’ve been “playing” One True Fan for a little while now after seeing a tweet from @Ileane and noticing that it came from the site, so I just had to check it out, you connect via Twitter Oauth and then add a browser plugin to register the sites you are surfing, I’m using Chrome and luckily they have an extension for you.

When surfing you have a box at the bottom of the screen that allow you to check in (I do this automatically it’s quicker), you can also share the page you are visiting via Twitter, Facebook and Delicious, you gain points for doing this. You can also gain “patches” such as ones for sharing posts, adding facebook etc.

Now to the nitty-gritty, One True Fan is really just for fun, yes it can be used to help out with some backlinks to your blog and posts, but it is just a simple, but entertaining.

The only downside is, as they and others can see what websites you are visiting, this could in turn, lead to this information being used for marketing purposes, but I suppose most sites have that potential. But as I said earlier, it’s all just a bit of fun.

If like me you are one the many that has moved away from the likes of Internet Explorer and Firefox in favour of the faster and more streamline Google Chrome, then you may be missing a few of your favourite plugins.

One plugin that many have mentioned in the past for FireFox and Internet Explorer was the Alex Toolbar and a lot have said that having the toolbar helps improve your Alexa ranking.

There is a selection of Chrome Extensions for Alexa, but up until recently, I’m not sure how recently, the Alexa toolbar wasn’t really available for the Chrome browser.

Anywho I was over at Alexa checking out my stats etc and there were several sections saying that they were only visible with the Toolbar! “Oh Great” I thought, but on the off-chance I surfed to the Toolbar page to see if they had one for Chrome yet.

There it was on Alexa a version for my trusted Chrome.

So now you can have a handy icon on your Chrome browser that when clicked will give you the information for the website you are visiting without leaving the site. Hovering the icon will show you the websites Alexa Traffic Rank and clicking on it will show you the info from Alexa on the site you are on.

But Does This Improve Your Alexa Rank?

Well as you surf the internet the Alexa Chrome Extension will improve the ranking of the sites you visit, so in theory, as you visit your own blog writing comments, posting article and so on, you will be improving your Alexa rank.

So every little bit of surfing helps, I know what your thinking, why is improving your Alexa rank important?

Alexa is usually one of the first places that advertisers check to find out information about your website, so having a few nice stats does help you out and having the Alexa toolbar pulling in info for your site does help.

Also by using this it will also help Alexa build your related links as you visit a site and it has a link to yours, click on that link this will show the toolbar that a site is linking and vice versa

So there you go. Now I’m not an expert on these things, but I do know that when I used to use the Internet Explorer Alexa toolbar I did see a difference in my blogs Alexa ranking. So hopefully if Alexa Traffic Rank for Chrome acts in the same way, I should start seeing some improvements over the next few weeks or months.

Related articles

• How Does Alexa Rankings Work? (shoutmeloud.com)
• 10 Best Google Chrome Extensions for Marketers (quickonlinetips.com)

Have you ever seen those icons on Twitter? You know the ones, a plane, heart, star sign etc. Well there are several ways of adding these to your tweets when your on Twitter, but there is a great Chrome Extension which will give you a brilliant way of adding these Twitter Symbols when you are Tweeting.

Twitter Symbols will add an extra button next to the Tweet button on the Twitter website and will open an on-screen box allowing you to click on a Twitter Symbol to add to your tweet.

So all you have to do is click on the button and the selection box will open up, then you can simply add what you want to make your tweet a little different.

One thing I have noticed when using these Twitter Symbols though, is not all of them will be displayed on Tweetdeck, even with the option for International font/Twitterkey selected in Tweetdecks setting, but they do seem to work on Twitter itself

So by using the Twitter Symbols you can tweet a custom tweet like I have below:

♥ing the ☼ we've had today, shame that now we've ended having to use a ☂ on the odd occasion!

August 23, 2010 5:47 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@BlazingMinds

Karen

If you are looking for a way of using these Twitter Symbols and you are using Chrome then this is certainly a useful extension to use and ideal for any Twitter user

It’s that time of the week when, here on Blazing Minds I bring you some of the popular posts from the last week as well as some stats such as top searched terms, some blog posts that I’ve enjoyed reading over the last week and other stats that most stat junkies love to read So without further ado lets get on with this weeks statistical wonder ….

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