#NECC09 & an iPhone

This year, I am going low budget... just me, my iPhone, backup battery and my digital toolkit:

These are the tools I'll be using while at NECC and EduBloggerCon. I use these tools on a regular basis and find them quite handy for capturing images, mircroblogs, retweeting, video streaming, uploading images, tweets and posts as well as listening to great music and finding the right places to eat... Here's a description of a few of my favorites:

Pixelpipe allows you to get your photos off of your iPhone and out to your favorite social network, micro-blog, photo/video and blog services. I use this to mass upload all #NECC09 / #EduBloggerCon images to Flickr.


ShuZu is a nice tool to post to your Blogger account, Flickr, Facebook or other social tool. I use this to post content to my costillacommunity.blogspot.com. Quick and easy.


Google App is a great tool to view your RSS / blog feeds with Google Reader. I use this to follow all the great posts from bloggers sharing their insights at #NECC09. Additionally, I use the Google Calendar to manage and track live sessions and events from the ISTE NECC calendar.

Twitterfon is a handy resource to have at #NECC09. This allows me to Tweet, ReTweet and follow all the buzz at conference. You can direct message me a@jcostilla


Additional tools that I will have in my mobile digital toolkit include Qik, a great live streaming tool to capture live events and share or post to my blog, Facebook or social site. With folks like Wes Fryer and others using their iPhone to record and upload sessions to YouTube, I'll have my phone ready to watch prerecorded sessions. Finally, with the many sites and walking excursions, I'll have my Pandora running to the tunes of Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Patti Griffin, Michael Jackson and few other artist as I look for the cool spots to shop and eat with iWant.

That's it for now, unless I learn about more tools to fit into my toolkit.

See you @ NECC09!

15 seconds of fame

Using TwitterFox, I am able to get quick Twitter updates on my browser as they come across the twitter pipes. I came across this very short post from Chris Pirillo.





Curious as to how my avatar would appear in his video, I (jcostilla) replied to his Twitter post. And there it was, 15 seconds of fame on his live Ustream Internet broadcast.

So what's the point? Not really sure, but during the call, one Twitter follower watching the live broadcast was singled out for having a certain number of Twitter followers. A simple request by Chris to his audience of viewers to help get her number of follower up and it happened. Just like that. This is truly a case of grassroots viral movement. I am so amazed by the many aspects of social media. All of this from a simple click to a curious post.

Genius. After listening in to the live broadcast for a bit, I learned that Chris basically attributes his work and entrepreneurship to "hard work" every single day. No magic pill, just tenacious drive to succeed. I believe it's grassroots marketing efforts like this that will help propel your brand in a social media play. Always fascinated by Web 2.0 and Chris Pirillo.