Web Toolkit for the Savvy Web User by Seattle MindCampers

We had a great time at MindCamp this year. MindCamp is an "unconference". Which means that nobody knows what we're going to be doing until we get there. Everyone has a chance to propose a session topic, and people vote with their feet on the sessions they're interested in. For the next 24 hours, "stuff happens". Blue Dot hosted a session to see what people are using in their personal "web toolkit". We know that, as a Web 2.0 company, we're competing with lots of tools and services for mind-share. We were curious to know what kinds of things people have adopted and have incorporated into their regular routine. Our session was really fun. I was on stage facilitating, but every web site we talked about was proposed by an audience member. Kabir and Jigna manned the control booth, dotting the sites as we named them where they would show up on the screen behind me. I was really blown away by the knowledge and breadth of services that this audience is using; it's obvious that MindCamp really attracts the über-geeks in the Seattle community. If you want to see what mainstream and leading-edge services MindCampers are using, you can see all the sites we dotted here: Web Toolkit on Blue Dot. If you were at MindCamp and want to add to the above list, just log in to Blue Dot and create a dot for your site using the tag "mindcamp".

We'll be @ Mind Camp!

As some of you may know, we've decided to be one of the sponsors for Mind Camp this year. None of us at Blue Dot have been before, but we have heard great things about it from friends. You might think it's bold that we're sponsoring something we've never attended, but Andru Edwards is one helluva guy :) Not to mention this is a great place for us to share our thoughts, get suggestions, and showcase some of the newer tools we've released for bloggers. Mind Camp describes itself as a "a self-organizing, digitally minded, entrepreneur-driven, overnight Seattle confab" - which is right up our alley. Plus, I've heard that by the time night hits it's less about 'business' and more about hanging out with fellow Seattle technologists and entrepreneurs. Mohit, Mike, Jigna, and I will be there on Saturday hanging out and sharing some ideas on what's coming next for Blue Dot - come find us! - Kabir.

Keyboard Shortcuts

Are you a frequent Blue Dot reader? You should know about some keyboard shortcuts that can make your reading faster:

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Hope you enjoying the new features!

New Stuff on Blue Dot Today!

Blue Dot has added some more nifty things to the site today: - Bookmark importing from your browser - You'll now be able to import your browser bookmarks from any of the major browsers (Firefox/IE/Safari/Opera/etc.). Click here to import your bookmarks. - RSS feeds for any Dot view (Public Dots) - Just look at the bottom of any Dot page (in the footer) to get the feed URL. For those of you using RSS readers, you can now use Blue Dot to get a feed of all of your Friends' public Dots. - We've added instructions for adding "Dot This!" links to your blog posts. - Click here to find out how you can use "Dot This!" to promote your blog! - Ability to embed URLs into your Dots and comments - If you add a URL to your Dot or comment, it will now appear as a hyperlink. (Please note: this currently only works for "new" Dots and not ones you edit). - Improved advertising - Things should be looking more relevant to you. Let us know what you think! As always, please feel free to send along your ideas to us.

Blue Dot & The Daily Reel!

Thanks to all of you who have added "Dot This!" to your sites in the past few weeks. It's been great seeing all the activity, and we all hope you're seeing more traffic and high quality referrals as a result of your content being shared within Blue Dot friend networks. Today, I'm very happy to announce we've partnered with The Daily Reel to add "Dot This!" - our first video content partner :) Their site is very cool: essentially they have an editorial staff of LA insiders who sift through thousands of videos per day and publish "the best of online video". You'll find everything from news to funny clips, and even a daily top 10. You can now add an extra editorial layer, by Dotting the videos you think are best directly from their site. They have also created a Daily Reel page on Blue Dot - so feel free to add them as a friend to have videos from the Daily Reel show up directly in your friends view (if you're so inclined). Any thoughts, questions, comments you have would be great - feel free to comment here or message me on Blue Dot! - Kabir.