Even at a basic level we all know how to use social media, well, to the point were we can post a Facebook update or even send a Tweet. But the most of us don’t really understand its power nor how you can use that power effectively.

You could read books and online articles that discuss every possible social media strategy, but the truth is, for the everyday user anyway, they are all pretty boring and certainly not gripping.

As means to helping you understand social media and realizing its power, we have below, displayed the data in the funnest way possible: Via infographics.

Click the images below to view the full-size version

World Map of Social Networks

How People Share Content On The Web

The Social Media Cheat Sheet

The Conversation Prism

Online Community Boom

Ages of Social Network Users

The Current State of Twitter

More Truth About Twitter

Google Facts and Figures

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

Mini programs, gadgets or widgets, are simple time saving apps that provide you with easy and quick access to the information or tool that you frequently use. With Vista they are called gadgets, and they are organised and displayed from the sidebar.

With the gadgets below you will be able to access the information, perform tasks, and interact with your favourite social media platform. You will find gadgets for Twitter, Digg, Delicious, Flickr, WordPress…and much more. You can now have all the info you need at your fingertips.

Digg News

Digg News Vista Gadget is a gadget that will show the lastest Digg news headlines, you can filter the headlines by categories and topics via the settings menu. Simply, click on the headline title to visit the Digg article, and click on the Diggs button to log in to your Digg account.

Download Digg News Vista Gadget

My del.icio.us

With My del.icio.us you can browse your personal bookmarks, view the latest popular links on Delicious or view the latest entries from your network. Easily switch from user to user or simply click the my del.cio.us button to return to your data.

Download My del.icio.us Vista Gadget

Twitter Explorer

The Twitter Explorer keeps you up to date with your Twitter account. With its easy to use interface, which can be resized and comes with various themes, you can post a Tweet and reply and retweet messages quickly and easily. You can also view recent activity, mentions, and trends, Cool gadget.

Download Twitter Explorer Vista Gadget

Chirpr – Gadget for Twitter

This gadget is similiar in functionality as the Twitter Explorer (above). Its features include: Automatic and manual refresh, audio notification of new messages, create new and reply to existing messages and keyboard shortcuts to submit (Ctrl+Enter) or cancel (Esc) a new tweet.

Download Chirpr – Vista Gadget for Twitter

Flickr Photo Search

Flickr Photo Search is a gadget that will allow you to search the Flickr website from your desktop or Vista Sidebar.

Download Flickr Photo Search Vista Gadget

Facebook Explorer

The Facebook Explorer lets you track incoming messages and friend activities, as well as allows you to change your status message form the sidebar.

Download Facebook Explorer Vista Gadget

Slashdot Feed

Get the last RSS feeds from Slashdot.org. The feeds are displayed 4 at a time. Clicking on a feed link opens a flyout with the text of the feed. Double clicking on the feed link will open the link on the Slashdot site. The feed list is automatically refreshed every 60 seconds, but a NOW link allows the user to refresh the feed list immediately.

Download Slashdot Feed Vista Gadget

Wikipedia Search

This Vista Gadget will allow you to perform Wikipedia searches directly from your desktop.

Download Wikipedia Search Vista Gadget

Skype Gadget

This gadget displays chats and your contacts' online status from Skype. Skype couldn't be easier to use, simply click on your friends icon to start chatting.

Download Skype Vista Gadget

YouTube Gadget

This YouTube gadget displays a selection of random videos, the selection updates every 30 seconds, and by clicking on the video-image you will start the YouTube player on the left side of the gadget. You can filter categories via the settings form or you can also select a custom search to show only the videos you like.

Download YouTube Vista Gadget

YouTube Video Downloader

A simple sidebar gadget to download YouTube videos. Simply enter the URL and download the video in flv format. Use the VLC Media Player or FLV Player to view the video.

Download YouTube Video Downloader Vista Gadget

FeedBurner Readers

This RSS tracker gadget, will keep you up to date with the number of readers at any feed available on FeedBurner.com (must allow Awareness API access). You just need to give the feed name, and it will check every 20 minutes.

Download FeedBurner Readers Vista Gadget

Sage RSS

This ticker news RSS feed gadget downloads your RSS feeds allowing you to easily scroll all the headlines. The Gadget has a compact design that allows you to view 30 items from your subscribed feeds.

Download Sage RSS Vista Gadget

Atom/RSS News Reader

A gadget that lets you get a sneak preview of your favorite feeds around the web. You can have the latest news, the latest posts from your favorite blogs, the latest posts from your favorite forums, the latest e-mails, etc, all in one gadget.

Download Atom/RSS News Reader Vista Gadget

RSS To Speech

This is an excellent gadget, it downloads your RSS feeds from any web site and reads them aloud. How cool is that.

Download RSS To Speech Vista Gadget

Blogger Buddy

Blogger Buddy is a gadget for your sidebar that allows you to log in, view, and post updates to your blog on Blogger.com.

Download Blogger Buddy Vista Gadget

WordPress Gadget

For any WordPress user this gadget is indipensible. This gadget will allow you to get straight to creating a new post, with just a couple of clicks, you can also add a new blogroll link or moderate comments using this useful sidebar gadget.

Download WordPress Vista Gadget

WordPress Stats

WordPress Stats gadget displays all the visitors statistics for your WordPress blog as delivered by the WordPress Stats plugin. The gadget allows you to display the information for both today and yesterday – just as visible on the WordPress Stats page in the admin panel of your blog.

Download WordPress Stats Vista Gadget

Windows Live Writer Gadget

With this gadget you can open a new blog entry, open a previous blog entry or even open the options right from your sidebar (or have it floating and open Writer from anywhere). Not only this, but you can drag and drop onto the gadget too. The gadget supports images, urls, and image urls for drag and drop, and each one will open a new blog entry in Writer with the relevant details already in.

Download Windows Live Writer Vista Gadget

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter).

We all need a personal assistant to stay on top of all our social media commitments, it can be difficult and time consuming. Twitter, Facebook, Myspace … Digg, Delicious … and not to mention kepping your personal blog up to date. We need help.

One solution for the MAC user are widgets, those small indispensible apps that run on the dashboard. Below you will find a selection of the best social media widgets for your MAC Dashboard, I hope they help.

digg.com

A handy and easy to use a digg.com widget with the look and feel of the digg.com website.

Download digg.com

Twidget

Twidget is a free feature rich Dashboard Widget for OS X that allows you to update your Twitter status. Its displays the 20 most recent public tweets or your friends timeline, automatic refresh, links to reply to direct messages, mark tweets as “Favourite”and recognizes replies and auto-links them to follow conversations.

Download Twidget

Chirp

Chirp is a Dashboard Widget for Mac OS X that allows you to quickly and easily keep tabs on your microblogging, Web 2.0 life. With Chirp, you can quickly view your friends’ latest updates, and post links, updates, or even send direct messages to your friends. Microblogging has been taking the world by storm — and now, Chirp brings the best of it to your Dashboard!

Download Chirp

Twitterlex

Twitterlex is a simple Mac OS X Dashboard Widget that shows you the last 30 twitters by you and your Twitter friends, updating every 60 seconds when visible. When hidden, it updates every 5 minutes and sending Growl notifications if anyone has updated their status.

Download Twitterlex

Del.icio.us Widget

This widget enables you to login to your del.icio.us bookmark feed and easily browse your bookmarks from the comfort of your Dashboard.

Download Del.icio.us Widget

Stumbleupon Widget

Put simply, it searches Stumbleupon and returns the results via the Dashboard.

Download Stumbleupon Widget

Slashdash

Simply click the Slashdash icon in your widget tray, and you will have a small Slashdot themed widget window that will update every 30 minutes automatically. Click the article title and the article will open in your browser.

Download Slashdash

MySpaceViewer

This elegant widget displays any MySpace user’s most recent comment. Simply enter the user’s URL on the reverse side, and MySpaceViewer retrieves both the comment and the picture of the user who sent the comment.

Download MySpaceViewer

Technorati Tag Generator

The Technorati Tag Generator is a simple widget allowing you to generate HTML code that is associated with popularTechnorati Tags. Ysers, then have to, cut and paste the generated HTML code into their blog page.

Download Technorati Tag Generator

YouTube

With this feature rich widget you can watch and search featured videos, you can also view the most discussed, most recent, most viewed all within your Dashboard.

Download YouTube

Search Wikipedia

Enter in the search field any searcg term and it will open the Wikipedia page with that information.

Download Search Wikipedia

FlickIt

FlickIt is a dashboard widget specifically design to save you huge amounts of time. Whether you want to post a photo to your blog, send a link to one via email or instant message, or would like to paste the source of it into an application you’re using – FlickIt can handle it.

Download FlickIt

Flickr Interestingness

This widget shows a random selection of 16 images from the top 100 most interesting photos on flickr.com. It also allows you to zoom in on a selected image and then open a browser window showing the selected photo detail page on flickr.com.

Download Flickr Interestingness

Google Reader

The Google Reader Dashboard Widget will display on your dashboard the number of items from your feeds that are currently unread.

Download Google Reader

RSS-Reader

This dashboard widget allows you to display news feeds in your dashboard. It supports both RSS and Atom feeds. You can have multiple readers open which display different feeds. The widget can automatically reload your feeds.

Download RSS-Reader

Gmail Widget

This cool little widget allows you to view your Gmail inbox at a glance.

Download Gmail Widget

Blogger Widget

The quickest and easiest method of posting to Blogger.

Download Blogger Widget

Facebook Watch

Displays user data from the social networking site Facebook.com. The widget allows the user to view: Their wall ; Friends’ recently updated profiles ; Friend, group, and detail requests ; Their inbox ; New Pokes.

Download Facebook Watch

WordPressDash

WordPressDash offers an easy way for bloggers to post to their WP sites whenever they want from the comfort of their MAC dashboards.

Download WordPressDash

LiveWidget

A LiveJournal client with support for: Shared Journals (including moderated communities); Custom Friend-groups; Ready made basic HTML tags (just type your own if you want something else); Current iTunes track info; Mood entry (from the list or enter you own); Colour schemes; Shrinkable interface, for smaller screened users; Secure passwords (using Keychain); Userpics; Tags.

Download LiveWidget

By Paul Andrew (Speckyboy and speckyboy@twitter)

Social media sites are a great place to exchange all kind of ideas or meet new people, they are also a goldmine for designers and creative people searching for inspiration. In this article I share a few ways that I often use to find inspiration through social media sites.

Browse image bookmarking websites

Design bookmarking sites are probably the most popular among designers. My favourite is by far FFFFound, a social media site where selected designers (you must be invited to get an account) share designs they loved around the web. One of the best features about the website is its keyboard based navigation. Other great image bookmarking networks are Dropular, Typeish, We Heart it or vi.sualize.us.

For typography lovers, John Boardley, the author of “I Love Typography “, created with a friend “We Love Typography“, an bookmarking website targetting specifically typography related stuff. You will for sure find a lot of inspiring design work there.

Ask questions

Interaction is what web 2.0 is all about. Sometimes all you need to do is communicate, that’s what Twitter, Blurtit or Yahoo Answers are for. I often ask my Twitter followers when I’m looking for ideas for a blog post. You can even take this further by using services like Twittpoll. People will most likely be happy to help you out, they are usually glad when they can show their expertise.

Read blogs

This can sound like obvious advice, but it has to be mentionned as blogs are one of my biggest inspiration sources. There are two types of blogs that I find better to find inspiration: people who share designs that they like, for example Design You Trust or Smashing Magazine, or tutorial blogs like NetTuts or PSDTuts.

Browse Flickr

Flickr by itself is just a good social photo site and isn’t so helpful to find inspiration. What makes it really amazing are the cool mashups that have been created around the website. My favourite mashup is by far the color palette generator that allows you to extract colours from one of your Flickr photos. Another Flickr related colour mashup is available on the Multicolr Search Lab , where you can look for interesting pictures that contain specific colours. If you simply want to search images more efficiently, take a look at Compfight.

Watch conferences

One great resource for inspiration is to listen to inspiring and successful people, watching conferences is a good way to do that. TED is the best conference for people looking for anything related to design, entertainment and technology. They bring every year brilliant speakers and share talks on their website. Another good source for design speeches is the AIGA video section, where they put videos of conferences organized by the association. Last but not least, Talks@Google offer a wide range of inspiring talks, most are not by designers but are still interesting.

Search for keywords on social bookmarking sites

It is no secret that people bookmark webpages that they find inspiring or useful, thus searching social bookmarking sites is a great way to find inspiration. In my opinion, Delicious and Stumbleupon are the best places for designers to find inspiration, obviously because they are the most used by other designers. In Delicious, you can perform searches by tags, then narrow you search within this tag. Another great way to make the most out of Delicious is to find power users and browse their bookmarks (for example Adobe).

For Stumbleupon, you’ll find inspiration for sure by stumbling the Graphic design, Drawing or Fine Arts categories. For more specific topics, just search for a keyword and stumble pages tagged with this keyword.

About the author: Mirko Humbert is a freelance designer from Switzerland. He shares his thoughts about his passion on his design blog. To connect with Mirko, you can follow him on Twitter.