Posted in Online Publishing Strategy	April 25, 2008

Top Free New Media Tools You'll Need for Everything with SpongeCell.com's Ben Katzman

The early-afternoon session at PodCamp NYC 2.0 was on productivity and marketing using new media. “The theme of what we’re talking about here is collaboration”, said speaker Ben Katzman, CEO of SpongeCell. Katzman opened this session talking about how businesses can use new media to be more productive in the office as well as to market their business online. “Software as a service”, according to Levy, makes up 3% of Adobe’s revenues. This "software as a service" refers to web-based programs, following the Google model, as opposed to Microsoft’s model where everything is downloaded.

He joked about how physical media will soon be taken over by digital media, and how we’ll be tossing out our CD’s like they’re those old AOL CD’s we used to get in the mail.

These are the tools Katzman mentioned during the session:

Wordpress – Katzman stressed the importance of hosting your blog yourself. By not hosting it yourself, you are driving traffic to your host, not yourself and you are unable to get a firm grasp on your own analytics.

KickApps – Enables you to create or use other applications on your site.

Ning – An easy social network tool you can use to build a social network externally or internally. You can request to be your own developer and integrate it into your site or you can choose to leave it hosted.

HotChalk – Katzman called this a “fantastic tool”. It’s actually more for educators than anything, but it allows educators to create syllabuses etc. online and allow parents to see what their children are learning.

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RememberTheMilk– A virtual assistant that you can forward emails to amongst other things and will keep track of your appointments and remind you of those appointments and to-do’s.

Yelp– The reason why small businesses depend on sites like these is because it is a social-based review site. If you have a physical address, you can be reviewed on the on this site and elsewhere on the web.

SpongeCell - Event aggregator site where you can disseminate and distribute your events across the web. Gives you the ability to have your content on their website as well as embedding the content into your own site. They also work for email distribution and SMS.

Katzman noted that it is very important to be transparent in the social community. Endorsing yourself won’t get you any brownie points, and you can’t just be a passerby for people to trust your opinion or thoughts.

More PodCamp NYC 2.0 Coverage:

How to Build and Sustain a Social Community - with Alan Levy of BlogTalkRadio.com

Top Free New Media Tools You'll Need for Everything - with Ben Katzman of SpongeCell.com

Straddling the Technical/Creative Line - with Rob Blatt of The New York Sun

How To Promote and Make Money With Your Podcast in the Next 30 Days - with Michael Geoghegan of GigaVox Media and Tim Bourquin of PodcastBrothers.com

The "M" Word: Alternative Ways to Monetize - with Mark Tafoya & Jennifer Lannolo from CulinaryMediaNetwork.com, Cliff Ravencraft of GSPN.tv, and Rob Blatt of The New York Sun

Tactical Transparency (being naked on the web) - with PodCamp lead organizer John C. Havens, and author of an upcoming book called Tactical Transparency

SEO for Podcasting, Vodcasting & Social Media - an ad-hoc session with PodCamp attendees

The Economics of Aggregation - with Travell Perkins of RGBDaily.com