The tool is super easy to use, enter keywords or possible words you’d like in the name. Let’s say you want to open a vegan bakery (not the most original startup idea, but just go with it). I enter the keywords vegan, bakery, baking, treats, cakes, simple, healthy, chocolate, tasty, delish. Then I enter the prefixes little, and the. Then pick some suffixes like, ous, ly, and shop. Mix it up and here’s what I got.

More options than I could show you! Mixnomer not only shows you the available domain, but if the twitter username is available as well. Right now the list is ordered by the number of characters in the URL. But I can rearrange to show my favorites on top.

Some of my favorites from this search were DELISHVEGAN.COM, LITTLETASTY.COM, THEDELISH.COM, lots of options I would have never thought would be available domains.

So play around with it, I’d love to see what cool domains you guys come up with! (full disclosure, mixnomer is a company I have been consulting for, but I honestly think it’s an awesome product!)

So when the guy asked me how I got the Gowalla shirt, I was honest with him. I said “I paid for this shirt”. He looked really confused, he said “wait, you paid money for that shirt?”. My response: “Yes, I paid cash money for this shirt”.

I love the design of Gowalla, so I am willing to pay to wear their brand. However, I was not really using Gowalla at SXSW. I was not willing to check in everywhere just to get a shirt, but I was willing to pay for one. That’s the difference between loving the design and loving the service!

I love Foursquare, and the new update makes me love it even more! Foursquare bringing back the leaderboard was smart! It feels like a game again. Every check-in counts and I’m loving it.

Foursquare is also showing me more about my check-in history. Gives me extra points for hanging out with the same people, and really is helping me to explore my city.

This is going to make foursquare tips more useful. Just the other day I got a thank you on twitter for a foursquare tip I left over a year ago.

My Gowalla shirt from SXSW 2010

It’s things like this that will make me add more tips because I know they are really useful to my friends. I also think this will turn into certain friends becoming experts in the categories of places that they check-in most. Of course my friends are going to look for my tips when they are looking for a good vegetarian place to eat. Hopefully foursquare will start to reflect the expertise that your friends have. They had the data, why not use it!

Gowalla hasn’t lost me as a user yet, I just use foursquare more at this point. That is why you will see me wearing a Gowalla shirt, while checking in on Foursquare.

#1: GroupMe: I don’t normally use group texting in my everyday life, and the reason I know I’ll end up using GroupMe at SXSW is because I’ve already been added to 4 different SXSW related groups. One of the reasons I like GroupMe is because it’s more than just group text messaging. You can also share your location with your group (which is nice if you want to tell your friends where you are but don’t want everyone you know at SXSW showing up). GroupMe also allows you to share photos. Another app to note is Beluga (which was just acquired by facebook). Beluga has very similar features to GroupMe, but GroupMe seems to be more popular with my group of friends so it’s what I will be using at SXSW. Since GroupMe is a NYC based startup, I foresee a little east coast/west coast group messaging battle playing out at SXSW. Very similar to the Foursquare/Gowalla preferences last year.

#2 Plancast: While it is impossible to keep any kind of a schedule at SXSW, using Plancast helps me to at least know what I wanted to attend that day. The only way to plan anything for SXSW is to make “plans” is to make them before you go down to Austin. Plancast makes it easy for me to get a preliminary list of things I’d like to attend. I am using Plancast over the official SXSW schedule, or sched.org because I like the design better and I find it easier to use.

#3 Hashable: I have a love hate relationship with Hashable, but I will be using it at SXSW to keep track of people that I meet.

What made me decide to start using it again was the realization that I can keep all of my Hashable connections private if I want to.

#4 Foursquare/Gowalla: In my personal life I use Foursquare but I will be using both at this year’s SXSW for two reasons. Reason #1: I have friends on both platforms. If I really want to get a good idea of where everyone is, I need to look in both apps. Reason #2: There are more companies that have partnered with Gowalla this year, so I suspect you will need to check in on Gowalla to get access to different official events.

In general it’s just a great way to see where everyone is when you are in Austin. Things change pretty fast down there.

#5 picplz: Officially my photo sharing app of choice for SXSW. I like it because it doesn’t force me to make all my photos square, it will upload to facebook, twitter, tumblr, foursquare, posterous and even Dropbox! I want to make an effort to take more photos this year at SXSW, but I don’t want to be carrying around my DSLR. So my iPhone will have to do.

With SXSW quickly approaching I have more an more things on my to-do list. Hopefully these apps will help me keep it all together in Austin. And if you are going to SXSW, please say hi!

So at the risk of being redundant, here are some tips that you may or may not have heard already.

1. I usually to say forget about the schedule. What I mean by that is don’t worry about making it to all the panels or all the parties. Just go with the flow, you’ll have more fun that way.
2. But a certain amount of scheduling can be good. For example: If you really want to spend some quality time with people, put a meal on the books. Schedule time to meet up, sit down, and eat something.  This way you will actually get to spend time with the people you want to see. I will be holding Ohours at SXSW for this very reason!
3. If this is your first time going to SXSW If you are going to SXSW, you should fully expect to be worn out when it’s over. Make sure to drink lots of water and take extra vitamin C, to prevent getting really sick when you return home.
4. You will walk….a lot! Everything is usually close to the convention center, but that’s going to mean a lot of walking for you. Be sure you are comfortable with what you are wearing.
5. Enjoy the serendipity. South by can be a very serendipitous place. Crazy things happen, you end up in awesome conversations with amazing people, and when this happens just enjoy it and stay in the moment. You don’t need to take pictures and tweet while this is happening (let’s be serious, you can tweet about it later)
6. Don’t forget to eat! It sounds silly, but with everything going on it can be very easy to forget to eat. My advice, schedule meetings around meals. This insures that you give yourself a brake, and get a chance to eat.

A little tip on what to eat at SXSW from your friendly vegan friend, Sarah Cooley (hey, that’s me!).

Remember to eat your veggies! At SXSW, there will be tons of free BBQ to partake of (in fact MapQuest will have a bus trip to Salt Lick BBQ) So I understand that it might be more difficult to fit veggies into your meals. But do your best to try and eat some greens at least once during the day. Trust me, you will feel better because of it!

I’m thinking of putting together a small casual vegan meetup at SXSW (vegans and non vegans welcome). If you would be interested, leave me a comment below. If there is enough interest we can figure out a time and day in Austin that works for everyone.

If you want to meet up in Austin, feel free to sign up for one of my Ohours slots. Or you can try more traditional methods of tracking people down at SXSW, but that usually doesn’t work.

Today’s great use of social media example comes from Rent the Runway. Today Rent the Runway launched a tumblr account. (which I thought was nice since I do like their regular blog. +1) but the bigger news was after I followed them on tumblr I saw this post.

While backstage at the Christian Siriano show at NY Fashion Week they posted a picture to their tumblr. (+1) Then they prompted readers to go vote on which pieces they should buy from the collection. (+1) If you don’t know anything about Rent the Runway, they allow users to rent dresses (and other accessories). The reason this is awesome is because they are involving the user directly in the decision making process. And this will effect the user directly because if RTR buys the dress they liked, then they can rent it!

The way they are allowing users to vote it via Facebook. (+2) The reason this is so brilliant is that it’s growing their Facebook community (you have to like their Facebook page in order to like the photos of the dresses, so they are gaining Facebook likes and interactions are the same time!)

They put all the photos in an album on their Facebook page, and users are liking and commenting on the dresses.

So hat tip to you, Rent the Runway, you are my Great Use of Social Media of the day. Your total, +5!

My role at AOL will be an ever changing one. As we all know, the internet does’t like to stay still and we constantly have to adapt to the changing landscape of this world that we live in, but we do it because we love it! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again…I love the internet! And AOL is the perfect place for me right now.

Many of you know that I am still in school, so hearing about my new position confused a lot of people. Just to clarify…I’m still in school, full time. I will be working at AOL 30 hours a week as a Social Media Consultant for the Marketing team at AOL media.

Finding a company that recognizes the talent in someone that is still in school and is willing to take a chance on them is hard to find! This position at AOL does one very important thing and that is, it allows me to be myself! I finally feel like I don’t have to hide the fact that I’m still a student or the fact that I have (and have had) a great career!

I don’t think any of this would be possible without the awesomeness that is Matthew Knell! Back in 2009 I wrote about him in my Good People Day post and I can’t think of any better words to sum up how grateful I am to have him as a friend and mentor!

Matt Knell. You were the first person to ever come up to me, already knowing who I was, at a Mashable event back last summer. It was one of the most flattering moments EVER. Since then you have become a great friend and provided me with some great advice over the past year. You have never stopped believing in me and pushing me to be the best person I can be.

I’m so excited to be an AOLer and continue to build communities online.

GoodGuide provides the world’s largest and most reliable source of information on the health, environmental, and social impacts of the products in your home.

With GoodGuide, you can:

• Find safe, healthy and green products that protect you and your family
• Search or browse over 70,000 food, toys, personal care, & household products to see what’s really beneath the label
• Use expert advice and recommendations on products to quickly learn the impacts of what you buy
• Find better products and make purchasing decisions based on what’s important to you
• Create a personalized favorites list with the products that are right for you and your family

They even have an iPhone app to help you make better choices when shopping. With this app, simply scan the barcode of the product and immediately see detailed ratings for health, environment and social responsibility for more than 50,000 products and companies. GoodGuide provides this information about personal care, household chemical, toy and food products for free on your iPhone / iPod Touch and is adding thousands of products every month. By making information about consumer products transparent, GoodGuide’s goal is to help people shop smarter and motivate companies to offer even better products.

But what really blew me away is their SMS application! It makes this type of “on the go learning” accessible to anyone with a SMS enabled phone! Simply send a text message to 41411. Every text message must begin with the word “gguide” in the body of the message. Then, add whatever it is you are searching for after “gguide”. You can search by Product Type, Product Name, or UPC code.

My favorite points from that session were:

• You can teach anybody social media, but for community management to succeed, it needs to be a senior role.
• We are in danger of slinging around “community” as this big buzzword, but you ALREADY HAVE COMMUNITY, it’s called your CUSTOMERS!
• Your community tells you when you have a community
• If no one is saying your brand sucks on twitter, you’re doing it wrong. You want that opportunity to start that conversation.
• You can’t tell your community what to do, you can only advise them. You don’t own your community, it’s their community.

Please read my review for more specific notes on that panel. But my big take away from that session was, You already have a community, it doesn’t matter what kind of business you are, or whatever kind of brand you are! This made me realize that even I have a community around my personal brand, and I need to actively manage my community.

I have been thinking about community a lot this last week, and I realized that I often find myself only talking about community as it refers to tech, or tech companies. But EVERYTHING is a community. Both in the physical location sense, and in the sense that you are probably a part of more communities then you realize. I realized that I am a part of the social media community, but I am also a part of the cancer community, the online video community, the vegan community, the health community and the New York City community.

I am interacting with all of these people, across all of these different communities, without even trying! Just my being myself, and that is awesome!

So I wanted everyone to reply in the comments with what communities they feel they interact with every day?

The first is Smarty Pig. Smarty Pig is a savings account with social aspects. This all started when I asked twitter if there was a way for me to save for specific goals and let other people also donate money towards those goals. Sure there were things like ChipIn, but that was only to show progress in collecting money, I wanted to also show my own savings progress. So someone suggested I check out Smarty Pig.

When you create a Smarty Pig account, you are actually opening a real FDIC insured savings account that has a 2.01% APY. Then within that account, you set up specific savings goals. That can be a family vacation, college savings for your children, or maybe just something you want to splurge on.

You set up these savings goals and choose how often you want to contribute to that goal, and how much. This was perfect for me because it allowed me to take out an amount from my check each week to save for rent, and then at the end of the month, I had my rent money without even thinking about it.

Next you can choose if you want to make the goal public or private. Certain goals like my rent, I kept private. But for other things, like my trip to SXSW, I can keep it public so that my friends and family can help me save too.

Once you reach your savings goal you have a few options. You can have the money deposited back into your checking account, Smarty Pig can send you a debt card with your savings, or you can choose to receive up to a 12% cash boost on your savings by placing it on a retail card like Amazon.com, Best Buy, Travelocity or Macy’s. You can even spilt your savings among the three, to find the best option for you.

You can add widgets for your facebook or blog so that all of your friends can help you save. I put one in my blog footer.

Over the past 4 months I have been living in Philadelphia, and working for Comcast Interactive Media. I worked on a project producing a series of tutorial videos. It was a very different job for me. There was a lot of managing. Managing people, managing expectations, managing outside agencies… it was a very big project. But my contract is ending on Jan. 15th so it’s on to hopefully better things.

So I had to make a decision, stay in Philly and look for another job, or move back to NYC? After talking with my family and close friends I have decided to do something that I didn’t want to do, but I know I have to do. Go back to school.

When I first started blogging there were 2 things that I worked very hard to keep under wraps.

#1 – that I was still in school

#2 – how young I was

I don’t really remember why I decided to do that, but from my point of view at the time, they were both negative things. I had a number of friends my age who were still in school and also in the social media/ blogging podcasting space, but for some reason whenever they were mentioned, they were always “student bloggers” and in my head that sounded like it was something less than everyone else. I didn’t think that they deserved less credit because they were young, or still in school. I also feel like the “student blogger” was being put in a box. It became a specific category that I didn’t want to be a part of. The age thing I always wanted to keep under wraps because I wanted my work to speak for itself.

I have very strong opinions about higher education. I don’t like it, I didn’t think I needed it, and I think the whole system in general is broken. I’ve written a little about education before. Once I had finished 4 years of school, I was done. I didn’t graduate, I just couldn’t take it anymore, I didn’t see the point. But while I still feel this way somewhat, I have decided to go back to school and finish my degree in Media Studies.

I can only hope that this doesn’t set me back career wise.

So…now that I got that off my chest, I’m moving back to NYC and I’m looking for a job. Not an internship people, I might be going back to school, but I don’t think that takes away from my level of experience. Ideally I would like to find some work in community management, social media consulting (I know I hate that term, but there is not other way to put it) Something that doesn’t require me to be in an office all of the time (since I will have classes, etc)

If you hear of anything, please let me know.

I wanted to thank all of my friends and mentors for being so great and supportive to me with this decision.