If there is one thing I need, and need desperately, it’s a vacation! A real, get away, something we’ve never done before, totally unique experience.

Manta could very well be that “most unique of all” experience. For roller coaster lovers and sea life fanatics alike, SeaWorld Orlando is putting these two experiences together, literally turning it (and you) on its head!

With (at this writing) less than 22 days and 17 hours to go, Manta (ride the flying ray) opens at their Orlando location.

For those making summer plans, consider Manta. For those wishing they could, head on over and participate in their contest.

Either way, enter to win “front of the line” passes, just for visiting their website and clicking on the “Participate & Win” yellow button.

You’ll be asked to create an account and add them to your Twitter. Then you have three shots at taking a few questions quiz (took me three tries). All the answers to the questions are right there on their web site. It’s like a treasure hunt

Don’t let this quiz keep you from trying because:

1. It’s not that long (the quiz)
2. You’ll learn some amazing facts
3. You’ll truly enjoy hunting for the answers
4. You can watch some incredible videos^*
5. It’s not a large website so looking for clues isn’t hard.

^*You do not have to watch the videos to get any of the answers – but the videos are tons of fun to watch

So if hoping to plan a super cool vacation when school lets out or just want a unique experience to share with someone special, this just might be your summer ticket to fun!

Enjoy!

I’m doing something I’ve got to grab moments to do, stumbling my way through random posts at Stumbleupon. If you don’t do this, you are missing out on some extremely spectular webpages, posts, pictures, humor and more. And if you do click the link above, be sure to send me a friend request!

But that’s not my reason for this post… not by a long shot.

Just now The Cab Ride I’ll Never Forget had me riveted. If you’re wondering if compassion is a lost art, look no further than this post (or afterward, keep looking compassion is alive and well).

This is my short post for Saturday (where I take the liberty over the weekend to find items of interest outside the realm of advertising and marketing), but if you read nothing else at all for the rest of the weekend, this will have been worth your trip!

The other day while visiting our Twitter, I was struck by how many different posting and contact systems are currently in place to help you Tweet more efficiently.

In our January 4th post, we mentioned a couple:

TwitterBar 1.1
TwitterFeed

The first allows you to add comments directly to your Twitter from the address bar of your browser. It is an addon for your Firefox browser. Extremely simple to add, very easy to use.

The second is a slightly confusing, but ultimately satisfying, way to have a third party recognize your new posts and announce them – automatically – to your Twitter account.

But then I started going down through our lists of followers, and taking notes on how individual Twitter-ers are able to (seemingly) Tweet and get stuff done. Turns out there are a wide variety of tools at your disposal. Some make it easier to post, some are desktop interfaces (versus tabbing back and forth to your Twitter account).

Here’s what I’ve located so far – with short explanations of what each of these services and/or software programs do:

Tweetie
For those who hang onto their iPhones and iPods with a vise-like grip, this tool is an application you can add to make posting and/or answering Tweets easier. This download-able application costs $2.99. For screenshots just click that link.

TwitterGadget
You can add this method of Twittering to your Gmail account using Gmail Labs (here are the installation instructions. What this program does is best represented by a quote from their website, “TwitterGadget is a clean, robust, web 2.0 style client for Twitter.com, designed to submit status updates to Twitter via your iGoogle homepage or Gmail Account.” I invite you to visit and interpret the rest yourself.

TweetDeck
TweetDeck is in beta, but I see an awful lot of die-hard Tweeters using it. It’s designed to help organize the massive amounts of incoming information, as well as allowing you to interface with your followers. Again, a quote from their website is in order, “It aims to evolve the existing functionality of Twitter by taking an abundance of information i.e twitter feeds, and breaking it down into more manageable bite sized pieces.”

TwitterFox
This is also a Firefox addon so installing it (like all things Firefox) is a breeze. TwitterFox “adds a tiny icon on the status bar which notifies you when your friends update their tweets.” In addition, it also has a small text input field to update your tweets.

Tweetfeed (not to be confused with TwitterFeed)
And last (for now) but most likely not least, Tweetfeed, a Twitter activity page that shows live what’s happening on your Twitter. You can customize the setting, and create what they call “Tweet walls” for conferences and events. Actually they state, use it however you want. We’ve added a link to a few TweetFeed examples

I do want you to know that, to date, I’m personally only using the first two referenced at the top of this post. But again, the ones listed are used constantly by Tweeters.

I should also note that TweetDeck (in beta) looks very appealing, but my Kaspersky firewall had strong objections to it. Most likely nothing at all to worry about, but I’m paranoid and decided to wait.

No doubt you’ve heard in the news lately of a few (stupid) tweets made by those (in our government) who should know better. Giving a step by step itinerary of one’s trip through war-torn Middle Eastern countries is definitely a stupid move.

However, in terms of instant communication, once you get the hang of it, Twitter isn’t going down the tubes as predicted numerous months ago. If anything, with all these tools available, mastering and using Twitter may be just the perfect move for you to make this year!

Enjoy!

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Ugh Greymatter comes to the rescue again with this interesting post I found last night. Owen had updated some of his videos and the one that caught my eye, and turned out to be very entertaining was the one about “Twitter in Plain English.”

So thanks to Owen, you, too, can be entertained in the simplest of forms, this YouTube video:

Now for someone to come up with a way that tells me how to manage to Tweet all day and still get work done LOL!

Enjoy