Survey Development: Forum Making Money

Mollie Vandor is the product manager for Ranker.com where she likes to make lists about reading, eating and bad-TV-watching. She’s also the media director for Girls in Tech LA. You can find her on Twitter @Mollierosev and on her blog.

Whether you’re looking to make a big change, or just tweak a few little things, the new year gives you the perfect opportunity to reflect on your behavior and resolve to do better going forward.

Of course, it’s one thing to say you want to tackle a typical resolution like get in better physical shape, get in better financial shape or — like many of us who work on the web — get your social media presence in order. It’s another thing to actually accomplish those big, broad goals.

So this year, instead of making your goals big and broad, why not take a page from the web world and use analytics to pinpoint the specific stuff you want to change? And, by that same token, why not use data tracking to hold yourself accountable for keeping all those resolutions too?

Read on for some tips on how to use social media to corral your New Year’s resolutions. Let us know in the comments below what tips worked for you, or share your own resolution advice.

Let’s Get Physical/>

There’s the freshman 15 everyone gains from collegiate pizza and beer, and then there’s the startup 15 many of us tech geeks gain from sodas and office snacks. Between the time spent sitting in front of a computer screen and the time spent networking over drinks and dinners, it’s easy to put on pounds when you work on the web. Of course, you can always try the startup diet, but that’s not necessarily going to work for everyone.

Keeping a food and exercise log might sound like a daunting task, but it turns out you may already be tracking some of that data without even knowing it. Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">foursquare actually lets you see your entire checkin history and, if you do a quick search, you can find it so you can easily see whether you’ve really been going to the gym or frequenting your fast food runs.

Similarly, the Foursquare stats page lets you see your own checkin trends in handy graphs and lists. There’s even a site called weeplaces that lets you turn your Foursquare, Facebook Places and class='blippr-nobr'>Gowallaclass="blippr-nobr">Gowalla checkins into graphic visualizations. And, weeplaces will let you filter those visualizations by food-related checkins and parks and recreation checkins, so you can really get a handle on your history.

class='blippr-nobr'>Google Mapsclass="blippr-nobr">Google Maps also lets you search your own history, so can get a visual reminder of the places you’ve been searching for, and start picking up on trends in your own behavior. You just have to enable it. And, of course, there’s the age-old pedometer, made a lot easier and more fashionable via a host of iPhoneclass="blippr-nobr">iPhone and Androidclass="blippr-nobr">Android apps that let you easily track how much you’re walking without having to do anything more than a quick download.

Of course, once you establish the things you want to change about your eating and exercising habits, you still have to make those changes stick. class='blippr-nobr'>Appsclass="blippr-nobr">Apps like LoseIt, Weight Watchers and LiveStrong let you log calories you eat and calories you burn via your smartphone. Fitango prescribes personalized plans to help you get in shape, and gives you a forum for sharing milestones you meet with your friends. Similarly, Phitter is like a fitness-focused class='blippr-nobr'>Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter stream where people share weight loss trials, tribulations and tips to help keep each other going.

Or, you can try something like the Social Workout Challenge, which gives you fitness goals to meet and a community of people to keep you accountable for meeting them. If you really want to take your weight tracking to the next level, there’s even a scale that automatically tweets your weight to the world. While you’re at it, FixNixer and QuitMeter also give you similar tools for tracking your way out of a smoking habit, another great way to get yourself in better physical shape in the new year.

Money, Money, Money/>

For many people, the New Year is also a great time to get a fresh financial start. But again, it’s a lot easier to make changes going forward when you know how you’ve been behaving in the past. That’s where a site like Mint.com can be very handy. class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint aggregates all of your various accounts, including credit cards, bank accounts and assets, and then turns your spending habits into easy-to-read charts and graphs that show you where you’re spending and where you could be saving. It even lets you compare your shopping and spending habits with other people in your area, so you can see how you stack up. Many credit cards, like American Express Blue and Visa Signature, also give you year-end spending summaries that show you how much you’ve spent, how much you’ve saved, how much interest you’ve accumulated and more.

Once you’ve nailed down how your money is going out the door, you can start figuring out ways to keep more of it in your wallet. Again, this is where tracking will be key to actually keeping those resolutions. First, you can establish your financial goals via an online calculator, which lets you figure out exactly how much to start saving. Once you’ve figured out your goals, there are more than 50 great, free mobile apps to help you track your spending. On Facebook, the BillMonk app will help you keep better track of those tricky situations where you’re sharing a bill with friends, and you need to make sure everyone knows what they owe. XPenser lets you record your expenses from any device, including via tweet and e-mail, and TweetWhatYouSpend gives you a forum for sharing your expenditures with everyone on Twitter, so your friends can help hold you accountable when you blow your budget shopping those post-holiday sales.

Get Your Social Media in Shape/>

Whether or not you work on the web, if you’re reading class='blippr-nobr'>Mashableclass="blippr-nobr">Mashable, chances are you have a social media presence. And, just like your physical and financial identities, your social media self might be due for a little makeover in 2011 too. The good news is that the data is even easier to find when you’re talking about your personal tech habits. For example, you can use the Top Words app to figure out the topics you talk about most on class='blippr-nobr'>Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook. Klout tells you which topics you talk about the most on Twitter, and all sorts of other stats that will help you pinpoint what it is about your social media presence that you may want to change.

Similarly, BackType analyzes your Twitter profile and tells you what percentage of your tweets are replies, retweets, links, etc. Like Klout, it also tells you who you’re influencing and who your influencers are. And, it shows you your most shared sites. All of these are great data points for determining things you’d like to change about your social media presence. Finally, ViralHeat gives you in-depth analysis of the sentiment around your various social network profiles, which really lets you hone in on how your social media behavior is being received by your followers on Facebook, Twitter and across the web.

Once you’ve established what you want to change, you can set up ViralHeat to send alerts and updates directly to your inbox so you can track the impact of those changes on the fly. Similarly, since Klout and BackType both update regularly now, you can see your statistics change as your behavior does, which is a great way to keep yourself motivated. And, of course, make sure you set up Google Alerts to track all the activity around your various accounts.

If your resolution involves blogging more often, there are plenty of apps to help you do that on the go, right from your phone. Another way to remind yourself of things you want to blog, tweet or post about is by using a service like TwittRemind, which lets you tweet yourself reminders to do things throughout the day.

To make the most of your many profiles, consider setting up a hub page via a service like about.meclass="blippr-nobr">about.me, which lets you showcase all your profiles in one place. Or, sign up for a social network aggregation service to make it easier to make changes on all your profiles at once. You also might want to consider setting up a targeted Twitter list of friends and followers who can help you hold yourself accountable and focus your social media efforts so you can minimize the number of relationships you’re managing and maximize the return you’re getting from all these changes.

New Year, New You/>

Whether your New Year’s resolutions involve getting yourself in better physical, financial or social media shape, the web can help you figure out exactly what you want to change and how you’re going to keep yourself accountable for changing it. 2011 is a brand new year and a completely fresh start, and, breaking your New Year’s resolutions is so 2010.

More Social Media Resources from Mashable:

- 10 More Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile [PICS]/> - 10 Cool Facebook Status Tips and Tricks/> - 6 Reasons Why Social Games Are the Next Advertising Frontier/> - 3 Things Brands Must Do to Reach Millennials Online/> - How Social Media Can Help With Your Long Distance Job Search

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, DNY59

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WASHINGTON — Nearly 200 cartoons hang on Sen. Mitch McConnell’s office wall, each lampooning him for backing big money politics, vexing his foes and getting slammed through a basketball hoop by an airborne President Barack Obama.

At the halftime of Obama’s first term, McConnell is the one soaring. Last month’s elections that gave Republicans control of the House, more seats in the Senate and blew the Democrats into glum disarray gave McConnell, R-Ky., almost as much power over the government’s direction as the president himself.

The looming expiration of tax cuts provided an early opportunity to exploit that clout. The White House came to McConnell for a deal. Quietly, McConnell and Vice President Joe Biden, colleagues in the Senate for decades, hashed out an agreement balanced with big victories, tough concessions – and heartburn for all concerned.

“We have the deal,” McConnell told Biden.

“We are on,” Biden responded.

No player benefited more than McConnell.

Whatever its fate, the agreement moved the 68-year-old Senate minority leader beyond the agenda-blocking role that defined him the past two years. There’s now a fragile nexus between the Obama White House and congressional Republicans where there had been scant communication, a precedent for making policy together rather than standoffs.

The “Obama-McConnell” deal, as Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., derided it, put McConnell at the table with the president he has vowed to turn from office.

If the relationship holds, the Obama White House will be dealing with the Republicans’ most agile negotiator, stone-faced, governed by discipline and swathed in Southern gentility. McConnell is a conservative ideologue at heart who operates as leader with cold pragmatism and a lawyerly approach to persuasion.

“I don’t want the president to fail. I want him to change,” McConnell says in almost every public forum.

It’s worth noting that McConnell apparently has never aspired to Obama’s job, an uncommon quality among senators and one that helps remove doubt about his motives when he is locked in negotiations or rounding up votes, colleagues and former staffers say.

But he stands out in the Senate in other ways, too. He’s a stern tactician in a chamber of flamboyant public speakers. He revels in the cat-herding nature of the job, unlike his predecessor, Bill Frist of Tennessee, a surgeon practiced in life-and-death matters who was unfamiliar with the Senate.

McConnell is not given to hallway chitchat like the garrulous former Sen. Trent Lott of Mississippi, a former majority and minority leader; does not charm his colleagues with the wry humor of ex-Senate leader Bob Dole of Kansas. And tellingly, even those who frequently find themselves crosswise with McConnell on policy say he does not lean on them in the tradition of Lyndon Baines Johnson.

If the bespectacled senator has a style, it’s inscrutability.

“He listens,” said Sen. Olympia Snowe, one of two moderate Republicans from Maine with extensive experience telling McConnell they can’t vote the way he would like. “I go through my reasoning, and he listens for the common ground.”

“He doesn’t threaten,” said the other Maine Republican, Sen. Susan Collins. “I would know.”

McConnell’s trademark is a discipline he attributes to his childhood battle to overcome polio and, at age 5, to walk. A subtle limp is the only outward sign of that struggle, a limitation that makes it easier for McConnell to travel up a staircase than down.

That uncommon focus threads through McConnell’s story, from his determination to play baseball and lead “a normal life” at the University of Louisville through law school at the University of Kentucky. Even now, when McConnell’s Louisville Cardinals are playing, “I’ve learned during football games not to talk to him,” chuckled his wife, former Labor Secretary Elaine Chao.

If McConnell’s discipline has been a constant, his operational style has changed with his role.

Elected to the Senate in 1984, he made a name for himself in the Senate as a conservative ideologue unafraid to sing the praises of big political donations and assail efforts to put restrictions on campaign fundraising and spending as infringements on free speech. Heated floor debates, particularly with Sen. John McCain of Arizona, culminated in 1994 with McConnell’s all-night filibuster of the campaign finance reform bill McCain had written with Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis.

In October 1999, McConnell marshaled the senators needed to kill that year’s version of the McCain-Feingold bill – a notable enough victory for McConnell to hang the headlines on his wall, opposite dozens of newspaper cartoons deriding him for his defense of big money politics.

It’s a gallery of honor, McConnell-style.

“For Mitch, a life of adoration is not a life worth being proud of,” Chao told the Washington Post at the time. “He takes delight in frustrating his enemies. Their damnation becomes the highest praise.”

The remark reflected the pitched rhetoric of the time. Ralph Nader was calling McConnell the “worst senator.” Common Cause deemed him “Darth Vader of campaign finance reform.”

McConnell suggests that what’s changed is less him than his role. He does not, for example, dispute his wife’s characterization.

“‘Enemies’ is a strong word,” he allows.

“Mitch has a different role now,” Chao says. “He’s very much the coach of his team.”

As such, raw pragmatism – how Republican votes might fall for and against various proposals – rules McConnell’s work as his party’s leader in the Senate more than his own ideology, according to interviews with lawmakers and aides.

Even as President George W. Bush’s point man in the Senate, McConnell often sided instead with what was politically pragmatic. Some Republicans in 2007 complained that he had shrunk from the debate over the Iraq war and disappeared completely from the immigration debate in an effort to insulate himself from difficult issues and an unpopular president in his own re-election bid the next year. McConnell won a fifth Senate term then with 53 percent of the vote.

Fast-forward to the Senate’s first day back in business after this year’s midterm elections. Taking the floor, McConnell abandoned his longtime defense of pork-barrel earmarks in a bow to the prevailing voter hostility against special spending deals.

The tax cut agreement with Biden provides more examples. McConnell won Republicans bragging rights over its extension for tax cuts for all, even the rich, along with a generous estate tax breaks for the wealthy – provisions that have sparked a revolt among progressive Democrats.

But in doing so, he also signed off on the package’s ultimate, deficit-swelling cost, estimated at $850 billion over two years. That’s more than the Wall Street package savaged by many Republicans in the fall elections, also more than Obama’s signature stimulus program in 2009. It gives members of McConnell’s caucus – and probably McConnell himself – a degree of indigestion.

Yet in interviews this past week, Republican senators voiced no criticism of McConnell’s negotiating performance, even among the deal’s staunchest GOP critics.

“I think we’re all shocked at the sticker price,” said Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn. “Aside from the policy itself, which I’m not saying grace over yet, the effort I greatly appreciate.”

Sen. Jim DeMint, who has said he’d vote against the deal as-is, nonetheless gave McConnell points.

“I think he got the best deal we could get,” said the South Carolina Republican.

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Monday, January 10, 2011

Forum Making Money

Let’s Get Physical/>

Money, Money, Money/>

Get Your Social Media in Shape/>

New Year, New You/>

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