The Smub-It button is now live on two exceptional sites: L’Equipe.fr, the website of France’s most popular sports magazine; and CRAFTzine.com, website of “the first project-based magazine dedicated to the renaissance in the world of crafts.”

From now on, at the bottom of every article or post on L’Equipe or CRAFT, you’ll see our little Smub-It button. What’s the Smub-It button you ask? It’s just a little button that allows you to share the page you’re viewing with any of the social networks that Smub supports (17, so far!) with just a click. Here’s the Smub-It button now, as displayed on L’Equipe:

We are absolutely ecstatic that L’Equipe and CRAFT have chosen to include Smub for their readers’ link-sharing needs. We really hope you’ll check out both sites, as they’re absolutely brimming with news, information, tutorials and projects!

Here, in no particular order (it changes hourly), are some of the most popular smubs making the rounds on Twitter today, as reported by Twazzup.

Twitter Oversharers — first smubbed by @tlamouline.

A Physicist Explains How Online is Killing Newspapers — first smubbed by @hotweir.

Three Cheers for the Product Review (Deep Tech Dive) — first smubbed by @mcbru.

Free vs Freely Distributed — first smubbed by @freshpeel.

Who Can Possibly Govern California? (NYTimes.com) — first smubbed by @thegoodmixer.

Pictures for Sad Children — first smubbed by @bre.

Remember that Harvard study that was making the rounds recently? The Metro turned the study’s findings into a rather gutsy headline:

Ta-da!

You can read the Metro’s article online at this smub: http://smub.it/hcq

If you’ve followed a smub lately, you may have noticed a new addition to the smub banner that appears at the top of the page: Smub Tips!

We’ll be rolling through many tips you’ll hopefully find helpful when using Smub. If you got a tip or trick of your own for using Smub, please let us know! We’ll write a little post about it and kick it over to the tips bar!

If you’ve been finding it challenging to install the Smub.it bookmarklet to your iPhone, this update should help immensely! We’ve just created detailed instructions for installing the Smub.it bookmarklet to your iPhone. These can be found on our Tools page under the heading Install Smub’s Safari Bookmarklets for Mac and iPhone heading AND on the Smub website when viewed from your iPhone!

To view the iPhone installation instructions directly from your iPhone, navigate to Smub.com from your iPhone’s Safari and click the Learn More button at the top of the screen. The next page will provide information about the Smub.it bookmarklet. To begin the installation process, simply the click the “Click Here” text at the bottom of the screen. The next screen will walk you through the three installation steps (pictured in part below):

Of course, if you already have the Smub.it bookmarklet installed on your desktop version of Safari, you can add the bookmarklet to your iPhone simply by syncing your iPhone with your computer and following the directions on our Tools page.

This clip has been circling Twitter at the smub http://smub.it/jqa, via @tlamouline, @macsharp & @GCeleb. The future is then!

I’m sitting in my home office in Portland, Oregon, watching the snow gracefully fall in front of the window. Its been snowing here all week, an odd occurrance. We’re not exactly set up for snow events, so weird things happen:

• The local news starts at 4:00 a.m. and goes ’til 10:00 a.m., then returns at 4:00 p.m. ’til 7:30 p.m.
• School districts cancel classes two days in advance, then hope the snow hits
• Or, school districts open for the day, but close two hours later…
• Stores are overrun with people stocking up on bread and milk

It seems no one here knows how to handle the snow. Few of us (unless we’re skiers) have snow tires or chains, and very few of us grew up understanding how to drive in the snow. (No one wants me out on the streets this week!)

So what’s happening all over town, all over the NorthWest, and in other areas (I’m imagining in Las Vegas and Southern California), people unused to the snow have a reprieve from “normalcy.”

• We stock up on bread and milk, and get the urge to bake… (http://smub.it/jlj/crunchcookies)

• We set up informal networks to share information about weather conditions around town… like Portland’s #pdxtst (Portland Twitter storm trackers) (http://smub.it/jlj/pdxtst)

• …And we do an awful lot of picture taking and sharing… (http://smub.it/jlj/flickr)

And we share and share and share… on our blogs, on Facebook, via Twitter, in email and on the phone.

Perhaps it’s the holiday season, perhaps it’s the snow. But people are connecting and sharing experiences like never before. It’s a joy to watch and participate.

I like to Smub in the snow… you?

Recent research findings by eROI, our friends in Portland, found that most kids get their first personal email address at about age 13. About 25% of them got one primarily so they could shop online. And 82% got one so they could communicate with family, while 52% got one to communicate with friends.

36% of those surveyed said they use email alerts for keeping up on MySpace and Facebook. These emails are an important part of how they interact with the networks they join.

But the study clearly shows that the preferred methodology for communication is texting.

We’re not surprised at this finding. Anyone who knows a kid (or a mom with kids) in college is clearly aware that texting is the usual way of communicating with them. One thing I do hope eROI asks next time is about Wall-to-Wall communications… I know that’s one way my friends chat with me on Facebook.

One of the principles in the development of Smub is to make it incredibly simple to share URLs via text (or SMS), IM, email and the social networks (MySpace and Facebook) that students and a growing number of businesses use.

As students enter the workforce, it’ll be interesting to see exactly how the tools we use will need to adapt to their communications preferences.

In my outreach so far to bloggers about Smub, I’ve found the most immediate “aha!” moments come from PR professionals. It seems that those who use the power of words to make their living have no problem grasping the beauty of letting memorable (or branded) words shortcut your path to any URL…

Michael O’Connor-Clarke, VP of Social Media at Thornley Fallis, an eloquent, yet succinct guy, said this:

Abbie Kendall, Technology PR Maven, said most agencies transform press releases into a PDF and send to editors: “Much better to send editors a nice little Smub link containing a standard or social media release … oh yeah, I like that.”

I like it, too, Abbie.

Smub Fabulously Branded URLs

You can effectively brand any URL online with Smub, and can share them incredibly easily. Imagine if Thornley Fallis was able to send out interesting articles to their clients - which they probably do…

“blah blah brilliant blah, here’s an interesting article in the NY Times about the polar ice caps for your review: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/02/science/02obice.html?_r=1&ref=science”

When now, they’d get even more credit if they’d send a Smub like this: (which isn’t real, because I don’t want to poach their Smub user name)

“blah blah brilliant blah, here’s an interesting article in the NY Times about polar ice caps for your review: http://smub.it/thornley/nytpolar”

Hey Michael, don’t you want to go register that Smub user name for the business?

Meanwhile, if you want to read about the polar ice caps, check out http://smub.it/janet/nytpolar

Thanks for the feedback. Please keep it coming at me, via Twitter, or comment here. We’re listening.

Next up: Smubs for marketers… plenty of value there.

In an intersting new twist to verification, Technorati has asked me to place this URL into the Smub blog that I’m in the process of claiming:

<a href=”http://technorati.com/claim/pz6g3urqfd” rel=”me”>Technorati Profile</a>

A clever piece of code, I suppose, that tells it “I’m me!”

Of course, I’m dying to change it to a Smub:

<a href=http://smub.it/jlj/me!”> rel=”me”>Techorati Profile</a>

So much better. Smub.it/jlj/me!

It’s kind of scary that I’m starting to look at all URLs in Smubs…