Howdy, Smubbers!

Everyone at Smub has been busy working on a brand new and very exciting offering! It’s hush-hush at the moment, but we’ll be able to share with you soon!

In the meantime, we’ve got a brand new, handy update for you! If you’ve been using the Smub toolbar for Firefox and IE to access smubs, you’ll find that the latest update allows the shortcut field to automatically complete your smub, based on the first three letters you’ve typed in! This is particularly handy if you can quite recollect the shortcut you’re looking for, but have some idea of what it may be!

ENJOY!

Posting, sharing and bookmarking links from your iPhone is even easier with the “smub it” bookmarklet! The “smub it” bookmarklet gives you the same easy-to-use interface that you would get by typing “smub.it/” to the left of the http, but simplifies the process by allowing you to “smub” a link with just a couple of clicks.

So, how do you get the “smub it” bookmarklet onto your iPhone? The easiest way is simply to install the bookmarklet to your desktop version of Safari, then sync your iPhone with your computer, making sure the “Sync Safari bookmarks” button is checked under the Web Browser section on the Info tab of your iPhone menu under Devices in iTunes. Phew…. that was a long sentence! How about I walk you through it, step by step?

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There are so many ways Smub can make sharing your online life even easier, but here’s one you may not have thought of: using Smub for sharing your Flickr photos.

Right now, if you wanted to share a photo you’ve uploaded to Flickr with one of your other favorite social networking sites, you’d have to go to the photo’s page, copy its URL and paste it into the entry field of the site to which you’d like to post. This may not sound like too many steps off the bat, but when you’re posting to a site that limits the number of characters you can use, like Twitter, for instance, you have the additional step of pasting your photo’s URL into a link-shortener, copying the new URL, then pasting that into the entry field, etc., etc..

Of course, using Smub can really streamline this whole process, particularly if you’ve installed one of our Tools, like the bookmarklet, toolbar or the right-click-to-smub function (shown above). With Smub, all you have to do is navigate to the page of the photo you want to share, use the Smub shortcut of your choosing, and — Ta-Da! — you’re instantly sharing the photo, including it’s automatically shortened URL, with any of your favorite social networking sites.

It’s just another one of the multitude of ways you can use Smub to make sharing simpler. Got some favorite shortcuts and uses of your own? Please let us know! We’d love to hear from you!

What if you could shortcut your way around the complexity and richness of the web with the simplicity of using one word? We’re testing this premise here at Smub.

We believe people are yearning for more simplicity in their lives. (When was the last time you yearned for more complexity? Here’s a pretty good solution for you then. Enjoy!)

So in conversations at the office yesterday, we got into discussing the real value we all find in using Smub, and it kind of all came down to one word access to anything online.

Here’s how we think about it, and we would be terribly interested in your thoughts:

I went over to Chris Brogan’s excellent blog on community and social media this morning. He had a guest post from Theresa Wu on what Generation Y expects from work. Since we’re marketing to Gen Y here at Smub, I thought the rest of the team would like to read it, too.

We all use the Smub Toolbar, which looks like this:

From the toolbar, I was able to create my Smub of the article, and I named it GenY. (Okay, perhaps GenY isn’t exactly one word, but when you read it or text it to someone, it comes across as a perfectly memorable URL.) And it beats the heck out of this:

http://www.chrisbrogan.com/guest-post-generation-y-in-the-workplace-explained/

I can let Heather know she needs to check out this article by simply saying “Check out geny. It’s a great article.”

I’ve mentioned before that I can use my Smub toolbar to gain access to other people’s Smubs. Once I know any Smub user has shared a Smub, all I have to do is go to my toolbar and type in their “handle,” and any one word will take me to their shared page.

For example… my friend Matt has a Smub account. (As an aside, he also has a blog called “The Monk and The Riddle of The Red Rubber Ball.” You can bet I Smubbed that down to “matt.”)

In my toolbar, I choose “Goto…” (vs. “Create) and type in “Matt” and “auto,” and up pops a BusinessWeek article on the automakers he found interesting in November, just when the brouhaha started.

And the word “auto” does a heck of a lot better job communicating a place Matt cares for me to see than this:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/08_48/b4110000545461.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index+-+temp_top+story

Ironically (via Twitter), I found that Matt and I both have “geny” Smubs…

Guess where his goes? http://smub.it/matt/geny … Wanna see mine? http://smub.it/janet/geny

(Anyone can ‘consume’ a Smub, just by typing into your browser window, even with out a Smub account or toolbar.)

And sometimes, one word - even if it’s “GenY” or “geny” - is all it takes to get you where you want to go.

What do you think? Compelling? Interesting? Too much fuss? Let us know.

I’ve got an iPhone that I use for pretty mundane purposes. I am, though, enjoying it more these days because I seem to be an innate “sharer” and have found Smub to be a perfect tool to help me share information with even my sister, who texts me more than anything… Although Smubs work from IM, SMS or any browser from any Smartphone.

I’m training her to recognize just one word to navigate my personal web, which means that soon I’ll be able to tease her into looking at web sites with a simple voicemail or text.

Making Smub work on my iPhone is a piece of cake. Let’s look at the end result first:

In a text message, the clickable link works from any Smartphone.

To make a Smub from the first place is simple on an iPhone. Here is a series of shots that show you exactly how I make a Smub and share it from any browser window.

1) Type smub.it/ to the left of the http:// in the browser window

2) Your Smub will be made automatically (in this case) once I hit the “Go” on my iPhone (your mileage may vary). From here, I can share it via email, Facebook, MySpace or Twitter automatically.

3) You can easily go to your account from your smartphone and browse your own Smubs: