Open up your mind and say, ahh...

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.

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Let’s Get Physical

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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. Foursquarefoursquare 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 GowallaGowalla 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.

Google MapsGoogle 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 iPhoneiPhone and AndroidAndroid 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. AppsApps 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 TwitterTwitter 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.

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Money, Money, Money

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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. MintMint 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.

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Get Your Social Media in Shape

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Whether or not you work on the web, if you’re reading MashableMashable, 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 FacebookFacebook. 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.meabout.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.

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New Year, New You

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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.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto

JetBlue is ordinarily smart with their web site, which is why their broken system is particularly useful to take a look at. I’m guessing that at some point, management said, “it’s good enough,” and moved on to more pressing issues. And then, of course, it stays good enough, frozen in time, ignored, and annoying.

The problem with letting your web forms become annoying is that in terms of time spent interacting with your brand, they’re way up on the list. If someone is spending a minute or two or three or four cursing you out from their desk, it’s not going to be easily fixed with some clever advertising.

Here’s an illustrated guide to things to avoid, JetBlue style:

First interaction wasn’t so great. If you even bother to build a “please wait” page, be sure it says something useful, or perhaps interesting, as opposed to confusing. Should I press continue?

Throughout the form, JetBlue frequently asks for dates (of birth, say, or issuance). Everywhere else on their site (and in the country they’re based) the format for dates is July 10, 1960. But here, just this one time, the format is 10, July 1960. And you can’t just type in the date, which is fast, you need to wrestle with pull down menus, menus too dumb to list all twelve months of the year at once, but instead requiring you to scroll if any date is after April…

Alert readers know that pull down menus with more than thirty total choices are a petty annoyance for me, and this one is particularly vexing. There a more than a hundred and fifty countries here, including a few I have never heard of. The United States, home to 90% of JetBlue’s customers, is listed near the bottom, but not at it (hint: if you insist on this sort of error in form design, list the popular choices at the top, at the bottom and in alpha… no penalty for multiple listings). (A far better alternative is the auto-completion guessing trick Google now uses in search).

Worse, if you try to type the country (U…n…i) it takes you to… TUNISIA!

Four passengers; 8 times I had to scroll down all the way, then slowly scroll up and then click…

It gets more annoying. For each passenger, I had to choose, “Travel document type”. But of course, there’s only one travel document permitted, “Passport” which hardly requires a pull down choice I think. Rule of thumb: when in doubt about a question, don’t bother asking.

They also wanted to know the nationality of traveler, which is fine, but then two items later, they wanted to know, “Issuing country.” While I’m confident that there are a few travelers who have a nationality in one country and an issuing country in another, my guess is that it would be considered a nice gesture if the form remembered your answer from three seconds ago and automatically entered it for you, no?

After painstakingly filling out the form, I was presented with these two buttons at the bottom of the page… hmmmmm.

Doesn’t really matter which one I pressed, though, because lady and the tiger style, I got this:

NOOOOOOOO!

And I had to start the entire form over again, from the beginning, with no fields remembered.

I know, I know, this is a rant. But it’s a rant with a point:

Fill in your own forms. Make your executives do it. Watch customers do it. See what your competitors are using. Improve the form. Don’t use pull down menus for more than 12 choices unless there really is no choice.

“Good enough” is a hard call, but I think we can agree that most online forms, aren’t.

“Is it feed a cold, starve a fever, or the other way around, I can never remember?”

Does it matter if you get the rhyme wrong? A folk remedy that doesn’t work doesn’t work whether or not you say it right.

Zig Ziglar used to tell a story about a baseball team on a losing streak. On the road for a doubleheader, the team visited a town that was home to a famous faith healer. While the guys were warming up, the manager disappeared. He came back an hour later with a big handful of bats. “Guys, these bats were blessed and healed by the guru. Our problems are over.”

According to the story, the team snapped out of their streak and won a bunch of games. Some people wonder, “did the faith healer really touch the bats, or was the manager making it up?” Huh? Does it matter?

Mass marketers have traditionally abhorred measurement, preferring rules of thumb, casting calls and alchohol instead. Yet, there’s no real correlation between how the ad was made and how well it works.

As the number of apparently significant digits in the data available to us goes up (traffic was up .1% yesterday!) we continually seek causation, even if we’re looking in the wrong places. As the amount of data we get continues to increase, we need people who can help us turn that data into information.

It’s important, I think, to understand when a placebo is helpful and when it’s not. We shouldn’t look to politicians to tell us whether or not the world is getting warmer (and what’s causing it). They’re not qualified or motivated to turn the data into information. We also shouldn’t look to a fortune teller on the corner to read our x-rays or our blood tests.

Proofiness is a tricky thing. Data is not information, and confusing numbers with truth can help you make some bad decisions.

Show me a modern political candidate who doesn’t understand television, and I’ll show you a loser.

When TV became the dominant medium for Americans to consume news and entertainment, political candidates could no longer be successful without looking polished in televised debates, appearing on talk shows and spending big on commercials.

Like the television boom of the 1960s, we are standing on the precipice of a big shift in how public figures are perceived and how campaigns are conducted. Our frontier is social media, and its impact on mainstream political culture is coming on fast.

While my colleagues have been making their predictions about what’s on the tech and social media horizon in 2011, there will be no major U.S. elections next year. Here, we’ll be postulating about social media’s impact on the more long-term future of American civics.

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1. There Will Be a Tipping Point

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While campaigning and marketing share many similarities, the differences mean everything when you’re talking about democracy’s big picture. Brands can sell by hitting a tech savvy demographic of influencers. Elections involve everyone, whether they’re online or not.

If a large bloc of your constituency is made up of 65+ year-old retirees, chances are a Facebook strategy won’t be time well spent. Despite the enthusiasm of the tech crowd and blogosphere, Twitter is exceedingly far from the mainstream, with only 6% of Americans using the service. And while the world consumes YouTube videos at a mind-bending rate, viral success is still transient and elusive.

While these tools have certainly proven to be effective in rallying support and contributions, we don’t yet live in a world where social media can make or break a political candidate by itself.

That will change, perhaps even by the next major election cycle.

The future of the social media politician is not about wild speculation and technological uncertainties. It has everything to do with when and how deeply social media can be absorbed into mainstream culture. We are on track for a tipping point — a JFK/Nixon TV debate moment — when everyone on the political scene will acknowledge that we can never go back to campaigns without social.

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2. New Media Strategists Will Just Be Strategists

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I’ve had the opportunity to talk with the new media strategists for a number of senators, congresspeople and political causes. Despite their differences, they all agree that their own jobs will soon be folded into the larger campaign strategy. As many have already foreseen, social media will not require experts for much longer. As we head toward true mainstream adoption, social will be a default and well-understood tool in the belt of any public-facing professional.

We’ve already seen this happening in the private sector with marketing and PR professionals. As many corporate entities lumber to catch up with those on the cutting edge, so too will government officials and the campaigners who seek their offices.

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3. We’ll See the Devaluation of Old Media in Politics

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Print and radio ads are not as valuable as TV. TV will no longer be as valuable as interactive media. For politics, this is especially so, as the arena (at its best, anyway) warrants engagement and discussion.

As media appetites shift, this is an inevitability. In the U.S., we’re already seeing web use catch up with television in terms of weekly hours spent. Political money will simply go where the eyeballs are, and we’re likely to see a big payoff on social creativity when it comes to future campaigns.

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4. Whistle Blowing Gets More Efficient, But That’s It

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The WikiLeaks saga has ignited plenty of discussion about journalism and whistle blowing in the Internet age. But at the end of the day, the mechanics of an information leak are about the same as they’ve always been: Someone from within an organization leaks damaging information, and the media (in whatever form) disseminates it to the public. Generally speaking, WikiLeaks has only acted as a “middle man” for raw information. It’s journalists who are making sense of it and transmitting it to the public with context.

The web only speeds up this process through digitization and universal access. Governments and politicians will feel the impact of leaks sooner, but it’s unlikely the methods of protecting sensitive information will be much changed.

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Your Thoughts?

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What do you think will be social media’s biggest impact on the political process? How long until we see a winning campaign strategy that is purely social? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.

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2010 was the year where we revisited not only the definition of influence, but also deeply explored its meaning in today’s social economy. What represented an ongoing series of virtual global summits on the topic, influence was scrutinized as a way of better understanding its role in new media.

It goes beyond academic study however. Influence permeated the realm of the masses and suddenly, we the people, were gifted with the opportunity to voice what moved us. In doing so, we also earned the opportunity to build networks around who we are. The quest for the meaning of influence emerged as something much more personal. Influence impacted digital societies and many were earning it without fully understanding why or how.

With the pervasiveness of social media, we were learning, and sometimes confusing, the differences between influence and new found, micro fame, celebrity and popularity. Suddenly the dichotomies of influence and popularity were blurring. And, the controversial Fast Company Influence Project only diluted distinction.

Unlike so many terms in Social Media, influence is not a new word invented or reinvented to suit the times. Its origin is Latin, “influere” which translates into something very interesting for the social era, “to flow into.” Almost everything we discover and share in social networks these days is done through our streams and to loosely translate the root of influence symbolizes the ability to flow into the streams of others.

The text book definition of influence is the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.

Effect…

Effect is key in understanding influence and its role in societies online and in the real world. In social media, it’s the ability to cause measurable actions and outcomes. While popularity may help, this really becomes a study of the quality, caliber, and conditioning of an individual’s social graph where context plays an increasingly important role over time.

Understanding the relationship between cause and effect in new media also helps us better understand the shift from influence to influencer.

In 2010 and heading into 2011, influence will only continue to captivate attention and interest. With services such as Klout, PeerIndex, et al, we are now measured by how we interact online and whether we like it or not, our influence factor (IF) is also weighted. To introduce a sense of urgency into the subject, many businesses are placing great importance on these scores, which in the real world is not new either, but here, we still have much to learn about social currency and individual capital.

Looking back to 2010, I’ve assembled a few of my favorite discussions on influence.  We learned many lessons and sparked significant insights that will help us continue the discussions in years to come. And, we’ll learn every step of the way.

Please read and share…

The 2010 Series on Influence

- Exploring and Defining Influence: A Study with Vocus

- Please Repeat: Influence is not Popularity…and Popularity is not Influence

- Influence is Bliss: The Gender Divide of Influence on Twitter

Connect with Brian Solis on Twitter, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Facebook

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If you’re looking for a way to FIND answers in social media, consider Engage!: It will help…

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Get The Conversation Prism:

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I’m working with Julien on a new book. I’m working with Rob Hatch on a business plan that we can sustain and where we can succeed. I’m working with the team at CrossTech Ventures to build revenue and expansion models for our projects. You could say that planning is pretty heavy on my mind right now. Some thoughts you might take into your own 2011 planning:

Your Plan For 2011

• Make a section that defines your roles (parent, employee, project lead, etc)
• In that section, make a one-line description of the best possible outcome you’d want for that role for 2011 (Reach $50K in extra revenue on side project, etc)
• Below, for each role, list out major initiatives by name, by target you wish to hit, and by a deadline.
• Below that, for each major initiative, list out potential resources, possible problems, and next steps.
• Write out more next actions, starting with what to do first for each one.
• Throw everything else away but the bottom part of the list.

My point, said another way, is that you need goals and targets and plans, but you need to take actions more than anything else. Pick a direction, pick a goal to hit, and then work all the time on your actions.

Thoughts?

The term “influence” doesn’t mean a lot, and yet, it seems to be the holy grail for online social media people. Marketers coming to the fold worry quite a deal about reaching the influencers. The dogma, such as it is, says that anybody can be an influencer. Only, you and I know that we all feel like a nobody sometimes, and that we’re not all influential about the same things.

For instance, I trusted Mark Horvath to share good advice on the cameras he uses for his projects, and that’s why I bought my Canon Vixia HF S200: because Mark said It was a good one. Mark was/is much more influential to my choice than someone with 200,000 followers on Twitter (or similar). He certainly has more influence to me than most ads, because I know Mark’s a real guy that I know and have met.

Klout says this about my influence:

When I look for analysis, I get this:

• Chris Brogan has built a very large and engaged network through high quality, trustworthy content.
• Chris Brogan is very likely to have any message amplified and acted upon.
• Chris Brogan is constantly engaged by very influential people.
• Chris Brogan creates quality content that engages a very large audience on a level very few can achieve.

But what does that all mean? Or a better question: Can we improve our influence? Here are some thoughts.

It Starts With a Solid Platform

I should be clear. I never set out to be influential. I set out to be helpful. That word, “helpful,” turns out to be ONE way out of several to be influential. Rich people often get to be influential, because money gives people improved reach, and improved options for decision-making. Because I didn’t have a ton of money, I ended up finding ways to be helpful instead. And I put that helpfulness right out there to be seen on my website, my home base. Over and over, I gave more than anyone I knew, and I gave away my “secrets,” so that you could do it, too. But it wouldn’t matter one bit without the next step.

The next step of influence is awareness.

Get Seen

I joke with Steve Garfield all the time about his awesome book, Get Seen. I ask him, “How do you get seen?” And Steve answers, “Be there.”

That’s the secret. Be there. I had accounts on every social network early. (I’m in the first 11K to join Twitter.) And when I got there, I connected, communicated, and offered help. But we’ll get back to that. First? I was there. And I was active. And I was not just active, but I shared the spotlight.

I did the same thing in real space. I’m one of the rare social media types who’s actually met several thousand of the people he’s connected with online. And I’ve met quite the mix of influential people and up-and-comers. (Know where the real gain comes from? Spend time with the up-and-comers.)

So, I started with a platform, and then I showed up everywhere I could afford (and sometimes not afford) to go. But what did I do once I got there?

Share the Spotlight

One thing that helps one become influential is to work on helping others rise up. The more people you can support and help, the more people who will remember where they got that help, and who will extend some level of your influence, whether or not they choose to do so. I promote others far more often than I ever talk about my own accomplishments. Why? Because you didn’t come here to learn about me. You came here to improve your own efforts. I share as much as I can about other people, so that you understand what will give you the best chance to improve.

Sometimes, I talk about people like Tony Robbins, who I think has given us lots to learn. I talk about Tom Peters, a mentor of mine for decades, who continues to really light my mind up with new ideas, and as I tell him at every opportunity I get, who continues to get me in trouble, all these many years later.

Other times, I talk about aGlenda Watson Hyatt, who is helping bloggers and businesses figure out accessibility and helping them grow a market segment that we all are missing our chance to help. I point out Suzanne Vara, who is one of the most loyal, most energized, most dedicated person I’ve met. To me, there’s great value in what Glenda and Suzanne show you, and I’d rather you get to know them better.

Sharing the spotlight in this way, though, improves your influence. How? It shows people (you!) what I value, and it suggests that I’ll be quick to point you out when someone else needs what you offer.

Working The Numbers of Influence

I work really hard to get my RSS subscribers. I ask for more whenever I can. I also ask people to subscribe to my newsletter. I don’t work as hard on getting followers on Twitter. Instead, I work really hard on being relevant and useful and funny and quirky and worthwhile. I work on promoting other people and sharing what they’ve found. Why? Because I think that’s how to get numbers there. (Want more Twitter followers? Get More Twitter Followers today!)

I look at my stats via Google Analytics, via PostRank, via HootSuite, and from other sources, to see what works for me, what doesn’t. I work those numbers. I don’t just let them show up magically. I’m not using HubSpot on this site, but in future projects, that might be another way for me to improve my numbers and measurement, as well.

Influence Isn’t Handed Over

No one passes out influence. Yes, sometimes, someone very influential will tap you and you can benefit from this, but that’s rare. No one came and tapped my shoulder. And yet, I did something with each and every opportunity I was handed.

When I worked with Jeff Pulver, I worked hard to help his efforts, and I also did what I could to meet the people he put in front of me. I listened hard to his every lesson, and I learned from observing the kinds of people he spent his time with, who he gave his attention to, and where he put emphasis. Every step of the way, I gained influence.

Before Jeff, I worked on influence by learning things. Christopher S. Penn and I figured out how to run PodCamp, and we learned from that how to build networked relationships with important people in the podcasting and new media space.

After Jeff, I learned how to leverage every new opportunity I got into a chance to help someone else, a chance to promote someone else, and/or an opportunity to grow my business. Never once did someone hand me more influence. I earned it.

That’s the Silver Lining To This All

Don’t work on your Klout score. Work on understanding influence. Don’t work on how many followers you have, except insofar as you worry about how to feed them useful information that will grow your reach.

Do work on learning how to be most helpful to those in your segment of the universe that are growing. Do work on putting more resources in the hands of people who need to grow. Do work on never missing an opportunity to take a privilege and to extend it into something more than what you started with. And say thank-you a thousand times more than you are today.

And that, friends, is some of what I know about influence.

You?

Facebook’s users are updating their status millions of times per day. We know what those users were chatting about the most, but what do teenagers talk about most? What about users with more Facebook friends? How does time of day affect status updates?

To find out, Facebook’s computers analyzed approximately one million status updates from U.S. English speakers. It then broke down those updates based on context, demographics and content to figure out just what its users are buzzing about.

The social network first analyzed the correlation between the use of specific words and age. Unsurprisingly, they found that there’s a positive correlation between age and religious words, family, and positive emotions, while there was a negative correlation between sex, sleeping, first person pronouns, school, swear words and negative emotions. In other words, the younger you are, the angrier you are.

Facebook also analyzed the correlation between word choice and friend count. While the correlation is not as strong as age’s correlation to word choice, Facebook’s data team did find that there’s a positive correlation between friend count and second person pronouns, total word count, communication, religion, swear words and sex. On the other end of the spectrum, there’s a negative correlation between friend count and past and present tense verbs, family and emotions.

Another interesting finding is the impact of the time of day on word choice. Not only do Facebook’s users tend to talk about sleeping the most at around 4 AM ET, but they tend to talk about their work right before they head into the office. Positive and negative emotions are also affected by the time of day: negative emotions tend to peak at around 1 AM ET, while positive emotions tend to peak at about 7 AM ET. More importantly, negative emotions tend to increase as the day progresses at the expense of positive emotions.

What type of status updates tend to get the most attention? Facebook dug into this data as well and found that positive status updates tend to get more likes while negative status updates tend to get more comments. Check out this image for the breakdown:

What do you think of the data Facebook has collected? Do any of these correlations surprise you? We want to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Back in November we told you about Streetline, a new service that offers drivers and cities a real-time view of available parking spaces. The service just got a lot more driver-friendly yesterday, with the debut of a new iPhone app that points the way to roadways ripe with ample street parking.

Parker, currently only available in areas near Hollywood, CA, displays for drivers a real-time Google map with available spaces. Streets with multiple open spots are highlighted, and garages are also listed as an alternative. Anyone whose been lured deep into a parking garage only to find obscenely high hourly rates posted beyond the point of turning around will appreciate that current garage and meter rates — in addition to time limits — are also available with the swipe of a finger.

For Los Angeles, it may be a chance to reduce congestion without drastically changing infrastructure. “By making parking easier, we can help people get where they are going faster, and reduce pollution and traffic congestion caused by drivers circling in hopes of finding an open spot,” said Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa

Streetline requires the installation of sensors into existing parking spaces, then connects parking infrastructure through an infinitely expandable wireless network. With the network in place, drivers can find, reserve and pay for open spaces, and cities can tell where violations are and set dynamic prices for spaces based on demand.

We tried out the app and wish it were already available in every city we’ve ever driven. Though it took a half second to get the hang of the interface, streets with multiple open spots were clear. It was also easy to get directions, albeit to another city, from our current location.

The Parker app might be the best example we’ve seen so far that having access to real-time parking information could be the difference between finding a space and circling the wrong block endlessly, or seeing that parking is at a premium and deciding to leave the car at home.

Photos: Streetline

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Leyl Master Black is a managing director at Sparkpr, one of the world’s top independent PR agencies. Leyl has more than 15 years experience driving high-impact communications programs for emerging technology companies.

The past decade has been rough on the media industry. As media consumption has shifted online, many print publications have struggled to adjust their editorial approach, advertising infrastructure and revenue models to accommodate a rapidly changing readership. During this time, quite a few online-only news sites also entered the market. With no legacy advertising infrastructure to deal with, lower overhead costs and startup agility, these new competitors began to attract viewers — and ad dollars — from traditional publications. Many publications have had to downsize, and reporters must now cover more beats and file more stories than ever before.

The recent social revolution changed the game again. Our social networks have taken on the role of crowdsourced news editors. Instead of going directly to websites to scan for news, we frequently only see bite-sized news headlines that have been posted or retweeted by our trusted sources. When we do go directly to a site, we’re now relying more on news aggregators such as TechMeme, or getting the scoop on what’s trending from sites such as Tweetbeat.

Today, mobile devices are sparking another big shift in media infrastructure, with the iPad in particular set to become the centerpiece of media strategies for top print publications such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and USA Today.

As the media changes, so too must the practice of public relations. In light of these evolving dynamics, what should savvy PR practitioners be thinking about as they’re building plans for 2011? Here are a few trends to watch in the coming year.

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1. Social Sharing of News

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In a recent article on Forbes.com, entrepreneur Dan Greenberg asserted that the web has evolved from a network of sites to a network of people. And because you can’t put ads on people, you must now focus on creating content that people will want to consume and share. The same holds true for PR, and next year, we will see more PR strategies that put social sharing at the forefront.

News releases will have more attention-grabbing or controversial headlines to drive more retweets. We’ll see more pitches that seek to seed a contrarian view or spark controversy, both of which will have a better chance of being shared than straight news. There will be more aggressive outreach to influencers on Twitter to ask them to tweet about news, and more strategies to provide incentives to tweet or post to Facebook. And PR professionals will be under more pressure to measure program success using social sharing metrics.

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2. Increase in “Direct Editorial”

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As media companies overhaul their revenue models, many have moved beyond straightforward banner-style advertising to offer new types of content-driven ad experiences, sponsored content and creative syndication partnerships. This means that the need for content has never been greater. But with staffing levels still low, there will be even more opportunities in the coming year for company execs to contribute their own thought leadership pieces and educational articles to prominent publications.

We can also expect to see more corporate blogging in 2011. While just a few years ago, many companies shied away from blogging because it was so difficult to promote the content and actually get people to read it, it’s now easier than ever to promote blog content to a targeted audience through social media. And, the shake-up in the media industry has produced a large number of talented freelance writers to support these efforts.

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3. Greater Demand for Exclusives

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With breaking news now posting almost instantaneously online, straight news coverage has become a commodity. When Facebook announces a redesign, you can expect to read similar stories about it on dozens of news sites the minute it hits. Many publications, as well as journalists, are now grappling with how to differentiate their coverage in this environment. Watch closely for publications shifting their editorial approach to find the right niche next year, and adjust your engagement accordingly.

Also look for increasing value being placed on exclusives as a way for journalists to offer a differentiated and unique news product. As more publications request (and even require) exclusive content, reporters will be able to invest more time in doing a “deep dive” for stories, and we’ll likely see an increase in longer, more insightful pieces.

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4. Growth in Multimedia

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Another point of differentiation for publications will be the use of use podcasts and video interviews to complement their print and online stories. Where appropriate, PR professionals should begin to build ideas for podcasts into their pitches to paint a more complete picture of how a story could be rolled out.

Video is also becoming a critical part of many news sites and an important asset for PR to provide to busy reporters, particularly as publications focus on creating visually rich content for devices such as the iPad. In 2011, expect to see more stories that include individual videos or even curated video in a slideshow or mosaic layout, such as this New York Times story about Tufts University applicants submitting YouTube videos as part of the application process.

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5. Data, Graphics and Apps

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Relevant stats have always been critical for validating trend stories, and with online survey tools making data gathering easier than ever, many PR pitches are now already accompanied by original research. In 2011, with news outlets hungry for visuals but short on resources, look for the presentation of this data to become more sophisticated, with PR teams working to develop infographics and other visuals to make their data pop. And in our app-happy world, also expect to see a slew of interactive applications to supplement stories, such as this texting and driving game that accompanied a New York Times article on the topic.

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Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Yuri_Arcurs