Tonight we held the first Tool Talk, a monthly round table discussion on tech tools.

Tool Talk is based on a first come first serve basis, so watch this space for news on how to RSVP for the next one in August.

The discussion tonight included some of Nashville’s brightest minds on (and off) the web.

The file is available below to listen to, but please note that this is not a professional recording.

A big thank you goes out to everyone who were kind enough to participate tonight.

I’ve included each person and their favorite tools below. Enjoy the conversation.

*** Kate O’Neill – [meta]marketer

- Remember The Milk – online to do list and task management.
- Evernote – remember everything.

*** Rex Hammock – Hammock Inc. / Small Business . COM

- Eye-Fi – wireless photo and video uploads from your camera to your computer and to the web
- Skitch – fast and fun screen capture and image sharing
- ecto – blog editor for Mac OS X
- Posterours – The place to post everything. Just email us. Dead simple blog by email
- Zemanta – We suggest tags, links, photos, and related articles. You save time and aspirin.

*** Chris Ennis – Function Interactive / Nashmash

- TokBox – free video chat and messaging
- Google Wave -  a new tool for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year.

*** Mitch Canter – Studio Nashvegas

Windows Live Writer – Windows Live Writer team blog
Freshbooks – online invoicing, time tracking and expense service

WordPress:
All In One SEO – optimizes your WordPress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).
WordPress Database Backup – WP-DB-Backup allows you easily to backup your core WordPress database tables.
CForms II – a powerful and feature rich form plugin for WordPress, offering convenient deployment of multiple Ajax driven contact forms throughout your blog or even on the same page.
Twitter Tools – Twitter Tools is a plugin that creates a complete integration between your WordPress blog and your Twitter account.
Super Cache – generates static html files from your dynamic WordPress blog.
Exec PHP – The Exec-PHP plugin executes PHP code in posts, pages and text widgets.
Front Page Excluded Categories – a basic plugin that excludes posts in one or more categories from appearing on the front page.

*** Dave Delaney – that’s me.

- Disqus – a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites.
- Tumblr – the easiest way to blog.

*** Allison Groves – Sitening / SheWrites

Twitter:
- TweetDeck – your personal browser for staying in touch with what’s happening now, connecting you with your contacts across Twitter, Facebook and more
- Seesmic Desktop – build your community
- Tweetie Desktop – Twitter client for Mac

- Ning – lets you create and join new social networks for your interests and passions.

Ning bashing ensues…. you’ll need to listen to learn more.

*** Chuck Bryant – Border Jump

- TripIt.com – online travel itinerary and trip planner
- HootSuite – the ultimate Twitter toolbox. With HootSuite, you can manage multiple Twitter profiles, pre-schedule tweets, and measure your success.
- Fluid – Free Site Specific Browser for Mac OS X Leopard

*** Eric Schuff – Tennessean

- CoTweet – CoTweet is a platform that helps companies reach and engage customers using Twitter.
- Publish2 – The Web’s largest newsroom: Journalists collaborate to curate the news.
- Coda – Text editor + file transfer + svn + CSS + Terminal + Books + More = Whoah.
- Espresso – PHP tool
- Yammer – Enterprise microblogging
- Feedly – weaves your favorite content into a fun, magazine-like start page.

Thanks again to everyone who participated. I’ll be posting details on the next Tool Talk.

Listen to episode one of Tool Talk here.

The thing I love the most with Disqus is that I can be alerted and respond to new comments straight from my email on my iPhone. This saves me the time of having to log in to WordPress on my machine.

I’m also a big fan of Seesmic (though I often find the video pixelated – what gives Sessmic?). Seesmic powers the video comment feature for Disqus. An issue I’ve run into is that the email I receive when someone leaves me a video comment doesn’t indicate this.

I decided I should let them know, so I emailed co-founder, Daniel Ha.

Daniel promptly replied:

The fact that the co-founder actually wrote me back directly is great, but that’s not the most impressive thing about this. Take a look at the time I sent the original message and Daniel’s reply time. There’s a one minute response time. Now that’s customer service.

Your comments are welcome Thanks.

It’s safe to say that the majority of bloggers and podcasters get blown away with excitement when we receive comments. A comment is a true way of knowing without any doubt that someone is reading or listening to you. A blogger need not understand anything about monitoring traffic and analytics when there’s a comment on their site.

Until now commenting has been kept in the dark ages. Sure, you could set up alerts, so you know when someone has commented, but that was about it. Comments were often one-sided. Commenters would seldom interact with one another (with the exception of *very* popular blogs). They often wouldn’t check back to see if there were any replies from the blog host or anyone else.

Last week I discovered Disqus. With Disqus you can now create real conversations from the comments themselves. You simply register for an account and let Disqus manage your commenting. This is a perfect tool for anyone who writes comments on blogs.

In addition to the above you can post video comments with the built-in Seesmic recorder, track other comments, reply to comments through your email in-box. Yes, you read that right. I now don’t have to log in to WordPress to reply to comments anymore. How cool is that?

Leave a comment on this post and let me know what you think of the new system. I’m a big believer in Disqus, I really think this is a tool that’s going to help us grow the conversations which stem from a single post. Let me know what you think.

UPDATE: Special thanks to Daniel Ha for his excellent support.