I am pleased to announce the development of a unique Business Social Media Impact Forecasting Simulator which provides a simple but scientific approach to developing clear and credible forecasts of the impact including financial benefits of social media campaigns before they are undertaken.

In an earlier article, The Bumblebee's 7 most useful Excel add-ins, I shared my 7 most useful excel add-ins. Here I share my 3 most useful Powerpoint add-ins - Acoolsoft PPT to Video, iSpring and PPT2HTML. Like excel add-ins once you install them they become available within the powerpoint menus. Unfortunately none of these are free but sometimes you get what you pay for.

There are a plethora of excel add-Ins out there, many of which aim to improve or extend a feature which excel already performs. I am not much interested in these but what I am interested in is add-ins which enable you to do something really useful which you cannot currently do in excel. In this article I introduce seven excel add-ins which meet this criterion - NodeXL, Solver, Rainbow, Spreadsheet Converter, Crystal Ball, Fractal Maps and XCell Compiler.

The Guardian reports on the growth in "Persona Management Software" which individuals use to engage in web conversations using multiple identities on forums and social sites. The aim is to create the perception of a (fake) upswell in sentiment on a given topic (a practice is known as astroturfing). The most disturbing revelation is that the US Air Force have tendered for such software.