News: twitter

Tips Nge-tweet untuk Marketing

2010-03-23T04:53:00.000+02:00

Pelan namun pasti, twitter sudah diakui pengaruhnya di jagad maya Indonesia. Sudah jutaan orang Indonesia yang menggunakannya. Mulai dari artis, penyanyi, pemasar, politikus, olah ragawan, orang IT, wartawan, orang iklan, rohaniwan, sampai orang umum pun nge-tweet.

Ada yang bisa memanfaatkannya dengan baik, seperti Pandji Pragiwaksono (artis, presenter, rapper) nge-tweet untuk membentuk citranya sebagai artis yang peduli dengan ke-Indonesiaan, namun ada pula yang gagal memasuki lingkungan twitter seperti Mario Teguh (motivator) karena tweet-nya yang kontroversial.

Beberapa produk (brand) pun sudah memasuki twitter. Bahkan, perusahaan-perusahaan yang masuk dalam jajaran 100 perusahaan TOP dunia kebanyakan telah menggunakan twitter sebagai salah satu alat pemasarannya.

Bagaimana dengan Anda? Sudah punya account di twitter? Apakah Anda juga menggunakan twitter untuk memasarkan diri dan atau brand Anda?

Berikut ini beberapa tips yang semoga bisa membantu Anda ketika memanfaatkan twitter sebagai alat pemasaran.

Pertama, nge-tweetlah sesuatu yang bernas. Ingat, twitter merupakan microblogging, dibatasi 140 karakter untuk sekali posting. Jadi, cobalah untuk nge-tweet sesuatu yang berkualitas seputar topik yang kita tekuni atau di mana kita terlibat. Jika memang tweet Anda bermutu, pasti akan banyak yang me-retweet. Apa untungnya ketika Anda diretweet? Tentu saja, Anda akan lebih banyak dikenal, sehingga akan difollow, dan pendapat anda dijadikan referensi.

Kedua, follow orang-orang yang sekiranya penting bagi Anda. Follow orang / tokoh yang selingkungan dengan ceruk pasar Anda. Follow juga website-website penyedia referensi penting tentang dunia Anda.

Ketiga, pantau tweet dari lingkungan ceruk pasar Anda. Kemudian, berinteraksilah dengan mereka. Ciptakan dialog dengan mereka. Bila perlu, tambahkan sesuatu yang bernilai ketika berinteraksi.

Keempat, ikutilah apa yang sedang menjadi trending topik. Paling tidak, yang sedang tren di timelines Anda dan di ceruk pasar Anda. Twitter adalah social media yang real time. Jadi, ikutilah. Tapi tetap ingat, saringlah informasi-informasi yang penting.

Kelima, integrasikan blog / website Anda dengan twitter. Jika perlu, gunakan robot twitter. Tentang pembuatan robot twitter telah dibahas dalam website ini.

Keenam, ketika Anda / brand Anda sedang mengadakan program-program atau acara, baik offline maupun online, jangan segan untuk “melaporkan”nya secara real time melalui twitter.

Ketujuh, ciptakan karakter Anda. Mungkin ini yang butuh proses agak lama. Yang terpenting adalah, konsistensi. Konsisten dengan topik yang Anda tweet, konsisten dengan bahasa Anda, dan konsisten dengan kontinyuitas tweet Anda.

Semoga tips tersebut bermanfaat. Jika Anda punya tips lain, saya sangat senang jika Anda mau berbagi juga di sini.

Artikel ini saya tulis untuk rumahdot.com

[Via http://mindmata.wordpress.com]

Reflections of a Newsosaur: News site visitors look like early ...

Twitter is Stupiddderrr!

2010-03-21T12:59:00.000+02:00

Bob is…

…not surprised to discover how ignorant this Twitter business is. Okay, so I was away from the internet for about 18 months. I return to find this latest fad called Twitter. I have been on the net for 9 years (okay – 7 and a half if you want to be precise) and I have seen a lot of silly ideas pass across my browser. But this is really one of the real doosies of modern communication.

I was curious as to what this Twitter biz was all about. Was it a new kind of blog? Or just another plea to get me to join another useless forum or message board group of idiots who can’t talk about anything related to the subject of the board or forum. Anyway, I sign up and begin to try to use this crappy piece of useless techno junk. Within a few seconds, I realize that this is just a sort of electronic game of tag. I supposed to follow so and so around all day and read his or her little dribbles of info, like “Going to the store now..” and I am in turn supposed to write to him or her back something like “Good, hope the store has what you want.” Now another person is supposed to join into the conversation and add something like, “What store are you going to?”

I suppose that Twitter is in line with the current fad of text messaging every detail of your working day off to the world. I suppose it also is in line with the theory that everyone has such an interesting life that people from all corners of the globe want to know precisely what you are doing 24 hours of the day.

Bull hockey!

This is just another childish fad, another cheap plea for attention from spoiled twenty-first century children, like the way they took MTV and turned it from a show about rock n roll with real music videos 24 hours a day (yes, real music videos with no ads and nothing to buy), took MTV and turned it into a campus fashion show. Twitter is as useless as beepers, and more annoying to the intellect of human beings than silly putty on an ice cream cone. I guess I am just too mature to handle this latest craze of text crapola. It will pass eventually, like a bad meal, or like tattoos and poking metal rings into every corner of your body. And when it passes, someone will write a book about “How I Spent My Summer Vacation Twittering Away Every Detail of My Life and How No One Really Gave a Crap… continued in Book 2, The Twittering Nightmares!”

So…………… I leave you with this PHOTO THOUGHT OF THE DAY

…and the beat goes on…

[Via http://aboutbob.wordpress.com]

Small Business News: Healthcare Prognosis? | Small Business Trends

KE$HA WHO?

2010-03-21T04:50:00.000+02:00

Britney Spears was the beginning to a long line of pop stars. A lot of them owe their respects to Brit, however one of today’s “biggest” pop stars is denying Brit the respect that she deserves.

In Ke$ha’s new song “Styrofoam” she sings about how nothing ever lasts and how nothing is permanent, except for styrofoam that is. She disesses the songstress in a line, which has created a trending topic on Twitter (#Keshawho)

The line goes, “In 10 years, Britney Spears…Britney, who?”

Ke$ha has only recently become famous from her single Tik Tok, and her other song featuring 3OH!3 Blah Blah Blah ( A huge disappointment ) Now she is making it seem she has taken the throne away from every other pop star out their. Sorry Ke$ha your brand new and talentless, Brit has been around since the 90’s making hit after hit, what have you done? Made 2 catchy songs, thats it. Like Britney or not, she’s been around for over 10 years, and she’s still on top with her most recent successful single, 3.

MY PERSONAL MESSAGE TO KE$HA-

It is not hygienic to brush your teeth with a bottle of jack, I use toothpaste. Second if I felt like Pdiddy in the morning, I would go to the doctors, third-You are the degenerate sister of Hannah Montana with the idea that you are a rebel because you don’t bathe and wear leather… classy

Ke$ha who?

Picture source: GOOGLE

[Via http://celebstoday.wordpress.com]

Balloon Juice » Blog Archive » Great News

Official Twitter app coming to Android

2010-03-20T12:54:00.000+02:00

Wherever you go people are talking about Twitter. It certainly is a great way to “micro blog” things.

If you have a mobile then it’s not possible to not be able to tweet as long as you have a signal. There have also been various applications on every phone that’ll let you tweet more easily.

Most notably on Nokia devices is a program called Gravity. Great interface, loads of features and a joy to use.

Android has loads of different Twitter apps, some are good, some are too basic but there has yet to be an official Twitter application.

Androidandme.com has reported rumours that this may actually be on the way to Android devices. Whether you’ll actually want or need to use this application will obviously be down to your personal preference.

Those of us who will be using the HTC Sense UI will have built-in Twitter access so may not need to look elsewhere.

Have a read of the Androidandme.com article and see what you think

[Via http://desirefanatics.wordpress.com]

Stocks in the News: Google, Google China, Ford, Toyota, Lloyds ...

LEGO Mindstorms Robot Controlled By Tweets

2010-03-20T04:36:00.000+02:00

My brain is overloading with the coolness of this little LEGO robot. On top of being remote-controlled, NIKO can receive its commands via Twitter! Now that’s a cool use of social-robo-networking!

YouTube Tops 1 Billion hits A Day

2010-03-18T12:48:00.000+02:00

There’s lots of competition, you’ll have to get lots of views for your content and you’ll have to do so fast. So why subject yourself to that? Because, quite simply, to do otherwise is to leave your business in your competition’s dust. YouTube content receives more than a billion views every day, and if you aren’t getting a piece of that pie your business is never going to flourish as much as it could.

The good news is this: There is some expert help out there. Social media marketing experts uSocial.net have figured out how to change the video marketing game in your favor. They’ve added a new service to their roster of social network marketing products, and this latest addition is designed to help you make money through video marketing. How, you ask, is this possible? They’ve figured out a way to help you get the video views necessary for success – by buying them.

“After we launched our other social marketing services, we saw video as the next obvious means for expansion,” says uSocial.net CEO Leon Hill. “Once we found a way to quickly generate loads of quality views to videos, we knew we were onto something that people would go crazy for.”

USocial.net can bring video viewers to your content either from within YouTube or through other social sites like blogs.

Hill says that what makes the company different is that they “can guarantee fast, targeted traffic to videos, instead of relying on traditional means like hoping for viral use, or pay-per-click advertising,” explains Hill.

[Via http://paulhinesmarketingvault.wordpress.com]

Fox News Interviews The Prez!!! FOX NEWS! | PerezHilton.com

Twitter gives Parvin Dabbas title for his film

2010-03-18T04:58:00.000+02:00

Bollywood celebs like Priyanka Chopra and Farhan Akhtar are on Twitter to connect with friends and fans, but actor Parvin Dabbas found a novel way to use it – he got a title for his directorial venture thanks to the social networking site.

“It was actually Mr. Anupam Kher who suggested to me to take to Twitter to hunt for the title,” Parvin told IANS over telephone.

The actor had initially announced a cash reward of Rs.15,000 to whoever would suggest a title that he would choose.

“I had announced about the cash reward within my cast and crew. One day Anupam-ji came and asked me to post it on Twitter as well. He also Tweeted about it. We had a few other titles but finally ‘Sahi Dhande Galat Bande’ was selected,” he said.

Parvin is still trying to find out who gave him the film’s title. The only cue is that he is one among Anupam Kher’s 26,420 followers on Twitter.

“We are figuring out who the person is and where he lives. If he’s someone from outside Mumbai, we’ll get him here and give the reward,” said Parvin, who has acted in films like “Monsoon Wedding”, “Maine Gandhi Ko Nahi Mara” and “Khosla ka Ghosla”.

Parvin’s “Sahi Dhande Galat Bande” is an action comedy with a political twist, and revolves around a gang of four guys. Apart from Anupam, the film also stars Vansh Bharadwaj of “Heavens on Earth” fame, newcomers Kuldeep, Ashish Nair and Tina Desai.

The cast also includes Kiran Juneja, Sharat Saxena, Yashpal Sharma, Neena Kulkarani and Vipin Sharma.

Parvin is not only directing the film but is also acting in it. Asked if it was difficult to tackle both the responsibilities, he said: “I did a lot of preparation in terms of storyboarding as well as acting. I knew how I would be handling it.”

Delhi boy Parvin has mostly shot the film in various parts of the capital and claims his film doesn’t cater to a specific audience.

“I am not a kind of person who keeps a target audience in mind. It is a film that will be watched in multiplexes, single screens across towns and cities,” said the actor.

“It has been an interesting journey. I am happy to get work that I enjoy. I try to do something that people would enjoy and get entertained,” he said.

Apart from his directorial venture, Parvin is also doing films like “Undertrial” and “Alibaug”.

[Via http://newshyderabad.wordpress.com]

Roger Ailes To Fox News Staffers: No Trash-Talking Beck, 'Defend ...

Twitter Founder Short on Biz Plan (NYP)

2010-03-16T12:57:00.000+02:00

Instead of mapping out a long-awaited plan to sell ads on Twitter, CEO Evan Williams yesterday unveiled a new feature, “@anywhere,” that allows other Web sites to link to Twitter feeds. Users will be able to send tweets through participating sites without having to jump to Twitter. AllThingsDigital/MediaMemo: When will we see Twitter’s planned ad platform? WebNewser: Twitter’s Evan Williams on what @anywhere means for publishers.

[Via http://gothampr.wordpress.com]

Crackdown 2 dated for July News | Xbox 360 | Eurogamer

It's time for advertising to evolve.

2010-03-16T04:48:00.000+02:00

We’re in a new stage of consumer evolution thanks to the latest advancements in technology. The last decade has seen Myspace, Facebook, the Wii, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog, Hulu, Netflix, iPods, iPads, and the myriad of innovative explosive consumer cache that these devices inherently spawn.

Facebook games, iPhone applications, and product placement are only a few examples of the highly (surprisingly) profitable weeds that sprouted from capitalism’s planter.

Jesse Schell, Carnegie Mellon professor and former Disney imagineer, spoke at the 2010 Design Innovate Communicate Entertain (DICE) Summit about these capitalist wet-dreams.

“Facebook is weird,” he announces to the crowd, “Webkinz. Wha? Really?”

Technology is revolutionizing not only our relationship with technology but our relationship with reality. Webkinz is so obscenely successful because it employs psychological tricks to keep our children playing. All the games on the website are free – in which you earn points and in game money – but the only way to spend your hard earned money is to pay a small monthly fee.

In 2007 Club Penguin, a children’s internet game, was purchased for 350 million dollars by Disney.

According to tech crunch there are over 350 million Facebook users. By the end of 2009, Twitter reached 18 million users. Now, note that there are more Farmville accounts than Twitter accounts; the massively popular facebook game has purportedly surpassed 80 million active users.

The law of inertia finds that technology converges: Refrigerators fit with wi-fi, computer/tv screen, and anything else you could possibly imagine – or want – from one kitchen appliance.

Pockets are the exception.

“Pockets turn the law of divergence inside out,” said Schell, “The iPhone is a modern digital swiss army knife.”

Schell’s speech, “Design Outside the Box” is fairly short (28 minutes) and extremely interesting. The last few minutes are a cheeky but probably not so inaccurate extrapolation of what our future will look like wrapped in Tech. Here is one of Schell’s many extrapolations: internet-synched ad tattoos. Scenario: See a friend at a BBQ who has the same ad-tattoo as you. The ads “link-sync” and you and your friend high five – because that is how you score points in the ‘game’ (winning you and your friend achievements which you can use for tax breaks). This ‘game’ teaches you to pay more attention to ads.

It makes more sense if you watch the video, which I’ll post below. I also linked directly to the video in the beginning of this article.

Xbox 360 Games – E3 2010 – Guitar Hero 5

The extent to which we are immersed – and continue to be immersed – in technology reminds me of the award winning Young Adult novel Feed by M.T. Anderson.

This is Amazon’s summary: In this chilling novel, Anderson (Burger Wuss; Thirsty) imagines a society dominated by the feed a next-generation Internet/television hybrid that is directly hardwired into the brain. Teen narrator Titus never questions his world, in which parents select their babies’ attributes in the conceptionarium, corporations dominate the information stream, and kids learn to employ the feed more efficiently in School. But everything changes when he and his pals travel to the moon for spring break. There Titus meets home-schooled Violet, who thinks for herself, searches out news and asserts that “Everything we’ve grown up with the stories on the feed, the games, all of that it’s all streamlining our personalities so we’re easier to sell to.” Without exposition, Anderson deftly combines elements of today’s teen scene, including parties and shopping malls, with imaginative and disturbing fantasy twists. “Chats” flow privately from mind to mind; Titus flies an “upcar”; people go “mal” (short for “malfunctioning”) in contraband sites that intoxicate by scrambling the feed; and, after Titus and his friends develop lesions, banner ads and sit-coms dub the lesions the newest hot trend, causing one friend to commission a fake one and another to outdo her by getting cuts all over her body.

But the title of this post targets advertising.

Hulu introduced us (and has already spoiled us) to easy, legally accessible, virtually commercial free TV viewing. A half hour show will typically have about 3 thirty second ads.

One might assume viewers could sit through a 30 second ad and indeed, we might, if only advertisers tailor their systems to the internet. So far they have taken the broadcast commercial and transplanted it directly into online viewing, an arena that is submerged in distractions – even for thirty seconds of free time. Thus, these same old, flat, repetitive commercials are not keeping holding internet-attention spans. And thus, the 30 second time spot is already dead.

Here is a very thorough post by Frank detailing the reasons we should rightly hold a memorial for the 30 second advertising slot. He concludes: “The bottom line is this: advertisers and marketers need to embrace new media now or else.”

The two “new media” approaches I see having a future online are: storyboard and interactive ads.

[I'm going to quote my comment on his post]

One thing that makes commercials so unbearable, especially for me, is redundancy. I can’t stand seeing the same (usually boring) commercial several times in one night – and on the same channel. Hulu is a front line offender with its 15 second to 2 minute ads. With only one ad per spot (about 3 spots/ 40 min show), Hulu often plays the same ad in each spot. Viewers already have distraction at their fingertips by virtue of watching from the internet and consequently will abandon an ad – even if only for a 15 second Twitter quickie – even faster than tv watchers.

There are two hulu ads which stand apart from this trend. One is interactive and literally lets the viewer explore a set scene (say, a barbershop) to discover facts about a product such as shampoo or combs. The second ad is actually a series of ads that play out essentially like three acts in a play. Act 1: see boy at soccer game make a mud-sliding save. Act 2: mother applies detergent [product] to uniform Act 3: clean underwear all around.

I even see multiple products advertised in one storyboard ad. Perhaps, both detergent and the type of washing machine.

This could be seen as already in use by shows that incorporate a good amount of product placement (30 Rock). I do wonder if product placement will become standard in all television shows in place of, or in addition to, 30 second commercial spots. (Let’s hope it doesn’t go too overt e.g. The Truman Show).

[end quote]

Frankly, I am surprised at how lethargic advertisers have been to adapting to the internet. As a frequent and primarily internet-television viewer, I do not want to be bored by ads. I welcome those ads are find a happy medium between intrusive in my browsing and flat, boorish designs.

My sister and I used to play a game in movie theaters giving thumbs up or down to trailers to indicate our anticipation level for the advertised movie. I would imagine that everyone in the theater could hit a button “thumbs up or down” and the theater’s collective interest or disinterest would show up on the screen after each trailer. People live to interact with their technology. We love integration, adaptation, and enhanced reality (just a shade shy of actual reality). See: motion-detecting video games and games like Second Life.

How long will it take for advertisers to evolve with the rest of us? And how far are we willing to take it?

[Via http://spudandtelly.wordpress.com]

Small Business News March 15 | Small Business Trends

Sunday Morning Random Thoughts -- Anti-Technology Edition

2010-03-14T12:52:00.000+02:00

I recently saw a cartoon that I thought was both very funny and very sad. It shows a young man, presumably the boyfriend, chastising a young woman, presumably the girlfriend. He’s telling her that he recently checked his texts, his voice mail, his Blackberry, Facebook, and Myspace and couldn’t find any updates from her, that it was like she had dropped off the face of the planet. He was practically distraught, he says. The girl responds by asking him if he has checked Twitter. When he does, he reads aloud, “Going to the bathroom. Be back in two minutes.” What makes it funny is how utterly true it is. What makes it sad is how utterly true it is.

I have a friend who has her cell phone synced to several people’s FB status updates, a half a dozen Twitter feeds, weather reports from four or five cities, as well as alerts whenever someone responds to her comments and updates and blog entries. That’s in addition to the regular influx of text messages she gets from however many friends she is in near constant contact with. It’s safe to say that if her cell phone isn’t going off every two to three minutes the battery is dead. I once (or twice or three times) suggested that she turn it off for an afternoon and spend the time going for a walk, alone with just herself and her thoughts. She informed that there was no way she could do that. She has to stay busy, she has to stay connected, she has to stay (my words) distracted.

And that’s what it really is all about. Staying distracted. For most people these days the scariest place on earth to be is alone, and the scariest person in the world to be there with is themselves. An hour of absolute, uninterrupted quiet time would be unbearable for them. The most foreign place in their world is their own mind. And so they fill each waking moment with distractions and deaden each sleeping moment with sedatives to keep from having to journey into that most unfamiliar place.

And what of that place? What is there that is so frightening, so foreign, so unfaceable? I really don’t know. I grew up in a farming community in the Appalachians. I spent many days wandering up into the hills and through the woods with nothing but my thoughts to keep me company. I have spent more time in my own head than anywhere else on earth. That is a practice I have carried into my adult life. To take a break from the noise, the crowds, from the external , seems to me not just a natural thing to do, but an essential one. I have to get away from time to time to cleanse my mental palate. I walk the trails in our parks from every now and then and the other walkers I pass almost always have earbuds in, or are talking on their cell phones. Why come to a place of contemplation and then not contemplate? They are simply passing by on their way from one place to another. Their trip along this trail through the woods is emblematic of the trips they take through their own minds. Hurrying along, comforted by distractions, they are there out of some vague notion that this is supposed to be good for you. “Walks in the woods can be very relaxing,” says the article in Distractions Illustrated. “Cool,” says the distracted person. “I think I’ll take a walk in the woods. I wonder if they have Wi-Fi there.”

How did we come to this? I’m not sure, really, except that the media has told us we need more sound, more noise, more colors and flashing lights in our lives. We need to stay connected/em>, we’ve been told. And we’ve believed them. I’m not so old that I can’t remember a silent house. TV off by 9:00 PM, my parents on the porch in the darkness—my mom most likely smoking a cigarette and my dad most likely having a beer— and me in my room or, sometimes in summer, on the porch with them. Each of us alone in our own heads. And none of us distracted. Scary thought, eh?

[Via http://mbillard.wordpress.com]

Dragon Age sequel in February 2011? News | PC | Eurogamer

So Close!

2010-03-14T04:54:00.000+02:00

I haven’t done a very good job of keeping track of the time spent on the site for the last two weeks. I know I’ve spent a lot of time, just not exact… I’ve been so focused on getting the blog entries edited, and finding and uploading the photos to complete the articles. But around 11:45 pm last night the last entries were completed – yay!

In our presentation, I took note of suggestions made by classmates and have made changes to the site accordingly. The letter spacing of the font has been adjusted so things aren’t so squished. I’ve added padding to the content area to align the text with the slider module. I have increased the timing on the slider module to make it less distracting, however; I can’t make the module loop. I finally found the CSS for the slider module to adjust the background colour of the module so it is the same as the wrapper colour (this took a LONG time!). I’ve also lightened up the header so it is not so dark and heavy.

I’ve worked on getting a better WYSIWYG editor installed to make editing of the articles and uploading images easier for the client. This was put into use for editing the last two dozen blog entries; uploading and adding photographs to those entries as well. I have also set up the search function on the site and it is working correctly.

This week, I also downloaded the comments modules and got that set up (that I know took about 3 hours to do site visitors can comment on the individual blog entries. I’ve also been doing some user testing on the site to see if there are any issues that need to be resolved. The group will be doing further testing once the e-commerce function is a little further along (this should be occurring early next week after our meeting with the client on Monday).

I still need to install and set up the social media sharing functions to distribute the blog entries to the client’s Facebook page and Twitter account. And finally (well, probably not finally ) there will be the client training and manual to produce!

I’m feeling very optimistic that we are getting this project done on schedule. Whew!

[Via http://ebalitski.wordpress.com]

Tiger 11 won't support Natal News | Eurogamer

A Smorgasbord of the Latest Technology

2010-03-13T12:27:00.000+02:00

The portal has opened and I am faced with a smorgasbord of the latest technology. I have a blog. I am on facebook. I will soon be on twitter and linkedin. And for the life of me, I do not know what made me decide I needed to have a webcam to see around the world, but I got one. We stayed up what seemed like half the night trying to communicate across the room to find that the only cooperation we got was with Skype; imagine using Skype to call each other in the same room rather than in different countries.

It is in situations like these that I begin to question technology and wonder why I am doing any of this. It is a momentary lapse. I do still love all of this technology and pride myself in being something of a techno-geek; but right now I am a bit frustrated.

I feel a bit like the old college professor’s saying of ‘publish or perish’. I am sure I will prevail on all fronts. And as soon as I do, something new will have been invented for me to take another quantum leap in learning to use. But for now, let’s blog!

[Via http://marketingbytesblog.com]

Your Local News Is Terrible, Studies Show

Alien Boards + Warhol Prints!?! What!?!

2010-03-13T04:45:00.000+02:00

Can you sense the excitement in my voice? I just have to quickly give some props to two of my favorites – Alien Workshop and Andy Warhol. Word was released today via @thewarholmuseum on Twitter, and on Alien Workshop’s company site, that they have been working collaboratively to bring the world – wait for it, wait … Yes! Andy Warhol Skate Decks!!! Get in line; according to Alien they will be available Spring 2010. The 10 limited-edition pro decks feature work from Andy’s Death & Disaster Series, along with 5 of his iconic pop creations (they even got the packaging right!). You can find them at the Andy Warhol Museum and through Alien Workshop. Check ‘em out -

Just for the Heck of it

Since we’re talking emerging media, I decided to do a little checking up on these two underground mega-brands. As a designer, I’ve worked in the same town that Alien was born in, and it has been awesome to watch them grow. Apparently Alien is so cool now that it doesn’t even have to start its own brand page on Facebook. At last count, the largest FB fan page for Alien (there are several) had 8,113 fans, absolutely no posts, no company info, but 3 pages worth of fan photos – mostly of Alien boards. Those are some pretty impressive fan numbers for any brand and they should like that people are that so interested, they’re promoting the brand on their own. Alien can be found on Twitter (@alienworkshop) but be warned, not sure if this is a brand page either. There are a cool 710 followers, but only 14 tweets. The Tweets are mainly about events that seem attended by Alien. There are awesome action shots like this one:

Apparently Alien subscribes to the same mentality that most skaters do, come and find us, and see how ya like us then. Skaters are known for guerilla tactics, and Alien would be a prime candidate brand to slap a few more stickers on the walls of social media. Other big skate brands have done it and fans are flocking. Alien is already huge, but by reaching out a deck, they can continue to thrive by giving fans what they want – more Alien bada@#ness.

On To Andy

Andy’s always been a buzz builder. The man’s been dead for decades and his pop brand is still making people talk. As the man said himself – “Art is what you can get away with” (Andy Warhol). That’s what makes the union of skateboarding and pop art such a perfect fit. Skaters have been looked down on for years – arrested for using public places, picked on by class bullies, and yet, they’ve gotten back up, dusted off their chucks, and kept on riding towards the X Games. The critics never cut Andy any slack either. He did what he wanted, when he wanted, how he wanted, and where he wanted. He made art. You can like it, or you can hate it, but it’s his and he made it. And he really doesn’t care if you like it or not.

The Warhol museum and foundation are now in charge of his legacy. They’ve kept him in the spotlight with unique displays, articles, Twitter and Facebook pages, and informative Andy sites. Andy’s got buzz whether he’s dead or alive, and surely you can at least appreciate his hyped up style.

Check out more from these two brands here :

http://www.warhol.org/

http://www.alienworkshop.com/news/andy-warhol-x-alien-workshop

Tweet this Post – http://wp.me/pMeVA-3U

[Via http://angelawvu.wordpress.com]

Chaos Theory - Desperation News Network -- Politics Daily

Egypt Then And Egypt Now

2010-03-11T12:50:00.000+02:00

Just days before 2009 was coming to an end, two of my work colleagues decided to come to Alexandria for a day trip. There trip was to just get out of Cairo to have a change of scenery, see something new, have a fish meal and visit me. I truly enjoy it when colleagues, family or friends make a trip to Alexandria, it gives me the chance to be a host and their guide in the city that I have fallen in love with. I try and show them the hidden beauty of what is buried beneath the modern Alexandria of today.

Mariam and Radwa wanted to go some where ‘authentic’, I racked my brain and finally came up with a place that has a lot of history and was probably where the elite of foreign society used to have tea. Delice still know for it’s bakery and view of Saad Zaghlool square and the sea is where I decided to take them. My sister and I love to go there and buy their giant sized macaroons and mini meringues. My elderly neighbour ,Mme Yamna Souccar who used to live on the floor above my parents flat, loved their jam busicuits and when ever I could, I would go and buy her a box when I would go and visit her. My friends really liked the place because it had an air to it and it’s noticable in its fading decor. I be it was a spectacular place back in it’s glory days. The three of us ate our brunch, caught up on each others news and discussed where we were going to go next.

The Biblioteca Alexandrina was our next destination. We decided to leave the car in the parking area across from Delice and walk along the Corniche (sea) to the Library to work off brunch and to breath in the sea air, (plus, parking near the Library is a nightmare!) Along the promenade I pointed out some landmarks and told them stories that had be told to me and they in turn shared their experiences and memories of Alexandria.

We bought our full pass tickets to enter the Library, turned in our bags with our cell phones got our number and began our journey back in time. The first muesuem that we went in to is below the planetarium to the right. It was one I had never been to before and I have been to the Library many times, (that’s what I love about the place, no matter how many times I visit, I always see something I hadn’t seen the time before). The first was of Egypt’s assasinated President Anwar El Sadat (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/515786/Anwar-el-Sadat), looking at the items in the display cases and reading the explanations of what things were for and what he did and accomplished, I but feel sad. We as a nation lost someone great, some one with a vision and direction for the futre of Egypt.

* One of my great Uncles from the El Shindy side of the family was a politician and before Sadat came to be president, he and Sadat were in exile together. It’s strange to think that members of my family were and apart of the Royal family and others worked along side the president and shared now that personal history is lost because some greedy putts sold tapestry of our family tree and now have no chance of ever being able to retrace our linage or ancestry.

As we continued through the library and visited other exhibits, we came to my favorite. The Awad collection of maps and pictures of Alexandria. Looking at the framed maps and pictures deepened my sadness the city was breath taking. No wonder so many people chose to leave their homelands to come and live here. It had a melange of European and Oriental feel to it. Now the city as well as the country is in shambles if I was to compare it to what it used to be like,’ The pear of the Middle East’. You would think that with all our technology and education that we as a race or society of people would have advanced and improved, but I honestly think that we are moving backwards.

I have been to Saudi Arabia & Jordan and I am ashamed to admit it, but they have more pride in their country and make an effort to keep it clean. Egypt compared to them and to what it used to be like is a garbage dump. The streets are littered with trash because people throw their tissues, crisp packets, wrappers and cans from their car windows as they drive by. The garbage cans are over flowing and no one seems to care! WHY??? Don’t give me crap about it’s because our country isn’t governed by a sovereignty, what’s that got to do with being clean? Islam promotes cleanliness of self and home….then surly that should also include our country too.

I have no idea how this problem can be rectified. I don’t know if campaigning would work. I think reprogramming peoples brains maybe the only solution.

Please don’t mis-understand me. I am not against Egypt. I am very proud of my heritage and where I come from, but I find it so frustrating that we were once ‘the it spot’ in the Middle East and Mediterranean and now we aren’t when we very easily could be! I guess you could say I am just venting!

[Via http://speakingupandspeakingoutfromcairo.wordpress.com]

Bigpoint making Battlestar browser MMO News | MMO | Eurogamer

Assurance Church Tidbit - March 10, 2010

2010-03-11T04:42:00.000+02:00

Assurance Church Tidbit – March 10, 2010

Pass it on….

Follow me on Twitter (I don’t have very many tweets) – http://twitter.com/tsepulveda

What are YOOOOOUUUU Doing?

Our lives are filled with so much “stuff.” So much of the “stuff” is just junk that really doesn’t matter. But all that junk takes space and time. Time that could be given to “stuff” that is not junk. Ok, I’m already tired of the “quotations.”

Anyway, when was the last time you took some time to evaluate the important things? For instance, when was the last time that you evaluated the time and effort you put in to serving…the people at your church….your community….the world? What about using your gifts? When was the last time you used your gifts in the church setting?

In our American brand of Christianity, we very easily fall into the model of going to church on Sunday, hearing the message that hopefully touches us, dropping a few bucks into the offering plate, saying hi to some friends, going out to eat for lunch and then going about our week to start it all over again. What about going to church and using what God has given you to give back or minister to someone who is hurting or whatever. Then, doing it the rest of your week.

We shouldn’t go to church, but instead BE the Church. What would your Sunday be like if you went to church with that mindset?

Kindness?

Ok, this lady spent her birthday doing random acts of kindness for others. Check out the blogpost. It’s pretty awesome…and can give you some great ideas! http://mixmingleglow.com/blog/?p=1358

Zig Ziglar

If you’ve seen my other blog posts or Twitter, you would know that I’ve started downloading and listening to the Zig Ziglar podcast. I can honestly say that I feel good/pumped after listening to one of the episodes. His podcasts range from dealing with self-talk to parenting to making more sales…you name it.

I decided to visit his website and noticed that you can sign up to attend a free online webcast. They have 2 that you can currently sign up for and watch live when it happens. After you sign up, they send you the link info. through email. The next two are called, “You Gotta Get in the Game” and “The Only 3 Ways to Increase Sales.” The website is http://www.ziglar.com/home.html Check out the other resources too!

Lifelong Learning

I recently did a short video on how to find and download podcasts. You can view the video at my school blog – http://cyfair1.schoolwires.net/198720511182019637/Blog/browse.asp?A=398&BMDRN=2000&BCOB=0&C=65055

The posts are called Lifelong Learning 2a and 2b.

Sunday Sharing

This week – Galatians 3

Do you want to read Galatians 3 in a different version? You can go here - http://www.biblegateway.com/ If you want to look at Greek and Hebrew words, you can go here - http://www.studylight.org/

Small Group Questions* – Galatians 3

In this passage, Paul explained the relationship between law and faith. The law given by God is unable to save anyone because no one can perfectly follow it. It points out our sinfulness and our need for a Savior. Only Jesus, our Savior, can deliver us from our awful predicament. Only he can clothe us in his righteousness and make us right before a Holy God.

OPEN

1. What would life be like if you never made any mistakes?

EXPLORE

2. How were the Galatians attempting to live out the Christian life? (3:3)

3. What is the curse on those who depend on making rules and adhering to rules to make them right? (3:10)

4. What important element is missing in the law? (3:12)

5. What did Christ do in response to the law’s curse? (3:13)

GET IT

6. In what ways do believers try to live the Christian life in their own strength?

7. When have you felt most successful in living the way Christ desires Christians to live?

8. How does it make you feel when you really blow it in your faith?

9. What contrasts can you be drawn between rule-keeping and a relationship as a basis for spiritual living?

APPLY

10. How would change your life to make all your actions perfectly consistent with the belief that you cannot earn a good standing before God?

*taken from Ilumina Bible Software

Old Tibits?

Would you like to view old issues of the tidbit? You can visit – http://groups.yahoo.com/group/assurancechurch/

Have you subscribed to the Assurance Church Tidbit? If you want to subscribe and receive this newsletter in your email – send an email to assurancechurch-subscribe@yahoogroups.com - You will not be spammed at all…I promise!

[Via http://13gen.wordpress.com]

Cocktails Ward Off The Bulge - Science News

Get Tweetable

2010-03-09T12:48:00.000+02:00

* Which customers or collaborators can help your business grow?

* Decision makers, always in the market for quality information.

* As long as it’s relevant, clear and concise. Really concise.

* Don’t expect them to read wordy, derivative articles or blogs.

* Or hang around networking events and flaccid Facebook pages.

* They demand real value, in messages that’ll fit on iPhone screens.

* Offer them bite-sized solutions to business problems and challenges.

* Excellent concise content can transform leaders into your followers.

* They’ll read articles like this on Twitter, posted one line at a time.

* So your messages will help business succeed for years to come.

* Just keep the messages short and sweet. Tweet tweet.

[Via http://3wordstosuccess.wordpress.com]

Breaking News: Pakistan Claims Adam Gadahn Arrested

Read (again) Mitch Lieberman's : Social CRM is a Journey, not a Destination – Revisited @CustomerThink

2010-03-09T04:45:00.000+02:00

Image by www.bluewaikiki.com via Flickr

Found at Social CRM is a Journey, not a Destination – Revisited | CustomerThink.

I wrote the following in September 2009 – 6 months ago. But, I could have easily written it yesterday, and it would not be too different:

“There has been a tremendous amount great conversation during the past couple weeks, regarding Social CRM. What it is as well as what it is not. I am not sure we have reached any conclusions yet, but we have all become smarter for the insights of a great many individuals. Interestingly, I am usually a bit opinionated, but I sat on the sidelines, just observing – for the most part.

As my title suggests, I do believe that we are all (customers, businesses, implementers and vendors) on a journey.

To be continued at http://www.customerthink.com/blog/social_crm_is_a_journey_not_a_destination_revisited?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+customerthink+(CustomerThink+-+All+Content)

Seven

2010-03-07T20:53:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, I was trying to analyse my hours (!) spent on social networks in a day. And its more than 7 hours a day. Seven! I almost died when I saw this number. But hey, wait, I don’t waste my time on these networks. I don’t poke, ping, peek or gossip or chit-chat. I don’t take social network for granted like most of you (none offences meant, hope none taken). I ask and ask few more. I am one of those annoying kinds who believe there is no one right answer for everything. I read and ask and answer and analyse, also like most of you.

Mechanical Zoo were the smarter ones and created Aardvark. This ask-your-friend-in-your-network technology is truly amazing. Its brilliant. For those who are new to this product, FYI, its a social serach engine that allows the users to ask or/and answer anything in real time in your network of friends (which includes Google contacts and Facebook contacts). Interesting thing is Aardvark finds that person on your behalf based on some intelligent algorithm and gets you one of your people to answer. Since Google bought it ($50 million), Aardvark is installed as one of your friends on your Google-chat list and communicate through key words like ‘pass’, ‘ask’, ‘more’ et cetera.

Here is a screen shot of my Aardvark page for you all to look.

Screenshot of Aardvark

It’s navigation is easy and simple. One can share their Aardvark’s thread and post it on Twitter or Facebook. Not only that, through my Google Inbox I can easily manage Aardvark account without logging into Aardvark page. So, whenever Aardvark sees me online, it asks me or updates me about various queries to which I can answer through Google-chat itself. Hence, no multiple window hassle.

Now coming back to those 7 hours, I spend most of my online time on social networks; of which, as anticipated, Twitter and Facebook were on the top. I love Facebook. I love it! But I love Twitter more. I am not one of those fanatic T-users but yeah, I still find it more useful. I am a sucker for news. For me twitter is more like a news aggregator. A place where I get all my news packed together on one page (from individual and trusted sources).

But there are lot of websites that I don’t follow even though I want to for a simple reason that my twitter page looks cluttered with unasked-for news feed. For example, New York Times. I still have to go to their website to read news on Business and Technology and Media. I don’t want to know their Weather news or Science & space news. It’s great and useful, just not to me. All I am trying to say is that Twitter should work on some technology that can customise news feed coming from one source based on individual necessity.

I wish my prophecy comes true.

[Via http://aditichopra.wordpress.com]

PC Prince of Persia will be late News | PC | Eurogamer

The Spring Madness Scentsy Sale

2010-03-07T12:37:00.000+02:00

New spring/summer scents have been uploaded to the Scentsy website. I cannot wait to get my hands on these new Scentsy Bar scents. Here is a list of the spring/summer scents: cherry limeade, go-go-goji, sweet clementine, mayflower, mad about mint, plum delicious, calypso, berry blush, sugar, and grape granita. I will have these in stock soon. While you’re waiting, check out “My Scentsy Auctions” going on right now on ebay. The 3 auctions end: Wednesday, March 10, 2010. Don’t miss out on these last minute savings. Supplies are limited.

[Via http://kathrynlc.wordpress.com]

MetsBlog.com – News: on Jose Reyes and his Thyroid

Twittollower: Get More Twitter Followers The Easy Way

2010-03-06T12:26:00.000+02:00

Twittollower is a new piece of twitter direct marketing software,

it is a fully automated system that targets twitter followers in your chosen niche and adds them onto your twitter account. This is done all on autopilot 24 Hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.

It’s great if your using twitter as a marketing tool as it guarantees you at least 2 thousand targeted followers each month.

If your using twitter as a marketing tool and your looking for some twitter ad marketing software then give twittollower a try.

Watch this video to see how it works

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akIC5uX0TvQ

If you like the system please visit

http://TwittollowerFollowers.com

[Via http://mrfredsy.wordpress.com]

Bad news: HTC says the Nexus One doesn't 'go in pockets' -- Engadget

The Art of the Hashtag

2010-03-06T04:45:00.000+02:00

How could I mention Twitter without talking about hashtags?

For those of you still in the dark ages (BT), hashtags are tags within your tweet (prefaced by #) which link to all posts mentioning the same tag. For example, if I mention an article about elephants, I can use the hashtags #elephants, #conservation, #wildlife, #animals, etc., in order to attract people searching for relevant tweets.

The most popular topics are listed to the right of your Twitter homepage. Don’t worry about clicking on any of them, though. The third most popular trending topic right now is #icheatedbecause. ‘Nuff said.

Like anything else in this beautiful world, hashtags are a wonderful idea which we should use wisely and in moderation. And any which use “your” incorrectly (#yourstupidbecause) should be immediately deleted.

#forserious

[Via http://elizabethallencampbell.wordpress.com]

'24' Baby News! at The Insider

Kalimatna's Social Media Platform

2010-03-04T12:42:00.000+02:00

Over the last few weeks, the Kalimatna team has been working on our presence in the wonderful world of social media. We created a page on the TYO blog where you can read more about our initiative, we began documenting our journey on flickr, and we created a Twitter feed!

While the overall goal of our project is to create a by‐youth, for‐youth multimedia kit to introduce the culture of Nablus to the world, our equally significant secondary goal is to engage an international audience in our journey. Entrez Twitter!

Twitter will allow us to share information about our work in Nablus with people beyond the city’s limits. We hope not only to imbue the image of Nablus with thoughtful and positive insights, but also to draw our audience closer to us, hold their attention and garner their support in order to improve our kit through intercultural and peer dialogue.

Kalimatna’s twitter feed will share news about our work, our journey, ourselves—our 140 character mini bios are already up–and our beloved city Nablus!

Please tweet with us @kalimatna to share your ideas about our work, our tweets and what you would like to learn about the culture and history of Nablus!

-Kalimatna Initiative

[Via http://tomorrowsyouth.wordpress.com]

Insomniac working on two new games News | PS3 | Eurogamer

Questions, Video Kudos, and Paris, S'il vous plaît!

2010-03-04T04:51:00.000+02:00

Recently, I have joined a website that allows users to ask me questions, either with their user info or the fun of anonymity. It can literally be any question in the world, from any person in the world! The thought is very intriguing – who knows, I could be explaining why I would obey the five second rule if in fact the food was delicious enough, posed by Angelina Jolie. If she has time to go on the Internet, that is. Join in on the fun at Formspring.

Also recently, I spontaneously booked a European backpacking trip to London, England, Edinburgh, Scotland, and my longtime love, Paris, France for 8 fantastic days with my best friend. It stems off a much bigger issue: unemployment. I was recently laid off my job of two years last week; it was my first “real-world” job, so it’s quite a personal low for me. This is the first time I don’t have school or a part-time job to fall back on, so I’m afraid of sitting idle for too long. Several people posed the idea of taking a vacation, something I never had the time to do when I was working. Before getting too wrapped up in looking for full-time work again, or going the temp agency route, I decided I would finally to go to Europe, specifically Paris. I’ve been romantically involved with the City of Lights for as long as I can remember (I have an affair with the Big Apple), so it wasn’t a very hard choice to make. The money is tight, and the accommodations aren’t completely glamorous, but we’re going to make the most of it. I ask all of you to follow my preparations for Europe and my 8 day adventure through London, Edinburgh, and Paris March 16th-24th on Twitter. I’ll be using my personal account @stefkttn, so follow me for all the details, and of course, beautiful pictures that are sure to occur!

Finally, earlier this week, Sony’s older PS3 models started malfunctioning due to a bug in the internal clock. My fiancé is an avid PS3 gamer and was affected by the glitch, while I was just sort of annoyed that I couldn’t watch any Blu-Rays. On the flip side, a rather robust gentleman had some choice (and hilarious) words for Sony, as heard and seen below in my Video Kudos this week:

(NSFW language!)

[Via http://ladyguru.wordpress.com]

Latest Bunning News | Mother Jones

twitter as a teaching tool? tis true.

2010-03-02T12:44:00.000+02:00

For my Media Copywriting class this semester, I added Twitter use to the syllabus. I didn’t add it for the sake of saying I was using Twitter to teach — after all, I preach goals first, tools second. My particular goal involved trying to boost and broaden class discussion.

A perennial challenge is that, while my students are bright and articulate, they often prove reluctant to participate in, or initiate, class discussion. I decided to start them 140 characters at a time. Their homework, on most class days, includes an assignment to answer via Twitter with a class-relevant hashtag. These work best when cultivating more thinking than a simple quantitative response. Top tweet topics so far include:

- Name a Super Bowl™ ad you thought was effective and why. As I’ve said before, having the Super Bowl™ during a class that involves advertising is a boon. Using students’ Twitter responses, I could call on them directly, show the ad they mention and ask for their analysis. When I tried this without Twitter, even as an official assignment, drawing participation was more difficult.

- What do you think your brand’s biggest weakness is? Students tend to select the brands they’ll work with their semester (Nike, Dunkin Donuts, Tim Hortons, Wegmans, Fender, etc.) based on strengths or qualities they like. But knowing a brand’s weakness, or perceived weakness, can inform the creative process as well, and provides a nice entree to critical thinking. It also ties into a research assignment I give them that involves a SWOT analysis, finding target demographics/psychographics and critiquing their brands’ current campaign.

- Tweet about the first thing you encountered on Thursday that annoyed you. They looked at me funny when I assigned it, but nonetheless talked about roommates, landlords, sinus headaches, slow drivers and other professors. I was providing practice in InDesign, so my in-class assignment was: Do an ad for a product (real or imagined) that would solve your problem (which also illustrates the suffering point concept). The students came up with all kinds of products including landlord repellent, traffic-beating hovercraft and The Shrink Ray, which neutralizes annoying psychiatrists. The amount of ingenuity many put into it was impressive, and the opportunity to blend creativity with problem-solving quite valuable.

As with the creative process itself, the quality of answers are only as good as the questions asked, so my challenge is to keep coming up with good questions. And I’ve noticed the class doesn’t interact with each other (although they do with me) on Twitter — though those accustomed to interacting via Facebook probably do so that way, and I’m not going to require them to cross-converse via Twitter unless I have good reason. But their rate of completing Twitter assignments exceeds 95 percent. And, strange but true, Twitter assignment completion actually runs higher than class attendance.

So Twitter — or any social media platform — can work in the classroom, as long as you tie it to goals you want to reach and are willing to put the time into it to make it relevant.

[Via http://insidetimshead.wordpress.com]

Sean Hannity and Fox News « scribblings

Friend Request: The Pentagon?

2010-03-02T04:49:00.000+02:00

The ban’s been lifted!

Check out the article posted this evening by Government Technology.

As of a few days ago, our government friends over at the Pentagon have verbally and visibly embraced the digital wave with “a newly released policy for using social networking and other Web 2.0 sites.” A lift on an imposed

The U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) on Friday, Feb. 26, released a policy “for responsible and effective use of Internet-based capabilities.” It essentially lifts a year-long ban on access to typically taboo (in this sense) to sites such as MySpace, the book of Face, Flickr and YouTube.

My thoughts, if I were a government employee affected by this situation: Yay! New ultimate forms of procrastination! (Just kidding.)

According to Karen Wilkinson’s article, under Obama’s administrative eye, “the policy also allows commanders to ’safeguard missions’ by ‘temporarily limiting access to the Internet to preserve operations security or to address bandwidth restraints,’ the release said.

What are your thoughts about the big P’s decision?

[Via http://emrachel.wordpress.com]

England Expects: UKIP News review 28 Feb

I'm going to step it up -

2010-02-28T04:56:00.000+02:00

I have recently realized that there are people inside Tehran that are reading my blog – therefore, I will translate every thing I write from here on to make it easy for them to get information, thoughts, prayers and support as quickly as possible. Why I didn’t realize this earlier is beyond me. Sorry about my lack. Thank you for your support. I am honored to support the Sea of Green. Humbled actually and in awe to know such amazing souls.

[Via http://livingdocuments.wordpress.com]

Facebook Gets Patent for News Feed, Potentially Hosing Twitter ...

Chat Roulette, EPCOT and avoiding the decorating..

2010-02-27T12:46:00.000+02:00

Well good morning to you. As I write it is 11:59 on saturday morning and I should be painting my skirting boards but I am putting that off to do this. I hope you feel honoured that I am prioritising you ahead of glossing!

I have been dabbling with a website called Chat Roulette this week ( www.chatrt.com )….I heard about it from Tim Lovejoy, who posted a tweet about it on twitter. (Already I sound like an internet junkie or a sad git, don’t I?) It’s a relatively primitive site, although the format is simple and, as is so often the case, when something is good it is an achingly simple idea.

You have a webcam feed from your computer, a webcam feed from a ’stranger’ and you have a text box (like on msn) to communicate if your webcam does not have a microphone. The idea is simple – the website puts you with a random person and you can communicate/have a chat or just click on ‘next’ and move on to see someone else. It may not grab you immediately, but it is addictive. There are no profile names, no personal details, you do not specify if you are male/female, etc, you just meet whoever comes up next. So far I have met several Americans, Argentinians, French, German, Chinese and a guy from Chile….but amusingly only one British person. There are so many people who use the site that the chances of meeting someone British, so it would seem, is quite slim. But that adds to the fun – the random day to day chat is so much more interesting if you don’t even know which country your stranger is from.

Yes I know the alarm bells may be ringing…the risks of this kind of anonymous site are clear…but you have to be sensible about what you’re putting out there and you have to be aware that it is possible to record what is happening. As an example of this search ‘Chat Roulette’ on You Tube. But people are becoming more savvy with this etiquette and as long as you don’t allow your 13yr old daughter on the site, all is well. On that point, there is a lower age limit of 16 years but it is quite disturbing to click ‘next’ and find someone who is clearly below that age. Such is the growing trend for this site and accessibility of the internet – unsupervised – in some homes this may be inevitable, but that is a subject for another blog. But I do wish parents would put some control mechanism in place to prevent this…it’s basic stuff….and the dangers are terrifying.

You have to also use this site with some knowledge of time zones and be aware of a basic human nature - give a webcam to a young male at a certain time of night and he will inevitably feel the need to get his penis out or remove some clothes. I think most adults over 16 have seen a willy and once you get used to the fact that sometimes you will click on ‘next’ and see a penis, you will get over this. Usually if you type ‘wow, small…’ in the text box the owner of the penis will click ‘next’ for you. I find it quite funny. But as a general rule USA are about 5 hours behind, europe an hour ahead and Asia are about 5/6hours ahead. this will usually give you a clue about the nationality of the penis!!

But that said, I have had some great banter with Americans – the day feels so much better after you take the pi$$ over their poor geography and tendency to invade places – and they think our women are all pregnant at 13 and our country is a dinky little island off Europe. In a way, both countries are right about the other. I find it blows their minds when you mention that part of Great Britain sits off the coast of Argentina, and they think it’s hilarious when you point out Canada is not one of the American states.

Some people just don’t get Social Networking on the internet. I am not addicted to it, but I find Twitter fascinating – communicating with people you just never would otherwise – and it gives you access to some high-profile people. On the other end of the scale, Chat Roulette is a bit of fun with random anonymous people and I find it’s banter all the way…but i would happily not use it for months. Facebook is for people I actually know and keep general contact with.

Some years ago I visited DisneyWorld for the first time and, in particular, EPCOT. I remember the first time I went on the ride inside the EPCOT globe - and the part where it ‘thrusts you into the future’….as far as a plastic car travelling at walking pace can. It predicted a future where people will communicate across the world with cameras and huge tv screens in their homes. This was about 20 years ago. Maybe slightly less. At the time webcams, the internet, Twitter, Facebook, Chat Roulette were not around and this vision seemed fanciful. (I would suspect many of the inventors of these sites were still in nappies if they were actually born at that point) Here we are in 2010 and we take this kind of thing for granted. I can sit at the top of the stairs and click a few buttons and chat with a stranger in China….or pick up my Blackberry and leave a Twitter post with a photo of where I am/a GPS map and this is accessible to the entire world…..or I can see what my old girlfriend is doing in Dubai through Facebook. Hmm…sometimes we take all this technology for granted.

Where will all this be in another 5 or 10 years? Well I think I will pick that as a subject of my next blog. First I have to paint my Skirting boards with a Brilliant White gloss. Wish me luck. And what will I be listening to whilst painting? Here are my ‘tunes to listen to whilst painting Skirting Boards’…..as ever the link is through the excellent Spotify.

Enjoy…

Caesars – Jerk It Out (Original Mix)

ZZ Top – Viva Las Vegas – Remastered LP Version

Jay-Z – Empire State Of Mind [Jay-Z + Alicia Keys] – Explicit Album Version

Will Young – Grace

[Via http://paulson500.wordpress.com]

Juggalo News, from the Insane Clown Posse dimension Boing Boing

Bingo ladies are violent!

2010-02-27T04:45:00.000+02:00

Bingo ladies don't play!

So today I went out to a BINGO hall with one of my best friends to play a little BINGO and I have to say old ladies that play BINGO do not play around! There had to be at least 100 old ladies and these ladies were crazy! I don’t know what it is but BINGO brings out the worst in people. These ladies cursed worst than sailors and they had no problem telling people how it is. There was a lady that was sitting next to me and she was especially pleasant. This woman said “Fuck” at lease 50 times and she told the woman sitting next to her that if she won another game she was going to beat her ass in the parking lot in which the other woman said “Suck it whore!”. By the end of the night all the women were talking smack to each other and I didn’t win anything. I wonder if this happens at all bingo halls or just mine?

[Via http://joshuaclary.wordpress.com]

Google News Tries Sharing With Facebook, But Where's The Buzz Button?

Video is the Radio Star

2010-02-25T12:41:00.000+02:00

For those of you who missed Sean’s illuminating talk earlier this week, here it is!

Many thanks to Sean for sharing his talk on Vimeo. It has been broken down into 2 parts for ease of viewing.

Social Media for Small Groups (SocMedSG) Part 1_22.2.10 from seanmtully on Vimeo.

First part of a short talk I gave to a WEA training course on the basics of Social Media Strategy for small groups. Much of the thinking was based on a mix of my own experience to date, and learning from AJ Leon at osCharity.

Social Media for Small Groups (SocMedSG) Part 2_22.2.10 from seanmtully on Vimeo.

[Via http://socmedsg.wordpress.com]

iPhone Street Fighter IV costs $10 News | iPhone | Eurogamer

Predicting American Idol Using Twitter, Facebook and MySpace

2010-02-25T04:35:00.000+02:00

For those of you that follow American Idol, I found an interesting site that is using the number of followers that the contestants have on Twitter, Facebook and MySpace to predict who will be eliminated each week. American Idol is still in the the first week of competition, so it is still early, but it sounds like it will be an interesting experiment to follow. Check it out at http://www.idoltwit.com/

[Via http://shiftingtheweb.wordpress.com]

News of the World phone hacking: Reaction to the MPs' verdict ...

Celebrating the end of my great grand father life, reflecting on how to save the lives of youth

2010-02-23T12:56:00.000+02:00

Friday night while I was volunteering in Detroit for the Between the Lines Fundraiser I recieved the news that my great grand father age 93 passed away. He had lived a long and full life, a veteran of WWII, married for many decades, many had 16 grandchildren and I am one of a known 33 great grand children.

Today I will be in Flint with my family mourning the lose and the end of a long life. As people know me I am very passionate advocate for LBGT and youth mental health. From being award the Jed Foundation Award, for my 2 years of Project Light work. Additionally annually walking as with the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention which you too can join in walking, advocating or donating to.

To this day wearing my Trevor Project star on my blazer no matter where I go to start dialogues of prevention. for years youth suicide a fully preventable matter has been a passion of mine. I am asking for people to while giving their prayers, blessings and more to considering making a donation to prevention for the leading cause of death for youth like myself who are gay (me) lesbian bisexual transgender.

Over the years I have attempted suicide, and spoken my story as the founder of Project Light which recently merged its membership into Trevor Project. I have seen hundreds of fellow members of my community some very very close to me who have attempted, and some who have been lose to this preventable matter that your donation of any size today could help a youth or several youths life turn to be 93 and live full long lives.

Today if you can go to Trevor Project donate page.

[Via http://adamleben.wordpress.com]

Sony shares its digital imaging strategy: Digital Photography Review

Twitter Me This, Twitter Me That

2010-02-23T04:33:00.000+02:00

When Twitter first started blowing up into the cultural phenomena it is today my thought was “I don’t get it”. It seemed kind of maybe fun and a little interesting but other than that I couldn’t hit on the use-case. The only people I could think to follow were those I talk to regularly anyway. Plus, I love my friends but do I really care if Michael is doing laundry? As much as like him in smelling downy fresh, no I don’t care.

But then it hit me that Twitter was the perfect way for local companies/restaurants/drinking establishments to tell their customers/fans/lushes of chef specials day of and to give them the inside track on new releases.

Of course, if I had this thought then others must have too. I looked up a few of my favorite Chicago places and low and behold, they twitter what’s going on there! So, below are a few local Chicago(ish) foodie type places I follow. I’ve noticed that micro-brews do a much better job of utilizing Twitter in this way, but perhaps that is because their product line and production cycles lend to it best.

Three Floyds Brewery (Dark Lord!!!!)
Rick Bayless (Mr. Bayless also answers cooking and ingredient questions and is very twitter approachable)
Goose Island Brewery and Restaurant (forgot about Chicago as they got bigger but they are turning back to befriending their roots)
Koval Distillery (the rosehip liquor is out of this world, as is most of their creations)
Revolution Brewing (haven’t been there yet because the wait is 2 hours on Saturdays, but I support local brewers)
Spacca Napoli Pizza (Best damned pizza in Chicago. Makes me forget about deep dish)
French Market (a in door market in a train station in down town chicago with fantastic local produce and food — what’s not to love?)
Half Acre Brewing (I love the culture these guys have created around their brewery)
Metropolitan Brewing (Flywheel Lager is the perfect summer beer)
Metropolis Coffee (Great fresh roasted coffee in the heard of Edgewater)
In Fine Spirits (Bar and Wine Shop)
Paul Kahan (Owner and chef of a few restaurants, including one of my favorites: Publican)
Big Jones (Great Southern Costal restaurant in Andersonville)
Urban Belly (Bill Kim’s take on a gourmet neighborhood noodle restaurant, brandy lamb dumplings oh so good!)

Not an exhaustive list of who is followable because I only look for twitter feeds from places when I think of them. Anyone I’m missing?

[Via http://thecleanplater.com]

No LAN or dedicated servers for C&C4 News | PC | Eurogamer

If Twitter is on a downslide...why social media marketing?

2010-02-21T12:46:00.000+02:00

If you’re a major Twitter enthusiast, Rjmetric’s Twitter analysis at the end of 2009 could be your downfall. Statistics showed that the number of Twitter users had reached a standstill at around 75 million accounts. While this might sound like a lot, their statistics also showed that only around 17 percent of users tweet on a regular basis, and 40 percent of accounts have never even sent a single tweet.

So, why are social media geeks singing Twitter’s praises? Don’t give up hope for Twitter just yet. The stats also showed that Twitter users become increasingly more active over time. It seems that Twitter is addictive, which makes it still a powerful marketing and branding tool.

Because that 17 percent of Twitter users who are ‘active’ are regularly interacting with their favorite brands, from celebrities and politicians, products and publications. What makes Twitter so powerful is that it’s a direct connection between brands and its consumers. Even if a company can get a few followers, that direct connection is worth the effort. After all, it is free. Check out some easy tips for measuring Twitter success here. You might be surprised.

Twitter users are also mostly young, in their late teens or early twenties. Companies can benefit from relating to their group on their terms, which right now mean that companies need to be online, at least a little bit. Having a Twitter account gives companies a certain cool factor.

And let’s face it: Twitter is easy. It’s simple, quick and once again FREE. So don’t worry about the statistics: Twitter could still make a difference, one follower at a time.

[Via http://bitsbytesandtweets.wordpress.com]

Some non-news - The Explosm Fora

iDEATECA - From The Box Of Ideas From Bilbao, Spain.

2010-02-21T04:35:00.000+02:00

filesocial – Share your files on Twitter easily, securely and completely free.

Find out more about filesocial at : http://filesocial.com/

[Via http://vyber.wordpress.com]

Breaking News - Mark Steyn - The Corner on National Review Online

Hey, hey, its SATURDAY!!

2010-02-20T12:44:00.000+02:00

I’d just like to start by thanking the stupid ass person who left their car/MONSTER TRUCK alarm RINGING FOR TWO HOURS STRAIGHT right outside my place!!! BITCH ASS BELGIAN!! I hate Belgians.

Anywhoo, Tiger’s apologized but people aren’t buying it; Hilary Duff is engaged (cool!) and Esther is still crazy. I’m getting tired of this story now, someone else needs to do something equally crazy.

Also, I watched Race to Witch Mountain yesterday – is that supposed to be a kid’s movie, because its full of explosions!! Anyway I didn’t enjoy it as much as other people seemed to, but The Rock (sidebar:DO YOU SMELL…WHAT THE ROCK… IS COOKING!!!! WWF used to be AWESOME!!) was really good in it. He’s funny. Maybe I will get someone to d/l Tooth Fairy for me hehe. Ho hum lots to do (and by ‘do’, I mean ‘watch’) so I better get on it

So Esther was on K24 jana bringing the crazy. I’m lazy and also didn’t see it so I can’t/won’t comment. But its funny that she asked Jeff for a job, isn’t she going all (vice) presidential in ‘12!! Anyhow here are some tweets because its much easier to post these than write about this certifiable chick.

So yeah. It’s funny, but she should space out her craziness!! Come on… Otherwise she’ll be old news/completely batshit crazy (yeah, even more crazy) before the end of next week… Play your cards right, crazy!!

[Via http://letsnotnsaywedid.wordpress.com]

Latest Legal News: Toyota Whistle-blower Will Give 'HIdden ...

Guru Inspection: Touiteur Twitter App for Android

2010-02-20T04:09:00.000+02:00

Every few months a developer comes out with another Twitter client for Android to try and take top spot. Android users used to be left in the dark when it came to good Twitter apps. Now we have apps like Tweetcaster, Seesmic, Swift, and now Touiteur (pronounced Twitter, but spelled in french) from LevelUp Studio. These are the same guys behind Beautiful Widgets for Android, so I have high hopes for this app. So I am going to put this app through the Guru Inspection and see where it lands. Hit the read more link to get the full inspection.

Touiteur is a great looking Twitter app. The bottom selection tab is sporting a gradient look and has a very nice gloss look to it. The free version comes with a standard dark theme which shows your time line in a nice dark tone. Your replies show up with the same dark tone, but with strips to indicate they are a reply, and your own Tweets show up in blue. This is really nice when quickly scanning through your main time line as it makes picking out Tweets fairly easy. The Premium version, which costs about $3.00, comes with a light theme and the use of widgets. You get a choice of three widget sizes, 4×1, 4×2, and 4×3. The widgets are very nice looking and allow you to Tweet quickly and at a glance see the latest Tweets from the people you follow.

The interface is very eye appealing and has some nice animations which set it apart from other Twitter clients for Android. When you click the Tweet button at the top, the menu drops down and “bounces” which I found really neat. Little things like that are a breath of fresh air for Android apps. Most Twitters apps for Android are a little bland with the exception of a few. Touituer is definitely a good looking app and has polish to compete or exceed what is on the Android Market currently.

Looks aren’t the only thing when it comes to Twitter apps. The app also has to have the right features to accommodate many different users preferences, likes and dislikes. Touiteur features all your standard Twitter functions, but also has multiple accounts, widget support, two themes, photo Tweeting and URL shortening. One thing that it lacks right now is threaded message view. This is a huge deal breaker for me as I use threaded messaging all the time to keep up with who replied to what. The other missing feature is video uploads, not a huge deal for me, but for some this could be a deterrent. Hopefully the developer will add these features later.

Notification options are just as important as features to a moderate to heavy Twitter user. We all have different ways we like to manage our Tweets and having the most options for notifications is always a good idea. Luckily Touiteur is no slouch when it comes to notification options. You can set the interval time as low as 3 minutes to as high as 4 hours. You can choose to be notified when you get any combination of Tweets, replies, or direct messages. You can choose to use the built in “bird chirp” sound, your own ring tone, vibrate and LED flashing to be notified when you have new messages. All in all the notification options available in Touiteur are top notch.

So does Touiteur get the Guru App seal of approval? YES it sure does! It looks good, it’s fast, you have almost all of the features you could ask for and the notifications are great! So hit the Android market ASAP and give it a try.

[Via http://thegadgetgurus.net]

Tiger Woods Statement: YouTube LIVE STREAMING Woods' News Conference

They Blog, You Blog, I Blog

2010-02-18T12:49:00.000+02:00

I was somehow moved by the article in our Developmental Reading, that I decided to search for blog-related articles on the internet. The title of the article that was given to us (about a week or two ago) is called Blogging loses its hold on the young by Martha Irvine.

I am not an active blogger in the past two years. I started several years back (in the year 2005) when I was younger, created a page at Geocities, and posted a lot of my mess there. I don’t have any idea how blogging can be a really serious thing. All I did was type away my emotions, my insights, and some of the usual things that teenagers talk about. I didn’t even want my page to be seen by the entire world. No comments, no traffics, no hit counters, just a plain unvalidated div layout (slapped on some Photohop brushes on a cropped image, typed those css codes in notepad, and presto!) created by a plain 14-year-old girl which focused on the content of her secret place. I buldozed that place down, thinking that the whole idea is reidiculous and would rather save my logs the traditional way — pen and paper, you know what to do. The rest is history now. Anyway, here are some interesting articles (blog-related articles) that are worth your time.

Stop Hating Bloggers How Often Should You Really Post? More Young People are using Twitter…

Even though I now blog regularly and get some hits, I still keep up to the traditional way. After all, it all started with the pen and paper, like who couldn’t afford to miss that? Count me in. I don’t post everyday and I don’t even use twitter at all — I don’t have a twitter account, to begin with.

Anyway, it’s fun to have a blog, you get heard and you hear other people as well. You can also make friends and surprisingly, even your offline friends get to know some stuff about you, and they comment on what you post in real life.

Blogging sure evolved through these years. These days, if you don’t have a blog, it’s not like you’re out of the fad. Whether you’re a blogger or not, it’s always good to keep a record of the things that you do, the things that you think, the things that you want to say, and so on.

[Via http://lymlym.wordpress.com]

Bits Scan: Wednesday's Tech News Roundup - Bits Blog - NYTimes.com

Misuse of APIs...

2010-02-18T04:46:00.000+02:00

Due to availability of APIs of many leading social networking shits and comprehensive content sites, now days people waste their skill creating interface to accommodate someone else’s innovation.

When twitter has web interface to send your tweet then why some one create another web interface to send tweet through their anus?

Its like claiming someone else’s shit as their own shit.

Why don’t they put their skills into some thing innovative, productive and useful.

[Via http://ruthlessdesire.wordpress.com]

Sony: PlayStation Network is our "not-so-secret weapon" | News

N is for endoplasmic

2010-02-16T12:45:00.000+02:00

Nobody could be as crappy as Ryan Lum! ‘N is for endoplasmic, Q is for queue.’ Bah, but still, you’re one of my best entertainer during recess! Hah, clowning together, messing with the crappiest business.

I’m pretty addicted to twitter and wordpress at this very moment, but well, seems that my sister is going have this notebook password protected. Damn it ):

I pretty hate physics graph drawing, with all the weird scales here and there. I freaking spent like hours on just 4 dumb graphs, or probably I’m the dumb one I guess. o.o Nobody would be a good girl except me to be doing all these crap on new year. And I’m all jittery for next week’s test. 3 on monday is total crap! And I have no more time to study, with all the chingay practices and performances. Speaking of chingay, anybody don’t want their chingay tickets? I won’t mind 1 or 2 more!

Time flies, and school’s back tomorrow. I just need one day more! Rant, rant, rant! :B

[Via http://eisforidiot.wordpress.com]

Sony warns of PS3 shortages | News

Sereive helps Start-Up to create more Social Networking Sites

2010-02-16T04:54:00.000+02:00

We got a beautiful feedback yesterday, that we wanted to publish. So we asked the guy, if that is okay and if we might mention his name. He wrote back within a few hours, although I had sent my message from Australia and he is obviously in the United States. It turned out that he wasn’t only impressed by the helpfulness of Sereive, because she helps him to reduce 3 hours of work down to 10 minutes. Beyond that he wrote back in his answer, that thanks to Sereive his start-up has been able to create more social networking sites than they would have been able without her.

Read Scott’s first feedback:

I am highly impressed and love this tool. I am thankful to be one of the first 365 so that I can use it for my company activities for free…lol. You guys and gals have done a great job. I did a test posting to the sites of interest and I was extremely happy. I use to do them all by hand and i just did 3 hours of work in 10 min. So. far no issues. Looking forward to the continued development and association with this tool.

And here his answer to my question if we can use his name:

Peter–By all means please go ahead and use it in your blog and if you don’t mind adding my name, position, and company rather than anonymous I am using it for I would appreciate it. It has been so helpful with getting word out about our start up. I have created new social network sites for our company just because I have the time to do more now with having Sereive to help me manage my postings.

Thanks again guys!

v/r

Scott C. Scheidt, MBA

Director, Global Operations

www.goldstrikepoker.net

Thanks, Scott! Feedback as this doesn’t only make us happy, because we learn that we created something really useful and relevant. It also helps us spread the news. And the more users we have, the easier we can work on our mission, which is to change the way we network.

[Via http://sereive.wordpress.com]

Shakesville: Great News

The Colors of Our Lives

2010-02-14T20:48:00.000+02:00

February 14th. Valentine’s Day. Some look forward to it; some dread it. But this year it holds another meaning as well: Chinese New Year. And color plays a big role in both of these holidays… the color red more specifically.

Cranberries and burgundys are draped from every corner of every restaurant, department store and CVS. But what do this mean? Given the time of year, it can mean many different things. For Christians, the red on a candy cane is said to signify the blood Jesus shed on the cross. Sewn together with stripes of white, the red of a flag shows American pride. The Chinese consider red lucky and wear it during weddings to scare off evil spirits.

But when do we think about this? I mean, do we really stop to think before we put on a pair of blue jeans or a yellow shirt? Or what impression we’re giving off with that green hat or orange jacket? According to Changingminds.org, we perceive a lot of emotion from each other’s routine clothing choices. Red can mean love or anger, danger or excitement. Purple is typically power, royalty or mystery. And green symbolizes harmony or freshness. (For the full list, click on the Changing Minds link).

And have you ever noticed how so many social media sites use blues in their logos? MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, WordPress… all the biggies. Interesting since blue has one of the more split definitions. It can stand for professionalism, reliability and trust. Or it could mean boredom and winter coldness. Now I’m sure Dorsey and Zuckerberg were aiming for the former definition. But what made people agree with that connotation? And what made Chen, Hurley and Karim go for that reddish-orange in their YouTube logo? What does your website, blog or Twitter background say about who you are?

Colors take on even more meaning with flowers… the most common gift for Valentine’s Day. Teleflora.com shares that red roses symbolize love as well as passion and respect; pink ones mean elegance and refinement; white blossoms declare purity, truth and loyalty; yellow blooms stand for friendship and caring; orange is for enthusiasm; and surprisingly the lilac roses are the most romantic of all – love at first sight.

So don’t hand the florist your credit card before you think twice about what the flowers in your hand mean. And no, roses are not just for lovers anymore. Friends, family and roommates can all be happy recipients on this loving holiday.

Happy Valentines Day. Happy Single Awareness Day. Happy Chinese New Year. Or just Happy Sunday PReppies : )

[Via http://preppie.wordpress.com]

Lost Remote | Local fashion news site raises seed money

Twitterfight: Cupid vs. the Dragon 2010

2010-02-14T12:48:00.000+02:00

Chinese New Year falls on the same day as Valentine’s Day this year so in the spirit of fun it’s time to see which twitter hashtag is better. Valentine’s Day gets the upper hand for being celebrating in more countries than Chinese New Year.

Snapshot of #Cny & Vday trend: 13 February 1am - 14 February 12pm GMT

February 13th

#Cny trended higher than #Vday between the hours of 6am – 3pm GMT eventually reaching the daytime peak at 4pm GMT. Valentine’s Day mounted a strong comeback immediately following which just failed to edge out #Cny by a whisker.

February 14th

The day is only half over in the UK and it seems that #Vday has won out, #Cny has been getting roasted for the better part of the day and with Chinese New Year pretty much over in Asia (9pm HKT) it’s up to the overseas Chinese to continue climbing the mountain.

It is worth noting as of 12pm GMT #Vday tweets sharply fell; perhaps #Cny can ease out another win?

Happy Valentine’s Day and Chinese New Year!

Twidentify: #Cny vs. Vday live graph

[Via http://futuresocial.wordpress.com]

Marshall Democrat-News: Blog: Best Movies of 2009

GET SWAGBUCKS BEFORE THE 25TH AND YOU WILL BE IN FOR THE BIG SUPRISE

2010-02-13T12:40:00.000+02:00

click the image and sign up today!

Join Swagbucks Today before it’s too late!

Hey guys, want to win prizes such as ipods ect? we you can here by clicking the link below. Just use it like google, earn points to put towards prizes.

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/lukehall1995

This is a site that if you use it like google, we will reward you with points to put towards free prizes! Win by searching and making friends by advertising your referal like the one above!

As the image shows at the top of the page these are only few of the 100’s of prizes you could redeem!

Sign up before the 25th and on the day there will be codes all around our site to find, there will also be a big surprise for everyone! so dont miss out and sign up today.

So don’t forget to get started today please click the link and sign up

http://www.swagbucks.com/refer/lukehall1995

Don’t forget please subscribe for info how to get referals

[Via http://officialswagbucks.wordpress.com]

News to know: Google ISP; MySpace CEO; Bing; Google Buzz; Sprint ...

Follow the Haiti Team on Twitter

2010-02-13T04:40:00.000+02:00

The first deployment of the Haiti Orphan Relief Team leaves for Haiti on Valentine’s Day, February 14th. One of things we’re hoping to do is keep up with the Twitter & blogs while we’re in country. I’m not exactly sure what that will look like but if you’d like to follow along here are the Twitter usernames for those on the team:

MAIN

Haiti Orphan Relief Team (HORT) – @haitiorphan

PERSONNEL

David Leventhal (Hope for Orphans) – @dleventhal

Paul Myhill (World Orphans) – @paulmyhill

Alan Hunt (World Orphans) – @oldmtb

Jodi Tucker (World Orphans and Christian Alliance for Orphans) – @joditucker

Jen Gash (Sweet Sleep) – @jengash

ORGANIZATIONS

World Orphans – @worldorphans

Hope for Orphans – @hopefororphans

Sweet Sleep – @sweetsleep

Christian Alliance for Orphans – @orphanalliance

(HT Paul Myhill)

[Via http://davidleventhal.org]

Spice-up your life with a Pink, or Silver Lumix GF1. « Akihabara News

Is it worth the Buzz?

2010-02-11T12:45:00.000+02:00

Google have decided to venture into Social Networks with the creation of Google Buzz which has set the world wide web, well, a buzz with talk of how this could be the next big thing.

So what’s the big deal? Basically you can automatically follow the people you normally email and chat with the most in Gmail. You’ll be able to publish your ideas to the world or just to your closest friends, it’s your call. And any comments you receive will be sent directly to your inbox so you can’t miss them. You also have thumbnails with each post and you can browse full screen pictures from websites and import stuff from your Twitter, Google reader, Flickr and Picasa accounts. All of the updates are real time and of course Buzz recommends the most interesting things and the ones you should be avoiding.

But let’s be honest, whilst it’s great they’ve chosen to integrate all your favourite social networks into one space, they’ve forgotten one rather important one, Facebook. Will this stand in the way of Googles world domination? Only time will tell!

Oh and be sure to check us out on Google Buzz.

[Via http://chatterboxworldwide.com]

Nikon 16-35mm f/4 G ED VR stabilized ultra-wide zoom: Digital ...

Attention Stalkers: Google Has Just Made Your Jobs Easier

2010-02-11T04:50:00.000+02:00

Photo: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews/index.cfm?reviewid=3212378

Google presented Google Buzz, a social networking source that is Facebook’s new competitor. In the WebNewser article, “Google Officially Introduces Google Buzz,” David Cohen mentioned that it takes Gmail users and enables them to share photos, videos and links from other social networking sites. It also has an additional feature that allows people to see where other people are posting.

Social networking is a convenient way for people to gossip and, even, keep up with the news. Follow the Huffington Post on Twitter and you’ll get an update every minute or so. Now, Google Buzz enters the arena armed with even more handy features. Users can post from anywhere and show readers/followers/friends where s/he was at the time.

I understand that this is evolution in the works and it has real potential for journalism, but have we gone too far? Do we really need to know what Britney Spears ate for breakfast? Is that really news or is it merely “junk food” for the brain?

Nonetheless, today’s consumers are spoiled. With the touch of a button, lists appear and you can choose from various news sources for the latest headlines or figure out the closest Chinese takeout location. If I owned a smartphone, I’m sure I would also be taking advantage of this feature. Nevertheless, today’s technology provides information that is readily available in the palm of your hand. People live in a world of “now” which makes journalists positions more competitive. Instead of taking the time to research, fact-check and critique a story, journalists need to sacrifice accuracy for immediacy. Now people can pin point where the action is, geographically. The question is: Will people care?

[Via http://mboyle247.wordpress.com]

New Elecom memory card readers with support for SDXC 64 GB ...

Ad Agency Draw 63,000+ Twitter Users for BrandBowl 2010

2010-02-09T12:54:00.000+02:00

A great idea for building agency awareness …

The Mullen advertising agency, and Radian6, a leader in social media measurement, created BrandBowl2010, a Twitter/Super Bowl experience that combined tweeting, ad reviews and a host of metrics to let viewers generate and view real time ratings of the TV commercials that ran on the big game.

“According to the 63,000+ Twitter users whose comments were captured in BrandBowl2010, Doritos was the most effective brand to advertise on the Super Bowl telecast on CBS this year. Budweiser Select55 was the least effective brand.

The results were determined from a total of 98,656 Tweets collected at BrandBowl2010. The site provided an overall ranking of the brands advertising on the game based on a composite score that takes into consideration both volume of tweets and sentiment (positive or negative).” Brandbowl 2010

A great idea for ad agency new business …

Mullen offered the last place finisher in BrandBowl2010 — Budweiser Select55 — free creative services to help them make a better Super Bowl commercial next year and they are serious with their offer.

Additional articles regarding ad agency promotion:

Ad Agency’s Super Bowl Party Generates National Attention
“Mindsalt – Magic ‘09 Ball” Used to Promote Ad Agency
The First of Five Ways to Promote Your Agency Using Social Media
The Second of Five Ways to Promote Your Agency Using Social Media
The Third of Five Ways to Promote Your Agency Using Social Media
The Fourth of Five Ways to Promote Your Ad Agency Using Social Media
The Fifth of Five Ways to Promote Your Agency Using Social Media
Ad Agency Creates Online Film Festival on YouTube
Social Media Marketing Map Used For Ad Agency’s New Business
Promoting Your Ad Agency Using Twitter?
Using Video to Promote Your Ad Agency

[Via http://fuelingnewbusiness.com]

Red Eye Celebrates Third Year By Topping CNN Prime Time Last Week ...

How 3D Virtual Worlds Can Be More Like Twitter And Facebook

2010-02-09T04:47:00.000+02:00

Facebook and Twitter have taught us that people of all ages love to utilize the web for self-expression, connecting and staying in touch. 3D virtual worlds have similar characteristics: the ability for self-expression via customized avatars and the creation of your own ‘island’; the ability to connect with friends (or meet people you’d never get a chance to meet in the real world); and the ability to be part of a vibrant community.

In addition, 3D virtual worlds offer a fully immersive environment, that allows you to escape from the real world – and, experience virtual representations of real-world locations. For virtual worlds experiencing declining usage, however, “community” becomes a challenge to maintain (i.e. imagine using Facebook when none of your friends or family are using it).

Mark Kingdon (in-world: “M Linden“), the CEO of Linden Lab, laid out his vision of Second Life’s evolution, tying it in with the recent acquisition of Avatars United.

M. Linden on Community:

“When we talk to the users who sign up but then decide not to stay, they say they left, in part, because they had a hard time finding people to hang out with. Either their friends weren’t there, or they have a hard time meeting new ones inworld, or sometimes both. We need to fix this.”

M. Linden on Social Sharing:

“Another part of the “social glue” of any community is the concept of sharing. Inworld, it’s easy to share and we’ll make it even easier. But sharing between Second Life and the larger social Web is not as easy. As an avid photographer (well, aspiring to be avid), I’d love to be able to easily share my snapshots from Second Life with my friends on other Web services, and be able to watch a feed of the people I’m interested in.”

Reaction

Kingdon’s blog posting generated a wealth of comments from the Second Life community – I’d characterize the comments as mixed to fairly positive. My own reaction to the blog posting was very positive – my use of Second Life (and other virtual worlds) would increase based on my knowledge of in-world events/happenings attended by members of my social graph.

Here are my thoughts on how to increase community engagement and social sharing in a 3D virtual world.

Direct Integration with Twitter, Facebook

With Avatars United, according to Kingdon, “you’ll start to build an activity feed (similar to Facebook or Twitter) that keeps you in closer touch with the people you’re connected to in Second Life.” While I see value in a single feed that aggregates content from multiple social networks, I see equal (if not more) value in direct integration of Twitter, Facebook, etc., into the virtual world.

The Twitter API and Facebook Connect make doing so fairly straightforward. A B2B company with an island in Second Life may want to integrate a Twitter stream that displays tweets related to the company. Similarly, the company could prompt visitors to tweet about their visit and have that message be distributed to all of the visitor’s followers on Twitter.

By enabling this, the owner of the island generates “free” promotion to the social web – and, the underlying platform gains wider reach as well. A relevant analogy is Ustream’s Social Stream, which allows viewers to “chat with your friends over Twitter” while they’re viewing a live video.

On the Facebook front, imagine if the virtual world platform enabled Facebook Connect, thus allowing residents to sign in to Facebook and find a list of their Facebook friends who are also residents. Then, imagine showing users a real-time list of their Facebook friends who are in-world right now, with “links” to teleport to the friends’ locations.

Borrowing from another popular service (Foursquare or Gowalla), the virtual world platform could enable residents to “check in” at different locations (islands). Broadcasting their whereabouts to their social graph may result in more “planned encounters” within the virtual world. If my friends just checked in to “virtual island”, I may choose to teleport and join them there if I happen to be free.

“I Like It!”

Virtual worlds could create a stronger “shared experience” by allowing visitors to leave a trail of breadcrumbs reflecting their visited locations. If I “friend” someone in-world – or, if an in-world resident is a Facebook friend of mine, then I might want to follow the path they took during their last session. Additionally, the platform could support location endorsements, in the same way Facebook allows me to “like” a friend’s wall posting.

As I enter a location in the virtual world, I can see whether members of my social graph previously visited – and, what their comments were. Alternatively, I could see a list of all past visitors – with a link to view their in-world avatar and profile. If a past visitor panned a location, but I enjoyed it, allow me to send an offline message to that user, who can read my message the next time she logs in. This allows me to connect with other users even when they’re not online (a form of virtual world email).

Source: flickr (User: Indiewench)

Virtual World Closed-Circuit TV

Business owners leverage closed-circuit TV technology to perform surveillance of their store front or office. Wouldn’t a similar service be useful for virtual world residents, especially those who “own” an island? While we tend to be online during our waking hours, it may not be practical to be in-world all the time. How about a virtual world thin client – it provides a read-only “view” of a given location, similar to closed-circuit TV.

Since it doesn’t allow you to navigate, teleport, interact with others, etc. – the client is entirely lightweight and can sit in a corner of your desktop with only a portion of the CPU/RAM consumed by the full-blown client. So if you’re interested in a given location, the closed-circuit TV can alert you to visitors – and with one click, the thin client can launch the full client and teleport you to the location.

Services (like this one) that can instantaneously connect users are a win-win – they generate more logins to the platform and enable more connections, upon which a stronger sense of community develops. Alternatively, the virtual world platform can provide even more lightweight notification mechanisms: it can generate an email, Twitter direct message or Facebook email whenever a user enters a designated space. The notification could contain a link that teleports the recipient into that space to connect with the current visitor(s).

Embed Web Content In-World

As Twitter and Facebook have demonstrated, users of social services are inclined to share interesting content, often in the form of web links. Within a virtual world, “sharing” often results in the launching of a web browser to render the shared page. Why not provide sharing capabilities that render the shared content on an in-world wall or projection screen? This keeps users engaged, while retaining their attention in-world. Building upon this, I may want to look up Facebook friends and be taken to all locations in which they shared content in-world (as I have an interest in what my friends are reading and sharing).

On Demand TV (for Virtual Worlds)

Facebook has a great utility that allows me to record a video on my laptop’s webcam, upload it to Facebook and share it on Facebook. Virtual world platforms should enable users to press a “record” button and have their current session saved for later playback. Perhaps I’m attending an in-world concert or watching a keynote presentation – capturing a recording of the session allows me to share it with members of my social graph who weren’t able to attend. Treet TV provides similar services (with professional quality) – this capability empowers end users to create on-demand programming with the click of a mouse.

Conclusion

3D virtual worlds have a lot to offer already – by adopting useful social sharing services, they can tap into the phenomenon (social media) that’s the force behind many of ftoday’s most popular web sites.

[Via http://allvirtual.wordpress.com]

Windows Phone 7 To Get Zune HD Makeover? » Podcasting News

Teacher Gets A Report Card

2010-02-07T12:52:00.000+02:00

Image by jessica @ flickr via Flickr

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about ways to assess teachers.

Some say that principals and other supervisors do a lousy job assessing teachers because they don’t have the time, the training, or the inclination.

Others say it should not be totally up to principals because they play favorites, are vindictive, or have some other agenda.

My first two years teaching I worked for a principal like that. Now her school is being shut down.

Some say that the scores students get on standardized tests should be used to rate teachers.

Image by COCOEN daily photos via Flickr

The President of the United States says that’s the way to do it.

Which just goes to show how little he understands about education, about assessment and about motivation.

The people who go to elite private schools never really get what education is like for the rest of us, especially those of us who work or learn in inner city or rural schools which, counter-intuitively, have a lot in common.

At the present time there doesn’t seem to be a really accurate, workable way to assess teacher effectiveness, at least not one that can be applied to all teachers.

I give the task of assessing my teaching to the people who see it every day and for whom it is most crucial that I do it well: my students.

At the end of each quarter, when I have to determine and enter their grade for the quarter into our data system, I ask my students to give me a grade, to give me a report card.

I tell the students they do not have to put their names on the paper, but I want their assessment of me in writing.

I let them pick the criteria and determine how their assessment will be expressed.

Some make elaborate report cards with various categories, letter or number grades, and comments.

Others just write one sentence.

The first time the students assess me I get excellent marks. By the second quarter, when they see I take this very seriously, they are more critical.

My sixth grade class can be VERY chatty and a majority of the students in it told me I should be stricter. Even some of the chattiest ones said that.

Image by isurusen via Flickr

They also told me they liked the projects I give them to do, that they like that I give them choices about how to do things and what kind of presentations to do. They want more parties.

Many of my colleagues who I know only through Twitter thought this was a great idea but one, Glen Westbrook, said that he knows some teachers who would be very worried about letting students have a say.

I have a message for those teachers:

All students assess their teachers every minute of every day.

Our grades are delivered as behavior.

The students who do the work, obey the rules and get good grades are saying they like, or at least can tolerate, the way you teach.

The others, those kids who are not engaged, not doing the work or otherwise acting out are delivering a different message.

Its not an easy message to receive.

It’s a lot easier to blame the students, their parents, the community or the administration.

Next time, before you bad mouth anyone else, take a look in the mirror and ask this question:

Image by wetwebwork via Flickr

Am I teaching my students the same way I’d teach my own child? Do I teach the way I want my child’s teachers to teach?

Think carefully before you answer. Be honest.

Or hope your students will be when you ask them.

[Via http://educationontheplate.wordpress.com]

First thoughts: Good/bad jobs news - First Read - msnbc.com

OBLITERATI: SOCIAL MEDIA WEEK PARTY

2010-02-07T04:24:00.000+02:00

My last stop for social media week was the obliterati at R Bar. Those I was a little upset that I missed the swag bag (darn NJ to NY commute). But I must say it was a nice night. Saw a few people that I met from earlier events. And that is always nice. I went with my friend Zay so that help with mingling with the crowd. I had the chance to meet some people in different fields.

Topic of Conversation

I also had a good conversation with a group of developers about twitter followers. Now what the particular developer was say was someone told him they were a social media expert simply due to the large number of followers that they have. I thought this was upsurd so I had to join the conversation. So we’re standing there have this conversation that by simply having a large following doesn’t make you a social media expert, how companies need a better understanding of what exactly social media is, how people claim to be experts in everything now-a-days and as we were talking I was thinking this is what social media we is all about getting together and having a conversation, learning, and sharing ideas with people who are in your profession as well as those who aren’t.

Networking

Through out the night I met other people and collected business cards (a total of seven for the evening) . The key thing is to email, make real connections and have them as a resource. That way I can better help my clients. Often times its about who you know in this business that will give you that extra boost that you need.

Final Thoughts

Overall I have to say that I had fun doing my social media week experience. Next year I do hope that I am able to attend more events. I hope that everyone who attended was able to leave with some god information and had a chance to network and have fun.

Happy Flying

~Solo Dove~

[Via http://solodovepr.wordpress.com]

Lazy Saturday News and Views: Snowpocalypse! « The Confluence

jumping onto the 'social' bandwagon

2010-02-06T12:44:00.000+02:00

If you’re involved in social media efforts within your company, are trying to carve out a niche as a social media pro, or just want to understand what this new space is all about, personal web projects are crucial to honing your skills. Here are some tips for making your personal web efforts an effective part of your ongoing professional development:

Keep it personal. Choose a subject or focus that is completely (and I mean completely) unrelated to your work. That could mean creating a collection of nature photos on Flickr, a blog about local restaurants, or a Twitter roundup of the latest electronic gadgets — unless you work for an ecological organization, a retail distributor or, say, General Electric! It’s great to have passions that intersect with your professional life, but if you do a social media project that is even vaguely related to your job, your employer (or their customers) may hold you accountable for the results. And that’s not a safe sandbox to play in.

Be cautious. Personal doesn’t mean intimate. If you’re thinking about a project that involves your family, think carefully about the safety implications. Until you are really fluent in social media, err on the side of caution by keeping private your family stories private or at least anonymous.

Start simple. Create your social media project on a fully hosted service so that you don’t have to sort out the complexities of setting up your own site. WordPress.com , Flickr and Twitter are all good starting options.

Give yourself room to grow. Choose a platform that will let you extend your project in new ways and try out new tools. Get going with Flickr or Twitter, and you can explore a world of tools and applications that complement those services. If you start with a WordPress blog, you can move your blog onto a web host that gives you more control over your blog’s set up.

Give yourself a budget. While you can do lots of great stuff for free online, you’ll have more possibilities — and perhaps more fun — if you give yourself a modest budget. You might want to spend ten or twenty dollars a month buying stock images to illustrate your blog; pay for a service that gives you more information about your Twittering efforts; or upgrade your blog to a custom URL.

Go easy on yourself. The social web can be a great place to get support or enforce your commitment to a personal goal like building your own log cabin or reading all of Proust. But if you focus on a challenge that is already daunting, you’re less likely to stick with it. You’ll find most of your energy is focused on sticking to your resolve, rather than exploring and learning.

Be a night owl (or an early bird). You’ll learn the most from your social media experiment if you’re prepared to make a few mistakes — installing widgets that don’t work right, making design changes that look terrible, embedding multimedia content that doesn’t display. It’s a lot less scary to make those mistakes early in the morning or late at night, when fewer people are likely to be visiting your site.

Find a community. Explore the sites and web presences of other hobbyists (or experts) in your space to see what they are talking about and what online tools they use. Introduce yourself and comment on their photos, videos or posts — and encourage them to take a look at what you’re up to, too.

Balance tech with content Some people use their personal web projects as a chance to geek out and try specialized tools and software, and upgrade their tech knowledge. Others focus on the content — shooting the perfect video, writing the world’s most articulate blog post, snapping the greatest high-speed photos. But you’ll learn the most if you divide your attention between content and technology, and develop both your creative and technical skills.

Be prepared to own your project. Even if you’ve created a totally anonymous personal project, assume that sooner or later you could be unmasked. Make sure that whatever you post online, you’re prepared to live up to it at Monday’s staff meeting.

Follow these guidelines and your personal web projects will become an effective and ongoing part of your professional development.

[Via http://siddharthbalaravi.wordpress.com]

Halo Wars and Fable II now Classics News | Xbox 360 | Eurogamer

Bro. Eli Soriano Appeals to Twitter Followers to be Educational on Their Tweets

2010-02-06T04:39:00.000+02:00

Twitter has become an online sensation of many people today because its accessibility is not only available online with a PC but with mobile phones as well. A very popular Internet Evangelist in the person of Bro. Eli Soriano appeals to his followers to be educational on their “tweets”.

Hour after hour, the 62 year old preacher has been posting his twits to thousands of his followers on twitter. With just two weeks of using the application. Bro. Eli Soriano had already gained 3,800 followers who was able to read his short twits about lesson in life and reminders base on the scriptures. On one of his recent twits, he reminded people to “be friendly in the hauz of tweets”.

“Is the hauz penetrated by spies? Let’s all be friendly in the hauz of tweets!” Bro. Eli Soriano

This appeal was supported by concerned followers and promised to adhere to what the evangelist said. Prior to twitting, Bro. Eli Soriano maintains a blog, a Youtube Channel, his own website, podcast and 24/7 Internet broadcast. Bro. Eli Soriano has become the most prominent Online Evangelist of his time.

[Via http://andrewmiguel.wordpress.com]

Steam News

"Declarações" de Lula em Twitter turbinam ações da Telebrás

2010-02-04T12:42:00.000+02:00

As “tuitadas” do representante da Associação Software Livre,org, Marcelo Branco, que do dia para a noite tornou-se porta-voz do presidente Lula, ao revelar declarações dele sobre a reativação da Telebrás, gerou nesta quarta-feira, 03/03, um volume de negócios com as ações preferenciais da estatal (com direito à voto e em lotes de mil ações), no mercado à vista da Bovespa, da ordem de R$ 224,6 milhões.Para se ter uma idéia do que isso representa – um único dia de especulação financeira dos acionistas da Telebras suspostamente embasados nas declarações de Lula postadas no Twiiter por Marcelo Branco – o volume de negócios da estatal foi maior do que todo o esforço de investimentos feitos pelo Serpro e pela Dataprev ao longo de 2009, respectivamente, R$ 131,3 milhões, e R$ 186,3 milhões.

Featured Story Teens Just Don’t Blog or Tweet [STATS]

2010-02-04T04:28:00.000+02:00

Social Media A new study published today by Pew Internet finds that teens and young adults are blogging less and using social networking sites more, with the prominent exception of Twitter.

Pew’s Report surveyed 2,253 American adults and 800 U.S. teens to get a reading of how they use the internet, which gadgets they own, and which social media tools they

more…

[Via http://lmd308.wordpress.com]

The Blurry Lines of Animated 'News' | Pamela Boykoff | Voices ...

3 must-have marketing tools for small businesses

2010-02-02T12:35:00.000+02:00

Small businesses naturally gravitate to tools and strategies that quickly generate revenue without incurring significant costs. So it’s no surprise that web-based marketing technologies have become a boon to small businesses because of their low cost and ease of use. Tools that are purpose-built for small businesses project a more professional image and deliver a richer set of management and monitoring capabilities than online tools targeted to consumers, which are often ad-supported and limited in function.

The essential small business marketing tools described below encourage stronger customer relationships and are easy to use and affordable, which makes them must-have tools in the small business marketer’s toolkit.

Email marketingDespite critics who have called email marketing’s effectiveness into question, email marketing continually delivers the highest ROI for any marketing method. According to the Direct Marketing Association, email marketing delivered $43.62 for every dollar spent in 2009.

What makes email marketing so effective? It’s simple: permission and relevant content. This means that the recipient is looking forward to receiving messages and considers the content of the emails to be beneficial. For marketers, this translates into a pre-qualified list of prospects and returning customers. All you need to do to keep them is stay in touch with content that is compelling and useful.

Businesses can achieve several important goals with email marketing, but the most important are strong, lasting customer relationships. With email marketing, you can consistently communicate your expertise, your offerings, and your brand, thereby building trust and recognition. When the time comes for customers to make purchases, they’ll naturally turn to the businesses they’re familiar with and loyal to, and they’re more likely to recommend those businesses to others.

Online surveysThe most successful small business owners understand that listening to their customers is critically important. Yet, it’s not always practical to engage in one-on-one conversations to find out what every customer is thinking. That’s where online surveys come in. Online survey tools allow you to easily request anonymous feedback from your customers at their convenience.

Whether conducted frequently, such as after a purchase, event, or customer service issue, or just once a year, surveys are an excellent way to glean valuable information about your customers’ satisfaction, experience with your business, or feedback on your product. For example, a retailer might survey his customers to find out what product lines they’d like to see expanded. A consultant could survey customers to learn what marketing challenges are most important to them for 2010. In both cases, the survey results will help guide important business decisions that neither business owner may have determined without the help of the customer base.

Another benefit of online surveys is the opportunity for your customers to feel like they’re a part of your business. In fact, asking customers about the best way to communicate with them — either via email, Facebook, Twitter, or some other mode or combination — is a great first step in gathering useful feedback. By opening up a two-way dialogue and inviting them to offer suggestions and constructive criticism, your customers feel that they’re contributing to your success. Knowing that you took their advice or considered their feedback creates a sense of loyalty that will naturally lead to longer and stronger relationships.

Your social network of choiceEverywhere you turn these days, someone is talking about Facebook, retweeting Ashton Kutcher’s latest comment, or asking you to connect on LinkedIn. While all the hype can seem a bit frivolous, the business benefits of social networks are very real. Countless small business owners have made valuable connections, including new customers, through their participation in social networks.

Participation is the key to success when it comes to social media. Much like email marketing, you must first offer real value before you can expect to get anything in return. Simply being there isn’t going to place your brand at the center of the conversation. You first have to establish your credibility as a member of the community and a legitimate expert in your field.

Establish yourself as a resource by sharing your knowledge. This may mean linking to your blog posts, media coverage of your product or business, or your email newsletter. You can easily add value and show you “get it” by offering your thoughts and commenting on another’s blog post or tweet, or by answering a question on LinkedIn Answers.

Once you’ve committed to a particular mode of communication, be consistent in using it. Frequency of communications is always a challenge for busy small businesses owners, but a regular effort to communicate will help deliver your message most effectively. Eventually, your audience will begin to anticipate your outreach and even look forward to your next tweet, post, update, or newsletter.

Low cost, high returnToday’s small businesses face an ongoing battle for mindshare among their target consumers. These low cost, high return marketing tools provide small businesses with the advantage they need to cut through the noise and get their messages heard without breaking their budget.

Credit: Eric Groves – senior vice president of global market development for Constant Contact Inc.

[Via http://sureshbhura.wordpress.com]

FIRST @ TSSZ: Sonicthehedgehog4.com Registered to Sega | tssz|news

Just Tweet It

2010-02-02T04:45:00.000+02:00

Twitter is the most convenient and most effective social networking tool when it comes to internet marketing. The question now is, how much time should you spend on Twitter?

If you are an entrepreneur who is into internet marketing, you have probably seen the transformation of internet marketing from emailing to twittering.

A few years back, if you have something to say, you will send an email to all your clients, potential clients and to strangers. And you are doing it for the whole day. From the time you boot up your computer until you shut it down at the end of the day.

Now, if you have something to say, just tweet it.

If you have new promotions, just tweet it.

If you want to update your network with your new products, just tweet it.

And at the end of the day, you realize that you have actually spent your all day in twitter while you are in a seminar, business meeting, and even while driving your way home.

If you want to maximize your time, just tweet it.

[Via http://smallbiznezz.wordpress.com]

International HD news roundup -- Engadget HD

Alex Osterwalder (business_design) tweets during the WEF Davos: very, very inspiring

2010-01-31T12:52:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

via Alex Osterwalder (business_design) on Twitter.

- Reply
- Retweet
jeffjarvis
RT @larrybrilliant: #Davos #WEF: many catastrophic risks are today at tipping pointsabout 4 hours ago from SeesmicRetweeted by business_design and 3 others
“We are what we allow to happen” Archbishop of Dublin#WorldEconomicForum @WEFabout 4 hours ago from TweetDeck
“We need to become the change that we wish to see”#WorldEconomicForum @WEFabout 4 hours ago from TweetDeck

Australians love social networking

2010-01-31T04:42:00.000+02:00

The latest Nielsen stats show that Australians spend more time on social networks than any other country. We’re spending nearly seven hours a month on sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, with the US and UK a distant second and third at just more than six hours. Nielsen reports that nearly 10 million Australians are now using social media.

Time Spent on Social Sites by Country, December 2009 Country Unique Audience (000) Time per Person (hh:mm:ss) United States 142,052 6:09:13 Japan 46,558 2:50:21 Brazil 31,345 4:33:10 United Kingdom 29,129 6:07:54 Germany 28,057 4:11:45 France 26,786 4:04:39 Spain 19,456 5:30:55 Italy 18,256 6:00:07 Australia 9,895 6:52:28 Switzerland 2,451 3:54:34 Source: The Nielsen Company, 2009

[Via http://wellingdigital.com.au]

Books, Inq. — The Epilogue: News alert ...

Praising Kristen Stewart & Helping Welcome To The Riley's Get Distributed

2010-01-30T20:05:00.000+02:00

Hello all, welcome back & if its your first time visiting, Welcome!!

Sundance Film Festival or StewDance as we’ve renamed it is OVER, le sigh. What a fun bumpy ride it was for us KStew Devotee’s. Our fingers are a bit sore due to the click & refresh & copy & paste. But so worth it. Why? Well…

The Runaways & Welcome To The Riley’s premiered & boy did they premier. The reviews we’ve read so far are incredible.

The Runaways

“Stewart as Joan Jett physically embodies the role and curses and growls as the part demands.” – MTVBlog

“Kristen Stewart finally breaks loose delivering a stunning performance that covers a wide range of the acting spectrum yet achieved in a way that is far from self-conscious.”- Dark Horizons

“Stewart, on the other hand, makes a living by being a mess on-screen. Her emotions seem to pour out of her without passing through the filter of self-consciousness, an astonishing openness that can be mistaken for a lack of technique.” – IFC.com

“Stewart captures the intensity perfectly, but never completely immerses herself in the character. She’s aggressive, sexual and all things rock-n-roll.” -FilmSchoolRejects

“Kristen Stewart does a dead-on performance of Joan Jett that has you thinking she’s the real thing.” – MusicCityRambling

“Kristen Stewart steps out of her normal angsty girl act and nails down the punk rock, hard as nails Jett.” – Cinematical

“It’s one of her strongest performances so far as she captures Jett’s fierce work ethic and undiluted desire.” – HitFix

Welcome To The Riley’s

“The film belongs to Kristen Stewart, raw, uncompromising, magnificent at every turn, delivering a ferocious and emotionally charged performance.” – Dark Horizons

“Kristen is a very brave actress and has a great presence.”- Thermocard

“What could be one of the best performances of Stewart’s career.”- WeAreMovieGeeks

“Stewart risks making a spectacle of herself, but she remains intriguingly subdued.”- TheWrap.com

“You cannot walk away from a viewing and say the actress doesn’t fearlessly expose herself physically and emotionally, and doesn’t do so with astonishing maturity and believability.” – MTVBlog

“Stewart plays through all of these layers incredibly well. She’s sexy, tortured and frightened. At some points, all at once. This isn’t her character from Twilight. It is a far more mature role, and one that is a polar opposite to Bella. Unless Bella starts showing her bare ass in the third movie…” – FilmSchoolRejects *lol*

JJ on Stew

“It’s hard for me to look at myself and judge myself from the outside. But I thought she had a quiet intensity.”

& now…

This post isn’t only about the amazing reviews & praises Kristen received for her acting in both films, We all know that The Runaways has been pick up for distribution by Apparition now we need to help to show distributors that Welcome To The Riley’s has as supporters worldwide!

Here’s some things we can do to help:

Follow the Official Welcome To The Riley’s Twitter by clicking here: @Welcome2Rileys

Raise the IMDb’s Star-O-Meter by clicking on it’s official page: IMDb

& Add them on FaceBook

Sign up for a chance to see an advanced screening of Welcome To The Riley’s http://bit.ly/aLyfXI This is not a scam & you will not have to pay a penny until you are chosen. So far Distributors only want to release Welcome To The Riley’s in 2 cities. Let’s show them that us Stew-pporters are WORLDWIDE.

I mean come on now guys… Did this 1 minute clip not keep you on the edge of your seat?

Let’s do this, not only for Kristen but for the amazing director, producers & cast in this film!

& a HUGE THANK YOU to Gio for keeping us fans up to date with everything having to do with the film. We truly appreciate it.

–The Sources

[Via http://kstewdevotee.wordpress.com]

Happy Sounding Economic Headlines Front Skeptical Economic News

Boring Twitter stats for January

2010-01-30T12:06:00.000+02:00

I can safely say I’m now addicted to Twitter after a month of using it every day, but lately I’ve hardly been tweeting anywhere near as much. Largely because I’ve been busy, but I must do better nonetheless!

Below is a graph to show how I started well, then I was flying high, then I kinda levelled off. Still, the resolution on January 1st 2010 was to tweet a minimum of three times per day, which over a year is 1,095 tweets, and so far this year I’ve tweeted 1,034 times (not including today).

Hoping for a big day on it today, though. I’ve no excuses!

[Via http://matthewnewman.wordpress.com]

Shakesville: TV News Item Korner

Twitter Subscribers: the global breakdown...

2010-01-28T12:39:00.000+02:00

I decided to have a look at the “Twitter Phenomenon” by looking at some interesting facts and figures and it was quite a revelation. I looked at

Growth Rates in comparison to other social media
Subscribers by Country
Country interest in Twitter as measured by Google searches

The USA has the largest Twitter user base due to its population size and early adoption of the the technology the other nations are quickly taking a high level of interest.

Current estimates have Twitter with over 8 Million users after 3 years at the end of March, 2009 .

Growth rates compared to other social media

Nielsen (Figures as published February, 2009) also looked at Twitter and compared it with other social networking sites in terms of growth over the last 12 months and Twitter easily took top spot with a phenomenonal 1382% growth compared to Zimbio with 240% annual growth and Facebook with228%

Twitter\’s blog shows the subscriber share from different countries

The USA is top in overall market share at 40% This equates to approximately 3.2 Million Tweeters in the US with the international community sharing the other 6o%

Japan has 39% of the International share with approx 1.87 Million
Spain at 11% (approx 528,000)
UK is 10% (approx 480,000)
Brazil has 7% ( approx 336,000)
Canada\’s share is 7% ( approx 336,000)
France 6% (288,000)
Germany 6% (288,000)
Italy at 5% (240,000)
Netherlands rounds out the Internationals at 4% with approximately 192,000
The other countries add up to 244,000

Interest measured by search inquiries by country

I utilised the new Google feature \”Google insights for Search\” to check to see what the level of google search interest from different countries was, in searching for twitter (as adjusted for population) and there were a few surprises.

So what are the rankings?

1. The United Kingdom ranked number 1 with a rating of 100

2. The United States ranked second with 82

3. Ireland with 72

4. Canada with 70

5. Australia is fifth with 65

6. New Zealand comes in with a 50

7. The Netherlands is number 7 with with 41

8. Singapore is ranked 8th with 37

9. Portugal scores 36

10. Norway rounds out the top 10 with 29

Is Twitter a fad or is it the real deal, and will it make a major impact on the Internet world that Google and Facebook have. Going on these numbers its well on its way.

[Via http://speaktorobster.wordpress.com]

Fox News' response to O'Keefe arrest: A handful of brief reports ...

SCBWI Winter Conference 2010

2010-01-28T04:51:00.000+02:00

I’ve been a bad, bad blogger!

But I’ve had good reason: I’m leaving in the morning for the SCBWI Winter Conference in New York!

*runs around room screaming*

I will be posting pics and info and fascinating whatnots here on the blog while I’m there. I’ll also be posting to my Facebook and to Twitter as well.

And of course when I get back, I’ll share with you all at length everything I learned.

Wish me luck!

[Via http://amyknichols.wordpress.com]

News to know: Apple Tablet; Android; Earnings; Google Voice ...

Social media's role in helping out Haiti

2010-01-26T12:49:00.000+02:00

In yet another example of social media permeating our lives, and in this case most certainly in a positive sense, it has played a significant role both in the dissemination of information about the Haiti earthquake, and in helping to raise awareness and funds for the various relief campaigns set up to help the disaster stricken country.

Thanks to social media, word of the earthquake spread immediately. With the infrastructure of the country in ruin, miraculously mobile phones and satellite broadband systems continued working, allowing tweets to provide a real-time view of what has been unfolding; images posted on TwitPic; Facebook; and Flickr, as well as videos on YouTube, to give a visual account of the situation; and bloggers like Troy Livesay and Carel Pedre to get the word out. Facebook has also become a hub of information as people desperately try to find out about family and friends in Haiti. Even the more traditional news organisations have been relying on social media to gather information.

Along with the use of social media to spread the word about the disaster, significant donations and word of mouth in support of the people of Haiti through social media channels have been seen. Haiti is still a trending topic on Twitter, with updates and information on how and where to donate appearing constantly, while Facebook has gone as far as setting up a new website,www.facebook.com/globalrelief, to help its members find ways to help. Bloggers have also jumped on the bandwagon, urging readers to donate if they can, and pointing them in the right direction to do so.

It is heartening to see the level of generosity generated in the wake of disaster, and the use that has been made of social media to spread the word. We have an array of technology tools at our disposal, some of which were not available during past disasters, which could make a real difference as the battered nation struggles to recover.

Let us know of any interesting campaigns you have come across or are involved in by leaving your comments here.

[Via http://mediaupdate.wordpress.com]

Senderos Deal Agreed – News Archive – News – evertonfc.com – The ...

Redgage (Does this count as a mention?)

2010-01-26T04:26:00.000+02:00

Last night, someone that I was following through Twitter has status updates to pictures posted on Redgage. Naturally I had to see what this was about and if Redgage is actually any good. So I did. They have this form that has several pieces of personal information including gender and day of birth. All of this is mandatory, but I thought this is all on my Facebook account and I thought of all the job sites that have my Social Security Number. So I registered anyway.

My initial reaction to this site is one of some disdain. I mean that I can see the usefulness of it. There is a initial import tool to draw blogs, status updates and other social media tools into RedGage. This is shown on the left. Once its on RedGage, you can earn money by people viewing your stuff. It’s almost like a get something for nothing scheme.

However, it is more like a get nothing for nothing scheme. To get anything, there must be a large amount of people viewing the blog or picture or something. You can withdrawal in $25 increments and you lose $5.00 for the first transaction and 5% for any transaction following. I have a whopping two cents from last night.

There is also a daily contest where you can get a $25 prize (big money). There are three methods of getting raffle tickets. Write a knowledge-based article for all the Redgage-ians, invite others, or mention RedGage and provide a link to anywhere in the RedGage domain. If you haven’t found out by now, that is what I’m doing with this post (if the moderators actually allow this slightly-unfavorable review of their website).

I decided to invite some friends because … well … I don’t know but I really wanted $25 dollars for some reason. So now I did what I don’t like on Facebook is those annoying invite requests for some application: “Dan really likes Farmville and thinks you should join as well.” This was exactly the same and to those that haven’t changed the email notification settings of Facebook will be getting an email. I essentially spammed them. Everyone probably ignores those notifications anyway. I ignore by not using Facebook that much anymore. My mom uses Facebook more than I do.

So what do you actually get with this website? You get a viewing window for all your objects (blogs, pictures, etc.) and that viewing window looks ugly. The red outline looks not that good. Look at the picture on the left? Does that look familiar? Yes, it is a WordPress blog post a few days ago. The upload and import functions work well and if you like everything at the same place, its a good idea. However, you lose a lot from keeping things separate. (I enjoy the blog stats for some reason.)

As there are other applications that interface sites together (such as Ping.fm), I’m not sure if I want everything together. I use Facebook and Twitter very differently. Status updates on Facebook are very rare now, but as I see how useful Twitter can be, I use it more. Furthermore, I’m not commenting on my joblessness on Facebook because I have an uncle that always comments on it. I know that it is supposed to be encouraging, but I don’t enjoy his comments.

Now, today’s contest ends in 38 minutes and some seconds. Now, I have a question to all the moderators (or whatever they call themselves on RedGage.) ”Does this count as a mention?” Not that I really care about $25 anyway.

[Via http://spufool.wordpress.com]

Economic news headlines | Money Supply | FT.com

Twitter better for immediate search than Google

2010-01-24T12:51:00.000+02:00

It’s Wednesday, January 13, 2009. We have a swim meet this weekend in Newburgh NY and we are told it’s postponed…

We are told the pool is unavailable. That’s very believable especially the week after a vacation. Our pool (HHHW) often has chlorine and chemical issues the week after a vacation. OK. That seems a likely scenario.

But — the rumors abound. One kid. The next kid. The next kid. Texting. Texting. Texting…

A stabbing? A murder? I had better check it out.

I hop onto Google and enter “Newburgh stabbing”. Results are returned but the most recent news related to a stabbing is dated January 4, 2009. (Click.) That’s 9 days earlier. Could the pool, or school facilities, be closed because of a stabbing over a week ago?

Better check Twitter.

I hit Twitter and search for “Newburgh stabbing”. Records are immediately returned. One the the links point to this short link http://bit.ly/7DK7zr . A stabbing had occurred that day. The local news site had posted an article about the stabbing 2 hours earlier.

Thanks Twitter!

The immediacy of Twitter was great. We immediately knew the true story (assuming we believe the Mid Hudson News) that there was a stabbing. The paper immediately tweet’d the news and it was available for us all. How long would it have taken for it to be picked up on Google? Would the AP have picked it up and then the AP picked up by Google? How often does The Mid Hudon News get spidered by Google?

When I need information, my first search remains with Google. But, depending upon the results, I will always check with Twitter.

As far as my content, I will always post a link on Twitter.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * ** * * * * * *

That leads me to think…

How long before Google purchases Twitter? It makes sense.

[Via http://esavvy.wordpress.com]

Pundita: Haiti Crisis Breaking News: Search for survivors still ...

DavidArchie's Twitter food party

2010-01-24T04:28:00.000+02:00

David asked us about what he should have for lunch and of course, we replied him immediately. (But I missed this fun)

Finally, David decided on Mexican food:

He decided on Mexican food.

[Via http://davidarchuletavn.com]

Video: Chevrolet's version of the news, circa 1935 — Autoblog

Bill Gates nieuwe Twitter-koning

2010-01-23T12:25:00.000+02:00

Gisteren las ik op verschillende websites dat Bill Gates een Twitter account heeft aangemaakt. Toen ik ging zoeken, bleek dat er op Twitter meerdere oprichters van Microsoft bestaan. Vreemd, dus mogelijk was er weer een grapjas actief om de wereld voor de gek te houden.

Ondertussen ben ik dan toch eindelijk overtuigd, want de nieuwsberichten vliegen me om de oren. Volgens de website van Dutch Cowboys is de officiële account van meneer Gates vandaag al meer dan 18 uur een feit. Tenminste, toen plaatste hij zijn eerste tweet. Het aantal followers steeg in korte tijd tot boven de 100.000. Na een tweet van ene Caroline Mizumoto begon het balletje pas echt te rollen. Bill Gates vestigde een nieuw record door vanaf dat moment een groei van 20.000 volgers per uur te creëren. Ze schreef: “psst…follow @BillGates it’s realy him. ”.

Het is voor het eerst sinds Oprah ging Twitteren dat iemand zo snel zoveel volgers wist te bemachtigen. Helaas voor Oprah wint ze het in populariteit niet van Bill, want zij had “slechts” 60.000 en nog wat volgers voordat ze haar eerste tweet had geplaatst. Op nummer één dus vanaf nu: Bill Gates met 100.000 followers alvorens hij zijn eerste tweet plaatste!

Who’s next?

[Via http://bart1989.wordpress.com]

Brad Friedman and Desi Doyen: Green News Report -- January 21 ...

Consumers spend more time on Social Networks

2010-01-23T04:53:00.000+02:00

The Nielson Company released a report that shows increasing amounts of online consumers using social networks like Twitter and Facebook. From the article:

” Facebook was the No. 1 global social networking destination in December 2009 and 67% of global social media users visited the site during the month. Time on site for Facebook has also been on the rise, with global users spending nearly six hours per month on the site.”

[Via http://socialnetworksguide.wordpress.com]

Shakesville: This is Very Bad News.

Twittergate

2010-01-21T12:42:00.000+02:00

I’ve just started a PR diploma, which is encouraging me to learn all about social media. I’m a little behind, but I’m doing my best to catch up fast.

So far it’s been a great experience – I’ve found friends that I haven’t spoken to since college, I’m writing this blog which provides me some much-needed respite from the never-ending chapters of PR text that I’m trawling through each evening, and I’ve discovered Twitter!

Twitter is great, honestly – I was like so many non-believers who thought that by signing up I would somehow get sucked into a parallel universe in which I would feel the need to “tweet” about the contents of my lunch and every bowel movement. While some of this is true (not the latter, I assure you) it’s an incredible way to socialise with people – like-minded people that you would never normally meet, who have information to share – there’s a sincerity to it . . or so I thought!

Yesterday I made friends with Bill Gates – kind of. I felt a surge of joy when I discovered he’d got a Twitter account and that I could follow him, I felt special . . . . for about a minute and a half – when I realised that I and every other computer literate person in the world was sharing the same “special” feeling.

My mate Bill is now the most popular geek on the planet – 250,000 Twitter followers in less than 24 hours – that’s impressive! I couldn’t help feeling a little put out, a little less special – and then to make matters worse, Bill tweets that he’s launching a new website – Gates Notes – and there it is, social media in a nutshell, Mr Gates had amassed himself a ready-made nation of prospective Gates Notes-subscribers in the simple action of opening a Twitter account . This concluded my initiation to social media – I don’t feel so special anymore, I do, however, feel like I’ve leant an important lesson.

On a more personal note – I feel like microwaved crap today. I have a cold, and I’m feeling utterly sorry for myself, perhaps if my new mate Bill reads my latest tweet he’ll reward my twittership by sending me a Lemsip gift basic – or a million pounds – I’m sure one if not both will do the trick!

[Via http://steffilewlew.wordpress.com]

Michael McCarthy: Big News! Lloyd Collins says "No Negro Dialect"

LIVE.

2010-01-21T04:36:00.000+02:00

Hace poco comente en Twitter, que mis 3 bandas favoritas son Metric, Nirvana y The Velvet Undreground. Asi que hoy les regalaré 3 de mis discos favoritos, los 3 son en vivo, LOL.

The Velvet Underground: The Velvet es una banda que debió de estar a la par de The Beattles, su influencia en el rock y música en general es incalculable, ha sido fuente de inspiración de cientos de bandas, sus letras fueron muy adelantadas a su época letras en las que ya hablaban de drogas, sexo y demás placeres. Si a alguien la música los trato mal fue a ellos.

Este disco es el ultimo de The Velvet fue grabado después de la muerte de Nico. A pesar de ser un gran disco, algunos arreglos que le hacen a las canciones no me gustan del todo mas sin embargo no deja de ser un excelente material donde Lou Reed nos demuestra por que es uno de los mas grandes genios musicales que existen en la actualidad.

MCMXCIII (1)

MCMXCIII (2)

Nirvana: Live at Reading es sin lugar a dudas mi disco en vivo favorito no solo de Nirvana si no de cualquier banda, la conexion que logran tener con el publico es impresionante y mas impresionante aun es el hecho de que logren transmitirlo a travez de unas bocinas a años y kilometros de distancia.

Live at Reading

Metric. Un gran disco donde Metric toca sus mejores canciones como lo son: Poster of a Girl, Love is a Place, Monster Hospital, Too Litle Too Late, entre otras. Lo que Emily Haines hace con cada una de las canciones es fantástico, un disco que te engancha desde el principio.

Live at Metropolis

Este post les va a interesar.

[Via http://loscomisionadoz.wordpress.com]

App news & reviews: Trapster, Observation, Foto Brisko and more

This, that and chicken pie

2010-01-19T12:49:00.000+02:00

Won a competition on Twitter last week that meant I was to receive delivery of not one but five pizzas from Crust. And not over a bunch of different days. ALL IN THE SAME NIGHT!!

Managed to negotiate for a Sunday evening delivery instead of Friday and invited a few people ‘round to assist in the eating. Great competition! I entered on a lark but somehow won the dang thing. Never happens to me. Til now I guess.

Also, just finished making a poster for Nadine to promote Mark Whitwell’s visit to Melbourne in a few weeks. Now I look at it, I can see a few things I woulda done differently or refined… but it’s not too bad I guess. Teaching myself Photoshop is fun…

Click to view larger image!

Finally had that ultrasound on my left shoulder (from my bike crash) couple of days back. Sure, I shoulda done it months ago perhaps… *cough*. See, I’m just not terribly good at taking care of myself although I’m working on it!

After almost being drowned in the incredibly sudden torrential downpour, I wait almosted half an hour to see the Scanner dude. In the waiting room I was subjected to daytime TV (which I rarely watched even when I was unemployed) and learned of something called a Shamwow, which apparently people like. Even 13 year old boys.

Just as I was getting impatient enough to interrogate the receptionists, my name was called. And it went a little like this:

Scanner dude: Okay, take off your top and put this gown on… are you done? Great, sit over here… *prod poke scan* *repeat* *repeat* So that tattoo you’ve got on your back, does it mean anything?

Me: Yeah… [wincing at prod/poke/scan] I got it in Thailand…

Scanner dude: Does it have any significance?

Me: Yeah… but it’s a little complicated to explain [especially to you right now while I’m half naked and you’re prodding and poking my sore shoulder and there’s a very strong possibility that you’re Jewish and therefore might be offended by my heathenness anyways...]

Scanner dude: Okay… *prod poke scan* *repeat* *repeat*

Me: [sharp intake of breath] *WINCE*

Scanner dude: Ah, you didn’t like that one did you?

Me: *head goes all smooshy* *stomach churns*

Scanner dude: *swiftly leaves room & returns with Doctor dude*

Doctor dude: Hi, I’m the Doctor dude.

Me: Hi…

Doctor dude &/or Scanner dude: So what’s going on?

Me: I’m not sure, but I feel really nauseous…

Doctor dude &/or Scanner dude: Why do you feel nauseous? Are you in pain? Does your shoulder injury normally feel nauseous?

Me: *breathes deeply* *head between knees*

Doctor dude &/or Scanner dude: Where is the pain? Do you have the pain all the time? What happened to you? Why is your shoulder injured?

Me: I fell off my bike last year and it flared up again at the end of the year. I’ve never felt sick like this before though. It just came on when Scanner dude pressed down on my shoulder…

Doctor dude: *Asks more questions in rapid fire that I can’t answer* Well, it’s very difficult to diagnose when you can’t give us more information.

Me: *head swirls* *body temperature rises*

Doctor dude: Okay well I don’t think its rotator cuff damage. It might be your AC joint…

Me: Okay…

Yeah, whatever. All I know is that I have a doctor’s appointment Thursday night and my shoulder hasn’t stopped hurting since that little episode. I briefly Googled ‘AC joint shoulder’ but I didn’t like what I read. So very cowardly-ish, I’ve stopped researching for now.

And today for no reason I can tell (although perhaps the abovementioned trauma had something to do with it?), I’m in Panic Attack World. Not too serious. I don’t feel like I’m going to die. But still, it’s far from comfortable. My heart and lungs are heavily congested and my heart rate is up, of course.

I’m safely ensconced in the office and there’s no stress in my job (unless you count having to revise budgets for my projects). And yet I’m in the grip of a very physical reaction I can’t control.

But I’m sans Emergency Essence (note to self: fix that), and it’s all about making it to the end of the day. And the tram ride home.

But everything looks weirder when you’re in a heightened state of anxiety. The person I sat next to on the tram that I thought was a girl? Turns out to be a boy with VERY emo and feminine hair. And how was I supposed to know? I mean, she/he had the kind of thunder thighs you normally only see on a girl (speaking from experience)… Everything is too loud. I want my sound-glasses (a little invention I thought of where putting them on creates an ambient noise filter, no iPod or headphones required). I’m too strung up to read.

So I just breathe.

Normally in these states, I go to ground. Burrow deeply into the couch and try to remain vewy vewy still… not that it helps. But comatose is usually better than anything else. Or so I’d thought.

I’ve had this idea in my head since last weekend that I wanted to make a chicken pie. Never made one before, but seemed like tonight was the night. Had to go get an ingredient at my corner store – another thing I never could’ve done before while in Panic Attack mode. And yet I did. And I liked it, the little walk down the street.

Even spoke to the neighbourhood black and white moggy who always looks seriously freaked out. But he/she is actually very friendly. So we spoke for a bit and puss listened to my ramblings. Even took a couple of steps towards me from its position on the brick wall. I giggled.

A photo of kitty from another day

Maybe it was the air. Or the cat. Or the fact that it’d stopped raining. Or observing my breath. Or all of the above. Or perhaps I’m just getting better at handling the panic attacks when they come. Maybe it’s that, and so I don’t freak out as much (adding to the fun). Dunno.

But it turns out that being active, running around and making food works just as well (if not better) than being comatose for the episode’s duration. Or maybe that’s just how it is now, given I’m less comatose-like in general? Can I mark that one down to progress perhaps?

Almost back to normal after about six hours of stress from no known source… and the pie was good, too.

My chicken & vegie pie!

~Svasti

[Via http://svasti.wordpress.com]

Nokia Ovi press event this Thursday, 'big news' promised -- Engadget

Tentang timing untuk jatuh sakit...

2010-01-19T04:52:00.000+02:00

Sudah enam bulan lebih berlalu sejak terakhir saya sakit dan tidak masuk kantor. Lalu, kemarin saya jatuh sakit lagi. Menurut saya, sakit yang kemarin (untungnya) tidak parah dan timingnya cukup oke!

Kenapa oke? Karena pekerjaan sedang tidak ada yang terlalu urgent kemarin.. Jadi, kemarin saya memutuskan untuk pulang lebih cepat dari kantor untuk istirahat di rumah. Pada pagi hari saya memang sudah merasa kurang sedap di badan, tetapi karena masih kuat untuk pergi ke kantor, saya pun berangkat ke kantor.

Sampai di kantor ternyata saya masih lemas. Kata seorang teman, mata saya turun. Entah apa maksudnya…, pikir saya kemarin. Pagi ini, saya tahu maksudnya, karena memang mata saya terasa lebih besar. Kemarin rasanya mata saya lebih kecil, lebih menutup. Dan kelopaknya terasa panas. Mungkin efek flu dan sedikit meriang.

Si bos pun mengirimkan sebuah email yang isinya menyuruh saya pulang dan istirahat, karena sedang tidak ada yang urgent hari itu. Dan, supaya tidak sakit di hari-hari berikutnya ketika pekerjaan mulai menumpuk!

Jadi, jam 11.30 saya meninggalkan kantor, dan teman-teman di divisi saya yang melambaikan sapu tangan sambil berkaca-kaca (yah, sedikit lebai sih, tapi you got the picture..).Tak lama, pesan-pesan macam ini masuk via Twitter..

*terima kasih yaa, teman-teman..

Setengah jam kemudian saya sudah sampai di rumah, disuruh makan oleh ibu saya (sepotong lasagna sisa dari hari sebelumnya) dan minum air putih yang banyak, serta minum Neurobion 500 (katanya untuk menjaga daya tahan tubuh saya). Tak lama setelah itu saya terlelap…

Jam 15.00 saya terbangun, hanya untuk minum air putih, pindah ke kamar ibu saya, dan terlelap lagi. Jam 5 sore akhirnya saya benar-benar terbangun. Berkeringat deras, kegerahan, merasa kedinginan. Saya pun memutuskan untuk membuat secangkir kopi susu (iya, iya, memang seharusnya teh sihh.. tapi kaan..), dan (lagi-lagi) leyeh-leyeh di atas kursi panjang.. Setelah banyak tidur dan leyeh-leyeh, selepas maghrib saya merasa jauh lebih enak.

Ternyata benar kata si bos. Lebih baik pulang dan istirahat sebelum sakitnya semakin parah… Timingnya tepat – untuk mulai sedikit sakit, dan istirahat, dan kembali lagi ke kantor dengan segar dan sehat.

Pagi ini saya merasa sehat, berangkat ke kantor 20 menit lebih awal (karena kemacetan di Jakarta semakin merajalela), dan sampai di kantor dengan semangat! Dan bekerja dengan lebih keras karena pekerjaan banyak menanti…

Intinya, timingku pas untuk sakit!! So, I am happy!!

*especiale thanke for si Bos, Cupcup, Sharon dan mbak Eva.. aciih!!

[Via http://laquesta.wordpress.com]

a7x_slashness: [NEWS] New Album.

What does Rob do on a Saturday night?

2010-01-17T12:52:00.000+02:00

Last night Twitter was alive with the buzz of possible a sighting of Robert Pattinson!

Minutes later another tweeter responded with information from a recent interview she did with Rob in which he talked about the Library..

Anyone else guessing hes doing a bit of research for Bel-Ami?

Soooo if Robs spending his saturday nights locked away in the Library that has to mean Kristen is back in LA? He wouldn’t ditch her for the library on a saturday night, surely?

On a more particual note though – sundance kicks on 21st January so its more than likely Kristen will already be back and preparing for the onslaught of promotions she going to be doing over the coming weeks.

[Via http://fireandicexx.wordpress.com]

Haiti Earthquake: Breaking News, Updates (VIDEO)

Ahh, Social Networking.

2010-01-17T04:31:00.000+02:00

I just wanted to drop in really quick to say I am making new profiles here and here. If you don’t have Facebook or Myspace, feel free to follow me on Twitter or just keep up with what I am making at the shop.

Alright, that is enough self-promotion for one night, don’t you think?

How are you all? What has your weekend been like so far?

love, scout

[Via http://erinsunday.wordpress.com]

Technology News: Internet: How Much Would China Miss Google?

Kate's Corner ~ Medical Team abandons Haitian Hospital, CNN steps in

2010-01-16T12:48:00.000+02:00

By Kate Doak

Port-au-Prince victims of the Haiti Earthquake were left writhering in pain overnight, after UN personnel ordered the closure of a Make-shift hospital and the evacuation of its Belgian Medical Team, due to security concerns.

In a move which is bound to have severe repurcussions for the UN, the Hospital’s patients were forcably abandoned, leaving only a CNN News Team led by Dr Sanjay Gupta to care for them. If it wasn’t for these individuals and a few caring locals stepping in, it is highly probable that many of the patients would have died.

After being informed that the Hospital was closing overnight, Dr Gupta was left as the only Doctor to care for these patients, many of who had just suffered severe head injuries and other major trauma’s. In an interview with CNN, Gupta expressed the following:

“What is striking to me as a physician is that patients who just had surgery, patients who are critically ill are essentially being left here, nobody to care for them.”

In another interview with CNN, Lt. Gen. Russell Honoré, US Army (Ret.), who led relief efforts for Hurricane Katrina in 2005, commented upon the situation:

“Search and Rescue must trump Security. I’ve never seen anything like this before in my life. They need to man up and get back in there.”

Now normally I have the utmost respect for Doctors and the UN, though decisions and actions such as this are just completely unforgivable, not to meantion shameful. If the Doctors were being ordered to move, they should have taken their patients with them. If they weren’t allowed to, they should have given the relevant UN Officials the “Bird”, and carried on with their work. If a location isn’t safe enough for the Medical Team, then it most certainly isn’t safe enough for patients to be just left to die. Whether they were forced to go or not, the Doctors shouldn’t have abandoned their patients.

In contrast however, I have the utmost admiration, appreciation and respect for Dr Gupta and his team from CNN. This team includes CNN’s Tim Crock, Jonathan Schaer and one of my mentors, the intrepid Danielle Dellorto. Having witnessed her kindness, honesty and wisdom during my own darkest hour, I know that “Dani” would have done her best to help and comfort the injured, while she would have been a source of inspiration and encouragement for the rest of her team. In a world dominated by instant communication, neither words or photographs can describe how proud I am of my mentor and her colleagues.

Here are some of the Tweets from CNN’s Dr Gupta and Danielle Dellorto from throughout the night:

Kate Doak is a Postgraduate Student at the University of New England, Australia. Over several years she has changed beats twice, genders once and has interviewed some of Australia’s top Authors, Politicians, Musicians and Journalists for TUNE! FM. Nowadays, Kate primarily focuses on International History and Current Affairs.

[Via http://dailydose.us]

DICE explains BFBC2 server policy News | PC | Eurogamer

Bebo Norman Urges Fans to Give to Haiti and Auctions Guitar on Ebay

2010-01-16T04:44:00.000+02:00

Overture Media (Nashville)– This week the world has mourned together the devastation that Haiti has suffered with the 7.0 earthquake. Desiring to give and somehow help in the relief effort, Bebo Norman and wife Roshare jumped on board by asking Twitter fans on Wednesday to give to Compassion International. The Normans committed for a one-day matching of $5 for every re-tweet of his original message. Due to the overwhelming response by his fans and wanting to do even more, Bebo will put one of his personal guitars up for auction on EBay starting on January 15th at 8 pm Central. The auction will be for one week concluding January 22nd at 8 pm Central. All funds are going directly to Compassion International for Haiti. The auction link will be posted at Bebo’s site: http://www.bebonorman.com/news/haitiguitarauction.

“I honestly can’t place a value on this guitar since it is Number 00-01 in a very limited production (only 128 ever made) and has been in my personal guitar collection as one of my primary ‘songwriting guitars’ for 10 years,” shares Bebo. “This guitar has been the source of quite a few of my songs (“Nothing Without You,” “Try,” “Borrow Mine”), spent one year on tour with me, and is in absolutely amazing condition. This guitar is priceless as far as I’m concerned. The only way I would even DREAM of letting this guitar go is for a cause as important as serving the people of Haiti and meeting them in their time of crisis.”

About the Everett Laurel Guitar: This hand-made Everett Laurel Guitar is THE very first production guitar (Number 00-01) in the Laurel Series and was given to Bebo Norman as a personal gift from the builder himself, Kent Everett (Atlanta, GA). This Laurel First Edition is solid Sitka topped with Rosewood back and sides, highly flamed Maple bindings, Maple rosette, and Rosewood fingerboard and bridge. Bebo has autographed the custom interior label next to the production number and Kent Everett’s custom wax seal that ensures authenticity. Also included in the auction pack: TKL hardcase for the guitar, 4 packs of Elixir Medium Gauge Nanoweb guitar strings, and the entire Bebo Norman discography, autographed. Discography includes “The Fabric of Verse” (1996, Out of Print), “Ten Thousand Days” (1999), “Big Blue Sky” (2000), “Myself When I Am Real” (2002), “Try” (2004), “Between the Dreaming and the Coming True” (2006), “Christmas from the Realms of Glory” (2007), and “Bebo Norman” (2008).

For more information on Bebo Norman, visit him online at bebonorman.com or follow him on Twitter (twitter.com/bebonorman). Also, don’t forget to check out Backseat Writer’s interview with Bebo as well as our other great Bebo Norman coverage.

[Via http://backseatwriter.wordpress.com]

John Coleman's hourlong news special “Global Warming – The Other ...

G-Dragon me2day Updates on January 14!

2010-01-14T12:22:00.000+02:00

G-Dragon: What events will there be in this concert?

Jiyongie has finally updated! Although it’s not exactly the message that I would like lol. we know he is doing good enough to post. ^^

Translations: alee @ ibigbang.wordpress.com

If taking out please credit!

[Via http://ibigbang.wordpress.com]

The Cable News Patrol: Rounding Up the Usual Suspects and Subjects ...

15 Minutes Starts...NOW

2010-01-14T04:40:00.000+02:00

Big thanks to the team at Wordswell! I am honored to have a guest spot on this weeks Wordswell Blog.

If you aren’t familiar with them yet, I highly suggest you become familiar with them and do so quickly. Their Communiqué is something I really look forward to reading and what they are doing with brand development and social media is amazing and inspiring. Check them out. Connect with them. They’re everywhere.

wordswell.com

communiqué

my guest spot

[Via http://kristerdunn.wordpress.com]

Sarah Palin: FOX News contributor: The Swamp

Business use of social media in Finland

2010-01-12T12:46:00.000+02:00

Back from a day’s recuperation from colds, I thought the talk about social media is a soft topic for the second week of 2010. Certainly, it’s a favorite subject for us since we have introduced Google Maps, Twitter, and LinkedIn to PlanMill systems already in 2009!

Google Maps and LinkedIn goes to PlanMill CRM, Project, PSA & ERP.

However, it’s high time that Finnish companies, big and small alike take this issue–use of social media in business– seriously. Finland, a Nordic country considered as a pioneer in the global ICT market, however reveals a few surprises.

First, big companies in Finland don’t care about blogging — possibly the reasons can range from lack of resources or motivation.

My Twitter contact Miia Äkkinen from the Helsinki School of Economics: Information Systems gave me a good lead today. With her co-researchers Professor Virpi Tuunainen and Professor Matti Rossi, they explored the use of social media in Finnish and Swedish companies, evaluated the social media use in companies using Facebook business accounts (Facebook fan pages) and Twitter microblogging accounts.

Miia recenly wrote in her blog:

“Taloussanomat just reported that large Finnish companies don’t use blogs in their business. In Sweden large companies use blogs a lot but in Finland only Nokia blogs. The blogging culture of 132 large Nordic companies was studied by consulting office Pohjoisranta and Burson-Marsteller. And only 11 blogs were found: 1 in Finland (Nokia), 1 in Norway and 9 in Sweden (e.g. ABB, Volvo, Ericsson, Electrolux, Skanska).”

What can this imply? If the one of the main points of Finnish innovation is internationalization — ergo, we have to meet the international markets halfway!

Also recently asked by Antti Vilpponen from Arctic StartUp “Why Is Finland The Mongolia Of Internet Marketing?“

“There are a lot of reasons, but one of the key reasons in my opinion is that we fail to see the potential in harnessing the online marketing channels for the benefit of our businesses,” Antti explained. “It’s 2010 and only now are the largest companies (in Finland) waking up to the potential of e-mail marketing.”

(Btw, you might find a few valid objections in blog comments against the parallelism between Mongolia and remoteness, of which Antti justified that “physically and psychologically (Mongolia is) very distant to us Finns and thus we don’t consider it close to us in any manner.”)

Everyone at Arctic Index seems to be equally passionate about the subject. One of the reading list I had recently included

“Use Your Users: Driving Online Media in 2010 by Nick Mueller” , which explores the thread of thought for online media entrepreneurs and content creators.

I can’t wait for the results of Miia’s research project; meanwhile you can view HSE’s abstract and slides to give us a glimpse of things to come: “Social Media in Business Use – Extent of use in Finland and Sweden”.

Meanwhile, if not for business, one can also use social media for sports! Try and register with HeiaHeia, a Finnish startup offering a simplified training log for sharing your activities with friends in a simple and fun way! Read more from “Moozement Rebrands Itself And Becomes HeiaHeia, One Of The First ‘Nokia Funded’ Startups To Emerge“

[Via http://planmill.wordpress.com]

The Big Picture » Blog Archive » All news is good news for stocks

Pause

2010-01-12T04:44:00.000+02:00

I’m exhausted, and should be asleep, yet all I can do is think. (Must be the “teacher brain” I keep hearing about everywhere!) Seriously, I think that’s part of the reason I AM exhausted. My head will not stop thinking about things I want to try and do in class with my students, comments they’ve made, things I can do better, etc. And it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with this kind of non-stop, busy feeling (after all, many of you already know I like to stay busy).

Then I was glad I came across this post which harps upon the importance of taking advantage of “me” time and served as a reminder for me. I’ve talked about it. I’ve made conscious decisions to improve in this area. And I’m trying.

So, this is just a “gentle” reminder to myself to simply push “pause.” (And be ok with it!) And though “me” time may be my biggest weakness because I am absolutely one to overload and go 110 mph ALL of the time, I AM improving already (through the use of my yellow “idea” notebook, a new twitter app , trying new, different ideas one class at a time , spacing out major assignments with my classes, exercising, writing, reading, playing games , and many more things to help me improve in this area, including taking the time to pause).

But my question to all of you out there is this…what do you find to be your biggest weakness as a teacher? And how do you push yourself to become better at whatever “it” is?

[Via http://englishteacher2.wordpress.com]

FOX NEWS's $700 Million Man

Twitter status update via curl

2010-01-10T12:46:00.000+02:00

Sometimes,,you just need to waste your time just to sending status update to your twitter.

Here’s my suggestion to make your wasting time more wasted ,, by sending twitter status update via curl in bash scripting environment.

vi some-file.sh, and write this bunch of code :

#!/bin/bash

/usr/local/bin/curl --basic --proxy 10.2.249.250:8080 --user $1:$2 --data status="$3" twitter.com/statuses/update.xml

Then save the file using (:wq!)

give chmod +x some-file.sh to your script

Here you can call your script using :

./some-file.sh username passwd "your status"

I recommend to use (“) in your status,,,so that the script can detect that everything in between ” is your status..

have fun !

[Via http://antonrifco.wordpress.com]

Dallas Cowboys Blog | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas ...

Online Identity Management (A beginner's guide)

2010-01-10T04:31:00.000+02:00

A dinner table discussion on Online identity management is what got me to write this post. Intended to be a nerd’s guide to “doing things” on the net.

Personal identities are migrating to the internet based social,crowd and professional networking platforms. Given the transformatory and disruptive effects that internet has brought on to societies, communities, businesses, information, and technology, it was about time that indentities went online as well. This post discusses Online identity management as a template.

Why do we need Online identities?

The “global village” term never seemed more true. What the internet has done is that it has multiplied reach and accessibility and democratized information. The internet is fast becoming every individual’s window to the world. What we choose to showcase through that Window is what we want to project ourselves as to the world at large. That is what i refer to as Online identity.

Online identities

The online identities may vary basis age demographics (assuming that the user is a normal internet user). So while students have a very heavy element of social networking in their online identities, executives and professionals will see a balance of social and professional networking elements. The reasons are obivious. Thus we have established the two important platforms: Social Networking and Professional networking as the two pillars of Online Identity management. Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Orkut are the prominent social networking sites and Facebook is the biggest amongst them. While Facebook also can be used for Professsional networking, my choice of Professional networking site is Linkedin because of the many other things that it allows you to do beside meeting and knowing people in the same profession. I use Facebook for my Social Networking and Linkedin for my Professional networking requirements. Sites such as Slideshare and Box.Net are important supports to my networking needs as they can be referenced readily for relevant subjects and material.

What has emerged with Twitter is the trend of conversation. Even before Twitter, Facebook, Orkut,MySpace and other Social networking sites featured conversations but then Twitter democratized it by taking the conversation to the crowd rather than limiting it to our immediate circle of friends and relatives and collegues. Twitter thus has become a worldwide portal to meet people, discuss ideas, microblog ones opinions, create an online presence and publicizing self. It is also incredibly useful as a forum where one can talk to the experts and gain some recognition in the crowd. I strongly suggest refraining from status updates like “Taking my dog for a walk” on Twitter. That is a waste of time and unless you are Paris Hilton, no one really bothers about you or your dog.

In the heart of Online Identity management is the “I, me, myself” thing. And nothing defines it better than an online blog, or a website for self. The decision to blog is not about an “impulsive do” but revolves around a larger context of “How i define myself? What is my expertise? What is my chosen area of work?” and a doggedness of voicing views regularly. As with the starters, it takes patience and time for the scale and number of blogs and the traffic to build. It takes time getting hits and reviews and comments. Hence this is a slow burn activity. One can however support his blog with publicity on Twitter, Professional and Social networking sites. Depending upon the relevance of the message and the target consumers of the information, traffic follows. A YouTube is a higher order blog where you can audio-visual your ideas and thoughts. The thing with Online content is that it needs to be relevant to the audience else you end up making monkeying yourself.

The Fourth pillar in Online identity management is not much of “identity” stuff anyway. It is more of “convenience and storage” over the internet.So there are Google Docs,Calendar; there is Microsoft Sky Drive; there is GMail for all your mails; there is Picassa/Flickr for all your photos and more. It makes sense putting the data up in the cloud so that it can be accessed readily by you instead of lugging around your laptop.One good thing is that most of these portals can be connected through with each other such that a change in one updates others as well.

So there you have it.. It isnt easy.. It is time taking and the whole idea needs to be strategically thought through in context of how you are, what you do and where you are willing to go. The decision and the thought predate everything else in building the online identity.

[Via http://ronnie05.wordpress.com]

News Ticker: Lady Gaga, Bamboozle, Kings of Leon, Lil Wayne ...

#weloveshindong

2010-01-09T12:51:00.000+02:00

Astaga.. sampe jam 7:47 WIB, #weloveshindong masih menempati urutan 4!!!

Sejak jam 4-5 an tadi!!!!

Keren…

You go girls!

Let’s show ELF’s love!!!!

Omong2, belakangan yang rame itu beritanya Shindong ya??

Hehhe

Dan Btw lagi, Shindong sekareng sedang berada di Bangkok!!!

[Via http://chaminra.wordpress.com]

thejetsblog.com » News: Weis to Return to the NFL?

FaceBook or PhoneBook?

2010-01-09T04:49:00.000+02:00

Here’s an interesting question for you to ponder over the weekend.

If, as GigaOm and other commentators suggest:

Facebook’s core asset is its social graph — a diagram of people and their connections.

The Dawn of Facebook’s People-organized Web

Why don’t the Telcos simply put a real-time Business Intelligence layer on their landline, broadband and mobile phone networks, remap their network data records and then publish the aggregated data as their localised social graph?

After all their network data (i.e. call) records are an infinitely more accurate record of people and their connections than Facebook attempts at “playing the game”.

The same thing goes for Twitter and SMS.

If the world’s Telcos pooled, mapped, shared and mined their network data records at a global level they would make both FaceBook and Twitter look irrelevant in terms of their audience size, accuracy and quality of connections, and in the volume of activity (i.e. messages).

So what’s the answer? After all the Telcos could have done this 15 years ago. Is the right answer FaceBook’s the core asset, its social graph, is not worth the effort, or is it the privacy laws that restrict Telcos from repurposing their data or is it simply the Telcos can’t see the “wood for the trees?”

After all, adding a real time business intelligence technology layer that would add $1 to $10 Billion to their market value must be worth at least a strategic plan or two? Plus it would help them to improve their customer billing

[Via http://excapite.wordpress.com]

Fox News Man Bill Hemmer Talks Football with NFLGridironGab.com ...

Social Media - Another Top Twits List

2010-01-07T12:40:00.000+02:00

I am sooooo lazy. It makes me feel almost unbearably guilty. It is linked in to my innate shallowness. (Shallowance? Shallocity? Or is that a characteristic pertaining to a small onion?) Anyway, what it all means is that I simply cannot be bothered to re-invent this splendid (but metaphorical) wheel. It’s a post by communications and customer services blogger Rich Baker (nice blog Rich, keep up the good work, excellent content, opinion and thinking – worth a read, blog snorkellers mine) which gives the full listing of Klout founder @JoeFernandez’s Top Twitter Influencers in the United Kingdom.

(No. You don’t listen. I’m lazy. You will have to research Klout for yourself. And Joe Fernandez.)

Anyway, the point is the same as the point I attempted to make when I posted this – which was a similar list, posted by INQ Mobile.

The point – or, rather, the question, dear blog snorkellers – is this. Do you really, really want to live in a world which has, as its Top Influencers, the likes of Lily Allen, Chris Moyles, Duncan Bannantyne, Peter Andre and Dougie Poynter? I’ve nothing against them, but they’re hardly at the apogee of intellect, culture, education or morality, are they?

Sadly, it merely underlines the vapid, transient and shallow nature of Twitter, and the medium’s arrogant and misguided belief that it actually has an influence.

I read yesterday, elsewhere on the net, that Pepsi is spending/has spent $20m on social media marketing. Some wag had posted a comment which suggested that the company should have held on to its money, because it would probably be able to buy Twitter for that amount in the not-too-distant future. I have a suspicion this might be nearer to the truth than anyone thinks.

[Via http://thewordmonger.wordpress.com]

The News You Can Use from the Nexus One Event - Nexus one - Lifehacker

"Fade To Black" Newsletter #3 | Jan 6, 2010

2010-01-07T04:36:00.000+02:00

FADE TO BLACK

E-Blast Newsletter | Issue 3

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Produced by

Black Professionals Global Alliance

NYC * HOU * ATL * MIA * BMORE * NC

Greetings everyone.

It is an honor to be able to greet all of you in this new month of a new year in good health and spirit. We have much to be thankful for today, and that is how I am able to embrace all of you. You are my extended family in life and in business. It is only through our working together will we reach the many goals included in our mission statement-the center of that which states “to change the face of OUR WORLD one person at a time.” It starts with ME doing me, and you doing you. ABOUT US (CURRENTLY)

We are in the following cities:

New York City

OVERVIEW…our base is Flatbush, Brooklyn, but we also have an organizer in Downtown Brooklyn, Harlem and the Wall Street area. These areas tend to be where our meetings and events take place. MEMBERSHIP REGION…for NYC include the five boroughs (Manhattan, Brooklyn, The Bronx, Queens, Staten Island), Westchester County (members in Mt Vernon, Yonkers, White Plains and Peekskill), Long Island, New Jersey (members in Hoboken, Newark, Orange and Jersey City), Connecticut (members in Hartford, New Haven and Stamford) ORIGIN…The NYC chapter was founded online October 9 and launched its first event that same evening. There are 113 members in the meetup and nearly 300 throughout NYC. NEXT EVENT…January 12, Tuesday, 7pm @ Velour Lounge: “Mary J Blige DJ tribute” WEBSITE…www.meetup.com/bpofnyc Houston… OVERVIEW…we don’t have a specific location yet, but are working on a stable and central office location. MEMBERSHIP REGION…members are in and around Houston, with a few as far east as Beaumont, as far south as Galveston, as far west as Katy (no one has mentioned San Antonio yet!), and as far north as The Woodlands. Interestingly enough, our sisters in Dallas have a group known as the Black Young Professionals of Dallas who we are working on a few events with, but we do not have any registered members in Dallas. ORIGIN…The Houston chapter was founded online October 15, 2009, and launched its first event November 6, 2009. There are 135 members via meetup and close to 200 total representing the Houston chapter. NEXT EVENT…February 10, Wednesday, 7pm (location TBA): “Rich Black Poor Black: 12 Keys To Success For Black Professionals” WEBSITE…www.meetup.com/bphouston Atlanta… OVERVIEW…downtown Atlanta is the most ideal location, but we do not have a specific and central office location yet. MEMBERSHIP REGION…members are in and around Atlanta. There are a few in regions beyond the city limits (19 mile radius) but our focus will clearly be centered in the downtown areas of Atlanta. ORIGIN…The Atlanta chapter was founded online October 13, 2009 and launched its first event November 20, 2009. There are 109 members via meetup and an additional 20-30 representing the Atlanta chapter. NEXT EVENT…January 11, Monday, 7pm @ Royale Vizionz Lounge: “Rich Black Poor Black: 12 Keys To Success For Black Professionals” WEBSITE…www.meetup.com/bpatlanta Miami… OVERVIEW…South Beach is the chosen location for our base of operations, and Kitchen 305-a restaurant inside of the Newport Beach Resort and Hotel in Sunny Isles, Miami (centered between Miami Beach and Fort Lauderdale) has been our base of events. MEMBERSHIP REGION…members are scattered all over Miami and go as far south as Key West, as far northeast as Fort Lauderdale and as far north as Orlando. We are mainly focused on events in Miami to Fort Lauderdale. ORIGIN…The Miami chapter was founded online October 25, 2009 and founded December 4, 2009. There are 89 members via meetup as well as an additional 1-200 representing the Miami chapter. NEXT EVENT…as the most active chapter, there are events posted twice a week. Go to the site to see what’s coming. WEBSITE…www.meetup.com/bpmiami Baltimore… OVERVIEW…No specific area has been designated for our base of operations. MEMBERSHIP REGION…members are in Baltimore and Washington D.C. This chapter’s reach may extend as far north as Philadelphia (although events will still be centered in Baltimore and D.C.) but only as far south as Washington D.C. ORIGIN…The Baltimore chapter was founded online November 3, 2009 and will officially launch Friday, January 22, 2010. There are 126 members in the online group at meetup, nearly 100 in D.C. and an additional number in Philly and Richmond. NEXT EVENT…”Baltimore Winter Restaurant Week” Friday, January 22, 2010, 12noon. WEBSITE…www.meetup.com/bpbmore North Carolina (Raleigh, Greensboro, Charlotte)… OVERVIEW…Raleigh is the base of operations for this soon-to-be-launched chapter. It is unique from all others in that it represents the full state of North Carolina. MEMBERSHIP REGION…Greensboro and Charlotte have Assistant Organizers who are occasionally going to host events in those cities, but Raleigh is where the chapter originated and thus where events will primarily be focused at this time. ORIGIN…The North Carolina chapter launched online December 5, 2009 and will launch offline Friday, January 15, 2010. There are 36 members in the group online at meetup and nearly 100 total throughout the state of North Carolina. NEXT EVENT…”Meet And Greet” @ Leslie’s Lounge, Raleigh, NC Friday, January 15, 2010, 7pm. WEBSITE…www.meetup.com/blackcarolina LOCAL EVENTS

Local gatherings are a way for members new and seasoned to get together to discuss business and be social without the pressure of a formal environment. Our groups favor social networking events as the primary way to get together with business networking a close second. Within those two categories we will explore a wide range of events. Most of the time our gatherings will be free. Members are encouraged to join our leadership ranks and assist in organizing events, finding venues, hosting the events and leading discussions. We’d also ask members who are business owners or know of local businesses that would be interested in sponsoring our group to come forward. Any members interested should reach out to their group leaders through their respective chapter websites and/or emails. Some organizers also encourage you to call them. NATIONAL EVENTS

National events are events that more than one chapter will host and present to its membership. In a few cases, there are events that appeal to ALL of the chapters, as well as a few that will be presented to every chapter by our founding chapter in New York City that every chapter will host. A few events on our 2010 calendar include: “All Star Weekend” (Various hotels; BPGA is hosting exclusive parties nightly | Dallas and Arlington, Texas) February 11-14, 2010 NOTE: Hotel packages are still available but going fast so please contact your chapter leader ASAP to reserve!

“Vegas, Baby! Weekend Getaway” (Various hotels | Las Vegas) March 12-14, 2010 “In The Mix Music Festival” (Various hotels & venues | South Beach & Sunny Isles, Miami) March 23-27, 2010 “The Jamaica Jumpoff” (Various hotels & venues | Montego Bay, Jamaica) June 10-14, 2010 “Essence Music Festival” (Louisiana Superdome & various venues in The French Quarter | New Orleans) July 1-4, 2010 “Blacks Over 40 Cruise” (San Juan * St Thomas * Dominica * Barbados * St Lucia * St Maarten * St Kitts | Carnival Victory) September 5-12, 2010 NOTE: We feature a number of smaller groups throughout the year for close to a dozen specialized and exclusive cruises aboard Princess, Royal Caribbean, NCL and MSC Cruise Lines. Refer to your chapter leaders/group organizers! “The First Annual Black Professionals Business Conference And Awards” (Newport Beach Resort and Hotel, Sunny Isles, Miami) October 1-3, 2010 NOTE: This event is the exclusive creation of Black Professionals Global Alliance. We recently put 100 rooms and suites on hold for our members to reserve at the host hotel, but also have others in Fort Lauderdale, downtown Miami, Miami Beach and South Beach (but we recommend the host hotel for the best rates and convenience). It will be posted to each group’s website by this weekend, but you are welcome to inquire for more information. We’ll be discussing it in future newsletters.

“1st Annual Black Travel Conference” (Location TBA!) June, 2011 NOTE: This event is still being formed by our Travel Committee, but we welcome members interested in starting a career or business in hospitality and travel, or looking to further their knowledge of the business to come forward with interest in participating.

Each of the above events are available to all BP members at special rates. You are welcome to invite anyone to attend. You may also get involved by organizing a group of your own for profit or to fundraise; let your chapter leaders and/or group organizers know and they will guide you in the right direction. As always, we encourage members who have ideas and would like to help organize in any capacity to come forward. We are only as strong as the members who participate! IN CLOSING

As always, I encourage every member to take a few minutes to check out their group pages each week AT LEAST once a week-twice a week if you can-and familiarize yourself with what is going on. If you don’t see something you like, say something to your group’s organizer! Send them a note directly (or you can write me anytime as well, of course). I respond to everyone who does, and to the best of our ability we will answer your question, address your interest and take on what inspires you and share that with the group-or in my case, with several of the chapters across the country. Enjoy your week and I look forward to meeting each of you in the near future. Regards,

Freedom Justice | Founder/Organizer

Black Professionals Global Alliance www.blackprofessionals.wordpress.com Join our FAN page on Facebook (“Black Professionals Global Alliance”) and follow us on Twitter (www.twitter.com/bpga)

[Via http://blackprofessionals.wordpress.com]

Environmental Economics: News from the AERE luncheon

#Kerryout?

2010-01-05T12:42:00.000+02:00

Interesting developments surrounding Kerry McCarthy, Labour’s ‘Twitter Tsar/Czar’…

There is a growing Internet campaign to see her ousted from her parliamentary seat, driven by #kerryout and Kerry Out.net

The about section of the site says:

“Ironically this promotion [to Twitter Tsar/Czar] has been Kerry McCarthy’s downfall. Her new power and responsibility has highlighted her utter incompetence and unsuitability to serve the House of Commons. Leaving aside her deceitful double furniture claims and her utter contempt of the anger caused by the expenses scandal last year, McCarthy has shown herself to be completely unsuitable to serve the people of Bristol East.

The KerryOut campaign does not believe her conduct befits a public servant. She constantly mischaracterises her opponents, throws tantrums and when backed into a corner resorts to accusing her opponents of racism or sexism. Few of her followers are from her constituency, and few of her tweets regard her constituency – she is constantly engaging in tribal and trite arguments instead of getting on with her job.

Self proclaimed vegan, McCarthy has attempted to paint herself as the new face of accessible politicians.

She is an utter fraud though given the fact that she failed to turn up to the Commons for no fewer than SEVEN votes that would have increased the transparency of Parliament and made her more accountable to her electorate. Incidentally one of the votes she did bother to turn up to was to vote AGAINST external audits of MPs expenses and a block on allowing them to buy more furniture on expenses.”

It’ll be interesting to see if an Internet campaign such as this will a) last until the election b) actually work c) be picked up by the general public and subsequently influence their view and voting

This could be groundbreaking stuff for the UK political sphere IMO…

What do you think?

[Via http://geetarchurchy.wordpress.com]

“Avatar”- the science fiction is in line to chase “Titanic” record ...

Marketing the Orange Bowl to the Yellow Jackets

2010-01-05T04:24:00.000+02:00

It is game day for the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. The team has been in Miami since the middle part of last week practicing for the Orange Bowl. Luckily, I have been enjoying the inside scoop from my favorite Yellow Jacket Equipment Manager He has updated his Twitter and Facebook frequently with pictures from the adventures in Miami. It has been pretty cool talking to him about his trip, as I never realized how much work and effort goes in behind the scenes to make a Bowl Game possible. What I especially love about all the pictures and inside scoop is the marketing behind the whole process.

The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets traveled on a chartered plane to spend the week in Miami. They were greeted on the Tarmac by an orange carpet, orange suited officials and even the Orange Bowl mascot:

The players and staff were then invited to the welcoming ceremony complete with a GT ice sculpture.

After the welcoming ceremonies, they were able to explore the hotel a little bit. Let’s just say the Orange Bowl Committee had decked out the hotel in Orange Bowl marketing tactics. Complete with Orange Bowl baskets in EACH of the rooms and signs throughout the hotel.

After a few days of practice, the team made it to the final destination to set up camp for game day. Not but 24 hours after having a NFL game in the stadium, the Orange Bowl Committee transformed the stadium and locker rooms in to an Oasis of Orange.

Since the stadium is primarily used by the Miami Dolphins, the Orange Bowl Committee needed to bring their own flair into the place. Every little bit of logo from the Miami Dolphins was covered in Georgia Tech or Orange Bowl Logos.

Needless to say, I love the marketing efforts that the Orange Bowl Committee has put in to making the Georgia Tech team feel welcome in the town of Miami.

Thanks to my wonderful friends on the equipment team who are working so hard for the Yellow Jackets (especially the one in the middle )

Go Jackets!

[Via http://msbuzzworthy.wordpress.com]

Tablet event moved to 27th, iPhone OS 4.0 beta to be shown ...

Koobface коледен подарък :D

2010-01-03T12:15:00.000+02:00

О, измамници, знаеш ли срам. В усилията си да се възползват празник развесели, нов зловреден софтуер атака поставя като поздрав Коледа на Facebook, но всъщност се инсталира на гаден червей Koobface на компютрите на потребителите.

Червеят се разпространява като заразени ипотпал публикувате приветствие към стените на своите приятели, които след това от своя страна се заразяват, когато те се провери на предполага поздрав.

Ето как Panda Security го описва:

“След изпращането на злонамерен връзки на стени Facebook потребителите, стръв насочва към фалшива вградени видео ипотпал, който поставя като поздрав Коледа. Когато потребителите се опитат да играят на видео или кликнете върху връзката на страницата, на компютрите си изтеглите и инсталирате вариант на добре известни червей Koobface, Koobface.GK.

[Via http://ipotpalex.wordpress.com]

Chrome inches ahead of Safari | ABH News

2010, Facebook and Twitter So Soft Targets Hackers

2010-01-03T04:37:00.000+02:00

Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter are expected to face increasing attacks by hackers in 2010, according to web security firm observations, McAfee. “Spike in the number of applications for Facebook and other services would be an ideal vector for cybercriminal, who will take advantage of a trusted friend to click a link that would threaten the user if not careful.” McAfee said.

In a report titled 2010 Threat Predictions, McAfee also revealed that there are increasing threats to the security vulnerability of banking and the use botnet to infect computers by spreading malicious software or malware. McAfee revealed that Adobe products, especially Acrobat Reader and Flash, Microsoft Office will also be a threat in the next three years and the operating system was released Google Chrome will provide kesepatan hackers to trick users. Hackers will also try to take advantage of the short service URL, like bit.ly and tinyurl.com.

[Via http://computer0810.wordpress.com]

Dallas Cowboys Blog | Sports News | News for Dallas, Texas ...

5 Ways to Use Twitter Lists

2010-01-02T12:52:00.000+02:00

Twitter users can now organize users they follow into groups, or lists. allows you to group the stream of messages from a specific set of users and isolate them in a separate time line.

Lists make it easier to follow the messages that flow through your account by categorizing them into various topics that you create. Twitter allows you to have 20 lists with a maximum of 500 persons per list.

How To Create Twitter Lists

Create a list by selecting “create new list” in the right sidebar. By visiting your “following” page next to the username use the drop down menu allowing you to add that person to a particular list.

Create lists consisting of:

Competitors
Clients
Prospects
Friends
News
Industry Thought Leaders

What Lists To Follow and Who Has You Listed

In the right sidebar of your Twitter homepage , there are two tabs “lists following you” and “lists you follow”. You’ll also see other lists that twitter user has made and an option to block the Twitter user entirely.

Here are 5 Ways to Use Twitter Lists:

1. Access to Experts. Feed tweets into meaningful real-time experiences. OPEN Forum does a great job of this for small businesses.

2. Manage Who You Are Following Feed tweets into meaningful real-time experiences. New York Times has its featured and curated lists that make it easy to access the information.

3. Industry News Monitoring. Breaking news, trends and information

4. Job Search. If your looking for a job, set up a list of companies for which you would like to work. Also include executive search contacts so you can keep on top of what jobs are available.

5. Private Lists. Putting an account in a List doesn’t mean you are following them. This is a useful tool for people who may post too frequently or that you don’t want to show up in your stream.

Check out tools like:

List Widget let you create a collaborative widget. Once you enter your information to customize it, you can see what people are tweeting about. There are other tools like

Looking for lists?

Listorious is a directory of lists on Twitter.

Ultimately, the value of any Twitter feature is only as great as the community of users makes it.

[Via http://suelachapelle.wordpress.com]

'World News' ratings steady under Diane Sawyer--The Live Feed | THR

Don't write a business plan

2010-01-02T04:47:00.000+02:00

Don’t write a business plan

by Jason on December 14, 2009 · 61 comments

in Essays

“You need a business plan” is the mantra of MBA types.

As they say, businesses don’t plan to fail, they fail to plan! Who could argue with such a clever turn of phrase?

Let’s do some quotes:

“Without a business plan, how will you know whether you can make a profit?” (source)
“A complete business plan should include five-year financial projections. These projections will assist investors with making decisions about your business and help you to know how much funding you will need to get things rolling.” (source)
“Many businesses fail due to poor planning. It is important for every business owner to understand the entire depth, flexibility, strength and weakness of their business plan.” (source)
“Adjust your business plan as needed, but be sure to not stray too far off of your original idea.” (source)

Surely those Harvard MBA grads are correct! After all they don’t give out those MBAs for nothing — you have to at least start a business yourself! Oh wait, you don’t have to do that? Oh.

Trouble is, this advice is inconsistent with how real (small) businesses operate, as you can often see for yourself in the same articles that promote the use of the business plan.

For example, Kenrya Naasel writing for Latina.com starts by saying “A business plan is the most important document you’ll ever create.” (And you thought your website’s home page was important? Ha.) But later she quotes a successful entrepreneur who admits “We operated with no real plan for years” and “Things don’t generally go as planned.”

That’s one thing everyone can agree with: Things don’t go as planned. Yeah, so how are you supposed to write a three-year projection with a straight face?

Or take Sean Davis of Success on my Mind who tells us “Writing a business plan is your most important step,” but then admits that his past two (successful!) projects were “simply an idea I ran with.”

The telling part comes in the comment section where Sean adds:

Now that I think back on it, I’ve done plenty of marketing that led sites to success… but it was all from trial and error. Had I known BEFORE what I know now, I could have had a plan and reached my goals much earlier.”

Here inlies the fallacy. You never “know before what you know now.” If success is “all from trial and error,” how exactly do you write a plan?

Marketing is trial and error! Features, messaging, the path to customers, your competitive edge, your pricing model — all this gets figured out as you go. You can’t know what’s going to work ahead of time, so why is Sean concluding that he should have written a business plan?

Business plans are just guesses, and they’re almost always wrong.

The very idea of “planning” is ridiculous:

If you had written a business plan in 2007, what would your assumptions have been? Investors love “Web 2.0,” MySpace is how to reach young people, the economy is growing without limit, and products with demonstrable ROIs will get healthy slices of corporate budgets.Of course every assumption in your plan was reversed in 2008. The world economy exploded. Getting money from budgets is like squeezing water from rock. MySpace is dead, long live Facebook. The term “Web 2.0″ is passé. Twitter went mainstream and might be more important for “word of mouth” than blogging.Good thing you spent all that time planning.
At the beginning you don’t know anything about what your business will look like. Your product will evolve to fit the market. You’ll test marketing messages on AdWords and make unexpected discoveries about what works. Good and bad luck shape your company. You have no answers, no predictive power. Nor should you artificially pin yourself down! Even a “plan” buried in a drawer makes you less likely to consider the radical new idea that changes everything and makes you successful.
Have you tried actually writing a plan? Go ahead, try it! Be sure to include your mission statement, your vision, your five-year profit-and-loss statement, decide who will be your key personnel, define your pricing strategy, explain the risks, position yourself against competitors.Now be honest, where did this data come from? I’m guessing you reached right up your ass and pulled it out. For the five-year plan you were so deep you tickled your spleen. You know this is crap; why are you doing this when you could, oh I don’t know, just talk to potential customers?

But enough from me. What do VCs have to say about this? What if you’re trying to raise money, don’t you need a business plan? What do other entrepreneurs say?

From Venture Hacks, a great blog written by entrepreneurs-turned-VCs: “Don’t send a business plan to investors. Nobody reads them and nobody executes them. … Document your detailed plans on a napkin.”
From David Cowham, Bessemer Venture Partners: “Nothing slows down a VC as much as a comprehensive business plan.”
From Mike Moritz, Sequoia Capital in a Guy Kawasaki fireside chat, “Five-year plans aren’t worth the ink cartridge they’re printed with.”
I could fill three pages with links to 37signals railing against business plans (did you like that pun y’all?). From When was the last time you looked at your business plan: “[All three businesses] are still alive but have also completely rethought their original plans. They’ve changed focus, services, salaries, partnership arrangements, etc. … If these companies’ one year projections were so far off, imagine how worthless those year three (or five) projections turned out to be.” Or, from The only plan is to learn as you go: “Stop presuming you can be right in a world of massive uncertainty. The only plan you should make is to plan on improvising.”
A study found that “quality of business plans had zero impact on the amount of VC funding being raised.”
From VentureBlog, VC David Hornik derides an article on Wired and TechCrunch about how to raise money: “VCs tend not to read business plans because a) they are too long and b) your business will likely have changed by the time anyone gets around to reading your business plan.”
From Business Insider, Kevin Ryan, founder of six companies, says “I don’t do a detailed plan. If a VC focuses a lot on the details on the financial model, I won’t work with them.”
From Steve Blank, “In the real world, most business plans don’t survive the first few months of customer contact. And even if they did — customers don’t ask to see your business plan.” And then from an article called Startups are Inherently Chaos: “As a founder you need to prepare yourself to think creatively and independently, because more often than not, conditions on the ground will change so rapidly that the original well-thought-out business plan becomes irrelevant.”

Do I really need to go on, or are you sufficiently bludgeoned into not writing that business plan?

In fact, stop reading this article and do something useful like A/B test a landing page.

[Via http://entrepreneurbizplans.wordpress.com]

Touching Base - NY Daily News

Decade Fail

2009-12-31T12:41:00.000+02:00

In a recent newspaper report on the state of the nation, local journalist Tom Moran cites a Pew survey in which most Americans surveyed rated the current and swiftly ending decade as the worst one of their lives. As a professional academic who was ousted from a highly rated, long-term teaching post this decade after a Fundamentalist takeover of the school where I taught, I am inclined to agree. Five years later I am still searching for any kind of meaningful full-time work, while yesterday I spied an ad for a “Ghost Twitterer” (as if someone is so important that they can’t write their own 140 daily words) and bowed my head in sorrow. Maybe we really have sunk to a new low.

What really caught my eye, however, was the statement of a fellow professor at Rutgers (where I have been an adjunct for nearly three years). Ross Baker noted that “It has always taken calamities of almost Biblical proportions to shake this country out of its smugness and complacency.” While I agree with his assessment, the use of the phrase “biblical proportions” demonstrated once again that my chosen field of specialization has a solid place in the popular imagination. Generally “biblical proportions” is a phrase used to refer to disasters, something along the magnitude of a world-wide flood, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, or the plagues of Egypt. These mythological episodes have left a deep impression on our culture that the message of the Bible is a fitting one for the first decade of the twenty-first century.

Perhaps we are really in trouble if this facile view of the Bible is wedded to a facile misuse of the same book for constructing prejudicial public policies and ill-conceived conservative “reforms.” If the past decade has been a wash in this country, I would attribute it to a conservative evangelical political machine that churned out a president who literally would have been pleased to bring on the mythical Armageddon. During this bushesque reign of biblical proportions, I lost a secure job teaching Bible and haven’t been able to find any other full-time work. I would continue my rant but I have to polish up my résumé, and hone my succinctness skills, and try for a Ghost Twitterer position.

[Via http://sawiggins.wordpress.com]

The Jets Stream - NY Daily News

The Heap Presents: Review of the Motorola Droid

2009-12-31T04:39:00.000+02:00

“In a World of Doesn’t, Droid Does,” was the Verizon Wireless advertising moniker for perhaps one of the most awaited smartphones since the revolutionary iPhone. In fact, little was known about the phone, only quick glimpses due to a seemingly secretive yet intriguing marketing ploy used by VZW. The brief TV spots had to have been influenced by the similar secretive approach used by the promoters of the film Cloverfield. Here’s a sample TV commercial clip:

And of course the infamous iDon’t commercial:

Nevertheless, the real question after all of the advertising hype and hoopla still remains: Can the Droid be the first successful “iPhone killer?” Or at the very least, begin the end for Apple’s reign at the top of the smartphone market.

One of the most glorified selling points of the iPhone is the simplicity of its OS. Everything is only a few slides of the finger and a press of the finger away. While I never did have an iPhone, I did have an iPod touch. The interface was extremely navigable immediately. There wasn’t much to learn when t came to general functions or where something may be hidden. Everything had an icon, and you just scrolled to where the icon was located. The most recent update to the iPhone OS even allowed you to group apps on different “pages” of the sliding menu.

Droid’s interface is generally simple, though a first time user does have to learn the functions of certain buttons as well as the extensive settings menu. Also, the initial clutter that is all of the application icons is a bit daunting as well initially. But the burgeoning Android user will know how convenient it is to have icons to ALL installed apps listed alphabetically in a slide out menu. This allows the user two place all sorts of widgets and the icons of the most used apps on one of 3 main screens.

I have yet to become too “app” savvy, and am in need of tips for useful apps! I do use two widgets, The Weather Channel and CNN widgets. TWC widget is a quick and convenient way to immediately check weather and temperature, with forecasts only a click away. CNN seems to be a good news widget, bt to be honest, I don’t look at it too much. I have heard that USA today might be the way to go with regards to a news ticker. I might have to give it a shot.

Don’t forget the “Social” apps! Dont worry. Facebook for Android already comes pre-loaded. So you can check that one off of your list. If you are into Twitter, I recommend Twidroid Free edition. The app allows you to update Twitter, while receiving tweets for those you follow instantly. AIM and Myspace apps are also available.

Droid requires you to have a Gmail account. Thus, your account’s email is synced to the device! It is possible to sync more than one gmail account (like my personal one and the account for The Heap!) and email addresses from other domains. In addition to email, your user name serves as your GChat name as well! Your buddies can chat with you on your phone as well!

The main free sports app for the Android OS is SportsTap. The app itself is very good, as scores from sports around the world, as well as surprisingly detailed box scores/ stats are readily available. The widget was disappointing because it didn’t seem to work most of the time. The favorite teams customization is pretty useful, as you are alerted when your team is playing and of changes in score. (Another Overtime loss for the Lightning tonight, by the way)

Then, like iPhone, there are an endless amount of created apps for just about anything! Some fun ones are the Coin Flip and Magic 8 Ball apps, that use the phone’s accelerometer to roughly simulate the physics of an actual coin flip or the shaking of the 8 ball. Google Sky Map is by far one of my favorites, as it uses the phone’s position and orientation to accurately tell you what constellations celestial bodies are visible by the user! It is absolutely amazing! And lastly, I have some other practical apps, like Flixster movies for times/reviews, Kayak for travel plans and Phoneflicks for organizing my Netflix queue.

As we can see, this has gone for far too long! I’ve decided to cut the review into parts. Part 2 will be about Music Apps, music playback and other media/ entertainment apps/ capabilities! Part 3 will most likely be about functionality, messaging, what I like and don’t like, and what makes Droid a serious contender in the smart phone battle! I might even make my own review video, showing off my Droid and showing you heapsters how it works! Stay tuned!

[Via http://theheapblog.wordpress.com]

From NPR News in Washington, That Was Carl Kasell - Media Decoder ...

AT&T Virtual Receptionist

2009-12-29T12:13:00.000+02:00

AT & T предлага удобен услуга, която ще ви дадат професионален полски сигурност ще впечатли всеки клиент. В ап е свободен, тъй като е част от услугата (но, както винаги, да проверите тези Ц. и Cs) и ще Ви предостави безплатен брой на “Auto-придружител,” а поздрав компания, гласова поща и бизнес. Със ипотпал директно от вашия iPhone, на ап работи с визуална гласова поща и изпращане на факс също предлага възможности за всеки, който се справите с които все още остана през 1994 година.

[Via http://ipotpalex.wordpress.com]

Live-blog: Ashura in Iran – December 27, 2009 | Iran News Now

Greensboo NC

2009-12-29T04:43:00.000+02:00

Image via Wikipedia

Greensboo NC

Facebook Greensboro

Greensboro NC Meta Search Directory

[Via http://greensboronc.wordpress.com]

Six Contentious Animal Culls in the News in December are Small ...

Tweetstats (Stats on you and others)

2009-12-27T12:20:00.000+02:00

Have you ever wondered what your tweeting statistics are? Well, wonder no more this site, tweetstats (great name) will give you just that. From your average number of daily tweets to even your preferred method of tweeting… and all you have to do is just enter your user name!

How many tweets do you average daily? I’m a 5.9 a day twitterer!

Another great thing is that you can see your tweet cloud,Its a click option and see what words you use most frequently in your tweets. If you don’t like the Native text then it can load it up in wordle.net, you can click over to wordle, it’ll transfer your words and you can make it look like the one above!

(Twooshes ) In tweet cloud tab, it also lets you know how many twooshes you had. (Yeah, a twoosh.. I would never have known this word until I visdited this site!) A twoosh is a 140-character tweet and I’ve had 38 of them. Interesting.

Share your stats with us all in the comments below!

[Via http://ethernat.com]

Ballot Access News » Blog Archive » Ballot Access News Paper ...

Twitter Hashtags: The Missing Manual

2009-12-27T00:21:00.000+02:00

The hashtag system on Twitter, created by it’s users for a powerful way of categorizing massive amounts of information, is possibly the most misunderstood and misused tool in the entire Twitterverse. Hashtags, for those who aren’t aware, are words or phrases preceded by a pound symbol (#). For example, the ever-popular hashtag #iamageek has allowed geeks everywhere to collaborate and share their geekdom.

The major thing that most Twitter users don’t know is how to properly apply these hashtags. One might think that if their talking about a movie, they should put a hashtag before it’s name to categorize that tweet for that movie. This is a misuse of the system, however, because one could just as easily find tweets about that movie by searching Twitter for the name of the movie without that hashtag. No, hashtags are intended to be used to apply a tweet to a motif that is present in tweets that may not share the same exact subject matter.

An example of a misuse of a Twitter hashtag would look something like this:

Just finished reading a really great #book by #danbrown.

Whereas an example of a properly used hashtag would look something like this:

Sending out Wave invites to followers, DM me if you’d like one! #googlewave

What the latter tweet has done correctly is to categorize the main concept of the tweet in a way that allows other tweeters to find it easily. They have also put the hashtag outside of the tweet, which is not necessary, but can help the English of the tweet flow better while still accomplishing it’s purpose.

The last important thing about hashtags is that one must remember to stay to the predefined hashtag for a certain category. Often there are widely used hashtags for different things (like #iamageek) that several people use every day. If you use a hashtag like #iamsuchageek, not many people will find that tweet in a search because they have no reason to search that tag. By using #iamageek, you are integrating your tweet with all of the other tweets that have used that popular tag, and thus you are increasing the chances that many people will see that tweet.

Hopefully this guide has been helpful for understanding how to use Twitter hashtags correctly. If you are interested in Social Media, you know that having interesting and engaging content is only half the battle, and you have to find a way to advertise yourself. Hashtags are a great way to do that.

[Via http://donovanmethod.wordpress.com]

Breaking news Tiger Woods: South Africans angry about golfer's ...

10 Key Strategies For Inbound Social and Search Marketing

2009-12-26T12:49:00.000+02:00

In over 20 years in sales and marketing I have made many cold calls. Over the last 12 months I have not made one cold phone call or bought any expensive mass media marketing, yet sales have increased and business is much more fun. Isn’t there a better use of your time and money? Think of how your life might change if you were calling only on prospects who actually want to buy from you. A lot of companies still have not realized it’s a digital world and the marketing rules are changing. So how would you optimise your companys digital presence to get found online and drive inbound enquiry for new customers and not have to cold call again or buy expensive mass media.

Here are 10 key strategies to drive traffic to your website, ecommerce site, enquiries to your email inbox and make your phone start ringing.

If you prefer to read this in text format pop over to my blog post where I discuss this in more detail.

So do you think you could use some of these 1o strategies?

[Via http://jeffbullas.com]

News Ticker: Kanye West, Paul McCartney, Tom Waits, Mick Cocks ...

13 Tutorial dan Sumber untuk membuat Twitter Background

2009-12-26T04:06:00.000+02:00

Twitter is probably the most hyped social network out there, all the mainstream medias are talking about it and a lot of celebrities are using the service. The popularity of the website means that you get to connect with tons of other users, but it also means that you’ll have to stand out to do so. For that, having a great Twitter background is recommended to make a great first impression. Learn how to do this with the following collection of tutorials.

Twitter background guidelines

Technical information regarding the file dimensions for a Twitter background, its positioning and some recommended tools.

How to brand yourself with a Twitter background

Introduction to Twitter branding by Calvin Lee of Mayhem Studios. Good advice on the type of Twitter background to chose, tiled image or not.

How to design the perfect Twitter background

An overview of various types of Twitter background, good read to make the right decision about how you will design your own background.

How to make a Twitter background picture

Step by step tutorial to create your Twitter background image with Photoshop.

Twitter Background using Adobe Illustrator

Video tutorial teaching you how to create your Twitter background using the popular vector drawing software.

Create a Twitter background using PowerPoint

For people with no Photoshop skills, this tutorial will explain you how to create your own Twitter background using PowerPoint. Some templates are provided in the article.

Create a Twitter background with Photoshop

Excellent video tutorial with in-depth explanations on how to create a Twitter background with Photoshop.

How to turn a texture into a seamlessly tiled background

Create your Twitter tiled background by editing a texture image with Photoshop.

Twitter background design how-to and best practices

Perhaps the most complete article about the creation of Twitter backgrounds.

High-quality Twitter backgrounds

A collection of free Twitter backgrounds for the people who are too lazy to create their own background.

Peekr

Peekr is a great website to view the entire background image of any Twitter user, very useful to get inspired by other people’s backgrounds.

Twitterbacks

A Flickr gallery of great Twitter extended backgrounds free to use.

1′000+ background patterns you can use for free

For the lazy ones, this website will offer you more than a thousand free patterns to chose from.

About the author: Mirko Humbert is a freelance designer from Switzerland. He shares his thoughts about his passion on his design blog. To connect with Mirko, you can follow him on Twitter.

[Via http://mauritsalbert.wordpress.com]

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