That’s great, but what the heck is Project Plaid? Launched in 2009, Project Plaid exists for one simple purpose: to sing the praises of the exceptional. Be it a company, a nonprofit, a person, place, or thing – if a P2 member is a fan of someone or something – we want to share that with the world.
What’s the big deal with “fans” these days? It’s easy to like something, but consider what it means to be a fan. Fans are loyal. Fans are passionate. Fans show up to cheer on their team in rain, sleet, or snow. Fans buy front row tickets even when it’s the third farewell tour. Or ninth.
Being a fan is about more than clicking a “follow” button on Twitter or buying the right jersey. A fan doesn’t just give lip service to something they love, they invest themselves in it. They help grow it. They ignite a movement to share it with others.
Why Plaid? If you ask the dictionary, it will define a clan as “A set of kin whose members believe they are descended from a common ancestor but cannot specify exactly how.” On a more basic level, a clan is simply a group of people united by kinship. In Scotland, plaids and tartans were traditionally used to designate a distinctive clan, a distinguishable badge of honor and identity for its members.
Good people know other good people. With each new person we meet, with every choice and encounter a new thread is woven into our life experience. By choosing to recognize the good in our personal worlds and the global world, we create a fabric that is strong, colorful and enduring.
So how do I get in? When do I get to learn the secret handshake? Our clan has no initiation. Our clan has no membership fees. Induction into the Project Plaid clan is simple and straightforward: just do something and do it well. Leave a lasting and positive impression. In a world of “good enough,” be exceptional.
So now what? As a featured company/person/organization, you will receive an e-mail questionnaire that will help the P2 team create a profile piece on your company to be featured on the P2 blog. Of course we love it when people color outside the lines, so we encourage you not to feel limited by our questions. Elaborate. Tell us all about you. Draw us a picture! Send us photos! Shoot us your favorite recipe! Mail us a plane ticket to come visit!
More than likely, we will have a few follow up questions once we receive your questionnaire back. Once the piece has been compiled, it will be posted to the P2 blog (http://projectplaid.blogspot.com) and you become an official card-carrying member of our clan.
Oh. And in return we have a tiny favor to ask. In order to keep the cycle of good-to-good going, featured companies are asked to provide us with a list of at least 3 companies, organizations, people, items, etc. that you find exceptional. Now is your chance to recognize a fellow entrepreneur, an outstanding vendor, or the best place in town to get pancakes at three a.m.
I’m haven’t been recognized, but I still want in! Think you’ve got what it takes to be a good-wielding, exceptionality-spotting warrior for the kind side? Shoot us an e-mail at project plaid [at] gmail [dot] com. In return we’ll send you a questionnaire to see if you’re one of our kind.
Questions? Comments? Insomnia? Fingers need to take a little jog? You can reach the P2 Clan at projectplaid [at] gmail [dot] com. We love the cheap thrill of new mail in our inbox.
While several friends have vowed to curb their Internet/Twitter/iPhone habits in 2010 to reclaim a modicum of face time with friends and family, I’m thinking I need to be more electronically plugged in to DC’s arts and culture scene. A great place to start: DCist’s handy round-up of local museums’ podcasts, blogs and Twitter feeds.
I’m already a Facebook fan of the Freer-Sackler Gallery and the National Gallery of Art, but in truth I’m still getting a lot of my museum news through (increasingly old school) e-newsletters. Not to say that e-newsletters don’t serve a purpose: The Freer-Sackler sent me a year-end fundraising plea just this afternoon, and I succumbed, much as I do after a week of listening to public radio pledge drive banter.
As for blogs, I often skim the Smithsonian American Art Museum and the National Portrait Gallery blogs, which include cool stuff like this time lapse video of shadows moving across the Kogod Courtyard, one of my favorite public spaces in Washington.
The Smithsonian’s Around the Mall blog is also worth checking out, for exhibit updates and quirky behind-the-scenes stories like this post on a couple who recently got engaged at the National Museum of Natural History (in the museum’s forensic lab? really?)
For sheer numbers of followers, however, the reigning champ on the DC museum circuit has got to be the National Zoo’s Pandacam, trained on our beloved Tai Shan, who will soon depart for China. Yes, he’s chomping bamboo as I type. Just try not to click on that link.
3.Dead and Defiled Veteran in Garage Months|at SCI Va.Site
4.Michael Jackson Memorial
5.Average Cost of a Funeral-Average Funeral Home
6.President Obama Stirs the soldiers At Fort Hood Memorial Service-
7.More than 100 graves dug up in Cemetery Horror Burr Oak Cemetery.
8.Digital Assets need to be a part of Every Funeral Arrangement
9.Funeral Preneed is Dead Even in the Richest Towns
10.Service Corporation International’s Burr Oak Cem. Scandal
11.Brittany Murphy Death and Funeral|has celebrity death gone too far n 2009?
12. Farrah Fawcett Memorial
13. SCI Denies wrong doing in Veterans Corpse Abuse Scandal
14.Chicago Cubs Cemetery is for Burned Fans.
15 So Where is Farrah Fawcett Buried?
16.Ted Kennedy Funeral | Mass- Full Program-Your Funeral Guy
17. Burr Oak Cemetery owners have a funeral home scandal
18. NFDA Exec Sec Earl Should Resign with Fed Investigation of IFDA
19.Neptune Society fined for Preneed Violations
20.Walter Cronkite Memorial Service: Video of President Clinton’s Eulogy-R.Brian Burkhardt
21. Senator Ted Kennedy Funeral Mass|Program-from Mission Church.
22. Funeral Preneed is Dead.
23. Service Corporation International, mishandled the Kennedy Funeral
24.Oral Roberts Funeral arrangements|Live Streaming Video-
25.Missouri Legislature passes reform in response to National Prearranged Services Scandal
我們對著YMCA門口再次跪下，等待民主黨員離場，當然又是大叫口號。這時的創意口號包括有：「黃成智，好不智，總辭唔敢辭」、「劉慧卿，2012，Delay No More」諷刺劉慧卿自己也講諧音粗口、「天滅白鴿，退黨保平安」、「民主黨，我跪你，你受唔受得起？」、「民主萬死，不辭」。最搞笑的是「走音哀歌大合唱」，大家一起吟唱在中式喪禮聽見的「喃嘸阿隬陀彿」，走音則不是我們的原意。跟這群朋友一起行動真的很開心，很平等，口號是輪流叫的，誰也可以發起叫口號。輪到那位中學生叫時，他這樣帶領我們：「白鴿—白鴿—變了—變了—烏鴉—烏鴉」，大家終於忍不住了，便笑說：「白鴿變烏鴉咪得囉，使乜咁樣兩個字斷開黎叫呀」，引來哄堂大笑。
Apakah masih ada banyak orang yang belum kenal dengan situs jejaring sosial yang satu ini..??, keberadaan Facebook memang sangat popular merambah keseluruh dunia dan pengaruh tersebut merebak ke Indonesia. Kini sebagian aktivitas kaum remaja atau masyarakat kita pun tak luput dengan aktivitas rutin dihabiskan baik itu menggunakan ponsel atau PC/NB hanya untuk mengakses dan berinteraksi melalui situs jejaring sosial Facebook ini.
Apalagi dengan pesatnya perkembangan dunia IT saat ini, telah banyak mempengaruhi perusahaan atau instansi dan lingkungan universitas untuk melakukan pemasaran di dunia Internet. Dan memang ada beberapa tempat yang mengijinkan karyawan/mahasiswanya menggunakan fasilitas hotspot atau sejenisnya tersebut untuk urusan bisnis ataupun akademik dan mencakup pekerjaan lainnya. Namun banyak dari mereka yang salah menggunakan fasilitas internet tersebut, dengan lebih memperioritaskan akses jejaring sosial facebook, untuk urusan pribadi, bukan urusan kantor atau akademik. Sehingga Instansi/Universitas mulai membatasi penggunaan Hotspot atau jaringan tersebut dengan dilindungi oleh proxy yang tujuannya agar tidak disalah gunakan, dan sekarang permasalahan nya adalah kita tidak bias mengakses Facebook atau situs yang lainnya jika jaringan kita dilindungi oleh proxy, Nah bagai mana mencari solusi mengenai akses facebook agar tetap bisa diakses walaupun di kantor/universitas hotspotnya terlindungi. oleh proxy, salah satunya dengan cara Free Proxy.
Jadi dengan Free Proxy atau Proxy Server, sebuah komputer server atau program komputer dapat bertindak sebagai komputer lainnya untuk melakukan permintaan terhadap content dari Internet atau intranet. Atau dengan kata lain Free Proxy dapat dikatakan bertindak sebagai gateway terhadap dunia Internet untuk setiap komputer klien.
Caranya tinggal berkunjung aja ke “privax.us”
Setelah itu, pilih salah satu Freeproxy diatas, misalnya “HideMyAss.com”
Anda cukup mengklik tulisan facebook.com atau tulisankan alamat URL facebook. Dan dilanjutkan dengan mengkilk HideMyAss
10. Stagnating worker wages and the emergence of a new monied aristocracy. Of all the income growth of the entire country of the United States in the Bush years, the richest 1 percent of the working population, about 1.3 million persons, grabbed up over two-thirds of it. The Reagan and Bush cuts in tax rates on the wealthy have created a dangerous little alien inside our supposedly democratic society, of the super-rich, with their legions of camp followers (sometimes referred to as ‘analysts’ or ‘economists’ or ‘journalists’). The new lords and ladies are the Dick and Liz Cheneys and the people for whom they shill. They are the Rupert Murdochs and the Richard Mellon Scaifes, and they are guaranteed to own more and more of the country as long as more progressive taxation (i.e. pre-Reagan, not pre-Bush) is not restored. They are the ones who didn’t want a public universal health option, did not want the wars abroad to end abruptly, did not want the Copenhagen Climate convention to succeed. They are driven by pure greed and narrow profit-seeking for themselves. They always get their way, and they always will as long as you poor stupid bastards buy the line that when the government raises their taxes, it is taking something away from you. It is the alliance of the Neoliberal super-rich with the new lower middle class populists led by W. and now by Sarah Palin that produces clown politics in the US unmatched in most advanced industrial countries with the possible exception of Italy. http://www.alternet.org/story/144755/the_ten_worst_nightmares_bush_inflicted_on_america
If you’ve followed the debate over climate change even a little, you likely know the main causes of global warming: concentrations of greenhouse gases build up in the Earth’s atmosphere, and create a “greenhouse,” or warming effect. You’re likely also aware that evidence of past warming periods has fueled the argument that natural causes are largely responsible for current global warming, and thus, our choices of ways to reduce global warming are limited. If Nature’s calling the shots, is there any reason to change human activities that increase levels of carbon dioxide, methane, and other greenhouse gases?
While arguments persist, there’s little doubt that human-produced greenhouse gas emissions play a major role in the current warming trend. Nature has a role, but it pales in the face of increasing emissions from human activity.
What are some of the natural causes of global warming?
Think back to science classes from school. You undoubtedly learned at some point that carbon dioxide is a naturally-occurring compound, that it provides food for plant life, and that animals breathe it out. You may have also learned that decaying organic material releases CO2. There’s no need to question these facts. Greenhouse gases can be emitted into the atmosphere from a variety of natural sources.
Skeptics of climate science, however, have latched onto a number of natural phenomena, and attempted to argue that they’re primary global warming causes. Some of the natural occurrences you may have heard discussed include:
Volcanic eruptions: Yes, volcanoes emit CO2 when they erupt; as Grist’s Coby Beck showed, though, volcanic CO2 emissions do not outweigh those produced by humans.
Solar cycles and cosmic rays: If you followed discussions about the causes of global warming at all, you’ve run across this argument. A recent study released by a group of European scientists concluded that “The chance of the natural cosmic-ray or solar irradiance explanation being responsible for more than 14% of the observed warming is quite negligible.”
Water vapor: You may have heard the claim that water vapor’s the most prevelant greenhouse gas, and therefore is the main cause of global warming (not CO2). This is half true. Water vapor is the most prevalent gas; however, it’s produced as feedback of increased CO2 emissions, and is not a “forcing” of global warming.
Why human causes of global warming are a much bigger problem
Many of the activities you take for granted ultimately contribute to global warming, including
Driving your car
Turning on your air conditioning or heat
Eating food that is locally out of season (or not locally grown), and shipped from other parts of the country or world
All of these activities rely on the use of fossil fuels. Burning of these fuels releases carbon dioxide… but CO2 that exists in a very different part of the carbon cycle. Fossil fuels are sequestered carbon: the elemental remains of organic entities (plants, animals) that were “stored away” by natural systems in order to maintain stability in the climate. You may find it ironic that many scientists and engineers are searching for ways to sequester carbon emissions: Nature had already done it quite well!
When you release carbon from fossil fuels by burning them, you’re essentially contributing to an “overflow” of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. This overabundance of heat-trapping gases can lead to:
Rising sea levels
Changes in seasonal weather and precipitation patterns
Increased severe weather effects
Lower rivers and lakes that are fed by snow and ice melt-off
Habitat changes for a wide variety of plants and animals
So, can you claim a straight-line, cause-and-effect relationship between climate change and these phenomena? No… but we do know that climate change increases the probability of these effects. Consider Colorado University climate scientist Brad Udall’s analogy: the climate is like a six-sided die, with “Two faces [that] say warm, two normal, two cold. That is your normal climate… We have now changed it. Now it says three warm, two normal and one cold.” “Rolling the die” becomes much more treacherous.
Do natural events and occurrences play a role in global warming? Definitely. But if we’ve learned anything from studying the geological record, it’s that nature’s time table is very different from the one for the current warming cycle — the climate has never warmed at this quick a pace. We also know that extreme climate changes produce extreme results for life on Earth… and that you want to do your part to ensure that such results don’t occur more quickly than they might otherwise.
If you’re looking for more detailed scientific information about the evidence for human-caused climate change, check out the International Panel on Climate Change’s “Summary for Policymakers” of its Fourth Assessment Report.
Image credits: takomabibelot and flydime at Flickr under a Creative Commons license
Tagged as: Carbon dioxide, global warming, greenhouse gases, human causes, natural causes
Source: Sustainablog and WIH Resource Group
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As things stand China’s financial control over US govt.is high.When they enter private sector, the results will be not good for US.Look at the African countries where china has invested, leading to local unrest, following Chinese policy of hiring only Chinese.Also China shall use this as a lever in diplomacy.
Story:
Chinese manufacturers are looking overseas to acquire the means to move into broader markets.
News that Ford Motor has agreed to terms with Zhejiang Geely for the Chinese carmaker to acquire its Volvo Cars division is the latest example of the next wave of Chinese foreign investment. Manufacturers–mostly privately owned, not state enterprises–are increasingly looking for brands and technology to use as the foundation of a new generation of innovative and branded Chinese products for both domestic and global markets.
The first wave of Chinese foreign investment was led by the country’s huge state-owned enterprises, which aimed to secure critical natural resources such as oil and minerals and bought into basic industries that are capital intensive and need scale, such as steelmaking, shipbuilding, construction and telecom infrastructure.
Chinese companies say that their motivation for foreign direct investment is market access or a pre-emptive securing of access against potential protectionist barriers. Computer maker Lenovo ( LNVGY.PK – news – people ) and white-goods manufacturer Haier have made inroads into the markets of the developed world following acquisitions, most notably Lenovo’s of IBM’s PC business. However, the fast-growing domestic market makes international expansion and the acquisition of foreign distribution networks relatively less important to many Chinese manufacturers than it would have been for companies from other developing economies at a similar stage of industrial development.
Further evidence that the acquisition of strategic assets such as brand and technology, including product R&D, is driving the new wave of Chinese foreign direct investment is that firms are entering foreign markets through M&A rather than greenfield investment.
In many cases, those acquisitions have been of failing firms, notably in the autos industry, where Detroit’s mistakes offer Chinese acquirers a rare and rich trinity of brands, technology and fire-sale prices. An additional plus: To the extent that these were firms in distress, any potential local political opposition tends to be more muted.
Natural resources and basic industries acquisitions, particularly in Australia, have sparked protests about national economic security being at risk, with state-owned enterprises portrayed as the instruments of an overbearing Chinese government.
Chinese manufacturers know how to squeeze value out of frugal engineering–the ability to produce low-cost versions of goods for mass markets–but they haven’t been able to add on the premium that can be charged for a top brand.
Chinese brands have yet to make global impact. Lenovo and Haier are the best known outside the country, but neither is in the same league as the likes of IBM, Dell ( DELL – news – people ), HP and General Electric ( GE – news – people ). Nor have China’s automakers been able to establish outside China brands of the value of Volvo, GM’s Hummer, whose acquisition by Sichuan Tengzhong is awaiting Beijing’s sign-off, or MG Rover, the last domestically owned mass-production car manufacturer in the U.K., which wound up in 2005 in the hands of Nanjing Automobile Group, now merged with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp.
Acquisition is not the only route to technology and brands. China’s automakers have long pursued the so-called “‘linkage, leverage, and learning” model of development, by conducting joint ventures with foreign manufacturers seeking access to the Chinese market, SAIC with GM (now jointly heading for the Indian market, too) and FAW with Toyota ( TM – news – people ), for example.
Baotou Bei Ben Heavy-Duty Truck, China’s sixth-largest heavy truck maker, announced a joint venture earlier this month with South Korea’s Hyundai that will let it revamp its model line based on Hyundai’s existing vehicles by 2014, far faster than it could do alone, and eventually give it access to the U.S. market through Hyundai’s distribution network there.
A similar joint venture approach is being taken in IT, where Chinese software firms have focused on their domestic market by working with foreign multinationals and expanded internationally little further than regional markets in Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.
Beijing has designated 20 industries in which it intends Chinese companies to become world-class, and it is driving consolidation and vertical integration in many of them. That makes its bureaucrats wary of private company ventures abroad (witness the dallying over Hummer) and subjects potential acquisitions to bureaucratic infighting between ministries championing “their” state-owned companies.
That may hold back the innovation that the foreign direct investment strategy is meant to promote. It may also hinder the creation of conglomerates that often drive horizontal integration necessary for developing economies to develop multinationals. South Korea’s chaebols, for example, started by replicating in overseas markets the innovations developed for their domestic market while simultaneously acquiring related technology and expertise internationally to grow as multi-product and multi-industry companies. China’s five-year plans aren’t so flexible.
India, in contrast does have conglomerates, such as the Tata Group. For all Chinese firms’ success in capital-intensive industries, they have been outpaced by Indian companies in skill-intensive sectors such as pharmaceuticals, information technology and business processing. There is no Chinese Wipro ( WIT – news – people ) or Infosys. Not yet, at least. Nor has China developed substantial food and beverage or retailing companies, two industries still dominated by Western giants such as Nestle ( NSRGY.PK – news – people ) and Wal-Mart ( WMT – news – people ).
It is easiest for any developing country’s firms to grow and internationalize in areas that lack head-to-head competition from U.S. and European firms. China’s carmakers are in the vanguard of those Chinese companies now showing a readiness to acquire the wherewithal to move out of the niches and into broader markets.
An interesting discussion has been taking place on the SourcePOV blog (hosted by Chris Jones) this week on the importance of communication — specifically the need for clarity and the methods that can promote it — and the trouble that ambiguity brings in a digital world. The debate, critique and insight from the many participants (myself included) has been a breath of fresh intellectual air this chilly week, not only because of the level of thought put into the discussion, but because the dialogue is challenging our collective assumptions about language in the present day digital era. Alas, we haven’t solved the problems of language and clarity in the information landscape, but we have posed some interesting questions.
One of the challenges that has come up is improving clarity in communications given the changing nature of the tools we use and the contexts in which we apply them. I’m not going to re-hash the debate here, rather I’d encourage you to join in at the source (no pun intended!) and add to the rich conversation going on there. What I am interested with this post is building on those ideas and offering some new ones on the future of communication. A few weeks ago I posted a highly unscientific, partly tongue-in-cheek poll to confirm or challenge something I was seeing in my personal communications, which was a shift from Facebook to Twitter and blogs in the number and nature of messages being shared. Facebook seemed to be getting quieter and Twitter and my blog-roll were heating up with messages and I wanted to know whether this was something unique to me and my network or something broader.
A few brave readers responded with 63 per cent (N=5) saying that Twitter and blog traffic is going up, while 1 participant felt there was no change and 2 voted for ‘other’. Unfortunately, no one commented and suggested to me what ‘other’ meant, as I’d hoped. Lesson: don’t expect much from half-serious polls.
Perhaps another lesson is that our electronic communications and online social networks are beginning to change. A look at the traffic for both sites over the past year shows that there was a big gain in March and April and a steady move upward or level since then. But what I see, and cannot be gained from these numbers, is a shift in the sophistication and quality of the content that I’m seeing on Twitter and my favourite blogs versus what is on Facebook. I would argue that 80 per cent or more of the very best content that I get on a daily basis can be traced back to my Google Reader and Twitter feeds.
It is not from academic journals or books or from formal presentations, rather it is content in the form of narrative fragments, little bits of information linked together, either unorganized or disorganized, and often free of any larger narrative beyond a general area of interest. Critics (too many to list here) suggest that this is a threat to literacy, a juvenile form of communicating, and out of sync with the way humans naturally communicate, which is based on stories with a beginning, middle and end.
While I agree that we are storytelling beings, I’d challenge the suggestion that stories (at least complete ones) are natural, while others suggesting that the electronic world of narrative fragments might very well be taking storytelling to a new level. The idea of ‘natural’ complete stories is a myth. When was the last time you sat down and told a complete story to someone (other than reading a bedtime story to a child) that could be reasonably understood and interpreted by someone other than the person you were communicating to? (In other words, you could take a transcript and show it to someone out of context and they would know what you’re talking about? No insider knowledge would be necessary, no shared history, no temporal or physical connection present). Probably not very often. The truth is that we communicate in fragments all the time. Twitter posts and Facebook updates work because the fragments we use have some other shared contexts with the audiences — intended or otherwise. These contexts shift and change and tools like Twitter, or text messages or other media provide a concise way to adapt quickly to rapidly changing contexts. This is why I think Twitter and blogs more generally are becoming the more powerful tool set for communicating and why I am seeing a change in my communication patterns.
In the days of Dickens people’s lives were far less complex than they were today. A person would communicate with a few dozen others at best and assume a few social roles. Today, we communicate with potentially thousands in many roles because of our vast networks and global reach through technologies. Yet the stories we tell are still done in fragments most of the time and require context to fully appreciate. So while our future of communication will require tools that enable us to communicate quickly in a variety of contexts to a broad audience, the importance of context will become as important as in Dickens time. A tool that allows us the ability to attract the right people (that is develop a shared context) and allow us to adapt it to the changes in context will be the one that fits with our natural communications and more likely to thrive. So the future will indeed be the past. Fire up the Delorean!
Join the discussion at the SourcePOV blog or here and in keeping with Dickens may I wish you all a Merry Christmas for those celebrating it and a happy holiday and insightful 2010 to all.
Here at Espresso Italia we greatly appreciate the continued support of our customers and to thank them we are now offering regular specials on our facebook page, so why not follow us, it might save you some money!! We will be putting all our specials on coffee, coffee machines from Saeco and Isomac and accessories!
We are continuing our series on understanding the basics of social media. This session will focus on Facebook.
Facebook is a social networking website which was founded by Mark Zuckerberg and a group of fellow Harvard University students to get to know their new classmates. It has since evolved and grown to over 350 million users worldwide. In 2009 Compete.com listed Facebook as the most used social network on the planet followed by MySpace.
Facebook users can add friends and send messages. They can update their personal profiles to let their friends know about themselves. Users may join networks organized by school, workplace, city, or region.
To get started on Facebook take a look at the video below.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4yu1XJQP50
Know who you are and whose you are. You were born for greatness. There is no limit to what you can do through Christ Jesus!
Why? Because knitting is badass. And because fucking because. Why not?
What gets me up in the morning? What is my motivation? I’m just scared of an empty life, I guess. 21 years and it seems I’ve done so little.
The move is the only thing I am truly proud of. I should have made the leap a long time ago. However, here I am, all moved in, doing the same meaningless shit I did back home. It’s not the town; it’s the people. It’s me. Facebook, Youtube, blogging, Facebook. My productivity went down a lot when I got Netflix.
Somewhere, people are living. Everywhere, I guess. I just have to find them. I just have to become one of them. I’ve got to get out there.
Because in here, well, you can spend a lifetime in here. After three new status updates in an hour, you run out of exciting things to say. Why am I sharing when there is nothing new to share? I’ll update how I currently feel, then what I am eating, then what movies I want to see, then… maybe a song lyric… and then… um… Expand that pattern over a year and I have wasted a year. Expand it over a lifetime and I’ve wasted a life. This is how I spend my time. Fuck.
I’ve got to get out there.
Paint a picture.
Build a bookcase.
Write a story.
See something new. Document it.
Make an acquaintance. Make a friend.
If I am honest with myself, that is more than I have done all month. And all of that can be done in a day. Tomorrow. Today.
You know what I want to learn? How to juggle. How to tattoo. How to get the HELL AWAY from the internet.
Dear Add-on Junkies,
Last Sunday, I received a very bittersweet email from a mother who has used FacePAD to help her cope with the untimely death of her daughter, Casey Feldman (pictured right).
This is her story:
“I was ecstatic when a relative directed me to Facepad! I will truly be forever grateful to the developer Arthur Sabintsev, the “lazyrussian” who, I might add, would accept no money from me and instead, asked that I make a contribution to the memorial foundation that has been established in my daughter’s memory.
We were devastated on July 17th [2009] when tragedy struck our family and my 21 year old daughter, Casey Feldman was killed when crossing the street on her way to a summer waitressing job at the Jersey shore. My main focus shortly thereafter has been attempting to archive everything related to her life in one location – CaseyFeldmanMemories.org. Casey’s Facebook contains over 3,000 photos (not including over 1200 wall photos) and I could not imagine the task of copying each of those photos, one by one to place them in the photo gallery on our memories website. Even with the volunteer effort of her many friends, the task would be overwhelming. Time consuming would be an UNDERSTATEMENT. I also felt a time pressure to have all of Casey’s albums backed up in short order because of my distrust of the Facebook developers who unilaterally removed much of my daughter’s public information upon her death, such as her profile, surveys, etc. They have yet to provide this information to us, despite being in touch with their legal department and providing them with documentation that we are the legal administrators of her estate. I continued to feel time pressured not knowing if any day they would unilaterally decide to remove primarily what was left of her site – the photo albums.
I installed Facepad quickly and easily within a matter of minutes. Thereafter, I began downloading Casey’s albums, each of which copied within a matter of a few minutes each. Within less than a week, around working and doing other things, I had downloaded all 67 albums with over 3,000 photos!
Thank you again Arthur, from the bottom of my heart. You deserve to be recognized not only for this outstanding application, but also for your compassion and generosity as well. You showed such kindness to me, a complete stranger and added one more big “positive” in this path of grieving the death of my daughter.”
Warm regards,
Dianne Anderson
For more information about the Casey Feldman and her Foundation, please visit CaseyFeldmanFoundation.org.
From a long-sealed cave tomb, archaeologists have excavated the only known Jesus-era burial shroud in Jerusalem, a new study says.
The discovery adds to evidence that the controversial Shroud of Turin did not wrap the body of Christ, researchers say;
Lost Gospel Revealed; Says Jesus Asked Judas to Betray Him
What’s more, the remains of the man wrapped in the shroud are said to hold DNA evidence of leprosy—the earliest known case of the disease.
“In all of the approximately 1,000 tombs from the first century A.D. which have been excavated around Jerusalem, not one fragment of a shroud had been found” until now, said archaeologist Shimon Gibson, who excavated the site for the Israel Antiquities Authority.
Found in a first-century cemetery filled with priestly and aristocratic burials, the tomb was initially opened by looters, who left the shroud behind, apparently thinking it has no market value. Experts were able to retrieve the artifact before it began to disintegrate.
The so-called Tomb of the Shroud is a rarity among Jerusalem tombs from the time of Jesus.
For starters, the Tomb of the Shroud appears to have been sealed shut with plaster for 2,000 years, perhaps as a precaution against the spread of leprosy or tuberculosis, which was also detected in DNA extracted from the man’s bones.
The tight seal apparently allowed the shroud—radiocarbon-dated to between A.D. 1 and 50—to survive the high humidity levels characteristic of Jerusalem-area caves.
Archaeologists were surprised to even find remains inside the tomb. Traditionally corpses were removed from such tombs after a year or so and placed in ossuaries, or bone boxes. (Related: “‘Jesus Box’ Is a Fake, Israeli Experts Rule.”)
Evidence Against Jesus Link to Shroud of Turin?
Housed since 1578 in a Turin, Italy, cathedral, the Shroud of Turin is believed by many to have wrapped the body of Jesus Christ after his death in Jerusalem—but the cloth has been decried as a hoax by many others. Several studies have attempted to settle the debate.
Carbon-dating studies by three different laboratories in the late 1980s, for example, suggested the shroud was made between A.D. 1260 and 1390, long after the time of Jesus. In 2005 another study asserted that the 1980s test had been based on a patch added in the Middle Ages and that the shroud is actually 1,300 to 3,000 years old.
The weave of the Tomb of the Shroud fabric, the new study says, casts further doubt on the Shroud of Turin as Jesus’ burial cloth.
The newfound shroud was something of a patchwork of simply woven linen and wool textiles, the study found. The Shroud of Turin, by contrast, is made of a single textile woven in a complex twill pattern, a type of cloth not known to have been available in the region until medieval times, Gibson said.
Both the tomb’s location and the textile offer evidence for the apparently elite status of the corpse, he added. The way the wool in the shroud was spun indicates it had been imported from elsewhere in the Mediterranean—something a wealthy Jerusalem family from this period would likely have done.
First Such Shroud, Second Such Textile
Assuming the new shroud typifies those used in Jerusalem during the time of Jesus, the researchers maintain that the Shroud of Turin could not have originated in the city.
That’s perhaps a big assumption, given that there are no other known shrouds from the same place and time for comparison—though in one case clothing had been found in a Jerusalem tomb.
“There have now been only two cases of textiles discovered in Jewish burials from this period,” said archaeologist Amos Kloner of Bar Ilan University. And both appear to contradict the idea that the Shroud of Turin is from Jesus-era Jerusalem.
As for the analysis of the newfound shroud, the researchers “checked their findings with the best experts, and this textile was found to be different [from the Shroud of Turin],” said Kloner, who was not involved in the new study, published today in the journal PLoS ONE.
To Kloner, the most important aspect of the new find is that the shroud could be carbon-dated. Examples of Jerusalem textiles from this period—never mind burial shrouds—are so rare that their main importance is in providing organic material for such tests.
The opportunity to compare the weave of this shroud to the weave of the Shroud of Turin is simply an added bonus, he said. “It is wonderful that they found this niche with the remains of a person, and even remains of hair,” Kloner said.
Shroud Is a Picture of Health
In addition to adding to the Shroud of Turin debate, the newfound shroud could help paint a clearer picture of the public health situation in the biblical era.
Experts don’t know much about the origins of leprosy, and biblical references may well have referred to various skin conditions. The disease is believed to have originated in India and to have arrived in the Mediterranean region sometime between the fourth and second centuries B.C. These most recent findings in Jerusalem may be able to fill critical gaps in knowledge of the disease.
The deceased’s apparently high status, right up to the end, indicates leprosy and tuberculosis crossed socio-economic lines at the time in Jerusalem—and that perhaps not all lepers were ostracized, as historical accounts often suggest, the study says.
The origins of leprosy remain hazy, but the researchers are hopeful that, as with the new study, a combination of archaeology and molecular pathology will help trace the evolution and distribution of this and other ancient diseases.
“The medical research has been quite extensive and has shed enormous light on the inhabitants of Jerusalem,” study leader Gibson said. “This is the first time that DNA research has been done on the skeletal remains of human beings from the period of Jesus around Jerusalem.” http://digg.com/d31D3Rc
A little while ago, I spoke at the Corporate e-Discovery Forum, where you find the legal experts who deal with electronic discovery. These folks really got the Total Recall message: “this is coming, and we’d better start getting ready,” said one attendee. Already, this community is beginning to grapple with how much the law should protect the privacy of one’s e-memories. I noticed this quote in a paper they were discussing about facebook and e-discovery:
The law in this area is just beginning to unfold. Its evolution will say a lot about who and what we are.
A new mobile web site from Colorado Ski Country USA is live, with links to social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Twitter, Facebook and resort snow reports are integrated in a new mobile web site from Colorado Ski Country USA.
By Bob Berwyn
SUMMIT COUNTY — Colorado skiers can now Tweet their way to the resort with the best snow conditions while en route, thanks to a new mobile web site rolled out by Colorado Ski Country USA this week.
With about 64 million mobile web users in the U.S., providing information to on-the-go consumers is more important than ever for businesses.
“This option allows users the flexibility to engage with Ski Country wherever they want,” said R.A. Burrell, founder of Internet Honey, the Colorado-based company that developed the mobile site for the state’s ski industry trade group.
Burrell said about one-fifth of adults in the country access the web from a mobile device for information on a daily basis.
The new site, m.ColoradoSki.com, includes up-to-date and breaking information on each of CSCUSA’s 22 member ski areas, and quick access to Twitter and Facebook postings from CSCUSA and its member resorts.
Summit County Voice took the mobile site for a quick test-drive on a Blackberry and found a quick-loading format with links to snow totals that can be sorted by resort, conditions for roads leading to Colorado ski areas and information on special events and deals at the 22 member resorts.
Clicking on the Arapahoe Basin link quickly brings up a text-based page with links to snow reports and other timely information, including A-Basin’s own mobile web site.
There’s also contact information for each area’s information desk lift ticket office, rental shop, and ski school, as well as parking instructions for each resort.
Users will be automatically re-routed to the site when accessing Colorado Ski Country’s main website from a mobile device.
“CSCUSA’s new mobile website simplifies everything for Colorado skiers, from planning a trip to checking the latest snow report, all the way down to where to park when arriving at a resort,” said Melanie Mills, President and CEO of Colorado Ski Country USA. “We think that this type of one-stop shop for Colorado skiers using the mobile web is a major step forward for the Colorado ski industry.”
This early version of the mobile site seamlessly integrates some aspects of emerging social media, with links to recent Twitter tweets from individual resorts and from the ski resort organization, as well as the ability to link with resort Facebook pages.
The next step would be the ability to include personal social media links, including local bloggers and other Twitter members, into the same feed.
From the Evan Williams party in Louisville. My New Year's resolution is to appear less stoic in photographs. Heck, I might even start to smile.
So I figured it was finally time to twit the blog. For those of you reading on a regular basis (that’s everyone right?) you will have noticed a new feature on the right hand sidebar which now shows daily twitter updates from yours truly. Borrowing and turning a phrase from the New York Times, it will feature all the news that fit to eat… and tweet. The focus is roughly local – and by local I mean wherever I happen to be at any given moment (which will be Lexington, Kentucky on most occasions) – along with the more interesting culinary related news articles I find from around the country. And of course, in an attempt to bring you the fullest social media experience possible, the twitter posts feed in from Facebook. So follow the blog on twitter for the latest updates (http://twitter.com/nthonaker), friend me on Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/nthonaker), or check out the blog here on http://nthonaker.wordpress.com. And if you see, hear or better yet – eat and drink – anything worthwhile, feel free to drop me note. It might end up in the next blog.
I freely admit that I am, although I am way out-geeked by some folks I know.
Like millions of others, geeks and non-geeks alike, I am also on Facebook. Like a smaller population of Facebook users, I play a number of the games created by Zenga for users to play for free. I still haven’t joined the gazillions of folks playing the pay-to-play online games like World of Warcraft, but I digress. The Zenga games I play involve a few basic actions: create your persona, use energy to do missions, buy properties to increase your hourly currency so you can buy more abilities/weapons/etc so you can do more missions. Throw in level increases based on experience and you’ve got a very rudimentary RPG. I love RPGs (role-playing games) and am still playing Dungeons & Dragons with paper, books, and dice. (I know, off topic again.) So, these games also allow you to attack other players to gain experience and currency. I don’t get into this much myself, but there are some folks I know who love to do this.
I hit my Facebook account a few times a day at minimum. At least a couple times a day, I go to the games I play, do missions until my energy is gone, spend or bank my currency and logoff. Yes, I am able to hit Facebook from my computer at work, and yes, I do hit it now and then (during periods of downtime, over lunch when I’m still at my desk, or for a two minute break from coding —see my job is even geek) to change my status or even hit the games quickly. When I open the games I usually have notes that I was attacked by someone or someones, frequently multiple times if they beat me.
Recently, I’ve noticed an interesting trend which lead to this post. When do you think the heaviest hits on my characters takes place? Over the weekend or evening/night during the typical work week? Nope. I see very little activity on the weekend. Almost all the real damage to my personas and their properties takes place during what would be considered by most to be the standard work day in the North American time zones. Now, as I’ve said, I do ocassionally hit these games during the day, but the amount of time I spend compared to the amount of time it takes for all the attacks I suffer during the day is very small.
I know a guy who keeps one of these games open for a large percentage of his time at work so he can do missions and attack other gamers. He also watches for when he gets attacked to that he can respond. As far as I know, he is the only one in his office who does this, but I have to wonder how many of these guys are out there at work with their game of choice open all day. Add this time to time spent reading news, chatting with co-workers, etc. and you can easily see where my title came from.
Now, some would argue that if we block sites so people can’t get to these time wasters, productivity would go up. I fervently believe otherwise. Block these sites and people will spend more time talking, reading print media, etc. The only way to increase productivity is to have something productive for people to do and have a manager who makes sure they are getting the job done. If the workers get their jobs done quickly, let them be rewarded by a few minutes of downtime. Let them take a quick break from a stressful task to hit a leisure site (that’s tasteful, non-offensive, etc.) without having to take a coffee or smoke break. It keeps them at their desk where they can still be reached by email or phone.
Of course, I’ve now skewed in a different direction than intended, but I guess that’s ok. It’s my blog after all.
Comments:
Old Bob wrote (3/17/2009 9:20 pm):
The last paragraph sounds like the basis for a Dilbert strip. All we need now is the pointy-haired boss and Catbert.
As record labels have fallen and web start-ups have takin off, the music business has almost completely changed over the last decade. Today musicians are on their own when it comes to developing into a real live band. Everywhere you go on the internet it is more apparent that artists are doing it themselves as much as possible, because it IS possible. With places like iTunes where you sell your music, Myspace (now dedicated to music)where you display your message, along with Facebook, Twitter and Youtube where you reach out to your fans and build a following.
Most recently we have Howcast.com which is a site dedicated to showing how to get things done. With over 100,000 videos already made, it is a great resource for ANYONE, musicians included!!! Check out the following video:How To Go On Your First Tour
As fall quarter is coming to an end, I start to reminisce about the courses I took this quarter. One class in particular was not only fun and educational, but it is a class that teaches you about web 2.0 and how it can be beneficial in the real world. Communication 395: Digital Communication Technology, taught by Kathy Gill, is honestly one of the most useful classes I have taken at the University of Washington. At first, I was skeptical about this class because I thought it was unnecessary but after my roommate Melissa convinced me to go to the first meeting and I found that this class would be very relevant to my future.
Professor Gill is one of the most tech. savy person I have ever met. Although, us college students live on facebook, twitter, and other networking websites, Professor Gill brings a different perspective to social media. The assigned readings in class helped me to understand what an advantage it is to have web 2.0 and how it can help us in the future. Google analytics was introduced to the class and it is a tool manages your websites or blogs. Google analytics is a great way to track down traffic, the number of clicks made my visitors, what’s the most popular link on your page, the number of unique visitors, etc. Working for a clothing industry and being in charged with the online site, Google analytics taught me how to track what’s working and what’s not working on our site. This helped me to increase sales since I could visual see what the customers like or dislike. Another hot topic that I had little knowledge in is Twitter. Professor Gill is a Pro at Twitter, she knew more stuff about Twitter than most of the students in the class! I learned that Twitter is more than just a status update tool, but it is a great tool for marketing, finding out what trending topic are and of course, a great way to social network.
Although I did learn a lot about web 2.0, I also found that this class is very beneficial to anyone’s career who is interested in communication. COMM 395 teaches internet etiquette on what you should publish on your blog or facebook, and the consequences on how it can hurt your reputation if not thought out properly. Because web 2.0 is mostly about social networking, by having accounts such as facebook, linkedIn and twitter, it can help you connect with people who are in the specific industry that you are wanting to work for. Developing a blog can be used to show companies that you can be devoted to a project (that is if you continue the blog after class) and because the whole purpose of having a blog is to update it daily, it also shows your obedience and dedication.
This class has taught me that the internet is your friend and there are millions of ways it can help you. Without this class, I would be clueless about all the online software and how to use it. Thanks to this class, I now have my own blog and has started another blog with my roommate, EmeraldBites. I highly recommend this class to students in all majors!
Al Gore has it exactly right. If Republicans can use Sarah Palin as a source, then Al Gore, who has actually studied this issue, deserves a hearing too.
I’ll bite on that. Al Gore has a right to be heard. After all, we’re not like the vindictive global warming “scientists” who suppress the work of those who disagree with them in what has all the appearances of a fanatical effort to persecute anyone skeptical of their religion.
From the largest and most trusted newspaper in the land, The Wall Street Journal:
Some emails also refer to efforts by scientists who believe man is causing global warming to exclude contrary views from important scientific publications.
“This is horrible,” said Pat Michaels, a climate scientist at the Cato Institute in Washington who is mentioned negatively in the emails. “This is what everyone feared. Over the years, it has become increasingly difficult for anyone who does not view global warming as an end-of-the-world issue to publish papers. This isn’t questionable practice, this is unethical.” [...]
In one email, Benjamin Santer from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in Livermore, Calif., wrote to the director of the climate-study center that he was “tempted to beat” up Mr. Michaels. Mr. Santer couldn’t be reached for comment Sunday.
In another, Phil Jones, the director of the East Anglia climate center, suggested to climate scientist Michael Mann of Penn State University that skeptics’ research was unwelcome: We “will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” Neither man could be reached for comment Sunday.
So I as a global warming skeptic am willing to let Al Gore be heard simply because I am a more open and honest person than the global warming alarmists.
But it’s not just that. I’m also willing to let Sarah Palin debate Al Gore even though Al Gore “has actually studied this issue.” After all, I’m willing to bet that Sarah Palin, unlike Al Gore, knows that the temperature of the earth’s core is not the “several million degrees” that Al Gore wrongly and frankly idiotically claimed it was.
I’m sure that Al Gore has studied something, but it wasn’t actual facts, it wasn’t truth, and it certainly wasn’t “science” by any legitimate meaning of the word.
All I want from Al Gore when he gets his “hearing” is that he actually tells the truth, rather than making false and misleading statements.
Here’s one for instance:
Al Gore has studied the Climategate emails with his typically rigorous eye and dismissed them as mere piffle:
Q: How damaging to your argument was the disclosure of e-mails from the Climate Research Unit at East Anglia University?
A: To paraphrase Shakespeare, it’s sound and fury signifying nothing. I haven’t read all the e-mails, but the most recent one is more than 10 years old. These private exchanges between these scientists do not in any way cause any question about the scientific consensus.
In the interview above, Al Gore repeats this lie about all the emails being more than ten years all three separate times.
But here’s the inconvenient truth that Al Gore would tell if he were being honest or factual:
In fact, as Watts Up With That shows, one Climategate email was from just two months ago. The most recent was sent on November 12 – just a month ago. The emails which have Tom Wigley seeming (to me) to choke on the deceit are all from this year. Phil Jones’ infamous email urging other Climategate scientists to delete emails is from last year.
The emails Jones wanted deleted were related to a Freedom of Information Act issue. The “global warming skeptics” wanted research so they could do their own review. It was unethical and contemptible to try to destroy such evidence.
The most damaging emails were from this year, not from “more than ten years ago.” In point of fact, the latest email was dated 12 Nov 2009 19:17:44 GMT. They weren’t just cheating, lying, colluding, conspiring, demagoguing, concealing, and distorting ten years ago. They were cheating, lying, colluding, conspiring, demagoguing, concealing, and distorting only last month.
Here’s an inconvenient truth: global warming “scientists” such as Phil Jones were manipulating the data to get the result they wanted:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
Now, the global warming alarmists are trying to say that “trick” is being used colloquially as in a clever thing to do, but what’s the purpose of the “trick”? “To hide the decline.”
Why would they want to “hide the decline”?
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
We’re not the ones using “tricks” to “hide the increases.” It’s the global warming alarmists who are using “tricks” to “hide the declines.”
There is an obvious pattern of deceit and corruption from politically- and ideologically-involved scientists who will get far more grant money hyping global warming and trying to solve the manufactured crisis of climate change than they would get if they said there wasn’t a problem.
And if that isn’t bad enough, we now find that these “scientists” have purged all their raw data – which had been sought by skeptics of anthropogenic warming for years. Beyond trusting the massaged data of documented liars and frauds, we now have to merely take their word for most of their “research conclusions.”
I’d trust my newborn baby to a starving pack of coyotes before I’d trust these people to tell me the truth.
So when we give you that hearing you deserve, Al Gore, tell the truth. Don’t keep selling the massive package of lies you’ve been selling all these years.
Al Gore says:
I’m not a scientist, so I’m not the best witness, but I have followed the debate for 40 years. It was a somewhat harder case to make 30-40 years ago, but it was still clear. So many of the details have been filled in now, it’s very hard to find a respectable argument contrary to the consensus on the main points about global warming. Some people don’t want to hear that, but it’s a fact.
That’s real interesting, considering that in 1971 – fewer than forty years ago if my math is correct – prominent global warming alarmists such as NASA demagogue James Hansen were predicting an ice age that would emerge from global cooling.
So it’s not “clear” in the way that science should be clear; rather, it’s “clear” in the way that radical judicial activists “clearly” saw the “penumbras and emanations” in the Constitution that showed that women should be able to murder the father of their childrens’ babies without the father of those same children having any say whatsoever in the matter.
Their “science” is as “clear” as their fecal matter, except for the fact that fecal matter would constitute raw data – something that they don’t have.
So we finally get to the current argument between Al Gore and Sarah Palin. Palin wrote an Op-ed in the Washington Post that Al Gore emerged from his carbon-spewing private jet to comment on in an interview:
MITCHELL: Well, one of the things that she has written recently on Facebook is that this is doomsday scare tactics pushed by an environmental priesthood that makes the public feel like owning an SUV is a sin against the planet.
GORE: Well, the scientific community has worked very intensively for 20 years within this international process, and they now say the evidence is unequivocal. A hundred and fifty years ago this year was the discovery that CO-2 traps heat. That is a — a principle in physics. It’s not a question of debate. It’s like gravity; it exists.
Sarah Palin’s response to Al Gore was tantamount to a bitch slapping, only Al Gore was “the bitch”:
Steven Hayward has a great article in The Weekly Standard on the Climategate scandal. Be sure to check it out.
The response to my op-ed by global warming alarmists has been interesting. Former Vice President Al Gore has called me a “denier” and informs us that climate change is “a principle in physics. It’s like gravity. It exists.”
Perhaps he’s right. Climate change is like gravity – a naturally occurring phenomenon that existed long before, and will exist long after, any governmental attempts to affect it.
However, he’s wrong in calling me a “denier.” As I noted in my op-ed above and in my original Facebook post on Climategate, I have never denied the existence of climate change. I just don’t think we can primarily blame man’s activities for the earth’s cyclical weather changes.
Former Vice President Gore also claimed today that the scientific community has worked on this issue for 20 years, and therefore it is settled science. Well, the Climategate scandal involves the leading experts in this field, and if Climategate is proof of the larger method used over the past 20 years, then Vice President Gore seriously needs to consider that their findings are flawed, falsified, or inconclusive.
Vice President Gore, the Climategate scandal exists. You might even say that it’s sort of like gravity: you simply can’t deny it.
- Sarah Palin
Let me add a little more to Sarah’s incredibly good response to Al Gore. Gore wants to claim that CO2 trapping heat is a principle of physics. And it is. But what he doesn’t account for – and what none of the global warming alarmist data-massaged computer models don’t account for – is that the planet has a means for venting vast amounts of carbon dioxide.
We have long known for a decade about the climatic heat vent over the Pacific that vents global warming gasses into space. We have long known that greenhouse gasses are trapped in the “sponge” of the oceans. What we find is that the vent increases the efficiency of rainfall when the sea surface temperatures rise above 28 degrees centigrade, and that the CO2 goes into the clouds, and then out of the atmosphere. So Al Gore again demonstrates that global warming proponents don’t know very much about science. CO2 traps heat, but only in a hypothetical closed system. Which is simply not the case here on the “real world” of earth.
Well, here is my very first post in my brand new blog. Hello out there! It’s about time.
I have decided to start this blog for a multitude of reasons, but most importantly due to the fact that I am discovering more and more by the day that I have a passion (or obsession??…yikes) for the world that my friends and I live in–the world of social media–a world that many grown-ups don’t understand.
I use the term “grown-ups” loosely. I am not referring to their age, but rather to a particular viewpoint that is quite foreign to me. I, like my fellow Millennials, do not simply use social media, but live my life on it. I wake up with Facebook, work on Gchat, get my news through Twitter, and entertain myself on Hulu and YouTube. The thought of not being connected is tough to imagine. This past Christmas I was on a cruise with practically no web access, forcing me to sign off. I did feel liberated, but even more so, I felt uncomfortable. Frustrated. Disconnected. And I didn’t know what to think.
I also work for a marketing and advertising agency, and have begun to notice that “Social Media” is the new buzzword. The grown-ups I encounter speak about this as if it is simply another medium: “We want to be on social media.” “It’s about time that we get on social media.” “Every company should have a social media presence.” This is all fine and dandy, but as a true, long-time social media user, I have come to realize that the vast majority of these marketers have no idea what they are doing.
Until now, brand communications have been a series of monologues, and the majority of grown-ups have entered the world of social media with similar expectations…and have been failing miserably ever since because they do not provide any value to users.
***Note: There are some brands who do get it, and I salute them. JetBlue. Home Depot. Burger King. Comcast, for God’s sake! If a cable company can learn to actually develop a dialogue with its consumers, any brand can.***
Anyhoo, I plan to use this blog to talk about anything that catches my interest within the social media world–the good, the bad, and the ugly. (Really, Abercombie? Really?? Why on earth would you have a Twitter page if you’re going to post 6 times in 6 months?)
But I digress.
I hope that through this blog, I can learn and grow with this medium as it becomes better recognized for the influential behemoth that it is. I feel lucky to be living in the midst of this revolution, and I look forward to seeing how it continues to change the way we buy, share, and live.
Well, we’ve finally gotten down to brass tax and started official production on “The Marvelous Failures of Stephen Priest”.
It’s true. The culmination of hours and hours of work to come will be a ten-minute short film, which will be edited down to five minutes for the Campus Movie Festival at UCF next semester. All parts of the film need to be readied for the week of February 17th, and on that day, and for the rest of the week, frenzied filming and editing will happen in order to have it ready for collection on the 23rd. It’s an exciting week, full of surprises, unnecessary stress levels, unhappy actors and actresses, and an extremely fun aura.
But in order for that week to take place, many things need prepping beforehand. Our usual pre-production schedule usually looks like this:
Story, Characters, Emotions
Outline, Script, Narration
Fonts, color schemes
Storyboards, Demo Edits (film mock-ups with storyboards)
Yeah, it’s a long list. There’s a lot to worry about, and for the most part, a team of people I do not have. But this time, it seems we’ll have several people helping out, and some actual legitimate teamwork happening on and off set. Hurrah!
I’m extremely excited. You should be, too. I’m posting some links for you to check out, and by all means, feel free to contact us with questions/comments/help offered/donations/anything! We look forward to presenting “The Marvelous Failures of Stephen Priest” to you next year!
Blinding Light Studios’ YouTube Channel
The Marvelous Failures of Stephen Priest Facebook Fan Page
While watching a documentary someone noted how they would have hated living in the middle ages. The idea of not being able to drive to the beauty salon once a week to get new painted nails was apparently too painful to bear thinking about. Imagine the horror at not having a car, computer, television and films, how on earth could someone survive.
Well quite easily I tried to explain. Everything is relative. If we had been born then, we would not have the good fortune of five or six hundred extra years of civilisation. We would not miss the little luxuries like our precious iphones, which we can’t seem to live without today, just in the same way I don’t miss some yet to be invented technology today. We can only use the cards we are dealt and we generally try to find some level of happiness with our lot. TV would not be missed, instead we would go with everyone else to watch a good old public hanging, and the next day we would chat about it at the public water fountain, and we would enjoy it, after all 10 million people claim to enjoy watching the auditions for Britains Got Talent and the X Factor, public mutilation for the 21st century. In the end the vast majority of us are not that innovative or special, we don’t visualise a better way, we are just following the collective herd.
So would I have liked to live in the middle ages. I’m sure i would have fucking loved it.
Now if you’ll excuse me I need to check what everyone is up to on facebook.
Google’s quest to take over the world will take a giant leap forward in the next few days as the world’s dominant search engine is trying to take the emerging real-time tools on the web and make them searchable and relevant.
Google announced on their official blog Tuesday that they will combine public posts on social networks — such as Twitter and MySpace — and blog posts to allow users to be able to view the most recent and relevant posts on the Internet. The tool will also include news stories, which is similar to their current Google News search engine.
The real-time posts will appear along with regular search results, but in a separate box. This section of a search is called “latest results,” and will continually produce results even after the search is complete. Users also have the option of pausing the real-time feed. Also like Google News, the “latest results” section will try to offer not just the most recent posts, but the most relevant recent posts.
CNN.com notes that this is Google’s first attempt to utilize the deal they recently struck with Twitter to have access to searching public Tweets. They also cut deals with Facebook, FriendFeed, Jaiku, MySpace and Identi.ca and will feature updates from those sites as well.
If a user wants to sort results by site, they can do so by clicking on the “latest results” feed, which will then open a new window that features news results, blog posts, Tweets, and other web content. You can then decide if you only want to view Twitter update, Facebook status updates, etc.
If Google succeeds, they could not only revolutionize their own search engine, but the way people find quick real-time content on the web. Having real-time updates in one place is what turned so many people on to Twitter in the first place. Google’s goal is to weed through the sea of information to bring the most relevant and important posts to searchers. So the question is: do you think Google will succeed? What other online innovations might come out of this new search tool? Is search relevancy the new step that social media needs to take?
ok so heres the deal. This blog will be dedicated to premiere trashing. If you are unfamiliar with this form of fun then here is a definition- trashing (v.)- to diss or make fun of bad companies, people, places, things, etc.
You can consider this as an FML but a TYL (trash your life).
My friend and i will be posting trashes and if you can come up with good ones yourself subscribe to my blog and comment them or email them to me and you will get credit.
Facebook, Twitter and My Space, everybody is talking about them, but is social media the new marketing frontier for your business? Many business people talk about huge returns in using social media marketing, but it really depends on two things, you and what you are marketing. First, you don’t need to be on every social media site and it’s best you are not. You must select the social media sites that work best with what you are trying to sell and who you are selling it to. We are photographers, Facebook is by far the most used and the most user friendly for us since it is set up to be a photo share site. Twitter works well for some types of clients, while some photographer use My Space although it’s a little scary out there, hence it’s neck name ’scary space’. The best way to select the site to use is look at the demographics of each social media site. We photograph high school seniors, Facebook is the best choice for us. Another photographer looking for families or Business portraits clients might find Twitter or LinkedIn as better source of prospective clients.
What ever sites you decide to participate in, the key to success in any social media site is to create posts that are interesting. You also have to learn to sell without selling. To be consistently interesting means that we all have to deal with our egos and our issues of self-importance. While there are many things in our daily lives that are humorous and others might find interesting, no one really cares that you are having a latte or just picked up your children from school. How much personal posting your friend/followers/potential clients can handle depends on who they are. If you are a young parent and marketing to people for Childrens Photography, you are your demographic, so your friends would be much more interested in your personal life than if you market to high school seniors. If you want to market in social media to friends/followers that are older or younger than you, set up a personal account for your family and friends and have a separate account for your business friends/followers. We do this on Facebook where we have 2000 friends who are seniors on one account for the studio and over 2000 photographers on another account for all of my books and DVD’s. This way seniors aren’t bored with posts to photographers and photographers don’t have to read about what my local senior are doing.
In social media there are way too many posts which fit into two categories, you have the warm fuzzies that think that everyone is fascinated with every mundane thing in their lives and then you have the infomercials, which are business people that have the selling subtlety of a used car sales person. As photographers we sell portraits, your friends and followers don’t care about portraits unless they are in them or know someone who is in them. Before you post anything, you have to put yourself into your friend’s/follower’s shoes and ask yourself, what’s in it for me? and/or if I read this post about a person, I knew very little about, (or just on a professional level) would this be interesting or funny? Posting photos of clients is always a sure way to get the attention of the person in the portraits and every friend or follower who knows that person. A post with suggestions on how to prepare for a session has a broader appeal, but is less likely to be viewed/read and add a posting that states that you just updated your website is a yawn, which nobodies cares about because it benefits you, not your friends/followers.
Humor is one way to talk about personal things without putting your friends to sleep. “I am having coffee” really doesn’t interest any one, “I am having coffee and spilled it on my laptop” adds humor and a little sympathy to the mundane. “I just picked up my son from school” (who cares) “I just picked up my son from school and he had ripped out the seat of his pants” (funny, in a folksy way) Even when using humor, most people tend to over-post. I try not to post more than twice a day, but most of the time it’s once a day. I post in the morning for photographers and evening for high school seniors. Then, if I have anything comes up during the day I post again after I am done for the day for photographer who are my demographic since most are close to my age and we are in the same profession. I seldom post more than once a day for seniors, since I am closer to their parent demographic than theirs.
The second group are those business people that take a non-personal approach to social media and just cut to the hard sell. This is even worse than the warm fuzzies endlessly talking about coffee and their children. If you fall into this Non-Personal hard-sell category you have missed something, especially with the name “Social Media”. People want to do business with people they feel are friends or at least friendly. Posting an ‘occasional’ sale or event is something that might interest friends/followers and even if they aren’t interested, they won’t be put off by it. Posting sales, events and specials all the time turns you into a nonstop infomerical, which nobody wants.
I personally find twitter is annoying for this reason. While you have the coffee post-ers you also have the majority of people posting things to get you to come to their blog or website. Once you go to the website they tell you to download a free this or a downloadable that, only to find another infomerical about buying one of their products with no benefit or reward for your time if I don’t want to buy what they have for sale. Capitalism at it’s worst. It’s like the guy trying to sell life insurance and mutual funds at a funeral. There is a time and place for everything and while sales drives all of our business, social media isn’t a place for used car sales tactics, not to mention you look desperate. I have my books linked constantly to my post, but I give photographers a huge amount of information for free in my posts, my articles on Gather.com, my videos on YouTube and now on our blog. I truly want to help photographers while I am boosting my book sales.
So in closing, talk about coffee and your kids less, talk about your clients and post their portraits more. Try getting involved with people before you try selling them something and always put yourself in your friends/follower shoes and ask, “what’s in it for me”?
I remember back in the day it seemed that men were much more aggressive when it came to approaching a woman they saw and liked from across the room. I mean, men would actually approach you and offer to buy you a drink! Nowadays, it seems like the men play the bar, look but don’t speak… WHAT’S UP WITH THAT? Now, I’m off the market but this goes out to all my single ladies out there that are wondering “Is it me or has dating changed?”
Yesterday, my bestie took me out to hang out for my birthday and we went to this nice spot in Teaneck, NJ. It was a decent sized crowd, not too many men and not too many women. There may have been a few couples, but for the most part it looked like an ample amount of “fish in the sea” or “fresh meat” out there to be had. I like to watch men and women interact, because I want to see what it takes. Is it what she wears that has the men looking? Is it the girl who flirts with all the guys that gets the most attention? Is it the girl who is cute but kinda plays the back that gets the guy or is there really no rhyme or reason to the dating madness?
What I saw was really kinda sad. It resembled what you would think of at a school dance. Guys hanging with their boys and the girls hanging amongst themselves. Now the room wasn’t divided and there were some people mingling. But it seemed they only spoke to people that they knew. I really didn’t see too many people approaching eachother at all. As the night progressed and more people came, there were more people letting their guard down and dancing on the floor, but for the most part it reminded me of a question that my girlfriends and I often chatted about after a night out… “what happened to the dating scene?” “where did all the men who approach women go?” OR “is it us?”
I often think that because the rolls for men and women have changed so much over time, we’re all confused in how we’re supposed to behave with eachother. Women are more independent and self-sufficient therefore making them more bold and aggressive and are asking men out. Women also are more “out there” then we used to be therefore we sometimes throw ourselves at men, making it easy for them. I think that they have become spoiled and often wait for the women to approach, that way they don’t have to worry about getting rejected or embarrassed if she’s not interested. But I thought, men liked to chase? Men were hunters once upon a time. Now it seems like the tables have turned. But I polled some of my guy friends on Facebook and these were some of the responses I got to my question:
POLL: FB Men I have a 2 part question. It seems like the men today have changed. Men used to be more aggressive when approaching a woman. Now it seems if you go out the men play the bar and watch from a distance… What makes a woman unapproachable? What signs or signals should a woman give in order to make you feel comfortable to approach her?
Guy: It’s not women being unapproachable, it’s the fear of rejection, not wanting to be embarrassed by getting shut down
Guy: From what I’ve seen yeah, I don’t really have issues with approaching women, I just do…never been brushed off… Guess I’m lucky
Me: So what should a woman do to give a signal to a guy that it’s ok to come and talk to her, besides just approaching him. Is there anything women can do?
Guy: For me it’s eye contact, a smile
Guy: when a woman is asking everybody for a drink that can be the reason [men don't approach] and we are in a recession… but women should maybe smile more thats a sign
Guy: I partly agree with being shut down thing. But I think men play back and watch more so than just jumping. When I go out I’m attempting to make a decent pick. I don’t wanna end up with the whore of the club. I lay back and find the one who is the most attractive to me it’s a combo of looks, how she dressed, how she moves when she dances and even wat she drinks or if she smokes. I prefer some type of eye contact be made and do it a little old school. But I will approach her. Some woman need to stop looking so dayum mean when they know a guy is checking. Unfortunately I’m sure some of my counter parts have ruined things and have been disrespectful but woman need to remember all mean are not alike!.
So ladies, I know that it’s not just my girlfriends and me that are asking ourselves these kinds of questions and now you have some honest feedback from the fellas. It’s not that they are intimidated, it’s just they have their pride and who wants to be embarrassed in front of their boys?! Although, if a man doesn’t approach you because of fear of rejection, then maybe he’s not worth it anyway. However, one guy also says he takes his time to scope out the scene because he’s looking for QUALITY! That’s a very good reason for a man to take his time and something that we should look at as well. Check out the men who are checking for you and if they are pouncing on everything that in a tight skirt maybe you don’t want him! And maybe we could help the guys out a bit and smile and look their way a little more. It gives them a little motivation to think they actually have a chance. And ladies, don’t make it all about the drink that you’ll ask him to buy for you AND your girlfriends… we are in a recession and every is on a budget SO maybe a more classy and sophisticated way to get a guys attention (and let him know you’re not just trying to get a free drink) is to send him a drink… see what happens.
So lately, I have spent more time on Face book having to trudge through piles and piles of religious spam. This stuff ranges from “God’s message for the day” to “If you are not ashamed to proclaim Jesus as your savior, do so by pasting this as your status!!!”. Well I am not ashamed….I don’t just believe it’s true..That’s why I’m not posting it.
What to do here?
When I say wading through it, I am talking about items posted on my newsfeed from my friends. I am not talking about messages spamming me to join a group etc. This creates a weird scenario. I should develop a chart which outlines a threshold, exceed it and feel the wrath of my “hide” button, stay within the limits and bask in eternal glory.
I spend a majority of my time either hiding the religious content, or contemplating just posting how I feel about it. I don’t think I am ready to commit Social Suicide yet. I have seen some pretty crazy stuff that almost makes me want to just let the chips fall where they may.
I have to confess to my FarmVille addiction, and no matter how busy I am, I always find time for this time sucking game. I always find the time to log into Facebook. Thank God, my Blackberry doesn’t support the game, otherwise, I’d be in trouble. I figured if I came clean, it was the first step, I’d be able to wean myself, but now they added Christmas decorations. ::sigh:: I wish it was something cooler, like 1 vs 100, seriously, I don’t know how I lived without XBOX 360 in the past.
Tomorrow, I’ll actually write a blog post about the CUNY IT Conference, and about the session on Web Tools and the Institutional Repository I spoke about But, tonight, it’s Friday, and I’m on my way out for some wine and girl bonding (don’t worry, Dollhouse is recording as I type…)
But, I needed to come clean about FarmVille, I feel better already. I know there are a lot of addicts out there. Let’s unite.
The Big Money Facebook 50 is a ranking of the brands that are currently making the best use of Facebook. Various metrics—including fan numbers, page growth, frequency of updates, creativity as determined by a panel of judges, and fan engagement—were factored into each page’s score and ultimate rank on the list.
Efforts run the gamut, from asking simple questions to polling fans to publishing contests and applications on their pages. And regardless of how established these brands were before they hit Facebook, the takeaway is that active engagement and participation on your page are a must to increase brand presence and grow your fan base.
Yes, I’ll admit it. I’m addicted to Facebook. I check in too many times a day, and use it way too often as an alternate form of communication with just about…well…everyone. It’s also a lifesaver for people like me who hate the phone.
That said, for those of us who troll Facebook more than we should, it’s natural for there to be a growing list of annoyances which result from frequenting a virtual establishment more than any place in reality.
So, without further adieu, here we go…
10. People Who Don’t Get the Real Purpose of the Facebook Status
Listen up, dipshits. The point of the Facebook status is NOT to tell us that you’re waiting in line at the dry cleaners or to give us your New Agey one liner pep talks. Do I really need to hear one more time that “today is precious – that’s why it’s called the ‘present’?”
Please.
Facebook status updates are either to entertain people with a little funny – or to vent your frustrations (frankly, also meant to entertain). Occasionally, you can send a shout out about an important event in your life – both good or bad – in order to save yourself the trouble of having to call a million people. I don’t recommend, however, you break up with a person via Facebook status. While highly entertaining, it’s still a shitty thing to do, which leads me to my next annoyance…
9. People Using Their Relationship Status to Signal to Their Significant Others There’s Trouble in Paradise.
I can’t believe I even have to say this, but don’t – I repeat – DON’T use your FB relationship status to let your baby know you’re pissed with them. I have actually heard from friends of mine, telling me they thought everything was fine between them and their girlfriend or boyfriend only to see their status change from “in a relationship” to “it’s complicated.” Can you be anymore high school than that? You’ve got a problem with your man, work it out at home and IN PERSON. I have even heard of one married couple who were going through some problems, only to have the wife change her status from “married” to “single” before letting her husband know it was over. That’s just beyond tacky. You don’t have the nerve to break up with the person IN PERSON, then at least do it one-on-one over the phone and not through the Facebook community. Made me feel like the kid at the dinner table watching their parents fight and not being allowed to leave.
8. Conversely, It’s Annoying When One Partner is Way Into Facebook and the Other is, Well, Really Not…
I usually don’t care that my man isn’t into Facebook. Frankly, his disinterest perfected aligns with his personality, so no biggie. That said, I don’t know…I guess deep down I’m a fucking twelve-year-old girl because I’d like my man to write the occasional lovey message on my wall…it’s like getting a big, bad and beautiful gawdy bouquet of flowers sent to your work on Valentine’s Day. It makes you feel loved and you get to show off to the other gals how lovingly awesome your man really is. I know, I’m pathetic, but there it is.
7. People Believing that By Simply Joining a Facebook Group, They’re Going to Cure All the World’s Ills.
I really hate being asked to join any of these groups, but I will occasionally do it if:
(1) I know the person sending me the join link is really involved in the cause outside of FB, and it’s my way of showing him or her support and
(2) it’s a cause I really believe in and one I put skin in the game outside my computer.
So for those of you who send me the link or app to cure cancer or save the friggin’ whales who have nothing to do with such causes, stop it. It’s really annoying. And even worse, that silly FB group eschews any real progress made on that cause’s behalf. Do your cause – and your FB friends – a big fucking favor and instead of spending your valuable time sending links for “Save Darfur” or “Stop Chopping Trees in the Amazon” take a measely $10 or $20 and donate them directly through the organization’s websites (NOT through Facebook). And shut the fuck up.
6. Stop Alerting Me Everytime Your Cow Takes a Dump on ‘Farmville’ or Your Virtual Vampire Bites Into Something.
For those of you who are lucky enough to be unaware of this, on Facebook there are applications which let you play a variety of games online. Some let you lead virtual lives on a farm, or running a restaurant, or become a wiseguy in your own lil’ ‘Mafia Wars’ (one of my former favorites). I too was once caught up in the fever of earning points for extra jobs and sending out notices on my news feed for help. Then, one day, I realized I had a life. A pretty good one, actually. And I walked away, cold turkey. Haven’t missed it since.
Now, I don’t expect for you all to stop doing something which gives you pleasure. But do I really need to know everytime you move up another level or buy yourself a new virtual weapon? No, I don’t think so. Moreover, I know that those apps give you the OPTION of publishing that kind of info or not. Choose not to, ok? It’s fine if you need the occasional help on a job…but otherwise stop with the FB bragging. You’re dirtying up my news feed and boring us to tears. Seriously.
5. People Who Only Show Pictures of Their Kids (and Never Themselves) on Facebook.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy to look at pictures of lil’ Ashley and Madison. Sure, why not? But some of you ONLY show me your kids. Don’t you realize the whole point of Facebook is to avoid having to go to the school reunions and see how people turned out? So what if you’ve gained some weight since school. Guess what, so have I pumpkin. And while I’m not sporting a bikini online anytime soon, I’ll still show off my chub mug for you all to see and judge. Big deal. We’re older. Some of us need to lose a few pounds or need a little face work done. Show yourselves and be proud!
Hey, there’s always Photoshop if you really have THAT many issues.
4. Hey Scumbags, Stop Hitting on Me and/or Our Spouses via Facebook.
If I had a dollar everytime either an ex-boyfriend or an old college “friend” started in with me via Facebook, I could take you all out to dinner. A nice dinner. Listen, I get that we all have those in our past that we wish we could’ve had – or there are the ones who got away. Hey, we’re all human, right? But there’s a fine line between catching up and seeing how you’re doing to trying to look under someone’s hood and ask in Joey Tribbiani-style “howa YOU doin’?” You know the difference, so don’t act as if you don’t. Light flirting is fine…wanting to start sexting and asking how my marriage is doing is not.
3. Facebook is a Social Networking Site – Not a Replacement for a Photo Album.
Throwing on a few pictures from last Thanksgiving is fine. Uploading more than 100 photos from your Family Grand Canyon trip is just excessive. No one’s gonna look through all that crap, so cut it out.
2. Speaking of Photos, Stop Tagging Me with Pixs From My My Embarassing Youth.
It’s just not nice to scan and tag those curled yellowed photos of me with feathered back hair and pre-nose job. It’s not good form to show the world what I looked like with metallic blue eye liner on. Stop with the tagging!!! Please!!
1. Hanging Out on Facebook May Be Kinda Lame, But it Sure-as-Hell Beats The Geek Squad Who Squat Over at World of Warcraft.
While several friends have vowed to curb their Internet/Twitter/iPhone habits in 2010 to reclaim a modicum of face time with friends and family, I’m thinking I need to be more electronically plugged in to DC’s arts and culture scene. A great place to start: DCist’s handy round-up of local museums’ podcasts, blogs and Twitter feeds. 
Top 25 Funeral Stories of 2009
Apakah masih ada banyak orang yang belum kenal dengan situs jejaring sosial yang satu ini..??, keberadaan Facebook memang sangat popular merambah keseluruh dunia dan pengaruh tersebut merebak ke Indonesia. Kini sebagian aktivitas kaum remaja atau masyarakat kita pun tak luput dengan aktivitas rutin dihabiskan baik itu menggunakan ponsel atau PC/NB hanya untuk mengakses dan berinteraksi melalui situs jejaring sosial Facebook ini.
A few brave readers responded with 63 per cent (N=5) saying that Twitter and blog traffic is going up, while 1 participant felt there was no change and 2 voted for ‘other’. Unfortunately, no one commented and suggested to me what ‘other’ meant, as I’d hoped. Lesson: don’t expect much from half-serious polls.
I remember back in the day it seemed that men were much more aggressive when it came to approaching a woman they saw and liked from across the room. I mean, men would actually approach you and offer to buy you a drink! Nowadays, it seems like the men play the bar, look but don’t speak… WHAT’S UP WITH THAT? Now, I’m off the market but this goes out to all my single ladies out there that are wondering “Is it me or has dating changed?”
