Archive for May, 2009

A heads up to all in the Bay Area this Friday. Indy Arts and Media,along with the Society for Professional Journalists is hosting the 2nd annual Innovations in Journalism Symposium at University of San Francisco. The all day event is a chance for journalists, techies and media professionals to get together, commiserate on the changing industry and hear from the industry innovators that are changing the way we think about media, collaboration and communication.
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I created this Photoshop collage on 2.18.2009 as part of a class "PhotoShop for Artists" taught by Liz Hickock @ the Bay Area Video Coalition.  It was a lot of fun –  I learned all sorts of great ways to work with masks and brushes and how to do photo touch ups. 

 

The web’s ever changing and the action never stops.  Here’s a few of our favorite recent links from around the world courtesy of our media network.  This week’s links run the gamut from finding VS funding for your social enterprise to the importance of “reputation grooming” to resources for writing website copy, marketing your business online and paying attention to your customers.  Plus a special lesson from Trent Reznor.  Check everything out, but be careful-you just might learn something! continue

Alright class pay close attention.  This is exactly WHAT YOU DON’T DO with a Twitter account, or with any readily archived, publicly accessed social platform.  To be honest, hopefully you don’t do anything like this at all.

So the Twitter echo chamber started buzzing a couple days ago about a very public meltdown by a very disgruntled reporter, namely David George Cosh, tech reporter for Canada’s National Post.   

Apparently Cosh was upset that a potential source for a story he was working on didn’t jump as high and as quickly as he would have liked.  Cosh was apparently upset because the potential source, marketing consultant April Dunford, had not returned a phone call in time for him to make his story deadline.

When Dunford, who had no other involvment in the story says she didn’t know Cosh before the event, returned the call a couple of days later all digital hell broke loose.  Apparently the exchange was pretty heated, and resulted in this Twitter post from Dunford:

“Reporter to me “When the media calls you, you jump, OK!?” Why, when you called me and I’m not selling? Newspapers will get what they deserve”

Oh, baby.  Hell hath no fury like a reporter backtalked.   continue

Here’s our weekly list of the hottest, most interesting and most useful news from around the ‘net in the last week.  Everything from South By Southwest Tech news to Daily show ranting.  Check ‘em out.  You just might learn something. 

 

Growing up online-

• The Digital Natives are here.  The first generation of childredn born into a wired world face a rapidly changing world of technology and information.  But to them it’s just the same ol’ same old.  John Palfrey’s new book (Growing up Digital) explores the way these plugged in youth see things differently from the rest of us. (On the Media) continue

 

For all you sync happy Wordpress/Twitter junkies, Tweetsuite has the integration cure for what ails ya’.

Tweetsuite, the new Worpress plugin by Dan Zarella lets you fully integrate Twitter into your Wordpress blog in pretty seamlessly.

Think of Tweetsuite as a supersized version of Zarella’s Tweetbacks plugin. Not only will the plugin display all tweets that reference a particular post, but it feeds posts directly to your Twitter account and automatically adds buttons for Tweeting, Re-Tweeting, and adding to your favorite tweets.  There are also side bar widgets that display your latest, favorite, and most popular Twitter feeds. Twitter Overload? Pretty close.

So far I’ve installed the plugin on all my sites and it’s working fine. While it would be easy to OD on this feature heavy plugin I’m using it primarly for the Twitter auto post and Tweet this features. continue

I found an interesting review in the NYTimes book section on Samuel Huntington, a political theorist and noted “power thinker” who passed away on Dec. 24.

Far from someone to tackle small subjects, just looking at Huntington’s book titles including “Political Order in Changing Societies” and “The Clash of Civilizations,” gives you an idea of the kinds of intellectual issues he was taking on.

The review discusses these two books as well as Huntington’s relationship to philosophers Karl Marx and Giambattista Vico. continue

While there are lots of stock photo sites out there, many of them offering cool images, some of them actually offering cool free images, I’ve found that most of the images found on these sites are just that-stock and non attention grabbing.  More elevator music than Miles Davis concert. So I’ve been finding myself clicking through the Flickr Creative Commons photo galleries with more and more frequency.  The galleries are a great place to find some really creative free images.  And since they’re all liscenced under a Creative Commons agreement, they’re free for the public to use (note-while free to use, different photographers use varying types of liscences with particular attibution and editing rules.  Be sure to check with the photographers before using).

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By now this video by Gary Vaynerchuk, WineLibrary founder has become the stuff of internet cult legend, and for good reason. In a down economy companies big and small are asking themselves how to stay afloat, how to make a profit and the best ways to position themselves for the upcoming years. It’s a strange time for the force, folks. Yes, the economy’s in the tank. Yes it’s becoming harder to make it as a start up, small business/business/idealistic entrepreneur. But on the flip side, now’s the time to get everything together-what’s that crazy business idea you’ve been mulling over? Do it. That new direction you’ve thinking of taking? Now’s the time.

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It always takes a lot of work to redesign a site.  YCB wants to take this opportunity to thank the following people and sites that made it all possible.

flickr:  creative commons

orange diamondplate:

Diamond Plate Sunset Reflection by glocinsgrel

red tread:

red tread pattern by meek rgt

diamondplate:

hatch by christian jackson

waves:

~ Water ~ by tomhide

sand and water:

Water on Sand at Avila Beach, California by brainwidth

shells:

She sells sea shells by the sea shore by annfrau

Sand and rocks.3. — Three is a good number. by SleepyOwl

Public domain images (from google image search):

wordpress icon:  http://www.techknowl.com/2009/01/download-web-20-wordpress-icons.html

earth day image: http://www.myspace.com/lastinternationalplayboys

green business: http://www.ecosherpa.com/green-business/eco-labels-100-green/

honor labor: http://blogs.zdnet.com/open-source/?p=2839#comments

lgbt flag: http://www.colourlovers.com/blog/2008/02/15/colors-of-the-cause-lgbt-movement

immigrant rights: http://portland.indymedia.org/en/2007/06/361000.shtml

city of oakland: http://www.abetteroakland.com/things-that-are-lame-about-oakland/2008-10-01

electronic frontier foundation: http://eff.org/bloggers
colors from adobe kuler
http://kuler.adobe.com/#themeID/439373
organic pull 2
by:  su11y_

theme:  WP Remix