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The best preparation I received for blogging was teaching online. One of the most important
elements for running a successful online course involves presence. The instructor must be
“present” in the course discussion boards and blogs. Teaching online gave me tons of
practice in writing rapid, hopefully thought provoking, discussion and blog posts around the
curriculum and the student’s work. Much has been written about how teaching onlinecan improve
on-ground teaching.I’d add comfort with blogging to the benefits online
learning.
Is the ability to quickly produce prose that (at least sometimes) may interest a reader the
sort of skill that we want to cultivate in our students? The importance of rapid, persuasive
writing is growing as blogs and other social media displace other forms of communication. We all
need to learn to make our case, to persuade, to make arguments based on evidence – and to
do so in a limited attention economy. For all of us, both writes and readers, time is our
scarcest commodity.
Perhaps participating in online courses provides students the same practice with rapid and
persuasive writing as teaching an online course. The same behaviors that make for a good online
instructor, namely the willingness to be active and engaged with the asynchronous communication
tools, are also those behaviors of a successful online student. An online course is all about
collaboration and interaction. The best students post persuasively, briefly, and often.
I would venture to say the best preparation I received for online teaching is blogging! Quick
posts sharing links and commentary – something bibliobloggers have long been doing –
translate perfectly to the way I interact with my online and hybrid classes. I also think the
blogging activities have helped my students with their writing – just afeeling, no evidence
yet, but it might be a good thing to study.
Cet outil, simple mais très puissant, permet donc d’augmenter simplement le nombre de
commentaires, se qui vous donnera plus de contenu et donc améliorera vos positionnements
Google !
In a recent conversation here at ReadWriteStart we were talking about what readers want
most. Beyond stories about where the latest funding opportunities are found, and beyond wanting
to know what startups are doing that works, we know that sometimes our startup readers just want
some simple practical advice.
Towards that end we've posted many a list. And now it's time for a review. Here are six of our
best lists in abbreviated form. From how not to kill your startup, to public speaking, to funders
to follow, we at ReadWriteStart want to help. If you have ideas for future lists, please post 'em
as comments below.
Fwix, a startup that offers a stream of local news that’s
updated in real-time, has landed a deal with The New York Times Company to use Fwix’s
hyper-local news wire across The New York Times Company’s Regional Media Group’s 15
newspapers, as well as other business units such as Boston.com and NYTimes.com.
Fwix, which launched
its
realtime API a few weeks ago, aggregates news articles and blog posts that are relevant to a
certain region (the site now features support for over 80 cities in the United States and
Canada). To do this, the Fwix team selects news sources and blogs that it thinks are related to
each city, and also uses automated algorithms to determine when other content might also be
relevant. Fwix has also recently tweaked its algorithm and offerings to include
“nearby” local content features. So content on Fwix displays relationships between
both topics and nearby location. For example, after reading a story about a robbery that took
place in the Mission district of San Francisco, you’ll be able to find any other crime and
or stories about the Mission neighborhood.
While its still unknown how Fwix will be implemented across all of the New York Times’
properties, the startup’s local news content is already being used in the publishing
company’s Northern California newspaper, the Santa
Rosa Press-Democrat. In the “YourTown” section, the Fwix feed is set to
a current location and feeds realtime news about the San Francisco Bay area. However in some
instances, the Fwix news feed might show the reader his or her own local news by autodetect
location via an IP address (say, at a global-reaching site like www.nytimes.com).
There is a revenue agreement with The New York Times Company, says Fwix founder and CEO Darian
Shirazi, but he declined to reveal the exact amount involved in the deal. And the deal is not
exclusive, so Fwix can be incorporated on other news sites as well. Fwix’s local news
stream has also been integrated on integrated on WeatherUnderground.com and UPI.com. And the startup also launched the Fwix News Publisher app on
Facebook, which lets any Facebook Page add local news of any variety of subjects (business,
sports, politics, living, entertainment, etc.) to their page’s feed. The deal with the New
York Times is a huge coup for a startup that launched less than
two years ago.
The NYTCo’s local content efforts are getting a quick boost from hyperlocal newswire
Fwix. In a sense, the deal with Fwix can buttress
the NYTimes.com’s New York metro area blogs program, The Local, which it began last
year. The deal enables the distribution of Fwix’s technology and hyperlocal content across
any of NYT’s Regional Media Group properties, as well as other properties such as Boston.com and NYTimes.com. For now, the deal will center on the various small
properties belonging to the NYTCo (NYSE: NYT), not the NYTimes.com itself—at least not right away, at least. The
first NYTCo paper to take advantage of Fwix’s newswire is the Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa, Ca.
The NYTCo’s local content efforts are getting a quick boost from hyperlocal newswire
Fwix. In a sense, the deal with Fwix can buttress
the NYTimes.com’s New York metro area blogs program, The Local, which it began last
year. The deal enables the distribution of Fwix’s technology and hyperlocal content across
any of NYT’s Regional Media Group properties, as well as other properties such as Boston.com and NYTimes.com. For now, the deal will center on the various small
properties belonging to the NYTCo (NYSE: NYT), not the NYTimes.com itself—at least not right away, at least. The
first NYTCo paper to take advantage of Fwix’s newswire is the Press-Democrat in Santa Rosa, Ca.
Eating healthy on a budget isn't just for hipsters on food stamps.
While some have called Michael Pollan and Mark
Bittman's ideas about cooking and eating "elitist," there are many cooks who
are smart enough to know that cooking at home is the only way to eat healthy on a budget. While
Jamie Oliver pledges to give all
school children "10 recipes that will save their lives," almost anyone on any budget can change the
way they shop for, prepare, and think about food.
Blogs that focus on budget & healthy eating: Budget Bytes - easy recipes, cost breakdown, some
veg-friendly dishes. Thirty Bucks a Week - vegetarian, weekly receipt
breakdown. Eating Organic on a Food Stamp Budget Cheap, Healthy, Good - nutrition and cost
breakdown, weekly vegetarian focus. Not Eating Out in NY - cost and health breakdown.
And many, many more in this list of 100
frugal cooking blogs. (Although not all of them with a healthy focus)
When
Valve
confirmed Mac support for Steam last week, I emailed the Joystiq team with the following claim:
"this is arguably the biggest gaming news on Mac OS ever." It seems Valve shares the sentiment, as
the company's John Cook - director of Steam development at Valve - calls it "the biggest event in
Steam's history." He also answered some more of our questions via email, so read on!
Joystiq: Just to clarify, Steam users with games already purchased on Windows and that have
Mac versions available will have those Mac versions accessible to them immediately in Steam, for no
extra charge?
John Cook: This is supported by "Steam Play." We are using this feature to provide cross-platform
access to all Valve games to those who already own the PC version. We hope other developers and
publishers will use it in the same way.
Some blogs have reported that Valve "hates the Mac" - From Gabe: "So, they seem to think
that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say
they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms." So,
as a followup, was Apple involved in this endeavor at all? Did they provide any programming
resources or platform-level assistance?
First, the statement that Gabe hates the Mac is erroneous. In fact, he worked on a 6Mhz Lisa
running a Mac emulator in his first post-college job and is involved in the current Mac work on a
daily basis. As for Apple, yes -- we've been working with them on this project and we're looking
forward to expanding that relationship as we launch Steam for the Mac.
When
Valve
confirmed Mac support for Steam last week, I emailed the Joystiq team with the following claim:
"this is arguably the biggest gaming news on Mac OS ever." It seems Valve shares the sentiment, as
the company's John Cook - director of Steam development at Valve - calls it "the biggest event in
Steam's history." He also answered some more of our questions via email, so read on!
Joystiq: Just to clarify, Steam users with games already purchased on Windows and that have
Mac versions available will have those Mac versions accessible to them immediately in Steam, for no
extra charge?
John Cook: This is supported by "Steam Play." We are using this feature to provide cross-platform
access to all Valve games to those who already own the PC version. We hope other developers and
publishers will use it in the same way.
Some blogs have reported that Valve "hates the Mac" - From Gabe: "So, they seem to think
that they want to do gaming, but there's never any follow through on any of the things they say
they're going to do. That makes it hard to be excited about doing games for their platforms." So,
as a followup, was Apple involved in this endeavor at all? Did they provide any programming
resources or platform-level assistance?
First, the statement that Gabe hates the Mac is erroneous. In fact, he worked on a 6Mhz Lisa
running a Mac emulator in his first post-college job and is involved in the current Mac work on a
daily basis. As for Apple, yes -- we've been working with them on this project and we're looking
forward to expanding that relationship as we launch Steam for the Mac.
Lon S. Cohen is a freelance writer and is @obilon on Twitter. He’s also the Director
of Communications at @ALSofGNY. This
post was co-authored by Steve Cohen, who is the Founder of Baywood Consulting Group and the
former CIO of M&T Bank. He can be contacted at baywoodconsultinggroup@gmail.com.
From felons on Facebook to tips through Twitter, social media is being used more and more by law
enforcement agencies, and not just to fight Internet-related crimes. We’re talking about
solving crimes that are happening on the street and in your community.
According to Lauri Stevens, founder of LAwS Communications and organizer of the SMILE (Social Media In Law Enforcement)
Conference being held in Washington D.C. this April, adoption of social media is still in the
“very, very, early stages,” but she sees it making an upward turn. “I expect
2010 will be a monumental year,” she said.
But many police departments that have embraced social media are still trying to figure it out.
“Most agencies … are not significantly proactive with keeping up with content and
updates,” said Terry Halsch from CitizenObserver.com, developers of the tip411 system for police agencies.
“There are some limitations because of uncertainty of how secure information is, how can it
be efficiently maintained, [and] the risks and liabilities of entering the world of social
media.”
Below are six different ways law enforcement is utilizing social media and real-time search to
enhance tactics, disseminate public information, and ultimately prevent criminal activity.
1. Police Blotter Blogs
A police blotter is the record of events at a police station. Traditionally, a desk sergeant kept
a register of these events. Nowadays, Twitter feeds, blogs, YouTube, and Facebook Fan Pages are being used by captains and
chiefs to put out the digital equivalent of the police blotter in real-time.
Publishing a register of crimes and arrests in an area has been an online activity for a while
now, especially through local newspaper websites. But social media is allowing many police
officers on the scene to report the publicly available details of a crime for themselves.
Reporters are getting their facts directly from a stream of real time-data and blog posts coming
from the department.
Individual cops aren’t about to turn into citizen journalists anytime soon, but the police
are able, through social media and real-time updates, to provide essential information that the
public and news gathering agencies need to know. Journalists today often use the web for their
first line of research, and rely on web-based police reports for many of the details they need
for a story.
“We don’t just release the police report; we write our own story and post it to our
website,” said Mark Economou, the Public Information Manager for the Boca Raton Police
Department in Boca Raton, Florida in a post on ConnectedCops.com. “Even more interesting, we are finding the media is
just cutting and pasting our stories to their sites, both in television and print.”
The Boca Raton Police Department has developed their own branded web platform that they call
Viper. Social media is a very important
part of their strategy, and like anyone adopting social media into a plan, they use it to support
and enhance the work they already do.
2. The Digital “Wanted Poster”
In the vein of an Old West “Wanted” poster, displayed in the most trafficked area of
town, modern-day law enforcement agencies are posting descriptions of criminals on today’s
most trafficked spots — namely the social web.
With millions of users, extraordinary reach, and the lightning-fast exchange of text, photos, and
video, platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are ideal for getting the word out about
wanted persons with up-to-the-minute updates.
The Boynton Beach Police Department is a good example. On their Facebook Fan Page, the department put up a post with the
headline, “Police need help identifying motorcyclist who robbed man at ATM.” In the
post there was a photo from the ATM machine of the crime in progress. The department also
cross-posted the information to their Twitter page.
In the UK, the Leicestershire
Constabulary is one of a number of police departments focusing on being hyper-local and
involved with the community through social media. Their website has a section titled
“Can you help?”
which is formatted like a blog, and contains posts about ongoing criminal investigations, and a
“Wanted Poster” and “Missing Persons” area with photos and requests for
residents to respond with any leads they might have.
The stories are also fed to a Facebook Page that is very interactive and updated constantly. They also maintain a
Twitter profile, a YouTube account, and the department
offers the ability to subscribe to their news feed via RSS. It’s an impressive mixture of
social media tools that seems to work fluidly and update automatically.
3. Anonymous E-Tipsters
Tips from the community have been a time-honored way that citizens have worked with the public to
fight crime.
Consulting companies are developing very sophisticated ways for the public and the police to
interact online. The tip411 program
developed by the CitizenObserver Corporation is marketed to law enforcement as a web-based
notification toolset. Citizen participation has always been a big part of fighting crime, and the
people at tip411 stress that social media “acts as a ‘force
multiplier’ by empowering your community to get involved.”
“Anonymous text tip systems are gaining significant traction because they enable young
people to provide information without fear of retribution, i.e. ‘Snitches get
Snitches,’” said CitizenObserver’s Terry Halsch.
The program allows tipsters to send information anonymously through a variety of means including
“anonymous web chat, text tips and secure social media publishing.” Filtered alerts
can then be pushed out through a police department’s central location to other web mediums.
Bundled with other offerings, tip411 can then be published with Google Maps to create a clickable, interactive crime
“heat map” of sorts where others can click on links directly to add more information
and tips based on location. This program is meant to encourage increased interaction between the
police and the community through real-time web tools.
“It doesn’t matter to us where the information comes from,” said
Detroit’s Chief of Police, Warren Evans, a tip411 user. “We just want the information
so we can act on it. I want people to know that they can feel safe using this system to
communicate with us directly.”
4. Social Media Stakeout
Social media advocates stress listening as a part of any brand’s online marketing strategy.
Listening to the bad guys doing bad things has always been a part of police work. It’s
important for police to search the real-time web to target particular keywords and phrases being
passed around on social media. Use of social media monitoring has a strategic, tactical and
operational application for law enforcement.
Boston Police Department Superintendent John Daly spoke about using Twitter search to monitor
chatter around the Boston area in real-time. He’s very sensitive to the implications of
engaging in this type of search, as many police departments are.
“We have to be very careful because there’s a Big Brother aspect to this,” Daly
said.
He stressed that they were not looking at “everyday messages,” as he put it, but
specific tweets that signaled something they should be looking into.
“But when people start saying, ‘What’s that smoke coming from the Hancock
Tower?’ or ‘Why is everybody running around Copley Place –- is
something going on?’ — if two or three things come in we look at patterns, trends,
something maybe we should be paying attention [to]. So it’s sort of an early warning
system.”
5. Thwarting Thugs in the Social Space
Myspace, Facebook and Twitter are popular with gang members, and police use this to their
advantage. Law enforcement has been able to infiltrate street gangs by posing as fellow gang
members online, making connections, and intercepting criminal communications as they happen.
Information like photos, videos, and friend links help law enforcement understand the dynamics of
gangs when investigating their activities.
“Investigators build phony profiles to ‘friend’ gang members either
within YouTube, Facebook or Bebo, and then may migrate that friendship to another platform and
gain trust and get their ‘friends’ to share useful information,”
said SMILE conference organizer Lauri Stevens.
According to an article in 219magazine, police in Cincinnati used Facebook and MySpace to
follow more than 20 members of a local gang, the “Northside Taliband.” The evidence
they gathered helped law enforcement connect members to a multitude of crimes, including a
possible homicide.
Other agencies have employed these tactics as well. The NYPD is using the Internet to monitor
gang activity, as well, and in a story reported in the Daily News, cops said that gangs have been
communicating on Twitter. They think that one Twitter exchange between gang members may even have
resulted in the shooting of a youth. The police seek out code words and slang used by individual
members to follow gang members online who are organizing illegal activities.
“It is another tool … just like old phone records,” a police source said in the
article.
6. Tracking and Informing with Twitter
As we all know, Twitter has plenty of uses for individuals and companies. Law enforcement also
uses the service to communicate with the public.
Stevens told us that she follows at least 700 law enforcement agencies worldwide on Twitter
alone. Not all of them are active, but some have found unique ways to incorporate Twitter into
their police tactics. “The LAPD used Twitter to monitor crowds during the Michael Jackson
funeral,” for example, said Stevens, and the Boston Police have been using Twitter to alert
followers of evolving situations in real time.
Sergeant Tim Burrows does media relations for the traffic services unit in the Toronto Police
Service. Tim saw his traffic safety messaging hampered by the mainstream media’s editing
time lines, so he started using
Twitter to talk to the local media about ongoing situations and inform the public. He
considers his tweets about traffic safety information a valuable public service.
The Broward County Sheriff’s Office took
things a step further. When the police wanted to utilize social media they, like many agencies,
felt that existing public sites were too unsecured and vulnerable for a system-wide roll out
within the department. So inspired by Twitter, the department took things into their own hands.
“CyberVisor was my vision
of Broward County Sheriff’s Office’s own controlled Twitter,” said Lynne
Martzall, External Affairs Manager, who worked with webmaster Tony Petruzzi to create it.
Since it was rolled out, CyberVisor has been used to broadcast information about unfolding
situations, such as crimes in progress, to put out information after a bank robbery and when the
Sheriff’s Office was looking for an escaped convict. For now, the public can’t
respond to CyberVisor — it’s broadcast only — but it has still be effective.
In one instance, they alerted followers to someone in South Broward County impersonating an
officer. In another, they sent out a missing child alert from a local elementary school with a
detailed description of the child’s physical appearance and where the child was last seen.
"That's Charles Petzold! Looking stylish with the cover of his free ebook on his tee shirt.
It's a draft preview of his upcoming book (to be published in the fall): Programming Windows
Phone 7 Series. This preview ebook contains six chapters in three parts (153 pages total):"
A draft version of the upcoming book Programming Windows Phone 7 Series is available for
free download. So if you haven't had a chance to start playing around with the new developer
tools, here is one more reason to start - and if you have, here is another thing for your
development arsenal.
Jordanian bloggers marked the third Blog About Jordan day on March 12th. As was the case
in previous years, the cyber event was organized by U.S.-based Jordanian blogger Qwaider:
It's that time of year again. March is is the month of Blog for Jordan day. March 12th to be
exact. This year it's going to be even more spectacular than the last two years.
The event, while primarily focusing on blog posts about Jordan, went live on Twitter as well
under #B4JO where new posts and tweets about it
were publicized. Clearly a testimony to the rising importance of Twitter as a social networking
tool, tweets also opened up the event to non-bloggers.
Qwaider not only organized the event but also published an excellent roundup of what
transpired during March 12th, linking up to the blogs that took part in the event. Since his
roundup is so stellar and in order to avoid online redundancy, here are a few of the things
bloggers have actually said on the third BAJD:
We're bringing my kids soon to visit you Jordan,
We'll make sure we take them downtown,
We'll make sure they BOTH eat mansaf, shawerma, knafeh and falafel,
We'll make sure we visit a lot of houses, for friends and family,
We'll make sure they bathe under your sun and they watch your sunset from the main balcony in my
parents' house.
Changeable weather that is summer today and winter tomorrow
Traffic that is never ceasing and never predictable
Opportunities to befriend the rich and the poor alike and enjoy both equally
An intoxicating blend of home-comforts and exotic strangeness
A country that takes in those without other places to go… that opens its arms and its
heart - often at detriment to itself.
I know now that we might not be the largest of countries, but as cliché-like as this
might sound, Jordan is large in its cities, each with its own history, its ability to hold within
it so much diversity, its people, who prove themselves to be more creative, more successful and
more worthy of admiration with each passing day.
Media today, be it legacy, traditional, new, or social, is a conversation. And no one can
shut you up. Censorship does not stop anything, never has. […] Go ahead, blog about Jordan
- share what you love, what works for you, and what else you want…with no holds. Speak
your mind about the Internet environment you want, teach your readers and viewers something we
don't know, demonstrate why open matters.
A lot of material to work with,Just look around you! Wherever you look it’s a blend of
interesting people, phenomena and landscape. […] There’s actually a lot of support
for those who choose to tap into their own potential. […] There’s always something
to look forward to. A photo exhibition, a book signing, a movie showing, you name it! There are
actually newcomers who are becoming well-known for their work all around Jordan, some sore of
local celebrities, and I think this creates an energetic vibe and could be encouraging to other
aspiring young people, or old for that matter!
The V&A's new quilts show is already causing a stir, with international enthusiasts
block-booking hotels in west London. Viv Groskop finds out what all the fuss is about
As you step through the heavy wooden doors into the V&A's new quilts exhibition, the first
thing you see is a four-poster bed, draped with bed hangings from 1730; these are made up of
6,500 individual pieces in shades of red, brown, green and blue. The lighting is low, the walls
are baby pink, there are weird, echoing noises. I don't want to say it's womb-like, but it is.
Quilts is a strange, fascinating show, six years in the making and the first the V&A has ever
devoted to the subject. It provides a window on to a world – a
predominantly female world – that feels private and somewhat undiscovered.
Already, it is one of the museum's most successful exhibitions, with 8,000 advance ticket sales;
quilting groups from the US, Australia and Japan have made block-bookings with local hotels.
Curator Sue Prichard thinks this enthusiasm is partly due to the global downturn. "I started on
this project in 2004. Now there is a huge revival of interest in traditional crafts. There are a
lot of women out there who are really keen to learn new skills and step away from their
computer and their Blackberry." She thinks many people will come not so much to marvel, but to
gain inspiration for their own handiwork.
Not just a female pursuit
Personally, I think the exhibition's appeal is much simpler than this: quilts are comforting,
intriguing, intimate and heavy with history. To enjoy them, you don't have to want to make one
(and I really, really don't). But the air in the first room of the exhibition, which houses the
oldest quilts, has a wonderfully musty tang to it, like breathing in the past
– it's a transporting experience.
There are 71 pieces here, mostly displayed as intended: on beds or as wall hangings. Many give an
insight into family life of their period; several are exhibited alongside letters and diaries.
There are quilted cushions from the 18th century, when a mother was expected to "lie in" after
childbirth, embroidered with mottoes such as Health to the Little Stranger and the slightly less
sinister Welcome Dear Babe. (These gifts were given after birth; it was thought that receiving
them before labour would make it more painful. If only a cushion could make a difference.) Every
quilt tells a story: one depicting Aesop's Fables, dated 1780–1830,
clearly shows evidence of two hands – one detailed and precious, the other
slapdash. You start to form stories about who these people might have been.
Is this a women's exhibition? Yes and no. It showcases the ways in which women have used quilts
to document the big events in their lives – love, marriage, birth, death, even
their thoughts on politics and patriotism. But it is not an exclusively female art. One of the
star exhibits is Grayson Perry's wonderfully disturbing Right to Life (1993), which depicts
embroidered pink foetuses against a background of red, white and black velvet. And there are
several military quilts, one thought to have been made by a private serving in India in the 1860s
(soldiers were encouraged to take up embroidery to stop them drinking and gambling).
Some of the pieces are unexpectedly satirical. A cover depicting the A-Z of Love (1875-1885)
shows a young couple cringing next to a moustachioed man, who represents G for Guardian. Other
quilts are overtly political: one takes a fabric template of "Her Most Gracious Majesty Caroline,
Queen of England" as its centrepiece. Caroline was never Queen; when she was divorced by the
future George IV, many women were disgusted. (Jane Austen wrote: "Poor woman, I shall support her
as long as I can, because she is a Woman, and because I hate her Husband.")
Impatience is a modern vice
What struck me most was how intricate the 300-year-old work was compared with the contemporary
quilts. Perhaps this is an unkind thought. I'm sure a lot of work went into Tracey Emin's
To Meet My Past, despite the self-consciously faux-naif stitching. Equally, Jo Budd's
Winter/Male and Summer/Female (2010) is strikingly beautiful; but it is a quilt made of giant
slabs of colour, not tiny woven pieces. Quilting has moved further towards the grand statement,
and there is a kind of impatience to the more modern pieces. There is another tension here, too:
the earlier works were never intended as art, or to be exhibited. It made me want to see more
examples of modern domestic quilting, rather than the professional art work of Emin and Perry.
Above all, a theme of confinement pervades this exhibition – literal
confinement (labour and childbirth); and domestic: these pieces required hundreds of hours of
homework. Later, the theme resurfaces in another form. One of the most striking quilts here is by
prisoners at HMP Wandsworth. The slogans are funny and poignant: "I miss my family"; "I will go
home"; "I didn't do it, guv, honest". Having time on your hands can feed an extraordinary
creative focus, whether you are an 18th-century woman, or a 21st-century inmate.
Quilts 1700-2010 is at the V&A from 20 March until 4 July. Details:
vam.ac.uk.
Sew simple: How to make a quilt
Where to start
The V&A's Patchwork for Beginners by Sue Prichard is excellent, as are a number of free
online tutorials. Quilting.about.com is a good place to start, or eHow's videos (tinyurl.com/ehowvideos). Save your
cash for pattern books – Kaffe Fassett is worth a look, or for modern stuff
try the Material Obsession set by Kathy Doughty and Sarah Fielke. There are lots of workshops: I
learned at Liberty (liberty.co.uk), but London's Make Lounge (themakelounge.com) and Brighton's Just Sew (justsewbrighton.co.uk) come highly recommended,
too. The Quilter's Guild can help find a course (quiltersguild.org.uk).
What to buy
Basics – a rotary cutter, cutting mat and a decent ruler –
start at about £30. (Omnigrip rulers and Olfa cutters outshine any other products.) If you
don't want to fork out just yet, though, get a decent pair of fabric scissors and cut each piece
out with a cardboard template.
Stick to cotton, and mix expensive, patterned stuff with cheap, plain fabric to keep costs down.
Liberty have a new range of material tied into the V&A show; if you're after something bright
and contemporary, Amy Bulter quilting fabrics (at John Lewis) are your best bet. Or design your
own – see UK-based thefabricpress.com – or recycle dresses
or table cloths.
Seeking inspiration
Flickr's quilt group should give you a few ideas (flickr.com/groups/quilts/), as will blogs such as aquiltaday.com. See what
contemporary quilters such as Laura Kemshall (sixart.co.uk/Laura_Kemshall) are up to;
I also like the picture-heavy book Quilting, Patchwork & Appliqué: A World Guide by
Caroline Crabtree and Christine Shaw. If it's real-life inspiration you want, take a trip to the
Quilt museum in York (quiltmuseum.org.uk)
or join the hardcore quilters who fly in from all over the world for Birmingham's four-day
Festival of Quilts in August (tinyurl.com/festivalofquilts).
Il paraît que j'ai gagné une tringle à rideaux. Celle du troisième des
« 10 blogs hightech francophones qui ont le plus gagné en influence ces derniers mois
» selon une étude du cabinet RCA en partenariat avec LePost.fr, qui...
Voilà une drôle d'histoire que relatent quelques blogs à propos de ce tout nouveauCommodore. Commodore, une marque qui a fait la joie de nombreuses personnes dans les
années 80 notamment, je fus de ceux-là avec le fameux Commodore 64
qui est sorti en 1982
Notre ami Stagueve nous ouvre les yeux sur cette supercherie
puisqu'il y a un an, il a déjà présenté
la chose sous le nom de Cybernet ZPC-GX31 qui est d'ailleurs toujours
en vente.
Et du coup, Steve me met la journée en l'air, moi qui était presque heureux de voir
Commodore renaître de ses cendres ... même si je n'aurais pas investit 1 centimes dans
la machine.
En tout cas je peux vous dire que de nombreuses personnes qui ont mon âge et même plus,
se souviennent sans aucun doute de ces douces années :)
Article original écrit par Philippe LAGANE et publié sur AccessOWeb
"So here’s the deal. This is an initial investigation into charging me, personally, with the
violation of Australia’s Racial Discrimination Act. While I act in complete compliance with
both the civil and criminal codes of the United States of America, and am assured the right of free
speech according to our Constitution (which, if not the greatest political document in the entire
history of law, is certainly on the top five) I can personally be jailed and fined for the
violation of this law. " [cc: the wired] [cc: blogs and zines]
I found some great statistics from The State of the
Blogosphere by Technorati via the
Search Engine Journal
* More than 133,000,000 blogs have been indexed by Technorati since 2002
* 77% of Internet users read blogs according to Universal McCann
* Two-thirds of Bloggers are male (c%u2019mon ladies, start Blogging!)
* More than half are married and more than half are parents
* 60% are 18-44 * 75% have college degrees and 40% have graduate degrees
* One in four has an annual household income of $100K
* Around half of Bloggers are working on at least their second blog
* 68% have been blogging for two years or more
* 86% have been blogging for at least a year
* 70% of all respondents say that personal satisfaction is a way they measure the success of their
blog
* 72% say they blog in order to share their expertise.
* 61% say they blog in order to supplement their income.
* 53% of professional Bloggers are interested in attracting new clients from blogging.
* 72% of those who are self-employed and blogging are interested in attracting new clients.
* 57% say that their future plans include blogging even more (including 74% of 18-24 year
olds).
* Part-Timers, Pros, and Self-Employed Bloggers are blogging as much as or more than ever (73%, 76%
and 80%, respectively), while Hobbyists are blogging somewhat less.
* 15% of Bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.
* One in five Bloggers report updating on a daily basis.
* The most common rate of updating is 2-3 times per week.
* The majority of blogs use tags (85%).
* 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog, making images the most popular form
of multimedia.
* Bloggers participate in an average of 5 activities to drive traffic to their blogs.
* 72% of respondents are classified as Hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to
blogging
* 56% say that their blog has helped their company establish a positioning as a thought
leader within the industry.
* 58% say that they are better-known in their industry because of their blog
#followjourn: Keith Perch Who? Perch is editor of the Leicester Mercury. He has previously edited
the Derby Evening Telegraph and the South Wales Echo, and was director of digital development at
Northcliffe Media Group. Where? Perch blogs about all things Leicester related and about the
Mercury at KPERCH. He also pops up on LinkedIn. Contact? Follow Perch on [...]
Ya tenemos algo más de información, casi completa, de lo que será el
II encuentro de Bloggers Gastronómicos Navarra Gourmet. Este año y
como novedad principal podemos decir que se desarrollará los próximos 23 y 24 de
abril en la ciudad, capital de la verdura por excelencia, de Tudela.
Como sabéis este año no se desarrollará el congreso gastronómico
Navarra Gourmet, eso no puede detener el movimiento gastronómico de una comunidad como es
Navarra que desarrollará las Jornadas de Exaltación de la Verdura
y uno de los puntos más importantes será precisamente el encuentro de bloggers que
tendrá lugar.
El encuentro de bloggers
Como el año pasado el encuentro de bloggers se desarrolló dentro
del propio congreso Navarra Gourmet y como este año no hay tal congreso se
desarrollarán actividades alternativas, y todo sea dicho de paso tienen una pinta
excelente. Vamos, que lo mismo el encuentro sale ganando sin congreso.
Entre las actividades (por confirmar) que se podrán realizar habrá, visitas guiadas
a Las Bardenas con comida campera incluida, cena (día 23) en la sociedad
gastronómica de Tudela. Podremos salir al campo para ver la recolección del
Espárrago de Tudela además de visitar una plantación de alcachofa de Tudela.
Comida en la Bodega de Príncipe de Viana y lo que a mí más me ha llamado la
atención una excursión en Segway.
Las ponencias versarán en torno a temas muy interesantes y que
darán par aun debate bastante enriquecedor:
Bloguers, críticos y restauradores ante los usuarios de la red: convergencias y
antagonismos
Nuevos formatos en la conversación sobre gastronomía: microblogs, videoblogs,
redes sociales y aplicaciones móviles
Especialización y nuevas tendencias: la atención a los micronichos y los
eventos 2.0
II Premio Navarra Gourmet a los Mejores Blogs Gastronómicos
Dentro de las actividades del encuentro y seguramente algo que tendrá a más de uno
en un sin vivir hasta que no se decidan, son los Premios Navarra Gourmet a los mejores
Blogs Gastronómicos. Son tres las categorías elegidas este año.
Mejor Blog Gastronómico Nacional
Mejor Blog Gastronómico Internacional
Mejor Uso de Nuevos Formatos
El año pasado fue toda una experiencia, poner cara a mucha gene que sigues a
través de sus blogs, como diría el famoso anuncio, no tiene precio. Es una
actividad que cualquiera de los que estamos detrás de estas líneas debe realizar.
Bueno, y si no es en el encuentro seguro que nos podremos desvirtualizar en
cualquier otro momento.
I consider myself a pretty good internet searcher. If it's out there I can usually find it one
way or another. However, there's one site in particular that always defeats me. I know the
information is there, it's got a great reputation, it's jam packed full of newsy goodness, and
it's also very poor. The BBC, for a world renowned news and information organisation is woeful
when it comes to search. At the top of every page we've got a search option:
That's good as far as it goes, but it doesn't go very far. No advanced search option. No 'search
help' option, no suggestions on what I can search for or how I can search for it. The BBC has
highly complicated data sets - we've got archive type information going back years, news reports,
current news, content from television and radio programmes, information that's available for a
short period of time via iplayer, photographs and a wealth of other content. None of that is
reflected in the search box that we're all shown.
Running a search really shows the limitations of their system. As you can see from the above
illustration I wanted to find out more about the little boy who had been kidnapped, and had
apparently been released. I looked on the BBC home page and there was no information at all,
which surprised me, given that it's a new twist in the event, so I went looking for it. 'Pakistan
kidnap' probably isn't the best search I could have done - perhaps adding in 'boy' or 'child'
would have helped, but let's see what we got.
The first news item is 6 days old. 6 days! The next is 13 days. Further down the page I'm getting
information that's dated 2007, 2004, and my favourite is 1st April 1998. For a 'news' site that's
worse than bad, it's virtually criminal. The tragic thing is that the information that I want is
actually on the page, but cunningly hidden away on the BBC iPlayer section to the right under 5
live breakfast. However, if and when iPlayer is updated to the next day, that information is
essentially lost. What you can't see however is that further down the same page, in the 'news and
sports clips' is this:
This states, quite categorically, that he's not been released. Moreover, it states that reports
that he has are unfounded. As a searcher, what am I to do? Of course, looking at the dates is
helpful, but is everyone going to do that? I have my doubts. However, I now have the childs name,
and a second search does bring up much better information, and this time in the 'news and sports'
section there's a useful news story I can listen to. As an aside, why on earth have news and
sports information so closely linked? It's just not helpful. If Pakistan had been playing in a
cricket match, which story would have got top billing?
BBC search has clearly never heard about Boolean operators. A search for the child's name and
-kidnap returns exactly the same results. NOT kidnap is the same as well.
Let's look at another example. I was invited onto a couple of radio shows recently to talk about
the sad case of the child murdered by a man she met via Facebook. I recall vaguely that the
Government was introducing some initiative late last year to make children safer online, and it
was widely reported on the BBC. I wanted to find out more about this, so turned to the BBC. I
thought my search for "government guidelines internet child safety" was pretty good until the
first result that turned up was "News - Technology - Net Industry must fight paedophiles" dated
6th January 2003. The nice little content boxes at the side for BBC iPlayer, News and Sport,
Elsewhere on the web all showed no content. Really? A subject that is right in the middle of the
news, with the Government talking about what can and should be done, and what they've done in the
past - nothing recent at all? Let's look at the dates on the results I do have - 4 Feb
2003, 16 Oct 2007, 6 Jan 2003, 18 Nov 2008, 6 Jan 2003, Undated (Don't ask me what's going on
there!), 11 Jan 2002, 13 Oct 2000. So the most recent thing I can find is 16 months ago.
This wouldn't be so bad if I could re-rank my search based on date, but I can't. I'm stuck with
what the BBC gives me - which in this case is outdated, useless information. You may say 'well,
add in 2009, since you know the Government initiative started then'. I'm way ahead of you my
wiley friend - I tried that, and the first result that came up with was "News - Technology - Net
Industry must fight paedophiles" dated 6th January 2003. Yes - the very same result. In the end,
I couldn't find what I wanted, so tried other resources instead, at which point I found what I
was after (the 'zip it, block it, bin it' campaign) quickly.
One more example - there has recently, very recently in fact, been a cyclone in Fiji. I wanted to
see how the BBC handled that. I threw in a slight curved ball at this point and tried my first
search as 'Figi'. I got results as well, worryingly. 5 of them, all talking about the country of
Figi. Most of these were however undated. Quite how that is useful to anyone, I'm not entirely
sure. Also, no 'did you mean?' suggestion either. So I went back and did the search properly.
This time I got a three panel approach - it's something new the BBC is trying. Columns and boxes
for News, Sport, About, Weather, IPlayer, Blogs, Knowledge and Around the Web. This time I did
get some information about the cyclone, and it was 10 hours old. There were also links to other
news stories, and some video as well. It's a new search system that the BBC is trying out, and
it's better than the previous version. If anyone from the BBC responds to this - which I doubt -
they'll try and use this to counter my criticisms. Before they so however, I would suggest that
they take a look at other news sites - Silobreaker comes
to mind. When I ran my search there, the engine immediately gave me a dozen suggestions to focus
my search. First news result was dated 46 minutes ago. I was then presented with other news
stories, tweets, 'In focus' pieces, content volume by date, networks, hotspots, blogs, audio
visual, quotes and 'more content'. THAT is how you run a news resource.
Trying an external resource to search the BBC doesn't work either. Limiting both Google and Bing
to the BBC site and running my searches again simply returns the same tired results. It's only
when I go into the Google options and choose 'last 24 hours' do I find the information that I was
after. This should not be necessary. Bing wasn't able to be any better either.
The BBC has great resources - why can't I use them? Why can't I limit a search and focus using
the most basic of search operators, things that have been around for 15 years or more? Why can't
I just get content in a specific form? Why can't I re-rank on date, which when you're dealing
with a news site is the bare minimum you want, given the state of their search results. Why isn't
there a proper search help function installed? Finally, and let's echo this loudly 'WHY IS BBC
SEARCH SO BAD?' If you need to find news, don't bother with the BBC; they simply have no
clue.
Conservative media figures have recently claimed that the use of a legislative procedure called a
"self-executing rule" to pass health care reform in the House is unconstitutional. However, Yale
law professor Jack Balkin has explained that the procedure in question would pass constitutional
muster; additionally, federal appeals courts have recently held that the constitutional
requirement that both houses pass a bill has been met when the House speaker and Senate president
attest the bill has passed.
Right-wing media claim Dems are "slaughtering the Constitution" with rule
Beck: "How is this even constitutional?" Discussing the "Slaughter rule" on the
March 16 edition of his show, Beck asked: "How is this even constitutional?" Beck similarly wrote
in his newsletter that Democrats are "slaughtering the Constitution" and that "the Constitution
is being thwarted" if the health care reform legislation passes using the self-executing rule.
BigGovernment: Congress is "violating the Constitution" with Slaughter rule. A
March 11
post on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment website stated that the "Slaughter Solution has one
very large obstacle -- the Constitution Article I, Section 7," and that "if this Congress
continues down this path of violating the Constitution, the 'people' will have a viable case,
class-action or otherwise, in the US courts because it is going to be extremely difficult for a
judge to ignore that the 111th Democrat-Progressive led Congress violated Article I, Section 7 to
the most obscene extent."
Jim Hoft: "Democrats will use the unconstitutional 'Slaughter Rule.' " In a
March 14
post on his Gateway Pundit blog, Jim Hoft wrote: "Democratic leader Rep. Chris Van Hollen
admitted today on FOX News Sunday that democrats will use the unconstitutional 'Slaughter Rule'
to ram their pro-abortion nationalized health care bill through Congress. Democrats announced
this tactic last week. They will pass the bill without voting on it. They will take over
one-sixth of the US economy without even voting on it."
Hot Air: House is using self-executing rule "for the first time in U.S.
history." A March 14 Hot Air blog
post stated: "We're hours away from Slaughter revealing the strategy and Democrats have no
other mechanism to pass a bill other than using an extra-Constitutional procedure. They don't
have the votes to pass the Senate Bill, so they are -- for the first time in U.S. history --
about to rule that they actually passed a bill they never voted on."
Malkin calls Rep. Slaughter a "Constitution-butcher." On March 13, Fox News
contributor Michelle Malkin displayed the following graphic on her
website under the headline, "Constitution Butchers: Stop Pelosi's Slaughter House":
Legal scholar Balkin debunks claim that rule is unconstitutional
Yale Law professor Balkin: Self-executing rule is constitutional if done
properly. In a March 15
post on his Balkinization blog, Balkin wrote:
[T]here is a way that "deem and pass" could be done constitutionally. There have to be two
separate bills signed by the President: the first one is the original Senate bill, and the second
one is the reconciliation bill. The House must pass the Senate bill and it must also pass the
reconciliation bill. The House may do this on a single vote if the special rule that accompanies
the reconciliation bill says that by passing the reconciliation bill the House agrees to pass the
same text of the same bill that the Senate has passed. That is to say, the language of the
special rule that accompanies the reconciliation bill must make the House take political
responsibility for passing the same language as the Senate bill. The House must say that the
House has consented to accept the text of the Senate bill as its own political act. At that point
the President can sign the two bills, and it does not matter that the House has passed both
through a special rule. Under Article I, section 5 of the Constitution, the House can determine
its own rules for passing legislation. There are plenty of precedents for passing legislation by
reference through a special rule.
Federal appeals courts recently decided that constitutional requirement is satisfied when
Speaker and Senate president attest that identical language passed both houses. In
Public Citizen v. U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the U.S. Court of
Appeals for the D.C. Circuit held that if both the House speaker and the Senate president attest
that identical bills have passed both houses of Congress, the courts must accept that the
constitutional requirement has been satisfied. (Malkin and other conservatives have pointed to
the Public Citizen case to falsely accuse Democrats of hypocrisy.) From
the
decision (which quoted from the Supreme Court case, Marshall Field et
al. v. Clark):
The Court crafted a clear rule: "[I]t is not competent for [a party raising a bicameralism
challenge] to show, from the journals of either house, from the reports of committees or from
other documents printed by authority of Congress, that [an] enrolled bill" differs from that
actually passed by Congress. Id. at 680, 12 S.Ct. 495. The only "evidence upon which a court may
act when the issue is made as to whether a bill ... asserted to have become a law, was or was not
passed by Congress" is an enrolled act attested to by declaration of "the two houses, through
their presiding officers." Id. at 670, 672, 12 S.Ct. 495. An enrolled bill, "thus attested," "is
conclusive evidence that it was passed by Congress." Id. at 672-73, 12 S.Ct. 495. "[T]he
enrollment itself is the record, which is conclusive as to what the statute is ..." Id. at 675,
12 S.Ct. 495. [alterations in the original]
Ornstein: Conservative complaints of rule is "hypocrisy," "disinformation"
Congressional scholar Ornstein: Conservative criticism of self-executing rule is
"hypocrisy," "feigned indignation," and "disinformation." From a post by Norman Ornstein
on the American Enterprise Institute's blog, The Enterprise, titled, "Hypocrisy: A
Parliamentary Procedure":
Any veteran observer of Congress is used to the rampant hypocrisy over the use of parliamentary
procedures that shifts totally from one side to the other as a majority moves to minority status,
and vice versa. But I can't recall a level of feigned indignation nearly as great as what we are
seeing now from congressional Republicans and their acolytes at the Wall Street Journal, and on
blogs, talk radio, and cable news. It reached a ridiculous level of misinformation and
disinformation over the use of reconciliation, and now threatens to top that level over the
projected use of a self-executing rule by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. In the last Congress that
Republicans controlled, from 2005 to 2006, Rules Committee Chairman David Dreier used the
self-executing rule more than 35 times, and was no stranger to the concept of "deem and pass."
That strategy, then decried by the House Democrats who are now using it, and now being called
unconstitutional by WSJ editorialists, was defended by House Republicans in court (and upheld).
Dreier used it for a $40 billion deficit reduction package so that his fellow GOPers could avoid
an embarrassing vote on immigration.
Less than 0.2 percent of people who use Twitter wind up going to news and media sites from the
social-networking site, according to a
recent analysis by traffic-measurement firm Hitwise (although Hitwise just looked at traffic
coming from the web site, not any third-party apps or services). So what are the top places that
users go from Twitter? About 60 percent go to other social networks and entertainment sites, says
Hitwise, primarily photo and video-sharing sites — in other words, places like Twitpic,
Tweetphoto, YouTube, Vimeo, CollegeHumor and so on. This isn’t all that surprising, since
many of the most popular links that get passed around are photos and videos that have “gone
viral,” as marketing people love to say.
So why don’t more Twitter users go to news and media web sites? Maybe Twitter users just
aren’t interested in the news — or at least not as interested as Facebook users,
who accounted for 3.64 percent of the visits to news and media sites, or roughly 15 times the
amount of traffic that Twitter accounted for. But I think it’s more likely that the reason
Twitter doesn’t push more traffic to news and media sites is that not very many of them
make good use of the social network to promote their content. Sure, plenty of them have RSS feeds
that they push onto Twitter, and some even have millions of
followers. But how much engagement comes from those links? In most cases, very little.
Most blogs and web-native media outlets, however, make it easier to share their content and are
more active on Twitter in general, and they see a resulting benefit: at GigaOm, for example, the
social networking site is regularly one of our top sources of traffic. Twitter says one of the
main purposes of its new @anywhere platform, which was announced
at SXSW, is to enable web sites to integrate Twitter and make it easier for users to follow
them and share their content (some web sites are making better use of Facebook fan pages as a
place to share their news, which could explain why those referral numbers are higher).
And why do people share content from Twitpic and Tweetphoto and YouTube and Vimeo? Partly because
it’s easy to upload and easy to share, something that can’t be said of the content at
most media sites. Lots of mainstream media outlets offer readers or users the ability to upload
photos and video, but then they make it so cumbersome and layered in legal verbiage about
copyright and liability that very few people do it. And virtually none make good use of Twitpic
or YouTube or any other media-sharing site, because they are afraid (or their legal departments
are afraid) of releasing their content into the wild where people might do unsavory things with
it, like posting it to Twitter.
It’s hard to draw too many concrete conclusions from the Hitwise data, in part because it
only tracked referrals from Twitter.com rather than any third-party apps and services. According
to Twitter spokesman Sean Garrett, more than half of the traffic Twitter sees comes from outside
the Twitter.com web site, which is roughly equivalent to what data-mining service Sysomos found
when it looked
at more than 500 million tweets over a six-month period last year. Regardless of the numbers,
however, I would argue that the low numbers of Twitter referrals has a lot more to do with the
media’s failure to make efficient use of the social network to promote their content than
it does any inherent lack of interest in the news on the part of Twitter users. Am I wrong? Let
me know in the comments.
There is a wealth of information on setting up and using FAME and FAMES on this site and on various
blogs and community sites. New tutorials will be linked to from here as they become available. You
might also find links to tutorials and guides on the project pages for Flashout, ASDT, MTASC and
swfmill.
Le blog est un média personnel qui n’a pas vocation, à la base,
d’être lu par des milliers de personnes. Pourtant, peu à peu, le celui-ci est
devenu également un magazine et certains sont même des références loin
devant la presse traditionnelle.
Si les journaux citent de plus en plus souvent les blogs de référence dans leurs
articles, c’est parce qu’ils ne sont généralement pas en concurrence
directe et que ceux-ci, flattés, n’hésiteront pas à les citer à
leur tour.
C’était le cas jusqu’à ce que les magazines décident de
créer des blogs rattachés à leur média principal où chaque
journaliste est présenté un peu comme l’expert du thème dont traite
son blog.
En effet, alors qu’il y a à peine 3 ans, on lisait souvent que
«Â les blogueurs ne sont pas des journalistes », les
journalistes sont maintenant valorisés lorsqu’ils ouvrent un blog. Allez comprendre.
Forcément, si les blogs de journalistes sont mis en avant par les sites
d’information à forte audience tels que «Â Le
monde » ou «Â L’express », ils
devraient forcément devenir les nouvelles références de la
blogosphère, non ?
Mis à part quelques exceptions telles que
«Â Transnet », c’est loin d’être le cas, les
blogs de références restent des blogs libres avec leurs propres identités.
Les Etats Unis ont d’ailleurs bien compris le principe : leurs grands
médias n’hésitent pas racheter des blogs connus ou même les
créer de toute pièce en se basant sur les éléments qui font le
succès de ceux-ci. Des médias à parts entières avec parfois toute une
rédaction.
Le blog est une véritable entreprise.
Forcément, lorsque de simples blogueurs, ceux qui, à la base, ont ouvert un simple
média personnel voient les succès de Lifehacker, Smashing Magazine, ou encore
Presse-Citron en France, ils se mettent à rêver d’en faire autant et cet ainsi
que l’on a vu régulièrement des articles de blogueurs qui proposent les
meilleurs astuces pour promouvoir leurs blogs.
Mais où sont-ils tous ces blogueurs ? Sont-ils devenus des
références ? Gagnent-ils vraiment beaucoup d’argents en
bloguant ?
Il est vrai qu’il faut bien se référencer et bien rédiger ses billets.
Il faut aussi intégrer des communautés, en tout cas, pour bien débuter.
Il est de loin préférable pour devenir une référence
d’écrire du contenu qualitatif plutôt que quantitatif mais si vous voulez
obtenir beaucoup de trafic, rédigez plutôt des articles accessibles et nombreux dans
le but de réaliser du buzz avec images ou video à l’appui : La
photo de la petite culotte de Britney Spear ou L’iPad converti en lance-flam.
Quelque chose d’accessible qui se partage va forcément amener beaucoup plus trafic
qu’un article qui ne sera compris que par une minorité d’internautes.
Promouvoir ses articles sur les digg-like, pourquoi pas, mais il faut mieux ne pas perdre trop de
temps, c’est clairement dépassé maintenant. Le trafic d’un Scoopeo
n’a plus rien d’exceptionnel.
Partager sur les réseaux sociaux. Oui mais à condition d’avoir de solide
réseaux ou de posséder du contenu qui buzz facilement. Sans ça, vous
n’obtiendrez que quelques dizaines de retours par article. La rumeur qui dit que Facebook
pourrait ramener plus de trafic que Google n’est valable que pour quelques cas
précis.
D’autres astuces bien connues vous permettront d’obtenir quelques dizaines de pages
vues en plus par jour, ce qui représente souvent peu par rapport au temps que vous aller y
perdre.
Alors comment devient-on un blog de référence ?
Le travail d’équipe.
La plupart des blogs à succès sont gérés en équipe. Mais il
n’est pas toujours nécessaire que l’équipe travail sur un seul blog.
Partager son expérience et ses connaissances c’est aussi du travail
d’équipe. On sait qu’il est souvent difficile de trouver le temps de publier
sur d’autres blogs, même si c’est une excellente façon de se faire
connaitre.
Alors, pourquoi pas l’échange d’article ? On pourrait imaginer que
de temps en temps, j’écris sur ton blog et tu écris sur le miens.
D’autres astuces sont également intéressantes et plus courante que l’on
le pense : Tu fais la promotion sur ton blog d’un de mes articles et je ferai
de même avec le tiens.
Avec une petite équipe de 5 blogueurs bien coordonnée, on pourrait prendre de
l’influence beaucoup plus rapidement.
Et de temps en temps, la création d’un dossier commun et co-publié peut aussi
apporter beaucoup de retour.
Le nom du blog.
On ne pense jamais assez au nom du blog. Il est plus facile de devenir un blog de
référence lorsque celui-ci s’appel
«Â Technoblog » que «Â mon blog
2.0Â » . Donner son nom à son blog peut également donner un effet
«Â pro » mais n’appelez pas votre blog
«Â le blog web 2.0 de Dominique Leroy », Mais plutôt
« Dominique Leroy ».
Ce n’est pas tout, le plus intéressant est encore de créer
l’équivalent français d’un blog anglo-saxon à succès. Je
suis certain que certains blogueurs US sont prêts à accepter sans rien demander, ou
presque, en échange.
Imaginez, vous pourriez devenir le nouveau «Â ProBlogger.fr »
ou «Â Smashingmagazine.fr »Â !
Le carnet d’adresse
Ceux qui ont percé le savent mais ne l’avouent pas souvent, c’est souvent
grâce à un hasard, à une personne rencontrée lors d’un
évènement, un coup de pouce que tout à explosé.
Il y a 5 ans, il vous aurait suffit de rencontrer une personne de l’équipe de
Netvibes pour exploser votre trafic du jour au lendemain.
Les blogueurs les plus connus ne sont pas forcément les meilleurs, c’est souvent les
premiers, ceux dont les flux RSS se sont retrouvés dans les premiers annuaires des
aggrégateurs les plus connus.
C’est peut être les plus médiatisés, mais aussi ceux dont on a
parlé une fois sur TF1, M6 ou dont le nom s’est retrouvéÂ
rattaché à une affaire surprenante. Après tout, le blogueur le plus connu de
france, c’est Mickael Vendetta (sic)!
Ca pourrait être aussi celui qui a parlé lors d’une conférence
importante. Oui, parmi les blogueurs les plus connus se trouvent les créateurs
d’évènements mais également ceux qui sont présents à
chaque manifestation à destination de ceux-ci, et dieu sait qu’il y en a beaucoup.
On vous a menti, un blog, ça ne se gère pas de chez soit, derrière un PC,
c’est un business et chaque rôle doit être tenu : Le
rédacteur, le webmaster... et l’opportuniste !
Magazines have always prided themselves on their longevity as a medium and their pass-along
circulation -- the additional readers each copy gains when it's passed from hand to hand.
Today, social media are providing opportunities for readers to share content and experience their
favorite magazines as part of their social activity online. As a result, this is the dawn of a
new era of pass-along.
Building a Community of Readers
So far, Facebook and Twitter have both been tested as ways to market print subscriptions and
publicize magazines' online content.
Seventeen magazine tried offering a special subscription deal to its over 64,000 Twitter followers. If readers paid up front, they could get
a $5 year-long subscription to the magazine through a link in a tweet.
"We had 170 paid subscriptions in 24 hours, which is a great number," said Julie Hochheiser, the
senior web editor for the Hearst Teen Network, which includes Seventeen's online content. "We
definitely thought that was a success."
Tweets and Facebook posts also help
promote the magazines' websites, though Hochheiser said that posts should offer more value than
just a link.
"With a content brand, your business is mostly driving traffic to your site, but Twitter users
don't necessarily want to be driven to your site," she says. "They want what they're finding in
those 140 characters to be useful."
Showcasing a Real-Time Voice
On the smaller end of the magazine spectrum, Lapham's Quarterly, a magazine focusing on
history and culture, is also active with social media. Web editor Michelle Legro said Lapham's
began using Twitter and Facebook simultaneously in
October 2009, and that their efforts have grown steadily since then, mainly to showcase the
ongoing research and discussions of the magazine staff.
"It's allowed us to give a real-time voice to the magazine," Legro said. "We're both a historical
and a quarterly magazine, so social media let us give a voice to things we find out every single
day."
Lapham's tweets, written by Legro, are noticeable for their frequent use of dates from the past
and their placement of contemporary events within historical context. "I can see what people are
talking about on Twitter, find a historical source in the archives and post that, then people
share it around," she said.
The response to Lapham's social media efforts has been positive: Twitter and Facebook are now two
of the site's main traffic sources.
"We've found that Twitter acts like a stock and Facebook like a bond," Legro said. On Twitter,
"when people really like something, they join in bursts. With Facebook, people join slowly and
steadily, but continue to join all the time."
Magazine Advertisers Join In
Magazines are just now beginning to find ways to make partnerships with advertisers work via
social media. Katie Tamony, editor-in-chief of Sunset magazine, described the magazine's Facebook page as a "little laboratory" for new
marketing ideas.
"We have 11,500 fans, so we can come to them not just with content, but also with some marketing
ideas," Tamony said. This small group of generally younger readers and fans posts about 500
"interactions" weekly to Sunset's fan page, and offers real-time feedback to questions and offers
presented by the staff.
Matt Milner, vice president of social media and community for Hearst Magazines Digital Media,
described the careful balance required to integrate advertisers into a magazine's social media
efforts.
"Advertisers or partners can pay to join the conversation, but it's equally as important to show
that we realize that there has to be value added to these communities," Milner said. "We give
clear guidance to our advertisers: 'It's great you're joining the conversation, but you're not
here to sell your product -- you're here to build your brand within our community'."
For example, Seventeen has used both sponsored tweets and sponsored Facebook posts to involve
advertisers in its social media content.
"Our audience didn't really see the difference. As long as the content is interesting to them,
they'll click on it," said Hochheiser, who works with Seventeen. "We make sure it's something
useful to them and not just a blatant ad, but it has the sponsor language right there."
Enhancing Print Editions
Magazines' social media efforts have also paid off for their print products.
"We pose questions to our readership to feed into future stories," said Tamony from Sunset. Past
queries included readers' favorite ways to use spinach and their favorite road trips in the West.
"We give a sampling of the Facebook responses we've gotten, and it's fun for readers to see their
names end up in print."
In another example, Tamony said a recent Facebook question about favorite weeknight meals
revealed how often readers used chicken in their everyday cooking, and how much they wanted new
ideas for those meals. Her staff can use this feedback to craft relevant stories in future
issues. "So even if we don't use their comments, we're still using their ideas in the magazine,"
she said.
The conversation with readers has benefited Hearst magazines as well. "Sometimes we just listen.
What do they want from content? What do they want our web editors to be writing about?" said
Milner. "We feel like there's a huge benefit to hearing that."
Magazines' use of social media also echoes and enhances the voice of the magazine itself. Legro
is the social media "voice" of Lapham's, and she works to maintain a specific style in her tweets
and posts.
"I try to be light and accessible, because often with history, it can be perceived as dry, but
really it's extremely fun," Legro said. "My goal is to entertain. History can entertain in
itself. It just takes an editor to find the right things."
For Sunset, using social media is like "having an event or a party going on all the time," said
Tamony. "It feels that way because Sunset is all about enjoying life and pleasurable things, so
you get this kind of happy buzz from it."
The lines distinguishing magazines' print and online content, their social media projects and
their advertising will probably continue to blur.
"It might take 10 years until we figure out how to master this," said Milner. "Social media
transcends departments -- it's beyond edit, beyond sales. It will inform more and more content
decisions in a good way, but it's going to take a little while."
Susan Currie Sivek, Ph.D., is an assistant professor in the Mass Communication and Journalism
Department at California State University, Fresno. Her research focuses on magazines and media
communities. She also blogs at sivekmedia.com, and is the
magazine correspondent for MediaShift.
Hate groups have always been a presence on the Internet, but their presence is growing quicker
lately thanks to social networking sites. According to a report from the Simon Wiesenthal Center
(SWC), groups that promote violence, terrorism, homophobia, antisemitism, and other forms of
intolerance grew by 20 percent in the last year alone.
The report is part of the Center's annual look at the spread of hate groups online, which noted
that there are now more than 11,500 social networks, websites, forums, and blogs that focus on
spreading intolerance, recruiting new members, and instructing people on how to hurt others. "The
numbers are probably, at the end of the day, multiples of that," the SWC's associate dean Abraham
Cooper said in a news
conference Monday. "That should be taken as a low ball figure."
Les dealers ont parfois ce mépris qui rend l'acte d'achat encore plus humiliant et
finalement excitant. Que n'est-on pas prêt à faire et accepter pour un fix ? Braver
l'humiliation et accepter, l'espace d'un instant, de n'être qu'un junkie aux abois. Certains
album blogs adoptent parfois cette attitude. Lorsque, après un retentissant coup de filet, le marché des leaks ressemble a Amsterdam au lendemain de sa
fermeture, alors que les blogs se font discret, migrent en secret et se terrent dans leur
tanières le temps de s'assurer que la tempête est bel et bien passée, ceux qui
continuent d'Å“uvrer envers et contre tout, occupant "la place", peuvent profiter de
cette position dominante pour jouer aux dieux méprisants. Leur came pue du cul, mais le
marché est mort et il faudra s'en contenter. Et accepter l'humiliation qui va avec.
Mon dealer m'a jeté The Noyelle
Beat, le dernier album de Standard Fare à la gueule en me disant (je résume) : "C'est de la merde,
elle ne sait pas chanter, mais ca devrait t'aller. Dégage maintenant !". Et je dois
reconnaître que si mon dealer n'y connait finalement rien en musique, il me connait assez
bien, en fait. Pourtant on se parle assez peu ; je suis du genre à prendre ma dose et à
filer bien vite sans laisser le moindre commentaire. Je ne suis pas de ceux qui assument, font
copain-copain avec leur dealer et les gratifient d'un "Thanks dude. This is awesome. Keep doing !
Ho, by the way, rapidshare is crap !".
Rentré chez moi, je décompresse ma dose, me prépare mon petit matos et me fait mon
fix, bien conscient qu'il s'agira sûrement d'une merde indie coupée avec de la daube
FM. Certes, les premiers effets furent assez mous. Premier titre en forme de pseudo-single
baveux, pas le moindre frisson, une vague envolée et un demi-rire nerveux. Mais dès le
second morceau, on change de registre et on commence à mieux discerner le genre de trip dans
lequel on s'aventure. Basse. Batterie. Guitare. Deux voix et pas vraiment de chanteur digne de ce
nom. Juste des tripes et de l'envie, de l'énergie et des mélodies. On fera avec.
Troisième titre et le trip démarre franchement. "Global warming is getting me down.
It's making the sea between us wider and deeper. Now I'm not Moses and I don't know how to split
up the ocean and drive right on over. I'm going to have to wait a year to see you again in
Philadelphia." Un hymne. Tout bonnement. C'est pop, pas prétentieux, pas même
sérieux, résolument nerveux, et finalement assez audacieux. Car, l'air de rien,
après des couplets servies par ces voix pour le moins bancales ("Emma Kupa, who's not
exactly a singer, Danny How, who's not much better" ) déboule toujours un fichtrement bon
refrain, a killer melody et une putain de guitare. Ouais, une putain de guitare. Et puis une
putain de basse aussi. Ouais, on se situe a ce niveau-là, effectivement. Back to the 90's.
Maintenant que le fix a pris, que le truc se ballade bien dans mes veines, la dope peut
déployer ses petites nuances et jouer au yoyo avec mes neurones. A "Wrong Kind of Trouble",
faux interlude aux échos hawaïens (hey, je suis stoned !), succède "Fifteen
(Nothing Happened)" dont le titre dit tout. Croit-on avant d'avoir entendu les paroles : "You're
only fifteen, what was I thinking ? Lying in your bed going 'this isn't happening'. (...) I'm
only twenty two I still don't know what it is that I'm supposed to do. My only mercy is that you
never knew."
Et l'air de rien, de titre en titre, on commence à se délecter franchement des effets
provoqués par ce disque. C'est que, petit à petit, la voix de Emma Kupa se fait plus
familière, de couplet en refrain je commence a véritablement kiffer (je suis stoned !)
son ton, son aspect rugueux, pas vraiment écorché, pas non plus totalement abimé.
Juste mal muée. Telle une Juno de 22 ans, sortie de sa bulle ado-ulte et qui aurait depuis arpenté
quelques kilomètres de macadam, pris quelques coups et poussé quelques gueulantes. Du
vécu, brut, sans fioriture ni faux-semblant, sans fausse pudeur ni exhibitionnisme
déplacé. Des bouts de vie dont l'ampli grésille un peu trop, des riffs de guitare
nerveux qui tentent en vain de balayer les obstacles et les coups de la vie. Un disque
sincère, joyeux, orageux. Et une putain de morale qui se déploie dans un single
imparable : "There's always gonna come a time when we don't know the answers, always gonna come a
time when we should just go dancing."
Pour ma part, je mets ma recherche du trip parfait entre parenthèses et vais me contenter
pour l'instant de ce très bon fix, lequel risque d'user mon petit matos pendant encore un
moment. Parole de junkie : this is good shit !
The Guardian Student Media Awards are now open to entries. The 2010 competition features a new
category designed to recognise developments in digital journalism and the rise of social media.
Blogs and Twitter feeds are now eligible for the ‘Digital Journalist of the Year’
category, meaning students unconnected to student newspapers or radio stations can [...]
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In a recent conversation here at ReadWriteStart we were talking about what readers want
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to know what startups are doing that works, we know that sometimes our startup readers just want
some simple practical advice.
When
Lon S. Cohen is a freelance writer and is 
Le blog est un média personnel qui n’a pas vocation, à la base,
d’être lu par des milliers de personnes. Pourtant, peu à peu, le celui-ci est
devenu également un magazine et certains sont même des références loin
devant la presse traditionnelle.
Mis à part quelques exceptions telles que
«Â Transnet », c’est loin d’être le cas, les
blogs de références restent des blogs libres avec leurs propres identités.
Achetez The Noyelle Beat 
Recommandations
)
and reject those that you are not interested in
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