if there is ANY thing we do, it's EVERYthing
Media
So much for Verified…
0765 days
Todd Sanders shared some interesting information about President Barack Obama’s twitter account on his blog last month. It turns out that our president’s verified account, isn’t his anymore! Apparently, sometime after winning the election, President Obama handed over the rights of his account to Organizing For America, a project of the Democratic National Committee.
I do understand how Barack may have gotten a little too busy to manage his own tweets, but don’t you feel that Twitter should re-evaluate the Verified status on the account? Sure, they do have full disclosure on the background image of the page, but this information is lost for anyone who is using a mobile client, texts, or a 3rd party app like HootSuite or TweetMiner (now called Pluggio). This indecent reveals that verified accounts are only verified ONCE, are never submitted to an audit and shows a great deal of irresponsibility on Twitter’s behalf.
They say the verified account feature is currently in beta, so consider this my bug report. Don’t put up a “lifetime” award that is so easily transferable.
Find the Passion
0774 days
Ric Szczepkowski (pronounced shep-KOUS-kee) , is a former portrait photographer who writes the monthly Camera Corner newsletter (signup here). In this month’s article, Ric discusses how a lack of passion can ruin a business, or how an increase in business can ruin a passion. He also remarks that his best work doesn’t surface until he finds what it is that makes his subject spark.
PASSION IS EVERYTHING! It increases your quality of work, confidence, and, (most importantly) happiness. Wouldn’t it be great to wake up every morning and do exactly what you WANT to do, rather than what you are paid to do? Check out some of the work at Ardent Photography. I’ve met Amy a few times working the wedding circuit, and every time I’m blown away by her professionalism and creativity. While other photographers are enjoying a drink and chatting with their “assistant”, she’s splicing together slide shows of pictures from earlier THAT DAY, catching extra close-up shots of the cake & decor, and walking the room to find the best angles & lighting to shoot the rest of the evening. Every picture she takes could be printed in a magazine add, because her passion drives her to do so much more than just document the event.
So how do you find the passion? DumbLittleMan has a few tips, but they just don’t work for me. I get excited about far too many things to narrow down to two or three. So yeah, this site is my passion, and while some people may criticize that I don’t focus enough on one topic or market, so what? I’m working on setting up separate RSS feeds for each of my categories (please leave a comment or e-mail admin@wautierent.com if you know of a good WordPress plugin for this) as an attempt to keep a few subscribers, but ultimately, it isn’t about satisfying a target audience, it’s about being me, and making myself happy.
You think your PC was expensive?
0775 days
I seriously want to print this piece and set it next to the price sheets on the computer sales floor at work. I can’t stand when someone comes in and asks for a discount on our $400 laptops, that we’re already selling near cost… Many times, a $40 cable generates more profit than the computer itself.
Site Changes
0777 days
As you probably have already noticed, I have added some connections to my Flickr, FaceBook, Twitter, and Formspring sites. I also set up a plugin to send all of my new content to Tumblr as well.
Shoot me a comment or email if you feel the site’s getting a little cluttered. Oh, and I should probably start building the “corporate webpage” side of my site soon too… For those that didn’t pick up on it yet… I’m a DJ… and an entrepreneur… and a geek… and…
Web Content Filter Gives Everyone their own Social Networking Site
0778 days
At my full time job, I sell a product (one of many, may I add) called LightSpeed: Total Traffic Control. TTC is an awesome software package that is used by a large number of K-12 schools and businesses in my area to filter and monitor various forms of communication between the internal network, and the internet. Ever try logging into your GMail at work and get a big red no-no on your screen? There’s a good chance that LightSpeed was behind it.
Web Content, E-Mail, and IM filters have become a necessary evil of the business world these days. From employees slacking off, to inappropriate content showing up in schools, there is a whole great world of distractions out on the web these days, myself included… The problem is, many of these distractions could have the potential to enrich your work or learning experience in a MAJOR way. For instance, I do a lot of work with Symantec, who provides amazing product overview videos on their website. These videos are embedded Flash objects, which many filters are configured to block, because this is also how most browser based games work. When I send this demo to a potential customer, do they understand why the link was blocked, or are they going to put the blame on me for sending them a link that goes against their web policy? Or, how about that awesome motivational speaker my manager found on YouTube last night that she forwarded to the team to check out in the morning.
Enter into a modern age, and welcome My Big Campus into your life. Included for free with every LightSpeed TTC license, My Big Campus will provide each customer with their own, personalized social-networking site (based loosely on the look and feel of FaceBook) that is integrated directly into the filtering components of the server. Every student or employee is given an account to MBC, and groups are set up for each class or team. Then, based on the access rights granted in TTC, teachers or managers are able to post links to any web content (blocked or otherwise), and exceptions are automatically made to allow that content through the filter.
THE FUTURE OF EDUCATION WILL CHANGE BECAUSE OF THIS TECHNOLOGY!
Thanks to the accuracy of Moore’s Law, storage is cheap! Why not record every classroom session and upload a video for students that were out, or just for everyone to review? You could allow that student to tag the video with their questions, at the point in the video where they come up. Just one of many ways that technology can expand our educations and hopefully get us to use a little more than just 10% of our brain (capacity).
Nielson Ratings for Blogs?
0779 days
So apparently, I’ve been getting a little traffic from BlogPulse, so I decided to look into who they are. Nielson Media Research, the company most commonly known for surveying households and publishing TV Ratings, purchased BlogPulse as a way to keep up with a constantly changing world of media. They publish blog profiles and track topics, similar to the Twitter Trending Topics system, but across all blogs on the net. I’m not sure how Nielson discovers the plethora of new content, but from my experiences (and those of others) there are some reliability issues with their system.
Check out the live pulse viewer, which displays a graph of the top 5 topics in the blogosphere at that moment. Oddly enough, the most consistent #1 topic is diary entries… Aren’t all blogs a form of diary?
32 words to boost photo sales
0780 days
According to the Experts at PhotoFocus, there are 32 key words that will help you sell wedding, portrait, pet, and family photography. The thought is that since Women tend to do the majority of household decorating, you should attempt to market to women and use sensitive words like love, passion, temptation, duke, moon, paradise, virgin, and bewitched. While his theory holds some weight, and I haven’t spent much time selling prints (yet), I highly doubt that throwing a word like “hug” “hug” in my tag list is going to increase sales in any way.
Is it just me, or does this seem a little chauvinistic? People buy pictures that express something. While the pictures you took with your little pocket cam at the bar last St. Patrick’s day may be fun and memorable to you, nobody is going to buy it unless it expresses some profound emotion or detail that is totally original and seemingly unrepeatable.
Don’t use these words as a sales-pitch, use them as a guideline while out shooting. No matter what words describe your photo, it will be the content that pushes it off the shelves.
It’s April, Fools!
3781 days
In typical Google fashion, they have revealed yet another April Fools Day joke. What I wasn’t expecting was separate jokes from the GMail team and the Chrome Team. Even more surprising are the Jokes from TechCrunch. I think in the end, PinoyTutorial has the most realistic grasp on the future of Google’s future.
In the end, I have to applaud Google for showing how they can manage being such a large company, while at the same time keeping a fun, interactive face to the public. It makes me wonder what levels of approval these ideas are subject to before publication. Say the wrong thing and you could have a PR disaster.
How I’m Staying Busy
0782 days
Well, despite being at the beginning of the busiest time of the year at my full-time employer, and only a few weeks away from the beginning of a heavily booked wedding season, I do have a few weekends available for fun. As you saw in previous posts, I have taken a little time to travel with my lady, but I threw myself back into the good old world of wrestling, if only for a day. I know, ironic… Just days after I talk about the unlikelihood of a wrestling return I find out that a show being run 3 blocks from my apartment was short staffed.
I took this opportunity to whip out my trust Canon ZR900, a mixer, and a few microphones, and head over to The Watering Hole. To capture a night of action on film… er… MiniDV tape. I also rented a Canon ZR500 from Camera Corner so I could have a 2nd angle, so now that the footage is captured I get to edit this beast. Word of warning for those filming with the Canon ZR series, the batteries drain fast, even on the shelf. Make sure you have 2 or 3 extended life batteries ready to go.
For those wondering, yeah… I do video… But I am entirely amateur when it comes to editing and producing. I’ll be doing most of my work in Pinnacle Studio 11 ( I haven’t used it enough to consider an upgrade) and have no clue if I will be using any on-screen graphics. Any suggestions for a newb producer?
Kmart Coupon Fail
0784 days
Via The Consumerist, Kmart apparently has posted an online coupon (listed as being honored at all stores) that is only valid at select locations, causing an uproar in the blogosphere… Add them to the list of corporate social media fails!
