Archive for the 'Blogs & Things to Explore' Category

I usually focus on blogging for business so it’s nice to be reminded that most of the 170 million blogs out there are by ordinary people writing about their daily lives and personal feelings. It was the We Feel Fine project that was the big reminder - it’s a project led by computer scientist, Jonathan Harris, that explores “human emotion on a global scale” by harvesting emotions expressed on blogs whenever the words “I feel…” are found.

The emotions are gathered and sorted in different ways and shown in six “movements” - madness, murmurs, montage, mobs, metrics and mounds - which are essentially different visualisations of the data. You can see good feelings and bad feelings as well as the geographic location, age and gender of the person expressing those feelings. The project’s website suggests that this living artwork can offer specific answers to questions like: “Do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest?”

You need to launch an applet - which can take up to 20 seconds to load - in order to experience this amazing artwork. Click on the image below and it should take you to the We Feel Fine page: to launch the applet from there, click on the last sentence of the first paragraph (”We Feel Fine is divided into six discrete movements, each illuminating a different aspect of the chosen population. These movements are represented in the We Feel Fine applet.”)

I love the way the bubble of feelings cluster round the mouse cursor when you click on the screen in Madness - if you hover it over one of the bubbles, it will show you the location of the feeling and a brief idea of what the feeling is.

Then in Murmurs, you can see each latest feeling expressed somewhere out there in the world appear on the screen and if you click on the phrase, you’ll be taken to the blog. So “i feel so detached from everything i used to stand for” takes me to a blog post You Are My Brand Of Heroin - tonight is the night to let it go by xshadowsoflovex.

So how does this artwork make me feel? I feel more connected with the millions of people out there in the world.

Twitter is THE big thing these days on social media. Barack Obama and other presidential candidates made it hip for politics in the last couple of years. Celebs like Stephen Fry and Oprah have also helped with bringing Twitter to the masses. Royalty have got in on the act - check out Queen Rania of Jordan (thumbs up for a smart and appealing use of the app) and also the British Monarchy (thumbs down for press releases galore).

Now, it’s the turn of the RAF in the UK and NASA in the US to use Twitter to bring what they do to a wider, global audience. The RAF hopes to use Twitter and also Flickr to help with recruitment, according to New Media Age (NMA). Six RAF personnel have been given multimedia phones to upload pictures and commentary on what they are doing. One paragraph at the end of the NMA article made me smile: “The RAF’s latest recruitment project comes as the Central Office of Information revealed its annual report earlier this week. It spent £40m on digital marketing in the 12 months to March 2009, an increase of 84% year on year” - I hope that they didn’t spend £40m just to come up with this Twitter / Flickr campaign!

Over in the USA, space agency NASA has its own Twitter feed as do a number of astronauts such as Mike Massimo and Mark Polansky. There is also a general NASA Astronauts feed. I’m following the two astronauts mentioned and it’s wonderful and surreal to read their updates from space - all about space walks and orbitting earth - while I’m here at my desk going about my daily business. We’ve come a long way from the Apollo missions and the moon landing back in the ’60s when we all crowded round the TV or radio to hear the latest bulletins - now we can get real time updates straight to our PCs or mobile phones directly from space!

Photo: thanks to ImpactLab.com

Neville Hobson, over at his blog the other day, asked why he should use Posterous.

For those of you who’ve never heard of this application, it’s a blog-like platform that enables you to blog by email. You sign up for a free Posterous account which gives you a blog at www.yourchosenname.posterous.com and you can then blog by sending an email with photos, mp3s, videos or text, and even by calling in on your phone - these items will be posted on the blog automatically. For more details of how it works, check out my review of Posterous from around this time last year.

Neville’s question - and the responses he got from various people - got me thinking about how and why I use it, when I already have this blog.

There seems to be a trend towards not just multimedia but also real time, or almost real time, communication online, facilitated by smartphones with always on internet connectivity as well as SMS (short text messaging) and MMS (multi media messaging). This is emerging as a fresh form of blogging that is being called “lifestreaming” - where you stream a record of your real life on to the online space in nearly real time. Twitter is the most well-known application that enables you to do that via text. Posterous facilitates the process in a multi-media way.

I use my blog at Fusion View for posts which are more like articles or essays where I explore issues and topics in a considered way. These longer posts are interspersed with some video, audio and photo-slideshows. But it doesn’t feel like this is the right place for very informal snippets of what’s going on in my daily life. So that’s where lifestreaming comes in.

I’ve called my Posterous site the Fusion View Lifestream. Since I got my new Blackberry Bold the other week, I’ve really been having fun snapping shots of my garden and friends I’ve met up with as well as my recent jaunt down to Bristol - and then emailing them straight to Posterous. You can also email multiple photos in one email and it will create a little slideshow automatically. There is an automatic cross-posting function that sends the snaps to Twitter, Facebook and my Flickr account - as well as a range of other social media sites, if you were so inclined. This means that my friends and family who follow me in those spaces can see what’s going on for me within minutes of my snapping the pictures or tapping out the text on my Blackberry. But people who read my blog who may not be that interested in seeing my tomato plants or my tourist snaps of Bristol don’t have to be bothered by those more personal moments.

Occasionally, I get Posterous to automatically cross-post to Fusion View as well if it’s the right kind of vignette or mood piece that would fit with the blog and break up the longer, in depth posts.

So, if you’d like to follow my lifestream vignettes, you can subscribe to my Posterous feed or follow me on Twitter.

If you’re lifestreaming or using Posterous, why don’t you add a comment with the link to your site - I’m curious to see who else is having a go at this!

Photo: thanks to Zest-pk from flickr.com (CCL)

If anyone is still sceptical about the power of social media, all you have to do is take a look at its role in the making of America’s first African American president. Of all the candidates, Barack Obama has probably been the most socially connected online throughout the Democratic nomination race and also in the last year going head to head with John MCain. So, what platforms was he using and what effect did they have on the outcome of the election?

Back in the summer of 2007, I spotted that Obama had signed up for a Twitter account so that his fans and followers could keep up to date with his every movement. As of this week, you can see the “tweets” alerting his followers of the last frenetic activity on his campaign trail as he tried to squeeze as much face time with the public as possible.

The tweets link to live video on his very own social network my.barackobama.com, developed with the input of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes. Obama also has a Facebook page with over a million “friends” and a Facebook application as well as a presence on MySpace. TechPresident.com gives a good analysis of these three social networks in “You’ve Got a Friend in Barack Obama”.

There is an official Obama Blog on his website, run by staffers and with a range of multimedia content, including live video such as his victory speech streamed via social networking video site Ustream, as well as YouTube videos.

Beyond this handful of tools, you can see on his blog links to “Obama Everywhere” - other platforms where he has an online presence, including interactive opportunities via mobile phone.

But a bunch of social media tools in themselves are not going to make a president all by themselves. The key is how they were used by the Obama campaign. Supporters, fans and followers were encouraged to take an action to show their support for the campaign - whether by organising local events or giving a donation, however small or large, or raising funds. According to the BBC, Obama’s online campaign “attracted more than three million donors. They donated about $650m (£403m) - more than both presidential contenders in 2004 combined.” With an overflowing war chest, he could out-do McCain by buying more airtime in the traditional broadcast media and also extend his own on-the-ground real world contact through more local outreach offices than the Republican campaign.

The BBC also reports that “Mr Obama had an unprecedented level of support among young people and new voters in the 2008 election. He won the votes of those under 30 by an impressive 66% to 31%, much higher than in any previous election. He also has a huge majority of those who voted for the first time, who supported him by 68% to 31%.” The Washington Post comments that the Millenials (those under 30) “are migrating toward each other, regardless of race or ethnicity. … (They) may have found their first president — one who engages them in their own space.”

Obama’s success was not entirely due to social media but he used it smartly in conjunction with other communication tools. Broadcast media is still hugely influencial and there’s nothing that will replace face to face human contact whether it’s through speeches at rallies or simply walking amont the people and kissing babies. But social media broadened his reach to those people he might not have otherwise been able to connect with and it also enabled ordinary people to do small things which came together as a whole to contibute to an enormous win.

Picture: screenshot of the official Obama website

For background to the project, read my post about our involvement in Dulwich OnView

The freshly re-launched website for the British Prime Minister at Number10.gov.uk is using the leading blog platform Wordpress to create a regularly updateable site that integrates a range of multi-media and social media tool. (My two blogs are both self-hosted Wordpress blogs)

The main page shows a Top Story and below it, the Latest News from No.10 in a scrolling reverse date order layout - like most blogs. It is updated pretty much every day, sometimes more than once. But for those hoping to learn what Gordon Brown had for breakfast will be disappointed. It’s not Gordy’s personal blog but rather a site where the latest official news from the Prime Minister’s office can be posted up quickly and easily. Each post or news update is tagged for easy searchability and there are buttons you can click on to share the posts that grab your attention on Facebook, Delicious or Digg. However, there’s no option to add your comment so there is no real blog-like interactivity.

The “blog” serves as a hub for the other PM’s other multi-media activities. There is a link in the sidebar to the latest photos on Downing Street Flickr page where you can see Mr Brown strutting his stuff at press conferences, meeting the public and shaking hands with other politicos. None of him in his shirt sleeves doing a spot of gardening.

You can also click through to the Downing Street YouTube channel which has videos of the PM on foreign visits, sending a Ramadan message and making speeches. So far, so “ho hum”. But there’s an interesting attempt at reaching out to the people via the “Ask the PM” initiative where Mr Brown will be “responding to the most popular questions submitted by the YouTube community.” Apparently, people have already left questions and the PM “will be back in September with his answers” - but I can’t seem to find the videos of those who asked the questions and I can’t easily work out which videos of Mr Brown currently on the site are answers to YouTubers’s questions. Can anyone give me some pointers on this?

I think my favourite of all the these social media initiatives is the Downing Street Twitter feed - it’s a bit less impersonal than the other to-be-expected press release/ photo shoot/ sound bite style multi-media offerings as you can get a little bit of the voice of the staffer who is behind the tweets, although most of the the updates are still fairly formal in tone.

Of course you wouldn’t expect the official website of the British Prime Minister to maintain a certain distance and dignity - and to be filled with official content. What is significant I think is the use of a blogging platform such as Wordpress as the host for the site and the dissemination of the multi-media content across video-sharing and micro-blogging sites to reach an audience that might not otherwise sit down and read the papers or watch the news on TV. It is a great example of thinking outside the box and using the technology because it’s the right tool regardless of what that technology is called - see my discussion of how misconceptions about “blogging” can limit your communication toolbox in A Blog by an other Name

For more commentary on the Downing Street “blog” from various bloggers, see:

Neville Hobson (blogger, podcaster and business communicator) - New 10 Downing Street site runs Wordpress

Simon Dickson, principal consultant at web and online communications firm Puffbox (which also inputted into the site) - Sneak preview of new Number10 site

Photo: from number10.gov.uk

by Angie Macdonald

We’ve recently enjoyed working with Savile Row tailor, Carol Alayne, to create her new business blog Tailoring for Women.

There are very few female Savile Row tailors, so it was a real privilege to get an insight into Carol’s world and the unique service she offers.

I used to associate Savile Row with men in suits making suits for men, but things are changing, and Carol Alayne is part of that change. She has twenty years’ experience and a particular passion for tailoring for women. Her background in banking means that she fully understands the tailoring needs of professional women and what their jobs require of them.

Through our coaching sessions on how to use blogging as part of her marketing strategy, we got to know more about Carol. Particularly fascinating is the fact that she learned how to sew on her grandmother’s knee at the age of five and started her first tailoring business when she was fourteen. Her other passion is playing the fiddle, which means she also understands the tailoring needs of musicians very well.

Together with our web design associate, David Robertson, we worked with Carol to design a site that would function both as a website and a blog, with the blog being the focal point.

The Tailoring for Women blog and website is now live. On the blog, Carol shares her expertise and insight on the tailoring industry. She is also creating a knowledge base that will demystify the process of the bespoke tailoring tradition and educate present and potential clients. Do go over and check it out. You will be able to learn about the differences between bespoke and ready-made and where to find extraordinary fabrics, for example. I was fascinated to learn that in many mass-produced ready-made garments the seams are fused together with glue!

Carol also has many high profile clients, including the British Olympic Shooting Team, Dame Kiri te Kanawa and one of my heroines, performance artist Laurie Anderson. From time to time she features garments she is making for high profile clients so it’s a good way to see who’s wearing what.

I hope Carol will enjoy blogging as much as we enjoyed showing her the ins-and-outs of blog posting, linking and commenting. We wish her every success!

For those of you who’d like to try blogging but feel a bit intimidated, there’s a new platform that makes it very easy to start your own blog. If you know how to send an email, you can blog. That’s the premise of posterous.com. You don’t have to sign up or go through any complicated setup steps - all you have to do to start blogging is to send them an email at post@posterous.com and they’ll reply giving you your own site at http://yourname.posterous.com. Once you receive their welcome email, you’ll be taken through a simple process to allocate a password so you can access the control panel to your site.

You can email photos, videos, MP3s audio files and other files such as Word documents, Powerpoint presentations and pdfs and they will be instantly uploaded as a blog post. The text of your email will become the text of the blog post. If you are in the US, you can even blog by SMS by authorizing your phone once you’ve got yourself a posterous blog.

Posterous can also automatically cross-post whatever you email to your other sites such as Twitter, Flickr and the major blog platforms such as Wordpress and Blogger as well as self-hosted blog sites. Also the audio feed is an iTunes-ready podcast feed so people can subscribe to your audio content via iTunes without your having to do anything more.

In the interests of simplicity, Posterous does not offer options to add widgets to your sidebar and there are no tools such as Categories or a Blogroll that you would normally expect to see on most blogs. For most people who just want to post items by email as and when they feel like it and wherever they may be, that simplified interface means there is less to think about - all you have to do is send an email and voila, you’re blogging.

You also cannot customise the design or layout of your site but then, again, the focus is on simplicity. So while Posterous may not be right for people who want the full blog experience with the ability to have a customized design, widgetized sidebars and all the usual elements such as Categories etc that help your visitors navigate around your blog, it’s a great starting point for people who are happy with the simple, streamlined way to post their content online.

For those of us who already have blogs, Posterous can be a fun supplemental tool - if you set up the automatic cross-posting function, you can blog by email via Posterous. It also means that your content is available on another platform and this can be helpful for making it more widely available to a different audience. Via your Posterous control panel, you can subscribe to follow other people’s posterouses (posteri?) and vice versa so it’s a great way to explore other multi-media posterous bloggers.

I’ve been using Utterz.com for my multi-media blogging but I will try Posterous. I like Utterz because it gives you the option of blogging by phone - ie you just dial a number from your mobile or a landline and speak, then press a couple of buttons on the phone and you have an audio-blog which is automatically cross-posted to your blog(s). I may still use Utterz for that. But from what I can see, Posterous has the advantage on other points in that the video player looks bigger and cleaner and for text posting there is no text character limit, compared to Utterz.

You don’t have to be glued to the telly this summer to follow the Olympics. You can watch it online from your desk at work or on your mobile phone anywhere you can access the mobile internet. According to Fierce Mobile Content, an up to the minute study by NBC Universal reports that, “74.6 million viewers tuned in for Friday’s Opening Ceremonies–while television accounted for 94 percent of the audience, online viewing represented 5.7 percent, mobile TV accounted for 0.03 percent and only about 36,000 viewers (0 percent) watched via video-on-demand.”

This is likely to be the first time that many people are using their mobiles to watch TV, according to the report, and no doubt a lot more people are watching online who cannot get to a TV. So the increased viewer numbers overall is good news for the US TV channel NBC as they are one of the key US broadcasters offering live coverage of the Olympics online and via mobile - once people get the hang of using new technology and get used to having that universal access, they are likely to want more. Increased access to content via a variety of media means, of course, increased viewer numbers overall and that’s good for advertising revenue - and may even translate into people willing to pay in the future for the convenience of, say, mobile content delivery.

The NBC online site offers viewers the option to be alerted when an event starts as well as “video to go” if you missed it. There are also downloads of highlights, results and medals listings, information about competing countries and online games to play. And, evidence of the growing Hispanic demographic in the US, a Spanish version of the site.

In the UK, the BBC also offers live video coverage of the Olympics online with a live text commentary. You can receive video masterclasses on your mobile phone - eg explaining the art of tae kwan do - and also take part in a live streaming discussion via text (Text 81111 with “OLYMPICS” as first word - UK users only). You can also receive text alerts for the events you want to watch live. For the mobile site, type http://news.bbc.co.uk/mobile/ into your phone’s browser. Like the NBC site, there are medal and results listings. There is also a section featuring BBC Sport’s Olympics Monkey - a cartoon mascot of sorts derived from the Chinese mythic hero Monkey - with games and quizes.

In fact, checking out the BBC mobile page opened up to me a whole world of mobile BBC content beyond the Olympics - including previews of the thriller series Spooks, text recipes from a cookery programme and the chance to share your snapshot of a newsworthy event direct from your mobile phone.

In China, too, mobile coverage of the Olympics is ubiquitous, according to Reuters. The report quotes Yun Weijie, president and chief executive of Telegent Systems, a Silicon Valley semiconductor maker: “TV will become a standard feature for cellphones in China by the end of this year, just like cameras.”

Check out the blogs, newsletters and social media spaces created by the ZenGuide Network - ie friends, colleagues, clients and associates connected with the ZenGuide Communications and Social Media Consultancy: all in one place.