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Category: social networks

Eleven in a Camper


Sunday May 18, 2008

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Before there was Kerouac, There was Paskowitz. But he took his wife and nine children along for the ride. They lived the true surf lifestyle in a 24 foot long camper. While following the seasons and the tides, they answered to no one and became surfings royal family.

This from Surfing and Health Doc Paskowitz 5 Pillars of Health seen in SurfWise

1) Diet with lots of fruits and vegetables and little meat,
2) Exercise to burn what you eat
3) Rest eight hours a day
4) Recreation in a kind of play that re-creates you (Surfing!)
5) Positive attitude of mind

“Diet, exercise, rest, recreation and attitude of mind, all working together, can make the young man a superman, and an old man, older.” Dorian “Doc” Paskowitz

The Paskowitz Surf Camp is still going strong, Contact my good friend Izzy if you feel the need to paddle out and catch the stoke.

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From the post Social Media is Giving Static Websites New Life is the following list of how social media is becoming the natural complement to static web pages.

1. Opens up the Lines of Communication between Customer/Clients & Website Owner. You can do this in many ways. Such as Forums or adding a Blog to your Static Website.

2. Let your Customer/Clients know via a Blog about Sales, Promotions, New items, Recalls, etc. Adding a Blog with a RSS feed to your website is a great way to let your customers and readers know about important updates.

3. Adding a Blog to your Website can add new content / web pages to your site. This causes more entrances to your Website for Serps and for Viewers.

4. Add Social Bookmarking buttons to your static pages and let viewers bookmark them. This can add extra traffic to your website when their social bookmarks are shared with others.

5. Using Social Media can let your website compete with other websites/blogs that have larger marketing bank accounts.

6. Using Photo sharing for your Product Images can bring traffic in to your website.

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Social Networking websites such as MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn are growing and some people still don’t know about them. It’s easy to make an account. Simply sign up and see how many of your friends are on there. Then, view their friends profiles and see how you can relate to them or find their knowledge or connections useful to you.

It’s a great way to expand your social network and get to know more of your friends friends.

Everyone’s on there, are you?

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There’s a new e-card you can send inspired by James Buck’s timely use of Twitter. Send it to your loved ones.

Saved by Twitter

April 10, James Buck was going to head back home from a three-week assignment studying the Egyptian blogosphere.

“I was trying to take some photos of this small protest and trying to be very clear that I was not in the protest, It was very tense.” – James Buck

As Buck tried to leave the protest in a taxi, He was chased and then detained by Egyptian police. As he was driven to the police station under the direction of the police, Buck was able to sent out a single-word message from his cell phone to his Twitter account: Arrested.
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Chris Brogan has declared Today. Monday, April 28th “Read and Comment” day. Instead of your typical post (or as well as), get out there and comment on some blogs. Contribute to their conversations. Find some good stuff and add to it.

Get out there and take part in the conversation.

You will be glad you did.

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I am one of those people who need to justify most purchases. When that iPhone came out my creative juices started flowing. Hmmmm … how can I convince myself that phone is vital to my existence, maybe not vital, but how can it help me? Sometimes you just need a little inspiration. The iPhone is a powerful tool and with every update new functionality is added.

Social Media takes time. Some say it takes more time than they can fit into their hectic lives. What if all you needed was a mobile phone? You could promote your business in your down time, those frustrating times when you can’t really do anything productive, the commute home, waiting for doctors appointments, waiting in line at the grocery store, you could even use that iconic device to open up conversations about your business.

Here is a list of the ways I have used the iPhone for social media optimization.

1. The dynamic duo “photos” and “camera” turn you into a photoblogging superstar! Take a picture and upload immediately to your blog. Get more bang for your post and cc your social sites while you are at it. Setting will have to be preloaded and the contact for each social site added to your contacts for easy and immediate access. Once settings are in place shoot your tantalizing picture and post. Be sure to add a compelling title.

2. Find the videos you have loaded up on YouTube and watch them, send them to social sites, email them to contacts, or make the person in line with you at the grocery store watch it. Bookmark your videos on your iPhone. Depending upon your industry and chattiness you will find opportunities to share your videos.

3. I was never a text message sender before the iPhone, but the iPhone’s large (by mobile standards) qwerty keyboard makes it easy and accessible. Combine your iPhone with a microblogging client such as Twitter and there are a variety of combinations to utilize. For example: Monitor your keywords and find the conversations as they happen. Using Twitter you can add ‘bots’ to search conversations which have your keywords in them. These messages containing your keywords can be sent directly to your phone and then your conversation begins. IMPORTANT POINTER: Be sure to adjust your text messaging package to insure your keyword alerts do not exceed your current text messaging package.

Buy technology you love and optimize your settings, bookmarks and features to remove all obstacles to using that technology.

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What is Twitter?

Twitter is for staying in touch and keeping up with friends, colleagues, and current events, no matter where you are or what you’re doing. For some friends or events you might want instant mobile updates for others, you can just check the web. Invite your friends to Twitter and decide how connected you want you to be.

During the recent Earthquake and California Wild Fires Followers Set Twitter Ablaze: “Twitter users Nate Ritter and Viss have been busy posting rapid-fire updates of the current wildfire situation in Southern California. Both of them are on the scene in San Diego, and they are doing an excellent job of providing information and news about evacuations, meeting points and anything important that local residents would need to know.”

Quite simply: There is nothing more important to teach educators (and the rest of us) about technology, than how to network.

Putting out a fire? Escaping an Earthquake? Planning a class? meeting? Lunch? Conference? and need to be able to update (and update your site?) and be updated via your mobile device? Twitter is how you can do so.

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And those reviews are having a considerable impact on purchase decisions. According to a recent survey by Deloitte’s Consumer Products group, almost two-thirds (62 percent)of consumers read consumer-written product reviews on the Internet. Of these, more than eight in 10 (82 percent) say their purchase decisions have been directly influenced by the reviews, either influencing them to buy a different product than the one they had originally been thinking about purchasing or confirming the original purchase intention. Interestingly, while the percentages were slightly higher for the younger generations, all age groups are reading and acting on online reviews at significant rates. In addition, the reach of consumer reviews isn’t limited to the online world; seven in 10 (69 percent) consumers who read reviews share them with friends, family or colleagues, thus amplifying their impact.

“This increasing market transparency can adversely impact the margins, market share and brand equity of consumer products companies,” said Pat Conroy, vice chairman and US consumer products group leader at Deloitte & Touche USA LLP. “In the past, clever marketers and advertisers shaped brands, but now consumers are increasingly empowered, everyone has a voice, and information and opinions are instantly dispersed. Consumer product companies need to determine how best to capitalize on this new landscape. Clearly, there will be consequences for those who don’t.”

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Did you get an invite to Quechup? DELETE IT!!! Just wanted to send a note out to everyone to let them be aware of a new social network that is spamming everyone in your gmail address book. If you get an invite from Quechup ignore it. I sign up for these sites all the time. I was sent an invitation from a customer and joined to check it out. When Quechup asked me to invite my friends I did, making sure only to invite Lisa McClure. However, everyone in my gmail address book was sent an invitation. The amount of bad press that can be found with a Google search on Quechup is amazing. Please disregard, trash, destroy, delete, remove, any and all invites from Quechup. and advise your friends to do the same. From now on I will google every invite I get prior to joining any new site. We advise you to do the same. and to contact us directly if you have any questions.

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ABSTRACT Tasks like image recognition are trivial for humans, but continue to challenge even the most sophisticated computer programs. This talk introduces a paradigm for utilizing human processing power to solve problems that computers cannot yet solve. Traditional approaches to solving such problems focus on improving software. I advocate a novel approach: constructively channel human brainpower using computer games. For example, the ESP Game, described in this talk, is an enjoyable online game — many people play over 40 hours a week — and when people play, they help label images on the Web with descriptive keywords. These keywords can be used to significantly improve the accuracy of image search. People play the game not because they want to help, but because they enjoy it.

Luis von Ahn is an assistant professor in the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University, where he also received his Ph.D. in 2005. Previously, Luis obtained a B.S. in mathematics from Duke University in 2000. He is the recipient of a Microsoft Research Fellowship.

He describes other examples of “games with a purpose”: Peekaboom, which helps determine the location of objects in images, and Verbosity, which collects common-sense knowledge. He also explains a general approach for constructing games with a purpose.

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Social Media Optimization uses the tools of Web 2.0: blogs, RSS feeds, social networking sites, social bookmark buttons, tagging, multimedia posts, and wikis, to target an audience, create an online presence and to develop familiarity and authority with the customer. SMO is about using these tools in conjunction with a website to spread your content far and wide, to create opportunities for others to link to your site and to establish yourself as an authority.

Social Media Optimization harnesses the power of the social network. Web 2.0 provides numerous and growing opportunities to become a participant in the on line communities. Social networking sites create new opportunities to reach potential customers and to establish a dialogue. Social Media Optimization operates in a way that is analogous to “word of mouth” advertising but is more efficient due to the tools and organization of the internet.

Developing content and posting in appropriate social forums, using the current tools to tag and make your content easy to distribute and link to is the focus of a Social Media Optimization Campaign. Building a wealth of informative posts using various media is an efficient and productive way to spread your reputation and encourage a discourse with customers.