Do you Hulu?

I know you are wondering what’s Hulu got to do with business? Let me tell you, a lot. Hulu’s new application  for the Wii console was the white glove challenge to Netflix. Hulu offers streaming TV and Movies and usually in their current season.  This challenges Netflix which only offers TV shows after their season has ended.  The subscription is the same 7.99 offered by Netflix and the offerings are actually a little more pertinent to the business medium. You can find documentaries on both but the financial series options on Hulu actually surprised me.  Shows like “the Business of Innovation”  and “Start-up Junkies”  are worth the fee! The nice feature is you get to try it free for a week and see if it has something that interests you. I’m on my third episode of Start-Up Junkies love it!

Social Media uses in education

Social media has enhanced the way we do so much in society. In the education field colleges and universities have developed several uses for the technology that virtually shrinks their sprawling campus’. Creating smaller more intimate communities.  This neat infographic I found on Mashable shows the ways social media can enhance the educational experience as both n interactive learning tool and campus notification system.

Verify your following!

Knowing that the people who follow you on Twitter are real people is a good thing. Especially if you use Twitter for business. someone who uses your Twitter following metric for the reach of your company. If you offer services in social media marketing, this can be crucial. TruTwit can help. They take the time to verify your following for you. Because social media is important to what I do, I use it. So when you click on the follow @crazphotochick button you will receive a direct message from TrueTwit asking you to verify that you are human. It works like buying concert tickets online where you get the Captcha image of weird-looking words. You are asked retype them to verify yourself.

The neat thing about the service is that people can still follow you with the click of a button. They have about a week to respond to the direct message so it does not require them to stop what they are doing to respond to your message. They can get around to it when they have a chance. The benefit for you is that you can provide stats on verified followers of a brand, person, team and we all know proven stats sell.

You can check it out for free then decide if it’s a service you want to keep it is just 20 bucks a year. Again. I get nothing for sharing their service, I just like to share things that work.

Sunrise…sunset, fast and real looking sunrays

Ever wish you could tweak the sunrays on a landscape for an illustration? or create that eerie beam me up Scottie feel? This is a great tutorial to enhance mother nature. Russell Brown is fun and his tutorials are great. I’d add him to your faves! Making sunbeams quick and easy

Related Posts

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Cheap and easy……. screencasts!

While there are several more expensive programs out there for screen casting, I found that TechSmith’s Jing and Jing Pro are the most cost-effective. This is especially true if the tutorial or presentation you want to create is shorter than 5 minutes or can be broken up into 5 minute segments.  Jing is free, while Jing Pro is about 15 dollars for the year. I use this to teach software to my online students for InDesign and PhotoShop as It allows them to watch the tutorials as many times as they need to learn a specific technique.  They are not polished by any means, and I hate the sound of my voice, but they are effective in quickly sharing.  I use the 5 minute time limits as a way to bridge moving from PhotoShop to InDesign. I then host them from screencast.com so that they play on all computers in the same clean viewer that works on any platform. Again this is a free basic service and 10  dollars a month for more reliable bandwidth. This would be great for sharing group presentations or sending a presentation that does not have to be simulcast. I’ll share a couple but no laughing! OK you can laugh a little. I’m starting to sound like a Minnesotan!

Easy clipping paths

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Gym membership or skills?

 

Skills, abs, skills, abs oh let’s get real you want the abs, you need the skills. One of the best things you can add to your repertoire, especially if you want a job in social media marketing, is to get training in an area where you are weak. Since most business schools teach you marketing, and even digital marketing, as in my case, they don’t have a lot to offer in social media marketing yet. Employers looking to add people with these skills will appreciate the get up and go of candidates who have taken the initiative to teach themselves.  So like the crazy woman I am, I went to Mediabistro.com. Mediabistro offers a host of valuable courses for about the same price as that gym membership. So make a New Year’s resolution you know you can keep. You know you want skills too!

Kicking it New School!

New School Marketing is not just a cliché. It is a well-researched approach to how marketers can put their best foot forward in a changing arena. It is no longer acceptable for seasoned veterans to acquiesce to ignorance. Yes. I said it! Get your head out of the hole and get with the program! I don’t mean just hiring a techy to tweet on the companies behalf, but understanding how each component of a new school media campaign work together. The more you know, the better you can calculate the risks of taking your marketing department into this new frontier. So let’s start with the basics.

Responsys Interact offers a wealth of white paper and data on New School Marketing. This is a good place to start learning the basics. If you like what they have to say they offer services that can help your business launch a full-scale campaign and track metrics all from the same CMS. Download their informational white papers and read them over the holiday break. This may give you some new ideas on where to lead your company and marketing department in 2012.

Become an e-publican with InDesign!

So you know InDesign but you don’t write code? No problem.  Well if you’ve got an hour and you want to learn a great marketing tool. Adobe.tv has a very useful tutorial that has only had 800 page views. This is sacrilege! Check it out here. This Adobe Evangelist, Rufus Deuchler, is funny, engaging and smart! He will teach you to animate your pdf documents and format to tablet and mobile devices. So go forth and create great e-publications, no tuition required!

http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-design/publishing-to-digital-devices-with-indesign-cs55/

Yes, photojournalism is great training for business!

In his book, “A Whole New Mind,” Daniel H. Pink makes a great case for the artistic mind in today’s business world, I agree. I am often asked “How relevant are your photojournalism skills in business and new media?” I refrain from the puzzled look then respond, “Extremely!” You need to be analytical, social, open to change, part geek, part therapist and part artist. I am a trained photojournalist, experienced manager, MBA and professor. The first career trained me for all the other accomplishments.

Photojournalists are typically the gadget geeks in the newsroom. This lends itself to ease of learning when faced with new equipment and software. We have also navigated a series of industry changes. The transition from dark rooms to PhotoShop, the near death of the film camera and learning to shoot and edit video all while producing quality audio required a lot of flexibility. The photographer in me has learned to be a Jack-Of-All-Trades and master of many! Simply put, successful photojournalists are fast creative problem solvers with technological savvy and people skills.

Photojournalists have to deal with an awful lot on an assignment. We need to document the news visually and be artistic about it. We meet and relate to new people every day.  Often we deal with people at the single worst moment of their lives, so empathy is a given. Building relationships quickly gains us the trust needed to photograph naturally apprehensive subjects. The deadline pressure is often insane, so the fast pace of new media suites us just fine.  Did I mention you need to find ways to get into places that are not necessarily safe for the general public, and avoid injury or equipment loss?  I’m not going on the record about how useful these skill are! Suffice it to say I’ve been hit by a NASCAR  and still made the picture. We are professional, behaving appropriately on Air Force One.  Photogs are natural competitors, comparing our photo play daily in news outlets across the country.

Photojournalists do much more than this. We have breadth and depth of experience that easily translates into today’s tech heavy business world. New media, no problem.  With the trials of the newspaper industry, it is worth it for photogs to consider a new path. So colleagues, while this is a trying time for photojournalists across the country, have no fear there is a place for your training in the private sector! Employers, it may just be time to start hiring “A Whole New Mind.”

Pimp your Prezi!

So, you want to give a presentation that stands out? One that keeps the attention of the students you are lecturing to? Or one that just says you’re cool to the innovative young execs your pitching? Then you need to bring out the big guns and “Pimp out your Prezi!” Prezi.com Is a unique site that helps you make zooming presentations and it hosts them there on the site. So your Prezi’s are wherever you have access to the internet. If you are a mobile collaborator, i.e. MBA student working on a team project or a telecommuter, this is priceless. Each group member can edit your presentation collectively from different locations. One of my favorite Prezi projects is seen here . This Coca-Cola Company Prezi uses the iconic image of the Classic Coca-Cola bottle and turns it into a vehicle to organize and keeps the central focus of the presentation all while creating a unique experience. This Prezi makes the viewer say “Whoa, now this is an experience, not just another PowerPoint!” Don’t forget to check out the YouTube video at the end of the presentation. Nice way to use a simply shot video to build a feeling of community with your audience.

While I love Prezis , there is a potential downside, if not done carefully, you can make your audience dizzy. So watch the amount and speed of transitions. This means the navigation distance between your boxes. Zig-zagging across the workspace is bad! If you use a clockwise direction, you are less likely to cause motion sickness!

P.S. I’d love it if you came back and posted links to your Prezis in the comments!