Here’s another short (one minute!) video from the folks at Common Craft that explains how to use Reader as well:

Related posts on this site:

Blogging and Podcasting Workshop

If you’re in facebook and planning to begin college in the fall of 2009, joining a “Class of 2013″ group may put you or your identity at risk.

Facebook allows users to create their own groups around common interests, a great feature.  While organizations and businesses can create “official” groups that customers/clients/fans can join, the conventional Web 2.0/social media marketing wisdom has been to let the users create the communities.  Users will be more passionate about something that they create themselves, so goes the thinking.  Most of the time this works.

In this case, however, it appears that College Prowler has a group of facebook users who are not students or prospective students for the class of 2009 setting up bogus “Class of 2013″ groups for 250 or more colleges and universities . Brad Ward, Electronic Communications Coordinator in admissions for Butler University (take note: that position belies some progressive thinking for an admissions office), unearthed the scheme.  Andrew Careaga comments about all of this at his higher ed marketing blog.

What’s the point of setting up the bogus groups?  Data collection and marketing/spam potential for an audience of over 1,000,000 students.  I don’t know that anything illegal has happened here but the intentions seem dubious.

What to do if you’re a student in the class of 2013?  Check Brad’s Google Spreadsheet to see if the bogus group is listed there.  If you’ve joined one of these groups, I’d recommend leaving it to ensure that you keep yourself, your data, and your identity at less risk.  Instead, contact your school’s admissions office to see if they’ve set up an “official” class of 2013 facebook group.  While college admissions offices may be reluctant to create their own facebook groups, preferring that students take the lead, incoming students will be better–and more safely–served by joining school-sponsored class of 2013 groups.

Many thanks to Brad for his outstanding sleuthing work.

Incidentally, the class of 2013 group at the school where I teach is legit and it’s just waiting for you to join.

UPDATE: The New York Times ran a story about facebookgate today (12/24/2008), including a response from College Prowler.

Like everyone else, I saw John McCain’s selection of Alaska gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate as coming out of left field.  Since the mainstream media (MSM) had no clue about Palin, they’ve been scrambling.  And some of the reporting has been inaccurate and unabashedly biased.

The insightful folks at GetReligion, however, have done their duty faithfully and are taking the MSM to task.  For a better look at this candidate’s views (as well as a critique of the MSM’s ham-fisted handling of them), direct your attention here:

• The barracuda is a believer – 29 Aug 2008
• Neglecting Palin’s faith, mostly – 30 Aug 2008
• “She’s a witch, she’s a mother…” – 31 Aug 2008
• When reporters attack – 1 Sept 2008

“We’re approaching a pull-the-plug kind of decision,” said Tim Westergren, who founded Pandora. “This is like a last stand for webcasting.”

It will be sad and quieter day if Pandora shutters.

FYI: FastCompany did a good piece on the company’s unique technology in December 2005.

I’ll be at the New Media Expo in Las Vegas next month, learning all the latest blogging/podcasting tips and tricks.  I’m hoping to gain some insights into marketing and production as well as some ideas for my latest project, the Inside LCCS Podcast.  Drop me a line if you’re attending.

The show will feature interviews with faculty, staff, students, and alums, telling their stories and how Lincoln has helped shaped their lives.  The first guest is Dr. J.K. Jones, a man whom I respect and admire as a teacher, friend, and mentor.  Although the school posts the weekly chapel services to a "podcasting" site with a feed, this project is really the first attempt at "conversational" media.  I’m excited to see what comes of it, from a new media perspective as well as a recruiting tool.

The site is Inside LCCS.  Take a look and see what you think.

Photo by rbatina

Public relations (PR) in the world of new media (blogging, podcasting) doesn’t work the same as it has for the print world. When you did something noteworthy in the old days, you’d write up a press release and send it to the relevant media outlets: newspapers, radio, TV, etc. That doesn’t work any more. In Naked Conversations: How Blogs Are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers, co-authors Robert Scoble and Shel Israel write:

…a large number of people see the PR practitioner intentionally blocking the path to the truth, someone who guides company spokespeople to manipulate the message around the actual facts to the advantage of the company and at the expense of the public’s right to know (100).

And it’s no wonder: we’ve suffered from so much spin and message-massaging in the last two decades that we’ve simply come to expect it. So if you’ve got something to say or want someone’s help, what’s the alternative in a post-press-release age?

Have a blogging strategy

The blogosphere is a free market for information: the best, most valuable stuff rises to the top while the dregs remain at the bottom. Because people have become accustomed to filtering spin, they can tell when they’re reading a credible site or not. It won’t do to send out a bunch of press releases to top blogs and podcasts. If you’re looking for positive press in the blogosphere, then, you have to work within the rules of new media, not old.

Tim Ferriss, author of the bestselling The 4-Hour Workweek (review forthcoming), did just that. He cultivated relationships with influential bloggers for a year prior to publishing his book. When the book came out, he asked those same bloggers if he could send them review copies. They said, "Sure," and his book was well-received (Robert Scoble has all the details of Ferriss’ strategy in a new FastCompany article).

New media means new rules.

Tags: blogging, marketing, new media

Photo by fragglerawker_03

Making money on the Internet is easy. I think I’ve made close to $30–without hardly lifting a finger–in two years. Which leads us to this truth:

Making a lot of money on the Internet is hard.

Without an effective strategy, you won’t be earning a living from your online experiences. Essentially, there are three methods for generating revenue:

• Sell advertising
• Use affiliate links
• Sell a product

These are a few of the best articles I’ve found that discuss the nuts and bolts of these methods:

• The Three Ways to Generate Revenue from Your Website
• How to Make Money From Your Blog
• Making Money on the Internet

For day-to-day reading, these three four sites are, hands down, the best resources for would-be blogger/podcaster entrepreneurs:

• Copyblogger
• The Business of Podcasting and New Media
• ProBlogger
• doshdosh (added with Jacob’s recommendation)

Throw these into your feed reader and absorb.

What is it?  Alltop is a kind of aggregator of all the top (all the top–get it?) news feeds on the Internet.  They’ve piped in news from sites in nearly forty different categories (for example, career, food, health, fashion, celebrities, etc.) and update the feeds every ten minutes.

Who would use it?  Good question.  If you’re comfortable with managing your own RSS feeds, you already know that you should be using Google Reader (or some other aggregator).  If you’re not comfortable with that, Alltop collects all the good stuff without your intervention.  Unlike Google Reader, though, you can’t customize the sources that Alltop pulls in.  But it is a good way to discover some sites that you might want to throw into Reader.

Who’s behind Alltop? Guy Kawasaki and a couple of his friends.

Bottom line: A painless way for technophobes and newbies to get the benefits of RSS without the heavy lifting.  For RSS addicts, you’ll need to bookmark the site–there’s no RSS feed .