Archive for the ‘Guides’ Category

The folks at Educause have put together 7 Things You Should Know About E-Readers. This brief guide details the essentials about these portable devices such as:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

Drew McLellan of The Marketing Minute has put together a helpful Social Media Cheat Sheet listing the best ways to leverage today’s popular social media websites.

Mike Troiano, President of Holland-Mark Digital blogs for VentureFizz about Ten Steps To Build A Basic Content Hub. This helpful post gives advice about sharing content and building relationships.

“Using the Web to build your brand is less and less about creating destinations, and more and more about creating content useful to the people you want to reach, then empowering them to access that content wherever and however they like.

The key to this is creating something we call a “content hub.” A content hub is more than just a standalone site or application, it’s both the heart of a distributed network of information, and a destination for those that share the interest it supports.”

Michael Brito at the Social Media Examiner offers 3 Tips for Managing a Social Media Community. This helpful post provides recommendations for building community through social media such as Facebook, Twitter, blogs, and YouTube. Here are the three strategies discussed:

1. Embed within your community.
2. Don’t just focus on monetizing.
3. Don’t just listen, get the community involved.

Joshua Johnson at Six Revisions has created a Comprehensive Guide to Saving Images for the Web. This detailed article addresses every aspect of Photoshop’s “Save for Web & Devices” feature. If you’re using this popular photo editing tool to save your images for use on the Web, you’ll want to check out this guide which has tips for both beginners and experts. These are the areas discussed:

• Before the Save
• Entering the Save for Web Dialog
• Image Size
• Resampling Quality
• File Type and Image Quality
• File Type Options
• Working with GIFs
• Working with JPGs
• Working with PNGs
• View Modes
• Working with Slices
• Outputting HTML

Lifehacker presents a very helpful chart and accompanying article that will help you choose Which Social Network Is Right For You based on privacy, use and management, access, and mobile features.

The folks at Educause have put together another of their “7 Things” guides, this time it’s 7 Things You Should Know About Backchannel Communication. The backchannel is the informal communication that goes on during a conference or other event, most notably on Twitter and other real-time tools. As usual Educause tackles the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. How does it work?
3. Who’s doing it?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

For those Facebook users with over 250 friends, you might not be seeing everyone’s content in your News Feed. The default limit for display has been set by Facebook at 250 which they choose based on who you interact with the most. However, you can adjust this yourself by going to your HOME page –> choosing Most Recent on the top right of the News Feed –> scroll down to the bottom of the page –> click the “Edit Options” link –> change the maximum Number of Friends shown in Live Feed to 5000 which is Facebook’s limit.

via Sarah Houghton-Jan

Ben Parr at Mashable explains the latest initiative from Google in Google Goes Social with Google Buzz. This quick post details the key features and mobile options for this new application. And you may also want to check out Google Buzz Privacy : Easy Steps To Stop Google Buzz From Showing The World Your Contacts from SaveDelete.

Lifehacker has posted a guide to how to Turn Your Netbook into a Feature-Rich E-Book Reader. Check out this post to find helpful tips and tricks to set yourself up with a portable e-book reader including:

• Rotate The Screen
• Adjust The Screen Brightness
• Use a Special Power Saving Mode
• Setting Up E-Book Software

Co-Action Publishing and Lund University Libraries Head Office have published an Online Guide to Open Access Journals Publishing with support from the National Library of Sweden and Nordbib. This useful guide details the steps necessary to launch an OA journal including sections on:

• Planning
• Set Up
• Launch
• Publishing
• Management

If that’s not enough info, you can also check out my article 6 Steps to Publishing a Scholarly Online Journal (for free!) which I have made open access.

The folks at Educause have created another one of their helpful “7 Things” guides, this time discussing 7 Things You Should Know About Next-Generation Presentation Tools. New online presentation services such as Slideshare.net are covered in this article which answers the following questions:

1. What is it?
2. Who’s doing it?
3. How does it work?
4. Why is it significant?
5. What are the downsides?
6. Where is it going?
7. What are the implications for teaching and learning?

The team W3Avenue has posted a compilation of 40 Really Useful Tutorials You Should Have Read in January 2010. These quality tuts are culled from such well-known publications as A List Apart, Webdesigner Depot, Nettuts+, and more. Here are just a few of the featured articles:

• 55+ Most Wanted WordPress Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
• The Easiest Way to Build your First iPhone App
• How To Add a Flickr Gallery to Your WordPress Theme Without a Plugin
• How to Make all Browsers Render HTML5 Mark-up Correctly – Even IE6
• 10 Tips for Better Print Style Sheets
• CSS Transitions 101

The folks at Webdigi have posted a tutorial for Creating a Custom Facebook Fan Page on their PHP, Web and IT stuff blog. This detailed guide provides step-by-step instructions and code snippets for creating custom tabs, a carousel, and web forms on your Facebook fan page.

Inc. Magazine has created a guide to blogging, social networking, multimedia tools, and online reviews and opinions for businesses and organizations. Their Social Media Toolkit includes these 14 guides:

• Your 10-Step Guide to Blogging
• 8 Steps to Starting a Blog
• 10 Must Have Blog Techniques
• 8 Types of People That Belong on Twitter
• How to Banish Blog Spam
• How to Use Social Networking Sites to Drive Business
• How to Advertise on Facebook
• 6 Social Networking Faux Pas
• How to Use Multimedia for Business Marketing
• Marketing Your Business on YouTube
• 6 Services to Help You With Mobile Marketing
• How to Take Advantage of Online Review and Answer Sites
• Take a Deep Breath
• 7 Secrets to Getting Positive Online Reviews