Archive for the ‘Media’ Category

Tom Walker at DesignMag puts together a list of 15 Essential WordPress Plugins for Portfolio Sites. These useful add-ons will enable WP users to create and add image galleries, albums, thumbnails, videos, and even embed music into their blogs. Anyone looking to create a more multimedia and interactive blog or website with their WP installation will want to check out this post.

Jennifer Leggio writes for ZDNet’s Social Business blog about the Nine worst social media fails of 2009… thus far. Anyone interested in social media marketing will want to check out these summaries of marketing misses.

“What is to be learned here? Well, don’t lead with tools. Don’t think that your brand is above the risks and backlash of social media. When plotting a social media campaign, truly think about what you want your end result to be, and fully examine everything that could possibly go wrong. Word-of-mouth marketing is a fantastic thing when you know how to leverage it. But if you lose control of your brand, the disasters are almost endless. Let these brands’ failures be a lesson.”

Several libraries have recently joined the Flickr Commons initiative started by the Library of Congress in early 2008. Among them are:

Swedish National Heritage Board - 201 images

Nantucket Historical Association - 208 images

Chicago’s Field Museum Library - 476 images

District of Columbia Public Library - 154 images

I was thinking that Mashable’s latest post by Sharlyn Lauby titled “Should Your Company Have a Social Media Policy?” could easily be applied to libraries. Since many libraries have begun adopting social media tools, it stands to reason that some may be considering developing such a policy. The article covers the Five W’s to creating a social media policy:

1. WHY have such a policy?
2. WHAT can social media do for my organization?
3. WHO should the policy cover?
4. WHERE should you let employees know about this policy?
5. WHEN is the right time to implement a policy?

I’d be really interested to hear what else you might add to a library-specific Social Media policy - please add your suggestions in the comments!

Lee Odden at the Online Marketing Blog posts about 25 Must Read Social Media Marketing Tips gathered from expert in-house social media marketers from Dell, Comcast, HP, Intel and more. The article includes advice and insight from 25 contributors including:

• Charlene Li - Founder of The Altimeter Group and best selling author, ”Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies”.
• Chris Brogan - President of New Marketing Labs
• Nick Ayres - Interactive Marketing Manager, The Home Depot
• Frank Eliason - Director of Digital Care, Comcast
• Richard Binhammer - Senior Manager, Dell

According to a recent press release, the Library of Congress will build on its recent success with the Flickr Commons pilot by sharing audio and video content from its collections via YouTube and Apple iTunes. Library of Congress channels on these services will launch over the next few weeks.

“New channels on the video and podcasting services will be devoted to Library content, including 100-year-old films from the Thomas Edison studio, book talks with contemporary authors, early industrial films from Westinghouse factories, first-person audio accounts of life in slavery, and inside looks into the Library’s fascinating holdings, including the rough draft of the Declaration of Independence and the contents of Lincoln’s pockets on the night of his assassination.”

There are over 100 million photos available on Flickr which have been licensed with Creative Commons licenses and Michelle Thorne has published an analysis of them on the Creative Commons blog. Here are a few of her findings:

• 33% of them are equipped with the most restrictive CC License, BY-NC-ND. That means that over 32 million photos are available to download, display publicly, and distribute, as long as the author is attributed and no changes are made to the original image.
• The second most frequent license is BY-NC-SA. It allows derivative works for non-commercial purposes as long as those resulting works are made available under the same license. 29%, or 29 million images, can be used in this manner.
• 76% of all photos bar commercial use. At the same time, it means that 24%, or 24 million photos, do allow for commercial use with minimal restrictions.
• Over 12 millions photos are completely free to use, as long as the author of the image is attributed.
• Approximately 63 million of all available image files allow for derivative works.

The blog search engine Technorati issues the Technorati Attention Index which reports the top mainstream media websites that bloggers link to the most. This report will be updated each month. Here are the top ten, be sure and check out the full article for the full list.

1. YouTube
2. New York Times
3. BBC News
4. CNN.com
5. MSN
6. guardian.co.uk
7. Washington Post
8. Yahoo! News
9. Reuters
10. Los Angeles Times

via TechCrunch

Robin Broitman at IIG has put together a Superlist of What NOT To Do In Social Media, linking to eye-opening examples of blunders made by major corporations and individuals when launching social Web initiatives. Learn by (bad) example and avoid the social media mistakes listed in this handy guide including:

• The Twitter Hall of Shame: 50 Tweets That Will Echo in History
• A Chronology of Brands that Got Punk’d by Social Media
• 10 Social Media Blunders that Can Destroy Your Brand

The Library of Congress has issued both a full and a summary report of the pilot project it launched with Flickr in January 2008.

“Two collections of historical photographs were made public on a Library account on the Flickr photosharing site in January 2008. The response from Flickr members and observers of the pilot was overwhelmingly positive and beneficial. The following statistics attest to the popularity and impact of the pilot:

• As of October 23, 2008, there have been 10.4 million views of the photos on Flickr.
• 79% of the 4,615 photos have been made a “favorite” (i.e., are incorporated into personal Flickr collections).
• Over 15,000 Flickr members have chosen to make the Library of Congress a “contact,” creating a photostream of Library images on their own accounts.
• For Bain images placed on Flickr, views/downloads rose approximately 60% for the period January-May 2008, compared to the same time period in 2007. Views/downloads of FSA/OWI image files placed on Flickr rose approximately 13%.
• 7,166 comments were left on 2,873 photos by 2,562 unique Flickr accounts.
• 67,176 tags were added by 2,518 unique Flickr accounts.
• 4,548 of the 4,615 photos have at least one community-provided tag.
• Less than 25 instances of user-generated content were removed as inappropriate.
• More than 500 Prints and Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) records have been enhanced with new information provided by the Flickr Community.
• Average monthly visits to all PPOC Web pages rose 20% over the five month period of January-May 2008, compared to the same period in 2007.”

via Open Education News

Have you ever wanted to bookmark images you find online in the same way that you would favorite an article or website in delicious or other social bookmarking website? The New York Times has hand-picked some top photo-oriented bookmarking sites which will let you do just that in their recent article Tag That Image: Visual Bookmarking Sites Worth Browsing.

The folks at Common Craft have put together a new video explaining Windows Live in plain english. If you have an interest in setting up a profile in this website community, you may want to check this out.

The Parisians, Photographer: Alfred Eisenstaedt

Google announced the LIFE photo archive yesterday, a collection of images photographed by LIFE Magazine photographers and newly digitized by Google. The collection which has been added to Google’s Image Search consists of approximately 10 million photos dating back to the 1750’s, of which about 20% has been digitized so far with the rest expected to be added over the next few months.

Mashable presents a list of 20 Great Online Image Editors. These are both free and subscription-based online applications which will allow you to import your images from social networking websites in order to crop, resize, remove redeye and more.

Torley at the Mashable blog has put together a quick guide to How to Master Screencasts in Seven Steps. The author, who has created over 200 video tutorials, shares detailed tips and tricks organized into the following steps:

1. Understand audio engineering
2. Indulge in templates
3. Focus on using eye candy to enhance learning
4. Learn from the best screencasts in the world
5. Practice narrating and love your voice
6. Be codec-smart, context-aware
7. Continually explore delivery mediums