Jeff Hobbs, Director of Engineering at ActiveState, blogs for Mashable about How To: Use Wikis for Business Projects. If you’re thinking about using one of these collaborative tools in your workplace, you’ll want to check out his tips and recommendations:

• Seed the Wiki
• Capture Feedback
• Beware the Wiki-Wary
• Applying Wikis to User Communities
• Just the Facts
• Choosing the Right Wiki

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.

• Teens are NOT abandoning TV for new media: In fact, they watch more
  TV than ever, up 6% over the past five years in the U.S.
• Teens love the Internet…but spend far less time browsing than adults: Teens spend 11 hours and 32 minutes per month online—far below the average of 29 hours and 15 minutes.
• Teens watch less online video than most adults, but the ads are highly engaging to them: Teens spend 35% less time watching online video than adults 25–34, but recall ads better when watching TV shows online than they do on television.

nielsen_howteensusemedia_june09

Laura I. Gómez, online media executive and former college language instructor, writes for Mashable about How To: Learn and Practice Languages Using Social Media. This quick and useful guide provides the following types of website recommendations for people who wish to learn a new language through today’s new media sites:

• Community
• Video/Interactive
• Blogs
• Twitter

• Find seven things worth retweeting in your general feed and share.
• Visit your blog’s comments section and comment back on at least 5 replies.
• Enter any recent business cards to invite them to LinkedIn (if you’re growing your network).
• Check in on birthdays on the home page [of Facebook]. (Want a secret? Send the birthday wish via Twitter or email. Feels even more deliberate.)

The folks at the Common Craft Show have put together another of their amazing educational videos called Twitter Search in Plain English which uses a metaphor of the small town of “Twitterville to explain concepts such as hashtags and trending topics.

Mashable has created a one-stop hub for all things Twitter with its new Twitter Guide Book. This aggregated directory of news and resources will be continuously updated by the folks at Mashable.

A new report on mobile technology adoption and libraries was published by University of Cambridge, authored by Keren Mills of the Arcadia Programme.

“The majority of respondents primarily use their phones to make calls, send text messages and take photographs, although they like to know that the other functionality is potentially available. respondents’ use of different forms of media on their mobile phones was mostly limited to viewing photographs. Some used their phones to listen to music or watch videos, but very few used them to listen to podcasts or audio books and only a small number read ebooks or journal articles. Some respondents commented that they prefer to use their iPod or other media player to access these other forms of media.”

Daniel Hooker at Sociallibrarian writes about 10 ways library schools should be teaching social media. This interesting post discusses the benefits of incorporating social media instruction into library school curriculum. Here are the first five ways that LIS programs could be teaching new media, be sure to check out the full post for more.

1. Promoting Content
2. Interviewing
3. News Gathering and Research
4. Crowdsourcing
5. Publishing with Social Tools

1. Do your research before engaging customers
2. Determine organizational goals
3. Utilize either a branded or personal profile
4. Build your Twitter equity and credibility
5. Track metrics and conversation trends