Twitter – a Brief Intro

~ joanvinallcox ~ 2 Comments

I’ve been ‘playing’ on Twitter for a few months now. I choose who I follow based on whether we appear to have similar interests, and I let anyone who wants to follow me. There are people who I follow who don’t follow me, and people who follow me who I don’t follow back. It makes for a kind of discontinuous ‘conversation’, and you might wonder why I bother. Here are some reasons:

  • it can be interesting seeing what people are doing/thinking in different parts of the world;
  • I find links to sites about things that interest me, mostly about the impact of social media on education and small businesses;
  • I find blogs I want to add to my RSS reader;
  • reading Tweets can take the boredom out of waiting.

If you’ve heard the buzz about Twitter but don’t ‘get’ it, here are two resources that might help you start, but you have to play on Twitter for at least a month to find out how you might want to use it, and if it’s useful for you.

CommonCraft’s Twitter in Plain English by Lee LeFever

Biz Stone’s How Do You Use Twitter, on Vimeo

http://vimeo.com/1466612

The discipline of only having 140 character spaces helps you practice alternative phrasing, brevity, and, possibly, texting spellings. The availablity of Twitter on mobile devices allows you to do silly things like watch political debates while reading Tweets and writing them while the debate (or game or show) is still going on.

Personally I use a variety of Twitter applications:

  • On my laptop
    • http://twitter.com/home – the home site
    • http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/ – which allows me to see any Replys or Direct Messages even if I’ve missed them when they first showed up on Twitter
    • There are many, many Twitter applications – use Google if you want to try some of the others.
  • On my iPhone
    • Twitterific – which is free from the App Store
    • Summizer – $2.99 from the App Store and allows you to search for topics and/or follow hashtags (Look it up;-> I had to).

So give Twitter a try, but do watch out; it can become addictive;->

Live Blogging WordCamp – Day2

~ joanvinallcox ~ 3 Comments
on my feet
on my laptop
Our awesome M.C. - Matthieu
Our awesome M.C. - Matthieu

Keeping WordPress Secure – Mark Jaquith

markjaquith.com

http://markjaquith.wordpress.com/

Upgrades will be automatic, and that will help keep up with security issues.

Top 50 plugins – good security, but less popular ones might have security problems.

WP 2.6 – notifications on plugin upgrades

Themes usually not a security issue, but can be – no system to check yet – again more popular ones, more seen, therefore likely more secure

Databases & hashtags important, but password security essential – bad if –

  • you can pronounce it
  • you haven’t used the shift key
  • you use it somewhere else
  • you write it down
  • it includes personal info

Info for developers – lots of code …

WordPress becoming much more secure! Result of concentrated effort by WordPress developers being very careful about code.

Password solutions – http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password

  • others available

Running Your Blog Like a Pro – David Peralty

http://brandingdavid.com/

  • Blog every day
  • research your topics
  • prove your passion or expertise
  • come up with unique angle – don’t copy or be generic
  • look at what inspires you – use that to inspire yourself – interview, break news, dissect
  • promote your content – network, social bookmarking & sharing, comment on other blogs, Twitter etc., aggregate updates
  • track & join the conversation – search.twitter.com etc.
  • Getting more comments – questions, open endings, be controversial, respond to comments
  • make commenting easy, thank people for commenting
  • getting links – compelling content, link bait, guest posting, create services, try out other media (audio & video)
  • Link bait = long, detailed, easy-to-digest, funny, useful, hard-to-replicate
  • increasing revenue = try other ad services, test ad placements, direct ad sales
  • don’t be afraid of ads – look at your competition’s ads, court advertisers, don’t undersell yourself (perceived value important)
  • secondary efforts – book deals, job offers, speaking opportunities
  • make your blog dummy proof – every page has contact info, make it easy to advertise, offer to promote their content
  • Find what’s limiting you – links? ads? content? SEO? more contacts? guest posting on other blogs?

Question Answers

  • colour coding for different topics
  • “link bait” definition – primary purpose, get people to share – compelling content
  • ad systems – “adify” – http://www.adify.com/
  • FeedBurner – useful – WP.org some copyright protections
  • David avoids plugins, 3rd party comment services

Mark McKay – Video Blogging

Mark McKay - Video Blogging
Mark McKay - Video Blogging

http://markmckay.ca/

  • Great video on Canadian content on tv
  • www.deartoronto.ca
  • a videoblog can be anything! – tutorials, news, community activism, personal etc.
  • videoblog can be like a tv show – Mark is on MTV live

Suggestions:

  • think before you speak – comments will respond! – have the facts
  • duration – about 2 minutes or less – long enough to make your point – short enough for a quick watch
  • Fair Copyright for Canada – Kill Bill C61 > viral, Michael Geist’s site – great video – 61 seconds
  • 12Seconds – http://12seconds.tv/
  • the camera doesn’t really matter – file size important though (100 mb) – compress before uploading
  • software – iMovie, Avid (free version available on their website), Premier,
  • be careful of the lighting, lots of light or outside, look & sound are important
  • syndicate to iTunes, BlipTV, Yahoo Video, del.icio.us, mdialogue, tubemogul – highly recommended, includes stats
  • viral videos – enter contests and win – especially controversial stuff – post on popular websites with a link to video
  • YouTube has made video mainstream & has created tv stars, brought amateurs into prominence
  • Using video sites saves you bandwidth use and gives you access to their audience – YouTube especially
  • MTV clears his copyright stuff
  • green screen in his basement – painted wall or used a piece of fabric, good lighting needed, there’s a FinalCut Pro plugin that helps

Brendan Sera-Shriar – Making the Most of Plug-ins

Brendan Sera-Shriar
Brendan Sera-Shriar

http://backspacestudios.com/bss/

http://phug.ca/

Plug-ins extend WordPress

Beyond out-of-the-box plug-ins

Customization – look a important as functionality – enhance & simplify the blogging experience of advanced users.especially developers & designers

coding needed for customization – PHP and SQL experience required

coding is a language & is learnable

Tips on writing plug-ins

  • look at source codes, especially of plug-ins you like
  • research to make sure you’re not just repeating
  • use a plug-in template

Demonstration of coding a plug-in

Feeling overwhelmed with content

Entertainment Blogging: A Panel Discussion

Frank Yang, Tim Shore, Chris Budd, Jonathan Dekel

Entrtainment Bloggers
Entertainment Bloggers

Melissa, one of the great organizers
Melissa, one of the great organizers

And I’m out of here ;->

on my feet
on my feet

WordCamp Toronto ’08

~ joanvinallcox ~ Leave a comment

I’ve been using Twitter for live blogging but am moving to my own blog.

Joseph Thornley inviting audience to describe their plugins, sites, etc. People giving their site URLs & Thornley showing them to us.Here’s few –

Plugin – on open id

Matt Mallenweg – State of the Word

WordCamp Toronto 08
WordCamp Toronto '08

Lots of upgrades – open source drives it. (Shouldn’t take more than 2 minutes)

WordPress.org is exploding – 2 million in 07 to 11 million this year

WordPress.com also

Spammers use social engineering >> compliments used to get traction

WordCamps all over the world – local, small but many, local culture in speakers & environments

New Features

iPhone – WordPress – lots of installs