Carlen Lea's shared items

Ever since the data storage industry was taken over by the multitude of sleek storage drives that can hold a zillion gigabytes with ease, their poor cousin, the floppy disk, is almost extinct. Perhaps rightfully so – I remember losing my precious data a million times because of faulty diskettes. Also, the grinding and groaning noises the disks would make trying to read the data was enough to drive me into fits of frenzy.

But a revival of the floppy disk as a piece of forgotten art seems exciting – the USB Floppy Drive is a project concept by Thomas O'Connor to recycle old 1.44MB floppy disks and convert them into functional (good-looking) USB drives. The disk can be connected to a USB port and used as a normal pen drive. And every part of the floppy has been used well – the USB drive flips out of the disk at right angles, creating a stand to rest against, and the circular metal hub at the center becomes a power-cum-data-transfer indicator. Who would have thought that a floppy disk could look so important again? All we dare say is - this is a cool storage device waiting to happen.

Via DVICE.

Posted by kanchana    Category: computers | peripherals
Tags:
Email this | Comments (0)

You guys are going to think I'm obsessed with slides (despite never having owned any) but I couldn't resist sharing this fabulous new lighting/design solution from the always-inventive Suck UK.

A Slide Lamp is a great way to display your photographic efforts as well as provide some nice mood lighting, and it comes in three sizes, with prices ranging from around $150-200, according to Geek Sugar.

I think these are beautiful, artistic and creative, and I love the idea of having a large one placed horizontally on my wall (if I had any slides to put in it, of course). I just wish there was an equally creative solution to removing or disguising the power cords...

Posted by Diane    Category: home
Tags:
Email this | Comments (0)

Money magazine's annual cull of 100 best places to live in the US is now out, and if you have ever heard of Fishers, Indiana, #10, shown above, you're far better informed than I. Still, houses appear to be pretty reasonable there, with a median price of about $200K.

Find all 100 of the Chosen here.

Posted by Tam    Category: current affairs
Tags:
Email this | Comments (0)

A digital lifestream service that uses a story-telling metaphor so you can present your activities in various formats. In just a few simple steps you can update your status, share a song you liked, give your opinion or link to an interesting site. Pick from a range of compelling templates that are easy to customize. URL: storytlr.

Part of a series

A lot has been written about how media relations as a discipline has been changed due to:

• the social media and consumer generated media explosion
• decline in trust in traditional media sources
• technology innovations like RSS, broadband video, and simple publishing

The next PR pros have to go beyond the story-pitching process of traditional media relations where the journalist is the gatekeeper that must be convinced of the relevance of the story. Big media or "Head-of-the-tail" media isn't going away any time soon. Yet it's influence is compromised by the new-media powerhouses and the ever-growing long tail of proam (professional and amateur) voices online.

"New Media Relations" is far more than mastering the Social Media Press Release, Blogs or Blogger Outreach. Essentially it includes three broad skills with a never-ending list of tactical implementations that follow.

The Three Skills of New Media Relations

1. A more organic & automatic ability to provide relevant value to any "media"
2. An ability to identify and engage new influencers who may not fit the profile of traditional influencers
3. An understanding of how technology and psychology impact people sharing information

Organic & Automatic Ability to Earn Media
Theoretically media relations has always required PR pros to offer their journalist counterparts something of value customized to teh needs of that journalist. They must "earn" the media, right? In the most valuable media realtions experts that is still how its done. When I hear Jane Mazur, Ogilvy media expert on the consumer side, talk about the producers at the Today show, I know she is thinking long and hard about who they are, what they value and how she can make their jobs a little easier. But the first wave of technology - wire services - actually undermined these best practices by making it easy to broadcast a standard "pitch" to dozens or hundreds of journalists.

Now individual relevance is critical again. If you broadcast a press release - either by wire services or by more intrusive emailing - you run the risk of ending up on the Bad Pitch Blog.

We need to go back and recommit to the practice of knowing who we are pitching to (and maybe not "pitching" at all) and what they will find valuable. That discipline of what is noteworthy, shareable and newsworthy has to be championed by the PR pro back in the discussion of the client's business goals and strategy. Sometimes that has to change to become of genuine interest and value to new and old media.

I say "organic" to mean that it should be built into our process of earning media. "Automatic" means that is where we start - define the value to the indivividual media contact whether they are journalist at long-lead publication or an enthusiast blogger.

Engage New Influencers
It's one thing to pitch a story to Cheryl Kramer Kaye at Redbook, still another to reach out to The Budget Fashionista (part of the Glam Network) and still another to reach out to a less well known blogger like Mai at fashioni.st (still one of my favorite street fashion spotter)

The two big differences implicit in these three comparisons:

• Earning media from even the head of the tail bloggers like Kathryn Finney at Budget Fashionista requires slightly nuanced skills than traditional media outreach. Who is a trained journalist, who is not? I actually think that distinction has become more and more moot. How can you earn media from them? What will they value? (get our Blogger Outreach Code of Ethics here)
• To even find Mai (and other long tail creators) and determine that she might be influential and helpful for a client, you need to understand how to find and assess influence amidst social media - social networks, blogs, message boards, review sites, etc... We can no longer look at the scarcity implicit in the Barnes and Noble magazine rack (as many titles as there in that rack, it is nothing compared to the Internet), or the cable channel line-up to know who is infuential in a long tail world. Knowing what is important to Mai requires morre research and honest relationship-building than you may think worthwhile.

Technology and Psychology and Sharing
Earned media in 2009 is as much about activating word of mouth as it is about getting coverage in popular media brands - new and old. What is word of mouth but earned consumer generated media? How do bookmark services like del.icio.us and mixx.com work? Under what circumstances will a user "send this to a friend?" What type of incentive do people need to pass something along? Is social capital enough? (revisit the book, Influence: Science and Practice. I am using it in my graduate class at Johns Hopkins this September) In this day and age of Google search results, what is the best configuration of a corporate online media room to be of-servce to journalists?

We want to promote word of mouth sharing and making "news' as frictionless as possible for journalists to pass on. Knowing how social technologies like tagging, RSS, embedding and forwarding work are critical to getting the most out of shareability.

Every online "press" room must now be an online "media" room serving the needs of the traditional journalist, the new media creator and the general public. They must feature the facts, hold back on the unsubstantiated claims (aka the spin) and make it easy for visitors to share the story, the pictures and videos, and access third-party content on the subject. The Social Media Press Release was born from the same intent - how can we give media - new and old - valuable elements to help them tell a story that is important to them. They have been misunderstood, misused ever since their introduction. Still a version of a new media release that satisfies the original intent will become standard-operating-procedure.

Marketing and public relations are coming together. PR is growing as an industry while "traditional" advertising - what ever that is - remains flat. Still, we have taken no new ground in 'measurement' and articulating the tremendous ROI of PR. (What happened to the tremendous affirmation and call to action from AG Lafley?) 

As I suit up to take on the graduate students of Johns Hopkins Communications program again this fall, I am mapping out the skills sets needed by the communications expert of tomorrow. I started this in another post and needed to add and consolidate some thinking.

Over the past few years at Ogilvy, we have unleashed one of the most intensive training regimens I know of for our staff. While our focus is on digital and "digital influence," there are a lot of other skills that will help the next generation of communications experts (do we need to retire the "public relations" term?).

The next generation will need to get strong in the following. I have begun the process of drilling down into each to offer some practical "how-to's" for each. Look for more in the future or even create your own and link back here:

13 Skills of the PR Pro of the Future

1. Create integrated marketing and communications strategy
2. Deploy live 'listening posts' online and offline
3. Design and deploy an advanced search engine optimization program
4. Plan and run a new media relations program inclusive of head-of-the-tail and long tail "media"
5. Identify & engage with influencers online and offline
6. Manage communities
7. Integrate new technologies into their own lives
8. Model measurement and performance metrics including new "engagement" metrics
9. Run quick pilot programs  and evaluate on-the-fly
10. Train staff and clients continuously
11. Participate in conversations, not just 'messaging'
12. Create and execute content strategy including video programming (hifi and lowfi)
13. Use digital crisis management 

Thanks to Nate Pagel, Rohit Bhargava, Virginia Miracle, Kaitlyn Wilkins, Brian Giesen, Chris Brogan,  Chi-chi Ekweozor, John D. , Phil M., Harro and Brendan Hodgson for ideas and insights on this list.

If you know #14 - please add it as the list will always be changing.

Marketing and public relations are coming together. PR is growing as an industry while "traditional" advertising - what ever that is - remains flat. Still, we have taken no new ground in 'measurement' and articulating the tremendous ROI of PR. (What happened to the tremendous affirmation and call to action from AG Lafley?) 

As I suit up to take on the graduate students of Johns Hopkins Communications program again this fall, I am mapping out the skills sets needed by the communications expert of tomorrow. I started this in another post and needed to add and consolidate some thinking.

Over the past few years at Ogilvy, we have unleashed one of the most intensive training regimens I know of for our staff. While our focus is on digital and "digital influence," there are a lot of other skills that will help the next generation of communications experts (do we need to retire the "public relations" term?).

The next generation will need to get strong in the following. I have begun the process of drilling down into each to offer some practical "how-to's" for each. Look for more in the future or even create your own and link back here:

13 Skills of the PR Pro of the Future

1. Create integrated marketing and communications strategy
2. Deploy live 'listening posts' online and offline
3. Design and deploy an advanced search engine optimization program
4. Plan and run a new media relations program inclusive of head-of-the-tail and long tail "media"
5. Identify & engage with influencers online and offline
6. Manage communities
7. Integrate new technologies into their own lives
8. Model measurement and performance metrics including new "engagement" metrics
9. Run quick pilot programs  and evaluate on-the-fly
10. Train staff and clients continuously
11. Participate in conversations, not just 'messaging'
12. Create and execute content strategy including video programming (hifi and lowfi)
13. Use digital crisis management 

Thanks to Nate Pagel, Rohit Bhargava, Virginia Miracle, Kaitlyn Wilkins, Brian Giesen, Chris Brogan,  Chi-chi Ekweozor, John D. , Phil M., Harro and Brendan Hodgson for ideas and insights on this list.

If you know #14 - please add it as the list will always be changing.

This video, for which I was interviewed in May, went up while I was on vacation. As you can see, Twitter is useful to lots of businesses. I turn up for a few seconds toward the end.

Related: How to Write Kickass Twitter posts.

What Marketers Need to Know About Twitter (for which I was practically tarred and feathered by other marketers who are now Twitter devotees when I wrote this post two years ago!)

Bonus link: Jonathan Kash's fantastic Twitter Brand Index of companies actively using Twitter.

All content copyright B.L. Ochman, Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported, with the attribution: By B.L. Ochman, What's Next Blog, and a link to the post

Ypulse readers are always looking for the latest research on youth -- and we are attempting to respond with our new Ypulse Research Channel where we resell market research about tweens, teens and twentysomethings. But marketers aren't the only folks researching youth -- academics are also producing valuable research on how this generation is interacting with technology. The latest issue of the Youth Media Reporter linked to a bunch of new papers that have been published on youth, media education and technology. Definitely check them out:

Youthtopias: Towards a New Paradigm of Critical Youth Studies

Young People, New Media, and Visual Design: An Exploratory Study

Challenging the Silences and Omissions of Dominant Media: Youth-led Media Collectives in Colombia

Creating Empowering Environments in Youth Media Organizations

Making Meaning of Media Education: Professional Development among Youth Media Practitioners

Shaping the Digital Pen: Media Literacy, Youth Culture, and MySpace

Examining the Intersections of Popular Culture and Youth Radio After-School