Find the Time to Blog

Hi my name is David. I'm a Mac.

2012-12-21T20:31:00.007-05:00

Hi.
My name is David.
I'm a freelance illustrator and artist educator.
I created this blog to become a reservoir of information about blogs and relevant social media.
Posts are arranged chronologically.

Aw Snap!

2009-04-28T09:37:00.002-04:00

Snap Shots embeds the content of a link into your site as a
mini pop up window. It makes it easy for readers quickly view the content without having to leave
your site. But they can also click on the URL link above the window to do so, if they choose.

Feed 101

2009-03-20T21:48:00.005-04:00

RSS (abbreviation for Really Simple Syndication) is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated works—such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video—in a standardized format.

An RSS document (which is called a "feed", "web feed,or "channel") includes full or summarized text, plus metadata such as publishing dates and authorship. Web feeds benefit publishers by letting them syndicate content automatically. They benefit readers who want to subscribe to timely updates from favored websites or to aggregate feeds from many sites into one place.

RSS feeds can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader", or "aggregator", which can be web-based, desktop-based, mobile device or any computerized Internet-connected device. A standardized XML file format allows the information to be published once and viewed by many different programs. The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's URI (often referred to informally as a "URL" (uniform resource locater), although technically, those two terms are not exactly synonymous) into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The RSS reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new work, downloads any updates that it finds, and provides a user interface to monitor and read the feeds.

RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Although RSS formats have evolved since March 1999, the RSS icon ("") first gained widespread use between 2005 and 2006.

Source~ Wikipedia

Feeds are a way for websites large and small to distribute their content well beyond just visitors using browsers. Feeds permit subscription to regular updates, delivered automatically via a web portal, news reader, or in some cases good old email. Feeds also make it possible for site content to be packaged into "widgets," "gadgets," mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies that make it possible to display blogs, podcasts, and major news/sports/weather/whatever headlines just about anywhere.

More

10 Cool Twitter Apps

2009-03-20T20:50:00.000-04:00

10 cool Twitter Apps

10 Twitter Tips for Nonprofit Organizations

2009-03-16T15:08:00.002-04:00

#10. Twitter is what you make of it. You get out of Twitter what you put into it. This is the same of all Web 2.0 social networking sites.

Twitter is a fun, valuable tool that can drive significant traffic to your Web site (start watching your Web site referral logs!) and help build and strengthen your brand in the online world of Web 2.0, but just like Facebook and MySpace, Twitter requires time and energy to produce results. You get out of it what you put into it. If you do one Tweet a week, you will get the results of one Tweet. But if you Tweet 4 times daily Monday through Friday… you will get the results of 20 Tweets weekly.
Again, it’s about community building around your mission and programs. Just having profile on Twitter (or MySpace, or Facebook) does not magically produce any results. You have to work these profiles. Find the person on your staff who loves Web 2.0 and enjoys working the sites and/or find a marketing/pr intern from your local university that needs to do a senior project! If they are getting college credit, then you know they have to stay around for at least a semester.

Read them all here

You Will

2009-03-12T14:13:00.001-04:00

You Will
AT&T commercials from 1993

Protect yourself

2009-03-02T13:59:00.006-05:00

One of the world’s largest email service providers, Gmail.com went down on Tuesday at about 4 PM IST. The crash of Gmail affected office work across millions of offices around the world as a large part of the official mail is often carried on Gmail. In India, the Google email service provider is also used by government officials. More...

What am I signing anyway?

2009-03-02T13:54:00.001-05:00

Excerpt from the Google Terms of Service

11. Content licence from you

11.1 You retain copyright and any other rights you already hold in Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive licence to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services. This licence is for the sole purpose of enabling Google to display, distribute and promote the Services and may be revoked for certain Services as defined in the Additional Terms of those Services.

11.2 You agree that this licence includes a right for Google to make such Content available to other companies, organizations or individuals with whom Google has relationships for the provision of syndicated services, and to use such Content in connection with the provision of those services.

11.3 You understand that Google, in performing the required technical steps to provide the Services to our users, may (a) transmit or distribute your Content over various public networks and in various media; and (b) make such changes to your Content as are necessary to conform and adapt that Content to the technical requirements of connecting networks, devices, services or media. You agree that this licence shall permit Google to take these actions.

11.4 You confirm and warrant to Google that you have all the rights, power and authority necessary to grant the above licence.

Did You Know?

2009-02-26T10:18:00.001-05:00

TwitPic

2009-02-25T00:56:00.001-05:00

TwitPic

Copyright © 2003 David Pohl
HOP | House of Pingting Archives

How To Sync Your Twitter and Facebook Status Updates

2009-01-26T01:52:00.002-05:00

How To Sync Your Twitter and Facebook Status Updates

Blogs in Plain English

2008-12-11T21:43:00.003-05:00

A video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal.

Social Networking in Plain English

2008-12-11T21:41:00.000-05:00

Slideroll

2008-10-22T23:57:00.010-04:00

Create a Free Slideshow

Slideroll.com is a website where you can create slide shows and post them on a blog.

It's free and they even have music you can add (although it's pretty bad).

For a fee you can upload your own music to the show. I chose to leave this one silent.

If you have a Flickr account you can also create slideshows from one of your image sets.

Here's an example of a Flickr slide show.

The images in this portfolio represent my digital mixed media worked from 2003 - 2008
All images Copyright © David Pohl | HOP | House of Pingting Archives

Social Media in Plain English

2008-10-21T01:09:00.001-04:00

Copyright Laws

2008-10-19T16:14:00.007-04:00

Here is a very detailed and informative piece explaining copyrights:
Copyright Explained: I May Copy It, Right? from Smashing Magazine.

From the legal point of view, Copyright in Web is often considered as the grey area; as such it’s often misunderstood and violated - mostly simply because bloggers don’t know, what laws they have to abide and what issues they have to consider. In fact, copyright myths are common, as well as numerous copyright debates in the Web.

Excerpt from Smashing Magazine

How To Remove Navbar In Blogger Blogs

2008-10-17T01:45:00.001-04:00

How To Remove Navbar In Blogger Blogs

1. Open your Blogger dashboard.
2. Go to your blog’s Layout settings > Edit HTML
3. Look for:
/* Variable definitions
====================
4. And above that add:
#navbar-iframe { display: none !important; }
5. Save your settings and open your blog now. The navigation bar will be gone.

Source: SizzledCore

The Brand Called You

2008-10-03T02:04:00.001-04:00

Starting today you are a brand.

You're every bit as much a brand as Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop. To start thinking like your own favorite brand manager, ask yourself the same question the brand managers at Nike, Coke, Pepsi, or the Body Shop ask themselves: What is it that my product or service does that makes it different? Give yourself the traditional 15-words-or-less contest challenge. Take the time to write down your answer. And then take the time to read it. Several times.

from FastCompany
The Brand Called You
By Tom Peters

Twitter + Microblogging

2008-09-29T12:02:00.003-04:00

Educators Test the Limits of Twitter Microblogging Tool

How Twitter Can Help At Work

By Sarah Milstein
in The New York Times
September 7, 2008
9: 01 PM

Brave New World of Digital Intimacy
By Clive Thompson
Published in The New York Times

September 5, 2006

This is the paradox of ambient awareness. Each little update — each individual bit of social information — is insignificant on its own, even supremely mundane. But taken together, over time, the little snippets coalesce into a surprisingly sophisticated portrait of your friends’ and family members’ lives, like thousands of dots making a pointillist painting. This was never before possible, because in the real world, no friend would bother to call you up and detail the sandwiches she was eating. The ambient information becomes like “a type of E.S.P.,” as Haley described it to me, an invisible dimension floating over everyday life.

It is easy to become unsettled by privacy-eroding aspects of awareness tools. But there is another — quite different — result of all this incessant updating: a culture of people who know much more about themselves. Many of the avid Twitterers, Flickrers and Facebook users I interviewed described an unexpected side-effect of constant self-disclosure. The act of stopping several times a day to observe what you’re feeling or thinking can become, after weeks and weeks, a sort of philosophical act. It’s like the Greek dictum to “know thyself,” or the therapeutic concept of mindfulness. (Indeed, the question that floats eternally at the top of Twitter’s Web site — “What are you doing?” — can come to seem existentially freighted. What are you doing?) Having an audience can make the self-reflection even more acute, since, as my interviewees noted, they’re trying to describe their activities in a way that is not only accurate but also interesting to others: the status update as a literary form.

Renaissance Generation

2008-09-28T22:18:00.002-04:00

Two things are going on simultaneously, and they live in creative tension. One is that we are ending one civilization and we are creating a new one. Witness what is happening on Wall Street. The second is the outpouring of creativity facilitated by the Internet. There is a generation that will lead us into what will literally be a second renaissance... more

Patricia Martin
Author of RenGen: The Rise of the Cultural Consumer and What It Means to Your Business