Tag Archives: blogging

Downtown Rotary rocks Posterous

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Jefferson City has four Rotary Clubs. Learfield Honcho Emeritus Clyde Lear belongs to the “Downtown Rotary Club” and he asked me to meet with a few of the members to explore the idea of a blog. We got together a couple of weeks ago at the Coffee Zone and after asking some questions, I suggested they start with Posterous.

Before I show you their progress, you have to see what they had before.

This really isn’t their fault. They had no way to update the site or improve it’s design. But they felt like they had lots of stuff they’d like to share with their members and the public. For those that haven’t seen my earlier posts on Posterous (as in ‘pre-posterous’), it’s a blogging platform or a “life-streaming” tool or both… but it doesn’t matter. The best part of Posterous is the ability to post by email. Photos, videos, audio, whatever.

In the screenshot below, they have photo and audio of a talk by MU Football Coach Gary Pinkel. Rotarian Jason Jett says he recorded the audio on his iPhone and just mailed it off to the new site. Simple as that.

While the Downtown Rotary Club tends to skew a little older than the other clubs, I’ll be very surprised if any of them one has a cooler, more content-rich site. Posterous is a great solution. Free, simple to use, and getting more features all the time.

Green Zone

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If you liked the Bourne series, you’ll enjoy Green Zone. [If you did not like the Bourne movies… why are you even reading this blog. There is nothing for you here. Hit the back button now.]

IMDB: “Discovering covert and faulty intelligence causes a U.S. Army officer to go rogue as he hunts for Weapons of Mass Destruction in an unstable region.”

I think we can scratch Green Zone from W’s Netflix queue. And if you lost a loved one in that war, you might want to skip this movie, too.

History might vindicate the Bush years but you’ll be damned hard pressed to find any movies that remember them kindly.

The movie is based on Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City.

UPDATE: Got some push-back for closing comments on this post. Do I care about the opinions of the people that read this blog. I do. But this is my blog. This is where I express myself.

If you have something to say about one of my posts and the comments are closed, just say your piece on your blog (you know, take ownership for your views, with your name and everything) and send me a link (stevemays at gmail dot com) and I’ll add it to the post.

ShowMeGaming.com (3 years later)

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Three years ago I helped my friend LeAnn McCarthy set up a blog to help with her communications efforts as Public Information Officer for the Missouri Gaming Commission.

Last week I sat down with LeAnn to see how the blog was working out. She talked about her target audience(s); content; response (internal and external) and other social media tools.

AUDIO: 10 min MP3

YouTube SimpleGallery

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I love WordPress. I won’t bore you with all the reasons. But one very big one is: plug-ins. These are little add-on’s that add extra functionality to your blog/website. Today one of our sites needed a way to display multiple videos on a single page. I found several plug-in’s that looked like good candidates and settled on one called YouTube SimpleGallery. It’s free but I made a small donation to the developer.

I usually test plug-in’s here, to get the hang of them. If you click on the VIDEO tab at the top of the page,you’ll see a bunch of thumbnail images that –when clicked– play the video on YouTube.

You can also configure the plug-in so the video pops up in its own window.

Steal this blog, too

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Markus Mindaugas’ blog is called “living on impulse.” I’ve only been following for a couple of weeks but his posts are consistently positive and upbeat. Yesterday he invited readers to “steal this blog.” I hope he doesn’t mind if I share most of that post here:

Feel free to take, steal, re-purpose, or do anything you want with anything you find here (including my best photos). A link or reference would be be much appreciated, but is not required. I’m not worried about ownership. I’m not worried about losing anything. There’s nothing I can possibly lose by someone taking something I created and using it in any way they want to use it.

The only reason for me to copyright something would be for me to control it, a need to derive income from it, or a fear of misuse. I have no such fears. Besides, even “altruistic-licensing” can get really hairy and become a mess.

I am supremely confident in my own ability to create new stuff as needed. As soon as I write, photograph, or otherwise create something it’s already in the past. If anyone finds a use for it, fantastic. If it helps them out in ANY way, fantastic.

If someone wants to use something I created and finds it helpful and wants to share it – that’s awesome. It’s a compliment to me. I am in no way diminished by it, only enhanced. Besides, anything I create I will never “always have”. I will have to relinquish it, at the latest, when I die. So why obsess or hang on to it? It’s gone the minute I am done creating it. So I’ll let it fly.

While I have no illusions about the value of the ideas or images I post here at smays.com, I’d like to make the same offer. Take anything you want, use it anyway you like. I’ll make some more.

RTNDA Guidelines for Social Media and Blogging

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Several Learfield (the company I work for) employee are members of the Radio and Television News Directors Association, so I was pleased to come across their recently published guidelines for social meida and blogging. A few snippits:

“Social media and blogs are important elements of journalism. They narrow the distance between journalists and the public. They encourage lively, immediate and spirited discussion. They can be vital news-gathering and news-delivery tools. As a journalist you should uphold the same professional and ethical standards of fairness, accuracy, truthfulness, transparency and independence when using social media as you do on air and on all digital news platforms. “

Ahem. This is where it would be tempting to remind some of my colleagues how ferociously they fought the very concept of blogging.

On Accountability and Transparency:

“You should not write anonymously or use an avatar or username that cloaks your real identity on newsroom or personal websites. You are responsible for everything you say. Commenting or blogging anonymously compromises this core principle.” [Emphasis mine]

“Be especially careful when you are writing, Tweeting or blogging about a topic that you or your newsroom covers. Editorializing about a topic or person can reveal your personal feelings. Biased comments could be used in a court of law to demonstrate a predisposition, or even malicious intent, in a libel action against the news organization, even for an unrelated story.” [Emphasis mine]

Reporters who forget that second point could face dire consequences.

Image and Reputation

“Remember that what’s posted online is open to the public (even if you consider it to be private). Personal and professional lives merge online. Newsroom employees should recognize that even though their comments may seem to be in their “private space,” their words become direct extensions of their news organizations. Search engines and social mapping sites can locate their posts and link the writers’ names to their employers.”

“Avoid posting photos or any other content on any website, blog, social network or video/photo sharing website that might embarrass you or undermine your journalistic credibility. Keep this in mind, even if you are posting on what you believe to be a “private” or password-protected site. Consider this when allowing others to take pictures of you at social gatherings. When you work for a journalism organization, you represent that organization on and off the clock. The same standards apply for journalists who work on air or off air.”

I don’t belong to RTNDA (or any association, if you don’t count the Order of the Fez) but I like these guidelines. Sort of, “Everything You Need to Know About Social Media You Learned in Kindergarten.”

Back to Google Reader Shared items

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On several occasions I have gushed about Posterous, the life-streaming/blogging tool. I used it for most of the past year but put it aside a couple of days ago. At least for my personal use. Several of our company blogs are using posterous.

I had to stop for sort of a silly reason. I kept sending personal stuff to one of the company blogs. Not good. The only sure way to avoid this was to pull the plug on the personal account.

I like having a place I can quickly share something of interest and it was there all the time, in Google Reader. For me it does all that I liked about posterous (with a few bonus features). Latest links are back in the sidebar.

Palin Effect?

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I rarely check the traffic on this blog because it isn’t much on the best days. 150-200 page views? Sometimes as high as 300. I happened to take a look a few minutes ago (in connection with one of our work sites) and noticed a spike on Dec 6th (last Sunday)

The only item I posted that day was some photos and links to Kay Henderson’s story about people waiting in the cold in Sioux City, IA, in hopes of getting a book autographed by Sarah Palin. The logs don’t show it, but the only thing I can think of is I must have gotten a link from some high-traffic sight or some unexplained Google juice.

“Journalism is like skiing in the 50s or 60s”

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An interesting analogy by Dave Winer:

“Previously it had been a sport that very few people enjoyed, and they were all very good. But now the doors are opening to amateurs. The pros have to share the slopes with people who don’t take the sport as seriously as they do. They’re still going to be able to ski, but the rest of us are not just going to admire them for how skilled they are, we’re going to do it too. They can earn a living as ski patrol and ski instructors. Or lift operators or more mundane jobs like people who work in hotels and drive the shuttle bus. There are still jobs in skiing after the arrival of the amateurs. But the exclusivity is gone.”

I think he might have nailed it. Oh, for the days before the lift lines were long and the slopes clogged with morons who didn’t know the right way to come down the hill.