Epic Success

So, social media workshops in Dunedin have started up again - and they've taken a bit of a different turn.
It seems we all understand Facebook and Twitter now - we just need to know how to harness them into the amazing social machine that they are.

One conversation we had on Tuesday this week was around whether it's a good idea to have an official, 'nameless' tweeter with a corporate identity - I mentioned an article from the fabulous NZ Marketing Magazine which has just been relaunched this month and comes free with Idealog - Epic Fail!
So, in my ignorance I've no idea how to attach a PDF - which Leigh's going to scowl at and suggest that I sort out my SlideShare account - but alas I've resorted to that bastard DreamWeaver and here it is - Epic Fail Article; NZ Marketing Magazine September/October 2009

It's a terrible PDF sorry - but if you want the real thing and all the other goodies inside it then you'll have to go buy the mag (I recommend you do, both NZ Marketing & Idealog are packed full of grass-roots Kiwi ingenuity and passion!).

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The End of a Great Thing

Unfortunately our Social Media workshops have come to an end (Leigh has left us to travel around America & Canada for a while - but he says he'll be back and will consider new options for teaching Social Media in Dunedin upon his return!

If you're looking to learn about Social Media I highly suggest you contact Leigh or the team from The Distiller (who have just finished one Breakfast meeting with the Dunedin Chamber of Commerce and are holding another one on the 25th of August.

Or you could ask me (not an expert yet... but thanks to the above mentioned guys I know more than I did)
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Working it out at the Workshop

If you're looking for help with Social Media in Dunedin you need to come along to the Tuesday night workshops held by Leigh Blackall! All the information from this blog I have learnt at these workshops & the provide a fantastic way to trial things out & ask questions... we get there in the end!

There's so much going on at the workshops & the two hours provide a great base from where to start investigating topics of interest, then when you head back the next week we recap on what we've found out or what we need more help with! Invaluable. Especially given this article from Usable Brand on Dunedin's (lack of) interaction with Social Media.

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More Hype over Hyperlinks

So, I've obviously been getting lazy using the hyperlink button despite the fact that one of my first blogs was on how to create hyperlinks!
First here's the most important hyperlink; and I actually created it without using the little icon; how did I create it then you ask...?
First some information - this browser that I'm writing my post in is called a WYSIWYG browser which as buttons for helping change fonts & add hyperlinks (globe & paperclip icon). Often when posting comments on other blogs they don't have this WYSIWYG functionality- therefore you'll have to create hyperlinks by hand!!
When you do head to this page take some time to get familiar with the navigation on the left side, here you will find how to create html code for 'links' & 'formatting' two functions that are my main concern for now.
Firstly 'links' will give you a little window of code you should copy for 'An HTML Link'- put this into the area that you're working in (for me this is most likely a comments section of someone's blog) then you'll see that between the " and the " there's three letters - url - this is where you put the URL address to the page you want to link to.
You'll also notice that somewhere there between > and < are the words - link text - this is what you want the hyperlink to be called... Done.

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Creating a Website

As part of my journey of familiarizing myself with social media involves building a website; well watching a designer build a website for me whilst trying to follow the process, learn something along the way and ultimately impress my boss/keep my job/lose my job due to getting a better one! Anyway - it's complicated.

For now though; I have set up a blog on Wordpress (for various reasons including that it can work easily with our Microsoft servers at the University). My blog is called SiteCreation and it will follow my involvement with Paul from five15design & friends from Pocksmith as we develop a new way for for The Otago MBA to engage with our stakeholders & social media.

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Channeling Youtube

I'm making my own channel - it'll be on Youtube, as opposed to TV (conventional mediums, on their way out?).

Anyway; my channel is live at chrislabes - check it out!!
To create a channel yourself; log into youtube & get started

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Getting out there

So, last week Leigh implied that this blog was like a loser at a dance, bopping away in the corner on it's own... so I've set to working out how my little loser can get out a bit more.
And apparently the key is all about linking & talking to people... imagine my surprise then when twitter told me the same thing; Presence Management Article, and when I picked up the latest edition of Idealog.

Anyway, over the next week or so I'm making an effort to not only read all the interesting articles provided through twitter - but to start engaging with them, posting comments & re-tweeting (RT). I'll be updating this with notes on how I get on, fingers crossed.

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RSS Include Twitter Widget

So... just been told that my twitter widget that was previously here is going to start displaying adverts... so, it wanted people to "go pro" so in Leigh's words "go no!".

Alternatively you could choose, rssinclude.com; and click 'start now'. Choose the twitter feed. You might need to adjust your sizes to suit your media - i.e. we've already discussed that the blog sidebar is 200 pxl so do this under 'content & styling options' then click 'Include' & it'll tell you how to do the rest. Once you've got the code - you want to head into your blog and find the option such as 'customize' and click 'add a gadget' (in here select that you want to add an HTML one. Done.

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Creating a webpage with Jimdo

Wikipedia.com thinks Jimdo is a WYSIWYG web hosting service.^[5] Jimdo offers JimdoFree, a free web hosting service, and JimdoPro, a premium service. Jimdo is operated by Jimdo GmbH, a Hamburg, Germany-based company.<sup>[1]

And youtube.com has this to say;

Interesting, sure. But how to get into it?
At jimdo.com you'll see a really obvious orange 'sign up for free' button... click - fill in the details. They'll send you an email. With instructions. Do what it says. Done.
Again, as with wikispaces mentioned earlier in this blog I don't have a particularly compelling reason to use this medium so my page isn't very dynamic. But if I do find the need I will keep you posted. http://chrislabes.jimdo.com/

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Sharing Slides with SlideShare

Wikipedia says SlideShare is a presentation sharing website where users can upload, view and share presentation files.

Anyway; it's easy... sign up with slideshare.com; click the big 'upload' button - browse & select files... find the slide show that you will have prepared earlier using PowerPoint & hit 'publish all'. Done.

Chris Labes

View more documents from sapphi_c.

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Using Del.icio.us

In your Firefox browser (you should switch if you're still using IE). As I was saying, in your Firefox browser go to the 'Tools' menu & select 'Add-ons' and in the 'Get Add-ons' tab search for 'delicious'; install it (add to Firefox).
You will probably have to restart your browser; but when you get back in there'll be some new icons in your browser.

Now, with those websites that you're interested in bookmarking - select the 'TAG' icon & save.
Now click on the white, blue, black & gray flag icon and this will get you to your bookmarks etc.
Done.

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del.icio.us

It's well past my tea time and using words such as delicious just isn't fair!

Well, now that I'm starving I might as well find out what this is all about, according to Wikipedia Delicious (formerly del.icio.us, pronounced "delicious") is a social bookmarking web service for storing, sharing, and discovering web bookmarks.

Youtube has provided a nice little tutorial for us to view;


Next post will be on how make it work;

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Creating Customized Calendars

So it's Tuesday night again, and here in Dunedin I'm at the Socially Constructed Media Workshops; the secret to my success!

I asked about calendars... and I'm about to learn, here's how to do it yourself if you're interested:
Looks like we'll be using Google Calendar for this mission; here's what Wikipedia has to say:
Step 1; Open up google, log in & click the Calendar link on the top left; here's your calendar!
Step 2; Start adding events (fairly self explanatory)
Step 3; Now... to customize your calendar - you'll want to find the little section on the left titled 'My calendars' in a pretty little box. At the bottom left there's a link to 'settings' click here; choose the calendar that you're working on and in here you can do all these interesting little things;
- change the title
- add a description
- change the timezone
- & ACCESS THE EMBED CODE! - you may have noticed (which I didn't) the calendar might not fit into your medium - this blogs width is 400 (but the calendar width was 800). To change this; above the code you'll see a wee customize link - go here and go wild!
Step 4; copy the embed code now and paste away (see below).




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SiteCreation on Wordpress!

So yes, I made the step towards Wordpress; check out my new blog SiteCreation following my progress in establishing a new website for Executive Programmes at the University of Otago

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Firefox; you win!

Firefox has won me over... yes, Leigh was right!
With the added bonus of the various search functions, the spell-check & the PDF creator... it's time IE & I parted ways.

Now if only I could remember the name of the twitter accessory Leigh mentioned my Firefox transition would be (a little bit more) complete...

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Bloging into Facebook

Just to annoy everyone within Facebook I thought I would link this blog to feed into my wall posts. Good fun!

I did this by heading into Facebook (presuming you have one. If not here's some info on Facebook and the best advice I could give you would be to sign in at www.facebook.com, create your account & follow your nose), anyay, once you've got one, head to your 'profile' page & under your 'status update' screen you'll see a little link to 'options' with a microfying glass; click here and it'll chance into 'settings' click this too and you'll see lots of options to import many different mediums. Start with 'blog/rss' and you're done. Done.

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Moblogging with Flickr

Moblogging, really? Apparently what I'm about to do is called moblogging; blogging from a mobile according to the all mighty wikipedia

This is done using Flicker... so I've set myself up an account with Yahoo... (hard enough work keeping track of all these accounts you have to establish let alone the actual task you're trying to achieve).

Once you're in there;
1. Head to tools (found right at the bottom of the page)
2. Click the link that says 'very own private upload address'. See your private email address there now...
3. Create a new contact in your phone and add the email address that flicker has given you
4. Send your image from your mobile to this new address; it should appear when you click YOU
5. Click on the image & add a tag to it; now with this tag you can click on it and view those photos or if you click the globe you can see all the photos that are tagged with those words from everyone in the world.... amazing! Done.

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Twitter WidGET

This 'blog spotting' reveals many hidden treasures; on a good friend's blog (Leigh Blackall) I was sidetracked by the fact that he has his tweets displayed alongside his posts. Which, of course, I want! So, I'm wondering how...

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Really Simple Syndication... says who?

Says who? Says wikipedia actually.
To me RSS feeds sounded really complicated; but I guess that wouldn't be a terribly good tag line would it.

So what is RSS - it is a tool that is indicated by the presence of this enlarged orange icon. Basically wherever you see this icon it means that the page can be 'channeled' into a medium such as your google reader and you can keep up to date with that information.

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Theory Query

So today I was off "blog spotting" (trying to get used to doing this on a regular basis) and I came into difficulty with a subscription which only gave me the option of subscribing using Microsoft; no google reader.
It got me thinking; at work I use the Microsoft suite of products and this seemed to be a good idea as everything would be managed alongside my outlook email etc, so thought I would just ask any readers out there "Would you recommend google reader over Microsoft, and why?"

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Technorati

So, what is technorati?
Wikipedia thinks Technorati is an Internet search engine for searching blogs, competing with Google and Yahoo!. As of June 2008, Technorati indexes 112.8 million blogs and over 250 million pieces of tagged social media.^[2] The name Technorati is a portmanteau, pointing to the technological version of literati, or intellectuals.

So, why use technorati when everything till this point has been all about google? The answer was provided by the very helpful Leigh Blackall who pointed out to me that google search engines have more to gain from identifying blogs created with google and therefore content might be missed.
So, we use an external provider, first stop; technorati; pop in the key words you want to search in the 'blogosphere' and you're off!
When you find something of interest remember to subscribe to it with your google reader.

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Wiki'd Wikispaces

A nice little tool in the 'belt' of social media is wikispaces; though I can absolutely see the value in wikispaces I myself won't be using this terribly much; however, for future reference, and in case any readers are interested here's what I've learned, and what wikipedia & youtube can add to the mix.

Getting started; head to wikispaces.com, and follow their instructions.

As I've been learning on this journey; most social media tools are designed to be straight forward. The difficult part is working out what tools are avilable, what ones suit your needs and where to find them. Hopefully this has helped you work out if wikispaces are something you want to pursue.

Here is my wikispace but I apologise, it's not terribly dynamic at this stage. If I do re-visit this medium I will certainly keep you updated.

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The Hype around Hyperlinks

So, a hyperlink is where you can make any piece of text link to a webpage; sounds difficult but it's actually relatively easy!
And even easier in forums such as this - you may have noticed when you're writing a document (word, email, blog...) a little icon which looks like a world globe with a paperclip over it? This is an assistant for creating a hyperlink; simply highlight the text you want to turn into a link, click this icon, and paste in the url address from a browser. Done.

A little more complicated is when you have to create your own hyperlink manually; but here's a hyperlink to instructions for doing this.


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Embedding Youtube

So, I've accomplished embedding a map - I'm about to take on a video; heading to the Youtube page find yourself something that interests you (I'm putting in a video of using blogger - which may be useful if you want to know how to set a blog like this up for yourself.

Once you're there and you've searched for a video of interest you'll see on the right hand side a box with a description about the video etc and two lines of code - the lower one 'Embed' is the piece you're after. Copy this into your blog. Done.



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Embedding Google Maps

So now each time I'm on a site referring to an address I do appreciate when someone's taken the time to put in a map - sure I could go onto google maps & look it up myself; but I much prefer not to have too.

Fairly hypocritical of me though, having no experience of how to do this myself I thought it time to learn; sign into google maps (this is another sneaky tool hidden on the top left of the google page) put in the location that you're after; i.e. 60 Clyde Street, Dunedin, head to the little blue link 'my maps' & start with 'create new map'. In here it will let you put in a title & a description; i.e. The Otago MBA, where I work. Done. Now on the top right hand side of the map that you're looking at is a link that is titled 'link' click here; the second piece of code says 'paste HTML to embed in website'; self explanitory really.


View The Otago MBA in a larger map

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Google Reader un-Raveled

So I've just learned that google is a lot more than a search engine; upon realizing this (initially feeling very sheepish) I also realized that I'm not the only one oblivious to this fact.
One very cool little tool that hides up on the top left of the google page is called 'Reader'. This tool helps synthesize the many different blogs that you may wish to keep up-to-date with.

When you sign in to google reader (to do this you'll need to create a gmail account; make it a good one because you'll be using it a lot with all the neat google products that are around!). If you're serious about creating a presence for yourself on the web you might like to choose something you can maintain consistency with across many mediums. I've already made my life complicated with a gmail account of labes.chris@gmail.com and my blog of chrislabes.blogspot.com but alas; we live & learn!

So, sign in to gmail & then into google reader; you will see an area for 'add a subscription'; in here you can type key words to search for content that you're interested in (or paste in a url of a relevant blog); I put in MBA Otago. If you find something that looks interesting you can preview the posts & you can subscribe to it. Now when you log into your reader you'll see if/when a new post has been added to the blog you're now following.

Enjoy your reader; remember to sign in each day & keep searching for more blogs to subscribe to,

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Wikipedi-what?

An online forum whereby anyone can log in and update content... great place to start any research particularly if you're looking for a quick & dirty description/definition.

Also worth checking anything that interests you to ensure content is up-to-date and accurate! Might like to check out The Otago MBA on wikipedia.

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First Lesson

So, a blog as defined by wikipedia is (a contraction of the term "weblog")^[1] is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. Entries are commonly displayed in reverse-chronological order.

This is in effect an open site on the web where I write things (and in time post videos, images etc) and people can read/view them. I have my own URL address; www.chrislabes.blogspot.com and anyone can view this... interesting

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The Aim of this Blog

My blog is a learning tool for me to establish how a blog works and... more importantly, how I can make it work for me!
Key areas that I'm looking at working on/learning about include;
- Setting up a blog to encourage interaction between groups of people
- Learning about 'blog spotting' and how to monitor what's going on
- And attempting to be as 'tech-savy' as my boss thinks I am!!

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