"I Voted" Sticker Photo Contest

Voted yet? If so, don't throw away that "I Voted" sticker. Mercury Mambo, a local hispanic marketing firm, has launched a photo contest, which asks voters to submit a creative picture of them and their “I Voted” sticker.

Web2.0 Video Assignment: Creating Video Without Commercial Software

When I first designed this class I felt that it should contain a web video component so students would learn to communicate a message in a number of formats, including digital video. I therefore covered basic iMovie video editing skills in class, stressing the video editing techniques rather than how to execute them on a particular software package. I didn't want students to think they needed to have access to the same software package we used in class to create another digital video. I'm afraid some of them may have walked away with just that idea.

To (hopefully) correct this misconception, I have decided to rely entirely on Web 2.0 video creation tools this semester. Students will each pick a tool from the list below and use it to complete their video project. We'll still cover basic video editing techniques in class, but students will have to figure out on their own how to apply that knowledge to the particular tool they picked. Here's what we will use:

• Flowgram - Mashup of web-based tools and voiceover narrative enables people to create a brand new type of webcasting multimedia experience.
• StoryMaker - A simple tool for creating digital stories. Using audio, pictures and text you can create storyboards, slideshows and much much more.
• Sprout - A quick and easy way for anyone to build, publish, and manage widgets, mini-sites, mashups, banners and more. Any size, any number of pages. Include video, audio, images and newsfeeds and choose from dozens of pre-built components and web services.
• TVNima - One of my favorites! An online machinima application that lets you create TV shows with your own images, videos, music, voice, sound effects etc.
• RemixAmerica - Allows users to create remixes by uploading their own video footage and sound clips to the site, searching YouTube for footage, or using video clips already uploaded to Remix America. Wired story on the RemixAmerica.
• VIDDIX - A new video platform that allows users to add all kinds of webcontent to their video timeline.
• muveeMix - Allows users to create their own short personal videos from raw footage, music and pictures. The result, called a muvee, can then be embedded in your blog or shared with your friends via email. The service comes free of charge (for limited accounts), though registration is required.
• Animoto - web application for making videos. Matches the video to your pics & music.
  
• JayCut - Create your own movies and slideshows, so called mixes.
• Brightcove Storymaker - Produce and publish professional slideshows, podcasts, and custom rich media

For even more Web 2.0 video editing sites, go to "go2web20" and select the video tag, or check out the tools listed on the 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story wiki.

Additional Resources:

• CurrentTV assignments - List of all the news & commercial assignments on CurrentTV
  
• FixMyMovie - If the quality of your video footage is low, run it through this first. Automatically cleans your movies with MotionDSP's advanced video technology.
  
• Public Domain Pictures - Repository for public domain pictures
  
• Wikimedia Commons - A media file repository making available public domain and freely-licensed educational media content (images, sound and video clips) to all
  
• Resources previously listed on the course blog

The Dark Side of Twitter: Terrorist Tweets

Seems like I forgot to mention that twitter also makes a good terrorism tool according to a military newsletter supplement discussed in a recent Wired post.

Maybe this is Goodbye

Here's something that may surprise you: I've been thinking about shutting down my twitter account. I've been looking at it a number of different ways. I could go on hiatus from my account, delete the account, or start a new anonymous account following new people.

It's no secret that I am anti-hashtag and that has always been something that aggravates me about twitter. It's also not a secret that I was repelled by AMC's agency's use of Twitter to fanjack and promote the TV show "Mad Men." What's been eating at me lately in twitter is the echochamber. The same social media voices tweeting the same social media cliches. People interested in building "personal brands" rather than just being people. Evangelists who petulantly bang their fists that clients should stop demanding metrics for social media because conversation can't be measured. Really? Conversation can't be measured? Then make it measurable. Attach an action or metric. Setting goals and defining success are part of our jobs, regardless of those who think social media is about winning a Facebook or Twitter popularity contest or gathering the shiniest collection of widgets and gadgets.

Maybe this is part of a Phillies malaise, but it is something that's been on my mind for some time now. I just want a community where people communicate like real people to other people and not as "experts" or "authorities" or as "knowledge centers" doing their personal note-taking using a # sign and an abbrevation. I just want twitter to be what it used to be when I joined in February 2007: a place where I meet people near and far, learn what they are doing/thinking, find or lend support, and sometimes, just a place to escape - like that rabbit hole into Wonderland.

The Wall Street Journal covers Twitter today, covering the same old businesses that always get covered - zappos and comcast. Yes, they both do a great job, so do the tons of other businesses on twitter. Don't know who they are? Check this twitter Brand Index.

And of course, a plug for the Phillies! Go Phils! Check out these shots on Deadspin. That's Broad street, you can see my office building in the shot, at 1am this morning.

1. More. Game.

Twitter and its uses in PR, journalism, crisis communication...

Now that your blogs are all up and running, it's time to give microblogging a try! Since Twitter is the most popular microblogging tool, that's what we will focus on in class. I've created the slideshow below to introduce you to both the technology and its many uses. The slideshow contains a lot of embedded links to examples. Please note that sometimes you have to position your cursor just right to be able to click on the link.

Twitter for Public Relations

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: twitter pr)

Links to the videos contained in the slideshow:

• Twitter in plain English
  
• Comcast technician sleeping on couch
• Rick Sanchez using twitter while on the air

Blog Action Day 08: Of bloggers, muckrakers and a worldwide financial crisis

Today is Blog Action Day and I wanted to take a moment to contribute to this great project by blogging about the subject of poverty. 

I’ve been fortunate enough to never have experienced poverty on a personal level but the global financial crisis has certainly brought the topic to mind more than once over the course of the last couple of weeks. A segment of my Intro to Public Relations class focuses on the history of PR and as luck would have it, I happened to cover that topic at the height of the global financial crisis. Having just covered the industrial revolution, the robber barons, and the social injustices of that time period in class, I can’t help but to examine the current financial crisis in light of those events.

There’s been a lot of talk of another great depression lately. We’ve been bombarded with news of increasing unemployment and inflation rates, a global economic slowdown, major bank collapses and even national bankruptcies.

The gap between the rich and the poor seems to be growing dramatically again, just like it was during the industrial revolution. The middle class feels trapped in the middle of this global mess and is angry at overpaid CEOs and corrupt politicians who’ve been compromising their financial future through irresponsible actions and policies. Replace the CEOs and politicians with the robber barons (i.e. the Rockefellers, Vanderbilts) and again, it is easy to draw parallels to the industrial revolution. Back then, it was the muckrakers who drew attention to these social injustices by writing books, newspaper and magazine articles designed to expose the oftentimes unbearable conditions people lived in. Nowadays it is bloggers who are uniting in a concerted effort to raise awareness of social problems such as global poverty. After all, isn’t this the point of initiatives such as Blog Action Day?

There's plenty of people living in poverty right now who need our voice, but there's also plenty of people who for the first time in their lives find themselves at the brink of poverty due to the events of the last couple of weeks/months. I want to include them in this post. Unfortunately, I think the threat of poverty has become a lot more real to a lot more people lately. 

Tips for your upcoming podcast assignment

Check out these podcasting tips from Len Edgerly. His post contains good advice for all you budding podcasters!

I'm updating my blog because some people have been harassing me about it.

Honestly, I'm just not that into blogs anymore. They seem some old fashioned and long form now, in comparison to some other formats/platforms online.

That said, I should use this space to thank Josh Hallett for creating and hosting BlogOrlando a few weeks ago.

BlogOrlando is my favorite social media event of the year because it always draws an eclectic group of people working with social media in different ways for different industries or causes. Each year it's a varied group of speakers that consist mostly of the people working with social media and not the academics who study it or write about it. It can be a bit like listening to the engineers who design a car, versus automotive analysts, which is great because the engineers can share some of what happened behind the curtain and the key learnings that followed.

One thing that I observed at BlogOrlando is that a disproportionate number of people interested in social media haven't read The Cluetrain. Because the Cluetrain is 10 years old this year, I guess I assume that we've all read it.

We haven't all read it.

So go to amazon and order the book or go here, NOW and start by reading the 95 Theses. Then go here and read it online, if you're a cheap bastard who doesn't believe in paying authors for their work. I don't care where you read it, just do it!

Go on then. Come back when you're done. I'll be waiting here.