What is your Social Strategy?

Looking to break into a social media career? Here’s pretty much everything you need to know about the job and the people who do it every day. Nearly 80% of corporations use social media, so there’s plenty of opportunity for aspiring strategists — especially as the other 20% get on board.


Step 1: Get a Twitter account — 100% of social media managers represented in the survey have one, and you have to know the lay of the land if you’re going to innovate and build a brand on said land.

Step 2: Be ready to wear many hats. When it comes to social media, there’s a lot to tackle, including crafting actual posts, analyzing metrics, training and managing a team, spearheading campaigns, working with agencies and managing a budget.

Want to know if you’re cut out for it? In the infographic "gist" above, you’ll see the personality traits, education, career paths and responsibilities of today’s successful social media strategists. Statistics were pulled from LinkedIn data, job listings for positions in the field, and a report by Jeremiah Owyang of Altimeter Group.

Enjoy, alright?

Light Cycle from Tron movie

Is there a strong market for electric bikes? There would be a bigger share, if they looked like this...

Hello!

---

Moshi Moshi Manual Cellphone Handset Posted: 18 May 2011 08:03 AM PDT In these days of the ubiquitous cellphone, it can be rare to use a "normal" phone, even if you spend most of your days desk bound. As much as I love my iPhone, when I'm sitting in my office I miss using my desk phone with its comfortable handset and easy to dial keypad. Additionally, as someone who likes to listen to music when I work, an incoming call on my iPhone means unplugging it from the cradle, a minor annoyance. Native Union has solved my problem with a series of handsets that allow you to take calls using a traditional handset attached to your cellphone. I picked up the MM02, a fairly basic corded model featuring a cradle, that I have really come to appreciate (they make a cordless Bluetooth version, but it is significantly more expensive). The handset connects to the iPhone via the 3.5mm socket on the top of the phone, leaving you free to rest the iPhone in the charging cradle, audio device etc. The handset is reassuringly solid, with a pleasant, matte plastic feel to it, and the well built cradle sits happily on a desk. There is an answering button in the centre of the handset that makes it easy to pick up calls, but one downside is that there is no keypad on the handset, so although you can dial out you need to use the keypad on your mobile handset itself, and that can be a bit fiddly. If you're flying a desk like me, you may find that you make your outgoing calls on your desk phone anyway. I've had the MM02 handset for around 6-months now and find it a delight to use. At the time of purchase it seemed to be the only accessory of its type. Overall, a very handy piece of kit, especially if you're a desk-bound cellphone user. -- Alan Arthur [Although the reviewer notes that he used the handset solely in conjunction with his cellphone, this handset can be used with any product containing a 3.5 mm socket including a laptop or iPad thereby making Skype or Google Voice calling a little bit more traditional and comfortable on unwieldy devices. --OH] Native Union Moshi Moshi 02 Handset $44 Available from Amazon Native Union Moshi Moshi 01H Handset (without a cradle) Available in a variety of colors $29 Available from Amazon Manufactured by Native Union Sample Excerpts: Native Union makes an even simpler retro model, the MM01H, that comes in a variety of colors while being a bit more affordable for those who don't need a desktop cradle.

Google Inc., 20 West Kinzie, Chicago IL USA 60610

Jeff Jarvis and I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion.

Usage-based billing not off the table at Telus

Jeff Jarvis and I wholeheartedly disagree with this notion.

Usage-based billing not off the table at Telus

Leaked video of how the Blackberry Storm 3 (code named Monaco) may function...

Click image for video.

By the way, Dale Bennett got me interested in these, originally.

This sexy device has yet to be officially announced.

(Sad sauce.)

Leaked video of how the Blackberry Storm 3 (code named Monaco) may function...

Click image for video.

By the way, Dale Bennett got me interested in these, originally.

This sexy device has yet to be officially announced.

(Sad sauce.)

The book is dead — long live the ebook

Source: Calgary Herald

The book is dead — long live the ebook

Source: Calgary Herald

Roombots: autonomous, mobile, evolutionary self-assembling furniture

Roombots are autonomous, roving furniture segments that cruise around your house, looking for each other and spontaneously organizing themselves into furnishings that evolve based on how you use them. It's a project from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. This project intends to design and control modular robots, called Roombots, to be used as building blocks for furniture that moves, self-assembles, self-reconfigures, and self-repairs. Modular robots are robots made of multiple simple robotic modules that can attach and detach (Wikipedia: Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotics).

Connectors between units allow the creation of arbitrary and changing structures depending on the task to be solved. Compared to "monolithic" robots, modular robots offer higher versatility and robustness against failure, as well as the possibility of self-reconfiguration. The type of scenario that we envision for the Rolex Learning Center is a group of Roombots that autonomously connect to each other to form different types of furniture, e.g. stools, chairs, sofas and tables, depending on user requirements. This furniture will change shape over time (e.g. a stool becoming a chair, a set of chairs becoming a sofa) as well as move using actuated joints to different locations depending on the users needs. When not needed, the group of modules can create a static structure such as a wall or a box.

Roombots: Modular robotics for adaptive and self-organizing furniture (via Beyond the Beyond)

Long-exposure photo of Roomba coverage
Concept for swarming "display blocks"
What happens to junk left behind in foreclosed homes?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/8bYK2xityP4/roombots-autonomous.html

Roombots: autonomous, mobile, evolutionary self-assembling furniture

Roombots are autonomous, roving furniture segments that cruise around your house, looking for each other and spontaneously organizing themselves into furnishings that evolve based on how you use them. It's a project from the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne. This project intends to design and control modular robots, called Roombots, to be used as building blocks for furniture that moves, self-assembles, self-reconfigures, and self-repairs. Modular robots are robots made of multiple simple robotic modules that can attach and detach (Wikipedia: Self-Reconfiguring Modular Robotics).

Connectors between units allow the creation of arbitrary and changing structures depending on the task to be solved. Compared to "monolithic" robots, modular robots offer higher versatility and robustness against failure, as well as the possibility of self-reconfiguration. The type of scenario that we envision for the Rolex Learning Center is a group of Roombots that autonomously connect to each other to form different types of furniture, e.g. stools, chairs, sofas and tables, depending on user requirements. This furniture will change shape over time (e.g. a stool becoming a chair, a set of chairs becoming a sofa) as well as move using actuated joints to different locations depending on the users needs. When not needed, the group of modules can create a static structure such as a wall or a box.

Roombots: Modular robotics for adaptive and self-organizing furniture (via Beyond the Beyond)

Long-exposure photo of Roomba coverage
Concept for swarming "display blocks"
What happens to junk left behind in foreclosed homes?

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/boingboing/iBag/~3/8bYK2xityP4/roombots-autonomous.html

FontPark Is a Searchable, Sortable Database of Over 70,000 Free Fonts [Fonts]

FontPark is a great big database of free fonts.

Fonts are available for personal and/or commercial use, and will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

FontPark Is a Searchable, Sortable Database of Over 70,000 Free Fonts [Fonts]

FontPark is a great big database of free fonts.

Fonts are available for personal and/or commercial use, and will work on Windows, Mac, and Linux.

Best Text Recognition Tool: ABBYY FineReader [Hive Five Followup]

Last week we asked you to share your favorite text recognition tool--more formally known as optical character recognition (OCR)--then we compared them all. Now we're back to highlight the most popular text recognition tool.More

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/xtFPvoWHbKE/best-text-recognition-tool-abbyy-finereader

Best Text Recognition Tool: ABBYY FineReader [Hive Five Followup]

Last week we asked you to share your favorite text recognition tool--more formally known as optical character recognition (OCR)--then we compared them all. Now we're back to highlight the most popular text recognition tool.More

http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/xtFPvoWHbKE/best-text-recognition-tool-abbyy-finereader

RIM server in Saudi Arabia

http://crackberry.com/reesearch-motion-reaches-deal-saudi-arabia

RIM server in Saudi Arabia

http://crackberry.com/reesearch-motion-reaches-deal-saudi-arabia

WORK LIKE BATMAN

Do you have a pile of work to do from your home office, a "white collar" desk job, or need to complete long hours of data entry (it is tax season now)?

WATCH YOUR POSTURE, ROBIN!
Most of the time...stand up while you work! This burns more calories, gives you more energy in general, and makes you sound better on phone calls!

The line about posture is out of the Dark Knight Returns book from Frank Miller.

TO THE BAT COMPUTER!
Get a sweet (sweeet) keyboard and mouse combination...it is the most used part of your computer, right?
There are multitudes of ergonomic designs from companies like Microsoft.

I prefer the wireless, rechargable, orange-glow-in-the-dark Divino variety from Logitech,
especially when it looks sleek, uses secure Bluetooth technology, and can be branded with a minimalist Bat logo.

Recently, Logitech launched a contest for some nifty prizes ala Dark Knight.
Swag!

CAPE AND COWL
Keep a neutrally-coloured blazer or jacket at your desk; dark beige, dark, blue, or grey seem to work well for most people. Layers of professional clothing are a nice (successful) way to handle temperature changes throughout the day within an air conditioned office, right?

Keep your clothes in shape by avoiding those 1960's "Bat Poles"...

QUOTATIONS FROM THE FAST AND FRIENDLY CLOUDS!

Feel free to use some TANTALIZING QUOTES related to Twitter and Google for spicing-up your speeches, discussions, and board (bored?) meetings...

From Vogelstein writing in Wired magazine, August 2009:

“Google is big. Very big. Its millions of servers process about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every [60 minutes]...bigness is the very point of Google...its competitive advantage-is its ability to find meaning in massive sets of data. The larger the data sets, the more potential meaning can be derived...”

By the by, one petabyte (PiB) is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes (B), and each standard byte contains eight bits (ones and/or zeros). Impressive, isn’t it?

Eric Schmidt, one of the founders of Google, repeatedly reminds his employees that Microsoft could crush Google at any moment. To wit:

“...because Microsoft is a follower, there is a concern that it could use its Windows monopoly to restrict choices”

Here's a couple from Jarvis in his What Would Google Do? book:

“When China’s Sichuan Province suffered its horrendous earthquake in May 2008, people who felt it firsthand shared their experience via Twitter...people in the quake zone would use Twitter to update friends...If I were going through a quake, I’d want to tell family and friends that I was safe, wouldn’t you?”

Note that back then, the Twitter service was only 600 days old – this is a reflection of the significantly swift adoption rate that y'all have for web services that “just work” connect you with your friends and family.

What Would Google Do?:

“...those of us that teach students in rapidly changing arenas...must get better at keeping up with – no, getting ahead of – our students, industry, and society.”

We're standing on the shoulders of Giants, right?

We're enjoying the multitudes of free web applications that are being developed nowadays to "just work," with the software vendor getting out of the way.

How do some of the newer, smaller, web vendors that "give away" free online services pay their employees, though?
The Web 2.0 conundrum...
Any brilliant ideas about this?

I keep hoping that this Golden (Google?) Age of developing free "just work" web applications lasts for a while.

If not, change will be brutally and significantly swift, too.

Talk about these ideas soon, eh?

QUOTATIONS FROM THE FAST AND FRIENDLY CLOUDS!

Feel free to use some TANTALIZING QUOTES related to Twitter and Google for spicing-up your speeches, discussions, and board (bored?) meetings... 

From Vogelstein writing in Wired magazine, August 2009:

“Google is big. Very big. Its millions of servers process about 1 petabyte of user-generated data every [60 minutes]...bigness is the very point of Google...its competitive advantage-is its ability to find meaning in massive sets of data. The larger the data sets, the more potential meaning can be derived...”

By the by, one petabyte (PiB) is equal to 1,125,899,906,842,624 bytes (B), and each standard byte contains eight bits (ones and/or zeros). Impressive, isn’t it?

Eric Schmidt, one of the founders of Google, repeatedly reminds his employees that Microsoft could crush Google at any moment. To wit:

“...because Microsoft is a follower, there is a concern that it could use its Windows monopoly to restrict choices”

Here's a couple from Jarvis in his What Would Google Do? book:

“When China’s Sichuan Province suffered its horrendous earthquake in May 2008, people who felt it firsthand shared their experience via Twitter...people in the quake zone would use Twitter to update friends...If I were going through a quake, I’d want to tell family and friends that I was safe, wouldn’t you?”

Note that back then, the Twitter service was only 600 days old – this is a reflection of the significantly swift adoption rate that y'all have for web services that “just work” connect you with your friends and family. What Would Google Do?:

“...those of us that teach students in rapidly changing arenas...must get better at keeping up with – no, getting ahead of – our students, industry, and society.”

We're standing on the shoulders of Giants, right?

We're enjoying the multitudes of free web applications that are being developed nowadays to "just work," with the software vendor getting out of the way.

How do some of the newer, smaller, web vendors that "give away" free online services pay their employees, though? The Web 2.0 conundrum... Any brilliant ideas about this?

I keep hoping that this Golden (Google?) Age of developing free "just work" web applications lasts for a while.

If not, change will be brutally and significantly swift, too.

Talk about these ideas soon, eh?