Have a look at this video, from a company based in Seattle, Washington called Common Craft who create simple training videos about social media topics.
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Archive for the ‘New technology’ Category
Networking – combining online and offline
Sunday, March 8th, 2009
We wanted to share our tips about Online and Offline networking and encourage you to use them in conjunction.
Networking can be interpreted in many ways
but activities should include:
- going to networking events, parties, trade shows, and other gatherings where you meet new people
- making sure you keep in touch with those people
- connecting those people with other people you know, where it would be of mutual benefit
- meeting people again for “1-2-1s” and finding out more about their businesses
- Joining a group such as BNI, NRG, Business Junction, Athena, or Chambers of Commerce where you meet regularly to continue to get to know other members.
- Building relationships with other business people and showing yourself as an expert in your field as well as a nice reliable and helpful person.
All of these are typical of traditional networking.
What we are seeing now is that there are a lot of online groups as well. These have been around for many years and their usage is growing. Examples include Ecademy, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter.
There are many benefits to making proper use of these:
Why we love Favy
Thursday, November 6th, 2008
UPDATE on FAVY – now Cognitive Match: Alex Kelleher has now rolled Favy into his B2B service Cognitive Match (www.cognitivematch.com) – using the same technology of matching individuals with content in real time.
You probably haven’t heard about Favy yet – but that’s because it’s not been OFFICIALLY launched yet. We are able to have Favy on our browsers because we have connections – we know the man behind Favy – Alex Kelleher. Great guy!
Simply described in my own words – Favy is an add-on toolbar which attaches to your browser and allows you to bookmark favourite sites with tagging technology.
There is a whole “smart” element to it where it can track your taste in bookmarks, but I haven’t really tested this bit yet.
It’s really handy and easy to use.
What I love about my Favy toolbar
I love that I can tag a website with different keywords and it comes up in different folders
I love that I have a whole new fresh modern set of favourites which is a lot easier than going through my old list and checking every link
I love that there are 5 search engines – Google, Wikipedia, You Tube, Dictionary.com and Favy search – all handily included.
If you want to learn more about Favy, visit http://favy.com/home and request a free invitation!
Video Formats – researched and explained
Monday, September 22nd, 2008
(by Alicia Bell from Top Left Design)
It’s tough to figure out which video format works best and why. Which one is the most accessible, which one has the best picture and which one offers the best “streaming”?
(Web streaming can be defined as “a technique for transferring data such that it can be processed as a steady and continuous stream”).
We’ve looked at some popular options; Flash, MPEG & AVI, and this is what we’ve found:
AVI files are limited to 320 x 240 resolution, and 30 frames per second. This means that it is not adequate for full screen or full motion video. However, video in windows doesn’t need special hardware, making AVI the easiest format to use (although the quality is much lower than other formats). This format is used mainly because it allows businesses to sell their products and reach the largest base of consumers. Although AVI is the most common format for on the PC, the Flash player is actually installed on a higher percentage of computers than any other video format.
This means that more consumer sites are moving towards the Flash video format – because it is more likely that your site visitor will have the correct player. Another advantage is that the flash video format works well across PCs, Macs & Linux.
The MPEG format is hardware-assisted. This means that you need a board to play MPEG files without dropping a lot of frames. There are software decoders available but they require a lot of processor power on your system and usually support MPEG video only (missing sound). The good thing about MPEG files is that they provide excellent picture quality. For these reasons it seems that the MPEG option is better for those that are very serious about digital video but not ideal for quick and easy web viewing.
Overall, Flash seems to be the best option for the web. Compared to other video formats, the flash format is small, fast and ideal for web streaming. It is popular (installed on more end user’s computers), uncomplicated and offers a consistent picture.
Sources:
http://www.videozilla.net/formatscomparison.html
http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2007/10/video-format-comparison-flash-wmv.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_container_formats
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/s/streaming.html
http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/V/Video_for_Windows.html
Google have done it again
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008
Google have now released a browser with faster yet simpler browsing. They say that it’s a new age browser derived from a combination of other browsers but only using the useful stuff to handle modern day websites. Features include multithreaded tabs and a built in search engine making tasks easier and quicker.
Google Chrome is open source so others can learn from its coding and can improve on it. It seems to have received good responses since its beta release on Tuesday the 2nd of September 2008. There is a comic showing what Google set out to do and how they went about it. It’s taking browsing to the next level and you should check it out.
Link to the comic:
http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/small_00.html
Link to download Google Chrome:
Vimeo.com
Monday, September 1st, 2008
Just found this great website for sharing video files – one of the videos is below – enjoy!
Big Buck Bunny from Blender Foundation on Vimeo.
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