division6 » Social media

Raymond E Feist backlist – thanks, Voyager!

Armand — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 07:54:03 +0000

Who says nobody wins online competitions? I entered a competition from Voyager Books, which I learned of via their e-newsletter (sign up here) and last month received a large box of books from the publishers with Raymond E Feist’s entire backlist! Of course, as a loyal fan I already have many of these but there’s a few titles I was missing and it’ll make a great gift… Pics may follow when I’ve finished sorting out boiler issues.

Thanks to Voyager, and do sign up if you’re an SF / Fantasy fans (the next competition will let you win Robin Hobb’s backlist, which I read my way through earlier this year). They also give a bunch of good stuff away via their Twitter handle, but I’ve not had the good fortune to win there…

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Blog aggregation

Armand — Thu, 29 May 2008 21:05:04 +0000

Why is Technorati the only blog aggregation service to institute some measure of ‘authority‘? It seems ludicrous that every other blog search/aggregation engine gives such limited indication of whether anyone else is reading and linking to the bloggers that come up when you search for them. Given the existence of Google PageRank and the ability to search for the number of sites that “linkto” a site via a number of different search engines, you’d think more people would have built this in.

These sites need these ‘trust barometers’ in some sense so you have some gauge over whether the blogger whose post you’re reading is a spammer or other misanthrope, or is offering genuine insight/advice.

Are there other services I should be checking out?

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There are very few people…

Armand — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 20:46:33 +0000

…who both think that Macgyver is awesome and love guitar.

Guitar – the MacGyver theme
Watch more DIY videos on 5min.com

God bless the Interwebs.

Actually impressed that the 5min.com people looked me up after I linked to Videojug in the last but one post. Good technorati monitoring and trackback tracking, guys, and actually taking the time to read my blog, find my Twitter and add me? Nice.

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Stephen Fry has an awesome, awesome blog

Armand — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 16:30:03 +0000

You may have already heard, but I tend to make the assumption that everyone is as immersed in various media as me, and that, I’m told, is not always the case. Whilst my networks, contacts and friends with whom I interact digitally have been revelling in this news since his iPhone opus, I hope it is useful news to some of you. His most recent post on fame is probably a bit more accessible (and entertaining) for those of you who don’t know or care about the history of the smartphone.

I’m envious of his prose, but pleased for the world at large. (I do note, however, that Stephen must have either a significant number of drafts in waiting – his first published post had a WordPress ID of ’3′ and his second has an ID of ’19′. What happened to the ones in between? Let us see, Stephen!)

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Social Memedia revisited

Armand — Fri, 17 Aug 2007 13:16:37 +0000

Drew B asks if the ‘top 5′ social media tools I listed last year have changed.

In 2006, they were:
WordPress – my blog platform
Wikipedia – everyone’s encyclopedia
RSS – which makes the news go around
Delicious – which keeps my links in check
Skype – connecting people

In 2007, they are:
Facebook – yes, you know I love it.
Google Reader / RSS – not much change there
WordPress – or there
Twitter – Microblogging fun
Delicious – linklove still in there

I’d also add
Pokerstars
Skype – Not today. That’s a big outage.
Google Mail – Ajaxy email goodness

I am fad-tastic. In truth, not a huge shift, but social networks have really come on in the last year, and I’m a big fan of Facebook’s ‘open’ approach. How about you?

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Vote for Vito!

Armand — Sun, 01 Jul 2007 13:40:51 +0000

One of my brother‘s directors is in the running for a prize with MySpace: we’d really appreciate your votes for Vito if you have an active MySpace account. You can vote once a day. In a meta-social-network fest, you can also support the efforts (and read more about it, interact with the producers, etc.,) with this Facebook group.

Here’s a short film from him:

MyMovie MashUp Short Film Entry

Add to My Profile | More Videos

And his pitch:

MyMovie MashUp Director Pitch

Add to My Profile | More Videos

Cast your vote here. Much appreciated!

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Twitter collaboration – keeping people enthused about blogging

Armand — Fri, 30 Mar 2007 09:09:59 +0000

Drew B, a PR blogger, asked his Twitter contacts (including myself) for our thoughts on how to keep people enthused about blogging for an interview he was doing with the Guardian (~~not found the article as yet – possibly still in development~~ here’s the story). I responded (full list of responses nicely summarised here) and the BBC Radio 5 Live blog has picked up on it (although no link love / and my real name not used)…

Still… Twice on the BBC in a week! My advice, FWIW, is to get blogging buddies – you can be spurred on by a few incoming links from friends asking your thoughts on things.

If you want to add me on Twitter, I’m over here.

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Twitter poetry

Armand — Thu, 22 Mar 2007 09:47:54 +0000

One of my agency’s clients, T-Mobile, has been working on a text poetry competition. You can win £1000 for coming up with the best 160 characters: see the blog for more info. Submissions have to be in by 5th April, if you’re interested, but thought, especially once I saw Tom Watson’s Twitter Poetry, that some of my fellow Twitterers would be interested.

I’m a big fan of Twitter, though I won’t try to justify its existence here and now (I’m aware it polarises people). But: if you want to have a go, here is some tag action to stimulate you into Twitter poetry greatness.

Chris, Tom, DoctorVee, Simon, Scoble (you know you love Twitter when the Ninja tells you to stop sending so many updates!), Chris G, Drew B: fancy yourselves poets?

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Blog advice needed

Armand — Fri, 02 Mar 2007 08:25:20 +0000

I’m on the hunt for some blogs. I’ll trawl Technorati, but having found lately that my RSS reader is populated by over-posting A-listers (who are great, but…) I think I’d like to read some people who are writing well, in the UK (preferably), on topics I care about.

So: appreciate the suggestions on blogs about –

Kotaku

PJ’s Chords and Lyrics

I don’t really need any more tech blogs, but love them so send them on if there are any that you recommend that you think I might have missed. Haven’t worked out how to share my subscriptions from Google Reader as yet (is that possible?) so afraid its not easy to list them all… Have to find some OPML sharing site. Any recommendations on that?

There are more topics that I care about. But that’ll do for now – be great to get your thoughts!

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Diary entry

Armand — Fri, 29 Sep 2006 07:14:18 +0000

Second Life diary, stardate 29 September 2006.

- Still don’t see the point of this. I’m in a virtual world that slowly loads around me whilst random people make conversations and friends.

- I don’t have enough time for my friends in the real world, why am I here again?

- The existential mist is clouding my brains, digital and literal…

- *The mist clears and I experience a moment of clarity* – why the hell do I have this ridiculous facial hair?

- I cannot get rid of this goddamn beard. Where can I get a Mighty Morphin’ Power Razor?

- ladeeeeedadeeee dumb… bored.

- Wheeeeeeee. Flying!

- Oh, It’s not that much fun. My mistake.

- Someone wants to be my friend!

- Sorry, who are you?

- Whoa. That’s What I Call Slowdown.

- I have inadvertantly pressed ALT-F4… Whoops……

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Social Memedia

Armand — Wed, 19 Jul 2006 07:35:51 +0000

I thought I’d avoided the ’5 favourite social media’ meme, but Danny kindly tagged me, so I’ll give it ago. The reason for avoidance? Erm, I’m not sure there’s anything particularly clever or interesting about my favourite five (I don’t rip, script, furl OR curl anything at all)… but here we go.

I love WordPress. Unsurprisingly. It powers this blog, and allows integration with all sorts of other cool things – including del.icio.us, Flickr, Last.fm, Amazon and more, thanks to some cool plugins.

I love Wikipedia. I’m one of those people who likes to know a little about a lot of things, most of the time, and occasionally a lot about a few, and the articles on Wikipedia invariably provide a useful starting point.

I love RSS. I love my RSS readers slightly less: Feedreader is good and is my desktop client of choice. What I really want is something that syncs with an online service so that threads I’ve marked as read on one are marked as read on the other, and so that I don’t have to subscribe to the same feed more than once. Does Newsgator do this? I’ll look into it at some point. Oh, my online RSS reader of choice is Bloglines, and I do like the way that public blogrolls can be shared on there. I should get into all this OPML stuff too…

I like del.icio.us a lot — currently more for my own edification than its social nature (I only have two people in my network) — but as someone who’s (1) never bothered to use bookmarks and (2) who likes to blog one-liners, it gives me good scope to find links I want to again and be pithy about amusing websites. The linklog on the right, btw, is powered by del.icio.us.

And for number 5? I guess Skype might win that one; admittedly it’s a long way from perfect, and arguable to what extent it constitutes ‘media’ as its output isn’t necessarily public… but its a great bit of social software, and there’s potential there (I read some good tips on Simon’s blog on how to record Skype conversations – something which may come in handy…!).

So there you have it. Tags? Don’t think Chris, Tom, Gareth, Ben or, erm, Neil Gaiman have done this (why not ask?). Share and enjoy, folks, share and enjoy.

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