Tutorials
Advice: MyTwitBook – a parent’s guide to social media – Part Two
Last month, I outlined what social media is, and began to give you, the parent, a quick primer on some of the big players (if you can’t get a hold of last month’s Bellarines Best, just head to rebusiness.com.au for a quick recap). We covered SMSs, MySpace and the wonderful world of Blogging, but we saved the best till last…
Advice: MyTwitBook – a parent’s guide to social media – Part One
Part One: Baby-boomers, Gen Y, Gen X, Gen *whatever* – one thing I know for sure is that the generations are slowly becoming separated by the tyranny of new technology – more so by the pace at which new technology evolves. For parents, the issue is two-fold: 1) where are my children going on the internet? and 2) what harm/good my children be able to do?
Advice: Psst… what’s the password?
Passwords, PIN numbers and security access codes – they seem like the bane of 21st century living. It’s so easy to forget which combination goes with which web site or with which credit card. Remembering passwords is almost a skill in itself. But with more and more of our lives going online, the first and foremost line of defence against unwanted intruders is the strength of our passwords.
Advice: Twitter 101: A primer…
So… what is Twitter? Ah, the multi-million dollar question… Perhaps it’s easier to answer what Twitter is *not*, first:
• Twitter is not exactly like a chat program (MSN, iChat, Skype, etc), but it does let you communicate back and forth with friends
• Twitter is not exactly like sending an SMS from your phone, but it does let you broadcast news and other messages to many people
• Twitter is not exactly like a blog, although it does let you get to know people over time
• Twitter is not exactly like Facebook, although it does let you find people and see what they’re up to
• Twitter is not just a fad – it fills the otherwise empty niche of ‘real-time written communication’ – although it seems to be the mainstream media’s darling this year!
What Twitter *is*, is a free system of writing messages of no more than 140 characters, so that anyone in the world who is also on Twitter can *follow* you, and thereby follow the stream of messages you’re writing.
Advice: Stuck sending emails with big attachments? Get Dropbox and let the magic happen…
It’s happened to the best of us – we try to send an email to a client, colleague, or family member, and we cram in one too many attachments. We press ’send’, and wait for the progress bar of life to tell us that our email is on it’s merry way when – uh oh – it bounces back to us with a gibberish technical message saying, in effect: ‘too big, try again’.
Let me show you an awesome bit of *free* technology that lets you send and recieve files of any size across this Internet – and it all happens as if by magic.
Advice: Skype 101: A primer…
Have you heard of Skype but were afraid to ask about it…? Don’t panic – it’s been a mainstay of voice communications for computer-folks for a long while, but there’s still lots of you (us!) out there who need to be introduced to the concept… one step at a time…
Advice: A glimpse into the process of refreshing a logo…
The following is a real-life case study of a logo refresh – where the client is wanting to refresh their whole business focus, and starting with their main item of branding: their logo.
Advice: Photos 101: Everything you ever needed to know about working with photos.
Two of the most fundamental interactions we have with computers and the internet are ‘words’ and ‘images’. By that I mean, mastery of creating and editing text, as well as that of capturing and handling photos.
By all measures, we’re all very well capable of handling the ‘words’ component – yet capturing photos in digital form and handling the resultant images is a rather new skill – and totally new language is required to describe them.
Advice: Crossing the digital divide: 5 steps to filing with style
The ‘digital divide’ is said to delineate ‘Generation X’ from ‘Generation Y’ – those who grew up with personal computers vs those who grew up before them. While the definitions of the range of ages of these two generations differs depending on who you talk to, I would suggest that it’s not so much age-based, but confidence-based.
That said, let me pose a few typical computer filing situations, and show you how to ‘file with style’ in the virtual world, and feel more confident with your own digital information.
Advice: A coffee and a blog for breakfast
How do you start your day? Coffee, tea or fresh OJ? Perhaps a slice of toast and the morning paper? For a lot of the population, it’s not only the morning wake-up routine, but it’s also their chance to get their daily dose of news and events.
Newspapers are still a fresh and consistent source of local and regional news and events, with their wide range of columns and inserts, but (you *knew* there was a ‘but’ coming, didn’t you?) newspapers are edited for the general population, with general interest and general topics that generally please everyone…
Let me show you a way to pick and choose your own topics of interest from around the world, and roll-your-own newspaper, so that you can start the day with your perfect selection of news, columns, and advice – and begin your day with coffee and a blog for breakfast.