Day of the Deployed

If you haven't heard by now, October 26 is now the National Day of the Deployed. This is actually the sixth year that North Dakota has celebrated this day and was the first to do so. Forty other states soon followed and now in 2011 it has become a National day of recognition to honor those who have been deployed, are about to deployed and who are serving all over the world.

At Bismarck State College this past Wednesday, the 26th of October, we held a ceremony to honor these brave men and women and to give thanks to the people that made this day happen. Senator John Hoeven, who sponsored the bill along with several other senators, including Kent Conrad was there for the celebration.

I had the opportunity to stream the event live on the military page on Bismarck State College's website. We streamed it so that people all over the country could view it and feel part of it. That is what makes streaming video so cool, it is usually free and if its done right, its like you are there. We were hoping for better streaming numbers, but did end up with 104 viewers from six different states.

One of the many things the ceremony included, was a Skype conversation between a deployed soldier and his family. His six-year-old son was there and surprised his dad with a poster he had made. I wasn't in the room at the time, as I was in a room across the hall directing the show. I could imagine that when the little boy told his dad that he loved him and that he was proud of him, that some people got a bit teary eyed. I got pretty choked up and had a hard time telling the camera operator what kind of shot I needed.

I think social media can play an extremely important role in keeping friends and family contacted as they go through tough times like being deployed and serving our country. Whether it is a simple status update on Facebook, a Tweet or maybe even a Skype conversation, I think any of them make life easier for both the soldier and the loved ones. This is definitely a benefit of Social Media and the World Wide Web.

New Books on Social Media

Are you a business owner? Have you thought about starting your own business? If you answered yes to either of these questions, you better familiar yourself with social media. Its not going to go away anytime soon and there isn't a better way to get your name and goods out there than to utilize the tools with social media. Its free and if its used right, it can be extremely beneficial to the success of a company.

Recently I ran across an article on the New York Times website that talks about four new books about the social media tools; Facebook, Twitter, Google and LinkedIn. They are being printed and sold at Office Depots around the country for the small price of $7.95. A lucky five million people will be receiving an e-mail from Office Depot and will be getting a digital format of the magazines for free. The magazines are called: fb & business, Tweeting & Business LI & Business and The Big G & Business. They are also setting up a website called socialmediamags.com, which should be open this coming Monday.

Eric Yaverbaum, associate publisher of the magazines is not concerned with the all the information already available online. "Small-business owners and entrepreneurs are all trying to figure out social media out," Mr. Yaverbaum said. "Print magazines help make the information accessible to them. There will be great success stories and useful information."

He also noted that they are going to be printing a total of 250,000 copies of the magazine to start with.

I really like the idea of the magazines. Almost everyone uses social media, but that doesn't mean they know how to use it, and how to use it right for marketing and promotion of a business. I don't know too much about Linked, and for less than $8, it sounds like I can end up with a great magazine that will show me tips and tricks on what it all about.

Getting a business up and running is a hard enough job in itself, these magazines can be great benefit to anyone looking to jump into the digital world of social media to promote themselves or to watch their company grow.

Twitter Campaigning

Its that time again, presidential election time. With that comes a lot of people we have probably never heard of running for office and asking us to vote for them. I will be honest, for the most part, I don't follow politics too close, I find it boring. However, I have never missed an opportunity to vote and take pride in the fact that I am able to. But like most people I know, I vote mainly on what I hear the people I am close to tell me about the candidates. I work in TV and I never pay attention to political ads on tv, because I know how untrue those can be.
Anyways, with the growth of social media, we can certainly expect to play a large role in the up-coming elections.
I found an article on the New York Times website that deals with one presidential candidate "family" who is using Twitter to have a little fun on the campaign trail.
Jon Huntsman Jr. who has seven children, three of which have decided to Tweet about what life is like on the road. Mary Anne, 26; Abby, 25; and Liddy, 23 are the daughters who are not only part of the Huntsman family, but are also helping in the Huntsman for President campaign. The Twitter account is @Jon2012Girls and so far they have made over 250 Tweets and almost 5,000 followers. 
According to the article,  Abby says the account was setup to, "Give kids our age an inside perspective into life on the campaign trail." What does dad, Jon think about all of this? “It’s the way people communicate today, so all I’ve done is to say, ‘Girls, promise me you’re not going to embarrass your dad.' ”
By looking at the tweets, you can tell they are just having some fun with it and I don't think dad has too much to be worried about.

Pause Before You Post

I am glad that I didn't grow up with Facebook or Twitter. I think it would make it even harder than it already is.
The only good that may have come out of using social sites like this would be to talk to people that you maybe wouldn't of in school and possibly make some new friends. But the negatives, for me anyways outweigh the positives.
October is National Pause Before You Post month. Its a month where educators and students makes pledges to pause before they post anything online that may harm someone else. I first found out about this from an article on a local television station's website. One of the local high schools is partaking in the event. According to the article, the teachers have talked about the issue of cyber-bullying before, but this month they are talking about more in class and encouraging students to think about things before they post them online. They are suppose to ask themselves, who will see it, will anyone be embarrased or hurt by it, am I proud of it, and how would I feel if someone posted it about me.
The main webpage behind all this, has a promotional video using upcoming teen celebrities asking teens to please Pause Before You Post. There is also links for students, parents and educators to follow, where they can find more information about this campaign.
We now live in a society where almost everyone uses social media to display their feelings and thoughts. I  know as an adult, I would never post anything harmful about someone on one of these websites. But for children and teens, its probably more of a challenge. So and so always started it, but this is a good way for maybe some students to end the negative posts and to realize how foolish of a thing this really is.

DVR for Online Movies?

Yep, you read the headline right. By now most of us have dvr's(Digital Video Recorders) setup at home and many of us might go as far as saying that we probably couldn't live without one. In fact, I work with a guy who rents three of them a month and he figures that he watches an average of five hours a tv a day. That is crazy!
Anyways, a recent article on Yahoo News reviews a new service that will allow you to record a streamed movie off of many of the popular video sites. It will work with Netflix, YouTube, Hulu and it is called PlayLater.
For $5 a month or $50 a year you can record a streamed movie off of one of the aforementioned sites or other sites like ESPN, MTV or even CBS. According the the article the quality isn't as good as it would be if you were just going to watch the original stream. Movies on the internet are already compressed files and its being re-compressed by the recording so its losing quality.
The idea behind this is great. We all watch streamed movies and to be able to skip commercials or save it for when you don't have access to the internet makes this very intriguing. The example the article gives is being on a plane and not having anything to do, you could watch a recording of a streamed movie.
The article also talks about the legalities about PlayLater. Right now there is no way for these companies to block the recordings or take action against them. Digital Video Recorders are considered legal and therefore they probably won't be able to do much to stop these services.
Right now its only available on PC's and not Mac's, if it was I think I may look into it, I think it sounds like a good idea. What about you, would you give it a try? Did I mention you can try it for free for two weeks?

Facebook Updates

To be honest, I am not real big on checking my Facebook. I probably only check it a few times a week. The only reason I got an account is because my wife thought it would be a good idea to keep up with family that we don't see everyday.

Anyways, I found an article on New York Times website talking about some of the recent changes to Facebook. They changed Facebook? According to this article, they did. The article didn't go into great details about the changes, but rather asks whether or not you like the changes. So I just logged on to my Facebook account to see what all they hype is about.

When I first logged in, I didn't really notice too many changes, just some more confusing stuff on the right hand side. I guess it doesn't bother me, before there was just a lot of white space on my computer over there. I guess that depends on your screen resolution. I was logged on for about 10 minutes checking out whats happening in peoples lives and responded to an email and noticed that the new ticker kept changing every time one of my friends did something. I guess I know how much certain friends are on Facebook.

Back to the article, it also referenced that Facebook made some more changes to their privacy settings. Which is always a good thing, I still don't feel really excited about sharing a whole of information of Facebook and don't really like sharing pictures and videos, because I don't know who will be accessing them. So any more secure settings is a good thing.

The last thing the article referred to was you can subscribe to someone's page that you aren't friends with. I can see why this might be a good thing. There are some of my friends that I am not really friends with but maybe would just like to keep tabs about what they have going on in their life. But at the same time, someone can subscribe to my page, even though we are not friends.

Sounds like their are a lot of people who do not like the new changes, what do you think of the changes? Am I missing something? I probably am, as I consider myself a Facebook beginner.

Just How Many Pages are on the Internet?

A recent article on CNN's website talks about just how many pages are on the web. The article asks, "It seems like an answerable question, right?"  


I would think that this information has to be somewhere, its something I have never thought about before and am know curious to find out. It would  have to be extremely hard to find an exact number as the internet grows by thousands of pages everyday.


According to Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired Magazine, he thinks there are at least a trillion web pages that exist today. A trillion sounds like a crazy number and it would be real interesting to find out just how many pages there really are out there on the internet. 


Thats exactly where the World Wide Web Foundation comes in. They are on a mission to figure out how big the internet is. WIth a $1 million dollar grant Google, they plan on releasing their results, which are going to be called the World WIde Web Index, according to the foundation's CEO, Steve Bratt. The index's website lists that the index will be the first multi-dimensional measure of the web. The say that its going to cover a large number of developed and developing countries and will access the political, economic and social impact on the web. It will also look into the Web connectivity in each country and the infrastructure they have in place to access the Web. 


I have no idea about you go about something like this, like I mentioned earlier, there are thousands and thousands of pages added everyday. Its going to be real interesting to hear the numbers the report is going to publish.