Disqus - Latest Comments for AramZS

Re: Trapped in the USA: Switched the commenting over to Disqus

AramZS — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 01:31:22 -0000

I'd really like to do this with my Textpattern blog as well. Any tips on how to get it running? I've only just started playing with Textpattern and I'm not very familiar with it yet.

Re: RSS=Robert’s Stuff is Saved (will it do the same for CNN’s Twitter account?)

AramZS — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 09:01:18 -0000

Very cool, you know what this gives real traction to?

Wordpress has a P2 skin that allows you to essentially create your own Twitter locally with a Wordpress.org site.

Combine that with real-time RSS and anyone, with almost no technical expertise, can build their own Twitter using Wordpress and use RSS to route it in real time to any service, including Twitter. (I think Zee already does this.)

It seems like Wordpress has been planing on providing an alternative to Twitter for a while now, the P2 template has been out for 5 months. It makes private "Twitter" pages, exactly like you're talking about, already an easy reality for anyone who wants them.

Re: be honest now….how many times have you sent an MMS?

AramZS — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 20:58:10 -0000

All the time, I use them to send photos to Flickr, Britekite, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention videos to Facebook. During the national election we set up collection points on the web and had people text in photos, people did. For those of us not using an email client on our phones, MMS is used all the time.

Re: Guest Post: Hand-coding vs. CMS? Hand-coding gives essential experience

AramZS — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 02:11:33 -0000

I understand the attraction of both sides. One option might be to make the back-end, where the journalists submit stories and copy editing is done, a CMS, allowing those who may not require as much HTML skill as others to submit and edit stories without having to worry about hand-coding. Then the front page of the site is a static HTML site, which is edited consistently, but also updated by pulling in RSS.

We did something like that for the first version of Mason Votes and it worked out great, allowing us the amount of control we wanted on the front page while allowing folks to easily submit stories online.

Re: Journalism school graduates: How to increase your chance of finding a job and decrease your chance of having to vent on AngryJournalist.com

AramZS — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:10:42 -0000

I think people underestimate just how important personal branding is in the current job market. If your sites aren't the first thing to pop up when your employer googles your name, then you should start thinking about how to make it the top result.

I maintain a resource over on FriendFeed for the whats and hows of Personal Branding at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/brand-me

The other big point that you hit is that people need to realize that Facebook is public. No matter what your settings are, it's pretty likely that a potential employer is going to see at least part of your Facebook profile, these days that may even include your Facebook friends' profile pictures. Everything on the internet is public, Facebook included, so keep it employer-friendly.

It's a good idea to follow a more Transmedia stratagy. When it comes to using different sites, put different content on them, a dozen sites with the same exact content just looks dumb.

Finally, College students have a HUGE opportunity when it comes to their personal SEO. .edu domains and links from .edu domains are (supposedly) weighted more heavily than any other type of domain. If your University lets you make a webpage on their server, DO IT! It means the opportunity to really push your results to the top on Google.

Also, if you don't have a LinkedIn account, you should.

Re: Mobile news alerts: An underused tool

Lauren Rabaino — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 11:04:23 -0000

I considered Twitter when writing this. The problem with it is that readers don't want your @replies and conversation with *others* appearing in their text alerts (or at least I wouldn't). You also single out a big portion of your readers who aren't familiar with Twitter . As you mentioned: how do you get them to sign up in a user-friendly fashion?

You also bring up a good point about unsubscribing-- I use the WP plugin and I'm fairly certain the unsubscribe option isn't clear either. I'll have to look into it.

Re: Mobile news alerts: An underused tool

AramZS — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 10:57:10 -0000

Yahoo includes ads at the bottom of their text alerts.

George Mason has an alert system that you can sign up for that our news source has a channel on, among many other channels.

We didn't have a good reaction, because it was difficult for users to unsubscribe to that service. Perhaps Tatango will prove a better option.

We've also tried to set up an SMS "listserv" type system, using a now defunct site, to help cover breaking news within the office, but no one was interested.

What do you think about promoting a Twitter account as a SMS service? Do you think the option to sign up is too complex or that being off-site creates a disconnect?

Re: Three easy features that add value to your site

Lauren Rabaino — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 12:24:17 -0000

The advantage of generating your own list of popular topics (as opposed to using an auto-generated) is that, rather than basing it on which articles have the most views/comments, you can use your editorial discretion to generate "topic pages" that deal with issues you know students are talking about on campus.

Also, I should note that my idea of a "trending topic" page is more than just listing a popular issue, but really building a page around an issue. You can see our preliminary example here. It's still in the rough, but it has the potential of being a useful resource for students who hear about these topics in class and in passing, but don't know much about them.

Thanks for the tip about the gCal, I didn't realize you could generate events automatically. I can see how that'd get out of hand, though. Good work with Connect 2 Mason, btw.

Re: Three easy features that add value to your site

AramZS — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 11:19:03 -0000

A good set of ideas!

Something cool to look at - http://ucrime.com/ is a website that automatically generates crime maps and lists of crimes from a number of sources. I'm not sure how up to date it stays and it doesn't appear to be embeddable, but it is a decent resource. In addition, you can take the RSS stream and use it to generate your own crime map (using Yahoo Pipes) automatically, though it won't look as nice.

Also, we have been running a Google Calendar of events for a while at http://connect2mason.com by searching out Google Calendars for most of the University's departments and many of the Clubs, along with Facebook events (which are importable into gCal) and we can then run them through Yahoo Pipes (which processes the ical files) and export them into one large combined gCal with all the events. We've taken it down for now though, the calendar had almost all the events going on around campus and it was just too large to be manageable or usable by readers.

I think for the gCal, what we need to do is edit it down after we import everything in. We're playing around with it.

I like the trending topics idea. Do you think building your own list has an advantage over CMS (like Drupal) that generate popular and recent comment blocks?

Re: Don’t like FriendFeed’s real-time speed? Eat my dust.

AramZS — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 15:27:59 -0000

I love the real-time speed, I've barely been using FriendFeed outside of real-time since the feature first came out.

However, I'm not sure what to think about the new design of the page, it feels a bit like a step backwards. I like the visual feel of FriendFeed, and I'm not sure that needs to be changed just to make it look more like Facebook or Twitter.

Re: On Those Microsoft Ads

AramZS — Sun, 05 Apr 2009 19:48:53 -0000

Microsoft has been creating a product that sells itself. Windows has made huge sales on almost non-existent advertising until very recently. It was only Apple's major ad campaign that attacked the Windows image that allowed them to cut in as fast and as deep as they have into Windows market share. Before that the Apple market share for OSX was (relatively) minimal. Up until very recently Microsoft maintained a large market share with almost no advertising.

Apple has been wining market share based on their intangibles (the cool factor), not their OS. Whatever the quality of either OS, the numbers say that ad campaigns based on something other than the OS work.

Arguably Apple is the poster child for the idea that image is everything. The iPod is the best example in this, while I wouldn't argue OS quality, the iPod has been high in price and low in features/quality (iTunes is not a plus and similarly priced players tend to have a better/more features) but they maintain a lion's share of the market because of their advertising campaign.

Re: Don't be afraid to let your staff leave comments

AramZS — Fri, 03 Apr 2009 11:56:08 -0000

Very good post. It's hard to cross that barrier and break through from the ideal of the aloof journalist to the new idea of an interactive journalist, but it is necessary. Posting responses back to your readers is one of the best ways not only to build a conversation but a community of readers who come back, not just for the content, but for the interaction.

Re: My First Experience with Nationalized Health Care

AramZS — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 21:10:49 -0000

Heh, they do love their toast in the UK.

Re: Tweetbacks: Let Twitter host your blog's comments

AramZS — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 18:00:35 -0000

Very cool!

Re: louisgray.com: Are We Too Connected to Social Media?

dpwilliams — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 16:04:05 -0000

"I hope the end-game for social media is to make us all smarter, that's what I use it for."

I'll second that. Most of my friends just use social media to play around posting pictures of nights out and updating their status to be a witty as possible and try to look funny, fun but it doesn't mean much or carry much value.

I don't think most people have used social media to its full potential yet and when they do they will use it as more of a learning/debate tool to help develop their opinions on things.

I feel way too connected when I keep hearing people are "cooking dinner" or "watching a DVD". I don't want to connect for that. Who does? Just wrote this blog post http://tinyurl.com/8pdxdl it has a few feelings about this sort of thing.

Re: louisgray.com: Are We Too Connected to Social Media?

AramZS — Sun, 04 Jan 2009 15:47:17 -0000

Isn't that the core reason why the top people online use social media? Sites like Twitter and services like RSS help keep people up to date and in the know. In the end, as much as we can try to automate aggregation of information, nothing beats the human touch. I hope the end-game for social media is to make us all smarter, that's what I use it for.

Re: More Creative Commons and Copyright Stuff

AramZS — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 02:49:00 -0000

I get my own tag? Coooool.

Re: Old vs New Media - Creative Commons, Wikipeidia and Post Scraping - What is Grand Theft Content?

AramZS — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 11:10:07 -0000

I did, though it posted funny, with the wrong headline and the preview text formatted weirdly. Ironically, even though I would be fine posting this entire article to S|M I can only post a little bit of it. I sent a tweet to Jason asking him why I couldn't at least edit the title, but he hasn't gotten back to me. Until then it is up here - http://www.socialmedian.com/story/1932298/read-...

Re: louisgray.com: Does Anybody Care About Non-Blog Commenting Anymore?

matthew hunt — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 01:02:37 -0000

You made some great points.

Re: How to pack for four months abroad

AramZS — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 01:04:21 -0000

Layers are very important, bundle up and make it waterproof.

Re: 6 Ways Evernote Fails and the 1 Reason I Don't Uninstall It

wstewart72 — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:07:01 -0000

Advantage - syncs across platforms (work computer, home computer), and more importantly, it works on my Mac

Re: 6 Ways Evernote Fails and the 1 Reason I Don't Uninstall It

AramZS — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:08:52 -0000

Really? I would have thought that the ability to type anywhere would have made OneNote far easier to use graphic organizers with than Word.

Re: 6 Ways Evernote Fails and the 1 Reason I Don't Uninstall It

AramZS — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 18:07:48 -0000

The thing is... OneNote does it better as far as I can see. All the photos are searchable, journal entries get passworded, everything gets saved. To top it all off, OneNote has a far nicer interface and no monthly fee. I just don't see the advantage to Evernote being big enough.

Re: louisgray.com: Does Anybody Care About Non-Blog Commenting Anymore?

AramZS — Fri, 14 Nov 2008 00:57:49 -0000

All my content is Creative Commons share alike. This is the way things are going, it is reality. There are two solutions. Bring the comments back in, as this blog does with FF. The other is to be active on the services which share your blog. People read and like articles and posts not because of what format they are in but because of what is in them and who wrote them.

Yes, sorry, you will have to work harder to engage your readers. Yes, sorry, site hits will be harder and harder to get. But you know what else? It also means that for the first time we are going to be seeing an internet where what someone wrote matters, not where they wrote it. If I have to put a little more effort out there to connect with the community, then so be it. (Not that I have much of a community at the moment :P ).

The end result is what is causing all this "blogs are dead" bull. The physical webpage format is no longer a viable one for small people who want to make a living off blogging. It sucks, I know. But blogging is still going strong, it's just that not all the activity is going on the blog. Time to find a new way to advertise and a new way to make money for those bloggers who are looking to make a living off it (just look at Gawker's serious consolidation). If you want to keep the traffic going to your site, it means a lot more work. However, for the little guys (those of us doing it for the love), this may be a change for the better.

Re: 6 Ways Evernote Fails and the 1 Reason I Don't Uninstall It

AramZS — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 23:38:37 -0000

Troy, your system is very cool. I'm not sure how well it would work when I don't have an iPhone and Pelotonics seems a bit complex for regular student life, but I'm going to look into it. Thanks for the link!