Month: December 2008

us now, me later

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

There are times when I hate not living in London and yesterday was one of them. Us Now was screening at the RSA and I really wanted to see it.  Here is a trailer. Blurb from the makers here too.

The film looks at the power of mass
collaboration, government and the internet and features interviews and clips from the likes of Clay Shirky – author of Here Comes Everybody and Matthew Taylor – chief exec of the RSA.

Just signed up to go and see it at NESTA next week so will post my thoughts then.

PR: new tools of the trade

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

913050_toolsLater than planned to blog this but I am loving the list by ex-Weber pal Ged about the top 29 not very technical things all PR people should know…a short summary here:

  1. How to manage your email inbox: this article from The Times is a good place to start
  2. How to touch type – if you can’t manage your email box or have to do hunt-and-peck typing how are you going to find the time to think about working smarter?
  3. How to create a link. Look at the source code of this blog post or Google it if you don’t know how.
  4. How to embed photos and videos
  5. How to buy a domain name
  6. How to set up a flickr account
  7. How to buy an ad on Google AdWords
  8. How to use an RSS reader
  9. How to set up Google Alerts
  10. How to do some advanced searches such as phrase matches, Boolean search terms, and site-specific searches
  11. How to conduct research efficiently and effectively using online tools
  12. How to understand the nature of a community and assess a blogs authority
  13. How Wikipedia works and how to get involved in the process for having a post changed
  14. Understand the nature of conversations and their appropriateness for your client
  15. How to upload photos and video to the web
  16. Understand the basics of how to record audio
  17. How to take interesting photos and the basic operation of a digital SLR
  18. Understand the basics of shooting video
  19. Understand the simple data of web analytics tools
  20. How to use social networks, beyond Facebook and LinkedIn
  21. How to use Twitter
  22. Understand the basics of community management.
  23. How to use free online survey tools
  24. How to use tags
  25. How to use social bookmarking tools and have a collection of useful and interesting resources
  26. How to share a presentation online
  27. How to use FTP software to move large files about (I can’t believe that PR people often don’t know this, especially when many picture desks have made use of FTP servers for a good while)
  28. How to use online calendar services
  29. How to use event registration management systems

Wanted to add a few more of my own:

30. How to source, use and reference photos for presentations, documents, blog posts using flickr and other image sites

31. How to set up a PR community online using Huddle or similar

32. How to edit a short video clip

33. What dpi a publication requires (cringe if I see people send over crappy little images)

34. How to pdf a document (using primopdf or other)

35. How not to rely on social networking as the only tool to build their contact book #reallifeandallthat

36. How to set up a blog

37. How to write for the web

38. How to set up their Blackberry/phone with useful mobile apps

39. How to take a screen grab

40. How to manage a quality online filing system so stuff doesn’t go wrong/get lost/piss clients off

I’d like to tag Wadds and Jed hallam to see if they can add any more.

my Twitter essentials

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

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Three things I am finding very useful for monitoring topics and clients within the realm of lovely Twitter:

Twist — Real time tracking of trends in Twitter – compare 2 trends graphically over a 7 or 30 day period.  Great for showing clients how they are fairing against competitors or comparing one brand vs another for the same client. Can also embed the dynamic or static charts into your site for ongoing tracking.

Twilert — Email alerts when stuff you want to keep track of is mentioned on Twitter. Daily, weekly, monthly options available. Useful for longer term research and analysis.

Twitter search — oldie but goodie great for real time monitoring e.g. this morning for keeping on top of N97 news. Like the detail and the flow of tweets this provides.

re-collocation…a made up word too far?

Posted on by Becky Green (was McMichael)

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Well after lots of consideration, we have decided to leave Cornwall to try life ooop North near my family.  Whilst we absolutely adore Cornish life and the the place we live is beautiful, we want to try life nearer my family and see if it suits us.  I reckon we’ll know if 6 months and it’s the perfect time to try it before my daughter starts school.

We are renting our place out and renting somewhere there too so it is fairly low risk (we hate it, we move back) and the fact that neither of our jobs have needed to change has made the whole process so much easier.

Another win for collocation…..it doesn’t matter where you end up commuting from.

Now to sort out Pickfords (the only company that doesn’t feel the need to adjust its pricing despite the current state of the property market/general economy); BT (can’t find our address therefore we cannot have a phone); Sky/Tiscali and other providers that rely on BT.

Let the fun and games begin.