Where Is My Mind?

I've been juggling quite a few things this Spring Quarter. I don't know how to juggle, so sometimes it becomes an issue. When I'm stressed out, I do some yoga on mountains. When there are no mountains, I go to Subway and treat myself right with the full combo. That's right.

Things I'm juggling (not in order of importance):

• Waking up early
• Indoor Soccer
• Tweeting
• Classes
• Selling posters
• Finding an internship
• Finding food to eat
• Finding friends
• Bloggering
• AND MORE!

It's okay, I can do less eating and more internship finding. At least that's what my mom said.

Very peaceful and uncomfortable without padding 

I hope to find an internship in the L.A. area this summer with a production company where I can get some real hands-on experience with getting coffee. My heart, my soul, for God sakes my luggage is still in L.A. (seriously, LAX lost them).

I'm most excited about making connections, "starting over", and clubbing with the Beibs.

Making connections = Networking

Networking with tools like LinkedIn, Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Phone.

I will use the power vested in me to:

1. Connect with other professionals.
2. Update my blog to stay current, or "hip".
3. Produce laughter with colleagues.

There's a few problems in the way. I need $$$. Living in Los Angeles isn't that cheap and virtually all internships are unpaid. Okay, so maybe that's the only problem, but it's a big enough problem to seem like multiple problems (airfare, car rental, FOOD, water, shelter.)

Calm down, deep breaths, "Woo-sah, woo-sah". I just need to buckle down and focus on the critical things in life.

like food.

This is what I'm studying for

Criss Cross Applesauce

The Class Thus Far

This course strikes me as very interesting and right with my interests. I did not expect to learn some of the useful history of the internet that we are being taught, but it aids moving forward with social media management.

The most interesting thing we have been studying are wikis. It's funny to think that the collaboration and interaction we have on the internet wasn't always there. When I was young, I remember GeoCities popping up and people could create their own web pages in "cities". This is the same concept we have today, but obviously with a more efficiency and attractiveness. Yes, I'll admit that I had a GeoCities web page dedicated to Pokemon when I was 8. Big whoop, wanna fight about it?

I'm taking this class to learn what this guy with the googley-eyes has already mastered.

The most boring thing in class is using BLOGGER! No offense to blogger, but I don't think companies these days are using it to reach out to the mass population. We are scribing a journal all over again, just as in MDIA 203. I have faith in our learnéd leader, MCK, that we will be learning more about other social tools that can be used in the professional realm.

The biggest lessons have come from Social Media 101, by Chris Brogan. Only 2 years old, it is chalk-FULL of ideas for promoting business, finding an audience, different management techniques and tools, and more! When I tell companies that I studied Social Media Management at Ohio University, and that I can assist their company with tuning in to their audience, I will be using a lot of advice from this great little book.

Being a Constructive and Responsible Adult

Say Something

Brogan explains in his book, Social Media 101, that even though many great blog posts deserve or should expect some comments, readers don't always have time to write anything. Either that or they are just straight up lazy (like me). Even Brogan admits to forgetting to comment on most of the blogs he reads! What a great role model!

Now that you've admitted you don't have a minute of free time to leave a comment, what can you do to contribute in less amount of time? Brogan say you can use the many tools such as Google Reader, FriendFeed, StumbleUpon, and more to at least pass along the content to your network. That way, you're friends and followers can see what goodie goodie stuff you've read YAY!

Yeah yeah, so I wrote a lil somethin' on a few blogs:

• Amanda's "Blog Critique" post
• Chris's "Dan Harmon Poops" post
• Carly's "What the BLOG?" post

Stars in the Blogosphere

A Look at evernote.tumblr.com

This is a blog that I've been visiting recently to get tips and trick on using Evernote, a note-taking/note-sharing program that I use on my Macbook and Blackberry (cloud computing!). The blog itself is called "Ron's Evernote Tips".

It looks like this blog is the official tumblr of Evernote, though it has a single personality representing it, "Ron".

Ron posts small tip and tricks that can be used while working in Evernote. Many tumblers comment on the posts with questions or comments, and Ron does a great job of interacting with them. His goals are helping the tumblr community learn how to use Evernote more efficiently.

I would say this blog is categorized as a "Help Blog" or "Tips & Tricks Blog". It could be referred to as an Instructional Blog. It is somewhat organized with archiving and a few post tags, but it could use more tags to help users search through the different types of tips and tricks. The posts aren't daily but they are all very helpful, meaning that this blog doesn't abuse its posting privileges. 

Ron's Evernote Tips at www.evernote.tumblr.com

How to be Popular: On Social Media

Brogan outlines an arsenal of social media tools that can be used to increase the scope of audience and to make your blog more personalized. I didn't realize how many different platforms are out there to assist you in making yourself known on this cold, dark void known as the web. In fact, it makes it seem like the Internet is one big party, and these are different networking tools such as business cards (LinkedIn). Facebook can be used to give a business a personality just as much as it gives people a personality. Twitter can act as a "hub" of news and information about your company in short, 140 character broadcasts. Personally, I think it''s awesome how Brogan uses Tumblr accounts as "scratch books" to jot down text, audio, images and video.

tumblr logo credit: tumblr.

Get Wiki With It:

We talk a whole lot about wikis in Social Media Management, but honestly, they are the backbone of the new internet. Nearly every site that I connect to is a form of a wiki. One of my favorite wikis is Brickipedia which is all about Legos. I visit the site somewhere around 5-12 times a day to check if there are any new brick shapes and colors being unveiled. It isn't a Lego(R) sanctioned site, nor is it official, but it is a collaborative sharing of information about one common hobby, building Legos.

Projects like this are very much worth the time and effort. These people that are contributing content to wikis in order to inform the masses are HISTORIANS! They are doing the good work of man and recording history! Okay, I'm possibly over reacting, but without wikis, we would be susceptible to information edited by a few instead of approved by all.

Brickipedia is a very organized wikia with over 19k pages! I'm sure at least a couple hundred people contribute and organize the site!

TWITTER PLUS

Blog 2

Tweet Tweet. Tweet Tweet. Man, isn't Twitter such an awesome social networking site?
Here's mine:

 Now there's a lot of things I love about Twitter.
1. I use Twitter mainly because it is a short-form way of getting information and social statuses from my friends. It's also a way to communicate to people on a certain level.
2. It's functional for my use because it's easily accessible on my phone, which is the device I use 24 hours of the 24 hour day. I like the simplicity of the 140 char limit, but sometimes people say the most mindless things that I could care less about.
3. I would add a better video feature, where you could watch linked videos on a video player right in the middle of the tweet. I think most devices are capable of this and it would make watching videos that friends tweet much easier.
4. One thing I dislike about Twitter is the heavy promotion. I realize it's a free service, but the adverts are more intrusive than on "It that shall not be named" (facebook). Also, Trending Topics used to be a great feature of this social site, but now it's gone to rubbish.
5. Although Trending Topics have gone down the crapper, it still represents a very collaborative feature of Twitter. In order to get a Trending Topic to the face page of Twitter, it needs to be tweeted by literally MILLIONS of people. That means that MILLIONS of people have to be tweeting (talking) about the same thing, or idea, or place or whatever. I think that's incredible. When I see a Trending Topic worldwide, I know that it must be near global news headline status.

Now let's talk about Google+....

  This is my Google+ page. It's alright. I kinda, sorta use it. I maybe have 20 friends that I'm connected to right now, compared to my 700 on Facebook, but I still like it better.

Here are some reasons why I don't use G+ as frequently:
1. I don't use it as frequently as Twitter because my friends are not on Google+ that much. They all joined and then never logged on again. Even though everyone who is accessing their Gmail account is also logged into G+, they don't bother talking or even posting anything.
2. I think G+ is different from Facebook because it integrates many more features in it that Facebook didn't (until they saw Google add a feature, then they added the same one). Plus, (haha) Google owns Gmail, Youtube, Calendar, Images, News and pretty much everything that people on Facebook post. All of those aspects are integrated wonderfully into G+
3. The site is doing everything perfectly, it's just a matter of getting people in my "social circle" to be more active on the site. Google made many changes in the beta stages. In fact I was a beta user and suggested some changes. They run the social network perfectly, it's just a matter of popularity.
4. I'm not done-zo with this bad boy, oh no. In fact, I hold a fairly strong belief that Facebook will crash and burn eventually after it's IPO and everyone will come running back to G+ and all of its glory.

Roll Tribe!

Blog 1

Chris Brogan asks me: "Just what the heck are you doing with that blog, mister?"

"Come on, Adrian. Get it together."

And I say, "You know what, Chris Brogan? I wanna be heard. I want to see the laughter and hear the tears of my audience as they read about my life. More importantly, I want to stand out from everyone else on the World Wide Web so that when somebody scans over my internet presence known as Dead Parrot's Society (so silly) they walk away thinking, "That kid doesn't have a life, but I think he's pretty neat. I would hire him for my multinational company."

So what's the relationship between what I want from my blog and my goals? Let's take another look at my goals.

Some goals for me by the end of this quarter:
-Maintain a sexy-lookin' blog.
-Make my online profiles more private and clean.
-Learn how to manage multiple accounts.

(Before we continue, I want you to know that I'm not a shallow person. I like blogs of all shapes and sizes. But personally, I love a good sense of design.)

What makes a blog look good?

Hey hey hey, I didn't say I was the king of design and my blog is the hottest block of text on campus, but it's a work in progress. Like MCK once told me, 

"Font and color are fun to play with, 

but make sure your readers can actually read your posts.

 You can have a creative flair if you want, but do it appropriately."

-MCK

So there's a start to spicing up that blog of yours. Or how about Google's different gadgets? I've added Twitter gadget to my profile, so you can see what I'm saying when I'm not necessarily sitting at a computer, but when I'm on the go. I've also added a Google+ +1 button to the bottom of this page so that all my G+ homies can get Dead Parrots Society to go viral. Please click it if you have G+!!!!

Another goal of mine is to clean up my profiles, so I'm going to try not to ****** swear, and keep the nudity to a minimum.

No swearing?!?!