
What’s the Place for Location Awareness in Advocacy?
August 20, 2010 by Chip Griffin · 2 Comments
Facebook Places has people all atwitter about the promise of location awareness. Commercial interests have already begun to take small steps toward turning existing services, like Foursquare and Gowalla, into money-making machines. Digital advocates will not be left on the side of the road, either. Chris Connelly offers up a good blog post with some ideas on how Places fits into the advocacy toolkit. The views he expresses are valid, and his admonition not to get caught up in location awareness … [Read More...]

The Petition as an Online Activism Tool
August 18, 2010 by Chip Griffin · Comments Off
"The truth is, online petitions to Congress and others are pretty much a sham." So says Clay Johnson in a recent blog post where he calls into question the merits not just of petitions specifically but of "calls to action" generally. Alas, he's wrong. Petitions serve a number of valuable roles -- both for the individual activist and the organization hosting the petition. It is through this mutual benefit that petitions succeed or fail. Certainly, there are bad actors and poorly constructed … [Read More...]

Your Cameraman is … a Robot?!
August 17, 2010 by Chip Griffin · Comments Off
My colleague Ge Yu presents an interesting concept over on the DCI Group blog. Are robots the future of video technology? Our clients increasingly benefit from the power of web video -- both recorded and live content. With multiple simultaneous events, however, manpower becomes an issue. Sure, we can outsource the overload, but that racks up additional costs for us and our clients. So we're always looking for ways to make the process more economical. Ge suggests that something like WowWee's … [Read More...]
This just in: journalists use new media
March 8, 2010 by Julie Germany · Comments Off
The Society for New Communications Research released a new Survey of Media in a Wired World study. It found that About 70% of journalists surveyed use social networking sites (an increase of 28% from 2008) 48% use Twitter or other microblogging sites and tools (an increase of 25% from 2008) 66% use blogs 48% use online video 25% use podcasts More than 90% agree that new media and communications tools and technologies are enhancing journalism to some extent … [Read More...]
New Research on Identity in Social Networks
March 1, 2010 by Julie Germany · Comments Off
Do we reveal who we really are on social media sites? A new study of social media use in Germany reveals that people who use social networking tools like Facebook actually do present fairly accurate representations of themselves online. The researcher, Mitja Back of Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany, argues that … [Read More...]
Featured Bottom Left
This is a widgeted area which is called Featured Bottom Left. It is using the Genesis - Featured Posts widget to display what you see on the News child theme demo site. To get started, log into your WordPress dashboard, and then go to the Appearance > Widgets screen. There you can drag the Genesis - Featured Posts widget into the Featured Bottom Left widget area on the right hand side. To get the image to display, simply upload an image through the media uploader on the edit page screen and publish your page. The Featured Posts widget will know to display the post image as long as you select that option in the widget interface.
Featured Bottom Right
This is a widgeted area which is called Featured Bottom Right. It is using the Genesis - Featured Posts widget to display what you see on the News child theme demo site. To get started, log into your WordPress dashboard, and then go to the Appearance > Widgets screen. There you can drag the Genesis - Featured Posts widget into the Featured Bototm Right widget area on the right hand side. To get the image to display, simply upload an image through the media uploader on the edit page screen and publish your page. The Featured Posts widget will know to display the post image as long as you select that option in the widget interface.