New Blog address

Hi all - I've moved my blogging over to http://angelalewis.wordpress.com/ - join me there!

Social bookmarking

I've recently started using Delicious for bookmarking - and I don't know why I wasn't doing it earlier. Here's a quick rundown on social bookmarking using Delicious if you are interested in using it.
Delicious is a social bookmarking website, which means it is designed to allow you to store and share bookmarks on the web, instead of inside your browser. This has several advantages.

•  First, you can get to your bookmarks from anywhere, no matter whether you're at home, at work, in a library, or on a friend's computer.
•  Second, you can share your bookmarks publicly, so your friends, coworkers, and other people can view them for reference, amusement, collaboration, or anything else. (Note that you can also mark bookmarks on Delicious as private – only viewable by you – if you like.)
• Third, you can find other people on Delicious who have interesting bookmarks and add their links to your own collection. Everyone on Delicious chooses to save their bookmarks for a reason. You have access to the links that everyone wants to remember. You can see whether two people have chosen to remember a link, or whether it was useful enough for a thousand people to remember – which may help you find things that are useful for you, too.

http://www.delicious.com/

 

 

 

Creative Sabbaticals

Just read this in Nett Magazines Blog:
Burn-out is an all too common occurrence these days. With the global financial crisis receding but still looming menacingly in the background, people are working harder than ever before, and it's taking its toll.
It's possible to work too hard. Though the sting of the global financial crisis has receded somewhat, some of its after effects are lingering. People are still working harder than they want to, and it's taking its toll. Read More...

Every seven years, designer Stefan Sagmeister closes his New York studio for a yearlong sabbatical to rejuvenate and refresh their creative outlook. He explains in this video:

...book me to Bali...

Creating online training videos

I have spent today learning Camtasia, a brilliant software program for creating training videos.  While the product itself is not tricky to learn, I have to say I am finding it a challenge to create even a small video that has both the actions and narration properly timed - and while I spend a lot of time in front of a class and using an overhead connected to a computer, I am ashamed to say how long it has taken me to create one small instructional video on using Word synonyms!  Ah well, I guess it is all a learning experience - I may even invite ridicule and put my first effort up here - I'm thinking about it!!!

Google has competition

Google has long ruled supreme in the world of internet search and has become so much a part of our daily lives has that we no longer 'search' for things, we 'Google' for them. However there is a new kid block. In June this year, Microsoft released their new search engine known as Bing. It is a different interface in terms of presentation: where Google is the straight-forward predominantly white and plain window, Bing (www.bing.com) provides a different picture daily, cycling through beautifully photographed and extremely vivid shots of natural scenes. In addition to the eye-catching colours, you can also mouse over points in picture to get facts based on the photo itself. But it isnt about who looks prettier, it is about who provides the better search result. There are many articles on comparison and if you would like to read about some of the differences from a more technical point of view try doing an Internet search for Google versus Bing, or try this article as a startpoint.

My personal choice is to stay with Google, as I feel Microsoft has enough of a monopoly on what we all do online.

My personal choice is to stay with Google, as I feel Microsoft has enough of a monopoly on what we all do online.

Facebook for MY business!

This afternoon I set up a Facebook page for my business, Angela Lewis Consulting, so feeling pretty pleased with myself.  The tools are available to link blog posts to Facebook and then to use Facebook to update to Twitter, the whole thing is almost mindblowing.  It reminds of something I read about change saturation, when there is so much change that a person becomes almost numbed and can't deal with any of it. While all this Web 2.0 stuff is not mind numbing, it is still a lot to think about and work with - along with the core of actually your own job, in my case training and keeping on top of being self employed.  Anyway, I have a twitter account now as well, but you know what, as I am typing change saturation must have taken over, as I cannot remember it, so will post next time around!!  One thing that I found invaluable in terms of the Facebook for Business seminar I attended, was (not only the tip about having a business page as well as a profile page), that people should grab their username (i.e. vanity url) before these get taken in the same way that domain names got snatched up.  I have mine now- Angela Lewis Consulting Pty. Ltd -  so I'm happy about that.   Saturday night - time for a glass of wine!

Google Analytics

I added Google Analytics to my blog, so that I could easily see how many times my various posts are being read by visitors. It is a terrific tool and very easy to set up.  Rather than re-write the instructions, here they are step by step from eHow.com:

How to add Google Analytics to Blogger.

You can also go to Google and type in Google Analytics and use Google's help on this.