Looking for a way to monitor social media activities and results on a tight budget? Want to show the world how social you are with a cool widget on your website or blog? How about a real-time search tool to see what’s being said about your company or any topic of interest right now?  Interested in an easy way to stay current on key Google Analytics traffic stats from your desktop? Need a way to edit video and photos without the expense and overhead of a pricey editing application?

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Recently posted at...  http://twitter.com/InspiredConverg

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Every week, Mashable puts together a calendar of upcoming social media and web events, parties and conferences...

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Recently posted at...  http://twitter.com/InspiredConverg

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Only if you've been secluded on a deserted island for the last ten years would you be clueless as to how social media has affected our daily lives. As part of our global zeitgeist whether or not you own a computer or a smartphone, the online tech sector is so hot, a series of movies are in the works that are banking on geek appeal to attract mainstream audiences...

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Posted recently at... http://twitter.com/InspiredConverg

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Are you finding yourself being sucked into the Social Media Vortex?

Many people find that adding online social networking to their business activities can affect their efficiency and challenge their time management skills.

Although social media is free for the most part, it is not necessarily true that using it for marketing purposes is going to be free if you consider that it can become a huge time hog.

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Recently posted at...  http://twitter.com/InspiredConverg

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Sponsored Tweets is a new Twitter advertising platform that connects advertisers with tweeters. Advertisers can create sponsored conversations on Twitter. Tweeters can earn money for spreading the word.

All you need is a Twitter account to get started. Sponsored Tweets is a whitelisted Twitter application and uses your Twitter credentials to create an account. Ethically, SponsoredTweets.com facilitates an open relationship between our Tweeters and Advertisers. The Tweeters that engage in a sponsored tweets program are required to disclose their relationship with marketers in their communications with other consumers.

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A recent blogger survey by Videojug reports that only 6.7% of bloggers spend more than $500/year to run their blog; most spend zero.

VIDEOJUG.COM reports:

The blogosphere has experienced phenomenal growth in recent years, so it was interesting to learn more about why so many bloggers have decided to become active in the blogging world. The overwhelming majority of new bloggers (nearly three quarters) choose to run their blogs for personal and non-commercial reasons.

Visit the Videojog blog post for survey results and additional insights.

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This answers the burning question of how much a million Facebook fans could potentially be worth to a celebrity, and with all the emphasis on virtual goods and social games, I almost expect a stream of similar announcement from other celebs...

Bookmark: http://paidcontent.org/article/419-can-celebs-make-money-shilling-virtual-goods-on-facebook/

You can find more of Inspired Convergence's bookmarks at:  http://delicious.com/inspiredconvergence

Or follow Inspired Convergence on Twitter.

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Smashing Magazine
Articles by Topic: Design Showcase

HIGHLIGHTS:

Discovering Papervision3D: Best Design Practices and Tutorials
Papervision3D (PV3D) is a popular open source 3D engine for Flash. It enables to create advanced three-dimensional objects displayed real time right in the web browser. With Papervision3D designers...

30 Fresh and Inspirational Portfolios With A Twist
It may be the economical slowdown, the climate change, or even a random boost of creativity, but the competition between graphic studios is huge right now. Today, more than ever, you really need to...

50 Fresh Portfolio Websites for Your Inspiration
Creating personal portfolio website is probably the most challenging task for designers as it should reveal the talent and some special unique style of its author. Beautiful portfolio is like a good...

50 New Beautiful Blog Designs
There are things that can't be showcased too often. For instance, beautiful blog designs. We have presented hundreds of beautiful blog designs in the past and now it's time to provide our readers with a...

50 Beautiful Flash Websites
Flash enabled designers and developers to deliver rich content over the browsers, creating motion, interactivity and an impressive visual experience. Good Flash-sites do not require too much bandwidth,...

Showcase Of Elegant And Original Blog Designs
When visiting a blog for the first time, you get an instant and strong impression from the design and layout. Cluttered and confusing blog layouts can be an instant turn-off, while sleek and elegant...

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The Web Trend Map plots the Internet’s leading names and domains onto the Tokyo Metro map. Domains and personalities are carefully selected through dialogue with map enthusiasts, and every domain is evaluated based on traffic, revenue, and character.

iA Japan grouped together closely associated websites, ensuring that every domain is on an appropriate line. As a result, the map produces a web of associations: some provocative, some curious, others ironically accurate.

Web Trend Map 4: Coolest Gift For Geeks | announcement, blog article

http://informationarchitects.jp/wtm4/

Web Trends Startpage | interactive web version of the Web Trend Map

http://informationarchitects.jp/start/

See the full gallery on Posterous

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CODING HORROR: programming and human factors by Jeff Atwood

(2009-08-09) Jeff Atwood lives in Berkeley, CA with his wife, two cats, and a whole lot of computers. He was weaned as a software developer on various implementations of Microsoft's BASIC in the 80's, starting with his first microcomputer, the Texas Instruments TI-99/4a. He continued on the PC with Visual Basic 3.0 and Windows 3.1 in the early 90's although he also spent significant time writing Pascal code in the first versions of Delphi. He is now quite comfortable in VB.NET or C# despite the evils of case sensitivity.  From 2005 to 2008, Jeff worked for Vertigo Software in Point Richmond, California. He currently works full time on his blog while building stackoverflow.com in a joint venture with Joel Spolsky.

Computers are fascinating machines, but they're mostly a reflection of the people using them. In the art of software development, studying code isn't enough: you have to study the people behind the software, too. -- Jeff Atwood

A few of my favorite postings at CODING HORROR...

{ 1 } In his post, Introducing Stackoverflow.com, Jeff states, "I refuse to become a full-time blogger."

{ 2 } Software Engineering: Dead?...

Tom DeMarco is one of the most deeply respected authority figures in the software industry, having coauthored the brilliant and seminal Peopleware as well as many other near-classic software project management books like Waltzing With Bears. For a guy of Tom's caliber, experience, and influence to come out and just flat out say that Software Engineering is Dead...  Well, as Keanu Reeves once said, whoa.

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First off, I never realized when I began this article that it would "have it all" in a manner of speaking.  When you review the tags for this posting, you get a sense of what is yet to come...

As quoted by Bruce on Games, "Don't play Evony."

Bruce Everiss, a veteran games industry marketer, elaborates on why to avoid Evony in a follow-up posting, "More about Evony."

Ultimately, Bruce writes quite a few posts that analyze trending of Chinese gold farmers.

Bobbie Johnson of guardian.co.uk posted, "Has Evony become the most despised game on the web?."

Zubon at KTR posted, "Condensed Evony Hatred," and linked to Lum, Mu, Tweety, Arkenor, Tipa, Ken, and Bruce on Games.

Trending on the reactions to the provocative, perhaps insultingly sexualized Evony web advertsing, an Experience Project member initiated a group with an interactive comment poll, "I Hate the Evony Adverts," prompting a response of 'Me Too' or 'Not Me' or 'Plan To.'

Nicholas Deleon posts, "Evony ad campaign: Where breasts trick you into playing a Civ clone," underscoring the shameless draw of gamers to MMO with sexuality.  In, his posting, Nicholas references Jeff Atwood's post, "How Not to Advertise on the Internet."  Jeff refers to the ever burgeoning freemium phenomenon in MMO/RTS.

(Sidenote: CODING HORROR: programming and human factors by Jeff Atwood is one of my favorite blogs.)

Emphasizing the notoriety of the advertising tactics, Gwen posts, "EVOLUTION OF EVONY VIDEO GAME ADS," featuring the maturation (so to speak) of the Evony web banners at the Sociological Images blog which is part of Contexts.org. (Contexts is a quarterly magazine that makes sociology interesting and relevant to anyone interested in how society operates.)

If you want to see what all the fuss is about without actually going to the Evony website (to which I am purposely am not linking), using a search engine optimized Wordpress blog, World Portal Group (whoever that is) promotes Evony in glorious detail.  Appears to me like the blogger(s) at World Portal Group post whatever topic they can to raise a buck for posting.  A brief review of the blog revealed a blog without much substance or context of integrity.

Interestingly, with the undercurrents of Evony disgruntlement appearing in the blogosphere, as of the posting of this article there hasn't be a lot of negative tweets trending the issue in the Twitterverse according to tweetmeme or Twitt(url)y.

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BlogPulse is an automated trend discovery system for blogs.  Blogs, a term that is short for weblogs, represent the fastest-growing medium of personal publishing and the newest method of individual expression and opinion on the Internet.  BlogPulse applies machine-learning and natural-language processing techniques to discover trends in the highly dynamic world of blogs.  BlogPulse is brought to you by Nielson Online.

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By Mark Nutter, July 1st, 2009 in Design Showcase

The “about me”-page is one of the most overlooked pages in development and one of the highest ranked pages on many websites. In a world that’s becoming increasingly connected through the Web, it’s important that you engage your audience in a personal and friendly way, otherwise you risk just being another faceless web designer among a sea of websites...

Best Practices For Effective Design Of “About me”-Pages

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via disqus.com

Disqus is a powerful comment system that easily enhances the discussion on websites.

In minutes, connect your community with those of thousands of other websites.

Track conversations across the web, plus bridge discussions with your favorite services such as FriendFeed and Plaxo.

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Top 5 Web Series Clichés
Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Friday, March 7, 2008 at 1:30 PM PT

1. Use Webcams
2. Lovable Nerds
3. Gangsta Raps
4. Person. Camera. News.
5. Straight Spoofs

View the complete article...  Top 5 Web Series Clichés

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The Feynman-Tufte principle:  A visual display of data should be simple enough to fit on the side of a van.
From the April 2005 Scientific American Magazine by Michael Shermer

I prefer the general form of the principle, "simple design, intense content," to the van metaphor.  — Edward Tufte, March 15, 2005

Richard P. Feynman | theoretical physics, quantum mechanics, quantum electrodynamics

You will have to brace yourselves for this — not because it is difficult to understand, but because it is absolutely ridiculous: All we do is draw little arrows on a piece of paper — that’s all!

Richard Phillips Feynman (pronounced /ˈfaɪnmən/; May 11, 1918 – February 15, 1988) was an American physicist known for the path integral formulation of quantum mechanics, the theory of quantum electrodynamics and the physics of the superfluidity of supercooled liquid helium, as well as work in particle physics (he proposed the parton model). For his contributions to the development of quantum electrodynamics, Feynman received the Nobel Prize in Physics 1965, together with Julian Schwinger and Sin-Itiro Tomonaga. Feynman developed a widely used pictorial representation scheme for the mathematical expressions governing the behavior of subatomic particles, which later became known as Feynman diagrams. During his lifetime and after his death, Feynman became one of the most publicly known scientists in the world.

He assisted in the development of the atomic bomb and was a member of the panel that investigated the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. In addition to his work in theoretical physics, Feynman has been credited with pioneering the field of quantum computing,[2] and introducing the concept of nanotechnology (creation of devices at the molecular scale).[3] He held the Richard Chace Tolman professorship in theoretical physics at Caltech.  [citation: wikipedia]

Edward Tufte | analytical design, statistical evidence, information and interface design

Edward Tufte has written seven books, including Visual Explanations, Envisioning Information, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, and Data Analysis for Politics and Policy. He writes, designs, and self-publishes his books on analytical design, which have received more than 40 awards for content and design. He is Professor Emeritus at Yale University, where he taught courses in statistical evidence, information design, and interface design.

[The design process as codified by Tufte:] (1) documenting the sources and characteristics of the data, (2) insistently enforcing appropriate comparisons, (3) demonstrating mechanisms of cause and effect, (4) expressing those mechanisms quantitatively, (5) recognizing the inherently multivariate nature of analytic problems, (6) inspecting and evaluating alternative explanations." In brief, "information displays should be documentary, comparative, causal and explanatory, quantified, multivariate, exploratory, skeptical.

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