Comments by Aram Zucker-Scharff

Part of the problem is exactly what you are seeing, this has been a perpetual policy since the No Child Left Behind act passed. If a school is failing, the default response of our system is to cut their funding, the result is a death spiral for our nation’s public schools as they fall deeper and deeper into failure for both education and their budget.

And if you think the issue is just with grade schools, you’d be wrong there. Our public Universities are suffering horribly too and in many cases the cuts hit classes and education the most.

The result is easily visible here at George Mason, we’ve decreased the number of classes, increased the class size, and stopped hiring professors. However, our sports program has maintained its level of funding and GMU is looking to build another whole campus. The problem isn’t just the lack of funding, but a misallocation as well.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Good look at how to get games on the cheap.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I think people underestimate just how important personal branding is in the current job market. If your sites aren't the first thing to pop up when your employer googles your name, then you should start thinking about how to make it the top result.

I maintain a resource over on FriendFeed for the whats and hows of Personal Branding at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/brand-me

The other big point that you hit is that people need to realize that Facebook is public. No matter what your settings are, it's pretty likely that a potential employer is going to see at least part of your Facebook profile, these days that may even include your Facebook friends' profile pictures. Everything on the internet is public, Facebook included, so keep it employer-friendly.

It's a good idea to follow a more Transmedia stratagy. When it comes to using different sites, put different content on them, a dozen sites with the same exact content just looks dumb.

Finally, College students have a HUGE opportunity when it comes to their personal SEO. .edu domains and links from .edu domains are (supposedly) weighted more heavily than any other type of domain. If your University lets you make a webpage on their server, DO IT! It means the opportunity to really push your results to the top on Google.

Also, if you don't have a LinkedIn account, you should.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I think people underestimate just how important personal branding is in the current job market. If your sites aren't the first thing to pop up when your employer googles your name, then you should start thinking about how to make it the top result.

I maintain a resource over on FriendFeed for the whats and hows of Personal Branding at http://friendfeed.com/rooms/brand-me

The other big point that you hit is that people need to realize that Facebook is public. No matter what your settings are, it's pretty likely that a potential employer is going to see at least part of your Facebook profile, these days that may even include your Facebook friends' profile pictures. Everything on the internet is public, Facebook included, so keep it employer-friendly.

It's a good idea to follow a more Transmedia stratagy. When it comes to using different sites, put different content on them, a dozen sites with the same exact content just looks dumb.

Finally, College students have a HUGE opportunity when it comes to their personal SEO. .edu domains and links from .edu domains are (supposedly) weighted more heavily than any other type of domain. If your University lets you make a webpage on their server, DO IT! It means the opportunity to really push your results to the top on Google.

Also, if you don't have a LinkedIn account, you should.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Yahoo includes ads at the bottom of their text alerts.

George Mason has an alert system that you can sign up for that our news source has a channel on, among many other channels.

We didn't have a good reaction, because it was difficult for users to unsubscribe to that service. Perhaps Tatango will prove a better option.

We've also tried to set up an SMS "listserv" type system, using a now defunct site, to help cover breaking news within the office, but no one was interested.

What do you think about promoting a Twitter account as a SMS service? Do you think the option to sign up is too complex or that being off-site creates a disconnect?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Yahoo includes ads at the bottom of their text alerts.

George Mason has an alert system that you can sign up for that our news source has a channel on, among many other channels.

We didn't have a good reaction, because it was difficult for users to unsubscribe to that service. Perhaps Tatango will prove a better option.

We've also tried to set up an SMS “listserv” type system, using a now defunct site, to help cover breaking news within the office, but no one was interested.

What do you think about promoting a Twitter account as a SMS service? Do you think the option to sign up is too complex or that being off-site creates a disconnect?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

A good set of ideas!

Something cool to look at - http://ucrime.com/ is a website that automatically generates crime maps and lists of crimes from a number of sources. I'm not sure how up to date it stays and it doesn't appear to be embeddable, but it is a decent resource. In addition, you can take the RSS stream and use it to generate your own crime map (using Yahoo Pipes) automatically, though it won't look as nice.

Also, we have been running a Google Calendar of events for a while at http://connect2mason.com by searching out Google Calendars for most of the University's departments and many of the Clubs, along with Facebook events (which are importable into gCal) and we can then run them through Yahoo Pipes (which processes the ical files) and export them into one large combined gCal with all the events. We've taken it down for now though, the calendar had almost all the events going on around campus and it was just too large to be manageable or usable by readers.

I think for the gCal, what we need to do is edit it down after we import everything in. We're playing around with it.

I like the trending topics idea. Do you think building your own list has an advantage over CMS (like Drupal) that generate popular and recent comment blocks?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

A good set of ideas!

Something cool to look at - http://ucrime.com/ is a website that automatically generates crime maps and lists of crimes from a number of sources. I'm not sure how up to date it stays and it doesn't appear to be embeddable, but it is a decent resource. In addition, you can take the RSS stream and use it to generate your own crime map (using Yahoo Pipes) automatically, though it won't look as nice.

Also, we have been running a Google Calendar of events for a while at http://connect2mason.com by searching out Google Calendars for most of the University's departments and many of the Clubs, along with Facebook events (which are importable into gCal) and we can then run them through Yahoo Pipes (which processes the ical files) and export them into one large combined gCal with all the events. We've taken it down for now though, the calendar had almost all the events going on around campus and it was just too large to be manageable or usable by readers.

I think for the gCal, what we need to do is edit it down after we import everything in. We're playing around with it.

I like the trending topics idea. Do you think building your own list has an advantage over CMS (like Drupal) that generate popular and recent comment blocks?

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I love the real-time speed, I've barely been using FriendFeed outside of real-time since the feature first came out.

However, I'm not sure what to think about the new design of the page, it feels a bit like a step backwards. I like the visual feel of FriendFeed, and I'm not sure that needs to be changed just to make it look more like Facebook or Twitter.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Very good post. It's hard to cross that barrier and break through from the ideal of the aloof journalist to the new idea of an interactive journalist, but it is necessary. Posting responses back to your readers is one of the best ways not only to build a conversation but a community of readers who come back, not just for the content, but for the interaction.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Very good post. It's hard to cross that barrier and break through from the ideal of the aloof journalist to the new idea of an interactive journalist, but it is necessary. Posting responses back to your readers is one of the best ways not only to build a conversation but a community of readers who come back, not just for the content, but for the interaction.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

I’m in! This sounds like a great idea.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

“14. I once broke into a friend’s dorm room and removed all the marshmallows from his Lucky Charms, one marshmallow at a time. He had his revenge by clipping my car’s brake cable. Ironically I crashed into a Perkins.”

Jeez, that was a little excessive huh? I guess he really loved his Lucky Charms.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Very cool!

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

Funny story, I know a guy who got hired because his future employer was scanning his Facebook and saw him at a party and decided to hire him because they wanted someone they could drink with.

In my mind, once you’ve opened your life up to the web, you give up the right to privacy for anything on there. Anyone who really wants to get your information, see your photos, or know when you are playing Pac-Man, can if they want to. My Facebook is wide open, as is everywhere else I’m on the internet. I’ve only blocked one person on Facebook and it was more because I didn’t want to have to see them show up on my feed than because I cared if they knew what I was doing.

In my mind, if there is something you don’t want your boss to see on Facebook remove it or un-tag yourself. Trying to avoid being seen on the web is futile.

My strategy, especially with Facebook, is to open up the spigot. No comment or picture stays on my Facebook wall for long, not with my FriendFeed linked up to it. There is a huge amount of information that goes through my Facebook daily, it makes it very hard to sort out and find an irritating comment and it means that anyone who really wants to track what I am doing can go to one place and do so easily, and I know exactly what they see.

Reply | Original | Permalink | Tweet

1. « Previous
2. Page:
3. 1
4. 2
5. 3
6. 4
7. 5
8. Next »