Mindtracks

I have been doing a bit of bookmark clean up and found a smattering of Photoshop Tutorials suitable for beginners who are taking our introductory first year course run from the Computer Art studio at the School of Art

Marquee Tool
Photoshop Move Tool: Move Layer or Selected Area

Editing Selections
Lasso Tool
Magic Wand Tool
Photoshop Painting Tool: Brush, Pencil & History Brush

Image Blending
101 Hidden Tips & Secrets For Photoshop

Masking No Link If you remove the link between image and mask, both can be moved independently.

References for my students this week

Standard suggestions to market and promote your site:
For instance the website promotion tutorial as this covers some of the basics. Also take a look at Smart Webby Website Promotion Guide This advice is a start but not the only way to market your site in a Web2.0 world.

Avoiding the 5 Most Common SEO Mistakes by Johnathon Smith

Of particular interest to artists is Ivan of Creative bits has shown us how to optimize your site for Google image search. There are some particularly useful tips here. The only jarring point for me is his advice to leave

The alt tag should be used for a short description such as alt=”turtle” in case the image doesn’t appear for any reason and because most likely Google uses it to index the images as well. It should however be empty if the image is used purely for decorative purposes.

If you want your site to meet W3C Accessibility guidelines you need to use Alt tgs for all images. Their handy check list points out that even if an image is used for decorative purposes state why it is there as screen readers interpret these tags and read them.

Chris Pearson of Personified offers a tip Optimizing Your Site for Google Image Search Feeling Sandboxed? How You Can Get 53% More Searches with One Tweak

Viral marketing
If you type the term “Viral Marketing” into Google you will come up with numerous links to definitions of the term and discussions about it. For studio based artists and designer makers viral marketing is an ideal hands on technique to help you promote your website. Using a blog to spread the word about your artistic practice is in effect viral marketing.

In “Viral Marketing” is your Buzz Word of the year viral marketing is described as:

Simply put, your content if distributed to a network with a large audience has a greater chance of being viewed than with a small audience. If you have video content, don’t limit its reach to your site alone within your incompatible, over-priced and inflexible custom-built video player – put it on YouTube and embed that on your site. Instantly you’ve given your content an opportunity to be viewed and shared by millions within the click of a button. The web is filled with thriving social networks with extremely active and participating users in the millions! Being at the top of a thriving social network is the equivalent to a super bowl ad on the web, but for free!

Also check out Wikipedea’s viral marketing

Blog promotion tips

101 Blog Tips I learned in 2006 put together by Daily Blog Tips

Mani Karthik’s Top 5 mistakes I did when I started blogging . Personally I think point 3 and 4 are great points. Interacting with, and linking to other bloggers is something that is constantly mentioned by bloggers that are experienced but those new to the genre often take a long time to really understand this point.

How To Market Your Blog in 2007

Seth Godin’s How to get traffic for your blog

Aiji Ducatillon has published some comprehensive Conference notes from BlogHer07. Since many people were having trouble with sound levels his summary is useful until podcasts are made available.

Personally found the discussion about the news media in Second Life was the session my mind kept returning to throughout the day. Blogher editor Kim Pearson moderated a discussion between news reporters who reported from in world. The panel was made of SL News Network’s Cybergrrl Oh, Starr Sonic who is host of That S’Life and 57 Miles of Metaversed.com

I am new to this virtual world but if you see Second life, as a possible precursor to a 3D web you are immediately aware of this point in time. If you compare early web development and think in terms of Second Life being the equivalent of the early Mosaic browser how Second Life is reported by those in world as compared to the mainstream media becomes fascinating.

Anyone who has done any historical research will now what it is like to trawl through the newspapers of the day to see how an event was reported. As I was listening to discussion it occurred to me that these media reports from within second life will also become of historical interest. In the questions I had asked if the panelists saw themselves and capturing the early history of Second Life as it happened. Simply put some did, some didn’t. Some saw their role as important others saw it as very much a concern of the moment and that was it.

I was curious because so many documents associated with the early web simply do not exist any more. These daily reports bit by bit build up to form a history and they are part of the story of Second Life and perhaps part of a larger story yet to unfold. At the moment no one knows what the story is just as in the days of the early web no-one knew what the story would be.

All day my thoughts returned to how much of the activity in second life and other virtual worlds was being captured or not. There is the Second Life History Wiki but to my knowledge it is the only concerted effort to record the history of this particular virtual world. I would love to know it there are others.

Later:the Podcast of this session is now available from Metaversed

Last night primed on coffee I attended Blogher07 in Second Life. For all that there were some serious problems with sound at the start it was one of those evenings where you sit back and contemplate where this technology could go.

Since the time zones were working against me I caught the first session which was a panel discussion focussing on combining blogging and Second Life. The panellists Vint Falken , Queen Tureaud, TheDiva Rockin and Kos Farina creator of the second life blogHUD ranged over the topic teasng out some of the issues. The question of mixing ‘real’ life topics with second life topics made me reflect on what I was going to do with this blog.

I knew people kept separate blogs one for second life and the other for real life but since I see Second Life as another form of Social software - in other words not a game but a place to connect people that have common interests, I see no reason why the two areas of activity should be split. Some people like the freedom of remaining anonymous but personally since I am in there to see what artists, musicians, film makers, educators and other creative souls are doing I see no reason to not reveal who I am.

So far the experience of the conference has been fascinating and it’s been great to meet so many other bloggers! I will be in there again tonight listening to what people have to say.

For those who are time zone challenged like myself or if you simply can’t get there 57Miles will be podcasting the SL BlogHer Sessions Also the sessions can be found on SLCN.TV

This weekend there will be some late nights as I will be going to Blogher this year. Since I can’t attend in person I will be going virtually as Blogher07 is in Second Life

BlogHer in Second Life will offer the opportunity to experience the Chicago conference live on a virtual platform, complete with general sessions, audio feeds, and even a virtual cocktail party!

The virtual cocktail party has me worried as now I have to figure out what my avatar should wear! But, apart from that it looks to be interesting and a great opportunity to participate if geography defeats you.

I am always belly aching about broadband speed in Australia. Recently the OECD has released a 310-page report entitled OECD Communications Outlook 2007 (available as a PDF file)

Between the covers of this report there is some interesting comparisons of broadband access, speed and price. Not only is Australia is slow to take up broadband but when data was gathered in October 2006 for this report we had the second lowest download speed across the whole OECD! From my own personal experience I haven’t seen any improvement since October last year. I am sure price and speed have something to do with the take up rate of broadband as when you look at this graph you can see just how bad the service is in this country.

Thanks to SLOZ for bringing this report to my attention

I am still exploring Second Life and still playing catch up as there are many educators and educational institutions in world already.

As I navigated the cycle of web reading/listening/viewing on the topic I encountered this Video which highlights the NMC Campus in world

NMC also has a blog

Mel Pedley of Accessites.org has posted an excellent article on the difference between web accessibility and web usability.

Whilst there is no doubt that the two topics do overlap to a significant degree, it is important to differentiate between them. Unlike web accessibility which impacts directly upon disabled users, web usability affects all users, and can be defined as a measure of how easy it is for a generic site visitor to carry out a task such as finding a given piece of information or buying a certain product.

Web Usability goes on to explore key components which make a site usable.

In class I will be talking about blogging this week.

I am a WordPress fan and you can get a free WordPress blog For a free service there is excellent support, heaps of features , lots of themes to choose from, you can import an old blog easily if that blog platform allows exports and you can create extra pages.

Susannah Gardner has produced an excellent analysis of many of the weblog platforms which are currently available. For anyone new to blogging Time to check: Are you using the right blogging tool? lays out clearly the advantages and disadvantages of various platforms. The article also commences with a good section on the jargon defining terms. So for anyone trying to figure out the meaning of terms such as trackbacks, pings and skins for instance, this article provides a useful introduction.

Check out Blogger: Should You Use it?

If You Have a WordPress Problem

You can have a free WordPress blog on WordPress.com free help is available on the WordPress.com Forums and the WordPress.com FAQ.

If you have problems with WordPress there are numerous ways to get help. Start with New To WordPress - Where to Start and First Steps With WordPress.

To get help with your full version WordPress, check out the WordPress Support Forums and the WordPress Codex, which is the online manual for WordPress Users. There is also a basic Guide to the WordPress Codex.
If you have problems installing the full version of WordPress, visit Installing WordPress for Free. This is a volunteer-driven free service is limited to personal blogs only.

If you keep a WordPress blog Lorelle on WordPress is a regular read not to be missed.

Blogging Basics 101 tag line is “where there are no stupid questions”. It is a blog that is intended for bloggers who are just starting out. Content covers all the basic questions in non tech language so that it is accessible to all.

Problems: Spam
4 easy steps to kill spam for WordPress blogs.

Blogging and ethics

Developing a personal code of ethics is crucial to anyone who self publishes. In Ethical Blogging 101 Stuart Brown covers key issues such as paid reviews, advertising, and plagiarism

After a bad case of cyber-bullying O’Reilly called for a Blogger’s Code of Conduct. This ode of conduct is often discussed so you should be aware of it.

The Blog Herald ran a piece on copyright infringement. How to Stop Plagiarism Cold covers steps you can take.

From personal experience I have found that the most effective tactic is to point out in a cease and desist letter that the major search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN etc take a dim view of copy right and they deal with copyright infringers by not listing the site in search results and of course if they have advertising accounts on the site such as Google adsense this too is removed.

Jonathan Bailey’s article covers these points and others in depth and therefore worth bookmarking for future reference.