Kristen caught our almost-three-year-old perusing the latest issue of Runners World earlier today.
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It’s amazing how hard it can be to talk someone through a simple process on a Web page or computer application by phone. And it’s amazing how often a professional Web geek ends up end up doing that, both professionally and in your personal life (family and friends get discounted consulting, yes)? It’s an order of magnitude easier if you can show someone what you mean, or if you can watch over his shoulder while he follows your instructions. Many organizations purchase subscriptions to WebEx or GoToMeeting or a similar paid service to allow this sort of virtual desktop sharing for sales presentations, software demos, development collaboration, etc., but if your company, or if you personally, can’t justify the expense there are a couple of totally free applications that not only meet the “good enough” criteria, but in the case of at least one I’ve tried, exceed it.
Here are three free desktop sharing/web meeting tools I turned up during some research recently. The first one, dimdim.com, I’ve used in day to day situations – it was easy to figure out, fast performing, and didn’t require any software download for the people with whom I was sharing my desktop. The other two also get good comments. Like any “freemium” type service, they place some limits on what the free account gets you, mostly around number of users that you can share your desktop or have in the meeting at any one time, but for a personal user or even a small company, these services provide a great tool for no cost.
Tags: desktop sharing, free, meetings, tools, web 2.0
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Last year was a good one to remember; a year filled with challenges and disappointments, serious milestone moments for family, for the kids, Kris and me, my siblings, my friends, my colleagues, the world. But I wonder, as 2010 already pours itself over me like torrent (have ten days of the new year passed already?), as memorable as it was, how much will I really remember? Should I have written more of it down? And so, chagrined, I open the journal again, stab at the lines with the pen, and pledge to myself, I’ll write every day. I doubt I’ll make it. But maybe I can come closer than I have before. Despite – or perhaps because – we are living in an age of blogs, social media, online micro-confessionals in 140 characters or less, quizzes, and literal and symbolic profile pictures and avatars, we no longer do much of a job keeping a diary. Maybe we’re not sure what a diary ought to entail. In my case, I’ve always over-thought a journal, assumed it had to be something greater, more elaborate or eloquent than it was; a sure recipe for a short lifespan in something I need to do daily.
A couple of recent experiences underscored for me the importance of a journal in recovering memories you wouldn’t otherwise even realize had been lost, and one gave me a clue as to how I might actually keep up with the a journal going forward.
A few weeks ago I was in the basement rummaging through an old filing cabinet, looking for a decades-old document. What I found instead was a journal I’d kept during a few years in my 20s. I stood there before the open drawer reading, and was struck by a couple of things. One was how embarrassingly sincerely I was trying back then to imitate Ernest Hemingway in my writing. The other was how sharply I suddenly remembered the days I was reading about, despite the fact I would not have even remembered them well enough to remember them at all (if that makes any sense) without this trigger. Not too many days later I was rummaging again, this time in the archives of this blog (there were years, now long past, when I wrote here more than once a month). I found an entry from April 28, 2004. ”David Says His First Sentence.” Our seven-year-old was just a baby, still being toted in a backpack around Concord by me. And he said, “Run, Dada.” A command. I’d noted it, with a few scraps of detail, and it brought back a flood of memories from that year, as well as a bit of remorse; I haven’t documented the other kids’ milestones like this, or even David’s later ones, though it would have been simple enough to capture many of them, if only I could keep the standards low.
Part of the problem with keeping up with a journal for me has always been the vain writerly assumption that each line is some sort of gem for posterity, an exercise in literary art that demands good writing and the presence of some sort of muse, and that the days I describe need to be as rich and fleshed out in the writing as they were in the living (ridiculous). So during the rare months in this whole life when I’ve had time to sit and write and the muse has been particularly forceful, and I haven’t felt like writing fiction instead, I’ve got journals. For the rest of the time, the real time, the normal, crazy, life a million miles a minute, life like an X-wing fighter down the trench of the Death Star, life with all the obligations, responsibilities and distractions that require writing to be 90 parts discipline, 10 parts airy muse-ical, I’ve got no journals (unless you count the bits and scraps that wash up in social media streams, and the odd scribbled poem in the back of a notebook).
Earlier this summer I came across a news story that gave me a clue as to where my primary mistake was in my efforts to maintain a journal. It has to do with John Quincy Adams and Twitter. On August 5, 2009, the Massachusetts Historical Society began tweeting on behalf of Adams, using his short journal entries (they average 110 to 120 characters) as material. Adams began the journal August 5, 1809 as he set out from to St, Petersburg, Russia. The posts are simple, and reference the weather, what he was reading that day, etc. But they also serve as pointers to longer pieces of writing he did in other formats.
I was immediately struck by this, and realized that while I may not have time or discipline (nor perhaps the skill) to sit and craft a meticulously beautiful and in-depth journal entry each day, I can write a sentence or two. And among those sentences, I could note topics that I’d like to expand into longer essays (such as this one). And, reacting as swiftly as a striking trout, some five months and five days later, I can finally cross this line off my essays-ideas list: “John Quincy Adams diary entries resemble tweets; group to post them. Reminds me, meant to start journal again.” I did indeed resume keeping a short-entry, handwritten journal at that time, though not faithfully. So given that it’s close enough to New Year’s so a resolution is not entirely anachronistic, here it is. Each night, I resolve to add a line or two in my own ugly handwriting to that little book. Too late to jot down Sofia or ‘Bela’s first sentences, perhaps, but there’ll be plenty of things yet to come. What day in a life, especially in a life filled with busy children, doesn’t bring a milestone with it?
I’ll share here are the rules I’ve given myself for this endeavor. If you find them useful, let me know.
- Don’t write it for posterity or for the public. This includes avoiding feeling as though everything you describe needs to be put into context so that a reader unfamiliar with all of the intricacies of your life would be able to understand it. You’re not writing your autobiography in real time, you’re taking notes.
- Don’t insist on writing well. Nothing wrong with good writing, beautiful prose, or even great handwriting. But if it’s not coming, forget it. Just put down the facts that seem most important to you right now. They’ll be enough to trigger your memory (and the poetry) later.
- Don’t insist on writing long. See above.
- Write one thing. If others occur, write them too; if not, let it go.
- Just as social media users often have to decide what should be a Facebook status update, what a blog post, what a Tweet, whether a photo should be on Flickr or Facebook or Twitpic, whether that video should… anyway, you get the point … your journal should not have to compete with all of these in terms of priority. Because it’s private, and therefore likely to be the bluntest, most honest, assessments of your life, give it primacy. This initial expression of high emotion in a personal journal may also help prevent unseemly, ill considered outbursts in social media.
Happy New Year.
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A piece by David Ellis, who works in a technique he calls “motion painting” in which he captures his painting process with digital time lapse photography.
Tags: animation, art, David Ellis, painting
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A Visit With Santa
Kris and I took the kids to see Santa and Mrs. Claus on the most decorated street in Bedford (just over the line from Manchester) Friday evening. An amazing night, all the more so due to its entirely non-commercial, neighborly, word of mouth nature; no charge to visit with Santa (even if you want to take pictures), no donation bucket even. Just good people who go to huge effort to create this very elaborate attraction year after and simply ask “Do something nice for someone, just because.” Kids had an awesome time. Helps all of us believe. Here’s a link to a couple of short video snippets of the kids meeting Santa and Mrs. Claus, and a most incredible Christmas light display on that same street.
Tags: Christmas, David, Isobel, Sofia
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Swedish media company the Bonnier Group has created this video showing a conceptual prototype for displaying a visually rich, digitally interactive magazine presentation on a tablet device. The video really captures the imagination (watch it full screen!) and conceptualizes something well beyond a simple graft of old media formats onto new technology (such as a straight digital replication of pages and layouts already designed for print, like simply filming a play directed for the stage instead of taking advantage of the possibilities of the new format). According to Bonnier, “The concept uses the power of digital media to create a rich and meaningful experience, while maintaining the relaxed and curated features of printed magazines. It has been designed for a world in which interactivity, abundant information and unlimited options could be perceived as intrusive and overwhelming.”
[Here's a link to the blog post on this at mediamemo.com that first caught my eye].
Tags: magazines, screen readers, tablet
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Oh, man. I can’t wait. The other night, Kris mentioned she was was going to make a couple of pies for Thanksgiving. She asked if I had any preference. I think she was surprised when I said blackberry. It seemed random, perhaps, and I don’t think I’ve ever requested blackberry pie. (Then again, we don’t make a lot of pie around here.) But on reflection I realized I have some incredibly fond childhood memories of blackberry pie. With vanilla ice cream. Mom made ‘em with berries she’d picked herself – mom loved picking berries, still does; she used to get enough to freeze and make pies for the holidays. She also loved to take us berry picking up in those Vermont hills, though I liked picking them considerably less than I liked eating them or just rambling around the hills. So I felt like a kid again coming home and seeing that blackberry pie on the counter. And I felt thankful to Kris for indulging me, thankful for blackberry pie, and thankful for mom and family and fond childhood memories. And the thing about gratitude is, once you start feeling it there’s a dam-bursting effect – you want to thank everybody, the whole gamut of persons you might be beholden to in some way starting with God and ending with that stranger who was moderately courteous in the grocery store the other day. But this not being the Oscars, I won’t run through the whole list; I’ll just say thank you, and you know who you are.
Tags: blackberry pie, family, kristen, Thanksgiving
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Sometimes nothing soothes the spirit like a day spent in the outdoors – away from the computer monitor and keyboard, the desk and lamp, the debilitating radiation of the television. But this doesn’t always require a journey into the wilderness. This afternoon, after Isobel got up from her nap, Kris and I took the kids walking down paths that run along the west side of the Piscataquog River, and picked up a few vines and other dried autumn fauna to with which to make Christmas ornaments. And simple as the task was, it was the happiest and most companionable the kids were all weekend.
They love scouring the trail for nuts and pretty stones, and when we got back, they spent hours weaving vines into wreathes and gluing acorn caps back on acorns (go figure) with the hot glue gun. I was moved enough by the spirit of the day that I even broke out the Christmas music, which typically I reserve until after Thanksgiving. (This is sort of akin to giving in to the temptation of eating your lunch sandwich at your desk at 10:45 a.m.) After they went to bed I headed out for a frosty 14-mile long run – which I’d been put off all day rather than miss the forest treasure hunt. On a dark, deserted walking path that runs through a wooded greenway right through the middle of the city, my headlamp startled two whitetail deer that bounded along in front of me. They soon outpaced me and vanished in the darkness – no speed workouts for me tonight. Not that I could have caught them even if I were sprinting. Not long after that, two eyes glared at me out of the darkness on the trail ahead. They held perfectly still as I ran toward them. I never did get a good sense for what they belonged to, or how big the animal was; could have been a squirrel or an opossum, cat or dog, rhino or yeti, chupacabra or wolfen. But whatever it was, it ducked away from the trail and dashed into the brush before I came up to it, and we parted on friendly enough terms – two runners nodding a greeting in the dark, in the wildest wilderness of downtown Manchester.
Tags: crafts, David, deer, Isobel, long run, Sofia, winter running
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There was so much great stuff search engine optimization material at the New England New Media Association SEO Bootcamp last Thursday that offering five takeaways from the meeting seems parsimonious, but hey, come to the next one! If you knew nothing about SEO, it would have been a great starting place, and if you had some experience, it would have given you the chance to really dig in and talk details with some highly knowledge folks. In the meantime, here are five good SEO tidbits that came up during the conversation:
1.Off-page SEO is 3x more important than on-site SEO, according to Mark Roberge, from HubSpot in Cambridge. That means the links that point to your site. Not only the total volume, but the quality or relevance of the sites they are coming from. I wonder how many newspaper sites expend 3x the effort on cultivating high quality backlinks as they expend on on-site SEO? Of course, newspaper sites may be a bit spoiled in that they naturally develop many high quality backlinks because of the type of service they provide. But nevertheless, this is a great point, and I think especially germane to our niche content sites right now.
2. On-page SEO includes both visible SEO (title, url, H tags) and invisible (meta description, keywords, alt text and image file names, etc.). I’m happy to say our team has been working on our Web development with this in mind for years, including most recently pushing the development of a new CMS to enhance our url structure and meta attributes specifically for SEO.
3. JPGs are better for SEO than GIFs. According to Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR in Boston and San Francisco, with the advent of Google’s universal search, images and video are a big consideration in terms of drawing eyeballs to search results. And jpgs optimize better than gifs, and even more specifically, jpgs that are bigger than 200px wide and smaller than 400 px wide.
4. A good title for a page is [key phrase]: [headline]. This per Brent Payne, SEO Director for Tribune Interactive in Chicago. It’s important to work that key phrase into the headline as well.
5. CNN writes 27 different versions of a headline for a single story. This, Brent Payne also related, allows them to target each channel they are delivering content to with the most effective style. An effective Twitter headline might be different than a Digg headline, and what might trigger somebody to share a link in Facebook could be different than a link that would urge a click through on a news Web site. It’s hard to imagine having the resources for this meticulous channel targeting and massive amount of copy writing. Brent mentioned that Tribune Interactive doesn’t write this many, either. He suggested starting where you can – if you are only writing a single headline for print, add one for Web that will make sense to search, and then keep growing it from there.
So there’s five. There were so many more (a whole day’s worth!), but like I said, next time come on down and join us.
Tags: NENMA, newspapers, search engines, seo

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