Disclaimer: This post is not an endorsement or critique of Apple’s “Documents in the Clouds” feature. Instead, it is a meant as an explanation to the general public about  the current functionality of the service. Views expressed here are my own. For more disclaimer information, click here.   

While many features of Apple’s new iCloud service have launched flawlessly with much fanfare, one particular element needs attention in order to make it work correctly. If you plan on taking advantage of Documents in the Cloud to keep versions of documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in sync across your computers, you will have to download one of the iWork apps to an iOS device, (more…)

Many pixels on the web are devoted to convince you that you, your business, and your life can benefit from sharing your passion through the use of social media tools. Well, I’m here to tell you – SOCIAL MEDIA WORKS! I started seriously paying attention to my social media web presence in September of 2009, after attending my first Podcamp in Boston, MA. It’s been a long slow trek, but I’m now starting to reap benefits on two fronts.
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Have you been to an opera? The music is lush, and often complicated. The plots? Not so much. So that makes opera plots ripe for panning and snarkiness in a 140 character Twitter post, and this year, thousands of entries were tweeted as part of the #operaplot 2011 contest on Twitter.

The entries were edgy, somewhat clever, and often hilarious. Take a look at these imaginative examples:

“Damn woman wants some power . Get her daughter to destroy her. With a a FLUTE! Talk about Freudian.” (The Magic Flute)

“Girl 1: Unfaithful. Girl 2: Sickly. Girl 3: Flighty. Girl 4: Robotic (The Tales of Hoffman)

“Don Jose to Carmen: “Never gonna give you up, never gonna make you cry,  never gonna run around and desert you.” (Carmen)

“One of these days Carmen . . . bang!  zoom! To the  . . immediate vicinity of the bull ring.” (Carmen)

“Anti-smoking message: stay away from girls in cigarette factory. One way or another it’ll kill you. And her” (Carmen)

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Organizer John Hermann greets guests at the New Hampshire Media Makers meet-up. Photo by Roger Goun.

Somewhere in America today, a group of creative types gathered at a bookstore/coffee shop to discuss their projects, ask for help and advice on new endeavors, and share recent successes.

Among the group was a fiction horror writer recently published in a genre anthology, another fiction writer nominated for a Hugo Award, an actress and playwright recently moved from New York City, several other playwrights and screenwriters with projects in various stages of production, a teenage metal musician excited to share (and sell) his newly minted EP disc, a published parenting and education expert who will soon be interviewed as part of documentary produced by LucasFilms, a photographer wanting to source the crowd for some before and after pictures for his latest instructional book, and a video producer who shared his latest You Tube sensation. Also in attendance were two illustrators, a few Internet start-ups, and local managers of community art and technology spaces.

So where did this awesome gathering of talent take place? Not New York, nor Los Angeles, not even Nashville.

This gathering took place in Newmarket, New Hampshire, home of the monthly meeting of the New Hampshire Media Makers.

While most participants use computers to produce their work, many also use social media to collaborate, create, and share, mainly through Facebook, and Twitter. Media Maker meet-ups similar to this take place throughout the country, usually on a recurring weekend day. Networking is a regular meme, and it is not uncommon for collaborations to seed during one of these meetings.

This particular gathering marked the third anniversary of the group’s founding, and ranks among its largest gatherings to date.

For more information about New Hampshire Media Makers, visit http://nhmediamakers.wordpress.com/

A phenomenon that has paralleled the rise of Twitter is the backchannel, a line of communication powered by Twitter hashtags, at lectures, speeches and conferences.  If you are unfamiliar with the concept, you can read a previous post I wrote about the topic by clicking on this post – Back channel Unleashed.

Now, it appears that enterprising and activist  communicators have taken the backchannel to a whole new level. Members of the animal cruelty prevention group PETA recently staged a hashtag takeover, by tweeting objections to NASA’s planned use of monkeys in long term radiation tests.

NASA spokeswoman Stephanie Schierholz was speaking at an event in New York using the #TWTRCON hashtag. During her presentation, tweets (from PETA supporters) objecting to the use of the monkeys began flooding the phones and computers of conference participants. The tweets included a shortened bit.ly link to a web page urging conference participants to confront Schierholz about the planned experiment.

Was the hashtag takeover successful? TWTRCON organizer Tonia Ries (@tonia_ries) talks about the incident and its ramifications, pro and con, in this post from her blog, The Realtime Report.

Is this a new trend? Perhaps a well timed and organized hashtag takeover during next year’s political conventions will sway the electorate one way or another. Or maybe virtual activism of this type will bring to light a humanitarian disaster during next year’s Super Bowl. What other ways could the Twitter hashtag be used to market, promote, or raise awareness?

Let’s hear your thoughts in the comments.

I participated in my first Twitter chat on Sunday night. It was actually quite simple. I logged on to Hootsuite, my Twitter client of choice, and added a stream tile for the topic hashtag, #blogchat. Once the chat session began, the tweets started streaming, and I simply refreshed about every minute or so taking time to read several tweets and and even venture a few times on to shared web pages.

The general topic, blogging, is something near and dear to my heart, and something I’ve been doing across several platforms for a few years. The specific topic for this chat was the differences between blogging platforms, and how to migrate from one to the other, if desired.

At first I was just going to lurk, as the concept of a Twitter chat session seemed a bit odd to me. (more…)