This is my first attempt at a screencast. This is what I have learned about how to use Seblod over the past few days of playing with it.
The video will take you through how to create a custom content type with a few different fields, and then create a search based on your content type. This should help you get on your feet with Seblod without all the trial and error!
If you have any questions or need anything else explained, please don’t hesitate to ask. 
As a web developer / social media type guy I spend a lot of time on the internet. Most of that time is in constant amazement at the skill of other developers and being overwhelmed with the possibilities that are out there. Today however, I stumbled on a particularly noteworthy find – A custom content extension for Joomla: SEBLOD.
I rushed to install the component on a Joomla 1.5 testing site and gave up on it almost as quickly. as far as intuitive software goes, this fails miserably. HOWEVER, a bit more digging resulted in finding the latest version (2.0) built for Joomla 1.6 – and it kicks ass.
I’ve struggled through a 1 hour presentations that the devs gave at the jandbeyond conference (I’m bad with understanding accents, and these guys are French) – but the language barriers didn’t stop me getting the idea that this thing is raw power. I hope to post more about it when I’ve had more of a play but for now check out the presentation here
If you’ve had any experience with SEBLOD I’d love to hear from you
I’m often asked the question when I tell people what I do, so I thought I’d settle it once and for all: What do PR people do?
Essentially, Public Relations (PR) is about starting and maintaining “the conversation”. It’s about talking, engaging, listening and responding to your audience (or as the business calls them: “stakeholders”).
Depending on your industry, your audience will vary and so will your message. For example: The Australian Defence Force’s PR people provide local media engagement, provide information to defence families and facilitate media visits.
For others, like those in fashion PR, it’s about networking, product placement, event management, starting at the bottom and definitely not about the money!
For those not in the industry however, Public Relations seems to have a mixed reputation. An Engineer I recently interviewed saw it as a waste of time and suggested that if you do good work, you’ll get good publicity.
On the other hand, a high school teacher saw PR as “spin” which is associated with half-truths and deception.
While I’d be lying if I said PR isn’t about trying to influence public opinion to favour your cause, that’s only a small part of the role. In any case, there are others who are much more influential in that regard anyway!
Despite the mixed views, I think that Public Relations is not just about spin, but is the art of maintaining and interesting and engaging conversation.
In my opinion, we live in an age where connectivity and interactivity is paramount in almost any field, so the opportunities in PR are limitless – and that’s exciting!
…but then again, who am I to say? What do you think about Public Relations?
This week, Google announced the release of their “+1″ button to rival Facebook’s “like this”.
Now, when I first heard about this idea I thought “What a good idea, Google is in a really good position to offer something like that, given the amount of people who use their products for a wide range of web services”. And it is a good idea. Or rather, it was a good idea 5 years ago, and then Facebook did it, and since then it’s been working pretty well for them. If you can’t already tell, I’m fairly pessemistic of the popularity that the Google +1 button will garner.
This is one of those interesting situations where a better product exists, but people still use an inferior alternative. I’m terming the Google +1 button as superior because Google has a wider use group, and the +1 button has the potential to have exposure to a wider user group than Facebook’s ‘like’ button. The most obvious use is the ability to see what your friends +1 in your search Google search results.
I’m kind-of perplexed by this. Because I really like Google and their products. I love the way they are always expanding and coming up with new innovations. But when it comes to social media services they seem to be a number of steps behind their competitors. It’s almost like Google is to Facebook and Twitter what Microsoft has been to Apple over the past 10 years, not leading the innovation and generally being perceived as “less cool”.
In February 2010, Google released Buzz – intended to be a “new way to start conversation about the things you find interesting”. Again, Google was in an excellent position to offer this service, because they built it into Gmail, a service which a heap of people already have, so theres no need to have an alternative site open to do your online social network. You just load up gmail.com and you get your email and social network in one place. Great idea in theory, but in practice I know of only 2 people who have used it over the past 14 months and have used it very little myself.
I think that their choice of colours and branding has some sway in this. Take the Google Buzz logo for instance:
…its awful.
I would suggest that Google has missed the boat on establishing a ubiquitous platform for online social interaction and should stop trying to compete. Twitter and Facebook (and to some extent LinkedIn) are, and will continue for a long time to be, the market dominators in this regard. Instead they should concentrate more on their kick-ass products and ideas, like Google Analytics, Google Maps, Google Earth, Appinventor, Scholar and Gmail.
For now, I’m giving +1, -3.
Google buzz logo: Creative Commons Image by Topgold
A recent post on Mashable posed a commonly asked question about a “Web 2.0 bubble”, but what it fails to accommodate for is the value of specific and engaged audiences.
The key stipulation made by the post basically states that valuations of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, Skype, Delicious etc. are far out of proportion due to their yearly revenue.
In my opinion, this completely misses the point of why these sites have value in the first place. Facebook earns revenue from advertising to the tune of around $2 bn per year, but is valued at around $75 bn. Why? because it’s the biggest database of user information outside of government available anywhere in the world.
And that’s worth money.
The thing to recognise here is that audiences are valuable. The fact that people use your service regularly, the fact you have traffic consistantly coming through your site might not neccesarily generate huge amounts of annual revenue, but it’s something that must be taken into account when valuing your service.
Take recent “citizen journalist” success story Natalie Tran for example. Natalie’s chanel on YouTube, through incredible popularity, earns her upwards of an estimated AUD$100,000 per year from affiliate advertising. HOWEVER, her “value” can’t be limited just to this. Recently Lonely Planet comandeered Ms Tran to create video blogs from all over the world and promote Lonely Planet. A partnership which is undoubtedly quite profitable for both parties involved.
Lonely Planet picked Ms Tran for her audience, and ability to reach her audience who Lonely Planet obviously has an interest in reaching also. So, it stands to reason that if you were to do a “valuation” of Ms. Tran, you would have to incorporate not only her ability to generate income from advertising, but her ability to reach audiences as well.
I’d argue that the same logic must apply to valuations of the previously mentioned Web 2.0 sites and services too.
I think the arguement about the web 2.0 is still valid, but I think this must be considered also.
The full article can be found on Mashable here: http://mashable.com/2011/05/29/social-media-bubble-infographic/
In the wake of the recent successes of social networking sites like facebook, twitter and linkedin, social networking is creating quite a buzz (no pun intended) in the creation of social networks to encourage and facilitate discussion online. While forum-type layouts for online discussions have long been the best way of achieving interactive discussion, An increase in DIY or “roll-your-own” social network services have made creating these online spaces a no brainer for anyone with an internet connection and the ability to use Google. Here’s just a few of said services that are available: Ning, BuddyPress, Jomsocial and SalesForce.
However, the ability to create and maintain an active online community is still rarity and a heavily desired skill.
The web is saturated by these communities and attempts to establish a piece of online real estate to facilitate discussion (Some call it the Web 2.0 bubble). However studies suggest that 50% of these sites have little to no traffic within 4 months. On top of this, around 10% of users generate a vast majority of the sites content1. Grim statistics to say the least for anyone who thinks their social networking site is about to change the world
All isn’t lost though, there are some techniques for overcoming this, a few of which I outline below:
If anyone has any better ideas, I’m all ears!
Creative commons image by Daniel Iversen
Some friends of mine and I had a heated discussion tonight about technology and computers, and the environment damage associated with their creation. While we could both see the positives and negatives, this stood out to me as an amazing example of the benefits that the internet can bring:
Balls for life is a charity that has little to no staff to pay because everything is online. They auction off the match balls from AFL games each week and donate the money to prostate cancer.
Excellent.
Self interested multi-national corporations abuse public relations practice to make a quick buck out of global sustainability and social responsibility movements.
An article published in the Harvard Business Review by Andrew Winston last October reported the corporate sins of “green” marketing which came out in the latest “Sins of Greenwashing” report. The report showed alarming figures of the number of products that make faux “green” claims on product packaging. In the age of ethical consumerism, global awareness and public conscience, it seems that the practice of public relations (for some) has simply become about convincing shareholders that they are “doing their bit” for these noble causes, while changing nothing in practice.
These marketing tactics may seem harmless enough, as they try to appeal to those sensitive to the softer side of capitalism, but at what cost do these artificial claims come? For a critical consumer of “ethical” products, this seems to raise one major question: Can ethical public relations practice be implemented when it is tied to the corporate agenda of financial profits at any cost?
Back in 2005 it was already evident that the green and social responsibility movements were being abused to serve the profit driven agenda of large multinational corporations. An article published that year in the Public Relations Review detailed how public relations campaigns used these movements to reinforce corporations’ reputation at the expense of marginalized publics (p. 515, 518). For public relations practice to be conducted ethically however, it must embrace all stakeholders of a company, despite if they serve the financial agenda or not. Time will tell if public relations practice for large multinational corporations can be used for more than just a tool to help “knife poor nations in the back, and offer a band aid for a photo opportunity” (p. 516).
I began this site as a small test to see what wordpress was like. Over the past 2 years I’ve become very familiar and comfortable with Joomla 1.5 and more recently 1.6. I’ve been putting off getting to know wordpress because Joomla has always served my needs well. But in the interest of being diverse I decided to branch out and learn some new things. I have to say I’m really impressed with the usability, template support and plugins available. I’d like to do a more details summary of what I think about Joomla vs. WordPress soon once I get a better handle on things. I’m also going to play with buddypress and see if that can serve the needs of dowhatyoucan better.
I create websites and web strategies and I live in Brisbane, Australia
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I created and own Loudbox Media
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