Digital Journalism – video is the new text

Today’s journalists are expected to stop writing already, pick up a camera and videograph the subject story for their audience. That’s because we all developed the new ways of ingesting reality.
We acquired habits of watching tv for hours or playing video games and browsing internet, while book and press reading declined significantly. Avalanche of information hit everyone so hard that whoever wants to catch viewer’s attention, has only a second or two to do so. Picture is worth a thousand words, right? And what tells a better story than dramatic image? – certainly not some long block of monotonous text. With rapid growth of mobile devices, even further constraints and opportunities in content presentation arise.

We love to see in the movies how the super agents have huge screens appearing in their hidden headquarters at will, where they could get a visual information on anything in the world at a swipe of a finger and enlarge the crucial details with the few cool gestures of their palms. Makes a great NCIS episode, and we all dream that in the nearest future that wall will be in our living room, where we can plan our next vacation spot to go or interact with the evening news or see our kids exploring galactic worlds or looking inside biology of the human cells.

Wouldn’t it be cool, during our next doctor visit, to have him displayed on demand all our X-Rays, uhm… MRIs, and digital lab tests on a big wall-screen to visualize diagnosis and animate different scenarios of our health prognosis? Next you know we are calling our next of kin using only brain waves.

How far have we gone from the long texts as an exchange of knowledge, information and communication…

Anyone sees anything wrong with this picture? It’s not about conservatism or opposition to technological progress. I am freakishly pro evolution of technology, innovation and creativity, BUT…
watch how vulnerable have we become in this model to all kinds of manipulation.

Don’t you feel like a hostage when information is provided in a video format?: …so you stumbled on that interesting title or image and you want to see the story. You start watching the video and… gotcha. Now you are at the mercy of the video narrator how soon you see something revealed. You are stuck with the pace of presentation and you don’t know what you missed, if you don’t just watch and hear to the very end.
With the same story in text, we could at least scan sections quickly for things we did not know before, or skip the boring parts, and we can choose the speed at which we are digesting the whole story. The same cannot be said even with the stop-and-forward capabilities.

Doesn’t it also discriminate to have as video journalists only cute, attractive people, because that’s what we grew to expect on the screen? Well made video does require much more effort than writing a text story. Some real time images cannot be re-iterated to perfection, or even captured in time. Images can easier manipulate us than written words.

Isn’t that why marketing invented large billboards or screen images, mostly without any words, to sell us our own dreams? …because the less salesman tells you about the product, the more you imagine it matching your dream?

And no, image is not always better than words: One can see what one is ready to see when one wants to see it. Ten individuals looking at the same picture can see ten different things. One may notice appearance, another situation, and another the expression of feelings, while someone else a composition of the whole view, without any detail. Perception is how we communicate with words our opinions, feelings and ideas, and a lot of times image only gets in a way.

Attention span and written expressions are becoming shorter and shorter. Even television is getting ditched when current generation interacts almost exclusively with the mobile, portable devices. This dictates a format of the journalism and all digital information.

It also creates new opportunities. One, just starting to be explored in the learning environments, is augmented reality. In this mode of creative information presentation, virtual layer is over imposed on the reality layer. So physical view of the landscape can be for instance overlaid with a drawn map with names of objects. It may also be a game, with hot spots of rich hidden curriculum to learn, and so on.

If the written words were to disappear, like so many communication means in the past, one can only hope that we had developed interpersonal brainwave communication before that happened.

Austerity measures and partying

Europe is consolidating financial controls and sticking with austerity measures to avoid collapse of the economy that will have global domino effect of some kind on all of us. We are connected, everyone knows that. If mother has credit card addiction, daughters may end up as entrepreneurs, because the family cannot afford to send them to college. Is that so bad?

Austerity measures are bad for everyone, say economists: you buy less – your employer holds back on benefits or raise because of less revenue – government has less taxes to fund social programs – you spend less. How much less can you spend? – unrest begins?… Alternatively government (like our neighbour in 2008) can just keep printing more money, so you can keep spending. It’s just a paper, right? Well, that piles debt for future generations – our own children…  Rich one percent seem to know how to get richer, and the rest can only think what else to cut out of the budget.

Obviously I am not going to solve any of this, I am just a web developer by choice. What I can observe though, is that after a period of serious austerity, people prioritize and the fun part is not the last on the list. Christmas parties are coming back! There is more small business owners. Some decide to make better websites – good for me! Because I love making better websites.

2012 is not going to be the end of world. This interpretation of Mayan calendar was just a mistake. And the new era begins with every day. Today I will learn something new, I will make it better for someone.

Recession Proof Business

Here we go again. Debt crisis, markets plunging, jobs hanging in delicate balance. Recession proof business is one of the top searches on Google.

I am reading: “Central and eastern Canada must brace for job losses in the months ahead as the slowing of global economy is eminent.”
Ten Doomed Industries article outlines jobs that are already obsolete: Newspaper Publishing, Apparel Manufacturing, Textile Mills, Formal Wear and Costume Rental, Video Postproduction Services, Record Stores, Video Rental, Photofinishing, Manufactured Home Dealers, Wired Telecommunications Carriers.

What can you do after getting a pink slip? Seven million dollar lotto ticket does not happen to everyone (Congratulations to 17 Ottawa manufacturing plant workers who laid off, won such a prize the same evening!!!). So your choices are: standing in long lineups at the job fairs, going back to school or setting your own business.

Recent grads can tell a lot of horror storries – sky-high student debt and sub-standard starting salaries. Graduating engineers have much better than average college grad prospects. Top ten earners categories are: petroleum engineering, chemical, electrical, materials science and engineering, aerospace, computer, physics, applied mathematics and nuclear.

Online career seems like not requiring any significant investment or skills… In every recession fortunes have been made by those who identified current trends.

Here’s a rundown (by no means complete) on what people consider these days the top selling products or services.

Recession proof business picks for online sales seem to be:
Hockey store, jewellery, electronics, pet accessories, sports gear, weight loss and life coaching, dietary supplements.
Bestsellers on Amazon.ca seem to be HDTV cable, iPone screen protectors and flash cards, while on Amazon.com Kindle readers are. Check the link for update as you read this – these lists are changing all the time.

Self-published books:
Outskirts Press, the fastest-growing full-service self publishing and book marketing company top ten titles for August 2011:

Always A Soldier But Never G.I. by Emmett T. Lang
Color Bind by Dr. Herschelle Adams
Dance of the Leaf by Lynn Torre
Engineer Your Own Success by Anthony Fasano P.E.
Going Green Using Diatomaceous Earth How-To Tips by Tui Rose RN
Linebacker in the Boardroom by Marvin A. Russell
March Forth by Marci A. Schmitt
Midlife Momentum by Holly Schut
The Sidecar Kings by Jon Burcaw
Teaching Narcissus to Swim by Scott Wells

Top affiliate marketing schemes:
Mobile Money Machines
Commission Commando
Affiliate Resurrection
Easy Profit Bot

If you want to read more on recession proof businesses, this article may be a good start: Ten Recession Proof Businesses. It lists candy, luxury and super-discount retail, reposession, education, sin items (tobacco, alcohol etc.), technology, health care, and non-cyclical businesses like funerals, utilities, religion, pharma, military and veterinary.

Do you have your own, better idea? The best advise I can give you is – Act on it!
The faster you fail, the faster the success will come. Test and fail, test and fail, until there is test and SUCCESS. Being afraid to fail only pushes you further away from the day you succeed. It’s an opportunity to simplify your life – stop commuting for hours and being stuck in a job you didn’t enjoy anyways. Spend the time the way you want, for your own happiness. For once in history it is easier than ever to test your innovative ideas and launch your own business online. Being yourself may be your greatest hit!

Positive thinking helps a great deal, too. When you visualize what you want to achieve, your subconscious mind will find the ways to get it. So dream your way out of recession right now.

On email etiquette yet again

A lot has been said about email etiquette in the early days, when internet taught us a thing or two about behaviour. Bad emails, whether sent or received, have the consequences that cannot be taken back.
Before the clients leave you, friends never talk to you again and you count opportunities lost to miscommunication, browse through this humble run-down on common blunders:

Don’t use all caps - that’s SHOUTING. Some people want to shout at others – one marketing guru wrote that number of caps in an email is inversely proportional to amount of love one received as a child. Shouted email communicates anger more than information it transmitted.

Don’t show everyone’s email in the open. It will haunt some of your friends for years to come with a spam, as one or more of the addressees are most likely affiliated with some sort of spammers. In the age of collecting email addresses for all kinds of reasons, this one will bite you more than just angry associates.

Be the last stop when trusted with a secret or gossip about mutually acquainted person. You will be confronted for releasing it sooner or later. Internet bullying had severe repercussions on many lives – are you willing to participate in this vicious activity if one day you are on the receiving side? In business relation you may simply end up liable.

Don’t use your business signature in unrelated matters. That’s misrepresentation. Being at work until late in the day, does not stop people from doing private business when they need to. That includes not only family matters, but also volunteer work and moonlight jobs. Signing email with your employer’s signature (because it is automatically inserted when you start writing, or otherwise) in unrelated business can have some far reaching consequences. Notwithstanding being fired for inappropriate use of the company’s time and logo, it may bite you back in so many ways.
Instead of thinking “Look who I am…“ or not thinking at all when sending such an email, consider that the addressee can easily reach your boss or blackmail you, or laugh at your just demonstrated self-esteem problem. Use appropriate signatures for each of your emails.

Don’t write anything that cannot be reprinted in a reputed newspaper. Because of the intrinsic media features, your email may end up in a newspaper, on the facebook, in your mother’s inbox or on your CEO’s desk, all at the same time. Value of a polite, concise and clear message cannot be appreciated enough.

Another point of miscommunication comes from the conviction that: ‘To criticise, you should praise the person first…’ . Known for extreme politeness, Canadians often reflect this in an email.
Have you received an email from your client or boss, saying how great you have done some task, just to read in the next paragraph: Please change this, this, and this, and it turns out when you think about it for a minute, he/she didn’t like what you’ve done at all. It’s not a blunder, but a warning rather to read your emails carefully so you can truly comprehend what was communicated indeed.

Wishing you smooth, effective communication that gets right to the point in a professional, balanced way.
Minibizweb

Is the New Year’s Eve indicative of your prosperity in the new year?

You may say – Oh, I am not superstitious, how I spend New Year’s Eve has nothing to do with the year ahead…

Think about it again. It has nothing to do with black magic, but a lot to do with your attitude and a state of mind that affects prosperity.

If you rush to the streets or downtown square joining big loud crowds in celebrations, doesn’t it say that you are young, restless, want to participate actively in what everyone else is doing and you will seek leaders in the new year to show you the way?

If you are playing in the band on that central square or work somewhere else that evening, maybe you are the leader and will undertake many projects on your own in the coming year?

If you rather stay at home and hide alone in the corner does it mean that you’re likely to do the same on your work or business path?

If you watch TV several hours, snacking all the way to New Year’s count down on your couch, doesn’t it mean that you go with the flow wherever life throws you?

If you buy new outfits for the occasion, go to spa and dress your man as a perfect prop matching your glamorous appearance at a big ball, doesn’t it say that you know how to sell well?

If you thought months ago where exactly you want to be on that big night and took care to purchase tickets early to ensure you get there, doesn’t it say that you plan and organize for success and you will keep achieving throughout the year?

If you researched all the bargains to grab what you need before New Year rings in, doesn’t it say that you are likely to take good care of your finances?

If you are spending New Year’s Eve with close friends at a small party in a  familiar house, doesn’t it mean that you appreciate what you have and holding clear values at heart you will create strong businesses and good work ethics around you?

So what can you tell about yourself by the way you are going to spend New Year’s Eve? How can you use this newly realized knowledge to steer yourself in the direction you want to see 2011 go for you?

It is a good time now to take a moment and find out what is that you want.
When do you want to get it?
What do you need to do to make it happen?
Are you able to achieve it on your own?
Where are the resources, motivators, trainers, people to help you achieve what you want?
Is it worth to invest in yourself if you don’t have sufficient budget?
Can you achieve what you want without changing anything that you are doing now?

2011 will be a result of your actions, like all the years before.
Start with great New Year’s Eve.
You know what to do.

minibizweb

Indecisively on success – a prelude to your New Year’s resolutions

All you need to know about success you learned in kindergarten. Right? Maybe… not. Kindergarten experience is not that widely shared. Many kids stayed at home with mom. Are they excluded from the future of success?

Is success a matter of luck or persistent doing of ordinary things? Success books are outlining things that we know (mostly), yet there are not as many successful people as it would imply. Before I stray into philosophical debate what success is, I’d like to focus on few basic observations why success is still so hard to achieve.

Success is a result of many actions. Noticed: “actions”? Although there are some peculiar situations where lack of action may result in a success, a rule is that we need to take an action to either succeed or fail. Failure rate is much bigger than success rate of all actions, but through increasing number of perceived failures we also increase rate of possible successes.  How? Statistically, the absolute quantity of successes is higher with the larger number of tries. By simply adjusting your actions due to lessons learned from failures you have better chance to achieve desired results.

Now that does not work if failures taught you to withdraw from trying to act again. Our brain is tricky this way. On unconscious level it wires all the time new connections that tell you to fight or fly in any situation.  Contrary to popular belief, fight is not always what you need and fly is not always what you want. The good news is that if you wired yourself to no-action, due to past failures, you can wire your brain even more to learn new behaviour. Noticed: I didn’t say un-wire? You can’t un-wire bad connections that have  happened – you probably heard already the story about pink elephant: When  someone tells you not to think now about pink elephant, what do you envision first? Of course, pink elephant. The same with your fear of failure. Saying or thinking “don’t fear” most often do not stop our fear.

There is no un-wiring until this pill to erase your past memories is approved for public use. No need to hold your breath until then though. New wiring is gradually pushing out the old one, like newly learned things take the front row in your knowledge stack all the time.
There is plenty of methods to wire your brain with new positive connections, drop me a line for more info if you need it.
How is that almost all self-development books telling us what to do to succeed are not written by the most successful people?

Well, because success takes more than knowing what to do, and it takes more than visualising where you want to be in 5 years.

All much talked about in 2010 Laws Of Attraction I perceive as merely tactics. It’s a good step in adjusting attitude, but not enough to achieve results.

So what does it take to succeed? Well, that depends who you ask. Abundance of films and books have been produced exploring different avenues of success.

Did you watch the “Yes Man”? We learn that just saying “Yes” to every opportunity can result in more successes than failures.

Did you watch “A Christmas Carol.”? We learn that learning from one’s mistakes can produce change needed to succeed.

Did you watch “My Fair Lady” based on Bernard Shaw‘s book “Pygmalion“? We learn that persistent work leads to great success.

Did you watch “Trading Places”? We learn that being in the right place at the right time, or pure luck as it’s otherwise called, puts you in the situation of instant success.

If this is so well researched subject then why we hear so often about famously successful people “…but what really got him/her a break was…” ? When it comes to think about it,  success has secret ingredient that is not so common to come by.

Before something amazing happens to change your life forever, here are 5 things you know already, to get you in the fast(er) lane to success in 2011:

1. Want something that you will call success
2. Outline the steps that you know are necessary to get it
3. Dedicate daily time to doing it
4. Allow new opportunities
5. Say YES more than you are used to

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Chemical mutiny coming of age?

In quest of healthy living…

I am coming from the screening of a new environmental film – Chemerical, just produced by a young Canadian vibrant environmentalist Andrew Nisker. It’s about time that we have more of such films, and I wish they are distributed everywhere. Especially they should be taught to teenagers who in turn will make their current and future families (two shots in one) to realize that chemicals have gone too far.

Plastics defined our generation.

 Colorful, sturdy, moldable, weight efficient, recyclable, fashionable, but edible…? My first shock in real life education on health and wellbeing was back in 90s when I learned that margarine is… yellow color asphalt. Supposedly the same compound. My face became suddenly red, as guilt of feeding it to my children for the last 15 years in all kinds of home baked products was creeping up to my consciousness.  I felt betrayed. I wanted to educate myself immediately about what else I didn’t know that was harming my family.

 I started to read food labels and became a hater of packaged goods. All of them seemed to have long name chemicals that did not sound good to me. Calcium propionate and stearyl in bread? I thought stearyl belonged to candles, and I certainly did not want to eat those. Why all of a sudden all these gums in dairy products? I wanted a cottage cheese, not a gum to gunk my guts. I understand that most of these additives aim at prolonging the shelf life of the goods. But I am concern about health of my family, not about convenience and logistics of the food industry. I rather go to Polish or Portuguese bakery to buy bread without any additives every second day than store bread for a month with stearyl in it.

One of the most upsetting moments in the last half a year was to find in the list of ingredients in my beloved pumpernickel a caramel colour – which sounds very natural, but it turns out is one of very offensive bad chemicals. Betrayal again. Why would anyone in good state of mind add any artificial colour to food? Most of children’s food contains unnecessary artificial colours. I think it’s a crime. I’d love to see all chemical colours banned from food. And this includes dying salmon in vivid pink so it looks “wild”. Period.

It does not stop at food. As a good mother I cleaned my house thoroughly and frequently for years and years with all kinds of chemicals that were presented to me by TV and every day advertisements as the best for the purpose. They smelled ‘good’ and everything looked so clean. It just that I was getting these sneezing attacks more and more often, my breathing was not without wheezing and I was oh so tired without apparent reasons. I knew something was seriously wrong when I lost completely my sense of smell about the age of 45. It was allergies and aging, as explained my doctor. Surgery on sinuses and nose was recommended, with unknown result. He suggested I better become accustomed to not having smell for the rest of my life. Boy, did I become a diligent reader again. I love flowers, I love food – how can I live without my smell? Thank God for internet, easy access to all kinds of research materials and alternative medicine.

In the next stage of my health education I learned that all the cleaning products I used so much were quite harmful.

I had to learn how to live without pinesol, javax, urethane, lysol and air fresheners. I was already half way to a clean indoor air considering I am not a fan of any candles and scent sticks, which deteriorate quality of the indoor air even further. It was really easy to get rid of all chemical cleaners while yearning my smell come back from the other side of the rainbow.

I had to wait couple of years, but you cannot imagine what a happiness it is to have your smell back. Even stinky soggy urban streets make me feel so much alive again!

 Next stage in the quest for healthy living is a deep look at the cosmetics and water.

I know, water should have been first. Good few years ago almost everyone got rid of lead water pipes in their homes. Now I am reading that copper pipes also pose some new risks. Bottled water? Well, did you read the label? Yes, water has a label with list of ingredients… and one of them is fluoride! OK, it kills bacteria – but at the same time it is harmful to me too. RO water gets rid of all, including minerals, and attempts to bring them back come with other additives. It all becomes catch 22. Sounds like I am just worrying too much. Fine, but what I already know about healthy living, I will apply. There is no going back. I wish I was taught these things in grammar school.

If I am for healthy living so much, why don’t I just get out of the city and into wilderness, to bath my soul in pure nature? Well, to tell you the truth, I am afraid of bears…

Wilderness has other dangers too. I am a city girl, a baby boomer, my income sources are in the city, I am used to certain conveniences and I don’t think that city should exclude healthy living.

I will vote with my buying power which foods, cosmetics and cleaners I like and I urge you to do the same. Go see “Chemerical” and educate yourself about what doctors, advertisements and chemical companies will not tell you.

Support free choices for a healthy environment.

Going nuts over [micro]management

Don’t you love these bosses who are a control freak over every aspect of your job to the point that makes you scream?

My geeky exercise patterns

Toned bodies of red carpet celebrities seem like a dream we can never reach. On the other hand turn around on the street to see [not so much] elderly people in their mobility scooters… I am over 50, with sedimentary life style and I hate exercising [period]. I don’t want to end-up in an electric scooter, and I am told people can live to 125 with full flexibility and good health if they stay active. This is not my usual blogging subject, however EXERCISE has been way too long on the first page of my to-do list to ignore it any longer.

So what’s a geek to do?