Tom's Multimedia Resume November 14th 2012

Hello,

Just incase you are curious about my background, I have created a multimedia resume for the world to view.

You can view it at:

http://students.washington.edu/tommyqw/INFX/Toms%20webpage.html

~Tom

Tumblr vs Wordpress

In the past several years, many social media platforms have emerged and are competing against each other for attention. Initially major blogging websites such as Blogger and Wordpress were the dominate players in the blogging arena. However, micro-blogging sites such as Tumblr, Twitter and Posterous have recently emerged and have gained popularity and usage among internet users. Today, I am will be going over differences between Tumblr a micro-blogging platform and Wordpress, a blogging platform.

Similarities

Tumblr and Wordpress shares many similarities that worth noting. First, both are free for the general blogger and both platforms can be customized with unique designs. Both platforms are Content Management Systems (CMS) that can be updated from anywhere in the world that has internet and both allows content to be imported and exported from other CMS-driven platforms such as Blogger. Furthermore, both are relatively easy to use and learn.

Differences

Platform:	Tumblr	Wordpress	Winner
General Difference	Given the fact that Tumblr is made for microblogging, the use of Tumblr will be different. Tumblr excels on a user posting a simple and quick blog post. Often the blog posts are 140 characters or shorter similar to twitter. In addition, most posts are without images or videos. However, Tumblr enables the posting of images as well as videos. Tumblr also allows you to follow blogs from other users like you would follow a person on Twitter. In addition it also allows you to like pictures and videos similar to what you could do on Facebook.	Wordpress allows for more traditional blogging. Through Wordpress you can have lots of different design and functionality options. In addition, you can also have your own domain name and server allowing you to have complete control and flexibility of the content. In addition, Wordpress offers an impressive range of themes and plugins allow you to truly customize and making your site as unique as you need it to be. In fact, you could also make Wordpress look like Tumblr.	Tie – Depends on your use
Control:	Tumblr is similar to Facebook in that anything uploaded to the platform are stored on their server. Thus giving you less control of your content.	Wordpress is a more robust CMS. It allows for your site to easy be expanded, allows for plugins, widgets, multipage navigation, provide database and management control. In addition the content can be hosted on your own server allowing for greater control of your content.	Wordpress
Usability	Tumblr offers a simple and user friendly interface enabling users to easily make quick posts. In addition, it actually guides you in posting other types of multimedia including pictures and videos. Furthermore, it functions well with existing mobile devices.	WordPress offers multimedia formats including pictures, audio and video. Not as socially integrated with other social media tools like the like function on Facebook or the follow function on Twitter. Can offer more content, but not as easy to use as tumblr.	Tumblr
Customization	Tumblr is limited to only one type of page layout.	Allows for many different types of layouts and supports widgets and plugins allowing further customization.	Wordpress
Social Integration	Tumbr is built for social integration. Your content can be integrated with Facebook and Twitter.	Wordpress does support integration with Facebook and Twitter, but additional plugins are required and there is the setup time required, while Tumblr requires zero setup time to be socially integrated with Facebook or Twitter	Tumblr
Access Levels	Tumblr offers one id and password	Wordpress offers many different levels of permission and allows for multiple authors.	Wordpress
Search	Tumblr is not optimized for its content to be searched	Wordpress is more optimized for its content to be found by current search engines.	Wordpress

From looking at the differences, it is clear the Wordpress does have a slight edge over Tumblr. However, if you were to pick one over the other, you really understand your intention are for your blog posts. If it is for simple blogging to be used by mobile devices, Tumblr should do the trick. If your blog is for potential commercialization and requires rich customization, Wordpress is the way to go.

Multimedia Resumes the way of the future?

If you are job searching and you know are a qualified candidate and are turned down, it maybe for the simplest reasons including not having the right buzz words or the fact that there are many other resumes that are similar to yours. One way to differentiate your resume from others might very well be a different form of resume such as a multimedia resume. What would one such resume look like? A multimedia resume would allow you to include photographs, samples of your work, videos, or even a social profile. By adding photo or videos on to the multimedia resume, it will get more attention from potential employers. Ultimately, the idea of creating a multimedia resume is to captivate recruiters and effectively communicate your qualification and fit to the position you are applying for.

How effective can a multimedia resume be? It actually depends on how well it is created. For example, if a video was used, the effectiveness of the video is largely dependent on the content and how it was made. If the video is done correctly, it can tell a recruiter that this candidate is a professional and was able to articulate what they do best. Please do take a look at an example of a multimedia resume for this particular individual at http://bemycareercoach.com/wp-content/uploads/video-resume.png

Another important way to spice up and distinguish your resume from others is the inclusion of infographics. Infographics are images that captures and helps illustrate certain points of an individual in a quick glance. In a way, it provides a more visually stimulating overview of the candidates’ experience and qualifications.  See example at http://bemycareercoach.com/wp-content/uploads/infograph-resume.png

Finally, creating a social media profile (on Linkedin) or creating a personal site allows others to see who you are connected to as well as way for you to really show case what you can do. For example having a blog or personal site allows candidates to showcase their writing and communication skills, and even work they have done such as a portfolio of projects. Before jumping into creating your own multimedia resume do consider the following Dos and Don’ts.

• Do - keep update the resume so that it looks fresh and updated.
• Do - Share the links as much as you can. You can create short, customized, memorable links pointing to the shareable version of the multimedia resume.
• Do - Protect privacy- don’t include private information on the resume.
• Do – clean up your social media profile (including deletion of certain comments or pictures)
• Do - dress professionally when making a video
• Don’t - have a messy or noisy background
• Don’t - have offensive background images

Are Multimedia Resumes the way of the future?

To answer that question, it can be. However given the fact that our society is becoming more and more dependent on technology and the fact that we are more socially connected (using technology), I don’t see how it cannot be. 

Apple apologizes to Samsung for non-infringement, but where is the apology?

Over the past year, Samsung and Apple has been at each other's throats over patents and just recently, the US court required Samsung to folk over $1 billion to Apple for patent infringement of multiple apple products such as the popular iphone and ipad. However over at UK, it turned out their court ruled in Samsung's favor requesting Apple to publicly apologize to Samsung. Apple prepared a statement and posted on Apple's UK website. However the statement didn't seem very apologetic and the UK court ruled that apple needs to rewrite the apology. 

Despite having to rewrite the apology, as TNW reports, Apple has infused its page with Javascript that ensures that no matter what display you’re viewing it from, you’ll have to scroll down past a barrage of Apple product ads before the apology can be seen. 

Even though this well satisfies the letter of the ruling, would you call that an apology?

Check for you self at Apple Store UK.

Hurricane Sandy - Coverage

In the past few weeks, most of your have probably heard about the devastation caused by Hurricane Sandy. Within minutes of hitting land, Hurricane Sandy become a super hurricane, which was fueled by the difference in warmer temperature on land compared to the colder temperature on water, ultimately rampaged through New York, New Jersey, and the rest of Northwest results in over billions of potential property damages, and as many as 50 deaths so far. Much of the information found so far can also be assessed through Gizmodo at

http://updates.gizmodo.com/post/34726719504/all-of-gizmodos-hurricane-sandy-coverage

What is fuelling the growth of Pinterest?

Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest, Pinterest… I hear this term all over the internet and even in news articles. Why is it so popular? Why do I care? How different is it from other social media sites? Before we go there, lets discuss what Pinterest is.

What is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a social bookmarking tool that allows users to create visual bookmarks by “pining” images from anywhere on the internet and videos on Youtube. Another way of looking at it is that it is a pinboard-style social photo sharing website that allows users to manage and collect images that are interesting to them and being able to share it with others.  Pinterest's mission in a way is to connect and share with everyone through the images everyone find interesting.

What has happened so far?

During the last quarter of 2011, Pinterest grow almost 400%. Recent studies show that Pinterest drives more visitors to third party websites than other social media outlets including Google+ and LinkedIn. Some recently released data by Modea shows around 68% of Pinterest users are women, and 28.1% of users have an average household income of over $100,000. Furthermore, about half of the users have children and more than 27% are between the ages of 25 and 34.

One of the main factors to Pinterest success was its openness to the many different type of users it attempts to attract and it connection to products that could be sold on the internet. For example, Delicious, a similar bookmarking service, targeted a specific set of users, and failed to grow. Canv.as, another similar pinboard concept, focused on those users who likes inside jokes. Pinterest on the other hand provides no barrier to entry and catered to everyone on the web including online vendors. In addition, Pinterest placed a heavy emphasis on customer’s perspective when designing the site itself. What about other factors?

Easy to Share:

From a customer’s perspective, the tool needs to be easy to use and that it doesn’t require much effort to perform a task. Pinterest has made it very easy to share content on the web. For example, when the tool is enabled and as user browses the web, and finds something interesting they determine to be worth pining, they click on the bookmarket toolbar and just click on the content they see without needing to switch to another application or browser. It is very integrated and simple making pining progress easy.

Visual:

The other factor leading to success is that social sites are becoming more visual over time. A unique part of it is that Pinterest is an image driven site with an emphasis on visual content. It is social network that is solely dedicated to sharing beautiful and interesting images. In human nature, human beings tend to be attracted and gravitate to beautiful things, and since Pinterest with the help of it users helps identify what those are, more and more people will be drawn to Pinterest’s collection of beautiful things.

So what about other image sharing sites such as Flicker?

Well not use Flicker? Even though Flicker allows its users to share images over the internet, it doesn’t allow you to follow and browse the pins of other people as well as repining their images to your own. In a way, Pinterest offers more of an integrated and robust way to share with each other. Another difference is the fact where the images are stored. For Flickr, the images are stored on Flickr’s storage, while images on Pinterest are links or pointers to where the source image is stored (and not Pinterest’s storage). The way how it works is as follows: you can do this by simply entering the link of the image you found interesting on the net. Pinterest would then extract the image for you and post it on your profile.

Furthermore, Flickr impose a policy on the size and number of photos you can upload, while Pinterest has no such restrictions allow users to pin as many things as they want.

Nintendo's Social Media Efforts for Wii U

Nintendo recently announced their next generation gaming console to compete with Sony’s PS3 and Microsoft’s Xbox360. However, how are their efforts in marketing their new Wii U gaming console? It turned out not only is Nintendo’s new product on Nintendo’s website, but Nintendo is utilizing social media to promote the product in hopes to connect with existing fans and potential customers.

One of the social media outlets is the creation of a Facebook account just on the product itself at http://www.facebook.com/WiiU. Through this method, it helps emphasize and shines a brighter light at its products and focuses on product awareness of the new gaming console and its associated games. Through this outlet, Nintendo can announce any news and updates specific to the products the customer should be interested in, including information from product price to technical specifications and cool features it offers. The site contains weblinks to game developer interviews, media interviews, and E3, which are very popular and interesting for gaming consumers. The site attempts to draw the potential consumers’ attention by frequent updates as the launch day draws near. In addition, the company also utilizes the site to announce new games and promote to pre-order available games that can be used on the Wii U. The facebook website has 651,275 likes and 26,977 comments as of 10/22/2012. The number is continuously growing.

Obviously, the company’s objective is to promote its new products. Also the company can get closer to the future consumers and communicate with them, so the consumers can learn the products better and that could lead to better sales. In my opinion, it is very smart move to utilize social media website for its marketing purposes. The rapid growing number of “Likes” and the long thread on each post shows that the site met the company’s goals. The social media is very powerful marketing tool for the company. Since the products have not been launched yet, success of the weblog can be measured from the number of likes and the people talking about the blog as shown below. After all, the more people are aware of the product, the more likely the product will could be sold.