Useful links
Here's a list of my most recently-bookmarked web pages. Click a category in the menu to filter by that topic.
- The future of news and why “digital first” matters
Covering the news used to be fairly simple, but things are a lot more complicated now: News has become an ongoing process rather than a finished product, and it’s composed of many different pieces, including blogs and video and Twitter and so on. - Sparked.com
Sparked is the world's first Microvolunteering network. It's easy, social and skilled online volunteering for busy people. - The Essential Elements of a Successful Website: Measuring Usability
A successful website needs to be usable, credible and visually appealing. This will generate positive word of mouth, repeat visitors and ultimately a more successful website. The trick is effectively measuring these concepts. - How to pitch an idea
Coming up with good ideas is hard enough, but convincing others to do something with them is even harder. In many fields the task of bringing an idea to someone with the power to do something with it is called a pitch. This essay provides a primer on idea pitches. - Designing Fun
Fun is a particularly difficult concept to define. We all have an idea of what “fun” is, but the nuances in these ideas can mean the difference between a successful project and an unsuccessful one. - Blogger Outreach: 5 Tips for Connecting With Top Influencers
Many of the top industry influencers are also the most accessible. A single relationship with the right blogger could lead to thousands of instant relationships with targeted readers who fully trust that particular source; not to mention the back links. - 10 ways to make the most of your journalism course « Adam Westbrook :: online video & entrepreneurial journalism
There are now nearly 100 journalism courses in the UK. Most of these students use social media, are multimedia savvy and have got work experience under their belts. If you’re going to stand out from the crowd you’ve got to bring your A-game to the table. - How Journalists Are Using Facebook to Share the News
Facebook is a treasure trove for journalists — with the ability to message almost anyone and search for people based on location, college, employer and interests, it’s a great platform for finding sources. - Imagination: Creating the Future of Education & Work
A site full of articles, videos, and ideas about how to boost imagination, creativity, and convey academic content in fresh ways, to shift schools toward fostering creativity and conceptual thinking abilities. - 6 Non-Profits Saving the World Through Technology Innovation
Some nonprofit organizations use and develop cutting edge technology to help save the world. Here are a few ventures that are using hi-tech solutions for social or environmental causes. - 10 exceptional tools for website testing
Once a website is created, every webmaster should perform various tests regarding various parameters such as, its loading time, page analysis, web server testing, traffic analysis, browser compatibility, scripts, etc.Here are ten vital and free website testing tools which will help Webmasters in testing their sites. - 8 startups that are changing the world
From life-changing technologies that reduce poverty and disease to online volunteerism for busy professionals, here are the eight finalists for Mashable's Startups For Good Challenge proving they have more than just a great business idea: They also are working to make a positive impact on the world. - 12 incredible Internet activists changing the world through social media
To celebrate World Humanitarian Day 2011, we’re taking a look at 12 incredible online activists making a difference through campaigns, crowdsourcing and blogging, in alphabetical order. - 9 Excellent Celebrity-Powered Social Good Campaign Videos
Celebrities and non-profits have been pairing up for a long time to help give good causes some exposure and a much needed PR boost. Here are nine amazing celebrity-powered social good campaigns. - Empire Avenue provides social gaming opportunities - and challenges - for brands
Empire Avenue is Farmville for Social Media. - How to set up an online resume
With the coming of social media resumes, video resumes and visual resumes, the world of job seeking just got a lot more interesting. If you’re looking for ways to make your resume stand out, here are some ideas to get you started, along with examples for each format. - Beyond Badges: 3 Smart Ways To Gamify Your Startup
Here are three key strategies for creating a gaming solution that has lasting value and truly engages consumers and site visitors. - Gaining Authority in the Age of Digital Overload
We’re entering into a new era of the Internet, where users are now looking to find validated sources within the mix of information overload that we all experience. - Facebook & Social Journalism
Facebook's growing role in news and social journalism. A look at how journalist's are utilizing the platform for storytelling, by Facebook's Vadim Lavrusik. - How Much Content Is On The Web?
How much content is produced every day on the Internet? Turns out when they say “everyone’s a publisher,” they’re not joking. - How To Sustain a Social Movement After Initial Success
Whether it’s a huge protest, a victorious election, an ousted dictator or a momentous piece of breaking news, it’s more important than ever for movement builders and members to prepare for day two. - How to track Social Media within Google Analytics
By adding a few Advanced Segment filters to Google Analytics, you can easily pinpoint social media interactions, and associated traffic sources for your website. - 50 Effective and Creative Call to Action Buttons
“Call to Action” is a term commonly employed in the field of web design and user experience (UX). It refers those elements in a web page that plead for an action from the visitor. Here is a roundup of more than 50 websites demonstrating effective call to action buttons that do their job quite smartly. - A New Kind of Transparency: Damage Control in the Age of Facebook
Clay Shirky said in 2010: "The loss of control you fear is already in the past . . . You do not actually control the message, and if you believe you control the message, it merely means you no longer understand what’s going on." - Seven truths about online influence
With all the talk of influence metrics, what should you pay attention to when looking for influencers to promote you cause? - Facebook Engagement Practices: Recent Studies and Discussions
Everyone wants to know the secret formula for on-page Facebook engagement. It seems that the new buzzword is “engagement,”and followers aren’t as important as engaged followers. - Twitter Community Organizing Rules for Non Profits
For a community organizer, Twitter makes a lot of sense. Organizing is about building relationships and mobilizing people around a cause. Twitter does exactly that. - Upgraded Twitter Search Helps You Find New People to Follow
Twitter has rolled out an update to its search tool that makes it easier to find new people to follow. - Using Twitter to Build a Community and Recruit Volunteers
A round up of Twitter-related posts, links and presentations about using Twitter to activate and engage communitities. - How to Create a Facebook Iframe Tab for Facebook Pages
Facebook have made a major change to the way you add tabs to your Facebook Page, FBML is out and now a much simpler system using good old iframe is the way forward. - Co-operation in the Age of Google
What is the way forward for the co-operative sector? The information and communication revolution, widespread concerns about private sector greed, public sector finances and impending climate chaos present a wide range of possibilities for co-operative expansion. - 6 Ways to Report on the Social Impact of a Cause Campaign
Whether the currency is time or money, it’s essential for anyone who is engaging supporters, donors or volunteers to be able to illustrate the social impact of their campaign. - 3 Small Cause Campaigns That Won Big With Social Media
The rapid growth and adoption of social media is helping non-profits in their quest for change — they truly are using social media for social good. Here are three inspiring success stories of small non-profits who met or exceeded their goals with the help of social media. - How to Sell Your CEO on Social Media Marketing
Social media represents both opportunity and risk - this why securing internal buy-in is a must. Often, this involves convincing your CEO and executive team why to do online and inbound marketing. - Facebook's Growing Role in Social Journalism
Twitter has been the go-to platform for real-time reporting and reaching out to sources, but with Facebook continuing to scale and in some ways become more public, it offers journalists an arsenal of content types beyond 140 characters and an alternative destination to connect with new sources of information. - Add an iFrame Facebook custom Tab
This post is aimed at the non developer in an effort to give the bare minimum of what is needed to get your first custom tab via iframe deployed. - How Nonprofit Groups Can Benefit from Foursquare
The beauty of the location-based service is that nonprofits of all types and sizes can tap its social marketing prowess. Here's how: - Usability Toolkit
The Usability Toolkit is a collection of forms, checklists and other useful documents for conducting usability tests and user interviews. - How to Create a Facebook Fan Page Editorial Guide
Facebook Fan Pages are popping up in record numbers. Now businesses have another space to connect with their clients or customers and a great opportunity to add value. - How To Boost Your SEO with a YouTube Channel
While many companies are still focusing SEO efforts on their websites, there are many other ways to boost search results, especially since results are now comprised of all kinds of content, including videos, images, maps, business listings, tweets and even Facebook Page posts. - 5 Ways Non-Profits Can Increase Engagement With YouTube
- Add Google Analytics to your Charity Facebook Page
it is possible to add Google Analytics to you Facebook Page and it's based on a very old way of tracking web impressions. - Guidelines for Writing a Good About Page
The About page is where site users go to learn more about the site they’re on. If you want to convert visitors to users, capture opportunities to work with people, and give your regular users a deeper appreciation of what your site does, a well written About page is your ticket - 12 Applications to Make Your Facebook Page More Engaging
Here’s a compilation of some must have applications for any Page. They’re great additions to the the basic layout that Facebook provides and they can be used in interesting ways to move your ‘likes‘ into action. - 5 Easy Steps to a Winning Social Media Plan
So you’ve set up your social media empire using Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and you’re blogging too. But how do you make it all work together? This article delivers five foolproof steps to get you on your way to finding, formulating and distributing content that will get you noticed - Nonprofit Facebook welcome tabs: inspiration and innovation
Most Facebook Fan Pages bring the visitor to the Wall. This is the equivalent of landing in the middle of a conversation. Consider developing a custom Welcome tab to introduce the organization to its visitors, and convert fans to stakeholders. - 10 Twitter Tips for Sucessful Nonprofit Fundraising
Before Twitter there was no economical way for a fundraising appeal to spread like wildfire. Now it’s incredible how many people a nonprofit can reach with very few resources. Read tips and best practices which may help your nonprofit increase its fundraising success on Twitter. - 6 Key Metrics for a Social Media Measurement Dashboard
To fully understand the impact of your social media efforts, you need a true social media measurement dashboard. - Designing Social Media Engagement
Creating engagement is not eas, as so many organisations and brands have discovered. Creating engagement is one-third natural confluence and two-thirds design. - User Experience Books for Beginners
If you’re a seasoned UX professional, chances are you’ve heard of most of these books, but hopefully there are a couple included that you may not have seen or considered reading before. - Social actions toolset
Following is a collection of the widgets, plug-ins, extensions, Web & mobile applications, mashups and tools that draw on the Social Actions API, making it easy for you or your organization to incorporate these tools into your own site: - Is Your Website A Dinosaur Or On the Verge of Distinction?
There’s been a lot of talk recently about whether websites have outlived their usefulness and are merely dinosaurs left over from 1990s, like grunge music and flannel shirts, but websites have found new life and have moved beyond serving as online brochures. - Top 10 Facebook pages and why they're successful
Does your business have a Facebook page? Have you ever wondered what successful Facebook page owners are doing right? Well, look no further. - Finding Your First Friends on Twitter
There are two types of people – those who get the incredible value of Twitter, and those who haven’t got it yet. The difference, is finding the right people to follow. - The pieces of the digital engagement puzzle
whether it's "Listen, Pubish, Engage, Evaluate" or "Educate, Enable, Engage, Promote" there are a number of elements to the digital engagement puzzle. - 5 Tips for Aspiring Digital Copywriters
So you’ve come to the conclusion that digital copywriting is the career for you, but where do you go from there? - Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Online Communications
Are your online communications working? How can you tell? This article talks through four types of measures-- Views, Followers, Engagement, and Conversion-- that help you track your efforts to see if they're worthwhile. - How to Make Your Location-Based App a Success: Reward People for Their Activities
After months of experimentation with various mobile advertising formats, marketers are starting to discover what strategies actually work. On mobile platforms, the clear winner is the reward system. - The Anatomy Of A Great Social Media Landing Page
While the “media” part of social media is almost completely free, the “social” part is quite expensive & requires generating a steady menu of content and participating in the conversations generated around that content. - How To Coax Social Media Insights From Google Analytics
Google Analytics (GA) is good at counting things. You can’t ask GA how your social network feels about you; it doesn’t get the concept of feeling. You can ask it to count how many people click on links in your social media posts. - The Science Behind a Single Page Website
The single page website is a paradigm of the modern web in which everything that needs saying can be placed in a single document. This article is on single page websites that use HTML, CSS and JavaScript. - How to Create Custom Facebook Pages
How do big brands create interesting Facebook pages? Do you really need to hire designers or skilled programmers who understand the ins-and-outs of Facebook APIs in order to build interactive and beautiful fan pages? Well, the answer is no. - Social Media Marketing Checklist
Companies can test and run tactics in silos but eventually, there will come a time when efforts need to be coordinated.This is a simple check list of considerations for a social media marketing effort. - HOW TO: Calculate the ROI of Your Social Media Campaign
If you’re one of the people who isn’t measuring your social media campaigns on an ROI basis, you’re setting yourself up for failure. Here are some tips, advice, and a little bit of simple math to get you on the right path to ROI success. - 5 Reasons Why Your Email Got Deleted
A lot of non-profits shoot themselves in the foot by forgetting to do the basics of email marketing correctly. Here’s five reasons why email messages fail. - What does a mobile journalist need?
4 lists of things a mobile journalist needs: hardware, software, systems, and mindset. - Personal Learning Networks
A collection of videos about growing and utilising Persoanl Learning Networks - 3 Social Media Metrics Every Non-profit Should Track
What type of metrics are non-profits tracking to determine if they are achieving their objectives? - 100+ Online Resources That Are Transforming Education
Education technology has become a busy space in recent years, with social campaigns for education, gaming in education and free educational resources.Here's a walkthrough nine clusters of education tech companies. - Understanding Citizen Journalism Properly: Separating Amateur Journalists From Professionals
Citizen journalism is a type of journalism practiced by everyday people. Citizens, some without proper journalism training, are using this modern technology to publish their journalistic work. - What effect has the internet had on journalism?
The web is a valuable tool, but old-fashioned press practices can still be best. - 4 Promising Curation Tools That Help Make Sense of the Web
As the volume of content swirling around the web continues to grow, we’re finding ourselves drowning in a deluge of data. Where is the relevant material? Where are the best columns and content offerings? - 25 reasons why I'll leave your website in 10 seconds
What makes people press the back button, shortly after visiting your website? Why do they bail out so quickly? And what can you do about it? - Wikinews: Wikinews needs you!
We want you to write articles for Wikinews on topics that you find interesting, you feel aren't getting adequate coverage or are important to you. We also want you to edit and expand the other articles you see here. - 100 iPhone Apps that Are Awesome for Homeschoolers
This list compiles 100 applications that they can possibly incorporate into the curriculum. Some are free and some require varying payments, but all of them serve the purpose of keeping a homeschool education productive and informative. - 6 Ways to Score a Job Through Twitter
Twitter has become a great resource for just about anything, including jobs. From industry chats to Twitter accounts dedicated to posting vacancies, there are a ton of resources for landing a gig. - Creativity Counts
This is a website about arts funding. - 5 Essential Tools for the Mobile Journalist
Today, front-page news can stream from any individual with a cell phone camera and a Twitter account, major news outlets, such as CNN, have crowdsourced parts of their newsroom to locally-savvy citizen journalists, often armed with little more than a camcorder. In addition to the standard smartphone equipment, such as a camera and social networking applications, we’ve compiled a list of five additional tools that can help a single journalist rival a fully-functional news team. With these tools, a mobile journalist can record data, edit clips, and broadcast polished stories as events unfold. - 12 Essential News Media Tumblrs You Should Follow
With Tumblr growing rapidly, it’s attracted a number of media organizations both local and national that are looking to engage their audience in a new way and perhaps attract new readers. But it’s not just about promoting their own content. - Out of This World Ideas for Showcasing Student Work
- How to Write a Facebook Application
If you want to develop your own Facebook App that works the way you want and doesn’t carry any third-party branding or advertising, here’s an easy tutorial to help you get started. - The Future of Social Media in Journalism
Social tools are inspiring readers to become citizen journalists by enabling them to easily publish and share information on a greater scale. The future journalist will be more embedded with the community than ever. - How to be a data journalist
Data journalism trainer and writer Paul Bradshaw explains how to get started in data journalism, from getting to the data to visualising it. - Living Self-Employed Online: The Manual They Forgot to Give You
If you've just made the leap to working for yourself, currently run your own business, or you're looking to make your money online in the future, this article may be just what you need. - Where to Get the Best Free Education Online
There's a lot more to the internet than Wikipedia when it comes to learning. Whether you learn best through video or text, want to a year-long course or just to touch up on a few topics, there are more than a few places online that can give you the full experience for free. - How to Use Mechanical Turk to Rock Conference Blogging
Thanks to tools like Mechanical Turk, Google Custom Search and of course Twitter, you can now do incredible things around conferences that would have been very inefficient to do before. - Power to the People – Your guide to Creating a Local Council for your Community
This guide is aimed at helping more people and communities set up a local council in their area. - HOW TO: Manage a Sustainable Online Community
A 2008 Gartner study on social software noted that “about 70 percent of the community typically fails to coalesce.” While the measurement and the statistics behind this statement raise questions, there is an element of truth. - How To Organize A Successful Meetup
Gathering friends, followers and “likers” online can only take you so far in the world of networking. Organizing a Meetup is a great way to move your virtual network to a tangible territory. - 7 Strategies to Stay Positive in a Non-profit Workplace
Working in the non-profit sector can be a very demanding and challenging job. There are strategies you can use for the short term to help to bridge those times when you are feeling unappreciated and overworked. Here's seven of them. - Thoughtwresting
Wrestle ideas to the ground, overpower problems, bring champion thoughts to victorious life. Thoughtwrestling is the act of taking the swarms of data that are flitting around your brain, misshapen and unconnected, and turning them into your finest creative work. - 20 Must Have WordPress Plugins For Every Website
WordPress specialist Amber Weinberg looks at the plugins she can’t do without. - How to Make Twitter More Useful for Your Business
If you’ve been using Twitter, you’ve likely checked out an app or two to make your Twitter experience more robust, or even just a bit easier. What if there was a place that could easily be your one-stop shop for all your Twitter needs? - 7 Ways Journalists Can Use Foursquare
Tech-savvy journalists usually go where the crowds are, and as Foursquare climbs toward critical mass, with over one million users, 40 million checkins, and counting, it’s also becoming a hot new tool for the digital journalist. - Building a successful online team
Here is a list of what one organisation believes to be the five most crucial positions required for maintaining and growing your organization’s online presence. - Designing For A Hierarchy Of Needs
Based on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, the idea of a design hierarchy of needs rests on the assumption that in order to be successful, a design must meet basic needs before it can satisfy higher-level needs. - How To Successfully Educate Your Clients On Web Development - Smashing Magazine
When dealing with clients, one faces the challenge of clearly and effectively communicating the goals and results of the work done in business development, graphic design, technology and user experience design. - The Art and Science of Understanding Users
Get your audience assessment wrong, and your whole marketing strategy will fall in a heap, no matter how slick your design or compelling your copy might be. - 9 Ways to Do Good With 5 Minutes or $25
Social media can be a huge boon for non-profits, NGOs and causes. Many are finding ways to let folks help those in need with small actions and donations. Here are nine ways you can make a difference in people’s lives with just a few minutes of your time or a few dollars from your PayPal account. - 14 Ways to Be the World’s Worst Web Project Manager
There are a great number of ways to manage website projects, but regardless of your management style, there are behaviors that you should learn to avoid as much as possible.