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Author Archives: Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org

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About Dr. Thomas Johnson | ict-design.org

Dr. THOMAS JOHNSON -intrapreneur, practicing academic, learning coach, designer, technology integration specialist, and educator -has lived in: Canada, Guatemala, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, and China -loves: Skiing, Sushi, Badminton, Volleyball, Working Out, Contemporary Art, Clean Lines, Good Food, Great Music, People Watching, Exploring, and his Wife, Son, and Daughter.

If you don’t consider “The Cutoff” you’ll hate yourself later

This is important if you are a blogger and you use Facebook to publish.  After the Headline of your article, the next most important characters you write are the following 280.  This is the “Facebook Cutoff”.  Without getting people interested in your article in this amount of time they are not going to click on the link to see the rest of your article and hopefully peruse (read intensely) through your blog.

So, how do you do it?

Put the important information up front.  Newspapers have been doing this for a long time, you can too.  Look back at an article to see how they are doing it.

Don’t tell people something they already know.  Why do they need to read the rest of the article if everything they are seeing is something they have already read before or is something they concluded about themselves.

Now, here is the interesting part: Test to see the sentence getting cut off at 280 characters is leaving someone yearning for more. Test the length in Facebook. Have you done so well that you have put ALL the important information in the first 280 characters that readers do not feel they need to read any further to gain insight?  If so, rework the article.

Finally, do something I didn’t do in this articles headline, and ask a question.  It might generate people commenting on the article, as they have thought about their response since they read the title.

 

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This changes everything.

@Wii – “Eat your heart out!” I remember going to Disney World back when I was seven or eight and going to Innoventions in EPCOT center. I was amazed at so many things, but one thing that still is embedded vividly in my mind was the virtual 3D head-mounted camera. Well, the Kinect, which is a consumer product seems to blow that out of the water.

Watch the video for full, cool, awesome details.

 

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Make Videos like a Pro

You want the easy way out, right?  You want something that you made that makes it look like you are a pro?  You want people to look at what you did and think to themselves, “That must have taken forever.”  Now you can.  You can make something like the video below in about 2 minutes from logging in until completion.

CLICK HERE

Sign up for free at Animoto.com

You can grant access to your Facebook pics as well. Neat and Easy!  The drawbacks are that you have to pay at least $39.00 if you would like to have a video that is longer than 30 seconds and doesn’t have the advertising from Animoto on it.  But it could be worth it.

Also, it seems to have educational licensing, which is good for teachers.  Worth checking out.

 

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How did you hear that Osama was killed?

I bet that you heard that Osama Bin Laden was killed from a different source that how you heard that Princess Diana or JFK was killed?

The reason I bet this is because you heard the other two were killed on the TV, whereas the latest story you read through the news on the web, through Twitter or because of a post on Facebook.

Gosh, how things are changing.

In the future, be it five years, ten, twenty or more, how will we be viewing, reading, hearing and sensing the news?  Media will continue to be more self-directed.

We have seen the advent of Sony, Samsung and Apple internet-TV, NetVibes, and iGoogle.  RSS feeders have been around for a while, and then of course there is Tweetdeck to help manage Twitter Tweets.  We are no long er passive readers and watchers.  We want what we want, when we want it, how we want it and how much we want of it.

We don’t like to stop for commercials, so they better be built right in somewhere and if we really like something you can bet we are going to share, tweet, like, or stumble it.  Our groups of friends and contacts are going to get to hear, watch and read what we did.

But it is going to get better with time.  Media itself, along with the ads that we see are learning from us and then cater to us.  Trends are amalgamating about things that we are doing.  What then, are you doing to help with trending for yourself?  How are you making your life easier?  Are you still watching the TV or reading an actual newspaper for your information?

Think about it now.  Act on it soon.

Read more about trends here.

 

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