Dove - Evolution Commercial

Kinda makes you wonder what else you see is altered.

Impending doom

As we sit here in New Orleans trying to determine if Hurricane Ida will continue on her current track or wander a little further west, it gives us time to ponder our options. To be honest before Hurricane Katrina I didn't even sweat Cat 3 hurricanes and now I'm worried about a small Cat 2 in November! I'm actually considering where we might need to evacuate to.

Christopher Johnston
cmjrvp on Skype
@chrisjohnston on Twitter

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How Do We Go From Ideas To Action

At the last Net2NO meeting we were in a new venue and it seems that along with new venue we took on a new focus. Where earlier we were about bringing together technologist in the city it seems that now we want to use the minds and skills of these brilliant individuals to enact social change in the city.

We had a few 5 minute brainstorming sessions and I copied down some of the ideas that emerged from them.

Get City Council to support local small businesses
Volunteer in schools to teach the teachers to use the technology available to them
Get community organizations to collaborate and share information or at least aggregate everything they know and publish it in one place on the web.
My contribution was to turn vacant lots all over the city into vegetable and herb gardens. The harvest from those gardens could be sold in community farmer's markets. (Turns out that Hollygrove is already doing this)

While all these ideas are great, the one thing we need before we can make any of them work, is buy-in from the people that live in the community. The ideas are useless if the people in those communities don't want them.

Ok, so we know that we need great ideas and we need buy in from the community to implement those ideas, but there are two critical steps missing.

How do we, or more correctly stated, who do we get to bring these ideas to the community? Then, once the buy-in happens, how do we organize and get people to show up to implement the ideas.

The first one is the biggest problem. Unless we have a framework for moving from ideas to action we just had great evening engaging in intellectual masturbation but didn't accomplish anything for the people and communities we claim to care about.

I'm not saying that the concept is not noble I just see flaws in the execution. I want this to succeed. I want us to accomplish real results. Do you, the three people reading this, have any ideas you would like to offer? I'll give you the credit and I'll do the work just help me make it happen.

Christopher M. Johnston
Social Media Consultant
@chrisjohnston on Twitter
504.208.1766 Google Voice
Facebook.com/chris.johnston
http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

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Untitled

Edited with Photogene

Chris Johnston

Social Media Consultant

(504)208-1766 Google Voice

http://twitter.com/chrisjohnston

http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

Sent from my iPhone, but I'd rather be on Android. I apologize ahead of time for spelling, brevity, and/or grammatical errors :-)

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This will make me leave the iPhone

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My new books for next month's classes

Chris Johnston
Social Media Consultant
(504)208-1766 Google Voice
http://twitter.com/chrisjohnston
http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

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Why I Think You Need An Attorney

Some of you who have been reading my blog for a while know that I wanted to go to law school. I may never get to pursue that dream due to my personal finances but I learned a lot about the legal system over the last few years. I was recently involved in a civil case related to an auto accident I was in. We never went to court and settled the case in arbitration.

Due to injuries I sustained in the accident I had to have back surgery and shoulder surgery. The other party paid to fix my vehicle, for both of my surgeries, a small amount of pain and suffering, and no lost future earnings. I live with back pain that exist every hour of every day of my life. I also have intermittent shoulder pain that is sometimes severe.

I tell you this to understand where I am coming from. I have witnessed first hand how this system works and why the services of an attorney are vital. Our legal system has huge flaws. I also know that with its flaws compared to what people have in other countries it is the best in the world.

It sucks that you need a $200/hr attorney when you have a problem that needs to be rectified in the court system. I also know that without one I would have not been able to afford the over $250,000 of medical care that gave me the somewhat limited mobility I enjoy now.

If you know me, you probably think "he looks fine to me" but if you have known me a long time you notice the difference. Those closest to me know it more than anyone else.

This video show that when you are involved in a criminal matter your very freedom is at stake and the services of an attorney are vital. What surprised me most is that anything you say to the police can be used AGAINST you but it CANNOT be used FOR you.

This video is long and I urge you to watch Part 1 AND Part 2. Part 1 is from the perspective of a law professor and former defense attorney and Part 2 is from the perspective of a police officer and 3L law student.

Seesmic Web Application Using Fluid (Mac Only)

This is just like the feature in Chrome that lets you create application specific windows for websites that you go to frequently. I have downloaded Fluid to my Mac but haven't actually run it yet.

Very cool looking iMac

I so want one like this.

Originally seen on twitpic http://twitpic.com/kc046

Christopher Johnston
@chrisjohnston on Twitter
facebook.com/chris.johnston
http://SocialMediaForRealEstateAgents

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Not good news if you are a home seller in New Orleans

I was testing Google's new real estate search feature and in testing I created this map. This all homes for sale in the Greater New Orleans area that Google has in its database. Keep in mind that there are properties that are not in the database that aren't on this list. I also think that this may include some Google Base data that is not alwaya removed after a sale or updated to reflect that sale.

Christopher Johnston
@chrisjohnston on Twitter
SocialMediaForRealEstateAgents.com

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Why You Need To Go To TribeCon

I shot this short video to tell you why you should be at TribeCon. Since you are not watching this on YouTube here us the TribeCon registration link and the discount code is NOLABLOGGER

Ken Burns National Parks: America's Best Idea

I have to admit that the first I heard of Ken Burns it was from the "Ken Burns Effect" in iMovie. So a few weeks ago when I saw commercial promoting the new documentary by Mr. Burns titled National Parks - America's Best Idea I was intrigued.

I have spent the last 2 days and approximately 10 hours watching 5 of the 6 two-hour episodes. It was one the best examples of wildlife and landscape cinematography I have ever seen. When that is mixed with the history of the parks and Burns excellent storytelling ability it becomes something that every American should see.

It covers the parks from their very beginnings up to the 1980's. I was amazed to learn that many of the original parks were all acquired as the result of wealthy individuals buying the land and donating it to the US government. In fact its first director Stephen Mather was a very wealthy and successful businessman who agreed to take the job for one year and ended up running it for 12 years.

The parks were also initially focused just on spectacular views and gave very little concern to the wildlife in the parks. This was changed by another wealthy individual and park employee, George Melendez Wright, who self-funded the first survey of wildlife in the parks.

The full episodes are only available online until the end of today (10/09/2009) but if you can afford it, buy the DVD. If you can't afford it, hound your local library to purchase it and then borrow it. If you are really fortunate I would urge you to buy an additional copy and give it your local school. This would be an excellent addition to any school library.

Photo courtesy of brian-m on Flickr.

Very Cool iMac I saw on Twitpic

I want one like this.

Christopher M. Johnston
Social Media Consultant
@chrisjohnston on Twitter
Facebook.com/chris.johnston
http://socialmediaforrealestateagents.com

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August 2009 browser stats: IE continues its slow decline

Net Applications, a great resource for watching market share trends, recently changed the way it weighs the data it gathers for browsers. We waited a little bit until things settled down before posting our next browser share roundup. Despite the slight changes, the main browser usage trend is unchanged: though its lead remains large, Internet Explorer is still losing ground to all other browsers. Firefox is steadily gaining, Safari remains in a nonthreatening third place, Chrome is happily carving out a small niche for itself, and poor Opera can't seem to budge from fifth place. In August, all browsers except for IE and Safari showed positive growth.

Between August and July, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 0.71 percentage points (from 67.68 percent to 66.97 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.51 percentage points (from 22.47 percent to 22.98 percent). Safari remained steady at 4.07 percent while Chrome once again moved further away from Opera: it gained a worthy 0.25 percentage points (from 2.59 percent to 2.84 percent). Opera budged 0.07 percentage points from 1.97 percent to 2.04 percent. Although IE's decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions still dominate (we can only hope that when Windows 7 becomes generally available next month this will start to change since the OS sports IE8 out-of-the-box):

• Internet Explorer 6.0: 25.25 percent
• Internet Explorer 7.0: 21.10 percent
• Internet Explorer 8.0: 15.10 percent
• Firefox 3.0: 12.48 percent
• Firefox 3.5: 8.88 percent
• Safari 4.0: 2.55 percent
• Chrome 2.0: 2.50 percent
• Internet Explorer 8.0 - Compatibility Mode: 2.46 percent
• Opera 9.x: 1.76 percent
• Firefox 2.0: 1.37 percent

Data source: Net Applications

You can see the market share pie for August 2009, according to Net Applications, at the top of this post. The graph just above shows how things at Ars are very different: Firefox continues to dominate, but the default browsers for Windows and Mac OS X still show their strength. Chrome's lead over Opera is much more significant at Ars. With Safari 4's release, the browser has managed to finally surpass Internet Explorer on our site, despite having one sixteenth of IE's share worldwide.

via feeds.arstechnica.com

Yeah! IE usage continues to drop. It is astounding how many people are still using IE 6

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Photograph What You Love

This could be advice for almost anything. Do what you love and the harder you work at the luckier you will get.

GarageBand AutoTune - How To Sound Like T Pain Kanye West

I'm simply amazed at the power and tools of the Apple product. I'm currently working on a project for my Digital Storytelling class at Full Sail and I need to do a voice-over for a commercial I'm creating. I was hoping to make myself sound like a TV voice-over artist and I stumbled across this. If you own a Mac and you like using GarageBand check this out.

Have a Healthy Disregard for the Impossible

Larry Page's University of Michigan Commencement Address, Spring 2009