Cyber Monday vs. Black Friday

People are still going out and shopping on the day after Thanksgiving. It is a crazy hectic time for shoppers looks for those great deals they could not find on any other day.

However, not everyone wants to stand in the cold lines that are crowded with people and fight over an item with another shopper. More people are turning to online shopping calling the day Cyber Monday for Christmas presents.

E-commerce tracking company called Akamai tracked 1,333,336 global page visits per minute.

Roughly 96.5 million planned to shop on Cyber Monday last year and this year 106.9 were estimated to participate in shopping on Cyber Monday.

National Retail Foundation (NRF) said that a lot of shopping will be done while working their jobs roughly 70 million Americans.

Just because shoppers choose to avoid the madness of the store's door busters doesn't mean they are not getting a good deal. 88% of retailers have a promotion for Cyber Monday.

Only with in the past years has this way of holiday shopping really grown. More and more online stores are having their largest coupon for products to purchase during the holidays.

This does not mean Black Friday doesn't do well in sales. The day continues to hold up it's far share of deals and high profits for stores.

I feel this in a way can be comparable to newspapers online and actual news print papers. No , not majority of the people in the world are going to stop shopping at the stores on Black Friday or other days during the Holiday season.

However, a lot more people are choosing to do their shopping online and this number has grown more in the past years. It will continue to grow because it is easier for people to avoid huge crowds and get their shopping down fast and easy.

Like above people can shop for presents and do their work at the same time.

This number of online shoppers around the Holidays I feel will continue to grow each year and it could potentially passing the people who go out on Black Friday. Or it may not but the number of online shopping will stay a strong number.

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WikiLeaks Founder in Trouble

As you may all know, the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks released around 250,000 diplomatic cables over the weekend. While this has been all over the news due to the government worrying about national security, an interesting article has surfaced about Julian Assange, the man behind the WikiLeaks releases.

Found on Mashable, this article is about Assange and his recent charges of sex crimes. According to Swedish officials, Assange sexually assaulted two women on a WikiLeaks related trip to the country. Assange said that the charges were a test to get people to turn against him, but Swedish officials re-opened the case. The International Criminal Police Organization has a warrant for arrest.

Assange is a man of mystery, and many do not know too much about him. He chooses to live in secret, fearing that governments are out to get him (and he is right). These charges put him in a whole different light.

This man has never struck me as being very stable, so it is not too shocking that this has surfaced. However, I feel like he has shot himself in the foot, because now if he is caught and arrested, the United States could also try to get him too.

For a man so intent on getting the truth out there about other people, why is he so intent on keeping his secrets secrets (assuming the charges are correct)?

What do you think will happen to WikiLeaks if Assange is caught and jailed on these charges? Will that be a good thing or a bad thing?

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President Obama Gets Stitches...So?

All of the late night talk show hosts have been paying special attention to the recent Presidential basketball game that left President Obama with stitches in his lip.

Getting slightly less talk time on the late night shows is Obama's recent announcement that he is going to freeze government salaries for the next two years.

It is clear that while entertainment includes media information, only the most entertaining of news concerning the most important of people get the attention.

Late night shows aren't the only media outlets seeming to be more concerned with the entertaining side of Obama's personal Thanksgiving activities than his Presidential duties and decisions. An article on rollitout.com comes up in recent google.com searches for President Obama.

The article title is "President Obama Announces Federal Pay Freeze," however the first sentence of the article reads, "Just days after receiving 12 stitches in his bottom lip during a pick-up basketball game, President Obama..." etc.

Bloggers and columnists are also combining the entertaining personal life of Obama with his recent announcement.

Washington Post Metro Columnist Courtland Milloy wrote an article called "Obama, the Great Placator, needs to throw some elbows." Of course the first point of the column written at 10:23 p.m. on November 30, 2010, was Obama's stitches and why they were necessary.

All the way down in the SIXTH paragraph Milloy finally mentions Obama's announcement.

I can understand entertainment outlets harping on Obama's mishap, but news outlets?

While his personal life may be entertaining at the moment, his presidential duties are still most important.

Leave the entertaining to the talk show hosts, and talk about the important things.

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Cell phone journalism tips

We can all be journalists with the tools that we have today. One thing that I don't take advantage of is my video camera on my cell phone. For some reason, it never occurs to me to record news on my cell phone probably because I rarely video record.

Luckily, Aaron Chimbel has given tips on "How to make the most of Flip and cell phone video". He realizes that a great majority of people these days own a cell phone, but just don't know how to properly use it for journalism.

Technology today allows ordinary people to contribute and capture news that they see. Although the quality isn't the best on mobile devices, they are improving which allows for more journalism use.

Now, for Aaron Chimbel's tips that we can benefit from.

-Get up close during interviews since there is just that one little microphone on your device.

-Hold steady. No one wants to watch video where the cameraman is constantly shaking. No one told the people in The Blair Witch Project, or maybe they were too scared.

-Get views from different angles. Variety is good.

-Don't zoom, if you do it makes the recording more shaky. Physically get closer.

-Go where huge cameras cannot. You're camera is in your hand, not on a tripod or resting on your shoulder.

Hope these tips were useful, now go out and capture some news with your phone. For editing tips and Aaron Chimbel's blog, click here.

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'Share' your LinkedIn

Today, LinkedIn unveiled it's new feature: the 'Share' button.

LinkedIn has commonly been referred to as, 'old people's social media' but in reality, LinkedIn users comprise a variety of students and professionals, employees and employers, who wish to network for common ideas and interests.

For networking, LinkedIn uses your connections to keep you up-to-date with job offers, discussions, and information related to your defined interests. It also allows you to upload your personal resume and work experience as a way to market yourself to searching employers.

LinkedIn offers a way to share information, like like other social media outlets.

Now you may have seen articles in online publications or blogs with buttons and features that look something like this:

Other common ways to share probably look like this:

LinkedIn has decided to add their own 'Share' button into the mix with other social media platforms and sites.

Bigger online publications, like The Huffington Post, have already started using the 'Share' button. But today, others like Bloomberg and Forbes are starting to do the same. These sites are also incorporating more advanced features with their 'Share' buttons, like the ability to sign in to their LinkedIn accounts from other sites.

With LinkedIn’s 'Share' button, the hope is to offer readers and professionals a different means of sharing content, whether it be news or presentations, journal articles, or research, they will be able to do so via LinkedIn.

LinkedIn share is designed to inspire conversation with clients and colleagues, or people you wish to network with.

The new LinkedIn share button will look something like this:

Ultimately, this feature will help jumpstart professional conversations. And if that's something YOU want to be a part of, sign up for a LinkedIn account HERE.

To get a copy of the URL for the LinkedIn 'Share' button for your blog or website, visit the LinkedIn blog to copy and paste the html coding.

*To look at a sample LinkedIn profile, check out mine: HERE

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Photo sharing website alternatives

Flickr and Facebook have excelled in the social media and specifically, sharing photos, but there are others out there that still have yet to be discovered.

Of the many out there, here are three alternatives to Flickr and Facebook:

1. SmugMug

SmugMug focuses on making photo sharing easy for the user to sell or display photos in his or her online gallery.

The difference with SmugMug is their concern with the

safety yet easy access of your photos.

You can use a password to protect either one or all of your photos along with custom watermarks to protect your photos especially if you plan on sharing with other social media sites such as Twitter, Facebook or StumbleUpon.

Although there are costs to use SmugMug, there are also apps to be used on the iPhone, iPad and Android.

2. Path

Path is a personal photo sharing site that also has its own app. Because its focus is on being personal, Path limits users to 50 connections.

The intention behind the limited connections is to give your connections and sharing a more personal feeling.

Path is unfortunately not the best site to use for a portfolio to network with potential employers.

3. picplz

Picplz is actually an app that is designed to make photo sharing on Facebook and Twitter simpler while checking into Foursquare at the same time.

The main focus of picplz is being mobile. In addition to being mobile, picplz also allows users to apply certain filters to the original photo.

This app is free and also offers a free account on the picplz

website.

For more on photo sharing websites click here.

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Jumo: the do-good social media site

Chris Hughes, creator of Jumo, is trying to get people involved in social causes year round.

Users on Jumo can find, follow and support social causes of their liking.
Jumo is very similar to Facebook, which makes sense since Huges (creator of Jumo) is a former Facebook employee.

Hughes left Facebook in 2007 and launched Jumo this past March.

What began as a homepage with surveys has now evolved into something much larger. Hughes noticed that people usually only have the "do-good" mentality around big events or holidays. What he wants to do is make this mentality last year round.

With 3,500 organizations on the site, good hearted people are sure to find something to their liking. As well as that, Jumo uses all of the other social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, Flickr and much more to provide information about causes, issues and organizations.

Like I said before the site is very similar to Facebook. Once signing up for on Facebook Connect users can find friends, begin adding their interests and shape their sense of who they are.

Each issue on Jumo has their own page users can follow. Within that issue there are more specific issues and users can find projects relating to that issue near them. Users can also add projects that involve that issue.

Jumo even has the ever famous (thanks to Facebook) "like" button, which allows users to "like" organizations, stories or videos posted.

With the creation of Jumo a new niche of "do-gooders" have been taken care of via social media. Here's a video of the one and only, Chris Hughes, explaining how Jumo works.

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