Mediaboss Marketing

Since it's so hard to keep up with everything that's shared on social media, here's a weekly guide to things that may have passed you by.

OK, here's the dirty little secret of social media. Almost everyone will miss almost everything you share.

Those who disparage Twitter, Facebook, and so on, point to that as a reason for us to ignore social media altogether.

But though it's true most folks will miss the majority of your posts, that's no excuse for you not to participate. After all, you can say that about any medium--TV, magazines, newspapers, even blockbuster films--the majority of people will never see what goes on there.

So, in an attempt to get more stuff seen, I'm starting a Social Media Week In Review. Each weekend, I'll post items you may have missed. You can help by posting links in the comments section or e-mailing me at sreetips@sree.net.

First stop: Mashable's 37 digital-media resources you may have missed, by @MattPetronzio. A great way to catch up with all the best posts within Mashable, a leading social-media site. On Mondays, @Charlie_White offers a Weekend Recap of Mashable posts--also worth checking out.

Social Media Week: Hundreds of social-media events were held in dozens of cities last week as part of Social Media Week. That means you--and I--missed almost everything that went on. Dozens of the panels were simulcast, and you can catch up via the SMW Livestream page. I was involved in two panels, and I thought I'd share them here.

One was about the future of education (video here). It featured several terrific speakers, but the star of the show was Melissa Seideman (@MSeideman), 8th grade history teacher from a school north of NYC. She showed me several new tools that I'll use with my students, including Socrative, an audience/class instant polling service that could make those complicated clicker-based systems obsolete.

The other panel was one I moderated at the instigation of Eric Carvin (@EricCarvin), the new social-media editor at the Associated Press. (Video below.) It was about challenging the conventional wisdom in social media, with seven top social-media editors. Strange to think that such a new medium already has conventional wisdom, but it's true, and we covered many topics I hope to touch on in future posts.

#anthonyshadid: Thursday night we learned that Anthony Shadid, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, and foreign correspondent for The New York Times (and ex-Washington Post, ex-AP) had died while covering the crisis in Syria. A man who had survived the Iraq war and countless other hostilities, including being kidnapped in Libya, appeared to have died because of an asthma attack. In a testament to how popular he was, Facebook and Twitter lit up with posts, tributes, and comments about his work. This NYT compilation of tweets shows the extent of Shadid's reach; my favorite was by his former colleague Don Van Natta, Jr. (@DVNjr):

"By Anthony Shadid" was a beacon of humanity and truth.
February 17, 2012

Liz Heron (@LHeron), NYT social-media editor, speaking at a tribute to Shadid at Columbia Journalism School, pointed out social media's unusual role in the hours after his death. She said the paper and his family would have had no idea how globally loved Shadid had been if it weren't for the outpouring of affection via social media.

Shadid himself was on Twitter (@AnthonyShadid), and what struck me the most about how he used it was in his very simple Twitter bio. He just said, "Journalist and author," rather than mention his prizes and his Times connection. How many of us are as humble as he was?

Shadid's widow, Nada Bakri (@NadaBakri), a former student at Columbia, tweeted this on Saturday:

#anthonyshadid i love and appreciate all your notes. they bring so much solace. he had so much more to give ... if only he had the time.
February 18, 2012

Funniest post I saw this week: Changing gears, the most amusing item I saw was posted on my Facebook wall by Jonathan Boorstein (@solodiner). It was a graphic from StuffJournalistsLike.com's Facebook account, which looked at what journalists think they do and what they actually do. I guess others liked it, too. The graphic got more than 14,500 likes and almost a thousand comments.

What did I miss? Tell me in the comments or via @sree or #sreetips on Twitter.

Original post:
Social Media Week in Review: What you may have missed

COMMENTARY | Foster Friess, a 71-year-old investor who has given money to Rick Santorum's presidential campaign, got himself and his candidate in a little trouble for his take on the birth control controversy, according to Reuters.

Friess repeated a decades-old joke about the cheapest birth control pill being a Bayer Aspirin. The trick is the girl has to keep it between her legs throughout the date. I first heard it from a friend whose Southern Baptist preacher father used to use the story as an admonishment to keep chaste. It did not work insofar as my friend was, incidentally.

It was a rather lame joke, but the reaction to it was even lamer. Andrea Mitchell, who has interviewing Friess, has to pronounce herself breathless at the old gentleman's take on contraception. Jonathon Capehart, writing for the Washington Post, took Friess' attempt at humor seriously, calling it "stupefying, backward and dangerous." Then he went on a rant about what a Neanderthal Friess is and, by extension, Santorum.

At least he didn't shout, "G-D-America!" as the close friend and spiritual adviser of a certain president once did.

Friess was forced to offer a gentlemanly apology and Santorum an explanation that he cannot be held personally responsible for everything a supporter might say.

The whole incident serves as an object lesson. President Barack Obama can associate with a wild eyed, ranting preacher and "pal around" (to use the phrase by Sarah Palin) with a former terrorist and the media will yawn.

But a man of obviously antique moral scruples who happens to be a supporter of a conservative presidential candidate can tell a joke fathers have been telling their children for generations, and the media will have the vapors like a bevy of Victorian doyens confronted by a streaker.

It's a testament to the culture of "gotcha!" journalism, at least where righties are concerned, that Friess' little joke did not get the response it deserved: An audible groan and then moving on to another subject. Instead Friess might as well have advocated the return of the chastity belt as a birth control method. It is silly but more than a little sad.

Sources: Santorum backer apologizes for contraception remark, Susan Heavey, Reuters, Feb 17, 2012

Foster Friess is a real pill on contraception, Jonathon Capehart, The Washington Post, Feb 16, 2012

More here:
Foster Friess' Cheap Birth Control Pill Makes the Media to Have the Vapors

NASA's next generation James Webb Space Telescope is an ambitious infrared observatory that is expected to yield exciting results about the universe, but in recent years, the project's swelling budget has been a major hurdle.

Pegged as the successor to the nearly 22-year-old Hubble Space Telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will probe the most distant reaches of the universe with its sensitive infrared instruments.

The $8.8 billion observatory has become synonymous with cost overruns, and last summer, House appropriators recommended scrapping the project entirely. But JWST survived, and in November, President Barack Obama granted NASA $17.8 billion for the 2012 fiscal year, which included full funding for the observatory.

Still, the project remains a source of contention, and critics claim that JWST is tying up valuable funds from other worthy science missions. Obama's proposed 2013 budget for NASA revealed earlier this week, for example, includes deep cuts to planetary science missions to help pay for JWST. [Photos: Building the James Webb Space Telescope]

SPACE.com recently caught up with Scott Willoughby, JWST program manager at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems (the company under contract to design the telescope), to talk about the progress being made, the next major milestones, and how they got past wrestling with the big, bad budget:

SPACE.com: When funding for JWST was secured for 2012, that must have been a huge relief.  Do you consider that a big victory for the project?

Scott Willoughby: It's been really good. Being fully funded at that level enabled us to get aggressive and really try to retire the last bit of our engineering risk. We want to get that done as soon as possible and start putting hardware on the floor. We've been able to pull the spacecraft's CDR (Critical Design Review) up by 10 months, the mirrors are done, and those are just a few examples. There were a number of things in that budget profile that got approved, and we're looking much better in 2012.

SPACE.com: All the back and forth that went on with funding for JWST, how did that affect your work? And when the money for 2012 was approved, what was your message for your team?

Willoughby: The message was always: let's not wait for a re-plan to continue working. We had certain things that we slowed down, but we worked to complete parts so that once we got the extra money, we were able to continue and not lose time. We were prepared, so when the money came through, that enabled us to accelerate things because now we're able to fill in some of the shallow areas. We're still looking at October 2018 for launch, and this increases our confidence in that launch date. [Giant Space Telescopes of the Future (Infographic)]

SPACE.com: When President Obama signed those figures into law, it must have been a boost for the entire team.

Willoughby: It's a huge morale boost. Full funding was an indication of support for the program. Over the summer, the outcry from the public was incredible and very positive, from the letter written by 30-something Nobel Laureates to the Facebook page set up to save JWST. Social media gave people the ability to communicate that they felt this wasn't just important for astrophysics, but important for the future of science and leadership.

This is a program that we want to see succeed, not fail, so for the team working on it, even though you're hearing people complain about your program — whether it's cost overruns or schedule — but all the meanwhile you're coming in to work and working hard. But to see the public come out and support the program like that was really positive.  

SPACE.com: What are some of the major challenges in designing this observatory?

Willoughby: Webb does two things kind of different, and one thing harder, than Hubble. One major difference is that it's looking in the infrared, so we're finding this light that's both very faint and in the infrared spectrum. To get this information, we had to be bigger and colder than Hubble. That drove a lot of technological challenges.

We also had to come up with a design that is big but stowable, so we had to make segmented optics that are also adaptable to create the shape they need to in orbit. We needed to have a large segmented mirror that we could command. [Video: Coating the James Webb Space Telescope]

All 18 of those mirror segments have now completed their testing — the last mirror was done in December, and that was impressive. It's taken years to polish these things and get them through two rounds of testing to get the prescription right, so that was one of the major technological leaps.

Webb was envisioned to do something that has never been done before. We're coming at it from the sense that science cannot be constrained by engineering limits. We want to get the innovators out there to make the thing that's going to do it. If science constrained itself by what we're capable of today, then we'd be done. We'd never be able to move to that next step.

SPACE.com: JWST underwent a big re-plan effort to create a more sound schedule and a more realistic budget for the program. What kinds of adjustments were made to make sure that things don't get out of hand again?

Willoughby: We segmented the re-plan by fiscal year, based on the profile that NASA put forward for the program. One of the most fundamental things is to have a reserve and to anticipate what I call known unknowns. We wanted to build in margin into the schedule so we could make high confidence estimates. And that's what we did in the re-plan. We phased the schedule, phased the cost margin into the system so that we could execute and make the year's commitments. With each phase, we looked at each year, and showed the play in the out years and looked at what we need.

The best testament to that is, in the last 13 months, we as a program — NASA and myself on behalf of Northrop — we committed to doing these major milestones and we finished them all.   

SPACE.com: Do you now feel increased pressure to meet the objectives that have been laid out?

Willoughby: There's always pressure to perform, from the managers to the engineers to the scientists. When I went back to the team at the end of the year, I said, 'Folks, there are no more excuses. We must succeed.' And that's not anything other than acknowledging that we put that commitment forward. We have to be very good stewards of the public's money.

When you see that come together and the program gets funded for the next year, I won't say it's because of that, but if we had not met our milestones in 2011, it probably would have been a much tougher decision to fully fund us for the next year.

SPACE.com: How do you respond to critics of JWST who say that funding for the project comes at the expense of other science missions?

Willoughby: The person who I thought said it best is Senator (Barbara) Mikulski at an event we did at the Maryland Science Center. No matter what, people are competing for what they want to do. That's going to go on forever. Between the government and the head of NASA, they basically came together and said: James Webb is a must-have for its importance to science and technology. They said this is something that must be done, so now it's about doing that as best as we can and as cost-effectively as we can.

There's no doubt that this is a debate, but the leadership at the most senior levels said this is what we need to do. We've been given a plan and we're committed to doing this. What should be satisfying to everyone is that when we succeed on that, everyone benefits from a great mission.

You can follow SPACE.com staff writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Follow SPACE.com for the latest in space science and exploration news on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

See more here:
Keeping NASA's Next Space Telescope Under Control: Q&A with Scott Willoughby

Joe Conti made the rounds in Harrisburg last week. And this week, the CEO of the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board will go a few rounds with the media as he pushes back against privatization of the commonwealth's liquor monopoly and pushes for legislation claiming to bolster state coffers.

Mr. Conti is advocating for Senate Bill 1287, sponsored by Allegheny County Democrat Jim Ferlo and now sitting in the Senate Law and Justice Committee.

The measure would, among other things, give the LCB greater product markup authority, add new administrative fees, increase fines and allow lottery tickets to be sold in liquor stores. About $70 million in new annual state revenues are projected.

Conti says the bill would allow the LCB to operate like a modern, wholesale and retail business and deliver a greater return for all Pennsylvania taxpayers.

Wow, welcome to the 20th century. And do remember that this is the same LCB beast that lost its shirt on those hilarious wine-vending machines.

Now, Mr. Ferlo insists that the push for privatization is driven by media seeking advertising dollars. Actually, it's driven by the very fundamental precept that government should not be in the liquor business (or any business other than administrating bona fide public services).

It's long past time to stop these LCB charades. Let's get on with privatization. Let's join the 21st century.

More Editorials headlines

View original post here:
Liquor control: Kill the beast

16-02-2012 19:40 How To Go To Heaven: http://www.jesus-is-savior.com http://www.presstv.ir Britain's ban on Press TV all about politics Wed Jan 25, 2012 9:33PM GMT By Faisal Bodi Ofcom's decision to stop Press TV broadcasting in the UK is a nakedly political action, which further sullies Britain's already tattered international reputation. In banning an international news channel from Britain's airwaves for the first time in history, the government-funded TV regulator has attacked the concept of free speech, denied British viewers access to an alternative voice, and further damaged the UK's relationship with Iran. Of course, Ofcom will say that this has nothing to do with politics. It will cite an unpaid fine of GBP 100000 and an administrative irregularity in Press TV's license contract. But that's absolute nonsense, and I'll tell you why. First of all, there is no doubt whatsoever that the British authorities and establishment have always regarded Press TV as a thorn in their side and have wanted it shut down. US State Department cables published by WikiLeaks have revealed that the British Foreign Office told the US embassy in London in 2010 that it was "exploring ways to limit the operations of... Press TV." According to WikiLeaks, the authorities reconsidered their decision in the face of legal obstacles at the time, but continued to look at other ways of advancing their agenda. Secondly, Britain has imposed sanctions on Iran, making it virtually impossible for anyone dealing with the country to ...

See more here:
CONTROLLED MEDIA Exposing The UK's Politically Motivated Censorship Of PressTV's Coverage - Video