Alabama democrat candidate for U.S. House reaches out to bloggers

The political season offers many opportunities for exploring how candidates are using social media in their campaigns. I didn’t think I’d find many (if any) examples in the Alabama races this year. Then, a Google ad popped up in my mail reader: “Turning Alabama Blue - Segall2008.com - Viable democrat running in Alabama. Watch his intro-video and join us!” Read more

Something New This Spring :: Student Digital Resumes and Portfolios Online

Note: All portfolios are now being posted to PRProspects.com.

Spring semester brought something new for the PR Style & Design class. They published their digital resumes and portfolios online.

The students completed their final projects this week. The links below lead to their digital resumes and portfolios.

In the past, some students took it upon themselves to do this. Each semester, more and more chose that path. So, I thought about having all the students stake their place online with a resume.

I think this is a positive opportunity. Already, some of the students have received positive feedback from those they’ve applied to for internships and jobs.

A diverse group, these students are either graduating, heading out to do their internships or about to search for internships/jobs. So, if you’re interested in hiring … check these links out now.

We’ve been doing a final project like this for years. But, this is the first time I’ve required the students to obtain a domain and publish their final projects online.

Here are the results … Read more

CollegeWebEditor.com Gets ReDesign :: Same Great Writing

For her blog’s second anniversary, Karine Joly chose to update the look of the site. I like it. Visit collegewebeditor.com. Karine’s all about “web, marketing & PR in higher ed.”

One of the many things I really like about Karine’s site is the writing. She’s quite good … and very thorough. The site is filled with great tips and news items I’d likely never see without her tireless efforts.

Karine’s agreed to a podcast interview down the road. We hope to get that done within the month. Look for it, or listen for it?

Here’s the new look. But go see it for yourself. The site is a must read.

PRblogs.org Now Offers Personalized Widgets

For some time, users of PRblogs.org have desired the ability to personalize their sidebars. Now, that is possible.

Widgets have arrived at PRblogs.org. This will add significant functionality and likely please existing and new users.

Fiddling with plugins, I’ve been able to get Widgets to work on PRblogs.org.

Pretty cool. Visit the example blog at widgets.prblogs.org to see how they look.

In the sidebar, you will see - from the top

• a text widget pointing to an image file,
• a text widget holding Constantin’s code to search for all PR blogs,
• the Google search widget,
• an RSS feed widget, and
• a del.icio.us feed widget.

Pretty nice, huh. Currently widgets only work on two themes - default and classic - but we’ll fix that over the coming week.

I’ll be going through and identifying themes that will work with widgets. All don’t, by the way, and it will likely take awhile for “all” to be made widget friendly. But, I’ll come back and identify the ones I find that work both with widgets and WordPress MU, the versions of WordPress we are running at PRblogs.org.

I’ll consider adding other widgets, if you wish to suggest them. I’m thinking that I’ll not put the PHP execute widget in as that is a security issue. But, there are others out there and I’m open to considering them, if you wish.

Update: Themes that work with widgets on PRblogs.org are now these…

• WordPress Classic
• WordPress Default
• whiteasmilk
• and more to come…

infOpinions Redesign by Necessity

IE7 does not like my blog. This blog, specifically. It likes all the other WordPress sites of mine, but not this particular blog. Hmmm? I’m guessing it is a plugin conflict, but do not know. I have so many running, I really don’t want to go through the process of deactivating them one at a time to see if that’s the case.

As you can see, I have changed the layout. I did it for my own site to test one I’m creating for another project.

What do you think? I like the widget goodness of the newest WordPress themes. That is invisible to you, I know, but the AJAXY widgets make defining layout simple - without any HTML or PHP, if you wish. The opensource Wordpress community has made the platform even easier to use and adapt. Their efforts are deeply appreciated.

This theme is Tarski. I like it very much. Great work from Ben Eastaugh and Chris Johnson. The flexibility is quite remarkable.

The theme I really want to implement is Canvas - by Karsten Temme and Yasser Dahab. It worked in WordPress 2.0.4, but the recent upgrade to 2.0.5 makes the Canvas plugin fail, for me. They state, on their site, that they will be rewriting the theme. I’m hopeful.

Have any of you had good fortune with IE 7, or any of these widget-friendly WordPress themes?

Update: Do not, whatever you do, put an ampersand in one of your tags. I had Style & Design in there and it crashed my feed.

Web Site Development Week :: HigherEd BlogCon

HigherEd BlogCon is still going on this week. The month long event concludes with Websites & Web Development. This is a good group of articles. Mike Richwalsky serves as Section Chair. Karine Joly and Rob Pongsajapan assisted in setting up the week of posts.

Monday, April 24, 2006

Legal Education Podcasting Project

John Mayer
Executive Director
Elmer Masters
Director of Internet Development

Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction/CALI

Tuesday, April 25, 2006

Student To-Do List RSS Feed: Combining Audience and Task Navigation

Matthew Winkel
The College of New Jersey

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Using Web Traffic with a Kaizen Methodology

Tiffany Vincent
Academic Web Services

brilliantignorance.com

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Know Enough to be Dangerous: Tools for Taking Control of HTML and CSS

Steve Lawson
Colorado College

Bringing Audio to a Visual Medium: Podcasting News and Events

CASE Online Speaker Series
2:00-3:30 ET (Paid registration required.)

Friday, April 28, 2006

The Fast Track to Agile Web Apps: Best Practices for Higher Ed Web Development on Rails

Jason Garber
Eastern Mennonite University

CSS and Accessibility: infOpinions? del.icio.us links for 2006-02-20

Food for Style and Design thought. A very interesting CSS tutorial - real time. Look at the page develop as more CSS elements are added. Quite an interesting tutorial idea.

Also, accessibility is a key issue for all web surfers. You want your audience to have the most “barrier-free” trip to the site. There are a myriad of browsers in use today.

An example: Remember that many people - especially in developing countries - are likely looking at Web pages through old (really old) browsers on machines running Windows 95 (or earlier). So, if that is your audience - be prepared to reach them. That brings us to the Firefox Accessibility Extension to check your Web pages. How fun.

• Albino Blacksheep - Live Design
  A very interesting tutorial … real time … from Digg … http://digg.com/design/CSS_Live_–_Watch_a_page_come_together.
  (tags: CSS Style+and+Design Web+Design HTML tutorial)
• Accessibility Extensions for Mozilla/Firefox: Announcements
  Excellent tool for both assisting people with disabilities access web pages and to find the problems and fix them.
  (tags: CSS Style+and+Design Web+Design accessibility web+access)

infOpinions? del.icio.us links for 2006-02-19

Just one link today.

This blog is neat for several reasons, but the best for us may be the tutorials. So, crack open your Photoshop and try them out today.

Also, read their other sections - Gallery and Resources. A nice blog with useful tips and info. Just ignore their rather unfortunate tagline. Hey, it is the internet. Is anyone really surprised?

• Photoshopblog.net
  Cool blog … with tutorials and more.
  (tags: photoshop tutorials blog)

New Theme for infOpinions? :: In Business

Is it strange that, when I find a few free minutes, I turn to checking out new templates and do a redesign of the site? Probably so. But, nonetheless … I did it again.

Many thanks to Kaushal Sheth for porting the In Business theme from Now Design’s “Business Design” free template they contributed to OSWD.org - Opensource Web Design.

I like the clean and easy to read use of white space. Kaushal did a fine job in crafting the ‘.php’ files to work quite well with WordPress.

So, thanks to Kaushal and NOW Design.

Update:  I have removed all five of the javascript functions I had running in the sidebar.  That ’should’ help with the pageloads.  They were neat tools, but - if they discourage those that might visit because of shear lag-time and frustration - they just don’t cut it, yet.

infOpinions? Redesign :: I’m Playing. Be Afraid.

Danger, Will Robinson. If you are not interested in style & design, this post isn’t for you. I link below to most of the new themes for WordPress that I really find to be quite attractive as well as very well constructed. You will find photoblog themes, one administration area theme and many colorful and whitespace optimized blog themes.

Hey, if you like looking at pretty designs, this post has links for you. So, if you are game - read on….

I have been wanting to redesign this blog, and several others I have going, for some time. During the holidays I’ll be playing with different ideas. Do you have any suggestions for some new WordPress themes that have been released recently?

Some of my favorites so far are:

K2 at Binary Bonsai is yet another truly nice theme from the creator of the famed Kubrick theme, Michael Heilemann, and Chris J Davis for WordPress. Kubrick is now the default theme for WordPress, for instance. But K2 goes much further. A one-column theme. Very pretty and getting lots of buzz online. It is still beta and seems destined for WordPress 2.0, but works with 1.5.2. Still, a pretty theme. Simple, clean and easy on the eyes.

All of the themes based upon the work of Andreas Viklund are just beautiful, to me. So, the following themes are especially nice:

WPAndreas03 v1.0: Somewhat similar to “Think Different” (you’ll see that one in a minute). This is a clean and pretty whitespace theme.

Kaushal Sheth’s Wordpress Themes are very beautiful and quite clean, too. They share similar characteristics with work by Andreas, above. Or, vice versa. Don’t know if they’ve ever actually seen each other’s work.

And, there are many more great new themes, too.
Impact: A clean and modest business looking theme. Simple, but quite nice.
triSexuality: An interesting name. This is a ‘very’ colorful and clean them with three-columns. Very stylish.
Eclectic Theme for Wordpress: Orange. Very sleek and pretty. A ‘different’ kind of design.
Kiwi: Great look, but I swear I can’t read it.
Phoenix Theme: Very clean and nice. But, a bit dark. However, that can easily be changed with the background color.
Think Different: A very “Mac” looking theme. Clean and lotso whitespace.

And, for something totally different, there is SpotMilk. Now that is actually a theme specifically aimed at the admin area of your blog. Great work.

How about a specific WordPress photoblog theme? Try Tan. This is really nice. Beautiful, in fact. Very clean and well done. This one should win prizes. Lots of prizes. And, the designer - Taly (Spanish) - has more Fotolog Themes to choose from, too.

I so hope that WordPress 2.0 will be released during the holidays. There has been a little scuttlebutt that it will, but we’ll have to see. I’ve already installed that a few times with the beta and two release candidates. It is looking sooooo good. WordPress has all of the other platforms beat - hands down. There will no longer be any question with 2.0. (Update: Just found that release candidate #3 is out. Get it here.)

I have already installed and slightly alterd the Exquisite theme. You can see it in action on this blog with this link. The theme is based upon the Andreas03 theme. The images will likely change, but I like the very “whitespace” look of the theme. Simple to read and so easy to navigate. It is a fixed-width theme. Some people don’t like those, but I do.

Update: Also found some very nice and well crafted themes from The English Guy - Richard Dows. Of particular interest are the News Print and Spick and Span themes. Can’t wait for those to be available for download. He’s doing some very nice work, so check it out.

Duke Web Site Redesign Blog :: Oh, Boy!

Ah, yes. Sweet happiness. You know how I love these college Web site redesign efforts via blog. Constantin Basturea kindly tipped me off to this one. He writes, “http://redesign.dukenews.duke.edu/ (via CollegeWebEditor) I know you’re a fan :)” And, yes. I am. Thanks, Constantin. And, thank you Karine (collegewebeditor.com), too.

Welcome “Redesigning the Duke.edu Website” to the college redesign social network. Good for them!

I made quite the goofball of myself with many posts about Cornell’s redesign project. I even nominated them for a Bob. They did pretty well, but their focus/audience was so narrow/niche, they couldn’t quite beat the broader sites.

So, could “Redesigning the Duke.edu Website” be my next cause celebre? Well, the title of the blog could use some work. However, it is quite literal. No confusing it with any other topic.

Thus far, the blog has 10 posts and Whoa! 141 comments. Pretty good startup. The Office of News and Communications (ONC) is moderating the posts. That isn’t unreasonable. Hey, it is a university site. No need to have students writing their off-color comments in there. Oh, students would never do that now, would they?

The three posts that garnered the most interest so far are - not surprisingly - the ones with examples of the pending design.

Mock-up: Design 2 Homepage (59 comments)
Mock-up: Design 1 Secondary Page (29 comments)
Mock-up: Design 1 Homepage (19 comments)

Among the interesting comments? “I’d like to see a mock up of #2 with images unrelated to science and technology. Although I’m an engineer myself, I think it portrays too much ‘nerd’ and not enough humanities.”

If nothing else, these comments will aid the design group in forming questions for any focus / demo groups they may wish to put together before launching the new site. Previously, most of these observations probably came from IT pros and selected administration and faculty members. They might have thrown in a few students along the way. At Cornell, parents and alumni also joined in the discussions. Hope that happens for Duke, too. I did find one alum / parent post already.

This blog, by virtue of the comments and participation so far, is focusing more on style & design - user friendly GUI - and not so much the aura and history of the school. Much of the Cornell.edu blog had some very entertaining comments about the school and how it should be portrayed in the portal’s design. This may well surface as the Duke blog is still young. Color (ah, Duke blue) has already surfaced, too. My experience in Web design has shown that color choice seems to be the primary concern of so many users.

This will be an interesting site to follow. I promise not to over post about this one. OK, well I’ll ‘try‘ to not over post about it. Can’t help it. I just think this is a great way to involve people in a conversation. It is especially interesting to see at places where, strangely, these kinds of decisions are ‘not’ ususally opened up to the core stakeholder groups. Involving your audience up front? Go figure. What a concept.