The older I get, the more time is on my mind. I took a hiatus from this blog for a while, and while I was gone, the blog had its 6th birthday. 6th!
I can’t believe I’ve had this blog for 6 years.
When I started it, I had more free time and so I posted more often. I’d thought that as I got older, my free time would increase, but it hasn’t worked out that way. However, I’ve missed blogging and writing, so here I am.
Space is the other thing on my mind – I use the free version of WordPress for this blog, so I get a limited amount of space for the pictures I add. When I was posting reviews of dance shows, I had multiple pics per post. Same with when I started doing travel photos – multiple pics per sim. I’ve only used 21% of my free storage so far, so I guess I have another 12 years or so before I need to worry about reaching the limit? 😛
Seriously, though, it’s a real dilemma. You want pics because those interest people (and drive traffic) but the tradeoff is the space requirements. I could upgrade to a paid account with WordPress and get more space, but that’s hard to justify right now.
I also used to post my pics to Flickr, but now Flickr is limited as well, unless I pay to go Pro (which I won’t). So now I’m back to debating what social media I might want to use with the blog. I used to post on KoinUp back in the day and they’re still around (and still free, I think) or I could use my Ello account. Any suggestions besides Fakebook and Twitter? 😀
I am a very organized person. I don’t like clutter and I am a big fan of only keeping what you need.
Until it comes to pictures and my inventory. 😀
Years ago, I bought a portable/external hard drive for storing photos. It was 700 GB and I was sure that it would last me forever. 10 years later, I suddenly realized it is almost full. Yikes!
I keep all my family photos on it, and with my youngest very involved in sports, I have a ton of videos from games and meets. I also keep all my music on it, and when I was moving files around a few days ago, I noticed that it was almost at capacity. 10 years is a pretty good run for a hard drive, and I’ve never (knock on wood) had an issue with it.
My wonderful husband ordered me a new one so that I could retire this one. The new one is 4 TB, and once again, I am certain that it will last me forever. 😛 Now that I have been taking more and more photos (in SL and RL), I need more storage. Because when it’s just pixels I’m saving, it doesn’t seem so bad. Right?!
I must say, I am really liking our Amazon Prime membership. Things that used to take weeks to get here are now here bright and early on Monday mornings, before 7am. That’s pretty amazing, imho. Which means that my brand spankin’ new hard drive is now sitting on the counter, waiting to be installed. 😀
Even though pixel/digital storage is relatively cheap and plentiful, it isn’t endless. For example, with my free WordPress account, I get 3GB of storage for photos and videos. After blogging for about a year and half, I’ve used 11% of that 3 GB. I could probably continue to upload my photos to WordPress for some time without worrying about hitting that limit.
However, since I’ve been taking more photos and sharing them here, I recently started uploading my photos to Flickr and then embedding them into my blog. Flickr gives me 1 TB of free storage with my free account, and again, it doesn’t seem likely that I will ever use it up.
I’m not sure that embedding my photos from Flickr saves me all that much time (maybe 30 secs of upload/clicking time?). I guess that does add up over the course of a year or so. Except that, of course, as soon as I started doing that, Flickr changed their embed code to include an obnoxious script that plasters unwanted and unnecessary information all over my beautiful photos! Good thing I figured out how to get rid of the annoying script. 😀
So today on my to-do list is installing my new hard drive, my new wireless mouse, and spending some time sorting out the black hole my inventory has become lately. I need to free up some space for more shoes. 😛
One of Eve Kazan’s snapshots (from Flickr) showing Prometheus’ products (robotic arms) and their competitor’s (Neurolab) logo
Second Life Blogger Eve Kazan returned from a holiday abroad in Spain to find WordPress had taken down three snapshots she published on her blog post. Prometheus Creations Studio, owned by Second Life resident Irine Abbot, filed the DMCA with WordPress’s owner, Automattic Inc on May 22nd.
Creator Irine Abott of Prometheus Creations first communicated with Ms Kazan on May 14th about the alleged infringement of the snapshots she published on April 3, 2014, via Facebook:
I was happy to see the robotic arms used in creative ways. However I was not happy to see my products used in commercially advertising a competitor, presenting the impression that they are from Neurolabs. I would appreciate it if you could please either remove the photos or add the product listing of the arms in the post as you did with…
This weekend, among other things, I decided to start digging a little deeper into my social media platforms.
I’ve been asking questions, but no one seems to know the answers, so – research it is!
There are only 24 hours in a day, and while I’d like to be as active as I can on social media, I don’t want to spend gobs of time doing it.
Automated Sharing
When I started blogging with WordPress, I knew there was an option for ‘sharing’ your posts on various platforms.
(It’s under Settings>Sharing, if you’re interested.)
As I am on WordPress.com (the free WordPress) and not WordPress.org (their CMS for self-hosted websites), I often don’t have as many options as I might otherwise.
In this instance, my options for sharing are limited.
I can set up my blog to automatically send my posts to Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+.
I don’t have a Facebook or a LinkedIn account, so those are not options.
I do have Google+ and Twitter accounts, so I set those up.
It’s been working okay.
Twitter
I’ve been paying a bit more attention to Twitter and I decided that I needed to look into how to attach photos to my tweets.
My posts always have some sort of image – it might be a LOTD pic or just an image I think is relevant to my post topic.
And since everything you read says people pay more attention when an image is included, I wanted to include them in my tweets.
Easy enough, since I see pics all over my Twitter feed and Twitter gives you the option to add a pic when tweeting.
I couldn’t find anything under the sharing options that would enable me to tell WP to add a pic to my tweets.
So, I did a bit of digging online.
In order to include pics in your automatic tweets, you have to have ‘Twitter Cards’ enabled.
What?
More research – what is a Twitter Card and how do I get/enable one?
Twitter Cards enable you to include photos in your tweets.
There are seven different types of Twitter Cards.
For my purposes, the only ones I needed to be concerned with were the Summary Card and the Summary Card with Large Image.
The Summary Card basically adds your pic to your tweets.
Great!
So then you have to go to the card validator, enter a post URL (as far as I can tell, it doesn’t matter which one), and wait for it to ‘validate’ your blog.
Then, you’re all set!
Their example page shows what your tweet should look like with the card.
It Worked – Almost
After validating my Twitter Card, I waited to see what would happen when my tweets posted (tweeted?).
My tweets didn’t look any different.
Instead of looking like the example card, it looked like this:
Where’s the image?
This is what my automatic tweets all looked like before I set up the Twitter Cards.
What gives?
Did I do something wrong?
Nope.
If you clicked on the tweet to see the details, it actually looked like this:
Great!
There’s my picture, along with an excerpt from the post.
Just click on the link, go straight to my blog, and read.
Easy peasy, right?
Except that hardly anyone clicks on a tweet to see the details.
What they see on their Twitter feed is the first image.
Which defeats the purpose of having the Twitter Card so that it includes the image in the tweet.
More research – how can I make the auto tweet look like this, instead of as it does above?
The short answer is – you can’t.
Not using the automatic sharing built-in to WordPress, anyway.
TweetDeck
I thought the answer would be that I needed to change my Twitter Card type from Summary Card to Summary Card with Large Image.
That way, my tweet would show a large image on the tweet, rather than just a small square as above.
However, I can’t.
For whatever reason (which involves computer know-how that is above my pay grade), the WordPress automatic sharing only uses the Summary Card.
It also does not use the expanded version, so the whole process of setting up the Twitter Cards ended up being kind of pointless for me.
What someone else recommended (unless/until the WP automatic sharing changes), is using a third-party app like Buffer.
I already had TweetDeck, so I decided to try that.
TweetDeck lets you use your Twitter account to sign in, and you can schedule your tweets.
I know there are other options, like HootSuite, but I used TweetDeck since I already had it.
I scheduled my post to tweet again several hours later.
When I checked my feed – voilá!
This is what I saw:
Woot!
That’s what I wanted it to look like.
My post title, a large pic from my post, and a link to my post.
(I was going to share the pic of my other scheduled tweet, but I was so focused on including the pic that I forgot to include my blog link – doh!)
For now, I will be using TweetDeck to schedule my tweets. 🙂
I am going to let WP continue the automatic sharing, because the Twitter Cards offer you the ability to look at some analytics.
After a few weeks, I’ll check the analytics and see if there is a difference in stats between the automatic tweets and the ones I schedule with TweetDeck.
Other Platforms
I chose to delve into Twitter first, because it seemed like the simplest platform.
That said, it still took a bit of digging to find what I needed to know.
I plan to do the same thing with the other platforms I’m using, but it may take a while, if this exercise was any indication. 😛
In the last few of weeks, there have been a couple of posts over at New World Notes about various social media networks and the writer’s opinion on their usefulness for Second Life users.
As a blogger, I am always looking for ways to make connections – with other bloggers, readers, SLers, etc.
A great way to do that is social media.
However, there are sooo many platforms and only 24 hours in a day (and I reserve some of those hours for sleep and RL!), so how do you decide which ones to use?
Also, how can you get the most out of the time you do spend on each network?
Rather than covering all the networks mentioned in the NWN articles, I’m going to stick to the ones I use or have questions about (hey, this is about me, right?).
I would love to streamline my process, so I’m asking all you brilliant people for your tips and tricks on the various platforms.
WordPress
(Okay, this isn’t really a social network, but I still have questions. 😛 )
Obviously, I use WordPress to blog.
However, a TON of people use Blogger.
Is there an easy way (or any way) to ‘like’ a Blogger post?
On WordPress blogs, I can hit a ‘like’ button or leave a comment very easily.
I haven’t found a way to ‘like’ Blogger posts.
Also, with Blogger posts, I have to pick a ‘profile’ to use for a comment and 9 times out of 10, when I hit ‘publish,’ Blogger eats my comment. -.-
Twitter
I use Twitter, but I’m not sure that it’s all that useful for networking in SL.
I follow quite a few people, but most tweets tend to be people tweeting their blog posts or pics.
Is there a way to streamline/pick SL content for my Twitter feed?
I have tried using TweetDeck, but I usually am on a mobile device when I’m on Twitter, so is there a way to use TweetDeck on mobile?
Are there ‘must-follow’ people on Twitter?
What hashtags do most SLers use when tweeting about SL?
Flickr
I finally caved several months ago and got a Flickr account, and I must say, I love it.
I love taking photos and playing around in Photoshop, and I’m having a ton of fun.
However, the Flickr UI (which apparently is constantly changing), is not user-friendly at all.
I have joined groups and followed others, but is there a way to easily view recent group photos besides clicking through to each group’s postings?
A group photostream, like the one I get for people I follow on Flickr?
I’ve tried adding an RSS feed to my feed reader (Feedly), but it doesn’t work. 😦
Are there tags I should be using (for my own photos and for searching) other than ‘Second Life’ or ‘SL’?
Avatar Social Network (ASN)
I signed up for ASN because I loathe Facebook.
I know I can have a Facebook Page as my avatar, but I don’t like the constantly changing privacy policies at Facebook.
Plus, a Page just doesn’t give you the tools that a profile does, so it doesn’t foster the same networking ability.
I like ASN.
It’s easy to use (it’s set up in many ways like Facebook with ‘likes,’ ‘groups,’ ‘pages,’ etc.) and there is a large friendly community.
ASN serves other virtual worlds besides SL, but there are plenty of active SLers on ASN.
However, I feel like I could be getting more out of ASN.
Are there people I should be following on ASN?
Any input about ASN is appreciated. 🙂
Google+
I am on Google because I have Gmail.
I do not have a Google+ page – should I?
People can follow my profile on Google – is it necessary to also have a page?
I like Google – I think the tools are more intuitive to use than most other platforms.
But like ASN, I often feel I could/should be getting more out of the time I spend there.
Other Platforms
I am on Ello, but when I first joined, it was not very populated.
I haven’t been back in a while – is the SL community there growing?
Or was it just the latest new shiny alternative to Facebook?
What about SLUniverse and the forums?
Are there other platforms that are helpful for networking with other SLers?
My husband has been working crazy hours thanks to a recent storm – he got home early this morning after a 22 hour shift.
Yikes!
So while he sleeps, I blog. 🙂
And we’re supposed to get another humdinger of a storm today – lots of hail, wind, and possibly tornadoes.
Gotta love spring!
I spent most of yesterday attending a Creative Live class about using eCommerce solutions with WordPress.
I had worked with some of the add-ons for a client previously, but at the time, I was overwhelmed by it all.
After watching the class, I was struck by one thought – what the heck was I afraid of?
It’s not rocket science, after all. 😛
I am planning to use some of what I learned as I work to get my book published and available online.
So thanks Nai, for turning me onto Creative Live!
I also had a chance on Monday to try out the new mesh heads by Lelutka.
I’m torn.
On one hand, I am not a fan of mesh heads, because I think they make everyone look too similar.
Plus, they almost all seem to have turned-down, pouty lips.
Is a neutral mouth so much to ask?
On the other hand, I did like the Lelutka heads better than many I’ve seen, though I confess that the 3 different heads look almost exactly the same to me.
I love that the heads made the neck seam disappear when wearing my mesh body.
However, I just don’t see myself wearing a mesh head every day.
And with the steep price ($2500L), it isn’t worth the investment to me if I only wear it occasionally.
I must say, though, I am absolutely loving the mesh body I have.
I’ve been using it for a lot of the LOTD photos and it has reduced considerably the amount of time I spend fiddling with the pics in Photoshop.
No weird pointy bits that I need to smooth out anymore!
I have a ton of things to get done today, so I’m off to get busy.
I am debating wrapping my cars with bubble wrap to try and protect them from the giant hail they keep saying we’re going to get this afternoon. 😦
A Kat and A Mouse 