Create good web sites and make them more findable!

The goals of creating business web sites is to make profits or create awareness. In order to achieve any of these objectives, you need to think about how you can make your site more findable? Here are a few tips for you.

• Encourage your business counterparts to link to your web site to increase inbound links.
• Analyse the search languages often used by your customers in their search. Use those words and phrases in your content as frequently as you can.
• Choose good link text for your links so that your page is more relevant to the searches.
  Update your content frequently to increase spiders' visits.
• Incorporate a weblog and add RSS feeds.
• Submit your site to search engines such as Google, Yahoo!, Alta Vista, About.com, DMOZ, and more.

In addition to the above, a good site should be simple, fun, and attractive with effective navigation links. It should be built around contents, not sheer design. It should be able to communciate clearly your business, products and services. Shy away from plug-ins, fancy design, excessive animations, and complexity. Pages should load quickly, and each page should have a meaningful page title. Lastly, do not send customers away from your site!

How photographers help to better this world...

I just read about the non-profit organization called 'Now I lay me down to sleep', founded by Sandy Puc' and Dave Junion, with the mission of creating a lifetime memories for all parents who are experiencing death of a baby. Currently, they have gotten about 700 volunteer photographers from many different countries, who have signed up to volunteer their time to help.

It is just amazing and wonderful to see how, by using photography, people come together, charged with a healing mission and show compassion towards each other in times of unimaginable grief and pain.

If you are a professional photographer and is interested in helping, please visit the NILMDTS website at www.nowilaymedowntosleep.org. They are also looking for photoshop artists who can do images retouching.

Reflection: How can we, in the fast track of technology, synergize our talents and knowledge to help those in need? Instead of delving ourselves in the making of new technologies every day, or racing to catch up in the game, can we divert some of our time and energy to support good courses, perhaps, even remotely-related to what we are doing?

Tips on taking shots for your Movie

I was reading a book on creating an iMovie, and it talked about a few things that beginners should take heed of when shooting their footage. Being an amateur myself, I found the tips to be quite useful and would like to share them with you. Here you go...

1. A few jargons - panning is shooting from side to side; tilting is shooting up and down, somewhat like scanning an image from top to bottom or vice versa; tracking is keeping the subject in the center of the frame while panning.
2. Different kinds of shots - A wide shot (WS) reveals where the scene is taking place. A medium shot (MS) shows half-body of your subject. Two shot put two subjects in the same frame (variation: over-the-shoulder shot has one subject's back closer to the camera than the other subject facing the camera. A close-up shot (CU) is a head shot. (If you get in closer, so that the actor's head fills most of the frame, you have a tight close-up. Going in even tighter, to a person's eyes or mouth, gives you an extreme close-up.)
3. Always take multiple shots when you are shooting, say 2-3 shots.
4. With your camcorder cap on, start roll your film for 10-15 seconds before you actually start.
5. Try not to zoom in and out while you are shooting. Think of the zoom feature on your camcoder as a chain of multiple lenses where you pick one to do multiple shots from a wide angle, then use another lens perhaps for medium close-up, then another for real close-up.
6. Try to find one unique detail of your shot as the focal point when zooming in.
7. Don't jump around to take your shots. Start from one location, take 2-3 shots; then move to another position and take additional shots.
8. Remember to take a focus shot, meaning a shot of the storefront logo or the shop entrance so that you can put it into your movie as an intro or outro.
9. Use tripods to shoot your movie. There are more expensive ones that have a fluid head that you can use to pan smoothly and steadily.
10. Practice to stablize your hand while holding on to the camera. To create tracking effect, try using a swiveling chair and have somebody push you.
11. Apply the 'Rule of Thirds' - one of the most popular rule in photography to create pleasing and balanced compositions. Place the subject about one third of the way into the frame from the left or right and about one third of the way into the frame from the top or bottom.
12. The light should always behind your back, not behind the subject's. In case your subject is lighted from the back and you want to see details, use flash to fill in the shadows.
13. Angles- you don't have to always take pictures from the eye level. Try to shoot lying down on your stomach (low angle), from an elevated plane looking down (high angle), or simply position your subject in an informal manner.

Well, so much for that....

Smart Boards Replacing Chalks

I used to sneak into the classroom during recess to get my hands on the pink, green, blue, white and yellow chalks by the chalkboard and start painting my 'Picasso' on it ... (Of course, back then we didn't have much to spare for watercolors or pastels to paint on nice drawing paper.) And, I just love to volunteer and wipe clean the chalkboard for my teachers with that dirty old rag they gave me!

Time has turned around last decade to offer artists like me with 'markers' that I could doodle on what they call the 'Whiteboard'. When whiteboards took over, I was quite sad to say goodbye to my chalks...

In recent years, chalkboards has been replaced by a higher 'breed' called 'Smartboard'. And, I am telling you, they are really smart, not only that they can let you write without any chalks or markers, they let you project on them, and save and print from them.

Let's take a look at what kids are doing with Smartboards at Columbia University's elementary school ...
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By David Cohn| Also by this reporter 02:00 AM Jun, 09, 2005

"It is a must-have technology," said Shawn Mishler, director of communications technology at Columbia's privately run elementary school. "My dream school would have 7-foot-diagonal, in-wall units in every classroom. That, however, requires a lot of in-wall space, which is not practical in Manhattan."

During a recent visit to the school, students in a third-grade class used the board to demonstrate solutions to math problems. The children drew on the board with their fingertips and explained to the class how they came up with their answers.

As each child sketched their answers, the solutions were saved as separate files on the teacher's computer. The 8-year-old students were eager to use the board and show the class what they had learned.

"It really helps with motivation," said Eliza Bang, the class teacher. "As a platform for encouraging group work, it's amazing."

Bang uses the board to display a wide range of learning materials on her computer, from web pages to video clips. It is also used as a lunch-time reward for students: The children watched Black Beautyon the same screen that was used earlier for geography.

Clickers in Classrooms

Read this article from Wired News on how elementary school teachers apply clickers in classroom. Right - we are talking about fifth graders, who are already using the newest available technology day-in and day-out! Personally, I do not see technology as intimidating, but my question is how can we, the 'immigrants' bridge the gap? The race is long and deems not easy- for a lot of people.
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By Associated Press | Also by this reporter
12:40 PM Jul, 04, 2005

An honors student at Ohio State, a kid in a fifth-grade science class in Kentucky and a deaf student in England all begin their learning experience the same way: with their hand wrapped around a remote control.

Hundreds of colleges, high schools and even middle schools are using "clickers" -- as even manufacturers call them. A moderator can pose a question and within seconds the respondents' answers are anonymously logged on a laptop at the front of the room.

"This is the MTV era," said Neal H. Hooker, an Ohio State professor who uses the technology in his agricultural economics course. "It's the instant-gratification generation. They don't like doing a quiz and hearing the responses in three days. They want to see if they've got it right or wrong right then."

Feelin' like a 'Digital Alien' more than a 'Digital Immigrant'

I was preparing my training materials on Yahoo!Messenger and got really excited about the new PC to Phone feature in addition to the free PC to PC calls I have been using for a long time.

As I was feeling i am ahead of the game bringing this technology to my fellow co-workers next month, my daughter simply thought i should not make too big a deal about this. Of course, the digital natives talk in a different tone than we do. The way I look at how I use technology compared to the younger generations, if I am not digital 'aliens' to them, at least I could call myself a 'digital immigrants'.