So I decided to create a separate blog. Why? Well…I’m a sucker for punishment.

No, not really. I decided to participate in the 31 Days to Build a Better Blog program and after the first few days, it became clear to me that I needed to set up a separate space to blog and re-focus my portfolio site to display the work I’ve done so far. Never fear, I’ll keep this blog page up and plan to post on a regular basis.

So see me over at SocialBigTop.com. My first post is up already which talks about my decision. I’m really excited about the design of that site. I used the ArtSee theme from ElegantThemes and my background comes courtesy of WheelofFish over at Deviant art.

In a couple of days this site will be undergoing a re-design (again I’m a sucker for punishment). I’m still on Twitter at @TwoZen or you can reach me via email at annette [at] twozenproductions dot com.

“The daily mishaps of a harried woman and her semi-dysfunctional family and their attempts to survive life in general in the city of Orson, Indiana.”
(Source IMDB http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1442464/)

I take issue with the description of this show as “semi-dysfunctional.”  I think this particular TV family is actually a realistic portrayal of a fully functioning family.

The show features a family of five lead by two harried parents, Frankie and Mike Heck (Patricia Heaton from “Everybody Loves Raymond” and Neil Flynn from “Scrubs”), who obviously love each other and their children and show it through their actions, if not necessarily through their words. They are just barely making ends meet even though both parents have full-time jobs.  Hey I can totally relate to that situation, as I suspect lots of families could in today’s tough economy.

The episode when a tornado drops a brand new dryer in their front yard and the whole family decides to keep the desperately needed dryer makes for a touching family moment as they all work together to get the dryer into the house before one of their neighbors claims it.  I can totally relate to that situation and might do the same thing if a brand new dish washer somehow found itself to my front yard right now.

The two teenagers in the show are real teens. They are moody and emotional– pretty much just the way teens are.  The middle child Sue is a treasure.  She goes unnoticed by the world most of the time, but that doesn’t keep her from trying out for every school club and activity in a quest to fit in. This has lead to some pretty funny episodes, like the one when she tried out for the swim team even though she has no swimming ability and kept swimming right into the side of the pool. Ouch!

I especially love the youngest child. Brick. He is an incredibly smart yet somewhat odd kid who doesn’t fit in with his peers and he’s okay with that. He’s happiest when reading a book.  Brick has this habit of repeating words to himself in a whisper, which makes for some hilarious moments.

This is one sitcom that I sit down and watch with my girls each week (they are 9 and 6 years old). We laugh and laugh and then they spend the remainder of the night quoting Brick as he whispers to himself. If you are not watching “The Middle” you are missing a superb family-friendly half-hour of television.

By the way, “The Middle” refers to the fact that they live right in the middle of the country aka “America’s Heartland.”

The Middle is on Wednesday nights at 8:30pm ET/7:30 CT on ABC.

But as I was thinking about what to include in the blog portion of this site, I considered what topics I would like to write about that would actually reflect who I am and what I am interested in. And as anyone who really knows me will tell you, television has been a MAJOR part of my life.

Simply put:

I.
Love.
Television.

Given this, I thought I’d roll out a little feature that discusses television shows, trends and topics. Hope you enjoy it!

So stay tuned for my first TV Stuff blog post.

Why do I love this little microblogging service so much? Here are my top 5 reasons why:

1. Live Reaction to Televised Events. I love watching tv events while following instant reactions to what I’m seeing on Twitter. It’s fun to read snarky opinions on a star’s dress at the Golden Globes while the star is still on my TV. Last week I shared with other fans the pain of seeing Brett Farve helped off the football field during the Vikings-Saints game. Twitter is my little community and I don’t have to log into a forum and deal with delayed responses and unwieldy threads.

2. A Chuckle Now and Then. There are some fantastically funny people on Twitter. Yes, you can follow the streams of famous comedians, but I love it when I find an average Joe/Jill who is hilarious in 140 characters or less. I really look forward to their tweets.

3. Breaking News. I have an RSS reader, but I stopped using it as my primary source of news when I started using Twitter. It was on Twitter that I learned about Michael Jackson’s death, Billy May’s death (lots of deaths last year!), and of the recent Haiti earthquake. Often news is reported on Twitter first before major news operations have the chance to update their websites.

4. Happy Little Freebies and Coupons. Smart businesses post promotions and coupons on Twitter, which I happily take advantage of (hey I’m on a budget here!). My favorite freebie so far was a promotion run by The Phoenix Zoo which granted free entry to anyone who repeated a “secret word” to the ticket taker at the entrance gate. That was AWESOME! My entire family enjoyed a day at the zoo for free.

5. Manners Mean ALOT! The best way to cultivate a following on Twitter is to remember to “mind your manners.” Sending out thank you’s to people who’ve re-tweeted your tweets, tweeting a quick note of hello to your new followers and remembering to say “Congrats” to anyone who’s reported good new goes a long way here. I believe people want to follow nice people on Twitter. I know I do.

Okay now it’s your turn. Do you use Twitter? If you do, do you like the service and why?
Update: Forgot to add this: If you interested, you can follow me on Twitter at @Twozen

~ Annette

That’s what I said to myself when I saw Google Fast Flip.  I was searching Google news for articles on freelancing hoping to find some motivating tidbit to help keep me focused on my goals for this year.  Then it caught my eye. Down at the bottom of the Google search engine results page just under the usual links was the link to search Fast Flip:

* Create an email alert for freelancing
* search blogs for freelancing
* Search Google FastFlip for freelancing

Fast Flip? What the heck? << my thought as I clicked on the link.

Click.

Hello Google Fast Flip!

My eyes take in the visuals of thumbnail images from major publications and websites, each displaying an article or post regarding freelancing. Click on at thumbnail and view the site in the center of a frame with your search results listed on the left side.  There are options to email, share and to vote for the site. There are also arrows that allow you to scroll back and forth through the sites which is nice.

According to The Official Google Blog, Fast Flip was launched back in September 2009 as a part of Google Labs.  I recall seeing it back then, but completely forgot about it.

Here’s part of the description of the web application from the Google blog:

“Fast Flip is a new reading experience that combines the best elements of print and online articles. Like a print magazine, Fast Flip lets you browse sequentially through bundles of recent news, headlines and popular topics, as well as feeds from individual top publishers. As the name suggests, flipping through content is very fast, so you can quickly look through a lot of pages until you find something interesting.”

They have also created a mobile version for iPhones and Android-powered phones.

Check out Fast Flip here: http://fastflip.googlelabs.com/
and The Official Google Blog post about it here:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/read-news-fast-with-google-fast-flip.html

Also Tom Krazit at Cnet profile of Fast Flip http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10352342-265.html has more.

So what do you think? Could this be the way for newpapers to reinvigorate their industry by participating in Fast Flip? Or is this just a dud?

One of my goals for this year is to actively blog more.  I’m pretty sure this is a universal goal for anyone who runs a blog/site.  Finding the time to blog can be difficult. And then of course there’s the challenge of finding something to write about. Luckily the focus of this site reflects something I do on a daily basis — working with sites built in Joomla or Wordpress and obtaining good search engine results by using social media profiles to promote and engage. But it seems like there are so many other bloggers out there who are already writing about this stuff.  How does one offer an original perspective?

And therein lies my challenge.

So, bear with me as I try to figure out a way to do this. Any advice?  Feel free to share any tips you have in the comments below. I  look forward to reading them!

~ Annette

One of my “things to do” was to create a html Gmail signature for the TwoZen Productions Gmail account. There’s a great post at Mashable on ways to do this (see it here: http://mashable.com/2009/08/20/gmail-signature-tips/). I wanted a pretty standard signature; nothing too fancy. Here’s what I came up with:

Hello WiseStamp!

Initially I wanted to use the BlackCanvas extension for Firefox but was greeted with a 404 error when I clicked the link in the Mashable post. I did find the WiseStamp extension in the Firefox add-on directory and decided to go with that one instead. I clicked the button to install it and restarted Firefox. As soon as Firefox re-opened, it automatically took me to the WiseStamp website where the steps to configuring the add-on were listed (see it here). Plus the site features a handy video how-to, which was above and beyond what I expected.

I followed the instructions and clicked on the tiny stamp icon which now sits in the lower right hand corner my Firefox browser and selected “Edit Signature.” A dialog box opened with all sorts of options that I can choose from to include in my signature.

First, I changed the pull-down to Business, since this signature is for my business activities.  Next I used the information I got from Saila.com on how to style a horizontal rule (http://saila.com/webdesign/tips/hr/) and created one in Dreamweaver. Then I switched to HTML mode and added the code into the box. I toggled back to Visual view and began adding my name, email and website information.  I customized the font size and color and added the tiny sun image that I use on most of the sites I create  to give my signature that little extra.

Links to your Social Media Profiles

The WiseStamp add-on has a nice feature which allows you to add links to your social media profiles in your new html Gmail signature. The tab “Social” is active by default and lists fields to enter your LinkedIn profile, Facebook profile/page, Flickr stream and your Twitter feed. If would like to add a link to another social media site, all you have to do is select the little arrow next to the one of the icons and it opens the option to add a number of different social media sites, including Ning, Delicious, StumbleUpon, and Plurk. I ended up using Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn in my new signature. I also toggled over to the RSS tab and added the RSS feed to this blog.

Next step was to click on the Preview button at the bottom left and, “Voila! My new signature is displayed”:

I sent myself an email to test out the signature and everything worked fine. I did have to choose to download the tiny sun image in my Outlook, so I may take it out in my next version.  Also,”— @ WiseStamp Signature. Get it now” is automatically added to your signature.  I’m not sure how I feel about this link yet. In any case, I now have a much more professional signature to share with others.

One more thing
When I moved to my laptop to finish writing this post, I realized that I would not be able to access my signature and would have to re-create it in Firefox. I guess I can live with that. If anyone knows of a way to store a signature online, please do share.

Before the recent movement to use Wordpress as a CMS backed by the creation of Flutter and PodsCMS, there was a clear line. It made sense to use Joomla when creating a dynamic website backed by a large database of information. If you needed to create a blog, Wordpress was the way to go.

I guess I’m a traditionalist because I tend to stick with this approach. Wordpress works really well for personal blogs, corporate/small biz sites that want to include a blog (an essential these days). Joomla is my fave option for larger sites with lots of information like a directory of golf courses.

I did a bit of research the other day to see what other people are saying on the subject. Here’s a collection of some of the posts I found:

• Wordpress vs Joomla vs Drupal
• A Worthy CMS Battle: Joomla vs. WordPress
• How to Choose Between Joomla, Drupal and Wordpress
• Joomla or Wordpress, Which is Better? 20 items Compared
• Joomla vs Wordpress
• 5 reasons you should use Joomla instead of Wordpress
• Should I Use Joomla Or Wordpress?