AxisPortals came of age during the moon frenzy. She read Tom Corbett books, drank bright orange Tang, begged her mother to purchase SpaceFood Sticks (the chocolate version was just barely edible, but the taste wasn’t really the point–it was the idea of the thing that mattered), and could, like most children of that era, do a perfect imitation of a NASA launch countdown. ”Lift-off” soon became part of the everyday vocabulary of childhood.
Even the family cookie jar bore witness to the urgency and romance of the space race.
Over the weekend, the fifteen year old that AxisPortals knows best observed, in passing, that he found Facebook rather dull. Oh, he said, it had been fun for a little while, but with everyone (and their parents and grandparents) there–and with the endless invitations, applications, and updates–the initial appeal for him had faded considerably. On the whole, he noted, MySpace, despite its current lack of cool, had been a whole lot more fun. At least it could be readily tinkered with, and it wasn’t quite so parent heavy. Somewhere in there, he sighed over the boredom of it all.
AxisPortals wonders what, if anything, in the technological realm today fills us with wonder and excitement? What makes us want to dance in the moonlight all over again?
Countless gurus inform us of how we can and should use technology to improve our personal and professional lives, but it’s just as important to tend to what captures our imaginations, what fires us up, what gets us moony and starry-eyed, what makes us want to reach for something more.
AxisPortals Aphorism: In the rush toward technology, don’t miss out on the romantic rush of dancing by light of the moon, or the sweet challenge of reaching for it.
AxisPortals quotes Shakespeare this morning for two reasons. First, she loves the Bard of Avon, and does hate to miss an opportunity to work in some of those classic lines. Second and more importantly, though, it occurs to AxisPortals that all the world’s a multimedia, interactive social network, and that the wise small business will therefore provide its web visitors with plenty of opportunities–plenty of entrances, if you will–to interact with both the site and with the business itself.
So, how to go about making your website not only a static web presence, but an active staging area for forging interactions, relationships, and connections? Here are few quick and simple approaches:
Icons and Badges and Buttons, Oh My! The major social and business networking platforms all make it very easy to create attractive, clickable connections to your profiles so that visitors can quickly connect to you and interact with you. FriendFeed, LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, and Plurk, for instance, all provide easy, built-in badge or widget creation tools. Some of these simply provide links to your social networking profile. Others actually display your status updates and activities. Simply customize your page to suit your purposes and the style of your destination page, then copy the code and insert it into your website or blog. Then, your web visitors can rapidly scan your online network, and can easily connect with you. If you are working with a web designer, ask him or her to work with you to ensure that your website and/or blog include badges that represent your main public social and business networking profiles.
It’s Alive, It’s Alive: Every website does need some core information that is relatively static (though religiously kept fresh and up to date) and always easy to find. For instance, you will want to ensure that your contact information and product and service descriptions are stable and easy to access. However, today’s web is multimedia driven. That means that your small business website would do well to incorporate not only polished prose but also arresting graphics and absorbing audio and video elements that not only inform and create interest, but also make it easy for users to share your key content with others. Note, for instance, how effectively the Centers for Disease Control and the Department of Health and Human Services have leveraged podcasts and videos to disseminate authoritative information about the Influenza A H1N1 virus. Multimedia elements bring your website to life, often quite literally giving it a voice.
Feed Me! Websites are a lot like teenagers: they require nearly constant feeding. Fortunately, the web itself provides abundant sustenance for your business site in the form of newsfeeds. Select appropriate newsfeeds based on the nature and focus of your business. What kinds of information can you feed to your site that will most interest and best serve your visitors, whether they are current or prospective clients? Once you identify the relevant feeds, configure RSS widgets to match the style of your site, and embed the feeds in your pages. Embedded news feed widgets ensure that there are areas of continuously refreshed content on your site. Embedded podcast widgets are also a good idea, for they not only offer all of the advantages of a feed, but also add another multimedia element to your site.
We Really Have to Talk: You might also consider adding real-time discussion tools to your site. If real-time web-based discussion plays a major role in your business plan and you can devote personnel to monitoring your online chat tools, then investigate paid services such as Bold Chat, Volusion’s LiveChat, or WebsiteAlive. If you are just beginning to explore the possibilities of real-time web-based discussion, then it might be worthwhile to experiment some of the free or less expensive tools, such as those offered by Meebo and CoffeeCup. Embedding your Skype badge also introduces an element of real-time communication to your site.
AxisPortals Aphorism: Make your website an active staging area for forging interactions, relationships, connections, involvement.
Open Mosaic makes for an interesting study in the ways of collaboration. Earlier this evening, AxisPortals visited the site to add a tree. The tree was all branches and leaves. It wasn’t fruit bearing, and it had no background.
Less than five minutes later, the tree was dotted with apples, and surrounded by a jaunty teal sky with its very own square yellow sun. Grass and a hot pink and red flower in full bloom soon followed. Who knows what’s next? Before the evening is over, the tree could be part of an entire forest, or it could be entirely gone.
Watching the mosaic evolve reminds AxisPortals that digital collaboration with far flung colleagues often requires a certain je ne sais quoi. To participate fully in the process, and to enjoy it–and to allow others the freedom to do the same–one must be enthusiastic and willing to chase a vision, but must never be so unyieldingly focused on a single vision that it disrupts emergence of the always shifting whole. Yielding gracefully, after all (as gracefully as the digital branches in the mosaic yield to the pixel wielder of the moment) , plays a crucial role in collaboration. There’s plenty of room for individuality and originality, here, but there’s little room for the fixed or the permanent.
Collaborative Mosaic
AxisPortals Aphorism: Online collaboration isn’t really about thinking outside of the box. It’s about sharing the sandbox willingly, with good humor, and with grace. (So, wish AxisPortals’ tree good luck, but don’t mourn its passing when it goes–something new is sure to grow there.)
Often, AxisPortals’ web meanderings lead to interesting, educational, and edifying places. The leogeo site is definitely one of those places. Some of the many things to love about it:
It is an incredibly beautiful site. Indeed, it’s a whole gallery of lovely and intriguing things. Need to persuade someone that there is such a thing as digital art? Lead that person here.
It’s mesmerizing and involving. It’s quite impossible, for instance, to stop clicking on timebeat. Yes, it’s a clock, but such a clock! Plus, we aren’t generally invited to handle the clockworks, as it were, or to listen to their movement quite so fully, so there’s something very satisfying about it. It’s a bit haunting, that heart beating away our all too fleeting seconds, but the rhythm is meditative and profoundly relaxing as well.
It’s definitely not text driven. There is some text, of course, but it sure doesn’t limit itself to behaving in traditional ways. Plus, it never attempts to explain itself.
It’s a wonderful example of how deeply the ways of the web have influenced our literacy. Perhaps as little as ten years ago, quite a lot of folks wouldn’t have been able to make heads or tails of this space, but now almost all of us are comfortable enough with mouse and screen to know when and where to click. So, we can figure out the navigation, and we can interact with the art installations in the gallery with no textual prompting. Quite a far cry from the “click here” and “click me” days of hypertext, isn’t it?
It’s a wonderful reminder of one of the little truths of life that AxisPortals holds most dear: exploration leads to learning.
AxisPortals Aphorism (with thanks to leogeo):Most things really are “best viewed with curiosity”
As a fan of mind mapping tools–and as one of the many who appreciate that presentation tools can be used really well but are predominantly abused–AxisPortals has been having an especially good time experimenting with Prezi.
Because this new mind mapping and presentation tool is not at all driven by division into slides, anyone who is very familiar with a more typical slide show tool will probably need to create several experimental Prezi-tations before its distinctive flow starts to feel really natural, but it’s well worth the effort. Watching the demo videos on the site and interacting with the sample presentations there is also helpful.
Try not to be deadly serious about all things technological. Play, as noted earlier, is the best way to learn. Besides, play is fun, and people who are always up to their eyeballs in making smart technological decisions really need some healthy play to keep their lives in balance.
AxisPortals realizes that some folks just can’t stand not having a real goal or task, though, so here’s the “resolution schmesolution” assigment: make a Wordle.
A wordle can actually be a very good brainstorming and planning tool, as well, so this is play with a purpose. No guilt allowed. Besides, if you’re the competitive sort, you’ll not want to be the only one left in the whole wide world who hasn’t yet created at least one wordle.
Posted by axisportals 
Posted by axisportals 
Posted by axisportals 
