6.1 Representing the Self

I have thought long and hard about choosing an avatar image to represent my online presence. One that I can use in different settings that is not rude, crude, whacky, businessy etc.. I like the idea of anonymity, yet reality, I like creativity rather than 'Plain Jane' face shots. Yet I do respect faceshots as avatars, the genuine nature says mountains. So I have chosen an inbetween avatar image, that is both creative yet authentic.

I am choosing to use a sunflower as the main background to my face, which I can change depending on my mood and creativity with other sunflower images and face shots that I can take myself (gives me an excuse to garden more!)

The image is a mesh of a sunflower and my face, both images I took myself. I love sunflowers, I grow them for colour and to collect seed to feed our chooks and to sprout for eating. The image represents the bright side of my life, a connection I have to the garden and life as one with nature. My face is not happy, not sad, I'm viewing the world, an observer, an internet avatar that I hope develops enquiry.

I'm choosing to use the below CC licence.

Flower Avatar by Noah Kololo is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

5.2 Remediating for 140 Characters

I found this task the hardest so far. I do have a Twitter account but I rarely use it, find it frustrating and convoluted. Yet after much research and discovery I am growing to appreciate it on some level.

I added TweetBlender to my blog which updates Tweets from Twitter accounts that I follow and have chosen to update on my blog.

I tried searching for many subject headings of importance and got very little useful ontopic tweets back.. I tried environment consciousness as a Twitter search and got nothing.

RE #Tags.. I find searching for info using #tags quite laborious.. There seems to be program after program attempting to make sense of #tags and the myriad of fragmented information all vying for time in the lime light that is the now moment. I used http://hashtags.org/ and http://tweetchat.com/ to little avail.

The issues with looking for information using #tags is that the information provided is specific to that word/topic, not the person Tweeting. If a # Tweet appeals then more often than not the user that posted the #Tweet will be doing it for business, or its a one off, not a totality. Sifting through mountains of #Tweets to find current topical info is very annoying.

I found these Twitter uses of specific interest 

• EckhartTolle who quite amazingly is following just 5, while has a following of18,722 Followers
• tacticalmonk, and DavidSuzuki

I retweeted djcdines "All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness" Eckhart Tolle 1:30 AM Feb 1st. However I cannot see where the retweet went/is. I do not have any retweets listed even though I have sent a few. This makes it difficult to follow. I shall investigate..

Looked into Tweet Deck http://www.tweetdeck.com/, however does not interest me.

I am following “in order to get tracked via a hash tag, you need to opt-in and follow” http://kristinewirth.com/that-mysterious-sign-in-twitterwhat-does-it-mean http://twitter.com/hashtags.

“Once you’re following Hashtags, every time you make a post in Twitter and tag it with a hash mark like so:  #iPhone, it will then show up as a real-time post on http://www.Hashtags.org.”

I tested the #tag and sent this:

#Monsanto~WANTED for crimes against life, see the documentary “The world according to Monsanto” #sustainability #consciousness @Hippy2012 Tue, 09 Feb 2010 22:05:31

This is what came up almost immediately on http://hashtags.org/consciousness after posting my Twitter Tweet. I'm sure I'll get some popup messages now notifying me of new followers. (Yep within 10mins I have a new follower)

I searched the top Twitterers and found mashable - The hottest Twitter news, Twitter tips and Twitter help. With1,957,237 follower. So I am now following

Searched http://wefollow.com/ for tags of interest to follow and to add to blog. I liked the option of searching for the most influential and followed, according to tags. Also signed up to be on the Tag list under the interests of consciousness, gardening, revolutionary, green, adventure

I even decided to follow ashton kutcher the leading twitterer with 4,499,808. Figure I might learn a few things about Twittering off him.

I added a firefox tool called Twitter Toolbar, where I can quickly add content, it also has many other tools.

I just added a tweet:  Hippy2012 What does 'Free Culture' mean to you? http://tinyurl.com/yel5qnv

This links back to my blog, so I hope to drive more traffic there and get some comments happening.

My blog URL is still generic, being http://surfingsolomonislands.com/wordpress_2_8_6/. So until I work out how to change it I don't want to be spreading this current address out too much. I also really need to get a header image working on the blog.

 

5.1 Consolidating your Presence

Not sure if all this will work as intended but here goes.
Below is my original Blogger blog: http://solsurfer.blogspot.com/

Below is my new Wordpress blog that I am working on.

The lines in the image are not there in "real life".

Now I'm still getting there with organising the Wordpress blog, not 100% about the theme. Is this a bad theme? Does it need more white space? I feel that the colour is a soothing green, and goes well under the banner ocean and environment.

Besides this I have realised a few important issues:

• Blogger is restrictive - Hence the move
• Wordpress allows more space for creativity and expression
• Wordpress is more clean, and hopefully more user friendly, and hopefully this will attract comments and traffic. No adds, and it is on my main website
• The tag cloud looks great, so do the categories along the top that I will eventually have as pull down menus
• I still need to integrate Fliker, Twitter, FB, Digg, Delicious, my main website, forum/discussion area, public image upload, and other stimualting innovative Wordpress add ons and widgets that develop community
• I want to integrate products and donations soon
• Need to integrate a solid bunch of blogs under my blogroll

ATM I am having trouble adding new posts with images, so this is a work in progress that I will update once I get that and the other notes finished. In the mean time I need to learn about the WordPress platform and its many options.

I am very happy so far with my progress and excited about the possibilities to make this new blog a work of creative and interactive art, and a space for the inspiration of activism. Hopefully a community in the making.

Any ideas or suggestions?

Thanks,
Glen