Blogs | Social Signal

Times are tight, which is the polite way of saying that your communications budget has probably been handed to Freddy Krueger for a light trim. So whether your organization is already blogging, or just thinking about it, you need to make a strong case for your blog's ROI.

There was much rejoicing and clinking of glasses/bottles last night as the fact (and scope) of Barack Obama's victory became apparent.

He's the most wired, with-it presidential candidate ever. My friends, join me in congratulating the social media president-elect: Barack Obama. 

And what would history be without a little cartooning in the margins?

Our friends at ReframeIt are enjoying a couple of weeks' worth of well-deserved glowing coverage, most recently in the form of a great review on ZDnet. I met ReframeIt CEO Bobby Fishkin at this year's NetSquared, where we had an awesome conversation about how well-designed social web tools can support meaningful conversation, knowledge building and social trust, as opposed to the usual yak yak yak.

If you love to visit that exciting, magical place where technology meets social change, you won't want to miss the 2008 Nonprofit Software Development Summit, taking place in Oakland November 17-19.

Today I took a giant leap forward in my update-ability. (If date-ability refers to your in-person hotness, update-ability speaks to your hotness in the social media pressure cooker of Twitter, Facebook, Jaiku etc.) If I'm going to be entirely honest, my virtual hotness has been severely limited by my relatively infrequent Twitterings. Not only do I eat, change my musical selection and go to the bathroom without posting the minute-by-minute update, but I even sometimes have actually vaguely interesting thoughts that pass through my head without being captured in my conversation stream.

Wow, it's hard to believe it's already been a year since we launched Green Gifts – the free virtual-gift-giving Facebook application we created for BC Hydro. That's a lot of water under the bridge (through the turbine? over the dam?) - this time last year, Hillary Clinton had a lock on the Democratic nomination, real estate was the can't-lose investment and the theme to Hockey Night in Canada was still the theme to Hockey Night in Canada.

As a longtime (now mostly recovered) reader of women's magazines, I have struggled with the ever-mounting list of feminine maintenance tasks. Leg shaving, nail filing, face cleansing, check. Hair deep conditioning, sunscreening, foot pumicing, ok. Lash tinting, brow shaping, lip conditioning (hey, I'm not naming it if I haven't done it)....well, it gets to be quite a bit of work. And then you get older and the list just gets longer: hair colouring, skin de-tagging, botoxing...where do we ladies find the time?

After a dozen years and many more magazine pages, I finally concluded that the only rational solution was to keep a set number of beautification slots. If Glamour tells me to add botox, I'm giving up deep conditioning. If Elle tells me it's time for eyebrow shaping, I'll have to jettison leg shaving. There is just only so much time I have available for physical perfection and I've got to put the minutes where they count.

I've now been a computer owner for almost as long as I've been a magazine reader, and I'm afraid the challenges of tech maintenance are even more relentless than the challenges of beauty maintenance.

When Sarah Palin and Rudy Giuliani mocked Barack Obama's years as a community organizer at the recent Republican convention, they wanted to underline the Senator's supposed limitations as a real-world leader. Instead, they highlighted the Republican Party's own limitations in a world that will be crucial in determining this election's outcome: the Internet.