Posted on Mon, Jul 19, 2010
Notes from the Intern's Desk:
By Darcie
Online portfolios have become increasingly popular among college students and professionals. They’re great tools for all majors including journalism, public relations, graphic design, biology and more. Everyone has work to show, whether it’s a design portfolio, public relations campaign, magazine spread, thesis paper or lab experiment.
If you’re looking for the easiest and cheapest way to create an online portfolio, then check out http://carbonmade.com/. This website features more than 220,000 online portfolios. The free option (called “Meh”) allows you to upload five projects and 35 images, as well as create a profile with your picture, your contact information and your biography. The best part? You determine your web address at carbonmade.com. I would recommend your name; for example, mine is http://www.darcieguilbert.carbonmade.com.
If you don’t think “Meh” offers enough room for your work, then check out Carbonmade’s “Whoo” option. It allows you to upload 50 projects, 500 images and 10 videos, including Flash. This costs $12 a month, but it also includes tech support and other features.
For those of you who are Mac users, you’re in luck. You automatically have the iWeb program on your computer. iWeb is a simple website design application. The interface is user-friendly and allows you to upload images, videos, text, blog and podcasts. The only downfall is you have to find your own web hosting site. MobileMe is most compatible with iWeb, but Justhost.com, iPage, HostMonster, GoDaddy, Yahoo, Google and BlueHost all work, too.
Now that you know where to start, check out this great article from Smashing Magazine http://bit.ly/jMlPM to help you develop the content of your site.
While online portfolios are a terrific tool, they should not replace traditional physical portfolios (especially when going for an interview). Having your work present gives the interviewer the option to ask questions about it and for you to answer.
What do you think of online portfolios? Do you have one?
Posted on Tue, Jun 23, 2009
Twitter is a great way to connect with people and stay updated with more news and information than you can possibly imagine. The opportunities are limitless on Twitter and so is the time you can spend living in the Twitterverse. Hours can quickly pass by as you read, talk and add your updates. Here are some of our favorites tools to help you make the most of your time on Twitter.
Twitterfeed automatically Tweets your blog posts from your RSS feed.
TweetDeck is a desktop tool for managing your Twitter account, updates and followers.
Twtpoll is an app for conducting polls.
Twitpic lets you easily post photos.
Twitsnearme shows you local tweets based on your location.
Twittervision is a mashup of Twitter and Google Maps that geographically displays tweets. You can see who’s tweeting in your neighborhood.
Twitterless provides you with information about who stops following you. It also charts your history of followers.
TweetPsych gives you a psychological profile of a person’s tweets. It’s best used if you have over 1000 updates.
Posted on Fri, Jun 12, 2009
The market is abuzz about the new Google Wave, a real-time communications platform that is in limited release to developers now and will be generally available later this year. Google Wave lets everyone participate, edit and collaborate in one online location. According to the creators of Google Wave, “A wave is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.”
Mashable has put up some fantastic articles discussing Google Wave and its many features. The opportunities are limitless with a platform like this that brings together all the best parts of online collaboration in one place. You can embed the conversations into any blog or website, and share the Wave with an even wider audience. It’ll be exciting to see what the developers do with it.