Around this time every year, Bonny, photographer par excellent, announces her Photography Calendar Pre-Sale. It is both a fun and somewhat intense time that finds us culling through her year’s collection of outstanding photographs in order to pick the 24 that will make the final cut (she prints the calendars in both horizontal and vertical formats with different photos included …
AsioStudio’s 2014 BEST PERSONAL BRAND OF THE YEAR AWARD
D R U M R O L L p l e a s e . . . Announcing AsioStudio’s first annual BEST PERSONAL BRAND OF THE YEAR AWARD … But first, a couple questions, do you think Kim Kardashian can rub elbows with Google’s best and brightest? Can Taylor Swift waltz into NORAD’s Headquarters and ask for a …
Twitter Hacks and You.
Last week Burger King’s Twitter account was hacked. The little darlings who hijacked it told the world that Burger King had been sold to McDonalds. That was on Monday. On Tuesday Jeep’s Twitter account was hacked and according to the hijackers, it had been sold to Cadillac. It was presumed the hijackers of both accounts were from the same camp; …
Bonny Fleming’s Photography Show – Somewhere Else Instead
Today is the BIG DAY, Bonny’s photo show will open at 5:00 pm. [nggallery id=10] It has been an effort to get this show together. Sometimes it was an effort of love and other times it was a table-full of sketches, thumbnails and yes, there was a heartfelt discussion or two about the best way to get the job done. …
Social Marketing is for the birds – Cornell Hawks & Herons that is…
Some events are tailor-made for social media buzz. Like new car model introductions, landmark events or anything in the celebrity sphere. But if anyone had ever told me that a 24/7 webcam focused on nesting Redtail hawks would draw a crowd I might have questioningly cocked my head a bit sideways. Yet that is exactly what the good folks at …
Type “Zerg Rush” into Google
Or you can just click here. Go ahead. I’ll wait. Ya do it yet? Good. Click the “Show” button to get my thoughts. [spoiler intro=”My thoughts” title=””] What you just witnessed (as you might have guessed from the title) was what is called in the gaming world as a Zerg Rush, a semi-popular (or unpopular, depending on which side of …
Big Money and A Young Entrepreneur
On a mid-summer day in 2011 young Anna, age 8, decided she HAD to go to a Selena Gomez concert. Conveniently, a concert was scheduled in September in Denver, CO, 365 miles from her Rapid City SD home. When she made her announcement that she and her mom would be attending, her mother looked at her like the mothers the …
South Dakota Facebookers Are Ad Click Happy
Yesterday Mashable’s Sam Laird posted an interesting article titled, Facebook Marketers Reveal States Where Users Click on Ads Most and guess which state lead the pack? Good old South Dakota is the Facebook click-through champion of the nation. In fact South Dakotans’ rate is 174% higher than the national average. If you look at that fact from an advertiser’s eye …
Project Glass
So, The Great Google in the Sky has determined that we should start working with wearable visual interfaces. Codenamed Project Glass, these little headbands contain a display that will sit just above eye-level, and give you on the spot notifications, in real time, in your upper peripheral area of vision. Check out the video below to get an idea of …
Infographics and the New Facebook Timeline
I’m a big fan of infographics. When done well an infographic is one of the best ways to convey complex concepts in an easy to understand way. The definition of an infographic at its simplest is – visual data. A more interesting description might be… research + data + graphics + art + design = infographic. In a way mankind …
Why I LOVE my iPhone…
Over the weekend, we headed East to the Cheyenne River Ranch to visit our favorite Wild Idea Buffalos. The trip didn’t disappoint and I could go on and on about the morning spent with buffalo, but I think that’s a whole separate post. What I want to talk about here has to do with the above photo. I snapped the shot on the way back from …
Is Pinterest the key to Collective Enlightenment?
So, like millions of other internet savvy women, I recently joined Pinterest. I got an account and instantly said; “I don’t get it, this is dumb” and then I went on with my life. That is, until I heard the words Pinterest about 200 more times here and there in everyday life and internetting around and I thought… “Ok, let’s …
Content Marketing the Termes Way
Most of our clients have gotten used to our begging them to create lots and lots of content for their sites. Content is good. It builds trust, it engages with viewers and it grows brand awareness. It also helps with search engine ranking. Recently however, one of our clients took the concept to a whole new level. Dick Termes, the …
MY Top 8 photos from 2011
Well, It has been quite a year. I feel that I’ve grown leaps and bounds this year as a photographer, and with the addition of the new 5D(!!!!!!!) the sky’s the limit for 2012. I thought I’d take a minute and pull my favorite photos from this past year and tell you a little bit about the shots. …
Viral Video of the Week
It is the ‘world’s first-ever senior citizen LipDub!’ And it is quite masterfully done. ‘Residents from Clark Retirement Community in Grand Rapids, Michigan team up with Grand Valley State University Film & Video Production students, alumni, and professors to create this sassy video to the jazzy-sweet contemporary crooning of Michael Bublé.’ The YouTube video count seemed to be down at …
Space Shuttle Atlantis – The Last Shuttle Mission and Social Media
As I sat at my desk this morning watching the Space Shuttle Atlantis lift off the launch pad at Cape Canaveral this morning, I was both thrilled and saddened. Thrilled because I was witnessing a monumental scientific undertaking being executed almost flawlessly and saddened because this was the last of the Space Shuttle missions. I watched the launch live on …
Viral Videos of the Week
A Cirque du Solei performer flips before delivering the first pitch at Monday’s game between the Padres and Royals at Petco Park. The video was uploaded on June 26th and as of July 1, 2011 it had been viewed 1,118,922 times. There is a lot that is right about this video: It is amazing to watch It is short It …
Email security note
If you receive an email from ‘The Electronic Payments Association titled ‘Rejected transaction’ or something to that effect – don’t respond. It is a phishing attempt. The opened email looks like this: _____________________________________________________ Canceled Transaction Transaction ID: 5645746324515345353 Reason for rejection View details in the report below Transaction report report_5645746324515345353.pdf 13450 Sunrise Valley Drive, Suite 100 Herndon, …
Word of the Week – linkbait
This one has been around for a long time. The principle is simple, publish GREAT [or controversial] content on your site so other site owners will link back to it. The content can come in a variety of packages. It can be: insightful, profound observations or thoughts unique, humorous videos, text or images infographs illustrating timely topics sensational or polarizing …
Word of the Week – Tweetup
A tweetup is a gathering of twitter users usually for social purposes – or as Urban Dictionary defines it, ‘A gathering of nerds attempting social contact, likely for the first time. Usually disintegrates into everyone running to the nearest computer to type to one another’ …hum, why does that sound so familiar?
Social media and the beauty of excellence
A little while back Buddy Media published a study highlighting the most optimal times of the day and week to publish your brand posts on Facebook. Mashable did a fine job summarizing it in an article titled How to Improve Engagement on Your Brands Facebook Page. Here are a couple of excerpts: Daily Facebook engagement has three peaks: early morning …
2010’s Internet numbers
Back in the old days of advertising we used to look at media reach – how many subscribers a newspaper had, how many viewers watched a tv show, how many ears tuned into a radio broadcast. Then we would apply what now seems like caveman-like formulas to calculate what kind of return on investment an advertising campaign might deliver. Even …
This week online
It was announced on Wednesday that Twitter raised $200 million in a new round of funding from venture firm Kleiner Perkins raising its valuation to $3.7 billion. “Sources said the San Francisco microblogging service is also adding two new board members: Flipboard’s Mike McCue and David Rosenblatt, whoran DoubleClick until a bit after it sold to Google” writes Kara Swisher …
Qwiki.com – a new search tool to get excited about.
I don’t often get giddy when I read about new software, search engines or products – actually that isn’t true at all, I have just taught myself to curb the enthusiasm and to take the wait and see approach. Once in a while though the little kid in me just jumps up and down for joy and say, ‘Looky, looky, …
This week in tech
This week one of the most talked about online events was Facebook’s introduction of its new ‘Messaging System’. It was labeled by most of the industry experts as the ‘Gmail killer’. At the Nov. 15, press conference Mark Zuckerberg said, not so. “This not an email killer, this is a shift towards more and more real-time communication. “We expect more …
Dick Termes rock YouTube!
This is a week of exciting Termes/Termespheres news. Stay tuned for the big announcement at the end of the week. While you are sitting on pins and needles though you might want to give him a high five for doing a spectacular job on his YouTube marketing efforts. Take a look at his latest videos and stats: 4 Point Perspective …
OH NO – NO ICED VENTI CUPS! –Or- Never underestimate your customers’ expectations
Bonny and I went to Starbuck’s drive thru this morning just like we do on way too many other mornings. We ordered our usual two iced venti lattes – one with two raw sugars. The speaker voice said, ‘Um, we are all out of iced venti clear cups.’ ‘Well,’ Bonny said, ‘How about putting them in your hot venti cups …
Email newsletters – are they still effective?
The oldest (and in my opinion one of the best) social media platforms is email newsletters. Today I received newsletters from both the US Forest Service and the Game Fish and Parks. The Forest Services’ was an information blast on how they were taking action to control noxious weeds in the Black Hills. And the GF&P’s was a roundup of …
6 things you (probably do but) might not know you can do on Facebook.
I was talking to my Dad on Fathers day and inevitably the conversation turned to Facebook and before long I was spouting off tip after tip of Facebook knowledge when it dawned on me that others could benefit from this information as well. So here you are… 6 things you may not know you can do on Facebook!!! These particular 6 …
Sticky: 6 things you (probably do but) might not know you can do on Facebook – Intro
I was talking to my Dad on Fathers day and inevitably the conversation turned to Facebook and before long I was spouting off tip after tip of Facebook knowledge when it dawned on me that others could benefit from this information as well. So here you are… 6 things you may not know you can do on Facebook!!! These particular 6 …
Image tags for better search engine placement
If you are adding your own content, images and videos to your site (you are doing this aren’t you) Be sure to pay attention to your image titles, ‘alternative’ [alt] tags and to your descriptions. For some reason this is a step a lot of folks skip over. DON’T SKIP OVER IT! Alt, title and description tags are important. This …
Video Marketing – when seeing is doing
Where do you turn if you want to learn a new skill or purchase some new fancy gadget? The internet? That’s what I thought. Recently, I decided I wanted to learn how to photograph a water drop so I headed over to our trusty friend, Google and typed ‘photograph water drops’ in the search box. Here are the results: Digital-photography-school.com …
Blogging from my Droid
The WordPress app for the Android phones is definately a useful one. Especially now that Spring is upon us.
Time management with the Pomodoro Technique
I was reading about the Pomodoro Technique this morning. It sent chills down my spine. For those unfamiliar with the PT it is a time management system. You can download a PDF of the book for free. It is supposed to take the stress out of the process of getting things done and evidently the system works extremely well. The …
Freaked Out Tuesday
Tuesday gets concerned about noises coming from the floor.
Google’s Personalized Search
Oh Google, we love you so but why do you have to keep stirring the pot? Oh yes, because it is your job, I forgot. Last month Google rolled out their ‘personalized search’ for everyone. This isn’t new technology. It has previously been available to only those folks who were signed into their Google account. Now, we all get to …
Marketing – Outback Steakhouse’s Bloomin’ Onion/Facebook campaign
Outback Steakhouse recently offered a free ‘Bloomin’ Onion‘ to the first 5,000 folks who signed up on their Facebook Fan page. The results? They added 24,000 new fans in the first week. And the numbers just keep on growing.
Everybody Like This!
So, Hank Harris just stopped by to drop off the a copy of his latest album “Shortcut to Hanksville”. I’m listening to it now, I’ll report back with a review after I’ve spent some time with it, but for now I wanted to show you the stunning graphics designed by, who else, ME! We’re working on getting the album up …
Termes Openhouse & Online Sale
Every year around this time our friend, family member and favorite sphere painter Dick Termes opens up his gallery for a Holiday Open House. He overs great deals on Termespheres but also on his many smaller, very cool Termesy things to buy. This year we went out a little farther into the marketing world and made fun posters and used …
Twitter 101
It seems that people either love Twitter or they hate it, passionately. Frankly, it is hard to “get” Twitter right away. It may take two or three or ten attempts before you reach the “wow” moment. Suffice it to say there are experts from every walk of life who tweet on a regular basis. They share their wisdom, they collaborate …
The 5 spoked wheel of social marketing
Social marketing, at its core, is like a wagon wheel. It has a hub and 5 spokes which can conveniently be arranged into a fine circular object that will handily take you down the social track. The hub is your blog Spoke #1 – a social networking account on Facebook. Spoke #2 – a microblogging account on Twitter. Spoke #3- …
Top 10 things you can’t live without
What would they be? For the sake of ignoring reality forego the basics like breathing, eating and sheltering. Let’s also rule out people and pets. This Top 10 list is concerning 10 things you could live without if you really, really had to but…. Here are mine: NPR – I’m a loyal listener to the end (even through fund raiser …
Blogs – Talk the talk and walk the walk
Have you ever wondered what a Blego or a Blawg are? How about a Barking Moonbat? I have to admit that I am a true devotee and student of the English language. As a consequence, when I go off on an exploratory research adventure for no particular reason, it often has to do with the pursuit of some lexicographic whim …
The story of creation (via Twitter)
This wonderfully witty post is from Tom McNichol at the Huffington Post Day One Let there B-lite. OMG! Or shld I say Oh Me! It’s so much easier 2-C now. WTF was I thinking B4? Spent the rest of the day dividing lite from drkness. It is good. 🙂 Day Two Made a firmament (sort of a dome thing) to …
7 habits of the highly effective
Highly effective websites are like highly effective people. They don’t just happen. Their success is honed and developed. To explore this thought I found a summary of Stephen Covey’s book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Habit 1: Be Proactive Habit 2: Begin with the End in Mind Habit 3: Put First Things First Habit 4: Think Win/Win Habit 5: …
#140tc
Today I’ve been attending the LA Twitter Conference via UStream.tv. So far I’ve watched the “Media Integration Strategies: Incorporating Twitter Into Your Existing Properties” session and a heartfelt “Thank-you Twitter” speech from San Fransisco’s Mayor Gavin Newsom. Although it isn’t like being there – no ducking out of a session to grab a sandwich at Langer’s or hobnobbing with cronies …
Remembering 9/11
Most of us will take some time today to reflect on the September 11th tragedies of eight years ago. Its sobering to remember the disbelief, apprehension and grief we all held as the day unfolded. As the days and months passed we learned of the 2,752 who had died, we witnessed the ceaseless acts of bravery from those who were …
Our estimated time is…. Forever
Those are the words of one of the Primal Quest’s participants when s/he was presumably asked ‘when will you finish the race?’ For those who don’t know, Primal Quest is “an expedition-level adventure race in which endurance athletes from around the world compete with one another and against a 600 mile (965+ KM) wilderness course.” This year that race is …
69th Annual Sturgis Rally
Today we drove from Rapid City to Spearfish and back again. It was a typical August Black Hills day – hot, dry, windy and dusty. My predictions from yesterday seem to be holding true because there were lots and lots of motorcycles on the road. There were also a lot of cops parked here and there, stalwarts reminding us all …
2009 Sturgis Rally Goers Go Shopping
Ok, so this was wild. I went to the grocery store at about 3:30 this afternoon to pick up a couple things. It’s Saturday, it’s summer and the mid afternoon store is usually pretty quiet. It wasn’t today. Let me preface the rest of this post with the fact that the Black Hills of South Dakota hosts an unpredictable ‘rally’ …
Do you ever wonder what your dog is thinking?
I do all the time. I know he likes to eat. Every time I come home he picks up a shoe or a shawl or a shard of printed out news and brings it to me, tail wagging – happy and welcoming. Like the well trained owner that I am, I dig the dog food cup into his food bucket …
Reality check and your cyber safety
Michael Vick is young, famous and until recently had more money than god. Who knows what lead him to dog torture for pleasure? Michael Jackson was not young, he was very famous and had more money than Michael Vick. Who knows what lead him to self torture? Is money the common denominator? Maybe. It certainly helped. My west of the …
Is Twitter worth the time?
On June 22nd Amazon acquired online shoe/clothing merchant Zappos.com with a stock deal valued somewhere between $850 – $920 million. I’m sure there a more reasons for this acquisition than meets the eye but the most stated reason is Zappos’ CEO’s philosophy of “karmic capitalism”. What goes around comes around couldn’t be truer in this case. Tony Hsieh is Zappos’ …
One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
What were you doing 40 years ago today when Apollo 11 made its historic landing on the moon? My unscientific statistics-ometer assumes about half of you weren’t doing anything because you were still twinkling away in your mom and dad’s eyes. For many of us, at the time much younger, ‘boomers’ however it was one of our first opportunities to …
Oh Wow!
I had a big ‘Oh wow’ moment on Saturday when I went to get the mail out of my mailbox. Mixed in with the usual blend of credit card offers (yes, I’m still getting them), catalogs and bills was the latest issue of Time magazine. Pictured on the cover was the large, signature photograph of FDR – and the headline, …
A man before his time
I don’t know why I was thinking about the election process but… Back in 2006 a good friend of mine had the brilliant idea of setting up a website where regular citizens could ask local political candidates questions and those politicians, in turn, could respond. The idea was brilliant. No more canned questions with canned answers – rather a clear, …
4 Reasons Companies Don’t Join the Social Media Marketing Frenzy.
You know who you are. You have that antagonizing itch scratching and scratching right there nestled next to the need-to-succeed part of your brain. You know the world of doing business as usual has taken a sharp left turn but you aren’t quite going with it. You have an inkling you should but you just aren’t buying in. Hummm, why …
And the Webby winners were brief…
This post is taken straight from the Associated Press: Webby winners take awards with 5-word speeches NEW YORK (AP) — Who needs Twitter’s 140 characters? Five words were enough for the winners at the 13th annual Webby Awards ceremony, where Biz Stone, co-founder of Twitter, took the prize for breakout of the year. Sticking to the Webbys’ tradition of acceptance …
Thought of the day -Youtube marketing
This one is from Mashable in a should-read article about 5 Outstanding Leaders in YouTube Marketing. One thing is becoming apparent: The brands that achieve long-term success on YouTube are the ones that consistently and frequently publish refreshing content that has intrinsic value for audiences online. The take away? -If you want to succeed in this brave (yet strange) new …
Thoughts on the Iran
We are all fascinated, some more, some less, with the drama of human injustice. This has certainly has been the case with the recent Iranian election and its ramifications. So much so that CNN is providing complete coverage both on the website and on the air. They are also doing something they didn’t do during the election and the resulting …
Largest showing of Termespheres at the Dahl Fine Arts Center
50 Termespheres are on display at the Dahl. Be sure to take it in – it is mind blowing. Read a great KELOland article and watch their video here. And don’t forget to visit Termes’ website here.
Forbes Magazine says, ‘Social media has reached a tipping point.’
In today’s article titled ‘Yes, CEOs Should Facebook And Twitter‘ writers Matthew Fraser and Soumitra Dutta remind us again that marketing has taken a sharp turn from being top-down to bottom-up.
How Twitter has turned my life into colossal collections of clutter
Mind you, it’s wonderful, intelligent clutter. It has to be because it was created by the best writers, videographers, cooks, artists and photographers. However, there isn’t a way in the world that I will ever be able to look at it all. I’m one of those Twitterers who like to share links to meaningful content. That endeavor requires me to …
What is the best browser?
The folks over at ZDNet are conducting an interesting poll . The question is simply, “What is the best browser?” You can view the poll here. Granted, the voting audience is decidedly techno-geeky. They are the folks who fix your computer when it is acting up or programmers who make all this internet magic work or perhaps they are security …
Word of the week – TWEEZERS
Watch out youngins we still got some clout 😛
Who’s Tweeting at Twitter.com?
Here is a partial list – its kind of impressive: Reuters http://twitter.com/reuters BBC (Off-site List) http://menti.net/?p=1 CNN http://twitter.com/cnnbrk NY Times http://twitter.com/nytimes (The NYT also offers other sections in twitter) NY Times Business http://twitter.com/nytimesbusiness MSNBC http://twitter.com/dcagle Today Show http://twitter.com/TodayShow Wired News http://twitter.com/wired NPR http://twitter.com/nprnews Science Friday http://twitter.com/scifri Planet Money http://twitter.com/planetmoney ZDNet http://twitter.com/zdnett Conde Nast Portfolio http://twitter.com/Portfolio
Lets talk downloads…
I recently switched form CS2 to CS4, there are things I like and things I don’t and even something’s I don’t understand yet (imagine that). Back a while I was still a CS2’er I discovered the exciting new world of downloadable presets for Photoshop. Brushes, Custom Shapes, Gradients, Actions etc. When I made the switch to CS4 I thought I …
Photo What?
When I was 10 my dad got this really cool program for his computer. I think it was called Photoshop. He showed me how to use a couple of the tools, I remember specifically the “smudgy finger tool” was of particular interest. I played with it for a while and made (drew) a picture of a candle. I remember thinking …
… I think I have a problem.
This morning… I… Well, I’ll let the picture do the talking.
Just say no to Internet Explorer
… I’ve been pulling my hair out this past week because of my dear friend Internet Explorer. Now, I could sit here and type on and on about why Explorer sucks and why you shouldn’t use it, but quite honestly I don’t want to and a quick trip to Google would provide you with more than enough reason to make …
A soothing service
I was Stumbling around this weekend and I Stumbled Upon this site. I was made to stop. Usually, I will instantly close/Stumble away from any site with intrusive sound. This one held me for a while. It felt good to just let it play and relax for a little while. Give yourself some Zen time.
Don’t ever rush a good thing
Good news for all of you great folks we work with – after ten years of bumping along on our semi-organized trail, we are finally going to start using our time/project management software to do just that; manage our time (which we have done for years) and our PROJECTS. Soon we will be communicating with you and you will be …
Just to let you know…
We aren’t all business down here at Asio Studio. On occasion, we get to have some fun. For instance, Bonny and I made this. Be warned, it’s very important.
Social Media Stumbling
If there is one thing that can be said about me, it’s that I Stumble a lot. What’s that? No, no, I don’t trip over everything, I use Stumble Upon. It is a plugin for most browsers that will (after a brief survey) deliver websites tailored to your interests. Being a tec and web savvy kinda person, I tend to …
Inspiration…
Its easy to create when the project is itself an inspiration. I want to share a logo I did for CHS Players (Central High Theatre Department) I designed it for the State One Acts competition. The kids go east river each year to perform an original piece written, directed and choreographed by Justin Speck. There has been a reoccurring theme …
Who’s on Twitter?
Mars Phoenix http://twitter.com/MarsPhoenix NORAD http://twitter.com/noradsanta Smithsonia http://twitter.com/smithsonian Manitoba Museum http://twitter.com/ManitobaMuseum Tate http://twitter.com/Tate Holocaust Museum http://twitter.com/HolocaustMuseum Franklin Mus http://twitter.com/thefranklin Barack Obama http://twitter.com/change_gov AIDG http://twitter.com/aidg Starbucks http://twitter.com/StarbucksV2V The Humane Society http://twitter.com/HumaneSociety Red Cross http://twitter.com/RedCross Science Friday http://twitter.com/scifri Al Gore http://twitter.com/algore Ntln Wildlife Foundation http://twitter.com/NWF Farm Aid http://twitter.com/FarmAid Tyson Foods http://twitter.com/TysonFoods BBC http://twitter.com/bbcscitech NPR Weekend Edition http://twitter.com/WeekendEdition Live Science http://twitter.com/LiveScience New York Times …
State of Utah vs. social media
It doesn’t matter if you embrace or detest California’s Proposition 8, either way it is taking social media’s center stage. Many bloggers, micro-bloggers and social media account owners are amassing a movement to boycott the state of Utah, the Morman church and Marriott Hotels due to their organizing and financial support for Prop 8. Similar campaigns were mobilized against South …
Election 2008 and social media
For the first time in election history a presidential candidate used the powerful reach of social networking for something other than as a virtual ATM machine – the numbers tell the story: Facebook Obama: 2,379,102 supporters McCain: 620,359 supporters Obama has 380% more supporters than McCain Thanks to Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang – @jowang MySpace Obama: Friends: 833,161 McCain: Friends: …
So its 7:31..
… even though my computer says its 7:31 in the morning. (I’m still getting used to Vista) I’m sitting here alone at work enjoying the silence and this song Johnny Cash is singing to me. I recently re-discovered Pandora, and subsequently am rediscovering lots of great stuff i once knew about but have since forgotten. Why am I here so …