In honor of 'Retro Week" on Facebook, I am using this photo of me as my profile picture! I loved that dress!

Here is what I am reading today:

(Karen’s note: In my family we share a job of books, we collect them, study them and we even READ them! With Libraries disappearing as we know them and as they shed their books, we have the opportunity to start our own collections!)

“Users simply added the hash tag #tweeshes to all new year wish tweets. These tweets were then assigned to a point on the world map dependant on their origin. This map had been transformed into a synthesiser and each tweet became a musical note. Check out the Best Tweeshes website and listen to the first piece of music composed by the whole world. I love the idea of bringing these tweets together to create something different and unique. What do you think?”

“Searching for images on Google isn’t always an easy task using words alone. Your search is going to rely on how images on the web are tagged or captioned. A new tool, however, lets you use self-created images, rather than words, to find pictures on the web. Unofficial Google Image Search by Drawing lets you draw a picture, drag and drop a photo from your computer, or take a picture. It then searches the web for similar-looking images.”

“At its core, Pinterest is a visual social bookmarking service.  Its masonry style layout presents material in a pleasing way.  Pinterest relies on user-created, high quality visual imagery from the web along with an addictive UX.  The competitive social aspect of the service help keep the taste level of the participants elevated.  But without strong content from the web, the service would not exist.”

“This time of year reminds me of when I first started working at Spectrum as an intern during my senior year in college. In some ways, I feel like I was more buttoned up with my PR know-how then. I mastered Grunig and Hunt’s four models of public relations and could outline an RPIE approach to a campaign in no time.
After being in the “real world” for a few years, I know that PR cannot be so easily defined or broken down into four simple models. And there’s never as much time as I’d like to R (research), P (plan) and E (evaluate)—which is unfortunate, really.”

“…If we look back to 2001, the world pretty much looked like the graph below. The traditional media industries were absolutely dominating our world. People primarily bought physical CDs. They mostly rented movies at physical stores. They only bought printed books. And, newspapers and magazines were dominantly consumed in the form of print….”

My mother was interviewed lately in Detroit on a new way of thinking about Psychology, research and the understanding of our world. John Cacioppo and Laura Freberg have a new textbook that — I think — will have profound influence… even with how we view public relations! Congratulation!