Links to astound and amazing you, dear reader.
Me
• I went to Social Media Breakfast on Tuesday to see Kira Wampler from Ant’s Eye View/Intuit speak. Here were a couple the tips I tweeted:
Find the sexy about your business, which may not be your product itself.
Don’t stop at just listening to your customers. Do something too.
Employees needs guard rails for rules of online engagement. Want to do right by the company.
Fandom
• Runaways Movie Casting Breakdown Racebending brings a summary of the casting for the Runaways movie, and the actor requirements don’t even mention the character being Japanese-America. Instead she’s “Uniquely beautiful, nurturing but guarded.” Worth noting that most casting breakdowns are horribly stereotypical, even if the end result of a film is not. However, after the complete whitewashing of The Last Airbender…
• Will You Subvert the Dominant Paradigm for a Cookie? The return of the Joss Whedon puppy.
[T]hat’s the fandom paradox in a nutshell: you love Character Z, but you can’t think of a Character Z story you’d recommend. Doesn’t seem like it should be possible, does it? But I remember the years before Johns came back to the Flash.
• PR: Auf Wiedersehen, Part Eins Fashion designer Jason from Project Runaway Season 8 gets kicked off the show. Much to my relief. A) He couldn’t design. B) He sexual harassed his model because she has bigger breasts and *gasps* choose not to wear a bra. And C) After not liking Tim Gunn’s criticism, he bitched about how hard it was to be a straight man. Take your privilege and pack it, you’re auf’ed.
• Story Length – How We’re All Measuring Up A very interesting look at how comic books have gotten longer and the story plots move from one issue to the next since the 1960s.
• Formidable Female Protagonists in Science Fiction A long series of blog posts about sci-fi books with excellent female protagonists. Watch your reading list grow.
Feminism
• Eat, Pray, Spend: Priv-lit and the new, enlightened American dream
Eat, Pray, Love and its positioning as an Everywoman’s guide to whole, empowered living embody a literature of privilege and typify the genre’s destructive cacophony of insecurity, spending, and false wellness.
Health
• Cancer cells slurp up fructose, US study finds Cancer cells seem to like fructose as a source of food for their multiplication. Just another reason to read those labels. And to avoid high fructose corn syrup. (Beware, the corn lobby is on Twitter, trying to save the face of corn syrup.)
Inspiration
• How Millennials are Redefining Adulthood I don’t agree with everything this article says. In fact, I have a little bit more cynical point-of-view on why Millennials are taking risks as they’re coming out of school (read: the economy). However, I do hope that Corvida’s predictions for Millennials hold true.
Politics
• Poll: Majority of Americans support gay marriage CNN finds that 52% of Americans support gay marriage. Or perhaps we’re just pissed that we’re now behind Argentina on that.
• Vogue Italia: Water & Oil Vogue Italia shows its ass by using the Gulf Oil Spill as a backdrop for a fashion editorial piece. Because that’s not offensive and stupid. Models covered in oil and ruining their billion lire dress. (Yes, I know they use Euros now, but lire make the joke funnier.)
• Target CEO: Sorry for $150K Donation Target ‘accidentally’ gave money to an anti-gay rights politician. But thankfully, they were wise enough to know when to apologize.
Recipes (I want to make.)
SEO
• Google Can’t Find The Original Source Of Content? Oops. It seems that either Google’s Caffeine or MayDay update have caused it to have a harder time determining the initial source of content. This is particularly problematic because original sources have higher page rank on natural search.
• Working with Navigation in SEO [SEO Fundamentals] A lot of navigation on websites works with fancy code. However, that code may make it look sexy, but often times, it’s awful for SEO. This post reminds us all of the basics of making navigation SEO-friendly and why that’s important.
Technology
• 74% of Social Media Users Expect Cries for Help to Be Answered Within an Hour If you are in an emergency, please call 911 before tweeting or updating Facebook. However, it’s not completely unhelpful to do so after calling 911.
• Track Social Media Campaigns from Inside Microsoft Excel A new social media company is offering a simple dashboard that converts into a Excel spreadsheet for better mining of social media data. No doubt with the aim of helping us social media mavens explain the benefits of social media to the C-suite.
Web Design
• CSS Compressor Because let’s face it, even the best CSS ninja rockstar needs some help condensing code.
Writing
• Libraries are not sacred spaces I always found it interesting that there were not more conversations in libraries. Besides children’s reading hour or the occasional author signing. Though at the same time, I do understand the need for a public quiet place to read, research, study, etc.
