Print Instagram Photos on Edible Organic Chocolate

Print Instagram Photos on Edible Organic Chocolate:
Digital photography has made us lose the wretched chemicals and excess paper of the Polaroid era. So if you want to save a summer memory, you can do it in organic chocolate.

Ed says! What a tasty way to treat your pictures and save the environment at the same time!  


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How To Make A Mark on Art; by acclaimed art blogger Katherine Tyrrell...

How To Make A Mark on Art; by acclaimed art blogger Katherine Tyrrell...:

The strapline of my blog Making A Mark says that Artist and writer Katherine Tyrrell writes about art for artists and art lovers.  

I’ve been writing about art rather a lot since I went public in January 2006.  I’ve posted to Making A Mark nearly every day generating well over 2k published posts read by more than 1.5 million visitors. It now has nearly 4k subscribers and, as an art blog, is currently rated#3 art blog in the UK and #11 in the world.  Traffic is on an exponential and upward trajectory.

I’ve had a wonderful time blogging about art and made lots of friends as a result.

Highlights of my blogging over the last six and half years have also included:

• Promoting artwork I like and helping great artists get a better profile online
• Predicting winners of major art competitions online - and getting it right about 75% of the time!
• Artists telling me they’ve won an award - but  only entered after they read about the art competition on my blog
• Matching up artists with galleries and going to their solo or group shows
• Getting to video an exhibition before it opens and sharing that video on YouTube
• Interviewing artists who’ve won a major prize
• Photographing and filming artwork in museums that some people will never ever get to see except via my blog
• Demystifying open exhibitions for artists who want to submit work - by showing them online what an exhibition looks like, what size the work is and how it’s framed
• Being able to open people’s eyes to what it’s possible to see and do
• Feedback from artists telling me that their website/blog traffic has rocketed after getting a mention on my blog
• Informal consultations with artists about ‘the best way forward’ - leading to improved sales, recognition and awards
• Being invited to awards ceremonies and awards dinners!

It can however be quite unnerving at times when introducing myself to artists only to find out that they all know about my blog and what I do!

So what do I write about which generates so many visitors?  

Simple - in short I write about what interests me for people like me - all the time.

Essentially I’m very much focused on writing for my peers - who are pretty similar to me. These are people around the world who are serious about art - and 

• Produce drawings, painting and sculpture grounded in more traditional skills 
• Lean towards the figurative rather than the totally abstract
• Exhibit and sell their art
• Aim to develop their artistic knowledge and skills, 
• Love going to see art plus a not insignificant group who
• Earn a living from their art 
• Enter art competitions and major open exhibitions

I also have distinct maven-like qualities and know a lot about a lot of different aspects of art - or know somebody who does.  I’ve become the “go to” person for a lot of artists wanting to find out about a topic.

Having made a deliberate decision to have a “sensible career” when I was young, means I’ve now got a lots of scope to round out my art education and learn a lot more about art.  For my readers that means they get to share in my approach to tackling key topics within art education - and share in my learning online.

While I’ve taken classes at art schools and workshops with tutors, my degrees and work experience are actually in education, business and government.  As a result, I guess I tend to look at the art world from the perspective of somebody who has spent many years having to unpick organisations to work out what made them tick and whether they were functioning well and how they might best learn to do better.  

I like understanding what makes somebody or something excellent and sharing the lessons learned.  One of the ‘added value’ aspects of my blog is I tend to ask questions other people might not ask - and apply my analytical background in finance and business management to art business issues which crop up from time to time.  Hence I’m not in the least bit averse to trying to analyse what’s going on within eg the art economy.  Plus I crunch the numbers on anything and everything - eg the % chance of getting selected for an exhibition - at every available opportunity!  It does tend to provide for an alternative perspective and so far as I’m aware there is very little competition!

Over time Making A Mark has become more structured and more magazine like.  More than a few of my regular readers have commented that they much prefer my weekly round-up each Sunday to the Sunday papers!  

Weekly, monthly and annual routines provide a backbone to Making A Mark:  

• Every week I do a round up of things which have caught my eye (“who’s made a mark this week?”).  
• Every month I run an opinion poll on a topic of interest to artists 
• Every year, for the last five years, I’ve run an awards scheme.  This aims to highlight all those artists who have ‘added value’ in some way during the course of the year.  
• I promote and review all the major open exhibitions (in London) and each year produce a timetable for all the major art competitions in the UK and all the open exhibitions of the national art societies 
• Plus I’ve created a portfolio of topic-specific websites for every aspect that I’ve researched online - from individual artists to how to ship your artwork or write an artist statement
• Plus I’ve floated off specific interests and specialised activities into three additional blogs - such as my sketchbook blog Travels with a Sketchbook which has been recommended by The Times

Much of what I do only happens because I “had a go” and then developed a track record of being somebody who provides good coverage. That gave me the credibility when I started to expand and helped enormously in terms of getting permission to attend press views and restricted access events.  Which is how I am able to photograph major exhibitions before they open and get to meet the prizewinning artists.

My tip for those who want to make a mark writing about art is pursue your interests and write about what you know about or what you’re learning about.

I’ve personally never had a problem working out what to write about.  If anything the problem is sorting through the hundreds of ideas I’ve got stacked up as draft posts ready to go any time I need them!

Aleah Chapin - Winner of the BP Portrait Award 2012
(left to right: Sandy Nairne, Director of the National Portrait Gallery,
Bob Dudley, CEO of BP, Aleah Chapin and Sir Michael Parkinson)

Katherine Tyrrell is based in London and has been blogging about art since January 2006 as well as making and exhibiting drawings in dry media.

Portfolio Hub: http://www.makingamark.co.uk/

Making A Mark: http://makingamark.blogspot.co.uk/ 

Making A Mark reviews

Travels with a Sketchbook

The Art of the Landscape

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Dr Weblove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and just love Reddit... by uber blogger Rudhraigh McGrath...

Dr Weblove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and just love Reddit... by uber blogger Rudhraigh McGrath...:

The process of pursuing happiness almost always makes you sad, the process of avoiding sadness doesn't always make you happy. You still want to be happy, but the confusing lack of efficacy of the available options has made you increasingly neurotic about your prospects.

All too soon life becomes a montage of moments of infinite stress over finite problems, you become dried up and twisted, full of bile and regret. In the days of yore, you'd have to take up crocheting, pipe smoking or looking wistfully out frosted windows onto misty moors just to be able to get out of bed in the morning.

Thankfully, mankind's peerless intellect has produced a new way of engaging with happiness. These days there's this thing new thing called the "Internet" that was invented to allow you to achieve the same goal but you don't even have to get out of bed for it. 

On the internet, things make sense. You have options. 

This is because on the internet there are things that actually make you reliably happy for short periods of time. You have small moments of human honesty such as a watching a stoned child babble existential truisms while whacked out of his head on post-dental feel-good drugs. For a minute or two, you can feel truly alive reading an article about an 80 year old semi-comatose Alzheimer's patient who immediately does the Lindy Hop whenever she hears this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aFd5Cci_pE4, and if you don't at least smile when you watch a video of Barack Obama singing the lyrics to Call me Maybe - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hX1YVzdnpEc, you should seek professional help.

Yes, on a very visceral level the internet is made of smiles (Or cats, depending on who you ask - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zi8VTeDHjcM)

The only problem is the more you smile, the more you find you NEED to smile. The more links you click, the more you find you NEED to click, and once you realize that you only feel happy when you're experiencing new and original digital content that the pursuit of happiness has an entirely new requirement.

I call them "Inficlicks". 

An Inficlick is a website that empowers the new denizens of The Age of Cyberhappy by making the continuous pursuit of digital happiness as efficient as humanly possible. An Inficlick provides a uniform platform for individual contributors to add to the common good by posting links of interest. This results in page after page of new content streaming in from all over the world at a rate that actually exceeds your ability to browse it. Other, less conceptually evolved people call them Content Aggregators, but I think "Inficlicks" is catchier. 

The most efficient Inficlick is of course Reddit. (Reddit.com)

I remember the dark days before I knew about Reddit.  Having to trawl around in agony, going to three or even FOUR sites to find an amusing video entitled "Puppy Assault Course Fail". Not knowing anything about upvotes, not caring about Karma, not understanding the importance of a snappy TLDR. When you hear about the "they" in the internet, they are talking about Reddit.

With infinite forums to post about your specific area of interest, Reddit's tagline is "The Front page of the Internet", so if until now you've been trawling around looking at other sites thinking that they're full of interesting and original content, a few weeks spent on Reddit will make you realize that Reddit is like the Rome of the internet, as eventually all links lead to Reddit.

If you want something, it's on Reddit. Want to ask real-time questions of an ex-Nazi Crossdresser? Go to Reddit. Want to swap stone-aged Faux-Vegan lentil pudding recipes? Go to Reddit. Want to argue over the existence of God in the Star Wars universe? Reddit's the place to be. 

I encourage you to spend an hour on Reddit, getting to know the ins and outs of the site, understanding the simple genius of the upvoting system.

I warn you however, if you have children or any kind of actual real life responsibility, give it a miss. You may never again be happy, but at least you won't go to jail for child neglect.

Meanwhile, I'm just going to check and see what's going on in r/videos/ (http://www.reddit.com/r/videos/)  

See you in seven hours.

-----------------------------------------

Rudhraigh McGrath

rudhraigh.com

www.twitter.com/tweetlikeaman

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A Begginer's Guide to Pinterest by social media expert Ivana Franekova...

A Begginer's Guide to Pinterest by social media expert Ivana Franekova...:

If you haven't heard of the Pinterest phenomenon yet, you must have been living under a proverbial rock these last few years. The social networking site is generating massive interest, especially in the business world, and for good reason. The site that enables you to promote your products and services through something called ‘vision boards’, has an estimated traffic of 1.36 million visits per day.

Although Pinterest is classed as a Social Website, its aim is to help businesses increase their brand awareness. A massive 68 percent of all Pinterest users are women; a fact many big brands are taking advantage of. Consequently, Pinterest became a lively, fresh and imaginative social site that offers top trends, fashion tips, simply everything that is chic and in at the moment through masses of photo and video boards.

At the moment, you can join Pinterest by an invitation only. An existing user can invite you, or you can ask Pinterest to send you an invite.

If you are using Pinterest for personal use, you simply create an account on Pinterest and then the fun begins... You set up unlimited online boards and ‘pin’ items to them - this is your chance to be organized whilst having fun!

Now let's look at the difference between a regular user and a business user on Pinterest:

Let’s say, a regular user called Jane joins Pinterest; Jane creates different boards, such as Shopping, Handbags, Favourite Movies etc. She browses Pinterest for ideas using the ‘Search’ box; she types in the word ‘flowers’. When she finds a photo she likes, she hovers over the picture with her mouse and chooses from the following options:

Repin - Like - Comment.

If Jane chooses to Repin the photo, she will then have a choice of her boards to pin it to. Furthermore, she can share her chosen photo of flowers with her friends on Facebook and Twitter, as well as all her Pinterest followers.

Jane is doing all this for fun. For her, the site is a board of her dreams, her interests and her likes. She doesn't think of Pinterest as a business.

Now let us look at the business that owns Jane’s photo of flowers on Pinterest: A local store in, let us say, London, wants to promote their services through Pinterest. They create a business account, with their business name. The store then created boards for their products. They created ‘Fresh Today’, ‘Wedding’, ‘Special Offers’ and so on. It costs the florist absolutely nothing to set this up.

With each photo they pin to their boards, they include their contact details and marketing information. They also include their website, which lists store opening hours and delivery terms.

When Jane repins their photo along with their marketing information, she has an effect marketed their services for them, free of charge, amongst all of her friends and followers. If she shares this photo on Facebook and Twitter, the potential reach of users seeing this activity is huge - we're talking thousands of people. Will some of them visit this company’s website for more information, share the photo further and order their flowers? You bet!

Can you now see the massive marketing opportunity Pinterest offers?

You might say, well, it works for products - but what if I sell services? Is Pinterest going to work for me? The answer is yes, absolutely. Here's an opportunity for you to provide educational videos and boards with free help and advice. As long as you offer your potential customers lots of value and information, they will visit, share and buy.

Pinterest also gives you the tools to pin items to your board quickly and efficiently. You will have ‘Pin It’ tool at the top of your browser, which enables you to pin photos and videos off any website you're visiting. Please be aware of copyright - do not pin off a website that does not allow sharing. Pinterest does not work with Facebook, however, pinning videos off You Tube is allowed. Add your ‘Pin It’ button on your ‘Goodies Page’ here:

http://pinterest.com/about/goodies/

You can incorporate Pinterest into your Facebook Timeline for immediate sharing. Just go to ‘Settings’.

Will Pinterest work for you and your business? Approach it the right way and it will. You should see a growth of visitors to your site but, like anything else, Pinterest takes time and dedication to achieve the right results. As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words. 

http://beinsocialmedia.com/

Be In Social Media

The Simple Way To Get Into Social Media

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Huawei mystery event in Karachi tomorrow!

Huawei mystery event in Karachi tomorrow!:

Yesterday Huawei held a launch even in Lahore, Pakistan. Event kicked off well as five phones (Huawei’s Ascend P1, U8860 Honor, U8850 Vision, Ascend G300 and Ascend Y200) were launched. The phones were first unveiled one by one, and than all the five were shown together, the event ended with an awesome performance by Ali Azmat.



Huawei plans to hold another event at Karachi tomorrow, until now Huawei has kept the details under cover and the products to be released are still unknown, it is rumoured that the devices which were released in Lahore will be showcased again. Lets keep our fingers crossed and see what Huawei unveils tomorrow in Karachi. For more information stay tuned at Huawei Fanpage.

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[Review] HTC One S

[Review] HTC One S:


Being launched at a reasonable price of Rs.48,000 — HTC One S is a great competitor for the new Samsung Galaxy SIII. Even though dual-core but the new Krait Dual Core Processor in the HTC One S has the capability to match the performance delivered by a Quad Core processor. Carry on to read the complete HTC One S review.


Design & Construction

Being 7.8mm thin and weighing only 119.5g, the HTC One S has a pretty sturdy design & a quite Solid build that does not only feel good in hands but also gives the phone a beautiful & admirable look.


On the front top is the speaker grill with a small Notification LED hiding in it. To its right is the VGA front camera for Video Calls or Skype. Just underneath them is huge 4.3″ (540 x 900 pixels) Super AMOLED display. Three Android ICS touch buttons (Back, Home, Recent Apps) are at the bottom.

On the back top is the 8MP auto focusing camera with the LED flash to its right. The Beats Audio speakers are located at the bottom of the phone.











On the left of the phone is the micro USB port for charging and data transfer. On the bottom is nothing else but just a single microphone. On the right side of the phone is the volume rocker. On the top is the 3.5mm jack, a power button and a microphone for noise cancellation or multiple channel recording.
Software & User Interface

Software & User Interface of the One Series is pretty much the same except HTC One V which has a few features ripped off due to its lower hardware specs. HTC One S runs Android 4.0.3 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4. Few images of the interface are given below. The interface is identical to the HTC One X, which can be seen here.

Camera & Video Recording

Here are a few screen-shots and a unedited 1080p Video sample from the HTC One S 8MP Camera.

















Main Features

• Stunningly thin at 7.8mm, ceramic or anodized aluminum finish
• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 4.3″ 16M-color capacitive Super AMOLED touchscreen of qHD resolution (540 x 960 pixels); Gorilla glass
• Android OS v4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with HTC Sense 4.0
• 1.5 GHz dual core Krait CPU, Adreno 225 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8260A chipset
• 1 GB of RAM and 16 GB of storage
• Beats audio enhancement
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash; face detection, geotagging and continuous shooting
• 1080p video recording @ 30fps; Snapping photos while recording video
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• Accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity and ambient light sensors
• Front facing camera with video calls
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v4.0
• MHL TV-out (requires a MHL-to-HDMI adapter)
• 1650mAh battery

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Huawei Bloggers Meetup in Lahore

Huawei Bloggers Meetup in Lahore:

Huawei held a bloggers meetup cum Iftar-Dinner at Lahore on Thursday to brief bloggers about the features present in the 5 devices launched earlier by Huawei.
A detailed presentation was given by Mr. Salman Muazzam which started from some stats about smartphone and Android market and then slowly started focusing on Pakistan and ultimately described the detailed specification of  the devices. Salman was courteous enough to answer various questions put forward by bloggers and at times the presentation turned into a positive discussion where all the participants shared their thoughts. The bloggers were given various models of Huawei’s current device lineup to have a first hand experience of the performance and build of the devices.

Mr. Bruce Fanhong, Director, Terminal Services Department , Huawei was present to shed light on the strategy adopted by the Chinese manufacturer and was eager to listen to the feedback of bloggers specializing in the smartphone niche. It was revealed that Huawei was the 4th largest Android smartphone manufacturer in the world and the Chinese giant is keen to flex its muscle to secure more growth in the global marketplace.
Mr. Bruce announced that Huawei is introducing phones in various phases and will be launching feature phones and expanding its smartphone lineup in 2013. He also revealed that Huawei is in the Pakistani market for the long run and is focusing on establishing its brand and spending millions of Dollars in R&D to become one of the major brands in the country.

Some concerns were raised by myself about the user interface and some features in the devices, Bruce assured that all these will be accounted for in Emotion UI (1.5) which will be launched in September and will be available as OTA update to all current Huawei users.  I’m eagerly waiting for the update to finalize my view about the Huawei device lineup as the devices have a nice build and are priced reasonably but fall short of quality as far as UI is concerned.
While briefing about the signal strength of Huawei devices, Bruce said:
We have more depth and study in the telecom sector due to our end-to-end solutions, so we are confident that our devices have the best signal strength.
The official distributor of Huawei products in Pakistan is Airlink Communication. Mr. Muzaffar Hayat, the Managing Director of the distributor observed the proceedings keenly and said:

We are looking forward to you (bloggers) for feedback on our devices. You must provide us with your comments, whether positive or negative to enable us to improve our products.

He further added:

We are counting on you (bloggers) to utilize social media and show the consumers how our devices actually are. 

Keep visiting TelecomPk as we will be reviewing Huawei’s devices soon.

" The Roving Giraffe News Report " provided by #Ace Media News