Tag Archive for 'blog'

What Mr. & Mrs. Fitch Do and Do Not Get About Social Media

Published
by
s000z
 on February 22, 2010
. 0 Comments

Mr. & Mrs. Fitch on Twitter

Went to see Mr. & Mrs. Fitch with my friend, J. Hotham the other night. While, it was impossible not to love the tender yet jaded but still lovingly crafted characters, I was constantly distracted by playwright, Douglas Carter Beane’s limited understanding of social media.

From Susannaspeier.com

Its not like everyone has to follow every subtle nuance of the perpetually fluctuating world of social media. Given the fact it was the literal as well as metaphoric world of the play, however, couldn’t Beane have solicited the assistance of a slightly more tech savvy dramaturg? If that wasn’t in the budget, all he’d have needed to do was offer up free lattes and he’d have had a swarm of geeks at his beckon call in no time flat.

Lithgow as Fitch on Twitter

John Lithgow portrayal of Mr. Fitch was sublime. No surprise there. Had the guy been a Brit, he’d have been knighted years ago. But once again, I couldn’t help but be hopelessly distracted by his character’s Twitter dismissives:
I inhaled/
I exhaled/
which do you like more — inhaling or exhaling?
Twitter characterization.

From Susannaspeier.com

How could Lithgow’s character –a journalist whose success had bought him a luxury loft in a great neighborhood–  not have known better.

The First Thing Mr. & Mrs. Fitch Would Have Known About

The epic paradigm shattering, “arrested” Tweet that photojournalism student James Buck sent his followers in April 2009 from the backseat of a police car headed towards the Nile Delta city of Mahalla, Egypt! Not only did this epic tweet succeed in alerting the US State Department –who  arranged diplomatic intervention that would lead to a subsequent tweet of “Free” in less than 24 hours–  it defined the vital role Twitter would play on future hotspot stages.

The Second Thing Mr. & Mrs. Fitch Would Have Known About

The New York Times hosted Social Media Week Crowdsourcing Panel and the upcoming Shorty Awards, (also scheduled to take place in the Times building). If this isn’t proof enough that the new era of journalism is now being championed and embraced by print journalism then Jennifer Preston’s @NYT_JenPreston recent appointment as New York Times Social Media Editor ought to be.

How To Fix All This

Had the playwright asked lead actor, John Lithgow @john_lithgow for a guided tour of the Twittersphere, the story that probes the delicious topic what happens when a credible journalist fabricates would likely have taken too ambiguous a route for its traditional narrative arc to sustain. Mr. & Mrs. Fitch, like the fictitious article the leading characters create are there to entertain, rather than draw their audience into a metaphysical Charlie Kaufmanesque quandary. An up to date depiction of how social media is changing print journalism might have therefore caused the genre’s hard drive to crash. Set the play sometime in late 2007 or even early 2008, however and the portrayal would have been relatively accurate.

Lithgow as Lithgow on Twitter

From Susannaspeier.com
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I’m One of Networked Blogs’ Top 50 Film Blogs

Published
by
s000z
 on October 21, 2009
. 2 Comments

Go figure!  Here’s the linkie - http://www.networkedblogs.com/topic/Film/Have no idea how they decide on these things but I guess I’ve made it to Networked Blogs’ (part of Facebook) Top 50 Film Blogs.

Defining a Multi-Topical Blog
Film might not be the focus of most of my posts but when I weighed the options:  Do I write a political blog?  No, not really.  All the real-deal political writers wouldn’t think so, anyway.  Politiku is politics, yes, but fancified.  And I only post my Politiku on Huffington now anyway, for SEO purposes.

And, yes, I write a lot about science.  I’m not a scientist, though.  Nor am I a Search Engine Optimizer, though I write about Search Engine Optimization.

Embracing Hot Topics
Boring as this may be, I simply write about about whatever inspires me.  New hot topics like SEO, yeah, I’m into it.  Into it in so far as I’ve been doing it for almost a year now and am just starting to embrace this particular “hot topic” as a new direction in which to take my freelance writing.  What prompted me to embrace it was not the “hotness,” so much as it was the pragmatic simplicity of gaining a skill that there is an abundance of demand for.  Well, okay, that is “hotness” maybe?

Film vs Optimized Content
Unlike film –in which, content is an end in and of itself– the SEO stuff I write about creates content based on trending terms.  In other words, content is determined by the swarm rather than from within.

Thank you, Networked Blogs
So, thank you, Networked Blogs, for putting my ‘Film Blog’ in your top 50.  Glad to hear you like what I have to say about film.  Back to trying to find an agent to represent my unsold screenplays and back to trying to find new clients while seeking out a real job to get me by.  And yes, perhaps a real job that would involve writing in some capacity but I’ll take a permanent position with health insurance over that, any day.  In other words, if you –yes, you the reader– need someone to create Search Engine Optimized, keyword rich content, even better!

So…ya wanna read more of my SEO stuff?  Click here.

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Daylight Savings 2009 makes me miss my atomic clock

Published
by
s000z
 on March 8, 2009
. 9 Comments

A Brief History of Daylight Saving Time -  Not a history geek?  No worries.  You can read my computer geek Daylight Saving Time post, instead.

Daylight Saving Time -or-  Macro vs. Micro:

It’s weird what a big deal I’m making over daylight saving this time round by putting a time twist on the macro perspective is not by choice so much as it is due to the fact that it’s impossible not to obsess over the history which is very much the story of individuals struggling to bring a micro concept to the macro arena where it belongs.

140px-Franklin-Benjamin-LOC

According to the Franklin Institute:

Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of Daylight Savings Time.  No one had conceptualized the idea prior to Franklin’s 1784 satirical essay on the topic.  It wasn’t until 1907, however that the English builder, William Willett propsed a Daylight Savings Time bill. Neither Franklin’s satirical nor Willett’s sincere efforts to brings this idea came to fruition came about during their lifetimes.

Contentious DST Component Established & Nixed

Daylight Saving Time was established as law in the U.S. by the Act of March 19, 1918 (sometimes called the Standard Time Act).  The primary purpose of the law was to officiate the time zones that the railroads had unofficially been using since 1883.  Although the contentious DST component of that bill was appealed in 1919, the standard time zones remained.

DST Finally Re-established

During World War I, Germany nationally established a DST and other European countries soon followed, including England –where Willet’s idea had been previously ridiculed.  Early into World War II, DST was finally nationally re-established in the United States.

Waste-of-Daylight-19-cover

Love and Loss

My beloved analog atomic clock will take a few days to catch up.  In the meantime, I will feel that significance of time passing and continue to organize and structure my precious writing hours as its large, clunky hands catches up with the change.  The fact that time gets lost during this atomic hickup –which, btw, has something to do with the dialogue it has with its NIST sponsored mothership, causing a few days of confused uncertainty before it sets itself straight, again— appeals to me.

Maximization through ubiquity

I admire the passion and dedication Franklin and Willett had for honoring and maximizing the precious hours of the day at a time when no one took their ideas seriously.  Then the concept, like my atomic clock, finally connected to the mothership and became the new, ubiquitously acknowledged measuring standard.

Blogs, websites, social media and Daylight Saving Time

Blogs, websites and social media, like Daylight Saving Time, maximize your potential.  The creation of content with sticking power and resonance, however, requires good writing.  If you need help developing quality online content to promote your business, email a website link and a tweet-length description of your business goals to: 

susanna (at) susannaspeier (dot) com

and I will provide a free assessment of your business’ online communication voice along suggestions for ways in which we could work together.


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