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CI 306 An Interview with Dani Jones

June 23, 2010

If you’ve been on twitter, Ustream or any of Dani’s many websites you know what an amazing and talented artist Dani Jones is. Chris and I had the privilege of interviewing Dani a little while back. It was a fantastic interview unfortunately the sound quality was so poor we weren’t able to release the episode.

Dani was kind enough to grant us another interview. In this episode she talks about social media, twitter, her blog, her on line comic My Sister the Freak and much, much more.

Here are a few of the many places you can find Dani:

CI 305: Another Twitter Episode

April 11, 2010

General Text Messaging definitions

There are scores of places on the web to find the definitions for this texting shorthand that is developing around short-form messaging, but here’s a decent on to start with:

http://www.webopedia.com/quick_ref/textmessageabbreviations.asp

Twitter Tags – what do they mean?
@<username> – Use this tag when you want someone <username> to see your post, such as when you’re talking about her or asking her a question.

.@<username> – If you want everyone to see the post regardless of whether or not they follow <username>, don’t start the post w/ @. You can use anything, even a simple period to accomplish this.

D<space><username> – Use this if you want to send a private message to a user.

#<keyword> – Use this if you want a tweet to be picked up by twitter search for a topic.

RT @<username> – Use this when you want to pass a tweet along and want to give credit to the originator.

Twitter Searchhttp://search.twitter.com/

Setting up email (for MAC)

Go to http://search.twitter.com/set up your search term. Find the RSS feed link. From the options “Subscribe to this feed using” select applications. Under applications find mail. Hit subscribe. Apple mail uses an RSS feeder to send alerts. They’ll show up just like an email.

If you want to have search terms sent directly to an email address there are several 3rd party apps you can use.
If you have a favorite please let us know which one you are using and why you like it.

Setting up rss reader alerts:

The easiest way to follow search results is to add a search column to Tweetdeck or whatever Twitter application that you use. However, on the results page from http://search.twitter.com/, you can grab the RSS Feed link and add it to whatever feed reader you use, such as Google Reader.

Trending Topics

Use trending topics to find out which topics are hot in a specific area. Especially if you use current events to draw attention to your blog, or for inspiration for your comics, art, writing or what have you, trending topics is a great tool to see what might be relevant.

Listed

Dunbar’s Number is a concept that basically states that most people can only handle about 150 people/connections in a single organization before you get too big to really manage. Lists helps you break down a large group of people into more easily manageable sets, and also lets your followers know who’s who in your follower list.

By putting someone in a list, you define why you follow them, and let people know who you feel is worth following in a certain topic. You and your friends can all list each other to help other people find you.

Favorites

Favorite tweets that you or others make that you want to remember or be able to more easily find again. I’ve been told that there is also some Google juice to this, but I’m not entirely sure of that.

Retweeting

When passing along tweets that you particularly like, use the tag RT before a username (for instance – RT @username) to give them credit. Its polite, good web karma, and will keep people from thinking of you as a plagiarizer.

Creative Independence Twitter Page

http://twitter.com/thecinetwork

CI 303: A Twitter Episode

March 8, 2010
Twitter Button

140 Characters

So, maybe if you’ve been living on a deserted tropical island or under a rock you haven’t heard of twitter. This episode, Bob and Chris talk about the basics of Twitter and go through the process of getting you set up and branding your account. Twitter helps you reach clients and grow your business 140 characters at a time.

WordPress 2 + WordPress MU = WordPress 3: http://ocaoimh.ie/wordpress-mu-291/

I answered Marty Qatani from MartyToons.com‘s follow up questions about Linked In on the Creative Independence group on Linked In. Also, sorry Marty, I believe I called you Marty Quintas in the show.  Besides my answer to that question, there’re also a slew of great tips for improving your Linked In profile and even a way to post video to your account.

http://www.linkedin.com/groupAnswers?viewQuestionAndAnswers=&gid=2489632&discussionID=10647783

All of our original Answers for Freelancers! episodes have been migrated and archived at http://AnswersForFreelancers.CreativeIndependence.net/

http://twitter.com

http://twitter.com/artisttarareed
http://twitter.com/brendaboo

twitter: geotagging applications
http://foursquare.com/

Want to find out when people’s homes are empty? This site brought to you courtesy http://pleaserobme.com

Find Bob and Chris on twitter at:
http://twitter.com/bobostromstudio
http://twitter.com/aithene

CI 302: Bob visits Wake Tech

February 5, 2010

Short show this week. Bob does a quick recap on his way to visit a group of art students at Wake Technical Community College. Home work assignments for this week will be collected with the release of the next episode. If you haven’t done your assignment yet there’s still time. Just head on over to Linked In and sign up for an account. If you’ve already signed up or have an account find the CI group and join up. Say hello to our group and introduce yourself. (more…)

CI 209: Favorite Podcasts

November 25, 2009

ipod-luvChris and I talk a little bit about some of our favorite podcasts and what we like to listen to when we’re not up to our eyeballs working on Creative Independence. We hope you’ll check out these out if you haven’t already.

There are a million great podcasts out there and unfortunately we could list them all on this episode. If you have any suggestions for podcasts we haven’t listed here or mentioned on the show please add them to the comment section after this article. Don’t forget to leave a brief description and a link to where we can find it.

  • Creative Independence: I like this show because the hosts are just plain hunky…
  • The Story: Dick Gordon is a fantastic interviewer and can find an interesting story most anywhere.
  • The Accidental Creative: Helping artist manage the create on demand world.
  • Chris Oatley’s Art Cast: If you are an artist (especially illustrators) this podcast is for you.
  • Dani Jones Illustration: (Video) Screen capture digital art.
  • Gary Vaynerchuk: (Video) If this guy can’t get you fired up nobody can.
  • Marketing Over Coffee: Great pod-cast all about you guessed it… marketing.
  • Small Business Marketing Blog- Duct Tape Marketing: (One of Bob’s favorites) All about small business marketing.
  • This American Life:- By Ira Glass you may have heard this on NPR
  • JC-Hutchins: Super nice guy, fantastic writer. Check out the 7th Son trilogy. We were fortunate enough to have JC on the show (ep2-11 of Answers for Freelancers!)
  • Scott Sigler: New York Times best-selling Sci-Fi- Horror novelist Scott Sigler has been podcasting without fail since 1978… er sort of. (Check our favorite, The Rookie)
  • Seth Harwood: We had Seth on our show in eps 2-9 and ep 3-1 of Answers for Freelancers! It was a blast interviewing him. Real funny guy and a great writer too
  • Art and Story: Specifically for those who are into cartooning and comics, but really, for anyone who marries illustration with words to tell stories.
  • Escape from Illustration Island: Thomas James runs a blog with a number of freelance illustration resources, and his podcast echoes this passion thru interviews of other freelance illustrators.
  • Hometown Tales: Gene and Brian explore the many tales of the world. From tales that are unique to certain towns to tales that every town seems to think is there’s alone.
  • Managing the Gray: C.C. Chapman explores the world of new media marketing and PR. This is for those of us who are looking to promote ourselves using these new-fangled new media tools.
  • Podcast Answer Man: Cliff Ravenscraft of the Generally Speaking Podcast Network (GSPN) shares the knowledge he’s gleamed since 2003 while producing roughly 20 hours of podcast content PER WEEK!
  • Radio Adventures of Doctor Floyd: Fun for the whole family, join Dr. Floyd, his protege Dr. Grant, and their alien computer companion C.H.I.P.S. as they track the (somewhat) evil Dr. Steve and his sock-shaped assistant Fidgert thru time and space, and foiling his attempts to steal historical artifacts to sell on eBay.
  • Decoder Ring Theatre: The folks at Decoder Ring Theatre spin their 1930′s radio show inspired stories in 2 main titles; superhero action in The Adventures of the Red Panda, and detective noir thrillers in Black Jack Justice. Also, every summer they release a number of unique tales in their Summer Showcase series.
  • Podiobooks: A collection of podcast novels for free download.
  • Philippa Ballantine: A wonderful writer, Philippa has the ability to spin a great story, and then produces a great audio drama to present it. Seriously, I could listen to her read me a technical manual. Actually, that’s not a horrible idea…

CI 102: Experiencing Technical Difficulties

December 20, 2008

Welcome to the second episode of illustrator Bob Ostrom’s and multimedia designer Chris Wilson’s new show, Creative Independence! The goal of this show is to explore and highlight the many and varied ways that intelligent and creative people are using their talents to create and run businesses that generage income in ways that are fulfilling and often do not include billing for hourly, project or any other pay per work rate.

We hope you enjoy it!

Opening:
Chris and Bob are experiencing technical difficulties with Chris’ audio equipment. Because of this, we’re totally unable to record a skype interview with artist and creator of The Dreamer comic, Lora Innes (http://thedreamercomic.com/).

—–

Bob Makes Headway with Twitter:
At about 5 minutes in, Bob relates a few experiences that he’s had using Twitter, and how he was able to leverage the twitter community to help him thru a tough situation in his work.

Twitterati mentioned include:
http://twitter.com/gcoghill
http://twitter.com/danidraws
http://twitter.com/rachelvalley
http://twitter.com/Mercuralis

Application mentioned for categorizing your twitter network:
http://tweetdeck.com/

Measure your twitter influence:
http://twitter.grader.com/
psst… I’ve gone up to 99.8 since we recorded the show ;)
heed me my freelance warriors. There are worlds to be conquered.

Call for Intros (14:20):
We need intros. Record a short intro. Introduce and pimp yourself; who you are, what you do, where we can find you, and then finish with something like “and you’re listening to Creative Independence with Chris and Bob.” Or “Bob and Chris.” The guy in second billing won’t hold it against you. And as always, just be creative. And try to keep it under 30 seconds.

CI Sketchbook (16:20):
Bob has started a new site where artists can have fun. He posts monthly assignments that are pretty open to interpretation. Grab your pencil and drawing pad and head over to:
http://cisketchbook.ning.com/
Set up a profile and start drawing. Remember, just have fun.

Contact Info (22:20):

General
site – http://answers-for-freelancers.com/
email – answersforfreelancers (at) gmail.com

Bob
http://twitter.com/bobostromstudio
http://bobostromstudio.com

Chris
http://twitter.com/aithene
http://www.livestrong.com/profile/aithene/
my livestrong account is chronicling my 100 everything challenge, based on the 100 pushups challenge:
http://hundredpushups.com/