Someone emailed me a while back and asked me to explain how email and websites, social media and all the rest fit together. So I wrote up this list of analogies.

I hope it’s helpful or at least entertaining. Analogies are my friend.

1. A site is a house.
2. A blog is a really cool house.
3. A page is a room in the house.
4. A blog post is a window into the house. Some people add a LOT of windows or a lot of rooms or both and their houses get bigger and bigger. many houses get run down because their owners lose interest and don’t keep them up.
5. An email message is a letter you send to someone’s mailbox OR it’s something you use a megaphone for. (See item 7.) You may also get your email at a post office box (webmail).
6. An instant or text message is a note you pass back and forth in class. Some of these notes are like the paper you get under your windshield wiper. You didn’t ask for it but there it is nonetheless. You have to pay to pass your notes, sometimes for a whole  month and sometimes one by one.
7. Twitter is like a megaphone that let’s you talk to everyone at once. When you talk into the megaphone you Tweet. (You NEVER twitter.)
8. An “at” (@) message is like using the megaphone to talk to one person but everyone else can hear you.
9. A Direct Message (dm) (as on Twitter) is someone whispering in your ear at a party…with a very small megaphone.
10. “Check In” messages (as on Foursquare and other location based services) are megaphone messages to tell Everyone where you are right now.
11. A Shopping Cart is, uh, a bottomless shopping cart. You have to be careful because you can get addicted to filling the shopping cart.
12. Ebay is a wacky shopping mall. One with stuffed duck toys and Ferraris. Everyone is shouting because somebody is buying something all the time. Same warning as above. be careful.
13. Facebook is the school cafeteria (without the food and the hairnets.) Everyone is talking about everything at once. Some people you listen to and some you don’t. The freshmen are over by the windows playing games (Farmville, Mafia Wars). Facebook Groups are the clubs (like the French club), all lined up at one end recruiting members. Facebook Pages are the “official” clubs (like the National Honor  Society) being more serious and sometimes more particular. But some of the less serious clubs (the National Lego Society) have snuck in. Facebook Causes are the charitable clubs (Save the Whales). Facebook Status is the built-in Megaphone.
14. LinkedIn is for all the Student Council and AP kids who can be way too serious about their work or are working the political system. It’s usually a good idea to keep an eye on them. There is also a built in megaphone.
15. Wikipedia is the know it all kid that states all these “facts” and after a while you don’t trust him but he’s also right a lot of the time.
16. A computer is a paper cup.
17. The Internet is all the strings connecting your cup to everyone else’s. That’s why they call it The Web.
18. WiFi is (an often free) paper cup that you can use in the living room watching TV or when you stop by someplace. Sometimes it’s nicer than your own cup and sometimes not. You can usually find these cups in bookstores or friendly coffee shops.
19. 3G is (an allegedly) expensive goblet that they always charge you to use. Sometimes it’s crystal and sometimes it’s plastic but it breaks easily and then you have no cup connected to the string. You can use the goblet anywhere, even in your car.

Posted via web from DoingMedia

I was working on some research for a project and I came across this excellent listing from the University of Iowa: Copyright and Multimedia Law for Webbuilders and Multimedia Authors.

Copyright, Fair Use, contracts and pretty much anything related to the law is generally a knowledge blackhole for media producers in all channels. This seemed like a good staring place for that information.

Notable are links to Lawrence Lessig, Stanford Law professor (the father of modern intellectual property and privacy thought) as well as numerous links to official and university fair use and copyright information.

NOTE: At least a few of the links are broken.

Check out this  post over at UIE’s Brain Sparks. It’s a re-publish of something from 2003 but has some good points.

My comment on the post is pointed at a missing reference: What role does “production value” or “macro design” have in audience acceptance of a web property’s design?

Seth Gottlieb over at Enter Content Here has a very good, succinct post on choosing a content management system (CMS). Don’t know whether this topic is getting some recent traction because people are trying to spend money at the end of the fiscal year or planning to spend money next fiscal year.

I think an important note for people to remember, (but not necessarily addressed in this post) is that it’s all about the business, not the technology. Cost of ownership of any CMS, over 3-5 years, needs to be included in the choosing process. It’s easy to jump to “how” to manage your content. But the driving force should be the “why” do you want to manage your content? Technology is not a solution. It is only a means to an end.