Make your own avatar

Get a photo of yourself and make it into an avatar (cartoon figure), eg using one of these avatar generators:

• the South Park avatar maker ,
• face your manga,
• befunky(start with your own photo),
• digibody's caricature maker,
• Digimi from Gizmos studio, or
• Voki for a speaking avatar.

From facebook to "blogging"

Hello to all the wonderful people in the Thomastown Social Media group.

"Social Media" refers to a lot of different sites, including:

• facebook
• twitter (social networking in 140 characters)
• google plus (social networking)
• linked in (networking for jobs & careers)
• pinterest (pin-boards)

As well as these big sites, many other sites have social "built in", for example:

• youtube (video)
• flickr (photos)
• instagram (photos - mobile only)
• tumblr (blog - mainly photos)

Before all of these sites, there was "blogging". This site is a blog. 

• A blog is like a diary. 
• The word comes from web-log. 
• "Log" is another word for diary, or journal. 
• (For example the "Captain's Log".)

You can publish photos, videos, sound files and more in your blog. And people can add comments.

Have a look at some of these blogs (list below). 

1. Find a couple of blog posts that interest you and share the links with our group in facebook.
2. If you're feeling brave, leave a comment on the blog.
3. Then see what everyone else has posted, and leave a supportive comment for them in the facebook group ;-)

NB: a "post" is one single entry in a person's blog.

Lists of blogs to follow

• Paul Shapiro's list of the best tumblr blogs to follow.
• Ignite Social Media's list of 100 women bloggers you 'should be reading'.
• Daily Tekk's list of the top 100 blogs of 2013 - these ones are in categories, so it might be easier to find one you like.
• ..and Daily Tekk's list from 2012 too.
• One of my favourites is Boing Boing.. you might not like it though. It's geeky. 

Extra, an article worth reading: Leigh Blackall writes: "What is blogging these days?".


(For a  list of the range of social media applications, try the Australasian library people.)


Photo by J&TPlaman (creative commons at flickr).