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Twitter's First Government Case Study

The USGS has become Twitter's first-ever Government case study on their Twitter 101 for Business page. The account highlighted is the @USGSted account (Twitter… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on March 23, 2010 at 8:00am — 8 Comments

How-To: Grab Video and Audio from the Web

Update (3/15/2010): I just found this simple little bookmarklet that makes it dead simple to download any YouTube video.



Additionally, there's another post here on GovLoop that links to what someone intends to be the… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on March 15, 2010 at 4:00pm — 9 Comments

Government Can Learn From Corporate (#ragancoke)

I'm currently at the Ragan Communications Social Media for Communicators conference in Atlanta, GA. So far the presentations are great from Ford, Mark Ragan, CDC, Shel Holtz, Coca-Cola SVP and more. There's a lot from the commercial world that government can learn from the experiences and trials that private industry has already gone through. There are some things that may be harder to accomplish with the difference policies that government has to deal with over private industry but they CAN be… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on February 23, 2010 at 12:10pm — 1 Comment

Woahhh There Horsie!

Over at Social Media Today, Gary Goldhammer, wrote a post with a few tips on how to slow down your social media use that are worth a quick read. What!? Slow down!? Yes! We get so caught up in having to use the latest social media tool that we don't stop to think why we even want to use them in the first place...other than to be the first to know… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on February 17, 2010 at 6:42am — 7 Comments

Apple iPad In My Eye?

My wife just asked if I was going to get one of those tablet things that Apple came out with today. She said so in that "you know if you say yes, you'll never hear the end of it---and if you say no, I'll simply spare your life" sort of voice. My answer though was "no" and it's not because of the wife-wrath. However, I did say, I WILL get the 2nd generation of the device when it comes out. But why not get the 1st gen version?



The 1st-gen versions are great but they're never quite what… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on January 27, 2010 at 6:58pm — 17 Comments

How-To: Create Closed Caption Video...For Free



Here's the run down of tools used:



Zamzar - for converting videos to multiple formats

Notepad - for writing and editing of the text only transcript

MAGpie - for the creation of the timestamped XML closed-caption file…

Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on January 14, 2010 at 6:14am — 11 Comments

Government Use of Tweetstreams

I just had an interesting discussion with several people, including privacy officers and ethics people revolving around the use of a Federal agency using/repurposing tweets and any potential privacy issues involved with doing so. Things seem a little unresolved and further discussion will be happening, but I'm hoping the GovLoop community can help address some of the issues.



Some of the questions being posed, along with some of the discussion results are posted… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on January 5, 2010 at 3:00pm — 3 Comments

How-To: Give Your Next Keynote Slideshow From Your iPhone

When I go to conferences where I'm presenting, I typically give my presentations using Keynote on the Mac. What I don't like is not having a remote device to control my presentation and I don't feel like going out and spending too much money on one...even if my work would pay for it.



However, a few months ago I found a little nugget app called "Keynote Remote" for $0.99 that let's me control… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on December 7, 2009 at 8:12pm — 3 Comments

Twitter Strategies

I'm wrestling with an issue and I'm hoping I can get a lot of input from multiple sources regarding Twitter strategies for government.



Try to look at this with your "public affairs hat" on. Do you think Twitter accounts for an agency should be created and managed based upon a general topic, organizational structure, or a combination of both?



If done organizationally, there's the potential for having hundreds of Twitter accounts all from your organization. Many would be… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on December 7, 2009 at 4:29pm — 4 Comments

Which Supervisor Would You Rather Be?

Which would you prefer:



  1. Starting out in a new job as the latest supervisor where nobody knows who are, or
  2. Becoming a supervisor after being a seasoned employee who's earned the respect of your colleagues over the years


???



If you were a new supervisor in an organization, do you expect to get more respect because no one knows who you are and they don't want to overstep their boundaries?



If you're a seasoned employee, you'll… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on December 2, 2009 at 7:47am — 2 Comments

How-To: Edit USA.gov, Google.com, and even WhiteHouse.gov

Yes, that's right folks...you too can edit these websites right now, live, and change the page however you see fit! Has the Government wikied out? Wait, you don't see… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 30, 2009 at 9:00pm — 4 Comments

Following Your Employees on Twitter

For those of you that run official government Twitter accounts, do you also follow your employees' personal twitter accounts from your official one? Some businesses in the private sector follow their own employees. This helps with the idea of being more transparent and open. However, with government accounts are there any downsides to do so? Following your employees may bring a stronger voice to your organization as whole however, I can see a downside if someone tweets something which the media… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 25, 2009 at 7:00am — 11 Comments

Diversifying Your ^Digital Portfolio

I just read a post on GovLoop about having to find a balancing act between your work and home lives and it got me thinking more about this with my own life.



Now, I'm not a financial planner/money guy, but when it comes to your investment portfolio, you're often told to diversify in order to spread your money over many investments giving you a chance at steadily increasing your return rather than betting it all on… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 24, 2009 at 10:00pm — 1 Comment

Cheap Image Management

A recent email I received asked about way to just have some sort of in-house image management software—just enough to get the job done. So, I thought up a quick way to do this and I wanted to share it with you. It may not be the solution for everyone, but it's functional.



If your organization runs Microsoft Office Suite then you're probably familiar with the standard applications like Word, Powerpoint, Excel, etc. But did you know about Picture Manager? Picture Manager comes with… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 20, 2009 at 10:28am — 3 Comments

First Experience with YouTube Caption Uploads

Yesterday, Google put out a post about the new beta caption upload feature in YouTube. This morning, I decided to put it to the test with all of the videos that we've uploaded to our USGS YouTube Channels.



Overall, I'm pretty impressed with how the captions have been… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 20, 2009 at 10:04am — No Comments

For the Developers: Cross-Browser Testing Without the Headaches

The holy grail of web development testing is being able to easily test your website in various browsers. The biggest problem is not only having to install each browser, but then having to run hacks on system to get older versions of the same browser running (ehem...IE, I'm talking to you). Well, today I was introduced to a sweet little nugget called Spoon.



By going to Spoon.net, you can test your site in IE 6, 7, 8; Firefox… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 16, 2009 at 12:00pm — No Comments

Flash and the iPhone?

Cross posted from JustAGovy



So here's a completely random thought. I happening to catch an article about the new message Adobe presents on it's site when you visit it from an iPhone. Yes, seems Adobe is a bit ticked off at Apple...still. But what if there's a good reason… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on November 11, 2009 at 3:00pm — 3 Comments

The Power of Twitter to Help Children

You can read my blog post that has all the information, but this shows you how a simple idea, and the RT power of Twitter is helping raise money for school children through the DonorsChoose program.

Full story: http://bit.ly/EgokB

Note: This post is of my own personal opinion and is not endorsed or supported by any local, state, or federal government agency.

Added by Scott Horvath on October 23, 2009 at 10:30am — No Comments

UPDATE: Live Tweet Chat on Coast Impacts of Hurricanes and Extreme Storms

UPDATE (Sept 23, 2009):



We did an interview with Federal News Radio (Chris Dorobek and Amy Morris -- thanks you two!) on our experience with the first @USGS Twitter Chat. Overall, our experience with the Twitter chat went well. We had a lot of retweeting of the planned chat well before it occurred which led us to believe we would have… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on September 23, 2009 at 8:30pm — 6 Comments

RSS Feed of Your Twitter Favorites

Cross-posted from JustAGovy



This morning, @apriledmonds posted a tweet asking how do you organize your favorites? I use favorites myself to bookmark tweets that I want to read later or that I find particularly insightful. However, I never really thought about… Continue

Added by Scott Horvath on September 18, 2009 at 9:30pm — 5 Comments

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