The Vivid Blog has a new home

It's official, the move is complete. You can now follow us at

www.thevividconsultancy.posterous.com

(Read Holly's post 29/09 to find out why)

We'd love to know what you think of the new look, so please feel free to leave us a comment.

Vivid Friday Favourites

Hilary:

• I love the fact that it’s Autumn which is my favourite season – the colours, the leaves on the ground, the low sun. Fantastic walking weather!
• I’m also really pleased that Sandbag, Dirtbag and Royal the dogs and Hesco the cat have arrived safely in the UK from Iraq - http://bit.ly/VNoqM. Even better, it looks like they've been given homes in Gloucestershire! However, it would be nice to see animal welfare being taken more seriously around the globe.
• I’ve enjoyed listening to John Hellings waking the Cotswold Way on BBC Radio Gloucestershire. Glorious!

Caroline: http://glumcouncillors.tumblr.com/ This hilarious site is dedicated to photographs of councillors looking gloomy... we had a look through our archives to see if we could find any of our own to contribute, but I'm happy to report that Tewkesbury's councillors are a cheerful bunch!

Holly: I'm not deaf! That's definitely made my week. I've always been a bit concerned that excessive exposure to loud music has caused some lasting damage, but whilst researching online hubs for the deaf/hearing impaired for the HPC I came across this deafchecker from the RNID. Awesome. http://bit.ly/q9c44. Also the fact that we're leapt from google obscurity to front page loveliness purely because of our blog and twitter account (@wearevivid doncha know). Def good for my ego :-)

Happy Friday all... this'll be the last week Friday favourites is here.... next week we make the move!

TVT xx

Bye bye blogger...

Can’t believe it’s been a month since I started work! Crazy how the time goes non? One of my tasks since becoming part of the team at Vivid has been to develop and maintain our blog. Definitely loads of fun. Recently though, I’ve been debating jumping the Blogger ship and finding a different platform from which to launch our tidbits of loveliness.

Why? Partly it’s to do with aesthetic preference. I’ve been using WordPress for my own site, www.dirtyenid.co.uk, for a while now and for me it’s far and away the better looking dashboard. To suddenly be faced with Blogger is a bit of a visual kick in the stomach by comparison. A little bit eye-vomitty, with too many colours, and way too much bold font. By comparison, WordPress keeps it nice and simple. Grayscale palette with the occasional splash of colour. A bit like Schindler’s list.

The other reason is formatting. Is it just me, or does the Blogger software have some kind of blind spot when it comes to calculating how many lines you’ve left between each paragraph? It’s a minor annoyance having to keep re-editing everything you write so that the spaces between the lines look right, but after a while it gets pretty tiresome. Tiresome enough to move when something better comes along, and a real indicator of how the small details can make a huge difference.

So it’s time to starting packing up and moving on. But it’s not WordPress I’m defecting to, despite its legions of fans and the fact that even Google’s Matt Cutts rates it the highest in terms of SEO. Oh no. There’s a new blog kid on the block. Enter Posterous. Launched in July 2008 by super-smart computer duo Gary Tan and Sachin Agarwal, Posterous is beautiful in its simplicity. It’s based around email – email for setup, email to post, email to share music, videos and other media.

It’s this simplicity that I find so appealing. It terms of implementing a blog that every member of the Vivid team can use it’s pretty unbeatable. Whilst getting to grips with creating and posting blogs takes time if you have no experience, everyone is already familiar with email. Whilst I’m totally in favour of pushing people out of their comfort zones when it comes to social media, sometimes it just makes sense to go for the simple option.

To conclude… adios Blogger. Posterous here we come – I’ll let you know once the move’s all sorted. In the meantime, I’d love to know if anyone else has been using Posterous for a while, and how it’s shaping up long term (and if anyone else agrees about the ugliness of Blogger…)

Hx

P.S... if you're still confused and wondering how to pick a platform for your own blog, check out this super informative post from the problogger team.

Vivid Friday Favourite

A mini Friday favourite this week as there's only two of us in the office today...

Caroline: My favourite thing this week was attending the Rick Stein event for the Princes Trust. Apparently he used to be a nightclub owner, until he was told he was unfit to hold a license and had it taken away from him! It was also great to hear from Lorna Knapman, who received help from the Trust and now runs the amazing Love Food Festival.

Holly: Linky favourites :-)
http://www.blockposters.com/ even though it would destroy your printer ink...
http://www.flickr.com/photos/w00kie/sets/180637/show/ Clever desktop backgrounds.
And continuing on the toilet paper/art theme from a fortnight ago... http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Paper-cuts-Rolls/241623

xxTVTxx

Automatic followers on Twitter - Just Say No

If you've taken the plunge and started using Twitter then it won't be long until you see a tweet that goes something like this...
"OMG, I JUST WENT ON TO (INSERT WEB ADDRESS HERE) AND NOW I HAVE A GAZILLION FOLLOWERS! IT'S AMAZING! TRY IT AND YOU TOO CAN BE A TWITTER STAR."

There are multiple sites of this ilk spamming their way around Twitter. All promise to find you a plethora of followers for minimal effort, applying the same principles as those chain letters that promised you 300 chocolate bars through the post if you sent out just one. (Remember those? If anyone ever actually got any chocolate I would love to hear from you!)

There are two major reasons for ignoring these sites:

1. They don't work

Example: Today the Vivid Twitter account (@WeAreVivid by the way) was followed by 'Warwuti'. I'm pretty prepared to accept that Warwuti may not even be real, a spammy bot of some kind designed to promote twitritus (detritus? Tenuous at best, but maybe?). But this account proclaimed the wonders of several follower sites, so I followed Warwuti back, watched and waited.

'Warwuti'

At the time of following (11.30am), Warwuti had 92 followers, and 365 that they were following.

At 13.21: Followers at 110, following at 365

At 14.42: 115 and 647

And at 16.07, 118 and 644. Nowhere near the hundreds of new followers promised by any of these sites. Lots of following going on, but noone willing to pay attention to Warwuti's (admittedly deeply unexciting) tweets. Which brings me neatly to point number 2...

Twitter is not just about how many followers you have. It's about making connections with people that will be generally interested in what you have to say, and that you can learn from in return. It's far better to take it slow and make sure you build up proper relationships with those you do follow than to play the numbers. Twitter isn't the playground, and to focus purely on popularity at the expense of finding valuable, interesting people to connect with will mean you do the site, and yourself, a disservice.

Our new new newsletter - social media explained #1

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Vivid Social Media Bulletin #1

Social Media Revolution

If you're still unconvinced about the power of social media, check out this slideshow from the folks at socialnomics.

Vivid Friday Favourites

Hilary: The concept of the Stroud pound, designed to encourage people to shops locally, and its nickname – the teasle! Also listening to Sapperton man Arthur Findlater who is in a wheel chair talking about his unique relationship with his assistance dog, Daxi. Daxi and Arthur work with Canine Partners, a fabulous charity which builds on man’s relationship with man’s best friend. Inspirational! If you'd like to hear more about Arthur and Daxi listen again to the John Rockley show from the 17th of September. And finally, hearing that my nephew Pete, a broadcast journalist, has been asked to contribute to a new football site, http://www.westhaminsider.com/. Cool, even though I’m not a West Ham supporter!

Caroline: Going to the 'Thank you for the Music' tribute to Abba in Hyde Park. It was great, particularly Jodie Prenger (Nancy in Oliver! and winner of 'I'd do anything'). However no one sings Abba songs quite like Abba! It was particularly satisfying to see that Bjorn looks even better now than he did back in the day! The concert is still up on bbc iplayer if you want to have a listen.

Holly: More internet faves from me this week (shock). First up is http://www.spezify.com/. This is a visual search engine that pulls together content from across the web and displays it in an engaging visual format that would be great for designers seeking inspiration. Try searching for emotions or colours. Another favourite this week is http://www.xtranormal.com/. This is a text to movie website that lets you script and move 3d characters around a virtual world. Next week I'm going to be using it to make a tutorial or something so watch this space....

Lauren: Having the launch party for the Tewkesbury brand and seeing the logo unveiled for everyone to have a look at. Check out the pics here.

Wishing you all a fantastic weekend.

The Vivid Team x