16 Pages In Thirty Minutes At Stumbleupon

I like my job. I really do. Nonetheless, all jobs involve well, WORK. Even when you like what you do.

I’m a writer and I love to write and I love that I get to write about education for the car donation program known as Kars4Kids. I like it because I know I’m helping kids and their parents with this work. My work offers meaning beyond the satisfaction of a job well done, not to mention it pays the rent.

Still, I love it when the day is done and I get to goof off. One of my new fave things to waste time on after a hard day at work is stumbleupon. I um, stumbled upon stumbleupon while looking for ways to shamelessly self-promote my blogs.

Screenshot of Stumbleupon

I share my blogs on my Facebook timeline, on my Facebook author’s page, on Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and tumblr. I even created a board for my articles on Pinterest. But all those other share buttons on the various blog interfaces I use had me intrigued. I began exploring some of these other venues and stumbleupon was one of the happier experiments I enjoyed in checking out these various social media networks.

Stumbleupon is FUN. On the other hand, it won’t be much use to me in my profession. I’ve shared about 10 pages on stumbleupon, but don’t really expect them to play well there. Stumbleupon is more about fun and delightful games and graphics than education, politics, and other serious stuff. But fun is good too, right? I mean, within reason.

So the interface is fairly simple. You’re shown a webpage. If you like it, you click the thumbs up symbol. Don’t like it, click the thumbs down symbol. Ready to move on? Click stumble and a new page comes up.

Or Be Brave

By voting thumbs up or thumbs down, you offer stumbleupon a way to refine your preferences and show you more of what you like. When you sign up (yes, it’s free), you check boxes next to all your interests. If stumbleupon sees you clicking thumbs up for many pages within one interest, a window will come up asking if you want to add a related interest. You can always say no. Or be brave and say yes.

I wanted to show you what it’s like to play on the stumbleupon playground (that’s my story and I’m sticking to it) so I went through 16 pages today to show you how I use it as well as my reactions to what stumbleupon chooses to show me.  

The one downside to stumbleupon is that not every webpage is accessible outside of stumbleupon which makes sharing kind of difficult. I linked to all the pages I came across today that CAN be accessed on their own. The others, well, you’ll have to sign up with stumbleupon to see them. Sorry about that.

1) Collected Quotes from Albert Einstein. Meh. email forward. Seen it 100 times. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

2) Crafts I'd never do. Toilet paper roll finger puppets. Seriously? Thumbs down.

Screenshot from website

STUMBLE

3) Gorgeous 360 degree interactive August sunset in Moab, Utah. THUMBS UP.

STUMBLE

4) Takes a long time to load but NEATO. It’s an interactive scene the nature of which I don’t want to spoil for you by telling you about it here. It takes a while to figure out what you need to do to get the neato stuff to happen. Once it does, it’s so cool it’s almost overwhelming. Very, very creative.  Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

5) Gosh. I don't LIKE the art here, but it is so lifelike and realistic and drawn from CHALK, yet! I have to appreciate the artist’s amazing work in spite of my dislike. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

6) Oh definitely. These are still pictures with embedded gifs so that the pictures move in only one or two small areas of the scene. It’s an extremely effective device. The dice. The cat's ear. I couldn’t figure out what was moving in the photo of the woman standing at the railing, though I looked for a long time and I’m a fairly observant person. That was disappointing. Still: Thumbs UP.

STUMBLE

I get a message from Stumbleupon: "You’ve liked the animation pages several times. Would you like to add graphic design to your interests?"

I choose yes.

7) A black and white photo of apartment building windows during a sideways blowing snowstorm at night. Okay.

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

Not wild about this particular photo, but in general, I like photographs and want to see more, especially black and white photos, so I'll click thumbs up.

STUMBLE

8) Hmm. Thumbs down, though I feel guilty, since it's Winslow Homer and all. Just don’t like this particular painting.

STUMBLE

9) Prank video. Australian guys rig up buddy's plumbing with BEER. Hot and cold running beer from every spigot in the house. Web cams set up so the friends can watch. They must really love their friend to go to all that trouble and expense. FUNNY! Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

10) Sesame street alien puppets discover computer. Weird. Pointless. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

11) Dumb, dumb, dumb joke. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

12) Stylish mommy blog. Boring. Thinking: people who stumble upon my blogs on stumbleupon will be thinking the same thing. Gulp. Thumbs down.

STUMBLE

13) Laser cure for Alzheimer's that can distinguish between healthy proteins and toxic amyloids "So simple,

Screenshot from website.

it's incredible." Medical breakthrough dated only yesterday. Cool, if not fun. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

14) Neatoooooooooooooooo! Canvas Pinball, a game of pinball set up as if on the page of a spiral bound

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

notebook. You use the arrows on your keyboard. Several balls in play at once add a surprise element. I like it. Thumbs up.

STUMBLE

Worried about the artist's diet. (screenshot from Stumbleupon)

15) Drawings of liquid by a Chinese artist. Amazing but um, yuh. The eyeball thing. weird. You wonder if the artist needs a change of diet and you wouldn't want to um, meet him. Oh all right. Thumbs up.

Screenshot from Stumbleupon

STUMBLE

16) Last but not least: a wikihow on how to escape from Handcuffs. That should be a right handy thing to know if I should ever decide to commit a crime. Thumbs UP.

The end.

Career Moves Part II

esterday's blog was about the pros and cons of using Facebook to promote a career. Today's blog continues the subject of social media and friends as vehicles for career promotion.


                                       Putting the Word Out There

I put the word out to friends that I need help with my job search. Some friends have done their best to help me by forwarding me job opps. I have been very touched by their kindness and this has really been, in general, quite helpful.

But in one case, someone actually spoke to a friend about me to try to help get me back on my feet. My friend's friend had politics at odds with my own. My friend was upfront about that fact. And the bottom line is Dov and I agreed it would be wrong for me to take any work that came through that venue.



It looks ungrateful, or maybe stupid. But in fact, it was only a moral decision about being true to our (mine and my husband's) own beliefs, politically and otherwise.

In another case, a friend gave me a hot lead, including an email address, but the contact never responded. I went back to my friend who said, "Write in the subject line: 'SO-AND-SO SENT ME,'" (substituting her name of course and not so-and-so) which still elicited no response from the contact. *shrug*

Well, onward and upward: in the first installment of this series, I wrote about the number one question from employers, "How many friends on Facebook?"

But employers are also asking about other social media sites.

2) "What about Quora and Pinterest?"

I had no ideas what these spaces were, but I figured it out and wangled invites for both sites. I need to say this: I HATE that by-invitation-only stuff. I think they do it to make people feel elite. Which is really obnoxious and insults our intelligence.

But once on Pinterest, I enjoyed myself. I made a nudnik of myself by posting luscious food pix one after the other on Facebook. People said, "What? Are you trying to KILL me??" LOL.


Quora was less successful. But only because I found myself "into it" right away and then had a negative interaction with someone within hours that is still having ramifications until now. I answered a question and got pressed for more proof. My proof was not this person's proof and I had none other to offer. But the other person insisted that meant I was wrong. Argh.

What do you think of the invitation only social media sites?

To be continued.

Career Moves

 have been thinking about a lot of ideas this week in a kind of ephemeral haze. I am stalled in my career. My attempts to find employment are still met with resistance.

What is, is written in the cosmos for reasons unknown to me. As a result, I came to decide that my best career move at the moment is to focus on this one space: my blog.

Here's the premise:

This is a space where potential employers can test my mettle as a writer: Am I good enough?

And this is a space where I can build a following.

Still, it is clear that to be anyone today, you have to be here, there, and everywhere. A blog isn't enough. eMail isn't enough. One blog and eMail is equivalent to having no presence on the World Wide Web. You'll have barely left a footprint. How do I know this? Potential employers have been asking me about my social media qualifications:

1) How many friends on Facebook?

This question forced me to assess my Facebook habits. I have tried to keep Facebook honest. I didn't want to make friends for business' sake. I have LinkedIn for that.

But today's employer expects you to exploit all social media for his/her benefit. That means that numbers count.

It also forces you to decide on your perspective--what do you deem a prudent career move and what borders on performing immoral acts? Do I agree to exploiting the numbers in this equation? Do I rack up friends to drive the numbers up without giving a damn about them? Do I friend famous or successful people, hoping that our friendship somehow leverages me to a different stratum of the social sphere?

If you were to do your own assessment of your Facebook friends, you may find that you have many friends you know are not interested in you in the least. Some of them never wrote a word on your wall or pitched in on a thread. Some never said a word but saw you in the supermarket and told you that they read everything you write and share--it's just that s/he's a lurker. Now that's a horse of a different color: an honest statement like that must be savored and appreciated.

But if they see you and still say nothing. Or they live far away but you see they wish everyone else in your old crowd Happy Birthday except for you.

Maybe you had a warm, even BEAUTIFUL reunion, seasoned with the wisdom that comes with age. But one party sensed the other's antipathy over the decision to divorce a spouse, or asked for financial help after having no connection for 3 decades. Or perhaps you posted too many youtube clips. Or perhaps it's really your constant politicizing but the other must find a noncontroversial excuse to unfriend you that doesn't seem anti-Semitic so the person says that you post too many youtube clips.

And what of lurkers who comment on every single posting and make everything all about them? Personally, I would love to do an honest clean-up of my facebook list. Keeping friends who do not like you feels like RAPE and it's not much better when it's you who doesn't like THEM.

But the numbers. I'd go down to so few real friends. Okay, not by that many, I'm exaggerating. But I'm thinking one-third would stay by my side, given a choice. Can I afford to be honest at the expense of doing what needs to be done to help me pay my bills?

Here is what I have considered then: Perhaps I will tell people that I will unfriend anyone who doesn't wish me happy birthday on the date Facebook tells them is my birthday (As an aside: I celebrate my birthday according to the changeable lunar calendar, for religious reasons. My lunar birthday is ט"ו סיון or the 15th of Sivan.)

At that point, if you wish to continue to be my friend, so this line of thought goes, you will have to send me a new friend request. If you have unsubscribed from my feed, then you likely will not receive notice that this blog entry has been posted. I post my blog entries from here, Twitter, linkedIn, Facebook, and Google+.

When I write something new, it is out here in the blogosphere. So, shall I adopt this policy? If you don't wish me happy birthday, you're gone and the numbers be damned? I feel I need to have some scruples, you see.

So maybe I shouldn't do that. What do you think? Should I keep the numbers and let two-thirds of my friends just be numbers? Is my career more important than calling nonfriends, "friends?"


To be continued.

Fun is Good

I am in love with a new app. It's called Pinterest and you have to get an invite from a member to join. It's like a virtual bulletin board.

You put in a search term and you come to a page where people have "pinned" related items they have found on the web. One can also create a page or pin and repin items, and follow people but I'm not that advanced yet. I'm still playing around and learning the ropes. Right now, I'm just having a blast searching for stuff and seeing the wealth of really cool items that come up.

I joined Pinterest because one prospective employer asked if I had experience with Pinterest and Quora. I didn't even know what they were. Needless to say, I did not get that job. But the good news is that the failed interview turned me on to this new, cool toy.

Someone on one of the myriad job lists I'd joined asked if anyone on the list had Pinterest and if they'd be willing to send him an invite. Another member of the list responded onlist saying, "Sure thing. Anyone else?"

And so I bit the bullet, not really knowing what to expect.

I'm driving my Facebook friends a little crazy with my new love, posting picture after picture of amazing desserts. Cousin Nili commented, "What are you DOING?? Are you trying to KILL me??"

I'm like a kid in a candy store. I just can't help myself.

Here are some of the things I found  today:

I searched "Zoya" because my girlfriend Leora Hyman told me about this great cosmetics company and I thought I might find some interesting things to show her. I found this Matte Velvet Lacquer. I never saw matte nail polish before.

Definitely cool.

 

Source: lh3.ggpht.com via Catherine on Pinterest

Next I searched for "handwoven" because my mother, one sister, and two good friends are weavers. I found this gorgeous Kilim rug:

Source: westelm.com via Katie on Pinterest

Aren't the colors amazing?

Next I looked up "food porn" and found this:

Fresh figs with ricotta and honey

Source: leitesculinaria.com via Danielle on Pinterest

Now I was getting hungry. I decided to look up "gourmet grilled cheese" and found this:

Source: nigella.com via Velia on Pinterest

Then I decide that I wanted to find the perfect silver sandal. I entered "silver sandal" and while it may not be THE sandal, it's pretty nice...I'd take it:

Source: rstyle.me via Xiaohan on Pinterest

I decided to see what came up for "vintage" and found this fairytale creation of a shoe. It's really for a bride and so alas, not for this happily married woman, but maybe I can keep it in mind for my daughters.

Source: images.search.yahoo.com via Meagan on Pinterest

Throwing hubby a bone, I then searched for "B52 bomber" and found this neat photograph:

Source: blog.iso50.com via Caleb on Pinterest

Pinterest is a blast and I'm just getting started. Each pinned picture takes you to a related website. If it's food, for instance, you might find a recipe or a way to order the item online.

Now all that's left is to wangle an invite to Quora to find out what THAT'S all about. Check out Pinterest, you'll be glad you did. As the good Dr. Seuss said, "If you never did you should. These things are fun and fun is good."