NEWS ITEMS  
The WordPress Community Offers Advice To Beginners
We’ve all been total newbies. In fact, I spend most of my time still feeling like one. So researching this article was a great opportunity for me to do some more learning, and to share all of that good stuff with you.
25 Best Photoshop Plug-Ins
Photoshop CS6 is a beast! It’s an all-powerful behemoth capable of producing sublime images, high-quality video and with CS6 Extended it can even create very passable 3D renders.
Facebook’s New Graph Search and the Future of Artists on Facebook
Earlier this week, Facebook announced their new search feature, Graph Search. Along with the controversy-ridden News Feed and Timeline, Facebook considers this to be one of their “Three Pillars.” Graph Search is meant to be a private, internal search engine with the categories People, Places, Photos and Interests. For searches that come up empty, you’ll be dumped onto a Bing search engine results page within Facebook.
Twitter Tweaks for Better, Close-Up Photo and Video Viewing
Twitter just introduced a couple of tweaks that make it easier to share and view media within the platform. Now, you can view large versions of photos shared on Twitter without having to leave the original page. You can also watch video within Twitter from sources such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Twitter's own Vine, the video startup it acquired back in October. We wrote about Twitter's stealth rollout of Vine last week, and since then, Vine has been getting heat for a porn pic that accidentally made its way into the Editor's Picks section. At least now you don't have to leave Twitter to get your daily #vineporn.
At Disney Parks, a Bracelet Meant to Build Loyalty (and Sales)
Imagine Walt Disney World with no entry turnstiles. Cash? Passé: Visitors would wear rubber bracelets encoded with credit card information, snapping up corn dogs and Mickey Mouse ears with a tap of the wrist. Smartphone alerts would signal when it is time to ride Space Mountain without standing in line. Fantasyland? Hardly. It happens starting this spring. Disney in the coming months plans to begin introducing a vacation management system called MyMagic+ that will drastically change the way Disney World visitors — some 30 million people a year — do just about everything.
More Facebook Changes, Aimed at Users on the Go
The only thing constant about Facebook is that it keeps changing. Just when you think you’ve figured out the interface to the world’s biggest social network, the engineers there update it again. For the 600 million or so people who use their smartphones to stay on top of Facebook friends, recent weeks have been especially anxiety-producing.
Recognizing some time ago that for many mobile users their Facebook phone app is their primary or only way of access, the company unveiled a barrage of new features that bring the mobile apps in line with the desktop browser version of Facebook.
How Do Arts Organizations Use the Internet?
Museums sometimes seem to have a split identity — some institutions are on the bleeding edge of innovation, taking full advantage of the internet and technology in spreading access to their collections and programming. Others are stuck in the past, operating just how they might have decades ago with administrations unwilling to push technological initiatives. A report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project on “Arts Organizations and Digital Technologies” provides a fascinating insight into just how museums and other cultural institutions view their relationship to the web.
5 Things Nonprofits Must Do To Captivate Millennials
I have a short attention span, but I rock at multitasking. I may get bored easy but if you capture my attention, I could become your number one advocate (or worst nightmare). Please just cut to the chase, there’s no need for lengthy instructions; to me a picture’s worth a thousand words. At about 80 million strong, by 2017 these Americans, born between 1980-2000, will have more spending power than any other generation before us. You call me a millennial, but I prefer Rachael.
Plus-One This: Proof That Google Plus Will Prevail
Remember when Google Plus 'flopped'? Well, it didn't. In fact, it was, and still is, just part of Google's plan–but everyone (including the media) has trouble seeing it as anything other than a swing and a miss for the explosive overtaking of Facebook, which is what most people believe was Google's intention with Google Plus. Sure, I bet Google hoped in the back of its mind it would get lucky and eclipse Facebook, but Google certainly wasn’t counting on it.
10 Surprising Marketing Predictions For 2013
Remember the days when a big-box store sounded the death knell for small business? Today, that trend may be ending due to another event: the emergence of mom-and-pops with the muscle of a major brand. Social media, online marketplaces such as Etsy and Fab, and transaction-processing technologies have enabled even micro-businesses to compete with national chains.
How to Calculate the Value of a Like
Effective marketers expect to see clear cut, positive ROI for every other channel of online marketing including email, search, and display advertising. But for some reason, many seem to forget about return when it comes to channels like Facebook and Twitter.
Eight Things Wrong with Your Google AdWords Campaign
Many advertisers think there's no harm in having countless keywords in their campaigns just to cover their bases, but this is false logic. First of all, having too many non-performing keywords in your campaign can actually bring your overall campaign down, which in turn can lead to increased expenses to generate the same results.
Are All Your Customers Just Like You? Seven Steps to Diversify Your Customer Base
A customer’s experience is shaped by the entire interaction with your brand, product, service, or company--from beginning to end.
Most people will initially find you online or will visit your website or Facebook page to check you out if they heard about you via word of mouth. You want to make sure that your website and your social media pages are welcoming to diverse groups. The least you can do is feature people who don’t all look the same if you use pictures of people on your site or pages.
Zynga Workshop: Creative Work Perk
The participants come and go--they aren't students taking a required course at an art school. Instead, they're colleagues--accountants, engineers, artists and animators--attending this drop-in workshop for personal and professional enrichment. They all work here at Zynga, a company known for its online social games, including "FarmVille" and "ChefVille."
Three Big Insights from Today’s Top Design Thinkers
A few weeks ago, at the Fast Company offices, we convened an all-star panel of designers and design leaders to talk about the problems that they found most vexing in the past year, and what they were trying to do to solve them.




