LA Carmaggedon

This weekend has been dubbed Carmaggedon weekend in Los Angeles.  The 405 freeway has been shut down between the 101 and the 10 to retrofit the Mullholand Street Bridge and make modifications which will allow the freeway to be widened. It’s Saturday morning and so far the expected gridlock has not materialized. The hype has worked and everyone either left town or are staying home.

In honor of the city of Los Angeles, which seems to be in constant state of freeway gridlock, I assembled some of my favorite things about LA. What I love most, is that contrary to popular belief, there is an abundance of culture in LA, the food selection is immense, and did I mention the weather. By the way I’m hanging close to home this weekend.

http://www.scoop.it/t/my-favorite-places-in-la/

What do you love or hate about LA?

It’s More Visual = Google Plus Resources

As I was going through my never ending twitter timeline I saw the following tweet and had to take a look:

GlenGilmore Glen Gilmore, Esq.

19 Essential Google+ Resources –on.mash.to/q1Sbw3 rt @mashsocialmedia

I’ve been playing around with my new toy Scoopit.com and thought I could take this post to the next level and give it a visual pop.

http://www.scoop.it/t/19-essential-google-resources

Have you started using Google+?

One Very Self Indulgent Post

I have been experimenting with a new website called Scoop It. It’s an intriguing site because it allows you to “Curate” from various websites. place them onto a grid in any order you desire, and publish what you have compiled.  A wonderful self indulgent thought came to mind “What if I curated my own blog site?” So I did and you can see it by clicking Jim’s best Blogs here.

What I like best about “Scoop It” is that it is so easy to use. You simply visit a website, Scoop It, and it’s immediately compiled into the specific blog you are working on. You can curate as many or as few sites as you wish.

I am sure there are many uses for Scoop It beyond the obvious. One that comes to mind immediately is to use it while conducting research on the web. Instead of bookmarking multiple sites you can scoop them into one place and have them click ready whenever you need them.  What do you think are some other uses?

As I was perusing “Scoop It” curated sites I found a couple that I wanted to high-lite. Here’s one curated by Neelima Sinha that features some great food (I’m thinking about what’s inside the refrigerator as I read through the blog posts). Here’s another one that has some very interesting fashion photography.  I hope you enjoyed my brief slide into self indulgence and consider curating your own favorite websites with “Scoop It”

A Google Plus – Scoop It Mashup

I’m not always an early adopter to new technology or social media but I definitely wanted to be among the first group of users to surf the Google Plus wave. Kudos to Andres Duque for sending me a Gvite and allowing me to be a Beta Tester. There is so much I love about it but I’ll blog about my personal experience at a later time.

Another opportunity to Beta Test a new website fell into my lap over the weekend when I discovered Scoop it. “Scoop It” is a site that allows users a way to curate any content they find on the web and publish it for all to see.  It is very easy to use, edit, and post. I don’t think it can be easily embedded into a WordPress blog but I’v provided a link below.

I found some really great blog posts discussing the benefits and a few negatives of  Google +.  My plan was to gather up all of the links and drop them at the end of this post when I came across the Scoop It site. As I was exploring  it dawned on me that this would be a great format to present my G+ findings.  Check it out here—-> Google+ on Scoop it.  Note: once you move over to the “Scoop it” site go ahead and click on any of the articles that you are interested in viewing (it’s not just a pretty picture). 

Are you ready to jump into Google Plus? Take the poll below and see how others feel.

Adventures on Empire Avenue

I just signed up for Empire Avenue and it’s been super fun so far. I am going to write a longer post about it in the next day or two. Just wanted to give a shout out and I needed to insert this string of characters to get credit on EAv for my blog.

EAV_BLOG_VER:51c61487fec908f5