A Few of UR’s Favorite Things
Where do we get our inspiration from in University Relations?
It turns out we all have different resources that help us to think creatively, strategically, or just make us laugh out loud. Here’s our list of things we find useful, and they are categorized for your convenience. Happy clicking!
Social Networks
Mashable www.mashable.com
Inside Facebook www.insidefacebook.com
Tweetdeck www.tweetdeck.com. This is where we monitor conversations about UM-Flint on Twitter, respond to feedback when possible, engage with other social media professionals for advice, and get up-to-date news about our community.
The “higher ed” hashtag on Twitter always has relevant and insightful nuggets: http://twitter.com/#search?q=%23highered
This site has lots of simple video tutorials for things like Twitter hashtags: http://www.commoncraft.com/twitter-search
Web
All Things Digital www.allthingsd.com
Forrst http://forrst.com, invite-only design and development community that allows you to share inspiration, code chunks, and your work.
Dribbble http://dribbble.com/, invite-only design community that collects some of the best and influential designers around the world to share what they are working on and get feedback on it. See stuff that Chad Hietala is working on at http://dribbble.com/players/chadhietala.
Todo App – iPad http://appigo.com/todo: an awesome to-do application for motivation and to keep track of things.
Alfred App – Mac http://www.alfredapp.com/, a favorite app of Chad’s for the desktop. Great for anyone that owns a Mac. Makes opening applications, searching online, and search folders pleasurable… if thats even possible.
TextMate – Mac http://macromates.com/, a light-weight text editor. Best Text editor ever.
CloudApp – Mac http://getcloudapp.com, great for snapping and sharing screenshots.
Dropbox http://dropbox.com, allows users to synchronize files across desktops, phone and iPad. Have your files wherever there is internet.
ZenCoding http://code.google.com/p/zen-coding/, allows users to write a short string of characters to build a whole layout instead of doing it all by hand.
Photo Archive:
Brand Toolkits:
www.umflint.edu/urel/overview.php
Inspiration/Research:
www.sxc.hu (website that has some free stock images)
References:
http://dictionary.reference.com/
http://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org
Writing
The tone of any written communication to any audience is key to its effectiveness. Finding the right tone means understanding the sensibilities of that audience. Perhaps the best clue to such ever-shifting preferences, especially for younger people, is knowing what that audience finds funny. Here some popular entertainment and humor websites created by and for “young adults” :
http://www.youtube.com/show/autotunethenews?s=1 (Auto-Tune the News)
