New Business, New Technology

I have been thinking about some of the other technology that we discussed in class, and, more specifically, the use of Twitter by a business. My family has a business, and it is based off of a blog.

At the beginning of the Fall 2010 school year, my family started a blog that is based on my dad waving at my sixteen year old brother every day on his way to high school on the school bus. The blog is titled "Wave at the Bus" and is found at http://waveatthebus.blogspot.com. The reason why this became so popular is because each day that my dad waved, he was dressed in a different costume, and he never repeated a single one.

We have created an iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad app of it, done numerous interviews, made many YouTube videos, have a Facebook page, and even have a Twitter account for it. After the first year of waving, once we realized we were receiving thousands of hits a day, we decided to make this a family business (Wave at the Bus, LLC). My dad still continues to wave once a week to my brother, and we do some more personal updates besides the funny posts now.

That following summer, once we created it as a business, we decided to also create a Twitter account. The Twitter account, located at twitter.com/waveatthebus, has become my responsibility. My mom and the rest of my family are in charge of doing the blog posts and updating the Facebook page; I am in charge of keeping our Twitter account updated and active.

Learning about Twitter in class, and how it can be used by businesses, has helped me to improve my Twitter usage and create more meaningful tweets for the followers. I really enjoyed the group that taught us about Twitter, and I believe they did a good job of showing it.

New Technology: Presenting in Motion

Until our presentations in class, I had never even heard of Prezi. But after seeing a Prezi presentation in action, I am sold.

I learned that there is software to make a dynamic, moving, zooming presentation. PowerPoints and slideshows are perfect for certain situations, but they often turn out dull and boring. Prezi provides presentations that keep the audience's attention.

It is free to get an account, however there are some premium accounts that you can purchase if you'd like some additional features. I also learned that it is very simple and easy to share with a group to collaborate on a presentation.

The Prezi group did a great job of showing how simple it is to use, and I enjoyed that they used Prezi for their presentation as it provided a great example. I'm grateful that I was able to learn about this software in class so that I can take advantage of it in the future. It's possible that I might even use it for my group's presentation at the end of the semester!