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HOW TO: Optimize Your LinkedIn Profile

With more than 85 million members in more than 200 countries, LinkedIn is a professional social network worth using, understanding and optimizing.

After you’ve covered the basics of setting up your LinkedIn presence, features including recommendations, applications, LinkedIn Answers, and the Resume Builder can add value to your profile. Many of these highly useful features, though, are often overlooked or underused by newcomers.

We spoke with four LinkedIn aficionados to get their top advice on making the best use of these tools. Read on for their thoughts and let us know which tips you’d add for optimizing LinkedIn profiles in the comments below.

Read the full article here!

Quote of the Day

To find out what one is fitted to do, and to secure an opportunity to do it, is the key to happiness. 

— John Dewey

The future of advertising?

Photo Flash Technology Creates After Image Visible When Eyes Are Closed

(AdAge.com) — BMW Germany is literally getting into consumers’ heads, by burning its logo onto the insides of their eyes. Using pioneering new “flash projection” technology, BMW is testing a cinema spot in Germany that does not feature a visible logo. Instead, a bright photo flash occurs during the ad, and a few moments later the audience is asked to close its eyes. At this point, the audience sees an after-image of the brand that has been created by the flash. The letters “BMW” appear before them, in the same way that you might see a bright spot if you had been looking at the sun and then closed your eyes.

Read the full article here!

10 Creative Uses of the New Facebook Profile

(mashable.com) – Facebook users are showing off some serious creativity by taking advantage of the new profile page photo layout.

French artist Alexandre Oudin (below) has been identified as the creator of the craze, and more and more designs are now emerging. People have been playing around with their profile pics since Facebook first launched, but the new redesign allows for some inspired fun including clever animations, typography and photography magic.

See full article here!

Quote of the Day

Design is an opportunity to continue telling the story, not just to sum everything up.

— Tate Linden

Staying in School Forever

(Scott Young on scotthyoung.com) – As a species, our incubation period is getting longer.

Just a few hundred years ago, finishing twelve years of education was uncommon. Today it’s difficult to get a job above minimum wage without a high-school diploma.

Teenagers were once miniature adults. Fifteen year-old girls got married. Sixteen year-old boys went to work. Today teenagers are older children. I know many people that aren’t financially independent well into their twenties.

This increase incubation is probably because, as the world becomes more specialized and complex, we need more time to learn things. Also as science and technology accelerate, we need more time to specialize. There are people who need to study principles of chemistry to get jobs today that hadn’t even been discovered 100 years ago.

Read the full article here!

7 things you should never say in an interview

(CareerBuilder.com) — You dry cleaned your suit. You’ve got a dozen copies of your résumé, just in case. You arrived early — but not too early. You silenced your cell phone. You made small talk with the receptionist, and you’re pretty sure the two of you will be best friends one day. Now, you’re about to confidently head into an interview for a job you’re dying to land.

Read the full article here!

Quote of the Day

Advertising is the greatest art form of the 20th century.
– Marshall McLuhan

10 Predictions for the News Media in 2011

(mashable.com) – In many ways, 2010 was finally the year of mobile for news media, and especially so if you consider the iPad a mobile device. Many news organizations like The Washington Post and CNN included heavy social media integrations into their apps, opening the devices beyond news consumption. In 2011, the focus on mobile will continue to grow with the launch of mobile- and iPad-only news products, but the greater focus for news media in 2011 will be on re-imagining its approach to the open social web. The focus will shift from searchable news to social and share-able news, as social media referrals close the gap on search traffic for more news organizations. In the coming year, news media’s focus will be affected by the personalization of news consumption and social media’s influence on journalism.

Read full article here!

Quote of the Day

Happiness… it lies in the joy of achievement, in the thrill of creative effort.

 -Vincent Van Gogh

Get a Taste of HumanKind

(Jenny Torres on talentzoo.com) – Attention all young creatives, not-so-young creatives, and creatives who are young at heart: Leo Burnett has recently published a new book titled HumanKind. Written by chief executive officer Tom Bernardin and global chief creative officer Mark Tutssel, this book is about people, purpose, and creating acts, not ads. HumanKind gives the reader an inside look into how their creative teams approach popular brands. Read the full article here!

Quote of the Day

Design is the search for a magical balance between business and art; art and craft; intuition and reason; concept and detail; playfulness and formality; client and designer; designer and printer; and printer and public.

— Valerie Pettis

Glassdoor’s List of 50 Best Places to Work

(gigaom.com) – Engineers aren’t just flocking to Facebook for a potential blockbuster IPO payout — apparently the social network is also a great place to work. Glassdoor.com announced that Facebook is debuting at the top of its third-annual list of 50 best places to work, beating out last year’s No. 1, Southwest Airlines. Technology rivals Apple (#20) and Google (#30) are further back in the pack along with Adobe (#39), Salesforce.com (#41) and Intel s (#45.)

Read the full article here!

30 Great Holiday Gifts for The Designer and Developer In Your Lives

Its that time of year again. Time to buy those important holiday gifts for your loved ones or coworkers. As we all know, it is never easy to find the right gift for the designer or developer in your life. They are generally very hard to shop for since they speak a different language and sometimes live in a different world, but now you have more unique, fun and useful gifts than ever. Today lets take a look at 30 Great Holiday Gifts for The Designer and Developer In Your Lives:

Read full article here!

Quote of the Day

A good basic selling idea, involvement and relevancy, of course, are as important as ever, but in the advertising din of today, unless you make yourself noticed and believed, you ain’t got nothin’.  – Leo Burnett

LinkedIn Reveals the 10 Most Overused Job-Hunter Buzzwords

(mashable.com) – LinkedIn has just posted the 10 most overused, tired and trite buzzwords that get slapped onto resumes and professional profiles around the U.S. and 11 other countries. According to our LinkedIn profiles, a great many of us tend to describe ourselves as motivated team players with extensive experience. Ironically, “innovative” is the second-most clichéd word found in LinkedIn profiles. You’d think we’d be able to be more innovative with our vocabularies, no?

Read full article here!

Quote of the Day

Good design is obvious. Great design is transparent. –  Joe Sparano

Start Now to Reduce Holiday Stress

(Dawn Foster on gigaom.com ) – We’re right in the middle of the holiday season, when the stress starts to accumulate until it reaches a breaking point. Start taking steps today to make some positive changes that will help you manage our stress over the next two or three weeks.

Read full article here!

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