March 2009

Recently, someone from a UK firm putting together a glossary of social media jargon asked me to contribute. The world of social media jargon is immense, but I realized I’ve been hearing the word “ping” in a sense that didn’t really make sense to me. Ping, v. This is something you send to a computer […]

Preparedness is never easy, which is why so many of us get caught out when something goes wrong. With technology, the tiniest thing can misfire and blast your plans to oblivion. I was happy to come across blogger Rob Jackson’s post Confessions of a Live Blog Failure, where he talks about trying to report an

[The following is reprinted from the technology issue of Torah at the Center, and educational publication from Union for Reform Judaism. Read the whole technology issue by clicking here.] By Monique Cuvelier, Usability Consultant and CEO, Talance.com, Burlington, MA The last thing you want a student to do in an online course is to think.

Never one to shy from a bit of self promotion, I wanted to share this list of 100 (Non-Design) Blogs that Every Web Designer Should Read. Friendly Web Tools makes the cut! But I also wanted to mention it, because this is a tidy list of what really are some of the most useful blogs

One of the nice benefits of our Talance’s Massachusetts Non-profit Social Media Report is how many conversations it’s opening up about how non-profits are actually using social media – or struggling with how to use it. Someone in one of my networks said her organization doesn’t use social media precisely because it does work. This

This Halloween I might dress as the economy. I can’t think of any scarier. You’re right to be scared too, especially if you’re a nonprofit and beholden to funders, because you’ve got to make the case why you need a good website. Hold on. Reality check: you aren’t thinking of cutting funding for your own

A free preview is available at: Talance’s Massachusetts Non-profit Social Media Report A few little gems: 80% consider social media important for peer-to-peer networking. By contrast 31% find social media unimportant to their business and marketing strategy. The great majority (85%) are not using social media for online giving. More respondents plan to use online

If you use GrandCentral for free phone call service, you’ll be happy to hear Google is releasing Google Voice. It’s only open to GrandCentral users currently, but will be open to a wider audience soon. A few highlights of Google Voice: A single number to ring your home, work, and mobile phones Voicemail Transcripts of

One of the most popular posts on the Talance blog has been my list of my favorite church websites. I’d like to revisit the topic with five techniques on these killer church sites that we use in super fast and easy congregation websites. The City Church http://www.thecity.org/ The City Church has a nice website no

Starting a social marketing effort is certainly time-consuming. It’s important to think about how much time you’re willing and able to feed into a new 2.0 project before you start one. All those abandoned Facebook pages and blogs are sad and arguably do more harm than good. But knowing how to arrange your time budget