Use Flavors.me or About.me to create an academic splash page

by Andy DeSoto on May 21, 2011

Professional homepages of most academics tend to fit a common theme: they’re rather static and rarely up to date; they look ancient and can be confusing to navigate. Although sometimes I wonder if researchers purposefully create their sites to fit “industry norms,” the most likely explanation is simple: Professors just don’t have the time to keep up with personal sites! They’re too tied up with the work that’s central to their profession. If only personal site building was any easier…

Personal branding page creators

Enter two web services I really enjoy: Flavors.me and About.me. These sites make it breathtakingly simple to sign up, create, and perfect a personal website that really makes an impact. I’ve been a paid user of Flavors.me for a while now, and have been really pleased with how easy it’s been to create a site with impact. Here’s a screenshot of my current site:

My Flavors.me homepage.

A view of the Flavors.me editor.

As you can see, it’s dead simple to put the things that matter up front and center: your vita and publications, some biographical information, and maybe a link to your lab website or some of your other social media properties. The site editors are super easy to work with, too; see the other image for a shot of the what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editor which will make it really easy to add that new Science pub to your CV.

Which should you use?

Okay, so maybe I’ve sold you on one of these great site editors. Which one should you pick? Well, the founders of these sites themselves have said that Flavors.me is a splash page for dynamic self-expression, whereas About.me is intended to be more of a business card of sorts. I don’t know how much I agree with these assessments, though. For what it’s worth, About.me is AOL-owned and supports fewer services out of the box — but has some more advanced visitor tracking features. Flavors.me seems a little more visually attractive, supports more services, and offers a $20/yr premium plan if you really like the service. It might be worth playing around with both to see what you like; I’m embarrassed to say that’s what this author has done. You might find that the “about.me” domain is more attractive, but do note that Flavors.me makes it easy to use a custom URL instead of the flavors.me domain.

Give one a try!

This is only a basic overview of personal branding page creators, but maybe we’ve inspired you to look into one of them to create your academic persona a new home. Definitely go out and try an option if one tickles your fancy, and feel free to chime in in the comments if you find one that works for you or have any questions about these tools. Thanks for reading!

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Social media over periods of transition

by Andy DeSoto on March 6, 2009

So if you know anything about my “professional” life, you know that this blog has been quiet so that I can focus on my primary goal– achieving admission into a PhD program in Cognitive Psychology.  As I prepare for the considerable life changes that will accompany the segue from undergraduate to graduate study, any casual reader of this blog might wonder: what sort of social media transition process might there be as one makes a significant next step?change_opt

As I see it, a successful social media transition requires three steps: 1) determine goals, 2) simplify services, and 3) manage branding and privacy.

Determine goals: what is changing?

For a successful shift, one should first consider their current social media strategy.  Mine, for instance, is centered primarily around this blog, with an additional effort to have an account on every other service that strikes me as remotely meaningful.  As a college undergraduate, this is a viable plan of action, but moving on to a position in graduate school, much like taking on a new job, requires a heightened sense of professionalism.  As my public role becomes one of scholarship and research, my primary web stronghold needs to reflect this fact.

Simplify services: unnecessary distractions must go

Once a general plan of action has been formed, it’s time to eliminate any distractions within the system.  As a student, for instance, there’s much less reason to focus on FriendFeed– since carefully monitoring popular web media is no longer of interest, this sort of service could comfortably fall by the wayside.  A transition provides the perfect opportunity to separate the social media wheat from the chaff.

Manage branding and privacy: control your Web presence

A natural extension of the prior principles is the importance of carefully managing the Internet face you share with the world.  If someone’s looking for a graduate researcher, for instance, and they find this website, they might be confused as to what my primary occupation truly is.  Likewise, a transition provides an excellent opportunity to double-check or sanitize all handles, usernames, and other such pointers so that they are consolidated into appropriate categories.

Do you have any particular experiences regarding managing your social media services as you transition from one phase of life to another?  Please share them!

It’s only appropriate, too, that I announce now that this site will soon be moving to another, to-be-announced domain.  Stay tuned for more details!

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A first look at Kakuteru

by Andy DeSoto on January 16, 2009

Brand new in my inbox:

You signed up for an early BETA of Kakuteru. You’re one of the lucky few to give this service it’s first spin!  Kakuteru is a fully customizable lifestreamer that tries to ride the waves of the ever interconnected and semantic web. Right now it uses FriendFeed as an aggregation backend, but it also provides custom integrations like for example Dopplr for your travel schedule.

For those that haven’t received an invitation to the invite-only service quite yet, I thought I would share some first impressions about this “customizable lifestreamer.”

Setting it up

The setup process for Kakuteru was quite simple: enter in your name, a desired subdomain on the Kakuteru server, and your FriendFeed account.  Bang: a brand new Kakuteru.

Immediately upon setup, Kakuteru showed support for the following services:supportedservices

  • Flickr
  • Google Reader
  • Last.fm
  • LinkedIn
  • Pandora
  • Seesmic
  • Tumblr
  • 12seconds
  • Twitter
  • Yelp
  • YouTube
  • Facebook
  • FriendFeed

And there would probably be more, too, I gather, if I imported more into my FriendFeed account.

Additionally, some other services are supported on an “Extra Integration” page: custom DISQUS settings (although DISQUS is already supported by default), Feedburner, Dopplr, and AddThis.

Enjoying the view

Once you’ve got your new lifestream up and running, the view is pretty plain at this point.  You’ll have to view mine to get a complete picture of what I’m talking about here, but think someone’s Twitter page with extra links and tags at the right.

hourlyactivityOne neat little feature is the “trends” page which displays my activity over time in a variety of interesting ways.  One such view is the “activity by hour” view, as shown on the left.  It’s easy to see I’m busiest between 2:00 and 3:00pm, but I wonder if a service updates at that time (as seems to be the reason for spikes at 11pm and 7pm, etc.

First impressions

My overall impression with Kakuteru is that developer Dominiek has laid down an excellent framework for the next big lifestreaming service.  The way it piggybacks on FriendFeed makes for a very interesting design and development choice, and I’m looking forward to seeing where the service goes– and playing around with it considerably– in the upcoming weeks.

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