Farah Sidek

I use Instagram on a daily basis and absolutely love it. It's a really quick and easy way to share photos, and the 40 million users they have are testament to its awesomeness. I've seen a couple of blogs featuring their Instagram feed on the sidebar and thought that was a pretty cool way to display Instagram photos! So I decided to include one in my sidebar - check it out.

How to do it? I was messing around with Instagram's API Console, but it was too complex for a HTML beginner to comprehend. Instead, I found this really great tool called SnapWidget, which did the job in a few quick clicks!

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It's a sad fact of life that camera gear is really expensive! It's been said that it could even cost buy you a new kidney in the black market; and man, I can't afford to spill that kind of cash even if I'd love for my photos to look good.

So what you could do instead, is to consider buying second hand gear - which usually translates to a huge slash in cost. Even better news yet, Singapore is a camera-crazy nation, with just about everyone spotting a DSLR these days - which supports the fact that the secondhand camera gear market is well-developed here!

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Did you know? There’s actually a story behind the ‘Keep calm and carry on’ phenomenon. It originated over 50 years ago during the build-up to World War II and was not rediscovered until recent years in a second-hand bookshop in England.

"Since that time, the poster has been reproduced, parodied and trivialised and has become a truly iconic image of the 21st century."

I've made a couple of parodies myself with this nifty generator. Some of them are common slogans like How I Met Your Mother's "Suit up" and some of them are just plain geeky. You can do a couple of your favourites as well!

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The team at SocialMediaExaminer.com released their fourth annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report and offers 42 pages of insights, tables, graphs and examples of tactics. Over 3,800 respondents provided their advice on the who, what, when, and where of social media marketing. They also shared where they plan on investing in the future.

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I'm doing a website audit from one of my clients right now, and am looking at using the Media Cloverleaf to structure the review. The Media Cloverleaf covers how media types have evolved to its current state, and how brands need to be in all the different spaces to complete their narrative.

The digital team at Edelman Singapore was invited by ZDNet Asia for a comment on the life of a social media analyst and Ben thought I should take it on. The article was published on ZDNet Asia's News/Internet page today!

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Fantastic new announcements from Facebook: At the fMC event in New York earlier today, Facebook announced a major redesign to Pages, which now follows the timeline design that was rolled out to profile pages.

Disclosure: Facebook is a client of Edelman (in Singapore)

While Facebook is a client of ours, I speak these views as an avid social media user and a fan of design. I love the new look because the visuals are simply stunning! See these examples below (photos credit to Facebook):

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Click here to download:

facebook-pages-on-timeline-the-quick-lowdown-imho-FuuCvjDHphvukDIFHjFo.zip (1.05 MB)

Here I highlight in a nutshell what the major changes are. I won't go much in depth, because so many social media website resources will no doubt be much more detailed: Mashable, TechCrunch, The Next Web.

Additions:

• Cover photos: The cover photo can be especially powerful for its ability to display logos, products or personalities. I hope Flash function will be integrated into the cover photo eventually.
• Timeline: Highlight your brands history and milestones.
• Pinned posts: Highlight your best pieces of content.
• Timeline integration: “Add to Interest Lists” function. 
• Messaging function: You can now send private messages to your fans. This is especially great for brands with customer service operations.
• Friend activity: You can check out your friends' interactions with the page.
• Insights and data: One month historical graph of both ‘People Talking About’ and ‘New Likes per Week’ (which you could only previously get from SocialBakers).
• Admin panel: The revamped admin panel includes a new Activity Log, giving page owners greater visibility of the activity on their Timeline: highlight, hide, or feature posts as you wish.

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A few weeks back I scored passes to I-S Magazine's lomography workshop, which was Edition 16 of the I-S Xperience series of events. On a side note, the I-S Xperience series itself covers a range of interesting activities you could do in Singapore, such as wine-tasting, cooking, and workshops. Very cool.

Back to the point. I answered a simple question and won invites! It was great because participants were taught the lomography basics by the expert store reps, and each pair was loaned a Diana F+ and a roll of film to go out and shoot.

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Click here to download:

of-diana-f-and-i-s-xperience-lomography-bnxrCEcIhHwDgczkvhyv.zip (432 KB)

All photo credits to I-S Magazine's Facebook album.

It was my birthday a week ago and I'm glad to share one of the most fantastic presents I've ever received:

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Click here to download:

oh-diana-f-will-you-be-mine-photography-tlAsoJGmhmDrChIAAxij.zip (359 KB)

A new twist on the cult classic 60’s Diana camera, the Diana F+ produces dreamy, radiant, lo-fi images on 120 film.

What should I finish my first roll of film on? I was thinking that a walk down the river would present some pretty interesting photo opportunities.

I am a big fan of Wong Fu Productions! The trio, consisting of Philip Wang (@philipwang), Wesley Chan (@thewesleychan) and Ted Fu (@tedfu) make awesome videos about life's journeys in dramatic and quirky ways. Check out their Youtube channel WongFuProductions which has over a million subscribers and 140 million views! YouTube superstars indeed.

Well, the guys are in Singapore for a special seminar called Social Media Unveiled and live showcase on February 27 and 28. The seminar includes dinner and is going for $80-$95 while the showcase for $35-$45. I am definitely interested in checking it out!

Apparently their Meet And Greet passes were sold out before they were even advertised! What the... ?

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So we got turned away from #TweetJams.

A few of us ladies from the office were really hyped up about heading to the event which was part of the Social Media Week in Singapore line-up. We came and found out we had to register online, and so we decided to do that on the spot. After registering online, and checking with the counter, we were turned away because the club was too full.

Disappointing of course, as I was really keen to check it out, even giving #SataySocial a miss. It was our bad not to have registered earlier, but there was nothing on the site that indicated late registrants would not be accepted.

Sent two feedback tweets while I was in the cab home:

• Registered for #tweetjams @Lucky13SG after 8pm and got turned down when we came by cos the club was too full? #SMWSG
• Could have been more transparent that #tweetjams @Lucky13SG registration closes promptly to avoid disappointment. #SMWSG

Saw this photo snapped by Lynn (thanks!) at the event, which shows that my tweets were picked up on the TweetWall they had installed. (Wow, talk about having your opinions heard.)

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