Finding Calm, Beauty and Peace in Oprah’s Podcast Series

I am a newbie to the world of podcasts, but my cup already runeth over with listening in. Before needing an even bigger boost of positivity and inspiration during these COVID-19 times, I had been listening to Oprah’s podcast series while driving as a means of inspiration for talking points during the yoga classes I teach. Now, I have the series playing as I cook, clean and hangout within my home. Entitled, Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations, each podcast features only one celebrity and conversations are raw as they talk about their own journeys of health and wellness with life lessons they have learned. I feel at this time, it is of utmost importance to flood our ears with information that can inspire positive change. The more we hear it, the more we will gravitate that way, instead of towards worry or fear.

I am still making my way through all of Oprah’s episodes and she continues to add new ones. There are some poignant take aways that will stick with me from what I have listened to so far.

In her podcast with Bishop T.D. Jakes, he teaches us that we think we are mostly only capable of what has been modeled for us. We are what we see, what we read, and what we hear.

mother dog with puppies

He tells a story of a beautiful mama dog who was injured in a car accident while pregnant. Her back legs became paralyzed, but absolutely no harm at all came to her puppies. The accident caused her to drag her legs behind her as she moved around. As the puppies grew and began to walk, they all dragged their legs behind them and only walked using their two front legs! They didn’t even know what they were capable of. What are you capable of that you haven’t even discovered yet?

Photo on left courtesy of Karel Van der Auwera via Unsplash.

standing under light

In Oprah’s Supersoul Conversation with Luptia Nyong’o, Lupita speaks on making space for abundance. We do such a good job at being sad, feeling negative, expecting rejection, preparing for “No’s” we will hear in our life, but we need to make space for light in our lives. Prepare for the “Yes’s” we will hear, for the positivity, and success.

A much needed listen at this time is the podcast with Eckhart Tolle, appropriately titled, Acceptance of Troubled Times. He explains that stress is something that arises when we want whatever is happening in that moment to not be happening. Stress arises in the gap between ‘what is’, and what our mind says ‘should be’. He feels we spend a great deal of time arguing with life and protesting our situation and this distracts the situation from changing. We must find acceptance in order to start achieving change.

Accept this moment as if you had chosen it.

Eckart Tolle

Eckhart encourages us to become friendly with the present moment. He feels that we add excess baggage to a situation by involving our own narrative. If we remove the dialogue we are telling ourselves of things like, “This is awful”, “This is ridiculous”, we can see a situation in its neutral state, in its true form.

Photo curtesy of Tim Goedhart via Unsplash

I will leave you with this quote from Joy Harjo, America’s Poet Laureate, whose podcast with Oprah reached me deeply, especially in these times where we rarely sit still with our thoughts and feeling, but rather distract with social media, the internet in general, and television.

You must be friends with silence to hear.

The songs of the guardians of silence are the most powerful –

They are the most rare.

Joy Harjo

Oprah’s SuperSoul Conversations Podcast Series can be listened to through Spotify and Apple Podcasts.

Vidme – How to Get Started and Verified

As storytellers and storyworld strategists, we keep our eyes and ears open for newer storytelling tools, platforms, and social networks on the rise. A recent one that has got us quite excited is Vidme.

Basically Vidme is a social networking platform for hosting your video content, as well as watching and engaging with the content of others – much like YouTube and Vimeo. It’s defining characteristics are that it also includes elements of Reddit and Twitch in it’s design. By sharing user engagement history, as well upvotes on both user videos and comments, it encourages users to engage with one another.  Unlike Reddit, however, there is no down voting of content, and as such it is fostering a positive and supportive community of content creators.

Currently, Vidme is getting the attention of many newer video content creators, as a great platform to grow on and share their video content.  After spending the last couple of weeks experimenting on the platform and getting to know the community, we’d have to agree.  This is a social networking and video hosting platform with a lot of potential. Also as a newer video content creator on Vidme there is a lot of opportunity to get noticed. Case in point, if you look at the photo below, that is one of our videos trending on Vidme in just our second week on the platform.


Guide to Getting Started and Verified on Vidme

For those of you interested in learning more about Vidme and how to be successful with your Vidme channel, here is our Guide to Getting Started and Verified on Vidme:

To review my 3 main tips were to:

 

  • Engage, Engage, Engage!!!

Engagement is what we should be doing on all our social media platforms as that is after all what ‘social’ media was designed for, but all too often we neglect to do this and just use our social media feeds to broadcast.  Vidme has been designed to remind people of the importance of engagement and as such many users (ourselves included) are discovering the magic that happens on social media when you become a part of an engaged, supportive community.

  • Wait to Apply for Verification Until You Check-Off Everything on the Verification Checklist.

Golden Goose, care of DonkeyHotey.

Image care of DonkeyHotey.

On Vidme the golden goose for many Vidme content creators is getting their channel verified. Why? As it gives their channel additional privileges, including the possibility of showing up under the trending videos, being able to monetize their channel, and adding their channel to different categories.

To get verified you need to: gain 50 followers, add an avatar and cover image to your channel, upload one video of your own, and adhere to the community rules. The process to doing this, helps to get you exploring, engaging and building a community on Vidme, which is a very good thing.

However, as is too often the case, we carry ego with us, thinking that rules don’t apply to us, so many people try to apply for verification early, before they have met the rules.  This usually results in two things: 1) you are turned down and feel resentful, or 2) you get verified (usually as you have really great quality video content or have a big audience on YouTube) and the community resents you for jumping the cue. In other words: wait to apply for verification, until you have checked off everything on the verification checklist.  If you do what I have suggested in the video above, it won’t take you that long and you will be better off for it.

To help you get started, review the Verification Page and visit the Vidme FAQs.

  • Participate in the Vidme Subreddits – both official and unofficial.

Whether you have had good or bad experiences with Reddit in the past, the Vidme official and unofficial subreddits are positive spaces to engage with other Vidme content creators and share content on Vidme.  A few subreddits I recommend checking out are the official Vidme subreddit, Vidmeos for sharing your Vidme videos, and Vidmelove for connecting with positive Vidme creators and content.

Just remember: read and follow the rules of the respective subreddits, and follow the Reddit 10% Rule. For those unaware, the Reddit 10% Rule is that for every 1 thing of your own that you share, you comment and engage with 10 other people’s posts on Reddit.

Advice from other Vidme content creators:

Having discovered the #vidmelove community, thanks to taking the time to explore Vidme and  to engaging with other Vidme content creators on both Vidme and Reddit, I asked the #Vidmelove community for their advice on getting started on Vidme.

Here is some excellent advice from @MutantPixel, @SpeedyGaming and @LinktheInformer in the #vidmelove community:

  • Use #Hashtags.

Hashtags work and are used on Vidme as a way of cataloging and searching for content on Vidme. To catalogue your content with hashtags on Vidme, simply add the appropriate hashtags to the description below your video.

  • Steer Clear of the Drama.

Vidme is a newer platform that is gaining a fair bit of attention at the moment.  As such, Vidme is working on defining itself and the direction it wishes to take, as is the community using Vidme. This attracts a certain amount of unnecessary drama.  My advice?  Avoid this and don’t fuel it.  Life has enough real problems, without creating manufactured drama.

  • Share Your Vidmeos (aka Vidme Videos) on Other Social Networking Platforms.

While engaging on other social media platforms, like Twitter, Facebook, Stumbleupon, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+ … etc share links to your vidmeos in a engaging and meaningful manner, so that you aren’t simply broadcasting and spamming your audience.  If unsure if you are sharing in a meaningful and engaging manner, look at your social media feed and answer these questions:

  1. Do you provide an interesting / engaging teaser to the vidmeo, before sharing the vidmeo link?  Your answer should be ‘yes’ here.  If it’s not, then it is time you start doing this.
  2. Are all your posts on your feed sharing vidmeos and other posts that lead people to content you have created?  Hopefully your answer is ‘no’ here. If it is ‘yes’, then you are likely spamming your audience and might be looking a little self involved.

Be sure to checkout Trinding.com, as a new social networking site, designed specifically to share links to your online video content.

Another great tip, shared with me by @Hoshi-Hana is to create content that you are passionate about. Don’t create something just because others are doing it or you think it might be popular.  To have staying power and be invested in creating new video content long term, you need to like what you are doing.


Pen and Paper, care of Dinuraj K.

Photo care of Dinuraj K.

Other Vidme Tips?

If you have other tips to being successful on Vidme, we’d love to hear them in the comments below.

Are You On Vidme?

If you are on Vidme, we’d love to come check out your channel. Please add a link to it in the comments below.


More Tutorials

For more in-depth tutorials and coaching from our team, sign-up for one of our courses at BCIT, or book us for a custom designed course or workshop of your own. You can find the details at the links below:

Houseparty App ~ Video Chat With up to 8 People!

I have been disappointed over the recent years with how little my teens communicate with their friends in a manner that does not involve texting. Nobody actually calls each other any more. Just as our mothers and grandmothers before us, I began to accept the changing times. The tide has turned though with the entrance of a video chat App. Its name is Houseparty, and it’s more than welcome on our devices!

Houseparty App

The appeal of Houseparty is that you can video chat with up to 8 people at a time. Now my teens are having ‘face to face’ conversations. Sometimes they have a bunch of friends on there just doing homework together, other times they are all chatting to make a decision on a weekend outing, and quite frankly most of the time they are just checking in on each other with short quick hangouts. Of course, they added the App to my phone and created my own account, because they are always trying to keep their mama hip. The problem that arose for me though, is that when adding friends for me to ‘party’ with, absolutely no one in my contacts has this App. That, my friends, is why I am sharing this with you. We once again have an App taking the teenage world by storm that adults don’t know about!

Apps for Video Chatting

I love the subtle red solo cup.

I see this App being incredibly fun and useful for my various groups of friends from near and far, as well as for family visits with international relatives. With its ability to include up to 8 people at a time though, Houseparty is actually a strong business tool as well.

fun facts

Lori in the House!

As soon as you open the App you will be shown your previous activity and you are then greeted with an added bonus…a fun fact! Also, upon entering the App your friends will get a pop-up notification on their phone letting them know that you are there. “Lori’s in the house!” They can then choose to go join you.

Houseparty App

A Party of Three (blurry action screen shot!)

As friends or co-workers join you in the house, the screen will continue to split. This gives me a chuckle every time as it reminds me of the Brady Bunch opening! If you notice the red banner at the bottom, it says that the room has been locked. This function closes the chat and no one else will be notified or allowed to enter. You activate the locking feature by clicking on the 3 dots you see in the bottom left corner of the photo above. This is needed, as everyone in your Houseparty contacts will get notified every time you enter the App. I would suggest you create a separate account for business and personal contacts. It is possible to turn off notifications though in your settings.

Houseparty Feedback

If you ever have any trouble or would like to give feedback simply shake your phone and select a prompt.

That’s the main tour of the house! It’s very user friendly and simple to navigate. I hope it brings you some great ‘face to face’ interactions.

Prisma: Turning Photos Into Works of Art

Transforming a Photo with Prisma

Prisma-ing a photo of Alouette Lake.

If you have found yourself looking at all the artistic images that your friends have been sharing on social media the past few months and find yourself wishing you had such artistic talents too, I will let you in on a little secret … most of the beautiful artistic images circulating social media have been created with the aid of a mobile app, Prisma. Translation: you too can create some of these incredible works of art without attending art school.

Basically Prisma is a mobile app that provides filters to transform your photographs into works of art using the styles of famous artists such as Van Gogh, Picasso, Levitan, as well as world famous ornaments and patterns.

To use Prisma on your photos, once you’ve downloaded the app to your smartphone, simply open the app and select a photo from your camera roll or take a new photo, and then tap the different filters and watch each one transform your photo into a different work of art.

Take for example the preceding image that Lori took at Alouette Lake, by playing with it in Prisma, I transformed it into the following works of art …

Dream Filter

Prisma Dream Filter of Alouette Lake

Waves Filter

Prisma Waves Filter of Alouette Lake

Paper Art Filter

Prisma Paper Art Filter of Alouette Lake

Coloured Sky Filter

Prisma Coloured Sky Filter of Alouette Lake

Prisma Tips and Tricks

Prisma also allows you to manipulate the intensity of the filters by running your finger left (to increase the filter’s intensity) or right (to decrease the filter’s intensity).

Altering Prisma filter intensity.

If you want to see your original photo next to your new Prisma artwork, swipe downward with your finger on the image. Swiping back upwards with your finger on the image will restore just the Prisma artwork.

Prisma Side by Side Images

By clicking on the cog icon in the top corner, you can enable or disable Prisma to ‘save your original photos’ (those you take while using the app), ‘save your Prisma artwork automatically’, and ‘turn on/off the Prisma watermarks’ on your Prisma artwork.

Prisma Settings

You can also save your Prisma artwork right after creating it, by clicking on the downward arrow icon underneath the artwork after you create it, and/or share it directly to Instagram and/or Facebook by clicking on the Instagram and/or Facebook icons underneath your Prisma artwork.

Saved!

Finally, if you wish to share the image elsewhere – to dropbox, via email, to Google+ or Twitter … etc – simply click on the upward arrow icon underneath your Prisma artwork.

Prisma Sharing

Have fun creating … err … Prisma-ing!

 

Quizlet ~ A Handy Study Tool

I’m past the point in parenting where I need to search and find tools to help my kids with their studying. They find innovative ways to help themselves! When I saw my daughter on her phone, I’m pretty sure I said something to the effect of, “Hey Missy! Shouldn’t you be studying?!” To which she gave me the stink eye and replied, “I am!” She has been preparing for her tests using an App called Quizlet.

Within Quizlet, you can create your own flashcards and then use them in a variety of ways to practice. I think this could be a great tool for any of us taking professional development courses.

digital flashcards

You can create your own flashcards by entering the terms and definitions you are trying to study.

Once your flashcards are made you can study them in a variety of ways, but another great feature of this App is being able to search general topics and study off of flashcards and study sets other users have made.

Quizlet

If, for example, you search ‘Computers’, you will find a list of already made study cards to choose from.

 

ready made flashcards

Once you select a set of terms to learn you have the option to read through them all and learn the concepts. You can then practice in the variety of ways shown on the top tabs. These same methods are available to you within your own study sets that you create.

 

study tools

This is an example of one of the study games where you need to click on matching squares.

You can use the test mode as many times as you like until you feel confident. I regularly see my daughter running through terms on her phone in the backseat of the car on the way to school. You have the option to join the App as a teacher where you could create your own study sets for students of yours to use. They have even launched an interactive feature called Quizlet Live! This has been a great study tool in our house so I wanted to pass it along to you. No intentions of putting the cue card people out of business! If you have other go-to tools we’d love to hear about them as well.

iMovie Tutorial: How to Rotate a Video

On more than one occasion, I have been so excited to capture greatness on video, only to discover upon playback, that I have held my phone improperly and recorded an upside down or sideways video! This makes the video virtually useless for sharing ~ or so I thought, until figured out how to fix it. In case this has happened to any of you, or should it happen in your future, I thought I’d share an iMovie tutorial on how to rotate a video.

I have been able to do some basic editing to videos right on my phone within the iMovie App, however the option to crop or rotate does not exist that I have been able to find. Determined to fix my most recent upside down video, I uploaded it to my computer and imported it into iMovie there.

upside down video

As you can see, everyone on my subway ride is hanging from the ceiling. That would have been cool if this was an amusement park ride, but instead I had some editing to do. Here’s how I did it…

iMovie Tutorial

Once you have imported your video in iMovie and have started a new project with it, click on the clip you need to adjust and then from the window menu select Cropping, Ken Burns and Rotation.

editing in iMovie

Click on the arrow icon in the direction you want your clip to flip. Each click will rotate your clip a 1/4 turn. Sometimes your video is sideways and not all the way upside down so the 1/4 turn option is great.

break dance on the subway

Voila! Now it is only the talented subway dancer I captured who is upside down. Once your video is right side up, simply select ‘Done’ and return to editing or finish your video.

I hope you have found this iMovie tutorial to be a welcome relief for those pesky times you simply hold your phone the wrong way and have an upside down world to deal with! Here is my edited video of a breakdance on the subway in its entirety for you to enjoy.

Nuzzle: A Social News Reader

Most of the time when we are using social media to engage with family, friends and followers, we don’t really want news stories or articles in general mixed in there. There are other times however, that we would just like to see those stories without other interactions intermingled. We have discovered an App for that! Meet Nuzzle, the social news reader.

 

Nuzzle

 

Nuzzle provides a clean layout of news from your friends and people you follow on Facebook and Twitter. What you see then are blog posts and articles only, without any status updates. An ‘options’ tab provides you with the following viewing options :

  • News From Your Friends
  • News From Friends of Friends
  • News You May Have Missed
  • Recently Read Stories
  • Your Custom Feeds (lists you have made within Twitter)
  • Featured Feeds

You are also able to build a network within Nuzzle by finding and following friends within the App. If you select to receive it, Nuzzle will send you a daily digest to your email highlighting top stories! To make your own social sharing easier, Buffer, Pocket and Instapaper can be signed into on the App so you can share right from a story as you read it, or save it to be read later allowing you to enjoy the read without an internet connection.

This is a free App that offers a de-cluttered experience, which is always appreciated!

 

Video Optimization Services for Digital Video Success

Video is increasingly becoming a powerful and effective tool in marketing businesses online. A video can only have an effect on an audience though, if it is seen. There are many aspects that go into putting video content online, which is why we are now offering digital video optimization services.

If you properly optimize your videos to target your desired audience through search marketing, your business will have the competitive edge it needs to get your videos viewed and drive traffic back to your site and your services.

YouTube Art

An artistic interpretation of the various YouTube icons found among websites. Photo by: Webtreats

Why are so many companies creating video content? Because:

• It tells a business’ story in a visual way;

• It connects potential customers with the personalities and culture of the business; and

• Video gets preferential traction online by search engines, as Google owns YouTube, and now Facebook is giving video preferential treatment within it’s feed too.

Take Dinologue for example, one of our clients whom we have built a successful YouTube channel for. They wanted to tap into an adult dinosaur fan base and present them with material that would be relevant and scientific, yet engaging and entertaining. In creating an engaged community and storyworld for Dinologue, digital video played an important role to accompany Dinologue’s blog posts and social media.

dinosaur video

This is a screen shot of a Dinologue video in action with popular science writer, Brian Switek.

Beyond creating a video that will appeal to your target audience, there is a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes in ‘pre and post video production’. In order to gain traction to your video, reach your target audience and attract views to your video, we can help you with the following services:

  • Taking the time to look up the keyword phrases that your target customers are searching online;
  • Researching which of those keyword phrases you can be competitive with, in reaching your target customer;
  • Optimizing your video’s title, metadescription and tags to target the competitive keyword phrases that your preferred customer is searching for online;
  • Including a call to action and draw back to your company site in the video; and
  • Creating compelling video thumbnails that capture the attention of viewers, so that they click to watch them.

custom thumbnails

Creating customized video thumbnails gives your YouTube channel a uniform look and makes your video brand immediately recognizable when your videos appear under search terms.

Properly optimizing your video will help your desired customer find you online and will lead to increased traffic back to your website. Please contact us to discuss a strategy that is best for you. This is something we can help you with at any stage you may be in with your videos – whether you have never made a video before and need guidance on where to start or if you already have a catalogue of video that needs to be optimized for what your target audience is searching online, giving those videos fresh views.

Jumping Photos: A Tutorial Video

taking jumping photos

We once did a professional photography session to get some fun jumping photos of our family. A while back, when were all at the beach, we decided to try our hand at it because there was a little ledge of sand that we thought would help make us look like we were jumping higher. It turned out to be really easy to photograph and we got some amazing shots! Jumping has now become our family’s signature way of capturing scenic memories. It’s contagious too! People who pass us while we are taking these photos want us to photograph some jumping photos of them too, on their own devices!

So that you can enjoy such an experience as well, and have a new way of capturing memories and telling your stories, I have created a tutorial video to demonstrate just how easy it is.

Warm up those leg muscles and get ready to catch some height and add an element of creativity to your shots. Really though, you don’t need to have any athletic ability to do this ~ just have fun!

Genius Scan: Apps for the Busy Professional on the Go

As someone who has a mobile office, I was initially unprepared for the amount of times I would receive ‘urgent’ requests for documents to be printed, signed and scanned back. There have also been times when paper sources of mine have had to be sent to someone immediately.  Of course, as a working mom, and busy professional on the go, this most often happens when I am nowhere near a computer, printer or scanner!  I have come across a couple Apps that have solved this dilemma for me: SignEasy; a Digital Signature App which I discussed in a previous post, and Genius Scan.

Genius Scan is exactly what its name suggests, a brilliant scanning tool! If you have a printed document that needs to be sent, but no scanner, this App give you the ability to take a photo of each page, make general enhancements and send it off!  It will save each page into the same document so you don’t need to send each page off separately.

Genius Scan scanning App

Cropping Your Document

After you take a photo of your document, a grid overlay comes up for you to crop and determine exactly which parts of your page to include. This is handy if you have smaller receipts where a lot of your table shows up in the photo.

Genius Scan document enhancements

Finishing Touches

Once you are finished cropping the page, the App enhances it for you. You have the option to select No Enhancement, Black and White, or Colour. Once you save the page and add any other pages to the same document file you can choose your format to send it in. I usually choose PDF and it gets sent off as a proper printable document, not like a photo you took and emailed off.

I have been using this App for a long time now and I believe there have been a few upgrades along the way providing an enhanced user experience with even more options than I have described above, and this App is free.  As someone who is always juggling work and family, I have been extremely grateful for the time and headaches I’ve been able to avoid!