Unsubscribe/Hide

Facebook gives us an immense amount of control over what and how much we see from each friend. These settings are easily editable from the NewsFeed. When hovering over the right side of a friend’s post, an arrow will appear. Clicking that will offer a host of options. ‘Hide Story’ offers you the ability to hide that one post that keeps popping up on the top of your NewsFeed. ‘Report Story or Spam’ is for blocking and reporting a post that may be generated by a clickjacking incident that your friend may or may not be aware of.

The next section allows you to control how much you see from a friend. The options include ‘All Updates’, ‘Most Updates’ and ‘Only Important’. How does Skynet Facebook decide what’s important? They use an interesting algorithm called Edgerank. On the surface, it’s kind of simple. Go to someone’s profile, like someone’s posts or write on someone’s wall and the probability of them popping up in your feed increases. That’s where the simplicity ends. This YouTube video delves a little deeper into it.

The final options are ‘Unsubscribe’ and ‘Unsubscribe from…’ Unsubscribe means that person’s post will never come across your NewsFeed ever again. They are still your friend however. You’ll have full access to their profile and vice versa. The ‘Unsubscribe from…’ option allows you to block one facet of that person’s posts. Let’s say you have a photographer friend who posts cool shots but distasteful status updates, you can hide the latter. Block individual types of posts works for photos, status updates, life events, games and applications. All of these options are available to edit on a friend’s profile as well under the ‘Friends’ tab.

When it comes to brands and Pages, the options are all or nothing. You either see their posts or you hide all. You may say, ‘Why would I be a fan of something but hide all their status updates?’ Think about it. Your sister’s boyfriend’s band, your neighbor’s heating and air conditioning business, your college roommate’s personal training profile. You want to support stuff like that but it might not always be pertinent to your every day life.

This is the first in a series of 3 posts about Facebook Interactions. Tomorrow we’ll deal with handling event overload. Friday we’ll tackle the most taboo subject on Facebook…unfriending. If you have a question or suggestion for a post regarding Facebook, shoot me a message on my page. As always, thanks for reading!

This year’s Gifts That Keep On Giving Campaign benefits Kickstarter campaigns! The premise remains the same. Old gift cards are turned into guitar picks, they’re sold on Etsy then the proceeds are given away. On Kickstarter.com, we’re always reminded that every dollar counts. That means every time you buy picks from the Gifts That Keep On Giving, you’re not only helping the environment, you’re also supporting someone’s dream! More details here. Check out our mini-Etsy store below!

New items every Tuesday. We ship every Friday.

Thank you and keep on giving,
Ryan

Last year I launched the Gifts That Keep On Giving campaign. The idea was simple: collect gift cards, turn them into guitar picks, sell picks on Etsy. The initial incarnation was created to support music education. Unfortunately, the funds were not lucrative and operating costs were higher than I expected. When it came time to distribute the money, the donation was quickly diluted due to the amount of students in each program. With a blink of an eye, the money was gone. My heart was in the right place, but my brain knew that I was basically wasting my time. There had to be a way to help this modest fundraiser have more of an impact. Enter Kickstarter.

For those of you unfamiliar with Kickstarter.com, it is a site that allows people with great ideas to seek funding through individual donors. The projects on there range anywhere from tech start-ups to films to ambitious art projects and everywhere in between. In following several campaigns, there is one reoccurring theme in their plea for donations: every dollar counts. Since I’m looking for a way to maximize each and every dollar the Gifts That Keep On Giving Campaign raises, Kickstarter seems like a good avenue! Below you’ll find ways to get involved!

Buy Picks: New picks are uploaded every Tuesday! Check out the Etsy store to buy picks!

Share This Campaign:

• Facebook or Twitter: With a simple post, you can spread awareness about this unique project.
• Blog: If you profile this campaign on your site, you help support recycling and art!
• YouTube: What better way to sell picks than to see them in action? Get picks, record a video, post!

Of these pieces we collect, none are more important than photos. They capture  life 1/10th of a second at a time. The story begins long before a picture is taken and extends far beyond it, yet somehow that little visual sliver can serve up some seriously comprehensive cliff notes.

With that said, I’m happy to introduce ‘…With a Side of Cute’. Is that a ridiculously corny title? Absolutely. See, when you meet someone special, corny becomes the comforting status quo. So enjoy this snapshot into my life…

01/2o12 @ Mario’s

02/2012 @ Glazed Over

03/2012 @ Jilly’s Arcade

More ‘…With a Side of Cute’ photos will be posted periodically to my Facebook page.

Numbers (iPhone and iPad)

Numbers is Apple’s equivalent to Excel. Like all Apple products, it’s sleek and simple. The irony was that I found it too simple. As we go deeper into the tablet era, the iPad as well as iPhone are making everything so intuitive, you have to become accustomed to the ease involved. After I got use to using gestures, Numbers helped me make my first beautiful invoice on my iPhone/iPad (Syncs via iCloud). If you ever use a spreadsheet, you need to pick up Numbers. Note: Definitely go through the tutorial at the beginning.

Scan Pages (iPhone)

Anyone over 50 years old may disagree but fax machines are pretty archaic. At work, we found the easiest way to share pages of information was simply to snap photos on our phones and message them. While this practice is easy for most people, you sometimes need to rely on a scanner or -gasp- a fax machine when doing business. Scan Pages is a scanner in your pocket. You take a picture of the document then Scan Pages gives it that scanned look. You can save the photo to your device, email a PDF or use Evernote, Dropbox or Google Docs. It rocks for sending W9s, printed invoices and even expense receipts.

ScatterBrain (iPhone)

“I have an idea!” and “I forgot it…” go hand in hand when you’re a busy entrepreneur. Keeping track of clients, projects and ideas should be easy with the amount of technology we have at our disposal but it’s all about finding the app that works best for you. ScatterBrain is the first app that I’ve been able to assimilate into my daily life. Using an ongoing log, bullet points and color coding, ScatterBrain can manage anything from pipedreams to bucket lists. You may find something that works better for organizing thoughts, but ScatterBrain is best for me because…I’m scatter brained.

TomorrowHD (iPhone and iPad)

Tomorrow is an unbelievably simple to-do list app that allows for procrastination with the push of a button. While embracing such a habit might be a bad thing, Tomorrow helps prevent that overwhelming anxiety and actually makes you a better worker in the long run. You write down every single thing you need to do then you can easily prioritize and guiltlessly push off the non-pressing issues without forgetting about them entirely.

As I’ve pulled together my piece for Talula Red at Who’s On First (February 6th-18th), I’ve struggled with a direction. I had a basic outline and structure for what I wanted it to look like but I wasn’t sure what it meant. Last night, I tore the whole thing down and started from scratch. I didn’t do so because I hated what I had, I did so because I loved another idea. Now I’m rebuilding and I need your help. I’ll post the artist statement next week, but for now, here is how you can get involved…

This piece isn’t mourning heartbreak, it’s celebrating love. So I want to incorporate as much love as possible. Here’s what I need from you to kick off this celebration of love!

Step 1: Snap a photo of you and someone you love or write a poem or draw a picture or write them a love letter. You can share anything you’d like! The only thing I ask is that it is portrait/vertical in it’s orientation!

Step 2: Upload it to my Facebook page or Tweet it to @IONRyan or email it to RySimmons at gmail.com

Step 3: Stop by Who’s On First at 1st and Asbury in Ocean City, NJ between February 6th and February 18th to see how it was incorporated!

It’s that easy! If you have my cell phone number, you can text it to me. I’ll be updating the photos every Wednesday and Friday! Be sure to come to the artist reception on Friday February 10th too!!!

When writing a paper in college, I’d type as much as I could before double spacing. Seeing the page total jump significantly closer to the required amount was a great feeling. Last month, I kind of did the same thing with my blog. In 2012, I wanted to increase the traffic coming into my site. Instead of compulsively checking totals, I decided I’d just post as much content as possible then look at the WordPress site stats at the end of the month. How did this work out? I doubled my traffic.

Now before I tell you how I succeeded in this endeavor, let me offer two disclaimers. One, I’m not a professional blogger or SEO expert. I’m just a young guy who really likes the internet, creating and sharing. Disclaimer two, the acts of paying no attention to hits and placing the premium on content are not exactly intrinsically linked. Obviously the latter is quite important. The benefit of the former is simply psychological. See, I’d sometimes become discouraged when I realized only 13 people read something. Ignoring that allowed me to shift my measure of success from how much incoming traffic I received to how much outgoing content I posted, at least for the time being. So how’d it happen?

Creativity

Your blog shouldn’t be an extension of your personal journal. Well it can be, but if it is, your audience may be limited. You need to offer things that are applicable to someone’s life or invites them to get involved. I posted two ‘How To’ pieces in January. Skipping the self-indulgent-here-is-what-I-think post made my blog a lot more interesting and accessible. People were coming to my site to learn then coming to my Facebook page to ask questions.

Outside of how-to stuff, I held a simple contest for creative Facebook cover photos, offered a suggestion and review for a Netflix film, spread the word about an artist opportunity and documented my own creative process in a series of random/confusing videos. Those are the things my friends and readers want to check out. You may say, ‘Ry, I have an automotive blog, creativity isn’t a focal point of that industry.’ To that I say, it’s not about posting on topics centered around creativity, it’s about being creative in the topics you post. Post something that your readers may have never seen, thought about or tried had they not seen your page.

Consistency

It’s easy if you’re someone like a tech blogger, you probably deal with Apple or Facebook news every day. If you’re an artist or a writer who enjoys tackling a variety of topics, you may struggle with what to post. Creating reoccurring features worked wonders for me. I introduced The Other Ryan Simmons series and weekly SJSL Dodgeball recaps. The people following my page came to expect those on Thursdays. I also created a routine for myself behind the scenes. I knew I’d post Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday no matter what. Then, after some research, I figured out when my audience was present on the social networks and I posted accordingly.

Community

This is a no-brainer: you need social media. 46% of all my traffic came from Facebook. 18% from Google searches. 13% from Reddit. 9% from Twitter. 5% from Pinterest. 3% from Google+. That means only 6% of hits came from people typing ‘imaginationsimmons.com’ into their browser. Now if you look at the math of my Facebook Insights or bit.ly clicks via Twitter, you’ll see that only 40% of my total traffic came from my personal outlets. This means everything else came from people who reposted my links on their own pages. If possible, keep an eye on who is sharing your stuff on Facebook or Twitter and return the favor or offer a thank you! You appreciate their support and they’ll surely appreciate your gratitude.

Finally, and this kind of ties together everything mentioned here, be sure you are thinking of your audience. Hits aren’t numbers, they’re people taking time out of their day to see what you have to offer. Make sure you are giving them something that is worth their time. Try to make your work beneficial, insightful and honest. Respect and appreciate them. If you’re only getting 100 hits a month, realize that you have the attention of 100 people which is pretty awesome. Enjoy yourself and be grateful. Good luck!

Birthday: January 9th, 1983. I’m in my last year of the twenties… let’s not talk about that though
Location: I grew up in Michigan, mostly in Allegan on the west side of the state. After college and not finding many design opportunities locally, I moved to Indianapolis with my girlfriend where she had landed a job with her sorority headquarters. The area had a lot more promise and within a couple weeks I had found a web design position. We now live on the north side in Carmel with our two dogs. (Side note: This weekend the city will be hosting the Super Bowl!)
Occupation: I have a relatively new job with Bluefish Wireless as a graphic designer in the marketing department (Bluefish helps corporations manage their wireless program – powering mobile strategy). It’s been a great fit, the group is dedicated and the culture relaxed at the same time. The office features a putting green, bubble hockey table and a robot. Either customers or off site employees can drive the bot around and interact with the office from anywhere. The company also has a few different brands that allow the design tasks to stay diverse. Occasionally, I also take on some freelance design work. I enjoy having a full time job that allows, and encourages, me to stay creative. I get to fill my time with what I love to do and have a little extra income.
Smarts: I have a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Central Michigan University. CMU is also where my parents met and we lived in married housing on campus right after I was born.
I had originally decided on CMU, because of their teacher education program. My hope was to be a high school art teacher. Thankfully one of the first required courses freshmen year involved in class hours. I quickly learned that it may not be a great fit for me, mostly due to my lack of patience. That same year I had a graphic design class that did fit.
Website: I’m currently working on ryansimmons.me (some other Ryan Simmons has the .com). Thankfully I have plenty of design work to get done right now, but that also means my own site is not getting much love. My twitter handle is @rlsims, but you can also find me on almost any social media site.
Favorite Website (other than your own): No day is complete without visiting Google Reader, but that may be cheating. One of my favorite design sites to follow right now is Quipsologies.
3 Words to describe myself: Creative, fit, adventurer.

I think those summarize me fairly well, or at least what I want out of life. The creative portion may be obvious at this point.

Fit, because I enjoy the challenge of pushing myself and what I’m able to accomplish. Last year was attempting a 50k trail marathon (Dances with Dirt), after never doing any race over a 5k. Right now, I’m working at becoming better at CrossFit – an all around fitness program with olympic lifting, gymnastics and endurance. I enjoy the mix and constantly changing challenges it offers.

Adventurer, because I’ve always been drawn to escaping into the woods. Each summer my family (my brother Nathan and our Dad) plan a trip to somewhere adventurous – backpacking in Alaska or mountain climbing in Colorado. Even Indiana has some trails worth visiting and are a good weekend escape. When I’m not able to escape, I find my fix through reading adventure books that now fill a solid book shelf.

What was your coolest live music experience?
Through high school and college, even as my taste in music changed, I had always enjoyed Incubus. Finally getting to see them this past year would have to be my highlight.

Does creativity play an important role in your life?
Absolutely. I think that problem solving and the act of creating is what draws me to design. Tasks at work, freelance jobs and the occasional drawing when time allows all involve creativity.

The best piece of advice you can offer?
Find a job you love. That has been my biggest lesson over this past year and adult life. The changes go well beyond working hours and I couldn’t be happier. It took time, effort and patience, but was well worth finding.

Turned on?

There are two types of people who are negatively affected by the opposite sex. The first one is the guy or girl who chronically falls in love. Every other month they have a new fling who they immediately <3. They do the same things they’ve done with all their previous exes and it ends the same way. The other is the guy or girl who plays the field…forever. They spend a lot of time and most of their money trying to bed a guy or girl they’ve recently met at a bar or party. Once they’ve done that, they move on and the cycle continues. Sadly for these people this achievement is viewed as the lowest hanging fruit on the tree of tangible accomplishments. Finding the right person is beyond difficult but wasting time on the wrong person is downright stupid.

Why I Might Be Wrong: The love between a man and woman or man and man or woman and woman is truly one of the greatest discoveries and most enjoyable journeys we embark on in life. Sometimes, finding that special someone is the missing piece in our lives and helps propel us to new levels of success and happiness.

4. Pipedreams and Circumstantial Happiness

Cats must eat every day...

Tomorrow’s to-do list is infinitely long for some people. The funny thing about tomorrow is the fact that it never comes. Today becomes yesterday, tomorrow is then today and tomorrow remains a hypothetical destination. Lots of us fall into this trap in which we’re waiting for a few things to change or happen and then we’ll allow ourselves to live up to our full potential or fulfill our obligations. Truth is, today is too valuable to waste. Happiness, success and prosperity begin with the actions we take right now. The joy in our lives can’t be intrinsically linked with situations with which we have little control or no intention of ever dealing with. We are the drivers of our destiny.

Why I Might Be Wrong: Dreams and goals for tomorrow can serve as a roadmap for our future. Sometimes the best things in life require a wait or take time. What’s important to remember is that the swell of pride that comes with an achievement is made all the more sweet when you’ve actively worked towards it. When you have the desire to wait, chose to work instead.

3. Weed

Engineering degree at work?

Jim Morrison named his band after the book The Doors of Perception because he believed that drugs blazed a path to heightened levels of creativity. Well I hate to break it to you, you’re not Jim Morrison and until you sell 100 million albums and have a grave featuring your bust in France, you won’t be. Marijuana enthusiasts come armed with an array of facts regarding the benefits of the occasional toke. Some are quite valid, I’m sure. But if your brushes with weed consistently result in a night on the couch, eating a bag of potato chips and spending endless hours watching Netflix…then you might want to reevaluate the relationship you have with your pipe.

Why I Might Be Wrong: I have a Grateful Dead tattoo on my left forearm. This means I’m no stranger to dope-loving hippies. For every 10 people who fit the aforementioned description, I know one person who smokes pot regularly but continues to be a functioning and contributing member of society. Now it’s just a matter of realizing whether you are one of the ten or if you are Jim Morrison.

2. Your Social Circle

Great time last night!

There is an old adage (or maybe it’s just a Hallmark card) that proclaims ‘Friends are the family you chose’. The sentiment is quite wonderful and quite true. So it’s important to examine the relationships we’ve forged with the family we’ve chosen. Are they people with whom we have a deep-seeded visceral connection or are they interchangeable parts on the bar stool next to us? It’s hard to scrutinize the people around us to such a harsh degree but friends dictate how we spend our time and money. More importantly, our friends shape our outlook and path in life. If you’re not where you want to be in life, there’s a decent chance that you’ve surrounded yourself with people who aren’t challenging you to be better or chase your dreams.

Why I Might Be Wrong: Life is boring journey without a circle buddies to share it with. If you’ve found the right people to spend your time with, you’ve struck gold. You have a shoulder to cry on in moments of despair, a body to embrace in moments of triumph and a full squad of cheerleaders to support your every endeavor! (Figuratively of course. Depending on your friends, imagining them in cheerleader outfits might be scary!)

1. The Internet

Awkward...

Do I really need to explain this? Only you know how and how much time you spend on the internet. If you’re using it to cyberstalk your old high school fling, grow virtual crops or look at adorable pets, you might be holding yourself back. Why not ask that fling out to lunch, plant a real garden outside or volunteer at an animal shelter. No matter how you spend your time online, there is probably an excellent way to translate it into real life. I promise it’ll be more rewarding than the pixelated, wifi-fueled version. One second, why are you reading this? Leave this site, go outside and never come back! Live your life!

Why I Might Be Wrong: I’m not (You know I’m not)

Talula Red- Teaser 1

Talula Red- Teaser 2

Talula Red- Teaser 3

Onesheets