Posterous is a cool site that allows you to post content simultaneously to multiple social media sites by email. You can attach almost any document or link and posterous will format it for you correctly and even embed the players if necessary. If you have multiple photos, it’ll even automatically create a gallery and reformat the pictures for online viewing, while retaining the full scale photos so that others can download them.

Today, I’m experimenting with posting to WordPress from email through Posterous. Posterous says they’ll format my YouTube link and embed the player. So, here is that super funny wedding entrance dance video that’s going around right now (only 12 million views to date).

You should be seeing the video in the YouTube player if it worked correctly:

As I mentioned above, the site is good looking. It has the type of modern, clean user interface that I love. Even their emails are nice looking. Looks aside, it’s easy to get started on posterous. They have a super helpful FAQ that answers pretty much any question you might have. They have password protected sites if you’re skittish about having your content in the public domain, and they have group sites where you can add the email addresses of your friends or family for group posting.

Also, if you tweet, this is an easy way to post content that is longer than 140 characters, add photos, etc. and have it all in one place. This is helpful, especially when posting from your smartphone. Currently, my photos go to twitpic, my tweets are texted to Twitter and my Facebook status is updated via the Facebook Blackberry app. Doing all of this via email to posterous could be a huge benefit.  Also, you have the option to post selectively to each of the services you’ve added — just by modifying the email address you send to (i.e., twitter@posterous.com for a tweet vs. twitter+facebook@posterous.com for selective post to twitter and facebook only vs. post@posterous.com for everything).

Though some folks might use this as their blog, because it doesn’t offer all the customization that most bloggers would want, I think posterous would be good as an “unblog” — you know, all the stuff (read: noise, junk, crap) that you want to post and share but don’t really want on your real blog or Facebook.

Anyway, that’s about all I can say right now. I’m going to try out Posterous for a few weeks and see what happens. There are so many features to check out.

Thanks to Ed Richardson who posted a terrific article about Posterous on Social Media Today. http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/112828 It was just the push I needed to get started.

Clicking the send button…now.

Posted via email from pamelawella’s posterous

Dissatisfied customer who accidently purchased a song lasting only 2:48.

Have you ever downloaded a song from iTunes and thought – damn, that’s one short song. Was that really worth the 99 cents or did I just get ripped off? After all, in today’s down economy, you can’t afford to waste your money on just any old song.  Wimpy little two and three minute songs songs just don’t add enough value anymore. And, for that matter, neither do 5 minute songs. Frankly, I’m done with anything under 6 minutes.

The iTunes Value Maximization Framework:

First: To fully realize your investment, make sure your picks are at least 7 minutes long, preferably more. That’s not to say length is everything. You’ve got to add a little substance too.  And, watch out for really lengthy self-indulgent tracks.  Take Marais la Nuit from Neko Case’s album Middle Cyclone, for example.  I’m sorry, but the next time I want to hear crickets chirping for 31 minutes, I’ll go outside, thank you very much.  It’s technically not a song and I’m a purist, so I’m treating this one as an outlier and taking it out of the average cost per minute (ACM) for my collection.

Second: Delete all the shorter songs in your library. Trust me, you don’t need them. Two minutes goes by really fast. That’s less time than it takes to make a cup of coffee, get the mail or eat an ice cream cone.  And, as you age, time goes faster anyway – so if Stairway to Heaven seemed long to you in high school, give it another chance.  It’s a lot speedier today. Really.

Third: Pledge to check your downloads each and every week.  Don’t forget this step. It’s very important to keep the integrity of your music collection intact and not let any low value songs sneak into the mix.  Kind of like the Farenheit 451 of iTunes collection management – just burn ‘em.

To help you get started, I’m sharing some of my personal picks below. While not necessarily the definitive list on the subject, I guarantee that these songs will help you lower your ACM:

1. Land of Hope and Dreams (Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - Live in New York City) Length 9:46
2. Can’t You Hear Me Knocking (Rolling Stones – Live Licks) 10:02
3. Disco Inferno (The Trammps  – Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack) 10:51
4. Movin Right Along (Michael Stanley Band – Stagepass) 9:35
5. Elegant Gypsy Suite (Al DiMeola – Elegant Gypsy) 9:16
6. D.M.S.R (Prince – 1999) 8:17
7. Taboo (Charlie Byrd – The Guitar Artistry of Charlie Byrd) 9:41
8. Groove Line (Disco Version) (Heat Wave – Best of Heat Wave) 7:29
9. Riviera Paradise (Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble – In Step) 8:48
10. I Want Your Sex (George Michael – Faith) 9:04

Special mention: Do You Feel Like I Do (Peter Frampton)  (The best versions of this song clock in at 19:28 on Frampton Comes Alive II and at 14:17 on Frampton Come Alive. Imagine what type of impact that could have! Unfortunately, you can only get them by purchasing the entire album. Note to Apple iTunes: what’s up with that?)

Important note: Older songs, such as these listed above,  generally provide even more value because presumably you’ve already heard them, which contributes to reducing the cost per listen (CPL).  That’s a complicated subject – so a future post will outline in detail how to lower your CPL, complete with step-by-step illustrated instructions.

Much credit goes to @fitzroy for bringing this extremely important subject to my attention.

What are your picks?

After an entire month of rain in June (ok, well, almost an entire month), this year’s July 4th weekend in Boston proved to be quite a nice surprise. The weather was beautiful.  The skies were clear.  People were happy. Finally.   However, doubts did linger, and  I did see a considerable number of people toting umbrellas just in case. And,  if you put me in Room 101 (sorry, reference to Orwell’s 1984, which I just finished re-reading), I might just admit to carrying one myself.

Anyway, after making a solid but unsuccessful attempt at moonwalking, it was time to head down to the Charles. I was pretty excited to capture some photos  – I thought it was a special thing (my glass is half full) until my bubble was burst by a cynical friend (glass half empty) who commented that these pictures would look just like the ones from last year, and the year before that. Geez.  Anyhow, I ignored that comment and it’s a good thing because after posting them to Twitter, Universal Hub was kind enough to mention my photos in his post about last night’s fireworks.  So I got another 2 or 3 seconds of Internet fame.  Plus, amazingly, it got me to post to this frightfully neglected blog.  

Here are a few more shots. You can view the entire set on Flickr.   These were taken at the end of Mass Ave. in Cambridge, which is a GREAT place to watch the fireworks, although I highly recommend earplugs — it’s pretty noisy from this location.