Peter Stinson › Comments

In the current economy, business networking is more important than ever — we need to use lots of different techniques for finding clients. Social networks can be a great addition to our marketing toolboxes. Since I started actively using social networks (only a year and a half ago!), I’ve reconnected with old friends, and have gotten quite of bit of business that can be directly attributed to connections that were facilitated through these networks. But social networks can also be great time-wasters, too. However, If you focus on the marketing aspects of the networks, the time spent using them can consist of, as Meryl says, “zero-guilt activities.” Here are some tips for using social networks as effective marketing tools. - Peter Stinson

Democrats are accusing senior CIA officials of repeatedly misleading Congress, but Republicans say the allegations are just political maneuvering to protect House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The accusations come as lawmakers prepare to debate intelligence legislation — a bill President Barack Obama has threatened to veto. - Peter Stinson

A federal program to recruit more tugboat pilots may have backfired by allowing thousands of novice captains to take the helm and contributing to a 25 percent increase in the number of accidents on the nation's rivers. An Associated Press review of Coast Guard records indicates that the U.S. tugboat fleet is increasingly piloted by captains who have spent as little as one year in the wheelhouse. - Peter Stinson

This is a blatant ripoff homage to Guy Kawasaki’s FAQ on how he uses Twitter, only this way, I’ll explain how I use Twitter, including answering some questions I tend to get more often than others. These answers might change as time goes on. As they do (and depending how lazy I am at fixing it) I’ll just try to update this post. - Peter Stinson

Amazon.com refused to pay any commission on a link that I distributed through Twitter and Facebook, sending me a link to their T&C as the reasoning. - Peter Stinson

Using Twitter and Facebook effectively takes more than discretion; you should know how to tweak the settings for these services so that you have full control over who sees what on your Facebook page or on Twitter. In the two stories linked below, and in others to come, we'll cover both sides of the coin: how to use the tools at your disposal to keep your profiles in check, and how to handle the etiquette side of the equation, as well. - Peter Stinson

For two years now, Allen has been seeking congressional authorization to codify the organizational changes he believes are necessary to carry his modernization initiatives forward after his departure next spring. Besides creating the acquisition organization, Allen is restructuring the stovepiped Pacific and Atlantic Area commands into a single operations command responsible for executing all missions, and a single force readiness command responsible for standardizing doctrine and training. A deputy commandant for operations will be aligning operational plans with the Coast Guard's policy and resources. - Peter Stinson

It isn't a command and control policy, it's encouraging, provides a lot of useful tips/steps, and is also realistic about the time commitment involved. - Peter Stinson

American Red Cross - social media strategy - Peter Stinson

It will be up to the U.S. Coast Guard, which must decide whether to issue a permit for the project, to balance the competing interests and decide on approval.. - Peter Stinson

iZoom is a simple application designed to allow you to easily resize and crop your photos for optimized display on your iPod photo, on the web, or in email messages to friends. iZoom is very useful for creating web photo galleries, forum-user avatars, and image thumbnails, or resizing your photos for perfect viewing on your iPod photo screen. Drag photos from your filesystem or directly from iPhoto to the iZoom canvas! - Peter Stinson

What do most companies do wrong when they enter the social world? No, it's not that they're being fake, or don't "get it." It's that they don't really know their objectives. Is your company doing its social strategy backwards? If you started by saying "we should do a blog" or "we should create a page on a social network" or "we should create a community" the answer is probably yes. In any other business endeavor we start by figuring out what we want to accomplish. Social technologies are not magic. They accomplish things, too. It's time to stop doing social because it's cool. It's time to start doing it because it's effective. To help clients with this fundamental idea, we invented a little acronym called POST. It's been one of the most popular ideas we've ever created, even though it's so simple and commonsensical. - Peter Stinson

great b/w pic... - Peter Stinson

@nmhschool - for continued social media efforts... What do most companies do wrong when they enter the social world? No, it's not that they're being fake, or don't "get it." It's that they don't really know their objectives. Is your company doing its social strategy backwards? If you started by saying "we should do a blog" or "we should create a page on a social network" or "we should create a community" the answer is probably yes. In any other business endeavor we start by figuring out what we want to accomplish. Social technologies are not magic. They accomplish things, too. It's time to stop doing social because it's cool. It's time to start doing it because it's effective. To help clients with this fundamental idea, we invented a little acronym called POST. It's been one of the most popular ideas we've ever created, even though it's so simple and commonsensical. - Peter Stinson

The new head of MI6 has been left exposed by a major personal security breach after his wife published intimate photographs and family details on the Facebook website. - Peter Stinson

Yes. Seeing you here on Friendfeed; I follow you in multiple places; this would just be one. - Peter Stinson

Here are eight simple ways to avoid driving your followers crazy by dominating their streams, and perhaps losing them in the process: - Peter Stinson

I often watch TED talk videos on my computer while I work out. Last night, I watched Sarah Palin’s resignation speech instead. This was not an improvement. Perhaps, it’s not a fair comparison: Palin’s speech was political, TED presentations scientific or artistic. Palin’s an announcement, TED an enticement. Her audience partially hostile, TED’s eager. I say, a speech is a speech. Whether you’re a division head communicating a layoff, a scientist sharing a discovery, or a governor resigning (and preserving a platform for who knows what), you have the same objective: taking some thought from your brain into ours. Doing this requires three elements: - message(s) you want your audience to receive - words and nonverbals that tell the message - ways to keep us focused so that your message is absorbed - Peter Stinson

management scholars are now looking deeper into the effects of goals, and finding that goals have a dangerous side. Individuals, governments, and companies like GM show ample ability to hurt themselves by setting and blindly following goals, even those that seem to make sense at the time. These skeptics draw on a broad array of large-scale failures - the design of the Ford Pinto, the Enron collapse, the rash lending practices of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac - as evidence of the pernicious effects of goals. Outside the workplace, these thinkers point to the unintended consequences of high-stakes testing in grade schools, and psychological literature showing that goals and other incentives can constrict our thinking. Even the scarcity of cabs on rainy days, some argue, illustrates the ways that goals can blind people to their own best interests. - Peter Stinson

Impact of a Leadership Development Program on Interpersonal Conflict Management within a Coast Guard Staff Command by Peter A. Stinson A Proposal as a part of an Applied Dissertation Submitted to the Fischler School of Education and Human Services at Nova Southeastern University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Education Nova Southeastern University 3 July 2009 *Table of Contents Page Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................1 Statement of the Organizational Problem - Peter Stinson

Margaret Stinson Dalton is on this trip... - Peter Stinson

The Aspire One 751h is the first 11.6" wide-screen netbook from Acer. View high-def content on the large LED-backlit display and enjoy amazing 5.1 -channel audio with Dolby Headphone technology. These groundbreaking advances and more-usher in the new netbook generation and give you fantastic fun on the road. Let the show begin! - Peter Stinson

Sure, Johnny Depp looks dashing as John Dillinger. Christian Bale makes a mighty fine lawman. And no one will deny the delicious sex appeal of Marion Cotillard. But the real star of the movie "Public Enemies," which opened Wednesday in wide release, is the brawling, bustling and undeniably beautiful city of Chicago. The film's director, Michael Mann, is a hometown boy who grew up in Humboldt Park and graduated from Amundsen High School. Obsessive about historical accuracy and a stickler for even the smallest details, Mann shot in Chicago for a total of 36 days last year, sending scouts to many of Dillinger's old haunts and filming, in some cases, on the very streets the bank robber once prowled. - Peter Stinson

All frequencies broadcast-this could be bad if you're following too close: Request feedback job app http://ow.ly/fiZd IRT http://ow.ly/fiZk - Peter Stinson

Midshipmen are admitted by two tracks. White applicants out of high school who are not also athletic recruits typically need grades of A and B and minimum SAT scores of 600 on each part for the Board to vote them "qualified." Athletics and leadership also count. A vote of "qualified" for a white applicant doesn't mean s/he's coming, only that he or she can compete to win the "slate" of up to 10 nominations that (most typically) a Congress(wo)man draws up. That means that nine "qualified" white applicants are rejected. SAT scores below 600 or C grades almost always produce a vote of "not qualified" for white applicants. Not so for an applicant who self-identifies as one of the minorities who are our "number one priority." For them, another set of rules apply. - Peter Stinson

NTEN offered a fantastic Webinar today featuring Randi Zuckerberg, Director of Marketing at Facebook and Adam Conner from the DC Office on the emerging best practices for nonprofits who want to set up Facebook Fan Pages. Here's the description This webinar will be a resource for non-profits and other organizations for social good. Expanding on the Non-Profits on Facebook page, we want to help you harness the power of Facebook and bring positive change to the world. Facebook empowers non-profits by enabling them to mobilize communities, organize events, increase fundraising, reduce costs with free online tools, and raise awareness through viral networks. I learned a lot, but I did not capture it all. Rumor has it that David Krumlauf was taking great notes, so I'm hoping he'll blog them or fill in some gaps here in the comments. Here are my notes and I've added some of my own references and links for more context: - Peter Stinson

RADM Sparks was commissioned in the CGR as a Chief Petty Officer. Interesting career in aviation before becoming a reservist. Rear Adm. Sparks memorial service SANTA ROSA, Calif. -- Rear Adm. Michael R. Seward, Pacific Area, salutes as he pays his last tribute to Rear Adm. Bennett "Bud" Sparks (Oct 1925-May 2009) during a memorial service June 13, 2009. Sparks served in the Coast Guard for 47 years before retiring in 1989. (Coast Guard photo/ Petty Officer Levi Read) - Peter Stinson

Adm. Thad W. Allen, head of the U.S. Coast Guard for three years, recently visited the Tribune's editorial office to answer questions about his command, the largest part of the Department of Homeland Security. Accompanying him was Capt. Timothy Close, the Coast Guard's captain of the Tampa port. This is an edited transcript of the conversation with the Tribune editorial staff. - Peter Stinson

Indeed... - Peter Stinson

As energy efficiency projects go, the renewable energy center at the Coast Guard Yard in Baltimore, is about as green as it gets. The center, actually a power plant, runs entirely on methane gas pumped in from a nearby city landfill. Paying no upfront costs, the Coast Guard in 2007 signed a $41 million energy performance savings contract with the energy company Ameresco, based in Knoxville, Tenn. Under the 15-year contract, Ameresco built the power plant at the Coast Guard Yard; 34 wells and a methane collection system at the landfill; and the pipeline that runs beneath the city road, railroad tracks and highway separating the landfill from the plant. - Peter Stinson