Social media's role in the Tunisian revolt has been well documented.  The contributors to a Posterous site, 24sur24.posterous.com,  were responsible for sharing some of the most powerful videos of the street uprisings.

With Twitter and Facebook now shut down in Egypt to quell government protests, email is the only reliable sharing platform left.

Same story in China.  If you're living or traveling there, email posting via Posterous Sites or Groups is the only way to get videos and photos to your Posterous site and reposted to Twitter and Facebook.

Sharing information to people in a country that blocks social media is also difficult.  Posterous solves this problem by delivering the full content of your posts via email to your subscribers.  This means that anyone with access to an email account can read your posts, even within a blocked country.  

View Slideshow

Download this gallery (ZIP, undefined KB)

Download full size (127 KB)

If you are in Egypt and need help setting up your site to continue to get the word out, contact us.

Is there money in DIY?  This is a space still trying to sell premium packages to artists, but at least one investment group believes.  And, they're putting their money on FanBridge, to the tune of a $2 million Series A.  According to FanBridge founder Noah Dinkin, the eclectic investment group is: Alex Zubillaga, Chris Fralic (First Round Capital), Founder Collective, Dave McClure (500 Startups), Maurice Werdegar, and Matt Keiser (Grape Arbor VC), as well as existing seed investors Jeff Clavier (SoftTech VC), Chris Sacca (LowerCase Capital), and Dave McClure (who previously invested through Founders Fund).

And FanBridge is putting this money to work - fast.  The company has already purchased Damntheradio, a platform that enables the creation of media-rich Facebook pages with fan engagement in mind.  That has already attracted clients like Warner Music Group, American Idol, Gatorade, Sony Music, EMI, Tapulous, and Linkin Park, though FanBridge is aiming to push the concept further.  In fact, FanBridge is now launching a self-serve version of Damntheradio, accessible to any band, label, or brand.

Dinkin has not yet disclosed the Damntheradio price, but founders Johnny Hwin, AJ Magnuson, and Nick Lane-Smith will be joining the acquiring parent.  And, helping to build a new San Francisco office.

I think this is an interesting play... Damntheradio is a set direct-to-fan marketing tools similar to Topspin. While Topspin built a platform of tools to sell to your email list... Their email system remains mediocre. Fanbridge already has a dynamic email program and is building their tools around it. Hmmm....

Buffy Hamilton is a teacher and librarian at Creekview High School in Canton, Georgia. Buffy is one of Tech and Learning’s 30 EdTech Leaders of the Future, Georgia School Library Media Specialist of the Year 2010, and one of the National School Boards Association’s “20 to Watch” educators for 2010; her media program at Creekview High School was also named one of two exemplary high school programs for the state of Georgia in 2010.

Name: Buffy Hamilton Profession: Librarian and Media Specialist Blog: The Unquiet Librarian Twitter: @Buffyhamilton

In the spring of 2010, I decided to introduce Evernote as a research tool to a group of 10^th grade Literature/Composition students at my school. I chose Evernote because these students (part of a learning and technology integration program), were preparing to start a research project using multiple sources of information, including database articles, web-based news stories, videos, photos, and interviews. For their research, students were not only using a wide range of information sources, but they were also creating multigenre learning artifacts, such as VoiceThreads, artwork, videos, poetry, and other representations of their key learnings.

Why I chose Evernote

I felt Evernote would be a perfect solution for the students’ need to archive and organize traditional and non-traditional sources of information. In addition to the more common features, Evernote offered some specific ones that made it the perfect tool for what we would be using it for. These included:

• Handwritten notes – Students could take handwritten notes if they preferred and still add them to their research by scanning or taking a snapshot.
• Flexibility – Students could use Evernote on their smartphones with apps available for iPhone, iPod Touch, and Android, as well as at home using any computer they had access to.
• Sharing – Students could make their notebooks public and import the RSS feed into Google Reader, iGoogle, or Netvibes.
• Email – The unique email address every user gets is very useful for adding things to your account from different places.

Class, meet Evernote

I introduced Evernote to the students by giving them a peek into how I was already using it personally. I showed them how I was capturing, organizing, and maintaining notes on materials I was researching to buy for our library using the web clipper and the iPhone app. They students were really responsive to this approach.

Next, I had each student sign up for a free account. Once everyone had registered, I went over some basics of the program with them, being sure to cover the fundamentals:

• Web clipping – At school, students only had access to Internet Explorer, but most used Firefox and Chrome at home so I was sure to demonstrate how to use all the different clipping options for each browser.
• Create new text notes – I went over how to create and edit text notes in the application.
• Use tags – I showed the students how tags work in Evernote and suggested some ways they could use tags effectively to keep all their notes in perfect order.
• How to modify note source/URL attributes – This features was relevant to my students who needed to insert the source URLs for database resources.
• How to work with notebooks – I went over how to create new notebooks, select default notebooks, as well as add content to notebooks
• Sharing and collaboration – I showed the students how to share notebooks publicly as well as how to capture the RSS feed of notebooks shared publicly.
• The power of sync – I introduced the concept of synchronization and explained how Evernote would automatically sync, giving them access to their notes no matter where they were or what device they were using.

What the students thought of Evernote

The response was very positive. I was pleased and pleasantly surprised by how quickly they picked up the program. They really liked the mobile apps and the flexibility of using either the desktop client or a web based version. Students repeatedly cited “ease of use” as their favorite reason for using Evernote.

“Evernote is really simple and easy to use. I am so glad Mrs. Hamilton gave us the opportunity to use this tool. I am really excited to keep clipping and working with Evernote!” -Lindy

“I found that Evernote was easy to navigate and kept all my information together. I like Evernote the best out of all the tools we have used.” – Jennifer

Evernote in the future

A year later, it has been exciting to see these students continue to use Evernote as a research tool into the 2011 academic year. To my delight, I  noticed several of my former students opening and using their Evernote accounts with no prompting, because they wanted to not because it was a course requirement.

What happened next was truly amazing, I saw some students taking the initiative and showing their classmates how to use Evernote. It was impressive to see Evernote quickly spreading around the school through enthusiastic students. I hope that the work I’m doing with teachers this academic year will help plant more seeds for learning experiences like this for more students in 2011 and beyond!

Resources for students and educators

I’m really happy to continue sharing this great tool with my students in the future. I created a research guide, as well as an introduction to help other educators get started using Evernote in their classrooms.

Evernote Education Series

• 10 Evernote Tips for School

FlickSquare helps you post your Foursquare checkin photos to your Flickr account automatically!

This guy overcomplicates it though... You will never get anywhere if you try to build and upkeep all of these sites. Unless you have a massive marketing team/budget... In which case, why are you even watching this video.

My best advice would be to look into these options and pursue what's going to make the most sense to you (or your artists). Just because you really really want the artist to do something/use a technology doesn't mean that they will actually "get it" or be willing to try.

Are you an artist who likes giving downloads away for free but would like something (besides money) in return from your fans? What if you could exchange a social interaction which helps market your music such as a tweet on Twitter or share on Facebook for the download? This idea of “social currency” is not new, but we’ve made it very easy to do with a new open-source app call SoundCloud-Social-Download.

The app automagically rolls together interactions from four of the biggest social networks (tweet on Twitter, share on Facebook, update on MySpace, & Digg… on Digg) and throws in Email capture for good measure to make the ultimate “social for download” campaign. Once a user completes one of the required interactions, they are served up a secure download straight from your SoundCloud account.

Here’s a short screencast about how the app works:

And here’s some examples of the app in the wild:

• alainjohannes.heroku.com
• playingmyheart.heroku.com
• love-amongst-ruin.heroku.com
• armageddoncomealive.com

The code is available (and completely free to use, change, etc) on the SoundCloud github. From there you’ll also find step-by-step documentation, walking you through setup, configuration, customization, and deployment. Let us know what you think and please drop us a line if you use the app. If you’re having technical issues, please submit your problem here.

Stay tuned for more open-source apps coming soon…

Did someone say Check in for Download?

P.S. If you’re a developer who is comfortable deploying these open-source apps, we’ve got a ton of SoundCloud artists who could use the help and wouldn’t mind paying for it. Let me know @LeeMartin