What or whom are you influenced by when you are looking for a new product? It might be commercials, television shows, or maybe if you are like millions of other people around the world, you are influenced by bloggers. Gone are the days when you only read ads in the Sunday newspaper, or watch commercials on the television. Today many of us are being swayed commercially by social media, the internet, and other digital mediums. In fact, according to Marketing Charts.com, nearly 50% of blog readers say they purchase products mentioned in the blogs they read on a daily basis. That is quite powerful when you put it in perspective. So what about here locally? What kind of power and influence do

Marty DeAnda started a vinyl record store by accident with a little help from Louis Armstrong. Medium Rare Records is in the offices of the Dig Music label, which DeAnda co-founded. The label represents local artists such as Jackie Greene, Chris Webster and Sal Valentino. The business is located in The Urban Hive at 1931 H St. and was pretty typical of a recording label office, with couches and music-themed décor, before becoming a retail store. The office, visible from the sidewalk, featured a mannequin of Louis Armstrong in the window, staring out at 20th Street, and passers-by routinely came in to ask about it. “I’d have 30 people coming by each day,” DeAnda said. “I figured I might

Rarely will you be solicited for a used toilet paper roll, but perhaps you’ll hand one over for the sake of art. What else are you going to do with it? The third annual Crayons to Canvas Art Drive is accepting art supplies of all varieties this month as organizers work to supply the Stanford Home for Children’s new art therapy room. Begun in 2008 by the sibling duo of Sacramento artist Raphael Delgado and publicist Veronica Delgado, the drive provides resources for an art-based therapy approach for at-risk youth. Stanford Home Development and Marketing Manager Sarah Mentze said the art therapy room, which opened in June, works as a supplementary resource to therapy programs offered by S

For self-employed Sacramentans who want to keep work and home separate, the ThinkHouse Collective provides an office space without any of the drudgery of a cubicle forest. “We’re a co-working community,” said co-founder Janna Santoro. “It’s a membership community for Sacramento’s creative class.” Santoro said the ThinkHouse Collective, located at 1726 11th St., offers all the social aspects of a traditional office, where members can bounce ideas off each other, while freeing workers from the typical distractions of working from home such as pets, kids and chores. Co-founder Jeremy Maron said the collective is essentially a community of freelancers including writers, photographers and ot

When reporters don't have a camera with them they often resort to using their cell phones to take pictures. It can be hard to take good pictures with cell phones and the topic of our next workshop will address how to take better pictures by using phone applications and different settings. The Camera Phone Photography Workshop will be June 30, from 6:30 to 8 p.m. at The Urban Hive. It will be taught by Anthony Bento. Bento has a B.A in film and digital media from UC Santa Cruz, where he photographed and reported on the 2004 presidential campaign and other political events. He has also worked as a product photographer in New York City and here in Sacramento as a freelance photojournalist f

 It was testimony to the tenuous state of the Sacramento job market that a full house attended the Sacramento Social Media Club’s May event, “Putting Social Media to Work: leveraging social networking tools to find and fill jobs.”  The panel discussion, held at the Urban Hive last week, featured four local professionals speaking of their experiences and expertise using social media to implement and accelerate job searches. The overall message of the four speakers was that social media--Twitter, Facebook and the like--have the potential to vastly broaden the parameters of a job and/or employee search. Speaking from one side of the hiring table was Curt Cetraro, CEO of ConnectPoint Search

 The Sacramento Social Media Club (SMCSac) held their April meeting at The Urban Hive featuring a trio of experts discussing social media and the law. Formally titled “The Web of Justice,” some forty plus lawyers, law students and those just interested in the topic gathered to hear individual presentations, followed by a question and answer period. Jeff Marmins, Executive Director of the SMCSac, was the MC for the evening, welcoming the crowd, before introducing the three speakers. Jonathan G. Steinis a litigator whose law practice handles a variety of cases from personal injury to debt-collection. It is as a blogger, however, that Mr. Stein comes by his social media expertise. He contrib

On the heels of Sacramento's first TEDx conference, grads from California State University, Sacramento, will launch a TED Talks spinoff on Thursday. "Talks Unleashed" is one of several local events created in the vein of TED Talks, a social movement that began in Monterey in 1984. TED Talks are conferences organized to inspire the spread of ideas to benefit the world through 18-minute lectures and collaboration opportunities. They originally featured talks on technology, entertainment and design. Now focused on science and culture, the events have spread throughout this country and into Europe and Asia, as well as on the Internet. About 200 people filled Sac State's Hinde Auditorium Fri

Many of you have asked about workshops and events being posted on our site in addition to the email invitations. Here is some information about our planned December events. We've organized a media panel Dec. 9. and a Google workshop Dec. 15. The media panel is a collaboration between the folks at the Urban Hive and The Sacramento Press. It will be held at the Urban Hive, Dec. 9 from 6:30 - 8:30 p.m. The panel features representatives from each type of news outlet and will focus on the changes each has had to make over the past few years with technology, the economy and social media. Each panel member will also be asked where they see the future of journalism is headed. Attendees will ha

Today, 30% of the US job market, about 42 million workers, are independent contractors, temporary staffers, or self employed, according to the July 2009 issue of Money Magazine. No longer just the realm of creative professionals like writers and artists, freelancing is spreading to accounting, engineering, health care, law and sales. “Now’s the time to think and act entrepreneurially when it comes to your career.” (Money 59) And in Sacramento, as teachers, state workers, and others, face layoffs and furloughs, they have both the time and the inclination to turn towards this professional avenue. Perhaps you have started researching freelance or self-employment options? Maybe you saw the

As many as 100 environmentalists gathered in Midtown Thursday night for a mixer known as Green Drinks. They all had one thing in common: an interest in sustainable living and other green issues. A Sacramento chapter of this international networking group has been meeting monthly since July 2008. The chapter was founded by Rick Noss and Sarah Piper. The first meeting was attended by three people. Now, nearly 200 people are on the e-mail list, Noss said. While many participants work in the environmental field, that's not a requirement for this chapter. "What I like about this is it's really a place where people in the environmental field can meet up and have camaraderie, not hard network

Police converged on a ballroom in a downtown hotel Tuesday night, but there wasn’t a crime in progress. “Social Crime” was the topic of Tuesday evening’s Sacramento Social Media Club event hosted by The Citizen Hotel in Downtown Sacramento. Representatives from local law enforcement shared how their organizations are using social media tools to prevent crime, improve community outreach, and even take down predators. Josh Morgan of Morgan/Dorado Public Relations and programming director for the Sacramento Social Media Club presented a “101” on Facebook Privacy. He explained how Friends Lists on Facebook can be used to limit information connections can see on your profile. Josh, for exampl

Contributed by Jenn Walker At age 19 and 20, Sacramento City College students Diana Byrd and Elena Gallegos are discovering the business world firsthand with the growth of their online business Meshugga Chic. Meshugga Chic, casually referred to as just Meshugga (not to be confused with the Swedish death metal band Meshuggah), is the duo's online vintage clothing store, catering to men and women with a unique fashion sense around the world. Their merchandise is an array of color, fun and the unusual. Items like high-waist purple parachute pants, a billowy bright pink and purple windbreaker or an acid wash jumper scream '80s. Anything funky goes. The two launched their site around a year