As if I didn't have enough to do, sitting here with my arm in a sling from the recent redo of my rotator cuff surgery, I actually have been working with a professional web designer to finally get the LaceNews website up and running. He suggested I take a serious look at Pinterest, which started in 2010, and is now the third largest social network behind Facebook and Twitter. I'm not one to start something just because it is popular, but in looking at Pinterest, it seems to be ideal as a 'link' page. Most websites have a section called 'links', where numerous pointers to sites of interest can be listed. These suffer from the usual problems of persistence as sites disappear, and they often get forgotten in maintenance activities. I've written some detailed notes on this at http://lacenews.net/lacenews-on-pinterest/, and established a LaceNews Pinterest site at http://pinterest.com/LaceNews/boards/. The basic idea is you go to a website, pick a photo that interests you, 'pin' it to a Pinterest 'board', and now you have a picture, a pointer to the website, and you can write a short description. Click on the photo twice and it takes you to the website. You can even load a photo from you own computer (perhaps even something like an advertisement designed by the people owning the site you want to pin) and link to an external website if that site doesn't have a good enough photo. Everyone can see the Pinterest pins, and subscribers to the service (it's free) can also add comments and follow various boards.
It's not perfect, for example you can only go one layer deep in boards (making this more flexible is on a to-do list at Pinterest). But I have to admit it's all looking very good, and surprisingly simple to manage. I now have 29 boards for various lace topics, and over the past three days have done very close to 300 pins. Take a look, feedback welcome. Things will jump around a bit as I decide on the optimum organization of boards, and every day I'm adding many more pins. Laurie http://lacenews.net (for example, I note a recent question on the Kniplebrevet publication on Arachne. I have a board called 'Lace Periodicals' with a direct link to Knipelbrevet, plus every other lace periodical I can think of.) - To unsubscribe send email to majord...@arachne.com containing the line: unsubscribe lace y...@address.here. For help, write to arachne.modera...@gmail.com. Photo site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/lacemaker/sets/
