Establishing an online presence is absolutely essential in this digital day and age, more so if your profession lies within a creative industry.

However, we’ve all heard of how well-shod cobblers children are; it can be hard to focus on your own site when you’re getting stuck into client work. All too often creating a personal site ends up in the ‘some day’ folder of your to-do app.

Thankfully, there are several web-based tools that can help you set up a site in under 5 minutes, meaning you can concentrate on more pressing issues. Despite their minimal setup time, they are aesthetically pleasing, with an air of professionalism, and are the perfect stop-gap solution for freelancers who need more than an ‘under construction’ page.

There are three main contenders in the personal site field, Zerply; Flavors.me and About.me, here’s how they stack up:

Zerply

The obscurely named Zerply is a one page site that ‘goes beyond the resume’, cleanly displaying concise information such as work experience, educational background, social media profiles and contact information. Both Twitter and Facebook accounts can be used to quickly sign up, automatically pulling in your profile picture and certain information about your professional background. Unfortunately this data can be quite inaccurate and more often than not will require tweaking. 

After signing up you’re prompted to flesh out your profile with basic information such as location, work experience and ‘tags’ (web design, photography etc.) Again, this can be pulled in from your Facebook or LinkedIn profile, with the latter being the more accurate choice. Side projects, non-profit work and other resume worthy information can also be manually added to your profile. 

You can then choose one of the five free themes available to display your profile, all of which are well designed and professional. They do feature Zerply images and links in the footer, as well as a link to the designer, but this is acceptable due to the service being completely free. 

Although your Zerply public profile is essentially just a one page site, the backend is intuitive and well thought out. You can network with like-minded individuals and follow their latest updates, and endorse people for certain aspects of their work. Likewise, people can endorse your skills and you can connect your GitHub, Behance, Vimeo, and Flickr to show off your latest creations.

Zerply operates on a Freemium payment model. Current premium features include two additional themes for $19 each, and support for a custom domain (instead of zerply.com/johnsmith) for $15 a year.

Best for: freelancers looking for an easy to launch personal site with basic but effective networking features.

Flavors.me

Flavors.me is a self-described ‘unified web presence’, allowing you to launch a simple personal portal that aggregates content from your social media updates, photos, videos and more. Flavors adopts a different approach to Zerply, opting for customisable designs, full page images and displaying core information in clean and compact boxes. 

The signup process is similar to Zerply, with the ability to register via Facebook, Google and Yahoo. You are then prompted to enter very basic personal information in the form of a short bio and tagline, before deciding which services you want to connect and display on your page. This is the primary purpose of Flavors, with over 30 different services being supported such as Twitter, Youtube, Tumblr, Soundcloud, Facebook and WordPress. Essentially all this does is add links to your various profiles, with some services like Twitter automatically pulling in your latest tweets and displaying them on your Flavors page when they are clicked by the user. 

Flavors has more of an emphasis on design when compared to Zerply, with 222 fonts and 17 layouts available for you to play around with, as well as basic HTML support. However, additional layouts are only available when you opt for a premium account costing $20 per year. Other premium features include a mobile site, real time stats, contact form and a custom domain name.  Design tweaks to your page are done through a simple drop down menu, with changes instantly carried out right in front of you. It can take some time to settle on a layout that suits you, so being able to preview changes on the fly greatly speeds up the process. 

Flavors.me lacks the professional feel that Zerply successfully achieves, coupled with the fact that some basic features such as a contact form are frustratingly unavailable to non-premium accounts. 

Best for: freelancers looking for a central hub to aggregate social media profiles.

About.me

About.me is a completely free alternative to Zerply and Flavors.me, with all features available right off the bat. Unfortunately this means that a custom domain name can’t be used with it, which may put people off slightly. Aesthetically, About.me appears to be very similar to Flavors, utilising full page images and displaying content in a similar way, but their core functionality differs.

Unlike its competitors, About.me doesn’t support sign up through social media profiles such as Twitter or Facebook, instead opting for the more traditional method of signing up through email. Again, the initial steps involve filling in as much personal information as you’re comfortable revealing, such as location, work background, education and contact information. You can then add ‘Apps’ to your page which are essentially links to your social media profiles, and like Flavors, Tweets and status updates can be pulled in.

The design process is similar to Flavors with the option to change fonts, colour schemes and background images on the fly. You can also click and drag the content area and background images to position them exactly where you want, which is effective at preventing About.me pages looking overly similar. 

About.me successfully achieves equilibrium between simplicity and style, with a small arsenal of basic yet effective features. Visitors to your page are able to send you emails without your address being publicly revealed; a function which is only available to paying members of Flavors.me. The dashboard also has impressive statistical information, such as visits, clicks on your links and referring search engine terms.

The only real downside to About.me is the lack of custom domain support, which is a nice touch if you wish to include your page on business cards and social media profiles. However, this is a minor drawback when you take into account that the service is completely free to use.

Best for: freelancers who don’t need their own domain name.

Ultimately, the best service to use is down to you and your personal preference. Zerply is well suited to users seeking employment, but is it as effective as linkedIn? One thing’s for sure, with the ever-increasing number of social media accounts we all hold, a central hub is something you’re likely to need in the near future.

Do you have a personal homepage that is hosted by a service? Which service do you use? Let us know in the comments.

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Econophysicists studying the way people accumulate a new form of digital currency say they have observed the famous rich-get-richer effect for the first time.

This graduate assistantship requires knowledge of computer concepts and programming languages.   The position requires design, trouble-shooting, and support for websites and databases.  Duties include database management.   The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) PROMISE: Maryland’s Alliance for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) uses the Xcalibur Scribe Tracking System and Registry (TSR) as part of the national evaluation program, Survey Monkey, and software for webinars.  The position also requires extensive use of social media and includes website programming.  The GA in this position will have knowledge of webpage design using Hypertext Markup Languages (HTML), Cascade Style Sheets (CSS), Extensible Markup Language (XML), and Java; all are necessary for designing and maintaining the program’s website and blogs.  

The GA will also have a sense of project management to assist with events and long-term projects.  The following media are used for PROMISE:  Wordpress, Google sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Blogspot.    The GA in this position should have background in the following topics: online communities, database implementation (SQL-based interface), project management, decision technology, information management, emerging technologies, system design, system performance, usability, and system architecture. 

This position will support several projects; the primary project will be the new Council of Graduate Schools Financial Literacy program: http://www.cgsnet.org/enhancing-student-financial-education, and will be responsible for implementing the "Go Live" project: http://www.cgsnet.org/project-summary-university-maryland-baltimore-county.  The applicant should have basic knowledge about  credit rankings and scores, budgeting, and debt reduction. 

Roles: The GA will work with the PROMISE team for the multi-campus AGEP http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/, the Graduate Student Development unit in The Graduate School at UMBC, and UMBC's campus-wide committee on financial literacy that includes a collaborative team of staff and students from Enrollment Management, the Graduate School, Financial Services, and The Office of Undergraduate Education. 

This is a 20 hour/week assistantship. It includes tuition remission, and student health insurance for the GA. Assistantship stipend rates: http://www.umbc.edu/gradschool/funding/minimum_stipend_levels.html

To Apply:

Send a cover letter and CV to Dr. Renetta Tull at rtull@umbc.edu, with the subject "CGS GA Position." 

Additional criteria: The initial email must include links from websites that you have designed, and links to public social media sites that you manage, e.g., Linked In groups, Twitter, blogs. The links must be accompanied by a few sentences that describe your role, e.g., administrator, content provider, editor. 

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NEW! UPDATE as of 11:50 PM, August 22, 2013

DEADLINE: 3:00 PM, Friday, August 23, 2013.

Due to the overwhelming response to this announcement, we will stop taking applications at 3:00 PM, tomorrow, Friday, August 23, 2013 so that we can take time to evaluate each applicant.  Applicants can begin to check their emails on Friday afternoon for notifications.  Interviews (for finalists only) will begin next week. Thank you for your interest!

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NEW: UPDATE as of 11:22 AM, August 23, 2013

Semi-finalists will have an additional assignment:

http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2013/08/23/the-umbc-promisecgsgrad-student-development-ga-position-information-for-semi-finalists/

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NEW Update, September 3, 2013.

We thank everyone for their interest. We have chosen our GA. Congratulations to Piyush Waradpande, UMBC, Computer Science Department. 

The online training provider of Android, Java, HTML5, Scala, Python, Hadoop, and jQuery, and Open-Source, Marakana has been acquired by Twitter as part of their new endeavor to build out their Training offerings.

It’s time for the 2013 SREB Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, Compact for Faculty Diversity!

PROMISE Maryland’s AGEP has been invited to nominate scholars for the upcoming SREB Conference. Read about our SREB trips to:

• Atlanta 2011: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/25-promise-students-and-affiliates-plan-to-attend-the-sreb-conference-in-atlanta-october-2011/
• Tampa 2012: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/2012-sreb-compact-for-faculty-diversity-conference-for-graduate-students-postdocs-and-jr-faculty/

YOU have a chance to attend in 2013 , but PROMISE has to nominate you. 

Here are some facts about the conference:

1. The 20^th Annual Compact For Faculty Diversity Institute on Teaching and Mentoring will be held at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia from Thursday, October 31 – Sunday, November 3, 2013. We expect to exceed 1,100 in attendance. http://www.instituteonteachingandmentoring.org/Compact/sreb.html

1. Scholars nominated to attend the Institute should be individuals who have an expressed interest in teaching at the post-secondary level. All of the sessions at the Institute will focus on topics and issues related to teaching at the postsecondary level. Consequently, scholars who are not interested in teaching at the postsecondary level would not benefit from attending this Institute.

1. Nominated scholars must be minority or underserved STEM majors enrolled in a Ph.D. program. SREB will not accept nominations from students.

1. The conference will be in Arlington, VA. Hotel rooms will be available at no cost to you. Single rooms will not be available for scholars. Students will be placed in double rooms. 

TO APPLY: 

Write a comment to this post (below) with the following information, and in this order:

a) NAME

b) University & Department (no abbreviations)

c) Planned year of graduation for your PhD

d) One paragraph that describes the reason why you want to be a professor.

e) What PROMISE events have you attended, and what have you learned?

Our deadline is August 31, 2013. Please apply now. 

Note that the SREB website features some of our former scholars when they were students! Dr. Chris Whitt (PROMISE Peer Mentor, College Park) is now a faculty member at Augustana College, and Dr. Robert Alexander (PROMISE Peer Mentor from UMBC) is now at the CDC. Dr. Alexander conducts the research and evaluation for the CDC’s anti-smoking campaign and TV ads.

It’s time for the 2013 SREB Institute on Teaching and Mentoring, Compact for Faculty Diversity!

PROMISE Maryland’s AGEP has been invited to nominate scholars for the upcoming SREB Conference. Read about our SREB trips to:

• Atlanta 2011: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/25-promise-students-and-affiliates-plan-to-attend-the-sreb-conference-in-atlanta-october-2011/
• Tampa 2012: http://promiseagep.wordpress.com/2012/07/21/2012-sreb-compact-for-faculty-diversity-conference-for-graduate-students-postdocs-and-jr-faculty/

YOU have a chance to attend in 2013 , but PROMISE has to nominate you. 

Here are some facts about the conference:

1. The 20^th Annual Compact For Faculty Diversity Institute on Teaching and Mentoring will be held at the Marriott Crystal Gateway Hotel in Arlington, Virginia from Thursday, October 31 – Sunday, November 3, 2013. We expect to exceed 1,100 in attendance. http://www.instituteonteachingandmentoring.org/Compact/sreb.html

1. Scholars nominated to attend the Institute should be individuals who have an expressed interest in teaching at the post-secondary level. All of the sessions at the Institute will focus on topics and issues related to teaching at the postsecondary level. Consequently, scholars who are not interested in teaching at the postsecondary level would not benefit from attending this Institute.

1. Nominated scholars must be minority or underserved STEM majors enrolled in a Ph.D. program. SREB will not accept nominations from students.

1. The conference will be in Arlington, VA. Hotel rooms will be available at no cost to you. Single rooms will not be available for scholars. Students will be placed in double rooms. 

TO APPLY: 

Write a comment to this post (below) with the following information, and in this order:

a) NAME

b) University & Department (no abbreviations)

c) Planned year of graduation for your PhD

d) One paragraph that describes the reason why you want to be a professor.

e) What PROMISE events have you attended, and what have you learned?

Our deadline is August 31, 2013. Please apply now. 

Note that the SREB website features some of our former scholars when they were students! Dr. Chris Whitt (PROMISE Peer Mentor, College Park) is now a faculty member at Augustana College, and Dr. Robert Alexander (PROMISE Peer Mentor from UMBC) is now at the CDC. Dr. Alexander conducts the research and evaluation for the CDC’s anti-smoking campaign and TV ads.