The Huffington Post won its first Pulitzer Prize Monday — becoming the first online-only daily news website to do so.

The prize, in the national reporting category, was awarded to veteran reporter David Wood. His 10-part series, “Beyond the Battlefield,” explored the lives of several veterans who were severely injured while serving in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The award may be Wood’s, but Huffington Post cofounder Arianna Huffington is a clear beneficiary. Over the past few years, Huffington has made a point of hiring experienced, well-known and (no doubt) expensive reporters like Wood.

The hirings are part of an effort to position the Huffington Post as a serious news organization — not, as former New York Times executive editor Bill Keller has described it, as an “overaggregator” of “celebrity gossip, adorable kitten videos, posts from unpaid bloggers and news reports from other publications… [with] a left-wing soundtrack.”

The Pulitzer is one small testament to the success of that strategy, and will likely feature prominently in the media kits the Huffington Post‘s sales team sends to potential advertisers.

The Huffington Post is the second online-only news organization to win a Pulitzer, following ProPublica‘s wins in 2010 and 2011. ProPublica partners with many offline publications, however, and focuses on long-form investigations rather than daily news.

Politico, which started as an online-only news organization and has since begun printing a print edition, also won an award this year in the editorial cartooning category.

Jeff Donn of the Associated Press and Jessica Silver-Greenberg of The Wall Street Journal were named runners-up for the national reporting prize.

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I am a Republican BECAUSE I root for the little guy.

 

It is not the prosperous that I love. It is the opportunity that comes with prosperity.

 

Prosperity brings good things to the little guy. It brings a job. It brings innovation. We almost all have cars because someone wanted to figure out how to sell them to the little guy. It pushes us to be great. It allows any one of us to create a business.

 

I do not want a government that feeds me, clothes me, and treats me like a disadvantaged child. I do not want a government that treats our most productive people like milk cows. We cannot punish success without making it more scarce and we cannot reward failure without making it commonplace.

 

I like the little guy, because I am a little guy. I want the landscapers to find work taking care of the property of the wealthy. I want the painters to paint their houses too. I want the contractors to add a wing to the house, or even build a new one. I want every little guy to go home at night proud of what he has done for the day and a little richer for it.

 

I am a Republican BECAUSE I am an environmentalist. I do not believe that watching Judge Judy from your trailer, or driving a 12 year old rust bucket is environmentally sound.

 

I do not believe that 800 sequential days off because the jobs have disappeared is good for any person’s health, or any community’s health. I want the personal environment of every citizen to improve. I think that people who are in charge of their own destinies can afford better, less polluting cars, better housing, better water and better health. Their mental state will improve if they do not sit at the TV accepting government payments, food stamps and the sinking feeling that they cannot provide for their own families.

 

I am a Republican BECAUSE I believe in Liberty. I believe that almost everyone is an expert in their own lives. No one else can be more aware of the myriad of details that make life so rich. I do not believe that a government, any government, knows how to lead an individual life better, or more efficiently then that individual leading the life. Big government is a formula for wasting money trying to come up with one size fits all policies while common sense tells you that one size does not fit all.

 

I am a Republican BECAUSE any government powerful enough to give you everything you desire is powerful enough to take everything you have.

KONY 2012 was the most-viral video of all time. Its sequel? Not so much.

More than a week after KONY 2012: Part II – Beyond Famous hit YouTube, the video, which was also created by Invisible Children, has racked up about 1.7 million views. That’s less than 2% of the traffic that KONY 2012 got in its first five days. Part II’s performance shows that the success of the initial video will be hard, if not impossible, to repeat.

“The first campaign was an anomaly,” says Matt Fiorentino, director of marketing at Visible Measures, a video measurement firm. “We’ve never seen anything like it before.” Fiorentino adds that 1.7 million views is still very good for a video, particularly one with a social good message. “Compared to a regular campaign, it’s pretty good,” he says. “Whatever they put out is going to be very visible.”

Both KONY 2012 and its successor were designed to raise awareness about Joseph Kony, a Ugandan warlord behind the Lord’s Resistance Army, a guerrilla force dedicated to overthrowing the Ugandan government. The videos aim to have Kony arrested for war crimes by the end of 2012. Invisible Children is also planning a worldwide rally on April 20 called “Cover the Night.”

Released on March 5, KONY 2012 is now up to around 180 million views, according to Visible Measures. The success has drawn critics, including a group called Visible Children that took issue with Invisible Children’s overhead costs.

Invisible Children also drew unwanted attention a couple of weeks after the video hit when the group’s director and co-founder, Jason Russell, was detained by police in San Diego for charges of public drunkenness and lewd behavior.

With all that back story, there was a lot of curiosity about the KONY 2012 sequel, but Fiorentino says there was probably nothing Invisible Children could have done to garner another video with comparable views, except maybe to wait longer before it released the sequel. Says Fiorentino: “They needed to give the audience time to breathe.”

Representatives from Invisible Children could not be reached for comment.

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Foursquare has added five million registered users in the last 16 months, bringing its total user base to 20 million.

The three-year-old startup confirmed the 20 million number through a 4sqDay badge, which is being awarded to anyone who uses the app to check in on Monday (April 16 or “four, squared”).

“Thanks to all 20 million of you for making us part of your lives,” the badge’s message reads.

New user growth has slowed since the last time Foursquare announced a milestone. When the company announced it had reached 15 million users last December, it had tripled its userbase and added 10 million users in about one year.

Foursquare users have, however, checked in 2 billion times in the last two years, according to the 4sqDay badge message. On average, that’s 100 times each — suggesting that while checking in may be the least prevalent smartphone activity, those who do use Foursquare do so frequently.

A December 2011 study from Forrester Research found that just 5% of U.S. adults use any location-based check-in services, suggesting that checking in has a long way to go before reaching the mainstream.

But Foursquare’s user base is large and valuable enough enough to have attracted partnerships with big brands such as American Express, and its newest features emphasize its value as a resource rather than a check-in service. Its new web interface, for instance, focuses on discovery features, and the web version of its recommendation feature Explore now includes 250,000 restaurant menus.

Do you use Foursquare? Tell us why or why not in the comments.

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Scott Randolph – the epitome of Radicalism acts like a spoiled school boy who has violent tantrums and throws things if he doesn’t get his way. Scott is notorious for attacking his opposition with child like threats followed by intimidation and false accusations.

The Randolphs, Scott and his wife Susannah spend their spare time backing Soros funded groups like Florida Watch (a far left group) that does nothing for our Country but distract and divide. Liberty Watch seems to have tight connections to SOSP (Secretary of State Project) funded by George Soros. Liberty Watch isn’t your house wives’ little friendly neighborhood “Bunko” group – they’re out to control State votes and that’s a “No No” in a Demcratic Nation.

Randolph like Obama climbs on his soap box attacking a stay at home mom, Ann Romney. Like Hillary Rosen, Scott Randolph exposes Obama’s war on women and he’s probably next in line to get sent to his room or alienated from Obama’s House of Radicals. Scott is a tweeter with an ego problem hating anyone who disagrees with him; he’s another “weiner” problem for the Democrats because he preys on women on “Twitter.”

Here’s his latest tweet against Ann Romney, a stay at home mom. “How many house servants did “stay-at-home-mom” Ann Romney have to raise her kids. Just b/c u don’t have job doesn’t make u stay-at-home mom?” It’s really none of your business Randolph what mothers choose to stay at home do 24/7. Scott exemplifies the Democrats hatred of women regardless of race or class.

He turned on a fellow Democrat Democratic Rep. Daphnee Campbell an African American freshmen in the Florida House of Representative. Daphne, a nurse believes in ultra sound prior to an abortion – Scott was violent in his reaction to Daphne’s here is what he said to her.

“Randolph, who has been endorsed by Planned Parenthood and Equality Florida, told Campbell “You are a traitor…I swear, you will not be re-elected. I will get an opponent.” Now that’s a threat with vicious intent!

Randolph is one of those squirrly human beings with low self esteem that needs to get a day time job and find out what balancing a budget means. He needs a refresher course on the Constitution and needs to learn what being a good steward of taxpayer’s money entails. He’s but one more extreme radical hell bent on destroying America; he needs to go and tomorrow isn’t soon enough to remove this person from Florida’s House of Representatives.

Obama isn’t a happy camper for Scott Randolph and Hillary Rosen have exposed his “War on Women” and women are starting to look at Obama as the problem not the solution to our Nations economic and social problems.

May God Bless America
As Always,
Little Tboca

Heather R. Huhman is the founder and president of Come Recommended, a content marketing and digital PR consultancy for organizations with products that target job seekers and/or employers. You can connect with Heather and Come Recommended on Twitter and Facebook.

In today’s digital world, your job search has to be as much online as it is on paper. Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook can help you establish your personal employment brand and connect with potential employers — in fact, almost 90% of employers are using social media to recruit potential employees [PDF]. What better way to have all of your online and offline job search tools in one place than in a portfolio?

An online portfolio allows you to compile what makes you employable — it should include things like your resume, cover letter, references, certifications, transcripts and any examples of your work (including writing samples, press clips, artwork or lesson plans). Plus, you should include basic contact information, such as a phone number and email, and more modern information, like a Twitter handle, LinkedIn profile, or Facebook URL. Put all of this into one online package that’s easy to browse and voilà — you have an online portfolio!

Here are five great options that can host your online portfolio. There’s a breakdown of each one, so you can pick which one works best for you and your career goals.

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1. WorkSimple

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Summary: WorkSimple is the first work portfolio that helps you manage your career and performance inside your organization. Users have endorsements, followers, goals and accomplishments, which can help you build your professional and social reputations. Set your professional focus, add your goals, and get recognition for your work.

Additionally, WorkSimple allows users to brand themselves by sharing goals and contributions with co-workers in real-time. Essentially, it’s a Facebook Timeline for professionals.

Best Feature: WorkSimple encourages you to set career focus and add “Social Goals” that support your direction, which help you keep track of your accomplishments, efforts and successes as you build your reputation. Plus, you can get great feedback from co-workers.

What Needs Work: Those looking for a traditional portfolio to display resume, work samples and more may not find these features in WorkSimple.

Ideal User: A corporate worker who is tech-savvy and wants to establish goals and stay synced with co-workers. Like the other portfolio platforms, you can add images, but this portfolio is not solely image-based.

Cost: Free for an individual plan but pricing plans exist for team or company plans.

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2. Behance

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Summary: Behance is a platform for creative professionals to gain exposure and manage their careers. Users can create multimedia portfolios that showcase their work to millions of visitors.

Best Feature: Behance turns your work into an online gallery; It claims to get 15 times the traffic of all other leading portfolio sites combined (including Carbonmade, the next site on our list). Recruiters can find and track talent and post jobs for the creative professionals on the site.

What Needs Work: In order to have your own personal portfolio website, rather than just a profile on Behance, you need to join ProSite. This costs $11 a month, but it allows you to create a full website without coding, and it syncs with your Behance portfolio.

Ideal User: Any creative professional wishing to showcase multimedia projects — images, text, audio or video. The layout of the site is better for viewing visual projects, so anyone from graphic designers to photographers to industrial designers can benefit.

Cost: Free for a Behance profile, $11 a month for the ProSite.

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3. Carbonmade

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Summary: Carbonmade is an online portfolio platform that helps users show off their work — especially creative work like design, illustration and art.

Best Feature: Carbonmade makes portfolios easy. Users can create a profile in a snap, and the service offers tons of ways to personalize your portfolio. Plus, users can establish their own URL — for example, yourname.carbonmade.com.

What Needs Work: The site isn’t conducive to any text, audio or video work — a still image is best for this portfolio.

Ideal User: Again, this portfolio service is primarily for creative professionals. In comparison to Behance, Carbonmade seems even more geared toward visual art. Any professional who can share an image of their work — fashion designers, illustrators, architects and more — would find Carbonmade useful.

Cost: Free

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4. Pinterest

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Summary: Pinterest is basically an online pin-board. It’s primarily a social photo-sharing website where users can create separate boards for various things. For example, you could have a board for recipes, pictures of places you’d like to travel or, in this case, your professional creative work.

Best Feature: Pinterest is far more social than Behance or Carbonmade, so you can have eyes from all parts of the globe on your work. Plus, you can “pin” any image, and when users click on a pinned image, they’re redirected to the original website. For example, if you “pinned” a piece of your artwork from, say, your personal blog, you can attract more traffic to your blog.

What Needs Work: The platform was not made to be a professional portfolio site. Therefore, the site may have a different audience of viewers than an actual portfolio platform. Plus, like Carbonmade, text or audio works cannot be “pinned.”

Ideal User: Pinterest only allows photos or videos (which will be “pinned” as a still picture), so creative professionals with image-based work will find this site most useful. Any professional with visual work that can be put into image form can display their portfolio on Pinterest.

Cost: Free, but you do need to request an invite.

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5. Dribbble

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Summary: Dribbble is a “show and tell” for designers, where users can share small screenshots of their work.

Best Feature: The platform shows off your work with screenshots of your progress or completed project. Plus, it’s easy to browse other people’s work by tags or color.

What Needs Work: Dribbble isn’t useful for anyone with non-visual works; it’s really only conducive to visuals.

Ideal User: Anyone who creates visual work that can be shared via an image, especially graphic or web designers, illustrators and logo designers.

Cost: Free

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Conclusion

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All online portfolio platforms have their pros and cons, and different sites work better for varying types of professionals in myriad industries. There are many portfolio services to explore aside from the ones mentioned above, but what all of these sites have in common is that they allow professionals to display their work online and continue to build their personal brand.

Do you have an online portfolio? What service do you use? Let us know in the comments.

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Social Media Job Listings

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Every week we post a list of social media and web job opportunities. While we publish a huge range of job listings, we’ve selected some of the top social media job opportunities from the past two weeks to get you started. Happy hunting!

• Manager, Digital Media Analytics at Digitas in New York
• Web Community Manager at ZS Associates in Evanston, IL
• Director Business Development at Liveramp in San Francisco

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, aluxum.

More About: behance, dribbble, features, job search series, mashable, pinterest, WorkSimple

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Nothing I could write here could say more about the vile nature of the rabid opposition to Governor Scott Walker than their own behavior, as witnessed this weekend at the Tax Day Tea Party in Madison. I dare anyone to defend this garbage.

Who can forget their first computer game? It wasn’t just kind of awesome, it’s what took up most evenings and every weekend. If you’re the type to have spent far too many hours playing these games in the 1980s and ’90s, you might want to clear your schedule now.

Some of the best gaming franchises are making a comeback. Here are five being revived in a new-school way, thanks to the crowdfunding site Kickstarter.

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1. Double Fine Adventure

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The Double Fine Adventure project isn’t a remake or continuation of a retro game series. Rather, it’s an effort to revive an old style of gameplay — the point-and-click adventure game. And who better to bring it back than Tim Schafer, one of the most creative and quirky innovators in the genre?

Throughout the 1990s, Schafer played a major part in classic adventure games such as The Secret of Monkey Island, Day of the Tentacle, Full Throttle, and, what many consider his magnum opus, Grim Fandango.

But even that kind of clout couldn’t help him find a publisher that would finance this recent venture. So he turned to Kickstarter in February, looking to bring in $300,000 for a new game, plus an additional $100,000 to film a documentary on the game-making process.

Shafer’s past success might not have had much sway with game publishers, but it definitely had some pull with fans. The Kickstarter campaign met its goal in eight hours and reached $3,336,371 by the time it ended on March 13. Shafer’s wildly successful campaign has inspired other developers hoping to revive an old franchise.

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2. Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards: Reloaded

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In the late 1980s, most computer games were created primarily for kids. However, there was one mainstream franchise that was made with adults in mind, Leisure Suit Larry, from famed adventure game publisher, then called Sierra On-Line.

The six-game series followed the exploits of Larry Laffer, a leisure suit-wearing loser looking for love in all the wrong places. Filled with humor that was a little bit seedy and a whole lot funny, the series was widely played around the world. In fact, the first game was so popular that it’s been called one of the most pirated games ever.

The last franchise game was released in 1996, but Replay Games later convinced series creator Al Lowe to come out of retirement. The result: Leisure Suit Larry in the Land of the Lounge Lizards: Reloaded. This remake will feature updated graphics, a touchscreen interface, and will be available on PCs and tablets — if it reaches its $500,000 Kickstarter goal. The company is well on its way to 100% funding, and has until May 2.

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3. Shadowrun Returns

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Shadowrun is a pen-and-paper role-playing game mixing elements of Tolkien-esque fantasy and William Gibson-style cyberpunk, creating a world filled with trolls, elves, hackers, and cybernetically-enhanced street samurais. First released in 1988, the game was adapted into two American role-playing video games in the mid ’90s, and a poorly-received first-person shooter for Xbox 360 in 2007. The problem is, every version has had to make certain compromises to the gameplay style, leaving many fans disappointed.

Fast-forward to April 4, 2012, and game developer Harebrained Schemes has brought Jordan Weisman, the creator of Shadowrun, on board for a Kickstarter campaign that promises fans an old-school, turn-based computer RPG set in the dystopian streets of Seattle.

Shadowrun Returns set out to raise $400,000, and surpassed that goal in 28 hours. (The campaign ends on April 29.) But it’s not just going to create a game with that money. The company is also giving players the ability to create their own Shadowrun adventures with an integrated game editor, which should help keep the Shadowrun world alive and kicking for years to come.

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4. Wasteland 2

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America has been devastated by nuclear war. Misfits, mutants and man-eating machines have made the deserts of the Southwest an inhospitable place. The only hope for mankind are the Desert Rangers, a small group of men and women trying to bring civilization back, one bullet at a time.

This was the world of 1988′s Wasteland, a post-apocalyptic computer role-playing game well known for its sense of humor, a “sandbox” world ripe for exploring, and a branching narrative where decisions made early in the game could have an impact later on. Despite an outcry from fans, Wasteland never received a direct sequel. However, many of the same developers created the early entries of the Fallout series.

Brian Fargo, the creator of Wasteland, tried for many years to get a sequel made, but he wanted to stick to the same gameplay that made the original famous. Modern game publishers refused to back a game that wasn’t a first-person shooter, so Fargo and his company, inXile entertainment, turned to Kickstarter. The initial goal for the Wasteland 2 campaign was $900,000, but fans have spoken to the tune of more than $2.5 million and counting.

As a way to give back to the Kickstarter community, Fargo has started a grassroots program called “Kicking it Forward.” The gist is that any Kickstarter campaign that gets funding and joins this group agrees to reinvest 5% of its profit to help fund other Kickstarter campaigns. There’s no oversight committee or auditing process; Kicking it Forward works purely on the honor system. And it’s already gaining support, with dozens of campaigns involved, including two retro revival games, Shadowrun Returns and Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded.

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5. Project Fedora

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Heavily inspired by Blade Runner, the Tex Murphy games continually pushed the envelope of computer gaming technology between 1989 and 1998. This immersive world of gun molls and gangsters, developed by designer Chris Jones, left fans clamoring for more.

However, the developer, Access Software, was bought by Microsoft in 1999, and the team shifted its focus from back-alley deathtraps to back-nine sand traps as it worked on the successful Links series of golf games. The division was sold off again and changed names numerous times, before finally going out of business in 2006.

Although Jones, now head of Big Finish Games, has tried to revive the franchise nine times with a new game called Project Fedora, he has yet to find the funding to make it happen. Now he’s giving it one more shot with a Kickstarter campaign set to launch on May 15. If Jones and Big Finish are able to drum up the kind of funding other retro games have, who knows what kind of groundbreaking game we’ll see added to the Tex Murphy legacy?

1. The Oregon Trail

The game that made dysentery fun was released as a Facebook app last February, much to the delight of grown-up school children everywhere. It's now social, of course, but the decision whether to ford the river is all your won.

Click here to view this gallery.

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, adamfilip

More About: contributor, features, kickstarter, trending, video games

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Read this and ask yourselves why nobody will talk about this. Is it that all of these posers have alot in their backrounds that they want to hide. This next election should be an open and shut case. We have and ineligible fraud posing as POTUS and not one candidate on our side will talk about this. My friends, not to sound conspiratorial, but this is a vast conspiracy. All you parents out there who want to send your children to college, claim them as foreign students and get foreign aid. They don’t have to have good grades, with this fraud poser in the white house, you can lie about everything and get right to the top. No more working hard. Just LIE. http://reaganiterepublicanresistance.blogspot.com/2012/04/obama-not-lawyer-not-professor-and.html After reading it, you will say to yourself how on earth is the fraud able to stay in the white house. He is being kept there by ALL the frauds in the media including the posers on “our” side. Why have none of them talked about this? Why won’t mittens talk about this? Rush? Sean? Mark? Savage? Fauxnews? They are all in this conspiracy. Members of congress know about this also. They are all sweeping this under the table.

RomneyCare.

He cannot escape it.  He signed it.

And now we have this: Mass. Healthcare Premiums Down 5%

While healthcare insurance premiums have gone up in other states, those  participating in the state’s Health Connector Commonwealth Care program are  enjoying a second year of reduced premium payments courtesy of the healthcare  reform act signed into law by then Gov. Mitt Romney, Forbes.com  reported.

President Barack  Obama‘s Affordable Care Act was patterned under Romney’s program in  Massachusetts and  designed to lower the amount of “free riders,” people who  don’t buy or can’t afford healthcare insurance but cannot by law, be turned away at a hospital emergency room if they have a  life-threatening illness, by mandating the purchase of healthcare insurance.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Health_News/2012/04/14/Mass-healthcare-premiums-down-5/UPI-83201334422081/#ixzz1s51Ydrol

How can he escape it? The media wants ObamaCare.  Romney supporters, please tell me how Romney is going to survive through the election process without reversing course on his current stated position on ObamaCare.  OCare and RCare are so close to the same thing that it is embarrassing.

Look, I do not want ObamaCare. You don’t either.  But we are not going to have a choice come November.

The “best” Romney is going to be able to do, after August 30th, will be to claim that OCare is flawed in a way that RCare isn’t, or that insurance should be left to the states.  Both are extremely weak arguments.

My point is that nominating Romney is a cataclismic mistake.    The media will put out crap like the article linked above and force Romney to  embrace his legacy in Mass. once he is our nominee.  Then we will be stuck with it forever.

If you want Romney/ObamaCare, then by all means, nominate Romney.  There is still time to turn this around.

As Alan Stang used to say “Think about it!”