Book Review: LinkedIn for Dummies, 2nd Edition by Joel Elad

 Before I picked up LinkedIn for Dummies, I really had no idea what LinkedIn was all about. I knew it was growing into something big because I had started to see its name more and more around the internet. I honestly thought that it was just another social networking site. While it is a networking site, it is nothing like Facebook or MySpace. It is a place to build your professional profile and get your resume out to possibly millions of other people who are willing to hire you based on your job history and skills or wanting to form a business partnership with you.

If you don't know anything about LinkedIn or you already have an account, but you're not sure where to go from there, LinkedIn for Dummies is a great guide to help you along the way. The book starts off with a brief history of the website and shows the reader step-by-step how to create an account, build a profile, find people, grow a network, find a job and so much more. I'll have to admit that some parts of the book were a bit slow for me when going through basic things, such as signing up for an account and searching for people. But when it came to building a profile, I found the author's way of breaking down each section extremely helpful because he gives the reader a good idea of the kind of information that should be entered regarding eduction, skills and job history, as to attract the eye of the right person, such as an employer. Of course, I'm sort of looking at this in a one-sided way because I don't own a business or have a reason to hire someone for anything, but this is also a great way for employers to find employees for their business. Or maybe someone were to need a website built, they could search for someone with the proper coding skills to do that for them on LinkedIn. This book covers the website from any angle that you would want to use it for. There is even a chapter on how to use LinkedIn to increase business sales.

All-in-all, I liked this book. I walked away with a full grasp on what LinkedIn was all about, what it was used for and how I could use it for my benefit. I think one of the most beneficial parts of the book is that there are pictures, TONS of pictures, that help guide you with everything the author is teaching you how to do. There is no way anyone could possibly get lost or confused. Something that I found to be kind of a downfall is that the author paints this image that anyone can use LinkedIn by just jumping in and getting started. And while it is true that it's quite easy to get an account started, this site relies heavily on getting a network built and gaining connections. The network connections are built in three degrees: first-degree connections, second-degree network members and third-degree network members. First-degree connections are people that you know personally, whether they may be friends, family, people you went to school with and so on. Second-degree connections are basically the friends of your first-degree connections. And then your third-degree connections are friends of your second-degree connections. So by the time you get to the third-degree, you may have quite a large network going and that's what you want. What my problem is is that I don't know anyone on LinkedIn at all. When the author shows the picture examples of his account, he has quite a large number of connections and it seems like he expects the reader to have some connections on LinkedIn already. Of course, the book goes over how to invite people to join LinkedIn and so on, but I don't think I'd be able to find people willing to join. There is the option of searching for random people and starting a network that way, but it seems less effective to me. So what I'm really getting at here is that I think this website is a great tool to help someone professionally, but I think it would help greatly if the person already knew at least one person on there. If you happen to be that person, then I recommend this book to you. Anyone who wants to use LinkedIn or who is already using it could benefit from this book because it probably covers things that you probably didn't even know about yet.  

Photos From My Theater

I've created a little slideshow of pictures from the movie theater that I work at that you can view here. They are just a few things from the past and present. The first photo is a display of Thor's hammer from the upcoming movie Thor, which is due out on May 6th. It's probably the coolest display to put together, but not the easiest. It took about 6 hours between me and two other people to get it done. The most frustrating part was that not all the pieces were sized right, so it doesn't look so great up close, which is a shame. The next photo is of the Tangled display that we had around the holidays. Now that was by far the most complicated one I've ever built. That one was an all day ordeal. It was made up of five big, wavy parts that didn't want to stay together most of the time. The third photo is of Donkey from Shrek 4. There was a chain that hung all the way across the lobby with all the characters from the movie, which was out last summer. The last photo is a little different. It is something from the projection booth. It is a little device that cleans film. Instead of lacing up a movie normally, we would lace it through this unit. Both sides of the film get clean by running between the two spools of white material. We usually only use this if we've had a film for several months because they tend to acquire a good amount of dust, which will then scratch the film.

And that's it. Hope you enjoy the photos!

Movie Wiki

It's sad to say that there aren't many good movie wikis out there. Upon searching for some, I came across Entertainment Wiki. While it contains an array of wiki categories, such as books, tv, comics and people, it also has one for movies. When I clicked on Movies, it brought me to an alphabetized list of movies. Most of the movies that I clicked on brought me to a page that gave links to other wikis for that movie. Most of the links are for other wikis that are also located on Wikia. I clicked on a few of these Wikia links and they were pretty informative. Anyone can edit the movie list and add a movie that isn't yet on there. Or they can contribute to a movie that is already listed. Some people have even contributed their own "Top 10" lists of movies they liked or didn't like.

While it would be more ideal for the movie section to be a one-stop-shop for movie information, it's still a great site, especially for people who already have their own movie wiki and want to promote it to others. Either way, it's the best movie wiki I could find. Here is the link to the Entertainment Wiki site: http://entertainment.wikia.com/wiki/Wikia_Entertainment

Sucker Punch

When I first saw the trailer for Sucker Punch, I was really excited for it. It looked like a really fun, action-fantasy sort of movie. The main character is a girl named Babydoll (Emily Browning). The movie starts off with her mother dying. Her and her younger sister are left with their stepfather, who appears to be sexually abusive and really pissed off that their mother left them everything in her will. When the stepfather comes after Babydoll, she claws him in the face and he locks her in her room. She watches through the keyhole as he then proceeds to her sister's room to molest her. Babydoll climbs out of her window, gets back into the house, finds a gun and instead of shooting her stepfather, she accidentally kills her sister. Her stepfather then takes her to the Lennox House for the Mentally Insane, where she is to be lobotomized so she won't remember anything when the cops come asking questions. Here is where the film can get confusing because Babydoll imagines that she is in a brothel. Instead of trying to escape from a lobotomy, she is a virgin, trying to escape before the "High Roller" comes to pay big money to have sex with her. She meets four other "dancers", Amber (Jamie Chung), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), Rocket (Jena Malone) and Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish). Whenever Babydoll is forced to dance, the scene changes to a war in Japan that the girls are fighting in. She needs to retrieve 5 things to escape: a map, fire, a knife, a key and the last one is a mystery. Every time the girls go to get one of these items, it becomes a battle in Japan.

I wasn't really sure what to think of this movie when I walked out of it. I was so excited to see it and I guess you could say that I was pretty disappointed. The storyline was just terrible. I definitely did not like the ending. I haven't seen Emily Browning in any other movie but this one and I have to say that she has only one facial expression, which is this timid/worried look. So whenever she would do something bold, it would take me by surprise. The action scenes were good, but highly unrealistic. These girls would land on the ground and the ground would crack beneath them, as if they weighed 5 tons. And who prances into war so scantily clad? I mean, I guess whoever made this movie was going for the sexy-girls-kicking-ass thing and maybe it would have worked if the movie had a better storyline, but not this time around.