Nancy Lyons

Why Social Media Matters In a Down Economy

Posted on March 22, 2009

Whenever the Geek Girls are out and about talking to people about technology and tech tools that can enrich our lives, and maybe make them a little easier, we’re almost always asked about the amount of time investment required to jump on the social media bandwagon. People are busy. The economy is one bad news story after another. Jobs are being lost. We’re just trying to stay focused on caring for our families, keeping our jobs, keeping our houses and not getting panicked over our dwindling retirement accounts. Who has time for social media? Well, if you want to feel a little better, you do.

When we’re talking about Facebook, in workshops or panel discussions, I always suggest that Facebook can help you be a better friend. I even wrote about it in a previous blog post. When the economy is down we’re more disconnected from our social circles. We socialize less, eat out less. Leisure travel takes a hit. The same sort of cuts are happening in our professional lives. Places of business cut back on spending and nix things like conferences, business travel, networking events.

When I was a kid, my father belonged to a men’s club and a country club. He was a lousy golfer, so the country club was always a mystery to me. But he was a man, so that club made more sense. But in retrospect, those two activities were my father’s way of keeping his fingers on the pulse of what was happening in town. He even landed a pretty swank job because of a connection he made in the neighborhood, but really turned into something at the golf club. This was back in the day when business people still made handshake deals over cocktails and 9 holes of golf. Those people probably still exist. But things are moving a hell of a lot faster. There’s more to know. And frankly, being on the golf course means you just might be missing critical information that matters to you.

Just yesterday I saw a number of folks I follow on Twitter tweeting about the power of positive thinking, and how businesses stay strong in tough economies by staying optimistic. My friend and colleague, Gini Dietrich, the CEO of Arment Dietrich Public Relations in Chicago (@ginidietrich on Twitter), tweeted a link to a brilliant article about how positive thinking can actually boost your business. It got me thinking about why all of this matters to our Geek Girls audience. Certainly leaders need to stay strong in order to guide their teams through these uncertain times. But who’s out there providing the encouragement that leaders need to boost their energies in that regard? Other leaders. How can we connect with them? How do we tap into their advice and expertise? How do we find out what they are doing, right now, to combat nagativity and defeatist attitudes in their work environments? Social media! I always say, don’t give me lengthy dissertations — give me snapshots of information. That’s the most valuable way for me to digest, and really use data. Twitter is my dream resource. Poo-poo it if you want. But the people I’ve chosen to follow are (with a few exceptions) veritable fonts of professional wisdom and inspiration. And, because I enjoy my work so much, and it plays such an integral role in my life, its a source for personal rejuvention as well.

Facebook takes that a step further. Yes, the information is still delivered in byte-sized packets. But its more personal. Friends and contacts from a variety of areas of my life are connected and communicating on Facebook. They are really investing in those relationships. The investment is manageable. We aren’t traveling to Tahiti together, or meeting up every Friday night, or heading to our home towns for slide shows of our recent family vacations. But we’re still sharing things that really matter to us. We’re still reaching out and engaging in a social way. We’re still invested in each other. And we’re all sort of in this together. We’re sharing these moments with one another — the economy is precarious, there is real suffering out there, and yet, we have these moments of good to share, and hold onto. They give us hope. Whether they are personal or professional. Your son scoring that winning goal in the recent hockey game. Or landing that account you’ve worked so hard on. They all matter and they all make a difference.

It has been well documented that people need other people. Friendships have a real impact on how people view the world, how supported they feel in it, and how they cope with the realities of it. Articles are written every day about how human interaction eases anxiety and depression. But everything is happening so fast. This isn’t my father’s era. He would have been stymied by how much information there is to keep up with and manage. His way of keeping up was a couple of beers after work, or 9 holes of golf. Now things move at the speed of light. We have these tools at our disposal and they allow us to keep up with our little corner of this fast paced world. Why wouldn’t we take advantage of that? Are they the end-all? Probably not. Will there be something else that comes along next year to dwarf Twitter or Facebook? Maybe. Is that any reason to avoid the benefits of social media? I’m saying no. Why would you avoid something that might keep you informed? Tune you in to a job prospect? Let you see a friend’s new baby on the day she was born? Hook you into the expertise of hundreds and hundreds of professionals FOR FREE? The list of benefits goes on. But my message stays the same. The economy is in the tank. But social media might just make you feel better. It matters. Really.

Facebook Folly? That’s Up To You.

Posted on January 28, 2009

Recently Kristen Tillotson, a columnist for the Star Tribune, spent some time waxing on about Facebook and the distracting, even destructive, addictive behaviors we all engage in as Facebook members. I admit, I am not a regular reader of her column. In fact, I may never have known about this one had I not been headed to a meeting one afternoon, channel surfing on the radio, when I happened to stumble upon the Lori and Julia Show, featuring Kristen Tillotson as a call-in guest. I didn’t know it was her. I just know that I tuned into a conversation disparaging Facebook, specifically the “photo frenemies”. According to Ms. Tillotson, “photo frenemies” are people who post photos (to FB) of themselves looking awesome and you, the hapless victim, looking like crap. This makes them a “frenemy“. In all fairness, the subhead for the column explained that “…Facebook imitates life in the realm of social faux pas”. The problem with the essay overall, though, is the suggestion that life is still so much like high school, and “social faux pas” are the grown-up equivalent of the kinds of activities in which “mean girls” engage. Frankly, the article rang familiar, much like the sort of defensive drivel I hear daily from people who are intimidated by Facebook and other social networks. Instead of copping to the fact that they don’t feel equipped to navigate the unfamiliar waters of social media, they assert that the media is flawed by human pettiness and, as such, not worth their time. In short — it’s bunk.

I’ve talked about most of this in a previous post, so I really just want to address Ms. Tillotson’s take on Facebook in this one. She talks about Facebook needing editors because of all of the “abuse”. Here’s the difference between the world she’s used to living in and the world of Facebook. If I don’t care about her column in the paper, it doesn’t matter. If I buy the paper, her column is in there whether I like it or not. Whereas on Facebook, if there are people I’m not interested in I simply delete them. Or I drop them from my news feed. Or I relegate their updates to the bottom of my pile. They’ll never know.

Ms. Tillotson calls out those people she calls the “oversharers”. She suggests that there should be a status message filter that blocks out tedium. I beg to differ. That tedium really levels the playing field. Frankly I think those people that are constantly hob-nobbing with someone cooler than you or updating their status from their spin class are full of balogna. Humans are boring. We have inspired moments, but for the most part we are all creatures of habit. The important thing is to not try to prove anything with those status messages. By suggesting there is something wrong with the average or the mundane, we’re rejecting authenticity. We’re asking people to try too hard and that defeats the purpose. Those status messages allow us little glimpses into the experiences we all share. Here’s my advice: if you want to “overshare”, that’s fine. Just keep it real.

As for the “exhibitionists”, they might bother you, but don’t be a prude. You might not want to prance around in your boxers, so don’t. That’s the beauty of it. It isn’t necessarily exhibitionism. I prefer “expression”. Perhaps you should try it. Your Facebook presence is a chance for you to express yourself in ways you may have never explored before. Write a little, make videos, share poetry, update your interests, add photos. You’re painting a picture of yourself, and adding depth to your brand, with every keystroke. Take advantage of this opportunity and the blank canvas – and the 140 million others like you who are reaching out in virtual space trying to connect.

The “photo frenemies” aren’t frenemies at all. Let’s face it, we all have those pictures of us in our scary mullets or the evil gingham prom dresses. If getting older doesn’t allow you just a little bit of perspective, then throw in the towel. This stuff is FUNNY. Besides, when have you ever liked a picture of yourself to begin with?

Come on! It’s not about labeling someone a “climber” or judging someone for the number of friends they have or don’t have. It’s not about judging at all. See, my thing is, if you can’t see the fun and value in Facebook; if you can’t really see that this technology is allowing us to reconnect with old friends, enrich current friendships, expand our communities and our views of the world, be more involved, network a little, have a say, express ourselves, share our stories and take some risks then I feel sorry for you. If you think Facebook is just like high school, and not the good part of high school, the crappy-I-would-rather-forget-those-years part of high school. Well. Maybe the problem isn’t with Facebook at all. Maybe the problem is with you.

Technology Enabled Resolutions

Posted on January 8, 2009

It’s the start of a new year and, inevitably we’re all thinking about how to do things differently in the new year. Whether or not you’re someone who believes in or can commit to New Year’s Resolutions, you have to admit there is something about the turning of the new year that allows for a fresh start, a new lease on life, a renewed commitment to something. The New Year is hopeful, and most people I talk to seem to think that 2008 needs a good kick in the behind. What better way to kick it than with a bright, shiny new outlook in 2009. Resolutions look like a lot of things, and generally we keep them in our heads, or our diaries, and we commit for as long as we’re able. Perhaps though, we could get a helpful boost from the Internet when our new year’s resolve is waning. Here’s a few (free or inexpensive) web-based tools I found that might make your New Year’s Resolutions stick, at least until February.

Fitday.com is a free, web-based weight loss management and journaling tool. We might as well admit it, we all have the best of intentions when it comes to shedding those extra pounds. And those intentions are especially bright around the 1st of the year. Who knows, it may be the extra garbage we consumed over the holidays, or the anxiety over an upcoming beach vacation. I am not one to commit to or encourage weight loss resolutions because I think they are so easily broken. But I do think that its a good idea to manage your health through awareness of your caloric intake and your activities. In my opinion (and I’ll get lambasted for this I’m sure) its better for you to commit to healthful food choices and some kind of physical activity than it is to make pointless resolutions about dramatic weight loss. Whatever the case, you can take advantage of FitDay’s free tools for setting your weight goal, logging your food intake, monitoring your caloric intake, calling out the nutritional value of the foods you eat, breaking out the carbs, fats and proteins and then checking it all against your physical activity. You can log your moods and see what sorts of correlating foods might be the cause for your headache or lethargy. It’s all about data, people. And there are pretty graphs that display that data for quick consumption. Be careful with this one – there’s an option to make your profile information public. If you want your world policing what you eat, go for it. I don’t share your desire to go public with every peanut butter cup. But that’s just me.

Weightview.com is another free service that will let you upload a photo of yourself that will then automagically show you how you might look sans those extra pounds. I know, why torture yourself, right? But some people might just need the inspiration (or kick in the tush) to get moving on their healthful lifestyle resolution, and seeing themselves skinny might just do the trick.

Not all resolutions are about weight though. Nor should they be. I just had to get the obvious resolution material out of the way. A few years back I made and kept what turned out to be one of the best resolutions of my life. I resolved to be a better friend – to reach out, make and foster richer relationships with the people in my life. I, like so many people do, got caught up in my career and my professional interests and was horribly neglectful of my friends. As a result, I found myself on the career path I wanted, but really lacking in the kinds of intimate, meaningful friendships that enrich one’s life in unexpected ways. That was the year I actually made new friends, which, if you’re a woman over 30 with a career and a family, you know how hard that is to do. I mean REALLY making new friends. Not like the people you just have lunch with at work. I made a conscientious effort to reach out and engage with a handful of people that are now so significant in my life I cannot imagine it without them. You’re going to think I’m crazy, but you shouldn’t because if you’ve been reading this blog at all, you’ve heard me say this before, social networks like Facebook and Twitter actually make me a better friend. That is why the 3rd item on my list of resolution enablers is Facebook. You laugh, but really, a small investment in using Facebook well means you’ll always see the latest photos of your friends’ kids, you’ll never forget their birthdays, you can quickly and easily offer words of encouragement, or even be reminded to pick up the phone and just call for a spontaneous lunch or cup of coffee. If you’re still looking for a good resolution that will really have an impact – I highly recommend this one. Be a better friend. It changed my life.

Weight and money are two resounding themes this time of year. I hear so many people talk about getting a handle on their budgets, their savings, their spending, their debt. This makes for very good resolution fodder. There are so many helpful applications floating around on the web to help you gain insight and control around your spending behaviors. My cohort and fellow geek girl, Meghan, reviewed what might be one of the best web-based financial management tools out there in November – Mint.com. And now there’s even more minty goodness with the recent launch of an iphone application. I can’t really speak from personal experience as the service claims to be available for my credit union, but the added level of security my bank requires for it’s web banking has made that interaction impossible. The thing is I WANT to be a Mint.com user. I salivate when I see the interface, the features, the brilliant reporting examples. It’s this geek girl’s fantasy to track my spending habits on Mint.com. I live for the day when that can happen. But until that happens for me, perhaps I can live vicariously through you?

I am a crazy list maker. I am constantly making, revising and widdling away at ‘to-do’ lists. If I’m honest with myself I have to admit that my lists of things ‘to-do’ are really goals I set for myself from day to day. I feel a great sense of accomplishment when I’m able to make significant progress on items on my lists. Turns out there’s this other guy, named Joe, who also makes lists of goals, schedules them out, and then tracks his progress from day to day. Joe made a web application that’s free for you to use, and it’s pretty darn cool — it’s called Joe’s Goals. If you’re resolved to getting more organized or being more productive then a simple little application like Joe’s Goal’s is ideal. You can establish your tasks, or goals; schedule your goals and then track your progress toward those goals, all via this simple user interface.

Maybe you’re reading this blog because you’ve resolved to ramp up your technology knowledge. That’s great! You might need a simple, web-based resource to look up terms with which you are unfamiliar. I recommend Webopedia to folks for exactly this purpose all the time. It’s a great stop in the middle of your day for the ‘term of the day’ – today it’s ‘geotagging’ and I’m not going to tell you what that is. I am going to encourage you to look it up yourself and then bookmark Webopedia—because you know you’re going to be in a meeting and someone’s going to say something and you are going to think ‘huh?’ Well, now you know where to turn when no one is watching to get educated on all things web/internet/tech related. Or at least to get better at speaking the language.

This is just a short list of helpful resources for making successful New Year’s resolutions. I’d love it if readers would contribute their suggestions to the list. Leave some hints, URLs, tools, etc in the comments and share with the Geek Girl community. We have to help each other stay on track. And Happy New Year!

Are Blogs Really Dead?

Posted on December 9, 2008

Recently someone asked me what I thought of this article in Wired Magazine. Are blogs really dead? My answer might not surprise you, since this ‘blog’ was started within the last year, but I don’t agree. I’ll tell you what I told this person, and what I’ve said to countless other people — the stuff that works on the web is content driven. If you’ve got good content, if you have something to say that people want or need to hear, if you have value to contribute to the vast resource that is the interwebs — go for it. Frankly, I think it’s a matter of symantics as to whether you call a website with essays a blog. You add video, does that automatically make it a vlog? Toss in some audio and some imagery, which all of the solid ‘blogging’ software allows you to do these days, and voila! you’ve got yourself a WEBSITE. Blogs and blogging software have evolved. The software really just allows self publishing of content. It’s the content that makes the website.

The really true geeks like to think they call the shots in terms of what matters and what doesn’t on the web. But it’s the audience that decides. And audiences gravitate to content that is compelling, that matters, that influences their lives. Let the ubergeeks say the blog is so yesterday. That just means more good stuff for the rest of us to explore, and argue about, and digest, and learn.

Facebook, It’s All Grown Up

Posted on December 8, 2008

If you’re reticent to try Linked In you might be curious about, but avoiding, Facebook. Or maybe you’re on Facebook because some high school friend invited you, but you’re mostly letting people find you. Rethink that. Facebook isn’t just for your kids any more. And if networking is your thing, there’s no better network out there. While Linked In is, for the most part, a professional networking site, Facebook is that and then some. I really want people to stop poo-pooing social networks that work. Desperate times call for desperate measures. With the job market being what it is and money being tight, these are desperate times.

I’ve recently started to really grasp the full power of Facebook. In addition to the obvious features, including a friends/contacts list, photo sharing, links/content sharing, and messaging – instant and otherwise – the experience can be significantly enhanced through one or several easily installed Facebook ‘apps‘. You can share and learn about music, books and films. You can align with particular causes or charitable organizations, you can support local businesses and promote your business through ‘fan pages’. You can share data from your itunes for real time info about what you’re listening to or what you’re watching. There are a number of very frivolous activities like giving ‘gifts’ and ‘drinks’ or ‘little green patches’. The good news is, you have the option to ignore those things. I am always sort of intrigued by the people that don’t ignore the silly. But who am I? Facebook also integrates with Twitter via a simple plugin application. So, if you’re tweeting what you’re doing right now, it’ll automatically update your Facebook status. This is really just the tip of the iceberg, but there’s no denying that Facebook is feature and content rich.

Why am I so convinced that Facebook can add value to your professional existence? Well, Facebook has spent the last year really working on building it’s member base. And, according to information published by Facebook, they have more than 130 million active users. More than half of facebook users are out of college, with the fastest growing demographic being over 25 years old. Simply put, you will NEVER have access to that kind of network in any other setting. Why is Facebook so powerful, beyond the sheer volume of users? Because it allows users to share snapshots of their personal and professional lives to a broad audience of contacts. Your list of ‘friends’ shares moments, victories, stories, interests and events with you, sometimes even as they happen. This kind of an interaction suggests a kind of investment in those relationships. There is an implied intimacy that people take pretty seriously.

We’re living through a period in history like no other. Information is flying at us and its rare that we get an opportunity to stop and really pay attention to it. Facebook gives us information on people we care about, have cared about or should care about, in small, digestable nuggets. It frames it up in a way that makes it palatable. Its that investment, whether personally or professionally (and let’s face it, these days, what’s the difference?) that makes Facebook so important. When we care about a person, even just enough to take in a morsel of information about them, we are more likely to want, and even invest in, their success. We network because we want to, and with our network readily available to us, we network because its easy.

People need to stop dismissing social networks as being fluff, or pointless, or time wasters. They exist because we don’t have time. They exist because we need access to the people in our networks, our communities. They exist because we actually do want to be more connected. Do I think everyone needs to have a profile on every social network? No. Am I selling Facebook for any reason other than the occasional usefulness of information? No. But I am suggesting that people who tap into a social network, especially one as huge and well established as Facebook, have an advantage. If you are looking for a job, a deal on a car, a good insurance agent, a wedding dress, a babysitter – where better to look than right inside your own community. And your odds are actually better online, because the community is broader. Sure, you still have to apply the same common sense filters you would in any situation, but chances are you’ll get more useful information.

People have asked me why I like Facebook and I generally answer “. . .because I’m a crappy friend.” I’m mostly kidding. But there’s a grain of truth there. With Facebook I can peek in on my friends lives and see pictures of their kids, find out about what books they’re reading, see what causes they are feeling passionately about, and comment on their latest flat tire or cold symptom. I can do all of that in just a few seconds. It keeps me current. It makes me a better friend. And, because my personal life bleeds heavily into my professional life, when I contribute content to this whole experience, I am really adding more color to my own story. In this wildly connected universe we live in, we’re investing in our own brands –that brand called YOU. If you’re authentic in voice and contribution, your community responds favorably. They help you. Professionally and personally. It’s really what makes the web so useful and compelling. The connections. That’s why Facebook is worth your time.

Linked In and People You May Know

Posted on October 13, 2008

Recently a geeky girl reader submitted a question about LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a professional networking site that allows you to connect to and manage your professional contacts online. It’s sort of a modern day Rolodex, if you will. It’s handy in that you can connect directly to those people you know through professional association, like current or past employers, networking groups and associations, school, conferences, etc. If you don’t have direct information for whomever you wish to add to your network, you can connect with them via a current colleague or friend. You simply ask your colleague for an introduction through email and the respondent has the option of confirming or denying your request. A basic/free membership to LinkedIn is, at the very least, an excellent tool for keeping an up-to-date list of your contacts and colleagues. A professional membership, however, takes networking to a whole new level, giving you greater access to contacts with whom you may only have a peripheral association, and letting you take advantage of more advanced features like tools for recruiting and job postings and, on the other end of the equation, job searching. I know some employers who only use LinkedIn for recruiting and have great luck with the service. All of that being said, I think most people I know use LinkedIn as a way of automating the maintenance around keeping their contact network current. Based on what I know of her, I imagine our reader with the question is exactly that type of user – a casual subscriber who maintains her professional contacts list using LinkedIn.

Our geeky girl reader wondered about the People You May Know feature on LinkedIn. This feature shows up in your sidebar and recommends possible connections. Miraculously the recommendations are pretty darn accurate. Often those people you may know are actually people you DO know. The accuracy of these recommendations has increased LinkedIn’s creepy rating by a factor of ten. The service recommends people you may have never had any contact with through the website. And sometimes those recommendations are so obscure AND accurate it borders on mind-blowing. Our reader wanted to know how in the heck LinkedIn can figure out who we might know and how they can be so darn creepy about it — so I set out to find the answer. I searched the web over and, come to find out, the people at LinkedIn know just how creepy and accurate they are and they work hard to keep this secret side of their code, well, secret. There are a lot of techies and bloggers supposing how they do it out there in the webosphere. But there are no proven theories about how they get to their lists. After my own research I did the only thing a self respecting geek girl could do (pffft), I reached out to a member of the geek girls men’s auxiliary, one genius engineer and Director of Technology at Clockwork, Matt Gray. I got way more than I bargained for in that exchange. Matt sat both Meghan and me down and explained to us the intricacies of graph theory. I’ll never be able to do any of that justice here. Instead I’ll just give you my layman’s take on the discussion and invite Matt and other geniuses to comment on this post and correct me if I over-simplify it to the point of being wrong. Remember though, our goal here on the Geek Girl’s Guide is to keep things simple. And I aim to please.

In very very basic terms you can think about each one of your connections on LinkedIn as a line — from you to that person. If you were to draw lines for every connection you’d have a heck of a graph. Say one of your friends, we’ll call her Rita, knows a guy named Bob. Rita has a line from her name to Bob’s name on her personal (and invisible, hypothetical, stupid but useful for this discussion) graph. That line in and of itself is just a connection. But say another of your friends, we’ll call her Sarah, also knows Bob. Suddenly the line from Rita to Bob and Sarah to Bob is bolder in terms of how it relates to your network. Because not just one, but two of your connections know Bob, which increases the likelihood of you knowing Bob. Throw another person from your network in there with a connection to Bob and, doggone it, Bob might just be somebody you might know and that’s how he shows up on your list. The theory is that LinkedIn has programmatically harnessed graph theory to weigh your connections in terms of how they relate to everyone in your network. They automagically layer all of these graphs over each other and make recommendations of people you may know based on the number of people in your network that share connections and the likelihood that those connections should be yours too. They probably go a step further and factor in the invitations people send outside of their LinkedIn networks. If two or more of your contacts invite the same person to use LinkedIN it’s likely you know that person too. That’s probably how people you know, who aren’t currently using LinkedIn, end up on your People You May Know list.

There you are. An overly simplistic, but easy-to-understand explanation for why LinkedIn is so creepy in it’s accuracy. Thanks to Matt for his help in laying it all out. Thanks to geeky reader Ann for the question. Now go ahead, people. Comment. Tell me how dumb I am. Tell me the right answer. Tell me how I could have explained it better. I’m open to all of it.

Free is Never Free, But. . .

Posted on September 17, 2008

It’s counterintuitive for me to facilitate this discussion, but what the heck. Who knows why, but people are always asking me where they can get an easy, free or very inexpensive website. They want to be able to add content – photos, maybe a little video, text. Perhaps they are a consultant or small business and haven’t gotten to the point where their website is a real priority (perish the thought) or they want to have more than a blog to chronicle their family adventures. There are many really good free blogging options out there, WordPress being, probably, the best one. And, with some technical assistance and a little tweaking (the geeks call it hacking), WordPress can be a great web content management tool. But it still requires intervention from that geeky friend, brother-in-law, uncle who works in IT. I encourage you to jump in and learn a little about how WordPress or other blogging systems work and try the tweaking yourself. If you use the WordPress hosted option and you don’t install their software on your servers you can dive right into your website in no time at all. If you’re still with me, I’m thinking that what you want is a simple, intuitive option that lets you bang out and publish a site in short order. And maybe a ‘blog’ isn’t enough for you. To tell the truth, there are some easy, free options out there, but you didn’t hear it here. I don’t plan on making this post an exhaustive list of cheap, free or inexpensive web building tools. Instead, I thought I’d look at a couple of free (or, ultimately very inexpensive) options for building and maintaining your own website.

I recently stumbled on an interesting service called Weebly. Weebly is entirely web-based, which means there’s no software to buy and download or install. This is a good thing. You can build an entire site in just a few minutes. This service lets you use drag and drop options for adding content to your site, you can add whole pages with just the click of a button. The templates include all sorts of layout options. And you can pull in things like photos from your own collections or from photo sharing sites like flickr. You can drop in a blog for the day to day writing. Or maybe you want to share a youtube video. No problem. Signing up is really easy. The interface is very intuitive and the system walks you through the (seemingly) more complicated elements like pulling content in from these other websites. If you want to get really adventurous the Weebly even gives you the option of pulling in GoogleAds so you can make money through your website. Whoa! What a concept. Remember this, this is probably not appropriate if we’re talking about your small business website. There are more advanced features in Weebly, but you have to pay for them. The premium service let’s you password protect pages, have multiple websites, upload and store large files, use their proprietary audio player and get some more hands-on support. This service is pretty reasonable, though. It looks like it starts at around 4 bucks a month. Here’s the thing that I think makes Weebly worth a look — the pages look decent. Unlike a lot of canned offerings out there, these are clean and current in their design. If you decide next week you hate how your site looks, no problem. You can change that design on the fly. Another plus is you can publish your site to your own domain. If you don’t have one, you can get it through Weebly, for an additional fee, of course. This is great because you can build your own site and publish it to www.MYOWNBUSINESS.com in a very short amount of time. If that’s not a big deal to you, or if you just want a site to show off your kid’s macrame you can just be a subdomain on Weebly like mykidsstuff.weebly.com. Every time you log back into Weebly you get a snapshot of your traffic too. You’ll know right away when the family starts visiting to judge you for how you dress junior in his most recent pictures. All in all, I’d say Weebly is pretty impressive. I built a Geek Girls test site in all of 10 minutes. I could definitely see my lower tech friends and family members using this service.

There are other cool web building tools worth a look. Matt Wilson, president of MIMA and a Geek Girls Guide Men’s Auxilliary member (whether he likes it or not) mentioned Tumblr to me and I thought I’d take a look. I liked it right away for its ease-of-use and intuitive walk-through of my first post. It didn’t give me a global view of the features as they relate to my layout in the same way that Weebly did. But it did walk me through creating and publishing a post with a very elegant, user-friendly, step by step process. I have the same kinds of opportunities with Tumblr to add audio and video, and outside content to my site. I liked some of the mobile options – I can ‘tumbl’ from anywhere with my mobile phone or handheld device. I can also publish to my own domain. I don’t see Tumblr being as useful for a small business, or someone wanting a website with multiple pages AND a blog. But it would be PERFECT for the beginner wanting to share family photos or videos or maybe journal through a trip or whatever simple little stories you might want to share. In fact, Tumblr is really geared toward those people wanting to offer a more media-rich experience to their users. Its all about the video, audio, image-rich content. Start a vlog! Or a Photoblog. You’ll impress your friends and it’ll be SO EASY!

Don’t take my word for it, though. Try some website building services on for yourself and see what fits for you and your requirements. Here’s a few more for you to take a peek at:

blogger.com: The original web-based blogging software. Its a lot more feature rich, user friend and robust than it was when it first came along. If you know it, it might be time for another look.
clearblogs.com: Easy enough. And free. For the most part, anyway.
terapad.com: The basic service is free but ad supported. Nice feature-set. Great templates.
Xanga.com: Blogging + social networking = xanga.
Squarespace.com: Great interface. Intuitive feature set. Awesome designs.

There you have it. I’ve admitted some things can be free. But you always pay a price. You pay a price in terms of flexibility and scalability. You pay a price in terms of support. And, as you grow, you may really have to pay a price – to grow, and get more, and do more. But as a stepping-off point, these services are worth a look. I promise you, regardless of your level of competency with technology, if you can use a word processor, if you’re reading this post right now, you too can build and manage your own little website. So, what are you waiting for? Get on that!

Look It Up

Posted on September 16, 2008

The other evening, on a short diaper-buying trip to Target, I passed two young women in the electronics department (Yes, I get distracted in Target. Who doesn’t?) asking the help of a young red-shirt wearing fellow. The question I heard started like this – “We don’t know anything about computers. We’re totally computer illiterate.” One waif-like creature was speaking for both of them. She went on to ask, “Is this a router?” I didn’t wait around for the young man’s answer. Instead I went on my way comparing Huggies to Pampers and trying to remember if I’ve ever had a bad experience with either. But I got to thinking, as one is likely to do while tooling aimlessly around your neighborhood Target store, isn’t it funny that those two young women represent the generation we’re all convinced is technologically competent and well-versed? The funny thing was, the young gentleman they were asking for help could not have been more than a year or two older than the ‘illiterate’ girls. But they were comfortable looking to him for his expertise. The whole scene struck me as unfortunate.

When I was a kid my parents purchased the Encyclopedia Brittanica from a tv ad. Every month for 26 months (not counting the bonus books) we’d receive a giant, quite handsome, leather-bound volume to add to our collection. Eventually the set took up an entire shelf in our family room book case. In the evenings at dinner, or while attacking our homework assignments, every little question my sister and I would take to our parents got redirected to that shelf of leather bound books. “Look it up,” my mother would say. “Don’t ask me. Find out for yourself.” In the moment it was probably frustrating. It would have been easier and maybe more efficient for me if my mother just had all the answers to everything. But she didn’t and the closest thing we had was the books marked A-Z. It changed our behavior, really. We learned that if we needed to know something there were resources at our disposal, the encyclopedia was really just the tip of the iceberg.

Fast forward about 25 years. If my son has a fever. If I can’t sleep. If my car is leaking oil, or my grass isn’t green enough, if I need a map, or the names of constellations, or a recipe for creme brulee. If I want to find the name of an obscure poem I thought I read. Or the lyrics of a song. If, say, hypothetically speaking, I want to know what a router is I have the same response, I go look it up. I have, at my fingertips, this fast sea of interconnected resources. I start with Google and I can surf my way through world history and pharmacology and urban legends and infant development and, well, you name it. So why, with this kind of knowledge available, were these two young women so willing to let this pimply faced, red shirt wearing fella be a key influencer in the future of their LAN? You didn’t ask me, but, here goes – I think its cultural and it has a lot to do with how we talk about empowerment and knowledge and the spirit of curiosity. I think it has to do with having the permission to explore and to try and to fail. And, at the risk of offending some of our readers, I think it is a particular concern in terms of how we talk to and encourage little girls. Add technology to that equation and we’ve (generally speaking) got a culture making a whole lot of assumptions about a generation of users without really empowering them to get the full benefit of the resources available to them.

What can we do? Well, as parents I think its our responsibility to have at least a basic understanding of how technology fits into our families, our homes, the classroom, our communities. Too many parents are intimidated by technology and they either believe all the hype and are terrified of strangers on MySpace, or they let their young son or daughter be the resident ‘expert’ without having any real sense of what systems they’re putting in place for the family. This is really a whole other post, and I plan on writing it. But for this one lets just say that in order to encourage exploration in knowledge, parents have to first model it. If you’re concerned about MySpace or Facebook – get on them. Find out what the buzz is about. Get a sense of how they work. And don’t let your kid be a member without ‘friending’ you. But more than anything, encourage their natural curiosity and their interest in creative problem solving. If your teen daughter has the money to go to Target and shop for routers, she’s probably got a broadband connection available to her. If she has that, why not talk to her about finding the answer for herself? Perhaps take it a step further, suggest she compare routers on a hardware review website. And, if you’re really cocky, maybe you can encourage her to map out her own plan for the home network. Its not that complicated, I promise. Sure there will be failure and frustration. But what’s the fun in learning without figuring it out? What’s better than accomplishing something? Especially if its something that the general population thinks is complicated.

I do think we send different messages to girls over boys. I think boys are encouraged to be adventurous in their thinking, where girls are encouraged to be careful. Boys are encouraged to care little about being watched. But girls are encouraged to consider who might be looking at all times. Handling little girls with kid gloves teaches them to be tentative and it’s limiting. We’ve come so far, and we’re defensive when these topics are broached because of all the progress we’ve made. But come on, if we’re honest with ourselves, we have to admit the crap our parents subjected us to still comes out sideways. And there is just way too much opportunity out there to be tentative. There’s too much to learn. Too many connections to make. To many conversations to take part in. Women have got to be part of those conversations. They’ve got to be influential in how those conversations are shaped. And they won’t be if they aren’t encouraged to jump in as children. I’ll stop preaching now. But the moral of this story is simple. Look it up. When in doubt — look it up.

Reader Question: Parallels for Mac

Posted on September 10, 2008

This (great) question was submitted to the Geek Girls recently by one of our geeky readers, Vickie in Seattle:

Hello ladies. Well, it’s time for me to install parallels on my beloved Mac. I’m so resistant to this — it’s silly really. But admittedly it’s due to my long-standing distaste for Microsoft and my recent nightmare experiences with Vista and Microsoft Exchange servers. So, I’m wondering if anyone out there has any thoughts as to bugs, install issues, desktop sharing, back-ups, etc. before I head into this. Oh, and am I going to get a stomach ache when I see Microsoft desktop icons on my Mac?

I asked our resident Mac expert, and official member of the Geek Girls Men’s Auxilliary, Michael Koppelman for his expert advice and he had this to say:

I would first take a look at VirtualBox (http://www.virtualbox.org/). It is open source and works very nicely on Macs, PCs and Linux boxes. Parallels is very nice, though, and is probably a bit more mature, especially in terms of devices such as printers and network connections. In both cases you need to own a version of Windows if your goal it to run Windows. You can virtualize Linux and other operating systems, though, as well.

As for the Windoze icon induced stomach ache, well, a little pepto in the desk drawer can’t ever be a bad thing. For the really specific information around bugs and backups, and every other little Parallels quirk, check out the Parallels Consumer Tech Blog.

Now, there may be some of you sitting there thinking, ‘what the heck is Parallels for Mac and why should I care? Also a good question. Simply put, Parallels for Mac is a program that lets you run Windows or Linux on your Macintosh computer (I know! Why WOULD you?). This is called ‘desktop virtualization’. You may not be running a Windows machine, but you can feel like you are with this handy program. So your desktop, your icons, your programs can all look and act like a Windows-based PC, when in fact you are working on your beloved Mac. For more information about Parallels visit the website.