Podcasts Geek Girls Guide

We’ve all clicked on the comment section to a blog, video or news article and immediately regretted it. That, or we’ve read each trolling comment like rubberneckers spying an accident on the freeway. Either way, internet trolls seem to be here to stay. 

In podcast #50, Sally McGraw joins us to discuss her work and share her experiences with trolling and online abuse. Sally is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer, and communications professional who has been blogging for 7 years. She has contributed writing to local newspapers, magazines, and websites throughout her entire professional life, and is an ongoing contributor to the Minneapolis Star Tribune and The Huffington Post. She is also a weekly contributor to the Fox 9 Morning Show. In addition to writing her popular daily style and body image blog Already Pretty, she has published a style guide titled Already Pretty: Learning to Love Your Body by Learning to Dress it Well which is available via Amazon and ships worldwide. She has also contributed to The Frisky, TypeF, and Glamour and guest posted everywhere from the revered fashion blog The Coveted to the wildly popular style advice blog You Look Fab. 

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Links & Related Info

• Nancy’s Prom Picture
• You May Be Right (Or you may be crazy.) – blog post by Nancy

Carol Cantwell is the founder of Fun With Financials, a company that teaches non-profit organizations practices that support informed financial decisions. She’s also a recent convert to exercise, specifically running. Carol popped by the studio (via Skype) this week to discuss some of the social fitness apps that helped her go from a person who could barely run a mile to someone who will be running the Boston Marathon in a few months.

Originally, we had planned on recording this podcast and putting it up around the first of the year. We figured that listeners might have set some New Year’s resolutions to get healthy or exercise more and, in turn, could be extra-inspired to maintain those goals by listening to this podcast. Well, things happen, podcast recordings get rescheduled and now the podcast is going up several weeks after everyone has forgotten that they had even made any New Year’s resolutions.

<sad trombone>

Let’s take this half-empty glass and fill it up a little bit, shall we? It’s time to get re-inspired to get healthy this year. Is a New Month’s resolution a thing? It is now.

Do you have suggestions for some other social fitness apps or sites that we missed in the podcast? Leave a comment, letting us know which ones have helped you the most.

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Links & Related Info

• Big Girl Running – Carol’s running blog
• Carol is running the Boston Marathon with the Dana-Farber Marathon Challenge team. Add your pledge and help her reach her goal!
• Track Carol during the Boston Marathon
• Sheila Ki Jiwani by Sunidhi Chauhan & Vishal Dadlani – Bollywood song mentioned by Carol

Apps and Other Useful Sites

• Charity Miles
• DailyMile
• Fitbit
• Fitocracy
• GymPact
• RunKeeper
• Zombies, Run! [iOS app]

Facebook has destroyed online events. What began as a brilliant idea has morphed into the most ignorable feature on the Internet. If you’re in a band, then chances are, hundreds of people have ignored the sweet event invite for your show next Tuesday at 11:00pm at that place they’ve never heard of. 

If you’re active on Facebook at all, you probably have a number of invites in your events section. How many times have you logged into Facebook and been greeted with that brilliant red square notifying you that someone, ANYone has contacted you only to find a message letting you know that the event you’re not planning on going to is happening an hour later than originally stated? 

By clicking ‘no’, you might hurt the feelings of poor Jimmy in the mailroom. I’m sure his band really IS good and they probably DO sound like Spacemen 3 meets Slade. 

You could always do the Minnesota No and click ‘Maybe’, but haven’t we all made that resolution to be less passive aggressive this year? A simpler option to clean out your events section and make it useful again is to just remove it. 

1. In Facebook, click ‘Events’ on the left side of the screen.

2. Hover your mouse over an event you want to remove. A bluish-gray X will pop up on the upper right side of the event.

3. Click that X.

4. Ta da! The event is removed and you don’t have to feel like the introverted hermit that declines every event invitation.

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It’s been a while since we’ve had a guest on our podcast. This week, we talked with Jeremy Wilker about Kickstarter projects. 

It seems like everyone is setting up Kickstarter accounts to help fund their creative projects with the mindset that everything will go according to plan, and they’ll get their money. According to their website, only 44% of Kickstarters actually reach the desired goal and get funded. Jeremy recently wrapped up his second successful Kickstarter for a feature film titled ‘Death To Prom’. He shared his experiences and advice on how to make sure your Kickstarter is a success.

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Links & Related Info

• Kickstarter
• ‘Death To Prom’ Kickstarter
• ‘Death To Prom’ Official Site
• ‘Triumph 67’ Official Site

Take a ride on the wild side with us as we answer questions sent in by our listeners. 

Thanks to everyone who sent in questions. They were great. Also, we’d like to apologize to Phil Beavis. Phil, we got to your question, but we had a bit of a laughing fit about your Twitter handle. Deep down, we’re 12-year-old boys. 

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Links & Related Info

• Erin Mathe: our kickass PR person
• Peachpit Twitterview: where we pulled the questions we answered in today’s podcast
• CNBC: Why Half of America Hates Their Jobs
• Ready Player One: a really good book that Meghan thinks you should read
• Calamity Jennie: a friend of ours who sent in some questions that we also answered in this podcast
• Life Below 600: some thoughts from Paddy Donnelly about “the fold”
• Upper Mississippi Academy: an example of a super-scrolly site
• Meghan’s Facebook post, with a “disclosure”
• Gini Dietrich’s post about Wal-Mart and Their PR Firm
• Information about the FTC’s disclosure guidelines for bloggers

We may not always have an agenda filled with bullet points when we sit down to record these podcasts, but we generally will have a few ideas in our heads when we hit the record button. Not this time…

What types of topics do suppose come up when microphones are in our faces and even we don’t know where we’re headed? Broadway musicals? IT folks? Real Housewives of New Jersey? The idea of a Geek Girls Guide bookmobile? Thomas Edison and/or Jefferson? Yes.

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Links & Related Info

• Secure360
• The 99% Conference
• Jonah Lehrer
• Jonathan Adler
• Once: The Musical
• jRuby Conf
• RailsBridge Workshop
• Death to Prom’s Kickstarter
• Jordis Unga’s Kickstarter
• Amanda Palmer’s Kickstarter

We had planned on talking about Klout and social media influence scores, but that’s gonna have to wait until next time. Don’t cry. We promise we’ll get to it.

44 is the magic number! In our 44th podcast we expand on our interview at SMBMSP, and answer some of the questions we were asked via Twitter. You can watch the whole interview video with Mykl Roventine below!

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Links & Related Info

• Nancy is a super recognizer. It’s a thing!
• Skins UK. It’s awesome. Trust!
• In case you missed it…WE WROTE A BOOK.

SMBMSP #44 Questions

@quick13: you have talked about agency side but what about managing interactive projects in diff culture of big corporations?

@amandaesque: Q: how can interactive PM be recognized in change-averse orgs? (or where change is verrrry slow)

@rasherman: Can’t wait to read book. Wonder if you considered making it interactive w/ video & animate?

@bridgetmonroe: would love to hear about the “process” part of the book title and how digital process is being improved/refined.

@mickivail: So, any way to back-pedal? @smbmsp #question RT @annikahanson: Biggest mistake agencies make is committing to estimate in proposal #smbmsp44

@jimmesick: Question: have some of your projects failed? If yes, why?

@clewisopdahl: Have you worked on a #digital project that never took off?

@kristinlenander: Tips for finding the job, office and coworkers as awesome as #clockwork? I hope you realize how luck you are!

Two podcasts in two weeks? That’s right! Our “weekly” podcast is dropping the quotation marks for now, which, according to a new study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences, could mean we are “socially disruptive narcissists”. 

Lifehacker: The More Facebook Friends You Have, The More Unhappy You Probably Are

Location-aware technology is blowin’ up these days, which will inevitably lead to another wave of privacy concerns. As a user, it’s up to you to learn what messages each of them will send out to the world. Don’t be surprised when you go out for the night and your phone finds your friends before you do.

P.S. What are you doing the morning of Friday, March 30th? Join us for some bacon and coffee while we discuss our new book, Interactive Project Management at Social Media Breakfast MSP! Buy tickets here. UPDATE: The event is sold out, but you can still get on the waiting list!

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Links & Related Info 

Highlight

• Highlight
• Highlight app takes automatic location-based sharing to the next level
• Robert Scoble article: Have Arrington and Conway screwed up big time with their investment in Highlight
• Who the heck are these people? Highlight’s social overload

Pinterest & Legal Concerns

• Why I tearfully deleted my Pinterest inspiration boards 
• The potential threat to Pinterest users

GetGlue

• GetGlue
• Meghan’s GetGlue profile: Yeah. I watch a lot of Vampire Diaries. Don’t judge.

Path

• Path
• A few articles on the Path data breach we mentioned:
  • Disruptions: So many apologies, so much data mining
  • The Path fiasco wasn’t a privacy breach, it was a data ownership breach
• Some thoughts from our pal, Patrick Rhone, on how he uses Path:
  • Path: Introducing the Personal Network
  • Path: Introducing Path 2: The Smart Journal

Foursquare and the Mystery of Meghan’s 5k Badge

• OMG, I ran a 5k!: Ms. Whitney Shaw, one of our Geek Girls Guide crew members, kicked ass at a 5k. Give her some love!
• Foursquare 5k badge: Meghan wondered about a mysterious 5k badge she earned. This article cleared up the mystery: she apparently hooked up RunKeeper with Foursquare and then forgot about it. See, kids?! You gotta keep track of what you’re sharing.

Shutdowns

• F***edCompany: Back in the day, this site kept tabs on the dot-com bubbles as they burst.
• Kevin Rose’s Oink shuts down: We never could figure out the point of this one.
• Well, that’s that. Gowalla shuts down. It was kind of like Foursquare, and now it’s no more.

It’s been a hectic 2012 so far. We finished our book, Interactive Project Management: Pixels, People, and Process, and it’s now available for pre-order from Amazon! Or, add it to your Goodreads list so you remember to read it later!

This is also our first podcast of the year (sorry!), so allow us to be the last people to say Happy New Year to you. We hope it’s been great.

In this podcast, we’re talking about Pinterest (hey, who isn’t?!) and the idea of anonymity and privacy online.

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Links & Related Info

• Sasha Westin – Fabuliss
• Meghan on Pinterest
• Nancy on Pinterest
• Meghan’s thoughts on Pinterest on Arik Hanson’s blog
• Pinterest hits 10 million users
• 4chan’s Chris Poole: Facebook & Google Are Doing It Wrong
• Sh*t Interaction Designers Say