internet 101

The Kevyn Burger Show

Posted on June 18, 2009

We had the pleasure of appearing on FM107.1’s Kevyn Burger show this morning to talk about this site, and our upcoming Social Media 101: A Beginner Bootcamp seminar on June 22.

If you missed the show, you can listen to our segment by using the link below to download the mp3.

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It was fun talking to Kevyn, and we got to meet Sheletta, too (who is just as funny in person as she sounds on the radio).

Follow-up

We talked about a few things:

Twitter. Here are links to three great articles for beginners:
Related to Twitter, we also talked about hashtags. Those look like this: #hashtags and are a way to classify or categorize your tweets. For example, here’s a search on #clockwork (tweets from co-workers at our day jobs) or #iranelection (tweets covering the current situation in Iran).
We talked about the pros and cons of presenting while people are Twitter-ing
Did you know that Twitter and Facebook could make you a better employee? We certainly know it makes us better friends.
We talked about the Motrin Moms thing last year.
- Here’s the original ad on YouTube.
- The whole deal was started by super-powered Mom blogger, Jessica Gottlieb. Think about that: one woman on Twitter was able to start a movement and get a huge corporation to pull an ad. That’s power, baby!

Drop us a line and let us know what you think, or if you have a question!

Using the Web at Work, by Andrea Vogel

Posted on June 9, 2009

The Geek Girls were recently asked “Is it safe to log into my mint.com account from work? I never have time to work on the budget at home, but during lunch is the perfect time.” This question, along with its sister query “Can my employer read my personal email if I am accessing it from my work computer?” and twice-removed-illegitimate cousin question “Is it OK to surf porn at work?”, is one many of us never had to consider when beginning our careers. Placing whispered personal phone calls to a date or a doctor, sure. Surreptitiously reading City Pages under the desk, of course. But only in the last decade has personal usage of company technology become such a serious issue – one often resulting in employee termination, lawsuits, identity theft and more.

The purpose of this article is to outline the answer to this question on four levels: rules, reputation, ruin and reality:

1. Rules. What can and cannot legally be monitored, accessed and/or forbidden by an employer (as it pertains to technology only – I’m not going to comment on the political propaganda hanging in your cube or the micromini that should have been retired when you were 17. Not in this article, at least.)

2. Reputation. Even in company settings with more lenient policies, consideration of your professional reputation is important and often overlooked. If non-work-related online activity is affecting the quality or productivity of your work, it’s time to curtail it. Similarly, if you are visiting “questionable” (read into this however you wish) sites using company technology, your credibility and integrity could be affected within the establishment.

3. Ruin. As in financial: Identity theft. PIN number swiping. Rare, but unfortunately feasible and a serious issue to address.

4. Reality. Situations in which it is most likely alright (highly caveated that you are not to use this article as your defense if you get busted) to disregard the policies and guidelines from points 1, 2, and 3 above.

Rules

Without exception, it is completely legal for an employer to monitor an employee’s online activity and information on a computer that is provided by the company. During working hours, after working hours, data saved to a “private” folder on the hard drive, emails sent from a work-provided email address, and even emails sent from a personal email address using said computer. This information is all legally accessible by the employer – even if it is password-protected.

Even after an employee leaves a company, the employer is within its rights to access and review activity and information from said employee’s computer during her tenure. This 2008 Techdirt.com article reiterates the fact that “anything on the computer is fair game for the employer (even if it’s password protected).” Now granted, this particular article pertains to a former employee that was stealing from the employer, whereas our reader simply wants to check her finances during lunch. Night and day, right? One would think. But it is important for her to know the facts: Her financial information can and may legally be accessed by her employer if she is using Mint.com on her work computer. Even if her manager condones the employee’s taking 5 minutes to do some personal budgeting during the day, another unscrupulous colleague could very well be accessing her financial information. More on this in “Ruin,” below.

While it is legal for employers to monitor and access the activity and information noted above, it goes without saying that many do not. It’s just important to know that they can. The majority of employers I have had, as well as those of my family, colleagues, and friends, will not admonish a competent and productive employee for spending some personal time online during the work day or at home on a work-provided machine. Let’s face it: Most of us work upwards of 40 hours per week and there are bills to be paid, news headlines to be read, and personal correspondence to attend to—and just not enough hours after work to manage all of it. In addition, more and more employers are encouraging their employees to spend some time online each day in non-task-related/billable activities—social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter or company blogs being examples of potentially positive ways to gain knowledge, share information, and promote the company via nontraditional methods.

Unsure about your employer’s policy on personal use of company machines? Ask your manager, read the employee handbook, or play it safe and do it as little as possible…or not at all.

Reputation

When I informed my manager that I was writing an article on personal use of company technology, he snorted and reminded me that I am on Facebook and Twitter all day. OK, guilty as charged. However, my productivity reports and completed tasks/projects indicate that my manager’s expectations are being met even with these diversions. If this is the case for our reader as well—that her workload is not being affected by her lunchtime personal budgeting—and she is fortunate enough to work for one of the more understanding employers noted above, then her professional reputation should remain intact. However, if productivity and/or performance are slipping, whether noticed only by the employee or by her colleagues or manager, then it goes without saying that personal use of company technology needs to stop during working hours, plain and simple.

Our era of tweets and blogs also brings up another sort of reputation damage control: that of TMI (too much information.) Employees who are using company technology to save/send/ post photos of last week’s kegger, or oversharing via status updates that can be viewed by clients or colleagues can find themselves in a world of trouble. Take the recent downfall of Ketchum VP James Andrews, who insulted the fair city of Memphis when in town to meet with his client, FedEx. FedEx employees immediately circulated the tweet corporation-wide, as well as responded scathingly. Awkward.

Be smart about the sites you visit while on company time and equipment, and what you post on said sites. You never know who might be paying attention.

Ruin

If the reader is using Mint.com, a free online money management application, on a company-owned computer, then her employer has access to any personal information stored within her Mint.com account, even though it is password-protected. It is illegal for her employer or colleagues to use or access that information without just cause, of course, but it is definitely feasible and could lead to theft of finances or identity.

Think twice before accessing financial or personal information on company machines. You could become a victim of identity theft.

Reality

So, in a roundabout way we have answered the reader’s question: Is it safe to log in to my mint.com account from work? No, it is not safe – yet it is likely that if your employer condones occasional personal use of company technology during work hours, and if your productivity is not being affected, it is probably fine. Just save the porn-surfing for your own computer on your own personal time, OK?

Andrea Vogel, Geek

Andrea Vogel is a Senior Producer at Popular Front who leads teams in the development of online experiences for clients including Hasbro, Deluxe and Gustavus Adolphus University. She holds a BA in French with a minor in Women’s Studies from the University of Minnesota, as well as a cosmetology license, of all things.

Follow her on Twitter: AVogel75

How Backpack Made Me Like Gmail More, by Nate Burgos

Posted on April 7, 2009

I guess we’re on a little bit of a 37signals kick over here at the Geek Girls Guide. Last week, our pal Julie outlined how she and her husband use Basecamp to manage their home remodeling. This week, our newfound friend Nate Burgos of Design Feast shares how 37Signals’ Backpack has helped him keep his inbox cleaner by streamlining his writing and editing process. This article is a great example of how one technology tool (Backpack) can help simplify another (email). I don’t think Nate is alone in wanting to keep the amount of “noise” in his inbox down.

We’ll be posting some more articles around here soon about how to keep your Inbox(es) under control. Let us know if Nate’s post gives you any bright ideas!

Since starting my blog last year, I had been using Gmail to send files to my editor Silvia. The system was simple: State the blog posting number in the email’s subject header, insert pleasant greeting and notification, and attach Word document. Writing is naturally iterative. There were a number of times that I would email another, and sometimes still another, revised version of the same posting. In these instances, the subject header would read USE THIS.

At times I needed to make sure that the latest version was indeed the latest, so I used Gmail’s fast search to track it. This way of sharing and commenting on versions was my workflow for making content to post. But repeating this workflow, with each compounded and buried email in my Sent folder, proved that the system wasn’t the right solution.

Last January, my writing-and-approval system was not only refreshed but also reengineered when I began using Backpack, 37signal’s tool for sharing and organizing information. I thought my immediate choice would be Basecamp, but decided that Backpack was appropriate for my purpose. Backpack allows you to create a Page, however many needed, dedicated to a topic. Each Page serves as a central place to store the stuff pertaining to the topic of that Page, like this for a past topic for a blog entry:

You can add a checklist and notes, and upload documents and images. These “digital assets” live on a Page that can be as tall as needed, depending on how many things you feel are necessary, or unnecessary. At first, I created a Page per blog piece. Then I shared the Page with Silvia, who accessed it to download the document and upload her revised version. But this quickly proved cumbersome. This led to one Page to accommodate all blog-writing projects.

This new approach meant Silvia would use just one shared link to access the Page that holds sections for new content (including those for other projects), a designated review space, a “From Silvia” section and a Downloaded section. The space makes it easy to post and identify both documents that are ready for review or have been edited. Everything is conveniently accessible on one surface, which also acts as a Backup. In other words, one Backpack Page to rule them all.

Some observations from the organizational move from Gmail to Backpack:

When uncertain about which web tool is good for you, sign up for a trial

For too long, I was toggling between Basecamp and Backpack. I really wanted to use the former, but felt that it offered more than what I would use. Watching videos of Backpack’s features honed my attention toward this webapp. But seeing videos and reading testimonials only goes so far: You have to use a tool to believe it. Signing up for a test run greatly helped the decision-making.

Email can only go so far in organizing information (Duh?)

Backpack’s make-a-Page action, resulting in a single Page view, is comprehensive. It’s comforting to have one’s bits and bytes about a topic on a single surface, rather than in a folder directory and mixed up with non-related content. I also use Backpack’s create-a-Divider action a lot to visually chunk my Pages and make them more digestible.

Ease into the more “robust” version of a web-based tool

Buying into a web-based tool is an out-of-my-pocket expense. I bought into Backpack’s Solo plan, which allows me to make 100 Pages and includes a personal calendar plus 1 GB for files and photos. Security is a part of this plan too. So far, this plan works for me. The option to upgrade is something to look forward to as my work and needs evolve.

Backpack promotes proactive documentation

Effectively using Backpack obviously depends on my input. I treat my project-based Pages in Backpack as canvases. It’s whitespace, and you should engage it with matter: a List, a Note, an Image, a Document. Searching for something is confined to the Page, of course, if you put in there in the first place.

I thought that I would let go of Backpack when the trial version was up, and I was promptly reminded:

To spin it, I did let go—all the way to a paid plan. I had no regrets because I was comfortable using Backpack and comforted by it. Comfort begets comfort. When a web-based product (or any designed product or service) inspires this, it’s worth acquiring and using. My editor Silvia acknowledged during our initial use of the trial version that Backpack’s alleviation of multiple emails (not to mention multiple attachments) was a very good thing. Silvia’s comfort level, combined with mine, was upped.

Now my Gmail inbox is thankfully shallower, with fewer messages and files when it comes to my editorial process. Gmail offers high storage but it feels better to arrange, share and store project-based content and information in a systematic way with Backpack. This makes Gmail more breathable and fun.

Nate Burgos is a designer who is ever-curious about design and designing through his webliography Design Feast. He also collects rare examples of innovative book design, such as first editions of Paul Rand’s “Thoughts on Design” (1947) and Ladislav Sutnar’s “Catalog Design Progress” (1950).

Follow Nate on Twitter: @designfeast

Twitter for Fun and Non-Profit

Posted on March 20, 2009

Geeky reader Justine from Chicago wrote in and said, “I’m not currently a tweeter and feel I am slowly grasping it’s potential and reach, but still don’t really know how I could best utilize this interest/stream?”

She was asking about Twitter specifically in relation to monitoring discussion about the non-profit that she works for, and their different products (for lack of a better word).

My answer? Twitter, Facebook and all the other tools that people collectively refer to as “social media” essentially make public the conversations that used to happen in people’s homes and over the phone. You can now listen in on a conversation that used to take place over a backyard fence.

So, you can use it in two ways: listening and/or participating. Listening is vital — just so you know what’s being said. Participating is optional, but can be a very powerful way to connect with your existing audience and build a new audience.

How you do that is up to you: you could tweet as yourself (which I would suggest) and/or as your company (which is less personal, but could also work). The key is to provide value either way. If you have a company account, make sure to not just tweet about what you are up to, but really engage with your industry as a community. (See also: my list of Twitter complaints from a few weeks ago. Specifically – Twitter should not be a replacement for your RSS feed. Give us something other than news releases!)

Listening

A selection of ways to monitor what’s being discussed in the Twitterverse:

search.twitter.com – Check the web interface anytime, or subscribe to an RSS feed of a given search. I monitor the words Geek Girls and Geek Girls Guide on Twitter via RSS, so I know almost instantly anytime someone tweets with those terms. If I choose, I can shoot those people a message saying hey, thanks how did you hear about us, etc.
BackTweets: Enter in a specific URL and get a list of tweets that link to it. What I love about this is that it also returns results from URL shorteners (tinyurl.com, is.gd, etc.). Twitter search doesn’t, so using RSS from Twitter search and BackTweets I monitor just about every Geek Girls-related tweet. (Or I feel like I do!)
Twitt(URL)y: Kind of like Digg for tweets. (Need a Digg overview? I did one here.) Monitor popular URLs that are being tweeted. What I don’t like about this one, is that there’s not an obvious way to search for a URL. Harrumph.

Participating

Here are a few resources to help you get started with using Twitter for yourself or your company:

Check out the book Twitter Means Business by @jojeda. I haven’t read it yet, but people I know have read it and say it’s a fast read and an informative overview on how to use Twitter for business purposes.
Here’s a selection of articles about using Twitter:
And, if you want to learn even more about how to use Twitter and other social media tools, join Nancy and I at Social Media 101 – A Beginner Bootcamp.

What To Do After You Do Something Dumb

Posted on March 13, 2009

Friday the 13th seems like an appropriate day to tell my bad luck story.

On Tuesday, I got a link from my cousin on gChat. It said something like, “Check out this funny video.” I clicked it, and then – like a dumbass – I entered my password to the site. Yeah. You heard me: I entered my password to a site I didn’t trust.

Smooth move, Meghan. Smooth move.

I’d like to blame the fact that it was my first day back from a 5-day trip to Mexico with two young children. I was tired. My inbox was packed with over 500 emails and stuff was blowing up at work. I was stressed. But whatever the excuse reason, it was an incredibly stupid thing to do. I was even thinking, “This is stupid,” as I did it. BUT I STILL DID IT.

Once I entered my password, I got to a site with a video on it. A video that wasn’t even funny. To the right was a list of all my gChat contacts. There were checkboxes next to the names and a button to forward this dumb video to them. A-ha! I immediately unchecked all their names. Smart me, right?

Nope. Still dumb.

As soon as I entered my password, the site immediately sent an instant message to all my gChat contacts inviting THEM to watch this stupid video. How do I know it did this? Because I got an email from a friend that went something like this:

“I got a chat from you with a link that I followed, and it prompted me to put in my chat password to view it. I stupidly did it, and it was a video. Anyway, it also sent the video to other people as well – which I did not request. Looks like we’ve been hacked, my dear. Time for a password change, I’m guessing.

I know – I can’t believe I fell for it, too. It’s just that you never send me chats, so I figured it MUST have been something cool. I can’t believe I re-entered my e-mail password…DUH.

Anyway, this might be a really good question for the Geek Girls: What do I do now?”

Yes! Let’s make lemons from lemonade. What can you learn from my insane stupidity? Here’s what my friend and I did once we realized what had happened:

Immediately changed our Google passwords
Immediately changed the passwords on any other accounts we had that were using the same password. Security experts always say to use a different password for every site, but most of us in the real world end up using some more than once. Hackers know this, so don’t use the same password everywhere or you’ll be sorry someday. I think a happy (realistic) medium is to have 3-5 passwords that you use on different sites. Try to change them every so often and make them as nonsensical as possible. They’re harder to remember at first, but after you use the same jumble of numbers and letters a few times you’ll be amazed at how well you remember them.
Sent a note (she emailed, I put a note in my gChat status) to our contacts letting them know not to click the link (in case they hadn’t already) and telling them we didn’t mean to send it.
Felt dumb. And then we moved on. Everyone does stupid stuff once in a while, so don’t beat yourself up too hard.
Then I found an article about the dude who did it. This guy gives anarchist transsexuals a bad name.

And that’s it. Luckily, in my case, this was a fairly low-level mistake. It wasn’t my bank account. But, it could have been. Next time, I’ll remember these important lessons:

Lesson #1: Don’t ever give your password to a site you don’t trust, and especially when you got to the site from a link. When in doubt, go to the site directly (e.g. if you receive a link to a bank site, go type in your bank URL directly, don’t follow the link).

Lesson #2: Follow Lesson #1.

Lesson #3: Take quick action to minimize damage if you are too tired or stressed to remember the first two actions.

Good luck out there.

Social Media 101 – A Beginner Bootcamp

Posted on March 11, 2009

Damn, it’s hard to keep up with this blog with (more than) full time jobs and kids! But, we are planning to record Podcast #2 tomorrow (thanks for all the great feedback) and hope to have it posted by the weekend.

Having a blog is great — we love it — but the real magic happens when we can sit down with people in person and talk about technology. We love the questions, the discussion, the sharing of knowledge.

Over the past year, we’ve spoken at several events and have gotten many requests for hands-on training, especially on all of the social media tools everyone is buzzing about (and seriously, what’s with the fad words? Four years ago all our clients wanted “viral” and now they all want something “social.” Funny thing is, it’s all the same: it’s conversation. But more about that later.).

We Geek Girls are definitely talkers, but we don’t know anything about organizing an event. And there’s nothing worse than having (or attending) a poorly organized event! So, we partnered with the smart and sassy Jennifer Kane (the mastermind behind the annual MIMA Summit) to create Social Media 101 – A Beginner Bootcamp.

In true Geek Girls spirit, this event is aimed at those who want to learn, and need some guidance. It’s a “there are no stupid questions” environment. A blend of strategy (Why would I, or my business, bother with social media?) and tactics (Um, how do I use Twitter?). You’ll learn basic social media strategies and skills that you can immediately put to work for yourself, and your business. A perfect blend of personal and professional (and remember how hard it is to keep the two separate these days, anyway?).

So, grab your laptop and meet us over at aloft Minneapolis on April 24th. UPDATE: We also added another event on May 18, too! Parking is included, so you have no excuse. That’s right. Free parking downtown. Did we mention lunch, too? True story.

We’ll start the day discussing strategy: why social media is relevant, how it works and why it works. Then we’ll spend the rest of the day exploring different social media tools (blogging, Twitter, social communities and social media on mobile devices) and discussing how to use them. We’ll even have a Social Media SWAT team to help you out if you get stuck.

You’ll leave the workshop with:
•    A better understanding of the social media landscape and how you can fit into it;
•    A basic roadmap and skill set for navigating the tools of the trade;
•    Your own burgeoning social network of like-minded professionals, and
•    A tool kit of informational resources to take back to the office.

We’ll be joined by Jennifer Kane, Jennifer Bohmbach and Lisa Foote. A bunch of seriously smart ladies ready to drop some knowledge. So, come on. Join us.

Register Now >

We hope to see you (or your favorite tech newbie) there. Tell your mom!

Living in Glass Houses: Separating the Personal and the Professional Online

Posted on February 16, 2009

Thanks to our new President, the word of the moment is “transparency.” We all love it! We all want more of it! Yay, transparency! That is, until the transparency applies to us.

The first question I get from people new to the world of social networks is, “Yeah, but how do I keep my [clients, friends, whatever] from seeing [whatever]?” The meteoric rise of Facebook and Twitter over the past year has a lot of people worrying about exactly that. In the good old days, it was easier to keep work life and home life separate (at least it looks easy on Mad Men). Now, it’s harder to keep that separation. Or, rather, it’s harder to be active in social networks and keep that separation.

Let’s assume that you do want to participate in some social network. How do you do it appropriately? I mean, if all you share is the dry, professional business side of yourself, you probably won’t get much out of the experience — nor will your friends or followers. What people truly enjoy in social networks is actually getting to know other people. I’ve never met @ms_rezai in person, but the tweet in which she shared a photo of her kid in front of a rack of knives endeared her to me forever. Only after I randomly started following her on Twitter did I find out that she works in the same industry I do. Weeks later, we bonded over the monkey cupcakes I made for my kid’s 3rd birthday. Later this week, we actually may meet in person at the local Social Media Breakfast. Professional women making a connection online by sharing a slice of their lives as moms. That’s social networking.

So, what’s a girl to do? A few ideas:

1. If you aren’t comfortable sharing your personal life online, don’t.

If you want to keep your online persona totally pro, stick to strictly business sites like LinkedIn. If you’re on Facebook, things will inevitably get personal and if you put it online, it’s forever. No matter how careful you are, at some point someone will find it if they really want to. But, to me, the key part of that setence is: if they really want to. When I think about the potentially embarrassing information that’s out there about me online, I try to remember that I’m not at all important and the likelihood that someone will search out that information is pretty slim. If anyone is so interested in me that they want to seek that stuff out, more power to them. I’ve made peace with the amount of personal information I’ve (over)shared in my life. That being said, I don’t think I can run for President.

2. Don’t say or do anything online that you wouldn’t in person.

This is a good rule that applies in many situations (think before you hit “send” on that email!), but it’s worth repeating. If you put it online, it’s forever. Even if you think you can delete it, those ones and zeroes exist somewhere. It only takes seconds to post a careless comment that you can end up regretting for a long time. The best, and probably most famous, example is Dooce. I started reading her blog right around the time she lost her job. Back then, those of us that were blogging were cocky about the fact that not many people we knew were reading them. Blogs felt anonymous. Of course, they weren’t. You can read the full story on her web site, but the short version is that she blogged about work and got fired (and spawned the verb “dooced.” As in, my boss found my blog and I got dooced). Recent history shows people still learning that lesson, like the guy from Ketchum who angered the folks at FedEx. Think before you type.

3. Choose your network(s) with care.

Almost everyone is on LinkedIn and, for professional purposes, it’s a great place to start. It used to be strictly a resume site, but in the past year they’ve added some additional social features. Create a professional profile and connect with colleagues. This is not a social network that you need to be very active in, but there are opportunites: there are discussion boards, question/answer areas, etc. Participating may drive people to your profile, so it becomes a form of online networking. Their “what are you working on?” feature is sort of a professional version of Twitter (which I’ve blogged about here, here, and here). You can also recommend people you’ve worked with, or ask them to recommend you. So, it’s a great place to dip your toes in the social networking water. It’s not too scary because it’s totally professional. Photo optional.

Almost everyone is also on Facebook, but this one is trickier. My Facebook “friends” include my boss, my mom, my junior high boyfriend, college classmates, cousins, clients and co-workers. How exactly does one manage the flow of information between a group that diverse? I thought I was going to have to type up a whole big list of instructions, but thanks to @KatieCW (who tweeted a link to this story earlier this week), I can just point you to 10 Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know. This article gives great, step-by-step instructions on how to compartmentalize your Facebook friends and keep information segmented accordingly. And by that I mean making sure that your clients don’t see a photo of you drunk at your cousin’s house on New Year’s Eve.

4. Maintain and monitor your network(s).

Keep an eye on your own profile, and those of your connections. Follow the tips in the Facebook article above to ensure that you’re not sharing more than you want. If a friend posts an embarrassing photo, ask them politely if they’d mind taking it down. (I’ve actually had to do this, and the friend totally understood and complied.) If they won’t (and it’s on Facebook), you can at least un-tag yourself from the photo. And you can double-check all the privacy settings from the article above and minimize the damage.

Watch your connections and keep them updated as circumstances change. On LinkedIn, I’ve disconnected myself from people that I wasn’t comfortable being professionally connected with. I do this on the assumption that more is not better, and that people judge me based on the quality of those I’m connected with. If I wouldn’t recommend someone, I don’t connect myself to them. By the same logic, I don’t accept or request connections from people I don’t know. Because then, what’s the point?

Same deal with Facebook: only people I know and only people I like. None of this “frenemies” crap. You’re a grownup, for crying out loud! You can eat ice cream for breakfast if you want to and you can turn down Facebook requests that you don’t want to accept.

Depending on how you look at it, all of this sharing is either a good thing (transparancy!) or a bad thing (embarrassing!). I’d say there’s a little good and bad in all of it. But, whether it’s good or bad, I think that there is more understanding now. Understanding that we are all human, and we’ve all done stupid stuff. So, for the most part, a little evidence of that isn’t going to kill anyone’s career anymore. Or at least, it sure won’t in the near future. Think about it: we all live in glass houses now, and by the time the Millenials are old enough to run for President, I can’t imagine that even one of them won’t have a drunken Facebook photo in their past.

I won’t lie: it’s difficult — maybe even impossible — to keep your personal and professional lives 100% separated online. But, that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Social connections, online and in real life, can often evolve into business opportunities, and our business connections can result in rewarding social relationships.

UPDATE: A few hours after I posted this, I found the following article via @gwenbell: Help me! I’m drowning in social media! It’s another good overview of how to use social networks in ways that work for you.

UPDATE #2: There’s been quite a recent furor over Facebook and who owns what you upload there. Google “facebook tos” or check out a few of the following articles for an overview of the issues (in order of appearance):

Consumerist: Facebook’s New Terms Of Service: “We Can Do Anything We Want With Your Content. Forever.”
NY Times: Facebook’s Users Ask Who Owns Information
CNN: Facebook faces furor over content rights

Back That Thing On Up

Posted on January 26, 2009

This past Thursday, I gingerly celebrated what I hope is the end of weeks and weeks of laptop problems. The point of this post is so important, that I’m going to give you the punch line before I finish the setup: BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Trust me on this one. Last year, one of the smartest people I know (a developer, no less) had a computer meltdown and lost all of his cherished digital photographs. He spent hundreds of dollars on data recovery. This same person guiltily admitted to me a few weeks ago that, despite that experience, he’s still not backing up his data. Sometimes, smart people can be so dumb.

Hey, it’s a new year (I can still say that as long as it’s January, right?), and a couple of weeks ago I heard a local radio personality vow that 2009 would be the year that she became more tech-savvy. Obviously, I fully support that resolution, and learning how to back up your data is a fantastic place to begin. Because if your machine self-destructs (or is shoved into the next life by a jam-covered toddler or a cup of coffee), all the tech-savviness in the world can’t save you.

Here’s what happened to me: due to some problems with my wireless connection I had to wipe out everything on my machine and reinstall the operating system (new Geek Girls: this is known also as the OS. On my Mac, that’s OSX. If you’re on a PC it’s Windows Vista or another version of Windows. For the super geektastic it might be some version of Linux, like Ubuntu.). I actually had to erase and install the OS and restore my data three times. Four if you include Thursday, when I finally gave up, bought a new machine and transferred all my data over.

Lucky for me, I’ve been doing backups of my data almost daily since November. I have to credit Apple here for an application called Time Machine which makes it crazy easy to backup your stuff. All I had to do was buy an external hard drive (I went with a cute red Western Digital Passport), and every time I connect it to my laptop, my machine backs itself up. It alerts me if I forget to plug it in for a long period of time, warning me that “Time Machine hasn’t backed up in X days.” But, now that I’m in the habit, I plug in the external drive daily. It’s usually plugged in when I’m at home, and often at work as well (I just toss it in my laptop bag when I leave the house).

But, even if you’re not on a Mac there’s really no excuse. There are lots of online backup services out there. (Of course, you take a risk in that if the company you’re backing up with goes out of business, there goes your data. On the other hand, it sure is handy to back up your data somewhere far away so that if your house burns down your data is far away and safe. Just sign up for a well-known service and not anything named Billy Bob’s Backups or I CAN HAZ BACKUPS PLZ and you should be fine.)

The bottom line is this: think for a moment about how much you rely on your computer every day. Think about how much of your life might be on there. If your first reaction is, “Oh, I don’t have anything really important on there,” I want you to try one thing before I’ll believe you: turn off the computer right now and put it in a closet. Go for one week without using it. You can use other computers to access web sites or email, but you can’t use your main computer. After a week, tell me that you don’t have anything really important on there and I’ll believe you.

Honestly, I’ve felt completely lost without my stuff over the past few weeks. At work, I was unfocused because all my To Do lists are on my laptop. I didn’t know what personal errands I needed to run (also a list on my laptop), and don’t even get me started on all of the passwords I had to try and remember when I was on a loaner machine trying to visit all my usual online haunts.

So, if you do have anything really important on there (as most of us do), I’ll say it again: BACK UP YOUR DATA. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Actually, wait, it’s as easy as 1-2:

1. Find a web site and start remote backups ASAP. I’ve heard great things from many sources about Mozy. They even have a free personal account (up to 2GB). If you need more, you can get a subscription for less than $5 a month. Not bad. You can also check out this excellent PC Magazine article listing the best online backup services.

2. If using an online service makes you uneasy, start shopping for an external hard drive and back up to that drive regularly (but humor me and use an online service until you buy your drive and get everything set up).

If you’re on a Mac, the whole thing is dead simple with Time Machine and there’s no excuse for not using it. As soon as you plug the drive in, your machine will say something like, “Hey, I see you have a drive connected, can I please do some backups for you?”

If you’re on a PC, check out this excellent article from LifeHacker on how to automatically back up your junk.

Two steps. You can handle that. If you do only one geeky thing this year, do this one. You’ll thank me someday when there’s jam oozing out of your keyboard.

The Truth About Twitter

Posted on January 21, 2009

Over the past year, Twitter seems to have hit its tipping point and truly entered popular consciousness. (@idpkbrian called it when he saw a reference to Twitter in a Wal-Mart ad in a movie theatre this summer.)

Just to be contrarian, I think it’s time I shared my Twitter peeves. Let the Twitter scroogin’ begin!

Twitter != IM
If more than half your tweets start with @, you might want to consider downloading an instant messaging client. Of course, if all those @ replies are interesting to your followers, more power to you. But, more often than not, @ replies consist of stuff like, “@ so-and-so, what are you doing tonight? I’m washing my hair!”

Know what I say to that? #annoying! Pick up the phone, send an email or use instant messenger.

Watch the re-tweets, Mister.
RT, or re-tweeting, is repeating what someone else said because you thought it was funny or interesting. That’s fine, but if more than half your tweets are RTs, what the hell are you doing? Add something interesting to the conversation, or don’t talk. (This from the girl who tweets pictures of her kid. Who do I think I am?)

Twitter is also not RSS
If all that you or your company are tweeting about is your latest blog post, please stop. If we want to read your blog, we’ll subscribe to your RSS feed. (If you sprinkle your blog notices among other interesting tweets, no worries.)

On a related note, if all you’re doing is @replying to people who mention you or your competitor, please stop. You’re killing me.

Quantity vs. Quality
This goes for tweets and followers alike. If you’ve been on Twitter for six months and you have thousands of tweets, you are either:
a) incredibly interesting and knowledgable
b) self-obsessed
c) in need of an IM client (see: Twitter != IM)

The answer is most likely b or c. Sorry.

Low or No-Value Tweets
When it comes to followers, I’m glad you have X-hundred or thousand. Good for you! Seriously, good for you. But, you don’t have to tweet every time another 5 people start following you. “I have 100 followers!” “I have 110 followers!” gets old very fast. As someone who’s following you, I obviously think you have something to say. Rattling off your number of followers is not that interesting. If I want to see how many followers you have, I can look at your profile anytime I want. On a related note, it’s really not necessary to publicly thank all your followers.

I am Not a Snob.
I saw a video last month decrying Twitter “snobbery.” The basic message was that if you have a ton of followers and don’t follow all of them back, you’re not social media, you’re solo media.

Um, no. I certainly don’t expect every blog that I read to also read my blog. Similarly, I don’t expect everyone I follow on Twitter to follow me back. I’m busy, they’re busy, we’re all busy, and keeping up with 2,000 tweeters may not be high on my list, or theirs. There are certainly people with thousands of Followers and Followees, and God bless them (see: @stephenfry). But, I have a full-time job, a blog, a husband, a house and two kids. I use Twitter to follow some friends and some industry people that I think are interesting. That’s it. And it doesn’t make me a snob, it just means I’m smart enough to know my own limits.

The Elite
It bugged me when bloggers did it years ago and it bugs me now that tweeters are doing it: lists of who is “elite” based on number of followers or number of tweets or other wacky methods. What bugs me is the “I’m more popluar than you” mentality that smacks of junior high school. The beauty of where technology is right now (Web 2.0, if you will) is that we all have a voice. Not everyone can start a radio or TV station, or start printing a newspaper, but anyone can set up a Twitter account, a web site, a blog, or a Facebook page — and if they have something interesting to say, they’ll find an audience.

If anyone has this kind of right, it seems like Mr. Tweet does. He looks at it in terms of influence and relevance, which seems right on the mark. Trying to calculate who is elite based on followers or tweets just seems silly to me. I’ve seen people who have made thousands of low-value tweets. That ain’t elite. Where Mr. Tweet gets it right is in understanding that it’s in the eye of the follower: what’s relevant to me may not be relevant to someone else. This is not high school. There is no “in crowd.”

The Echo Chamber
Just like in real life, there are clusters of Twitter users. Many of us follow many of the same people. The result is that I might get the same article tweeted 5 times in 5 minutes. (related: my RT gripe). @jongordon noted a few weeks ago that it seemed like Twitter was made up of 90% PR people and “social media experts” and sometimes, it sure seems like he’s right.

Everyone was all a-buzz about the Motrin Moms a couple of months ago, but only ONE DAY after the whole thing happened there were so many tweets ABOUT it that it was impossible to find the tweets that actually WERE it. Echo….echo…echo…

Ego-Tweeting
I got a lot of Amens this week when I tweeted, “the more people use twitter, the more it becomes a place for ego-tripping and butt-kissing. i’m ready for that to stop now.”

Here’s what I’m talking about: the ego-tweet is the standard annoying bragadocious comment. This was brilliantly parodied by @lolife who said, “Having lunch with @god, then a meeting with @obama and then drinks with @bono before my date with @superhotchick.” Ego-tweets are all a variation on that theme. #snore

The butt-kiss tweet is usually a reaction. It goes something like this: powerful client-type person tweets about their business. The bajillion vendor-type people who follow this person go into a tweeting frenzy, each one trying to prove their smarts and derring-do. “Why yes, @powerfulclient-typeperson, we are incredibly strategic and smart!” And then we’re all subjected to the equivalent of a group capabilities presentation in 140 character bites. Which makes me, and all the kittens in the world, weep.

The Circle of Life
Don’t get me wrong, I love Twitter. It’s changed my life, cleared up my acne and I have lost 15 pounds since November. It’s just going through an interesting phase.

If you think about the arc that blogs have followed, it’s easy to draw parallels: began life as geek-only tool, gained popularity, users started defining crietria which make them “elite” to set them apart from all the newcomers, companies thought they were a golden ticket, blog ad networks developed and PR companies actively wooed bloggers, some bloggers were outed as shills and some managed to make a living at it, “real” journalists bristled but grudgingly started accepting blogs, blogs pronounced dead.

This same arc applies to Twitter. When I joined almost two years ago, there weren’t a whole lot of other people tweeting. Now that it’s hit the mass consciousness, the elite lists have started popping up, more and more companies are tweeting (and just like with blogs, a few are getting it right and the rest don’t know what to do), Twitter ad services have started popping up and will soon start to infiltrate. When I was watching CNN last month they were scrolling tweets across the bottom of the screen which means that sometime later this year, you can expect the “Twitter is Dead” headline to hit Wired.

Of course, blogs aren’t really dead — they’re just not the Next Best Thing anymore. Now, that mantle is carried by Twitter. We’ll see how long it lasts. In the meantime, happy tweeting. Follows or rotten tomatoes can be directed @irishgirl.

[cross-posted on the MIMA blog]

Note to new Geek Girls: if you need to know more about what Twitter is, you can check out my earlier post. There’s no shame in not knowing, but there’s no excuse for not learning!

Digg the Delicious RSS

Posted on January 11, 2009

Geeky Reader Madge from Minneapolis asked, “RSS. Digg. Delicious. What the heck do they all mean and how do I use them?” Great question, mom! I mean…um…Madge.

Let’s digg in!

RSS

I did a three-part series on RSS a couple of months ago, which you can read here, here and here. In a nutshell, RSS is a way for sites to syndicate their content, and for readers to subscribe to it. Common Craft did a fantastic short video explaining it all here:

Digg

Digg allows people to share stuff they think is cool. The more people “digg” something (an article, video, or image), the higher it rises in the rankings. For example, here is a list of the most popular articles on Digg over the past 24 hours. On the left, you can see how many diggs each article has. (Getting “dugg” can result in a lot of traffic to an article, sometimes to the point that the site is overwhelmed with traffic and either goes down, or becomes very sluggish. This is sometimes called the “Digg effect.”)

Anyone with a Digg account can submit something they think is cool (like, say, a Geek Girls Guide article). If other Digg users see it and also like it, they “digg” it. Users also police the content by using “bury” on duplicate, spam, or off-topic items. And, it just wouldn’t be Web 2.0 if they didn’t allow you to build a “network” would it? So, you can connect to friends on Digg to share diggs with each other. Or…just install the Digg Facebook app.

Digg has a good explanation on their site as well.

Delicious

Delicious is a social bookmarking service. Wha? Okay…do you know about bookmarks in your web browser? If you don’t, read this paragraph. If you do, skip to the second paragraph. Bookmarks are a way to create a shortcuts to sites you really like. Every web browser has this (some may refer to bookmarks as “Favorites” but it’s the same thing). So, if you visit CNN every morning, you can create a Bookmark and click on it instead of typing “www.cnn.com” into the address bar every time. (Or, you could just subscribe to the RSS feed, right?!)

Delicious stores your bookmarks online. So, whether I’m on my computer, my mom’s computer, or the library computer, I can log in to Delicious to see all my favorite sites. In addition, I can “tag” the sites with keywords to keep things organized.

Here’s a snapshot of my Delicious account: