Byte of the Week

Do you ever have those days where you wish someone would just give you the How to Live Life manual? Well I found the manual and I have some good news. It’s free, it’s online, and it’s not even a manual it’s a series of checklists!

List Organizer publishes lots of printable checklists to help with everything including a grocery list, income and tax checklist, travel packing list, clean house chore list, and more. There’s a whole section on checklist chores for kids!

Printable Checklists has a great collection of lists too – including some business related lists. Unfortunately this site also sports a number of pop-up ads so I can’t give a glowing review.

Checklists publishes “lists to live better and longer and help save the earth.” These lists are very instructive and a good reminder of the things we should be doing.

For those of you who are long-time Byte subscribers you may recognize the following. Two people in the last couple of weeks have asked me about identity theft so I am rerunning a Byte

December 17, 2003 – Minimizing Risk of Identity Theft

This statistic is dated (Dec 2000), but according to the Identity Theft Clearinghouse, the average time it took for someone to notice identity theft had occurred to them was 14 months. Here is a short list of things you can do to minimize your risks.

Check your own credit rating once a year. You can do that through one of the following services: Equifax Credit Information Services, Experian, or TransUnion Corporation.

Place passwords on your credit cards. Right now many credit companies use mother’s maiden name – ask to use a password instead. And then pick a password that uses numbers and letters.

Protect your paperwork at home and in the trash. Secure information you have on hand and destroy personal information before you toss it.

Avoid using your social security number whenever possible. Often companies (like your employer) will use your SSN as an identifier; simply ask them to use something else. Often they will.

If your computer is online make sure it is secure. (I’ll be going through steps to secure and back up your computer on New Years week.)

I created the list above from the FTC site, for more tips and details on protecting yourself, visit their site.

Newsgroups and email lists are both online discussion groups. You can access newsgroups through your web browser or with a news reader. You access email lists through your email box. Newsgroups generally do not require registration so the participation comes from a wider audience. Email lists are based on subscription and therefore often have more of a community feel.

Here are some of my favorite newsgroups & mailing lists:

Nonprofit Tech Talk is for techies in the nonprofit sector. Some members are really experts; some are just learning but folks are respectful and helpful with questions from both ends.

Hidden Tech is a list of tech-related business owners in Western Massachusetts. People ask good questions, get good answers, and I’ve seen some interesting business deals getting started here.

E-Democracy hosts a number of mailing lists for local political and policy discussion. There are lists in the Twin Cities, Chicago, Iowa, and now in the UK. (If you’re not in one of those areas – you can always check with this volunteer-based group about starting a group in your area.)

Minnesota Fishing Forums gathers fishers from across the state to talk about fishing. The hot topic these days is ice fishing. I love it because so many people include pictures!

You can find a Yahoo Sponsored newsgroup here; Tile.Net is still the best list of email lists I know. Sometimes getting involved in a public discussion can be a great way to promote your web site – if done very carefully. (In other words just be helpful and include your URL in your email; don’t try to post ads, they are rarely well-received.)

I have heard so much on the Mac Minis lately – on the news, in newsgroups, jokes on TV – that I just had to look into it for myself. I thought I’d share what I learned. (This isn’t meant to be an endorsement for Mac – just an effort to keep us all in the know.)

The Mac Mini is touted as “the most affordable Mac ever.” Costs start at $499. That price, however, does not include a monitor, keyboard, or mouse. Mac calls it BYODKM or Bring Your Own Display, Keyboard, and Mouse.

The Mac Mini seems to cater to folks who have other computers and want more computing/storing power and/or a cheap way to make their files more portable. It will work for storing music, playing DVDs, downloading pictures or video from a digital camera.

It comes with the following software: email, chat, web browser, calendar software, Quicken 2005, an address book, some games, faxing and a way to download your contacts to your cell phone or iPod. You can balance your check book with.

Here are the hardware specs: 1.25 or 1.42GHz G4 processor, 40 or 80GB hard drive, a slot-loading CD-R/DVD-ROM optical drive, 256MB DDR SDRAM and ATI Radeon 9200 graphics chip with 32MB dedicated DDR SDRAM.

So, am I going to get one? Probably not. With 3 kids, my computers suffer most from peanut butter in the keys or fingerprints on the screen. So if I go new, I want it all to be new. And I’m not in the market for a boost for my other computers at that price. But I think it’s an interesting concept.