Byte of the Week

My apologies to the folks outside Minnesota, but I have been directly and indirectly working on some events around the Twin Cities that I thought locals might find of interest. For everyone – Rick in Minneapolis expanded on last week’s Byte on Google Alerts by pointing out that you could monitor your own name to see who’s talking about you!

Here are the events:

Podcasts, Wikis, RSS, and Blogs with Garrick Van Buren – Tuesday July 12 5:00-6:30 – St. Paul, Minnesota

Garrick Van Buren Principal Behavior Strategist at Working Pathways Inc, a social software consulting and customer research firm will be talking about pocasts, wikis, and blogs. There is no cost. To learn more contact atreacy@treacyinfo.com.

International Symposium on Local E-Democracy- July 26-27 – Minneapolis, Minnesota

This is the world’s first international conference focused specifically on local e-democracy. The first day we’ll explore leading e-democracy trends around the world. The second day is a field trip to the “wired” chambers of the Minnesota State Legislature and Northfield, one of Minnesota’s forerunners in online civic engagement.

Minnesota Rural Summit – July 28-29 – Collegeville, Minnesota

The Great Reconnect – Bridging Rural & Urban Resources for Community & Economic Success. This is conference will showcase efforts that link community and economic resources between rural and urban Minnesota for the greater good of all. To learn more visit the conference web site.

I have one very fun web site to share today. It’s particularly for folks with web sites – but I think it would be fun for lots of folks and useful for anyone who is as color challenged as I am.

VisiBone Webmaster’s Color Lab

Visit the color lab and you can see a wheel of web-friendly colors. Select one of more colors to view them together. It’s a great way to see how two colors will match, contrast, or complement each other. It can save a step if you’re a webmaster. If you work with a webmaster this might help you be more specific about the colors you want to use.

Every few months it seems as if it makes sense to check in with Google and see what news things they are doing. Below are three things – the first two are for searchers and the last is for web owners.

Google Alerts

This is a service that tracks news and new items on the web. You enter a topic and they will send an email with related items that they have recently added to their database.

My search history

This is a way to track your history of Google searches – then you can revisit them by visiting the “My Search History” page – which shows results by calendar. The advantage to this over your browser’s history is that you can login and access it from any computer.

Google Site Maps

Google has created a way for webmasters to submit a site map directly to Google. This is a good way to make sure that all of the pages in your site are indexed by Google. You need to know how to upload items to your server and understand some scripting to do this well. An alterative is to send .txt site maps that only include URLs to the pages of your site. I have been trying this with some customers and will report back later to let you know how this has been going.

Today’s Byte is a little different – it’s a book recommendation. Although in fairness I have to admit that I haven’t read the book. I learned about it through the Future Tense site. Here’s the line that caught my eye, “Write down passwords, keep them in wallet.”

It is advice from Bruce Schneier, security expert and author of Beyond Fear: Thinking Sensibly about Security in an Uncertain World (http://www.schneier.com/book-beyondfear.html), which I’m planning to read soon.

I loved his advice! And from what I can tell I like his philosophy. He describes the need to balance security with utility, which I think is a good reminder for us all. He broadens the topic, but I’ll stick to technology here.

There are cases when I think it is very important to remember technology:

• Never use email for private information
  
• Don’t use your credit card to make an online purchase from the computer at your library
  
• Tell kids not to give even basic personal info to online buddies
  
• Use a password with letters, numbers, symbols, capped and lower cases, when it’s important
  

I also think there are times when we are too clever. Do you really need to go to the grave with your library barcode and pin memorized? The books are free after all. Does everyone in your house need to have a separate password for the computer? What if you want someone to look up a number for you? You’ll have to share your password anyways, which gets back to the balance of utility versus security.

Just some things to consider…

Looking to save a little money or make a little money this summer? These sites can help. (Or if you have a teenager maybe you could set them up for a summer of earning!)

Stretcher

This is an online magazine with article on topics such as selling items on e-bay versus garage sales.

Better Budgeting

This is more of a compilation of items such as a list of cheap recipes and links to free budgeting software and calculators.

Clark Howard

Another magazine of sorts – this site includes an online forum, so you can get and give opinions on sales and products.

Mommy Saver

This site, as you might expect, is for moms; it talks about ways to make money from home and ways to save money on typical mom purchases (like alternatives to teacher appreciation gifts).

Thanks to Katie & Dan in Chicago for the fun links!