Author Archives: BettyW

Friday Faves

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Rescuing the instruments from 95 Columbia

Rescuing the instruments from 95 Columbia (photo by Peter Moulthrop)

UPDATE: While all of these projects are cool, if you’ve got some spare cash please look at this Facebook event page: less than 48 hours ago 12 friends from the Boston music/arts community lost their living situation and most of their possessions in a 3-alarm fire at their Cambridge MA apartment building.  Fortunately no one was seriously injured or died (but it was a close thing – 6 police officers rescued everyone), and firefighters retrieved much of their gear and instruments (though some are water-damaged). Please consider helping and spreading the word to others. You may donate directly via this ChipIn widget:

Some Kickstarter and IndiGogo projects I like:

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Creating Easy Secure Unique Passwords

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Recent incidents of hackers stealing millions of password files from sites like Linkedin are a reminder to choose both secure AND unique passwords for every site you visit – because even a secure password is no good if one site’s security is lax and it’s the same password you use for EVERY site.

I know – even an average user has a dozen or more web accounts requiring passwords (email, Facebook, Amazon, Google, a blog, bank and credit card sites, etc), so the thought of having to remember a different password for each one is daunting! But a simple memory+pattern trick makes it easy: Continue reading →

Facebook Tip – Your Listed Email Address

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When people visit your Facebook page, if they click the About link under your icon photo in the header they will be taken to a page that displays various information you have entered about yourself: schools attended, employers, contact information, etc.

When you set up your personal FB page you may have entered an email address to be displayed to friends or a wider audience (depending on your privacy settings), or you may have decided NOT to list any email address.

If you haven’t revisited this choice recently, Facebook has played a little joke on you. They decided to give everyone an email address, yourname@facebook.com… AND they decided to replace whatever other email address you listed as your primary contact information (or no listing at all) with this new Facebook email address!

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Prepare Yourself for Web Notoriety

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You may or may not have taken to heart the many articles about checking your privacy settings on Facebook and presuming that anything you post on the Web may be seen by anyone. Unless you are being stalked by an ex-lover or rabid fan you may have assumed “This doesn’t effect me, because why would a stranger care about my Facebook page?”

What many people don’t realize is: when you do something that makes people more interested in you, and specifically if you are soliciting money from them, the smart potential donors/customers are going to Google you to research whether you are legitimate. Do you know what they will find?

As I’ve mentioned, I back a lot of Kickstarter projects (over 50 so far). While some of those are presented by people I already know and trust, many more are presented by strangers to me personally, and frequently not even known to a more general audience (i.e., not performers/businesses known in some other location).

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