The Internet is not as dangerous a place for children and teens as we previously thought, according to a recent law enforcement task force report. Real threats remain, however, and parents need to educate themselves and their children about online safety and privacy.
Be aware of Internet safety.
There are six major areas parents need to be concerned about:
- Amount of overall Internet/computer use
- Inappropriate websites—violence, pornography, hate groups
- Internet predators, perhaps posing as children or teens
- Online abuse and bullying
- Divulging confidential family information or ID numbers
- Downloading/installing malicious software
Create a family policy.
Your Internet policy will depend on how old your kids are and what level of individual responsibility you’re willing to grant them. The point is to have a policy.
- Use parental controls (see below) to enforce the level of safety you’re comfortable with.
- Ask the child to suggest a reasonable amount of daily computer usage. Reach agreement on this and then hold the child accountable. Renegotiate if necessary—again, the point is to have an agreed standard, not to expect that the limit will never be exceeded.
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Tags: children, internet, pornography, privacy, Security
Twitter has taken the Internet by storm in recent months, but there are still a lot of people and businesses who haven’t signed on or who have but just don’t get it. More than any other communication method, Twitter can be a bit like trying to sip from the fire hose. And to keep that water metaphor going, if you jump directly into the deep end of Twitter you will either drown or be eaten by the sharks.
The key to Twitter is in remembering that it is a communications medium, and to truly communicate the conversation must be two-way. You should be looking for quality in those you follow and who follow you, not quantity. Start by following your friends and business colleagues. Only after you get comfortable should you really start branching out. And, like any good conversationalist knows, the best way to interact with people is not by lecturing but by asking intelligent, open-ended questions. If you need help, just ask and people will usually jump right in.
Finally, so that you will be taken seriously and get the most out of your Twitter experience, there are a few things you need to do early on. The pointers below won’t change your life, but they will change your Twitter outlook. Just as with any professional presentation, you need to be aware of how people see you online and how that image creates an impression of you and your business.
- Fill out your Twitter profile completely. This means name, location, bio, and URL. Nothing is more frustrating, and confusing to me, than to go to the Twitter profile of a company or professional and find nothing there. Would you hand out a business card that listed no means to contact you? Then why would you have a profile with no URL? As for the geographic location, it doesn’t need to be specific but should at least let people know what time zone you are in. You can set all this by clicking on “Settings” up in the top right of your Twitter screen.
- Change the default avatar. The avatar is that little picture that appears beside each tweet to represent you. The default one is ugly, means you didn’t care enough to change it, and represents you in a bad way. Preferably change it to a nice little picture of yourself, but at least change it to a picture or logo of some sort. People come to recognize those avatars, so chose something that you want to be identified with – and the default one isn’t it. You can set you avatar picture by clicking on “Settings” and then “Picture” up in the top right of your Twitter screen.
- Don’t follow too many. Especially while you are still learning and gaining speed, don’t follow too many people. First of all, you will get swamped and get lost. Second of all, other people gauge how “real” you are by how many people you are following vs how many are following you. So, if you have followed 700 people but only 10 are following you – chances are pretty good that you are a spammer of some sort. Try not to follow more than about twice as many people as are following you. So, if you only have 5 people following you, don’t follow more than 10. I know it can be hard, but if you start by following your friends, colleagues, and me(!) you will find you can build number fairly quickly. Remember, the goal here is quality not quantity.
- Give it a rest. OK, this is an odd one, especially for me. The truth is though that there are times when you should just step away from the keyboard – or cell phone as the case may be. If you are using Twitter for professional purposes, then you really don’t want to tweet when you are inebriated, under medication, or very late at night. The Internet has a very long memory and the things you say have a way of coming back to haunt you. Additionally, people who are following you for your professional wisdom may get tired of hearing about where you are going to lunch. Sure you need to inject some humanity and humor into your messages, just be careful not to overdo it.
Twitter can be daunting so take it slow but don’t give up. And don’t forget to follow me and send me a tweet!
Tags: advice, internet, news, rules, twitter
Presented here for your approval are a few handy free web-based utilities that will help with some bothersome tasks. None of these utilities is complicated or difficult to use. They are also probably not something you are going to use every day. But, when you need the service they have to offer, you usually need it badly and quickly!
The first is CometDocs which will convert documents from one format to another. The most powerful conversion in my book is the conversion of PDF files to Word or text documents. Not only does this make all those frustrating read-only files editable, but it maintains the formatting and is far less prone to error than OCR. I have tried this conversion on multiple documents and have had consistent success. Beyond converting PDFs, CometDocs can transfer between all sorts of Office and Graphics files. The utility is quite easy to use in that after the free sign up, all you do is upload the file to the service and it is email back to you.
Another on-line utility that I use all the time is WordOff. When you generate html files for a website with Microsoft Word, Word puts tons of extra code in the document that not only bloats the file, but can also mess up the formatting. WordOff just strips all that extra Microsoft Formatting out. Just the kind of utility I like – a one trick pony that does that trick to perfection.
Finally, a service called DialMyCalls is excellent if you need to keep groups of people updated by phone on news, events, or statuses. After signing up, you can record short phone messages of up to 30 seconds and the service will then broadcast that message out to the list of phone numbers you establish. DialMyCalls is free for one message per day to up to 25 people. That would roughly cover a small office or youth soccer team. If you need more people or messages, you can sign up for the pay service at rates of 7 cents per call or less. A great time saver if you have lots of calls to make and also don’t want to get caught talking to lots of people because you have work to do!
So there you have some useful tools that can help solve that one particular problem you might be having. Bookmark them and store them away under “Web Tools” and just pull them out of the toolbox when needed. And don’t forget about DropBox for online file storage and sychronization and Mozy for backups. All free, and all great.
Tags: advice, file conversion, internet, Office, utilities
One of the most common questions I am asked as a computer consultant and web developer is “how much would it cost to build a website for me?” While this is a perfectly legitimate and understandable question, it is very much like asking “how much does a car cost?” Again, it sounds reasonable, until you start to think about it. Are we talking about a commuter car or luxury car. Are you wanting to win a Formula 1 race or maybe you really just wanted to drive cross country or haul some passengers and luggage for a living.
As you can see, that simple question of car cost is really not so simple after all and the answer could be anywhere from a few hundred dollars for an old fishing car to hundreds of thousands for serious racing equipment. So the conversation around websites should begin not with cost, but with purpose – what are you trying to do with your website?
To make this a bit easier, lets start by breaking business websites down into three different categories. And again, we really are talking just business sites here, large or small, but not about personal or social sites.
The first type of site you might consider is a business card site. A business card site is how we refer to a static site of just one or two pages that includes the basic information about your business. These sites will tell what you do, how to contact you, your hours of operation and other standard information. As the name would imply, this type of site is basically a business card on the Internet. Or you might think of it as an overgrown Yellow Pages ad. The lure of this first type of site is that it is simple and cheap to setup. You can get one up quickly either by yourself or with minimal help. The bad thing is that it doesn’t do you a lot of good other than putting a stake in the ground for your domain name. That is about it. There is nothing in a site like this that will get you noticed by search engines, get you new customers, or really connect you with the market.
The second type of site is about real communication with clients and customers. We will call these interactive websites. There is a lot of leeway as to what can be in these site, but generally here you are talking about a site with content management so that regular updates like news and events can be posted easily. Also these site are tweaked for search engine optimization (SEO) to ensure they are indexed by search providers like Google and Yahoo. Finally, these sites are dynamic and menu driven. That means it is fairly easy to change things around, add features, and grow the site as needs arise. There may be blogs on interactive sites or customer feedback forums or scheduling and multi-media. Because there are so many options with an interactive website, most implementations will start with a smaller feature set and only implement, and pay for, additional features as they fit the business model. Again, when you think of these interactive sites, think of extensive search features, improved navigation, social networking tie-ins to services like Facebook or Twitter, automated RSS feeds, and streaming video.
The third and final category of websites is the ecommerce site. When you think about ecommerce sites, think about Amazon and eBay. These are the sites that concentrate on selling things, processing payments, inventory presentation, stock management, and customer accounting. Ecommerce sites are the most complicated and expensive to develop. While there are many systems that can make the process less painful, a full ecommerce site should only be considered when there is a strong business case for it. Typically you are not trying to pull in new customers with a site like this but to service existing customers. Pulling in new customers and winning them over is the job of an interactive website, which is why you will often see ecommerce sites paired with an interactive site to deliver the full continuity of customer service.
You will see from this over simplified breakdown that what you want to do, like when you buy a car, is to determine first what you are trying to achieve. If all you want is to hold your domain name and prove that you exist, then the cheap and simple business card type site will do you. But if you want to attract new business, provide value to your customers, and establish a communications tool that will engage your customers, then you need to move on to interactive content driven site. And finally, only when you have significant online sales to warrant the time and expense should you move into the ecommerce sites.
Tags: blog, business, development, ecommerce, internet, website, WordPress
The following is summarized from a notice posted on Google. I couldn’t have said it myself, so I won’t try…
The Internet as we know it is facing a serious threat. There’s a debate heating up in Washington, DC on something called “net neutrality” – and it’s a debate that’s so important Google is asking you to get involved. We’re asking you to take action to protect Internet freedom.
In the next few days, the House of Representatives is going to vote on a bill that would fundamentally alter the Internet. That bill, and one that may come up for a key vote in the Senate in the next few weeks, would give the big phone and cable companies the power to pick and choose what you will be able to see and do on the Internet.
Today the Internet is an information highway where anybody – no matter how large or small, how traditional or unconventional – has equal access. But the phone and cable monopolies, who control almost all Internet access, want the power to choose who gets access to high-speed lanes and whose content gets seen first and fastest. They want to build a two-tiered system and block the on-ramps for those who can’t pay.
Creativity, innovation and a free and open marketplace are all at stake in this fight. Please call your representative (202-224-3121) and let your voice be heard.
Thanks for your time, your concern and your support.
Eric Schmidt
This is a very important issue and one you need to be aware of. This will fundamentally affect how we use the Internet and whether or not the little guy can compete. From freedom of blogs and bloggers to post news to how something like Craig’s List competes with eBay, it is all wound up together.
For more information on net neutrality, check out the wikipedia entry. And to help support the efforts, check out SaveTheInternet.
Tags: business, free speach, internet
