by Scott Howard | Oct 24, 2013 | ScLoHo's Web World
This is for those of you who do not have a Dropbox account yet.
And those of you that do, I’ve got a tip for you too.
Over the past 10 years, the growth in computing devices has sky rocketed.
Most of us have gone from having a desktop computer at work to also having a personal computer (often a laptop), along with a smartphone and a tablet.
Some of us have more multiples of these devices. I currently have a phone, a couple laptops and a couple desktop computers.
If you already have 1 Dropbox account, get another one.
You will have to use another email account and another device. For me, I set up my second account on my work desktop with my work email.
I created a folder called Take Home and shared that folder with my personal Dropbox account.
No more moving stuff from one computer to another via email or flash drives. It syncs automatically when they are connected to the internet.
And those files live on both devices too, not just in the cloud.
What if you accidentally delete a file or folder? It’s still backed up in the cloud for up to 30 days.
Cost? Free.
How much storage does a free Dropbox account have? They’ll start you with 2GB free. Then with each referral you earn another 500MB up to 18GB Total Free!
When you sign up your second Dropbox account, and use your referral link, you’ll earn 500MB too.
Get started today with your first Dropbox account and you’ll be singing its praises too!
Oh, and if you click on any of the Dropbox account links in this post, both you and I earn 500MB of storage when you set up your account.
by Scott Howard | Oct 23, 2013 | ScLoHo's Web World
It happened to a friend of mine recently.
She posted a picture via Twitter.
But it was not the picture she wanted to share with the world.
(No, it wasn’t one of those kind of pictures.)
It was her combination to her new lock.
She didn’t even realize it and probably never would have known if I hadn’t asked her to tweet a picture of her Social Security card too.
Even then it took her a couple of hours before she saw the mistake.
I know, I know, mistakes can happen. I manage the Social Media for 5 brands and use Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, blogs, and YouTube, multiple times a day along with my own accounts, so I better make sure each and every post and update is correct.
I’ve made a couple of mistakes, but they are usually corrected right away and we move forward.
But here’s a trick I use to keep the personal from the business.
I use different browsers for different accounts. And different tools too. Hootsuite manages all my business twitter accounts. Tweetdeck is for my personal Twitter accounts. Currently I only use Instagram for business from my phone. I have to really be carefully when using Facebook or Google+ because those accounts are all interlinked.
How about you?
How do you keep it all straight?
by Scott Howard | Oct 16, 2013 | ScLoHo's Web World
I seem to be continuing a theme of how our privacy is affected by internet companies that we more or less trust.
You can read what I wrote about the Privacy Tradeoff and Web Trust earlier this week.
Today the discussion continues because some friends of mine started the discussion on Facebook and got me involved.
Google has announced that they may be using YOU in their ads.
You can opt out if you want. Google has made it pretty clear and obvious that I have that option and each time I turn on my computer(s), there was a special message from Google alerting me to this change, encouraging me to read about it.
The skinny on this is that Google is now planning on using the power of “Word of Mouth Endorsements” to help their advertisers boost effectiveness of their ads.
Facebook has already been doing this. I know because I spend my companies money on Facebook ads and for us, some of the most effective are the subtle “Scott Howard likes Mountain Dew” type of ads on Facebook.
If Google follows the Facebook model, they are simply going to use what you have shared that you like and let your friends or connections know that you like this product, service or company.
In the traditional mass media world I’ve worked in, we called these testimonials, and they were pretty powerful. If you were featured in a radio commercial for your favorite jeweler, you weren’t paid, you were famous!
Google, Facebook and the other web ad platforms are going to target their ads, so you aren’t going to become famous, unless you have thousands of connections, and even then, you are in a pool of possible endorsers for those connections.
Like I said, you can opt out of being used by Google if you want.
Most folks won’t opt out because they have no idea what this means and the default setting is Use Me.
(The original discussion that my friends were having went deeper as the question dealt with SEO and authorship, something that most of us don’t worry about or know about anyway.)
by Scott Howard | Oct 14, 2013 | ScLoHo's Web World
Yesterday, I addressed the issue of a Privacy Tradeoff.
The slant I took was we have been giving away our private information for a long, long time and it’s not something we can reverse, nor should we fear it unless we are living a secret life that we don’t others to know about.
Today, let’s explore this idea of privacy from a different angle.
Seth Godin shares his thoughts that Google is jumping the shark by taking our information that we have given them and using it in ways that they supposedly didn’t do before. Read what Seth has to say here.
Google has been consolidating the data they receive from all of the Google products and services and they are able to create a database about each of us that would blow your mind.
They know what you search for when you use their search engine. They know where you go online when you use their Chrome web browser. They know all about your behavior on your Android powered phones and tablets too. They own YouTube and countless non-Google branded products & services.
We trust Google to be responsible with this information. Seth Godin however writes that the next step that Google is planning on doing is beyond being responsible.
I disagree.
There always is a certain amount of risk we take in life. And there are also plenty of risks that are injected into our lives.
5 days a week I drive 33 miles one way to work and the more than half those miles are driven on a two lane road traveling between 50 and 70 miles per hour.
I trust others on the road to drive responsibly. When there is another car coming towards me, we both trust each other to stay in our own lanes and safely pass each other. Otherwise it would be foolish to have two cars heading towards one another, resulting in an impact of a combined 100 MPH. I also use caution at certain intersections because every week I see the potential for fatal consequences from cars and trucks running red lights.
We also travel on the superhighway known as the internet with a balance of trust and caution.
One more item to share with you and that is the most recent Facebook changes I mentioned yesterday. Here’s a link to Kim Komando’s take on it.
But I repeat what I said before. Unless you have something to hide, the issues of privacy and trust online shouldn’t concern you.
by Scott Howard | Oct 13, 2013 | ScLoHo's Web World
This past week Facebook and Google either made changes or announced they were going to be making changes with how they use your information.
It has some folks up in arms. I’ve seen posts on Facebook pages asking people to untag them from photos and stuff. It’s a form letter and it’s silly.
Here’s why:
In 2013 the idea of having privacy is unrealistic.
We have already willingly given away more information than we realize.
Use a credit card or debit card?
How about a store loyalty card?
Own a cellphone?
Do you have a GM car with the OnStar system?
Do you use a free email account such as Yahoo, Hotmail,or Gmail?
Do you have a drivers licence?
Do you own a car?
I could go on and on and on.
You have been giving away tidbits of information about yourself and your habits for years.
And cameras are everywhere. Security cameras, traffic cameras, even Google with street view may have snapped a picture of you or your home.
News that the government has access to our info was disturbing to many earlier this year, but let’s take a moment and see what the trade off is all about.
Security is obvious. The presence of cameras in retail stores should actually make us feel a bit safer. It’s a lot easier to track down criminals if we have a recording of the crime.
Less obvious is the GPS tracking in our cellphones. But what if a family member is missing. The ability of law enforcement being able to locate them is something that just wasn’t possible 10 years ago.
How about email and social media targeting ads based on what they know about us? As a 50 year old guy, I appreciate not seeing ads for tampons or acne products. The weeks that I was researching smartphones, I noticed LOTS of ads geared towards cell phone plans while I was surfing the web. If there was only a way to get them to stop now that I’m done shopping, but they will decrease as I search for other things.
And here’s the real trade off…
The web is basically free.
Google doesn’t charge you, Facebook doesn’t charge you, No one is charging you to use the web.
The only thing we pay for is a connection to the web and a device to access the web. I’m talking about your phone, a tablet, laptop or desktop computer and perhaps internet service piped into our home and businesses. That’s different.
Even though the web is free for us, the consumers of the web, it still costs money. It costs money to buy and maintain the equipment that powers the website and for the electricity to power that equipment. It costs money to pay the people who run the sites. The web is not a volunteer project. it costs money.
The most commonly accepted system of paying these expenses is capitalism based mostly with advertising and sometimes supplemented with subscriptions.
This is the privacy tradeoff.
You and I get to use Facebook and Google and they get to serve us with ads based on the data they gather about us.
They are now increasing their reach into our lives by taking our “Likes” and using them as part of the advertising campaigns to others.
Now I used to really dislike Facebook because they kept changing their privacy settings and I was worried too.
But I have nothing to hide. And most of you don’t either.
You really have nothing to fear. So relax. You will never have complete privacy, but for most of us, the tradeoff is worth it.
by Scott Howard | Sep 8, 2013 | ScLoHo's Web World
A couple of discussions recently about Gmail prompted me to write and share this with you today.
First of all, let’s talk about how Gmail works. This also applies to Yahoo mail and the multiple Microsoft based versions of hotmail they keep coming out with.
All of these emails are cloud based services, before they were called cloud computing. The email is not stored on your computer, it is stored on servers that are owned or leased by your email provider.
Every once in awhile we hear about someone losing emails. They are just missing from their Gmail account. My friend Kevin Mullett was talking about this on Facebook the other day and reminded us to back up our Gmail. Since it had been awhile and several computers ago since I had done that, I thought it would be a good time to do it again.
You can save your Gmail, and any cloud based email on your computer with a free program like Thunderbird. Install Thunderbird on your computer and then follow these instructions. I had 15,000 emails going back about 5 years. Thunderbird would import them at the rate of 300 to 500 at a time. Now I update once a week.
Then last week I was reading about how Google is combining the storage limits of some of their various services and a few tips on how to manage those limits.
One more tip, Back up your stuff to an external hard drive. I bought one about 5 years ago for around 100 bucks that has enough storage to last me 10 to 20 years. Prices stay steady while the capacity increases. Get one for around 100 or less and back up your computers regularly.
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