With the ever-expanding glut of information and tasks involved in today’s complex world, organization is a must. I’m often presented with new tools to help in this effort, and I’ve tried more than a few. I’ve used Evernote some for planning, and I’ve also tried to plan with iCal, the Mac calendar program. Both have been problematic.

Recently I downloaded the highly recommended iPhone app called “Clear”. I even paid a bit of money for it. I like it, but I have found it to be a bit limited. One thing was that I couldn’t access the “to do” lists, which was its entire function, without access to the phone. Sometimes the phone is not by my side, so that was not so good. Also it was hard to get an overview and to plan jobs with this software. I needed something that would give me anytime access and allow me to look at the big picture. I think I have found that with Wunderlist.

Wunderlist is a fee application that includes web access (available through a web browser like Internet Explorer or Safari), a mobile app (for the various mobile devices) and a free-standing version for your desktop. All are synced so that your entries on one device will appear when you log in with another device. If your internet is down, no worries. You can continue to use the desktop version and your tasks will be synced when you get access again.

Some of the other organizational software I have tried required me to figure out how to make it work for me. Wunderlist is pretty simple to understand. There is a tutorial on the Wunderlist site, but you may not even need it.

When you first see the Wunderlist app you are presented with a pre-existing list with entries that tell you how to use the software. You can add tasks at the top of that list if you want. I left that list as it was so I can refer back to it while I’m getting used to the process. That one is called the “Inbox” and it is kind of the Master List.

Create new lists at the bottom of the right hand column by clicking “Add List”. You’ll immediately want to name the list by typing into the box that appears at the bottom of the right hand column. Once you’ve set up a new list, move to the top of the left-hand column to add a task to that list. You can set a time when the task is due by clicking the clock beside the “Add New Task” text. Alternatively you can set the time once the task is created by rolling over the task and then clicking on the clock that appears on the right side of the task bar. You’ll also see a little document icon when you roll over the task. If you click there you can add information regarding the task.

Tasks can be dragged and dropped within a list to prioritize them or dragged to another list altogether. To delete a task, click the big X at the far right of the task bar when you’ve rolled over it. To mark it as done, click the check box to the far left of the task bar.

At the bottom of the Wunderlist window you’ll see icons to show All Tasks, Starred Tasks, tasks you’ve marked Done, ones due today, tomorrow, next 7 days, etc. To the far right you’ll see a help icon for hotkeys (key commands for the common items), a way to change the look of the app to suit you, and a toggle for the sidebar. You can also move the sidebar to the left hand column if you prefer that.

At the top of the left column you’ll see a printer icon so you can print your tasks, an email icon, and a cloud icon that lets you share your task list with others who don’t have Wunderlist. If others you are working with do have Wunderlist you can collaborate on jobs by inviting them to share your list. If you scroll over your list name (right column in the default setting) you’ll see a 2-headed icon that is the sharing button. Click that and you can add the address(es) of those who have Wunderlist with whom you’d like to share the list.

Wunderlist has already been extremely helpful to me for organizing jobs, and I have only been using it for a short time. Try it out and see if it won’t help you, too!

I figure most of you ignored the first two of these postings or bounced off of them because it was just too danged complex. Maybe these tips will help with that. I recently posted to my personal Facebook page a link about how to opt out of sharing all the products and pages you “Like” on Facebook with all of your friends.

In response, one of my Facebook friends asked me how to get rid of all the other “likes” her friends have been adding into her news feed. Apparently she is continually barraged with photos of people she doesn’t even know and posts about them due to her friend’s “likes” being shared in her feed. That doesn’t happen to me, and I’m not sure exactly what I’ve done that prevents it. I fiddle with the settings pretty regularly, and I’ve done that for a long time now, so who knows which of the fiddles got me out of that particular irritant.

Anyway, I shared this link with her, and I thought it might be helpful to you too with this and other problems of TMI (too much information) on Facebook. I hope you find it helpful!

Remember SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act)? This was a proposed bill in the U.S. House of Representatives that was aimed at preventing online piracy, or the theft of intellectual property (music, writings, art, etc.). However, it was thought by many to be overly broad and that it would have had the effect of crippling the internet as we know it. It was eventually killed through massive protests and reactions of individuals and internet heavies. Pretty much everyone agrees that Online Piracy is a problem. The question is how to devise a solution that solves the problem without decimating freedom of speech and the creativity and openness that currently defines our online life. Work is ongoing in that regard.

SOPA and its Senate counterpart, PIPA, put the onus on private companies to keep track of what their users were doing and held them liable for any infractions. Facebook and many other internet companies spoke out against these bills for that reason.

More recently, Facebook, Microsoft, IBM, Intel, Oracle Corporation, Symantec, AT&T, and Verizon, among others, have come out in favor of CISPA (Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act), another bill that opponents say is too broad for its purpose. Again, most agree that ensuring the security of our networks against attacks is a worthy cause. (The bill originally also included language aimed at protecting copyrights and patents, but that was later dropped.)

Advocates of internet privacy and net neutrality, such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation and Avaaz.org, have criticized CISPA “because few safeguards are included as to how the data may be used; they claim that such new powers are likely to be used to find and punish file sharers rather than foreign spies or hackers.” (from Wikipedia)

According to Lifehacker, the main reason that Facebook and certain other companies are supporting CISPA is because it takes the pressure to regulate users off the private company. CISPA transfers that role and responsibility over to a government entity. This means that a company cannot be sued by a user for handing their information over to government authorities.

Co-sponsors of the bill have changed the wording in an attempt to appease CISPA opponents, but many still find problems. According to Wikipedia:

• Sharan Bradford Franklin, of the Constitution Project states, “Although we appreciate the Intelligence Committee’s efforts to improve the bill and willingness to engage in a dialogue with privacy advocates, the changes in its most current draft do not come close to addressing the civil liberties threats posed by the bill, and some of the proposals would actually make CISPA worse. Therefore, Congress should not pass CISPA.”

• Rainey Reitman, of the Electronic Frontier Foundation states, “To date, the authors of the bill have been unresponsive to these criticisms, offering amendments that are largely cosmetic. Dismissing the grave concerns about how this bill could undermine the core privacy rights of everyday Internet users, Rep. Mike Rogers(R-MI) characterized the growing protests against CISPA as “turbulence” and vowed to push for a floor vote without radical changes.”

• Kendall Burman of the Center for Democracy and Technology states, “The authors of CISPA have made some positive changes recently. Unfortunately, none of the changes gets to the heart of the privacy concerns that Internet users and advocacy groups have expressed.”

It is important for us all to keep up on these proposed bills and to express our views to our representatives. We have enjoyed many advantages due to the technological advances of our age. That can all be changes o quickly, and many have interests that do not exactly mesh with yours and mine. We do need enforceable laws against Internet piracy and cybercrimes. Throwing away our rights in the attempts to achieve that is not the way, however. We have to insist on great care in writing these laws so that our rights and the internet as we know it is preserved.

To contact your representatives on this or any other subject, go to:
www.firstgov.com/
For your U.S. Representative, go to this page and put your zip code in the box at the top right:
http://www.house.gov/representatives/
For your U.S. Senators, go to this page and search by state:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Once you get to the representative’s page, use the contact form to tell them what you think.

You can also find other elected officials and other valuable information on the FirstGov.com site. Remember it and use it often to express your opinion. They don’t hear from many of us, so your voice counts!

Death has been too prominent a feature in my life this year. I have lost a couple of good friends, my sister had a major health scare (fortunately that one got successfully resolved!) and now my neighbor of long-standing has died. When faced with the stark realities of this world we can:

1. Get real depressed! Life really is short, and we all end the same way.
2. Get focused! Stop squandering our time and energies on useless stuff. Figure out what is the point of your life and keep your eye on that. When you are at the end of your days, what will you be glad about and what will you regret?

I have to admit that I do get a little depressed about the impermanence of my world. Who doesn’t? Whether we are currently happy with our lot or not, it is what we know. Mostly, though, I try to be really aware of choice #2. I know that, when my time is done, I will most appreciate the relationships I’ve enjoyed and what I have been able to contribute in my career.

I need your help with that last part. I have committed to writing these postings again on a regular basis, but I don’t want to do that if I can’t offer something of value there. Reading, researching, and writing are all fun for me, but I know sometimes what I think I’m putting out is not really what is being absorbed or what you need.

I hope that you will either comment on this post about subjects you’d like to hear more about or that you will send me a private comment with that information. That way I won’t be bugging you with stuff you can’t use and neither of us will waste our precious time. Possible subject matters:
• Web design and development
• WordPress
• Social Media (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest, blogging, etc.)
• Web marketing
• Search Engine Optimization
• E-Commerce
• Online privacy
• Life and death
• Your choice here

Spring/Easter is a celebration of fresh growth and renewal. May it have a special meaning for you this year!

I know you missed my post terribly last week. My excuse is that my family came for the weekend, and I was busy preparing, entertaining and recuperating. It was a fun time, and it was worth it all, so your need for information got relegated to second place. The weekend bonus for me was that I received instruction about how to be a fairy from a 5 year old. That was the icing on the cake!

Ok, here is some magic for you.

I only got a tiny bit of feedback on my last post about making Facebook better, and that came orally rather than as a comment on the site. I was told that the person followed my instructions to the letter only to find that even more remote (and not too desirable) Facebook friends showed up in the place of all those she had designated as “Acquaintances”. Not good!

I promised you better ways to refine your Facebook feed, and it comes by way of a little piece of software I’ve mentioned to you in the past: Social Fixer (http://socialfixer.com/) It can be installed for the following browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Safari, Opera. It is not available for Internet Explorer, so if you are using that you may want to change to one of the others for accessing Facebook.

From the Social Fixer home page, click on the browser you want to use and then click “Install” when given the option to do that. When you first log in to Facebook using that browser you’ll see a setup wizard to help you with the confusing assortment they offer. A recent article at LifeHacker (http://lifehacker.com) suggests that you start out by disabling everything and save. Then you can go through them one at a time to choose what works for you. To do that using the Wizard, click on the “Minimalist Settings” instead of the “Recommended Settings”. Then click “Next”.

The next step of the Wizard discusses the icons that allow you to control the posts in your feed. Your choices are “Mark as Read” (hides the post, but it will show up again if new comments are made to it), “Mute” (hides post and also hides any new comments), “Mark Unread” (if you accidentally marked a post as “read” or “muted” by accident, this will undo that) “Add App” (more later on this—maybe) “Google It! (searches Google regarding the post), and “Show Debug Information” about the post. You are given the option to check the box to show these post action icons. Mine do show. You are also given the option to Display the “Control Panel” at the top of your feed. That makes real-time control of your posts easier, so I have chosen to show that. If you want both of those choices, check the box beside them. Then click “Next”.

The next step is one many of you will like. Facebook’s default view is to show you what they deem “Top Stories”. You may not agree with what they want to show you, but they have eliminated the option to just see whatever has been posted most recently. Here you can recover that option, and Social Fixer will override Facebook’s default for you whenever it kicks in again. If you want to see the most recent stories first, leave that box checked in the Wizard. You can also choose to hide the little triangle that Facebook uses to point out their “Top Stories” if you want. Then click “Next”.

If you are a gamer you may want to have those games put into their own Tabs. I don’t have this option checked, as I am not a gamer. Make your choice and click “Next”.

The next Wizard Option allows you to fix up your Chat to your preferences. Make it like you want and click “Next”.

If you don’t like the way the photos are shown in Facebook these days (Light Box, which overlays the page with a large copy of the photo along with comments along the side of it) you can disable it in this pane. I don’t mind that, so mine is unchecked. Make yourself happy and then click “Next”.

I don’t do themes, and these may not even work anyhow (according to Lifehacker). Maybe you like them. If so, give it a try on this pane and click “Next”.

You can disable many of the boxes in the right panel once Social Fixer gets going by clicking the “X” in the top right corner. You can also collapse the box by clicking the title. This just makes it smaller without removing it. You can expand it again at any time.

You may want to check the “Show Friend Tracker” box. This lets you know when someone unfriends you. It can be useful in letting you know what you’ve said that is so offensive that people are jumping ship on you. Sometimes Facebook unfriends people accidentally, and sometimes you are reported as being unfriended by someone when you actually are still friends. If you see that you’ve been unfriended, click on that person’s page to see if they have cancelled their account. If they do have an account, look at the Friend button on the top right of their Profile (or the below the large photo on their Timeline). If that is checked, you are still friends, If it gives you the option to add as friend, you’re out. Contact them to see if they did it intentionally if you care enough.

The next pane allows you to “Show image previews on hover” when you roll over a thumbnail. Kinda handy.

Next is a way to restore the old behavior of the “Comment” button. I really don’t remember what the old comment behavior was. However, when I look at my Social Fixer settings (more on how to do that later) I see that I have “Fix the missing cursor problem in comment boxes” checked. I assume that is what they are talking about in this pane of the Wizard.

The next box allows you to “Like” Social Fixer on Facebook and click Done.

On the “Timeline” option you can change how you view the Timeline’s of others, but not how they see yours. If you don’t like looking at the Timeline, though, change your view of it there.

The most important option of all may be the “Filtering” option. Here you can hide all my pitiful dog stories if you want or any other of your friend’s irritating posts. If you want to hide all stories about dogs, for instance, click in the “Other” column and add the word “/dog” (without the quotation marks). Leave the forward slash before the term you want to filter. Then check “Hide” in the Action column. DONE!

If you just want to hide MY dog stories but not all stories about dogs, select my name (and MD, BFA, SJO, AH, MH, and anyone else who’s dog stories make you cry on a daily basis). To make multiple selections use the Command key (Mac) or Ctrl key (PC). Leave the Type column blank so that all kinds of posts will be included, and also skip the Application column. Put “/dog|dogs” into the Other column. The vertical bar ( | ) between the terms can be taken to mean “or”. You can add several terms with that bar between (e.g. /Judge Roy Moore|Roy Moore|Moore would cover all such mentions of the name). Then click “Hide” in the Action column. For more on filtering, check this link:
Social Fixer Feed Filter
To create another kind of filter you will need to click “Add New Filter at the Top” or “Add New Filter at the Bottom” and make your new choices there. You can delete filters or disable them without removing them in the last column on the right.

I just created a filter that hid the “Birthday Calendar”. I don’t participate in any of the apps where you have to allow third party access to my Facebook account, including the Birthday calendar. To create this filter I left everything in all columns blank except for the “Birthday Calendar” in the Application column and the “Hide” in the Action column. When I save and refresh the page I should see no more of those requests.

Any time you want to change your Social Fixer settings, just click that wrench, go to Social Fixer Options, and make and save your changes. You can disable Social fixer by clicking on the wrench and clicking “Disable Social Fixer”. For more on Social Fixer check out their FAQ page.

Ok, folks, that should be enough to entertain you for a few days. Let me know if any of this is unclear and I’ll try to clarify. Also let me know if I got it wrong—it is possible if not probable. ☺

NOTE: I ran this by my spouse who is a Facebook innocent, and he pointed out areas for improved explanations. I hope you will do the same in your comments to this post. (click the comments link at the bottom)

Many people (myself included) are kind of frustrated with Facebook these days. Mostly the complaints I have and that I hear are that you don’t see many of your friends on there anymore. One of the reasons I don’t see my friends is that I subscribe¹ to a bunch of professional folks and to Facebook pages that are related to my job. Facebook wants to put the posts of those I subscribe to up front in my feed, apparently, so they tend to overwhelm my friend’s contributions. That may not be your problem if you don’t subscribe to a lot of people/pages.

Those of you who’ve been around for a while remember earlier issues with Facebook controlling what appeared in your feed and the complaints that followed. The first time I remember having such issues I was educated by my niece (thank you, Kelly!) to use the pull down menu at the top of the feed to choose “View All” or some such so that I could see all the posts rather than just the ones Facebook thought I needed to see. That option was dropped with the revamp in September 2011, but the resulting outcry led Facebook to re-introduce some control over the feed. Now you have the choice of seeing “Top Stories” or “Most Recent” at the top. Neither option means that you will see everything your friends are posting.

You can better determine what you see in your news feed by making friends lists. That’s kind of a pain if you have a bunch of friends, but it is doable and then you can add new friends to a list as they come to you. (NOTE for newbies: the news feed is the middle column on the Facebook home page when you are logged in—and http://www.facebook.com is at the top in the web address window.

To further confuse things, some of you will find that Facebook has already put your friends into lists for you using “Smart Lists”. My spouse seldom logs on to Facebook and has few friends. (Not a statement of his social skills, merely a statement about his use for Facebook.) What friends he has are already placed into lists. Facebook defines this process as “Smart Lists” and they further tell you the following:

To make a friend’s list, go to your profile or Timeline and find your Friends link. If you are still using the profile the Friends link will be in your left hand column. If you are on the Timeline the Friends will be at the top of your right hand column. On the Timeline, click “See All” in your Friends box. (If you haven’t yet changed to the Timeline you automatically see all when you click the Friends link.) Hover over the name of one of your friends (or the picture if you’re not yet on Timeline) and a box will pop up with their photo and how many mutual friends you have. At the bottom of that box will be a “Friends” button. Roll over that and you get various options, including your groups where you can add the friend. You can add new groups if the default ones don’t fit your needs. You can add a friend to more than one group, if you want. If you have a lot of groups, you can choose “Show All Lists” to get to the one you want to use.

An alternate way to get to the box where you can add friends to lists is to roll over their name when you see their post in your news feed. The resulting box looks like this:

I did notice that my new friends are not automatically added to my lists, or at least my newest one wasn’t. That may be because her profile doesn’t have much information on it so Facebook doesn’t know where to put her. When I look at her “box” (like above) certain groups have a lightning bold beside it signifying Smart List suggestions for you.

When you have your lists completed you can click on the “Friends” (on the left-hand side), choose your group, and you’ll see only posts by people in that group. If you don’t see your Friends link in the left column click “More” toward the bottom of that column and you should see it then. When you are in one of your “Friends” lists, Facebook helpfully suggests others you may want to add to that list. (Suggestions will be in the right-hand column.)

While you are viewing your news feed (again, the middle column of your Facebook home page, the address at the top should be http://www.facebook.com) you can hover to the upper right of the person’s post where you’ll see a downward-facing arrowhead. Click there and you’ll get a chance to hide the story or report the story as spam. You can also choose the type of stories you want to see from that person there, unsubscribe from status updates, or unsubscribe from them altogether. You’ll find these same options if you go to your friends profile or Timeline and click “Friends”. (The Friends link is toward the top right on both the profile and the Timeline).

Another option with Friends lists is that you can control which of your groups sees which of your posts. That means you can publish only certain of your posts to your work friends while being a bit more relaxed with your close friends or family. Don’t relax too much, though, as nothing on the internet is really private!

If you don’t like social sharing (the automatic sharing of what you are reading, music you are listening to, etc. that some sites do for or TO you) you can click that downward arrowhead on a social share post and “Hide all from Pinterest”, “Hide all from Washington Post”, “Hide all from Spotify”, etc. If you accidentally hide something you didn’t mean to, click the Undo link. You can also hide games in the same way as you hide a social sharing site (e.g. Farmville, Mafia Wars, etc.)

To review the people, games, etc. that you’ve hidden hover over the News Feed label at the top of the left hand column in your feed page. You’ll see a pencil icon appear to the side. Click the pencil and “Edit Settings” will drop down. There you can retrieve people or games or whatever that you have previously hidden.

SO, all of you who are tired of my dog and cat posts or my links about privacy, Pinterest, Google, or whatever now have the tools to make Facebook less painful to visit! Next time I’ll post more about fine-tuning your Facebook contents. If you can wait until then you can before you block me, maybe you can still allow the good parts to get through and cut out all the stuff you don’t want to see.

Let’s put the fun back in this thing!

¹You now can subscribe to people who aren’t your friend if they have allowed subscriptions, and you’ll see the posts that they mark as public. I subscribe to quite a few people who post information related to my profession. You are automatically subscribed to people you friend. You are automatically subscribed to your Facebook friends’ posts.

One of the primary goals in my life is to be organized. Toward that end I do better than some and worse than others, but I do work at it and have for a long time. One of my favorite organizational tools is Evernote (http://www.evernote.com/). It is defined by Wikipedia as:

. . .a suite of software and services designed for notetaking and archiving.

(Also adapted from Wikipedia’s description) A “note” can be:

• a link to a web page
• a piece of formatted text
• a photograph
• a voice memo
• a handwritten note (see below for details)

Notes can also have file attachments. They can be sorted into folders, then tagged, annotated, edited, given comments, searched and exported as part of a notebook.

I have used Evernote for several years now to organize both my personal and professional life. Most of the time I post a note there rather than bookmarking a site in the browser, as I can more easily annotate and organize the information that way. I plan jobs in a notebook called Laurel Design jobs. For each job I can note colors used, post links to pertinent info on the web, paste snippets of code I need to use later, make notes about the client’s needs, and even create to do lists that I can check off as the task is completed. I also have a table in Evernote where I post my hours for billing purposes.

I have notebooks on Web Development, WordPress Theme Development, Facebook Fan Pages, Social Media, Search Engine Optimization, Writing / Blogging, Photo Editing, and many more. For my personal use I have notebooks for recipes, travel, financial info, decorating, gardening, and others.

One of the most interesting things about Evernote is that it can “read” handwritten notes and text in images to make them searchable. Scanned images or photographs containing handwriting or text should be saved as .jpg files before being imported into Evernote. “Ink” notes, available only for Windows, may also be used to create handwritten Evernote notes. Adobe Reader (.pdf) files can be pasted there, too, which is really handy. The contents of the .pdf files is also searchable.

Another wonderful thing about this software is that it is synced across your various devices. I can make a note in Evernote on the laptop and it shows up when I get to my desktop computer. Evernote apps are also available for smartphones, so you can revise those client notes when you are away from your office and find that paint color or the curtain dimensions when you are purchasing the products.

When searching for specific info on Evernote, make sure you have the folder for “All Notebooks” selected. Otherwise you have to know exactly which notebook you filed the info into, not something I will necessarily remember.

Hubspot posted an article about how Evernote can help marketers. Several of the ideas can be used by almost everyone: http://bit.ly/AncO8k

So, my advice to you is to get yourself Evernote and try it out! You may want to go through the tutorials on it at first: http://www.evernote.com/about/video/
Once you learn to use it, I think you will also be a big fan!

Fun and Potentially Useful

When I was first introduced to Pinterest (www.pinterest.com) I thought of it a ginormous time sink. The images were beautiful and interesting, but why would I want to invest time exploring them? I already have too much to read, look at, do something with, etc. I don’t need more!

More recently I’ve come to see more benefits in the site. In the U.S., Pinterest is mostly a woman-thing. It is a great place to collect recipes, plan a party or a wedding, organize ideas for your dream home, and post references for all those crafts that you hope to get to one day. According to the data visualization starup Visua.ly, in the U.K. the site users are predominantly well-to-do, professionally motivated young men between the ages of 25 and 34.

Jennifer Van Grove posted the Visua.ly graphic here:
http://venturebeat.com/2012/02/13/pinterest-uk-users/
She notes that the average pinner in the U.K. is more interested in venture capital and blogging resources than U.S. pinners. In the U.K., web analytics, SEO, marketing, and content management are also popular subjects. Further from her article: “Fifty-six percent of U.K. users are male and 29 percent fall into the highest income bracket, making $150,000 or more per year. Granted, we’re looking at a much smaller pool of people—approximately 200,000 U.K. users to 12 million U.S. users—but the Brits have put a unique spin on how they use the site and seem to have completely different “pinterests,” if you will, from their American counterparts.”

Many businesses are now using Pinterest to gain the attention of all those viewers. Those who market to U.S. women and are already graphic intensive can make the best use of the new social outlet. Ann Taylor, the women’s clothing store, is active on the site as is Real Simple magazine, ToysRUs and many other brands.

When you go to the Pinterest site you will be presented with the opportunity to “Request an Invite”. Current pinners can also send invitations to their friends. Approval of the requests and the invitations is pretty quick in my experience.

I enjoy spending a moment or two checking out the pinners I “follow” once or twice a day. At the top of the page will be their new stuff, so if you check in often it is easy to keep up. If you have more time you can click other possibilities at the top, like “Popular”, “Gifts”, or “Everything”. You can click on an image to enlarge it. If you click the enlargement it will take you to the source of that image. There you can get the full info: the recipe, the instructions, etc.

You can pin from websites by installing a “Pin It” extension to your browser. Copyright protection has become an issue on some sites, particularly those related to professional photography. Because of such issues, some sites now won’t allow you to pin items.

Mostly I just share pins that are already on Pinterest. Once you are logged in you can roll your cursor over the Pinterest image you’d like to share and some selectors will pop up, one being “Repin’. Then you choose the “board” you want to pin the image to. If you don’t have a suitable board, you can create one.

If you see pins you like and want to “follow” the pinner, click on their name under the pin. That will take you to that person’s “boards”. You don’t have to follow all of a person’s boards. If you only like some, just follow those. If you like all of their boards, follow all.

Can your business benefit from this new social media outlet? Maybe! Can you have fun with it? Sure!

My Pinterest address is: http://pinterest.com/vickietolbert/
Follow me there!

Many people are confused about Twitter and how it can be useful to them. Even if you don’t plant to participate, you may want to claim your business name there. Accounts are free, and claiming your name can protect you from someone else posing as you or your business on Twitter. Twitter posts (tweets) are short, 140 characters or less, and that includes your Twitter “handle”. Because of that you will want to keep your name as short as possible. You don’t have to tweet to get benefits from Twitter. Check out this page for more information about how it can be useful to you and your business: http://twitter.com/about

Many traditional news outlets now cite Twitter for breaking news, so it can be especially useful in extreme situations. My attention was first drawn to it when I learned that people’s lives were saved by tweets they got during the 2008 Mumbai attacks. Many people benefited from Twitter during our recent tornadoes.

Twitter discussions often congregate around “hashtags” (#). For instance, many of the tweets regarding the recent tornadoes included the hashtag #tornado, #weather and/or #Alabama. If you are interested in a particular subject you can search for the term and include the hashtag to find like-minded people. (e.g. #gardening) Once you find a few people who are interested in the same subject, watch for other related hashtags for find more people to follow.

To get stated on Twitter, follow the instructions on the about page. You can also “follow” my tweets: @vickietolbert
My most recent tweets are also in the sidebar of the news page on this site. Just look in the right column to see them.

You’re wondering about the @ symbol before my name? Twitter names are preceded by the @ symbol, so when you are addressing someone on Twitter, use the @ symbol before their Twitter name. Once you follow me or anyone else, you can “mine” their followers or the people they are following and follow them yourself. In that way you can build your own Twitter list. Try to build your list slowly so that the number you are following is in the same neighborhood as the number who are following you. If you are interested in a particular subject, though, follow those experts even if they don’t follow you back. You can use tools like http://manageflitter.com/ to see who is not following you back and decide whether they are worth following in spite of the reciprocity.

For more advanced information about how you can use Twitter to benefit your business you may want to review this article by Duct Tape Marketing.

Does that help you to understand Twitter and why you should be using it? I hope so. I welcome your comments and feedback, so let me hear from you!

There is no one harder to please than a designer trying to create something for her/himself. That is one of my excuses for being so long updating the Laurel Design site. Eventually a person has to stop aiming at perfection and get on with it, so here it is. The background photo was taken by Don Patterson when we hiked with Don Sparks in the Sipsey Wilderness area. What an amazing place that is! It is way past time to get back there. It has been harder without our guide (Don S.), but we’re going to do it one of these days.

Today is our Thanksgiving cooking day. So far we’ve completed the Barefoot Contessa’s spinach gratin.

I hope your holiday is extra special and that there is lots of love to go around.