What Kind Of Geek Are You?
What do you think of when someone mentions geek?
A guy wearing bottle pop glasses, a bowtie and Urkel knickers?
A kid running million dollar web businesses in his bedroom at his parent’s house?
I think there are many more kinds of geeks — and not all of us are socially inept.
The definition of a geek that I subscribe to is:
“…Someone who is an enthusiast, often in things outside of the mainstream spectrum…”
So what does that make me?
- Writing geek
- Web design geek
- Web hosting geek
- Star Trek geek
- NCIS (TV show) geek
- JAG (again, TV show) geek
- CSI (Yes, TV again) geek
- Internet marketing geek
- …need I go on?
What about you? You can be a knitting geek, a drag racing geek, a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure geek.
My husband is a telephone technology geek(He works at the phone company). My brother is a automotive mechanics geek (He works at a dealership). And my sister is a Friends geek. (She hates Star Trek, but her fiance LOVES it and even has every episode and movie on DVD. Sweet justice, for all those years she mocked me. Hehe!)
So tell me: What kind of geek are YOU?
Shame On You, ScribeFire!
For those of you who use ScribeFire regularly, you’re probably already aware that you have to turn off the little “feature” that puts a “powered by Scribefire” note on your posts.
But did you know that a ScribeFire partner, Zemanta, is adding a hidden tracking image to your posts as well? I didn’t either.
At least, I didn’t until I started adding photos and thumbnails to my posts. I found the following code in my post, at the very bottom:
<div><img src=”http://img.zemanta.com/pixy.gif?x-id=794a29ac-1f34-8871-9701-18203bfe2cd1″ alt=”" /></div>
You can read about ScribeFire’s addition of Zemanta in their 3.2 update from February. Notice, the article doesn’t mention anything about adding a hidden tracking code. The article only tells us that they have partners with Zemanta:
What does this mean for you? You can now instantly add relevant pictures and links to articles to your blog posts with just a few clicks.
Aha!
But if you click on the changelog link for the 3.2 version, down at the very bottom, ScribeFire does tell us about the little web bug:
Important: Note that the new Zemanta integration includes by default an invisible image that is added to your posts to gather statistics for you. If you do not want to participate in this, you can disable it from the “Publishing” tab of the ScribeFire settings.
Still. Talk about hiding it.
For those of you who are just now starting to use ScribeFire, or are considering it (since it really is an awesome way to blog), here are some screenshots showing you where to disable the web bug:
If Your Password Is ILove(insert child's name), It Might As Well Be HackMe!
I have a confession to make.
Back in the day, (Ha!) I was part of a group of moms who spent most of our days playing with kids and playing on online message boards. Our favorite past time was fighting with the owner of another message board, who we had decided was evil incarnate. Of course, when you think the mom at the message board next door is evil, what better fun is there than lobbing insults at her?
Well, we apparently thought it would be loads of fun to guess the password to her friend’s ezBoard account and read all the junk she and her friends posted about themselves (and about us) in her secret forum. (I can’t believe I stuck around for this either! What was I thinking?!)
Guessing the password was a breeze. Of course, everyone knew the woman’s son’s name. Heck, I think she might have even had the whole password in her signature line, at some point! We even setup a separate ezBoard site to plan these shenanigans. And then we sent someone in to guess the password. Of course, all the discussion of this went on behind the scenes in a Yahoo chat room with about a dozen people.
Yes, I know. How HIGH SCHOOL.
Anyway, we gained access and proceeded to quietly watch the goings-on in the private forum for months. And laugh about what we read in our private forum.
You want to know what is really funny? The evil mom figured it out, broke into our secret forum and outed us. She may even have deleted some stuff. Definitely copied and pasted stuff. And then she had our ezBoard accounts locked and our private forum shut down. But then, we got her account locked. Oh, the drama!
So what’s my point in dredging up all this past craziness that I’d much rather forget?
According to the New York Times, the most popular password is 123456.
Seriously?!
Have we learned nothing? I can tell you, my experience taught me that no matter how much you think no one will ever crack your password, don’t bet on it. Even the stay at home mom next door with 6 kids who goes to church every time the doors are open may be trying to hack your password at midnight.
Choose a secure password!
This is the #1 lesson I learned in this whole experience. (Well, along with don’t hang out with people who think it’s OK to hack into stuff.) I’ve spent the past 7 years making sure my passwords are secure and trying to convince my clients to keep theirs secure. I also instituted very strict security and privacy policies for myself and others while running my hosting business. I learned my lesson.
So you know that group of mommies you can’t stand on twitter? The one that can’t stand you, either? Well, watch out! They may be a bunch of hacking freaks. Worried now? Protect your password with this free random password generator. Then just memorize it.
UPDATE: You know what’s really scary? According to this article, my name is the 22nd most popular password!
Please Make Your Website Phone Friendly!
Back when I was answering helpdesk tickets throughout the day, I invested in an iPhone. This made keeping up with my email, tickets and general Internet browsing MUCH easier.
What really bugs me though is when a website I want to keep up with doesn’t have an iPhone friendly theme. Why’s this a problem?
- The whole page shows up in the tiny screen and can’t be read
- I can magnify the site, but then it’s sometimes tough to get the block of text I want to read to fit in the screen (By tough, I mean I have to try it a couple of times. Yes, I know. I sound completely spoiled. Perhaps I am…)
- If I’m looking for something in particular, I have to scroll all over the page and zoom in/zoom out to find it. Zoom in…zoom out… zoom in… zoom out
- If I just want to know what the latest articles, posts or stories are, I have to figure out where you’re hiding this section.
I’m sure I’m not the only iPhone, Android or other smartphone user who has experienced this. And I know it’s worse for non-touchscreen users because I used to have an AT&T 8525. Yeah, that was awhile ago.
Anyway, here are my recommendations:
If you have WordPress, you’re in luck. There are two themes that you can download and use along with your existing theme. Both are free:
- WPtouch iPhone Theme — This is the theme that I use on this site because, well, I’m an iPhone Geek. Hehe.
- WordPress Mobile Pack — I haven’t tried this on a site of my own. But I checked out an awesome web geek’s site and liked how the mobile pack looks on my iPhone.
There are more themes, but I’m going to save them for another post. Just hit the little orange button below and your feed reader will let you know when I’ve published that post.
That Verses Who — Let The Debate Begin
Yes, the name of this blog is Geeks THAT Write.
I can already hear some of you old grammarians, clutching your master’s degrees in English, gnashing your teach over that.
So, I’m heading you off at the pass.
First, for all the journalism types out there, the AP Stylebook does say that who should be used for people and named animals, while that should be used for inanimate objects and unnamed animals. It’s also considered conventional wisdom to use who for people, according to a Rutgers University English Professor.
For example:
- Jason is the man who drives the Corvette.
- The dog that chased the Corvette ran home.
However, I’m not writing a newspaper article and I’m not writing a dissertation. So I checked with a few other sources.
I pulled out my new copy of Strunk & White to see what “The Elements of Style” are related to this matter. Surprisingly, the book does not cover this question directly. According to S&W who is used to introduce non-restrictive clauses, which are set apart with commas. On the other hand, that is used introduce restrictive clauses. These are not set apart by commas. This didn’t help much with my topic at hand.
So I turned to the Merriam Webster Online Dictionary’s usage notes, which are quite clear:
In current usage that refers to persons or things…who chiefly to persons and sometimes to animals. The notion that that should not be used to refer to persons is without foundation; such use is entirely standard.
Dictionary.com and the American Heritage Dictionary have this to say in it’s usage notes on who:
Some grammarians have argued that only who and not that should be used to introduce a restrictive relative clause that identifies a person. This restriction has no basis either in logic or in the usage of the best writers; it is entirely acceptable to write either the woman that wanted to talk to you or the woman who wanted to talk to you.
Personally, I prefer to introduce a restrictive clause that identifies a one person with who. It just sounds more acceptable to me. However, I think it’s perfectly acceptable to write that when identifying a group of people or an organization.
So, here are examples of how I’ll write on this blog:
- Any student who wants to can learn to write well.
- The dog that ran across the street went home.
- It was my dog, Pepper, who ran across the street.
- Geeks that write are cool.
Step Off The Negative Option Bandwagon
You know when you sign up for a free trial and somewhere during the order process (or not!), you’re told that by accepting the freebie, you’re agreeing to a monthly fee for whatever backend service the company is selling?
That’s a negative option. Your signing up for something else is considered acceptance of the additional charges and you have to take action to prevent those charges.
(Personally, when I see a negative option, I cancel the transaction immediately!)
Here’s what this has to do with you. As a copywriter, web designer, marketer or programmer, you may be working for someone who employees these tactics. Or perhaps you’re considering putting together a membership site and using this technique for gaining members.
Don’t.
People buy your products or services because they trust you. They believe that they’re buying what you’re offering them. Signing them up for additional fees via hidden terms of service or crafty marketing language is unethical and dishonest. It will kill your business.
Not to mention, the FTC, Mastercard and Visa are taking a hard line with those who use these methods.
You can news from the FTC and Visa here:
FTC SEttlements Bar Deceptive Online Marketing — The FTC contends that over an 18-month period Commerce Planet did not clearly and conspicuously disclose that, by registering for the “free offer,” consumers also were agreeing to be enrolled in the “Online Supplier” program and would be charged a “membership fee” of up to $59.95 per month unless they canceled within a few days of ordering.
Visa, FTC and BBB Partner To Educate Consumers About Online Scams — According to a Visa survey, 29 percent of American consumers have fallen victim to deceptive marketing when unscrupulous e-commerce merchants require them to cancel or opt-out of a recurring charge for future products or services.
Blogger’s opinions here:
FTC Says No To Negative Option Fraud — Consumers should either have the option of joining the program after a genuine no-obligation free trial. Or they should be warned before giving out their credit card number that not saying “no” will result in a monthly bill.
Visa Terminates Merchants Over “Negative Option” Trick — Since early summer 2009, Visa has been monitoring complaints about merchants doing this, and in December announced that about 100 merchants had their payment processing terminated because of chronic complaints.
You Know You're A Geek Writer When…
Here’s my list:
- You catch yourself correcting your significant other’s grammar errors, in spite the Evil Eye
- You’re chilling with your friends, but you can’t stop thinking about that blog post you’re wanting to write
- You’ve had to draw in some of the letters on your keyboard with a paint pen
- You can type an article, carry on a conversation with your significant other and read an IM at the same time
- You wake up at 4 a.m. to work on a writing project
- You stay up until 4 a.m. doing the same thing
- You can write a dissertation on why your wife shouldn’t spend so much money, but you can’t just tell her
- You find yourself correcting errors in the books you read
- You keep your iPhone with you at all times, just in case inspiration hits and you need to take notes
- You outline your articles in Google Docs
Feel free to add to the list…
In Case You Noticed Downtime Today
I finally had it with my previous host.
Now, before I start sounding like the typical disgruntled hosting customer who switches companies at the drop of a hat, I’d like to say I used the same dedicated server vendors for more than 7 years when I was running a hosting business.
I know what tends to go wrong and what needs to be done to resolve the issue. I know when tech support has a clue and when they’re just trying to shut me up.
I think my previous host’s technician didn’t have a clue. Now, I have to hand it to them that they were very nice and polite, even when I canceled. If I had not had any issues, then I would have been very happy with them.
However, we’ve had three separate problems with them.
1. AWstats didn’t work when I first moved my site over. Now, this is NOT a dealbreaker. Apparently, their server framework is setup differently than mine was and so they just needed to make some changes. Problem solved, no big deal.
2. But then I decided I wanted to add a second site to my hosting account. I logged into cPanel, setup an Addon Domain and then headed to Enom to change my nameservers to the hosting company’s. The next day, my domain name still wasn’t pointing to the server. I changed their sparse FAQ and found no resolution, so submitted a ticket. Come to find out, you have to request permission to use their nameservers for a domain name. And not only that, but if you want an Addon Domain, you have to pay $5 per month extra. And you can’t even add it yourself. You have to fill out a form on their support site and they’ll setup the domain for you.
Not happy with that, but I did it.
3. And finally, my email arrived inconsistently. My email is setup so that it flows through the server to my Gmail account. I had no issues with this while running my own hosting company. When I moved through, my domain-based email stopped arriving. This is not a deal breaker. What got me though is when the technician told me that I needed to have a POP email account setup with the email forwarder. I know from many years experience that this will cause some mail to forward and some to sit on the server. When I told the technician about this, he told me that he’d been told a POP account was needed for a forwarder and that he knew of several sites setup this way.
But, since I knew their server was setup differently, I thought perhaps this was true in their case. So I let the technician setup the POP account. Guess what? I checked the server a few days later and, sure enough, some of my email was sitting in the POP account. It had not been forwarded to my Gmail account.
So, being told to setup my email incorrectly, instead of having a technician fix the initial problem, and having to pay extra for an Addon Domain is what made me decide to move elsewhere.
Naturally, the move did not go 100 percent smoothly. LOL!
After I ordered the new hosting account, had tech move my site over and I changed the nameservers, I canceled the old hosting account. That’s when we discovered a problem with the routing of this domain name. I reported to my new hosting company, their datacenter technicians spent a better part of the day working on it and now my site is up and running properly. Woohoo!