A friend of mine recently visited his parents and they had “the talk” with him.
The Talk consisted of who the accountant was, what the lawyer’s contact info was, where copies of all the Important Documents were, and so on. Just In Case something were to happen.
The parents were thorough – every month they sent a CD backup to the safe deposit box with electronic copies of vital accounts, usernames, and passwords that would be needed In Case Of Emergency.
LEGACY LOCKER is a bit like that emergency backup CD, except that all that important information is stored online. Their marketing material says that “Legacy Locker is a safe, secure repository for your digital property that lets you grant access to online assets for friends and loved ones in the event of death or disability.”
Seth Simonds has compiled the NAPOLEON DYNAMITE GUIDE TO SOCIAL NETWORKING, because let’s face it — anyone who is a new user to Facebook, MySpace, bulletin board discussion groups, business networking events, speed dating, or any other forced social intermingling activity really needs a hand to break through the pre-established cliques and get away from being that awkward wallflower to become a true contributer to the situation.
And who knows, maybe you’ll meet someone and get a date out of it.
The first three rules are:
Give, like, creative and real compliments.
Don’t let other people take up all your time or space or eat all your steak.
Put your connections to work for others so they get sweet stuff, too.
Take a look at Seth’s article for the other two examples and how Napoleon Dynamite applies to the points he is making.
The whole piece should really be subtitled, “EVERYTHING I KNOW ABOUT HOW TO SUCCEED IN SOCIAL NETWORKING I LEARNED FROM NAPOLEAN DYNAMITE”.
Don’t know if Seth will take my suggestion though. Maybe if I offer to draw him a liger, he’ll consider it.
Do you have friends who text-message you a lot, each time with more and more obscure abbreviations and short codes that are beginning to annoy you because you don’t know what they mean?
I know, it would be easier for your friend to just call you or send you a normal email instead of trying to thumb their way through a cell-phone keypad to tell you where to meet them for dinner.
Luckily, you can pop over to TRANSL8IT, type in the message you received, and have the site convert the undecipherable message for you into ordinary English. Plus, if you have text-addicted friends and you want to look like you have a clue about how to text yourself, you can type in your plain-English message and have the site convert it into text-speak.
The New York Times, for all its supposed stuffiness, sometimes has some odd offerings on its website.
Today’s entry: THE WEIRD BODY QUIZ, a 10-question test to see how well you know odd bits of human biology trivia. Like, the best way for you to tell if your own breath stinks.
If you’ve seen the trailer for the movie He’s Just Not That Into You, then you know the scene where Drew Barrymore is rattling off all the places that she needs to check in order to contact her date: MySpace, Facebook, texting the cell phone, voicemails at work or at home.
While it’s a good thing that we’re so interconnected with all these social networks, sometimes it can be a little overwhelming.
And scary.
So along comes a website that really shouldn’t need to exist, but it does – THAT’S NOT COOL. What isn’t cool? Electronically stalking somebody.
You don’t necessarily want to be poked, superpoked, searched for, friended, have friends befriended, sent a virtual beer, thanked for the add, or otherwise forced to interact with all these online folks. And sometimes, all that can turn into harassment.
There are a few different ways people can buy music online, but they are all basically the same whether it by the iTunes Music Store, eMusic, Amazon, ro any other retailer.
PEOPLES MUSIC STORE is a bit different, as it is setup and run by YOU, the music fan. And unlike that alleged Ponzi scheme BURNLOUNGE from a few years ago, you don’t have to pay any money to participate.
All you have to do is select the music you want to sell, write a few reviews and articles, and post your links for people to buy from you. You’ll be able to promote your store by including code on your own website, or by using Widgets on places like MySpace or Facebook. The better you are at providing reviews and commentary, the more visible and profitable your storefront will become.
I’d call the whole thing “MyTunes”, but that name is already taken.
Diana Freeman is a blogger specializing in social media and other related topics. I really like her stuff; if you have a chance to do so, bookmark her site.
She recently returned from a Walt Disney World vacation and wrote an interesting piece entitled DISNEY: A MODEL OF SUCCESS FOR YOUR PRODUCT OR WEBSITE, where she analyzes all the things that Disney does well, and how you can apply those techniques to your own business or website.
Here are the high points of what she talks about, and my brief interpretation:
You know how you can just enter anyone’s name into Google, ZabaSearch, WhitePages.com, or other people-oriented search engine and be pretty much assured that you’ll be able to get their name, address, phone number, list of last known relatives, and birthdate without even trying very hard? All that information is available for free without too much effort for practically anyone who bothers to go looking for it.
PrivacyRights.org has compiled a PRIVACY RIGHTS DIRECTORY OF OPT-OUT DIRECTIONS for those of you who would like to removed yourself from appearing in those online directories. It won’t remove you from the original sources that these directories pull from, and the directories don’t make any promises that you won’t re-appear in the future – but at least most of these search sites offer some way to limit the amount of information that’s available about you online to the casual web surfer.
A friend of mine recently visited his parents and they had “the talk” with him.
