Day Twelve: Internet Explorer - Outcast

"Attitude is a little thing that makes a big difference."

Winston Churchill

Before leaping into this project, we attended an industry seminar on blogging. The presenters one and all basically advised: "To understand blogging, you must blog."

So we did.

At this same event, some bright spark asked about browsers; apparently the majority of peeps these days use Mozilla's Firefox (yes, even on PCs)...not good ol' Internet Explorer. One presenter put us all on the spot and asked disdainfully..."Is anyone still using Internet Explorer?"
One brave lass put up her hand. The audience chortled under their collective breath. (We sat on our hands, rather than walk into the trap.)

Days later, we switched to Firefox; obviously the cool people use that. Weeks later, have to admit, still not enamoured of Firefox, but continue to use because the "cool" people use it. (We promised our kids not to use that "C" word under any circumstance...apparently we're too old to peddle that term, along with "dude" and other such favorites.)

We digress.

Having learned another browser, it was disconcerting to find out that the coolest of cool browsers these days is TweetDeck. Heaven forbid. It's heavy going keeping abreast of all this newfangled technology, but TweetDeck is mesmerising...

We've fallen for it hook, line and sinker.

TweetDeck looks like the control panel in a jumbo jet. It's a giant four-columned dashboard which manages all your social media. Twitter itself is a little Disney-esque for our liking and you have to move between screens to read incoming news alerts and then post a message, for example. TweetDeck is clever because you can see everything at a glance, deleting, cutting and pasting, clicking through, tracking people or companies. The program links you to apps like Flickr, FourSquare as well as the obvious -- Twitter. It's like Winston Churchill's war room.

Best feature we've found so far is the facility to autoshrink tweets and translate them into one of any of the world's most popular languages. (I started with Afrikaans, and stopped myself at Cantonese...could spend all day doing this.) More to the point there is an option to schedule posts to multiple social media. Haven't quite figured out how to do this yet, but before the day is over we plan to do so.


Dare you to translate this sentence into Galician and tweet to us from TweetDeck! I'll c u when u get there:





Coolio...(sorry kids).

Posted by: Claire

Day Eleven: Counting Your Chickens

Well, now that you have your blog up and running, it's essential to ensure that you are attracting and expanding your target audience. Fortunately, there are some very handy tools to help you monitor your progress.

Bravenet and Google Analytics are just two of the possible counters, for lack of a better term, which enable dopes, doyennes, and everyone in between to track their traffic. Happily, both services are free of charge.

You need to know who is visiting, how they found you and what they were looking for. Both Google Analytics and Bravenet provide you an incredibly sophisticated perspective on website usage and, if you map trends, help you to orient the site to attract the right people.

Here's a brief, simplified, and by no means complete summary of the data you can access:

• Visits--not particularly useful; 100 visits could be 100 people visiting once or 1 person viewing site 100 times.

• Unique Visitors--this is the metric that matters--a visitor that has not visited your website today.

• Page Views--total number of time page reloads–-could be that one person--your mom, your secretary, or your stalker. Also could be an ever increasing fan base.

• Page Views Per Visit.

• Bounce Rate--how many people make it to your home page and then go away immediately. Experts say if you are getting 35% then you’re doing really well; 50% is average. Like your golf score and your weight, lower is generally better. Although, if they depart quickly it may mean that the visitor found what he needed on the home page, such as address or opening hours.

• Exit Page.

• Traffic Sources--where your visitors are coming from--is it other sites, search engines, etc.


Future topic: what to do with these numbers once you crunch them. Meanwhile, have a lovely holiday weekend; we intend to take a break from blogging and hit the beach.
Cheers!

Posted by: Keri

Day Ten: Read on if You Value Your Privacy...

"Facebook Privacy Tips? What a bizarre title. If you truly want privacy DON'T use Facebook. Simple. really."

So tweeted one reader in response to Mashable.com's informative article, 5 Essential Facebook Privacy Tips.

We get what they mean having just read this article, and explored behind the scenes on our own Facebook (FB) accounts. Please read the above linked article and take steps to protect yourselves - and your kids - from prying eyes. It'll take you about 10 minutes all told and involves about 40 separate processes. Annoyingly, FB's default setting for everything is "everyone"... and there is no global change setting to restrict info to your "friends" only. So this is an uphill task, but persevere.

Take one example of why it's worth doing this; unless you're smarter than we are, and have already obscured your birthdate, then everyone with Internet access has access to this piece of info. By everyone we mean everyone...not just the universe of Facebook users. It's out there for all and sundry to see.

It's not that we're precious about our age but just think for a moment how frequently you use this information as the first line of security in many of your relationships with third-parties - with your online bank say, an online retailer, with your utility provider perhaps. It's one of those pieces of information, much like your email address or your zipcode, by which we identify ourselves to others.

OMG, this is beginning to sound like a bad radio ad for a credit checking agency.

We thought it was time to jump into this subject as it appears to be a political hot potato at the moment. Not only has Google been under attack for vacuuming up unprotected wifi data - this may well be an innocent mistake - but this news has been followed by fresh revelations about FB.

Apparently FB's 'partners', all commercial software companies (such as Microsoft, Google to name a few), can currently access your FB account unless you specifically close the back door to your account information. To fix this:

• Click Account



• Click Privacy Settings



• Click Applications and Websites



• Click Instant Personalization Pilot Programs
  

The nub of this whole privacy issue is why did FB, Google and others leave us all so exposed?

So think twice before you activate that "Location" setting on your twitter account. Why share this information? Lindsay Lohan doesn't have a choice; we do.

As of 25th May, FB issued a statement saying it was actively reviewing its privacy policy and soliciting our opinions. To learn more, sign up to their FB page.

POSTCRIPT: FB listened, changes have now been made to the privacy settings...see attached link for information

POST POSTCRIPT: FB under investigation by the House for the abuse of data.

Posted by: Claire

Day Nine: The Pesto Problem

We didn't give a tremendous amount of thought to the name of our blog. We wanted something that would describe our journey, and that would be a bit clever and witty. We have since learned that we did not choose all that wisely. Our name is long, contains an unfamiliar word that is hard to spell, and has embedded within it the word "pesto". As a result, a search of 'fromdopestodoyennes' can send you to cooking sites with recipes containing basil, garlic and parmesan cheese.

Well, it could be worse. We could have emphasized the speed with which we intend to learn all of this and called ourselves techsexpress.com or even worse, focused on forwarded twitter posts with whoretweets.com, right?



So in the world of blogs, Shakespeare may have been wrong. A rose by any other name may not smell as sweet.



A blog's name must:

1. Be easy to remember and spell.
2. Be catchy.
3. Be relatively short, ideally no more than 4 syllables.
4. Contain no offensive or unrelated words in the name.

And fromdopestodoyennes does not fit any of those criteria, alas.

Loved these articles on naming your blog. Thank you, wordful.com. If only we'd known who was on first last week....

A PS to the copyright post: The Laurel and Hardy video clip we put up was blacked out with a message that said: 'removed for improper usage'. The clip is no longer available on YouTube, so our best guess is that it violated some copyright protection and was flagged. We were kind of excited--it meant that either someone or something not related to us by blood or on our payroll had visited our blog. We chose another L&H video from YouTube. Will keep an eye out to see if it, too, is revoked.

A PS to our repeated attempts to post audio: IODA Promonet did not respond to our application, so we gather they were not interested in our custom. We also learned that the html code that enables us to post requires a visual component, so audio posting, unless you are a true webmaster, is not doable.

Posted by: Keri

Day Eight: S.ave O.ur S.ouls

We know it's happening; things are a-changing round here.

Friday's tweet shared our excitement about a clever software program, Tweetdeck, which enables you to manage all your social networking posts from a single dashboard.

Did we really just write that?

Not only can we parlay the jargon...we have taken to fantasizing about acquiring an iPhone, or the even sexier iPad. Think how much more glamorous / sexy / cool (strike as appropriate), we'd be if we had one or both of those..?

Howzat? What about that Coach bag we've been saving up for?

Boy, how we've changed.




We even threw a garden party, inviting respective husbands, friends and neighbors and found people comparing notes on their social networking experiences. (The majority of punters were pretty sceptical by the way, especially on its relevance to business or for providing professional services.)

A lone voice in the wilderness was a social networking guru working mainly for consumer brands as part of a collective of creatives, fondly described as a "collaboratory". Her comments are worth considering.

Just remember to think of Social Media as the Wild West. Other than the basics (how to twitter, how to use tweetdeck, Google Analytics etc, there really aren't any set rules, which makes it sometimes very frustrating. Just stay fluid and enjoy the ride. She also added: Working with Social Media is also a bit like working with Spaghetti. You throw it at the wall and see what sticks...

Spaghetti and the Wild West in the same breath. We can feel a very poor segue creeping up on us...

Do you know the origin of the term "Spaghetti Western"..? These low budget movies, starring American actors, were so called because in order to save on costs they were mostly filmed in the mountains of Italy or Spain - hence the association with spaghetti.

Another interesting, and vaguely related factoid, Ugly Americans - that devastatingly satirical cartoon on Comedy Central - will return to our screens in the Fall; see the cartoon above for a taste (pun intended).

See, we told you you'd learn lots reading this blog.

Posted by: Claire

Day Seven: I Think I Can, I Think I Can

While we were not overly concerned that "from dopes to doyennes" would be grabbed by a competing blogger, securing a domain name is another step up the technology mountain.

We started the climb with Network Solutions....

Click on the "domain names" tab and enter your name for a search. You will be asked what "extension" you want--this refers to .com, .net, .org, etc. We chose .com and were delighted to learn that our name was indeed available. We jumped around the site a bit looking at various packages and tools and soon realized that we needed a live person (or a little blue engine) to help us. We were fortunate to find a phone number connecting us to a nice chap named Jimmy who helped keep us on the tracks.

We sought:

1. Our name.
2. Privacy protection--which would prevent telemarketers and e-advertisers from getting access to us. (We're not entirely sure this was necessary, but weren't keen to find out the hard way.)
3. Web forwarding--which enables us to be found as "fromdopestodoyennes.com", abbreviating the awkward and lengthy blogspot address.

The good news is that Jimmy helped us achieve all three of those goals. The less good news is that these services cost three times what we initially expected. The front page of NetSol featured a 'web package' for around $15/annually which we found encouraging. But when we described what we wanted and Jimmy crunched the numbers, our bill was $55 for the year.



But, in for a penny, in for a pound, so we forged ahead. Jimmy entered the domain name per our phone instructions and advised us that it would take two hours for the web forwarding service to activate. Without web forwarding, prospective readers would have to type in the exact url to find us. Web forwarding enables them to type the blog's name "fromdopestodoyennes.com" and land on our front page, which is much handier. We waited patiently through the afternoon, periodically checking the web forwarding. Six hours later, no joy. Finally, we thought to check our NetSol account, and discovered that dear Jimmy had logged us in as "topes", not "dopes". There's clearly a joke, or at least a wry ironic comment to be wrung out of that situation....

So, another call to NetSol, some reconfiguring on their part, a credit card payment and refund later, and we are web forwarded.

We continue to attempt to post audio clips, today trying yet another music source: IODA Promonet. We had to fill out an application on their site; approval is pending and if we are given their blessing, perhaps we will have better luck sourcing sound. Stay tuned.

We've also discovered another good resource for all things social media: Mashable.com. It contains the latest news on social networking, as well as helpful tutorials, product descriptions, and much, much more....Check it out!

Posted by: Keri

Day Six: Policing Copyright on the Internet

Is copyright an issue?


In researching this blog, we’ve spent way too much time on YouTube; people are just so darned imaginative.

Browsing for a usable video-clip of Sly Stallone starring in the horrible adaptation of Judge Dredd, we came across imaginary fight scenes pitching Robocop against the Terminator or Terminator vs Neo.

This creative sampling of videos - which may also involve changing a sound track or splicing different clips of films together - is apparently known as “mashing.”

Type in “fave movie lines,” for example, and you stumble across a compilation of some of the best one-liners from recent movies – all shambolically woven together. One such home movie carries the heartfelt plea: “Please don’t sue me, I’m not making a dime from this!”

Both Facebook and YouTube raise many issues related to intellectual property. And since learning how to download the goodies available on YouTube, we thought best to consult a neighborhood legal eagle about Internet copyright. (At this point we’d like to throw out our own legal disclaimer about what’s written below…)

Q: Could we get in trouble reproducing images that we’ve downloaded from, say, YouTube?
A: The short answer is that most of your blogging, especially if you aren't gaining commercial benefit directly from the copyrighted materials, is "fair use."

"Fair use" is the magic catch-all phrase here and refers to criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching. This argument stands squarely on the idea that your ‘borrowing’ has a nonprofit or educational purpose. Assuming you stay away from lifting people's copyrights and trying to sell it, you generally will be ok.

Q: If we’re readily borrowing video links from Universal Studios or grabbing images off Google, then what’s to prevent someone from lifting our copy without crediting us?
A: Your works are copyrighted when created. They don't need to be registered. They can only be registered when "published." And "published" is a term of art--there is uncertainty whether blogging is publishing. It's probably not--which makes a lot of your concern about copying others' work moot, but also makes it difficult for you to have copyright protection.

Q: What about "mashing"? Is this illegal and is anyone policing this?
A: This is similar to “sampling” in the music world. If you “mash” something that isn’t protected, then there’s no harm. If you “mash” something that is, then there could be a problem. But, generally, in your case, you could argue “fair use” or “parody.”

Q. Is everything on Google Images safe to use?
A: Using Google Images will not insulate you. In other words, just because they might have an image doesn't mean that they have it legally. Again, however, the first step is (a) whether the matter is protected and (b) whether your use is "fair."

Heavy stuff.


To lighten the somber mood a little, check this out.

Allegedly this guy, Kent "Toast", is the world's fastest clapper. Here he gives us his rendition of the theme from that famous cop show, Hawaii 5-O.



BTW, did you know that the bubbly female cop in Reno 911 is now the celebrity presenter of Clean House?

Posted by: Claire