Geek Girlfriends

The Twitter Blog Explains the recent spate of phishing scams

Okay, so who uses Twitter? I do. I love it.

Oh sure it seems like a complete waste of time at first. (And it can be a big time waster.) But now I don’t bother to read the local paper because I follow the Twitter feed of the headlines. I’m more current with the local news than I have been in years – all in 140-character hits to my cell phone. If I want to know how to do something, if anyone else has seen a trend, or just to make an announcement, I can do it myself in 140 characters from my computer or phone. I have a decent crowd following me now so I almost always get answers, responses, or whatever I’m looking for in rapid order. And I know I have answered more than one desperate technical question for someone who needed to know something immediately. If you don’t already, why don’t you come follow me on Twitter?

Lately, though, the spammers have hit twitter. I have gotten several direct messages from people I don’t really know well but who are in my Twitter crowd. (Just exactly as described in that C|Net story in that last link.) The messages say something like, “Check out this funny Web site.” And they provide a link. But when I follow that link, I land at a Web site that asks me to log in. (So far the Web sites have looked just like the Twitter log-in page.) That Web site is not real. It is a dummy site designed to capture your log in information and hijack your Twitter account. (So far they look like Twitter log in page but phishing scams can lead to what looks like bank sites or anything the scammer chooses.) I know this because the Web address is wrong and because Twitter doesn’t ask me to log in when I’m already logged in. Also, I make a habit of not entering log-in information when I followed a link to arrive at the site.

In short, I know a phishing scam when I see one so I have not been caught by this one. And the last few of these that I got, led to a site that Twitter had already taken down. Even the direct messages have disappeared from my Twitter account so the folks at Twitter are obviously on it. But I just want to warn any of you who are using Twitter that these ARE phishing scams. These scams are relatively new to Twitter — though you probably get several phishing scams a day via email. But I’m sure there will be more of this nonsense now that the idea has caught on. Kudus to Twitter for posting a warning so quickly and dispensing with all danger before I even had time to take a screen shot of it!

Still, watch out!

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In your travels around the Internet — reading blogs and posting pithy comments on same — you may have noticed that some people post adorable self portraits or avatars to go with their comments. But your comments just get a faceless dude (or something the blog chose) who looks just like the image next to everyone else’s comment. No matter how much you poke around trying to fix this, there seems to be no way to add a photo or avatar to your comments, right? Frustrating.

Here’s why: Those other people are probably bloggers. (Or just clever like you are about to be.) Their blog service allowed – encouraged – them to associate an image with their email address. Now, wherever they post a comment (using that email address) that image automatically shows up with their comment. It lends personality – even authority – to their comments and creates a face that readers can automatically associate with their blog, book, product, or job – no matter where they are talking it up. In short, it’s good branding. Not all blogs allow images to show up this way but many do. And they add a little lively color to the conversation.

You don’t have to write a blog, though, to lend personality to your comments. Just go to Gravatar and click on “Sign up now!” Enter your emails address and upload your photo. Then give your image a rating (G, PG-13, etc.). Once you are done there, your cute image will show up whenever you post a comment. It will even attach your image to comments you made yesterday – or whenever.

Try it. And post a comment here so I can see your new look!

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I’m a late convert to gaming. Okay, well, that’s not entirely true. I got very addicted to a text-based mystery game back in the 80s and I kicked hiney at Pac-Man when I was dating in college. But then I got a job, husband, house, kids, and too many pets and no longer had time for that sort of thing. A couple of years ago, though, I got an assignment for Family Circle reviewing games that moms could feel good about their kids playing and it was like I fell off a cliff. The game CivCity: Rome hooked me. I couldn’t stop. My people needed villages, aqueducts, raw materials, armies. I had to make sure the cities were running well. I was in charge! And along the way, I was learning all sorts of interesting stuff about Roman civilization. I dimly remembered that I had actual children in my care, too, who might want dinner and tucking in. But, for a while, I was lost to that ancient world and helpless to leave it — even though I wasn’t, according to my then-11-year-old son, very good at the game.

It was fun to fall into another world and I felt smarter after playing. That was a nice feeling. When I got to the end of the game, and looked up, though. My euphoria evaporated. What a mistake! The house was a disaster, my husband was pissed off, and my daughter had learned to open a can of Chef Boyardee Ravioli. (She had even figured out how to heat it up.) Only my son – just as embroiled in Civilization – understood. I swore not to pitch any more articles on games or fall prey to the temptation these world-building, sandbox games offer me.

I play casual games (like Pogo.com) and the occasional parlor game that came with Windows Vista (Hearts and Mahjong Titans are my favorites). I have seen studies indicating small hits of this sort of mind-vacation are great for stress relief. They are certainly better than a trip to the candy bowl when I need a 15-minute break. So I indulge in those freely. But the games that suck you in and ask you to commit to building an empire? No more. I clearly have too much on my plate.

But now I’m thinking I should revisit that decision. A study came out last month that seems to indicate that my post-game “smart” euphoria was real.

According to Psyorg.com, University of Illinois psychology professor Arthur Kramer and his colleagues studied the effects of gaming on older adults’ cognitive ability and found a significant improvement in reasoning, the ability to switch between tasks, and memory. These improvements weren’t limited to game play either. After playing, test subjects did better on a variety of tests that measured their executive control functions – something that apparently gets worse with age. The study used the game Rise of Nations, which is similar to CivCity: Rome in that you build a world and manage its resources. “You need merchants. You need an army to protect yourself and you have to make sure you’re spending some of your resources on education and food,” said postdoctoral researcher Chandramallika Basak, lead author on the study in the Psyorg.com article. “This game stresses resource management and planning, which I think for older adults is important because many of them independently plan and manage their resources.”

I’m not as old as the study participants but I do believe in prevention. Maybe I should take a night off from blogging and play some games? I know my son would be pleased to see me back in the world of gaming. He liked having an ally. What about you? Do you play games? (You know I need a little moral support here and if “all the GGFs (geek girlfriends) are doing it” what can my husband and Chef-Boyardee-eating daughter say?)

As someone with a particular interest in 17^th and 18^th Century American history, I am seriously tempted by the new Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization. Dare I?

Tags: gaming makes you smarter

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Though I haven’t been in the ocean in a long time, I’m a diver. At one time in my life, I lived to dive. I worked at jobs I didn’t care much about and travelled all over the world so I could submerge myself in distant waters. In fact, I once spent a lot of time underwater with the guy who did the underwater Antarctica photography (and production) for the Discovery film Encounters at the End of World. (Trailer shown above; put that in your Netflix queue.) That’s a long story.

The reason I mention it is that’s it New Year’s Eve and that calls to mind a motto I learned from my first dive guru Lloyd Austin (who ran the UC Berkeley Underwater Research Program for many years) : “Plan your dive. Dive your plan.” The idea is simple: You decide how deep to go, how long to stay down, who your buddy is, and what your goals for the dive are before you hit the water. That’s your Dive Plan. You don’t deviate from that plan. It’s a safety thing.

But this is a motto that applies to more than diving, as did most of the Lloyd’s teachings. I pretty much apply it to every day: The first thing I do every morning is make a Day Plan. If I get to the end of a day and haven’t accomplished my plan, either I wasn’t a very good diver or it wasn’t a good plan. At the beginning of a new year, I also like to look at the big picture and plan the large brush strokes for the coming year. I like to take much of this day to apply the “Plan your dive. Dive your plan.” motto to everything I do. So I’m thinking now about what I want for this blog in 2009.

Like diving, blogging is something you can’t do alone. Writing a blog without you all commenting, emailing, and asking questions would simply not be worth doing. So I’m thinking of you as my dive buddies. And now it’s time to plan our dive. How deep shall we go? How long shall we stay? What are our goals?

I did an interview yesterday with the cute guy who writes Culture Crash and he asked me a question that got me thinking about what I want to do here. The interview isn’t up over there yet but here is the question and answer:

Cute Culture Crash Guy: If you could pick just three things readers would walk away with after reading your book, what would they be?

Me: The feeling that they will never need to put up with that annoying guy down the hall at work just to get their computers working. I’d like my readers to know there are other women who love technology for the same reasons they do –- or would, if it weren’t for all the guy talk — and to come hang out with us at GeekGirlfriends.com. I’d also like my reader to feel she could slap the next guy who implies she’s stupid about computers just because she doesn’t like to talk in acronyms.

So I know I want to make this a place where we can ask each other about technology, share our new discoveries, where I can share my connection to the companies that build high-tech companies — either through giveaways or by helping my readers get problems sorted out. (Sometimes you need an in!) I want to be a part of getting rid of the feeling that technology is guy stuff. And I want to help eliminate the feeling women often have of being “behind” when it comes to tech topics, which is so not true. What I don’t know is what my buddy (that’s you, following this dive plan analogy) wants to do. So?

What do you want to do while we are here in 2009?

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I hate to nag but I know there is something you should all be adding to your New Year’s resolution list that you probably haven’t thought about. It’s boring. It’s irritating. And it just doesn’t seem that important. But you know you should do it: Back up your data.

For years, I just didn’t do it. Then one day, a few years back, the hard drive on my desktop died a loud, sudden, and spectacular death. I lost so much of my own work in that tragic event that I cried. I couldn’t face work — except to admit my foolishness and beg deadline extensions from my editors — for days. My heart was broken. I lost articles in progress, notes on fiction, an almost complete work of fiction, emails, and photographs – lots of photographs. My hard drive never recovered and I never got back most of that work. But I am resilient. I did recover. And I learned a hard lesson. It was a bad experience that I could have easily avoided it. So now I avoid it.

I know I’m not the only one who has carried on blithely as if hard drive failures only ever happen to other people. A while back, Kym posted a comment here saying that she had lost a year’s worth of pictures of her kids’ in a tragic hard drive accident. She will never be able to remember what they looked like when they were 7 and 9. Everyone I know has a similar story. The fact is, hard drives die. Eventually, they all die. In fact, they are guaranteed to die. They are just fallible bits of magnetic storage.

The data on them though is important stuff, though. So don’t lose it. Here’s what you do: Automate the process. I use an online backup site Mozy.com. It waits for me to stop using my computer and backs up everything I’ve written or edited or added since the last time it backed up. It does this every day. I don’t even think about it. Mozy offers a free trial that might serve if your storage needs are simple. I pay $4.95 a month for unlimited backup.

And Now for the Giveaway

But an online backup service is only good if you can get online. This is a good thing if your house burns down but an irritant if your Internet connection goes down. So doing a local backup is also good. And I happen to have a giveaway that will help with that. I have an automatic backup tool called ClickFree. All you do is pop the DVD into your drive and it automatically backs up all your data files. It even goes and finds your emails (those are often hard to locate) and backs those up too. They make DVDs that automatically back up photos and other types of data, too. And they make an external hard drive that backs up all the data (not the software installations) on your hard drive.

Today, though, I have two 5-DVD packs that back up your office files. (I have a lot of these to give away thanks to Ruth, though, so I will be doing more of these giveaways coming up.) All you have to do to win one of these 5-pack Office DVD packs is post a comment below. Tell me your own data-loss heartbreak or at least how you are making data backup one of your New Year’s resolutions.

In other news

Last week, I forgot to say that Kary, Michelle, and Jenny each won a copy of my book, How to be a Geek Goddess. (If you didn’t win, I see there are a couple of other giveaways for my book out in the blogosphere right now. There is one at Wise Bread and another at Oh, Hey, What’s Up?) Melissa won the flying Tinker Bell. Thanks for playing!

Tags: data backup, giveaway

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Every year, just when it’s too late to do anything about it, I realize I have forgotten someone on my gift list. Inevitably this is someone who lives too far away for me to ship a gift to them in time for the holiday. I have gotten good at recovering from this goof. In fact, I think some of my last-minute gifts are the best ones. Here are 10 of my favorite procrastinator’s gifts. Order them now for instant delivery.

1. 1. An Amazon.com Gift Card is always welcome. Since the site carries virtually everything, usually at the best price on the planet, your recipient can get whatever toy they wished for but failed to get. These are perfect for your tween nephew who probably covets some video game you have never heard of yet lacks the credit card to buy it himself.
2. 2. Give a subscription to Napster To Go. Who wouldn’t love to be handed a license to explore whatever music moves them for a period of time. A teeny-bopper niece could explore beyond the marketing hype of Miley Sirus and Hilary Duff and discover a world of music without having to spend her hard-earned allowance.

3. If anyone on your list commutes or takes long walks and might like to enjoy spoken word literature, while she does it, she will love a subscription to Audible.com. You can buy gifts in many denominations. So your sister can buy an audio book or two –or three or four – of her own choosing. But the real bargain is in the subscriptions, which allow you to download a certain number of books every month For example, a 3-month subscription gives her 1 book a month for three months and costs $45. She can take her books with her on her MP3 player, burn them to CDs, or listen to them on her computer.

4. Got a small niece or nephew? Do his parents a favor and give that kid a gift certificate to Audible Kids. Audio books allow parents to beg off the “Read it again!” requests, buy a little peace and quiet as a child listens happily to a story, and expand a child’s appreciation of reading. I got both my kids hooked on reading (they are both reading as I write this) by letting them listen to books that were a bit beyond their ability. It helps them understand why reading is fun and motivates them to get past the difficulties. Gift certificates start at $10 and you will have started something big even with that amount.

5. Expand someone’s movie viewing horizons beyond the blockbuster store by giving a subscription to Netflix.com. Even people who say they won’t like this service are thrilled when they get a free pass to watch whatever they want on someone else’s dime — without leaving the house.

6. Bookswim is the Netflix of books. Pile books into your “pool” on the site and they will send you new books whenever you send a book back. There are various plans that suit all styles of reader. You can give a subscription gift for as little as $9.99.

7. Know someone with a messy office or a hatred of filing? Give them a gift they need – and a hint – by getting them a subscription to Pixily. You can name the amount you want to contribute to cleaning up their office or just foot the bill for a year of neatness. They will thank you over and over when they can quickly put hands on that insurance form or tax receipt at a moment’s notice – even though they haven’t filed in months. Once they are signed up they simply send their papers into be scanned and uploaded to a private Web site.

8. Wish you’d sent your mother, sister, friend, or favorite blogger a little spa pampering package? It’s not too late. Get her an electronic gift card from Origins. That way she can choose what she really wants. I would be thrilled to get one of these as this is my favorite pampering store and no one but me knows what I just ran out of.

9. Know a game-addicted kid? Want to save his parents some money while giving him unfettered access to new games? Buy him a subscription to GameFly™. A one-month subscription is $22.95 and he can play as many games as he has time for in that time, keeping two games at home at a time.

10. If your recipient is a woman –or has feet – give her a gift certificate to Zappos.com. Not only will she love you for buying her shoes, she will love the shoes because she chose them herself. And if she goofs? Free delivery both ways so she can try again. It’s even possible – since Zappos is uncannily fast at delivery – that you could give her a gift certificate today and she could have the shoes by Christmas.

Tags: gift cards, last-minute shopping. procrastinators gifts

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Okay, this isn’t very geeky but I know the purse strings are tight this year and maybe you have daughter, niece, or other Tinker Bell fan girl on your list who would love this remote controlled, flying Tinker Bell from Disney. Disney sent me one to give away and it’s getting late so this is my Frugal Friday gift to you. Comment below and she will be winging her way to you fast. This is a quick – 25 hour – giveaway so don’t dawdle!

Here is her official description from Disney:

FlyTech Tinker Bell Indoor Flying Robot (Disney and WowWee)
Experience the magic of make-believe with Tinkerbell - a fantastic, flying friend.  Made from high-flex materials, Tinkerbell is durable so you don’t have to worry about her getting into mischief. Using a single channel remote controller designed perfectly for little hands, launch and fly your Tinker Bell with ease.  When she gets tired and needs to rest her wings, recharge her directly on the wand remote controller using the built in charger cable.  For ages 6 and up.  AVAILABLE AT: Retailers nationwide and online, including Sears, Target, Wal-Mart.  SRP $39.99 USD.

Good luck! Happy Frugal Friday! And thanks Norma for thinking of this giveaway!

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I can’t resist sharing this funny story from yesterday’s Consumerist. Apparently some poor Apple customer had problems with his laptop and sent it in for repairs. Tech support told him they couldn’t fix it because it was full of bugs. Ladybugs! (There are actual pictures of the bugs at The Consumerist. Can you hear me giggling?) And Apple tech support insisted he put them there himself. Why would he sabotage his own expensive computer? Um. Because Apple computers don’t otherwise have bugs and he wanted to be more like a Windows user?

Apple – while refusing to admit the bugs are theirs — took care of the angry fan boy with the buggy laptop in the end, though, so the story has a happy ending. Who put the bugs in the laptop in the first place is still a matter of contention between Apple and its Fan Boy.

Check it out. And while you are there, sign up for the Consumerist email or RSS feed. I don’t know of another site that combines humor, great reporting, and consumer advocacy so well.

Don’t miss my book giveaway. I’ll be picking a winner in just a few hours.

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I wrote a piece a couple weeks ago for the online design magazine Product Design and Development about why more technology gear needs to be designed by women. When I started writing, I set out with the usual inertia of starting from scratch with a deadline looming. But a few hours later I was on my daily walk and company meeting with my husband, berating him about the entire industry, why there are no memory cards or Bluetooth headsets that look and wear like jewelry, why it’s only the fashion industry that designs for women, and how women control domestic spending almost entirely and so what sort of serious company would so overlook us?

He listened patiently, nodding and agreeing when appropriate. He knows who controls our domestic spending so he had no argument with me. So he waited quietly till it was safe to change the subject. (Or so it seemed to me. But then yesterday he tweeted a sweet Twitter note to his peeps about the article (and me) and linked to it on Digg.com. Maybe he does care?)

Ultimately my article turned into something of a rant, too. It’s an informed rant though. And my delightful editor at Product Design & Development let me have my way.

Do you ever wonder why it is taking so long for high-tech companies to notice that women buy stuff? You can read my rant here.

Also don’t miss my book giveaway! I will be choosing winners VERY SOON there so get on over and put your name in the hat.

I have another giveaway to announce tomorrow, too. This one from Disney! So anyone with a daughter, niece, or love of Tinker Bell: Pay attention to tomorrow’s post. This one is wrap-it-up-and-put-it-under-the-tree worthy.

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Results from the survey Harris Interactive poll have been flying around the Internet because apparently 46 percent of the women surveyed would give up sex rather than lose their Internet connection. A lot of reports I saw interpreted this as women preferring blogging to screwing. But I’m not sure that stands up. (Though, of course, I get that it’s amusing to joke about.)

In the last chapter of my book, How to Be a Geek Goddess: Practical Advice for Using Computers with Smarts and Style, I interview a lot of women who used the Internet as an extension of their intimate relationships and as a way to find intimate relationships either because they were solo and wanted to change that or because their spouse or lover was far away physically (just for a few hours or because of work or war) and the Internet was the very means they used to connect. So if you look at what people actually use the Internet for, asking them to choose between it and sex is hardly an either or question. Maybe when the men in the survey said they were unwilling to give up sex for their Internet connection because they hadn’t considered how much one leads to –or stand in for—the other.

I explore the topic at some length in my book, covering everything from online dating to porn but here is an excerpt to whet your appetite.

Virtual and Vicarious Sex

One step up from a virtual date night is virtual sex. This idea often evokes images of perverts and scary dungeons in the minds of women, so you might be surprised to learn exactly how popular this private entertainment is. According to the Cybersex and Romance Survey of 15,000 people done by Elle and MSNBC in 2004, “81 percent of men and 53 percent of women are sampling some kind of sex-related activity online, whether participating in adult chat rooms, posting to a sex newsgroup or interacting with someone on a live webcam. Porn is also popular—41 percent of women and 75 percent of men who responded have intentionally viewed or downloaded erotic films or photos.”

So if you’ve toyed with the idea of logging on for a bit of titillation, you are hardly a deviant. In fact, if you haven’t, you are something of a minority. … Okay, I know you are wondering, “What the heck is virtual sex? How the heck can sex be virtual?” Regina Lynn describes it in her book on sex and technology, Sex 2.0: “Cybersex, also known as ‘cyber’ or ‘cybering,’ is consensual sexual interaction among two or more adults using the Internet as the primary means of connection. I generally think of cybersex as a text-based activity because that’s my preference and that’s the way it’s been done for decades, but cyber can also include audio chat, avatar-based communities, and webcam conferencing.” So, you see, part of the beauty of virtual sex is that it is safe sex. There is no actual contact—except the conversational variety.

This means it can also be anonymous—something that’s hard to pull off in the real world. You can send an avatar out there to represent you, and no one has to know who is pulling its strings. In fact, it’s something of a debate as to whether virtual sex even qualifies as adultery if you are married. Though I doubt this argument would hold up after the fact, so if you want to play, you should probably clear it first with your partner. If you are ready to play, you actually don’t need much beyond what you already use for keeping track of your finances and sending email to your mother. If you have a partner and already use instant messaging (the most popular tool for virtual sex), all you need to do is take your IM flirting up a notch. You can use a webcam if you want to, but it’s hardly necessary. Everything that is true of language and romance is also true on instant messaging—just turn the heat on your language up to high. (Talk dirty!) Put your inhibitions aside, dim the lights, find some privacy, and go for it. “Cybersex—like actual sex, now that I think about it—always looks ridiculous from the outside,” says Lynn. “Yet good cybersex is so much more than the words on the screen . . . It can be such a profound erotic connection between two people that they forget their surroundings and see only the interaction; their bodies respond as if they were really touching, and their emotions don’t always know the difference.”

Don’t forget! I’m giving away three copies of my book right here at GeekGirlfriends.com. Go here to play. Right now you have a three in 17 chance of winning. Them’s pretty good odds.

Tags: computers, harris poll on sex and internet, sex, sex versus blogging, women

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