it's all geek to me

social media -- non-profit style

2011-02-17T18:20:00.026-06:00

my friend c.j. jackson spoke on social media at the waco non-profit breakfast and it was great! here are her notes:

Recommended reading - Charlene Li. Books include "Groundswell" and "Open Leadership."
Link to presentation
Waco Social Media Breakfast is the last Tuesday of every month at 7:30 am.

the facebook obsession

2011-01-26T18:46:00.001-06:00

I watched a great show last night on cnbc called "the facebook obsession" it was really informative and got me thinking a lot about facebook and how I use it. I would love to hear the thoughts of any of you out there who have seen this special or even after just reading the link in this article.

how to tag someone in a facebook update

2010-08-08T14:07:00.000-05:00

you may have noticed that you can now tag people when you update your status on facebook (it turns thier name blue and hyperlinks to their page). you can do this for people that your are friends with or pages that you like on facebook, here's how:

type your update like you normally would
when you get to the part in your update where you want the tag to be, just type the @ sign and then start typing the person's name (no space between the "@" sign and the person's name)
a list will then populate below where you are typing and all you have to do is click on the name of the person or page you want to tag (if they don't show up at first, keep typing and they will)
now finish typing your update and click on share

see, wasn't that easy!

what do you want me to cover next?

2010-08-06T18:56:00.000-05:00

I've been awfully quiet on this blog the last few months mainly because I don't know what to share with you, so you tell me, what topics would you like for me to cover next?

twitter questions from a hat -- waco social media breakfast

2010-02-23T20:37:00.000-06:00

despite our awful weather this morning, we still had 10 people for the waco social media breakfast. our topic was an open forum on twitter. karla patterson did a great recap of the meeting on the social media breakfast blog!

how to be a social media butterfly

2010-02-21T19:59:00.002-06:00

this past week I had the pleasure of giving my "how to be a social media butterfly" talk to another group of abwa women. so, I figured I would share my presentation with you!

How To Be A Social Media Butterfly

View more presentations from carynbrown.

cartoonizing a picture in picasa

2010-02-14T15:27:00.001-06:00

for the longest time, I thought you had to have expensive photo editing software to make a cartoonized picture, but I have discovered how to do it in picasa. now, it might not be as good as the results from more expensive software, picasa is free and easy to use and that means a lot to me.

double-click on the picture you want to cartoonize in picasa
click on effects
click on saturation and drag the bar all the way to the right for the most saturation
click on apply
click on tuning
drag highlights and shadows until you get the picture to look the way you want it to
click on apply

see, wasn't that easy!

how to add a picasa slide show to your blog

2010-02-07T13:15:00.019-06:00

one of the coolest things that you can do with picasa is add a slideshow of your pictures to your blog posts or website and it's really easy to do:

put all the photos you want in the slideshow in one folder.
in picasa, click on the sync button to sync your (folder) album to the web.
log into the picasa webpage.
click on the album with the pictures for the slideshow.
click on link to this album (in the menu pane on the right-hand side).
click on embed slideshow.
a window will then pop up for you to select your settings and give you the code to copy into your blog or website.

how to add top posts to your blog

2010-01-03T15:08:00.001-06:00

one of the coolest things you can do on your show your readers what your top posts are. for that I use post rank and here is how you set it up:

go to the post rank website at http://www.postrank.com/publishers and choose your blogging platform from the get widget drop down (for these instructions I used blogger).
enter your blog's URL in the website: field (sometime it may take a while for it to index your blog)
choose the color scheme and the number of posts that your want to display
you can then click on add to blogger or copy the code onto your website

see, wasn't that easy!!

does blogging increase your SEO?

2009-12-27T11:16:00.005-06:00

so, this question was posed to me a few months ago and I have been thinking about it and trying to put it into words ever since. I have tried unsuccessfully to find some articles and blog posts on the subject (if you have one, please put a link to it in a comment on this post). here are links to the two that I did find:

SEO Benefits Blog to Increase Your Search Engine Ranking

The Definitive Guide To Higher Rankings For Your Blog

in my own words, this is how I understand it to work. blogging in and of itself does not increase your SEO, but blogging increases the number of words on your site and the frequency of updates to your site, both of which increase your SEO.

picasa 201 - sharing pictures on picasa

2009-12-13T21:10:00.007-06:00

one of the greatest things about picasa is that you can easily share pictures from it. here's how:

in picasa, on the folder you want to share, click share button beneath the folder's name. (you will have to have a picasa on-line account to do this, but it will walk you through setting one up if you do not have one yet)
enter the user's e-mail address in the to field and click on send.

see, wasn't that easy!!

facebook questions from a hat

2009-10-27T18:13:00.001-05:00

we had a great turn out this morning with over 20 people at the social media breakfast. we did things a little different by asking everyone to submit questions about facebook and then we as a group answered them. it was very informative, here are the questions and the answers that the group came up with:

How do I set up a business page on facebook?
There is a link on the front page of Facebook, you have to have a personal facebook account first and you will create the business page under that.
Here's the link to get started: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php

When you make your own fan page, how do you make it your own design?
Use Facebook Markup language. http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/FBML

Is it best to post questions or comments?
Posting questions will usually generate a lot of comments from others on facebook, while comments are just a way to share your thoughts.

Facebook Pages vs Facebook Groups:
http://mashable.com/2009/05/27/facebook-page-vs-group/

How to use facebook and twitter together to promote a business?
Link the two accounts to spread the word to more people.

Is there a way to add a photo or video to a comment?
Put the link to the photo or video in your comment and facebook will automatically embed it.

Putting an RSS feed into your profile.
It is built into facebook or you can use twitterfeed: http://www.twitterfeed.com
Instructions on using twitterfeed:
http://www.helpdeskgoddess.com/2009/06/feeding-your-blog-into-your-twitter.html

what is RSS? real simple syndication http://www.whatisrss.com/

can you set it so your twitter updates become your facebook status updates?
set it up with selective twitter http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/ and then every tweet that ends in #fb will update your facebook status

can you "tweet" too much on facebook? yes

should you separate your business from your personal on facebook? yes, but it depends on the business

who's afraid of social media

2009-07-26T11:38:00.000-05:00

every time I turn around lately, I am reading another blog post about why companies are hesitant to embrace social media. the thing about it is most of their concerns are there whether they are part of social media or not. for example, their concern that they can not control what is being said about them in social media. well, people will talk about you in social media whether you are involved in it or not. so, take the plunge and get involved in social media, that way you can be part of the conversation. there, that's my 2 cents!

social media is not a guinea pig

2009-07-19T16:45:00.004-05:00

so, here's the deal, I do a lot with social media, between my personal obsession with it, my work with Waco Social Media, and the little bit of it that I do for my work. I also read a lot of blog posts and articles on social media in the workplace and what always seems to fascinate me is the amount of businesses that treat social media as if it is a guinea pig, something that they are just going to "try out" and see if it works for them. this does not work for 2 reasons:

if you are not truly invested in social media, people can tell and you are not going to get the results that you want from it
you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so make sure you make the best impression you can with your social media presence

I think social media is a great tool for many business to get the word out about their company with little or no monetary investment. so, my bottom line is if you are going to give social media a try for your company, give it an honest try. jump in with both feet and don't just dip your little toe in.

that's my soapbox for today, next week I will talk more about why businesses are scared of social media.

feeding your blog into your twitter account

2009-06-28T19:11:00.001-05:00

one of the things that you will notice very quickly after you get on twitter is that people have their blogs set to automatically send out a tweet when they have a new post. well, if you wanted to learn how to do that, today is your lucky day! I use twitterfeed to feed my blog posts in, so I will walk you through the steps in getting that set up:

go to the twitter feed site at http://twitterfeed.com
click on register now
enter your e-mail address and create a password
click on create account
you now have a twitterfeed account and all you have to do next is set up your blogs
on step one, make sure twitter is selected in the "connect your feed to" drop down box
click on "connect feed to your twitter account"
click on allow to allow twitterfeed access to your twitter account
enter a feed name for your feed
enter your rss feed url (i.e. {your blogs url}/feed/posts/default) and click on test rss feed
click on advanced settings if you want to make any additional changes
click on create feed

you now have a feed that will automatically post to your twitter account everytime you update your blog, wasn't that easy

what do you want me to cover next?

2009-06-21T16:17:00.000-05:00

so, I'm at a crossroads and looking to my wonderful readers to help me decide what to cover next, so let me know what you think in the poll to the right. please feel free to comment as well.

a waco workshop for twitter beginners

2009-06-07T10:00:00.000-05:00

Do you live in the Central Texas area?

Have you heard about Twitter but aren’t sure how to use it?

Signed up to Twitter but don’t know what to do next… or why?

Want to find out how Twitter can help your non-profit or small business?

Here’s the workshop for you. This is a hands-on, step-by-step workshop, led by three of the most influential tweeters in Central Texas. Caryn Brown, Jay Ehret and C.J. Jackson, members of the Waco Social Media Club, will help you make sense of how and why to use Twitter to make an impact for your organization.

Saturday, June 20, 2009
1:00-3:00pm
Cashion Bldg, Room 404
Hankamer School of Business
Baylor University Campus

how to add a watermark to a photo in picasa

2009-05-17T23:36:00.000-05:00

so, here was the question I was asked today, what is the easiest way to add a watermark to a picture?

my answer, with picasa from google, here's what you need to do.

download and install picasa
launch picasa and let it start indexing your pictures
find the picture you want to add the watermark to in picasa
double-click on the picture
the picture will then come up in a photo editing tool where you can edit your picture
once you have your picture the way you want it, click on export at the bottom of the screen
take note of where picasa is going to export your file to (the file name will stay the same, but it will be in a different directory, so it won't change your original picture)
at the bottom of the export screen, click on the add a watermark checkbox.
enter the text you want displayed in the watermark in the add a watermark field
click on ok

see, now you have a watermarked picture, wasn't that easy?

the people who follow you on twitter

2009-04-29T22:09:00.000-05:00

you don't have to be on twitter for very long before you realize that half the new people that follow you are wanting you to try their get rich quick schemes, well, my friend cj, one of the waco social media gurus, wrote a great blog post about just that yesterday; twits, you are on notice

facebook 503 -- how to create a facebook event

2009-04-05T15:31:00.041-05:00

one of the great things to do with facebook is set up an event with your friends. it is great because everyone can easily see who is coming to the event and write on the events wall to share information on the event.

from any page in facebook, click on the events icon (the white box with the 31 in it and the red bar at the top) in the lower left hand corner of the facebook page (this will bring up your events page)
click on "create an event" in the upper left hand corner of the events page
fill in all the information on the event info tab (event name, host, event type, and location are all required)
one note on the network field, if you choose a network other than global, you will only be able to invite people in that network to your event
click on "create event"
you can now upload a picture (or logo) for your event, set your options, access level (I typically choose closed, that way, I can decide who I want to have on the guest list and others can request an invite) , and choose if you want to publize the event
click on "save"
click on the friends you want to invite or enter their e-mail address if they are not on facebook
click on "send invitations"

and your done, see, wasn't that easy!! one note, if you select to have a closed event, you can click on the view guest list and choose to make anybody on the guest list an admin on the event so they can invite others or approve invites as well.

twitter 401 -- sharing pictures on twitter

2009-03-29T07:12:00.024-05:00

now that you are really getting into twitter and making some great twitter-friends, you are probably finding times when you want to share pictures with them. there is a very easy way to to this with twitpic.

go to twitpic.com and enter your twitter username and password and click on log in
you will see your twitter avatar and your bio from twitter, click on upload photo in the upper right-hand corner of the website
click on browse to browse to the picture on your computer that you want to upload, select the picture and click on open
add any message that you want to share and click on upload
twitpic then sends out a tweet from your account with your message and a link to your picture
when your twitter followers click on the link, they can see your picture and if they want, they can log into twitpic and add a comment on your picture
if they comment on your picture, the comment is sent out as an @[your twittername] reply to you with a link to the picture as well

what is #followfriday?

2009-03-27T18:03:00.000-05:00

so, by now you've probably seen all the people on twitter tweeting out with the #followfriday hash tags on fridays and you may be asking yourself, what is this?

well, this is something that was started earlier this year by @micah on twitter as a way to show off his favorite tweeple (read @micah's original blog post on how and why he started it). mashable also has a good post on this called "follow friday, the anatomy of a twitter trend"

basically all your do is send out a tweet listing your favorite people to follow using their twitter handle (@[twitter username]) and put the #followfriday hashtag in the tweet. lately, I have enjoyed having a theme to my follow fridays like twittering couples and the people that I met at SXSW. but most people just put down their favorite people to follow.

some tweeple have started writing blog posts with more information on why the have chosen their #followfriday tweeple, like this one by sonny gill or this list by mashable. another interesting blog post is brian troy's "follow friday experiment".

and like everything else on twitter, their are tons of sites and apps to help you with #followfriday. my favorite one is the twitter tag project. all you have to do is go to the site and enter your twitter username and it will return the friends you should suggest for #followfriday. I'm not sure how it works, but I think it has to do with who you tweet with most often. one of the things that I like about it is that you don't have to put your twitter password in, it opens a new twitter window for you to send the tweet out in.

for more cool apps and sites for #followfriday, check out brian cray's blog post

twitter 303 -- tweet-ups

2009-03-22T11:52:00.027-05:00

by now, hopefully you are probably really enjoying twitter and all the twitterfriends you are making and you may be looking for opportunities to meet some of them in real life. tweet-ups, meetings between two or more people on twitter, are a great way to do that, there are a couple of ways to find out about tweet-ups in your area:

ask your twitterfriends about tweet-ups in your area
search google for tweet-ups in your area
check out the social media breakfast site for social media breakfasts in your area
if you still can't find any tweet-ups in your area, you can always start your own: how to organize a successful tweet-up

twitter 302 -- twitter parties

2009-03-15T18:05:00.001-05:00

in addition to the hash tags, one of the other things you have probably noticed on twitter are all the twitter parties. a good example of a twitter party is twitter mom's girls night out (#gno) that I participate in every tuesday night. you sign up on the girls night out website before the party and then you end all your tweets during the party with #gno. they usually have a topic and host and the party can be very fast paced once it gets started.

there are many more twitter parties, in fact, my twitter friend, @ResourcefulMom has created a site, TwitterParties.com, devoted to sharing all the information she has on the various twitter parties, click on her logo on the left to visit the site.

additional blog posts and articles on twitter parties:

twittering 2nd graders??

2009-03-13T09:52:00.000-05:00

when I talked to my mother earlier this week, she told me about a 2nd grade teacher who was using twitter in her classroom. my mom of course was blind-sided by this, she barely gets facebook and can not even begin to comprehend twitter.

this immediately made me think of my boys in kindergarten and 2nd grade, while they are both every into what I am doing on-line (twittering, facebooking, and blogging). it is my kindergartner who is really into it, you can read my blog posts; my social media butterfly and ed and his women on my the water is fine blog to see just how into it he is.

naturally as soon as I got a chance, I googled it and sure enough, a couple of 2nd grade teachers in maine are using twitter for their students to communicate. after reading the article and looking up the twitter accounts for these teachers (which were both protected), I really started to think out this.

while I can definately see the learning value and the knowledge that the students will gain from this experience, I have some reservations about it. for the most part, the twitter community is adults (I have found a few teenagers on twitter, but only a few). my twitter profile is public meaning that anyone on twitter (or on the web for that matter) can see my tweets. I use discrestion because of that, but there are things that I tweet that I don't think I would want my son or his classmates to read as part of a school assignment. I am just wondering if there is another fourm or site that would be better suited for this? what are your thoughts?

twitter wiki

2009-03-11T21:32:00.001-05:00

I just found out that there is a twitter fan wiki with lots of great information from around the twitterverse, check it out:
http://twitter.pbwiki.com/

twitter 301 -- hashtags explained

2009-03-08T20:36:00.001-05:00

you don't have to be on twitter long to see that there are lots of people using hashtags, #[followed by a word or acronym], and you may be wondering what they are used for and why you would want to use them. here is a brief explanation:

"Twitter messages may be tagged using hashtags, a word or phrase prefixed with a #, such as #beer.^[31] This enables tweets on a specific subject to be found by simply searching for their common hashtag, provided that the user has tagged his or her tweet." (via wikipedia)

you can then search twitter search for all the tweets with those hashtags.

additional blog posts and articles on hashtags:
making sense of confusing twitter hashtags

on twitter, exploring the world of the #
how can I use hashtags to find and read posts on a topic?
twitter hashtags for emergency coordination and disaster relief
an introduction to twitter hashtags
twitter hashtags: a quickie
hashtags.org
hashtags for my followers
to tag or not to #tag
organizing twitter with hashtags
twitter hashtag search

hashtag directories:
#hashtags
top twitter hashtags of the moment
twitter memes -- global tags for twitter
# marks the spot

tweeting couples for #followfriday

2009-03-07T14:53:00.000-06:00

on twitter, people tweet out their favorite tweeple (twitter users) on friday with the hashtag #followfriday. yesterday I thought it would be fun to share the couple that tweet for #followfriday. once I started this, the couples seemed to come out of the woodwork. here are the ones that I know of so far:

please feel free to comment and add your twitter names if you are a tweeting couple

twitter 202 -- how to find people to follow on twitter

2009-03-01T13:36:00.001-06:00

now that your twitter account is all set up, and you know who you want to follow on twitter, all you have to do is find some tweeple (twitter people) to follow. here is how I find other tweeple:

first, you can follow me, carynbrown (send me an @carynbrown tweet saying you are reading my "it's all geek to me" blog and I will follow you back)
follow back the people that follow you
look at the tweeple who your twitter friends are talking to and re-tweeting (remember you can click on the @[twitter username] to open up their twitter homepage)
go to the twittersearch page and put in things that you are interested in (i.e. knitting) to find other people tweeting about the same topics
when you are reading an article or a blog that you like, check to see if they have a link to their twitter page in the sidebar or at the bottom of the article
use twittergrader:
follow twittergrader on twitter
then go to the twitter grader webpage enter your twitter user name and click on "grade" to let them grade you
they will suggest users for you to follow
you can also click on "twitter elite" in the upper right-hand corner and search for people that are the top twitters
follow mrtweet on twitter, after following him for a week or so, he will send you a DM (direct message) on twitter with a link to a list of people to follow, you can go to the mr. tweet website for more information

other twitter search sites (I have not used these yet)

as usual, here are some links to other blog posts and articles on how to find people to follow on twitter:

twitter 201 -- who to follow on twitter

2009-02-22T10:24:00.002-06:00

as promised, here are the rules that I follow when trying to decide who to follow on twitter:

they have to have a profile picture, I don't care if it's a picture of them, their dog, a piece of fruit, or a cartoon. as long as they have something other than the brown box that you get if you haven't uploaded a picture yet.

they have to have a bio. tell me a little bit about yourself, especially the types of things you tweet about. it's only 160 characters, that's not so scary.

if a person has both those things and I still can't decide if I want to follow them or not, I will click on the link and take a look at their blog. if I like their blog, I'll follow. if they don't have a link or a blog then I will take a look at their most recent tweets and decide.

here are some other blog posts from people on who they follow on twitter:

how to follow 101

practical 101s: tips for new twitter users

follow fail

who I follow on twitter

deciding who to follow on twitter

who to follow on twitter?

choosing who to follow on twitter

facebook terms of service change

2009-02-17T21:57:00.000-06:00

ok, so everyone is up in arms about this change that facebook made to it's terms of service earlier this month. I was trying to decide if I wanted to write a blog post about this or not, when I read my twitterfriend @adamjackson's blog post. this post was my thoughts on this exactly, so instead of reinventing the wheel (or re-writing the blog), I figured I would just link to it here:

adam jackson's blog post "my thoughts on facebook's TOS changes"
facebook's blog post regarding this "on facebook, people own and control their information"

twitter 103 -- twitter rules and twitter lingo

2009-02-15T18:22:00.001-06:00

I know I said last week that I would help walk you through who to follow this week, but I want to go through this with you first. I will walk you through who to follow next week, I promise.

just like everything else, twitter has a few quirky rules that you should know about:

you can send a tweet (twitter message) to another twitter user by starting the tweet with @(their twitter username), for example, a tweet to me would be "@carynbrown you really are a helpdesk goddess." these tweets will show up in your twitter stream on your twitter home page and in that person's twitter replies. you can do this for anyone on twitter. also, any time you put the @(their twitter username) anywhere in a tweet, it will become a link that anyone reading the tweet can click on to see that user's twitter homepage.
you can send direct messages through twitter that will only be seen by you and the person you send the message to. to do this, start your tweet with d (their twitter username). the one rule on this is that the person you are sending the direct message to must be following you on twitter.
to send a tweet to someone, you use @(their twitter username), with no space between the @ and their username and to send a direct message to someone, you use d (their twitter username), with a space between the d and their username.
there is a following limit on twitter, I have had a hard time finding the actual rules on this (this is the closest that I have found). from my experience, you can follow up to 2000 twitter accounts, but over 2000, you can only follow 120% of the number of twitter accounts that are following you (i.e. if you have 2000 twitter followers, you can follow 2400 twitter users). here is a link to the blog post I wrote when I hit this limit for the first time. there are a couple of other blog posts that I found on this limit: Twitter Doing Damage Control On False Follow Limit Rumor, TWITTER LIMITS FOLLOWING TO 2,000, Twitter’s 2000-Follow Limit Raises A Ruckus

you don't have to be on twitter very long before you figure out that twitter has a language all it's own. here are some links to more information twitter language:
mashable's twitterspeak
twictionary
twittonary
popular twitter terms

update on 21 march 2009: here is another good blog post I found today on clarifiying the twitter rules for newbies

twitter 102 -- getting your account all set up

2009-02-08T19:40:00.001-06:00

as promised last week, I am going to work with you this week on getting your twitter account all set up. right now, your twitter page probally looks something like this:

I am sure that you are a very interesting person and tons of people will want to be your twitter friends, so let's get you a twitter page that reflects that!

first off, let's get some tweets out there. post a tweet about what you are doing or what you have done today. as we work through these next few steps, sporadically post some additional tweets so you will have something that is showing up on your twitter stream.
click on settings in the top right-hand corner.
make sure that your time zone is correct.
enter a url in the more info url field if you have a blog or other site that people can go to if they want more information about you.
in the one line bio field, enter 160 characters (or less) that tell people about you. this is a good way for other people to find you on twitter so be descriptive.
enter a location in the location field.
you can click the "protect my updates" checkbox if you want to protect your updates from showing up on your twitter page and in the public timeline. you will have to allow people to see your tweets.
my personal position on this is to leave your tweets unprotected, that is the only way to really interact and make friends on twitter. just know that everything you tweet can be read by anyone on the web.
click on save.
you can click on the password tab to change the password you set, click on the devices tab to add your mobile phone, click on the notices tab to set up the notices you want to receive from twitter, and click on the design tab to change the theme (background design of your twitter page).
click on the picture tab, this is where you will upload the picture that will show up on your twitter home page and next to the tweets that you send out on your friends twitter streams (click here for my thoughts on profile pictures). click on browse and browse to the picture you want to use. select the picture and click on open. click on save.
click on home to return to your twitter home page. now you have a twitter page that better reflects you (see, doesn't that look better!).

look, I even have a follower already!
tune in next week and we will talk about how to decide who you want to follow on twitter. see you then.

twitter 101 -- what is twitter and how to create a twitter account

2009-02-01T20:10:00.001-06:00

twitter is defined by wikipedia as:
Twitter is a social networking and micro-blogging service that allows its users to send and read other users' updates (known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length. Updates are displayed on the user's profile page and delivered to other users who have signed up to receive them. Senders can restrict delivery to those in their circle of friends (delivery to everyone being the default). Users can send and receive updates via the Twitter website, SMS,RSS (receive only), or through applications such as Tweetie, Twitterrific, and Feedalizr. The service is free to use over the web, but using SMS may incur phone services provider fees.

it is a great way to connect with others on-line and to form a community where you can share thoughts/ideas with others.

here's how to get started:

go to the twitter website at www.twitter.com .
click on get started-join! in the green box at the bottom of the screen.
enter your full name, your username, your password, and your e-mail address and type in the words from the captcha.
click on create my account.
you can then click on any of the services you use to see if your friends from your e-mail contacts are on twitter, click on the service you use and enter your e-mail address and password, then click on continue. you can also click on skip this step at the bottom of the screen.
you can select any of the famous twitters you want to follow and click on finish or click on skip this step at the bottom of the screen.
you now have your twitter account, see, wasn't that easy!!

check back next week and I will walk you thru getting your twitter account all set up!

facebook 501 -- setting up facebook with your cell phone

2009-01-25T19:28:00.001-06:00

one of the great things about facebook is that you can set it up to send you text messages for certain things on your cell phone (standard text messaging rates apply). here is how to set it up:

from facebook, click on account settings from the settings menu on the top facebook toolbar (by your name).
click on the mobile tab under my account.
enter your cell phone number and select your carrier from the drop-down list and click on activate.
you will then receive a text message on your phone with a confirmation code that you will need to enter on the same page. enter the confirmation code and click on confirm.
you will then receive another text message saying that your phone has been confirmed.
by default, the texts are off, so you will need to select on to turn the texts on and then you can select which texts you want sent to your phone.
once you are done, click on save preferences.

facebook 403 -- uploading videos

2009-01-18T14:51:00.001-06:00

so, now you've got some friends on facebook and you have some pictures of them up, but what if you have some videos that you want to share as well. it is very easy on facebook and not something that you should be afraid of. here is how to do it:

from your facebook page, click on the video camera on the left-hand side of the lower facebook toolbar.
click on upload on the upper right-hand corner.
click on browse to browse to where the video is saved on your computer. read the information under the filename field regarding file size and other important information about uploading videos.
click on ok.
your video will then start uploading. while it is uploading, you can add the information about the video (i.e. title, description, and the privacy settings)
be patient, depending on the size of your video and you connection speed, it may take a little while for the video to upload.
you will then have you edit video window appear, where you can tag anyone that is in the video and choose which thumbnail from the video that you want shown.
then simply click on done. the thumbnail that you choose for your video will now show on your wall and your friends homepage, they can click on the thumbnail to view the whole video.

see, wasn't that easy!!

facebook 402 -- adding captions and tagging your friends in your pictures

2009-01-11T10:45:00.001-06:00

so, now that you have friends on facebook and pictures on facebook, you probably want to tag your friends that are in the pictures that you have on facebook and you may want to add captions to help explain what is going on in the picture. here's how:

from your main facebook page, click on the photos tab or click on the photos icon on the bottom left hand side toolbar.
your albums will be listed on the bottom of the page. click on the album with the pictures that you want to tag your friends in or add captions to.
click on "Edit Photos" above the box of pictures in your album.
all the pictures for your album will then be listed on the page with a box on the left-hand side for you to type your captions into and the picture on the right-hand side where you can tag the people in the picture.
to add a caption to the picture, simply type what you want the caption to be in the caption box on the left-hand side.
to tag someone in a picture, click on them in the picture on the right-hand side.
a box will pop up with a list of all your facebook friends. click the check-box next to the friend's name that is shown in the picture.
click on tag. the person's name will now show up in the "In the Photo" section under the caption box for this picture and this picture will now show up on you friend's wall, stating that you tagged them in a picture.
you can repeat steps 6 to 8 for all the people in the picture.
repeat steps 5 to 9 for all the pictures in your album.
once you are done, click on "Save Changes" at the bottom of the page.

see, wasn't that easy!!

my new laptop, it's pink!

2009-01-08T22:07:00.000-06:00

after working with mike's cool new acer mini laptop, I decieded that I really wanted one too! so my wonderful husband got me one and it came in today and it's pink!! I have been playing with it all night and I really like it. I will probally still use my big laptops for somethings, but for everything else (including traveling, this one will be great).

update 9 february 2009, here are links to 2 great tech republic posts on this:
the acer aspire one
geek gifts 2008: the acer aspire one

CHANGE YOUR TWITTER PASSWORD!

2009-01-05T19:24:00.000-06:00

twitter got hacked today and is sending out bogus direct messages from some tweeple's (twitter people) accounts. while no one seems to know what started this, the only way to ensure that your account is safe is to change your twitter password. unfortunately will all the twitter apps out there, most of the people on twitter (myself included) are giving their twitter passwords out a little too freely. chris brogan wrote a great post today with step-by-step instructions to change your twitter password. here is the link to his blog post, it's great and all the tweeple out there should read it!
Log Into Twitter and Change Your Password -- Chris Brogan

facebook 401 -- creating photo albums and uploading photos

2009-01-04T11:24:00.001-06:00

now that you have made some friends on facebook, you probably want to share some of your photos with them. personally, this is one of the things that I use facebook for the most. there are two things that you will need to do, create a photo album and upload pictures to that album.

creating new photo album:
you can create as many photo albums as you want to, but you can only put 60 pictures in each album. I typically create an album for each month and add the pictures that I want to share during the month (I find the 60 picture limit keeps me from boring my friends with too many pictures). I will create a separate album for special events (i.e. kids birthday parties, Christmas, etc.)

from your main facebook page, click on the photos tab or click on the photos icon on the bottom left hand side toolbar.
click on "create a new photo album" on the top right hand side of the page (right under your name).
give the album a unique name and add a location and description if you want to.
set your privacy for this photo album, by default it is set to let everyone see your photos. (I usually set mine to only let friends of friends see my albums)
click on create album.
if you want to start adding photos to this album now, start with step 4 on the instructions below.

adding pictures to a photo album:

from your main facebook page, click on the photos tab or click on the photos icon on the bottom left hand side toolbar.
your albums will be listed on the bottom of the page. click on the album that you want to add the pictures to.
click on "add photos" or "add more photos".
you can browse to the folder where the pictures that you want to add are located using the folder list in the left hand side of the screen.
you will then see the pictures that are in that folder in the right hand side of the screen. click the check-box next to the pictures that you want to upload.
once you have chosen all the pictures that you want to upload from that folder, click on "upload" (you can only upload pictures from one folder at a time).
the pictures will then be uploaded to facebook.

facebook 301 -- limiting your profile

2008-12-28T22:27:00.001-06:00

as I make more and more friends on twitter and through my blog, I am getting more friend requests from people on facebook that I don't know "in real life." I've been pretty open with what I share on facebook, so I wanted a way to limit what some of my "friends" could see about me on facebook. here is what I have set up:

set up a group of the people that you want to limit
click "settings" on your facebook toolbar and click "privacy settings"
click "profile"
click "customize" for the items that you do not want the group to see
in the "who can see this" window that pops up, add the group name to the "except these people" section listed at the bottom
click "ok"
repeat steps 4-6 for all the items that you do not want the group to see

see how easy that was!

creating podcasts

2008-12-24T16:29:00.000-06:00

my brother in law asked me last night about creating/distributing a podcast. I twittered the question out and as usual, my twitter friends gave me some great responses! here are the links that I got:

librarian and information science news -- podcasting section
youtube video on podcasting
podcasting for dummies book

TalkShoe.com -- an online community/service that helps you create podcasts

thanks to @michelletrent, @stephenk, @onegate, @dananner, @nikkimk and all my other great twitter friends for all the suggestions. as I have said many times before, you guys ROCK!!

facebook 203 -- creating groups of friends

2008-12-21T20:45:00.002-06:00

on your facebook page, click on friends on the top toolbar and then click on all friends.
you will then see a list of all your friends. click on make a new list on the left hand side.
give your list a descriptive name (i.e. waco friends, on-line friends, or family) and hit enter.
you can add friends to your list by either typing their name or click on select mulitiple friends to bring up all your friends and you can click on the ones you want to add to the group. once you have selected the friends you want to add, click on save list.
you can add or remove friends from your groups at any time by clicking on the group name.
to remove someone from a group, just click on the "X" to the right of their picture and current status. you will then have the option to remove them from the list or remove them from your friends all together.

groups are a helpful way to send information and invites out to only certain friends, you can also lock down your profile by using groups. more about that next week!

facebook 202 -- removing friends

2008-12-14T07:51:00.001-06:00

it happens to all of us, sometimes we need to cut people out of our lives, so here is how to remove a friend that you have made on facebook:

click on "see all" on your friends section on the left-hand side of your facebook wall.
find the friend you want to remove and just click on the x for that person.

see, wasn't that easy just two steps!!

facebook 201 -- making friends

2008-12-07T20:43:00.001-06:00

there are two ways to find and friend people on facebook.

you can search for people by typing their names in the search field in the upper left hand corner on your facebook screen. OR
you can also search through the friends of your friend's by going to your friend's facebook page and click on "see all" under the friends section on the left hand side.
once you find the person that you want to be friends with on facebook, click on "add as friend" on the right hand side.
you can then click on "add a personal message" if you want to add a note with your friend request and then click on "add friend."
facebook will then send the person a message saying that you have requested to be their friend, and you will get a message once they accept you as a friend.

feel free to search for me and friend me on facebook. my name is caryn berger brown and if you put "it's all geek to me" in the message in your friend request, I will add you as a friend.

facebook 103 -- profile pictures

2008-11-30T21:12:00.001-06:00

first I will walk you through how to change or set your facebook profile picture and then I will tell you my thoughts on choosing a pic for your profile picture.

log into facebook and go to your wall, when you are logged into facebook, you can go to your wall by clicking on your name on the facebook toolbar (by settings)
you will see your picture (or a white silhouette in a light blue box if you haven't uploaded a picture yet)
mouse over your picture and you will see a change picture link appear in the upper right hand corner
click on the change picture link
click on upload a picture
click on browse
select the picture on your computer to upload for your profile picture and click on open
your profile picture will then be added to your facebook profile

here are my thoughts on profile pics:

you need to have one, this is what people will see when they search for you on facebook
try to have one with only you or you and one other person in the picture, so that you are the focus of the picture
it will be easiest for people to verify that they know you if you have a clear and recent profile pic
if you have multiple social media accounts (twitter, blog, facebook, etc), it is best to use the same profile picture across all of them

hope you are enjoying learning about facebook, keep the comments coming!

facebook 102 -- answers to your questions

2008-11-26T13:21:00.001-06:00

after my facebook 101 post, I got some really good questions and comments. I decided to add an extra post to address those.

why are you on facebook?
at first, I joined facebook because my hubby was on there, and he had found some good friends of ours that had moved away from waco on facebook. I wanted to reconnect with them as well. once I was on it, I was hooked. I use it as an easy way to share pictures with my friends, to keep up with new friends, and to reconnect with friends from high school or my hometown. I have also started using it to create deeper friendships with people that I have become friends with on twitter.

what is a wall?
every person on facebook has a section of their facebook profile that is called a wall. the wall is where your status updates show up, where your friends can write notes to you, where the pictures that you have posted, and gifts you have received on facebook will show up.

what do the different privacy settings mean?
in my facebook 101 post, I walked you through how to change your privacy settings. below is an explanation of what the different settings are:

my network and friends -- people that you have accepted as friends and people in your network can see

friends of friends -- people that you have accepted as friends and the people that they have accepted as friend can see

only friends -- only the people that you have accepted as friends can see

no one -- no one can see

thanks for all the comments, keep them coming!! I will have a new post up on sunday on profile pictures!

twitterberry -- it's twitter for your blackberry

2008-11-24T21:59:00.000-06:00

I do always jump into things with two feet! so a few days ago, when one of my twitter friends put out a request for someone to write a post on his blog about twitterberry, I quickly put my name in the hat (I don't know what I would do without my twitterberry). here is a link to my post on incslinger's blog!

http://simonsalt.wordpress.com/2008/11/24/guest-post-twitterberry-caryn-brown/

facebook101 -- getting started

2008-11-23T23:23:00.001-06:00

OK, so for my first lesson, I am going to show you how to get started with facebook:

first step -- create facebook account

go to www.facebook.com
enter your name, email address, password, sex, and birthday (they need your birthday to verify your age; you must be at least 13 to have a facebook account)
click on sign up
enter the words listed in the security check (if you haven't seen these before, they are just verifying that you are a human)
click on sign up
facebook will then send a confirmation e-mail to your e-mail address
you will need to log into your e-mail and click on the link in the e-mail from facebook to complete your account creation
once you click on the link in the e-mail, your account has been created

facebook will now prompt you to find friends through your e-mail address book. you can enter your e-mail password here and let it find friends from your e-mail contacts. we will talk more about that in facebook 201, so I am going to skip that for today, click on skip this step.

second step -- enter school and work information

if you want to, you can fill in your high school, college/university, and company information here along with graduation years. this will make it easier for you to find others that went to school with you or work with you.
click on save if you filled in the information or skip this step if you didn't

third step -- city/town network

you can enter the city/town that you live in to add you to that network. this will help you find other people on facebook that live near you.
click on join if you entered your city/town or click on skip this step.

you now have the option to search for people you know (click on find people you know) or enter additional profile information (click on view and edit your profile). I will post about finding people you know in facebook 201 and editing your profile is pretty self explanatory.

fourth step -- privacy settings
I wanted to include this in my first lesson because I think you should look through all these settings and make sure that you are only sharing what you are comfortable sharing. one point to remember is that you will have to approve all your friends, so anything that you set to friends only, you will have control over who sees it. also, you can make changes to these settings at anytime.

click on settings on the upper right-hand corner
click on privacy settings
there are 4 sections to the privacy settings; profile, search, news feed and wall, and applications
click on profile
profile (basic and contact information) --for each of the options listed you have 3 or 4 choices (only friends, friends of friends, networks (this will not be a choice if you did not enter a city/town in the network), or no one)
change any of the options that you want to under basic and contact information
click on save changes
click on privacy
click on search
there are three parts to the search section; search discovery, search result content, and public search listing
search discovery this controls how you can be found if someone searches for your name on facebook
search result content this controls what people can see when they find you in a search
public search listing, by default this box is checked. if you leave this box checked, someone can find you on facebook and see the items that you have checked in search result content when they search your name on search engines (i.e. google)
change any of the options that you want to under the search sections
click on save changes
click on privacy
click on news feed and wall
news feed and wall controls what is shown on your wall (what your friends can see when they go to your facebook page)
change any of the options that you want to under the actions within facebook and social ads sections
click on save changes
click on privacy
click on applications
read the overview
click on settings
change any of the options that you want to under the settings section
click on save changes

you have successfully completed your first lesson and created your facebook account. please leave me comments if there is anything that you are unclear about.

the geek plan

2008-11-21T19:37:00.001-06:00

after teaching my mom and mother-in-law how to use facebook recently, I realized that while there are quite a few blogs out there on how to use different social media and other web applications in general, there aren't many out there that show you the simple processes of setting these up and using the basic functions. that is what I plan to do with this blog. below are my thoughts on what I will cover. please comment if you have any suggestions. I look forward to learning with you.

facebook 101 -- getting started
facebook 102 -- answers to your questions
facebook 103 -- profile pictures
facebook 201 -- making friends
facebook 202 -- removing friends
facebook 203 -- creating groups of friends
facebook 301 -- limiting your profile
facebook 401 -- creating photo albums and uploading photos
facebook 402 -- adding captions and tagging friends in pictures
facebook 403 -- uploading videos
facebook 501 -- setting up facebook on your mobile phone
facebook 601 -- facebook etiquette
facebook 701 -- adding a link to your wall
facebook 702 -- creating a note on your wall
facebook 801 -- creating an event on facebook
twitter 101 -- what is twitter and how to create a twitter account
twitter 102 -- getting your account all set up
twitter 103 -- twitter rules and twitter lingo
twitter 201 -- who to follow on twitter
twitter 202 -- who to find people to follow on twitter
twitter 301 -- hashtags explained
twitter 302 -- twitter parties
twitter 303 -- tweet ups
twitter 401 -- sharing pictures on twitter
twitter 501 -- going through your twitter followers
twitter 601 -- feeding your blog posts into twitter
linked in 101
e-mail addresses
gmail 101
gmail 201 -- filters and labels
google reader 101
google reader 201 -- finding feeds
google reader 301 -- subscribing to feeds
picasa 101
picasa 201 -- cool things to do with your photos
picasa 301 -- web album
google calendar 101
google calendar 201 -- sharing your calendar
google calendar 301 -- viewing other calendars
google docs 101
google docs 201 -- uploading documents
google docs 301 -- sharing your documents
remember the milk 101
flickr 101
blogs 101

coming soon!!

2008-11-15T15:51:00.000-06:00

I am going to post an outline of what I am planning on blogging on here soon, check back!!