My Digital Makeover [dot] Net

Don't let this happen to you.

Computer Weekly dicided to go all dishy about how certain puublic relations people at certain pulic relations companies and certain business ended up stepping all over their .... reputation by Twittering before thinking.  I recommed the whole article business this one I must call out as it concerns one of the brightest lights of social media Public Relations. 

Top 10 Twitter marketing blunders in photos

Senior VP at PR company Edelman, Steve Rubel, decided to post a negative comment about PC Magazine on his  public Twitter feed. It read, “PC Mag is another. I have a free sub but it goes in the trash."

In response the magazine said it was considering a boycott of the PR company, and Rubel offered a public apology after the magazine editor-in-chief asked, “If we’re not relevant to Edelman’s employees, then how could we be relevant to their clients?”

[more]

You just updated Firefox and...

... some of your favorite plug-ins are now disabled.

I've just finished receiving a spate of email from readers along the lines of, "I just installed the new update to Firefox and I just found out that [fill in the blank] doesn't work anymore.  I know exactly what you mean.  You've spent the time to tune Firefox into a productivity machine.  Wisestamp is handline your tricked our signature for your web-based emails, sharethis owns your ability to pass along cool sites and articles to friends and delicious has a catalog of about five years worth of bookmarks.  --And they're gone.  All gone.

Well, not really.  Welcome to the world of being an early adoptor.

Call me jaded, but I've been in the business long enough to know what that a new software release is always going to be a Traumatic Event.  In these day of Web 2.0, even more so.  First, I neve use a ".0" release, these are the software releases numbered 1.0, 2.0, 3.0 etc.  The likelihood of a company announcing a clean, bug free .0 version is exactly that 0%.  At least wait for the .1 relase. 

Then, there's the issue of the new Web 2.0 interdependencies.  At last count, according to Mozilla, the company that publishes Firefox, there are more than 5,000 add-ons for the product.  And at last count, I'm using 27 extensions and only two different themes.  Some of these extensions are from companies that are actually in business and others are published as a labor a love by individuals.  (Let's give a special tip of the hat to Ms. Gina Trapani who publishes the series of "Better gMail," "Better gReader," etc. extensions that make so much for productive for me.) 

Here's the point, some of these people and companies publishing extensions and themes are going to be really on top of their game and the extension still won't be compatible with the brand, spankin' new release of Firefox for a couple of days, couple of weeks, or, sad to say, ever.  You have two choices:  One, upgrade right now and bit the bullet when you find out that your favorite extension is now out-of-date.  Two, mark your calendar for two weeks after the new release and save that date for your upgrade.  The odds are much better that the extensions have been re-coded to be compatible for the new release.  And, (thank you very much, Firefox) your extensions will automagically up-date when you install the new release. 

Just in case some of you might be reading this and haven't made the switch to Firefox and are asking yourself, "Why on earth would I want to add that complication into my life?  I'll just sit tight on iE (or Chrome or Opera)?  You make a good argument but once you've experienced the power and flexibility and ability to customize your browser experience with Firefox, I just don't know how you could ever be satisfied with anything else.  True, Chrome runs like a scalded dog and Opera has some good cross platform benefits, but...

I just Firefox on three different platforms (Ubuntu, Mac and ... you know, the OS from Seattle).  My bookmarks, passwords, history and auto-fills are completely synched across half-a-dozen different machines thanks to xMarks (formerly Foxmarks).  My browsers are tricked out so that the menus and interface is completely minimized (to maximize my screen acreage for demonstration purposes), and I love having access to my Amazon S3 disk through my S3Fox extension.  Oh, and my to-do list is also incorporated through the Toodledo plug-in.  I could go on but I won't bore you with increasingly arcane and geeky references. 

And I like the idea that Firefox is supported by such a large community of people who have invested so much time and energy into the platform.  --It's something I look for when selecting software or a platform:  How big is the community?  I don't ming a lot of other people doing some of my thinking and research for me. 

So, hang in there.   Don't be such an eager beaver.  Whoa up and let the rest of the community catch up with you so you'll have a softlanding when you do finally upgrade. 

It's 2009 already. Are you managing your online identity? Are you making the Internet work for you, instead of the other way around?

How may I help you?

I need to raise the profile of my practice.  I need to find prospects.  I need to stay top-of-mind with prospects and clients.  I need to recruit employees.  I need to get competitive information.  I need to stay in touch with the latest trends.  Then, once we collect all these needs, we can refer to them throughout the day and show how what we're demoing and talking about is a cost-effective, low-task way of filling these needs. 

How can I maximize my productivity on the Internet and accelerate / make more efficient my daily media diet?

How can I connect what I read to what I blog about and make it one seamless program?

How can I keep better track of interesting web pages, especially when I use more than one computer in the course of my day? 

What's the best way to re-purpose content into blog postings?

WSJ, 3.7.9: How to Twitter.

I think it's a bit presumptuous to be declaring already that the formula for communicating on Twitter has been solved.  I do think that you probably have some pretty good ideas about how you might use this new channel for influence and staying in touch with the people in your life and career that matter.  I won't go into the details now, especially as some of my own opinions are just half-formed and not very useful to you.  Just let me share this one thing with you:  Never before in the history of the world have we had such a chance to enlarge of diminish our reputation thanks to the wondrous internet.  Every single thing you write on the this huge wall will last forever and become part of how people think of you and understand you.  So don't mess up.  Okay?

Julia Angwin in her Wall Street Journal article I want to pass along with you, as long as you take the advice with a grain of salt, keeping in mind what I wrote to you above.  Here's some sensible advice from the article: 

I spent a surprising amount of time trying out tweets in my head before tweeting. I aimed to tweet once a day, but often came up short. I found it difficult to fit in both news and opinion. Without a point of view, though, my updates were pretty boring. So, for instance, I changed "eating strawberries during a snowstorm." Into "eating strawberries during a snowstorm. not carbon efficient but lovely."

Here's a link to the rest of the story.

Lay Off 2.0. Act Now.

 If it's been more than three years since you looked for a job, and you have even a theoretical interest in the headline of this post, then you need to know that many fundamental things aobut looking for work has changed and the absolutely best time to learn about this is while you are still gainfully employed and have access to some of your most important tools. If you act now,k you will prevent yourself from endingup unemployed and disoriented in a whole new world of job search and without your most important tools, tools that belong to you and not your past employer. Furthermore, these are steps you should be taking anyway to ensure your protecting the investment you've made in yourself and your profession.

My wife's grandfather was a ship fitter in the Brooklyn Navy Yards and his son inherited his father's the heavy wrenches, which wasn't much use to his psychological practice. Many years ago, when I was starting out in my career, I was working for a public relations agency and had spent a couple of years there and was preparing to take a much nicer position at a much nicer agency.