Thievery, Tailgating, and Tips for Your Tool Belt
As digital thieves contrive ever more clever and convoluted traps, we must remain vigilant about protecting our online identities–keep your coterie in lock-down and personal information secure. It’s takes two to tango though, so think twice before you fake a name online.
With money being tight these days, one has to be resourceful. That hairdryer of yours? Go ahead and add it to your tool belt. However, money is not tight for all; where do the wealthy settle down? Forbes enlightens us. If you’ve got some extra funds, perhaps take a ride on the Florida foreclosure tour bus?
Football season is once again upon us. If you’re a football enthusiast, then check out these tailgating tips (or sailgating if you’re a Washington Husky). If, like my mother, you are not a sports fan, then we recommend the New York Times Arts section for reviews on movies, TV, plays, art exhibitions, and more. Not sure what tailgating is? Wikipedia sheds light.
And last, for those who experience pain–joints, back, head–some helpful ideas.
Disney house, Facebook changes, and money matters
Notorious for copyright protection, Disney surprised a developer and architect in Utah when it agreed to allow them to build a replica of the house from the Disney-Pixar movie ‘Up’. According to the New York Times, although over 27,000 people have paid to tour the property, it’s still for sale. It can be yours for $400,000.
The Washington Post reports that Facebook is making some sweeping changes when it comes to how you share content with friends, and many look to be inspired by some of Google+’s more robust features.
In these tough times, the last thing we need is to replace a major appliance. Yahoo! Finance’s Financial Fit column tells how to prolong the life of some major appliances.
You’ve probably seen the commercial where a certain bank will round up purchases you make on your debit card and place them in your savings account for you (and therefore pocket a slightly higher fee from the merchant), but sometimes you need a more robust savings plan to build a rainy-day fund. Yahoo! Finance has some suggestions for building up your own nest egg.
Wired is impressed with Third Rail’s new iPhone 4 charging case.
iPhone tracking, ordering to overeat, and how to cook the Easter Bunny.
This week brought news of movement on Capitol Hill toward Internet and technology privacy legislation, presciently timed with recent news of the iPhone and iPad tracking issue.
Obama: Housing ‘Probably the Biggest Drag on the Economy’
The last chapter has been written for Google Video for a number of years. The site stopped accepting new videos a number of years ago, but Google is now officially pulling the plug. Still have videos on the site? Need to figure how to get them off? Wired‘s Webmonkey has the info.
Another sign of the Apocalypse? Mashable via CNN reports on how the tablet war is heating up in restaurants, replacing live waiters or waitresses. Apparently people order more when they can do it digitally themselves. A tablet doesn’t judge when you order a piece of chocolate lava cake. Just what we need…
You know you can listen to music, make a call, check sports scores, and lots of other things on a smart phone, but did you know you can check your heart rate? Lots of gadgets these days have secondary functions that people overlook. Yahoo! uncovers some gadget surprises.
To celebrate Earth Day, many businesses are offering consumers free stuff, good deals, and chances to win valuable prizes. Yahoo Green has gathered just a sampling of Earth Day deals.
And speaking of green: I wouldn’t even know where to buy one, but Fox News had an interesting story on a not-so-traditional Easter Dinner idea: how to cook a rabbit. Really the story is more of a why cook a rabbit: It is leaner than chicken, veal or turkey, with less fat and cholesterol. It has half the calories per pound compared to beef and pork and is the most easily digestible protein around. They grow fast, meaning they impact the environment less and don’t need antibiotics or hormones. Sounds like a great idea to me.
You’ve all seen the movies where the heroes outrun an explosion or even use it to propel their mode of escape – like a surfer riding a wave. Yeah, right. Gizmodo tries to answer the question how big an explosion could you realistically survive?
Who’s Ron Phipps, what is the key to getting email read, and why does Facebook make me sad?
“4G” is the hot buzzword in smart phones right now. All the major carriers claim theirs is the ‘fastest’, ‘largest’, ‘best’, ‘most reliable’, etc. But beyond marketing jargon, what does it all mean? Wired looks at the four major carriers in the US and compares their 4G flavors. They are not created equally. And as it turns out, they’re not really 4G…
Email marketing is never easy. Getting people to hit read or open rather than delete is a constant challenge. Forbes recently had an article on how to write a compelling email subject heading. Their advice: urgency, consistency, focus, and no exclamation points!
About 40% of visitors to your website aren’t entering through the home page, so you must make sure every page of your website is informative and supports your business goals, writes Mikal E. Belicove in the February issue of Entrepreneur. He recommends checking your website’s analytics to determine where visitors are entering your site and having a clear call to action on every page.
It’s always good to know more about who is leading your organization. California Real Estate profiles the 2011 NAR President, Ron Phipps.
eReaders continue to gain ground in the marketplace as prices drop and competition spurs development. But how do you decide on which eReader to get? MSN’s Smart Spending guru says with it’s closed environment Kindle isn’t the answer.
Social Media! Social Networking! How many of us are getting tired of all this? But these days Facebook has spread its tentacles beyond the simple poke and “Dave is having caviar and champagne in Cannes with @Angelina Jolie” pretentious status update. It’s becoming hard not to have a Facebook account. But what if you want to keep it on the DL? The Atlantic has a quick step-by-step guide to making yourself virtually invisible while still maintaining your Facebook account.
And if your friends aren’t virtually hidden, think twice about turning to your news feed for solace if you’re down. A new study finds that Facebook can actually make you sadder. Everyone’s lives seem so much more colorful and wonderful than yours (see champagne, Cannes, and Angelina above), leading you to falsely lament your actually very nice place in the world.
Yikes! According to a recent study, more young kids know how to work smart phone apps than can tie their shoes.
With over half a billion members, Facebook is THE social network today. It’s also an ever-changing, evolving time-suck. Poking is passé, privacy rights are in flux, and don’t get me started on Farmville! Rule number one for Facebook – or any other social network for that matter – is to assume all the privacy shields you have created will fail and your whole profile will be visible to everyone. Before you post that photo or add that snarky comment step back and consider: how would you feel if your mother saw this? This NEW Field Guide goes over the basics, reviews current security settings and explores how REALTORS® are using the social network to build their brand.
Pop-up stores are gaining in popularity with both small businesses and property managers, says the Wall Street Journal: “Large fashion retailers and high-end designers have long demonstrated the success of the pop-up model for generating buzz about new brands and designers. But now, small businesses in a wide range of industries are testing new retail concepts and markets by leasing commercial space on a short-term basis, in some cases for just a few weeks.” The July-August issue of Inc. Magazine offers some practical tips for making a pop-up store successful.
Is Google losing its edge as the be-all-and-end-all of search engines? Maybe, according to CNN/Business Insider’s analysis of the Bing/Google smackdown. Google has adopted some of Bing’s innovations, such as photography on the opening page. Bing now incorporates Twitter results in their searches, and Google followed quickly also adding Twitter. In contrast to Google, Bing groups search results by category, such as Web, News, Wikipedia, Blogs and Images, and provides a list of related terms that might be useful. Google lists results links and offers different ways of searching in the left column, such as date of results, sites with images and related searches. Try it and see which search engine works best for you.
The Wall Street Journal has been running an interesting series this week, What They Know, on internet tracking and online privacy. Minority Report is closer than you think. Most of the series is available for free on the journal’s website. The step-by-step guide on how to strengthen your online privacy is especially useful.
As a good example of “what they know”, CNET’s Technically Incorrect reports how the town of Riverhead, NY, scoured images from Google Earth to find unpermitted swimming pools — and collected $75,000 in fines from the offending homeowners.
And last but certainly not least for this week, Realtors Property Resource™ (RPR) is wrapping up its beta testing and preparing to launch in a few weeks. The RPR Blog is a great place to find out what RPR is (and isn’t) and keep up with its progress.
