Maybe you've heard about the First Lady's work in fighting childhood obesity.  While preventing a health problem that can be ultimately fatal for children is certainly a worthy cause, some are taking issue with the reasoning and methods used by this government program.  I'll leave the political "Why is it the government's responsibility to watch your child's weight?" question alone for now.  I'll also leave the "How about if you let parents decide what to feed their own kids," retort out of this discussion.  Really, I'm not even going to mention the "I don't even have children, so why should I have to pay to keep your kids from eating like pigs? dilemma faced by many of us.

Right now, I'm going to focus on the logic that TV and computer games (specifically the Sony Playstation) are half the problem. 

Yes, it is likely that a lot of children spend a shocking amount of time in front of their "screens," as the program calls it.  But how does this come about?  In many cases, I would argue that it is because parents are looking for safe ways to occupy their children's time.  When I was growing up, we were able to spend much of our free time outside, running around, riding bikes, walking back and forth to our friends' homes, and hanging out at the mall.   We no longer live  in that world.  Many parents no longer feel safe letting their beloved offspring run loose in public, due to the fact that the rights of child predators are now considered as important or more important that the rights of their potential victims. 

So, here's a radical thought.  How about if those in our government who want children to exercise more start putting their time and energy into making our streets safe enough for the kids to actually do that?

Also see:  Michelle Obama Program Blames Sony Playstation for Making America's Children Fat 

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking. 
 

As the great Garth Brooks once crooned, "Well, it was bound to happen, and one night it did." 

The news most of you probably missed over the weekend, because you were busy with your families and BBQ's, was that Craig's List is no longer allowed to host the human trafficking industry under the guise of "adult services."  Well, that's not the way the headlines are reading. 

Actually, most of the web is pretty up-in-arms, spouting "first amendment" issues.  Some are even using the reasoning that making these services harder to obtain boosts the black market (I'm pretty sure these services already were on the black market, but whatever). I'm big fan of the first amendment, along with the rest of the U.S. Constitution.  Unlike some of my colleagues, however,  I'm not thoroughly convinced that pornography, and many of the sub-categories thereof are given a free pass under the Constitution - particulary when said pornography ends up victimizing hapless women from third-world countries, and children.

The Crag's List admin, rather than simply disallowing advertisement for adult "services," however has decided to stage their own protest, by marking the section as "censored." Apparently, however, some advertisers are already finding a way around the new policies.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
 

 Well, folks, we've made it to Friday, again.  We've been talking a lot about online security, and particularly Facebook privacy, lately - particularly how to adjust your settings to protect your location, and keep your name from being used to promote Facebook "features" without your permission.  In all fairness, we wanted to give Facebook an opportunity to defend itself, but seeing as they're kind of busy with over 499,999,999 other members (approximately), we wondered how we would do that.

Fortunately Mark Zuckerberg, the owner of Facebook, put his response on YouTube. 

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
 

Have you ever wished you could see yourself through the eyes of others?  Well, now you can - on Facebook, anyway.  Once you think you have your privacy settings the way you want them, you can check to see how your profile looks to one or each of your friends.  Here's how:

Once you're logged into Facebook, click on "Account," in the top righthand corner, then "Privacy Settings," on the drop-down menu.  Near the center-bottom of the page, click on "Customize Settings," and make any adjustments you want to make.  When you're finished, click on "Preview My Profile."

At the top of the page, type in any of your friend's names, and you'll see your profile the way it looks from that person's account. You can do this with one friend, or try it with as many friends as you want to, if you have different settings for different friends.  If you're unhappy with how much or how little you are sharing, simply go back to "customize settings," and make your adjustments, then try again.

Also see:  The Facebook archive, on the WebRev blog

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
 

We've been talking a lot about online security and privacy lately, and I figured this was a good time to reiterate what we all really should know, but sometimes forget:  There is no such thing as "privacy" on the web.  Just like your mother used to tell you, if you want to keep a secret, you'd better keep it yourself.  The web is no different, and in fact, it gives gossips and newsmongers a larger bullhorn. 

It seems like daily we hear stories of some now-famous person being humiliated by photos or videos of themselves during their younger, wilder days, being posted online - like this crazy stunt by our current Vice President (Aww, Joe, you're so crazy! Ha ha!).  The ones we don't hear about in the national news, of course are the TRULY humiliating ones, like some job-seeker's or college applicant's sexting adventures showing up on MySpace or YouTube.

Then, of course, not all online embarrassment comes from drunken parties or ill-advised dating games.  Some of us, who like to blog or be active in the social networks just have stuff online was relevant at the time, but several years later makes us appear hot-tempered, silly, or like really, really, bad spellers.  Sometimes this stuff can be deleted, and sometimes it cannot.  The problem is that even if we have access to the site this stuff is posted on, and can deleted it (or can convince the site owner to delete it), the search engines often store it in a "cache" for an indefinite period of time (unless, of course, you delete your stuff in error, and need the stuff in the cache, in which case the cache will be deleted within hours - Murphy's Law, don't ya know).

If this has happened to you, you can try getting it deleted using instructions like these,  but you'll have to do it on every search engine individually, and good luck with that.  You're better off to just start posting good, current material like crazy, and getting your online friends to link to it, to push your "good" stuff to the top of the search engine results pages, and hope no one does an in-depth search (to page two, three, or four) of those search results). 

Better idea?  Remember that what happens online stays online, and guard your digital reputation with care.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.
 

It's been awhile since I had a Facebook privacy scandal to write about...let's see about three months?  (Oh, and speaking of Don't Use Friend-Finder, Facebook is STILL telling your friends you used that insidious feature, whether you did or not.)

So, what's up, now?  Well, remember how I told you that Facebook was  going all Foursquare?  At the time, it didn't seem there would be a major privacy issue, because it was (still is) an opt-in (aka "check in") feature.  The problem new users are running into is that once they check in, they are not always aware that ALL of their friends can see where they are. 

For some people this is not a problem, but it can take others off-guard.   They may not even realize their profile could be poppling up on the phones of people they had forgotten were on their friends' lists (say...parents, children, significant others, exes, secret stalkers...).  The default is set to "friends only," and "yes" on the "people here now," info.  You have to opt-out of the second one - and this includes if your friends have tagged you as being "here" (wherever "here" is).  Please note, there are two boxes review and check for Facebook places, as shown below.  To get to this box, click on "account," in the top-right of your screen, then "privacy." then "customize settings." 

This is one of those features that can be a lot of fun to use - IF YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'RE DOING.  If you don't, you might get caught in an awkward situation, so educate yourself.

Jennifer Pointer (e-mail) is in Tulsa, OK. She promotes a simple, a low-tech approach to effective online profile management, search engine optimization and social networking.