February 14th isn’t just Valentine’s Day. it’s the International Book Giving Day, a wonderful initiative to promote literacy.
Libreleft Books is celebrating by giving away “Inconstant Moon” eBooks to the first 5 people who wish me a “Happy International Book Giving Day” via email or comment.
Have a good one!
The NSA “is gathering nearly 5 billion records a day on the whereabouts of cellphones around the world.” (Washington Post)
Join us in protesting the National Security Agency’s wide-ranging invasion of privacy.
Unlike the Nigerian Scams that try to con people out of money by dangling a large mysterious financial windfall that the grifter will send after you give them a wad of cash, a “Phishing” attack uses bait to hook people, so they can get your personal information for Identity Fraud.
One things you can do to protect yourself when getting email that looks legitimate but that asks you to do something you shouldn’t ~ like giving personal information to a stranger ~ is to hover your cursor over the link you are supposed to click. If the text of the link is different than the actual link, don’t do it.
Phishing attacks pretend to come from someone we trust. In Canada we pay our taxes to the Canada Revenue Service, so when a Canadian gets an email from them we pay attention. Thiis is a phishing email I received that pretends to be from CRA:
*Claim Your Tax Refund Online*
We identified an error in the calculation of your tax from the last payment, amounting to $ 146.00. In order for us to return the excess payment, you need to create a Tax Gateway account after which the funds will be credited to your specified bank account.Please click “Get Started” below to claim your refund:
Get Started <http://www.cunningruse.com/.tax/>
We are here to ensure the correct tax is paid at the right time, whether this relates to payment of taxes received by the department or entitlement to benefits paid.
An email from the Canada Revenue Agency is likely to make us a little nervous, because most of us will wonder what we have done wrong on our tax return. But when we read this, we discover it isn’t anything terrible, but an error in our favor which brings welcome relief. The amount owing isn’t big enough to look fishy, just a small correction.
The crooks who sent this hope our little bit of fear followed by relief will cloud our judgement, so we will click on the link that will take us to a place where they can extract our personal information. After all, we will be giving the information to the government.
The “Get Started” link actually will send you to a different web page… which hovering reveals leads to www Cunning Ruse dot com.
If your bank, or the government, or any reputable retailer wants your personal information, they will not ask for it through email, because email is not safe, private or secure. Anyone who asks for your personal information in unencrypted email is either foolish or a setting you up for a scam.
Don’t do it. Privacy Matters.
Promotion is necessary to sell books. That’s one of the distasteful jobs traditional publishers saved novelists from. Although many self publishers have a hard time doing this, it needs to get done.
In today’s world, we need an online presence. Authors need blogs, whether we self publish or not. Registering our blogs with Technorati is supposed to help promote them. When you sign up with Technorati, you can fill in a profile. But to register your blog you need to “claim it” which you do by posting the unique code Technorati assigns to you (for this blog, it’s K76X4UNJWKR9 ) in a blog post. What this does is prove to Technorati that you have the keys to the blog you say you own, so Technorati validates that you do actually control it. Of course, this can be annoying, since once posted, the code needs to stay in the blog forever to guarantee your continued Technorati accreditation.
Another big part of self publishing is being your own boss. Self Publishers get to make our own decisions, and that includes learning to use our time effectively. Which is why I have not bothered to go through the rigorous Technorati process with all my blogs. In my experience there have always been glitches in the process.
For instance, today I upgraded my personal Technorati profile. There were several new fields to which I could add information if I chose, including links to various web platforms like Facebook. But after getting all the information, when I pressed the “save” button, Technorati didn’t like the facebook URL for my Facebook author page. But in rejecting it, all the other information I had added or changed in the profile was wiped out. This is a mistake common to many online forms, and it is always annoying and a waste of the user’s time. Silly me, I went through the whole process again, this time using my personal Facebook URL. But Technorati rejected that too, again wiping out everything I input. For my next attempt, I filled in the other info one field at a time, saving after each.
And again my Facebook URL was rejected. One of the things I have learned not to waste my time on is trying to contact a human being at giant web platforms like Facebook, since it’s generally pretty futile.
I decided at that point to “claim” this Libreleft Books blog on Technorati. Again, after accepting my g+ Libreleft Books page, Technorati refused the link to my Libreleft Books Facebook Page. This tells me something is broken, whether at Facebook or Technorati I can’t say.
Nor can I say whether having verified blogs has been particularly helpful or not. This might be different if I involved myself in Technorati in other ways, but I am spread too thin as it is. If you have any experience, I’d appreciate hearing Technorati feedback either way.
During a barbeque this past summer, Terry converted this picnic table into an umbrella table. The table umbrellas are mounted on a pole runnung through the table into a base. Terry began with a sun umbrella that had no base.
He covered the top of the picnic table with a plywood cut to size, then drilled a hole — just large enough to accommodate the umbrella pole — through the plywood and the table below
Under the table he mounted a board to serve as the base for the umbrella.
The final touch was an extra piece of 2.4 for stability. Bravo Terry!
Just add tablecloth and serve!
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