When Adventure Girl Stef Michaels invited me to the 140 Smiles event I knew I couldn’t say no.  140 Smiles is the official pre-event for TWTRCON and is designed to raise money and awarenes for Operation Smile, a 501(c)3 organization that helps children all around the world.  I’m going to ask for your help with this (just scroll down a little if you want to get right to it), but wanted to share with you a blurb about what this great organization does.

Since its founding, Operation Smile volunteers have treated more than 130,000 children born with cleft lips, cleft palates and other facial deformities and the organization has a presence in 51 countries. In addition to contributing free medical treatment, Operation Smile trains local medical professionals in its partner countries and leaves behind crucial equipment to lay the groundwork for long-term self-sufficiency.

To know me at all is to know that I am extremely sympathetic to groups like this and have personally worked to help people (particularly children) around the world in different ways for most of my life.  I know that most of you feel the same way, so I want to ask you for your help.  It’s really quite simple, you’ll make a huge difference and you get to play around with Twitter! What could be better?

This blog is about technology, social media, marketing and all of that stuff, and I rarely write anything about my personal life here.  However, all of that is just that…stuff.  It’s my work, and although I’m deeply passionate about it, it isn’t my life.  My life is made up of friends and family, relationships, memories, common joys and sorrows and the hope of the future.

I woke up this morning to the incredibly devastating news that one of my best friends, Scott, had died last night in a plane crash.  He loved to fly and was an incredible pilot who was happiest at about 10,000 feet in his favorite little plane,  November Four Yankee Hotel.  Although I moved out of Oregon a couple of years ago and haven’t had much face time with him, I saw him just a week ago when he made a surprise visit and stood with me on Malibu beach.  We stood barefoot in the sand, laughed, talked and caught up.  That time will now be burned in my memory.

I know the folks down at ResumeBucket in Santa Monica, and I’ll vouch for them, they have an awesome thing going.  If you are a job seeker in Southern California they are hosting an event this Thursday night and you won’t want to miss it.  Here are full details, do yourself a favor and make a point of being there.  If I weren’t out of town consulting a client I wouldn’t miss this…so go for me, and take good notes!

WHEN: Thursday, May 21 – 7:00pm to 8:30pm

WHERE: The Santa Monica Library, Martin Luther King Jr. Auditorium

ResumeBucket.com, a local Internet company that specializes in helping people find jobs with free online resume posting, is holding its first “Get Hired 2.0″ — a free event that will provide insight into the current job market for local jobseekers. A panel of top hiring managers and HR professionals from successful companies will be advising attendees on the best practices of getting a job in this unique economy.

Earlier today I received a private message on Facebook from a personal friend of mine asking me to “Check 151.im”.  Knowing her and knowing the type of message, I immediately recognized it as a phishing scheme…that is, an attempt for me to voluntarily hand over personal information to a site that I think is something I regularly use.  Very often phishing schemes involve bank information, but in this case the website in question looks like the login page for Facebook.  Understand that it is not Facebook, it is an attempt to get your username and password!

Although I do most of my work in my office, I am constantly on the move, and as such I need to be able to move my office with me.  If you are a consultant or a road warrior, or just want to be more efficient away from your primary workstation, I hope this post will offer some good suggestions for you. Running a mobile office should be simple, but can get a little tricky.  Don’t be caught coming up short when travelling, just remember that today’s work is important, and in a recessive economy even a simple mistake like not being able to take a phone call when you don’t have a cell signal may cost you a job.  As always, I welcome any tips or tricks you have, please drop a note in the comments to share. With that in mind, let’s get started!

I advise companies about how to optimize social media for brand exposure, adoption and support.  Because of this I am constantly talking to potential clients on the phone, discussing their goals and desires for an effective online campaign.  If you are in the business of consulting or are thinking about moving in that direction I’ve put together a short list of tips and tricks for preparing for that phone call, because as I’ve learned the hard way, if you aren’t prepared you’re not going to get the job. With the economy in the condition it is, every call is critical.

1. Know the client.  There is nothing worse than being asked a question about the company that you are pitching and not knowing what they are talking about.  I’m not talking about obscure facts, this is about their core competencies.  Make sure you have done your research, have at least a general familiarity with the key leaders, products, services and areas of operation.

Note: I originally published this in November 2008 but have had several people ask me about backup plans since then, so it’s worth a reprint.

Have you ever had a computer crash? Hard drive failure, BSOD, an unfortunate meeting of Diet Coke and your hardware? I have. It’s painful. Trying to restore data feels like something that the U.N. should condemn as universally cruel and unusual. System failure and data recovery is such a horrible thing to go through, it used to be a nice source of revenue for my former tech company…people would hire us and pay a lot of money to see if we could recover their financials, their emails, their files and their pictures. If you have ever gone though this, you know what I’m talking about.

Easy integration with other social networks is new for FriendFeed

I’ve recently been getting a lot of emails from FriendFeed letting me know that somebody new is now following me over there.  I have started receiving so many that I decided it needed to look into it…was I suddenly interesting whereas I was not before, or was there some change at FriendFeed that I needed to know about?  Turns out I’m still not interesting, but there are some exciting changes at the social media aggregator FriendFeed, including the ability to import all of you Twitter friends’ feeds.

I’ve just downloaded and installed Microsoft Windows 7 Release Candidate (RC)  on my laptop, and I’m happy to report that it was quick, easy and I’m loving it! I installed the beta when it was first released, and even for a beta release it was surprisingly not buggy at all.  Given that, I was excited to get the RC up and running.  Although I’ve only been running through it for a few hours, I want to give you a quick how-to guide, my experience with installing my “must have” applications and my overall initial impressions.