HI TECH CAT FLAP

If you want to let your cat in and out without inviting in the whole animal world, consider the “Cat Flap,” $83 on Amazon. It’s as if each cat had his or her own door key.  A reader told me about it. Thanks to the Flap, he said, the raccoons immediately stopped menacing his pet. The cat is now “the neighborhood rock star.”  Here’s the high tech part: It works with a microchip implanted in your cat or in its collar, recognizing up to 40 cats. Hopefully you don’t have that many. The Cat Flap’s opening is 5.9” (height) by 5.5” (width). I wonder if fat cats can squeeze in.  The Cat Flap is a little hard to find because […]

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GOOGLE SLIDES CREATES THE PERFECT TRAVEL BLOG

“Do you know of any free, easy-to-use blog-type websites?” my niece asked, before heading for Costa Rica. “Google Slides,” I said. That may sound like a funny choice. Google Slides is typically used for PowerPoint-type presentations. But there’s no reason it can’t also be used for travel blogs. The recommended blog-creation tools, even the “kid-friendly” ones, are far more complicated than they need to be. My niece agreed. “I know Google Slides,” she said, “but I didn’t think to use it as a travel blog. That’s a good idea.” On a computer, go to slides.google.com and click on the blank presentation at the top, or on the “photo album” template. If you choose the photo album, you’ll get a traditional […]

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WEBSITES VERSUS BLOGS

We recently wrote about some website creation tools but didn’t talk about blogs, which are what many people really want and are easy to create and maintain.

What’s the difference? A web site contains recurring information and links that are appropriate to businesses and organizations. A blog is a series of posts. These posts can be personal comments, stories, political opinions, anything you like. Each time you post, the item goes to the top of the site’s home page.

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THIS WRITING IS WROTE ROTTEN

TechCrunch.com is the number one tech blog and we look at it just about every day.  What drives us nuts, however, is their creative grammar. Here’s a particularly egregious sample from an article entitled “Redbox Prepping Movie Streaming Service.” “The company’s CEO stated that the service would do be subscription-based…” (As in “do-be-do-be do?”)

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60 MINUTES INTERVIEW: WIKILEAKS FOUNDER

Wikileaks Founder Julian Assange gave a rare interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes. Wikileaks, Assange said, is a conduit for information for other journalists (the New York Times recently published some of its leaks).  If someone in the State Department knows of wrong doing and has no way of getting the information out to the public, Wikileaks can help, he said. As an example, he said 15,000 civilian deaths in Iraq went unreported. Assange refuted the idea that he is doing anything illegal. Military personnel can go to jail for sharing classified documents, but not publishers. In the last 50 years, none have, he said. Click here for interview.

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CREATE YOUR OWN BLOG

Tips for bloggers: Where to find “podsafe” music, how to do a business blog, etc.

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GETTING OUT OF THE SLUSH

Inkpop.com helps writers get discovered.

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BOOKS: “PUBLISHING A BLOG WITH BLOGGER”

This new book makes blogging easy.

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BOOKS: SAY EVERYTHING

Scott Rosenberg’s “Say Everything” looks at blogs: how we got here and where we’re going.

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THE TWITTER BOOK

You’ll find some real “tweets” in “The Twitter Book,” by Tim O’Reilly and Sarah Milstein; $20 from oreilly.com.

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