Hacked!

...or phished, or whatever it's called. Yup, got a message in my Facebook inbox from a lovely friend, with a somewhat mysterious title: Look at this. When I opened the message there was a succinct instruction to click on the link given. Nothing else. I wondered why my friend was being so mysterious and, curiosity piqued, clicked on the link which took me to a blank page. Thinking the page hadn't loaded properly I went back and clicked again. Same result.

This morning I got a message from her - sent to all her Facebook contacts, I imagine - advising us that she hadn't sent us the link and that if we got it we shouldn't click on it. She also mentioned that Facebook had frozen her account while advising her to change her password.

Then the messages started coming in from some of my other FB friends: Hi, did you send a link to me? I clicked but nothing happened. One friend did not click because she got a phishing warning. Another friend told me her click opened a window that asked for her e-mail address and password - which she entered!

A flurry of messages followed, all from 'friends', all with the same title and invitation to click. I changed my password, posted a warning on my FB page and sent a warning message to everyone on my list. Then I ran my antivirus and spyware scans, hoping for the best. I had no idea what the hackers would do next so I painstakingly made a list of all my FB friends and their contact info. Wouldn't like to go over there and find everything had disappeared into the cybervoid. Minutes ago another friend - who had gotten the message to go click from 'me' earlier today - let me know that FB had frozen her account as well, pending her changing the password. Interesting, no?

Beware, beware, beware. These villains thrive on the trust we put in our friends. If something with, for example, my son's name in the sender field comes into my inbox, my defenses disappear without my even thinking about it, and I'm clicking away and following instructions before I'm even aware of what I'm doing. Hopefully this episode will serve as a warning to me, and to you. The Internet isn't the fuzzy friendly place we imagine it is sometimes. Let us not fall into complacency.

There's another angle to this. I've been hearing rumors about FB beginning to charge users for the privilege of using their services. Being a great fan of conspiracy theories, I've been wondering if they're engineering this rash of break-ins to convince us that we need a more secure, PAID version of their service? What think you?

Nikon or Canon?

Canon Powershot SX10IS 10MP Digital Camera

The photographers among you might recall my fascination with the Nikon D40. I intended to buy it with my little book advance but, alas, that plan fell by the wayside as more practical imperatives became, well, imperative. A few of you have asked me why this camera? Someone swore by a Pentax, a couple others (including my son) think I really need a Canon Rebel. So, why the D40? Because I wanted a DSLR and was taken aback to find this brand in the price range I like to think I can afford, for one; it's a Nikon, for heaven's sake, and that name carries a lot of weight. In addition, most of the reviews I've read are honest to goodness rave reviews.

I've been having second thoughts over the last couple of days, though, so I pulled up the one-star reviews on Amazon. They aren't many, compared to the raves, but they gave me reason to pause and rethink. So, I started researching all over again, and one guy's advice stopped me cold. He asked something along these lines: Do you intend to get really serious about photography? Do you have any experience with digital cameras? Do you have any experience with DSLRs? Then he suggested that if you're a complete newbie you should start with a plain old digital camera with a few manual features, have fun with the auto setting, play around with the manual settings, and then decide if you really want to get in deeper.

I don't think I want to get serious about this thing; I have enough distractions as it is. I just want to take decent shots of scenery, my mother's yard, animals, my family and friends, as well as fiddle around a bit with a few SIMPLE options. When I look at my son's DSLR my head begins to buzz: so many knobs, buttons, features. So much to learn. And the damn thing is heavy!

The Canon Powershot SX10IS 10MP Digital Camera with 20x Wide Angle Optical Image Stabilized Zoom - a mouthful, that - is what I'm looking at now. It's just a few dollars cheaper than the D40 but I'm reading the specs and reviews and I'm convinced - almost - that this is what I really need. The 20x optical zoom - see flamingo photos above - convinced me. The Canon PowerShot A590IS was a contender, and it's less than half the price of the SX, but that 4x zoom can't compare. The SX is pretty enough, too. Some of the others that are recced are so ugly I didn't even check them out. (Stop screaming, men! Aesthetics are important, as you visually hard-wired Y-chromosomers should know!)

What think you?

Little green things

Yes, I've been doing it again: staying up late fiddling with... widgets. I've been seeing blogs with lovely website-like tabs at the top, and avarice got the better of me. I wanted some! Had to have them to shore up my author-website resistance! So off I trotted into the cybersphere on the scent of tabby-widgets. Apparently Blogger doesn't provide them, but techies have been designing their own all over the place and I stumbled across this site. Hey presto! Instant tabs!

Well, not exactly. The only HTML I know is what is required to italicize or bold or insert a link in blog comments, so I had to fiddle around (and around, and around) until I got rid of unwanted stuff (don't even ask because I don't have a clue!) - and there is the result under the blog header: 6 little tabs in barf green. With the appropriate content, mind you, for which I had to create new blog posts.

My new tabby look is still under construction. I have to add reviews and interviews to the "News" tab, which for the moment directs to a newspaper article. [Update: done!] And I've got to get my son to look through that HTML and make sure that all is kosher; wouldn't want to find out the hard way that there's hidden code in there that hacks into the Pentagon and transmits info to, I dunno, scary people who do scary stuff.

And the colour? That green has got to go.

Animoto - the end of slideshows

That's their name, and their slogan.

I discovered Animoto through a post on one of the numerous Facebook writers' groups I belong to. This is my first video and it's not perfect, but they make me look good!

It's easy to do, even for a technopleb like me:

• Create an account (of course!)
  
• Upload your images
• Choose your music
• Create the video!

30-second vids are free; if you want the 60-second version, you pay $3. You can post your videos directly to Blogger, YouTube, MySpace, Live.com, TypePad, iGoogle, Wordpress, LiveJournal, Facebook, and a number of other places, or just copy the code and embed where you like. (The direct posting makes me think: Security breach! Security breach! Probably my paranoia kicking in, so I chose to embed.)

Check them out at http://animoto.com. At worst, you sink a couple hours having fun and feeling like a technowizard. At best, you get a sweet promotional widget for your book - or whatever you're pimping!

Grumbles & groans

I'm bombarded with the advice that an author must have a website. I understand the need for a web presence, of course, but what I don't understand is why a writer who has a blog needs to have a separate website. Isn't a blog a website?

I've looked at several writers' sites and most are quite basic, with some variation of the following:

• Their bibliography
• A synopsis of each book, sometimes with excerpts or sample chapters
• An author bio
• Contact information
• Some had a photo gallery
• An itinerary if the writer is doing tours and signings
• Links: to Amazon or wherever the books are sold, to the blog, and random others of the author's choosing
  

There is nothing there that can't be posted or linked on a blog. If I create a website, I'll simply be duplicating all the information on the blog. This pisses off the minimalist in me. In addition, the blog has the advantage of being user friendly: I manage it myself, update as frequently as I like, and it's wonderfully interactive. Managing a website, I understand, requires knowledge of html or some such voodoo.

I'm a stubborn PITA when I can't see the logic behind something that everyone insists is necessary. So I'm throwing this out there: Someone, anyone, please, please convince me why it is necessary for me to duplicate all the stuff I have on this blog onto a website.

[And it's not about the money. My son's job is building websites.]

Widgets for not writing

Okay, I suspect that I'm very late to the party, but I've just discovered - widgets. Or gadgets. Or blidgets. I went across to LibraryThing last week to find out how to put a random selection of books from my online catalogue on to my blog. Did it. Felt like a techno-whiz. Also found a 'chicklet' banner that I could add to the page. Went over to Romancing the Blog and discovered another cool chicklet, which provoked a manic search for cute thingummies for my brand new blog.

That's when I stumbled on Yahoo Widgets, and realized what the really cool stuff on my son's laptop was all about. Over the last two days I've checked out hundreds of these little gizmos, and my desktop is now a maze of flitting butterflies, bouncing balls, moon phases, weather eyes, a day planner, mail checker, picture frames that scroll through photos on Flickr, Yahoo Photos or my computer, a CPU portal gauge, a memory gauge... I don't even know what some of these things are for (CPU portal, anyone?), and there are others lined up in a dock that magically appears when I move the cursor to the extreme right of the screen.

I have only just begun. There are webcam widgets with views of beaches and campuses (?). Games. News feeds. Dictionaries. Clocks. Foreign language translators and tutors. Little images that don't actually do anything, like the tiny cat that just sits there on the desktop. Restaurant menus. A clipboard washer to remove formatting from text. And lots, lots more.

This is fun! Keeps me fully occupied. What I have discovered is yet another method of avoiding the edits to that second book - edits that my agent is patiently awaiting. I'm so wound up by this interminable wait to finalize my very first book contract that I can't work. I can't think. I can't write. So - I prowl the Internet for days at a stretch on the hunt for... widgets!