1. Stake a claim on the web. Register your own domain name. This point cannot be stressed enough. Having your own domain is like owning your own home. You want to offer your friends, family, clients and customers a place where they can relax and engage with whatever you are all about. 1&1 and BlueHost are good places to start. Registering a domain name is cheap and liberating. Whether you are a student, employee, or just adventurer, you have ideas, projects, stories and records worth owning, sharing and expressing on your terms.
2. Own your Identity. Create a personal web page or blog. A WordPress self installation (WordPress.org), is a great place to start. Don’t re-direct to outside services. You can’t claim ownership or have control over your social network accounts. Your Facebook and Twitter Pages do not make a good web presence nor can you control all of the elements in play. If you want control over your privacy, you need to refer your social networks to your own private web presence. You would not want to lose all of your favorite photos and blurbs to a FaceBook meltdown.
3. Keep a light email footprint. Get rid of old emails to keep inbox and database small. Ditch Outlook. Get Gmail or Google Apps for your Domain (Standard or Priemere). Outlook and programs like it are responsible for a major portion of technical glitches and create a dependence on databases that cannot keep up with modern demand.
4. Keep a light security footprint. Don’t be paranoid about web security. A few free tools can offer a better defense from viruses and malware and identity thieves than a $100 subscription based software. The expensive software often cripples computer performance and creates new problems that lead to wasting more time and money. If you can’t afford a Mac, use AVG, MalwareBytes AntiMalware, Spybot S&D, Super Anti-Spyware, PeerBlock, etc.
5. Filter out the noise and control communications. Use PhoneBooth or Google Voice to create a separate virtual “office” phone line, that can filter who reaches your mobile phone and who gets stopped with voicemail. These tools have free versions and can transcribe voice messages to email and text.
6. Increase your mobility with LogMeIn and DropBox. These tools are worth every penny, or lack thereof, as they both have free versions. These tools will allow you to synchronize your files and remotely access your computer anywhere. They also have mobile versions for the major smart-phone platforms.
7. Read user reviews before purchasing a gadget. Test everything you can and do your homework before you buy. USE MORE THAN ONE SOURCE WHEN REVIEWING A PRODUCT. Read user reviews from geek websites like NewEgg, Amazon and TigerDirect. NewEgg has an excellent geek user community who review and put products through their paces.
8. Pursue the Liquid Computing Model and invest in a desktop computer, if only to use it as a home server to sync your files. Think of it as a mother ship for your digital lifestyle. If you can’t afford one, team up with a friend or relative and create a community server. It’s not complicated, it’s just simple concept of moving some tasks and resources to a central location. Don’t believe anyone who tries to convince you that these things are too complicated to learn or do in a weekend.
9. Rip and record every CD, DVD, book, song and video you legally own and store it on your home server. HandBrake, DVD Decrypter to rip DVDs (which is perfectly legal by the way). Use liquid formats AKA mobile formats that are recognizable by just about any device or platform (doc, jpg, pdf,) and avoid saving data to proprietary formats that require a special program that has no other competition.
10. Use Format Factory to convert media files to liquid formats and easily put them on your portable media players. Proprietary formats, e.g. AAC, QuickTime, and Apple’s new book standard are not universal and lock you into certain programs which will always cost you more money than a liquid format that can be bought and sold on multiple competing markets.
11. Own your media. Don’t use middle man media management tools to organize and control your music and movies. Have a system in place, organizing files and folders before you even launch iTunes. Use VLC Media player to watch every video format under the sun.
12. Use hybrid search techniques. Combine social search tools with your Google search results to quickly find an answer to your question that other humans found useful. Try StumbleUpon, WebMynd, Xmarks add-ons for FireFox/Chrome. Turn on the enhanced searched results and find the most useful content and results in a flash. This method can help you find answers to technical problems and locate the best resources on the web and instantly corroborate the search engine world (SEO) with the social world (SMO).
13. Add trying Ubuntu Linux to your bucket list. This particular Linux flavor has come a long way over the years and is very user friendly. You can download or order a Live CD to try the operating system and see how you like it. If you are using Linux, you can rest assured that you are computing on a solid foundation that is always looking out for you. That can never be said of Microsoft or Apple’s platforms.
14. Relying on middleware is a bad habit. Always, Always, ALWAYS pursue the principles of Digital Liquidity speed, simplicity, independence, control and mobility.
Use a PC once but leave before it makes you too hard.
Use a Mac once but leave before it makes you too soft.
Surf. Don’t be afraid to explore new things on the web.
But if you remember nothing else, trust me on # 14
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Nice one I Like it ………………