Why Spoof Twitter?

So the question remains... Why spoof twitter profiles? Why create twenty-three versions of me?I gained a lot of insight into this issue from Gilad Lotan's recent article "Mining Twitter gold, at five bucks a pop."Buy followers_1Buy followers_2Buy followers_3 So for five bucks, I could buy 5,000 twitter followers... profiles like mine, that have been spoofed.So now you have 5,000 more twitter followers. Congrats. Where does that get you? It doesn't get you more engagement. Maybe it gets you more people following you but ...and I'm going to shout this ...MORE FOLLOWERS =/= MORE TWITTER SUCCESS.You cannot buy success on social media. Really you can't. If you try, you may find a bump for a short time but in the long term, you will not see an increase in sales or hits or any other TRUE measure of success.Don't measure your ROI by followers, fans, or likes. Measure your ROI by engagement and conversation. And... by not buying followers, you prevent identities from being stolen!

Twitter Spoofing

Recently, I had an interesting situation. A friend emailed me to tell me that someone was tweeting under a very similar username to mine, and mentioning my friends in the tweet. She had sent my usual "Shabbat Shalom" tweet on a Wednesday and @'ed my friends.Odd.I looked her up.Turns out, she had used my header image, my username, and every few hours... tweeted my tweets.I felt violated.My dog's face was all over twitter... being used randomly by a stranger. It seemed like she was responding to my friends. How do I make this stop?So I googled. And I found that this is a technique for creating many, many twitter accounts to sell to people to boost their follower count. Turns out, for five bucks you too can have 5000 twitter followers... but does that really help anything? I will address that in a second blog. For now, here is the rest of my story.Twitter Fakes_1I started to get curious. If there was a thdprc ... what else was out there? Turns out, as I marched down the keyboard I found - thdprl, thdprq, thdpre, thdpry, thdprj, and thdprd. I found seven that day. The next morning, I opened my computer and went to take a look. I was curious. Were there any more? Bam - thdprz, thdprw, thdprt, thdpru, thdpri, thdprx, and thdprm. Seven more. Fourteen fake profiles, in total. Why were they doing this to me? My Twitter account is fairly innocuous. I update it fairly regularly. I say Shabbat Shalom to my friends. I post pictures of my dog. I link to my blog and retweet interesting articles. Sometimes, I even live tweet conferences.I was shocked. But it fired me up. I was going to find out everything I could. They shared links to my blogs so I saw IP addresses and links to pages that gave me names. I am fairly certain, based on the things that I found, that it is a person based in China.The next day, I had a thought... Since it appears they mashed me up with another person, how could she find out this was going on? It wasn't her username or tweets that were used. So I searched for my actual name on twitter, exactly how I wrote it on twitter... I found nine more profiles. This time, instead of my username, they used my profile picture, my real name, and my bio. Again I reported them -  talzirp, talzirc, talzirt, talzirh, talzird, talzirf, litastarsp, muttnheadc, and taliasimonrant.Twitter Fakes_2 Again, they took someone's username and changed it by one letter. I sent out a flurry of tweets. "You are being spoofed!" "Look here and report it to Twitter!" Some people actually thought my tweets were spam. The person who I was mashed with was very receptive and she started reporting them too. While all of this was going on, I started getting emails from Twitter."Hello, This is an auto-response to let you know we have received your impersonation report and will respond shortly. Your patience is greatly appreciated. Please note Twitter allows parody, commentary, and fan accounts; if an account is in full compliance with our policies, it is not considered impersonation. For more information, see this help page: http://support.twitter.com/entries/106373"Greeeeaaat.Reported it May 28.Got the "thanks for reporting it" May 29.Got the next email on May 30.

Hello, Thank you for bringing this to our attention. In order to process user impersonation reports, we need to confirm your identity. Please click on the link and upload a copy of your valid government-issued photo ID (e.g., driver's license, passport). We need to be able to see your full name and photo on your ID, so please try to send a legible copy. This information will be kept confidential, and will be deleted once we have used it to confirm your identity. Once we have received your documentation, we will review and process your report. We will not process your report until we receive a valid photo ID. We appreciate your cooperation.

Uh. Ok. So I scanned my driver's license... and uploaded it to their secure website.

Whistle. Whistle. Sure no problem... I'm not worried THAT SOMEONE IS STEALING MY LIFE ON TWITTER. Whistle. Whistle.

EMAIL! They suspended the first round of profiles on June 3 and the second round on June 4. Mind you, I filled out their impersonation form (for your reference, it is here) for the first round TWENTY-THREE TIMES. Each time, I linked to the offending profile, each tweet they stole, and gave them a link to the images that is connected to my name. It was a process that took maybe 10 minutes or so each? I did it every single time. For every single tweet. I made a handmade spreadsheet to keep track of them all - who was reported, which one had the documents uploaded, and which ones were removed. I am still waiting for eight to be removed.

Honestly, one of the scariest things is that there are major brands out there who have NO IDEA that someone took their image and are using it. And the other thing that makes me a little freaked out is that I have found several profiles that have mashed up three people... there is a person out there, that doesn't know that someone is using their profile image. Maybe there are more spam profiles out there using my image? It makes me think about the intelligence of putting my child's image online.

I think that if Twitter banned IP addresses, that might slow them down. But spammers will always spam. And that sucks.

Why Spoof Twitter?

Disable the Dashboard in OS X Mavericks

I downloaded the new OS X Mavericks for my macbook and I love it... except there are a few things that I have been struggling with. One was that the Dashboard launched if I sneezed the wrong way... I would just swipe the wrong way and while I was in the middle of working, I would end up in the dashboard. UGH! It was driving me crazy. So I googled and found this article from IT World: http://www.itworld.com/operating-systems/379426/disable-dashboard-os-x-mavericks How to kill your Dashboard in OS X Mavericks. The old articles have instructions that don't work but this did. If you aren't sure where the Terminal is... search for it using the spy glass on the top right of your Mac. :) Hope this helps you, it helped me!

Disable the Dashboard in OS X MavericksGet rid of the Dashboard in OS X MavericksBy Jim Lynch, ITworldHere's how you can disable the Dashboard in OS X Mavericks.1. Open the Terminal application (it's in the Utilities folder).2. Type in the following command then hit Enter.defaults write com.apple.dashboard mcx-disabled -boolean true3. Type in the following command to relaunch the Dock, then hit Enter.killall DockNow the Dashboard is gone from OS X Mavericks.

Days like today...

When crisis strikes in Colorado, Israel or really anywhere in the world, my days look like this:Wake up.Learn there is a crisis.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online (in the case of the November 2012 Israeli engagement it was an awesome blogger giving blow by blow).Compile information and compare with my team.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Shout information from my office to my bosses office.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Make a recommendation to the CEO to open a fund (or he tells us that we have to).Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Write an "ePhil" (electronic philanthropy) to our community.Send said ePhil to team for fact/spell checking.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Send said ePhil upstairs for approval.Get told to add more pictures.Obsessively look at devastating pictures from the tragedy.Add them to ePhil.Resend upstairs for approval.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Nudge hard to get approval so we can send before 5pm.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Get some changes or approval.Send to community.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Post it on Facebook while... obsessively checking Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online until it is time to go home.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online at home.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online from bed before I fall asleep. Wake up.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online.Write another message from the CEO/ press release to news outlets.Obsessively check Facebook, Twitter, news outlets, any information I can find online. I think you can see where this is going...CO Fires FB pic_TH

Mandy Patinkin at JFS Luncheon

I had the pleasure of listening to Mr. Patinkin speak at the Jewish Family Service luncheon here in Colorado. He was a joy to listen to and he sang a little bit of a song a the end in English and Yiddish. Here are my tweets from the event and the sound bite at the end. 

 

 

 

oops... break the bread to come back together

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mandy Patinkin Singing at JFS

 

Jewish Family Service of Colorado Video

Purex Earth Day Contest!

Folks! Get in on this Purex contest for a chance to win!1161-promo-031.130848The Go Purex Gro Green Instagram Contests ends Tuesday, April 30th, so don't delay!Instructions:1. Follow Purex on Instagram, @Purex2. Instagram a photo of your favorite eco-friendly practice or activity3. Be sure to use the hashtag #GoPurexGoGreen in the photo caption and share the photo on Facebook & Twitter4. Ask your friends to “like” your photo on Instagram to increase your chances of winning.Prizes:The 5 participants that receive the most “likes” on Instagram will get their very own mini greenhouse (ARV $50), along with a free bottle of Purex Natural Elements detergent (ARV $6). This contest ends April 30th, so there’s no time to waste! Get started now and you just might find that with Purex, it pays to be green.

New Facebook Event Images

Facebook EventsIf you post events to Facebook, you may have noticed that they have changed the format for the images. They haven't yet allowed you to format you text, which I am patiently waiting for (you hear that FB?! Patiently WAITING!) but they have given you a banner image now which, in my opinion, is much better than the small thumbnail you could not expand.The new banner size is 714×264, however, keep in mind that Facebook like to change these things on a whim and not always tell you. (As I found out with their cover photos when they adjusted it a few pixels.) This website has a nice Photoshop template for folks who want some guidance but you can do this yourself. Obviously, a knowledge (and ownership) of Photoshop is helpful but you can do this without it.Here are some options:

  1. GIMPThe GNU Image Manipulation Program is a great application that was created for photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. Written on Unix, GIMP is arguably the most popular alternative for Photoshop available today.
  2. PicasaOriginally created and sold by Idealab, Google aquired Picasa in 2004 and released it to the world for free. The current version supports easy geo tagging and heavy integration with Google+ that lets you easily tag Google+ friends and share photos through your circles. It’s user-friendly interface makes it easy to apply basic edits to your photos and touch them up. 12 effects are available and there are additional affects via Picnik too.
  3. PixlrPixlr is a perfect online image editing application that is designed for non professional users and allows them to easily edit images. It combines image design and paint tools with photo editing and adjustment features more convincingly than any other online image editing program.
  4. PhotoPos ProPhotoPos Pro is a rich photo editor that has support for most picture file types and support for digital scanners. It also features image enhancement, text tools, layers, masks and special effects.
  5. Sumo PaintSumo Paint is an online image editing application similar to Adobe Photoshop.
  6. SplashupSplashup is a powerful editing tool and photo manager. With the features professionals use and novices want, it’s easy to use, works in real-time and allows you to edit many images at once. Splashup runs in all browsers, integrates seamlessly with top photo-sharing sites, and even has its own file format so you can save your work in progress.
  7. PicMagickPicMagick is an online photo editor that enables you to make ordinary photos look wonderful within a few clicks. It will surprise you how fabulous your photos can be and how easily this can be done.
  8. Photoshop.comPhotoshop.com is the complete solution for managing, editing, storing, and sharing your photos online, with tutorials, inspiration, and more. Photoshop.com is available from any web-enabled computer, compatible mobile phones, and directly from within Adobe Photoshop Elements 7 or Adobe Premiere Elements 7 software. With Photoshop.com, you can organize, tweak, create, e-mail, display, and store your photos.
  9. Pixer.uspixer.us lets you manipulate, edit, enhance and apply filters to your digital pictures using only your web browser.
  10. Snipshot Snipshot is a fast online image editor. You can use it right from your browser, no downloads or Flash required.

Disclaimer: I am not promoting any of these tools. They are just suggestions that I have spoken to friends, industry insiders, and read about on blogs. I am sorry if something goes wrong if you use one... but I am not responsible! Practice responsible downloading!

Tis the Season (to get sick)

I always welcome the cold weather with trepidation. The seasons change and it is beautiful and all... but with the cold weather we welcome colds and the flu. Funny thing is, when I used to work for Ballet Nouveau, I used to get sick ALL THE TIME. I was around little ballerinas all day... little ballerinas with the sniffles who didn't always wash their hands... And thus... I would get sick every year... several times a season.Now don't get me wrong... I wash my hands. But maybe not always for long enough. You know, the worst thing that can happen in a public bathroom is for the soap to be crappy. You know the kind of cheap soap I am talking about... the stuff that feels gross on your hands and smells disgusting? Yeah, I can stand that stuff. So I admit it. Sometimes I don't wash my hands for long enough (You're supposed to sing "Row, Row Your Boat," you know) but I always do.So I started buying soap that I really liked and bringing it with me to work. That way, I always got a good wash. I tried a ton of different soaps and finally settled on two that I love. The first, Dial Complete Antibacterial Foaming Hand Wash. The second, Mrs. Myers frufru hand soap. Love that Mrs. Myers but man oh man, can it get expensive! The Dial is awesome, affordable AND new for the holiday season... comes in cute holiday themed bottles.Recently, Dial sent me a couple of these bottles to have around the house. My fiance totally embraced them. He loved the clean feeling and the scent (he was less than thrilled with the soap we had in the bathroom at the time... too girly he said). Bonus... you can get them delivered to your house through my new favorite website Soap.com! Why do I love Dial? I love it because it smells good. Because it is gentle on my hands and it is a hospital strength antibacterial formula! AND! I love the foam! It feels so much better than typical gel soap!I recommend you check out Dial's holiday packaging and their foaming soap! Dial provided a free sample of their Holiday Foaming Hand Soap for this post. My participation is voluntary and my opinions, as always, are my own.

The Perfect Ahhhh

I was frantic. Crummy few weeks at work, working too hard on two huge events. I was stressed to near tears. Then my friend 'D' called me."Hey little sister! I have something I want you to try.""Grumble, grumble, grumble, I need a drink... grumble" - was my approximate response."Never mind, I'm coming by your work to drop it off.""Grumble, grumble, grumble"Click.She dropped off a CUTE little care package with the only thing better than a bottle of wine... chocolate! Chocolate for your Chakras, no less. She left some information about this brand new company called Sushumna Chocolat,  and a sample of all of their flavors for me.But I was in a rush... so I decided I would get ONE square and then get back to work. I chose the first Chakra, grounded. I figured this was a good choice for the place I was in right then... and as I read about the chocolate, I learned that the Muladara chakra is located at the base of your spine. It is associated with survival and feeling stable... well... I needed to survive these events and I sure as heck wasn't feeling stable! This square was milk chocolate with crisped rice  and sweet potato.I broke off a small piece and let is slowly dissolve in my mouth. I breathed slowly through my nose and closed my eyes. I tasted the earthy-ness of the sweet potato and hit the crispness of the rice all swirled with the decadent but not too sweet milk chocolate.I opened my eyes.Unbelievable. I felt better. Maybe it was the chocolate. Maybe it was because I took a moment to refocus my intention. But either way, it was a delicious refresh.I was so excited to eat the rest! But I held off. I brought them home and Dan and I decided to do a tasting after our shabbat dinner.What should we start with? Less focused on the chakras and more on the taste, we hit Chakra two, Svadisthana, next. Appropriately, this is the sensual chakra. Again milk chocolate with chai and cardamom. Amazing. They encapsulated the Indian style of flavoring and intensity in one square. It was delicious.Chakra four, Anahata or compassion, was next. Dark chocolate with sweet dried cherries... perfection! And I don't usually like cherries in chocolate! Not too sweet, totally different flavor profile.We hit one more before we had to call it quits or we would be on a sugar high all night... Chakra seven, transcendence... Fascinating... This one, I was SO curious about it! Sahasrara Chakra was milk chocolate with hemp oil mushroom essence, and cashews. We did NOT know what this would taste like. It was delicate, slightly nutty with an earthly finish. Amazing!We didn't get to chakra three - connected or the Manipura chakra which is white chocolate and vanilla bean, chakra five - expressive or visuddha chakra which is dark chocolate and peppermint, and chakra six - insightful or Ajna chakra which is dark chocolate with port soaked currants...AMAZING, right? The flavor combinations are incredible, things I would never put together in a million years. And the ladies behind this collection - Amity Cooper and Sally Belk really put thought and exquisite flavors into these treats. Not only that but they are only 30 calories a square!!!Sushumna is going to have many different facets. There are not only chocolates for each chakra but mindful wine pairings and a Sushumna Home segment. They are creating candles, soaps, body balm scents, and a charm necklace for each flavor.But here is the deal, they are doing this on their own and need your help! Trust me when I say, the chocolate alone is exquisite... but the whole production together? Incredible.Help fund them by donating to their Kickstarter campaign here - Click Here. You can also learn more on the Kickstarter campaign about what they intend to do. Pledge $50 and you get one of each of the 7 flavors! But here's the catch! They only have 11 more days to fund their project! So click, donate (you can donate as little as $1) and share with your friends! Chocolate for your Chakras for everyone! Want to see founder Amity Cooper on Good Day LA? They paired each bar of chocolate with a celebrity. It's pretty funny. Click here!Did I mention Michael Franti is a fan too? It's true. Here's Amity and Franti... :) Okay fine. Enough gushing! Go out and support Sushumna Chocolat now! I did!