Geek Girls Guide

About three years ago, my husband and I started into a relationship-challenger remodeling project on our house. We started in the beginning of the year with grand hopes of finishing it in time to host that year’s family Thanksgiving dinner. (Note my point in the first sentence; that was three years ago.) Outside of the fact that the remodeling is taking forever, it really is going to be pretty sweet when it’s all done.

After a few months of working with some architect-friends of ours, we finally settled on the plans and were ready to start making it happen. Since we remodeled parts of our last house, we thought it was pretty doable but not too crazy. Basically, we’re remodeling 70% of the main floor – relocating the kitchen to a different room (all new appliances, countertops, cabinets), opening up a couple walls, remodeling the living room (install hardwood, remove popcorn ceiling, take down paneling), and add a small mudroom. (Yeah, ok, I guess we are crazy.)

Since we wanted to do most of the work ourselves to save money, we started plugging away on research. As you may know, there’s a lot to figure out when you’re remodeling. Our main priorities: look stunning; do it for cheaper than other similar remodels; and do it as environmentally friendly as possible given the first two points. I was quickly racking up bookmarked eco-friendly remodeling sites and information about appliances while my husband was starting to plan the timeline. Before we knew it, we had both amassed information that was getting lost and not communicated to each other.

So we decided to give 37 Signals’ Basecamp web application a try to see if it would help us get more organized with our project, and it has been fantastic. Basecamp is an online project collaboration tool that allows you to assign tasks, gather feedback, and set milestones – among other features. Since we didn’t want to spend any more money than necessary, we opted for their most basic (free) plan. Included with this version are the following features with examples of how we used them.

Dashboard
The Dashboard is a high-level view of what’s going on with your project. If someone posts something, everyone sees an intro line about what was posted. Included with the intro line is the date of the posting and who posted it.

Damn, it’s hard to keep up with this blog with (more than) full time jobs and kids! But, we are planning to record Podcast #2 tomorrow (thanks for all the great feedback) and hope to have it posted by the weekend.

Having a blog is great — we love it — but the real magic happens when we can sit down with people in person and talk about technology. We love the questions, the discussion, the sharing of knowledge.

Over the past year, we’ve spoken at several events and have gotten many requests for hands-on training, especially on all of the social media tools everyone is buzzing about (and seriously, what’s with the fad words? Four years ago all our clients wanted “viral” and now they all want something “social.” Funny thing is, it’s all the same: it’s conversation. But more about that later.).

We Geek Girls are definitely talkers, but we don’t know anything about organizing an event. And there’s nothing worse than having (or attending) a poorly organized event! So, we partnered with the smart and sassy Jennifer Kane (the mastermind behind the annual MIMA Summit) to create Social Media 101 – A Beginner Bootcamp.

In true Geek Girls spirit, this event is aimed at those who want to learn, and need some guidance. It’s a “there are no stupid questions” environment. A blend of strategy (Why would I, or my business, bother with social media?) and tactics (Um, how do I use Twitter?). You’ll learn basic social media strategies and skills that you can immediately put to work for yourself, and your business. A perfect blend of personal and professional (and remember how hard it is to keep the two separate these days, anyway?).

So, grab your laptop and meet us over at aloft Minneapolis on April 24th. UPDATE: We also added another event on May 18, too! Parking is included, so you have no excuse. That’s right. Free parking downtown. Did we mention lunch, too? True story.

We’ll start the day discussing strategy: why social media is relevant, how it works and why it works. Then we’ll spend the rest of the day exploring different social media tools (blogging, Twitter, social communities and social media on mobile devices) and discussing how to use them. We’ll even have a Social Media SWAT team to help you out if you get stuck.

You’ll leave the workshop with:
•    A better understanding of the social media landscape and how you can fit into it;
•    A basic roadmap and skill set for navigating the tools of the trade;
•    Your own burgeoning social network of like-minded professionals, and
•    A tool kit of informational resources to take back to the office.

We’ll be joined by Jennifer Kane, Jennifer Bohmbach and Lisa Foote. A bunch of seriously smart ladies ready to drop some knowledge. So, come on. Join us.

Register Now >

We hope to see you (or your favorite tech newbie) there. Tell your mom!

This past Thursday, I gingerly celebrated what I hope is the end of weeks and weeks of laptop problems. The point of this post is so important, that I’m going to give you the punch line before I finish the setup: BACK UP YOUR DATA.

Trust me on this one. Last year, one of the smartest people I know (a developer, no less) had a computer meltdown and lost all of his cherished digital photographs. He spent hundreds of dollars on data recovery. This same person guiltily admitted to me a few weeks ago that, despite that experience, he’s still not backing up his data. Sometimes, smart people can be so dumb.

Hey, it’s a new year (I can still say that as long as it’s January, right?), and a couple of weeks ago I heard a local radio personality vow that 2009 would be the year that she became more tech-savvy. Obviously, I fully support that resolution, and learning how to back up your data is a fantastic place to begin. Because if your machine self-destructs (or is shoved into the next life by a jam-covered toddler or a cup of coffee), all the tech-savviness in the world can’t save you.

Here’s what happened to me: due to some problems with my wireless connection I had to wipe out everything on my machine and reinstall the operating system (new Geek Girls: this is known also as the OS. On my Mac, that’s OSX. If you’re on a PC it’s Windows Vista or another version of Windows. For the super geektastic it might be some version of Linux, like Ubuntu.). I actually had to erase and install the OS and restore my data three times. Four if you include Thursday, when I finally gave up, bought a new machine and transferred all my data over.

Lucky for me, I’ve been doing backups of my data almost daily since November. I have to credit Apple here for an application called Time Machine which makes it crazy easy to backup your stuff. All I had to do was buy an external hard drive (I went with a cute red Western Digital Passport), and every time I connect it to my laptop, my machine backs itself up. It alerts me if I forget to plug it in for a long period of time, warning me that “Time Machine hasn’t backed up in X days.” But, now that I’m in the habit, I plug in the external drive daily. It’s usually plugged in when I’m at home, and often at work as well (I just toss it in my laptop bag when I leave the house).

But, even if you’re not on a Mac there’s really no excuse. There are lots of online backup services out there. (Of course, you take a risk in that if the company you’re backing up with goes out of business, there goes your data. On the other hand, it sure is handy to back up your data somewhere far away so that if your house burns down your data is far away and safe. Just sign up for a well-known service and not anything named Billy Bob’s Backups or I CAN HAZ BACKUPS PLZ and you should be fine.)

The bottom line is this: think for a moment about how much you rely on your computer every day. Think about how much of your life might be on there. If your first reaction is, “Oh, I don’t have anything really important on there,” I want you to try one thing before I’ll believe you: turn off the computer right now and put it in a closet. Go for one week without using it. You can use other computers to access web sites or email, but you can’t use your main computer. After a week, tell me that you don’t have anything really important on there and I’ll believe you.

Honestly, I’ve felt completely lost without my stuff over the past few weeks. At work, I was unfocused because all my To Do lists are on my laptop. I didn’t know what personal errands I needed to run (also a list on my laptop), and don’t even get me started on all of the passwords I had to try and remember when I was on a loaner machine trying to visit all my usual online haunts.

So, if you do have anything really important on there (as most of us do), I’ll say it again: BACK UP YOUR DATA. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Actually, wait, it’s as easy as 1-2:

1. Find a web site and start remote backups ASAP. I’ve heard great things from many sources about Mozy. They even have a free personal account (up to 2GB). If you need more, you can get a subscription for less than $5 a month. Not bad. You can also check out this excellent PC Magazine article listing the best online backup services.

2. If using an online service makes you uneasy, start shopping for an external hard drive and back up to that drive regularly (but humor me and use an online service until you buy your drive and get everything set up).

If you’re on a Mac, the whole thing is dead simple with Time Machine and there’s no excuse for not using it. As soon as you plug the drive in, your machine will say something like, “Hey, I see you have a drive connected, can I please do some backups for you?”

If you’re on a PC, check out this excellent article from LifeHacker on how to automatically back up your junk.

Two steps. You can handle that. If you do only one geeky thing this year, do this one. You’ll thank me someday when there’s jam oozing out of your keyboard.

It was only a matter of time.

Yep, we here at Geek Girls headquarters have started getting inquiries from boys in search of a geek girl of their very own.

Ken from Indianapolis asked, “I’m a single 24 year old geeky guy…Where can I go to meet geek girls?!” and Dan from Brazil said, “…here in Brazil there aren’t cool chicks that get geeky, love games, [and] know bout technology…Do you have any idea of where we could look for those? Time is passing and we are really getting sad and lonely cause the non-geeks don’t fill in the blanks.”

Yes, Ken and Dan, I agree. There is nothing quite as awesome as a Geek Girl. As for where to meet them, that’s a bit tougher to answer.

Where the Geeks Are

Here’s my two cents: the best place to meet a truly geeky girl is probably, well…online. For example, my husband and I found each other via the perfect storm of geekery. One night, while I was bonding with my laptop in my single-girl studio apartment, Nancy sent me an IM with a link to a blog called the Kingdom of Squirrels written by a guy named Jeremy. “Hey,” she typed, “you should date this guy.” I checked out the blog, thought the guy looked cool, but suspected that he was so cool that he was either:
a) gay
b) taken
c) psychologically unfit
d) all of the above

By coincidence, Jeremy stumbled across my now-dead blog a few weeks later (he thinks via a directory of MN bloggers — this was in 2002 when there were far fewer blogs and before they were proclaimed dead) and left me a comment. I saw it, clicked over to his website and realized I had been there a few months before. We exchanged blog comments and emails for a couple of months, we saw each other in person for the first time when he came to see me at a poetry slam, we had our first real date a month later, and the rest is history. There was also a mix tape involved (well, technically a mix CD, but the effect was the same).

Finding the Elusive Female Geek

Obviously, you can find a geek girl anywhere you’d find any other kind of girl, but it might be tricky to figure out if she’s a geek. Sidling up to a girl at happy hour and asking if she knows CSS from RSS might not work so well. In my experience, what works best is to just put yourself out there, either via a blog where you write about whatever you are passionate about or an expert on, via Twitter, and on social networks like Facebook, Orkut, MySpace, or whatever is most popular in your country or age/interest group.

Next, cruise around and see who’s interesting. Let it happen naturally by commenting on blogs that interest you, or finding opportunities (like Meetups) to mingle with other geeks in meatspace. Whatever you do, don’t be creepy. Sending an IM or direct tweet like “Hey, baby let’s chat…” is sooo not going to work. It’s just like real life: you’ll encounter a lot of people, but you’ll only make a real connection with a few. Don’t try to force it, or you’ll come off all wrong and you’ll scare the girly geeks away. Be cool, man. Be cool.

What worked for Jeremy and I is that — first and foremost — we found each other to be interesting; technology just facilitated our relationship. Had it not been for the Internet, AIM and Movable Type, we might have never met (in fact, I probably should have invited Tim Berners-Lee and the Trotts to our wedding), but our relationship is based on who we are, not on the technology itself. It’s a bit of a happy coincidence that we are both geeks, but your odds of meeting a geek girl are higher online than they are IRL. So, just put yourself out there. See what happens.

That’s that. Don’t get the wrong idea, guys — I’m not turning this into a dating column. But, you asked and I’m here for you.

Good luck.

My co-worker (and Men’s Auxiliary Member), Ben, tipped me off a few weeks ago that there was a book being published by No Starch Press (one of his favorite resources for geek books) called How to be a Geek Goddess. I contacted the publisher and they were kind enough to put me in touch with the author, Christina Tynan-Wood (@xtyan), and send me a copy of the book.

I’m currently on vacation in the Coachella Valley (ah, sunshine feels good on my pale Minnesota skin!) and, while on the three-hour flight and lounging in the desert, have been perusing the book. My verdict? Excellent!

I’d highly recommend this book as a gift this holiday season, either to yourself or to a woman in your life who’s looking for a handy desk reference on all things geek. Tynan-Wood gives simple, but not condescending, instructions on everything from purchasing to outfitting your computer and everything that goes along with it.

In a very funny prologue, Tynan-Wood describes her husband as a “pompous ass” — a rather typical male tech-know-it-all. I laughed out loud at this, because I read it after I caught my husband paging through the book, rolling his eyes at her diagram of a mouse (right click, left click, scrollbar). Yeah. I married a pompous ass, too (and I mean that in a really loving way, honey!).

So, yes. The book contains things as simple as a diagram of a mouse, but you know what? Some people need that. And — despite Mr. Wilker’s eye-rolling — there’s no shame in that. Knowledge is power, and this book doles out tech knowledge from A to Z. What I like about the book is how comprehensive it is — even I, a self-described Geek Girl, learned a thing or two. Those who are just beginning to dip their toes into Interweb waters will learn even more, but won’t find it overwhelming.

While the book is structured in chapters, one certainly doesn’t need to read it cover-to-cover for it to make sense, or be a valuable resource. It would serve as a great desk reference for any woman aspiring to girly geekdom. Skip to Chapter 7 to learn how to set up a wireless network at your house, Chapter 9 for handy info on how to keep your kids safe online, or start at Chapter 1 if you need a guide on how to buy yourself a new computer. She really covers all the bases, and does so with good humor.

She also touches on what I think is an important point for women when it comes to embracing (or not embracing) technology. And this also came up in our Geek Out Room at the MIMA Summit this year. It’s relevance. Namely, that it’s okay to not be interested in technology for technology’s sake. For many women, technology is only interesting to the point that it’s relevant to one’s life. As in, how can this web application or gadget make my busy, insane life easier? Tynan-Wood does a great job illustrating how the technologies she describes can be applied to one’s life.

There are a few too many shoe-shopping references for my tastes, but I’m willing to admit that I’m a female anomaly in my dislike of shopping (shoe or otherwise) and her metaphors often do make sense. Software really can be considered an accessory in my world! All-in-all, the book is a fantastic tech bible for women: witty, informative and comprehensive.

The author was kind enough to agree to an interview with me; now that I’ve read the book, I’ll be contacting her. But before I do, do you have any questions you’d like me to ask? Either post to comments, use our Ask the Geeks form, or email me at meghan [at] geekgirlsguide [dot] com.

You can check out the Christina Tynan-Woods’ Geek Girlfriends blog here.

One of my pet peeves about tech sites targeted to women is that, at some point, they start posting lots of stuff about shopping. I guess it rubs me the wrong way because I think to myself, “C’mon. There’s lots more that we do — or should do — online than just shopping.”

You know what else? I hate shopping. I hate digging through racks to find my size, I hate trying stuff on, and I hate standing in line. I also hate crowds. (I’m a real charmer, aren’t I?) But, I love technology, I adore efficiency, I like a bargain, and when I venture out in public I like not looking like a hobo. Luckily, my sister recently sent me a site that has made my shopping life easier.

You know what that means, right? Yeah. I’m about to write about shopping.

The site is Shop It To Me and the concept is simple: sign up on the site and specify the brands and retailers that interest you, as well as the sizes you are looking for (in Men’s, Women’s and/or Kids). You can also customize how often you want to be notified about sale items (daily, weekly, etc.).

I started small: a handful of Women’s and Kids brands and a 2x/week email. The beauty of the Shop It To Me newsletters is that I only get notified when the brands AND sizes I want are on sale. With retailer newsletters, I’m notified every time they have any kind of sale, whether or not my size is available. (I wear a size 11 shoe, so this is particularly convenient in regards to shoe shopping; anything above a 10 can be very difficult to find.) Sometimes, the email also includes a special Shop It To Me discount code as well. Bonus!

Today, I started adding more brands and am considering increasing the frequency at which I’m alerted via email. I’m also considering taking myself off the retailers’ mailing lists (though I’m sure they’d hate to hear that). Who needs them, when I have this?

The Shop It To Me emails (see sample below) are formatted very simply and include thumbnails of the products, so I can scan over it very quickly and either act on it, or delete it. I don’t even have to visit the sites to get the information I need! So simple. One small way to apply technology to simplify your life, instead of making it more complicated.

So, happy shopping. May the bargains be with you.

It’s counterintuitive for me to facilitate this discussion, but what the heck. Who knows why, but people are always asking me where they can get an easy, free or very inexpensive website. They want to be able to add content – photos, maybe a little video, text. Perhaps they are a consultant or small business and haven’t gotten to the point where their website is a real priority (perish the thought) or they want to have more than a blog to chronicle their family adventures. There are many really good free blogging options out there, WordPress being, probably, the best one. And, with some technical assistance and a little tweaking (the geeks call it hacking), WordPress can be a great web content management tool. But it still requires intervention from that geeky friend, brother-in-law, uncle who works in IT. I encourage you to jump in and learn a little about how WordPress or other blogging systems work and try the tweaking yourself. If you use the WordPress hosted option and you don’t install their software on your servers you can dive right into your website in no time at all. If you’re still with me, I’m thinking that what you want is a simple, intuitive option that lets you bang out and publish a site in short order. And maybe a ‘blog’ isn’t enough for you. To tell the truth, there are some easy, free options out there, but you didn’t hear it here. I don’t plan on making this post an exhaustive list of cheap, free or inexpensive web building tools. Instead, I thought I’d look at a couple of free (or, ultimately very inexpensive) options for building and maintaining your own website.

I recently stumbled on an interesting service called Weebly. Weebly is entirely web-based, which means there’s no software to buy and download or install. This is a good thing. You can build an entire site in just a few minutes. This service lets you use drag and drop options for adding content to your site, you can add whole pages with just the click of a button. The templates include all sorts of layout options. And you can pull in things like photos from your own collections or from photo sharing sites like flickr. You can drop in a blog for the day to day writing. Or maybe you want to share a youtube video. No problem. Signing up is really easy. The interface is very intuitive and the system walks you through the (seemingly) more complicated elements like pulling content in from these other websites. If you want to get really adventurous the Weebly even gives you the option of pulling in GoogleAds so you can make money through your website. Whoa! What a concept. Remember this, this is probably not appropriate if we’re talking about your small business website. There are more advanced features in Weebly, but you have to pay for them. The premium service let’s you password protect pages, have multiple websites, upload and store large files, use their proprietary audio player and get some more hands-on support. This service is pretty reasonable, though. It looks like it starts at around 4 bucks a month. Here’s the thing that I think makes Weebly worth a look — the pages look decent. Unlike a lot of canned offerings out there, these are clean and current in their design. If you decide next week you hate how your site looks, no problem. You can change that design on the fly. Another plus is you can publish your site to your own domain. If you don’t have one, you can get it through Weebly, for an additional fee, of course. This is great because you can build your own site and publish it to www.MYOWNBUSINESS.com in a very short amount of time. If that’s not a big deal to you, or if you just want a site to show off your kid’s macrame you can just be a subdomain on Weebly like mykidsstuff.weebly.com. Every time you log back into Weebly you get a snapshot of your traffic too. You’ll know right away when the family starts visiting to judge you for how you dress junior in his most recent pictures. All in all, I’d say Weebly is pretty impressive. I built a Geek Girls test site in all of 10 minutes. I could definitely see my lower tech friends and family members using this service.

There are other cool web building tools worth a look. Matt Wilson, president of MIMA and a Geek Girls Guide Men’s Auxilliary member (whether he likes it or not) mentioned Tumblr to me and I thought I’d take a look. I liked it right away for its ease-of-use and intuitive walk-through of my first post. It didn’t give me a global view of the features as they relate to my layout in the same way that Weebly did. But it did walk me through creating and publishing a post with a very elegant, user-friendly, step by step process. I have the same kinds of opportunities with Tumblr to add audio and video, and outside content to my site. I liked some of the mobile options – I can ‘tumbl’ from anywhere with my mobile phone or handheld device. I can also publish to my own domain. I don’t see Tumblr being as useful for a small business, or someone wanting a website with multiple pages AND a blog. But it would be PERFECT for the beginner wanting to share family photos or videos or maybe journal through a trip or whatever simple little stories you might want to share. In fact, Tumblr is really geared toward those people wanting to offer a more media-rich experience to their users. Its all about the video, audio, image-rich content. Start a vlog! Or a Photoblog. You’ll impress your friends and it’ll be SO EASY!

Don’t take my word for it, though. Try some website building services on for yourself and see what fits for you and your requirements. Here’s a few more for you to take a peek at:

blogger.com: The original web-based blogging software. Its a lot more feature rich, user friend and robust than it was when it first came along. If you know it, it might be time for another look.
clearblogs.com: Easy enough. And free. For the most part, anyway.
terapad.com: The basic service is free but ad supported. Nice feature-set. Great templates.
Xanga.com: Blogging + social networking = xanga.
Squarespace.com: Great interface. Intuitive feature set. Awesome designs.

There you have it. I’ve admitted some things can be free. But you always pay a price. You pay a price in terms of flexibility and scalability. You pay a price in terms of support. And, as you grow, you may really have to pay a price – to grow, and get more, and do more. But as a stepping-off point, these services are worth a look. I promise you, regardless of your level of competency with technology, if you can use a word processor, if you’re reading this post right now, you too can build and manage your own little website. So, what are you waiting for? Get on that!

Mike Engelby, proud member of the Geek Girls Men’s Auxiliary, sent us this tip and we thought it was worth passing on. It’s a handy little tidbit on how to remove typos from form data you’ve saved in your browser. He says it’s an old tip. But it might be news to you!

This works on Firefox 2.0 and up, Internet Explorer 7, and probably others.

If you use the browser option, save form data, and have a bunch of mispellings or things you don’t want in there; use the arrow keys to highlight the unwanted item, and press SHIFT-DEL on the keyboard.

and after pressing the SHIFT and the DEL key at the same time:

resources

How to Manage House Projects with Basecamp, by Julie Horton

Social Media 101 – A Beginner Bootcamp

Back That Thing On Up

Geek Love

Where the Geeks Are

Finding the Elusive Female Geek

Book Review: How to be a Geek Goddess

Shop Smarter

Free is Never Free, But. . .

Deleting Typos in Form Data (WOO!)