A busy day today, late start, bowling, Sunday lunch and swimming runs topped off with the Sunday evening routine. A routine of tidying, cleaning and of collecting together all the kids stuff ready for the morning. Then just enough time to sit down briefly before heading to bed. Night night world.

I’m going to admit it, “It’s been a reality check coming back to work!”. There, I’ve said it. However on the flip-side it’s now 5:30 on Friday afternoon and I’ve had a glass of wine lovingly delivered to my desk. Therefore, by my clock it’s Wine-o-clock in the UK. Enjoy!

The whole concept of Take-a-Note is to keep the process easy, efficient and effective. There’s no abundance of screens and menus to get involved with, just open the app, press the button to record some audio or type in some text and press ‘OK’. Take-a-Note will store the note, assign it to an appointment in your calendar and even fire off a reminder at a set time to review them. Notes can be assigned as individual events, or digested together so you are only reviewing one item in your calendar.

Take-a-Note also stores the location of the note, which can be handy at times for me.

Take-a-Note costs £0.69 from iTunes

The Good

Take-a-Note is clean and efficient. I like the straight forward nature of this app. Your in and note taking within a second. This is great if you are on the move and need to capture a note quickly. The audio works great on the iPhone and recordings are clear and audible.

The ability to set the preferences to automatically start recording when the app is started is also very useful, allowing you to cut out even more clutter and tasks.

The daily digests and notifications are also very useful. Especially for me when I am out and travelling. I can record notes after phone calls and thoughts and them review them before the end of the day. You never know I might get to a point where I don’t forget something.

Areas for Improvement

This app is all about simplicity, so maybe there’s little room to improve. Personally though I would like to have the ability to correct my appalling spelling when typing notes; which is not possible in this release.

Secondly, it would be handy to categorize notes into sections at times – so I could split work, customers and personal and have a digest for each category to review at the end of the day.

Thirdly, whilst the entry into the diary is a great feature, there’s a disconnect with the audio. Obviously I record a snippet of audio against a note and that gets saved on the iPhone. However when I am reviewing my notes, the URL to the audio only works if I am reviewing them on the same iPhone. It doesn’t work if I am reviewing my notes on my desktop’s calendar. Maybe syncing your audio notes in the cloud would be a nice solution.

I have recently bolstered the services that I can offer through my web hosting company (www.community-hosts.co.uk) so things are now a lot faster, and functional. As much as I love the free hosting that I can provide at Community Hosts, it’s only when you put things on a unrestricted server that you notice the difference.

What is interesting though is the shear amount of information that people display about themselves on their Facebook pages. Names, locations, birthdates, religious beliefs, who your married to or currently dating. We share photos, stories and information with hundreds of people every day – and in many cases we actually know very little about the people that we are sharing this private information with.

It’s like a stranger arriving at your door, and asking you for your name, date of birth, photos of your kids, and a few other personal details! I’m not sure about you but if a stranger knocked on my door, they get approximately 2 seconds to give me good reason to keep the door open before I slam it! So what’s different with Facebook?

In an age of identity theft we have never been so open with our information – that is one of the disadvantages of the Internet!

So if you are a facebook user, then stop, and look at what you are sharing – and more importantly who you are sharing it with!

Here are my top tips to start protecting yourself within Facebook.

1. Hide your year of birth.

Displaying your year of birth to all is pretty dangerous in my opinion – not just because to tells everyone exactly how old you are; but it’s also a good security question that you would normally be asked, and sometimes incorporated into people passwords. Not showing it also helps to protect yourself against identity fraud – and let’s face it Facebook is the identify thieves’ greatest tool if they want to know anything about you!

How: On your facebook profile, click on the ‘Info’ tab and then select ‘Edit Information’ and then under ‘Basic Information’ change the option to either, “Don’t show my birthday in my profile” or “Show only day and month in my Profile”.

2. Maintain a ‘’Private Life’!

Just remember that anything that you or your kids/family put up onto facebook is potentially public – to others. For example if you upload an embarrassing photo and I am not your friend, I wouldn’t normal know about it – however if one of MY friends make a comment on one of your photos (because they are your friends) then I can see that action; and then also see the photo. Be warned!

3. Use your friends list

Friends lists in facebook is not only useful but also important – it essentially allows you to ‘Group’ your friends into different lists. Once you’ve done that you can start to manage them better. To access your Friends  list – hover over the ‘Friends’ menu at the top, and then select ‘All Friends’.

Now you will see all your friends, and to the left side of the screen, you will see you have one list. called ‘Friends’ – which means that everyone is treated the same as your friend.

What you need to do now is start create different lists and places your friends in one or more of those lists. So for example you might have a ‘Friend List’ called, ‘Family’ and another called, ‘Close Friends’ and potentially some like ‘Friends, but never met!’

To create a new list simply click on ‘Create new list’, give it a name and then start selecting which of your friends should be in that list.

For me I have lists such as Family, Close Friends, Friends of Friends, School Friends, and Business Contacts to name a few.

3. Adjust your privacy settings to control who see what

By default in facebook you share all your information, photos, wall posts to all of your friends (and their friends in many cases). This is something that you need to think about carefully. Whilst my family members are indeed my friends (most of the time!) and I am happy to share my embarrassing photos with them – ‘Bob’ who I have never met, nor actually know but is in my friends list – do I really want him to see those photos as well?

So the best way is to change your privacy settings. To do this simply select ‘Privacy Settings’ from under the ‘Settings’ menu on your facebook page.

Then you will want to click on ‘Profile’ to change the privacy settings of who can see various elements of your profile.

Firstly select ‘Profile’ and you will see that you can define who can see your profile. Personally, I would select ‘Friends’ Only’ here.

Now continue down the list selecting different settings for different areas of your profile.

4. Avoid the embarrassing tagged photos

It only takes an embarrassing situation, a camera, Facebook and a ‘tagged image’ and all your friends, family, colleagues and half the world suddenly can laugh at you. Not great at the best at times, but what if the photo that you were tagged in was not actually you? That’s both embarrassing and potentially hurtful.

The best way to protect against this is to restrict which of your ‘friends list’ can see the photos that you have been tagged in. Under ‘Photos Tagged of You’ in your privacy settings, select the option “Only Me” and then “None of My Networks” if you would like to keep all tagged photos private. If you’d like to make tagged photos visible to certain users you can choose to add them in the box under the “Some Friends” option. In the box that displays after you select “Some Friends” you can type either individual friends or friend lists.

I would suggest that you did the same for ‘Video Tagged of You’ to remove the video nastys as well.

5. Protect your photo albums

The previous section only protects photos for which you are tagged in – however what about all the photos that you upload and store in your own albums? Do you really want all those photos shared amongst everyone?

“If anyone called Jason Micheal White, Jason White, James Ryan White, Phil Gibson, Shelly White, Daniel White, Hayley Omalley or Hayley White try to add u, dont accept!! They copy pics of ur kids & sell them to perverts, they’re fake! Please copy paste & inform all ur friends, we need to put a stop to them, police R informed, plz take it seriously .. I’ve been told to pass the message, Please do the same too!” – Taken from a Facebook posting today.

Well, there is a way to protect your photo albums as well. Firstly click on your ‘Profile’ and then  click on ‘See All’. You will then see an option for ‘Album Privacy’;

From here you will be able to select who can and who cannot see each one of your albums.

6. Don’t be afraid to remove friends

Every once in a while take a look at who your friends are – and ask yourself, “Am I still OK with this person seeing what I am doing?”. If not then remove then – or place them in a group that only sees a small amount of your information. It could be an ex-boyfriend or a complete stranger. Nothing feels better than culling a few people off your friends list!

7. Be careful when mixing work and play

If you are like a lot of people you will have both friends, family and work colleagues in your friends list. If you do, then think carefully in what you share. Is your boss, or one of your work colleagues privy to what you are saying? People have been sacked for posting a defamatory comment about their employer on Facebook – or updating their status saying that they are pulling a ‘sicky’!

If you do have work colleagues on your friends list then consider placing them all in a separate friends list (as mentioned above) and restricting what they can and cannot see.

If in any doubt – check it out!

There is a great way to ACTUALLY see what another person can see from your profile on Facebook. Use it to check up on yourself through another’s eye – and use it to check your security settings. To access this gold nugget go back to your Privacy settings page – and at the top there is an option to, “See how a friend sees your profile”.

Enter in one of your friends names and spend a few minutes in their shoes looking at your profile!

When people have asked me about broadband providers in the past my replies have always evolved around one simple policy, “Stay away from the Sub-ISPs and stick with the main providers”.

This has kept me going well, with no outages, a decent service and no problems. I signed up with Pipex Broadband years ago and have been with them ever since. However at the point at which they were swallowed by Tiscali I was concerned; as  Tiscali’s reputation was not great to say the least. I thought, “providing my service remains consistent then I am OK – and as long as I do not get messed about I will stay”

Several weeks ago I contacted Pipex for the first time to request; quite explicitly “please cancel my Home Call phone package – BUT LEAVE MY BROADBAND ALONE”. A simple request. However yesterday I suddenly had a complete and utter lack of broadband – which was a complete nightmare for someone who works at home a lot. Broadband to me is just as important as electricity!

So I phoned Pipex immediately on the support line (0871 66 333 00) and went straight to query my bill, and discovered that the only thing active on my account was the Home Call Phone package – and no Broadband.

Numerous calls then to the terminations team left me even more confused and angry. Apparently they had cancelled the wrong service with no notification, no customer communication and with no remorse. Problem was that it was going to take 10 days to reconnect me. Oh, I could have a £10 credit to my account as a ‘Sorry!’ – and that just upset me even more as I was probably losing that on the time and calls alone!

You know this part of the tale – lots more phone calls, lots more departments! Long story made slightly shorter – I was told it would still take up to 10 days to reconnect me and there was nothing that could be done – unbelievable. More phone calls and more frustration. Surprisingly one person did say that he would get it reconnected within a few days – but that was a false claim.

After a while I took a different tack – and a bit of searching on Google came up with a few names, namely the CEO, and several of the PR team.

My advice is to keep an email like this factual, calm and to the point. A letter that simply rants and raves and makes false claims will not get you anywhere.

I later saw this letter to Pipex (http://pipexcommunicationsplc.com/emails-to-pipex-march-2009.html) and thought, “That’s not how to do it!”. It’s from a MSN email address with no identity, it rants, it makes false claims and the grammar is terrible.

Remarkable (and credit does need to be given at this point) within 2 hours I received a call from Tiscali’s High Level Complaints Department trying to sort out the mess. By the end of the call we had agreed a temporary free and unlimited dial-up service to keep me going and a direct contact with someone who’s surname I actually knew, not to mention an email address and contact telephone number!

Bottom line is that Pipex screwed up majorly. There was no communication, and what communication I did have was simply lip-service; with no backed up actions. Unless I had taken it to a high level – I would still be phoning premium rate numbers; going round in circles and getting nowhere.

Helpful Hint: When facing repeated calls to premium call centres try look at the following site to alternative numbers instead of paying the full price – saved me some money! http://www.saynoto0870.com/ is a great resource provide alternative numbers to common high-rate and premium support centres.

Granted I am still considerable upset with Pipex, and would never recommend them to anyone I have to; in this instance give some credit to Tiscali for stepping in and taking some action on an individual level – and not hiding behind a call centre. If only this could happen more often.

What bugs me now is that at some point soon I will get my broadband back – with Pipex. The problem is that I do not really want to be with Pipex; but what’s the alternative?

We shall see; as this story is not over yet

Well no more – I’ve found Twikini (from Trinket Software); a new Windows Mobile (5, 6, and 6.1 are supported) Twitter client that seems to have a clean and useable UI, it’s fast (very fast) and has the functions that I want (such as Twitpic integrated).

Twikini offers a powerful and efficient way to use Twitter on your phone. It conveniently updates your favorite feeds in the background, and leverages the camera, GPS, media, touch screen, keyboard, graphics and storage capabilities of your device.

Our goal is to make Twikini the best designed Twitter app for Windows devices in the world.

Bizarrely it even has some integration into Windows Media Player which will automatically tweet the song and artist I am listening to. I doubt that will catch on and could actually lose me followers!

Twikini is a breeze to install; just download the CAB file from http://www.trinketsoftware.com/Twikini/ and you are away.

Happy tweeting…

So how do you do it quickly, easily and efficient manner. Well let me share with you what I do with my WordPress blogs that I run.

Backup up the database (1st priority!)

All WordPress blogs are pretty much contained in a database somewhere. All your posts, comments, mete data and user information is stored away in a database table. If you lose that; then I’m afraid that you will be started over from scratch.

There are a few ways in which you can do this; either directly through your web hosting provider using a tool like PHPAdmin or with WordPress it’s better to use a plugin.

My favourite WordPress plugin is WP-DB-Backup (http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/)

Installing and configuring WP-DB-Backup

1. Go ahead and download the plugin from http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wp-db-backup/ and save it to your disk.
2. unzip the contents and upload the wp-db-backup folder to your WordPress wp-content/plugins directory
3. Log into your WordPress administration area, and select ‘Plugins / Installed’ and then select ‘WordPress Database Backup’ and activate it.
4. Now go to ‘Tools / Backup’ and configure the plugin to backup all your tables.
5. I prefer to get the plugin to email me the database once a day. That way I know that I always have an up to backup and I know where to find it.

Backup up the files

Now that you have your database safely being backup up every day you should be happier in the knowledge that if you lose everything you can always get the database back – you would just need to re-install WordPress, themes and plugins and upload any images etc that you were using.

Remove that fear as well by ensuring that you backup the entire contents of your web host on a daily basis as well. This way you will never be without a complete backup to get you back up and working quickly.

Again there are numerous ways in which you can do this; and they will vary depending on the web hosting provider that you use; the level of access they provide to you and the platform upon which you are backing up to. In my case I only have FTP access to my hosting provider and I use a Linux (ubuntu) platform at home to provide file sharing and backups.

So the best way that I discovered was to run an automated download of the sites once a day using the following script:

#!/bin/sh
# WebSite(s) backup routine
# Uses wget to remotely download FTP only webservers – like byethost.com
# Written by David Baldaro
# ———————————————————————-

### Service Setup ###
ROOTDIR=”/directory/to/backup/too”

### FTP server Setup ###
FTPU=”your-ftp-username”
FTPP=”your-ftp-password”
FTPS=”your-ftp-server-address”
WGET=”$(which wget)”
LOGFILE=”/var/logs/website_backup.log”

### Other stuff ###
EMAILID=your@emailaddress.com

### Dump backup using FTP ###
#Start FTP backup using wget
cd $ROOTDIR
wget –recursive –level=inf –timestamping $FTPS –ftp-user=$FTPU –ftp-passwor
d=$FTPP –no-verbose –output-file=$LOGFILE

This script effectively uses WGET to keep a synchronised copy of the entire directory of my web host on my local server. I can either run this manually; or I can set it as a cron job so that it runs once a day in the early hours of the morning; so as to not effect my bandwidth during the day.

I hope that this helps someone save hours of trying to piece back their beloved blog!

There are a good number of options available with the plugin – the best bet is to head over to Google Group for the plugin (http://groups.google.com/group/wp-feedlist).

Anyway to get things working download and install the plugin into your wordpress installation and then activate it within the Plugins administration section.

Using the plugin

Once the plugin is active within any page or post on your blog you can insert the correct to plug in the content from an RSS feed like this:

<ul>

<!–rss:rss_feed_url:=http://feeds2.feedburner.com/DavidBaldaro, num_items:=5, random:=false–>

</ul>

The Results

The above results in a list like the following (obviously adhering to your CSS styles)