Let’s face it — it’s not in Delicious.com’s (and Yahoo!’s) interest to make it easy to let people default to NOT sharing their bookmarks, but I wish they made it a little easier to actually do it.

So here’s how you do it in Firefox:

1. Quit out of Firefox
2. Explore deliciousBookmarks.jar (the location of this file depends on which OS you’re running) with a proper JAR editor (NOT just a text editor) and open the file yAddBookMark.xul,
3. Search for the following code:
   
<checkbox id="cb_noShare" label="&addybookmarks.sharing.label;"

    

4. Add checked=”true” to the tag, so it looks something like this:
   
<checkbox id="cb_noShare" checked="true" label="&addybookmarks.sharing.label;"

    

5. Save the file, exit, and relaunch Firefox. Voila!

Now don’t forget to uncheck it if you DO want to make something private!

Finally gave up on Vista, but it’s not Microsoft’s fault (though I still don’t forgive them for the hideousness of Office 2007+) — turns out my HD had some subtly failing sectors that caused all the crashes. So I’ve reverted back to Windows XP running off another drive, and I’m only using the PC as backup (and occasional gaming) — I’m 100% Mac now. If only I could get TweetDeck to behave, I’ll be set!

While I was complaining on Twitter (what will I tweet about now, by the way?), I got a pitch from litl on the benefits of getting rid of the HD. Folks, appliance computing is here, and guess what? It’s not as scary a place as I thought it’d be. While I’d lament not being able to pop open a terminal window and crank away on the command line, how often do I ACTUALLY do that? The last .bat or shell script I wrote was 4 years ago.

While I don’t think I’ll embrace the litl (I do like the design though), I’m a little less scared about the cloud each day.

(I warned you about topical departures, rants and tech talk, right? Here it is again: if you just want marketing talk, go visit the Fresh Ground Blog.)

It’s simple, ladies:

1. Stability (often in the form of spouse / lover).
2. Progeny (the closest thing we have to immortality until Kurzwiel figures it out).
3. Sex (however we can get it at the frequency we desire).
4. Wealth (most of the time, this varies roughly inversely with numbers 1, 2 and 3)

The problem is the nature of the relationships between these four desires. Here’s a graph (a tribute to Indexed) that explains it better:

So the problem is, we want all four, but can’t really have all four, at least for long periods of time. I think a lot of bad behaviors can be explained by men trying to figure out the right equation to max out all four of these variables. Good luck, gentlemen!

Yesterday I wrote about my collection of favorite WordPress plugins for managing a private user community. One of the plugins I mentioned was Absolute Privacy.

I love my friends, but I wouldn’t trust most of them with a loaded weapon. Similarly, I want to give my editors the ability to approve new users in a closed WordPress forum I set up for one of our clients, but I don’t want to give editors all of the functionality that comes with the manage_options Capability.

I’m using the Absolute Privacy plugin for WordPress, which I’ve slowly been modifying myself, so it’s the one plug-in I’ve set to version 999 to ensure that it doesn’t get accidentally overridden by an overzealous admin (read: me). This means it’s also the one plugin I’ve been playing around with deeply.

By default, Absolute Privacy tests against the manage_options Capability flag to see if you should have permission to moderate new users. I don’t want to give my editors the ability to manage all WordPress options, so I did the following:

1. In Users->Roles, I added a new capability called approve_new_users, and gave Administrators and Editors the capability.
2. Then I went into the code for Absolute Privacy and found the function that creates the Moderate Users menu item. I edited two lines of code:
   • I replaced the line that tests the user’s Capability to read
     if (!current_user_can('approve_new_users'))
   • I edited the add_submenu_page call to read
     add_submenu_page('users.php', 'Moderate Users', 'Moderate Users', 'approve_new_users', basename(__FILE__), array(&$this,'moderateUsers'));

Done!

I’ve recently launched a private forum on WordPress, and here’s a rundown of the plugins and add-ons I’ve used to secure the site, manage members, etc. (this isn’t a comprehensive list, just a list of the plug-ins that make locking down and managing a blog simpler):

• Absolute Privacy – I played around with a LOT of user moderation tools before settling on this one, with a few modifications, which I’ll talk about in a separate post. Absolute Privacy gives you the ability to ask for a first and last name during registration, set a password upfront (no emailing passwords), review and approve new users, force redirects for unregistered users (nicer than password-restricting the site using .htaccess), manage access to RSS feeds, and most importantly, edit all the confirmation emails new users get, something sorely missing in WordPress by default, and not handled well by other access management plugins. Simply put: spectacular!
• BM Custom Login – This is what I used to redesign the look of the registration window, which keeps getting longer and longer as I add more fields! It’s nicely extensible, and plays well with all my plugins.
• Cimy User Extra Fields – While this is definitely one of the more complicated and difficult-to-use plugins I’ve worked with, it’s also one of the most extensible, so for that reason I hold onto it. I use this plugin to add extra fields that allow the administrators and editors to make a call as to whether to allow the user to join the community or not. I haven’t gotten around to editing the Absolute Privacy’s Moderate Users screen to display the extra info (note to self), but if the moderator clicks on the profile link, they’ll see all the fields and can then go back and approve or deny the addition.
• Members – I use this to give me more capability to manage roles and, well, capabilities.
• Members List – This allows me to create a public, searchable listing of members. I can easily edit how the list appears, and what it links to.
• Register Plus – It’s a crying shame that the developer has stopped making updates to this plug-in, as it looks like it could handle so much of what I want inside one plugin, but alas, most of it is broken. I still use it to display and manage the Terms of Service and other Disclaimers for the site, as well as to permit the use of multiple logins with the same email address (mostly for testing purposes). There are a TON of other features, but many of them don’t seem to work any longer.

I’ll share some other plugins that I’m using to encourage user activity, but this is a great combination that provides me with some peace-of-mind.

What, you’re still reading this? I’m impressed. You have patience.Back in October I asked what was next for this blog.

I’ve decided that I will use this blog for my non-marketing-related posts and general rants about life. I’ll also start sharing what I’m learning as I really roll my sleeves up in WordPress, Twitter API and other technologies that our Fresh Ground clients, and my own curiosity, have me pursuing.

That may make this blog less palatable for some of you. If deep tech dives and rants turn you off, please refer to the Fresh Ground Blog, where Chuck and I will continue to post our more general thoughts on marketing, technology and business.

 

No, I’m not talking about Fresh Ground Communications (although it is), I’m talking about the company I keep in this video, namely Katie Paine, Gary Vee, Rebecca Corliss and Mike Schneider.

The full post is available on the DNA13 blog.

Please follow my new blog at http://itsfreshground.com/blog to get all my thoughts on social media, PR, measurement, marketing and business.

I created the More Than Marketing blog a little more than a year ago to capture my social media, marketing, PR and technology thoughts since I was no longer blogging at Tech PR Gems. Now that I have teamed up with Chuck Tanowitz to form Fresh Ground Communications, I’ll be sharing my business-related “day job” thoughts on the Fresh Ground Blog.

So what’s to become of this blog and site? I’m not sure yet, but I’m thinking about redirecting More Than Marketing to the Fresh Ground Blog, while keeping VanHoosear.com directing here — if that’s possible. I will be switching my RSS feed over to the Fresh Ground Blog, and am considering switching my Facebook Notes feed as well. If you read this on Facebook, are you more interested in my thoughts on social media, PR and technology, or what I had for breakfast?

You heard it on Twitter first folks, but it’s true: @ctanowitz and I are announcing today the launch of our new venture, Fresh Ground Communications. There is a lot more information to come on what we’re doing, hence the small splash, but have a look at the website and the blog to get a sense of what we’ll be offering.

In July I separated from SocialSphere after about eight months there. I don’t normally like to make my tenures at companies so short — in fact, I’ve averaged about 4 years per gig if you set aside acquisitions, transfers and the like.

My undergraduate degree in communications, obviously my first four-year stint (okay, more like 4.5 if you count a couple summer terms) is where I found my love of public relations and refined my editorial skills (which I first picked up in high school as an occasional contributor to our high school paper and to the newsletter for my Civil Air Patrol Squadron, for which I was awarded 1989 Michigan Wing Newsletter Editor of the Year). My love for PR and editing skills came in good part thanks to Ned S. Hubbell and PRSSA, where I edited the MSU chapter’s newsletter called the Forecaster (I won a couple awards for that too). Unfortunately, PR didn’t pay so well in the early 90s, so I had to make my money a different way. I chose to go back to school. I studied communications, but got an assistantship from the MSU Computer Lab to pay my way. Still a lousy salary, but they also paid for school. This led to my slow but inevitable temporary departure from communications and marketing.

My first five years of my professional career, from about 1992 to 1997, gave me my really deep understanding of technology, and exposed me to public speaking, training and the joys of editing and the web. These first five years took me from my graduate program in communications to a temp job, a part-time job, and finally a full-time job at the Computer Lab. I went from running the Graphics Lab (where I learned to be a Photoshop guru) to the last editor of ACRONYMS (the Computer Lab’s newsletter, where I learned PageMaker), to running the school’s non-academic computer training program (where I taught, in addition to PageMaker and Photoshop, Excel, Unix, Windows, Networking and several other popular classes), to helping launch the schools first virtual university project (where I was responsible for setting up the computers that served web pages and streamed video and audio to Extension Schools across Michigan).

My next three years (1997-2000) brought me to Boston, where I transitioned from technology back to communications at Advis, later bought by Primix, later bought by Burntsand. I went from a Java trainer (my first, very short-lived gig at Advis) to network administrator (running Windows Server and NeXT machines) to pre-sales consultant (where I got to do live demo installations of web applications for PeopleSoft and SAP) to marketing communications manager (where I was re-acquainted with PR in a big way, especially when my company made Barron’s famous Burn List that essentially kicked off the dot com crash).

When the opportunity to jump ship and work at the PR agency I had hired for Primix came around, I jumped at it. I cut my teeth in PR from 2000 to 2003 as an account manager and account director at Miller/Shandwick Technologies (later merged with a couple other IPG agencies to form Weber Shandwick Worldwide). And when the opportunity came to work for my old boss at Miller/Shandwick came, I also jumped on board his growing small PR agency called Topaz Partners.

My five-year tenure at Topaz Partners from 2003 to 2008 marked my rapid introduction to Web 2.0 and social media. I launched our blog on July 7th, 2004, and it was downhill from there (you can see every old blog post of mine here). I loved it there, but it seemed like it was time to move on.

SocialSphere gave me an opportunity to grow into some new markets, including some more consumer- and government-focused areas. I got to work with some great people, and cut my teeth on some new technologies. I helped the company solidify its client services, including the development of some pretty mean spreadsheets that drove our (whenever possible and always morphing) daily War Room discussions. It was what you would call a learning organization, rapidly trying new ideas at it worked to improve itself. It was an enjoyable 8 months, but it was again time to move on.

Why? Well, for a long time now I’ve been wanting to strike out on my own. I have a wonderful combination of technology, communications and marketing skills and a great network thanks to all the social media involvement I’ve had. I’m not quite ready to share what’s next yet, but stay tuned over the next few weeks for more news as I set the stage for what I hope will be a successful business.