Including random thoughts on life, art, business, stuff, and occasionally Real Estate.
What is a CAT BLOG?
According to Seth Godin: "Cat blogs are for, by, and about the person blogging. A cat blog is about your cat and your dating travails and your boss and whatever else you feel like sharing in your public diary."
Well, I am the boss, my dating years are behind me, but I do love my cats.
Mark this date: Thursday evening, August 26, 5pm to 8pm. Please invite your friends, family and neighbors.
From Heritage Square Museum: On August 26, the Susie Hansen Latin Band returns to us for what promises to be an unforgettable performance. Electric violinist Susie Hansen plays fiery Latin Jazz and Salsa, creating music that brings audiences to their feet, dancing in the aisles. Susie and her Los Angeles-based band have been acclaimed by many critics, such as Phil Elwood from the San Francisco Examiner who describes them this way: "It's a sizzling, swinging Salsa band. Hansen can solo as if her bow was afire. The whole room was jumpin' for joy." Mark Holston wrote in JAZZIZ Magazine that Susie Hansen’s “violin speaks the language of Latin Jazz with total fluency."
A long-time favorite in Los Angeles, Susie and her band play 175-200 live performances per year, including such events as the Playboy Jazz Festival, Fiesta Broadway, San Jose Jazz Festival, LA Salsa Festival and Newport Beach Jazz Festival. She has toured nationally with her band, and has appeared with such big names as Tito Puente. For more information on Susie Hansen, go to http://www.susiehansen.com/.
Opening for the Susie Hansen Latin Band will be local favorite blues band Blue Metro. Learn all about Blue Metro on their website at http://www.bluemetro.net/.
Heritage Square Museum is located at 3800 Homer Street Los Angeles, CA 90031-1530
Here's the dark side of Facebook PLACES. It just went live on Wednesday last week -- so the Bartman decided to give it a whirl.
I was celebrating a killer July sales month so I decided to have a dinner party and I invited some of my younger friends in their 30's. All of them iPad, iPhone, or Droid toting, digitally connected REALTOR colleagues.
We headed over to Blue Corn Cafe off Jefferson and I-25 for blue margaritas.
The wait staff had arranged a large, long table for all of us. when 90% of our group had arrived I had announced I had checked them in on Facebook Places as they arrived to I could inform the rest of the group.
Foursquare lets you check in and tagging people with GPS like check-in programs like Foursquare and now Facebook Places isn't a bad thing, right? Well... as I learned today (Sunday) it depends on who you talk to. Because it CAN be a huge violation of your Privacy.
Here's what happened.
I now have more than 1,000 Friends on Facebook. Combined with my friends and colleagues I invited to dinner on Friday, we probably shared more than 17,000 friends/contacts.
As my friends arrived, I checked them into Facebook places without their permission. Informing the rest of the incoming gang where we were and who showed up.
When I informed the group I had added them -- 5 out of the 11 were upset. One of my friends was completely torked. He had told his wife a small white lie. He told his better half that he had work to do.
She is an avid user of Facebook. (whoops, my bad! )
So he imagined his wife waiting at home for him at the front door -- holding the frying pan to beat him over the head immediately upon his arrival.
Another problem didn't surface until the next day. My post on Facebook Places showed up in more than 100 newsfeed websites. I never meant to broadcast this to a ton of websites. What the Hell was I thinking?
Ooops. Here I am reading about my dinner party and who I checked in as the arrived at the door. Why does this have to make the news feeds? I had no clue. Suffice it to say, I got a few upset phone calls this weekend. Fortunately, the newsfeeds dump stuff quickly and I personally wrote 11 of them asking them to please clear the news about my party which was now a train wreck that I wanted to forget.
Who's responsible for this problem? Marrk Zuckerberg, CEO and jerk at large from Facebook. Apparently he just can't seem to stay out of trouble. In April, Facebook announced the LIKE button feature which violated a lot of people's security by openly allowing anyone with the skills to hack your personal calendar online and access content you might not want others to have.
What's WRONG with Check In Networks like Foursquare and new Facebook Places? Plenty of you've been stalked on line by thieves.
My checking my friends into Facebook Places sends the clear message to a whole new crop of smart theft rings, I call; DiHeads ( Digital Housebreakers with Droids or DHD's )
One of my colleagues told me this is a real problem and he showed me a website, PleaseRobMeshowed the darker side of Check in Websites. I invite you to click and visit that site. If you use Twitter, Facebook or Foursquare -- this will scare the living daylights out of you. And it needs to wake all of us up -- because we have to be careful with what we do online.
Because thieves will watch you and wait for you to leave your home. The process might take weeks or months of stalking. But one day, you go home and you learn sometimes too late, that you need to be more careful with what you post online.
Below is the video on YouTube that shows you how to deactivate the Facebook Places and prevents people from ADDING or letting them Check you in, too.
Tsk. Tsk. I like Facebook.
But it seems that Facebook never really thinks alot about how their new products will affect personal security. Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook's founder/CEO) blindly spends millions of dollars in new products that can harm you.
They screwed up in April on the privacy issues. And now... here we go again.
Below is the YouTube Video that Facebook Places is now under your control.
Most folks know I've been in the cheering section for WordPress Mu (multiple user) since 2008. For me, it has been a great way to create separate sites for staff members, individual properties, particular neighborhoods, etc.... without needing to setup up a separate hosting account for each.
Another tip: If you are using a Categories or Archives widget on your original site; after Multi-Site is enabled, remove each of those widgets and then reinstall them (just drag back to the sidebar), to make sure permalinks are updated.
And it got me thinking about our tendency to want to block everything into a time slot.
Maybe we all need a little less "time blocking" and a little more "you do something until you finish it, and that's the amount of time it takes to do it" kind of thinking .....
Do you have a self-hosted WordPress blog? Do you also use Posterous?
You could, of course, post to Posterous first, and have Posterous autopost the article on to your WordPress site.
But, if, for whatever reason, you prefer to work in WordPress first,POSTERIZE is the plugin in for you. It automatically forwards your WordPress posts to Posterous.
And, from Posterous, you could set the posts to go out in several more directions.
This is a rare opportunity to rennovate and restore an absolutely classic StoryBook Style home in Sagamore Park.
This Grande Dame is somewhat faded, but with a lot of cosmetic attention and landscaping could be ready for her close-up! The ocean wave roof is unique and gorgeous... makes the property look like a fairy tale house behind a Sleeping Beauty hedge. From the front door you step into a large living room with a coved ceiling and a wood burning fireplace. Turn left into the formal dining room, also with coved ceiling. Breakfast nook and laundry room are at either end of the kitchen. Three large bedrooms and a bath and a half bath are off a center hall. The private, overgrown yard is lush with greenery, but with some trimming and clearing will be the perfect place to entertain. Or just sit under the arbor and dream about Prince (or Princess) Charming!
4503 W. Avenue 40, Sagamore Park, offered for sale at: $479,900
On August 15th and August 26th, step out of your car or get off the Metro Gold Line on your way home from work for one-of-a-kind free concerts at Heritage Square Museum. Join us as we present great musical acts, local food vendors and costumed docents in a venue that brings you out of the present and into Southern California's past. No need to drive - take the Gold Line to the nearby Heritage Square station. Concerts are made possible thanks to the support of Supervisor Gloria Molina, the LA County Arts Commission, the Mt. Washington Homeowner's Alliance and El Classificado.
Dorrs open at 4:00 PM with opening acts beginning at 5:00 PM. Arrive at the museum early to see the historic architecture up close. Visitors will have a chance to try local food and drink and shop in the museum store. Costumed docents will be on hand to enliven the evening. Foodies take note - the world-famous Pink's Hot Dogs will be here on August 15th.
On August 15, Mariachi Divas will be the headline act. Founded and directed by trumpet player Cindy Shea in 1999, the all-female Mariachi Divas are making big waves on the national music scene. In 2009, the group won the American Grammy award for Regional Mexican Album for their latest CD, Canciones De Amor. Mariachi Divas are a unique, multi-cultural ensemble imbued with the true flavor of Los Angeles and have been represented by women of Mexican, Cuban, Samoan, Argentinian, Colombian, Panamanian, Puerto Rican, Swiss, Japanese, Honduran, Peruvian, Tongan and Anglo descents. Cindy Shea states, "Music is a way of uniting our cultural backgrounds." Mariachi Divas have appeared at Southern California venues such as the Arrowhead Pond, Universal Amphitheater, Staples Center, the Greek Theatre, the Santa Barbara Bowl, the House of Blues, the LA Forum for the 2005 Premio La Gente live TV awards show and the Shrine Auditorium for the 2006 Alma Awards. They have also accompanied Grammy- winning artists including Joan Sebastian, Jenny Rivera, Marco Antonio Solis, Pablo Montero, Graciela Beltran and Paulina Rubio and Mariachi Vargas. For more information on Mariachi Divas, please visit http://www.mariachidivas.com/.
Then Look up in the upper right corner for the search box. Type in the name of a book you'd like to "read".
For example, try typing in gary keller shift. Hit Enter. There you go. If you wanted to read Shift, but just hadn't gotten around to it yet, you can purchase it on iTunes for $10.95, and listen to it instead.
And if you don't have an iPhone, you can just simply play it right on your computer. Plus there are free Podcasts.
Try searching for other books on your reading list. You just might get hooked. :-)
Thanks to Wordy C, I found this post about Fast Company's Influence Project!
When you register, you are given a unique link. You post that link in blogs/websites/facebook updates/where-ever. Your "influence" is then determined by the number of people who click on your link.
Fast Company is doing something interesting with social media. They have set up a site to determine who the most influential person is by tracking sign ups and pass alongs of your link. Everyone that participates is supposedly going to get their picture in the November issue when they reveal the Most Influential Person. How cool is that going to be to see your picture in the magazine?
Of course the size of your picture is going to be determined by the amount of influence you have so get cracking now.
Think about the promotional possibilities if you are the most influential person (although you probably wouldn’t need the PR if you are that influential.)
So, if you ever wondered about the value of social media why not give this a shot and see how influential you really are. This won’t give you the true ROI of social media but will give you an indication of your reach and influence.
More importantly it could be fun to see some AR members in the November issue.
