Technology Talk

It’s always a good idea to monitor what you write about less it come back to haunt you one day. What you post on blogs and social networking sites like MySpace and FaceBook can hurt your job prospects, be used as evidence in against you, and even get you fired. But the line between appropriate and inappropriate behavior is one of interpretation, as 17 year old high school student, Miles Haggard, learned recently.

A junior at Plainfield South High School, Haggard vocalized his concerns about the school district on Xanga.com. Part of his comments included Read the rest

As a webmaster for several sites, I get a lot of comment spam on blogs and guestbooks. The vast majority of these comments come from automated bots that scour the web creating links back to spam sites. I’ve often wondered what’s the best way to weed out these comments from the legit ones and have ended up moderating all comments - a time consuming process. Read the rest

I’m always amazed at the kinds of stuff people will post about themselves online. Last week, Businessweek posted a good article about how what you post may eventually come back to harm you - particularly when you enter the job search.

Five years ago, a guy posted about his bad drug trip. Today, the post still comes up on the first page of search results for his name. Another girl was fired for posing suggestively in her airline uniform. Read the rest

If you’ve ever spent time in online chat rooms, forums, or games, you’ve probably noticed the little pictures posters use to represent themselves. Sometimes, they’re real photos but often, they’re cartoons, movie characters, animals, or pretty much anything you can imagine.

For most sites, it’s pretty easy to change that picture (called an Avatar) - you just select which picture you want to represent you, upload it to the server with the click of a button, and presto - you’re someone completely different. Read the rest