LinkedIn Company Pages and More: Committing to More Time and Effort on LinkedIn in 2013

LinkedIn is coming up in more and more conversations that I'm having with clients and over this Thanksgiving holiday weekend, LinkedIn actually popped up in a chat or two among friends - seems that more and more business folk are interested in learning more about LinkedIn.

Most everyone at this point considers LinkedIn as more than a site used by people looking for a job or those looking to hire.  (Not that there's anything wrong with that, right?)  Most everyone is also confused about what LinkedIn can do for them, and absolutely everyone that I have been chewing the fat with over LinkedIn is wary of the amount of time that needs to be invested into LinkedIn before results are seen.

Still, LinkedIn is a surprisingly hot topic here on the Planet Reba: people are pondering doing more on that site, it's just a question of what they will do and how much time it will require.

Of course, this is exactly what LinkedIn is working hard to achieve: just read a post or two at the LinkedIn blog and you'll catch the drift about LinkedIn's plans for the future.  (Maybe it's not world domination, but I wouldn't discount the possibility.)

Should LinkedIn be a part of your future?  I think so.  I know that I plan on LinkedIn having more of a presence in my 2013 Schedule than ever before.  How?  Why?

I'll explore this in more detail in future posts; however, right now there is something that I think is worth noting now and worth your time to consider implementing on the LinkedIn networking site: it's their new company pages.

LinkedIn Company Pages

LinkedIn made their redesigned company pages available to everyone last month.  LinkedIn has a nice set of pages to acquaint members with this new offering, as well:

• Overview of LinkedIn Re-Designed Company Pages
• Connecting:  How to Find and Follow Other Companies on LinkedIn
• How To Set Up Your Own LinkedIn Company Page
• Money, Honey:  Set Up Products and Services on Your Company Page
• Easy Peasy Status Updates to Your Company Page

And there's more.  There's a widget so you can place a "follow" button for your LinkedIn Company page on your company's web site or blog.  There's a nice FAQ section.

Best for last:  LinkedIn also has everything here packaged in a set of instructional videos to make things even easier and more inviting to you.

And, yes -- it's all free.  Free.  (Take that, Facebook.)

Want to learn more about this?  Check out this downloadable pdf from LinkedIn for those who would rather print something and read it instead of looking at a screen.  (Dinosaurs do still roam the earth.)  Also check out their case histories of companies who are happy with the results they've experienced with their LinkedIn company pages.

5 Tips for Creating Strong Passwords That Are Easy to Use

Today, there is a story that those who are following the tabloid story of Twilight star Kristen Stewart's affair with the director of her new Snow White movie are vulnerable to malware attacks.  Seems that evildoers like to tag their malware (viruses and the like) to popular topics -- and this Twilight saga split of the Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson is right up their alley.

One of my clients is very concerned about this, since her kids love Twitter and Facebook and use her laptop routinely - and in doing so, they've already opened the door to one or more viruses which her tech support believes gained access through those shrunk links that appear on tweets and the like.  It's called "clickjacking."

Which brings us to passwords.  My client's biggest concern was protecting her financial sites as well as her blogging account.  Could the virus circumvent her passwords?  How do you create a strong password?  How can you make passwords that are strong and that are also easy to use (and remember)?

Passwords need to be easy for you to remember and hard for those computer villains to figure out, even with their sneaky password finding software.  Don't share them with anyone.  Don't put them on sticky notes on your monitor.  Remember to change them -- say on the 1st of every month.

Here are five (5) tips for creating strong, easy to use passwords:

1.  Use a quote or a short sentence that is personal to you.

Carnegie Mellon's Computer Science Department recommends sentences such as "I have two kids: Jack and Jill."  For sites that only allow a certain number of characters, they suggest you memorize a short version of this sentence and use it:  "Ih2K:JaJ"

2.  Use two unrelated words and then add some tweaks

Tweaks?  They can be whatever works for you: like added punctuation and a capital letter or two which will be easy for you to remember.

Carnegie Mellon gives an example here of  "book and goat" which then becomes "bo!ok29goat"

3.  Use different passwords, and change them often.

PCMag recommends that you change your passwords as often as you change your underwear.  PCMag also recommends that you use different passwords for different sites: never use the same password for different things. Don't use the same password for your online banking and your email account.  That's just asking for trouble.

4.  Move your hands on the keyboard.

PCMag has another good idea:  once you have your secret password, move your hands on your keyboard so they are one row up or one column over -- then type.

5.  Make things easier to remember by having your own password themes.

ComputerWorld suggests having a personal theme to your passwords that relate to a personal life event, such as the birth of a child.   OneMorePush and IceChips were given as some of their examples here.

What I'm Doing With My Passwords These Days.

Not too long ago, I was hit by an evildoer that did get one of my email account passwords.  However, the damage wasn't too bad -- it was an account I had set up to receive all those newsletters, daily quotes, etc. and not my personal or professional stuff.   Still, it was scary enough that I spent most of a workday setting up all new passwords and a password-changing schedule (not on the 1st).  I feel safer for it, and I think you will, too.

Another thing I did:  I stopped opening those shrunken links.  If the tweet doesn't give me enough info for me to google the site, and if I'm not interested enough to do a Google search, then so be it.  Turns out to be a nice time saving tool as well as a security strategy.

For more:

Microsoft suggestions on passwords.

Microsoft Password Strength Checker (input your password for evaluation). 

Are Westlaw and Lexis Violating Lawyer Copyrights By Publishing Legal Briefs and Memoranda In Their Databases? New York Lawsuit Filed for Damages Under U.S. Copyright Law

Well, this seems silly.  As a lawyer, whenever I filed something in the public record of a court case - and I did this for over 20 years - never once did I think WAIT, I better make sure I've protected my copyright on this thing.   I mean really.

However, two lawyers up in New York are suing both West Publishing Company and LexisNexis for having the audacity of taking documents like briefs and legal memoranda, copying them, and placing them on their databases.  That's right.  The lawyers are arguing that they are due actual and punitive damages for a violation of federal copyright laws because West and Lexis have digitally collected and sold these public records to their clients.

Oh my, oh my.

The lawsuit isn't new.  It was filed as White v. West Publishing Company & Reed Elsevier Inc. in the Southern District of New York back on February 22, 2012.  You can read the complaint here.

UCLA Law Professor Eugene Volokh wasted no time in writing about this, and his blog post is worth your time to read.  

From Professor Volokh's perspective, the issue here isn't the existence of a copyright -- he argues that the briefs are copyrighted material of the lawyers who wrote them (or maybe the law firm, or maybe the client, too - but this is a rabbit trail and Prof. V argues work for hire doesn't extend this far) -- it's the question of whether or not the fair use doctrine will apply here to allow the two big legal research companies the ability to share these briefs for their own profit under the fair use defense to copyright infringement under federal law.

Meanwhile, up in Canada there's another case dealing with a similar issue of copyright violation of lawyers whose briefs have been copied and then placed into legal software databases and it's been certified as a class action.  More on that case here.  

Another law professor shares his take on things over at the Law Librarian Blog; it comforted me to read that he thought this to be a little silly, too.