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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Huckleberries Online

8 Things Every Geek Needs to do Before 2010

Here's some great advice for all of us:

1. Edit your privacy settings and friendships. Facebook's maelstrom-causing privacy changes have given quite a few of us a head-scratching good time trying to figure out just how much of our private lives are to be made public. Before the new year begins, take a look at your settings on sites such as Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, LiveJournal and any other places you might be sharing personal content to make sure what you display is consistent with the public image you want to project.

2. Change your passwords. Safety first, friends. Social web security threats in 2009 were sweeping and surprised more than a few users with spam DMs, hacked accounts and malware of all kinds.

3. Own your name. I've conducted many a web search on many a professional geek this year, and I've been disappointed by how few of us have staked a meaningful claim to our online identities.

4. Prune your feeds. When going through your RSS feeds, do you find yourself impatiently scrolling more than you're intently skimming? Is your list of unread items becoming unmanagable? The end of the year is a perfect time to get rid of the content you're not reading and group the stuff you are.

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Huckleberries Online

D.F. Oliveria started Huckleberries Online on Feb. 16, 2004. Oliveria's Sunday print Huckleberries is a past winner of the national Herb Caen Memorial Column contest.