The scene in the office on that sad day reminds one of sort of a virtual shiva; now-former employees make the last copies of their resumes on the office copy machine, the last paychecks are distributed, the boss signs letters of recommendations for workers, and whatever is left of the office supplies are distributed. And, of course, there’s the last lunch, with employees and managers reminiscing on their time together, and promising to keep in touch.

Then there are the assets. The hardware that the service ran on are often taken by creditors, or the VCs who will not be seeing a return on their investment; the patents are either sold, rented out, or frozen, in the hope that they will be used to innovate on another day. And, of course, the final monetary accounting is taken, ensuring that former employees’ pensions and other savings plans are kept safe.

What about the data? Ah, there’s an interesting question. We would expect the information on hard drives and databases to be wiped; indeed, there would seem to be little use for user data after the service has closed down. Of course, someone could mine the database for email addresses and sell them, but the reputation of the company – and especially the management, and super-especially the CEO – would be severely tarnished. It’s hard to imagine an internet startup whiz, who was able to raise millions of dollars to fulfill his or her vision, would stoop that low – or be that hard up for cash.

But there might be other information that could come in handy – depending on the nature of the service. Here is a quote from a well-known internet service, where you can store information, documents, and ideas, for yourself or for others. “By submitting to [service] any ideas, suggestions, documents and/or proposals… you acknowledge and agree that… your contributions automatically become the property of [service] without any obligation of [service] to you; and you are not entitled to any accounting, compensation or reimbursement of any kind from [service] under any circumstances.”

I’m intentionally not naming the service, because in truth this terms of service (TOS) agreement is not unique; Gmail’s, for example, says that they have a right to use your information in all sorts of ways. Gmail, the classic cloud application, stores all your information online, and nowadays many people are using Gmail for their main mail account – meaning that they transmit all sorts of sensitive information right to Google’s waiting claws, which the company can theoretically use for nefarious purposes.

But I’m not worried about Gmail; any company whose stock price is in excess of $600 doesn’t need the petty business ideas and thoughts we may send through and store on their servers. Whatever we can come up with, I’m pretty sure the Google people have already thought of, and they either have a pilot program going based that idea, or have rejected it as not being applicable to their business model.

But what about a service that stored information like Google does – including sensitive spreadsheets, business plans, communications, thoughts and ideas – shares of which are not trading at $625 a share, and in fact are no longer trading at all, because they’re bust? Could one of our business ideas – a really good one – end up the property of an ex-CEO, or to whomever said CEO or the board of directors sells the intellectual aspects of the former service provider?

Concerns over computer application and internet service TOS  are nothing new, and there have been many celebrated cases of user TOS protests – such as the one against Facebook, where users got nervous when Facebook claimed the right to use any user content posted by anyone, in any way they wanted to. According to the TOS that every user agrees to (but few bother reading before agreeing), the Facebook people have a perfect right to take your photos and sell them to an advertising agency. By clicking “yes” on a page that links to an agreement that says that “You hereby grant Facebook an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, transferable, fully paid, worldwide license (with the right to sublicense)” and use in any way “any User Content you (i) Post on or in connection with the Facebook Service,” you’ve given them all the permission they need to use you in a “Don’t let this happen to you!” style ad campaign!

Partly as a result of the protests, Facebook has updated its privacy settings, making it easier to opt-out of any potential use of your content for purposes you didn’t intend them to be used for. But what are those Facebook-posted photos and updates worth anyway? It’s not like the company is going to auction off your photo to an ad agency for millions – and if your image is worth that kind of money, you’ve probably beaten Facebook to the ad agency and made your own deal, anyway.

But Facebook and Google are in leagues of their own; besides the fact that they’re wallowing in cash already, both companies would have far more to lose if they were caught selling, renting, or otherwise profiting from user content. As both companies make clear on their  websites and in numerous blogs, the legalese in the TOS agreements is for their protection, such as when data gets cached (and used) on a server not under their control, and ends up being linked to by an undesirable website. Numerous articles of mine, for example, are linked from the Jerusalem Post server to sites of less than savory individuals (anti-Semites and the like), but it’s clear that I couldn’t hold the Post responsible for that.

But when it comes to smaller web services whose future is iffy, beware. We want the convenience of the cloud, but not all cloud data and information storage services are created equal. I’m sure no CEO would be the type to want to rip off an innovative business plan or idea I posted/stored on his or her service/servers. And under normal circumstances it’s almost impossible to conceive of such a thing happening. But when the chips are down and said CEO is down and out, it’s entirely possible that his/her next Big Idea will be the very same one you jotted down and posted in your (private) account – an account on a site where the TOS says that “your contributions automatically become the property of [service] without any obligation of [service] to you.” It hasn’t happened yet (to my knowledge), but on the day it does, that fluffy white Cloud will turn dark and angry, and become the harbinger of a hurricane.

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Those percentages mean that if you haven’t already started your own blog or website, chances are good that you will at some point – because as someone with something to say, you probably won’t be satisfied remaining someone’s “employee,” and will likely want to be your own boss. Especially when you find out how much money the person you’re writing for is actually earning from the site (it’s probably more than s/he’s telling you).

Fortunately, there is an easy way for you to get a very professional looking blog – indistinguishable from a “website,” if you feel the need to differentiate between the two – that will cost you little or nothing, depending on how much work you put into it. How? By using Wordpress to build your sites.

While Wordpress is properly considered a blog authoring platform, the truth is that Wordpress has morphed far beyond blogs. The later versions of the platform (the latest release was 2.8.4) support myriad plug-ins and widgets, which allow you to integrate advanced features on your site – such as  flash slideshows, shopping carts, podcasts, mailing lists, links to social sites like Twitter and Facebook, SEO management capabilities, and much more – with the click of a button. Wordpress, in fact, is more like a content management system; the Wordpress software sets up your site and provides you with an easy way to upload information, whether text or images. You get a perfect looking blog/site, without having to poke around with the “guts” of html or css code running behind the scenes.

Wordpress is free (actually, as the site says, it is “both free and priceless at the same time”). You can download the software for installation on your favorite web host (a list of free hosts can be found at Click Here Free, but note that most of them either put ads on your site, or don’t let you use your own domain name). Actually you probably don’t even need to upload Wordpress to your site host, because it’s probably already included in the batch of software and services they provide (if the site where your web pages are hosted has you log in using Cpanel, Wordpress is already there). And, if all else fails, you can join the 223,954 other people with  blogs/sites at the free Wordpress hosting site, a free service provided by Wordpress. And, Wordpress is available in just about every language you can name, including Hebrew.

Everyone wants to be unique; nobody likes cookie cutter platforms, where the tools make your site end up looking similar to others who’ve used the platform. Uniqueness (along with advanced capabilities) is one reason professional web site builders are still in business, despite the plethora of free blog and site building platforms like Wordpress and Blog.com. But folks like us who want to save money are aiming a little lower. Luckily, though, with Wordpress, your aim can be almost as good as a pro’s!

When you first install Wordpress, the software sets you up with a default theme – one that will seem very familiar to you, because you will have seen it on dozens of blogs and sites on the internet, belonging to people who never bothered to change the default theme (called, oddly enough, Wordpress Default theme). But changing a theme is simple; all you have to do is find a theme you like, upload it to your host, and click on the “themes” button in your Wordpress site’s control panel to switch. Wordpress does all the heavy lifting, fitting your blog/site’s data into the new layout you’ve chosen.

So where do you find themes? That, I have found, is one of the biggest challenges in using Wordpress – not because they’re hard to find, but because there are so many! You can pay hundreds of dollars for Wordpress themes, but there are plenty of free ones to choose from as well, such as those listed here. The thing I look for when searching out a Wordpress theme (I recently converted all four of my sites to Wordpress) is support, flexibility/features (ie how much the site can be easily customized), and, of course, price (free!) Among the themes I’ve used are Mandigo, Atahualpa, Arthemia, Mimbo, and others – all with nice features and easy to access and understand support.

How long does it take to set up a Wordpress site? That depends on how much you tinker with the features, and how much configuring you want to do (Atahualpa, for example, has over 200 options you can tweak, until you get things “just right!”). Between the configuration options and the hundreds (thousands?) of plug-ins, you can easily and quickly (within a couple of days, even for newbies) build a blog/site you will be proud of posting on and promoting.

Sounds great, doesn’t it? To most of you, that is; you’ll note that I haven’t made any comparisons of Wordpress and other blogging/site building platforms. No doubt there is someone out there who is ready to pounce and e-mail me something like “why didn’t you mention that Blogger.com lets you do xyz that Wordpress can’t…”

Whew! I’m already afraid to open my e-mail! The truth is, there are many platforms out there that can be used to do what Wordpress does (not as easily or as successfully, though). The reason I wouldn’t consider Blogger is because I want to host my sites under my own domain names, something you can’t do at Blogger.com. And, then there’s the analysis of Wordpress (the platform) vs. Blogger.com. But there’s no need for a Blogger vs. Wordpress showdown; the blogosphere is big enough for the both of them.

It’s tempting to think of the blatherings of web anti-Semites as just that. But somehow, those words are getting translated into action. Since the dawn of the “social web” – free-for-all blogging, Myspace/Facebook, and now Twitter, there has been a clear uptick in the number of people ready to go out to the town square and march against Israel. While it’s difficult to pinpoint specific causes and effects where you could quantify how more social web organizing resulted in larger protests, it’s clear that “they” are using social web tools – to good effect. Just ask Israeli tennis player Andy Ram, who in March was forced to play in a near empty arena in Malmo, Sweden. Seven thousand people staged a sometimes violent protest that led the authorities to ban nearly all spectators from the hall. That protest was heavily promoted on Swedish blogs, as well as in the media – and from the point of view of organizers, it was a smashing success.

Clearly there are plenty of dedicated anti-Israel bloggers out there who are using the social media to great effect. Some of them apparently spend whole days posting articles and links designed to incite their readers against Israel (and Jews, for that matter). Don’t these people have to work? Apparently not – but whether they’re independently wealthy or are getting paid by international “peace” organizations is academic; they’re getting the job done for their side, pushing people to show up at events that really matter, like the protest that resulted in Andy Ram’s shabby treatment.

And what about our side? We, too, have our bloggers and tweeters. Most of them comment on internet news, articles, and other blogs, and some – like the Jewish Internet Defense Force (http://tinyurl.com/d7n4ex) have even organized successful on-line protests at Facebook and other sites. In that situation, thousands of JIDF Twitter followers helped organize a campaign to get a notorious anti-Israel Facebook group removed from the site. That’s a good example of harnessing social media to accomplish something constructive – but unfortunately, there’s not enough of it going on.

More on-line protests are needed, and not just when a large anti-Israel group rears its ugly head; we should be targeting blogs, newspaper articles, etc. that spew out anti-Israel and anti-Semitic hate and lies. And when I say “targeting” I mean just that – sending out “action alerts” to readers to get them to take action, beyond reading (and presumably agreeing) with the criticism our bloggers have posted on a specific instance of anti-Israel negativity.

The “other side” does plenty of this kind of targeting – their organizers aren’t afraid to tell them to go out and give their nasty opinions in online forums, etc. All you have to do is look at the talkback forums on Israeli news sites; you see the same people giving their “Israel is always wrong” opinion at every opportunity, no matter how farfetched. Clearly these people see doing this as their “job” – whether or not they’re getting paid for it. While an Israeli news site like Jpost or Haaretz is not going to stop posting news stories, even if dozens of people react with negative comments, it unquestionably puts publications on the defensive, as writers anticipate the wave of negativity they’re about to experience in the talkbacks.

Well, why should our side be the ones who have to deal with this “wall of hate?” How about returning the favor, by “targeting” the anti-Israel and anti-Semitic sites with comments that show them up for who and what they are – posted not just by one or two stalwarts, but by hundreds, or even thousands of people? Let’s face it – when it comes to Israel and Jews, the internet “information stream” has been largely hijacked by a specific group that doesn’t operate by Robert’s Rules of Order, or respect freedom of thought. There’s just one point of view as far as they’re concerned – the one that says we’re wrong – and no logic in the world is going to change their minds. And while our natural tendency would be to keep the debate civil and respectful, it’s almost impossible to act with such chivalry today. By fighting fire with fire, we’d be restoring the balance – reopening the door to honest discussion, as serious people on both sides drop the rhetoric and engage in honest, spam-free discussion.

In order to accomplish something like this, you would need two elements – organizers and targets. Bloggers who have popular sites might be good candidates for such a job; a Facebook group would be just as effective. Then you would begin searching for posts to comment on. There are a number of search engines that will crawl through the blogosphere, looking for the term(s) you submit.

Google’s got one, of course (http://blogsearch.google.com/), with advanced search using the same operators as regular search (http://www.google.com/help/cheatsheet.html). Technorati (http://technorati.com/) is popular as well. Also notable is Twingly (http://www.twingly.com/), a Swedish site that is hoping to develop “the world’s best spam-free blog search engine,” Blogpulse (http://www.blogpulse.com/) from Nielsen, the TV ratings people, Feedmill (http://www.feedmil.com/), “a ‘long tail’ feed search engine,” and BackType (http://www.backtype.com/), which “connects millions of conversations from blogs, social networks and other social media.”

There are also several tools for searching Twitter (note that there seems to be much less political content in Twitter – most “tweeters” are interested in business and technology, it appears). Twitter itself has an advanced search tool (http://search.twitter.com/). This page (http://tinyurl.com/6xoll3) has some tips on advanced Twitter searching. A site called Twearch (http://tinyurl.com/dlygyv) will search Twitter, Wikipedia, and Digg, as well as Tweepz (http://tweepz.com/), a service that checks what tweeters are tweeting about at any given moment. And the tools at http://tweetprobe.tumblr.com/ and http://www.trendrr.com/ are worth checking out as well. With a little effort, all of us can get onto the front lines, defending Israel – where it counts.

There’s that word again – “network.” You could be the best, the greatest, the most accomplished at what you do – but unless you figure out a way to get the attention of the person who makes the hiring decisions, you just might lose out to a less qualified candidate. Why? Because that person knew how to get their name at the top of the hiring person’s list – while you relied on the “traditional” method of responding to a want ad and sending in your resume.

I don’t think it’s fair to say that that “traditional” system is broken – but face it: When you’ve sent out a couple of hundred resumes with nary a response, it’s time to take a good, hard look at the process. It certainly isn’t your fault that “they” changed the rules of the game in the middle; but now that they have, you’re going to have to learn some new tricks in order to get back in the thick of the game.

You probably know about the various on-line networking sites already, like LinkedIn, Ning, and FaceBook, also much-used by professionals these days). Networking works; I know several people who have had success in finding jobs using LinkedIn, for example, depending on how much work they put into it. It should be noted, however, that these people put a great deal of time and effort, fine-tuning their LinkedIn profiles, joined many groups, and built up a large bank of connections (500+). Building up such a large network could take awhile, though.

And while you should by all means nurture your LinkedIn presence, there’s a new kid in town you can use to get to the people who know where the jobs are: Twitter. Twitter, of course, is the Web-based SMS-type service where you can “tweet” (message) to all and sundry your latest adventures. That, at least, was how it started out, but Twitter has evolved – especially in the past couple of months, it seems, as people seek new avenues to beef up their business networks (check out http://www.tweetcruit.com/). And because of Twitter’s very casual and open format, you “meet” people online far more easily than with other services. It might take you a couple of months to build up a network of, say, 50 connections using LinkedIn – but you could get that many in an afternoon, using Twitter!

In Twitter, you don’t make “friends” – you follow people, with their updates streaming on your own Twitter home page. Often, these people will follow you, eagerly reading your updates as you post them (according to Twitter theory, the more people you follow, the more likely you are to get followers). All “tweets” are limited to 140 characters, and you see the whole stream of consciousness emanating from your network on your Twitter home page (mine’s http://www.twitter.com/newzgeek, if you care to check it out). Posts range from what the writer is actually doing right now (“Just got out of the meeting”) to links to interesting news or blog posts, to questions and answers or requests for assistance. Unlike on LinkedIn or FaceBook, which give you time to digest what’s going on, Twitter is very “of the moment,” and you can spend a lot of time watching the posts go by. It’s lots of fun!

But before fun, work. You’re here for a very specific reason – to build up a network that can help you find job opportunities, and the people behind them. It stands to reason that the more people you “know” – the bigger your network – the better. And more than any other social networking system, Twitter is the place to go for big network numbers. In the Twitter world, there’s only one standard whereby success is measured – the number of followers in your network. And when you follow, others follow you. It’s like being at a party – everyone wants to be the center of attention, but those potential attention-centers need you to pay attention to them. The more people you “know,” the more tweets you will be privy to, and the more connections you will make that can lead to “success,” however you define that.

That’s the theory, and there are hundreds of sites that will give you ideas on how to leverage Twitter in this way to get more clicks on your blog, sell more products on-line, or just enhance your reputation in an on-line community (hi-tech, of course, but there are many other industries where on-line buzz helps, like restaurants and hotels). If your goal is to enhance your reputation – your “brand” – for online success, you can just follow straight Twitter networking procedures and gather your followers.
Job-seekers, especially in a place like Israel, have to work a little harder, nurturing a network of locals, who of course will know better where the local jobs are. First, when you set up your Twitter account, put your “elevator pitch” in your Twitter bio (160 characters), so potential followers know who you are and what you can do. If that’s not enough room, integrate more info about yourself in your Twitter background, using http://www.freetwitterdesigner.com/. Also include a link to an online CV (the ones at http://www.visualcv.com are especially suited for something like Twitter).

Once you set up your Twitter account, it’s time to seek out Twitter users located in Israel and start following them, thus building up your network. Fortunately, there are a number of services that let you search for Twitterers in your area, in real time, such as http://www.twitterlocal.net/ (requires Adobe Air), http://twitsnear.me/, and http://www.tweetscan.com/. The latter can be used to search by location and keyword, as can http://monitter.com/, so you could try a search like “Tel Aviv Accounting” if you were looking for an accounting job, for example. But it probably won’t be that easy. You can also join directories of Twitter users, such as http://justtweetit.com/ and http://wefollow.com/tag/israel/ . And others (Google “Twitter directories). And don’t forget the plumbers – they’ve got a page at http://bit.ly/oDVJw (people in other professions may have more luck at http://twitter.com/jobangels and http://twitter.com/jobshouts).

Now that you’re connected, start tweeting – about yourself, your work, your skills, etc. If the usual tweet is a form of “microblogging,” as it’s been called, think of the messages you send out as “micro-resume-ing.” Send out interesting links about your industry, links to blog posts (you really ought to have one, too, but that’s another article), and the occasional “if anyone hears about openings in ___, please let me know!” The more people hear about you, the more they’ll realize what you’re capable of – and the more likely you are to hear about the jobs you’re after. With Twitter, “what you know” gets communicated directly to “who you know!”

I couldn’t find any hard statistics on how many people have been able to find jobs using Twitter, but there are plenty of stories online. And it makes sense that you have a better chance of finding something, depending on how well known you are in the community. At least for now, Twitter is “the place to be” on-line, and users actually read the communications the people in their network send out (they’re only 140 characters, after all) – as opposed to not reading the resumes piling up in their e-boxes. Finally, a case where the short attention spans most of us have actually work to your benefit!

That’s not to put down Facebook users, of course – I’m on there too, as I’m sure many of you are. But let’s face it: It’s nice that there are dozens of pro-Israel support groups on FB, but they basically “preach to the converted.” Of course, we need to encourage “our own” to stand up and be counted, but there’s little value-added in the effort; those who are anti-Israel will remain so, while the vast majority who are on the fence or have never thought about the issue are not using FB for their political information. Lest we forget, FB’s real purpose is to encourage internet social corrections.

Unlike Digg.com, or the dozens of other social bookmarking sites (http://xrl.us/beczuc) – where people go to actually find out new information, to educate themselves on topics they may have heard about in the news that they want to know more about, or just to “browse” and increase their knowledge of the world around them. Digg and its relatives are more “viral,” as well – meaning they have a much greater chance of getting “pushed” to more people. A “good Digg” could get your site or blog hundreds, or thousands of hits, spreading the word on the network of social bookmarking sites – and coming back for more. All you need is a good come-on (ie article or post title) and some interesting information – and, of course, a someone to submit your site to the Digg list (usually accomplished by the clicking of a Digg button on your site, which submits it to the Digg.com site – and the more people who click on it, the better).

And based on my perusal of Digg and similar sites in recent weeks, we need more pro-Israel articles to appear on the front page. The anti- crowd has long used social bookmarking to promote its agenda (many of them using shady tactics such as establishing “Digg clubs,” where members surf the net promoting each others postings), with the result that if you surf to Digg.com or Reddit.com, search terms like “Israel,” “Gaza,” “Zionism,” etc., to get an idea of what I’m talking about. If there’s one thing Digg users are looking for, it’s both sides of the story – and right now, only one side is on display.

Fortunately, there is a large body of information on the internet describing how to promote sites and links in Digg and Digg-like sites. Most of the information relates to promoting commercial sites or business ideas – but if you can use business tactics to promote moneymaking ideas, why not use them to promote pro-Israel ideas? It’s actually good practice, too – when you perfect your skills at promoting Israel’s story, you can use your newfound expertise to promote your own site, too!

Because there’s money at stake (in the form of user clicks, Google rankings, etc.), there are lots of advice sites out there. Some of them have good advice – like the ideas at http://xrl.us/beczts. This site recommends a “twelve step program,” that essentially promotes networking with others at blogs and sites to promote your cause, along with informal mutual cooperation to convince others to promote your link. Titles are important, according to http://xrl.us/beczt8 – which helpfully suggests that “Catchy titles and descriptions usually do better then dull titles and descriptions.” This site (http://xrl.us/beczue) tells you how to get to the top of the Reddit page (and make money from it!). And http://xrl.us/beczun tells you how Digg and other social bookmarking sites work – their underlying philosophy, and what the front pages of the sites are looking for in posts and submissions.

There are other ways to promote sites on Digg – but I wouldn’t recommend using them. There are “pay to Digg” sites, for example, which claims to pay out (a half a buck!) for Diggs by users (if you want to get Dugg, it will cost you $20!). Users who want to get paid get a list of five articles to Digg, and when they are verified, they get a credit in their account; after you “earn” $20, they’ll forward the money to your Paypal account (you have to Digg 200 stories to make that kind of money!). There are also “Digg clubs” or “buzz clubs” out there (http://xrl.us/beczuz), where you agree with others in your club to Digg or otherwise promote each other’s stories. The Digg people are wise to this, though, and if they get wise to you, you could get banned (http://xrl.us/beczu7).

While most of the concern over phony Diggs and Digging revolve around misuse of the system to make money, you wouldn’t want similar charges to hamper your efforts to promote Israel in the social bookmarking world. So efforts to get users get together specifically to click on links are out. But there’s nothing wrong with urging members of your own interest group to check out your own links – and to Digg them as well. This is where your membership in Facebook Israel groups can come in handy – since the people in those groups are already predisposed to checking out positive news about Israel, anyway. If you’re on Facebook, check out http://xrl.us/beczvf, where you can install the Facebook/Digg app in your account. The app shows people who log onto your page the last five stories you Dugg – giving them some material to check out and promote, in the effort to promote Israel’s story online.

Can it be? Would a multinational corporation voluntarily give away, for free, some of its most powerful programs and best-known brands – some of which have had a near monopoly in their particular specialties?

The company in question is Adobe, which last week released on the Internet, for free, a Web version of its Photoshop software. Photoshop, of course, is Adobe’s top-drawer, photo-editing software; after nearly 20 years, it is still the most used program for photo editing, selling like hotcakes every time a new version comes out.

If you’re a graphic artist, Web designer or photo editor, you use Photoshop on the job (and if you’re one of the very few who don’t use PS on the job, you still have to know how to use it). Now, if you want to use Photoshop, you don’t have to pay the big bucks for PS CS3, the latest version; just surf to http://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html https://www.photoshop.com/express/index.html> , upload your photo, edit, save, download and you’ve saved yourself a pretty penny. The site says it’s for US residents only, but I didn’t have any trouble with it.

And it’s not just Photoshop that Adobe is “giving away.” There’s also an on-line version of Adobe Premiere, the company’s high-end video-editing and -mixing tool. Surf to http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereexpress/ to check out the product, and follow the links to either the MTV or Photobucket site from that page.

You upload your videos to your accounts on those sites, where you can make use of the Premiere Express software. You can even get free (albeit limited) access to some aspects of Adobe’s PDF-making software, Acrobat. At http://createpdf.adobe.com/, you can upload a file in a whole bunch of formats, like MS Word, Powepoint, plain text – even Pagemaker (!) – or insert a URL for a Web page and turn it into a downloadable or e-mailable PDF. You can convert five documents for each e-mail address you submit, but if you’ve used up your allotment, the site suggests you sign up with another address. Here’s a chance to use up all those Gmail invitations you have; just invite yourself to open a new account and you’ve got virtually unlimited access to on-line PDF making.

Sounds too good to be true – like, there has to be a catch, doesn’t there? Well, that depends on what you’re looking for. First of all, the PDF converter definitely works as advertised, and has helped me out in a couple of pinches where I had to send a document or Web page as a PDF to someone.

True, there are plenty of third-party programs that you can download and use for this, but this is Adobe (the people who created the PDF, after all), so you can be sure that whatever you generate using their service will be a “real” PDF, readable by Adobe PDF reader, which is the standard program for reading these documents. Not that the documents generated by the others aren’t 100 percent compatible as well, but why take a chance if the PDF’s “mother ship” is giving it away for free, with no installation necessary?

As for Premiere Express, it reminds me a lot of Apple’s iMovie or Windows Movie Maker – simple, basic and very easy to use. Never having used the full version of Premiere, I don’t know what I’m missing by using this clearly limited version (the on-line version can’t be the same as the one http://tinyurl.com/6ohp2m). And again, it’s Adobe – so how can you go wrong?

But Photoshop Express is a different story. Having had a lot of experience with PS, I can safely say, What were they thinking of? PS Express gives you a limited number of tools, similar to the ones you can get with Apple iPhoto, Google Picasa or a whole host of on-line photo-editing software. It’s basic, with almost none of the sophisticated tools the “real” Photoshop is famous for. That’s not to say it isn’t very good at what it does; for each of the 17 actions you can use on your photos – red-eye removal, touch-up, sharpen, hue – there are six or seven preset changes you can select (there are no variations). On the other hand, you can’t make a selection in the photo (changes are made to the whole thing at once). It’s a nice, elegant, basic photo-editing site, but it’s not the Photoshop you grew up with.

My question is, Why would Adobe attach the Photoshop name to this Web site? It’s not like the program needs more name recognition; “photoshopping” as a term to edit photographs is practically in the dictionary already (http://tinyurl.com/5k7qjj). Surely they could have come up with another name for it? I don’t mean to be nitpicky, but it’s not like there is even a continuum of “lite” (PS Express) to “medium” (Photoshop Elements, http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshopelwin/) to grown-up Photoshop. Obviously it’s aimed at casual users, such as those uploading photos to Flickr or Facebook (to which you can directly link from your PS account).

On the other hand, the whole idea of putting a version of Photoshop on a Web site shows that Adobe has a sense of where the future is going, and that’s to on-line applications.

It could be that the company also has a master plan to add more Photoshop-like features to the site (after all, it’s in beta and barely two weeks old). There was a bit of a flap over the digital rights Adobe claimed for photos uploaded to the site, but that seems to have been resolved (http://tinyurl.com/5vw32n.

Photoshop Express is by no means the only on-line option for photo editing; there are a couple out there. If you can live without the cachet of a major brand like Photoshop, you might find Fotoflexer (http://fotoflexer.com/) more versatile, with more sophisticated tools (many of which were found in earlier versions of the “real” Photoshop), but still easy to use. Fotoflexer offers more than 75 tools, as well as the ability to work in layers, add text, animations, distortions and lots of other fun items; it’s also free, and with links to all the sites where you would save photos (Myspace, Picasa, etc.).

As Adobe invented most of the tools on the Fotoflexer site anyway, I am looking forward to a beefed-up (and still free) Photoshop Express site real soon.

IMHO, they’re wrong: It’s a very useful service, but not necessarily for the reasons its boosters usually cite.

LinkedIn, as you may know, is to business networking what Myspace is to social networking. Actually, it’s difficult to really compare the two, since Myspace is much larger (the largest) as far as registered users go. In fact, LinkedIn is among the lesser of the social networking communities, with only 17 million users, according to the ever-accurate Wikipedia people; there are plenty of sites with far more users. What distinguishes LinkedIn, however, is that it is the only “trusted” site for business contacts, considering the jam its closest rival Plaxo got into not too long ago.

Thus, while you might find teenagers dominating Myspace and “party people” college types hanging around Facebook (not that either haven’t been courting other groups), the LinkedIn crowd is more of a practical, down-to-earth, get-it-done-now type of user – i.e. they are investing their time and energy in building up a network of users to somehow benefit materially at some point in the future. One reason adults like LinkedIn is its policies regarding whom one can link to (adopted now by many other sites); you either have to be invited personally by a user and/or introduced to him/her by someone in your network.

LinkedIn user-profile pages often read like a resume, with users listing their work experience and education, along with noteworthy accomplishments, Web sites and other relevant information. You choose how much data you want to share (you can close yourself off to invitations as well); there is also a listing for recommendations of your work by others, or recommendations by you for others (more on that below). And, there are various tools, such as people and job search, questions and answers to people in or out of your social network, and social networking groups you belong to (ditto). And, of course, the all important contact list.

One interesting phenomenon I have noticed with this service is what I call “LinkedIn fever.” One person in an organization joins the site and starts contacting his or her co-workers in the office, inviting them to join. Chances are the invitee has heard of LinkedIn; that it’s a “good” site to join and can “help you get a job or something.” Very quickly they learn that the measure of success in LinkedIn is the number of contacts on their list, so they start inviting other people in the organization – the easiest people to invite (since they already have the invitee’s e-mail address, usually the only free way to “cold call” potential contacts).

The “fever” sweeps through the organization and within a week or so, everyone is connected. That’s it for most people; they occasionally visit their profile (LinkedIn is very good about sending out subtle reminders, telling you when other people in your network have updated stuff), but rarely look beyond that list of contacts. The more competitive among them may dun friends and acquaintances outside the organization to build more contacts. But for them, too, it stops there.

So, just what is LinkedIn really good for? Will it help you get a better job? According to most users I have met, the answer is no – even though they may have used the job-search function on their profile page (many of the jobs listed, by the way, claim to be “exclusive to LinkedIn”). But even that, I believe, is not the raison d’etre of LinkedIn – although it can be used that way if you have very high-in-demand skills. (But then again, potential employers are probably knocking your door down anyway if you do.) Plus, if you live in Israel, you’ll find that while there are some jobs available, the pool is very limited if you’re not a mid- to high-level programmer for Web 2.0, or a former CEO.

So, I ask again – what is LinkedIn good for? Here’s my answer: LinkedIn is an excellent tool to enable you to focus your career goals, advertise them to others inside and outside your industry, and get you noticed on the Web. If you use it properly, it can help create a “buzz” about you, which probably will lead you to opportunities you would not have otherwise been exposed to.

Here’s how I see LinkedIn working for you: Building a social network of people you know is a fine thing. However, since these people are probably already in your address book, the idea would be to leverage people you know professionally to “virtually” meet others whom you don’t know, but who have a profession or industry in common with you. The point of building a connection portfolio is to build a reputation among people who might know someone, somewhere, who can help you find information, potential customers – or even a new job. Used properly, the LinkedIn tools can help you build your reputation and enhance your professional standing.

Lest you think I am “on” something, let me elaborate. Honing your LinkedIn profile page is your first mission. It’s like a resume, but much better because people with whom you hook up will actually look at your profile. (LinkedIn provides information on how many people from which industry checked out your profile.) So what do you want to say about yourself? Remember: Your LinkedIn profile page gets picked up by Google, meaning that non-LinkedIn users may come across it as well. If for nothing else, LinkedIn is useful as a tool to help you focus, to get you to consider how you want others to see you professionally.

And once you organize your image, other aspects of LinkedIn’s usefulness fall into place. Presenting and answering questions is a great way to build up a portfolio of contacts and getting to “know” a wide range of people – as well as building up a portfolio of recommendations, another LinkedIn “power tool.” You could also start a LinkedIn group, another way to build contacts. Your name gets into other’s contact books as well, building your name and reputation. With this approach, many of the “100+ Smart Ways to Use LinkedIn” become relevant.

With the right attitude – i.e. looking at it as a way to get your name out in front of people who count professionally for you (otherwise known as networking) – LinkedIn can be of great service. After all, it is a networking site, and the tools it supplies do just that. And like any other tool, LinkedIn is what you – and only you – make of it. Maybe a LinkedIn job search won’t find you your dream job on the first try, but if the person who has the keys to finding that job is on the site too, you’re already halfway to your goal.