For those of you lucky enough not to have encountered it, MacDefender is a real looking pop up web advertisement that tricks unsuspecting users into believing that their Mac is infected with a number of viruses.  By clicking Remove, you’ll actually download (and if you’ve got Safari set up to automatically open downloaded files, initiate the installation of) MacDefender’s extortion malware.  MacDefender adopts that classic mafioso protection scheme of ‘pay me or else’, flooding users’ screens with graphic pornography at random intervals unless they pay for ‘protection’.

You can find Apple’s guide to avoiding and removing MacDefender here.  Look out for a patch in Software update soon to automate the removal/avoidance process.  And as always, never enter your administrator password unless you know exactly what you’re doing or installing.  If you’re not sure, call someone who is before you do.  That’s the only anti-virus you’ll likely ever need for your Mac.

Drobo Overview

Drobo S

Five bay expandable storage units. Perfect for graphic designers, video editors (we use them at Rewatchable), and for home photo and media storage.

DroboFS

These are network-attached Drobos that allow small groups to enable high speed file sharing and applications – without a server.

What is a Drobo?

Time Machine

Every Mac comes with Time Machine built in.  Buy a cheap, big USB drive (like this 1TB Western Digital Passport), plug it into your Mac, and click “Use this Disk for Time Machine Backups.”  Now just leave it plugged in as often as possible, and you’ll have the ability to recover old files, or restore your system in the event of a disaster.

AppleCare

When you buy a Mac, purchase AppleCare.  It costs between $100-$250 at the time of purchase, which sounds expensive until you realize that for three full years, anytime you experience an issue with your Mac, you can bring it to the Genius Bar at any Apple retail store, and one of the highly skilled technicians will get your Mac back up and running.  Hardware dies?  They replace it.  Everything short of the battery and accidental damage is covered.  It’s unbelievably cheap insurance.

Dropbox

Time Machine is fantastic, and AppleCare ensures that you’ll always have a working Mac, but what about those extremely important files that you might not want to be without for more than a few minutes, hours, or days?  Enter Dropbox, an online service that installs a small piece of software and a folder on all of your devices (Macs, Windows PCs, iPads, iPhones, and several other mobile devices are supported).  Whenever you change a file, it’s updated EVERYWHERE.  Your Mac dies?  Everything in your Dropbox is fine.  You can get a 2GB account for free (or 2.25GB if you use this shiny referral link).  2GB is plenty for essential documents, but they also offer additional storage fairly inexpensively ($10/mo for 50GB, $20/mo for 100GB) that you can use to back up larger files like iPhoto and iTunes libraries.

So that’s it.  Add these three simple purchases/techniques to your Mac arsenal, and you’ll rest easy knowing that your data is safe and your hardware is protected for three full years, for less than $350.

- Kanye West

Twitter isn’t the easiest service in the world to begin enjoying.  In fact, the vast majority of my real-life friends signed up for Twitter, added their real-life friends, and walked away.  Well guess what folks?  You’re missing out! Here’s how to get your Twitter up and running for real, so that it’s something you’ll actually enjoy…

Sign Up

When you’re registering, choose your username carefully.  If you’re going to establish yourself on Twitter, your name needs to be something easy to remember.  Ridiculous is better than obscure (awesome promotional video-maker Adam Lisagor, for example, is @lonelysandwich, which is absurd, but far easier to remember than @alisagor854).  Get creative.

Find People to Follow

Twitter very kindly offers new users an interface for finding friends to follow from your Facebook account, email contact list, etc.  Sounds great, right?  NOPE.  This is probably the biggest hurdle people have to overcome before they can truly enjoy Twitter.  Your friends are probably boring on Twitter.  Your friends probably tweet once a week.  Twitter is not about your friends.  Twitter is a tool for creating a custom news feed about your personal and professional interests.  That’s the key to everything.  It’s the crucial element, so I’ll say it again, only more dramatically and with a larger font:

Twitter is a tool for creating a custom news feed about your personal and professional interests.  Also, your friends are boring.

Now that we’ve got that out of the way, it’s time to find some folks to follow.  Lots of folks to follow.  Think of your three favorite things in the world.  Are you a lawyer from Boston who likes skiing and movies?  Search for luminaries in the area of law, skiing, and movies.  Follow ‘em.  Even strangers, if they have a lot of followers.  You can always unfollow them later.  Try to follow around a hundred people to get started.  A few dozen at a bare minimum.  See, if you’re not enjoying Twitter, the reason is most likely that you’re not following enough of the right people.  Fix that.  Find more people.  Follow them.  It’s an hour or two of work, but I promise you won’t regret it.

Find More People to Follow (#ff)

Twitter has evolved its own mechanism for helping you find new people to follow, and it’s called Follow Friday.  Each friday, you’ll see a bunch of tweets that have a hashtag (hashtags are little keywords preceded by a #) that says #ff followed by a bunch of usernames.  These are users that the tweeter is suggesting that you might like to follow.  It’s a ‘seal of approval,’ if you will, and the best way for you to start finding less-well-known luminaries that are delivering great content on Twitter.  If you really like someone’s tweets, follow a few (or all) of the people they recommend on Follow Friday.

Participate – Or Not

At this point, you’re getting some momentum, and there should be something interesting to you on Twitter pretty much anytime you visit it.  Now you’ve got to decide whether or not you’d like to participate.  If you want to participate, the best way is to just start tweeting out interesting things to no one in particular.  That’s right, just stand in front of the vast and empty ocean, and start sharing your thoughts.  If your goal is to get followers, tweet with purpose on a specific topic or a very few topics.  Sure, throw in some unrelated observations or off-topic tweets here and there, but if you’re tweeting all over the place, you’re going to have a hard time gaining traction.  Why tweet before you have followers?  Two reasons.  First, when people check out your profile – and recent tweets – to decide whether or not they’d like to follow you, it helps if you have something there to help with their decision.  Second, a lot of people use Twitter’s built-in search tool to find people discussing topics that interest them.  If you’re speaking intelligently or interestingly about a topic, chances are good that you will be found.

Cut the Fat

Now that you’re following a lot of interesting people who are talking about topics that you find interesting, you’ll want to curate your Twitter account a bit to keep things good.  Maybe an actor that you follow is promoting a movie and filling your feed with banal spam.  Maybe a musician you like is having emotional issues and using Twitter as a therapeutic outlet (not always a bad thing – @kanyewest is one of the funniest feeds in the history of Twitter).  Maybe someone’s a total expert in a field that interests you but you just don’t like their tweets.  You should always be looking for new people to follow – and for people to unfollow – to keep your Twitter experience enjoyable.  Don’t be a drama queen about it – you don’t need to (and shouldn’t) publicly announce your unfollow – just hit the unfollow button and move on.  If the person gets interesting again, you’ll probably see some of their stuff retweeted and can follow them again in the future.

So that’s it.  Follow a bunch of people (even strangers), find more people to follow, and unfollow anyone that doesn’t suit your fancy.  Put in a little work at the beginning, and you’ll quickly find that Twitter can be a tremendous resource, both professionally and personally.  Think I’m missing something?  Let me know in the comments, or send me a tweet –  I’m @rkreed on Twitter and my feelings won’t be hurt if you unfollow me later.

Bonus Tip: Add your local newspapers, favorite magazines, and then search for a few of your hobbies. Before you know it, Pulse will be loaded with ‘just for you’ content that’ll keep you coming back several times a day.

• Claim your venue. In order to create Specials for your visitors, you need to claim ownership of your venue.  To claim your venue, visit the web version of it at http://www.foursquare.com and provide Foursquare with some basic verification information.  A few weeks later, you’ll receive confirmation and your account will be upgraded with venue analytics (see who’s checking in, and when) and the ability to add and modify Specials.
• Create an employee check-in policy. If you’re using Foursquare for customer loyalty rewards, it’s probably best that you ask your employees not to check in at work.  If you’re an office-based business, Foursquare can still boost your visibility, and you can always use the service to create rewards for enthusiastic employees.
• Reward your Mayor. It’s tempting, when faced with the Foursquare ‘Create a special’ screen to create easily attainable, generic rewards.  Resist this temptation.  Instead, create amazing Mayor rewards, and use Foursquare to build competition and community around your most passionate customers.  The more they’re thinking about your business, the more likely they are to discuss it (free marketing!).
• Sometimes the best Special is no special.  Ever see that one store where everything’s always on sale?  Do you trust their standard pricing?  Nope.  Don’t be that store on Foursquare.  By using Specials sparingly, and making the rewards associated with them real and valuable, Foursquare users will know that when they see the Special banner at your establishment, it’s worth checking out.

Foursquare and its competitors are all still relatively young and immature as services, so there’s not a ton going on for business yet.  As they continue to grow and improve, the analytics and offerings are likely to improve and crystallize, but usage by large businesses will increase as well.  If you’re a small business owner, the time to get on board with location-based services is now, so get to it!

That link’s for our new Thumbtack page.  Heard about the service on This Week In Startups, and thought I’d give it a try.  The vast majority of our marketing is done through word of mouth, with Craigslist a close second.  Always interested in new service providers that try to connect service providers with interested parties.

I’m trying something a little different here, and giving the HowTo in video form.  If you like it, let me know – there’ll be more.

HowTo: Disable the Apple Remote in Mac OSX 10.6