Sonja Thompson, a news editor at Tech Republic, has launched a Women in IT podcast series, which consist of interviews of women who are currently working in IT, their careers and technology in general. I had the pleasure of participating in the Women in IT series in September 2007.

This month Sonja interviewed Esther Dyson, who is a commentator on emerging digital technology and is known as a pioneer in many technology circles. She is a great role model for Women in IT and I would definitely recommend listening to the podcast interview.

Today someone sent me a blog post that discusses how some e-commerce sites are automatically broadcasting information about your online behavior to the popular social networking site: Facebook: Facebook changes the norms for web purchasing and privacy.

The post cites the example of how Overstock.com automatically sends updates to your Facebook mini-feed when you purchase something from their site, and then all your friends get notified. The post tells how to go into your Facebook settings to turn this auto-broadcast feature off for Overstock.com, but it says that you can’t globally opt out from all future third party purchases.

The blogger, Ethan Zuckerman, captures his feelings nicely:

“For me, the overwhelming feeling was one of uneasiness – in my head, at least, this isn’t how the web works. When you’re doing business with a website, your interactions have consequences only on that site, not on a completely unrelated website, right? Of course, that’s not true”.

Continue Reading “Are Companies Sharing Your Purchase Habits With Your Friends?”

Check out LifeHacker’s top 10 New and Improved Apps of 2007.

My favorite app is Zoho Suite:

Zoho Suite (Online office suite, most improved)

Google Docs is good, but another online office suite has been rolling out upgrade after upgrade this year, slowly, steadily, and consistently trouncing GDocs in the features department. Zoho Suite makes collaborating and editing documents, spreadsheets, presentations (and way more) better and easier straight from your browser. Most of you said you hadn’t tried Zoho because you already had a Google Account, but if collaborating and editing office documents from your browser is in your future in ’08, bite the bullet for a Zoho account and you won’t be sorry. Here’s more on how Zoho stacks up against Google Docs.

Being able to present to a group of people in an articulate and entertaining fashion is one of the most important tasks whether you are a manager or an employee in a large corporation or an entrepreneur. Alex Ion of Socialpacks.com offers 8 tips on improving your public speaking.

As a speaker and presenter, I would like to add a few practice tips….

Continue Reading “Tips to Improve Your Public Speaking”

I attended the NY Business Expo last week and while meandering from booth to booth, I started a conversation with two other professional women who were there to see the offerings.

As usual, during conversations in a professional setting, the conversation got around to what each of us does. When I asked one of the women what she is involved in, she said a few words about herself and what she did…and then her colleague jumped in and offered a whole host of accomplishment and achievements of this woman and told me about her credentials and successes.

Having been involved in the women’s movement online since the early days, and as the Chapter Leader of the NYC Webgrrls having hosted numerous networking meetings and events, where professional women come together to share who they are and what they do, this was not the first time running into a situation where women either don’t or don’t know how to talk about what they do, who they are, and promote themselves.

Most women I speak with say that they feel uncomfortable talking about themselves and always feel like they are “bragging”.

Continue Reading “Brag and Boast and Tell All About It!”