Stephen Chinnadorai

If you use the internet, it’s more than likely that you’re on at least one social network — for many of us, it’s more than one. These five guidelines should help you have a better presence on the internet, and allow others to find you more easily.

1. Use a consistent username

This is something I haven’t done in the past, but is essential. Having the same username means that if I know someone, e.g. “Nick”, I can easily go to twitter.com/nick, flickr.com/people/nick, etc.- without even needing to search. Using the same username also groups your accounts under a Google search for the name. I recommend using your real name, or at least some element of your name.

2. Have a memorable avatar

Sometimes people talk to me on IM and know my name — I ask them how they know, and the answer is usually: “I recognized your avatar”. Think up something original and simple; the same consistency rule applies here, too: Use the same avatar everywhere — services like Gravatar make this somewhat easier.

3. Use your real name

Using your real name on social networks will help people that know you find you, and gives a list of your online presence under a Google search for your name. When someone adds you on one social network, they might often search for you on another one — if they see your name, they will most likely add you there too.

4. Add the people that add you

That, of course, doesn’t include spammers — no one should add them. But the regular people who have added you or followed you should be added back. This might encourage a conversation, which could bring more followers/friends to you — it’s also just nice when you get an add back from someone.

5. Organize your social profiles

I use a service called ClaimID. All I do is add the links to my profiles on all of the social networks, and it creates a list. It’s useful to have a list like this, so that people can easily add you on multiple networks — plus, it’s useful to have a list yourself; I’m registered on so many websites that I sometimes forget which ones I’m on.

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You’ll hear at least once in your life someone asking you “How many megapixels does your camera have?”And, of course, if your camera has less megapixels it is considered “worse” than the one with more megapixels. This isn’t the case. So many people have been fooled by the marketing of megapixels — when the truth is: Megapixels mean nothing; at least on point-and-shoot cameras.

Digital SLR cameras are another story. Usually on SLR cameras, the sensor size is large enough for the millions of pixels to actually look good, rather than distorted. This means that full-frame DSLRs, more megapixels are even more effective.

6 megapixels is the ideal resolution for compact point-and-shoots — it’s large enough for print, yet isn’t too large to cause noise. Although there are some top of the range compact cameras like Canon’s PowerShot G9, which could be an exception to this theory; they produce fine, crisp images - even at 12 megapixels.

The next time someone compares a camera purely based on megapixels, educate them that, on point-and-shoot cameras, it really doesn’t matter - and can in fact make your images look worse - whilst wasting valuable megabytes on your memory card.

In case you weren’t following the WWDC news this week, Apple came out with two major products in Monday’s keynote: MobileMe and the iPhone 3G — both of which link together. MobileMe replaces the .Mac service that Apple previously offered, and brings a range of improvements.

First off, you get 20GBs of storage “in the cloud” — this is shared between e-mail, photo galleries and iDisk backup space. The new service gives you an @me.com e-mail address, which is pretty easy to remember — but the chances of you getting your desired username@me.com are slim. MobileMe also syncs everything up between your computer(s) and iPhone; Apple call it “Exchange for the rest of us” because of this.

But is it worth paying $99 a year for this service? You could use Google’s Gmail for push e-mail to your iPhone with their free IMAP service; you could also use Google Calendar for calendars (although syncing to iPhone does not yet exist); you could use Flickr, or Google Picasa Web Gallery; DropBox is a free alternative to the iDisk.

The table below shows MobileMe and all of its main competitors:

It looks like if you have an iPhone or iPod Touch, and want to keep it in sync with your e-mail, calendar and contacts — plus benefit from 20GBs of online storage — then MobileMe may be worth the $99 price.

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When Steve hits the stage on Monday, June 9th 2008, hundreds of thousands of people around the world will be awaiting the launch of a new product, or several. It’s impossible to predict what Apple does behind the scenes — rumours are about as close as the general public gets. I’m going to list the most anticipated products expected to be launched, or announced, at this year’s WWDC keynote.

1. 3G iPhone

The 3G iPhone has had so many rumours in the past months that it’s almost certain the next iPhone will be launched, or at least announced on Monday.

It’s expected to have 3G (of course), GPS, video conferencing and most of the features that people expected in the first version (copy & paste, multimedia messaging, etc.).

2. New .Mac

Let’s face it, .Mac isn’t exactly the best value service for e-mail, or backup — in fact the only good thing about it is its perfect integration with the Mac. The new .Mac service is expected to include over-the-air syncing with iPhones, and could potentially be released for Windows users too.

3. Mac OS 10.6

This very recent, last-minute rumour was unleashed into the blogosphere only yesterday, and has caused quite a disruption. TUAW broke the “news” that a new version of Mac OS X would be announced at this year’s keynote, and could be named “Snow Leopard”. It is not expected to include any major new features, but rather an upgrade focused on ”stability and security” — isn’t that what you get in software updates?

4. New Macs

The Mac Mini, MacBook Pro and Apple Cinema Displays are overdue for an update — WWDC seems like an appropriate place and time to launch some upgrades to them. The MacBook Pro would most likely include a redesign and processor speed increase, the Mac Mini may also include a redesign and spec increase.

Of course, the rumours could be entirely wrong. These are just predictions, and nothing in this article has been said by Apple themselves. The WWDC keynote starts at 10 a.m. PDT/6 p.m. GMT.