I live in Canada and although these bills are before the American Congress they will have a massive effect on us here in Canada too if they are passed.

I am reposting some content from https://www.google.com/landing/takeaction/.

Two bills before Congress, known as the Protect IP Act (PIPA) in the Senate and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the House, would censor the Web and impose harmful regulations on American business. Millions of Internet users and entrepreneurs already oppose SOPA and PIPA.

The Senate will begin voting on January 24th. Please let them know how you feel. Sign this petition urging Congress to vote NO on PIPA and SOPA before it is too late.

Here are a few notable websites who have “blacked out” for the day in protest.

From reddit.com:

“These bills provide overly broad mechanisms for enforcement of copyright which would restrict innovation and threaten the existence of websites with user-submitted content, such as reddit.

Please take today as a day of focus and action to learn about these destructive bills and do what you can to prevent them from becoming reality.”

From Wikipedia

“Imagine a World Without Free Knowledge.

For over a decade, we have spent millions of hours building the largest encyclopedia in human history. Right now, the U.S. Congress is considering legislation that could fatally damage the free and open Internet. For 24 hours, to raise awareness, we are blacking out Wikipedia. Learn more.”

A rapidly growing community

Opposition to the Protect IP Act (PIPA) and the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) grows with each day. This brief list is just a sampling of businesses. Visit the Center for Democracy and Technology’s list for a more complete look at the individuals, organizations, experts and legislators that know how bad this legislation could be.

Stop the insanity!!!

Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute

After a quick search I found that simply deleting the .maintenance file via FTP will remove this.

Phew!

Jaikumar Vijayan wrote a great blog post on Computerworld yesterday and even included a link to the bill.

You can read the full article here: http://blogs.computerworld.com/19286/why_sopa_deserves_a_closer_look?source=CTWNLE_nlt_wsmgnt_2011-11-17

Tell Congress not to censor the internet NOW! – fightforthefuture.org/​pipa

PROTECT-IP is a bill that has been introduced in the Senate and the House and is moving quickly through Congress. It gives the government and corporations the ability to censor the net, in the name of protecting “creativity”. The law would let the government or corporations censor entire sites– they just have to convince a judge that the site is “dedicated to copyright infringement.”

The government has already wrongly shut down sites without any recourse to the site owner. Under this bill, sharing a video with anything copyrighted in it, or what sites like Youtube and Twitter do, would be considered illegal behavior according to this bill.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill would cost us $47 million tax dollars a year — that’s for a fix that won’t work, disrupts the internet, stifles innovation, shuts out diverse voices, and censors the internet. This bill is bad for creativity and does not protect your rights.

Social Media is here to stay – Check

I am using social media for my business (hopefully well) – Check

I am listening and building relationships – Check

I realize the new threats to my business and online reputation – Ummm..Check?

In business, you are your reputation! But bad things do happen, even to great companies. With the growth of the internet and social media, you are at risk . There are companies that provide online tools & services that help you prevent, monitor and respond to social media threats including those involving identity theft, intellectual property, brand and other abuses.

I work for BrandProtect, the leaders in Internet Threat Management and they have the tool and services you need to protect your enterprise solution.

They also have a solution for SMBs, Internet911, a social media risk management program.

I highly recommend having a solution in place for your business to manage social media risks and internet threats. There are several companies out there that offer these services, and I truly believe BrandProtect and Internet911 are at the top of the list.

I use it for so many different things including: email, web browsing, YouTube, listening to internet radio (The DI.FM App is amazing), playing games and checking weather reports, sports scores, reading books and  reading whitepapers. My wife loves using it and so do my two young kids. The iPad really is revolutionary.

The only thing I didn’t like is when one of my kids bought $60 worth of virtual smurf berries, which was way to easy for them to do. I have since turned off in-game purchases and Apple did refund my money.

I saw an infographic online today about iPad usage in the UK. Very interesting to compare my own usage to that of other users  and my usage is very much the norm.

Check out the infographic here: http://idea.imano.com/2011/06/uk-ipad-usage-infographic/

The FREE mobile app for iPhone and Android smartphones puts up-to-the-minute guest information at your finger tips. So now you can review details like first and last name, status, number of guests and email address any time–you can even email attendees directly from the app. It’s a great tool for checking guests in at an event, too! Check it out in your app store for more information.

Tubby Designs partners with Constant Contact to offer our clients email and event marketing services.

For more information on the latest release of the Event Marketing App, click here.

For example, when you ask a question and your friends answer or follow, their friends can see and answer it, too.

Get recommendations on restaurants, music and more. Create a quick poll to gather opinions and learn about your friends. Answer questions or point your friends in the right direction.

You can ask a question from a few different places:

From your Profile:
At the top of the page, next to where you would normally share a status update, select the “Question” link. Then enter your question and add poll options if you wish. Click “Ask Question” to share it.
From your home page:
At the top of your News Feed, next to where you would normally share a status update, select the “Question” link. Then enter your question and add poll options if you wish. Click “Ask Question” to share it.
From your Questions page:
Click “Question” next to “Share” at the top of the page. Then enter your question and add poll options if you wish. Click “Ask Question” to share it.

You can ask any type of question, but Questions was designed to help you get fast, short-form responses. For example, you can use Questions to get recommendations from your friends (What are your favorite iPad apps?), learn more about the people around you (What was your favorite board game as a child?) or start discussion about current events (How can I help get more people out to vote in the upcoming election?).

What do you think of this new feature?

So you’d think I would have my own shit together, right! Well I learned the hard way last weekend when a number of the websites I manage were hacked before I updated them to WP 3.04.  For most of them it was a quick database restore and update and they were good to go. I find I am always working on other projects and seldom have time for my website, which as you can probably guess wasn’t backed up, it’s back to starting from scratch. Ouch.

Live and Learn and backup, everything.

I think I’ll go back up all my family photos next!