As a busy mom, I'm sure you don't have time to struggle with difficult or unreliable web printing. You need to print that recipe ASAP for your kid's last minute school bake sale! Well, you are in luck. 

As such, I wanted to let you know about something you might be interested in. I work with Hewlett-Packard (partners with Microsoft) on the Bing Bar for HP Toolbar. The Bing Bar for HP is a free tool designed to...

What does this mean - when you print recipes, you get the recipe - not 3 pages of pictures, random site text and ads. Want to print a news story? You get the news story on the full page, not on a skinny third of a page with the rest taken by unneeded clutter. The use cases for the Smart Print function can go on and on.

With the recent popularity of tablets, do you think in the near future tablets will replace netbooks or stay as a substitute? If you think tablets and netbooks are going to continue competing against one another, do you think the demand for netbooks will decline but not perish? Thanks!

He raises an interesting question, but I'm going to expand it just a bit to ask an even bigger question: Are tablet computers going to eclipse and ultimately replace laptop computers in the marketplace?

I have the most popular devices -- two laptops (one Mac, one PC) and two tablets (an iPad 2 and an Android-powered Kindle Fire) -- so I can start by discussing my own experience. With both a Mac and PC, I definitely spend more time on the Macintosh side. Less viruses and a more aesthetically pleasing user experience works for me.

On the tablet side, it's a bit more complicated because I'm more of an information producer than consumer, and I believe that in their current instantiation, tablets are optimal for consuming data, not creating it. As a result, I find that I use my iPad for reading ebooks (though I just got the new Umberto Eco novel, so I'll be switching to paper for a while to enjoy the full kinesthetic experience) and for entertainment, especially on airplane flights.

The Kindle Fire is still so new that I'm trying to figure out what it offers over and above a great form factor with its crystal-clear 7-inch screen and low price tag. Kindles are still optimal for digital books and magazines, and I'm working out how to get my own movies, music, and reference PDFs onto the device.

When I watch people coming out of the Apple Store, there are at least as many MacBook Air buyers as iPad buyers, another data point.

Television and radio are all about consumption. The Internet and our always-on world is just as much about publishing and production, however, and that plays a major part in this discussion.

Facebook reports over 250 million photos are uploaded each day. Tapping in a sentence or two is no problem, but anything longer and you're moving into the gray area of adding a wireless keyboard to your tablet or mobile device. Isn't it then essentially a laptop?

I believe that we're heading towards a hybrid world where the average user will have a tablet computer, either running iOS or Android, that will neatly slip into a case that includes more storage, additional ports and a keyboard. We'll have a second 'travel' case that's slim and offers additional battery power. Between the two we'll have a tablet that's also a laptop, the best of both worlds.

I just got an update from CLEAR Vice President Mark Neirick addressing my security concerns. Here's what he says:

CLEAR encrypts all data in transmission to ensure security in transit. CLEAR uses a variety of security protocols and procedures to secure the data collected including: AES 256, virtual private networks, SFTP, SSL, and TLS. In many cases these protocols and procedures are combined for even higher levels of protection.

Our secure data center uses extensive physical and logical security protections including access control, personnel screening, video surveillance, intrusion detection, and others. The data stored on the CLEARcard is encrypted with 2 separate security keys. The fingerprints and iris images collected are converted to templates prior to being stored on the CLEARcard. These templates can be used for positive matching against the original biometric but cannot be used to reverse engineer the source biometric.

Other than our technical security standards, tools, and procedures, the CLEAR privacy and security policies help ensure the integrity of the information we collect and protect. These policies include screening requirements for key employees and contractors, data management policies, and mandatory training all focused on ensuring the highest levels of protection for our member's data.

What do you think? Is this response from Mark sufficient to alleviate your anxieties in this regard?

Fast forward a few years and the company has been relaunched under a new management team and the first thing that they did was to extend every previous CLEAR subscriber membership in the new program for the time they had left originally. Without charge. Nice. Smart way to build instant customer loyalty.

When they approached me a few weeks ago and offered a one-year membership in the CLEAR program, I read about the program and decided to sign up. I don't fly that often by myself -- if you travel with others and they don't have CLEAR, well, they'll end up in the slow lane while you zip through. Not a way to keep friends and definitely not an option with children involved -- but still, I love the idea so I signed up!

Taking advantage of my trip out to Los Angeles to speak at Blogworld Expo, I went through the CLEAR biometric collection step at the airport, with my friend and photographer Aimee Giese in tow...

Data. Lots of Data

I knew in advance that I had to bring my passport, current drivers license, and be ready to have my fingerprints and eyes scanned. They collect all the data digitally, so the CLEAR enrollment kiosk is really a wonder of compact tech, with an iris scanner, camera, fingerprint scanner and document scanner, along with a mag card reader, keyboard and big display screen. Quite the gizmo!

That took me a bit by surprise too. I thought that my passport would be used to verify my ID, not actually scanned and parsed. To give you a sense of how sophisticated their system is, the first time we went through the application process, I signed up as "Dave" Taylor and when my passport was scanned, it failed to verify because it lists me as "David" Taylor. Right. We backed up, revised it to "David" and it worked properly. Cool.

Then it was time for my fingerprints to be collected...

I had to then enter my social security number, which they used to immediately pull my credit report and quiz me on background data only I'd know, like previous street addresses. Creepy to suddenly have my street address from twelve years ago pop up on their screen, but I've seen this sort of credit history quiz verification system before and passed the test, fortunately. If you have a bad memory, you could have a problem with this, I suppose.

The Great Iris Scan

The last step of the process was to scan my irises (iri?) and that was surprisingly easy: a glass panel at (adult) eye level on the kiosk, about 8" wide had the eye imaging device and all I had to do was slowly move forward and backward until a small green dot appeared in my face's reflection on the glass. Moments later we were looking at my irises:

Apparently, there are more personally identifying points on your iris than there are on your fingers, so an iris scan is actually a better way to establish identity. After seeing the film Minority Report, however, I worry about unexpected workarounds. :-)

That was it. Data collected. I'll get my CLEAR card in the mail, with all my biometrics encrypted in the chip buried within the card.

How is it encoded? "It's all ones and zeroes" the gal working at the kiosk explained. Uh, yeah, so's everything else. Still, as I pointed out to them, CLEAR now has an extraordinary wealth of data on me, more than just about anyone else, including the US Government, between my birthday, SSN, fingerprints, iris scans, and travel history. That's slightly alarming from a Big Brother perspective, but understanding how they secure and keep this data safe is a separate discussion, one that I'll have with their security team, and report back.

Meanwhile, I can't wait to get my card and try it, preferably on a day when the airport's crazy busy.

Curious about CLEAR? If you sign up using my referrer code, you'll get an additional month of membership free. Why not give it a shot, particularly if you're a frequent traveller? Here's the link: Sign up for CLEAR today.

In that regard, I've been lucky in that I've been speaking from podiums and stages for decades now and when I first realized how much I enjoyed the limelight, I studied top professional public speakers to learn what made them tick, what made them engaging, fun and interesting. The two main people I watched, over and over again, in case you're curious, were Tom Peters and Tony Robbins. Both are just dynamite on stage. But why? That's what I figured out...

The first thing I realized is that as someone on stage, I need to be interesting. No, more than interesting, I need to be an entertainer, a performer. I mean, I'm on stage, I'm performing. Not in the monkey and organ grinder sense (hopefully!) but still, the best speakers are people who keep your attention and find that marvelous mix of fun, entertaining and informative.

There are some speakers who have the opposite problem too, of course. They're all entertainment, often the "bad boy" persona on stage, but afterwards you realize that they didn't actually have anything of value to share. Not uncommon for keynote and paid speakers, unfortunately, so it's really a mix that you need to try and attain. But to assume that you're speaking at a professional conference or event and therefore you don't need to do anything other than share your research data or case studies in a dry monotone. Well. It already sounds boring, doesn't it?

Tom Peters Entertaining His Audience

I once spoke at the Modern Language Association Convention and was the odd man out. I didn't stand in front of the room and read a prepared paper, word for word, without looking up or even taking a breath. I actually engaged my audience and made eye contact, shared humorous asides, and had a bit of fun with my session. They didn't know what to to make of it. Me? I never went back. Yikes.

Two of the best things you can do to get ready for a speech or other presentation are to spend the time preparing your material. It's a very, very rare person who can give an extemporaneous talk and not fall flat. Those people you see doing it on TV and at major events? Yeah, they have speeches they've studied, often for weeks, prior to stepping onto the stage.

In that same vein, don't over-prepare. Practice your talk for a few colleagues or in front of a mirror? Could be a good idea, especially if you're not good at pacing yourself. But doing that a dozen times or more? You'll just get paranoid and more anxious, not less. Ditto slides. Revise them once or twice, but if you're spending hours and hours on your deck, you're putting your attention into the wrong thing.

Once you've gotten to a good spot, take a deep breath. Go for a walk. Exercise. Have sex. Whatever. Just breath out and relax. You're going to do fine.

No, Really, Everyone Loves You.

I don't speak at political rallies, so this next part might be skewed, but in my experience, it's always true that every single person in the audience wants you to be awesome. They don't want to nit-pick, they don't want to be critical, they want to find your talk fascinating, thought-provoking and entertaining.

That's reassuring, isn't it?

I think the fear of public speaking is closely tied to a fear of looking stupid or being embarrassed, but if you envision that everyone wants you to succeed, not fail, then you realize that you're going to be speaking to a supportive audience that will forgive just about anything -- including speech impediments, coughing fits, stumbling when you're walking on stage, accidentally smacking the microphone, or even -- in one notable experience I witnessed -- walking on stage with a glass of wine and then promptly spilling it all over yourself. Really, as long as you keep calm and have a sense of humor, it's just about impossible to alienate an audience if you actually have something worth saying.

You wouldn't be invited to speak at a conference or trade show if you weren't already considered someone smart, savvy and blessed with good communication skills. Really. Walking on stage doesn't take that away from you, and I know, I've run all-day workshops for 500+ people.

Here's an exercise that'll convince you that you're ready: think about the last time you were hanging out with your buddies, your mates, your colleagues and everyone was paying attention to you, smiling and nodding as you talked. Got that? Now capture that relaxed sensation and stick it in your pocket. Then pull it out just before you walk on stage.

One more thought about how to do well speaking on stage: be bigger than life. Whether it's a small room with thirty people or a large stage and seating for a thousand, you need to be bigger, bolder and more enthused than you'd be if we were sitting across from each other at the local Starbucks and chatting.

Tony Robbins and his Exaggerated Stage Presence

Imagine you're in the back of the room. Hold up your fingers and measure. The speaker's no bigger than your thumb or smartphone screen. Yeah, it's called perspective, I know. But it's important, because if you want to really hold your audience and have them listen to every word you utter, you need to capture and keep their attention.

It's like when movies first started, because there was no sound and the projection systems were crummy, actors had very exaggerated movements and gestures. Turns out that works really well on stage. Even with sound.

Most of all, my key advice to any public speaker is always the same: relax, relax, relax and have fun on stage. Really. It's fun to be on stage.

You'll do GREAT!

Here's just a subset of what you'll learn in our workshop:

• How to get found in local searches so that you can get new clients
• How to get more Likes to your Facebook Page and convert those new connections into customers
• The best times to post, how often to post and what to post
• How to sell from your Facebook Page without feeling pushy
• Where to get keyword ideas that you can incorporate into all your social media profiles
• How to optimize your profiles to help your SEO so that you are found
• How to use Twitter if you don't want to Tweet
• Where to find targeted new followers
• The best Twitter tools to make your job easier and take less time
• Three things you must do on LinkedIn to increase your exposure and help you come up in searches
• How to find and connect with new people
• Google Plus and why you need to get started while it's still in beta
• Four videos you should create on YouTube to help you connect with clients
• How to build a blog that acts as the centerpiece of your social media presence
• The three most important things you can do today to improve your search engine rank

When? October 18th, 2011.

Piqued your interest? We also have early bird registration if you act quickly. Details, sign up, maps, and much more can be found here: Facebook and Social Media Marketing workshop.

Hope you can join us, I know I'm excited to spend a day working with Andrea and learning from her!

Visa Corporation is finally figuring out that our collective anxiety about shopping online, identity theft, theft of credit and card balance, etc, can be tapped from a business perspective and has introduced their Visa Online Shopping Card.

Smarter yet, it's a debit card which means that even if someone does steal the card number and CVV number the maximum charge they can run up is only as much as you actually have in that account's balance.

I'm actually a big fan of debit cards anyway, because having credit cards that are limited to money on hand means you can't get into debt. In my opinion there are too many people that live with so much debt that they end up working and earning money to service their debt (e.g., pay interest and fees) rather than saving or actually buying the stuff they want. In my wallet is one credit card and one debit card, the latter of which I use far more often. That, however, is probably a different topic.

Back to the Online Shopping Card!

What's interesting to me is that your credit card, Visa or MasterCard, already has guarantees against online fraud. In Visa's Zero Liability promise, for example, the company assures you:

Shop worry-free at millions of merchants: You can use your card to shop with confidence. That's because Visa protects your card information 24/7 and you won't be held liable for unauthorized purchases made with your card or account information.

And if you're a marketing person like me, marvel at how Visa can simultaneously have a Zero Liability promise to its customers and still figure out a way to generate additional corporate revenue based on the very same customer fear. That's just good marketing.

Here's the Google search result for the phrase "dinner with a critic":

I realize that it's a perfect match for our domain name (which is, ingeniously enough, DinnerWithaCritic.com) but that wouldn't explain moving into the #1 position on a search that has 13.1 million results. Is it because I'm logged in to Google? No, I had a number of other people do the same search and report the same #1 match.

Think about it: there are no incoming links for this site, I've never submitted it with Google, and a week ago it was available for registration. I post a note on Facebook with the clickable URL and another on Google Plus similar, and less than 48 hours later it's top 'o the charts on the search for dinner with a critic.

Now tell me again why you think that social media isn't relevant to search results placement?

Except that Google hasn't really though through the entire issue of how to share with a user who is following them, and it means I'm not paying attention to people who I really do want to have a symmetric relationship with on the service.

That's the big difference between G+ and FB: Google Plus is asymmetric, meaning that you can follow me (in the Google Plus world it's referred to as "circling" because you add someone to one or more of your follow circles) without me having to follow you back. On Facebook every relationship is symmetric: we can't be friends unless we both green light it. Huge difference and one that I really like, actually.

Except now I find that 300-400 people each day are "circling" me and I have no idea who the majority of them are because there's just insufficient information from Google shown about how we're connected, if at all.

Here's what I mean:

You can see four people shown here, one of whom has their name in Chinese, three of whom in English. But who are they? Do we know each other? Have we connected or followed each other on a different social service? Do they have a Web site that points to my online content?

The pop-up I am showing for John Yaeger is an improvement because it shows the number of people we have in common (e.g. that both of us have circled). That's social proof, and that's darn helpful as a first step. In fact, it's that "people in common" count that I'd like to see next to each and every person so I can quickly scan and say "ah, 17 in common, what's the story with this otherwise unrecognized name?"

But there's a deeper issue here. Google owns the search engine space and has rich, deep and sophisticated profiles on each of us, profiles that include our interconnectedness. Why isn't that data included here somehow so that I can have a quick visual clue who has circled me that I should be paying attention to versus those that are followers or just building up big circles but that, realistically, probably won't make it into my Friends circle?

Imagine if G+ was using predictive analysis behind the scenes and that it had a five star scale next to each name that offered a quick clue about who it believed I was most likely to circle up? Or maybe just added a star or slightly changed the background color of the box that included people that have a non-zero "people in common" list? (better, let me have a slider so I can say the minimum for them to be highlighted is X people, not just 1).

There's more to be done with Google Plus for sure, and this is one area that's increasingly failing for me. What's in the cards, G+ team?

Go through the account settings, click on "deactivate" and you'll get this warning:

In case you can't read it, the top says "Are you sure you want to deactivate your account?" and below it says "Deactivating your account will disable your profile and remove your name and picture from everything you've shared on Facebook."

Below that are pictures (not profile pictures, but user photos) from some of your friends, with the headline "Jason will miss you", "Alynne will miss you", "Kim will miss you", etc.

Under each photo is a convenient "Send Jason a Message", but really, Facebook, this feels awfully manipulative on your part. Is it such a crisis for the business if someone deactivates their account that you need to have this sort of screen pop up to slow them down?

But we're not done. After you finally deactivate the account, the account holder gets the following email message:

Forty words and two links to "reactivate" your account, one of which is a bright green "Sign In", as if you'd never deactivated your account, let alone JUST gone through the steps to deactivate it.

I'll keep my eyes open, I expect my son will get monthly and randomly scheduled messages from Facebook reminding him of all the people who are missing him because he's not on the service and reminding him just how darn easy it is to reinstate the account.

Feels very sordid, Facebook, very manipulative. You really need to reconsider this entire sequence of communication.

And that's just what I did this afternoon when doing a Google search on my iPhone, stumbled across the coolest new feature that I've seen in a while. Check it out...

First off, you do a Google search on the iPhone in Safari and here's pretty typical results:

Look a bit closer at the results, however, and there's a new icon present to the right of each matching entry in the search results:

I've highlighted it above. Tap on it and suddenly you're looking at the different view entirely:

Neat. Kind of reminiscent of "screenflow" in iTunes, isn't it? If you move things down just a bit, you'll find that there's even useful information about each match in addition to the thumbnail view of the page itself:

Very cool. And the fact that I just stumbled across it? That's pretty fun too.

"I'm hoping you can help me. I paid money to a company called, "The Auction Employment Training Institute" so that I could take the training, then become an Ebay auction listing agent. Half way through my training, this company went under. (I think this because they haven't answered their phone calls for months. First they said it was a temporary inconvenience, now they just don't answer.) Employment with Ebay was guaranteed. Is there any way I can follow through with this to get this job? I realize this may not be your area of expertise, but any suggestions would be welcomed) I've tried looking this up on the Ebay sight, and there is nothing."

The fact is, most guarantees have escape clauses as it's the rare small business that can afford the risk of having too many customers use their product or service then return it for a refund. Imagine a restaurant where lots of homeless people enjoy their meals then claim it was inferior and ask for a refund, or a housecleaning service where most of their customers later refuse to pay because they weren't happy with the resultant level of cleanliness?

That's not to say that this is what happened with Auction Employment Training Institute, but I'm a bit confused: they can't possibly guarantee you're going to be hired by eBay. The only company that could guarantee employment with eBay is, well, eBay. Anyone else has to be misrepresenting the situation or, perhaps, they mean you can sell stuff on eBay as a merchant, which you can already do by simply signing up and listing stuff.

Still, do they have a guarantee of employment? Well, they did, and it was enough for you to sign up for the program, which is too bad because, as many questionable companies do, they apparently shuttered their office (my guess, they never had an office) and split with the rest of the money. From their perspective, they probably figured that it's easier to drain the bank account and shut down than to worry about delivering content for the latter part of your course.

So does your guarantee have any value? Not at all. I'm sure eBay won't help you out (though they might sic a lawyer on the task of finding and suing the original owners of the business) and while you can try filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, the fact is I'm confident that they've long since split and will resurface under another name.

All I can say is that I'm sorry you've been ripped off like this, and to encourage everyone to always beware deals that seem too good to be true. It's clearly the case that no third party company can guarantee you'll be hired by another firm, regardless of how they phrase it.

What would you do if you received this and they weren't your absolute all-time favorite company?