RF Exposure and You

There has been a lot of buzz in recent years about the possibility that cell phones could be hazardous to our health because of the radiation they emit in close proximity to our bodies. The recent announcement by the World Health Organization (WHO) that mobile devices are possibly carcinogenic has brought this issue to the fore once again. Since many of us web marketers and IT people use mobile devices daily, I thought it would be worthwhile to put on my radio-geek hat and offer some thoughts on this topic.

It’s important to keep in mind a couple different quotes from the USA Today article I linked to above:

Cancer researcher Peter Shields of Georgetown University Medical Center cites three categories of risk: possible, probable and known. Cellphone radiation falls under “possible.” “This is nothing like asbestos or smoking, which causes cancer in one of 10 people who smoke cigarettes.”

The WHO is talking about a possible risk, not a sure-fire thing.

Donald Berry of the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston notes that there has been no increase in U.S. brain cancer rates despite huge growth in cellphone use. The notion that cellphones cause brain cancer is “just an urban myth that keeps coming up,” Berry says. “The panel somehow decided that there is maybe something here that’s possibly carcinogenic, which ranks with everything else in the world.”

It seems to me if there were a high risk here, there would be some correlation between increased mobile use and cancer. There doesn’t appear to be such a correlation.

As I wrote in my article about mobile device antennas last year, the FCC very strictly regulates radio frequency (RF) energy exposure limits because RF is absorbed by the body, especially in the microwave frequencies used by mobile devices.

A little background
Microwave ovens have been commonly available since the 1970s. One of the first brands was the Amana Radarange; so called because it used RF energy in the same frequency bands as radars used at the time. Amana, in those days, was a subsidiary of Ratheon, a manufacturer of radars and radar parts. Radars and microwave ovens use magnetrons, high-powered microwave transmitters.

Microwave RF energy causes molecules of certain substances to vibrate rapidly. The rapid vibration generates a great deal of heat. This heat is what warms up your burrito or leftover pizza when you zap it in your microwave oven. Water is especially susceptible to this vibration – and almost any organic material contains water, including you.

Some other background info
Thinking about exposure to RF energy there are four things to keep track of:

• Frequency – the items we discuss all use frequencies in the microwave part of the radio spectrum
• Power – RF energy is measured in watts. Mobile device output is typically are measured in milliwatts, thousandths of a watt.
• Time – RF energy exposure can become a problem if it is for a long duration.
• Distance – The further away one is from the source of the RF, the less energy they are exposed to.

There’s nothing to be done about the frequencies. Each device and the transmission modes they use are regulated by the FCC (or other government agency). Power levels are also set by the FCC. They are not usually adjustable by the end user. So, there’s nothing much we can do about that, either. Power levels over time are measured as the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR). You can read about FCC guidelines on their web site.

The SAR of mobile phones, Bluetooth headsets, Wi-Fi hotspots, Mi-Fi devices, Wi-Fi-enabled laptops, tablet devices, wireless game controllers and such can be found on the FCC web site as well. The power output of these devices is low enough that they pose little risk to users’ health. Still, keeping in mind that most things are OK in moderation, it’s not a bad idea to moderate your exposure to RF energy.

What You Can Do
That leaves us with distance and time as the two things we can change to limit our exposure. While the health risks of low-level RF exposure is small, here are some ideas on how you can limit it and further reduce that risk:

• Don’t wear your mobile device on your person all the time. When you are at home or at the office, set it more-than-arms-length away when you’re not actually using it.
• If you’re going to talk on the phone for an extended period of time, use a Bluetooth headset. While these still use RF to operate, the power output is much lower, still, than your phone. For even less RF exposure, use a wired headset.
• Put your home Wi-Fi router up and out of the way of people.
• If you can, turn the Wi-Fi feature off on your notebook and plug it into a router with a cable. Of course, if you’re plugging into a router which also does Wi-Fi, use a longer cable.
• If you can, turn your wireless devices off when they’re not in use.
• Even though your microwave oven is shielded to avoid microwave “leakage,” there is still a possibility that some could “escape.” When running your microwave, don’t stand directly in front of it.

What say you? How do you feel about the announcement by WHO? Do you think there are significant risks to mobile device use or is this much ado about nothing? Please feel free to share in the comments.

I won an iPad earlier this year from the great folks at Trackur. It was a gadget I really wanted, but I couldn’t quite bring myself to part with the cash to purchase one. I’m glad I got one, though, because it is really a handy tool. Now that I’ve been using it for a few months, I can’t imagine not having one.

To be sure, I play games on it. I play Words with Friends, Chess with Friends, Monopoly, Angry Birds, etc. But I also use it as a tool to make my life easier and more productive. For instance: I play bass with the band at church. Since getting the iPad, I’ve been converting my music binder from paper sheets to PDFs. Carrying the iPad is quite a bit easier than toting around a ten-pound binder full of paper. It’s easy to copy the PDFs to the “Books” section of iTunes and let them sync to the device.

Another way I use the iPad is taking notes. I bring it to meetings and jot down notes using the Notes app and then email the document to myself and anyone else with whom I might want to share. This is much more efficient for me than taking notes on paper and then typing them into an electronic document.

At the recent PubCon South, I used the iPad to build my summaries for the blog. Just for this purpose, I purchased the Apple Wireless Keyboard (Bluetooth – Amazon Affiliate link) because I found I couldn’t type fast enough with the on-screen keyboard. At each session, I set up my iPad and took notes in the CleanWriter app. At the end of the day, I copied the notes and pasted them into my blog using the BlogPress app. BlogPress is not a WYSIWYG editor, so I did have to code some HTML to put the notes in unordered lists. Still, using copy and paste didn’t take very long. I think it worked out pretty well.

I also use the iPad to read my Kindle books, go through my email, and surf the web. It has really enhanced my productivity in many ways.

If you’re thinking about getting an iPad (or any other tablet device) and are afraid that it’s not much more than a toy I say “Get it!” People may look at you askance, but they don’t know what they are missing.

What about you? Do you an iPad or similar device. How do you use it to be more productive. Please share in the comments.

Warning: Major Geek Content

If you’ve been working with Microsoft’s Internet Information Server (IIS), and you check out your log files on a regular basis, you’ve probably seen error messages with content similar to this:

Process Information:
Process ID: 3264
Process name: w3wp.exe
Account name: NT AUTHORITY\NETWORK SERVICE

Exception Information:
Exception type: System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException
Exception message: Padding is invalid and cannot be removed.

Request Information:
Request URL: http://www.yourdomain.com/webresource.axd?d=d8qwertyu9a7asdfghjklzxcvn1&t=123456789012345678
Request path: /webresource.axd
User host address: 255.255.255.255

I often wondered what these were about, but all I ever saw in searches on the topic mentioned incompatibility with certain browsers (especially Safari) and miscommunication between the server and the browser. Not really good answers, but enough to know it wasn’t some serious hack attempt.

That was, until a few weeks ago when we started having some major trouble with timeout errors between our web server and the SQL Server which holds the data for our sites. We went round and round trying to figure out the issue ourselves to no avail. Thankfully, we have a subscription to Microsoft’s telephone tech support, so we finally decided to punt.

I have to give Microsoft some serious props when it comes to their top level support. When you get one of these folks on the phone you are dealing with a true professional; one with a lot of knowledge, background and experience to help you work through your problem. The service isn’t cheap, but it’s good.

We worked with a networking engineer who helped us narrow down the issue. He ended up calling in one of his colleagues on the IIS support team to help us find a resolution. 45 minutes on the phone with those two guys was about a week’s worth of education.

In the end, it turned out to be some errant code we put in for error handling. Rather ironic, I have to say, that the error handling caused the errors themselves.

But, the real education was in learning about the webresource.axd and what causes these System.Security.Cryptography.CryptographicException errors.

The webresouce.axd file is generated by the system. Like the web.config, it’s not a file that someone can just “browse” to. It’s requested automatically by the browser and is a helper file to assist with using script files.

The interesting thing is that the “d” portion of the URL string is supposed to be mixed case, but in every instance where I see this type of error, all the letters are lower case, like from the completely fake example I noted above:

d=d8qwertyu9a7asdfghjklzxcvn1

It should be more along the lines of something like this:

d=d8QWErtyU9a7ASDfghJKLzxcVn1

If you go through your server logs, you can track down the requests which cause the errors, compare them to other requests for the webresource.axd file and clearly see the difference. I didn’t notice this until I looked at the logs closely trying to troubleshoot my problem.

Checking closely in the log files, I can also see where sometimes the “&” between then end of the “d” string and the “t=” is sent like “&” – which apparently also causes issues.

There you have it – a “not to technical” explanation as to why you might see this type of error message in your log files. Apparently, so long as your server is patched and set up according to best security practices, this shouldn’t cause you any problems other than possibly filling your log files with messages.

A couple weeks ago I started seeing tweets from some of those I follow in the web marketing space which read something like this: “The xxxx Daily is out” with a link. Curious, I clicked on one of them and found Paper.li, the twitter aggregator that arranges tweets into a newspaper-like format.

From their site:

paper.li organizes links shared on Twitter into an easy to read newspaper-style format. Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or #tag.

A great way to stay on top of all that is shared by the people you follow – even if you are not connected 24/7!

I have my Twitter streams broken up into lists, which helps me keep track of those I want to follow closely. Even using lists, it’s hard to stay on top of all the great content shared by all these people. Paper.li keeps track of all the tweets with links in them and puts them together into a nicely organized web page and emails me when it’s ready. Here’s a screen shot of my Web Marketing list’s paper.ly edition:

Paper.li even grabs links to videos and images and puts displays them right in the daily update.

The site’s text indicates the service is in “alpha” which means updates and improvements are bound to come around. Still, it seems to work quite well as it is right now. I highly recommend you check it out.

I’ve been working on a project where I’m taking old Windows servers running legacy applications and “virtualizing” them. This works out great for us because it allows us to keep the few old servers running for a bit until we can upgrade the applications which won’t work on newer operating systems. I have to say, Microsoft’s Virtual Server and new Hyper-V server are excellent applications.

The downside comes when you need to reactivate a Windows license. As I’m sure many of you know if you significantly change the hardware on a Windows server or workstation, Microsoft requires reactivation of the operating system license. Normally this isn’t a big deal because you can do it automatically when starting the machine for the first time.

Except if you don’t have a working connection to the Internet, then you have to call.

When you call the number shown on the reactivation screen, a nice computerized voice walks you through the process, including the hint that doing the activation online is much faster. (Well, DUH! I know that and wouldn’t call if I didn’t have to). The voice asks goes through a list of operating systems eligible for activation, to which you’re supposed to respond.

I don’t know about you, but I hate talking to a computer. Most of the time they don’t understand what I’m saying and I have to repeat myself half-a-dozen times until it gets it right. This last time I got so exasperated with the system, that just on a whim, I hit “1″ on my phone’s keypad to answer “yes.” It worked!

This time, the operating system I was activating was WindowsXP, which is the first choice given. I hit “1″ and got to the part where you’re supposed to read the 9 6-digit groups. Instead of speaking, I just started hitting the numbers when the voice told me to say the numbers. It worked! The only hitch was the last group, which I had to enter three times before the computer got it.

Once my activation was approved, the computer read off some groups of numbers for me to enter into the computer to complete the activation. In this one, each time the voice finished it asked if it should go on. Here, “1″ means repeat and “2″ means to continue to the next group.

If you’re like me and hate talking to computers, let this be your guide to touch tone nirvana.

WARNING: Major Geek Content …

Last week my colleague deployed an update to one of our many web sites. This particular site was originally coded in Microsoft’s .NET Framework 2.0 using Visual Studio 2005. She updated it in Visual Studio 2008, successfully using the automatic update tool VS offers to run when you open up a project created in an earlier version of whatever VS you open it in. There were no issues when we ran through the site on our test web server.

All was looking good until we moved the web site code to our production web server. All the apps on the web site were working properly except for one file upload application. For whatever reason, this one hunk of code decided to malfunction. We’d run into problems similar to this one which turned out to be caused by a missing patch – so that was the first place I looked.

Sure enough, for some reason our WSUS server didn’t push out all of the service packs for the various versions of the .NET Framework to this server. To fix this, I ran Windows Update on the server. As it started the service pack install I got an error: 0×643. Bummer!

A quick search found the solution on Microsoft’s support site in Article ID 923100. The short version: manually uninstall all versions of the .NET Framework, reinstall them and then run the service pack install. Easy enough, I supposed.

I spent 2 1/2 hours of my Saturday uninstalling and reinstalling. When I was all done I opened up the web site only to find it was erroring out with the “Yellow Window” generic error message. Time to stop, think, and not over-react.

Thankfully, we have a VPN and Remote Desktop so I could multitask from home that day. After taking time to swap laundry loads from the washer to the dryer it hit me to check the web site settings in IIS. Good thing I did because there was the problem, bigger than Stuttgart (as we used to say when I was in the Army) – the ASP.NET version selected in the ASP.NET tab in the web site properties was 1.1xxxxx instead of 2.0.50727. A quick change and a restart of the IIS Admin Service got everything working as it should.

I can only guess that the IIS settings were automatically changed when the .NET Framework 2.0 was uninstalled from the server. It makes sense – and it makes sense that one would need to go reselect the proper version of the Framework. Since that wasn’t spelled out in the Microsoft article, I’m warning you here.

Hopefully you won’t have to go through this yourself. If you do, though, don’t forget to check the IIS settings before declaring yourself finished.

Apple’s recent problems with the antennas on the iPhone 4 are very well known. Steve Jobs’ talk on the subject and his demonstration of other phone manufacturers’ antenna foibles gave me cause to ponder on the subject a little deeper. Hey, everyone else is taking a shot at Apple about this, why shouldn’t I get in on the action?

Well, Sort Of
I’m not really going to take a shot at Apple. There’s no need since there are plenty of others jumping in, for example Consumer Reports won’t recommend the iPhone 4.

The other mobile phone hardware manufacturers seem to be holding their own in the debate, too. But the real reason I won’t jump on the “Bash Apple” bandwagon is because the truth is, Steve Jobs was correct in his demonstration that other cell phones have similar issues. While I found his demo there in front of a live audience to be a staged PR stunt, his facts were correct.

A Little History
I’ve owned almost a dozen different mobile phones by five different manufacturers. In the users manual of each of those phones a paragraph (or more) was included stating that holding the phone by the antenna (for models with external antennas) or near the antenna location (for models with internal antennas) will degrade performance. This issue has been around since day one of the mobile phone.

It’s All About The Waves, Man
The most daunting aspect of modern mobile phone antenna design is matching the wavelength of the transmitting frequency used by the phones transceiver. Wavelength is the physical length of radio waves in space. It’s an inverse proportion to the frequency (the higher the frequency, the shorter the wavelength). For a short explanation of wavelength calculations for radio waves, check out “Frequency vs. Wavelength” on DXing.com.

Correct matching of antenna length to wavelength is critical for efficient operation of the transceiver, which can have a tremendous impact on battery life. If the match isn’t right, not enough radio frequency (RF) energy will go out the antenna. At best this will cause dropped calls, at worst it will cause damage to the transmitter and make the phone inoperable. Neither of these is ideal.

Back in the day (which wasn’t really all that long ago) cell phones would operate in one or two frequency bands. This made antenna design rather straightforward as it was somewhat of a “one size fits all” situation. Even so, design compromises needed to be made in order to keep the antennas small enough to be convenient. Remember the switch from the pullout metal antennas to the stubby rubber-coated ones? Stashing the antenna inside the phone’s case makes the situation even more complicated.

Because the newer generations of devices do so many things, they need to operate on many different frequencies almost simultaneously. A recent article in the L.A. Times Blog by Mark Milian titled “Building a Better Cellphone Antenna” mentions that new 4G phones will need to operate in up to 40 modes in 50 different frequency bands. This means that the antenna systems in those phones will need to be able to adjust on the fly, switching from one frequency band to another as the phone goes from voice to data to Bluetooth to Wifi modes – and it needs to happen quickly enough that the user doesn’t notice. I’ve read a number of very technical articles over the past few days describing different ways to approach this problem. It’s a technological marvel these newer devices work as well as they do.

A reasoned comparison specifically covering the differences between the first generation iPhone and and the iPhone 4 can be gotten on the AntennaSys, Inc. blog. In this article, the author points out two other very important challenges to mobile phone antenna design: RF energy exposure limits imposed by the FCC and the fact that human tissue conducts and absorbs electricity.

In order to address possible health issues related to long term RF exposure, the FCC places strict limits on how much RF energy can be emitted* from devices based on their frequency (wave length) and proximity to humans. Since mobile phone transceivers operate in the microwave band (typically at frequencies 1 Ghz and up) and microwave length RF energy is easily absorbed by human tissue, placement of the antenna and output power of the transceiver must be carefully balanced in order for a device to get FCC approval. By placing the antenna at the bottom of the phone, more transmitter power can be used in order to allow the device to have better range and (hopefully) reduce dropped calls.

As the author of the AntennaSys, Inc. article points out, the hand is not always taken into account when testing RF exposure limits. The hand conducts electricity just as well as the rest of the body, so when your hand blocks the antenna some of the RF goes into your hand instead of out into the air, thus blocking the signal from the cell tower and increasing the chance of poor performance. Covering the antenna with a bumper case or even duct tape addresses this problem, but doesn’t completely resolve it.

The bottom line is: You have to keep your hand away from the antenna for peak performance. Because people want the antennas to be hidden and marketers like the sleek look of a smooth case, compromises in antenna design are made. As antenna designers continue making improvements, I think you can expect some performance gains. But, since the laws of physics cannot be changed, RF will always be blocked by the human body. There may not be a perfect solution found on the device end. Maybe it would be better to look to the cell tower end of things to help solve this issue.

Why Am I Writing This?
I’ve been playing and working with radios for almost thirty years and I often tell people I’m a radio geek. What started out as a hobby became a big part of my professional life. I first got interested in radio when I bought a boom box which could receive signals on the shortwave broadcast bands. I spent many an hour listening to broadcasts from around the world. Later, my jobs in the Army allowed me to work with many different kinds of radios in different settings. I’m also an amateur radio operator licensed by the FCC (KB5NJU. 73 to all my ham friends).

While I am not an antenna guru, I’m “smarter than the average bear” when it comes to knowing how they work and what what makes one antenna better than another in certain circumstances. I’ve bought, assembled and built from scratch quite a few antennas. While some worked better than others, each one had plusses and minuses. I expect the folks who design mobile phone antennas have similar results in their work, and they’re a whole lot smarter than me on the subject.

Since mobile phones are, at their core, radio transceivers, I hope I explained things in such a way as to help those who are not radio geeks better understand what’s really going on and why mobile phone antennas are very complex and take a lot of delicate balancing to get right.

FootNotes:
* I hesitate to use the words “radiate” or “radiation” because most people think of the type radiation which is emitted from radioactive decay and is much more dangerous than exposure to RF. “Nuking” your food in a microwave is really a misnomer because a microwave oven uses RF energy to cook the food, not atomic radiation.

Top Photo: photo credit: CalypsoCrystal

Bottom Photo: photo credit: ebmarquez

Facebook, despite its privacy shortcomings, is a tool many of us use to keep in touch with friends and family. I find it extremely useful to maintain relationships with many I know who live, literally, around the world. For the vast majority of people, using Facebook will not cause any real issues; but, there is a minority of folks for whom using Facebook (and other social media sites) may have a dark and sinister side and could possibly hold dire consequences.

My friend Nadine (not her real name, of course) is a wonderful lady. I met her, her husband and their children while we were working together on a volunteer project. You wouldn’t know unless she told you, but Nadine has a somewhat checkered past. There is someone from her “previous life” who has stalked and threatened her over the course of a number of years. The thought of this person even just contacting her brings up feelings of terror. Thankfully, he has not been able to track her down for well over ten years, though she has heard through the grapevine he has tried from time to time.

Nadine has family and friends spread across the country, and many of them are on Facebook. Of course, they want her to join so they can stay in touch easier. She wants to join, but hasn’t thus far. She and her husband are very cautious when it comes to social media. This is quite understandable given Nadine’s situation. It’s one thing to join Facebook and lock down your privacy settings knowing the odds of someone stalking you are quite low; but, it’s quite another when you know there is a real “someone” out there who may want to get you. “Paranoia may destroy ya” as The Kinks used to sing, but in Nadine’s case a healthy amount of caution is called for.

I have to admit, at first I rather drew a blank when she emailed and asked if I could advise her how she might get on Facebook and stay safe. Knowing the inherent privacy issues in Facebook, I thought long and hard. I certainly could not tell her she could get on there and know for sure her information was safe. There are no guarantees for any of us, but she certainly has a reason to be extra cautious. While telling her to carefully consider whether or not to join I made sure to stress there is always a risk of exposure, I wrote the following in an email to her for consideration if she does decide to sign up:

1. Pick a fake name. Although this is technically against the Facebook terms of service, it most likely won’t be a problem unless someone complains about it. She should pick a fake location, home town, etc. too.
2. Set up a bogus email address based on that fake name and use it for Facebook. I reminded her she’ll need to check this email address periodically.
3. Don’t put pictures of herself up anywhere on Facebook. I told her if she gets a message that someone has “tagged” her in a photo, she should go and remove the tag immediately. There are settings which can restrict tagging a bit in the privacy settings, but they may not work as advertised. Sharing pictures of her kids should be OK, though she may want to watch who “likes” them or who comments because those comments can be seen by others.
4. Tightly restrict all her Facebook privacy settings to share information with “Only Me” and “Friends Only” as appropriate.
5. If anyone of her Facebook friends pass your information on to this person, all bets are off. Even the cleverest disguise is worthless if someone tells on her.

I consider the last point to be the most important because there are no guarantees of privacy and safety once you put your information online. When you consider the importance of online reputation management and how easy it is for employers to find information about potential employees, it’s quite easy to see that personal information is very hard to hide once it’s posted.

I pose the question to you: What would you tell Nadine in this situation? Would you advise her to stay off Facebook and other social media sites completely? Do you have any tips for Nadine or someone in a similar situation as the one she is in? Please feel free to leave your answers and suggestions in the comments.

photo credit: MartynvanDeelen

Last week I was called upon by Megan Fleetwood, a reporter with KWTX in Waco, to offer up some comments about social media security and safety. In this case it was specifically regarding the safety of kids on social sites.

Unfortunately, the story is no longer available on their web site. I’m looking for another source.

Background
This particular piece revolved around a school bus driver who thought a dog belonging to one of the students on his route had been found by one of his neighbors. The neighbor was about to take the dog to the animal shelter. Concerned for the pet’s safety, he contacted the 13-year-old female student via a Facebook message asking if the dog in question was hers. Apparently, when she didn’t respond, went to her house and knocked on the door.

The concern here is (as spoken in the story): “When is it appropriate for an adult to contact a child on the internet?” I’m sure opinions vary. In this case, the school district leadership is convinced the driver’s intentions were honorable. Still, the incident did raise a bit of concern for school district – and it should.

Kids are on social media. It’s part of their culture and embedded into their lives in a way even the most social media-savvy adults I know don’t fully comprehend. Because it’s such a part of how they interact with others, it’s essential we teach them about online safety when they are young much like my parents taught me not to talk to strangers or look both ways before crossing the street.

School Is Teaching Kids
Apparently, the school district spent some time during the course of the last year teaching kids about online safety. That is excellent. Although I believe parents should be ultimately responsible for monitoring their kids’ online activities, it is an excellent idea for schools to help by offering some instruction. This may offer the chance for the kids themselves to look out for each other and help each other succeed in keeping not only their personal information, but their persons safe.

Social Media Policies for Employers
From what I gather of the superintendent’s comments, the school district does not have a social media policy for its employees. I firmly believe all organizations should have a social media policy, and this goes double for schools. I don’t think social media policies for school need to be draconian to the degree that social media contact between school personnel and students are cut off totally. There are some excellent and legitimate uses for social media contact, especially between students and teachers. However, there should be some guidelines to help prevent a situation like the one in this story; to help keep “honest people honest.”

Social media can be a great tool to help schools communicate. For example, I have a friend whose highschoolers are involved in Theatre Arts. The teachers have a Twitter account which they use to let parents know what’s going on when students are on field trips and traveling to competitions. Certainly a Facebook fan page for a teacher’s class would be of great help with communication of lessons and such between the teacher and students and parents. I know many teachers who use email lists for this type of communication – perhaps it would be more efficient to post message to social media sites.

Some Points to Ponder
During the interview I did with Megan we discussed a number of points about how to help kids make good decisions when it comes to their social media activities. Here are a few:

• It is mainly the responsibility of parents to teach their kids how to be safe online. Some parents are overwhelmed by this because they don’t understand social. If this is the case with you, concentrate on the basics like, “Don’t talk to Strangers,” “Treat others as you want to be treated,” “Don’t spread gossip.” Teach them not to share their personal information such as address, phone number, pictures, etc. with those not personally known to them.
• Foster a relationship with your kids that encourages them to let you know when something untoward happens. Often times communication between parents and kids is the best tool to keep them safe. Of course, when they become teens and think they know everything this gets tougher, so you have to start early.
• Anyone can figure out how to send a message to anyone else. That’s how spam works. Getting emails from strangers is nothing new. Teach your kids to ignore and delete messages from people they don’t know.
• It’s not a bad idea to put the family computer in the living room with the T.V. and other entertainment items. This way, you parents can keep an eye on what the kids are doing online.
• Check your kids’ social media accounts from time to time. Not only should you check the security/privacy settings on their accounts, you should check to see who they are interacting with and how they interact. Cyberbullying and such can be cut off if parents are involved in monitoring their kids’ online activities. You kids may complain about you “invading their privacy” but in the end they will appreciate that you care.
• If you are technically savvy enough, you can install various filters and limit your kids’ time online. This way you can help prevent them from Facebook-ing or MySpace-ing at all hours of the night.
• Kids need to understand that online is pretty much “forever.” Once something is posted and indexed by search engines it’s nearly impossible to get rid of and it can pop back up during searches for who knows how long. Younger kids talking smack and older kids posting pictures of themselves acting the fool at parties may be all fun now, but they can come back to haunt them later. Though this point probably applies more to older kids and young adults who may be soon entering the workforce, it’s important that kids learn early on about the basics of online reputation management.

Please check out the tips I gave in my last TV interview in my article “Social Media Safety & Security.”

How about you? What tips do you have regarding keeping kids safe online? Please feel free to share them in the comments.

Those who have served in any of the armed forces know teamwork. Some may not do it well, but they know about it because it’s stressed from day one. Let me share a great lesson I learned while attending a leadership school during my time in the U.S. Army.

Background
When I was an up-and-coming young soldier, recently promoted to the rank of Sergeant, I went to the required month-long training at the Army’s Primary Leadership Development Course (PLDC). The particular school I attended was the 7th Army NCO Academy in Bad Toelz, Germany. This PLDC had the reputation of being the toughest in Europe. One feature of the school was the infamous “Autobahn,” which was the main hallway through the classroom portion of the building. It had a black strip in the middle and an alternating color on the sides. The black strip had to be polished to a mirror finish each day and no students were allowed to walk on it.

In the time leading up to my departure, I wasn’t exactly looking forward to the experience.

I showed up at the school and was assigned to a squad of about twelve to fourteen other young soldiers. We were all from different units and had different specialties and different backgrounds. The one thing we all had in common was that we all wanted to finish the class successfully so we could keep our newly-acquired rank or be promoted.

One person from the squad was assigned to be Squad Leader. This person was in charge of making sure all the squad’s tasks were completed each day and inspecting each squad member’s uniform before the morning inspection by the school cadre. A goodly portion of each soldier’s successful completion of the course was riding on the evaluation the cadre gave them for their time as Squad Leader. Because there were around fifteen soldiers in our squad, this job rotated every two or three days.

Each squad was assigned different duties which the members had to perform as a team after classes were over and the classroom floors were mopped and polished and before lights out. The trick was, these jobs had to be finished with enough time left over before lights out so everyone had opportunity to polish their boots and press a uniform for the next day.

One squad was assigned the task to wax the “Autobahn” each evening, another was directed to clean all the showers and latrines in the basement of the building, a third was tasked with waxing the other hallways. Our squad was assigned the task of cleaning the Commandant’s office and the rest of the headquarters building.

The Plan
The very first day the group got together and divvied up the individual portions of the building to clean. One person vacuumed the carpeted areas, another mopped and waxed the tile floored rooms, still another cleared out the trash from all the wastebaskets, etc. Each person had a task and we all worked together and finished the entire job in about two hours.

I wish I could take credit for the stroke of genius which came out of the meeting we squad members held after the cleaning was done. Someone suggested that to make sure we all got good evaluations as squad leaders we would all agree to do the same jobs we did that first day; and, no matter who was in charge we would work together for the success of everyone. We all shook hands and “pinkie sweared” and agreed that’s how we would do it.

The Result
It worked, too. The next day we had our cleaning time down to one and one-half hours. The day after that, it was down to an hour. By the end of the first week we had our time down to thirty minutes. Done, done and done – and done to the Commandant’s satisfaction.

After we had our duty time down to thirty minutes, we had lots of time for boot polishing and uniform pressing. We also had time to play cards and nightly Spades tournaments were held.  At one point I found myself wondering what all the fuss was about before I went to the class – the class was turning out to be quite easy.

At one point, about half way through the course, our instructor came in for the first class of the morning. He closed the door and motioned for us to gather around his desk at the front of the classroom. He looked around as if making sure no one would overhear what he was about to say. He asked us, in hushed tones, what we were up to.

None of us quite understood what he was talking about, so he clarified. Apparently, the members of the other squads were complaining that our squad didn’t have enough work to do because we were finishing our cleanup duty in the Commandant’s office in thirty minutes and they were working right up until lights out. They thought it unfair that we were “getting over” and were demanding we be given some of their work. Our instructor was quite puzzled because there were no complaints from the Commandant. In fact, our instructor told us the Commandant mentioned at a recent staff meeting that his offices had never been cleaned so thoroughly.

We all broke into smiles as the squad leader for that day explained what was going on. He told our instructor about the meeting we had on the very first day and how we agreed that no matter who was in charge, we would do the same job every day and work it so every succeeded at that part of being squad leader. The reason we were finishing up so quickly was because of teamwork and lack of egos.

The other squads hadn’t worked out such an ingenious plan. I saw them, every day, argue amongst themselves about the best way to do this or that task. Every time a new squad leader took over (mind you, this was just about every other day) he or she would impose on the others “The Way It Ought To Be Done.” This would result in arguments and delays in getting the work started, thus more time taken to complete their tasks. While we were playing cards, they were fighting over whose way was best.

A huge smile broke out on our instructor’s face. He told us not to tell anyone about our conversation. He said something like, “Very few people get it when they come here. You guys did. Keep up the great work.”

You see, it was all about working together as a team for the common good. Instead of PLDC being a dreaded experience and a time of torment, we actually had a good time. Don’t get me wrong, we did work hard. In the end, though, checking our egos at the door and working together made the experience a whole lot easier.

How about you – do you have a teamwork story? Please feel free to share in the comments.

Top image:  photo credit: The National Guard

Bottom image: My personal collection