Leo Laporte — Digital Literacy Project

My 15 Minutes of Geek Fame!

In 1968 Andy Warhol made this now famous statement: “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” Well, I think I got my 15 minutes today (closer to 5 minutes), at least as far as geek fame goes.

I am pushing hard to get my upcoming book edited and decided to call into the “Leo Laporte: The Tech Guy” radio show. This is a call-in type show about digital technology that is broadcast live on Saturdays and Sundays from 2-5pm EDT. The host, Leo Laporte, is broadcasting out of his studio in Petaluma, CA and the show is syndicated with the Premier Radio Network into over 60 major USA markets. The show is also available one week later as a MP3 download and an additional audience listens to the show that way.

I pitched the idea to Leo about having his audience help with the book edit. Leo looked at my site on the air and really praised what I was doing. An audio clip of my time on the show is available below. This is a big deal for a geek.

Digital Literacy Project's Page View Statistics

To understand how big of a deal this is, look at the page view statistics graph for the Digital Literacy Project web site on March 22, 2009. The page views went from about 75-100 a day to 1975 views on the day of the show (the big spike to the right). Wow! At least I got a chance to test my server. It didn’t crash, which is a good thing.

Now I have to see what the final results will be. Will I end up getting some serious help with the edit? So far I have a lot of traffic, and a few offers to help. My gut feeling is this exposure on Leo’s show will pay off in many ways for a long time.

Download the audio file (MP3 Format)

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Staying Safe While Web Surfing

When you take a computer online, you must be prepared for a hostile word. The bad guys are working hard to compromise your computer for a wide range of reasons. Some of which are:

Acquire personal information from accessing your computer’s files or even installing a program that will monitor your keyboard input.
To present advertisements to you via pop up windows (even if you are not connected to the Internet).
To do malicious damage to your computer files.
Present you with a web page or form that looks legitimate in hopes you will be tricked into providing your personal information, This scheme is called “phishing”.
To “zombie” your computer by installing a hidden program on it that allows your computer to be used for malicious actions. Your computer could be used to spread spam or even be partnered with thousands of other computers to hit the same web page at the same time and take the site down.

Almost everyone is aware that you need to take some precautions; however, far too many people rely on anti-virus software to protect their computer. While software can help, your personal online behavior is actually more important. A person who follows a very strict regiment could actually surf the Internet safely without any ant-virus software.

On his weekly call in radio show, The Tech Guy, Leo Laporte covered the five most important things a person can do to keep safe while on on the Internet. The audio clip below is from his radio show.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.