Traitors, a novella by Carrie Clevenger, is a Crooked Fang adventure available on Amazon Kindle and at Smashwords from Katarr Kanticles Press. If you haven’t tasted a Crooked Fang story before, this is a perfectly reasonable place to get acquainted with Xan and his world. Traitors picks up where the novel, Crooked Fang, left off if you’d rather start there. This novella is short enough to enjoy in one gulp with plenty of content to leave a lasting impression. Not for the young ones.

This story holds the same edge found in the blog serial and has grown with the author into a smooth ride like a restored muscle car with power when you need it. Xan introduces his world with a playful style touched by his dark-offbeat humor. I feel I’m right there with Xan at Pale Rider, a little drinking hole, and riding with him in his Camaro. It’s a fun ride, too. Xan keeps things lively even when picking music on the radio. The love that went into writing and editing Traitors bleeds through at every turn, a smooth ride winding through the Xan’s feelings for his friend, Nin, and rising over the peak into a blaze at the Traitors bar. Xan realizes there’s more to this mission, and the story leaves us with a taste of things to come.

I’ve enjoyed the other Crooked Fang stories by Carrie Clevenger, but Traitors has made me a fan. Thanks, Carrie, for sharing with us.

Dee Count updated to version 1.6 with new look for iOS 7 style and added support for scanning bar codes with the iPad camera. The layout is nearly the same, but flipping right and left sides of main workspace.

• Note: “Scan Bar Codes” button requires iOS 7 and appears when on-screen keyboard is visible; external keyboard device is ejected.
• updated manual on Scribd

Dee Count is an inventory counting program targeted at those wanting to count and compare counts quickly using an iPad. Inventory management is not the primary goal.

Scanning Bar Codes with Camera

Scanning bar codes using the built-in iPad camera requires iOS 7. The “Scan Bar Codes” button appears when the on-screen keyboard is visible; your external keyboard device is not active. If you have an external keyboard device connected, eject the device and tap the add box.

Tapping the “Scan Bar Codes” button opens the camera view. When a bar code is detected, a blue line appears over it along with the detected code. Tap the camera view to add the code as a count.

Note that scan success depends on the size and quality of the bar code. An external laser bar code scanner like Scanfob 2002 is recommended, but sometimes it’s nice to do a quick scan with the camera. A newer iPad with a camera having 1080p video support, newer than iPad 2, works best. The screen shots on this page were taken on an iPad 2, but notice the size of the bar codes. I had a much tougher time with smaller bar codes found on books or shoe boxes with the iPad 2. I’ve tested with the iPad Retina which works much better.

Dee Count camera bar code scanning supports UPC-A, EAN-13, code-128, and code-39. EAN-13 codes beginning with a zero will be automatically converted to UPC-A (leading zero ignored) much like many laser scanners to remain consistent.

Learn more about Dee Count on the software page, read the manual on Scribd, or look for Dee Count at the Apple App Store.

Social media allows you to improve your brand by engaging with others. Staying connected with clients or reaching out to a new audience may mean writing newsletters, articles, brief posts, or profile summaries on sites. Even if your team commits a passionate effort into the finding the right words, forgetting to proofread risks damaging your marketing efforts.

Bad grammar risks destroying credibility and reputation.

Spotting too many mistakes, especially breaking simple rules like capitalizing the wrong letters, becomes distracting. The reader may believe the persons working for the brand do not care enough to write well and conclude they don’t care about quality or their clients. Imagine a Facebook post claiming quality services containing basic grammar errors, and the post refers potential clients to an overview page on the web where grammar mistakes abound. Poor grammar risks losing sales.

In the post, “Writing for Social Media: When Bad Grammar Happens to Good People” at GrammarChic.com the author states, “bad grammar not only hinders your social media marketing efforts, it has the ability to crush any credibility or authority you may have in your respective field” and simply, “no one wants to look like an idiot.”

Brad Hoover in “Good Grammar Should be Everyone’s Business” on Harvard Business Review writes about an informal study by his company, Grammarly, of LinkedIn profiles finding a correlation between good grammar and success.

Also on Harvard Business Review in “I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why.” Kyle Wiens, CEO of iFixit, asserts that “good grammar is credibility, especially on the internet.” People judge others by their writing. Wiens’s observation is that people who make fewer mistakes in writing also make fewer mistakes in other work. Supporting his hiring practice he states, “programmers who pay attention to how they construct written language also tend to pay a lot more attention to how they code.” Also notice in the post Wiens mentions the basics like mistaking “to” for “too” or incorrectly using “it’s.”

Your post doesn’t need to be perfect. It needs to show that you care.

When it comes to informal writing, readers are forgiving. A mistake in a brief post will likely go unnoticed. Forgiveness diminishes when errors outnumber sentences, or the message becomes difficult to understand. Proofreading a short newsletter may only take a minute. You know writing basics and how to find help. Your clients know this, too.

You are passionate about your brand. Show your passion by proofreading.

In my 2010 post, “Get Off Your Butt,” I addressed the problem of working at a desk for long hours increasing risk of heart problems, obesity, and general fatigue. After four years at a desk job, I had realized that commuting to work on a bicycle was not enough to compensate for eight or more hours sitting at a desk.

After two years of using a standing desk (a drafting table), I now realize how detrimental to my health hours of sitting had been the previous four years. Standing for part of the work day has helped recover much of my health. I’ve also noticed that when I’m trying to solve difficult problems, my brain prefers it when I stand. Humans think better on their feet. Of course standing in one place for too long isn’t good, either, so I upgraded my office with a GeekDesk.

Thanks to pre-built software, password cracking keeps getting easier, and many users still don’t care. Even if you have nothing worth stealing, using strong passwords prevents attackers from social engineering to get something that is worth taking. Attackers can glean parts of secret information from different sites, or hints from your Facebook profile, to get something valuable. Sophisticated tools also make it easier to use the simple passwords to crack other passwords. See “Why passwords have never been weaker—and crackers have never been stronger” at Ars Technica and take a look at some of the worst passwords in “10 of the worst passwords exposed by LinkedIn hack.”

Password dumping—public display of encrypted (and later possibly cracked) lists—has become more common allowing both security professionals and thieves learn more about password habits. Thieves may automate re-using your name-password login on other sites. A short list of recent dumps from Ars:

• "More passwords dumped, this time from alleged billabong.com hack"
• "eHarmony confirmed its members' passwords were posted online, too"
• "8 million passwords leaked connected to LinkedIn, dating website"
• "Sony hacked yet again, plain text passwords, emails, DOB posted"

What these dumps reveal is that many users still choose simple passwords, a real word usually with a capital letter at the beginning and ending in a number. Cracking software try this pattern first starting with the most popular. Slightly tougher passwords use a real word with two or more capitals somewhere in the middle broken by a number or two. Better, play the license plate game to make a memorable password.

Tips

• length should be at least 8 characters
• use one or more capital letters in the middle
• use numbers, but not just at the end
• use at least one symbol if site allows
• use a password generator
• never use same password twice

Passwords are easier to remember if you type them every time instead letting your browser remember for you. Also, you may try a secure password organizer to store passwords (and other info) like 1Password available for Mac, iPhone, and iPad.