Protect yourself and your children from spam, spoofing, cyber-bullying, phishing, hacking and predators with the practical advice in Internet Safety and Your Family. Today, when most kids have 24/7 access to the Internet, we need to think about more than pornography filters and Facebook. As important, what risks are we adults creating---and what risks are we vulnerable to? With seemingly everything online today, and possibly archived forever, we may unknowingly creating opportunities for identify theft, stalking and worse when we post a photo to a social networking site or add a comment to a blog. This practical guide prepares you to make choices about your family's Internet use. Based on material recommended by the Seattle Police Department and child protection agencies, it is also designed to help schools meet the National Educational Technology Standards.
I grew up near the sites of several company towns and worked in forest products early in my career. When I returned to school for an MBA, I spent the summer with a San Francisco-based timber company that had operated many remote camps in the days of railroad logging. I was fascinated with how families had lived in these tiny communities accessible only by company railroad. Much later, I visited Holden Village, which began life as a copper, silver and gold-mining operation in yet another remote site, this one 12 miles almost straight up from Lake Chelan, in central Washington. The result? When I finished the seventh edition of "How to Find a Good Job in Seattle," a job-search guide I had been writing since 1990, I went to University of Washington Press with a proposal for a history of employer-owned villages. After a thumbs-up from the general manager (thank you, Pat Soden!), I dove in---and 11 months later, I delivered a first draft of the manuscript. The book was published late in 2003 and in 2004 I began a four-year term with the Humanities Washington Inquiring Mind speakers' bureau, which gave me the opportunity to visit towns all over Washington state and talk about company towns as they existed in this region. Each year I also visit Cedar Falls, a Seattle Public Utilities community off I-90, to speak and show slides during its Twilight Tours. What's especially rewarding is to often meet people who lived in these communities or are the children of former residents. A few people have even spotted photos of their parents in "Company Towns!"
Besides the book on small business marketing that I researched when completing my MBA, the job-search guides and the history, I have written or contributed to an Internet safety guide, which was prompted by what I found on the Internet about my own children's classmates. I also edited and contributed to a Dummies guide on digital book printing which is available to the publishing industry through the Independent Book Publishers Association.
Although I enjoy regional and business history, I spend most of my time consulting to publishers and other small business people on marketing. This includes coaching people prior to media appearances. I also Twitter at twitter.com/carlsonideas, where you'll find promotional tips.
