Why not take full advantage of your tablet to make planning and meeting those goals easy? Today we’ll take a few common New Year Resolutions that we all share, and look at how your tablet can help with each.

Keeping organized

Syncing your tablet with the cloud has never been easier. If you have an Android device you can let your Gmail account keep track of your contacts, calendar, notes, tasks, pictures, music, messages and more, keeping everything lined up, no matter how many devices you have. Whether you are on your tablet or on your computer, everything will stay in sync as long as you’re connected to the Internet. With an iPad, iCloud will do many of the same things for you. On Windows tablets you can use Google or SkyDrive. You can even export from one service and import it into another if migrating everything to one central account makes your digital life easier to manage.

Keeping fit

There are apps available to help you with pushups, sit-ups, yoga or walking. Nike, and coming soon from Jawbone, there’s pedometer-like gear that will work with apps to give you more accurate readings of your accomplishments. If making fitness more social and fun helps keep you motivated then you can go to Fitocracy from your tablet web browser to share your experience with others while keeping track of your progress.

Keeping in touch

Keeping in touch with friends and loved ones can be a challenge with our busy schedules. Fortunately, social sites like Facebook, twitter and foursquare make it easier to share in the lives of the people that you care about. If logging in to separate web pages to check in with your social network is a bit overwhelming to you, you may want to consider consolidating them into one app on your tablet. Both Tweetdeck and Hootsuite do a great job of streamlining this experience in a way that may just make you want to use those services even more.

So no matter what you resolve to change in your life this year, remember your tablet can help you out, and help you stick to it! Also, keep in mind that we are always here to help. If it all seems a bit overwhelming, Geek Squad offers a Tablet Setup, as well as a variety of other services to help you skip the “techie” part, and get straight to using your new tech-tools. As always, Geek Squad Agents are standing by 24/7/365 at 1-800-GeekSquad and GeekSquad.com to help keep your unruly tech in order.

-Agent Shane N.

Geek Squad Online Support Agent Shane N serves the public by policing technology at Support.GeekSquad.com

He is father to four boys who remind him that no matter how smart he thinks he is, they are smarter. He likes Sci-Fi and skateboarding.

There are a couple of set-in-stone ground rules that everyone needs to know about social networking websites. Let me share with you the same information I tell most of my clients:

• Social networking websites themselves are generally safe; The content people put on them, however, may not be. It is the human element you need to worry about.

• Always remember that any content you post on the internet will be there forever, for anyone to read, store, and republish

Now that we are armed with those rules, let us run through a few possible scenarios. For instance, you hop onto a popular networking site to update your status and you see you have a message from your friend. We are talking about someone you know but does not frequently message you. You open the message and there is a link to what is described as a ‘cool video’ or some super-duper product that you should “check out.” The link doesn’t work, or for whatever reason it doesn’t seem to work. Or perhaps it is such as stupid thing you are wondering why your friend was even wasting your time. “No biggie” you may think. A week later, however, you find that you are getting popup ads left and right and your computer is slowing down.

What happened? Well your friend probably had a virus or spyware infection that spreads itself via sending messages to everyone who his is ‘friend,’ telling them to click on the link. When the link is clicked the spyware is installed. (Please remember that antivirus and antispyware programs are not always 100% effective) The spyware has been watching what you are typing, trying to steal credit card numbers, or otherwise is up to no good. Bam, you’ve been socially hacked.

Another scenario popping up lately involves micro-blogging websites. One of the most popular is Twitter. (Micro-blogging is posting status updates or information in only one to two sentences). There are several excellent micro-blogger humans out there reporting everything from celebrity updates, news hot off the press, and even your latest television show character developments.

However, there are also those micro-blogging accounts where it seems that some “person” is following the status updates of 5,000 people yet only 10 or 20 people are following them. This seems odd…who has the time to follow 5,000 people yet is not popular enough to warrant anybody ‘following’ what they are doing? Yet this random person just ‘followed’ or ‘added’ you to the list of people they listen in on? Weird! So what in the world is going on?

Well, it is completely feasible that this person is waiting for you, and the 5,000 other people, to post something that could be personally identifying. Maybe you don’t post revealing information all at once. Perhaps without realizing it you do it over the course of months. Like pieces of a puzzle to be assembled into a greater picture at a later time. Maybe you uploaded a photo revealing your address or house number in the background of your family picnic? Did you post something with your name on it, or tied to your name like the picture of the new car you bought? Did you just update your status about the burger joint on the corner of Main St and how you are eating there?

Believe it or not just with that simple information above a person can cause you a big headache. For example: With that house number, nearby the burger joint address, the make/model of your car or license plate number in a picture (and personal information tied to this plate number), or anything else you posted, someone could do something as simple as fill out a credit card application in your name. With the free credit card application they stole out of your mailbox. Or perhaps they could use this information to impersonate you in other ways. Ick, who the heck needs that sort of trouble!

That whole scenario seems like a lot of trouble for someone to go through, but it really is not that hard. There are freely available programs on the internet that can scour social networking websites for certain keywords multiple times per hour. When they hit upon this keyword, the program marks that post for future review by human eyes. That person who was following you now has all the information they need from your three months of blogging posts to paint an excellent picture of you. They could possibly step into your shoes if they wanted to.

So what can you do to protect yourself? Remember the set-in-stone rules I mentioned above. What appears to be, may not be true. Ask your friend you do not speak to often if they really sent you a funny video about a cat climbing the Christmas Tree before you open the message and follow the link.

Do not post anything on the internet you wouldn’t want someone to see no matter how innocuous it seems to be. Personally identifying information such as license plate numbers, house numbers or other addresses, specific names, how you went to Johnny’s High school and still live in the same town…things like that. Remember that this information is stored somewhere, likely in multiple places, for almost all eternity. Information can be used like pieces in a puzzle to paint a bigger picture of you.

Do not accept “friend requests” from people you do not know. Do not allow people to “follow” you if you do not know who they are. If you are unsure as to the authenticity of the person on the other end, ask them a piece or two of personal information that only the true person would know. Watch your children and make sure when they are on these social sites that they adhere to your rules and guidelines.

Trust your gut feeling. When a scenario seems odd it could mean someone is up to no good. In addition, remember when you cannot see the person on the other end of the internet connection you have no proof they are who they say they are.

I truly hope this information helps steer you towards trouble-free social waters. The internet is certainly an awesome way to connect and stay in touch at the speed of light. We need not be afraid of the web, but we do need to respect the power it can have over us if used incorrectly.

Now I think I will go post on Twitter that I have finished writing this blog…

But what if you wanted to Twitter a link to my epic blog about using secure passwords? As you may know, Twitter updates are capped at 140 characters. The full address of my post is:

http://www.geeksquad.com/intelligence/blog/use-halibut-to-protect-your-identity/#more-474.

Not only is that hard to type, but it weighs in at 89 characters. This only leaves you 51 characters for the remainder of your tweet. When it comes to Twitter updates, space is at a premium. 

Enter the URL shortening services. After TinyURL.com was launched in 2002, there have been numerous other sites with a similar spin, such as snipurl.com, is.gd, and bit.ly. By using their services, the large unwieldy URL above is rendered as http://tinyurl.com/yjclqts . Much easier on the thumbs, and it gives you more space to write glowing praise about the link in question.

The problem is, as with anything on the Internet, you find people with malicious intent looking to use URL shorteners to their advantage. Firewalls, anti-virus software, anti-spyware software, and phishing scanners are great, but if you click a link that goes directly to a malicious site, often there isn’t anything security software can do about it. You may think you’re following a friend’s link to a story about the release of Windows 7, and end up at a site with adult content or a site with the intent to infect your computer with a virus.

Some of the shortening services have instituted a preview system; for example, if you were to enter http://preview.tinyurl.com/yjclqts, the tinyurl site will tell you what the link points to. But for those sites that don’t have a preview system, or if you don’t want to retype all of them, there are a few ways to make sure you don’t end up someplace you’d rather not be.

There are add-ons, which are programs you can download for Firefox and Internet Explorer, which check the shortening site and report back to you the expanded URL, and then giving you the option of clicking on it or not. Longurl.org is a website that you can go to where you can copy and paste the shortened URL, and it will report back the full link.

 So while sometimes your friends may just be trying to hit you with the most viral Internet prank of all time, other times you may find something far worse than Rick Astley on the other end of that link.

If you’re looking for some of these add-ons, go to http://snipurl.com/sikhj for Firefox or http://bit.ly/3RD3sP for Internet Explorer.

One of the first things that may catch your eye is that instead of having a link to the Best Buy or Geek Squad websites, this commercial features a link to a Twitter profile throughout: twitter.com/twelpforce.

So what’s different about this Twitter account?  For many companies online, customer service accounts are manned by a small team of representatives who specialize solely in dealing with questions and issues.  What Best Buy has done differently with @TwelpForce is to open up that access to any Best Buy and Geek Squad employee to answer questions while on the clock.

As a Geek Squad Agent helping out with the questions, it’s been an eye-opening experience at just how powerful the idea is.  I’ve seen and experienced hundreds of customer interactions since the launch, and it’s great to see how welcomed our help is by the public.

Since the launch, we’ve already seen a number of Twitter conversations about @Twelpforce.  Even a very positive review by TechCrunch , which calls it, “a phenomenal way to engage with Twitter users and social media in general.” Even Twitter themselves have commented on the program when speaking about business uses for Twitter.

Still, the best review is when you get a Twitter response from someone you’ve helped that simply says, “thanks for the help, every thing’s working now!”  I definitely look forward to more @TwelpForce twittering in my future.

In fact, I’m happy to share how this all came about. On Friday, May 15th we celebrated “Silver Surfers Day.” This promotion started about 7 years ago to encourage older people to get online. We heard about Ivy Bean nearly two years ago, when she tackled Facebook as a 102 year old. We were impressed. We decided to seek her out and see if she would like to give Twitter a whirl. As it happens – she did! Ivy has a genuine interest in connecting with the world outside of Bradford and her residence. She is attracted to the simplicity of Twitter. We were thrilled to set up Ivy, but we were also excited to tell her story. After all, the point of Silver Surfers Day is to get older people online. This seemed like a great way to do it.

To get to that point, we created and issued a press release about Ivy’s new Twitter account. At no point did we hide our involvement – we were proud of it! For reasons we can’t quite understand, the facts around this have become confused. We want to clarify a few points:

According to Ivy, she has enjoyed the attention she’s received as a result. She got her hair done before the photo shoot and, if you notice, isn’t wearing her glasses–she took her glasses off to look her best in the pics.

We have checked with her residence to ensure they aren’t being overrun by media attention. They assure us they’re not. All of Ivy’s tweets are her own. We may have given her a primer on the lingo, but everything she writes is her own. Were there more than one laptop in her residence, you would probably be getting more Ivy!

Again – we’re happy to have done this. Ivy is enjoying Twitter. From the look of her 14,000+ followers, Twitter is enjoying Ivy. Geek Squad views its role as helping people master technology in all its forms, and this is a great example. We plan to support Silver Surfers Day again in the future and hope to see more Ivy Beans (joining Twitter or whatever is the “hot new thing” next year!) reaching out to connect to the world.