Written by fastcompany

“Can you call my phone?”

How many times have you been asked this question in the last year? Losing your phone, whether between your couch cushions or (like most Apple employees) at a bar, is a common headache. But finding your phone is another story, one that usually requires a bit of serendipity or the kindheartedness of a good Samaritan.

Today, mobile-security startup Lookout, which specializes in Android smartphone protection, released an infographic on the lost-phone phenomenon–namely, the 10 worst places to lose your phone, and the top U.S. cities for smartphone loss or theft.

According to Lookout’s data, the No. 1 city for cellphone loss, based on the percentage of its population, is Miami. No doubt that season of the Jersey Shore factored into the outcome. (Who could’ve possibly been sober in the MIA during the weeks the MVP were present?) New York City comes in second, followed by Los Angeles, and Phoenix. Philly, Dallas, and Chicago are all in the bottom half.

As for the top 10 worst places to lose your phone, based on chance of recovery, a restaurant or bar isn’t such a horrible place, coming in at No. 9 (chance of recovery is fairly high, at 80% to 95%). The car roof comes in at No. 8, with a 25% to 75% chance of recovery. Unsurprisingly, public transit makes up a big part of the top 10. Airport security, buses and subways, airplanes, taxis–all these areas are prime spots to lose your phone.

The worst location to have your phone go missing is the swimming pool, which has a 50% to 75% chance of recovery–but your sopping-wet phone, even if retrieved, has less than a 5% chance of ever working again.

Check out the infographic below.

Bonus: I received a scam ‘Paypal Verification’ email this morning. After a little backtracing I was surprised to find the ftp password to be ‘password’. I made some alterations.

Written by howtogeek

If you have a lot of time and information invested in Facebook, it’s not easy moving to a new social network. Here are a few tips on moving your information from your Facebook account to your shiny new Google+ account.

Moving social networks isn’t the easiest thing to do, but luckily there are a few tools we can use to migrate pictures, videos, and friends. Wall posts and messages don’t make sense to migrate between networks so we are going to leave those out.

Export Facebook Information

Start by downloading all of your Facebook information. To do that, log into Facebook and go to account settings in the upper right corner.

On the settings tab click “learn more” next to “download your information.”

Enter your password and click continue; you will be sent an email once your download is ready.

Once you receive the email, click the link to download a zip of all of your files.

Extract the files and open the index.html file to verify all your information is there.

Import Photos

Google+ uses Picasa web albums to share pictures. To get started you need to download Picasa from the link below.

Once installed, open Picasa and add the Facebook photos folder you just downloaded to picasa.

Set Picasa to scan the folders once, and then let it do the import.

Once the pictures have finished importing into Picasa, find the albums and select Sync to Web on the right.

A pop-up window will open and ask you to sign in to web albums. Log in with your Google+ account and a second popup will ask you to verify your upload settings. Click change settings and modify the settings to you liking. Make sure you check the box to “use the above settings” otherwise you will be asked every time.

We’d recommend setting your new album visibility to private by default. You will be able to change the sharing settings from Google+ later, and this prevents you from making any embarrassing photos public.

Now go back to Picasa and click sync; your photos will be uploaded in the background.

Share Your Photos on Google+

After your pictures have uploaded, log into Google+ and click on photos in the top banner.

Navigate to your albums on the left.

Open the album you just uploaded and click share album at the top.

The share album button will automatically make your album public and post a link to it in your stream.

If you don’t want the album to be public, you can remove the Public circle and instead add some of your own. This will still make a post in your stream, but it will only be visible to those you have shared it with.

It is possible for someone you shared an album with to re-share that with the public so make sure you only share with people you know and trust.

If you don’t want the album posted to your stream, you can also click the edit button from the main album page which will change the sharing settings without posting the album in your stream.

Import Your Videos

Importing videos is a lot less automated than pictures. To import your Facebook videos browse to your Facebook export you downloaded earlier and there will be a videos folder.

Log into your Google+ account and click on your profile -> videos.

Click upload new videos on the right and drag the videos from your computer to your browser.

Once the videos are done uploading you can name, create, and share the album from Google+.

Import Your Facebook Friends

Go to login.yahoo.com and sign in with your Facebook account or a yahoo account if you already have one.

Confirm access and sign in with your facebook account and then go to address.yahoo.com. Click tools and import from the dropdown.

Select Facebook from the provided options.

After you confirm access to your contacts, the import will happen automatically.

Next export your contacts to a .csv file with the tools menu.

Export your contacts to Microsoft Outlook, confirm the capcha and save the file.

Now login to Gmail, click contacts -> more actions -> import.

Browse to the .csv file you just downloaded and select it for importing.

Specify a new group to import the contacts into, if you chose that option, and the contacts should import without any problems.

Go back to Google+ and your newly imported contacts will show up under find and invite.

Add friends to circles and send invites to them if they aren’t already using Google+.

Download Picasa

Bonus: Lurk around Myspace a bit, you’ll get what I mean.

Written by Jeanne Hopkins

As a business, you need to think of social media like fishing. Sometimes you put your pole in and the fish are biting; other times, not as much. Still, a lot of people approach social media marketing without any bait whatsoever.

So what is this ‘bait’ I’m talking about? Engagement!

Setting up a Twitter account and a Facebook page — these are both a good start, but if you don’t attach something tasty to the end of your pole, you’ll be fishing for a long time for that viable lead. Here are five tips to optimize your social media participation for the best engagement.

1. Geo-Target

If you’re a business in, say, Omaha, and you operate in a specific location, or you’re organizing an event, or you’re just trying to get people in the front door of your establishment, then you’re not going to have a lot of luck if you’re marketing to New York. Conduct searches to determine who is tweeting relevant keywords in your location. A simple way to do this is by using Twitter’s own search function on Search.Twitter.com. More advanced businesses may want to try a 3rd party application like MarketMeSuite’s Reply Campaigns.

2. Ask Questions

Can you resist a question? If you answered that, or even thought about answering that, you’ve proven my point. We’ve embarked on this fishing analogy, so let’s stay with it. Asking a question is premium bait! It’s almost irresistible for someone who has been asked a question to reply. This works great on Twitter by @replying and works equally well on Facebook in comments on pages or even sending messages to potential customers. For example, if I see Sally Smith just commented on a Food Network fan page and I sell pans, I may want to send Sally a Facebook message like this: “Hi Sally, I happened to see you commented on the Food Network fan page, and I’m doing a bit of research. Do you mind telling me what your favorite maker of pans is?” There’s a very good chance she will answer. You can then thank her for taking the time to answer you and offer her a coupon to shop with you in the future.

3. Be Useful

Monitor what people are tweeting and posting on Facebook, and lend a hand if you can. Set up searches for certain “problem areas” in your industry. A chiropractor may want to look for people tweeting about back pain, and a web designer may look for people having trouble installing WordPress. If you reply with something helpful, a person is very likely to stay in touch with you and follow what you have to say. Let’s face it, people buy from who they like. This approach may not convert leads instantly, but it’s well worth having some good karma irons in the fire.

4. Don’t Automate Engagement

We are all busy people, but for a social media marketing strategy to succeed, you cannot automate the engagement side. Social media may be virtual, but it’s still real human interaction. Think back to before the internet (yes, there was a world before the internet). Imagine people walking into a shop and being greeted by a tape recorder welcoming them to the store and randomly probing them for conversation. You cannot automate engagement. You can organize it, and there are a lot of useful tools for helping you keep track all of your social media marketing. You can also collaborate with a team of people to get it all done. But don’t automate engagement.

5. Settle Into the Strategy

On a fishing trip, it’s rare to catch a 5 pound fish just after you’ve dipped your pole in the water. Be patient. Once you embark on an engagement strategy, keep it going. You will see some early results, I promise, but don’t get discouraged if your cash register isn’t overflowing a few days later. Similar to how search engine optimization works, social media engagement takes a little time to convert. But once you get into the groove, you will be incredibly pleased with the world you’ve opened up for yourself and your business.

Key Marketing Takeaway

The same rules apply to social media situations as real life ones. Be real, be relevant, be useful, and people will want to talk to you. If you’re the crazy person shouting randomness at no one in particular, you aren’t going to get a lot of traction in offline situations. The same holds true for online situations. Find your customers, talk to them, find out what they want, and interact.

Image credit: maggiejumps

This is a post by Tammy Kahn Fennell, CEO and co-founder of MarketMeSuite. MarketMeSuite now has thousands of users and a fast-growing global customer base of small businesses and consultants.

Bonus: Google+ VS Facebook