Putting a Price on Your Work, New York Times Business Section, Jan. 29, 2012

As a bonus, my office is now totally spartan clean, which will save me time when my parents come to visit later this month.

WineBottler offers the solution. Install it on a Mac and you can fun IE6, IE7, and IE8, along with other Windows apps, in your Mac environment. Perfect for cross-browser CSS development!

Here’s how to do it:

Find the loop of the page you want to protect. Today I am working on the Member Directory of a site, or the /members page, so I opened /members/members-loop.php from my BuddyPress theme files.

At the very top of the page, I inserted this conditional statement to check if the viewing user is logged in, and to show them an error message if not:

<?php if ( !is_user_logged_in() ) : ?>You must be logged in to view this section.<?php endif;?><?php if ( is_user_logged_in() ) : ?>

This second conditional statement wraps the member loop itself, so don’t forget to close it off at the bottom of the file with a new:

<?php endif;?>

Viola! Subsequent visits to the page show the error message if I’m not authenticated into the system, protecting the member’s profile data from outside visitors and search engines.

I took it a step further and styled the error message to match my site and its tone, including a hyperlink to the log in information page for member access info and password resets. To do this, I turned the first chunk of our conditional statement into this:

<?php if ( !is_user_logged_in() ) : ?><p><strong>The Member Directory is for members only.<br><a href="#">Click here to log in now</a></strong></p><?php endif;?>

To alter the code of the header in a BuddyPress member profile, find your member-header.php file. This will be specific to the BuddyPress theme – different than the WordPress theme – deeply buried in the plugins folder under the following path:

/wp-content/themes/suffusion/members/single/member-header.php

Open that file and find the offending line:

<span class="highlight">@<?php bp_displayed_user_username() ?> <span>?</span></span>

It appears at the very top, right after the file calls out the member’s display name, like so:

<h2><a href="<?php bp_user_link() ?>"><?php bp_displayed_user_fullname() ?></a></h2>

For my purposes, I’m going to comment out the displayed username, complete with ‘@’ and ‘?’, and leave just the displayed full name. Viola! The wonky username echo is gone!

This file location would also come in handy if you want to customize the header of the member profiles with imagery, branding, or custom fonts. The sky is the limit! Let me know if you need help putting it into practice.

First, we tell the category.php template to print the name of the category being displayed:

<h1>Category Archive: <?php echo single_cat_title() ?> 

Then we use that echo call in the hyperlink, like so:

<a href="/category/<?php echo single_cat_title() ?>/feed"> 

So now, when the user clicks on the RSS button, they are linked to

http://mysite.com/category/categoryname/feed

The category-specific feed we were looking for, dynamically changing depending on which category is being displayed.

Need help modifying WordPress template files? Drop me a line, maybe I can help.

Twitter: A Medical Hype, Help or Hindrance?, ACP Internist, 04.09

Print Media

Conference Board: 43% of Internet Users now in Social Networks, The Business Journal, 06.16.09
Drug Firms Jockey for Space Online, Washington Post, 06.16.09
Organic Trade Association finds lift in social marketing, DMNews, 06.15.09
An Unwelcome Delivery, Business Week, 04.22.09

Radio

Tweeting execs walk a fine line, American Public Media Marketplace, 04.22.09

Blogosphere

Social Media Insights for Dietitians, Rebecca Scritchfield, 05.14.09
Nielsen: Social Nets, Video, Reshape Web, Online Media Daily, 04.23.09

Case Studies

Twitter Catches Swine Flu, But Don’t Shoot the Messenger, Kit Eaton, Fast Company blog, 04.28.09
Meet @PolarWisdom, Jen McCabe Gorman, OrganizedWisdom Health, 04.09

With the potential for nationwide EMR adoption on the horizon, what else is in store for health care and the web? Two thoughts:

• Freer communication between docs and patients.  The list of hospitals and medical centers on Facebook and Twitter continues to grow. More and more doctors are tweeting, inviting their virtual followers into the operating room, the private practice, the day-to-day tasks of providing care. As healthcare professionals dive into the social media world, they become relatable, in a way that’s hard to see when you’re wearing and gown and they’re wearing a stethoscope. Both sides win? We’ll see.
• Public health promotion will enter the mainstream. This week, Twitterers across the globe having been using the hash tag #swineflu to share info about the Mexico-based influenza outbreak. In one twitter search, you can apprise yourself of the Swine Flu latest, courtesy of varied sources, from the CDC to infectious disease experts to regular folks who are curious about the course of the illness. It’s a beautiful collaboration, and offers great potential for other health promotion and health education aims. Is Facebook the future of tomorrow’s smoking cessation support group? Maybe.

Is the economy hurting or helping health care? A recent TIME Poll of 1000 Americans found that, because of the economy:

• 20% of Americans polled have not filled a prescription because of the cost
• 24% have not gone to the doctor
• 21% have gone without health insurance
• 24% have postponed or canceled a medical procedure
• 40% have experienced anxiety, 32% have trouble sleeping, and 28% have trouble concentrating

Yet, at the same time, the stats show some bright spots:

• 29% are spending more time exercising, even while 27% are spending less on health clubs
• 34% are growing their own food – goodbye GMOs! hello fresh fruits and veggies!
• 8% more vitamins and supplements were sold in the last quarter of 2008 over the same time the year before, according to the NY Times
• 20+ states now extend health insurance coverage to single adult children, according to Forbes
• 48% are cutting back on eating out at fast food restaurants
• Congress is making moves to help small business owners offer health coverage to their employees, according to the WSJ
• Groups are calling on Congress to increase state funding for public health programs like smoking cessation or obesity prevention, like the Partnership for Prevention

Maybe when we emerge from this recession, we will have more than just a new attitude towards consumer debt and living within our means. Perhaps we’ll have a stronger health system, and a population more dedicated to living well, too.

• Health 2.0 = Credible content + community
  And this is exactly what today’s online health seekers are looking for. Jen McCabe Gorman (@jenmccabegorman) lead a discussion into the use of social networking tools, like Twitter, in creating collaborative disease-specific communities for people who turn to the Internet for health information and support. See her presentation on the case of one twitter thread focusing on depression and bipolar disorder by OrganizedWisdom Health. Disease-specific online communities like this one – evidence based and intimate – represent just the latest iteration of the Health 2.0 revolution and its promise to patients.
• The provider v. web wall may finally be crumbling
  Doctors and other healthcare providers are starting to see social networking sites as a way to leverage the very finite amount of time they have with their patients. As more people look to the web for health info, more doctors are using the same tools to reach out to the greater patient community. This is fantastic for healthcare. By being part of the online world, providers can be right there to dispute false information and make sure online health seekers are getting the facts. We need more docs like @doctor_v, and his 33Charts.com blog.
• Effective online health communication requires you know your audience
  Conduct interviews. Hold focus groups. Run searches on social networking sites – both the popular ones and the more niche communities. Sign up for Google alerts. Bottom line: Get to know your target before you try to talk to them. It’s a basic principle of marketing, but its essential to communicating health via the web. Google didn’t go out and grab everything on the Internet and put it in one place; they simply set up a set of pointers for us to find it. Learn where your patient audience is lurking, and give them the info they need there, at the point that they need it. That’s the way to effect informed healthcare decisions.

And lastly, a public service announcement: If you’re into social networking tools and putting web 2.0 technologies to use, go to a podcamp event. The networking opportunities and exposure to fresh ideas and innovations are priceless. Find one near you: podcamp.pbwiki.com

I grew up in Bergen County, NJ, which a couple years ago boasted the highest retail sales per zip code in the nation – and that’s on a 6-day workweek, with blue laws that close all stores and malls on Sundays. And I am admittedly in love with shopping. I have been known to head to the mall when I’m having a bad day just to stroll and browse, to cheer myself up. But I’ve also been known to battle unwieldy Visa and Mastercard bills. I’ve reined in my shopping in recent years (thanks to a debt-averse husband), and honestly, it feels good. I side with much of the mass media in believing that consumerism has gotten a little out of control in the past decade. As America makes efforts to “live within our means”, it may be time to kiss a couple malls goodbye.

Or at least a couple stores. Do we really need three different versions of Ann Taylor? The tri-tiered Gap/Banana/Old Navy casual clothing line to fit different price points? Multiple outlets for buying scented candles? No, we don’t. We need one of each, perhaps. Just enough to meet demand – and no more.

Once the struggling stores are weeded out, perhaps we can make better use of America’s malls and retail spaces. Think drop-in health clinics in storefronts, like the few that are popping up in the backs of CVS stores, offering strep tests and other non-emergency care without the hassle and cost of a doctor’s visit. Maybe a return of the arcade in some form, or something similar to Europe’s Internet cafes, offering wi-fi and workspace for remote workers. The possibilities are endless. In a lot of ways, the future looks bright – if not for retail, for other possibilities.