Category: How To

How to…Measure your online influence using Klout

Ever wonder how much influence your social media input has? Find out with Klout, a free tool that measures your online power and even rewards you.

While we’ve always had the power to influence other people, that power, which is being democratised, is much easier to harness with new social media tools. But how much influence do you have over others? Do your Facebook ‘likes’, retweets, posts and comments go unnoticed, or are you an online mover and shaker? This is where Klout comes in, measuring your influence based on your ability to drive action in social networks, and providing you with an updated Klout Score each morning.

Klout provides insights to help you better understand your own power – whether others trust your opinions online, what topics are you the most influential on and how you compare with your friends. Your Klout Score measures your online influence on a scale of 1 to 100, but the average Klout Score is 20, not 50 – bear that in mind when you get yours.

In this tutorial for Windows: The Official Magazine I show you how to get started with Klout.

Rachael Sharpe

A tutorial for the shopaholics…

If, like me, you find it difficult to keep your receipts together, with the pesky paper ones always getting lost and the digital ones waiting to be accidentally deleted from your inbox, you’ll love OneReceipt. It keeps paper and digital receipts in one place.

Indexing your spending records might sound like heavy work, but OneReceipt has made the process easy. The software will sync to Google and Gmail accounts, automatically pulling receipts into your personal space. Use a different email address? Simply forward your receipts to OneReceipt. Paper receipts are dealt with most impressively – simply take a picture with your phone and email it. The software does the rest.

Organising your receipts is child’s play with OneReceipt’s easy-to-use categorising and tagging system, and its filter search function makes it easy to find things, too. Plus it’s free. In this feature for Windows: The Official Magazine I show you how to get the most from it.

Rachael Sharpe

How to… Create a master password

Today you need a password for pretty much everything. You need one for Windows Live ID, another for your email address, one for each of your social networking accounts and then there are all your banking logons… The list goes on. Hopefully you already know that you should have a different password for each account. If not, a single mistake can leave all your accounts vulnerable to attack.

But although they’re safe, and preferable to using a single insecure password for everything, multiple strong passwords can be difficult to remember and keep track of. That’s why I love KeePass, a free open source password manager that helps you create strong passwords without the need to memorise them all. You put all of your passwords into one database, which is locked with a master key, so you only have to remember one set of login details. In this tutorial for Windows: The Official Magazine I show you how.

Rachael Sharpe

Fall in love with vintage wedding jewellery: Published in WED magazine


Planning on crowning your wedding gown with a covetable treasure from a beautiful bygone age? Good choice: there is something wonderful about wearing a piece of jewellery with a story – and shaping its next chapter.

This month I had the enviable task of writing a complete guide to vintage wedding jewellery for WED magazine – it was the most enjoyable wedding-realated feature I’ve written to date, and not just because it involved looking at lots of lovely sparkly jewes! In the feature I explain the difference between vintage, antique, estate and heirloom jewellery, as well as how to age rings, provide questions to ask when buying vintage and teach all about the hidden meanings of vintage jewellery. Did you know diamonds symbolise consistency, hence there use for engagement rings, coral was said to protect against evil, rubies mean passion, amethyst’s signify devotion, emeralds show hope and pearls symbolise tears? Fascinating!

Click the pages for a larger view. Published in this month’s WED – see www.wedmagazine.co.uk or  buy online here.

Rachael Sharpe

30 photography project ideas: feature published in Photography Monthly

Undertaking photography projects is a great way to make sure  you always have something to shoot and concentrate on, so you’re constantly developing your skills, rather than editing old pictures and feeling uninspired. Projects make you a better photographer because they force you to get out there with your camera, come rain or shine, which can only be a good thing. Some projects can last for years, while others will take only a week, or even a day; choose a few which appeal to you and see your creativity and inspiration levels soar. Don’t be afraid to quit a project if you’re not enjoying it, though; they’re supposed to be fun, not a hardship to endure – you’re better off starting something more suitable than becoming disenchanted. In this feature for Photography Monthly magazine I compiled 30 tried and tested projects, one for every day of September, which should see readers occupied for quite some time…

 

Click on the pages for a bigger view.

Rachael Sharpe
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