When dynamic DNS fails, try Gmail

Wordle fun

I just discovered wordle.net, a fun website that lets you visualize the most prominent key words in a bunch of text as a “word cloud”, a website or a feed. Here’s the generated image for my blog:

Head on to wordle.net to create your own.

Bye bye Facebook

I have finally decided to delete my Facebook account. I could write a long post analyzing this decision, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll just quote a short note that I’m going to publish on my Facebook wall.

I have decided to leave Facebook. I never really liked it in the first place. It was fun commenting on your photos and your status messages, learning all those little details about you that I never really cared for and watching you throwing Britney Spears’ to each other.

I won’t miss the myriads of utterly useless groups you’ll continue to become members of, nor the bazillions of ugly applications cluttering your “walls”. And I’m pretty sure Facebook won’t hire a designer before either cold fusion replaces oil or Google hires one.

I am going to delete my account on February the 27th, a day after my birthday. This way you can all wish me happy birthday by writing on my wall and save the phone call or sms! (That is, before Facebook reads this note, gets mad and kicks me out of it before that date!)

I am jumping off the social crap wagon, but you’ll still be able to find me on Twitter (@Karageorgakis). That is, until I delete myself from there too, but I don’t think this will happen pretty soon.

I urge you to re-consider your goals in your everyday time-wasting habits and ponder the question of whether you need to create detailed records of your lives on some (rich by now) twenty-something guy’s servers. I won’t do that anymore.

So take care, have fun and be well. I hope to see you in the real world.

Do online identities go to heaven?

It looks like creating an online identity in the post-web 2.0 era that we’re living in is essential. People go into great lengths to present themselves in the online world, participate in as many social networks they can, flood microblogging services like Twitter and Friendfeed with their thoughts, opinions and emotions, share their photos on photo-sharing sites, upload short video clips of themselves on sites like Seesmic, and the list goes on and on and on.

After great effort, we manage to create a solid social online identity to expose our selves and our lives to the public, updating it with fragments of our personalities and everyday activities. But what happens to our online identity when we die? We are all going to die one day — that’s for sure. Have you ever wondered what is going to happen to your online identity in that case?

All of a sudden, you will stop updating. People may nudge you, poke you, send you direct messages, but they wouldn’t get any replies. E-mails that are reaching your inbox will never receive a reply. Cold silence will come out of your Twitter account and your Facebook friends will wonder what’s keeping you busy. Your blog’s RSS feed won’t show any new activity and all the myriads of social networks you joined during your life will host an account that never updates.

How will your online friends know what happened to you if none of your friends or family members are using those services as well? Will people ever wonder what may have happened to me if all of a sudden I stop posting updates on Twitter? Are they going to search for me in other social networks, or leave a comment on my blog, or e-mail me asking why I’ve stopped participating? No person in my physical environment is using Twitter, so no-one’s going to post news about my death.

Will people care after all? Is there any “friend” or “follower” that is going to care that I’ve ceased to post and to exist? And if they got to find out, how would they react? Would they mourn, sob, laugh, re-tweet the news of my death or just un-follow me since no more updates would ever be coming from my account?

Finally, what is going to happen with the information that I’ve submitted to all these sites and services? Will my Facebook account or my Flickr photos still be there, years after I die? Would my family be able to browse my photos, my social networking timeline, my videos and my e-mails and all the myriads of tiny fragments I’ve submitted to the Internet (e.g. comments on other people’s posts)? Would it make them feel better if the data was still there, or would they merely be unable to delete my accounts (since they don’t know the passwords)?

I can’t help but ponder all these questions. I don’t know what’s best to be done. Entrepreneurs could build on this idea, and create a “social memorial” or “web graveyard” for the lost souls of online identities of departed persons. They could even create a service that monitors all online activity of every person and declare them as “missing” if they don’t update in any online service for some time (i.e. a year), or declare them as “dead” after more time passes. They could even crawl the web for every piece of information regarding that person, gather it and create an entry in their Social Memorial so people will remember them.

They could even give the option for their family and friends to pay in order to promote their loved one’s profile to the top of the list, so they could gain more new “mourners”. There may be a grader for these deceased online identities, measuring the value of each one and creating lists about who was the most social one. Such a service may exists even now, as I’m writing this. If there is, please leave a comment and let me know, and if there’s not, I’m damn sure there’s going to be one in the future. This is the social era, everything can be used (and abused) in the name of profit!

For the ambitious entrepreneurs that may be reading this, here’s one more idea: give people the ability to sign up for such a service while they’re living, so they can link it to all their social networks and other sources of personal information. The service would monitor all these sources and upon a prolonged lack of activity, it would create a memorial for them. There you go, I give you this idea for free — it’s too morbid for me to monetize on.

Update [20 May 2009]: Looks like somebody decided to monetize on the premise. I was damn sure this would happen.

10 factors that resulted in getting more followers on Twitter

Watching the number of my followers on Twitter increase during the past few weeks, I spent some time wondering why it happened. Why did people start following me all of a sudden? By correlating my tweeting habits with the increase in followers, I’ve come to some interesting realizations that I’d like to share with you.

Following is a list of factors that indeed brought an increase to the number of people that follow me on Twitter. I didn’t deliberately try to gain more followers, it just happened! However, the rest of the article is written in a way as to guide you on how to act if you do want to get more followers. It is advice that is coming out of personal experience so it could, or could not work for you.

Here’s the list (items presented in no particular order):

1. Tweet about a broad range of subjects.

   This is because the more diverse the topics you post, the more people get to read them. Why? Because people seem to use the search functionality in order to find tweets about a subject of their liking, thus landing at your own tweets. If they like what you’re talking about, there’s a good chance they’ll follow you, in hope that your tweets will be worth reading (to them).

2. Tweet a lot.

   Simply put, the more you tweet, the more probable it is: to get re-tweeted; to get discovered in search; to be read by your own followers.
   Most Twitter users seem to have the notion that it’s good practice to follow back everyone that follows them (something that I don’t agree with), so they end up following hundreds of people, which results in a very noisy environment. It is highly probable for your tweets to become lost in all that noise, so the more you tweet the more probable it is for them to read your tweets.

3. Engage into existing conversations.

   If one of your followers is in a conversation with other people that you may not follow (so you don’t see their tweets), get in that conversation by replying to that person. It is highly probable that the person will reply back to you, which will result in your @username being displayed to all the other people who are participating in the conversation, making it highly probable for them to click on it to find out who you are. The deeper you get into the conversation with that person, the more likely it is for the others to follow you, so they can read your tweets, which are now part of the conversation.

   (Also, keep in mind that people are selfish, so it’s more probable to get their attention if you get to chat with them, rather than waiting for them to read your tweets and initiate a chat with you. Go ahead and make the first step.)

4. Tweet about trending topics.

   If you tweet about something nobody cares, chances are nobody will give a damn about it. But if you’re tweeting about hot trending topics, it’s very probable that several people all over the globe will be reading your tweets that include the specific keywords of #hashtags for that topic. Many Twitter clients display the current trending topics, and you can always check out Twitter Search or Twitscoop to check them out.

5. Reply to “celebrities”.

   Chances are, you’re following some of the so-called “web celebrities“, or “influentials“. These people have tens of thousands of followers, so it’s a safe bet to assume that they’re getting tons of replies. However, they do reply to some of their followers (some more often than others), one of which could be you. This results into tremendous exposure, since thousands of users will be seeing your @username in their screen, plus they may assume that you’re someone the celebs know (thus you’re momentarily gaining some form of pseudo-fame).

6. Create an interesting profile.

   People won’t follow you blindly; usually they’ll check out your bio and your homepage to find out more about you and decide whether you’re someone worth following or not. That’s why you definitely have to have a bio in your Twitter profile, and if you have a blog or personal site include that as well. If you don’t have one, then link to your Flickr page, or your public Facebook account, or some other source of public information about yourself. (Personally, I never follow people who have a blank bio – I just can’t see any reason to follow someone who doesn’t have to say anything about themselves, because that’s what it means not to have a bio.)

   Try to have an interesting bio and avoid being just “one more guy”. Admit to yourself that Twitter is full of geeks, so “Web developer” won’t make you much more interesting than the rest of the millions of web developers out there. Try to think of something that diversifies you from the masses, something that may intrigue others to find out more about you.

   Using a real photo of yourself is good practice since people can put a face to your name and know they’re dealing with a specific individual, thus increasing trust. However, spend some time into finding a photo that looks good, and that you look good in it. A bad photo may have negative impact on the people who are considering whether to follow you or not (simply put, they don’t want to see that bad photo of yours in their screen whenever you tweet). If you’re a girl, you get bonus points if you use a hot photo of yourself (it will get you hordes of followers, but it’s up to you to decide if you want that!!!)

   Also, keep in mind that using your real name encourages people to trust you even more, since you seem to be not just another Internet user who cowardly hides behind an obsolete username, but a certain individual responsible for your words. On another level, people may even assume that you’re someone who have accomplished something in your life, thus you’re known to the masses by your real name and that’s why you’re using it.

7. Tweet about Twitter, Social Media, Internet Marketing and SEO.

   Twitter is an emerging trend. There’s much hype about it in the blogosphere, and most people use it to market themselves. If you examine the bios of random Twitter users, you’ll find out that perhaps half of them are “SEO experts“, “Internet Marketers“, “Social Media gurus” or some other self-titled masters of social wizardry. All these people are constantly using the search functionality to hunt for customers, so merely including the acronym SEO will get you followed by them (try it out, it works!). Besides, discussing Twitter and social media is a safe bet since it’s guaranteed that people care about that topic — otherwise they wouldn’t participate in social media at all!

8. Follow people from your local community.

   People that live in your area or country, are more probable to want to follow you than others who live in the other side of Earth and share a totally different culture. If you’re not in the U.S. and English is not your basic language, try to get in touch with people from your country. They feel much better when they chat with compatriots in their native language, you have common grounds to share and you can always discuss about local news that seem to matter a lot more than tech stories.

9. Be nice.

   The Internet is full of know-it-all, opinionated smartarses. Actually, the whole world is full of them but the Internet assists them into bringing out the worst of them. For some strange reason, some of those people have become successful just by behaving that way, but please don’t try to become one yourself. Be nice, kind, polite and sympathetic. Not only will people love you, but you’ll make the world a bit of a better place as well. If you can give just a bit of joy to one person with a tweet of yours, you are making the world a better place.

10. Stop trying to get more followers and be yourself!

    Granted, you may want to gain more followers and you may want it badly for some reason, but that won’t make people follow you. So drop that attitude and the hypocrisy, stop being a phony and just be yourself! Express yourself, your thoughts and your feelings, discuss things that you actually care about and let your true self and your true personality shine through your online presence. People will respect your being genuine, true and honest and will love you for that!

Reconsider your goals

Remember that even if you do get hordes of people following you, most of them won’t really care about you, they won’t be reading your tweets and they will never interact with you. Only a few people will actually reply and show that they pay attention to your tweets. Treasure your interaction with these people, and keep in mind that it doesn’t really matter how many followers you have on Twitter. You don’t have to follow back people that you don’t know and don’t care about if you plan on actually reading other people’s tweets.

A great person shall always stand out for their character and their works. Try to become successful first and the followers will follow (if it is fame that you seek), not the other way around.

So why am I writing an article about getting more followers when I don’t believe you should be trying to get more followers? Because it’s a trending topic that so many people seem to care about. It’s up to you to decide how important it is to have people follow you on Twitter.

Feedback!

Did it work for you? Have you got experiences that you’d like to share? Please do so by leaving a comment below.

World of Twittercraft: Social Media are MMORPGs

I haven’t been a hardcore gamer in my life, except for manically trying to finish the Monkey Island series when I was younger and perhaps the short burst I had with Grand Theft Auto, but I don’t usually play games. I did, however, indulge into trying out World of Warcraft (WoW) which led to some serious time-wasting that could almost be classified as an addiction.

Having played WoW for almost a year before quitting and indulging into social media lately, I can’t help but witness the similarities between the two (of course this applies to almost all MMORPGs, but I’m referring to WoW since it’s the only one I’ve ever used).

A whole new world

World of Warcraft is actually the MMORPG version of the game Warcraft, and Blizzard (the company that created it) did a very nice job in creating a massive and diverse universe for its players. The world is quite big, spanning continents with dozens of areas, each being special in its own way. It’s not so trivial to explore all the different lands in the game since the world is just too big.

Social media, on the other hand, don’t have the equivalent of space – there is no such thing as a “world”. However, explorations are not at all absent, since there are many different “areas” that users can explore. For example, Facebook sports applications as well as groups, and even browsing all of them could possibly take years. There’s something new to explore, and there are even applications (games) on Facebook that are plain versions of MMORPG’s (e.g. Mob Wars).

A parallel universe

Even though scientists have yet to decide upon a commonly accepted universal theory about the nature of our universe, it’s pretty safe to say that we (at least physically) appear to be living in the same universe with each other. However, our players in WoW are living in their own universe. It doesn’t really matter if that universe exists only inside Blizzard’s servers, it’s still a valid universe with its own space-time and its own laws. It is a parallel universe to ours, albeit in a Matrix-like fashion (maintained by computers).

Who’s to claim that the Internet isn’t a parallel universe as well? We all know we can go “online”, but where is that online space? Your online identity exists not in the real world (there you have your “actual” identity) but in the Internet world. You can log in anytime to this world and interact with it. You “peek” into this universe every time you launch your favorite Twitter browser, so you can interact with other “online” versions of actual people (or even robots – bots). You enter it every time you’re on Facebook, and in a more direct way when you log into the 3D virtual world of Second Life.

Be it newsgroups, Twitter, Facebook, Second Life, WoW or even the web, the Internet is a parallel universe created and maintained by humans with the aid of machines. Each one of us has their own (possibly multiple) identity in each of such worlds.

Levelling

One of the most important aspects of WoW is that of levelling. You start at level 1 as a young and poor guy (or gal) with practically no knowledge of surviving in the world. You soon begin to learn how to combat, so to protect your life from predators as well as how to make money out of the items you get by looting their corpses, so you can buy new clothes, weapons etc. Every time you gain enough experience, you “level” (used as a verb) and become more powerful; your health, strength and other stats are increased and you can buy arms and clothes of higher quality.

Levelling makes the world really addictive mainly for two reasons: first, players always want to gain “one more level”, so they never stop playing; second, because they’re in a constant direct/indirect competition with all the other players, so they need to level up and become better than them. This is so true in WoW, that having a character of the highest possible level brings much joy to players and makes them feel rather superior to their lower level peers.

People are always in direct or indirect competition to each other in our society and it’s always enjoyable to feel “better” than others or “superior” to them. Social media was built on this premise, which is the key to their success: people want to show-off and become “better” than others, even if it’s only for their online presence (they may still suck in the real world). Showing off is perhaps the most important reason people are using social media for.

But since the media itself is an arena where players from every corner of the planet can compete in becoming the coolest person in the universe, the idea of levelling is not absent. Not only does a person’s status increase by the mere number of followers in Twitter, or friends in Facebook, but there are dedicated services like Grader that calculate a score in the range of 1-100 that’s based on how important your online “character” is. Even top user lists are compiled, where people compete to climb up and beat their peeps, in either ethical or “unethical” ways.

Socializing

We all know that prolonged use of computers is supposed to make people less social in real life, but at least the Internet helps people socialize in the online life. WoW is quite fun to play mainly because you get to play along with other players who are not bots but actual persons. You can form a team and beat hard enemies, fight other (real) players of the opposing faction, form “guilds”, chat, and even flirt with them. There have been cases where people met in the game and then got married in the real world (but unfortunately I don’t have reference for this one). The bottom line is that fun comes when interaction with other humans is in play.

Of course, the same applies to social media. You get to chat with your friends or with people you don’t know, become friends with them, flirt with them, get on a date or even marry someone you met online. Although, as in WoW, you never really know the gender or looks of another person as it’s pretty easy to present yourself as something that you’re not.

Time-wasting

One of the main reasons people are condemning WoW players is their severe time-wasting, since they may be playing for many hours every day. But aren’t there Facebook users who spend hours in front of their computers, “socializing” with their friends and spending great amounts of time (and even money) on useless and almost pathetic “applications”? Both activities are huge time-wasters, but it’s still a matter of taste if one fancies spending their time killing virtual beasts, or throwing Britney Spears’ to their buddies and feeding their virtual pets!

Social media are MMORPGs

Examining all the differences, we could say that social media are indeed a form of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. They are used massively by multiple “players” all over the world who go online to create their own “characters” and engage in a role-playing “game”. In both of them, you get to interact with people who you don’t know, compete against them, show how “cool” you are, try to become better and more important than others and gain popularity. There are many new things to do and unknown territories to explore.

Participating in either MMORPGs or social media steals much of your time. Both are worlds of their own, in parallel to ours. They’re both another way for a person to participate in a “non-real” environment where they can show-off as much as their heart desire. Aren’t they all nothing more but different facets of the new multi-dimensional universe we have created, named “The Internet”?

Day 2 of the No-Internet experiment

The second day of my No-Internet experiment wasn’t the most suitable test subject, since I lost all morning running for errands and taking care of stuff outside of the office. I finally faced my computer about one hour after midday, and when I checked mail (this was the morning check) I was cheering to see that Apple finally approved my company’s enrollment for the iPhone Developer program!

Since I’ve been waiting for Apple to complete the enrollment process for almost 3 months, I decided I could make an exception and stay online for a little while to browse around the iPhone dev portal. This, however, didn’t last long, as I felt an urge to continue my work; the pressure of all those lost hours was intense. This made me realize another important facet of my new working habits:

Time matters. I have to track the time wasted and compensate for it.

Upon getting back to work, I managed to become quite focused, with almost no distractions at all, online or external, for about two and a half hours until my lunch break. Even though the task of styling my client’s CSS menu was becoming quite tedious at times (styling becomes more and more tiring for me as the years are passing by), I didn’t deviate from it, something that wouldn’t have happened last week; I’m sure I would have engaged into some online activity to rest myself a bit.

During work, at one point I was talking with my wife of the phone, and she asked me how it’s going. “Do you still have the Internet off?“, she asked. I was amazed to find out that, I didn’t know whether it was on or off! After checking it out, I discovered that it was on, yet I hadn’t used it for the past couple of hours. So it looks like not using the Internet is becoming a habit to me.

As the days are passing by, I see that this experiment is quite valuable in adjusting my daily habits and schedule while at work. However, the real value of this experiment could be the need to answer the underlying question: “what is information, and how much of it do we really need?“

Day 1 of the No-Internet experiment

It’s almost half an hour past eight in the afternoon and I think it’s time to call it a day. Evaluating the first day of my No-Internet experiment, I can say that it worked well, distractions were reduced and overall I worked much more than I would on a typical day with the Internet on.

At first, thoughts of performing those almost ritualistic time-wasting habits were surfacing my mind, but the instant I was initiating such an action I reminded myself that the Internet was off, so I kept getting back to work. When I felt that I needed a break, I’d have to get up and walk around the office a little bit, have a snack or drink some juice, or just gaze the hill outside of the window.

I realized that these breaks were much shorter than those in which I spent time online. Most of the times they wouldn’t last longer than five minutes, quite less than an average “online time-wasting” break. Upon returning to the computer, I’d go straight into work again without wasting any time on the ‘Net. This makes me realize that the most crucial moment of potential time-wasting is probably when I was getting back to work; instead of continuing the task that was interrupted, I used to take advantage of the interruption to perform some other task, i.e. check mail or Twitter. Now, with the Internet off, this isn’t the case.

There were times when I needed the Internet to perform some task for my work, i.e. check out online documentation or google for some specific CSS hack. Since I’m turning off the Internet in order to assist my work and not the other way around, I had to turn it back on at times to find the information I was seeking. Later, I decided to let the router on, and just disable Airport (wireless) during the day, so when I needed the Internet for some crucial part, I could instantly turn it on.

This, of course, requires some discipline since it’s quite tempting to make thoughts like, for example, “hey, since I had to turn it on, let’s spend just a few seconds to check mail…“. Luckily, when I had to turn the Internet on, I used it only for the task that required it, and immediately turned it off again. The discipline that I portrayed, amazed me!

Until now, I checked mail once, upon returning to the office after lunch, and I’ll do it a second time after I finish writing this post. I realized that having the mail notifier off helped a lot into minimizing distractions, and decided to remove it from my auto-launch group of applications and keep it always that way.

Considering a whole day without Twitter, Facebook, news and e-mail, makes me feel much calmer, more isolated and focused, and eliminates the anxiety of information overload. No more stress to have to catch up with the news, and no more need to filter dozens or even hundreds of tweets to find out the few that may be worthy of attention. It amazes me when I realize that the process of information filtering is a quite stressful activity.

So day 1 was a success, but it’s not long enough to make a verdict. I’ll just publish this story and go home. I’ll tweet about this post, but I promise not to peek into other people’s tweets!

The No-Internet Experiment: A week without connectivity

Part of my resolution for the new year was to get things done, stop wasting time and make my plans come true. But after the first working week of 2009, I see that there are still old habits that are plaguing my productivity, as I found myself pondering at the end of the day, why my work didn’t advance as much as I’d want it to.

I came to the conclusion that the main reason that’s hindering my productivity is getting distracted, not away from my computer but inside it! I do spend most of my day (while working) in front of my iMac, sitting in my office, but am I doing what I am supposed to be doing, or am I constantly wasting my time in a never-ending cycle of tedious distractions?

Reading the news, connecting via Twitter, checking on Facebook, reading (and replying to) e-mail the moment it arrives, engaging into some chatting on MSN or googling that thing that occured to me during the previous night while I was trying to sleep is a huge time-waster. All of these tasks seem quite innocent and may require no more than a couple of minutes to perform, yet there’s an urge to do them again and again during the day, which results in a big waste of precious time without realizing it. I guess this applies to many people who work online.

For example, here’s a quick list of thoughts that trigger such actions:

• “Hm, what’s going on in Twitterland right now? I’ll only take a quick look.“
• “Let’s check my friends’ status on Facebook for a minute.“
• “Gotta check the news, maybe there’s something big happening right now, I’ll just scan the headlines.“
• “Hm, new mail, gotta check it out, I want my inbox to be empty at all times“
• “It’s been some time since I last checked Google analytics, how’s my blog doing lately?“
• “Is a replacement for the Epson R2400 out already? Maybe it’s time to get myself a good color printer“

and the list goes on an on and on…

Not only do these things feast on my time, but more importantly even if they’re only distracting me from work for a couple of minutes, I still have to set my mind again into working on the problem that got interrupted, which can cause mental fatigue if it happens too often. So here I am in 2009, postponing all of my great plans until I’m done with some client work that has been already delayed a lot.

I realized that finishing this work for my clients is a big barrier for me, since I can’t dive into anything big (i.e. start developing an iPhone app) until I’m done with it. If I ever want to begin doing all those things that I long to, I have to get over this barrier, get all those distractions out of the way and boost my productivity.

Shutting down the Internet

In order to do this, I have decided to shut down my office Internet router for the week to come, and see how much more (or less!) productive I’ll be by Friday evening. Not being connected to the Internet means that I won’t be able to do any of the aforementioned actions, therefore I’ll be able to focus on my work and, hopefully, get it done after a week’s hard work (it’s a project stuck in 90% for quite some time).

But why go to such extremes? There are other successful ways of getting things done, i.e. batching your actions, time-scheduling etc. True, these methods are quite effective when it comes to minimizing distractions and focusing on work, yet I think that shutting down the Internet for a (working) week will have a much more powerful effect. It’ll be a standard, to which I’ll be able to compare the amount of online time-wasting I’ll be doing when I turn the router back on next week.

So, starting on Monday morning, I’m shutting down my office Internet router and start working in an environment without connectivity. That means that I’ll also have to turn off e-mail auto-fetch in the iPhone and not allow myself to peek into the Internet over 3G! I’ll still check mail once or twice during the day, only to see if there’s something urgent that I need to act on, and I’ll blog about the process daily when I get back home in the evening, but that will be all.

I think it’ll be an interesting experiment!

How to Recover Your Stickies Widget Info After MobileMe Loses it

If you’ve got a Mac and you’re a MobileMe user, be cautious to sync your Dashboard Widgets with the service. Well, I did, trying to sync my widgets along my Macs, which resulted into all of my stickies wigdets to appear blank! I use stickies a lot (the widget, not the Stickies app) when in need of taking quick notes, i.e. telephones, passwords, things to do, even my next great idea, so seeing them all empty wasn’t nice at all.

Here’s how you can restore the information, provided that you do have a backup of your computer’s files. Luckily, my recently bought TimeMachine could save the day.

1. Open up a Finder window, click on your username and then go to Library/Preferences/
2. Locate the file named “widget-com.apple.widget.stickies.plist“
3. Replace this file with the corresponding file from from your back, either by entering TimeMachine or manually
4. If this problem occured by syncing your Dashboard Widgets with MobileMe, enter the MobileMe preference pane in the System Preferences application and deselect the Dashboard Widgets from the Sync pane.
5. Log out of your account, and then log in again. Your stickies should be populated again with all the precious data you’ve stored in them.

Remember to keep a backup copy of this file in case you’re using the Stickies widget to store any information that you can’t afford to lose.