Diabetes and Social Media talk at Torbay Hospital on May 1st #torbaydoc

Between about 14:30 and 15:30 and May 1st I'll be talking about the use of social media to the diabetes team at Torbay Hospital.

It would be good to see who might be available in the Diabetes online community at about 15:00 (UK time, GMT+1) on May 1st on Twitter. Perhaps we could use the hashtag - #torbaydoc.

Any suggestions on what we should talk about? Will talk about my personal experience of communicating with colleagues and people with diabetes, and how it has been helpful.

I'll definitely go through the obligatory social media donut slide.

Any suggested YouTube channels from people with diabetes?

Any suggested blogs / online groups?

Any suggested evidence that social media ... eh ... works? (Here's a list of the evidence that I've been gathering for 'new technologies in diabetes'.)

.htaccess tip of the day

Got a website nicely protected with .htaccess authentication but want to allow open access to a single directory without interfering with it?

Me too.

So it turns out you just stick a .htaccess file in the said directory and include the following two lines.

Allow from all
Satisfy Any

Job done.

Managed to then share an animated GIF of son with sword from 2006. None of the cloud-based services allow you to share the file exactly as you'd like.

Ubuntu One is unplugged: the risk of losing your cloud storage

Ubuntu One has announced it is closing and has given users 2 months' notice - free and paid.

"The Ubuntu One file services will not be included in the upcoming Ubuntu 14.04 LTS release, and the Ubuntu One apps in older versions of Ubuntu and in the Ubuntu, Google, and Apple stores will be updated appropriately. The current services will be unavailable from 1 June 2014; user content will remain available for download until 31 July, at which time it will be deleted."

It is an important reminder of the fragility of online cloud storage - even ones that you might pay for. It is a shame as Ubuntu One was (mostly) a smooth system for accessing important files on desktop, mobile, and tablet. It would do it automatically without the worry of having to manually back things up. The latest version of the file you were working on was just available wherever you needed it.

So, how to avoid missing cloud service disappointment? Do you really need to store those files? Are you just doing it as a time capsule for the future?

Suggest keeping your total collection of files to a manageable size and store them on multiple different types of media. An essential piece of digital literacy is not being fixated on any single piece of technology - they all come and go.