All of the bloggers I know online have felt the pinch from the economy. The money isn’t flowing around the internet as freely as it used to! Most of the folks I’ve talked to who are receiving “stimulus” checks from the IRS are planning on stimulating their bills with the money. Times are only going to get tighter, and those of us who are used to making money online will continue to feel the pinch. If your budget has taken a hit, now is a good time to investigate debt counseling online. Programs like debt analysis and credit repair can help get your budget back on track so that you’re not a victim of the economy!

I was bummed to hear that Microsoft backed away from the option to purchase Yahoo. I thought this deal, if it had gone all the way, would have been just the right thing to shake up Google’s strangle hold on the internet search business. The powerhouse combo of Microsoft + Yahoo would have equaled major competition for Google. I’m saddened to see it’s not going to work, because this means Google can tighten the choke hold it’s got on market share.

I’ve been contemplating a design change on my main blog. I usually hire that type of work out, not being able to make pretty images on my own (none I’m pleased with, anyway!) but I know I’m not ready to hire someone just yet. At any stage of the game, I’m a designers worst nightmare, nit picking over layouts and colors, but I don’t even know what *I* want yet. A three column Wordpress theme with soft muted colors, or something in a snazzy two column with colors that pop off your screen?

Until I decide where I’m going, and how to get there, I’m taking inspiration from places like this design blog. Billed as the blog where style and web design meet, you’ll find articles on web design as well as SEO tools and tips. The title “Web Designing - The Planning” just caught my eye, so I’m off to read and see if I can pick up a few ideas. This piece on the top three web design elements is interesting too - it puts into words what I like visually and explains why colors and contrast work together on a web page.

I just called my husband at work, and I was on hold waiting for him to get to the phone a LONG time. After about 5 minutes, just when I was about to hang up, my phone beeped, alerting me to a new text message. It was from my husband and read:

“In the potty.”

Isn’t technology grand? I hung up the call and quickly texted back a reply that read, “Call me when you’re done”, and he did. Before the texting age, I would have grown irritated with my time on hold and assumed he was just being slow in getting to the phone. Thanks to technology, I can know exactly what the delay is and save my attitude for another occasion.

Grand Theft Auto IV arrives in stores this week, adding a 4th storyline to the existing brand, which includes Liberty City, Vice City, and San Andreas. When we got a Playstation 2 years ago, my husband gave me the GTA 3-pack for Christmas, and I spent 2 months straight playing in San Andreas. (I finally gave up when I couldn’t get past the stupid motorcycle chase.)

In Grand Theft Auto IV, you play as Niko Bellic, an Eastern European immigrant who starts working the streets in Liberty City. Minigames include bowling and video games, and missions will involve running from the police and stealing things, naturally! Die hard gamers will love the online feature that allows you to play in a multiplayer or Death Match mode.

Jim and I watched Family Guy last night, and it was the episode where James Woods seeks revenge on Peter by stealing his identity. Peter loses his wallet, and because James Woods has Peter’s social security card, drivers license, and the deed to his house, he’s able to move right in to Peter’s house. Absurd, of course, but funny. (Peter later gets revenge on James Woods by stealing HIS identity and going on David Letterman to promote a comedy about 9/11.)

Identity theft is a real, and growing concern. I, like most of my neighbors and friends, get 10 credit card offers a week in the mail. How easy would it be for someone to take my mail and get credit cards in MY name for their use? Too easy! You can see why identify theft has topped the Federal Trade Commission’s complaint list for the SEVENTH year in a row. 36% of all complaints received by the FTC in 2006 were about identity theft.

Lifelock is hoping to change those numbers by creating fraud alerts for their customers and removing your name from junk mail and credit card lists like the one I mentioned above. As a Lifelock customer, you receive free, regular credit reports so you can stay on top of changes to your account, too!

James Woods may never steal your wallet, but wouldn’t you rather be safe than sorry?

We’re on the verge of making big password changes at work for our system. Going forward, all passwords will need to have three of the following items:

A capital letter
A lower case letter
A number
A special symbol (*, &, $, etc)

This is going to cause huge issues, because most of our users are…well, not technical people. They can’t even remember the simple passwords they’re choosing now, so when we break the news to them that their passwords have to change - well, people are going to be bent.

It’s for a good reason though - people often use the same password on every single site they belong to or register at, which makes it super easy for hackers to crack one account…and then every single account that person has online. Could you imagine if someone hacked into your blog, and then was able to do the same to your online banking, simply because you used the same password for both sites? Scary, huh?

There are hundreds of opinions from SEO “experts” on the right and wrong way to promote your site. Not a day goes by that I don’t see someone on sites like the Digital Point forums offering to submit your site to 450 web directories for $5. Is it even worth it? I don’t think offers like that particular example are, but I still believe that free web directories have value to offer to bloggers and web site owners. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t be running one here at GeekySpeaky!

The trick is to list your site only in QUALITY web directories. You want a search engine friendly site, and you want one that allows you to provide a real description for your site, not just a list of keywords. Peruse the other listings - are the quality sites, or spam packed garbage? Are sites in the directory regularly reviewed and removed if they no longer qualify? DirMania is one free business web directories that promises to only accept quality sites, and they approve listings within 24 hours. All of this explains how they kept their PR 3 ranking when many directories LOST pagerank!

In my line of work, I see a lot of resumes - did you know that there are two main types? The two types of resumes generally used are a chronological resume and a skills resume.

A chronological resume places an emphasis on dates, job titles, and degrees. It provides a prospective employer with a time line of events relating your career and education, and allows the job seeker to highlight prestigious job titles and honors.

A skills resume places an emphasis on the skills you’ve acquired in your education and career. This resume type is most often used when you are seeking a job in a new field, or when you wish to highlight non paid experiences that may be relevant to the position applied for.

My own resume is chronological, and it allows a prospective employer to see the wide breadth of knowledge I have in the staffing and background investigations industries. However, in my current role at a staffing company, most of the resumes we receive are skill based. This is because we work with very specific needs for IT customers and need to know what type of programming languages a developer can use, or what kind of software someone has worked with. The dates and titles aren’t as relevant to our recruiters.

I bought a new laptop recently (note to self: send rebate form in to get my $180 rebate!) and last night I finally got around to moving files from my old laptop to the new machine. It’s been a while since I switched laptops, and I had forgotten what a pain it is. I used one of those Belkin easy transfer cables to move everything, and that was simple, but I still had to download Firefox, and add in the extensions and add ons I use with it.

When I did the Firefox install, one of the questions I was asked was what did I want my homepage to be? Because I was in a bit of a hurry, I just kept the standard Google Firefox search homepage I’ve been using on my old laptop. BORING! The laptop came with a Toshiba homepage in IE, and it’s sort of neat - but it doesn’t look right in Firefox. I’d like to have something a little more custom, a little more fun, and a lot cooler than the lame-o Google page, which is what led me to HomePagle. I can use this site to create a cool custom homepage for Firefox, complete with a picture of moi, or some celebrity, AND the functionality of Google search.

When you create a HomePagle homepage you’ve got your choice of premade templates featuring female celebrities, male celebrities, cars, animal images, sports themes, landscape pictures, holiday themes, and music as well. The Google box on your homepage moves, and you can drag it around the image and place it where ever it fits best. This is so easy, my mother could do it!

Here’s a screenshot of my Homepagle homepage:

Easy, fun, cool, and fresh!

We communicate daily by speaking to people in person, by talking on the phone, and in writing. Does your communication style meet the right criteria for business and administrative communication?

• Is your message clear?

  A clear message ensures that your audience won’t be left with questions
  or assume the intent of the communication. This saves time for your
  audience, as well as the sender of the message.

• Is your message complete?

  Don’t leave our pertinent information. Try to anticipate the questions
  your audience may have, and answer them in your communication. Again,
  this will save you time because your audience will be able to pull all
  of the needed information from your communication.

• Is your message correct?

  Not only should your message be free of spelling or grammatical areas,
  all of the details should be correct. I was sent an email communication
  in advance this week, that would be going out to 300 of our staff. In
  the email was a phone number for support, but it wasn’t the correct
  phone number. Imagine how frustrated a user in need of support would
  have been when they dialed a provided number and found it was wrong!

• Is your message going to save the receiver time?

  Your message should be clear enough so that your audience can digest the
  information and take action. It should make the receiver’s life easier,
  not give them a headache as they try to understand a complicated
  document or misguided memo.

• Is your message going to build Goodwill?

  Make sure that your message conveys a positive outlook, of both the
  sender and the organization represented. Even when bad news must be
  given, it’s still important to be polite, respectful, and let people
  know that you care.

Take a look at what you’re writing and see if you can’t beef it up to match the criteria above more closely.

It’s almost that time of year for me…time to order new checks! We rarely use checks, so I only order a small box each time, but they’re still a necessary evil. Several of the small businesses I frequent around town don’t accept debit or credit cards, and I rarely carry cash. The school always wants payment in the form of a check for field trips and other things, and the piano teacher always wants cash or a check as well. We’ve been ordering checks through our credit union, which is convenient, since they deduct the payment right from my bank account…but they’re not very cheap.

VistaPrint is now offering discount checks at their website, and if the quality is anything like the business cards I ordered a few months ago, I know I’ll be impressed. Our credit union also offers ONE design, and as you can imagine, after using that design for the past two years - I’m sick of it! You can select from several different designs at VistaPrint, and even make suggestions to their team on new designs you’d like to see! Right now you can get 25 free checks with your order, just use this VistaPrint coupon code when you check out: BlogFreeChecks08

While I was at the baseball field this week, watching my son’s practice, I took a quick glance through my new issue of Real Simple. They recommend new products from time to time, and I spotted a quick blurb on the Eye-Fi Card. You can check out the neat video demo at the site I linked here, but in a nutshell, the Eye-Fi is a wireless memory card for your digital pictures and video. You insert the card reader into your PC, and the Eye-Fi card goes into your camera. Without cables or camera docks or waiting, each time you snap new pictures, the Eye-Fi card uploads them to your computer, or if you choose, to your favorite photo website. I could have SO used this on my Las Vegas trip. Instead of returning to my room each night and uploading countless pictures to Flickr, the Eye-Fi card could have been doing it FOR me through out the night!

My office has always included ongoing training as a line item in the department budget. Nurses take continuing education courses to stay on top of their game, and IT professionals should do the same. Just because you’ve got your four year degree, or a few certifications under your belt isn’t any reason to stop advancing your education. If the thought of spending time in a classroom to take an IT Course makes you break out into a cold sweat, consider QuickCert.com - they allow you to self study for everything from Cisco to Oracle and Crystal Reports. Being able to study at home while working at your own pace is huge for a working professional with a family as well, and skills like these are in high demand in the IT marketplace.

Have you ever seen recut previews on YouTube? I’ve seen one previously where a preview for Mary Poppins was edited to make it look like a horror film. The people who create these are so talented. This one for The Shining is no exception, taking one of the creepiest films ever and making it appear like a romantic comedy:

If you’ve seen The Shining, you can pick out scenes that were intensely creepy in the movie…and they just look like lighthearted fun in the clip.

A while back, I posted about the new system to gauge blog rank available from Izea. I’ve got all of my blogs registered there, and in the past months, have seen quite a few advertisers willing to forgo pagerank in order to experiment with RealRank. Several of my blogs are at the top of the rankings, meaning that they rate highly as far as links and traffic, which translates to more opps for me. This blogs real rank is at 850 for today, which is another feature I like - ranks are updated daily, not every 3 months (or more) like pagerank.

To use RealRank, simply visit IZEARanks.com, install a snippet of code on your blog, and start getting ranked. Learn more about your traffic and how you stack up to other blogs, be they in your genre, or not. RealRank only allows blogs to be added, so you’re not competing against websites that don’t have personalized content added daily.

You can view the top 100 of all blogs on the site, or drill down into categories to see how you stack up against blogs with the same niche and focus. You’ll see that some bloggers chose to keep their stats private, while others publish them for the world to see. (Guess which one of those options I’ve chosen for my blogs?) The whole system, when used in conjunction with the PayPerPost marketplace, allows advertisers to select from blogs that are getting the traffic and pageviews they want, instead of blogs with a high pagerank assigned by Google that doesn’t equate to traffic or pageviews. Because really, what does a PR of 5 or a PR of 8 mean to the advertiser? Absolutely nothing. There’s no promise of pageviews, traffic, or great content, only the promise of a link weighted more by Google.

The more blogs added, the more weight your high rank can carry with advertisers!

Yahoo isn’t going to sell for cheap to Microsoft. A new article on Yahoo today (is that biased news? LOL) stated that they want Microsoft to pony up at least $45 million. Will Microsoft do it in order to enter the Google game? Forecasters predict that Yahoo revenue will go up over 70% during the next three years, totaling $8.8 billion in 2010. That would mean that not only would Microsoft be giving Google a run for their money, they’d be MAKING money in the long run.

Yahoo shares are over $27 right now, while Google sits at $439. Might be a good time to buy Yahoo and enjoy the ride!

Promotional items are always a fun way to promote your business. My sister recently gave us some Devil Rays (St. Petersburg baseball team) SWAG she scored from a business contact, and we’ve been enjoying our loot. Last night I grabbed a plastic beer mug out of the freezer (the kind with water inside) and noticed that it had the Devil Rays logo on one side, and the logo of a local tire company on the other. My son has been using his Devil Rays baseball mitt at his baseball team practices. My husband wears his free Devil Rays hat when he mows the yard! It’s really neat that the Rays have been able to use items that tie into their business (hats, beer mugs, and mitts) so well.

Even if you’re not running a baseball team, trade show novelties can provide you with a way to promote your product, or get people to remember you. When I attended Blog Expo in Las Vegas, I got tons of freebies (can koozies, pins, pens, magnets) imprinted with website URL’s. I also got tons of business cards with website URL’s. Guess which URL’s I checked out first? The megaphone, hand clappers, shot glasses would be GREAT promo ideas for the next trade show I attend - hint hint! Gimmees.com has a ton of fun items like that, so you’re bound to find something that fits with your business.

Have you been following the Jesus (Hay-soos) storyline in Dilbert? I’m a big Dilbert fan, and I read the blog that Scott Adams writes every week. It cracks me up to hear about people getting fired because they posted Dilbert comics at work. Uhh…I should clarify, it’s not funny that people got fired, but it’s funny if their management is that paranoid. The Hay-soos storyline has been a good one - I enjoyed seeing Wally with hair. Not everyone liked it though, and Scott Adams actually got hate mail about it.

People are nuts.

In another case of a company being afraid of a little competition, Experian (one of the three big credit bureaus) is attempting to block Lifelock from helping credit consumers. I’ve previously written about the great services offered by Lifelock on this blog, which include Lifelock creating fraud alerts on your behalf with the credit bureaus. Experian is trying to stop this, saying that current credit laws don’t allow for a third party to place a fraud alert on the behalf of a consumer. Hmm…why would Experian be trying to block this service, which PREVENTS credit fraud? Could it be because fraud alerts cost Experian money, and affect their bottom line? Could it be that Experian really doesn’t care about protecting your credit, only THEIR PROFITS? Lifelock also allows consumers to opt out of pre-approved credit offers and other junk mailings, which further cuts into a big business the credit bureaus having - selling your personal information to credit card companies!

And we wonder why there’s so much credit card fraud in the US - it’s because the credit bureaus couldn’t care less about protecting us!