It’s always nice to see companies listen to customer feedback, and use those suggestions to give their customers what they really want. IDrive-E recently announced new features that will really capture the hearts of small business geeks. The online backup site now allows users to create and manage multiple accounts via a web interface. That’s a very nice tool for perhaps, a geeky consultant who is assisting two or more customers in using online backup. Or a tech guru who managers several different locations. And now there’s IDrive-S too, which is a file and folder sharing feature accessed via the web. Great for office locations who don’t have a shared server to access!

As I alluded to on Simple Kind Of Life, there will be a contest here with geeky prizes to win on June 1st. I’ve actually already bought what I’ll be giving away, and I’m sitting here at my laptop eyeballing it right now. The good news about my contest is that it will be easy to enter, easy to get extra entries, and anyone can win - regardless of where you live. Look for a big announcement here on June 1st!

(If anyone wants to blog about the contest, and perhaps speculate what I’ll be giving away, I’ll hook you up come June 1st. I can’t say with what, or how, but I will hook you up. Trust me!)

My sister got called out of town unexpectedly last week. She doesn’t have a laptop, so until she was able to make her way to a computer with free internet access at the library, she was offline. And even when she got to the library, she didn’t have access to any of her bookmarks, so she couldn’t blog, or pay bills, or do anything that she’d normally take care of online. Now, if I was in the same boat, I’m lucky enough to have a laptop to take with me. However, we’ve got a computer upstairs, and more than once I’ve been up there (too lazy to walk down) and trying in vain to remember the correct URL for my online banking. This portable bookmark manager could solve that problem for me. With this tool, you can keep your bookmarks on a portable USB drive and share them between computers. You can install it to your portable drive or your PC, and the trial version (gotta love something for free!) allows you to try it and store up to 100 bookmarks.

I’m not sure if it would solve my sisters issue, because it doesn’t say if the bookmark manager offers you access to those bookmarks via a simple webpage. That’s what you’d need to access it from a free computer at the library, because I’m sure that they don’t let anyone plug in a USB drive there to access things….

For those of us who use two browsers, you can use the bookmark manager with any browser. And something I could use is the organizing and deletion feature. I don’t typically keep my bookmarks organized (again, for the same reason I don’t walk downstairs to another laptop - pure laziness) and I end up with a really long list that would be much more useful if it were divided into folders. Portable Bookmarks will sort out bad links and duplicates and remove them for you so that you’re not taking up valuable real estate with junk. That’s a nice little time saver!

This is a sponsored review.

I’m definitely not the scientific type. I barely understand some of the technical things contained in my brain. (Funny how I can remember the theme song to The Brady Bunch, and all of the characters on Gilligan’s Island, but I forget simple HTML that I use all the time…)

Anyway, you don’t need to have a scientific mind or be extra smart to read and understand these cartoon laws of physics. I spent many a Saturday morning in my childhood watching the Warner Brothers cartoons (they’re WAY better than most of the crap on these days!) and this list brought back some good memories of things that only happen in the cartoons!

The big news over at PayPerPost this week is PPP Direct. Instead of cruising the marketplace over at PayPerPost, trying to find a post that will work for your blog, bloggers can be approached directly by an advertiser who came across their blog, and liked it. Whereas ReviewMe charges a 50% markup, and other paid-to-blog companies charge 35%, PayPerPost charges only a 10% fee for this service. PayPerPost has put together a great video overview of their new PPP direct here. (Hmm..who IS that blogger? She’s so cute!)

My first question was, why should I do this, instead of just inviting advertisers to email me directly? What benefit is it to me to allow PayPerPost to collect a 10% fee for the transaction? I’ve been blogging for 4 years (not at this domain) and I have had advertisers contact me directly in that time period. So why should I divert them through PayPerPost first? Well, one reason is that PayPerPost can act as an escrow company. Eh, not such a big deal for me, because I always get payment in advance, but it might provide an additional level of comfort to the advertiser who doesn’t know me personally.

The money paid to you will be reported to the IRS…well, I’m not too excited about that either. So again, not really a benefit to me.

I do like that an advertiser who already has money in his PayPerPost account can use that balance to pay me, and that I get paid quickly - in fact, I don’t have to wait the 30 days as required by other PayPerPost blog entries.

Here’s the main reason I’m interested in PPP Direct:

Marketing - We are building a directory of PPP Direct bloggers and will be promoting those that have adopted the technology in the meantime. PPP Direct will ultimately mean more Opps for quality bloggers.

I’m all about keeping up with the technology and trends so that I can remain on the top of my game, and make myself and my blogs as attractive as possible to advertisers. I’m not sure that I have a ton of potential advertisers reading this blog, but I like know that if there are advertisers out there, they know they can request a blog entry from me specifically, instead of just creating an opp and having 5 random bloggers respond. I’d like to see this promoted as an option from within PayPerPost, so that an advertiser can find me there and request a review, even if he’s never come across my blog before (similar to what Sponsored Reviews does, I suppose?)

That said, I still love the regular marketplace on PayPerPost and don’t plan to stop using it anytime soon!

One of the guest bloggers on the Sponsored Reviews blog posted a big long list of blog directories that you can submit your blog to this week. The list is arranged by Alexa and PR ranks. He left me out, so I left a comment on the entry telling him about the PR 5 (Alexa 13431!) directory here at GeekySpeaky, and he edited his entry to include it. Nice! My site is the 5th lowest Alexa score on there, so I’m pretty proud of myself. I’ve seen quite a few submissions from it too, so I’m impressed with how many people are coming over from that entry. Thanks, Daniel!

At work, I deal with a lot of spreadsheets and reports - some that I create, and some that I maintain for other people. I’ve never deleted any of my Excel files or Crystal reports in error, but I’ve come really close to doing it. I know our IT department has a way for us to recover deleted emails, but I’m not so sure about deleted files. I’m so paranoid about losing something, that I not only store important files and folders on my own drive, but also our shared server for the office.

I guess I don’t really need all of those duplicate files, because you can recover files that you’ve deleted in error from your hard disks or floppy drives. (Do people even use floppy drives anymore? My last 2 computers didn’t even come with one!) You can also recover files from your Recycle Bin, even AFTER you’ve emptied it. Handy Recovery has a neat little browse function that allows you to browse your disk drive just like you do with Windows Explorer, but in addition to all of your regular files and folders, you see everything you’ve deleted as well. If you want to recover one of those files, just save it back to your hard drive.

The program is compatible with Microsoft Windows® 9x/Me/NT/2000/XP/2003/Vista operating systems. You can download a free 30-day trial version which allows you to recover one file per day, so you can give Handy Recovery a test drive. If you like it, the single user license is only $39, and they’ve got a discount program for volume orders, so those of you running businesses can get a deal in providing this software for all of your employees.

This is a sponsored review.

What a great blogger we’ve got to feature today! Tami has been with Supahstar Saturday since the start - in fact, she was the very first person to jump in and participate. About time she was featured, don’t you think? Tami blogs over at Miss Write. She’s a writer, and like me, a voracious reader.

Why do you blog? I blog to express my self on various fronts pretty much without restraint other than what might be moral in my opinion. There are a lot of forums dedicated to the various aspects of my life that I like to be verbal and converse in but they tend to become either a hodge-podge of communal voice, or argumentative to the point of distraction from the original thought… or, the least gratifying of forum types… so lightly trafficked that I’m talking to myself anyway and may as well just have my own blog about whatever it is I want to talk about–which brings me right back to why I blog. I have three active blogs at the moment. One dedicated primarily to my farm life, one dedicated primarily to my writing life, and entertainment as a whole, and one where I just spout off about anything that crosses my mind. I enjoy them all immensely and the friends I’ve made within the blogging community are wonderful and cherished.

What do you like best about blogging? The freedom to express my opinion on a subject and the ability to share my life and thoughts with other like minded individuals. The Internet has become such a vast and wonderful place, and blogging is the bigger, better equivalent to diary writing. Diary writtng is a lonely business, and no one will likely every read the entries. With blogs, you can share your innermost secrets (if you’re bold), or just chit chat about the variety of life and find out you’re not alone in those feelings, and experiences. Diaries can sometimes make you more depressed over a situation, where blogs often leave you uplifted to find others in the same situations… and with blogs, when you have something joyous to share, you can get global support in your happiness as well.

You know the drill from here, right? If you want to participate, write an entry on your blog about Tami’s blog with 2 or 3 links to entries that you enjoyed. Then return to this entry, and leave a comment with a link. You can use one of the following images in your entry or on your site, please save it and upload it to your own. You’ve got a whole week to write and submit an entry about Tami, and once you’ve participated in 5 separate Supahstar Saturdays, you’re eligible to be picked as a featured blogger!

For more info and guidelines, please read my post explaining how Supahstar Saturday works.

Technorati Tags: Supahstar Saturday, blog, blog promotion, Technorati, PR, pagerank, Google pagerank, SEO, Tecnorati ranking, promote your blog

When you work in an office with open cubicles, it’s really not cool to use an old school radio at your desk, without using headphones. We’ve got a new consultant sitting catty corner from me, and apparently, she’s clueless about office decorum and the unwritten rules of the workplace. Not only is she playing a radio (which isn’t THAT loud, but it’s loud enough that all of the cubes around here can here it), she’s playing this annoying station. I’m not even sure what station it is, but all of the music so far has been horrible folk tunes from the 60’s and 70’s. My ears, they are bleeding.

We’re a very quiet office. Most of the people that work around me aren’t on the phone a lot, so the only sound you’ll hear all day is the sound of typing, and quiet conversation. The radio is so out of place and inappropriate, but I don’t have the balls to say anything. I’m just going to start up my iPod and tune her out. And hope that the radio disappears when she goes to lunch. Wouldn’t it be a shame if the cord was mysteriously cut?

In this day and age of outsourcing and expansion, most companies seem to be focused on tapping certain specific markets. For us, it’s Asia - we do a lot of business there and there’s even talk if of outsourcing some work to employees in India. (Don’t get me started on that particular topic.) For BackgammonMasters.com, the place to be is Latin America. BackgammonMasters is the online backgammon site that features a talking tiger (named Jean Claude) as its online spokesperson. And while they’re expanding worldwide, they’re placing specific attention on the Latin American market, which is interesting to me, because Jean Claude is French. How will that market relate to a French spokesperson?

Anyway, the reason for the Latin American push is the popularity of a Spanish dice game called Perudo. The backgammon site is the first online gaming site to introduce an online version of Perudo, so you can see why they’re seeing a lot of increased activity from the Latin American market. Thus, they’ll be opening a branch office in Central America. The site still offers backgammon, poker, and blackjack will be coming soon. The company plans more games for the Latin American niche as well.

I’m not usually one to pass around cute comics and funny emails, especially in the workplace, but I am SO sending this to my coworkers tomorrow. I love Dilbert, because so much of it is spot on as far as office life. But this particular strip will hit home for those of us working on the project we’re currently on, especially the bit about metrics on the dashboard.

If you haven’t noticed, I like to have techy toys. I love my high-def TV’s and my laptop and my cell phone and iPod and DVR and Playstation. I’d love to have more techy toys, especially the kind I don’t have to lay out my own cash for. PayPerPost, the company behind most of the blog advertising seen on this blog, has a neat promo every Tuesday where they give away a cool techy toy. So far this month, people have won Apple TV’s and a PS3, and by the end of the month, they’ll have given away a new HDTV. Now, I’ve got 2 high-def TV’s, but I certainly wouldn’t turn down a third. I’m sure I could find something to do with it!

Tomorrow (May 15th) people will have the chance to win a Slingbox, Nintendo Wii, Yamaha Surround Sound System or a Logitech universal remote. I don’t even know what a Slingbox is, but I want one now. The sponsor for all of this cool stuff is a little place called Bid4Prizes, and they give away lots of cool stuff on their site as well, like Apple iPhones and Scions.

To win the prizes from PayPerPost, you’ve got to find a special opp - like a needle in a haystack. Some are obvious…most are not. Just click and you may be pleasantly surprised! And so far, the prizes and the opps are going a lot smoother than some of the other past contests PayPerPost has held - it’s nice to see people winning without any drama!

If you’re a Google geek like me, and love to travel, this is one Google search function you’ll use a lot. When you want to find airfare, just type your departing city airport code and the arriving city code into the search box at Google, like:

TPA PHL

That brings up a page on Google providing me with a place to input dates for my trip, and links to CheapTickets, Expedia, Hotwire, Orbitz, Priceline, and Travelocity. Input your dates, click a link, and you’ll instantly be taken to search results at the provider, showing the dates you picked. It will definitely eliminate a lot of time spent inputting dates and locations at each place you wish to search for a fare!

Last year, my sister and I threw a big anniversary party for our other sister, and her husband of 25 years. One of our bright ideas was to create a PowerPoint slide show that we could show during the party. We had to beg, borrow, and steal to get a projector from someone’s workplace…now, getting a projector is much easier, thanks to sites that allow you to rent them! You can rent a projector for use anywhere in the USA, but Projector123 is specifically targeting the Spokane projector rental, as well as the western cities of Albuquerque, Boise, Colorado Springs, Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Salt Lake City, Seattle, & Tucson. Easy to rent, easy to use, easy to return!

Bored at work? Filing your TPS reports just not giving you enough to do? Why not turn your office or cubicle into a place of argri-tainment by growing a bit of office corn? (Argriculture + Entertainment = Argri-tainment!)

As you can see from this corn project, anyone with a bit of time on his hands (and a window!) can grow corn. I don’t have a window, so I’m going to have to try mushrooms. But back to the corn - you can use all sorts of office tools in your venture, like rulers to hold up the stalks. Get a pretty coworker to assist with corn rotation. Assist your corn in pollination (watch out for sexual harassment in the workplace! Just watch out for those grasshoppers.

Seriously, what would you do if your boss or a coworker started growing corn in his office?

For the recruiters and salespeople I work with, one of the biggest issues is following up on leads and hot prospects. When you’re trying to sell someone on our services or features, you want to follow that lead until you know it’s dead. And you don’t want anyone to blow off a lead, or not follow up on a call from a prospective client…you might as well be burning money if you’re going to ignore people with a genuine interest in your product. AIMPromote is a CRM software product designed to give you complete control over the sales process. You can easily schedule contact visits, schedule follow up calls, emails, letters, and other mailings, and give your sales team an easier way to make the sale. Try it now with a 2 week trial version!

Well folks, the time has come to change the pricing structure over at the GeekySpeaky links directory. I realized tonight that with the last Google update, the main directory page increased to a PR 5! Combine that with an Alexa score of 16,000 for this domain, and you have enough for me to warrant a price increase. Gone are the days of $5 and $10 featured links, but you’re still getting a big bang for your buck by submitting your site there.

• You can still get a FREE regular reciprocal link. You link to me, I link to you = free.
• Regular links WITHOUT a reciprocal link were $5, and they’ll now be $25. That price is not annual - it’s good for as LONG as this site is around.
• Featured links, which display a screenshot of your site, were $10. They’ll now be $40. Again, that’s not an annual price, it’s good as long as the site is around.

Please note, I will be capping the number of featured links I display at some point soon, so I’d suggest getting in while the gettin’ is good. By ordering your featured link now, you’ll insure that you won’t get left out when I decide we’ve got enough.

Additionally, you can purchase link advertising on the main page of the links directory. That’s a link from a PR 5 page right to your site.

One link = $50 per month. Buy more than 1 month upfront & each additional month is only $40 (save $10).

Why? Because I love you!

Chances are, at one time or another, you’ve seen one of those lame motivational posters in an office you’ve worked in. The pictures are always fantastic - beautiful photographs of sunsets and mountains and proud eagles, wild horses running free…

but the sayings with the picture…well, they suck. They’re always about setting goals and trying your best and success. Blah, blah, blah. Anyone who works in a corporate environment knows that setting goals and doing your best have nothing to do with success. I’d like to secretly switch out those motivational posters with these demotivational posters and see how long it takes for someone to notice the switch.

Potential: Not everyone gets to be an astronaut when they grow up.

So true.

Practically everyone shops online. Anyone with a product to sell and the ability to create a website can set up an online store and take advantage of the huge number of people who turn to their computer to shop everyday. With any new technology comes a new wave of scam artists as well. Unfortunately, many fledging business owners who don’t know any better have been taken in by scam artists. Other websites are set up specifically to scam consumers. And haven’t we all received one of those phishing emails at one time or another?

StoresOnlineHelp.com has put together workshops around the world in order to help entrepreneurs avoid being scammed while establishing a legit web presence. Entrepreneurs receive training in these workshops and seminars to overcome the ignorance about scams and the way business is done online with the Stores Online program, which offers:

• Online credit card processing
• CRM
• A range of eservices for the small business owner
• Tools and training to help you succeed
• Flexibility with your online business
• Control over your online business

Don’t sign up for a scam!

Someone put a lot of time & effort into this, and it’s a neat little concept. Take a look - it’s called the map of online communities, and the size of the “country” is supposed to correlate with the size of the community. Hence, we have MySpace, which is the size of China on the map, but “attractive MySpace pages” is just a teeny weeny peninsula of the MySpace country. Blogs are down in the southwest area, but I think we’re much more powerful than the small bit of real estate we’re shown with, don’t you?