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.

“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.

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.

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?

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?

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!

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.

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!