Computer Chit Chat

Archive for the ‘This and that’ Category

SocialSpark is a form of blog marketing that combines social networking with the opportunity to make money from blogging. I signed a couple of months ago. I am convinced that this is the perfect opportunity for Mommy bloggers to make some extra cash from the comfort of their home. It’s actually perfect for anyone that’s home during the day.

After bloggers sign up for Socialspark they’ll have the chance to make new friends within the social media environment. Opportunities to monetize your blog are presented in a marketplace. Socialspark offers nofollow opportunities, so there’s no fear of punishment from Google for writing a sponsored post. While browsing the available opportunities bloggers can select open opportunities or be placed into a queue to take other opportunities that aren’t open at that moment.

The queue is what makes Socialspark ideal for Mommy bloggers. Once you’ve queued yourself for an opportunity you’ll be notified by an email when a slot becomes available. That email will be sent at midnight and you have twelve hours from then to submit your entry. While it doesn’t work terribly well for me since I start working at 6am, it does seem to be working well for stay at home Moms.

Moms have a lot to say. They use a lot of products and have a lot of opinions. They know what it’s like to try and make ends meet. Moms value the opportunity to make some money to contribute to the household while staying at home and raising their children. And what better way to to that than while blogging? It doesn’t make a difference if you’re a Mom and you a new blogger or an experienced one. Once you’ve joined Socialspark you’ll be surprised at home many blogging friends you make that are more than happy to help out if you have a question or if you need help with something.

If you’re a stay at home parent, go check out Socialspark and sign up. You’ll be making money in no time right from the comfort of your home and get to continue doing the best job there is, raising your family.

• Journyx, free time and expense management software
• Entrecard Credits News
• Paid blogging - Smorty

Many people are interested in managing their time and maximizing their income. If they aren’t they should be, because time truly is money. Expenses are also a part of money that it’s crucial to track. That’s what makes Journyx Timesheet such a great find. Journyx offers a free online time and expense management solution that can be used by anywhere from one to ten users. Because it’s a software solution, there are no more books and ledgers to keep, so you’ll save money on those items and the man hours it took to use them. Even if you have some one tracking all of this info in Excel it’s a good idea to check it out. If you use Journyx you’ll be freeing up yourExcel guru’s time to work on other projects.

You can do a lot of things with Journyx. Yes, Journyx manages payroll functions such as employee timesheets, attendance and vacations. But Journyx can also mange projects, expenses and client invoicing. To better understand what Jourynx does you really need to sign up for the free demo like I did. After downloading the complete version for free you can log in and play. Go ahead! Give it a test drive. Create a test project. While ideal for people that are self employed or those that own small businesses, Journyx could be used by any individual wanting to be more efficient and manage time better. Even bloggers can make great use of it to track how much time they spend working on their blog.

If you want to read about some Timesheet success stories, just visit their website.

• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• 25 free magnets
• Let’s chat about mailing lists

Fuelmyblog and Tsheets.com want to know what people do in the first five minutes of their working day. One lucky person who answers this question on their blog will win an 80Gb iPod Classic or an 8Gb Nano.

You probably know Fuelmyblog as one of the most popular online blogger communities. TSheets is an affordable monthly service that offers a web-based timesheet system created to track hourly time from any computer or mobile device. The Tsheets website is well laid out and easy to understand. To use their language, it’s Triffic.

So, they want to know what I do in the first five minutes of my working day. I get up on a work day at 4am. I usually begin work at my day job at 6am. When I get to work the first thing I do is clock in. Then I go into the office and turn on my computer. Then I put the radio up on top of bookshelf on top of my desk (the only place I get reception) and turn it on. I open Outlook first and then the different apps and folders that I use all day. Then I go into the kitchen and make a pot of coffee. Then I go back to my desk and check my voicemail and email. By then almost ten minutes has gone by and I need that coffee. So, there you have it. That’s what I do in the first five minutes of my working day.

What do you do in the beginning of your work day?

• New fangled gizmo contest
• And the winner of the Computer Chit Chat Christmas Contest is…
• May Entrecard giveaway winner

I found out today that companies can now get customized Visa gift cards made. When I was in computer sales I won many gift cards and they all looked the same, you couldn’t tell which company you’d been awarded the card from once you took it out of the envelope. Companies can now get gift cards made with their logo on them, making it the perfect reward or award, or just a great way of saying thanks. There’s no minimum, so even small businesses are able to participate. What an ideal thing for a small business looking for a way to promote their brand! Take a look at these customized gift cards. They might be the perfect solution for you to thank an employee or client, award a prize or provide an incentive.

• The cost of software
• Any small business owners out there?
• 25 free magnets

Earlier this year a laptop belonging to Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield NJ was stolen and it contained the personal information of more than 300,000 people, me being one of them. It was at that time that I was forced to consider identity theft, and first heard of life lock.

Lifelock is a company that guarantees to protect the identity of their clients. Everyone can benefit from Lifelocks’s services. Hard working adults, both individuals and couples are common targets, but they are not the only victims of identity theft. Children are a big target because their identities are often left unchecked until they’re maturing and turning into adults so their identity may have been compromised long before. Noone deserves to be the victim of identity theft, especially a young person just starting out. People who have had their identities stolen are usually denied credit, because their credit has been damaged. Many people are judged by employers on the merit of their credit which could mean not getting a job or promotion. Here in New Jersey many find themselves not being eligible for insurance or paying a lot more for it because many of the auto insurance companies now factor your credit into your rate.

Noone is too old or too young to be concerned about identity theft. Every person should know the status of their credit and what’s on it. And anyone with credit should consider protecting it with Lifelock.

• Let’s chat about mailing lists
• The cost of software
• One person can be in more than one place at a time

Click Here for a Chance to Win a Nintendo® Wii™! Charter area residents that visit this site and register are put into a drawing for a complete Nintendo wii video game console system. The wii will come with everything needed to play out of the box including the console, a stand, sports games, one remote, one nunchuk, one sensor bar, one ac adapter and one av cable. Now that’s a great prize, because the wii is a really fun and hot game system. It is the best video console idea yet in my opinion, because it’s fun for the entire family while promoting exercise and movement.

While at the site Charter area residents can participate in an auction. The item being auctioned is a lifetime of Charter high speed internet. Qualified residents, determined by zip code, that are 18 years or older can participate. It doesn’t matter if you are a current Charter customer or not if your zip code is within the specified areas. People that meet the geographic requirement can preregister to bid from yesterday March 5, 2008 through March 11, 2008. Bidding begins on March 12, 2008 and ends on March 26, 2008. The bids will start at $10, and there is no reserve.

Good luck to all, for both the wii and the lifetime high speed internet!

• None Found

Who doesn’t like free things? Who wouldn’t like some free postcards to help market their business? Would you like to get 25 free magnets? Continue reading and I’ll tell you where you can get them and what you need to do to get them.

Vistaprint is an online service that offers terrific deals on great quality products. This is where you can get the free magnets. Vistaprint is so confident in their stuff they’ll let you have some of it for free. I have personally tried their large postcards, large calendar magnets, business cards and address stickers. I have always been pleased with their products. Their site is easy to use, they have a huge selection and their products are easy to customize to best suit your own needs.

Here’s what you need to do to get them. Go to the Vistaprint site. Check out the small magnets. While you’re on the site be sure to check out their other products and special offers. (I signed up for their exclusive offers a couple of years ago and love it when they email me specials every month.) Decide which postcards you’d like, put them in your basket. When you check out just use coupon code “Blog25FreeMag” to get 25 Free small magnets. Finish checking out and that’s it. Let me know how you like your stuff when you receive it. Happy browsing!

• Any small business owners out there?
• Need some free photo prints?
• Places to find free pictures to use on your blog

Just before the holidays the company I work for hired a guy specifically for server management and security issues. The IT guy we had didn’t have enough time in the day to do everything so they brought in a specialist for one of our most important areas. Right now our network is in one location. But as we continue to grow and if we expanded we’d need to implement something different such as a remote management solution. Uplogix has created the Envoy appliance so that someone like our one IT guy can administer several different physical locations. Now the old saying “one person can’t be in more than one place at one time” is no longer true, because these appliances stay on even if the remote network goes down so the admin can fix the problem and get things up and running again. And, to keep our IT guy happy, Uplogix makes sure the network is protected and secure by using the strongest standards. And to make all of us happy, Uplogix remote management will be increase efficiency and save the company money which should leave more money for the employees. That’s a win win situation.

• Journyx, free time and expense management software
• Pragma. A pragmatic solution.
• The History of Backup

The cost for some software titles is quite expensive, which is one of a number of good reason why people don’t rush to upgrade their software to newer version. What some people don’t know is that there are many times software can be bought for less, with an academic discount. Companies such as CostCaptain offer their educational discounts to both students and staff of research labs, libraries and schools. Here’s an example. A copy of Microsoft Office 2007 would typically cost the average person like me. Those that qualify for the educational discount can purchase the full version of Office 2007 starting at $129 and the Vista Upgrade starting at $89. Some people wonder if academic version are fake. I sold them for years and they are quite real. CostCaptain is a Microsoft Authorized Education Reseller, meaning you are purchasing a 100% Authentic Microsoft product. And, if you know of someone that qualifies for the academic discount and needs software but is short on cash, you can buy them a gift certificate. Valentine’s Day is next week and I’m sure that would be quite a useful gift. Educational discounts are a great program and a great way to save some money and show value for education!

• How do you unzip?
• Looking for a free alternative to Office?
• How to insert random text in Office documents

Ever wonder which blog gets the most traffic and is the most influential? You wouldn’t be alone, lots of people do. Now that IZEA will be paying $1,000 to the blogger in the number one spot for each week in February, more bloggers will be trying to write their best articles and bring in as much traffic as possible to give their blogs a boost. That’s $4,000 they’re shelling out! Wondering how will they calculate who’s number one? Listen up.

Here’s a little background for those that don’t know. Late last year Big G started punishing bloggers that monetize their blogs in certain ways, particularly the buying and selling of paid posts and links. All of a sudden the all important page rank became Page Spank for those of us little fish in the big blogging sea, and just like that we had page rank of 0. This severely limited some of the marketing opportunities available to us, also impacting income. IZEA knew that blogs do have worth and value without Page rank and had previously set out to create a remedy for a situation such as this.

IZEA came up with Real Rank, a method of calculating the traffic and influence of blogs on the web. The long term goal is that Real Rank will become an accepted replacement for page rank and Alexa data that will be used when purchasing blog marketing. You’re wondering how it works. I’ll tell you how. A piece of javascript installed on a blog collects and reports data based on the traffic the blog actually receives. The result is the blogs Real Rank, where it stands among other blogs. Factors that effect Real Rank include unique visitors, active inbound links and page views. The neat part is, you (the blogger) choose what you want displayed. Wondering where it’s displayed?

One of the places you can see a blog’s Real Rank is on IZEARanks.com. There’s no big catch to being listed there and there’s no troublesome installation involved. If you put that one piece of javascript code into your blog then your blog and Real Rank will be visible to advertisers and other bloggers. In case you’re wondering, this is a completely different code than a Pay Per Post code, so you won’t get spanked for having it on your blog.

Wondering what’s displayed? The above picture is a screenshot. You can select to view Real Rank, page visitors or unique visitors, within time periods of one week to one year. The cute little lightbulb slider allows you to adjust the time period you’re looking at to see how the blog is trending. On the bottom is an option to allow the viewer to compare up to ten blogs at once. It’s pretty neat. One thing I wish was shown on the screen is the categories a blog falls into. The site is certainly interesting to surf. If you want to be entered into the drawings for any of the four $1,000 prizes hurry over there and sign up. Good luck to those who enter!

• SearchStatus Firefox add-on tells you more than rank
• Feedjit
• Alexa, Ilikea!