For the New Year - confront your deepest fear
This bit of wisdom is from Marianne Williamson. I invite you to consider it as you begin a brand new year. - Dana
“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate...
Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our Light, not our darkness that most frightens us.
We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant,
to be gorgeous, talented and fabulous.
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.
There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that others won’t feel insecure
around you.
We are born to make manifest the glory of god with in us.
It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our inner light shine;
we consciously give others permission to do the same.
As we are liberated from our fear,
our presence automatically liberates others
Marianne Williamson
'Tis the Season...
A friend of mine posted an idea for holiday gift giving in this season that I'd like to pass along for your consideration.
This is supposed to be the season of peace on earth and good will to man. So instead of just racking up the credit card bills buying gifts, mightn't it be more meaningful to give of yourself? Your time, your talent, even your attention can be more valuable than the latest gizmo from Wally World or Q Mart.
You don't necessarily need to volunteer at your local soup kitchen (although I'm sure they would love any help you could offer.) Start small... Do you have people on your gift-giving list that you have no clue what to buy? Well, instead of 'what can you buy for them', consider 'what you can do for them.'
Think about it for a moment. What act of kindness/service would they appreciate?
Don't you know someone who would really appreciate your help with:
* Cleaning out the garage
* Changing the oil in the car
* Baby-sitting so they can have a little time off
* Shoveling snow off the driveway/sidewalk
* Learning how to use their computer
* Driving to the grocery/doctor/etc.
As a gift, you could make up a certificate to give them reading "Good for ____________" (and you fill in the blank with your gift idea.) It doesn't have to be elaborate - it just needs to be a serious offer to give a little of your time, your talent, and/or your expertise.
The holidays are a time for us to share with friends and loved ones. What better way than to give of yourself?
May you and yours enjoy this holiday season!
Dana
Don't mean to toot my own horn, but...
I would be delighted to hear from anyone who reads the book what they think about it. Good or bad, constructive feedback is welcome.
The picture is a link to purchase the paperback book on Amazon. You can also purchase the Kindle format here: Mon Coeur Mort
'Linked In" Phishing Attack
There is a new type of phishing attack that you need to be aware of if you use LinkedIn, because it looks a lot like an invitation from someone on LinkedIn for you to join their network. Or, worse, it may look like a message from LinkedIn telling you to go check your messages... and providing a handy dandy link (which, of course takes you somewhere else and presumably, tries to get you log in, thereby stealing your linked in username and password.)
This one is a bit scary to me because I use LinkedIn a lot and might have fallen for it, had it crossed my inbox. But thanks to a timely warning and explanation from Dave Hatter, I (and you, gentle reader) will now be on guard against such an attack.
The full story on this new phishing attack can be read on Dave Hatter's blog (here ) And, a big thanks to Dave for the warning.
As I have said before, NEVER NEVER NEVER click on a link if you don't see where it's taking you. And I don't mean the link text, friends and neighbors, I mean the actual destination link. The above link to Dave's blog is a good example. It says it's taking you 'here', but that's not the URL. I could have just as easily typed in "free DisneyWorld Vacation" or even "Message from LinkedIn" but where will the link actually take you when you click it?
For those of you who've heard this before, my apologies. Better safe than sorry. And for anyone who anyone who is still wondering what the heck I'm talking about, I have a blog entry about phishing in general and some ways you can tell they are not legitimate links. You can read more about it (here... if you trust my link, that is Bwaa! ha! ha! ha!!! [cue evil music...]
Be safe!
I've been called worse...
I honestly don't know if this is true... but it SOUNDS about right, don't you think?
Enjoy!
Railroad tracks.
The US standard railroad gauge (distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That's an exceedingly odd number.
Why was that gauge used? Because that's the way they built them in England , and English expatriates designed the US railroads.
Why did the English build them like that? Because the first rail lines were built by the same people who built the pre-railroad tramways, and that's the gauge they used.Why did 'they' use that gauge then? Because the people who built the tramways used the same jigs and tools that they had used for building wagons, which used that wheel spacing.
Why did the wagons have that particular odd wheel spacing? Well, if they tried to use any other spacing, the wagon wheels would break on some of the old, long distance roads in England , because that's the spacing of the wheel ruts.
So who built those old rutted roads? Imperial Rome built the first long distance roads in Europe (including England ) for their legions. Those roads have been used ever since.
And the ruts in the roads? Roman war chariots formed the initial ruts, which everyone else had to match for fear of destroying their wagon wheels.
Since the chariots were made for Imperial Rome , they were all alike in the matter of wheel spacing. Therefore the United States standard railroad gauge of 4 feet, 8.5 inches is derived from the original specifications for an Imperial Roman war chariot. Bureaucracies live forever.So the next time you are handed a specification/procedure/process and wonder 'What horse's ass came up with this?', you may be exactly right. Imperial Roman army chariots were made just wide enough to accommodate the rear ends of two war horses. (Two horses' asses.)
Now, the twist to the story:When you see a Space Shuttle sitting on its launch pad, there are two big booster rockets attached to the sides of the main fuel tank. These are solid rocket boosters, or SRBs. The SRBs are made by Thiokol at their factory in Utah
The engineers who designed the SRBs would have preferred to make them a bit fatter, but the SRBs had to be shipped by train from the factory to the launch site. The railroad line from the factory happens to run through a tunnel in the mountains, and the SRBs had to fit through that tunnel. The tunnel is slightly wider than the railroad track, and the railroad track, as you now know, is about as wide as two horses' behinds.
So, a major Space Shuttle design feature of what is arguably the world's most advanced transportation system was determined over two thousand years ago by the width of a horse's ass. And you thought being a horse's ass wasn't important?
A little humor helps us learn the lesson
I really got a laugh out of this. The blog entry is about hiring a professional to design your company's logo, name, signage, whatever, but the first example was more of a joke. The company's name is "Kids Exchange".
Here's a picture of their sign:
Is it just me, or do they perform "Kid Sex Change" operations here? <G>
The blog entry is worth a look just for the chuckles, but it also points out real life mistakes people have made in their business advertising decisions....
http://nameflash.com/blog/
Enjoy.
Domain Name Prices are about to go up (again)
On July 1, 2010 the wholesale cost of registering domain names will increase for '.COM' and '.NET' domain names (.COM by 7% and .NET by 10%.) This means the cost will increase for registrars (like GoDaddy ) and of course most of them are passing the increase on to us, the consumers.
If you only use 1 or 2 domains, that means you will be paying between $0.75 and $1 more per year for each '.COM' domain name you use (and around $1.30 more per year for a '.NET' domain name.) If, like many small business owners, you use multiple domain names for your web site(s), then the increase becomes more pronounced.
What can you do? If you renew your domain name(s) before July 1, then you can avoid the increase. AND DID YOU KNOW that you can register a domain name for up to 10 years at a time?
So let's do the math...
For each '.COM' domain you can save up to $10 if you renew for 10 years ($13 for each '.NET' name)
If you have multiple domain names, then multiply that savings per name.
Plus you don't have to worry about it again for 10 years (by which time, I'm sure the price will have increased again.)
But the deadline is July 1, 2010. So you will need to act now to beat the increase. If you handle the domain account yourself, that's great. If not, then contact your 'web person' and make sure this gets handled before the deadline. If you have any questions or aren't sure who controls your website's domain name you can contact me . I do this for a living.
Have a great summer... Start by beating the price increase.
Dana
What is an appropriate keyword for my website?
I just replied to a client about what key words we might choose for her new website. Her site promotes her services as a personal chef and some of the keywords she requested included 'diabetes', 'macrobiotic cooking', 'heart health' and 'high blood pressure'.
Now, before reading further, I invite you to test your own judgement and see if you come up with the same solution as I did.
The website is about a personal chef. The pages will include topics like
- What is a personal chef / what duties do they perform?
- Meals and how they are prepared
- Credentials about this particular chef
- FAQ about personal chefs
- Contact page
- Blog with recipies, tips & tricks, etc.
- Diabetes
- macrobiotic cooking
- heart health
- high blood pressure
I responded that we could create a page about macrobiotic cooking if that was actually an area of expertise, but I nixed the other three. Using 'diabetes' as an example, I'll explain why.
Generally speaking, search engines think like this:
When a person does a search on a keyword, go fine any pages using that keyword (sometimes there are thousands) and order them by relevancy - with the most relevant page at the top. In other words, for a page to show up at the top of a search for 'Diabetes' (of which there are over 71,000 results on Google) it must meet these criteria better than the others:
- The page or section topic must be about diabetes.
- The word 'diabetes' must be used in the text several times. (it can also be used in links, text behind pictures, meta tags, etc.)
- Any links on the page to other pages/sites about diabetes will help.
- Preferably it will have multiple outside links (links from other reputable websites - preferably also related to 'diabetes') pointing to it.
Since many medical and health related sites will almost certainly be more relevant to the keyword 'diabetes' than a website promoting a personal chef, I judged that it would not make sense to use 'diabetes' as a keyword for my client's site. At best, it would come up in the search engines on page 14 or 25 (or 200) and nobody would ever see it.
And that's only if you follow the white hat techniques. You can actually do everything right and still get lousy search engine rankings, depending on the keyword(s) you choose and how well your competitors use the same keyword(s).
Additionally there are "black hat" techniques which some sites employ to boost their ranking on search engines (remember: 'black hat' = bad guy... BOO!... Hisssssssss...) Using any of these techniques can actually harm your page's ranking:
- The word 'diabetes' is thrown in multiple times even though the page is obviously not about diabetes.
- The word is STUFFED into the page (used multiple times in such a way that does not make sense or does not read well.) - Keyword stuffing will get your site banned from some search engines, including Google.
- The word is purposely hidden around the page so that the reader won't even see it. This will also get your site banned.
Internet Ad Revenue Hit Record High In Q4 2009
Not online, and not as far as Internet advertising is concerned. The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IA
says that U.S. online ad revenue hit an all-time high of $6.3 billion in Q4 of 2009, a 2.6% increase over the fourth quarter of 2008 and a 14% increase over Q3 of 2009.Matt McGee at Search Engine Land gives us the numbers which show that business is still going strong on the internet.
Read his article and take hope that business is still booming - if you know where to look.
http://searchengineland.com/internet-ad-revenue-record-high-q4-2009-39571
Who are you calling a dummy?
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