BizCoachDeb's BizBuzz -

Archive for the ‘Look What I Found’ Category

I’ll admit it, I loathed my BlackBerry Storm the first few days I had it. It appeared to be the biggest time sink and simple things I did before seemed way more complicated. This was supposed to make my life easier! But like any relationship worth having, I just needed to start finding out what made it tick.

Since then, I’ve fallen in love with my BlackBerry Storm, and it’s become a better friend to me, too. It keeps track of my day, alerts me to emails and text messages, plus has ample storage capacity for my every musical whim. The onboard camera makes Iphone users flush with envy and the touch screen and nifty buttons make it especially fun to tap out messages. Yes, we’re in love. And here are some free tips and apps to help you fall in love, too.   The rest of the story...

Can you find them? My sister sent this pic to me and while I found many right off the bat, I thought I’d share this fun and interesting waste of time with the community. Happy hunting! (You’ll likely have to click the image to make it bigger.) Here’s my list so far:

• Led Zeppelin
• White Zombie
• Cowboy Junkies
• U2
• Smashing Pumpkins
• Scissor Sisters
• Guns and Roses
• Queen
• Matchbox 20
• Phish
• Presidents of United States of America
• Styx
• Gorillaz

  

As promised, I recently tested out a couple new (to me) WordPress Widgets and the results are in – I really love these two: Snap Shots and WP Cumulus Tag Cloud. Snap Shots is set up fairly straight forward, but take the instructions literally and it will be more of a piece of cake for you than it was me. Apparently the interface doesn’t have controls through WordPress, with the exception of “activation.” Instead, the controls are on the Snap Shot website and “feed” to your WP site based on the key code. Once configured, if properly coded in your page, links to other pages will pop up a little window, giving a tiny preview of the linked page. Pretty nifty and makes your own page seem a little less static. A guest can actually move the Snap Shot page wherever they like on the page while viewing.   The rest of the story...

Over the last couple months, I’ve become passionate about WordPress. I can thank Doug Wray, because having attended a class of his on the subject, he simplified a couple things that were vexing me, plus revealed how fun it was to build both blogs and websites using this great tool. Ever since, I’ve been singing the praises of WP, making some client sites and blogs, plus trying to help some adventurous people along the way. I’ve learned a couple key things I feel are worthy pieces to the puzzle; hopefully they will help lessen your learning curve.

First, This Important Message
This is just a nugget that helps me so I don’t blow up my own site: have a backup or test site in which you deploy and fiddle with things like plugins and changes to the css and php files. I use mine before using anything on my “real sites” and it’s saved me a lot of aggravation and embarrassment. I tweak it to death or I kick it to the curb, and my visitors are never the wiser because it all happened on a “pseudo” site.   The rest of the story...

Does this beer make me look fat?

This morning I was reading an article about a couple of University of Colorado at Boulder graduates who invented a contraption called the, “Booze Belly.” At first glance, it seemed like a dorky toy for frat boys and tailgaters, but what occurred to me (and likely them) is what a cross-section of customers they could really reach. Imagine how many applications something this simple could have and not only that, what types of things could be developed from this idea? Kids with “Juice Bellies”, runners with “Water Bellies”, and so on. What has been made isn’t a revolutionary idea, but it’s one that has taken things a couple steps further than the ordinary “Camel Back” you see hikers running around with. It’s also less conspicuous and than the traditional flask or the not so traditional refillable binoculars. (google it, they exist.)

When a business brings an idea from concept to production, a key to it’s longevity is to see beyond the first move and look to the next move. These entreprenuers hopefully have done that, and it’s a lesson for you, too.   The rest of the story...