Are PR, freebies, affiliate deals, junk mail an spam emails ruling your day?  Do you wake up to hundreds of emails and find it necessary to clear your inboxes several times a day, but your inboxes are still never empty?  Don’t let emails take over your inbox!  We’ll show you how to get your email inbox under control.

Don’t Let Emails Take Over Your Inbox

As bloggers, we know our services are in demand and everyone wants us to help “spread the word”.  How many emails have you had asking you to do that lately?  However, if you want to have time to blog about anything substantial, aka what YOU want to blog about, you have to draw the line between blogging for companies and blogging for yourself/your readers.

When I read Total Workday Control and started using Michael Linenberger’s strategy for managing my time, I realized how important it is to schedule email time.

I’ve since written a schedule of my computer time for the day, which includes an allotment for reading and responding to emails.

Using a timer to monitor my computer time is key to making sure I don’t spend longer on a task than I want to.  This point is especially important when it comes to emails, which tend to usurp time by their very nature.

Linenberger also advocates getting away from the endless email folders that are supposed to keep us organized.  Instead, I use 2 “Processed Emails” folders.  The first folder is called “Processed Business”, the second is called “Processed Personal”.

How to Get Your Email Inbox Under Control

1.  Set an email time budget. Decide how much time you are willing to spend each day on reading, writing and responding to emails.  Write this time down and post it near your computer.

2.  Use a timer to stay within your time budget. A simple kitchen timer will work wonders to keep you on track with your time goals.

3.  Delete unneeded emails as soon as they come in. Don’t save them until later and don’t spend time reading the whole message.

4.  Unsubscribe from email newsletters you didn’t request or don’t use.  Scroll all the way to the bottom of an email message and hit the unsubscribe button, as long as the email is from a reputable source.  If it’s possible that it’s from a spammer or that the link may contain a virus, it’s safer to just delete the email and move on.

5.  Set up a processed email folder. Once you’ve dealt with an email, move it to the processed folder.  Dealing with it could be as simple as reading it if no response is necessary.

6.  Keep email replies short. I try to use the 3 sentence reply as much as possible:

• Acknowledge what the question, problem, or request is.
• State the answer or solution.
• Let the reader know what the next step is.

There’s really no need to ramble in long, unstructured email replies which just eat up your blogging time.  Stick to the email reply formula whenever possible.

7.  Clear out your email inboxes every night before you leave work (or go to bed).  Make sure to reserve some of your email time on the schedule for the end of your workday.  Take your inboxes down to zero a the end of each workday by moving them to the processed folder, deleting them, or acting on them quickly.

If an email will take longer than a few seconds to deal, attach it to a task (you’ll have to read Total Workday Control to learn how to use this system effectively).

8.  Learn to say no. The word no will save your sanity and safeguard your time.  Make choices wisely about what you say yes to.  Always keep in mind the opportunity cost of saying yes: the blogging time you’ll give up.

Using these 8 important steps together will get you on the fast track to get your email inbox under control.  Starting over for the new year means getting the most out of your time.  This is the year to make your blog better than ever.  Skip unnecessary email time and use your blogging time for blogging!

We originally published New Year, New Blogging: How to Get Your Email Inbox Under Control on January 3, 2011 and it is also linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

Print or download the Freelance Lifestyle free printable Freelance Article Assignments Organizer.

Use the {Freelance Lifestyle} Freelance Article Assignments Organizer to:

• Keep freelance assignment due dates highly visible.
• At-a-glance- Make sure you’ve turned in all assignments before the due date.
• Keep track of which articles are for which client, blog, or website.
• Know the payment amounts for each assignment (easy way to prioritize jobs that may not be the best use of your work time).
• Make sure you were paid for each assignment and received the right amount for each job.

Part of the new internet lifestyle for many of us involves working online or being location independent.  This freelance lifestyle usually means you work out of a small home office or mobile office, which might even be a computer bag which gets unpacked onto the dining room table during work time!  Having a good organizational system is key to making sure you keep on top of your freelance work.

Whether you’re a blogger for hire and submitting articles to someone else’s site or freelance writing for print magazines, you need a way to keep track of your freelance work. 

Two of the most important things you need to track are on our Freelance Article Assignments Organizer: due dates and payments.  Click the download button to print or download the Freelance Lifestyle free printable Freelance Article Assignments Organizer.

If the Freelance Lifestyle is for you, watch for more freelance materials this week on Home Ever After!  Subscribe now to our free updates so you don’t miss out.

I’ve had my hands on a lot of minis and netbooks this year, and I love them for their portability.  Moms need a light laptop that fits in the purse or diaper bag but still gets things done!  However, you need something bigger and more powerful for your everyday, stay-at-home machine.  My regular work computer is a quad-core, and I couldn’t run the intensive programs I do for work on anything less. 

This is part of the reason I was so excited to get the new Toshiba Satellite P755D laptop from AMD recently.  It is a bigger, traditional sized laptop and incidentally, has a quad-core from AMD powering the machine!  Remember, I’m an AMD Mom and have an ongoing relationship with their company.  Disclosure about my relationship with AMD is here.  Although I get to work with them, I still tell you both the good and bad points of machines using AMD parts.

The Toshiba Satellite P755D laptop is powerful, energy efficient, and has one of the neatest features that I’ve seen on a laptop recently…  it stays cool!

You can set the laptop on a desk or on your lap and it does not get hot. It’s really amazing! I am really excited about being able to use it propped against my legs while sitting on the couch, or even having it sit on the bed on top of blankets without it overheating or burning me!

If you’ve been burned by your laptop before, or tried to pick it up and carry it and touched it in the wrong place, you know exactly how hot it can get. I just ran my hand over the bottom of the laptop, and though it has been on for a few hours, it’s cooler than my hand. It actually feels cool.

If you’re reading this thinking, “That must be a pretty wimpy laptop,” think again. It has a Quad-Core AMD Processor, 6 GB of RAM, and a 580 GB hard drive.

Some of the other systems I’ve looked at from AMD have been very lightweight, with necessary compromises made in the processing power to get a computer that can travel easy and have a huge battery life. That’s not this computer. It’s refreshing to see a larger laptop with huge computing capabilities and it helps to get a lot of things done that can’t be done as easily on a mini/ultra-portable laptop.

We asked our tech guy to give the Toshiba Satellite P755D a thorough evaluation and let us know where it stands as far as bang for the buck.  Michael Simmons is a tech blogger for I Love PowerShell and Petri IT Knowledgebase, and he shared his experience testing out this Toshiba’s specifications below.

Toshiba Satellite P755D: The Good

After spending most of my computing time lately with lightweight, portable systems, I have really appreciated some of the features that I’ve missed on a full size laptop:

• Optical drive
• Full size keyboard, with a 10-key pad that’s not part of the qwerty keyboard.
• Full size screen
• More capacity on the hard drive
• More powerful components: more RAM, bigger hard drive, and faster processor

Those could be said of many full size laptops, so I’ll tell you some of the features of THIS laptop that I’m really liking:

Toshiba Eco Utility:  With one key press, you can put this laptop into economy mode. Saving the planet is everybody’s business, and the Toshiba eco Utility helps. Putting the laptop into eco mode reduces my power consumption by an average of 30%. Yes, there’s a wattage meter so you can see what is being used. It also adjusts the brightness of the screen, and how quickly the screen dims, turns off, and then goes to sleep.

Built in Blu-Ray Player:  Another great feature is the Blu-Ray player. It’s great to have the availability to go grab a free Redbox rental, drop it in, and then output the high definition of the Blu-Ray player out to the TV through the HDMI.  Not only does the video look great, but the sound coming out of the Harman/Kardon speakers sounds way beyond what I expect out of a laptop.

When you’re not saving power in eco mode, the keyboard is backlit, giving a very nice feel when the lights are low in the room. This laptop looks great, sounds great, and has plenty of power for doing everything I want to do.

No-Nonsense Price:  Finally, I’ll mention one of the best features overall – the low price!  I expected this laptop to be priced between $1,000-$1,150. Instead, it came in well under that.

The price for this system is priced around $749, with other models (such as those with less hard drive, RAM, or without the Blu-Ray player) coming in for even as low as $500.

AMD Processor:  The AMD quad-core processor that came with this laptop is a fully functioning, very quick processor.  It is very responsive and really helps to get things done.

For comparison, a recently reviewed mini scored a 3.8 on the Windows Experience score, meaning it was able to fully run all of the features of Windows 7, but it may have some problems (and it did – it was slower than it should be for a full time use computer). Windows Experience scores have a maximum rating of 7.9. This processor scored a 6.6 on the Windows Experience Index. That’s certainly a respectable score, considering the low cost of this system.

Battery:  The battery life was pretty good, working about 2-3 hours on a full charge. It certainly does not compare well to the lower powered AMD processors that are being put into the minis, but that’s okay. I don’t expect this computer to go for 7 hours or more on a charge. For a fully capable computer, 2-3 hours is enough to get plenty of work done on a plane.

Software:  For systems I’m reviewing, I leave the software on that comes with the system, and I give it a try.  For this system, there was not as much software as you get with an HP.

Toshiba Book Place is installed, and it is the same software as Blio that comes with HP. It even connects to the same service, so a book purchase I had on one was able to be downloaded on the other. 

There were several utilities for checking the status of hard drives, laptop checkup utilities, and programs to start online backups. There was also a 30 day subscription to Norton Internet Security.

Office Starter Edition is included with the system, and if you only require basic access to Microsoft Word and Excel it may suit you. Upgrading to full versions of Office is easy, as is upgrading to more advanced versions of Windows 7.

Overall, the Toshiba Satellite P755D has a very basic set of software utilities. Everything you need, and essentially very little of the often annoying pieces of software that I typically uninstall.

Toshiba Satellite P755D: The Bad

The main drawback with this laptop is the driver update. For some reason, it won’t update the video driver from AMD. I can use PowerShell to determine the exact video card that is installed, and even see the date that the video card driver was created. I know there’s an update available, but when I tried to update the video card driver, the driver installation package said my hardware was not compatible with the driver.

I even went looking for video card drivers because the resolution seemed small. On a 15.6” display, the maximum pixel size is 1366 x 768. Now, that’s not bad, since a 720p HD display is 1280 x 720. Right out of the box this display is better than 720p HD. Still, with the Blu-Ray player, it would sure be nice to get to 1080p HD display (1920 x 1080 pixels).

Toshiba Satellite P755D: Take It or Leave It

Take It: I’d say the Toshiba Satellite P755D is a great choice for anybody looking to replace an older system. You can’t beat the performance for the money.

I give a strong recommendation on this laptop for home use, college students, and even for gamers that want performance without paying high prices. It is a very nice looking and sounding laptop. The keyboard is responsive and feels great. It has all the space you need on a laptop and it is overall a great computer.

–

Disclaimer: This article has material connections. IS World Media (ISWM) received no fees for the writing or publication of this article. A Toshiba Satellite P755D laptop was provided to ISWM at no cost by AMD to facilitate the review process.  Disclosure about my relationship with AMD is here.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Norton Small Business by Symantec. All opinions are 100% mine.

With the holidays coming up, I know a lot of people have technology items and gadgets on their wish list for Santa! Since there may be laptops or netbooks in store for your family, it’s a good time to review your internet security and protection measures to keep your machines, data, and family members safe.

Norton Small Business by Symantec is a suite of internet security products (you may be familiar with the terms “anti-virus” or “virus protection”). While in the old days, these security programs were mostly designed to block viruses, in 2012 they mean a much broader layer of protection over our everyday activities we do on computers.

Do you have someone in your family with a small business? I know I do and a lot of you bloggers can relate. Do you sell Mary Kay? Scentsy? Pampered Chef? Are you a freelancer? Whatever your small business is, you need to have big business level of protection but with a small business price tag that’s just right for you.

Symantec wanted us to pass on that small business owners get a 30% discount when they purchase Norton products designed for 5-10 users!

It’s so important for us to have this full spectrum of internet protection like what is provided with Norton 360 version 5.0. It automatically backs up files in the method you choose to the Norton data centers, so you don’t have to worry about losing your valuable data in case of computer problems. It would be devastating to your time and productivity to not have an offsite backup for your information if something did go wrong!

Norton 360 and Norton Internet Security 2012 are the 2 new Norton products that came out in September 2011. They have the latest protection and tools to fit your everyday technology needs.  For those of us who shop online, we used to have to worry about spyware and tracking cookies.  Not anymore!

Whether you’re using them for your small business or just your family’s regular computing, the 2 new Norton products offer necessary protection like:

• Keeping confidential business information or financial information safe when you pay bills online or other banking transactions,
• Keeps your internet browsing safe by checking files for safety before download,
• Checks websites for threats before you open them in case of danger by virus or malware,
• Does automatic backups of your files,
• and lets you access your remote files no matter what computer you’re on!

Having children old enough to use the internet, I’m always concerned about their safety as well as them accessing information and sites that are harmful to the computer. My daughter has to do research on the internet for reports and research projects, and you never know if unsafe sites will come up in the search results.

Thankfully, the parental controls and the built-in site and download protection in Norton take care of those issue for my preteen so she can do her homework safely and I can stop worrying!

If you don’t currently have a comprehensive plan for protecting your current computers (and any other tech goodies which might be coming home for Christmas!), go check out the options available in the different Norton products. Plus, remember you can get 30% off Norton Small Business Products now!

Do you use Norton for your family or small business? What Norton product have you found works the best for your needs? Let us know in the comments.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of TracFone. All opinions are 100% mine.

A few years ago I switched from my traditional cell phone plan to a Tracfone and my decision was based mainly on things that are important to me as a frugal mom: monthly price, no contract, value for my money, and quality.

At that time I rarely used my cell phone and really only needed it when driving with the kids in case I had an emergency and needed to call for help. It didn’t really make sense to me to have to pay a monthly fee to the phone company to have a cell phone that I rarely used.

My husband is the one that told me about Tracfone after I expressed my concerns to him about how much we were paying in our monthly plan. I went online and researched the different phone options and minutes prices for Tracfone and I was convinced that I needed to switch! I could pay only for the minutes I used. That really is the cheapest way to have a cell phone.

Choosing the Cheaper Way

Our contract on the other cell phone had just expired, so I figured I had nothing to lose by switching to a prepaid cell phone with Tracfone instead. I headed out to my local Walmart to find my new phone and was surprised by how many options Tracfone had.

The cell phones were the same phones as what my husband and I had paid anywhere from $50-$100 per month for in service charges (popular cell phone brands like Motorola, Nokia, LG, Kyocera, and Samsung)! They have the same nationwide coverage and reception as the candy bar phones or smart phones the phone cell phone providers want to charge much more for. Tracfone’s Get into Everywhereness motto can be seen in the elevator demonstration below:

They have basic cell phones that handle texting and talking only for about $10 or smart phones that have all the bells and whistles: camera, apps, internet browsing, music, and more for $29.99.

The major difference was that these phones do not have any monthly fee. You simply purchase the phone at the store or on their website, then purchase minutes (a prepaid card from a store like Walmart or on the Tracfone website) and you’re done paying until you use up those minutes!

The phone I chose cost $19.99 and came with texting and even had a camera and video camera built in. There were some phones that were only $10, but I chose the more expensive one because it came with double minutes for the life of the phone. This meant if I logged on and paid for 100 minutes, 200 minutes would actually show up on my cell phone! The double minutes feature is an incredible frugal value for a budget-minded mom like myself.

The minutes prices they have now are even better! Minutes are cheap: e.g. 200 minutes for under $30 or 50 minutes for $9.99.

1 year cards give you double minutes for the life of your phone and 800 minutes for $119. (You can buy the double minutes for life feature for $19.99 if it didn’t come with your phone.)

Budgeting Cell Phones for the Family

I can see how Tracfone would be a blessing to parents with teenagers that need to have cell phones to stay in touch, especially with the prepaid feature to keep their minutes usage under control! Tracfones could be a big help in the summer time to keep tabs on the older kids that are out of school.

When you’re serious about cutting the bills like I am, you start to look to non-traditional places to save money. The cell phone bill is just something that so many people accept as a fixed expense that you can’t really get out of. That’s just not the case!

Even if you’ve had credit problems in the past, you’ll still be able to switch to a pay as you go Tracfone because they don’t do a credit check or require a contract. Your savings can be recognizable right away because Tracfone also doesn’t charge activation fees or cancellation fees.

Surprisingly, Tracfone’s international long distance minutes are the same price as calling locally! They support calling up to 60 foreign countries with no extra charge. Their International Neighbors program even allows you to set up a local number for people in Canada and Mexico to call your Tracfone.

Spreading the Savings

After I switched to a Tracfone, I told my Grammie about it and she said she was also ready to dump her cell phone provider in favor of something cheaper. I told her all about how I had chosen my Tracfone and the different options available, and before I was done talking about it she was ready to go to the store and buy one for herself! I didn’t know it then, but Tracfones are available through Senior Value (cell phones for senior citizens so they can be prepared in an emergency).

I had a great experience with Tracfone as my frugal alternative to the local cell phone provider. They offer so many benefits with the low cost for such high quality and feature-rich phones. Check out the Tracfone website to browse the minute prices and you’ll be ready to switch too!

Disclosure about my relationship with AMD is here.

With tablets like the iPad2 and Kindle Fire grabbing all the headlines, you may be wondering if a laptop is still a good deal?

You know I spend a lot of my days working with computers.  So to test how well a new laptop with an AMD processor could keep up with my heavy schedule of twitter, facebook, and blogging, I reviewed a new Sony Vaio Y-Series laptop for AMD.  This little Sony VAIO is now mainly my kitchen machine, which holds the pantry inventory for the whole family to use.  This complete food inventory is vital to my menu planning!

Any laptop that I use has to be able to do a few things very well:  It has to be able to move between Tweetdeck, Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Live Writer without long pauses.  I don’t want to spend a lot of time waiting when I am using my basic applications.  Additionally, I need a little something more for my travel laptop:  it needs to fit well in my purse,  it needs to have enough battery to last, and since I spend so much time writing, it needs to have a keyboard.

Sony Vaio Y-Series:  The Good

I’m really impressed with how far laptops have come in the last 3 years.  Travel laptops (under 4 pounds) used to be marketed mainly for executives.  Their price was high and their performance was low.  Then as netbook computers started coming out, the price was really low, and the performance was worse.  Now, the machines are light, portable and powerful!

This Sony Vaio Y-Series is very inexpensive, yet has good performance.  Considering the price for performance, this is a really good value.  The battery life is great, lasting about 4-5 hours on a single charge.  There are several good pieces of software that came on the machine, including software for working with your media – videos, pictures, and music.

These are some of the highlights that I enjoyed:

• Up to 5.5 hours of battery life
• The webcam does face tracking, motion detection and even records the room while you’re not there
• 3 USB ports (enough for a mouse, full-sized keyboard and a cord to download photos from your camera at the same time)
• HDMI out (so you can hook up your laptop to the TV and watch Hulu or Netflix on a bigger screen)
• It works together with other Sony products, being the keyboard for your Sony TV and a Sony PlayStation 3
• An assist button that makes it really easy to get support, get updates, and reinstall everything if needed

Sony Vaio Y-Series: The Bad

While it’s got great performance for its size, it can be noticed that you’re using a smaller computer. But it’s not really a fair fight between say a Sony Vaio Y-Series and a mobile workstation.  You do give up some performance by using a lighter, more energy saving system.  To be fair, you can’t really stick a 15 pound laptop with a 17-inch screen in your purse and carry it across a large airport, or carry it with you around a new city all day when you’re hanging out with your friends at BlogHer.

While connected to a HDTV through the HDMI cable, it stuttered on each episode of “Running Wilde” on Netflix streaming, getting choppy at the same time in each episode.  It would do this at about six minutes into the episode, and would continue for about two minutes.  The wireless network didn’t really seem slow overall, and I was able to stream in HD, so I can’t say why it was doing that.

The shift button on the keyboard is only a small square, which makes using the keyboard for normal typing very unpleasant.

I had a hard time finding the power button, which is tucked away on the side of the machine.  Out of the box, I tried to turn on the machine by pressing the Assist button.  As a result, the machine’s first boot was in a restore mode that was a bit off-putting.

Finally, it has no DVD drive.  Not having one saves space, battery, and weight, but it’s a pain to install programs that you’ve already bought, rip CDs, burn a DVD, or for that matter, play a DVD movie.  If you want to do that, you’ll need to connect an external drive.

Our Computer Guy Said…

Michael Simmons from I Love PowerShell is an IT professional with over 15 years experience helping people with their technology needs.  He gave this system a going-over and he had this to add.

Notes on the AMD processor:  I really like this processor.  I compare the AMD E-350 Processor to an Intel Atom Processor on steroids.  It is extremely power efficient, allowing a long battery life.  Additionally, it has dual cores so there’s no one program on your computer that can hog up the whole thing.  These systems have netbook prices with laptop performance.  They are great value systems, especially for the budget-minded.  They’re not supercomputers, but they are super computers!

This processor actually functions better in a different system I’ve reviewed.  The Sony Vaio Y-Series had a processor rating of 3.7, while this same processor on another system scored a 3.8.  One difference I noticed between those systems is that the Sony Vaio Y-Series shipped with the 32-bit version of Windows 7, while the other system had 64-bit.  Using the 32-bit version makes the system only see 3.5 GB of RAM, even though 4GB is installed.  It may be splitting hairs, but it should have shipped with the 64-bit version.

The scores mentioned here are from the Windows Experience Index (WEI). A Windows Experience Rating of 2 is sufficient for performing basic word processing and functionality.  A 3 or greater is required for running all the features of Windows 7, including the Aero interface. The highest score possible is 7.9, only achievable with the most advanced hardware.  The overall score of a system is the same as the lowest score for any component (instead of an average).  This system had an overall WEI score of 3.7.

Notes on the battery:  The battery on this system was really good.  I would expect a battery that lasts this long to add a lot of weight to the computer.  That just isn’t the case.  It was really surprising the that computer could get over 5 hours of battery life and still only weigh about 3 pounds.

I really didn’t have to baby the computer either.  I put it through its paces – I used the wireless, kept the screen bright, and kept the processor going.  It was working and still had great battery life.

It feels good being able to grab it up, take it with me out the door, and head to a coffee shop to get some writing done.  As long as I plan on being back home within 4 or 5 hours, I can even leave the charger at home.  I really like that.

Notes on the hardware overall:  I like the hardware that I’m working with here.  I don’t have any misconception that I’m working on some blazing fast system.  But really it is fast enough.  I have to say that I’m not much of a gamer anymore, but most games do not require as much processor as they do RAM, and even more than that – hard drive speed.  The hard disk had a very good speed (a Windows Experience score of 5.9) so I think that most games would play great on this machine.

Sometimes when working with the smaller 11.6 inch screen, I miss having a larger one.  That usually happens when I’m trying to put a browser and an Excel sheet both on it at the same time.  It does get a little cramped.

I sometimes miss not having a DVD player/burner, and I also miss having an Ethernet port built in.  Having a wireless only computer works most of the time, but I’ve been in some offices where plugging in was easy, but getting on the wireless is not. I understand it doesn’t have a lot of things that bigger, heavier laptops have.  It’s all a trade-off, and not having those components actually saves battery life, size, bulk, and money.

Notes on the bundled software:  Software that came on the machine included an EverNote client that allows you to quickly save clippings, browser screen shots, and notes from the computer to an online Evernote account (free).

The Microsoft Office Starter Edition is good enough to get by in a pinch.  It gives the basics that you need from Microsoft Word and Excel, and you can use it as long as you want to, as long as you don’t mind some advertising.  It does work, and it handles most of what I need – but I’m going to have to install the real Office because I can’t get by without Outlook.

Also worth mentioning is the webcam software, which includes a motion detection technology which can record for a few seconds (you can set how long) after it detects motion, and can even send you a snapshot from the recording to your email, and save a copy of the recording to a network server via FTP.  So even if the person being recorded stops it and removes the video from the computer, it’s still accessible to you on your network server.

Notes on the bizarre placement of the assist button: One bizarre thing is the placement of the “assist” button.  Pressing the assist button while the computer is on is really neat.  It takes you to a support page, where you can update your computer, get a lot of information about your computer, and quickly and easily connect with Sony Tech Support.

But it’s right where a power button should be.  Pressing the assist button while the computer is powered off makes the computer turn on, then automatically boot into a restoration utility where you’re just a couple of clicks away from wiping out all your data, and starting over with a fresh computer.   Seemed like a bad place for that button to be, and I hope people don’t wipe out their data.

Sony Vaio Y-Series: Take It or Leave It

Take It: I’d say a Sony Vaio Y-Series is a great choice for moms on the go because of its smart functionality coupled with its affordable price. It also makes a great computer for a teen or college student, or anyone else whose backpack is already heavy enough.

Disclaimer:  Disclosure about my relationship with AMD is here. 

I cried and asked my husband to pray.  My husband’s prayer mentioned that he always thought heaven looked like an Apple store, all white and pearly and serene. 

Now, today, at age 56, Apple founder Steve Jobs is dead.  Steve changed the world in so many ways that it’s hard to know where to even begin.  From personal computers to iPods, iPads, iPhones, he changed the way we think about technology and let it bring us closer together. 

And while I never met Steve Jobs, he changed my life and the world stage so much from his contributions that I can’t help but mourn his loss.  Will I have used my life for so much good and life-changing stuff-that-legacy-is-made-out-of that I can look back on my contributions like Steve Jobs can?  I can only aspire to live for the now, doing God’s work for what may be my short years, just like Steve.

Goodnight, Steve, and have a good rest.  The Lord said you’ll just be sleeping for a while, in that big Apple store in the sky.

Read more about Steve Jobs’ life and death here.   If you’d like to express your condolences, email them to rememberingsteve@apple.com.

Photo credit:  Danny Novo

Hurry and go get your copy of Guy Kawasaki’s The Macintosh Way for free. You can also get his 2nd and 4th books for free on the same page: Database 101 and The Computer Curmudgeon.

Thanks so much to Guy Kawasaki for emailing me this morning about this freebie. Here’s how to get your free copy of The Macintosh Way:

1. Go to the fan page.

2. In the left column, click on “Enchantment”.

3. Click on The Macintosh Way book cover to download the PDF.

4. Click on the  Database 101 book cover to download the PDF.

5. Click on The Computer Curmudgeon book cover to download the PDF.

These nuisance products often times do not relate to your blog or website’s topic at all.  Most of the time they are not even products you can use because they simply aren’t appropriate for your lifestyle or family.

What can You do with Unsolicited Review Products that Come in the Mail?

Option 1:  Review the product anyway, then keep it.

Option 2:  Review the product, then give it away.

Option 3:  Do a giveaway for the product.

Option 4:  Throw the item away.  Mail the company your form letter explaining that you do not accept unsolicited products.

Option 5:  Mail the product back to the PR firm or company that mailed it to you.  Include your form letter explaining that you do not accept unsolicited products.

I prefer to do lightning giveaways of unsolicited review products.  These are fast giveaways, usually lasting only 24 hours with a random drawing or accepting the 20th commenter as the winner.  The bottom line is that I will not have my staff or myself spending time to promote giveaways of products we didn’t agree to receive in the first place. 

We do not do a review or summary of the giveaway product in lightning reviews.  We simply link through to the Amazon listing (with an affiliate link, of course) and let the reader click through if they want to read more about it.

The above methods will free you of any awkward obligation you may feel after receiving unsolicited review products in the postal mail.  To lower the chances of receiving unwanted review items, remove your mailing address from your website(s) and set your WHOIS domain registration to private through your domain registrar (GoDaddy, Sites and Web Hosting, Host Monster, etc.).

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Let’s specify that at BlogHer I took my LG Quantum Windows Phone.  I have also used my husband’s Samsung Focus Windows Phone, but mostly the review will be based on the LG Quantum.  Without further ado, let’s just jump into the nitty gritty.  Was my Windows Phone at BlogHer all it was cracked up to be?

Windows Phone: The Good

Favorite Features: My favorite feature on the LG Quantum Windows Phone is the slide-out qwerty keyboard and optional virtual keyboard. For someone with small fingers like I have, the hardware keyboard with physical buttons makes typing much faster and reduces the chance of typing errors.

From anywhere on your Windows Phone, you can press the windows start button to take you to the start screen. From anywhere on your Windows Phone, you can press the dedicated search button to open up your Bing search in a browser.

"Windows Phone’s People Hub truly is the Rolodex, phone book, contacts folder, and instant messenger replacement for our generation."

Battery life:  The battery life on my Windows Phone was amazing!  Our conference days started as early as 7am, and I would leave my hotel room with a fully charged cell phone.  Much to my surprise, when I would arrive back at the hotel room after the sessions (around 5:30pm) to call home, the phone would still have around half of its battery left.  I’d give it a few minutes of charging as I changed for my evening parties, then head out until around midnight. 

The Windows Phone had enough battery to last through an extended day, even though I used it a lot for photos and video.  I also run a white background on my start screen, which can cause extra battery drain in some cases, but did not seem to be a problem for my Windows Phone.

Camera roll:  The camera roll on the Windows Phone is handy in that it’s easy to access your pictures with a quick left or right scroll as soon as you take a photo.  This is not the case on all smart phones.

Video quality:  The video quality on the Windows Phone was surprisingly good for a built-in cell phone video camera.  It doesn’t shoot the same caliber of video as my Flip HD, of course, but it can eliminate your need for carrying a separate video camera for everyday use.

People Hub: The People Hub on the start screen of the Windows Phone is an essential tool for both business and personal life.  I constantly saw people in the Hub that I wanted to look for or meet up with while I was at the conference. It was indeed a command central for phone calls and texts to my family while I was away. I love that pulling up a person in the People Hub shows you the different ways to get ahold of them all in one place. Windows Phone’s People Hub truly is the Rolodex, phone book, contacts folder, and instant messenger replacement for our generation.

While we’re on the subject of the People Hub, let’s talk a little bit more about the features that make it so useful.  As soon as you open the People Hub, you’ll see a +, which is the way you add new contacts.  You can fill in their name, phone, e-mail, add a photo, or link up to their with Windows Live accounts for more information.  You can even set a special ringtone for different people so that you know who is calling before you look at the phone! 

In the “other” field you can add all kinds of tidbits about people you want to remember, such as their birthday, their husband’s or children’s names, their website, or special notes (like interesting stories that came up during an impromptu elevator conversation!).  Like I said, the contact information you can add to each person is truly comprehensive in Windows Phone.

If you’re very connected in social media, you may have a large number of people pre-populated into your People Hub.  In my case, when I open the People Hub, I have thousands of people to scroll through in order to find the individual I’m looking for. 

A nice way to navigate this if you have a lot of contacts is to use the slide-out keyboard and start typing in the letters of the name you’re looking for.  Chances are, with only one or two letters it will get you much closer to the part of the list are looking for, at which point you can just scroll a little way further and double click on the person.

Also, when you open up People Hub, the first thing it shows up at the top of the page is your own picture with your last update on Facebook.  It also shows what networks you have included on your profile (in my case it shows  Windows Live and Facebook). 

Plus, People Hub is getting ready to get upgraded with even more exciting features when Mango is rolled out by your cell phone carrier.  Mango is the next version of Windows Phone, and I’m told it will be bringing the ability to tweet from the People Hub.  Mango is also releasing something called Groups, so that you can add people to a specific group, pin the group to your start screen, and use it as a micro People Hub.

Surprising Windows Phone Bonuses: I Didn’t Plan to Do This!

In the Open Mic Salon, where attendees entered their favorite post into a pool to be selected to read on stage, they had a last minute technology fail with their printers. Speakers could not get their posts printed out to take on the stage to speak! Luckily for me, when my time came to go on stage and there was nothing coming out of the printer, I had to think quickly. As I was called to speak on stage, the Windows Phone was my last-minute savior. I simply pulled up the web page in my browser, enlarged it so that I could read the tiny words at the podium, and delivered a wonderful performance.

Windows Phone: The Bad

Facebook integration: While I loved the Facebook integration for being able to directly upload photos right from the phone, I encountered problems with it. I tested out this feature the first night of BlogHer at Evening at the Expo. I used my Windows Phone to take pictures of the events and special guests and upload them directly to Facebook in real time. Each time I uploaded a new picture, I reveled in how productive I could be with only 1 small gadget in my purse!

"Windows Phone gave me access to the world with a connectivity and versatility that I’ve really never known before from a cell phone."

However, later that evening I checked Facebook, discovering that only 9 photos from the entire 2 hours had actually made it from the Windows Phone to Facebook. The worst part is that I never received an error message while uploading any of the photos. As far as I could tell, each upload was a success and I just kept snapping photos and uploading, even though they really weren’t going anywhere.

Camera quality: My chief complaint about the Windows Phone is that the camera is unreliable and the photo quality is poor.  To make sure that the problem with the camera was not just hardware related and specific to the LG Quantum Windows Phone, I also tried out the camera on my husband’s Samsung Focus Windows Phone.

Unfortunately, the cameras on both phones were equally unreliable.  Of all the pictures I took, about 50% of the pictures were great, and the other 50% were so bad that they were unusable.  When I describe the pictures as bad, I mean that they were unclear, blurred, and out of focus.

The unreliability of the camera was something that really hurt my experience with the Windows Phone at BlogHer.  Many of the photos that I needed to take were quick shots of people disappearing into crowds that needed to be captured right away.  In cases like that, I only had one chance to take the picture that I needed.  If that was one of the times that the Windows Phone camera delivered an out of focus photo, I didn’t have an opportunity to try again.  My moment had passed and unfortunately, for most of those misses, my perfect photo opp was gone forever.

Luckily, it’s very hard for me to leave home and not be prepared with a backup plan!  With that being the case, I took my point and shoot digital camera with me to San Diego as an emergency backup to the Windows Phone camera.  I was hoping that I would not have to switch to it, but after viewing the photos that I took from the first day of the conference and seeing the number of photos that were ruined, my only choice was to switch to my traditional digital camera.

My hope is that with the Mango update coming to Windows Phone the camera quality issues will be addressed.

How I Used the Windows Phone at BlogHer

Before I left for BlogHer, I made a giant list of the things I planned to use my Windows Phone for at the conference.  Now, I’m going through the list to see exactly what worked, what didn’t, and what I just didn’t have the opportunity to use as much as I originally thought.

"As I was called to speak on stage, the Windows Phone was my last-minute savior. I simply pulled up the web page in my browser… and delivered a wonderful performance."

1. Take quick pictures and video: The Windows Phone has a quick camera button on the side so that you can quickly switch to camera or video camera, even if you’re doing something else.  The dedicated camera button was indispensible as I caught opportune shots when there wasn’t time to dig out a larger digital camera. 

The perfect example of this was capturing fashion don’ts for our column; there were several moments during which I had only seconds to snap a picture of an individual before they would disappear in the crowd and I may never see them again.  However, as I mentioned above in the camera quality section, a lot of those quick opportunity photos did not turn out.

It was very handy to be able to switch between camera and video camera on the same screen with just the touch of a button.  I found myself using video more often than I normally do, simply because it was accessible.

2. Post updates to Facebook and Twitter: Not being able to send updates to both Facebook and twitter from one screen was a real inconvenience.  Once I was in the twitter app’s screen, I didn’t have time after every tweet to get out and post the same update to Facebook.  This meant that as I live-tweeted sessions, the same information was not also broadcast on Facebook.

3. Manage my email inbox without being “out of office”: Having all of my e-mail accounts accessible right from the start screen of my Windows Phone was a lifesaver!  I can’t imagine how I would have gotten through the weekend without the constant access to my e-mail on the Windows Phone.  Waiting until I got back to my hotel room after sessions and evening activities would have meant spending hours sifting through hundreds of emails and hoping that I hadn’t missed anything that was time sensitive.

There was also an instance where having the e-mail accessible from my Windows Phone saved me a long walk from a party back to the hotel.  My contact information for an event that I was supposed to attend at the Hard Rock Hotel was not complete, and I couldn’t remember the name of the contact person I was supposed to be meeting!  It was looking like I was going to have to walk all the way from the venue back to my hotel, fire up my laptop and open Outlook to find the e-mail with the woman’s name and cell phone number. 

Instead of wasting all that time, I simply opened up my e-mail from the tile on the start screen of my Windows Phone and quickly scrolled to the message that had the information I needed.  I was able to get access to the venue and find the person I was supposed to be meeting, all thanks to my Windows Phone!

4. Check the weather before I leave my hotel room: My weather and clock app wasn’t as useful as I thought it would be in San Diego; the weather appears to be the same everyday there all year long!

5. Check in for my flights from my mobile phone. I did check in for my flights from my Windows Phone and it worked like a charm.

6. Carry pics of my sweet babies: I didn’t have to carry my mini photo album with pictures of my family to San Diego.  I was able to use the camera roll, the Facebook photos, and the wallpaper to bring along all the pictures I had time to look at.

7. Get directions to private parties at nearby hotels and restaurants.  The maps feature is truly spectacular.  With Windows Phone’s maps feature, it’s quite possible that you will never get lost again!  With the maps feature, the phone automatically detects where you are.  Next, you put in the address you would like to go to, and the Windows Phone gives you directions, step by step, on how to get there.

8. Most importantly: BLOG! I’ve heard that the WordPress app for Windows Phone is really good, but unfortunately I didn’t have time to use it while I was at BlogHer.  For the sessions in which I was live blogging, I brought my Mini laptop with me so that I could use LiveWriter (my program of choice) for blogging.

Windows Phone: Take It or Leave It

Windows Phone comes with my high recommendation as a Must-Have Cell Phone of 2011.  I intended to test it out as a tiny, portable, always-available virtual assistant who can handle anything I needed to do while I was traveling.  I discovered that Windows Phone really can take over the role of a virtual assistant for busy professionals on the go.  Many of the things I’d have to ask my assistant to do for me, I can now do for myself in less time than it would take to assign it to someone else. 

The Windows Phone freed up space for me as I traveled, since I was able to leave an extra video camera, photo album, my Bible, books to read on the plane, calculator, and mp3 player at home.  The Windows Phone was really able to hold all those items inside of it while it gave me access to the world with a connectivity and versatility that I’ve really never known before from a cell phone.

Since the Windows Phone is such a great gadget, I’m excited to announce that I’ll be giving one away in our next big giveaway!  Stay tuned for details on how to enter.  Remember, if you’re the lucky winner, nothing says you have to give it to your teen going back to school, your college kid moving away from home, or your spouse who travels a lot.  You could always keep it for yourself and find out all the things it can do for you!

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Disclaimer: In compliance with the FTC Guides, this article has material connections. IS World Media (ISWM received fees for the writing or publication. This article is an informative public relations post about Microsoft’s Windows Phone. Danelle Ice has a compensated relationship with Microsoft. Windows Phone logos were used with permission by Microsoft.

Oh, they were good too…  Hershey’s made a really cool retreat complete with a fire pit to roast marshmallows over.  I wish I’d had more time to spend at their suite.

Disclosure: I received a Hershey’s carrying bag from the Hershey’s suite as a free gift but was not compensated for posting these photos.  Get more Wordless Wednesday at WordlessWednesday.com and 5 Minutes 4 Mom.

For all of us bloggers, this question is key, especially since we have limited time in which to promote our blogs and find new readers to broaden our audiences.  A new study by Outbrain has discovered the answer to our questions:

“If the study’s validity is intact, the main lesson from Outbrain’s findings is social media sites do not drive traffic like content sites and search engines do, and it’s not even close. That means that, while all those retweets are nice to see, apparently, few people are clicking the actual link embedded within the tweeted message. The study also sheds doubt on just how effective social media marketing campaigns are. Sure, things are good if it’s part of a current trend, but if not, no traffic for you, apparently.

The same, according to the study, is true for all those Facebook shares, as well. People evidently only react to the subject line, and not the content contained within, or that’s being promoted.”

Just have to know more?  Read the rest of this study’s surprising findings.

Disclosure about my relationship with AMD is here. 

“But I don’t really need a smaller/newer/better laptop.  I only need  my computer to check email, get on facebook, update my Quicken, find dinner recipes that my teens can follow, watch a movie on Netflix…”, you say.

I know.  I hear you.  We all think we only need our computer for just a few things, then when we buy a new one that’s underpowered and can’t do the things we need it to do, we feel let down.  Realistically, moms and other family managers are in a group of power users all their own.  We need so many different varied functions from our computers that they become extensions of us that help us keep our lives together.  Our portable computing needs are many: we need a computer that can not only move to different parts of the house, but also in the vehicle, at summer camp, on vacation, in airplanes, at the playground, and on and on and on… 

This perfect laptop has to be small enough and light enough to fit in a purse, but still big enough to have a keyboard that’s comfortable.  It needs enough power to stream movies online and be able to last a long time without being plugged in.  I put the HP dm1z to the test to see if it fit my “wanted list” and could possibly be the new “it” computer for busy moms.  Is this the perfect machine for sending your kids back to school?  Keep reading my HP Pavilion dm1z review to see if it’s right for you or your kids.

HP Pavilion dm1z: The Good

I love the small size of this laptop and the weight (3.52 pounds), which combined make it easy to carry in a purse or even a diaper bag.  The HP dm1z runs tweetdeck and a browser at the same time, something that shamefully, a lot of netbooks don’t do well.

This machine comes with a starter price of $399 from the HP website, which makes for a very affordable upgrade for mom or a new machine for an older school-aged child.  Plus:

• Up to 9.5 hours of battery life
• Built in webcam so you can video chat with your college kids away from home
• 3 USB ports (enough for a mouse, full-sized keyboard and a cord to download photos from your camera at the same time)
• HDMI out (so you can hook up your laptop to the TV and watch Hulu or Netflix on a bigger screen)
• QuickWeb allows you to boot up the machine fast when you’re in a hurry, without having to wait for Windows to load

HP Pavilion dm1z: The Bad

The HP dm1z laptop takes a while to wake up and respond, even when it hasn’t been set to hibernate mode. 

The touch pad also has a rather obnoxious setting (which I can’t find the proper place to turn off) which causes the pointer to keep rolling after you have stopped moving your finger.  I found this feature annoying and it made it very hard to work with.  I’m sure there is an easy way to disable the feature if you know where to look.

The machine stood up to my Hulu test, but did have a little trouble.  I like to stream television from Hulu and prefer a tiny machine, like the HP dm1z, to use as a media machine.  That allows me to move it from living room (for the kids) to bedroom (for mom and dad) whenever I need to without a big production of moving a heavy laptop.  While the HP dm1z could stream, it took a few breaks to buffer and had a few choppy times when the playback skipped and sputtered.

Like most itty bitty laptops, the HP dm1z has no internal DVD or CD drive.  You’d better plan on buying a separate external drive to bring out when needed, like for loading new software from discs or playing DVDs.

So that’s a busy mom’s take on the HP Pavilion dm1z, but what about our computer guy?  I wondered if his opinion of the machine would coincide with mine.

Our resident tech expert is Michael Simmons, a scripting genius from ILovePowerShell.com who knows his way around computers!  We asked him to rate the technical specifics of the HP Pavilion dm1z with a dual core AMD 1.6 GHz processor and 1MB L2 cache and see what he thought.  He gave us a glowing review and admitted that this tiny laptop blew his expectations away with not only computing power, but battery life as well.

AMD Processor

“The AMD dual core processor is a lower powered alternative to the Intel I series. According to the Windows Experience Index, it scores a 3.8, which is the lowest of the five scores. This being the lowest of the scores is actually very good for a netbook.

“A Windows Experience Rating of 2 is sufficient for performing basic word processing and functionality. A 3 or greater is required for running all the features of Windows 7, including the Aero interface. The ideal processor for what I’m wanting is a lightweight system that does basic functions, can play games, and can make it longer than my last laptop could on a single charge.

Battery

“I hoped for more than 2 hours of really using it.  The battery was doing great, right out of the box. I did use quite a bit of the processor, because as I was using Office Live through a web browser, that takes more CPU than normal web browsing.

“That being the case, I was happy to see that even using the HP Pavilion dm1z laptop with everything on – leaving the default theme with its nice bright colors on the desktop (I usually use a solid black desktop background to save battery life), wireless network on (I usually turn it off to save battery life), and leaving the display at full brightness (I usually use it very dim to save battery) – I still got 4 hours of battery life without being plugged in.

“This long battery life seems to have as much to do with the processor as the battery. Overall, the battery life of this computer is great. It combines the battery life of a netbook with the display of a laptop. As I played with turning down some of the battery draining features, including the wireless, the running applications, and dimming the display, I saw the timer counting down the remaining battery life to peak at around 8 hours, even though there was only 75% remaining.

Blasting Through Misconceptions

“I really thought I’d be sacrificing to switch to a smaller laptop. I thought I’d miss the 15 inch display. I really don’t. I had it in my head that I’d be stuck on a netbook display that was about 10 inches or less. Instead, I find the 11.6 inch display to be large enough to not feel like I’ve had to compromise.

“I thought the slower processor would be sluggish. To be honest, I do see a small stutter occasionally. It’s not bad, but it is there. Would I trade the battery life to get rid of the stutter? Maybe a little bit. The battery life, as advertised, can last up to 9.5 hours. I wouldn’t mind a little bit more L2 Cache.

Software

“As a computer guy, I’ve gotten into a very common habit when I get a new computer. The first thing I do is remove most of the software that ships with it.  There’s usually software that I don’t use and it just takes up space and resources when it’s set to start automatically. I decided to check out all the included software and do my best to use it.

“The HP dm1z had some software that I immediately liked. The first I’ll mention is Fences Pro, a desktop organization software from Stardock. I was really excited to try this, because I’ve liked some of their other programs before. Using Fences, you see groups of icons on the desktop. Not only that, but it actually extends your desktop real estate because you may have 20 icons in a small "fence" called "Internet Favorites".  Scroll bars make it easy to find the rest of your favorites and you can have multiple fences. All said, you can now have hundreds of icons and shortcuts on your desktop, and they are all easy to find.

“The official HP software includes HP CloudDrive, their cloud-based file system.  They start you with 2GB free, which is rather paltry considering Skydrive has 5GB free, and Amazon has 5GB free plus doesn’t count any music you buy from them.

“Finally, the Instant Web OS, QuickWeb. This isn’t Windows. I love Windows, and I spend my day in Windows most of the time. However, this starts within 2 seconds, and gives you access to a web browser, email, Skype, Instant Messenger (most flavors), calendar, photos, music, and games. It didn’t take any effort to set it up. Once you’re in QuickWeb, you can still browse even advanced websites like Office Web Apps.

“The HP Pavilion dm1z has become a real favorite of mine. It is so light and easy to carry around, it’s a nice change of pace. It looks so small in my computer backpack because my last computer was so big and heavy I have a lot more room for books and everything else.

“I also love the Office Starter edition that it comes with. Office starter is a pared down version of Word and Excel – the two parts of Microsoft Office that I use the most, and the two parts that I would be at a loss without. Even getting by with the Office Web Apps is ok, but I really like having the word processor on the computer. Office Starter is not a trial, it doesn’t go away. Instead, it is slightly limited in functionality (for instance, it doesn’t have “full screen reading mode” and has an advertisement to buy a bigger version of Office on the right hand side. It gives me the basics that I need, without having to shell out extra money for it.

“The touchpad was causing me some problems for a while, but after I watched the video tutorial that came with it, I was amazed at what the touchpad could do – multi-touch gestures, a gliding mouse cursor that you can “throw” by moving your finger quickly, and quick-scroll features so that you can click and scroll easily. The touchpad also has a “palm filter” built in, so that it can filter out the inadvertent light touches that mess up your cursor when you’re typing. I had to move the filter up one setting so that it filtered out when my thumb brushed against it while typing. It even has a spot you can double-click the touchpad so you can turn it off.”

“Feature rich for a low-priced laptop, this is easily your coffee-shop, novel-writing, stuck in a library with no outlet, fun machine. It’s not the most powerful laptop you can work on (I won’t be loading up Visual Studio on it), but it will run Word, Internet Explorer, Skype, Tweetdeck, and everything else that most busy moms use. Perfect screen size, weight, and good features – including a battery that goes and goes – make the HP dm1z a really nice laptop. It’s much nicer than I thought it would be. I’m happily surprised and impressed.” – Michael Simmons

HP Pavilion dm1z: Take It or Leave It

Take It: I’d say the HP dm1z is a great choice for busy moms on the go because of its smart functionality coupled with its affordable price.

I give a strong recommendation on this small laptop for back to school. High school and college students will find the HP dm1z light and portable, easy to fit into a backpack, and lasting long without access to outlets. Parents buying this machine for students will appreciate the low price that comes with the total package, as well as the availability of LoJack (in case it gets stolen).

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Disclaimer:  In compliance with the FTC Guides, updated 10/5/09, this article has material connections.  IS World Media (ISWM) received no fees for the writing or publication of this article.  An HP Pavilion dm1z laptop was provided to ISWM at no cost by AMD to facilitate the review process.

Proctor and Gamble (P&G) built an entire house inside the expo hall, as did Lowe’s.  Swiffer had the set of their famous “Dirt Guy” commercials, complete with a giant keyboard.  Here I am with the Swiffer Dirt Guy:

I tell you truthfully, the dirt suit he was wearing was so static-filled and matted that it stuck to my hair (even my arm hairs) and I had to pull myself off of it! 

The next truly oversized prop was Charmin’s giant toilet.  Now normally, I wouldn’t let anyone photograph me sitting on a prop like this, but the sheer size of it made it too funny to pass up.  Plus, I knew my kids would really love Charmin’s giant toilet.  Here I am (after climbing up on with the help of a stepstool):

There are plenty more photos, videos and stories to share from the blogging conference, BlogHer 2011.  Stay tuned and remember to subscribe for free to get our updates delivered to your email or RSS feed reader every day.  Larger Than Life Props is linked to Wordless Wednesday at WordlessWednesday.com and 5 Minutes 4 Mom.

I could barely reach the top of his shoulder on the cardboard cutout for the photo.  This is just another reminder of exactly how short I am – and that moms are just as crazy for cardboard standees as our kids are!  Oh, the simple pleasures in life (and quick and easy success for PR companies everywhere).  Did I mention they gave me a $5 off coupon for Brawny paper towels?  They really know the way to a frugal mom’s heart!

1. BlogHer 2011 Notes: Creating Digital Products for Your Blog
   1. "What you call your e-product has a lot to do with what people are willing to pay."
   2. Different types of e-products: pdf, coaching, worksheets, etc. (anything you can package (expertise, info))
      1. E-courses (check out Thecreativeempire.net)
      2. Teleseminars
      3. eMail only
      4. Subscription services
      5. Buy a product, 31 daily prompts emailed to you
      6. Monthly subscription, get an email once a week
   3. Reasons to create digital products
      1. Create more content for readers
      2. Make more income
      3. Establish yourself as an authority / expert
   4. Find your format based on the content you already have, your mission
   5. Find out what your audience wants, what your readers ask for more of
      1. Email commenters and ask what they want/need
      2. Have a conversation with your readers
      3. Use a survey to get info
         1. Survey methods to use
            1. SurveyMonkey
            2. from your blog
            3. use a Google form
         2. Use conversational form in your questions, like you are talking to a friend
         3. Common questions to ask
            1. What do you want to ask me?
            2. What’s wrong?
            3. What’s the biggest challenge you’re facing in your life?
   6. "Think about your readers as customers"
   7. Look back through comments and note the questions/conversation trends
      1. Visit blogs/twitters from commenters and find out your demographic
      2. You can still make a full-time living by selling digital products if you only convert 5-7% of your readers
   8. Barriers to creating digital products
      1. Don’t want to appear "sales-y"
      2. Keeping your voice small – not sharing your expertise
   9. "High quality, graceful marketing"
      1. Write a blog post or newsletter article about why you’re thinking about creating a digital product
      2. "Create a separate email list for this product"
         1. Constant contact, aweber, mailchimp
      3. Free calls
         1. Maestro conference, audio acrobat
      4. Tweetchat
      5. Guest posts, interviews at other blogs

Disclaimer:  In compliance with the FTC Guides, updated 10/5/09, this article has material connections.  IS World Media (ISWM) received fees for the writing or publication.  This article is an informative public relations post about Microsoft’s Windows Phone.  Danelle Ice has a compensated relationship with Microsoft.  Windows Phone logos were used with permission by Microsoft.

This week marks a whirlwind of preparation, travel and networking for bloggers across the North American continent.  The occasion is BlogHer 2011, one of the largest blogging conferences in the world!  I’ll be flying to San Diego for BlogHer11 tomorrow morning and you’ll be able to keep up to speed on the speakers, tips, parties, and brands through my updates on twitter and on HomeEverAfter.com. 

I’m also excited to scale down my technology for this trip to smaller and more powerful pieces to lighten my load.  1 of the items I’m taking to BlogHer which will enable me to get it all done is my Windows Phone.  Did I mention I’ll be giving away a Windows Phone to a lucky reader when I get back from BlogHer?  Keep reading to find out more!

My Long Road to Windows Phone

Being a somewhat-early adopter for new technologies and gadgets, it is surprising to even me that I went so long without a smart phone.  Would you believe that I only purchased my Windows Phone a few months ago?  Before that, the only cell phones I owned were strictly for talking (not even texting)!  When I traveled I would take my husband’s cell phone (a BlackBerry at the time) along so that I could use email and twitter while I was away from home.

I finally realized how ridiculous it was for me to be borrowing my husband’s phone and was ready to commit to having a smart phone of my own.  However, the next problem was that I just couldn’t give up the use of my Windows products (particularly Office) on my phone.  That made up my decision pretty quickly about what kind of phone I’d be getting: I’d be waiting for the “new” Windows Phones to come out!

That brings us to present day. Even though I have my Windows Phone now, I’m so busy that I’ve not had  time to explore its features and set it up with all the apps which would turn it into my custom tech power tool.  That is, until now.

I’ve teamed up with Microsoft to bring my Windows Phone with me to BlogHer11 in San Diego this week!  I’ll be testing it’s capabilities and pushing them to the max to see if such a small gadget as the Windows Phone can really be the centralized powerhouse I need for managing my personal and professional life.   Can I run our publishing network (IS World Media) from mobile with my Windows Phone?  I’m ready to find out!

Windows Phone – My New Virtual Assistant for BlogHer

Other bloggers heading to BlogHer know how busy and fast-paced everything is a blog conferences.  There are so many things we want to do in such a short period of time, and most of them are happening in different places.  Let’s not forget about all the online friends and professional contacts we want to meet up with in person.  Throw in the fact that we’re also exploring a new city with its own destinations and site-seeing attractions, and the logistics of doing it all at BlogHer might seem unrealistic.

What we all need for BlogHer is a virtual assistant: someone to manage our schedules, meet up with other bloggers at the conference, live-blog the tracks we’re attending, and send updates to readers on Facebook and followers on Twitter.  What if the virtual assistant didn’t have to be a person?  What if the most perfect virtual assistant to manage your business and personal life at BlogHer was small enough to fit in your pocket and never took  the day off?

That’s right, I’m going to use the Windows Phone to be my BlogHer virtual assistant for a weekend and see if it’s up to the job.  Do you want to read along and find out how I do?

What Can Windows Phone Do for Me?

When I plan to test something out, I push it to the limit.  Can I record videos and upload them directly to YouTube from Windows Phone?  I’ll find out.  Can I find tons of free apps for Windows Phone?  I’ll find out.  Here’s what I’m intending to take care of at BlogHer, all from the comfort of my little Windows Phone.

1.  Take quick pictures and video:  I love that my Windows Phone has a camera button on the side so that, no matter what else I’m doing, I can hold in the button and quickly bring up the camera or video camera.  This also gets me out of carrying a separate video camera and regular camera with me to BlogHer.

2.  Post updates to Facebook: I want to keep readers up-to-date with what’s going on at the conference without getting bogged down to have to get to my laptop every time I need to share.

3.  Send tweets on Twitter:  I’m used to using TweetDeck as my social media console and I’m already missing its presence on Windows Phone.  Maybe I’ll find the Twitter app just as useful.

4.  Manage my calendar:  I have a detailed schedule and my itinerary puts me in 2-3 places at the same time.  Having my calendar and schedule on the Windows Phone will help me to stay focused and not miss appointments.

5.  Manage my email inbox without being “out of office”:  Nobody wants to come home from a conference (or vacation) to thousands of unread emails.  I’ll be able to read, delete, and respond to emails from my Windows Phone while I’m out of the office.

6.  Find my people!  I love the People hub and the fact that you can track down friends / coworkers at huge events like BlogHer by reading their updates and messaging them from one place.

7.  Search Bing for restaurants and local attractions: I’m told that Bing is smart with phone searches… I wonder if it can look up which restaurants are in my section of the airport while I’m traveling?

8.  Check the weather before I leave my hotel room: I installed the free app Weather & Clock.  This should be able to tell me what to where before I venture out.

9.  Check in for my flights from my mobile phone.

10.  Carry pics of my sweet babies:  I usually carry a wallet-sized photo album with me when I travel to keep photos of my family near.  Now I can upload them to my Windows Phone and leave the photo album at home!

11.  Check in with Foursquare:  Yes, the Windows Phone Foursquare app is free!

12.  Get directions to private parties at nearby hotels and restaurants.

13.  Most importantly: BLOG! 

I can’t wait to get going and have a fantastically (busy) weekend at BlogHer!  Make sure you follow along with my updates throughout the conference and stay tuned to read how you can win a Windows Phone of your own after the conference is over!

–

Disclaimer:  In compliance with the FTC Guides, updated 10/5/09, this article has material connections.  IS World Media (ISWM) received fees for the writing or publication.  This article is an informative public relations post about Microsoft’s Windows Phone.  Danelle Ice has a compensated relationship with Microsoft.  Windows Phone logos were used with permission by Microsoft.

As bloggers and women, we all want to look our best when we go to network and meet up in real life with people we’ve only interacted with online.  We’ve developed a countdown to BlogHer conference makeover timeline that you can follow to ensure you’re looking your very best before August 4th! 

What is Included in the Countdown to BlogHer Beauty Makeover?

Things that might need to be addressed in your complete Countdown to BlogHer 2011 Conference Beauty Makeover:

Hair color, cut and style:  Going for a brave new you with a completely different hair cut, color or style is not something you want to jump into the week before the conference.  The hair overhaul should be done at least 6 weeks before you leave for the conference.  That way, if you don’t like the style, it will have time to grow out a bit. 

Also, the 6 week time frame lets you test out a new color without risk.  If you like the new color, you can get your roots touched up a few days before your plane leaves.

Diet and exercise:  Whether you need to lose the last few pounds to fit into a special dress for one of the official BlogHer parties or want to do a complete overhaul and lose a lot of weight, you’ll need to consult your doctor first.  Have your doctor okay the diet and exercise plan you want to use. 

Healthy looking skin: If you haven’t been treating your skin nicely or paying much attention to your skincare regimen, there is still time to get your face into tip-top shape!  Never get a professional facial (which can bring out blemishes, breakouts, and even allergic reactions to the products used) during the final week before the conference. 

If you choose to have a professional give you a facial (Mary Kay consultant or salon), plan it at least a month before the conference.  This will give you an opportunity to use the new facial products the facialist recommends for your skin type and give them a chance to show results.

Healthy nails:  For many of us moms, growing and keeping beautiful nails is a challenge with kid care and frequent hand washing.  A little attention to upkeep and maintenance will give you fabulous nails in time for BlogHer!

White smile:  Teeth whitening is easier and more affordable than ever before!  There’s no reason not to show off a bright white smile in your BlogHer photos.

Choosing the perfect outfits: For many of us, wardrobe is an important part of the BlogHer conference experience!  If you don’t have anything in your closet you’d like to wear, it’s time to start shopping.  Shop early so that you have a chance to look for sales or free shipping deals from your favorite clothing stores. 

If you’re starting a diet and exercise plan also, take into account that you may be a few sizes smaller by the time the BlogHer conference rolls around.  Don’t buy too small of a size, in case you don’t make your weight loss goals.  It’s still easy to have a loose garment taken in with a few quick alterations.

Daily

• Skin care every morning and every night.  Cleanse, tone, and moisturize twice a day.  Use eye cream before bed.
• Drink at least 8 8-oz. glasses of water to keep your skin hydrated and moisturized.
• Massage cuticle cream or oil into your nails before bed.

Weekly

• Give yourself a mini-facial at home by using a facial mask after cleansing.
• Do a foot soak while you shower by filling up the bath tub.  Use a loofah or pumice stone to remove dead skin.  After you get out of the shower, apply a heavy foot moisturizer and socks immediately to lock in the hydration.
• Deep condition your hair to add moisture and shine and help repair split ends or damage.

Every Two Weeks

• Do a quick manicure and pedicure by removing polish, pushing back cuticles, then applying base coat, 1 coat of a light color, and top coat.

3 Months Before

• Start a diet and exercise plan.  Make a doctor appointment to get approval for your new plan.
• Remove the junk food from the house and go shopping for healthy ingredients.
• Make up an exercise schedule, listing which activities you will do on which days of the week.  This could be from 3-5 days per week, depending on your weight loss and fitness goals.

6 Weeks

• Make an appointment with a salon for a hair cut, color, and/or new style.

1 Month Before

• Make an appointment for a facial.  Purchase new facial products (cleanser, toner, mask, moisturizer, eye cream, etc.) for your skin type.
• Try on outfits you’ll be wearing to BlogHer.  Choose all accessories for each outfit, including shoes.
• If you need to purchase outfits or specific pieces, start shopping.
• Break in new shoes by wearing them around the house for 1 hour per day with socks on.

2 Weeks Before

• Make an appointment for any hair removal or hair bleaching you need.  This includes eyebrows, upper lip, legs, and bikini area (if you plan to be sporting a swimsuit at the hotel swimming pool!).
• Do an at-home microdermabrasion treatment on your facial skin or use a facial scrub (such as a natural apricot scrub) to remove the top layers of old skin and reveal new younger looking skin.  Follow this treatment with a heavy moisturizer or night cream.
• Whiten your teeth.  Depending on which teeth whitening product you choose, it could take 2 weeks or 2 hours to complete.  Make sure you start early enough to give your teeth time to recover in case of sensitivity.

1 Week Before

• Make an appointment with the same hairstylist to touch up your roots or give you a trim for your new hairstyle.
• Try on all outfits you’ll be wearing at BlogHer and make note of necessary alterations.  Make the alterations yourself or drop off your clothing at the tailor.

3 Days Before

• Pick up clothing from the tailor.  Make sure you try on the items before you leave the tailor’s to make sure they fit correctly.

1 Day Before

• Have an at-home steam in your bathroom (to add moisture to skin, hair and nails).  Turn the shower onto hot and close the bathroom door.  Allow steam to fill up the room, then sit in the steam for as long as you are comfortable.
• Give yourself a full manicure and pedicure.  Include a hand and foot scrub before doing your nails with 2 coats of color.
• Take a shower and deep condition your hair. 
• Apply scented moisturizer after showering.  Follow up with a body spray of the matching scent.
• Before bed, spritz your hair and pillow case with your favorite perfume.

Have a great trip to BlogHer 2011 in San Diego!

I’ve talked before about why I do 3 sentence email replies as much as possible (How to Get Your Email Inbox Under Control).  Now don’t get me wrong- I’m not saying that every email should be a to-the-point 3 sentence reply with no personality or flavor.  However, you may be wasting your time writing emails that never get read.  Here’s a startling example.

How Many People Read Your Last Email?

My husband, Michael, attends a small group at our church and each week there is an email reminder sent out to the attendees by Mrs. M.  Michael told me that the emails tend to be long – very long – and include stories, experiences, encouragement, and more. 

One snowy night, Michael showed up for the small group and observed to Mrs. M that there was a very small turn out.  Mrs. M jokingly said, “Maybe everyone read my email reminder and decided that they didn’t want to come tonight!”

Mrs. M then asked Michael what he thought of the email.  He had to confess that he hadn’t read it at all – he just saw the subject line and went on to the next message.  Then, trying to make her feel better, he said that sometimes he reads them.  She seemed surprised and turned to another man involved in the conversation.

“Well, did you read it?” she asked him seriously.

“No, I never do,” he replied.   “I just read the subject line and trash them.”   

Needless to say, Mrs. M was shocked (as evidenced by the speechless dumbfounded expression she donned) and probably wondering just how many people DID read her emails.  She probably spent a lot of time writing them and hoped they wouldn’t fall on deaf ears.  As it turns out, they weren’t falling on ANY ears!

When I asked Michael to look back through the old emails, he discovered that half were long, half were short.  Curious as to why he thought they were all long, I asked how he got that idea.  He said the first 2 out of 3 he got were long, and after that he just stopped reading them ALL.

What to Do if People Ignore Your Emails

1.  Admit you have a problem!  If you’re a compulsive long email writer, it’s time to look at your messages objectively.  Is everything you typed really necessary to get your point across?  Remember that everyone is just as busy as you are.  Writing an on-subject message is a way to respect the time of others.

2.  Stick to the subject.  Make sure you keep to only one subject per email – the one listed in the subject line.  If you’re sending out a reminder email, do the reminding and leave it at that.

3.  Ask people for honest feedback.  Go to some of the people you email and ask for their honest opinions of your emails.  If they admit to not reading them, ask why so you can make changes.  After all, you want your information to be read, that’s why you write it in the first place.

4.  Use an attention-getting subject line, followed by an attention-grabbing first line.  Is this an email that you couldn’t resist opening to find out what the writer is talking about?  In the words of Captain Picard, “Make it so.” 

5. Re-brand your emails.  If the problem is large (as in no one is reading your emails and the necessary information is never delivered), it’s time for a drastic rebranding.  It’s okay to poke fun at yourself to your audience just this once and admit you have a rambling problem!  Let them know that you intend to cut it down, then follow through on your commitment. If you relapse into long messages again, you know what will happen.

Have you had a problem with long-winded, rambling emails?  How did you get back on track?  Let us know in the comments.

It’s 2011, and everyone is either on Twitter, Facebook, or both.  Anyone not already using these social media networking tools will be soon, especially bloggers and mommy bloggers.  It’s important that people be able to identify you from your twitter or facebook avatar or icon.  Why?  A lot of people share common names, and you sure don’t want to be talking to someone you thought was someone else.

This brings us to a critical point of advice:  there are certain things you should NEVER use as your facebook or twitter avatar.  We’ve put together the 27 worst twitter avatars.  I’m pretty sure people talking to you online or even having to see your updates in their social media streams would not find these avatars helpful to identifying you.

To all the professional bloggers and social media consultants out there – please remember that you will want to meet your online friends in real life at blog conferences, social media meet-ups, tweet-ups, etc.  Make sure people can recognize your face by using it online!  The best thing to use (even better than your company logo) is a picture of your own stunning face – in focus and smiling! 

We’ve combed twitter for examples of the 27 WORST possible avatars to compile this helpful, but scary, list of what people are capable of for avatar crimes.

Thanks to my husband’s pleading, I did not include links to every offender below (yes, these are all real avatars).  A few of them with links were just too good not to show.  Do you have more offending twitter avatars that people should never use?  List them / link them in the comments below!

The Top 27 Worst Twitter and Facebook Avatars

1.  Pic of your butt.  How can I recognize you in real life from a photo of your behind?

2.  Pic of your boobs.  You may think they’re real and they’re spectacular, but again – see #1 above.

3.  Pic of you shirtless.  I doubt there’s really been a time when you really didn’t have 2 seconds to put on a shirt before asking someone to take your profile photo.  Please – no one wants to see man-boobs.

4.  Pic of you with your grandma.  The key problem with this avatar is that most people won’t know which one is you: the grandma or the non-grandma.

5.  Pic of only your baby or kid.  You may have a beautiful child, but it’s you talking to other adults on your own account, remember?

6.  Pic of Justin Bieber.  I know half the world has Bieber fever, but the Biebs is the only one that should have his picture as their avatar.

7.  Photo of you wearing a hat that says, “I’m #1”.  Really, it’s like I tell my daughter, “If you have to tell people you’re #1 one, you’re probably not.”  And where did you get that hat in the first place?!

8.  Pic of you in pain.  Are you okay?  Why would you want to share this injury with the world?

9.  Pic of only your pants.  That’s right, pants only.  Not even on a person- just pants.  I don’t get it.

10.  Pic of a samurai cartoon.  Is your life long dream to become a samurai?  Or a cartoon, perhaps?  Why not a pic of you dressed up as a samurai?  That’s a happy medium.

11.  Pic of you making a fist.  There ought to be a law about 3rd degree assault on twitter by means of threatening fist pictures.

12.  Pic with only half of your head.  Is this your good side?

13.  Pic of you lying dead on the floor with a word bubble coming out of your mouth.  There are really no words to even heckle this avatar with.

14.  Twitter default avatar.  Nothing says, “lazy, noob, spammer, or witness protection program” like using the default twitter avatar of the not-so-attractive egg.

15.  Pic of your cat hissing.  or any LOL Catz for that matter.  I’m just saying.

16.  Pic of you making a mad face while aiming a camera down your shirt.  From my understanding, this must have been a hard shot to capture, including the use of many mirrors and a contortionist body to get the camera, the face, and the inside of the shirt into the finished product.

17.  Animated gif of you rubbing your butt.  No comment.

18.  Pic of a baseball card (unless it is you ON the baseball card).

19.  Pic of your chihuahua wearing a pink tutu.

20.  Pic of you hiding behind your own hand.  You did choose this picture, right?  The best one you have is where you were hiding from some unkind paparazzi snapping your photo?

21.  Pic of your knee.  Umm, why?

22.  A xeroxed pic of your face.  I guess in a pinch, if no one even has a smart phone with a camera in it, the Xerox machine would make a replica of your face (minus the smooshed against the glass part).  Of course, I doubt that was the case.

23.  Pic of the sky covered in question marks. 

24.  Pic of your breakfast.  It’s rude to make the social media world hungry every time you talk , you know?  And no company can take you seriously when you complain about their customer service on twitter while your photo is a plate of huevos rancheros.

25.  Pic of your cat scan or X-ray.  I don’t need to see this much of you, honestly.

26.  Pic of hideously ugly animal.

27.  The initials BM, even if those are the initials of your business name.

I know we’ve barely scratched the surface!  Which offending avatars have you seen?  Leave them below in the comments!  Top 27 Worst Twitter and Facebook Avatars is linked to Works for Me Wednesday.

If you’re not following me yet in the social media world, please do!

• Follow me on Twitter @HomeEverAfter or @DanelleIce.
• Here I am on Facebook.
• Here’s where you can find me in other social media sites.

The good news is that there are plenty of probloggers you can model as you learn to cultivate your thick skin, and plenty of support from bloggers who have been there and experienced the downside (myself included). Here’s a quick excerpt from the article The Responsibility of Being a Blogger:

• “As a blogger, you are now a public figure. 
• People will expect more from you than they do of themselves or their friends. 
• People will feel you owe them explanations for your actions, blog posts, even the choices you make in your personal life.
• People will say negative things sometimes.  Never believe what people say about you. YOU decide what you are, no one else has that right.”

Read the rest of The Responsibility of Being a Blogger here.

Whether it’s to enjoy the warm weather and do outdoor activities, or to spend more time with your kids since school is out for summer vacation, it seems a lot of mommy bloggers are scaling back.

Blogging is a multi-faceted business and we’re always busy: reading, writing, networking, guest posting, commenting, Mr. Linky-ing, and more.  It’s time consuming and sometimes it seems that entire days pass by and we wonder where they went! 

Many of you who know me have heard me talk about opening my RSS feed reader to upwards of 7,000 unread posts a day.  I just don’t have time to read all the blogs I would like to, because my family does come first and I have to really streamline my days with a tight schedule to make time for both my business and my family.  We have a wonderful 3-part series of interviews we did with super blogger Crystal Paine of Money Saving Mom about cutting back computer time which I think you’ll enjoy.

We’d love to hear your thoughts on scaling back blogging for the summer.  Let us know in the comments!

If you missed part 1, Balancing Computer Time and Family Life: Crystal Paine Interview, go read it first.

In our never-ending quest to streamline computer use and productivity to have more family time, we sought out power mommy blogger Crystal Paine.  This young mom of  3 children runs 3 successful blogs while spending extremely limited time online.  And when we say successful blogs, we mean by mainstream standards: Money Saving Mom gets over 1 million page views a month! 

We had to know Crystal’s secrets to productivity and were delighted that she offered to share her expertise with us and our readers.  Below are two more questions we asked Crystal about limiting computer time to increase productivity, and her responses.

Home Ever After asked: Is your computer time more productive because you have less time to spend on online distractions?

Crystal Paine said: “Absolutely! When I don’t have time to waste, I’m not only much more efficient, but I find I’m much more selective in what online commitments I’ll make. If I had all day to blog and answer emails, I probably could pretty much blog and answer emails all day–because there’s always more work to be done online!

“By limiting my online time, though, I have to pick and choose which things are the most important and productive. For instance, I’ve found that social media (such as Facebook and Twitter) can be a great way to interact on a more personal level with friends, but it can also be a huge time-sucker. Because of this, I try to stay off of social networking sites unless I’ve finished my more pressing online responsibilities and have extra time online still.”

Home Ever After:  When it comes to computer time or work time, we know guilt can be a major factor for many people.  Some feel guilty that they have to spend time working outside the home instead of being home with their families.  Yet others who work from home don’t escape the guilt either.  Being at home with your family but having to spend time on the computer instead of doing activities together can take its toll on your morale. 

Work at home moms (WAHMs) and mommy bloggers especially can feel strong guilt in this department.  The common mindset is the more time you work the more money you’ll make, and they often feel compelled to spend more time on the computer to make a successful business or blog.  While there are many tips and strategies to help us strike a balance between family time and work time, the right amount of time dedication to each activity will vary greatly from person to person.  We asked Crystal about this dilemma to get her perspective.

Home Ever After asked: Do you have any helpful hints or words of encouragement for our readers?

Crystal Paine said: “If there is one thing I could encourage every mommy blogger or work-at-home mom out there to remember, it is this: anyone can be a pretty good blogger or pretty good business owner, but there is only person who is mommy to your children and wife to your husband. Don’t let all the good things out there take precedence over the best things. You only have one life to live–make it count!”

Sage advice for all parents and spouses to consider, to be sure!  Stay tuned for the conclusion of our interview with Crystal Paine (part 3).  Part 3 of Computer Time and Family Life addresses how to get started setting up a computer time schedule, and which online activities to cut out to gain more time.

Woman with laptop black and white photo by mangpages. 

Why pay for anything you don’t have to?  Software can be expensive, so always do your research before buying to find out if there is a free alternative available.  Below are some tips for finding free software online that will save you tons.

Free AntiVirus Software

• Some anti-virus companies have a free version of antivirus software. Here’s one – AVG Free.
• Avast – the home user edition is free.

Cloud Computing Services

If you want to take advantage of some “cloud computing” and domain services, try these:

• Microsoft Office Live – You bring the domain name, you can get a free website hosted there.
• Google Apps – Free email, word processing, spreadsheets, group calendars, group chat, and more.

Operating Systems

Picked up an old computer and can’t see spending the money to put Windows on it?  Try Linux. Some people love it, some people don’t understand it or are afraid of it, and some people just like what they’re already using. But nobody complains about the price tag of Ubuntu, one of the best “linux flavors” for a home pc or laptop.

Other Open Source

• More open source options include Open Office instead of paying for Microsoft Office.
• For a free, web-based Photoshop replacement I suggest Aviary (super-cool site, too!).
• And finally, if you find you’re getting a whetted appetite for open-source software, give Osalt a try, where you can find open-source alternatives to popular programs like Adobe Photoshop and Acrobat Pro.

I’ve personally tried a lot of open source software.  Usually I find it’s not as good and harder to support than the mainstream, paid-for software. But what do you expect for free, right? And did I mention it’s free?!

What free software have you come across?  Let us know (with links) in the comments!