I guess it was time for this post. I know I can’t be the only person who is suddenly hating all these toolbars popping up all over the place. It’s almost to the point where you can’t go to any site or blog without having either the upper or lower part of your screen filled with a toolbar that won’t go away. Heck, even my buddy Sire had one (he might still have one, but it’s not coming up anymore & I haven’t seen him talking about it any).

At this point probably everyone has seen either this picture to the right or something like it. These types of toolbars are bad enough because it seems like every piece of software wants to load someone’s toolbar onto your computer. I already have a search engine I used that I specifically loaded myself; why the heck would I want to keep adding other company’s toolbars onto my computer like this?

You go to a news site these days and there’s a toolbar at the top. You go to close it and sometimes it doesn’t close, just reduces itself to this little tab that seems to be saying to you “go on, you know you want to use me; I’ll just be sitting here until you’re ready”. If I closed your toolbar I’m not going to use it; take it away! And, for whatever reason, Firefox’s Adblock Plus can’t block them; what the hey? Guess I have to find some software or plugin that blocks pop-unders, which is kind of what these things are.

Why are most of these sites loading toolbars? It all comes down to money; it always does. Everyone is getting paid to add a toolbar in some fashion. Software companies, if it’s not their toolbar, are getting paid. Blogs that add toolbars get paid if someone actually uses it. I doubt there’s one truly altruistic company out there putting out toolbars. Heck, even Google’s toolbar, which I stopped using, was getting something out of the deal, mainly tracking people who used it, even on their own computers, so they could target advertising towards them based on their surfing habits. I wonder what kind of ads Google sends to those folks who only search for porn all day, since they don’t accept advertising from adult related sites.

Either way, I have to say that I didn’t purchase this 22″ widescreen monitor so someone could invade and fill up my space with a toolbar. Please, if you’re going to use one, at least allow us to be allowed to totally close it and get it out of the way.

Hamilton Beach HealthSmart Contact Grill Price – $39.95

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

Last week I heard the news that Google was going to allow people the opportunity to customize their main page. What they were going to do was to have certain images already set, but if you wanted to you could use your own image for the page.

I have to admit that I was excited. Though I have my Google page already altered thusly, there to the left (right click to see it bigger), via Stylish and Firefox, and I have that stupid sidebar shut down through a script on Greasemonkey, the idea of adding my own image was kind of appealing. And all we had to do was wait until, one day, the link to the bottom left of the Google screen popped up.

Mine popped up Sunday evening, and I thought that was pretty cool. I went to look to see what I had to do, and saw some choices already there. I saw that you also had to log in to your Google account, and for the first time I was sort of hesitant, and I wasn’t sure why. Then I realized why. The thing is if you want to use your own image, you must set up a Picasa account, which is their photo sharing site. Then you can upload your image and attach it to your page, and go on with your business. If you didn’t want to do that, you could upload one of their pictures, but you still have to have a Google account to use it, so that when you sign in it knows it’s you. Otherwise, you can stick with your white background, or do something like what I’ve done.

Here’s the thing about a Picasa account. If you have one, it pretty much means other people can go through your images. That’s what the user agreement says. I don’t have an account, so if there’s a way to make it private I don’t know about it. Still, the idea of someone being able to go through my personal pictures and use them for whatever reason they wish to bothers me somewhat. Yeah, I have some pictures on Facebook, but I knew that I’d be sharing those pictures with people I allow into my Facebook life, since that’s the kind of privacy I put on my account there. Anything beyond that, I’m not sure I want to deal with.

For me, I can do without it. Truthfully, if I wanted to tinker with it, I think, because I use Firefox, I could figure out a way to alter one of the scripts to use my own picture if I wanted to badly enough. However, overall, unless you really know what you’re doing, it’s not a great thing to go messing around with these scripts. That’s why my background is black instead of my favorite color, which is red.

Anyway, if you’re not quite as skittish as I am about sharing some of your images with the world, and you want to customize your Google page, go for it. It’s not a bad deal overall, and gets rid of the boring white. Lucky for me, I’ve already taken care of that on my favorite browser.

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mitch Mitchell

You know, it’s possible that this is one of those posts I really don’t have to do, but something is telling me that I need to make sure. What’s prompting it is that lately more than half of the spam I get asks the question “how do I subscribe to your feed.” As simple as it seems, after a meeting I had last Friday I realized that many people really aren’t all that internet savvy, and they might not even know what a feed is to know how to subscribe to it, or even where. Hence, this post. For the rest of you who already know this… y’all don’t have to read this, unless you want to see if I miss something.

You see that symbol to the right? Any time you see that symbol it means that particular website or post has what’s known as RSS, or Really Simple Syndication (sometimes known as Rich Site Summary) feed. In essence, it means you can follow certain websites or blogs that have new content with some kind of regularity in a place other than having to visit that website. You can subscribe to the feed by clicking on that orange button whenever you see it and read it whenever you want to somewhere else. I use a program called Feedreader, which is independent of a browser, and a lot of people use Google Reader, which uses the browser, but groups all the feeds in one place. There are plenty of other options as well.

On websites, you might see that orange symbol in many different places, and sometimes it depends on the browser you’re using. On Firefox, you’ll see that little symbol to the far right of the address bar. On IE 8, you’ll see that symbol on the right next to the home button on the toolbar. On some sites you’ll see that symbol elsewhere, and it might not be the orange symbol. Seems that some sites will change the color of the symbol. If you look on my blog, you see that symbol in the far right column, and underneath that you can decide to subscribe by email, which other sites also. This means you’ll get any blog posts from me through email instead of a reader; many people like that instead. Other sites will do this as well.

That’s pretty much all it takes for RSS subscriptions. And those of us who blog love when people subscribe, as we want more people to read what we have to say. I subscribe to many blogs and news sites, more than 200, although I think it might be time to pare down my list some. We’ll see if I get to that. Any questions?

I have no idea how I learned about this site, but it’s so unique that I just had to share it with you.

It’s called The Oatmeal, and it’s a collection of articles, cartoons, quizzes and news that’s presented in a unique way. What I’m stunned about is that it’s ranked really high, yet I’m just hearing about it, and I’m betting it’s fairly new to most of you as well.

A good example of an article on this site that’s also educational is called How To Use A Semicolon, something I use often, but see very few other people using. It’s a training article with images, and very simply teaches people how to use semicolons. There’s even dinosaurs in the article; when’s the last time you saw talking dinosaurs teaching you anything (don’t even go the Barney route)?

As you’ll see, the articles are also presented in a totally different style, with cartoon headers rather than text. Frankly, if I had an artistic bone in my body, I have just the type of warped humor to be able to pull the same type of thing off.

Me being me, I wondered how they made any money off the site, since I can’t find any advertising. They have an online store, where they sell items with their logo on it and other stuff associated with their brand. I’m betting they do well; heck, I’ve been tempted to buy something myself, but keep wondering where I’d put it and how long it would last before my wife snatched it and hid it on me. Also, some of the articles end up being products themselves, being created into posters.

What else is there to say? Check the site out, and obviously this isn’t a paid review, since how the heck could they pay me when they don’t know me? The Oatmeal is a lot of fun; give it a shot.

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Okay, stay with me for a minute. I was going through Kristi’s weekly Fetching Friday listing, where this week one of my posts was mentioned (thanks Kristi), and came upon an article she was highlighting called 10 Firefox Addons For Affiliate Marketers from the blog Ace Affiliates.

Always someone who’s looking for the next big thing, I went to read that article, and one of the Firefox addons it recommended was something called Ghostery. It seems to do two things for you. One, it lets you know how safe a website is that you’re visiting. Two, it allows you to block sites from tracking your IP address and the like.

That second one is very intriguing to me. I was talking to my friend Kelvin about it and saying how freaked out I was when I go to websites, such as MSNBC, and see all the ads that are targeted for me knowing that I live in the Syracuse, NY area. He said he didn’t know of anything that could block that, so I thought this might be the plugin for me.

When I went to the page where the addon is, it looked different than what I’m used to seeing. There’s no description of what the addon is about, and there’s this big block in the middle with only one line: Ghostery requires that you accept the following End-User License Agreement before installation can proceed. And in the box there’s only one thing: http://www.ghostery.com/terms. Now, maybe it looks that way because I’m running Adblock, but it looked strange.

This tasked me (a line from Star Trek II; Wrath of Khan), so I decided I wanted to read the terms of service for using this particular addon. Overall, it was the same standard stuff you see everywhere else, but suddenly I came upon a line I didn’t like, under privacy: You acknowledge that the Software will contact GHOSTERY and send limited information about the websites you visit to GHOSTERY’s databases.

Come on now; y’all know me! I’m the guy who has a problem with Google Toolbar tracking our movements, to the point that I won’t use it anymore once I learned it did that. I’m certainly not letting some other group of folks track where I go; wasn’t the point of using their software so you could go to websites without them knowing where you were coming from, as in “tracking” you? I’m going to give up my privacy to these guys who I don’t know to get privacy from sites that I at least have some idea of who they are?

Many times I don’t read terms of service, just like most people don’t when we want to use something. However, the way this was segregated looked, well, suspicious. They might have specific reasons for wanting to track people, as in making sure the software works. And, of course we all have the right to use or not use something.

I’m choosing not to use it; that doesn’t sound surprising, does it? So, I’m still on a quest to find something that will aid me in my privacy efforts. Sure, I know that there’s no real privacy online, but I’d still like to find a way to decide when I want to give up information about myself and when I don’t.

Many of you know how much I love going to play poker. I get a lot of enjoyment out of it because I love the camaraderie that eventually is created by spending just a few hours with a bunch of people you’ve never met before, commiserating with everyone else who’s either won a big hand or gotten beaten in a big hand. We’ve all been there, and we all have stories to share.

One thing I like to believe I’m good at is figuring out what the odds are that my hand is good or not. Of course, having a good hand doesn’t always mean it’s a winning hand, but more often than not it works out just fine. What I’m not good at is figuring out the numbers, as in what the actual percentage is that favors my hand.

I was reading a blog post called Easiest Way To Understand Math In Poker, where the writer, named Mitchell Cogart (knew I liked him for some reason) was giving some formulas for how to calculate it fairly quickly. It’s still somewhat beyond me, mainly because it takes time to do those calculations, and unless I was playing in a tournament, I don’t like taking that kind of time figuring out anything.

However, it’s the other thing he was talking about that starts to get me into the point of this post. There’s something called pot odds that, to poker players, is very important and very intriguing. In essence, it’s figuring out how much the pot is worth to you in odds versus the odds of you having a winning hand. Just to throw out numbers, if you only have a 30% chance of winning a hand, but the dollars in the pot come out to you having a 55% chance of winning the pot, many poker players will take a chance on the money rather than their hand because they perceive the dollars are so high that you can’t afford NOT to play the hand.

I hear this on poker commentary sometimes on TV. The guy will say “there’s so much money in the pot that so-and-so absolutely has to call the hand, even though he’s going to lose.” On TV, you always know what the players hands are, so you know who’s going to win or lose. But the players don’t know that, so you see them taking time, running through all the calculations in their minds, and then they’ll pull the trigger on hands that most of us would say we know better than to play because we have no idea on how to calculate pot odds.

In a way, you can relate that to trying to learn more about internet marketing. There are a lot of products out there that will teach you something about it. Some are very good and some aren’t all that good. However, what most of us believe is that the more expensive something is, the more we should be getting out of it. Truthfully, that may or may not be true. The “pot odds” are in your favor; after all, why would someone put a $500 product out there that wasn’t going to deliver on what’s been promised, right?

Here’s the thing. Just like everything else in life, nothing works for everyone. It’s possible that the $500 product might tell you everything you need to know to make money, or it may not. It may tell you things to do that your morality won’t allow you to do. For instance, if it said that in order to make lots of money you have to kill a lot of puppies, would you do it? If it said that you had to do what’s known as black hat principles, would you do it?

While I was at my mother’s house on Friday, she was watching this network that was advertising a program called Kell On Earth, about this fashion designer who’s very successful. However, she’s a terror; there’s no way I’d ever want to deal with that type of person on a yearly basis, let alone a daily basis. She berates her employees and other people around her, but justifies it by saying she has to do what she has to do to stay at the top. I’m sorry, but if you have to treat people as if they’re inferior to you then I don’t want to be successful. It’s not my style, and I couldn’t live with myself. Yet there are thousands of people who subscribe to that and believe it’s the way to go. Notice how some are successful, but others aren’t? Once again, no one size fits all.

Some folks thought I was being too lenient when I reviewed Six Figure Blogger Blueprint. The thing is, the book wasn’t really for those of you who have been doing this for awhile. It was also free, not a full course on internet marketing. It got me thinking about things, and any book that does that for me works for me. We all judge things differently. We have to know ourselves, and what we might respond to. Like that book to the right side there, 20 Ways To Make
$100 A Day Online. I bought that book, and I think it was perfect for me because I was able to take just one of its principles and turn it into a way to make money. It wasn’t overly expensive, but turned out to be just what I needed. I calculated my odds for finding something I thought I could use, and I turned out to be right.

How do you determine whether something might work well for you or not? Do you even try anymore? I say that at the risk of jumping into Sire’s response, because I know he’s said more than once that he won’t pay for anything anymore, after being burned many times early on. Has that happened to some of you as well? I’d really like to know.

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I can’t claim total credit for this find. I was going through Twitter and came across a retweet of something from Susan Hall, one of my local Twitter buddies, who writes a blog called Penguin Hall Monitor.

It’s called PDFMYURL, and what it does is turns any url you type into its window into a pdf file. Now, when I read this I thought “what the heck would anyone ever want to use something like that for.” Still, I’m game to try things out, so I typed in one of my websites urls and hit enter. It opened a menu window so I could pick where I wanted to save it, and it saves it with the url name in the file. Then I opened it up, and indeed, my entire page was there.

Suddenly I could see the appeal of such a thing. One, it’s a fast way to capture a news story without having to print the entire thing out. Two, if you’re searching for specific information, such as instructions on how to do something, you could save that as a pdf file in case you’re worried about having to deal with that sort of thing again. Three, it’s a neat way to capture information on the fly so you can look at it later on, and you wouldn’t have to be thinking to yourself “where did I find that sucker” because the url would be in the file name.

I like this little thing so much I’ve added it to my bookmarks toolbar for easier access. It hasn’t made the main line yet, however; gotta figure out what I’d want to move to make room for it. Hey, give it a try; you might find you like it yourself. Neat things can be found on the internet, eh?

The Url King Price – $10.35

I just finished reading a story on MSNBC.com with the title Privacy is dead on Facebook. Get over it. The story pretty much laments the fact that there isn’t any privacy on Facebook, even with all their changes, and that it’s pretty much the story across the internet.

Big Brother Is Plugged In

Privacy on the internet is an interesting dichotomy. We all say we want to be able to disseminate whatever we want to and yet still retain a bit of anonymity here and there. I actually understand some of that, as Mitch isn’t my birth name, and I tell almost no one what my middle name is. If one decided to really dig deep on the internet, I’m sure they’d find both answers.

When I first got on the internet back in 1995, I didn’t understand what most of it meant. The first service I signed up for was AOL. Like many people, I got that disk in the mail, loaded it onto my computer, and the rest was history. So was my privacy, because pretty quickly I started getting all sorts of email from suppliers who contracted with AOL for my email address. And things took off from there.

Let’s talk about privacy for a little bit. Here’s the big hairy question in the room; do you really think that you can be online and have privacy? If you do, I’m sorry to say, you’re living in a dream world. People who have never been online can be found online. For some of those folks, it might cost a little bit of money, but most of them are online in some fashion. I did a quick check to find that my grandmother doesn’t have her name anywhere online, but my mother does.

Why is that? Because my grandmother has never had a credit card or a driver’s license. She’s never signed up for email or anything else online, and she hasn’t worked since, I believe, 1980 at least. She’s never left the country, so no passport. In other words, she’s basically a non-entity in the online world.

Mom, on the other hand, worked up until 1997. She had a couple of credit cards. She has an email address. Her name is on the mortgage of the house she owns. She can check her bank balances online. And her name is in the phone book. That’s enough information for Mom to have a trail by which people can find her online if they know her name. She has a picture online, courtesy of yours truly, but not with her name associated with it, so she’s fairly protected there.

Here’s the general thing. If you want privacy, don’t do anything that might encourage someone to invade it. If you sign up on Facebook, you’ve invited people to find you; maybe not the people you want to find you, but that’s too bad. If you put up pictures of yourself doing stupid things, you’ve invited yourself to scrutiny. I don’t know how real this is, but has anyone seen this blog called THE DAILY SCOOP OF STUPIDITY-THE PEOPLE OF FACEBOOK, where the author puts up pictures he supposedly pulled from Facebook? There was also this one post from College Candy on the types of photos on Facebook. If these are all real, not much privacy there, is it? Why would these people put these pictures up to begin with?

And some of the other stuff people put on Facebook is amazing. If you’re married and most of the world knows it, don’t put up that you’re single and looking for a member of the opposite sex for anything. If you work in certain industries, don’t put up your resume as if you’re looking for a job, and certainly don’t indicate your politics and religion, unless they’re the same as where you work (come on, we know that most places of employment have a political and religious leaning, whether they’re supposed to or not). Don’t sign up for games you don’t want anyone knowing you’re playing. Don’t become friends with people you don’t know just because they’re hot without knowing if they play well, and safely with others. Don’t join groups you think no one’s going to know about because it’ll probably show up in your feed. And, of course, check your privacy settings, but know that they can only go as far as the people you think you can trust who might out you anyway. If you’re worried that the wrong people will see it, keep it to yourself.

On to Twitter. One of my wife’s friends was shocked to find out that, after she found me and added me to her account, I could read what she was writing to her daughter. I told her she hadn’t protected her account, just added people, and that everyone could see what she was writing, and what was written back to her. She immediately closed her account. If you have no idea what something is, don’t sign up for it. She’s an intelligent woman who did a stupid thing; she should have known better.

Saturation of Privacy

People say things on Twitter all the time, then don’t think they should be held accountable for what they say because it’s their freedom of speech. Sorry Sparky, but freedom of speech comes with a cost and a consequence. If you don’t want to be judged, watch your language, watch what you have to say, and, well, shut up. If you say it, own up to it and move on.

During 2008′s presidential election, I dropped a lot of people for inappropriate things they were saying about Barack Obama. I kept doing so after the election, after his inauguration, and even now. I’ll call out business people who say stupid things, even at networking events, because those are people I’d never work with, and if they didn’t mean it they shouldn’t have said it. I’m an equal opportunity “caller-outer”, as I called out Harry Reid for his stupidity that was reported last week also.

Time to finish, as this has gotten long, and I could go on for another 1,000 words. There is no real privacy online, period. If you want some control, you have to learn how to protect some of your information. For instance, if you have a website, when you pay for the domain name hide the info so no one can track you back; I use that one all the time. If you want to write stupid stuff to or about other people, don’t do it from home, because you can be tracked easily enough by anyone with a little bit of internet savvy or that has friends with some internet savvy. Don’t think that hiding behind a fake name will protect you for long; if you’re irritating enough, you’ll be found out, even if by court order.

Trust me, you’re out there; it’s up to you to make sure you’re represented the way you want to be.

Privacy Lost: How Technology Is Endangering Your Privacy Price – $16.99

In my post talking about my online goals for 2010, I got a quick request from one of my readers who has never written a comment as far as I know named Connie Baum. It’s always great to hear from people who enjoy what you have to say, and she asked me if I could write a guest post for her, which I did entitled Watch Out For Internet Marketing Scams. I hope you check it out.

Then I asked Connie to write a guest post for me, since her blog is all about internet marketing, so she’s created this post for us. I hope you enjoy it.

Creating a blog post for someone whose work you admire is akin to being a child, visiting a classroom where the teacher places you at the front of the room to introduce yourself. You think you would rather be having a root canal at that moment. You are embarrassed; you are not sure what to say. You feel certain that the friend who brought you to school is biting his lip and wishing his mother hadn’t MADE him bring you.

Internet marketing is the reason I have been closely following Mitch and ‘I’m Just Sharing.’

There is something endearing about every post he makes. I aspire for my blog posts to call people to action the way Mitch’s do. When Mitch extended the invitation for Guest Bloggers, I raised my hand and ‘Teacher’ called on me. I’m looking forward to reading what other Guest Bloggers have to say, for I fancy I can learn something from every post. The trick of course, will be remembering what I learn and implementing it properly.

The mother in me is compelled to admonish all internet marketers, including Mitch, to do two things and in the proper order. Remember, kids, I’m Just Sharing. Grin

1. Take very good care of yourself
2. Take your marketing work very seriously but don’t take yourself so seriously.

Health and wealth walk hand in hand. If you lose your wealth but have your health, you can recover and resume. But if you lose your health, you also stand to lose your health as well. Doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, now, does it?

With a nod to #1 and taking good care of your body, let’s address how important- no, critical-it is to eat well and wisely; to remember to move away from the desk from time to time to move and play.

If you are fortunate to work at home where there are children-or fun loving adults, for that matter-you can schedule recess time! Go out of doors, jump rope, run, walk, turn cartwheels! Do whatever it takes to get your heart rate up and pop a sweat. Then you will be ready to go back to business and resume the creativity and discipline of work.

Your body needs water to keep all your cells functioning optimally, so keep handsome pitcher of water close by. Drop a wedge of fresh lemon in it to make it more tantalizing. And don’t be fooled into thinking that anything wet counts as water because if there is anything in the water, it isn’t really water any more. Don’t rely on coffee and other caffeine loaded beverages because those will dehydrate you and literally shrivel your brain.

Another facet of self care is to reward yourself for meeting your online goals. For example, when your new blog makes the first page of Google, you are entitled to have lunch at your favorite eatery that day. Or, you might have added 100 new names to your new list of subscribers. This calls for a hot chocolate break with your spouse or significant other! You need to figure out what floats your boat and use those things to motivate you. Some popular rewards include scalp massage, nail care, pizza, fresh flowers; new socks. You probably have your own list of what trips your trigger.

Let’s address item #2, taking your business seriously. If you are new to internet marketing, I would offer that a good coaching program would benefit you. You will learn skills you did not have previously and you will network with others who will enhance your journey.

I would also remind you of the recess idea from item #1. Being completely silly and operating with abandon for brief periods of time will increase your creativity and make you far more productive. “Do use discretion,” she warned.

Read other people’s blogs with sincere interest. Comment intelligently, adding value to their site. Interact with the bloggers; get to know them. Attend every live event you can and take copious notes whenever you are on a conference call, webinar or brainstorming session with others. Partner with others to capitalize on one another’s strengths; offer added value in any way you are able to help others.

It has been an honor to present my ideas through Mitch’s blog. Here’s hoping some value was added to your life, even if it did not shake the earth.

I thank Connie for this wonderful guest post. Here are her blogs for you to check out when you can:

Rapid Cash Review
Mother Connie Sez
The Healthy and Wealthy You
Food Stamps Cooking Club

Motivational Moments 2010 Desk Calendar Price – $12.99

I remember when I first got into instant messaging. It was 1997, and I had just learned about ICQ, which is still around. There was AIM, and I don’t remember if Yahoo Messenger was around at that time. But ICQ offered just what I and my family members needed.

Through ICQ, I was able to connect my dad to all of his brothers and sisters, a couple of my cousins, and some friends I’d met through newsgroups. Later on, I had some friends I would talk to. We’d talk often, pretty much every night, and it was fun. Of course, ICQ tanked in a big way, but still, there are other instant messaging systems; even Facebook has one.

These days, I can’t find almost anyone who’s using instant messaging. It’s pretty much been replaced by Twitter and Facebook, and even a little bit by email. Sure, email was around back in ’97, but many friends wouldn’t use it for whatever reason.

Is instant messaging dying out, or am I just too old to have many friends who want to use it anymore? I ask that because it seems the people who say they still love instant messaging are all younger than 30. Obviously most of my friends are older. I only have one family member who still has an instant messaging account, and he’s rarely on. The friends I have accounts for almost never show up. There’s a couple of people I talk to sometimes during the day while they’re at work, and when I’m out of town my wife and I will try to have conversations through Yahoo (though I use Trillian), but that’s about it. I don’t even know anyone who uses Facebook’s instant messaging, though I’m sure there are people who do.

I also wonder if it’s why having Meebo on my business sites doesn’t seem to bring me much communications during the day when I hold office hours, which I announce on Twitter every once in awhile. I mean, one would think someone would take me up on the chance to speak to me live, but nope, doesn’t happen.

What are y’all thinking about this? Anyone else lamenting the demise of instant messaging, did you care, or have I just passed by the age where it makes sense for my friends and my business?

I don’t do this often, but I thought I’d take a diversion for a little bit of fun. How often do I do this? Well, I’ve done it only twice. The first was in 2008, and then I was only talking about music sites. The second was in April of this year.

This list is going to give you 5 websites you probably don’t know about, which I think are pretty cool, and have been around for awhile. You might find them fun or informative; that’s what I’m all about.

Achievement Radio is a motivational site that I’ve always thought was very cool. There’s all sorts of motivational material everywhere, but that’s not the beauty of the site. If you look to the right, there’s a place where you can actually listen to short motivational excerpts from both famous and not so famous people. It’s free, and it will play all day if you’d like. Every once in awhile, we all need to hear uplifting stuff, right?

Every once in awhile, I feel I need to know how to make certain things. You’d think I would know how to make everything I need, but I don’t. Allrecipes is the site I go to whenever I need to check on a recipe, or I’m looking for ideas. There’s a ton of websites like this one out there, but this is the one I like best.

This site will kind of freak you out, but it’s neat for at least a little while. It’s called The Human Clock, and if you go to the site, then click on the image at the top, you’ll see it giving you the correct time. Then, if you keep it up for awhile, you’ll see that every minute there’s a new picture and the new picture tells you what time it is. No, it’s not a site where you’ll want to stare at it for all that long, but I have popped it up there for an hour or two, just to look to see what creative picture they’ve done for the minute I’m there.

Who remembers Cabbage Patch Dolls? What about mood rocks? This site is called Bad Fads, and you can go through the site and relive some of those things that you may not want to own up to as being a part of your life. I know many of you wore those bell bottomed pants; go ahead, admit it.

Finally, if you’re one of those people who loves quiz sites, you’ll want to check out Cool Quiz. Just like it says, it’s replete with many quizzes of many times, and you can find out lots of stuff about yourself; that is, if you believe this kind of thing. Hey, it’s a good time killer.

And that’s that; enjoy on this beautiful Saturday.

TSI-751-P Silvertone Digital Clock by Seth Thomas Price – $74.99

How many of you ever check your name on Google to see what might be out there for you? If you have a common name, the numbers might be kind of skewed, which stinks. If I go looking up Mitch Mitchell I’m out there, but I have to deal with a heck of a lot of stuff that talks about Jimi Hendrix former drummer.

However, when I go looking under my official business name, which is “T. T. Mitchell (and don’t ask, because I’m not telling what any of it stands for), I’ll find myself all over the place. As a matter of fact, out of the first 50 references on Google, 38 of the references are to me. Out of the next 50 references, 17 are about me. I mean, 55 out of the first 100; that’s not bad if you ask me.

It can be pretty heady stuff when you keep finding websites that you’re listed on, or things you’ve written. I’ve found all sorts of things about myself that I never expected to find. I found a reference to a speaking engagement I’m giving next April on social media; never knew that was online. I found that many songs I have copyrights on are listed online in a certain place; freaky. I’ve found my articles on sites I never knew existed. I’ve found myself listed for things I’d have never expected to be found for. I even found someone who recommended both my newsletters and my services (read the article by Catherine Ryan on the right), someone I hate to admit I don’t remember, or can’t verify that I’ve met, but you know, we take recommendations as we find them, right?

Overall, how many references are there that pertain to me? According to Yahoo, more than 8,600; yeow! There’s also one thing I found that kind of freaked me out. The last year of my dad’s life, he was going to try to learn HTML so he could put up a family genealogy site. He got some of the references in, but not all that many. However, one of those references is me, and seeing that, something my dad put online back in 2001,… chills!

I guess the best thing is that I didn’t find anything negative about me, which is always a good thing. Of course, I’d probably find more if I could weed myself through all those other Mitch Mitchell’s. I’m listed at least 3 times in the top 100, and I guess that will have to do. Of course, if I add the “T T” to it, in quotation marks of course, I kill! As a matter of fact, 46 of the top 50 references are me; yeah baby! How long have I been talked about by some folks online? Check this article out from January 2004. I’d forgotten about it, to tell you the truth.

I’ve talked often about marketing and advertising on this blog. I haven’t talked as much about PR, or public relations, or press releases and the like. I have talked about being all over the internet and wondering what else I need to do to break through and become at least a well known name so that I can start making money, or at least getting more business, off my own name. No one can say that I haven’t established a presence on the internet, that’s for sure.

So, how are you doing with spreading your message, and getting your notoriety online? Are you ready for more? I am.

Time Magazine has always been in the list business, and once again, they’ve come out with their 50 Best Websites Of 2009 list.

I always find one main thing interesting with lists like this. I know very few of these websites, and for someone like me, who feels like I’m always on the internet, that’s sort of freaky. I think it’s actually more of an age thing now. I tend to go to websites that I see listen through other people’s blogs, or from someone who mentions it on Twitter. I don’t just surf as much as I did in the 90′s.

Anyway, here are the few sites I’ve actually heard about:

1. Flickr
3. Delicious
5. popurls
6. Twitter
7. Skype
11. Google
12. YouTube
13. Wolfram|Alpha
14. Hulu
19. Amazon
21. Netflix
22. Etsy
31. Facebook

I’ve only given the links to sites I actually visit more than, well, once ever to be truthful. Actually, I should put Flickr on that list, but it’s never that I’ve visited because I want to check out their site. Rather, I end up there because someone else has posted an image that I want to see better, and it ends up being on Flickr.

How many of these sites, or sites on the main 50 list, have you ever heard of, or used? I will add that my wife is a major Hulu fan, but I’m not someone who can just sit and watch a TV show on my computer; I’m always doing something on my computer, which is why I have a TV in the room.

Maybe one day I’ll go back to this list, check out some of those sites, and then come here and write about them as though I discovered them. Nah; just don’t see that happening. After all, if Time knows about it, then how cool can it be?

If you run a business and have a website, you want to know whether you’re listed in the top search engines as far as your business is concerned. You also want to make sure that you’re listed in local searches higher than just being in a search engine for kicks and giggles.

SalesMix will let you put in your business name, zip code and state, and it will tell you if your business is listed with the major search engines. When I first ran it for one of my businesses it listed me as having started the process but never completing it. I didn’t even remember that I’d started, but when I went to it, seems I thought about it almost 3 years ago and never finished filling in the information; what was I thinking?

After you see if you’ve signed up on any of the sites, you click on “listing snapshot”, and you’ll see where you can click on links and get your business on all those sites. Yes, you have to do the work for yourself; don’t be lazy.

Well, I should turn that on myself. One of my businesses is listed on Google, but that’s it. The other business isn’t listed anywhere; major faux pas on my part. Yeah, I’ll get around to it; I have no real excuses.

But it’s a good tool for you to explore if you have a stand alone business and want to make sure you’re getting all the benefits you can by listing it. And, because he’s a friend of mine, he’s given me the link of instructions you can look at if you’re still unsure of how to proceed. Pays to know people, right?

Guess Silver G-Perf Ladies Watch Price – $74.51

First, let me say I’m glad none of these are my family.

Second, I want to mention that I was interviewed by another blogger, so check out New Media Bloggers, and blame Sire for it.

A short post for today, so y’all can take a breather. I came across this site, for which one of the pictures was highlighted by one of the people I’m friends with on Facebook. The site is called Awkward Family Photos, and the creator, who doesn’t have an About page and thus I know nothing about, finds, or receives, family pictures that, well, are just funny for one reason or another.

He also pops in snap commentary here and there, and that’s pretty funny also. I would show one of the images and bits of commentary here, but I think it’s enough that I share the link back to the site and let you experience it on your own.

It seems to be a very popular site also; notice how many comments each of the posts gets for saying very little. Man, to find a niche like this! Anyway, I hope you enjoy it.