This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Boost Mobile. All opinions are 100% mine.
In our very fast-paced, technologically-advanced and demanding society, if you’re going to buy a phone, chances are you’re going to buy one that can pretty much do anything and everything your computer can do–and then some.
Every time a new phone comes out, I am blown away by all of its features and add-ons you can choose. Technology has truly made it possible to accomplish everything you need to get done while you’re on the go. However, one thing I have noticed with the phones that seem to have everything you would ever need or want it to have so you can work while you’re out running errands or on business trips, is the price tag and even more crucial than that, the committment. When different companies are always coming out with new phones possessing a whole new web of technology, needing to commit to one provider and one phone becomes a problem for me. I don’t want to limit myself, I don’t want to be stuck with something that my friends and colleagues laugh at because they’ve got the brand new, super awesome phone with everything and I’m still stuck with the equivalent to an archaic piece of tech that no one uses anymore–or wants to use. Staying true to the message of our instant gratification society, I want the best that my money can buy right now and I want everything that goes along with it. I’m greedy like that.
Enter: Boost Mobile.
Boost Mobile knows what we all want when buying a new phone and isn’t afraid to offer it up at an affordable price without all the strings that come with other providers. They are launching the brand new SANYO Incognito; a sleek, sexy phone with nationwide coverage, EVDO capabilities, a full QWERTY keyboard, 2MP camera with VGA camcorder, music and video player and enhanced web browsing. The SANYO Incognito comes with the price tag of $129.99 (plus tax), comes with a $50 monthly unlimited plan and absolutely no contract is required. That is an absolutely awesome plan, if you ask me! If purchased through the above link, the SANYO Incognito SCP6760 will also come to you with free shipping, which is a huge perk because I know how much I hate getting my debit card out to pay for something, after frugally selecting my items and making sure I’m in my budget, only to have my jaw drop when I see the shipping fees.
The SANYO Incognito also has a list of additional features, making it easy for you to do any kind of business on your phone wherever you are, like multi-media messaging, so you can send videos and pictures to your friends, family and colleagues in a snap, it is stereo Bluetooth capable and it also has a GPS so you (hopefully) won’t ever get lost again. All in all, the SANYO Incognito from Boost Mobile is the absolutely perfect phone containing everything and anything you could ever want in a smartphone for a fraction of the cost of most leading brands out there, and without all of the hassle of the contract. The contract is always the killer.
When news first broke of Jay Leno being pushed back into late night by NBC, the masses began siding with Conan O’Brien, also affectionately known as “Coco.” He became the most popular he had been for what seemed like his entire career, as he faced unemployment from NBC.
While Conan was host of the Tonight Show for a mere 7 months, his popularity has not died down since we all tuned in to see his last show and it was only a matter of time until Coco came to join his fans on the internet–starting his very own twitter account.
@ConanOBrien became active on Twitter a mere 19 hours ago and since then his identity has been verified by Twitter and he has accumulated over 270,000 followers and has been listed over 6,000 times. He has only tweeted once since his account has become active, but that isn’t stopping his fans from flocking to his Twitter account.
Will you follow Conan O’Brien on Twitter? Do you think it’s about time he hopped on the Twitter bandwagon?
This is a guest post by Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com.
On Monday, February 22nd, the major provisions of the Credit CARD Act took effect, nine months after they were signed into law.
Many of these provisions will have a very positive effect on consumers, but the law has resulted in some unexpected fallout.
“The CARD Act has some very significant benefits for credit cardholders. The restrictions on interest rate hikes and the ban on over-the-limit fees are tremendous. Consumers have cried out for these protections for years and they are finally about to take effect,” says Bill Hardekopf, CEO of LowCards.com and author of The Credit Card Guidebook. “However, there are a number of unintended consequences that have resulted from the CARD Act. These changes might affect more credit card consumers than the law helped.”
Here is a look at some of the unintended consequences of the CARD Act:
Since issuers will be unable to raise interest rates on new accounts for twelve months, they simply raised the advertised APR before February 22nd so it affected everyone shopping for a new credit card account. According to the LowCards.com Complete Credit Card Index, the advertised Annual Percentage Rates for credit cards averaged 13.46% last week. Six months ago, the average was 12.11%. One year ago, the average was 11.51%.
People under 21 will find it harder to build their credit score. If they do not have a job with enough income, they must get an adult to co-sign. Many young adults will not take this extra step, losing out on the opportunity to build up a good credit history throughout college. Without a positive credit history, they may not receive as good an interest rate on their first house or car loan.
Fees, fees and more fees. Issuers are introducing more cards with annual fees, increasing existing fees, and putting new fees on accounts. Last October, Bank of America notified a small percentage of their customers that it is adding an annual fee of $29 to $99 on their accounts beginning in February. Balance transfer fees, which have been at 3% for most issuers, have now been increased to 5% by Chase and Discover. Firth Third Bancorp recently added a $19 inactivity fee if your card is unused for a twelve month period.
The scarcity of fixed rate credit cards. Most issuers switched their fixed rate cards to variable rates, since the CARD Act allows APR increases in variable rate cards if the index used to calculate that variable rate increases. As an example, if the infex for a variable rate card is tied to the prime rate and the prime rate increases by 1%, the APR on that card can increase 1%. Many issuers switched their fixed rate cards to variable rate cards so they could maintain their margins once the CARD Act was instituted.
Since any amount above the minimum payment goes toward the balance with the highest APR, some issuers raised the minimum payment up to 5% on a number of accounts.
A decrease in the amount of credit card rewards or cash rebates. Reduced rewards could come in several different forms.
A cutback in the payouts of cash back cards.
More miles or points needed for that free airline trip or hotel stay.
Higher tiers required for consumers to receive the same level of rewards.
A decrease in the number of credit cards awarded by retail stores. Providing proof of income when applying for a credit card will make it significantly harder for consumers to instantly qualify for a credit card. This will certainly impact the marketing efforts of the 10-15% discount on a purchase if you sign up for a store’s credit card. Retailers rely on this marketing strategy to increase purchases and to build their mailing list of customers used for offering future coupons or early-bird discounts.
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LowCards.com simplifies the confusion of shopping for credit cards. It is a free, independent website that helps consumers easily compare credit cards in a variety of categories such as lowest rates, rewards, rebates, balance transfers and lowest introductory rates. It also gives an unbiased ranking and review for each card. The LowCards.com Complete Credit Card Index is the most objective and comprehensive resource on the Internet which allows consumers to compare rates for all 1260 credit cards offered in this country. Created by Hampton & Associates, the company has been analyzing the credit card industry and supplying objective websites on various consumer expenses for eight years.
We have all seen the spring and summer emails coming in from our favorite stores we receive email alerts from. I have been known to complain about these emails, shouting in their bold-faced type that it’s almost spring and time to buy flip flops, which isn’t surprising since at this exact moment, I am sitting in front of a window watching inches upon inches of snow layer the ground. Hopefully spring will come to Northeastern Pennsylvania soon because I am getting ridiculously tired of snow and to prepare for those spring and summer seasons, Old Navy has a ton of styles, colors and sizes for all the men in your family.
The Old Navy FUNdamentals Sale is well underway and from now until March 4th you can get baseball tees, v-neck tees, boxers and socks for just $5, shorts for $15 and cargos, khaki and jeans for just $19. What makes this deal even sweeter is that not only will you cash in on Old Navy’s lowest prices of the season, but you will also receive free shipping on your purchase over $75 or more by using promo code ONFREE75 at checkout.
Ever since I first had the opportunity to try Yoplait’s Fiber One yogurt last summer, I knew I had found my new favorite yogurt and since that time, my love for Fiber One yogurt has not wavered one little bit.
Before Yoplait’s Fiber One yogurt even hit shelves, it had already received Lisa Lillien, also known as Hungry Girl’s seal of approval. In fact, it is the first nationally-distributed yogurt to receive this seal of approval. In every 4oz of this yogurt is 5 grams of fiber (20% of the recommended daily value each and every single one of us need daily,) is a great source of calcium and vitamins A and D and is just 50 calories.
In the past, we have also had the opportunity to share with you coupons for Yoplait’s Fiber One yogurt–one for $1 off of a 4-pack of yogurt, and another for a free 4-pack of yogurt. Needless to say, this yogurt rocks and I am so excited to be able to share even more Fiber One yogurt love with all of you out there!
At a recent Fiber One yogurt tasting event, Lisa Lillien chatted with consumers about this tasty snack. Thanks to Yoplait, we have the opportunity to share a video with you from this recent tasting event so you can see what other folks think of Fiber One yogurt and also a downloadable $1 off Fiber One yogurt coupon!
Yoplait’s Fiber One yogurt comes in four flavors–strawberry, vanilla, peach and key lime pie, so you will definitely be able to find a flavor that you will absolutely love. Enjoy!
Jane Jarvis and her best friend Allison are true blue friends ’till the end who always have each other’s backs and who can confide anything in each other. Attending Saint Teresa’s Preparatory School for Girls, the two are used to sticking out in a crowd, but now in the most positive way, being quirky in both their attitudes, as well as in their looks, so when the school holds their annual Big-Little celebration where Bigs (upper classmen) pair up with Littles (lower classmen) with the means to be more or less mentors to these younger girls, super confident Jane is immediately fearful for her less-confident friend, who she knows gets very nervous in any situation, not to mention an entire school event that, in essence, is based on your popularity.
During the Big-Little celebration, Allison seems to have it all together after showing Jane that she had received a cupcake in her locker with a note asking her to be a Big to an unnamed freshman. But Jane’s initial fears for her friend are reassured after Allison, waiting for her Little to come up and introduce herself fails to show, she throws up all over one of the freshman girls coming in her direction after nearly every other senior girl had obtained a Little. After Allison runs to the bathroom, Jane runs after to be there for her best friend, giving up any chance of getting a Little of her own. While trying to console Allison, who has barricaded herself inside a stall, a new sophomore student named Lanalee asks about Allison and after Jane tells her that Allison did not get a Little, Lanalee offers herself up, saying that she wasn’t able to get a Big anyway.
Lanalee seems to have appeared on the scene at Saint Teresa’s Preparatory School for Girls just in time. She is cool, calm and collected and even the most popular of girls in the school are fascinated with her, after she tells them a story of coming from another school primarily made up of rich socialites. She instantly becomes a great friend to Allison and to Jane alike, but Allison is spending less and less time with Jane and Allison starts to worry about this girl who she thought she had known so well; especially after Allison comes to school with her usual unruly hair cut into a short, dyed-red bob and is rocking an entirely new, obviously expensive wardrobe with matching, equally expensive accessories. Allison’s entire situation becomes even hairier to Jane when she follows Allison out of a small cafe, to see her go directly to Jane’s ex-boyfriend’s Elton’s house, who is now Allison’s new boyfriend.
As a series of weird and random events take place, Jane is left wondering what has happened to her friend to have made her become this completely new person she hardly recognizes (or sees) anymore. As her curiosity grows, she meets a very strange and at first, even somewhat stalker-like freshman named Owen and after ignoring him for a while, she realizes quickly that she needs Owen–because he happens to know exactly what has happened to Allison and is one of very few links Jane has to piece everything together. It is with Owen’s help that Jane comes to find out that Allison has made a deal with the devil–literally and it all started with that single cupcake in Allison’s locker on Big-Little Day. Now, it’s up to Jane to save the best friend she knows is still hidden inside of this new, but not-so-improved Allison, even if it means sacrificing herself.
I had Devilish sitting on my bookshelf for a little while before picking it up to read. I thought it was yet another young adult beach read; something that I would read through in a few sittings and be done with, it not really leaving such a lasting impression. Needless to say, I was wrong. The cover of the book is superb, especially since it does hold a great deal of meaning for the story itself, but you don’t know that when you first pick it, giving it that intriguing feel before you read it and a much more complex, full-circle feeling after.
It is an intelligent, fast-paced, thrilling read that will keep you turning the page again and again. This is the first book I have read by Maureen Johnson, but I am beyond intrigued and very excited to pick up another one of her books. She truly has a gift for playing with suspense and keeps you thinking and laughing throughout the entire book. Johnson’s characters, even her evil, do-no-gooders, are fun and will keep you switching sides on who to root for because you really like these diverse and very well-rounded characters.
Devilish was very much aptly-timed for me, just finishing it right after Valentine’s Day and not knowing exactly why I was craving cupcakes so much; it took my partner asking me what I expected from reading a book every day with a delicious cupcake pictured on the cover. While Devilish did initially present itself to be a not-so-remarkable read that I’ve read a thousand times before, it was anything but. I surprised even myself with how much I truly enjoyed this book.
The British Academy Film Awards, also popularly known as the BAFTAs, took place in London last night at the Royal Opera House. Check out the gorgeous stars that walked the red carpet in the season’s best fashion.
Happy newlyweds Josh and Ting Li had a Valentine’s Day wedding, and while V-Day is a very, very cliche day for engagements, weddings and vow renewals, the Li’s wedding was anything but run of the mill.
The two said “iDo” in an Apple store at New York’s Fifth Avenue Apple store. The ceremony referenced Steve Jobs, the ring bearer was a first generation iPod and the priest who officiated the ceremony was dressed as Steve Jobs.
While this may just seem like two geeks who fell in love and because of their epic fandom, chose to have their wedding at an Apple store, but the location actually bears a great deal of meaning to the couple, since it was where they met. Ting was looking to buy an iPod and Josh struck up a conversation with her and the rest was history. Josh also accounts that he used to joke that the Apple store was his church because he is not religious and obviously, loves everything Apple, so it was only natural for the couple to tie the knot at a location that was very much important to them both.
Check out video of the couple’s wedding:
I absolutely love that this couple was able to have their wedding in a setting that they felt passionate for, but check out all of those people taking obsessive amounts of pictures! I know I would personally opt for a more intimate setting where I didn’t feel like I had a flock of paparazzi after me trying to get as many pictures of me as possible. While there are definitely some people out there who do crave that celebrity treatment, when it comes to your wedding, I would personally keep it a bit more private.
Have you or would you ever want to have a fan-based wedding?
We all have lives. We all have families, regardless of whether we simply live our lives as people who have grown around, with and because of a group of people, or whether we are taken care of our own. We all have responsibilities and that last episode of LOST to catch up on before the next episode airs. Very, very few of us take time out of our days and nights to indulge in purely recreational, self-fulfilling activities that are completely and utterly selfish and one-sided. While words such as self-fulfilling and selfish may latch onto you as very negative things to do, when it comes to relaxation, it is just about the best thing you can do.
We have all heard of the term “mental health days,” but the term is often tossed around as a joke between women as to what they wish they could do–if only they could afford the day off or were able shirk their daily duties to a fellow co-worker for the day. When it comes to women actually taking a true mental health day to do something fun and fulfilling for themselves, we may as well be living in a fantasy world because we just don’t do that and if they do, they take that dangerous day off of work to catch up on their list of errands that must be completed in order to live in a house that doesn’t smell faintly of gym socks or for functions or other obligations we really couldn’t fit into our schedule, but tried to convince ourselves we could.
I did not post on Woman Tribune yesterday. I thought about it and really sat down at the computer with the intention of writing and putting more content out there, but when it came down to it, my head and my heart wasn’t in it and the worst kind of blogging you can do is forced blogging when you’re just not feeling it. Through the years, I’ve noticed that when I forced myself to put content out there when I really just didn’t feel like it and wasn’t passionate about it, my hits would decline over time and my number of subscribers would follow suit. I was creating the same amount of content, but really, I knew it was all filler–and so did my readers. So instead of posting here yesterday, my partner and I hit up the store (in the middle of a snow storm, woops,) and filled up on the most junk food we have bought in a very long time. When we got home, we both went to our computers, but instead of working, we decided that it was time to spend some time together doing something we both love–play video games. And yes, we do consider him sitting in his office upstairs at his computer and me sitting downstairs at my computer “spending time together” if we’re both logged into the same video game and talking through Skype. We’re nerds like that.
We ended up playing Empire Builder with a friend of ours last night for over nine hours. That sounds extreme and of course I do not want to imply that everyone has nine hours to sit at the computer getting nothing but high scores on a video game accomplished, but being such a creature of the computer and such a video game nut, I needed a day of nothing but gaming to let me relax, rid my head of my absolutely insane list of things I need to accomplish, have been wanting to accomplish and have been trying to make myself accomplish. After last night and sitting here today, I don’t have to force a thing and I’m back to my normal, workaholic self.
So, in conclusion, regardless of your list of errands or the amount of minutes or hours you have to spare in a day, take some time to do something that you genuinely enjoy doing; something you may even feel guilty about because it is so self-indulgent. Do it and when you’re through and you have allowed yourself that time, you will come back to your list of errands, because they never do just disappear, regardless of how much we may want them to, an you will feel refreshed and be ready to get to work.
The blogosphere is made up of countless blogs on an exuberant amount of different topics. There is literally about 500 different blogs that appeal to every one person. That is how big the blogosphere is. While there are so, so many different things people bring up, explore, dissect and discuss on their blogs, when you cut through all the clever wording used to describe what a particular blog is all about what type of content you would expect to find there, there are mainly two different types of blogs–those used to detail, rant and rave about one’s life and blogs built and written by and for corporations. As more and more people start opening up and divulging just about everything that goes through their heads to their prospective audiences and as more corporations seek to identify and connect with their consumers, the line between these two, seemingly separate blog types continues to blur where we, the blog readers, see our favorite blogs writing about and being sponsored by corporations. Before the most recent FTC guidelines have been put into place, most of the time, blog readers did not know when we, bloggers, were just sharing information or were being compensated in some way for what we wrote about products and businesses.
As this already very thin line continues to blur, people who began blogging to divulge, rant, rave and detail their lives on the internet are evolving their blogs into their businesses and in some, albeit rare cases, a person’s blog makes up their entire of the bulk of their household income. While most people put the emphasis of being compensated for blog posts, advertisements and the like on mommybloggers, this trend has and will continue amongst any and all blogs with a significant audience that is deemed a “target audience” by consumers.
Woman Tribune started out as a business-like blog. It was not created merely to divulge about my life, although I have done just that on several occasions and will undoubtedly continue to do so as long as Woman Tribune is up and running, but it was created more-so to provide information and to explore and discuss information that is important and significant in the lives of women everywhere. To put it bluntly, Woman Tribune was created as a business, rather than something fun to do in my down time and because of that, Woman Tribune has always operated with a business-like platform. One of the major things to keep in mind when creating a blog with the purpose of it being a business in mind is that it must always contain recent information. While I do my best to post about relevant, interesting and varied topics, if I let Woman Tribune sit for a few days with no content going up after a number of days, it is pretty much the equivalent of committing blogosphere suicide. It starts to become irrelevant, something easy to gloss over and it becomes forgettable. So obviously, knowing that not only is content king in the blogging world, but frequent content is also king and something that must be kept in mind to sustain your blogging/business, the thought of blogging schedules is guaranteed to come up in your mind at least, oh, about 150 times. A day.
Blogging schedules are tricky. Every “professional blogger” or “internet/blog marketer, “interblog marketer” if you will, repeatedly states in just about every five posts for about five years straight to post on your blog as many times as you’d like, but around the same time every day in order to set your readers on a schedule and give them something to look forward to. This is all well and good, in theory, but can become quite a mess in no time and without any effort.
Firstly, trying to get my readers on some sort of “schedule” of when to expect my new posts seems a little weird to me. A little like parenting and why would I start treating my readers like my children when most of them already have children of their own? To add to this, because most of my readers do have children of their own, that means that while they probably love, and even fantasize, about the thought of having some semblance of a schedule, in reality, that is really not given to most parents. Adding to that, for a blogger to be available at around the same, exact time every day in order to update their blog makes it sound like they are lacking a life, which then again may be why they make the money and can be considered interblog marketers in the first place. Just sayin’…
I have always been a night owl; there is just something about the dark and the quiet that really jump-starts my mojo and really puts me to work. I tip a significant hat to the night time as being a key factor in my web design/development talents and for putting my natural knack for the English language to work as a writer early. I have been on the internet, designing and developing websites, writing (mostly) bad poetry and blogging since I was 13 years old. That is an entire decade of this stuff and for the longest time, I honestly had no idea what I was doing, but it worked and I built a name for myself in the political and feminist blogging worlds early. I thought I had some sort of an idea of what I was doing, but as I founded Woman Tribune and found myself enthralled with this new “blogging business” everyone jumped on the bandwagon of over the course of the past few years, I realized that in order to treat this business like a legitimate business, I was going to have to adapt to some business hours. This is exactly where my blogging schedule goes a bit haywire. Because I am a night owl, I am very often up all night (it’s 5:11am here right now and I have not yet been to bed. You obviously get the picture.) and because of this, I am usually not awake during “business hours,” ie: 9am to 5pm. A lot other bloggers have come out quite frequently to say that they too are night owls or suffer from insomnia and in order to still operate under the disguise, for lack of a better word, of being awake during normal business hours, they simply schedule their blog posts that they have written in advance, to publish throughout the day. I could do this if my WordPress did not consistently refuse to publish scheduled posts, therefore making me believe that my installation of WordPress has developed some sort of technological personality and I am just not ready for my content management system to start taking over my life, and then of course, the world.
Just a few days ago I had stayed up all night and got so, completely tired, but wanted to force myself to stay up all day and “work,” also known as write blog posts which is very much work in my life, this website technically being my business regardless of how much I enjoy doing it, but something dawned on me–something that should have dawned on me quite a while ago. I created Woman Tribune in order to provide information to women and to explore and open discussion about the topics that interest me, and collectively other women around the world. If I stay up all night and sleep all day, yet still provide this same service, then I have essentially fulfilled my obligation. If Woman Tribune has become even the least bit important, or a daily stop on women’s blog hopping and internet stays throughout the day, then it technically should not matter when new posts hit the home page.
When small potatoes bloggers, and yes I do very much consider myself small potatoes, I do not have an ego in the least when it comes to my “online personality,” see the blogs of corporations or really, really big potatoes bloggers updating several times a day it is because most of them have a staff of writers. Most of them have pre-written posts to publish throughout the day to make themselves look more professional, again for lack of a better word, than they really are. Bloggers who have created their own websites and who are the sole bloggers on their websites cannot catch up to the amount of volume being presented on professional and corporate-backed blogs and it is about time that we stop trying to. We don’t have teams or staff, we just have ourselves and if people are still logging onto our websites, then it must be enough and it must be okay.
Do you keep to a blogging schedule? Do you think having a blogging schedule or posting at the same time every day is important?
While I and Woman Tribune, essentially is a “small potatoes” blog, I am very interested in its continued expansion and if any women out there are interested in contributing guest posts or weekly/daily columns to Woman Tribune, please feel free to contact me directly at holly[at]womantribune[dot]com to contribute your awesome blogging talents. I’m sure we could work something out and you would be in pretty good company because for the most part, I kick ass. Again, just sayin’…
This is a guest post by Bill Hardekopf, CEO of 
We have all seen the spring and summer emails coming in from our favorite stores we receive email alerts from. I have been known to complain about these emails, shouting in their bold-faced type that it’s almost spring and time to buy flip flops, which isn’t surprising since at this exact moment, I am sitting in front of a window watching inches upon inches of snow layer the ground. Hopefully spring will come to Northeastern Pennsylvania soon because I am getting ridiculously tired of snow and to prepare for those spring and summer seasons, Old Navy has a ton of styles, colors and sizes for all the men in your family.
Happy newlyweds Josh and Ting Li had a 
