Woman Tribune » Technology

Ultimate Blog Party @ 5MFM

Jenny — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 15:48:58 +0000

Have you ever wanted to meet new bloggers? Have you ever wanted an insane amount of comments? Yea, I think we all have to be honest. If that’s the case, well, then you should check out the blog party going on over at 5 Minutes for Mom next month (April 9-16).

Every year for the past couple of years, the ladies over at 5MFM hold the Ultimate Blog Party. It’s an annual event where you can visit a shit’ton of bloggers and people, win prizes and make some new friends in the process. I’ve personally made some new friends in the 2 years I’ve participated in the party and gotten some new regular readers to my blog as well. But the awesome part is *leansinclose*, you don’t have to be a parent or a blogger to join either. Non-parents and non-bloggers are welcome to party as well.

If you wanna find out more about it, just check out their post here. I hope you do join. You’ll love it and you get so much out of it.

Happy Pi Day, Geeks!

Holly — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:45:21 +0000

Today is March 14th, a date geeks and math enthusiasts around the world know as Pi Day.

Sure, most of us know that = 3.1415926535… but you can brush up on your pi facts by learning more about pi, send friends Pi Day greetings, and keep up with what people around the world are doing to celebrate Pi Day by checking out Google Trends. Even Google is celebrating Pi Day by changing their Google Doodle of the day (seen to the right). You can also feel free to call all of your friends and family members and sing some Pi Day songs to those you know will appreciate them (and your singing voice, of course.)

There is anything but a short in awesomely geeky novelty items for every Pi lover out there to go nuts over–like these Pi and pie earrings ($7.50) from Etsy user nerdgoddess. These are made from polymer clay, glaze and wire and are water-resistant, rather than waterproof, so while you may be able to wear them while it’s drizzling during a summer afternoon, you cannot take them into the shower or swimming without ruining them. They are sure to relay the message to each and every single person you come into contact with that you don’t need to present them with your Official Geek Card, because you have something better–and it’s dangling from your earlobes.

If you’re looking for a gift for a math enthusiast or just have a thing for all things plush, Etsy user Kim Payne has the perfect solution–a Pi Guy ($6.00). This guy is made of cotton fabric with a green crackle print and has embroidered eyes and mouth and polyester stuffing. If green isn’t your style, take a look at the many other Pi Guys available of differing colors and prints.

Don’t forget to spread the word about Pi Day, or just send a lovely message, letter, thank you, words of encouragement and so on to a friend using these utterly awesome Pi notecards ($8.00) from Etsy user ziggybaby. The stamps used to make these notecards were carved from linoleum and were inked onto archival quality cardstock, so you are getting a completely handmade, straight from the heart of a fellow geek item when you get these notecards. I especially love how when you open these notecards, the first 17 decimal places of pi is stamped along the bottom.

You can effortlessly search Etsy for all pi-related items to satisfy your pi-loving, geeky soul and enjoy your Pi Day!

Boost Mobile’s SANYO Incognito: Nationwide Coverage, Monthly Unlimited Plan, No Contract Required

Holly — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 23:55:57 +0000

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.

Conan O’Brien Joins His Fans on Twitter

Holly — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 18:44:12 +0000

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?

Blogging Schedules: It May Never be “Good Enough”, but that’s Okay

Holly — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 10:28:42 +0000

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’…

Generate Your Very Own Heart Candy Messages

Holly — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 13:30:03 +0000

Everyone remembers those little heart candies–they’re practically Valentine’s Day staples. While I haven’t had them in quite a number of years, I do remember them fondly from all of my years of schooling, from elementary right through high school; they were always around during the month of February and perhaps they still make an appearance this time of year for some of you. However, if running out to the store is way too much trouble, especially if you’re one of the many out there who is still greeted with piles of snow and ice when you walk outside, you don’t have to venture out into the cold to get your candy heart fix.

You can now make your very own candy hearts just by typing what you want your heart to say in a little box and clicking on the color of heart you want it to be. Yet another V-Day gift you can instantly send out to your friends, families and lovers without even having to leave the computer. And if you absolutely loathe Valentine’s Day like the plague, there’s also a goth mode to create black hearts of apathy, broken hearts and rage galore!

Check out my absolutely hilarious candy hearts above and head on over to create your own.

CEO of Sun Microsystems Tweets His Resignation

Holly — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:42:44 +0000

CEO of Sun Microsystems, Jonathan Schwartz, has resigned and as only appropriate for a CEO of an IT company, he went out in style, tweeting his resignation. But it wasn’t just any old tweet, it was a full on tweet-haiku. Yeah, pretty awesome.

Schwartz has officially become the first Fortune 200 boss to tweet his resignation, which isn’t too big a surprise, considering he was the first chief executive of a major company to come out with a public blog of his own. He had also pushed the Securities and Exchange Commission to treat blogs the same as press releases and filings in matters of disclosing critical business matters to investors.

The reason behind Schwartz’s resignation is said to be because Sun was recently acquired by Oracle, which acquired the company after I.B.M. had moved to buy them out, but when negotiations came to a standstill, Oracle moved quickly to grab it. In an interview conducted last week with Oracle CEO Larry Ellison, he had stated that he fully expects Schwartz to resign, rather than play a role in the new Sun/Oracle company.

While it is not well-known what is next for Jonathan Schwartz, he had stated in an e-mail that “with a few million businesses and a few billion consumers on the Web, rumor has it there are some interesting opportunities to be had.” and he is completely right; you never know what’s going to happen when it comes to an IT professional joining the ranks of the recently unemployed, but I’m sure the right company will snatch him up, perhaps a company with the same innovative ideas and mindset for the internet and blogging world.

Get Alice on Your iPhone

Holly — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 21:55:24 +0000

With the amount of benefits Alice provides to busy folks shopping for household essentials and the oh so excellent deals they have to make sure you’re getting the lowest price, it was only a matter of time before Alice had her very own iPhone app.

If you’ve never heard of Alice before, it’s a website that makes it easier and cheaper for you to shop for your household essentials like Q-tips, toilet paper, laundry detergent and more and even get reminders of when you’re running low and need to order more–and not only that, but Alice will ship your order right to your house so you don’t even have to go to the store. From a personal perspective, Alice is a hermit’s dream. When you download the Alice iPhone app (for free, I might add!), you will have full access to product lists, coupons, reminders and shopping cart. You can access price comparisons, ingredients, customer reviews and coupons for the top 50 daily deals on Alice.com.

Get the new Alice.com iPhone app

How to Find Free (and Extremely Cheap) Kindle Books

Holly — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 12:30:00 +0000

There are thousands upon thousands of books and periodicals available in the Kindle Store, but sprinkled throughout all of the material you have to pay for, there are also hundreds of free or extremely cheap items available for download. Instead of having to sift through thousands of items, you can now find all of the free and very cheap items available just by typing -domain in the search bar of your Kindle or on Amazon.com.

People Sure Do Like to Say Twitter–A Lot

Holly — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 10:09:42 +0000

Twitter was recently branded as the most used word of 2009, with Barack Obama coming in second and H1N1 coming third.

But how do we know what words people are saying the most in a particular year? Well, Twitter was crowned the winner by Texas-based algorithms company, Global Language Monitor (GLM). Other words people like to say a lot are vampire, which we can blame on Stephanie Meyer and her Twilight series as well as True Blood, and of course, the word stimulus, which makes sense since we’re in the middle of a global recession and $800 billion sure is a lot of money to be pumped into the US economy–and still have more people living below the poverty line since the Great Depression.

This definitely shows how big Twitter is, not just as a social networking site, but as a daily part of our lives. All of the really big news that has broken over the past year or more, I have heard about first on Twitter and a lot of other people have remarked with the same sentiment. Twitter is easy for anyone to hop onto, it’s accessible and that is why it has seen so much success covering pretty much any and every topic imaginable.

So what do you think? Are you on Twitter? Do you Tweet your days and nights away or still not understand why everyone is on it? Also, don’t forget to follow WomanTribune on Twitter!

Games Galore for the Holidays

Holly — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 22:38:48 +0000

This holiday season there are a myriad of gift items that are hot, hot, hot! But now more than ever before, games are in super high demand. Best game titles of the year like Little Big Planet, Call of Duty 4 and Fallout 3 are some big favorites and titles like Rock Band and Guitar Hero have become staples for the past few holiday seasons. But there are also a lot of great online games that will appease the little gamer in your household without you having to take on an abundance of stress this holiday season looking all over the place for these hot ticket items.

In most cases, once someone completes a game and has solved all the puzzles and has been named victorious in the game they’ve been playing, it takes a long time for people to get the interest in that game back again, but online games have an appeal (and can also be very, very addicting) that they will actually hold the attention of your game-player for many months to come. I know I personally have a Playstation 3 and have played it maybe a handful of times in the year I’ve had it. However, I play online games a few times a day and with games like Burger Shop, Bejeweled 2 which every member of my family plays every free moment they have, and the beloved Diner Dash and every variation of that game that has come out in the past few years, they really end up having more of an appeal to game players of all ages.

So this holiday season, when your children are asking for those hot ticket games, you can also keep in mind that there are numerous online games (we’re talking like hundreds and maybe even thousands of different online games here) that they will also love and you can have them ready on your computer for Christmas morning without even leaving the house–or your computer, for that matter! How’s that for some hassle-free holiday shopping?

Simple CAPTCHA to the Rescue!

Holly — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:24:19 +0000

Throughout the past week, Woman Tribune has been littered with hundreds, perhaps even verging on the thousands of spam comments that had outwitted my anti-spam plugin, Defensio. An absolute incredible amount of comments that did not consist of your usual spammy content, but of random words put together by no logical thought whatsoever. To say the least, it was very annoying having to go through pages of comments to mark the random-language comments as spam only to finish, go back to my dashboard and see yet another slew of spam comments appear that span over two to three pages. It was a never-ending process of spam deletion. Luckily, Defensio did catch on after a few hundred of these new type of spam comments were flagged and started keeping a few handfulls of them off the website, but a few handfuls of comments being held back was no match for the work that I had ahead of me every single time I pulled the administrator dashboard of this website up.

After a few searches through WordPress’ plugin directory I found the plugin that finally brought my spam comment hysteria to an end–Simple CAPTCHA!

Captcha image verification has been a staple on blogs small and large alike to cut down on the monstrous amount of spam comments an average blog accumulates. We hadn’t had this implemented on Woman Tribune because we did not have an absolute need for it. Sure, we did accumulate a great deal of spam comments, but it was pretty manageable–until now. So the time has come for captcha image verification to become a necessity for Woman Tribune and so I downloaded and installed Simple CAPTCHA, a simple and secure plugin that adds a little six letter/number combination field to your already existing comment structure.

As far as simplicity when installing the plugin goes, you cannot get any simpler than Simple CAPTCHA–which is probably why they put the word simple in the title of the plugin! It’s an easy upload process, click activate in your WordPress dashboard and you’re good to go! Yeah, that is it and since installing the plugin, I have not had one of these comments leak through and I did not lose one legitimate comment.

So if you’re looking for an image verification plugin that you do not have to set up at all that will do its job exactly as you want it to, check out Simple CAPTCHA.

Monday Mingle: October 19th

Holly — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 18:51:30 +0000

Please note that this week’s Monday Mingle was recorded on Tuesday night and posted Wednesday afternoon. Hopefully future Monday Mingles will actually pan out to be posted on Monday; we’ll see.

Now it’s your turn! Go get your camera and join in on the fun! Eighty MPH Mom has her linky up all week so you can record your video for Monday Mingle any day of the week. It’s a great way to meet other great bloggers out there and also get to know a little more about the people you’re reading.

Here are the questions for next week:

1. Talk about a breast cancer awareness program and post a link to that site. You can wear pink if you’d like, or do something else for Breast Cancer awareness (this whole step should be simple).

2. What is the closest you have come to meeting a celebrity? Or have you ever met a celebrity? (this can be ANY celebrity- famous author/singer/actor/even blogger LOL)

3. Would you rather lick a grocery cart handle or lick a bus stop bench?

4. Do you like to sing? Are you a good singer? What would Simon Cowell say about your singing? Feel free to sing a short song if you want.

5. Make up a limerick about Monday Mingle! (you know – limericks? “There once was a man from Nantucket….”)

See you next week!

Become a Fan of Woman Tribune on Facebook!

Holly — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 16:29:25 +0000

Facebook is a daily staple in many people’s lives. It has a tremendous impact on people who want to get back in touch, stay in touch, contact companies with any questions or comments you may have about their line of products or their business ethics, and it also allows you to receive the latest news and special updates from your favorite websites.

And Woman Tribune has just joined that list of websites you can keep track of on Facebook! We have recently created a Facebook page where you can receive the latest posts you may have missed and share news, ideas and stories with other like-minded women who also read Woman Tribune. We also have plans to offer exclusive giveaways only available to our loyal Facebook fans, so there’s your incentive to become a fan right there!

So how do you become a fan? It’s easy. Just go to our Facebook page and click ‘Become A Fan’ and you’re all set and will begin seeing our updates on your Facebook home page immediately!

Monday Mingle: October 12th

Holly — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 01:39:43 +0000

Monday Mingle: October 12th from Woman Tribune on Vimeo.

You can find and internet-stalk Allen at http://AllenVanWert.com and watch his videos (mostly free guitar lessons) at http://youtube.com/musichopper

Here are the questions for next week:

1. Have you ever had any surgeries or have you spent more than one night in a hospital? What for? (only if you want to tell, of course!)

2. Does your spouse do any of the cooking? Is he/she a good cook? Be honest…

3. Do you speak any foreign languages fluently? What (if any) foreign language did you take in school?

4. What are your best budgeting/saving money tips?

5. What are a few of your worst habits?

See you next week!

The Federal Trade Commission Injects Itself into the Blogosphere

Holly — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 21:02:46 +0000

People have been blogging for close to a decade, but never before have we seen something that attracted so many people so quickly before than the amount of people who have flocked to blogging and who have created internet-based spaces for themselves. People are very resourceful and it was only a matter of time before people realized they could make a nominal, or in some rare cases, could earn their sole household income from their blogs. In fact, the biggest blogging niche where bloggers are making the most money is by running blogs on how to make money blogging. And whenever people are making an income from doing what they love, it’s only a matter of time before the government turns its nose up at it and finds a way to discipline the people who have the nerve to not work a society-approved 9-5.

If you haven’t yet seen the Federal Trade Commission’s new 81-page document (or if you don’t have access to someone with the eccentric skill set needed to decipher the language) it basically means that starting December 1, 2009 if you are compensated in any way for a blog post you write (or info you share on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube or any other new media outlet,) you must disclose that you have been compensated by the company that provided you either with cash, a free product, or any other type of compensation you received from the company.

If you bought the product or service you are reviewing or sharing your opinion on with your own money, then you are not required to disclose any information whatsoever. If you received a product for free from a company, you are now mandated to write a little blurb on the bottom of your blog post that goes something like ‘I received this product for free from X company and all information in this blog post regarding said product is is the sole opinion of myself and do not represent the thoughts of X company.’ Or you could be a little less-professional, which is what most bloggers will be doing come December 1, and just add a short and sweet ‘I received this product for free from X company.’ The only hole in this legislation is if you did buy a product you decided to review on your blog with your own money and you fall under siege of the FTC, how do you prove that you bought any products you reviewed on your website? How many of you actually keep the receipts of gifts you buy for your children and loved ones or apparel that you absolutely love after wearing and want to share a brand with your readers? No, in most cases you don’t and how else would you prove that you did buy a product that appeared on your site that could cost you up to $11,000 per post if you don’t disclose any business relationship.

However, semantics really does play a part in this conversation and not just because I am a blogger who is really not very happy with the new FTC mandates. For instance, Woman Tribune currently has a site-wide disclosure in place that distinctly states that I receive forms of cash advertising, sponsorship, paid insertions or other forms of compensation. Granted, it also states that you, my readers, do not know which posts are sponsored by any company in most cases, but the policy of Woman Tribune that I am adamant about because it is my own, personal and ethical belief, is that whether or not a post is sponsored by a company, service, website, and so on, my blog posts are always honest and if I don’t like a product or service that I was asked if I would try, or I find anything misleading about a sponsor, I won’t think twice about reporting my findings; note the ‘ethical blogger’ badge in the footer of Woman Tribune. As far as I’ve seen, most bloggers who accept sponsorship of any kind feel the same, exact way.

I think the media, especially when targeting “mommy bloggers” who blog for profit or are often sponsored by companies or services, have blown blogging sponsorship way out of proportion and have basically represented women bloggers, who make up most bloggers who review products and are sponsored in any way by any company as people who sell their souls for freebies, which is completely not the case and is probably why the FTC felt the pressure to amend their legislation and place mandates on bloggers.

The FTC’s new mandates on bloggers are only subject to US bloggers, so those who live outside of the US who don’t have strict mandates over media or any other niche that free-thinkers and free-speakers thrive in, do not have anything to worry about. If you’re a blogger whose web host is located outside of the US I don’t believe should be subject to the new mandate, although I’m not a lawyer or a member of the FTC, so I could be mistakes and it’s always wise to double check. The bottom line is that bloggers who are endorsed by any company, service, etc. and whodo not disclose the relationship they have with the company are subject to fines equaling up to $11,000 per post.

Are you a blogger who feels under siege by the FTC? What are your thoughts on the new blogger mandates?

Monday Mingle: September 28th

Holly — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 03:00:15 +0000

This is my first week participating in Monday Mingle, which was created by Eighty MPH Mom. So glad I could join other great bloggers out there who are mingling it up!

Here are the questions for next week:

1. What would you think about having our spouses vlog with us one week? Would yours make a cameo appearance?
2. Do you have pets? Tell us about them!
3. What are your favorite sayings or movie quotes?
4. What is your favorite kind of music? Favorites bands/artists and songs? Best concert you ever attended?
5. What are your favorite drinks (alcohol or non)?

See you next week!

The Ultimate Music Player for You and Your Many Moods

Holly — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:02:51 +0000

When you work from home and you’re in front of a computer all day, it becomes second nature to have music playing pretty much all the time. Before you know it, your hard drive is completely full and you’re sitting there wondering how it’s possible that there is no space left on your computer as you’re simultaneously listening to a few hundred different albums playing on shuffle. Not only do we find ourselves absolutely needing music to function in our internet lives, our minds also crave music while we’re driving, walking around the block to stretch our limbs, working out, getting ready for the day ahead of us, music plays a very big role in our every day lives. That is precisely why mp3 players and iPods have exceeded popularity and become a social necessity. As we continue to become a very technological society, more and more people are hopping on the mp3 player bandwagon, but there are still a lot of people out there who don’t necessarily understand how to work the average mp3 player–how to load music onto it from our computers, how to even get music downloaded onto our computers in the first place, and so on. There are also a great deal of people thinking to themselves “Why can’t there be a simpler way to enjoy music while on the go? Well now there is.

The Sansa slotRadio from SanDisk is the ultimate no hassle music player. There’s no transferring your music from your computer to your music device; no trying to figure out how to get music transferred if you’re not completely comfortable with music downloading or music playing gadgets, no waiting for all of your files to transfer or wondering how much space you have left on your mp3 player and if all of your files will fit, because if you’re as big of a music freak as I am, they can continue making mp3 players with more and more space, but you will always have more music needed to be loaded onto it and chances are, you’re going to run out of that space real quick. The slotRadio comes pre-loaded with 1,000 full-length songs featuring artists from the Billboard charts, professionally arranged into genres that you can flip through. It also has an FM radio integrated into it so if you listen to the morning radio shows you won’t miss them while listening to your slotRadio. Additional slotRadio cards are available for purchase if you want to mix things up a little. You can purchase additional cards for a variety of genres, including health and fitness for all of those great songs to work out to, rock, country, R&B/hip hop, oldies, 80’s and 90’s, daily mix and the slotRadio mix. However, even if you listen to your slotRadio constantly, it will take you quite some time to get through all 1,000 songs that are loaded onto the Billboard charts card that you receive with the player; I have had my slotRadio for a little over a month now and still haven’t made my way through all of the songs. It definitely has something for everyone and something for everyone’s many moods.

You may be apprehensive about the idea of a pre-loaded music player; what if you don’t enjoy any of the songs that are on the card that comes with it? I had the same apprehension and so did my partner who, when I initially told him about the slotRadio told me ‘You should just get a regular mp3 player since you’re guaranteed to like all the music on it.’ But after we both had our time with it, we found that there were many, many songs on the card that we both loved. A misconception that we picked up on from looking at the slotRadio website and actually using it ourselves is that the Billboard card is not full of songs that are currently on the Billboard charts; it encompasses a great deal of songs from years. I was very pleasantly surprised to get reacquainted with a great deal of songs that I had forgotten about completely that took me right back to those good times from the past that gave me that incredible warm and fuzzy feeling you get when you reminisce on past memories that are attached to the songs you heard on the radio or the bands you loved at that time.

All in all, I absolutely love the Sansa slotRadio; I listen to it when I’m working on my laptop from bed and have even used it quite a few times while sitting at my desktop, even with my ample supply of music at my fingertips that I have on my desktop. If you’re looking for a quality music player that involves no work or hassle whatsoever, I would definitely recommend you check out the Sansa slotRadio.

If you would like to purchase the Sansa slotRadio, it is available for purchase on the official website as well as to Radio Shack stores nationwide.

Support Grandparents Day, Join the Grandparents Day Twitter Party

Holly — Wed, 09 Sep 2009 12:00:21 +0000

National Grandparent’s Day is September 13th, but not many people know that, which is why it is one of the most overlooked national days of celebration all year long. But this year is different; Grandparents.com and MomSelect have teamed up to celebrate Grandparent’s Day and they’re inviting moms, dads, grandmothers, grandfathers and grandchildren to take part in the celebration via Twitter.

I have always had a very unique respect for my grandmother. I come from a so-called “unconventional family,” being raised by my father, grandmother and aunt; my grandmother and aunt have always been and still remain to be the mother figures in my life. Some of my most-treasured memories that I have are with my grandmother; we have both always been night owls and we would go to Wal-Mart in the middle of the night when the store was empty and we would do whatever shopping that needed to be done. Afterward, we would go back home and she would make a pot of coffee and for the next hour or two we would sit at the kitchen table, drinking coffee and talking about whatever came into our heads. It is my grandmother and these long talks that we had once or twice a week that I have to thank for my deep understanding and passion for Democratic politics and the women’s liberation movement, which is why I started my personal and political/feminist blog, Menstrual Poetry. It is because of my grandmother because of my “unconventional family” that I know just how much a grandparent will do, both for their children and for their grandchildren and that is why I am thrilled that Grandparents.com and MomSelect have teamed up to celebrate and spread the word for others to celebrate National Grandparent’s Day.

The Grandparent’s Day Twitter party will take place Thursday, September 10th from 8-9PM EST. People will be swapping stories about their grandparents and being grandparents and they will also be giving away prizes that would make terrific Grandparent’s Day gifts!

You can find the discussion on Twitter by searching for hashtag #grandparents. If you want to participate in the Twitter party, RSVP here. Your registration will count as an additional entry to win a $25 e-gift card from Target.com. Additional giveaways will be held throughout the evening, including two $25 gift cards to 1-800-Flowers and two gift cards to Snapfish.

For updates as well as prize information, make sure you are following @ResourcefulMom. You can also follow us on Twitter @WomanTribune.

For even more chances to win great prizes, if you tweet the details of the Grandparent’s Day Twitter Party (including hashtag, date and time) between 8AM and 8PM on Thursday, you will eligible for a separate drawing for another $25 e-gift card from Target.com.

Grow Delicious Crops and Raise Adorable Animals on Your Own Farm…On Facebook

Holly — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:55:21 +0000

Facebook has an absolute plethora of applications; they easily have hundreds of applications, if not more, that appeal to pretty much everyone. I have noticed an application frenzy around Facebook as of late. While applications have always been very popular on Facebook, it seems as of the number of people visiting their Facebook applications has grown exponentially and seem to only be rising as time goes by. From personality and ‘What character from this television show/movie are you most like?’ quizzes to games you can play with and against your friends Facebook applications have been growing to meet the rising demand for them.

The reason why Facebook applications have done so well and are continuing to pick up the pace is because frankly, they are addicting and one game that has been the source of a great entertainment and procrastination for all is Farmville–an application that lets you be a farmer and grow crops and raise animals living on your own, virtual farm.

Farmville lets you grow numerous crops like strawberries, eggplant, soybeans, peppers, and numerous others and lets you raise animals like cows, pigs, horses, and ducks. It is incredibly cute and very, very addicting, especially when you get into the awards you can get from achieving small milestones like harvesting a certain number of trees or the amount of times you visit and help out on your friend’s farm and start purchasing decorations like whitewash fences (to keep your animals all fenced in while they are getting ready for their feathers, wool, milk, and eggs to be collected!) and haybales, carts, outhouses, and garden gnomes. And of course, a farm is not complete without a barn, tool shed, and of course a farm house for your farmer to live in.

Over 7 million people are playing Farmville daily, but if you’re one of the few people to actually have never heard of this game, it’s time to start your own farm and get in on Farmville. However, you may want to clear your schedule for the next week or so because that’s how long you’ll be staring at your farm, waiting for crops to go, and decorate your space.

And if that sounds a little like what your life has looked like over the past few weeks, be sure to follow Farmville on Twitter @zfarmville where they announce all of the new crops, decorations, buildings, and more that are put into the game and announce all the cool stuff going on within the Farmville community, like one person who made an entire farm that looks like Super Mario.

Adding Links to Directories

Jenny — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:00:05 +0000

While surfing the mommysphere (mommy blogs), I came across a post that got me wondering. This article talked about adding your link(s) to web directories. It gave some good advice, and there was some stuff I didn’t know about that really helped me. But seeing as I run two myself, there was one thing that concerned me.

The author of this article stated that if a directory linked sites in this way…

http://www.yourlisting.com/click.php?linkname

instead of listing them this way…

http://www.yourdomain.com

that you should move on to the next. I can see the logic in this, I really can. It’s all about the link back, right? People are greedy for them, and they want good PR (even though Google won’t give more than three from what I’ve seen). Personally, I don’t care which way they do it. I’ll confess, my listings link sites in the /click.php?linkname manner, but that’s how the script creator wrote it. That’s not my fault, and there’s nothing I can do about it. Anyway, back to the rant…

So if they’re saying this to people looking for places to list their sites, then what about the top 100’s that people add their sites to that link site(s) in this way…

http://www.yourtoplistsite.com/out.php?id=101

There’s no link juice coming out of that, and people seem to be fine with it. I think people are too worried about PR and link popularity instead of who is seeing their links to begin with. In my opinion, it doesn’t matter how a directory or listing displays your link(s). Add them anyway. At least then you won’t be missing out on all that potential traffic.

What’s your opinion? Do you care? Do you have a preference? Share with us

Charter is Giving Away a Laptop a Day

Holly — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:54:25 +0000

Charter has become a household name not only in their internet and television serviceable areas, but also outside of those areas merely because of the amount of buzz they attract when they run promotions. Charter is the only internet and television provider I have ever seen that gives their customers something so valuable and exciting, such as their HDTV-A-Day sweepstakes from last April, just for choosing Charter as their provider. And because that sweepstakes was so successful, Charter is yet again launching a great promotion sure to excite anyone living in a Charter-serviceable area; and just in time for back to school shopping!

From now until September 15 Charter is running a Laptop-a-Day Sweepstakes! This contest is for the student who is heading back to school in September (or August, as I know is the case here) who needs a laptop for homework, projects, research papers, and of course, being able to work on your schoolwork on the go! It’s also perfect for businesspeople who are attending meetings, conferences, or just need to get out of the house for a little while to work in peace at a local coffee shop or restaurant. Having a laptop makes it easy for you to get through your workload on the go and even produces a more efficient businessperson or student out of you.

The winner of Charter’s Laptop-a-Day Sweepstakes will receive an HP 550 Notebook 15-inch with Windows Vista and a NeoTec Compu Backpack. In addition, you will also have the chance to receive a gift card ranging in value from $25-$100 with special online deals from major retailers in clothing, home and accessories, restaurants, and more!

This sweepstakes runs from now until September 15 and don’t forget to keep up with all Charter news by visiting Charter on Facebook and following Charter on Twitter.

Subscribers and Followers

Jenny — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:50:25 +0000

So, we all want people to check out our blogs. Hell! People have come up with a lot of ways to get other bloggers and people in general to follow them in some way, be it through their site feed(s), Twitter accounts, Technorati favs (didn’t that go out of style?), site listings in online mags…the list goes on. I, myself, was looking at a few ways to get people to notice my blog since it seems to be slowly dying and going unnoticed. I haven’t run out of shit to say!! There was a lot of things to try out on Mom Bloggers Club, so I started poking into it further.

Aside from my idea of offering free WordPress themes, I found groups where you post your FaceBook Network Blogs url, groups where you post your Twitter profile and get followed by other people, and groups where you can get your posts voted up on social media sites (omg more of those please!). Even the idea of when people post contests and giveaways, they list following them in some way or another as a way to enter. We’ve all seen those, I’m sure. Now, that’s all well and good, but at the end of the day, unless your a high profile blogger with a well set group of roadies, you got nothing really. Just a lot of clutter in your profiles.

You know what I noticed? And I don’t know if this has happened to others. I’ve run two giveaways on this blog, one of them being unsuccessful which sucks cause it was awesome. People subscribed, followed, commented as they were told to do to enter. But when the deal was done and the giveaway was over, I started getting emails saying this person unsubscribed from my feed and/or that person unfollowed me on Twitter. I don’t think I’m the only one this is happening to, but what was the point in asking them to do so if they were gonna undo it later? It kind of defeats the purpose and it makes my site (and me) sad that people don’t think I’m worth keeping up with. They’re probably right, but still!!

So, in conclusion, unless your already popular and have been around for a while and are known, I don’t think it’s worth trying to get up to your eyeballs into all of this social business. Granted, it takes time to build readership, but personally, I don’t think it’s working out for myself (being the comment whore I am) and a lot of other people I’ve seen having the same issues. I’m not saying I’m giving up though. ‘Cause I’m not! I shall own the internet one day, you watch. And I’ll be the super networker everyone wishes they were. Mwahahaha!!

It’s Time for Some Hands On Social Media Learnin’ Courtesy of Kirtsy

Holly — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 16:44:22 +0000

The awesome women from the social media for women website, kirtsy, are embarking on a journey to spread their knowledge of social media to the masses! kirtsy editors, founders, and friends will have fun, FREE, gatherings to show you and yours cool things that will help make your online life easier, smarter, and definitely more interesting!

Registration is now open through Eventbrite and you can see the dates and times below:

Denver, CO

Friday, June 12th at 7:00 PM
Location: The Cup
1521 Pearl St., Boulder, CO 80302
303-449-5173
Click here to Register for this Event

Saturday, June 13th at 9:00 AM
Location: The Curtis Hotel
1405 Curtis Street Denver, CO 80202
303-571-0300
Click here to Register for this Event

Salt Lake City, UT

Tuesday, June 16th at 7:00 PM
Location: State Capitol Building
350 N. State Street, SLC, UT 84114
801-538-3074
Click here to Register for this Event

Wednesday, June 17th at 7:00 PM
Location: Bridge Art Academy
148 W 600 S, Provo, UT
801-623-0351
Click here to Register for this Event

Houston, TX

Wednesday, June 17th at 6:00 PM
Location: Caroline Collective
4820 Carotlin St., Houston, TX 77004
917-689-7771
Click here to Register for this Event

Thursday, June 18th at 11:00 AM
Location: Bright Sky Press Book Space
5416 Chaucer, Houston, TX 77005
1-866-933-6133
Click here to Register for this Event

Little Rock, AR

Saturday, June 20th, 10:00 AM
Location: Capital Hotel
Markham & Louisiana, Little Rock, AR 72201
501-374-7474
Click here to Register for this Event

Saturday, June 20th, 2:00 PM

Same location as above.
Click here to Register for this Event

Get more information on the event and stay up to date with everything Hands On Social Media over at Hands On Kirtsy.

In Logitech I Trust

Holly — Fri, 05 Jun 2009 15:35:49 +0000

I go through quite a lot of computer parts and accessories. In the past two years or so, I have gone through two mouses and just received my third keyboard this morning. The reason for this, of course, can be due to the fact that I spend the bulk of my overall time in front of my computer. Working a full-time web designer job, a part-time freelance writing job, and running two blogs (one of which is getting better all the time thanks to the rise in visitors–Psst, that’s Woman Tribune! Yay!) can certainly take its toll on everything computer hardware-related. To say the least, I do not go easy on my computer. I expect it to work all of the time, break very infrequently, and I expect the comfort of my day sitting in front of the computer to be at a high, which includes my list of requirements in (especially) computer keyboards.

I type approximately 84 words per minute with a 4% error rate (Yes, it’s been tested.) Because of how fast I type, I require my hands to glide across my keyboard effortlessly, so you can imagine the frustration that comes with having to press down really, really hard onto a key to get it to type the letters on the screen. My first keyboard, I believe, was the first keyboard made for the computer, so the no-name company really did not grasp the concept of soft keys for their keyboards. The second keyboard I’ve had (and retired today!) was another no-name keyboard that meant well, however, it frequently spazzed out for periods of time, either typing the same letter for quite some time or not working at all. This was not a jamming of the keys or anything, it would just literally get hormonal.

This morning my new keyboard came and after using it for a little while, it is the perfect keyboard I’ve had in mind for years.

The Logitech Classic Keyboard is a no-frills keyboard; it has a great shape, it’s black and sleek looking, but most of all, the keys are so soft making for great rhythm and flow when writing and working!

When I was thinking about how wonderful it was to have a keyboard that actually felt and worked great, I had a look around my office and realized… All of the computer-related gadgets in here are Logitech!

In addition to the classic keyboard, I am also using the Logitech LX3 optical mouse, the boyfriend is using a snazzier version of my keyboard, also by Logitech, and he is also using a Logitech webcam full-time for all of his video needs, which is quite a job because he gives guitar lessons over on YouTube.

All in all, my family pretty much relies on Logitech for all of our computer accessory needs. They are great quality products, affordable, and won’t let you down!

Woman Tribune » Technology

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