Never Forget an Item at the Store Again

I don’t know about you, but every single time I go the grocery store, I end up forgetting either one or several items I went to the store for in the first place. That doesn’t stop me from buying up the whole store, of course and thus making me completely oblivious to what I forgot until I get home, put the groceries away and suddenly it dawns on me that what I wanted to make for dinner that night is still sitting at the store. Luckily, I’m not even close to being the only person who does this and not only can several other primary grocery shoppers of the household can empathize, an awesome gadget came out to eliminate this from happening ever again.

SmartShopper is a gadget with state-of-the-art voice recognition that makes a grocery list by speaking into the device and printing your list out to take with you to the store. With over 2500 different items including food and even errands and anything else you find yourself doing regularly, you are sure to get what you need done every single time you go to run your errands. No more forgetting to pick up dinner or depositing a check or anything else you need to get done and if the SmartShopper does not have the item you need listed in their database, you can enter your own errand and add voice recognition for the item for later use.

SmartShopper is more than appropriately named, it really is the smartest gadget you will ever pick up and you will find yourself benefiting from the organization this gadget introduces into your lives from the first time you pick it up.

This gadget is extremely easy to use, perfect for busy moms, anyone who loves a cool gadget, teachers, anyone who needs a little organization in their lives and in my opinion, it would be perfect for elderly people living on their own. The SmartShopper is extremely easy to use, has a clear, easy-to-read LED screen display, requires no ink cartridges to print, and has a very strong magnet making it easy to just stick on the fridge without having to worry about it getting lost.

The SmartShopper is an ideal gadget for anyone who, like me, finds themselves constantly forgetting to run errands as well as finding out that dinner is still at the store when you go to prepare it.

Receive $5 off of your purchase of SmartShopper with promo code EU87937.

Receive $5 off of your purchase of SmartShopper with promo code EU87937.

Top Social Media Sites of 2008

2008 has seen a great rise in social media activity. More bloggers, entrepreneurs and businesses have started utilizing social media sites like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, and so on.

While a great deal of people see greater networking results signing up and being active on several social media sites, what sites saw the most activity in 2008?

These findings, presented by ComScore, do not include December and include both social media and blogging platforms. Although the findings fail to include December and December is full of holiday craziness resulting in substantial dropping of hits, these findings are a great assessment of where social media sites stand at the close of this past year.

The top social media sites of 2008 according to ComScore are:

• Blogger (222 million)
• Facebook (200 million)
• MySpace (126 million)
• Wordpress (114 million)
• Windows Live Spaces (87 million)
• Yahoo Geocities (69 million)
• Flickr (64 million)
• hi5 (58 million)
• Orkut (46 million)
• Six Apart (46 million)
• Baidu Space (40 million)
• Friendster (31 million)
• 56.com (29 million)
• Webs.com (24 million)
• Bebo (24 million)
• Scribd (23 million)
• Lycos Tripod (23 million)
• Tagged (22 million)
• imeem (22 million)
• Netlog (21 million)

WordPress 2.7 “Coltrane” has Launched! What Do You Think?

Just under a week ago WordPress 2.7 hit the scene. With ample time to work with the new WordPress and get a feel for what has been changed (which is pretty much everything,) what do you think of it?

As soon as you go to log in to your WordPress admin panel after downloading 2.7 “Coltrane” named after John Coltrane, you will immediately notice the changes–and they don’t stop there. The entire WordPress dashboard has not only been changed, but if you don’t like it, you now have the power to move everything around to fit your most comfortable specifications. According to WordPress, version 2.7 is the product of the continuous feedback received by the community of people running WordPress on their websites. “Coltrane” aims to not only be sleek and pretty, which it completely nails on the head, but also faster–Every single thing you do in WordPress to manage your website should now take fewer clicks to accomplish speeding up the blogging process.

If you have been on the fence about upgrading to WordPress 2.7 due to being comfortable with the old interface or want to know more about how version 2.7 will work, check out this awesome video by WordPress taking you through the entire interface top to bottom and officially introducing you to “Coltrane.”

Have you been blogging with version 2.7? Upgraded and run into a few conflicting kinks with your design or the way your blog works? Does Coltrane satisfy your needs as far as a reliable, dynamic blogging platform? Whatever your thoughts and experiences are, leave them in the comments!

If you don’t currently blog with WordPress but have been interested in trying it out, I highly recommend it, it is what I use on all of my websites (including this one!) and you can download it right here.

Goodbye, Pownce

First we heard about Hugg being taken down and now, sadly, Pownce will be closing. This is a very sad time for anyone who clung to Pownce like a lifeline, as I know happens just from talking to people I’ve met through other social networking sites such as Twitter and Plurk.

Even though Pownce will be closing, the people behind Pownce are bittersweet about closing its doors. One one hand, yes, it is a sad time and it has been a sad time with a lot of different online communities battling the economic crisis, but the people behind Pownce are also moving on to Six Apart, the company behind well-known blogging software, Vox, Movable Type and TypePad.

Pownce will officially be closing on December 15 and if you are currently a Pownce user who would like to have access to all of your Pownce messages, an export function has been added for your convenience. To export your files, all you have to do is go to pownce.com/settings/export/. After you export your data, you can import all of your messages to another blogging software…perhaps blogging software made by Six Apart so you can continue to support the makers of Pownce.

Since this is the second major internet community closing, I can only hope that some of my favorites can keep their services going. We hardly see the real truth of the matter and what could happen to the websites we frequent when we see a major drawback in the industry.

Goodbye Pownce, you will surely be missed.

RIP Hugg

Announced earlier this month, TreeHugger’s social media platform for all things green, Hugg, has reached its final days.

As many people may know, website costs can be a little worrisome to your wallet even if you are just starting out, but once a website hits a certain stage and develops a substantial following, web and maintenance costs only skyrocket and sometimes, no matter how good your website ratings are or how many advertisements you put on a website, you come to a point where you must ask yourself if the money and the effort is worth the payoff received. This could very well be what happened with Hugg, as it has had a decent lifespan as far as social media platforms go, and has developed into the resource for green news.

As of November 17, Hugg no longer accepts new registrations or submissions and after the new year, hugg.com will transfer directly to the TreeHugger forums, where over 6,000 members currently share environment news, information, events and resources. If you’re like a great deal of the green online community, and see the closing of Hugg as an invaluable resource for green information and news, the TreeHugger forums will implement a new category specifically for posting and commenting on green links. It isn’t as good as a social media platform, but it will generate a seamless TreeHugger experience as well as the opportunity to reach across website lines and meet other, interesting and like-minded treehuggers.

If you are devastated over the loss of Hugg and are craving a social media platform specifically for all things green, I highly suggest you check out GROW, a news service from About My Planet.

Hugg, you will surely be missed.

Have You Heard about YouData Yet?

We heard about YouData a little over a month ago from the wonderful gals over at kirtsy and not only did we fall in love with it’s mission, we’re benefiting from it and so can you.

Most people who run a website are interesting in monetizing it; people love to get paid for what they love to do and blogging, a passion of hundreds of billions of people around the world, is one of the biggest topics of conversation on the internet today. People get paid to keep their website up and running through ads, sponsorships and even tip jars, but what YouData noticed is that while your attention is being bought all the time, it isn’t being bought from you.

YouData matches people, based on their MeFile profile, with ads for websites that they are genuinely interested in. If you’re sick of being shown ads for websites you have no interest in, like if you can’t cook and suddenly see a website littered with foodie ads, chances are you don’t care and you’re not going to click to go to the website or if you’re in a committed relationship or married and you see a great deal of ads for Match.com (I use that site as an example because their ads are everywhere and just as annoying on every site I see their ads appear on) or some other website in that realm, you’re probably going to keep right on going about your business without a second thought.

What I like about YouData is it is extremely versatile. You get matched up with ads that chances are, you’re going to like, and you can view these ads on either the YouData website, by downloading the application to your desktop so you can view your ads without even having to open your browser, or on your favorite sites, like Woman Tribune.

That’s right, here. If you’ve noticed in our sidebar, we have the YouData application so anyone who is signed up on YouData can log in right from our website and see their ads. You can also click on your ads to get your cash and never leave our website; pretty cool, right? And if you’re not signed up for YouData, you can also sign up via the application in the sidebar.

If you have a website that you would like to monetize, you can also benefit from people checking their ads on your website. To get a YouData application code for your website, all you have to do is go here or email monetize@youdata.com with the following information:

• Blog name (as you would like it to appear in the adget)
• Quick description (for anyone who would like more info on your blog)
• Blog URL (link to your blog)
• PalPal account email (where should we send your money?)

And that’s all there is to it! So I hope everyone out there takes advantage of this great ad network who, instead of paying Google or some other ad network who, let’s face it, have enough money, they want advertisers to buy your attention straight from the source. Have fun!

Circuit City Files for Bankruptcy

Circuit City has been making significant changes as of late to ward off their financial instability, but even after closing 155 retail stores across the country and announcing plans to cut approximately 17% of their 43,000 employees, Circuit City’s financial matters did not lighten up a bit and they were recently forced to file for bankruptcy.

Due to pressure from Best Buy and Wal-Mart, Circuit City’s future is unclear and Best Buy, in their attempts to further drive away all other competitive markets, reportedly stated that they may take over Circuit City stores that were forced to close.

I wonder what happens if they were to do that in areas such as mine where Best Buy and Circuit City are a mere hop, skip and a jump away from each other. Come to think of it, Wal-Mart is bunched together with the two; it’s a competitive market free for all where I live! Only time will tell, I suppose.

Register to Vote Using Your Xbox

The 2008 election is almost upon us and many people still aren’t aware of the impact they have when they vote. Voting, especially for women, had become a well-deserved and well fought for privilege 88 years ago and since then, has become our responsibility; not just as women, but as Americans. This election is the most historic and crucial election perhaps in all of history and to let this election go by and staying silent would be a travesty. So while you’re playing video games, even if you’re unable to get yourself away for the amount of time it takes to download, print out, sign and mail out a voter registration form, Xbox has you covered!

You can now register to vote using your Xbox who have recently partnered up with Rock the Vote. As long as you have an Xbox Live membership it is completely free to sign up to vote; not only that, but it is pretty easy to do, too! With over 12 million members currently on Xbox Live, what they are doing is absolutely amazing to get more people out to the polls.

Not only can you register to vote, but Xbox has made voting fun with online polls and downloadable gamer pics of the candidates to show your support!

Take On Your New Business with Updated Computer Software

Now, more than ever, people are making the decision to leave their 9-5 jobs and starting their own, home-based businesses. Most of the home businesses people are opting for are internet businesses or primarily internet-based. The internet is a surefire way to reach the greatest amount of people in the least amount of time and not only that, but while conducting business online, your computer soon becomes your very best organizational tool.

People who conduct business from home are realizing within just the first few months that the days of home offices filled with standard office equipment such as something as simple as a filing cabinet is no longer needed. All of your important documents and files can easily be kept on your computer and since you will surely be spending a considerable amount of time on your computer to keep up with your budding business, keeping your business files on your computer is more convenient and easier to keep track of. But what do you do when your computer gets a virus or you do a virus scan and find spyware and malware on your computer that you can’t get rid of?

There are a great deal of risks that one must take as soon as they choose to keep important documents on their computer. You must be prepared for something to go wrong with your computer at the most crucial and inopportune time. Some feel a bit safer with their documents by keeping them on an external hard drive, backing up their important files and keeping them on a private server or even keeping copies of your files, printed out and kept in a filing cabinet. One of the most convenient aspects of home businesses is that all you should need is your computer, whether it be a desktop computer or a laptop that you can easily travel with and never have to miss a day of work so keeping run of the mill office furniture in your home-based business is being counterproductive and you are making your business and organization more difficult than it has to be.

Did you know that something as simple as computer software can eliminate not only these, but many other risks that people take when doing business on a computer? A computer’s operating system is the most crucial and important aspects of your computer; if your operating system is not functioning to the best of its ability then you, and your home-based business are not functioning to the best of your ability. If you are using a PC you may feel that you are limited with what operating system you can choose to run your computer on. The simple fact of the matter is that most businesses and even people are not using the one Windows operating system that has been tested and proven to work most effectively for individual users and is the absolute best operating system for home-based and small businesses to run on–Windows Vista.

Windows Vista has less than half of the security risks that Windows XP, the most common operating system PC users are using today, has; with a 60% less likely change to be infected by spyware or malware. If that doesn’t make you more comfortable, you are also guaranteed the peace of mind and know that your important files and documents will not be lost while they are on your computer since Windows Vista has also implemented a new Windows Backup and Restore Center. Vista is the most secure Windows release to date, which is comforting since the amount of people who use and have used Windows XP know the frustration that sets in when your computer gets a virus you can’t seem to get rid of or your computer freezes or applications randomly crash for no reason. People who run small or independent businesses have polled to be up to three times more favorable of Windows Vista just after using it and adjusting to its interface and superior quality.

Since its launch, Windows Vista now supports more than double the number it supported at the time of their initial launch; the PC world is moving over to Vista–Are you willing to be more productive in your business and make the smooth transition over to Windows Vista?

What Really Happened When Mario Saved the Princess

Think the world of Mario ended happily after he saved Princess Peach? Did they live happily ever after, having five kids and live the rest of their lives in bliss? Or maybe Princess Peach didn’t think that just because Mario saved her she should give herself to him…Or even give him a kiss.

Next Page »