From the Tonight Show (a long time ago):
Saturday, April 11, 2009
Friday, April 10, 2009
1st Impressions
Do you pay attention? You do more than you think you do. From the DLM Blog:
Do you find it hard to connect with new people? Have you ever come away from an interview, a business meeting or a personal visit, feeling that it just didn’t go quite as well as you hoped?
First impressions mean a lot. Get them wrong, and you lose business and career opportunities, as well as potential friends and contacts. But get them right, and life will go that bit more smoothly.
So here’s your guide to making a great impression on people when you’re meeting them for the first time, or very early on in your relationship.
How To Stand Out and Make a Great First Impression
Posted: 08 Apr 2009 05:17 AM PDT
Do you find it hard to connect with new people? Have you ever come away from an interview, a business meeting or a personal visit, feeling that it just didn’t go quite as well as you hoped?First impressions mean a lot. Get them wrong, and you lose business and career opportunities, as well as potential friends and contacts. But get them right, and life will go that bit more smoothly.
So here’s your guide to making a great impression on people when you’re meeting them for the first time, or very early on in your relationship.
- Remember Their Name
One very basic step is to be sure to remember the names of anyone new you’re introduced to. If you clearly can’t remember what their name is the next time you meet, you’ll give the impression that you simply weren’t interested. And if you want to get in touch with them in future, you’ll look a bit of an idiot if you ask for “that chap in the third office on the right with a blue dinosaur sitting on his computer”. - Smile and Shake Hands
Body language is crucial: we make instant, unconscious, judgments about people based on their body language. Just think how you feel when you meet someone for the first time who won’t make eye contact, or who leans in way too close. Two simple steps to appearing friendly and confident are to smile warmly and to shake hands – firmly, but not so firmly that you crush anyone’s fingers. - Show Up On Time
Another basic but essential step is to always be on time. Being late will create a bad impression before people have even met you – not exactly the best way to get off to a good start. Being prompt shows that you value their time, and that you’re organized. Don’t turn up too early though – appearing at someone’s office half an hour early means you’ll have to sit around until your appointment, and showing up at someone’s house early is not terribly polite: if your hosts are anything like me, they’ll still be running around with the vacuum cleaner... - Pay Attention to Your Clothes and Grooming
Give yourself enough time to dress in well-fitting, flattering clothes that send the right message. That might mean a suit for a business meeting, casual smart wear for meeting your significant other’s parents for the first time, or something creative and zany when going for that job interview at an advertising agency. Whatever the actual style, your clothes absolutely must be clean. And of course you’d never dream of showing up reeking of sweat, or with greasy hair, but double-check your appearance in a mirror too – spinach between the teeth happens to the best of us... - Take a Small Gift
In most situations, taking a small gift for the person or people you’re meeting is a lovely gesture. (I wouldn’t recommend it for job interviews, as this would probably come across as a bit weird and could even be interpreted as an attempt at bribery.) How about bringing a box of chocolates for a client’s office when you’re visiting them, or a bottle of wine for your hosts at a dinner party? - Watch Your Language
Until you get to know people, it’s worth keeping things clean. Don’t tell off-color jokes or use curse words. This particularly applies when meeting older folks, or in a business context: language which might go down fine with the same people after-hours might fall very flat in the office. - Have a Positive Attitude
Most of us are quickly put off by someone who grumbles constantly. Even if you had a horrendous journey to get to your meeting, or you’ve been suffering with multiple health problems, your new acquaintances don’t need to be told the details. Stay upbeat and cheerful, and people will warm to you.
 | Written on 4/8/2009 by Ali Hale. Ali is a professional writer and blogger, and a part-time postgraduate student of creative writing. If you need a hand with any sort of written project, drop her a line (ali@aliventures.com) or check out her website at Aliventures. | Photo Credit: freddthompson |
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Wednesday, April 08, 2009
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
Fort Wayne Site-of-the-Day
This site was recommended to me as a place to search for local businesses, with reviews written by locals. Click here to go there.
Monday, April 06, 2009
Stop Paying For Free Stuff
Recently I told my brother in law about Open Office. He is a graphic designer and needed to convert a file but he uses a Mac and needed help without buying a bunch of software for a 1 time project.
At times, I've become a piped piper for free programs and today the following list of 100 were recommended to me. I have not checked them out myself yet, but go for it, with precautions, like have your internet security active before you start clicking. And here is where the article came from: http://www.dailybits.com/100-sites-to-download-all-sorts-of-things/
At times, I've become a piped piper for free programs and today the following list of 100 were recommended to me. I have not checked them out myself yet, but go for it, with precautions, like have your internet security active before you start clicking. And here is where the article came from: http://www.dailybits.com/100-sites-to-download-all-sorts-of-things/
These days you can find all sorts of things online, from audio books to flash files, from sound effects to CSS templates. Below we compiled a list with over 100 download sites that serve that purpose.
We will also try to keep the list updated, so if your favorite download site is not here, let us know about it with a comment.
Audio Books
Librivox: One of the most popular audio libraries on the web. The LibriVox volunteers record books that are in the public domain and release them for free.
Podiobooks: Similar to podcast, Podiobooks are serialized audiobooks that are distributed through RSS feeds. You can receive book episodes or download directly from the site.
Oculture (Audio & Podcast): Offers a rich array of educational and cultural media. The site editor scours through the web to find the best cultural and educational media available.
Learn Out Loud: A one-stop destination for video and audio learning resources. You can browse through over 15,000 educational audio books MP3 downloads, podcasts, and videos. The site also contains various free resources.
BitTorrent
The Pirate Bay: The web’s largest collection of bit torrent trackers. The Pirate Bay banks on its member file sharers to cull the web’s torrent files and make these available to users.
Mininova.org : What started as an alternative to the now defunct Supernova that went offline in 2004, Mininova has become the biggest torrent search engine and directory on the web. The site provides easy-to-use directory and search for all types of torrent files.
Torrent Portal : This P2P and file sharing site works like Google by linking only to .torrent metafiles and captures the caches of those files. It does not store files nor transfer data which are content linked to by .torrent files.
Now Torrents: The site scans torrent websites on the internet to provide the best results to users. Now Torrents provides an advanced real-time search engine for bit-torrents while at the same detecting and removing fake or dead torrent sites.
Torrentz: This Sweden-based torrent meta-search engine also indexes various major torrents sites including Mininova, The Pirate Bay and Demonoid. It provides various trackers per torrent that would work when another tracker is not working.
Books and Documents
Scribd: A virtual place where you can publish, discover, discuss, and share original writings and document. With 50 million unique page views per month, Scribd is a great place to learn new things.
Sheet Music Archive: The web’s most popular music web site. The site contains more than 22,000 classical music pieces and more than 100,000 sheet of music. It offers hundreds of free music downloads and more for subscriptions.
Computer Books.us: The site offers high quality computer related books for free download. These computer books are all legally distributed and their authors have granted permissions for the site to distribute their works.
Docstoc: This is your ultimate resource for free legal and business documents. Docstoc does not only allow you to download documents for free but it also lets you upload and share your own documents.
Tech Books for Free Download: If you’re looking for free books on Java, Perl/Phyton or other computer programming related books, this site might be of help. It offers books covering technology subjects for free download.
Project Gutenberg: The most comprehensive repository of ebooks on the web. Project Gutenberg was built by volunteers and now houses more than 27,000 titles of ebooks in its catalog.
Free eMagazine Download - covers a comprehensive collection of free emagazines for free download.
eBooks
KnowFree: The site offers a virtual place to exchange ebooks freely., video training, and other educational materials . Know Free features a very nice search engine which enables users to search for a particular materias fast.
Spotbit: Providing a paperless solution to publishing and for selling e-books, Spotbit makes e-book available in a different digital format than what is available on the web lately. Spotbit offers a simple Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology for E-books format.
Ebookshare: Provides link to either an e-books torrent files or direct download to the file itself. E-books are categorized into broader subject and the site has a nice search engine to aid you in finding the e-book you want.
Ebookee: A free book search engine. Ebookee helps you in finding e-book titles that you are particularly looking for. The E-books listed on the site are organized in general subject categories.
Wowio: The site lets you access legally available high-quality e-books. Wowio lets you read complete books online for free. If you want to download the PDF versions, Wowio charges a minimal fee.
Internet Archive - With the aim of building an Internet Library, this site features texts, audio, moving images, and software as well as archived web pages in its collections.
Clipart
Open Clip Art Library: The site is an ongoing project to create an archive of user contributed database of clip art that can used freely. Open Clip Art Library upholds the Creative Commons and encourages users to participate in generating contents.
WP Clipart: Offers more than 29000 public domain clip art images which were designed specifically for use with Word Processors. WP Clipart provides thousands of color graphic clips, illustrations, photographs and black and white line art in lossless, PNG format.
Clker: The site offers royalty free clip art in SVG, ODG and PNG format which are in public domain. It lets you easily embed these images in openoffice documents.
Clipart.com: The web’s largest collection of royalty-free clipart, vinyl-ready images, photos, web graphics, fonts, illustrations, and sounds. Clipart offers paid subscription to its database containing 10 million+ professional-quality images in various formats including .EPS, .JPG, .PNG, and .WMF.
Download Hubs
Softpedia: The site contains more than 500,000 sofware programs Windows, Unix/Linux, Mac, Mobile Phones, Games and Drivers. Some of software programs in Softpedia are freeware while some are shareware.
Download.com: Cnet’s most comprehensive library of freeware offers free download. Download.com contains tons of Windows software ranging from security software, digital photo software, educational software and more.
Open Source Mac: A handy reference and useful tools that encourages users to utilize free and open-source software.. Open Source Mac offers a simple list of the best and free software for the Mac OS X.
Free Downloads Center: Hosts a collection of free software, games and other desktop goodies which you can download for free. Free Downloads Center also offers a Give Away of the Day licensed software which you can download during the day only.
Tucows: The web’s original software download site. Tucows contains more than 40,000 software titles which are freeware or shareware.
Phazeddl: Hosts download warez, games, torrents, movies, software, apps, scripts, TV shows, ebooks, templates as well as key-gen of crack softwares.
Freeware
A+Freeware: The site offers choice applications or “A+Freeware” which become useful only when combined with a valid operating system. A+Freeware lets you get copies of software for free.
Best Freeware Download: A free wares site which allows you to register and save links on the site’s member account areas. Best Freeware Download is categorized into communication desktop and games. Gamers would definitely want to check this site from time to time to check on new freewares to be added.
Free Ware Box: The site offers categorized summary of freeware software. Freeware Box contains open source software, public domain and other types of free software, all available for free download.
Freeware Zoom: This site offers freeware for free download. Freeware Zoom is updated daily and it contains no adware or spyware.
File Hippo: The site has considerable number of freeware, demo and shareware programs which are of high quality. File Hippo puts a premium on quality software rather than quantity. Hence the site offers only the best software.
Windows Downloads: Download.com’s Windows-only software download site offers softwre which were tested to be 100% free of malware.
Major Geeks: Offers only the serious software meant for the serious geeks. It hosts the most comprehensive collection of computer utilities available on the web.
Brothersoft: The site offers more than 100,000 software for free download. Brothersoft does not only offer free software download but also thoroughly evaluate all the software submitted to them.
Flash Files
Ffiles: The web’s richest repository of free Flash Files. Ffiles contains Flash files which you can download freely. It also allows you to upload your own Flash files that you want to share with other users.
Flash Kit: If you’re a flash developer, Flash Kit is the site for you. It’s the ultimate online resource for Macromedia Flash development.
Flash Den: This site contains everything that you need for your Adobe lash project. You can buy preloaders, templates and other things you need to finish your project. And most of these Flash components sell for as low as $1.
Fonts
Dafont: If you’re looking for some cool fonts to use for whatever purposes, you could probably pick up one or two font style at this site. Dafont offers freely downloadable fonts. You can browse fonts by author, by style or by popularity.
1001 Free Fonts: This site has a big collection of TrueType fonts which are either freeware or shareware. 1001 Free Fonts offers free fonts for both Windows and Mac platforms.
Download Free Fonts: A simply designed online resource for thousands of free fonts. Download Free Fonts contains free fonts for Windows and Mac. You can use the site’s search box to find the font you are specifically looking for or browse through the font categories.
Show Font: The site lets you download fonts for free. Show Font contains TrueType fonts for both PC and MAC. It also provides font editor and font management tools.
FontStruct: Aside from offering freely downloadable fonts, Fonstruct also has a font editor and font management applications available online. FontStruct lets you build fonts, share it with others and download fonts made by other people as well.
Games
Liberated Games: This is a simple listing site offering free downloads of legally available games. It’s a straight-out listing of these different games including their download links.
NDS-ROMS: This is a heaven sent site for NDS gamers. NDS-ROMs offer free downloads of publicly available ROMs.
Iwin: The Internet’s largest selection of free game downloads. You can choose to play games in the popular categories.
Donwload Full Version PC Games: This is a blog site containing 100 best legal, free, and full version of games. The site covers free action games, free action games and 3rd person games.
Abandonia: If you’re up for some good old DOS-based gaming experience, Abandonia may have those games. Abandonia offers DOS games which have been abandoned for so long.
Best of Games: The site offers various old games and certainly has many of them on the site. Best of all, Best of games offers these games for free download.
Free Games - A search engine for free games that can be played online or downloaded to your machine. It also covers cheat codes.
Movies
ZML: One of the Internet’s most useful download service. ZML offers update subscriptions and lets you find out about current movies by subscribing to ZML.
Free Documentaries: offer free Streaming Independent Documentary Films, Environment Documentary, Israel, Palestine, War, George Bush, Afghanistan, Iraq, 9/11, Globalization, Media, and more.
Moving Image Archive: A comprehensive library of free movies, films, and videos uploaded by the site users. Moving images include full-length films, news broadcasts, cartoons and concerts. Not all of the videos are free to download though.
MP3
eMusic: The world’s biggest online retailer of independent music and audio books. eMusic holds more than 40,000 independent labels and almost 5,000 titles of audio books from top publishers.
Jazz on Line: The web’s most comprehensive online resources of digitalized Jazz music. Jazz on Line hosts only songs which are in public domain.
Jimmyr: A search engine for mp3 music and other digital files. Jimmyr crawls through the various mp3 resources available on the web using Google Custom Search Engine.
Music Download: The ultimate source for legally available and freely downloadable digital music on the Internet. It’s from Cnet.com, so you are pretty sure that most of the files are safe to download.
beeMP3: A music search engine useful for finding mp3-audio files available on the web. BeeMP3 currently indexes around 800,000 mp3 files.
Download Any Stuff: A digital file search engine that provides download links to free stuff over the Internet. Download Any Stuff lets you search for MP3 files, softwares, drivers, games, movies, ebooks, even Torrents and more.
Skreemr: Another music search engine that you can use to locate audio files available on the web. Skreemr currently indexes and crawls more than 6 million mp3 files from 100,000 web sites.
iLike: A social music discover site that allows you not only to discover music playlists available on the web but also to share your own playlists to the world. iLike also links to iTunes and Amazon music stores.
eMP3 World: A free mp3 download site. eMP3 World currently holds around 85,000 mp3 download links on its database.
Jamendo/: An online community of free, legal and unlimited digital music content. Jamendo offers only those music which have been licensed under Creative Commons. The site lets you share your own music and create your own widget playlists which you can embed to your site or social networking profiles.
Online Video
Vixy:An online video converter that you can use to convert a Flash video / FLV file or YouTube videos to MPEG4 format. Vixy uses a compressed domain transcoder technology. You can enter a YouTube link to have it converted into MPEG4 online.
Keepvid: The site lets you download streaming videos from YouTube, Putfile, Metacafe and other video streaming sites. After downloading you need to convert it into another format depending on what media player you are using. Or you can use FLV’s own media player instead.
Javimoya: Another good video downloader site. Javimoya supports many video streaming sites including YouTube, Metacafe, MySpace Music, and more.
VideoDownloadx: The site allows you to download videos from YouTube and save these videos to your PC. You also need to download an FLV player to view the videos from your local hard drive or convert the file into other formats that can be read by your media player software.
Download YouTube Videos as mp4 Files: This blog post gives a detailed instruction on how to download videos directly from YouTube in mp4 format. No need to use a third-party site to scrape the video off from YouTube.
Kiss YouTube: Offers an easy and simple way of downloading and saving YouTube video directly to your computer. You can enter the URL of the video on the Kiss You Tube site, or add the word “kiss” on the URL of the YouTube video to download the file. Either way, you will still download the file from the Kiss You Tube site itself.
Download YouTube Videos: This site lets you download YouTube videos faster and easier. You just nee to enter the YouTube URL of the videos that you want to download
keepHD - lets you download HD videos off Youtube. It also lets download the mobile 3GP version for your mobile devices plus the standard MP4 and FLV format.
Photoshop and Design
Deviant Art Photoshop Brushes: A collection of artsy paintshop brushes used by Deviant Art members. You can download the paint brushes or share it to other people.
Adobe Market Place and Exchange: Adobe’s online resource containing tools, services, and innovations relating to Adobe’s various products. The site also let you discover Adobe AIR runtime applications.
Pixel Chick: Offers both free and paid Photoshop brushes that are compatible with CS2 and CS3.
Vecteezy: Serves as an index of free vector graphics that are available for download from the web. Vecteezy’s vector graphics were created by famous designers.
Busheezy: A huge collection of free Photoshop brushes and patterns. Busheezy is updated daily and also accepts submission of Photoshop brushes from online users.
Vector 4 Free: A free vector graphics site for Adobe Illustrator AI, EPS, PDF, SVG, and Corel Draw CDR. All the vector graphics are free for personal and commercial use.
Get Brushes: A directory of brushes personally handpicked by the site owners. Get Brushes contains various brushes including over abstract and text, gothic, coffee pills and more.
Q Vectors: The site offers free high-quality vector images and graphics. Q Vector also accepts user submissions.
Archive 3D: Host more than 17,000 3D graphics model. Archive 3D models ranges from Beds,Shkaps, Chairs,Tables,Sofa, Sanitary Ware, Decoration, NVAC, Tools, and more.
Vectormix - This site has a good collection of vector graphics submitted by users and arre free to download.
Sound Effects
Soundsnap: A library of more than 100, 000 high-quality sound effect and music loops. Soundsnap offers 5 free downloads per month, after which you need to pay a Pro membership to download more files.
FindSounds: A useful sound and sound effects search engine. FindSounds offers sound directory, keyword search and sonic similarity search functions.
Partners in Rhyme: The site offers royalty free music featured in Films, TV, Video and Websites. Partners in Rhyme also offers free music loops, midi files and audio software.
Stone Washed: An online resource for free sound effects, loops, button sounds and other multimedia files. Stone Washed offers various categories including sound effects, animal sounds, buy out music and more.
Stock Photos
Stock.Xchng: One of the web’s leading stock photography site. Stock.xchng offers a full gallery of high-quality stock photos available for free download or for sharing on blogs, social networks and other sites.
Free Digital Photos: Contains thousands of royalty free photos available for download and can be used for commercial or non-commercial purposes. Free Digial Photos does not require registration to download stock photos from their site.
Morgue File: The site provides high-resolution stock photography images for free regardless of whether the photos will be used for corporate or private use. Morgue File is the place to keep post production materials.
123RF - The site offers a daily dose of free high-quality images aside from the paid stock images that it sells.
System utilities
Open Drivers: A free driver download service. Open Drivers is categorized by device category and driver manufacturer. It also includes step-by-step process to install and uninstall the drivers.
DLL Files: A very useful site for users who keeps on getting the missing DLL prompt from the machine. DLL Files contains a comprehensive databased of dll-files that you could possibly need.
Download 3K: A huge archive of free and free-to-try software programs and games for Windows. Download 3K is categorize into 15 main categories and the site is updated with around 300 software everyday.
Free Codecs: The ultimate resource for all types of codecs available online. Free Codecs offers video codecs, audio codecs, codec packs, codec tools and more.
Open Office: Home of the free open-source office software suite. Open Office contains word processing, spreadsheets, database, presentations, graphics, and more.
Web Design
Open Source Web Design: A collection of web designs submitted by the community members. Open Source Web Design offers free web design for download that can be used for personal blogs to a full-featured content management systems for businesses.
Free CSS Templates:The site offers standards compliant CSS templates for free. Users are free to use the templates for personal or business purposes.
Template World: Offers top quality, creative and unique web site templates created by certified web professionals.
Iconspedia: The site offers free icons download. Iconspedia are arranged in various categories including animals, food and phones.
Free Icons Web: The site contains 15000 high quality icons for free downloads. Free Icons Web contains icons for Windows XP, Vista, Macintosh, and Linux. Icons are for personal use only. Commercial users have to pay a certain amount of royalty.
1000+ Classic Icons for Free Download: Probably the best collection of free icons available online. Icons are in png, icns, ico-formats as well as .EPS vector files.
Spotbit: The site allows you to publish and sell e-books using a fast, easy and free method. Spotbit lets you create your e-books and published it on Spotbit.
Smashing Magazine’s 40 Professional Icon Sets for Free Download: A list of 40 high-quality professional icons for desktops and web design which are all free for download. The icons can be used for private and commercial purposes.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Soul Searching?
There have been times in my life when I felt settled, other times when I have been restless. Right now, it's a combination of both. And I'll lay out more than I usually do publicly.
Restless. It comes from the work/career part of my life. 6 years ago this month I returned to the radio business full time as an advertising sales person. During the past 1/2 dozen years I have worked for between 4 and 6 "bosses", had my job title and position change just as many times and I've never "left the building". When I was hired, I was one of 6 that was hired that month and one of 12 on the sales staff. We grew to around 20 and then shrank to our current level of 4.
The radio stations themselves have changed too. When I started we had a News/Talk/Sports station, a Top 40 station, an Alternative Rock station, an Adult Contemporary station and a Classic Hits station. They evolved and changed and now we have a Classic Rock Station, Adult Standards Station and a Hip-Hop Top 40 style station.
But while I believe in the power of the medium of radio, and what it can do for local business owners that want to invite people to do business with them, I also have a restlessness going on.
About 5 1/2 years ago I bought my first laptop and grew with the power of the internet and became a bit of a local "go-to guy" when people wanted to learn how to connect both on line and off line. My interests in advertising were not limited to radio advertising.
As a matter of fact, my interests in marketing were not limited to advertising. I have seen myself grow and evolve into more of a "relationship based marketing expert". That involves using human relationship principles to create advertising, communication and marketing that works no matter what form of media is employed.
My employment with the radio station is stable but limiting in the scope of what can be done. So a few years ago I expanded into the online world of blogs and currently have 5 that are updated regularly. The most popular is Collective Wisdom, which gets between 60 and 150 visits a day. Altogether, I have at least 30 to 40 weekly blog updates, spread over the 5 sites.
I also have become active with Twitter as ScLoHo, of course, and have been involved with the first couple of local tweetups. I joined the Advertising Federation of Fort Wayne a few years ago and serve on the board of directors as the V-P of communications. I was interviewed last year for a television show on Social Media. I serve as a marketing advisor for a local non-profit and a local financial services firm.
And yet there is this restlessness because I would like to perhaps tie it all together more. Time will tell. I find myself at an interesting age where I can relate to both younger and older generations with ease. I recall what my life was like when I was the age of my kids and wish I could ask my parents about what life was like for them at the age I am now.
But it was their deaths that brought me to where I am living now. 11 years ago, my Dad died of cancer, and shortly after, I moved back to Fort Wayne and helped my Mom move to the next phase of her life which only lasted 3 1/2 years. It was weird to feel like an orphan at the age of 41. Getting married again to a fun woman who shares spiritual values with me and a great sense of humor has also helped me move to the settled state.
Settled. A sense of peace, contentment, the balance to my restlessness. I think I first felt it in 1982 when I became a Christian. I was raised in a Lutheran church but in that denomination there is an assumption of being a Christian that I disagree with. At least in my own life as I cannot judge others. My point of disagreement has to do with salvation occurring at baptism which is traditionally done to infants. I have seen both sides of the argument, and I just know that in my life, there was a transformation when I was 22 when I specifically asked for forgiveness for sins and surrendered myself to Christ and accepted His death on the cross as payment for sins.
These days I am back at a Lutheran church even though I have some disagreements with some of their doctrine. My wife and I attend on Saturday nights because we like the contemporary style of the service and the time works well with her work schedule and my life schedule. In the past year, the church has also become less "Lutheran" and more "Christian" with actual Bible studies and small groups, etc.
To sum it all up, my soul searching is grounded in the settledness of my Christian faith and the restlessness of wanting to implement my gifts and talents to help others in real life.
Exciting? Yes.
Frustrating? Sometimes.
Boring? Never.
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