A Legacy Of Food And Family Online
Have you secretly longed to be recognized for your daily hard work in the kitchen? Do you imagine yourself a gifted cook a la Martha Stewart (without the ankle bracelet)? Well, guess what? There is a quick and easy way to showcase your culinary skills and display your special recipes.
Although some people claim it is a piece of cake to make meals every day, the truth is, it can be exhausting and boring work. For example, after a long day at the office, sometimes you are too tired to decide on...
Attorneys Online
Advertising is a relatively recent development in the legal profession, and not all law firms engage in it today. Nonetheless, it is advisable for every law firm to take note of the important resource the internet has become to consumers seeking products and services. Computers are a household standard, and the internet provides information on every profession, in formats from simple 'yellow page' listings to proprietary web pages with audio and video presentations. Even among lawyers and...
Audiobooks- Listening To Literature Online
In a few short years, the amateur digital spewing phenomenon known as blogging has become an Internet fixture and has spawned a few explosive online successes (MySpace, YouTube) and more than a few bloggers whose opinions became valued professional resources. Like so many of the good things on the web, what began as projects of individual dedication became an important addition to our social and economic fabric.
Now, the rise of podcasts has led to what may become an addition to our cultural...
Auto Insurance For The Digital Age - Online, On Demand
The maturation of the Internet has turned it into a viable marketplace and no industry has benefited more than the auto insurance business. In May of 2006 alone, Yahoo saw almost four million searches on "car insurance." Three of the strongest insurance companies in the country do their selling primarily over the internet or telephone: Progressive, eSurance and Geico.
There are other highly popular sites on the web that provide multiple quotes from standard insurance companies, but do so...
Bartering Online
Online bartering has been going on for at least ten years. High profile websites that feature the service have been online for at least five years; a little surfing reveals that they are going through a process of consolidation and realignment.
There are a couple of models for online barter. A few sites charge substantial fees for member merchants to join and advertise. Their membership figures number in the tens of thousands. There are also sites that provide free access to people and...
Call For Bands - Going Beyond Myspace
You're loaded up on MySpace tons of friends and fans with pictures from your most recent shows, flyers for your next tour, and comments from the peanut gallery on everything from the outfit you wore last week to the person you just broke up with. But as much as this is working, it's limiting. Hugely limiting.
With your own website, your band goes to the next level. First, there's the credibility. MySpace is for basement bands, kids who practice after school when their drummer isn't...
Channel Surfing Across The Internet
The advent of broadband, high speed Internet access in millions of homes has introduced the use of video over those networks as a mainstream digital reality and led to the creation of phenomena such as YouTube. It has also baffled the television and movie corporate powers, who can't decide whether to sue online video sites or learn to use them as new channels for distribution of their products. In fact, some of each is occurring.
The movie companies are much touchier about the Internet, as...
Click And Print: Photography Websites
As a photographer, you are up against stiff competition when it comes to getting gigs or jobs. Newspapers, magazines, weddings, family and student photos how do you reach the multitude of people who may be interested in hiring you? Portfolios are expensive and targeting the many different segments of the population who would benefit from your services is no simple marketing feat.
By building your own photography website to showcase your work and your services, you handle all these problems...
Commuter Resources On The Web
There are a ton of resources available online to help you find what you need to make your commute to and from work as painless as possible. From weather reports to carpool hook-ups to route guides, there's something for almost every city in the country with a population of over 50,000.
Local Community Transit
If there's a local transit system in your town - buses, trains, subways - then there is a website for that system. On the home page, you will find updates about which lines are under...
Digital Reputations And What To Do About Them
Until recently, the key to kicking open a door for a job interview was the resume. There are innumerable books that are 'how-to' guidelines for resume writing; how to lead with skills, not experience, how to make your dynamic personality jump off the page; how to in fact keep it to one page - the mantra of the resume professional.
While you've been busy shoehorning your experience onto one lousy sheet of printer paper (no cheating with legal size) another important issue has emerged for job...
Digitizing Those Old Records And Tapes
Everyone who was old enough to be listening to music pre-CD has a collection of grooved vinyl records and magnetized tape cassettes stashed somewhere. Those records are not only great for the cover art; some of them have music that still sounds great. Now there has been a concerted effort to develop the hardware and software to allow you to convert that music from its current analog form to digital, and reorganize it on a CD or an MP3 player.
First, of course, you're going to need a turntable...
Discovering The Personal And Professional Benefits Of Myspace
If you have been thinking of creating a website for your company, then you are already aware of the amazing benefits of having a corporate presence online. Tapping into the internet community is a proven way to increase your company's visibility, improve sales, attract new clients, and more. But have you ever wondered: if a website can do wonders for my profession, can it work magic in my personal life, too? Most importantly, is there a service that can benefit me both personally and...
Do-It-Yourself Or DIY Websites
What's the Attraction?
Today, with the cost of ready-made products continuing to rise, more and more people are finding it prudent to make or do things themselves. Sometimes kits are available, such as those for birdhouses or jewelry and sometimes it's necessary to build it from scratch, such as wood planters or an extra bedroom. Whatever your preference is, don't let potential customers miss the sense of accomplishment they'll feel when they're able to stand back and say, "I made that!"...
Eight Billion Reasons Yahoo Didn't Buy Facebook
For much of the year, Facebook had been in negotiation to sell itself to Yahoo. The market value of the "instant behemoth" social service sites has fluctuated, as services both large and small have changed hands this year. The first big acquisition was Newscorp's purchase of MySpace for $580 million in 2005. That set a benchmark, which was driven upward somewhat by the NBC Universal purchase of women's online network iVillage for $600 million earlier this year.
Social networking sites...
Family Childcare And After School Services Websites
Offering family childcare and after school services from your home means that you are competing with some pretty hefty competition. There are small daycare centers with big backyards and large daycare centers that have a different classroom for each year of preschool plus separate after school care facilities. How can family childcare and after school services compete?
First of all, you have the personal touch. Rather than a sterile classroom, you offer a warm and loving home, a personality,...
Fiction And Folk - Making Filk Music Together
The word "Filk" is a combination of "fiction" and "folk." Filk music originated as songs composed by dedicated film or TV fans, usually relating to science fiction and fantasy programming. The word originated in the '50s in an article about the practice of science fiction fans singing self-created songs while meeting at conventions geared for the sci-fi and fantasy fan.
While the practice goes back to the fifties, it has developed a genre and following that continues to this day on the...
Finding Law And Order Online- Building A Legal Information Resource
What do you do if you find yourself, suddenly, in a legal bind? Who do you turn to if you do not have the slightest idea of your rights as a citizen and you do not have your own lawyer? Believe it or not, lots of folks have been caught in this kind of a jam. But lucky for them, more often than not, the solutions are no more than a click away.
A resourceful legal website is certainly beneficial to anyone who needs quick and accurate information about a law suit or anyone who wants to learn...
Here Is A Method That Is Helping Automobile Enthusiasts Connect With The World
For decades we have seen the national auto shows, where the major manufacturers roll out their new models and a few flashy "prototypes" that will never see an assembly line. Then there are the rod and custom shows, populated thirty years ago by twenty- and thirty-somethings and filled these days with middle aged and older auto enthusiasts who still love classic American cars, both stock and in all the different permutations of customization they have gone through over the years.
And of course...
Home Schooling And The Internet
A brief history of home schooling
During the settlement of this country, home schooling was accepted as the primary means of educating children. Surprisingly, this led to a literacy rate of almost 98%. Of course, as the nation's population grew, so did the number of schools, both public and religious (private). This trend continued at a growth rate of nearly 15% per year. However, driven in part due to the Supreme Court decisions relating to the practice of religion in publicly funded...
How Architects Can Optimize Their Websites
Architectural firms with any sense of marketing at all have long used the internet as a portfolio. Both commercial and residential architectural firms publish beautiful photographs of their work, many of them employing professional photographers in order to maximize impact. Architects that specialize in restoration projects will often post pictures of the project before and after their work as been done. For most established architectural firms, this is standard fare.
A website can also be...
How Fashion Houses And Designers Can Use Websites
A quick search online will reveal that many of the major fashion houses not only have websites, but use them in creative ways. Fashion is an industry built on fantasy, to a great degree. Those fantasies are constructed in glossy magazines oriented to professionals in general (Vanity Fair) and to women who follow the trends (Elle). The online experience is a multidimensional tool to expand on designer fashions and the yearly line of products.
Gucci has a website that rivals some of the major...
How Your Clients Can Benefit From Online Banking
These days, customer service representatives have got it easy. Why? Because computers are taking over their responsibilities. More and more, people are using home computers for everyday tasks, from ordering gifts and groceries to making appointments and dates to booking movie and travel tickets. It is no wonder then that online banking is becoming increasingly popular. Even smaller banks are recognizing the benefits of online services.
There are numerous perks to online banking. For example:...
Keep Your Family Together With A Family Website
As families grow and fan out across the country, and matriarchs and patriarchs become unable to handle the responsibility of holding everyone together, it becomes more and more important to maintain communication. Life is busy. There are responsibilities of work, school, hobbies, dreams and goals. It's easy to get caught up in your own life and lose touch with cousins, aunts, uncles, second cousins, great aunts, grandparents, et cetera. When you start a website for your extended family, you...
Let The Games Begin - Taking Your Sporting Passion Online!
Sports fans just may be the most loyal, enthusiastic, and excitable fans around. It does not take much for a football fan to start talking about their favorite team, a hockey fan to recount the best play of the year, or a baseball fan to rant about an upcoming season. And if it is a basketball fan, don't even get them started on March Madness!
Come March, you can bet that everyone who follows college basketball is scouring the media to find out as much as they can about the twenty-day...
Machinima - Gaming And Flimmaking Converge
This word is a combination of the terms 'machine' and 'cinema' and it was created to describe an intriguing artistic form developed by computer gamers that also happen to be a new form of "modder". For years, modders have been adapting the structure of computer games - usually a first person "shooters" - to build new "levels." Most of these games are broken into sequences; what modders have been doing is devising their own level or "maps" that are, in essence, additional game content,...
More Players On Movie Download Field
Two major retailers have moved into the online movie sales business. WalMart and Amazon.com join existing properties in trying to convince the consumer their downloadable wares are more attractive than other, less "official" options. Do their services offer anything significantly different than the current players in the market, or is simply a case of the same limited options with different labels?
WalMart announced its entry into the download field at mediadownloads.walmart.com. At least,...
Now You Can Have Commentary With Your Opera
Something like 3% of all adults in this country attends the opera, according to the National Endowment for the Arts. It's always been thought of as an elite art form and it's popular following remains miniscule. The municipal opera company based in Nashville has undertaken a number of steps to expand interest in its art form. Nashville is the home and commercial center for country music - there are thousands of musicians in the area and the odds are that, outside of the opera performers, none...
Online Pet Stars What Makes A Great Pet Website
It goes without saying that Americans are wild about their pets. We spend an inordinate amount of time, money, and energy making sure our cats, dogs, fish, and exotic animal friends are happy and healthy. The pet industry is booming and it shows no sign of slowing down.
It was only a matter of time before this pet mania spread to the internet.
Today, people can log on to order pet food or custom-made clothes for their four-legged companions. Top notch veterinarians are available to answer...
Pet Care Online: Building A Useful Pet Care Info Site
Would you have guessed that there are around sixty-eight million dogs in America living in forty million households? Would you believe that nearly thirty billion dollars are spent on pets annually?
Clearly, Americans are animal crazy. There is little we will not do for our beloved pets. We take them with us wherever we can-to the corner store, a cafι, on a train. We buy them gourmet food, order customized beds for them and dress them in specially made clothing. We are attentive to their every...
Photographers - Here's How To Put The Internet To Work For You
It is not lost on professionals in the visual arts field that the Internet is an advertising outlet made for visual imagery. One of the most creative professional fields with Internet presentation is the architectural business. Good firms present their portfolio in such a manner as to walk a potential client through the process that previous clients have been through. The Internet provides many opportunities like this, and perhaps none quite so powerful as the one afforded the photographic...
Planning Your Vacation Online
There is no shortage of travel resources on the internet. There are two enormous sites dedicated to flight and auto bookings at www.expedia.net and www.travelocity.net. For purposes of exploring the cheapest way to fly from point A to point B, these two options are the best. They will show every flight available, with no bias toward advertisers or major airlines. They will also take a regional approach, and give you the cheapest flight to your destination from all locations in metro areas that...
Predict The Weather As Well As The Guy On TV
The weather resources on the Internet are many and varied. They range from highly sophisticated dedicated sites to national newsfeeds that produce fairly comprehensive weather reports, to regional news organizations that feature weather as part of their online news service. These can be from TV and radio stations or local newspapers. In addition, the major search engines have a weather feature that allows you to consult for forecasts in your local area.
In all cases, however, their weather...
Slinging Hash On The Web- How To Attract Hungry Internet Users
What makes a good restaurant? Well, the obvious answers are the food, the staff, and the atmosphere. But what goes on behind the scenes and beyond the walls of the establishment is equally important to the places success. That is why restaurants of all sizes are creating web sites to support, promote and advertise their business.
You dont have to be a four star, big city restaurant to establish a web presence. Even local cafes and brick and mortar eateries can use the web as a marketing...
Taking Them There- From Cyberspace To Your Vacation Space
There is no doubt that effective marketing will bring new and returning guests to your vacation site - whether it's a small beach home for rent, or a destination retreat exclusively for adults. No matter. When searching for the perfect vacation site, potential guests look for very specific information. There is no doubt that the more details you are able to include in your website, the more likely you are to capture vacation dollars.
* When first trying to decide where to visit or what to do,...
The Basics Of Podcasting
Podcasting in its simplest form is the uploading of MP3 files to the internet, where they can be accessed by the majority of the online universe with little more than a modern browser. You might consider a podcast to be an audio blog, although podcasts are basically standalone units of communication and not limited solely to audio. The term is also applied to short video pieces that are uploaded for general consumption; that is becoming more common, but the term was born as a reference to...
The Expansion Of Official Fan Forums On The Internet
The use of web pages built around entertainers has developed multiple facets. What began as amateurs building web sites to gush over their favorite entertainer has developed into sophisticated use of the world's newest and biggest communications device. Fan sites have become entertainer promotion sites; entertainer's product promotion sites; commercial opportunities for enterprising webmasters from outside the entertainment industry; and features for larger websites that provide an opportunity...
The Explosion Of Video Online
In just over a year, the idea of easily uploading your home videos or personal creative projects to an easily accessible, popular web destination has gone from "unheard of" to commonplace. The explosion of web video is just another example of the egalitarian appeal of the Internet. If you're new to the latest craze, here are some of the major players in the world of online video.
What is You Tube?
You Tube is a video social networking site that allows its members (membership is free) to...
The Front Page On World Of Warcraft
First came computer games. Then came DSL, and broadband online access, followed very closely by computer games where you can play with other real people sitting in front of other real computers, somewhere else in the real world. This functionality has led to the development of several phenomenally successful "Massively Multiple Online Role Playing Games," or MMOs as they have come to be known in the industry.
One of the most successful of these games is "World of Warcraft," or "WoW", which...
The Internet Advantage For Local Travel Agents
Travel and the Skeptical Public
There is no question that the internet has changed the travel business. Online airplane reservations and electronic tickets combined with the loss of the commission structure has taken a primary travel function away from traditional travel agents and automated the service. People can shop for hotel and car reservations on their own, on the web. Consumers can book vacation arrangements and cruises with a mouse and a keyboard.
And they can also get badly burned....
The Internet And The Insurance Agent
The auto insurance business has gone to war online. Insurance companies such as esurance have emerged from nowhere to capture a significant portion of the auto insurance market, wholly through online marketing and sales. Theirs is a completely electronic empire. The company is underwritten by an established insurance firm and provides all of its customer service through a half dozen regional call centers scattered around the country.
Auto insurance is perhaps the most egregious example of...
The Lonelygirl15 Hoax - Home Schooled Entertainment Or Viral Marketing?
Do you remember where you were when Lonelygirl15 was exposed as a hoax? Perhaps the revelation was not quite worthy of such importance, but it is the case that millions of people were not only wondering, but, more importantly, watching- for months on end. Was this one of the most successful attempts at viral marketing in history, and if so, what was being marketed? First, a little back ground for those who haven't been connected to the Internet or exposed to mass media in the past few weeks....
The Mpaa Allows Movie Downloads- Are They Worth Your Dime?
What Are Movie Download Services? Movie download services are exactly what they sound like: a service that allows you to download movies from the Internet onto your hard drive or a DVD. Though this isn't a new concept, it is relatively new to the legal world of consumerism. Though 'pirates' have been making free download of movies available for quite some time, movie studios are now getting in on the action and offering access to their movies for download the day they hit the stores in DVD...
The New Art Magazine: Artists And Their Websites
With the number of slick art magazines on the stands today, it's easy for your work to get washed away in the homogeneous art school world. It's not easy to be truly original and yet still make your mark. With your own website to showcase your art, you don't have to deal with the trendy cliques that make up both the 'legitimate' art world as well as the 'underground' art world.
Here are just a few things you can do with your art website through a reputable web host:
- Show samples of your...
The Players In Internet Movie Downloads
There are several online movie download services that have established themselves as real players in the instant gratification film niche. The latest to join the fray is Apple with its iTunes Movie Store. You can download a film to your Mac, your PC or your iPod - although watching a feature link film on that three inch screen could leave you babbling into your popcorn box.
Apple is joining a number of existing online services. The largest among them include Guba, Movielink, CinemaNow and -...
The Sims Phenomenon
In the world of video games, there are game categories such as shooters, adventure, action and role playing. Then there is the Sims. This game was introduced by Electronic Arts in February of 2000 and became a cultural phenomenon. It sold twenty million copies and generated the development of hundreds of fan sites devoted to their own personal Sims environment.
Sims was the first game that introduced a significant degree of online socialization through the use of a game platform. A Sims...
The Social Bookmarking Phenomenon
Some days, it seems that we are quickly evolving from a digital world where information was THE marketable commodity to a communications market, where new methods of communicating, networking and socializing are being introduced on a rapid fire basis and are the new consumers of online attention and time. Blogs, wikis, RSS newsfeeds, podcasts, video socialization built around applications like YouTube...all of these are recently formulated methods of communication that seemingly overnight have...
There Are A Lot Of Lists Out There, Why Is Craig's So Popular?
What is Craigslist?
Craigslist is a website that was started in 1995 by a guy named - you guessed it - Craig. What began as a place for the residents of San Francisco to find what they need from each other (i.e. a job, a babysitter, a new dresser, a Buick) has since grown exponentially. With sites for all 50 states, 52 countries, and major cities all over the world, Craigslist is the ultimate, all encompassing 'classifieds' for anything you could possibly want that's up for grabs in your...
What Future Undergrads Ought To Know About Student Loans And Online Resources
Navigating the student loan process can be a challenge, starting from ground zero. Since the federal government got in the student loan business in 1965, something like 65 million Americans have taken advantage of it. There have been several bills run through Congress over the years, creating a variety of loan programs - for students, vets, returning students, and so forth. The primary government online resource for information on government student aid is...
What Is RSS?
RSS is technology - a simple software program - that allows you to access web and blog content automatically. The acronym's most popular translation is "Really Simple Syndication. Once your browser or computer has an RSS reader on board, you can subscribe to any number of RSS "feeds." A feed is simply a way in which a reader may subscribe to website content - most commonly blogs or news sites. A news site, for example, may list their latest headlines or entire articles in their feed every time...
What Is Wikipedia? A Guide To The Most Unique Encyclopedia On The Net
Wikipedia is an open source encyclopedia, a website where anyone can write and post an article on any topic of their choice. The site has been a remarkable success, with thousands of amateur authorities weighing in on an infinite variety of topics. As of the summer of 2005, Wikipedia was home to nearly 850,000 articles in English alone, with many other entries in dozens of additional languages. They currently have over 1.3 million articles in English, 445,000 in German, 342,000 in French and...
Wii And Playstation3: The Latest Battle Of The Gaming Consoles
It seems almost like a Christmas ritual: there's a Next Big Thing in the video game world almost every holiday season. Last year featured a particularly interesting competition between the new gaming hardware put on the market by Nintendo and their prime competitor, Sony with its PlayStation series.
The Sony PS3 is the high-end, bells-and-whistles choice between the two. It includes high-definition graphics, a hard disk, and a Blu-ray Disc drive that delivers great image quality. The top...
You Can't Ask Jeeves Anymore
The new http://Ask.com search engine, minus Jeeves the butler, has a simple home page design along the lines of Google, with an unadorned list of major options along the right side. That list is headlined 'Search Tools' and includes:
* Web * Images * News * Maps & Directions * Local * Weather * Encyclopedia * Ask for Kids * Dictionary * Blogs & Feeds
The main search feature (Web) turns up the usual list of keyword-inspired responses. An innovative touch in this section...
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