Blog Your Blessing : Friendship


Oh, the comfort, the inexpressible comfort of
feeling safe with a person;
having neither to weigh thoughts nor measure words,
but to pour them all out, just as they are,
chaff and grain together,
knowing that a faithful hand will take and sift them,
keep what is worth keeping,
and then, with a breath of kindness,
blow the rest away.

George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans)



The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. Visit the website and grab the blogroll code, add it to your blog, and leave a comment on Blue Panther Experience. Next Sunday, post your blessing. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on Sunday as we blog our blessings.

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Democracy in Search Engine Results!

I believe all my readers know that I am boycotting the search engine that begins with a G and ends with an E. In an effort to help others wean themselves from using this search engine, I have been looking into alternatives and reviewing them on this blog.


Earthfrisk.org - Democracy in Search

The latest search engine offering is Earthfrisk.org. Earthfrisk is a metasearch engine, which means it delivers search engine result pages (SERPs) from all the major search engines; social networks like Del.icio.us, StumbleUpon, Technorati, Digg and Reddit; and information sites like Wikipedia, WebMD, Britannica, Dictionary and InfoPlease.

From the website:
Add your own site, vote and comment on sites and together we can build a truly Democratic Search Engine That WE the People control.
To decrease the number of spam sites returned in the SERPs, Earthfrisk has added a community to the search engine. You simply register and then you may vote and comment on results, rendering a color value (CV) rating system, thus doing away with dubious page ranks-- which we know may be stripped for any reason by one search engine.

There are toolbars for both Firefox and Internet Explorer. You may have a custom toolbar with your logo on it if you wish, so that readers may download the toolbar from your site.

I love it. Power to the searchers. Down with the tyrants.


Happy Holidays!

Seasons Greetings wreathJust a Little Note to Say
That I Hope the Season's Best is on its Way
To You and Yours

Word of Mouth Marketing

The number of people who have influence—because of their expertise, their passion and their connections, is predicted to increase with the opportunities for user-generated content and word of mouth marketing. Please visit CoolAdzine for Marketers and read Passionista? Influential Internet Persuader for more on this.

Or click here to read: Marketers Missing Out on Word of Mouth? - eMarketer

From the article:
eMarketer projects that, in 2007, 66 million adults will have shared advice about products and services and 27 million will exert influence online.

Bloggers are naturals for word of mouth marketing, but many bloggers have been penalized for writing reviews of products, websites and services for pay. I believe this is wrong and I subscribe to the Word of Mouth Marketing Ethics for Bloggers. However, full disclosure has left me with no page rank, penalized by G@@GLE for being transparent and honest in my blogging.

Bloggers who do not disclose were not penalized. Makes me wonder. Where is the justice? *Heavy sigh*

Stay in Touch . . .

Christmas is the time for being with our friends and extended family. If we are not going home for Christmas (even in our dreams), we want to stay in touch with our loved ones. Many of our loved ones are overseas and Packet8 MobileTalk account can help you talk to them for less money.

All you have to do is sign up for a Packet8 MobileTalk account. You may use one of 400 cell phones that are supported by MobileTalk. Then, you simply follow the link in a text message that is sent to your phone and download the MobileTalk application. Now, if you dial 011 or + from the USA to call someone overseas, the MobileTalk software will route your call to the Packet8 network, automatically.

Reduce your international calling rates from the USA by as much as 90 percent. No more fumbling for your PIN or dialing long access numbers to make a call. You have MobileTalk digital voice service and great calling rates to just about anywhere in the world!. No more running out of minutes or dropped calls.

For $9.99 per month (with a $9.99 activation fee), you will receive reduced international calling rates from the USA with no long-term contract. With a 30-day money-back guarantee, how can you lose?

Now, if you will just watch this, you will see how easy it is to stay in touch with loved ones, no matter where they live.




If you liked the video, please visit and vote for it: http://bix.yahoo.com/contest/33995

Surfing on Company Time

Burst Media conducted an online survey in November 2007 of 11,510 web users, aged 18 and older about their Internet browsing habits at work.

According to Burst Media, more than 1/4 of Internet surfing at work is unrelated to job duties. Marketers may want to target these workers, since more than 1/2 of respondents shopped online for personal items during work hours.

Making a purchase was the most common personal shopping activity conducted at work (31.7 percent), followed by researching product features (26.6 percent) and comparing retailers' prices (25.8 percent) and finding retail locations (25.1 percent)
From the news release:

Most employees show little remorse regarding their time spent web surfing on company time: Only one-quarter of employees (28.5%) feel guilty about using the Internet on company time, although women are more inclined to feel guilt than men (31.7% vs. 25.6%). Additionally, very few are worried that “big brother” is watching, with only 30.5% of respondents concerned that their employer might be tracking their Internet usage. The one segment that expressed some concern that their web usage might be tracked by their employer was young men ages 18-24 years. Among this segment, 41% expressed concern that their web surfing at work might be tracked by their employer.

Clicky Web Statistics : Get the Facts

Would you like to have more detailed statistics for your blog traffic? With Clicky Web Analytics, you have access to detailed information on your visitors. For example, learn their IP address, location, browser, operating system and the website from which they came, including the search term if the visitor came from a search engine.

To get started, all you have to do is register, add your blogs, and install a snippet of javascript to your blog templates. If you cannot use javascript, no problem. There is an HTML alternative. You may choose between the free plan or several premium plans. Below is a screen shot of the different plans:

Clicky Web Statistics PlansClicky Web Statistics Plans
Right-click graphic to open a larger version in a new window.

Why would you want another web statistics package? Please compare Clicky to the popular analytical tools below. You will easily see how much more Clicky offers.

Compare Popular Web Analytics PlansCompare Popular Web Analytics Plans
Right-click graphic to open a larger version in a new window.

If you would like more information, or to sign up for free today, please click here to visit Clicky.


Blog Your Blessing: Gentle & Forgotten Art of Blessings



After viewing this video, I realized how much we do each Sunday with Blog Your Blessing. We are healing the Earth and others. I am proud to be a BYB blogger. God bless us all.

The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. Visit the website and grab the blogroll code, add it to your blog, and leave a comment on Blue Panther Experience. Next Sunday, post your blessing. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on Sunday as we blog our blessings.


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Advertising on Report Cards

McDonald's has underwritten the cost of printing report cards for a school district in Seminole County, Florida. The trade off? A Happy Meals coupon printed on the report card.

Click to read: McD's Newest Ad Platform: Report Cards - Advertising Age - News

Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood has this to say in the article:
Lots of companies advertise directly in schools, but I think McDonald's has taken this to an all new low by advertising on report cards. It bypasses parents and targets children directly, [telling them] that doing well in school should be rewarded by a happy meal.
My thoughts:

While many groups are upset about this advertising aimed at children, it is actually smart of the school district to get someone else to foot the $1600 printing bill. With all the cuts in the school budgets, many programs are being cut. If advertisers can pick up the slack, I think it is helpful.

What do you think?

Lost Innocence and Page Rank

Advertising for Success blog will be changing. A few weeks ago, I realized that this blog had lost page rank and was ranked PR2. After Thanksgiving, I realized it was ranked PR0.

This is disheartening because I have always been transparent with my blogging. I follow the blogging ethics of WOMMA. I disclose all sponsored reviews and do not recommend something I do not or would not use.

I used the Bad Neighborhood Text Link Tool to find out what might possibly be dragging my page rank down. I had linked to other bloggers and sites who had linked to sites that may be considered to be in bad neighborhoods. Many of the bad neighborhoods were links to or from Blogger!

Moderating comments has become a real chore with most comments NOT being aoproved. This breaks my heart because I am a Do Follow Blogger. However, as an early adopter of do follow, this blog has become a target for every scam site on the Internet.

Please note that I have started to add rel="nofollow" to most of the URLs on my blog. I had no idea that I was passing my page rank to other sites.

Blogger has started linking to profiles instead of blogs. There used to be an option to check "other" and put your URL in the comment. No longer.

Happy Holidays.

Overstock.com : Christmas Giveaway

Woohoo! Get in on the All I want for Christmas Giveaway at Overstock.com. All you have to do to is register your email address and pick a gift (with a value of up to $1000) from the thousands of items on the Overstock.com website.

When you have found your gift, you email the description of the gift to a friend. After you complete this step, which I believe is what actually registers you to win, you may return to the contest page and enter the email addresses of up to five friends. Spread a little cheer! If you win, they all win the prize, too.

My first entry was for a Toshiba 32-inch LCD HDTV with DVD player. My husband, Michael, would love to have one of those big flat screen HDTVs! I sent the description of the HDTV to my husband and five of my girlfriends. I am glad I did. I had two calls right after I sent the email to my friends. They were happy to get the email!

You must hurry! The contest just started, but it ends at 11:59 pm (MST) on December 7, 2007! Submit an entry each day of the contest for a chance to win the daily draw. At the end of the contest, one entry will be selected to win every prize for which they registered. Can you imagine winning five gifts, each worth up to $1000?

I am going back out and pick out my other gifts right now. LOL





Test your useless knowledge

The Media Guy at Ad Age has outdone himself! Simon Dumenco picks on Brittany Spears, Lindsey Lohan, Ann Coulter, the Spice Girls, Esquire Magazine and Carson Daly in his Media Guy Media Studies Pop Quiz.

Test your useless knowledge by clicking Can You Keep Your Train Wrecks and Has-Beens Straight?

Test question from the article:
After 16 years, telecom giant T-Mobile decided last week to stop sponsoring its professional cycling team because of cycling's unsavory connection to doping scandals. What other marketers are suddenly skittish, and what actions are they taking?

A. Verizon to sever all ties to "Can You Hear Me Now?" guy -- because of his unsavory affliction of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
B. Geico to sever all ties to cavemen -- because of unsavory connection to awful ABC sitcom.
C. Alcoholic Indian elephants to distance themselves from their supposed champion Paris Hilton -- on the advice of their William Morris agents.
D. Heroin Dealers Association of Britain to immediately distance itself from rocker/addict Pete Doherty -- for being just too damn pathetic and skeevy, even for them.
Did you hear? Brittany is pregnant again. If she was cat, she'd have been fixed by now. Too bad she cannot buy common sense with all that money she has.

Revenge is a Pie Best Served Hot

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street is a movie based upon the musical by Stephen Sondheim, Sweeney Todd. It is based on a legend that was the topic of Penny Dreadfuls (serial novels) in the late 1700s. Whether Sweeney Todd is urban legend or true man, the fact remains that the story is gruesome.

Johnny Depp is Benjamin Barker, a young man born to poor parents who leave this Earth early. Benjamin is sent to Newgate Prison for stealing when he is 14 years old. There he learns the tools of the barber trade from another inmate.

Next, we see Benjamin married with a baby. His life, while never perfect, is good until he is framed for a crime, sentenced and sent to a penal colony in Australia. While serving 15 years for a crime he did not commit, Benjamin changes to become Sweeney Todd, a man driven by the desire for revenge until it drives him insane.

He returns to London, looking for his wife and child, only to find that the judge who sentenced him to the penal colony had married his wife, now deceased, and raised his daughter as a stepchild. He visits his former landlady, Mrs. Lovett, who rents him the room where he lived with wife and daughter. Mrs. Lovett has also saved the razors with which Sweeney Todd makes his living as a barber.

When he opens his barber shop, next door to St. Dunstan's church, Sweeney Todd becomes the Demon Barber of Fleet Street who shaved the "heads of gentlemen who never thereafter were heard from again." The bodies begin to pile up in the catacombs and tunnels of St. Dunstan's, so Mrs. Lovett comes up with a unique use for the bodies. She makes pies, the "worst pies in London."

As Sweeney Todd sinks further into insanity, he exacts his revenge on the judge who sentenced him to the penal colony and others who have crossed him. Mrs. Lovett serves up the remnants of revenge until they are caught.

While musicals are not my favorite type of movies, I think I will have to see this one. Check out the trailer and other gruesome goodies. Click here to visit the official Sweeney Todd movie site or visit Sweeney Todd on MySpace.


Affiliate Marketing Made Easy

Self SEO blog has a great write up on affiliate networks that should be useful to all affiliate marketers.

Click to read The Top 10 List of the Best Affiliate Networks

From the article:
Affiliate marketing, if done right, can prove to be a very lucrative venture. Commissions can run anywhere from a few pennies to thousands of dollars for just one click or sale. Professional marketers develop affiliate relationships with hundreds of companies and build sites to promote these companies and products.

I agree with choices of Titus Hoskins except for #7, Google AdSense. If pennies is your idea of the big time, then post Google ads all over your website. The advertisements make your site load slowly, send people off your site, and the only entity who makes money in the deal is Google.

But then, I am prejudiced. LOL



Blog Your Blessing : Serenity Prayer

Krause Springs

~~::+::~~

The Serenity Prayer

God, grant me the
Serenity to accept the
things I cannot change,

Courage to change the
things I can,

and the Wisdom
to know the difference


Attributed to Reinhold Neibuhr who credited
Friedrich Oetinger, an 18th century theologian

~~::+::~~

The Blue Panther Experience is host for Blog Your Blessings Sunday. Visit the website and grab the blogroll code, add it to your blog, and leave a comment on Blue Panther Experience. Next Sunday, post your blessing. We are of all faiths, creeds and races, so everyone is welcome. Join us on Sunday as we blog our blessings.

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