Quote of the Day

By the way, if you want to add a "quote of the day" to your blog or website (like the "Art Quote of the Day" that I have to the right), just visit Brainy Quotes, decide what topic of quotes you want, ie. art, funny, love, nature...... click on that and code will come up that you can copy onto your site. The cool thing is that the quotes rotate daily without any additional work on your part once you copy in the code. These things continue to amaze me. The internet is so cool. Aren't we lucky? Let me know how this works for you.

Reservations for Dinner

Valentine's Day is fast approaching. Do you dread calling around trying to make reservations? After the 2nd or 3rd call will you give up? Well, try OpenTable.com before you do. This cool site allows you to choose the city and/or town, select the time you would like to get a reservation for along with the amount of people in your party and then lists all the open tables available at finer restaurants that take reservations. The best part is that if your exact time is not open it suggests an alternative. You can book your reservation on the computer. This is handy at the last minute, but also a great way to find restaurant suggestions or to book in advance. The larger cities are better represented here, but it is a good site to check out your town's restaurants. I would imagine the more this site is used, the more restaurants will want to be listed. Have a Happy Valentine's Day!

What IS the name of that song???

I was sent this link today in a newsletter that I get each day, and it is just the coolest thing! Have you ever wanted to know the name of a song that you only remember part of? Or you have been hearing it on the radio and you want to know the artist? Some of us have radios in our car that scroll the artist and the name of the song, but certainly not all of us, and sometimes you just miss it or keep replaying a chorus in your head later on. This site, Midomi.com, allows you to sing or hum part of a song and identifies it for you. How cool is THAT! This is definately a link to pass on.

Color Scheme Generator

Here is a link to a very useful tool if you are building a website, especially on a site like ibuilt, or the very similar netidnow. It is a color scheme generator and as you click on any color you like on the color wheel, you can build instant color schemes with a single click. You can choose mono, contrast, triad, tetrad or analog color combinations, go lighter, darker, pastel etc. and you get a color coded list with all the corresponding color numbers you can just type into your site. It is easier than I am even describing and a very useful tool!

Remember The Milk

Here is another cool site, called "Remember The Milk". It is basically a place to list tasks, but it will email or phone you at a predesignated time before appointments, you can add tasks to it by email. It can sync with icalendar if you are a Mac user, but it really is worth checking out. To do lists can be added and will automatically update on your Google home page. Between this and Hassle Me, we shouldn't forget another thing!!!

Hassle Me!

Oh, this one is good. You can set up email reminders for anything you want! It is called Hassle Me and I think they will eventually even have text messages for your phone in the future. Add this to a site called Joe's Goals which I will blog about tomorrow and you will be well on your way to a whole new set of good habits!

Popular Hassles

* Go to the gym roughly every 4 days
* Write an entry in my diary roughly every 3 days
* Call your mother roughly every 7 days
* Go to the theatre roughly every 21 days
* Spend 5 hours doing something for mySociety roughly every 28 days
* Practice the piano roughly every 3 days
* Go for a walk in the park roughly every 10 days

The Things I Want

Whenever you come across something you want to buy on the web, wouldn't it be nice to organize that list in one place? No matter how much I bookmark into my "shopping" bookmark , it always takes me a while to find things or remember where I saw it even. Also, you have to revisit and open all the sites to search for things and that just takes too much TIME. Well, I found a feally cool tool to solve these problems, called
The Things I Want that saves the page and the exact item you are looking for. To add this cool tool to your computer, all you have to do is download the button, which I have added to my toolbar and voila....you have a place to save ALL the things you want. So, next time your honey asks what you want for your birthday the answer will NOT be..."let me think..."! You can even send a link to your list to someone or create a wedding or baby shower "wish list". Pretty cool!

Create Your Own Free E-Store

If you haven't heard about Cafe Press, I just have to tell you about how cool it is that this site allows you to create a totally free one page "store" of your own that sells t-shirts, mugs, hoody jackets, bumper stickers, tile boxes, calendars etc...with your own artwork which you can then sell on your free page that is yours to set up. You can upload a saying, or express yourself any way you want. You can just upload your design and order one single item yourself or sell tons of things on a site you create for yourself. You CAN create a multi page store at a nominal monthly fee, and have more designs, but a simple page site is free, and the cool thing is that they do all the work for you! You upload the artwork....set up your page if you want(easy), set the price and Cafe Press processes the order, prints the item, ships the product and sends you a check! They have some cool products and as there is a standard price for each item, you can set your price to whatever you think appropriate and you get a check for the difference. The page I linked to shows the main site where people can search for your product, but if you have a blog or anywhere to post a picture of your artwork or photo or graphics t-shirt, you can link it to your site to get some customers. I see these links on sites and I am always curious to see if it is a Cafe Press product and it usually is. Even if you are a Plumber you can create a company t-shirt for your employees. For my 11 year old daughter who is into riding horses, this is much better than babysitting or a lemonade stand as a way to be entrepreneurial and make a little $$. She is selling horse related t-shirts to the girls at the barn this summer. There are so many ways to play with this, and I just thought I would pass it on. I know I will have some products for my new business as soon as we launch. I am sure to put a Cafe Press link on this blog too! Have fun!