It seems as though everyone out there has their own website these days. It has become the latest way for people to keep track of their lives, voice their opinions, discuss important topics or just plain have some fun. Some of the best websites have hundreds of thousands of visitors and are helping to change the face of the world. I have seen so many situations where an everyday blogger or site owner has created a stir in the world and the result is that people are better educated and things change. What other media outlet can everyday people use to reach others around the world at such a small cost? Best of all, it is your site, you control it and you decide what gets posted. So why doesn’t everyone do it? Most people are scared of getting started and concerned that it will be difficult or expensive to set up.

There are a lot of companies now who help people build and maintain their sites. Using an online website builder like Web Deva will make the process virtually pain free. These kind of sites help you by giving you all of the tools you need to set up and run your site. You will have a unique web address and all of the tools for maintaining the site are online. You can access them from everywhere and you don’t need to have a server to keep your site. This type of company is ideal for people who have never run their own site before. Sites like Web Deva put the world of blogging and web hosting at the hands of everyone.

Now is the time to join the fun! Let everyone know what you think! Teach others about the topics that are important to you! It’s easy to get started.

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Anyone who works on the INTERNET or has large amounts of data they need to store understand the importance of protecting your information. Living in Louisiana I realize the importance even more. After Hurricane Katrina there were so many businesses who couldn’t access their data because their physical buildings and computers were destroyed. The disaster in 2005 helped everyone realize the importance of using data center services. These are off-site centers that store, protect and manage your data. This means that you can access your information even when you aren’t at your physical business location. It also means that your information is protected from fraud, hacking and worst of all destruction from acts of nature. If there is a fire or storm or other disaster your information is safe and sound in an off-site location. I can’t imagine any business that wouldn’t benefit from this kind of service. Since hurricane season is about to be in full swing I highly recommend that people have several different methods for backing up their information including incite and off-site options. It will make life so much easier in the event of a disaster to know that you have the information you need safely stored away.

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I am not usually one to promote other book sites but I have to tell you guys about a new site my friend Tricia is doing. It is a site completely dedicated to the Sookie Stackhouse Novels and the True Blood series that evolved from the Sookie Series. The site is called Sookie and True Blood and it is going to be all inclusive for Sookie and True Blood fans. You can find the best information and merchandise related to Sookie and True Blood.

Why not just read them and review them myself? Well I am on vampire burnout. The funniest part is that this whole vampire obsession of Tricia’s started last year when I read and reviewed the Twilight Series. She was determined she didn’t need to read the series and waited until I had finished most of the series to even start reading them. This could very well end up a reciprocal thing. I keep hearing about Sookie and I even mentioned her books a long time ago when I first started blogging. I had read some good things before the Twilight phenomena and so I posted about it. Now Sookie is taking over the Twilight craze and so I may need to oblige the peer pressure and pick them up.

For now my readers will have to go over to Tricia’s site for their Sookie fix. Let me know what you think. Tell me why I should read these books! Convince me that I won’t be waisting my time. Better yet…convince me that I won’t end up with vampire post traumatic stress syndrome like did after reading Twilight. I still can’t see the covers without thinking about the time, energy and brain power I put in to that series. Enjoy!

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I ventured in to the world of Facebook many months ago. I did it because a bunch of my Disney friends were doing it and it provided another way for us to communicate besides forums and AIM. It was enjoyable at first but I didn’t really keep up with it much. Then all of a sudden friends from my past starting contacting me through Facebook. I have ‘talked’ to people I haven’t seen in 15 years and honestly, I love it.

It is a great way to connect with old friends that doesn’t require a lot of time or commitment. You don’t have the awkwardness of face to face meetings with people you aren’t sure you will still have things in common with. It lets you get caught up on each others lives from your own home and be done with it.

I can’t tell you how many people I have reconnected with and it has been great fun. I do have to say though that Facebook could be a breeding ground for people who want to take advantage of young people. I only accept friend invites from people I know or once knew. Teens aren’t quite so selective so I can see where it could lead to very bad things.

I have seen recent news articles about teens being taken advantage of through Facebook. In the end it is not the fault of the web site that these things happen. There will always be people willing to take advantage of a situation. I just ask that parents monitor their children when it comes to Facebook. It really is the only way for parents to know what their kids are doing. One thing I learned about Facebook is that everyone your friends with and everyone they are friends with will know what is happening in your life. Being on Facebook and friending your child will go a long way toward knowing what they are doing and who they are talking to.

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I have long found that the best blogs are those who include beautiful photos with the text. Not those flashing blinky images but just nice beautiful images like the one posted to the left.

The problem for most bloggers is in finding the images they need and assuring they aren’t copyrighted against being used and then resizing them if possible and then editing the colors and then adding them to their blog.

There is a new web site names Acobox.com that collects and organizes blog pictures for use by bloggers. They make it very simple for bloggers to search for pictures and then customize the sizing and placement of the image before adding the coding to their blog post. No more having to keep these pictures on your own photo hosting site. It is simple and saves so much time in dealing with photos and images on your blog. Photos can be searched by type and also in alphabetical order. The blogger also doesn’t have to worry about the copyright and licensing of the photos because Acobox assures that all of their photos have been cleared for use. How much easier could it be? Now we can make our posts interesting and beautiful without spending hours searching for photos to use and then customizing them for use. This could be a wonderful tool for bloggers new and old. Enjoy!

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Have you ever seen or heard of those programs that use voice speech recognition to create documents? I have but I hadn’t heard anything about them lately and I wondered if they were even being used anymore. Surely there must have been a new invention that had replaced speech recognition and was better or more accurate.

Apparently you shouldn’t fix what isn’t broken because I found out that Speech Recognition software still exists and it is better than ever. I am posting a link to a user who is demonstrating how to use the Dragon Naturally Speaking Speech Recognition system to type a document. I also wanted to give you guys a copy of what he typed using the system of speech recognition. I can’t really tell you guys how useful this system would be to those of us who think and type all day long. I write my blog posts from my head and so I am not copying something I wrote ahead of time. If I could just speak what I wanted to write as I was thinking it would make telling my stories so much more simple. So many times I realize that my brain is working faster than my fingers and I have forgotten part of my post because I wasn’t typing fast enough. Have a look at what this system can do. I love it!

Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 was used to create the following text as demostrated in the video above.

The video above was created by a blogger that goes by the name, SuperZ.

I couldn’t write that name before using Dragon NaturallySpeaking until I trained Dragon NaturallySpeaking to recognize the name SuperZ. I mention that because I’m using Dragon NaturallySpeaking right now to write this article (notice Dragon new when I said the words right now that I meant the word right and not the word to write).

I’ve been writing articles and reviews about Dragon NaturallySpeaking for close to two years. I’ve had a lot of experience with the software, and I wanted to reach out to other bloggers and see what they thought of the software.

SuperZ tried out the software and as you can see from his own video, the results that he’s getting after having used the software for just a week are pretty amazing. His computer is keeping up with just about every word that he says, and typing those words out for him in text.

Well frankly that’s exactly what Dragon NaturallySpeaking is supposed to do these days and it lives up to its claim of achieving 99% accuracy and I’ve clocked it typing faster than its claims of 150 words per minute.

That’s right you can type 150 words a minute with Dragon NaturallySpeaking. You do have to spend a little time editing from time to time, but you type so fast that editing doesn’t take that long. You get the typing done faster and the editing is a breeze because you only have to look at the way that you phrased words. Dragon NaturallySpeaking almost never makes a spelling mistake. It types out the entire word based on the vocabulary that has stored in the machine. So it really can’t misspell a word it’s pulling the word straight out of a dictionary.

The only exception might be the case when you run into a name like SuperZ, which is not in your dictionary yet. When you run across a name like that, all you have to do is add it into your dictionary and train the software to recognize that new word or name. It just takes a second and after that you’ll be able to say SuperZ all you like and Dragon NaturallySpeaking will know exactly what you are talking about.

Sincerely,
Brett Bumeter
Softduit Media
www.softduit.com
PS this article includes about 381 words that I wrote with Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10. It took me about 4 minutes to write and 4 minutes to edit this article. The writing time included the short amount of time it took to train dragon to recognize the name SuperZ. Editing took 4 minutes because I’ve been working all night and I’m not reading too fast! J

 Now that you have seen what this system can do I am sure that you can see its usefulness. I can imagine this program working well for authors, students, bloggers, online journalists and anyone else who wants a hands free way to get the information they want on to the page. I also think my 7 year old would love this program. She likes to write songs. However, she isn’t a very speedy writer right now. She is slow. She knows the words she wants and can say them she just forgets them in the time it takes to put them to paper. Imagine what she could do if all she had to do was say the words she wanted. Her songs wouldn’t be lost in her head any longer. What a blessing that would be. Check out this system and please let me know how it goes. I love to hear back about how my suggestions work for other people.

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It has been very nearly a year since I started to blog and I have to say that it has become a way of life for me. I find that I have to report everything I find on my blog and it is the place where I go first to pass along the great things I read. I have been able to better organize my reading and research because of my blog. I now have a whole community of friends who also blog and we are always helping each other out with ideas to help make our blogs better.

If you haven’t considered starting your own blog I have to say it is well worth the nominal fees that are required to start up your blog. Web hosting is really your biggest expense and that really amounts to some where around $10 a month. If you are considering starting your own blog and don’t know where to start when looking for webhosting companies I have found a site that can help with that. Web Hosting Rating is a web site that provides a directory of web hosting companies and gives its readers the pertinent information. It is very helpful in providing the information needed to make an informed decision on which company to use for your web hosting needs. They also provide many articles to help new users keep up to date on the latest needs for site owners including installing payment options on your site, choosing a domain name and many on web hosting.

I have been very lucky to have a lot of help with my site and with the decisions I have had to make but a site like this would be invaluable to a new site owner who doesn’t know where to find the answers. Good luck to those who are considering starting a new blog. You will see that your life will be changed completely.

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I have been noticing that a lot of blogs have these neat little buttons. A lot of them allow you to grab their buttons and put them on your site if you like the blogs you have visited. I thought this was a fabulous idea and decided that I wanted a button too. Problem is that I am neither creative nor do I have the tech abilities to do this. I decided to throw myself at the mercy of one of my friends for help. Kimberly over at AllAboutKimberly decided to help me out. She has been working on making buttons for people and so she made me a few different versions of buttons and let me decide which one I wanted. I have had a hard time deciding but I narrowed it down to three of them that I love. If you guys need something like this Kimberly does an awesome job and the fees are very reasonable. You will be up with the times in blogging and have a great button to show off. Here are the ones that I am deciding on, make sure you comment and let me know which one you like the best:

I love them all. I think the last one is my favorite because I have been in a girly mood lately. I do like the first though because they reflect the theme of the blog more in that it is a blog about books. I just can’t decide. I highly recommend you guys head over to Kimberly’s blog and check out her work. She designed her whole them from scratch and she will design a button for you!

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I am one of those women who SWORE I would never scrapbook. I did it with a friend once and I realized that it took way to long to complete a page and I am very much an instant gratification person. I also don’t have the space to purchase and keep all of the materials that are required. Well today I eat my words…well sort of.

I purchased a program a week ago and it arrived yesterday and I can tell already that I am going to love it. The name of the program is Scrapbook Factory and you use it to make digital scrapbook pages. It feeds my need for instant gratification since it is quick and easy. It also works for me because I like to try things and if I don’t like them I can just delete them and start over or make changes. Not so easy to do that with actual materials. The amount of things that can be done with this program are amazing. I love it. The best part for me is that once I have my pages done I can submit them to Shutterfly and have them printed out on photo paper. Then I just get them back and put them in a scrapbook and I am done.

I got mine through a company called Avanquest Software through Sunshine Rewards. They had a special where I got it for $10 off and free shipping so I paid a total of 29.95 for a program that will allow me to make thousands and thousands of scrapbook pages. Plus I was able to get cash back in to my SR account for the purchase so my actual out of pocket ends up being 26.95. Who can ask for more. I am going to start working on a page tonight so that I can get my two Disney trips immortalized finally. Check it out on SR and ENJOY!

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I have to tell you about this service I heard about. It is called ChaCha and it is basically an information line for people with cell phones. You can either voice call or text message to ChaCha with questions you have and they will reply back with a text message with your answer. I love it. If you are on the road and need directions from one spot to another you can call and leave a voice message for ChaCha at 1-800-2chacha and they will respond with the directions you need. If you are going to text message you can use 242242. I tend to like the voice message because some people don’t have text plans and because it is often easier to phrase a question when speaking than when typing. This service is available 24 hours a day and 7 days a week, even on holidays. I love it because they will find a way to answer any question you have that is not illegal or blatantly pornographic. The answers are researched by live "guides" so that you will have the most accurate answer available. This is becoming the most popular form of information available. It is a free service (your phone service may charge for the minutes used) and it isn’t just limited to names, addresses and phone numbers like the typical information line is. You can call and give the name of the theater and the name of a movie and ask what time the show starts or plays. Another common thing is to ask about travel time from one place to another. You can also ask about events occurring in a local area and they can research what time the event will occur and where. The questions aren’t limited to being about those kinds of things either. You can call and ask about history, birth dates, death dates, anything you wonder about is open game to ChaCha. What a great idea! Try it out next time you need an answer.

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