Archive for December, 2008

Wedding Reception Lessons To Learn

Wednesday, December 31st, 2008

After the wedding ceremony is carried out, every one that needs to has said their I do’s, the confetti has been thrown and the carriage arrives to take the bride and groom away, the bride and groom head of to the wedding reception to meet the guests, of course the guests from the ceremony are all going but some people only attend the reception. The ceremony is more for family than friends. So once you arrive at the reception what happens then? A party!

The wedding reception is where the entertainment and the food is, no doubt the newly weds will be starving after the nerves and the shock of getting married has worn of. The reception is a great time for friends and family to get to know each other as well they are all one big circle of family and need to get along, for your sake! The wedding reception then starts of with a speech, a toast, some food and then the entertainment. The food can either be hot plate served or it can be hot and cold buffet style dinner whatever you choose is loved by all guests, no doubt the happily married couple will be starving after the shock of marriage and the release of the nerves. After everyone has eaten and admired their wedding favors and the special gifts have been handed out to the members of the guests that have played a special part in the wedding the entertainment starts. The entertainment is usually a DJ or a live band, sometimes though couples get really creative and go for a magician or even a comedian. Keeping the guests entertained is a great part of the wedding as it makes you feel good to know that everything that you have done has made all these people happy.

The wedding reception is the most favourable part of any wedding, the ceremony is usually boring and the guests are glad to get off to the reception to have a good time. The wedding reception is another type of celebration of your marriage. The next celebration which is undoubtedly the best is the honey moon which you will no doubt enjoy thoroughly!

For a free course on finding the best discount wedding invitations and discount wedding dresses, visit www.discountweddingguide.com/ today.

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Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

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dirSpace-Your Web Directory

Tuesday, December 30th, 2008

If you have just ‘opened’ your new online business, are thinking about starting one, or want to give your existing website more online exposure, choosing the right online directory to advertise your website on is definitely a smart professional move. You will want to make sure that your business is listed in a place that is easy for people to find, organized, and gets the appropriate amount of traffic that will expose your site to the masses. The ranking that your website has in a web directory is instrumental in determining how much traffic your site will receive, and the type of web directory you choose is just as important.

dirSpace is an online reference library that can help you to achieve the kind of success for your website that you want and need. dirSpace is an online library that categorizes websites and businesses by subject and interests, so that people searching online for information, services, or items that your business has to offer can find them with ease. That means that people can find great places to shop, locally or online, information on quality restaurants, the latest news, and articles on everything from home repair to home remedies simply by using dirSpace as a web directory. Categories on dirSpace include Business and Industry, Education, Arts & Humanities, Shopping, and even News and Media. If you don’t see exactly what you’re looking for in the categories that dirSpace offers, you can type in the subject or words that you want, and the search engine will direct you to the most helpful resources.

If you’re writing articles for your site or for another online business, you may also want to use this as a way to make sure that the web directory has all the information necessary to make searching easier for potential customers. For instance, the articles or informational material that you write for the site may have a number of keywords that will make it easy to find in the dirSpace directory. And, the directory is edited by humans, so that you and your customers will receive quality results each time you search, whether you’re trying to find a business, information on a specific location, or are doing research.

And, if you do decide to list your business or website with dirSpace, you’ll receive a weblink ‘backlink’ that more people will be exposed to, so customers will be much more likely to visit your site. Before you decide to have your business or informational website listed with dirSpace, it’s a good idea to try the site out for yourself, in order to see just how easy it is to find facts on whatever subject you’re curious about. That way, you’ll know what sort of words or phrases potential customers and website visitors will be looking for, and you can make sure that the keywords that people will use (if they’re using a search engine to find your online business) are effective. You may also want to check out some of the businesses in the category you’ll be listed in to see where you’ll be ranked and how ‘available’ you’ll be to online searchers. The site even provides a list of recently added sites, so that you can see that no matter how small or how new your website is, having it listed on dirSpace will definitely make it easier to find. You’ll find information on how to submit your site, as well as effective advertising tools at http://www.dirspace.com.

Your Transnational Land Markets — Facilitated by The Property Index

Monday, December 29th, 2008

Property Index is an online platform that gives buyers access to thousands of properties www.propertyindex.com. Property in Dubai City is currently booming so browse the range on offer at Property Index.

Regardless the fact that the Property Index online service may be considered a new kid on the block firm, having been incorporated in March 2007, they have established expert status very quickly. They’re a quite down-to-earth firm specialized in offering advice to any individual who is aiming to buy, sell, rent etc. property across the world. Their pledge is to be of assistance to you to find squarely what’s desired very swiftly and, as well, sans pain. Property is available wherever you want in our times, one of the most fashionable areas being real estate available for sale in Dubai. It’s an easy job to tally the fabulous real estate on the market in Dubai, one motivation for selecting real estate here being property available and the mega cool possibility of living surrounded by this active populace.

It is one of the most popular regions in our times, and in view of the scenic beauty and the agreeable climate surrounding you all year, how could you ever go wrong? Property in Dubai is steeped in history, art and culture, this region has been and still is home to numerous sophisticated civilizations. Just one generation ago there was only very few of Britishers who are looking for real estate in Dubai. Just ask anyone who has chosen to remove to Dubai and they’ll be sure to confirm this. Many would tend to see it as a short-lived trend and others tend to see it as a that’s nearly an obsession… People actually relocating here may range from young freshly weds who are looking for a life perspective to senior citizens looking to enjoy retirement.

Note that you may encounter some difficulties when looking to buy real estate in a foreign country – there are, of course, a million heterogeneous, not always very logical, procedures when organizing, visiting or finalizing the deal. Even if a single minute procedure is missed this may definitely kick up comprehensive difficulties not to forget, preeminently, money loss. Obviously, as can be anticipated with this sought after destination, real estate could be costly in this location which is, of course, purely owing to the high buyer demand. Notwithstanding the patron actually is a bit spoilt in terms of choice in a part of the world full of good scenery. It has the lot you might imagine, etc.

Creativity and Innovation: Blocks and Unlocking

Monday, December 29th, 2008

There are a variety of blocks to creativity:

a) conformity and risk aversion

b) cultural dictates; appropriate behaviour

c) negatively assessing own ideas

d) scientific heritage forces logical thinking

e) ego forces rejection of inappropriate ideas

f) evaluation apprehension

g) competiton causes many people to shut down

h) negative interpretation

i) educated out of creative thinking

j) fear of being perceived as unoriginal, unintelligent

k) illusion of difficulty

l) waiting for the mood; procrastination

m) waiting for the big idea

n) lack of focus or goal

o) not trusting oneself or experiences

Various techniques assist in the overcoming of blocks:

a) Separate creative from critical thinking; write first, edit later; ignore content. Best done in different environement. The first containing much stimuli, variety, diversity, novelty etc. The second focusing on feasible, bottom line factors etc.

b) Allow atmosphere of psychological safety and freedom. Essentially, where the individual is safe and free to express him or herself without that person’s value being based on the quality of output.

c) Acknowledge failure as a given; use it to expand competencies.

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You are free to reproduce this article as long as no changes are made and the author’s name and site URL are retained.

The MBA research project, 188 stage Hero’s Journey and other creativity and innovation tools can be found at http://managing-creativity.com/.

You can also receive a regular, free newsletter by entering your email address at this site.

Kal Bishop, MBA

Kal Bishop is a management consultant based in London, UK. His specialities include Knowledge Management and Creativity and Innovation Management. He has consulted in the visual media and software industries and for clients such as Toshiba and Transport for London. He has led Improv, creativity and innovation workshops, exhibited artwork in San Francisco, Los Angeles and London and written a number of screenplays. He is a passionate traveller. He can be reached at http://managing-creativity.com/.

Laughter and Your Health

Sunday, December 28th, 2008

Did you know that according to research, children laugh about 400 times a day while adults only laugh about 15 times a day? Some how we lost the ability to laugh, as we got older. Could it be that putting more humour and laughter into our day will improve our health and wellbeing?

In an article written by Drs. Gael Crystal and Patrick Flanagan they stated that; “Scientists have found that laughter is a form of internal jogging that exercises the body and stimulates the release of beneficial brain neurotransmitters and hormones. Positive outlook and laughter is actually good for our health! More than ever, scientific evidence suggests that laughter really is one of the best medicines.”

According to a study done by Dr. Tan from California’s Loma Linda University Medical Centre, laughter can have a huge impact on our immune system. The university conduced a study of average adults. One group of adults was subject to an hour of laughter through watching videos of comedians and another group sat quietly out of earshot of the first group.

What did they find? Through regular blood tests carried out during the comedy shows they found that the laughter group had an increase in good hormones and a decrease in the body’s stress hormone. Dr. Tan concluded that; “Laughter brings a balance to all the components of the immune system.” Some clinics are now using this information with their patients. They are using laughter therapy to replace anti-depressants and to reduce the use of painkillers. According to researchers faking laughter will also produce the same health and wellbeing results as real laughter.

Do you need to improve your ability to laugh more?
Well here are some tips from Family Scientist, Herbert G. Lingren to help all of you, who are humour impaired, to add laughter and humour to your everyday life.

1. Hang around funny friends, or better yet, marry a funny partner.

2. Start looking for the absurd, silly, incongruous activities that go on around you each day.

3. Take a 5-10 minute humour break each day. Read jokes, add to a humour notebook, and listen to a funny tape.

4. Rent a comedy video, go to a funny movie, and watch humorous programs on television.

5. If you hear a joke you really like, write it down, or tell it to someone else to help you remember it.

My final tip would be to spend more time having fun with children maybe you will catch a few hundred laughs off them! Better still join a laughter club or start your own.

Lisa Branigan specialises in coaching women who are stressed, tired and overwhelmed with their busy lives. Lisa is the author of “Life Solutions” a free monthly e-zine providing tips, advice and information on self-care and wellbeing.

For more information contact Life Coach Lisa Branigan:
Email: lisa@quantumcoaching.com.au
Website: http://www.quantumcoaching.com.au

Tips On Effectively Organizing Your Navigation

Saturday, December 27th, 2008

Not all links are created equal.

While all of your links may be important, you must sort and prioritize to come up with an effective navigation scheme. Here’s what you should keep in mind:

1. Sort your links

Your links should be organized according to their relationship to each other. Any time you can find a way to divide your links into two or more categories, do so.

If you have more than 5 or 6 links, categorizing becomes very important. Try to find some natural groups. For example, suppose you sell widgets, and your site has this set of links:

  • Mini widgets

  • Multi-colored widgets

  • Discounted widgets

  • Contact us

  • About the company

  • News

Your major categories are:

  • Products

  • Company info

When you separate the two sets of links according to those major categories, it becomes much easier to sort the available information.

The simple reason is that a choice between two items is less complex than a choice between 6 items. It’s the principle of dividing and conquering.

Take a look at the following site:

www.adobe.com

Notice the four main categories–Products, Resources, Support and Purchase. These four categories help visitors narrow down at a glance which area they need to look in to find the info they want.

Imagine if all of those links were lumped into one long list. How much harder would it be to figure out where to go?

Often, you might not have clear-cut categories. For example, you may have three links that all go together in one category (such as “Products”), plus several more miscellaneous links. Even if the miscellaneous links don’t fit conveniently under one category name, you can still group your links. Put the three product links together, then all the miscellaneous links in a separate place.

2. Prioritize your links

Hopefully, you have some idea of what you want visitors to do on your site. Your site should be designed to drive a specific action–in other words, get visitors to do a specific thing.

Once you’ve decided what your primary goal is, your navigation should reflect it. The links that pertain most closely to your main goals should be emphasized the most. You need to guide the visitor in the direction you want him or her to go.

Prioritize. Ask yourself the question, “What is most important?” What do you really want to accomplish? (I’ll give you a hint: “About the company” should not be a top priority link.)

Here are several examples of sites that prioritize well:

www.fleet.com

On the home page, you’ll see three main links. These links are geared at attracting the company’s major types of customers. All other links on the page are much smaller.

www.atomz.com

On this page, it’s clear that the company wants visitors to click on one of their three product links: Publish, Search or Promote. The site does a good job of getting attention and guiding the visitor in a specific direction.

www.columbiahouse.com

Right from the beginning, it’s obvious that the company wants visitors to join one of their three clubs. All other links are relegated to the bottom of the page.

By carefully prioritizing, these sites are able to narrow down the choices and make it more likely that visitors will head in the direction they want them to go.

About The Author

There are 605.6 million people online. Can they find your business? Jamie Kiley creates powerful and engaging websites that make sure YOUR company gets noticed. Visit http://www.kianta.com for a free quote. Get a quick, free web design tip every two weeks–sign up for Jamie’s newsletter: http://www.kianta.com/newsletter.php

jamiekiley@kianta.com

I Just Got Mobile Broadband

Friday, December 26th, 2008

And no matter what the mobile phone companies are trying to tell me it beats the pants off my 3G broadband using mobile phone.

3G mobiles are great for checking emails and looking up sports scores, but have any of you tried getting any work done on them? Trust me, not worth the effort. Realistically to find any connection of note you needed to find somewhere with a wifi hotspot to take your laptop.

Only I don’t anymore.

I decided to give one of those mobile broadband deals I found on Broadbandgenie.co.uk a test run, I’m sure you have seen them advertised all over the UK. Well worth every penny, (not that it cost much). This wonderful piece of kit gives me complete freedom to take my laptop anywhere and still get work done. Anywhere from a car parked outside a clients to the local pub can now be my office. Very liberating I can tell you!

I have to admit I was slightly concerned at first, I was worried about the speed of the Internet connection and the coverage the service would give. I didn’t need to. Both have surpassed my expectations.

I truly suggest you get yourself mobile Internet access; it makes things that bit easier

Build Your Website in a Weekend

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

While it seems that everyone and his dog (or cat) has a website, there a plenty of people out there that never got around to creating one, even though they could profit from it. Many people feel that they are not technically gifted enough, and that building a website would cost too much time or money.

The following, therefore, is not for the seasoned web designer, but for all those artists, crafters, freelancers and small business owners who want a website, but have all thoses excuses why they have not managed to get one yet.

What if you could set up your own website in one weekend, without having to engage in any HTML programming? Here is how:

1. Get a host. Your website has to be hosted somewhere. The options are free website communities (such as http://www.tripod.lycos.com/ or http://geocities.yahoo.com/), your own ISP (internet service provider), which might offer you a personal website, or a paid host (of which there many, you can find a list of popular hosts at http://www.websitehostdirectory.com/). I would stay away from the free offers, as these include ads and do not provide you with a professional image (though both Tripod and Geocities also offer paid ad-free options, sometimes with your own domain name) (1 hour)

2.Get a domain name. This is optional, but having a URL such as www.zebrabreeder.com (which was still available as I wrote this article:-) is more memorable than www.geocities.com/zebrabreeder. The other advantage is that you can take your domain name with you, if you ever switch ISPs. Just be warned that many of the “good” and obvious names have already been taken, so you have to show some creativity. You can find a list of domain name registrars at http://www.internic.net/alpha.html. The easiest way would be to buy your domain name and web hosting from the same company, and there are many sites that offer all these services, such as www.godaddy.com. (1 hour)

3.Decide on a layout. Once you registered a domain and obtained a host, it is time to think about the layout of your site. Get some pen and paper and started drawing. What do you want on your homepage (which should be named index.html)? How many sub-pages will there be (for example for various goods or services you offer)? What kind of visual theme do you want? What kind of graphics and pictures should you include? Make these decisions before actually designing your site. (3 hours)

4.Design your site. Many of the hosts mentioned in step 1 offer tools that let you choose pre-made designs and just fill in your own information. This makes it very easy, but may also restrict what you can do. Another way would be to use Netscape Composer, which is a free tool and part of Netscape 7.2 (you can download it at (http://browser.netscape.com/ns8/download/archive.jsp). Composer lets you use a word-processor like interface and contains a nifty “Publish” function to upload your pages. Of course you can also buy programs such as MS FrontPage. Your website will not win any design awards, but it will get your information out. (8 hours)

5.Check your site. Before uploading it, you should check spelling and grammar and see that every page has at least a link back to your homepage. (1 hour)

6.Upload your page. Now you actually have to get your content to the web. Your host will have information on how to do this. You basically need a destination, a username and a password to upload the files. (30 minutes)

7.Publicize your website. Do not expect people to rush to your website. How would they even know about it? There are many services that will submit your website to “hundreds” of directories for a fee, but you can submit it yourself (for free) to the ones that really matter:
http://www.google.com/addurl/?continue=/addurl
http://submit.search.yahoo.com/free/request
Add your URL to the signature line of your outgoing e-mails, put it on your business card and on all other business-related communications. (30 minutes)

8.Don’t let you site go stale. Remember that content is king. You can start your website in a short time, but you have to keep adding to it. Why not write an article in an area of your expertise? Use the expertise you have in your field to make your website unique. Remember, fresh content will help search engines find you and will induce visitors to come back to your site.

Pamela Bruce lives in Austin, TX. She is the owner of Love Beads Unlimited and sells the sterling silver and Swarovski crystal bead jewelry she designs and creates both in her Etsy shop (http://lovebeadsunlimited.etsy.com) and on her website (built with Netscape Composer) at http://www.lovebeadsunlimited.com, where you can also download the free e-book “A Consumer’s Guide to Buying Bead Jewelry Online”.

Web Site Navigation

Thursday, December 25th, 2008

Once a visitor gets to your web site, you want to make sure they can find what they are looking for quickly and easily, or they will just go elsewhere. If a web site is easy to use and understand, visitors will come back time and time again.

Using intuitive navigation techniques will greatly improve the usability of your web site, and therefore user satisfaction and return rates. By intuitive navigation, I mean some sort of menu, map or list that is instantly understandable to most visitors to your web site.

One of the first points to making a site easy to navigate is to have a consistent menu that is on every page. By having a menu that is on every page of your site, users can move from each section from any other section, with out having to go back to a home page or menu page.

Keeping the menu in the same location, and in the same style throughout your site ensures that visitors quickly recognize how to navigate your site. If you have a different style menu on every page, users may get confused and not as easily comprehend how to navigate your site.

Another useful tool a Webmaster can include for visitors is a site map. A site map is a page containing an organized list of all the pages or sections of the site. Instead of moving through the site’s menu system and down through categories by clicking on links on different pages, a visitor has the option of going to the site map and clicking directly to the page they are seeking.

Though there are many fancy buttons, graphics and rollovers that can be used for your navigation menu, sometimes simple text links are the best bet. For one, text link navigation menus are fast loading. Many web surfers are on slow connections and do not want to wait for a complex navigation system to download. Text navigation menus also can add relevant text to search engine results, whereas image navigation bars cannot. Text navigation also helps ensure your users understand what the links mean.

If you do opt to use graphic navigation menus, you may wish to consider adding a redundant text navigation menu at the bottom of the page to ensure viewability and search engine spidering.

Many new Webmasters are tempted to use frames to create a navigation menu that will appear on all the site’s pages. The benefit is that the navigation will stay in sight even when the rest of the page is scrolled. But because frames piece pages together from other pages a Webmaster cannot be sure that a web page using frames will be viewed correctly. If a visitor comes to a page through a search engine that was designed to have a navigation menu added with a frame, the user will see not see the menu. Because of this, it is important to add a link to your home page on every page, so viewers can see your site as it was intended.

Even if you are not using frames, it would be helpful to have a link to the home page of your website on every page, to ensure users can find the “beginning” of your site.

Keeping the navigation menu near the top of the web pages ensures that surfers will be able to see the menu as soon as the page loads. If a user has to scroll to navigate to other pages of your site, they will be less inclined to do so.

In closing, it is important to keep in mind that when it comes to site navigation, simplicity is key. If a user does not immediately see what they need, they will not spend much time trying to find it, but will rather move on to the next site.

Halstatt Pires is with the Internet marketing firm – www.marketingtitan.com – a San Diego Internet marketing and advertising company offering automated web site systems through www.businesscreatorpro.com.