eCommerce Website Builder

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of eDirectHost.com for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have found that setting up a business web site is more difficult than it needs to be if you use the tools available from most website hosting sites. When you are looking for an eCommerse Website Builder the best solution is one that gives you all that you need, web hosting, website building, site management, and domain registration, in one place. For that eDirectHost is the only one I have found that does it all.  
All kinds of eCommerse Software do some of these things, but eDirectHost has a seven step process that gives you all that you need to build and run a business website.

The first step, Select A Design:  Start by selecting one their design templates that are grouped by category. You can select your business type and then pick a design to customize to how you need it to be. the next step is to Customize the selected Design. You start customizing your design  by uploading your company logo, images, videos, blog, content and stuff like that.  eDirectHost website builder is really flexible and allows you to customize almost every aspect of your site to fit your business type and style. select from a wide range of colors and style sheets as well as layout designs and images. Set up blogs and forums to allow you to communicate to your customers and for them to communicate with you and each other. Step three is to activate your website. Once you are happy with the design of your site with the website builder, the next step is to activate the site with your credit card.  Payments are withdrawn from your credit card account on the 1st of each month and there are no long term contract.

The fourth step is the one that most website building sites leave up to you to figure out, the Purchase of a Domain Name. With eDirectHost eCommerse Website Builder, domain names are registered under your company name and address or your personal name and address.  like all domain name registrations they are good for one year from the date of purchase.  This name determines what your web audience or customers put into their browsers to bring up your website.

Step five is Website Optimization, and will help you out a great deal. this is one of  eDirectHost best, and most useful services.  Just click on the "Search Engine / Site Optimization" icon from the main admin page and they will walk you through the steps to optimize your website for search engines.  they review key words, meta tags, and website content to make sure your site is as visible to google or bing searches as it can be. Their website builder has been optimized for search engines and contains many tips that will help you get better rank within search engines. And then step six, submit your site to search engines. this is done mostly by the eCommerse Website Builder on the site you just have to tell it when to do it. And finally step seven is to open your site for business.  Once you are live on the internet you can take a step back and enjoy your new website.  You will have 24 x 7 access to the sitebuilder throughout the world so that you can continue to update your site whenever you need to.

eCommerse software can be confusing and you are probably not running a web site to spend all your time and effort in setting up and running a web site. You want to sell something or provide a service and that should be where your time is spent. so take a look at www.edirecthost.com and get a free trial.

Content Central, Workflow Made Easy

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Ademero for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

I want to talk about a new and very interesting business application. its from Ademero and its called Content Central, a document management software suite. The really cool thing about it is that it’s all just a web app. Once its installed on your server(s), you load it into your browser like any page and go. That gives you many neat benefits.  A browser-based application offers, quick deployment, controlled & logged access, and remote connectivity.

Your administrator(s) can install Content Central on a single MS Windows server or across multiple servers.  Once user accounts have been defined, users connect from available Windows, Mac, or Linux computers on the network. You do everything from within this browser-based interface, from capturing, indexing, and retrieving documents to approving and distributing them.

Content Central looks like document creation software but its so much more. They call it a Workflow Solution. That means that it helps you set up, and speed up, all aspects of document preparation. You don’t just write a paper or proposal you also have to share it, have feedback from a team, get approval from whoever is in charge, and make changes based on client and management participation. All of these things are accelerated by Content Central.

Content Central has some really useful features inside. You create documents using PDF-based electronic forms. Documents and other files can be captured from document scanners, network folders, e-mail accounts, or user interaction. Content Central converts scanned images into fully searchable PDF files, and all documents can be retrieved using content keywords and other index information based on the type of document. Integrated e-mail and fax tools allow you and your team to distribute documents without requiring external software. A powerful workflow engine can manage your information behind the scenes based on system events or schedules.

Best of all, there aren't any confusing add-on modules to worry about, you receive every feature for one simple and affordable price, you pay only for the number of users that you need.

Ademero, the makers of Content Central, is an interesting company. They are based in Central Florida. Their brand name is synonymous with enterprise-class document management solutions. Your business, large or small, can only benefit from using their services and their customer service cannot be overstated.

They offer all of these exelent services.

• Full-Service Document Imaging

• Solution Implementation

• Solution Migration / Conversion

• Hosted Document Management

Take a look at their web sight and explore the services they offer.

Together all these things make Content Central a great piece of software that allows your company to get on with whatever it does instead of sending, receiving, and sorting documents and keeping track of who has what document, and what version they have. You can streamline the whole process and get a lot more work done by fewer people without sacrificing any productivity.

The truth is that you will have to buy some kind of productivity software, there’s no getting around that. The only real choice is what will you buy. Content Central is a great choice that will make your work easier, and, most importantly, cheaper.

What the iPad mini should be

Very soon it is expected that apple will announce the release of a smaller more affordable version of the iPad. It is likely that it will be wi-fi only and that means that it almost certainly won’t be a phone. But, it should be a phone, an actual hold-it-up-to-your-head phone.

I love the usefulness of the iPhone but it is simply too small for my needs and I don't think I’m alone. It would be a simple matter to at least provide a user accessible sim slot and cell radio so that people can use this little device as there take everywhere device.

I think that this would be a good time for Apple to target the enterprise market as well. The business person that once relied on their Blackberry now has a choice of basically Android or Windows 8 phones. Apple should be in there too, but the iPhone is simply not for enterprise users. Why? It is a problem of perception. The iPhone is for kids and hipsters in most peoples minds, enterprise users don't like that stigma attached to there device no matter how well it does what they need it to do. That is one of the reasons that Blackberry was so popular with this market in the first place.

And don’t forget little kids. this is the perfect product to market to parents as a device for little kids between the ages of 2 and 6. Parents need to feel like there kids will not be injured by the device and that they will not damage the device. A snap over cover to make the iPad mini could make this possible and separate it in look from the enterprise version. A kids mode of running where they can only get to the games they're authorized to play and cannot make purchases without help. The size and relatively low price of the device combined with these cosmetic changes could make this device very buyable.

An enterprise device, that is also a phone, and a model for little kids. The iPad mini will probably not be any of these things but it should be. We need a device of this kind if Apple wont make one someone should, but it wont be as good. Apple should listen to the market instead of trying to dictate what the market wants. That never works good.

Bagel Head is Just the Beginning

The bagel head fashion in Korea has gotten some news recently so I thought I would take a moment to talk about body mod. Body Modification is not tattoos and piercings, if you think it is well consider this.

Body modification is, to my mind, changing your body to look like what you want to look like. Bagel heads are one of the first proto forms of this. Its not permanent and its not drastic but it changes you not adds to you like art or piercing. People that have teeth pulled and posts put in for permanent vampire fangs are body moders. 
I hope soon to see people adding fingers or limbs to outwardly portray the person inside. That's what body mod is about. Making the inside and the outside match. I haven't started the conversion to full dragon form because it is unavailable and I am unlikely to be able to afford it if it were. But if I could I would in a minute, sacrificing ease for giant size, and social interaction for intimidation without a second thought. 

The idea is not new or mine but the philosophy is very interesting to me. A man with full body tattoos and small subcutaneous horns on his head is making a statement more than almost any other person about who he is and what he believes in. But it cannot stop there. as we advance in technology we are presented with new opportunities; an extra functioning arm, or more fingers, or even eyes that work better than the ones that you have. 

Sexual reassignment is a relatively normal possibility in most peoples lives, we each at some point have to decide if nature gave us the gentiles and reproductive capability that we want. in the future this will be a more conscious choice because it will be more available and the reassignments will be better and better. 

I am not trying to be offensive, but there is an interesting example of this going on fairly regularly, that of the multi-gender porn star. A woman has a fully functional penis, usually these days with a pump for erections, installed over her existing vagina. this gives her capabilities she did not have before and from the standpoint of body moding philosophy must be respected even admired. though i don't recommend looking for pics unless you really want to see exactly this.
Body mod is a philosophy and one that I hope, in the future, becomes popular and accepted. Bagel heads look silly to me but if the wearer likes it, its beautiful. Beauty is a choice that society and the individual make together. I am old enough that tats on very young pretty girls still shocks me a bit but its pretty standard at our high-schools and colleges. I am the one advocating being in control of your appearance and I still have these hang ups. Humanity grows at the edges and becomes stronger. Beauty is a choice and so would all appearance be if I had my way.

Great Protection From Identity Theft

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of LifeLock Twitter for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

We all know about identity theft by this point, so no long definitions here. What we still seem to have difficulty with is stopping it from happening to us. Now there is a simple and solid way to not just protect your information but to find out when someone might be using it and to recover for your losses.

LifeLock is the premiere identity theft protection and recovery service. Their $1 Million Total Service Guarantee is solid protection. if your identity is stolen they will do what it takes to identify the culprit(s), stop them from using your identity, and recover your losses.

How hack-friendly is your password?

Of course you are taking precautions and good ones too, just like you should. You shred your mail before throwing it away and you cover your pin at the grocery store. But identity thieves have lots of ways to get your information. How secure is your mailbox? Have you ever found it open when you sure you closed it? Are you sure nothing was taken? You can’t shred documents that you never see.

Don’t forget that simple thievery is a good tool for identity thieves as well. They just snatch a purse or a wallet or even a cell phone and they have a lot of your private information. If that happened the first thing you’d do is report the theft to the police and the next is to report it to the credit card companies. But was your social security number in there? Maybe that was just what the thief wanted. He can sell it to someone looking to get a job and maybe even an apartment in your name. The government does not monitor too closely where you live and work. This person now has utility bills in your name and is filing income tax for you. How do you think that will look to the IRS, if they spot it?

And finally what if that person, living as you in another city, gets arrested and charged with some crime. All they have to do is abandon the apartment and skip town. Now you have outstanding utility bills, rent, and maybe even an arrest warrant in your name that you don’t even know about.

That’s all very scary, but a real possibility.

LifeLock makes worries like that go away.

LifeLock Ultimate protection monitors your personal information. They check multiple databases to see if your information is available to anyone it shouldn’t be. LifeLock Ultimate provides, public record surveillance, payday loan monitoring, and daily monitoring of all 3 credit bureau reports to see if someone other than you is using any of your information. Alerts are provided when contact information changes on existing credit card, checking, and savings accounts and most importantly guidance to correct accidental disclosure of personal information on file-sharing sites.

LifeLock on Twitter

The LifeLock web site is easy to navigate and their services clearly laid out for you. LifeLock Ultimate is great protection. The bad guys have so many ways of getting at your information and over 9 million people in the United States will be victims of identity theft this year. You need someone in your corner if it happens to you.

You need more ram.

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of Crucial.com for SocialSpark. All opinions are 100% mine.

Ram, or random access memory, is the most cost effective way to upgrade your computer. Your computer almost certainly could be running faster and better. Ram allows you to multitask more efficiently because your computer does not need to write to the disk as often. This is because your computer uses the hard drive to store data that overflows the ram. The hard drive is slow compared to ram speeds. So more ram means a faster computer, almost always. You need more ram, and now it is cheaper and easier to get than ever, with Crucial.com.

Crucial.com has many great tools for getting you the ram that you need. I have 2 gigs but I could have up to 8 and with Crucial.com, I could get it for under a hundred bucks! That, is really quite cool.

Now through June 30th, take our quick Apple computers survey and be entered into Crucial Memory Sweepstakes. That gives you a chance to win $10,000 worth of Apple gift cards for you and a matching $10,000 gift card donation in your name to TechSoup® Global. Let's just say that with a $10,000 Apple gift card, you could conceivably buy an iMac for every room in your house! Coupled with a matching donation to TechSoup, you'll get the satisfaction of knowing that you helped supply $10,000 worth of technology to a non-profit in need. That's pretty awesome.

Go to Crucial.com and enter the sweepstakes. Get a chance to win very cool Apple stuff, and get yourself some much needed ram for your machine.