New Years Eve - ON-LINE!!!

I hope that everyone had a great Christmas! We gave two of our kids and my Mom ASUS Netbooks. They have been enjoying the Internet from their laps for the last couple days. Kind of nice not to have to be sitting at a desk all the time.

For those of you that can't get enough of New Year's Celebrations on T.V. you can also have some fun watching the Times Square Ball drop and countdown online on several sites. Hulu & MSN both have live coverage as well as my favorite site, http://newyears.earthcam.com/ Visiting earthcam will get you views from multiple webcams as well as a very accurate countdown.

Happy New Year!

Shipping deadlines: order your gifts soon in time for Christmas

This year, as always, I buy most of my gifts online. I love not having to go out into the crowds and I am nearly always happy with what I order. Plus it is fun when the packages arrive to open them and find that what I ordered will be a hit. I am almost done but I still have a few things to get so I went online this morning to research whether or not it is getting to close to Christmas to have delivery on time.

I found out that if you still have gifts to buy and you plan on shopping via the Internet, you don't have much longer to meet the Christmas deadline.

Two-thirds of retailers are giving you until Dec. 18 to order gifts and assure that they get delivered by Christmas.

Dec. 17 is also free shipping day. At least a couple hundred retailers, including Toys R Us and Crate & Barrel will offer free shipping that day and guarantee delivery by Dec. 24.

So you still have a few more days!

Wize Dezigns adds RSS feeds

RSS is a web content syndication format. Its name is an acronym for Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary. It is used for syndicating dynamic material such as blog entries, news headlines, audio, and video and is a defined standard based on XML (Extensible Markup Language). Programmers use RSS to provide website users with fresh content and headline news. Consumers use RSS readers and news aggregators to collect and monitor their favorite feeds in one centralized program or location. Content provided by programmers and viewed in a RSS reader or news aggregator is known as an RSS feed.

Wize Dezigns has added a custom RSS feed on our website to share our latest news with you. We have also added feed headlines from this blog. Both can be found at http://www.wizedezigns.com/

If you use a news aggregator such as Google reader or My Yahoo or a feed reader on your email application, you can subscribe to our news feed by clicking on the RSS icon on our homepage or by using the address http://www.wizedezigns.com/feed.rss and/or you can subscribe to our blog feeds using the address http://wizeblogs.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss

Here comes St. Nick!

In the Bendt house we celebrate St. Nicholas Eve as the start of the Christmas season. Every year I forget the date, I know it is the 5th but I can never remember if the eve is the 5th or the 4th. So every year I a have to do a google search to figure out which is the eve. This year was no different so yesterday I did my search and found that the eve is the 5th. So if you celebrate St. Nicholas day or you would like to start, have your kids leave their shoes by the door or fireplace on Saturday night. In the morning St. Nicholas will have brought them little presents to indicate whether or not they have been good this year. It is a great way for you to get your kids ready for the Christmas season and to remind them that Santa and the elves are always watching. You can find out more about St. Nicholas and his history here http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=38

While I was searching I also came across a great site http://www.santaclaus.com/ This website has a ton of information related to Santa and will even let you track him on Christmas eve.

Facebook hits 350 million

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook now has 350 million users!

They have also been working on better ways to improve privacy and networks. Look for these changes coming soon. You will begin getting notices and prompts to adjust your privacy settings based on these changes. The goal is to allow your personal activity to be seperate from your business activity or protected from users that you do not wish to share information with.

Cyber Monday was blazing!

By 2:20 p.m. ET, more than 270 retailing Web sites tracked by Internet monitoring firm Akamai were drawing more than 4.3 million visitors per minute in North America. Traffic was up nearly 39% compared to the same time last year.

I know that I got some good deals, did you?

Not to worry, there will be plenty more, just keep checking everyday for the items you are looking for. Prices change by the minute.

Should you upgrade to Windows 7?

A lot of clients and friends have been asking me whether or not they should upgrade to Windows 7. The information that I am posting here is just my personal opinion but I will give you a few things to consider as well.

The quick answer is this...I never recommend upgrading a computer's operating system. There are many reasons for this including hardware and software issues but the most important reason is that upgrading a computer's operating system almost always results in some problems, mostly because of registry files. The only way to really get a trouble-free version of Windows 7 on your computer is to reformat your harddrive and do a clean install of the full operating system, not the upgrade. If you choose to do this, make sure that your system can physically handle the operating system. You can do a quick check here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/get/upgrade-advisor.aspx. That being said, if you are going to go through the trouble of wiping out everything on your system, installing a new operating system and re-installing all of your programs, you might as well purchase a new system and benefit from the hardware upgrades you will get with a new system, in my opinion.

The biggest issue that you need to be concerned about with both options is whether or not your existing software programs are compatable with Windows 7. You can check to see what programs will work with the new operating system here http://www.microsoft.com/windows/compatibility/windows-7/en-us/default.aspx

If your favorite program will not work on Windows 7 you might want to reconsider switching or be prepared to purchase new software.

The best advise that I can give you is this. If your system is older, slow, and you have been thinking about getting a new one then this would be a good time to do that providing that you are prepared to re-load all of your software, purchase new software and learn a new operating system. If you are happy with your current system and operating system (XP, Vista, etc...) then you should probably wait until all the bugs are worked out of Windows 7 and make the switch later. The major benefit that I have heard of so far of switching to Windows 7 is that it does make systems run faster and safer.

I didn't want to provide a ton of information here but you can always visit the Windows 7 website to get all of your questions answered. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

Happy 19th Birthday Kristen!

It's hard to believe but 19 years ago today I gave birth to an amazing person. I am so proud of my daughter, Kristen. She is a beautiful, intelligent and fun loving woman. She is a freshman at St. Thomas University studying Public Relations and Marketing. She is also the first freshman ever to have an internship with the University in Social Media Marketing. She is in charge of the St. Thomas Facebook page as well as being an ambassodor for the school. You can see all of her great work on their page at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?page=2&aid=-3&id=532595715#/stthomasmn?ref=ts

I hope she has a terrific day full of fun and celebration. Love, Mom

My Tips for fixing your Facebook Page - MUST READ

In the last few weeks Facebook has really frustrated me. Just when I thought I had my page the way I wanted it, they go and change things up on me. Facebook now has what they call "live feeds" and "news feeds." Live feeds has constant updates and News feeds highlights some of your friends activities. The problem is that if you have a lot of "friends" you aren't necessarily getting the updates on the friends that you really want to know about because Facebook choses what to feed you.

One thing that you can do to sort of switch back to the old Facebook is to change the default on your Homepage from live feed to status updates. To do this go to your homepage, in the very left hand margin there is a column listing the various feeds and applications that are available in the order they are available to you. Below the top 5 there is a little word called "more. " Click on MORE and then you are able to select and drag whatever feeds or applications you want to appear first on your homepage to the top. For example if you want to go back to the way the old Facebook was, you can drag STATUS UPDATES up to the top replacing live feed. Problem solved.

Next... I love all the different Facebook applications that are out there but I am sooooo tired of getting a feed everything someone obtains a Farmville, Mafia Wars, Bejeweled accomplishment, etc... The fix is this. Choose someone's post from one of these applications that you don't want to see anymore. Next to the post is a label called HIDE. Choose HIDE and voila, you won't see that application posts from anyone-anymore. YIPEEE! If you change your mind and you do want to see the posts again just go to the very bottom of your homepage. At the bottom right there is a label called EDIT OPTIONS. Click on that and you will be able to unhide any applications that you have blocked from your news feed.

As far as not getting all the feeds you want from your most important friends and getting feeds from people you barely know - here is the solution for that. Click on your News Feed option, then go to Live Feeds. At the very bottom of that page there is a label EDIT OPTIONS. Click on EDIT OPTIONS and you will be able to manually add friends that you really want to keep up with and you can hide feeds from friends that you don't want to know about anymore.

I really hope that this will help make your Facebook life more bearable with all the changes they have made. I know that I feel better :) Have a great day!

LinkedIn & Twitter Partner!

LinkedIn and Twitter announced a partnership on Monday allowing you to push your LinkedIn status updates out to your Twitter account or pull your tweets into your professional profile.

You have three options for integrating LinkedIn with Twitter: you can rebroadcast your LinkedIn status updates to Twitter, turn your tweets into your LinkedIn status or both. To start integrating your tweets, you need to edit your LinkedIn settings by adding Twitter from your profile page or by clicking the Twitter icon next to your status on the homepage. Twitter integration will be rolled out to all LinkedIn users over the next few days, so you may not see the new feature right away.

Just for fun

I don't know why I thought of this song this morning but it really made me laugh!

Keep in touch!

Last night I attended a very informative Professional Womens' Network Meeting. The featured speaker was Brenda J. Carlson. Her firm provides coaching to businesses and work teams to maximize strengths for success and discover what to do about challenges. Her topic was maximizing your social media. She reminded me how important it is to utilize all the great social media marketing tools that are free and available in order to promote your business and YOURSELF! It was really helpful for me to reflect on my own social media use and I realized that I have been neglecting my LinkedIn profile. Facebook, Twitter and Blogger are such a big part of my day but it is also important to make professional connections through LinkedIn. So I invite you to create a profile and add me in your network. http://www.linkedin.com/in/angiebendt You can get linked in and find out more about Brenda here: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brendajcarlson

The spotlight speaker was Darla Donley. She is a representative for a company called SendOutCards. SendOutCards is an online greeting card system. You choose your card from over 15,000 cards or you can upload your own. You enter the recipient's address and SendOutCards prints the card, stuffs it in the envelope, puts a stamp on it and mails it out for you. AWESOME! I can't wait to try this. She emphasized how important it is to use email, personal contact and greeting cards to maintain contact with friends, relatives and business partners. Again, I was reminded how important it is to use all types of communication that we have available to us. You can check out this service at www.sendoutcards.com/havemorefun

Well, thanks again for reading my ramblings. I hope that you take away this.... Don't get so wrapped up in your day to day routines that you forget to use all the tools that are available to you.

Fun and safe games to play on the Internet

Just for fun I thought I would share with you some of the Internet games that we enjoy playing here at the Bendt house. I love to play Farmville and Bejeweled Blitz on Facebook. If you have a Facebook account you can access these games under the Applications tab or just add me as a friend and you will see my updates. My daughter, Keri, plays Farmville and also visits http://www.bored.com formore games. Johnnie is an avid Roblox player (http://www.roblox.com) This game is a game for creating robots and places. It uses an advanced scripting language so is a great way for young programmers to get a start. For younger players, http://www.millsberry.com/ is a fun way to play learning games and earn millsbucks to decorate avitars and houses.

As always, monitor your child's activities on the Internet and limit their game playing time but these games are all safe and free to use.

To Blog or not to Blog

I have been getting a lot of great compliments about my blog lately and I want to thank everyone for reading and giving me the feedback. I hope that my posts have been interesting and helpful to you. A lot of my friends and clients have become more interested in blogging have been asking me if they should start blogging and how to get started. Here are some good reasons to start blogging...

1. You can organize your thoughts in one place.
2. You can develop your writing skills.

3. You can get your voice heard. You can blog about anything from and interest you have to your family to your business.
4. You can meet new people. It's amazing how many people can find your blog online and start following what you post.
5. You can get feedback on your ideas. It's always nice to get comments about something you cared enough to blog about.
6. You can teach others. We can't all be good at everything, but we all have our strengths. So, why not share some of your knowledge so others can learn from you?
7. You can open doorways. Blogging isn't only a hobby. Blogging can help you promote your business or yourself and might even land you a job! Imagine adding your blog address to your resume! What a great way for a potential employer to get to know you.
8. You can make better use of your free time. Ever feel like you're not using your free time very productively? Blogging can be a great use of your time. It doesn't have to take over your life - but it can be a good option if you have some time to spare.
9. You can get into a routine. Set aside a few minutes each day at the same time to blog. It can be a great break from your daily grind.
10. You can find it to be very therapeutic. Angry? Sad? Overjoyed? Lonely? Ambivalent? Therapists have recommeded journaling for years. Guess what? Blogging is JOURNALING!

So the next question is how do you get started? There are many blogging websites out there. My personal favorite (obviously since I use it) is Blogger. Found at http://www.blogger.com/, blogger is subset of Google. Visiting that address gets you right to the homepage where it couldn't be easier to set up your blog. Just click on CREATE BLOG!!!! You will be walked through a step by step process and away you go! Best part is.... It is completely free of charge and ad free.

So future bloggers get going and be sure to send me your new blog link! Oh yeah, and watch this music video about blogging if you get a chance.

Happy 40th Birthday to the Internet!

Tomorrow is the 40th Birthday of the INTERNET

What a busy old year 1969 was.
When man wasn't landing on the moon, the Beatles were performing their last concert together, Led Zeppelin were releasing Led Zeppelin I and the Rolling Stones were playing Altamont. Say no more.
Meanwhile, on October 29, the first Arpanet network connection between remote computers was established.
Arpanet was the military precursor to what we now know as the internet (the term "internetting" would not be coined until 1977).
Anyway, at 10.30pm precisely, the first message was sent over the Arpanet between the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Stanford Research Institute by student Charley Kline. The message itself was the word "login". The "l" and the "o" transmitted without problem but then the system crashed. So, trivia fans, the first message transmitted over the internet was "lo".

Oh and sorry Al Gore, but you did not invent the Internet.

Online Map to check your area for flu outbreaks

With all the talk of H1N1 (or as I like to call it, THE Swine Flu) and all the other viruses going around, I thought you would enjoy visiting this website which provides the latest information on flu outbreaks in the world. http://healthmap.org/en

HealthMap aggregates news feeds from the WHO, Google News, ProMED, and elsewhere to map out all of the disease outbreaks. It includes a heat index to understand how bad certain situations really are and the most recent health-related news items.

Tip: To check just for influenza-related news, check only the box that says “influenza” under “Diseases, last 30 days”.

Family Guy to air Windows 7 Episode!

Seth McFarlane, creator of Family Guy, confirmed that a Windows 7 themed, Microsoft sponsored episode of the irreverent TV show will air soon.

There will be no commercial ad time, no network promotions, and no commercial breaks--just a 30-minute Windows 7 trailer. It will feature original animation, live-action performances of Family Guy's most memorable musical numbers, comedy sketches, and surprise celebrity guests.

The show airs on Fox Sunday, November 8th at 8:30 PM EST/PST, 7:30 PM CST.

In my opinion it should be well worth watching but keep in mind that the "Family Guy", by nature, is meant for mature audiences.

Considerations Parents Should Make When Naming a Baby

Naming a baby 30 years ago was much easier. Parents just needed to pick a name they liked, say John or Michael, add the surname, and that was it.

Enter the Internet, and everything changes. Now you need to think twice before naming your kid or else he/she might have a lot of trouble on their digital interactions. Below are some new considerations parents should make when naming a baby these days.

1. Is NameSurname.com Still Available?
In the future it is very likely that every person will need to have an online presence, and having the namesurname.com domain is the best way to go. You can check this by going to any domain registration website such as http://www.godaddy.com/ and entering the first and last name that you are considering followed by .com in the lookup box.

2. Is NameSurname Still Available on Twitter and Facebook?
Another cornerstone of your child's online presence will be their Twitter and Facebook accounts. Make sure that the prospective name is still available on those websites by visiting http://www.twitter.com/ and http://www.facebook.com/ and starting the signup process.

3. Will the name trigger email spam filters?
Email will probably remain the digital communication channel of choice. Make sure that the name or surname of your kid will not trigger spam filters for sexual or common scamming content.

4. Will it be easy to rank in Google’s first position for “name surname”?
Evaluate whether or not it will be easy to get your kid’s website ranked in the first position of Google for the “name surname” search query. Virtually everyone will use a search engine to find information in the future, and you don’t want people who are searching for your kid (i.e. to make a job offer) ending in the website of some footbal player or rock star.

I am sure there are many more things to consider but this should get you thinking!

Want to be a Gyan?

Gyan is the Sanskrit word for knowledge. As Hindi borrows heavily from Sanskrit, the word has the same meaning in Hindi too.

Gyanis are knowledgeable people, those who are maestros in their fields.
Words like guru and gyanis, though are Sanskrit words, are now becoming more popular in English, especially to denote a person proficient in technology field.

Read this blog every day and you might become one!

“Woo-Hoo...Woo-Hoo-Hoo...”

Good morning! I have something that I want to share with you but I hope you don't take it the wrong way. I am not trying to sell you anything.

We are really trying to cut expenses around here so in reviewing our bills we found that we were paying over $160 for our 2 phone lines with MCI (one home, one business). I decided to take the leap and sign our home phone up for VOIP (voice over Internet protocol). I did a lot of research first and went with the company that had the best jingle. Just kidding. But I did chose Vonage because of their unbelievable $24.99/month plan that includes every feature under the sun including visual voice mails (they actually transcribe your voice mails and send them to you via e-mail) Very cool. All local toll and long distance calls are included in the price, even most internationally calls. You must have a high speed Internet connection (no dial-up) and you have to get used to the fact that your phone line is no longer a POTS line (Plain old telephone service). That means that your jacks do not have dial tone anymore. They send you an adapter that you connect to your cable or dsl modem. You will probably want to invest in a cordless phone system that has multiple handsets. I picked a nice VTECH system up at Walmart that has 3 handsets. It was only $59.99. You can plug the extra handsets in anywhere in the house so you won't miss a call and you don't have to have a RJ21 (telephone jack) in a room to have a phone in it.

My review so far is that I love it! You can log in to your account and configure your services the way you want them. Another cool feature that you can have is "call hunt." When someone calls your main number and you don't answer you can program it to ring on up to 2 different numbers (example.. cell phone). If there is still no answer the call will go to voice mail.

I like it so much that I switched my business line over too. So now I will be saving $110/month on phone bills!!!

If you have any questions or would like to learn more just send me an email at info@wizedezigns.com or call me at 715-377-0233. I am including a sign-up banner and link. If you click on it and put my telephone number 715-377-0233 in the "get it now and start saving box" we will both get 2 MONTHS FREE! That's all for now. More later of course...

Mid-week is here and before another week gets away from me I wanted to post another article. I spend an average of 10 hours a week updating myself on search engine optimization and submission. I thought it would be a good idea to let you know about the newest search engine on the scene, Microsoft's bing.

Bing is becoming the new Google. Who would have guessed that the yet-another-search-engine-attempt-from-microsoft-to-beat-google would really turn successful?
Well, it surely seems that Microsoft has finally worked its magic this time as Bing has become the 13th most visited site on the web. According to Compete, Bing’s traffic has overtaken that of other prominent sites like Digg, Twitter and CNN.
Now, for those people who would like to switch to Bing, but finds Google to be unavoidable, there is a solution.

http://www.AskBoth.com

AskBoth.com is a new Web 2.0 search engine that combines the results from Google and Bing and displays them side by side. Note that entire Bing page or Google page is not displayed, but just the results are displayed here.

Check it out if you get a chance and make sure that if you have a website that you contact your webmaster and request that your site be submitted to bing as a proactive measure.

Welcome to my NEW blog (I deleted the old one)

Welcome to my new blog. I deleted my old one because all of the information was out of date. This blog will try to take you through day to day uses of the Internet for your personal and business use.

This week I spent my usual amount of time on my favorite websites: http://www.facebook.com/ http://www.drudgereport.com/, http://www.rivertowns.net/, http://www.ebay.com/, http://www.wellsfargo.com/, http://www.searchenginewatch.com/, http://www.coburnsdelivers.com/, http://www.youtube.com/ and I could go on and on. The most unusual thing that I did on the Internet this week was to develop a Facebook Fan page. This is different from a regular Facebook profile page. Facebook fan pages are for businesses and allow you to custom program your pages. Please take a peek and become a fan here. Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Blogger etc.. are community websites that are part of what is collectively known as web 2.0 soon to be web 3.0. Easy to use programming interfaces that allow even a half way intelligent 8 year old to do advance tasks on the Internet such as posting photos, creating and joining discussion groups, posting multimedia, configuring design, etc.... Johnnie, my 12 year old son, has a pretty nice Facebook site and is proficient at using MSN messenger and developing applications on ROBLOX. Keri and Kristen, my teen daughters are active daily on Facebook. Kristen just landed a social media marketing insternship at St. Thomas University. I mention this because I intend to include them in my blogs from time to time as their Internet activity is the window to the future. (please note: I do not recommend letting any child go unsupervised on the Internet. Computers should always be in common areas of the home, usernames and passwords must be known to the parents for all sites and services and children should know that they have no privacy when it comes to the Internet.)

To wrap up now, this blog will hopefully keep you interested in the Internet without being too overwhelmed or bored. Hopefully you will come back and visit from time to time which is the whole purpose of blogs: driving traffic to your website. Feel free to email me with topic suggestions or comments.