Ice Princess's Extra Cash

Overlook Mansion Little Falls Website SEO

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 29 Jun 2012 02:03:00 +0000

In my spare time, I've been busy building a new website. It's for the Overlook Mansion in Little Falls, New York. It is a very historic building that was built in 1889 for entrepreneur David Hamlin Burrell who made many contributions to the dairy industry. The site is available at www.overlookmansion.com. There is a lot of work to still be done on it, but the general layout is up along with a contact form. Next on the list is to add a photo gallery.
The site has only been up a few weeks, but it is already ranking on Google on page 1 for the site's keywords. The site even has a link from a third party article already. I have to do a little bit more link building from a couple of forums that discuss the Overlook Mansion. It's a good thing I've gained some useful search engine optimization (SEO) knowledge over the years. Ranking a new website on the first page in Google can be a daunting task.
There is a lot of SEO information available on the internet. There is always something new to learn. Search engines tend to revamp their search algorithms every now and then. I really haven't learned the specifics of how search engines rank websites. I just follow the basics of choosing keywords relevant to the topic of the website. It's good to choose keywords with low competition, if possible. It's also good to link to the site from third party websites, but only if the content of the third party site is relevant to the topic of your website.
If you have a website that needs help raising it's search engine rank, but don't have the time to do it yourself, it might be a good idea to hire someone who specializes in SEO, such as AdvantageMarketing. They can help you achieve top rankings on all of the major search engines.
If you are interested in learning a few SEO tips on your own, you might want to check out http://www.seomoz.org/learn-seo. They have a good checklist of some steps to follow when optimizing your website.

Hiking info

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 01:20:00 +0000

Thanks for the guest post by Esteban Vinson

My friends and I love to hike as often as we can get away. We mostly stay in Georgia, but occasionally we will get a longer span of time and go exploring in another state. I am usually the event planner, coordinating the travel plans, sight-seeing, and lodging for the trip. While I have some research for the best locations though several sources, I also enjoy watching the travel stations on Direct TV. These shows offer advice on not only where to go , but the best time to go places to stay and local attractions and restaurants. The national park websites are also full of travel information. These website have hiking maps and sometimes a brief description of the hikes. It is always good to know if the hike is easy, moderate or strenuous as well as the altitude increase. Several hiking websites help determine where to go and which hike are best suited for the group as well. We have been very fortunate to find clean, safe , comfortable lodging at a price we can afford and plan to continue hiking as long as we are able.

Social Media Marketing GetGlue.com Review

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 01:51:00 +0000

Social media sites, such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+, are great for spreading the word about your website or business. There are a ton of smaller, lesser known social media sites too. I haven't joined too many of them as I just don't have the time to keep up with all of them. There is one lesser known social media site that is really cool. It's called GetGlue.com. Basically, whenever you are reading a book, watching television, listening to music, or just doing something, you login and check-in to whatever activity you are doing. Each book, tv show, movie, etc. has it's own stream, so when you check-in, you can connect with others who are also reading that book or watching that tv show or movie. Your check-in stream can also be connected to your Facebook and/or Twitter accounts, so that when you post in GetGlue, your post shows up in your Facebook and/or Twitter stream.
There is also a running tally of how many are doing a given activity at any one time. It is great for soap operas. Especially since network honchos think nobody watches soap operas anymore.
The twist to GetGlue.com is, everytime you check-in, there is a possibility you may unlock a sticker. Yeah a sticker! General Hospital has tons of stickers. As your number of check-ins increases, you unlock a hierarchy of stickers. It's very cool. Special shows like the Super Bowl, Oscars and Academy Awards even had stickers for viewers to unlock. Once you have unlocked 20 stickers, you can get physical copies of them mailed to you. I've unlocked 20 stickers, but am waiting to unlock the die-hard General Hospital sticker before I have them mailed to me, which won't be much longer.
GetGlue even has an app for the Android, and I'm sure there is probably an app for the iPhone too.
I highly recommend adding GetGlue.com to your list of social media sites.

More Social Media Marketing

bonus check

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 22:27:00 +0000

Post contributed by Leonard Phelps

I got a little bonus check at work for finishing a project before the deadline. I wasn’t exprecting to get it, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Lord knows I’ve got plenty of bills I could put this money toward, but I’m actually thinking about getting internet at home with the check. I’ve been looking at all the satellite internet deals and it seems like a great time to do it! I’ve been wanting it for so long, and this might just be my chance when I finally have a little extra cash. I think in the end it would probably end up saving me money to get internet at home, actually. I spend so much extra gas money going to and from the library to use the computer, and that would be money put back into my pocket if I had access at home. Also, I could pay my bills online, which would save me money on stamps. I know that’s not that much money, but hey, every penny counts, right?

Search Engine Optimization Schema.org

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Mon, 27 Feb 2012 17:04:00 +0000

On my to do list is to learn about Schema.org and it's microdata schema. According to an article in the February 2012 issue of Website Magazine, in June 2011, the major search engines, Google, Yahoo! and Bing, created Schema.org as a unified way of consistently using structured data all across the web. The schema allows webmasters to add microdata to HTML tags. For example, if you have a header in your website that says People, you can add a tag to the HTML to tell exactly what People means, such as humans or a magazine type. Within each broad category, you can define more details. For example, for a movie, you can define properties such as director name, producer and production company.
This is a really great feature for search engine users as it helps give more accurate search engine results. For example, if you are looking for a recipe using black eyed peas, you will probably also get a bunch of results relevant to the band called Black Eyed Peas. If you are doing a search for information on the band Black Eyed Peas, you might also get results relevant to the food black eyed peas. If websites use microdata to give specific details on what exactly the words Black Eyed Peas refer to, a band or food, search engines can use that information when they crawl the website, and then use that detailed information to present the websites that more closely match what you are searching for.
Schema.org is not good for webmasters, if they don't use it, since their search engine rankings might actually be lowered. Websites using schema.org's microdata will be easier to classify and more likely to find their target audience.
Schema.org's microdata uses four main attribute tags. The first is itemscope. It is used on a "div" element to identify that the div's children elements will contain information about "something".
The second attribute is itemprop. It defines the item's value attributes. Each itemprop tag contains specific information about "something", such as name, price, description, availability, etc.
The third attribute is itemtype. This sets a url to where schema.org defines the attributes for the "something" you are giving information about, such as itemtype="http://schema.org/Person" or itemtype ="http://schema.org/Movie".
The fourth main attribute is the itemid tag. This sets a unique identifier for a given item.
It sounds to me like schema.org's metadata is going to be a necessary search engine optimization technique for all websites to use, if they are trying to achieve a top search engine result ranking. I know I will be working on adding it to my magazine back issues website.
If you hire professionals to optimize your website, such as Inbound interactive, Calgary SEO experts, make sure they have schema.org's microdata in their bag of tricks to get your website listed at the top of search engine results.

Bro's Advice

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 02:23:00 +0000

Guest post written by Christine Duncan

My brother told me about http://www.tvbydirect.com/ for satellite so I took a look at it to see if it would work for my family. My kids are watching more and more TV as they’re getting older and though I used to worry about it I’m now feeling a lot better about the fact that there are some exclusively educational channels that I can leave on and not worry too much about whether or not they’re getting content they shouldn’t. I think it’s great there are shows on TV nowadays besides Sesame Street that are dedicated to teaching our children lessons and numbers and things like that because I can’t always be on top of them all the time and I don’t worry about whether or not they’re not seeing the right stuff. Before I became a stay at home mom I was really worried that I would get bored but as it turns out I’ve been busier staying home with these kids than I ever was when I was part of the working world!

Lanny Forrester Golf

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 21:11:00 +0000

Here in upstate New York it finally feels like winter! I'm not really a big fan of winter, but the snow on the trees after a fresh snowfall is very pretty. We have been lucky so far. Up until a few days ago, we just had a dusting of snow once or twice. The temperatures have been very mild. A few weeks ago the temperature was even in the high 50's.
That all changed this week. Winter came roaring in with a few inches of snow and temperatures down to a low of about 9F. Although temperatures are supposed to slowly increase to a high of 42F on Saturday.
When I was younger I used to love going cross country skiing. I haven't been in at least eight years. My skis are now 24 years old, so I should really buy new ones if I ever decide to take up cross country skiing again.
Another winter sport I used to like is snowmobiling. I have an old Polaris XLT snowmobile. It is about 17 years old. Someday when the boys are older I may buy a new one. Registering and insuring a snowmobile costs about $100 per year. It's pretty expensive when you only ride once or twice.
I'm not really interested in any other sports. There is a very popular, small golf course up the road from where I live. My oldest son wants to learn how to golf, so maybe in a few years, we will give golfing a try. A lot of people I know love to golf. The boys father bought a golf video game that the boys enjoy playing. A Facebook member named Lanny Forrester enjoys playing golf. He would probably be able to give me a few golfing pointers.
The way this winter has been so mild this year, golfers were still golfing at the golf course up the road until mid November. I'm really hoping winter ends early too. I'm sure golfers would agree.

Free Links

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Wed, 04 Jan 2012 17:10:00 +0000

If you have a website and aren't sure how to promote it, you might want to check out freelinkbuildingtools.com. It is a website that shows you how to create, improve and promote a website. Promoting a website can be time consuming and there is a lot to learn, such as search engine optimization, keyword research, analytics and how to build links. Not to mention, you also need to know the technology used to develop a website, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, Javascript, etc.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com helps you gain free links. It also offers tools to build your website, including templates, html code, scripts and tutorials. A free link exchange service includes a webmaster forum where you can connect with other webmasters and exchange links. You can also share ideas such as site optimization. You can post your tips and tricks and see tips and tricks from other webmasters.
A link exchange manager allows you to upload a custom template to your site. Other webmasters can then use the template to submit their information and quickly trade links with you. You just have to verify that you want to exchange links.
You can also exchange links by contributing a list of sites from which you are willing to exchange links.
A database of articles allows to you to learn the latest search engine optimization and search engine marketing tips and tricks. You can learn about how to improve your site, the latest search engine optimization news and link exchange etiquette.
A referral program is available. Freelinkbuildingtools.com can connect you with experts to help you out with your website, if you don't have the time or know how.
The best part is that all of the services I have mentioned, are free.

Free Link Exchange

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 16:59:00 +0000

Back when I first started blogging almost six years ago, one of the tips I read about to get visitors was to use link building sites to get backlinks to your site. More backlinks is supposed to help give your site a higher page rank in the search engines. There are a lot of free link exchange sites out there. One free links site I tried out would let you put in requests to have someone link to your site if you would put a link on your site linking to them. I got a lot of requests not relevant to the topic of my site though, so they weren't very helpful backlnks.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com is another site designed to help you build links to your site. They offer a webmasters forum where you can connect with other webmasters and exchange links. A link exchange manager lets you upload a customizable resources page that other webmasters can use to quickly submit their information and follow your linking instructions to trade links. A free link exchange service lets you choose links from a list of relevant sites to trade with. You place code on your site and every time someone links to you, you get points to use for getting links from other sites of your choosing.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com can also refer you to someone who can do all the hard work of getting back links for your site.
Freelinkbuildingtools.com offers a database of articles designed to help you improve your site. Several useful articles include Link Building Etiquette, Generating Valuable Back Links with Blogs, and Using Quality Content to Build Backlinks.
The best part of Freelinkbuildingtools.com is, it is all free. You just have to register to gain access to free information, which just might help improve your site.

Fantasy football

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:39:00 +0000

This guest post from Lewis Beck

I am a fantasy football widow. I cannot even believe that I am living this life. My husband has always been a person who cannot drag himself away from a football game. But now he has joined this fantasy football league and has become totally obsessed with what seems like every football game imaginable each weekend on television. And when he cannot find out a score of a game on television, he gets online on West Jordan wireless internet and finds out everything he wants to know about any game. To say that he has gone insane is putting it mildly. I don’t even like football, and now it affects our everyday lives. My husband’s brother who lives in Texas calls him every Saturday and Sunday to discuss their fantasy football teams. Before football season started, they would talk to each other about once or twice a month. At least they have unlimited minutes on their cell phones. I guess it could be worse. My husband could be interested in hunting and dragging home a deer or something dead every weekend expecting me to clean it or something.

Online Marketing DiscountClick

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Thu, 01 Dec 2011 15:12:00 +0000

Now that times are tough, I'm really glad I have my websites to generate a little bit of extra income. It would be great if they would generate a full time income, but I don't put enough time into them for that. I really like my day job though, but an extra full time income would be nice.
My blogs have all been around for a few years now, and I still post on all of them. That helps with building their credibility.
The main thing I need to focus on is online marketing, meaning ways to get visitors. Getting top ranking in the search engines is very important. That brings in the majority of my visitors. When writing a blog post, it is really important to choose your keywords wisely. It makes a big difference. I usually use Google's keywords tool, to look at the competition and number of monthly searches for a keyword before I settle on the one I will use. Google's keywords tool also gives suggestions on other keywords, so you might find one that is searched for frequently, but has low competition.
There is really a lot to learn in the online marketing field. There are lots of tips and tricks that the professionals use.
If you don't have the time or interest in promoting your website yourself, you could always hire a third party to do it for you. DiscountClick is one company that can help promote your website. They have several different online marketing services available starting at $50. Free quotes are also available. In the long run, that is a pretty affordable search engine optimization service. Hiring a professional to promote your website will guarantee you more visitors, which means increased revenue.

Custom Pins PinMart

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 17:56:00 +0000

We are five and a half weeks away from Christmas already. It seems like Christmas was just here. I hate shopping. It's an expensive time of year due to Christmas and several birthdays. Sometimes I have a hard time coming up with ideas for what someone might like.
One new idea is custom pins. There is a website called PinMart that offers stock lapel pins and custom pins. Some of them are really cool, especially the 3D cast pins. They are made of pewter or zinc and offer a very high level of detail. Animals work great for 3D pins. A rubber mold is used to create 3D pins while 2D die struck pins are made by stamping metal with a die. 3D custom pins have more dimension and detail than 2D pins.
Other custom pin options include Cloissonne hard enamel with a smooth glassy finish, etched soft enamel pins, made in the USA pins, and printed pins. If you have a photo you would like to turn into a pin, printed pins are a great option. It takes about 15 days to create a custom printed pin.
PinMart also sells custom lanyards. Lanyard options include printed polyester, printed tube, quick ship, woven logo, full color and stock lanyards. Full color lanyards allow for an image or design to be repeatedly printed over the lanyard in full color.
Custom rubber bracelets are also available. They are a great idea if you have a cause you would like to show support for or use as a fundraiser. Production time is 10 - 12 days and options include glow in the dark silicone, screen printed, debossed, enbossed or color filled logo, and multi color silicone.
Custom embroidered patches are also offered by PinMart. They are a great idea if you have a new patch idea for Boy Scouts. Several different patch backing options are available. They include iron on, velcro, temporary peel and stick, or no backing. A virtual sample is created from your artwork. When you are satisfied with the sample, the design is digitized, so that sewing heads have a pattern to follow. Color for the backing is selected and backing attached to the sewing heads. The design is then stitched on. When the design is completed, the patch is trimmed and the backing of your choice is attached.
Free quotes are available for all custom items. Shipping is also free.

Internet marketing in the Middle East

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Mon, 07 Nov 2011 17:59:00 +0000

Internet marketing in the Middle East is on the rise. Between 2009 and 2010, Twitter users in the Middle East were estimated to be from 15,000 to 40,000. However, that number was way off. The number of Twitter users in the Middle East is actually around 5.5 million.
The number of Facebook users in the Middle East is around 15 million.
It's amazing how internet use has just exploded in countries which aren't even fully developed. The internet provides a great way for people to connect with each other, no matter where they are physically located. The internet is also a great way to attract customers to a business. I have a magazine back issues website and several blogs. I use social media to advertise them. Selling old magazines without the internet would be pretty difficult. I could advertise in local papers, on the radio and television, but it's a small niche and probably not very profitable locally. Thanks to technology and the internet, I created a website, promoted it, and now have customers all over the world purchasing magazines from me. I will ship outside the United States, so every one in the world is a potential customer.
Internet marketing takes a lot of skill, time to learn and time to keep updated on the latest techniques. It's a field which is always changing. Those skilled at internet marketing in the Middle East need to learn search engine optimization in order to be found in search engine results. Learning about keywords and finding the proper analysis tools is important. Website design and development knowledge is needed in order to have a visually attractive website. Email marketing, social media, smartphone app creation and adword campaigns are also crucial to the success of a website.
Internet marketing in the Middle East provides a great opportunity for financial success. A successful website has the potential to turn into a full-time work at home job. Areas of the Middle East are poor, so the idea of success and earning a lot of money is a draw to those hoping to do better than those before them. Over the years, I've earned money from the internet. I don't have hours and hours a day to devote to it though, so I've only made a supplemental income. The internet provides these bright, young kids in the Middle East who own a computer and have lots of spare time, an opportunity for success normally only dreamed about. It will be interesting to see what happens in the Middle East as new generations raised on technology grow up. Hopefully they will use the internet and technology for good purposes.

Butterfinger pie is my favorite post-Halloween dessert!

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 28 Oct 2011 21:37:00 +0000

Guest post written by Annie Krisp

I love how just about anything can be baked into a pie and it's delicious. I don't think that it's hard to believe that, so of course Halloween candy is another great option to put into pies to make them even better. As soon as they start putting it out in stores, I like to make sure that I grab a few bags of candy here or there so that I'll have enough candy to include in all of my baking and not just to give out to trick or treaters.

I mean, I guess that you could just buy a whole lot of bags of candy at a time to make sure that you have enough, but I'm not really in the habit of doing that. I'm continually finding new recipes for desserts with candy online with my wireless internet providers Corvallis that I discover I don't have the proper candy to prepare. So I guess that's my excuse in regards to that.

But my favorite dessert may be my butterfinger pie because it's my favorite candy bar.

Test

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Thu, 20 Oct 2011 19:13:00 +0000

The dissimilar leisure sabotages another antique underneath the trapped crossroad.

Reputation Management Consorte Marketing

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 19:27:00 +0000

In this poor economy, many people are getting laid off and looking to themselves to find ways to generate an income. One way of doing this is to think about the things you know and enjoy, and find a way to make money doing it. Basically, turn a hobby into a business.
That's what I did with my magazine back issues website. I enjoy reading and subscribe to a few different magazines. I always hated throwing them away when I was done reading them. Magazine subscriptions are expensive. Reading a magazine once and throwing it away when I was done seemed like such a waste. Sometimes I saved them, but after a while you get a pretty big pile of old magazines. I never looked at them either. What I did was build a website and sell them. Luckily I work as a programmer, so I had the know how to do it. I just had to learn a little HTML, CSS and search engine optimization (SEO). Now I have a whole world of people that buy my magazines when I'm done reading them. Nice green way to recycle magazines and make a little extra money doing it. Not much, but it helps. The generated income from turning my hobby into a business should increase as my inventory increases too. I still have to store quite a few magazines, but now they have a purpose.
Starting your own little business is tough though. For a business to survive, it needs customers. You need to advertise your business, so that people will find you. You also need to strive to make sure you and your business have a good reputation. Nobody is going to buy a product from a company with bad reviews. In this day and age of the internet, Twitter and Facebook it's not hard to find reviews on a company or information on the person/people running a company. If you have bad reviews or negative information floating around about you in cyberspace, you could lose customers.
There is a reputation management company that might be able to help. Consorte Marketing will research you and your business's online reputation. They will give you a report of all the information out there about you and where it is located. They will also give you a strategy for repairing your reputation. Some of the information out there is permanent, but some can be removed. They might be able to help persuade an unsatisfied customer to change a bad review to positive, or come up with a way to push a negative article from page 1 on Google to lower level pages.
If you run a business and are worried about negative information surfacing, Consorte Marketing would be worth a look. Consorte Marketing's reputation management tweets can be followed on Twitter.

Blogsvertise 10 Paid Blogging Tips Make Money

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 16:21:00 +0000

I've mentioned Blogsvertise before, but feel the need to mention it again. I've been getting quite a few tasks the past 6 months, about 4 - 5 per month. If you've never tried paid blogging, that doesn't sound like a lot though. Paid blogging is easy, but it's hard to get tasks. Signing up at a paid blogging site doesn't mean you are suddenly going to make tons of money blogging. You have to have a good, established blog with regular, recent posts. I have 6 blogs, 1 which I have totally neglected and will get to someday. The 5 I do keep up with, I try to post on each one at least once per week. Sometimes it's more like once every couple months, but they are blogs I've had for a while. This blog was started 5 years ago. The most recent blog, my healthy living naturally blog, was started over a year ago. Life and work make it hard to fit in blogging, but if you start a blog and make an effort to keep it active, over time, it will pay off.
My soap opera blog is my best performer. That one and my recipes blog are the ones I have the easiest time figuring out what to write. I also really enjoy soap operas for some unknown reason.
My tech-tips blog also does well. I have one post that get almost 1000 hits per month. It was a useful tip that helped me out and has been helping out lots of others.

A few tips if you want to blog and/or make money blogging:

1. Post regularly - content is key
2. Write about something you enjoy, even if you think no one would be interested. Someone out there somewhere probably also enjoys it.
3. "How to posts" are a good bet.
4. Get post ideas from magazines, what's trending on Twitter or Google searches, your daily life, etc.
5. Sign up with Blogsvertise and whatever paid blogging service you can find. Although, I've joined all of the paid blogging sites I have found and Blogsvertise is the only one still giving me tasks. Smorty gave me quite a few when I first joined, but that was years ago. They don't really seem to be active anymore.
6. Add Google Adsense to your blog.
7. Sign up with Amazon.com's affiliate program
, LinkShare and CommissionJunction. I haven't had much luck with LinkShare.com or CommissionJunction, but I haven't put much effort into it either. I have had a few small payments from Amazon. There is also ClickBank, but I haven't done anything with them in a few years after they had a change of terms.
8. List your blog with with all of the major search engines, minor ones if you want to.
9. After you write a post, advertise it. Link to the post from your Twitter/Facebook/Google+ account. Use pingomatic, digg, delicious, etc.
10. Use the Google Keywords Tool to find keywords with low competition, but a lot of monthly searches.
BONUS. Be patient.

Making money from a blog takes a lot of time. I wish I had been more diligent about posting more frequently, but I am glad I have been able to post as much as I have over the years. The more I post, the more I see my effort paying off, so maybe by the time I am ready to retire I will be generating a full time income. That's my plan anyways. Although the way things are going this past year, I think I'm going to have to step that plan up.

More Make Money Blogging

Toaster oven, a college studen't best friend

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 02 Sep 2011 20:15:00 +0000

Guest post written by Pam Long

I've decided that I don't want to ever get a meal plan again. I just hate the dining hall food. I got so sick of it last year, especially after I started eating off campus before and had some normal food again. So this year, I'm not getting a meal plan for college. Instead, I invested in a toaster oven because you can basically make almost anything that's a simple dish that you would make in an oven. Well, at least that's my theory so I'm trying to prove it with all kinds of really great recipes.

I like to look through a whole bunch of recipe blogs to come up with all kinds of dishes to try out in my toaster oven. While I was online looking up some of these recipes, I ran across a site about satellite internet packages. After I looked through I sent it to my mom and told her to Click Here to switch over her home internet service to it.

I've made all kinds of really great sandwiches, but I'm even more excited about making all kinds of dishes.

Laptops

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 20:13:00 +0000

Back in the spring of 2004, when I was pregnant with my youngest son, I bought my first laptop. It was a good thing I did because a few months later I ended up on bedrest. The laptop came in very handy. It was a Dell Inspiron E1405. A nice little portable laptop with a 14.5" screen. It came pre-installed with Windows Vista, not the greatest operating system. Applications tend to crash and it runs out of memory frequently, so a regular reboot is necessary. I didn't plan on buying another laptop for a long time, but about 6 months ago, I didn't have much choice. The screen on my laptop started not staying up. It was a gradual process. At first, it would stay up if it was in a certain position and then over time it wouldn't stay up at all. I had to prop the screen up to use it. That was ok, but I got tired of not being able to sit on the couch with it, so I sucked it up and bought a new laptop.
Laptops have really come a long way in the few short years since I last bought one. They have tons of hard drive space, lots of memory and fast processors. They are really on par with desktops. I'm pretty sure I'll never buy another desktop. I have my old laptop sitting on my desk with the screen propped up serving as a secondary desktop. It's working out pretty well.
There's a lot of different laptop brands out there. It's hard to choose from all the options. Various brands include dell, gateway, sony, hp, samsung, acer, and asus laptops. I ended up going with an HP for my new laptop. I've had it about 4 months. It's really nice, very slick. The operating system is Windows 7, which is a major improvement over Windows Vista. Needing to reboot is a rare occasion and makes me very happy as I tend to have a lot of stuff open at once and find it a pain to reboot and reload everything.
Mechanically, the screen hinging seems put together much better than my old dell. The only part that took a little getting used to was the mousepad. It is all touch, no buttons. The keyboard is really nice. The keys are kind of set down into the computer more than on my dell.
I really hope my new HP holds up better than my old Dell did.

A Trip to Aruba

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Thu, 23 Jun 2011 01:45:00 +0000

Guest post written by Linda Creighton

My husband and I spend the evening looking for places to help us remodel the house when it gets a little warmer. We've been looking for painters and looked at service from www.HomeProImprovement.com. We have been talking about all the changes we want to go through with on this old house. I think it is waaaaay overdue. After talking about the house for a while, I suggested to my husband that we finally take a vacation. We both have all this vacation time and money saved up, and it's about time that we do something for fun instead of juts worrying about necessities!

Ever since I mentioned that idea to my husband, he's really been on board..maybe even moreso than I am. We've been looking at a whole bunch of places and I think we want to visit Aruba most of all. We've been to many places, but Aruba hasn't been one of them. I think would be a great getaway, right?

Regis and Kelly

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Tue, 19 Apr 2011 18:44:00 +0000

Guest post by Jewel Cole

Regis and Kelly Live is my favorite talk show. They are great together and always have awesome guests. Recently they had Josh Groban on. He is such a amazing singer.

Regis is so funny. He somehow tends to keep set on edge throughout the whole show. My mom loves him too. We even went to see him when he was in Pigeon Forge, TN, for the grand opening of the Titanic Museum. He was just as funny in person. His jokes were fresh and relevant to the town we were in.

Kelly's stories of her children are always so funny. She seems to have a great life. It is like she understands how complicated being a mom can be. She is a beautiful woman who inspires me to do better for myself.

Even on days when she is hosting the show without Regis, she can hold ! it together. I like the way she interacts with the audience and callers on the phone.

I can't wait to watch Regis and Kelly everyday on my satellite tv from CableTelevision.net. It is the highlight of my day. It is my Me Time. I will be looking for it tomorrow as soon as I get up.

Topamax lawsuit O’Hanlon McCollom Demerath Lawyers

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:04:00 +0000

Giving kids any kind of medication these days is scary. Medication is full of toxic chemicals and may cause all sorts of side effects.
One such drug called Topamax is used to treat epileptic seizures in kids and adults. It is an anti-convulsant. It is also used to treat migraines. One side effect is cleft lip or cleft palate. This is a condition where the lip or palate fail to completely fuse together. It is a birth defect. The defect can range from minor, where there is a small, notched lip to major, where there is an open groove that extends from the roof of the mouth to the nose.
Luckily there are lawyers out there who can help you get compensation for damages caused by taking bad medications, like that in a Topamax lawsuit. One group of lawyers who could help are:

O’Hanlon, McCollom & Demerath – Personal Injury Lawyers – 808 West Avenue, Austin, TX. 78701 – 512-494-9949

They understand the dangerous effects of Topamax and that the defect is not your fault. Their combined experience, expertise and training make them well qualified to handle complex liability claims, so that you can get the compensation you deserve.

MyLikes.com Payment Paid to Tweet

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 20:16:00 +0000

Received my first payment from MyLikes.com. Pretty cool. Wasn't much, but with time it will add up. Payouts are made on Fridays to your PayPal account. Payments are made when you have an account balance of $2.00.
The idea of MyLikes.com is you are given a list of items to "like" on Twitter and/or Facebook. When someone clicks on the link in your "liked" item status update, you get paid. The most I've made for 1 "like" is only 22 cents, but this figure will increase as you gain more followers. It's a pretty easy way to get paid using Twitter.
See my earlier post for more details on MyLikes.com.
BTW, you can follow me on Twitter at http://twitter.com/ice_princess_81.

More Ways to Make Money

Bloggers: Help Save MyBlogLog From Closure

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Tue, 29 Mar 2011 18:59:00 +0000

Back when I first started this blog, I looked into finding various ways to get traffic. One way is to join forums and become part of a group. One of the popular sites at the time was MyBlogLog. I joined and found it to be pretty cool and useful.
The part I liked the best about it was you could view your site stats. It told you what link readers came from, what pages they viewed and what links they clicked on. The free version only gave you the top 10 for each list. You had to upgrade to see the full list. The free version told me more about site visitors than any other stat site I found though.
BTW, if you can recommend a good stat site, which gives you all of that information in a clear, simple list, please let me know.
Lots of people I met when I used to autosurf were also on MyBlogLog. There were lots of active users on there. Found some pretty useful blogs at MyBlogLog.
Not really sure why I stopped using MyBlogLog. Probably lack of time, but I stopped around the time Yahoo took over just because it was a pain logging in. I couldn't just stay logged in and always go to my homepage when I typed in http://www.mybloglog.com. I would always get logged out automatically and then get redirected to sign in with my Yahoo account. Just an extra step that was annoying.
Unfortunately, Yahoo didn't do much with MyBlogLog once it became owner, and they have now decided to completely shut it down on May 24, 2011. Pretty sad because all of the bloggers and their info are still there. You can still get the great stat info on your sites. It's all still the same as when I first joined. It's a great site for bloggers to connect.
Luckily, BlogCatalog also feels that MyBlogLog is a great site with lots of untapped potential because they want to buy it and resurrect MyBlogLog. Unfortunately, Yahoo isn't really interested in selling. They just want to shut it down. As an email from BlogCatalog points out, Yahoo should just sell it to BlogCatalog and donate the money to those in need. Great idea! Japan would be a great place to start.
BlogCatalog and BloggersUnite.org have joined forces to save MyBlogLog and are asking bloggers to write a post explaining to Yahoo that selling MyBlogLog is a much better idea than just shutting it down.
Here's the link if you are interested in helping save MyBlogLog.

BloggersUnite + MyBlogLog + BlogCatalog is "The Right Thing."

More Blogging Info

How To Turn Blog Posts Into Facebook Status Updates

noreply@blogger.com (Ice Princess) — Fri, 10 Dec 2010 02:44:00 +0000

Now that I've got a fan page set up for each of my blogs, I did some more research on how I could use Facebook. I came across a pretty cool technique to import posts from my blog into Facebook as status updates.
Here's how you turn your blog posts into Facebook status updates:

1. Underneath your page's profile picture, click Edit Page.
2. Select Applications from the left hand column.
3. Click Go to Application under Notes.
4. Select Edit import settings from the left hand column.
5. Enter the url of your site's RSS feed. Ex: For this blog the RSS feed url is: http://ice-princess-extra-cash.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss. Select the check box and click Start Importing.
6. Click confirm and you're all set.

It's as simple as that!

More Facebook Marketing