Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

I saw this in action at another blogger’s page, and looked into it. It is SO COOL! It’s Kontactr, a free personal contact form for your blog or website. I love it! It looks so professional, is a breeze to install, and hides my email from spammers. In the early bloggy days, I left me email as a means for people to comment, and it’s probably no surprise to anyone that I get tons of spam now. Ugh.

Check out the contact form in action! I have it at my New York Traveler.net. Isn’t that cool?! Now, click the button in my sidebar that says “contact me.” A contact form will pop up. Isn’t that cool?! I love this thing!

Got a blog and want one? Go here: Kontactr.

I found a great website offering free flash cards. The website is http://www.flashcardfriends.com. It is free to join!

It’s a “safe for kids” website, but there’s much more to the website than your typical ABC flashcards. Want to learn Arabic, Chinese, German, or brush up on your political science or neurology skills? Wow, everything is here. Check out the “Browse by Category” link on the home page. Holy cow! Also, there are flashcards for the standardized tests like the SATs, ACTs, and GREs! This site is amazing.

There’s a good video here if you’d like to know more about it. Here’s the full scoop from the company:

Flashcard Friends Combines Social Networking and Online Learning

Second generation Web 2.0 entrepreneurs create a FREE “social learning” website for students, homeschoolers and teachers

Belmont, CA. – February 21, 2008 – Flashcard Friends combines social networking—a la Facebook and MySpace—with online learning. The inspiration for Flashcard Friends came when the founders of the company, Kendall and Ryan Hogan (now ages 15 and 12) were being forced to create flashcards by their whip-cracking father. They complained that “flashcards are lame…why can’t we do them on the Internet…and why can’t they be fun like MySpace.” Their father, Mike, a web 2.0 entrepreneur, started asking questions about how it might work. Kendall and Ryan described a social network where students could create flashcards and share them with their classmates; or teachers could create flashcards and share them with their students.

With the help of their father, Ryan and Kendall defined what they wanted their website to do. Then their father recruited a top-notch team of developers and got it built. You can now see their website at www.Flashcardfriends.com. Following in their father’s footsteps, Kendall and Ryan are second generation web 2.0 entrepreneurs.

Old school (printed) flashcards are a powerful and proven memorization tool. By using them, Kendall and Ryan were able to substantially improve their test scores. But online flashcards enable a lot of very powerful capabilities. For example, spelling, pronunciation of foreign words, automated testing and correction, images, all of this and more is a snap with Flashcard Friends.

Once the flashcards are in the system, you can share them with friends. The Hogan kids are now looking forward to the day when they return from summer break, only to inherit online flashcards from the class ahead of them. In addition to finding flashcards through friends, you can navigate through flashcard decks by category (e.g. math > algebra), or search by tags, keywords, and more.

Some of the website’s functionality:
• Create flashcards with text, pictures and sounds (ideal for foreign languages)
• Four different learning modes: find one that fits you, or use them all
• Auto-magically creates tests from the flashcards and then corrects them
• Uses social networking to manage sharing card decks
• Find existing flashcards by subject, school, teacher, book and more
• Speak into your computer and add the recording to the cards instantly
• Turns a spelling list into spelling flashcards with a spoken version of each word
• Includes web 2.0 technologies like user ratings, bookmarking and tagging
• …and much more

Flashcard Friends enables students to create flashcards, share them, memorize them and then test themselves. Flashcards can be used at every level, from Kindergarten to post-graduate, and for every topic, from learning colors to preparing for the legal bar exam, learning a language, or studying for the SAT.

Nancy Ferraro 5th Grade Teacher, Granite Bay, CA: “I was very excited to discover Flashcard Friends. I introduced it to my 5th grade students, and we have been using it ever since. The students like how easy the site is to navigate, but they are so jazzed to see their friends’ flashcards. My students have already exchanged flashcards on multiplication, fractions, the 13 colonies, and space. All this in one week! I will definitely use this site for all of my classroom flashcard needs.”

About Flashcard Friends
Flashcard Friends, the social learning website, is pioneering the powerful combination of social networking and online learning. The company was founded by students, for students. The entire website is free to all; students, teachers, homeschoolers, everyone. You can register for free at www.Flashcardfriends.com. For more information call (650) 595-2400, or email mike (at) Flashcardfriends.com.

See web demos of Flashcardfriends.com here: http://Flashcardfriends.com/videos.php

Got kids who need help? Are you even an adult who needs help? This is a very impressive flashcard website. I was impressed with the massive amount of “decks” of flashcards available. Can’t be beat, mom– it’s free!

I noticed that YouTube was not online Sunday. Anyone else notice? I, for one, was shocked. Since YouTube is so enormous and probably the most website on the Net, I thought it must have been something really big to disrupt service. I read this morning that it was caused by Pakistan’s attempt to censor YouTube.

Most of the world’s Internet users lost access to YouTube for several hours Sunday after an attempt by Pakistan’s government to block access domestically affected other countries.

The outage highlighted yet another of the Internet’s vulnerabilities, coming less than a month after broken fiber-optic cables in the Mediterranean took Egypt off line and caused communications problems from the Middle East to India.

… An Internet expert likened the cause of the outage to ‘identity theft’ by a Pakistani telecommunications company, which accidentally started advertising itself as the fastest route to YouTube. But instead of serving up videos of skateboarding dogs, it sent the traffic into oblivion.

On Friday, the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority ordered 70 Internet service providers to block access to YouTube.com, because of anti-Islamic movies on the video-sharing site, which is owned by Google Inc.

The authority did not specify what the offensive material was, but a PTA official said the ban concerned a trailer for an upcoming film by Dutch lawmaker Geert Wilders, who has said he plans to release a movie portraying Islam as fascist and prone to inciting violence against women and homosexuals.

The block was intended to cover only Pakistan, but extended to about two-thirds of the global Internet population, starting at 1:47 p.m. EST Sunday, according to Renesys Corp., a Manchester, N.H., firm that keeps track of the pathways of the Internet for telecommunications companies and other clients.

… John Palfrey, executive director for the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School, said that while all the facts in the case are not yet known, it appeared that the repercussions were due to Pakistan taking a relatively heavy-handed approach in trying to censor YouTube.

‘It points in many respects to the difficulty, if not the folly, in Internet filtering at the state level,’ he said.

Misrouting occurs every year or so among the world’s Internet carriers, usually as a result of typos or other errors, Underwood said. In a more severe example, a Turkish telecom provider in 2004 started advertising that it was the best route to all of the Internet, causing widespread outages for many Web sites over several hours.

‘Nobody ran any viruses or worms or malicious code. This is just the way the Internet works. And it’s not very secure or reliable,’ Underwood said, adding that there is no real solution to the problem on the table.

You can read more of the story here. This is a good example of how insecure the Internet really is.

The newest blog ranking system in the blogosphere is the illustrious IZEARanks, the brainchild of Ted Murphy (Murphy is a “serial entrepreneur” and CEO of PayPerPost, IZEA, MindComet, Social Spark, Rock Startup, and those really cool Blogger’s Choice Awards). IZEARanks has a system called “RealRank” that determines a blog’s value by its actual traffic and content. Gone are the days of arbitrary valuation (like Page Rank), the inaccurate stats of the toolbar (Alexa), and the begging for alms from other bloggers (Technorati’s “authority” numbers). RealRank is a formula that monitors your unique visitors, page views, and inbound links. The clincher is that the valuation determination is completely candid. This is from the IZEARanks FAQ page:

Unlike other ranking systems, the RealRank scoring algorithm is public. The system weights blogs 70% on daily unique visitors, 20% by daily active inbound links and 10% by daily page views as reported by ITK. Participants can choose to expose just their RealRank score or expand reporting to include other data such as pageviews and visits. This provides advertisers with the most comprehensive and relevant view of a blog’s ability to meet specific campaign goals. RealRank is the first site ranking service that focuses exclusively on measuring the traffic and influence of individual blogs throughout the blogosphere.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been jumping for joy ever since RealRank was debuted a few weeks ago. I use it for all my blogs. My travel blog is Number One in travel at IZEARanks.com!

There’s a lot you can do with your RealRank stats. You can check your own blogs stats, compare all your blogs’ stats with each other, compare your blog with other blogs, and more. Here’s how Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook rates:

Hmmm…. looks like I could use some more visitors to boost my ranks, wouldn’t you say? With RealRank, the lower the number the better (as in a #1 RealRank means you are NUMBER ONE!) This blog has a way to go before reaching number one, but I can see where I need to improve, thanks to RealRank. The next photo shows a comparison of my three blogs:

The great thing with RealRank is: the more the merrier! The more blogs that join the IZEARanks community, the more it adds to the value of the entire blogosphere. RealRank is the free tool that measures your place in the community, and lets you (and others) see the value of your blog. It is far superior to any other blog ranking system, ever.

I highly recommend that if you have a blog, use RealRank. It’s very easy to use– it’s a piece of code that you insert in your html, just as you do with stat counters and such. Plus, IZEARanks.com offers a little badge that you can place in your sidebar, to display your RealRank status (you also have the option of keeping your stats private). The time has finally come for us bloggers to have a worthy, standardized blog ranking system. RealRank meets this need. The more bloggers who join, the better our blogs are valuated. Check out IZEARanks.com for more!

Forget all that “eye in the sky” stuff. The Big Brother and Inc. want to follow you everywhere, watching everything you watch! This is unbelievable.

What better way to track people’s video consumption than to have someone follow them around all day — literally from the time they wake up until they retire at night — making detailed notes about when and how they watch, listen, surf, read, play video games, download, text and talk on the phone?

That’s exactly how a new $3.5 million study–funded by the Nielsen Co.–will track the media usage habits of a panel of some 450 consumers in separate phases throughout this year beginning next month.

Some people will do anything for a buck. This is creepy. Do you think there’s anything wrong with being completely monitored for marketing purposes?

I am just more and more amazed at the leaps and bounds with which Internet technology is progressing, particularly remote access LAN management technology. I have utilized it on a very small scale with my home LAN, and on a broader level when I assisted a family member in another state, to fix his computer’s software issues. But a new development, the Uplogix Envoy appliance, enables network administrators to oversee and maintain technical stats and problems from a single location– the administrators could stay at their own designated location and never have to travel! It’s like an omniscient IT guy for businesses! Uplogix claims to use the strongest security standards, and, reading over the credentials and articles, it looks quite impressive. Their clientele is impressive, as well.

Imagine, never having to call the IT guys for your network problem, wait for them to arrive, and never have to rearrange the office to allow them access. Interested? Check out their website for demos and a plethora of informative articles. This could mean a totally new world of virtual administration. Amazing.

Mummified Times Five.net is not about the contents of an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. I admit, when I see “mummified” I do think mummy first thing (I’m an American, after all!). I forget that “mummy” is the word for “mommy” in the UK and Australia!

Mummified Times Five.net is a classic mommy blog. It’s even colored with bright pinks and yellows! I actually love the bright colors and the perky design. Reminds me of Johnson’s baby oil bottles, lol. The blog’s author, Tina, lives with her husband and brood in NSW Australia. Fascinating. I love Australia and hope to visit it someday.

Tina’s blog is outstandingly organized. Buttons and badges are minimal, colorful, and aligned neatly in smooth columns. Niiiiice. Her About Me page is short but sweet. Her posts are short and sweet, too. Either she is a master at short posts, or she squeezes in what she can between diaper changes and bottle runs. I had four little ones running around not too long ago (they are older now), and some of the posts brought back sweet memories. I liked the freezing the milk tip, too; didn’t know milk could be frozen. There’s more to the blog than handy household tips, however. Like the post titled, If I Get Sent…

….one more of those stupid emails that have you looking closely on the screen for something, or doing a silly maze, or listening for something and then a scary face pops up on the screen and screams, somebody is going to pay!!! lol. I’m sitting on the lounge with the laptop on my lap (duh! It’s a LAPtop) I received an email from a friend saying ‘listen closely’. I don’t have the speakers up too loud because the baby is sleeping so I put my my face closer to the screen to hear it better and of course, the scary woman pops up screaming. …I nearly dropped my laptop!

LOL! Having a laptop set with low speakers and having received such emails, I could sympathize completely. I get mad, but Tina makes her anger seem so funny!

Mummified Times Five.net has some great things about it, but as always, I have a few suggestions.

Firstly, consider enlarging the font for the posts. And that would include the title for each post. It’s just a suggestion– not a crucial one– but the posts seem short overall, and the blog’s theme has a narrow column for posts. Enlarging the fonts would give a little visual boost to the posts, where the emphasis truly belongs.

I would also love to read longer and more frequent posts! I really enjoyed reading the posts (my daughter always slept with her bum in the air, too! And she loved “dummies” as well!) which were fresh and delightful and very entertaining. Gimme more! I’d love to learn about what life is like in Australia! Photos were sparse– gimme more!

Mummified Times Five.net is very enjoyable. It’s got good content, good design, and a crisp overall look to it. I’ll be checking in to read the latest!

I’ve heard about this in the news from time to time (not major media news, but the small quirky Internet news I read). It’s about Zion Oil and Gas. Here’s the scoop on a press release I recently saw:

Source: Zion Oil & Gas, Inc.
Zion Oil Announces Follow-on Public Offering to Fund Its Exploration Program in Israel
Friday February 1st
Proceeds of $25 Million Offering to Enable a Multi-Well Drilling Program

DALLAS & CAESAREA, Israel — Zion Oil & Gas, Inc. (AMEX: ZN - News), announced today the filing of a registration statement with the SEC, for a follow-on public offering of a minimum of 325,000 units, up to a maximum of 2,500,000 units, at $10.00 per unit. Each unit will consist of one share of Zion’s common stock and one warrant to purchase a share of Zion’s common stock at $7.00 per share.

Zion is raising funds in order to pursue its planned multi-well drilling program. Depending on actual amounts raised, Zion intends to carry out, to the extent possible, the following work program: drill Zion’s second well to the Triassic Formation (at a depth of 15,400 feet under Zion’s Joseph License) and/or to the Permian Formation (at a depth of 18,040 feet), drill a test well on Zion’s Asher-Menashe License to the Triassic Formation and, if appropriate, the Permian Formation and prepare for the drilling of an additional well on either its Joseph or Asher-Menashe License.

The offering will be placed through Network 1 Financial Securities, Inc. and other selected licensed broker-dealers, on a ‘best efforts’ basis. If the offering does not raise the minimum amount of $3,250,000 by 90 days after the registration statement is declared effective by the SEC, (a date that may be extended for up to an additional 60 days), the offering will be terminated and any funds subscribed returned. If the minimum is timely subscribed, the offering will remain open until the earlier of a maximum raise of $25 million or 180 days after being declared effective by the SEC, (a date that may be extended for up to an additional 60 days), subject to termination on notice of two trading days.

Zion’s common stock trades on the American Stock Exchange under the symbol ZN. Zion has applied for the listing on the Amex of both the units and the warrants to be offered in its follow-on offering subject to its registration statement being declared effective by the SEC and the successful closing of the minimum offering.

A registration statement relating to the securities described above has been filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission but has not yet been declared effective. The securities may not be sold nor may offers to buy be accepted prior to the time the registration statement becomes effective. The information in this press release shall not constitute an offer to sell or the solicitation of an offer to buy, nor shall there be any sale of these securities in any state or country in which such offer, solicitation or sale would be unlawful prior to the registration, qualification or exemption under the securities laws of any such state or country.

The offering will be made only by means of a prospectus. When available, copies of the preliminary prospectus relating to the offering can be obtained by contacting Ashley Chatman at Zion Oil & Gas, Inc., 6510 Abrams Rd., Suite 300, Dallas, TX 75231; telephone +214-221-4610; email: ashley@zionoil.com. A copy of the preliminary prospectus can be downloaded from the Zion Oil website at www.zionoil.com . A copy can also be obtained from Network 1 Financial Securities by contacting 800-886-7007.

Zion Oil & Gas, a Delaware corporation, explores for oil and gas in Israel in areas located onshore between Tel-Aviv and Haifa. It currently holds two petroleum exploration licenses, the Joseph and Asher-Menashe Licenses, between Netanya on the south and Haifa on the north, covering a total of approximately 162,000 acres.

FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: Statements in this press release that are not historical fact, including statements regarding the future effectiveness of Zion’s registration statement, matters regarding the offering and possible closings thereof dependent on the declaration of effectiveness, Zion’s planned operations, potential results thereof and plans contingent thereon, including selection of potential drilling targets and locations, are forward-looking statements as defined in the “Safe Harbor” provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward looking statements are based on assumptions that are subject to significant known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other unpredictable factors, many of which are described in Zion’s periodic reports filed with the SEC and are beyond Zion’s control. These risks could cause Zion’s actual performance to differ materially from the results predicted by these forward-looking statements. Zion can give no assurance that the expectations reflected in these statements will prove to be correct and assumes no responsibility to update these statements.

Zion’s homepage may be found at: www.zionoil.com

Contact:
Zion Oil & Gas, Inc.
Ashley Chatman, 214-221-4610
Email: ashley@zionoil.com
________________________________________
Source: Zion Oil & Gas, Inc.

The Internet has been a terrific source of news for me. I have seen this company in the news sources- they are a U.S. company looking for oil in Israel. Yow! The entire landscape of the Middle East would change significantly if oil was discovered in Israel (which is why I have been keen to news stories like this). Very interesting. We’ll see what develops.

I’ve been getting a lot of hits on my post I wrote about some great educational software programs. We use them all the time here at home. Maybe other folks are going on a geography blitz or something, lol. Well, I wanted to bump up the information to the top, to give others the chance to see and take advantage of some great software. Best of all, it’s FREE!

It’s called Owl & Mouse software. We have downloaded all their programs and we love them! Check out the website, as they have a variety of online games and downloadable software.

It’s been floating around in the blogosphere and media for quite a while now, but it bears constant exposure. It’s about Raelyn Campbell, a woman who left her laptop with Best Buy’s Geek Squad, for repairs. Best Buy “lost” her laptop but falsified reports and did not inform her of the theft/loss of her laptop (and personal information in said laptop) for months. She has a blog, Best Buy vs. Consumer Protection, and it’s wonderful. Best Buy has a long history of abuses and frauds. Here’s hoping they don’t get away with it this time. It’s amazing that in a world where not only do people need life insurance policies, they now need computer insurance, fraud protection policies, identity theft policies, etc– outrageous! Best Buy’s abuse is over the top! In this case, Best Buy tried to buy off Ms. Campbell (with a measly $2500) and force her to sign a non-disclosure agreement (i.e., to promise to keep her mouth shut). The nerve! Thankfully, Ms. Campbell refuses to be pimped off. Here’s an interesting video.

This is one excellent example proving that we need to shop locally. Everything from our food supply to government to electronics to education– we need to stay within our local community. There is no accountability with the bureaucracy– none. Small businesses, on the other hand, operate amongst us; the bosses and workers and repairmen and farmers are our neighbors and fellow workers. There is accountability within small groups. America needs to get back to basics, because the bureaucracy is too large and growing so powerful that we may never have control over our food and consumer goods. And who knows– maybe we’ll even have communities again!

A Cowboy’s Wife, maintained by blogger Lori, is a really cute blog. The blog is fresh just like the author; her About Me page states:

I can change my own tires, cook from scratch, and will voice my opinions on whatever topics I feel like. I am usually a lady but can and will kick your ___ if you tick me off. I hate liars & rudeness so if you have either of these traits, then don’t come to my blog.

Well! Here’s a lady who speaks her mind, kind of like those anti-corsets women of the Wild Wild West of old! Yes, a very entertaining About Me page, lol!

Lori’s blog is very stylish, and everything matches. It must have been so much fun to attribute “comments” to “neighs and snorts,” “blogrolls” as “the posse” and “the watering hole.” Nice touches. These things give a blog a “finished” look and reveal the blogger’s joie de vivre.

As far as blog content, Lori is an adept communicator. Her feelings and opinions jump out like a calf let out of the barn in the springtime. Sometimes trying to rope around her point takes a little effort, at least for this cowpoke. Her writing style is very visual, with the use of ALL CAPS, emoticons, and loooooooong repeated letters. It is entertaining, to be sure. Sometimes the posts deviate from the “mom” narrative, and Lori takes on current events. I loved the post on the rig explosion. Great photos. I’d love to see more interesting content like that– about what happens way our there in the middle of nowhere. This blog could fill a niche like that, if Lori ever felt like expanding the scope of the blog. One thing I noticed is that oftentimes in the posts, a meaningful word is omitted in a sentence. This happens to me when I type too fast and don’t proofread my work carefully. For example:

If happen to be an Internet Marketer…

I just wanted to pop and say hello and give you the warning on the cake. It’s x-rated or anything, in fact, she’s covered up…

It’s a common mistake, but if it happens too frequently, it looks sloppy. A good thorough proofread is what usually cures it.

The design, like I’d stated, is tailored to the “cowboy” theme. It’s adorable. However, the content in the sidebars is a little messy. Blinking ads, differently-sized font at different alignments, and lines of text inconsistently squished too close was a distraction. I recommend cleaning up the sidebars. Lori’s style seems to be ad hoc as a general rule, so a too-tidy clean-up might make the content look too out of place. Just a little. May I be so bold as to recommend setting aside “blocks” of content in the sidebar– perhaps an area of banner/block ads in one area, then a few blogrolls, then another area of ads, etc. The consistency would help the reader concentrate on the blog posts, because right now, the haphazard sidebar organization is distracting.

Overall, A Cowboy’s Wife in an entertaining blog where the author’s personality really shines through– and for a blog, this is everything. Content is king! Messy sidebars and overuse of emoticons is secondary and easily remedied. Happy trails!

The first thing I notice when I look at Life With Kim is the spectacular header picture. Those emerald green colors are stunning with the deep gray blog template. I am not a fan of dark backgrounds and light font, I will admit. They are very difficult to read. Blogs should be generally breezy and easy to read. Kim’s blog is luscious with colors– very sophisticated– but very down-home and easy-going with her writing.

The “Life with Kim” page is terribly sparse. I happened to click the link for “Kim” and was at a totally new page– a semi-profile page. This was purely an accident that I clicked on it, and I doubt most readers would discover it. Perhaps put this page in a more prominent area, rather than as a link accompanying the name.

I would love to see more photos, or longer posts. I would also love to see more about Kim herself, since this blog is about her life. I checked out the “Homemade Crafts for Sale” but was disappointed to find a few quick sentences and a link to another website (although it was a “personal” page there). I’d love to see a few examples of the crafts before I start clicking away from the blog.

I also found an oddity while browsing the archives. When I accessed the archives, the full posts were not available; I had to click “read more” after the first few sentences. (The main page had all the full posts). I don’t know if this is a Wordpress theme option, but I highly discourage bloggers from making readers click to “read more.” It is an extra step. I rarely, rarely ever click on “read more.” Honestly, I think I’ve only done it one or two times, ever.

I like the little buttons at the bottom of each post (StumbleUpon, etc). They are organized and look like a million bucks. Good job on the clean, easy design style! There is almost no clutter, which can be a plus and a minus. On the plus side, your blog loads very fast and looks good. However, there can be such a thing as too little clutter.

I feel that on a blog, there should be a variety of interesting things to look at, read, and perhaps do. I appreciated Kim’s post and her sidebar button about Entrecard. I’m going to check it out, so thanks, Kim! But there was little else to catch my eye or my interest. A few photos, more sidebar content, and especially more human interest stories would help to give the blog that personal touch. Kim has the basic structure established to make this a great blog that will attract regular readers, but it needs to be fleshed out a little.

One last thing I noticed, as I took a last look at the blog. In the footer (the very bottom of the home page) are all these little links (Free Signatures, MySpace Friend Adder, etc). I wonder if these are spammy links set there by the Wordpress theme creator, or by Kim? They seem out of place on the blog. I checked, and the links are nofollow, which means they are leaking juice to the link’s websites. Might want to fix that unless those links are there by and for Kim.

The blog is new, so it seems Kim is still building it. She’s off to a great start. I look forward to watching this blog develop.

Ya gotta love the name: Sportsmamma: Living in the Land of Testosterone. I really like the template design, although it needs a little cleaning up here and there. Those fresh colors and the vivid blog header are what catch my eye first thing. The background is striped with baseball uniform stripes, very cute! The design is an Everyday Design, done by Jules. I’m familiar with her fresh designs and admire her work.

The header is cocked too far to the left, however. That large block of white space at the right makes the blog look a little messy. Secondly, as much as I love the Georgia font, it doesn’t match here. Perhaps a Trebuchet or something more streamlined would work. (I do wish all computers had more than the basic Arial/Sans Serif/Georgia/Trebuchet/Times New Roman. They are getting very, very old. Would someone please program some better fonts?)

I love the colors. The blue- which would look too “country” elsewhere, is a nice feminine touch amongst all those baseball stripes and talk of sports. I love the scripture box widget, too. The blog is not too cluttered with buttons and widgets (I am guilty of that alll the time on my blogs), but they could use some organizing. Maybe set them so that everything is centered, or aligned to the left. It would help maintain that streamlined look that the stripes and fresh-looking header encourage.

I like the blog content. Sportsmomma writes in a fresh, jaunty style which lends a friendly flair. I take it from the content that she is a Christian (me too!). I was merrily scrolling down the posts, enjoying the narrative and seeing all the neat things in the sidebars; therefore, it was very disconcerting to see an album cover with a woman unzipping/zipping her jeans (for that Skinny-songs CD). It is a little unseemly for this proper old lady, and unseemly for a Christian music album in general. I won’t start harping on how worldly the Christian music industry is, but the picture was a surprise.

Sportsmomma’s posts have lots of little pictures, and the writing is very entertaining. I’d like to know more about her boys and her crazy life of baseball and other boy-type stuff.

Love the graphic signature! I have one, too! It adds a lot of class to this blog, and keeps the theme of a fresh, fun site– kinda like a testosterone-filled home.

Overall, the blog is great fun, and the writing is very breezy. Sportsmomma makes you feel right at home when you visit. This is a blog to visit often; I’m sure the refreshments will always be plentiful and the conversation entertaining here.

I’ve been scouring local retail stores and the Internet, looking for software deals. My daughter received a “pre-owned” laptop as an early graduation gift, but it needs reformatting something fierce. Unfortunately, the Windows OS disks did not come with the laptop. Before I will allow her to connect the laptop to our network and the Internet, the machine must be reformatted. I was looking around online for prices on Windows XP (which we decided she would use), and was appalled at the cost of the operating system! I was so, so tempted to just install Ubuntu (which is free)! But for my daughter’s sake, I can’t; a lot of her programs wouldn’t work and she is accustomed to XP. Retail stores still had this seven-year OS for $200! My eyeballs were a-popping! I surfed around eBay, and prices were lower… but to be honest, I’m not terribly keen on eBay, especially when it comes to electronics and software. You just can’t be sure that it’s the real thing until you buy it. Too risky for this cautious shopper.

I have been using online “retail” stores (like Tiger Direct, Overstock, Amazon), and even with shipping costs, these stores still win, hands down. I have had good experience with them. However, if you are shopping online, be sure to check for coupons and promo codes first! This is a must. My sidebar has a list of good shopping links, so check them out. I have yet to add Coupon Chief, my new favorite coupon store. I think they have every store on the planet, even have Bluefly coupons for the intense shopping fans, and even Home Depot coupons, lol!

I have found online stores to offer better deals. If you are looking for even better discounts, always check for coupons and promo codes. Check my “Shopping” sidebar for my favorite stores and links.

Update: Coupon Chief link added. Check out the links if you shop online. As I discover more discount sites, I’ll add them. Look in the sidebar for the dropdown menu “Shopping.”

Well, we got part of our tax refund! We’ve been waiting for a while. My husband did the taxes using Turbo Tax, an e-filing system. I assumed he’d been able to file for free (last time I paid attention to tax filing, he got it free). However, I caught wind at Common Sense With Money that e-filing is not free anymore! Is this true?? I asked hubs, and he said it cost us $30 plus tax! Yow. I guess those free days are over. At least the filing is relatively easy!

By the way, I’ve heard that if you are a member of State Farm Insurance, you can file for free, up to $50. This is a great deal, so take advantage of it if you can. We, however, do not have any policies with State Farm, so we must still pay.

E-filing is very safe and secure– just be very careful that your network is secure and you have software firewalls. We don’t want criminals to steal your hard-earned cash and go on Gucci handbag spending sprees and carnival cruises, do we? Although, after doing the taxes, a cruise isn’t a bad idea right now…