Mrs. Mecomber’s Scrapbook

I found this news story through VistaNews newsletter. It’s a terrific news letter (e-zine) full of great tech articles.

The news story is about RepairPal.com. It sounds terrific!

RepairPal, which went live roughly three weeks ago, culls data to determine how much every car repair will cost based on the region. RepairPal licensed information on how much it takes mechanics to repair something from an undisclosed data provider. The company will also alert users to what other parts may need to be replaced when getting a specific service.

Unfortunately it’s true– when it comes to car repairs, most of us are at the mercy of the auto mechanic. I don’t like that. When I have car problems, I’ve always done a search first, but it’s been like finding a needle in a haystack to find something relevant about my repair. This looks like a great site to bookmark!

My grandparents used to love reading the Dear Abby columns. Her columns were syndicated in our local newspaper, tucked between the comics, the television listings, and colorful ads for office supplies. I don’t think her advice was always wholesome, but it certainly was always entertaining. I saw this at a blog, and had to pass it on. SO FUNNY because it is so true!!

I read this in the newspaper many years ago and got a kick out of it then. Thought someone might enjoy it. Dear Abby has given advice for many years and one reader wrote in with a request to define different forms of government. This was her response:

COMMUNISM: You have two cows. The government takes both of them and gives you part of the milk.

SOCIALISM: You have two cows. The government takes one and gives it to your neighbor.

FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both cows and sells you the milk.

NAZISM: You have two cows. The government takes both your cows, then shoots you.

BUREAUCRACY: You have two cows. The government takes both of them, shoots one, milks the other, then pours the milk down the drain.

CAPITALISM: You have two cows. You sell one of them and buy a bull.

Abby, what happens in a democracy? — MRS. J. MC C.

DEAR MRS. MC C.: In a democracy, everyone has two cows, then a vote is taken, and whatever the majority decides to do, you do, and that’s no bull!

Need some help getting your blog noticed? Check out this great post. It is done by Amy, and is a pretty good list of blog directories and blogrolls that you can join for exposure.

I have had very good success with Blog Catalog. The people at that community are quite active, and the administrators have done an excellent job of moderating the blogs and making the site very user-friendly. I do get traffic from them.

By by far, the best traffic generator is Entrecard. If you haven’t joined and want to see an explosion in traffic, I recommend them. The system works best if you visit other blogs and “drop your card” on their widget. Many will reciprocate. However, if you don’t have a lot of time to visit other Entrecard blogs, then you probably won’t see a great deal of traffic. It’s a very active community. I have found some great blogs and made some wonderful friends through Entrecard. And I have found that there are blogs on everything! From peanut butter (yes, there’s a peanut butter blog!) to knitting to pool toys. Those are the extremes– most blogs are niche or mommy blogs. I’m enjoying my experience with Entrecard.

Need new eyeglasses? It’s easy to buy them online! Check out zennioptical.com. We’ve ordered from them and have been pleased with their incredible low costs and great quality. There are a ton of frames to choose from, including the most popular styles available today.

Zenni Optical eliminates the middle man, so you save. You will need to know your prescription when ordering (get the stats from your optometrist’s office). You may need to adjust the glasses to fit your face when they arrive, too. My husband was able to do this easily with a set of jeweler’s screwdrivers (the tiny screwdrivers that you can find at any Dollar Store or department store). We’re impressed with Zenni Optical. We saved about $125 dollars by ordering from them!

I’m very impressed! After hearing about Hulu for several weeks, I decided to give it a try. It/s a website that offers free streaming television programs. It actually worked! I have “medium speed” broadband, and the show worked pretty well. i didn’t browse around a great deal, bui their selection looks quite large.

The shows are free; however you watch a brief advertisement in the beginning, and there is a small banner ad in the Hulu browser. Every once in a while, a corporate logo (I saw the McDonald’s Dollar Menu ad) pops up in the eight-hand side of the screen. The ads are not obtrusive and are easily ignored.

I was extremely impressed because they have a good collection of PBS and NOVA documentaries (I am not a TV show watcher, but I love documentaries). Even when I enlarged the video player to full screen, the video ran smoothly and the picture was still relatively clear. (It’s not like YouTube, where the picture is blocky and cube-looking when you go full screen). Hulu is an excellent tool for home educators. I give it my thumbs up.

Not very good news for online shoppers. New York State just passed a law that commands online businesses to tax their patrons if these patrons reside in the state of NY. The NY government is pooh-poohing it, saying that shoppers won’t see much of an increase in their costs, but the state is expected to reap in millions. So, you buy a $10 book, you’re going to pay $1.00 extra for tax (by the way, NYS taxes are the highest in the nation). But if you buy, say, a fancy lcd mount for $1,000, you’re going to pay $100 in taxes. That’s highway robbery.

And money or not, it’s a matter of principle. New York State is breaking federal LAW and being a bully.

I’m amazed that the state can get away with this, since this is a direct breach of the “interstate commerce” clause of the Constitution; this clause forbids one state to tax goods purchased in another state. The Supreme Court clarified it, to allow a state to tax commerce if the business has a direct physical presence in the state. But Amazon.com has no store in New York State (just individual vendors). I’m glad to hear that Amazon.com and Overstock.com are taking NYS to court. God forbid NYS should be allowed to tax like this, imagine all the states doing this. That would be another part of the Constitution gone.

Incidentally, one of the reasons why the Founding Fathers even wrote the Constitution was because New York State was doing this very same thing– taxing goods from other states (New Jersey and Connecticut) as the goods passed through the New York City harbor. NJ and CT became so incensed that it almost started a civil war– and this was only just after the American Revolution! You’d think New York would stop being a bully, but nope.

News is not trickling in very quickly. I got an email from the folks at Entrecards, informing me that their website is down due to a fire at ThePlanet Database Center. The datacenter is located in Houston, Texas. Apparently, an electrical transformer exploded, burning down three walls. The electrical power has been turned off, and all websites hosted by ThePlanet were down all night Saturday.

My initial reaction was that of shock. I suppose I viewed a datacenter as something non-tangible and amorphous, something akin to vegan shoes or something. Oh, so– websites aren’t created out of thin air! They are on computers and those computers sometimes fail! Haha! It wasn’t until I got my own websites that I finally began to understand that the Internet is not like radio– it’s not really transported via waves, but via tangible databases.

OK, anyway… so that’s why a lot of websites are down. Entrecards says the site may be up in 12-24 hours. Statcounter.com is up although there are some components of the site not working. And the only news story I could find, and Newsblaze.com, is down because– duh– they are hosted by ThePlanet, too.

Looking for window coverings? I found an outstanding company that sells discount window blinds and more. I’m very impressed with the quality of the website. I don’t know about you, but when I did my first several online shopping transactions (ten years ago now!) I was quaking more than a bowl of jelly! It seemed so unreal, typing in my credit card information to buy something I couldn’t tangibly touch or see. After ten years of online purchases, I have never been disappointed. I am more and more impressed with the convenience and safety of buying things online. Of course, I am always looking for reputable, quality companies and I go back to them.

ShadesShuttersBlinds.com has an excellent website. They even have a telephone number and a blog! Talk about customer service! Plus, they have a terrific selection of cheap mini blinds and a gorgeous shade design selection. The Roman shades are exquisite. Roman shades are my favorite. I cannot sew them very well, so I’ve been on the lookout for some good deals. Aren’t these beautiful?

The company will even mail out little sections of fabric for the customer to see it and feel it. Such incredible customer service is unsurpassed, in my opinion- wow! The blinds are also American made.

The blog is very informative. I am in the middle of a huge renovation project on my house, so I have been keen to websites that offer quality products and information. The blog is very readable, and mentions upcoming sales, too.

The Internet has opened up a huge “window” (haha) of opportunity for us. We can literally buy things “wholesale” and at deep discounts, whereas years ago we were at the mercy of the middleman retailer and his “sales.” Finding a quality company is notable. Check out ShadesShuttersBlinds.com if you are in the market for affordable and beautiful window coverings, or check out their blog for information. This is an excellent company, and they will be receiving my business in the future. I’ve gotta get those walls and windows up first, however!

exp. 6/11

Ever been “scraped”? It’s the name (oh no! another funky new name for something Internet related!) for a blogger whose content has been stolen and that content republished by another blogger. And without crediting the originator. These scrapers surf the blogosphere, looking for content for the specific purpose of stealing it to “create” their own blog or website. It’s a disgusting, heinous practice. Search engines like Google and Yahoo, penalize websites for “duplicate content.” Your website or blog has a decreased chance of getting indexed (and therefore visited by readers) if there is more than one copy of your work out there. So scrapers are the bottom of the pool of scumbags, worse than card-sharks at poker tables.

I came across a great website that tells bloggers how to fight back. Hurray! It may come in useful for you if you are a blogger. You can check it out here. There’s a downloadable pdf form, too. Many thanks to this blogger for bringing this to the forefront! Scrapers should — and now can– be stopped.

Surfing to all these money-making blogs these days has me thinking a lot about money! lol! The websites for the buying and selling of stuff has absolutely exploded. I think in the past six months, there has been a doubling of online marketing and trading.

We stay-at-home moms aren’t always looking for a good deal. Sometimes we are trying to MAKE a good deal! I am not too fond of some of those auction-selling sites because the fees are out of this world. I stopped selling stuff online with them after the last postal rate increase, because the seller’s rates skyrocketed.

How about video classifieds? Has anyone tried them? How about video classifieds? That sounds so cool, I think! How about Listasaurus? Has anyone heard of them? I checked them out a few months ago. I haven’t tried them yet because I’m waiting for spring to start clearing out my stuff, but I hear they are becoming quite popular (they have listings for real estate and employment, too). Plus, they have the cutest purple dinosaur, lol.

Listing your ad with a video is free! As a matter of fact, you can get paid to list it! They look really good, and I think I’m going to try them out in the near future. They also give a portion of their ads profits to charity. If you check them out before me, leave a comment. I’ll let you know how it goes with me.

I cannot imagine how some people would list something like a house or a car or a computer, without a video to showcase it! I’d never buy something so big with just a little jpeg photo, no way! I think video classifieds are the way to go.

I love the Internet. The whole world is open, before your eyes, on a screen! It’s a pretty amazing invention, I tell ya. I love it because everything is at one’s disposal– news, communications, entertainment, social groups, information (reams of it!), and shopping. I am a stay-at-home mom, homeschooling my kids, so we use the Internet for everything.

One cool thing about the Internet is that I can shop online, and compare prices. Not just for books anymore, either. Now it’s for groceries, car parts, clothing, tools, cars, houses, even quotes on things like home insurance and car loans! No pressure from salespeople, no pressure to please them or cut a deal– you can just look things up and there you go. Quotes are free!

Of course, it pays to be careful in this day and age. Always read the fine print, and be sure you know what you are doing when you are giving out your personal information. But there are a lot of websites whose services are outstanding!

*this is a sponsored post*

If there is anything I love most about the Internet, it is that information is readily available. At no other time in history has so much information, and disinformation, been available to a person. I am by nature inquisitive, so I reap many of the Internet’s benefits. I can’t tell you how thrilling it is to wonder about something, and within ten minutes have an answer. It’s pretty amazing.

Another great thing about the Internet is that information is no longer solely in the hands of elite groups. I am referring to the major media. It’s a known fact that the media hides important news but releases only what they think will benefit them or their agenda. The Internet has leveled the playing field.

I recently came across an interesting website that made the bold statement “Atlantis Was America, Tampa Was The Royal City.” That’s a pretty powerful statement. They made a short video with why this is believed. It’s interesting enough.

Are you living in Atlantis? According to a new video, America was the Lost Continent of Atlantis and Tampa Florida was once the royal city. Now we know! Tampa’s history goes back over 11,000 years. Dennis Brooks has matched the terrain that Plato described to that found in Tampa Florida and the Americas. See the video.

Some of the information at the website has to do with the paranormal and myths, but some of it makes some serious claims and asks many important questions, like the WTC collapse, JFK’s assassination, and more. These are definitely important questions, and things that, for some reason, officials have been hiding or lying about. The website, Atlantis Kingdom, links to several videos from infowars (a favorite site of ours– we love Alex Jones!)

This is why I love the Internet. No one can hide anything anymore! And we who use the Internet can network and gather information and share it.