Mishmash Musings

Now that Barack Obama is assured of getting the Democratic presidential nomination, he’s bent on taking his campaign to the next level. One of the new things he’s done is start a website designed to combat the numerous false rumors that inevitably crop up during any political contest.

Obama’s website is called Fight the Smears, and can be found by copying and pasting this link into your browser’s address bar:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/content/fightthesmearshome/

Some of the “misinformation” Obama dispels on the site include the contention that he’s not a natural-born citizen of the U.S. (he provides a difficult to read image of his birth certificate); the allegation that his wife Michelle Obama used the word “whitey” in a racially-charged manner on tape; and the rumor that he was sworn into the Senate using a Koran.

I actually think a website like this is a good idea for candidates because it could potentially save them from having to answer the same questions over and over again in interviews. They could then use their precious airtime to discuss real issues — a refreshing change, if you ask me!

The long-awaited social media marketing platform known as SocialSpark has been up and running for about a month now. Developed by IZEA, the company behind PayPerPost, RockStartUp, Blogger’s Choice Awards, and more, SocialSpark was hyped as a revolution that would change blogging forever. I now have a chance to provide a paid review of the service, so here is what I’ve come away with after my first impression. (If that wasn’t clear enough for you, this review is sponsored by IZEA.)

Unfortunately, after poking around SocialSpark for the past few weeks, I have to admit that I’m extremely disappointed by the many limitations that I’ve encountered thus far. Here is just a small sampling of the features I dislike:

– The social networking aspect of the site is annoying. There are users with, quite literally, thousands of friends. We’re talking two or three thousand here, though it’s quite obvious that nobody is truly “friends” with that many people. Same thing with props, which people trade for no reason other than to boost their numbers. You might think that a blog with 700 props would be a darn good one, but in reality, it just belongs to someone adept at getting other people to vote for him. In other words, stats regarding friends and props are meaningless — yet advertisers can select “Most Props” as a filtering criterion.

– I absolutely detest the queue system as well. Right now, when a marketplace opportunity goes live, only a certain number of slots are available for the taking. The rest of the slots are put on hold, and would-be takers must queue up and wait for an opening. This queue function is apparently necessary to accommodate the dynamic pricing feature, which also stinks (in my opinion). It’s frustrating to have to wait for opps to open up (it could be anywhere from several days to a week or more), and even more frustrating to have just 12 hours to complete the opp, beginning from midnight eastern time.

– I don’t like how difficult it is to determine whether an opp is open or not. Green lights, red lights, waiting for slots, requesting slots… this is something that should be straightforward, but it isn’t.

There are a couple of things that I like about SocialSpark, including the way bloggers and advertisers both have a chance to put up extensive profiles. Check out Ted Murphy’s profile by clicking the link I just provided. You can see all the information available there, which is certainly a lot more than was ever possible in the old PPP profiles. Plus, PPP profiles were never public, so SocialSpark definitely has an edge there.

Overall, I’m going to sit on the sidelines while IZEA works out all the kinks in SocialSpark. I do think this has the potential to be a great platform, but it’s definitely not there yet.

We’re not going to be able to take our usual summer vacation this year, but we could possibly swing a short three- or four-day trip to Las Vegas in October. My husband has some vacation time coming up then, and we’ve got to use our frequent flier miles before the end of the year anyway, so the timing is actually pretty good.

I’ve been checking into suggested itineraries for Las Vegas vacations and have discovered that there are tons of fun things to do besides gamble away all our money. We can see shows, attend sporting events, visit museums and art galleries, or participate in thrilling activities such as skydiving and zero gravity flights. Plus, who can forget about touring the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam?

Discount tickets for all of these options are available at a website called BestofVegas.com, which means we’ll be able to save money no matter what we decide to do in Sin City.

We’ve been wanting to visit Las Vegas for a long time now, but have not quite gotten around to it yet. Could this be the year that we finally get to go? We’ll see!

I was surfing around the Internet today looking for some of the latest NFL mock drafts when I came across a website I’d never been to before. It’s called Addict Sports, and features free message boards where registered users can talk about baseball, football, hockey, fantasy leagues, and more. There are even boards dedicated to nfl game picks to help you cover the spread, and original articles analyzing player or team performance.

All in all, AddictSports looks like a pretty cool place to hang out and talk about my favorite teams. I’m going to register and add the site to my regular rotation so I’ll have something to do during the baseball season. If you’re a sports fan, you’ll definitely want to check it out for yourself!

It seems like most of the blogosphere is buzzing with chatter about the launch of Photoshop Express, a free web-based version of Photoshop that Adobe put out in beta today. It’s over at www.photoshop.com/express, and you have to go through a quick registration/verification process to get started.

I registered, and then went in to start playing around with some of the tools. I’m not a Photoshop expert or anything, so I didn’t really know what I was doing.

To me, it seems that Photoshop Express does things that are pretty similar to what Google’s Picasa does. There are basic fixes and touch-ups that you can perform, such as red-eye correction, hue, color, saturation, exposure, etc. There are a few special effects that you can add to your pictures too, such as sketch, distort, soft focus, etc.

The site seemed a bit slow to me, which was probably from the amount of people on there testing out the goodies. I don’t know if I’ll actually switch over to Photoshop Express for my image editing needs, but I guess it’s good to have that option available.

For now, I’ll stick to Picasa!

With the way the economy is right now, our finances are so tight that we have to keep a very close eye on every cent that we spend. Over the past few weeks, I’ve noticed an alarming trend as far as our grocery bills go: we’ve been spending 20-30% more than usual. This is the result of having to buy more food at higher prices — and it’s really draining our budget.

So what I’m going to do now is make an effort to use Grocery Coupons whenever possible. I used to use them all the time, but that stopped at the same time that I canceled our newspaper subscription because I didn’t know where else to get coupons from.

After checking around online, however, I found a great website called PPGazette.com. This is the homepage for the Penny Pincher Gazette, and is a terrific source of printable coupons that can be redeemed at local stores.

It took me less than a minute to register for free. After that, I was able to browse through a bunch of coupons for products that I use all the time, including Totino’s Pizza Rolls, Wisk laundry detergent, Healthy Choice frozen dinners, Hamburger Helper, Chex cereal, and much, much more. The coupons entitled me to savings of anywhere from $.75 to $2.00 (or more), and will definitely help make a dent in my next grocery bill.

I can’t wait to print these out and use them on Sunday when we hit the supermarket for our weekly food run. I’ll let you know how much we end up saving!

Oh, and if you’re looking for ways to cut down on your grocery costs, I recommend checking out PPGazette.com today. I’m sure you’ll love the site as much as I do!

On one of my many web wanderings today, I came across a brand-new hip hop website that looks pretty cool. It’s called RapArtists.com, and looks to be a pretty good resource for information about everything related to hip hop. For example, you can read the biography of your favorite rap artist, view photo galleries, find out what the top-selling hip hop albums in the country are, get the inside scoop on upcoming CD releases, and interact with other hip hop fans on the message boards.

RapArtists.com has a nice, clean layout, making it easy to navigate through the different pages to find exactly what you want. I’m sure that as more content gets added and more people find out about the site, RapArtists.com will become one of the top online destinations for hip hop fans.

Check it out today and spread the word!

I spent an hour trying to post a simple ad on Craigslist today, and it still hasn’t shown up in the live listings.

I know I did everything right because I’ve used Craigslist several times before. The ad shows up in my account and is labeled as Active, but like I said, it doesn’t appear on the actual site.

I’ve done some checking around and learned that some people have had to try like 9 or 10 times before their ad would finally take. Apparently, this is a somewhat common problem over there.

Well, I’ve given up for tonight. Maybe I’ll try again over the weekend.

I’ve been making money from my various blogs for well over a year now, but things have been slowing down considerably in the past few months. As such, I’m looking into different options for making money online.

After a bit of research, I’ve decided to try a keyword/content site that focuses on generating clicks for AdSense and affiliate programs. I know there’s quite a bit of competition in this area and I’ll have to do a lot of work before I can start making money, but I think I’ve got a reliable system to work with. Plus, my income goals are modest, as I would just be looking to make $100 or $200 per month from the site.

I’m not quite ready to reveal any more details at this point, but will definitely post updates in the future. I’ve been doing this sort of grunt work for someone else for a couple of years, so I think it’s high time I branched out on my own to get a bigger piece of the profits.

Let’s see how it goes!

I read an article last week that I just have to share with you. It’s about a stage show called “Mortified”, where participants read their teenage diaries, journals, or other writings in front of an audience — usually to the tune of uproarious laughter.

Why would anyone want to mortify themselves in this way?

According to comedian Matt Harawitz, the answer is simple:

I think it’s a catharsis to be able to laugh at yourself and then laugh at what you used to be. It feels great.

Apparently, people all over the country feel the same way, because “Mortified” has been playing to sold out audiences everywhere. In fact, the success of the stage show has led to the creation of a companion website called getmortified.com, where people can publish their own tales of teenage angst and woe.

I don’t know about you, but this is not something I’d be able to do. I don’t think I have any of my teenage writings left anyway, but even if I did, there’s no way I’d be able to read them in front of a live audience.

Sure, I can see the therapeutic value in being able to laugh at yourself and acknowledge that you’ve come a long way since high school; however, I can’t imagine doing so in front of a huge group of strangers. Yikes!

It’s an interesting concept though, so check out the site for yourself!

Because my husband and I come from diverse ethnic backgrounds, we currently have family members on no less than three different continents. It’s been a priority of ours to visit relatives as often as possible so our son will have a chance to meet everyone, but at this point it’s pretty clear that we’re going to fall well short of that goal.

It saddens us to think that our son will never get to know some of his great-grandparents, aunts, and uncles, so we’re thinking of putting together a family tree to document his ancestry as best we can. Towards that end, I’ve been checking out TribalPages.com, and think it’s one of the top genealogy resources out there.

TribalPages.com makes it easy to research and build a comprehensive family tree dating back several generations. There are several family tree formats to choose from, and I can even include photos if I wish.

This looks like a fun and useful site, so I’m going to go sign up for a free membership at TribalPages.com today!

Did you know that Sudden Cardiac Arrest (SCA) claims the lives of nearly 900 people every single day? That comes to more than 325,000 people annually — and that’s just right here in the United States.

One of the reasons for the high number of SCA fatalities is the fact that it strikes so quickly. From what I’ve read, if SCA isn’t treated within the first four to six minutes, the results can be deadly.

To assess your own risk factors for Sudden Cardiac Arrest and to learn how to respond should someone fall victim to SCA while you’re present, I recommend visiting InsideCardiacArrest.com. That site has free videos, articles, and other resources to help people learn about the causes and symptoms of SCA, as well as tips on what to do in the event of an SCA-related emergency.

I’ve already reviewed the information on the site, and now I’m going to go make my husband sit down and watch the videos as well. It can’t hurt to be prepared!