I’ve already tried removing and reinstalling MS Office 2007 but the problem continues.

After several lengthy calls to Microsoft I was told that my operating system (Windows Vista) is corrupted and one solution would be to buy and install Windows 7.

Reinstalling windows for me would be almost as disruptive as buying a new PC.

So I think my options are:

1. Do nothing and risk having my PC blow up on me while I travel. (I keep getting strange pop up “dll” errors signaling there may be trouble ahead…)
2. Install Windows 7 (it can’t possibly be worse than Vista).
3. Do what several people, including my sister, have suggested and switch to a Mac.

I’m tempted to follow Mae West’s advice on this one: “When choosing between two evils, I always like to try the one I’ve never tried before“, so now I’m seriously thinking about the benefits/disadvantages of switching to a Mac.

Considerations

• I’ve been a PC user since Windows 3.1 was released and I’m not looking forward to another learning curve.
• On the other hand, do I want to continue supporting the company that released Windows Vista and MS Office 2007?

I’ve read several articles including Should I Buy a Mac or a PC? from WiseGeek and after reading all the comments from readers and their strong arguments for both the Mac and the PC, I’m still undecided.

Ok, I’m headed to Best Buy now just to look around and ask a few questions…

Michael Bungay Stanier has a knack for turning simple, ordinary ideas into wake up calls that make you think “Why didn’t I think of that?”. His style is very playful, always emphasizing the importance of having fun.

In his new book, Do More Great Work, he explains that the work we do falls into three categories:

- BAD WORK (Mindless, Aimless work)
- GOOD WORK (Our Job Description)
- and GREAT WORK (Work that Really Matters).

The problem with GOOD WORK is that it keeps us busy and it tends to expand to fill every minute of our lives, leaving little or no room for us to do GREAT WORK.

What is Great Work?

Great work is work that makes a difference, the kind of work that connects our heart, with our hands and our mind.

Or to quote Seth Godin: “Work is the Stuff that Scares You. Work is the stuff that you ultimately may get paid for but that in the short run, you may want to avoid”.

Do More Great Work explores 15 Practical Ways to make room in our busy lives for getting more Great Work done.

The book concludes with several wake up statements:

• To do more Great Work, you must both narrow and broaden you gaze.
• Decide what to say No to.
• Stop Making everyone happy.

This reminds me of something I read a while ago, also from Michael Bungay Stanier on his www.boxofcrayons.biz.

I keep a 3×5 card on my desk with the following text to help me stay on target or when I struggle with a decision. I hope you may find this tool helpful as well.

I like to call this list, “How to Live a Congruent Life” although Michael calls it:

The Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun.

1. Stop Hiding who you are
2. Stop Being Busy
3. Stop Following the Rules
4. Stop Taking it all so damn Seriously
5. Start Getting rid of the crap
6. Start Being Intensely Selfish
7. Start Scaring Yourself
8. Start Something

Do More Great Work is selling on Amazon for $8.60 plus shipping. Not a bad deal and it would make a great gift.

Enjoy!

Even if you already have this plugin configured you may find sometimes you loose all the settings (as it happened to me this morning on my other blog). I think I may have lost the settings when I upgraded to the latest version of the plugin, who knows.

I’m inserting the image from the post for future reference. Although I’m sure in time it may become outdated, for now I think it’s a handy, time saving tool.

To read the entire post see My All-In-One-SEO Settings and Summary at www.realestatebloglab.com.

The only setting not shown above is the checkbox next to Canonical URL. I can’t seem to find a simple answer about what it means to have it checked/unchecked. I’ve seen several long winded posts with multiple comments about 301 redirects but no one seems to have a concrete answer as to when or why we should check this box.

Update: I just checked Jack Leblond’s All in One SEO Configuration Chart and found information on this setting:

Canonical URLs

This newly added feature is enabled by default – leave it that way. If you are not familiar with canonical URLs, and would like to be – read this Google webmaster blog post. For the rest of you, just know that this feature helps avoid duplicate content issues with the major search engines. That’s a good thing.

Related Post

For a more in-depth description of every single setting see All in one SEO Pack configuration by Jack Leblond.

Well, think about it, the internal revenue code of the United States and all the forms required to prepare our annual income tax returns are available to all for free at www.irs.gov. Still, I think most of us use either TurboTax or pay someone to do our taxes.

eBooks sell because they deliver information in a fast and convenient way. I prefer having information neatly organized in one single place rather than scattered throughout the Internet.

When it comes to technical information, I need to follow step by step written instructions and I always keep hard copies of newsletters and eBooks in my gym bag or briefcase to catch up on my reading and take advantage of waiting time.

I’ve studied eBooks while sitting on the beach or at an airport. I admit I’m an eBook junkie and my Paypal account shows evidence of this bad habit.

Problogger Nathan Hangen recently put together a collection of his best blog posts (more than a year’s worth of output) into one eBook called Claiming your Destiny.

Grant Griffiths, co-founder of G2WebMedia provides some excellent tips on how to recycle content to create information products.

Related Post

Marketing Information Products

What an empowering thought! Just reading this affirmation immediately changes my attitude from feeling helpless to feeling in control.

I’m copying this post from IM guru Rich Schefren here, to remind myself to stop whining and complaining about all the work I have to do to improve my sites and my business and instead, buckle up and accept the challenge that lies ahead.

Owner or Victim? – Choose…

by Rick Schefren

“Online entrepreneurs can be separated into two different groups by the way they think…

Owners -or- Victims

Right now in your business you are either an owner of your outcomes, or you’re a victim of your circumstance.

Entrepreneurs who are owners take ownership of every situation of their business. They realize they grow with each challenge they overcome. So they come up with creative solutions to their current obstacles. And in the process their skills get better and better…

Entrepreneurs who act like owners stay in the “profitable now.” They give all themselves to what they’re doing in the moment. They stay committed to the outcomes they’ve established and invest all their energy into achieving them.

You see, owners realize this…

Future business success is only created in the present moment. The small task, activity, or project you’re focused on right now will impact your business’ future more than all the excuses, worries, and fears you could possibly stack on top of each other.

Owners embrace the philosophy shared by Ralph Waldo Emerson when he wrote…

“Don’t waste life in doubts and fears. Spend yourself on the work before you, well-assured that the right performance of this hour’s duties will be the best preparation for the hours and ages that will follow it.”

So, for today, pick one excuse you’ve been using in your business and come up with all the different actions you could take that would begin to eliminate it once and for all”.

Small, Focused Steps

This is so so true. A series of small, focused actions can really add up. We don’t have to do it all perfectly at once, but we need to do a few things right and do it over and over again.

I was reminded of this from watching Laura Roeder’s most recent webinar on the power of Twitter.

With a fairly small number of readers (about 50 a day or less), a small mailing list and Twitter she was able to generate a 6 figure income in less than 12 months.

It gets better. She didn’t even start blogging until March 2009 and she hates to write blog posts. She didn’t give away an eBook. Her site is made up of mostly short videos.

Granted, the fact that she’s adorable and has a bubbly personality doesn’t hurt either but people would not give out their credit cards if she didn’t offer value.

I’ve been getting emails from Laura for months and I even got her Backstage to Twitter course last year but, I was really busy at the time with another site and never looked at it.

But Laura has continued hammering my Inbox for months (focus, persistence) and finally this past week I paid attention to one of her emails. I watched her entire webinar and took good notes and I was blown away.

Here’s a few key thoughts from her webinar:

• She gets 36% of her traffic from Twitter!
• Email marketing costs money and work. Twitter is fun, easy and FREE!
• With Twitter your followers choose you. You don’t have to entice readers to join your mailing list by giving them a free eBook.
• Twitter provides instant social proof.

So next week, I’m paying close attention to Laura and what she has to say about Twitter.

But first I need to take two little steps. Get a twitter account for this site or use the existing Twitter account I already have for one of my sites (messy) and second, add a Twitter button to this site and start tweeting.

Conclusion

I know I’m going to feel like shit again next week as soon as I face a few obstacles but hopefully, I’ll be reminded of this post and I’ll keep repeating Rick’s affirmation until it becomes part of my DNA:

YOUR BUSINESS IS YOUR MASTERPIECE….NOT YOUR PRISON!

You can check out Laura Roeder’s Backstage to Twitter here: www.twitterwebinar.com/go (This is not an affiliate link)

and Read Rich Schefren’s complete post here:
Owner Or Victim – Choose…

If you’re going to be a freelancer you have to be EXTRAORDINARY

The market for freelancers that are average is horrible

The market for exceptional freelancers has never been better

Work is the Stuff that Scares You

Work is the Stuff that Scarce

Work is the stuff that you ultimately may get paid for but that in the short run, you may want to avoid (‘cause it’s hard).

Hint: If it scares you that’s the signal that you should do it

You can watch the entire 18 minute interview here:

What it Takes to be an Entrepreneur Way Beyond 2010

This post captures some of the highlights from the last 31 pages of Nathan Hangen’s Claiming Your Destiny. (You can read the first half of this review here).

Nathan’s book concludes with these empowering, action provoking questions and ideas:

Who Are You?

What is your brand? You can be anything you want to be, whatever you feel you need to be. You are capable of taking back your destiny. Don’t play by the rules, make your own rules and become what you need to be.

How Much Real Estate Do You Own?

People aren’t buying items anymore, they are buying relationships and trust.

How much real estate do you own? How much of your niche are you carving out online? Do you own your own name.com? Do you own your YouTube channel? Are you using Twitter and Facebook to leverage your brand and your social network?

Even if you don’t want to be a guru, there is no reason that you can’t position yourself as a trusted ally in the eyes of the world. If nothing else, you need to own your own portion of Internet real estate because just like houses and apartments, internet real estate is going to increase in value over time.

If you haven’t already, start carving out your own little niche on the web and set up shop. Set up your own blog or website and just squat until you feel you’ve got something to offer.

With every niche, every domain, every article, every keyword, and every social account that you own, you start to create a wealth that will pay huge dividends down the road.

Building a Foundation

Creating an online business is very similar to building a brick and mortar in that regard. You’ve got to spend a lot of your early time shaking hands and making friends. Your PR and branding is more important in the early stage than it is in the later stages.

If you rush into the marketing phases before your business is ready, then people will blow you off and move on. And even if it does pay off at first, your structure is weak, and not built for long term success. If you focus on building a foundation first…then you’ll be able to weather small storms along the way.

3 Ways to Turn Your Passion into Profit

1. Consulting
2. Membership Program
3. Sell your $**t

If You Can Make it in this Economy

If you can hang on to your hat and buckle up for the ride, then you can capitalize on this paradigm shift rather than suffer from it. The truth is, if you can make something happen in this economy, then you can make something happen anytime and anywhere. Learn the ropes now, get baptized by the fire, and set up shop. If you act now, you can create something for yourself, your family, and for the world.

Your Life is a Reflection of what you make Time for

If you want to become a best-selling author, or a pro blogger, you need to make sure that your life reflects that commitment.

This means less procrastination, less excuse making, and more action. More action leads to more achievement, which is what will help you build the momentum you need to succeed.

You’ve got one shot at life; don’t let one single thing get in the way of you being happy. Spend your time in winning relationships, whether they are personal or business. Keep pushing that boulder uphill until you get there…no excuses.

Blogging as a Platform

Treat blogging as a stepping stone or a platform. Blogging is a means in and of itself, and like any other promotional tool, shouldn’t be started until you have specific goals and an action plan ready to put into place.

Working with Small Businesses

Generally, local businesses face problems that are much easier to fix than those of big businesses. If you’ve got the skills, then start small…build your chops…and then go big.

Don’t Get Trapped

Blogging is an awesome promotional and marketing tool, but it’s not the only path to building an online business. Think about that when you’re planning your online business ventures, and decide which platforms you’re willing to be tied to.

Create a business plan with an exit strategy, and you’ll be ahead of a large percentage of online entrepreneurs.

As I said before, it’s all about the endgame. Download your own copy of Claiming your Destiny.

Online news can be a powerful tool we can use to increase our knowledge of other languages.

Reading about a familiar topic in a foreign language helps us understand the content more easily. If you’re a language teacher you can also use this technique to help your students improve their vocabulary.

The day after Obama’s State of the Union address I went to www.yahoo.fr to see what the French press had to say about it and found some interesting phrases.

(In my case, I’m trying to improve my knowledge of French but you could use the same method to learn any second language. For instance, check out www.yahoo.es for Spanish news).

The title of the post was: Obama s’est montré à la fois humble et combatif au Congrès.

Without any knowledge of French we can quickly recognize the words Obama, humble and Congress.

Next, we zero in on two more words for additional clues:

The word combatif in this case means assertive or aggressive and montré (from the french verb montrer) means to show or demonstrate.

So now we have Obama, humble, assertive, show and Congress.

The little words are the hardest

The little words are usually the hardest to decipher since they bear no resemblance to English and we just have to look them up until we learn them.

The word fois is one of those words whose meaning changes depending on its context.

For instance,

une fois ~ one time
deux fois~ twice

In this case, the phrase à la fois means “at the same time”.

We can now figure out the sentence:

Obama s’est montré à la fois humble et combatif au Congrès

Obama shows to be humble and assertive at the same time before Congress

The preposition au can have multiple meanings depending on its usage. In this case, the meaning of au can be inferred from the context.

Google Translator

Compare the above translation with the version from Google Translator: Obama has shown both humble and combative Congress

Google translator misses a key word: au. Without the word au, we’re not really sure which of the two, Obama or Congress, is humble and assertive.

This is why online translators will never replace humans although these tools can save us some time when translating large portions of text.

Reading about current events in a foreign language is an effective way to expand and reinforce the vocabulary we’ve acquired through formal language training.

This book contains 89 pages packed with inspiring and thought provoking ideas about lifestyle design, overcoming obstacles and the gatekeepers that keep us from going after our dreams “full throttle”.

I found it encouraging and uplifting to read about his own struggles and insecurities in starting an online business, something most of us beginners can relate to.

Some of the ideas in Claiming Your Destiny may sound familiar to you but Nathan presents them in a new and refreshing way and it never hurts to be reminded of these great truths.

He also shares insights into his Master Plan, the step by step approach he used to achieve his goals by beginning with the end in mind.

Prioritizing and Outsourcing

Nathan discusses the importance of focusing on high leverage tasks, those that lead to generating revenue and he recommends making an A list, a B list and C list. Nothing new here but as a blogger, are you sure you’re spending your time on the most important tasks? I know many of us could use some help in this area.

Suggested Tasks to Outsource

Have you spent days trying to format an eBook or tweaking a theme? Nathan recommends outsourcing these and other tasks:

• Guest posts (from others to your blog)
• Web Design/Graphics
• Sales Copy
• E-Book Formatting
• Custom Coding/HTML
• Blog Posts/Content (Niche Blogs)
• SEO
• PPC

Own the Night

He has a section titled How to Be Like Batman in which he lists 5 lessons we can learn from the superhero. One of them, #4 is Own the Night, which highlights the importance of using our evenings to advance our goals.

Every one has 1 or 2 hours a day they can use to work on those things that really matter to them. I’d like to add to that Own the Weekends and Holidays.

If you dream of making money online or starting a business then be like Batman and own your time. Use evenings, weekends and holidays to advance your goals.

There’s a lot more goodies in this eBook (I’ve only read up to page 58) but I couldn’t wait to share this on my blog. On my next post I’ll present highlights from the last 30 pages.

I’d like to end my review with an inspiring quote from the book:

Never Give Up

Fatigue, depression, doubt, cynicism, skepticism, hunger, thirst, lack of patience, you name it, you’ll deal with it. Whenever you feel like you aren’t going to make it, realize that you are in the moment that separates the quitters from the winners. You have to be the person to believe in your vision, even if the rest of the world has given up.

I highly recommend you grab a copy of Claiming Your Destiny and keep it handy for those days when you may feel a bit discouraged and need a little lift.

Related Post

Claiming Your Destiny Review – Part 2

What I’ve Been Doing

Recently I purchased a domain for a niche site and I’ve decided to focus on it for the next few days. I usually tend to underestimate what it takes to launch a site from scratch. I love writing and adding images to a site while I detest installing plugins and doing all the behind the scenes SEO setup.

Buying a Domain Name from an Individual

For this new site, I bought a domain name from an individual using the services of a domain escrow company called www.escrow.com.

The domain transfer went smoothly and both seller and buyer (me) were pleased with the speed of the transaction.

Here’s how it works

1. Contact the domain owner and offer to buy his or her domain name. If the seller agrees, go to escrow.com and write your information.
2. You then enter your payment information. I used a credit card for added protection in the event something went wrong. I also had to fax a copy of my credit card to Escrow for verification.
3. The seller was notified of the payment and was told to begin the domain transfer process.
4. I registered with a hosting company (big mistake! should have stayed with Bluehost) and set up a hosting account for the new domain.
5. I accepted the domain via the hosting control panel.
6. When the domain was completely transferred to me and I knew everything was ready to go I accepted the domain in Escrow at which point, my funds were released to the buyer.

Total time elapsed: Less than one business day! We started on Friday evening. Nothing much happened over the weekend. On Monday morning we started the process and at 9:00PM that same day I emailed the seller: “it was a pleasure working with you”.

In case you’re wondering, all these steps were beautifully orchestrated by Escrow via email. You don’t have to wonder what’s happening or what you should be doing. They take care of all the notifications.

The Lesson

One of my favorite quotes from Albert Einstein is “Smart people solve problems geniuses avoid them”. I braced myself for 1 to 2 weeks of delays and problems and I Googled “How to buy a domain name without getting screwed” (that’s how I got the tip about using Escrow).

The buyer asked me to pay him via Paypal and then he would do the transfer. When I suggested we use a domain escrow instead he agreed and everything worked out fine.

Ok, back to plugins…