• Merriam-Webster releases new words to its Collegiate Dictionary including…
  • Air quotes: My brother makes fun of me whenever I do this — which ain’t often.
  • Edamame: What took so long?
  • Fanboy
  • Malware: Yuck, but at least we all know what its name is other than dirty rotten stinkin’ software.
  • Mental health day: Gee, “I don’t feel well” doesn’t cut it anymore? Or is it a way around that so you don’t curse yourself? After all, “mental” doesn’t have to mean a cold.
  • Texas Hold’em
  • Webinar: Now maybe we’ll stop hearing the 20 variations of this.
  • And for the most interesting one: mondegreen. Along the lines of a malaprop except in this case it’s when someone misheard something not the unintentional misuse of a word or phrase (pornography instead of photography).
• Making the Most of Tough Times: Never, ever become complacent.
• Copyblogger Tagline Clinic
• 21 Ways to Make Your Blog or Website Sticky
• Copywriting: The 10 Magic Words
• 3 Steps to Successful Writing on the Web

And for fun because we’re allowed…

• 70 Amazing Business Cards
• Rice Field Art
• Kid safe browsers
• Fuel Savings Calculator
• Vaudeville Nation: I loved reading about vaudeville and catching TV programs about it. I still have an old tape from 1983 called Parade of Stars Playing the Palace. I wish it would come out on DVD as the tape is full of commercials and weather interruptions. Plus, the quality is going downhill.
• Take a Staycation as an alternative to pricey vacations.

It may be this blog’s birthday, but the presents will go to readers like you. All the birthday details here. Here are the games up for winning!

• Reflexive contributes a total of 10 copies of three games! Some are for Mac.
  • Big Kahuna Reef 2: 4 copies (2 Mac and 2 PC)
  • Ricochet Infinity: 2 copies (PC)
  • Airport Mania: 4 copies (2 Mac and 2 PC)
• One full copy of Orchidia PC game from Joyboost. See Meryl’s Orchidia review.
  • One full copy of Spinword PC game from Joyboost.
  • One full copy of Astraware Classic Collection, which includes Astraware Sudoku, Astraware Solitaire, and Astraware Board games. Astraware is one of Meryl’s favorite — if not the best — developer of handheld software.
• Two full copies of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93.
• Unicorn Castle from PC game from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93.
• One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger. My Magic Farm review.
• One Alawar PC game package including full copies of Virtual Farm, Curse of Montezuma, and Alex Gordon.
• Full copy of First Class Flurry PC game from Chanon Sajjamanochai of Viquagames. Meryl’s First Class Fury review.
• Full copy of Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper PC game from Mark Kanter of Bang Out Games. Meryl’s Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper review.

Wow! Meryl is overwhelmed at the generosity of donated prizes and guest blog posts in celebration of this blog’s 8th birthday on June 1, 2008. Thank you for helping me (the blog) give her a little break. If only she would take a vacation OUTSIDE of Texas. That’s another battle.

There’s still time to contribute a prize (Help us get Meryl to jump out of a plane! Keep reading.) or to an article. Here are the upcoming guest bloggers and prizes.

Guest Bloggers

• John Hewitt of poewar.com
• Janet Lee Johnson of janetleejohnson.com
• Peter Bowerman, the The-Well Fed Writer author
• Yuwanda Black of InkwellEditorial.com
• Paige Eissinger, one of 2smartchix.com
• James Chartrand, one of the menwithpens.ca
• Bob Younce, The Writing Journey
• Jamie Grove, How Not to Write
• Anne Wayman, The Golden Pencil
• Yvonne Russell, Grow Your Writing Business
• Jon Phillips of Spyre Studio and Freelance Folder
• Joanna Young of Confident Writing

Prizes – Almost $6000 as of June 25

If we get We received $5000 worth of prizes by June 1 (birthday), so Meryl has to jump out of a plane at Skydive Dallas. This is no easy task for Meryl as she’s afraid of doing such a thing (she’d do the tandem jump complete with a video). Looking at a later June date.

She did it!

Now $5000 sounds impossible, but we have two sponsors that are coming who should help things along.

Prizes added June 26, 2008

It’s never too late to add a prize… well, maybe 2009 would be ridiculous.

• Softpowerhouse donates three copies of PowerReuse, a document assembly software designed for boosting productivity for professionals.

Prizes added June 16, 2008

• Five copies of Andy King’s Website Optimization.

Prizes added June 4, 2008

• Four copies of Business Daffynitions: Humor from the Workplace, one copy of Wit and Wisdom of a Regular Joe, and one copy of New Idiot-Proof Guide to Customer Loyalty from Joe Heuer, the Rock and Roll Guru.

Prizes added June 2, 2008

• Two full copies of Unicorn Castle Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger.

Prizes added May 29, 2008

• Custom blog design by Jon of Spyre Studios and Freelance Folder. Prize includes:
  • typical blog layout.
  • design mock-ups (usually two to four designs)
  • coding: css and xhtml valid
  • Provides the design files (PNG/PSD if needed)
  • Built on WordPress (the person would need his/her own domain name and hosting plan)
  • 30-day support + PDF ‘how your new WP theme works’
  • WP installation and plugin configuration
  • link in the portfolio section of spyrestudio.com
• Reflexive contributes a total of 10 copies of three games! Some are for Mac.
  • Big Kahuna Reef 2: 4 copies (2 Mac and 2 PC)
  • Ricochet Infinity: 2 copies (PC)
  • Airport Mania: 4 copies (2 Mac and 2 PC)

Prizes added May 23, 2008

• AWAI’s Nick Usborne’s Million Dollar Secrets for Online Copywriting
• How to Make a Living as an SEO Writer from Yuwanda Black
• Access to Teaching Sells for two months from Copyblogger Brian Clark
• 80 Photoshop Brush Packs from Jacob Cass
• Five ebooks on writing from Anne Wayman

Prizes added May 22, 2008

• $800 DVD set from marketing extraordinaire Seth Godin. The guy admits he skipped the books so he can get Meryl closer to jumping off a plane (yes, the plane is way up in the air, not on the ground).
• AWAI’s Accelerated Program for Six-Figure Copywriting
• $450 basic WordPress customization package from Kim Beasley.
• One $100 gift certificate to Amazon from Mark Wegner of The Diamond Games — the guy responsible for me starting the separate games section.
• Lifetime subscription for RadioTime.com RedButton software — TiVO for radio where you can pause and record live radio.
• One full copy of Orchidia PC game from Joyboost. See Meryl’s Orchidia review.
• One full copy of Spinword PC game from Joyboost.
• One full copy of Astraware Classic Collection, which includes Astraware Sudoku, Astraware Solitaire, and Astraware Board games. Astraware is one of Meryl’s favorite — if not the best — developer of handheld software.

Original Prizes

• One $80 gift certificate to Amazon from Meryl ($10 for every year)
• Full version of Microsoft Expression Studio 2.
• Tara Calishain, two books
• Peter Shankman: signed copy of his book, Can We Do That?! Outrageous PR Stunts That Work–And Why Your Company Needs Them
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media’s Luke Wroblewski’s Web Form Design.
• Lou Rosenfeld: Rosenfeld Media’s Indi Young’s Mental Models.
• Ted Demopoulos: Two copies of Secrets of a Successful Blogging System digital audiobook with What No One Ever Tells You About Blogging and Podcasting (in which Meryl appears).
• Problogger Darren Rowse provides a copy of his book, Problogger: Secrets for Blogging Your Way to a Six-Figure Income.
• Men with Pens: one custom banner for a blog or website created to the winner’s specs and preferences, valued at $200. They ask for a 7 to 10 day turnaround from the point that the winner transmits her/his specs.
• Two full copies of Magic Farm Game PC games from Oleg Kuznecov of Meridian’93. One copy for a reader and one copy for a guest blogger. My Magic Farm review.
• One Alawar PC game package including full copies of Virtual Farm, Curse of Montezuma, and Alex Gordon.
• Full copy of First Class Flurry PC game from Chanon Sajjamanochai of Viquagames. Meryl’s First Class Fury review.
• Full copy of Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper PC game from Mark Kanter of Bang Out Games. Meryl’s Lex Venture: A Crossword Caper review.
• Microsoft Expression Software (more details coming soon).

How You Can Win

The contest has three (ouch, not “two” as I put in the first entry — Boy, I was not off to a good start with my notes about this. I also messed up the email I sent to friends and colleagues about this.) parts: Readers, prize sponsors, and authors.

1. Readers get entries for a chance to win prizes by simply leaving valuable comments, linking to this blog and its sponsors from their own blog, and telling others about it by Stumbling, Digging, and all that (keep track of what you do so you can get an entry for each one!).
2. Readers part 2: Some prizes will be available only to those who comment. These prizes are those with specific requirements that not everyone has. For example, software may only be available for Windows users and not Macs. I will put these up in a blog entry and anyone who comments within five days of the blog post (to be fair to those on vacation) will get an entry for the prize of the blog entry. These are the ones where you can win more than one! Comments must be at least 30 words to ensure they’re valuable to readers.
3. Prize sponsors: Automatically get 10 entries for donating a prize and links to their sites. Readers gain entries for linking to sponsors, which means more linkage!
4. Authors get entries into author-only prizes for their contributions. Articles can cover any of the following:
   1. Writing
   2. Freelancing
   3. Marketing
   4. Web site design, usability, etc.
   5. Technology

Participation rules coming soon. Meryl needs to take care of her clients. Here are the entry guidelines. If you want to contribute a prize or an article, we’d appreciate hearing from you by June 1.

Here are the guidelines for articles — and yes, it’s OK to have a longer article, but we’re trying to respect your time.

Guest Blogging Guidelines

* 400-800 words
* Self-promotion / bio goes in last paragraph (About the Author).
* Material must be original (it’s OK to re-use material with modifications) and first published on this site. 30 days after publication, you can re-use the article anywhere you please.
* I reserve the right to edit or reject the article for any reason (rare as most of you are great writers.)
* Due June 1 (willing to negotiate if needed).

The list will be updated as more offers come in. Thank you to everyone who stepped up.

Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year already available at a discount! The following games will be discounted this week on Game du Jour, the ‘one-deal-a-day’ website dedicated to indie and casual games:

Mon. May 5th: 60% off on The Butler Did It!

Tue. May 6th: 40% off on Build-a-lot 2: Town of the Year

Wed. May 7th: 60% off on SnakeTris

Thu. May 8th: 60% off on Frutti Freak

Fri. May 9th: 50% off on 5 Star Mahjongg

Sat. May 10th: 50% off on First Star Software’s Greatest Hits

Sun. May 11th: 50% off on Towers

Every new release of an application adds more features, but not always for the better. Get ten tips for getting feature frenzy under control. In writing an article about social network sites, I looked at over two dozen sites like MySpace, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Sermo, TravBuddy, MyCreativeCommunity. Wikipedia provides a list of many social networking sites.

I noticed most specialty social network sites do one thing well — they provided the appropriate features that fit their site’s purpose and target market. They didn’t try to capture the features everyone else has.

The following is a shorthand version of Frank Spiller’s excellent post:

1. Get task-focused.

2. Map business requirements to user tasks.

3. Talk about user tasks not features.

4. Design for probability not possibility.

5. Validate features with user tasks.

6. Map features to tasks.

7. Create a feature-task matrix.

8. Think scenarios first, use cases next.

9. Use tasks to test features, and features to test tasks.

10. Use diary studies to evaluate feature adoption over time.

Remember that users won’t necessary use every feature in an application. It costs to add a feature — so make sure it’s worth the cost.

The Microsoft Office Team reports that Microsoft has added 58,000 words to the US English dictionary including the following:

* Possessives, i.e. the possessive form of words that already were in the lexicon
* The most frequent male, female and last names from the 2000 Census data and other sources. Examples: Brianne, Britta, Carissa, Carolyn, Carmela
* Company names, such as Verizon, WorldCom
* Names of autonomous Native American governmental units
* Names of the official UN countries, as well as most languages in our market areas, e.g. Indic language names
* Place names, such as all world capitals and other major cities, e.g. Wuppertal
* Miscellaneous words that were missing from the lexicon: e.g. Camus, Wyeth, Woolf

Office 2007 also comes with a new feature Microsoft refers to as contextual spelling. It watches for correctly spelled words that aren’t the right word based on the sentence. We all do this. I know the difference between your and you’re; too, to, and two; and their and there — it I’ve caught myself typing the wrong word many times. Why does this happen? I guess we get a word in our heads and our fingers spew out the wrong word.

If you write, “You’re shoe is untied,” Office 2007 will mark “you’re” as an error. Nice feature to have! Even us grammar geeks make mistakes and sometimes we don’t see it when proofing.

The Reviewing toolbar is one of the most valuable features for writers and editors as well as for teams who create and edit documentation so they can see what changes have been made and include comments. I’ve always had it included in my default toolbars, so it appears every time I use Microsoft Word.

Lately, it hasn’t appeared every time and it was driving me insane especially since there is a gaping spot where the toolbar usually lives. I tried the usual stuff to make it stick, but darn thing kept taking off without my permission. Word simply isn’t keeping my personalized settings.

So time for Microsoft’s Knowledgebase, my first destination for Microsoft-related problems. I could do a search on the web to find the same solution elsewhere, but I prefer to start with the official source as Microsoft’s KB has helped me resolve many problems.

I found the Your toolbars are missing… entry and it resolved the problem. What worked is Step 2: Rename the Global Template, and then going back to Turn On the Default Toolbars early in the document.

If you have any customized buttons in the toolbar, it will disappear. However, when renaming the normal.dot file, make sure you give it a new name per the instructions. I called mine normal2.dot. I was able to import the macros from there into the new normal.dot.

See larger image

To import the macros, click Tools, Macros, Organizer, and Close File (on the left). Click Open File and select the renamed normal.dot (normal2.dot in my case) and click Copy.

Update on 08-03-2006: Danged steps didn’t work. It’s broken again. Will report a solution, if I find one.

Once I got out of automated mode, I woke up and realized that I often use Paste Special with unformatted text when working in MS Word. It became a habit like CTRL+V, CTRL+X, and CTRL+C. To do Paste Special without formatting, I clicked CTRL+V to paste, selected the Paste Special icon (smart tag) and selected Keep Text Only. Another way to do a Paste Special is to click Edit, Paste Special and select your preference.

Why do all that when I can create a macro and put a button on the toolbar? That’s exactly what I did. It took a few days to get the hang of using the button instead of going the old-fashioned route. I can’t remember where I found the tip and searching for it didn’t jog my memory.

A Microsoft article shows part of the way. The difference is that it changes CTRL+V to paste unformatted text. There are occasions when I do want it to paste formatted text, so I don’t want to change CTRL+V. The button works great. I had thought about making another keyboard shortcut, but I didn’t want to risk erasing another shortcut in the process.

If you prefer to create a keyboard shortcut, here are the Windows keyboard shortcuts. However, these don’t consider the shortcuts that come with specific programs like SnagIt. I use CTRL+SHIRT+P to snag an image.

Here are the steps from the Microsoft article with some minor changes:

1. Start Word.
2. Click ALT+F8.
3. In the Macro name box, type PasteUnformattedText.
4. Make sure that All active templates and documents is displayed in the Macros in list, and then click Create. The Microsoft Visual Basic Editor appears.
5. Directly above the End Sub statement in the Sub PasteUnformattedText() section, type (or copy and paste) the following line of code:

Selection.PasteSpecial DataType:=wdPasteText

6. Click ALT+Q to return to Word.

The next steps add a button to the toolbar.

1. Right-click the toolbar and select Customize.
2. Ensure the Commands tab is selected.
3. Select Macros and locate Normal.NewMacros.PasteUnformated.Text (part of it might be cut off).
4. Click and hold Normal.NewMacros.PasteUnformatedText and drag it to where you want it in the toolbar.
5. Right-click Normal.NewMacros.PasteUnformatedText (if nothing happens, click the Customize window and right-click again — keep the Customize window open).
6. Change Name to whatever you want, so you can shorten it.

You can use an image instead, if you prefer. In this case, while the Customize window is still open:

1. Right-click the new button you created, select Change Button Image, and pick an icon.
2. Right-click the button again and select Default Style. Only an image appears. You can leave it as image and text, if you prefer.

You might want to do a Save All after finishing this. See this post for an explanation and how to do it.

When I had to re-install everything on my computer, I opted not to install a few programs including the one I used to manage spam. It wasn’t bad, but I felt it wasn’t as effective as it could be. I rarely hear about a 100 percent effective spam solution, but I had enough of the tool.

I’ve been using Thunderbird for email and am happy with it. I also use Outlook for one of my clients and it drives me insane. It has its good and bad points. Anyway, Thunderbird’s spam and scam manager doesn’t work worth spit. I was spending too much time going through my inbox to weed the junk.

Went to Thunderbird’s forums to see if anyone found a solution. Came across open source POPFile. Figured I’d look into it. Where has this baby been??? Being an organized freak, it’s a great fit.

Buckets o’ mail

It took me a little time to figure out this buckets business. But now I rarely have anything coming to my Inbox. Everything goes into a bucket or “folder” as most of us call ‘em. Before using this app, I had all newsletters and general emails go to a folder, junk going into another folder and everything else (if the email did its job, it’d be personal emails) in the inbox.

Now, I have four folders: personal, occasional, newsletters, and junk. The only emails that land in the inbox are unclassified emails. I get about one every few days.

You can set up POPFile to modify the subject header or leave it alone. Some of you probably get junk email that gets [spam] added into the header. It’s trouble rather than helpful. Sometimes, without thinking, I hit “reply” and the recipient person would see [spam] in the header. That’s why I have such suspected emails going into a junk folder. Why clutter the inbox with [spam]?

Control Center

Any time I see an email appear in the wrong folder, I go into POPFile’s browser-based (which looks great in Firefox, by the way) Control Center and reclassify the bucket.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

The control center also shows a dashboard. You can see how much you email you get for each bucket. The data also shows the number of false positives and false negatives. Currently, the application has a 92% accuracy (it was 76% on March 30). The accuracy continues to climb. You can reset the data anytime to get fresh numbers. According to the help docs, it takes about 1000 emails to get the accuracy rate up to the 90s.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Magnets, Configuration, Security, and Advanced Features

Magnets resemble message filters except you use them in POPFile instead of your email client. You can have POPFile look at the To, From, CC, or Subject for a value that you enter. If the value matches, then it goes into the selected bucket.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

In Configuration, change skins, language, History page view, and POP3 preferences.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Security contains options for server operation, remote servers, automatic update checking, and reporting statistics to POPFile. Here you can set up an interface password.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Advanced tab lists words that POPFile ignores. You can add and remove words from the list. You can also adjust the parameters here. For ultra-geeks, this app has command-line options.

View larger image in a pop-up window.

Requirements:

* The latest POPFile release.

* An e-mail account that uses the POP3 protocol (most accounts do, although you can’t use POPFile with web-based services like Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail without extra software)

* Around 10 MB free disk space

Final Notes

After using it for two weeks, I’m happy with the app. Email also downloads faster than it did with the previous app (both used the local host). POPFile is a Sourceforge project, therefore it’s free. Its Web site is available in the following languages: Norsk, Deutsch, Portugues do Brasil, Francais, Dansk, Espanol, Arabic, Japanese, Taiwanese, Chinese, and Korean.

It comes in two versions: “an easy-to-install Windows version, and a cross-platform version for technically-minded users.”

With all the price comparison sites available, I’m posting them all in one post because it’s just tough to keep up and remember them all. The first three places I go whenever I shop are Froogle, Pricegrabber, and ISBN.nu.

I don’t just buy from the place offernig the best price. It also depends on the business’ reputation. If no ratings are available for the business, then I search elsewhere like the Better Business Bureau and BizRate. Offertrax lets you store, compare and receive price alerts.

Pronto is a Firefox shopping comparison plugin.

Another thing to consider is the best time of the year to shop for certain items. MSN Money lists the best times of the year for the following:

Air conditioners best time: winter

Airline tickets best time: Depends

Big appliances best time: September and October

Bicycles and outdoor gear Best time: January

Boats best time: January, February and March

Cars best time: September

Cell phones best time: any time

Computers best time: July and August

Cookware best times: April and May; October and November

Furniture best times: January and July

Gas grills best time: winter

Jewelry best time: Avoid the holidays, Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day

Linens and bedding best time: January

Mattresses best time: always

Real estate best time: spring

Recreational vehicles best time: fall and winter

Toys best time: October and November

TVs and home theaters best time: winter holiday sales and January

Vacuum cleaners best time: April and May

Wedding best time: winter

Most Often Used

Froogle results look like typical search engine results. It also explores sites that often don’t appear in the comparison shopping site lists. I’ve found some great deals here.

Pricegrabber is the one I go to the most outside of Froogle. I think its comparison chart is the easiest to read and scan.

PriceScan is similar to Pricegrabber and easier to read than the ones listed further down.

ISBN.nu.

Books

AddAll does books, music, movie, and magazine.

Best Book Buys also compares book prices as well as music, videos, electronics, and bikes.

BookGenies

BooksPrice searches for lowest price on new and used books, CDs and DVDs. Also includes a feature for finding the best price when buying more than one book since shipping costs could be lower due to the combined order.

FetchBook

ISBN.nu does only price comparisons for books. While I find better deals through Amazon Marketplace or elsewhere, this is a great starting point.

Local Stores

SalesHound.com

ShopLocal

General Price Comparison Sites

The following sites are similar in how they produce their results and they don’t have a neat chart like Pricegrabber or MySimon. Their results are similar to Froogle, but I think Froogle provides better results. I recommend using a few sites when looking for a specific item as every site links to different stores.

CostHelper reports what people are paying.

DealTime

MySimon is one of the first price comparison sites I’ve used. Its site doesn’t look good in Firefox.

PriceComparison

SearchAllDeals searches all deals and coupon sites in one shot.

Shopzilla

SortPrice

Yahoo! Shopping

Coupons and Discounts

Most of these sites are junky or have a ton of popups, but I’ve found coupons here.

BigSavings

CoolSavings requires free registration.

CouponHaven

CouponSaver:

CouponSurfer

Current Codes

eCoupons

eDealFinder

FatWallet

KeyCode Coupons

NaughtyCodes

Rather-Be-Shopping.com

RetailMeNot

SmartSource – grocery coupons

Online Deals

These sites list bargains and big sale items. The best place is Woot, but it only shows one item per day. Once in a while, it’ll post a new item as soon as one sells out for a certain amount of time (usually 24-hours).

DealHunting

Deal of Day

Hot Deals Club

SlickDeals.net

ugenie provides discounts on bundled items.

Discounted Shopping Stores

American Science & Surplus – science bargains

Cheap Tickets – travel

Dawdle: Buy and sell new and used games

Deep Discount DVD for DVDs.

Expedia Travel – travel

Farecompare – travel

Farecast – travel

Free CD Software

Kayak – travel

Lowestfare.com – Travel

Overstock

Priceline – travel

SmartBargains

Updated: September 29, 2009