Tricia's Musings

Random Thoughts about life in general, living in the big city of Toronto



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Some very cool applications and websites I learned about at Blogworld

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I’ve been busy trying out some new software, sites and applications that I learned about either at Blogworld, P0stiecon or through others that were also at those conventions and I must say I’m quite thrilled with these new products and websites!

One new application I’ve been trying out on a few of my sites in the last week or so is Triggit. You can add links to Amazon, Commission Junction or wine related products as well as add photos from Flickr and Youtube videos on the fly directly from the public/published portion of your site. I wrote about my experiences with Triggit on Webstyle if you’d like to learn how to use this great new application.

I’ve also been granted an access key of my own to give out to anyone that would like to become an Alpha tester for Triggit. Just create a login for the site and when asked for an access key type in tricia. Give it a try and tell me what you think.

Next …

You might have noticed in some of my recent posts that the photos I’ve used have a Photrade watermark on them? Yes, I’m using a new site to store some of my photos.

I met Andrew, the CEO, of Photrade on Saturday Nov. 10th at the Bl0ggers Ch0ice Awards at TAO. He saw my husband carrying our camera and stopped to talk to us about photography and his new website, Photrade, which is still in Beta.

The beauty of Photrade is that visitors to the site can browse your photos and purchase them as prints, have the photo placed on a mug or turned into a Canvas. Photographers can set their own prices for prints, mugs and canvases.

Also, every time your photos are viewed on the site and elsewhere if you say embed them in your posts you’ll get paid. You’ll also make money if the photos are clicked on. There’s no information on the site yet (that I’ve found) that states how much you get paid per view or click but I’m willing to give this site a try.

One feature that I like is that when I do embed one of my photos in a post it is water marked. That will help prevent photo theft and if someone really does like one of my photos well, they can buy a copy for themselves. I don’t know how many times people have asked me if they can buy my photos or if I could please “provide them with a high definition copy” … why? I don’t know. I don’t mind if someone wants to buy a photo, but to ask outright for a high def copy without explanation as to how it might be used? No.

I’ve only just started using Photrade and I think it will take a while to upload a decent amount of photos to my gallery/portfolio, but once I’ve used it for a while I’ll write more about the site and let you know if I think it’s going to be a winner or not.

At this time Photrade.com is a closed, invite only beta project. I had one invite and I’ve already used it, however I expect to get more invites in the near future. If you are a photographer and would like to try the site out let me know.

Check out my Photrade home page if you’d like.

And finally …

Fix8 is an application that I’ve yet to try, but it looks totally cool! If you use your webcam for chats or perhaps to create podcasts I think you’ll love Fix8.

So what is it? Well … if your like me and you’d like to use your webcam more often but perhaps you’ve still got bedhead you can mask your image with some very cool avatars. The avatars cover your face and move when you move. They are even expressive – so if you smile or raise your eyebrows your avatar does as well.

I believe you can even use Fix8 to create fantasy backgrounds behind your image and add fun accessories that your avatar might use while chatting too.

Here’s a description from their site:

Fix8 is a free and easy to use interactive communication tool that animates expressions and movements in real-time over 3D avatars. All you need is your PC, a webcam, and a dash of creativity. Use a wide mix of creative tools and accessories to “dress up” and create animated videos for sharing. You can also share avatar animation with friends in real-time IM webcam chat.

I’m sure you could think of lots of different ways to use Fix8. You can watch one of their demo videos to see some of the avatars in action if you’d like.

Chris and I spent quite a while talking with Peter Singer, the director of Fix8 affiliate partners group and he was telling us how Fix8 is being used on television series in China and gave us some ideas as to how we can use Fix8 in our videos and for live streaming.

Once I’ve experimented with Fix8 I’ll post more about it and maybe I’ll even post a video using Fix8.

You can download a free copy of Fix8 directly from the Fix8 website.

I’ve got a few more interesting applications and sites to tell you about and I’ll get to that soon. In the mean time have fun exploring the sites I’ve just told you about and give the applications a try!





If your in debt perhaps debt consolidation would help

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Have you ever been in debt? I have thanks to school loans and the struggle I went through during the first year that I had started my business. I suppose I’m still in debt since I have a mortgage, but as far as I’m concerned a mortgage or a car loan is a good debt if you’re able to manage it.

The kind of debt that gets people into trouble is when they take out too many loans and get in over their head, or perhaps when they have a number of credit cards and they’ve reached their spending limit on all of them or worse gone over the spending limit. That’s when debt is out of control.

Did you know that the average American family has a debt of over $9,000 due to credit cards which are an unsecured debt?

If you’re in debt it might be time to look into Debt Consolidation. Nationwide credit counseling agency specializes in helping people who’ve accumulated debt.

The agency can help you Consolidate Debt and as a result lower your interest rates.

Visit the Nationwide credit counseling agency website and you’ll find information about debt consolidation, articles on do it yourself debt consolidation, money and debt videos, debt and credit calculators and information that will help you reach a Debt Settlement with your lenders. They’ve even got a forum where you can learn more about debt consolidation and talk to others who are struggling with debt.

Obviously the benefits of debt consolidation will be that you’ll reduce the interest that you’ve been paying, the credit collection calls will end, your total payment amount will be reduced and the best benefit of all will be that you’ll probably be able to sleep better at night because your stress over your financial situation will be reduced or perhaps even eliminated.

When I was in debt I didn’t even think about looking into debt consolidation. I know now that it would have solved a lot of my problems and my stress. I hope to never get into bad debt again but if I were to I’d consider consolidation all of my debt.

Upgrade your small businesses phone system

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If you own a small business and have been thinking of upgrading your telephone system to one that includes voIP technology you might want to visit Neobits and have a look at their Talkswitch phone systems.

Neobits specializes in providing phone systems to small businesses. When I say small businesses I mean small, with perhaps only two employees to larger small businesses with up to 300 employees who would use the system. They currently have over 3000 customers nationwide. Their clients belong to just about every field of business from retail to medical to construction and so on.

Neobits is able to perform local installation services in every zip code across the nation and their customers can choose from dial tone and or broadband internet services.

Now I’ll bet you’d like to know what kind of telephone brands are available with their phone systems? Well, Neobits offers major brand name telephone systems from Panasonic, Avaya, NEC, Allworx, Talkswitch, Epygi and several others.

Neobits also offers a complete range of telephone system accessories such as headsets, corded telephones, surge protection, cordless phones, voicemail systems and more. While you are on the site you can visit their forums or read their client testimonials.

You can use Spock to easily search for people and information

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Have you visited Spock yet?

Spock is a people and information search engine. You can use the site to find information and links to sites with more information about your favorite celebrities, politicians, authors, musicians, places, or countries or a whole variety of things for which you can think to create a search.

When you visit Spock.com you can easily search by the name of a person or by the “tag” that might have been placed on listed information. A tag could be the type of industry the person works in or the form of entertainment they perform just as guitar player, entertainer, musician and so on.

Really the best way to tell you about Spock is to show you how it works. I signed up at Spock in order to access the sites full features. Did I mention that Spock is completely free to use?

If you’ve been reading my site for a while you know I have a great variety of interests from photography to gardening to music to being sure to watch my favorite television shows.

I enjoy the television show Heroes. I like most of the characters on the show equally so I decided to just do a search for Heroes on Spock. The first page of results were individual listings for many of the main in the cast of Heroes. The other pages that came up had other people with the word “heroes” associated with them such as David Bowie.

I decided to narrow down my search by clicking on the tag within the listing for Masi Oka otherwise known on the show as Hiro the time shifter. I clicked on the tag “Heroes (TV Series) Cast”. This gave me four pages of results with 39 listings for all the actors that take part in Heroes. I bet you didn’t know there were that many actors in the show did you?

Beside each actors listing there’s a series of tags that have been left by Spock members. Some of the tags lead to movies or other TV shows that each actor has been in, in the past or to news stories, interviews or possibly fan listings for each star.

Now if I knew of something that suited the listing that came up in my search, perhaps a movie that an actor had stared in or a wiki page I could easily add a tag of my own by clicking on the “add tag” link underneath each listings tag area. Site members can click on the little arrow beside each search result tag in order to vote yes or no as to whether the tag is appropriate for the listing.

Besides tags, when you do a search on Spock, you’ll also see a short description beside each search result, as well as links for the full tag listing, photos, related people and news. Below that you’ll find links to web pages that have information about each search result.

Hopefully you can see how one simple search could set you off on a journey either exploring other areas of Spock or sending you out into the Web where you’ll find more specific information.

I’m sure that you can see how the results of a search on Spock might be helpful to you, but what else can you do with it? Well, you can email the results to yourself or to someone else who might be interested in the information that you found, or you can click on the word “text” which is to the right of the search results and convert the listed result into a simple list that only includes a link to the information page for each search result on Spock.

There is one thing that you might want to try if you’d like to share the information that you found with your readers. You can create a widget in order to show you search results within a blog post.

When you click on the Widget you’ll be taken to a page where you can get the code for a flash or a javascript widget.

If you’re having a cosmetic surgery treatment make sure it’s with the best

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As you might remember, my husband and I have a PVR so we tape a lot of television shows and watch them when we have time. Well, last night we got around to watching the previous evenings episode of CSI New York. Did you see it? It was a great episode about a hit woman using Second Life to pick off her targets.

One of the things that caught my eye in that episode was that one of the characters, who ended up being the first victim on the show, had had cosmetic surgery to enhance her looks. I don’t even know if the procedure that she supposedly had done is even a real cosmetic surgery procedure or not, but apparently it was a special type of surgical thread used give her a minor face lift. If this is a real treatment it looks like it would be minimally invasive and as a result much easier and faster to have done!

At this point I can say that I’ve never had any cosmetic surgery done, but as the saying goes “never say never”. I mean, there are so many different cosmetic surgery procedures and treatments available these days that I’m sure more and more people have decided to have a little work done to either correct a flaw, enhance their looks or minimize the effects of aging.

Certainly if you are going to get any form of cosmetic surgery done you should be sure that you have your work done by a certified cosmetic surgeon. I mean it’s your body we’re talking about here – you want to have someone that specializes in the type of treatment you are having done and who has performed the procedure successfully time and time again. Right?

Take for example the medical staff at the SurgiCare clinic. This company has clinics throughout the UK and all of their doctors are GMC certified. SurgiCare employs some of the most respected surgeons in the UK. Looking at their site it sounds as if they put their patients first. They provide their patients with a thorough consultation that is meant to not only find out what the patient wants to have done and what their expectations are, but also to inform the patient of their choices and the total costs of the treatment.

The Surgicare Clinic website has quite a bit of information about all of the procedures and treatments that they specialize in. Looking through their site it looks like they do everything from Smart Lipo treatments to chemical skin peels, derma fillers, treatments for excessive sweating, facial contouring, acne treatments, laser hair removal, Lip enhancement, microdermabrasion, muscle relaxation treatments, semi permanent make up, teeth whitening, wrinkle treatment, weight loss surgery and an interesting sounding procedure called Non surgical 3D face lift.

If you’ve considered having a cosmetic surgery procedure done and you live in the UK do visit the SurgiCare website to see what they can do for you and to read up on the various treatments.

In the meantime I’m going to try to find out if the cosmetic surgery that I saw on CSI NY is really real. I’m intrigued!

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