Never Forget Your Anniversary Again!

I found this surfing the other day. It's a great organizational tool. And it works with one of my favorite things ever - Google Calendar. It's Remember the Milk.

This handy little application can be used to manage tasks, organize, and schedule. It's also a reminder service that works with AIM, Gadu-Gadu, Google Talk, ICQ, MSN, Jabber, Skype, and Yahoo.

You can share your to-do list or calendar with your colleagues or friends, and add tasks to your list wherever you are, either by email or by phone.

And now a new feature, accomplished through a partnership with Google Gears, allows users to access Remember the Milk offline. So if your computer's down, or you're somewhere without Internet access, you can still access your stuff. Cool...

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Will We All Be Retiring to Panama?

I've been hearing a lot lately about the wave of Americans retiring to Panama. In fact, there was a piece last night on some news show that got me thinking - will we all be retiring to Panama? I have to tell you, it sounds enticing. According to Panamainfo.com, Panama is one of the safest countries in the world and has long had a large American presence.

You can live there at a fraction of the cost of living here in the U.S. The currency is the U.S. dollar, and Panama has the best retiree incentive program in the world - discounts on everything. It also has a great and affordable health care system, which makes it very attractive to retirees.

And if that isn't enough to pique your interest, Panama makes it easy for retirees to move there. Retirement visa requirements are minimal. You only have to demonstrate that you're bringing in $500 a month for yourself and an additional $100 a month for each dependent.

Americans can buy property in Panama and have the same rights as native born Panamanians. Travel back and forth is convenient, with flights to Panama from seven major U.S. cities, all within a travel window of three to five hours.

Finally, it's just a beautiful country with lush mountains and white, sandy beaches. It's the new Florida. And it looks like the wave of the future. Sign me up!

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Study at MIT for Free

"Education is the movement from darkness to light."

Allan Bloom, author of The Closing of the American Mind

I'm always looking for online courses and classes. But most of the time, they're unaffordable. So I was really excited to find out that MIT - that's right, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - offers free online courses in everything from aeronautics to urban studies. These are not degree-granting or certificate-granting courses. And you will not have access to the MIT faculty.

According to the web site, MIT OpenCourseWare is "a large-scale, Web-based publication of the educational materials from the MIT faculty's courses." Learners are given access to the class "syllabi, lecture notes, course calendars, problem sets and solutions, exams, reading lists, even a selection of video lectures..." These come from 1,550 MIT classes in 34 departments. The goal of OpenCourseWare is to include material from virtually all courses taught at MIT by 2008.

I'm thinking of taking the class in American Women Authors. How about you?

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Still Hanging

I'm in the process of moving from one house to another this week. So my living room is filled with boxes. I have bags and bags of dirty laundry waiting to be washed. My children keep complaining that there's no food in the refrigerator. And yet I must keep working, because the rent is still going to come due the 1st of the month. This picture sort of accurately depicts my state of mind lately. Just thought I'd share.

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Fabulous Tool for Bloggers

Thanks to Blog Avenues for this fabulous tool for bloggers and other webpreneurs. It's Website Grader. You just enter the URL of your site, the keywords you're gunning for, and your email. It will generate a report that's filled with useful information and helpful advice on how to best boost your site's visibility.

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The Britney Spears Phenomenon: Why the Inept Often Succeed

I've often wondered why it is that people of modest intelligence and talent often have great success in life, while many extremely talented people possessed of very high IQ frequently do not. You see it all the time. Britney Spears, for instance. While she's a beautiful girl, recent events seem to suggest she's not all that bright. And her singing, though adequate for its purpose, doesn't rise to the level of, say, Christina Aguilera. So how do you explain her pop career, which until she seemingly lost her mind, placed her at the top of the charts?

I think I have the answer. It's a little known phenomenon called the Dunning-Kruger Effect. And the crux of it is that people with little or no knowledge or talent believe themselves to be much smarter and more talented than they actually are. David Dunning and Justin Kruger of Cornell University did a series of experiments with undergraduates at Cornell. And the results of the study demonstrated that:

• Incompetent people tend to overestimate their skill level.

• Incompetent people are incapable of recognizing real skill in others.

• Incompetent people fail to realize how incompetent they are.

• If these same incompetent people can be trained to raise their level of skill, they then are able to realize and acknowledge their previous inadequacy.

The results of this study were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and the authors noted that: "Across four studies, the authors found that participants scoring in the bottom quartile on tests of humor, grammar, and logic grossly overestimated their test performance and ability."

What's really amazing is that people with true intelligence, knowledge, or ability tend to underestimate themselves. And the obvious result of that is they are less likely to pursue their goals, thereby limiting the possibility that they will meet with success. Meanwhile, the Britneys of the world keep getting richer. If you'd like to read more about the Dunning-Kruger Effect, the paper can be found here.

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For Those of Us Who Are Culinarily Challenged

I'm not a great cook. My sad little repertoire is limited to four or five main dishes, at the most. My kids know exactly what meal to expect at Christmas, because it's the same one they ate last Christmas, and it's the same one they can expect to see on the table next Christmas. To be honest, I just don't have time to experiment. So I stick with what I know.

But I found a list on the Net at About.com's Busy Cooks, and it's got me thinking I might try my hand at Crockpot Sour Cream and Bacon Chicken or Chocolate Almond Pastries. They just sound too good. But most importantly, they sound simple, because each recipe has five ingredients or less. The whole collection of Five Ingredient Recipes can be found here. Now if I could only pay someone to go to the grocery store for me... Have I mentioned that I have a phobia of the grocery store?

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Pimp Your Google Calendar

I mentioned in a previous post that I LOVE Google Calendar. It's clean, easy to use, and colorful. Especially great is its drag and drop functionality. But I've only been scraping the surface of what I can do with Google Calendar. There are some great add-ons that can make it even better.

You can colorize Saturday and Sunday, add events without going to the Google Calendar page, import events directly from Facebook, and basically alter its design to fit your needs. Check out the best of the user-created add-ons, thanks to Kaly at makeuseof.com.

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Moms Helping Moms Make Money

The U.S. Census Bureau notes that by 1992, women owned 10 million home-based businesses, and that today, they own 17 million home-based businesses. That's 70% of all home-based businesses. In addition, according to the National Foundation of Women Business Owners, 2.1 million of these women business owners have children. These numbers are impressive.

What's behind this boom in women-owned home-based businesses? Part of it, I believe, is a determination by many mothers to be at home with their children. But another important aspect of this societal and economic phenomenon is the explosion of the Internet into our lives, and the reach it provides to many women who want to start a business from home, but have a limited budget for advertising.

Advertising your home-based business on the Internet is far less expensive than the older traditional methods. Word of mouth is free, and it's one of the best ways to promote your home business, particularly if your business has a web presence. There are many forums where you can not only enjoy the community of other women, but also advertise your home business in your signature line.

A blog connected to your business is another great way to advertise and also network. Google Adwords is affordable for most small businesses. Business owners specify how much they are willing to pay per click by a potential customer and what words they want to generate their ad. No longer are businesses limited to a local clientele. The Internet makes it possible to reach a worldwide audience.

Most importantly though, women business owners are taking advantage of the opportunity to network with each other by exchanging links and sharing useful information and support. A great example of this is The Mom Pack, a site that's all about "Moms Promoting Moms." There you'll find everything from free web site templates to coupons to a link exchange program. And the best part, it doesn't cost a thing!

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Maybe the Housewife of 2010?

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Time Yourself!

Continuing with my earlier theme of productivity, one of the things that I find helps me be more productive in my "real" job as a transcriptionist is using a timer.

I set it for 30 minutes and start typing. When the buzzer goes off, I stop, take a break, and walk around. This is especially important if you sit at a desk all day, because of the very real risk of blood clots forming in your legs.

I find a timer makes me much more productive. It's easier to focus on your work when you use a timer. It not only insures that you're going to work for a minimum amount of time, it also lends urgency to your task. And as I said, it also reminds you to get up and stretch your legs every now and then.

There's an easy to use, free timer that I keep on my desktop. It's Cool Timer by Harmony Hollow Software, and you can download it here at Cnet's Download.com. Try it, and see if your productivity increases.

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Cool Links O' the Day

I need this one! Found a cool link for homemade Febreeze on Charlotte's Tips. She also has this great recipe for Chocolate Chip Ice Cream Pie.

Also found this site, 10 Minute Mail. They'll give you a temporary email address for 10 minutes - plenty of time to register on a site or forum where you don't want to give your real email address. Your email will be sent to a temporary web page. You can then click on any links necessary to confirm.

And finally, for you moms with younger children, there's Kids-in-Mind, a movie review service for parents. Movies are reviewed and rated based not only on the amount of sex, nudity, violence, and profanity they contain, but also on the messages they convey.

Enjoy!

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Early to Rise = More Productive Day?

I am a night owl. I love to stay up late at night reading, working on the computer, surfing the Internet. One reason is that it's quiet at my house. Everybody is in bed. And this will only make sense if you have teenagers. No one's going to call me on the phone and ask me if I can pick them up or bring them something.

I'm also more creative at night. My brain's just not working at full tilt in the morning. It's all I can do to roll out of bed, pour some coffee down my gullet, and get dressed. I do most of my best work after midnight.

But it's catching up with me lately. I'm having more and more trouble falling asleep when I finally do go to bed. It used to be that my head would hit the pillow, and ten seconds later I would be unconscious. But no more. Now I toss and turn all night until, oddly, just as I hear the first bird chirp of the morning, I fall into a deep slumber. Is the bird's chirping some type of signal to my brain? "It's okay now. You can go to sleep. Enjoy your one hour." And it's up at 6:30 a.m. to get my kids off to school.

I know the solution to my insomnia, and it's a bitter pill to swallow. The solution is to call it a night earlier, to retrain my body to fall asleep at a normal time. But it's just so hard to give up that alone time.

At any rate, I'm going to give it a go this week, and I'll report back. Zenhabits has a great article on the benefits of being an early riser. It's 10 Benefits of Rising Early, and How to Do It. I think I might have a little trouble with number one: greeting the day. A little too cheery for me at that time of day. But the rest of the tips sound doable.


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An Irresistible Offer

Just stumbled across this enticing job offer. ;)



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