Author Archives: Ileane

Gurus and Evangelists – 6 Creative People to Watch in 2010

Posted on 09/04/2009 | 13 comments

Vote on Blog Engage[tweetmeme source=”ileane” style=”compact”]I’ve known about blogging since it became a cyberspace phenomena over a decade ago, yet this is my first blog.  I figured out that what I needed was an internet guru or an evangelists to inspire me.

Web Analytics

Web Analytics

Before you start thinking that this is a religious post let me give you some examples.  One of my favorite bloggers is the self-proclaimed Web Analytics Evangelist for Google Avinash Kaushik. Avinash has lots of great video tutorials that explain why you need web analytics in the first place and how you can get the most out of using it. I realize that his  video presentations are what initially captured my attention. I must be a visual learner, because I won’t even subscribe to a podcast unless it’s a video podcasts. I’m also fond of Avinash because he turned his blog into a book and all of the proceeds are donated to charity.

When it comes to gurus I have four that I watch faithfully every week.

Mr. Excel

Mr. Excel

One is Bill Jelen Mr. Excel.  He stands head and shoulders above the rest because he will explain any and every feature available in Excel that you could possibly imagine and if you go to his website you can download his books for free.  That is something so rare that it cannot go without mention.

The other three gurus are all rolled up into one funky, little podcast called Photoshop User TV. The Photoshop guys are very talented and you can watch the podcast just for laughs.

Photoshop User TV

Photoshop User TV

They give step-by-step instructions to help you manipulate images on a whole different level then what you might expect.  But in contrast to Mr. Excel they don’t give many books away for free.  Don’t get me wrong, they have a contest or two every week and the winner gets a free magazine or a subscription but their book sales punctuate every podcast.

Yesterday Word Press gave me a glimpse of the blogosphere guru I’ve been longing for Timothy Ferriss. I watched this awesome video Blogging Without Killing Yourself that gave me insights and a fresh approach to blogging.

Tim Ferriss

Tim Ferriss

I might end up finding some other blog evangelists in the coming weeks, but I’ll never forget Tim because he was my first. I also found out that he has a talk on www.TED.com called Smash Fear, Learn Anything and I now I’m truly hooked. Tim is author of bestseller The 4-Hour Workweek, he’s credited with coining the phrase lifestyle design, has over 57,000 tweeps, and he is on the list of 20 People That Started as Bloggers, Who Are Now So Much More.

I’ll blog more about www.TED.com Ideas Worth Spreading, in a future post because I think you’ve had more than enough of gurus and evangelists for today.

Smooches!

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Ode To My Podcasts – 11 Top Rated Podcasts on iTunes

Posted on 09/02/2009 | 6 comments

I’m an iTunes junkie.  The music player is great, yet to be honest it’s the podcasts that I overdose on.

iTunes

iTunes

Today I have a total of 818 not including the 3 that are downloading as I write. “Wrote a poem about it, wanna’ hear it?? here it go!”

I Get Exercised each week with Miss Dina Prioste,

Watch Mr. Excel where Bill Jelen’s the host.

Dekepods feature R-rated content mixed with a funny song,

Russell Brown’s Photoshop tips are always the bomb.

Chaz’s Yogamazing helps me practice every imaginable pose,

Creative Cow has got you covered, from your head to your toes.

Bert Monroy creates pictures of  Times Square, Shrek and the stars,

JPL keeps me current with Spirit, Opportunity, and Mars.

Scott, Dave and Matt are the 3 Photoshop guys,

No More Boring Fitness has me totally stretching my thighs.

One can master all the new software watching Lynda.com,

Got more to tell you, but this ode’s getting way, way too long.

I know just what you’re thinking, “She sure loves her podcasts”,

Now it’s your turn to comment and don’t make it your last!

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Credit Scores Gone Wild – 6 Reasons To Revamp The Credit Scoring System

Posted on 09/01/2009 | 3 comments

Vote on Blog EngageIt’s always been said that if you have good credit you’ll be offered lower interest rates because you’re considered a low credit risk. As a result, over the years many of us have spent countless hours and exorbitant fees trying to repair our credit reports. Last year we were hit by this current financial crisis and, in-turn the credit card companies began raising interest rates, even for those of us that were previously considered low risk. The logical conclusion here is that banks can raise your rates whenever they want; your pristine credit rating ain’t worth diddly.

My question to you is, why do we need those credit reporting agencies anyway? Oh yeah, that would be: Equifax, TransUnion, and Experian. Let’s review a few points:
  1. The 3 agencies spew out different – often conflicting information on your report
  2. One out of the 3 has to be more accurate than the other 2
  3. Very often we end up with wrong information appearing on our reports that we need to have “fixed“
  4. It’s no secret that these 3 agencies are flawed, (isn’t that the reason we have 3 in the first place) so let’s “fix’ them and the methods they use to collect the data
  5. If we need to rely on credit reporting agencies can’t we have just one that is accurate at least 90 – 95% of the time? Come on people this is American right?
  6. Bottom line – what’s the difference when it seems the lending institutions can basically charge whatever interest rate they want whenever they get ready to anyway??
Credit Basis

Credit Basis

I know that there is someone reading this thinking that I’m out of my league and I don’t know how devastating it would be to change the current system. If you happen to be that person, I say to you, the next time you get your free annual credit report, and if you find no erroneous, outdated or just plain old wrong data on all 3 of them, watch out your interest rates are about to go up!

EXAMPLE: On September 1, 2009 Michael Jackson’s credit scores were reported by TMZ as 592, 575 and 524. (R.I.P. King of Pop)

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Shout out to the “Come over Brotha” – 5 Ways To Spot A Loser

Posted on 08/30/2009 | 25 comments

Vote on Blog EngageMy tagline reads “Insights on love, music, money and lifestyle design”. Yet I must admit, that I haven’t blogged about love much, so this post is overdue.

Long time ago, my friend and I came up with a term to describe some of the men we were dating back in the day. We call them “Come over brothas”. Well we didn’t exactly use the word “brotha” but you get the point…I’ll be nicer now than we were back then.

Don't tell him to "come over"!

Don't tell him to "come over"!

Here’s a typical scenario: You meet a nice guy and you decide to invite him into your home. The first time he shows up he is truly on his best behavior. He says the nicest things and behaves like a complete gentleman, “You have such a lovely home, thank you for inviting me over”. You ask him if he cares for a glass of wine (but you really want to know if he is a drinker or not) and he says, “No thank you, can I just have a glass of water if you don’t mind?”.  The evening goes well and now you’re thinking “hmm, this might work out”.

The next time he calls and asks if he can “come over” you are a little excited and with out thinking you say “Sure, come over tonight.” When he arrives he’s a little hungry. You make him a sandwich and this time he agrees to have a small glass of wine to wash it down. Once again, you have a delightful evening and possibly one or two more before you figure it out. By the fifth visit, the “come over brotha” rears his ugly head.

He comes by without calling, not only is he hungry but he’s funky and thirsty from playing ball, he heads straight for your refrigerator, opens it without asking and says “How come you ain’t got no beer in here? What’s up wit dat?”  He grabs your remote, changes the channel from the program you were watching, and just then his cell phone rings and he leaves the room so that you can hear the TV.

Read How To Spot Him

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Passwords For Days

Posted on 08/24/2009 | 12 comments

I recommend that you start making a list of your passwords.

I’m not saying that you are forgetful or that you have CRS (can’t remember sh**) like me, I’m warning you ahead of time that you’re going to be signing up for a bunch of stuff and you will need to keep track of passwords and personal URLs somehow.

You see here’s the thing, in order for us to navigate the sea of social media tools and discover what works best for our individual needs we are gonna have to sign up for stuff.  I know, I know you don’t feel like it, neither did I as first.  I felt like, this is such a pain in the neck, can’t I just to go on Face Book or Twitter and call it a day. But after I blogged about social networking resourses two weeks ago, I thought it made sense to follow up on my own advice. After all, Face Book and Twitter are great ways to stay in touch with friends and followers but I wanted to take it to the next level. I wanted something more mainstream.
THERE IS MORE TO THIS KEEP READING

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Social Networking Resources

Posted on 08/16/2009 | 3 comments

Do you ever wonder what those tiny little icons at the end of an article or post on the web mean and what they are used for?  I put together a listing of the most common tools used for promoting with today’s social media.

According to Wikipedia, social media is defined as media designed to be disseminated through social interaction, created using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques. Social media supports the human need for social interaction with technology, transforming broadcast media monologues (one to many) into social media dialogues (many to many)…

Here is the list I have compiled so far, minus a few well known omissions (MySpace and FaceBook). Let me know if you think other tools are worth adding.

Delicious http://delicious.com/

Is social bookmarking. Search the biggest collection of bookmarks in the universe. All your bookmarks in one place. Bookmark things for yourself and friends. Check out what other people are bookmarking.

Digg http://digg.com

Digg is a place for people to discover and share content from anywhere on the web. As a user, you participate in determining all site content by discovering, selecting, sharing, and discussing the news, and videos that appeal to you.

Flickr http://www.flickr.com/

Share your photos (and video) and watch the world.

Kaboodle http://www.kaboodle.com/

Kaboodle is a social shopping community where people discover, recommend and share products

Linked In http://www.linkedin.com/

Relationships matter. Over 40 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities

Continue reading →

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Get Clusty

Posted on 08/15/2009 | 4 comments

SEARCH ENGINE TIP:
Are you tired of hearing about the Google vs. Microsoft Bing/Yahoo search engine tug-of-war?  Well, maybe you aren’t yet, but you will be soon.  Do yourself a favor and try Clusty. 

CLUSTY

CLUSTY

Just try it for a week or two for your searches and you’ll see what I mean.

See related article here.
See another related article here.

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Trane-ing Day

Posted on 08/14/2009 | 6 comments

Body and Soul is my favorite song right now. Several artists have recorded the tune and here is my list in order of preference: Carmen McRae – Live at Newport, Esperanza Spalding – singing in Spanish Cuerpo y Alma, and the instrumental rendition from virtuoso saxophonist John Coltrane. [tweetmeme source=”ileane” service=”ow.ly]
Carmen is one of the greatest jazz singers of all time and Esperanza is new on the scene and surely destined for similar fame and fortune. John Coltrane was something else entirely.

John Coltrane

John Coltrane

Like many artists who aren’t truly appreciated until they’re gone it was 40 years after his death (1967), when in 2007 the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded Coltrane a posthumous special citation, for his “masterful improvisation, supreme musicianship and iconic centrality to the history of jazz”.

Wow, that’s a mouthful, 40 or more years overdue, yet an appropriate, awesome accolade. I can’t say enough about how his music has affected me. It has become part of my psyche. I rise in the morning with the sound of his horn dancing around in my head, before I even realize that I am awake. His outpouring of harmony inspired me to write song lyrics for the first time in my life.

Coltrane’s unique brand of saxophone playing is referred to as “sheets of sound”. When I first heard the technique I asked a friend “who else is playing sax on that tune ?”. Remarkably, there was no other sax player. Only Coltrane.  Man, how did he do that?! 

Over the last few years I have come to learn why Trane’s music is in a class all by its self. You’ll never be bored listening to this great body of work. There’s classic jazz, smooth jazz, avant-garde, be-bop, ballads, spirituals and plenty more. John dedicated the 40 short years of his life to perfecting his craft. I’m hooked, so I’m going to finish listening to The Wise One again before I turn in. In the morning I want to hear Afro Blue, and of course Body and Soul.

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Trane-ing Day Part 2, My Favorite Things 1961

Posted on 08/13/2009 | 9 comments

[tweetmeme source="ileane" service="ow.ly"]

In Trane-ing Day you learned something about John Coltrane, now what are your favorite things?

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Amateurs! How 1 Amateur Beat-Out Hundreds Of Rocket Scientists

Posted on 08/10/2009 | Comments Off on Amateurs! How 1 Amateur Beat-Out Hundreds Of Rocket Scientists

Amateur! Yo, I’m talking to you. [tweetmeme source=”Ileane”]

Aren’t we all amateurs at one thing or another at any given point in time?  Being an amateur can be a very good thing.  What I like about using the word amateur is that right from the door, you admit that you don’t know everything.  For some of us, making the admission alone is hard to do. We use the term “rocket scientist” to describe someone we consider to be really smart, a master at whatever it is they do. Yet it’s a beautiful thing when the student can show the master a trick or two.  Like in the case of amateur astronomer Anthony Wesley who on July 19, 2009 saw something that none of the experts at NASA or ESA (European Space Agency) were paying attention to, simply because they weren’t looking.  Anthony made a major discovery because he realized that a new dark “scar” that appeared on the surface of Jupiter meant that something had hit the gas giant.

Since no one else was watching, we still don’t know if it was a comet or an asteroid or something else entirely.  We may never know.  They speculate that if an object of similar size smashed into the Earth “there would be serious regional devastation or a tsunami if it hit the ocean”.

I don’t know Anthony, yet I am so very proud of him.  Lil’ ol’ Anthony sitting in his backyard in Australia with his 14.5 inch telescope, watching Jupiter, only the biggest planet in our solar system.

It just goes to show the tremendous impact we amateurs can have on the universe.

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