You have to listen to this... Virtual Haircut!

Just a fun thing this Memorial Day evening...

This only works with headphones... You MUST wear headphones for it work...

I was moving my head around and FREAKING OUT. Check this out...

http://3gpvids.com/virtualhaircut.mp3

This is so creepy! The whisper thing made me jump about 3 feet.

Planning to Fail

I'm doing some work on the ole Ink Think business plan right now, and found this little slideshow interesting.

Inc.com put together a slideshow of the top 10 business plan mistakes. I like the simple language and how it manages to boil down essential points into a paragraph or two.

Live Support!

No, I'm not talking about Microsoft Office Live!.

I'm talking about when you need help. I may work on a computer all day, but I most certainly do NOT like talking to them! I recently found a solution to this dilemma--a nifty little website called "Dial-A-Human".

Dial a Human maintains a list of customer service phone numbers for all sorts of companies, from AAA to XM Radio, and information on how to circumvent the computer phone system and get a live body on the phone.

Start-Up Snafus

An interesting article on start-up mistakes at accoutingweb.com . They apparently "digested" it from CNN Money, but I couldn't find the original.

The one thing I would really like to see more of is articles like this aimed specifically at solo operators and SOHO business owners who provide services rather than products. Our business model is completely different, since what we are selling is ourselves.

Good Balance Keeps Workers on the Straight and Narrow

The “2007 Deloitte & Touche USA LLP Ethics & Workplace” survey results were released last month.

According to the survey, most people (91% of those surveyed) feel that employees are more likely to behave ethically in the workplace if they have a good work-life balance.

For more detailed information, check out D&T's press release about the survey results here.

The main thing I took away from this article is that people are most likely to behave unethically at work as a result of dissatisfaction with their job, and the #2 factor in job satisfaction is... work schedule flexibility.

Ah, it's good to be a VA.

Amazing People...

Every now and then I read a story that just makes me stand up and say, "Wow, that's an amazing person." I've been following this story for the past two months and it truly IS amazing.

http://1000daysatsea.blogspot.com/

Reid and Soanya are attempting to spend 1000 days at sea, without stopping for supplies or anything else. Wow. That's pretty impressive. They are on a sailboat or something - I know very little about boats, honestly.

Anyway... this guy, Reid, has apparently been dreaming of this for a very long time, he set a goal and he went after it. Even now -- it appears after just about 2 weeks underway they hit a freighter and something major broke, but they are just drifting and making the repairs - he has NOT given up on that dream.

What's your dream? Would YOU be willing to give up easily on it?

That, my friends, is determination.

Kudos to both of them and may they have nothing but the very best of luck on the rest of the journey. I'd love to see them fulfill it!

Ubu..Huh?

Ubuntu.

Ever heard of it? I hadn't until a couple of days ago and now I'm hearing about it in a lot of places.

Ubuntu is a Linux-based OS (operating system) and Dell (them again!) announced on May 1st that they are partnering with Canonical, Ubuntu's creators, to offer the OS pre-installed on some of their systems.

Time to Pay the Postman!

The latest postal increase, coming fairly hard on the heels of the last one, goes into effect tomorrow, May 14, 2007.

For more information on the new cost of doing (mail) business, including new shape-based pricing info, head over to the USPS website. I've linked some of the highlights for you:

USPS Short Announcement
USPS Long Announcement
USPS Rates & Fees Page
USPS Updated Domestic Mail Manual (html version)

One interesting thing that I didn't see mentioned anywhere until I started digging around on the USPS website is the new "Forever" stamp. According to the Postal Service, this Liberty Bell-bearing stamp will be good for a 1-ounce or less domestic letter in a standard envelope "forever" no matter what price changes may occur in the future. I think I may have to get me some of these...

We Want Firefox! We want Firefox!

That's what users have been telling Dell, anyway. Gee, they sure are in the news a lot since their shake-up a couple months ago, but most of the news has been good (unless you're one of the people they laid off!).

Dell's customers have been using their new feedback forum, IdeaStorm, to tell the company what they want and a LOT of them want Firefox to come pre-installed on Dell computers. Some have even suggested it be pre-installed as the default browser, to increase awareness of browser alternatives.

I can actually see the sense in that last one, though I doubt Microsoft would think much of it. Until a friend introduced me to Firefox a couple years ago I had no idea what else was out there. I knew IE and had an ancient, horrible experience of AOL's proprietary browser and that was it. I didn't even know Navigator was still around, and had never heard of Opera, because IE is the default browser on computers.

Dell customers want to change that, and I wish them luck, since I'm sure MS will fight it tooth and nail.

Retro OS

Dell Computer, the 2nd largest PC seller in the world, resurrected XP last month.

After Windows Vista was released in January of this year, the computer manufacturer, like most, started phasing out Windows XP as an OS option on new systems. Until their customers begged them to bring it back.

Read the BBC News article here.

~~~

I can talk about this one from personal experience. We recently bought another version of XP after my husband's new computer (with Vista) wouldn't play nice with, well, practically anything. Online video wouldn't play. Ok, some of it may work--All I know is we had to watch the episode of "LOST" that we missed while the satellite down on my laptop because the player on ABC.com doesn't work with Vista. My husband is a gamer and had tons of problems getting his enhanced audio/video to work right with Vista.

I'm sure there was more, but I tuned out the list of reasons why I needed to go spend another $200+ on a different OS for his new computer while he was just winding up.

The thing that upsets me is that MS issued an apparently flawed product (TWO service packs in the works before it hit the shelves? Anyone else think they should have, I dunno, WAITED til it worked right?) and is, par for the course, going to make us take it. After January 2008 Microsoft will no longer sell new Windows XP licenses to manufacturers.

So go get a spare copy or two now - if you read Tom's recent tech tip on Vista you'll see that XP is likely to be supported by third parties long after Microsoft stops selling it.

Dinner in SFO

Just a quick photo from my adventure at the IVAA Summit in San Francisco last week...

While there I had dinner with Donna Sooter, Cindy Opong, Debbie Tester, Lana Newlander and Lanel Taylor. Great conversation and a great time!

Deductible Dog?

Are you sick of tax talk yet?

Well, maybe this one will bring a smile to your face. Did you know that sometimes, just sometimes, you can deduct your dog?

Of course it has to be a trained "professional" dog (i.e. I don't think I can write off my Lab just because she guards my home office while living in the house...lol.) .

For more info on cutting your taxes with your canine, check out the accoutningweb article on the topic here.

Icon War... the Icon's Story...

Candy here with your monthly time-waster...

Okay... this must make me a HUGE geek, but I thought this was one of the funniest things...
http://www.xs4all.nl/~jvdkuyp/flash/see.htm

Last Minute Filers Beware!

If you remember, I recently posted (4/20) some outside reviews of tax software for folks who filed an extension for 2007.

Looks like you guys are the lucky ones.

Apparently lots of last-minute filers, who didn't file an extension, got caught up in an Intuit uh-oh. The full NYT article is here. The gist of it is, despite--they thought--overestimating the servers they would need to handle e-filing, Intuit's servers slowed to a crawl on April 17th, resulting in late filing for tons of people and a special arrangement with the IRS to let Intuit customers who were e-filing have a couple more days.

If I understand the article properly, a large part of the slowdown was tax professionals using Intuit's products for pros who were bulk filing lots of returns at the last minute.

Competitor H&R Block swooped in to offer people money to switch, and pointed out that they did NOT have any server problems on tax day.

If you did file an extension, you might want to think about getting to work on your taxes before October 15th--just in case.