5 Useful Laptop Accessories For Your On-The-Go Needs

Posted by Kelly Brown at 12:50 AM
May 272010

Owning a laptop computer is fast becoming more of a need in today’s world than simply a preference. More and more people are making the switch from the traditional desktop computer to a laptop because they need to have access to documents and files while they’re out and about. Being able to take your computer with you wherever you go makes it so much easier to share important documents with colleagues or treasured photos and videos with your family and friends. But no laptop is complete without some useful laptop accessories to compliment your on-the-go computing experience. Below are some items that I have found to be handy to have around.

Headset

image A headset is a device with both earphones and a microphone. Imagine you’re having lunch at your favorite restaurant or diner, but the music there doesn’t suit your personal taste. You can plug in your headset and listen to your own music that you have stored on your laptop. A headset is also useful in making calls while you’re away from home using a VoIP service such as Skype. If you’re an online gamer, a headset is a “must have item” for communicating with other players.

Port Replicator

image A port replicator is a device that allows you to connect your laptop to a number of non-portable devices such as printers, scanners and monitors. This is a nice item to have because instead of having to connect all these devices to your laptop, you just connect them all to the port replicator, and then when you get ready to use one of them, you simply connect your laptop to the port replicator – saves you a lot of time and trouble.

Portable Mouse

image If you are like me, and just cannot get used to your laptop’s touchpad, a portable mouse comes in very handy. I chose to go with an optical mouse rather than the trackball kind because it’s more lightweight, navigates better, and you never have to open it up to clean it. You will need to make sure the mouse you choose has a USB cord. This makes it faster and easier to plug it in whenever you need it.

Laptop Sleeve

image Along with my laptop, I carry a variety of items, around in a backpack – stuff like pens, keys and other things that can scratch my computer. To avoid this, I use a laptop sleeve. Laptop sleeves are smaller and less bulky than regular carrying cases, therefore you can use them and still fit your laptop in a backpack or other bag along with all your other things.

Extra Battery

image While some laptop batteries last for several hours, many of them do not. For instance, mine only lasts about 3 or 4 hours. If you plan to use your laptop away from home and electrical outlets for an extended amount of time, having an extra battery is the only way to do it. Let’s say you’re sitting on the beach, working on an important project. Chances are, you won’t want to leave the beach and interrupt your work just to charge your battery when the juice runs out. Laptop batteries are not cheap, but having an extra is well worth the price in the long run.

These are items that I personally feel the need to have around. Are there others that you find useful that aren’t listed here? If so, please feel free to list them in the comment section below.

Computing, Technology View Comments Tagged with: , , ,

ReviewStream Pays You To Write Reviews About Anything

Posted by Kelly Brown at 5:38 PM
May 262010

tmp6CECWriting online is a great way to pick up some extra cash. It can also be extremely fun, especially when you can write about things you know and love – or hate, whatever the case may be.

ReviewStream.com is a nice little website where you can write short reviews on anything and get paid for it. When I say anything, that’s exactly what I mean. They accept reviews on any product or service you’ve used, any place you’ve visited, your favorite or least favorite websites or apps – simply put, the sky is the limit.

Currently, the regular rate for reviews is $2.50. If your review doesn’t fit their regular rate criteria, you can still submit it for the “bulk rate,” which is 1/5 of what the regular rate is. The rates are subject to change at anytime, but you can always check the ReviewStream homepage to see what the current rates are. Minimum payout is $50 via Paypal. ReviewStream doesn’t have a log-in screen or membership. When submitting your reviews, you will be asked for an email address. This is the email address where you will be contacted about review acceptance or rejection and it should also be the email address that you use for your Paypal. Make sure you use the same email address for all of your reviews, because accounts cannot be merged.

Work-From-Home, Writing View Comments Tagged with: , , ,

FaxBetter Allows You To Receive Faxes Over the Web

Posted by Kelly Brown at 11:01 PM
May 252010

FaxBetter is a free fax to email service that allows you receive faxes over the Internet without a fax machine.

How It Works
When you sign up for a FaxBetter account you receive a free toll free fax number. When documents are faxed to this number they are emailed to you and appear in your FaxBetter account within minutes.

Easy as Email
FaxBetter requires no hardware and there is no software to install.

Searchable Faxes
FaxBetter’s exclusive searchable fax emails can be quickly found using your email search.

Spam Protection
FaxBetter’s exclusive searchable fax emails also allow your existing email spam protection to filter spam faxes.

Secure Faxing
FaxBetter lets you keep your faxes private by sending them directly to your email account instead of laying around on a public fax machine.

Start Faxing Now!
After you signup, your free toll free fax number will be ready to use immediately.

Sign up now at FaxBetter.com

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Late for Lost

Posted by Kelly Brown at 2:31 PM
May 242010

My favorite con man - Josh Holloway - Lost Ok, so I waited until the very last minute to start watching Lost, but I’m slow that way sometimes. Besides, I like it better when I don’t have to wait a week to see what happens next. And with this show, I’d lose my ever-lovin’ MIND if I had to wait that long!

To be honest, I don’t watch much prime time television. The last television show I got interested in was House. And it just drove me crazy having to wait a week, or possibly a month or more between episodes, so I stopped watching it, (though I do sometimes catch-up on it whenever Bravo has one of its House marathons). Yes, I know. Patience is a virtue…yadda, yadda, yadda. I’d just rather wait until there are at least two or three seasons of a show, so I can watch episodes at Hulu at my own leisure.  That way, if I want to stay up till 5am watching Lost episodes, (which I did last night), then I can. Remember the “good ole days” when we were forced to wait? Wasn’t that fun? Thank the gods for the interwebs, (and websites like Hulu).

If you’re like me and never watched Lost, you should go to Hulu and give it a go. It is one of those shows where you really get to know the characters. You get glimpses into each one’s past, and then watch how they evolve and adapt to life on the island. Some of them change drastically over time. It’s fascinating.

As you probably guessed, my favorite character is that of Sawyer, (played by Josh Holloway, pictured above). Yeah, he’s a bad boy, but what can I say? Maybe it’s because he’s Southern, like me, and I can relate to that aspect of him. I dunno. There’s just something about him I like. Remember, though, at present, I am only a couple of episodes into season 2, so my feelings could change later on. We’ll just have to wait and see. Who is your favorite Lost character and why?

If you like action and suspense, Lost is definitely the show for you. It seems something terrible happens to one of the characters in each episode. It never, ever gets boring. In fact, you will probably need to make sure you’ve taken your blood pressure meds before watching. I am always “pumped” from start to finish. So…um…be careful if you have issues there. Ha! No, I’m just kidding (maybe). I’ve never heard of anyone having a heart attack or stroking out while watching Lost, (though, I guess it could  have happened…I dunno).

Since I’m only a few seasons in, last night, I thought I may have made a huge mistake by watching the Lost series finale, because I was totally LOST! But, then I found out afterwards (via Twitter) that even people who had watched the entire 6 seasons all the way through were asking, “WTF?” So I don’t feel like I ruined it for myself. Why did I watch it? Because I knew there would be spoilers all over the internet, TV, etc. for the next month (or three) and I’d never be able to escape it. So, I watched it with my husband, Charlie, who, by the way, had never seen a single episode! Afterwards, he posted this about it on his Facebook wall:

I’m officially lost! Probably, shouldn’t have picked the series finale as a starting place! LoL, I’ve decided I’m seriously going to watch the show in reverse! Instead of putting pieces together, I’m going to scatter them about!

LOL! Bless his heart.

In conclusion, I would like to say that when I’m done with Lost, I’ll be starting on Roswell, then Fringe, and then Carnivale. If you have any suggestions for me, please leave your feedback in the comments section below. I’d love to hear what you’re watching!

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Become An Influencer and Get Paid At MyLikes

Posted by Kelly Brown at 4:06 PM
May 212010

What Is It?

MyLikes is an innovative advertisement platform launched on January 6, 2010 that allows Twitter users and bloggers to become influencers and endorse products and services that they like and get paid for it on a cost-per-click basis. Influencers choose Likes that are relevant to their audience and recommend them to their followers, readers, and subscribers. The more influential one is and the more relevant their Likes, the higher the cost per click.

How It Works

  • Find and choose from a list of relevant advertisers that are useful to you and your audience.
  • Create Sponsored Likes and post them to your Twitter feed or your blog.
  • The more influential you are and the more relevant your Likes are, the higher your cost per click.

MyLikes continuously measures your relevance based on the number of clicks generated relative to the size of your audience. They will then adjust your cost-per-click to reflect how relevant you are to your audience.

Ways To Post Your Likes

  • Tweet your Likes – If you like an advertiser you want to Tweet about, you simply create your Tweet and MyLikes will post it on Twitter for you. You can schedule it to be posted at any time you want.
  • Embed a MyLikes widget- Choose the size, color and font to match your website and cut and paste some code to your blog. You are allowed to pick your own settings such as the number of Likes you want to show in the widget, the maximum number of Likes, only Likes from certain topics, number of comments, etc. MyLikes will automatically pick the regular and Sponsored Likes from amongst all your likes based on these settings.
  • Post your Like as a blog post – You may also post Likes as blog posts. MyLikes currently supports Blogger and gives you code for other platforms. These posts will be clearly marked as sponsored.

How and When You Are Paid

  • Paypal
  • Fridays

In order to be paid by MyLikes you will need to specify a PayPal account. Once you’ve done that, any pending balance over $2 will be transferred to your account each Friday. (Any funds accrued on Friday will be transferred the following Friday).

MyLikes allows you to donate your earnings to charity. They currently work with ten popular charities and you can choose to donate your earnings to any one of them. The name of the charity you choose will be prominently displayed on your profile.

For further info, check the detailed FAQ section.

Blogging, Paid Blogging, Social Media, Sponsored Tweets, Work-From-Home View Comments Tagged with: , , , , ,
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