As Long as There’s a Christmas

The first few lights glow brightly,
as you watch the season start.
You know you should be happy,
but don’t feel it in your heart.

Instead you think about a time
when someone laughed with you,
and the love you shared then filled your soul.
But too soon it was through.

So Christmas comes with sadness,
and a yearning deep inside,
a thirst for love and peace and hope
that will not be denied.

Late one night you hear a voice,
so soft, and without blame,
and then, surprised, you realize,
He’s calling you by name.

“I know your hurt and loneliness,
the heartache that you bear.
I listen and I cry with you
through every single prayer.

“I promised in the manger
and fulfilled it from the cross.
I built a home that’s filled with love
for all those who are lost.

“So let me come and heal your heart
and give you rest within.
For my way is kind and gentle
and will bring you joy again.”

His words still echo through the years,
a vow that He made true,
“As long as there’s a Christmas,
I will be in love with you.”

–Jack Zavada

Merry Christmas!

May You Know the Joys of the Holiday Season All Throughout The New Year!

TwitterFox is a Firefox extension that notifies you of your friends’ tweets and status on Twitter and was previously known as TwitterNotifier.

It sits in your status bar, where you will see a small “t” icon and is very unobtrusive. You can set it up for different time intervals and it will display tweets from those you are following.

You can also enter and post your own tweets right from your desktop by typing into a small text input box without having to login to Twitter. And it works with multiple Twitter accounts if you have more than one.

I love this little plugin and it works like a charm. If you’re a Twit and use Firefox this is a must have!

You can get TwitterFox by CLICKING HERE.

Everyone by now has heard of Google and their search engine. It is the internet giant of giants. When it comes to marketing with Google, it can be very confusing and also empty your wallet if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Google Adwords is a Pay Per Click advertising method of generating traffic and sales by displaying ads with specific keywords in the search engine results. Every time someone “clicks” on your ad and goes to your site you are charged whatever the click rate is.

There are many ebooks, software, training and membership sites for Google Adwords that you can purchase, but there is also free training from Google itself. The Google team has created over 6 hours of training videos that show you how to be successful using Google Adwords. Who better to teach you than the Google Team itself ???

So before you go out and start purchasing all the “Beat Google Adwords” programs and guru ebooks, take a look at what Google has to offer and you may find that to be all you need. Use your head, do your research, study the market and then set up an Adwords campaign using the information Google has provided. You just might be surprised at the results.

To learn more just go to:

http://www.google.com/adwords/learningcenter/

Free Digital Photography Guide – Get Your Questions Answered

With the holidays just around the corner, everyone will be either pulling out their digital cameras to take pictures or may receive one as a gift. If you want to learn how to take better digital pictures, no matter the lighting or subject, here is a handy free 28 page guide that will help you with many of your digital photography questions.

It includes answers to questions like:

- What is the biggest mistake made by beginning digital photographers?
- How to decide on the right digital camera.
- How to decide is a picture is worth taking.
- How to get the white balance right.
- How to take clear shots for indoor sports.
- Advantages/disadvantages of raw vs. Jpeg format photographs.
- What are the best settings for low light/nighttime conditions?
- What is hyperfocal distance?
- How to take a photo of a glass sign or a framed picture in glass
- How to get high contrast natural light black and white pictures.
- Time lag from the time you take a picture until it is on the memory card.
- How to avoid redeye in dim light.
- Small object close up pictures.
- How to photograph gemstones and jewelry.
- How to take a picture with both strong sun and shade.
- Capturing personality in photos of people.
- How can I understand depth of field?
- Settings and techniques for photographing birds and wildlife.
- How to take pictures into the sun and avoid lens flare.
- How to take good pictures in the snow or on the beach.

To get your free Digital Photography Guide just
RIGHT CLICK HERE and “Save Link As”! NO PERSONAL INFORMATION REQUIRED!

(Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader which can be downloaded for free here.)

Now go take some great pictures!

Every now and then a good webmaster needs something to dress up or freshen their site. Fortunately, there’s a lot to choose from online. The internet is loaded with gadgets and widgets and all sorts of stuff that will make any site a better experience for your visitor. One such site that offers gadgets for the webmaster is SmartWebGadgets.com, all of which are free. For a fee you can have them customized to your specs. Some of the gadgets include articles, weather, news feeds and entertainment. Just choose the one you want, and they will provide the code and all you have to do is copy & paste the code into your site. Couldn’t be any simpler. So if you’re looking for something new to add to your site, I suggest you take a look at what they have to offer. May find something you like.

You can see a sample below. In keeping with the theme of this site, I chose the “freeware” gadget.

I needed to do a screen capture on some folders for a site I am working on, and not wanting to invest a lot of money for something like Camtasia, I went searching for a free program. Afterall, I do love “free” and that’s what this site is all about.

It didn’t take long for me to find this program, ScreenHunter 5 and it looked promising so I downloaded it. I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it was to use and in a matter of minutes, including download and install, I had captured the screen images I wanted for my site.

Installation was a breeze, program started right up with no problems, has a friendly user interface and did the job without any glitches. You can set the output folder and the documentation is readily available in the event you need help, altho I doubt it cause it’s so easy to use. The program will sit in your system tray and can be set to “standby” and with just a click of a ‘hotkey” (F6) you can capture your active window, full screen, or just crop out a section of the window.

Free screen capture details from the site:

• Capture any part of your desktop, a window or full screen with mouse pointer
• Save captures in BMP, JPEG and GIF file
• Hotkey from F1 to F12 and Print Screen key
• Automatic file naming

If you have a need for this type of software I highly recommend trying ScreenHunter 5, you will be pleasantly surprised! They also have Pro versions, but I found the Free version to be more than adequate. You can find out more by visiting this page:

http://www.wisdom-soft.com/sh/sh_free.htm

If you’re looking for software or programs for whatever reason or function, you might find this site very interesting. It’s called Giveaway Of The Day and everyday they offer FREE licensed software you’d normally have to buy otherwise. It changes everyday, with a new listed program. You can subscribe to their mailing list if you want to get an email everyday telling you what the download for the day is. (Which is what I did so I don’t waste time going to check out a program I’m not interested in.)

Some of the downloads are not that impressive, but there are some real gems being offered now and then. I’ve already downloaded a few even tho I haven’t used some of ‘em. But I grabbed them while they were free and will install them when I can.

The site will list the download with a description and people can comment on them. If it’s a “dud” you will know it… visitors and users are very quick to give their opinion and let you know whether or not it’s worth downloading.

Anyway, if you’re interested and want to try some new software, just go to:

http://www.giveawayoftheday.com/

It’s 100% free.

Enjoy…

A young man named John received a parrot as a gift. The parrot had a bad attitude and an even worse vocabulary. Every word out of the bird’s mouth was rude, obnoxious and laced with profanity.

John tried and tried to change the bird’s attitude by consistently saying only polite words, playing soft music and anything else he could think of to “clean up” the bird’s vocabulary.

Finally, John was fed up and he yelled at the parrot. The parrot yelled back. John shook the parrot and the parrot got angrier and even ruder.

John, in desperation, threw up his hands, grabbed the bird and put him in the freezer. For a few minutes the parrot squawked and kicked and screamed.

Then suddenly there was total quiet. Not a peep was heard for over a minute. Fearing that he’d hurt the parrot, John quickly opened the door to the freezer.

The parrot calmly stepped out onto John’s outstretched arm and said, “I believe I may have offended you with my rude language and actions. I’m sincerely remorseful for my inappropriate transgressions and I fully intend to do everything I can to correct my rude and unforgivable behavior.”

John was stunned at the change in the bird’s attitude. As he was about to ask the parrot what had made such a dramatic change in his behavior, the bird continued, “May I ask what the turkey did?”

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!