A friend of mine came over the other night for a few beers and said that he was in the process of buying gold. His point of view is that no matter what the stock market does, he wants to have some real tangible gold at his home if the whole economy “tanks”.

This MarketWatch video describes a new and interesting way for folks who host private parties to walk away from the gathering with a little extra “scratch”.  So, forget Tupperware! This video talks about a new and interesting way to get your hands on the shiny stuff – er… by “shiny stuff”, I mean gold! Enjoy!  You can check out The Gold Refinery for more information.

[video]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cpc-t-Uwv1I[/video]With all the negative stuff floating around about the economy and AIG and everything else – I think a dose of Tony Robbins is what is called for… Enjoy!

62 words
This is a fun little typing application which will allow you to practice typing the most common used words in the English language and post a little badge for all to see how well you do *grins* Check it out, it is surprisingly fun and addictive! Try Speedtest out now

Ever find yourself asking, begging, pleading – “How do I Convert a pdf file into something useful like a Word document?” Probably, if you were to take a poll of HUGE annoyances for internet affiliates, publishers and business owners, this would rank right up at the top!

I absolutely HATE dealing with different file formats, then trying to find a reliable way to convert the files to make them useful to me, not only for my websites, but also, for my business.

I have been checking out some recent solution providers to this problem and have found one called Zamzar. It is currently still in beta release, but it still provides a great new service that allows you to convert files from one format to another online for free. Check it out – you may find it useful in your daily struggle to deal with the seemingly hundreds of different file formats for documents, images, videos and music files, etc.

So, you are browsing the Internet and you see a site, or article that reminds you of something you worked on a few weeks, months, or years ago.

Upon further review, you realize this is not just a common feeling of Deja Vu – this is not just a reminder of an article, but when you go back and look at your work (which is still published on your blog, or website) it is an almost exact replica – perhaps a few words changed here and there for effect. You begin to remember, the hours you spent sweating over all of the little details, making sure all of the links were live and valid, revising the article and tweaking it to make witty observations and the satisfaction it felt to realize you had created a tone with just the right amount of originality, humor, and valuable content for your readers. Not to mention the work you spent on the CSS, *.php or other formatting issues which came up to deliver the full reader experience.

You are left feeling violated and “ripped off!” What can you do? What could you have done?

Enter Copyscape – a service which not only allows you to search for copies of your page and content on the Web, but it provides many useful services. Its free services include

basic searches and plagiarism banner notices. Not only do the banners (some found placed in the article here) come in many different color schemes and sizes to fit the design of your site comfortably, but the folks at Copyscape have also centralized resources which offer information on plagiarism and a forum to network with other site owners and industry experts.

Some of Copyscapes offerings come at a very reasonable fee – I am not an affiliate of Copyscape, in fact, I do not think they offer an affiliate program, so feel free to use these links to get to their site, we make no money on this article or referral. Their two fee based services are Copyscape Premium, which comes at $0.05 per search and CopySentry which is a subscription based service for $4.95 per month. The CopySentry service is especially interesting as it continually monitors the Web for any content which appears to be a plagiarism or copyright infringement and notifies the subscriber upon detection.

I recommend their services and if you are an active Internet publisher, I would encourage you to check with them often to ensure that your copy stays where it belongs – securely in your hands.

Just received an email this morning, and, of course it is a another email scam. However, when doing research on this little bad boy, I was surprised to find a number of comments on blogs which reported people had “fallen for” this dirty trick.

What was really hilarious was that I did a search on the ticket number – a seemingly 14 digit “unique” number and found about 24,300 results in Google – Thank God these “scammers” are stupid enough to keep using the same number over & over.

Here is the email for your edification – should you see something like this do NOT be fooled by it. Do NOT give your personal information out in response to these sorts of inquiries.

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We happily announce to you the draw (#980) of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on May 24 2007.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:56475600545 188 with
Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 14-18-29-33-37-39-47(bonus
no.), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch
5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£516,778.00(Five hundred and Sixteen thousand,seven hundred and seventy eight
pounds
sterling only) or $921,201:00(Nine hundred and twenty one thousand two
hundred and one dollars only)in cash/check
credited to file number UK/5678/T85.

This is from a total cash prize of £3,100,673.00 shared amongst the
first six (6) lucky winners in this category i.e Prize for six balls.

To file for your claim, please kindly provide the following
informations and send it to our Fiduciary Agent who shall clear you as a
winner.(1)FULL NAMES (2)DATE OF BIRTH(3)SEX (4)MARITAL STATUS(5)CONTACT ADDRESS
(6)PHONE NUMBERS(7)OCCUPATION

MR.Peter Taylor
Email:ukgaming1111@yahoo.es

Goodluck from me and members of staff of The U.K National Lottery.

Yours faithfully,
Mrs.Marie Flyn
ONLINE SUPERVISOR
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

WINNING NOTIFICATION:

We happily announce to you the draw (#980) of the UK NATIONAL
LOTTERY,online Sweepstakes International program held on May 24 2007.

Your e-mail address attached to ticket number:56475600545 188 with
Serial number 5368/02 drew the lucky numbers: 14-18-29-33-37-39-47(bonus
no.), which subsequently won you the lottery in the 2nd category i.ematch
5 plus bonus.

You have therefore been approved to claim a total sum of
£516,778.00(Five hundred and Sixteen thousand,seven hundred and seventy eight
pounds
sterling only) or $921,201:00(Nine hundred and twenty one thousand two
hundred and one dollars only)in cash/check
credited to file number UK/5678/T85.

This is from a total cash prize of £3,100,673.00 shared amongst the
first six (6) lucky winners in this category i.e Prize for six balls.

To file for your claim, please kindly provide the following
informations and send it to our Fiduciary Agent who shall clear you as a
winner.(1)FULL NAMES (2)DATE OF BIRTH(3)SEX (4)MARITAL STATUS(5)CONTACT ADDRESS
(6)PHONE NUMBERS(7)OCCUPATION

MR.Peter Taylor
Email:ukgaming1111@yahoo.es

Goodluck from me and members of staff of The U.K National Lottery.

Yours faithfully,
Mrs.Marie Flyn
ONLINE SUPERVISOR
<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<

Thanks go to Simon Barker of Zath.co.uk for hooking me up with a Joost Beta invite. If you would like an invite, drop me a line and if you are nice I will hook you up! The quality of the player is amazing, but remember that this is still beta level software.

Many people seem to think that when they get into a trial like this, the software is supposed to run seamlessly, or, that it may have a few minor issues. The fact is, any beta release will more than likely have many minor issues and a few MAJOR issues. If you want your issues resolved, you must report them in a way that will allow the developer to reproduce and observe the unexpected behavior.

The folks at Joost have set up a pretty user friendly and extensive support structure with support forums and a knowledge base which is more than I have seen with other beta released software. Do yourself and the developers a favor, when you report a bug, if you want it to be addressed, give them enough information to take the report seriously.

Remember, there is absolutely NO value in hearing the following:

• It doesn’t work
• It broke my computer
• Joost doesn’t run on my machine
• Every time I blink, my machine disappears… is that because Joost screwed something up?

Standard things to include in any bug report:
Make sure you have verified the bug and have figured out the steps which must be followed to reproduce the unexpected behavior.

Make sure you include the EXACT steps to reproduce the issue when you report the bug.

For example:

1. Launch Joost by pressing Start -> All Programs -> Joost -> Joost
2. After Joost launches click the close button
3. Get an error message stating “whatever the error message is”

Also include any relevant hardware information, the best way to gather this information on a Windows OS platform is to run the dxdiag from the Start -> Run command line by typing in dxdiag then after the diag has completed analyzing your system, you can click on the Save All Information button and include the resulting text file in any correspondence with the company you are reporting the bug to.