You've Arrived....Blogger Recognition

So recently, actually a while ago I am late on this post-so very late, I received an award from another blogger. Getting the award felt a lot like winning the blue ribbon at a spelling bee. Ok, I was never part of a spelling bee, I was on the debate team but that analogy just didn't seem to work here. In any case I was touched and very flattered by the gesture. I tell clients that if you are going to jump on the blog/social networking train you better be real, there is no faking it here. So to have someone that visits my blog regularly say hey I'm not bored yet I like your style is a real honor.

Heidi over at the Health Nut Wannabee Mom blog is the blogger that bestowed the special award, known as the Arte y Pico Award, on me. What you haven't heard of it before? Well let me tell you, that is because it is a very rare, prestigious, and selective award that not many people get. Come on it's my first award so of course I think it's the best award out there!! Seriously I am touched and very thankful for the recognition, it is a lot of pressure an honor. I hope I can continue to provide award worthy content and support those other blogger's that are doing the same.

Ladies and Gents:

The Arte y Pico Award

The "Arte y Pico" Award was created and to be given to blogger's who inspire others with their creative energy and their talents, whether it be writing, artwork in all media's.

It was so meant for me...look at the hot smart chick on it!

Part of receiving this award is sharing it with at least 5 other blogger's. So now I get to bestow this wonderful award to you people....drum roll please!

This Brazen Teacher

About Site - I am an Art Teacher.This site is a revenge against my career. Against my paycheck. Against Politics. Against the standardization of everything. And I mean everything. We have a couple of teachers in the family and let me tell you these ladies are wild! As a kid I knew but could never prove it this blog does that for me. I am giving her this award even though she has gotten a few others, because I want to. She has Calvin & Hobbes on her page, Paulo Coelho in her roll, Crotchety's seal of approval, and I am never bored when I stop by.

Crotchety Old Man Yells At Cars

His Bio - I'm a crotchety old guy who enjoys ranting and raving about the injustices of the world. While many of my rants are political in nature, I can complain about almost anything. If I were a cartoon character, I'd be Grandpa Simpson or an elderly Eric Cartman. I personally love his rants they are intellectual, informative, and incredibly amusing. which is difficult to accomplish, but so wonderful when done well.

Secrets of a Black Heart

Lunanik is a wonderful blogger, she's been doing it for quite a while and it shows. Her writing style is wonderfully engaging. she is witty, funny, and most importantly real. She writes about every day things which could get boring, but the way her personality comes through I cant wait to see what she is going to write about next. Lately Miss Lunanik feels a little drained, a bit uninspired, and has been thinking about pulling back. I sincerely hope that she doesn't, she is a great blogger.

A Little Piece of Me

Blog Description-"Just a general blog about me and my life. You will find anything from my counseling homework, photography, hiking, traveling, doodles and more on this blog." I personally do not visit this blog enough, when I do happen by I am always happy I did. She is one of those people that you would want to know in person, if you like that full package perfect chick thing (just kidding). Seriously great blog, great commenter-if you see her comments you know they are going to be interesting, with envy inducing doodles. Check her out.

Regretful Morning

The tag line "We Laugh At Your Misfortune. Initially I thought this blog would be one of those blogs that I would check out once, hate, and never return. I was wrong! Though it is not a blog for the faint of heart (good humor never is), it is hysterical. This blog could have been one of those uninspired, nonsense, shock effect, fall short blogs but surprisingly it is not. Jason takes alcohol induced regretful stories (we all have them), mixes in his own humor, and throws it out there for the wolves to devour. All of this makes for a fun blog.

So there you have it, those are the chaps I think deserve an award whether they like it or not!

Windows Live Writer...A Blogger's BFF

Nothing excites me more than when I find something that makes my life easier-ok well almost nothing, I do like chocolate, Thai food, long walks on the beach (I need to get out more). This need to simplify, systematize, and ease my over encumbered lifestyle made me the Get Smart Tech Chic that I am today. I work hard but it's also about working smart, and when I find something that helps me reach my work less play more goal, I have to share it.

Let's talk about Windows Live Writer, some of you may already use this cool tool and some of you may be anti-establishment Down with the Man types that don't go near Bill Gates is taking over the world Microsoft gadgets. Well I am in, maybe not love, but deep infatuation with Live Writer, it has made my blogging, article writing, and website updating so much easier!!

This one tool allows me to create a blog post offline in the format of my blog, then publish directly to my blog-works with most major blog services, without going through a bunch of convoluted steps. I can also insert hyperlinks, pictures, maps, videos, tags, etc., and all from this one little FREE program. Now not all blog platforms are supported, ActiveRain for instance is not supported, and those blogs that are embedded in a website are usually not compatible for the one click publish feature.

What you can do though is change the view and copy and paste from there. So what do I mean by change the view? No it's not an everything looks brighter with your shades on reference. What I mean is that you have four views, web layout and preview (this is blog layout and view), normal (basic Word format), and html. So you can write the post/article publish to Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad, etc., then convert to html for your website, ActiveRain, Trulia, or other random blog platform. Last but not least, you can switch to normal view to place your masterpiece on those article distribution sites.One stop shop is what I call that, isn't it Grand!!

Now that I have told you all the great things....there is one thing I am not keen on and that is the insert video plug-in. It will only allow you to insert web based videos not videos that are stored on your hard drive. Now for the most part your videos are probably acquired from and stored on the web, but for myself we have tons of Get Smart Women instructional videos that start on our external hard drive and then move to one of our web sources so I want to be able to do both. Yes I know I want it all-I want my cake and I want to eat too! I never understood that saying if you got the cake of course you want to eat, what are you just going to stare at it?

Anyway for now if you use Live Writer your videos have to be stored in the big web world, Youtube, Helloworld, Screencast, Seesmic, Vimeo, where ever you have them or you can add an extra step in by publishing without the video and then going to your blog and inserting the video there. This feature may change they seem to be adding new plug-ins all the time, like the Google gods and their constantly improving gadgets, they understand that to stay "cool" you need to have more and more accessories tools.

So now the Smart Gal rating 4.5 out 5 Smart Gals here:

Ok Brandon Turner from Microsoft is trying to get 5 out 5 Smart Gals, what they won't do for the extra half...can't do it until I try out the Soapbox but here is the comment he left:

"With the newest version of Windows Live Writer(was released this week) you can upload videos from your harddrive, they go Soapbox(MSN Video). This is just a preview release, so if you find any bugs, feel free to contact me. For more information on the new release:http://windowslivewriter.spaces.live.com/"

Google Translator Widget

Come One...Come All!!

Ok, so I was on Krapsody's blog the other day seeing what's up and looking around I saw this translator widget (if you're questioning what that is, take a gander over to your right, scroll down a bit-yep you got it, that is a Google Translator widget) and as you can see I had to have it. So I Googled it, found it, and then put it on my site. I like the mini version over the big daddy in your face one.

If you do not want or can't put this handy dandy little tool on your blog and/or website there is still the free online translation tool I talked about a while back so you can use that. I just think this tool is less labor intensive and a lot more versatile-just me though.

This is the freak that I am, I have been getting a kick out of clicking on the translator to see my blog in French, Spanish, etc... (probably going to skew my site stats-duh!) I had no idea I wrote so beautifully in those other languages-I am quite impressed with myself!

I am not sure how much it will be used but because I want everyone to be able to hang out on this blog I thought it was a nice addition to the page. As a side note, according to Lijit (check out the map icon also located on the right side) I did have some viewers from Calcutta-sorry no Bengali translation...bummer, Luxembourg-oh yeah we have French and German for you buddy, San Paulo-nice we have the Portuguese for you, Tripoli-dang no Arabic, and so on and so forth.

So we will please some but not all, but well that just sums up life doesn't it.

Alrighty then so on this tech toy I give it 5 out 5 Smart Gals (Oh yeah that's right top ranking-this is mostly because it kept me entertained for a good 20 minutes today)

Cost FREE....entertainment value PRICELESS!

Obsess Much

I have gone crazy with this blogging thing actually crazy doesn’t do it – obsessed! I am consumed with templates, content, linking, traffic, gadgets, tricks, tips, tools, feeds, and so on and so forth. I truly didn’t understand the draw before….so you sit there and you write about your day – get a life dude! Then you get your first comment or feed report and see people really do care! That’s how it gets you, starts with one person reading and now you think you have a fan base better pull out the stops. Can’t let that one reader down, where would they go, they need you!!

I have re-done this template more times than I care to admit. I finally have three columns but I am still not happy because I lost the header graphic I liked and I would like one more left side panel in green. I will have to come back to this my ass has made a permanent impression in the couch! I hope my one reader is an adult. I found my template at http://www.blogcrowds.com/ they have some great 3 column templates for blogger.

I have been adding gadgets and links on the blog, one of my favorites is the mybloglog.com visitor widget. It shows everyone from http://www.mybloglog.com/ that has visited my page….. Oh yeah the tables are turned I see you now buddy. It is getting late and I haven’t had much social interaction-can you tell? Mybloglog is turning out to be an interesting social site everyone there is just looking to connect in one day I went from 2 friends (the mybloglog people & my mom) to 10. I started by looking at communities that I thought had interesting content that I could follow, but then I saw that some members had 100’s of communities they were a part of, how do you stay up on those communities? You don’t, it is all about getting connections, friends, people in your community. The more communities you are a part of the more people see you and check you out- you could spend all day doing it. I think that's why they limit you to 15 communities a day, they are trying to save you from yourself! One great thing is that on your profile page you see what is happening with people in your network and new people that join your community, so if there is an interesting post by a “friend” I can see it pop up without going to their community. Ok, I feel a little bit better about joining all of those communities.

My goal tomorrow is to figure out how I can add all of those book mark links at the bottom of a post, that shouldn’t be too much work right? I better sit on a different couch cushion if they all have the ass imprint people will think it is part of the design.

How To Set Up a Blog on Blogger Part 1

We had an interesting blog class yesterday, those who attended did so with enthusiasm and lots of questions......lots of questions. It was a great class and I had tons of fun but it didn't feel like I had accomplished my goal. What was my goal you ask? To get people blogging, to set them up on the spot with their blog page and ready to put in their first blog!! I was only marginally successful there. The class taught me quite a bit about varying levels of interest and understanding. I practiced my presentation a few times before I did it, I ran through the screens before I started, and yet as we got going I felt as prepared as if I had at that moment decided to do the class. I thought the class would be easy, quick, and a huge success!! I believe it was a success but I also think that instructing people on how to do something on the Internet, or that is technical with multiple steps, is better done a by a pre-made video rather than live and in real time. So now we will test my theory, for those individuals that attended the class and are now watching this video please comment on which method was easier to understand?

Blogging Made Easier

I know some people hate writing and most people thoroughly despise routine tasks, and I know that blogging has all of that and more, but once you really start doing it you will not believe how much you end up enjoying it.

I know you are skeptical - so bear with me a moment, but blogging is about sharing ideas and most of us do that around water cooler every day anyway. Blogging is also about getting out there and getting information, hate to break it to you but we also do that quite a bit too through the television, radio, books, and the Internet. When I started blogging I knew that if I was going to keep up on it I would need to set some systems in to place to help me stay consistent and those systems would have to be cool and just a tad bit tech.

So here is where you start; you need content and unlike me you don’t want to spend half of every day looking for it so figure out what you like and what you might want to talk about now go out there and look for sources to help you.

Google Alerts; http://www.google.com/alerts put in search words set up your time frame and Google will send content rich material to your email. To keep your information organized create a folder for the alerts and a rule to direct the alerts into the folder automatically.

RSS Feeds; RSS stands for real simple syndication and most news sources like CNN, CNBC, Bloomberg, Yahoo, etc. have a way for you to sign up for their information look for the big orange box at the top of this post. Once you sign up for a RSS feed, by clicking on the orange box, you can access the information under your favorites (This is the star icon located in the top left hand corner of your web browser) on your web browser tool bar.

Feed Readers; when you find blogs and content rich websites that you can subscribe to through the RSS feed you can use a reader application and have all of your subscriptions in one handy dandy place. Some of those readers are applications for your computer NewsGator, Firefox, Safari & Pulp Fiction. There are also online readers like Google Reader, Bloglines, Pageflakes, NewsGator, Netyibes

Blog Roll; If you have blogs that you frequent often and want to link them to your blog there is something called a blog roll and you can get it for free at none other than http://www.blogrolling.com/. This website will give you the means to link other blogs to your blog site. If you have your blog through Google you can link your Google Reader to your blog page and get the same result.

Schedule a Blog; If you are on Google’s blogger.com you can use http://draft.blogger.com/ to publish a future post. Simply go to the post editor, reveal the Date and Time fields using the “Post Options” toggle and enter a post date and time that is in the future. When you click the “Publish” button, your post will become “scheduled.” When the date and time of the post arrive, your post will be automatically published to your blog. You can also cancel it if you change your mind or the post becomes irrelevant.

Now I know the information I have provided is nothing new or revolutionary but for those new bloggers hopefully it will add a few tricks to your bag that will make blogging easier, more enjoyable, and ultimately more advantageous for you!!