Upcoming Classes

We have three special classes in March. On March 4th from 6-7:30pm is the “Build a Better Business Website.” Stop by to learn more about brand strategies and how they can affect sales, traffic and communication.

On March 11th from 6-7:30pm is the “Moving to the Top of the Heap.” This is the first of a two-part series about tools that can increase your website traffic. Part two is on March 18th from 6-7:30pm and is called: “Internet Advertising for Small Business.”

If you have any questions or want to register for the classes, please call the Downtown Lansing Library Computer Center at 517-367-6356.

Seed and bulb websites

Think spring.  Think spring.  Think spring.

For those of us who garden, it is definitely time to start thinking spring. Anything started by seed must be planted soon in order to be ready for outdoor planting (and blooming and fruiting – oh, sweet, warm tomatoes from the garden…) The seed packets that are being sold in stores right now are great.  But if you are a bit of a garden geek (like me) or if you are a little intrigued by becoming more “green” in your garden this year, you might want to check out the following websites dedicated to heirloom seeds.

www.victoryseeds.com/index.html An Oregon farm with lots of vegetable seeds (also flower and herb seeds). The site also has great educational value, explaining heirloom plants and open-pollinated plants, offering almanac links, and providing  information on how to plant from seed and how to save seeds.

www.seedsavers.org An Iowa farm that maintains some 25,000 endangered varieties of vegetables. It also offers a large seed bank of herbs and flowers. An interesting site to visit.  Check out the “About us” and “Saving Heirlooms” sections if you visit.  (And honestly, I never knew there were so many kinds of garlic.  They sell 18 different seed packets.)

www.jungseed.com Ok, so this is not an heirloom site.  But it does have WAY more variety than the grocery store. And it has some absolutely lovely bulbs and roses for reasonable prices. May the natural growers forgive me for including this site.

(Heirloom seeds are seeds from heirloom plants – obvious.  This means that the plants have not been genetically engineered. Heirloom plants are often more naturally pest-resistant than their genetically engineered counterparts, with better flavor.  Some fruits also add interest to a garden because they look unusual – and are indeed becoming more unusual, in the sense that they are endangered in this world of mono-crop homogenization.)

Happy growing!

Internet Safety Act

Both the Senate and House  introduced today the “Internet Stopping Adults Facilitating the Exploitation of Today’s Youth Act,” or Internet Safety Act for short. If passed, it basically would require a lot of eletronic record retention for business, schools, individuals, and libraries. To read more, please visit this link: Internet Safety Act.

Language Tools: Websites, Podcasts, iTunes (Part 2 of 2)

The last installment on this topic is on podcasts. 

Podcasts are an invaluable tool for sharing information over the web. Basically, podcasts are audio or video files which are transmitted via the web to computers or mp3 players. You can think of podcasts as a new take on early radio programming. Just as in the last century with radios, podcasts followers tune into (and download) their favorite programs each week.

There are thousands on podcasts on the web covering a variety topics like current events, fashion, humor, arts and crafts; and of interest to us, language. Don’t worry if you do not own a mp3 player or an iPod. These portable mediums just make it easy for you to listen to you podcasts on the go. All you need is a computer. That’s it! Download the podcasts and listen from your computer.

In the last year, Apple computers  has made a huge push to provide educational materials through iTunes. But don’t fret. Both the iTunes software download, and the language podcasts are free and do not require the purchase of a iPod. Follow these instructions to get to the language podcasts.

1. If you don’t already have iTunes, download it from the link above.
2. After you have downloaded iTunes, click on “Podcasts“, located in the “iTunes Store” box in the upper left hand corner.
3. Click on “Education“, located in “Categories” box, which is the second box on the left.
4. Finally, in the third and last box on the left side of the page, click on “Language Courses” which is located in the “More Education” box.

You have now reached iTunes language podcasts page. To see all the the language options and courses available, click on “See All” in the “Featured” box in the middle of the screen. If you scroll through all of the courses available, you will notice they are all free! So jump right in, and practice your English, Spanish, Chinese, or try them all!

Word 2007 can Address Your Letters for You

If you are constantly retyping your contacts addresses in your documents or searching your Outlook address book for an address, Use Smart Tags in Word to do it for you. Stop having to copy and paste by following these steps:

1.       Type the recipient’s name in your document and then press the Enter key.

2.       Move your mouse over the name until the Smart Tag appears.

3.       Click the Smart Tag drop down arrow and then click Insert Address.

Word automatically searches your Outlook address book and adds the client’s address to your document.

If the Insert Address option does not appear on the Smart Tag shortcut menu, click “Smart Tag Options”. This will bring up the Smart Tag Options menu. Click the Person Name (Outlook E-mail Recipients) button and then click the Recheck document button. Find the Smart Tags Options menu by going to “Tools”, ”Auto Correct”, “Smart Tags”.

New metasearch engine

Well, may be not brand new, but worth checking out is http://www.etools.ch/.  It is a search engine out of Switzerland.

Etools search engine

It’s easy to use and crawls many search engines and gives you the results. The results can be in English, German, Spanish, French, and Italian. You can specify the language and the the source engine used when limiting your results list. Also helpful is to narrow the search by topic. Use the results tool on the right side menu for this.

Some other useful tidbits: fast, good results, can preview the page before opening it, and best of all you can check the status of the URL. You can use the status check to see when the page was last updated and if it sends cookies. You don’t need to find that last update number buried on the page anymore. Give it a try and see what you think.

Getting Healthy with On-line Accountability

I was in the store the other day, which is always an adventure for me.  Ten years ago, I lived in Chiapas, Mexico (that’s a state way down south that borders Guatemala).  Stores there were generally small (often home-front) and invariably specific.  Next door was the tortilla shop,  a few doors down was the cake shop.  The grocery store had groceries, the paper store had paper, the shoe store had shoes, and the coffee shop had coffee.  Even though I only lived in Chiapas for a short time and I’m many moons removed from that time, I still get blown away by “one-stop” shopping centers. (Meijer, for those who know it.)

This particular outing required that I venture from the grocery side of the store over into the side that has endless rows of anything and everything.  It’s so totally distracting over there.  First, I had to stop and look at the stand of seed packets.  (Oh the joy!  Spring will come!  We will plant!  Things will grow!) As I wandered away, admiring the beautiful garden already planted in my mind, something else caught my eye.  Bathing suits.  Racks of them.  And I found it rather cruel, as the sky was threatening snow outside, that inside I should be looking at these little things. It’s February, for crying out loud.  Lake Michigan is frozen as far as the eye can see.  (I know, because my niece told me so.)  Bathing suits won’t be useful for another four months.

Unless you’re one of Those People. Those People go south for a week or so.  They come back all happy and tan. If you are one of Those People and you are actually looking at those silly bathing suits and thinking about being seen in them, here’s some info on getting healthy with on-line accountability. 

www.neversaydiet.comis a site with all kinds of informational and motivational words.  I especially appreciate the section on body image, which works to promote body-love and has entries from people who have thrown out their magazines full of airbrushed and spray-tanned models. There is a link to www.healthylivingonline.com, which is a free service offering tools for healthy living (including nutrition, exercise, and mood journals and plans for meals, exercise, and stress relief).  I appreciate that the focus is not get thin, but get healthy – mind, body, and spirit.

www.sparkpeople.com - I learned about this free site from a friend of mine, who loved it.  It features a calorie-counting food journal (with a great database of restaurant and supermarket foods), a water consumption tracker, meal plans, recipes, a grocery list maker(!), and exercise plans and journals.  My favorite part? Users get points for tracking their activity and meals, reading articles, drinking 8 glasses of water, and more – and then get trophies for reaching point goals!  Fun.

www.nutritiondata.comis The Site for learning about foods and their value for our bodies. For a wide variety of foods (fast food to avocados and bananas to canned beans), there is detailed nutritional value information: that info we see on packaging, plus an estimated glycemic load rating, an inflammation factor rating, a nutrient balance graph, an amino acid rating and graph, and a complete breakdown of vitamin and mineral content.

As you strive to be fit, it is always important to be realistic and to be holistic. Since living in Chiapas, I have found that gratitude and perspective make life a whole lot richer and contribute in fascinating ways to my overall health.  Here’s an example of perspective: when I start thinking that I absolutely MUST HAVE something (usually edible, usually chocolate), I remember the day I stood and stared for at least two full minutes at the first M&M’s ever to appear in our grocery store in Chiapas. (Or the day, a couple of months later, when there appeared a box of tampons.) My life was full without M&M’s. My life is full without a lot of things.  I don’t need the majority of the things I want. Having that perspective makes me uber grateful for the things I have and helps me to savor food, family, friends, and so much more.

¡Salud!

Language Tools: Websites, Podcasts, iTunes (Part 1 of 2)

If you are just now learning another language, or trying to freshen up your existing foreign language skills, there are many valuable resources at your disposal on the web. This week’s entry will focus on language websites. Next week’s entry will be on language podcasts and language tools available on iTunes.

LanguageGuide: Foreign Language Vocabulary, Grammar, and Readings- This website is amazing. It is like a online “see and say” book for language learners. There are many languages available- English, Spanish, French, German, Russian, Mandarin Chinese, Vietnamese, Hindi, Japanese, Arabic, Portuguese, Hebrew, and Italian. Each language is divided into sections covering, animals, clothes, parts of the body, nature, and everyday matters. Select one of the links under a category, and then click on any of the pictures on the page. You will hear audio giving the correct pronunciation for each word depicted in the pictures. Some of the languages have grammar or reading sections, which also have audio giving the correct pronunciation. Overall, this site is a great resource to not only work on vocabulary and grammar, but also pronunciation.

WordReference.com- This site is an excellent online dictionary and idiomatic expression translator. Spanish, French, Italian, German, Russian, English, Portuguese, Polish, Romanian, Czech, Greek, Turkish, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and in the near future, Arabic, are all available. All of the dictonaries translate from English to “another language” or “another language” to English (i.e. English to Russian or Russian to English).  As long as you are familiar with either English or the language you are translating to or from, this site will work well for you. Unlike other online translation websites, this site will use your translated word in a sentence, have difference uses for the word, and provide compound forms of the word. In addition, there is a forum where users can talk about the meaning of expressions and different uses of the word in contemporary society. This is a very useful tool for idiomatic expressions that are not accurately translated using traditional online translators.

Give these websites a try and tune back in next week for the last installment on this topic.

Online training logs

Well, February is upon us.  Die-hards are still working on their resolutions.  The rest of us have resumed our love affairs with our televisions. Our fantasies of warm-weather getaways have become increasingly powerful. (Ay, México Lindo y Querido …) In a battle to save myself from these traps and preserve my mental health, I began running a couple of weeks ago.  Or rather, I began running regularly.

I’ve run on-and-off for some time. (Translation: even as a collegiate athlete I never ran year-round. Slacker.) But since starting grad school in 2005, there has been no consistency.  It seems I was perpetually trying to be able to run three miles.  A typical month would consist of about 8 days of running – four days globbed together at the beginning of the month and another four scattered wherever there was a deadline. (Running clears the mind, you know. Helps you meet deadlines.  It is in no way a form of procrastination.) But no more! I have found an event to train for, and I am going to be consistent. (I have two weeks down and only 13 more to go.) I’m trying to look at this as a lifestyle change. I am becoming a runner.

To help me track my progress (please, please let there be progress!) and stay motivated, I have joined an online training log. It’s free, fast, and super easy to use.  Online training logs are great for beginners, middle of the pack-ers, penguins,  and die-hards. They support runners, walkers, swimmers, and cyclists. Of the many logs I looked into, my two favorites are described below.

www.runningAHEAD.com -  This is the site I joined, mostly because I liked the simplicity and cleanliness of its design. It is SUPER user-friendly, with clear navigation tabs at the top of the page.

It offers route logging (with elevation, on Google maps); route searching address, city, or state; a community area with dicussion forums (my personal favorite: “Belch while running?”); and a seriously comprehensive workout log. The log allows for the entry of date and time of the workout; the type of activity (run, bike,or swim); the type of workout (easy, fartlek, hill, interval, long, race, tempo); the route, distance, and duration; the weather details; star ratings for quality and effort; your health stats (weight, heartrate readings); interval data; race data; and additional comments.  You can even place a link to to an event page.  Awesome.

www.LogYourRun.com – Not as sweet-looking as the other, but it is as comprehensive in the logging capabilities (even has additional activity categories, like strength, and run types, like trail).  It’s also more die-hard and techie friendly.

OK, all you Garmin freaks, you can upload your route info straight from the Garmin to this site.  Also, info can be entered from a Google homepage and your info is accessible through an iPhone, iPod Touch, and other mobile devices. If you are a die-hard runner and Facebooker, you can post your data to Facebook. (Do people really use this feature?!) The highlights of this site for a non-techie runner like me are the race calendar and the list of training programs for various distances and intensity levels (complete with discussion forums!)

With this kind of feedback, there’s no turning back! Happy trails.

Learning Express Library

Need to brush-up on your job searching and resumes skills? If so, check out the Learning Express Library database. They recently added some new features. The look is new and more user friendly. Even better is the section on Job Searching and Workplace Skills. You will find topics such as:

• Writing resumes and cover letter
• Job searching techniques
• Networking
• Business writing