Another toy that you must get if you have kids is the Laugh & Learn: Learning Home. This came out several years ago, but is a huge hit at my house. There is just so much to play on with this! The door open and shuts and allows your children to crawl through it. The light turns on and off. There is a mail box slot and the flower spins. The window opens and closes. Up on top, you can turn the thing with the moon on it, so it shows the sun. Of course, there is a corresponding noise with all these actions. On the other side (which this picture doesn’t show), there is a little mini radio for the kids to play with. It has 4 stations and the kids can hit that and hear just music or it singing the ABCs to them. I don’t know how this all works (maybe HDMI switches?) However, the kids love it, so it doesn’t matter. At this point at ten months, Will is really not sure what to do with this. He does play with it a little. Madison, however, is in seventh heaven. I don’t think she remembers playing with it, and she played with it a lot. At 4, she is enjoying this.

This is one of the more pricier toys to get your kids. However, it is another toy that is worth every cent, because they will play with it for years!

Entrecard is one of the new ways to drive traffic to your sites. I have been using them for several months and have been happy with what I have seen so far. The best part of Entrecard is that is free. All you need to do a put a widget on your site so people can drop their cards on you. You’ll see one on the sidebar on this blog. That’s all you have to do. To effectively use the system though, you want to be dropping your cards on other blogs. You will be amazed at the number of quality blogs you’ve never seen before that is in their system. Entrecard drives approximately 50-100 more visitors daily to each of my blogs that I have it on. I can’t complain out those stats. Actually, it makes me want to send the creators of this some wine gifts. The only complaint that I have is that each blog has to associated with its own email account. If you are needing some extra traffic to your blog, this is worth trying out!

Every so often you come across a service that really fits into your life. Diigo is that for me. I never understood what the excitement was over sites like delicious. I never saw any practical use for it. However, I see many uses for Diigo. A big one for me is how you are able to use it as a research and knowledge tool and how it will allow me to be more time efficient. For one of my freelancing jobs, we talk a lot over email since we are all over the country. I hate when I find a cool article and then I have to send it to each person (I am still trying to figure out how to make email lists on Gmail).

This service would allow me to bookmark the article and each person on my team can then decide if it pertains to them (instead of me trying to figure that out). You can set up different groups too. My personal group wouldn’t have to wade through my work bookmarks. Another feature that I love is that you can highlight articles and leave notes for yourself. Currently, I have a ton of bookmarks that I did, and I can’t remember what was important in those articles and why I bookmarked them. When doing research, I would love to be able to note that I have already looked at different web pages.

On the more personal side, there are several features that are just fun to play with. First, you have People Like Me. That feature will show you what other people who have bookmarked the same site as you also bookmarked. It will also suggest people that are close to you in your bookmarking behavior. You are able to import your bookmarks from other sites, so you don’t have waste your time doing that again.

Today, Diigo is releasing version 3.0 of their service. They have added over 100 new features so there is a feature for everyone here. It is a tad overwhelming at first when you are trying to figure it all out. However, it is worth your time. This video will show you the new dashboard and some of the new features you should expect:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=0RvAkTuL02A

When you try it out, let me know what you think.

My mom got me a subscription to Readers Digest for Christmas. I love this magazine. It usually comes in the mail with all my furniture catalogs. It has lots of short stories and I love the jokes that you can read in there. I have some of stories I should send in. If they do publish your story, they pay you money which I think is awesome. They have some great investigative reporting too. I know each month I get this I have it read in the first day. The price is great and you can often send a free gift subscription to your family and friends.

Have you seen the commercial for Lifelock yet? If not, this is a service you need to look into. I am not sure how many of you know that I was almost a victim of identity theft. When we lived in Aurora, they was a person with the same name as me giving out my phone number and address to creditors. I had to fight for 2 years with American Express’s lawyers that I was not the Lisa they were looking for. Heck, I never ever even owned an American Express. I had to put a freeze on my own credit reports (which means no more instant credit when you want to get $15 off your purchase if you sign up now at certain stores like Kohls). I also know people who have had their identity stolen. Unfortunately, it happens more often than you think.

I ask if you have seen the commercial, because in the commercial, the president of the Lifelock actually puts his social security number on the side of a tractor trailer truck. I know, it is quite a bold move. He also has his social security number right on the top of the Lifelock website in a huge font and bolded. That is how sure he is of his company. If his identity is not being stolen and he is putting his information out there for the world to see, just think what Lifelock can do you. Normally, people try to hide their information as best as possible. Lifelock will ensure that your identity will never to stolen. Let’s say if something would slip through and it did happen, Lifelock has a million dollar guarantee. Yes, I said a million dollar guarantee: They “will pay up to $1,000,000 to cure the failure or defect in our service, per member, per lifetime for all incidents in the aggregate regardless of circumstance”. How many companies do you know are that confident in their service?

How does Lifelock work? First, they set fraud alerts on your behalf with the credit bureaus. This is done, so you are notified anytime anyone tries to use your credit (including yourself). However, these fraud alerts are only good for 90 days. They go back every 30 days and reset the fraud alert for you. You don’t have to worry about forgetting to do this. They also request that your name be removed from all those annoying preapproved and junk mail lists. They keep making these requests for you as they expire also. This is another way that identity can be stolen, so why not stop it at its source? Plus, junk mail is just annoying anyway. Look at it this way, you are probably saving a few trees by getting your name off those lists. They also order credit reports on your behalf from all the major credit bureaus once a year and have them sent directly to you. Lastly, they have an awesome program called WalletLock. If you lose your wallet or if it gets stolen, a specialist will help you contact each credit card, bank, or document issuing company to cancel your accounts. They will also help you complete the paperwork to replace your lost documents. This includes your credit/debit cards, driver’s license, social security card, insurance cards, checkbook, and travelers checks.

I know you are probably saying that you could do most of this yourself and save yourself the money. Honestly though, do you do it? I am on top of things I forget to do a lot of these steps. With Lifelock, you are buying peace of mind. In a world where identity theft can take away everything you own, you definitely need that peace of mind.

I use to work fast food, and I did it for about 6 years. The thing that was the biggest pain in the butt was scheduling. Every fast food place that I worked in did their Restaurant scheduling with paper and pencil. That is a pain. We would have to give the managers a piece of paper every time we wanted off or when we wanted to switch shifts. The other thing that was a huge pain was that people would be constantly calling to find out their schedules, or they would stop in over rush hour to get their schedule. Sometimes, a shift would change hands so many times, you had no idea who was coming in. Plus, it was super easy to manipulate the schedule since it was in pencil.

It has been a while, but I am glad to see that somebody was that there was a need that needed to be filled here. Schedulefly allows managers to create and edit schedules online. The schedule is then emailed or text messaged to the employees. Employees can also check their schedule over at Facebook too! People who need to trade shifts can do so online too! This is software that is desperately needed in the fast food industry where the majority of your employees are online and have cell phones. There is a 30 day free trial for companies to try it out, so they have nothing to lose. After the free trial, there is no contract to sign and you pay month to month. The cost depends on the number of employees you have.

If you are running a business (and it doesn’t have to be fast food either), this is software that you should definitely look into. I can see it definitely saving you time and money.

I decided to use Bluehost for my hosting last January because of the many great reviews from other bloggers I know. They have not disappointed me. They have this cool live chat feature that you can use to contact them 24/7. I have used this several times and walked away happy. I never once have felt that I was being read a script (though I probably was). Tonight, my site was a white screen. All of us know how that strikes terror into our hearts. I had heard wonderful things about their phone support, so I decided to call. It was about 7 PM CST, so it was definitely off hours. The first thing that impressed me was that the phone system immediately told me what number in line I was. Granted, I was number twenty, but at least I knew where I stood. While I was holding, the system would interrupt the music to tell me that number 19, 18, and so forth to talk to a customer representative that was based in the United States. Now, I don’t want to sound mean, but I hate talking to customer service people who don’t have a good command of the English language. It just annoys me. I also hate being talked to off a script. Most of the foreign customer service people do that. It is like nails down a chalkboard for me. I like only have to explain my problem once and have the person understand me. When I got my customer service representative, he spoke perfect English and had my site back up in less than 5 minutes. I forgot to even ask why it was down, because he asked me about my toilet paper post and we started talking about that. My hosting is up for renewal in January, and I know I am sticking with Bluehost. I have always been impressed by their customer service, and I am even more so now. (I have an affiliate badge in my sidebar if you want more information about their hosting packages).

(Now you don’t need to be worried about hosting expenses because there are cheap web hosting services along with cheapest domain name registration facilities. You can also get windows hosting facility over Internet. Modern email marketing and the affiliate resources are a big source for improving your website ranking and traffic flow. Several wireless internet service providers also for securing data are offering special backup software to customers.)