Volume 1 Issue 28 10-20-06
For those who would like to read this in HTML format, this issue of Boomer eZine is posted on the Boomer eZine website at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/V1I28_102006.htm and on the Boomer eZine Blog at http://boomer-ezine.blogspot.com/.
Table of Contents for this issue.....
Did you know that I speak Volkswagen? I am a quail hunter and in South Texas, every serious quail hunter has a hunting car or truck. Mine is made from a VW bus. My original VW hunting car, the Quailmobile, broke apart after 25 years. I bought a 1970 VW bus body to build the Quailmobile II using all the knowledge I gained from patching the old one for 25 years. (It had a lot of burned welding rod on it).
On top of all the work at my day job and my online job, I am trying to get this finished for hunting season this year, and I am running out of time. I have posted a couple of pictures of me working on it. It is lying on its side so my helper and I can weld the steel support in place on the underside without having to lie on our backs and have welding sparks falling in our faces. I will probably write more on it for those who are curious about it. I will post a picture of the final product. It is a one of a kind vehicle and it is fun.
A few years ago, for a project (I seem to have too many of them), I rebuilt a VW Thing. It took five years to complete since it involved taking it apart screw by screw and then putting it back together. We used it for a few years and when our children did not need the transportation anymore, we sold it. It was fun, but I will not undertake a project of that magnitude again.
John measuring for cutting steel brace
John welding brace in place
Linda and I are flying to Dallas this week end on our company plane (Southwest Airlines) to visit our son, Travis, and his lovely, talented wife, Linda Lee. Since I am married to a Linda and he is too, we tagged our daughter-in-law with her middle name so we would not get the Lindas mixed up. Travis turns 31 next week and we are having a birthday celebration for him. They have tickets for us to go to the Plano Symphony. Linda and I will really enjoy this. Kingsville does not have this available, and we consider this a real treat.
Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
Tim Know, one of our mentors, made the suggestion that we not use a full page for the width of the Boomer Video eZine. He suggested setting up a 700 pixel wide table on the page and put all the text inside that table.
We tried his suggestion and it makes a world of difference in the readability of the page. We hope that you think the same.
Please send us your comments on this style change via our new suggestion form. We will format the future issues to please our readers.
Submit your input at our suggestion form
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm
Follow up on eBay Feedback
In the last issue we discussed the need to achieve positive feedback for ten or more transactions to be creditable on eBay. I want to share with you the feedback generation for 10-17-06. I logged on eBay and searched for ebooks for $.99. There were 1,688 available. I bought the following. A cookbook with 11,000 recipes for Linda, Every Book on eBay plus resale rights to 1000’s more, Be Your Own Boss plus resale rights, Instant Affiliate Link Masker software, and 100 Feedback in Seven Days (I need to read this).
For fun I searched on ebooks for $.01 and found 678 ebooks for $.01. I bought one of these on How to Sell Books on eBay.
A friend who is a Boomer Video eZine subscriber bought one of the videos, and I bought one so as of 10/17/06 I have eight transactions and I am waiting for the feedback on them. I am still waiting for my children to buy the videos. At this rate, I guess I will have to cut them out of the will.
Ebooks are good items to buy for feedback. They are inexpensive. They are delivered immediately so you do not have to wait a week for shipping before leaving feedback. You can leave feedback in a few minutes after the purchase and if the seller is on the ball, he/she will leave feedback quickly.
Author’s Note: I just took time to read the “100 Feedback in Seven Days”. It is a seven page book that says to search for items for $.01 that are “Buy It Now” information products with no shipping cost. Buy 100 of these whether you need them or not, leave positive feedback and in one week you will have 100 transactions with positive feedback for the total price of $1.00.
I was looking for more value so I started at $.99 for the items for which I was searching. However, for building feedback, the $.01 item with no shipping cost is the way to go.
ASK Database
When I set up the Boomer Guru site for selling videos, I wanted to get feedback at the end of video so I could determine if there was something outdated in the video or get any suggestions for improvement. I also wanted to collect any suggestions for a new topic for a video.
After checking around on what was available, I settled on ASK Database. This is an amazing site that will handle the task of setting up forms to collect information and provide tools to help you analyze the information.
When you join ASK, you can set up various types of question formats and it generates the HTML code for you to copy into your web page for the form. When the reader completes the form, the data is logged into the ASK database and is available for you to read or analyze.
I have used ASK to set up a suggestion form for Boomer Video eZine at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm. I would really appreciate your going there and leaving your suggestions or comments. This will help us improve the eZine and will also debug the website.
You will get a “Thank You” page after leaving your suggestion. This is a custom Boomer Video eZine page If you did not want to make your own page, ASK has a default thank you page.
ASK has a 21 day free trial and then it costs $19.95 per month for the silver membership and $29.95 for the gold membership. This is not cheap for the starting entrepreneur. The cost of this service makes this one of those tough decisions. Will my site grow so the cost per response and the data collected justify the cost? Our decision is “yes”. This will be an invaluable tool for improving the quality of this site and other sites that we manage.
To learn more about ASK, go to www.askdatabase.com/cmd.asp?AF=503396.
The ASK Database is another tool that the successful online entrepreneur should have in his/her bag of tricks.
Back Up Your Computer Hard Drive
What is your backup procedure? I REALLY hope you have one. Most people back up to some type of media, but then store the media next to the computer. This takes care of the hard drive crash, but it does nothing about the house burning down along with the computer and the backup.
As we have expanded our online business, “My Documents” (for non Microsoft Windows users, this is where all user documents and files are usually kept) has grown exponentially. I now have 1.5GB in My Docs. I used to burn my backups to CD, but each CD only holds about 650MB which complicates the backup procedures.
I now have a large amount of valuable data on the computer that took many man-hours to create. I DO NOT want to have to recreate it. I doubt if I could remember half of what I have already created.
I began exploring using an online backup service. In the process of doing the research, I read a good review about it in P C World (June 2, 2006) http://pcworld.com/article/id,125729-page,2/article.html.
The article picked these are the top services in order IBackup, XDrive, Acpana Data Deposit Box, Elephant Drive, Mozy. The article picked IBackup first, but gave mention of Mozy which is in Beta form.
I looked at the choices and I like Mozy. You know why? Mozy is free for the first 2.0GB. It costs $4.95 per month for 30GB. Before you read too far about Mozy, it only works with Windows XP so check out other sites if you do not run XP operating system.
To use Mozy, download the Mozy software and it takes care of the backups. It has an automatic feature the analyizes your hard drive and presents you with a back up set that it develops. You can make changes to the backup set as you see fit. It develops the backup set based on file extensions that it thinks you will want to back up. It backs up Outlook or Outlook Express. The backup works on files that are open.
Your first back up will be long (mine was over 24 hours), but each backup following that is incremental. It only backs up what has changed and it does that automatically. The backups are done in the background only when the CPU usage on your PC is low.
Here’s what Mozy says about itself:
* Is simple to set up
* Performs backups automatically in the background
* Encrypts all files on your PC before transfer
* Performs incremental backups
* Backs up only blocks that have changed
* Backs up open/locked files
Alternatives to Mozy (this is copied from the Mozy site)
I highly recommend that if you do not have one, you start a backup procedure. It is not a question of if the day will come when you need the backup. The real question is when. Don’t be the one who says “I wish I had listened and backed up my computer”.
I recommend that you sign up with Mozy (http://www.mozy.com/). Since it is free for backup under 2.0GB, you have nothing to lose. On the sign up form, there is a place for a referral code. Please do me the favor of entering my code which is 3FWLA1. I do not get paid directly in $$$, but I get 250MB additional backup space for each member who joins and right now my backup is 1.9GB out of the free 2.0GB so I am pushing the size of the free membership.
Linda and I work hard each week to bring you this eZine without volumes of advertising. We would appreciate a favor in return. Thanks in advance for your kindness.
How do I Print What I Am Viewing on my Screen?
Some readers may already know this trick so no offense to them.
If you want to print the contents of the screen that you are viewing, click on the Print Screen key on the keyboard. This does not immediately print the screen but rather, it puts a copy of the screen on the clipboard. This allows you to paste the image into another document.
Now that the image in on you clipboard, open Notepad or Word and position your cursor in the middle of a blank document. Right click your mouse and select “Paste” from the dropdown box. The image will be pasted into the document.
If the image is small, click on the image to select it. You will see small boxes at each corner of the picture. Place your cursor on one of these small boxes, hold down the left mouse button and drag away from the picture. This will resize the picture to a larger size. You may have to expand the margins of the document to really blow it up.
This is a handy tool to know how to use so keep it in mind for the next time you want to capture a screen shot.
I have prepared a short video of this procedure. View it at
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I28Video/Click-to-Play.html
That wraps up our issue for this week. I cannot stress enough about backing up your computer. DO IT NOW!!! Until next week, stay tuned.
John and Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
Boomer Marketplace
Boomer eZine Blog
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
Boomer’s Amazon Store
Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!
It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.
If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.
Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.
Table of Contents for this issue.....
- Authors Comments
- Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
- Follow up on eBay feedback
- ASK Database
- Backup Your Computer Hard Drive
- How Do I Print What I Am Viewing on my Screen?
Did you know that I speak Volkswagen? I am a quail hunter and in South Texas, every serious quail hunter has a hunting car or truck. Mine is made from a VW bus. My original VW hunting car, the Quailmobile, broke apart after 25 years. I bought a 1970 VW bus body to build the Quailmobile II using all the knowledge I gained from patching the old one for 25 years. (It had a lot of burned welding rod on it).
On top of all the work at my day job and my online job, I am trying to get this finished for hunting season this year, and I am running out of time. I have posted a couple of pictures of me working on it. It is lying on its side so my helper and I can weld the steel support in place on the underside without having to lie on our backs and have welding sparks falling in our faces. I will probably write more on it for those who are curious about it. I will post a picture of the final product. It is a one of a kind vehicle and it is fun.
A few years ago, for a project (I seem to have too many of them), I rebuilt a VW Thing. It took five years to complete since it involved taking it apart screw by screw and then putting it back together. We used it for a few years and when our children did not need the transportation anymore, we sold it. It was fun, but I will not undertake a project of that magnitude again.
John measuring for cutting steel brace
John welding brace in place
Linda and I are flying to Dallas this week end on our company plane (Southwest Airlines) to visit our son, Travis, and his lovely, talented wife, Linda Lee. Since I am married to a Linda and he is too, we tagged our daughter-in-law with her middle name so we would not get the Lindas mixed up. Travis turns 31 next week and we are having a birthday celebration for him. They have tickets for us to go to the Plano Symphony. Linda and I will really enjoy this. Kingsville does not have this available, and we consider this a real treat.
Q & A, Suggestions and Comments
Tim Know, one of our mentors, made the suggestion that we not use a full page for the width of the Boomer Video eZine. He suggested setting up a 700 pixel wide table on the page and put all the text inside that table.
We tried his suggestion and it makes a world of difference in the readability of the page. We hope that you think the same.
Please send us your comments on this style change via our new suggestion form. We will format the future issues to please our readers.
Submit your input at our suggestion form
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm
Follow up on eBay Feedback
In the last issue we discussed the need to achieve positive feedback for ten or more transactions to be creditable on eBay. I want to share with you the feedback generation for 10-17-06. I logged on eBay and searched for ebooks for $.99. There were 1,688 available. I bought the following. A cookbook with 11,000 recipes for Linda, Every Book on eBay plus resale rights to 1000’s more, Be Your Own Boss plus resale rights, Instant Affiliate Link Masker software, and 100 Feedback in Seven Days (I need to read this).
For fun I searched on ebooks for $.01 and found 678 ebooks for $.01. I bought one of these on How to Sell Books on eBay.
A friend who is a Boomer Video eZine subscriber bought one of the videos, and I bought one so as of 10/17/06 I have eight transactions and I am waiting for the feedback on them. I am still waiting for my children to buy the videos. At this rate, I guess I will have to cut them out of the will.
Ebooks are good items to buy for feedback. They are inexpensive. They are delivered immediately so you do not have to wait a week for shipping before leaving feedback. You can leave feedback in a few minutes after the purchase and if the seller is on the ball, he/she will leave feedback quickly.
Author’s Note: I just took time to read the “100 Feedback in Seven Days”. It is a seven page book that says to search for items for $.01 that are “Buy It Now” information products with no shipping cost. Buy 100 of these whether you need them or not, leave positive feedback and in one week you will have 100 transactions with positive feedback for the total price of $1.00.
I was looking for more value so I started at $.99 for the items for which I was searching. However, for building feedback, the $.01 item with no shipping cost is the way to go.
ASK Database
When I set up the Boomer Guru site for selling videos, I wanted to get feedback at the end of video so I could determine if there was something outdated in the video or get any suggestions for improvement. I also wanted to collect any suggestions for a new topic for a video.
After checking around on what was available, I settled on ASK Database. This is an amazing site that will handle the task of setting up forms to collect information and provide tools to help you analyze the information.
When you join ASK, you can set up various types of question formats and it generates the HTML code for you to copy into your web page for the form. When the reader completes the form, the data is logged into the ASK database and is available for you to read or analyze.
I have used ASK to set up a suggestion form for Boomer Video eZine at http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Suggestion_Form1.htm. I would really appreciate your going there and leaving your suggestions or comments. This will help us improve the eZine and will also debug the website.
You will get a “Thank You” page after leaving your suggestion. This is a custom Boomer Video eZine page If you did not want to make your own page, ASK has a default thank you page.
ASK has a 21 day free trial and then it costs $19.95 per month for the silver membership and $29.95 for the gold membership. This is not cheap for the starting entrepreneur. The cost of this service makes this one of those tough decisions. Will my site grow so the cost per response and the data collected justify the cost? Our decision is “yes”. This will be an invaluable tool for improving the quality of this site and other sites that we manage.
To learn more about ASK, go to www.askdatabase.com/cmd.asp?AF=503396.
The ASK Database is another tool that the successful online entrepreneur should have in his/her bag of tricks.
Back Up Your Computer Hard Drive
What is your backup procedure? I REALLY hope you have one. Most people back up to some type of media, but then store the media next to the computer. This takes care of the hard drive crash, but it does nothing about the house burning down along with the computer and the backup.
As we have expanded our online business, “My Documents” (for non Microsoft Windows users, this is where all user documents and files are usually kept) has grown exponentially. I now have 1.5GB in My Docs. I used to burn my backups to CD, but each CD only holds about 650MB which complicates the backup procedures.
I now have a large amount of valuable data on the computer that took many man-hours to create. I DO NOT want to have to recreate it. I doubt if I could remember half of what I have already created.
I began exploring using an online backup service. In the process of doing the research, I read a good review about it in P C World (June 2, 2006) http://pcworld.com/article/id,125729-page,2/article.html.
The article picked these are the top services in order IBackup, XDrive, Acpana Data Deposit Box, Elephant Drive, Mozy. The article picked IBackup first, but gave mention of Mozy which is in Beta form.
I looked at the choices and I like Mozy. You know why? Mozy is free for the first 2.0GB. It costs $4.95 per month for 30GB. Before you read too far about Mozy, it only works with Windows XP so check out other sites if you do not run XP operating system.
To use Mozy, download the Mozy software and it takes care of the backups. It has an automatic feature the analyizes your hard drive and presents you with a back up set that it develops. You can make changes to the backup set as you see fit. It develops the backup set based on file extensions that it thinks you will want to back up. It backs up Outlook or Outlook Express. The backup works on files that are open.
Your first back up will be long (mine was over 24 hours), but each backup following that is incremental. It only backs up what has changed and it does that automatically. The backups are done in the background only when the CPU usage on your PC is low.
Here’s what Mozy says about itself:
* Is simple to set up
* Performs backups automatically in the background
* Encrypts all files on your PC before transfer
* Performs incremental backups
* Backs up only blocks that have changed
* Backs up open/locked files
Alternatives to Mozy (this is copied from the Mozy site)
- Burn a new CD or DVD every Sunday night and store them at your brother-in-law's office.
- Pay $200/year for an online backup service that uses old, mediocre software.
- Buy a $200 external hard drive and hope your office doesn't burn down.
- Do nothing and don't worry about backup. (We suggest closing your eyes, plugging your ears and repeating "I'm in my happy place, I'm in my happy place.")
- Run a cron job of rsync, gzip and mcrypt piped over ssh to your friend's server over his DSL line.
I highly recommend that if you do not have one, you start a backup procedure. It is not a question of if the day will come when you need the backup. The real question is when. Don’t be the one who says “I wish I had listened and backed up my computer”.
I recommend that you sign up with Mozy (http://www.mozy.com/). Since it is free for backup under 2.0GB, you have nothing to lose. On the sign up form, there is a place for a referral code. Please do me the favor of entering my code which is 3FWLA1. I do not get paid directly in $$$, but I get 250MB additional backup space for each member who joins and right now my backup is 1.9GB out of the free 2.0GB so I am pushing the size of the free membership.
Linda and I work hard each week to bring you this eZine without volumes of advertising. We would appreciate a favor in return. Thanks in advance for your kindness.
How do I Print What I Am Viewing on my Screen?
Some readers may already know this trick so no offense to them.
If you want to print the contents of the screen that you are viewing, click on the Print Screen key on the keyboard. This does not immediately print the screen but rather, it puts a copy of the screen on the clipboard. This allows you to paste the image into another document.
Now that the image in on you clipboard, open Notepad or Word and position your cursor in the middle of a blank document. Right click your mouse and select “Paste” from the dropdown box. The image will be pasted into the document.
If the image is small, click on the image to select it. You will see small boxes at each corner of the picture. Place your cursor on one of these small boxes, hold down the left mouse button and drag away from the picture. This will resize the picture to a larger size. You may have to expand the margins of the document to really blow it up.
This is a handy tool to know how to use so keep it in mind for the next time you want to capture a screen shot.
I have prepared a short video of this procedure. View it at
http://www.boomer-ezine.com/Videos/V1I28Video/Click-to-Play.html
That wraps up our issue for this week. I cannot stress enough about backing up your computer. DO IT NOW!!! Until next week, stay tuned.
John and Linda Howe
www.boomer-ezine.com
www.boomer-guru.com
www.boomer-entrepreneur.com
Boomer Marketplace
Boomer eZine Blog
eBay Boomer Retirement Store
Boomer’s Amazon Store
Administrative Details …………….
If you are changing email addresses in the future, put a note on your calendar to send us a blank email after you have changed your address. Send the blank email to: boomerezine001@aweber.com. We want to remain in contact with you!
It is OK to go ahead and join our subscriber list with more than one email address. You never know when an email will be blocked by those tough SPAM filters. They are getting tighter and tighter and are blocking many legitimate emails.
If a friend sent you this newsletter and you would like to receive your own issue next time, send a blank email to boomerezine001@aweber.com and we will send you your own copy on the next issue.
Copyright 2006 John Howe, Inc.
posted by John & Linda Howe at 8:16 PM
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