Hilton Head Island

I am heading to the beach with my family for some much needed r&r. It will be fun to see my 3 year old daughter play with her cousin on the beach. Palmetto Dunes is beautiful and we are ready to go. Even though I am very pregnant, I will be poolside with my gossip magazines. Escape! Serenity now!

Road trip! Here are some fun HH and Summer music links for anyone going to the beach this summer:

www.hiltonheadisland.org

www.hiltonhead.com

www.palmettodunes.com

Songs of Summer 2006
http://spinachdip.blogspot.com/2006/07/rating-songs-of-summer-2006.html

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/002811.html

http://www.npr.org/programs/asc/archives/summer06/

Lake Lanier at Low Level Thanks to Army Corps of Engineers

Our lake days are seeing low levels once again only this time it's because of human error. A faulty gauge released 22 BILLION gallons. They also miscalculated the lake levels and reported the level was higher than it actually is. How do you miscalculated a water level?

And they are responsible for fixing the New Orleans levees? Good God.

Faulty gauge drains Lanier Low levels could prompt drought declaration on brink of summer
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/stories/0619lanier.html

Faulty gauge costs Lake Lanier lots of water
http://www.macon.com/mld/macon/14854687.htm

IKEA US web site needs help

I tried to order my daughter's bedroom set online today from IKEA to pick up at their downtown Atlanta store, but they wouldn't let me. If you order online, you have no option for store pickup, just shipping. I also tried searching items from the catalog using their search feature and things would not show up that I later found through the categories. You would think such a large company would have thoroughly checked their web site for products and made them easier to find. So now we have to trek downtown with our printouts and find the items to buy. I guess large corporations are still not at the top of their web site games either.

www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/
Just try searching for a bed rail

Freelance project marketing professional in Atlanta

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Theodore Roosevelt's ideas on Immigrants and being an AMERICAN in 1907.

"In the first place, we should insist that if the immigrant who comes here in good faith becomes an American and assimilates himself to us, he shall be treated on an exact equality with everyone else, for it is an outrage to discriminate against any such man because of creed, or birthplace, or origin. But this is predicated upon the person's becoming in every facet an American, and nothing but an American...There can be no divided allegiance here. Any man who says he is an American, but something else also, isn't an American at all. We have room for but one flag, the American flag... We have room for but one language here, and that is the English language... and we have room for but one sole loyalty and that is a loyalty to the American people."

- Theodore Roosevelt 1907

Nanny nanny boo boo

As my 2 1/2 year old daughter smiles at me and says "nanny nanny boo boo," I stop and ponder where that phrase originated. I mean, I said it when I was little and I'm sure my parents' generation said it and so on. It is just a special something that she picked up at daycare. It is funny what gets passed on and even if you try to keep your kids from learning this things, it is inevitable.

The same goes with riding the school bus. I rode the school bus but only from like 3rd grade on to public school. I do have an issue with my daughter riding one at 5, but only because there aren't any kids on our street and she won't know anyone, plus the fact that 10 year olds will also be riding that bus. I think kindergarten is a little young and I wouldn't have issues if she had friends in the neighborhood to ride with. Well I'll cross that bridge when I come to it in about 2 years.

For now, nanny nanny boo boo.

Random mom thought #452

You know, that Johnny in Johnny & the Sprites on Disney looks like a young, cute Ben Affleck. Boy do I need to watch some grown up tv. hee hee hee


http://disney.go.com/disneychannel/playhouse/johnny/

The Job Interview - How Can You Really Know How Someone Will Work?

I have been interviewing for jobs and find the whole interview process a little off kilter. I mean, how can we really know what a company is like when they grill you? And how do they know how productive I will be by answering questions the right way? I say give people more 90 day trials and let them duke it out. An apprentice like approach but that is really the only way to know - for both sides.

Indeed.com job search www.indeed.com
Monster www.monster.com
Career Builder www.careerbuilder.com

F&*(^% Company
www.fuckedcompany.com
Job Vent
http://www.jobvent.com/
BullS*&^ Job
http://www.bullshitjob.com/
About My Job
http://www.aboutmyjob.com/

Office Space Soundboard
http://www.ebaumsworld.com/officespace.html

The Office UK
http://www.bbc.co.uk/comedy/theoffice/

The Office US
http://www.nbc.com/The_Office/

Movies with Great Plot Twists

My husband and I just watched Skeleton Key last night with Kate Hudson. Just when I thought I had it all figured out, it threw me for a loop. I love smart movies that keep you guessing. This is a great movie if that is what you seek. Not a lot of gore or scary scenes, it is more imagination and the setting in New Orleans pre-Katrina and in the tone of Hoo Doo, not Voo Doo although I think they are related. Add it to your next Netflix rental if you enjoyed these types of flicks: The Village, The Sixth Sense, The Others, etc.

I hope New Orleans comes back. I know its soul is there. It's just a matter of time.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0397101/ Skeleton Key

http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/listmania/fullview/1I9SQWLW3M40N/002-2296279-3421668?%5Fencoding=UTF8 Amazon Reader List: Movies with Great Plot Twists

http://www.virgin.net/movies/toptens/movietwists.html Everyone has a list come to think of it

I love Netflix! www.netflix.com

Stop. Hammer Time.

Stop sign seen in Shiloh Road Alpharetta business park. Right under the stop, someone put in nice stenciled lettering "Hammer Time". I almost drove off the road laughing. I will go back and take a picture for my blog. Thank you to the random person who put that there. I have been giggling about that all week.

Another annoying sighting - at a grocery store, a large woman wearing sweatpants with writing on her backside. Please don't make me look there. And the writing just forces your eyes to look there. That is a big fashion DON'T that Glamour magazine regularly covers!

www.glamour.com Glamour magazine

http://www.roadtripamerica.com/signs/categories.htm Funny street signs

The Chicago Bears have a chance!

It's a damn good year when the Bears are in the playoffs. The Cubs did okay but now as a Chicago fan I feel better. Although the Red Sox/Cubs game this summer did rule as my sports choice of 2005, I hope the Bears can make some headway.

I won my husband's office pool for the college bowl games and it was just sweet. I picked Texas to win just like last year and my dream came true. My husband thought I was nuts, but after Auburn was shafted last year for the bowl championship series, it would be a cold day in hell before I root for the number one ranked team.

I say have a playoff! College fans deserve a thrilling and worthy championship series that will silence the critics and allow a true champion to evolve through what every other sport and pro NFL conference will attest to: you need a playoff system.

Word to the motha. Jenni out.

www.auburn.edu

Welcome to the world of the podcast

I got a new 30 GB video iPod for Xmas and it rocks. Besides trying to upload all my CDs and maxing out my laptop, I have half my iPod full and have now discovered podcasts.

Through iTunes, I have discovered some really cool podcasts. For those of you who aren't familiar with them, they are basically radio shows that you can download and listen to on your iPod at any time.

I have the Rolling Stone interview with Bono on my iPod as well as NPR 7 am news, story of the day and song of the day. I have stuck in the 80s and the ricky gervais show podcasts and they rock. Even They Might Be Giants has one that I am subscribing to and it's free.

There is a whole world out there and now we can listen on our schedule instead of the programmer's schedules. When I drive home from work, I listen to the NPR story of the day and in about a 20 minute drive, I hear a really neat story from someone in the world in my own little commuting world.

I have a feeling that life and radio is about to change as we know it, again. I am very excited to be witnessing this empirical shift from media when the programmers direct it to media when the consumer wants it. It is the age of me and it rocks.

Now back to my iPod.

www.apple.com/itunes/podcasts
www.itunes.com
www.ilounge.com
www.npr.org/rss/podcast/podcast_directory.php

http://www.podcast.net/
www.ipodder.org
www.podcastalley.com
www.podcastbunker.com
podcasts.yahoo.com
www.podcastcentral.com
www.guardian.co.uk/rickygervais
www.podcast411.com
www.podcast.com

Toddlers and Medicine

My two year old daughter had strep last week and we gave her amoxicillin to treat it. She felt better in a few days, but was waking up agitated in the middle of the night with stomach cramps and she was crying, which she never does normally.

I called the nurse at her Dr office and she said although it is cause for concern, to continue giving it to her for the remaining 3 days of the 10 day treatment. It was against my better judgment and we stopped giving it to her.

It had been 8 days since we all slept through the night, but last night was the first restful night since we stopped giving it to her.

It's hard being a parent and deciding what's best for your child, but when they are in pain and don't need to be, it's not even an issue.

I guess I'm most upset that I have discovered that doctors and nurses are just people and not superpeople whom I grew up thinking could solve every health problem. As a parent, we have to make educated decisions and guesses, like they do, about what is best for our health and for our family's health.

Never second guess your gut feelings and instincts. I know I won't!

Online Marketing and Smaller Businesses

DECEMBER 20, 2005

About two-thirds of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) use online marketing or plan to start in the next six months, according to a new report.

Frank N. Magid Associates surveyed a national sample of 1,060 for-profit small- and medium-sized businesses between September 12th and October 11th, 2005. A little over one-half of these respondents were from a registered users list of AllBusiness.com, an online resource for businesses that sponsored the study.

The data implies that only 22% of SMBs use the Internet for marketing. Of these, just over 60% employ e-mail marketing, while 56% use search engine optimization, 36% have banner ads, and 25% use pay-per-click advertising. Most of these organizations — 74% — are planning to increase their online marketing spending, although 43% of SMBs who are not using online marketing say they are planning to in the next 6 months.

However, a study by Interland indicates that SMBs rate other, non-Web related factors as more important, or just as important, when it comes to business success. For example, 55% of US SMBs surveyed said that community relations were critical, compared to 47% who cited a Web site. Public relations, direct mail and yellow pages were all deemed more important marketing tools than e-mail marketing. While converts to online marketing seem enthusiastic about it, it is clear that SMBs as a whole have not yet jumped wholeheartedly into the online realm when it comes to promoting their products.

Outside the realm of marketing, Magid found that over four-fifths of SMBs credit the Internet with improving communications in their company, while about three-fifths said that the Internet opened new markets for them, increased competition and lowered their costs. Interestingly, less than one-third said that the Internet improved employee performance, perhaps reflecting concern over employees being distracted from work by surfing the Web.

http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?1003731

©2005 eMarketer Inc. All rights reserved

Small Internet Retailers Are Using Web Tools to Level the Selling Field

E-Commerce Report from The New York Times

By BOB TEDESCHI
Published: December 19, 2005

AMAZON, Walmart.com and other online retailing giants have always had upstarts nipping at their heels. But the little guys are starting to bite harder.

Just how sharp their teeth are, however, is a matter of some debate.

Of the $26 billion in sales that are projected for Internet retailers this holiday season, about 45 percent will go to small retailers, according to Forrester Research, up from 42 percent last year. Even so, with revenues starting to flatten at eBay, the site so many of them use to market their wares, some analysts doubt they will ever be able to break through the 50 percent mark.
But other analysts are not so sure. In the fast-changing world of Internet commerce, they say, smaller merchants have gained two important advantages: Google and consumers who are fussier than ever.

"The game has changed," said Gene Alvarez, an analyst with Gartner, a technology consulting firm.

In years past, any retailer could put up a Web site fairly easily, although it had little chance of attracting the attention of Web browsers unless it had enough money to advertise on well-known sites like AOL and MSN. Yahoo and Amazon, which have long sold cheap Internet storefronts to small businesses, sweetened the deal by listing the businesses on their sites in return for a sales commission.

But that exposure, while significant, pales in comparison to the publicity Web merchants can now gain by spending a few nickels per click on a text ad on Google. "Before, people couldn't find these smaller guys," Mr. Alvarez said. "But now these stores can be much more easily discovered on Google."

At the same time, consumers are displaying a growing appreciation for small online retailers. According to the Kelsey Group, a media consulting firm, the portion of Internet searches that include local elements like "dry cleaners and Greenwich Village" or "art galleries in Easton" has doubled in the last year to 20 percent.

One reason for that, no doubt, is the spread of high-speed Internet connections, which allow users to click through multiple merchants without waiting hours for Web pages to load.
All of which leads to another phenomenon that could further threaten the dominance of the big players - simplified e-commerce software with the potential to lure hordes of hitherto reluctant merchants onto the Internet.

According to eBay, nearly 650,000 small businesses in the United States have an online presence, a sizable figure but a tiny fraction of the 7.5 million companies that the Kelsey Group estimates market most of their goods directly to consumers. Many of the holdouts have resisted the Web because they deem the transition to be too difficult, too expensive or both. But now, Yahoo Stores, ProStores from eBay, NetSuite and other companies that help businesses operate online hope to change the minds of the hesitant with software and services that are cheaper and easier to use.

"We're moving into the next generation for small and medium-sized businesses who want to sell online," said Mr. Alvarez of Gartner. "Even a one-person shop can open an online store that's much more refined than it would've been a few years ago."

Liz Herbert, a Forrester analyst, said the biggest change in e-commerce software in the last few years was that it no longer comes in a box. It is delivered online, so businesses do not need technology specialists to install and run the company's system.

EBay has for years offered sellers the chance to set up their own ministores, called storefronts, in this fashion, but the company this year intensified its efforts to reach small businesses that might not be interested in selling solely on its site. In January, it bought Kurant, an e-commerce software company, for an undisclosed sum; this year it renamed the service ProStores and upgraded the software with added features.

According to Chris Tsakalakis, eBay's senior director of stores and platforms, the ProStores service, which costs from $7 to $250 monthly, gives sellers templates to use in setting up a store, and will carry an online catalog of 10 items or more. For those who pay $30 or more a month, the service includes a personalized Web address, a secure checkout process and a selection of more sophisticated business tools, like those that help managers improve the store's rankings on search engine results.

Such software tools sound like an obvious place for Google's engineers to focus, particularly if the company wants to attract more local businesses online so they will buy more Google ads. But Google - which last month began giving away software to help Internet managers analyze their site traffic, but has not otherwise pushed into e-commerce services - does not offer live customer service, and this is one market where such service is critical, executives said.
"We have hundreds of live agents that are highly trained, answering questions around the clock," said Rich Riley, vice president and general manager of Yahoo Small Business. "That gives us a real head start."

And increasingly, these services include more than just the ability to post a Web site and accept transactions. NetSuite, a privately held company co-founded by Lawrence J. Ellison, Oracle's chief executive, and Evan Goldberg, one of Oracle's chief technologists, has improved its tools for companies that want to manage their entire business - including payroll, shipping and marketing - through the Internet.

For some retailers, like Mess Makeup, a New York seller of cosmetics, that is the most important feature in the latest incarnation of e-commerce services. "I could go to the Bahamas, pull out my laptop, look at inventory, see how many leads came in, track people's shipping, and everything's extremely user-friendly," said Adam Furman, a former software consultant who co-founded Mess Makeup two months ago.

Mr. Furman, who pays NetSuite about $1,000 a month for one of its more sophisticated service offerings, said he would have had to spend $500,000 to $1 million to develop the same technology on his own a few years ago. "And we would've needed to hire a tech team of our own," he said. "Now we can concentrate more on just selling makeup and building our business."

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/12/19/technology/19ecom.html

Small Business Marketing Help is Here

As a business to business marketer, I have garnered much experience in the areas of technology with a splash of agency work as well. I am currently a one person marketing department and I handle all aspects of corporate marketing communications. I handle advertising (both print and online), public relations, trade shows, marketing collateral and all marketing projects for a software company.

I have recently started working freelance on small business marketing projects for some local companies. It is amazing all of the companies out there who are looking for marketing professionals for projects but who do not have the budget or workload to staff a full time marketer.

With that in mind, I have started freelance marketing for small businesses. Jen Marketing is my new creation designed to help entrepreneurs and small businesses handle their advertising, marketing and PR on a project basis. Looking for a freelance marketer? Seeking a marketing consultant? Need help with some projects that you don't have time for? Need help writing and distributing a press release? Just need some research done? Give me a shout. I can help with your small business marketing and small business advertising needs large or small.

Jen Marketing.com freelance project marketer - all things marketing. Marketing, advertising, events, web research, PR, Collateral, Web marketing, flyers, newsletters & more! Because you have work to do. Let's get started.

Jen Marketing. Do More.

www.jenmarketing.com
Freelance marketer
Project marketer
Marketing consultant
Advertising consultant
PR consultant
Trade show coordinator
Small business marketer
Small business advertiser
Small business public relations

I got my iPod. You didn't get one.

Glory day. I got my 30GB video iPod and I am in heaven. It rocks. I also bought the kit with all the cables that you need to play it in your car, on your stereo and listen with 2 people. I have all of my music and pictures on it. You can show slide shows on tv to music, put your calendar on it, your contacts from Outlook. It even has games and a timer on it. Christmas came early in our household!

Between this and our satellite radio that is due anyday, we will be set. No more boring radio for us. No more songs overplayed to the point of no return! Control is back in our hands! Victory is ours!

www.apple.com

U2 is the band of our generation

I am 34 years old and I have grown up with U2. Go ahead. Call them a band that has not affected you in some way shape or form, and I will work with you on this. I am sorry but there isno excuse but to know this band and the beaty it brings to your world. Rock on. For now, we live here.

www.u2.com

Auburn Wins the Iron Bowl. War Eagle!

Auburn ended a fabulous season by making a human pinata out of Alabama's quarterback, Brodie Croyle. Bumper stickers are already on the market "Honk if you sacked Brodie." As an Auburn fan, seeing them beat Bama four years in a row is golden.


Auburn's defense contributes to its fourth consecutive win over Alabama.
http://www.theplainsman.com/vnews/display.v/ART/43833d26ad71c

Auburn's victory could set the tone for the future
http://www.montgomeryadvertiser.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051122/SPORTS/511220364/1002

Auburn Tigers
http://www.wtvynews4.com/sports/headlines/1996907.html

Auburn Awaits Mystery Game
http://www.al.com/sports/mobileregister/index.ssf?/base/sports/1132568116235900.xml&coll=3

Auburn Blasts Out of Alabama's Shadow
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/10130783/

Great video clip of the 2005 Iron Bowl Highlights
http://www.aunation.net/ironbowlvideos/AU%20vs%20UA%2011_19_05.wmv

Auburn University
http://www.auburn.edu

IKEA, The European Target

My sister road tripped into town from Charlotte, NC with my mom and her two kids so we could have a sister shopping spree at IKEA. She has been an avid fan for a few years and hasn't been to one in years. This was my first trip but since they opened the Atlanta location and sent the catalog, they have made a fan out of me. With their funky cool style and low prices, you can't beat it! I got stuff cheaper than Wal-Mart there and it looks ten times better. Needless to say, I was able to give my sister an early Xmas present by shopping with her as our mom and my husband watched the kids.

It is a huge store and it does encourage kids. It even has a restaurant and kids play palace. I got doormats for $1.99 and kids plates 5 for .99. You can't beat that! Plus they won me over as they played the 80s satellite radio channel. I guess we fit their target demographic.

It rocks. Plus I just got back from visiting our friends in Luzern, Switzerland. They have all that cool track lighting and space saving efficient furniture. It was like an extension of our trip going to IKEA. They show you examples of living within certain spaces like 1500 sq ft, 1000 sq ft and less. It's definitely a lesson for the US as we are used to larger wide open spaces. If you are in a smaller space, you must plan for more efficient use of your space. Like IKEA says, think high. Go all the way up your wall and maximize your space.

www.ikea.com