Snow in South Texas

It is snowing here in Spring - Not sticking but still very cool to see every once and a while... Glad my commute is just 3 stops signs and a light...

Amazing Terrorist News Map

A web site that shows Global Incident Map.

This map shows Terrorist activities worldwide. They use icons for different categories of incidents and you can move and zoom any area of the world. You can also see US based Amber Alerts. The Amber Alerts page tends to be a little dated - meaning you see where the person was found and it might be weeks old data. They need to have a filter on it for only active alerts.

Just a personal observation about the transparency of information world wide. There are a lot of countries that don't show any terrorist activity at all and that would be clearly a view into the fact that they control the media and information flow out of their countries. Makes you want to live there (yea right).

I mainly just wanted to share this as a interesting site to look at from time to time - especially if you are planning to travel anywhere - it is good to look at it to get an idea of what is going on in a region you maybe traveling too...

This is a site I found from my new favorite Web Service

~ Stumble Upon ~

On every thorn, delightful wisdom grows.
In every rill a sweet instruction flows.

~ Edward Young ~

Hmmm - Life caught up with me...

Here I was feeling all good about blogging everyday and what happened - I missed one then two... How did it get by me to fast? I think it was because I came upon another service out on the web and immersed myself in it. I want to say first off it is truly amazing the work - thoughts - creations that people have come up with. You can spend hours / days and not come close to seeing all that interests you. Me being ADD - this service is fabulous. You go in and select from a very wide selection of categories that interest you and then this service pulls up websites / pictures / music / video from those categories - RANDOMLY.

The picture above is from one of those finds. If you look toward the top right of my blog your will find a link to my Stumble Upon profile and see the sites that I have found interesting. Trust me you will not be bored and you will find things that will educate and inspire you.

“One doesn't discover new lands without consenting to lose sight of the shore for a very long time.”

Andre Gide

Professional Looking Craigslist Listings

A lot of my friends know that I sell on eBay and also have an Estate Sales company. As a result of my selling experiences I have had to find ways to make my listings stand out. On eBay that is hard to do because there are so many services out there to assist in these matters - so just about everyone has an advanced looking listing but Craigslist is a completely different story. You don't have to know how to write HTML code to make your listings look fantastic in comparison to the bland boring simple text that 95% of the users of Craigslist.

Here is what I do - use the editors like what is used here in Blogger, eBay, or the one that I use the most is Auctiva. You go in and format exactly the way you want then Click on the Edit HTML tab and copy the code. Then when you create new listing in Craigslist - you paste the code straight into the listing.

If you have any questions or tricks that you would like to share - please let me know.

Thanks,

Dennis Sewell
(281) 374-4815
texasestateservices@gmail.com

"If you do build a great experience, customers tell each other about that. Word of mouth is very powerful."

- Jeff Bezos Amazon.com founder

How fast did you know?

There is so much information out on the internet and in the world that keeping up with it is next to impossible. I have found a number of tools out there that condenses the time it takes to get this information and even to process it into your daily use.

For those of you that know me - know that I am not a big reader. But that is not completely an accurate statement. I just don't read a lot of books. I would prefer to listen to a book then to sit down and read. A lot of it is that - I have a hard time staying focused on one thing. That is where the misconception of my reading prowess comes into play. I am an avid reader off the internet - just short bursts like magazine length articles. The major source of my material is through the use of Google Reader. After you create an account with Google then you can define your subjects (interests) that you would like for Google to source for you. It is amazing the amount of information out there that is published every day. The neat thing about using Google Reader is that if you use Google Blogger then when you see an article that you think is cool or worth keeping all you have to do is click on the star and it is automatically added to your Blog.

I would love your input on ways to improve my Blog, anything you may have questions about and I hope that you find things on here that are useful, insightful, or just plain cool...

Dennis

The man of wisdom is never of two minds;
the man of benevolence never worries;
the man of courage is never afraid.
Confucius

Outstanding Find - Pandora Radio!!!

It is not everyday that your teenage kids say that YOU WIN when it comes to finding new and cool things on the internet. As a result of using Spokeo a couple of my friends (Credit due to Steve Gross and Phillip Elkins) were members of a new music service online called Pandora Radio. Not only can you listen to the music you already know and love - but goes way deeper then all that. It is called "Music Genome Project" Click HERE and you can read exactly what it is all about. They have given you an easy format to buy the music or to create (free) what are called radio stations of the music you really like.

No matter what ~ it is a great site with more Artists / Music then you could ever listen to....

My Pandora profile is dennis775

Blog Power - Expands Knowledge

Okay - yesterday was my first official Blog and as a result of that posting I was amazed that someone one that I didn't know would take the time to read it and comment on it. I have been looking at using Social Networks and Google Reader to keep up with business co-workers, family, friends and just to get new fresh ideas. I really expected for my Blog to be a vehicle to push that information out to this network. Instead it just opened the door for me to see new and great things out there.

The people that commented on my Blog were actually pushing their sites so in a way they had a very good reason to be surfing peoples Blog's looking for an opportunity to expose their business. As a result of this I am grateful in that they exposed me to new cutting edge things that I will use and even broadened my knowledge of other things out there. One of them is what I am going to comment about today:

http://www.spokeo.com

This site is like a Google reader but the focus of the reader is your network and the sites that "THEY" are using. You go in and put in your logins to the various Social Networks your belong to and/or upload your email contact list. For me that was:

• LinkedIn
• MySpace
• Facebook

Then what it does is look at your friends and contacts across a very large list of Social Networks and imports updated information that "THEY" have put onto those sites. No emails being sent out and all this is done quietly behind the scenes - it even opens doors of other sites / information that I hadn't even thought or heard of. Some of these will be in upcoming Blogs.

Now this can be kind of scary in that you see information that you might not have expected to see. An example of this is that it even pulls things like what is on your "Wish List" from Amazon.com. But overall you will see when they have added anything to their profiles, so you don't have to jump from one social network to the next just to see if they have updated anything. It is all shown in the Spokeo reader - if they add something you want then you just click on the new item and it takes you to their profile. Quick, Simple, Painless!!! Speeding up this already Super-Fast World of Information and Knowledge...