Love and Internet

There are many websites that help singles to find the real love, like Heart Detectives. Very intriguing name, red website, sign up is free and easy; you get access to thousands of local singles.

Another interesting website is eHarmony. It’s free to receive and review matches. You just register and take the questionnaire to receive the matches.

Last one I’ll talk about is Lovebank.com. Unlike other online dating services it features subscribing members only. The membership guarantees unlimited communication with all other members for a very reasonable price, only $39.95 for a full 12 months subscription.

But why these services are so popular? Why is so good to find love through the Net? I wait your replies and stories to include in the article. Just write your story in the Comments section, and if good enough, I’ll feature it in this article.

• A Taste of Fate: Meeting Winemaker Jacky Blot Wally August is the owner of a gift baskets business. Since 1987, this commitment to quality, beauty and service has made Fancifull Gift Baskets Hollywood's #1 gift basket company with a worldwide clientel. They have provided baskets and gifts for over 500 movies and TV shows. Wally said me: I......
• The History of Santa Claus Santa Claus is a legendary figure in folklore who, in Western cultures, is described as bringing gifts on Christmas Eve. He is a fat, jolly man wearing a red coat and trousers with white cuffs and collar who delivers presents to all of the good boys and girls in the......
• Fashion, internet and our society Today we interview Justin Hoehn. Justin manages LEADapparel.com, providing a broad range of apparel brands at the lowest prices possible. With 27 warehouses covering all regions of the U.S. LEADapparel.com has the ability to ship customer orders quickly to anywhere in the country and worldwide. Fashion, internet and our society......
• A beautiful Car-Pc Today we interview Oliver Aigner, owner of CarTFT.com. His business is very particular and I'm sure you'll love to read about it. They offer people a cheap way to integrate computers into cars. A beautiful Car-Pc When did you start your business? We started in May 2003. (You can read......
• Ten Tips for Shopping Online This Holiday Season Kathy Grannis sent me this very useful article by Shop.org. Shop.org is the network for retailers online. Its 600 members include the 10 largest retailers in the U.S., and 70 percent of the Internet Retailer Top 100 E-Retailers. It's where the best retail minds come together to gain the insight,......

• Get McAfee Internet Security Suite 2007 For Free. Although I don't need it (thanks to Apple), you can get a copy of McAfee's Internet Security Suite 2007 for free after rebate from Office Depot. It costs $69.99, but after 2 rebates of $60 and $10 it costs you nothing and you even make a penny on the deal.......
• Find in 3 Steps How VoIP Telephone Systems Works For those who have never heard about the possibilities of VoIP or phone over ip, be prepared to drastically change the way you think about your current long distance calling plan. VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) is a method for taking ordinary analog audio signals and turning them into digital......
• Use Free 411 Services to Save on Your Telephone Bill 411 information services can become quite costly to businesses.There are now several free 411 services that work just as well as the traditional AT&T or carrier services.Of these services, Google (800-GOOG-411) has a ranking at the very top of the list for quality and ease of use.If you happen......
• Restaurant & Catering Super Summit January 13, 2010 Veteran Restaurant Owner Reveals His Tested Multi-Million Dollar Generating Road-Map To Success So You Can.. Double Your Restaurant & Catering Profits ...even in the toughest economic times. The trauma in the economy isn't anywhere near over, in fact, it might turn even uglier, and if you just mush on......
• The Pros And Cons Of A Free Email Service META: Every person in the world, or so it seems, practically uses an email service that uses at least one free email account. Using a free email address has its benefits as well as drawbacks though not as many as the former. Due to the fact that free email services provide......

A desert riding story

A few girls at the desert at a campfire talked about starting a business—of course, a few cocktails were involved. That is where we started! At this point, there were very few clothing companies with riding gear that catered to quad riding, desert-loving women. The name was picked that evening by one of our friends who wanted the name ‘dirty!’ We had our first meeting and everyone declined business involvement except Kim and me (Tracey). We cleaned up the name and changed it to Huchi. I did research on the name and found out that in Japanese it means ‘Goddess of Fire.’ Let me tell you our road was rocky. Many fights! Honestly, we could write a thousand page book on that! We went to Los Angeles with our spouses to find material to make our pants. We spent a lot of money to come up with the product we have now, which is pretty darn good.

At first, we had our friends sell our clothing at their shop and during desert season at their booth. He got us in Dirt Wheels magazine for our first article. After a while we had so much inventory that it was too hard for our friends to carry everything and the few stores we distributed to only carried a small amount of our inventory.

So by the third year in business, we decided to try it on our own. We had so much fun—sold at the desert (won a toy hauler), Thunderboats, Oktoberfest, Off-road shows, and so much more! We met an heiress, boat racers, rode in the fastest cars in the desert while we threw out clothes for promotion, sold to bigwigs in the police force, military, you name it! We were profiled in several videos and pictures. We signed autographs, and even posed in pictures with some of our best customers. We met so many people and that was the best part. Even men loved buying our clothes for their girlfriends/wives. We learned to size a woman up by the spouse or significant others body description. We do not know how it happened, but our product has been sold online all over the United States.

There are lots of people who have asked us how to start a business! In fact, right before writing this article, I had a friend’s son ask how to legitimately to sell online. One reason that most people do not become rich selling clothing is because there are just so many clothing companies in operation, causing difficult competition.

Here is our best piece of advice—networking and customer service are critical for a successful business. A word of caution, think twice before starting a business with family or friends. It is tough!

• An exquisite online Art Gallery Today we interview Michael Goldstein, the owner of RockPopGallery.com. Michael, what can you tell us about your Art Gallery? RockPoP Gallery was launched online in December of 2005 to showcase the best graphic art and photographic talent working in all areas of today’s music industry. I had the privilege of......
• An intense trip in the profound Mexico Jared W. Olen, founder of OlenJewelry.com, made an intense trip and his story is featured in this article. Olen Jewelry is an international retailer of high-quality, sterling silver jewelry. Jared told me a fascinating story about the campaign he will start soon and that will have the name Fair Trade......
• There is not Bad Weather, Just the Wrong Clothing Jeff Knowlton wrote this exclusive article for us. He is the National Account Manager of 66North.com. 66°NORTH Ltd. is among Iceland’s oldest manufacturing companies. It was established in the year 1926 and has throughout the decades been a leading producer and innovator in the making of working clothes used on......
• Why Do Girls Love Shopping? Girls absolutely love fashion and dressing themselves up. This is one of their favorite activities and they will spend hours out shopping in the hope of finding that perfect outfit to wear to some big event coming up in their lives. Whilst men will be out competing over sports and......
• Has the internet changed your life? Corrie Petersen is a WAHM wanna-be. She and her husband Kevin run a successful Christian jewelry business that can be found at http://heavenlycrosses.com. You can also check out Corrie’s other businesses at http://corriepetersen.com. Here's Corrie article for us. Has the internet changed your life? The internet was an amazing technological......

• Voting Time: Top Ten Nominees for Green Business of the Year. From Co-op America (one of my favorite sites), below are the top ten most popular green business nominations for 2008. See what green consumers are saying about the businesses, check out their Web sites, and then vote for your favorite before October 9. 1. Alter Eco San Francisco, CA......
• What You Need To Know When Buying Used Hardware Refurbished network hardware is the latest thing for hip IT managers who consider themselves in the know. The used equipment is often renovated by various resellers and integrators, reset and error free. They are then sold in the secondary market at up to 90% off of list price. Products are......
• Ten Tips Toward a More Eco Friendly Home Tip 1 - Turn the lights off any time that they are not needed, even if you are just moving from room to room in the course of your day. According to Energy Star, as much as 20 percent of a home's overall energy use comes from its lighting. Using......
• Distilling the Ingredients of Successful Account Management - Part 1 Ask 10 business owners what makes a good supplier or distributor, and you'll get 10 different answers. It's an interesting question; one sure to give rise to all kinds of opinions no matter what industry you spend your time. As the owner of one of the nation's most prominent......
• Take the Five Social Networking Model Steps That Transforms Your Business Have you noticed that Linkedin is being used more and more as a recruiting center for career management? Linkedin is becoming one of "the" hot recruitment centers because the profile content their database provides is more useful than what a typical job placement website provides. Job seekers can network......

He is a fat, jolly man wearing a red coat and trousers with white cuffs and collar who delivers presents to all of the good boys and girls in the world, and coal to the naughty children.

Is Santa Claus real? well, of course not, but the figure is more than a legend. It is connected to the story of Saint Nicholas.

The History of Santa Claus

Nicholas was born during the third century in the village of Patara. His wealthy parents died in an epidemic and Nicholas used his whole inheritance to assist people in need. Still young, Nicholas was made Bishop of Myra. Under the Roman Emperor Diocletian, who persecuted Christians, Nicholas was exiled and imprisoned and died december 6, AD 343.

Many stories have been told of Saint Nicholas about his generosity to those in need, especially children. This is why he is known as protector of children. To have more info about him, you can search the net. There are so many websites with interesting stories about him.

Going back to Santa Claus, surfing the Internet you’ll find also many websites selling magical greetings, gifts and Santas letters.

There is much time before Christmas, but I discovered this website just now and it is very well done. It delivers a personalized letter from Santa and also deluxe packages.

The deluxe package is a kid’s dream come true, the letter is packed with a whole box of custom Christmas goodies. You receive a huge, shiny, bright red box “directly from the North Pole” with a glossy autographed photo of Santa Claus, genuine reindeer food, an authentic collectors piece of Santa’s suit and a CD with a personal greeting From Santa Claus.

The bright red box will be addressed with a shiny gold foil shipping label, a North Pole postage stamp and a return address label from Santa’s workshop. About the workshop, the website has a “workshop area” where you can download a free countdown to Christmas module for your MySpace page, Blogger or website. It is not static, there is moving snow in the background and it is a nice addition to every website when Christmas will be near.

• Wine, the Perfect Gift After our article about wine, A Taste of Fate: Meeting Winemaker Jacky Blot, let's talk again about it, this time reviewing The Wine Messenger website. The Wine Messenger has a great collection of wines and all can be ordered online (but within 24 states only, read their shipping policy). Collections......
• Clothing, Jewelry, Computers This is an interesting Weblog about online shopping and, to be more specific, about clothing, jewelry and computers. So you'll read articles about online shops, shopping experiences, consumers stories and also reviews. But there will be much more than this, as example we'll talk about the online shopping phenomenon and......
• Why Do Girls Love Shopping? Girls absolutely love fashion and dressing themselves up. This is one of their favorite activities and they will spend hours out shopping in the hope of finding that perfect outfit to wear to some big event coming up in their lives. Whilst men will be out competing over sports and......
• Graphic t-shirts enter the world of haute couture Al Keser wrote this article for us. He is a New York fashionista, intrigued by the on-goings in the urban fashion scene in the Big Apple. He is writing on behalf of R.A.G., the New York clothing store which specializes in urban wear such as graphic t-shirts, plaid shorts, and......
• An intense trip in the profound Mexico Jared W. Olen, founder of OlenJewelry.com, made an intense trip and his story is featured in this article. Olen Jewelry is an international retailer of high-quality, sterling silver jewelry. Jared told me a fascinating story about the campaign he will start soon and that will have the name Fair Trade......

• Random Thoughts From the Clouds [/caption]There's not a lot of personal finance content in this post... which makes it somewhat suitable for a Friday afternoon (or evening if you are on the East coast). It's simply some thoughts I had while flying back from vacation that I felt like sharing. I'll return with more personal......
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• Dominion Cast 17 - History Made, What's Next? What is there to be thankful for? A black president bringing change like a lanky caramel Dumbo-eared Santa Claus in his bag of hope - of course! Assuming he survives to the inaugural. Hunin, Heaven, Rib, Anson and myself discuss this last election and how it's effected us as .........
• No Waiting for the Stem Cell Research Debate To Finish While the debate on stem cell research rages on, Donald Cecil couldn’t afford to wait for research. Donald badly needed treatment for his heart which was damaged by a series of heart attacks. Luckily, he found a stem cell treatment, Vescell in Thailand by using his own Adult Stem Cells......
• Trafficked children in Nepal Conor Grennan, another hero, backed by a small NGO that he started Next Generation Nepal is walking back roads in Nepal trying to reconnect families with their trafficked children. Here's part of one of his blog entries. Karin He was amazing, Min Bahadur, tall and lanky for a Nepali, always......

An intense trip in the profound Mexico

My idea for Fair Trade Silver came from a trip I took in May of 2006 to Mexico. My best friend, Kim, and I flew into Benito Júarez International Airport in Mexico City. We had worked since that January to plan a trip to see the “real” Mexico, that is, a trip that did not include staying in Americanized hotels and resorts.

While reading Jared story I thought, well, this is a really nice experience, in Mexico, culture and tradition are seen as central to life and society and Mexican people are profound and warm, not at all superficial. But you can’t understand their traditions if you stay in hotel. I continued to read his story…

My main goal for visiting Mexico was to visit Taxco in the Mexican state of Guerrero.

Taxco de Alarcón (Taxco) is a former colonial silver-mining center in the northern part of the Mexican state of Guerrero on the western arm of the Sierra Madre del Sur. It is located 200 km southwest of Mexico City along the old highway to Acapulco at an elevation of 1,800 m (5,900 ft).

…Taxco is known by many as the sterling silver capital of the world for it is home to countless shops that sell beautiful machine- and hand-crafted sterling silver jewelry made from silver mined just outside the town.

Taxco reminds me of quaint European town with its narrow, cobblestone streets and white-washed buildings that are perched on the side of a mountain. When one visits Taxco it is shocking to see how purely “un-Americanized” it really is. There are no Wal-Mart nor are there other corporate giants.

I love corporate giants :) and I would love to see a Wal-Mart in Italy, but this time I really envied Jared for this experience. The Aztecs founded a city they called “Tlacho”… what artistic treasures Jared will find?

…the silver trade in Taxco relies on buyers that travel from around Mexico, the United States, and the rest of the world to Taxco with cash in hand to purchase goods to bring back to their stores. I met many buyers there on their annual buying trips for stores in the United States and Canada. What really struck me, however, was the indigenous population that lives nearby.

As Olen Jewelry moves into the future, I am exploring the possibility of opening a community crafting center in or around Taxco where local artisans can use the workspace for free to create their jewelry. I will then bring their goods to the United States where they can be sold to the mass-market. All artisans will receive the majority of the proceeds from the sale of their jewelry. In this way, those people who do not have the money to invest in equipment and raw materials can still put themselves to work creating jewelry that truly is an expression of themselves and of Mexico.

This is admirable… well, a good business idea, of course, but also admirable, indeed. And we wish Jared to succeed in this project! We’ll post an update about this in the future.

• CDBaby.com Guru: Derek Sivers This is a short but very interesting interview to Derek Sivers, CDBaby.com president. CD Baby is a little online record store that sells albums by independent musicians. They only sell music that comes directly from the musicians. No distributors. Musicians send them their music. They digitize and warehouse, sell them......
• The future of Online Shopping We asked Adrian King, the entrepreneur behind the popular online Aboriginal art gift shop, Australia Gift Shop, about the future of online shopping and online retailing. Australia Gift Shop is an online gift and souvenir shop based in Bundaberg in the state of Queensland in Australia. The online shop began......
• There is not Bad Weather, Just the Wrong Clothing Jeff Knowlton wrote this exclusive article for us. He is the National Account Manager of 66North.com. 66°NORTH Ltd. is among Iceland’s oldest manufacturing companies. It was established in the year 1926 and has throughout the decades been a leading producer and innovator in the making of working clothes used on......
• Some tips to think about when deciding to have a web site built Judith Palfrey is a professional web site developer for 14 years and has developed some special websites to help small businesses advertise in their local community using the Internet. She is also the President of Shopping Portals, Inc. affiliated with Palfrey Associates. To learn more about her services visit: www.ShopGaithersburg.com,......
• Has the internet changed your life? Corrie Petersen is a WAHM wanna-be. She and her husband Kevin run a successful Christian jewelry business that can be found at http://heavenlycrosses.com. You can also check out Corrie’s other businesses at http://corriepetersen.com. Here's Corrie article for us. Has the internet changed your life? The internet was an amazing technological......

• Review: The Princess and the Pea by Victoria Alexander There is a lot going on in this story and it all wraps up neatly but it makes you wonder how on earth Victoria Alexander managed to cram it all in. There are four couples, 2 older and 2 younger, that are navigating their way through love. One is......
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• Review: Me and Mr. Darcy by Alexandra Potter Emily Albright is a 29 year old romantic whose first love was Mr. Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. This love affair started when she was 12 and no man has ever reached the bar that Mr. Darcy set. Of course if you were to look at her......
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• First Two: Karate King Kamille Zeta Gundam, or at least the first two episodes of it, are a karate anime. What slays me is that this was in slow-mo. That is the way of sports and games anime. In Yu-Gi-Oh!, all worldly problems are solved by playing card games. In Saki, presumably by Mahjong. In......

Wally said me: I have lots of great stories for your weblog, we have trekked to little known regions of France and Italy to find foods and meet with wine makers.

And this is one of these stories, exactly, one story written by my wife, Terry, about finding a “new” winemaker in France. This happened in May of this year.

A Taste of Fate: Meeting Winemaker Jacky Blot

Many of my vacations truly are “working vacations”. Yes, we spend three weeks in France, but we are visiting wine makers, cheese producers and the like. Yeah, I know, tough job – but someone has to do it. I can’t complain. I do work at hunting out products. Much like the truffle pig, I am always sniffing around, looking in local shops, watching what the locals are eating. Of course this often means eating and drinking many things to be assured of quality – I never just take someone’s word for it – but that is another story altogether.

When I eat a cookie I like in Italy, I will find out who imports it to the U.S. I am quite vigilant. This is just the best way to bring my customers items they might not find otherwise, such as many of the wines we have in our shop. Sometimes I find them through a focused tasting or meeting wine makers. Sometimes greatness just falls in your lap, almost like Divine Intervention.
Forces were at work when we discovered the lovely wines of Jacky Blot: Domaine Taille aux Loups (whites) and La Butte (reds).

The Intervention came by way of a kindly Paris wine shop owner, Christophe Vidal. While we were buying some wine from his shop, I noticed some odd whiskeys from Japan which started up a conversation (and some sampling of said whiskeys, did I mention how nice this guy was?). In our discussion of the wine business, we mention that we are planning to visit a winemaker or two in the Loire Valley. As we are about to leave we hear a shout. He comes running up to us with an open bottle of wine. Turns out that the winemaker, Jacky Blot from the Loire Valley, had been in his shop earlier for a tasting of his wines. Jacky had left an open bottle but Cristophe didn’t need it, perhaps we could take it back to our apartment and enjoy it. We took our Taille aux Loups wine, happily skipping back to our apartment and marveling at the kindness of strangers.

The wine is a delightful surprise. Chenin Blanc grapes, light, crisp, wonderfully balanced. What a nice gift! My husband, Wally, ever diligent, looks up the winery and I can see he is contemplating – actually becoming determined – to find the winery in our travels. We move on to the Loire and are having dinner in the city of Tours when, lo and behold, the Taille Aux Loups is on the wine list by the glass. We have to order it, and yes, it is as good as we remembered. Okay, that settles it; we have to find this winery.

After a few days of trying wines in Chinon and Saumur (both great cities to visit and sample wine), we track down the winery Taille Aux Loups. We drive along curvy roads, follow the river (because we don’t know exactly where it is) along the south bank of the Loire east of Tours. Eureka, we find it! Jacky’s daughter Françoise greets us warmly as we come in from the rain, and sets up quite a tasting for us. We try sparkling wines, the whites that we love, and reds from nearby Bourgueil. It is quite fantastic, especially since we don’t even have an appointment. Jacky pops in and gives us an exuberant hello, but he is quite busy with a bunch of clients in another room. We write down the name and phone number of their distributor in California and buy some bottles to add to the collection we have amassed during the previous few days. We high five ourselves once we get in the car, feeling the excitement of another successful hunt. We rub our hands in anticipation of tasting this wine for our clients back home, and hope that the distributor, Adventures in Wine, carries the wines we want. We have never bought from them before, or even heard of them.

We return to our Paris apartment a few days later with our cache of prized wines. I really want to serve Jacky’s wine at our upcoming tasting in two weeks. I need to email my assistant Dave to find this company. As I am looking in my purse to find the business cards from the wine makers we visited, I find a card for Adventures In Wine! I have no idea how it got there. I don’t remember ever meeting the person whose name is on the card. There is no other business card from America in my bag, having cleaned it out before we left. Françoise at the winery did not give me a card, she just had me write down the name in my notebook. But here it is. Magic! That did it. We were obviously destined to have this wine in our shop.

The importer has the whites I want, not the reds, but they are ordering them for me. So with this happy set of circumstances, I am able to offer this fantastic wine to our customers. And it all began because I had noticed some odd whiskeys at a Paris wine shop and started asking questions.

• Has the internet changed your life? Corrie Petersen is a WAHM wanna-be. She and her husband Kevin run a successful Christian jewelry business that can be found at http://heavenlycrosses.com. You can also check out Corrie’s other businesses at http://corriepetersen.com. Here's Corrie article for us. Has the internet changed your life? The internet was an amazing technological......

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• Weekly Round-Up: Visiting Duplin's Vineyard Yesterday you probably saw on twitter that we went to Duplin's Winery to take a tour. We headed down there with a couple of friends and had a wonderful time. They give a tour of their production facility followed by tastings of 11 wines and 3 wine kits. The tour......
• Captain and Guide Pages Are you a fishing captain or guide?  To add or change your page, please send your requested listing along with a digital photo of your choice to kevin at sfboater dot com. In addition to the basic listing, I can drive even more traffic (traffic=customers) to your business, but I need......