HoundsGood: Chronicles of a Virtual Volunteer

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of Nexx Inc. All opinions are 100% mine.

Yesterday, I was investigating a dog rescue group and a local thrift store. A friend of mine wanted an opinion on the rescue group, as they offered to take a large number of dogs from a county pound and she had never heard of them before. The thrift store is in my local area and benefits a charity I have never heard of. Upon performing basic internet searches, I was really surprised that these organizations were running their websites on free space, or were found on a url as long as Yao Ming’s arm. Pop ups, and very clumsy navigation made the groups look like fly-by-nights.  A group that looks rag-tag and disorganized is not getting my donations.

I am abundantly aware that operating a website for a group often is at the mercy of a volunteer and costs money. However, with the Unlimited Web Hosting specials I found at Nexx, there really is no excuse not to have even a simple informational website, attached to your own domain and free of popups. One would think that everyone has gotten the message by now, especially folks handling such important tasks of creating or preserving the image of a small nonprofit organization or grassroots movement, but many groups are still stuck in a website from 1998. One excuse made is, “Our volunteers are mostly seniors.”  My 88 year old great-aunt sends dirty jokes to my aunts via email on a weekly basis and zings around with her Webtv.  I’ll have to hire her out to them.

For $10 per month, the hosting plan includes a free domain name to get you started. To drive traffic to your url, they are providing a $50.00 credit to both Google Adwords and Facebook. Not familiar with Facebook advertising? When you log into Facebook, look at the column at the right hand side of your page. Your group could be there, and your ad would appear to people who were specifically targeted by keywords, or on pages that mesh with what you are about. Conventional wisdom dictates that someone has to see a message or concept three times before they act. If they see a Facebook ad, see a Google Ad and see your website when they click on one of those….Bingo!  If you don’t see major results, it didn’t hurt to try it for free. Free is my second favorite price to cheap. Free would be my favorite price, but I don’t always trust Free…unless it is thrown in as a bonus with something cheap.

A one year package at Nexx normally adds up to $71.40 per year, so it is a rock bottom bargain.  Some groups are reluctant to spend any money, but the potential a website has to drive donations is priceless and the savings is fiscally responsible.  No tech savvy? No problem. Nexx offers one-click installation for Wordpress and other blog platforms if a journal-type website is more your speed to constantly update your contributors and the world.

There must be a catch at this price.  Actually, upon my through investigation, there are no add-on fees.  The service guarantee is very equitable as well. There is a 30 day money back guarantee.  Within 30 days of activation or upgrade, a full refund is issued if you are not satisfied. Even if you have a site already, it is worth giving a new concept and new site a whirl. The investment is small to play around with a new idea.

This information is so timely. I was so frustrated I could spit yesterday when one of my other websites was down with no warning for about three hours. While it wasn’t a site that I depend on all the time, or play with everyday, it was a big disappointment. The service I was using frequently shorts out the server that the site happens to be on. I wonder if its just a hard drive under some guy’s desk that gets kicked when he was playing World of Warcraft. Darn ogres.

In the past two years, the ChipIn widget seems to have proliferated on the Internet. For legitimate non profit groups, it seemed to solve a few problems. It gave immediate access to donors to see exactly how close to a goal the group was in real or almost real time. However, since there are no real “checks” that the site does, it also allows for a lot of fraud.

This familiar widget can be created on the ChipIn site very easily, and the code can be tailored to a variety of formats that a wide variety of platforms can understand. Just be aware, that if using on Wordpress, you can only use it if you host your blog on your own domain as it is against Wordpress TOS. Also, the shockwave script only appears in “publish” or “preview” mode.Please do not attempt to actually donate to this one, because it won’t go anywhere. It is for illustrative purposes only. It is not connected to a Paypal address.

For a legitimate group, not only does it motivate donors, but the constant updates cut out the “middle man” and save time for volunteers seeking updates as well. Funds are processed through Paypal, which is very familiar to those donating on the internet already. A widget is best used if a small, reasonable goal is targeted as people like to be part of the “winning team” and feel that they are making a difference versus a small drop in a bucket that may never be filled.

However, the widget went from being used by legitimate causes to just about anyone. Because the address that is receiving the donations is hidden, it can easily create a situation where someone is falsely collecting funds. However, it was more frequent for individuals to not pretend that they were collecting for something they were not, but counting on you seeing so many widgets that you will get them confused. Another scenario is that because you do see a widget, you think they have been “checked out.” One young lady was asking for over $20,000 to build a “No-Kill Sanctuary for Dogs.” Behind the scenes, there was never going to be a shelter. She had made graphics to look convincing, but in reality, she was trying to gain trust with shelters in order to attempt to take unaltered dogs to start breeding and fighting them. She was “found out.”

The more innocent misuses are people using them to fund their savings goal, or dream of buying a boat. In of itself, if everyone is aware that they are gifting money to the person and it is not a donation, to each his own. Perhaps ChipIn should create a widget that clearly carries a disclaimer.

Technologically, the widget will not appear in Wordpress based blogs in draft mode and is sometimes only viewable when published. This is an improvement. The widget is compatible with blogger.

In my opinion:

From a technology perspective, ChipIn is a valuable widget and gets high marks. A s a consumer, you should do the same research of the person behind the widget as if they were handing you an envelope or asking for a donation in person.

The Saving Shelter Pets, Inc., spring auction is going strong, thanks to some great bloggers spreading the word.

Drew, over at BenSpark.com picked up the story. I was pleased to see that not only was he pitching the auction, he is involved in lending a helping paw of his own. He will be designing a website for Friends of North Attleboro Animal Shelter. North Attleboro is just south of Boston. Even though heartworm has been pretty much licked in the area, and by and large, the spay and neuter message is getting through, there are still many dogs and cats in need.  It just may be more evident in Georgia, because of all the gassing facilities still operated, but there are people in ever state who leave a beloved pet behind.

The auction recieved international exposure on a blog from India.   “Animals, birds or say all the species of the live beings on the planet of earth hanker for love much in the same measure the humans do for themselves.”  I am glad that a stray dog has value and worth as a living creature in areas of the world that seem so far away.  International bidders are welcome in this auction, so it should be interesting to see if a few people wander over from neelkanth’s blog.

The most important endorsement, of course, is from an actual dog.  Dog’s View Point is written by a lovely and charming BlueTick Coonhound named Bandit Queen.  She wandered up to the door one day at her parent’s house and has been there ever since.  She knows what its like to be a homeless dog, so I find it an expert endorsement indeed.  Bandit Queen talks about her Petsmart trips elsewhere on her site:  “If I sit and stare at a particular toy, mom will buy it for me.”  Maybe she will rub off on all the auction bidders!

I am having all sorts of silly fun today. Over on Back To a Mac, one of blogs in the HoundsGood.com family, I have discovered the strange fascination with changing the decor on my website. Yes, you can “Cornify” your website by making rainbows and unicorns with sparkles instantly appear. Why would you want to do that? I dare you to press this button to see what happens to the world.

According to Cornify.com and the world powers that decide these things,  it is the #1 unicorn and rainbow service worldwide.  As if there were more out there.  Who am I to argue?  You can’t just get away with clicking it one time. Click three, four, or five times and see what I mean. To get rid of all the sparkles, just hit “refresh” on my site, and things should be as good as new.  This may be the best thing that has happened to a complete waste of time since the Baconizer.

Throughout the past years, there have been individuals who have gone on some amazing quests. There was the young man whose avocation was to eat at every single Denny’s in the country, or at least as many as possible.  Of course, that is considered a more wallet friendly restaurant but gasoline and just eating out for every single meal adds up. Similarly, Ted Murphy had a dream of his own. He wants to get his photo taken with every single person who reads his blog. Since that would involve cross country and international travel, and Ted is not made of that kind of money yet, he decided to ask his readers to simply print out his face instead. Bonus points for sticking our tongues out.

In Michigan, specifically the Metro Detroit area, we are enjoying the tail end of a gorgeous day.  I was enjoying a visit with the “sibs” today, so decided to feature Ted with Chloe, who is my “sister” (she belongs to my parents so she’s technically my sister, right?).  She is one of the extended HoundsGood hounds, meaning that she is a contributor to this blog, and enjoyed her time exploring the grassy knoll near a cider mill.  Yes, “it’s real.”  Chloe has never had tongue extensions.While I enjoy salvaging antiques and such that others are about to toss out, I will say, hands down, Chloe is the very best thing that ever was pulled out of the trash. She was pulled from behind a dumpster, behind a shopping center, by my (human) sister.  She was just a wee pup back then, and too young to make it on her own.  She was too young to have been weaned from her mother, and she was all alone.  Chloe is one lucky dog.If she would have been picked up by animal control, she would likely have been euthanized.  Black, mixed breed dogs are the last to get adopted.  Sometimes it is because they don’t attract attention on the pound websites because they are so hard to photograph.  Often, other times, they will just fade into the background.  In fact, whem I am over, I sometimes walk past and think that she isn’t there! Then her eyes open and that little bit of white shines, or she gives out a Beagle-like yodel and I realize that I wasn’t going nuts.  I indeed DID let her back in from the yard like I thought.That in a loving home, where she gets noticed.  Imagine what would happen in a cold shelter with too many dogs to keep track of?Good luck, Ted, in your quest.  You didn’t quite manage to get a picture of what I look like, but you definitely snagged a photo of a beauty queen, a photo op with a “Purebred Motown Mutt”!  You may never want to wash your face ever again.  Maybe it will inspire someone to go down to the county pound and get one of their own! It is a very special breed and no two look the same!

A friend of mine wanted to invent a trash compactor for computers.  Their reasoning was that when we erase a file, it is not truly gone until the memory is written over. That doesn’t usually happen for a very long.  It may be comforting to know that what you erased, often by accident, is not truly gone.  However, the average person has no way of recovering these items.  Most of the time, it is not a matter of looking for them very intently. Looking through the nooks and crannies of a computer usually involves the expertise of another computer, or more properly, some software to do some major File Recovery.

The top reasons that I have lost things are the following:

1. I dropped something in the recycle bin, only to realize later I probably needed it.
2.  I corrupted a file through my own fault.  I put two memory cards in a universal card reader once.  There were slots for both.  Little did I know they somehow “fry” each other, and the file from one memory card that I was working with on the screen was corrupted.
3. My dog leaned on my keyboard.  Literally, my dog ate my homework, but digitally.
4. There are situations where I can blame the actual computer and not the error of the operator.  Does that actually exist?  Yes, occasionally it does.

Disk Doctor has a feature that gives you the choice of restoring the file back to its original state of affairs, or if you really don’t trust your clumsy fingers, the rescued file can be immediately transferred to flash drive, disk, or DVD.   If it is not integral to a program, I think backing it up is a safe bet, as lightning often strikes twice in the world of home and small business technology.

In otherwords:  The dog didn’t eat your homework, your own clumsy fingers usually did.

At the moment, the allure of remote access to my computer is getting more seductive by the moment.  Firstly, there was an incident a few months ago where a certain canine did certain things to certain computer parts that rendered my blogging attempts futile.  I tried to get online with someone’s cell phone and the keys were so rediculously small that it just didn’t make any sense to the sane.  More recently, a Realtor called to show the house, and I needed to dump and run.   I was working with files on my computer that I wasn’t in any position to finish in the alloted time.

During the first time, luckily, I came to my senses and went to the copy/computer store.  Everything I needed was on the web.  However, in the second scenario, I definitely needed access to what was actually on my computer and could not access it from the neighbor’s house or anywhere else.  For those of you who have to leave your home for more pleasant circumstances such as a globe trotting vacation, or for those of you who do not want to load your travel cd up with sensitive files, than you may be in the same boat as me.  Remote computer access may be something to consider.  Remotepc.com actually has plans starting at $4.95 per host computer that definitely is a lot more justifiable than other services.  Even twenty dollars a month seems fair, but if you are like me, and aren’t going to use the feature every day, it would really rack up at the higher rate.

I was curious, so I fiddled around.  There is an online demo that you can play with, too, to see if the “back end” is friendly enough for you.  I wondered how secure it would be looking in from another computer.  There is a key that you enter in rather than your typical easy to guess password that you use for everything:

Then, you select your computer.  If you have a desktop, a laptop, and a computer at work, you can easily access the one you want and save files from one onto the computer you are operating, or just simply work from a remote location.  It is too risky to transfer work stuff onto the laptop you are taking to the Bahamas, but you will still be able to “take it all with you!”

And…there you have it. You’re in!

Have you tried any similar services?  Did you use them or did you find that you pretty much forgot you had it?

I have been thinking for awhile about spiffing this place up. From time to time, I tinker with this site or surf around looking for theme template ideas to spring off from. There are so many things to look at out there. Unfortunately, some of the most customizable and prettiest themes sometimes have little quirks in them and the author doesn’t always come back with a patch to fix the problem. Another problem I had before on a different theme I used to use was that some widgets would show up in IE, but not in any other browser.  It was definitely my site having the problem and it wasn’t the widget.

When you look at premium wordpress themes that you might have to pay just a little bit more for, usually you find that the author or the company that put them out has an interest in keeping the code up to date and bug free and you can stop puttering around for days looking for a fix or trying to handle the code on your own.  WPremix.com has a package that includes 50 templates, and a lot of flexibility to customize it to include exactly what you want and how you want your blog to work.  One thing I am guilty of is spending more time tinkering around and less time promoting my blog somedays, but that is all about to change. I might give it a try.

To soften the idea of spending money, they do have an affiliate program. Recently, they upped the reward from 20% to 50%. If you are looking to make your money back from a purchase, it could be a good way to go for you.

The other pet peeve of mine when I contemplated switching to another theme or even another blog program, is that I could see the admin control panel or back end ahead of time and had to commit beforehand. Some changes I quickly ditched when it didn’t have the familar control panel format or something that was easy to interpret. I am the type who usually has a good handle on things without instructions, so it frustrates me when a control panel or operating system is counterintuitive. They actually have a video of the back end, and yo

The race is on for whose blog will be voted the very best pet blog.  You can vote once every 24 hours.  Somehow, the website “knows” that you already voted so no cheating.  Although, I guess you can call a significant other who is at work and tell them to vote too.

There are two blogs that are in the race that I recognize, and I am recommended you to VOTE.  I would like to see these two blogs win in a tie – as they are both winners!

Daisy the Curly Cat – This blog is the personal diary of the eponymous curly coated cat and her good pal, Harley.  Join Daisy for pictures, stories, videos and anecdotes about daily life.  Most every Sunday, Sunday funnies are posted starring Daisy, and often her friends Snail, Mr. Shrill, and Harley.   Great fun.  There is a lot to do and see, and after awhile, you won’t feel weird about talking back and forth with a kitty!   Daisy sometimes shows us kitties who need a home, too.

Holy Cuteness – An adorable picture or a video of a rediculously cute animal every day (I mean it…your head will explode into a million pieces of candy).  If you like pictures of baby monkeys making friends with birds, dogs and cats sleeping together, and baby Cheetahs who count a Puppy as their best friend, then this is where you need to be.   The Holy Cuteness blog posted a picture of a kitty in need for us once and the kitten plus a few others found homes that way!

Okay, I bid you to vote for your favorite and then call someone now to vote for the other one.  And then tell all your friends to vote for their favorite too!

CLICK HERE TO VOTE!!  

Previously, I have talked about Dragon Naturally Speaking and how it can be a breakthrough for people who are limited in their online journaling. There are many gifted voices that are silenced or very limited as far as the internet is concerned because of physical impairment. Paralysis of the upper body or severe carpal tunnel may inhibit someone from typing or typing effectively. Varying degrees of visual impairment also causes a barrier. Dragon Blogger is a tool, that with the use of a microphone, can have someone blogging as fast as or faster than they could type depending on the speed of your speech.

There is a special coupon code that will give you ten to twenty five percent off the purchase of the software. This is an after Christmas special and expires December 31st. It is the perfect thing to buy while you may have extra days off during the holidays, or keep a New Year’s resolution. In addition, the purchase will be eligible for a 2008 tax write off if you happen to be using it for your business.

I am excited to see that there is not only a Standard and Preferred Version, but also a version for MacIntosh!  Software makers are getting better at concurrently developing a Mac counterpart of their software, thank goodness.  I can’t wait to try it.    There are a few people I know that like to multitask or have an impairment that makes typing difficult and I would like to see them try it.   Just a note: you will need a noise cancelling microphone.  Those are easy to obtain online or from your favorite electronics store.

Now that I think about it, John McCain got a lot of flack for not using email.  It wasn’t because he was behind the times, but because of the lack of range of motion in his arm that makes it uncomfortable and not possible to really be effective on the keyboard with two hands.  Maybe if his staff discovered Dragon Blogger, he would have been blogging from the road and would have come across to people as more cutting edge!

• $50 Coupon Code- DNSMSBG -Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 Preferred
• $25 Coupon Code- DNSMSBG -Dragon Naturally Speaking 10 Standard
• $25 Coupon Code- DNSMSBG -MacSpeech Dictate

Lately, I have been reading of people who have turned to webhosts that are based overseas because the price is so much lower. The budget prices, even with very economical domestic choices available, are considerable lower and in line with the income of individuals in that country. While you may pay pennies on the dollar, choosing that type of webhosting just to save a few dollars might not be something for you. I read an informative article on Webhostinggeeks.com that explained why.

Much like real estate, location matters. The closer your server is to your clients, the faster those clients will be able to access your website. Even in a virtual existence, the physical distance between servers and end users can make a difference. Most internet marketers target United States and European citizens, so by hosting halfway around the globe, website response time for target demographics may be adversely affected.

Server location never occurred to me, as the internet seems so instantaneous and fluid, but it makes perfect sense.  There are a few other articles, plus a webhosting comparison chart with reviews that you might want to check out if you are looking to relocate your little patch of the web to a new host.  Unfortunately, they don’t have any articles about what happens when a dog gets on your lap and starts “typing.” Mine hit something and all the sudden everything on the screen was huge, but just in one internet program.  I will get it sorted out eventually.

Sometimes it takes me extra time to put my thoughts down on paper (or more properly, on blog) because I am hunting the hard drive for just the right photo to show what I mean, or to pretty up the entry.  Often I end up taking out the camera myself.

I recently found a site that has the sole purpose of providing blog pictures. All of the images are just the right resolution for blogs,so they won’t cost your site extra loading time. Since you only have three to five seconds to lure a reader in, that is extremely important. Acobox.com even asks you what alignment and image width you want and customizes the code for you to pop right in your entry without fiddling with it. So, if I were to be talking about Leopard Frogs, I could probably find a photo there that I have permission to use that shows exactly what one looks like.  In fact, I just did find one and there it is, at left.

Now, I can’t guarantee they will have a photo of every single solitary object that exists in the world, but there is enough there to get your point across.  The service is free.  All you have to do is take a few moments to register and an entire library is open to you.  Photographers can also submit photos, which they will screen for apropriateness and quality before releasing to the library.   Have fun!

HoundsGood was named one of “100 Blogs that Will Inspire You to Be a Better Person” by MassageTherapyCareers.com.  I am always appreciative of the readers of this blog, and am very flattered and surprised by the recognition.  Things like this motivate me to keep writing, even if sometimes a big hunk of writer’s block sometimes stands in my path. More so, the list is a very good resource to find some new blogs to read about personal development,  goals and dreams, giving back, and more.  I have found a few sites that I am definitely going to make a part of my regular reading.

The site as a whole is a great resource if you are looking for a school to train as a massage therapist or a practitioner of a complimentary therapy.  Having a therapist in the family, I can attest to how it can help many people who have experienced a physical trauma, or just for maintenance.  The blog is relatively new, but promises to be an informative one, with tips for health and wellness and the demystification of complimentary therapies.   I wish the new venture well and will be a regular reader.  I recommend that you check it out and add a few to your reading list!