You might have saw a post I made earlier today when I noticed that Google was broken and every single site on the internet was showing up as containing malware. It was rather weird too because I had just read the email they sent me about making sure to check your site for malicious content. (You can read that warning here) Well as it turns out and this is no joke, it was all caused by a single character /. I mean literally this “/” took out the entire Internet basically for anyone who was using Google. It didn’t actually take down the sites but it was still bad enough. For most people it lasted about 45 minutes and if you were still sleeping then you probably never noticed. What is strange is a single character could do that but that’s just how computers work. Thank god it wasn’t code ... 01/31/2009

Twitter Tools: Presenting Flittr If you are on Twitter but find it hard to navigate then you might find Flittr useful. It’s a really cool way to basically sort it all out and filter (Ahh now Flittr makes more sense instead of just being a cute name!) out some of the non sense. There is a lot more to it than just my explanation and as to how it would or could work for you… well that’s up to you! I just present you with the information or at least try to propagate it more. I hope you find that useful. Anyways, I try not to report on every single Twitter thing that comes out because there are about 20 each day and most seem functional but lacking on the practical side. Either way make sure you check it out. You can find out more here. Don’t forget to follow me! If you have something to sa... 01/31/2009

A new company has a new way to sync your phones up with Gmail, Contacts and Calendars and it’s called NuevaSync of course. You can find out more about the service here. I thought it was pretty nice actually. I only wish it offered an offline option so that you can use USB or Bluetooth in the office or at home. But if you have the web on your phone I don’t see any easier way of doing this. Oh, did I mention it’s free? If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you really like this story flag it for a feature! If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email. Buy or Sell, I'll Treat You Well! Search Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate! Buy Eau Claire Wisconsin Real Estate Sell ... 01/31/2009

If you use Gmail and probably a lot of you do, you might not have noticed that they rolled out a pretty cool new feature that gives offline access to Gmail. It works by basically retaining a snippet but it’s pretty useful as far as I am concerned. I switched as soon as they activated it on my account. If you are interested in doing this you have to manually set the feature. Just go to settings and then see the new offline tab. Just click it and then you have to install Google “Gears” which is another new thing that basically adds offline functionality to Gmail and a few other things. For more info check out this story here. If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you really like this story flag it for a feature! If you would l... 01/31/2009

If you pay for internet access and you probably do if you are reading this then what you might not know is that for years different ISPS (Internet Service Providers) have been silently deploying kill switches and throttling methods to actually cut certain users from the internet. They are also trying to force certain websites such as Google to cough up extra money simply for existing. There is much more to it than this, including privacy concerns where it has been revealed lately that your ISP might have sold off your personal information to different companies. Google is guilty as well as far as privacy concerns go. Regardless this is one fight that you need to know about because it’s your rights that are being taken away and you might not even know it. Not to mention that it’s your m... 01/31/2009

I just read an interesting article about the growth of Google and guess what? It’s growing! DUH! Well what is particularly interesting is that they are eating up 90% of the growth of searches too which means out of the new people using the internet to search for stuff, Google is taking a huge chunk of the potential market share.  But guess what? So is my site! Check out my Eau Claire Real Estate website at Your Chippewa Valley Home. I have enjoyed a 250% increase in traffic this month alone! Every day I have checked and my rankings are going up and up. Thanks to all the people visiting my site and as always let me know if you think we need to change anything. I designed the site for you, so if you don’t like it just let me know! You can contact me anytime using the comments and suggest... 01/31/2009

  I just got an alert from Google Webmaster Tools this morning and so far I can’t tell if its related to this or not. But apparently it’s all over Twitter as well. Do a search on Google. ANY SEARCH! You will quickly see what I mean. Every single site that I can tell has been flagged by Google as being MALWARE! This is not a joke. I hope everyone is smart enough to realize that this is not true but if it’s affecting your traffic to your site you might want to send out an email to everyone you know. This is not a joke and very serious.   There is more information here but no one really knows what it is.   http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/google-flags-whole-internet-as-malware/   http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/31/google-flags-whole-internet-as-malware/trackback/ If you have somethi... 01/31/2009

Well this guy should know how to do what everyone wants to attain, the holy grail of Twitter, the cult leader or Kool-Aid pourer. Whatever you want to call it, its what everyone seems to want and hes the one who did it. The only person with more followers than him is Barack Obama if I am not mistaken and that might be a hard act to top. Who is he? Kevin Rose – Founder of Digg I am not going to copy or attempt to paraphrase what he said but you can check out this article here. It just came out today so this is fresh information and something that you probably might want to do. Also if you notice the end of his article he follows his own advice... maybe hes making for the top after this article? http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/01/25/kevin-rose-10-ways-to-increase-your-twitter-followers/tr... 01/26/2009

A few months ago I posted this question to everyone and got many responses, most of which were that it shouldn't matter if the realtor was pregnant.  If the realtor was good at her job, she should get the listings she was pitching to get.  Well, of course that pregnant realtor was me and here's a diary of what happened.  Keep in mind that my baby due date was December 6th, 2008. November 25th - showed properties all morning and then in the afternoon, went on listing presentation November 26th - showed properties an hour away to a buyer of mine. December 1st - showed properties to the same buyer and wrote up an offer when we got back. December 2nd - listed a property that I had been trying to get for the past couple months. December 5th - Showed 10 properties to another buyer of mine (wh... 01/25/2009

Searching for a New Home - Eau Claire Real Estate Advice In my last post I discussed the first step in buying a home in Eau Claire Wisconsin or the surrounding area, for first time home buyers. But really the advice is true for anyone looking to buy a home. But once you know a good price range to start looking, how do you start? Well almost any site offers a search but how can you know for sure that it has all the available properties? Well certain sites are directly linked to our MLS system but many are not. That's why I always recommend that you use the search on my website. I am sure that many area websites offer this basic feature. But the problem is always how agents enter the information. Because of the way our MLS is set up we are only allowed to enter in one location. Our MLS h... 01/25/2009

Eau Claire Real Estate Advice - First Time Home Buyers When I get approached by potential clients about buying a home in the Eau Claire area the first question is almost always, “How do we get started” As many times as this question is varied my answer never does. I know the overwhelming feeling is you want to get out and start looking at houses. I always feel bad when my answer is so much more boring. The first step is going to a lender. But why? Well they can help with a variety of things that we need to know before we can start looking. First they can tell you if you can get a loan or not. As much as I would love to get you a house, if you can't afford it financially then I don't want to see you in trouble this way. They can also tell you what price range will work for you as well. ... 01/25/2009

I have reported on this virus a few times and with good reason, its a doozy. When I first read an article about it I thought it was appropriate to send the word out. But then MSNBC came out with their own report that basically said there is nothing to worry about. Well like I said then, if you aren't in the tech industry maybe you should stick to reporting on what the tech industry is doing rather than trying to provide technical advice to your readers. They insisted their was nothing to worry about with this virus and called it a dud basically. Well check out this article. Apparently Conflicker is poised to take over about 30% of the world's PC's which amounts to about 300 to 350 million computers! That sure sounds like a dud to me MSNBC. The worst part is that the 2nd part of the vir... 01/24/2009

It appears the growth of Twitter is growing. That makes sense right? Well its pretty obvious that most people on the web are becoming familiar with Twitter and it seems to go hand in hand with the growing popularity of texting in general. But few could have seen this kind of growth when the application was first launched. But as the saying goes, what goes up must come down and Digg appears to be going down. According to this article they seem to be struggling for breath. But will the same happen to Twitter? Well I keep saying this and maybe I am wasting my breath but I really see it losing popularity. Why? Because people are gaming it like crazy. I just saw a group forming whose only purpose was to follow each other in order to artificially inflate the number of followers that the peop... 01/24/2009

I came across this article the other day and being an avid Google supporter and Google Apps user ( I use dozens of them) I was a bit disappointed. Now I guess I am complaining about my ability to use a no charge program but for one of the biggest corporations in the world I guess I would think they can afford it. Not to mention that when we use the word free, sure its free of charge but it certainly is not free of advertising. Not to mention the majority of Google programs that we use track our every move which in turn leads to more advertising or rather “better” advertising. Also as the article points out, lets not forget that “When Google Apps first launched in August 2006 it was free and described as “a service available at no cost to organizations of all shapes and sizes.”” The oth... 01/24/2009

I just came across this article and regardless of your political affiliation this sounds like a good idea to me. It actually feels a lot like thinking outside the box so to speak because of the hundreds and thousands of articles I have seen and read I have never seen this suggested. But why not? Everyone has to pay the energy bill regardless of whether they are a home owner or renter. This would really hit home for almost every American faced with bills that can just be plain overwhelming. Maybe there is more to this but to me it seems spot on. Good job is all I can say. If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you really like this story flag it for a feature! If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call ... 01/24/2009

Andrew Wyeth, the legendary painter of Christina's world, recently died. I have always had an appreciation for art but it wasn't until one of my last semesters in college that I had an opportunity to take a formal art class. It was there that one of my favorite professor's and friends taught me about Andrew Wyeth and introduced me to the aforementioned work. Christinasworld.jpg‎ (550 × 368 pixels, file size: 35 KB, MIME type: image/jpeg) Christina's World (1948) by Andrew Wyeth Source: http://cache.eb.com/eb/image?id=8707 When I first started designing my website I thought it would be important to include some of my interests as well. Thats why on each page I have tried to include important works of art or pieces that I found interesting. One of my pages on my site looks like this. If ... 01/24/2009

I guess most people don't follow statistics or probably even care about how popular their favorite social networking site. They might not even know what social networking is other than “that thing that they talk to their friends on” Well now Facebook has gained so much traction and is now more that just gaining traction its full speed ahead and no stopping now. Its not nearly twice the size of Myspace worldwide! (Oh and if you are on Facebook you probably new how popular it was already...duh!) :) Check out this article If you have something to say please leave a comment. I will try to comment on your blog as well. If you really like this story flag it for a feature! If you would like to work with an agent who is leading the way call 715-894-1001 today or send me an email. Buy or Sell, ... 01/24/2009

As I discussed and was no doubt disgusted in the first part of this series I now bring you Part 2. Its hard to write about something that most of us are forced to use but can do little about it. Thats the hard thing about monopolies because once they are in place, you have no choice but to make your extortion payment each month on time or risk losing that service. Now to be fair of the Telco companies they are not alone in this sort of racket. Your stack of bills each month probably contains letters from many companies that enjoy a monopoly, your cable bill, your energy bill, your medical bills (pharmaceutical companies, insurance, etc) Then when you get in your car you have the lovely oil companies to thank for the bonus bill each time you fill up your tank. Really it must be nice bei... 01/18/2009

Everyone who has a cell phone is probably aware that the company they use is ripping them off. I mean come on just look at the bill once. The same was true before the age of cell phones, charging for every additional service and insanely priced long distance charges. Well the long distance is free today, sort of, but the companies involved have thought of a charge for almost anything. Well what about text messaging? What if you could market a product that costs you nothing to make and double the charge for this product year over year and the whole thing was quite legal with no one able to stop you? Well the answer is sort of like that what if you were a red neck but insert Telco and you have the answer (You would be very rich) If this doesn't sound right or fair to you then you don't u... 01/18/2009

I came across this article the other day warning about a variant on a known virus that is rather nasty. Basically this thing infected over a million computers in less than a day. Worse its spreading. What is particularly nasty about this version is that it can infect from so many different sources, including thumb drives. It also has a rather nasty effect on networks in that it only needs to infect one computer to rapidly spread to the others. It always seems like there are so many viruses to look out for and I try to report on many of them because when they hit, they hit hard. But this one looks like its going to be big and it made MSNBC. They report its not as nasty as intended. But I prefer to listen to computer experts on this stuff rather than second hand. Anyways this is a good t... 01/17/2009