WordPress Shopping Cart Solutions Coming This Year

Are you as excited as we are about all the WordPress shopping cart plugins to come this year, all the new features that will be available?  We’re not normally geeks here, being good liberal arts majors one and all, but we do like making money (especially as we’re just liberal arts majors, each and every one!) and so we really appreciate it when the science majors we went to school with come out with some invention, some new piece of software, some discovery — just something that makes our lives better, especially if it makes us better at making money!

So that’s what a WordPress shopping cart is all about, really; software that’s installed on a site to help one make money more efficiently.  Specifically, these plugins, as they are known in the WordPress world, help with order processing tasks, mainly clerical affairs such as calculating tax rates and shipping charges.  This saves a lot of time, as can be imagined, and time is money in business, online or off.  So we’re especially tickled this new year because it looks like the world of e-commerce with WordPress will take a dramatic turn for the even-better in 2012.  No, we don’t have any special insider knowledge here, but we do have our collective wits about us and so are able to divine most things fairly accurately (it’s part of the reason why we’re a page-rank three blog, after all).  Thus, we are confident in delivering such a prognosis based on the  one simple fact below.

WooCommerce.  Or, rather, we should say WooThemes: They’ve finally come out with a WordPress shopping cart of their own, called WooCommerce.  This is big news if you know anything about WordPress. For WooThemes is one of the community’s great success stories, regularly featured in mainstream non-technical magazines as an example of how it’s possible to make a great living off open-source software that’s otherwise got nothing to do with you.  In the same way that Microsoft has enabled a whole ecosystem of economic activity around its products and services, so too, on a much smaller but still impressive scale, has the world’s most popular blogging platform been behind many a small personal fortune.  Exhibit A is WooThemes.  So for them to now enter the world of e-commerce solutions with their own cart systmem is big.  Really big.  Why?

Because they are serious developers with the multi-million dollar-deep pockets to make it finally happen for real.  They may well standardize WordPress e-commerce with their offering, something long established options such as WP e-Commerce and even Cart66 Pro has not been able to do to everyone’s satisfaction.  A robust industrial-strength (that is, enterprise-level) shopping cart plugin has been the Holy Grail of WordPress plugins for years and years, and it looks like 2012 is going to be the year things are set aright at last.

But the title of this article is plural, “solutions,” concerning more than one.  So who else besides WooCommerce from WooThemes?  Well, there are the aforementioned WP e-Commerce and Cart66 Pro development teams, who are surely going to be harder at work than ever before improving their respective offerings in order to stay competitive with the heavy-duty programming efforts that multi-million dollar WooThemes is now bringing to this once cozy marketplace, with the upshot being big, big changes.

So, are you excited yet??  ;-)

Why a Variable Frequency Drive Is the Right Choice

Saving money through lowering energy usage is possible with a variable frequency drive due to a reduction in actual motor speed. By comparison, belts, sheaves, and gearboxes would still have the motor running at full speed. Yakasawa is a trusted brand-name when it comes to AC motors, with just under a century of industry experience, and almost fifty of those in North America. In fact, the company is actually the world’s largest manufacturer of engines for industrial automation and OEM hardware. Yakasawa variable frequency drives are among the most popular because of their user-friendly interface, ease of installation, and automatic tuning and programming. The company’s expertise in servo and motion control, robotics automation systems, and of course AC inverter drives makes it an ideal source of quality manufacturing technologies to industry across the world.

A variable frequency drive is a system that controls the speed of an AC motor by controlling the rate at which power is supplied to that motor. A wide variety of applications exist for such a capability, from pumps and elevators to conveyors and machine tools. These motors are used to improve efficiency and thereby save money wherever they are found. Indeed, a variety of VFD rebates can often be found at the federal, state, or municipal level, with many local utilities also providing discounts for their installation and use.

In the United States, fully half of all electrical energy is consumed by hardware that rotates. A wide variety of drives exists, but oftentimes those offering variable frequencies make the most sense to implement. They are even easy to maintain, especially with a robust preventative maintenance program. Keep it clean, keep it dry, make sure the connections are tight – there’s really little more than such basic common-sense measures! Following the usual good practices for electronics in general will go a long way towards helping to ensure years of trouble-free service.

Interracial Romance Novels with A Twist

Romance novels are hugely popular, but those depicting interracial relationships are not quite so highly sought-after.  Within that preciously small non-sub-genre are those that feature Asian men and black women as romantic leads.  Why is this?

That’s what Aminka Ozmun was wondering, and the former model is now just finishing up her first romance novels, all of which feature black women-Asian men relationships.  Industry observers have been taken by her idealistic pluck, since the market for such works is so small any effort may be considered more fan fiction than anything else.

Being a good sport, Ms. Ozmun was gracious enough to entertain such barbed-wired cross-examinations during our interview on her art, during which she revealed that romance novels were just the beginning of her plans.  Her sunny disposition combined with a refreshing candor that resulted in an incredibly disarming interview in which we were almost convinced that she might just pull it all off.

Not.

Sorry to break it to ya, kiddo, but it takes more than just a good storyline to make it in publishing (oh, didn’t you know; she’s self-publishing, at that).  It takes a market.  In other words, romance is a business.

She’s simply selling to a non-existent market, the equivalent of opening a lemonade stand on the moon, hoping that NASA will catch up with her!  While such entrepreneurial aplomb is commendable in some respects, for her personally it will be an unmitigated disaster.

That’s right, you heard it here first.  We predict that Aminka Ozmun romances will wither by the wayside not just because of an already crowded marketspace for such sentimentality but more so because she’s chasing a niche within a niche: Readers do not generally go for interracial romances, and those who do are looking for white or black male leads, not Asian ones — not very many, we are sad to say if we don’t say so ourselves.

Of course, to hear her tell it, that’s precisely the point of her endeavors, to put such couplings on the cultural menu of mainstream tastes.  But there isn’t any interest anyhow; might as well stick a stick in the ground alongside Interstate-99 or some such stretch of road and hope the traffic busily whizzing by notices — never mind cares.

Now we do wish her well and hope to be proved wrong but it simply isn’t likely that one person is going to not only create a whole niche on her own but put it in front of people and have them care on top of everything else.  She’s asking for too much.  But then again, that’s what writers do, isn’t it: Dream.  And in that regard her works promise to be quite imaginative, whatever their ultimate commercial viability.

Safes as Cartoon Commonplaces

How did safes become such cartoon commonplaces? Mention the word and most likely the first image that anyone has in mind is of one landing on a character! But how did this happen? Why not a simple chair or table; why not a television set; why not another cartoon character?

It isn’t only safes, of course, that land on cartoon characters’ heads – anvils and pianos have also traditionally shared that role. Yet it is arguably more common to encounter a safe fulfilling the requirement than anything else. This is probably because the squarish dimensions of the typical safe as drawn in cartoons lends itself most easily to the desired result of a perfectly flattened-out victim.

After all, a piano is likely to break into pieces itself, and while the top and bottom sides of an anvil is as flat as any safe, the solid block-like shape of many safes immediately suggests pulverization – so much so, viewers are likely to already visualize the fact before any actually lands on a character!

Perhaps it’s to do with a paradoxical juxtaposition of words and ideas – a pun on the word “safe,” as in safety, and the idea of a safe being quite dangerous, falling as it is out of the sky. Maybe it’s the idea of untold riches landing on someone, killing him, outright flattening him to a pancake. Or perhaps it’s something that actually used to happen years and years ago, when clumsy movers would drop safes the way they would drop pianos, in the manner of a Laurel and Hardy skit.

Indeed, it’s become quite a cliché, the dropping combination safe. But whatever it is, it all begs the question of how these things became a universal cartoon shorthand for “death from above.” Like many a meme, there is no clear lineage to be found.

Use Online CPE Courses for Ease and Speed

As an attorney, online CPE courses is a fact of professional life for me. This makes sense, as the law is constantly changing. That’s why they made it mandatory that lawyers should pursue continuing professional education. Thankfully, the online CPE coursesavailable today are much more engaging, as far as these things can possibly go, than the old correspondence courses of old, the ones that were sent back and forth through the postal system. They’re interactive, for one thing, these modern offerings are, what with multimedia sights and sounds sometimes and, if nothing else, at least the instant gratification, if that’s the right word, of immediate feedback!

No more waiting for my results; I know right away how I did (of course, being a professional, it’s unlikely I should have made anything like a poor showing!). Honestly, that’s really the best these online CPE courseshave to offer, no offense to anyone!
Everything else is good, truly, but the one aspect of them all that has the most impact, in my personal opinion, is that we professionals can just get our results and get the whole thing over with already!

For the time being, of course. As mentioned at the outset, they are a fact of life for us lawyers, accountants, doctors, dentists, teachers, and even personal fitness trainers nowadays. Many more jobs and professions require on-going accreditation, too, due to the ever-increasing complexity of our world, which leads to the need for specialists dedicated to some relatively minute aspect of the crazy chaotic whole.

Now for all the immediate feedback, I can proceed at my own pace. This is great because I work sixty if not sometimes seventy-hour weeks, typically, and it’s nice to know that I can attend to a course in due course, if you will!

Kerio Hosted Email Saves Time and Money

In relation to Kerio hosted email, there’s more than meets the eye. With electronic mail serving as one of the primary modes of communication, a professional business needs to avail of an email host for them to be taken seriously. There is nothing wrong with using Gmail, Yahoomail or Hotmail but in a business where the competition is bottleneck, using these free services risks your messages to being trashed as spam by potential customers.

That’s why there’s so much demand for Kerio hosted email as it provides a feature-rich solution for today’s demanding business and personal requirements. There are numerous email hosts out there and if you are not careful, you may end up paying for more than what you need or paying less for services that are incomplete. In this conversation, the two hot names that pop are Kerio and Microsoft. Just considering the two, Kerio hosted email versus Microsoft hosted email, one can get ideas not much on which of them is better but more on which of them better suits your business.

Kerio hosted email is known throughout the industry as the Microsoft alternative of choice for serious technology buffs. Compared to the Microsoft solution, with Kerios you get a much better way to synchronize your data across platforms and between devices. Of course, both offer the regular online calendars and address books plus the beauty of having your own domain name and the company to help you when your email account encounters problems.

In the end, you also have to consider the proverbial bottom line: expense. The boys from Redmond are making a cool mint with everything they do, whether it actually works, whereas scrappier outfits offer “fire-and-forget” type of turn-key easy and peace of mind. So who wins in the fight of Kerio hosted email versus Microsoft hosted email depends on your service needs and probably your budget.

How To Hide Your IP Address Online

A whole host of reasons exist for knowing how to hide your IP address online. All valid reasons, and it really is a great idea. This article will briefly consider all the reasons, going through them one by one and we’ll even learn a little about actually hiding that IP address.

So let’s get into why you should even check out how to hide your IP address online to begin with. One of the first things that I always tell people when they ask my why I hide my IP address is that I care about my privacy. I don’t visit sites any bad sites at all, nothing like that. But why should anyone know your business anyway; there’s no reason for you to let all the websites you visit know all kinds of things about you.

Equally valid and just as concerned over privacy for understanding how to hide your IP address online involves media streams such as movies and so forth. Sometimes videos are only available in certain areas, and you’ll get the “You can’t view this content in your area” message. By figuring out how to hide ip address online information from the site you’re visiting, you can also make it so that you have an IP from an area that would be able to let you watch the video you’re trying to see.

Those are probably the top two reasons for getting into IP nuts and bolts. Naturally, there are plenty more, some of which are more important to others.

Now lets talk about how its done. You can do it several ways. One way to do so it by setting up your own proxy server. Almost no limitations exist with this approach. A simpler approach would be to utilize the services of a company that was set up for just this purpose. A great many websites allow you to surf the net anonymously through their servers. Even a precursory search will turn up dozens of these companies. The number of methods for online anonynimity are as numerous as the reasons behind such a wish. This article has outlined just two of the most popular means but so many more exist!

A Calculator For All From Texas Instruments

A Calculator For All From Texas Instruments

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The Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator is an update to the very popular TI-83 and it is totally compatible. The new model, building upon the well-established platform, has more speed, more memory, more Apps, and an enhanced high-contrast display. It includes a USB port with cable so it can be connected to laptops or presentation tools and can share files with other calculators.

The TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator supports all of TI-83 Apps and it features 13 apps of its own. A few of the applications are Cabri Jr., Probability Simulations, Conic Graphing and many more. The TI-84 is a powerful tool for solving problems, great for math and science students, due to its features for storing, graphing, and analyzing as many as 10 functions. Also, you can have a split screen view so you can evaluate both table data and graphs at once. Thus, you have the capability to trace a graph while going over the data. With the TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator by Texas Instruments, simultaneously you can view an equation, and its graph and the coordinates as well. You can jump from point to point by merely entering a number. You can use Box-and-whisker, scatter, and XY-line plots and also histograms and normal probability plots.

The TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator by Texas Instruments comes with many functions that are readily accessed, such as advanced statistics, regression analysis, graphical analysis, and also data analysis. For advanced analysis, the TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator has features for calculus, financial, engineering, logarithm, trigonometry and hyperbolic functions. Also, there are graphing tools designed for mathematics and science work, and for finance and statistics also. Furthermore, the TI-84 comes with a kickstand slide case so it can work better on your desk.

Four AAA alkaline batteries, that don’t come in the package, are used to operate the Texas Instruments TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator. Nonetheless, it has a silver oxide battery for backup and it is equipped with auto-shutoff to save power. If you are a high school or perhaps a college mathematics student, then you will get everything you need to successfully learn and solve mathematics material. Apps like the Probability Simulator and the geometry app Cabri Jr. makes solving math problems quick and fun.

The TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator by Texas Instruments is a truly good upgrade from the TI-83 Plus, because it is 2.5x faster and has 3x the memory, and not only that, connecting it to your PC is easy. With the USB port, the TI-84 Plus Graphing Calculator by Texas Instruments can easily upload new apps and do updates. With all these excellent features, the TI-84 makes a great investment for a student’s education. Although not everyone needs all these features, the TI-84 is nevertheless a fantastic calculator with plenty of memory and applications.

The Time That Credit Repair Of Your Credit Score Is The Last Option

After having taken several loans in your past, you may have amassed yourself a bad credit score at this time. You may not know it, but if you don’t repair your credit, you may never again be able to get credit from any financial institution in the United States again.

Knowing is half the battle and your credit score is no different, use Free Credit Score Gov to get the facts first.

A credit line may be able to help you with credit repair if you are trying to take care of a mortgage gone bad. You needn’t even worry a lot because it is not an uncommon thing in America at this time. The number of services you will find that can help you out is actually impressive. If they can’t get you of, I don’t know who can. If you cannot afford the cost of a credit repair service, you should learn to do it yourself. Goodness, of course it is possible! Except that it is going to take some effort on your own. The first step will be deciding where you are going with the initiative, and the second will be to follow it through. It is no tougher than that.

You are only as fortunate in life as you can make yourself… and as unfortunate too. Your unfortunate bad credit situation, for instance, is after all the work of your own hands. Fixing it, therefore, is also going to have to be your own doing. When you realize that, you’ll be able to start your credit repair on the right footing.

Take a view of your credit report as of today and ask yourself if that is where you need to be. There are a few people who actually are so on top of their credit situation that they have nothing to worry about. However, several other people are badly in need of a credit repair service. If you find you are one of them, get to it already.

If you need to do some credit repair, a credit repair service with a history of impeccable service delivery is definitely your best option. It would be a shame in your eagerness to saddle in with some firm that is only looking to take advantage of you. That is worse even than a bad credit report.

There are too many Americans who don’t have a good credit rating. It is almost like a rite of passage these days. As such you don’t need to be feeling guilty about your own condition. Instead, you need to settle right into locating a credit repair service that will do you the good that you need to be done for you.

Getting By with a Microsoft Exchange Alternative

In this economic environment where time and money mean more than ever before, it’s imperative to start considering a Microsoft Exchange alternative. You can get huge savings without any lull at all. Understanding the market is important for any commercial enterprise. Your chosen application must offer you seamless connectivity with essential services.

So, on that note, we’ll now turn the discussion over to all the things that should be on an educated consumer’s checklist. We will take a look at the many ways that a business can succeed with server technology today.

You need to be connected all the time with Entourage, iCal or Outlook. These programs run well with others on the market so that your business is more efficient and thus more profitable. Even Microsoft’s own e-mail program is a good start for many needs, and they probably can’t be beat when it comes to integration with Windows, for obvious reasons. A Microsoft Exchange alternative can still be more advantageous, however, not for the least of which reasons are the typically much lower prices.

You can really save a lot of money as such applications commonly cost a whole lot less. This way, there’s no big overhead for you. Keeping in touch with people in our interconnected world is the key to success. This is where a Microsoft Exchange alternative is useful. Forget winging it until your luck improves. With a Microsoft Exchange alternative you will be able to handle email and calendar without jeopardizing any point of the sync process. The included anti-spam and anti-virus protection alone will save lots of money, not to mention headaches.

In the above lines you have learned a lot of interesting things about getting a Microsoft Exchange alternative. Thinking and then going outside the proverbial box is becoming ever more popular these days; don’t let your company fall behind.