Suze Orman’s 2009 Action Plan is over 200 pages packed with a series of action plans for

• Credit
• Retirement Investing
• Saving
• Spending
• Real Estate
• Paying for College
• Protecting Your Family and Yourself

Hurry and download your copy before January 15th.  The directions are clear on the website on how to download the book and view it with Acrobat Reader.  Suze Orman is also answering questions during a live webcast on January 15th at 9pm Eastern time.

I have a lot of reading to do and then setting up my action plan.  Of course my plan has to include my vacation to Cancun this winter but I think I can accommodate my travel.  Do you have a 2009 action plan for your finances?

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The screensaver was created by Jesson Yip and he describes it as

a typographic clock which fuses the immediacy of digital with the visual-spatial quality of analogue into a hybrid format. It presents an everyday object with a fresh twist.

All you need to do is download Analogy, install it then go into your display settings to change your screensaver.  If you like the screensaver make sure to buy Jesson a drink in appreciation.

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slydial can be used without registering for an account though if you sign up for an account you have access to a couple of great feautures.

• Dial By Name — Once you add someone as a slydial contact, you don’t
  have to remember or enter their full phone number anymore. Just dial
  267-SLYDIAL and enter the first four digits of their slydial nickname
  to connect to their mobile voicemail.
• Click 2 slydial — At your computer? Click on the “Click 2 slydial”
  icon next to your slydial contact and slydial will call your phone.
  Once you answer, you will be connected directly to that contact’s
  voicemail.

When you register you are given the option of staying with an ad supported free account or a premium account with a pay per use fee of $0.15 per slydial or an unlimited use subscription for $4.95 per month or $29.95 per year.

Their website has been updated and really is quite nice and easy to use. Right off the bat you are given the phone number to dial if you don’t want to register an account, 267-slydial (267-759-3425). Nice and simple. Registering is easy and something I recommend doing in order to take advantage of their new feautures.

slydial works with all major U.S. wireless carriers and calls can be made from a mobile or landline phone. It would be nice to see slydial in more countries, hopefully that is coming soon.

Since registering for an account it occurred to me that it would be nice if I could group contacts, like family, and then be able to send out a group message, say to remind everyone of an upcoming event. This could be part of their premium service and I think would make a nice addition.

What do you think? Is slydial a service you would use and for what situations?

Technorati Tags: slydial

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Like many others I have heard of The Rosetta Stone programs for learning languages but I would rather spend my money on gadgets and clothing than language programs.  So, it was a nice surprise to come across a free service offered by Rosetta Stone called SharedTalk.  Using the web as a platform SharedTalk makes it possible to have voice and text chats with people wanting to learn languages and in exchange help you learn their language.  SharedTalk is a language exchange community to practice foreign languages – currently 113 languages with people from 174 countries.  Wow!

Signing up is easy to do, choose a username, password and provide a brief profile and you are all set.  I signed up, got my confirmation email and was voice chatting with a young man from Santiago, Chile.  His English was much better than my Spanish but now he is in my network and hopefully we will have more chats and my Spanish will get better.

Rosetta Stone points out that a language exchange has many advantages including

• practice with a native speaker.
• discovering other cultures.
• sharing hobbies and interests with your language partners.
• learning slang, informal expressions and idioms.

As a member of SharedTalk you get a mailbox and can practice language skills through email exchange.  There is no need to hand out your email address or instant messenger information.  I like the privacy that affords me, similar to what is available on the top dating sites.

I like that you are able to join in on public text chats or chose to have private exchanges.  SharedTalk is not for shy people, this is a community of people who want to talk, learn new languages and cultures.

I’ll be visiting SharedTalk often, probably late at night when I can’t sleep and feel like chatting.  Not only will I get to chat, I’ll get to learn and practice foreign languages with native speakers.  Pretty neat.

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Think about the reasons for using such a service for a minute. 

• SlyDial gives you the power of whether you want to talk directly to a person or not.
• Call friends and relatives you don’t want to have a lengthy conversation with but leave a nice message, maybe a thank you for a gift or just letting them know you are thinking of them.
• If you need to call in sick and your boss uses his/her mobile for communication you can bypass speaking with them and just leave a message (I like this reason).
• You are short on time and just want to leave a quick message like confirming the time you are meeting your spouse for dinner.
• Leaving a voicemail means you tried reaching the person, they don’t know that you made your call directly go to voicemail.

It’s easy to use SlyDial.

• Just dial the 267-SLYDIAL (759-3425) from either a land line or mobile phone,
• then dial the 10 digit mobile number of the person you are calling,
• listen to a short advertisement,
• you are then connected to the number and you can leave your voice mail message.

The first time you call listen to their explanation of the service, it is amusing at times. On future calls you can just start dialing the number you are calling

I made a call to my Verizon phone and went through the steps. After leaving the message I received notification on my mobile that I had a new voice message.  It didn’t show that I missed a call and the call is not logged in my missed calls list.  I’m not sure on other carriers how it handles the call, whether it says the person missed a call or just that they have a new mail message.

SlyDial is still in the alpha stage where new features will probably be added and they are looking at a premium service to bypass the advertisement heard before connecting your call.  I would like to see an option to sign up for the service and the ability to import my contact list from a service like Plaxo and then the ability to just say “Call dad” and be connected.  An Outlook plugin is another option which could be part of their premium service as it is with Joopz.

Try it out and let me know what you think.

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The amount of free content is amazing and will keep anyone interesting in broadening their education experience occupied for quite some time.  I plan on downloading some content such as Thomas Friedman’s, The World is Flat,  to listen to while I am away on vacation.  There are lectures from Yale University, Standford, MIT and Wellesley College, content from the Museum of Modern Art, American Public Media and the National Science Digital Library.  I can’t wait to dig into it all.

I guess I now have a reason to be happy using iTunes.  I used to play my media with Media Monkey and Winamp and hated having to change over to iTunes for my iPod Touch (neither player is compatible with the Touch).  Between the ease of finding podcasts and now iTunesU, I am now a happy iTunes user.

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In order to have working versions of each program you need to register with your email address and a registration key.

Camtasia Studio 3.1.3

Download and save to desktop. Camtasia Studio 3.1.3 Download

Get registration key and follow directions.

Camstasia Studio 3.1.3 Registration

If you want to upgrade to the newest version 5.0 you only have to pay $149 rather than regular retail of $299.

SnagIt 7.25

Download and save to desktop. SnagIt 7.25 Download

Get registration key and follow directions. SnagIt 7.25 Registration

If you want to upgrade to version 8.2 it will only cost you $19.95 rather than the regular price of $39.95.

This is a really nice way to use software beyond limited trial periods and features and decide whether or not it is worth upgrading to the most recent version. I like that TechSmith gives the upgrade price even though I never paid for the previous version. I hope that enough people write about the free versions so no one pays full price.

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