What are we to do America? Come on, think! We have some of the brightest people in the world, undoubtedly the most successful businessmen.

The commercial real estate market is falling right now, so I could forsee in the next year rents dropping dramatically for retail space, are you thinking about starting up a small business? Now is the best time ever to do so. Consumers are spending, there are alot of qualified people looking for work, and rents, well you can negotiate that to a 6 month freebee with tenant improvements!

So maybe thats the ticket, start your small businesses. What about financing you say, well yeah that is a huge concern. There are ways to get capital, the SBA is creating a waiting list for loans, micro-lenders are popping up, I know two off the top of my head that are lending to new business entrepreneurs.

Lets get a move on, there are great resources out there like Club Entrepreneur, which meets all the time. SCORE.org can help you get started, sba.gov.

I am going to start writing about my journey into a residential re-hab business. It can be a great business to be in, there is alot of work but the rewards are there.

Stay tuned, and for now, start a business! Entrepreneurs are the answer.

Advertising and Marketing on the Internet: Rules of the Road.

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Club Entrepreneur Offers Zero Tuition College Education for Arizona Residents

(TEMPE, AZ) May 7, 2009 – Arizona residents can now earn a fully accredited college degree at no cost by joining Club Entrepreneur, a free online community for emerging entrepreneurs. Prospective students who sign up are eligible have their tuition waived at Andrew Jackson University (AJU), a nationally accredited online institution with eleven degree programs. Additional enrollment fees, books and materials costs, and other qualified expenses can be fully offset by the recently passed American Opportunity Tax Credit, effectively bringing the net cost of a college education to zero.

“Our sponsored tuition program will strengthen Arizona’s economic future by unlocking the gates to higher education for thousands of residents who are being shut out by the recent wave of fee increases at colleges and universities throughout the state,” remarked Club Entrepreneur founder Peter J. Burns, III.

Club Entrepreneur is the latest addition to AJU’s growing list of business and organizational sponsors who want to offer educational opportunities to their employees or members. Interested students must join the sponsor’s e-mail list or online network in order to qualify for the tuition waiver. There is no cost to the sponsor or the student to participate.

“Traditional educational institutions find applicants by paying hefty fees to educational websites which collect and sell personal information of interested students,” explains AJU President Don Kassner. “We eliminate this costly middle man by partnering with groups that are trying to reach the same population we are,” he adds.

Students are under no obligation to maintain a relationship with their sponsoring organization and will continue to have their tuition waived even if they sever ties with their sponsor. “It’s really up to the individual sponsor to maintain a good relationship with the student,” according to Kassner. Sponsors are prohibited from selling or sharing the personal information of their sponsored students.
Participating students can choose from a variety of Associate, Bachelor and Master degree programs in business, communication, health care administration and other fields. Courses and assignments are administered “anytime anywhere” on AJU’s secure, user-friendly online platform. For more information on the sponsored tuition program, visit Club Entrepreneur at http://www.clubefactory.com/

I spoke about idrive.com, you can get 2GB of free space through them just by signing up.

There is a lesser known way to get free space by using a Google Gmail account. Sign up for a free account, and install the program called Gmail Drive that creates an actual drive on your system. This program is for windows only, Linux users can find GmailFS on the net to use. Gmail drive is as simple as running an executable then typing in the new username and password you created with Gmail. Once installed, you can use the drive just like a local disk. Google is currently giving away 3.6GB of free space and they increase it every day. The competition is fierce among the free email providers, so this space will only go up.

Another somewhat free (you pay for hosting) option is to use the extra space on your web site. If you pay for web hosting (1and1 sells 100GB for $5.99/month) you can use that extra space as your personal hard disk. There is a program called sftpdrive which creates a local disk drive and will secure ftp to your provider to store them. This means the data is encrypted while its being sent (but not on the server so be careful). Sftpdrive isn’t free, but if you don’t care so much about encryption, there is a free version called ftpdrive that works the same, just not encrypted transfers.

A proxy is a special kind of server that takes your web request, and sends it out for itself. This makes all your requests come from that server. A lot of workplaces use this method to control what content employees can see.

To find a free proxy, just do a search for “anonymous proxy” on google, and you will find tons of websites with lists of free proxies. For IE: use these directions. For Firefox: use these. One thing to note, these proxies CANNOT be trusted. Who knows what they are doing with your information.

A better and free alternative is to use the TOR network. TOR is a connection of anonymous proxies that tunnel your data through random places on the internet. These are called endpoints and are hosted by people from all over the world. Goto the download tab and install the bundle for your OS. This inludes the TOR engine, Privoxy, and Vidalia. Privoxy is a great little program that makes sure all the data sent from your PC is cleaned. This includes cookies that might be sending private information, and other bad browsing items. Vidalia is a graphical interface for the TOR program. Firefox (great free browser) is recommended for all of this, it has extensions that let you turn TOR anony-mizing on and off with a click.

Read more on the TOR network and how it can protect your privacy online. One large item is to make sure any important data is still encrypted with SSL. The TOR endpoints cannot control what comes out on the other end!

I asked the rep if it would work anywhere, and he said it should, roaming is enabled. I said OK, give me your pre-paid phone that has tri-band support (tri-band will support most GSM type networks). I ended up with the at&t Nokia 6102i phone which is the only pre-paid that has tri-band. A Quad-band phone would be your best bet, but they don’t offer it. When I got the phone, I unlocked it so when I was traveling I could use a local SIM card since you usually get cheaper rates. I unlocked it at unlock123.com for about $5. For those who don’t know what unlocking is, your phone comes with a software lock that only lets you use certain carriers in the U.S. You can purchase phones that come from the factory unlocked, but you will never get those in a local store. You can unlock just about any phone with a SIM card in it, just do some Google searches.

So I had my phone, SIM, and was ready to travel. Off to Dubai I went, through Amsterdam. I tried the phone in Amsterdam, and what do ya know, it won’t get service since the SIM card is not allowed to roam on their network. I figured that $alesman lied to me. I get to Dubai, and same result, nothing. No roaming for me. So with the help of a trusty friend I procured a SIM card locally (good luck doing this in the states) which worked fine. Added some Durham’s to it, and away I went.

My next issue, is that the Nokia 6102i doesn’t hold a signal for crap. When you start to move in a car, no signal. It drops instantly. When you are stopped, works great. Since most of my trip was traveling between Abu Dhabi and Dubai, the phone is useless. I had to borrow a Motorola RAZR for the rest of the trip.

When I got back to the states, I researched SIM cards that would work all over the world. I found a company called World SIM which gives free incoming calls to most of the world. The rates are very reasonable, and you get a U.K. number which for anyone calling you from the states would be an international call. I bought a new RAZR off ebay that was already unlocked, popped in the SIM and it works like a champ. When you make a call, it actually calls you back instead of calling directly. This can get a little annoying since calls are not instant, but it still works fine. I tried the card in Curacao and it worked without issue.

My RAZR stopped charging soon after (not having good luck here) so I got a free Samsung phone from my friend, unlocked it, and that has been working great. SIM cards are nice because you can save all your contacts on the card, put a PIN on it, and everything moves with you from phone to phone.

I really wish the carriers in the U.S. would allow you to just purchase phones and SIM cards separately and be free to pick a network. They are too greedy so I doubt that will ever happen. For now you can pick companies such as MetroPCS that don’t make you sign a contract, but they lack a lot of the new data services.

If you are looking for the best Hotel or Airfare, you can use the newer type search engines. These will scour the web for rates from the airlines own home pages (nwa.com, southwest.com), and all the major travel sites like Orbitz, Travelocity, etc.

It doesn’t hurt to check all of the following links, chances are you can find an airfare and a flight time that you can deal with.

If you don’t have a specific time to fly, then try the generic searches. They allow you to find the cheapest deals for a range of dates.

Search engines (try all of them):

• Kayak.com -best in my opinion, can narrow your search very easily (time, price, stops) and it does hotels as well as cars and more.
• Mobissimo.com -similar to Kayak, not as nice of a layout but can have different results.
• Sidestep.com - this one is new to me so I haven’t used it yet, but it looks like it is very well laid out.

Standard searches:

It doesn’t hurt to also run searches on the main sites, some might reserve fares when only searched on their page. Most of them can also do vacation packages which can be handy.

• Orbitz.com
• Expedia.com
• Travelocity.com
• Hotwire.com
• Priceline.com

Last minute travel:

These are handy if you need to travel now, or just want to get away this weekend. Most do not work for more than a couple weeks ahead of time. You can usually find good deals through the search engines as well for last minutes things.

• 11thhourvacations.com
• Go-today.com
• Lastminute.com

Smaller airlines:

There can be a lot of airlines that fly out of your local airports that offer cheap rates. These are also nice since you don’t have the large airport crazy-ness that plagues most of the U.S. A carrier that flies locally to me is Alligiant Air. Check the billboards when you are driving and you will find one. Jetblue is another smaller airline.

Miscellaneous travel sites:

• Farecast.com – if you want to keep an eye out for the cheapest rates to a specific destination, or from your hometown, run a search agent on this site. They try to forecast if the fares will go up or down based on past data. Very neat site with alot of potential for deals.
• Seatguru.com – this site is always consulted before I book a seat on a plane. The user comments are great since they are putting seats in more and more places (like right next to the bathroom).
• Artoftravel.com – good info on back packing and everything about travel.
• Gridskipper.com – great travel destination information site, geared towards cities.
• Pleasantholidays.com – destination package deal site
• Lonelyplanet.com – Can’t forget this site, great source of information about every destination. Read the user comments for great suggestions.

If there is anything missing on my list and you have had a good experience with it, shoot me a request!

My overall reaction is a positive one based on 6 weeks of use. I was the lucky first person to get one in the Sprint store.

Image from SprintMogul.net

Pros:

• Battery life is very good on this model, it will easily last two days with moderate use. I constantly check my email during business hours with ActiveSync, and make about 30 minutes to an hour of phone calls each day.
• EVDO support. The new Sprint network is quite fast, and with the mega-plan I had to pick ($30 extra a month), I get unlimited PC data access through a USB cable which is nice.
• At some point in the future, Sprint will have TV and Navigation support built in, see my rant below for more on this.
• The keyboard has a resistant slide-out spring now, so it won’t open in your pocket on accident. This is an upgrade from the 6700.
• Application support is as good as my Palm (although more freeware stuff for Palm OS). Google maps for mobile is very nice. This phone supports a bluetooth GPS, so you can use Googles location features with it. I have also used TomTom Handheld and it works great with this phone.
• It comes with a nice leather belt case. I have been using the case and it works well. It has a magnetic button which closes tight, so the phone hasn’t slipped out yet.
• Upgraded camera, it is now 2 megapixel. The camera is what you would expect from a mobile device, it is crappy. Without bright light, it is always blurry and takes a few seconds to take the picture. It does include a flash which lights up a little, but not more than a few feet away. Overall its a nice addition, but I will still carry a digital camera for real pictures.
• Plenty of internal memory. You will be hard pressed to install enough programs to fill up the 160+MB of memory built in. At that point your system will be so bloated, it’s pretty useless.
• Included 512 MB MicroSD. This was a nice surprise as you can copy music or movies directly onto the device when you get it. When you plug it in to windows for the first time, it will create a new Mobile Device under My Computer where you can access the Storage Device folder directly.
• Voice activation that actually works. There is a voice button on the side that you press for the phone to listen for voice commands. It works very well when recorded properly. It can be setup to makes calls or open applications.

Cons:

• Its windows, and it still has bugs. One bug I keep running into is that the sound just stops working after a certain period of time. I can’t determine a set time, it appears to be random, sometimes a week, sometimes two days. A reboot of windows fixes this (reset button).
• Sprint customer service sucks! I wanted to keep the same plan I have had for over two years, it includes unlimited text messages. The customer service lady at the Sprint store said, yeah thats not a problem. So I get my next bill, and guess what, charges for all of my text messages. Waiting on hold for the minimum of 20 minutes, Sprint explained that they do not offer my old plan anymore with unlimited text. To get the same package it will now be double. I also get to use the Sprint TV and Navigation software, but wait, it isn’t supported yet on my phone? But you will happily charge me for it right? Yup.
• It doesn’t have a nice silicon case like the Treo. This is a design issue though, since there really isn’t a good way to get a silicon case on it, unless it is a split design or something.
• It turns on randomly. The screen will turn on what appears to be randomly, but I now tracked it down to switching between the EVDO network and the standard network. This can get very annoying in low signal areas, and I hope Sprint will figure this out (don’t have my hopes up too high).
• No headphone port. The Mogul comes with a USB adapter that has a 3.5mm headphone port, but that is a pain to carry around.

Other things to note:

• There is now a 2200 milliamp battery available, which should almost double the battery life. The only thing I don’t like is that it’s larger, so a new battery cover is needed. This will make your case unusable.
• I purchased a dock kit from igonemobile.com which works nicely. It also includes another charger and a car adapter which are always handy. The phone uses USB for charging so you can use any USB charger.

Overall this is a great phone, and I hope to use it for a few years. I made sure to purchase the Sprint insurance plan in case it dies, since these are about $500-600 to replace.

-Vince

Typically one gets on an email list from a spider that’s only purpose is to cowl the internet for email addresses. If you are a web domain owner and used your real email address in the registration, all that information is publicly accessible. If you have ever signed up or purchased a product from an online retailer, your email is on a list somewhere. When Gmail was first started, there were automated bots just sending emails starting at AAAAA to ZZZZZ@gmail.com. So what can you do?

There are a few ways to work on this.

1. Use a fake email address! Sites such as http://www.mailinator.com let you use any email you can think of, as long as it is @mailinator.com. So if you just want to access a website for an initial registration, make up an email address like onetimejunky@mailinator.com. Go to the website, and type in your username, and after a few minutes your emails should pop up. There are many other such websites out there, some giving 10 minute emails, or you can register for another yahoo account and just delete it.
2. Google’s Gmail and possibly most email providers allow you to add a plus sign to your email username. An example would be test+ihatespam@gmail.com. This will allow you to filter out emails easier, for instance you can put the website your registering on after the plus sign and very easily see where your spam is coming from.
3. Only give out your email address when there is a reason for it. Most merchants have no reason to ask for your email, only to solicit business or sell the addresses. They should have a privacy policy that states either way, but who really can be sure they abide it?

One final suggestion is to always enable the spam filtering on your free email accounts. They are pretty good at catching mass emails, which seems to be all the rage these days.

So why do spammers stay in business? One simple reason, people click on the links! Stop clicking on the spam, and we don’t have a problem (except for virus spam, which there is ALOT of).

As always, don’t click on an attachment unless you are expecting it. Viruses come from friends and family too.