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As we cope with the efforts to combat the infectiousness of COVID-19, we have turned increasingly to electronic means of communicating. SMS text messages, Facebook messaging, tweeting, livestreaming and video conferencing have all played a role in helping people stay connected when they need to stay at home. These technologies have been key to keeping people informed to a degree that was impossible 100 years ago when the flu epidemic ravaged the world. But as helpful as these communications tools are, they have their own risks. One tool that we have heard a lot about recently is Zoom, which describes... [...]

Winning the favor of search engines is always a good thing. When people search for content in your niche, being found high in the results is always a benefit for your site. As much as you like return traffic from people who already know and love your site, attracting new visitors is necessary to replace those who inevitably lose interest. The other factor, of course, is creating content on your site that people find helpful and that search engines find to be worth sharing with their users. Such content goes a long way in winning those coveted high rankings in search engine results. So far, so good.... [...]

Android, of course, is the popular operating system created by Google that runs on billions of phones, notepads and other devices. It is so popular that older versions of the system are still running on devices that were bought years ago. That can be a problem because early versions of Android (prior to Android 8, those released in 2012 or earlier) have security problems that were just recently discovered. Device manufacturers don’t generally offer fixes for hardware that old. So, if you are still using an old Android device, you are doing so at your own risk. Here’s a news story that... [...]

In America, today is Thanksgiving Day, a holiday near the end of the year (originally, this time of year was chosen becuse it was after the Fall harvest), when we pause and reflect on the many good things that we have enjoyed during the year, and we give thanks for them. Of course, not everythng has been good. Everyone has had a year that had its ups and downs. That’s normal, but for most of us, we have avoided the perils of war, the hardships of famine, the blight of drought and the poverty that comes from financial meltdown. We don’t have everything we might want, but we are blessed... [...]

Many of our readers know that their productivity (getting the work done as efficiently as possible) is an essential factor in their level of marketing success. Waste hour on one task and another one gets pushed off till the next day. If that happens often, blogs don’t get updated, ads don’t get written and sales suffer. Any tips and any technology that help us do our work well and quickly can lead to better productivity, better job satisfaction and better end results. This problem is faced even more vividly by people who work from home, as many of our readers do. All the normal office-related... [...]

In the USA, today is known as Independence Day, remembering the struggles beginning in 1776 for freedom. Other countries have a similar celebrations of their own history and the foundation for their modern society. In the American case (perhaps others, too), the purpose and the mission of the struggle was well-defined in advance. They were going to, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor” to the overthrow of tyranny. They saw freedom as being worth all the risks involved. Their goal was freedom, in all its... [...]

I am frequently dismayed by the poor writing in the promotional emails I receive. There are a lot of grammar errors and misspellings. There are also sentences that don’t make sense. I have wondered if there would be a market for having sales pages, emails, etc. reviewed for good English prior to release. The errors I see reduce a reader’s confidence in the ability of a seller to deliver quality products, so cleaning up the English should pay for itself in improved sales. You may not have to hire someone to clean up your poor writing, though. There are tools that will improve your writing,... [...]

In our industry, there seem to be a lot of them. Just remember what Will Rogers said, “The quickest way to double your money is to fold it and put it in your back pocket.”  [...]

From the November 2018 edition of Reader’s Digest: Tired of boiling water every time you make pasta? Boil a few gallons at the beginning of the week and freeze it for later.  [...]