My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings » benefit

SafeSocial

Lisa — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 14:59:11 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

As a blogger, I know how important my child’s safety is in this online world. However, what can a parent do to protect their kids online as well as off? It’s scary that your kids ”friends” aren’t just the kids hanging out in your family room – they’re also the hundreds of contacts on their online “friend” and “buddy” lists. Did you know that more than 50 million teens (ages 13-17) are online worldwide? Or that the average number of “friends” on a list is 130? The totals are much higher for many teens.

SafeSocial, a new AOL product that launches today, can help you protect your children, even if you aren’t a social media expert. SafeSocial helps you:

Find out where your child has online accounts
Know who your child is “friends” with online
Get notified if your child is in a conversation about violence, suicide or drugs
See photos your child has posted online, and others’ photos in which your child has been tagged

Another benefit? You can monitor all this activity without being a “helicopter parent.” Your child will have to agree to be monitored, but you won’t need to connect with them on the social media accounts, or hover over their shoulders in person. (Which I personally think is great).

Since this is a tool that I think is great in your arsenal to help protect your kids, I wanted to let my readers know about it and let you also know that you can sign up for a 30 day free trial!

How do you protect your kids offline and online? Is this something that you’d use?

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Box Tops & A $50 Giveaway Too!

Lisa — Wed, 12 Nov 2008 17:55:05 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

The school that Madison is going to next year collects Box Tops. If you don’t know what Box Tops is, let me explain. There are a ton of items that you can buy that have the image to the left on the box. You collect these for your local schools, and they get 10 cents for every one you turn in. Now, that doesn’t sound like a lot, but when if you can get a bunch of people together, it adds up quickly. Now, the school’s goal is to earn $750 from Box Tops. Last year, they made $536, and I would love for them to meet their goal for this year (even though Madison is not even enrolled yet. I understand that any extra money to the school with benefit her). Now, there are several ways we can do this for our local schools.

First, you need to log into the Box Tops site and create an account. You enter your state and your school or if you don’t know that, just enter your zip code. I personally entered the school and state. From there, you are able to see how your local school is going. Now, how do you increase that number? Well, you can collect box tops with that logo on it. They also have a Marketplace. Now, until recently, I did not know about the Marketplace. This works so awesome too! There is a list of stores that will give a percentage of whatever you buy from them back to the school. There are stores like Avon, Gap, Kohls, Best Buy, Leap Frog, Target, and Walmart (this is just a couple of them — the whole listing is on the site). All you have to do is log into the Box Tops Site, click on marketplace, then click on the store you want to shop it. That’s it. Once you checkout, the percentage you purchased will then be applied to your school. If you are Christmas shopping online anyway, why not help out your local school (and if you don’t want to help any of them out, I’ll tell you the school we are sending our money too, and you can use them).

Did you know that Box Tops has donated more than $250 million to schools nationwide since 1996? Would you like to help raise that number? Then start collecting Box Tops and use their Marketplace to do your online shopping! To help you get started, I am giving away a $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble (thank you Barnes & Noble for your support of such a great program!). What do you have to do?

Each one of these things will give you one entry:

1. Leave a comment on this post. I want to know why you want this $50 gift card to Barnes & Noble!
2. Twitter about this contest. Please leave me your username so I can verify.
3. Stumble this post. If you don’t know what Stumble Upon is, please read Lori’s post at Blogging Cents. She explains it extremely well.
4. Add this post to other social media sites like Digg, Kirtsy, Blogging Zoom, Reddit, Propeller, Etc.

For 5 additional entries,

1. Blog about this on your blog. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
2. Add this to any forums you belong too. Please give me the URL, so I can verify.
3. Subscribe to this blog using either my email or RSS feed
4. Add my badge to your sidebar:

This contest will end November 26th at 8:00 pm CST and is for US residents. Good Luck!

Entrecard Forums Censoring Again

Lisa — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 04:55:29 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

I really do like Entrecard. I really do. However, some of the missteps that have occurred over are just crazy. One of the ongoing missteps is their moderators on their forums. This was an issue a while back before. New forums popped up due to the censorship that a lot of the members were feeling on the Entrecard forums. Seriously, that was how bad it got.

Now, I thought that was over and done with. We were told that wouldn’t happen anymore and blah blah blah. Well, I learned firsthand myself how much crap that was (I’m a little irritated . . . can you tell?) Now, I have moderated before (I was moderator at the Izea forums over a year, so I know what a pain it can be. However, we were never ever ever allowed to delete anything unless it was spam.) Now, the thread in question is this one: http://entrecard.com/forums/7/15804/#p=21. Now, they posted a question and people started responding. I happened to be one of them. And my response got deleted since he (the moderator who started the question) didn’t like the answer. He also removed the reference to another forum called Firestorm. I’m sorry, you can’t ask a question on a public forum and then start deleting the answers you don’t like. Sorry, that is crap. The part that I especially love is that other forums are listed there. His reasoning? Firestorm and Forum Finder (which is the one I listed) are too close to what Entrecard’s forum does (huh?). I wouldn’t be half as ticked if he didn’t leave other forums up there that do the same darn thing. I don’t understand the double standard. I am not one to kiss ass which is probably why my comment is gone (I’ve left two more comments questioning why — we’ll see how long those last).

Now, I don’t own either forum that got taken off the list. I get no benefit for writing this post, besides releasing some of my anger. I just am sick and tired of Entrecard’s double standard when it comes to their forums. Obviously, the only way to get your posts to say is to kiss up or keep your opinions to yourself (which I would think is counterproductive on a forum).

Let me know your thoughts.

March of Dimes March For Babies

Lisa — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 01:32:24 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

My sister over at Karebear Central is walking in Walk America this weekend up in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Since we are in the middle of a remodeling project, the kids and I aren’t going up there. However, I would love to surprise her and help her raise money for such a great cause!

I truly believe that without the research the March Of Dimes has done, my kids would not be here. I had preterm labor issues with both of my children. If they (the doctors) wouldn’t have been able to stop it, my kids would have been born too early and probably would not have survived. My cousins two children were born extremely premature. Her daughter was only 3 lbs when born.

If you ask around your friends and family, you will be amazed at how many people you know that have benefited from the March of Dimes and their research. With that in mind, please consider donating to March of Dimes March For Babies. All those who donate will be included get a link from both me on this blog and a link from my sister on her blog. For anyone who donates $20 or more, I will also write a review about your blog (or whatever you want) over on my Lisa Reviews blog. Leave me a comment if you donate. Thanks!!!!

Antipoleez

Lisa — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 02:53:21 +0000

My Thoughts, Ideas, and Ramblings - A day in the life of a busy mom . . .

When I first heard about this product, I was a little surprised about it. Antipoleez is a product that you can use to get rid of bad breath resulting from consumption of alcohol, tobacco and food. I can see this being a product that you would use if you don’t want your significant other knowing you went out after work for drinks. However, I see a much better use for this. Being a nonsmoker, I cannot stand the smell of cigarette smoke. When I was pregnant, I was super sensitive to the smell. However, I live with a smoker. I would love for him to use a product like this so it isn’t like kissing an ashtray. When I was pregnant, Bill would have a cigarette at lunch and I could smell it on him at dinnertime that night. He would have loved this product. It would have saved us a lot of toothpaste. The other benefit is that it takes care of bad breath. I also have husband who loves garlic. His breath, at times, could knock you over (though I don’t have to worry about vampires!). There are many great uses for this product — I just have to talk Bill into getting it.