Posts Tagged ‘environment’
CLR & The Housewares Show
When I was invited to attend The International Housewares show, I was super excited. I was invited by both the Housewares show itself and also CLR. What’s CLR? It’s an awesome cleaning solution. When we lived in Aurora, IL, we had the hardest water EVER. Okay, maybe not the worst in the world, but it would leave that pink gross grimy stuff in our tub and sinks. Nothing, and I mean nothing, ever worked to get rid of it. That is, until I was introduced to CLR. We used CLR exclusively, so I was happy to and represent them. I even got to be their roaming reporter. Here are a couple of the videos I made with them:
I’d recommend checking CLR. It was awesome! Here a few of the pictures I took while I was there:
A great time was had by all!
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Software That Doesn’t Require Your Fingertips
I have been writing a lot about Dragon NaturallySpeaking Software lately. I absolutely love how it saves me time writing posts. If you see the post before this one, it is almost 700 words. I used the software and with editing (mainly because I decided to reword things), it took less than 10 minutes. This software is a bloggers dream. Life is so much easier when I can write a 700 word post in the little bit of time I catch here and there during the day. The best thing is that I am not the only one who thinks so:
Drew of the BenSpark has put together a great little video demonstrating Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Drew has been blogging for quite some time and he might just be one of the best mobile bloggers that I know. He is probably more famous for his picture a day work as he is an excellent photographer. But I can’t help be amazed at how much content he creates and the high level of quality in that content.
He’s definitely a blogger that employs best practices when he finds them. And based on this video, it looks like he might see some potential in Dragon NaturallySpeaking. Now I am not trying to put an endorsement in Drew’s mouth. Time will tell, but I do think he is off to an excellent start.
You’ll notice in his video, that the sound quality of his video is excellent. That’s actually an important aspect for Dragon NaturallySpeaking. I don’t mean that you need good video quality or sound quality in a video to make Dragon NaturallySpeaking work. However you do need a good microphone, and it should be a noise canceling microphone at that. The better the sound quality, and the better able your microphone is to remove other background noises, the better your system will be able to recognize the words that you say as fast as you say them and transcribe them accurately.
Now Dragon NaturallySpeaking comes with a noise cancellation microphone that works very well when you buy it out of the box. Drew is working with a download version that does not come with a microphone, and so he had to supply his own.
As I write this article, I am using a wireless headset microphone from Logitech. I’ve been using Dragon NaturallySpeaking for almost two years now, but I’ve just recently untethered myself from Dragon NaturallySpeaking and started using a wireless headset microphone with noise cancellation capabilities. Dragon NaturallySpeaking 10 does have the capability of working with Bluetooth wireless microphones, but my particular microphone runs on 2.4 GHz wireless technology. Now if you live in a household or work in an office environment where there are a number of systems or phones or microwaves, you may experience some interference with this particular headset. In that case, you will probably be better served with either a Bluetooth headset or a headset that is capable of being plugged directly into your computer through the microphone plug or through USB. I don’t have that issue, and so I do get excellent quality with little to no interference at all.
So if you take an interest in Dragon NaturallySpeaking and want to try it for yourself, I highly recommend that you get a boxed version of the software which you can order from Nuance online. You can even get a good deal on a Bluetooth wireless headset and a bundled option from Nuance. If you’re looking for entry level pricing, you can start using the software and get a headset microphone for as little as $99.
To put that in context, I’ve taken three typing classes over the years to boost my typing speed and spent essentially three semesters practicing at typing. It wasn’t the only thing that I studied, but I spent a lot of time building up my typing skill. With Dragon NaturallySpeaking, you can invest $99, invest an hour installing the software (I’m being very conservative with that time estimate) and as little as 10 minutes training the software to recognize your voice before you can be off and running typing at 150 words per minute!
That is pretty amazing, and well worth the value of $99. Not to mention if you spend a little extra and get a wireless headset microphone, you can pace around your room or your office, you can exercise, or do a number of different things other than sit at a computer desk staring at your computer all day long. 
$99 basically gives you your freedom,and who wouldn’t want to type at 150 WPM for $99?
Best regards,
Brett Bumeter
www.softduit.com
My name is Brett Bumeter, and I wrote the article above and 4 1/2 minutes. The article is about 659 words long, and that translates into 144 words per minute. Add in two minutes for editing, and that’s still 100 words per minute!
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Bluehost Woes = Big Gain for Hostgator
Many of you know that I have been having major hosting issues as of late. From July till now, my sites have gone down daily, and Bluehost’s support has been less than helpful. I have used them for almost two years, so it was truly sad for me to have to even think about leaving. I have never had the problems I was having. If you read my blog, you will notice long absences (when I couldn’t even post due to not being able to even get to the backend of my blogs!), and I wrote about a lot of my issues. My final straw was when support finally told me to delete my old posts and put them on a static page. Well, that kind of defeats the whole purpose of a blog. I think I just outgrew them. I do have to say that to cancel Bluehost was super easy, super fast, and they were super nice.
I had asked around quite a bit about what other hosts were out there that people liked. One I heard a lot of good things from was Hostgator. Before I made my decision, I even online chatted with some of their sales people. The other thing that impressed me was that they are green. I personally believe that every little bit helps and that if I can help the environment with my hosting, why not. Granted, Hostgator isn’t running their own windmills in downtown Houston. Instead, they have bought RECs for 130% of the electricity used to power and cool its shared and reseller servers. What’s a REC?
Renewable Energy Credits (RECs) are tradeable credits representing all the environmental benefits of 1 megawatt hour of renewable energy. So when HostGator purchases 4,009 Texas wind RECs, it’s basically paying a Texas windfarm to generate renewable energy on HostGator’s behalf. HostGator doesn’t own the windfarm, but for every REC purchased by HostGator, that windfarm generates 1 megawatt of Texas wind power and puts it into the grid. When HostGator draws power from the grid, it can then claim credit for that wind power generated on its behalf.
Another thing I really like is that if there is a problem with one of your sites, they don’t pull them all down. That was a big grievance of mine before. They will also transfer your domains and your files to them for free! That was what really got me to come over to them. They saved me hours of time of having to move my sites! Every step of the way, I got an email letting me know what they were up to. The only thing you end up having to do is check to make sure that your site looks good and to change your DNS settings. It doesn’t get easier than that!
Any issues I have had so far have been dealt with quickly. When I didn’t get my welcome email (due to my own typo), they responded to my ticket in 15 minutes. I ended up sending in a ticket due to a WP hiccup last night (which I think was my fault too – lol) and had a response in about 2 hours. I love that kind of customer service! They have been nothing but nice and helpful. The thing I love the best is that I went from throwing errors on all my blogs to not throwing any. I am not sure how that happens, but I’ll take it!
If you are in need of new hosting, I highly recommend checking out Hostgator. They are very competitive in pricing, and they are everything I wanted in a host.
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