Holiday Photos and Art - The Gift of Sharing Ideas

Some of the best gifts for the holidays are those made from the heart using creativity, a little bit of time and a little bit of technology. While we won't go into detail on " how to's ", we'd like to just share web sites where you can get started with some ideas.

Picture Frame - Do it yourself tools -

Gimp - This tool is for photos and is a free alternative to adobe photoshop. Using this tool you can take a copy of your image and add a creative holiday flare to them for the perfect gift.

Inkscape - This tool allows you to create vector images and is a free alternative to adobe illustrator. Vectors are a format that is resizable to billboard size or baseball card size without distortion. Very crisp.

Themed Photo Book Gift Ideas -

Shutterfly - Great site for creating one-of-a-kind photo books from your collection. While the photo book is not free the wow factor and life time memories out weigh the cost.

MyPublisher - Great site for creating one-of-a-kind photo books from your collection.

3 Tips to Blogging and Reading Blogs - Part 2

In part 1 we learned what a blog is, how readers can subscribe to a blog and the advantages that these tools give us in centralizing information and saving time in business. Let's dive into three foundational tips around starting a blog.

First decide the purpose of your blog and what you want it to do. Without a focus area your blog may wander and make it hard for users to follow. In this blog we focus on technology tips and tricks that we'd like to share with customers. Many of the tips compliment a service offering that we provide to customers.

Second develop simple yet catchy titles and use keywords related to the central topic not only in the title but throughout the body of your post. Embedding these keywords will help search engines pick up your site. Also it will attract and retain the attention of readers.

Third have fun and relax. Writing serves multiple purposes including but not limited to: establishes you as a authority figure on a topic, assists in educating customers and building customer confidence, keeps your writing skills fresh, builds an image, and creates a demand for your products / services.

Lastly we'd like to share a few of our favorite blogs -

Tip'd - A community for financial news, ideas and tips

Harvard Business Review - Business Related Conversation Starters

Marshall Goldsmith Blog - Helping Successful Leaders Get Even Better

Joel on Software - Joel Spolsky is a software developer and owner of Fog Creek

Google News - News available for Blog Readers (ONLY subscribe to topics important to you)

Looking for additional blogs that may interest you? Visit Google Blog Search today!