The Thirty Day Challenge 2008 has a new tagline – “There’s no charge for awesomeness.” It’s not bad as far as tag lines go, but personally, I think “there’s” should be dropped. I think in this case, “there’s” is already implied in “no charge for awesomeness.”

“The Thirty Day Challenge – No charge for awesomeness” sounds way cool.

But that’s just my perspective.

Anyway, I can hardly believe it’s already just a matter of days before 30dc 2008 begins – *this* Friday! Wow! Although I’ve kept up with the pre-season stuff, I’m really not ready for it to begin. I mean, we’ve barely just begun having summer around here and August means it’s almost over. That bums me out, quite frankly. Summer with the kids home, the warm weather, fun activities and gardening is just a season I hate seeing come to an end.

If the emails Ed Dale and Dan Raine have been sending out for this years challenge are any indication, 30dc 2008 is going to knock the socks off any previous year, IMHO.

So, other than following pre-season, is there anything you’ve done to get ready for this year?

I decluttered and reorganized my office. Ok . . . well, that’s not entirely true. I *did* truly declutter and reorganize, but not really for the challenge. The fact that I’ll have a nice, clutter-free office this year is just a bonus. I simply got everything in shape because it was driving me nuts! Because my old desk had no drawers, everything was piled on TOP of my desk and it made working difficult at best.

Get ready to fire! (Use <— that link to sign up if you haven’t already.)

~ Annie

Well, it’s officially Pre-Season for Thirty Day Challenge 2008 with Ed Dale and Dan Raine. And I’m very excited.

Ed has already shared a couple of things on such as the social web browser, Flock and hinted at other tools we’ll be using this year like Google Reader.

I must admit so far, though, that Flock is cool, even if it is a bit annoying. For example, downloads are slower on Flock than I on my preferred browser, Firefox (which I’ve been using for years) and it has crashed on me over the past 3-4 days more times than Firefox beta 3 has since I began using it a few months ago.

That said, I do like the tools within Flock.

Anyway, Thirty Day Challenge officially launches August 1st and pre-season started June 1st. I encourage you to check it out if you haven’t already done so. You will learn a lot!

Make it a great day!

~ Annie

Many of the tools I’ve shared with you in the past are available on both Windows and Mac machines but today, I’ll be sharing some Mac only programs. I apologize to all you Windows users out there and if I knew of Windows comparable apps, I’d share those. Unfortunately, I don’t. But if you do, please post them in the comments.

StickyWindows. This is a cool little program. It makes the edges of your screen “sticky” – and you “dock” open programs there when you aren’t using them so they’re not taking up space on your desktop. Now, you can basically hide open apps with the dock, but this takes a bit further so they’re open and very easily accessible. I love this program and I use it everyday.

Skim. If you read or use a lot of PDF docs, this app is a must-have. It allows you to make notes, comments, and much more on your PDF’s for future reference. It also has a bookmark feature, snapshots feature and even allows copying and pasting quite easily. Skim is like Preview on steroids.

PTHPasteboard. Where Skim is Preview on steroids, PTHPasteboard is your clipboard on steroids. It will remember 100’s of items you’ve copied and allow you to insert any of them with just a few simple clicks nearly anywhere you want to paste them. I copy and paste A LOT in my writing and design work and this little app speeds up that process so much, it’s not even funny. It doesn’t have a lot of fancy bells and whistles but it powerful nonetheless and like the other tools I share, I use it daily.

So, there you have it! Another segment of the cool tools series. I hope you find these useful. And please do post any Windows apps you use that are similar to these. I’ll be back soon with another Product Creation post, though I am still feeling under the weather so it might be late today or possibly not until tomorrow. We’ll see what the day brings!

~Annie
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I’m writing because I can’t tell you to take part in Mark
Joyner’s “Word of Mouth Transformation!” experience.

Why not?

Because I haven’t seen it yet. No one has.

What I can tell you is that I, myself, will be registering
for it the moment the clock strikes 8PM on the east coast:

http://www.simpleology.com/p/womt/lsandrsn/

Why will I be doing this myself?

1. I just got off a live webcast Mark did where 1,800 people
from around the world (including some from Turkey, Iran, China,
and India!) listened to him teach some of the basics of his new
Word of Mouth technology.

If it’s a 10th as good as I think it will be it will be a
bargain.

2. Registration is only going to be open for a short time. If
you miss out you miss out.

3. I recommend you register, just to hold your seat, and then
decide later.

Get this – they have put up a full 1 year refund policy.

That means you could do the whole training and get a refund at
the end if you wanted it.

Or, you could register, then cancel a day later if you decide it’s
not for you.

So, I don’t know if this will be right for you (it sure will for
me), but what I *do* know is this:

If you don’t register, you probably won’t ever get the chance to
do so again – ever.

So, do yourself a favor and register as soon as the doors open.
Reserve your virtual “seat” on this roller coaster ride, and then
decide later.

~Annie
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I wasn’t going to post my next in the Useful Tools series until later in the week, but as I’m sitting here brainstorming, I came up with another set of useful tools I use often, if not daily. So, I thought what better time to share them with you than now.

NovaMind. An awesome MindMapping software, available for both Mac and Windows users. The power of this program is amazing! And I’m sure I don’t even know a miniscule portion of what it’s capable of. But it’s awesome and I love it. Until I began using NovaMind, I wrote/drew my MindMaps by hand because nothing worked the way I wanted it to. And if you don’t do MindMapping yet, you owe it to yourself if you’re serious about your business endeavors to give it a try. There’s a GREAT book by the creator of MindMapping, Tony Buzan. Go to Amazon.com and get it, too.

Bluehost. Seems everybody who’s been online for any length of time has a favorite hosting company. And, mine is Bluehost. I’ve been with them for going on 2 years now and I’ve never had an issue. I keep adding domains to my account and it all just keeps running smoothly. It’s about $100 if you pay annually and $10 for new domains. You can even transfer existing domains free.

Adobe Creative Suite. Though CS3 is now on the market, I am currently using CS2 and will probably upgrade here soon. In any case, it’s a suite of Adobe’s best design products and I highly recommend them. I’ve been using them since the early days of PageMaker – which at the time, was produced by a company called Aldus. (Yes, I’ve been around a while in the design market! ) And yes, CS3 is expensive if you’re looking at it from a financial perspective. At the least, learn to use Adobe Acrobat so you can produce PDF documents that are both Mac and PC friendly as well as Photoshop or Photoshop Express for making your pictures look spectacular. You can buy those 2 products separately from the Suite.

So – those are my best tools for this time. Let me know if there’s something you use every day or regularly that I haven’t mentioned yet. Perhaps I’ll take a look at it.

~Annie (lsandrsn on the forum)
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You may remember a few weeks ago when I wrote that I had finished a book cover for a clients forthcoming book. That book is – - BEing The Titus Concept by my good friend and mentor, Al Diaz.

The cover is now up on his website and a free eBook sample is available for download. Please take a look at Al’s website, download the book and begin changing your life.

You DESERVE it!

~Annie (lsandrsn on the forum)
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Some of the most popular posts on this site have been my Useful Tools threads so I’m back again today with another post on those tools I use in my business that make things easier.

And the big one for today is something I just started using – MarsEdit.

MarsEdit. It’s a Mac app for posting to your blog or blogs straight from your desktop. No need to login. No need to open your web browser and go to your admin panel. Just type and send! It’s that easy. And I’m loving it! If you use a Windows based computer, I’m sorry – I have no idea if there’s an equivalent application for you but if someone knows of one, please feel free to post it in the comments.

UPDATE I read yesterday after posting this that Windows Live Writer can do the same thing for Windows based systems but I have no idea what blogging platforms it is compatible with.

Bloglines. It’s a feed reader for all those blogs you love to keep track of but don’t have the time to check every day. Now you can. Subscribe using Bloglines and it’ll tell you every time a post is added to your favorite blogs. You can read it from there, save the ones you like and more. And it’s free, too.

Scrivener. This is one fabulous piece of software! I’ve been using it for several months and love it. I can write everything there, complete with formatting and all kinds of cool stuff. It’s Mac only, sorry. But there is a cool app for Windows called KeyNote (not to be confused with the Apple program of the same name) that is very functional and I used it all the time on my Windows laptop. It’s no longer in development, but it still works great.

That’s all for now. I’ll write another post in the series probably next week.

~Annie (lsandrsn on the forum)
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This is not what I intended to write about today, but I just had to share another cool tool – Quicksilver. Now, if you’re not on a Mac, this will mean nothing to you but read on anyway.

I have had Quicksilver installed for months but never really knew how to use it. Just hadn’t had the time to figure it out or look at any tutorials for it. Anyway – I saw Ed use it a week or so during one of the 30dc videos and thought I really should learn how to use it.

Well, let me tell you – it’s really cool. I can find any THING on my computer, launch any program on my hard drive with just a few keystrokes. Very cool.

Here is a good intro video – enjoy!

And if you want to learn even more, here are two good websites -

VJArmy – QuickSilver – A Better OS X In Just 10 Minutes
The Apple Blog – Screencast: Quicksilver for Beginners

~Annie (lsandrsn on the forum)
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Continuing with my series on tools I use daily, I’ve got a few more for you. So far, I’ve talked about Basecamp, Backpack, Highrise, NeoOffice, and Blog i360, among others.

Today I have some Firefox Add-Ons that I want to share. I use them daily as well and if you’re a part of the 30dc and have set up Firefox the way Ed showed us in pre-season, you probably do too.

Cool Iris – view a webpage link without opening the page or clicking it’s link. Very useful if you’re not sure you really want that page.

Bloglines – feed reader that makes reading all the blogs you enjoy a snap.

Fasterfox – speeds up Firefox tremendously. Very nice if you have several plugins and add-ons as they can tend to slow FF down.

~Annie (lsandrsn on the forum)
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Last week another Challenger, Davinian, created a WP theme based on the Box theme over at Tumblr. It’s really quite nice. I set it up on my real estate website and once I have some content up there, I’ll share that link with you.

So far, I enjoy the theme and today Davinian posted that some more Web 2.0 type updates might be in order. I think that’s pretty cool as having video, photo and other options would add a lot of diversity to the theme.

You can check out Tumbled at Davinian’s website.

~Annie (lsandrsn on the forum)
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