Thank you for choosing Data Designs Publishing!
Because you've chosen to do business with us, we are able to give back in an exciting way this year. This year we've decided to give our employees, customers, and friends an opportunity to be a part of our giving. You get to help us decide how we'll spend our donations!

As a way of giving back...
We've decided to give to an international organization that helps those in need. World Vision is a Christian humanitarian organization
that has been working with children, families, and communities since 1950.

Will you help us decide how to give?
The fun part is that we'd like your help deciding how to give back. What is your passion? World Vision probably has a means of giving aimed at your area of concern. Here are just some of the projects you can give toward:

• Animals to help a family become self-sufficient
• Clean water for a community
• Education
• HIV & AIDS treatment and education
   
• Orphans & widows
• Victims of sexual exploitation
• Environment
• Medical care
• Kids in the USA
   

We're not asking for your money - we're giving you the opportunity to choose where our money is given.

Already our staff  has decided to give...
First we asked our employees where they wanted to us to give. So far we've decided to give:

• 2 shares of a deep  well
• 1 goat
• 1 sheep
• 4 chickens
• 5 ducks
• 1 fishing kit
• $35 to provide $385 worth of medicine
• $25 to provide $150 worth of necessities for US children
• $50 to give hope to sexually exploited girls  

That's a lot of hope and a lot of assistance. The wells will provide clean water for a community; the animals will provide nourishment and income for families; the money for medicines, necessities and other assistance provide life and hope to the recipients.
 

 Tell us how would YOU like us to give:

1. Go to the World Vision gift catalog
    
2. Select an item or two (keep the value under $100 so that more people can participate)
    
3. E-mail me what you'd like us to include in our gift basket this year.

That's it! We'll do the rest. Of course, our ability to give is limited,
so we'll be including the gifts of only the first few people who contact us. If you're receiving this e-newsletter, we are inviting you to participate.

Again, thank you for your business throughout 2010. We have enjoyed serving you this year, and it is your business that enables us to give to organizations such as World Vision.

I look forward to adding your gift to the Data Designs Publishing gift basket. E-mail me in the next day or two to be included. Together let's bless a few people in need.

                                  Sandy

If you have been a user of www.drop.io, you probably know that it was recently purchased by Facebook and the ability to store and share files has disappeared. Such a shame. We loved drop.io because it solved a lot of problems with sharing large files over the Internet. You would think there would be other similar sites, but we've found that finding an alternative has been quite a challenge. We've looked into ADrive, Egnyte, Box.net, Tonida, yousendit™, Dropbox, and a few others that I won't even bother to name. Keeping track of the purposes, capabilities, uniquenesses, advantages and frustrations of each was driving me crazy. (This is when my friends would say "I'm sure there's a spreadsheet for that" because I create Excel spreadsheets to track everything.) Perhaps you can benefit from the hours we put in. Our two favorites were Dropbox and yousendit™.

 
We have settled on Dropbox...at least for now. It doesn't do all that we want (or all that drop.io did), but it seems to be accessible by most of our clients. We set up an e-mail account specifically for Dropbox usage and can upload and download files as needed. Even more important, we can provide the address to clients who can then upload and download files. We haven't run into anyone yet who was unable to access the site. If you're looking for a free dropsite, check out Dropbox.

I was feeling overwhelmed one day and e-mailed Maggie Timmons for help. She's my guru of all esoteric things online. Many of you will remember Maggie from when she worked as our office manager. She's moved on to her own business, but still responds to my off-the-wall requests for help.

My request went something like "I'm looking for a program that will let me save bits and pieces of info I come across on the Internet without having to save the whole web page." I thought I was asking the impossible, but it wasn't long before she e-mailed me suggesting I take a look at memonic.com. I've looked. I like!

I found the program a bit confusing at first (their video tutorials don't include audio and the mouse movements were hard to follow), but once I got the hang of it, it did exactly what I was looking for. Prior to memonic, I would read something on a blog or webpage and want to remember it, but not want to save the site in my Favorites area. My Favorites would quickly get blown out and no longer be meaningful. Memonic lets me clip bits and pieces of info, save them in a file along with the web address, and organize them into folders (they call them "collections") future access and use.

So I have a collection for future issues of this newsletter, one for bits of info related to a book I'm writing (or at least I'm wanting to write), one for info on social media, etc. It's easy to clip info, give it a name then file it. It's even easier to open the file and find what you're looking for.

I used to be the queen of browser tabs - rarely would I open my Internet browser without it opening about twenty active tabs. I still have more than I want - things that simply haven't gotten into my memonic filing system yet. But I'm absolutely loving the simplicity of using what has been filed. Check it out! Click on their logo above to go to their site.

Sales of e-readers and e-books have increased dramatically over the past year. Interestingly, New York Times best seller Seth Godin said he will never publish traditionally again. After twelve traditionally published books, he's turning exclusively to the e-book format.

Of the various e-book readers, Amazon's Kindle has the greatest market share. Phil and I each have one and we love them. (In fact, Phil is so committed to his Kindle that he's begun carrying a "man bag" just so he can have it with him all the time.) If you own a Kindle, you'll want to follow this blog. The author identifies free Kindle books on a regular basis. Last week Phil was looking at a book on investing. The retail price of the paper edition was in the neighborhood of $25. He didn't buy it but was seriously considering it. The next day, the blog provided a link to the same book free in Kindle format. Woo-hoo!

OK, you can live without the blog...but living with it is cheaper!

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