I spent most of Friday and Saturday visiting the City by the Bay - San Francisco. But I didn't have to book a flight, hotel room, or even leave my office - and the cost was ridiculously low: I attended WordCamp San Francisco via live streaming!

Okay, I wasn't there physically, and I didn't get to tour that beautiful city in person (which I haven't visited since I graduated college many moons ago), but I really did feel present. I truly felt like I was right there in the audience with everyone else at the Mission Bay Conference Center. I'm sure some of it had to do with my physically attending WordCamp in Phoenix earlier this year, my first WordCamp experience. In any case, live streaming is a fabulous way to 'be' some place when you really can't get there physically and want to be part of the action.

In case you don't know, live streaming media is the transmission over the Internet of video of an event as it is actually happening. Amazing! So keep in mind that there are so many wonderful, exciting, professional, inexpensive opportunities via the Net to enhance your knowledge and your experience - of all kinds, not just technology-related. Be an explorer, save money - and have plenty of fun too!

Wag My Tail Like Crazy

One day, while browsing through the Paw Prints Thrift Shop, I came across a 2006 edition of Daily Guideposts, one of my favorite publications for uplifting stories of faith, hope, love, and gratitude. Reprinted here is the May 23rd devotional written by Edward Grinnan, now the Editor-in-Chief and Vice President of Guideposts Publications - don't miss the closing!     

"Ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee..."- Job 12:7

I've had dogs all my life: my obstreperous boyhood beagle Sparky, Pete the high-strung poodle, my laid-back spaniel, Rudy, the high-energy athletic Lab Marty and my current cocker Sally, a true princess. Yet despite their markedly different personalities, they all had one common trait: the exuberant display of happiness. (Marty used to wag his tail so hard that he'd occasionally fall over.)

Maybe you have just come through the front door after being gone for all of, say, thirty-seven minutes. Or you pick up your canine companion's favorite toy and wonder aloud if it's a nice day to go outside. The mere mention of food will sometimes do it. Or perhaps you've been away for a long time, and when you get home you're treated like the prodigal son. You know the dog has done nothing but fret about you, and now...

General Computer

Gmail has been rolling out a brand new inbox on both desktop and mobile, designed to help users stay organized and on top of their email.

This new inbox separates email into five tabs: Primary, Social, Promotions, Updates, and Forums.


Gmail will automatically categorize your email for you, but it will also 'learn' as you move emails around and sort messages on your own (just drag and drop messages into the different tabs).

Still, you might not like the way Gmail handles this and want to turn the feature off. Here's how:

1. Click on Gmail's gear icon in the upper right area, and a menu will display.
2. Click "Configure inbox."
3. Deselect all the tabs/categories to go back to your old inbox.
4. Click "Save."

Note that if you choose to keep the tabs, Constant Contact emails will likely end up under the Promotions tab. So please check there regularly so you don't miss reading e-newsletters, including mine! By the way, my e-newsletters are archived.

e-Newsletters

Some versions of Microsoft Outlook, most notoriously 2007 and 2010, use Microsoft Word to render HTML email, rather than a web browser or other program which is compatible with current web standards. Hence this means that if you're viewing email in Outlook, you may not be able to see a beautifully designed template properly. Parts of these templates, including background images, bulleted lists, and many positioning elements, may not appear at all, or may be broken when viewed in these versions of Outlook.

What to Do About It

On the extreme end, one can send plain text email - but what fun is that?! Even without going that far, you can send HTML email, as long as you keep your formatting simple. But my best suggestion is to provide a link to view the email as a web page. This allows you to use HTML email templates and other advanced styling features, while still giving users of mail clients that don't support those features an option to see your messages as they were meant to be seen. It's easy to insert a link in Constant Contact via the Header Options block.


Constant Contact, my email marketing tool of choice, is dedicated to maintaining the professional look and feel on every email sent.  Although there may be some variations in how Outlook 2007 and Outlook 2010 displays its email, Constant Contact templates are designed to have as little variations as possible.

July has been an interesting month for me in terms of being able to kick back a bit more than I'm used to. It's been fun catching up on old NCIS episodes (the only TV show I watch - on my laptop), singing more, and, I even got to go floating down the Verde River with girlfriends - complete with giggly, water fights!

Until next month...