BLogging for the soul

After running a boy scout event on the computer merit badge, there’s one thing that I know for sure … kids know way more software features than we do! One of the assignments I gave them was to create a PowerPoint presentation; and not only were they all extremely creative, but all of them used cool tricks that I’ve never used before. That being said, there’s a reason that I’ve never used those “cool” tricks - it’s because I never need them.

The scouts had a great time creating these PowerPoint presentations; but unless you want to show the equivalent of a Bugs Bunny cartoon to your boss or a client that you’re trying to get business from, you probably won’t want to hire any of them as a slide show consultant. The key to great PowerPoint slides is simplicity. Let me clarify, I didn’t say plainness, dullness, uncreativeness, or colorless - because you actually need all of those things in order to create great PowerPoint slides; but each one of these aspects needs to be done simply.

Background
Don’t just change the color; you should definitely take advantage of the slide design & templates to change the backgrounds of your slides. But when you select a background design, use the ones that give the allusion that it’s just one color; in order words, don’t pick one that too busy. In the end, the background needs to enhance the words on the screen and not distract from them.

Slide Transition & Custom Animation
There’s a lot of fun ways to move from one slide to the next, or from one bullet to another. For the most part though, the basic “Fade” is all you need. Again, you don’t want the transitions & animation to distract from your presentation; you also don’t want the appearance that you have to add junk to your presentation to make up for a lack of substance. Making simple moves shows power!

Graphics
We’ve all seen PowerPoint presentations with graphics on every single slide. It’s fun for about 2 or 3 slides, but then it gets redundant. Your text content is your centerpiece, but that doesn’t mean not to use any graphics; just make sure that those graphics make your text content look good.

Keeping presentations simple has served me well for a long time, and I always get compliments afterwards. So for your next presentation, I hope these tips help to make your PowerPoint presentation great! But if you get stuck on how to use something, ask one of your kids … you’ll be surprised what they know (just don’t let them do it for you)!

Whether you use a document or an e-mail message, a well organized and timely report to your team members or your boss will always be received with appreciation and will always communicate to others that you’re serious about doing your job. By using the guidelines below, you’ll be on your way to improving your image and your productivity (even if you’re already doing company reports).

When To Create a Report Reports are excellent for recapping a meeting or important conversation. Once the details are agreed upon by all attendees, it is much easier to move forward with confidence. If you’re attending a meeting where you’re expected to give a status of your activity, you should always have your update written to make it easy for you to give your report and for your audience to use as a reference during the meeting and afterwards. Other appropriate moments for a good report are the following: when delivering a project (or milestone), to summarize analyses or research findings, or to assign or hand over a task or project to someone else.

Don’t Be Afraid to Take Notes There is nothing more frustrating than trying to remember an important point that you don’t have written down. The best way to make sure that your report has all of the important details is to have all of the details available to you. Taking meticulous notes from start to finish (even if they don’t seem important at the time) will ensure that you get your report right the first time. It may seem like a lot of work in the beginning, but as my mom always said, “A stitch in time saves nine.”

Make Your Heading the Eye Catcher When your audience looks at your report, the emotion that you want them to have in the first 5 seconds is that your document is important and that it should be read. To accomplish this task: 1) The heading should always be first; 2) The heading text should be bold (not italicized) and have the largest font size of any other text in your document; 3) It is preferred that the heading be center-aligned, having it left-aligned is acceptable, but it should never be right-aligned; and 4) the title heading should be simple, short (no more than 6 words), but clear.

Don’t Leave Out the Small Details Have you ever held a document in your hand and wondered if it was the latest copy that existed? Have you ever wrecked your brain to figure out what date a meeting was held? These type of details are small, but may become crucial well after you’ve submitted the report. They also make your report a complete document. Here are some other small details to consider: Meeting Attendees List, Location, Print Date & Time (always at the bottom), Filename (bottom), Page Numbers (except on the first page), company logo (if it’s for a client), Minutes From Last Meeting (if it’s for a meeting that repeats on a recurring basis).

Organize Your Information into Sections Remember that you’re not writing for entertainment, but to provide your workgroup or company with information that they need to make business decisions. A good report will make sure that this information is easy to find, and that’s where sections come into play. Make sure that each section has a subheading that is bold and/or underlined; it can also have a slightly larger font size (maybe 2 pts larger). A good place to begin is by dividing your notes into discussion topics; after that, you may want to add sections like Objective, Purpose of the Meeting, Conclusion, Action Items, or Next Steps.

Make It Look Good and Keep It That Way You’ve gone this far to provide for your team, so why not go the extra mile to make sure that your report doesn’t get lost amongst other bland documents. Consider the following techniques: 1) Do everything you can to have the fewest amount of pages possible by slightly changing margins, font sizes and even the font face; 2) You don’t have to use Times New Roman or Arial, but make sure that the font is clear and very readable - changing the font face on just the headings is another way to give it a change of pace; 3) A simple divider line after the heading or in your footer can bring elagance to a document; 4) Take the extra time to set your copy machine to make good copies - you don’t want to spent time making your document look good and have your copy machine ruin it; and 5) Save your document with a filename that makes sense and 6) use this exact copy to make the following reports (people respond well to consistency) - learn how to make it into a template to use for new documents later.

Anyone with experience in written communication has had the experience of producing a document with typos and grammatical errors. The good writers never say a document is complete without running a spell check first. Those that use Microsoft Word can check spelling and grammar at the same time. Indeed, many documents have been saved by the spelling & grammar checks (I certainly use it on all of my articles).

But, to be a great writer, one must take it a step further than just making sure that a document is grammatically correct. To make your documents better than just error-proof, you must make use of a thesaurus - a tool that allows you to find synonyms (terms with same meaning) and antonyms (terms with opposite meaning) for a particular word or phrase. In the old days, thesauruses were only available in book form; now, they are included in just about every word processing program - not the mention on the web (check out www.thesaurus.com.) It’s a pity that they’re so rarely used that it’s not even in the Tools menu of Microsoft Word anymore when you install it (you have to either add it yourself or remember Shift + F7!)

However, it is very easy to abuse a thesaurus. Some writers have so much fun replacing words, but end up confusing their readers and never really properly convey your thoughts. The question is simple - what is the correct way to use a thesaurus to make your documents great? As you consider the following thesaurus tips, keep in mind that the main goal in using it is to make your document “flow” better.

Know When to Use It
Using a thesaurus means that you’re reaching outside of your normal vocabulary to make your thoughts sound better. The wrong time to do this is when you’re trying to convey a personal message or if you’re trying to make a simple statement. A good rule is to never use it on a one-page document. The exception is when you need to replace a catchword that you’ve already used in another sentence (or the same sentence); even then, you can usually re-phrase a sentence without having to reach for the thesaurus. Another guideline is to only replace one important word per page with the same exception as before. Don’t choke your reader.

Quality, Not Quantity
It’s a lot of fun to look for the biggest words we can find to replace with; but it’s not productive. The goal is to find the word that makes the rest of the sentence sound its best; this also means that you only want to replace words that make a sentence unclear. It’s never fun to read a document that is full of words that you don’t understand or that you have to stop to regroup after each sentence. You also need to keep your audience in mind when choosing words.

Focus on Your Main Thoughts
When you’re trying to decide which words to replace, it’s usually good to start with your main points. Remember what you learned in your writing class: each paragraph should have a main sentence with the remaining sentences supporting it. Pick out your main sentences from each paragraph and make sure that they sound clear. From here, you should be able to pick out the ones that need attention.

The Second Opinion
Never underestimate the power of a proofreader. They will always notice things that you don’t because writers tend to focus primarily on the topic they’re writing about. My proofreader (which happens to be my lovely wife) constantly comes up with concerns that I never think about. Most importantly, she always points out the words that don’t make sense to her and usually has a suggestion for a replacement. In the end, the goal for a document is to make sense to your reader; so after you’ve used your other thesaurus tools, be sure that your final test comes from a reader, as well.

I find the thesaurus to be one of the greatest tools that we can use to put our documents over the top. Perhaps its decline in popularity is mainly due to many of us not knowing how to use it properly. Maybe this article will help the thesaurus to make a comeback. Well, at least now your documents can be “negated of imprecision.”

Today, teens have a larger influence on a family’s discretionary income. This is evident by all the companies that target their marketing towards teens, and all the gadgets you see them walking around with. Getting young adults and kids to appreciate the value of money is difficult when you just purchase items that they want. Even my nine year old is under the impression that we have an endless supply of money. To help teach kids how to budget you can now get them pre-loaded visa which is the first customizable, reloadable prepaid card on the market. This gives your young adult the ability to manage money without interfering with their credit and they can customize the image on their card.
Kids want more and more independence and with the pre-loaded credit card they can upload their own image to personalize their card. You give them a sense of freedom while helping them to learn some great financial management at the same time. And right now Visa is having a design contest where you can design your own card and have others vote on the design. The winner will have their design available for others and could be eligible for future royalties if others elect to use their design.
Happy Shopping!

We going to be presenting chapters on how to blog and why

Whether or not your brand is relevant to your content, it will quickly develop one relevant attribute: a reputation. Everyone who reads your blog will come away with an impression, either good or bad. They will like it or not. Surprisingly, that’s not the most important issue for your Blog Empire,
because no reader, not even your most loyal, is going to like or agree with everything you say. The important issue is whether that reader believes your
blog to be important. If a reader does not find a blog important, she will
probably not return even if she liked a story or two: there are simply too
many other blogs to see. If a reader finds your blog insightful, entertaining,
and relevant, she will return even though she disagrees with your
commentary or doesn’t like your layout. In order to be a serious empire,
your blog must exude seriousness. That doesn’t mean your subject must be
serious, but you must be serious about your subject.
For political and technology blogs, that means accuracy and timeliness.
Rumors must be noted as such. Opinions must be noted as such. You can be
a partisan – in fact, your theme may be a very partisan view of something -
but you’ve got to be fair to your readers, who will form an opinion about
your subject based on what you say. If your blog is an art blog, you’ve got
to focus on quality.
If your blog features model trains, entries about your daughter’s dance
recital will lose readers. If your blog is a reference or news blog, you’ve got
to be thorough. Once your reputation is established, readers will come to
your blog to see what you have to say because they will expect you to know
more than them. If you miss the big story or are shown by later events to be
completely off-the-wall when you said you were certain, they may not
return.
Reputation is everything, so as you build your Blog Empire, remember
what you want a reputation for and consistently strive to earn it.

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Condo unit owners own the inside of their units. Townhouse owners own the complete unit, including exterior surfaces and the land on which the unit is built. Maybe. If you are considering the purchase of a new condo unit created on or after October 1, 1986, the developer (or the developer’s agent) must give you a public offering statement. This statement is prepared by the developer and contains information about the size of the development, the projected completion date, the legal documents which govern the property, and the projected common expense assessment.