Interesting things afoot today. First waking up to a big fat blanket of snow, quite unusual for Reading and even more unusual for not melting away in a couple of hours.
Also had a look at a new blog by a keen Californian shopper and baker. Have a look: http://somethingjusttostart.blogspot.com
Things are also moving again on the website front. I will be making another big change, this time to add a shopping cart! Thanks to Google, it looks like that is going to be possible!! Hurrah! It's still in the beta version, but with some adjustments to my website, it should do the job fairly soon. That is all good news, as it will make the site more user friendly!
The craft fair in Reading at the Rising Sun Institute is coming closer, so I am in the process of making a whole load of rings and cuff links. They need to be made first so I can send them off to be hallmarked and still have them back on time. Then it'll be more earrings! I have an idea for another large necklace - large in the sense that it is a whole necklace, not only a pendant. Hopefully I will have time to work on that this week. It'll be hard if I also want to get around to the website changes! And a ring should come back from the engravers...and I have a ring I need to re size.
So, it looks to be a busy week! It'll be getting up early and squeezing as much as I can into every day. It's good that I have this craft fair coming up, it makes me get more done!!
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
Showing posts with label google. Show all posts
6 Apr 2008
1 Apr 2008
YAWN. At first I thought, gah, it's hard to get up today, but then I realised that the hour change is what makes me feel still sleepy. Ah well, it'll wear off. Yesterday I jogged (think extremely slow running) 4.5 miles and man was it difficult. I just felt like a tortoise, just plodding along. sigh. I fear this 10k is going to be humiliating, with people whizzing past me. Well, I still have a week and a half left for practice.
So another little interesting tidbit I learned at the Google info day was the three busiest online shopping days of the year (in 2007). I thought it was interesting to know, in terms of having stock prepared and website in order. The online shopping trends, apparently, are more than ever mimicking the troughs and peaks of the offline shopping world. So it's normalising to some extent, becoming mainstream. Anyway, the top three busiest online shopping days were, in order:
1. 26 December (aka Boxing Day)
2. 10 December
3. 25 December (Christmas, obviously)
Another interesting thing I learned was about water filtering. Oh yes, water filtering. No, Google doesn't filter water as well.....this was just a woman I met on the day. She and her husband have set up a business selling Japanese bamboo charcoal, which is a natural water filter. It's a completely eco business. They have researched all aspects of the environmental impact of the charcoal and it's much, much better than Britta filters with all their plastic and so forth. Anyway, I thought it was quite fascinating and a very good alternative to Britta filters. I read the instructions on their website and it's a bit of a nuisance because you have to boil the charcoal every so often so it stays clean. But it's so much more natural and when you're done with the charcoal you just put it in the garden. Anyway....you can read all about it on their website, which is www.charcoalpeople.co.uk
So another little interesting tidbit I learned at the Google info day was the three busiest online shopping days of the year (in 2007). I thought it was interesting to know, in terms of having stock prepared and website in order. The online shopping trends, apparently, are more than ever mimicking the troughs and peaks of the offline shopping world. So it's normalising to some extent, becoming mainstream. Anyway, the top three busiest online shopping days were, in order:
1. 26 December (aka Boxing Day)
2. 10 December
3. 25 December (Christmas, obviously)
Another interesting thing I learned was about water filtering. Oh yes, water filtering. No, Google doesn't filter water as well.....this was just a woman I met on the day. She and her husband have set up a business selling Japanese bamboo charcoal, which is a natural water filter. It's a completely eco business. They have researched all aspects of the environmental impact of the charcoal and it's much, much better than Britta filters with all their plastic and so forth. Anyway, I thought it was quite fascinating and a very good alternative to Britta filters. I read the instructions on their website and it's a bit of a nuisance because you have to boil the charcoal every so often so it stays clean. But it's so much more natural and when you're done with the charcoal you just put it in the garden. Anyway....you can read all about it on their website, which is www.charcoalpeople.co.uk
31 Mar 2008
1 Nov 2007
Right, well, I guess I need to start posting! So, erm, I thought I'd start with an extremely nerdy post about why I love Google. Google is brilliant for lots of reasons that are very useful for people trying to run their own business from home.
First of all, there's the calendar. The calendar works just like the microsoft outlook calendar, but you can access it easily from anywhere! brilliant! It makes it very easy to keep track of appointments and so forth.
Second, there's the documents - you can create, save, and access documents from anywhere! So for instance, if you need to access your budget (in Excel) then you can do so from any computer. And change it AND save those changes. No more carrying around a USB stick! Not that carrying around a USB stick is terribly difficult, but it's annoying when you forget it and a lot of email cafe's that I have been to don't allow customers to use USB sticks since they are afraid of viruses. So anything that you can do in Word or Excel, you can do in Google Documents.
Then there's iGoogle. If you use google as your main search engine, you should set up iGoogle. It's SO easy. basically, when you go to the google homepage, in the top righthand corner, you can sign in. Then you click on igoogle (also top right hand corner) and you have your personalised google homepage. Very useful for getting to everything you need easily. So, for instance, I have links to various websites I use a lot -- but this is the minimum -- of course you can use favorites for that as well. But I also have a world clock that tells me what time it is where my parents are and where my sister is, so I don't call them in the middle of the night (ok, i have done that several times). I also have a quick mini currency converter. And a to-do list. And a summary of the current BBC news headlines. There are hundreds of extras you can choose from, you just make your page useful for yourself!
There's also Picasa. I know lots of people use Flickr, which also seems great, but I like Picasa 'cause it makes uploading photos from your own computer so quick and easy.
Ok, last thing I'm going to mention is google checkout -- if you have your own website and want a cheap way of allowing people to buy directly from you, this is super easy! It's also free in the UK until the end of 2007. If you are not a web whiz, then you can use put the "buy it now" buttons on your site. It's not super sophisticated, as it doesn't work like a shopping trolley, but at least people can buy items on your site. And you can customise the buy it now buttons for whatever purpose you need - multiple items, single items, etc. You can see how I used it on my site - www.magpienest.co.uk I think you need to know a little HTML to get the most out of these, but google even generates the code for you, so it is pretty easy!
The great thing is that all these things are available for free! so why not use them....more info is on google. hopefully some of the above is useful to someone....
First of all, there's the calendar. The calendar works just like the microsoft outlook calendar, but you can access it easily from anywhere! brilliant! It makes it very easy to keep track of appointments and so forth.
Second, there's the documents - you can create, save, and access documents from anywhere! So for instance, if you need to access your budget (in Excel) then you can do so from any computer. And change it AND save those changes. No more carrying around a USB stick! Not that carrying around a USB stick is terribly difficult, but it's annoying when you forget it and a lot of email cafe's that I have been to don't allow customers to use USB sticks since they are afraid of viruses. So anything that you can do in Word or Excel, you can do in Google Documents.
Then there's iGoogle. If you use google as your main search engine, you should set up iGoogle. It's SO easy. basically, when you go to the google homepage, in the top righthand corner, you can sign in. Then you click on igoogle (also top right hand corner) and you have your personalised google homepage. Very useful for getting to everything you need easily. So, for instance, I have links to various websites I use a lot -- but this is the minimum -- of course you can use favorites for that as well. But I also have a world clock that tells me what time it is where my parents are and where my sister is, so I don't call them in the middle of the night (ok, i have done that several times). I also have a quick mini currency converter. And a to-do list. And a summary of the current BBC news headlines. There are hundreds of extras you can choose from, you just make your page useful for yourself!
There's also Picasa. I know lots of people use Flickr, which also seems great, but I like Picasa 'cause it makes uploading photos from your own computer so quick and easy.
Ok, last thing I'm going to mention is google checkout -- if you have your own website and want a cheap way of allowing people to buy directly from you, this is super easy! It's also free in the UK until the end of 2007. If you are not a web whiz, then you can use put the "buy it now" buttons on your site. It's not super sophisticated, as it doesn't work like a shopping trolley, but at least people can buy items on your site. And you can customise the buy it now buttons for whatever purpose you need - multiple items, single items, etc. You can see how I used it on my site - www.magpienest.co.uk I think you need to know a little HTML to get the most out of these, but google even generates the code for you, so it is pretty easy!
The great thing is that all these things are available for free! so why not use them....more info is on google. hopefully some of the above is useful to someone....
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