While there are hundreds of car lots all over Guatemala, if you’re in the business of buying a car you may want to check out the vehicles that are for sale at GPautos.com.
This web site gives you online access to thousands of vehicles in a searchable layout. You can pick from cars, pickups, SUVs buses, trucks and even boats from all over the country.
If you’re selling a vehicle, this site can be a great place to present your vehicle to the rest of the country.
Michael with teacher Luis.
All language schools are not equal, nor is finding the best place for you as simple as reviewing a few schools online and then picking one. I’ve been there and there’s a lot of info out there, but making a decision of where my wife and I were to spend our next six months or so as we studied Spanish was kind of like diving into a river after talking to others who swam there before. We hoped to hit the right spot and not drown or hit any rocks in the process.
When you’re looking for a place to learn Spanish there are many elements to take in to account: Location, Cost, Perks, Experience and more.
First of all there is the consideration of countries. There are lots of Spanish Language schools in Spain, Chile, Costa Rica, Guatemala, and probably every Latin American country on the map. Here’s a list of 90 schools in 14 countries. We wanted to learn Latin America’s version of Spanish and we have plans to be in Guatemala for a while so we chose to study in the beautiful highlands of Guatemala. Once the country was settled, it became a matter of what city: the main choices are: Antigua, Xela / Quetzaltenango, or Panajchel but about 10 cities offer language studies in Guatemala. Private tutors can be found in other places, but you’ll need some sort of contact to connect with them since there’s no central way to find them.
Getting the right teacher is very important. One thing we learned is that in one-on-one teaching sessions, the individual teacher really makes a difference. Don’t be afraid to change teachers if one doesn’t work for you. Usually within one week you can know whether or not you and your “maestro/a” are a good match. If you’re not, change so you can get a better fit and learn all that you can. Continue reading ‘Spanish Language Schools in Guatemala’
Camera+ logo
Camera+ is my new favorite App for the iPhone. ($1.99)
I’ve been using the standard camera option on my iPhone 3GS. It was handy but nothing fancy and with pretty much no options or editing capabilities. Camera+ has so many options, filters and editing tools built right in that it turns your iPhone camera into a photo machine that gives you customized images that look awesome!
Summary
Fresh bean dip
Easy to use and great additional features for your iPhone camera including zoom, filters, self-timer, and more! Many options are available without paying more than the basic 99 cents. (There are additional features available for additional costs but they’re just more filters.)
Things I love about it:
Several online payment services offer many useful tools for businesses and for non-profit organizations too!
As e-commerce becomes more and more common and is embraced by many as the norm. It is not time to sit back and wait for people to send checks to your organization. When it comes to fundraising, it is time to take that same ease of payments that for-profit organizations use and bring it into the non-profit world. Put online giving within easy reach of donors. Here’s a breakdown on three options for online donations.
Thanks to PayPal, Amazon.com, and other sources like Facebook’s FundRazr App non-profits have the ability to collect individual donations or even schedule ongoing gifts with tools that e-consumers are already familiar with.
PayPal Donate Button
PayPal offers several options that give non-profit organizations the ability to accept donations in a simple way that consumers are already use to using PayPal accounts or credit cards. See a guide on how to setup online donations on PayPal.
FEATURES:
PayPal features include:
DONATION ACCEPTED:
PayPal accepts donations from people with or without PayPal accounts through:
COST?
With PayPal’s fee structure you receive a discount if you verify your 501(c) 3 status. The regular rate is 2.9% + $0.30 but while the non-profit rate is just a wee bit less:
| YOUR MONTHLY DONATIONS |
YOUR FEE PER TRANSACTION |
EXAMPLES |
| $0 to $100,000 | 2.2% + $0.30 | $2.50 fee on a $100 donation |
| $100,000+ | 1.9% + $0.30 | $2.20 fee on a $100 donation |
Amazon Payments Logo
Amazon.com offers a similar non-profit donation plan. Amazon’s no start-up cost option includes the ability to configure your own donation buttons (to be posted on your site or in your html e-mails). Amazon also provides flexibility to set fixed, minimum, or donor-determined donation amounts along with scheduling ongoing gifts.
Donors will have to either open an Amazon Payments account or have one already to use this service.
Amazon supports giving through:
Cost?
Amazon charges no start-up fees, but neither do the other options listed here so that’s no big deal. The key is to compare per-payment charges. At Amazon they’re pretty similar to PayPal:
I couldn’t find good info on their charges for non-credit card transactions, but they provide a pretty good FAQ page.
FundRazr provides a unique option of embedding your giving links into Facebook and providing goal-oriented giving with on the fly followup charts so donors can see how the donation project is progressing.
I like this idea, but have found it to take some work to setup (though recent reviews say it’s easy now!). Still with the popularity of Facebook this could reach a lot of people on the social network.
Payment sources?
Cost?
Recipients pay a fee of 4.9% + $0.30 on every payment. The fee includes all PayPal transaction fees. This is higher than either Amazon Payments or PayPal’s regular service, but the ability to integrate with Facebook is really attractive even at nearly 5% in fees per payment.
Conclusion
I like PayPal but it doesn’t hurt to have several options as long as they’re displayed in a user-friendly way. In unofficial numbers PayPal had more than 153 million accounts worldwide in 2008. Amazon has about 615 million and Facebook has over 500 million users. That puts Amazon in the lead with users by evaluating your audience may be a good idea if you just want to use one service instead of all three.
Keep in mind the fees involved. You’ll need to account for these as you keep up on your records since this will be a reduction in the total donation you receive when transferring the donations to your organization.
Do you have a different source that you use for online donations? What’s working well for you?
Want extra security for your e-mail messages? Write your text then paste it in to this Morse Code Translator and voila! your text becomes unsearchable by normal means! For added security you can play the Morse Code audibly and record it to your computer. Then send the audio to your recipient! You can send them a Morse code alphabet so they can transcribe it back to the original message!
It also makes you feel a little bit like the US/Russian spies of the 50s & 60s with their special encoder machines! To bad they didn’t have internet and a handy Morse Code Translator back then!
Just let the recipient know what you’re doing or it will be pretty useless to them also!
Product image from Amazon.com
We’re moving out of the country and tax season is fast approaching. After a conversation with my CPA, I realized that I’m going to need a way to easily scan in documents for e-mailing and such.
After searching the internet, visiting the local Best Buy, Staples and box stores, I finally found what I was looking for in a scanner. My criteria…:
When I came across the amazing Doxie scanner for documents
I ordered the Doxie on Amazon.com and had it shipped overnight to my hotel so it was waiting for me when I arrived. The creative packaging and easy setup were impressive. Here’s my review:
Easy instructions make Doxie an easy scanner to setup. Just download the application and install. There is a quick calibration with provided calibration sheet then you’re ready to scan your own color or black and white documents at up to 600 dpi resolution. Continue reading ‘Doxie scanner review’
If you haven’t seen it yet, check out Wibiya’s handy toolbar (see a sample at the bottom of page here). This tool helps increase interactivity and keep people on your site longer. Plus there are revenue generating options integrated if you want to use them!
Wibiya provides a web toolbar that enables blogs and websites to integrate the most exciting services and web applications into their blog or website.
via About Wibiya.
When it comes to Facebook its hard to know whether it’s best to make a fan page or to use a group page. I came a cross a great description on Search Engine Journal.
Here’s a quick summary of Ann Smarty’s review of the two features. I didn’t include it but her article includes a great table that compares the feature of pages and groups.
- Pages are generally better for a long-term relationships with your fans, readers or customers;
- Groups are generally better for hosting a quick active discussion and attracting quick attention.
via Facebook Group vs Facebook Fan Page: What’s Better? | Search Engine Journal.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in March 2001. 1 WTC, the North Tower, with antenna, is on the left; 2 WTC, the South Tower, is on the right. World Trade Center Towers were the world's tallest buildings from 1972 to 1973 (Photo by Jeffmock from Wikipedia)
The terrorist attack on New York City had a personal side for former Fort Scott, Kans., resident John VanSickle — he was there.
Still settling into his second week at a law firm in lower Manhattan, VanSickle decided to go to work early on Sept. 11. He wanted to have time to visit a health center in the World Trade Center complex near the office building where he worked.
At about 8:55 a.m., he made his way through an unusually crowded exit as he left the Manhattan subway. VanSickle said that as he maneuvered through a crowd standing outside of the subway exit he saw people staring up at the twin towers of the World Trade Center. When the towers came into view, VanSickle saw that one tower had thick black smoke pouring out of it nearly three-fourths of the way up the tower. He said he stared in disbelief as he saw human bodies falling from the tower.
After seeing several people fall from the tower, VanSickle turned and saw firetrucks coming down the street. As he yelled to try and clear the dense crowd so the fire trucks could get through, a second explosion ripped through lower Manhattan. As with the first tower, a hijacked commercial jetliner had plowed into the building and exploded in a dramatic fireball that was televised to the world by news reporters covering what turned out to be America’s first terrorism attack of the 21st century.
VanSickle said people were stunned as the shock waves of the explosion shook the buildings around them. Continue reading ‘September 11th Attack on World Trade Center (Remembered)’
Building a fan base on Facebook can be something that you gradually grow or something that catches on like wild fire. Here’s how Weekly World News multiplied their fan base in a matter of four days.
When we took over the Facebook Fan page for Weekly World News , they had 3,244 fans. 4 days later, we had 40,310 fans– 10 times larger.
Read the process they used here at
