JerseySmarts.com

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #3, Edition #1

Joe — Fri, 03 Apr 2015 12:30:54 +0000

It has been a long time since I posted one of these Start the Weekend Right Link Series entries. But I have too many posts building up behind the scenes on this blog and in my Feedly reader so I need to start clearing them out and getting them out there for you to consume. Before you check out of work and begin whatever celebrations you’ll be involved with this Easter weekend, take a look at some of these links – I think you might enjoy this content.

Before we get to the links this week I again recommend signing up for a free Feedly account. I get absolutely no kickback for promoting Feedly, but I’m so appreciative of their product being the best RSS reader on the internet that I encourage everyone to use it. If you’re using another RSS aggregator, please consider following JerseySmarts.com at http://www.jerseysmarts.com/feed/. If you’re already on Feedly, then you can follow us by clicking here. Thanks!

No, You Are Not “Running Late,” You Are Rude And Selfish, Vitamin T
The message of this article is, as the title alludes to, that all of those times you or a coworker comes to a meeting late are not driven by outside factors, but rather by the fact that you’re a rude person. And on top of that rudeness, you’re a selfish punk who only cares about themselves. Personally, I agree with the message here, but living in New Jersey drops more than a few grains of salt on this article. When I was in college, I knew a kid who showed up to all of his classes late – and always with a cup of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee in his hand. He was a rude, selfish idiot. On the other hand, I’ve seen people arrive to work (and even meetings and appointments) over an hour late because of the completely ridiculous nature of the traffic and road construction in most of this state.

Death By Degrees, n+1
The best preview I can give for this article is this quote that is taken from it: “Like the market for skin care products, the market for credentials is inexhaustible: as the bachelor’s degree becomes democratized, the master’s degree becomes mandatory for advancement. Our elaborate, expensive system of higher education is first and foremost a system of stratification, and only secondly — and very dimly — a system for imparting knowledge.”

Manual Labor, All Night Long: The Reality of Paying for College, The Atlantic
Typically, the commentaries that The Atlantic publishes are too buried in far left talking points (and shoddy ones, no less) that I can’t find the usefulness of their content. This article is a little bit different, though I don’t take the same bleeding heart stance as some of the folks quoted in the article. In short, the article talks about how some students opt to work an overnight shift to get tuition reimbursement for their local college. I believe the writer’s stance is along the lines of how we could allow this type of near-torture for someone who wants to get a higher education. As someone with a deep history in student loans, I don’t often feel bad for others who have to go through difficulty to get a degree. My comment on this topic, though, is that we should be looking at the larger educational system and why we push nearly all high school students to pursue a college degree when many of them should be pushed towards vocational and technical schools instead.

An unusual victory for donor intent at Trinity College, The Pope Center
One of the topics that I love following is how a donor’s intent is followed – or completely ignored – by organizations that are the recipients of the donor’s financial contributions. Martin Morse Wooster details a recent victory for donors that took place at Trinity College. This is really fascinating stuff (or at least I think so). And if you’re an active donor to your church, college, or any other cause, then I encourage you to give this article a read.

Google rethinks Google+, spinning off several successful pieces, Christian Science Monitor
Goodbye, Google+! Several years ago I wrote about how I was shutting down several of my social media accounts (MySpace and LinkedIn) because it was just becoming too much to handle and all I really needed was Facebook. As the years went by and Google tried to shove Google+ down our throats, I had to open up one of their silly accounts and – like the majority of their users, apparently – I almost never used it. Now, hopefully, Google will retreat from social media and I can put that silly, useless Google+ profile to rest!

Homeless man of deep faith given funeral, burial in Vatican City, American Catholic
I just thought this was a touching story and a reminder that there are good people out there who will do good things for people of devotion. I’d like to believe that this homeless man’s soul was received into glory with the same reverence that his body was received by the Vatican.

A New Life for Dead Malls, The Atlantic
Alright, so The Atlantic gets two mentions this week because this story is just awesome. I’ve written on here in the past about how I can go nuts trying to use all of my “stuff” before buying new things. For me, it’s not a matter of frugality, but rather a matter of not generating the need to create additional products and/or waste to give me something that I already have possession of in one form or another. That’s the point of this article – that old, dead malls are actively being repurposed for a wide variety of uses – and it’s pretty cool!

7 Basic Life Hacks Men Shouldn’t Ignore, Return of Kings
Simply put – if you’re a guy and you’re reading this, then you should stop and click over to Return of Kings to read this article. It’s excellent, direct, and gives you good advice on what you should be doing to improve yourself. Some of the advice that the writer offers includes reading daily, working out, eating right, and not watching porn. Each of these “life hacks” have intensely positive outcomes for you as a man and when combined they can lead to a dramatically improved life. Take five minutes and give it a read.

Before you go, I want to recommend one more time that you consider opening a free Feedly account. You can follow JerseySmarts.com on Feedly or you can add us to your existing RSS aggregator. Enjoy!

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #1, Edition #1

Joe — Fri, 02 Aug 2013 16:02:54 +0000

Up until it shut down about a month ago, I was an avid user of Google Reader. For those of you who don’t know, Google Reader was a news and blog article aggregator. In other words, if you visited 3 – 4 blogs everyday and 3 – 4 news websites everyday, then you could have added those websites to Google Reader and the web-based aggregator would have pulled all of those headlines for you to read in one place. This way, you didn’t have to jump around to 10 more websites everyday to read the most up-to-date content from your favorite websites. Pretty cool, right?

Well, Google shutdown Google Reader at the beginning of July and a flood of companies have tried to come up with a good replacement for the news aggregation service – which had millions of users. I’ve tried several of the alternatives and the one that is most like Google Reader (though better in some ways) is a website called Feedly. If you’re interested in reading the content from your favorite websites in a custom-built setting (custom-built by you, that is), then you have to give Feedly a shot. And if you already have a news aggregator or would like to follow my blog on Feedly, then you can do so by following our feed (http://www.jerseysmarts.com/feed/) or clicking here if your Feedly account is already set up.

Anyway, as of this writing I follow 74 different news websites and blogs through Feedly (that number grows every week or so). And, as you might imagine, following so many websites creates an incredible amount of news articles and blog posts that I sift through not just on a daily basis, but sometimes three or four times each day. In that sifting, I sometimes come across articles or columns that I think would be fun to share with you all. So I’m writing this post as the beginning of what I hope will be a weekly or bi-weekly (or maybe even monthly) update. The purpose of these updates will be to share with you some of the interesting and noteworthy news articles and blog posts that I come across.

A few years ago, sharing links in this matter used to be “the thing.” There was an informal group called the “Carnival of New Jersey Bloggers” that I was a member of; we shared some top-tier links from group members’ blogs with our readers each week. While I don’t know if this is series will reach that type of interest level, I do hope that some of you will enjoy reading these links and sharing them with your friends. And if you come across any interesting links, then please share them with us in the comments section below. Thanks!

Start the Weekend Right Link Series – Volume #1, Edition #1
What The Holy Father Said, His Eminence Timothy Cardinal Dolan
A big story this week on the religious front was Pope Frances giving an impromptu, 80-minute press conference on his plane as he left Brazil and returned to the Vatican after World Youth Day. The biggest item to come out of that press conference was the Pope saying who was he to judge the heart of a gay person who believes in God. In this blog entry, New York’s Timothy Cardinal Dolan explains how the Pope did not say anything new or change Church doctrine – this has always been the Roman Catholic position.

Main Street Redesign Issue Requires Separate Meeting, Asbury Park Sun
There is some discussion in Asbury Park about taking Main Street from a four lane road (two lanes in either direction) to a two lane road (one in either direction) with one of those turning lanes in the middle. This would allow for bike lanes to be put on both sides of the street.

An Unusual Feat in Congress: Student Loan Bill Breezes On, The New York Times
This article talks about how both Republicans and Democrats came together to quickly pass a bill that changes student loan interest rates. Both sides put their own spin on why the bill passed by wide majorities in both houses of Congress, which is to be expected.

Living Our Values In Our Daily Life, Fraternity Pledge
The Executive Director of my national fraternity (Sigma Pi Fraternity) wrote about what makes our fraternity unique and what it means to live those unique values on a daily basis.

5 Reasons Why I Unbranded My 30 Month Old Blog, CalebWojcik.com
This blog used to be known as PocketChanged.com, but the writer behind the blog recently changed the name of it to CalebWojcik.com (his name). In this blog entry, Caleb lists out the reasons why he made the change. Makes me think – should JerseySmarts.com change to my name instead? Probably not since the JerseySmarts.com name is versatile enough to cover a variety of topics. Although, I do own my name at its own .com… Hmmm…

That’s it for this week. Get your weekend started right by checking out these links, starting a new Feedly account, and/or adding the blogs above (and JerseySmarts.com, too) to your Feedly account. Enjoy!

Have You Heard About This OUYA Video Game Console?

Joe — Sat, 21 Jul 2012 00:44:44 +0000

Some of you may be familiar with the new crowd funding website Kickstarter.com. I stumbled across this website a number of months ago and I immediately loved it. The main gist of the website is aspiring artists, developers, writers, entrepreneurs, etc. post descriptions of their projects online and then ask you to help them fund their goals. It’s a way of harnessing the do-gooder, helping spirit that exists in all of us while, at the same time, helping someone achieve their goals and realize their dreams.

But Kickstarter is better than just feeling good about what you do with your money – you actually get something in return for your dollars.

The first campaign that I put some money towards was a music project. Believe it or not, there is a woman professional wrestler who is an accomplished country music artist. She’s not half bad, actually! Anyway, this woman was trying to make a second album with funding from Kickstarter and was asking for anyone to contribute $5, $10, $50, $100, and so on towards the costs to develop her album. After the word spread around the internet, she reached her funding goal and is now in the process of making the music. The dollar amount that you contribute to a campaign dictates what you’ll get in return. Personally, I only contribute at a level where I’m going to get something tangible. For this woman’s campaign, I contributed $50 (funded from my website company) which gets me both a physical copy of the new album plus the full MP3 version of the album, my name in the “thank you” section of the album, my CD autographed by the woman, and an invitation-only web concert. Sometimes the rewards are much more extravagant. For example, in this campaign if you donated $10,000, then you received all of these items, a 30-minute in-home concert, a hand-painted t-shirt from the singer, an executive producer listing for the album, and a personalized thank you video.

And each Kickstarter campaign is different. Seriously, check out the link above – I think you’ll enjoy what you find on there.

This entry, though, is about a new video game console that I saw on Kickstarter. Here, watch the video for yourself:

Did you watch the video? It’s a pretty cool concept, right? Some of you might be wondering, “Well, what’s the difference between this OUYA video game system and the Nintendo Wii or the Playstation 3 or something like that?” And that’s a good question. I’ve been doing some research on this OUYA concept and what these folks are trying to do and this is what I think the difference is between this console and the others.

It’s open.

When I say it’s open I mean that you can go in and hack it and it doesn’t void a warranty or become an illegal device or anything like you might imagine. In other words, people can go in and hack the core system’s operating protocols (I’m probably not using the right language) and it’s not a problem at all (assuming, of course, that the hacking doesn’t fry the system). The OUYA system is built on the same software infrastructure as the Droid cell phones out there – it’s an Android-based system. What this means is that anyone who can develop an “app” for a Droid cell phone or an app for a Droid tablet (for example, a NOOK) can have that app operationable on the OUYA system. This creates two immediate outcomes – one interesting and one alarming.

The interesting outcome is that since the console is built on the Android system, there are going to be thousands of apps and mobile games available for download on the first day that this thing is hooked up in your living room. The second, more alarming outcome is that I can’t imagine wanting to play any of the time-wasting games on my cell phone on the big screen of my television.

That second outcome is one of the issues that the OUYA development team is taking very seriously. They are talking to a variety of high-level gaming software companies to ensure that there are blockbuster-level games available for this system as soon as it hits the market. That’s going to be a huge task, but with only one week of starting their Kickstarter campaign these folks have already generated over $5.2 million from over 40,000 backers.

That’s a lot of money to make in a single week!

I admit that I’m not technical enough to know much more about how this thing is going to work, but I do know that if you Bing “OUYA” you’ll find a bunch of positive and negative press for the not-yet-created console. For my part, I like supporting these Kickstarter campaigns and I’ve supported a variety of independent video games on that website already. So I supported the OUYA campaign at the $99 level. This gets me the ability to reserve my username before the console goes live to market, a “Founder” emblem emblazoned next to my username forever, and an OUYA console plus one controller. That’s right – a brand new video game system (expected to be delivered some time in March 2013) for $99 (plus $20 for shipping).

You can’t even buy a used current generation console for $99!

If you’re interested in the OUYA or in at least learning more about it, check out their Kickstarter page. This is a very interesting concept and I’m glad to support it!

NOOK Book Review: The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien

Joe — Sun, 26 Jun 2011 04:34:41 +0000

Before I begin this entry, I should probably note that I’m not going to actually write a review of J.R.R. Tolkien’s masterpiece, The Hobbit. I’ve read The Hobbit over a dozen times and it’s probably one of my favorite books, if not my favorite book of all time. So I’m not going to use this entry as an opportunity to continue blabbering on about how much I enjoy all of Tolkien’s work and how The Hobbit, in particular, is absolutely spectacular.

So do we call these things "Classic NOOKs" now?

Instead, I wanted to use this brief entry to talk about my experience using the NOOK Color to read The Hobbit. You see, The Hobbit was the first book that I purchased on the NOOK Color and the first book that I read from start to finish on the device. And, overall, I have to say that it was a pretty good experience.

There were two features that stood out to me in particular while reading The Hobbit. Here is a brief discussion of those features from my point of view.

Ease of Holding the Device. Look, I’m a book reader. I love reading books. Even when I was a little kid I loved reading books. And, as a long-time avid book reader, I love the entire book reading experience. If you’re a fellow avid book reader, then you know what I’m talking about – the experience of holding a book in your hand and having the thickness of pages in your right hand diminish as the thickness of pages in your left hand increase. You rush towards the end of the book and flip ahead to see how many pages are left and wonder how the author will get to his point before the book is over.

It’s the sensation – the experience – of reading a book that an avid book reader comes to love. Well, with the NOOK Color, you get a different experience, but not an all together bad one.

While there aren’t any pages to flip, the NOOK Color is easy to hold. It sits in your hand comfortably and isn’t too heavy. Plus, all you have to do is touch one side of the screen to flip forward or backward. While this takes away from the traditional experience of reading a book, it does allow the reader to get into a groove with flicking his or her finger to move to the next page. Getting into a groove like that ultimately allowed this reader to get very comfortable reading The Hobbit while laying in bed and not having to move too much to keep the story moving.

Features and Options to Enhance Reading. Not only does the NOOK Color allow the reader to change the layout of the text on each page of the e-book, but after a recent software update you can now change the color of the page, too. I found that this feature came in handy when I wanted to read a portion of The Hobbit before going to bed. Instead of having to keep the lights on in the bedroom, I could turn off the lights and lay in bed and still read comfortably after changing the brightness settings of the screen and changing the color of the page from white to grey. The darker tones made it easier on my eyes before I went to bed – a very nice feature indeed.

One other item that I feel compelled to bring up even though it didn’t directly impact my reading experience is the recent software upgrade for the NOOK Color. You may have read about this software update which essentially turned the NOOK Color into a high-powered, Google Android tablet. Well, I can vouch for how cool of an Android tablet the NOOK Color has become. It has its own app store (though it desperately needs more apps to choose from) as well as built-in e-mail support and a pretty efficient web browser.

Overall, I really enjoyed my reading experience with the NOOK Color. The e-reader sat comfortably in my hand and the ability to change the view, brightness, and color of the pages made the reading experience comfortable for my eyes. If you haven’t tried the NOOK Color yet, then I suggest you head over to your local Barnes & Noble store and try one of the devices that they have on display. It really is that damn good.

Give it a shot – I think you’ll really enjoy the NOOK Color!

A Look at the Monmouth Hawks Basketball Schedule for 2010 – 2011

Joe — Wed, 29 Sep 2010 15:30:40 +0000

Over a month ago I was playing around with my Google Calendar to see all of the extra features that were available that I hadn’t been taking advantage of (I can never cease to be amazed at what the folks at Google think up next). While I was digging around, I came across the schedule below, which I think is pretty handy. It’s an embeddable version of the Monmouth University Hawks men’s basketball team schedule for the upcoming season. Ummm… you need to flip ahead to November in order to see the actual schedule.

Pretty cool, huh? What’s even cooler is that Google has a function where I can install this calendar over my existing Google Calendar. It’s great!

JerseySmarts.com Now Has an Official Facebook “Like” Button

Joe — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 14:47:14 +0000

Welcome to JerseySmarts.com, where we’ve finally entered the year 2010 by placing an official Facebook “Like” button on each of our entries. Granted, you won’t be able to see this button on the main page of the blog itself, but since 80% of our traffic comes from people searching for specific items, the Like button will be seen by more people than actually see the front page anyway.

I played around with the button last night (which, if you are on the front page, you can see by clicking on the title of title of this entry – it shows up right underneath the title) and tested it out to see how it works. I’m not really sure of the dynamics of the button, but I think when you hit click on it there is an update to your Facebook wall saying that you liked that entry on the blog with a link to the entry for your Facebook friends to see.

Oh, and I tried the Like button in Internet Explorer and it didn’t work. I don’t know why, but the majority of this site’s traffic comes from Firefox or non-Internet Explorer browsers so I’m not overly concerned. Plus, Internet Explorer has been bulky and clunky for the last few years anyway. If you’re not using Google’s Chrome or Mozilla’s Firefox (or even Apple’s Safari), then you’re missing out on a much better internet experience.

But back to the point of this entry – we now have a Like button so if you see something that you like (and you’re not using Internet Explorer), then feel free to hit the button so your friends on Facebook can see what JerseySmarts.com has to offer, too!

Scanning Through Search Engine Results… Weird…

Joe — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 03:11:50 +0000

One of the great things about running a website (or, in this case, a blog) is seeing how your readers get to your site in the first place. I know that I have a lot of family and friends that read my blog (thanks guys!), but the majority of my hits come from search engines (thanks Google, Yahoo!, and the rest!). As a webmaster, I am sometimes baffled by the search terms and phrases that bring my readers to me. In fact, I thought I’d look at the last five search phrases that brought some of you to this website.

Please note that I’m not looking at the top five most popular search terms – that would be a different entry altogether. I’m looking at the last five search phrases that landed someone on JerseySmarts.com. It should also be noted that the last five search phrases brought readers here from a Google search engine.

Searched Phrase: terry weldon new jersey 2009
Ah. Nice one. For those of you that don’t know, Terry Weldon is the former (scumbag) Mayor of Ocean Township in Monmouth County. He was also a public employee of the City of Asbury Park. This man is as corrupt as the day is long. The JerseySmarts.com page that this searcher landed on talked about how Terry Weldon was the epitome of a scumbag.

Searched Phrase: comcast customer care number
Over the summer I had some issues with Comcast’s customer care. Something wasn’t quite right when I was looking for FOX News HD on my cable box. You can read what this particular searcher found on JerseySmarts.com by clicking here.

Searched Phrase: diet books for men
It was only a few days ago that I posted my review of The Eat-Clean Diet for Men. In case you missed it (or in case you can’t scroll down the screen here…), feel free to head on over via this link. I’m probably the happiest about this particular search phrase because it shows that the content that is placed on JerseySmarts.com quickly rises up the ranks in the search engine world. You listening to that, advertisers?

Searched Phrase: guys trip to nashville
Every once in a while one of my entries has something to do with an event that someone else is planning. Clearly, this searcher was looking for ideas for a trip to Nashville for he and his buddies. Well, when he Google’d this phrase he landed on JerseySmarts.com and an entry that I uploaded over the summer reviewing my most recent trip to Nashville.

Searched Phrase: roxbury high school football
Go Gaels! A few days ago I made it very clear that, as a member of the 1998 State Championship football team from Roxbury High School, I am completely behind the current team as they prepare to play against East Orange Campus High School this weekend at Giants Stadium. I know that I speak for the entire 1998 team when I say good luck! Many of the guys will be in the stands and we want to see that state title come back home. The guys on the current team have made all of Roxbury Township proud with their excellent performance this season. We’re all pulling for them to win the big one this weekend and they can definitely do it!

Whoever searched for that term found my congratulatory post to the current team (as well as some pictures of me from when we won the state championship 11 years ago) when they landed on the page linked here.

And there you have it – the last five searched phrases that brought some of YOU to JerseySmarts.com. If you happen to be someone who landed on this page thanks to Google or another search engine, please feel free to leave a comment telling us what you were looking for and if the search engine that you used gave you the right answers.

No Longer Using LinkShare for Online Advertisements

Joe — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 16:30:24 +0000

Like I’ve been writing about lately, I’ve been deleting software programs and removing online services that are, essentially, unnecessary to me at this point. I’ve removed my MySpace account, Yahoo! Messenger, LinkedIn, Plaxo Pulse, Microsoft Money Plus, Quicken, a bunch of games that I installed a few years ago but don’t use any more, TaxCut 2006 and 2007, Google Chrome, Norton 360, (by the way, removing this particular piece of software generated the greatest increase in speed and performance for my system) and some other programs. It’s all about simplification, really. Just like the rest of you, my life is too busy to have any mental space to process random programs, pieces of software, or really old online profiles that almost no one looks at these days. You get the picture.

As a part of this simplification process, I’ve also begun reviewing the advertising programs that I use on my suite of websites (this one included). The truth is that the only advertising program that I currently use that has ever generated sustained income over a number of years is Google Adsense. However, like any good webmaster I’ve tried to increase earnings by utilizing other program such as Amazon.com Associates, LinkShare, and Text-Link-Ads. Which brings me to this entry on the blog…

I’ve decided to cancel my LinkShare account. The truth is that this program doesn’t really generate any income for those websites that aren’t bringing in a massive amount of hits. I don’t want to talk inside baseball, but if JerseySmarts.com brings in 250 – 500 hits, then that’s a good day. LinkShare really isn’t made for a website like this one. Heck, even combining a bunch of different websites into my account didn’t help. My suite of websites brings in a few thousand hits per day – tens of thousands of hits per month – and the program still didn’t generate a dime.

So, instead of clogging up my websites with advertisements that don’t really generate any income for me, I’ve decided to cancel my LinkShare account and do some de-cluttering for your viewing pleasure! Actually, the LinkShare advertisements came off of this particular account about a month ago; they came off of my other websites a few weeks ago.

The next on my list to take a look at is this Amazon.com Associates program. Yes, I’ve had some people purchase items by using the Amazon.com Associates links that I embed in my entries and that I advertise around these and my other sites. However, I still haven’t seen a check from this program so I’m not sure if I want to continue using it. Anyway, I’d say that Amazon.com Associates has at least another 6 to 12 months for me to make any decision.

In the mean time, check out New Jersey Carpet Cleaning for the best carpet cleaning in the Garden State!

The Merger – One Year Later

Joe — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:30:48 +0000

Can you believe it was one year ago today that the merger was complete? Pretty amazing, huh? I mean, just to think that there used to be such duplication seems absolutely mind-boggling! Oh wait – you’re not sure what I’m talking about? Let me refresh your memory…

Joe's Journal - As it used to exist

If you read that link, you now know that I merged my old blog – Joe’s Journal – with the one that you’re reading – JerseySmarts.com. One year ago today, that merger was complete. I think the results have been great, but you could probably be the judge of that better than I can…

One of my favorite parts of the old Joe’s Journal was that crazy header that I put together by blending all of the different things that crossed my mind at the moment. You might be able to tell from that screenshot, but there are a whole bunch of different things on there including the Monmouth University hawk, Stewie from an early episode of Family Guy, the Arrested Development television show’s logo, a Cross, the American flag, my fraternity’s flag, a Lord of the Rings logo, a Smallville logo, a silhouette of New Jersey, a Rutgers University logo, and a bunch of other stuff. Plus, the main color of the site was yellow.

In general, I never hate on any of my old sites and Joe’s Journal is no different. I really enjoyed that blog since it was my personal blog where I let off steam and commented on a variety of issues (the entries have all been merged into this site, so go back a few years and look at some of the older posts – lots of bitching in there!). However, as I began to enterprise my web design skills and I began creating newer websites with stronger capabilities and better marketing opportunities, I realized that I had to begin eliminating duplication in those areas of my life where it was unsustainable and, really, unnecessary.

On that point, a few years ago I opened up JerseySmarts.com as a place where I could capture some of the writing skills of my friends from college and other people that I’ve met along the way. It never really panned out the way I wanted it to, but that’s okay. Since JerseySmarts.com became a viable source of revenue, I wound up keeping the domain and just uploading my Joe’s Journal entries onto both blogs. It was easy, but pretty laborious in the grand scheme of things. I never wanted to engage in larger marketing campaigns or new ways to present content because I didn’t want to have to duplicate everything. Plus, I felt like the impact of my entries was being thinned since they were available in two locations.

The logical answer was to merge the two blogs and condense my efforts to create a single website with greater impact. I think that I’ve been pretty successful in that effort considering that JerseySmarts.com is both profitable and has a wide readership. Since the merger, I’ve admittedly held back on publicizing the blog to the extent that I originally intended and part of that was because I wanted to ensure that I had the commitment to keep the thing updated. With that, I’m glad to announce that today marks one full year of this blog being updated every single day. In 365 days JerseySmarts.com has had more than 365 entries. I think that’s a pretty significant accomplishment for a one-man show. One of the ways that I accomplished this was taking advantage of the ability to “schedule” a post in WordPress. For example, I wrote all of the entries for November 1st through November 16th (that’s today) on Halloween. Hey, I had the free time while sitting around waiting for trick or treaters, so I wanted to use it productively! I can’t guarantee that I’ll be updating the blog on a daily basis for the coming year, so I might miss a day here and a day there, but I made it work in the last year so I might be able to keep the momentum going in the coming year!

If I had my way, I’d get more people to sign-up for the monthly newsletter in the next year and I’d utilize that newsletter for more than just a recap of previous entries. I think that goal is attainable, but not when the newsletter stands at 26 subscribers. Last month I started a new Google Group which replaced the old newsletter system that I’ve been using for the last year. Let’s hope that it has some staying power, huh?

Anyway, we’re one year into this merger and I think it’s going great. Let me know what you think!

More Information on the Revisions Made to JerseySmarts.com

Joe — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 15:30:04 +0000

As some of you may have continued to notice, there are more changes here at JerseySmarts.com. First, the header is now changed to a three part design with the site’s button-style logo on the far left, a set picture of the steps leading up the path at my Mom’s house in the middle as well as a graphical representation of the site’s name, and an advertisement in the far right. You’ll notice the “Joe’s Journal at JerseySmarts.com” name has been shortened to just “JerseySmarts.com.” Hey, that’s the name of the site – no reason to beat around the bush, right?

I’ve also darkened the background on which you are reading right now. For those of you that liked the brighter white background, I’m sorry – it just hurt my eyes too much so I had to change it. Chances are I spend a lot more time on this website that most of the readers so I have to be sure that simply looking at the website doesn’t bother me!

I’m always looking for new ideas, so let me know if you have any thoughts. Right now I think the site is somewhat boring in its approach, but that’s because I’m not currently integrating pictures and other multimedia into the various entries. That should be changing soon. Also, I have some graphics that I’ll be adding to the sidebar sooner or later (for example, the link to my Facebook pictures). I’m debating whether or not to even keep the Google image gallery, so I can’t guarantee that the Google images link will reappear.

Frankly, I wanted to do these revisions to JerseySmarts.com in November, right around the one year anniversary of merging JerseySmarts.com and Joe’s Journal. However, sometimes you just have to act on the momentum in your head and make the changes while you’re motivated!

Again, I’m always open to your thoughts and ideas, so please feel free to send them over.