When the economy gets a little rough and gas prices go sky high (among many other climbing expenses), people tend to increase their negativity.  They pay more attention to the negative things around them.  They get bombarded by media and practically everyone around them.  Many change their spending habits, cut unnecessary expenses, and do everything they can to survive without going under.

Right now, media keeps focusing on home foreclosures, job losses, oil going up, the stock market going down, food prices going up, and just about anything else that can cause someone on a tight budget to get depressed.  It is very easy to get caught in the trap of focusing on the negative and feeling like everything is “gloom and doom” and everything is going to get worse.  These ideas, thoughts, and feeling are exactly the WRONG way to be thinking………

Believe it or not, if you are reading this blog, most likely you are “RICH”.  Let me explain…….

If you have a computer, you are in an elite group.  Only about 5% of the world population has a computer.  Think about a few other things that you probably have…….

Do you have a roof over your head?

Do you have a car?

Do you have food in your kitchen?

Do you have …….  and so on….

Think about the things that you DO have in your life.  There are so many other people that have a LOT less than you.  They would love to be in your shoes.  They would appreciate having what you have and being in your situation.  Do you appreciate what you have or are you focusing on what you don’t have and how bad things are?

Do you have kids?  Do you focus on how they don’t clean up their room or all of the noise they make?  Do you focus on how much of your time it takes to take care of them or what you wish they did differently?  Or, do you focus on the joy they bring to your life - all of the times they laugh at silly things you do or when they pat you on the back or jump in your arms to show how much they love you?  Be thankful for your children.  They are a blessing from God.  Many other people long to have children of their own but can’t due to physical or other situations - and they would love to have a child that would mess up their room, make a lot of noise, and take a lot of their time.  To these people you ARE rich.  It’s all a matter of perspective…..

Do you have a home?  Do you complain about how much work it is to keep clean?  Do you complain about mowing the lawn, doing the dishes, doing the laundry, and cleaning every nook and cranny just to do it all over again the next day?  Or, do you focus on the fact that you have a home that you can relax and feel safe in?  Be thankful for your home.  It may not be a mansion, but their are countless people that wish they had a home.  They would gladly mow the lawn, do the dishes, do the laundry, and clean every nook and cranny and anything else they would need to do just to have a home.  They would be so thankful.  To these people, you ARE rich.  Are you thankful for your home?  Again, perspective…….

Take note of the positives in your life and focus on what you DO have.  Focus on how things will get better and look for the good in everything.  It is there if you look for it.  You will be much happier if you do.  Even in a rough economy, you are RICH.

Put your focus where you should.  Be appreciative.  It is all perspective.  Have a positive one and enjoy life….

- Hill Robertson

This is a video that shows how to be a little bit more secure using Microsoft Windows based web development tools by using them on a Mac (using OSX Leopard) which is much more secure than Windows. Windows has many more vulnerabilities than UNIX based operating systems such as Apple’s OS X and Linux. The security level of Linux and OSX is far superior to Windows and we can add a layer of security by running the Windows OS within VMware.

The Windows based web development tools can still be used (such as Adobe Dreamweaver, Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, etc.) to build the website files but then instead of transmitting the files using the less secure Windows (and possibly having key logger malware spying on every key that is typed in the Windows environment such as user logins and passwords), we can drag and drop the files from the virtual machine (using VMware Tools) directly to the Mac.

You may get some other ideas as well after watching this video. On another note, you should notice the quality of these videos getting better as I figure out better ways to encode them.

Also, don’t forget to sign up for announcements on this blog to be notified by email when I post updates. I even occasionally post private password protected posts that only subscribers will get. It is absolutely free to subscribe and I will never give your info to anyone. I hate spam myself. So please sign up at the top right of this page.

Enjoy!!!!!

- Hill Robertson

Yahoo launched the ymail.com and rocketmail.com domains for email accounts.  Yahoo is one of the largest email account providers in the world with both free account and pay accounts.  The free accounts have an ajax based web portal for reading and writing emails.  For years, Yahoo has used the yahoo.com domain for email addresses.  It is very simple to sign up for a new account.  Just go to ymail.com and sign up.  You can even chat with your friends within Yahoo mail.

Since these new domains just opened up, you may have a chance at getting your real name before someone else takes it.  I had some friends of mine get their first name (like name@ymail.com).  As long as it is more than four letters, you might have a shot.  But don’t wait too long or you may miss your chance and end up with something like name1234@ymail.com.  It is just not the same.

If you do sign up for a free account.  Be sure to login to it regularly or you may lose your account.  Or, you can purchase the “plus” package to add more features, more disk space, more spam filters, pop3 access, and much more.

So, go sign up for an account at ymail.com or rocketmail.com.

- Hill Robertson

Mozilla launched Firefox 3, one of the most popular internet browsers.  The highly anticipated launch and attempted download record clogged internet servers hosting the open source package which is available on all major platforms.  Users trying to download firefox 3 were greeted with timeouts and other “server too busy” type messages as they attempted to set a record for most downloads in a day.

After the initial hours of the launch, things seemed to settle down a bit and users could download Mozilla’s firefox browser without issue.  I downloaded the Mac OSX version and installed it.  I recorded a video as I downloaded and installed it.  There are many nice new features and it does seem to be a bit more snappy than prefious firefox versions.  I don’t get into too many details in the video but thought I would post one so you could get a little idea about the process.

Keep in mind that if you install the newest version and you already have a lot of plugins (or add-ons) that you use in your current version of firefox, they plugins may not work if the developer has not yet released a version for firefox 3.  You may want to wait a bit or at least keep a copy of your older version so you can continue using your plugins.

Enjoy……

- Hill Robertson

I hope everyone had a great Father’s day. I sure did. I always enjoy spending time with my family. My family is the primary reason I build my internet businesses. It gives me the freedom to control my own success. A job will not allow you to control your own success (or freedom). A job will keep you enslaved to your employer. Your employer will dictate how much money you make, when you have to work, and how long you have to work. If you think about it in a different way, you employer tells you how little money you make (just enough to get by - if even that much). They tell you when you can’t be spending time with your family and they tell you how much time you can spend with your family. On top of that, they can lay you off at any moment regardless of your situation.

I recently had some friends of mine told that they were no longer needed at their place of employment. They had worked hard (and did an excellent job) for many years and made the business what it was for their employer. They made many sacrifices along the way for the sake of their jobs and in the end, they were just let go. This seems to happen more and more these days.

The best way to be successful and in control of your own freedom is to have a business of your own that you control. An internet business is an ideal way to accomplish these goals. All you need to do is find out what people want and are willing to pay for, create the product, and sell it. It’s really pretty simple. It may not be easy, but it is a simple formula.

What are you interested in? Do you have a hobby? What do you know a lot about? You are an expert about something. If you know more about something than a majority of other people, you are an expert to them. They will want to know what you know. Just think about how many times someone asked you advice about something. You were an expert to them about whatever they were asking about. There are MANY more people that would ask you the same type of questions if they knew you could help them and a percentage of those people will pay you for your information.

So, get started and set up a blog or some other internet presence about yourself and your “expertise” and let people know about you. This is just the beginning of a successful business that can help you can gain financial freedom and success.

- Hill Robertson

Here we go with the geeky info……I uploaded my first video to YouTube so it may not be perfect but it is a start. The video gives a little bit of information about virtual machines.I boot up a Windows XP virtual machine using VMware fusion on my Mac Pro and show you how to run Internet Explorer on a Mac (sort of).

This is one of the tools I use to do my website development for my internet businesses. It allows me to test my websites on multiple configurations with different operating systems and in different browsers. By using the VMware virtual machine software, I can do all of my testing on my Mac Pro system without having to physically have several different computers to test with.I can run multiple versions of Windows (XP, Vista, etc.) and I can run multiple versions of Linux while running on my host Mac OSX system. It gives me the best of all worlds and a lot of flexibility.

VMware can be run on Windows, Linux, and Mac OS. It is a valuable tool in many ways for many people. You can find it at http://vmware.com .

- Hill Robertson

OK. All of the comments I got back were very positive about getting more geeky on this site and posting more of the technical information I would like to post. So, I’m going to start putting together some technical posts and hopefully videos I can start posting on this blog. I will also need to make some changes to this blog such as adding categories and deciding if I need to change the design around to better accommodate videos and so forth.

Thanks to everyone for their comments and if you have any suggestions on geeky material to post, post a comment.

- Hill

OK. I’ve really been itching to add more blog posting about a lot of things I like. A lot of them are not so much business related as much as they are technical. Since they are more technical, I have been a bit hesitant to post them on this blog and possibly alienate some of my visitors. However, I am an absolute geek and LOVE talking about technical things. The technical things are what eventually made me successful since they are my passion and all of my businesses spawned from my technical knowledge.

So, here’s what I am thinking….. I am thinking about adding some more categories (and possibly sub-categories) that are more specific such as “Linux”, “Mac OS”, “Web Design”, “Video Production”, etc. With them being different categories, I could set up subscriptions/RSS feeds specific to each category so visitors could subscribe to just the info they want. They could still subscribe to the main list and get all categories if they so desire.

What are your thoughts? Please leave me some comments on this post. I will keep your posts private unless you specifically say I can make them public.  Let me know what you think…..

- Hill

Some of the biggest complainers these days about the higher cost of gas, food, and other basic essentials have been those that claim to be on a “fixed” income. The truth is, there is no such thing as a fixed income. Now, you may have a fixed income for a particular job that you have but you are free to generate more income in other ways. So, fixed incomes are a myth.

Many times, people who complain about their fixed income are either lazy and just vegetate watching television all day or they come up with every excuse in the world as to why they can’t earn additional income. Even people with some kind of handicap can create additional income if they really want and focus on what they CAN do instead of feeling sorry for themselves and focusing on what they can’t do.

It is all a matter of attitude and actions. Anyone with the right positive attitude with the right focus and actions to accomplish their goals can be successful in anything they set their mind to.

- Hill Robertson

Well, it’s been a long while since I posted to this blog.  That’s one of the nice things about having your own blog is that you are in total control of when you want to post an entry.

It has been very interesting watching the traffic and other activity to this blog without any updates.  I have been updating posts to some of my other blogs and doing many updates to a lot of my other sites.

Happy Blogging……

- Hill Robertson