Member Management Solution

About a year ago, I was involved in a project that aimed to build a social networking site which allowed gifting. When I say gifting, it involved gift cards, money, e-cards, among many others. As I was too busy here in my other project in Phoenix, I was not fully involved with the project and the last thing I know was that the account was pulled off from our company. Ok... let's not focus on the reason why the project failed or was not delivered. I am sharing this to you because I think that building a social networking site entails a lot of planning, not just technically but also the business side of it. Besides the fact that you need to have a highly technical work staff to build the application, you would also need to keep a highly skilled staff to maintain your site if in case anything goes kaput. Some businessmen just think of how to build and start the business but real and seasoned businessmen know that maintenance and support is what keeps the business going.

Wild Apricot's smart software does wonders in association management. They've developed a system that allows you to manage memberships to your website, edit webpages, website hosting, manage events calendar and registration, manage fundraiser and payments, an email tool and discussion forums. Their system allows you to manage a professional-looking website without having the need to hire somebody to build and maintain it for you. Their easy to use tool allows you to customize your website without having to learn a lot of difficult technical stuff. Membership management is also a task that is too tedious to both build and maintain. Having Wild Apricot's smart software gives you the freedom to manage membership easily. Their software allows you to always have up-to-date and clean membership database. I guess the best way to market something is being able to Engage Members through forums which allows them to communicate and exchange information with one another. Wild Apricot has a built in discussion forums where members can easily communicate with one another. Subscription plans are available from their website so do check them out and get flat, all-inclusive and affordable fees. You can also open a 30-day trial account to see if the software fits your needs. By the way, they are microsoft gold certified partner so you are sure that they know what this business is all about.

Memorial Weekend in Las Vegas

After several trips to Vegas, I finally got the chance to get my photo taken at
"Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas" sign. Hahaha. Yeah boy! Good thing I travelled with my California tourist friends so I wasn't too ashamed of posing in front of the big and popular landmark in Vegas.

So yeah... spent Saturday morning until Monday evening in Las Vegas. We stayed at a hotel just off the strip which was paid for by my company by the way. I had several meetings with the boss and the rest of the officemates during the whole weekend. We even got the chance to visit my boss' sister's rest house in Lake Las Vegas which was so chic and super sosyal! The house was super near Loews resort and from what I heard, it's one of the most expensive places to live in Las Vegas. It was a chance for me to rub elbows with the ultra sosyal and rich relatives of my boss. Although I honestly hate social functions like those. Hahaha.

Anyways, the whole weekend was fun although tiring. As always, it pains me to leave B and come home to an empty apartment. I just hope my moving to Vegas happens sooner. =(

More Opportunities

PolyThings.com sells everything under the sun. Talk about finding everything in just one website! This website is an online resource for virtual products on the web. If you're thinking of starting your own business or even a home based business, polythings.com has resources for that. May it be a business on publishing, education, web design, promotion, reports, management and a lot more, this website has all those. I think this can greatly help all those people who were badly affected by mass layoffs that happened the past months. Polythings also has resources on online games such as World of Warcraft guides, Xbox 360 repair guides, poker tips and tricks, nintendo games, and a lot more. Now if you're looking for music, mp3 download site, guitar and violin lessons, professional drum lessons, this site also has it! I've also found some other interesting stuff for sale here such as weight loss solutions from medications, techniques, workouts and then there are also resources for automobiles, sports such as soccer, tennis, golf and basketball, travel guides, cruise ship jobs, US immigration forms, and a whole lot more. This site is surely the resource of all resources! Do check out their website to find out more about the stuff that you need. PolyThings.com Best Virtual Products On The Web!

Business Phone System Solution

All businesses have been hit by this bad economy so I guess all businesses are trying their best to cutdown on extra spending and just minimize operational costs. That is one of the reasons why my employer finally decided to move to a smaller and less-chic office building in Makati. As an employee, I would rather have my company spend money on giving us a raise than spending it on a fancy office which by the way, most of our clients never visited. If it is even possible, a virtual office would be a great saving from operational expenses just like what we have now in our US office.

800PBX is a telephony business provider for hosted or virtual PBX. You don't need to buy hardware nor software to be able to provide support to your clients. You just simply need to outsource them from 800PBX and get 800 numbers which is the most common toll-free number for support. Here's what you will get when you subscribe to 800PBX: a toll-free number which is a 1-800 number that your clients can dial, a free local number, an auto attendant or receptionist that can redirect calls by pressing specific numbers on the phone, a voice driven auto redirect phonebook that uses speech recognition, extension numbers with bundled voicemail box for each extension, voicemail, voicemail alerts that can be received through email, pager or SMS, large voicemail storage capacity, call forwarding, among many others. This speech recognition IVR is awesome because if you have forgotten the number of the extension whom you are calling, you can just say the name of the person that you want to reach and it will automatically redirect your call to that person. This speech recognition functionality is one of the best things ever invented in telephony. It is surely awesome! From their website, plans start at $9.99 per month with 300 free minutes. They offer Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum plans for different number of minutes depending on what your company will utilize. Each type of plan also adds a different functionality besides the free minutes. Additional features can be added to your plan and each feature has a different pricing. I strongly believe that this outsourced telephony solution is very beneficial to small and medium-scale businesses especially at this state of the economy where operational expenses need to be kept at the minimum. You can check out the FAQs and video demonstrations so you can find out if this is the solution that your business needs.

May is SFC Month

I am officially declaring that the whole month of May is an SFC month!

May 2 - SFC Christian Life Program Day 1 with SFC TMSD and Las Vegas
May 3 - SFC fellowship/bbq with SFC TMSD and Las Vegas
May 9 - SFC Christian Life Program Day 2 with SFC California East
May 10 - SFC fellowship/bbq with SFC California East
May 16 - SFC Christian Life Program Day 3 with SFC California Southbay
May 17 - SFC fellowship/bbq with SFC California Southbay
May 22, 23, 24 - SFC California birthday celebrations and bachelorette party in Las Vegas
May 29, 30, 31 - SFC Singles Weekend Retreat (SW 1 and 2) in Yucaipa, CA

All weekends of May, I was and will be with SFC. Not to mention the weekday gatherings for upper household, meetings, lower household and general assembly.

I live and breathe SFC!

Motorcycle Parts and Accessories

Are you looking for rare and high-end motorcycle parts and accessories? Or are you just looking around to see how you can pimp your motorcycle? CruiserCustomizing.com is a one stop shop for accessories and parts for motorcycles and motorcycle riders. They have an extensive list of products that will surely fit your need. Since the owner of the site are bikers themselves, this means that they have a lot of experience when it comes to motorcycles and bikes with a combined 255 years of riding experience making them experts on this field. Their easy to use website gives you the best of breed of tires, chrome accessories, lighting or electrical parts, windshields, suspension, riding apparel, among many others. Get excellent parts and accessories for national cycle by clicking on the link.

On Going Back to Music

Just got home from household *aka. hh*. I cant feel my left fingertips!!! Waaaa!!! Hoookay... Here's the story behind that. Since I have been promoted to household head last weekend, I have decided that I should be able to lead my hh to worship and to do this, I should be able to teach them songs and lead them to singing worship songs. What better way to lead my HH to singing than playing the guitar right?! Back during my highschool days, I used to play the guitar very extensively to the point that I missed being in honor roll during my 2nd year in highschool because of my highschool band. Haaa! Those were the good old days. Every afternoon after class, we would go to this music studio to practice playing. OMG! And that was like almost 15 years ago! Oh-em-gee!!! When I went to college, I stopped playing the guitar because I got busy with school and then went on to working hard after college. After maybe more than 10 years, I tried to play the guitar again! I can still remember some of the chords but I guess I need more practice to refresh my memory.

I think the most unhappy person about my playing the guitar again would be my bf because he would need to get used to holding a "guy-like" hand full of callouses. Hahaha. Dyahe!

Dreaming of a Wedding

Hookay... I am not getting married yet. Not just yet! But then I need to share this great resource for bridal and bridesmaid dresses. At BestBridalPrices.com, you can find affordable yet stylish dresses for most formal occassions that you can think of. Since a lot of my friends have been thinking of taking the big leap of finally tying the knot, I am most welcome to share them this website. Best Bridal & Bridesmaid Prices sells wedding dresses from top designers at a fraction of the normal cost helping you stay within your big day budget. Keep that luxurious look while saving for other stuff for your wedding like decorations, reception, giveaways, cake, among many others. This website recommends that you order your wedding dress at least 6 months before the wedding day to allow alterations to be done on the dress and make sure that you have the perfect fit for the dress. Check out their website for new styles for the Spring wedding collection.

Creative Web Design

Nobody ever imagined that I would end up in the Information Technology field. Everybody thought that I probably would be in the arts because when I was younger, I was getting better grades in the arts. Even my evaluation exams back in highschool suggested that I take a course that's inclined to the arts. My dad always thought that I would be great in Engineering because I excelled in Math back in gradeschool and highschool days. He dreamt of having an engineer daughter working for a kick-ass engineering firm someday. I've been working as a consultant for an IT firm for the past eight years and so far, I have no regrets in taking this careerpath. I know that my dad is still wishing that one of her daughters will have that Engr title in her name but too bad none of her daughters took engineering as a course. To compensate, I have chosen the field of software engineering. I may not have that "Engr." appended on my name but I am still an engineer by function. I may not build bridges, nor buildings under my name but I do build the backbone of a company's operational and functional softwares. I know that my dad will still be proud of me. =)

I guess my inclination to the arts was still evident even if I did not push through taking an Art major. Even if I am a hardcore java-sap programmer, I still find time to do freelance web design and graphic designs which most programmers really hate doing. Haha. Notion3 offers the nicest and most advance website and graphic designs. I was pretty impressed at how they've mixed technology with great creativity. They make use of HTML, XHTML, CSS, Flash, AJAX, PHP and Javascript in the websites that they build and really push to produce a rich user interface. They have a very good portfolio proving how much experience the have in the business. Do check out webdesign Denver.

Raving About Xoom

People like me who are OFW's *hehe* or people who work abroad but still permanently reside in the Philippines which of course entails having to pay for monthly bills in the Philippines even if you don't exactly live there are always in search for faster, cheaper and more secure way of sending money to the Philippines. Couple of days ago, I found out that the only remittance center where I can send money from here in Arizona directly to my Manila bank account is closing and will not accept anymore transactions! Ugh! Talk about living in a state where there are few Pinoys so any Filipino business is bound to close down in a few months! Hayyy...

After googling for hours and reading reviews, I finally decided to use Xoom.com to send money to the Philippines. Transaction fee is pretty cheap compared to other online money senders but I noticed that the exchange rate is also pretty low compared to what banks would normally pose as exchange rate. Service wise, yes it is very, very convenient because I can now send money online *therefore saving me driving time, gas and mileage* and money immediately gets credited to my Manila account. Less than 24hours for that matter!

Webhosting Geeks

Why is WebHostingGeeks.com is the best resource for your web hosting needs? Simple... because they provide you with not just pricing comparison of web hosting providers but they also provide you with the services included in the pricing plus ratings from review sites. If I were I webmaster, I would definitely visit this site and get as much information as I can before I select and purchase a web hosting provider. Different factors affect each webhosting needs such as number of domains that you need, web hosting space size, network bandwidth allocation and of course the price of the service that you can afford. Finding a secure and reliable site is always a challenge for people like me who are non-experts with hosting. What I like a lot about WebHostingGeeks.com is that they have a specific "best of" web hosting provider for the specific niche that you are looking for. For example, the Best Budget web hosting for 2009 is WebHostingPad.com. People like me who are on a very strict budget without really caring much about extensive bells and whistles, I would easily choose this web hosting provider. This web hosting awards on the webhostinggeeks.com is really a great help for no-brainer web hosting decisions. Well, that is of course if your are not as OC as some people I know. Also do check out their blog and get to read articles on web hosting, CMS, domain names, SEO, security issues, among many others.

Plurk versus Twitter

I've known twitter for the last couple of years and this year is like a global boom for this application. But then couple months ago, a friend introduced me to Plurk. I've been a plurk addict since then.

What I like about plurk is that it is comparatively more user-friendly and has a stylishly nicer GUI than twitter. Usability wise, my heart belongs to plurk inspite of the occasional glitches and downtimes. As you earn karma points, new emoticons are available to you making it more exciting than twitter because you don't earn anything besides more fans *and sometimes spam*. It has integration with the most common social networking sites such as facebook and even twitter! Haha. Oh well, I hope this application keeps up to the diverse technologies being created everyday.

Follow me on plurk!

Payday Loans

Couple of days from now, my sister in Manila is undergoing a surgery. She has this weird medical condition wherein doctors found a mass building up on her lower left jaw. According to her doctor, it needs to be removed immediately in fear of a more serious illness to develop. My family and I finally decided that it needs an urgent surgery and so we scheduled the surgery for this coming Friday. Although healthcare in the Philippines is more affordable than let's say here in the US, other supplemental medications and tests will be covered by insurance. This is the same reason why I have been trying to save as much cash as I can so that I can send money to the Philippines if in case my sister cannot fully cover the cost of her surgery.

In times of emergency like this, it is a great help if you can find payday loans that immediately solves your financial needs. PaydayLoansMania is one of the fast and hassle-free payday loan providers out there in the market. For as long as you meet the minimum requirements for a Payday Loan, your application is easily approved. Minimum requirements are a proof of steady income, proof of residency, proof of identity and a proof of open bank account. All you need to do is fill-out the application form online and No Fax Payday Loans get saved into the system. Regardless of how bad your current credit status is, payday loans still approves your application if you provide the minimum requirements. A collateral or a co-signer is NOT needed! Interest rates for your loan varies by state. Fast and immediate approval can be received if you apply for amount $1500 or less.

Just a Thought

Got this from a friend's blog and I just want to remind those who are currently in a relationship like me...

There's always a possibility that a person can get attracted to another. It's human nature. It's not wrong. But that's why you're in a commitment, you discipline yourself. One may get attracted to numerous aspects & it's OK as long as you don't nurse the feeling & won't do something about it.

Borderline between cheating & faithfulness: recognize the reality that you already have the person who can give you more than what you can get for the cheap thrills of attraction.

Radio Disney Concert Series

Have I ever mentioned here in my blog how addicted I am in riding rollercoasters? I find a feeling of relief and a release of stress after every rollercoaster ride. If you are anywhere near Wilwood, New Jersey, make sure that you visit Morey's Piers! Morey's Piers is composed of three amusement piers and two beachfront waterparks. They have a great combination of kiddie rides, thrill rides, water rides and a lot of concessions that I am so sure people like me will enjoy. I so want to try the SkyCoaster and the Screamin' Swing at the Adventure Pier.

From June until August, Morey's Piers are hosting weekly live concerts featuring Radio Disney's Summer Concert Series of their up and coming artists. Guests of the park can watch free concerts every Mondays until August 31 at the Mariner's Landing pier. Concert times are at 1PM and at 4PM where your favorite Radio Disney artist will perform. I think visiting Morey's Piers is a new way of enjoying a Jersey Shore vacation especially during summer time. If you are planning a vacation at Wilwood, New Jersey, Morey's Piers website is also a great resource for finding Wildwood New Jersey hotels and motel accomodations at very affordable prices. Check out their website to get awesome deals for Jersey Shore beach Vacation.

B Updates

It was a great weekend! He came here for the CLP to serve with us here in AZ and I am so glad he came. Well, that was after a lot of convincing! I guess the fun in keeping a long distance relationship is the opportunities when you see each other again. Yeah, we missed each other soooo much and we just can't stay away from each other the whole time he was here.

So how am I really doing? Still very much in love with this person who really swept me away. Hayyyy.... Inspite and despite of my busy schedule *which he understands!*, he still finds ways to please me and make me feel that he's just near me. Awww...

Yes, he is partly the reason for my late blog updates and delayed posts. Yay!

Social Security

I guess most of us would agree when I say that we work very hard to prepare for our retirement. Some people invest their money in businesses, real estates, among many others. I am no economist nor financial analyst but at the current rate the economy is going, no investment is probably secure and will assure you of a good financial gain when you reach your retirement age. Social Security Credit website is a great resource for your financial needs. If you need financial services such as cash advance loan request, just logon to the SocialSecurityCredit.com to get your application going. They also offer debt consolidation services and life insurance appraisal. This website also contains a lot of searchable articles about how to handle cash, local news on where to invest, tips for retirement planning, protecting your retirement accounts from creditors, among many others. This easy to use website can greatly help those who are in need of information about social security personal finance, social security retirement and social security senior news.

There's never a better time to prepare for retirement than now. I guess one my reasons why I do kill myself at work now while I am still young is because I am preparing myself for a good future not just for myself but also for my future family. And I am one of those millions of people who are praying for a better economy.