Go Virtual Solutions Blog

Here is a little Christmas history - Saint Nicholas or Santa Claus was originally portrayed wearing bishop’s robes, today Santa Claus is generally depicted as a plump, jolly, white-bearded man wearing a red coat with white collar and cuffs, white-cuffed red trousers, and black leather belt and boots. This image became popular in the United States and Canada in the 19th century due to the significant influence of caricaturist and political cartoonist Thomas Nast. This image has been maintained and reinforced through song, radio, television, and films. In the United Kingdom and Europe, his depiction is often identical to the American Santa, but he is commonly called Father Christmas. (source Wikipedia)

Just a little Christmas knowledge to get you in the festive season!  I wish all of you a very safe and happy holiday season and may 2010 bring you health, happiness and prosperity!

I find gmail as a fantastic platform for emailing, however the signature option needs more flexibility.  I recently discovered a very simple way to add flexibility to your gmail signature.  There is an add-on in Firefox that you can download that allows you to add flexibility to your signature…like adding links to your social media sites or links to your specific web pages. I hope you find this useful - as I did!

For those of you that are newbies to YouTube and would like to learn more of how this great tool works then I have something to share with you.  Okay lets get started, here is a little tip when viewing videos from YouTube. You may come across a scenario that requires you to have a YouTube video appear in its own popup window rather than the YouTube website.  It is very simple…

When you are on the YouTube website and viewing a video, there are two icons on the top right of the video.  Click on the second icon that looks like an arrow pointing towards the corner of your screen, which is says “Watch this video in a new screen”.  Once you do this it will appear in a popup window, then all you need to do is copy the URL that is located in the address bar of the popup window and you are ready to use this video where ever you need to.  See it is really just as simple as that.  Until next time!

Please accept my apology for the long delay in posting to my blog.  I have no excuses what so ever. The only thing I can say is - wow has time flown by.  At any rate - here I am and ready to get back to it again.
Have you ever had two or more pdf files that needed to be merged together and had no idea in how to do this?  I certainly have, until I come across this program that you can download of the internet. It is very simple and fast to use.  It is called http://www.cutepdf.com/.  This is a free download that creates professional quality PDF files from almost any printable document.
I hope you find this useful!
Until next time….have a great day!

It has been awhile since I have made an entry into my blog and for this I apologize. You can say that my time was spent working through my computer problems.  Not by choice that is for sure.

Have you ever experienced any sort of computer problems, such as a computer crashing?  If you have, then you will agree that this is not much fun especially if you do not have any contingency plan put in place.

I was one of those people that did not have a good plan in place; however, I was lucky enough to have just put a better plan in place before my computer crashed. We sometimes become lackadaisical and think that I will get to that “soon” and before long…”soon” is just not soon enough.  There are many ways that you can save your information from your computer and I recommend that you have more than one back up plan in place.

You may use such things as flash drives or something that has a little more space such as external hard drives which range approximately $100-$200 depending on the make, model and size of hard drive.  It is very easy to set up and does not take a techie to install it for you.  All you have to do is plug it in to your surge protector, then plug in the USB cable into your USB outlet and you are off copying and pasting your files to a safe storage.  It is just that easy. When you are done simply unplug the unit and keep it in a cool safe place, as this will protect the longevity of the external hard drive as well as from power surges that could be harmful to your information.

Last and certainly not least, the other method is utilizing the many offsite backup applications that are easily accessed by the internet.  You may be able to find one that is pay per year or your IT provider has this capability to do this for you. 

I have been studying this application and found out that it is loaded with great information about how your website is performing.

~ You will see very easily where your visitors come from.
~ How they interact with your site.
~ What words they are using the most to find your site.

Google Analytics is free to everyone and is very easy to install.

uring these times of economic turmoil and political upheaval, it is very easy to let the stress get the better of us and forget about taking care of our own health.

1. Take a 10-30 minute walk every day. And while you walk, smile. It is the ultimate anti-depressant.
2. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
3. Record your late night shows and get more sleep.
4. Live with the 3 E’s — Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Dream more while you are awake.
6. Life isn’t fair, but it’s still good.
7. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
8. Don’t take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
9. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
10. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a college kid.

re emails taking up more and more of your time? Are you having trouble being productive with distracting email pop ups constantly throughout your day? And you’re overloaded with so much email that you can never seem to get through them all?

I recently listened to a teleseminar that Mike Song, co-author of “The Hamster Revolutions: How to Manage Your Email before It Manages You” and is one of America’s leading experts on email efficiency and etiquette, which I found very useful.

Here are a few tips that I have since implemented:

1. If using Outlook, turn off your email notification pop up, as this is distracting when trying to concentrate on a project.

2. Have your send/receiving timer set to every 30 minutes instead of 5 minutes; again, this can be distracting.

3. In Outlook, you can set rules so that all incoming email will route itself to certain folders. Then set up a reminder during certain times of the day to check these folders.  Believe it or not your clients will get use to your time line for responding to email messages.

as your listing been sitting on the market for a while?  Not getting a good response to your advertising?  Maybe it needs a little boost. Ann Brenoff of the Los Angeles Times  put together an article last year that you may find useful or at the very least serve as a reminder of ways to describe your listings. 
 
    Discoveries were made by a Canadian professor, Paul Anglin - who teaches real-estate and housing trends at the University of Guelph in Ontario, during a study of sales patterns utilizing the wording of over 20,000 Canadian home listings from 1997 to 2000.
 
    He found that such words as “Motivated Seller” will take 15% longer to sell and will net 4% less or “Good Value” will net 5% less or speaking of “Value” or “Price” will increase the days on the market.   

    However, words that indicate “Curb Appeal” or that the home is “Attractive” have decreased days on the market, as well as “Handyman Special” sold in half the average time. He also found that homes described as “Beautiful” sell 15% faster and net 5% more in price than the norm.  Paul also mentioned the use of “Granite”, “Maple” and “Gourmet” all netted higher sales prices.  When the word “Landscaping” was used the listing sold 20% faster.  “Move in Condition” resulted in 12% shorter stay on the market, but had no effect on the sale price.  
 
    The one phrase that I found to have mixed reviews was “Must See”, Paul Anglin noted that this was received about as enthusiastically as a dinner-time telemarketing call and had a statistically insignificant effect on the number of days homes took to sell. However, Jstankevicz, who is a management consultant and focuses on information technology (IT) from Cave Creek, AZ stated that “Must See” showed a positive effect.  You decide!!
 

    It does go without saying that the words you use must apply to the listing. If it’s a rundown home, then the word “beautiful” or “attractive” will get a negative response, not a sale.

    The one thing you need to remember your description of the listing is their first impression next to the pictures; and it should be as good as you can make it! If you use “curb appeal” then the home/property better look good, so the potential client will agree as they drive by and get their second impression.   

Warmly,

Laurie