One of the things I love about the Internet is how versatile it is. You can do everything from Christmas shopping to reading the news. And yes, you can even do most of your wedding planning online — which was how I was able to plan an out-of-town wedding without being in the immediate vicinity.

For instance, it’s easy to find a list of venues and service providers by searching online for information on weddings in Michigan. Most businesses, including caterers and venues, have moved into the 21st century and now are quite happy to communicate with you via email so that you can work out all the details at your convenience. Even florists can send you pictures of their arrangements via email. A good wedding photographer should also have a website which showcase their best work, so that you can see for yourself a photographer’s style in order to decide whether they are the right one for your wedding.

Although things like trying out your wedding food beforehand still need to be done in person, for obvious reasons, it’s easy to research vendors and plan Michigan weddings via the Internet and email.

Even if you are having a local wedding, though, the Internet can help you out with planning, and even save you a lot of time and trouble. For instance, you can do your research for a venue and other service providers online, saving you the time of going around from place to place or meeting with people when they aren’t quite what you want. Plus, you can read reviews online and make sure others have been happy with their service!

Really, it never ceases to amaze me what you can do online!

Technorati Tags: Michigan weddings, wedding photographer, weddings in Michigan

When I was in my senior year of college, I dated a guy who was pursuing his master’s degree in educational information systems, which apparently meant anything that used technology to teach — building websites and stuff like that.  He knew his stuff pretty well, and designed the website for the school’s writing center, where he worked part time.

Like I said, this guy knew his stuff.  If you asked him about where to find an Atlanta colocation provider, he probably would have been able to answer.  But luckily for all the rest of us normal folk, you really don’t have to be an expert in order to have a website.

Technology today makes setting up your website pretty easy.  The easiest is a blog, which is free to set up (usually) and really quite easy to add to.  There are also software programs to help you build a more complex website.  Sometimes you can use your web hosting provider’s software in order to build a really professional-looking website.

Building a website doesn’t require a lot of knowledge about coding, or a lot of money to hire someone to do it for you.  You can set up a website in a snap on your own — all you need is to choose a blog platform or a web design program!

Technorati Tags: Atlanta colocation, blog platform, unix hosting

Just when I thought I knew it all about emailing, along comes something I had never heard of. You see, I consider myself to be email savvy. I’m not one of those people who will forward you an email that has the entire previous recipients’ email address list. In fact, that is probably my biggest email pet peeve, but what can I do? I also understand the whole blind carbon copy thing (that’s the BCC option) which means if you are sending an email to a whole bunch of people it won’t show the list of all of their emails.

I also know that if you receive an unsolicited email, then that is why it shows up as spam. That is if it shows up at all. Of course that depends on how you have your spam blockers set up. What I didn’t know about was the whole concept of opt in email. This is a way in which a company can basically get your permission to send you emails which you agreed to get. That way it won’t show up as being spam. That’s because you wouldn’t even be on their email distribution list if you wouldn’t have said it was OK in the first place.

Technorati Tags: email address list, email distribution list, opt in email, spam

eBay has long been seen as the ideal way to start your own business.  The auction site offers a variety of different ways to earn money.  Some sellers just sell part-time, while for others selling is a full-time business.  And some people sell off their own stuff, while others may hunt for things to resell or even list other people’s items on commission.  eBay stores may be small and run from a home office, or large enough to justify renting out retail or office space, such as with an eBay drop off store.

Now, however, it seems eBay may be on a downturn.  The company has come under fire a lot lately for the changes they’ve made.  Both sellers and buyers tend to feel they are not being protected very well under the eBay system.  To make matters worse, eBay recently announced that they will be transitioning everyone to online-only payments — meaning buyers will no longer be allowed to send checks, and sellers will no longer be allowed to accept them.

A lot of businesses, both on and offline, have stopped accepting checks, so this might not seem so bad if it weren’t for the fact that eBay happens to own the primary (almost the only) way of paying online: PayPal.  eBay has essentially made sure that they get to claim even more fees — i.e. the fees charged to sellers for receiving payments via PayPal.  So now eBay gets fees when a seller lists an item, fees when they sell it, and fees when they get paid for it!

All of these fees are quickly eating into the sellers’ slim profit margins.  As the article points out, eBay has ventured pretty far from what they used to be — an auction site populated by small sellers.  And at the rate they’re going, pretty soon eBay will no longer offer any reasonable self-employment opportunities at all!

Technorati Tags: news organization, news organizations, online news, web based news