You have no idea how shamed and humbled I feel about that.

I haven’t fallen for a scam since I was 20 years old. I actually sent $18 and a self addressed stamped envelope to get info on stuffing envelopes for pay.  That was pre-internet of course… but the lesson was learned well and I knew I’d never fall prey to anything like it again.  I pride myself on seeing a scam coming from a mile away.

*grumble, grumble*

So, last week I was surfing rental ads on Craigslist.  There was a house that looked like a perfect fit for us at a great price.  I emailed the owner for info and received this email:

Before we begin giving you more information on the apartment we need to know if you are currently up to date with your credit report. Obtaining your credit rating for free is easy, using the following link:

http://uscreditreportcenter.com/creditcheck.php (The process is free and safe and only takes a minute to fill out).

We have had a large number of defaulting tenants who came from Craigslist, so before we can set up an appointment with you we need to verify you are a credible tenant. Once you have completed the application please e-mail us back.

I thought that their request sounded fair… so I followed the link.  When asked to pay $1.95, I thought – ok, why not? I saw the fine print about canceling within three days and planned to do that.

To make a long story short – after giving them my credit card I was routed to a page with info on how to request a free copy of my credit report from another website.

*grrr*

So I felt foolish but I thought to myself, ‘Ok, fine – I was tricked.  That’s not the end of the world. I’ll just call the number and cancel right now and be done with it.‘

But the phone wasn’t answered.

And the fax I sent brought no reply.

And the email I sent was ignored.

And three days later my card was charged $34.97.

*argh!!*

I should also mention that the ‘landlord’ hasn’t replied to any of my testy emails about their little Craigslist scam.  Upon future exploration I learned they’re not really a landlord.  They have a private registration domain for email but maintain no website on it.  I suspect that they’re posting Craigslist ads for awesome looking houses all over the country – all with an affiliate link for the credit report site.

A call to the bank, a few copies of my fax and emails and the money is back in my account.  Oh – and my credit card had to be canceled and reissued which will affect me in a lot of other areas.  It’s a pain in the neck and I’m annoyed that I had to waste time dealing with it. All my own fault of course!

You know what annoys me the most?  An affiliate marketer scammed me. I’m an affiliate marketer!  Call me naive, but I didn’t realize that we had this sort of slimy underbelly in the affiliate marketing community.

It’s just wrong.

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The Most Wonderful Time of the Year from Staples via @BarbaraJones.

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This is another guest post from Brad Shorr – a really great writer and marketer who is an expert on using humor in business. His first post was Don’t Train a Duck, but Do Use Cartoons to Build Your Brand.

Be careful about how you mix cartooning (or any other form of humor) with business. As I mentioned in my earlier post, cartoons transform brands.  Unfortunately, that transformation can be for the worse if you take the wrong approach.  Following these 5 rules will keep humor working for you, not against you.

1. Do Not Make Fun of Your Customers. Have you seen the V8® Juice commercials where people get a thump on the forehead because they were too stupid to drink the product?  I hate them. Is the idea to shame a person into buying by branding him clueless? Doesn’t motivate me to buy, much less become loyal to the brand.
2. Do Not Make Fun of Your Industry. Remember the WaMu commercials featuring a group of stuffy, doddering old bankers babbling witlessly to a hip, casually dressed WaMu employee? Risky. By stereotyping the banking industry as old-fashioned, WaMu may alienate large segments of the market; in this case, anyone over forty. On top of that, given our current banking crisis, old-fashioned conservative values might be more prized than ever in a bank, even among the young. In any case, disparaging your own industry begs the question, then why are you in it? Crusades are serious business – if you’re on one to change your industry, why are you making jokes? Doesn’t compute.
3. Do Not Use Stereotypes. Building on the last point, it’s wise to stay away from stereotyping of any kind. Even today, offensive stereotypes have a way of creeping in to business humor. Why? Because often, there’s a fine line between funny and offensive. For example, I did a cartoon for a book pitch where an extremely old woman with a walker is at a used car lot. A moustache-twirling salesman is trying to sell her a souped-up sports car, telling her she’ll never be late for bingo again. Is that ageism? Used car salesmanism? Even a cartoon as innocent as this could easily backfire, so steer clear. (Car puns intended.)  I believe you can be plenty funny without being offensive, so why take a chance?
4. Do Be Brief. As funnyman William Shakespeare once said, brevity is the soul of wit. Many a good joke has been ruined by driving it into the ground. Take the earlier V8® and WaMu examples – as a one-time shot, either commercial would have been amusing and appealing. But beating us over the head with it quickly becomes annoying.
5. Do Repeat Yourself.  As with most other marketing activities, repetition is crucial. A one-off cartoon might attract some short-term buzz, but to really get the job done, do a series. What you want is for customers to see your newsletter in their email in-box and think, “Great! Another newsletter from XYZ. I can’t wait to see what cartoon they’ve got for me this month.”

Make sense? What other rules of business humor would you add to this list?

Here’s more samples of Brad’s business cartoons, and you can contact Brad about using cartoons in your marketing or call him at (630) 845-1778.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. Don’t Train a Duck, but Do Use Cartoons to Build Your Brand
2. Working at Home and the Two-Foot Buffer Zone
3. Viral Marketing Gone Awry – Hysterical!

Humor transforms brands. Everybody has heard of GEICO, the insurance firm with a gecko spokesman since 1999 – but did you know the company has been around since 1936? Another insurance company, Aflac, enjoys 90% name recognition thanks to its celebrity duck, even though most Americans don’t even know exactly what Aflac does. In the decidedly unfunny business of janitorial and maintenance supplies, New Pig Corporation has mopped up market share with help from a cartoon pig. And just for the record, animals are not required for injecting humor into a brand. Hormel keeps the SPAM name alive and well with an extremely silly SPAM Web site, and paper towel maker Georgia-Pacific caused quite a stir recently with a satirical online reality show, Brawny Academy.

Humor is an equal opportunity branding technique. It matters not whether the product is supplemental health insurance or processed pork, because all people like to laugh. Make ‘em laugh in a way that makes them connect with your brand, and serious business opportunities will follow.

Nobody Can Resist a Cartoon

You don’t have to be a multi-national with a six-figure marketing budget to be funny – most of my cartoon clients are entrepreneurs and small businesses. One-panel and two-panel cartoons are reasonably priced. I can create cartoons about your business or industry that feature your company’s logo, Web address, and even a caricature. Clients use them in many ways. Here are a few -

l Electronic newsletters and landing pages. Putting a cartoon above the fold is almost guaranteed to hold subscribers, attract new ones, and increase conversions.

l Mailings. One client sends a cartoon every month to hard-to-reach B2B prospects, along with product literature. The prospects forget the literature, but remember the cartoons and my client. It’s generating leads.

l Presentations. This cartoon was for a client who runs management workshops for multi-national companies. The purpose – to reduce complex ideas down to a simple, memorable concept. There were eight cartoons in the series; I believe he gives attendees printed copies as a leave-behind.

l Print media placement. In this very fun project, I partnered up with a client and placed a cartoon strip in a major trade publication. It’s a revealing case study of how traditional media meets conversational marketing.

l Advertisements. For print or online media, cartoons grab better than most photography and graphic design. Who can resist reading a one-panel cartoon?

l E-books and videocasts. I think there’s a market here – maybe it’s you!

The thing I love about cartoons is that very few people use them. With all the noise in today’s marketplace, how do you get heard? Cartoons give you the element of surprise in its most enjoyable form. You know the feeling you get when your friends and family throw you a surprise party? Take that warm, joyful, and extremely in-the-moment feeling (scaled back a good bit), and that’s how customers and prospects react to a branded cartoon. Not to sound overly dramatic, but I really believe cartoons open doors by opening hearts. When you build a business relationship with an emotional connection, instead of simply an intellectual one, it lasts longer and runs deeper. The big brands figured this out ages ago, and there’s no reason you can’t join the party.

Here’s more samples of Brad’s business cartoons, and you can contact Brad about using cartoons in your marketing or call him at (630) 845-1778.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. The 5 Rules of Business Humor
2. Viral Marketing Gone Awry – Hysterical!
3. 5 Ways You Can Use Your Blog To Build Your Coaching Practice

ROFL. This was the funnest contest. EVAH. Am thinking I have to do it again just because you guys are so dang funneh!

The Sparkplugging authors have made their selections. The following four LOLCat Caption Contest entries are the winners of Darren Rowse’s and Chris Garrett’s new book ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income. Please send me your snail mail address so I can send you your bookz.

From Andy Murd:

Entreprenoo cat sez “I will gladly give you equitiez tomorrow for cheezburger today”

From Sherry:

I IZ OFFENDED! I IZ NOT LOLCAT, I IZ SERIUS BLOGGER!

From A. B. England:

No nom timz? No probemz. Et cheezburgers at cumputr.

From Missy:

MeOwZA! I Iz Da 1st pRoBloGger KiTtY, anD i Iz SpArKpLuggIn AWaY.
LEaVe mE NoW, I hAvE mOnEy 2 cOunT.

Honorable Mentions:

From Dawn Miklich:

AS CFO (CHIEF FELINE OFFICR) IZ BOUT TIEM THEY GIMIE MAH OWN BLOG

From Neil Creek:

Teh twitter was yum, dog do digging, me 2 gracful 2 stumble upon, so I press de wordz.

From Jenny:

im in ur hard drive deletin ur saved passwordz

From Alex:

Alt-Tab Cat Is Working Hard

From Patrick:

HOW MANY WORDZ IN UR PRESS?

and

I IZ BRAINZ

From Rishil:

LOLCatz iz Awsum Link Bait

From Marissa:

REELY, YOUZ NO THINK I FORMAT C?

From Harrison McLeod:

In ur wurdpress moderatin ur commentz.

From Karen:

I CAN BE WHOSEVER I WANTZ ON TEH INTERNETS

Here’s more from overachievers Chris Bartow, Chance, Karrine, Carboncy, Dennis Bjorn Petersen, CaraM, who put together their own LOLCat images:

. .

. .

And thanks so much to the rest of you who participated:

Rick Emmerich, JennyDecki, @Stephen, Lori, Jen McCabe Gorman, Glenda Watson Hyatt, Lisa Marie Mary, Genesis, Momma, Tori Deaux, Mike Ralph, Sime, Ange Recchia, JoLynn Braley, Kim Beasley, Matt Tuley, Gizmo, Kathie Thomas, Neil Creek, Simple Mom, Sandra, BeadinByTheSea, J 4 Jokes, Stephanie, Karen Putz, Nicole, Goal Guru, Alex Shalman, Mike Huang, Eric, Carl, Brent2, Isle, Andrew Wee, Ericabiz, John Jones, Mickie, Andrea R and Scott (who completely slipped in at the last possible second before I closed comments!).

And finally, there was a tie between two Sparkplugging author submissions. They are both getting a copy of Lorelle Van Fossen’s Blogging Tips book. (Stay tuned because I have more of these to give away!!)

From Derek Semmler at The Man Page and DerekSemmler.com:

Hoo iz i not 2?
(At SOBCon last weekend, I rather passionately quoted Marianne Williamson in my presentation, “Who are we to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be?”)

From Eric Doggett at The Man Page and ShootTheBaby:

IM IN YUR WORDPREZ CHANGN YOUS COMPUHNY NAME.

Phew! Thanks again everyone for making our week so enjoyable! Next week We’re wrapping up the blog rollout celebration by giving away a NeatReceipts scanner & software. We’ll make it easy to win that one too.

KTHX ICanHasCheezburger for the inspiration!!

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As we continue to celebrate the new blogs and new name ’round here, I figured it’s high time to have some geeky fun and give you some goodies.

I am a huge LOLCats fan. You may have enjoyed my caption above, but I’m quite sure you can do better. Put your creative thinking cap on and come up with a caption that puts my caption to shame. Then I get to give 4 of you copies of Darren Rowse’s and Chris Garrett’s new book ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income. (And by the way, I finally got to meet Chris this weekend at SOBCon and he’s, like, absolutely awesome).

The LOLCat Contest

So it’s super simple:

1. Recaption the LOLCat photo above in a comment – Make it related to working at home or entrepreneurship if you can. (If you’re an overachiever, here’s a copy of the photo with no caption).
2. You’re automatically entered to win a copy of ProBlogger, Secrets to Blogging Your Way to a Six Figure Income.
3. The panel of Sparkplugging judges will chose 4 winners – whoever makes us fall off our chairs wins!
4. All entries will get their name in lights and lots of link love. We’ll pick a winner on Friday May 9th.

Not feeling very creative? Then let the LOLCat Translator help you come up with something.

That’s it! Have fun! Can’t wait to see what you come up with!

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

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Others on it include Loren Feldman (1938Media), Steve Hall (AdRants), Chris Heuer (SocialMediaClub), Guy Kawasaki, Darren Rowse (ProBlogger), Aruni (Entrepremusings), Aaron Brazell (TechnoSailor), Stephanie Agresta (InternetGeekGirl) and more.

I was scared to push play knowing a bit of what happened behind the video at SXSW. After hitting play I found I should have trusted my instincts.

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My Egyptian Heritage? When I was a toddler, I used to caress a statue of the Egyptian goddess Nefertiti that belonged to my grandmother. She insisted that it was a sign that she and I knew each other in a past life in Egypt. Although I don’t know if it’s true or not, I can say that I have always had a fascination with ancient Egypt, she and I were very close, and that same statue now sits on my desk today.

My REAL heritage. I am adopted, so I know very little about my genetic history. In fact, the only thing I know is that I am English, Swedish, Danish & Welsh. I would have to say that if I ever saw a resemblance between me and particular nationality, it would be Welsh. I’ve always wanted to go to Wales to connect with my biological past, because I’ve never really been able to find any information on my birth family.

My Clone? When my first daughter was born, I was amazed to find how incredibly alike we were, even as a baby. She has grown up to be my Mini-Me, and has even shared the same reoccurring nightmare dream I had when I was a child. Talk about w.e.i.r.d.

Famous – vicariously. I grew up in Glen Ellyn, Illinois and went to High School with Sean Hayes and Amy Carlson.

EEeeeewwwwwww… I went to college at Prescott College in Prescott AZ. Our new student orientation was a three-week backpacking trip in the wilderness, and we were not allowed to leave any trace of being there behind (read :: no toilet paper allowed :O)

How I piss off my family & friends. 99.9% of the time I am late to things, and it drives me nuts. But it doesn’t bother me as much as being early to things, which makes my skin crawl if I have to sit somewhere and do nothing for any length of time. Being stuck somewhere with nothing to do is my definition of claustrophobia. Same with having a computer with no internet connection. You seriously don’t want to be around me when Comcast has an outage; it’s downright embarrassing.

I confess. I am notorious for having a messy house. I actually love to organize things, and don’t mind actual cleaning (washing, polishing, laundry, etc.) – I just hate, hate, hate putting stuff away.

I’d like to get to know some of my new-ish readers better, so I would like to ask WAHM Tara, Dorothy Stahlnecker, Cory Huff, Rose, and WAH(Web)Mommy just how weird they are, too. But honestly, there are SO MANY of you that I’d love to hear from on this one, so please feel free to play along if you want to shake your weird thing with us, too!

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. A Really Weird Sign. Hysterically Off-Topic.

Last weekend, we had a family get together at my brother’s house. My parents had found a box of my old school papers, including yearbooks and assignments I brought home. They presented me with this box of memories, and I found proof positive that anyone can become a good writer.

Let’s first take a look at me when I was about 9 years old, to set expectations appropriately:

The dress I can handle :: sort of. You can’t see the wild hair in this reproduction, but UGH. And the workboots? Don’t ask, because I think I blocked it from my memory.

NOW, let’s take a look at some of the poems unearthed from my parents’ attic:

The Boy From Denver

There once was a boy from Denver
Who had a crush on Pam Henver
He picked up her math book
She gave him a bad look
And now he likes Dawn Tenver

Or perhaps this little ditty:

The Girl From France

There once was a girl from France
Who always wore jeans and tight pants
She looked at Dan,
And said, “Oh, Man!”
Now she is divorced with Vance

Oh, god, I’m laughing so hard I am having a hard time typing. But wait! It gets worse! And now, drrrruuummmm rrrrollllll please, for perhaps the worst poem of all time:

Pictures

Pictures make you look so weird
They made my brother have a beard

My brother is only eight years old
And all my pictures are covered with mold

When the flash is wrong, your eyes are red
They also kill pesky bugs dead

They killed my favorite spider plant
‘Cause it wasn’t a nasty witches chant

We heard the chant on T.V. last night
And boy! It was really a fright!

I kid you not. Methinks I have just peed in my pants.

So there you go. From the bowels of Wendy Piersall’s writing history, I can now firmly say this is proof positive that if you think you write poorly, you are sorely mistaken after reading my early writings. Anything is better than this stuff!

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**Char runs her Casual Fridays on Casual Keystrokes and sometimes gives away goodies (which is nice because I can actually have a chance at winning some of them unlike on Momsational!)

**I watch the Neatorama headlines and usually get sucked in when they find especially weird or cool things, like this hobbit house or a story on asphalt-eating bacteria. Yep, you read that right.

**Sometimes I just want to look at pretty things (so girly of me, I know…). That’s when I head over to Design Sponge, where even the ads are eye candy. And right now they are doing all of these gift-guide thingys that would break just about any budget on the planet if you got everything you wanted (as in, all of it!)

**And finally, no distracted Friday would be complete without a gaping stare at the photos over at Stuck in Customs…  he uses this amazing HDR effect in which he composites different exposures into one photo that is literally breathtaking… he’s good at sucking a whole hour out of my day sometimes… jerk.

Check out Hong Kong at Night… wwwoooooooooowwwww!!!

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

1. Friday Distractions
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Link for feed subscribers

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Sit back, relax, and get ready to laugh – we need it on Fridays!

Link for feed subscribers

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I always try to test things out before having to go live, so since eMoms was a WordPress-powered blog, my first move was to push my own blog from Google’s Blogger to WordPress to get a real feel for using WordPress.

If you have a blog, you probably know Blogger and WordPress are the two heavyweight tools for writing and publishing blogs – - – they comprise something between 60-75% of the market (determining blogging tools market share is more art than science— if you know of a good, comprehensive and recent report on blog usage, please comment).

As a primer, WordPress.com and Blogger.com (bought by Google in 1999) are free, easy-to-use, web-based blog publishers… if you’re thinking of making a move or getting started, here’s a good comparison…..

There is also WordPress.org, which provides free software that you need to install on a server — WP.org allows for tremendous flexibility at the cost of being more involved and requiring more technical know-how . Here’s one ex-Blogger’s rationale for switching.

Ever wonder how the two are doing relative to each other? There are a lot of Google toys out there many people don’t know a lot about and go under utilized. Here’s Google Lab’s Trends feature to compare Blogger and Wordpress based on search trends.

Anyway, word on the street is Blogger is superior to WordPress.com if you’re just getting your feet wet. If you want ultimate control and things like ftping and editing some text files don’t scare you, WordPress.org is by far the best way to go. If you know about the power of Drupal, you’ve probably already stopped reading this post.

But for a faux-hacker like me, playing with WordPress(.org) was kind of like Christmas… all the loads of free templates and plugins and widgets, all floating in freely distributed, mildly supported, and horribly commented code… yum! Sure, it was fantastic time sink, but luckily there are a ton of great resources out there. Find them, use them, and share them.

And I must say, once I did some reading and made the transition, going from Blogger to WordPress was like going from a bike with training wheels to a Ducati or like moving from Solvang to Las Vegas. Pretty much out of the box, I went from a vanilla text blog to an ultra-customized, multi-media, monetized website in nothing flat. Is it currently over-complicated? Sure… Is that a good thing? Well, we’ll see.

So what’s all this talk about 2.0?

Exactly! So in my pursuit of creating the next version of my blog, I wondered what else I could do to 2.0-ify my site… unfortunately, there really is no consensus about what it even means to be Web 2.0 anyway.

So while I was foolishly thinking Web2.0 was all about using the web as a universal platform and outlining new standards for web usability and empowering user-driven content, apparently all I had to do to make my blog web2.0 compliant was use glossy fonts, some glass badges, and call it beta, and I’d be all set.

And boy does that sure ring true, when even mainstream sites that have been around for 10 years, like BabyCenter.com, have decided to switch to slick new graphics and stick on the the moniker “beta”. Oh, OK…. I can do that.

Are you wondering if your site is 2.0? Here is a hilarious tongue-in-cheek Web 2.0 Validator. My blog got a 16/66…. I guess I have a ways to go to true 2.0 status yet.

Okay well what did you learn?

I actually learned lots from this exercise… chief among them:

• There’s a ton of rapidly evolving technology out there that can really make a difference to your online business.
• To avoid getting lost in the avalanche of new things, find a few key blogs as resources and get involved posting comments and asking questions. One of the best things about the open-source movement is there are a lot of people willing to help you.
• And ultimately, if you lose your way, there’s always things like the 2.0 validator or watching ok go on treadmills on YouTube to remind you not to take things all that seriously.

Next week I will tackle some great business resources I’ve come across in my starting up my startup.

Geekiest thing I found this week: “Visualizing people’s music listening trends” Boy do I love a good visualization.

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“Man’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”

But once you’re already outside of your comfort zone, what does it feel like? How do you know you’re stretching yourself?

I’ll tell you from first hand experience – a lot of the time it feels like $hit. Since I have spent a good amount of time outside of my own comfort zone, let me help you to recognize when you’re outside of yours, just so you know why you feel like crap.

1. You second guess your decisions.
2. Your critics, once easily ignored, suddenly rent way more head space than they deserve.
3. Your old plan of action may now seem overly simplistic.
4. Formerly non-existent “What If’s” suddenly spring to mind. A lot.
5. Before you got outside of your comfort zone, all you could think about was getting your goal, but once outside of it, all you can think about is what will happen if you don’t reach your goal.
6. You become a textbook example of the infamous “Impostor Syndrome“.
7. Words start rearranging themselves in your head – for example, the phrase “I can do this!” somehow becomes “Can I do this?”
8. You sometimes wonder WTF to do next.
9. “Positive Thinking” suddenly doesn’t quite seem so, well, “realistic” as it used to
10. Digg Trolls magically appear to be more intelligent than they really are.

So what do you do now?

Here’s the most important thing to keep in mind (no matter what else you wish you weren’t keeping in mind):

If you were strong enough to push yourself outside of your comfort zone, you have to trust yourself to get through to the other side.

So here’s ten more tips to get you through what we could call “growing pains”:

1. Talk about your fears or concerns with someone out loud – the doubting voices in your head sound a lot more stupid when they come out of your mouth.
2. In the big picture, even if you really screw up, you’ll be grateful for it at some point.
3. Being outside of your comfort zone by nature doesn’t feel good, so feeling scared or crappy doesn’t necessarily mean that something is wrong.
4. NOW would be a really good time to recap your accomplishments to yourself. Yeah, as in, right now.
5. No matter how hard it is to think positive, you really gotta do it anyway, even if it doesn’t feel very encouraging.
6. If you really get off track, you’ll know. Really.
7. There’s a reason the saying “Fake it ‘Till You Make it” is still in use after all these years.
8. If you’ve gotten this far, you already know that listening to your fears is a dumb move. So don’t start now.
9. Nobody ever did anything great without taking a risk.
10. And of course, don’t forget that a strong alcoholic drink shared with your BFF will always knock some sense into your head.

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2. The Risks and Rewards of Making Big Business Changes
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The scope of the amount of work that needed to be done to pull this off was, well, more than I care to admit. A huge hug and special thanks go to the team who worked really flipping hard to get it ready to go:

• Steve Johnson :: Tech Wizard of WordPress
• Randa Clay and Sarah Lewis :: Design Queens
• Char Polanosky :: Magical Morale Booster
• My new hosting company pSek :: Stonehenge Solid Support
• Erika Jurney :: To-do List Disappearing Spells
  

I freely admitted earlier that I had to let “balance” slide to get it all done. Yesterday I did practically nothing, except ensuring I got a lot more time with my kids, who are happy to have their mom back.

I also treated myself to a trip to Target, probably my favorite treat of all.
Mmmmmm…. Target…….

But now I face… The Aftermath.

If you liked this article, you might also enjoy:

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3. Launch of T3: Tech Talk Tuesday

Experts Exchange (at www.expertsexchange.com)

Who Represents (at www.whorepresents.com)

Graphic Arts Exchange (at www.graphicartsexchange.com)

Speed of Art (at www.speedofart.com)

IP Anywhere (at www.ipanywhere.com)

Morrison and Foerster (at www.mofo.com)

Apetit (at www.apetit.com – they just messed the whole naming thing up!)

And probably the worst offender of all is Cumming First Methodist Church in Cumming, GA (at www.cummingfirst.com)

Plus two legendary mistakes that are now retired:

Mole Station Native Nursery (at www.molestationnursery.com)

Italian Power Generator (at www.powergenitalia.com)

Well, hopefully you won’t be haunted with a domain name like one of these for the rest of your life. :O

The Method to My Madness

The real reason I wanted to share these with you is that I wanted to give a shout out to David over at PickyDomains.com. I mentioned a few weeks ago that I am in the process of starting up a new support forum site for families of alcoholics – and David and his team did an unbelievably creative and GREAT job at picking a domain for the site: SecondHandDrink.com (which is coming soon!).

In fact, they came up with over 70 choices that took me more than an hour to go through and evaluate, because most of their ideas were just phenomenal. I’m after him to raise his prices because I think that $50 for such a great naming service is too cheap for what they offer. But until he listens to me, you might want to hire his team now.

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1. Interested in Some Great Domain Names?
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I think I may may this a Friday tradition – a roundup of all the things that distracted me during the week! (Oh, that could be a L-O-N-G Friday post – jeesh!!)

On that note – here’s a very funny video about an enthusiastically hungry cat who, well, is just plain enthusiastic.

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2. My Favorite Friday Distractions
3. Friday Distractions :: 6 Reasons You Shouldn’t Read My Blog

So there’s this sign. A rather ambiguous sign.

It’s been let loose on Digg. And the comments will have you rolling on the floor laughing your tail off. The comments get even better on the original post.

Go – enjoy the sign and enjoy your Memorial Day Weekend!

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1. Just Exactly How Weird Are You?
2. How to Choose the Perfect Blogging Topic
3. Today is the Last Day to Sign Up for Productivity from the Inside Out

RSS Readers, here’s the Bloggy Dance Video link. Thanks to Chitika buddy Sharon for posting it!

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