Maybe you are like me on claiming your facebook name — a bit too late. Someone else who doesn’t even have my exact name used it for theirs. Her name is DaLana Hawkins. Geez.

So this is how it works. You can use a period or a dot ” . ” in between any letters in your name but once someone chooses all the letter you want in a row, regardless of the dots between, your name has been taken. You can only use three dots in a name. So all these names are the same to facebook:

lanahawkins
lana.hawkins
l.a.n.ahawkins
lanahawkin.s

Get it?

When you go to select your name in facebook you can see if any particular combination is available. I believe it is under settings. Facebook will give you some choices if your name is taken like lanahawkins2, lanahawkins3 — totally lame in my humble opinion.

So I took Janak’s advice and thought of my name as a keyword and used it twice. I chose:

lanahawkins.lana.hawkins

So my facebook link is http://facebook.com/lanahawkins.lana.hawkins

I’ll have to see what happens in a search for this one and I’ll update this post if anything interesting happens.

P.S. this is very similar for google gmail too.

I just ran across this easy to use application that lets you change your twitter background really easily and for free. It’s run by a group of programmers named Zugara.  You can donate some money to them and they send it to the Make a Wish Foundation.

You go to their site FreeTwitterDesigner.com

You sign in using your twitter account if you want it to automatically load your new theme and background automatically.  I recommend the twitter sign-in method.  It seems to give you more choices in your design.

Or use it without signing in.

Select a theme or use a blank theme.

You can upload an image and it shows you what it will look like in various screen resolution.

You can also change the text colors, link colors background color (if your background image doesn’t cover it all, plus both sidebar colors.  The twitter panel can also be ghosted (transparent).

You can add shapes and objects and images and move them around.

It’s fun and easy to use.  I highly recommend it!

http://FreeTwitterDesigner.com

Local Business Owner Challenges Brick And Mortar Companies: I Can Improve Your Advertising ROI!

Ann Arbor, MI (April 18, 2009) - Lana Hawkins, a local business owner, is making a challenge to community businesses across Ann Arbor. She believes she can show them how to get more for their advertising dollar – even in today’s economy.

Online local search has been proven to be the first thing people do when they are looking for local businesses. In fact, according to DMNews “35% of ALL searches [on the internet] are local”.

Because more and more people are performing searches online before they ever leave their homes, Lana Hawkins is helping local businesses get their name in front of those internet surfers.

Lana Hawkins recently launched a website, directoryofannarbormi.com (aka dira2.com), and has started attracting many local brick and mortar businesses who want to improve their chances of getting found on the internet quickly.

“Brick and mortar businesses know that marketing and advertising are important to continue even during the toughest times but they do look for ways to save. And that’s exactly what we’re giving them.” says Lana Hawkins.

Using her directory, directoryofannarbormi.com, local businesses will get instant advertising in the online directory with just a few clicks. It’s easy and simple. There are no long forms or creative advertising needed.

It’s perfect for any size businesses looking to save a few dollars on advertising and improve their overall customer reach.

Offline stores now have the opportunity to purchase premium listings that will get more eyes on their ad. And as the owner says, “The more eyes you get on your business at the time your prospect is interested, the better opportunity you have to get more customers.”

All the local companies who participate will be one step ahead of their local competition. Since more and more people are searching online for local businesses it makes it obvious that more owners will start leveraging local search to their advantage.

Directoryofannarbormi.com provides space for a detailed description that makes it effortless for anyone who visits your listing to know exactly what you provide. It is a perfect opportunity for your company to make that internet surfer an offer they can’t refuse.

These listings for local businesses will be served up for all the local communities and optimized just for Ann Arbor. The added value a directory such as this brings to local businesses is tremendous and helps get your company in front of your ideal client faster.

For more information you can visit directoryofannarbormi.com (or dira2.com), contact Lana Hawkins at 734 478-2936, or email to directoryofannarbor@gmail.com.

Or get your free listing in the directory by going to http://directoryofannarbormi.com/submit.php.
We’ll approve your legit Ann Arbor business listing in about 24 hours.

The mom in me wants to show you the video my daughter made Thanksgiving weekend for the Coldplay LOST? video contest.  One of the things that impressed me was that weeks before hand she knew what the story was going to be and she made a story board with the exact times for each shot.  Then she edited it using FinalCut Pro. 

My daughter and I made a great music video for the Coldplay LOST? contest this weekend.  It involved three days of shooting, mostly because of a minor continuity mistake.  One of the scenes had the main character holding a scarf after a pivotal point on the story.  However, that scarf made it into a few too many scenes.

We shot on the second day, however, that day turned out to be much sunnier than the first. After a lot of color correction it was decided by the Director, Miura Hawkins, to re-shoot the scenes on the following day which turned out to be cloudy like the first day.

Well we live in Michigan so you’re nearly guaranteed some cloudy weather at least after a sunny day.  Not too much sun here.  It was much better for shooting since we didn’t need to match lighting when it’s overcast.

We made this movie in HD and it turned out great.  I will post a link once it uploads to youtube.  Actually, I post a link to vimeo because I think the quality will be better.  The Coldplay contest requires an upload to youtube.

Miura put together a story board with times for each scene this made the process run really smoothly over all.  I have to give her a ton of credit on the story board.  75% of the people in my video classes had little or no story boards for their videos and she’s in 11th grade. Go Miura!

I’m totally psyched by this one!  You’ve gotta check out this new blog I found called ExtremeSportsBlog.com . There are fifty (50) different categories of extreme sports with over 20 videos in each category.  I never even heard of some of these things before I saw this blog. 

You’ve got your Base Jumping, Winged Suit Flying, and Zorbing (huh?).  Zorbing — you know, rolling around in a human sized hamster ball down a gentle hill.  Geez, now I know what the pet hamster must have felt when the neighbor kid rolled him down the stairs.

How about Ski Joring or Jumping Stilts? Wow. Now that’s new to me.  There are at least 1,017 videos on the site and many will get your heart pumping just imagining doing it.  Put yourself in the place of these guys who not only jump off 1,000 ft cliffs but do a few back flips off a launching pad in the process.

Need a rubberneck fix?  Take a look at some of these nasty crashes and be glad it’s not you. Yikes. Check out this one BMX Video Crashes.  Have fun and forget the coffee!

I just love WordPress themes.  It’s so cool that you can try on new looks for your blog just by uploading a few files. So I changed my FitHealthySelf.com/blog with a new theme.  Take a look and let me know if you like if.  I can’t even remember what the old one looked like. Who knows, I may change it every season. Hope the readers don’t get confused.

I’ve started a new blog for single moms who are looking for ways to earn enough money to send their kids to college, without having to remortgage the house, take a 20 year loan, get extra jobs or work another 15 years to pay for it.

It is called Mom Pays For College.

I worked my way through two college degrees and it was a lot of work.  Luckily for me my employers paid most of the tuition and I came away with two engineering degrees and no debt.  However, I did this while working full time and the Master’s degree was while I had a small child too.  Talk about driven.

I used to think that this would be great for my kids, working their way through school, but I have changed my mind. I think that it would actually be OK if I paid for most of their college costs. After all, they are becomming so very expensive in the US that it seems like a huge burden to place on some kid (the student loan debt) if there is another way.

If you have the feeling of “where is the money going to come from for college education for my kids” then stop by and leave your opinion on the subject and find out a way to pay for those rapidly approaching expenses.

Visit Mom Pays for College right now.

I’ve started a new fitness and health blog in conjunction with the Fit, Healthy Self eBook and exercise video demonstrations. There, I will write and publish many articles about staying healthy and getting fit without going on any diet.  I hate diets.  Check out “Dieting. Just Say No Way” right now and learn 4 simple ways to lose weight.