There’s a quote (I believe its from a Beatles song) that goes, “I get by with a little help from my friends”. Well, the Hispanic business community is getting a little help these days from a relatively new business networking site, Questamente. Questamente is a bi-lingual (spanish and english) networking site geared towards helping hispanic business owners find the help they need. The site offers a job board, blogs, business profile, help with business plans and other aspects of running a business but perhaps the most important aspect the site offers is the ability to locate other business owners that have things in common with you and your business.

Sites like this have been around a while for english only speaking business owners and I believe this is a valuable tool for the market place to have. A big plus is that its a bi-lingual site, allowing businesses seeking hispanic help the ability to post as well. Registration is free (which is another plus) and advertising on the site is currently kept to a minimum.

The site itself is laid out in an easy to follow layout and users will have no trouble finding the job board or the “coffee shop” which appears to be filled with articles to help business owners. The only issue with the site is that there isn’t a defining container around the main content. The colored tabs ride on the black background, leading to a missing feeling of togetherness in the site. Over all though, Questamente appears to be a solid tool for both Spanish and English speaking entrepreneurs.

Its August already and before you know it stores will be clearing out the back to school supplies and loading things up for Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas (it seems to come earlier every year doesn’t it?). Soon that dreaded task of shopping for Christmas will be on everyones mind. Well, the AWESOME people at Coupon Chief want to make sure you have the right coupons for your holiday shopping.

Coupon Chief is a very well laid out site offering coupons for various name brand stores (Target Coupon Codes, Best Buy Coupons and Amazon.com Deals are just a few) and online shopping sites around. The surprising thing is that they actually have some pretty good deals for the stores (499 for a PS3 at Best Buy!!).

There are coupons for just about anybody on line at coupon chief, you can see all the stores they have coupons for by clicking the stores tab (and boy are there a lot!!) and the front page has some of the best coupons available. If you have some serious shopping to do for your Christmas list, or you just want to spoil yourself, you need to check out Coupon Chief!

So I’m on an online storage kick today… I came across another amazing online storage center that offers some cool features. This one is drag and drop like its a mapped drive right on your computer. Thats right, iBackup takes online storage to the next level by making it as simple and easy as using your current drives. HOW COOL IS THAT?? It would have prevented issues like this!

Where the file sharing I mentioned earlier is a ‘free’ (ad sponsored product) the offering from ibackup is not. However, with economy plans starting at just under $10 a month for 5gb of storage space, who could complain and with idrive for ibackup, you get the ease of mapping a drive on their servers as though it were sitting on your immediate network. This provides for easy drag-n-drop and familiar explorer interface to work with online data. No other online storage services offer this feature with the kind of performance and security that IBackup offers.

The efficiency of ibackup make it a worth while alternative to other costly (and sometimes unwieldy) backup solutions. This one almost seems too good to be true.

Been in a situation before where you need to transfer a large file (say a cd) to a coworker or a friend? Or maybe you just need a place to stash your mpg’s of Veronica Mars (so no one else know you secretly like that show). Well, check out Driveway and on line file sharing and storage resource and a relative new comer to the scene.

Driveway boasts file sizes up to 500mb in a single file, unlimited uploads and downloads and even the ability to edit .doc, .xls and .ppt office files. You can choose to send the file to a friend, yourself or to no one at all. The interface is very straight forward and leaves little to be missed, and the site is fairly quick to upload (it took a while to upload a 350mb file to the site on a business class cable internet line).

Once the file is there, if you put an email in the form, you will receive a link to the file to download or you’re presented with a link to your file where you will be able to access it. Files uploaded to the driveway servers are kept for 90 days from the time of last access (so as long as you access it once every three months you’re set).

Driveway seems to be a fairly complete online filesharing site, we’ll have to keep an eye on it though to see if it remains free (there are currently no charges or ads on the site that I have found…). For more info on Driveway, visit: Driveway.com.

Thinking of Incorporating? Check out IncParadise for information on forming aMaryland corporation. Incparadise will help you incorporate in the state of Maryland (which is one of the cheapest and easiest places to incorporate) for $89 plus the state filing fee.

Why incorporate through IncParadise? Its easier, it takes the hassle out of incorporating and they know how to do it. Plus, if you want you can incorporate in other states as well for the same cost, 89$ plus the state fee. Their site is laid out in a clean easy to follow layout and they allow for ordering both online and via fax or mail. It couldn’t be easier. Could it?

IncParadise will answer any questions you have about incorporating, they’ll work with you to figure out which is the best type of incorporation for you and your business and where the best location is. They even have an affiliate program for those who want to help others incorporate.

Their incorporation process is painless and easy so if you’re looking to incorporate, check them out!

Three weeks ago I took the plunge and upgraded my laptop from Windows XP (I have an ubuntu install on there as well) to Windows Vista Ultimate in order to check it out and make sure it will work with the software we use here at work. After hearing about messy upgrades and the tightened security in Vista, I was a little leery of the whole process, but I was surprised by the ease of upgrade.

The upgrade was seamless, the laptop went from windowsXP to Vista with out any problems. I have had to upgrade several drivers (mostly video drivers) and reinstall some of my software (itunes and an ISO mounting program) in order for it to work correctly but otherwise it worked well. A couple of clicks disabled the security prompts (which weren’t that annoying to be honest…). I did not find though that vista was a vast improvement over windows XP.

The laptop in question is just over a year old, it is an HP Pavilion dv8000 model, dvdrw, 1gb memory, 2 100gb Harddrives, an ATI Radeon Express 200M video card, 1400×900 display and an AMD Turion64 cpu (the thing rocks). Ran XP wonderfully, runs linux like a champ. Vista seems slow and clunky at times. I do like the gadgets (though they don’t always work correctly) but it takes longer to boot and startup than it did under XP which is not an improvement. The overall gain in the gui isn’t that great when compared to XP or KDE or Gnome under linux (I actually think I prefer KDE with compiz fusion to the vista aero).

Am I upset I wasted the time to upgrade to vista? No. I can always reinstall XP (I still have the discs), though I wonder if it will free up the license for Vista so I can install it elsewhere… do I think everyone should upgrade to vista? No. Unless you’re buying a new PC, then it only makes sense to buy one with vista on it. Would I recommend Ultimate? Possibly, though if you’re using it in a strictly work environment, go with Business Plus or whatever and for home, definitely pick up the MCE Edition…

I’m not old (well, I’m 29…) and I have little use for their product, but its not their product I want to talk about. Value Stair Lifts has managed to make a nice, clean site that is easy to navigate and informative on their products. most businesses would be good to do the same.

The site is not over powered by images, does not confuse the visitor and allows you to contact them for information with out leaving the front page. Something few business sites do these days. The simple layout of the site (menu on the left, main content and some other content on the right) are a simple layout that relay the important information. Even pricing was easy to find on the site.

If I move to the UK and I need a stairlifts installed I’d call them.

So I’ve been looking at online diet sites lately. Not because I need to loose weight (at 6′0″ and 130lbs, I could, as my sister puts it, eat a donut…) but because I bet that many of the diets that help people loose weight, would help me gain weight. Besides, if I start eating better and working out (ok, walking…) I might actually sleep better and feel better and become a nicer person right? Well, virtually all of the sites around charge you (any where from 19.99 a month to 30.00 a month plus startup costs). If you’re on a good diet thats working for you already, these sites probably won’t offer you anything you can really use. Thats where MY Fitness Pal comes in to play.

A free calorie counter, My Fitness Pal charges nothing, and claim that they’ll continue to provide a free service. At the moment, that seems to be quite true and it will be interesting to see if it continues to stay that way as the site gains in use. There are no ads, and you can even opt out of the weekly(?) email when you register.

Once in the site, there are no menus or suggested diet’s or exercise routines. Simply a way to track the calories you’re intaking and the exercise you’re doing to help counter that. They provide graphs and reports so you can chart your gain/loss over time which is nice and the site, while a little bare isn’t really bad to look at or navigate. The calorie counter is fast and easy to use and will teach you the nutritional contents of what you are eating, and consequently, how you can make better food choices.

There is a forum that is surprisingly spry and in use (something rare in a lot of cases), where you can talk with others using the free site and gain insight in to dieting and exercise. I would caution though that there does not seem to be an abundance of licensed help, so take what you get with a grain of salt (don’t listen to anyone telling you to go on a water only diet for three weeks… sure it will work, but you might look a little like Nicole Richie after a while…)

All in all, if you’re looking for a place to keep track of your calories, or to find out just how much you’re eating in a day, check out My Fitness Pal.

I’m in the preliminary stages of considering opening my own online store for backpacking gear. In addition to working out how to become a reseller for several of the manufacturers, I’ve been looking around at shopping cart software. The software offered by ashop is among the best I’ve come across so far, with a couple of minor drawbacks.

The customer interface on the shopping cart software is fairly straight forward and easy to follow. It allows for the customer to get information about the items, see a picture, read about it and select from a number of options. It works fairly well in both Firefox and IE (7) and is really eye pleasing in its basic form and layout.

The cart software does require that a customer create a login or login to an already existing account, something that is pretty standard these days among shopping cart softwares.

I was a little put off at first with the admin area when I wasn’t able to use Firefox to login. I don’t know if this is due to some special code they’re using or just because they have a checker in there to make sure that you’re using IE 5.0 or greater, but the fact that I cannot use the admin section in Firefox is a little alarming (since its the second most popular browser today). If the shop section works in both, the admin section should as well.

That being said, it is fairly easy to admin items, add items, check stats on items, send newsletters, look at order status and some other options. For more information, check out ashop shopping cart software and try their demo. The nice thing is that they have demos of both the shopping cart itself and the admin section and they offer a trial period. Pricing is by the month as this is a hosted solution (you host your shop on their servers) and is inexpensive if your shop is actually selling items. For those looking for a self hosted solution, this may not be the best thing for you, but give it a go with the free trial.

With the advent of digital photography, the market has had to create new ways to share and display these digital wonders. The easiest way is a digital picture frame. DigitalFramez.com is an online retailer specializing in only digital frames in a 7, 9 or 10 inch size, all with varying amounts of memory.

First impressions of the web site are that this company knows what they’re selling and they know what people want. The four most popular items are front and center (below the ad that tells you about the free sd card that comes with every order) and there are links to other items on both sides of the page.. The site is laid out nice and cleanly and is very easy to navigate. On the left side of the site, they have links to the different size frames as well as links to information about them and their products (which is a nice feature).

Clicking on the links to the various sizes brings up a page for each size that has the different options available, and while it looks like they’re all the same “frame” with a different border, it is nice to see them laid out like that. The product page has a good description of the item as well as the cost. The only thing lacking is an area for customer reviews of the product, though I bet you could google the item and find that.

The site has a live help button that was green when i visited, I did not try it, but its nice to see that there is an option for help if you need it. The company is located (it looks like the UK) outside of the US, so shipping is a little pricy and the number of countries they ship to is mostly limited to Europe and the North America, but they do have a good selection of items. I’d be willing to order from them.