7 Step Consulting

Cell Phone News

Looking for up to date cell phone news? SJA Mobile is a very, very clean text-only blog that connects you with up to date mobile news. I am seriously impressed with the blog. Some might see it as a plain, but in the day of advertising covered blogs with flashy graphics the black background and text-only content is refreshing. It almost has an “Apple” feel to it.

Page Rank Fluctuations

I’ve had some page rank fluctuations on several blogs. It’s been weird. Usually Google updates and everyone notices. You see it on blogs and forums “page rank change!!!”. I didn’t see that, but one of my blogs dropped from PR4 to PR3. Boo.

Diving and Gymnastics

Watching Olympics diving is just ridiculous. The Chinese girl has been diving for 11 years. She’s 15. Talk about dedication — or forced dedication.

Jump, tuck, spin, spin, spin, untuck, splash.

Amazing.

Find business credit cards

We seem to talk about this all the time, but I’m not ashamed. I freakin’ love CreditCards. Especially for business travelers like you and me. They just make the most sense. Why use a debit card that is directly linked to all of your money? The credit card is just safer.

Plus, you can earn ridiculously awesome rewards (cash back, travel miles, hotel points, etc.).

CardHub.com is designed to help you find the perfect card based on specific search criteria. I recently searched for a card by choosing the following options on the website:

• Excellent credit history (good for me!)
• Personal and Small Business cards — remember, this is ultimately for business travel
• Rewards (all of them although I personally prefer cash back)
• All card networks
• No annual fee (why pay for something you can get for free?)

Overall the searching was easy, no problems. If there was one negative thing I had to say I would wish they would change it so that I can just pick all of my search criteria at once rather than one at a time. After each criteria you select, it updates the list which takes a good half second each time.

Other than that, it was great.

Got a new work computer

My old laptop finally died at work. I sent it back with high hopes of a brand new, smoking hot machine.

I got a slightly updated version of the old laptop.

Hilarious.

Yet, sadly, not unexpected. Life goes on…

Snazzy Brochures

You’ve done it. You finally won your first client meeting.

All the weeks of work and preparation for the sales call paid off. They want you to come present to the big wigs at the corporate headquarters.

It’s your first customer. It’s your first and possibly last shot. You’ve spent a lot of money to get here. You need to land the deal. Desperately. It sounds like the tale of any other entrepreneur, but this time it is you. It’s go time.

You need your presentation materials from your business cards to your brochures to the sleeves that hold your documentation to look spot on.

Stop — don’t print them in the office or on your home computer. Let’s step it up a notch and get some high quality prints from PsPrint. They do high quality brochure printing and can surely handle your small order. PSPrint is one of the few high quality shops that will complete your online printing order.

Tell them how you want it, and that’s how you’re going to get it.

Fast. Professional. And high quality for that lucky meeting. Focus on other things (memorizing what you’re going to say!) and let PsPrint handle the printing details for you.

Wow, Way to go Michael

He did it. Michael Phelp’s reached his goal.

China started the Olympics at 8:08PM on 8/08/2008. The date has significance in China and is linked to prosperity. (Thousands got married the same day.)

Now Michael Phelp’s has 8 Gold Medals in one Olympics. If he wore all the medals he has ever won, I’m sure he would fall over.

Way to go, Mike. Keep up the good work.

Paintball as a team event?

We’ve thrown around several team building exercises at work. Not just events at the office, actual events off site that help bring the team together while also having fun. We’ve talked soccer, softball, and the guys have even thrown out going paintballing.

As you might imagine, most of the girls are not enthused about these totally awesome weapons flinging paint at them at high velocity. Or having a paintball sniper take aim at them from behind a tree or something like that.

But the guys are all over it. I’m not sure why we haven’t scheduled it yet. Pntball.com can help you find all of the gear you need to safely enjoy a round of paintball. Of course they can hook you up with a paintball gun as well as a big hopper to hold all of your ammo. You would expect that from any paintball store. But they’ve also got safety gear, paintball sights (how awesome!), and apparel to wear out on the course.

And the best part? Cheap prices and free shipping. Can’t beat that.

He’s still a beast!

Michael Phelps is amazing. Not only has he won all six events he has participated in with the Olympics, he has set world records in every single event.

Is there anything this kid cannot do?

Is six gold medals enough? I think everyone (except his competitors) wants to see him go eight for eight. But it won’t be easy. I think one of his events left is a team relay… so he only has a small portion in that.

Should be fun to watch.

Ultimate Movie Software

My wife and I still have copies of our wedding video on CD. My Dad took the video for us, and gave us a CD of the files so we could save them and convert them to whatever wanted.

But we don’t have a Mac or expensive movie editing software. We’ve also taken videos on our digital camera (not video camera, just camera with a video option). It saves the movies in AVI format, but we want to make sure we get the highest quality video — and — can share it with friends and family.

What we need is a great piece of software that can help us edit the files (ever taken a 90 degree angle video on your digital camera only to remember that you can’t turn it? I have!) that can also convert AVI to MPG.

Here’s a shot of the video editor:

Looks like it should be pretty easy to learn. I definitely look forward to trying it out. It has 30 different effects and can help with color adjustments.