Justin Germino Ramblings

I am stuck in a case where my iTunes can’t load the iTunes App Store and my Safari browser can’t load any websites at all.

I have seen other users report similar problems on the Apple forum but I can’t see any resolution.  I opened a support case with Apple but have received nothing but the auto reply so far.

I have uninstalled both iTunes and Safari, rebooted, re-installed, flushed all sorts of cache and no matter what I do Safari cannot connect to the internet and just spins in place no matter what website I try to visit.

Chrome, Firefox, IE, Opera all work fine, and this problem only started after the Safari 10.5.x upgrades I did last week.  In the meantime I hope I can find a resolution soon because not being able to access the iTunes apps store is a bit of a setback.

-Justin Germino

Yesterday kicked off the Kindle Fire giveaway contest on DragonBlogger.com where thanks to some awesome sponsors I am able to give away Kindle Fire gadgets to two lucky readers who enter the contest. The contest is a random draw contest but readers can gain new entries everyday and increase their odds of winning.

Enter the contest now for a chance to win one of two Amazon Kindle Fire’s in the giveaway.  So this is your chance to win a free Kindle Fire and I suggest you enter the contest now!

I have opened the contest to anyone, however I will only ship to an address in the United States or Canada, so if you want to enter and live Internationally you have to have a friend stateside that I can ship the Kindle Fire to.

Thanks to the following awesome sponsors for helping me put together the biggest contest ever so far:

Dragon Blogger Kindle Fire Giveaway Sponsors

These awesome sponsors made this giveaway possible and you should pay them a visit and thank them!

Platinum Sponsors

BlogEngage.com

Aidy Reviews

Gold Sponsors

Basic Podcasting Tips

Blondish.net

Silver Sponsors

iBlogZone.com

Metallman

How To Blog

Smart Boy Designs

-Justin Germino

If you are keen to social media, and would like to improve your scope of it in order to broaden your horizons, then it is important that you understand there is a certain, unspoken etiquette that dictates the right and wrong way to use social networking sites. Even more (for you business-minded readers), there is an effective and an ineffective (even counterproductive) way to use social media. If you want to get the most out of your Internet social networking, then you owe it to yourself to gain a thorough understanding of what to do and what not to do. One of the best ways you can optimize your social media participation is to schedule your updates. Read on for some more about the importance of scheduling social media updates.

Your target audience

Who are you trying to speak to? This is a serious consideration if your social media usage involves a target audience. For example, if your niche targets college students, then it doesn’t make much sense to send updates out at the crack of dawn (you may be up and drinking your coffee, but I don’t know too many college students who are actually early birds). By scheduling your social media updates, you are able to put your messages in front of your target audience’s eyes when they are actually open.

Flooding the market

I don’t know about you, but I get really annoyed when someone I’m following on Twitter decides to completely monopolize my feed so that I am forced to basically follow only them (unfollow). If you want to respect people, rather than force yourself on them, then you need to space your updates out some. Sure, you may only be able to squeeze time for social media in during your lunch break, but that doesn’t mean you have to squeeze all of the day’s tweets into a 30-minute period.

Set it and forget it

Perhaps one of the biggest advantages of scheduling social media outlets is that you can approach the task like a business matter. If social media is important to you but you have a busy schedule, you can schedule your social media time just like you schedule your meetings, then create and schedule all of your updates and that time and move on.

There is no doubt that if social media is important to you, then scheduling social media updates is also important. Make use of one of the many popular applications designed to automate the scheduling process, like HootSuite, Tweetdeck and Co Tweet, to make your Internet social life a breeze.

About the Author: Abe Morario is a full-time writer with a passion for social media and business. He enjoys working with accounting recruitment firms to help new businesses find affordable staff.

It is amazing how quickly I have lapsed on my fitness regimen and now am paying the price. In June 2011 I was down to about 169 pounds and felt healthy and better, but a cruise in July followed by a busy schedule and excuses to not find the time to hit the gym 3 days a week and I wound up at 180 pounds and feeling just more crappy in general.

What I really need to do is block out an hour a day three days a week and just go back to the gym, it isn’t easy and I have to see where I can fit the block in without causing disruption to my job, or my hectic schedule picking the kids up from school or helping my oldest with his homework before dinner.

I saw a fitness equipment which you can use while sitting at your desk that was similar to a stationary bike pedaling except with resistance bars you push with your feet. I can’t remember the name of it now but saw it in the Skymall catalog while on a plane and it looked like an interesting way to burn calories while sitting at my desk typing or sitting on conference calls all day long.

I will have to do further research, or else I better start saving now for the treadmill desk I wish I could get.

-Justin Germino

I ordered the Kindle Fire’s I will be giving away in the Kindle Fire contest on Dragonblogger.com starting Monday. I found out that it is easy to order Kindle Fire devices and check mark “give as a gift” which has them sent unmarked and unregistered.

This way I didn’t have to deal with de-registering the Kindle Fire devices manually and having any personal information sent along to the winner. I don’t have to open the boxes now and can just reship to the winner without any issues.

In retrospect, I probably should have just waited and ordered/shipped to the winner directly from Amazon when they won the contest. But I wanted to take a picture of me holding the boxes in my hand to show readers that I had them. I could have saved the shipping fee, but the picture holding the Kindle boxes was worth it.

I am excited about this giveaway, it is the largest contest I have done so far in my 3 year old technology blog and I had some fantastic sponsors.

The following sites also signed up to become Platinum sponsors and get special notice!

BlogEngage.com

Aidy Reviews

The Chefs Cookbook

I am super excited and hope to get as many readers as possible signing up for the contest.

-Justin Germino

I like to think of today as food coma Friday. I am stuffed from all the turkey, stuffing, potatoes, green beans, rolls and so much other food the family ate as our thanksgiving lunch yesterday. Yes, I did say lunch instead of dinner because we decided to drive up to California thanksgiving afternoon to spend the long weekend in Encinitas.

I don’t have to do any holiday shopping on black Friday because we already purchased some gifts and others we have had since September. The rest will be ordered online or through a single shopping in early December. I will probably take the boys to pick out gifts for their mom in the next week of two as well.

Things are pretty good overall and I can’t complain. Work keeps me very busy and I also enjoy blogging and spending time with my wife and kids. Lately I alternate between spending time playing Green Lantern: Rise of the Manhunters on the Xbox 360 and Red Alert 3 with my oldest son on the computer.

For the first time in years I don’t really have a Christmas gift or item that I really want as I have everything I need. I am just happy to have such a great family to spend my holiday time with.

Every Thanksgiving I tend to do a post that focuses on what I am thankful for and encourage my readers to share what they are thankful for.  I tend to stop and reflect on the present, the here and now and not the future or the past.  This was one of the busiest years on record in my household and 2011 certainly had some challenges, but it also had some of the best rewards of all time as well.

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I am so thankful for the two wonderful children I have, two boys who are not only the greatest gift I could have ever asked for but also the greatest human beings in my life.  They challenge me, inspire me and teach me in more ways than any other.  I grow as a human being as a result of being a parent and there is nothing like being a father.

I am also so grateful for the lovely woman who is my wife, through thick and thin over the last 15 years we have been together and rode the greatest of times and the worst of times together.  She gives me purpose and keeps my in motion.  I have never met a person who captured an extreme intelligence, determination, beauty and fire all wrapped up in one extraordinary personality.

In an economy that is crushed I am thankful I have a job that I love and one that I have been with for nearly 10 years, I realize how luck my family is when others are not so fortunate and I make sure it is appreciated by not complaining (too much) about anything in my life.

My health, of course we all have our aches and pains but my health is fairly good compared to some and I am thankful it is holding up okay.

My readers, fans and fellow bloggers on the web.  I have met so many great people over the years while blogging and each blogger is their own unique personality and story, each goal is an inspiration.  It is amazing that so many people that never meet face to face can build such a connection with each other, take the time to show appreciation for each other and this online community of peers is one of the greatest thing about the Internet and social media.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving and remember to take the time and show appreciation for the people you love and the things you have, not just one day a year but every day.

-Justin Germino

It’s true, I love Livefyre and in fact have converted all three of my major blogs to using the Livefyre commenting system.  I also however was HUGE proponent of DoFollow commenting for blogs and this was one of the best features of CommentLuv.

I promoted Livefyre as a Dofollow commenting system previously and it used to be.  I also said to my readers over 3 years I would always remain a DoFollow blog.

Livefyre changed to make commenter URL NoFollow recently and this now conflicts with my support of the DoFollow blogs.  It also means Disqus which offer DoFollow blog would could be considered the preferred external commenting system if you would want to be DoFollow.

I love the conversation tracking of CommentLuv and the new Guest Commenting feature, but I think it should be a blog owner’s decision to leave comment URL’s dofollow or nofollow or default to using DoFollow.

If you support my opinion that Livefyre should allow DoFollow for URL backlinks of commenters, then go to the GetSatisfaction ticket here and add your feedback.  Tell them you want Livefyre to allow the blog owner to choose DoFollow or NoFollow for themselves and help convince them this should be a higher priority item.

Click to Add To Livefyre Dofollow Conversation

In the meantime, temporarily my blogs are not going to be DoFollow until Livefyre allows it, I do want my blogs to be DoFollow but am not going to dump the Livefyre which I am still getting established with.

-Justin Germino

So in light of a recent discovery that the[easyazon-link asin=”B0051VVOB2″]Kindle Fire[/easyazon-link] doesn’t allow you to password protect purchases from the Amazon Android App store or even the Amazon Store itself, I thought this would be a show stopper for getting Kindle Fire for my kids for Christmas.  Then I realized you could tie even a gift card to the 1-Click for a Kindle Fire and I found a reasonable way to get the Kindle Fire for the kids without worrying about them spending my actual account.

[easyazon-image-link asin=”B0051VVOB2″ alt=”Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi” src=”http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41Xx9W8gdRL.jpg” align=”center” width=”500″ height=”500″]

All I had to do was setup 2 separate Amazon accounts, (1 for each kid) and tie a $10 gift card as the 1 click for the Kindle Fires.  Then I just added the kid’s emails as guests for my Amazon Prime account which allows you to give up to 4 family members access to it.  This now gives the kids full access to the Kindle Fire and ability to download free apps, should they spend more than the initial $10 on the gift card it would be rejected.  By having separate accounts they won’t have the option to select one of my other payment methods or changing anything so this is the best option I could come up with.

The [easyazon-link asin=”B0051VVOB2″]Kindle Fire, Full Color 7″ Multi-touch Display, Wi-Fi[/easyazon-link] is cheaper than the iPod Touch, Nook Tablet, Nintendo 3DS, and any other small portable medium while offering more versatility than anything save the iPod Touch (the new ones do have camera’s and support Facetime which is a nice feature).

So this means I will definitely be purchasing a total of 6 [easyazon-link asin=”B0051VVOB2″]Kindle Fire[/easyazon-link] devices between now and December 1st and 3 are given away as gifts, with 2-3 being given away to DragonBlogger.com fans in an upcoming contest.

-Justin Germino

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Never fails that I catch a cold around the holidays and came down with an annoying one last night.  Nothing like coming back from a business meeting only to get sick on your weekend.  Fortunately my wife and I were able to make headway this weekend on the Holiday decorations and we wound up going into the attic and unloading years worth of stored baby clothes which we donated to the Salvation Army.

The Decorations are all stuffed in about 20+ crates in the Garage and they were all taken out.  I was able to completely re-organize my workbench which needed it for a year.

In the end, we wound up stuffing my Mother in Law’s truck to the gills with donation stuff for the Salvation Army and even had the entire back of the truck cab filled up with clothing bags.

We always look forward to doing the Christmas Angels program as well during the holidays to help donate some toys to kids less fortunate.  We have my sons pick out a kid close to their own age and pick out the present to buy and donate to them.

-Justin Germino