Being that this is Make a Referral Week, I thought I would make some attempt to recommend a product that I use and I like. Thanks to John Jantsch and Colleen Wainwright for the motivation.

For the past couple of years or so, I have been using Ta-Da List, until the list grew, and grew and grew!

I didn’t want to put my personal projects into my Basecamp account, nor did I want to put my to do items in my Highrise account, so what’s a person to do.

Until last week, I forgot that I had a Backpack account. So I finally caved and got the solo account.
It allows you to create different pages. For instance, I have a page for my summer trips and a couple of events I’m planning that are not business related. I can share these pages with my family and friends so that everyone is on the same page regarding events and celebrations.

Oops! Did I almost give something away.

Quickly changing the subject, I also like both the reminders feature that go to an email and the calendar which you can also sync with your organizer of choice. (Outlook, iPhone/iPod, etc.)

So now my personal life is almost as organized as my professional life.

Looking for more referrals? Look at my special offers section for referrals and discounts.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

How can I follow them on Twitter without a twitter handle?

Oh and don’t get me started on Facebook.

Also, they should say what platform is the app for (even though most of us know the answer.)

Posted via email from nextSTEPH’s posterous

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

Here it is, another weekend.  For the past several weekends, I have been making room for a new arrival.

Just like that story on  The Secret, where the woman started packing her things because she wanted to move. So I began to digitally pack my things in anticipation of a new computer. I don’t know which platform yet, but that’s for another post.

It all started with my laptop scare and this post from Web Worker Daily brought the point home. It is time to clean up the computers.

On the desktop PC, I went to the Control Panel and clicked on “Programs and Features” on Vista or “Add or Remove Programs” on XP. You can go through the programs based on how often you use them, when was the last time you used a particular program. In my case it doesn’t matter since “I’m moving”.

However, I think it a good practice to at least review your applications quarterly to find out what programs are essential versus the ones who are taking up valuable space on your computer.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

It’s always nice when a long weekend comes along. This gives me the time to organize, clean and fix things.

This weekend its all about manuals.

How many times have you received a new gadget, toy, device,  or electronics item? You may have used the manual in the beginning, but what happens months or years from now? What happens when something goes awry and you need to find that one manual to figure it out?

Sure you can go online and try to find it, provided that:

• You have the right model number


• That the manufacturer is online


• The age of the product

How to solve this dilemma? Organize the manuals.

A few years ago, I got a few boxes and decided to designate a box for each room. I then put the manuals for each device in the room that they are in. For example, all the computer and technology items are in one box in the office and all the kitchen manuals are in the box in the kitchen.

This way, I can find the manual that is needed without having to go too far to find it.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

Over the past week, I was under the weather.

There were mornings that I did not feel like firing up the laptop. Yet the comments on various blogs kept coming in. What’s a blogger to do?

If you have a Blackberry or an iPhone/iPod Touch, you are in luck.

Wordpress has a application available both for the Blackberry and the iPhone/iPod Touch.

I did a review on posting from my blackberry.

Plus I was able to easily moderate comments on my iPod Touch.

For those of you on TypePad, there are also both a iPhone App and a Blackberry App.

What ever platform you are on, there is a will and a way to stay on top of your blog, even when you are on the go.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

In addition to last weeks news, Blogger has decided to "bring it" with the ability for users to create pages.

This move will definitely level the blogosphere playing field with the likes of TypePad and WordPress.com and it also serves as a strong effort to keep users from migrating.

The drawback is that there is a limit to the number of pages (10), but if you want to create more pages, like I said last week, it may be time to weigh your options.

Posted via email from nextSTEPH’s posterous

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.

I had a free Friday afternoon.

Instead of going out in the cold, I resolve to spend the afternoon with Thesis and finally figure out how to make it my own.

I caved and got the Developer Version, which you are then able to do more with the theme.

This is how the site  looked like before I got the Developer Version.

The first thing that I did was switched the header and the navigation.

Then I addressed the footer and customized it.

Finally, I put a stamp on the blog by making a collage of all of the images used in the blog post from the past couple of years.

Here is the design after.

The verdict, if you want a basic clean theme and don’t have css mojo, Thesis is for you.

If you are a developer, you can push the limits and see how far you can go with Thesis as the foundation.

This post is from Stephanie M. Cockerl's blog, From the desk of next STEPH.