Are you Twittering yet? Jump on the bandwagon! You can find me at http://www.twitter.com/anaisamy. Come join the fun.

I did a lot of research before deciding on which phone to get, and although there were a few drawbacks that people consistently posted about this model, I decided to go for it anyway. I’m glad I did – I’m not in the least bit disappointed. Some users don’t like the keyboard (which is on the small side) or the way the number pad is designed inside the keyboard. It’s been 1/2 a day and I’m already adjusted to it. To those people I say, “Quit yer cryin’”.

One thing I’ve needed for a while is the ability to access my work email on my phone; with my previous models, this simply wasn’t an option. Rob helped me get all synced up and I’m in business with the email. Of course this means I no longer have an excuse for not responding in a timely manner, doesn’t it? Did I say I thought this thing through?? ;-)

Now get ready to laugh: I think I need to name this phone because I get the feeling I’m going to be quite attached to her! In the meantime, she will just be known as Love. Because, seriously, love.

After a comedy of errors trying to get out of town, I drove up on Tuesday night to stay at the Hotel Ganesvoort courtesy of Google. This place was totally swanky and hip and surprisingly busy at almost 11 o’clock on an early weeknight. I couldn’t believe the amount of activity around the entire hotel area, but it definitely added to the whole hip factor. Obviously I was in a happening spot, yo! Too bad it was past my bed time. I took a few pictures, got settled in, and was soon snuggled up in the luxurious bed. Morning came quickly, but I wasn’t complaining because I was excited to visit the big G for the first time.

Since I drove, I had to find parking. That turned out to not be a problem at all because there’s a garage directly below Google’s building. I just parked in there and hiked my way back up to the street level to get into the building. I was slightly annoyed and surprised that there was no elevator right from the garage into the building, but once I actually got inside the building and saw the massive amounts of security, I understood it better. The organizers for the event I was attending were handing out name tags to those on the roster so we could get through security. Once in, we were given guest badges to wear for the duration of our stay in the building. Every person in the building had a badge on – and there was plenty of security to enforce the wearing of such. I think the amount of security and maintenance personnel on site might have been my biggest surprise of the whole experience, but only because I had already read about the amazing 8th floor restaurant – Hemispheres.

I’m getting ahead of myself a bit, though. The event itself was extremely well put together. As I write this, I’m reminded that I haven’t filled out the satisfaction survey that was sent around afterwards – I need to do that because the Health team really did an excellent job of putting everything together. The first half of the morning was spent listening to some passionate members of the team talk about the different ways Google can help us grow our businesses and drive sales. All of the speakers were engaging, and left me excited for the rest of the day. The second half of the morning we were treated to a more in-depth look at six of Google’s properties: Analytics, YouTube, GadgetAds, and, Newspaper, Audio, and Print Advertising. A lot of the information I got was mind blowing and a bit overwhelming; I was wishing my entire department was with me to ask the questions I didn’t think to ask.

Lunch was held in the aforementioned Hemispheres restaurant on the 8th floor – where I was just blown away. When you get off the elevator, you’re greeted by a huge sunken wall refrigerated case full of just about every type of drink you could imagine. There were multiples flavors of seltzer there, which just tickled me all kinds of pink. And when I say this refrigerated case is huge, I mean it is about the length of my living room, maybe a little longer. On the wall behind the case are pictures of the current world-renowned chefs and their schedules to be cooking on site. Unbelievable.

Inside, the restaurant is set up cafeteria style with different stations for all the culinary delights. First stop for me was the grill. Some people around me ordered hamburgers and I watched as the cook put fresh patties on the grill for each order. I got some steak sans au jus and headed to a very well-stocked salad bar next. I walked around a bit trying to find a suitable starch before I laid my eyes on the holy grail – Chili Spiced Sweet Potatoes. I had never heard of such a thing and I want to kiss the chef who thought of it because they were just delicious. I tried to replicate them tonight, but wasn’t exactly what I’d call successful. Anyway, once I had my lunch assembled, I got to be further wowed by the condiment station. How can one company be so cool at every.single.thing they do? I mean, seriously. So, we had lunch – looking out on the city from the wall-to-wall windows and then put our trays on the neatest lazy-Susan conveyor belt thingie and headed back to our meeting.

The afternoon session was pretty light compared to the morning and I headed out not long after getting back from lunch. We were treated to an overview of Google Trends, as well as some other cool things brewing in the Google Labs. I wanted to stay for a week to soak up all of the innovative ideas running rampant in that building. Alas, I had to leave – and once I left the magic of Google, bad things happened. Well, a bad thing, specifically – a stupid accident! Some stupid jerk swerved into my car on the NJ Turnpike. That was a sucky way to end an otherwise awesome day.

So, give it to me straight – is my site hard to read? For those of you reading this from the feed, click on over so you can chime in.

That switching hosts thing? Took up the majority of my day. I moved to HostGator – who absolutely rock! – and they offer unlimited Addon domains, so I am moving all of the sites Rob and I both operate to this new host. We’re talking about 8 sites total, and I had to do a lot of the WordPress database stuff on three blogs manually. I’m pretty much done except for two sites, one of which now has a SQL Server backend and I’m moving it to a mySQL backend. I’m not sure if it will change much in anything I have to do to get it running, but I’m putting it off until last just in case.

Looks like I’ll be home again tomorrow, but I think Aric is feeling loads better. I have a feeling my nursing hours are numbered.

Now to start switching over all my other domains to the new host… I’ll be glad when this is all done!

Here’s how it works:

***Start Copying Here***

1. Create a post and link back to the person that put you on the list in the first paragraph with a brief thank you and description of why people want to use the campaign. DO NOT copy their paragraph. Write your own unique one and link to their site.

2. Copy the ENTIRE list of Feeds and create an OPML File to import into your feed readers so that you can subscribe to all of the blogs on the list. You will want to read the post entitled Mass RSS Feed Subscribing with an OPML so you understand how to do it. (You will want to copy this link over to your post so those you add know how to do this too.)

3. Copy the ENTIRE list of Feeds AND blogs and put them into your post like they are here. Move the “My Adds” from the blog that added you into the “Originals” lists for each. This list is unique because I want you to be able to copy the feeds with out having to delete the blogs before making the OPML file so I separated the two links into 2 lists.

4. Add any blogs you want to the list with whatever keywords you want. Then get their RSS Feed and add those to the list of Feeds in your “My Adds” section.

5. Publish your post.

6. Comment on the post that originated the list here so that new additions can be subscribed to as well by the lists before yours.

My Blog Adds:

LaLa Girl
Hawt Mama
Losing it All Baby
Know A New Freedom
The Lonesome Wolf’s Den

Original Blogs:
Whatever I Feel Like
Tricia’s Musings
Ugh!!’s Greymatter Honeypot
A bit of this and a bit of that
WordPress Plugins
Internet Serious Business
Julie’s Journal
Utterly Geek
jon lee
Pencil Thin
No Average Mom
Marisa’s Dandelion Patch
Scribble on the Wall
The Sovereign Journey
Digital Nomads
msdanielle
Mr. Gary Lee
Windows Tips, Tricks, and Hacks
Get a First Class Degree
SiteLogic Web Development
Geeky Speaky
Little America
Shadowscope
Pray for Mojo
Detroit Sports
Steven Lorenz
Sir Post A Lot
Celeb News
John Chow
Automobile News

My RSS Feed Adds:

http://paulnlaura.com/mommy/?feed=rss2

http://hawtmama.com/?feed=rss2

http://losingitallbaby.blogspot.com/atom.xml

http://feeds.feedburner.com/KnowANewFreedom

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheLonesomeWolfsDen

Original RSS Feeds:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/WhateverIFeelLike

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TriciasMusings

http://feeds.feedburner.com/u-g-h

http://feeds.feedburner.com/botbot

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JmhTechtronics

http://feeds.feedburner.com/InternetSeriousBusiness

http://www.juliesjournal.com/feed

http://www.utterlygeek.com/feed

http://feeds.feedburner.com/jonlee/

http://www.noaveragemom.com/?feed=rss2

http://www.pencilthin.com/?feed=rss2

http://www.mydandelionpatch.com/feed/

http://www.scribbleonthewall.com/feed/

http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheSovereignJourney

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalNomads

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Msdanielle-JustAnotherEgoBlogSite

http://feeds.feedburner.com/MrGaryLee

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Samanathon

http://www.geekyspeaky.com/feed

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Littleamericaus

http://www.sitelogic.co.uk/feed/

http://www.howtogetafirst.co.uk/feed/

http://feeds.feedburner.com/PrayForMojo

http://feeds.feedburner.com/Shadowscope

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JimiMorrisonsHead

http://feeds.feedburner.com/blogspot/ZguH

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SirPost

http://feeds.feedburner.com/SirPostsEntertainmentBlog

http://feeds.feedburner.com/JohnChowDotCom

http://feeds.feedburner.com/AutomobileHaven

***Stop Copying Here***

In case you’re not aware, CRM stands for (in this instance) customer relationship management and put simply, is a software solution for being able to see at a glance all pertinent data about the business and the customers that make that business. The software I happened upon is called AIMpromote and the first thing that caught my interest was the price. At $33 per user, that’s quite affordable, especially compared to industry standards. Here are some of the features relevant to our business that are included with that $33.

• Lead Attention Meterâ„¢
• Custom Lead List Display
• Lead Export
• Lead Import
• Lead Opportunity Value
• Campaign Performance
• Return on Investment (ROI)
• Return on Advertising Spent
• Task Calendar
• Newsletter / Mass Mail
• Visitor Tracking
• Web Analytics

Those are just a sampling of the features, too. I’m impressed! Definitely one to bookmark for when we’re ready to implement something like this.