This is our seventh installment of a feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for information. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you choose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

What Does Your Phone Number Spell?

Are you opening a business and need a new phone number? This site allows you to pick a new 7- or 8-digit phone number by typing in an available exchange (first 3 digits) to see what one-word numbers you can choose from. Searching for just the right toll-free number to advertise? Simply type in letters and this site will show you the corresponding phone number. The PhoneSpell® search engine provides four services in one. You may have heard that now you can take your phone number with you when you move. Enter a 6- to 10-digit phone number, and it will show you what words and phrases your phone number spells to help you decide if you want to keep it. If you have more questions, you’ll appreciate this sites FAQs. At this site, you can:

• Enter a full phone number and see what words and phrases it spells;
• Enter the start of a phone number and see what words start with those digits;
• Enter some letters and see (and even dial) the corresponding phone number; and
• Enter your 16 digit Wii “friend code” and see if it spells something cool.

Free Directory Assistance Calls to Businesses

Google to the rescue again. Simply dial 800-GOOG-411 and you immediately save money. This number will allow you to make free directory assistance calls to businesses throughout the United States and Canada. You might wonder why Google would offer this service. Its voice recognition software is gathering a lot of sample data to perfect it. You can put it on speed dial on your cell phone or even have a technician modify your phone system so it will dial Google 411 when employees dial the traditional directory assistance numbers, which usually cost anywhere from $1.25 to $1.99 a call. Take a minute and figure out how many of those calls you make in a year and you’ll see that this is a real cost-cutter.

Mr. Picassohead

You’ve got to actually experience this one to appreciate it. This site will permit you to “paint” in the style of the famed abstract artist Picasso. It’s an online do-it-yourself portrait center that quickly becomes habitual if you aren’t careful. This will remind you of the old-fashioned Mr. Potato Head Game updated to our computer age. Simply drag and drop Picasso elements such as faces, eyes, nose, ears, lips, mouth, eyebrows, hair, and even your signature onto a blank canvas and suddenly you’ve created a masterpiece!

Reach Key People Immediately

This is an award-winning, easy-to-use, and popular one-to-many calling service. Phonevite provides you a free service for reaching key people right away. You can now contact 25 people with a single phone call and even more than that for a fee. Phonevite can provide:

• Wake-up calls for you and/or your group
• Reminders for tasks and follow-ups
• Emergency alerts to the team
• Conference call reminders
• Weather cancellations
• Last-minute party/event reminders
• Quick motivational message to the team

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

This is our sixth installment of a new feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for information. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you choose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

Top Events from Coast to Coast

Planning a vacation or a weekend get away and want to make certain you’ll do something of value? This site will, at the click of your mouse, reveal what’s going on from coast to coast as far as the top events and festivals.

One click will show you a simple list and description of the top 20 events in the country, including a description, place, times and dates.

If you want to narrow it down to your own state alone, you simply click on your state on the U.S. map, and you’ll immediately find the top 10 events taking place within your own area.

If you have a special category of interest, another click will reveal the location and date of the top events from coast to coast in your category of choice. Categories include: arts & crafts, ballooning, barbecue events, blues music, Celtic culture, Christmas, film, fine arts, fishing, flower events, fruit, German heritage, history, Independence Day, jazz, marathons, maritime events, parades, rodeo, Scandinavia, seafood, state fairs, unusual events, wine, winter, and winter sports. 

Weird Things

If you enjoy things a little off beat, you’re going to find something of interest on this site because it contains almost anything that falls into the category of being weird. In their ongoing quest to find the weirdest things on earth, they provide you a number of options from which to draw: funny videos, other strange & bizarre, weird animals & creatures, weird cars, weird facts, weird food, weird gadgets, weird games, weird inventions, weird jokes, weird laws, weird names, weird news, weird pictures, weird science, weird sites, weird sports, weird tattoos, and weird toys.

The Top 10 Everything of 2008

Have a longing to review last year’s important happenings? Here we have a compilation of Top 10 lists that covers just about everything that could have happened. From a groundbreaking American President to a historic economic collapse—with everything from the Olympics to Puppycam in between—TIME magazine in partnership with CNN provides a comprehensive look at the year that was. Here is a full list of the categories offered: albums, animal stories, awkward moments, best biz deals, best performances, breakups, buzzwords, campaign gaffes, campaign video moments, children’s books, crime stories, editorial cartoons, election photos, fashion moments, fashion faux pas, fiction books, financial collapses, fleeting celebrities, food trends, green ideas, iPhone apps, late night jokes, magazine covers, medical breakthroughs, movies, museum exhibits, news stories, non-fiction books, oddball news stories, Olympic moments, open mic moments, outrageous earmarks, photos, plays and musicals, political lines, quotes, religion stories, scandals, scientific discoveries, songs, sports moments, T-shirt worthy slogans, TV ads, TV episodes, TV series, underreported stories, video games, and worst biz deals.

Listropolis

While on the subject of lists, you may find this site a great resource. The good folks from Listropolis noticed an obvious lack of sites that accumulate the many lists available on the Internet. Thus, this unusual web site was born. They will be adding random lists as they find them across the web, or lists submitted by their readers. Their growing list of lists currently includes: blogging (11), career (5), design (35), Disney (2), education (4), entertainment (3), Facebook (3), featured (13), finance (4), Firefox (9), fitness (4), Flickr tag fun (3), fonts (5), food (4), free (10), Friendfeed (4), funny (19), games (5), Google (7), GTD (3), health (21), inspiration (15), interesting (8), Internet (6), iPhone (9), Lifehacks (12), logos (5), Mac (6), manliness (4), movies (6), music (8), people (3), photography (5), Photoshop (4), politics (7), productivity (4), resources (4), science (7), social media (8), sports (5), strange (4), tech (3), Twitter (7), uncategorized (124), videos (1), wallpapers (5), Web tools (11), and WordPress (6).

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Here’s another installment of a new feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for information. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you choose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

Does Your Vote Matter?

In this chaotic political season, you’ll want to check out this interesting site created by PBS. “Why Vote“ explores many attitudes about the voting process, examines the many issues confronting voters today and explains exactly how you can take action to make this a successful election with positive outcomes.

You’re Not Alone: Well-known People with Disabilities

Have a disability or medical condition? You are not alone. Many people with disabilities have contributed to society. These include actors, actresses, celebrities, singers, world leaders, and many other famous people. This is a fascinating site that talks about diseases, the famous person with the disease, and how it affected his/her life.

Superstitions Abound

Want to learn more about any one of the many superstitions you’ve heard over the years? This is the site for you. In fact, this is the largest list of superstitions on the web. Categories include general, moving into a new home, Halloween, acting and stage, good luck, bad luck, card, baby, Christmas, mining, death, Greek, parsley, animal, New Years, wedding, hair and many others.

Time Capsule

This site allows you to type in any date of your choice to discover what happened on that day in history. Find out the top headlines, hit songs, prices and what else was going on the day you were born, graduated, married, etc. It currently has data online for the years 1800 through 2002.

Bugged about Bugs?

Here’s an interesting site that will answer any and all questions you may have about bugs. Search by the insects name or by location such as lawns and turfs, flowers, trees and shrubs. This site will come in handy for those trying to figure out what kind of weird bug you may have around the house and how to best deal with them.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Here’s our fourth installment of a new feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for information. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you choose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

You Might Be Surprised!

Have you ever wondered about the contents of such things as Silly Putty, Cheese Wiz, artificial snow, self-tanners, new car smell, light sticks, asphalt, fireworks, aircraft deicers, shampoo, teeth whiteners, jello, sticky notes, Catnip, marshmellows, pool chemicals, or lava lamps? Well, these are just a few of the items you’ll learn about as the Chemical & Engineering News presents a collection of articles that gives you a look at the chemistry behind a wide variety of everyday products.    

Protect Yourself

We all get more than our share of daily scams, spam and other junk mail. The majority of it is rather easy to spot but, every once in a while, you get one that may cause you to pause for consideration as to its authenticity. For that reason Dr. Audri Lanford created Scambusters.org, a public service website and e-mail newsletter that has helped over 11 million people protect themselves from Internet scams, identity theft and spam since 1994. You’ll find lots of great free resources here on how to avoid the most popular scams, and identity theft threats and urban legends making the rounds. You can also subscribe to the free weekly newsletter, which has become the #1 publication on Internet fraud.

Women of Our Time 

Navigate through this Smithsonian Institution website that offers an interactive gallery and explore photographs of some of twentieth-century America’s famous and influential women. Also Included is brief biographical information and a discussion of photographic styles.

U.S. Economy at a Glance

This site by the U.S. Department of Labor provides information on the U.S. economy. Data includes the unemployment rate, average hourly earnings, consumer price index, and productivity.

Colorblind

Are you colorblind? Have you ever wondered why colorblindness occurs? Do you think you are colorblind, but aren’t sure? Well, this site has answers and explanations that will answer all these questions.      

Of Mind and Matter

The human brain is a fascinating thing. This Internet resource aims to promote awareness about the marvel of the human brain. Let your brain begin its journey to understand itself! 

Jigzone

Jigzone is the place on the web for free online jig saw puzzles. Jigzone allows you to choose between 6- to 240-piece puzzles and numerous different backgrounds/pictures (changes daily). Jigzone also times the amount of time it takes you to complete each puzzle. Be sure to check out the puzzle of the day (changes daily).

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Here’s our third installation of a new feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for success. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you choose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

What Happened the Year You Were Born

This site takes you on a nostalgic trip down Memory Lane. Want to show your children or grandchildren what things were like when you were young? This site will provide you with everything you need. Pick any year … the year you were born, the year you graduated, the year you were married—your choice. Simply enter your year of choice, click, and back you go.

• You’ll find a list of events that took place in that year.
• You’ll find a list of the most popular musicians of that year.
• You’ll learn about the popular culture of that particular year.
• You’ll see the most popular inventions of that year.
• You’ll learn about the technology that emerged that year.
• You’ll find out the price of typical purchases for that year (gallon of gas, new car, house, average wage, etc.)
• You’ll see actual videos from the news of the day.

Free Telephone Reminders:

Wakerupper is the web’s easiest telephone reminder tool. Schedule reminder calls on the web. It couldn’t be simpler. Use Wakerupper to:

• Set a wake-up call at a specific time.
• Remind yourself of important events.
• Remember to take medication on time.
• Escape from a boring date or meeting.
• Remind child or spouse to do chores.
• Set reminders for tasks and follow-ups … and much more!

It works with any phone in the U.S. and Canada. You can even test drive Wakerupper before you trust it to wake you for an important meeting or task. Schedule a test call—it’s free! Wakerupper even has its own blog providing a demo and additional information.

Time Zone and Other Travel Tools

The World Clock shows current time in all parts of the world. The International Dialing Codes includes area codes for many countries. Day and Night Map shows the current position of the Sun and indicates which parts of the Earth are in day and which are in night. The Sun Calculator shows local time, adjusted for daylight savings time for when the sun is rising or setting, or in twilight, dusk and dawn. The Distance Calculator calculates distance between any two cities available in the World Clock. If you want to display local time for a location in any time zone on your website or blog, you can do so with the free clock. The Time Zone Converter calculates your local time, based on a day and and time in another location. You can also calculate between any other two locations. It handles past, current, and future dates and locations in 200 countries.

Calendar Clock

This is a unique calendar clock displaying the year, month, day, hour, minute, and second digitally. The uniqueness emerges in witnessing a person’s hand actually writing each second on the screen.

Area Code Listing

Find area codes areas within each state in the U.S. Codes are listed, in order, by number.

Conversion Calculator

If you need to make a quick conversion for length/distance, area, volume, weight/mass, temperature, time, or cooking, this site will solve your problem with a single click.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

Here’s our second installation of a new feature designed to assist you in your efforts to save some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for success. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you chose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

Tap the Power of Wise Geeks to Answer Your Questions

wiseGEEK allows you to search over 22,100 (and growing) articles, providing answers to common questions everyone seems to have but no one can find. It is maintained by a team of writers and editors dedicated to providing clear and concise answers to common questions. Currently, there are more than 50 active, qualified contributors, and profiles are provided. Readers are also permitted to “comment on this article” if they have additional information to offer. Every comment is researched and implemented where appropriate. Their qualified writers along with the army of readers ensure that the information is as accurate as possible.

Categories are numerous and you can expect to be overwhelmed with the number of answers you’ll discover on this site. Categories include: Technology & Gadgets, Home & Garden, Manufacturing and Industry, Internet & Computers, Health & Wellness, Crafts and Do-It-Yourself, Finance & Investing, Science & Engineering, Cars-Boats & Airplanes, Business & Economy, Sports & Hobbies, Food & Cooking, Travel & Entertainment, Art & Music, People, The World, Animals & the Environment, The United States, Language & The Humanities, History & Government, Miscellaneous, and others.

U.S. National Debt Clock

While the U.S. National Debt Clock is a very interesting site, you might want to be sure you’re sitting down before you actually make the visit. You’re in for a real shock! This site continually updates our outstanding National Debt, our estimated population and each citizen’s share of that enormous figure. By the way, the answer is yes—that total figure is in the trillions! It’s a real eye-opener and even tells you how to voice your concern to Congress and the White House.

The Outstanding Public Debt as of July 9, 2008, at 07:30:00 PM GMT is: $9,496,827,721,239.56

The estimated population of the United States is 304,325,087 so each citizen’s share of this debt is $31,206.19.

The National Debt has continued to increase an average of $1.72 billion per day since September 28, 2007! Concerned? Then tell Congress and the White House!

By the way, they even provide a link to another site that answers all of your questions about the U.S. National Debt Clock and even shares questions and answers of previous visitors.

U.S. POPClock Projection

The U.S. population clock is based on the national population estimates. The U.S. Census Bureau produces national population estimates annually using the latest available data on births, deaths, and international migration. Each year, we recalibrate the population clock when we release the new set of population estimates.

According to the U.S. Bureau of the Census, the resident population of the United States, projected to 07/09/08 at 19:33 GMT GMT (EST+5) is 304,556,518.

COMPONENT SETTINGS FOR JULY 2008

• One birth every 7 seconds.
• One death every 13 seconds.
• One international migrant (net) every 30 seconds.
• Net gain of one person every 10 seconds.

The MightyCool Atomic Clock

If you need to set your clock to the actual current time, a quick visit to this site will provide you with precise time. The MightyCool Atomic Clock is calibrated several times per day with the U.S. Naval Observatory Atomic Clock, which maintains the official time standard for the United States of America as mandated by law.

You can find the time for each of the Pacific/Mountain/Central/Eastern time zones here at home as well as select International Times.

You’ll find a button on the page labeled RELOAD. Simply click on that button and the Atomic Clock updates to the current second.

Stress Relief

Time for a unique combination of both fun and stress relief. Go to this site and the page is nothing but a full screen duplication of a sheet of bubblewrap. You know how relaxing and mind-numbing it can be to simply sit there and pop each bubble on a full sheet of bubblewrap.

This site has several advantages compared to the real experience:

1. It requires much less effort than the real thing inasmuch as all you have to do is move your mouse across the page clicking on each of the 140 bubbles to hear each relaxing “pop.”
2. When you’ve finished, simply hit the “Fresh Sheet” button, and you immediately have another 140 bubble to pop. This can go on for as long as it takes to totally relieve your tension and stress.
3. Having a really tough day? There’s another button at the bottom of the page labeled “Manic Mode.” Hit this button and your page is transformed to deal with your increased level of stress. You no longer have to use your mouse to click on each bubble. Simply move your mouse all over the sheet as fast as you can, and you’ll pop every bubble you pass over—no clicking required. This, of course, increases the speed of your “popability.” Exhaust yourself! I know—get a life! On the other hand, this site may just prolong the one you have!

Bureau of Labor Statistics

If you’re looking for stats for any reason at all, this is the site to meet your needs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the principal fact-finding agency for the Federal Government in the broad field of labor economics and statistics. The BLS is an independent national statistical agency that collects, processes, analyzes, and disseminates essential statistical data to the American public, the U.S. Congress, other Federal agencies, State and local governments, business, and labor. The BLS also serves as a statistical resource to the Department of Labor.

Stats are organized in the following categories for quick reference and ease of discovery:

• Productivity
• Business Costs
• Safety & Health
• Demographics
• Publications
• Occupations
• International
• Industries
• Research
• Geography
• Other Statistical Sites
• Kid’s Page
• Employment & Unemployment
• At-a-Glance Tables
• Inflation & Consumer Spending
• Wage, Earnings & Benefits

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.

We’re adding still another new feature to our blog in hopes of saving you some time and effort in your day-to-day quest for success. Let me explain the title. The “Sore Eyes” may very well be what you experience from continuously searching for needed information to complete a task or assignment. A “Site” is what we hope to provide for you among the many we’ll be spotlighting in this on-going feature.

Think back to the days when you had to resort to a dictionary, encyclopedia, or library to research your concern or topic. Consider the total amount of time and energy you exerted time and time again to meet the demands of your job. Today, take a quick visit to Google, Yahoo, Dogpile, MSN, Ask, or any of the many other search engines on the Internet and, within seconds, you have more information than you can ever use. And yet, ironically, we don’t seem to have any more time than we had before these time-saving assets appeared on the scene. Of course, that’s because the new demands and challenges have appeared to claim that time and energy we freed up through the benefits of technology. And so it will continue.

Therefore, we now need even more resources and short-cuts to be utilized upon our arrival at those critical search engines. As we locate valuable resources, we’ll post them here for your convenience. Browse the listing, identify potential assets, make a quick trip to those sites you chose to see if they may be worthwhile to add to your Favorites.

If you happen to have resources you feel might be valuable to others, please feel free to send them to me at the e-mail address listed here, and we’ll certainly consider posting them as well.

The World Gazetteer

The World Gazetteer provides current population figures for cities, towns and places of all countries along with the largest cities of the world and current national flags.

Wanna Learn?

SoYouWanna claims that this service “teaches you how to do all the things nobody taught you in school.” Find cheap airline tickets, buy a cell phone, design your own web page, write a business plan, cure a hangover, use feng shui, change your name, flatten your abs or learn how to do hundreds of other interesting things. The opening page tells you just about anything you’re going to want to know about the site. It’s very easy to navigate and offers a wealth of information.

Save Time – Get Organized

Stressed for time? Who isn’t? I personally guarantee you can immediately find dozens—I’d say hundreds, but you’d think I was exaggerating—of tips and ideas to help you organize your home, your office, and your life. Maria Gracia is a home-organizing consultant specializing in helping people get better organized to live the kind of stress-free life they’ve always dreamed of.

State & County QuickFacts

The U.S. Census Bureau provides quick, easy access to facts about people, business, and geography.

Charity Navigator

Charity Navigator works to guide intelligent giving. The site helps charitable givers make intelligent giving decisions by providing information on 2,500 charities and by evaluating the financial health of each of these charities. The site ensures its evaluations are widely used by making them easy to understand and freely available to the public. By guiding intelligent giving, the Charity Navigator aims to advance a more efficient and responsive philanthropic marketplace, in which givers and the charities they support work in tandem to overcome our nation’s most persistent challenges.

Exploratorium

The Exploratorium is a museum of science, art, and human perception located in San Francisco, California. Online since 1993, the Exploratorium was one of the first science museums to build a site on the World Wide Web. Included in the site are more than 12,000 web pages and many sound and video files, exploring hundreds of different topics.

Top Inventions of 2007

From the phone that has changed phones forever, to futuristic cars, to a building made of water, to a remote-controlled dragonfly—a dazzling display of the many inventions that emerged last year are available on this site . For speed and convenience, inventions are arrange in a vast array of categories.

Mark Twain in His Times

This site focuses on how “Mark Twain” and his works were created and defined, marketed and performed, reviewed and appreciated. The goal is to allow readers, scholars, students and teachers to see what Mark Twain and others from his times said about each other, in ways that can speak to us today.

Harry K. Jones is a motivational speaker and consultant for AchieveMax®, Inc., a company of motivational speakers who provide custom-designed seminars, keynote presentations, and consulting services. Harry's top requested topics include change management, customer service, creativity, employee retention, goal setting, leadership, stress management, teamwork, and time management.  For more information on Harry's presentations, please call 800-886-2MAX or fill out our contact form.