SoftballBats.com Gets Some New Features

Greetings SoftballBats.com fans.

I'd like to let you know about some awesome changes we've made to SoftballBats.com.  First of all, we updated the site to have a product reviews section and product reviews are inline with each product, so they are easy to find.  We've been collecting reviews for two years and organized them all on one page for you to use and assist in finding products.  To Begin, go to the Softball Bat Reviews page and select the vendor of choice and sort the results head-to-head based on price, overall rating, and number of reviews.  You can even see the product image, price, and all the reviews in one convenient location.  Since everything is ajax and xml based, it's lighting fast too, so you'll blaze through the reviews, find a bat, and with our next day shipping, have it by the weekend for the next "Big Game!"

If you're in need of specialized help, please see the Softball Bat Wizard.  The wizard will walk you through a series of questions and provide the perfect Softball Bat recommendations.  Our users have provided great questions about the wizard which has assisted us in building an even more useful tool, based on the feedback we get, so we encourage you to try the Softball Bat Wizard.

Shot of the reviews page

Shot of the reviews inline on the product detail page

What’s Cooking In Google Labs

I’m always looking for new Google products and services to see what they are up to. The place for this is at http://www.googlelabs.com/. Most of the lab products are free and are designed to be Google-easy to use plus provide powerful, time-saving features. Let’s take a look at a few products.

http://similar-images.googlelabs.com/ – This allow a user to find similar images, hence the name, similar-images. And it’s brain-dead easy to use. Just enter a query like Mizuno Baseball Gloves. This service could assist us in finding people who “borrow” our images.

http://www.google.com/trends - This works two ways. Google provides a list at the bottom, which I presume, is a recent list of popular search terms. Clicking on a popular trend term link shows more detail about the hour-by-hour rise and fall of the term and supporting articles and search results. Now, try entering a search in the Google Terms search box and you’ll get an insane graph. For even more craziness, place two words in the box separated by a comma, like Mac, PC. Unbelievable comparison! You can string together as many as you want for complex trend analysis, if your into that kind of thing.

http://newstimeline.googlelabs.com/ - organizes news stories chronologically. This one just blows my mind how powerful it is, yet I am unable to harness all the power. One thing is for sure that if I was back in college, this would make research so much easier. Try entering a search and changing the “show” parameter to get a broader view of the history of that particular search. Don’t forget to page back and forth. This interface is very cool indeed.Comments, Feedback, Suggestions – email mikekearns@5starnet.com

Gmail Now Consumes Other Mail

Do you have an old account with yahoo or hotmail, but want to move to gmail. Maybe you use both but want to merge and purge? Wait no longer. Gmail introduced a new feature today that allows you to import mail, contacts, etc (baggage) from other mail accounts into gmail. You can even label the import for findability. Rock on!

Here's the list of email providers they current support for import.

aol.com
aol.fr
clear.net.nz
cox.net
comcast.net
cs.com
earthlink.net
freenet.de
freeserve.co.uk
gmx.at
gmx.ch
gmx.de
gmx.net
hotmail.com
hotmail.co.uk
hotmail.de
hotmail.fr
Ihug.co.nz
juno.com
laposte.net
live.com
msn.com
netscape.com
netzero.com
neuf.fr
optonline.net
optusnet.com.au
orange.fr
orangehome.co.uk
orcon.net.nz
paradise.net.nz
rr.com
slingshot.co.nz
sprint.ca
sympatico.ca
tiscali.co.uk
verizon.net
voila.fr
wanadoo.co.uk
wanadoo.fr
web.de
worldnet.att.net
yahoo.com
yahoo.co.uk
yahoo.co.in

Now, here's how to perform the import. Google says that this feature is limited to a number of Gmail users, so you'll need to open to hood to find out if it's available for you.

If you're switching to Gmail from another email provider, importing contacts and messages from your old email account can help you make the transition without having to do a bunch of housekeeping.

To get started, follow the steps below. Before you dive in here, keep in mind that you'll need to have access to that email account for this process to work:

1. Click the Settings link.

2. Under the Accounts and Import tab, click the Import mail and contacts button.

3. In the new window that opens, enter the email address of the account you'd like to import contacts from. Click Continue.

4. Enter the password for your other email account and click Continue.

5. Select all the checkboxes that apply:

If you choose to import contacts, the information in your contacts list in your old account will be imported to your Contacts section in Gmail.

If you select the Import mail checkbox, your existing messages in that account will be imported to your Gmail inbox.

If you want, you can also select the Import new mail checkbox so that messages sent to your old account for the next 30 days will be imported to your Gmail account.

These messages won't appear in Gmail immediately once they're sent to your other account, but should update within a day or two.

Finally, you can automatically apply a label to your imported messages to indicate that those were sent to your other account.

6. Click Start Import. The import will continue if you leave the Settings page or sign out of Gmail.

7. Your contacts and/or messages will be imported. It may take 24-48 hours before you see your imported messages, so don't worry if they're not there as soon as you click OK. You can check the status of your import by clicking the Accounts and Imports tab on the Settings page. Once the import is complete, you'll see a confirmation message at the top of your inbox.

That's it! Happy Importing!

Mike

Baseball Glove Wizard & Baseball Glove Reviews Added To Ball Glove Warehouse

You can always find a huge selection of baseball gloves on Ball Glove Warehouse, but now it's even easier to find products using the new baseball glove wizard and baseball glove reviews page.

  

Glove Review Page

Glove Wizard Page

The glove wizard asks simple questions while taking the customer through an experience to learn about baseball gloves, then targeted gloves are presented exactly for what the customer needs.  Price, brand, web type, position, age, game type are all taken into consideration when the wizard calculates results.

Also, we released a new baseball gloves reviews page that includes the ability review products by vendor and compare them head-to-head.  Reviews can be sorted by name, price, rating, or number of ratings.  Our custom solution allows the customer to remain anonymous while we retain control of publishing of content.  With over 2,000 reviews in the system, almost all of our 900+ gloves are reviewed.

Next time you are on the web and looking for the baseball gloves or softball gloves, please give the baseball glove reviews or baseball glove wizard pages a try.  We love hearing your feedback, so please send it to support@ballglovewarehouse.com.

Cheers,

Mike       

Some iTunes Tips

Let’s talk about iTunes. It’s the source of frustration for many and I get many requests for “how do I” do x, y, or z with iTunes so why not list a few tips.

The first issue, how do I move my iTunes library from one computer to another? There is a backup iTunes library function built-in to iTunes, but it requires a DVD or CD recorder to be attached or installed. If you have many songs, this could take a few disks, which could take some time. For a faster method, find the “my music” directory in your “my documents” and then locate the iTunes directory. To backup, just copy the contents of the iTunes directory to a backup usb thumbstick or external hard drive. On the target machine, just copy of the files to the same location. This technique will work for re-formatting a hard drive as well.

How do I find album art or repair album art for iTunes? iTunes tune-up is a program that can be downloaded from here - http://www.tuneupmedia.com/ , and once installed, will find your album art and reconcile it plus much more.

How do I rip CD’s without DRM (Digital Rights Management)? Using the built-in iTunes ripper will only riddle your music files with proprietary nonsense that’s overly protective for content duplication, so I recommend audiograbber, which you can find here - http://www.audiograbber.com-us.net/

How do I copy music from an ipod to a computer? Yamipod - http://www.yamipod.com is a free program that works on Windows, Linux, and Mac. Install and follow the directions.

5 Star Net Announces FIVE new websites!!!

5 Star Net would like to announce the release of five, new North Kansas City School District Middle Schools websites including Antioch, East Gate, Maple Park, New Mark, and Northgate.

They were all redesigned to reflect the new web communications policy of the district which centers around these core elements; parents, teachers, and students. A content manager was deployed to assist the school-based tech coordinators so that updates can be made by each school, independently. In similar fashion to the High School sites, 5 Star Net worked with the district to enable student video broadcasting on each website. With the aid of video cameras, software-based visual commander, and some creative ideas, the videos can be produced and moved to the site all in one day. Other features added to the school websites includes photo gallery's, rss feeds, podcasts, newsletters, schedules, calendars, 6th, 7th, 8th grade team pages, all of which can be updated with the CMS.

Given the short time frame to complete, the four-month project required a dedicated team of professionals and a well-planned implementation process to ensure a timely completion. It didn't hurt that we recently worked with the North Kansas City School District on the High Schools and had all the administrative stuff already in place, yet this time, we really enjoyed getting the know the NKC team even better. So much so that we've created a top ten list.

Here's our top ten list of things to remember when working with NKCSD.

10. Apache, your case-sensitive nature is so far from perfect.

9. Darlene does not know 10 words.

8. Coming to a consensus can be challenging.

7. Jo will find you.

6. Marla bears a fine tooth comb.

5. The portal is real fast - at night.

4. Just edit the xml file Jo.

3. doc. docx, xls, pdf, rdf, txt, etc - pick a content format - I'll parse it.

2. ie6 lives forever at NKC.

1. Attention to detail never goes under appreciated.

Here's an image of Antioch middle school before the transformation:

And after:



Here are the remaining sites.

Eastgate







Maple Park






New Mark







Northgate

Pro Athlete Newsletter Column #1 - Mike's Tech Tip

Image Courtsey of yum9me

Mike's Tech Tip of The Month

This Month's Topic - Hot Keys.

Hello. My name is Mike Kearns and my job is to write code here at Pro Athlete. I use a computer way too much, and as a by-product, I've learned to use many Windows keystroke combinations, often called Hot Keys, to perform tasks and
make my life easier. I'd like to share a few with you today.

The windows key, located between the alt and ctrl keys, which appears like a waving flag with four sections, can be used with many other keys to perform powerful functions. I sometimes refer to the key as the Bill Gates key.

Here are some examples:

Need to lock your computer - Hit windows + L at the same time
Need to open Windows Explorer - Hit windows + E at the same time
Need to minimize all - windows + M
There are many other hot keys built-in to windows.

Need to close your current window - Alt - F4. Need to shift between
applications - Alt - Tab - One of my favs. Are you in a browser and need to
go to a new site and your hands are on the keyboard - try Alt - L, enter the
url, hit enter. Ah, the beauty of the computer, there are multiple ways to
do the same thing. Let's try this again. In a browser and need to get to a
new site, just hit F6.

Not only do hot keys save you time, but can prevent RSI injuries due to moving
back and forth between the mouse and keyboard. I like hot keys so much that I
added one to JustBats.com. When you are on ANY page and need to search just hit
ATL-S and enter your search words, then hit the enter key. Boom - search results.
It's that easy.

If you have some hot keys that you would like to share which make you life
easier, please email me at mike@beapro.com.

For a complete reference, please see - http://www.geocities.com/ian_springer/winkey.html