Enjoy a few photos from around town in Arroyo Grande.

Working with marketing and web technology, I come across a ton of new start-ups, applications, and new web tools pretty much every day. Much of what I see is a spin-off of something that has been done already; a new type of social network, another app for the iPhone, a video platform that promises to be different and better than the rest, or something along those lines. Refreshingly, LearnVest is a tool that addresses an audience that has been largely ignored by a topic that is hugely important for them to be educated on: women and finance.

A presentation given at this year’s TechCrunch 50 Conference explains just how LearnVest plans to help. By quizzing women about their financial knowledge and “learning” more about them every time they log in, the site will be able to offer the most applicable advice for that person’s unique situation – all from an expert. The website hosts a vast library of resource articles from experts on ten major financial areas, and emails are sent to members which are designed to be read in under two minutes.

So, why women? Alexa von Tobel, LearnVest’s founder and CEO says they focus on helping women because they are “an audience that has been historically ignored and under-served in this topic”. Women graduate with more consumer debt than men, are commonly unskilled in negotiating salaries, and earn 75% less than men for similar work. While the site says they can be helpful to men or women, it’s no secret why they chose to focus on the latter.

With the U.S. now the largest debtor nation in the world, LearnVest could not have come onto the scene at a better time. While they are still in Beta, I have already received one of their “2-minute” emails, and must say I am excited to dive in deeper. I encourage anyone wanting to get a hold of their finances to sign up to be able to experience what TechCrunch calls, “the online version of financial planner Suze Orman.”

With celebrities like Asthon and Oprah using and evangelizing Twitter, it has recently received an outpouring of media attention and is growing at over 1,000 percent annually in new users. But long before it was popularized by the mainstream media, the Twitter community had found clever ways to use the tool for their advantage. One such clever use is the Twitter Hashtag. While the usefulness of #hashtags remains debatable, with some passionately against their use, I contest that this simple tool is very useful indeed. Here’s why:

• It can help you find a job. A simple search for #jobs or #hiring at search.twitter.com results in hundreds of just-released job posting. In fact, since I started writing this post, 21 new job openings have been posted under the #hiring hashtag, and 154 new openings under #jobs. When paired with more specific hashtags, such as #freelance or #sf (San Francisco), a job seeker can narrow down their search by location or category.
• It can help you learn. So, you want to learn more about Wordpress? No problem, just type #wordpress into that Twitter search engine and you’ll find a wealth of information, tutorials, and advice. What about #webdesign, going #green, or figuring out the #socialmedia maze? Yep, there’s a hashtag for that too.
• It can help keep you informed on the latest-breaking news. Whether it’s the #swineflu, the attacks in #mumbai, or the #teaparty movement, Twitter users mobilize very quickly around breaking news stories to send out the very latest, sometimes even before mainstream media breaks the news.
• It can help you find others like you. Maybe you’re a #mother or a #photographer or a conservative (#tcot) or an #obama supporter… chances are, there’s someone on Twitter just like you. They are easily found by using the handy dandy hashtag.
• It can help you spread your message. Did you just write a great blog post, take an amazing picture, or have an important company announcement? When you use the appropriate hashtag in your tweet, it reaches a far wider audience than just your followers alone. It will reach everyone monitoring that conversation, potentially in the hundreds of thousands or more.

I’m sure there are many other useful ways to use Twitter hashtags, but with the examples on this list alone, many people have already found them indispensable. Useless? I think not. What think you?

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Although I was born and raised in Southern California, where there are very few horses and rodeos and open expanses of land that country music so often refers to, I’ve always enjoyed the simple melodies and heartfelt stories that are behind the music.

One such song recognizes the importance of enjoying the simple things in life, like fried chicken. Performed by the Zac Brown Band, this lively tune is filled with energy and life as it helps listeners realize how thankful they should be for the little moments that are often taken for granted. The singer loves his “chicken fried, cold beer on a Friday night, a pair of jeans that fit just right, and the radio up”, but that opening verse could be sung differently by a thousand different people. In fact, many of us have much more than is really needed to survive, even much more than is really needed to be happy.

Only very few of us in this life get every material thing we want, but the little comforts can be a big blessing. The closing verse in the song helps us remember that in an especially poignant way:

“Salute the ones who died
And the ones that gave their lives
So we don’t have to sacrifice
All the things we love
Like our chicken fried…”

Enjoy the little things today.

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Have you ever Googled yourself? If so, you’re definitely not alone. At least 47 percent of people have performed “ego searches” or “vanity searches”, typing their own name into a search engine (i.e. Google, Yahoo!, MSN, etc.) to find results. If you’re at all concerned about your online reputation, this is a smart way to get and keep control of it.  And if you don’t care what turns up from an online search for your name, you should be.

Popular marketer and bestselling author, Seth Godin, tells a story about an employer who researched applicants online before hiring them. The results showed an embarrassing MySpace page, an unfortunate blog post, and a police record for each of the different applicants. Whether you like it or not, Google will find you.

In another revealing statistic, 22% of hiring managers research applicants online, according to a recent study by Reuters. I’ll bet the farm that number is higher than it was a year earlier, and that it will increase next year and beyond. What will your potential employer see when they Google your name? What about your parents, little sister, boyfriend, boss? What will they see?

So, what’s the lesson here? You are most likely on the internet, even if you don’t think you are. Don’t believe me? Go do an ego search for yourself – you just may be surprised at what you find. And in the wise words of Seth Godin, “The best plan is to overload Google with a long tail of good stuff and to always act as if you’re on Candid Camera, because you are.”

Photo credit: CK in TX

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