Time- and Moneysaving Tools and Websites

http://www.weather.com/activities/driving/interstate/
Going on a road trip? This handy website will ask for your travel route and then show you what the weather will be like along your route! Use this site to build a custom forecast for your trip!

http://www.bing.com/travel/
Bing™ Travel (formerly Farecast) is an invaluable tool for the bargain traveler. Enter your desired travel dates and “To” and “From” cities, and Bing™ will tell you whether fares are expected to rise, remain the same, or decrease over the next week. It will also tell you how certain they are in their prediction!  Bing™ bases its predictions on years of fare histories. Although it doesn’t yet have data for every possible city pair, the folks at Bing™ are always adding new combinations!

http://www.google.com/goog411/
Most of you have probably already used Google™. Have you heard of Goog411™? It’s a free 411 service you can reach on any phone (standard phone rates apply). Call 1-800-GOOG-411 (1-800-466-4411) from any phone, state the location and business type you are looking for (for example, “Pizza, Fairfax, Virginia”) and Goog411 will provide you with a list of choices. You can then have them send you a text message with the information, or be connected directly to the business. And it’s free!

http://www.surprise.com/
Need a gift for someone and don’t know where to start?  Instead of driving to the mall, visit Surprise.com for gift ideas for almost any recipient and almost any occasion. Or, for more targeted results, use the GiftFinder (http://www.surprise.com/gifts.html). Select the recipient, their personality traits, their lifestyle, interests, world view, and the occasion. Need a birthday gift for your shy, outdoorsy aunt who loves the arts and is spiritual? Surprise.com has got you covered with tons of fabulous gift ideas. Order them online and have them shipped to you or directly to your recipient!

http://www.retailmenot.com/
RetailMeNot has discount codes for thousands of websites across the internet. With coupon codes for everything from free shipping to 80% discounts (search restaurants.com!), RetailMeNot will save you money on almost anything you can order on the web.


What other time or moneysaving websites do you frequent? Please share in the comments section!

Either/Or, Neither/Nor

Quick! Look at the following sentences and identify whether there are any errors.

• Either Janice or Samson are going to have to refill the water cooler.  
• Gerald is not a team player. He neither wants to stay late today nor tomorrow to help with the project.
• Either my computer or my speakers needs to be replaced this year.
• Simone neither wants to eat her lunch or go to a restaurant.

Did you find errors in every sentence? If so, you’ve got a gift for grammar.  If not, don’t worry; correlative conjunctions (either/or, neither/nor) cause some of most commonly made grammar mistakes.  Let’s take a closer look at each sentence to identify the errors.

Either Janice or Samson are going to have to refill the water cooler. 

• The problem with this sentence is that “either” is singular, not plural. It refers to one subject at a time.  Said differently, the sentence would read “Either Janice is going to have to refill the water cooler, or Samson is going to have to do it.” The sentence should read “Either Janice or Samson is going to have to refill the water cooler.”

Gerald is not a team player. He neither wants to stay late today nor tomorrow to help with the project.

• The issue here is a bit more complex. If the action is the same in both parts of the clause (in this case, “to stay” is the action in both parts), then the “neither” or “either” goes after the verb. Corrected, the sentence would read “He wants to stay late neither today nor tomorrow to help with the project.”

Either my computer or my speakers needs to be replaced this year.

• Oh dear. Well, I have just told you that “either” is singular, not plural, so why is “needs” incorrect here?  Look carefully at the subjects. “Computer” is indeed singular, but the word “speakers” is plural. If either of the subjects in the “either/or, neither/nor” clause is plural, the verb must be plural: “Either the computer or the speakers need to be replaced this year.”

Simone neither wants to eat her lunch or go to a restaurant.

• Yikes! This one is a double doozey (and I’m not talking about cookies!)  In this sentence, the action of each thing being compared is different—“to eat” and “to go”. When that is the case, the “either” or “neither” must come right before the first verb. Did you pick up on the second problem?  We’ve got an “or” and not a “nor”! The corrected sentence reads “Simone wants to neither eat her lunch nor go to a restaurant.”

Communicating with Confidence

Picture this: You step into an elevator to travel to your office on the sixth floor, and just as the doors are about to close, a hand flies into the elevator and the doors re-open. It’s your boss’s boss and the head of the organization, both of whom you have only ever spoken to once before. Immediately your heart starts pounding in your ears and you feel your face flush. You wish you could slink to the corner of the elevator and blend in with the wallpaper, but that is not an option.  You know you should say something, but what?

Or how about this: Your supervisor comes to your desk, breathless. She is holding a meeting with some VIPs from the community, and she just realized she sent the wrong presentation to the copier. She asks you to go to the conference room and entertain the VIPs until she returns.

How would you feel in these situations? Most of us would feel anxious, nervous, and pressured. According to the Book of Lists (2005), most people fear public speaking more than they fear death!  Why is this? What is it about speaking in front of others that causes us so much panic?

For many of us, it is the fear of rejection. When speaking to important people, or to large groups of people, it feels like what we say matters immensely.  One false word could mean intolerable embarrassment, which could seriously impact our self-esteem. If we recognize that these high-pressure situations are bound to happen from time to time, what can we do to prepare ourselves and initiate the best possible outcome?

The answer is simple, and yet difficult for many of us to achieve—self-confidence. Self-confidence is what makes a good speaker in high-pressure situations — not a special book, not the “good speaker” gene, and not necessarily lots of practice (although, the more you practice feeling self-confident, the more it will become your gut reaction to these stressful situations).

We’ve all heard the phrase “fake it until you make it.” In the case of high-pressure speaking, this axiom holds especially true.  Even if we don’t feel particularly self-confident, if we project a confident image, others will perceive us as such, and this will actually end up making us feel more confident.

So how do you go about projecting confidence when you don’t feel it? Here are a few ideas:

• Breathe deeply from your diaphragm. Imagine you are trying to suck in air through your bellybutton. This will help prevent verbal shakes and stammers.
• Be aware of your facial expressions. Unfurrow your brow, warm up those smile muscles, and relax your lips.
• Check your posture.  Beware of hunching shoulders.  Keep them pressed back and low, but only as far as is comfortable.
• Make eye contact while smiling. This is perhaps the single most important “giveaway” of confident individuals.
• Think positive thoughts about yourself.  It may sound silly, but repeating the mantra “I can handle anything” or “I am calm and confident” or even “I am awesome!” can have a measurable positive effect on your self-confidence. This is known as the phenomenon of autosuggestion.

What else can help you project confidence in high pressure situations?  Please share your ideas in the comments section below!

*For another perspective on public speaking, visit http://thingaboutskins.wordpress.com/2010/06/

Using Social Networking

As the digital age continues to grow and expand, social networking over the internet has become one of the key ways to connect with people from all over the world. One website which focuses on connecting individuals in a professional capacity is LinkedIn.

This website is devoted to the sharing of “information, ideas and opportunities” over the internet and can be used to network with the people you know—such as your friends, family members, past and present colleagues, and schoolmates. By creating a LinkedIn profile, you will be able to connect and stay in touch with these individuals and then build on your professional network through linking yourself to other people’s networks.

LinkedIn also provides resources for professionals about their industries. Many professional associations, schools and companies have groups which offer forums for discussion, news and job leads. These communities provide a wealth of knowledge and ample opportunity to build your network.

Things to keep in mind when using a professional social networking website:

1. Maintain a mature and polished profile. Use a profile picture that clearly shows your face.
2. Do not use slang or abbreviations on your profile or in discussions. Always use correct grammar and punctuation in your profile!
3. If your email is visible to others, make sure that it is one that can be shared with potential employers! Some variation of your name or initials is ideal.

Falmouth Institute also has a LinkedIn company page. Please click here to view our page!

For more tips, check out this article: 13 Essential Tips for Landing a Job on LinkedIn.

Tips and Tricks Tuesday Poll

Please comment on this post if you do not see the subject you are particularly interested in!

When do you capitalize someone’s title?

One of the most persistent sources of confusion about capitalization is the issue of capitalizing someone’s title. These days, most style books have taken the journalistic approach to capitalizing titles. When the title comes before the name and is used as part of the name, it is capitalized. U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. Navajo Tribal Chairman Joe Shirley. Law Professor James Jones.

When the title comes after the name, it is not capitalized. Hillary Clinton, secretary of state. Joe Shirley, tribal chairman of the Navajo Nation.

Note that the organization should be capitalized if the name is used in full as in Navajo Nation. However, if you wrote, Joe Shirley, chairman of the tribe, you would not capitalize tribe.

Tell the grammar bully where to get off...

...it is OK to use a preposition at the end of a sentence!

Somewhere deep within all of us there lurks a “grammar bully” -- the stern guardian of the language who will never let us forget a comma or allow us to meander into a run-on sentence. She means well, but sometimes you need to tell her where to get off.

If it were up to her, we would never end a sentence with a preposition, such as at, off, with or for.  Instead, we’d be twisting our words into tortured phrases to avoid it and we’d all be the worse for it. It’s time to quell the grammar bully on this subject and to do what makes sense. As Winston Churchill reportedly said when someone rewrote his words to correct his use of a preposition at the end of a sentence: “This is the sort of bloody nonsense up with which I will not put.” Happily, none of us have to put up with it. Despite what your grammar bully is telling you, it is generally fine, and sometimes preferable, to end a sentence with a preposition.

The original rule was derived from a Latin linguistic prescription to end a sentence with a strong word, and while that is good advice, you don’t have to go to extremes. A preposition at the end of a sentence is acceptable if it helps you to avoid an awkward sounding and poorly constructed sentence.

“Which table did you eat at,” sounds better to Americans than “At which table did you eat?” “He gave the audience the performance for which it longed,” is not better than “He gave the audience the performance it longed for.” If you say, “At what are you driving?” instead of “What are you driving at?” you’ll avoid the preposition at the end of the sentences, but all your friends will think you’re weird.

There is a time when you shouldn't use a preposition at the end of sentence and that is when you don’t need to. If the sentence makes sense without the preposition leave it off. “Where will you be meeting her at?” is wrong, not because it ends in a preposition, but because the preposition is not necessary.