Early January. Though it’s the dead of winter, many of us are dreaming about our summer vegetable gardens. The seed catalogs have begun to appear in the mailbox. Kris and I received eight of them today:

Images of summer…

It might seem crazy to start thinking about a vegetable garden in January. It’s cold outside! But believe it or not, now is the perfect time to begin preparing for a successful autumn harvest. Over the next month, we’ll plan our seed order. By the end of February, our seeds will be started indoors. All of this leads to those exciting days at the end of April when we can move our plants to the vegetable garden!

Our garden Kris and I own about two-thirds of an acre in Portland, Oregon. Since moving [+]

Several months ago, I took my own advice about how to choose a credit card and signed up for an American Express card from Costco. This is a business card and not a personal card. (I carry only one personal credit card.)

In early October, I complained that I wasn’t willing to activate the card until I had read and understood the enclosed agreement, which was the equivalent of 63 normal typewritten pages. Many readers have written to ask for a follow-up, but I haven’t been able to give one. I didn’t read the agreement until Christmas break.

It took me about an hour to work through the document. As far as I can tell — I’m only moderately proficient in that arcane language known as legalese — everything here is pretty standard except for one fee. Here’s the quote from the [+]

Shoemoney has a great, easy promotion going on right now with a contest he’s running.  He’s giving away a Flip Mino HD customized with his logo on it.

And all he’s requiring to enter the contest is that you Twitter about it.

Why Shoemoney is going to get tens of thousands of new followers:

1.  Contest is dead easy to enter

2.  Prizes (Flip and Mac Air) are highly desireable.

How you can do this easily for your blog:

CafePress is offering to print anything that will fit on a Flip Cam.  You set up the artwork you’d like in your CafePress account, grab a sample image, post it on your blog with contest rules, and once you pick the winners, simply order the cameras from your account on CafePress and have them mailed directly to the winners!

Easy peasey!

What to base the contest on:

Shoemoney based it [+]

From laser focus in growing your blog readership as fast as possible to birthdays and other blogsphere news you can use!

Growing Your Blog Faster:  Problogger guest post by Leo Babauta of Zen Habits Wordpress Founder Turns 25 Today:  Happy Birthday Matt Mullenweg!  Thanks for the best blogging platform on the web! In Your 20’s?  Into Social Media?  Grab a scholarship! Win an HD Flip Mino from Shoemoney.  (Easy to enter Twitter contest, finally!)

Did YOU find a great link today?  Share it below!  And be sure to follow me on Twitter as I pass along a ton of great resource links over there as well!

Go to Source [+]

With a name like that, there’s no need for a longer title.  Clay is a friend of mine.  And I am proud of that because Clay was friends with Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin!

A lot of people know Clay online as a marketer, website developer, and all around great guy.  What most people don’t know is Clay was one of the best piano mercenaries you could hire.  He tickled the keys like nobody’s business.  I would give anything to go back in time to see one (or all) of his shows with some of the greatest musicians and rock stars in history.

Another thing most people don’t know is why everyone talks about Clay and the piano in the past tense.  This is because Clay’s been suffering with MS [+]

Seth Godin is the only person who can get me to open an email entitled “Time to Start a Newspaper” in what is being considered the swan song days of chopping down trees and delivering them to people.

Seriously, the paper news industry is truly coming to an end.  At least in its current form.  The New York Times took out a mortgage on their own building last year to raise capital to stay afloat.  And they are considered one of the best in breed, most-likely-to-stay-afloat of newspapers.  Countless news stories have covered seemingly countless papers going out of business or struggling like never before in the last year.

There’s a site dedicated to watching the industry decline!

So, when Seth sent that email, I HAD to see what he was up to.  Had he lost his mind?  Was this my chance, now [+]

Reminder that I’ll be on today at 2 p.m. est with Jim Stroud, my fellow social marketing “enthusiast” to discuss this week in traffic, social media, and probably Jim’s damned iPhone.

Tune In!  It’s Fun!

Got a question?  Know of a neat site?  Twitter it to @bendtheweb and we’ll try to answer it on the show!

Go to Source [+]

Book Review by Zinta Aistars· Paperback: 168 pages· Publisher: Twilight Times Books, 2007· Price: $16.95· ISBN-10: 1933353872· ISBN-13: 978-1933353876The Real Reason the Queen Hated Snow by Annette Marie Hyder is a collection of short stories, poems, recipes and essays. For the most part, all are built on and around the feminine (and feminist) experience, and the structure is reminiscent of fairy tales and fables, folklore and mythology. At the end of many of these pieces are citations, short explanations, recommended reading.Hyder is knowledgeable about her sources and about the ideals of feminism. As a feminist myself, I appreciate the message and, quite often, the delivery in this collection. We see the strength that is uniquely a woman’s; we see the comfort and [+]

Book Review by Zinta AistarsPaperback: 272 pagesPublisher: Kunati Inc., 2008Price: $14.95ISBN-10: 1601641621ISBN-13: 978-1601641625 In her first adult novel, author Ivana Hruba tells the story of a kidnapping gone awry. I suppose saying so beckons a definition of a successful kidnapping, which would depend on one's perspective -- as either the kidnapper or the kidnapped. We have in A Decent Ransom the perspectives of both. It is perhaps, then, up to the reader to determine if the unusual twists in this particular kidnapping end well or not (and I don't intend to give the twists away entirely). This something of a roller coaster ride of perspectives is both the strength and weakness of Hruba's novel. Three cheers for the juggling it requires for [+]

Book Review by Zinta Aistars

· Hardcover: 203 pages· Publisher: Black Lawrence Press, 2008· Price: $20.95· ISBN-10: 0976899361· ISBN-13: 978-0976899365Years ago, I saw a Jim Carrey movie called The Truman Show. It was about a man whose entire life, unbeknownst to him, played out on a movie stage while the rest of the world watched. Steven Gillis’s novel, Temporary People, reminded me of that movie … only with a much darker palette of colors. Much darker. Add a touch of the surreal, and you have Gillis, likened to Kurt Vonnegut by some (and I would agree with the comparison).Temporary People is called a fable by the author, explaining the designation in the first pages of his unfolding story, in which the island of [+]