My Favorite FREE Web Utilities

Tiny URL shortens web addresses

Pixlr is a great, free online photo editing site. You can crop and resize photos, and you can change file types, such as changing a .gif to a .jpg.

YouSendIt allows you to send large files, such as powerpoints, to others without ever entering anyone's inbox, including yours. You upload the file to their server, they send a notice to your recipient who downloads it directly to their computer. There is a free version.

Lovely Charts allows you to draw all kinds of diagrams.

Meeting Wizard allows you to schedule meetings with ease.

PDF to Word will convert PDF files to Word documents.

Aboogy online Bookmarking site.

Office Live from Microsoft. Document sharing that saves and opens as Microsoft documents, including Word, PowerPoint and Excel. You can also store files and create a free website.

Social Media Revolution

Laurel and Hardy meet Santana

LVCVA hire will combat terrorism

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority wants locals and tourists to feel safe along the resort corridor, and the agency could spend as much as $480,000 in the next three years meeting that goal.

The authority's board approved the funding on Tuesday during its monthly meeting. The money will finance the hiring of an intelligence analyst who will work for the Metropolitan Police Department in its Southern Nevada Counter-Terror Center. The analyst will read narrative documents and scrub suspicious-activities reports to look for information on possible crimes and to seek out connections that could indicate terrorists are planning coordinated attacks.

Ray Suppe, security director for the authority, said he believes it's the first position of its kind at any convention and visitors' agency in the nation. Michael Hart, editor-in-chief of Tradeshow Week magazine, said he hasn't heard of any other visitors' agencies adding such analysts. Security was top-of-mind after the terrorism of Sept. 11, 2001, Hart said, but concerns about such attacks have receded in the eight years since. "I can't imagine anyone picking a trade show destination or making a decision about going to a trade show because they're afraid of personal danger," Hart said. "If this works for them (the authority) and it helps them draw people, that's good. But I can't imagine there's a serious competition between New York and Las Vegas over which city is safer." Continue.

Making Sidecar Frozen Cocktails with Banquet Captain Denny

This is Denver Forester, a former student of mine and an alum of the UNLV Hotel College. He has others, including Chocolate Brandy Martinis and Strawberry Daquris.

The 50 Minute Meeting

How often do you find that by 11am you're running late and that by 3pm, you've either been forced to dump a meeting to reset your day or are 100 emails behind because you've gone straight from one appointment to another all day long?

Either way, you're leaving someone (or many people) in the lurch. Either way, it's a stressful and unsatisfying existence.

Why do we live this way?

There's another group of people who are scheduled in back-to-back sessions all day long, every day of the week. I speak, of course, of students. All the way through school we're taught in 50-minute blocks, a schedule that lets us get to our next class on time. The buildings even have bells to remind the person running the meeting, er, class, to end on time. Link.

Twitter Search in Plain English