Paydayloansonlineresource.org strives to end this lack of education. We want to make sure that anyone considering a payday loan knows exactly what they might be getting themselves into. The high interest rates, the hidden terms, and the fact that the payday loan won’t fix the underlying problem all contribute to one of the worst financial decisions a person can make when they have found themselves in a poor financial situation.

On this site, you will find pages explaining exactly what a payday loan is, the advantages and disadvantages of getting such a loan, and information about trusting online companies promoting payday loans. You will also be able to access information about the rates many payday loan companies charge and some factors you should consider before taking out this type of loan.

We realize that, for some, getting a payday loan is the only option. However, we encourage those in financial trouble to exhaust all other options before making this drastic decision.

Vanessa Lang is an author who writes guest posts on the topics of business, marketing, credit cards, and personal finance. Additionally, she works for a website that focuses on educating readers about payday loans.

Their printing services range from all kinds of invitations (baby shower, birthdays, parties, weddings, etc), announcements (weddings, graduation, moving), all kinds of baby & kid related items, and holiday gifts. Items like custom printed labels on mint tins are not something you find at every online stationary printer.

Ordering Business Cards

Like I mentioned, the only service I have experience with is ordering a set of business cards, but I am going to guess that the other print services are the same.

I started originally wanting to upload my own design – sounds easy right? Well, no. Unfortunately, TinyPrints does not allow you to upload your own custom design like most other printers. I had a business card design that I created in Adobe Photoshop and had printed at other places but wanted to try it through TinyPrints but could not.

So, than I had to switch directions and pick from one of their premade designs to customize with my information. Once I found a design that I liked, it was very simple to add in my information and quickly complete my order. Now, while you cannot upload a completely custom card design, you can upload different elements to your card such as your own logo. Some of the templates are set up to have a picture of you in which case you can upload a photo and edit it for use on the card. This was good to see and is a nice feature to still be able to personalize the cards more for your business or brand rather than just having a plain text card.

Most online printers offer your standard vertically and horizontally printed business cards. TinyPrints.com has those and many other options too. If you’re looking for something a little more unique then a normal card, check out some of the options they have – folded cards and different size cards.

25 cards for $23.50? Isn’t that a bit expensive?

This simple answer is yes. There are plenty of options when using a printing service online that offer some rock bottom prices and offer all kinds of additional services and features as well. At almost $1 a pop, these little cards are pricey, especially for not being able to upload your own custom design. When you think about the price your paying for the cards though, it is important to consider a couple points.

First, the shipping time is pretty quick. With some of the other online printing services, you have to wait weeks for your cards to just be printed let alone shipped. I ordered from another service a few months ago and the wait was 4 weeks just to have my cards and banner printed.  It appears that the standard shipping service for TinyPrints has the cards arriving in about a week to a week and a half from when you order.

The minimum order quantity is only 10 cards. Then you can order basically in increments of 5. Other sites, your minimum order are usually 100 and can often times be 250 or more. With a higher quantity, they are obviously going to be able to charge a lower price. But when you only need a small run of cards, invitations, or other items, TinyPrints is offering that service and you are going to pay a premium on such small orders.

Finally, the quality of the cards is great. I’ve ordered from 3 other websites and also the printing service at my local Staples store. The cards are always much thinner and sometimes the printing is a lesser quality than how my cards arrived. The card stock for the cards is a nice thickness and corners are not easily bent when in pockets or your wallet.

So while the cards would be expensive, the quality and turnaround time is great so there is a trade off. Either way, my experience with these guys was good and I’d recommend them for small printing runs or definitely for the other services like baby announcements and invitations as their designs looked great.

Have you used TinyPrints.com? Share your experience in the comments!

Disclaimer: TinyPrints.com sponsored the business cards for this review. The opinions in the review are 100% of it’s author.

Computer viruses and internet security are two things that everyone should be worrying about when they are putting their personal information out there – especially small businesses. With so many options out there to try to protect yourself from harmful viruses, attacks, and snooping, what do you use? Norton Small Business is a great solution if your answer was “nothing” or anything but Norton.

In a recent survey, 30% of small business owners ranked technology as one of their top business priorities, even above reducing labor costs. That just goes to show what a huge problem it is. Norton is trying to help small businesses stay say with the Small Business discount on Norton products. They are offering a 30% discount on Norton products. get 30% off Norton Small Business Products now.

As a small business owner, it’s important to protect your businesses information when connected to the internet. You don’t want someone stealing your corporate credit card information or any other sensitive data, now do you? There are two different product choices that you could go with, Norton 360 and Norton Internet Security 2012.

Norton 360 offers more features than NIS 2012 such helping keep your machines running at full speed and not slowing down productivity, safeguards your important files with automatic backups, and lets you access your backed up files securely from any internet connected computer. Norton Internet Security 2012 and Norton 360 both offer features such as freedom to surf the net, chart, and email without having to worry about online threats, protects you against theft of sensitive information, and they both let you know if a file is safe to download or if a website is safe to visit.

With all these features, and the low price, it’s a no brainer to pick up at least one of the software options.

My complaint with running a Norton product has always been that is has slowed down my computer when doing a backup or sweeping for viruses. In the last edition that we purchased for our home computers, the lag and slowdown was completely eliminated and you basically had no idea the program was running in the background.  It’s great to see that this has been fixed and will be a huge help to small businesses as well as the regular household user.

Do you use any virus protection or internet security software for your small business? What’s your experience been?

Be sure to check out the 30% discount on Norton Small Business by Symantec

First, I’m a pretty basic Adobe Photoshop user. I’ve been using it since back in the day when it used to just have a version number, not a CS before it, like back in the time of Photoshop 5.0 (1999 I think). I’ve used it for web design and graphic design mostly but every once in a while, I’ll touch up a photograph or just mess around with it. There have been all kinds of changes in the designing world that have seen trends go through such as vintage looks, trendwhore looks, grunge, and many more. But I never really went past what I would call normal usage. However, my skills were beyond that of many others as was apparent in college when I took two graphic/web design classes in which Photoshop was the focus. I would quickly finish assignments of designing logos and website templates in half the time as others in the class.

But, some of these hidden gems and tricks are way beyond anything I knew was possible with the software or anything that I had ever thought about doing. So without more rambling, let’s dive into some very cool tips. Also – a big thanks to Adobe and Bryan O’Neil Hughes for hosting the session for a such a small group of college bloggers.

One feature that I have used a little bit which I would always get frustrated with was the clone stamp. This would basically allow you to clone different areas of your image to use them in other places. This was helpful on a small scale for taking out cracks in a scanned image or removing part of a photograph that you didn’t want to be there. Now in CS5 there is a cool Content Aware Fill feature that lets you do this same thing but on a larger scale and much more efficiently to fix large areas of an image. Check out this video below from Adobe on how to use the Content Aware Fill feature.

Another feature that links to the Content Aware Fill feature is the Spot Healing Brush to remove lines or similar paths from an image. This cool tip is highlighted in the video below.

Photoshop has tons of these awesome videos post on YouTube and their site. A couple quick responses for you are below.

• Bryan O’Neil Hughes is a Senior Product Manager at Adobe and creator of these videos – http://www.photoshop.com/people/bryan
• The full Photoshop YouTube channel – http://www.youtube.com/user/Photoshop?feature=watch
• Adobe Labs – http://labs.adobe.com/

Also, if you thought that Phtoshop was just for editing images – you are wrong, you can also edit video within Photoshop CS5.

Adobe is working on so many cool features for Photoshop it’s hard to keep up with! Such as Tutorial Builder – go check that cool one out!

Don’t forget about the crazy cool discounts that students and educators can get on Adobe Photoshop and other programs as well. Check it out on the Adobe website.

So here’s how the app/website works. You head to www.stuffpal.com and log in with your Facebook account. Once logged in, you can then ‘add’ your stuff to your account. Basically, your creating an inventory of the stuff you have that friends could borrow including books, DVD’s and videogames. Then you invite your friends to log in to the site. Once your friends are on the site and have loaded their stuff, you can view their catalog and they can see yours. Then the borrowing begins by seeing which items you’d like to borrow and hearing from your friend what they want to borrow; meet up in person and exchange your items. Sounds pretty cool, right?

The service is good for college students and others for a few reasons. First, it lets you share your stuff with your friends and it makes it much easier than going “Ay yo, what DVD’s you got?” Now you can just go on StuffPal to take a look at your friends list. Next, since the economy is still pretty crappy, you probably don’t want to be spending money on new video games or DVD’s when you have bills to pay, so this allows you to still see some fresh stuff but not have to spend a dime. Finally, it’s good for the environment – borrowing someone elses item rather than buying your own helps cut down on waste.

Another benefit to college students? You can now create a catalog of your textbooks and share them with your friends rather than just having them collect dust on your bookshelf, in a box, or under your bed.

StuffPal has been giving away iPads to the people with the most shared items and those who have them most borrowed/lent items, so if you’ve got a lot of stuff, get on the site and share it. But, the downside is that you can only share items with your friends on Facebook. In the future it would be great to see the service be available by location too, so that I could share with other people in my zip code or college even if we are not friends on the almighty Facebook.

It seems like the reach right now is mostly based in California based on the events and marketing they have been doing at UCLA and USC. Hopefully they make their way around the country to your areas.

StuffPal also recently won the 2011 W3 Silver Award in the web application and services category. The awards honor creative excellence on the web and recognize the people behind the award winning sites. StuffPal beat out over 3,000 other entries this year.

What do you think? Check the site out at www.stuffpal.com and also give them a ‘like’ on Facebook.

This is a sponsored review written by Dorm Room Biz on behalf of StuffPal. The opinions of this review are 100% that of it’s author.

Anyway, if you haven’t heard of Dormzy.com, then you need to check them out. Recently they sent us a package of goods that students and young professionals normally order from their site. Dormzy is an online ordering platform for all your grocery, health & beauty products, household items, and snacks. You order directly on their site and within a few days, everything arrives at your doorstep.

The service is perfect for college students. When I started college, I didn’t have my own car and our school’s bus service was pretty shotty. So I had to rely on friends for rides to the local big box store or food store to get the essentials – ramen noodles, water, soda, mac & cheese, etc. Obviously this becomes a pain because you are relying on other people to help you out and their schedules. But, now with Dormzy and other similar sites, you can order the food, snacks, drinks and health products that you need right from their website and they will ship them to you…and at a great rate.

The guys over at Dormzy were kind enough to send us a box of goods to see the vast array of products they offer. Included in our package were snacks (chips, granola bars, cookies, crackers), microwavable meals, drinks (Red Bull and Vitamin Water), body wash, Advil, and probably some other items that I can’t remember at this point.

Everything was well packaged, in perfect condition, and there were no issues of leakage from any products. If I had ordered the items myself, I would have been pretty satisfied with the experience. A big tip of the hat to Dormzy for providing free shipping on orders over $49 since it should be pretty easy for anybody to pick up a few items and reach that threshold.

My favorite thing about Dormzy, besides the huge selection is that anyone can order from this online general store. Not a college student? No problem. Not a young person straight out of college? No problem. Are you a parent of a college student? Order from the site and have it shipped directly to your kid. It couldn’t be easier.

Again, a big THANKS to Dormzy for sending us some products to check out and share the experience with our readers. We look forward to following the company over the next few years as they grow and expand to carry more products.

Now, get over to http://www.dormzy.com and check out their huge selection of thousands of products! Check them out on Facebook too to see if they may be visiting a college near you!

The Sony VAIO-S Series laptop. This is a great buy, with an amazing battery life among other awesome features for college students. Over the past month I have been testing out a S-Series VAIO and I must say I love it. The laptop was sent to me for review by Sony Electronics and Microsoft as part of their “Charged and Ready” program. This was a program to test the extremes of the battery life, which with the optional Sheet Battery, can give you 15 hours of battery life!

I’m sure you’ve seen those kids sitting in class next to the wall with their laptop plugged in charging while in class. Or while they are in the library, they are searching for an outlet. With the Vaio S-Series, your time spent searching for is outlet are over. One of the main features with this laptop is the amazing battery life. This laptop lets you go about your day and be completely unplugged but still charged and ready. By it self, the laptop should last you around 7.5 hours on a full charge. Now if that can’t get you through a few classes and a lunch break in the cafeteria, then something is wrong. Here is where things get crazzzy – add in the extra Sheet Battery and you can get yourself another 7.5 hours of battery life for 15 hours total! The Sheet Battery from Sony is currently $150. I know, you’re thinking that’s expensive – so keep reading. When you purchase your new VAIO, you get the Sheet Battery for just $75 extra! And, if that is not good enough for you, as a student you can even get the sheet battery for free! Yupp, I said FREE. So stop reading right now and head over to the Sony Sheet Battery Offer page to get the full details.

You’re still here? Okay, well here are some more of the awesome benefits of this laptop.

Size
You’ll have no problem fitting this baby on your desk with your text book or note pad. While I was in college, I lugged around a huge Dell laptop that took up the whole table top. This VAIO is just about 13 inches x 9 inches. If you’re geeky, and I know some of you out there are, and must know, the thickness of the laptop is just about an inch and when you add the Sheet Battery to it, it adds close to another quarter of an inch.

Weight
Without the sheet battery, it weighs at 3.8 pounds. Not bad right? Compared to carrying my old Dell laptop, this thing is like a stack of tissue paper. The weight, combined with it’s small size, makes it a no brainer decision to throw this in your school bag and take it to class with you. You won’t regret it.

Stamina vs Speed
Are you working a late night on editing some video footage before your 8 AM class or working on the finishing touches to a new website you are going to launch and running Photoshop at the same time? Or are you just kicking it on the couch surfing Facebook  and sending some emails? Depending on your usage at the time, there is a great little button where you can switch between Stamina and Speed operating conditions. Switching to Stamina will help conserve your battery life when you are not doing anything too graphic intense or that requires a lot of processing power. But if you are playing World of Warcraft in your dorm room or working on that next music video, you can switch to Speed to help bolster your operating experience. A great feature to have for sure!

I’ve talked about the size, weight, and power, so here are a few more of the basic details on the laptop that Sony publishes:

• 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i5 technology
• Dedicated AMD graphics – AMD Radeon™ HD 6470M dedicated graphics card with 512MB of VRAM
• Intel® Wireless Display
• Processor Speed: 2.30GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology up to 2.90GHz
• 4GB memory
• Storage Capacity: 500GB
• Windows® 7 Home Premium 64-bit
• Software: Microsoft® Office Starter, Adobe® Creative Software: Adobe Acrobat® Standard 9.0, Adobe Photoshop® Elements 8.0, Adobe Premiere® Elements 8.0
• Backlit keyboard
• Durable magnesium alloy casing
• 13.3” (1366 x 768) widescreen display w/ LED backlight to ensure a bright display while conserving battery power.
• Dimensions: 13.04″ (W) x 0.95″ (H) x 8.84″ (D)
• Weight: 3.80 lbs. (with Standard Battery)

Now, let’s talk price. The VAIO I received to test out starts at about $1,299 and that’s not including the Sheet Battery. But that’s for the souped up model. If you want to consider just the base VAIO-S Series model, check out the Sony website and you can find them starting at around $999.

Over the next couple weeks, we will be using the VAIO even more as we head off on a road trip across the US. I’ll follow up with some more details about how it survived while working in campsites, hotels, and busy convention centers & tradeshows across the US.

If you are a student looking for a laptop, definitely, definitely, definitely check out the VAIO-S Series with the Sheet Battery for 15 hours of battery life! The free student Sheet Battery offer and the $75 (half off) for everyone is good only until September 17th. So get a movin’!

Want to read what some others thought about the laptop? Check out their reviews below.

CampusGrotto: Be ‘Charged and Ready’ this fall with the new Sony VAIO S-series
CheapScholar.org: Gearing Up For College With The New Sony S Series Laptop
CollegeInfoGeek: Sony Sent Me A Laptop

Disclaimer: This post is part of program called “Charged and Ready” by Sony Electronics and Microsoft, where myself and a group of other bloggers have been given a Sony VAIO-S series laptop to test and review.

Domainers are already having their domain names appraised to determine the resale value on them, so why wouldn’t you have an appraisal conducted for your entire business? In addition to helping you determine the actual worth of your business, business appraisals also help you determine:

The Value of Marketable Assets

Knowing the potential value of your company’s marketable assets is highly beneficial should your business be liquidated. Although no one wants to believe that their business could be liquidated, the market for businesses has been so tough, that anything is possible. A business could be looking great one week and go under the next. By knowing your marketable assets, you will know exactly what you are able to sell should your business begin failing which could save you thousands of dollars in the long run.

The Value of Interest for Personal Planning

If you know the approximate value of your business, you will know how much coverage or insurance you will need. Knowing the value will also allow you to better prepare for retirement and for death as you will know how much additional income you may obtain during your retirement years, or how much your loved ones will be left with should you perish.

The Value of Each Owner’s Interest

Did you start on online business with your roommate? Is half your frat house invested in your business? A business appraisal will help you assess how much each owner should receive should you choose to sell the business. Not only will this help argument be avoided later on the down the road, but it will also help ensure that business continues to be conducted fairly amongst owners.

There are several ways that a business appraisal may be conducted. A business owner can perform one themselves by using their own balance sheets, or they may employ the professional help of a business valuation firm. Although all business owners should perform a business appraisal themselves, a professional appraisal is recommended as all guesswork will be removed from the equation. The price for a professional appraisal can be expensive though so only serious business owners should consider employing the services of such firms.

CoursePark is a sleek looking learning management network that helps individuals advance their careers and businesses through online training solutions. The courses will bring value to your business, increase productivity, and your return on investment will be huge.

Below are some of the features of CoursePark

• Learning for individuals, employees or clients
• Free registration
• No software to install or download
• Unlimited access to 3500+ courses
• Track your courses and progress
• Build and sell our own training courses/material

For small business owners and entrepreneurs like us, CoursePark could become an invaluable tool. With thousands of courses in hundreds of areas, this site really offers you the chance to take your knowledge to the next level and be prepared in different areas of business. Plus, it is an incredibly low cost option which fits our bootstrapping budget – which always makes us smile. Plus, if you budget is even tighter or non-existent, CoursePark offers a number of FREE courses when you sign up too.

If you are looking to hire someone and need help with effective interviewing, there is a course for that.

If you want to beef up your Microsoft Office 2007 skills, there is a course for that.

If you want to learn more about information security best practices to keep your data safe, there is a course for that.

If you want to learn how to be a better project manager, there are courses for that.

if you are ready to take your training to the next level, set yourself up to be better equipped, then definitely consider CoursePark.

join CoursePark

Are you the guy who is so busy that you can’t wait for your Facebook app to load on your Blackberry? Do you want easy access to your email, social media, and multimedia at the tip of your finger without having to scroll through menus?

Well, it may be time to check out the LG Optimus 7 then.

The Optimus 7 is LG’s newest phone to come out featuring the new Windows OS 7. You’ve probably seen the commercials for it on TV, so lets dig into the details a bit more.

Below are some of the cool features:

• Offers the glance and go experience of Windows Phone 7
• Play To lets users share multimedia files with other digital devices from the picture, video or music Hubs without having to access other menus
• Share your videos and photos captured on the LG Optimus 7 on a TV wirelessly
• Enjoy music on your phone through speakers without wires.
• ScanSearch can access real-time information about shopping, dining, weather, and more
• Features LG’s Voice-to-Text feature which allows communication without the need for fat fingering the keyboard
• Voice to Text feature also lets you update Facebook and Twitter accounts and write emails verbally.

Then of course there are some cool specs for the phone:

• 3.8 inch LCD display
• 5MP camera with Intelligent Shot and Panoramic Mode
• 16 gigs of internal memory
• 720p HD video resolution is great for shooting videos for YoutTube on the go

Need more of a preview? Check out the below video.

They also have some more videos up on their YouTube channel: LG Optimus 7

Overall, looks like a pretty cool phone. Without playing with one in hand, I’m not sure how much I’d like the split front screen with all the options, but then again, that is the point of this phone – easy access to the things you need quickly at a glance.

Also, for the iPhone lovers out there, you’ll find that the LG Optimus 7 is larger, at 3.8 inches vs the 3.5 inch display of the iPhone. However, if you’re a Droid X lover, than you’ll be happy to know that your Droid is larger at 4.3 inches.

As a Google fan, and a Verizon subscriber, I see the Droid being my next phone purchase rather than something like the LG Optimus 7. The Droid also beats the LG in camera megapixels (coming in at 8 megapixels)

Anyone tried this new LG Optimus 7? Id love to hear your thoughts.