Movie Reviews

Post contributed by Hilton Miranda

I used my parent’s http://www.wildbluedeals.com/ while I was home for Thanksgiving to look up reviews of the newest Twilight movie. I was trying to decide if I wanted to go see it with all my friends while they were home. It was between that and the new Muppets movie. I was a little biased and wanted to see the Muppets more than the Twilight movie, but I figured I needed a more fair opinion. My girl friends were all in favor of Twilight. They have really jumped on the vampire bandwagon in a really big way. I think they may have even gone to the book release event. I am not judging them, but I am not sure how I feel about all the movies. I really thought my boy friends would not want to see either movie, but they were actually really fans of seeing the Muppets. The reviews were mixed, as most are. The Muppets on the other hand got pretty fair reviews. I guess you never know until you actually see the movie though and I am clearly still very biased.

Widening your business reach

With globalisation moving at a rapid pace, the barriers to reach new markets are becoming increasingly thin. One barrier in increasing the business reach to new markets is the language barrier. For a business owner, the availability of translation companies help reduce this barrier.

When you have a technical brochure which you would like to use to market your services overseas, using a translation agency to translate your brochure to various languages e.g. Chinese, German, French, Spanish and Japanese would give you easy access to huge markets in non-English speaking countries. This can be e at a minimal cost and by engaging a single translation agency to manage multiple translations simultaneously, hence reducing the need for the business owner to liaise with multiple vendors This would also help ensure the quality assurance of the multiple language translations.

In this era of information technology advancement, having multiple language options in your website helps widen the reach of a certain website. In the case of a internet business owner, being able to tap into non-English language markets can be lucrative as there is minimal competitive in such niches. In this case, the use of translation services to translate your website content from English to other languages would be the best solution considering time, price and quality factors.

My Spanish-Speaking Inlaws

Post contributed by Leonard Phelps

It makes my mother-in-law, whose first language is Spanish, extremely happy when she is able to do business in her first language. While a lot of places offer many of their services in Spanish, not everywhere does. She and my father-in-law- were trying to set up utilities at their new beach house. I ended up assisting her with most of the things that need to be done. The tasks ranged from finding the best natural gas provider to finding a good local painter. My mother-in-law called me the other day to announce how proud she was that she had set up the television for the house on her own. She logged onto tvbyDIRECT.com and was able to surf and conduct business on the site in Spanish. My knowledge of Spanish is minimal. I could only imagine how difficult it would be for me, who has minimal knowledge of foreign languages to set up a vacation home without native-speaking help. I’m surprised that with as large as the Spanish-speaking population is becoming the United States, that more businesses aren’t going bilingual.

Zoe

Posted by Arden Wallace

Can I tell you how excited I am that a new season of Rachel Zoe is on? I missed the premiere, but today I ran home from work to catch it on my satellite tv HS. Let me tell you, Rachel Zoe never disappoints. There were more fur vests, bangles and sunnies in the first episode of this season than I could handle, not to mention that there’s a little baby Zoe to come. I love most of all that Rachel disclosed that she cried for a week or two when she found out her baby was a boy because she dreamed of dressing a little girl in couture and taking her to Paris. I respect such honesty, and I’m sure we all could have guessed that was the case even if Rachel hadn’t admitted it. The fact that Rachel is pregnant gives me hope. It seems that no one can ever be too old or too skinny to carry a child. But honestly, I do really respect that she can maintain a massive career and be super successful and still manage to have a child. I guess the jury will be out until the child is old enough to tell his story (probably in a therapist’s office or on E!), but for now, I’ll say she’s doing it all.

The American Music Awards

The American Music Awards

Thanks for the post, Lorraine Gregory

One of my favorite award shows is The American Music Awards. The reason I enjoy it is because of the many musical performances that are done during the show. My favorite this year was Pink singing “Raise Your Glass” she is one of my favorite musicians and I really love that song. Pink is also very good when she performs live.

The show began with Rihanna singing two of her songs; she started with “What's My Name” and finished with “Love the Way You Lie.” I didn't know the first song, but I love the second one and own the version with Eminem. She was wearing a revealing two-piece outfit and her hair was as red as ever.

The Black Eyed Peas also performed “The Time (Dirty Bit)” and did an excellent job. My three year old is a huge Black Eyed Peas fan and danced throughout their entire performance. I had to jump up half-way through and grab my video camera to record it. Luckily he kept going and I was able to capture this moment. My family watched the show together on our Direct TV current deals and enjoyed a superb picture throughout the show.

I wish they would end the silly conversations that the show producers make the announcers do with one another. It always sounds as though they are reading from a script, which they are.

Van Gundy & Miller Shine At ESPN

Van Gundy & Miller Shine At ESPN

Guest post by Gerard Mcdaniel

I always like to watch my favorite sports network on directtv specials. I have always enjoyed listening to the broadcasts associated with Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN. Jon Miller and his accurate pronouncing of players names is something that should have a high level of appeal to a true baseball fan. There are a high number of people who also like the idea of how Jon Miller likes to draw parallels between the game of baseball today and the game of baseball in the past. You have to admire Miller's true love for the game of baseball, it truly seem genuine. When Jon Miller speaks, you still get a sense of a young boy from the Bay Area who still acts like his first Major league game was as relevant and exciting as the last one he called.

If you were to switch over to basketball over at ESPN. I happen to like how former Houston Rockets and New York Knicks coach Jeff Van Gundy happens to call games over there. There needs to be more announcers out there who happen to bring the kind of candor that Van Gundy does. Jeff Van Gundy also brings some key information about what a coach would happen to be thinking at this very moment and he also tends to bring a lot of good insights on the type of defensive schemes to the table

My Kids Favorite Show

My Kids Favorite Show

Contribution by Darren Saunders

My kids, God love them, absolutely loved watching television with my wife and I. However, some of the shows that we watched even though they were based off of real life experiences were above the level that they could comprehend and that kind of worried my wife and I. The main problem that we had was in keeping them entertained during the day since they are both home schooled and that could lead to them finishing school work early.

Thankfully we had a great DVR that worked wonderfully well and even recorded in HD. That way my kids could watch their favorite Discovery channel shows during the day time in HD. That was a blessing that we always would enjoy because that meant they could be watching the same HD programming on Directtv HD DVR that we had watched the night before. Then my wife and I could work on getting some of the house work done while they were occupied with the shows that they loved. That meant that we would not have to worry about them coming up to use and asking questions every five seconds while we were concentrating on the jobs that we were trying to complete.

Too many New Year's Eve plans

Guest post written by Daphnee Henry

I'm not quite sure how this happened this year, but I seem to have a few different New Year's Eve party invitations. So I'm going to have to make a decision about which parties to actually attend. Traffic would be a nightmare to go to more than one party and I think that if I went to more parties than that I wouldn't be able to enjoy them and spend time with people at them.

Normally I have to come up with my own New Year's Eve ideas, but a few weeks ago I checked my e-mail with my clear-internet and found several e-invites to parties in it. I'm pretty flattered by it since normally the people that I'm friends with opt for going out to eat at a nice restaurant or staying at home to watch the ball in Times Square drop.

I thought that I would stop by our New Year's party because it literally is down the street and I don't have to worry about traffic to get there. Then one of my wife's friends is having a party across town, so we might just ring in the New Year there.