Gary Coles's (garytcoles) Blog

I just had a featured post (What is the Last Thing You Taught Someone?) and I promised to write two more posts.  Here is the first one.  It is a basic tutorial on Wordles.  Wordles are "word clouds" that are created from text or from the text on a web-page.  The images can be modified with differ...

Are you serious about finding topics and creating great posts for your blogs?  One of the things that slows down many bloggers is the search for topics. How can you find some great subjects.  My advice is Stop, Look and Listen.  Stop -- Too often we are so absorbed in our day to day work to pay a...

Ya Gotta Luv it - I'm talking about ActiveRain University. Just think about any website or software that you use and ask yourself, "Do they provide excellent training to help you use the site or product?"  Think about the sites you visit:  Facebook, Twitter and others  -- chances are there is no ...

A Year of Growing Rich:  Overcome Fear to Reach Your Goal     This is the 40th week of a 52 week motivational journey and I want to invite you along.  Each week, I will touch on one of the chapters from Napoleon Hill's book titled  A Year of Growing Rich and subtitled "52 Steps to Achieving Life'...

The 2012 BIG Jumpstart Blog Challenge has created a lot of awareness and interest in many things -- but one thing has always been very visible in the Rain and that is members sharing experiences and the best ways to do things.   The ActiveRain philosophy (Weltanschauung) says: "ActiveRain believe...

The December Posting Challenge kept many of us in touch and I am continuing with a recap each week. I'm behind so here is the recap for weeks three and four of 2012. My office manager Yazmine (a Siamese and great friend) has developed severe kidney problems and many of you have asked me to contin...

As many of you know, my specialty is Latin America. I've decided this year to watch for posts that show a little bit about some of the wonderful places and re-blog them.  And, if you would like to know more about retirement homes, second homes or investments please contact me or go to my website,...

One of the great things about the 2012 Big Jumpstart Blog Challenge is that it encourages us to take a closer look at ActiveRain.  The guiding principles and philosophy of the organization (Weltanschauung) is set forth and is a great guideline for us.  Principle #7 is: "We encourage dissenting a...

Do You Make any of My Top 12 SEO Mistakes? Everywhere I turn, I see posts telling about Search Engine Optimization. The 2012 BIG Jumpstart Blog Challenge has created a lot of awareness and interest in SEO.  Many of the posts are great -- but I'm the guy who reads all the "Dummies" Books and I sta...

A Year of Growing Rich:  Learn from Defeat     This is the 39th week of a 52 week motivational journey and I want to invite you along.  Each week, I will touch on one of the chapters from Napoleon Hill's book titled  A Year of Growing Rich and subtitled "52 Steps to Achieving Life's Rewards."    ...