Jacob S. Paulsen.com

Ami and I have almost been married for three years. Last night I was reflecting on what we have done and where we have been in those three years and it was very fun to think about. Here is a brief list:

In the last three years we have:

1. Lived in four different homes/apartments.
2. Been in contract to purchase 7 different homes in Utah.
3. Purchased 2 of those homes.
4. Had two pregnancies, one of which was successful.
5. Had 6 different jobs between us
6. Started 6 of our own businesses (many unsuccessfully.)
7. Owned 6 different computers (5 laptops) of which we still use 4 on a regular basis.
8. Owned 4 vehicles. (Worth noting that Ami has always had the same car and I’ve been through 3 on my own, the Honda, Infiniti, & Lexus)
9. Listened to over 65 Audiobooks.
10. Been through 2 fish, a guinea pig, and a dog (still have the dog)
11. Lost almost $400,000 in poor business sense.
12. Done door to door sales in 9 different states.
13. Used over 65,000 cell phone minutes (1083.3 hours) not counting mobile to mobile or nights and weekends.
14. Seen every episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, King of Queens, and Still Standing. (Currently working on Who’s Line is it Anyway)
15. Held 7 church callings.
16. Almost finished reading the Book of Mormon once as a couple (I know its pathetic but we are in Moroni 9)
17. Found 3 geo-caches (Also Pathetic)
18. Been to Disneyland twice
19. Been through 6 different cell phones
20. Only mowed our own lawn like 4 or 5 times

Not to bad but interesting for sure!

Jacob

So when it comes to home based business owners like myself, we really tend to feed on the coolest of the internet services. Especially the free ones. Today I just wanted to highlight a few of those. (No surprise any of these are google services).

IGoogle: Customized Home pages aren’t anything new but Google has made a huge innovation in personalized home pages. With bazillions of different “widgets” you can add to your site there is almost little need to even leave you home page anymore.

Google Reader: Now that I’m into blogging and more importantly keeping up on other people’s blogs I love this program that alerts me every time anyone on my list posts a new blog entry. Because I have a Google reader “widget” on my Igoogle home page I know immediately when family and friends post. I love it.

Skype: Instant Messaging isn’t really new either but Skype has changed the way we do this. They have integrated a full feature video VOIP phone. Fancy way of saying you can make phone calls for free via the internet to anyone anywhere in the world who also has the free software installed. Turning on the video is an option and we generally only use it for family who want to see the baby but still… Super Cool.

Plaxo: Plaxo does a lot of things but the coolest is its ability to synchronize your contacts and calendar between your Google, Yahoo, MSM, Hotmail, excite, email services in addition to MAC, Outlook, Express, etc. HOLY COW this is amazing. The premium services are cool too, but the free account does about everything I need it to do.

Ok. I’ll stop for now. No doubt I will rave about more programs in the future.

Jacob Paulsen