The Ultimate How-To

Want to know how to fend off a shark, save on gas, build a picket fence, or soak a stamp off of an envelope? FindHow.com makes it easy to find authoritative information on how to do just about anything related to your car, career, home, education, family relationships, travel, holidays and more.

You can browse information by category or do a search. The search feature isn’t as intuitive as you might want. When I typed in “how to manage email” the top results were about being or becoming a manager. Still if you need instructions on how to get something done, its a good place to start.

To learn more visit FindHow.com

Decipher Abbreviations and Acronyms

Have you ever come across an abbreviation or acronym and not known what it meant? Acronym Finder is a dictionary with over 600,000 abbreviations, acronyms and initialisms. Simply type in the abbreviation or acronym to get a list of possible definitions. For example, ICPC is used to refer to Interstate Compact for the Placement of Children or International Conference of Police Chaplains as well as several other meanings.

If you still aren’t sure which meaning is the one you need, you can further categorize the definition into areas of information technology, military and government, science and medicine, organizations and schools, business and finance, or slang, chat and pop culture. The last category can be a bit help with texting and instant messaging.

Visit Acronym Finder to learn more.

Translate Website Content into a Different Language

The world wide web has made interacting with other cultures so much easier. Even so, many websites are in languages that I don’t speak. And I know that English isn’t the first language of many people who visit my sites. But there is help. Babel Fish from Yahoo can translate a bit of text or an entire web page for you.

If you’re on a website written in a language you don’t know, you can visit Babel Fish and type in the URL of the page you want to translate and the ‘from’ and ‘to’ language. Here is a screen shot of Better Living On the Web from English to French.

Better Living On the Web Translated into French

If you own a website and would like to make it easy for people to translate it into their native language, you can add the Babel Fish translation service to your site. You can test it using the one here at Better Living on the Web (scroll down the right side navigation to find it).

The translation may not be perfect, but hopefully it will be enough to get the meaning of the website.

Find a Planner that Fits Your Style

With the New Year, comes resolutions and a commitment or recommitment to goals. To keep all your new tasks organized requires a planner that fits your needs.

I’m organizationally challenged, which causes problems because I’m also a multi-business entrepreneur. I’m always on the hunt for the perfect planner system that fits how I work. My preference is to see the whole week at a glance and have all my to-dos (personal and professional) listed along side any appointments. I don’t want to have to turn pages to manage my day because I’m more likely to not turn the page and therefore miss something. The problem has been that I’ve never found just the right planner.

If you’re having the same problem, visit DIYPlanner which has tons of different planner styles…for free. These planner templates are created by DIYPlanner or its members and uploaded for anyone to use. Planners come in a variety sizes depending on your needs.

The site also offers articles and other resources related to planning. The best way to find the actual planner templates is to click on “DIYPlanner.com” or “Time Management” in the left hand side bar. But do take some time to read the articles and other information. There is an interactive community with lots of great tips and ideas.

To learn more, visit DIYPLanner.com

Debt Payment Calculator

With the economy still in the dumps, many families are struggling to make ends meet never mind pay off debt. But if you’re trying to get out of debt and aren’t sure of the most efficient way to do it, visit the Snowball Calculator.

The Snowball Calculator is designed to figure out the least expensive way for you to pay off your debt. Just fill in the form with the loan information on each loan, how much money you have to put towards debt payment, and click the “Calculate” button.  You’ll get instructions on how much to send to each lender every month and how many months it will take to pay off the debts.

To calculate your debt repayment or to learn more, visit the Snowball Calculator.