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.

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

Screen capture is a helpful tool in business and education. The difficulty is finding a quality, AFFORDABLE screen capture software. One option is Jing, which provides a free and low cost option for screen capture video. However Screencast-O-Matic offers one-click recording from your Windows, Mac or Linux browser. The free version provides 15 minutes of video (Jing only offers 5 even in the paid version), hosting, YouTube upload, and exporting in MP4, FLV or AVI. For $9 per year (Jing is $15/yr), you can have the watermark removed, password protect screencasts, ability to screencast outside the browser and editing tools.

If you’re creating lots of videos and need a full range of tools, Camtasia may be your best bet, but at $299 it’s pricey. For the individual or small business owner with few screencapture needs, Screencast-O-Matic offers all the basics for an affordable price.

To learn more, visit Screencast-O-Matic.

Better Living on the Web does NOT receive any compensation from Screencast-O-Matic.

A couple of years ago I was checking my web stats and noticed that one URL seemed to making a lot of hits on one of my graphics. Visiting the site I discovered it was using my logo as its own. This was potentially very bad for me as my site was about finding legitimate work-at-home opportunities and the site that was stealing my logo was a scam. People who didn’t know better would think that I was promoting the scam or at the very least endorsing it. It could have ruined my credibility.

Copyright infringement is rampant on the Internet, and its hard to know what materials are being stolen and where they are posted. But at TinEye.com you can an least find out if your logo, image, or other graphics are being used somewhere other than where you placed them.

TinEye has an easy to use image search engine for graphics. Just upload the graphic or give the URL of the graphic and it will show you where else the graphic is being used. You may be surprised to find your pretty mug showing up on a different  site! Or your logo!

To learn more visit TinEye.com

Results of a search on my photo image. Sparkplugging has permission to use this photo.

When I first started my business, I paid a fortune in tools and services to get it up and running. MS Office Suite cost hundreds of dollars. Then there were the planners, form templates and a host of other tools and services each with a fairly hefty fee.

Today the Internet offers many of these tools and services at an affordable price. Entrepreneur offers most of them for free. Entrepreneur Assist is a one-stop virtual officer where you can:

• Create text documents, spreadsheets and presentations.
• Customize and use business form templates.
• Hold live online meetings with customers and colleagues.
• Schedule events and reminders.
• Build your business plan.

You can even read and save articles from Entrepreneur.com as well as read free business related books.

The templates menu is vast including samples of accounting forms, starting a business checklists, sales receipts, business plans and more. The book selection is small but offers resources in retirement planning, project planning, marketing and more.

The appeal of Entrepreneur Assist is the ability to have a variety of office tools and service all in one spot. In a single sitting you can print out an invoice, write a letter, read and save an article, create your schedule and host an online meeting all from one site.

To learn more or sign up, visit Entrepreneur Assist.

Ever need a contract or other legal form, but don’t want to hire an lawyer? WhichDraft allows you to automatically create legal forms for free. The site makes it easy by offering wizards to help you put your form together.  WhichDraft has a database of pre-made legal forms in a variety of categories or you can search for documents created by other users. You save your form and even share it with others.

WhichDraft is NOT a lawyer nor does it offer legal advice. But it does offer self-directed assistance to creating legal documents. Learn more by visiting WhichDraft.

Microsoft Word and Excel are the most common document creation software used by home based workers. But at several hundred dollars a pop, it can price you right out of working at home. Not to worry. OpenOffice.org offers free wordprocessing and spreadsheet software. It doesn’t have all the features found in Word (has anyone used ALL the features in Word?), but it offers good document creation with the ability to be shared and modified by Word users as well. And did I mention its free?

Learn more and download OpenOffice.org here.

When I first got my Palm Treo, it was more of a novelty than anything. I paid the extra for Internet access and bought all sorts of programs to go with it, but at the time I didn’t really need it.

Today, I have a Blackberry (although I’m taking a close look at the Droid) that I can’t live without. If there is no wi-fi for my laptop, I can check email on my phone. If I need to do some quick cost comparison research, I can access information from the Internet on my phone. If I need to capture a thought, I can do it on my phone either through text, recording or a service like Jott that will send it to my email or calendar. And while much of its use is related to work, not all of it is. I listen to Pandora, read ebooks, and locate where my children have wandered off to.

Here are my top three reasons why everyone needs a Smartphone:

1) You can carry your life with you wherever you go. Contacts, notes, schedule, music and more. You don’t have to carry a bulky planner with erasable ink scribbles in it. Your phone can do it.

2) Get information about anything, anytime, anywhere. Like phone service, your Internet access can be limited but as many times as I’ve hit a dead spot in my phone service, I have very rarely not been able to get online to access important information from my phone. Need to know the traffic or weather where you’re heading? Want to compare prices on that great new doodad you’re planning to buy? Just last week I used my phone in Blockbuster to figure out what disk a specific episode of Stargate was on so my son could rent it. You can even get GPS.

3) Mange your life. Worried about missing an important call or email? Need to update your blog or Tweet with your colleagues? Nearly every great web-based productivity site has mobile options to make doing your work or managing your projects fast and easy while on the go.

Self-employment particularly among women, many of whom are mothers, is growing at a fast rate, faster even than men owned business. While many begin their work-at-home search hoping to find a job, starting a business is probably the fastest and easies way to start making money at home. But once the product or service is created, the real work is getting the word out. A new website helps self-employed parents by offering a directory that consumers can use to find products and services.

Our Milk Money was started by two work-at-home moms Ally Loprete and Kelli Shand who wanted to help parents find ways to achieve the financial means to stay home or provide more for their children, and to educate consumers about the products and services found through self-employed parents. They provide a searchable directory of businesses through Canada and the United States from which consumers can find local or Internet based businesses from which to shop or find work-at-home opportunities.

To learn more or find a self-employed parent near you, visit Our Milk Money.