I had great hopes for this site, and Debbie and I spent a while trying to come up with a good domain name, the meaning of which you can see if you visit our About page.

At the time of creating the blog, both Debbie and I were creating lenses on Squidoo, as well as being involved on a new site Tagfoot as mentors.

I was also still living in Florida, with Debbie in the UK, and we were still 7 months away from my moving back to the UK so that we could be together all the time.

Over the months Debbie found it hard to get enthusiastic about writing, and so most of the articles in the last year have been up to me.   I also found it hard to work a full time job, create lenses on Squidoo, write articles on Associated Content, and try to earn money online to suplement my income from my full time job.

As a result, some weeks have seen just two articles published on here.  Firstly an automatic post that features my Tweets on Twitter for the previous week, and secondly a post that highlights the articles that I have published on Associated Content in the last week.

At this time I am not 100% sure which direction the blog is going in, since I would dearly love for Debbie to be writing again, since she has a lot of experience in dealing with children with emotional and behavioral problems, and also she has been ill recently and could write a wonderful diary on her history of Meniere’s Disease.

I have been posting shopping bargains and special offers as well, which is another area of diversity, and so in some ways it might be a good idea to create multiple blogs rather than just have this solitary one.

The one thing that will not change in 2011 is that the blog will go on, and hopefully if things continue to go well for us, Debbie will come back and write more, and give our readers more to think about and to enjoy.

If you do enjoy this blog, please can you give us a Thumbs Up on Facebook or any other social sites that you use, and hopefully our readership will grow over the coming year, as will the number of our articles.

Merry Christmas to you all and a Happy and Prosperous New Year for 2011.
Tony & Debbie

Tony keeps gently reminding me that we have a blog and that some input from me would be nice.

I keep meaning to write on here, but what can I say?   My head is full of pregnant daughter… make that HEAVILY pregnant daughter, her up and coming house move whilst heavily pregnant,  Tony’s plans for coming home which just happens to be the same week as my first Grandchild will arrive,  Rocketmoms on Squidoo which I just joined, and the major, number One distraction in my life… TAGFOOT!!

I’ve just completed my first Rocketmoms lens When Debbie Met Tony

I have no idea how I get all this stuff done and still manage to work full time.

I’m barely sleeping where I’m so excited about Tony coming back and the baby arriving… oh, we know the sex!!! 

When Tony is back, he’ll then have to find a job here and then we’re moving house at the end of October and oh, I almost forgot… there’s a little thing called a wedding to plan too

Isn’t life great?

So naturally I was rather nervous, as most of us are when starting a new job, and as is typical for me, every new job I have takes me to somewhere I don’t know.  This one is no different, at Juno Beach, just north of West Palm Beach in South Florida.

It’s a 45 mile drive to work, and as I had to be there by 9:30am to meet my new boss, I thought I had better leave by 7:45am in case the traffic was heavy.   Well as it turns out, pretty much nobody went to work by the look of it, so the roads were fairly empty, and I got there by 8:50am!   I still had to wait until 9:45am for my boss to arrive, as he had to go to the other office first, so by the time introductions had been done in the department and I had got my security card etc, it was time for lunch.

My boss was busy, so I took a walk out, a chance to call Debbie, and also my Son, both in England.   The office is in a small strip mall, and across the road is a park.  The other side of the park is the Ocean Drive, and beyond that the beach!   There was a wooden walkway with steps leading down to the beach, so I stood there to make my phone calls and took advantage of the nice breeze that was blowing, it was great to not feel as sticky as I had just 1/4 mile inland.

The afternoon went well, with me getting into the systems and looking at a few programs, and then the drive home was fairly uneventful, getting home at 6:30pm.

I thought as I had been sticky, it would be a good idea to put the sauna on, and with luck someone had already used it, so it was still pretty warm.  Nice to only need 15 minutes to warm it up instead of almost an hour!   I had a good sauna, did 30 lengths in the pool and then back up my well trodden six flights of stairs to the condo, by which time it was close to 8pm.

I was ravenous by this time, having only had grapefruit juice and a banana before I left this morning, and just water and two cups of green tea all day.  I didn’t care to go out to eat, I preferred to explore a bit and make my phone calls instead.  Starving I was, but I didn’t want to overdo things as it was late, so I just made a cheese and tomato sandwich with some German Black Bread (Pepperidge Farm, really good) and peeled and sliced 3 carrots and had those with some ranch dressing.  Yumm…  Followed by a Raspberry Fat Free Yoghurt.  That hit the spot, and wasn’t too heavy either.   Now if I can do the same tomorrow, I ought to lose a couple of pounds for sure…

Watched a bit of tv, nothing much on though.  Caught up on my email, tried to print a couple of documents, but the ink was low on the printer, need to redo those at work tomorrow.  And now, last thing before bed, to catch up on Tagfoot.

So now I am winding down, and about ready for that trip to the Land Of Nod.   Catch you tomorrow… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz…

I decided to slow things down a bit yesterday morning, which helped, my feet weren’t too bad during the day, but then I went on another 4 mile hike yesterday evening which left them sore again.  I was determined not to miss my walk this morning, but knew it had to be done at an even slower pace.  I also wanted to try and take a swim after, to make the most of my workout routine.

I lost track of how long the walk took this morning, but it was a while longer than the 36 minutes of the previous days, helped along with some more good music from my trusty MP3 player, today being a fresh batch of random songs from the same selection.

The walk starts and ends with going down and back up 6 flights of steps from my 7th floor condo, and within 10 minutes of having got back from the walk, I was changed and back down for a dip in the pool.  I managed 20 lengths, then back upstairs again, by this time just after 10am.  It really is nice to be living in Florida where you can do this sort of thing most of the year.  If anything the summer time is hte worst, since it’s just too hot and humid, even in the early morning.

I was feeling nicely energised after the walk and swim, and not very hungry surprisingly, so I made do with an orange and a banana.  I then set to on the internet, catching up with messages and postings on various sites.

Before I knew it, 1:30pm had come around, so I legged it downstairs for a 3rd time to put the sauna on, then grabbed a light lunch of cheese and tomato sandwich, my favorite since I was knee high to a grasshopper.  I topped this off with a yoghurt.

An hour later I headed down to the sauna, then did 20 lengths in the pool, took a steam, and another 30 lengths, before heading up those steps for a 4th time.   That made a total of 70 lengths in the pool, my daily record, plus I think a record for going up and down stairs.

I was going to have some homemade chicken soup for dinner, but didn’t feel like something that heavy, so I made do with some sliced carrots and ranch dip, followed by an apple and orange.

My day of working out wasn’t over yet though, as I went out for another walk to check out the opening times for the local Farmers Market and for a couple of items to Target.  I hadn’t been to this Farmers Market before, but Tim, who I rent from went today and got some real bargains, all important if you are on a tight budget.  We also discovered a nice park around the corner from the market, with several walks and lots of ornamental shrubs and trees.  I guess we covered about 2 miles in total.

So here I am at almost midnight trying to get my daily post completed before the day ends.  I have spent the evening trying to catch up with comments on my Squidoo Lenses and also on Tagfoot.   And so it’s almost time for bed, catch you tomorrow.

Ingredients;

One  large,  good, solid idea

A good pinch of AIM/GOALS

One unique theme

A cool name

One cute logo

A massive amount of effective Support

METHOD:

Develop the idea over long periods of time.

Keep your aims clear and focused.

Blend in a unique theme and add a dollop of a cool name.  Mix with this in equal parts a cute logo.

Test, test and test again.  Invite friends to sample your product at regular intervals.  Encourage them to tag, tag, and tag some more.

Throw in a helping of Adsense and a pint of Amazon. This will produce revenue.

Blend all ingredients together and add some badges and ample amounts of goodies.

Pour mixture into Foot shaped tins and cook for as long as it takes.

Meantime, cherish, nurture and encourage the taggers in their footsteps.

When the mixture is ready, and only you’ll know when, hit the

‘GO LIVE BUTTON’

Stand back, admire and be proud in your  VICTORY  because your creation will rise and become the best on the net.

This blog entry is a contest entry on Tagfoot

From a description alone you might think that Tagfoot is just another site like Digg or Stumbleupon, but aside from being able to bookmark pages, there the similarity ends.  The whole interface and experience is something else.

With Tagfoot you can bookmark different types of items, including  news, photographs and videos.  There is even a facility to build your own wishlist (more about this later).  Maybe you would like to let the world know about your blog or website, your photographs, the latest funny video you found on You Tube, or a news headline .   This is the place to do it.

You can share anything with other members.

Over time you can build up a list of friends on Tagfoot who have similar interests.  Members tag themselves to identify things that they are interested in, and when you bookmark an item you have the ability to share it with friends, either by name, or by specifying various tags.

Tagfoot is a wonderful online community made up of diverse, vibrant, fun and interesting people of all ages from all around the world. There’s quite a following from Squidoo and Hubpages on there, plus from other social networking sites as well.

This is the fun part…

Once items have been shared with other members, you can comment on them and rate them. We have some fantastic, side splitting conversations as well as more serious ones too. The more you interact with others on Tagfoot, the more you will gain from it. It’s not just about promoting your own stuff. It’s also about helping out others.

If you like an item that someone has shared, you can opt to give it a Foot-Up, which tells the person who bookmarked it that you like this type of item.  You can also foot comments on items up or down.   The more you bookmark, share, comment on or foot up, the higher your footing.  The Tagfoot home page shows you your rank or footing and it’s fun to rise up the charts as you find more things of interest to comment on.

Now, here’s the clever part…

If you have a Google Adsense account or an Amazon affiliate account, you can earn money on Tagfoot.

Add at least ten items each to your bookmarks, news, videos and wishlist, and you can then apply to ‘Support’ to have your Google Adsense account linked into your Tagfoot account. Adsense adverts are displayed on every page, and a percentage of these will be for your account.  So the more interesting and diverse your bookmarks, the higher the chance of you earning something from the clickouts.

And there is more to come…

If you have an Amazon account, you can add items from Amazon to your Wishlist and tag them.  There is a Widget that you can configure to select Wishlist items that match given tags, and you can display these items on your web page or blog using the Widget.  This will drive people to Tagfoot and if they buy – well I think you get the picture.  You can see an example of the Tagfoot Widget at the top right of this page.

Do you Twitter?

Twitter is rapidly becoming the site to be on, with millions of tweets being sent out daily.  There is an interface from Tagfoot to Twitter so that having bookmarked a page, shared a page or footed an item, you can opt to have a notification sent to your Twitter account.  Cool eh…  Add Twitter to your Tagfoot account and you get a shiny Twitfoot badge.

Tagfoot is spam free

There’s no spam on Tagfoot, or at least if someone attempts to spam it’s soon discovered and reported. You decide who to accept on your friends list and if they get too heavy with the shares they send you, you have a variety of options to control what you receive.   Tagfoot has it’s own police force, a select group of elite members called Bigfeet, who constantly monitor postings to ensure that everything is running smoothly and that nobody abuses the system, either by posting spam or illegal material, or by oversharing their posts.  Guess what?  If you achieve the elite status of Bigfoot, you get another shiny badge on your profile.

So what do you think?

Hopefully this description of Tagfoot has got you curious.  Even better by now if your curiosity has got so aroused you already clicked on a link and checked it out.  If by this time you are still not sure about Tagfoot, all I can say is that both of us have been members for a few months and we wholeheartedly endorse it.  We have learned a lot, laughed a lot, and met a lot of great new people.  So what are you waiting for?

I hope that you will take a look at Tagfoot, sign up and become a participating member.  Certainly if you have your own websites or blogs, this is a great place to give them more exposure to the world.  We would love to hear from you to know what you think, so please leave us a comment if you have anything to say, or indeed if you have any questions we can answer for you.

Don’t Miss The Definitive Guide To Tagfoot
100 Tagfoot Tips

Here is where usernamecheck.com comes in handy.  I just Stumbled upon this site tonight, checked it out and it’s pretty cool.

Not a lot to it really…   Type your user name (assuming you usually use the same one for most sites that you register with – I think that most of us do), click on Check, and the site will check a whole host of sites to see if your user id is registered or not.

While this is really cool to check where you have registered, the best part for me was finding plenty of sites out there that I not only haven’t registered with, I hadn’t even heard of them.

And so, it looks like I will be busy for a while yet tonight, seeing what some of these “new to me” sites are and if it’s worth my while registering.    If any sites allow posts to be generated by feeds from other sites, you are onto a winner for sure by registering and boosting your presence.

Well that’s my take on usernamecheck.com.   I hope you find it useful, and look forward to your feedback.

And don’t forget, if you enjoy this post, you can register for email updates or for our RSS Feed.