I received an email asking me to post about this website. While this post may not be of interest to all of my readers, I thought this was worth posting. While most of the articles were beyond my comprehension, some of the abstracts for the journals were pretty informative. See, I like reading stuff other than tech articles.

BioMedSearch is a biomedical search engine that contains NIH/PubMed documents, plus a large collection of theses, dissertations, and other publications not found anywhere else for free, making it the most comprehensive free search on the web.

BioMedSearch also provides advanced account features that allow saved searches, alerts, saving documents to portfolios, commenting on documents and portfolios, and sharing documents with other registered users. Registering for BioMedSearch is free.

The President goes through the benefits in health insurance reform that are already kicking in for young adults, retirees, and families, and says more benefits are coming down the pike.

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If you search the internet, you’ll find all types of varying opinions on what people feel about Oprah. But one thing I think everyone can agree on is that she is definitely the queen of the television airwaves. Just last week to increase the amount of face time she has with her viewers, Oprah.com went mobile and released an app for Android, Blackberry,  iPhone and Palm devices.

The Oprah Mobile app features allow you to:

• View a weekly calendar of what’s airing on The Oprah Winfrey Show
• Receive alerts and notifications about the availability of reservations for The Oprah Winfrey Show
• Watch video highlights from The Oprah Winfrey Show, including backstage interviews with your favorite guests
• Find out what time and channel The Oprah Winfrey Show is on in your current location in the United States
• Access the latest articles and features from Oprah.com and O, The Oprah Magazine
• Listen to audio clips from Oprah Radio, including Gayle King, Dr. Laura Berman, Dr. Mehmet Oz

• Search by your favorite experts, guests and contributors, including Peter Walsh, Deepak Chopra and more
• Take our latest polls and see how other people are voting in your city and state
• Share your favorite items via email, Facebook and Twitter
• Sign the pledge to make your car a No Phone Zone
• Customize the menu to keep your favorite sections within easy reach

The apps do cost $1.99-$2.99, but according to the review at appolicious.com, there’s a lot of potential for future releases that could increase the social aspect of it.

But there’s more! Yesterday Engadget blogged about her showing off the Sprint EVO on her show while discussing her “No Phone Zone” campaign. Now please note, there is no official release date for this phone (Sprint said Summer 2010)! But if anyone could get a hold of it early, Oprah would be that person.

I can’t wait for this phone to come out and have been anxiously waiting for its release. We all know that when Oprah says go buy something, people do. So I’m curious to see if this affects sales of the EVO when Sprint finally decides to release it.

If anyone reading this is a friend of Oprah, tell her I’ll take the phone if she gets tired of it. Check out the video.

The deadline is coming up soon. Get on it!

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FedEx/UNCF Scholarship Program provides scholarship opportunities for high school seniors entering Historically Black College or University commencing Fall 2010. The scholarship Program is funded by the FedEx Corporation and provides need-based scholarship awards to eligible applicants who meet the following criteria:

Applicants must be graduating high school seniors at the time of application. Applicants must have cumulative high school grade point average of 3.00 or higher on a 4.0 scale.

Applicants must enroll at a four year Historically Black Colleges or Universities. Applicants must complete a Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA). Applicants must be Pell Grant eligible and have demonstrated financial needs.

Deadline:
May 9, 2010

Award Amount:
$4,000

Website/Contact Info:
www.uncf.org/forstudents/scholarDetailSGA.asp?id=481

This site has been out for a couple of weeks, but when I heard about it, I knew I needed to share it on the blog. According to the website, Unvarnished is:

an online resource for building, managing, and researching professional reputation, using community-contributed, professional reviews.Unvarnished reviews help you get the inside scoop on other business professionals, providing candid assessments of coworkers, potential hires, business partners, and more.

By contributing Unvarnished reviews, you can share your knowledge of other professionals, giving credit where credit is due, and valuable feedback where needed.

Lastly, your own Unvarnished profile, which you may create yourself or claim one that has been created for you, helps you take control of and build your own professional reputation. Get recognition for your accomplishments and actively manage your career growth.

So basically you can leave comments about someone (good or bad) in a public forum. It’s like having your resume online for all to see and ridicule. The site is currently in beta, so you have to sign up using Facebook Connect and they will put you on a waiting list of people who’ve already signed up. I put my name in for an invitation because I want to know what you all think about me. This is social networking at its best and it will be interesting to see how they plan on managing the site once everything opens up.

PS > If you are reading this and are currently a member of the site, please send me an invite so I can bypass the waiting process. Thanks!

I was listening to one of the many tech podcast I subscribe to and they were talking about the new Safety Center that Facebook added for its users. While geared to the best ways to stay safe on Facebook, some of the tips given can help you stay safe anywhere on the Internet. As a parent, I was pleased to see advice for parents on ways they can help their teenagers deal with predators and unwanted solicitations from other Facebook users.

There’s also a section for educators on how best to use Facebook in the classroom. I think the best question was “How can I maintain a professional presence on the site separate from my personal profile?”. The best method in my opinion is to not let them be your friend, but check out Facebook’s answer because they show you how to have the best of both worlds. I’d also recommend reading the general safety section on ways you can adjust your privacy settings.

Now all of this information is great, but it takes a lot to keep your information safe online. A Facebook friend of mine, posted comment about spokeo.com. They aggregate publicly available information from phone books, social networks, marketing surveys, real estate listings, business websites, and other public sources. They index third-party data in ways similar to Google or Bing. While not all of the data is accurate, they are able to pull a lot of information from people all over the country. You can remove your listing from the site, but this is just one of many sites that collect information about you online.

One final article that I’d recommend reading is from PC World titled, Facebook’s New Features and Your Privacy: What You Need To Know. The amount of information stored on social networking sites is ridiculous and there’s money to be made from your personal information. Don’t think Facebook isn’t looking for ways to do that. They’ve had issues with how they allowed you to set up your privacy settings, so it’s important to know what you need to do to only share the information you want with the public.

As the auto industry and financial markets begin to stabilize, the President says the government’s emergency interventions can now wind down. He pledges that real reform, particularly on Wall Street, must now begin.

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The purpose for this post is to inform you of the new laws and acts enacted by Congress and President Obama. With the advent of the Internet it’s gotten easier to watch every step our government takes. And President Obama is making some nice moves to make what they do more transparent to the American people. We elect them, so we need to make sure they are doing their job. The laws I list are posted at govtrack.us, which is a nice site for checking laws in any stage their in. As always feel free to leave any additional comments.

This was also the month history was made with the signing of the health care reform bill. There was a lot of fighting over this, but President Obama got it done. Only time will tell whether it was a good or bad idea to reform health care. To be honest, I don’t think anyone knows what will happen and there will always be people out there who want to see it fail, so they can say “I told you so”.

On Mar 2, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
H.R. 4691: Temporary Extension Act of 2010. To provide a temporary extension of certain programs, and for other purposes.

On Mar 4, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
H.R. 1299: United States Capitol Police Administrative Technical Corrections Act of 2009. To make technical corrections to the laws affecting certain administrative authorities of the United States Capitol Police, and for other purposes.

On Mar 17, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
S. 2968: Trademark Technical and Conforming Amendment Act of 2010. A bill to make certain technical and conforming amendments to the Lanham Act.

On Mar 18, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
H.R. 2847: Hiring Incentives to Restore Employment Act. Making appropriations for the Departments of Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2010, and for other purposes.

On Mar 23, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
H.R. 3590: Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. An act entitled The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. This is the Senate’s health care bill, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The Senate is co-opting this bill as a vehicle for passage of their reform and will change the text of this unrelated bill in whole in the coming weeks. They do this because the Constitution requires all revenue bills to start in the House, and their health reform plan involves revenue. So they have chosen to work off of a bill that started in the House, even if that bill is unrelated.

On Mar 25, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
H.R. 3433: To amend the North American Wetlands Conservation Act to establish requirements regarding payment of the non-Federal share of the costs of wetlands conservation projects in Canada that are funded under that Act, and for other purposes.

On Mar 31, 2010, the President signed the following bill(s) into law:
H.R. 4957: Federal Aviation Administration Extension Act of 2010. To amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to extend the funding and expenditure authority of the Airport and Airway Trust Fund, to amend title 49, United States Code, to extend authorizations for the airport improvement program, and for other purposes.

S. 1147: PACT Act. A bill to prevent tobacco smuggling, to ensure the collection of all tobacco taxes, and for other purposes.

As April 15th approaches, the President discusses several of the tax breaks for middle class families he has signed into law.  Find out more about the Making Work Pay tax credit, breaks for first-time homebuyers, rewards for making your home more energy efficient and more through our Tax Savings Tool.

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Are you interested in learning how to write a grant? For $1000 I can teach you the secrets to grant writing!!!

Well actually I can’t. But I can point you to a website that will help you get started. Workforce3 One, is a U.S. Department of Labor/Employment and Training Administration (ETA) sponsored entity that offers tools (FOR FREE) to get you started in writing your own grant proposal.

They have a really cheesy podcast called “Grant Applications 101: What You Need to Know”. While cheesy, it does dispel some of the myths of grant writing and points you to their Toolkit Homepage to get started.

From what I’ve heard, grant writing is not an easy process and it takes time and patience to actually get one. But it is a way to get funding for your project and may be worth it in the long run. For more information about the grant writing process, visit the links above.

Podcast Transcript