The epidemic of bank failures is spreading, as borrowers continue to struggle to repay loans made during the boom

Several things have come out of the recent press coverage about Royal Caribbean's behemoth Oasis of the Seas, aside from some pretty magnanimous reviews. The main problem with having starry-eyed citizen journalists report on the $1.5 billion ship (see above) is that they often lack the critical eye necessary to spot problems (hence why companies love them!) Luckily, though, several reporters and bloggers have been able to suss out some possible trouble spots before the 225,000-ton ship goes on its maiden voyage Dec. 5. According to Fran Golden of USAToday: Tickets for all of the shows are free on a first-come, first-serve basis. . . . Why offer online pre-booking for the tickets? It's simple, says (cruise director Ken) Rush: “People don’t want...

Verizon (VZ) is kicking ass right now in the 3G coverage advertising war, having seen its ads prevail against legal challenges by both Sprint (S) and AT&T (T). The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus just ruled that Sprint should stop advertising its service as “America’s most dependable 3G network,” after Verizon challenged its ads. NAD rules on disputes between advertisers over the truthfulness of their claims.

Patrick Moran is chief strategy officer at Fuze Box, the company behind Fuze Meeting. He was also chief marketing officer at Mzinga, a leading social media and white label community provider, and led online marketing at Cisco WebEx. Companies of all sizes and in all sectors regularly use virtual meetings to connect with colleagues, partners, [...]

click hereto retweet Blogging tools are designed to be easy to use. They generally don’t provide all the advanced features of a complex content management system, but rather do one task — publishing a blog — very well. To this end, they can help you: Create posts. Since the purpose of a blog is to be able to post new text or information to the site frequently, creating posts is usually quick and easy. Upload or embed pictures and multimedia. Pretty much all blogs allow you to upload pictures to your posts. Some will also enable you to upload video and audio/mp3/podcasts. One significant note here is that most people do not have video that is in a "Web ready" format and often the video you have is just huge which means you risk spending a lot of money for the space to host the video and the bandwidth that enables people to view it. My general recommendation is to post your video on one of the video sites like YouTube or Vimeo and then use their embed feature to embed the video into your site. Quick, easy and no-cost. I Can Email You When I Post to this BlogClick here to get notified of new posts to The Internet Strategist by Email Configure the appearance and layout. Tools vary widely in the degree to which they allow you to configure your blog, and the methods they offer to do this. Most blogs are built on themes – essentially a design template that can be installed and modified. Display posts & comments to visitors. A blogging platform makes it easy for readers to view your posts and to add their comments. Moderate. you will want to remove some of comments left by readers and you will eventually have to fight comment spam. Different platforms provide varying degrees of spam protection and moderation features to weed out unwanted contributions. Related Articles by Maisha:Blogging for CoinBuild Your BlogBlogging's 11 Big Payoffs pt 2Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs Publish RSS feeds. RSS feeds allow more tech-savvy users to subscribe to your blog and get headlines via myAOL, myYahoo, iGoogle or another RSS reader. Find support. Not every blogging tool offers the same degree of support: while some offer personalized assistance, others have forums where you can find answers to your questions. Host your blog. While some blogging software lives on your own server, others are hosted by the software provider or vendor. A great example of this is WordPress.com which is hosted by WordPress vs. WordPress.org which you download and install on your own server/hosting account. These are some of the basic blogging features that pretty much all blogs provide. Next time I will describe another set of features that you may not know about but will definitely be useful to maintain your blog. Two important notes: Get Your Blog FeaturedI will be highlighting a variety of companies as examples in upcoming posts. If you've had success with your Blog and can describe results/back it up with real data, you can submit your Blogging strategy here. Get a Free Blog or Web Site!Even in a bad economy there's a silver lining. I'm giving away a free Web site! If you'd like to be the lucky business owner tell me about your business and why you should win here. I acknowledge I'll be choosing the winner purely based on my own discretion. Heck I may even choose more than one. I look forward to seeing your entry! Post Your CommentHave a question? Got something to share? Something I missed?Your feedback, comments, real world experience and tactical questions are an important part of the discussion. If you have a comment, question or feedback post it below.Share:Easily share "8 Basic Blogging Features You'll Actually Use" on TwitterFollow:Follow me on TwitterFeed:Add "The Internet Strategist"RSS updates to yourreader or your Web siteRead Related Articles by Maisha:Blogging for CoinBuild Your BlogBlogging's 11 Big Payoffs pt 2Blogging's 11 Big Payoffs

Google is shoring up its lead in the mobile advertising market, with the AdMob acquisition about to give it 24 percent market share in the U.S., at least. So how long before Microsoft opens its checkbook?

Good management practices can help improve health care delivery and reduce costs as much as any Washington D.C. reform now under discussion.

A new study of direct-to-consumer (DTC) prescription drug advertising says that spending on promotion may be associated with increases in drug prices. The study reopens the debate about whether DTC actually works, and if so, whether it affects drug prices. More importantly, the study's limitations underscores the need for a large, comprehensive study on whether DTC affects drug prices -- something that has never been done.

Universal notifications are awesome. For the low, low price of free, you can significantly enhance your Windows experience.

Finding your passion and building your dream career is difficult enough without adding unnecessary hurdles to the process, but that's just what many of us do, argues a recent post on the U.S. News & World Report On Careers blog. You can't control the economy or the mood of the person whose desk your resume happens to land on, but you can control how you think about building your career, writes career coach Curt Rosengren. In his thought-provoking post he runs down five mental roadblocks that make it more difficult to identify and pursue your passion. Are any of these patterns of thought holding you back? Thinking, “I should have all the answers.” Few people are willing to admit that...