ETP Manalapan

Since many professionals are on vacation during August we won't be meeting this month. However, starting next month we'll plan to meet on a monthly basis and will alternate locations between the Monmouth and Ocean counties of New Jersey. Thus you can attend which ever meeting location is most convenient for you, but of course you are welcome to attend both if they wish.

More details will follow in the weeks to come. But for now please reserve the following dates on your calendar if you are interested in attending future meetings of the Jersey Shore Networking Group.

The September meeting will be on Thursday the 25th in Manalapan, NJ.

The October meeting will be on Tuesday the 21st in Toms River, NJ.

The November meeting will be in Monmouth county NJ but the date and location have not been planned yet.

The December meeting will be on the Tuesday the 16th in Toms River, NJ.

The Jersey Shore Networking Group is a local chapter of the Empowering Today's Professionals Network. Each of the planned meetings listed above are free and open to the public. The purpose of our meetings is to offer career management educational and professional networking opportunities for attendees. These meetings will be from 7:00 PM to 8:30 PM with a social gathering for extended networking afterwards at a nearby food and beverage establishment.

If you wish to receive invitations to our meetings, please send email to JerseyShoreNetworkingGroup@gmail.com and include the following:
1. Your first and last name.
2. Your E-mail address.
3. Town of your residence.
4. ETP Network member status: Yes, No or don't know.

By Thomas E. Kenny

Even if you are not a road warrior, many professionals have busy on the go lifestyles. To help support that fast paced lifestyle, almost all of us have cell phones. Below I describe three free services for your cell phone, which can help make you more efficient and knowledgeable while on the go.

Does your cell phone plan charge you for every call you make to directory assistance? If so, consider using 800-466-4411. It is a toll free call that will provide you with free automated telephone directory assistance, thanks to Google.

Have you ever had a question when you were not in front of your computer, that you know you could answer via a Google search? A few weekends back, a friend was telling me that his doctor advised him to take potassium supplements. Being interested in a natural solution my friend stated, “I wonder how many milligrams of potassium are in the average banana?” I said, well I don’t know but we could ask CHA CHA. I then dialed 800-224-2242, and asked that question to their automated system. A couple of minutes later, I received a text message with the answer. My friend was truly amazed!

Last but not least. Do you find you make to do lists, to help you keep track of tasks you need to remember? Well you might want to consider using Jott.com. Once you establish an account with your cell phone number, you can dial 866-568-8123. Their automated system will ask you who you want to Jott, state “myself” and then the message you want to Jott. It will transcribe your message and send it to you via a text message. You can configure your account to also send your Jott message to your E-mail account, that way you don’t have to log into Jott to retrieve your messages. If there is a transcription error you can always listen to the recorded audio, to recall what you wanted to remember. However, Jott has many other features such as:
1. Send your transcribed text message to a group of individuals.
2. Have it read your favorite blogs to you.
3. If you use Gmail you can have Jott read new E-mail messages to you if you are willing to setup some advance tricks.

Well there you have it, three great free services for the busy professional. If you wish to see an online video demo of these services, you may want to view
this link.

At last week's meeting of the Jersey Shore Networking Group I discussed the importance of Email signatures as a form of electronic business card. Thus you can imagine my surprise when my HTML signature was no longer being appended!

This was due to functionality being removed from the Firefox browser add-on known as "Better Gmail2". This feature was removed in version 0.5.3.2 of that add-on and was placed in a new add-on known as the "Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures" add-on.

There are two ways that you can assure your Emails from Gmail will contain your HTML signature.

Either continue to use versions 0.4 through 0.5.2 inclusive of the "Better Gmail2" add-on. Meaning you will need to assure that you never upgrade to the latest version or you can perform the following steps.

1 - Upgrade your Firefox browser to version 3. The new version of Firefox has some very nice improvements. However, note that not all add-ons support Firefox version 3. Thus if you use any other add-ons besides "Better Gmail2" you'll need to carefully consider this option.
2 - Update the "Better Gmail2" add-on. This is accomplished within Firefox via clicking on Tools, Add-ons and Find Updates.
3 - Download and install the "Blank Canvas Gmail Signatures" add-on.
4 - Click the Gmail's Compose Mail link, click the Edit Signature button, paste your HTML signature and click the Save Signature button.
5 - Enter your email address and some text in the subject line and click the Send button to test that your emails contain your Email signature.

If your instance of Firefox has already updated Better Gmail2 to version 0.5.3.2 and you do not wish to upgrade to Firefox version 3. You may click here to download the 0.5.2 version of the "Better Gmail2" add-on.