Web 2.0. Say it out loud because its here. But what is it?

In a word, Web 2.0 is the name given to the post dot-com boom and bust of Internet growth. Its been impressive, hasnt it? Companies like eBay, PayPal and Amazon.com have proven that business can be conducted on the Web and it can be profitable. Now the rest of us can have our turn.

Internet growth and business management in the post dot-com bust world can be described in one word: Collaboration. If youve been wondering how to tap into this Internet boom youve got to learn how relationships are built online and capitalize on it. There are no lone rangers online.

While collaboration is the key to success in the Web 2.0 world, it helps to know the tools available to you as you embark upon your new venture in cyberspace. Heres a short list:

• Blogs
• Content Management Systems
• Wiki
• RSS
• Affiliate Programs

You can expect this list to grow. The question that is probably on your mind is, What can I do with these tools? Thats a good question and the answer is, Whatever your imagination unveils. Nevertheless, here are a few tips:

Blogs If you dont have a blog by now, youre behind the eight ball. Blogs are the first step into Web 2.0. They allow you to start a conversation with your customers, to enter into dialogue with the marketplace. You can update your customers on your business plan, survey or poll your customers to find out what they want and receive feedback from your customers by allowing them to comment on your posts. Of course, you can always have a collaborative blog where more than one blogger makes posts to the blog as several successful and high profile blogs have already done. Example: Church of the Customer.

Content Management Systems (CMS) A CMS is an easy way for you to manage your websites content. Its almost impossible not to have one in the Web 2.0 market. Unless you are planning to learn programming languages like HTML and Java, or you have the money to hire a full-time webmaster, then youll benefit from a CMS. There are three ways to go about this, however:

• Open Source
• Purchase a System
• Design Your Own

Which of these ways is best for you depends on your goals and circumstances. Just know that a CMS can shave off a lot of time in your marketing and business plans. You can upload content to your website in just a few minutes as opposed to a few hours. This is something you definitely want to learn about. Examples: Joomla and Drupal are two open source content management systems.

Wiki The ways to use wiki have not been fully explored yet but what youll need to understand about wiki technology is that it is intrinsically collaborative, unlike HTML. Wiki allows you to build a website without spending time uploading content. This is true collaboration and gets right to the heart of what Web 2.0 is all about. One famous wiki, Wikipedia, allows users to add encyclopedic entries and edit content input by others. This is truly amazing technology.

RSS Another Web 2.0 technology we couldnt live without is RSS. There are several acceptable meanings to this acronym but the one I prefer is Really Simple Syndication. In essence, if youre not syndicating your content then your content is getting found. Everyone is doing it, or should be. And anything can be syndicated blogs, articles, Web copy, news, jokes, anything you put on your website. RSS allows your website visitors to subscribe to your content and receive updates automatically every time you change or add to your content. Yahoo! Pipes is the latest RSS tool to appear on the scene and gives users the ability to mash several RSS feeds into one.

Affiliate Programs It is difficult to fit this one into the Web 2.0 model without a little imagination but its a powerful tool for building any Web business. An affiliate program allows you to build a sales force that will promote you, your products and your services for you. The great thing about affiliate programs is that you dont have to pay your sales force until they make a sale. You can build a list of business partners, most of whom will become your customers before anyone else even hears about your new products just because they want to try it out first so that they can help promote it and make extra income. Dont overlook this powerful method of building your Web 2.0 business. One of the foremost authorities on affiliate programs is Allan Gardyne at www.associateprograms.com.

Web 2.0 is all about building online relationships and collaborating for maximum growth. To succeed online, you must be willing to shed your lone ranger mentality and develop partnerships. My most successful ventures were a result of joining forces with someone else. Im confident that yours will be too.

Allen Taylor is an award-winning journalist and freelance writer. He operates a full-service content provider for online businesses, a local small business directory in South Central Pennsylvania and Articles.pn, an article directory with social networking tools.

The best tips on how to stop smoking you will ever get are from those who have successfully done it. Smoking is an addiction, and studies have shown that the smoking habit is even harder to break than an addiction to heroin.

You Cant Fight Nicotine With Nicotine
Nicotine stimulates our brains to produce dopamine, the pleasure neurotransmitter, better than almost any other substance, so quitting smoking is not just a matter of finding some other non-addicting replacement in the way that methadone can be substituted for heroin to help people over withdrawal. Tips on how to stop smoking which do not acknowledge the addictive nature of nicotine will simply not be of any use.

But if you are willing to get tips on how to stop smoking from others who have actually done it, and not just quit for a while but kicked the smoking habit for good, you will be getting a treasure trove of wisdom. Its up to you to decide what to do with it.

Tips on how to stop smoking which tell you that you can use nicotine-based smoking cessations products to ease yourself through the symptoms of nicotine withdrawal, until your body stops craving nicotine, are misleading for one reason: as long as you are relying on nicotine to help you recover from a nicotine addiction you are merely feeding the beast.

While nicotine replacement products may be useful in eliminating the toxins with which cigarette smoking saturates your tissues, they do nothing to get at the root cause of your addiction. Any tips on how to stop smoking which do not include the necessity of behavioral modification therapy to understand and find ways to overcome your emotional need to smoke are doing you a disservice.

Find A Support Group Of Those Who Have Been There
One of the best places to find reliable tips on how to stop smoking is through the hundreds of stop smoking support groups available both off and online. Nicotine Anonymous, modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous, provides a twelve-step program based on the understanding that smokers suffer from a nicotine addiction.

The Nicotine Anonymous pamphlet Tips for Gaining Freedom From Nicotine offers fifty-five tips on how to stop smoking divided into categories covering the pre-quitting, quitting, and maintenance phases of kicking the cigarette habit. All the tips on how to stop smoking in the pamphlet are from people who have recognized that they are addicts and that their nicotine recovery is a lifetime process.

Nicotine Anonymous is just one of hundreds of stop smoking groups on which you can call to provide you with tips on how to stop smoking which will help you prepare for, and survive, the quitting process. To find one in your area, try contacting the American Cancer Society, American Lung Association, or your local health department.

You can also find more info on Hypnosis To Stop Smoking and Stop Smoking Laser Treatment. Stopsmokingaidsguide.com is a comprehensive resource to know smoking & how to get it off.

For some people, having a credit card in hand is like giving a beer to a recovering alcoholic. They mean well, but have trouble abstaining. The problem is compounded by the fact that in todays society, there are many occasions (such as renting a car, selling on ebay or ordering online) when you really do need a card.

This is where a prepaid credit card can be especially helpful. Originally designed for adults with poor credit ratings, prepaid credit cards are also becoming a valuable tool for parents of teenagers. The credit limit on such cards is determined by how much money is placed in the bank. This fact alone can teach an important lesson: if the money isnt there, they cant spend it. Rather than enabling us to spend money we dont have, credit cards should be tools of convenience.

Not Free
Its impossible to get a late free on a prepaid card, as there is nothing to pay off. But there are annual fees, monthly fees, activation fees, customer services fees, ATM cash withdrawal fees, fees per purchase on prepaid cards and even inactivity fees. So it pays to shop around before picking a card.

There are scammers in the prepaid credit card business too, just as there are in just about any business. If your prepaid credit card company is tacking on $1 every time you use the card, or $10 per month just to carry their plastic, beware. There are better alternatives available, but its up to you to find them.

Not always accepted
There are also some gas stations and car rental companies that do not accept prepaid credit cards. The logic behind this seems unclear and the incidences may be minor, but the fact it, your prepaid VISA may not work everywhere you want to be and this is one drawback to consider before getting a prepaid card.

Neutral on your credit
While prepaid credit cards wont tear down credit, they dont build it up either. If your goal is to re-establish your credit history, a secured credit card might be the better way to go. Prepaid credit cards are a great tool for gift-giving or spending money for your child, however.

The bottom line is you need to do your homework before buying a prepaid card. The bank has to make money somehow, so even the best of deals is going to cost you something. With a regular credit card, the bank makes their money on interest, late fees and penalties. If you have good credit and the willpower to manage a regular credit card wisely (e.g. never charging more than you can pay off each month and never being late on a payment), a regular credit card will always be your less expensive option. But if or one of your dependents really has trouble keeping the balance in check, a prepaid card may be just what the doctor ordered.

For more information on debt free living, visit http://www.debt-free-living.net

What is your deepest fear? There are many to choose from. I am not really talking about phobias here, fear of heights, bugs, small spaces, etc. I am referring to things like the fear of death, the unknown and the highest on most lists public speaking! That is very interesting when you think about it. Most of us have a deeper fear of being viewed negatively in the public eye than of facing death! So the fear of not fitting in, being rejected, or at least not accepted by others is deeper and closer to our core than anything else.

What does that tell you? It tells me that our first fear, the one that occurred immediately after we fell from grace was and is that we are separate somehow from all that is. This illusion is so powerful that we feel an intense need to belong to something bigger than ourselves. We seek acceptance and approval through a group. Many of us have more than one group to fall back on just in case we do get ostracized from one of them.

Of course, this fear of rejection does not pertain only to public speaking. It grips us anytime we see something from a different perspective than our group. The moment we begin to show our individuality by not accepting certain principles of the groups reality, we make ourselves vulnerable because we may no longer fit in.

Our egos want to keep that from happening at all costs. After all, what will become of us if we have no groups to belong to? I have seen this fear grip people so many times throughout life in various circumstances. Some examples include:
A man too afraid to defend a gay friend of his around a group of so-called tough guys or mens men
Women who act like best friends in a group then attack the character of one of the group the moment she walks away no matter which one walks away
A mistreated employee afraid to tell management the truth about their working conditions or their immediate supervisor and/or afraid to just quit
Family and so-called friends distancing themselves from someone they have known for years because he or she has shown courage to risk everything for an ideal which is something they dont have

The hero within you doesnt let that kind of fear stop you from expressing your truth. Almost everyone says, I dont care what people think! I do what I think is right. Yet very few people act in accordance with that concept. Your hero walks that talk and lives those statements as a personal motto!

Michael Celender is an experienced speaker, coach, consultant, writer, teacher and therapist who has dedicated his professional life to developing skills and untapped potential in others. To learn more visit http://www.unleashthehero.com