Updates Blog

We are working to translate The Leaves Of Time into all the languages shown at the top of this page.  Here is the progress we’ve made so far:

• U.S.A.  100% completed.
• British Commonwealth:  100% completed.
• Spanish:  95% completed.
• Russian:  90% completed.
• French:  30% completed.
• Others:  Currently examining translators’ bids

Visit 1heart2another.org to download this free collection of time-saving tips that can gain you hundreds of hours.

The first launch of 1Friend2Another.org not having attracted much attention, I’m preparing a re-launch AND a launch of a sister site at 1Heart2Another.org. The main purpose of both sites will be the same: to enable friends to connect with teach other, and to promote “The Leaves Of Time” (which really is “The Book Of Time” renamed.)

1Heart2Another.org is a simple site. I concluded that a lot of people just want to grab the goodies and go, without spending as much time as 1Friend2Another.org usually takes. There you just look at the book, and if you accept the challenge of saving hundreds of hours of free time for yourself and your friends, you pass the word. Not too many bells and whistles.

The relaunch of 1Friend2Another.org solves some troublesome bugs which took me some time to find and eliminate. I’m also making a subtle but important change in its emphasis: rather than being so much about the site and the book, I’ll make it much more about friends appreciating each other.

When you visit 1Friend2Another.org you can leave a comment for Barack Obama. We will include your comment with those of others in a giant bouquet of flowers, and deliver it to the White House on Inauguration Day. It will have:

• 50 flowers in the middle (the official flower of each state in America)
• 200+ flowers ringing it (one for each country on Earth)

Thousands Of Prizes!
You are not required to give us any of your contact information in order to participate in this contest. Here are the prizes that will be awarded:

1. A Prize For Everyone:  You will receive a prize package worth $25, including a sequel to The Book Of Time. That in itself should be worth $25 to most people, plus we’ll add at least a couple of other really nice downloadable prizes to be named later.
2. 250 Runner-Up “Mystery Prizes”:  We will mail this prize package, worth around $100, to 250 people who left comments that interested editors at the Consumer Freedom Alliance.  Hints:  You’ll receive something you’ll want to share with your family, something you’ll actually interact with, and it will help most people financially. It’s not a book, nor is it software that you install on your computer.
3. One Grand Prize:  Awarded to whoever made the best comment as judged by David O. Snow, author of The Book Of Time.  It’s actually a double prize!  First, you will be awarded $1,000 to be paid no later than March 1, 2009. Second, you will also get five runner-up prizes to give to whoever you like.

Full contest rules are posted at 1Friend2Another.org.

Regarding the new site at 1friend2another.org, I’m customizing the site for English speakers from other countries, for example in the Mount Rushmore scene I’ve added quotes from people in Australia and other parts of the British Commonwealth.

Meanwhile we’re buried in the strongest snowstorm in over ten years here in Seattle. But I love it, having been born and raised in Alaska.

I’m preparing a press release for the American press and will put it on this page tomorrow.

You may wonder what the chances are that 1friend2another.org will succeed in its ambitious aims. Well, there are basically three ways this site could go:

1. Some people forward it to their friends, but it doesn’t really catch on and it fizzles after a few hundred (or a few thousand) people have read it.

2. It grows exponentially as friends forward it: 1000 forwards become 2000 the next day, then 4000 the next, until in ten days one million people have seen it — and in the next week, tens of millions may even see it.

3. We send out emails to people and enthusiastically urge them to forward it for the sake of charity, and at first it grows exponentially because the email is being forwarded among caring and charitable people. But as it gets forwarded to more people who are a bit less charitable and less connected to the original enthusiastic email senders, the growth gradually slows down. It ends up reaching tens of thousands, maybe hundreds of thousands of people.

Six very worthy charities will soon benefit from our new site at 1Friend2Another.org. By launching this site, we hope to entertain and enlighten people worldwide, while generating many thousands of dollars for charities. Once it is officially launched on December 24, you can visit it and forward it to anyone else whose life you wish to brighten.

Everyone is encouraged to donate, but you can use the site for free either way. Charities will be collecting all donations directly from donors; visitors to our site are instructed not to send any money to our company.

What is our vision and mission? It is this:

a) To disseminate very high-quality consumer information in support of charities

b) With this information, teach people to live better. The more people live right, the less likely they will become a burden on charity. If you think about it, spreading good teachings is an excellent way of being charitable in and of itself!

c) Establish that the power of friendship, beauty and fun can inspire positive social change through friends communicating with one another.

d) As we establish contact between us and thousands of people, we believe this site will increase both your donor base and our customer base. While we expect to spend tens of thousands of dollars on this promotion, we expect that this expense will be made very worthwhile by establishing these contacts.

We look forward to seeing you soon after the official launch on December 24 at 1:00pm EDT.

There are quite a few places on the Web that allow you to request a free calendar through the mail.  We tried about five of them, hoping to pass on the opportunity to our readers, but we never received the goods.  But you can still print your own calendar:

• You can print your own Consumer SmartCalendar every three months.  We recommend that you fold it three ways, stick it in with your bills and glance at it every week.  The advantage of the SmartCalendar is the great tips for home maintenance, investing, shopping, taxes and college planning.  Fairly soon, we’ll add sections for kids, health & safety.
   
• It’s fairly easy to print customized calendars from TimeAndDate.com for a number of months or an entire year. You can also select which day starts the week, whether to show moon phases, and different sets of holidays for different cultures.
   
• Online calendars include Calendars Net, AOL Calendar and Yahoo! Calendar.  You can print it and/or add appointments and events that can be made visible and printable by others you want to allow to see it.

Sometime before Thanksgiving, look for a brand new site from the CFA called “1Friend2Another.org”. The basic idea is to encourage friends to spread the word about two very helpful, consumer-friendly infoproducts that people can download:

1. The Book Of Time, a compilation of time-saving tips. “Time is money” as they say. You can read it in just half an hour, and it will help you gain hundreds (or even thousands) of hours of free time.
2. The Consumer SmartCalendar. It magnifies the power of an ordinary calendar by adding tips on finances, health/safety, home maintenance, shopping/spending, and taxes. People can take a minute to print it out and stick it in with their bills. It’s very easy to use, you just look at it like a regular calendar and read the tips. Optionally, people can add their own reminders to it.

People will be encouraged to “spread to the word” to their friends in two ways:

1. They’ll be reminded of the good that friends and loved ones can do for each other by staying connected.
2. They can “plant a flower for a friend” to help build an online garden of a million flowers. They can pick between 6 to 7 flowers of various colors, click to plant it in the field of flowers, and watch it grow over 10 seconds with a sweet, pretty mini-movie sequence. They can leave a short message too for anyone else they send to this site.

The site will also help charities. People will be given a chance to donate to the charity of their choice in several different places on the site and the infoproducts they can download.

A bare-bones version of 10Life.com is available now. All it does now is list seven of our sites that have great consumer tips and tools. In less than two months, we want to add a “fun and friends” twist to it, in order to encourage a lot of people to go take advantage of great consumer-friendly advice.

Three new sites are up! Each one is the new site for three features that previously were hosted here on this site:

• 10Coco.com is the new home for “Coco”, the Consumer Control Center.Every day we Americans are bombarded with commercial messages. Marketers just want your money; Coco is a completely pro-consumer tool that, like the police, is intended to serve and protect the public rather than to get you to buy anything. Here’s why consumers everywhere love it:
  1. It saves you money by comparing prices from many shopping sites.
  2. It also helps save money by listing alternatives to buying it new (such as borrowing, renting or buying pre-owned.)
  3. It helps you search many different consumer-friendly sites so you can get accurate information. You’ll avoid shoddy products and rip-offs.
  4. You can use it to search locally for products or businesses in your area and see maps that will help you get there fast.
  5. You can quickly check weather and traffic, and get driving directions, or even have the computer plan your bus routes.
  6. It’s really easy to use: you can hover your mouse arrow over any link in Coco, and helpful text will appear to explain what the link is good for.

  To use it, you only need a recent version of Internet Explorer, Netscape Navigator or Firefox.  It’s been extensively tested on IE 7 and Firefox 3, and it will work nearly as well on IE 5 or Firefox 2. If you have an older browser, download an updated FireFox or Internet Explorer browser.

  Y’interested? Smart Earthling! To read more about what Coco does for you, visit the Coco Help Page — and if you wanna look right in the horse’s mouth, go check out Coco now.
   
  

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• 10Remind.com is the new home for Consumer SmartCalendar reminds you of many things consumers can do throughout the year to remember events, improve their finances and maintain the condition of their homes.  When you take just one minute to glance at it each month, you’ll be able to plan the month much better. It’s a public service for which I receive no money, nor does it even have any display ads.

  I use it to pop up reminders to brush my teeth because half the time I forget! Next time you forget to do something, come and get the SmartCalendar: you’ll relax knowing you’ve got automatic reminders, instead of enduring the stress of having to remember everything.

  Its consumer tips are very helpful.  For example, you’ll remember to inspect your home to prevent ruinous disasters like termites, mold and fires. Tips are divided into five categories:
  

  Financial
     Home
  Spending
    Taxes
    College Prep (optional)
  (And Coming Soon: A Kids category with dozens of kid-friendly ideas)

  It’s really as easy to use as a paper calendar.  This little page tells everything you need to know to enjoy all its benefits.  Simply moving your mouse arrow over nearly anything on the calendar will display a helpful tip.

  Scroll down to the “Add Reminder” section of SmartCalendar.  Using this feature, you could add birthdays or an anniversary, or remind yourself of your periodic meetings, tasks or events. You simply fill in a date, name it, and click one button to specify how often it occurs (weekly, yearly, one time, etc.)  After you’ve entered all your reminders, click “Save Changes” at the top of the screen.  This will save the calendar to your list of favorite bookmarks, with all the reminders you’ve entered.

  Another very helpful feature you’ll see on SmartCalendar is “Print 3-Month Calendar”. It prints a one-page calendar that will remind you of all your important dates coming up. You can fold it to one-third size and stick in with your bills. Never again will you forget a to-do item that’s important to your finances or home maintenance.

  Checking your SmartCalendar each month is automatic:  Simply add it to your list of “home pages.” An article written just a couple of days ago shows exactly how.
   
  

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• 10HugeKeys.com is the world’s top seven “quick tips” for consumers (well, actually eight tips if we include the oversized anti-crime tip.) We couldn’t make that a quick tip because the mind of the criminal can be complex, and there is no quick and easy defense against it. Consumers must actively and intelligently think ahead in order to combat it.

  Today we took those seven top quick tips and put them on one sheet of paper. It’s actually two pages long, but you can print it front-and-back on one sheet. Why not print out a couple of copies of The World’s Best 7 Quick Consumer Tips now? There’s a simple trick to it: Print out two pages as you normally would, then switch ‘n’ flip them right back into your printer’s paper-in tray. Then just print again, maybe stick them in with your pile of bills, and you’ll always have the most important things you should know as a consumer right at hand.

  Oh, and don’t forget to stay safe by checking out the 8th (anti-crime) tip.

The Book Of Time is a free 19-page book written to give everyone “the best of the best” when it comes to time-saving tips. This short book will save you many times the amount of time it takes to read it.  If a person ends up with more time to live life after reading it, then why would anyone want to miss out on it? More free time equals more freedom for you!  To get this free gift, just visit 10Freedom.com.