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One of the world’s premier luxury china and crystal makers, Waterford Wedgwood PLC, has filed for bankruptcy protection when they failed to successfully restructure or find a buyer for the company. The business advisory firm Deloitte was called in to administer the company. Waterford Wedgwood has nearly 8000 employees around the world, most of them in manufacturing facilities in Asia and Eastern Europe. The bankruptcy administrators promise to keep the business in operation until the company is sold.

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Waterford, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton, all of which are affected by the bankruptcy, are classic brands of fine china and crystal that have been around for two and a half centuries. Wedgwood began making pottery in England in 1759 and began making fine china about 100 years later. Waterford opened their first factory in Ireland in 1783 although problems in Ireland caused the business to fail in the 1850’s. The brand was brought back in 1947 by Miroslav Havel, a Czech immigrant. In 1986 Waterford acquired Wedgwood and began moving more and more operations to Asia and Eastern Europe in search of cheap labor. In 2005, they added Royal Doulton, the renown ceramics company, to their line up.

Like many companies, Waterford Wedgwood PLC found themselves taking on substantial debt to fund their expansion and acquisition efforts. Now, with today’s credit crunch and recession, which has blunted the demand for high end luxury goods, the company is facing considerable financial difficulty. The company failed to find a buyer while seeking a forbearance from its chief creditors and this led to the bankruptcy.

With the bankruptcy and the uncertainty of where the company will go in the future this creates an opportunity for Waterford, Wedgwood and Royal Doulton collectors, both from a buying and selling perspective. It is certain that patterns that aren’t selling well will be struck from the the product line. This should create a brisk used and ‘new old stock’ in these designs. If you’re needing a replacement piece of china or glassware you probably want to seek it out now to avoid price increases due to demand. If you’re selling, it may be a good time to cash in but there may be some advantage to holding if scarcity increases the demand for hard to find pieces.

At any rate, I hope that Waterford Wedgwood PLC is able to continue operations and find a suitable buyer. It would be a shame for us to lose one of the classic makers of fine china and crystal.

Today Vic Franqui launched the Niche Blogging Network, a site dedicated to providing high quality Private Label Rights (PLR) content. I was given the opportunity to get a sneak peek at this membership site and the content that’s being provided there. I’m not a big fan of Internet Marketing hype and hoopla and, even though my links to it are affiliate links I’ll give you the straight scoop on what this site does and doesn’t provide.

What are Private Label Rights articles and what can they do for you? Essentially PLR articles are articles sold to be reused by the purchasers. If you’re like me and run several niche marketing blogs and are adding more each month you’ll find that having good fresh content is important. PLR articles are a good way to obtain some of this content.

Now, if you’ve been around a while you’ve probably seen some really bad Private Label Rights articles. Yes, I have too. These often republished articles generally aren’t too good. You may have also seen articles that were butchered by an article spinner. Sometimes my own Blog Content Wizard does a better job than these spinners. Niche Blogging Network doesn’t give a rehash from 2002 or a clumsy spun articles. The articles on Niche Blogging Network are fresh, new, articles that are well written and informative, perfect for a niche blog.

The membership at Niche Blogging Network gives you at least 250 new articles a month in at least 10 niches. If you consider the price for having 250 articles written every month you’ll be talking a minimum of about $1000 to get articles of comparable quality, probably even more. Plus you get comments to go along with the articles to help you seed discussions on the blog, another great value add. And Vic is throwing in some great extra bonuses with the membership too that you should find helpful. Best of all, for a limited time, you can use this discount coupon code, G3ZJLY69JB, to get $20 off the regular membership price of $29.97. That’s $9.97 for a lot of content on a monthly basis. You can’t beat that.

But, are there some downsides to using Private Label Rights articles? Yes there are.

First of all, everybody worries about ‘duplicate content’ when it comes to PLR articles. I suggest that anyone who thinks that Google does anything about this go Google on the lyrics to their favorite song. You’ll find page after page of lyrics sites, all with the same basic content, the lyrics, with the only difference being the on-site navigation and advertisements. What really matters so far as search placement is the number of backlinks and the authority Google gives a site. If your site offers what Google’s algorithms consider the best experience for searchers your site will be in a good position in Google, PLR or no PLR article. So far as Google goes, this isn’t an issue except that you’ll have to work to get enough links for Google to recognize your blog as an authority on the topic.

The other downside is that you will be competing to some degree against other Niche Blogging Network members, including me and, yes, probably Vic too. However, don’t let that deter you. Remember most people fail to take action and you’ll be far ahead of them. You can also use the content to create your own autoresponder series, eBook, or private membership course. You can also do a minor rewrite of the material to make it more unique to you. Sometimes you only need to change the title and add an opening and closing paragraph to achieve this.

One other downside of the PLR articles is that major article directories frequently reject duplicate PLR content. So, these articles won’t be suitable for submitting to article directories without a significant modifications.

If you’re into niche blogging I highly recommend that you sign up for Niche Blogging Network with the G3ZJLY69JB discount coupon code. You’ll be glad you did. If you have any questions about it, feel free to ask in a comment and I’ll try to answer them.

Today I thought I’d take a look at another All-in-One printer, the Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One. Like many other such units this one gives you basic printing, copying, faxing and scanning but also includes wireless networking and duplex printing which are rarer features to find on lower end all-in-one units. I’ve been checking out and testing a number of these units to find a replacement for my old Epson all-in-one. Let’s see how the Lexmark stacks up…

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Feature-wise, the Lexmark X9350 is impressive, especially for the price. Not only does it cover the basics, including having PictBridge and Bluetooth interfaces for picture printing, it also has wireless 802.11g (802.11b compatible) networking and duplex printing. The scan and fax features are networkable which is also nice. It works well with Windows, including Vista, and Macs. But, do all these features perform well?

Unfortunately, the printing quality of the Lexmark X9350 isn’t all that great. Sure, it does fine on quick black-and-white copies but the 4 ink system it uses produces poor photographic prints as compared to better, dedicated, photo printers with more inks. The duplex printing seems to streak occasionally as if the ink wasn’t drying quickly enough or the unit was putting out too much ink. The duplex printing and copying also seemed to jam a lot. That was kind of disappointing but I guess that being used to $1000+ duplex copiers at work kind of spoiled me in that regard. I suppose one shouldn’t expect that level of performance out of an inexpensive home printer/copier/fax/scan unit.

One problem I’ve encountered with some inkjets in the past is ink clogs. It seems like the Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One suffers from that as well. One way I get devices to test is working with a local electronics store computer repair tech and he has told me that he’s gotten several of these units back with gummed up jets plus he’s gotten complaints about the level of ink usage being high. Another common complaint by purchasers has been that the wireless networking fails. Of course, wireless can be kind of tricky sometimes due to router placement but this seems more like an out and out failure since even an on-site service call couldn’t correct the problem.

Another common complaint about Lexmark printers in general is that they have poor customer service and durability. Sadly, you get what you pay for in a lower end unit. If we were still paying $1000 or more for an all-in-one we might expect good tech support but when we pay $100-200 for one we’re probably lucky to get someone to read a page from the manual to us over the phone. That said, Lexmark, in my experience, is one of the worse when it comes to supporting customers.

The bottom line is that the Lexmark X9350 Wireless Office All-in-One has some impressive features for its price point but that you’re likely to be buying a more or less disposable printer that may not work as well as you might wish. It also isn’t a good choice if you want to do photo printing. For small office/home office (SOHO) work or college and other educational work I think that there are better, more reliable, options out on the market.

First I have to give props where props are due. I ran into WikidPad via other users at Wakoopa. I played around with it a bit and then forgot about it. Then I ran into this post about using WikidPad to organize your keywords.

And something clicked. I had been using a folder with various reports and text files in it to store the information about the blogs I’ve been building. But it was a mess. I tried mind maps and they became overwhelming in the end. So I gave WikidPad a try. I just started with keywords.

Read Ann Smarty’s post on how to organize your keywords. Here are the basics of WikidPad. I would create a wiki per blog. You have to give your wike a CamelCase name like MyNicheBlog. This will give you one page. On that page, by writing other CamelCase names or by putting braces around a phrase or word, you create another page and a link from that word. This allows you to create endless hierarchies of pages.

Here is a brief run down on what I did.

I started with Google Search-based Keyword Tool. Yes, you may get more keywords from a tool like Wordtracker, but I was here to write blog posts and articles, not create ad campaigns just yet. I think 800 is enough to begin with. Plus Google gives you a lot of important traffic data along with the keywords. I put in the most general term I could think of that described the niche, I exported the CSV file and opened it in Open Office. Then I selected it and pasted into my KeyWords wiki page. I then put braces around the keywords I would begin targeting and left the others for later.

But keywords don’t really give you articles ideas, so I went to the WordTracker Keyword Questions tool and searched EzineArticles with the same term I used for keywords. The pageview count at the bottom of each articles gave me an idea of the type of questions people were looking to get answered. This gave me plenty of questions I could answer with articles. I then added these questions to its own [question] wiki page.

When I was ready to write an article on one of the questions, I just put braces around the question to create a new wiki page and start typing. Now I had my article organized whether I was going to use them as blog posts, articles for marketing or articles for various content sites.

For research, I am still using Niche Browser. It also will give me new article ideas once I run out of the ones I already have.

But the point of this blog I was mapping was to make money, so I created another [products] wiki page and listed all the affiliate products that were related to the niche. And again by adding braces around each product, I had another page where I could write the rough draft of the product description.

I could take this further and map out categories and tags beforehand, but I stopped there for now. WikidPad is a pretty simple but powerful for visualizing data in a more simplified and text based way than a mind map.

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Power screwdrivers are a great solution for a number of home repair issues. They are very efficient and inexpensive. How can you go about selecting the right power screwdriver for your needs? Should you buy a cheap no-name cordless screwdriver or should you buy a brand name like Skil, Bosch, Ryobi, Milwaukee or Makita? In this special ‘buyers guide’ article, we’ll take a look at some tips for finding the right one for your particular needs.

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In line power screwdrivers are designed for basic household projects. They aren’t too powerful, but more than sufficient to get the job done. For heavy duty projects, consider using a drywall screwdriver. Some models offer various speeds. There are several models to choose from. Some are very similar in design to a basic screwdriver. Other are shaped like a pistol grip, with a handle for you to guide the screws in. Others come with a handle that pivots to help you get into just about any angle you can imagine. This is my favorite kind.

Select a power screwdriver that fits well in your hand. Some of the handles are rough and others have a soft, foam grip to them. Hold the power screwdriver in your hand and see how it feels after a few minutes. If you will be using it for lengths of time then comfort is very important. You don’t want to end up with sore hands or blisters. I’ve found a neoprene grip to be the best choice so if you’re buying online that’s the type of grip I would suggest you purchase.

Different power screwdrivers have varying amounts of torque power and speeds. You will want to compare this information before deciding on the power screwdriver you wish to purchase. Take some time to review what each power screwdriver is recommended for. Compare that to the projects you are likely to undertake with the power screwdriver. I’ve found that 6 volt units are a bit underpowered for larger projects but are just fine for occasional home use. If you think you’ll find yourself using the screwdriver a lot on heavy duty projects then, by all means, go with a more powerful, and yes, more expensive, driver. It will be worth it in the long run.

Speaking of heavy duty usage, some people choose to purchase a second battery so that they can have one charging and one in the screwdriver. I highly recommend this if you will be using the power screwdriver on a regular basis. Nothing is more aggravating than being in the middle of a project and having to wait to recharge your tools. Look for lines of power tools that have interchangeable battery packs to take full advantage of this feature.

For those of you who intend to use your power screwdriver regularly and want to save some money, consider purchasing a power screwdriver kit. Inside you will find the power screwdriver and slots for each accessory. You will often get many sizes of bits to use and a recharger station and adapters. You can get a power screwdriver kit at a much better price than having to purchase accessories separately.