~~~ Little Mountain Web Design's Blog at 402WEBPAGE.COM ~~~

Happy New Year!

Posted on January 1, 2012 by webpage

One of the things I have enjoyed most is being fortunate to have met people from different countries and different cultures. Best wishes to everyone for a best year ahead.

And no matter how you say it, Happy New Year !!

Melkam Addis Amet Yihuneliwo!     (Amharic)
Kul ‘am Wa Antum Bikhair     (Arabic)
Sun Nin Faai Lock     (Cantonese)
Felican Novan Jaron     (Esperanto -Conlang)
Bonne Annee     (French)
Kali Chronia     (Greek)
Shannah Tovah     (Hebrew)
Felice Anno Nuovo     (Italian)
Xin Nian Kuai Le     (Mandarin)
La Multsi Ani      (Romanian for Many Years)
Prospero Año Nuevo    (Spanish for Prosperous New Year)
Ruhus Hadush Amet     (Tigrigna)
Chuch Mung Nam Moi      (Vietnamese)

Please feel free to post a comment and to add more languages!

For those of you joining us for the first time this year, our web design blog covers many Internet industry related topics such as websites, the Internet, social media, marketing, domain names, ICANN and hosting services. We will also cover topics that affect businesses and organizations. We also cover some multicultural topics to help people to understand and enjoy each others cultures and help connect people throughout the world especially in business.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Guest Blogger:Kam Wiese, CPA: IRS Announces 2012 Standard Milage Rates

Posted on December 27, 2011 by webpage

Beginning on Jan. 1, 2012, the standard mileage rates for the use of a car (also vans, pickups or panel trucks) will be:
55.5 cents per mile for business miles driven
23 cents per mile driven for medical or moving purposes
14 cents per mile driven in service of charitable organizations

The rate for business miles driven is unchanged from the mid-year adjustment that became effective on July 1, 2011. The medical and moving rate has been reduced by 0.5 cents per mile.

The standard mileage rate for business is based on an annual study of the fixed and variable costs of operating an automobile. The rate for medical and moving purposes is based on the variable costs as determined by the same study. Independent contractor Runzheimer International conducted the study.

Taxpayers always have the option of calculating the actual costs of using their vehicle rather than using the standard mileage rates. A taxpayer may not use the business standard mileage rate for a vehicle after using any depreciation method under the Modified Accelerated Cost Recovery System (MACRS) or after claiming a Section 179 deduction for that vehicle. In addition, the business standard mileage rate cannot be used for more than four vehicles used simultaneously.

Please feel free to contact Kam Wiese, CPA at Kluge and Wiese LLP (402) 332-3387 or email kamwiesecpa@gmail.com if you have additional questions.

To meet the recently established requirements of the Internal Revenue Service as described in their circular 230 we hereby advise you that any tax advice contained in this communication was not intended or written to be used, and it cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by Internal Revenue Code.

Kam Wiese, CPA

Kluge and Wiese, LLP

620 N. Hwy 6, PO Box 500

Gretna, NE 68028-0500

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged business, IRS, standard mileage rate | Leave a comment

Twitter App Reviews: Friend or Follow

Posted on December 17, 2011 by webpage

There are so many things one can add to Twitter and other social media to make its use more effective and enjoyable.

Here is the first of the fun and useful tools that we like for Twitter that help provide information about your followers:

Friend or Follow

Description: Friend or Follow is a Twitter app that allows you to easily view those who are not following your account back on Twitter. This is a great tool to use especially since Twitter has initiated following limits to make sure you are engaging the right audience and enhance connectivity in both directions. Simply go to the Friend or Follow website, enter the name of your Twitter account and get results on who does not follow you back.

How It Works:

1. You type in the name of the account you wish to review and click “submit”. An image of the accounts not believed to be following back is displayed in a grid formation of a maximum of 13 per row and 20 per column, adjusted for how many are not following you with a maximum of 260 per each page.

2. Choose an image and hover your mouse over it. Information will be displayed about that account including account name, following and follower count, bio and location.

3. You can click on that to visit the account not following you or you can click the combined plus and person icon to grant permission for Friend or Follow to grant access. If you choose to grant access then this message is displayed, ”Connect Friend Or Follow with your @YOUR TWITTERACCOUNT account to interact with your followers and share content through your timeline,” before beginning that process.

4. You can sign up for “Gold” membership which is currently $9.99/month. This grants special services such as generating these lists in CSV format and different ways of looking at lists.

Strengths: You can use this for free. You do not have to authorize Friend or Follow to use your account. You can make all the decisions of who you wish to keep following or who you wish to no longer follow. You can also pay and sign up for more benefits.

Weaknesses: We’ve noticed some errors on who has followed or not with the free and no access version. With the free no access version, only the images are displayed. There is no text list for accounts that do not follow back with the free no access version.

Recommendations: Bookmark this great tool. As always, check before deleting anyone to be sure they are not following you if you wish to delete those who do not follow back.

Where to Get: http://www.friendorfollow.com

Posted in Social Media, Twitter, Twitter Apps | Tagged social media, Twitter, Twitter app | Leave a comment

Guest Blogger:Kam Wiese, CPA: Cancelled Debt Anyone…

Posted on November 10, 2011 by webpage

Cancelled Debt Anyone…

What is Form 1099-C?

A Form 1099-C is used to report cancellation of debt of an individual or business from a taxpayer’s rental property, business debt, personal debt or personal residence. A financial institution is required to issue a taxpayer a 1099-C if it forgives or writes off more than $600 of the debt’s principal.

To give you an example of when this form would be issued. Say you had credit card debt of $10,000, you call the credit card company and settle to pay $6,000. The credit card company will then issue you a 1099-C for $4,000.

Is Cancellation of Debt income always taxable?

Not always. There are some exceptions. The most common situations when cancellation of debt income is not taxable involve:

Qualified principal residence indebtedness: This is the exception created by the Mortgage Debt Relief Act of 2007 and applies to most homeowners.
Bankruptcy: Debts discharged through bankruptcy are not considered taxable income.
Insolvency: If you are insolvent when the debt is cancelled, some or all of the cancelled debt may not be taxable to you. You are insolvent when your total debts are more than the fair market value of your total assets. To figure out if you are able to report an exclusion – Form 982 must be completed.
Certain farm debts: If you incurred the debt directly in operation of a farm, more than half your income from the prior three years was from farming, and the loan was owed to a person or agency regularly engaged in lending, your cancelled debt is generally not considered taxable income.
Non-recourse loans: A non-recourse loan is a loan for which the lender’s only remedy in case of default is to repossess the property being financed or used as collateral. That is, the lender cannot pursue you personally in case of default. Forgiveness of a non-recourse loan resulting from a foreclosure does not result in cancellation of debt income. However, it may result in other tax consequences.

If I have a tenant who doesn’t pay rent can I issue them a 1099-C?

Technically, no, a 1099-C is only to be issued by lenders or financial institutions.

Please feel free to contact Kam Wiese, CPA at Kluge and Wiese LLP (402) 332-3387 or email kamwiesecpa@gmail.com if you have additional questions.

Kam Wiese, CPA

Kluge and Wiese, LLP

620 N. Hwy 6, PO Box 500

Gretna, NE 68028-0500

Posted in Guest Blogger, Uncategorized, business | Tagged 1099-C, business debt, cancelled debt, CPA, debt, guest blogger | Leave a comment

Welcome Guest Bloggers

Posted on November 10, 2011 by webpage

402webpage welcomes guest bloggers on a variety of subjects including business, tax, Internet, IT, cultural topics and more topics of interest to small businesses, organizations and the International business community.

If you are interested in becoming a guest blogger, please contact us at info@402webpage.com for details, questions and to submit a topic.

Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a comment

In the News: CIA Uses Social Media as an Intelligence Tool

Posted on November 7, 2011 by webpage

On 4 November, some of the major media sources ran what we already knew that the folks over at Langley were doing, watching, and analyzing social media including blogs, Twitter and Facebook. It should not come as a surprise. We already know that many employers and landlords check social media for perspective employees or tenants before making a decision. What was news was that a special interview and tour was granted.

During this, the CIA said it used librarians to aid in the research and analysis. For those of us who research online, including those engaged in white hat SEO (search engine optimization), this is a wise choice. Librarians continue to be one of the best resources for research on and offline because of their training and experience in reference research with keywords.

This research by those who have been nicknamed the “vengeful librarians” is combined with other sources of information such as those conducted from ELINT (Electronic signals intelligence), personal communications, chatrooms, newspapers, television and radio broadcasts. The Agency’s Open Source Center (OSC) reviews about 5 million tweets a day.

Links from a variety of sources with different perspectives:

http://www.npr.org/2011/11/04/142029141/cia-analysts-comb-social-media-for-trouble-spots

http://news.google.com/news/story?ncl=http://www.npr.org/2011/11/04/142029141/cia-analysts-comb-social-media-for-trouble-spots&hl=en&geo=us

http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/11/how-the-cia-uses-social-media-to-track-how-people-feel/247923/

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/world/52850565-68/center-naquin-media-social.html.csp

http://slatest.slate.com/posts/2011/11/04/cia_s_vengeful_librarians_track_up_to_5_million_tweets_per_day.html

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/11/04/cia_open_source_center/

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/twitter-facebook-are-catching-cias-attention/2011/11/04/gIQAiWyumM_story.html

Posted in Blogging, Facebook, SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media, Uncategorized | Tagged blogs, CIA, Facebook, Langley, librarians, Open Source Center, OSC, social media, tweets, Twitter, vengeful librarians | Leave a comment

Vacation Month

Posted on October 1, 2011 by webpage

402webpage will take a vacation this month from our blog posts. To learn more about websites, our philosophy as a company or ask us a question please go to http://www.littlemountainwebdesign.com. The blog posts will resume next month.

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged Web Design, websites | Leave a comment

Website Basics: An Introduction to Important Terms and Concepts

Posted on September 30, 2011 by webpage

PART II: WEB DESIGN

1. Search Engines and Search Engine Optimization (Continued)

Meta tags are located in the coding for the webpage near the top underneath the identification of they type of document and coding that will be used.

Here is a handy list of some of the most often used meta tags

Keywords
Description
Author
Title

To use these meta tags, simply copy the below in their respective format and insert into your website replacing the *ADD HERE* sections with relevant words for your website and deleting the asterisks as well as the directions.

 <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="*ADD KEYWORDS HERE SEPARATED BY COMMAS*">
 <META NAME="description" CONTENT="*ADD YOUR DESCRIPTION HERE*">
 <META NAME="author" CONTENT="*ADD YOUR AUTHOR HERE, IF ANY*">
 <title>*ADD YOUR TITLE HERE*</title>

There is much more to search engine optimization than can be covered here in these two posts. Please contact us at Little Mountain Web Design to learn more about how our company can help you and your website with search engine optimization.

Posted in SEO, Search Engine Optimization, Search Engines, Web Design, Websites, search engine algorithms | Tagged meta tags, Search Engine Optimization, SEO, Web Design, websites | Leave a comment

Website Basics: An Introduction to Important Terms and Concepts

Posted on August 27, 2011 by webpage

PART II: WEB DESIGN

1. Search Engines and Search Engine Optimization (Continued)

Now that you understand better how search engines work, we will cover part of search engine optimization, SEO. It is important to use SEO to create better websites and not to use techniques and strategies solely to have your website rank high. Google has written much about this aspect of SEO.

To Meta or Not To Meta

Meta tags are in the coding of your website. With the exception of the title of the webpage you will not see them when viewing the webpage. To view the code, other click on a website where their is no image or flash and check under the hood so to speak to see what is there running the page like an engine for your car. You should see one for title. You should also see other meta tags but they are not present in every website.

Some of the less experienced search engine optimists and web designers feel and write that it is unnecessary to use meta tags with the belief that Google, Bing, Yahoo and other search engine companies will find their website without this effort. While that can be true, a large part of why a customer wants their website optimized is to have their website rank higher on search engines.

As such, they are not mindful of these three things:

Robots as members of your audience
Traditional types of information that are collected by search engines
Classic elements of a website

As discussed earlier, a website has two audiences people and robots. The robots collect information including those contained in the meta tags and report back to their respective search engines with these golden nuggets. These data nuggets are in turn evaluated in the search engine algorithm and compared with other data such as the content of your website. This evaluation ranks your website according to that particular algorithm and other criteria. The weight or importance put on the meta tags and comparison with the content can shift depending on the the algorithm or the version. The current search engine algorithm used by Google has been called Panda or Farmer.

The use of meta tags is an important strategy to be incorporated into any web design and is an integral part of search engine optimization. To meta or not to meta should not be the question. It should be a standard practice for those wanting to build good solid websites that are search engine optimized.

Our next segment of our series, “Website Basics: An Introduction to Important Terms and Concepts” will cover the different types of meta tags.