For some professionals, traveling around the world is a necessity. If your business calls for it, you may find yourself in Lisbon one day, Sydney the next, and New York the day after that. Ideally, you want to rely on a single set of electronics on these journeys, not having to switch between mobile phones, laptops, and other gadgetry that has become such an important part of doing business. There are several world phones available that will accept international SIM cards, but what about charging that phone? What about powering your notebook computer?

One of the best and most economical solutions I have found is the PowerLine Global Power Travel Voltage Converter, available from Walmart. Retailing for just 20 bucks, this reasonably compact kit will let you plug in your various electronics in just about any wall plug, regardless of voltage. The series of adapters will ensure that you can draw power from the wall, whether you are in Europe, Australia, Hong Kong, or Lima. The other part of the package serves as a voltage converter, because while we use 100-120 volts AC in North America, many other parts of the world use 220 to 240 volts. Naturally, this kit is designed for people with North America-based electronics.

The PowerLine Global Voltage Converter is a neat package that measures less than six inches wide and three inches tall, so it will easily fit into any suitcase or backpack. It does have some weight to it, though.

Each week I get asked many questions on how to do something.

Questions range from using robots.txt to editing WordPress themes. Each week based on questions received either through email, in person or via the comments I will add a new how to video that demonstrates how to accomplish that task. If one does not exist I will create one myself and publish it on youtube.

This week I was asked how do I add an image to my sidebar in WordPress.

Do you have a how to that question would make a good video? If so post a comment.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Matt who scored on our Acronyms Geek of the Week questions. This weeks questions are:

1.   Who is this?

2.   Who is this?

3.   Who is this?

4.   Who is this?

5. What do all of these people have in common?

Radiohead an English rock band announced that they had dropped their record label and will be selling their own content via their website. Madonna, Oasis and Jamiroquai quickly followed suite announcing that they also are dropping their record label. In one week Radiohead sold 1.2 million songs at $8 each.

Do you think that this will be the way of the future for already successful bands?

I can see record labels working well for new bands with little to no fan base. Once you have a fan base though a record label really does not add any value for musicians. I think we will see more and more artists moving away from their record labels because of the success of Radiohead.

Do you think they could have sold more if they had a record label?

A record label takes care of marketing and distribution of a new album. They of course do it at a hefty cost. Personally I think a record label would have produced a similar amount of sales for Radiohead. The problem of course is that Radiohead would have most likely made less. Also the consumer would have paid more for the CD. The real looser here is the record labels and music stores.

Will this put music stores out of business?

I don’t think so. Music stores that sell CD’s know that the industry is changing and have started to focus more on selling DVD’s and Video Games. The last time I went to HMV I noticed that less then a 1/3 of the store was actually devoted to selling music.

When the most successful business owners are asked what is the most important reason for their success a vast majority of them say it comes down to passion. It is passion that helps them work through the dip of the slow growth to success. There will be good days, there will be bad days but in the end it will be their passion that will keep them in the game.

The classic example of being passionate about their business is Colonel Sanders and KFC. The story goes that Sanders had the idea that a fried chicken franchise restaurant would work. With nothing more then the idea of KFC he went forth and knocked on 1000′s and 1000′s of investors doors. Many of them laughed him right out of the office. Instead of giving up after the first 1000, Sanders passion drove him to keep going. Eventually he found the right investor and today as I’m sure everyone knows KFC is the leader in fast food fried chicken.

Are you passionate at what you do right now?

If you are not then perhaps you should look into yourself and find something you are passionate about. Then start to think of how you can form a future business around it.

Halloween is just around the corner, but this edition of In The Sphere is anything but spooky. Nope, today we’re going to provide you with a bunch of helpful hints and discussions that have been posted on the web in the last week or so, each of which will surely aid you in your journey toward dot com mogul status. The last entry, however, is a new development that is more than strange. It’s pretty outrageous.

In your quest for blog superstardom, you will inevitable make a wrong turn here or there. OpTempto describes his 5 biggest blogging mistakes. Of the five mistakes described, I am personally guilty of the first one: not using WordPress right away. I migrated my blog later on, but it was a big pain in the butt to do it. Then again, I didn’t even know about WordPress at the time.

Martin Reed of Community Spark is a well-respected blogger in the area of forming and maintaining online communities. One of his most recent posts reminds you that forums don’t have to popular to be good. The true value of an online forum isn’t in the number of members it contains. Much more important than member count are post counts and post quality, because many “members” could be either lurkers or spam bots.

Matt has grown up in an online world, so he knows all about PHP, HTML, and all those other acronyms that web-savvy people seem to know. He also recognizes the increasingly huge size of files we send over the web, so he’s quick to note that Gmail is giving users more space much quicker than before. At the current pace, Matt projects that Gmail will give each user 5GB by October 28, 10GB by December 21, and 100 GB by December 15, 2009.

Darren Rowse, who most people know simply as Problogger, discusses the advantages and disadvantages of the 125 x 125 pixel ads that have been popping up on blogs lately. We can see their implementation on Darren’s blog, as well as countless others, including the panda killer John Chow. Are 125×125 ads right for your blog?

Speaking of John Chow, Jeff Kee has discovered a new blog reportedly written by the lovechild of John Chow and Jeremy “Shoemoney” Schoemaker. This is the result of one crazy dot com love affair that just may have started with a certain RSS competition. Feel free to navigate over to Chowmoney.com, but be warned that the kid isn’t exactly pretty.