In previous editions of Great Gadgets, we’ve covered everything from fantastic laptops to useful accessories. These are all meant to help you be a little more productive in some way, making your daily routine just a little easier. A new smartphone can help you stay connected to the office and a handy portable hard drive is a great way to back up your data.

Today, we’re taking a slightly different approach. Summer is definitely upon us and it can be pretty hard trying to stay cool during these hot summer months. You can try sipping on some iced tea or relaxing by the pool, but what do you do when you need to put on that monkey suit each day for work? For many offices, the standard attire would involve a necktie and this fashion accessory can make for quite the stuffy experience. That is, unless you get this USB Tie from Thanko Japan.

There is a fan built into the knot of the necktie and this fan is powered via a USB cable. It may not exactly be discrete, but it’s nice having that constant stream of cool air blowing toward you. There are two versions of the USB necktie. One costs about $30 and the other about $37. If there are any readers out there that understand Japanese, it would be great if you translate the difference between the two units for us.

Congratulations to this weeks geek Rinko. This weeks questions are…

1.  How many IP’s are available in IPv6?

2.  What is IPv5 being used for?

3.  What does CIDR stand for?

4.  How many bits are in a IPv6 address?

5.  What is the equivalent of 127.0.0.1 in IPv6?

Last week we worked on making it easier for our site visitors to bookmark our site on various social networking sites. This week we will ensure that we list our site on 24 of the social sites that do provide a link back to your site. Wondering why? Matt Cutts has been interpreted as saying that backlinks from social sites is a good way to increase the authority of your own site. So this means that you should go to each of these sites and submit your site or create an account at each.

Here is a list of 24 sites you should visit (thanks to Search Engine People), setup an account and submit your site…

Digg
LinkedIn
Flickr
Technorati
MyBlogLog
Propeller
Kirtsy
Current
PostonFire
BloggingZoom
CoRank
Bumpzee
LinkaGoGo
Bibsonomy
Mister-Wong
MyLinkVault
ClipClip
9Rules
AssociatedContent
Blogoria
NowPublic
MemeStreams
Mixx
Edopter

Know of any I missed? Leave it in the comments.

If you get stuck let me know in the comments.

A cartoon created by artist Rob Cottingham.

If you have an idea for a future comic or would like to submit your own BlueFur cartoon let us know in a comment.

Another week has come and gone, so that means that it’s time to take another look at what the blogosphere has to offer. We’ve gathered up quite the eclectic mix of posts for your reading pleasure, so there should be something here for everyone.

While over in Taiwan, Ed Lau got to experience all sorts of new things. He even ate out of a toilet at one point. Even though he is relatively accustomed to the precipitation in Vancouver, it simply does not compare to Taiwan torrential rainfall. In his own words, it’s like a boiling hot waterfall.

If you are reading this post, there’s a good chance that you like to make money online. Bob Buskirk came across an article in Time Magazine that listed the 50 best websites on the ‘net. Being the online entrepreneur that he is, Bob was much more interested in how these sites managed to make money.

There is an ongoing debate as to whether you should offer ‘dofollow’ links on your blog. Among the group that is all for ‘dofollow’ is RT Cunningham of Untwisted Vortex. He likes offering the link love so much that he’s written an article on how ‘dofollow’ links can help your blog. Give a little, get a lot!

Pictures are worth a thousand words and videos can be worth so much more. Unfortunately, you could run into some legal ramifications as a video blogger like the recent headache that Mostly Lisa had to endure. What are your rights? Do you have to ask for permission first before hitting the record button?

Positive thinking can work wonders. By the same accord, negative self-talk can be the only thing holding you back from ultimate success. Laura Spencer of Freelance Folder addresses this very concern and how it applies to all the freelancers and entrepreneurs in the audience.

From your company slogan to detailed marketing materials, you want to be very careful with the words that you choose to represent your business. What may sound perfectly fine to you may be construed as pretentious, offensive, or outright incorrect by another person. This is a particularly pressing issue when you cross cultures or the language barrier. When I took a recent trip to Taiwan, I was bombarded with all sorts of signs that may be fine in Taiwanese, but they sound terrible in English.

Beyond simple language issues, another area that deserves your attention is corporate or industry jargon. Even when marketing to others within the same industry as yours, it is important to be mindful of what jargon you are using. The marketing materials may make perfect sense to you, but the person from the accounting department of a potential customer may not understand. Technical language may stand in the way of completing a sale and it may make for a poor customer service experience. At the same time, you don’t want to patronize your clients by explaining every little detail.

Take the target audience into consideration when drafting up any sort of signage, newsletters, or even blog posts. Talking about PHP and mySQL may make sense to intermediate web users, but the novice blogger will have no idea what you’re talking about. Acronyms are a particularly touchy subject, so try to spell things out the first time before reverting to their shortened versions.

Have you ever been turned off by jargon? Has it stopped you from dealing with that company?