While hockey and snowboarding might be more popular and get more attention in the mainstream media, a very significant number of people are very much interested in curling. And the Terrace Curling Club is there to fulfill that interest.

Following up on the widespread coverage during the 2010 Winter Olympics, an increasingly large number of people want to see what curling is all about. If you happen to be out in Northern British Columbia, this club is a great place for families to get together for a game or two.

Two bonspiels have already happened this year, but there is another one already scheduled for later this month. The Mens Loggers Bonspiel is set to take place from March 25 to March 27 of this year. You can also check the site for open pricing of the facility.

Do you use BlueFur to host your websites? Let us know and we can feature you in a future blog post. Send an email message to blogfeature@bluefur.com with your name, website URL, and a brief description of what you’d like to see highlighted.

Looking for a WordPress theme that is easy to use and easy to navigate, yet also easy to customize? That’s fundamentally the idea behind zeeReputation.

It comes pre-loaded with nine different color schemes, but you can also pick custom colors using the appropriately named Colorpicker. The core design has two columns with social media integration toward the top of the sidebar, which is located to the left.

Among the other features are the three featured posts slider at the top (and you can choose between horizontal, dropdown, or fade for the transition), Google Analytics integration, custom logo upload, dropdown menus, and a theme option panel for easy adjustment.

You can check out the demo and take a look at the screenshots at ThemeZee.com,the site for the developers of zeeReputation. That is also the link for getting the free download.

Another Friday means another speedlink session through the blogosphere. Let’s check it out.

Gayla Baer-Taylor starts off with some very important advice for the committed bloggers in the audience: never apologize for lack of posting. You don’t need an apology post; just get back into the groove when you have the chance.

Ivanildo has a guest post up on Untwisted Vortex, explaining what you can do to reduce your tummy fat. Believe it or not, regular old stomach crunches are not going to do the trick; you need a full body workout. This is because stomach crunches will only build your abdominal muscles and not burn the fat that is on top of it.

Martyn Chamberlin points us toward some unfair market advantages that you should use for your business. The inspiration for this direction: Apple. Are you putting your customers first? Are you writing good copy? There are reasons why iProducts sell so well.

Daily Slif continues his Vancouver-based culinary journeys with a quick visit to Wally’s Burgers in the Killarney area. It’s not nearly as iconic as the original Kingsway location, but can the burgers beat out the fast food competition?

John Chow is a well-known blogger and online entrepreneur, so you might want to know how much it costs to run his site. Despite making over $40,000 every month, his operating costs are only barely over $1,000 per month. What other business sees that kind of profit margin?

Considering that Vancouver is such a bustling real estate market, it’s no surprise that my mailbox gets filled with all kinds of junk mail from realtors, home renovation experts, mortgage brokers, and just about any other professional remotely related to the industry. Most of these flyers end up in the recycling bin, but are they effective?

In my own experience, even though I barely pay attention to any of these mailings, the persistence of certain realtors has led to some fantastic brand recognition. More importantly, the real estate agents that I remember are the ones whose mail-outs demonstrate real world success in my very own neighborhood.

Instead of sending out a flyer or postcard that says, “Hey look, I’m a realtor,” the mail-out is more likely to say, “Hey look, here’s a house I sold for $X over asking in just 5 days.” That’s demonstrated and proven success. Seeing the person succeed once is one thing; getting consistent mailings that demonstrate this success over and over again starts to get the message to stick in the minds of potential customers.

Yes, most people don’t like junk mail — both of the real and virtual variety — but the “right” kind of junk mail, when used appropriately to proclaim continued success and expertise, can be a very effective means of marketing and increasing brand awareness.

Sometimes, the most important things are the ones that happen behind the scenes. In addition to the countless plug-ins that adjust your admin panel and change the look of your blog, there are many more than don’t make many visible changes but are ultimately more useful.

One such example is Secure WordPress, a plug-in that helps to protect your WordPress site from hackers and other malicious attacks. This plugin actually serves no fewer than eleven different functions, all of which without any additional input on your part.

Among the processes to help secure your WordPress installation, the plugin will remove the wp-version (except in the admin area), remove Windows Live Writer, remove plugin update information from non-admin accounts, block bad queries, and remove error-information on the login-page.

Coupled with some of other security efforts, Secure WordPress should be able to keep your site reasonably safe from malicious attacks. Download it for free from the WordPress Plugin Directory as usual.

When the harmonized sales tax (HST) was introduced in Ontario and British Columbia last year, many entrepreneurs and small business hours were confused about the new rules. The confusion lay not only in what tax applied to what kind of products and services, but also how to charge out of province customers when it came to the sales tax.

Those concerns have been mostly addressed, but now we are in the midst of another set of confusion. After charging the appropriate tax rate for the appropriate customers, how do you go about remitting these collected sales taxes back to the government. The quick method of accounting is supposed to simplify the process, but the introduction of HST has complicated it once more.

Essentially, you need to separate your customer receipts in terms of the tax rate that you charged them. For instance, if you are a BC-based business, your BC-based customers are charged 12% HST while you Alberta-based customers are charged 5% GST. You need to keep them separate and calculate the remittance rates accordingly.

These rates can be found on the Canada Revenue Agency website. In the past, you could clump together all of your (Canadian) clients and largely work with a single remittance rate. If you have customers in multiple provinces with multiple rates, you will now need to calculate them separately, but still remit all of your collected sales taxes at the same time.