When the recession hit the international economy a couple of years ago, many people who had previously held comfortable positions were suddenly laid off. For many, this represented an opportunity to get into business for themselves.

An article in the New York Times last month documents the experiences of some of these people who went from white collar workers to small business owners. While their original jobs were seemingly stable (plan A), the move to small business ownership has been quite rocky (plan B).

It’s a rude awakening for many who see small business ownership as a way to gain more control and more freedom, since entrepreneurship can oftentimes bring greater stress and longer hours. As such, some of these people are now looking toward possible plan Cs, especially since the financial stability of owning a small business isn’t quite the same as getting a steady salary from a conventional job.

There is absolutely something to be said about sticking it out and fighting through the rough times. It is only through perseverance that you can achieve any real success. At the same time, you also have to recognize when changes need to be made and the move to plan C may be the right thing to do.

One of the worst things that can happen when you are working on an important project is to suddenly experience a power outage. While a standard surge protector will protect your computer against surges, it is not at all useful when there is a power outage.

For instances like that, you need to invest in a UPS or uninterrupted power supply. Essentially, these devices work like surge protectors, except they also house an internal battery that will keep supplying electricity in the instance of a power outage. This particular example is the CyberPower CP850AVRLCD, which offers 850 volt-amps or 510 watts of power.

Depending on the power needs of your computer system and its connected peripherals, this will have a varying battery life in the case of a power outage. It also comes with intelligent LCD diagnostics, allowing you to monitor everything from that display. It is ultra quiet and comes with nine outlets, as well as protection for your RJ11/45 and coaxial connections. This is great for workstations and personal electronics.

This model is currently on sale on Amazon.ca for $100.98, which is 15% off the regular price and includes free shipping. If you need more or less power, Amazon also has other CyberPower UPS offerings for you to consider at varying price points.

Creativity and inspiration can come from all sorts of different places, but you still need a place on the web where you can collect, store, and display your inspirations. Many artists prefer to use BlueFur web hosting for this purpose.

One such visual artist is Sharon Erlichman, based out of Toronto. She does both painting and photography, providing two distinctly different venues for expressing her creativity. On her website, you can look at both types of artwork with extensive galleries, complete with social integration for sharing with your friends.

The Dreamscapes paintings are quite phenomenal, as are the architecture photos. A fuller gallery of these images can also be accessed from the site, as well as her artist statement that offers insight into her creative process.

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.

There is just something soft and delicate about the Custom Community WordPress theme from Theme Kraft. It’s wonderfully understated in its tones, yet it offers a robust feature set that is suitable for a wide range of blogs and other sites.

All three of the predefined color schemes continue this “softer” approach to the appearance, giving a clean and simple design that is automatically pleasing to the eye. The jQuery slideshow at the top of the content area helps to showcase you rowrk, while the magazine style layout beneath gives a professional and accessible appearance too.

Like so many other pro-level themes these days, Custom Community doesn’t require you to have any prior coding knowledge. This is because many of the changes for the theme can be done through the WordPress Theme Options panel, including the placement of sidebars and the colour for the background.

More information can be found on ThemeKraft.com. A live preview and the free download link, as usual, can be accessed through the Free Themes Directory on WordPress.org.

We’ve got a little bit of everything from around the blogosphere this week, so let’s get down to it.

Joseph Planta has been conducting interviews on the web for a number of years and now he is celebrating the seventh anniversary of his On The Line feature. He takes us through some of his more interesting interviews, including two that he had with the late Jack Layton. Other highlights include Dawna Friesen, Mike McCardell, Tony Parsons, and Robert Bateman.

Thursday Bram is starting to recognize an emerging trend. Rather than focusing on computer science or engineering, the English major could be the next geek success story. Technology advances so quickly that what you learn in school could be outdated tomorrow, but good writing will always be valued as good writing.

Darren Barefoot is a not a “productivity zealot,” but he would like to get more done in less time. So, he has put together a list of ten productivity tips from a slacker. These include making approval requests opt-out rather than opt-in, getting onto instant messengers, and breaking large tasks into smaller ones.

Gus Fosarolli has published a guest post from Laura, running through the TV shows returning this fall. This is just part one of the series, discussing such programs as Dr. Who, Amazing Race, How I Met Your Mother, House, and New Girl.

Steve Selengut offers some financial management advice, reminding you how you can make a volatile stock market into your best friend. The volatility is what so many investors fear, but it is exactly through this volatility that you can make some very impressive returns.

When it comes to most conventional trade shows, there’s an expectation that each company will have its own booth and that’s where people can go to get information about their products. That may be true, but you shouldn’t limit yourself to just that paradigm.

In the case of a trade show like Penny Arcade Expo or the Consumer Electronics Expo, it is very common to see cross-marketing between companies that work together. The computer industry is a great example of this. A case maker may use the RAM of one company, the processor of another, and the hard drive of yet another in a display unit. All three of those partners represent advertising opportunities.

Similarly when it comes to the video game industry, the console maker, an accessory maker, and the game developer might all be promoting all three of their products. That’s not a competing product, since all three work within the same ecosystem. That helps with brand recognition and brand presence, spreading as far across the trade show floor as possible.

And this isn’t restricted to consumer electronics and technology. Companies from all kinds of different industries can consider leveraging similar partnerships. Travel trade shows, for instance, might see cross-promotion with hotels and airlines. The possibilities are endless and the opportunity certainly shouldn’t be ignored.