Off and on I have the pleasure of bringing you cool contests and fun prizes. Today’s post is no exception. The folks over at Charter never rest when it comes to imagination and innovation. Their recent HDTV-A-Day contest was such a success that right on its heels they are currently running a 2-month extended Laptop-a-Day Sweepstakes!

Don’t worry, you’re not late to enter… You have from July 15 through September 15th to get your entry in to win a laptop AND they are adding bonuses – $25-$100 free gift cards with special online deals.

Back to school students and all business people on the go love laptops. Laptops rank right up there with cell phones, don’t they. So what better time (school wise) to check out the potential for getting one of these necessities, for free, from Charter Communications

Wondering what sort of laptop you can enter to win? It’s a HP 550 Notebook 15-inch with Windows Vista, and it comes with a NeoTec Compu Backpack.

In addition, the clothing, home and accessories, restaurants and more free gift cards are from major retailers… no off-brand names there!

Laptops, Xbox 360 game systems, HDTV’s and even a 2009 Honda Civic Hybrid... those crazy people at Charter, you’ve just got to love them!

Entering is easy. Just visit charter.com/laptop to review the rules and register today.

And since Charter is on a roll, you’d be crazy not to follow Charter on Facebook and Charter on Twitter.

What will they think of next?!

I feel like a fool for even writing it because there most likely isn’t a person on the planet that hasn’t at least heard of Facebook by now.

But if you’re a Facebook fan, did you know that they’ve teamed up with Ask.com to provide you with a nifty little interface? This toolbar can save you hours of time and keep you current with the goings-on within your Facebook account. Best of all – yes, it’s a free download!

Social media web sites, and staying actively involved in the ones you’ve chosen, can be difficult at best. Who really has the time to jump from one social community to the next? You know you NEED TO because it not only makes great business (and or just friendship) sense.

That’s why I highly advocate grabbing and using toolbars whenever possible! Makes your life a whole lot easier… And again, why not? It’s free

For bloggers and website owners around the globe, if you’re struggling to get that PR rating from Google, and it still hasn’t happened, there is a reason – competition.

Not your competitor-type competition (though if your “niche” is more an “umbrella” that does effect you), but (especially for bloggers) if you’re participating in “paid to post” programs to pull in some cash for your time and efforts, chances are fairly certain that the powers that be will frown forever upon your efforts. But don’t despair. The ultimate sign of a popular web site or blog is its level of traffic. I’ve seen web sites with PR 6′s and 7′s, that get so little traffic they are truly lost in cyberspace yet acknowledged for what? Content, yes? Purity, most likely.

Anyway, just thought I’d get that off my chest yet again.

And, since it’s Sunday I also wanted to share two web links I’ve run across. One explains not only the “how to” to retweeting, but the why do it in the first place; the second is a warning about scammers using Facebook (yet again) in another unsavory way (both worth reading):

Bloggingbits on How to Retweet

Mashable posts about yet another Facebook phishing scam

We’ve also include additional link outs to topics covered in this post

Hope you’re in the middle of enjoying a wonderful Memorial Day weekend (for those in the U.S.) and a marvelous weekend to those around the world!

Related articles

• Google, SEO, Publishers and Spam (webmetricsguru.com)
• The Facebook Phishing Scams Continue, Day 2 (allfacebook.com)

This past week, Janet Giacoma, a Whole Hog Blogger and extensive article writer, wrote to ask how does one add their Twitter feed to EzineArticles.com. Apparently, she’s heard through the grapevine, and has demonstrated proof from those sources, that adding (updating) your EzineArticle profile to include your other social identities can have real benefits.

Well, it could be me, but it did take some doing to locate the steps. Actually I had to finally just hold my breath and head to the EzineArticle blog, do a search for “twitter” and voila! here’s the results (quoting a bit of that forum post):

“Here’s the 6 simple steps on how to quickly add your social media links: (more…)