Selling your own home can be a time-consuming and frustrating process. Sometimes, though, in the right market, it makes sense to save thousands of dollars in commission and do it yourself. If you’ve decided to give it a try, use the tips here to do it right, and to avoid common FSBO (for sale by owner) mistakes.

1. Understand value. It isn’t what you think your house is worth, and it doesn’t even matter how much you put into it. It is only what it’s worth to potential buyers. Find out what they have paid for other similar homes before you decide on a price.

2. Be objective. This is a difficult one. You may want to get your most honest and outspoken friend to walk through the house with you. He’ll see problems you didn’t know were problems.

3. Have a plan. What will the kids or wife say to those who call? Where will you be closing? Will you have documents prepared by an attorney? A plan will help it all go smoother.

4. Make a list. What needs to be fixed, cleaned, changed, or removed? Do the most obvious things first.

5. Be a prepared salesman. List every question a buyer might have, and be ready with an answer. Have comparison sheets showing other home sales, so buyers can see the value. Have a map showing where nearby stores and libraries, etc. are.

6. Sell benefits. Don’t say “near stores.” Say “You can walk to the store in five minutes.” Don’t say “garage.”

With podcasting and internet radio programming exploding, a lot of folks are looking for tools that would let them record streaming audio. Here are four tools that will do just that without you having to take AV class first.

Replay Radio

Replay Radio lets you record radio shows from the Web, and then listen anytime, anywhere. It’s like a TiVo for the radio. You can record anything you hear, including streaming audio broadcast from Internet radio stations. 600 shows and 900 stations are pre-programmed, making recording as easy as point and click. You can even use Replay Radio as a general purpose recorder for archiving audio books, converting Real Audio files to MP3, saving music, monitoring online police scanners, recording from devices attached to your PC (like cassette decks or radios), or other uses.

AudioStreamer

AudioStreamer is the Internet radio receiver and recorder that lets you enjoy the thousands of radio stations available on the Internet. While listening to your favorite radio station, you can record any radio station you want, anytime! Browse through the radio stations, selecting a genre and the preferred bandwidth, and enjoy Internet radio! This Internet radio receiver also lets you search for stations by keywords, like ‘top 40′! All radio recordings can be saved as individual tracks, and AudioStreamer automatically adds the correct MP3 tag to the recording.

Cybercorder 2000

Cybercorder provides VCR-like recording for radio shows or any audio input. Recordings are stored on disk as WAV or MP3 files with optional audio compression to save disk space. Recordings can

What do people really find challenging about leading meetings? Here are the top three questions that keep on cropping up followed by guidelines or simple ways to keep meetings under control and on track. Make your meetings work.

1. “Do you have any tips on encouraging people to be on time to meetings?”

The general rule is to start the meeting on time. This gives the message to people that you are serious about time and meeting management. If you start late, it penalizes the people who make an effort to be there at the designated time. Also, if someone only needs to attend for one particular segment of the meeting, let that person know approximately when that agenda item will be dealt with. Then that person does not have to attend the entire meeting, but just the part for his input.

Also, research suggests that setting a meeting time that is NOT on the hour or half hour is more likely to result in people arriving on time. For example, consider starting your meeting at 2:10 P.M. rather than 2:00 P.M. It certainly should get the attention of the participants.

2. “We hold regular staff meetings but often we spend a great deal of time on nothing at all. What can we do to be more productive?

Meetings that occur every week, or on some other regular basis, can be useful provided that there is a clear, important and continuing purpose for the meetings. However, this is often not the case. Staff meetings, for