We’re all screwed, the dollar is worth nothing and our savings are wiped out. Right?

Not necessarily. In fact, I’d imagine a lot of us won’t even notice the effects of the recession on a day-to-day basis. But it is definitely going to affect us in one way or another.

Still, you can take simple steps to ensure your survival:

Avoid buying on credit (read: no more debt!)

Try to pay off all your debts right away and put off big purchases.

Be (or appear) valuable at work

When layoffs come, make sure that you are valued at your company. You’ll need a stable income during the times when new jobs are scarce.

Trim the fat (from your expenses)

This should also be filed under Save more, waste less. American personal savings rates are disgustingly low. We all waste money, but recession isn’t the time when you can do so comfortably.

Do you really need that wireless internet card? New magazine subscriptions? Premium gas for your car? Think, don’t just abuse your credit card.

Don’t be jumpy

Don’t sell your investments! Stock markets are affected by downward turns in the economy. If your favorite company is tanking, do some research. If the decline is aligned with the rest of the market or sector, then calm yourself and wait it out. If not, dump the sucker.

Remember, you’re in the market for the long term (in most cases). Keep an eye out on your positions, but don’t get obsessed.

That’s all I can think of right now.

Numbers to chew on:

Savings rate

In summary: Horrible!

via U.S. Department of Commerce

Employment situation

In summary: In March, we lost approximately another 80,000 jobs, a downward trend that started in January 2008. To this day, Bureau of Labor Statistics is reporting that “Over the past 3 months, payroll employment has declined by 232,000.” (linky) A lot of this is due to decline in construction, which is directly related to the housing slump.

via U.S. Department of Labor

Prime rates

The Fed has been trying to prevent a recession for a while by lowering the rates. They’re expected to slash another half percentage point very soon. As of March 2008, prime borrowing rate is at 5.25%.

Important takeaway: Low rates are attractive, but don’t get suckered into buying expensive things like a house, if a slight change in your life can make it hard to afford the payments.

Uneducated borrowing is what got us in this whole mess in the first place.

That’s right! Youtilize I am Dimitry blog is back =)

I couldn’t live even two months without you guys, so I brought the blog back up under a new name.

I’ve been pretty busy last few months, so I can’t wait to update all of you. There are some pretty exciting things in the works.

This is me, saying hi

While I have you here, check out some recent pics on my Flickr page. I got a new toy and have been trigger happy lately. Go nuts.

See you all around

Bear with me as I update the logo.

In the coming days, you’ll notice that Youtilize will stop loading for you. No, the world didn’t stop turning. I’m closing down the site and moving on.

My current lifestyle doesn’t leave me with much free time and it has definitely taken a toll on my blogging.

I’ve met a lot of talented individuals and have definitely reaped the benefits of this once semi-popular blog.

But alas, it’s time to move on to bigger and better things. I’ll leave the tech and business blogging to the wonderful minds behind PaulStamatiou.com and OkDork.com.

Thanks for your dedicated readership, your insightful conversations and your useful criticism.

Ta ta, so long, and as those awkward Germans would say, tschüss!

One more thing…

If you want to keep in touch, you can follow me on Twitter, add me to your buddy list (AIM: BigDimitry, Y!: dimitry.bents, GTalk: dimitryb@gmail.com), connect via LinkedIn or simply email me.

First and foremost, I love a lot of what Google has to offer, particularly Gmail and Reader.

Recently, Google released a new Gmail version to the world with many wonderful upgrades. One thing however, left me scratching my head. I noticed they replaced a regular old HTML <select> tag with a smaller drop-down widget.

Apart from the apparent visual improvement, it doesn’t seem to be all that better and innovative to me. In fact, I’d imagine it suffers a bit as far as accessibility goes.

Growing pains

Being a daily Reader user, I also noted that their drop-downs are pretty custom as well. What’s interesting, is that they have a completely different look from Gmail’s.

I dug deeper and found that drop-downs across most of Google’s web apps did not look much alike. In fact, sometimes there was more than one look within the same app!

These inconsistencies are most likely attributed to Google’s exceptional growth. It’s huge now and all big companies have the same struggles. Yahoo is no different and I see this first hand almost everyday at work.

Plenty of examples

Another one from Gmail

Analytics – my favorite

Calendar

Docs

Groups

Picasa

Reader

Conclusion

Google has done a pretty good job keeping the main look similar from from one app to another. What’s more important, their services are pretty good and are actually helpful.

Still, they need to work out and implement various design patterns for specific controls that appear on multiple apps. The latter part is the hardest of course, but Google can do it, can’t they?

I love using a Mac. I also love shortcuts and the vast array of shortcuts that Mac apps provide (especially Textmate).

What I don’t love is the fact that every application has its own shortcut for similar tasks.

For example

Switching windows or views:

Textmate	Cmd + Shift + Left or Right	(in Project mode)
Adium	Cmd + Left or Right
Firefox	Cmd + Option + Left or Right
Safari	Cmd + Shift + Left or Right

Granted they’re all fairly similar, but it’s still a huge annoyance. I don’t see why one way is better than the other and why developers couldn’t have stuck with one combination.

Are we in need of a Mac shortcut standard?

Favorite unified shortcuts (most set by the operating system):

Window switching within the same app	Cmd + `	(tilda)
Preferences in every app	Cmd + ,	(comma)
Closing windows	Cmd + W

Other annoyances

Opening new tabs in browsers

Cmd + T

It’s all good and dandy until you’re accidentally focused on a wrong application (Mail, Adium, others) and same shortcut brings up a Fonts dialogue, which is then not closable by Cmd + W shortcut because it’s not actually a window. UGH!?