Chamber Members Save on Electric Costs
     About a dozen members of the Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce will begin to realize savings on their monthly electric bills.  The members were participants in the second class of a Chamber electricity purchasing coop.  The class was formed earlier this summer. 
     The Pekin Area Chamber of Commerce partnered with the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce to offer this benefit to our members.  According to information provided by the Peoria Area Chamber of Commerce, the class signed a 29-month, two-tiered contract. 
     The first tier will be from December of 2007 until May of 2008, with a rate of 6.999 cents/KWh.  The current default rate for Ameren customers is 7.45 cents/KWh.
     In May of 2008 the contract rate for coop members will increase to 7.355 cents/KWh.  Ameren's default rate will be reset in May of 2008 and is expected to increase.
     This second class included a total of 51 companies with over 66 locations.  Their total first-year savings is projected at $450,000. 
     It pays to be a member of the Chamber and take advantage of the membership benefits. 

New Years Resolution
     If your New Year's Resolution is to stay more current and up-to-date on news, trends or information affecting your business, organization or industry, I've got a suggestion for you--podcasts.
     If you're not familiar with that term, a podcast is a collection of digital media files that are distributed over the Internet for playback on portable media players and computers.
     A podcast is different from other digital media because it can be syndicated, subscribed to, and downloaded to your computer automatically when new content is added. 
     But don't let that confuse you--start simply.  Many podcast websites offer direct download or streaming of their content.  In other words you listen to the audio program on your computer or you download it to your iPod or MP3 player for later listening.

     What kind of programs and topics are available?  The answer is as broad and vast as the Internet.  If you have an interest, I'd be willing to bet there is a podcast for you.  While some podcasts require a paid subscription, the vast majority are free.               
     You could visit your favorite search engine and type in your topic and "podcast."  Or you could visit www.podcast.com or www.podcast.net to see a huge directory.  Or you could visit websites like Small Business Trends Radio.
     They've posted links to their favorite 100 Small Business podcasts and grouped them by broad topics like Leadership & Management, Sales & Marketing, Operating A Small Business, etc. 
     Take advantage of this technology tool that lets you stay informed on just about any topic.   

Chamber Photos Posted to New Website
     If you've been to our website recently (www.pekin.net) and clicked on the "Latest Pix & News" link in the left menu bar, you might have noticed the picture page looks very different.  That's because we are now posting our pictures to Google's Picasa Web Albums. 
     The Picasa site offers several advantages over our old picture page.  First, the process to get the pictures from our camera to the website is much more convenient and simpler.
     Second, the photo album page is a clean, concise listing of all the albums that we've uploaded.  Each album includes the title of the event, the date, and the number of pictures in the album.  From this page you can even subscribe to an RSS feed so you'll know when new photo albums have been added. 
     Like podcasts, if you don't know about RSS feeds your missing out on a great tool that can help you manage the seemingly infinite amount of information on the Internet.
     Once you've clicked on and opened an album you'll find a description of the event.  You can look at an index page of all of the pictures in that album with 3 different display sizes to choose from.  You can even view a slide show of all of the photos in the album.