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New Project Kahn Jeep Wrangler Latest Manifestation 2011

2011-07-26T18:18:00.002+07:00

Here are the new Project Kahn Jeep Wrangler Latest Manifestation 2011.The Jeep Wrangler itself has an update abnorme, but for its newer appearance, the car is that " ; Blow of stolen C ' Attitude; ; and l' aspect of the provision of l' analyzes, accustomed manufactured project of blow of flight favourites tuningfahrzeuge a d' part; a series of prominent.

The Wrangler Jeep of Project blow of flight comes flexible with RS Caster (9 X 20) an occasion suspension, atramentous Nappaleder, Alcantara autogenous and a blow of stolen design sport system of bankruptcy.

The aboriginal centermost cap from Jeep has been taken for the authoritative of the auto and this would be accessible immediately. However, stocks are traveling to be limited. Tires that the tuner recommends to go with this caster are of 275 x 55 x 20 size.

Choose Plants for Container Gardening

2011-07-26T17:57:00.002+07:00

Here are tips to Choose Plants for Container Gardening,that will make your garden look more beautiful and neat that it will remedy your home.Containers gardens offer the possibility, garden within a small range and the flexibility to you, around your plants into innumerable interesting variations arrange.

Containers gardens give to you also more freedom with the choice of your plants, there can one tropical plants inside take in freeze and cool weather plants in heat periods.

The disadvantage with so many options is however that it can be difficult, in order to select your plants. Consider exactly, your garden abilities, space, climatic and decorative requirements, which fetch best plants for its garden container.

Here are tips from eHow about Choose Plants for Container Gardening :

1 Choose plants that fit into your space requirements. For a windowsill container garden, you may be confined to herbs, air plants, small cacti and other small plants. In a living room container garden, by contrast, you may have room for ferns or even small trees and, on a patio, you may be able to accommodate medium ornamental trees such as Japanese maples. Also, consider whether you plan to move your containers around frequently. Large plants in large pots will be much more difficult to rearrange than smaller ones.

2 Pick plants suitable for the microclimate you are growing them in. Water plants, fruiting vegetables and flowers require eight hours of daily sunlight, rooting veggies need six hours and leafy veggies, four. Other plants such as ferns and other understory plants require indirect or filtered sunlight. If you are growing your garden indoors, the window space you have available for your garden will determine what plants you should grow there. Also, consider humidity. If you live in a climate with cold winters, your house will be dry inside during the winter. If your garden is inside, you will have to run a humidifier or build a miniature greenhouse to nourish plants that crave moisture.

3 Choose plants that fit with your diligence and skill as a gardener. If you tend to forget about your plants, restrict yourself to plants that handle neglect well such as cast iron plant and mother-in-law tongue. If you are a more attentive grower, however, you can chose plants that require frequent watering, fertilizer and care as well as plants that don't.

4 Chose plants that complement each other. The University of Illinois Extension, recommends that a container garden have a combination of tall plants or "thrillers," round plants or "fillers" and overhanging plants or "spillers." In addition, chose plants with different leaf shapes and textures. This variety will provide visual interest in your container garden. Also, choose plants with pleasing colors. Use an indoor container garden to accentuate the colors used to decorate the room, and an outdoor one to harmonize with the landscape.

Rachel Uchitel Return The Money Given by the Tiger Woods

2011-07-19T06:17:00.003+07:00

Rachel Uchitel Hot News Celebrity - Not to finish up here on the news about Rachel Uchitel and Tiger Woods,Nowadays a lot of rumors about Rachel Uchitel gives back hush money from affair with Tiger Woods.she received from the golfer after allegedly violating her confidentiality agreement — and is now fighting her lawyer Gloria Allred over making that decision, according to a new report.

Gloria negotiated a $10 million settlement for Rachel ... just several hours in advance of Rachel was heading to hold a tell-all news convention about Tiger Woods. The settlement involved a confidentiality agreement, which prohibited Rachel from discussing Tiger.

If violet Uchitel the confidentiality clause, not only would have to give back the money that received but Woods could be demanded by damages and damages, thus. TMZ.com informs that the lawyer into Woods Jay Lavely contact with Allred a few months ago and said that they went after Uchitel because they thought that it violated the confidentiality agreement.

Lavely accusations was that discotheque VIP ex- presenter who became PI had spoken with TMZ and appeared the year last in " Celebrity Rehab with the Dr. Drew" in order to treat his " addiction to amor" - although never it spoke specifically on the player of golf in the program. Although Uchitel insisted on that never broke the agreement, TMZ reported that they convinced it to Allred that " they would lose if the push came empujar". Like result, Allred reached an agreement with Lavely that Uchitel would return the liquidation most of in cash.

Sources said to TMZ, nevertheless, that Uchitel is now " furioso" in Allred as the lawyer still would receive all the honoraria of his lawyer. TMZ said to Uchitel " originally; bien" went; with the agreement, but the passage of time " it felt that jodido had arrived, and soon contracted a negligence lawyer that has made a demand of Gloria to pay what Rachel gave the back him or to demand. " Uchitel offered " without comentarios" when it was contacted on the subject. In an official notice, Allred said: " Our company/signature does not represent Mrs Uchitel already and we at this moment do not have any commentary on this history. Nevertheless, we are sure that always we have acted correctly and in its better interest. "

How? Very exciting news regarding my relationship Rachel Uchitel with Tiger Woods this, love to pass because more and more hot and attractive.We wait for the news and what else do the sensation created by the two couples

Ryan Dunn killed in a car accident in West Goshen, Philadelphia

2011-07-17T20:55:00.003+07:00

Hot News Celebrity - The news of the death of Ryan Dunn is currently being discussed and the warm-warm across print and electronic media, especially on the internet.For lovers of Jackass, the news about Ryan Dunn killed in a car accident in West Goshen, Philadelphia very surprising and raises deep sorrow for the loved recording Ryan Dunn.

According to news reported by NBC Philadelphia, Ryan Dunn was involved an accident on Route 322 in West Goshen, Philadelphia on Monday, at 3:30 am local time. So far the cause of this accident is not clear but sources say NBC, Ryan confirmed dead.

Other sources had said that if Ryan Dunn was seen drinking with some friends, but so far no confirmation whether this is the cause of the fateful event. Reportedly there are witnesses who saw Ryan Dunn driving at high speed shortly before the accident. In the same car was also found other victims who have not been identified.

In a short time, Twitter was the flood of condolences fan of Ryan Dunn. Music magazine, Kerrang, too condolences over the death of Ryan Dunn. "RIP Jackass star Ryan Dunn," writes @ KerrangMagazine via Twitter.

Ryan Dunn Ryan Dunn was born with the name Goofed on June 11, 1977. His name began to soar since he played in the series Jackass on MTV in 2000 ago. He had starred in several movies including Jackass 3D in 2010. Finally Ryan starred in Jackass 3.5, released on DVD and Blu-Ray June 14 last

Hopefully with the news of Ryan Dunn killed in a car accident ,did not make his fans lost her affections but still loves him even though now gone and hopefully Ryan Dunn acceptable beautiful place in the side of God and all his deeds are acceptable

House sends health care overhaul bill to Obama

2010-03-22T17:23:00.004+07:00

Hot news this time came from the president of the United States.What's wrong with Barack Obama?As reported by news yahooabout House sends health care overhaul bill to Obama
.A transformative health care bill is headed to President Barack Obama for his signature as Congress takes the final steps in Democrats' improbable and history-making push for near-universal medical coverage.

On the cusp of succeeding where numerous past congresses and administrations have failed, jubilant House Democrats voted 219-212 late Sunday to send legislation to Obama that would extend coverage to 32 million uninsured Americans, reduce deficits and ban insurance company practices such as denying coverage to people with pre-existing medical conditions.

"This is what change looks like," Obama said later in televised remarks that stirred memories of his 2008 campaign promise of "change we can believe in."

"We proved that this government — a government of the people and by the people — still works for the people."

Obama's young presidency received a much needed boost from passage of the legislation, which would touch the lives of nearly every American. The battle for the future of the health insurance system — affecting one-sixth of the economy — galvanized Republicans and conservative activists looking ahead to November's midterm elections.

A companion package making a series of changes sought by House Democrats to the larger bill, which already passed the Senate, was approved 220-211. The fix-it bill will now go to the Senate, where debate is expected to begin as early as Tuesday. Senate Democrats hope to approve it unchanged and send it directly to Obama, though Republicans intend to attempt parliamentary objections that could change the bill and require it to go back to the House.

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How to Get Traffic to Your Local Business's Website

2010-03-22T16:55:00.002+07:00

For your local business Website owners who struggle to bring visitors to your website here are the steps to get traffic to your website.Here is how to Get Traffic to Your Local Business's Website by Gary Ruplinger.

Any small business owner can use to get more online traffic and leads tips :
Your Business Name Is NOT The Title Of Your Website

If you hired a website designer to build your website or worse, did it in house, the title of your website is probably your business name. If you were on trial for poor online marketing practices, this would be exhibit A and I would need nor further evidence to show you need a lot of help with your website.

The only exception here is if you are the pre-eminent, top of mind, business in your area. By that I mean that in your area, you what Coke is to soft drinks, McDonald's is to fast food, or Google is to search engines.

If you're not, however, then you need to describe your business in the title of your website. You can use your business name at the END of the title but not at the beginning.

For example, if you did landscaping and were based in Omaha, Nebraska, you'd want your title to look something like this:

Landscaping Services in Omaha, NE - Design and Maintenance

However, the vast majority of business owners do something like this:

Giorgio's Land Artistry

That's only useful to me if I'm searching for your business by name.

There are many other strategies that go into making your online website a successful one, but this one is so important, it can result in 10 times more traffic to your website almost overnight.
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How to Make Non Toxic Cleaning Supplies

2010-03-22T16:16:00.004+07:00

This is about How to Make Non Toxic Cleaning Supplies by Darcy Logan.To successfully run all please follow all the instructions below and good luckNon-toxic cleansers are not only good for the environment, but they also are good for children. According to Worldwatch Institute, cleaning products accounted for approximately one out of every 10 toxic exposures reported to U.S. poison control centers in 2000---more than 200,000 calls. Of these, two-thirds involved children younger than 6. Chemical cleansers pollute our homes, our landscape and are totally unnecessary. You can clean almost anything with just a few ingredients--most of which you probably already have in your home. Below you will find some general guidelines on non-toxic cleansers as well as a list of some of the more popular cleansers you can use to clean your home. Each item is designed to be used individually, not together.

Instructions
General Guidelines

Step 1

Place cleaners into spray bottles for easier user. Oil-based cleaners should be stored in glass jars.

Step 2

Write the ingredients or purpose of the cleaner you mixed on masking tape and place it on the bottle.

Step 3

Add tea tree essential oil to any of the cleansers listed here if you're combating fungal problems. It is a natural fungicide. Other essential oils that you can add that are both fragrant and known for disinfecting include cinnamon, clove, eucalyptus, grapefruit, lavender, lemon, lemongrass, spruce and thyme.

Step 4

Use naturally acidic products, such as lemon juice and vinegar, to clean hard-water scale, tarnish and other alkaline substances. Follow up with an alkaline cleaner, such as liquid detergent, to neutralize the acid.

Step 5

Test any homemade cleanser on an inconspicuous area before using it on an entire item. While these products are generally safe, it is always better to check before using.
Recipes for All-purpose Cleansers

Step 1

Mix 1/2 cup vinegar, 1/4 cup baking soda and 1/2 gallon of water.

Step 2

Mix 1/2 cup vinegar, 2 tsp. borax and 1/2 gallon of water.

Step 3

Mix 1/2 tsp. washing soda, a small amount of liquid soap and 2 cups hot water.

Step 4

Mix a few drops of natural soap, 30 drops of tea tree essential oil and 2 cups of water.
Recipes for Furniture Polish

Step 1

Mix 1/4 cup vinegar and 3/4 cup olive oil.

Step 2

Mix 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1/2 cup olive oil.

Step 3

Mix 1/2 tsp. olive oil and 1/4 cup vinegar or 1/4 cup lemon juice.

Step 4

Add a four to five drops of lemon oil and 1/2 cup warm water.
Recipes for Toilet Cleaner

Step 1

Mix 3 cups of white vinegar and 10 drops of tea tree essential oil.

Step 2

Mix 1 cup borax with 1/2 cup lemon juice or vinegar. Let sit for several hours or overnight.

Step 3

Mix 1/4 cup lemon juice and 1 cup vinegar.

Step 4

Sprinkle baking soda in the bowl and then add lemon juice or vinegar.
Recipes for Other Cleansers

Step 1

Clean your oven with a paste of 3/4 cup baking soda, 1/4 cup salt and 1/4 cup water. You can also use 1 cup of baking soda and a small amount of soap and water.

Step 2

Mix 1/2 cup baking soda and liquid detergent until it becomes the consistency of frosting and use on stubborn stains. You can also use baking soda and a damp sponge.

Step 3

Clean windows with a mixture of 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon liquid detergent, 3 tbsp. vinegar and 2 cups water. You can also use between 2 tsp. and 1 quart of vinegar with 1 quart of warm water.

By Darcy Logan, eHow Contributing Writer

Complete List of the Oscar 2010 Winners

2010-03-08T22:58:00.006+07:00

The following is a complete list of the names of the winners of the 2010 oscar trophy. The winner was some artist who was a senior and the newcomers in the entertainment world.

- The Academy Awards winners for 2010 is The Hurt Locker upset Avatar! Katheryn Bigelow on becoming the first female director to win an Oscar for Best Director for The Hurt Locker, which then went on to win Best Picture. "There's no other way to describe it, it's the moment of a lifetime." Kathryn Bigelow, winning Best Director for The Hurt Locker.

Jeff Bridges won best actor for his portrayal of a boozy country singer in "Crazy Heart." Sandra Bullock took the best-actress prize as a brassy Southern mother in "The Blind Side."

Sandra Bullock took the best-actress prize as a brassy Southern mother in "The Blind Side."

Here is the Complete List of the Oscar 2010 winners:
- Motion Picture: "The Hurt Locker."
- Actor: Jeff Bridges, "Crazy Heart."
- Actress: Sandra Bullock, "The Blind Side."
- Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, "Inglourious Basterds."
- Supporting Actress: Mo'Nique, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
- Director: Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker."
- Foreign Film: "El Secreto de Sus Ojos," Argentina.

- Adapted Screenplay: Geoffrey Fletcher, "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."
- Original Screenplay: Mark Boal, "The Hurt Locker."
- Animated Feature Film: "Up."
- Art Direction: "Avatar."
- Cinematography: "Avatar."
- Sound Mixing: "The Hurt Locker."
- Sound Editing: "The Hurt Locker."
- Original Score: "Up," Michael Giacchino.
- Original Song: "The Weary Kind (Theme From Crazy Heart)" from "Crazy Heart," Ryan Bingham and T Bone Burnett.
- Costume: "The Young Victoria."
- Documentary Feature: "The Cove."
- Documentary (short subject): "Music by Prudence."
- Film Editing: "The Hurt Locker."
- Makeup: "Star Trek."
- Animated Short Film: "Logorama."
- Live Action Short Film: "The New Tenants."
- Visual Effects: "Avatar."

Sandra Bullock Oscar Acceptance Speech

2010-03-08T22:43:00.002+07:00

Los Angeles - Sandra Bullock says she will put two contradictory awards. Yes .. Bullock had just got an award as best actress and the right to take home an Oscar for "The Blind Side". But he also received a Razzie as worst actress for her performance in "All About Steve" this week.

This day made her the first actress who won both Razzies and Oscar Awards in the same year.Sandra Bullock won the Oscar Award for the Best Actress.
People have been searching the net for Sandra Bullock Oscar acceptance speech. Its her first Oscar during her career till now. The 2010 Oscar Award for the Best actor won by Jeff Bridges. Sandra Bullock won the award for her movie “The Blind Side”. She has already won two awards for the same role. It was a competition among many actress for the same catogory by winning it she beats actresses like Helen Mirren, Carey Mulligan, Gabourey and Meryl Streep. She said in her acceptance speech that,

“Gabby, I love you so much. You are exquisite. You are beyond words to me. Carey, your grace and your elegance and your beauty and your talent makes me sick. Helen, I feel like we are family through family and I don’t have the words to express just what I think of you. And Meryl, you know what I think of you and you are such a good kisser.”

She also said that she had to thank many people but due to shortage of time its not possible but she thanked her family and friends.Not only this she also thanked those who showed kindness and those who were mean. In the end of her speech she specially thanked her mother. Her acceptance speech was one of the best acceptance speeches.

To continue with her speech, Sandra stated “I thank all the good and all the mean people to me such as George Clooney who kind drowned me in a pool some times in past’ and that ‘I still have a grudge about the same.” Then she talked further and in a serious tone stated that she would like to thank ‘The Blind Side’ and especially her mother for making her learn there’s no religion, class system and no race or no color etc.

Download Opera 10.50 – Worlds Fastest Browser

2010-03-08T22:27:00.004+07:00

Opera has now released their latest version with the release of Opera 10:50. In this latest version of Opera comes with a display interface more attractive and different from previous versions. Display the version of Windows 7 was followed. With their latest technology, the Opera said while browsing will be faster and lighter

A full-featured Internet browser, Opera includes pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, and advanced functions like Opera’s groundbreaking E-mail program, RSS Newsfeeds and IRC chat. And because we know that our users have different needs, you can customize the look and content of your Opera Browser with a few clicks of the mouse.

Opera 10 Final – Fast, powerful and Efficient :

* Exclusive Opera Turbo compression boosts slow connection speeds
* Innovative visual tabs displays Web sites in thumbnails
* Intuitive, sleek design
* Easy-to-personalize Speed Dial visual bookmarks
* Everything built-in, no need for extensions
* It’s free!

To Download Click Here

At GDC, iPhone game development breaks out

2010-03-08T22:20:00.003+07:00

by Daniel Terdiman

If you had any doubts that the iPhone must now be considered one of the world's most important gaming platforms, this week's Game Developers Conference in San Francisco will try to put them to rest once and for all.

For years, GDC, as it's known, has hosted two days of "summits" early in the week, before the main keynote address and the bulk of the panels and sessions begin, including the longstanding GDC Mobile, which dealt with just about every issue a developer could want on mobile and handheld devices.

And this year is no exception. Starting Tuesday, the GDC Mobile/Handheld summit will begin, offering 18 discussions on things like "bootstrapping games on Android;" "Creating augmented reality experiences on Nintendo DSi;" "Social networks: The new marketplace for mobile games?" and more. There's even one called "Get your iPhone game to 2,000 other devices."

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How to Figure the Loan Value on a Vehicle

2010-03-08T22:02:00.002+07:00

This in How to Figure the Loan Value on a Vehicle by Leigh Egan in ehow.com

Whether you are a potential car buyer looking for a good deal on a vehicle or are thinking of selling your car, you first need to figure out the vehicle's loan value in order to negotiate a satisfactory transaction or ask a fair price. A car's value is determined by several important factors such as the vehicle's make, model, exterior and interior condition, mechanical shape and added features such as anti-lock brakes and airbags. Although a used vehicle's worth is not set in stone, there are ways in which you can get the average loan value.

Instructions :

Step 1

Evaluate your car's condition. Look for cosmetic flaws as well as any mechanical problems. Have a trusted mechanic appraise your car's condition if you are unsure.

Step 2

Visit the official site for The Kelley Blue Book (see References). Click on either the "New Car" tab or the "Used Car" tab, depending upon the car you are trying to find the loan value on, and click go.

Step 3

Select the year, make and model of your vehicle in the provided boxes on the next page. Click the "Go" button to proceed to the next page. Choose the "Suggested Retail Value" button on the next page. Enter any extra features your vehicle has such as power locks or dual air bags, then press continue to proceed.

Step 4

Follow the guideline, read each selection thoroughly and choose your vehicle's condition on the next page. Click submit to get the approximate loan value on your car.

Step 5

Peruse consumer websites, magazines and other car-related resources, such as Consumer Reports and Auto Trader. to get a general idea of how much your vehicle loan value is worth. Be certain to look for vehicles that match your car's description, including wear and tear, cosmetics, mileage and any extra features.

Amanda Knox Verdict

2009-12-05T06:37:00.004+07:00

This is hot news about Amanda Knox.As reported by the cbsnews.com website of the Amanda Knox Verdict more news like this below.An Italian jury has reached a verdict in the trial of American Amanda Knox and her Italian ex-boyfriend Raffaele Sollecito, who are standing trial for the murder of Knox' British roommate Meredith Kercher.

The court is expected to announce the verdict at 6 p.m. EST, from the eight members of the jury, including two judges, who were sequestered in a room in the Perugia courthouse.

In November 2007, Kercher, 21, was found fatally stabbed in the neck in her bedroom at the home she rented with Knox in the central Italian university town of Perugia, where Kercher, Knox and Sollecito were all students.

Prosecutors claimed that Knox, Sollecito, and another man, Rudy Guede, who has already been convicted, killed Kercher in a sex game gone wrong. They have claimed DNA evidence puts the suspects at the scene.

Knox and co-defendant Raffaele Sollecito insist they are innocent. Their lawyers have argued that the DNA evidence against them was tainted; the knife prosecutors claim is the murder weapon does not fit Kercher's wounds; and they have derided the supposed sex game motive as nonsense.

Both Knox, who is from Seattle, and Sollecito have been jailed since shortly after the slaying. They were taken to their cells as they awaited the ruling.

Kercher's parents, John and Arline Kercher, arrived in Perugia Friday evening with their surviving children Stephanie and Layle.

They were surrounded by photographers and television cameras as they tried to make their way into the hotel but refused to comment as reporters asked them what they expected from the verdict.

Curt Knox, Amanda Knox's father, did talk to reporters outside the Perugia courthouse. "They've got two 20-old kids and they are going to be determining their life," he said of the jury.

If Knox and Sollecito are convicted, they could receive life in prison, Italy's maximum penalty.

Top 7 Search Engine Marketing Tips

2009-10-25T16:35:00.002+07:00

It is of no use having an expensive professionally designed website if no visitors come to it. To drive up the number of people that go to your site it is important to use a number of search engine marketing tips and techniques so that you stay ahead of the competition.

1. Content - To increase the number of hits on your site it is vital to have content that can be classified as "research". Many people browse the net looking for information, or in other words they are researching. You need to make the most of this and create text that is relevant. Today there are many sites that offer pages which have "how to" information or inspirational and helpful articles. Even if such knowledge is not the main aim of your site by creating pages with this information you will draw people in.

2. More Text, Less Graphics - If you don't have much in the way of text on your site then you are less likely to get good rankings in any search engine as there is little for them to read when they are trawling and indexing. You don't necessarily have to do away with nice images; just ensure that you have a decent amount of text as well.

3. Keywords - It cannot be understated how important it is to choose the correct keywords and phrases to embed into your website. These should be relevant and were possible not too broad or popular as you face stiff competition. Think of which phrases and words are most important for each of your web pages.

4. Directories - It is essential to add your website to as many directories as possible. Today there are many more human powered directories that often appear high in search engine rankings. These have become a popular way of being directed to relevant websites.

5. Website coding - You need to ensure that the coding used to develop your web pages has been thoroughly tested with search engines in mind. Sites that use frames and JavaScript navigation do not often get indexed correctly by the search engines. Your JavaScript can be kept in external files.

6. Links - Through correct internal and external links you can dramatically increase the number of visitors to your web site. Try to add links to other sites that are relevant to yours and vice-versa. Make sure that all of your individual pages have correct link structure.

7. Website USP - This is probably the one element that will secure your websites success. What is the unique angle for your site? You can create the same content essentially, as other sites, but presenting your information in a different and unique way is the secret to successful search engine marketing, that will get your results.

Karla Penny | ezinearticles

Microsoft warns of Patch Tuesday from hell

2009-10-10T10:05:00.002+07:00

Microsoft will deliver no fewer than 13 security bulletins on October's Patch Tuesday.

The bumper security update includes eight critical issues, and five that are classed as important. Windows 7 RTM also makes an appearance in the Patch Tuesday line-up for the first time.

The 13 bulletins address a total of 34 vulnerabilities, most of which are related to remote code execution. There are also fixes to counter denial-of-service attacks, elevation of privileges and spoofing.

The affected software includes every version of Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, Silverlight, SQL Server and more. Just to add to the IT department headaches, all of them will likely require a restart of the patched PC.

Even though it isn't officially launched yet, Windows 7 is affected by five of the bulletins, although only one of those is critical. The final RTM version of Windows 7 has been available for download to MSDN/TechNet subscribers and businesses for a few weeks now, even though consumers won't get their hands on the software until 22 October.

More than 700,000 people in the UK are also running the Windows 7 beta.

Internet Explorer 8 is also affected by one of the critical bugs.

The patch onslaught means it's likely to be a busy time for IT departments, many of which will want to test the updates before rolling them out across the company.

Superstitious readers will have noted the 13 patches will arrive on 13 October. Read the Microsoft Security Bulletin for full details.

Author: Barry Collins
source : pcpro.co.uk

Tsunami Warning Hawaii 2009

2009-10-03T10:06:00.002+07:00

Tsunami warning Hawaii 2009 has been cancelled by the national weather service, but Tsunami warning has been issued for California after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake under the sea’s of Pacific. National Weather Service issued the warning after the earthquake struck the Pacific Ocean of Samoa Island area near Pago Pago, American Samoa; the warning issued is for the Californian and Oregon coast.

The earthquake struck the Pacific region at around 10:50 P.M. PDT; however, there is no information available about any damage or injuries.

To make sure that the local residents keep safe, EMA “California Emergency Management Agency” is now working in collaboration with NOAA Pacific Tsunami Warning Centre, Alaska Tsunami Warning Centre, NOAA West Coast and USGS “National Earthquake Information Centre” to provide up-to-date information to the local and state officials.

Latest updates from Alaska Tsunami Warning Centre show that the forecast points towards the increase in wave activity in the ocean alongside the west coast, amplitudes rising over 20 to 70 CM. Warning Centre also stated that these waves can be dangerous to those locals near to ocean lines of west coast, San Luis Obispo and Crescent City, it has also been stated that waves can gain their maximum rise more or less after 1-1/2 hours of reaching the shore lines.

Warning Centre advice to those living in the lower coastal area and for those who are in Tsunami Warning area that they should be careful about the situation, keep their eyes open and it would be better if they move out from the areas.

According to National Weather Service waves will reach in the area are between 7:30 to 11:00 P.M.

source

10 Steps to Buying Auto Insurance

2009-08-27T13:06:00.003+07:00

The following simple steps will help you determine how much car insurance you need to carry. And it will also help you get the best coverage at the lowest price. If you are confused about any of the terms we use, be sure to review the glossary in "Little-Known but Important Insurance Issues."

Step 1: Starting Out
When it comes to auto insurance, you want to be adequately covered if you get in an accident but you don't want to pay any more than you have to. So how can you navigate your way through this murky subject?

Keep telling yourself there is money to be saved. How much? Hundreds, even thousands, per year. For example, one of our editors typed all of his insurance information into a comparative insurance service. The quotes (for very basic coverage on two old cars) ranged from $1,006 to $1,807 — a difference of $801 a year. If you're currently dumping thousands into your insurance company's coffers because of a couple of tickets, an accident or a questionable credit rating, shopping your policy against others may be well worth the effort.

Look at it this way — you can convert the money you save into the purchase of something you've desired for a long time. Hold that goal in your mind.

Step 2: How Much Coverage Do You Need?
To find the right auto insurance, start by figuring out the amount of coverage you need. This varies from state to state. So take a moment to find out what coverage is required where you live. Make a list of the different types of coverage and then return for the next step. (You will find a list of each state's requirements and an explanation of the various types of insurance in "How Much Auto Insurance Do You Really Need?" Also, check out "Little-Known but Important Insurance Issues" as it has a glossary of basic insurance terminology.)

Now that you know what is required, you can decide what you need in addition. Some people are quite cautious. They base their lives on worst-case scenarios. Insurance companies love these people. That's because insurance companies know what your chances are of being in an accident, and how likely it is for your car to be damaged or stolen. The information the insurance company has collected over previous decades is crunched into "actuarial tables" that give insurance adjustors a quick look at the probability of just about any occurrence.

So how much insurance should you buy beyond your state's minimum?

Experts recommend that if you have a lot of assets you should get enough liability coverage to protect them. For instance, if you purchase $50,000 of bodily injury liability coverage but have $100,000 in assets, attorneys could go after your treasures in the event of an accident in which you're at fault and the other party's medical bills exceed $50,000.

General recommendations for liability limits are $50,000 bodily injury liability for one person injured in an accident, $100,000 for all people injured in an accident and $25,000 property damage liability (that is, 50/100/25) given that half of the cars on the road are worth more than $20,000. Here again, though, let your financial situation be your guide. If you have no assets, don't buy excess coverage.

Another issue to consider is that the limits of any uninsured and/or underinsured motorist coverage that you purchase cannot exceed the limits of your liability coverage. Such coverage, he said, can be valuable, as it will cover lost income if you're out of work for several months after being injured in a major accident.

Your driving habits may also be a consideration. If your past is filled with crumpled fenders, if you have a lead foot or a long commute on a treacherous winding road, then you should get more comprehensive coverage. Keep in mind that you don't have to buy collision and comprehensive coverage. If your vehicle is older, if you have a good driving record and if there is a low likelihood that it would be totaled in an accident, but a high likelihood of it being stolen, you could buy comprehensive but not collision.

Step 3: Review Your Driving Record and Current Insurance Policy
Before you begin shopping for insurance you should check the following: the status of your driving record, your current coverage and the premiums you are paying.

You should know how many tickets you have had recently. But time plays tricks and our memories repress painful incidents. If you can't remember how long that speeding ticket has been on your record, check with your state's DMV. If your record will soon improve, and the points you earned will finally disappear, wait until that happens before you get quotes. Nothing drives up the price of insurance like a bad driving record.

Also, you should contact your auto insurance company or pull out a recent bill. Jot down the amount of coverage you have and what you are paying for it. Take note of the yearly and monthly cost of your insurance since many of your quotes will be given both ways. Now you have a figure in mind to try to beat.

Step 4: Solicit Competitive Quotes
Now that you have made several practical and philosophical decisions, it's time to start shopping. Begin by setting aside about an hour for this task. Bring all your records — your current insurance policy, your driver license number and your vehicle registration. Drink plenty of coffee. Have a phone at your elbow. And, of course, power up your computer.

Begin with the online services. If you go to InsWeb.com or other online insurance quote sites, you can type in your information and get a list of comparative quotes. These forms take about 15 minutes to complete. If this bores you, just remind yourself how much you will be saving and that you can use the money to buy something nice for yourself. If the entire shopping process takes you two hours to complete and you save $800, you're effectively earning $400 an hour.

A few things to keep in mind: 1) When you use quote sites, you may not get instant quotes. Some companies may contact you later by e-mail, and some that are not "direct providers" may put you in touch with a local agent, who will then calculate a quote for you. (A "direct provider," like Geico, sells an insurance policy to you directly; other companies like State Farm sell insurance through local agents. We'll discuss the pros and cons of each later.) 2) It's not easy to get quotes from these sites in all states — if you live in New Jersey, for instance, you'll probably find it faster to pick up the phone, since most insurers in this state currently don't provide online quotes.

You can also try getting quotes from some of the insurance companies listed on the Edmunds.com Web site — Liberty Mutual, Geico or Progressive. These forms will take about 10 minutes each to complete.

Step 5: Record and Compare Quotes
While you're researching companies, make notes in a separate computer file or on a piece of paper divided into categories. This will keep you from duplicating your efforts. When you visit the different online insurance sites, you should take note of several things:

* Annual and monthly rates for the different types of coverage — make sure to keep the coverage limits the same so that you can make "apples-to-apples" comparisons
* An 800 number to call for questions you can't get answered online
* The insurance company's payment policy (When is your payment due? What happens if you're late in making a payment?)
* Discounts offered by the insurance company that pertain to you
* The insurance company's consumer complaint ratio from your state's department of insurance Web site (more on this later)
* The insurance company's A.M. Best and Standard & Poor's ratings (more on this later)

Step 6: Work the Phones
Once you have exhausted your online options, it's time to work the phones. Those companies you haven't been able to get an online quote from should be contacted. At times, doing this process verbally can actually go faster than the online counterpart, providing you have all the information regarding your driver license and vehicle registration close at hand. When you get a quote, be sure to confirm the price. Also, ask them to fax or e-mail the quote to you as a record.

Step 7: Look for Discounts
While talking to the insurance companies' telephone salespeople, make sure you explore all options relating to discounts. Insurance companies give discounts for a good driving record, favorable credit score, safety equipment (for example, antilock brakes), certain occupations or professional affiliations and more. For more guidance in this area, check out "How to Save Money on Auto Insurance."

Step 8: Choosing the Right Insurance Company
You now have most of the information in front of you that you need to make a decision. However, there is something more to consider. You can clearly see which company is least expensive, but when you need them to cover a claim, what kind of job will they do? To put it another way, which is the most reliable insurance company?

Below, we offer a number of issues to guide your thinking and help you reach a decision:

1. Visit your state's department of insurance and check consumer complaint ratios and basic rate comparison surveys.
2. Get in touch with local body shops or dealerships you trust and ask which insurance companies they recommend.
3. Consider contacting an insurance agent for additional information about a particular company.
4. Check out the financial strength ratings for an insurance company by referring to the A.M. Best and Standard & Poor's ratings.
5. Look over J.D. Power and Associates' consumer satisfaction surveys reviewing auto insurance companies.

Step 9: Review the Policy Before You Sign
So, you've done your research, and you've decided on a company. Before you sign, though, read the policy. In addition to verifying that it contains the coverage you want, there are two clauses that you should look for in the contract:

1. Retain your right to sue. "Find out if you are giving up your right to go to court and will be forced into arbitration if there is a disagreement [between you and the insurance company]," one expert advised. "You're much better off if you don't give up this right…. It makes it easier for [insurers] to take advantage of you." If you find a clause to this effect, all isn't necessarily lost. "At least in theory, a contract is a mutual agreement, so you should be able to cross out that line in the policy," he said. If the company won't agree to the policy sans clause, then you should probably take your business elsewhere.

2. Avoid aftermarket parts requirements. If an insurance company has written in the policy that "new factory," "like kind and quality" or "aftermarket parts" may be used for body shop repairs, go to another company, one expert advised. If you own a relatively new car that you plan to keep for a while, you will probably be much happier if you spend a little more time researching companies on the front end rather than try to fight the company when you have a claim.

Step 10: Cancel Your Old Policy
After you lock in the insurance policy you want with the company you select, you have two more things to do. The first is to cancel coverage with your existing insurance company. Second, if your state requires you to carry proof of insurance, make sure you either have it in your wallet or the glove compartment of your car (some experts discourage this, however — if your car is stolen, the thief has everything he needs to prove the vehicle is his).

Now, there's one last thing to do: reward yourself for saving so much money on car insurance.

Checklist

* Determine your state's insurance requirements.
* Consider your own financial situation in relation to the required insurance and consider buying more to protect your assets.
* Review the status of your driving record — do you have any outstanding tickets or points on your driver license?
* Check your current coverage to find out how much in premiums you are paying.
* Get competing quotes from an Internet insurance Web site such as InsWeb.com, YouDecide.com and InsureOne.com.
* Make follow-up phone calls to insurance companies to get additional information about coverage.
* Inquire about discounts you might qualify for such as a multiple policy discount.
* Evaluate the reliability of the insurance company you're considering by visiting your state's insurance Web site.
* If you have chosen a new insurance company, remember to cancel your old policy.

Philip Reed |edmunds

Nintendo Game Boy Advance SP White Console Review

2009-08-27T12:24:00.002+07:00

A completely redesigned version of the popular Game Boy Advance, this system has a new illumination feature and a sleek, flip-screen design -- making it the most distinctively stylish, compact and portable Game Boy system ever.

The rechargeable lithium-ion battery takes just 3 hours to fully recharge, and its good for 10 hours of continuous play with the light on and 18 hours of play with the light turned off. Game Boy Advance SP is backward compatible, allowing you to use virtually all games previously released for the Game Boy® line.

Specification:

Product MPN
MPN : 44100

Key Features
Console Type : Handheld
Platform : Game Boy Advance SP
Color : White
Processor : 16.78 MHz Sharp ARM7TDMI
Display : LCD TFT (Active Matrix)
Gaming Type : LAN Gaming

Processor
Processor type : Sharp ARM7TDMI
Processor Speed : 16.78 MHz

Memory
Installed RAM : 256 KB
Installed Cache Memory : 32 KB
RAM technology : WRAM

Display
Display Type : LCD TFT (Active Matrix)
Screen Size : 2.9 in.
Max. Resolution : 240 x 160

Graphics
Max. Number Of Colors : 32,768 Colors

Audio
Audio Support : Stereo

Technical Features
Communication Type : Serial Cable Proprietary
Expansion Slots : Game Cartridge Slot
Main Controls : 4 Way Cross Keypad A/B/X/Y Buttons
Input / Output Ports : 1 x Game Boy Advance link connector 1 x Game Boy Advance SP multi-access port

Battery
Battery Run Time : 18 Hours
Battery Type : Rechargeable Lithium-ion

Dimensions
Height : 3.2 in.
Depth : 0.97 in.
Width : 5.69 in.
Weight : 0.31 lb.

Miscellaneous
Supplied Accessories : AC Adapter
Release Date : March, 2004
Product ID : 55496922

source

MSI Launches Wind Top AE2010 20-inch All-In-One Desktop

2009-08-27T11:37:00.005+07:00

MSI just announced its next-generation all-in-one desktop PC, the Wind Top AE2010. This step up from the previous AE1900 is a 20-inch model with a 1600 x 900 touchscreen, AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 3250e processor, and an onboard ATI Radeon 3200 graphics card with DDR3 128MB memory. The AE2010 also has 4GB of DDRII 533MHz SDRAM, a 320GB hard drive, 6 USB ports, and a 4 in 1 card reader. Look for this new model to be available next month for a starting price of $649.99.

CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA – August 26, 2009 – MSI, a world-wide leading manufacturer of computer components and systems, is excited to announce the next-generation all-in-one desktop PC, the Wind Top AE2010. The AE2010 is upgraded with an AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core processor for increased computing power and features an efficient touch-enabled All-in-One PC with a crystal clear 20-inch widescreen. The improved performance and beautiful form factor combined with EPA ENERGY STAR Version 5.0 efficiency rating provides users with a PC powerful enough for everyday computing and aesthetically pleasing enough to have as a design centerpiece.

The new AE2010 also includes a VGA input and output allowing the user to utilize the All-in-One PC as a monitor or transfer video data to another television or computer screen. Additionally, graphics capabilities have been improved via the onboard ATI Radeon 3200 graphics card with DDR3 128MB VRAM. Users will now experience brighter colors, sharper contract and significantly improved picture clarity. Lastly, design functionality has been improved with the addition of a VESA standard wall mount. Whether you choose to set on a countertop or mount on the wall, the AE2010 is poised to change in-home computing.

The MSI Wind Top AE2010 features touch-enabled applications, wireless connectivity, SuperMulti DVD Rewriter and a built-in webcam and microphone for maximum personal computing. Whether you are sharing and editing photos, videoconferencing, browsing the web or completing school or work products, the AE2010 provides the tools to get the job done efficiently and in style. Starting at $649.99, the AE2010 offers a tremendous value proposition for any computing scenario.

The AE2010 also features a 320 GB hard drive, 6 USB ports, 4-1 card reader and a color-matched multimedia keyboard and mouse. The ultra-silent, state-of-the-art cooling system eliminates traditional cooling fan noises and keeps the noise level no more than 26 decibels. As with all MSI All-in-One PCs, the AE2010 is engineered to consume up to 75% less energy than traditional desktop PCs.

System Specifications

MSI Wind Top AE2010-02SUS
CPU :AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 3250e Processor
Operating System :Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium (with Free Window® 7 Upgrade
coupon)
Chipset :AMD RS780G and SB710
Graphics :ATI Radeon HD 3200 Graphics Core (Side Port DDR3 128MB memory)
Memory :4GB DDRII 533MHz SDRAM on board
Display :20-inch Touch Widescreen (16:9) 1600 x 900 High Definition
HDD :320GB SATA Hard Drive/5400RPM
ODD :Tray-load DVD Super Multi rewriter drive, support dual-layer
burning
Card Reader :4 in 1 (SD/MMC/MS/XD)
I/O :1 x DC-in jack, 6 x USB 2.0, 1 x E-SATA, 1 x LAN jack (RJ45), 1 x
Mic.-in, 1 x Headphone-out, VGA-in and VGA-out
Wireless :802.11 b/g/n
LAN :10/100/1000 Gigabit LAN
Webcam :1.3MP Webcam with Microphone
Sound :3W x 2 SRS Premium Sound Technology
Dimension :15.46” x 20.07” x 2.15”
Keyboard / Mouse :Color-matched multimedia keyboard and mouse
Support :VESA Wall Mount, VGA-in (monitor mode) / VGA out (dual display)
Software :Microsoft® Office 2007 (trial version), MSI Wind Touch, MSI Easy Viewer, MSI Burn Recovery, MSI Controller, MSI Q-Face, MSI Easy Face, WinRAR (trial version), SoftStylus™, Adobe® Reader, BurnNow, Cyberlink® PowerProducer, Cyberlink® PowerDVD8, Cyberlink® PowerDirector, Cyberlink® Power2Go, Cyberlink® DVD Suite, Cyberlink® PhotoNow, Gimp2, Dia, Ganttproject, FreeMind, GeoGebra, Java 6, Microsoft® DirectX, Microsoft® .NET Framework 3.5, Microsoft® MSN
Power Supply :External 90W Power Adapter with Active PFC

Via: MSI |hothardware

The 7 best features in Mac OS X Snow Leopard

2009-08-27T10:20:00.003+07:00

When a new OS upgrade costs $29, you can be forgiven for thinking of it as a service pack. Such may appear to be the case with Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, which Apple has positioned as an under-the-hood upgrade whose new capabilities won't be so obvious to users, and thus not worth the usual $129.

I agree with that price assessment (if only Microsoft had made the same judgment about Windows 7), but I don't agree that what Snow Leopard offers resides merelyunder the hood. Instead, it provides many enhancements and some new features that Mac users of all persuasions will really like. (Note: The $29 upgrade price is for Leopard users; if you have an older Mac OS X version, it'll cost you $169 to upgrade.)

Much of Snow Leopard's focus has been internal. For example, Apple has revamped the kernel, included apps, and much of the OS itself to be 64-bit (to allow virtual addressable memory of 16 exabytes and physical addressable memory of more than 32GB). But until apps are rewritten for 64-bit and the new Mac models support that kind of memory, there's little immediate benefit -- ditto for multicore enablement in the Grand Central Dispatch engine. But the revamped QuickTime X and Java engines should result in faster processing of streaming media and Java applets (such as on Web sites).

Putting aside these important but long-term changes, here are Snow Leopard's most immediately beneficial new features and enhancements.

1. ActiveSync and Exchange 2007 support
Following in the footsteps of the iPhone, Snow Leopard makes these Microsoft technologies native to the OS. That means Apple's e-mail, calendar, and contacts apps work just peachy with Exchange 2007 server, giving users the same capabilities as Microsoft Entourage but with the better-designed, less-memory-intensive apps -- Mail, iCal, and Address Book -- included in OS X.

2. Exposé integration in the Dock
The Mac OS X Dock makes it easy to access applications, open documents, and common folders, a concept Windows 7 is stealing in its retooled taskbar. Open documents are even more easily accessed in Snow Leopard, thanks to the integration of Exposé. Now when you click and hold an app icon in the Dock, you get preview windows for each of its open documents, allowing you to switch easily among them or to close them, all without having to clutter your screen with document windows. I never cared much for Exposé in its traditional role (providing hot corners and shortcuts to open application windows), but I love the Dock-integrated Exposé functionality that Snow Leopard adds.

3. Automatic location detection
When you travel, it's easy to get mixed up as to when your appointments are, since your computer is still in your "home" time zone, and you have to mentally calculate the current time when looking at the calendar or clock. Sure, you can change the time zone in the Date & Time system preference, but it's easy to forget. So Snow Leopard changes the time zone for you automatically (if you set that as the default behavior), using Wi-Fi mapping to figure out where you are -- you will need to be connected to a Wi-Fi access point or router. iCal can also be set to adjust the times to the current time zone automatically, so your calendar always reflects the current times.

4. The new Preview is more like Adobe Reader
I have nothing against Adobe Reader, but I love that Preview now can open multiple PDF documents, display their contents as contact sheets, and show thumbnails of pages in a sidebar for easy navigation. In other words, it works a lot like Adobe Reader. That's one fewer app to launch -- and since Preview loads much faster than Reader, I can get to my PDFs' contents much faster now.

5. Movie and screencast recording
Snow Leopard takes the formerly $35 QuickTime Pro and makes it a standard, free app in Mac OS X. That means you can record movies and -- great for many marketing, education, and Web professionals -- screencasts from your Mac with no additional software.

6. Systemwide automatic text replacement
Automatic text substitution as you type is nothing new; Microsoft Word has had it for more than a decade. But Snow Leopard lets you specify such substitutions via the Keyboard system preference, so you have a common set of substitutions available to all applications. Right now, only TextEdit, Mail, and various Apple apps use this common auto-text service, but if other software developers adopt it, you may finally get all your text-oriented apps to autocorrect the same way.

7. No more gesture segregation
I have a late-2006 model MacBook Pro at home, and it's frustrating that its gesture-capable trackpad supports only the first generation of touch gestures (one- and two-finger moves), not the second-generation three- and four-finger options. Snow Leopard fixes that, so gesture-capable trackpads now support all gestures, no matter what Mac model you have. (Of course, your Mac has to have a gesture-capable trackpad, so models before 2006 aren't helped out by this update.)

Galen Gruman | InfoWorld

How to Know If My Child Is Ready to Start Kindergarten

2009-08-27T07:25:00.002+07:00

It is that time of year that parents and children are starting to think about school. Children will be returning to school shortly, but for some children – our youngest students – it will be a brand new experience – KINDERGARTEN!

Is your child ready to start kindergarten? Here are some considerations to help you decide.

Instructions

Step 1

THINK ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S SOCIAL NEEDS: Does your child play nicely with other children? When you set up play dates, can your child play without hitting or biting? Does your child follow adult oral directions or your rules? Can your child sit for short periods of time (10-15 minutes)? When school starts, your child will be in a classroom with many other children. They will need to have these basic skills in place to successfully function within a classroom setting. Settling into a new setting is important.

Step 2

THINK ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S PERSONAL NEEDS: There are basic self-care skills that each child should be fairly independent at. Can your child blow their nose? Tie their shoes? Put on and zip their coat? Put away toys? Use the bathroom and wash their hands?

Step 3

THINK ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S INTELLECTUAL OR ACADEMIC NEEDS: Children entering kindergarten should be able to perform some basic tasks and have some pre-literacy skills. There are many checklists available online, but as a former kindergarten teacher I would be thrilled if my beginning kindergarteners had the following skills:
a. Listens to and enjoys stories
b. Can recognize and names 10-15 letters, and knows their sounds
c. Speaks in complete sentences
d. Can print their first name
e. Counts to 20 (1,2,3…)
f. Can count 5 objects correctly
g. Knows their colors and shapes
h. Can sort by color, shape and size
i. Understands basic concepts like more, less, same
j. Understands positional words like above, below

Step 4

IF YOU ARE CONCERNED ABOUT YOUR CHILD’S READINESS: If you are worried about your child and whether they are ready for kindergarten, the first step you should take is to talk with your child’s preschool teacher. They have been with your child in a school setting, and can shed a great deal of light into your child’s strengths and weaknesses.

Step 5

If your child is not in preschool, make an appointment with the local elementary school principal. Tell them your concerns. They are absolutely there to help you sort through the situation, and assist you in next steps. It may be a kindergarten screening that is needed; it may be talking with a kindergarten teacher; it may be just spending time with the principal and talking through the problem.

Tips & Warnings

As you can see, kindergarten readiness is a complex issue. You cannot simply look at what your child can do academically – you must look at the whole child – social needs, personal needs as well as their intellectual or academic needs. Gather information, talk to education professionals, and then make the decision about school readiness. You, after all, are your child's first and most important teacher!

plannerpatty | ehow

Obama Injects Himself Into Health Talks, Despite Risks

2009-08-13T11:01:00.001+07:00

WASHINGTON — In pursuing his proposed overhaul of the health care system, President Obama has consistently presented himself as aloof from the legislative fray, merely offering broad principles. Prominent among them is the creation of a strong, government-run insurance plan to compete with private insurers and press for lower costs.

Behind the scenes, however, Mr. Obama and his advisers have been quite active, sometimes negotiating deals with a degree of cold-eyed political realism potentially at odds with the president’s rhetoric.

Last month, for example, hospital officials were poised to appear at the White House to announce a deal limiting their industry’s share of the costs of the overhaul proposal when a wave of jitters swept through the group. Senator Max Baucus, the Finance Committee chairman and a party to the deal, had abruptly pulled out of the event. Was he backing away from his end of the deal?

Not to worry, Jim Messina, deputy White House chief of staff, told the lobbyists, according to White House officials and lobbyists briefed on the call. The White House was standing behind the deal, Mr. Messina said, capping the industry’s costs at a maximum of $155 billion over 10 years in trade for its political support.

Some Democrats and industry lobbyists now argue that, in negotiating deals through Mr. Baucus’s panel with powerful health care interests, the White House was tacitly signaling as early as last spring that it might end up accepting something more modest than the government insurer the president has said he prefers.

The Finance Committee, for example, appears to be coalescing around the idea of nonprofit insurance cooperatives instead of a government-run plan. It is a proposal the health care industry prefers, but many liberal Democrats oppose, in both cases because cooperatives are likely to have less leverage over health care prices.

Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, disputed that the administration had elevated the work of the Senate finance panel above the four other committees that have all approved strong government insurers.

“They are an important committee,” Mr. Emanuel said. “They have a bipartisan process. The president would like that to work, just as he is proud that the other committees have done their work. They don’t get an exalted status over everybody else.”

But he also acknowledged the political realities that have made the Finance Committee’s still-unfinished cooperative plan a center of attention. “We have heard from both chambers that the House sees a public plan as essential for the final product, and the Senate believes it cannot pass it as constructed and a co-op is what they can do,” he said. “We are cognizant of that fact.”

Asked whether the president would accept the weaker co-op, Mr. Emanuel declined to comment. “I am not going to fast-forward the process,” he said.

Industry lobbyists and moderate Democrats in both chambers, though, argue that the White House’s actions behind the scenes show a recognition that the finance panel’s anticipated compromise is the most likely template for any final legislation.

“The House has largely been a sideshow,” said Representative Jim Cooper of Tennessee, a member of the so-called Blue Dog caucus of conservative Democrats. “The Senate Finance Committee is where it really matters. That’s the bottleneck.”

Members and staff of the four other committees say the White House has largely stayed on the sidelines. “They have been — what is a good way to put it? — available for consultation,” Mr. Cooper said.

Mr. Obama and his top aides have immersed themselves in the Senate Finance Committee process. The president talks to Mr. Baucus several times a week, people briefed on their conversations say. Mr. Obama has also held a few calls with the panel’s ranking Republican, Senator Charles E. Grassley of Iowa.

In addition, Mr. Obama invited both senators to a private lunch at the White House early in the summer and met with six panel members for another White House session last week. White House advisers have held long evening and weekend meetings with Finance Committee staff members.

Nancy-Ann DeParle, charged with leading the White House health effort, has a standing biweekly meeting with Mr. Baucus, while Peter R. Orszag, the White House budget director, has spent so much time in the senator’s office that he helps himself to the Coke Zeros tucked away in Mr. Baucus’s personal refrigerator.

Lobbyists for the drug and hospital industries say that, as early as June, White House officials directed them to work out cost-saving deals with Mr. Baucus’s committee. Drug industry lobbyists said they negotiated a deal to contribute $80 billion over 10 years toward the cost of an overhaul with Mr. Baucus, under White House supervision, before taking it to the president for final approval. House lawmakers have said they were caught by surprise when it was announced.

Hospital industry lobbyists, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of alienating the White House, say they negotiated their $155 billion in concessions with Mr. Baucus and the administration in tandem. House staff members were present, including for at least one White House meeting, but their role was peripheral, the lobbyists said.

Several hospital lobbyists involved in the White House deals said it was understood as a condition of their support that the final legislation would not include a government-run health plan paying Medicare rates — generally 80 percent of private sector rates — or controlled by the secretary of health and human services.

“We have an agreement with the White House that I’m very confident will be seen all the way through conference,” a lobbyist, Chip Kahn, director of the Federation of American Hospitals, told a Capitol Hill newsletter.

Mr. Emanuel and liberal Democrats argued that the White House had worked more closely with the Senate Finance Committee because it was stepping in to break up legislative logjams. In the same way, they said, Mr. Obama and Mr. Emanuel had personally interceded to resolve a last-minute revolt by conservative House Democrats that threatened to derail a bill in the energy and commerce panel in July.

Representative Henry A. Waxman, the California Democrat who is chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Mr. Obama had assured House members that he did not intend to let the Senate Finance Committee determine the final bill.

“This is going to be a genuine conference with give and take,” Mr. Waxman said. He added: “The president has said he wants a public option to keep everybody honest. He hasn’t said he wants a co-op as a public option.”

Still, industry lobbyists say they are not worried. “We trust the White House,” Mr. Kahn said. “We are confident that the Senate Finance Committee will produce a bill we fully can endorse.”

DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK | nytimes

Cisco and Warner Music extend Web partnership

2009-08-13T10:53:00.000+07:00

Warner Music Group announced Wednesday that it has expanded its partnership with Cisco Systems, using the tech giant's software platform to power more Web sites for its artists.

Warner Music is the first and only company that has said it is using Cisco's Eos social media software platform. Cisco announced the platform and hosted service in January.

The service, called Eos, allows media and entertainment companies to create, manage, and grow online communities. Through Eos, Cisco has compiled technology tools and slapped on an easy-to-use interface to make building and customizing Web sites easy. But most importantly, it's bundled into the software technology that will allow media companies to build interactive Web sites so that fans can connect with musicians, TV shows, movies, or whatever brands they want to promote.

Initially, Warner Music Group used the platform to develop Web sites for two artists, Laura Izibor and reggae singer Sean Paul. On Wednesday, it announced it has expanded that relationship to include sites for other artists, such as Paramore, R&B singer Trey Songz, rock band Halestorm, and a redesigned site for Sean Paul. By the end of the year, Warner Music Group has committed to creating 12 additional artist Web sites using Eos, including sites for "American Idol" alum Jason Castro, R&B singer Estelle, and hip-hop artist Lupe Fiasco.

With Eos, Cisco has essentially created a template for building and designing Web sites. Michael Nash, executive vice president of digital strategy and business development for Warner Music, said that Eos allows the company to develop a Web site five times faster than it could on another platform. And a strong online presence is something that Warner Music executives hope will lead to new revenue streams for its artists' content.

Edgar Bronfman, chief executive at Warner Music, noted the importance of using the Web to reach out to fans and music consumers.

"We clearly see the entertainment industry in a phase of tremendous transition," Bronfman said during a press conference Wednesday.

Cisco CEO John Chambers said that he believes Cisco's Eos platform could "change the music industry forever."

"When you look back five years from now, you'll see that what Warner Music is doing will change the industry, and others will follow in its footsteps," he said.

But Eos is more than just a platform for creating new Web sites. The software also allows media companies, such as Warner Media, to collect and analyze data about their users. For example, data can be used to identify "influencers," or people within the fan community who generate comments or traffic on the site. Data about these types of individuals could be culled to develop new features. Or data could be collected about certain users' behaviors to create more tailored content or marketing opportunities.

"We are still in the early stage of figuring out how to use this data," Dan Scheinman, the Cisco executive behind Eos, said in a phone interview after the press conference. "And much of what can be done with the data will be based on Warner's privacy policies."

Nash emphasized that the company is committed to protecting individual fans' privacy, but he noted the usefulness of this data for improving the site and finding new ways to monetize content.

Bronfman said that using other social-networking sites along with new, rich fan sites could help breathe new life into the industry, which has been hit hard by declining CD sales and piracy. And he sees the platform creating a vehicle for new business models. For example, he noted that the rock band Paramore has been offering a special box set on its Web site that has outsold the band's regular album 13 to 1. He said that other revenue streams could be added as well, such as backstage tickets or presale tickets that allow fans to come to rehearsals. Ultimately, he said it will be up to each band to decide how they use their site.

For Cisco, the move into providing a managed service for creating and maintaining Web sites is a huge leap from its traditional business of building routers and switches to shuttle packets around the Internet. Some critics of the company believe that Cisco, which is also diversifying into other areas such as consumer electronics, is spreading itself too thin. And a new corporate structure of creating development councils to create and usher in new businesses has been met with criticism from some journalists and bloggers who question whether all this collaboration is really effective.

But Scheinman said that the new corporate structure has allowed his division of 60 individuals to develop and grow much like a start-up.

"Sure some people are saying, 'Where's the revenue?'" he said. "But I think there is an understanding from John (Chambers) and others in the council that this has the potential to be big. And I think the new structure has created a place where people can work together and collaborate. Our core business is building networks, and this corporate structure allows us to tie everything together into something that realizes a much bigger vision."

Chambers himself said during the press conference that the music industry is valued at $1.3 trillion. Exactly how much of that money can end up in Cisco's coffers is unknown, but he believes the Eos platform could help grow the market, ultimately creating more opportunity for Cisco. And the more content that is shuttling across the Internet as people download and listen to music or check fan pages, the better things are for Cisco because all that traffic ultimately creates a need for more of Cisco's core products.

Marguerite Reardon | news.cne

Crazy Britney Spears Being Lured as Ratings Bait Again?

2009-08-13T10:26:00.003+07:00

It’s that time of the year again — last week nominations were released for MTV’s star-studded and notoriously controversial Video Music Awards. But who should score a whooping seven nods, including the top category for Video of the Year? Britney Spears, y’all.

The songstress will be up against 2009’s hottest acts, Beyonce and Lady Gaga for the coveted prize, prompting numerous industry insiders to question if she really deserved such a slew of nominations for her one and only music video this year, Womanizer, in which she suggestively caresses her seemingly naked body, photocopies her bottom after stomping around a corporate office in a black wig and gets raunchy in the back of a car in her secret-service inspired get-up.

"We were surprised she got so many nominations because she has been 'lip synching' and while she is talented, the terrain has changed so this may be sympathy nominations because she is getting well," said a key industry insider. "Every network is hurting for eyeballs. Britney always draws an audience."

But let’s not forget that it was because of the troubled Tinseltowner’s sedated-like opening performance in 2007 that the VMAs surged into a whole new ratings stratosphere.

"When I first saw it I started to panic," an MTV advertising executive told Tarts at the time. "But I soon realized that this was great, it was obviously going to get a lot of attention around the world."

Last year, Brit was ratings-gold for the VMAs (viewership was up 41 percent from two years prior) thanks to her over hyped ‘comeback’ - although this time she didn’t have to sing and dance, she just had to gratuitously accept three moonmen for her musical abilities. Interestingly, those three VMAs were the first Spears had ever won although she had previously received 16 nominations. Her 1999 debut album "Baby One More Time" remains the highest-selling album by a female pop artist of all time but even then she only scored three nominations.

So does Brit really now deserve seven nods or is MTV trying to not-so-subtly steer Spears back to the stage, for better or for worse?

Her former music producer and good friend, the Grammy winning Dallas Austin, even admitted she was quite "a singer."

"Britney is very normal, very average. She's fun, she likes to play games, it's sad because Hollywood makes you into a person that you don't want to be," Austin told us. "She can sing, but it's different than being a singer and a person who can sing. The average person can sing pretty much, you can sing along to it in the car and you'll probably be in the same pitch. But then there's people who can't sing, and they're tone deaf and they can't hear the pitch that the song is in. That's a different story. Britney Spears, Janet Jackson, Aaliyah - there are a lot of people with really great tones that aren't going to sing like Celine Dion or Whitney Houston."

Spears rep did not respond for comment and it remains unclear as to whether Spears will present or perform at the uber-hyped awards show, which will take place in New York City on September 13.

While things are obviously looking pretty positive for the pop princess on a professional front, it seems she could be going through some personal problems yet again. Britney has been back to a bit of her bizarre behavior over the last week — wigging out, wearing too tight dresses and hanging out with fellow "reformed" rehabber Lindsay Lohan. Let’s hope it is all in the name of post-tour recuperation!

Hollywood Foreign Press Luncheon Cursed With Another Car Accident

Chris Pine, Emmy Rossum, Jordana Brewster, Rose McGowan and (coincidentally, Marilyn Manson’s other ex ) Evan Rachel Wood were walking the red carpet outside the Beverly Hills Hotel before heading into the Hollywood Foreign Press Annual Installation Luncheon on Tuesday, however all eyes were actually on something slightly more sinister.

Just as one of the guests, believed to be an HBO publicist, stopped in the valet line and was stepping out of the car her vehicle was hit from behind (generating quite the smack!) and she tumbled to the ground. Drama ensued as several people panicked and rushed over to help but thankfully the female attendee came out seemingly unscathed.

But could the annual luncheon, in which $1,249,000 was donated to 29 film schools and nonprofit organizations to foster emerging filmmakers and education, have a car curse? Last year John C. Reilly failed to show as he was involved in a fender bender en route to the star-studded event.

However the belle of the ball was the super slender Emmy Rossum, who was obviously so concerned with being quizzed about the recent rumors she is splitting from her secret husband Justin Siegal that she had two reps walk her down and warn everyone not to approach the controversial topic. However we did spot Rossum making a hasty exit from the auditorium pretty early.

"It’s freezing, one degree in here," she told us with a laugh. "But all these people don’t feel it because they are wasted!"

One person who was trying to avoid being lumped into that category was Warren Beatty.

"I always behave badly at these things and I’m trying to control myself so I wrote some things down," he said. "To keep myself from saying the things I’m tempted to say …"

Pop Tarts Scene & Herd

Cindy Crawford, Rande Gerber, Sting and Trudie Styler sipping new Neuro drinks while together on vacation in St. Tropez, France last Thursday.

Samaire Armstrong at the Gavert Atelier Salon in Beverly Hills on Thursday, dying her blonde locks chocolate brown.

Bridget Marquardt picking up a "Guardian Angel" necklace from Energy Muse Jewelry at Melanie Segal's Teen Choice Awards gift lounge at Hollywood's Magic Castle on Friday.

Ashlee Greene (who has just been caught up in yet another nude photo scandal) picking up goodies at the Pastry by Angela and Vanessa Simmons booth at the 102.7 KIIS-FM gifting louge at the W Hotel in Westwood on Friday morning.

Jesse McCartney relaxing on the roof deck with a Agave Lemonade SoBe Lifewater and inquiring about renting the venue at the final SoBe Lifewater Summer Fridays event which was the Stephan Weiss Studios in NY. Cassie also got a pedicure before jumping onstage during the MJ tribute.

Lindsay Lohan at the Music Lounge at the Hard Rock Hotel Chicago during Lollapalooz on Friday, dancing backstage to The Virgins with her little sister Ali and on again girlfriend Sam Ronson’s sister Annabelle Dexter-Jones.

Leighton Meester and beau Sebastian Stan enjoying a daytime "brunch-fest" at Day & Night　Restaurant Beach Club in Southampton on Saturday where they sipped from several bottles of Bertaud Belieu Rose Champagne with a group friends in a private poolside cabana. The couple later hit up Philippe Chow’s Lily Pond restaurant for the after party of Gotham/Hampton magazine’s screening of Kutcher’s film Spread.

Jon Voight, Brett Ratner, Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson, James Van Der Beek, Scott Baio and the newly separated Shannon Elisabeth and Derek Hough partying up a storm and listening to the live sounds of Three 6 Mafia at Hugh Hefner's Annual "Midsummer Night's Dream" at the iconic mansion on Saturday night.

Designer Betsey Johnson dining with her family on Saturday night at Matto in East Hampton.

Down the road at Nick & Toni's, Mary J. Blige enjoyed dinner and bottles of French red wine with record executive L.A. Reid and his wife.

Former Cheetah Girl Adrienne Bailon relaxing in a private cabana The Pools at The Water Club at Borgata Hotel Casino & Spa in Atlantic City on Saturday with her girlfriends before enjoying some alone time at Immersion Spa. The songstress then used her Borgata Nightlife Rewards for a shopping spree at Fixation and Just Cavalli at The Water Club on her way to FORNELLETTO Cucina & Wine Bar before partying at mur.mur nightclub where DJ Chachi performed a special set for the guest of honor including her new single "Only You." A reality show following Adrienne’s new single life in New York City will air this fall on MTV.

John Mayer and Rob Dyrdek drinking Belvedere and Corzo the VIP table at Hollywood hotspot MyHouse on Saturday before escorting their ladies to the car at the end of the night.

Britney Spears picking up Office Depot backpacks for her sons at the Bop It Celebrity Retreat produced by Backstage Creations, backstage at the Teen Choice Awards on Sunday. Meanwhile Robert Pattinson, Hayden Panettiere, Ed Westwick and Abigail Breslin were spotted noshing on Sprinkles cupcakes.

Rob Lowe talking about a "huge twist" in the new season of "Brother's and Sisters" as he showed off his golf skills at the Bernie Brillstein Golf Classic benefiting Barlow Respiratory Hospital (Brillstein was Lowe's longtime manager) in Tarzana, Calif. on Monday.

Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie sitting together all evening sipping cocktails and making lovey eyes at West Hollywood's Mondrian Hotel on Monday for the "Inglorious Basterds" premiere after party.

Meanwhile Joshua Jackson kept a low profile next to his leading lady Diane Kruger as he let her steal the spotlight.

Eva Longoria-Parker dashing into the Beverly Hills Hotel after running significantly late for the Hollywood Foreign Press luncheon on Tuesday.

By Hollie McKay

The 5 surprising things ruining your teeth

2009-08-13T10:17:00.003+07:00

Thought coffee was the only culprit? Find out how to protect pearly whites

We know smoking cigarettes and drinking coffee or red wine will not keep our teeth nice and white. We also know that chewing on hard things like pens or pencils can wear away or even break the enamel of our teeth, and that eating candy and other sugary foods can give us cavities. But there are other things that can ruin our teeth that you may not be aware of. Most of these things contain some acid and sugar that you will find surprising. Here are five things you didn’t know are ruining your teeth:

White wine
There is a recent study that says white wine can put people at risk for tooth staining. The tannins and the acids in the white wine can roughen the surface of the teeth. This can make the enamel more porous and allow the teeth to absorb color. So, if a person is having white wine at dinner, and then drinks coffee or eats something like blueberry pie — that person is at risk of having stained teeth. Red wine does cause more staining, but you are not off the hook if you drink white wine.

Milk
Milk is great — it has the calcium we need for healthy bones — but if someone gives their child or baby milk (or other sweet drinks, like apple juice) in the bottle too often or too long, this can cause cavities. We all have bacteria in our mouths. Bacteria use these sugars in the drinks as food. This is why people shouldn’t give children sweet drinks or milk too often and never let them fall asleep with a bottle in their mouth. Breast-feeding moms should also be aware, as babies are also at risk if they are falling asleep while being breast-fed, especially if a mom keeps her nipple in the baby’s mouth. A solution for this is to try to wipe or brush the child’s or baby’s teeth before they go to bed. Try to give the baby some water or diluted juice in the bottle and an alternate drink.

Cough syrup
Many cough syrups contain sucrose, fructose and citric acids. These ingredients can cause tooth decay and erosion. Many people take cough syrup or other types of medications like NyQuil right before they go to bed and after they brush their teeth. The syrup remains on their teeth all night long. Some syrups have alcohol in them as well, which can dry out the mouth. When the mouth is dry, there is less saliva. The sugars and acids remain in the mouth and on the teeth. Try to take the syrup with a meal, when there is more saliva present. If that isn’t an option, try to rinse with some water or try the pill form of the medicine instead.

Lemonade
Lemonade is a dangerous combination of acid and sugar. The formula for decay is bacteria that causes cavities (which we have in our mouths) plus acid (which penetrates the enamel layer of the teeth) plus sugar (which bacteria feed on), which equals tooth decay. Lemons are extremely acidic. Combining this fruit with the sugar makes it a potent cavity causer. Lemon slices in water are not nearly as bad as lemonade because there is no sugar involved, but the lemon does make your water more acidic.

When you eat something acidic such as fruit, it can strip the mineral off the teeth. Saliva in the mouth helps wash the acid away, but if you expose your teeth to acid too often this will lead to acid wear. When erosion occurs, it can cause the teeth to become very sensitive, which makes eating and/or drinking very uncomfortable. Not only that, but the teeth can become yellow and dark in color as the outer enamel layer is worn away and the dentin layer is exposed. Aesthetically, it isn’t pleasing either. Unfortunately this is irreversible.

How can you protect your teeth from acid wear? Drink a lot of water after eating or drinking. Drink acidic beverages through a straw so the liquid doesn’t have much contact with your teeth. Avoid brushing your teeth right after a highly acidic meal or drink. If you brush right after, you are just brushing your teeth with the acid. So, be patient, wait 30-40 minutes before you brush.

Swimming pools
Those who swim more than six hours a week in chemically treated pools may develop brown stains on their teeth, commonly called “swimmer’s calculus.” The chemicals in the pool mixed with the saliva can cause an unusual brown stain. The stain can be yellow to dark brown, and will be found, for the most part, on the front teeth. Swimmers should have more frequent professional cleanings to remove this stain. Wearing an airtight mouth guard can help.

Nancy M. Rosen, D.M.D. | msnbc

Microsoft to port Bing to the iPhone

2009-08-13T09:59:00.003+07:00

A software wrapper to make it easier to do Bing searches from the iPhone apps deck is in development

Microsoft is developing a software wrapper to better enable iPhone application developers to add Bing search results to their applications, a Microsoft official said on Wednesday.

The wrapper, based on Objective C, is being tested now and is due out in a few weeks, said Alessandro Catorcini, senior program manager for the Bing search engine at Microsoft, in an interview at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, Calif.

"Right now, there is an unneeded step to climb to integrate Bing results in your iPhone app but we want to make that smooth," he said. "We want to make it as easy as link [a] library, create an object -- bam -- you're done."

Bing was unveiled in June as a re-release of the Microsoft Live Search engine, and it was tipping point in the Microsoft-Yahoo deal. Microsoft earlier this week at the conference emphasized linkage between mobile devices and search capabilities as future expectation for search.

Paul Krill | InfoWorld.

Benefits of Omega-3 Fatty Acids Prompt New Dosage for Heart Health

2009-08-12T19:56:00.001+07:00

A healthy dose of omega-3 fatty acids such as DHA and EPA not only prevents heart disease in healthy people, it also reduces the risk of heart attack in people with existing heart disease, according to a new study. That finding has researchers recommending people add a daily dose of omega-3 fatty acids to their diet.

Based on a review of several large studies involving more than 40,000 people, researchers say the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids to heart health are clear and merit taking action to prevent unnecessary deaths from heart disease.

The body doesn't produce fatty acids, so researchers recommend healthy people consume 500 milligrams daily of EPA plus DHA, and people with known heart disease or heart failure should aim for nearly twice that amount (at least 800 to 1,000 milligrams daily).

"There are clear health and heart benefits associated with increasing one's intake of foods that are rich in Omega-3s, including oily fish like salmon, sardines, trout, herring, and oysters" researcher Carl Lavie, MD, medical director of cardiac rehabilitation and prevention at Ochsner Medical Center in New Orleans, says in a news release. "Patients should talk with their doctors about whether a fish oil supplement is needed to get the right amount and, in turn, benefit from the associated cardiovascular protection."
DHA and EPA Help Heart

The study, published in the Journal of the American College of Cardiology, reviewed the findings of four studies comparing the benefits of omega-3 fatty acids in heart disease prevention over the past 30 years.

The results showed that omega-3 fatty acids' strongest protective effect appears to be in people with established heart disease after a heart attack. In these people, a daily dose of DHA and EPA is associated with a 30% reduction in the risk of heart-related death.

But researchers say healthy people can also benefit from including omega-3s in their diet. Research shows a diet rich in omega-3s can also reduce the risk of hardening of the arteries (atherosclerosis), irregular heartbeat (arrhythmia), heart attack, sudden cardiac death, and heart failure.

Most of the evidence for the benefits of fish oil comes from the use of DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) and EPA (eiosapentaenoic acid), which are the long-chain fatty acids in the omega-3 family.

Lavie says EPA and DHA work by getting into the membranes of cells and by doing so may help improve the heart's electrical activity, muscle tone, plaque stabilization, blood pressure, and other aspects of heart health.

The study also showed that there was a smaller benefit of omega-3 fatty acids in preventing 9% of heart failure deaths in people with heart failure who took omega-3 supplements. Given heart failure patients' grave prognosis, Lavie says this is impressive.

"If we translate this finding, it means that we only need to treat 56 patients for four years to prevent one death," Lavie says. "And we are talking about a very safe and relatively inexpensive therapy."

By Jennifer Warner
WebMD Health News

Raw foods as best Anti-Aging Supplements

2009-08-12T19:46:00.002+07:00

One of the best anti-aging supplements is eating raw foods. This is because cooking actually removes some of the nutrition in food. Taking them in a raw form gives your body more of the vitamins and minerals present in food than otherwise. Here is a looks at some important raw foods you can intake to reduce the effects of aging:

* Raw foods that have anti-oxidant properties are best because they counteract free radicals which are responsible for causing aging. Foods like carrots, apricots, oranges, lemons and grapefruit are high in anti-oxidant properties and they should be taken everyday in order to minimize the effects of aging.
* Raw foods containing high levels of enzymes gives your body much needed vitamins and minerals. Any deficiencies in vitamins and minerals fasten the process of aging.
* Raw foods rich in sulphur helps to maintain skin, hair, nails and joints in a good condition. Foods such as asparagus, garlic, onion, broccoli, red pepper, watercress and seeds like hemp seeds and pumpkin seeds are rich in sulphur.

Raw foods containing phytochemicals such as broccoli, cauliflower, spinach, berries, carrots, cocoa, celery, and bell pepper will help to counteract aging effects because phytochemicals prevent damage and have anti-aging properties.
* Raw foods rich in vitamins E, C, B and A, and Zinc improve the body’s resistance to ill-health. This is because they help to boost the immunity system and give way for healthy looking skin. Thy also help to rule out eczema.

Raw foods serve as good anti-aging supplements primarily because they abound in vitamins and minerals, which help to keep body healthy and strong. They can eliminate toxins, which in time bring out aging. If you have a diet that is rich in raw sea vegetables, considerable level of body toxins gets reduced.

When having raw foods ensure that you take ones rich with antioxidants. A very powerful anti-oxidant is Coenzyme Q10, which is present in every body cell, but its level reduces with age. Taking foods such as spinach, broccoli and peanuts maintains the balance and reduces the effects of old age. Ensuring that 65% – 75% of your food intake is raw food, helps to bring about better health and counteract the signs of aging.

via helpfulhealthtips

How to Speed Up Performance on a Slow Windows Computer - Optimise Your Computer Fast

2009-08-12T19:32:00.002+07:00

Does your computer keep freezing on you when you are using it? Does it take what seems forever for windows to start up? This is more common than you might think and you do not have to call a technician to fix it.

This is what you need to do to overcome a slow computer.

#1 The very first thing you need to do is to free up more memory and more space on your hard drive. The easiest way to do this is by removing any unwanted programs, unused programs, deleting pictures, documents and files you no longer need or use.

#2 The next thing you need to do is to remove all your temporary files. Do not confuse this with temporary internet files. These can take up a large amount of disk space. You do this by running the windows disk cleanup program which can be found from the start menu->programs->accessories->system tools->disk cleanup.

The next step is the most important step to optimising your computer and making it fast again.

#3 Run a free registry scan with good registry cleaner. This will detect any entries that are not needed, invalid start up files, and entries for programs that have already been removed that are making the registry too big and slowing down your computer. Running a good registry cleaner will detect these quickly and show you how to remove them with one click.

Doing these steps in this order will speed up your computer, making it run faster and start faster and prevent registry errors causing it to crash, or worse, failing to start at all.

David S Marshall |ezinearticles

How to Teach Children Socially Acceptable Behavior

2009-08-12T19:23:00.000+07:00

Children that are new to a daycare environment are just learning which behaviors are socially acceptable and how to manage their natural impulse to react physically to events that frustrate or anger them. Here are a few tips to help children learn which behaviors are socially acceptable.

Instructions

Step 1

It's important to model positive conflict resolution and non-physical problem solving. When searching for a daycare, it's helpful to see if gentle interactions are used to redirect children to good choices. Pay attention to whether teachers speak to children at their eye level and use children's names when addressing them.

Step 2

Encourage and praise children's attempts to use good conflict resolution and problem solving.

Step 3

Help children develop vocabulary necessary to describe feelings, needs and frustrations. Try not to ask yes or no questions. Ask questions that require an explanation and help the child verbalize what he or she is feeling.

Step 4

Redirect children away from inappropriate choices and toward appropriate choices. Remember to praise children and recognize their accomplishments.

Step 5

Offer opportunities in the program to practice social skills such as problem solving, cooperation, turn taking, and sharing. In addition, many accidents, child behavior challenges and inappropriate guidance issues can be avoided by providing a program that is rich in interesting and engaging activities. Spend some time in each childcare center looking for the following:

KinderCare |ehow

OCZ Goes Mainstream With Indilinx-Based Solid 2 SSDs

2009-08-12T19:16:00.002+07:00

OCZ Technology is at it again, this time pushing out a new range of solid state drives for the laypeople in the crowd. The Indilinx-based devices, which proudly boast a Solid 2 Series label, are designed to slot neatly into notebooks that can hold 2.5" form factor drives. The MLC based solution was designed with mainstream consumers (as opposed to hardcore tech enthusiasts) in mind, utilizing an Indilinx controller and offering decent performance that'll definitely crush traditional hard drives.

OCZ Solid 2 SATA II 2.5” Solid State Drives feature up to 125MB/s read and 100MB/s write speeds, 64MB of onboard cache, and unique performance optimization (which we uncovered last week) to keep the drives at peak performance. Available in capacities of 60(64)GB and 120(128)GB, the drives should start flowing to retail channels soon, though pricing remains a mystery for now.

OCZ Technology Introduces the Most Affordable Indilinx-Based Solid State Drive Solution with the Value Oriented Solid 2 Series

San Jose, CA—August 11, 2009—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today unveiled the OCZ Solid 2 SATA II 2.5” Solid State Drive (SSD) Series, the ultra-affordable MLC based solid state storage solution for mainstream consumers looking to take advantage of flash based storage technology. Offering a faster and more durable alternative to traditional hard drives in a cost-efficient SSD, the Solid 2 delivers reliable performance without the high price normally associated with SSD drives.

“While solid state drives offer exceptional performance, the high cost of ownership has been a barrier for many consumers,” commented Eugene Chang, Vice President of Product Development at the OCZ technology Group. “It has always been our goal to make quality SSD drives affordable to the complete range of customers. By making use of the proven Indilinx controller coupled new flash technology, OCZ is excited to introduce the Solid 2 that delivers increased reliability and performance over competing traditional and solid state solutions at a price point that is truly within reach of mainstream consumers.”

For users looking to upgrade their laptops or configure a cost effective RAID array in their home or office desktop PC, the OCZ Solid 2 Series is an excellent starting point into the world of SSDs. This line provides the best of both worlds —the performance and advantages of solid-state technology at an incredible value. Based on the quality Indilinx controller, the Solid 2 Series delivers an enhanced computing experience with faster application loading, snappier data access, shorter boot-ups, and longer battery life. Solid 2 SSDs feature HDD-dominating access times, up to 125MB/s read and 100MB/s write speeds, 64MB of onboard cache, and unique performance optimization to keep the drives at peak performance.

OCZ Solid 2 drives feature a durable yet lightweight alloy housing, and because OCZ SSDs have no moving parts, the drives are more rugged than conventional hard drives. Available in ample storage capacities of 60(64)GB and 120(128)GB, Solid 2 SSDs state drives meet the needs of users looking for a quality hard drive replacement.

Designed for ultimate reliability, Solid 2 Series SSDs have an excellent 1.5 million hour mean time between failure (MTBF) ensuring peace of mind over the long term. OCZ also offers a leading 3-year warranty and award-winning technical support with the Solid 2 Series, making SSDs a more viable upgrade for cautious users requiring ultimate levels of customer service.

Shawn Oliver | OCZ Technology

The ins and outs of Windows-based deduplication

2009-08-12T19:08:00.001+07:00

All those copies of data increase hardware, power, and IT costs. Data deduplication is the answer, and Windows shops may already have the core technology in place

"Storage is cheap!" you might say. Well, certainly disk storage has become cheaper over time, and there are all sorts of products on the market taking advantage of the price reduction with virtual tape libraries and megastorage appliances. But keep in mind the fact that more disk storage comes at a cost beyond the vendor price tag: power to support and cool, space to house, IT administrators to oversee. You have to factor in all these costs. Products that provide single-instance storage (SIS) and data deduplication can really help mitigate the expense of so-called cheap storage.

You may not realize that you have some of the necessary ingredients to take advantage of deduplication within your Microsoft server environment. But you do.

[ Get the latest on storage developments with InfoWorld's Technology: Storage newsletter. | Learn which vendors support Windows Server 2008's deduplication capabilities. ]

First, let's be clear on what deduplication is: Data deduplication is the process of eliminating data redundancies at the storage repository or from network traffic. You can deduplicate either at the object (file) level, which is also called "single instancing," or at the block (subfile) level, which saves much more space.

Data is naturally duplicated due to mass distribution or data processing needs. Most IT organizations maintain multiple copies of the same file in different repositories, or even a few iterations of files you are working on. In addition, backup applications produce and maintain multiple copies of files so that they are available for recovery. Backup processes have contributed greatly to the explosion of data proliferation in the datacenter.

Consider a simple scenario. An e-mail is sent out with a 10MB video to 100 people. If the e-mail platform doesn't have SIS capabilities and the backup product doesn't have a deduplication feature, you are looking at backing up 1GB of data (which takes space, time, and money) as opposed to a single instance of 10MB.

J.PETER BRUZZESE | infoworld

Microsoft Purchase Office.com Domain of Belgium

2009-08-11T11:39:00.002+07:00

Microsoft finally buy a domain name Office.com, preparation for discharge Office10. Office.com previously owned by the company with the name of Belgian origin ContactOffice.

Microsoft does not mention how much money they spent to take Office.com. While the user will move to Office.com contactoffice.com

Below is the announcement of Office.com, a user must move the data to the new site and change the e-mail address:

Dear Office.com Users,

As you know from the recent email we sent you, we will be transitioning the operation of your Virtual Office account to ContactOffice.com during the next 30 days.
As part of this transition, on Monday, June 29, 2009, we changed email addresses in the office.com domain to ones in the contactoffice.com domain.

To access your existing account, you will now need to log in at Virtual office

As of Friday, July 31, 2009, Office.com will no longer be available so please be sure to bookmark this URL for future use. Also, if you use POP or IMAP with Office.com you will need to change your settings to pop.contactoffice.net and imap.contactoffice.net respectively.

For new users looking please visit us at 'http://office.contactoffice.com to register for your free subscription.

We are committed to making this transition as seamless as possible and are working hard to minimize any inconvenience these changes may cause. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me by email at tom@contactoffice.com or by telephone, toll free, at 1-866-675-1776.

Sincerely yours,
Tom Graham and the Office.com Team

How to Stay Healthy During the Influenza A (H1N1) Pandemic

2009-08-11T06:39:00.002+07:00

The recent outbreak of swine-origin influenza Virus A (also termed H1N1), or more commonly known as "swine flu," has many people concerned about their health. These concerns are justified, but need to be placed into perspective to avoid a social panic that will not benefit anyone. Swine flu is a respiratory disease found in pigs caused by Type A flu virus. It is contagious the same way any other known influenza virus is transmitted, which includes person-to-person contact via coughing and sneezin

Swine flu cannot be transmitted by eating or handling pork, and properly cooked pork is safe to be consumed. Also, as with any influenza outbreak, people with underlying medical conditions such as cancer, HIV/AIDS, poorly controlled diabetes and similar clinical conditions are likely more susceptible to acquiring swine flu if they come into contact with the virus. It is essential to remember that for anyone, regardless of their health status, the only way to get swine flu is by coming into contact with a person actively infected with a confirmed case of H1N1. In this article I will help you to understand how to prevent swine flu, review the symptoms of infection and examine prevention/treatment interventions that are effective and available.

Instructions

Step 1

The basics of infection are simple and you already know them; however, it may be a good time for you to sit down with your family and review them:

• Eat a healthy diet that includes plenty of fruits and vegetables.
• Keep yourself hydrated by drinking enough water.
• Get adequate rest and exercise to help your immune system function properly.
• Wash your hands frequently with soap and water or one of the many over-the-counter hand sanitizers. Hands should always be washed after using the bathroom, eating, sneezing, coughing or touching any object that may be contaminated with significant bacteria or viruses. A simple-to-follow-rule is that if you have any doubt about whether or not you should be washing your hands, then you should indeed be washing them!
• If you develop cold-like symptoms, even mild ones, it is best to stay home from work, school and social events for the time being. Your cold symptoms will more likely be the “common cold” that will typically respond to your usual self-care interventions. However, if they worsen you should contact your medical provider immediately.

* The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also suggest that anyone who is strongly suspected of having contracted swine flu be asked to wear a disposable face mask to prevent possible transmission to others.

Step 2

Know the signs and symptoms of swine flu in order to protect yourself and your family. Remember that swine flu presents itself like virtually any other flu-like syndrome, so while it is prudent to be cautious, the odds of you not coming into contract with someone with cold-like or allergy symptoms this time of year are fairly remote--so please do not overreact. Remember, the only way to get infected with swine flu is to come into contact with someone who has a confirmed case of the virus or by touching a swine flu virus-contaminated object.

The basic symptoms of swine flu include: fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills and fatigue. Diarrhea and vomiting have also been reported, but to a lesser extent.

Step 3

Since it's not yet known how easily swine flu is transmitted between people, it may be wise to avoid close contact with people who are displaying flu-like symptoms; however, it may not be necessary to isolate yourself from an ill individual if you feel well and are taking the precautions listed in Step 1. While not yet the standard of care, the ill person might provide you with a level of protection if they wear a disposable mask covering their nose and mouth while in your presence.

Step 4

If you have come into contact with a person suspected of having or confirmed with swine flu there are two drugs that can be taken to prevent you from becoming infected with the virus or to lessen the severity of the disease. Currently only two out of the five anti-viral flu drugs are effective against swine flu. The two effective medications are: Oseltamivir (brand name Tamiflu ®) to prevent and treat in people 1 year of age or older and Zanamivir (brand name Relenza ®) is approved to treat people 7 years and older and to prevent Influenza A and B virus infection in people 5 years and older. Currently, there are health authorities testing other medications, but as of now only Tamiflu and Relenza are known to help with swine flu infection. Generally, treatment for swine flu is a 5-day course of therapy and 10 days are required for prevention control. It is also important to note that these drugs are not in short supply or difficult to manufacture. There is no reason to stock pile drugs or panic.

Step 5

Stay informed. The science and knowledge of swine flu infection and treatment is rapidly evolving on a daily basis, which is normal when there is a flu breakout. Newly developed information should not be considered a concern or reason to panic. It should be viewed as scientific advancement; the health care community is learning more about this emerging infection.

Tips & Warnings

* Swine flu is a real health issue, but one that can be better controlled with correct information and prevention strategies.

* Review and re-review your prevention interventions listed in this article and make sure each member of your family or community understands them.

* Information and treatment are expected to change due to the advances in our ability to learn about swine flu and to communicate more effectively worldwide via the Internet.

Richard Ferri | ehow

Windows 7 Upgrade Chart Sparks Spat

2009-08-11T06:17:00.004+07:00

A chart Microsoft provided to a Wall Street Journal columnist that spells out which versions of Windows and XP can be upgraded to Windows 7 without a cumbersome "clean install" is causing a dust-up between bloggers and prompted Apple users to poke fun at Microsoft's upgrade process.

The chart, which Microsoft provided to Walt Mossberg, who writes the popular "Personal Technology" column in the Wall Street Journal, consists of a 66-cell matrix that details what XP and Vista users face when upgrading to Microsoft's next operating system.

Only 14 of the cells indicate an "in-place" upgrade, one that retains all data and applications, but simply swaps out the OS. Vista Home Premium, for example, can be upgraded in-place only to Windows 7 Home Premium or Windows 7 Ultimate.

The remaining 52 cells show where users must do a "custom" install, also often referred to as a "clean" install. That process requires users to back up data and settings, install Windows 7, then restore the data and re-install all applications.

Ed Bott, a noted Windows blogger and author, called the chart a public relations mistake -- "Someone at Microsoft is secretly working for Apple," he said in a Thursday post -- but said concerns over the size of the matrix, and the overwhelming number of "custom" cells, is overblown.

"Most customers considering an upgrade will be running one of a handful of Windows products," Bott said. "If they are using Windows XP, they'll need to do a custom install to move up to Windows 7. That was announced ages ago. Most Vista users will have clear and logical upgrade paths from their current edition to the same edition of Windows 7."

Bott crafted his own version of the chart that reduced the cell count to 14, half of the cells marked as suitable for "in-place" upgrading.

Joe Wilcox, a former JupiterResearch analyst and now a blogger and contributor to BetaNews, countered Bott's contention that things are not as bad as the Microsoft chart showed. "Ed uses smoke and mirrors -- a mistake regarding Windows Starter -- to try and discredit the chart," Wilcox argued.

"God bless him, Ed spent hours redoing Microsoft's chart to something simpler," Wilcox continued. "It's too simple, ignoring the many real 32-bit and 64-bit combinations that consumers will encounter as they decide on which Windows 7 edition is right for them."

Apple fans and users have also waded into the rumpus.

In an entry yesterday to The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, "Fake Steve Jobs" wrote of the chart: "Green boxes represent upgrades that will be painful but won't kill you. Blue boxes represent upgrades that will kill you." (The diary is written by Dan Lyons, the technology columnist for Newsweek who uses the moniker Fake Steve Jobs.)

Fake Steve Jobs then linked to a page he said represents Apple's upgrade path from Mac OS X 10.4 and 10.5 to the upcoming Mac OS X 10.6, aka Snow Leopard, which is to launch next month.

The Cult of Mac blog did one better, aping the Microsoft chart with Apple's version for Snow Leopard.

Similar charts have popped up on other Apple-oriented sites.

"It's definitely dumb marketing," said Michael Silver, an analyst with Gartner, when asked for his take on the chart Microsoft provided Mossberg. "But you have to realize that the vast, vast majority of Windows 7 will ship pre-installed on new PCs."

For those who do upgrade to Windows 7, rather than buy a new PC at some point down the road with the OS pre-installed, the process isn't as onerous as the chart -- and Wilcox -- hint, Silver added. "For the majority of Vista users, they will pop the 32-bit Windows 7 disc in and be done," he said. "And most new PCs shipped to consumers over the past three years shipped with Vista anyway. Really, the biggest issue should be to know if they're running 64-bit, which has shipped on some consumer PCs."

And the jabs from the Apple side of the aisle aren't fair, said Silver. "Apple has an entirely different business model," he said. "They don't have a large enterprise market they need to support, and they don't have as much and as big a variety of legacy [applications]. Controlling the hardware and catering to consumers allows them to greatly simplify things.

"Windows users will always need to know a bit more about their systems than Mac users," Silver explained. It comes with the broader [Windows] ecosystem and deeper legacy."

Microsoft has slated an Oct 22 launch for Windows 7, although developers and IT professionals were allowed to download the final code starting yesterday. Apple, meanwhile, has only promised to deliver Snow Leopard sometime during September. It has not yet nailed down a specific date.

Gregg Keizer, Computerworld

Sony's S-Series Walkman Emerges; It's No iPod Killer

2009-08-11T06:02:00.002+07:00

Sony's X-series Walkman (otherwise known as the OLED Walkman) has barely had time to make a splash in the US market, and already Sony is preparing to launch anoher music player. Based on some believable details leaked on Materiel's website (a French e-tailer), the new S-Series Walkman will arrive in 8GB (NWZ-S544) and 16GB (NWZ-S545) models, and while we doubt it'll compete with the heralded iPod touch, the built-in kickstand should make it suitable for movie watching, regardless.

The display has a 2.4" QVGA display, stereo speakers, a built-in FM tuner, a microphone, a rechargeable battery and a pretty crazy battery life figure. We're talking about 42 hours of audio playback or 6.5 hours for video. Also of note, the device looks to support a litany of file format, and the estimated $180 (8GB)/$211 (16GB) price tags don't seem all that outrageous. Of course, we've still got to wait for Sony to confirm this unit as real, but really, we're just waiting for the company to confirm a US price and release date.
Via: Sony Insider

Nvidia Warranty Costs Much Higher Than Expected

2009-08-10T19:56:00.002+07:00

Nvidia’s second quarter profits are evidence that poor quality costs much more than just bad PR. The company recorded a charge of $119 million to cover warranty costs associated with faulty die and weak packaging materials used in its graphics chips. This is significantly better than the $196 million it had already written off for the same reason, but it was still much higher than analysts were expecting.

Most of these issues can be traced back to a faulty solder bump that was discovered in its 8M-series mobile graphics chip. Nvidia estimated at the time that the warranty costs could be somewhere in the range of $200 million, but clearly the $315+ million they have already spent shows they were perhaps a bit overly conservative in their estimates. This might be a result of the problem reportedly cropping up in G92 and G94 series mobile cards as well, but Nvidia has been pretty tight lipped on the issue.

When asked to comment on the charge Nvidia downplayed the impact and described them as a small distraction. Nvidia President and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang claims it hasn’t impacted Nvidia’s ability to launch new products, and he expects profits to rise in the near future. Huang is being optimistic, but he is likely hoping to reassure investors who saw the company’s revenue drop this quarter to $776.5 million from $892.6 million only a year ago. “The company has invested in new products such as Tesla, a graphics processing unit for high-performance computing, and low-power Tegra chips for mobile devices. The products should start contributing to the revenue stream soon”, Huang said.

via maximumpc

Google vs Bing

2009-08-06T08:15:00.006+07:00

Enmity two giant software and Internet giants Google and Microsoft that is more exciting course. Even of late-summer heat again. One form of competition between the two services is Search Engine (search engine). Read also "Chrome Google Operating System" other forms of competition between the google microsoft.

You may already know that Microsoft has to change / update to its search engine, which was initially called msn (http://search.msn.com) now called bing (http://www.bing.com). While Google remains the best search engine (google.com), which has long been the / rule the world search engine.

Enmity between the two search engines (search engine) that has this interesting someone named Domagoi Pavlesic. He has the idea to combine (accommodate) the two search engines in one site search service that is given the name bing vs google.
Search Engine - Google vs. Bing

Bing vs. Google with a http://bing-vs-google.com search combine the results from this second search engine (google and bing) in the two frames side by side in a one-page / page. So we can see a direct comparison of results from both a keyword search engine is.

According to me, this is a site search service of interest to try. Because we can get search results from the two giant search engines are different as well. This can also help broaden our search results.

Sony Launches Two New E-Book Readers

2009-08-06T07:32:00.003+07:00

Sony today released a pair of new e-book readers the company hopes will help put it in a better position to do battle with Amazon's popular Kindle. As such, Sony also plans to reduce all new releases and best sellers at its e-book store from $11.99 down to $9.99 each.

On the hardware front, Sony's new Reader Pocket Edition weighs 7.76 ounces and sports a 5-inch display. There's enough memory to store 350 standard e-books, but no expansion slot for memory cards. Users can expect about two weeks of use before having to recharge the battery. The pocket-sized reader is available in navy blue, rose, and silver with an MSRP of $200.

As the name implies, Sony's new Reader Touch Edition ups the ante with a touchscreen display, which supports finger or stylus enabled note taking with the virtual keyboard. It comes with five adjustable font size and expansion slots for both Memory Stick PRO Duo and SD cards. This one comes in red, black, or silver with an MSRP set at $300.

source : maximumpc

How to Have a Successful Job Interview

2009-08-06T07:25:00.004+07:00

Getting the interview is the first big step, but now that you are in the room with the interviewer--what do you do? Do you just sit there and answer questions like you're in an interrogation? Or do you brag about your accomplishments? The most important thing to keep in mind is--it's also their time to impress you. Here’s how to rule your interview.

Instructions

Step 1

Make eye contact, but don’t stare. This is a simple rule of thumb. But not coming off as a creepy stalker is a fine line. Making eye contact tells the person you are confident about who you are and are not afraid to let people see that.

Step 2

Try to match the posture and position of the interviewer. If your interviewer is sitting upright with their hands folded, you should try to sit the same way without acting as a mirror. The interviewer is looking for people that will fit into the company. Showing the same mannerisms conveys that message. On the other side, if the interviewer is laid back and relaxed, take that as a sign that you can lean back in your chair and get comfortable.

Step 3

Do not be too serious. Many people give you insight into their personality within minutes of meeting them. You should know in short order if cracking a one-line joke is appropriate. Don’t put on an entire comedy routine, but show the person that you know when to take yourself lightly. They already know you have the experience from your resume. Now is the time to show your personality.

Step 4

Do not be afraid to ask questions. This is not a one-way interview. Ask as many questions about the company as you can without letting it seem as if you do not know anything about them. You should always research the company you are interviewing with before you go. Asking a question shows you have interest in the company, not just interested in a paycheck. Plus it gives you more information to help you decide whether or not you even want to work for the organization in the first place.

Step 5

Be confident, but not cocky. There is nothing wrong with talking about your accomplishments; that is the reason they called you in for an interview. But be aware of your attitude while relaying the information. Don’t just talk about the results; add in what you did to make it happen. Keep in mind that there is another person waiting to get this job. Do not give an impression that your attitude could be a potential problem.

Kristen Fischer | ehow

Tips for your kid's health

2009-08-05T17:00:00.003+07:00

Use a sunscreen with a SPF of at least 30 and apply it thirty minutes before your child goes outside. Sunscreen sticks go on easily and evenly; coloured sunscreens will reveal if you've missed a spot. An adult should always supervise a child swimming in the pool or at a lake. Remember that while floatation devices such as water wings add buoyancy and help your child stay up in the water, they are not lifesaving devices.

Bathing suit folliculitis, a bacterial infection that causes a rash on the legs and buttocks, often strikes young girls who sit in wet bathing suits all day. The solution? Get out of the wet suit and into some dry clothes as soon as possible and the problem usually resolves on its own.
Cool baths or showers, followed by powder or cornstarch, can help clear up prickly heat - an itchy, red rash that usually appears in the folds of the skin.
Ticks and mosquitoes can transmit several diseases. For the best protection, dress your child in light-coloured pants (tuck them into her socks) and a long-sleeved shirt when she'll be playing near a wooded area where ticks live. Also apply insect repellent to her clothes and any exposed skin to protect her skin.

source : sitagita

Heart Care and Cholesterol Control

2009-08-05T16:43:00.002+07:00

AN INDULGENT LIFESTYLE AND AN INADEQUATE DIET ARE TWO MAJOR CAUSES OF HEART DISEASE. TO STAY FIT HERE ARE A FEW MEASURES OF CARE AND CONTROL

Heart Diseases and Hypertension which lead to heart or other organ failures has been on the rise for the past 2 decades. People above the age of 40 have been suffering from such problems due to their unbalanced dietary habits. Its always advisable to control these factors if you want to reduce your risk.

Preventing Coronary Diseases
When there are excess deposits of fat, cholesterol or other substances in the inner wall of arteries, the arteries narrow and harden into a condition known as astherosclerosis, the most common cause of heart trouble. A planned diet and regular exercise are the key to prevent atheroclerosis.

Friendly and Unfriendly FATS
FAT should not exceed 30 per cent of your total calorie intake, which includes a maximum of 10 per cent saturated fat and 10 per cent mono-unsaturated fats. Saturated fatty acids in full-cream milk and red meat increase your cholesterol level. Use non-fat or low-fat milk and milk products instead of full-cream milk and avoid sources of saturated fatty acids like lard, butter, cream, palm oil, coconut oil, ghee and vanaspati

Mono-unsaturated fats that lower cholesterol as well as prevent formation of blood clots are present in olive, canola, peanut and mustard oils. It’s best to use these while cooking.

Omega-3, a fatty acid that prevents atherosclerosis is present in foods like herring, mackerel, salmon, tuna, soyabean, walnuts and butternuts. Take these regularly in small quantities to prevent atherosclerosis.

Cutting Cholesterol
Dietary cholesterol should be limited to 300 mg per day. Since it largely comes from animal products, consumption of non-vegetarian foods, whole milk and milk products hould be restricted. For example, an egg has 250 gm of cholesterol and it is not advisable to take more than two to three eggs a week.

Take healthy alternatives like chicken, fish, beans, vegetable, fruits, bread, pulses, wholewheat flour, cereals, rice, millet, skimmed milk and skimmed milk products and vegetable oils like corn, sesame, soyabean, sunflower, canola, olive and mustard.

Heart disease is less frequent among those who eat high carbohydrate and fibre-rich foods. Carbohydrate and fibre-rich foods. Carbohydrates should provide at least 55 per cent of your daily calories. Foods like bread, chapattis, cereals, rice and dals provide an adequate amount of carbohydrates.

How to control Chest Pain:

* Boil 4-5 pods of garlic in a glass of milk and consume the garlic pods with
milk daily to avoid chest pain.

* Pound the dates with the seeds and eat them every day.
* Increase the intake of ginger and lime in your diet.
* Pound urad dhal to powder and eat it regularly.
* Drink a glass of milk mixed with kadukai powder every night before going to bed.
* Take a spoon of tulsi juice with honey in empty stomach every day

source : healthtips

How To Fast Improve Your Adsense Earnings

2009-08-05T16:29:00.002+07:00

This is 5 Ways How To Improve Your Adsense Earnings

If webmasters poverty to decriminalize their websites, the enthusiastic artefact to do it is finished Adsense. There are lots of webmasters struggling hornlike to acquire whatever beatific money a period finished their sites. But then whatever of the “geniuses” of them are enjoying hundreds of dollars a period from Adsense ads on their websites. What makes these webmasters assorted from the another category is that they’re assorted and they conceive discover of the box.

The ones who hit been there and finished it hit quite whatever multipurpose tips to support those who’d poverty to stake into this field. Some of these tips hit boosted quite a a aggregation of earnings in the instance and is continuously doing so.

Here are whatever 5 proven structure on how prizewinning to meliorate your Adsense earnings.

1. Concentrating on digit info of Adsense ad. The digit info that worked substantially for the eld is the Large Rectangle (336X280). This aforementioned info hit the artefact to termination in higher CTR, or the CTRs. Why opt this info discover of the whatever you crapper use? Basically because the ads module countenance aforementioned connatural scheme links, and people, existence tradition to clicking on them, utter these types of links. They haw or haw not undergo they’re clicking on your Adsense but as daylong as there are clicks, then it module every be for your advantage.

2. Create a bespoken reach for your ads. Choose a colouration that module go substantially with the scenery of your site. If your locate has a albescent background, essay to ingest albescent as the colouration of your ad abut and background. The intent to patterning the colours is to attain the Adsense countenance aforementioned it’s conception of the scheme pages. Again, This module termination to more clicks from grouping temporary your site.

3. Remove the Adsense from the lowermost pages of your locate and locate them at the top. Don’t essay to conceal your Adsense. Put them in the locate where grouping crapper wager them quickly. You’ll be astonished how the disagreement between Adsense locations crapper attain when you wager your earnings.

4. Maintain course to germane websites. If you conceive whatever sites are meliorate soured than the others, locate your ads there and essay to maintaining and managing them. If there’s already lots of Adsense locate into that destined site, locate yours on crowning of every of them. That artefact traveller module wager your ads prototypal upon feeding into that site.

5. Try to automate the intromission of your Adsense cipher into the webpages using SSI (or computer lateral included). Ask your scheme chief if your computer supports SSI or not. How do you do it? Just spend your Adsense cipher in a book file, spend it as “adsense text”, and upload it to the stem directory of the scheme server. Then using SSI, call the cipher on another pages. This counsel is a instance saver especially for those who are using semiautomatic tender generators to create pages on their website.

These are whatever of the tips that hit worked substantially for whatever who poverty to create hundreds and modify thousands on their websites. It’s essential to undergo though that ads are displayed because it fits the welfare of the grouping watch them. So centering on a limited matter should be your direct determine because the displays module be especially targeted on a matter that persons module be watch already.

Note also that there are whatever another Adsense distribution the aforementioned matter as you. It’s prizewinning to conceive of making a beatific ad that module be somewhat assorted and unequalled than the ones already done. Every clickthrough that visitors attain is a saucer for you so attain every utter calculate by making your Adsense something that grouping module definitely utter on.

Tips presented by those who hit boosted their earnings are meet guidelines they poverty to deal with others. If they’ve someways worked wonders to some, maybe it crapper impact wonders for you too. Try them discover into your ads and wager the termination it module bring.

If others hit finished it, there’s null criminal disagreeable it discover for yourself.

source:various source

How to Buy the Best Auto Insurance Online

2009-08-04T18:21:00.002+07:00

Since the advent of the internet and it's emergence of the 1990's, the idea of moving your service out of the high-street and onto the information superhighway has never been more prominent. Many land-based operations have sought to take their businesses and reputations online as either a replacement or addition to their existing services.

Selling a service online has far reaching benefits for many different businesses. There are no overheads, your products and services can reach a larger target audience and much of the service can be automated to save on unnecessary employee costs. This offers benefits back to the consumer as well. Because profit margins aren't being swallowed up by extortionate rents and other costs, the savings can be passed back to the customer to make a service more competitive amongst its rivals.

One such area is the world of online insurance quotations. The days of visiting several offices over a period of hours have long gone to be replaced by a series of one-stop shops that gather information from everybody and present the prices to the consumer with just the click of a button.

Most insurance companies still have their own individual web sites to deal with existing customers or potential new business familiar with their brand. But for the most part, most online business comes through the increasing number of price comparison web sites where auto insurance makes up a massive percentage of the market. The use of a price comparison web site means the consumer can look at all the prices and services of many different companies without having to spend large amounts of time doing so.

Using a price comparison site is incredibly easy. First, you'll need to locate a site but popular choices in the UK are Confused, Compare the Market and Money Supermarket. All of these sites are free to use but consumers must register first. This helps the site to feed information back to your e-mail address based on your site activity.

To find a quote for auto insurance, simply click on the insurance option and the online form will gather relevant information to ultimately deliver a series of quotations.

You will have to give personal information such as your name, address and age as well as information about the vehicle you want to insure. You will be asked about your driving history, any claims or accidents you may have had and also any driving convictions that are on your drivers license. Once all the relevant information is gathered, the data is assessed and a series of prices for insuring your vehicle will be displayed on the screen.

These prices will vary depending on the type of policy the insurance company is offering plus any additional features that are included in that particular policy such as breakdown recovery or a protected no-claims bonus.

The site will send a reference number of the page you visited to your e-mail address so you can access it again, and this reference number can also be used to save time when actually taking out a policy as the insurance companies have it stored to their database as well.

To learn much more about the different types of insurance rates, visit AllAboutInsuranceRates.com where you'll find this and much more, including auto insurance, life insurance, commercial insurance, and how to get the best car insurance rates.

Leo Fitzpatrick | ezinearticles

Saving Money on Auto Insurance

2009-08-04T17:46:00.004+07:00

If you have a bike, you required insurance, still if you do not predict needing it. You must have problem coverage any time you drive a vehicle, as well as a motorcycle. If you have finance on the bike, you will perhaps need more than just problem coverage. Though, before you buy a plan, make sure it is the finest and most reasonable option.

egin by discussion to the company that has your auto insurance policy. Talk to other riders and visit motorbike devotee websites to get thoughts about companies that offer insurance coverage.

If you find the quotation marks too high, there are a few things you be able to do to lower your charge. First, stay your driving documentation clean. Still if you have not at all ridden a bike, your automotive driving proof also plays a part. Owners of motorcycles recognize how critical it is to protect themselves, and their motorcycles for possible accidents. Motorcyclists are just like added consumers and love a great deal.

Most companies do not like the term cheap these days, they are fearful that the consumer will think the plan is poor quality, or with treatment insurance that it is not sufficient coverage. Insurance companies have their means of dropping the price of the premium for insurance. In adding up to dropping rates, they offer saving policies, and other choices in coverage that would in shape any driver's particular need.

usefulinsurancetips

7 Tax Tips For New Small Businesses

2009-08-04T17:30:00.001+07:00

The sun will come out tomorrow -- but in reference to when the unemployment rate is expected to peak north of 10 percent, just which "tomorrow" we're talking about depends on who you ask.

Tomorrow could very well be this time next year, according to about half of 49 leading economists surveyed by USA Today. Another 16% push that peak Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernake, however, expects that peak will occur much sooner, and begin to recede before the year is up.

Tired of the guessing game? As my small-business colleagues from around the blogosphere and I have been reporting for months on end -- even before the R-bomb was officially dropped late last year -- more and more people are taking their careers into their own hands and starting their own small businesses. Some call them "accidental entrepreneurs" -- Accidental? Really? -- but no matter what circumstances place you in a new small-business state of mind, the federal tax responsibilities that come along with them won't take care of themselves.

So hot off the press (that's an idiom), the IRS has served up the following checklist of basic tax considerations for anyone who has started or is about to start a business.

1. First, you must decide what type of business entity you are going to establish. The type your business takes will determine which tax form you have to file. The most common types of business are the sole proprietorship, partnership, corporation and S corporation.
2. The type of business you operate determines what taxes you must pay and how you pay them. The four general types of business taxes are income tax, self-employment tax, employment tax and excise tax.
3. An Employer Identification Number is used to identify a business entity. Generally, businesses need an EIN. Visit IRS.gov for more information about whether you will need an EIN. You can also apply online.
4. Good records will help you ensure successful operation of your new business. You may choose any record-keeping system suited to your business that clearly shows your income and expenses. Except in a few cases, the law does not require any special kind of records. However, the business you are in affects the type of records you need to keep for federal tax purposes.
5. Every business taxpayer must figure taxable income on an annual accounting period called a tax year. The calendar year and the fiscal year are the most common tax years used.
6. Each taxpayer must also use a consistent accounting method, which is a set of rules for determining when to report income and expenses. The most commonly used accounting methods are the cash method and an accrual method. Under the cash method, you generally report income in the tax year you receive it and deduct expenses in the tax year you pay them. Under an accrual method, you generally report income in the tax year you earn it and deduct expenses in the tax year you incur them.
7. Visit the Business section of IRS.gov for resources to assist entrepreneurs with starting and operating a new business.

If you're still on the fence about what kind of business to start, check out Research & Markets' compilation of 50 industries that have best weathered previous economic downturns, with a specific focus on small business industries.

by Gayle Kesten | businessknowhow

4 Easy Steps to a Whole New Look -- Without Spending a Dime

2009-08-04T17:27:00.001+07:00

Clothes can be expensive and are not to be wasted. Recycling clothes that don't work for you anymore makes as much sense as recycling the tons of glass, plastic, and other materials we use. Especially after the fashion magazines have lined up all the trends for the season, giving you that itch for something new, even if it is only one little dress. Okay, and maybe just a handbag. And that adorable shoe that simply needs to meet your foot. Your pulse starts racing right there in the store, and there go the savings! Not to fret.

Smart, stylish women everywhere have been decoding the system and feeding the need to purchase an entirely new wardrobe each and every season by hosting fun, inexpensive clothes-swapping parties. They are simple, low prep, outrageously funny, and bond-building in a way you can never predict. Here are the four easy steps to your great first event, and possibly a whole new look from a second-chance wardrobe:

Step One: Invite a few friends with varied fashion tastes and similar figures. They don't all have to be your exact size.

Step Two: Decide on an equal amount of clean bottoms, tops, shoes, accessories, and unopened beauty products to bring along as well as a potluck dish and/or fun cocktail or mocktail.

Step Three: Let the party begin! Crank up the music and ask each guest to walk the group through their collection, as a designer would, sharing the history of each garment -- the first-date dress, the major sale shoe, the job-winning interview blouse.

Step Four: Open the floor to bidding on each item, using your own items as currency to swap for the item of your choice. The owner makes the final decision as to the highest bid based on her personal preference.

At the end of the party, you will undoubtedly have at least one new item. What's left can then go to a charity. Do something proactive, productive, and fun!

Lloyd Boston | lifestyle.msn

Google guns for Microsoft Office in New Ad Campaign

2009-08-03T23:09:00.003+07:00

Google is launching an all-out offensive against Microsoft and its Microsoft Office software suite with a new ad campaign called "Going Google." In addition to being spattered all over the web, the new ads will also appear on billboards on four major U.S. highways that will give a new message about Google Apps everyday for a month. Said highways include the 101 in San Francisco, the West Side Hwy in New York, the Ike in Chicago, and Mass Pike in Boston.

The strategically placed ads, which will target IT managers stuck in traffic jams, will focus on how and why some 3,000 organizations are signing up to use Google Apps each day. According to Google, more than 1.75 million businesses, schools, and organizations have joined to use the various combinations of Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and other Google Apps.

Google's new ad campaign represents the latest in an ongoing war between the search giant and Microsoft. Google recently announced the development of its Chrome OS, while Microsoft recently announced a deal to take over Yahoo's search business.

Paul Lilly | maximumpc

How to Plan and Build a Business Part-Time

2009-07-26T18:07:00.002+07:00

At first, most potential entrepreneurs can't afford to quit their jobs to start a business full-time, so they "moonlight" their business on nights and weekends. Here are some tips on how to do it.

Instructions

Prepare

Step 1

Select a hobby you'd like to convert into a profitable business or a passion that you'd like to learn more about.

Step 2

Research, research, research. Read books and talk to people who have worked in the industry you're considering.

Step 3

Get a sense of how much income you can make in the first year or two, and what kind of financial investment you'll need to make.

Step 4

Prepare a plan to determine how much money you will need to make before you can quit your job, and how long it will take you to reach that goal.

Step 5

Be careful not to inappropriately use your employer's time and resources for your own business.

Step 6

Avoid telling your boss before you are ready.

Step 7

Keep your standards of performance up to protect your primary source of income.

Take Care of Family

Step 1

Take an occasional break from your work and devote yourself fully to your spouse and family.

Step 2

Remember to take vacations. You might not need it, but your family will.

Step 3

Budget money to help take care of your kids and housework, if you won't be available.

Tips & Warnings

* Let your spouse share in your dreams of entrepreneurial success--it will make him or her much more supportive.

* Starting a business part-time will create an unexpectedly large amount of hard work.

via ehow

10 Healthy Foods You NEED to Fall in Love With

2009-07-26T11:56:00.001+07:00

Here's 10 of the healthiest foods you can find. Have additional foods you would like to add? I would love to hear from you!

1. Bananas
According to The Georgia State of Health "What's for dinner tonight?" program, Bananas are a remedy for upset stomachs and help strengthen stomach lining against excess acid and ulcers. The pectin in bananas may be helpful in fighting colon cancer as well as lowering blood cholesterol.

2. Potatoes
According to the CDC, potatoes are a rich source of fiber, potassium and vitamin C. Like other fruits and vegetables, potatoes are a low calorie food and are free of fat, cholesterol, and sodium.

3. Acai Berry
They are calling it a "miracle food" and its benefits range from being high in protein and omega 6 and 9, to having dietary fiber and antioxidants.....and most importantly the Acai Berry is becoming a popular anti-aging source.

4. Brocolli
Broccoli is high in Vitamin A, Vitamin C and folate. Cup for cup, broccoli has as much Vitamin C as an orange and almost as much calcium as milk. Including broccoli in your low-fat diet along with a colorful variety of fruits and vegetables will help you to maintain a lower risk of some cancers, vision health, and strong bones and teeth. TIP: Purchase tight, compact florets with an even green or purple-green color. The size of broccoli heads does not indicate eating quality. Avoid yellowing florets and tough or woody stems.

5. Flaxseed
According to GA Healthinfo.gov, flaxseed is high in fiber, omega-3 fatty acids and phytochemicals called lignans. Flaxseed can help reduce total blood cholesterol and LDL ("bad") cholesterol levels - and, as a result, may help reduce the risk of heart disease. Flaxseed oil also contains omega-3 fatty acids, but it doesn't have the beneficial fiber that the seeds have.

TIP: Most nutrition experts recommend ground flaxseed because your body is better able to digest it. Whole flaxseed may pass through your intestine undigested, which means you won't get the health benefits of flaxseed.

6. Whole Grains
No other food group delivers numbers the same way whole grains do:

• Up to 36 percent lower risk of stroke
• Up to 30 percent drop in type 2 diabetes risk
• Up to 28 percent drop in heart disease risk

Plus, whole grains reduce the risk of colon cancer and obesity, maintain healthy gums, and reduce the buildup of dental plaque. (Source: The Whole Grains Council)

7. Quinoa
The 2,000yr-old "Mother Grain." Pronounced (Kin-Wa) Quinoa is highly appreciated for its nutritional value, as its protein content is very high (12-18%) making it a healthy choice for vegetarians and vegans. It is a good source of dietary fiber, phosphorus and is high in magnesium and iron. Quinoa is gluten-free and considered easy to digest. (Source: California School Board for Nutritional Education)

INTERESTING FACT: Because of all these characteristics, quinoa is considered a possible crop in NASA's Controlled Ecological Life Support System for long duration manned spaceflights.

8. Fennel
Fennel, the "sleeper" vegetable, is an excellent source of potassium, making it effective for lowering blood pressure. Typically associated with spicing up an Italian or Mediterranean dish, Fennel is also a very good source of fiber, and may help to reduce elevated cholesterol levels. Since fiber also removes potentially carcinogenic toxins from the colon, fennel bulb may also be useful in preventing colon cancer.

9. Avocado
Avocados are loaded with nutrients such as dietary fiber, vitamin B6, vitamin C, vitamin E, potassium, magnesium, and folate. They're also cholesterol and sodium free. This fruit is an excellent source of monounsaturated fat, which is good for heart health. Including avocados in your low-fat diet along with a colorful variety of fruits and vegetables will help you to maintain a lower risk of some cancers, vision health, and strong bones and teeth.

TIP: A ripe avocado is firm, yet yields to gentle pressure.

10. Soy
Eating 25 grams or more of soy protein daily can help lower levels of LDL (bad) cholesterol. Plus since it's low in saturated fat, soy is also a great source of lean protein. Look for natural sources of soy protein, like edamame, tempeh, or organic silken tofu. (Source: KingCounty.gov)

TIP: But watch the amount of salt in your soy. Some processed varieties like soy dogs can contain added sodium, which boosts blood pressure.

by Jeff Hopeck | ezinearticles

New "Sexy View" Malware Targets Mobile Devices

2009-07-21T07:47:00.002+07:00

The eventual creation of botnet(s) based on mobile devices rather than PCs has been theorized about for years, but no such malware has ever appeared in the real world—at least, not until now. Security researchers believe they may have found the first true mobile worm, dubbed "Sexy View" or "Sexy Space" depending on which version of the program one encounters.

The infected payload displays many of the characteristics of PC botnet software and is now more sophisticated than other handheld attacks that have appeared to date. The "now," in this case, is important, as Sexy View first hit the radar six months ago or more. The program has evolved considerably since it debuted, and is now capable of downloading and updating its SMS templates without user input. Such capability is considered a core component of a modern botnet; its new functionality elevates Sexy View/Space into a more severe threat category.

Sexy View exploits the same basic attack vector as PC-based malware. The program (identified as SymbOS.Exy.C by Symantec) spreads via a text message that invites viewers to download an apparently legitimate application. The badware's hook reportedly consists of the phrase "A very sexy girl, Try it now!," thus proving that human stupidity creates far more security problems than even the buggiest of operating systems. Once installed, the new application digs through one's personal details and contact list. The former data is forwarded on to a set of predetermined addresses, while the latter is used to bait a fresh series of hooks for users whose only thought processes occur below the belt.

The defining characteristic that elevates this little darling from "worm" to "malware," is that the malware is capable of phoning home and receiving new instructions from a command-and-control (C&C) server. Sexy View was written specifically to target Symbian OS, which is quite popular outside the United States. In another troubling twist, the Sexy View payload has earned signed application status, despite the fact that the signed application process is meant to prevent malicious software from garnering such authentication.

The nasty question at hand is how device manufacturers and mobile OS developers should guard against such attacks in the future, given the near-certainty that we'll only see more of them from this point forward. It would be nothing less than gobsmackingly surprising if the PC antivirus/antimalware industry didn't have some of its own ideas about that, but it's hard to see mobile users wanting to sacrifice the memory and performance (to say nothing of the battery life) necessary to keep an AV scanner resident and active on a smartphone.

In the meantime, don't open strange texts that link to programs claiming to offer sexy girls in broken Engrish.

Joel Hruska | hothardware

How to Choose a Reliable Mechanic on the Road

2009-07-21T07:37:00.002+07:00

Nothing can wreak havoc on a road trip like car trouble, but a good mechanic can take much of the anguish out of an untimely breakdown. Here are some tips on tracking down a reliable auto mechanic when you’re away from home.

Instructions

Step 1

Prepare in advance so you won’t be caught off guard and desperate if trouble does arise. For example, if you know you’ll be visiting the L.A. area in a few weeks, do some online research now to obtain some decent possibilities in that region.

Step 2

Check with the concierge or other staff members at the lodging where you’re staying. There’s a good chance they have helped other guests with the same problem, or will just know of someone through their own automotive needs in the past.

Step 3

Ask for some references, even if you don’t plan to call them. The fact that they provide you with some will be a pretty good sign to begin with.

Step 4

When calling around to garages, also ask about credentials, such as membership in ASE or good standing with the Better Business Bureau. Another good question to ask is whether they back up their repair work with warranties. Similarly, while visiting a garage, look for certification reflecting the training and knowledge of the shop’s mechanics.

Step 5

Consider the attitude and professionalism of the staff on hand. Are they helpful and courteous, or surly and off-putting? Trust your instincts if you get a bad feel based on the staff.

Step 6

Make sure the place you’re taking your car will provide a free estimate before beginning substantial work. This is standard procedure, and any repair shop refusing to cooperate should raise serious red flags.

Step 7

Try to find out if they have extensive experience working on your particular brand of car. Failing that, see if they specialize in foreign or domestic vehicles and pick the right match.

Step 8

Determine how you’ll get to and from the repair shop ahead of time, so you won’t have your choices too restricted by your location. Having a membership with an emergency road service company can be invaluable in these situations, since they can tow you free of charge to the best possible shop.

Tips & Warnings

Making sure your car is in decent working order before a long trip can truly help you avoid more serious problems during your travels.

Zach Chouteau | ehow

5 Organic Foods Every Woman Should Eat

2009-07-21T07:29:00.003+07:00

Here's a summary of what I consider to be the most important organic switches every woman should make, if she eats these foods.

# Daily Dairy Dose: Most women don't drink a lot of milk, but I know you're reaching for yogurt in the dairy case when you need a snack on the go. Organic yogurts don't contain added hormones and antibiotics and can have higher levels of omega-3s. Organic dairy products are not only good for our bodies - they can be much less damaging to the environment.

# Super Salads: Conventional lettuce has some of the highest levels of pesticides of any food. Choose fresh organic greens as a salad base, then slice in organic veggies to add color and vitamins. You'll benefit from almost an extra serving of fruits and vegetables a day when you choose organic greens because organic has as much as 25 percent more antioxidants.

# An Organic Apple a Day: Apples are second only to bananas on our fruit shopping lists, but most people don't know they can contain toxic pesticides and organophosphates, even when they're peeled. Choose organic apples as well as nectarines, peaches, pears, strawberries, cherries and imported grapes, as all these fruit are more vulnerable to pesticides.

# You Say Tomato, I Say Organic: The average American consumes about 90 pounds of tomatoes a year, mostly in sauces and catsup. Organic tomatoes have significantly more lycopene, an antioxidant that may lower cancer and heart disease risks and may do other wonderful things.

# Organic - It's What's for Dinner: Grass-fed beef is usually leaner than conventional beef and can contain about 5 times the good omega-3 fats. And choosing free-range beef promotes farming practices that help our environment as well.

# Bonus - Red, Red Wine: Scientists were happy to discover the health benefits of drinking a moderate amount of red wine: the antioxidant in the skin of red grapes might help slow aging, prevent cancer and do other wonderful things. Organic wines can average about 32 percent more antioxidants and go splendidly with a nice organic marinara and organic salad

Alan Greene | webmd

Ways How to Make Money Working From Home

2009-07-21T07:09:00.002+07:00

Money is something we all need. It is something we work hard for. That is why when money is not enough we find ways to make the ends meet. Earning money seem to be a difficult task, that is for those who do not know that there is a way to earn money the easy way- and that is earning money from home. A lot of people have already found out that they can earn extra cash by going online. The internet has a lot to offer to people who are willing to work harder by using their spare time with a part-time job. It is of great comfort to have part-time jobs being offered online. Many men and women are bale to earn cash without having to leave their home, and without sacrificing their time for their family.

What are the ways on how to make money from working from home?

There are actually so many ways. You may discover these ways by browsing through the internet. Many job opportunities online are being suggested and tackled by many websites hoping they could help people like you to find a job opportunity that will not require them to leave their homes.

These are just some of the online job opportunities that you can find.

Earning through writing blogs, becoming a freelance writer, writing poetries and e-books, writing web contents, or ads for products and services is one. If you are a good writer, these jobs fit you. Imagine earning money doing the thing that you love to do. If you are good enough, this would not take so much of your time. You can easily write excellent articles about certain topics.

You can sell online by having your own website or becoming a member of eBay. What do you have to sell? Again that is up to you. You can sell anything under the sun. You can sell different hand-made products; you can sell second hand books, gadgets, collectibles, furniture etc. You can even make crafts and attract the attention of buyers worldwide. The internet is surely a good marketplace.

You can also advertise your services online. You can do jobs for other people and get paid for it. You can arrange parties and events if you can. Think of something you can do for other people and post that in your website and start earning money from it.

You can also different online contests, answer surveys and questionnaires about a company's product or services. More and more companies are willing to pay for the ideas, opinions, and feedbacks you have in mind.

You can also put up a virtual business like a candle-making business or any business you have in mind. It is easier to put up a business online than because of the lesser start-up cost.

There are still more job opportunities that you can find online, most of which are very easy to do. You can even start immediately once you've chosen the job that you want to have.

By Brock Hamilton |ezinearticles

Home theater speaker buying tips

2009-07-21T06:41:00.002+07:00

First thing, determine your system's priorities. Will you watch movies or listen to music? Most folks do one or the other.

Since more home theater speaker buyers watch movies than listen to music, I'll start there.

It's hardly an overstatement to claim movie-oriented home theater systems succeed or fail based on their center channel's performance and sound quality. The center speaker delivers virtually all the dialog and it can, depending on the mix, convey upward of 80 percent of a movie's soundtrack. The center speaker has a big job.

So invest 30 percent of your 5.1, 6.1, or 7.1 system budget on the center speaker, the Center Centric HT approach. As always, when it comes to sound quality, size matters. Bigger centers tend to sound better than small ones.

The subwoofer is the next most important player in a home theater sound system. Invest the next 30 percent of your dollars on the sub. The sub is largely responsible for home theater impact and power.

That leaves 40 percent of the budget for the front and surround left and right speakers. Of that, I'd put more bucks into the front speakers than the surrounds.

What I'm describing here is a little unconventional, but it's predicated on the belief that the best possible sounding center and sub are crucial for home theater performance. I'm also assuming all the speakers and probably the sub are from the same manufacturer.

For more music oriented home theaters the priorities are reversed. Fifty percent or more of the budget goes for the front left and right speakers, which should be large enough to produce bass without the aid of a subwoofer. The remaining budget is spent on the center and surround speakers (more on the center than surrounds). It's the "Stereo Plus Three HT" approach.

After all, music is mostly stereo, so it makes sense to put the lion's share of your dollars where they'll do the most good: The left and right front speakers.

Lastly, the 50/50 movies and music system. Evenly distribute your budget and buy the more typical "matched" system. Thing is, it won't sound as good as either the movie or music systems described above, when doing what they were designed to do.

I make my living writing about audio and reviewing tons of gear every year. My opinions about speaker sound quality are covered in the reviews. Asking advice from me or anybody else about speaker sound quality is like asking what's better, chocolate or strawberry? There's no definitive answer, it's a matter of taste.

With speakers and subs you really have to listen for yourself. That, or buy the ones I like the most.

Steve Guttenberg
[via news.cnet]

6 Ways to Start a Business with Bad Credit

2009-07-17T06:41:00.001+07:00

Times are tough - especially for those budding entrepreneurs looking to get their business off the ground. While the state of the economy should never be a deterrent in starting a small business (regardless if the economy is up or down - people and businesses still need to consume goods and services); down economies do have some effect on the business owners ability to find and obtain capital for their ventures.

But, all is not lost if your personal credit is a bit lacking.

Most business owners usually have some types of capital to put into their business - be it from personal savings, retirement accounts or loans from friends and family. But, they usually do not have all the funds necessary to launch their business and tend to struggle with allocating the money they do have to the numerous start-up expenses they will encounter.

Plus, bad credit (or even no credit) will make it very difficult for business owners to obtain unsecured working capital for items like marketing, payroll, or even office supplies.

I have always believed that whatever liquid capital (cash on hand) a business owners has walking into a new venture should be used for the overall development and growth of the business - it's essentially like putting in your own venture capital. However, this method of allocation usually leaves little if not 'no' additional money for other items businesses need for their operations to include tools and machinery to provide their goods or services, inventory, rent, or even office equipment including computers, copiers or even vehicles - items used in the day to day life of all businesses.

But, there are other ways that business owners can get these items even if the entrepreneur has bad credit.

For unsecured working capital, business owners can use the numerous social lending sites that have proliferated the Internet over the last decade or so. Social Lending is essentially where member borrow and lend to each other. Gaining access to capital for these sources tends to be easier to obtain as you get to tell your story directly to funders. Further, rates of these types of loans are usually lower than traditional bank lending. While considered personal loans, the funds received here can be used for any purpose including starting and running your business.

There are also Micro-Credit organizations whose whole purpose is to help new and growing businesses obtain capital after they have been turned down by traditional lenders like banks. These organizations are typically non-profit groups, backed by the SBA, and understand the trials that business owners face when trying to get their business venture off the ground. Plus, they offer a plethora of guidance to help ensure your long-term success.

Many new small businesses need all types of equipment for their business - from standard office equipment like computers and copy machines to tools and machinery that allow them to make or provide their products and services. There are equipment lenders that only provide these types of loans. They work with new start-ups and are extremely flexible in developing programs that can meet these businesses specific needs and while these loans and leases are secured by collateral (the equipment) there is less emphasis put on personal credit histories.

Further, a start-up business is considered a business in operation under one year. During this time, many businesses generate financial assets - but still find themselves lacking working capital as they grow. However, these assets can be used to secure financing, either to speed up the flow of payments, to complete current jobs or orders, or to get the funding needed for payroll or additional marketing.

These capital resources include factoring a business's receivables (why wait 30, 60 or 90 days to get paid by your customers- when you have bills that need to be paid now) or purchase order financing where your business can receive cash to complete jobs that are already in the works or funds to bid on jobs that would have otherwise eluded your business due to lack of working capital. And lastly, business cash advances for businesses that accept credit card payments from their customers allowing them to leverage future sales for growth capital today. The real bonus about there types of financing options is that they are not focused on the business owner's personal credit history but more on the strength of the asset.

Moreover, given our government's propensity to help people get back to work (most new jobs are created by small businesses) there has been an influx of new government and private grants to help people in need - including business owners.

Lastly, should a business owner still face difficulties due to credit issues - then the only step remaining is to eliminate those issues. While bankruptcy and credit counseling will continue to harm your credit after you complete these programs, there are other ways like debt consolidation that can reduce your unsecured debt (including credit card debt) into one, low, affordable payment. Allowing the business owner to free up current cash flow as well as improve their credit scores.

While most lenders tend to weed out potential borrowers through credit profiling - leaving many new business owners in limbo - the resources listed above are design to fill the lending gap that is crippling our nation and geared to help all business owners - regardless of past credit mistakes.

Joseph Lizio | businessknowhow

Tips in Writing Effective Blog Posts

2009-07-17T06:27:00.002+07:00

Blogs are a means of communication in which people can exchange information, ideas and insights toward things. An individual can write a blog post that tells a story about a travel experience, and share the article to other Internet users. A business entrepreneur can write a blog post about marketing tips for small and medium businesses, and promote the article to other business entrepreneurs. More and more individuals and businesses are creating weblogs to get their companies known to the customers. Here are a few tips in writing creative blog posts for personal or business purposes.

Use Simple Words – A key to an effective communication is simplicity in writing. Use simple words to make people understand the article’s point. Don’t make things complicated by using long, unfamiliar terms in your articles. Every individual who wants to write an effective blog post must consider that the choice of words is important.

Use Examples – Citing examples can help a writer elaborate his or her point. Blog posts can be more understood if writers provide examples to make their points clearer.

Use Images and Photos – Insert images and photos on the blogs to make the articles appealing and attractive to the eyes of target readers. Moreover a visual form of communication can be more effective than plain texts. For example, an article for UPrinting blog can include photos of business card designs. Online companies can make use of images and photos in making their blogs more attractive and professional to the target niche market.

Break Paragraphs – Break paragraphs and divide an article into several sections so that a blog post can look nice and neat. For example a paragraph can be written for introduction, then three separate paragraphs for three different points, and a separate paragraph for the conclusion. It is also recommended to use headings to emphasize the main points of an article.

Giving Emphasis to Words – Writers can emphasize their article titles, headings and subheadings by changing the font type, size and color. Headings can be set in boldface or italic face for emphasis.

These helpful tips can let individuals to write blog posts that have the potential to communicate with readers. Moreover, writers can be able to create blog posts that can be perceived as valuable source of information.

Kat Nocom | articlesbase

How to Maintain a Weight Loss Program

2009-07-17T06:17:00.000+07:00

Maintaining a weight-loss program can be tough, but not impossible. One just need to have discipline and positive attitude to acheive your goal. Here are more suggestions on how to make sure that you are on the right track in losing weight.

Change your mentality. Stop thinking of your weight loss program as a diet. It’s just a lifestyle change that you are undergoing to make you a healthier and fitter person.

Think positive and set realistic goals. Accept that things won’t happen overnight. Don’t go to the dark side if you see slow progress. Many people eat when they are depressed. This just takes time and did say that patience is a virtue.

Chart your progress. This will keep you stay focused on your goals. It will also serve as a good moral boost when you see that you’re steadily losing weight. However, allow plateaus and don’t forget to take into account water weight gain.

Choose one day of the week when you can eat whatever you want. This is to reward yourself of a job well done. This also allows the body to burn more calories in the 24 hour period after indulging.

Pick an exercise program that you will enjoy. Vary your activities once in a while. This will keep you from getting bored.

Have a support system. There will be times when you feel blue or stuck and you think that no progress has been made. During these moments of weaknesses, you will need someone who can encourage you and talk you out of the blues. This can be a friend, family, or your partner. Why not all?

via tipz

How to Start Writing Children's Books

2009-07-17T06:05:00.002+07:00

Children's books are extremely popular and sell in huge numbers even when traditional adult fiction seems to be dropping in sales. Books for children range from educational nonfiction to fictional stories that are both entertaining and educational. Classics such as "Alice in Wonderland," "The Wonderful Wizard of Oz" and the Mother Goose Classics continue to enchant children decades after they were written. Writing books for children can be a profitable and satisfying career for a writer who has the skill to reach a young audience. Learn what it takes to get started writing books for children and how you can turn your ideas into something that will be read for generations to come.

Instructions

Step 1

Create a short outline for your book, and keep it age appropriate. Books written for children 5 and under should have plenty of room for an artist to interpret the material and illustrate it. Children older than 5 years old are more capable of understanding a story with little or no illustrative assistance.

Step 2

Create stories and characters that children can relate to. Try to stick with universal issues. Use your stories as a means of teaching without preaching. Be aware of how you write. You don't want to talk down to your readers because they're young. In fact, keep the writing level slightly above the reading level to challenge children to expand their reading and comprehension abilities.

Step 3

Illustrate your books if you have the ability to do it. If not, children's book publishers have artists on staff that can illustrate for you. Feel free to suggest ideas you may have for illustrations.

Step 4

Study the markets before you pitch your children's book. The Writer's Digest Children's Book Market is a good place to start (see Resources below). You can also consult an online market database for children's books (see Resources below). Target the markets that accept the type of material you've written, and follow their submission guidelines when sending your manuscript for review.

Step 5

Don't wait for a response from your first submission before you begin another project. Start writing your next book while you wait. If you feel the first book deserves a sequel, this may be a good time to start it. Series books are popular in children's fiction, and a solid central theme and likable characters could very well lead to a contract to do several children's books with the same publisher.

Carl Hose via ehow

Google AdSense Made Easy!

2009-07-17T05:50:00.000+07:00

If you are looking to monetize your Website or Blog then Google AdSense would be one of best options for revenue generation through text, image and video advertisements. Just type "AdSense" in any search engine and you would be amazed to find numerous websites which give quality information on this topic. It also signifies the importance of making money online, many Internet marketing experts and intellectuals have made abundant blog posts and written ebooks on the same topic. This article would be of great use for rookies and people who want to get into Google AdSense.

We can find many discussions on AdSense on almost all major discussion boards, forums and blogs. AdSense has become a buzz for teenagers who want to meet their personal expenses by running blogs of their personal interests. Even fulltime webmasters research to find various techniques for consistent revenue generation without any copyright infringement and violations of copyright laws.

Ironically many authors who claim to be the authority on AdSense and other advertisement media are still thriving to generate consistent revenue online. For this reason, there is no point in buying ebooks on this topic. All the information that you ever needed can be found online and especially at Google's own pages. AdSense is a Google owned program that allows webmasters to display pay per click ads on their webpages. These advertisements are content sensitive (or contextual). This means that if you have a website on computers, advertisements displayed will be about computers. AdSense ads are highly relevant and it is because of this reason it is more successful. In fact, in the 3rd quarter of the year 2007, Google made a whopping $1.45 billion just from AdSense alone.

There have been other ways of online advertising like popups and banner ads. However, these are not so profitable and efficient when compared to pay per click ads. When was the last time you clicked on a banner or waited to see what a popup was about to display? The answer would be rare. However, the case is different with pay per click ads. As, these ads are contextual thus they can easily blend in with the content of the web page. Users click on the ads only when they are interested in the ad, this proven result generates huge targeted traffic to the advertiser. Targeted traffic means more conversions in return of investment and profits.

Being a webmaster or an active blogger you might have already known that "To increase revenue from AdSense earnings we have to place multiple ads on rich content web pages. Here are some tips in maximizing your revenue with multiple advertisements.

Make sure the ad unit with the highest CTR is the first ad unit in the HTML code of your page. We've heard that there may be some confusion on this, so here's some clarification on how we serve ads to a page once we know which ads win the auction.

First we would start with selecting the ad unit on our main web page. I got some amazing results when I selected an ad size of 300x250 rectangle. Apart from selecting the right size, it is also important to select the right place and color of the ad unit.

I went through a survey on how a person uses the Internet. The results were remarkable, most of the users move the cursor in the centre or on the extreme right corners of a web page. Considering these facts it would be sensible to place the ads in the middle of the page or on the right hand side of the web page.

Selecting the ad color is also important. We can select the ad units which match the web page color and start placing them in between the content.

How about selecting the keywords which yield good money! It is always important to write a quality content which the visitors find valuable. If the content is based on high frequency keywords then it would be great!

Now that you have known few tips on AdSense, let us try these tips and watch your earnings grow!

Most of the Google AdSense publishers commit mistakes naively which could ban their AdSense account.

These AdSense tips are derived from Google Program policies, Terms & Conditions and FAQ's.

1. Never click your own AdSense ads or get them clicked for whatever reason.
2. Never change the AdSense code.
3. Do not place more than 3 advertisement units or 2 AdSense search boxes on any web page.
4. Do not disclose confidential information about your AdSense account like the CTR, CPM and income derived via individual ad units.
5. You do not need to create 5 accounts for 5 different websites. One account will do.
6. Label headings should be "sponsored links" or "advertisements" only.
7. Do not add it on web pages with MP3, Video, News Groups, and Image Results. Also exclude any pornographic, hate-related, violent, or illegal content.
8. Avoid excessive advertising and keyword stuffing
9. Ensure the Language is Supported
10. Do not confuse with adjacent images

Prevention is better than cure, so whenever you are in doubt it is better to ask AdSense for help.

By Charles Jeyalins
via ezinearticles

5 handy free tools to speed up your website

2009-07-15T08:14:00.004+07:00

Want to speed up your website? It's well worth the effort.

The faster your pages load, the happier your visitors will be, and the longer they'll stick around.

Removing unnecessary or oversized content can help reduce your bandwidth requirements and save you money, too.

Of course you'll need advice on which parts of the site need optimisation, but that's surprisingly easy - we've uncovered free tools from Google, Yahoo, MySpace, AOL and more that will analyse any web page and point out how it can be improved. So which one is best? Keep reading for everything you need to know.

1. YSlow

Yahoo!'s YSlow is an excellent Firefox add-on that will analyse a web page and deliver a list of helpful suggestions on how to improve its performance. It's integrated with the Firebug development tool, though, so you must install that first before adding YSlow itself.

Once set up clicking Tools > Firebug > Open Firebug will display load times for every part of the current page, so if one image or external link is particularly slow then it'll be immediately obvious.

A couple more clicks and YSlow will return plenty of recommendations on how your page can be optimised. Try it on the YSlow download page, say, and you'll see that it's using four external JavaScripts. These should be combined into one, YSlow says, if possible. And because browsers won't start other downloads while scripts are downloading, any that are deferrable should be moved to the bottom of the page.

There were 20 other recommendations in the list, all graded so you can see which should be applied first. An overall page performance score provides an objective measure of speed, letting you watch how each change improves the site. And linked tools compress JavaScript, reduce the size of images and otherwise help speed up your pages.

We did notice one problem with YSlow, and it's big one: the current version doesn't work with Firefox 3.5. But once an upgrade appears YSlow will once again take its place as one of the best free web page optimisation tools around.

HELPFUL: YSlow clearly identifies the bottlenecks slowing down your PC

2. Web Page Analyzer

WebSiteOptimization's Page Analyzer is an online service that will check whatever URL you enter, then suggest ways to improve page performance.

This all starts with a simple list of page object types and the time they took to load (including estimates for several connection speeds), which immediately highlights any problem areas.

A further table highlights page objects that are using HTTP compression, and the rest of the report is taken up with "analysis and recommendations". These provided some useful comments on our test pages, successfully picking up oversized JavaScripts, the large number of page objects and so on, but lacked the depth we saw in the YSlow reports.

The Web Page Analyzer has some good advice to offer, then, and is a simple way to get started with web page optimisation. But if you're serious about revamping your web site then you'll want to quickly move on to a more professional tool.

SIMPLE: Web Page Analyzer is easy to use, but a little short on detailed speed-up advice

3. Google Page Speed

At first glance Google's new Page Speed looks like a YSlow clone: a a Firefox/Firebug add-on that benchmarks your web page and uses a set of best practice rules to let you know how you can speed things up. Play around with the tool for a while, though, and you soon begin to spot the differences.

Where YSlow simply tells you that trimming your JavaScripts or reducing cookie size is a good idea, say, Page Speed adds details, telling you exactly how many bytes you'll save.

And Page Speed also provides more substantial analysis of your page CSS code, for example pointing out on one test page that an estimated 57% of the current CSS was unused, and listing very inefficient CSS rules that needed fixing.

The Google utility is less impressive when it comes to benchmarking your site, with awkward and limited reports in comparison to YSlow. And overall it just feels more complex and fiddly to use. Page Speed is a relatively new program, though, and we're sure it'll improve over time. It's definitely worth installing alongside YSlow to ensure you'll get the best of both worlds.

IN DEPTH: PageSpeed offers plenty of good advice, but the presentation lets it down a little

4. MySpace Performance Tracker

MySpace has entered the web optimisation race with its own Performance Tracker. It promises more benchmark information than most of the competition, for instance measuring the CPU hit and memory footprint of your pages as they're rendered, as well as reporting on download times and estimating how these might vary for different connection speeds.

Sounds good, but there are problems. This is barely an alpha version and we found it simply didn't work on many systems. When we did get it to run, though, Performance Tracker provided some detailed benchmarks for our pages, which might be useful if you're looking for a way to assess the effectiveness of your own speedup tweaks.

It's also good to see someone developing a page optimisation tool for IE: like it or not, Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser around, and you really need to know how your pages perform on it.

Okay, so Performance Tracker is lacking in terms of the advice you're given at the moment, and there are some frustrating bugs. But these are early days. Performance Tracker is an interesting tool and by its full 1.0 release could be a must-have for every web developer's toolkit.

LACKING: It may take some tweaking before the pre-beta Performance Tracker will work

5. Pagetest

Initially developed by AOL as a way to benchmark its own websites, Pagetest is now being developed as an open source tool, and there's also a very easy to use online version that we decided to try out.

One immediate Pagetest advantage is the ability to choose the configuration of the system that will carry out the test, from a speedy cable connection in New Zealand to a 56K modem in the US. You can have the system repeat the test up to 10 times for more reliable results, and include logon details if your page requires authentication.

A minute or two later you'll be browsing a benchmark report that's easily the most detailed and attractive of anything we've seen. Everything you could possibly need is here, from simple details on each page object, to a complete record of every HTTP request and response header.

The optimisation advice isn't quite as good, with YSlow reports notably easier to follow, and Google's Page Speed having more depth. Still, there are useful tips here, and it's easy to scroll down the performance review table and, say, pick out text that can be compressed.

It's not perfect, then, but Pagetest has a lot to offer more experienced web developers. Try the online version first to see if it might be for you.

DETAILED: Red crosses in the performance table highlight areas where speed improvements can be made

Conclusion

MySpace Performance Tracker has made an interesting start, but is too buggy for serious use just yet.

And although the online Web Page Analyzer is quick and easy to use, it doesn't quite have the detailed advice that you need to properly speed up your web site.

Pagetest and Google Page Speed offer far more specific recommendations, and if you're an experienced developer then they're both worth trying.

But the best optimisation tool around, at least once it provides a version that works with Firefox 3.5, is still YSlow. It provides professional reports and high quality advice, yet in a straightforward way that's good for both experts and beginners.

[via techradar]

5 ways to save money, boost IT value with PC power management

2009-07-15T07:49:00.002+07:00

U.S. organizations waste approximately $2.8 billion annually and emit 20 million tons of carbon dioxide by not powering down idle PCs, according to the PC Energy Report 2009, issued by the Alliance to Save Energy, together with 1E, an energy management software company. For a company with 1,000 PCs, it means wasting $26,000 yearly, whereas an enterprise with 10,000 PCs would waste $260,000 and emit 1,871 tons of CO2 annually.

PC power management software can reduce the energy consumption of PCs as well as attached monitors during periods of inactivity. Using this software, IT can manage PC power settings over a network to drastically reduce power consumption, energy costs and carbon dioxide emissions.

Consider the following five business and technology best practices to slash your desktop power bill for greater operational efficiency and environmental impact:

1. Understand the business case.

“The first step is to create a business case and understand how much money you are spending,” says Doug Washburn, an analyst with Forrester Research. He recommends running scenarios by using Microsoft® Excel and performing simple modeling to determine potential cost savings.

Available tools include Forrester’s Online Green IT Baseline Calculator

and EnergyStar’s online calculator.

2. Understand your users.

“Users won’t tolerate downtime,” says Washburn. “It’s important to be smart about when to enforce power management.”

A successful program incorporates people and processes as well as technology. Map power management savings to user business requirements and the amount of downtime the specific business function requires. For instance, during the workday, power management may not be suitable for front-line employees, whereas in back-office locations, turning off monitors or placing PCs in standby mode after 30 minutes of inactivity may not be a problem.

3. Implement EnergyStar-standard Windows and Macintosh OS power management features.

Today’s desktops and notebooks incorporate many built-in power-saving capabilities such as “sleep” and “hibernate” modes that can significantly reduce the amount of energy consumed during inactive states.

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency recommends placing monitors and computers into a low-power “sleep mode” after a period of inactivity. Simply touching the mouse or keyboard awakens the computer and monitor in seconds. Activating sleep features saves energy and money and helps protect the environment.

To maximize power savings, the EPA recommends setting computers to enter system standby or hibernate after 30 to 60 minutes of inactivity. The lower the setting, the more energy is saved: Set monitors to enter “sleep mode” after 5 to 20 minutes of inactivity; on laptops, activate these settings in the AC power profile, not just the DC (battery power) profile.

The average desktop PC wastes half of the energy it consumes,” says Pat Tiernan, executive director of the Climate Savers Computing Initiative. “By turning on a single computer’s energy-saving features, you can save up to $75 per year in energy costs and reduce your CO2 emissions by nearly half a ton.”

4. Evaluate PC power management software.

Evaluate power management software from vendors such as 1E, Symantec’s Altiris, BigFix, Avocent’s LANDesk, ScriptLogic and Verdiem. Determine pricing structure, features and functionality, including administration, reporting functionality and support for advanced power management such as “scheduled” or “always on.”

5. Communicate to the business.
A well-designed PC power management program provides an opportunity for IT to showcase its value to the business. Because 55 percent of IT energy consumption comes from outside of the data center, enterprise IT organizations are expected to turn to PC power management software, according to Forrester Research findings. [Source: Doug Washburn, “TechRadar for I&O Professionals: Green IT 1.0 Technologies,” Q2 2009, Forrester Research, June 12, 2009]

By Paula Jacobs
[via accelerateresults]

How to Stop E-Mail From Ruining Your Summer Vacation

2009-07-15T07:38:00.002+07:00

Does your summer vacation checklist include sifting through hundreds of e-mails the day before you return to the office? Will your BlackBerry be as essential as your swimsuit? Do you fear your "staycation" will turn into writing e-mails each day?

It's hard to cut the e-mail dependency when we take a vacation. Half of the workforce checks business e-mail on weekends and 34 percent while on vacation. Work overload-before, during and after vacation-can deter many from even taking their allotted days off. In fact, 56 percent of Americans fail to take all their vacation days.

While the prospect of going "e-mail cold-turkey" during vacation is daunting, what if you detached from e-mail while working?

More than a year ago, I did just that at my job as an IBM consultant. Receiving an average of 30 to 40 e-mails a day meant spending a couple hours reading and crafting responses. Instead of a means to accomplish my priorities, my inbox had become a "to-do" list for others.

So I made the leap to give up business e-mail, shifting the bulk of my communication to social media platforms like Twitter, blogs and wikis. Sound hard? Not really.

There were challenges. I report to a manager in the U.S. but live and work on the Canary Islands in the Atlantic Ocean. Most people thought I'd give in after a couple of months or be fired. But quite the opposite has happened.

Social Software Tools = Better Collaboration

Now my daily e-mails are down to five or so a day-taking about 15 minutes. This has freed me to tap social software tools to create richer collaboration with colleagues.

I'm not alone in the move to embrace social networking in the workplace. Now more than ever, companies offer employees a range of social networking tools to work smarter and faster, and collaborate with colleagues who live a world apart.

Here are some lessons learned on how to take control of productivity outside of the inbox:

Begin by taking a step back and evaluating how you use e-mail. Group your inbox by activities and target more efficient ways to accomplish those tasks.For example: 1. Probably the biggest productivity gain you can make is to avoid e-mail for filesharing. Having multiple people comment on a draft creates version control. Instead, use fileshare software or a wiki so everyone can see the most current version and review the prior comments. 2. Put your project status reports in a wiki. That way everyone can have access, make comments, ask questions and feel involved. Collective intelligence and team action items are saved there. 3. Are people asking you the same question again and again? Create a blog about your area of expertise. Organize it on different topics and provide updates on the current projects there. This allows people to "self-serve" on areas of your expertise. 4. Do you e-mail a newsletter? Instead, make a blog or wiki. Just like a status report, you can get others to contribute to it directly. 5. This may sound tricky, but avoid e-mail for thank-you notes. Instead make your thank you's in a more public forum like LinkedIn, Twitter or your company's social software system. It's better for the employee's reputation management and can build loyalty from that individual. 6. Avoid "flame" e-mails altogether. In general, escalate issues using the phone, not e-mail. Have the courage to express more complex feelings or communications using a one-on-one discussion, which is typically less misunderstood and a better use of time. 7. Train people around you to follow these hints. That way you can help shape the team's responses and increase productivity for others.

The bottom-line is that transparency in your work builds trust with your colleagues and partners. We probably don't even have much of a choice either anymore. That's the kind of impact that social software is having within the corporate world. Social computing is empowering knowledge workers to be much more in control of with whom they connect, collaborate and share expertise.

Building your personal brand online is a journey and not without a learning curve. Follow your company's social media guidelines to start developing online expertise using social networking sites like Twitter, Facebook and others.

Allowing others to "self-serve" on your blog and wikis for their own projects means no one has to wait on you to send a file or give an update. With your expertise accurately captured, this can also give you some peace of mind when you unplug and relax on your vacation this summer.

Luis Suarez is a social software evangelist for IBM. IBM social software evangelist. Read more about his work here

Luis Suarez | pcworld

How to Know If a Car Dealer Is Cheating You

2009-07-14T09:44:00.003+07:00

The infamous car dealers. Everyone has heard of the bad reputations of car dealers, so how can you not get cheated by the con. There are ways to find out for yourself how much you should be paying for a certain vehicle, and then you can tell if your dealer is just taking you for a ride.

Instructions

Step 1

Don't limit yourself. Go to a few different dealerships, this gives you more options and prices. Whatever you do, do not make a hasty decision, you will regret it.

Step 2

Write notes, if you like a car write it down. Be sure to include the make (chevy, ford, etc..), model (Toyota Camry, ford focus, etc..), year the vehicle was made, if it is a sedan (4 door), coupe (2 door), hatchback, etc.. and get a vin number. Also be sure to write down the place of the vehicle, and the price wanted.

Step 3

Get on the internet. Go to kelley blue book, http://www.kbb.com/ and enter in the vehicles that you are looking at. The purpose of kelley blue is to give you three prices, trade-in value (value of your car if you are trading it in), private party value (if you were buying a vehicle from a person rather than a car dealer), and suggested retail value (what the price should if you were to buy it from a car dealer). This website will give you a lot of your information.

Step 4

After you have narrowed your search for a vehicle down. You can go to www.carfax.com if you are planning on buying a used vehicle. Here you can use the vehicle's vin number and search the car's history. It gives you any title problems, ownership history, and more. However the car fax does cost money usually $30 to $40.

By vaptori | ehow

Top Pay Per Click (PPC) Campaigns

2009-07-14T09:37:00.002+07:00

One of the best and effective modes of creating traffic towards you website is pay per click search engine. The best among top per-click are Yahoo search marketing and Google. The PPC campaigns or also known as PPC search engine internet marketing is the extremely efficient way by which your site can get more traffic and acquire awesome exposure to the world's top search engines like AOL, MSN, Yahoo, AltaVista, Google and many more. A huge series of services sell paid listing on PPC (pay per cost search engine) which is usually known as Cost per click search engine. The common rule for advertising is that advertisers have to pay for each and every click the search engine forwards them.

The use of technology to satisfy human's hunger is not a new story. With the advent of the internet and advancement in technology, business has been turned into new shape with some awful means of advertisement and marketing. The PPC (Pay Per Click) is said to be the strongest mode of advertisement. There are many pay per click search engines, among which top 5 rankers are discussed here. Google AdWords is another PPC search program that connects people, searching for services and products, with the new consumers within no time. The advertiser has to pay when someone visits their website. Sending as $1 per day, businessmen are satisfied with their sales. Currently more than 1, 50,000 advertisers use Google AdWords. Just select the required text and drive traffic towards their site.

Overture

This is said to be the major search program that distributes the listings to different search engines including yahoo which allows the overture. The page of search engine provides the basic training tips on getting started with paid listings at Overture. MSN is another Pay Per Click search program which has created partnership with overture providing some better opportunities to the people, driving in better traffic to their sites.

Yahoo! Search Marketing

Whenever there is a discussion about the top rankings search engines then Yahoo comes first. The secret of success of Yahoo search marketing is the fact that it contains highly organized phenomena that provides the customers with the targeted traffic to his website. The most appealing truth about this PPC search program is that a bidder can, at any point and from anywhere he wants, control his bid on the quality basis of the result of the bidder. The search area tool is so powerful that it can provide a statistics as how often people search a specific phrase. The advantage is that advertiser has to pay every time when a visitor enters his site. When more number of visitors enters his site, the advertiser has to pay more.

Junk PPC search engines

A junk PPC is a type of junk email. Their purpose is to spam sites with useless traffic instead handy ones. PPC (Pay per click) junk search engines create many websites with no content and just apply the top general words for specific groups, then drive traffic to your website.

By Faizan Rana | ezinearticles

10 Funding Solutions for Starting a Business

2009-07-14T09:05:00.003+07:00

Why don't more people start their own business?

If you answered, "lack of funds" you're right on the money.

In various ways, money - getting enough to start the business and worry about not making enough money to replace the income and benefits from a full-time job - is one of the biggest deterrents to would-be business owners.

Nevertheless hundreds of thousands of individuals start businesses each year. How do they do it? Where do they get the money to get started? Here are ten solutions for startup funding for a micro-sized business. Some are nearly risk-free. Others involve significant financial risk and should be used with caution.

1 - Start part-time. If you need a steady source of income to meet your financial obligations (and keep your family covered by health insurance) start the business as a part-time venture. Don't quit the day job until the part-time business has a steady flow of customers and profits.

2 - Start the business from home. You can start your business for much less money if you don't have to foot the bill for office space and utilities for an out-of-the-home office. While you may not want to advertise the fact that you work from home, you will have plenty of company. According to the findings of a US Census Bureau study of small businesses, nearly half of all businesses in the US are homebased.

3 - Get advance commitments for work. Line up one or two sources of business before you take the plunge. Former employers, if you left on good terms, are often a source of start-up work, or sometimes funding. Big companies that can send you their overflow work or small jobs that they don't want to do can also provide the initial stream of work and income.

4 - Get a part-time job. Work part time and save up your earnings until you have enough money to start the business. Or, as an alternative, work part- or full-time in your own business and take a part-time job to supplement the income from your new business.

5 - Live frugally - and invest the savings in your business. You don't have to live like a pauper or waste hours searching for 50 cent-off coupons to live frugally. A few simple changes may save you $200 a month or more.

Depending how much coffee you drink, for instance, making it at home or in the office instead of buying it at Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts could save you $10 or $15 a week. Bringing your lunch to work instead of ordering it out could save you another $15 or more a week. Eating a home-cooked meal instead of bringing home fast foods or eating out on week nights could possibly save you another $20 or $30 a week. Turning your thermostat down a degree or two during the heating season, and turning it up a degree or two when you have the air conditioning cranking away will save you significant amounts of money during the year. If you're determined to save money, you can probably find a lot of other ways to cut back on your spending.

6 - Use a credit card. Using a credit card - if you have good credit - is the easiest way to get money to start a business. Equipment, suppliers, advertising and postage (for mailings) can all be purchased with a credit card. And if your credit card gives you a line of credit, you can give yourself an instant loan (up to your credit limit). But using a credit card to start your business bears some significant risk, too. If you're not careful you can quickly run up a huge credit card bill - a bill you'll be responsible for paying whether your business is successful or not.

7 - Apply for a home equity line of credit. Some banks offer home equity lines of credit that let you borrow up to as much as 85% of the appraised value of your home. Depending on the value of your home and what you still owe in other mortgages, that can put a significant chunk of money at your disposal for starting your busness. The downside: you're putting your home at risk. If the business fails and you can't repay the loan, you could lose your home.

8 - Apply for business loan instead of a home equity loan. Information you'll need to give the bank includes the: purpose of the loan, projected opening-day balance sheet (new businesses), lease details, amount of investment in the business by the owner(s), projections of income, expenses and cash flow, signed personal financial statements and your resume. You may also need a formal business plan. (If you’re trying to get funding to grow a business you've already started, you'll also need business financial statements for the last three years, and information on receivables, payables, and outstanding debt.) Don't be surprised if the bank turns you down, though. Banks are often leery of lending money to startups.

9 - Ask Your Bank About an SBA-guaranteed loan If the bank turns you down for a business loan, ask them if they'll consider your loan through the SBA guaranteed loan program. If they agree to do so, they'll forward your loan application and credit information to the nearest SBA district office, for a decision.

10 - Borrow from family and friends. Family and friends are a frequent source of funding for small businesses. But remember, you have to live with your family for a long time - and you probably want to stay friends with your friends. So don't borrow from unless you have a business plan and have done enough research to know there is a market for what you want to sell. Be sure your plans provide a way to also pay interest on the money borrowed from family and friends.

by Janet Attard | businessknowhow

5 Reasons You Can't Lose Weight

2009-07-14T08:50:00.002+07:00

Even if you skip breakfast, drink too many calories, or just don't have time to plan, you can still fix your weight-loss problems.

You haven't had a bite of pizza or a lick of ice cream in, like, forever, but you still can't lose a pound. What's up with that? Here's the real what, plus some expert fixes.

1. Consciously or not, you're clueless

"Very few Americans tell the truth about what they eat," says Elizabeth Somer, R.D., author of 10 Habits That Mess Up a Woman's Diet. In one USDA study, more than 80 percent of women underestimated their daily food intake by a whopping 700 calories! Part of the problem is visual: Most people don't have a clue about what a true portion looks like, Somer says.

The fix

Find your measuring cups and spoons. And if you don't have one, buy an inexpensive kitchen scale.
Measure out the recommended portions of everything you eat for a week. You'll quickly learn to accurately identify a 1/2-cup serving of pasta, a 2-ounce muffin, a teaspoon of butter, a cup of cereal, or a 4-ounce portion of chicken.
2. You skip breakfast

Successful dieters share a common habit: They eat breakfast, say University of Colorado researchers who monitor people who have lost at least 30 pounds and kept it off for a year or more. The benefits are big. As well as preventing 10 a.m. attacks on the vending machine, eating breakfast boosts your mood, memory, and work performance.

The fix

Adopt the gold standard: Top 1 cup of whole-grain cereal with berries and fat-free or low-fat milk. Add OJ and coffee and you'll be good to go for hours.
Try the make-ahead version: The night before, put these into a preheated wide-mouth thermos: 1/2 cup old-fashioned oatmeal, a few chopped dried apricots, a pinch of brown sugar, a dash of cinnamon, a drop of almond extract, and 1 cup of hot fat-free or low-fat milk. Close tightly. In the morning, just open the thermos, sprinkle with slivered almonds, and spoon out a warm, delicious, ready-to-eat breakfast!
3. You eat without thinking

Do you nibble off the plates of others? Constantly taste while cooking? Feed small fry in "one for you, one for me" bites? Each mindless nibble averages 25 calories, and with only four mindless bites a day, you gain a pound a month!

The fix

Turn mindless eating into mindful eating, says Somer, by keeping a food journal and writing down every single thing you eat. You'll be amazed.
Eat food only when served on a plate to avoid overindulging.
Eat sitting at a table, not watching TV, driving, or flipping through magazines. And don't rush meals—enjoy each bite.
4. You drink more calories than you realize

Sugary sodas, teas, and juice drinks don't fill you up, yet they pack on pounds. So do happy hours. For example, a bottle of sweetened green tea has 140 calories, the equivalent of a chocolate chip cookie. And a large margarita can have up to 800 calories—more than four cake doughnuts!

The fix

Can't give up regular soda? Make it an occasional treat.
Nix supersized cocktails and drinks made with high-calorie mixes or cream.
At parties, alternate a glass of wine with a glass of sparkling water.
Make your own iced green tea, and sweeten lightly (1 teaspoon of sugar has only 16 calories). The plus: Home-brewed tea usually has more healthy antioxidants, which often get lost in commercial processing.
Cut juice calories by mixing 1/3 cup of OJ, apricot nectar, or your favorite juice with 2/3 cup sparkling water.
5. It's not you, it's your life

You swear you want to eat well, but in the next breath lament how hard it is to find the time, money, or mental energy to make it happen.

The fix

Try tough love: Stop blaming others, the weather, your job, your life, the dog, etc. Focus on reaching your goal. "People lose weight every day, often despite overwhelming odds," Somer says.
List your excuses, and then brainstorm solutions. Lack of time? Cook large quantities and divide into single portions to eat throughout the week. Keep meals simple, and buy prepared foods, including sliced veggies and fruit.
Finding ways to eat right makes you not only slimmer and healthier but also physically younger: Maintaining a desirable weight can take 6 years off your RealAge.

[via health.msn]

Office 2010 looks solid and smooth

2009-07-14T08:29:00.002+07:00

Microsoft's technical preview packs a streamlined look and feel, co-authoring and collaboration hooks, and numerous refinements, with the promise of Office Web apps to come

Say what you will about the Windows monopoly, it was Office that made Microsoft's fortune. After all, what's an OS without applications? Over the years, Microsoft evolved a humble word processor and spreadsheet into a tightly integrated suite of groupware and productivity applications. Today you'll scarcely find a business desktop without Microsoft Office installed.

At the same time, competition has never been tougher. Open source alternatives, such as OpenOffice.org, now offer the basic functionality of business productivity software for free. And Web-based productivity software, including Google Apps and Zoho Office, threatens to subvert the traditional desktop software model altogether.

[ A public beta of Office 2010 could begin later this year. In the meantime, brush up on the latest features in InfoWorld's Office 2010 screenshot slideshow. ]

But Microsoft is no slouch. Office 2010, the next version of the software suite, is not expected to arrive until next year, but a technology preview shows it to be another solid effort from the Redmond-based giant. With this release, Microsoft has polished and expanded upon the groundwork it laid with Office 2007, while continuing to add new capabilities, particularly in the area of networked collaboration.

Love it or hate it, the Ribbon is here to stay
When Microsoft first unveiled its revamped UI concept for Office 2007, some hailed it as revolutionary. Others complained that the Ribbon was too big and too awkward, and created an unnecessary learning curve by messing around with menus that worked perfectly fine where they were.

I happen to belong to the first camp, but if you count yourself among the Ribbon haters, you'll definitely be disappointed with Office 2010. This time, the Ribbon is pervasive across all components of the Office suite, including those that lacked it in Office 2007 (such as OneNote, Outlook, and Visio). For those of us who feel more productive with the Ribbon, this consistency is a welcome improvement. Sorry, haters.

The Ribbon has undergone a slight revamp in Office 2010, however, which could help win it some new converts. Gone is the big, orb-shaped button in the upper-left corner of the screen that held (or hid) the File menu options. In its place is a more subdued, rectangular button bearing the Office logo, and this time it's aligned with the rest of the tabs on the Ribbon. There's also a button to minimize the Ribbon, which is sure to please everyone who never figured out that double-clicking would do the job in Office 2007.

Clicking the Office button brings up something that Microsoft is calling the "Backstage view," where you'll find file, print, and collaboration options. This is similar to how it worked in Office 2007, but Backstage view is even less like the traditional File menu than the older version. Instead, you can think of it as a new, explicit context for document operations. Printing, in particular, is much improved, offering a wider range of settings alongside a live preview of your document.

By Neil McAllister | InfoWorld

Asus Launches Xtreme Design Series Motherboards

2009-07-13T08:12:00.002+07:00

ASUS today announced the Xtreme Design series motherboards featuring ground-breaking design innovations and offering the best in performance and reliability. The Xtreme Design series motherboards delivers exceptional overall system compatibility and enhanced reliability by proficiently managing and reliably controlling core processes operating in the PC. Drawing on two decades of engineering excellence, ASUS believes a genetically superior motherboard DNA will provide the winning formula to surpass current user expectations and industry benchmarks. ASUS leads the industry with designs that optimize overall performance and reliability of PC hardware. In the new Xtreme Design series motherboards, ASUS further raises the bar in motherboard designs for the ultimate in performance, reliability, and safe operations.

Xtreme Reliability for Extended Component Lifespan
Xtreme Design features innovative Stack Cool3+ to enhance motherboard component longevity. It is a feature that was re-engineered from the original copper cooling innovation of the ASUS P5E64 WS motherboard. With the perfect cooperation with Xtreme Design, Stack Cool3+ effectively cools motherboards with an enhanced PCB layer to provide a stable and low operating temperature for optimized data transmissions. By substantially improving heat dissipation, the new series offers users exceptional reliability. This innovation builds on ASUS' pioneering achievement as the first adopter of innovative cooling technology—which transformed the way motherboards were designed.

Xtreme Performance for Enhanced Power and Throughput
For the ultimate experience in performance, Xtreme Design features Xtreme phase to ensure the most stable and optimized power delivery; and Turbo V for a real-time, dynamic processing boost. Both features allow motherboard enthusiasts to experience optimal power performance under various loading conditions as well as an overwhelming boost of up to 51% in processing throughput.

P6TD Deluxe Specification:
Model P6TD Deluxe
CPU Intel® Socket 1366 Core™ i7 Processor Extreme Edition/Core™ i7 Processor Supports Intel® Dynamic Speed Technology
Chipset Intel® X58 / ICH10R
System Bus Up to 6400 MT/s
Memory 6 x DIMM, Max. 24 GB,
DDR3 2000(O.C.)*/1866(O.C.)*/1800(O.C.)*/1600(O.C.)/1333/1066 Non-ECC,Un-buffered Memory
Expansion slot 3 x PCIe 2.0 x16 (at x16/x16/x1 or x16/x8/x8 mode)
1 x PCIe x4
2 x PCI
Multi-GPU Supports NVIDIA® SLI™ Technology
Supports ATI® CrossFireX™ Technology
Storage 6 xSATA 3 Gb/s ports
1 xExternal SATA (SATA On-the-Go)
1 xUltraDMA 133/100/66 for up to 2 PATA devices
LAN Dual Gigabit LAN controllers 2*Marvell88E8056® PCIe Gigabit LAN controller featuring AI NET2
Audio ADI® AD2000B 8 -Channel High Definition Audio CODEC
Other I/O ports 1*PS/2, 1*eSATA, 1*IEEE1394a, 2*LAN, 8*USB, 1*Optical S/PDIF out, 1*Coaxial S/PDIF out
USB / IEEE1394a 14 USB 2.0 ports /VIA® VT6308 controller supports 1 x 1394a ports (one at mid-board; one at back panel)
Features StackCool3+, Turbo V, Xtreme Phase, 16+3 Phase Power design, Express Gate SSD, EPU, AI Nap, Wind-Flow Heat-pipe solution, Fan Xpert, Optional Fan for Water-cooling or Passive-Cooling only, Noise Filter, Q-Shield, Q-Connector, O.C. Profile, CrashFree BIOS 3, EZ Flash 2
Form Factor ATX Form Factor, 12 inch x 9.6 inch ( 30.5 cm x 24.4 cm )

[via asus]

Small Business Management Principles

2009-07-11T08:49:00.001+07:00

For any business to flourish the management needs to be innovative and creative. As a manager find an excellent role model, either an individual or a company. Establish what makes them successful and then emulate their mode of operation to your small business depending on your needs.

As you emulate avoid pursuing courses of action that are of no value to you or your business. Absorb only that which is essential to running of your business operations. Seek to improve excellence in financial management by budgeting before spending. Avoid lip service and approach your business with policies that suit you and your small business. Adopt and adapt to methods that have been tried and have proved to produce excellent results.

Problems should be confronted and resolutions found as they occur. Solutions are good for as long as they work. Being knowledgeable and well informed in your line of business will greatly improve your business performance.Significantly, consult widely on models of managing a small business. Observe your competitors closely and always stay ahead of them. Come up with innovative ideas that counter whatever your competitors are offering. It's also recommended you get a mentor whom you respect and has succeeded in his area of operation preferably in business.

Take control of your finances by coming up with a budget before purchasing or investing. This will help avoid overspending and hence invest effectively. Balance is everything, so every aspect of management has to be excellent and produce results on all key aspects of a small business. The product of excellence is excellent results, financial or non-financial.

By Stephen Kavita
[via ezinearticles.com]

Firefox 3.5 Review

2009-07-11T08:26:00.003+07:00

The just-released version 3.5 of Firefox is a winner, offering significantly faster Web browsing, better tab handling, a host of interface tweaks and, like just about every other browser on the planet, a "porn mode." If you already use Firefox you'll want to upgrade right away. If you're not a Firefox user, this version represents a very good opportunity to give the browser a test run.

Need for speed

For many people, the browser wars are all about one thing: speed. There's no doubt that version 3.5 of Firefox is significantly faster than version 3. Pages load noticeably more quickly for a number of reasons, not least because Mozilla built a new JavaScript engine called TraceMonkey for this version of Firefox.

How much faster is open to debate. Mozilla says it ran the industry-standard SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, which measures how quickly browsers render JavaScript, on versions 2, 3 and 3.5 of Firefox, and asserts that the newest version is more than twice as fast as Firefox 3 and more than ten times as fast as Firefox 2 on the test. Other testers have reported similar results.

Of course, rendering JavaScript quickly doesn't necessarily mean that all Web pages load faster. Microsoft, for example, argues that for most Web pages, other kinds of speed-ups are more important than rendering JavaScript quickly. I'll leave that debate to Microsoft, Mozilla and other browser makers. But putting aside any speeds-and-feeds specs, I can tell you that from the user experience, Firefox 3.5 is lightning fast -- it seems to me about comparable to the recently-released Safari 4.0 for the Mac.

Private Browsing

Any browser worth its salt these days has a porn mode, and with version 3.5, Firefox now has one as well. It's called Private Browsing (Internet Explorer's is called InPrivate Browsing), and it works as advertised. When you browse the Web using it, nothing about the session is stored -- no history, no cookies, no temp files, no forms information, no search information, nothing that can show where you've browsed or what you've done. To turn the Las Vegas tag line on its ear: What happens in Firefox doesn't stay in Firefox.

To use Private Browsing, Select Tools --> Start Private Browsing, or else press Ctrl-Shift-P. Unlike with Internet Explorer, a new instance of the browser doesn't launch. Instead, a warning appears, asking you if you want to start a Private Browsing session and telling you that Firefox will save your tabs if you want to start one.

Starting a Private Browsing session

Firefox then closes your existing tabs, and immediately launches a private browsing window. From here, browse the Web as you normally would, and nothing of the session will remain. To end the Private Browsing session, close Firefox as you would normally, or else select Tools --> Stop Private Browsing, or else press Ctrl-Shift-P. The current session ends, and Firefox launches with all of your previous tabs intact.

There are other nice touches for those who don't want other people to know what sites they've been visiting. You can remove all the traces of a site you've visited while you were in a normal browsing session.

This eliminates it not just from the History list, but also kills all traces of the browser on your computer, including cookies and temp files, search history, forms you've filled out, and more.

To use this feature, first open your History list by choosing History --> Show All History or by pressing Ctrl-Shift-H. Then right-click the site you want to remove, and from the menu that appears, select Forget about This Site.

You can also remove all of your history and other data related to your browsing session from the last few hours or last day. Select Tools --> Clear Recent History, or press Ctrl-Shift-Del. From the drop-down list on the page that appears, choose either the last hour, the last two hours, the last four hours, today, or everything.

Select Forget About This Site to remove all traces of a site from your browser

You can also fine-tune what to clear by clicking the Details button; it lets you determine what data to remove -- browsing and download history, forms and search history, cookies, cache, logins, etc.

Interface tweaks

The new version of Firefox has some nice interface tweaks as well. Primary among them is the ability to re-open windows that you've previously closed -- functionality that was previously available only through add-ons.

Select History and look for two items at the bottom of the menu -- Recent Closed Tabs and Recently Closed Windows. From those menu items, select the tab or window you want to re-open. Note that this works only for tabs and windows you've closed in your current browsing session. After you end a session, you won't be able to restore them.

New: the ability to re-open windows that you've closed in your session

Firefox 3.5 also supports watching video and listening to music directly in a Web page, without having to launch any plug-ins, by supporting the HTML 5 audio and video elements. The Web page itself plays the video, and includes audio and video controls. You can even download the video or audio by right-clicking and saving it.

Playing a video directly on a Web page

For all of this to work, though, the elements have to be in the page itself, which means the developer has to code it that way. At the moment, there are very few pages that contain these kinds of video and audio elements; only time will tell whether they become popular.

Firefox 3.5 has taken a page from Chrome, letting you drag a window out of a browsing session and launch it as its own browsing session, or else drag a tab from one browser session into another to combine them. In addition, when you drag a tab to reposition it among other tabs, you see a thumbnail of the tab as you move it.

Firefox now also supports what is called Location Aware Browsing, which tells Web sites your location so that they can deliver geographic-relevant information for online maps or to help when you're searching for local information and businesses.

It works like this: Firefox finds your IP address, gathers information from any nearby Wi-Fi hot spots, and sends that to Google Location Services (its geolocation service provider), which then tries to determine your location and shares that information with the Web site you're visiting. All this happens only if you give Firefox permission; Mozilla claims that it's done in a way that protects your privacy.

When you reposition a tab, you see its thumbnail as you move it.

Version 3.5 also supports downloadable fonts, and CSS support has been improved. And the "Awesome Bar," which is Firefox's name for the Address Bar, has gotten a slight change that power tweakers will appreciate: You can now more easily filter results as you type text into the bar. So, for example, if you want to see results only from your bookmarks, use the * character (as in Gralla*); if you want results only from tags, use the # character (e.g., Gralla#).

The bottom line

If you're a Firefox user, this upgrade is a no-brainer. Browsing the Web is significantly faster, the ability to re-open previously closed tabs and windows is a major improvement, and as for PrivateBrowsing ... I won't delve into your personal life, but if you've got a need to keep some of your browsing a secret, you'll want this feature.

The video is a nice-to-have, but won't be particularly useful until sites start using it. The same holds true for Location Based Browsing and some of the other improvements.

Note to current Firefox users: As with previous Firefox updates, some of your add-ons, such as Google Gears, might not work until they are updated to work with version 3.5.

Still, all in all, this is a major improvement over Firefox 3. Even if you're not currently a Firefox user, you'll want to give it a try.

By Preston Gralla
[via computerworld.com]

How to Keep Carpooling Safe for Children

2009-07-11T08:00:00.003+07:00

Keeping Carpools Safe for Kids

Carpooling can be an economical and practical alternative mode of transportation if you and your neighbors or friends have children who go to the same school. However, as you (or anyone else who is driving) are dealing with precious cargo, make sure that you and your car are ready to handle the responsibility:

Meet with the other parents and guardians. Discuss the rules and guidelines for carpooling. Make copies of this. Include emergency contact information of everyone. Distribute so that everyone knows. Have the parents or guardians write down any of their children medical condition or allergic reactions of which you should be aware. Have everyone sign an agreement form.

Be prepared for anything. Check that your insurance covers everyone carpooling with you.This includes equipping your vehicle with a fire extinguisher and a first-aid kit. Always make sure that your vehicle is in tip-top shape.

Make sure children are protected from stormy weather as they get in and out of vehicle. Once inside the car, ensure that all the kids are buckled up. Have each child’s parent do this for them so that they are assured of their child’s safety.

Have the kids place their books, bags, and lunch boxes on the floor. So in case you need to step hard on the brakes, these objects won’t fly off and hurt the children.

Close and lock the doors. Make sure that you check that all fingers, feet, and limbs are safely inside the vehicle before doing so.

When everyone is settled, remind the children about safety guidelines and proper behavior before driving off to school.

Make a head count to be sure that everyone is present and that no one is left behind.

Have a parent or a guardian present when you drop their children at home. In the same manner, if you are dropping children at a child-care facility, make sure that you turn them over to the direct supervision of a recognized staff member.

[ via tipz.com ]

5 Important Things When Buying Life Insurance

2009-07-11T07:49:00.003+07:00

Finding the middle ground between being "insurance poor" and unprotected requires assessing real needs and choosing products that are affordable. This article introduces different types of insurance products and the role that they can play in a personal financial plan.

1.Buying Life Insurance

Conventional wisdom says that life insurance is sold, not purchased. In other words, some people are reluctant to discuss the importance of owning life insurance, and others are simply unaware of the need to have life insurance. Although many large companies provide life insurance as part of their benefits package, this coverage may be insufficient.

Who needs life insurance? If there are individuals who depend on you for financial support, or if you work at home providing your family with such services as child care, cooking, and cleaning, you need life insurance. Older couples also may need life insurance to protect a surviving spouse against the possibility of the couple's retirement savings being depleted by unexpected medical expenses. And individuals with substantial assets may need life insurance to help reduce the effects of estate taxes or to transfer wealth to future generations.

2.Types of Insurance

Term insurance is the most basic, and generally least expensive, form of life insurance for people under age 50. A term policy is written for a specific period of time, typically 1 to 10 years, and may be renewable at the end of each term. Also, the premiums increase at the end of each term and can become prohibitively expensive for older individuals. A level term policy locks in the annual premium for periods of up to 30 years.

Declining Balance Term insurance, a variation on this theme, is often used as mortgage insurance since it can be written to match the amortization of your mortgage principal. While the premium stays constant over the term, the face value steadily declines. Once the mortgage is paid off, the insurance is no longer needed and the policy expires. Unlike many other policies, term insurance has no cash value. In this sense, it is "pure" insurance without any investment options. Benefits are paid only if you die during the policy's term. After the term ends, your coverage expires unless you choose to renew the policy. When buying term insurance, you might look for a policy that is renewable up to age 70 and convertible to permanent insurance without a medical exam.

Whole Life combines permanent protection with a savings component. As long as you continue to pay the premiums, you are able to lock in coverage at a level premium rate. Part of that premium accrues as cash value. As the policy gains value, you may be able to borrow up to 90% of your policy's cash value tax-free.

Universal Life is similar to whole life with the added benefit of potentially higher earnings on the savings component. Universal life policies are also highly flexible in regard to premiums and face value. Premiums can be increased, decreased or deferred, and cash values can be withdrawn. You may also have the option to change face values. Universal life policies typically offer a guaranteed return on cash value, usually at least 4%. You'll receive an annual statement that details cash value, total protection, earnings, and fees.

Drawbacks to this type of insurance include higher fees and interest rate sensitivity. Universal policies include up-front fees as well as ongoing administrative fees totaling as high as 5% to 7% of your premiums. You may also find your premiums increasing when interest rates decline.

Variable Life generally offers fixed premiums and control over your policy's cash value. Your cash value is invested in your choice of stock, bond, or money market funding options. Cash values and death benefits can rise and fall based on the performance of your investment choices. Although death benefits usually have a floor, there is no guarantee on cash values. Fees for these policies may be higher than for universal life, and investment options can be volatile. On the plus side, capital gains and other investment earnings accrue tax deferred as long as the funds remain invested in the insurance contract.

Universal Variable Life insurance is the most aggressive type of policy. Like variable life, you control your investment in mutual funds. However, there are no guarantees on universal variable policies beyond the original face value death benefit. These policies are probably best suited to affluent buyers who can afford the risks involved.

Key Terms and Definitions

* Face Value -- The original death benefit amount.
* Convertibility -- Option to convert from one type of policy (term) to another (whole life), usually without a physical examination.
* Cash Value -- The savings portion of a policy that can be borrowed against or cashed in.
* Premiums -- Monthly, quarterly, or yearly payments required to maintain coverage.
* Beneficiary -- The individual(s) or entity (e.g., trust) that is designated as benefit recipient.
* Paid Up -- A policy requiring no further premium payments due to prepayment or earnings.

3.How Much Insurance Do I Need?

A popular approach to buying insurance is based on income replacement. In this approach, a formula of between five and ten times your annual salary is often used to calculate how much coverage you need. Another approach is to purchase insurance based on your individual needs and preferences. The first step is to determine your unique income replacement needs.

Currently, a large portion of your income goes to taxes (insurance benefits are generally income tax free) and to support your own lifestyle. Start off by determining your net earnings after taxes. Then add up all your personal expenses such as food, clothing, magazine subscriptions, club memberships, transportation expenses, etc. The remainder represents annual income that your insurance will need to replace. You'll want a death benefit amount which, when invested, will provide income annually to cover this amount. Then, you should add to that the amounts needed to fund one-time expenses such as college tuition for your children or paying down mortgage or debt.

Income replacement for nonworking spouses is an important and often overlooked insurance need. Coverage should provide for your costs for day care, housekeeping, or nursing care. Add to this any net earnings from part-time employment.

Finally, estimate your own "final expenses" such as estate taxes, uninsured medical costs, and funeral costs.

4.Other Types of Life Insurance

Survivorship life insurance (also referred to as last-to-die or second-to-die) is a unique type of contract that insures the lives of two people. It pays a death benefit upon the death of the second insured. Therefore, it is typically less expensive than two individual policies. Survivorship life is often used for estate planning, where it may be possible to potentially leverage today's dollars -- via insurance premiums -- into a potentially significant death benefit that can be used to fund estate taxes, create wealth for future generations, or benefit a charity. These policies may be available if one insured is medically "uninsurable."

First-to-die life insurance insures the life of at least two people and pays a benefit upon the death of the first insured. This policy is useful for covering a mortgage or other large debt obligation where there is more than one debtor. In addition, it can be an ideal tool for funding a buy-sell agreement within a closely held business.

5.Conclusion

Life insurance is an important component of a sound financial plan. Buying insurance involves asking a variety of personal lifestyle and financial questions. If you are not already working with an insurance professional, you may want to consider the advice of a fee-for-service financial planner who can offer you an objective review of your insurance options. When you decide on what you want, there are many solid insurance companies to choose from. Consult your library or an independent insurance professional for companies with the highest ratings from the four ratings agencies: AM Best, Duff Phelps, Standard & Poor's, and Moody's.

Summary

* Term insurance is basic, inexpensive coverage with premiums that increase over time and have no cash value.
* Consider a term policy that is renewable and convertible to whole life should your needs change.
* Whole life provides level coverage with level premiums. A portion of those premiums goes into tax-deferred savings.
* Check rates on whole life policies and compare them to other investment opportunities.
* Variable life offers control over your investments.
* Premiums on variable policies are fixed, but face value and the value of your investments can fluctuate.
* Universal life offers more investment options, but is highly sensitive to interest rate changes. Universal variable life is highly flexible, but offers no guarantees beyond the original face value.
* Insurance needs are based on income replacement and personal preferences.

Checklist

* Determine exactly how much money your survivors would need from life insurance in order to maintain long-term financial security.
* Decide whether you prefer term life insurance or a policy that also includes a savings feature.
* Shop around for the best deal, and read the policy before making a purchase. Don't assume you'll be getting benefits that aren't clearly spelled out.

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[ via finance.yahoo.com ]

How To Identify a Target Market

2009-07-11T07:38:00.002+07:00

Before beginning your advertising campaign, it is important that you first identify your target market. A target market is basically the type of person that will want or need your product or services. By targeting a specific market, you will be able to save money by spending less on marketing and increase marketing. The process of identifying a target market is called market segmentation. Using market segmentation, a business can use a top-down approach to identifying a target group or niche. Once you have identified a niche using target segmentation, you will be able to concentrate your efforts on marketing to attract a specific consumer group.

As a business owner or executive, you have probably heard of using market research
. Market research is the process of using various techniques to collect, analyze, and report data about potential consumer groups. Formal market segmentation requires comprehensive market research. The market research will help you to identify quantitative and qualitative patterns in consumer groups. Quantitative data refers to numbers such as age, income, and family size while qualitative data relies on characteristics such as education, occupation, and personality. There are severals ways you can go about segmenting a population to target a market. Some are more relevant to your business than others. The following describes different aspects of market segmentation that will help you in identifying a niche and maximizing your marketing dollars.

1. Demographics:

* Age: Teenagers targeted by acne medication company.
* Income: A person earning $200,000 is more likely to purchase a Cadillac than a person earning $10,000.
* Family size: Wholesale distributors that keep prices low by selling in bulk would target larger families.
* Education: A calculator company may target high school math students.
* Occupation: A shoe company might sell a shoe targeted for construction workers.
* Gender: A handbag company will target women.
* Nationality/Race: A small business selling foodstuffs from Africa would target the immigrant African community.
2. Geography:

* Region of the world: The shoe company, Puma, most aggressively targets consumers in Latin America and Europe for their soccer shoes.
* Climate: A snow plow manufacturer will target areas where it snows.
3. Behaviors:

* Brand loyalty: Apple targets a niche of consumers loyal to its products.
* Value of quality: Higher-end watch companies like Seiko target consumers that value high-quality timepieces.
4. Psychographic:

* Personality: A person who likes to show off is more likely to buy a Hummer H2 than a reserved person.
* Lifestyle: A shoe company like Vans, that sells skateboarding shoes would target skateboarders with their advertising.
* Interests: Stores that sell arts and crafts materials target hobbyists and students alike.
5. Other Questions to Ask in Market Research:

* Readiness to buy: How soon will they purchase your product?
* Frequency of purchase: How often will they purchase your product?
* How likely are they to purchase your type of product?
* What kind of music do they like?
* What kind of ____(fill in the blank) do they like?
6. Types of Market Research:
* Surveys are the most commonly used and least expensive market research method available. They can be conducted online, in person, or by phone.
* Focus groups are a method by which companies gain feedback on products by asking questions in an interactive group setting. This method might also be used to gain feedback on services, concept, advertisement, ideas, or packaging.
7. An Introduction to Surveys:

* Establish goals of survey. What market segmentation criteria will you use? Ask specific questions so you won't lose sight of your target.
* Sample size. Who will be asked to complete the survey? The sample size should be as random as possible to ensure a variety of different type of people complete it. Also, the greater the sample size the greater the accuracy of the research.
* Method.
1. Personal interview: Ask past customers to answer some of your questions.
2. Telephone: Hire telemarketers to conduct the surveys for you.
3. Mail: Purchase the addresses from direct mailing companies and mail in bulk.
4. Web-based: Search for a website with a survey panel that has existed for a long time and has good results for past clients. You can also conduct your own research by putting surveys on your website or sending e-mail messages with links to your survey.
* Planning the research.
1. How much will the research method take?
2. How long will it take to write and edit a survey?
3. When will you implement the survey?
4. When will you complete the survey and analyze the data?
* Processing and analyzing data.
1. For large market research campaigns with a very large sample size, computer software is a must. You might want to hire a company that conducts surveys or someone familiar with statistics to help you with this aspect.
2. For smaller market research campaigns you can simply look through the surveys and get an idea of what your niche is.
3. Create a report detailing your findings and how it will fit into your marketing plan.

By Daniel A.
howtodothings.com

WiMax: Growth Back On Track

2009-07-04T08:40:00.002+07:00

Since the recent economic meltdown growth of WiMAX deployment has really slowed, however experts are said to think that by the end of the year WiMax should take of again.

WiMax is said to be growing mostly in developing nations such as Africa, the Middle East, India, Europe and Asia, and following the recent 16% drop in revenue this growth is needed.

Some of the growth breakdown is also said to be caused by the initial success of WiMax, therefore some people see this pause of growth as a chance to re-organize. Hopefully with the upcoming prospects of WiMax the company’s involved will be able to deal with quick growth a lot better.

Jamie Pert
[via product-reviews.net]

Facebook for iPhone 3.0 Coming Soon

2009-07-04T08:07:00.002+07:00

Facebook for iPhone is awesome. Anyone that has used it usually raves about it, as It makes interacting with the site ultra-easy (and fun)… and I have to admit, I pop it open once a day just to see what’s going on.

Awesomely, (Is that a word!?) Facebook has announced that the new Facebook for iPhone 3.0 is nearing completion, and we should see it available for download in the near future. Look for enhancements such as a new homescreen, new notes and events pages, plus an updated news feed. Also, and probably much more noteworthy, Facebook for iPhone 3.0 could very well let you create photo albums, upload photos, zoom photos, tag photos, and a lot more. Stay tuned for more on this. It’s coming soon… I can feel it.

James Falconer
[Via: UnwiredView]

Michael Jackson Funeral Tickets Info

2009-07-03T17:29:00.003+07:00

Angeles funeral ceremony rencanaya singer Michael Jackson was held at the Staples Center, Los Angeles, 7 July 2009. Want to attend? Ready-ready look for the ticket. The Committee will only provide 11 thousand tickets for the funeral ceremonies Michael.

Quotation from CNN, Friday (3/7/2009), according to the committee obsequies Michael, they will only provide 11 thousand tickets can be obtained free of charge. To get tickets to fans of the King of Pop is to be registered.

Unfortunately, details about the registration to get the new ticket will be announced soon. Discussion of the distribution of tickets for this event are also still not finished.

Previous news circulating that tickets to attend the funeral Michael not distributed for free. Tickets are sold at price U.S. $ 25, or about Rp 255 thousand.

But a committee at the Staples Center tickets are not sure sale. But still have not ascertained how the division of tickets is not going to be chaotic.

source : cnn

Five Strategies for Selling During a Recession

2009-07-03T17:00:00.002+07:00

During an economic slump, it’s tough for even the best sales professionals to close deals. Downturns prompt executives to slash discretionary spending as companies face intense pressure to show quick returns on investment and once-loyal customers eye cheaper competitors. But some companies still manage to close deals — or at least tee up for renewed sales in the inevitable rebound. Drawing on the successes of IBM and others, Howard Stevens, chairman and CEO of the HR Chally Group, and John Asher, chairman and CEO of sales training firm Asher, offer these five ways to make your sales organization a winner during a recession.

1. Don’t Devalue Your Product

During the 1973 recession, as competitors panicked, IBM made an unusual move: It raised prices. Big Blue took this step after embracing the marketing catchphrase “Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM.” “Most people think in tough times you have to give a special offer or cut prices,” Stevens says. But that ends up devaluing the product — and the salesperson’s reputation. When prices fall dramatically, Stevens says, customers start to believe they were overpaying at the regular price or that the product is so cheap because there’s something wrong with it. Instead of slashing prices, consider offering additional services — such as longer guarantees or additional tech support — to make buyers feel like they’re getting more value for their money.

2. Stay Calm and Focus on Solutions

One of the worst mistakes a sales professional can make during a recession is to panic, says Stevens. Sales reps who act too aggressive or too hungry to make a sale will scare off potential customers, who are already worried about the fate of their own companies — and their jobs. Instead of hysteria, offer calm, focused solutions. “In a downturn, people are more concerned about safety and security than they are about high potential and big gain,” Stevens says. Sales pros should do background research to determine the biggest challenges and threats potential customers face, then shape their sales pitches around ways to minimize those threats.

3. Concentrate on Fewer Leads, but Contact Them More

Asher says his firm’s research shows it takes an average of 12 “contacts” — including e-mails, voice mails, face-to-face meetings, and phone conversations — to make a sale. “That increases in a recession,” he says. During a downturn it can take as many as 16 contacts to close a sale, because factors like tight credit and budget cuts lengthen the decision-making process. In a recession, sales reps should concentrate more of their efforts on a smaller group of potential clients. “The average salesperson will pick 50 prospects and give them just a little attention, usually quitting after three contacts,” Asher says. “Elite salespeople will pick their top 10 prospects and give them 15 or 16 contacts.”

4. Don’t Neglect Your Base

Focusing on new customers is crucial, but don’t ignore your existing customers or assume that they’re safe. Make sure they know their business is appreciated, and spend as much effort reaching out to them as you do contacting potential new clients. After all, it’s your existing clients who will carry you through a recession. “Losing them for the sake of new business will only cost you more in the end,” Stevens says.

5. Upgrade Your Sales Force

Recessions often trigger layoffs or the closure of entire firms, which means that scores of sales professionals are looking for new opportunities. That’s an opportunity for you to give your sales team more muscle. Asher suggests taking advantage of that pool of experienced labor and reorganizing your sales force to maximize its potential. His rule of thumb: Reassign or let go of the bottom third of your underperforming salespeople and replace them with fresh blood. But don’t stop there. Employee training is also essential to boost sales in a recession. Assign senior sales managers, or even executives, to act as personal coaches to the sales force. Meet regularly with your sales reps to review your products and services, discuss strategies and setbacks, and keep people motivated

source : Christina Salerno-www.bnet.com

How to Manage Time Using a Computer

2009-06-04T07:58:00.002+07:00

Time is a treasure that, if not used properly, can get away from us in a hurry. Your computer is a tool you can use to help you get a better handle on your financial, business and personal life. You can use your computer in ways you never dreamed of to get a better handle on your time. You do not need special software, just a willingness to learn, access to the Internet and certain websites.

Instructions

Step 1

Why waste money on stamps, envelopes and checks and risk them getting lost or stolen in the mail? Consider paying your bills on the Internet. For utilities, cities, taxes, mortgage, credit cards, cable, satellite or car payments, go to a website which allows you to set up payment through a bank account. You will receive email reminders each month when bills are due. If you want less hassle, you can set up automatic payments. You will need your routing number and bank account, both found at the bottom of your check. It is strongly recommended to pay bills online to avoid late fees and have a record of your transaction, as you will receive a confirmation number.

Step 2

Your computer can also be set up in a variety of ways to remind you of special days. You can have a calendar beep or send email reminders. For example, Yahoo calendar will send email reminders if you ask it to for certain days or appointments that you set up ahead of time. You can set up hourly, weekly or monthly appointments and obligations as well and include addresses and other information for easy reference.

Step 3

Don't know what to make for a meal? Recipe-challenged? Having company in a hurry? Try any of hundreds of recipe websites, including those of major food companies. Some links are listed below. All you need to do is print and go. In many cases, you can print to recipe in card size for your convenience, select ingredients you have on hand, type of food, portions, special considerations and more. Take advantage of the "recipe box" tool on many websites and save them as your favorites on the Internet. You can also have a recipe of the day emailed to you if you prefer.

Step 4

Got mail? Use your computer to send a letter or document via email for instant arrival rather than waiting on snail mail. You can also set it up to fax using Windows or the all-in-one machines on the market today. Why chance its arrival when you know instantly with email and fax if your documents and information arrived as intended.

Step 5

Shop and don't drop! You will indeed drop less on time and money in this case. Very often they offer free or low-cost shipping and you can hunt for exactly what you need. For shoppers needing specialty and hard-to-find items, this is a dream come true.

source : ehow.com

Inexpensive HIV Monitoring Technique by Victorian Researchers

2009-06-04T07:33:00.002+07:00

A new technique for monitoring the disease on HIV sufferers has been developed by Australian scientists. This test is hiv_life_cyclecheap price wise, thus will be a soothing thing for the HIV sufferers from any country. This test has been developed by the researchers at Melbourne based Macfarlane Burnet Institute, and will enable the experts to monitor the key CD4 T cells in people with HIV virus.

These cells are perfect and true indicators of development in the disease, and are a major target of HIV virus. By targeting these cells, HIV reduces their level. Not only this, but it weakens the immunity system of the victim that gives rise to AIDS.

40 million people around the globe have been diagnosed with HIV. Three million new cases are diagnosed every year. Currently, the monitoring technique is quite expensive and pricey. This technique uses flow cytometry, and is available in limited laboratories. In these circumstances, this new inexpensive test is a ray of hope for HIV inflicted people.

Initial validation state of this technology has been achieved with the funding by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the National Health and Medical Research Council. Research on the ELISA (enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay) based test has been led by Associate Professor David Anderson and Professor Suzanne Crowe. Researchers have established a company with the name of SeeD4. The received funds have reached up to $377,000 from the Medical Research Commercialization Fund (MRCF) and a $30 million fund supported by the Victorian Government. This innovative creation has been announced by Victorian Innovation Minister Gavin Jennings, who said, “The Victorian Government is taking action to promote health and lifestyle benefits through biotech initiatives, such as this new HIV test, which will also create jobs for Victorians.”

source : coolhealthtips.com

Microsoft Hardware To Launch Exclusive Windows 7 Features

2009-06-04T07:25:00.002+07:00

Microsoft announced in a press release earlier today that all Microsoft hardware products will be fully compatible with the final retail version of the Windows 7 operating system. The hardware will make use of Windows 7 features such as Device Stage, Windows Flip or Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery.

Device Stage. Microsoft Hardware mouse and keyboard products will support Device Stage, a Windows 7 feature that gives customers quick and easy access to common tasks, including product information, registration, settings and more for popular device categories such as cell phones, cameras, printers, portable media players and input devices.

Windows Flip. Microsoft mouse and keyboard users can easily see a thumbnail preview of all open windows with the press of a button. A full-screen preview of the application will automatically display, enabling the user to better identify and select the desired application.

Windows Live Movie Maker and Windows Live Photo Gallery. LifeCam users will be able to do more with photos and movies. With Movie Maker they can start a movie project with one click, and then upload video to social networking sites. Photo Gallery access will enable them to easily upload a photo that they can edit, tag and share with friends and family.

An additional feature called Taskbar Favorites was mentioned in the press release as well which will be available for Microsoft keyboard products.

the first of which is a timesaving feature called Taskbar Favorites that gives Microsoft keyboard users a smart new way to access their most frequently used programs and documents. Taskbar Favorites will map to the location of applications on the improved Windows taskbar. The applications in the taskbar can be easily rearranged just by clicking and dragging, and Taskbar Favorites will automatically adapt to the applications’ new locations.

source: Microsoft Press Release

Intel Launches Core i7 975 Extreme Edition

2009-06-04T07:12:00.002+07:00

Supplanting the Core i7 965 as Intel's flagship processor, the No. 1 chip maker today launches its Core i7 975 Extreme Edition. Clocked at 3.33GHz and built around the company's Nehalem architecture, the 975EE ranks as the fastest desktop processor yet available.

Built on a 45nm manufacturing processor and checking in with a 263mm2 die size, the 975EE boasts 1MB of L2 cache, 8MB of L2 "Smart" cache, a 25X clock multiplier, 6.4GT/sec QPI link frequency, and a 130W TDP. The new chip is also based on the newer (and more overclocking friendly) D0 stepping, which has just recently started showing up in newer Core i7 920 chips.

Reviews are out in full force now that the NDA has been lifted, some of which also include the Core i7 950, another new entry to the Core i7 family launched today. The i7 950 comes clocked at 3.06GHz with a 4.8GT/sec QPI speed.

Both processors are available now with street pricing in the $540-$570 (Core i7 950) and $1000-$1040 (Core i7 975 EE) ranges.

source : Paul Lilly - maximumpc.com

Tips For Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses

2009-06-04T07:02:00.001+07:00

Whether you've just started out in business or taken the first step toward marketing your small business, there's a lot to learn. Whether you've hired a full-time employee or selected a partner you trust to work with to achieve your goals, you need to ensure your investment is good. To get your money's worth, maintain a healthy professional relationship, keep up momentum, and ensure a smooth process, consider the following tips.

1. Communicate your expectations and share the ideas in your head about all aspects of the project. A good partner or employee charged with managing a project will want to know what you expect, will ask questions to draw that out, help you articulate it, and make sure they understand it. Sometimes, however, it helps to be proactive in identifying and communicating what you want-and what you don't. With some introspection and honesty, you can also identify any preconceived ideas you have, especially about budget, costs, and the relationship. Sharing those upfront will allow your marketing person to help you understand what's possible, design a project scope that meets your needs, and ensures a mutually beneficial path.

2. Understand and believe in the value of what the marketing project will accomplish. Without clear, future goals and marketing projects that are investments towards achieving them, you have no way of quantifying success and so every expense can seem like an unnecessary cost. You-and you alone-must be emotionally and financially ready to promote your business or the project is not worthwhile. If your goal is "a more professional image through marketing," you must attach a value to that today. Whatever your goal is, in a best-case scenario, you feel as though you are getting a good deal and your marketing person feels they are being well compensated.

3. Be open to new ideas. The idea that you had regarding your initial project may not be the solution-or the only solution. Sometimes you will have a project in mind-something you believe you need because someone said so, your competition has it, or you read about it somewhere. By looking closely at the aforementioned goals, however, this may or may not be a professional marketer's recommendation based on your target market, product or service offering, channel structure, or any number of variables that they are trained to consider. Start discussions with the problem and you'll have a wider range of potential solutions to choose from that match your budget, your style, and your true needs.

4. Decide how the project will be managed. Most often, a marketing partner or employee was brought on to manage the project. Most of us went into business for ourselves because we are experts in our field. We know how to do something and do it well. If you are hiring a professional marketing person, chances are they can manage the project at hand (and will provide a plan or statement of work to do so) while you focus on doing what you do best. If you need to manage the project directly, however, let your prospective partners know the level of involvement you would like. This will ensure a good fit and an amicable relationship based on clear lines of who's-doing-what-by-when. (In best cases, however, the "how" is best left to your marketer. After all, that is what you're paying for!)

5. Make your project a priority. Once you've started, remain mentally committed to the project and don't lose sight of the goal. Many projects stall and have an impact on the quality of results, not to mention the bottom line. If you get busy and/or do not have the commitment level, fortitude, time, or money to invest in your marketing and/or entrepreneurial efforts appropriately, try to continue on a smaller scale or add resources to the project. For the project to run smoothly, responsiveness from all parties involved and adherence to deadlines should be expected. That said, your marketing person should be making your project a priority as well.

Like most professionals, your marketing person will be best prepared, equipped, and excited to see your project through-and you'll be pleased with the results-if you're able to establish a rapport and follow through on the tips above. When I take on a marketing project, I am just as invested in that company's or individual's success as my own because I realize that they are one and the same. I hope these tips provide food for thought and insight for you when your next project arises.

source : Tracy Diziere - ezinearticles

Tips to Get Pawn Loans

2009-06-03T11:57:00.003+07:00

In recent times, men are highly interested to invest money on gold. The value of gold has highly increased after the recession and has chances of further increase in the coming days. For this reason, investment on gold is considered to be a wise investment. These days, for the increasing value of gold, many jewelers are also interested to purchase gold from individuals. A person who needs cash can sell the gold he has with him. When a person wants to sell gold then he should search for the best buyer who would provide him the best price.

To get the best price for gold a person needs to shop around for sometime. Prices of gold vary from one jeweler to other. One should take the quotes from different jewelers and compare them to know who provides the best price. Gold jewelry is always precious for the owners and one should always be careful while he sells the jewelries. The money earned from a gold jewelry can help a person solve a severe crisis situation.

There are many people who do not want to sell the gold that they have. In that case, a person can take a pawn loan. One can give the gold as a security for the loan and can take back the gold after the loan is responsible. To get the best pawn loan from the gold one need to check the websites, which offer this type of loan. Some of the best pawn loan services have experts who can help in providing the maximum loan for the gold. A person can opt for a loan online. This is an easy procedure. One can earn fast cash from the loan and use it to meet the requirements.

The experts have suggested checking the authenticity of the site, before taking a loan. All the sites in the Internet are not authentic and can cheat a person. Experts have recommended taking loan from the services, which are regulated by the government. This would ensure a person legal protection for his collateral loans. As a person would take a secured loan, he would have to pay lower rate of interest than the unsecured loan. This will help him save the money and repay the loan faster.

A person can take any amount of pawn loan depending on his requirement. But he needs to have the collateral for the security deposit of the loan. Generally, the gold loans or other pawn loans are taken for a short period of time. One generally pays back the loan as early as possible and get back his jewelries or other valuables. A person should pay the interests to avoid penalties. Before accepting a loan, a person should go through the terms and conditions carefully.

source : Bill Aitken - ezinearticles

Microsoft sets Windows 7 launch for Oct. 22

2009-06-03T11:16:00.002+07:00

Microsoft will put Windows 7 on store shelves and computer makers will have systems ready to sell with Vista's successor on Oct. 22, the company confirmed today.

Microsoft will also offer discounted or free upgrades to Windows 7 to users who buy PCs in the months leading up to the operating system's launch in a program dubbed "Windows Upgrade Option," a company spokeswoman said Tuesday. Although the name is new, the program had been reported as early as January, when a usually-reliable Web site leaked information about the deal, including its July 1 kick-off.

Until today, Microsoft had been coy about naming a release date for Windows 7, although it edged toward a timetable last month. Both Bill Veghte, the senior vice president who runs the Windows Business unit, and Steven Sinofsky, the senior vice president of the Windows engineering group, said then that Windows 7 was on track for the holiday selling season, and would make the final milestone -- called "release to manufacturing," or RTM -- in mid-August. Today, however, other company spokespersons said Microsoft is shooting for RTM by the end of July.

Details on the Windows Upgrade Option were not immediately available, but analysts have assumed that it would resemble Vista Express Upgrade, a program that gave people who purchased Windows XP PCs between Oct. 26, 2006, and March 15, 2007, free or inexpensive upgrades to Vista.

Vendors were allowed to set the price, if any, of the XP-to-Vista upgrades, and it's believed that they will have the same flexibility for Windows 7.

This isn't the first time that October has been named as the likely ship date for Microsoft's new OS. In an interview last month, an Acer executive based in the U.K. said "October 23 is the date that Windows 7 will be available." The executive, Bobby Watkins, the managing director of Acer's U.K. operations, also confirmed that customers who bought a Vista-powered computer from the company in the 30 days leading up to Oct. 23 would receive a free upgrade to Windows 7.

Also last month, Computerworld used Sinofsky's mid-August RTM date to predict that Windows 7 would go on sale sometime between Oct. 11 and Nov. 4, based on the actual timetables of Windows XP and Vista, respectively.

source : Gregg Keizer - computerworld

Low-Fat Dairy Products Can Help to Reduce High Blood Pressure

2009-06-03T11:00:00.002+07:00

High blood pressure (or hypertension) is a serious health problem of modern times. It is estimated that currently, every third person above 50 suffers from hypertension, however, only 30% of such people are actually aware about high blood pressure as a reason of their poor health. Nowadays, hypertension becomes a malady of the people at much younger age than it was a century ago. Therefore, the results of a recent study carried out by a group of British and Dutch specialists, should not slip the attention of us all.

About 2245 people over 55 took part in this continuous experiment. They were grouped according to the type of dairy products they had to consume: high-fat dairy, low-fat dairy, cheese and cheese products, milk and milk products, fermented dairy. Every 6 years, the health condition of the participants was closely monitored by the scientists. It turned out that those people who followed a low-fat dairy diet (650 g a day) and regularly consumed milk products (651 g a day) had 7% lower risks of having hypertension. At that, positive changes in blood pressure could be noticed over 2 years of regular low-fat dairy consumption.

“Dairy provides minerals such as calcium and potassium which are important for blood pressure regulation. This study is an extra building block to an increasing body of evidence which suggests that dairy proteins and minerals play an important role in maintaining a healthy blood pressure,” Dr Judith Bryans, one of the leaders of the research explains. It is important that eating a low-fat dairy on a regular basis can also assist in maintaining a healthy weight and lower the risks of having high levels of bad cholesterol. The results of the Rotterdam Study were published in American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, April 2009.

by : Carla
source : guide2herbalremedies

How to get the best price on a used car

2009-06-03T10:50:00.001+07:00

There's alot more anxiety in the purchase of a used car then there is when purchasing a new car. Here are a few tips to keep in mind when going used car shopping.

Instructions

Step 1

Knowledge is the key when purchasing a used car. When looking for a used car, I always recommend taking along someone who has real knowledge of the workings under the hood. You might consider asking a mechanic that you know and trust, perhaps a parent or a friend who has enough knowledge that they will know a problem car when they see it.

Step 2

Do your research. In order to get a great price, you need to have an idea of what the car you are looking to buy is currently going for on the market. Kelley blue book is a great tool. You can search by year, make model and it will spit out the car value based whether you buy from a private seller or a dealership. It even adjusts the price based on the condition of the car such as fair, good, excellent. Makes sure you take the print out of the reports to the dealership wth you as a negotiating tool.

Step 3

Be prepared to walk away. Even if you fall in love with a car, you may just have to say no and walk out of the dealership if they refuse to budge on the price. Believe it or not, that's exactly what I did and the dealership actually called me an hour later and offered me a better price. Remember, sometimes it all comes down to who's the better bluffer. You or the salesperson.

source : ebnickiea - ehow

How to Cut Marketing Costs without Endangering Business Growth

2009-06-03T09:10:00.003+07:00

As business owners and/or marketers, we're all under pressure to cut costs. Unfortunately, many business owners get so intent on reducing costs, they lose sight of what it's going to do to the business. It's hard to grow - or even survive - if you don't have any customers.

Reducing marketing costs without screwing up your ability to grow is easier than you might think.

Here are five ways to do that.

Eliminate waste

Over the years I've looked at hundreds of marketing programs, and I can tell you honestly that nearly all of them have some kind of hole that either drains money directly or allows leads to be lost.

Before you cut anything, take a good hard look at what you're doing. Are there programs that aren't delivering the results you anticipated? Fix them or get rid of them.

Is there anything that can't be traced to increasing sales opportunities? Unless you have a pile of extra money, now is not the time to be spending money on marketing efforts that don't generate more leads or develop the ones you have.

Make fewer mistakes

Another way to say this is: turn to people who know what they're doing.

Marketing - which has never been exactly simple - has changed a lot in the past few years. Customers and prospects are in charge now, and they're looking for you online. If you're not on the internet, you're not in the game.

While I admire business owners who try to figure marketing out for themselves, it wastes a lot of time and it leads to mistakes that could be avoided with some experience.

You may not need a proven marketing pro on staff, but if you don't have one somewhere on your team you're probably wasting money.

Nurture what you've got

Successful lead generation programs bring in people in different stages of the buying process. Some are ready to commit more to you than others are. Some are ready to talk to a sales person and some aren't.

Think of any lead generation activity you've ever done: search marketing, email, advertising, telemarketing, networking, trade shows - it doesn't matter. Were all of the people who responded ready to schedule a two-hour demo of your product? Of course not.

But that doesn't make those people any less likely to buy from you in the future as long as you maintain a relationship with them.

If you're one of those businesses that has a bunch of inactive prospects sitting in a database (or on your desk), you may be better off nurturing those people than paying to find new ones. And nurturing leads can be a lot less expensive than generating them in the first place.

Increase conversions - not just inbound leads or traffic

This point is similar to the one above it, but it's important enough to look at from a different angle.

Let's say you have 2000 visitors a month going to your website and 60% of them leave your homepage without going anywhere else. Which do you think would be cheaper, changing your website so that an additional 20% (400 visitors) stay on your site or doubling traffic to the site? The results are the same.

(Hint: if you picked the first option, you're right).

Complex purchases - such as technology, high ticket goods, and ongoing services - are made up of many different conversion points where the buyer decides whether or not to spend any more time with you. Each of those conversion points can be tweaked to pass more prospects through and provide a better return on your investment.

Consider outsourcing

To have a successful marketing program today requires skills in multiple disciplines - some of which didn't even exist a decade or so ago. For example, you need website strategy and development, search engine optimization, paid search marketing, prospect conversion optimization, lead nurturing and web marketing - just to name a few.

Staffing an in-house team with all of this expertise would cost more than most small to mid-sized businesses are willing or able to invest. Yet you can easily - and cost effectively - get this expertise from an outside firm or group of individuals.

source : Susan Tatum - businessknowhow.com

How To Achieve Top Google Rankings

2009-05-29T11:35:00.000+07:00

For years, it has been well known that Google’s search algorithm is driven by the number and quality of links pointing to a particular URL. And as a result, it was all the rage for some time to buy links on web pages that had a high Google PageRank (PR).

But in March of 2007, Google’s mouthpiece Matt Cutts declared that Google was going to fight back against Paid Links. Google put a shot across the bow of many online marketers, letting them know that the days of easily buying links from high PageRank pages in order to influence a website’s ranking in Google were over.

The Shot Heard Around The World

With Matt Cutts declaration, a world full of online marketers began to cry foul. It was said that “They can’t do that!”

But the truth was and is that the Google Search Algorithm is Google’s intellectual property, and therefore, Google can do anything they want within their algorithms - no matter who those changes might hurt or help.

By the end of the Summer of 2007, the people crying foul had quieted down a bit and got back to the business of trying to find new ways to manipulate their website’s rankings inside of the Google search results. That is the way it has always been and always will be.

The summer of 2007 was just such an oddity… For me, it has always been exciting to challenge the brains at Google to get my websites to rank well within Google’s search algorithms. But for some reason, at that moment in time, many of those who held the top rankings in Google felt as if it was their God-given right to be at the top of Google’s search results, and how dare Google oppose God’s decree in this matter.

Yep, I know I am going to catch flak for that statement - comparing a few webmasters to religious zealots - but that is how I roll sometimes.

For me, Matt Cutts was telling people to work harder to actually “earn” what they have been given. For me, it was a chance to re-dedicate myself to the goal of ranking well in Google for competitive keywords. I did not have to change anything I was already doing, because I have never gained a single ranking in Google by paying for a link from any web page. (wink)

Google’s Search Engineers Are Not Foolish

Matt Cutts has said time and again that Google does not want to attack any problem in their search algorithms by manually deleting any participant in the Google search ranking game.

Instead, Google in every case wants to program a solution to address a particular bad practice.

I guess it might be easier for me to understand since I am also a computer programmer. It is a hobby I really enjoy, and I exercise my mind with computer programming anytime I want to improve my own websites or to build a new website. I keep my brain sharp by solving problems in computer code.

So, whenever I see Google making moves in one direction or another, I try to visualize how I would solve their algorithm problems in computer code.

In my mind, solving the paid links issue was a super-easy solution. Just look at the pages linking to a particular website, and then do a cross-comparison of the PageRank of all of those linking pages. If all of the pages linking to a particular URL have a PageRank of Four or higher, then chances are that those links were artificially created, through some kind of paid linking system.

Let me explain this in an example, where all of the sample web pages have 100 inbound links each:

If Site A has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 4 or higher, then that is unnatural and therefore suspect.

If Site B has all of its 100 links on pages that have a PageRank of 0, then those links offer no value to the Internet community as a whole, and therefore Site B should not measured as a quality search result.

If Site C has a mix of PageRank 0, 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 links, then that is more natural in its structure and it also shows that some of the links are considered to have value in the Internet community as a whole. Therefore, Site C has proven itself worthy above Site A and Site B in Google’s search results.

This example should show in no uncertain terms how easy it was for Google to properly address the issue of paid links and to put a stop to people using paid links to manipulate their websites’ ranking in Google’s search algorithms.

Publication Standards

A couple years back, I wrote another article discussing this concept in relationship to article marketing. You can read that article with third-party commentary from Chris McElroy, aka NameCritic, on the Article Content Provider Blog.

In a nutshell, I was discussing the role of article directories in the article marketing industry. Again, this solution came to me from my programming mind. The simple way for Google to have dealt with all of the junk articles that have been written for the purpose of building links to a website is to look at the article in the context of where that article is published.

The article marketing carpet bombers send their articles to hundreds of article directories to get hundreds of links pointing to their website. But the role of the article directory has always been to be a repository where newsletter publishers and webmasters could go to find articles that they would like to reprint in their own newsletters and on their own websites.

Some article directory managers bring a commitment to providing publishers with only quality articles. Other article directory managers approve anything and everything sent to them.

Through computer programming, it is relatively easy to identify which websites are article directories and which ones are not.

If an article is of good quality, then niche website publishers will find the article and put it on their own website. If the article is a crap article, then the only websites that will accept it are those article directories that publish anything and everything given to them.

As a result, it is easy for Google to look at the Linking Portfolio (list of publishing websites) of a single article and to see which articles were considered worthy of reprint by human reviewers. If the article only exists on article directory websites, then the article must not provide any real value to other people. But if the article is of good quality, the article will be able to be located on article directories AND on niche websites.

This concept very elegantly feeds into Google’s overall strategy of determining which web pages people recommend to others. After all, if you look at Google’s PageRank, it is very simply a system which measures how many people have voted on the quality or value of a particular web page.

Expanding On Google’s PageRank Formula

Google loves any system that they can conceive to measure how much value the overall Internet community gives to a particular web page.

Google naturally treats links found in the Yahoo! Business Directory and the Open Directory as higher value links, because the search engineers at Google understand that links in these directories are all approved by a human being.

Google also gives extra value to social bookmarking websites, because the concept behind social bookmarking is that individuals “bookmark” a web page when they find that web page to offer good value to its readers.

Google openly dislikes paid links and can easily identify those paid links, without having to jump through too many hoops. (This should not be confused with paying for a service that will help you increase your rankings in Google. Paying a service provider to provide services to you is very different than just paying for links on high PageRank web pages.)

Google also appreciates reprint articles that have a Linking Portfolio beyond the article directories. Once again, Google appreciates reprint articles that are shown to provide real value to individuals in the greater Internet community.

When you take a close look at the original premise of Google’s PageRank, it has always been about creating systems that measure the value of a web pages to find which web pages will best answer a searcher’s question. Rightfully so, Google believes that the best way to ensure that they are able to give their users good quality search results is to look at what web pages others have already deemed useful.

Herein rests the secret to ranking well in Google’s search results. If you can create content that people will find useful, interesting, and valuable to others, then Google’s search algorithms will look favorably upon your website.

source : Bill Platt - immediavisi.com