Archive for May, 2009

Are You a Southpaw? You Could Find Help with Your Advanced Education

Auto Date Saturday, May 30th, 2009

Looking for different avenues like school bursaries to help finance your higher education is often time consuming and frustrating. College scholarships are unlike a student loan in that these are a grant for education, and, don’t have to be paid back. As you look for ways to fund your degree, keep in mind that cash is available at very unusual places, such as left-hander grants.

Lefty Scholarships

A left-handed scholarship may initially appear a bit unusual, but it’s worth considering this: Albert Einstein was a left hander, as is Barack Obama. Raphael, Da Vinci, Paul McCartney and Winston Churchill were also lefties. Statistics propose up to eleven percent of individuals are left-handed. Often considered much more artistic and to be smarter, lefthanders have often experienced discrimination. Stigmatisation is not an issue anymore, lefthanders are no longer thought to be unusual, and may have many qualities in common with the exceptional people noted previously.

There are many grants available for left handed scholars if you know where to look. A Frederick and Mary F. Beckley Scholarship for funding up to $1000$1k is available at Juniata College in Huntington, PA. For students going to Juniata College and it was set up in 1979, this particular grant has helped over forty southpaws in their quest for further education. Whilst searching for school scholarships, do be aware that many of them have prerequisites or limitations. These can include grades and monetary needs. Multiple applications will give you a much better probabilty of supporting a university education with as little college debt upon graduation as possible. Societies, hobby related groups and local organizations may offer college grants. Left handed bursaries aren’t the only case; scholarships are accessible in many different instances for example the children of veterans or if you have a disability. Researching college grants can be time-consuming, but the payoff may be enormous. In conjunction with student loans, they can cut down the inescapable debt which a college education generates. Be sure to enquire into each suitable grant. Be aware the alternative choices besides lefty scholarships — think about all the options you can envisage and use every accessible resource. Try for each scholarship you might possibly qualify for, keeping any costs minimal, also you’ll look forward to a better economic future when you graduate.

Eurocell the Guttering Specialists - Selby Gets New Branch

Auto Date Thursday, May 28th, 2009


Installers, contractors and DIYers in Selby have welcomed Eurocell
Building Plastics latest branch opening in the town, which now gives
them access to over 3,800+ roofline and building plastic products,
literally on their doorstep. Access doesnt get much better either, as
the branch is conveniently located on the A1041, the main road into
Selby approaching from Bawtry.


The location of Selby itself makes it a crucial hub point for customers
travelling between the surrounding cities of Leeds, York and Doncaster.
The opening has been welcomed by trade and DIY customers in the area,
who previously had to travel for up to 30 minutes to source their
supplies.


There is currently a large amount of building and refurbishment work
occurring in the Selby area as it has evolved into a commuter town for
Leeds and York. This has meant that the new branch has already had many
enquiries from local tradesmen and DIYers looking to take advantage of
its offer.


Commenting on the opening, Paul Dixson, Eurocell Building Plastics
Northern Regional Manager, explains: We listened to our customers in
the area, who appreciated the excellent value we offer, but wanted more
local availability. The result is that Selby now gives customers quick
and easy access to our products, without having to drive to one of the
surrounding cities. Many of our contractors and installers also prefer
to collect early morning on their way to site and being close to the
major road networks means it will save them a huge amount of time.


Eurocell Profiles Ltd is one of the UKs leading suppliers of PVC-u
window, door, conservatory and roofline systems. From its base in
Derbyshire, Eurocell supplies a national network of fabricators with a
uniquely
comprehensive range of UPVC Products including href="http://www.eurocell.co.uk/buildingplastics/guttering.html">
guttering, href="http://www.strategy.nildram.co.uk/upvc-conservatories.html">
conservatories,
inline patio doors, vertical sliders, conservatories, roofline,
cavity closers and curtain walling. Eurocell Building Plastics (EBP) is
the
sister company of Eurocell Profiles and operates over 76 depots
nationwide stocking href="http://www.plastmo.co.uk/sliding-sash-windows.html">
sliding sash windows, windows trims, conservatory roofs and most
other items
required by the trade and DIY customer.

Durom Recall Broken Hip Replacements Extremely Rapidly

Auto Date Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Every year, joint replacements are given to many Americans. It’s a method of older people who have outused their joints to enjoy more activity in their lives. Because this procedure has become so routine, many do not question their doctors, or the manufacturers of their joint replacements about the quality of the technology that they are using. This has led to practices that can actually cause injury to you or your loved ones. If you are acquainted with anyone who has gotten a hip replaced, continue reading this crucial information on the maker, zimmer hip lawyer.

The current hip replacement surgery has been happening since the 1970’s, which is why it may seem so ordinary to one. A hip replacement, like those made by Zimmer Durom, typically involve three individual pieces designed to mock how an organic knee joint would. They include a metal replacement for part of the femur. A component which allows for movement like the joint naturally would, and either bone cement or screws to hold the contraption in place.

Click here in order to see more information about the zimmer hip lawsuit

A further surgery to correct issues with the implant or the need for revision is the one of the most common issues with hip replacements. Unfortunately, this is something many elderly and even healthy young patients cannot tolerate. This is primary with the zimmer hip class action. The Durom device was used by doctors in younger patients that would normally need a hip replacement, as it was designed to be long lasting. It created a bit of controversy that two years later, nearly 12% of the patients needed to be operated on again.

In the last several years you or someone you know had a hip replacement, ask your doctor if it was done by Zimmer Durom. You may be able to join a class action law suit even if you had no problems with your hip replacement. You will lose your rights if you sign a legal release by Zimmer Durom.

Get Better Search Engine Rankings with RSS

Auto Date Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

RSS is the latest craze in online publishing. But what exactly is RSS?

RSS or Rich Site Syndication is a file format similar to XML, and is used by publishers to make their content available to others in a format that can be universally understood.

RSS allows publishers to “syndicate” their content through the distribution of lists of hyperlinks.

It has actually been around for a while, but with the advent of spam filters and online blogging, it is fast becoming the choice of ezine publishers who want to get their message across to their subscribers.

However, not much attention has been given to the advantages RSS provides for search engine optimization.


Why Search Engines Love RSS

Many SEO experts believe that sites optimized around themes,or niches, where all pages correspond to a particular subject or set of keywords, rank better in the search engines.

For example, if your website is designed to sell tennis rackets, your entire site content would be focused around tennis and tennis rackets.

Search engines like Google seem to prefer tightly-themed pages.


But where does RSS figure in all this?

RSS feeds, usually sourced from newsfeeds or blogs, often correspond to a particular theme or niche.

By using highly targeted RSS feeds, you can enhance your site’s content without having to write a single line on your own.

It’s like having your own content writer - writing theme-based articles for you - for free!


How can RSS improve my Search Engine Rankings?

There are three powerful reasons why content from RSS Feeds is irresistible bait for search engine spiders.


1. RSS Feeds Provide Instant Themed Content

There are several publishers of RSS feeds that are specific to a particular theme.

Since the feed is highly targeted, it could contain several keywords that you want to rank highly for.

Adding these keywords to your pages helps Google tag your site as one with relevant content.


2. RSS Feeds Provide Fresh, Updated Content

RSS feeds from large publishers are updated at specific intervals. When the publisher adds a new article to the feed, the oldest article is dropped.

These changes are immediately effected on your pages with the RSS feed as well. So you have fresh relevant content for your visitors every hour or day.


3. RSS Feeds Result in More Frequent Spidering

One thing I never anticipated would happen as a result of adding an RSS feed to my site was that the Googlebot visited my site almost daily.
To the Googlebot, my page that had the RSS feed incorporated into it was as good as a page that was being updated daily, and in its judgement, was a page that was worth visiting daily.

What this means to you, is that you will have your site being indexed more frequently by the Googlebot and so any new pages that you add to your site will be picked up much faster than your competitors.



How does this benefit you as a marketer?

Well, for example, let’s says a top Internet Marketer comes out with a new product that you review and write up a little article on, and that your competitors do the same.

Google generally tends to index pages at the start of the month and if you miss that update, you will probably need to wait till the next month to even see your entry in.

But, since your site has RSS feeds, it now gets indexed more frequently. So the chances of getting your page indexed quickly are much higher.

This gives you an advantage over the competition, as your review will show up sooner in the search results than theirs.

Imagine what an entire month’s advantage could do to your affiliate sales!


Why Javascript Feeds Are Not Effective

Some sites offer javascript code that generates content sourced from RSS feeds for your site.

These are of absolutely no value in terms of search engine rankings, as the googlebot cannot read javascript and the content is not interpreted as part of your page.

What you need is code that parses the RSS feed and renders the feed as html content that’s part of your page.

This is achieved using server side scripting languages like PHP or ASP.

A good free ASP script is available from Kattanweb
http://www.kattanweb.com/webdev/projects/index.asp?ID=7



An equally good PHP script is CARP
http://www.geckotribe.com/rss/carp/



So in conclusion, besides optimizing on page and off page factors, adding RSS feeds to your pages should be an important part of your strategy to boost your search engine rankings.


Satyajeet Hattangadi is the CEO of Novasoft Inc, a software
solutions provider, that specializes in affordable
customized software solutions. http://www.novasoft-inc.com
Get the Free Email Course “RSS Riches” and learn how to use
RSS to get high search engine rankings and monetize your
website at http://www.trafficturbocharger.com

The Other Side of the Search God’s Abracadabra!

Auto Date Tuesday, May 26th, 2009

Thousands of servers …billions of web pages…. the possibility of individually sifting through the WWW is null. The search engine gods cull the information you need from the Internet…from tracking down an elusive expert for communication to presenting the most unconventional views on the planet. Name it and click it. Beyond all the hype created about the web heavens they rule, let’s attempt to keep the argument balanced. From Google to Voice of the Shuttle (for humanities research) these ubiquitous gods that enrich the net, can be unfair …and do wear pitfalls. And considering the rate at which the Internet continues to grow, the problems of these gods are only exacerbated further.

Primarily, what you need to digest is the fact that search engines fall short of Mandrake’s magic mechanism! They simply don’t create URLs out of thin air but instead send their spiders crawling across those sites that have rendered prayers (and expensive offerings!) to them for consideration. Even when sites like Google claim to have a massive 3 billion web pages in its database, a large portion of the web nation is invisible to these spiders. To think they are simply ignorant of the Invisible Web. This invisible web holds that content, normal search engines can’t index because the information on many web sites is in databases that are only searchable within that site. Sites like www.imdb.com - The Internet Movie Database , www.incywincy.com - IncyWincy, the invisible web search engine and www.completeplanet.com - The Complete Planet that cover this area are perhaps the only way you can access content from that portion of the Internet, invisible to the search gods. Here, you don’t perform a direct content search but search for the resources that may access the content. (Meaning - be sure to set aside considerable time for digging.)

None of the search engines indexes everything on the Web (I mean none). Tried research literature on popular search engines? AltaVista to Yahoo, will list thousands of sources on education, human resource development, etc. etc. but mostly from magazines, newspapers, and various organizations’ own Web pages, rather than from research journals and dissertations- the main sources of research literature. That’s because most of the journals and dissertations are not yet available publicly on the Web. Thought they’ll get you all that’s hosted on the web? Think again.

The Web is huge and growing exponentially. Simple searches, using a single word or phrase, will often yield thousands of “hits”, most of which will be irrelevant. A layman going in for a piece of info to the internet has to deal with a more severe issue - too much information! And if you don’t learn how to control the information overload from these websites, returned by a search result, roll out the red carpet for some frustration. A very common problem results from sites that have a lot of pages with similar content. For e.g., if a discussion thread (in a forum) goes on for a hundred posts there will be a hundred pages all with similar titles, each containing a wee bit of information. Now instead of just one link, all hundred of those darn pages will crop up your search result, crowding out other relevant site. Regardless of all the sophistication technology has brought in, many well thought-out search phrases produce list after list of irrelevant web pages. The typical search still requires sifting through dirt to find the gold. If you are not specific enough, you may get too many irrelevant hits.

As said, these search engines do not actually search the web directly but their centralized server instead. And unless this database is updated continually to index modified, moved, deleted or renamed documents, you will land yourself amidst broken links and stale copies of web pages. So if they inadequately handle dynamic web pages whose content changes frequently, chances are for the information they reference to quickly go out-of-date. After they wage their never ending war with over-zealous promoters (spamdexers rather), where do they have time to keep their databases current and their search algorithms tuned? No surprise if a perfectly worthwhile site may go unlisted!

Similarly, many of the Web search engines are undergoing rapid development and are not well documented. You will have only an approximate idea of how they are working, and unknown shortcomings may cause them to miss desired information. Not to mention, amongst the first class information, the web also houses false, misleading, deceptive and dressed up information actually produced by charlatans. The Web itself is unstable and tomorrow they may not find you the site they found you today. Well if you could predict them, they would not be god!…would they?! The syntax (word order and punctuation) for various types of complex searches varies some from search engine to search engine, and small errors in the syntax can seriously compromise the search. For instance, try the same phrase search on different search engines and you’ll know what I mean. Novices… read this line - using search engines does involve a learning curve. Many beginning Internet users, because of these disadvantages, become discouraged and frustrated.

Like a journalist put it, “Not showing favoritism to its business clients is certainly a rare virtue in these times.” Search engines have increasingly turned to two significant revenue streams. Paid placement: In addition to the main editorial-driven search results, the search engines display a second and sometimes third listing that’s usually commercial in nature. The more you pay, the higher you’ll appear in the search results. Paid inclusion: An advertiser or content partner pays the search engine to crawl its site and include the results in the main editorial listing. So?…more likely to be in the hit list but then again - no guarantees. Of course those refusing to favor certain devotees are industry leaders like Google that publishes paid listings, but clearly marks them as ‘Sponsored Links.’

The possibility of these ‘for-profit’ search gods (which haven’t yet made much profit) for taking fees to skew their searches, can’t be ruled out. But as a searcher, the hit list you are provided with by the engine should obviously rank in the order of relevancy and interest. Search command languages can often be complex and confusing and the ranking algorithm is unique to each god based on the number of occurrences of the search phrase in a page, if it appears in the page title, or in a heading, or the URL itself, or the meta tag etc. or on a weighted average of a number of these relevance scores. E.g. Google (www.google.com) uses its patented PageRank TM and ranks the importance of search results by examining the links that lead to a specific site. The more links that lead to a site, the higher the site is ranked. Pop on popularity!

Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek and MSN Search use keyword indexes - fast access to millions of documents. The lack of an index structure and poor accuracy of the size of the WWW, will not make searching any easier. Large number of sites indexed. Keyword searching can be difficult to get right.
In reality, however, the prevalence of a certain keyword is not always in proportion to the relevance of a page. Take this example. A search on sari - the national costume of India -in a popular search engine, returned among it’s top sites, the following links:
?www.scri.sari.ac.uk/- of the Scottish Crop research Institute
?www.ubudsari.com/ -a health resort in Indonesia
?www.sari-energy.org/ - The South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation and Development

Pretty useful sites for someone very much interested in knowing how to drape or the tradition of the sari?! (Well, no prayer goes unanswered…whether you like the answer or not!) By using keywords to determine how each page will be ranked in search results and not simply counting the number of instances of a word on a page, search engines are attempting to make the rankings better by assigning more weight to things like titles, subheadings, and so on.
Now, unless you have a clear idea of what you’re looking for, it may be difficult or impossible to use a keyword search, especially if the vocabulary of the subject is unfamiliar. Similarly, the concept based search of Excite (instead of individual words, the words that you enter into a search are grouped and attempted to determine the meaning) is a difficult task and yields inconsistent results.

Besides who reviews or evaluates these sites for quality or authority? They are simply compiled by a computer program. These active search engines rely on computerized retrieval mechanisms called “spiders”, “crawlers”, or “robots”, to visit Web sites, on a regular basis and retrieve relevant keywords to index and store in a searchable database. And from this huge database yields often unmanageable and comprehensive results….results whose relevance is determined by their computers. The irrelevant sites (high percentage of noise, as it’s called), questionable ranking mechanisms and poor quality control may be the result of less human involvement to weed out junk. Thought human intervention would solve all probes….read on.

From the very first search engine - Yahoo to about.com, Snap.com, Magellan, NetGuide, Go Network, LookSmart, NBCi and Starting Point, all subject directories index and review documents under categories - making them more manageable. Unlike active search engines, these passive or human-selected search engines like don’t roam the web directly and are human controlled, relying on individual submissions. Perhaps the easiest to use in town, but the indexing structure these search engines cover only a small portion of the actual number of WWW sites and thus is certainly not your bet if you intend specific, narrow or complex topics.

Subject designations may be arbitrary, confusing or wrong. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Never contains full text of the web they link to - you can only search what you see titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc. Human-labor intensive process limits database currency, size, rate of growth and timeliness. You may have to branch through the categories repeatedly before arriving at the right page. They may be several months behind the times because of the need for human organization. Try looking for some obscure topic….chances for the people that maintain the directory to have excluded those pages. Obviously, machines can blindly count keywords but they can’t make common-sense judgement as humans can. But then why does human-edited directories respond with all this junk?!

And here’s about those meta search engines. A comprehensive search on the entire WWW using The Big Hub, Dogpile, Highway61, Internet Sleuth or Savvysearch , covering as many documents as possible may sound as good an idea as a one stop shopping.Meta search engines do not create their own databases. They rely on existing active and passive search engine indexes to retrieve search results. And the very fact that they access multiple keyword indexes reduces their response time. It sure does save your time by searching several search engines at once but at the expense of redundant, unwanted and overwhelming results….much more - important misses. The default search mode differs from search site to search site, so the same search is not always appropriate in different search engine software. The quality and size of the databases vary widely.

Weighted Search Engines like Ask Jeeves and RagingSearch allows the user to type queries in plain English without advanced searching knowledge, again at the expense of inaccurate and undetailed searching. Review or Ranking Sources like Argus Clearinghouse (www.clearinghouse.net),
eBlast (eblast.com) and Librarian’s Index to the Internet (lii.org). They evaluate website quality from sources they find or accept submissions from but cover a minimal number of sites.

As a webmaster, your site registration with the biggest billboards in Times Square can get you closer to bingo! for the searcher. Those who didn’t even know you existed before are in your living room in New York time!

Your URL registration is a no-brainer, considering the generation of flocking traffic to your site. Certainly a quick and inexpensive method, yet is only a component of the overall marketing strategy that in itself offers no guarantees, no instant results and demands continued effort for the webmaster. Commerce rules the web. Like how a notable Internet caveman put it, “Web publishers also find dealing with search engines to be a frustrating pursuit. Everybody wants their pages to be easy for the world to find, but getting your site listed can be tough. Search sites may take a long time to list your site, may never list it at all, and may drop it after a few months for no reason. If you resubmit often, as it is very tempting to do, you may even be branded a spamdexer and barred from a search site. And as for trying to get a good ranking, forget it! You have to keep up with all the arcane and ever-changing rules of a dozen different search engines, and adjust the keywords on your pages just so…all the while fighting against the very plausible theory that in fact none of this stuff matters, and the search sites assign rankings at random or by whim.

“To make the best use of Web search engines–to find what you need and avoid an avalanche of irrelevant hits– pick search engines that are well suited to your needs. And lest you’d want to cry “Ye immortal gods! where in the world are we?”, spend a few hours becoming moderately proficient with each. Each works somewhat differently, most importantly in respect to how you broaden or narrow a search.

Finding the appropriate search engine for your particular information need, can be frustrating. To effectively use these search engines, it is important to understand what they are, how they work, and how they differ. For e.g. while using a meta search engine, remember that each engine has its own methods of displaying and ranking results. Remember, search strategies affect the results. If the user is unaware of basic search strategies, results may be spotty.

Quoting Charlie Morris (the former editor of The Web developer’s journal) - “Search engines and directories survive, and indeed flourish, because they’re all we’ve got. If you want to use the wealth of information that is the Web, you’ve got to be able to find what you want, and search engines and directories are the only way to do that. Getting good search results is a matter of chance. Depending on what you’re searching for, you may get a meaty list of good resources, or you may get page after page of irrelevant drivel. By laboriously refining your search, and using several different search engines and directories (and especially by using appropriate specialty directories), you can usually find what you need in the end.”

Search engines are very useful, no doubt. Right from getting a quick view of a topic to finding expert contact info…verily certain issues lie in their lap. Now the very reason we bother about these search engines so much is because they’re all we’ve got! Though there sure is a lot of room for improvement, the hour’s need is to not get caught in the middle of the road. By simply understanding what, how and where to seek, you’d spare yourself the fate of chanting that old Jewish proverb “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”

Happy searching!

Liji is a PostGraduate in Software Science, with a flair for writing on anything under the sun. She puts her dexterity to work, writing technical articles in her areas of interest which include Internet programming, web design and development, ecommerce and other related issues.

The Pros and Cons of Val D’Isere in the Northern Alps

Auto Date Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Among Europe’s most famed snowboarding mountains for luxury ski holidays, Val d’Isre features 409 km of marked ski pistes. The skiing begins in mid November and terminates in the start of May. The high altitude purpose built French village provides everything for you. The resort stretches through the vale from La Daille up to Le Fornet with the focus and the apres ski in the centre Val d’Isere. This clustering of attractive chalets incorporate chic shops nearly all of which have arisen since the town was picked for the 1992 Winter Olympics.

Broken into three parts Val d’Isre has lots of slopes for all skiers. It has a fab snow record, the resort is hugely fashionable amongst pro skiers and boarders and mileage hungry intermediates, however you don’t have to be especially experienced to love what’s there. One can easily see why umpteen Brits are pulled in to the town, with its exciting apres ski and the choice of entertainment on offer, however the proximity of Tignes allows you to venture out to quieter areas if it all becomes all too much.



Pros


A good night-life in the Alps. Everybody understands English. Comfortable entrance to Val d’Isre and Tignes known as the the Espace Killy skiing area. It has a lot of traffic and whilst there are regular buses during the day, devoted apres skiers had better aim to be within a short distance from the centre.



Cons


Expensive. Frantic and fashionable with English skiers, so not for holiday makers looking for a classic French ski resort to savour a relaxing skiing holiday. Several ski lifts can close in inclement conditions. A few challenging blue and green runs.

No More Oreos? Tell Me it isn’t True!

Auto Date Friday, May 22nd, 2009

Another good citizen comes to the aid of the uninformed public. After years of eating Oreos, and enjoying them tremendously, somebody put on a pound or two. Who’s to blame? You know somebody is to blame. It couldn’t be the fault of the user. Did she exercise? Did she walk? Did she do her housework? No, she sat in front of her T.V. and ate Oreos.

When she realized she had gotten a little pudgy around the middle, she didn’t like it. She complained to a lawyer friend. The lawyer friend listened to her crying about being fat and did his best to assure her she was still beautiful. To make her feel better, he got them both glasses of milk and took a fresh bag of Oreos from her cabinet.

Making themselves comfortable at the kitchen table, they continued to dip the cookies and argue whether she was fat or not. For hours. Finally, to shut her up, he said he would find the cause. He absolutely knew it wasn’t her fault and he told her so.

And what did he discover while reading the ingredient list on the side of the bag? It’s the fault of Oreos! There is fat in the white filling! Shazam! Who would’ve thunk it? I wonder which college he went to? He was amazing! Now, another American icon is about to be erased.

Dads will not be able to show their sons how to twist off the top cookie carefully so they can lick the filling off. Little brothers will no longer be able to dip their Oreo into their big brother’s glass of milk, and enjoy a bit of brotherly camaraderie before being pushed away roughly. What will mothers put in the lunch boxes? Will we be able to carry one more straw of added stress in our daily lives?

In the years to come, someone will remember Oreos lovingly, and the children will say, “What the heck is an Oreo?”

Or beg, “Tell us about the old days, Daddy, when you use to eat Oreos.” Fathers will sigh sadly, and brush a tear away.

People are going to start hoarding them, just wait and see. The neighbor across the street just put a padlock on his freezer in his garage. I just know he has Oreos in there.

On Halloween, Oreo came out with orange filling. (I wonder if it was to get rid of the white filling that had the fat in it? Hey, it works for me.) They also have double chocolate. A cookie with chocolate filling. Oh, they probably have a lot of new ideas in their secret files. Now, what will they do if they are shut down?

People will lose their jobs. Nabisco will go bankrupt. It’s a real shame, but will the good citizen, with the over zealous lawyer, care? No. She knows her duty. Her concern is over the rest of us getting fat. She is looking out for us that are too ignorant to know there is fat in the filling. Anyone out there who didn’t already know this? Anyone?

I like fat. It keeps my hair shiny and my skin soft. Doing
without a bit of fat turns you into a dried up prune with straw for hair. I’d rather be round, myself.

Oreos are the cookies of distinction. You don’t just buy chocolate cookies. You must buy Oreos. When you bring the kids in for milk and cookies, their ears hear “milk and Oreos!” Can any other cookie put that ring of chocolate around a child’s mouth so sweetly? I don’t think so.

If this can be done to the King of cookies, what’s next? Ice Cream? Reese’s minis? The Golden Arches? It’s time for people to revolt. Stand up for your right to eat Oreos! In the meantime, run and grab all you can before they’re gone!

Update! May 17, 2003

The suit has been dropped. Wow! People can stand up and be revolting - it works! Kids can keep enjoying their Oreos, and mom and dad will not have to freeze them or hide them from the neighbors.

I wonder what else is on the Endangered Food List?

Harriet is an author on http://www.Writing.Com/
which is a site for Creative Writing.Her portfolio can be found at http://www.Writing.Com/authors/storytime.

The Things You Can Do To Fix Bad Credit

Auto Date Thursday, May 21st, 2009

When confronted with the reality of having bad credit, people’s first reactions are something along the lines of “I’m doomed” or “This is it” and that’s it. But there’s no need to be so depressed and pessimistic just yet.

Haven’t you heard about the wonders of credit repair? Yes, I know, the critics are still going on and on about the need for consumers to be wary of professional credit repair companies and the kind of services they’re offering but whether you do it yourself or hire the services of a professional credit repair company.

If you’re interested to learn about the things you can do to fix bad credit - yours in particular - read on!

Bad Credit Can Still Be Erased - That’s the first thing you have to convince yourself of. The path to credit repair is not a short and easy one so if you don’t have the patience and perseverance for it, I can already tell you now that you’ll be quitting even when you’re not halfway to the finish line. Because you’re doing it alone, the task is doubly harder so you truly need buckets of patience if you want to see this through.

Prepare Yourself For Changes - Don’t fool yourself into thinking that when all this is over and you’ve accomplished what you intended - and that’s to repair your credit - you can immediately revert to your old form and once again not care about payment deadlines, overextending your loans, using up the remaining balance of your credit cards and so on.

If you want the effects of your credit repair achievements to last, then you must promise to yourself not to go back to your old bad habits. Besides, that’s also like throwing away everything you’ve earned!

Deciphering Credit Reports - When you’re about to fix bad credit you can ask anyone in the world with the minimum amount of intelligence regarding financial matters and they’ll tell you that the first thing you’ll always have to do is obtain a copy of your credit report and find out about your FICO scores.

If you have a FICO score that’s above 680, it’s time to set your heart at ease because for now, there’s nothing to worry about. But if you have a score lower than 550, you better wish that your credit report contains a number of errors or you’re in for a longer fight.

Mr. Peter Garant is a long time contributer of financial articles, Most of his work is faxless payday loan and credit repair Articles.

The Google Sitemap For Idiots

Auto Date Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

I don’t mind admitting that every time some new fangled idea or piece of technology arrives online, I have a small fit and wonder how long it’s going to take me to understand what it is, what it’s for and whether I need to use it to stay ‘up there’. It’s even more frightening when the experts start explaining it and really only serve to confuse the matter when they use their ‘techno-speak’.

Here I am still wrestling with RSS and along comes Google with their Sitemap program. I must admit, it sounds simple enough until you read a couple of articles about how to generate your sitemap or go to Google’s instructions and manage to get completely confused. I don’t know what it is, although I know it’s not just me. I know too many people who work online and have the same problem. Maybe we just went to school in the wrong decade (seventies or maybe earlier). But then, we can spell and write, can’t we…

For those who need to know what the Google Sitemap program is about, here it is in the nutshell and in MY language - English. At least, what I think it is, anyway:

Google, I imagine have become tired of crawling billions of websites, most of which are largely inactive or abandoned or both. So they are giving webmasters (website owners) the opportunity to play a part in the frequency and importance placed on the crawling of our websites. Even to the point of giving us the ability to prioritize these aspects of the individual pages. In doing so, they are also having us do some of their work for them, which is OK, seeing as they are our websites. I think it’s grand.

In their instructions, Google give a few different methods by which you can generate a suitable Sitemap and how to get it onto your server etc. To be honest, I found it totally confusing. They do suggest that we use their Sitemap generator, but it is only compatible if your server uses a thing called ‘Python 2.2′ and you need to know the command that launches it… WHAT??? There’s that ‘nerd stuff’ again. Every time I send a simple question to my webhost, like, “what’s your name”, I get three paragraphs of unintelligible ‘techno-speak’, so how do I find out if I have some ‘Snake-thingy’ on my server? So, Google’s instructions are no good to me, or anyone like me. Even their alternatives, although slightly simpler, don’t answer ALL the questions I need answered in order to get through it in one piece.

Fortunately, through trial and error (or maybe because I may actually be turning into a ‘nerd’), I can tell you how to generate a Sitemap, upload it to you server (and more importantly, WHERE to put it) and how to submit it to Google.

First, you go to this website - http://www.blocklayer.com/googlesitemap/ and you will find that all you need to do is put the URL of you website (the main domain name) into the appropriate field and click “Create map”. It will create a list of the pages in your website and will, helpfully, also list any broken or inactive links (which you can go about fixing). You can change the frequency with which each page is crawled and rate it’s importance. Obviously, pages which change often, need to be crawled more often etc. When you’re happy with your list of pages, you click on “XML Sitemap” and it creates a coded XML Sitemap. XML is the code that’s used in RSS, which looks much like HTML.

Now, and this is the magic bit, you need to do one more thing before you can upload to your server. You need to copy and paste the XML code to a ‘Notepad’ document. You call the file ’sitemap.xml’. Now the WHOLE of that file name goes in the ‘Filename’ box,. The ‘.xml’ doesn’t go into the ‘file type’ box, like it would in a Word, Excel or any other program. Low and behold, the little ‘Notepad’ program magically recognizes the fact that it is XML format (I don’t know how, probably mirrors…) and the file you end up with has the ‘.xml’ file extension. That is what you upload to your server.

It’s very easy. You just place it under what they call the ‘Root Directory’. I’ve learned that this is the ‘Main Folder’ (I don’t know why they just don’t say ‘Main Folder’, but…). So, it goes into the very first folder of your website. If using cPanelX® it’s called ‘html public’. If using Frontpage®, it’s simply the folder with the main URL as it’s name.

My first question was, “What about Sub-Domains?” Do I have to submit separate Sitemaps or will they be included in the one I generate for the Main Domain? The answer is that Sub Domains won’t be included in the Main Sitemap, you need to generate a separate one by simply using the Sub-Domain URL in the generator. This is handy because each Sub-Domain will usually have unique needs and it would be more than awkward if they were all included in the main Sitemap.

Obviously, in the case of a Sub Domain, the ‘Root Directory’ or ‘Main Folder’ you put this Sitemap into is the Main Sub-Domain folder, that is, the first one under the Main Domain folder.

Submitting to Google is a really easy process. You just log into your Google account (you have to have one) and go to the ‘Add a Sitemap’ section and enter the COMPLETE filename of the sitemap, which will be: http://www.mydomain.com/sitemap.xml and click on ‘Submit URL’.

Although I have had a little fun with the fact that I still, after several years earning a living online, don’t understand a lot of the ‘lingo’. To those of you who are in the same position or those who are new to this Internet business thing, I can honestly say, you will get a handle on it and find that all these things, which may seem completely overwhelming at first, will make sense and come more easily if you take the time to read a little and find out. I’ve obviously surrendered to this concept and it has made things much easier.

Oh God! I think I’m a Nerd!

Stephen Brennan is the author of the popular ebook title ‘The Affiliate Guide Book’ - The Definitive guide to Affiliate SUCCESS. He also runs The Home Based Business and Affiliate Center.

Introducing Yours Truly, a Single Friend Who Really Found Great Expectations

Auto Date Wednesday, May 20th, 2009

I cannot say I’m exactly happy being picky and not be lying. Even then, I’m not uncomfortable about it, either. I only mention it on the blogosphere as a delicious detail setting up the story I will shortly unravel!

A week ago today yours truly was walking the dog, Corey, pondering about signing up for a dating service for Phoenix singles. As of this minute, I stand to the blogosphere as a surprisingly pleased member of the matchmaking service. Totally, it’s true. I like it! If you know me at all, perhaps you’re thinkin’, “Stop blabbering and tell me about it already.”

Well, I looked at this Great Expectations Dating site and liked what I saw. They’re for the honest singles who think dating should mean something.

Because I’d never been a fan of whatever it is that my friends and my family so aptly entitled “The Dating Experience.” I heard it all the time. Every night people nagg, “You’re still single? ” and “Oh I know just the guy for you!”

“Nonsense,” I reply, without missing a beat. “Have you seen what’s out there?”

“Not true,” they level with me. “You haven’t dated in a year, you wouldn’t know!”

That’s just my partner in crime (on a good day) hah! Sandy Holland. She offers rational thought to my brain to set me straight. Loved ones are always there to offer perspective. Can’t argue with that, and I thank her for it.

Coming home to the message of this essay. As I selected from more than three hundred outfits (hah) and desirable, honest singles for my first Great Expectations date, a revelation hit me deep. For years, I hadn’t held the greatest of figurative great expectations for dating and myself in the serendipitous path of life. Single life has its perks, specifically when you get out there and have fun. Having great expectations makes a difference in dating.

~Christy Rodriguez