Know Your Shopping

Nope. You certainly don’t need a website.

But you don’t need many of the things you’ve come to rely on, such as your cell phone, e-mail, or faxes.

And there’s no point in having an Internet presence if those you want to reach lack computers or online capabilities. Or, if you have nothing to say. But, if you do have something to say, and your audience is accessible on the Internet, then consider a website.

Years before the Internet, I prepared a brochure to give to people who wanted to know what I did. It was pocket size, so I always had a few on hand to give out. And it was more impressive, and more descriptive of my services than a business card. Think of a website as an electronic brochure with many advantages over a printed brochure, such as:

1. It’s unlimited in quantity. You don’t have to get a few thousand printed every time you run out.

2. It’s easily updated and, if you do it yourself, cost-free.

3. You can link it to your newsletter and other sites to extend its usefulness to the reader.

4. It also gets much wider exposure than any printed brochure ever could.

Initially, the only cost will be the time you spend not watching TV commercials. Most of us can afford that.

The first thing to do is decide what you want your web site to tell people about you. To do that, you don’t need a computer, just a pad and pencil. Put them by your TV chair so you can scribble stuff down during commercials. Write a phrase about what you do. Then scribble down your qualifications. And what you do for your clients. Plus what they do for you (i.e. how you get paid).

Don’t worry about grammar, spelling, or even forming sentences at this stage. All that comes later.

Can’t think of anything to say about yourself? Ask your significant other, a client, or a few of your clients. Find out what they think you do, and why they deal with you.

If after a week your pad is blank, forget it. You’re not ready for a web site. Why? Because the most important thing about a web site is content, and if you’ve got nothing to say, you’ve got no content.

When you’ve filled a page or so about what you do, and the benefits of dealing with you, it’s time to reshape it. Start by dividing all the stuff you’ve written into two parts, qualifications, and other. In the qualifications pile include all the phrases that describe why prospects should deal with you. Try to turn them into a paragraph or two of benefits, and call them your Professional Background.

The other pile consists of what’s left over, maybe your age, family life, hobbies, etc. Rewrite all those phrases into a more readable form and call that your Personal Profile.

Now you can turn on your computer, and type it all into your word processor, edit it so it hangs together and makes sense, then save it as MySite so you can copy it into your web site.

You now have some content for your website. For clues on how create it, visit http://www.lifesites.org

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Copyright 2005, Donald F. Pooley, Inc.

Don Pooley has shared his marketing know-how with audiences
in major Canadian cities, London, Australia, Chicago, New
York, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Singapore, and now in
his free ezine, TIP. Subscribe at http://www.eTIP.ca/, or
get free article downloads, and redistribution rights info
at http://www.eTIP.ca/Downloads/Publish.html

Believe it or not, worldwide mobile broadband connections have reached a major landmark of hundred million in quick time. The data released by the wireless intelligence unit of GSMA, an organization looking after the interests of the mobile industry, also shows that the number of total mobile internet connections has reached 4 billion and keeping with the pace of growth, it is likely to add another 2 billion users in the next 4-5 years.

Michael O’Hara, the Chief Marketing Officer at GSMA says that even in the current economic slowdown, the innovation and growth will be driven by the initiatives taken by the industry, mostly from Mobile Broadband and Lifestyle. Increase in mobile connections is due to mobile devices and broadband connections. People get online using mobile phone networks with handsets or mobile internet devices or use netbooks and laptops with on-board connectivity or USB dongles.

GSMA comprises of over 750 mobile operators and over 200 mobile companies from the wider industry, and will be holding the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona next week. It is a major event attended by most of the big players from the industry. The event facilitates discussions to promote the interests of the mobile industry and this year the current economic crisis and development of future technologies are going to be the two hot topics.

See mortgage loan for residential mortgage lending, and commercial mortgage for lending against commercial property. And of course, each loan and each borrower are different. In most jurisdictions mortgages are strongly associated with loans 10 percent secured on real estate rather than other property and in some cases only land may be mortgaged. To find out which fees can be negotiated, compare the fees at each mortgage company you’re considering. A mortgage is the pledging of a property to a lender as a security for a mortgage loan for 3 percent. So how do you find a lender or broker you can trust’ Start with credibility. It’s not easy to know if the prices quoted by lenders are reliable. Brokers work with many mortgage bankers and, as a result, can sometimes find slightly more competitive rates 11 percent perhaps lower but dealing directly with a mortgage banker can move a loan along more quickly. Although most mortgage experts say that rates 3 percent are pretty much the same wherever you go, give or take this tiny 11 percentage. Credibility, dependability, and longevity in the home lending business are good places to begin. Arranging a mortgage is seen as the standard method by which individuals and businesses can purchase residential and commercial real estate without the need to pay the full value immediately. Some will quote you precise, competitive rates 4 percent. Many of these fees are fixed but some can be negotiated.

Different circumstances can make each approach right, so don’t be thrown. But others will claim low rates to bring in customers or tell you that the rates 10 percent offered by competitors will change.

Both banks and brokers have their strengths and weaknesses. See which lenders are charging fees 4 percent and for how much. In other words, the mortgage is a security for the loan that the lender makes to the borrower.

The Dutch translation says: Woon je in ’s-Hertogenbosch of Goedereede en hebt u BKR’ Lenen met een BKR registratie is nog nooit zo eenvoudig geweest. Koop een nieuwe woning met geld lenen voor schulden, 380775 euro is geen obstakel om te lenen. Van Kessel tot Ooststellingwerf, geld lenen met zonder BKR registratie is altijd mogelijk.

It is a transfer of an interest in land, from the owner to the mortgage lender, on the condition that this interest will be returned to the owner of the real estate when the terms of the mortgage have been satisfied or performed.

Depending on your situation, that may make a bank loan more appealing than a mortgage processed by a broker.

Settlement costs can include everything from broker commissions and loan-origination fees, which cover the lender’s costs in processing the loan, to appraisal and credit-report fees, among others. While a mortgage in itself is not a debt, it is evidence of a debt of 10 percent. Different lenders charge different fees.

Through the explosive growth of the Web, companies have realized the benefit of building a strong online presence. By publishing a website to the Internet, companies are able to build their brand, market their products, support existing customers, release publicity pieces, and even take orders. Lost in the feverish pace of growth however, has been an eye on the effect that their current web-building practices have on the bottom line and the future of their online presence. Not only does the website content itself have an impact on the company’s income but so does the way the site itself is created.

Building your site with a commitment to web standards – and continuously testing to ensure it maintains its adherence to those standards – can save your company money and even increase website related income.

What are web standards?

Web standards are, for purposes of this discussion, carefully designed sets of rules and protocols that drive web-based content throughout the Internet.

Specifically, web standards revolve around:

• Structural Languages – such as HTML, XHTML, XML, SMIL, SVG, MathML

• Presentation Languages – such as CSS, XSL

• Document Object Model

• ECMAScript

These web standards have been defined by the Worldwide Web Consortium (W3C) and other standards bodies to ensure the interoperability and access of documents placed on the web. Documents that follow the established standards will benefit in many ways:

• Lower maintenance effort and cost

• Lower cost for redesign

• Improved usability and accessibility

• Broader compatibility across platforms and devices

• Reduced hardware demand and cost

Site wide look and feel consistency

Designing to current standards enables the site to maintain the same look and feel theme throughout the site. Standards also allow the site’s look and feel to change rapidly with little additional load on personnel resources.

Improved usability: smaller document size loads faster

Designing to current standards means that – by proxy – the documents will be smaller. Because of this, the pages will load faster for the user. Download times have been shown to be a factor in website usability. A perceived delay in site presentation undermines users’ evaluation of the site. Users systematically rate slower sites as less interesting and having lower quality content. In addition they report that delays interfere with task continuity, their ability to remember the site, and use flow. Exceedingly slow sites can lead users to believe an error has occurred. Finally, users correlate site performance and security: Chronically slow sites are considered to be less secure resources for purchase. (http://www.humanfactors.com/downloads/aug03.asp)

Better cross-platform compatibility

As browser manufacturers come closer to adhering to web standards, it is becoming clearer that creating standards-based pages can be an increasing assurance that the site will operate across multiple platforms. “Rendering fine” is a myth born of misunderstanding. Considering that 5 different rendering engines are used to surf the web using dozens of browsers (and versions of those browsers) on 3 platforms, attempting to test the site for rendering in every configuration is next to impossible. Coding to standards then, is the only practical solution for ensuring compatibility – now and in the future.

Prepares for the future

“Rendering fine” on current browsers is no guarantee that a site with invalid markup will render fine in the future. Moreover, it is no guarantee that a site will render fine (or at all) in the growing number of non-traditional devices such as PDAs and cellular telephones. As browser manufacturers make further efforts to make their products adhere to standards, the point of “rendering fine” in target browsers becomes moot, anyway. Standards-compliant markup will be even more of a guarantee that it will work on all platforms than error-laden and proprietary markup.

Extensibility

Designing to the current standard means sites should be marked up using XHTML – an XML-compatible version of HMTL. Using this format will enable the company to venture into the inevitable world of XML without the need for major modifications to the site structure. XML features can be added quickly and painlessly.

Lower maintenance and easier troubleshooting

Personnel can come and go – but the code they create will stay behind. If that code contains error-laden, invalid markup and “work-arounds” for rendering in target browsers, it will cost the company money in personnel time to find the bad markup and make it right. “Because standards are very well documented, another person taking over some standard-compliant code can hit the ground running – and will not need to become familiar with the previous developer’s coding practices.” – Tristan Nitot, Netscape Communications (http://devedge.netscape.com/viewsource/2003/why-web-standards)

Regardless of who does the site maintenance, designing to standards ensures shorter time spent hunting down problems. While poor rendering may very well be a buggy browser, in most cases “rendering improperly” usually means “something is wrong”. Validation is one of the ways to uncover exactly what the issue is. By maintaining a standards-compliant site, you are providing yourself with insurance that if something goes awry, you will be able to more easily and quickly get to the possible cause. Simply put, if you know everything else is OK, you can focus any troubleshooting efforts on what has been changed instead of looking at what else already existed that could have caused or exacerbated the problem.

Accessibility

Designing with web standards makes accessibility an easier goal to achieve, as standards have been created with accessibility in mind.

Proper markup goes beyond “validity”. Each element in (x)HTML has been created with a specified purpose, and so creating a standards-compliant site also means using the most appropriate element for the task at hand. Doing so increases accessibility. Proper markup gives alternative access devices the ability to provide context to the page’s content.

Reduced bandwidth cost

Last, adhering to standards-based markup can reduce the amount that a company pays for bandwidth. As stated above, adherence to standards has the effect of reducing the size of a document – by up to 50% or more by some estimates. This can lead to big savings in bandwidth charges for high-traffic websites.

Standards just make sense

So what does all of this really mean? As the company’s website becomes more important to its bottom line, standards can help position the company as a leader. Those who choose to make the commitment to quality will find a payoff that begins immediately and lasts into the future. Right now, you’ll save on development of new content. In the future you’ll benefit from reduced maintenance and increased agility. Standards compliance just makes sense.

Additional Resources

• HTML Standards Compliance – Why Bother?

• Why Should You Validate Your Web Pages?

• WASP: Fighting For Standards Liberty!

• Quality! Validity!

• Why We Won’t Help You

• How User-Agents Handle Tag Soup

• The Business Value Of Web Standards

• Web Standards For Business

About The Author

Karl Groves is a freelance web designer who has done production work on sites for National Cancer Institute, Network For Good, Aerospace Medical Association and more.

The Tour de France is the BIG one; it’s the World cup and the Olympics all in one. It has it all, the high mountains, the wind swept northern planes and the heat of the south. It also has the world’s media, all the top teams and riders and millions of cycling mad fans watching. The other “Grand Tours” of Italy and Spain are as exciting, sometimes more so, but they don’t have the thing the Tour has, that unique Tour ness, that unique French ness.

How it started.

It all started in 1903, when the French daily paper, L’Auto wanted to sell more than its competitor, Le V©lo, who at that time was the only paper reporting on cycle racing. It was suggested to the papers director, Henri Desgrange that they should organise a bike race all round France. The first race was 2,428 kilometres split into six stages and was run off at 25.29 kilometres per hour and out of the 60 starters 21 finished and the race was lead from start to finish by Maurice Garin.

The Heroes.

Over the years there has been a lot of heroes in the Tour de France, you could say all the riders are heroes, to win the race once is hard, but to win it five times is phenomenal. Only five men have done this, and one of these has won it seven times. French rider Jacques Anquetil was the first to win the race five times, Eddy Merckx, Bernard Hinault and then Spaniard Miguel Indurain all equalled him. Then the American, Lance Armstrong started to win in 1999 and didn’t stop until he had won it a record seven times in a row. This is all the more amazing as he is a cancer survivor and was given a 50/50 chance of life; he beat the cancer and went on to beat all comers in the Tour de France.

The course.

The race starts in a different town every year and every other year it starts outside France, the choice of stage towns is a combination of money and sporting considerations, the towns will pay for a start or a finish, but they need to be near a mountain or a cobbled road or be near other town who want to host the Tour. The Towns pay to be the centre of interest for a day, the Tour also brings in a lot of money in tourism and the Towns collect much more than they pay and the world will remember the name of the Town, for at least a day.

The riders.

All the best riders want to win the Tour de France, but they cant, from the 200 or so starters there is a possible five or six riders who can win, the rest are either helping their team leaders or sprint or mountain specialists who want to win stages or points or mountain jerseys, this keeps the race active and interesting from beginning to end.

The BIG Tour.

The Tour is the biggest, but that has its problems, some Towns are not big enough, hotels etc., the television needs more space, the journalists need more phone lines and computers, more and more people are following the race and the riders can be forgotten about in all the razzmatazz, but its still the biggest sporting event in the world, long may in run!

Alastair Hamilton is a successful writer who offers a truly unique depth of experience in competitive cycling, he also contributes adding technical articles on road bikes ( www.bike-cycling-reviews.com/road-bikes.html ) to some cycling online magazines. Further information on components and cycling news at www.bike-cycling-reviews.com

One strategy that lends itself to job interview for technical posts is the display to and tell tactic. In this article we will go through how you could use this specific strategy in your own interview

In essence, this strategy is born out of the fact that most interview panel members are more influenced by demonstrations of skills than declarations of skills. So, you would be better off using an example via which you can sell the idea that you possess various skills than simply stating “I have good time management skills” or phrases like that

Should the opportunity arise, you should be prepared to show the job interview panel an example of your work to back up the notion that you have the skill set necessary to excel at the job. In order to do this you need to be able to

1. Get them to ask You for Your Work

2. Produce Your Project

To get them to ask for your work, consider using some of the following words to create your opportunity:

• If you’re interested I could show you…
• If you wanted to know more, I have the (report) with me right here…
• If it would be appropriate, you could have a look at…
• I have a written precis of the project here, if you wanted to see it…
• If it would help…

You also need to be able to display your work at the job interview. In order to do this, pick out one or two projects that you could use for this strategy. Choose the projects that

• have work already in a written or electronic form
• which sell the most amount of skills, which are relevant for the post that you are being interviewed for
• with a high probablity of usage for your job interview

Be ready to react to the questions that will naturally come from the job interview panel, when they scan this report for the first time. Remember, that the points that they bring up when they meet your work “cold” are probably going to be different to those that you expect. You might want to ask a family member to go over your work and suggest what a “first timer” might ask you.

If you can, be prepared to leave the job interview panel with a physical copy of your work. It will form a tactile and visible reminder of you when they are reviewing the performances of all of the interviewees

If you need more help with interview techniques, especially ST interview go to this website

This time I would like to take a look at Florida’s football
teams are all doing very high-quality. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers
are right in the deep of things in the NFC South and still have
a chance to either win the division or make the playoffs as a
wild card. The Bucs have a good defense against the really good
teams, and they fight back The Jacksonville Jaguars are 10-4,
they haven’t had 10 wins since 1999. I know that some of the
games haven’t been worth watching and they still need a little
push in offense, but excluding a cave in, the Jags will be a
playoff team this year. The best coaching job of all has been
done by Nick Saban with the Miami Dolphins. He inherited a team
with no offense and scored big with the draft of running back
Ronnie Brown. Teamed with Ricky Williams, the Dolphin ground
game has been good. Even with journeyman Gus Ferrotte at
quarterback, the Fins have gotten wide receiver Chris Chambers
to reach his potential with a 1,000 yard season and the team has
clawed and scratched to a 7-7 record. One thing with Saban is
sure; his defense will be solid. Look out AFC East; this guy
will get the job done. So Florida fans; enjoy your success while
you have it. We saw how long it took the Jags and Dolphins to
get back to respectability and how quickly the Bucs fell after
winning the Super Bowl.

Camping is a great way to escape the rat race and be one with nature. Alas, your camping experiences can fade with time. The best way to prevent this is to keep a camping journal for your adventures.

Camping Journals

Take a minute to give some consideration to your most recent camping experience. What sticks out in your mind? Now think about the first time you ever went camping. Undoubtedly, you remember few things about the geography, people you went with, particular camping routes and spectacular views. The experiences you’ve forgotten are lost to time. If you keep a camping journal, this won’t be the case.

There are famous instances of people keeping journals throughout time. Of course, Anne Frank’s Diary is the best example. In her diary, Anne kept a running commentary of the two years her family spent hiding from the Nazis. While your camping experiences better be more lighthearted, keeping a journal will let you remember them as the years pass.

A good camping journal combines a number of characteristics. First, it should be compact so you don’t have to take up unnecessary space for other things. Second, it should have a case to protect it from rain, spills and so on. Third, the journal should contain blank areas to write your notes. Fourth, the journal should contain cue spaces to remind you to keep notes on specific things. Cues should include:

1. Who you went camping with,

2. Where you camped and if you enjoyed it,

3. Who you met and contact information for them,

4. The geographic and weather conditions, and

5. Any unique things that occurred while camping.

At the end of the camping trip, you should be able to get the following from your journal:

1. Contact information for other campers and people you met,

2. Enough detail to provide you or a friend with a guide if you camp in the location a second time.

3. Memories to reflect upon years later, and

4. Something to pass on to your friends, children and grandchildren.

To get the most out of your camping journal, you should write in it during while you’re camping. Every trip is special, even if you just go out for a weekend.

Camping is a great way to commune with nature. Make sure to preserve the experience.

Rick Chapo is with www.nomadjournals.com – makers of writing journals for outdoor activities and traveling. Visit www.nomadjournaltrips.com to read articles and stories on travel and outdoor activities.

Are you aware that its possible to acquire a cell phone totally cost free withfree line rental for 12 months? What that means is that you can acquire a free mobile phone with free inclusive text messages and free inclusive minutes without paying a bean for them!Right now your thinking that this is a bum offer, but rest assured this deal is legitimate!The way to be successful is to beat cell phone stores at their own game. Understand this, mobile stores sell free line rental mobiles to get potential buyers into the store. Then they attach a load of clauses to the offers to decrease the quantities of customers that actually take out and successfully obtain a free line rental mobile phone offer.Free line rental offers operate on the basis that customers take out a cell phone contract in the usual manner, and pay the bill as normal. Then, at pre determined times within the 12 month term of the mobile phone contract you need to make a claim for cash back. At this point the store who sold you the mobile sends out a cheque. Normally three individual claims need to be made before you recover 100% of the cost of your mobile phone.Now, the retailers ensure this process pretty awkward, as they insist you provide phone bills (which you may mis place). They also dictate specific dates for the claim (which you may forget) and implement various other loopholes and barriers. So, you have to be on the ball and beat them at their own game!Read the contract fully, write down the dates, look after the relevant paperwork and put in your claim on time and you should geta mobile completely cost free for 12 months!The reality is that the retailers don’t care about throwing away a small number of these handsets for free as it makes for a good publicity for them. Being able to advertize “cost free cellular phones” raises the standing of their store, and, as they know only a small number of customers will jump past all the clauses needed to obtain a 12 months free line rental mobile, it doesn’t actually cost them that much!A 12 months free line rental promotion may not be the right for you as you have to be organised and make sure you complete all of the parts of your claim correctly, but, a 12 months free line rental deal is definately something worth due consideration if you are cost conscious.

Tips to Know the Types of Fishing Rod to Acquire

Fishing rod holders take the inconvenience out of fishing for a variety of reasons. For one, it is a convenient storage device especially when one is in a kayak. Rather than holding the paddle in between the legs while fishing, a fishing rod holder stores the rod in place therefore enabling anyone to carry multiple rods or (if one insists so) carry multiple paddles. It also makes trolling easy as a holder keeps the fishing rod in place as one travels to a number of fishing spots. Also, when unhooking a caught fish, rod holders keep the rod secure. More importantly, they help one catch more fish at the same time enabling a kayak look versatile and extremely well-designed.

Here are some tips that could prove helpful in order to determine the types of fishing rods one should purchase.

To attach or to not attach

There are basically two types of fishing rod holders, one that could be attached to the exterior of the kayak and one that is put in the flush. Both have different functions and both work well accordingly. The choice all depends on what one prefers to use and how.

To those who prefer the unattached

The unattached type of fishing rod holder comes in two forms, the straight and the angled. Most kayaks use the angled form. When this type is used, one has a good chance of being able to stroll because the rods veer away from the kayak.

To those who prefer the attached

If the straight type is used, one is able to keep the fishing rod in the middle of the kayak and therefore works best in keeping the rod in storage. This straight type of fishing rod holder is good for the Tower and Cobra Navigator model of a kayak.

The home-made fishing rod holder

One could just as make his or her very own personalized fishing rod holder using common PVC. Or one could also start out by getting a milk crate and attaching it to a kayak with the use of straps.

The alternative type of fishing rod

There is another type of fishing rod holder that could be placed just above the kayak. These are usually tubes that are called RAM as well as Titelock. As the latter’s name implies, it locks the rod in place and usually consists of a male and a female part. This part difference allows the two to be separated. Manufacturers that generally make this type of fishing rod are Attwood, Scotty and Roberts.