Technology

Retirement Planning

2007-07-14T12:48:00.001-07:00

If you think that you will be financially secure when you decide to retire just because you invest in a retirement plan, think again! Did you know that there are common mistakes on retirement planning that you should know about in which you can also use as a guide to reevaluate your status? If you are making these mistakes, you could be in a big trouble.

Here are some of the mistakes of retirement planning:

-Not taking full advantage of your company retirement benefits – it is wise that you invest money into your company retirement plan as much as you can afford.

-Withdrawing money from your retirement plan – Be very aware when availing of loans or withdrawals, because aside from losing interest, you could face penalties or early withdrawal fees.

-Not actively monitoring your investments – it is extremely important to keep track of your investments in order for you to be aware of any discrepancies.

-Relying on Social security for your retirement income – social security may provide a considerable share of your retirement income, still it can be of great help if you have other means of income as a back-up in case there are other unexpected expenses that might come up. In addition to social security, it would be best if you have a company pension or retirement plan and personal savings.

-Relying on your spouse’s retirement plan – this is one of the most common mistake of retirement planning people do. It is possible that a spouse with a retirement plan could die leaving the other spouse with no income. Instances like divorce or illness can also bargain the only spouse retirement, therefore both spouses should have a separate retirement plan to best secure your retirement days.

-Forgetting to review your plan regularly – always conduct periodic review of your retirement plan to ensure that you are making the most of your plan.

-Practicing poor asset allocation – poor asset allocation can sometimes be a financial suicide. The secret is to broaden your horizons so that if one investment decreases in value, another will hopefully increase.

-Not checking your booklet/financial advisor- there are plenty of highly regarded brokers and financial advisors who have the expertise about how your portfolio should be set-up and maintained, but there are also who aren’t and are simply ill informed. So, be aware and make sure to check up on credential and track records on anyone you wan to entrust your retirement savings.

-Relying too heavily on your stock – your company stock is one of the excellent ways to save for your retirement. But, it is also best to have a good investment mix in your retirement account.

-Not taking retirement planning seriously – this could be the worse mistake you can make with your retirement plan. If you start early on retirement planning, you may be able to retire early and keep the lifestyle you like once retired.

Milos Pesic is a successful webmaster and owner of popular and comprehensive Retirement information site. For more articles and resources on Retirement related topics, Retirement Plans, Retirement Communities, Individual Retirement Accounts and more visit his site at:

=>http://retirement.need-to-know.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Milos_Pesic

Gaming Mouse Comparison

2007-07-14T04:12:00.001-07:00

Whether it’s a first person shooter or a strategy game that you're into, the mouse can be the difference between winning and losing. The purpose of this article is to briefly outline and compare two of the most popular gaming mice—the Razer Copperhead and the Logitech G5. I used both mice for two weeks straight at a time, so I could get the best idea of what annoyances may not be apparent straight away. Read on and find out which one is the better buy as decided by me, an actual gamer.

Both the Razer Copperhead and the Logitech G5 are attractive, high quality gaming mice from two big gaming hardware brands. In terms of specs both mice have a 2,000 dpi laser engine and high speed motion detection. Both are also roughly the same size, however, there are many interesting variations between the two. For instance, the Logitech G5 has adjustable balance and weight, meaning you can control how heavy it is by adding weights to the bottom of it. When I found this out I was stunned! It's possible to add up to 36grams of weight onto your G5—amazing.

The Razer on the other hand doesn’t have adjustable balance and weight, however it is the only mouse out at the moment that can boast on-board memory. This means you can save gaming configurations on the actual mouse and take it around with you, connect it to other computers and not have to reconfigure the buttons for individual games! This is one feature that I love because I know that it can be a nuisance having to reconfigure buttons every time you go to an internet café or a LAN. But with the Razer, all you have to do is take your mouse with you and you’re all set, something that many serious gamers already do!

Both mice are comfortable, although like any mouse out there, they take a little bit of time to get used to. Although I'd have to say out of the two I found the Razer to be slightly more comfortable than the Logitech. This is not to say the G5 isn't comfortable, it's just that I liked the way the Razer fit into my hand. I also was put off by the fact that the Logitech is only for right handers due to its lop-sided design. Even though I'm not left handed, I felt a bit uncomfortable having the mouse not being symmetrical.

After testing both mice with games such as Counter Strike, WC3 and Battlefield—I have to say that both are very high quality gaming mice. The Razer is the slightly more comfortable one of the two, but the Logitech G5 comes in with the innovative idea of adjustable weight and balance. Nevertheless, the Razer also comes in with it's own, possibly more innovative idea of on-board memory. In terms of price, the Logitech mouse is slightly cheaper at $46.33 whereas the Razer Copperhead costs you $62.20.

Frank is an IT professional, but in his spare time enjoys gaming. Check out the website bellow to find out which one of these mice was his final choice as the better gaming mouse. You can also find out where to go for the lowest possible prices for for either of these.

http://www.essential-comparisons.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Frank_Madras

Restrict Google Image Results to Faces

2007-07-13T11:59:00.000-07:00

Google Image Search has a new feature that lets you restrict the results to some general categories. For the moment, the only categories that are available seem to be faces and news-related images, but other categories should follow.

The image results for Paris are pretty diverse, but most of them are about the French city and Paris Hilton. Now let's restrict the images to faces by adding &imgtype=face at the end of the URL: we get all kinds of images, but all of them show faces. Google uses face detection technology to select only images that contain faces and that may be the first visible result of the Neven Vision acquisition.

The restriction to news-related images seem to include only images posted to news sites like BBC or New York Times.

You can try the two restrictions in the search box below.
Article Source

I can see a test Google Images layout…

2007-07-13T11:55:00.000-07:00

And this time it's not because of a plugin! Check it out, all the images are aligned nicely and when you hover over one, it gives you more details about it.

Test Google Images Layout

Notice how the second image is highlighted with a blue box and has more detailed information. If you could see my cursor, it would be hovering that image, but oh well.

I have mixed feelings about this possible look. I noticed the difference right away, and it's obviously simpler in terms of looks, but it just didn't seem right because I'm so used to the normal way Google lays out its image results. Also, all of the images are vertically aligned at the bottom of each row, and that leads to some odd looking mouse over boxes when, for example, hovering over the "Fire Dancer" image which is right beside the "The FIRE Place" image with the text in it. It looks odd because all of the boxes start just a few pixels above the tops of the images and extend downward. (sometimes overlapping images on the next row)
Article

Netscape revives Navigator, only about 10 years too late

2007-07-13T10:13:00.000-07:00

Mac users are getting bombarded with browsers this week, since we're getting another browser option hot on the heels of the Camino 1.5 release. This one is a bit more "interesting" though, since it's bringing back a browser we haven't seen on OS X since 2002. Even more interesting is the name, which hasn't graced a browser in nearly ten years. Hell, it's been at least ten years since the browser in question was cool anyway, so I really have no idea why Netscape is trying to revive it.

Did I say Netscape? I think I did. That's right; everyone's favorite blast from the past, Netscape Navigator, is back. The version 9 beta came out earlier this week, having skipped a version since the last Mac release (Netscape Browser 7), and four whole releases since Netscape Navigator 4. Netscape is trying to bring it back with a bang, too: they've modified the Firefox base and added a whole bunch of new features. There's a new, spacious interface, a space-eating Sidebar Mini browser, URL correction (for typos like .cmo), a Link Pad for one-time link storage, resizable text areas, and even a "combined stop/reload button." Way to innovate with that last one, guys.

Still, the best feature in Navigator 9 (and also the one winning an award for worst feature name) is the "Throbber." No, it's not a button that takes you to a random porn site; it's a button that takes you to the Netscape site. Talk about a mood killer.

Actually, most of the new features in Navigator have to do with some sort of integration with the Netscape site. There are news menus and news alerts, both graciously provided by Netscape, an activity sidebar for your Netscape site friends, and even email notification for when you get new site mail. It's good that Netscape is taking steps to add features to Firefox, but they could probably spend their time thinking up some better features to add. No one is tied to one portal or ISP anymore, meaning that most of these features are just taking up space.

I can't help but think that Netscape should have just let Navigator die. It's possible they wanted something to show for their investment in the Mozilla and Firefox projects, which are Netscape activities we should all be thankful for; they've led to a number of good, successful browsers, after all. In fact, Netscape may have done too good a job producing quality, open-source browsers, and are now trying to bring out their own to capitalize on the past successes.

Unfortunately, what they have to show isn't much more than Firefox with a teal theme and some marginal (but new) features. It's certainly not going to pole-vault them to the lead in the browser usage statistics or even a place in the top three. Since there's no real incentive to use this over Firefox, I just can't see a browser with no real innovation and a better existing alternative going anywhere in a crowded market. Still, if you want to kick it old-school and use Navigator again, you can grab the beta from Netscape, pull out your 28.8k modem, put on a Goo Goo Dolls CD, and get back to the glory days of mid-90s web surfing.
Article Source

How to get traffic from Google Images

2007-07-13T10:10:00.000-07:00

Google Images can drive a surprising amount of traffic to your website or blog and it's much easier to get good rankings in the Image search results than the normal results. The majority of visitors arriving from Google Images won't want to read your pages or buy any products - they are just looking for an image to use on their web page, PC or blog post. Over 500 people have already downloaded the script to use Google Images to build links so clearly people are getting traffic from Google Images already and want to make the most of it.

Getting good rankings in Google Images isn't actually very hard. The first thing to do is make sure you have the basic page elements in place so that Google can figure out what your images are likely to contain. Search engines are experimenting with using software to detect the contents of your images but until this is fully operational they are reliant on using the rest of the page to determine what the image shows.

The key elements that search engines use are the page title tag, alt text of the image, filename of the image, title tag of the image and the text immediately surrounding the image. A good example would be a blog post with the page title "Paris Hilton goes to prison" and an image with the following html code:

The image should be placed either at the beginning or after the first paragraph of the post for maximum effect.
The long tail of image search
While some keywords can attract a lot of traffic (especially in the adult industry) the best way to take advantage of Google Images is by ranking on the first page for thousands of image searches. This is very hard for new sites unless they are some kind of web shop with lots of products so the key is to concentrate on making sure the site is as well optimised for image search as possible so it will gain good results in the future.

A lot of web shop software programs are quite poor in terms of general SEO but they fare even worse for image search optimisation. You would need to make sure all the images have alt text and keyword filled filenames and make changes where appropriate.
Choosing an image size
There is no "one size fits all" solution for Google Images, you need to consider what type of images your visitor will be looking for and size your images accordingly. Visitors searching for web icons will want much smaller images than people looking for Britney spears wallpaper. Check out the results for the search term you are targeting and look at the sizes of the other images. I prefer to make my images towards the larger end of the scale so that visitors are not disappointed to see a low quality small image that they can't use.

Maximising your traffic
The Google Images search results are laid out in a very clear way so the user can see straight away which image they are looking for and whether it is the right size for their application. To make the most of your Google Images rankings you need to make sure that your image is the best one on the page and that it stands out from all the others in some way.

To illustrate this point check the rankings for the iPhone image results. Bearing in mind the searchers are likely to want a picture of the shiny new Apple iPhone the companies with pictures of fake iPhone prototypes are likely to be getting a much lower click through rate than the number 1 result from Gizmodo which shows 2 images of the iPhone in a good quality image. If you have good rankings in Google Images don't be afraid to alter the image or (keeping the dimensions the same) replace it with a better or more interesting one. The image search results take a while to update so it might take some weeks before the new image shows but the results or changing the image can be quite impressive.
Article Source

Control the pictures of your business on Google Maps

2007-07-12T21:18:00.000-07:00

ess Lee over at Googleblog posted that you now can see images of businesses on Google Maps.
As Barry Schwartz points out over at Searchengineland these seem to be images ranking highly for some search terms related to your business - Philipp over at Google Blogoscoped tells us the images of his example are from Yelp.com - either way you might want to

control what’s showing up for your business there

And you can … just go to the Google Local Business Center where you now got the opportunity to upload up to ten images to your business profile.
Article Source

Mobile Phones and Consumer Electronics: Do They Mix?

2007-07-12T21:07:00.000-07:00

With many companies integrating consumer electronics technology, such as hard drives, into mobile phones, industry analysts are predicting that the practice will result in many new challenges.

For example, fitting a large hard drive into a small device isn’t always easy. It must be done in such a way to minimize potential for damage, and ensure high durability.

Although the consumer electronics market is an easy marketing channel for mobile phone manufacturers, extra effort must be put into ensuring optimal quality of these combined devices.
Article Source

Build your Google sitemap online

2007-07-11T11:34:00.000-07:00

Here are 4 simple steps to get it done
Enter your full website URL and some optional parameters in the form below.
Press 'Start' button and wait until the site is completely crawled (the progress will be indicated)
You will see the generated sitemap details page, including number of pages, broken links list, XML file content and link to a compressed sitemap. Download the sitemap file using this link and put it into the "public_html/" folder of your site.
Go to your Google Webmaster account and add your sitemap URL.
Please check About Google sitemaps page for more info.
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/

First look at Flock 0.9... it's a powerful social media browser

2007-07-10T08:10:00.001-07:00

Last night I had the chance to receive a demo of the new Flock 0.9 browser with CEO Shawn Hardin. The official launch is next week but if you want to grab the preview today, check it out on their beta page along with the welcome information. Also check out my discussion with Shawn from last week.

Overall I would say that the comparisons to Firefox are no longer warranted. This is a very powerful browser for those of you who use social networking and social media heavily. There is a pretty hefty initial setup curve to get all of your social accounts setup but you only have to do this once.

The first thing Shawn walked me through is what he calls the "differentiated value bar" - which is shown below. The options here expose the power of Flock and include a Web Clipboard which basically allows you to quickly save any bit of content by dragging it to the clipboard. Items are saved until you remove them.

Also included are a feed sidebar which is basically a slick feed manager, media bar manager and one click access to blogging and uploading.

The Media Bar is a way to see your (and your friends) media in a quick and efficient way. The "media streams" stay updated in real-time so if your friend adds a new image that falls into one of your defined areas, it will appear automatically. The Media Bar works with all of the services that are incorporated in Flock (listed below). Inside the media streams window there is a search option to search your streams and/or search your providers. A quicker way to get to the media you need than going to each individual site.

Currently Flock 0.9 has the following media services setup:

* Media Sharing: Flickr, Photobucket, YouTube
* Blogging: Blogger, Blogsome, LiveJournal, Typepad, Wordpress.com, Xanga, Self Hosted (I couldn't get it to work with Drupal)
* Online Favorites: del.icio.us, Magnolia

Flock continues to allow one click blogging and uploading. They have beefed up the upload tool which allows you to resize, rotate, etc to any photo and create tags and descriptions for each one or for a batch. Then you upload the media to any service you have setup. On the flickr upload example, it's like the standalone flickr uploader on steroids.

Other features include a bug/feedback system, one click favorites (love this); "My World" which is basically a start page that keeps track of your favorite sites, feeds and media; and the ability to save favorites locally, online or both.

Shawn closed the demo by saying he is most excited about the updates coming this summer and the 1.0 release in the early fall which will include some significant upgrades (he wouldn't tell me what they are). My suggestion is simple... if you are a heavy user of the social tools listed above, give Flock a try. If you tried it before and gave up, I would take another look. I am impressed by what I saw and while this isn't the browser for everyone, their target audience should find a great value in Flock.
http://www.centernetworks.com/flock-social-media-browser

The Germans made pocket toilet

2007-07-08T07:08:00.001-07:00

The Germans made pocket toilet. Now out to somewhere in the cork or without toilet seat is only 4 euros. However, because of the anatomy to "mini" use only men. Toilet can safely stored in your pocket. Its convenient form is designed so that any man could urinate himself on the go. Capacity package-700 ml. Roadbag Polymerk filled with absorbent material, which is filled with latex dish. As soon as the urine passes inside, Polymerk makes it a thick gel, which has failed to turn outward. After using a handheld simply throw toilet in a nearby box

Technology without Costing the Earth

2007-06-29T11:27:00.001-07:00

ASUS EcoBook points the way forward with nature-inspired aesthetics and environment-friendly design and construction

Taipei, Taiwan, June 27, 2007 – For all the modern miracles that electronics and Information Technology has brought us, there is a cost to the environment, in the materials and processes used to manufacture computers and electronics, and increasingly, in their disposal. In the light of this, ASUS has undertaken a bold initiative that could point the way forward for the rest of the industry. Its groundbreaking concept notebook – the EcoBook, is unique as the first notebook to be made using bamboo; it is built according to environmentally friendly principles, reconciling the world's reliance on computers with the need to preserve the Earth.
EcoBook
On the surface, the EcoBook represents yet another triumph in a longstanding tradition of materials innovation by ASUS. Evolving from the use of polycarbonate, aluminum-magnesium alloy, carbon fiber and leather in earlier notebook models, each material bringing its own unique combination of physical and aesthetic properties that enhance the look, feel and durability of ASUS notebooks, the EcoBook is a concept notebook that is the world’s first to use bamboo paneling.

Bamboo has great significance for Asia; it is a beautiful material and a natural choice for evoking the Asian Zen minimalist design that informs the EcoBook. As a natural material, each piece is unique, making each EcoBook distinct from another. It can undergo several treatments to achieve a variety of colors or even laser etched with designs limited only by the imagination. It is also tough and resilient. Moreover, bamboo is found in abundance, grows very quickly, and as opposed to plastic, it is biodegradable.

Design Flair
Beyond its environmental soundness, the EcoBook sparkles with design flair that not only enhances its look, but its usability as well. With the right treatments, bamboo is a beautiful natural material with a personal, warm touch that industrial materials can hardly replicate.

Real World Robustness
That the EcoBook successfully accompanied a Mount Everest expedition is litmus proof for the EcoBook's robustness, even under extreme conditions. This success is also symbolic to the dedication that ASUS puts in developing technologies and IT solutions that not only enhances the daily operations but also with care for the environment in mind.