You CAN buy lingerie for her without the red cheeks…

With Valentines Day and birthdays never too far away, men know
that she will want a present, and it will have to be good. More
and more men are starting to buy lingerie - Good Choice.
However, you need to get it right AND avoid embarrassing
yourself, but how? You don’t want to be seen picking ladies
underwear off the rack in a high street store. You can’t bring
yourself to go into a specialist shop because you are too
embarrassed to admit you don’t know her size, and do you really
feel comfortable telling the assistant that your lady has boobs
the size of grapefruit or apples or melons?

The least risk option is to buy off the internet: no
embarrassment; a good selection to choose from and you can
always return the underwear if you do get it wrong. Check their
returns policy though as some websites will not accept back
items of an intimate nature - ie: briefs. Men’s Lingerie Buying
Guides have been used to great effect by many male purchasers
from all over the world. Here are my own top hints and tips to
help men in their choice of lingerie for their partner:

1. Remember that she is the one wearing the lingerie! Many women
prefer pretty, lacy, elegant lingerie to the naughty stuff you
would prefer to see her in!

2. Cheap and cheerful usually means scratchy and uncomfortable
and often found filed under B for Bin very soon after…

3. Go through her drawer and pick out some underwear that she
wore recently and that fitted her well. Check the size labels
and buy those sizes (eg; 32F, or 38G etc). BIG HINT: make sure
you put her underwear drawer back as you found it!

4. For briefs and night wear, check her dress sizes.

5. Choose colours that compliment her eyes and hair colour and
her skin tone - if unsure, you can’t go wrong with black

6. Think about what the garments are for - if it is just for
bedroom wear, choose items that you know may be a bit daring,
but that you know you will both like.

7. If you really want to impress, choose quality, luxury
garments - some websites will even gift wrap them for you.

8. If the garments are for every day wear, think about what sort
of clothes she will be wearing it with. - Is she naturally shy?
Choose something in a skin tone. A white bra will show up more
under a white blouse than one that is skin coloured. A little
bit of lace or embroidery will make it more special. - Or does
she like to wear lacy, coloured underwear that can be clearly
seen? Go for the more luxurious looking items - quality and fit
count here, so make sure you buy her something that will look
good if it is going to be ‘worn to be seen’. - Does she like her
straps to be on show? Look for underwear that has decorative
lace or embroidery both on the cups and the straps.

9. Don’t choose something too over the top if you are buying for
her for the first time. Choose something simple and classy and
learn about her likes and dislikes for future purchases.

10. If you are still unsure, why not buy a Lingerie gift
voucher? This saves your embarrassment (and your relationship)
and this way you can both get to choose…

So, it is possible to buy lingerie without the red cheeks!

You Don’t Have to Hurt Yourself to Snowboard

You Don’t Have to Hurt Yourself to Snowboard Snowboarding Gear
to Keep you Safe and Comfortable as you Learn and Ride

Are you thinking of trying snowboarding, but reluctant because
you’ve heard that you’ll be bruised after the painful
edge-catching falls of the first three days? Or have you tried
snowboarding but thrown in the towel because it hurts too much
when you fall?

Snowboarding without Injuries– Snowboarding without injuries is
actually a possibility. If you wear protective snowboard gear
you will greatly reduce the odds of hurting yourself when you
snowboard. You will not have to worry as much about possible
pain and injury on the slopes, and you can relax and enjoy the
ride. If you are lucky enough to always ride on soft deep
powder, protection is not such a big issue. But hard snow
happens, especially in Eastern America.

Most Websites and Magazines Do Not Discuss Snowboard Safety–
and protection for the snowboarder. In some circles, it seems
there is something stoic and admirable about enduring pain. If
you disagree. and want to spend quality time on the slopes
instead of nursing bumps and bruises on the sidelines or
sustaining slow-healing injuries that can become chronic and
arthritic, read on.

Main Points of Impact with Snow and Ice– When you ride, the
main points of impact where your body will meet the snow or ice
are predictable: knees, hands and wrists, buttside or tailbone,
and head are the target zones. Protect these body parts and you
will hurt less and have a lot more fun.

Knee Protection for Snowboarders– Knee protection is one of the
most important pieces of snowboard protective gear. Your knees
are bony and vulnerable. And they are complex joints that are
painful and expensive to fix.

Wear in-line Skate Knee Pads beneath your snow pants. Make sure
they are soft and well-padded on the inside and hard plastic to
absorb shock and protect on the outside. Good pads will also
keep your knees warm and flexible, and you can relax so much
more knowing that a fall forward is not going to be painful and
damaging. Beginners fall on their knees often. Believe it or
not, good knee pads also help to protect your wrists. Read on.

Hand/Wrist Protection for Snowboarders– Falling forward with
your weight on your hands is a good way to break a wrist. Fists
should be balled up, with your thumb outside, as if you were
ready to punch someone. Try to relax and fall evenly on your
protected knees, and forearms. You should wear good protective
knee pads so you can distribute the weight on both your knees
and hands. Then you won’t have to try to catch yourself with
your hands.

Some experts argue that wearing skate wrist guards can increase
the severity of a fracture by sending the “shock” up the arm to
a larger bone. A new snowboard specific safety glove and wrist
guard is now on the US Market. It was designed by a French
Emergency Room physician who has worked on thousands of
snowboard fractures, and it is supposed to reduce snowboard
wrist injuries by up to 60%.

Butt/Tailbone Protection for Snowboarders–

People sometimes say “But I have plenty of natural padding on my
butt.” Forget it. You need padding that is not connected to your
central nervous system.

If you’re a beginner and if you don’t have anything else, you
can slide some bubble wrap down the back of your pants. Use
plenty! You’ll hear the bubbles pop when you fall and you’ll be
glad you wore them. And you will have saved a lot of jarring to
your spine as well as wear and tear on your buttocks and
tailbone.

Once you’re convinced of the need to save your posterior, invest
in some real padding designed for snowboarders. A hard plastic
shell outside with soft padding on the inside is great. It will
hardly be noticeable beneath your snow pants and it really
helps.

Helmets for Snowboarders– You might think (mistakenly) that
helmets are only for people who ride in the trees, or do big
tricks. But the first time you catch an edge and go CLUNK! and
the back of your head hits the hard hard ground, you’ll
reconsider. A helmet also adds the comfort of warmth and
dryness, as well as cushioning for your brain. With a helmet on,
you can ride in the rain comfortably, and have the slopes almost
to yourself.

You should buy a helmet in person at a shop. Correct fit is
mandatory and tricky. Get expert help at the snowboard shop to
be sure the helmet fits. And have your helmet checked for safety
and fit next season if you fell on it a lot or grew dreds or
shaved your head since you purchased it.

Hydration for Snowboarders– Snowboarding creates heat. That
means you are perspiring, even when it’s cold. Stay hydrated
with water, and you will be able to ride longer and better. To
replace the water lost perspiring and breathing the dry winter
air, use a hydration system. It is a backpack with a water
bladder, and a tube to deliver the water to your mouth. Simple
and efficient. Just grab the tube, bite the valve on the end,
and sip. You can easily do it while sitting on the lift. You can
wear it outside your coat, or even under it on freezing days.

You can do tricks and ride the pipe while wearing a small
hydration backpack, no problem. You can also throw an extra
clothing layer, energy bar, tool set, or whatever in the
hydration backpack. The backpacks come in many different sizes
and configurations.

Safety for Your Board– It’s just as important to protect your
trusty ride when you get off it. Hardcore riders never let their
boards out of their site. If you do, check yours at the lodge,
or lock it with a small cable lock that you carry in your
backpack. Also register it online at
http://www.SnowboardRegisty.com so if it does disappear, you at
least have a chance of getting it back. And be a good citizen of
the snowboard universe. Before you buy a used board, check its
serial number at http://www.SnowboardRegisty.com to make sure it
wasn’t reported stolen.

Ride Happily Many a Day– Unlike with skating and surfing, you
DON’T have to endure pain to learn and ride your snowboard.
Respect yourself. Dress for safety and comfort on the slopes,
and you’ll come back to ride happily many a day.

10 Adsense Tips for Maximum Click Through Rates

1) You should make your Adsense ads look as a part of your web page. They shouldn’t look like an Ad. People are negative to advertising. They search the internet for content not ads. Especially Banners have a less of 0,5% response. Their days are over. Imagine if you have an Adsense ad looking like the typical Banner with different colors. It will not be profitable.

2) Text ads are better than image ads. Like before, people are more responsive to text than images. In a way it is considered as a part of the online document and is more clickable.

3) No Border ads. One of the best tricks is to erase the borders of Adsense ads and make them again having the same color with your website’s background.

4) No other advertisements. The first reason is to be legitimate according to Google’s Rules and the second more practical reason is that you do not want to distract your visitor’s attention and go somewhere else without clicking your Adsense ads.

5) Placement. Even if you have the best Ad, people will not respond if they don’t see it instantly. The best place to see the ad is the top of your web page and the next is aside
your document’s text. Visitors will click it more frequently since it will look like your text.

6) Traffic. Try to use legitimate ways of traffic. Some people use Google Adwords and other Pay per Click search engines. The problem here is to search very carefully for the right niche and keywords in order to make your campaigns profitable. Other ways is link popularity techniques like link exchange directories, software or even mass blog submission techniques. Don’t use link farms and classifieds for that, because search engine’s algorithms are extremely clever and they will ban your listings.

7) Do not rely on one website. Yes you can make money with one website but try to make as more as possible.

Relevant content is King. Articles are one of the best tactics to create huge websites that will be crawled by search engine’s robots. Don’t forget search engines exist to provide relevant content at first. One excellent resource to automate your article directory procedure is http://www.articleequalizer.com .You can create an article database in minutes which otherwise is time consuming and it would take you a week!

9) Use site maps. Google’s site maps visit your site and crawl it much sooner that any other submission process. More information is here: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps

10) Relevant ads. It’s one of the most important factors for Adsense success. If the internet user can’t find relevant ad in your page he or she won’t click the ad. Would you act differently? So it’s critical to create relevant resource for your web page. In order to do that, you must do the following steps.

First the file must be saved with the appropriate name for example: Golf-Secrets.html if your article is about golf. So the webpage will be:
www.yoursitesname.com/Golf-Secrets.html

Second thing you must change is your title tag. For example:

Third is the heading. The first sentence must have this heading:
h1 12 Golf secrets h1

Christos Varsamis is a Business writer, creator and owner of the http://www.settinglifegoals.com & http://www.fastprofitbiz.com Sign for your 7 day FREE e-course ” How to TRACE a Legitimate Business Opportunity.”

Ebook Review: Quick Cash Injections

EBOOK DETAILS
File Size: 1,287kb Zipped, 1,300kb Unzipped.
Number of Pages: 1 long scrolling page.
Format: Executable (.exe)
Subject: Quick Cash Injections details the methods Sara used when she first started out in Internet Marketing to generate quick cash when needed.

ABOUT SARA BROWN (AUTHOR OF QUICK CASH INJECTIONS)
Sara Brown is one of the UK’s top Internet Marketers. She sells on eBay at http://stores.ebay.co.uk/The-Jobhaters-Marketplace and also runs a variety of websites which can all be accessed from http://www.sara-brown.com/choices/. If you want to know more read her About Me page on eBay or subscribe to her newsletter through her websites.

ABOUT THE EBOOK
After reading An Interview with Sara Brown I was intrigued by her unique income generating methods and had to know more. This led me to purchase her ebook “Quick Cash Injections.” This ebook tells you how Sara generates quick cash injections when she needs them.

In the ebook Sara discusses how to:
· Get your first set of cash injections within 24-72 hours!!
· Get your second set of cash injection within 1 week!!
· Get your third set of cash injections in 2+ weeks!!
· How to generate quick cash injections with Digital Products!!
· How to generate quick cash injections with Physical Goods!!
· How to generate quick cash injections without any product!!

Ultimate Income Plan begins with Sara telling you why you need quick cash injections. As she puts it there are some of us who do not have savings and “There are often financial emergencies and unexpected bills that require a sudden cash injection to rectify.” She then goes on to explain how you can generate these quick cash injections in three basic timeframes; 24-72 hours, 1 week, and 2+ weeks. She then sums up the ebook and outlines why soon it will be necessary to generate quick cash injections using the “Pensions Crisis” (where thousands of people are now facing a bleak retirement due to having ten years salary stolen from them) as an example.

As expected I found this ebook to be a very interesting read. I feel some of the methods Sara uses are very good and some are not so good. To conduct this review I will outline each cash injection below and how effective I think it is.

Sara’s first cash injection is reselling ebooks on eBay. She believes that this can provide you with a quick cash injection within 24-72 hours. Whilst the actual chapter does outline some useful tips for ebook sellers (such as using a unique listing title), I have to disagree with the timeframe Sara uses. As I outline in my own ebook “How to set up a Successful, Automated, Ebook Business on eBay” the ebook market on eBay is now very competitive. Simply listing the ebook on eBay does not guarantee you a sale. I think the best method of selling ebooks on eBay is to build a large, constantly expanding, automated ebook business on eBay which requires regular promotion. To achieve this will take considerably longer than 24-72 hours and I personally would not class this method as a quick cash injection.

The next cash injection is making money from other people’s mistakes. I can’t go into too much detail as it will give too much away but I have to agree that this is a very good quick cash injection. When I launched “How to set up a Successful, Automated, Ebook Business on eBay” I made quite a few mistakes, some which could have potentially been very damaging to my sales. Luckily for me I had someone identify these mistakes free of charge, and all before the product was launched. However, I have learnt from this the value of checking for mistakes. The earlier they are identified, the less damaging they can be. Now as I said I can’t reveal exactly how exactly you can make money from other people’s mistakes but it is one of the better 24-72 hour cash injections included in Quick Cash Injections.

The third cash injection is Ebay Arbitrage. Now most Ebay Arbitrage systems I have seen involve a misspelling tool which is still an effective tool but is becoming increasingly widely used. Sara’s arbitrage system involves simply buying goods off eBay and reselling them on eBay for a higher price. I can’t say anymore as it will reveal exactly what she does. Sara also includes an example of the system in action with examples of real goods she has purchased and sold on eBay. This is a good cash injection with the potential for high profit margins but it does require more time than some of the other methods outlined.

Next up is the 1 week cash injections. The first involves buying and selling domain names. This is again another excellent cash injection. Sara gives plenty of good tips in this chapter on which domains should be popular and which domains may not be so popular. She also provides a great resource to get free appraisals on domain names. Although I have not personally dabbled in this area, I have seen others do it successfully so know that there is potential for high profits. Also, it can all be done without even having to leave your PC so I can again see this as being a great method to get quick cash injections.

The second 1 week cash injection involves selling disks (CDs). You don’t need your own product but there are various legal guidelines you need to be aware of when embarking upon this cash injection. Sara outlines them all inside the ebook. My overall opinion on this cash injection is that although it will work I don’t think it is worth the effort when compared to some of the other cash injections mentioned. This idea involves sourcing, packing, and shipping whereas for some of the other injections you don’t have to leave your PC.

The next cash injection involves freelance writing. In this section Sara provides you with an excellent free resource on which contains a database of thousands of jobs for freelance writers. Most people are an expert at something so this is a cash injection worth considering. Personally, I am in two minds about this subject. On the one hand it would be great for me to be paid for writing articles similar to those that I already do. On the other hand if I did write freelance articles for others, I would not be able to use these as promotional tools like I currently do. Overall, opinion on this cash injection is likely to be divided and it all comes down to how you want to use your writing skills.

Following the previous cash injection, Sara provides two website links. The first is a website that lists goods that people don’t want anymore. If you want that person’s goods then they will give them to you for free. What you do with it after is up to you but this is a potentially useful cash injection. The second website is a free list of 1000 money making ideas. I have read a few of the ideas and some are very easy to set up, some not so easy. However, both these websites are a useful bonus and could easily provide quick cash injections.

After this section comes the 2+ weeks cash injections. The first of these is paid online surveys. In this section Sara outlines why you should never pay for access to surveys (to summarise companies aren’t allowed to make you pay to perform market research). She then provides you with a website that gives you access to many free paid surveys. This is an invaluable link as many ebooks charge you for this very information. I personally don’t rate paid surveys too highly. Although you do get paid for sitting at your PC and filling out a survey (which is simple enough) I find it quite boring. If you feel that the money outweighs the boredom or actually enjoy doing surveys then this could be a good cash injection for you to try.

The next cash injection is the car boot sale method. Again I can’t say too much or I will reveal exactly what it is but this is one of my favourites in the ebook. The car boot sale method is basically a technique that Sara uses herself to get goods from a car boot at well below the price they are being sold (and no she doesn’t steal them). Once aquired these goods can be sold separately on eBay or at the place where Sara herself sells them (again I can’t reveal it here). Using this method Sara says that she bought some stock from a car boot for £60 and then sold it for £1,920. Although I haven’t tried this method it does sound like an excellent way to generate a lot of cash for very little work.

The final cash injection is creating your own software without being an expert programmer (or even amateur programmer). Again I can’t reveal how you achieve this here (it’s all revealed in the ebook) but I can tell you that all you have to do is come up with the idea i.e. what function do you want the software to fulfill. Now this income stream will cost you a bit of money to set up but in my opinion the potential returns are well worth it. Out of all the methods mentioned in Quick Cash Injections I think this is one of the best and one that I am seriously considering looking into in the future.

Overall, Quick Cash Injections comes with a mix of ideas but thankfully the good outweighs the bad. I personally don’t think that the ebooks with resell rights chapter would serve as a very good quick cash injection and I don’t rate paid online surveys highly, but on the other hand I think the car boot method and creating your own software cash injections are some of the best money making ideas I have come across. The ebook is worth it’s price for these methods alone.

GOOD POINTS
· The making money from other people’s mistakes cash injection can generate money within a couple of days, for very little work, without you having to leave your PC.
· The Ebay Arbitrage System with a little creative thinking can be another great quick cash injection and could even be used as a long term business.
· Buying and selling domains allows you to generate cash from the comfort of your own PC.
· The car boot sale method is a unique, easy to implement idea, which requires little time and can produce huge profit margins.
· The creating your own software cash injection can be used by anyone, and for a small initial investment, could make you a LOT of money.

BAD POINTS
· I don’t think that reselling ebooks on eBay qualifies as a quick cash injection.
· Selling disks (CDs) takes a reasonable amount of time and only produces very small profit margins.
· Paid online surveys can be long, tiring, and often boring.
· The delivery system delays your access to the ebook which I found quite annoying.

HOW I HAVE GAINED FROM QUICK CASH INJECTIONS
At the moment I have not implemented the ideas from Quick Cash Injections. The reason for this is that I do not require any quick cash injections at the moment and also I am pursuing more long-term money making methods. However, I could definitely see myself using some of the ideas in the future, especially the creating your own software one. Next time I end up at a car boot sale (although I don’t go very often) the car boot sale method will prove a nice little earner.

Year End Giving Review

The end of the year is time for most of us to review and reflect
on the past year. We may think about how we didn’t exercise like
we intended or we didn’t save money like we planned, or that
vacation trip we wanted to take didn’t quite make the calendar.
Our charitable giving should also have the same focus.

Charitable giving, whether you are a company owner, a foundation
trustee, or a donor deserves the same reflection at year’s end.
Why? Because giving is driven by some sort of goal, it is
intentional and an expression of values. Donors, businesses and
foundations should reflect on their giving over the past year
and review the gifts they made and why. Businesses and
foundations in particular need to review and evaluate the
success of their giving as a way to redirect their strategies
and improve their giving impact in communities. Why? Because
companies and foundations have a responsibility to invest their
charitable gifts or grants in a manner that strategically
impacts people and communities. Donor’s giving is also driven by
some goal or reason and using an asset that they worked hard for
or saved for. This sounds hard, but giving is a way of investing
assets and you want to be able to measure successes so that in
the long run you find ways to improve giving as a way for
improving lives.

Reviewing year-end giving can be done in different ways. There’s
the long-way that uses evaluation methods to show impact and
results. This can be an involved and lengthy process and is
highly recommended for foundations and corporations. Face it,
corporations and foundations are results oriented and without
knowing what your giving results are— you don’t know how
effective you’ve been. For small and medium size companies and
donors, a simpler strategy can give you the information you want
or need to effectively plan giving for next year.

Here are a few questions you can ask to review your past year
giving: 1. Did you keep your giving in line with your financial
plan? 2. Did your contributions reflect what you most care
about? 3. Were your contributions used as you intended? 4. Did
the organization meet its goals?

These are by no means all the questions that should be asked.
Review or evaluation is unique for each foundation, company and
donor. But the bottom-line is you do reviews to know if your
giving was effective.

By doing a year-end review, you can determine direction for the
year ahead that will make your giving more meaningful and
successful. The process helps you to re-think who you give to
and why, and what your give and why.

Review of your charitable giving helps you better meet your
philanthropic goals and make a real difference at the same time.

5 Reasons Why Your Site Needs to Publish a News Feed

It seems like everyone is talking about RSS Feeds. They’ve been around for years but the buzz is up about them as the technology continues to go mainstream. Some people are reportedly abandoning their browsers and viewing the web through their readers - but they hardly represent the general public yet.

So does your site need one?

This question is somewhat like asking if your site needs a newsletter. Sure, the sky won’t fall tomorrow if you don’t get one today, but once you realize the benefits of having a news feed for your site, and try it for yourself, you may become an addict like the rest of us.

Reason #1: More free traffic to your site

I’m not exaggerating when I say that a frequently updated feed can bring you massive amounts of traffic in a short time period. This won’t be true forever.

Here’s a snapshot in PDF format, of just the feed-originating traffic to a new page of my site for the first 24 hours it opened.

http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/2-rss-marketing/screenshot.pdf

Not exactly a stampede, but here’s the good part.

On the fourth day, the feed traffic doubled, and all other traffic continued to rise at the same rate.

That’s my fifth active feed of the twenty I have spread out over four sites, and I get similar results each time. In thirty days, that would be at least 5,000 new targeted visitors - again, this is not counting my present traffic, or those who try my feed and stay subscribed, nor does it factor in what happens when the traffic doubles again..

I can’t promise you the exact same results, no one can. But you should know that my feed is targeted towards a crowed market - if you know how to set up your feed properly and correctly apply your keyword research, you could have better results..

Those visitors, from the first hour of traffic to today, resulted just from submitting my feed to the list of directories I compiled from many sources and studied. Some bring great free traffic to new feeds, some are better for once your feed has matured.

You can often get better placement in feed directories and in Yahoo’s RSS Directory than you could from your results in a regular search engine, and often, inclusion is instant.

Reason #2: It’s a hands-off way to update your audience

What if you could run your newsletter without the hassles of maintaining your list, removing bounced addresses, finding new subscribers, formatting the content you find, altering your content to keep from being blacklisted, and after all that, wondering if all the various blockers mistakenly kept your message from getting through?

If that sounds like heaven, you can be one of the angels as soon as an hour from now.

When you supplement your current newsletter with more frequent updates via feed, you will be able to push out updates to subscribers to your news channel or feed more frequently and more efficiently.

With all the new free tools available, even if you’re all thumbs when it comes to making a web page, if you can fill out a form, you can create a feed.

Reason #3: Get visitors to click through to your site whenever you update

If you haven’t used a feed reader before, you might be confused about the connection between the feed and your site and why it can result in an increase in traffic. I’ll attempt to explain this to you in words, but I suggest downloading a news aggregator (also known as a feed reader), and looking at the results of your favorite site’s feed through a reader after you read this for the full effect..

You can use my main feed here if you don’t have one to view:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/FreeTrafficTips

If you don’t want to have another application up while you’re surfing, you can try Pluck , a free application you can use for more than just feeds that integrates with Internet Explorer - get it at

http://freetrafficdirectory.com/pluck - it will take you right to the downloads page.

You can also do this from My Yahoo!, by changing your page to include their RSS Headlines console, still in Beta testing at http://my.yahoo.com.

To summarize, a visitor sees the headlines they want to read, view the summary, and click through to your site to read the rest of the news, either in a new window, or without having to leave the application they are in.

And when you update again, the reader will notify them that you have new headlines, and/or populate the list of items you have available. This can keep your audience coming back.

If you had trouble following that, come to this page for a one minute tutorial:

http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/members/postt95.html

Reason #4: Recycle old content.

If you have a list of your older articles, some older product reviews, site suggestions, or archived newsletters, you can use those to build content to populate your feed with information. As long as this news is still relevant, you can recycle this content to attract new visitors

Reason #5: Its so easy it’s crazy not to do it.

Before the last few months, there weren’t as many free tools online that made the process of starting and publicizing a feed so effective and user-friendly.

The bottom line is, now that you can get all those benefits from filling out a form, saving the file, uploading to your server, promoting it once, and updating it from time to time, it’s insane not to do so.

You already have to update your site from time to time. You might as well get all the benefits of having a news feed too.

Copyright © 2004 Tinu AbayomiPaul

Tinu? Currently wanted by Secret Hoarders of America for spilling free traffic tips: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/blog

118118 - Directory Assistance Service in Great Britain

118118 is a United Kingdom provider of directory enquiry facilities, helping everyone to get hold of telephone contacts amongst other useful info.

118118 make use of The Number UK Ltd’ to supply directory assistance information - the Number UK Ltd is a child company of US Business InfoNXX - the largest independent directory enquiries supplier on Earth.

Directory enquiries used to be obtained by phoning 192 (Great Britain), but, the market was deregulated in ‘02 and in August 2003 192 terminated.

As well as offering up a directory enquiry facility, 118118 also offer a facility whereby you could ask 118’s staff a question, including’ Where is the highest building in Mexico’ and 118 118 will supply the answer to your question, over the mobile, or through a text (terribly valuable for a quiz!)

118118 presented a number of remarkable ad campaigns in recent years, making both twins sporting droopy ‘taches, well known for promoting 118 118’s resource. The guys who have appeared in several peculiar circumstances, such as a parody of ‘The A-team’. 118 118 are, now, an incredibly familiar component of the 118 brand across the United Kingdom, and are readily recognizable.

Workplace Stress

It is estimated that 500,000 people in the UK are suffering illness that has been caused by stress in the workplace, with a further 5 million people reporting themselves as being very or extremely stressed whilst at work. Stress at work also affects people’s life outside work too, with 55% of full time workers saying that they took their stress home with them at the end of the day.

Mind, a mental health organisation, found that stress costs 10% of the UK’s Gross National Product, but over 90% of companies do not have any strategies in place to deal with it. 12.8 million days a year are recorded as being lost to stress, but it is thought that up to 50 million days are lost in which stress plays a part.

What is stress?
Stress is a reaction that comes from a survival mechanism from our history, when it fuelled our “fight or flight” response. Nowadays, a certain level of stress can be healthy and can build motivation at work, but when this becomes seen as an impossible burden rather than an achievable challenge, this turns into negative stress.

Negative stress is defined by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) as being “the adverse reaction people have to excessive pressure or other types of demand placed on them.”

What are the symptoms of stress?
There are many symptoms of stress, and people who are stressed may display one, several or many of them. What starts off as a mental symptom of stress may build into a physical condition, and some physical illnesses may be worsened by stress.

- Physical symptoms include problems with sleep, tension headaches and migraines, heart disease, fatigue and high blood pressure.

- Mental symptoms include anxiety, depression, irritability, memory problems, and a feeling of being out of control.

- Relational symptoms include increased arguments with colleagues and family, road rage, lack of interest in social activities, and overreactions.

What can an employer do to reduce stress?

Recognising the causes and effects of stress on employees is an important place to start for a company trying to reduce levels of stress. There is a range of ways in which an employer can go about reducing stress, and some may be more appropriate to certain jobs than others. Here are some of the ways in which companies have helped reduce the effects of stress:

- Introducing flexible working, either by allowing employees to work from home or starting a flexi-time scheme

- Promoting lunchtime exercise or relaxation classes

- Encouraging stressed workers to see counsellors

- Provide interpersonal skills training

- Setting clear roles for employees and ensuring they understand them

- Making sure that employees are in the most appropriate roles

- Encouraging employees to take their full lunch break and not to work late

What to do if you are stressed at work
If you are stressed at work, the best things to do are voice your concerns to your manager, and try to work out what is causing you to be stressed and find some strategies to reduce your level of stress.

If your employer will not help, the option of making an accident at work claim may well be open to you, and this will allow you to claim financial compensation for the pain and suffering which you have experienced, as well as any other losses that your stress has caused you. Making an accident at work claim could help improve working conditions for your colleagues, as well as providing you with recompense for the effects that stress had had on you.

Editorial notes: YouClaim helps people all over the UK get compensation for workplace stress and accidents at work. YouClaim’s service is completely cost-free for customers and no deductions are made from compensation awards. For more information, go to http://www.youclaim.co.uk or call 0800 10 757 95.

Author notes: Alexandra Gubbins of http://www.youclaim.co.uk.

Lesson 69 - When Networking Events Fail

The Story

In a quest to create strategic alliances, coalitions, and partnerships, we don’t usually allow ourselves to imagine our efforts failing. We don’t imagine faltering at building relationships with people, since working with others comes naturally to most people.

It’s even harder to imagine that people would decline to help us with our work after they’ve gotten to know our reputations. It is unthinkable to consider that after doing all the right things, attending the right events, having a polished image, keeping lines of communications open, and establishing proper business rapport, that business ventures set up through network could fail.

We don’t typically invest our time, effort, and money in attending events that in some way are not mutually beneficial. For example, frequently benefactors donate large sums of money to their favor charity for several reasons. First, because they support the work the organization is accomplishing, and second, to increase their reputation and prominence in the business community through establishing and advancing their niche in the market place through public relations. Monetary donations also provide tax credit to the donor’s organization. So given all that we do to be successful in establishing networks to make our work and events successful, how do we handle networking efforts that fail?

A while ago I began attending an organization called the “Love Corporation’s” yearly fundraising event. The first year a friend invited me to accompany her. Each year after that I began attended the event on my own. By the fourth year of participating, I had pretty much gotten to know certain people and these certain people knew me. Many of the relationships I found through this event blossomed into more permanent friendships, with people whom I would communicate with on a weekly basis.

During the fourth year an incident occurred. I asked a certain NBC Washington news anchor if I could interview him for my second book. He agreed, and we had the interview on the spot. Up to that point when we saw each other we would have great conversations. So, when Barbershop Talk was released I sent him a complementary copy. With that complimentary copy, I wrote up an idea for a news story and hoped that he would include my book and me in the story.

It is difficult to admit that through this incident I realized that for four years I read our relationship wrong. He liked my story idea and subsequently aired a story using my idea and suggested topic. However, he didn’t include my new book or me, and gave me no credit for the idea! I sat angrily in front of the television and watched him interview other people using my idea without getting any credit as the person to whom the idea was attributed.

My years of networking with him at this yearly event failed. It failed for one reason, because I assumed that he was honorable and would help those who helped him. I was so wrong. Another reason the relationship failed was because I didn’t know his work ethic well enough before trusting him with an idea. We never can exactly know what goes on behind the scenes of a news programming business, and journalism, like other professionals, are not always straight and honest.

Maureen Dowd described the way I felt through defining the Woodard-Darman Law that, “A friendship between a reporter and source lasts only until it is profitable for one to betray the other.”

The Lesson

What is the best way to handle failed networking events or situations? The best thing to do is evaluate and learn from what happened, why it happened, and how to prevent it from happening again. Though one cannot predict what will happen in every situation, predicting consequences of certain situations comes easier with age and experience. Analyzing all the factors that lead to the specific outcome you desire will allow you to be prepared when the outcomes unfolds. So in retrospect, I was betrayed but in the long run given material to reflect on through which to teach others.

Melvin Murphy is a Consummate Speaker, Noted Author & Certified Seminar Leader. His latest book is title, It’s Who You Know! Creating Alliances and Partnerships through Networking. Contact him at: MMurphy833@aol.com

From Cell to Super Cell - with Glutathione

Imagine you’re a cell.

Inside your body runs the machinery that creates life itself. But as that machinery keeps running, day after day, you begin to get worn out - the friction and the processes that cause damage (here the “free-radicals” - highly destructive little entities generated by biochemical processes, as well as pollutants, UV radiation and other sources) start to create havoc and you begin to lose the battle to disease, old age and ultimately death.

In fact your battle would be over much sooner were it not for the numerous mechanisms that you and other mammalian cells evolved over millions of years, as protection from the injury that can result from your normal functional processes. The foremost among these internal protective systems is the “Glutathione antioxidant system.”

Glutathione, a small molecule composed of three amino acids - glycine, glutamate and cysteine - acts as your cellular Super-Mop, soaking up “free-radicals” (with the help of the sulfur-containing portion of the cysteine molecule), protecting your cellular membranes and internal organs from the cascading destruction they can cause.

Besides being the major antioxidant that you produce as protection from “free-radicals,” glutathione is also a very important detoxifying agent, enabling you to get rid of undesirable toxins and pollutants. If you were a liver, kidney or lung cell, you would contain high levels of glutathione, as you’d be exposed to the greatest levels of toxins.

Glutathione also helps you dispose of many cancer- producing chemicals, heavy metals, drug metabolites etc. that invade the pristine recesses of your cellular world. And Mother Nature (the first recycler) also designed you to use glutathione to recycle other well-known antioxidants such as vitamin C and vitamin E, keeping them in their active state.

If you were a cell delegated to the immune system department, you would require glutathione for many of the intricate steps needed to carry out your essential immune response functions - such as multiplying to make many clones of yourself, to mount a full-bodied immune response, or “neutralizing” undesirable elements of the cellular community, like cancerous or virally infected cells.

But your finicky cell membrane does not allow whole glutathione molecules to cross over directly into your cellular spaces. And every time a molecule of glutathione neutralizes a destructive free-radical or toxin, it fatally binds with the undesirable element and is washed out with them in the bile or the urine.

So how do you replenish your stores and get your daily fix of glutathione? Simple. You manufacture it in your cellular factory, from its raw materials - glycine, glutamate and cysteine.

If your human eats a diet high in fresh fruits and vegetables and freshly prepared meats, you should get be getting enough glutamate and glycine. But cystine comes mostly from eggs, milk and cheese. And when eggs, milk and cheese are cooked or processed, the composition of Cystine is changed to Cysteine (small difference in spelling, but BIG difference in action). While still a valuable protein, it can no longer feed your glutathione levels.

If you can get a sufficient supply of cysteine (which determines the rate at which you can make glutathione), your arsenal is well- stocked. If not, you and your human are at a strategic disadvantage in the battle of “Cell v/s Free-radical Destroyers.”

As a normal, healthy cell, increasing your glutathione levels could help you and your human maintain that strategic advantage in the battle against free-radicals. If you’re not really in your prime, boosting your levels could tip the scales in your favor, and help you fight the cellular damage that causes disease and aging.

Copyright 2002 Priya Shah

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About the author:
Priya Shah is the Editor of The Glutathione Report, a newsletter featuring regular updates on the health benefits of glutathione. Get a Free report on Glutathione in Health and Disease
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