Tips To Avoid SPAM - Part 3

If you have an e-mail address that receives a very large amount of spam, consider replacing it with a new address and informing your contacts of the new address. Once you are on lots of spammers' mailing lists, it is likely that the address will receive more and more spam.


Make sure that your anti-virus software is up to date. Many viruses and Trojans scan the hard disk for e-mail addresses to send spam and viruses. Avoid spamming your colleagues by keeping your anti-virus software up to date.


Use the firewall included with your operating system, or use a firewall from a reputable company, to avoid your computer being hacked or infected with a worm and used as a spam-sending zombie.

Do not respond to e-mail requests to validate or confirm any of your account details. Your bank, credit card company, eBay, Paypal, etc., already have your account details, so would not need you to validate them. If you are unsure if a request for personal information from a company is legitimate, contact the company directly or type the Web site URL directly into your browser. Do not click on the links in the e-mail, as they may be fake links to phishing Web sites.


Do not click on unusual links. Confirm the sender did send the e-mail if it looks suspicious.


Source : DSD Email Group

Concluded

Tips To Avoid SPAM - Part 2

When filling in Web forms, check the site's privacy policy to ensure it will not be sold or passed on to other companies. There may be a checkbox to opt out of third party mailings. Consider opting out to receive less opt-in e-mail.

Never respond to spam. If you reply, even to request removing your e-mail address from the mailing list, you are confirming that your e-mail address is valid and the spam has been successfully delivered to your inbox, not filtered by a spam filter, that you opened the message, read the contents, and responded to the spammer. Lists of confirmed e-mail addresses are more valuable to spammers than unconfirmed lists, and they are frequently bought and sold by spammers.

Do not open spam messages wherever possible. Frequently spam messages include "Web beacons" enabling the spammer to determine how many, or which e-mail addresses have received and opened the message. Or use an e-mail client that does not automatically load remote graphic images, such as the most recent versions of Microsoft® Outlook® and Mozilla Thunderbird.

Do not click on the links in spam messages, including unsubscribe links. These frequently contain a code that identifies the e-mail address of the recipient, and can confirm the spam has been delivered and that you responded.

Never buy any goods from spammers. The spammers rely on very small percentages of people responding to spam and buying goods. If spamming becomes unprofitable and takes lots of effort for little return, spammers have less incentive to continue spamming. Would you risk giving your credit card details to an unknown, unreputable source?

To Be Continued.....

Tips To Avoid SPAM - Part 1

Do not post your e-mail address in an unobfuscated form on the Internet. If you need to post your e-mail address, obfuscate it so it cannot be easily harvested such as “name –at- hotmail – dot- com,” Or if you need to include your e-mail address in your signature, include a small graphic image containing your e-mail address.

Check to see if your e-mail address is visible to spammers by typing it into a Web search engine such as www.google.com. If your e-mail address is posted to any Web sites or newsgroups, remove it if possible to help reduce how much spam you receive.

Lots of ISPs provide free e-mail addresses. Set up two e-mail addresses, one for personal e-mail to friends and colleagues, and use the other for subscribing to newsletters or posting on forums and other public locations. If you have a more complex e-mail address, it is less likely to receive spam than one that could be easily dictionary-attacked.

Many ISPs also offer free spam filtering. If this is available, enable it. Report missed spam to your ISP, as it helps reduce how much spam you and other members of the same ISP receive. If your ISP does not offer spam filtering, use anti-spam software to reduce the amount of spam delivered to your inbox.

When replying to newsgroup postings, do not include your e-mail address.

To Be Continued......

Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen - Part 4

41. If your milk always goes bad before you can finish it, try adding a pinch of salt to the carton when you first open it. It will stay fresh days longer.

42. Water that has been boiled and allowed to cool will freeze faster than water from the tap. This comes in handy when you’re having a party and need ice pronto.

43. Remove tea or coffee stains from your fine china by mixing up a paste of baking soda, lemon juice, and cream of tartar. Rub it over the stains and they’ll come off easily.

44. If two drinking glasses become stuck together after stacking, it’s not impossible to unstick them. Just put ice in the inner glass and dunk the outer glass in warm water. The warm glass will expand and the cold glass will contract, making the glasses separate easily.

45. For splinters under the fingernail, soaking the affected finger in a bowl of milk with a piece of bread in it is said to draw out the splinter.

46. Did grandpa ever give you a drink of cola for an upset tummy? It turns out that this is actually a pretty effective remedy. The sugar and carbonation can soothe many tummy problems - but it can also exacerbate others.

47. Putting salty bacon on a boil is said to “draw the poison out” of boils.

48. To help old wooden drawers (without runners) open and close smoothly, rub a candle on the tracks.

49. A cotton ball soaked in white vinegar and applied to a fresh bruise will reduce the darkness of the bruise and help it disappear sooner.

50. Drinking cranberry juice and eating blueberries regularly will help stave off urinary tract infections.

Concluded

Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen - Part 3

31. When you burn yourself in the kitchen, just spread mustard on the affected area. Leave it for a while and it will ease the pain and prevent blistering.

32. For aluminum pans that are looking dull, just boil some apple peels in them. This will brighten up the aluminum and make your house smell yummy.

33. To keep cookies fresh, savvy grannies like to put some crumpled-up tissue paper in the bottom of the cookie jar.

34. If your salt is clumping up, put a few grains of rice in with it to absorb excess moisture.

35. To clean fruit stains off of your fingers, rub them with a fresh, peeled potato. White vinegar can also do the trick.

36. Keep iceberg lettuce fresh in the fridge by wrapping it in a clean, dry paper towel and storing lettuce and paper towel in a sealed baggie in the fridge.

37. If your loaf of bread is starting to go stale, just put a piece of fresh celery in the bag and close it back up. For some reason, this restores a fresh taste and texture to the bread.

38. Always keep an aloe vera plant in your kitchen. It’s invaluable when you scrape your arm or burn your finger. Just break off a leaf and rub the gel from the inside on the injury.

39. When making a soup, sauce, or casserole that ends up too fatty or greasy, drop in an ice cube. The ice will attract the fat, which you can then scoop out.

40. To reuse cooking oil without tasting whatever was cooked in the oil previously, cook a 1/4″ piece of ginger in the oil. It will remove any remaining flavors and odors.

To Be Continued.....

Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen - Part 2

21. When you clean your fish tank, the water you drain can also be used to water your house plants. The nitrogen and phosphorus in fish droppings make aquarium water a great fertilizer.

22. When defrosting meat from the freezer, pour some vinegar over it. Not only does it tenderize the meat; it will also bring down the freezing temperature of the meat and cause it to thaw quicker.

23. The substance in onions that causes your eyes to water is located in the root cluster of the onion. Cut this part out in a cone shape, with the largest part of the cone around the exterior root section.

24. Taking the top layer off of a onion can also reduce the amount of eye-watering misery.

25. Toothpaste is a great silver cleaner.

26. Baking soda isn’t as effective a deodorizer for the fridge as that baking soda company would like you to believe. Activated charcoal is much better at absorbing fridge and freezer odors.

27. Baking soda is an extremely effective cleaner, though. Use it with vinegar to deodorize drains and clean stovetops and sinks.

28. A favorite tip of thousands of grandmas: when you nick your finger while cutting veggies, wait until the bleeding stops and paint on a layer of clear nail polish. It will keep juices out of the wound and won’t fall off into the spaghetti sauce like a bandage.

29. The jury is still out on what to put in the bag of brown sugar to keep it from going hard: a slice of apple, a piece of bread, and a shard of a terra cotta pot have all been used.

30. Got a nasty invisible splinter from your kitchen tools? Put a piece of adhesive tape on the area and then pull it off to remove the splinter.

Know The Term : Catfish Effect & Tomato Ketchup / Sauce

Difference Between Tomato Sauce and Tomato Ketchup

In the US, ketchup is prepared with tomatoes, sugar, vinegar / acetic acid and spices. It is used as a dressing or table condiment. Ketchup is cold and is never heated as a rule.

Tomato Sauce on the other hand, is made from tomatoes, oil, meat or vegetable stock and spices. Vinegar is not usually used. Sauces are generally served hot. Most manufacturers insist that ketchup is made with spices while sauce is generally made without spices.

Catfish Effect

'Catfish Effect' is a term used in human resource management to describe how groups are motivated by the addition of a strong competitor. The phrase comes from the practice of Norwegian fisherman, who add a single catfish into their haul of live sardines. In this way, the sardines swim vigorously to avoid contact with the catfish, and can be brought to market while still alive, thus fetching a higher price.

Source : TOI

Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen - Part 2

11. Burned a pot of rice? Just place a piece of white bread on top of the rice for 5-10 minutes to draw out the burned flavor. Be careful not to scrape the burned pieces off of the bottom of the pan when serving the rice.

12. Before you chop chili peppers, rub a little vegetable oil into your hands and your skin won’t absorb the spicy chili oil.

13. If you aren’t sure how fresh your eggs are, place them in about four inches of water. Eggs that stay on the bottom are fresh. If only one end tips up, the egg is less fresh and should be used soon. If it floats, it’s past the fresh stage.

14. To banish ants from the kitchen, find out where they are coming in and cover the hole with petroleum jelly. Ants won’t trek through the jelly. If they are coming under a door, draw a line on the floor with chalk. The little bugs also won’t cross a line of chalk.

15. Before making popcorn on the stove or in an air popper, soak the kernels in water for 10 minutes. Drain the water, then pop as normal. The additional moisture helps the popcorn pop up quicker and fluffier with fewer “old maids.”

16. Don’t store your bananas in a bunch or in a fruit bowl with other fruits. Separate your bananas and place each in a different location. Bananas release gases which cause fruits (including other bananas) to ripen quickly. Separating them will keep them fresh longer.

17. To keep potatoes from budding in the bag, put an apple in with them.

18. If you manage to have some leftover wine at the end of the evening, freeze it in ice cube trays for easy addition to soups and sauces in the future.

19. To clean crevices and corners in vases and pitchers, fill with water and drop in two Alka-Seltzer tablets. The bubbles will do the scrubbing.

20. After boiling pasta or potatoes, cool the water and use it to water your house plants. The water contains nutrients that your plants will love.

To Be Continued....

Amazingly Helpful Time-Tested Tips for the Kitchen - Part 1

1. For cleaning smelly hands after chopping onions or garlic, just rub them on a stainless steel spoon. The steel is supposed to absorb the odor.

2. Fresh coffee beans can also absorb nasty odors from your hands.

3. If you happen to over-salt a pot of soup, just drop in a peeled potato. The potato will absorb the excess salt.

4. When boiling eggs, add a pinch of salt to keep the shells from cracking.

5. Never put citrus fruits or tomatoes in the fridge. The low temperatures degrade the aroma and flavor of these persnickety fruits.

6. To clean cast iron cookwear, don’t use detergents. Just scrub them with salt and a clean, dry paper towel.

7. Will milk curdle if it is allowed to boil? It turns out that this age-old piece of wisdom isn’t true, after all. Milk that has been boiled is perfectly safe to consume.

8. To clean an electric kettle with calcium buildup on the heating element, boil a mixture of half white vinegar and half water, then empty.

9. When storing empty airtight containers, throw in a pinch of salt to keep them from getting stinky.

10. If you are making gravy and accidentally burn it, just pour it into a clean pan and continue cooking it. Add sugar a little at a time, tasting as you go to avoid over-sugaring it. The sugar will cancel out the burned taste.

To Be Continued....

Self Help Mantra - Happiness Makes For A Happy Heart

Happiness makes for a happy heart

People who are usually happy and enthusiastic are less likely to develop heart disease than those who tend to be glum, scientists said on Thursday, and boosting positive emotions could help cut heart health risks.

US researchers said their observational study was the first to show an independent relationship between positive emotions and coronary heart disease, but stressed that more work was needed before any treatment recommendations could be made.

"We desperately need rigorous clinical trials in this area. If the trials support our findings, then these results will be incredibly important in describing specifically what clinicians and/or patients could do to improve health," Karina Davidson of Columbia University Medical Center wrote in the study in the European Heart Journal.

Heart disease is the leading killer of men and women in Europe, the United States and most industrialized countries. Together with diabetes, cardiovascular diseases accounted for 32 per cent of all deaths around the world in 2005, according to the World Health Organization.

Over 10 years, Davidson and her team followed 1,739 men and women who were taking part in a large health survey in Canada.

Trained nurses assessed the participants' heart disease risk and measured negative emotions like depression, hostility and anxiety, as well as positive emotions like joy, happiness, excitement, enthusiasm and contentment -- collectively known as a "positive affect."

The researchers ranked the "positive affect" across five levels ranging from "none" to "extreme" and found that for each rank the risk of heart disease fell by 22 percent.

Davidson, who led the research, said her findings suggested it might be possible to help prevent heart disease by enhancing people's positive emotions.

"Participants with no positive affect were at a 22 percent higher risk of ... heart attack or angina ... than those with a little positive affect, who were themselves at 22 per cent higher risk than those with moderate positive affect," she wrote.

"We also found that if someone who was usually positive had some depressive symptoms at the time of the survey, this did not affect their overall lower risk of heart disease."

Smoking, being overweight, a history of heart problems in the family and high blood pressure are traditionally seen as major risk factors for heart disease, but studies have also linked such things as intelligence and income levels to heart risks. Research published last week found intelligence is second only to smoking as a predictor of heart disease.

Davidson's team said one possible reason for the link between happiness and heart risk could be that people who are happier tend to have longer periods of rest or relaxation, and may recover more quickly from stressful events and not spend as much time "re-living" them.

Source: Indian Express

Self Help Mantra - Six Keys To Success

Six Keys to Success


1. Attitude
Bloom where you are planted. You have a choice to get back up after temporary set backs. Attitude is a small thing that makes a big difference!


2. Direction
If you don't know where you are going, any road will get you there. Write your short term goals down on paper. I have discovered and continue to discover that putting your dreams and goals down on paper lock in or focus your belief that they can be achieved--even if you have to take a course correction in achieving your goals. Success comes in cans, failure comes in can'ts.


3. Values
Explore what is important to you. Maybe it is family, friends, your spirituality or working hard at any given task. I can assure you that your priorities will change as you grow older. Very important that you value yourself and treat yourself like the valuable gift from God that you are.


4. Interests
Birds of a feather flock together. This is to say that if you are hanging around winners or others with a "can do" mind-set, you'll likely adapt to this same kind of thinking. Remember--"SUCCESS LEAVES CLUES!


5. Commitment
Feelings may change, commitments do not. "Success is getting up one more time than you fall." I have often wanted to give up, and then I must think to myself about what the consequences of giving up will be. Generally, this is more than enough of a motivation to make us stick to the task at hand even if we don't feel like it. When the task is achieved, Whow!--IT FEELS GREAT!


6. Encouragement
Be an encourager and comforter to friends that are feeling discouraged. I promise that you will not regret this as you will be encouraged by one, if not many, when you are feeling down. Encouragement and love are contagious qualities that can change the minds of the most stubborn and "hard-to-get- along-with" people you know. I have seen it happen over and over again.

Self Help Mantra - Being a Good Leader !

What gives a man or woman the right to lead..?

It certainly isn't gained by election or appointment. Having position, title, rank, or degrees doesn't qualify anyone to lead other people. And the ability doesn't come automatically from age or experience, either.

No, it would be accurate to say that no one can be given the right to lead. The right to lead can only be earned. And that takes time.

The key to becoming an effective leader is not to focus on making other people follow, but on making yourself the kind of person they want to follow. You must become someone others can trust to take them where they want to go.
As you prepare yourself to become a better leader, use the following guidelines to help you grow:

1. Let go of your ego.
The truly great leaders are not in leadership for personal gain. They lead in order to serve other people. Perhaps that is why Lawrence D. Bell remarked, "Show me a man who cannot bother to do little things, and I'll show you a man who cannot be trusted to do big things."

2. Become a good follower first.
Rare is the effective leader who didn't learn to become a good follower first. That is why a leadership institution such as the United State Military Academy teaches its officers to become effective followers first - and why West Point has produced more leaders than the Harvard Business School.


To Be Concluded...

Some Interesting Facts - Part 3

It is impossible to lick your elbow.


A snail can sleep for 3 years.


The names of the continents all end with the same letter with which they start


In 1883 the explosion of the volcano Krakatoa put so much dust into the earth's atmosphere that sunsets appeared green and the moon appeared blue around the world for almost two years.


"Almost" is the longest word in the English language with all the letters in alphabetical order.


Twenty-Four-Karat Gold is not pure gold since there is a small amount of copper in it. Absolutely pure gold is so soft that it can be molded with the hands.


Electricity doesn't move through a wire but through a field around the wire.


Do you know the names of the three wise monkeys? They are: Mizaru (See no evil), Mikazaru (Hear no evil), and Mazaru (Say no evil ).


55 per cent of people yawn within 5 minutes of seeing someone else yawn. Reading about yawning makes most people yawn.

Concluded

Some Interesting Facts - Part 2

The only 2 animals that can see behind itself without turning it's head are the rabbit and the parrot.


A 'jiffy' is an actual unit of time for 1/100th of a second.


India invented the Number System. Zero was invented by Aryabhatta.


The whip makes a cracking sound because its tip moves faster than the speed of sound.


A hippopotamus can run faster than a man.


India never invaded any country in her last 10000 years of history.

Some Interesting Facts - Part 1

All the planets in our solar system rotate anticlockwise, except Venus. It is the only planet that rotates clockwise.



Hummingbirds are the only animal that can also fly backwards.



Insects do not make noises with their voices. The noise of bees, mosquitoes and other buzzing insects is caused by rapidly moving their wings.



The cockroach is the fastest animal on 6 legs covering a meter a second.



The word "listen" contains the same letters as the word "silent".

Help Mantras - Radio Buttons & Costliest Cities

Radio Button is a series of on-screen buttons that allow only one selection to be made from the group. A selected button will automatically de-select when any other button is selected.

Radio buttons come from the early days of radio which had five or six preset station buttons in a row. Pressing one button deselected the other station.

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Tokyo & Osaka are widely regarded as the cities with the highest cost of living by several surveys. Asuncion in Paraguay is considered the cheapest.

The parameters determining the cost of living include housing, transport, food, clothing and entertainment.