Editing Photos for Online Albums in Photoshop Elements 9

Online albums on social networking sites like Facebook are a popular way to share photos. In Photoshop Elements 9, four adjustments are all you need to improve pictures taken with cell phones, point-and-shoot cameras, and professional digital SLR cameras.

Obviously you can make more refinements using artistic effects, selecting areas of a photo for brightness adjustments, using additional color correction tools, and other options. However, understanding the following adjustments is really all you need to improve images for displaying your pictures onscreen, using albums on social networks or other online tools:

• Levels: The Levels adjustment is used to change brightness values for highlights, shadows, and midtones. Make this adjustment first.

  
  



• Shadow/Highlight Filter: Your second adjustment, which you find by choosing Enhance→Adjust Lighting→Shadows/Highlights.

  
  



• Hue/Saturation. You use the Hue/Saturation adjustment when you need to correct color. The tool can reduce or increase saturation.

  
  



• Sharpen: A lot of amateur photos are on the soft side, and a little sharpening as a final step can make them a little snappier.

  
  

Use these tools in Photoshop Elements in the order they’re listed, although you may need to make only a single adjustment when preparing photos for your Facebook albums. Perhaps a Levels adjustment is enough to add some snap and proper brightness to your image. Each photo is different and the appearance of the original photo dictates how much editing you need to make.

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How to Make the Most of Your Small Business’s Assets

The assets of your small business drive your financial picture to a large extent, so you need to know how to manage those assets to maximize their use to you. Use the tips in the following list to help put your assets to work for your business:

• Determine the sizes of assets you need to support the level of your annual sales revenue. The amount of your total assets determines the amount of capital you have to raise, and capital has a cost. The more assets you have, the more capital you need. Downsize your assets as long as you don’t hurt sales.

  
  



• Don’t rush into securing debt and equity capital without doing due diligence. Many small businesses are desperate for capital. Carefully examine the true, total cost of the capital and scrutinize the potential for interference from capital sources in running your business.

  
  



• Businesses that make profit generate taxable income. Small business (“S”) corporations, partnerships, and LLCs (limited liability companies) don’t have to pay income tax. They are pass-through tax entities; so, their owners include their respective shares of the business’s taxable income in their individual income tax returns. The profit of a pass-through business is taxed only once — in the hands of its owners. Cash dividends paid to stockholders by regular (“C”) corporations from their after-tax profits are included in the individual income tax returns of their stockholders and are thus subject to a second tax in the hands of the stockholders.

  
  

To keep your assets working for your business, trust, but protect. Business is done on the basis of mutual trust, but not everyone is trustworthy, even a longtime employee and a close relative. Enforce effective controls to minimize threats of theft and fraud against your business. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.

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Striving for a Headful of Healthy Hair

Although you see a lot of media and marketing hype about wellness these days, you never really hear anything about what a detrimental lifestyle can do to hair. Hair damage may not seem like such a big deal because hair doesn't become overweight or suffer from a fatal disease. Yet, when hair is damaged, every day can be a bad hair day — something that most people find depressing.

Avoid habits that cause damage

Some lifestyle habits can prove to be deadly to hair:

• Frolicking under UV rays: No matter whether you're at the beach, by the pool, or at your local tanning salon, UV rays fade color and cause dryness and brittleness to the point that the only practical solution is to cut off the damage with your scissors. Sun streaks in the hair, by the way, are a sure sign of sun damage.

To solve this dilemma, suggest to all your sun gods and goddesses that they wear hats, use hair products containing antioxidant or sunscreen ingredients, and do deep conditioners — those that are recommended remain on the hair five minutes or longer — as frequently as once a week.

• Compromising the health of hair by taking too many shortcuts: Overly committed people who don't have time to do things right often become their hair's worst enemy. They often take shortcuts, such as blasting the hair with hot air to make it dry more quickly, roughly combing through the hair while it's still tangled, and not conditioning properly for the sake of saving a little time.

To speed up the styling process without doing more damage, encourage busy folks to wrap their head in a towel while applying their makeup, shaving, brushing their teeth, and so on to remove at least 50 percent of the water before even going near their hair with a blow-dryer.

Never wrap a towel around the head too tight, as this stretches the hair and causes damage.

• Cruising the coast in a convertible sans scarf: Not only does this activity expose the hair to too much warm air and sun, the wind literally beats it up, creating roughness and split ends — the forked tips that develop on the ends of the hair.

You can prevent this type of damage simply by wearing a hat or a full scarf, and, if the hair's long enough, by securing it in a bun to protect the fragile ends from whipping about. If a helmet's involved, always put a scarf on the hair first to prevent the lining from tearing the hair.

• Being a chemical junkie: The too-frequent use of hair color, hair bleach, relaxers, and permanent wave solutions is extremely detrimental to the hair. In short, chemical junkies literally burn — sometimes even melt — their hair. The first signs of chemical abuse are extremely dry, dull hair. If chemical abuse continues, this leads to a noticeably rough hair texture, quick-fading color, the inability to hold a style, and breakage.

Much of this damage can be avoided by refraining from dramatically changing hair colors every month — going from red to blonde, for instance, requires extra stripping of the hair — and never overlapping hair chemicals when doing touch-ups (treating the new growth at the roots). Letting the hair grow out at least 1/2-inch before retouching the hair color makes it easier to avoid overlapping applications. This same advice applies to chemical relaxers.

As for permanent waves, overlapping perms is tough on hair. People should space permanent wave applications three months apart for very short hair; every six months for hair that's still above the shoulders; and as infrequently as once a year for hair that drapes barely past the shoulders. Fortunately, with today's smoother styles and better product formulas, most people don't need a permanent wave for their hair to look absolutely fabulous.

• Restless sleeping: A little bit of tossing and turning is okay, but when restless sleeping becomes a way of life, the hair can become worn to the point that it looks like a frayed rope.

The solution is simple: While you're waiting for your nerves to settle down, rest your head on a satin pillowcase, allowing the hair to glide easily across the fabric.

Screen for hair health

Creating a custom haircare plan means nipping problems in the bud — the onset of split ends, for instance, or the first signs of dryness — while working to correct past transgressions that are showing up in the hair. These sins are particularly apparent on longer hair because it hangs around for years rather than months.

A haircare plan should include the following

• A five-minute hair assessment to check for dryness, brittleness, breakage, and fading hair color.

• A talk about tools: Tell the person which ones to use to get the job done without harming the hair and when those tools need to be thrown away.

• Shampoo and conditioner recommendations: What products do individuals need to use in order to promote optimum health of their hair.

• Lifestyle recommendations: Discuss hair sunscreens and give advice about protecting the hair against wind, heat, sun, chlorine, salt water, and other harsh elements.

• A treatment schedule: The person may need treatments weekly, bi-monthly, or monthly, depending on the extent of damage and the length of the hair.

Re-evaluate the hair and the people's lifestyles every time you cut their hair: You may find they have been doing more swimming and hiking during the spring and summer. They may have taken up skydiving, or bicycling, or developed a restless sleep pattern due to stress. These things need to be addressed as they pop up, because they can affect the health of the hair.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/striving-for-a-headful-of-healthy-hair.html?cid=dn_article

Reasons Why Small Businesses Fail

Many different conditions can cause a small business to fail; some of the major reasons may be down to one or a few of the following. Safeguard your business by making sure you don’t fall into any bad practices such as these:

• Lack of a long-term company vision

  
  



• Failure to establish clear goals and objectives

  
  



• Misunderstanding what customers want

  
  



• Underestimating the competition

  
  



• Inadequate financial planning

  
  



• Lack of strong leadership

  
  



• Ineffective procedures and systems

  
  



• Absence of critical business skills

  
  



• Inability to change

  
  



• Failure to communicate the plan

  
  

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How to Maximize Opportunities and Manage Risks in Emerging Markets

Emerging markets have amazing opportunities for investors to make money and maybe even change the world. That’s all good stuff. But they also have some risks that you may not have considered.

The secret is that there is no secret. Do your homework, use advisors knowledgeable about the markets that you’re considering, and diversify.

Do your homework

Doing careful research can help you better identify your sources of risk and return, which in turn can help you better understand when — and how much — to buy and sell. Doing your homework starts with a good understanding of the country and the industry that you’re investing in.

When you start your research into the country and industry, look for the obvious opportunities and risks. Who runs the government? Is the government committed to development? Who competes for customers and funds with the investment that you’re considering? These basic questions are essential — investors throughout history have lost money because they overlooked the obvious.

Because markets change quickly, especially new markets, rely on news sources for up-to-date information, such as The Economist magazine and the Wall Street Journal.

The next step is looking at the financials of the investment that you’re considering. How will it make money? How much funding will it need to grow?

Research is an ongoing process. You need to keep it up to see if situations have changed. Maybe you want to commit more money to a market or investment, or maybe you want to cut back. The more you know, the better decisions you can make.

Use intermediaries or advisors

Emerging markets are probably far from where you live and don’t show up in the news very often. To get around this lack of information, you may want to use an intermediary to help you. The most popular intermediaries are emerging-market mutual funds and exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that pool money from many different investors. The fund managers are people who concentrate on emerging markets and have access to research and travel budgets that you may not have. Their job is to find investment opportunities and assess risks in order to make money for their clients, so they can devote more time and effort than you may be able to on your own.

If you have a great deal of money to invest, you can work with a private investment fund or a wealth manager with a specialty in emerging markets. Some brokers, wealth mangers, and other financial advisors have a specialty in emerging markets.

Diversify your investments

In any market, the easiest way to improve your long-term return and manage your risk is to diversify by buying different investments with different risk and return characteristics, such as stocks and bonds. If you limit your emerging-market investments to the long-term, risk-bearing part of your portfolio, and if you invest in a range of countries and industries, your overall risk is greatly reduced because you have the rest of your portfolio in less-risky, more-liquid assets.

When you diversify, don’t just go after a grab bag. Instead, look at a mix of emerging markets. They range from almost developed to barely modern, from natural-resources economies to technology-driven economies, from hard currencies to those that are difficult to exchange. If you have exposure to a little bit of each, then the unique risks in any given market will be offset by unique advantages in others.

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Keeping Your Web Marketing Newsletter Address List Up-to-date

Starting a web marketing newsletter is a useful opportunity to clean out and update your e-mail address list. Any e-mail addresses that have been in your database for more than a year are suspect, on the surface. Here are some ways to keep your address list up-to-date:

• Send everyone in your database a bulk e-mail asking for opt-in e-mail confirmation, and then delete addresses that are no longer valid.

  
  



• Most list servers and template newsletters automatically test subscriber e-mails to make sure addresses are current. Delete the bounced addresses from your list.

  
  



• If you have a list of print addresses without e-mail, send a prepaid business-reply postcard announcing your newsletter. Be sure to request opt-in permission and an e-mail address on the reply card, and provide a link to sign up online.

  
  

Most providers of e-mail services segregate undeliverable e-mail addresses before sending your first message, or they record them as bounces. This strategy keeps your newsletter list up-to-date, but your base contact list might now be out of sync. You might need to delete undeliverable e-mail addresses from your source file as well.

Maintaining and grooming your list is an ongoing process. Between mailings, add new names to your list and review blocked or otherwise undeliverable ones.

What about e-mailing to that carton of business cards you collected at trade shows and networking events? If you didn’t get permission to add them to a newsletter list when you acquired them, you must send a confirmation link or postcard to obtain an explicit opt-in.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/keeping-your-web-marketing-newsletter-address-list.html

How to Improve Garden Soil with Organic Matter

3 of 6 in Series:
The Essentials of Garden Soil

Organic matter is the key to amending less-than perfect garden soil. To fix mucky clay or sandy sand soil, add plenty of organic matter. You can't change the type of soil you have, but adding organic matter makes your soil more like loam, which is perfect for plant roots. Even if you have loam, you still should add organic matter every year.

Organic matter improves garden soil in the following ways:

• 
  

  It helps loosen and aerate clay soil.

  
  


• 
  

  It improves the water- and nutrient-holding capacity of sandy soil.

  
  


• 
  

  It provides the once-living material that attracts microorganisms, beneficial fungi, worms, and other soil-borne critters that improve the health of your vegetables.

  
  

How to work organic matter into soil

Work some organic matter into your soil before you plant each season. If you're using unfinished (raw) organic matter like leaves or undecomposed manure, add it to your soil at least one month before planting. That way it will break down before you plant. Add finished compost and manures just before planting.

Follow these steps to add organic matter to your garden soil:

1. 
   

   Add a 1- to 2-inch layer of organic matter to the area where you intend to plant.

   
   

   Go for the higher end (2 inches) if your garden is new or if your soil is heavy clay or very sandy. Use less if you've grown there for years or if your soil is loamy and fertile.

   
   

   You need 3 cubic yards of compost to spread a 1-inch-thick layer over 1,000 square feet.

   
   


2. 
   

   Work in the organic matter to a depth of at least 6 inches.

   
   

   There's nothing glamorous about spreading manure. The best way to spread organic matter is with a wheelbarrow and a shovel. Work it into the soil with a shovel, iron fork, or rototiller.

   
   

Using compost

The best organic material to add to your soil is compost. Composting breaks down yard waste, agricultural waste, wood scraps, and even sludge into a crumbly soil-like material called humus.

Compost is usually clean, easy to use, and available. You can buy it in bags or have it delivered by the truckload. Most waste disposal sites make compost and sell it relatively cheap. You also can make your own compost.

Before you buy compost, ask whether the compost contains any heavy metals, such as lead, and whether the compost is safe to use in a vegetable garden. Your local health department should be able to tell you what levels of lead and heavy metals are unsafe. The folks at the waste disposal site also may even be able to give you a precise nutrient content if they've performed any tests on the compost.

Using sawdust and manure

Using organic materials other than compost — such as sawdust and manure — is fine, but these materials present a few problems that compost doesn't. Here are some advantages and disadvantages:

• 
  

  Sawdust adds organic matter to your soil, which eventually breaks down and forms humus. However, the sawdust also robs the soil of nitrogen when it decomposes, so you have to add more fertilizer to compensate.

  
  


• 
  

  Livestock manure improves your soil's nitrogen level. However, livestock diets often include lots of hay that's full of weed seeds, which may germinate in your vegetable garden. Some manures (such as horse manure) add organic matter and some nutrients to your soil, but they're also loaded with bedding materials (like dried hay) that cause the same problem that adding sawdust causes.

  
  

If you use manure, make sure it has been sitting around for a year or two, so it's decomposed, and the salts have been leached out. Too much salt in the soil can be harmful to plants. Good quality compost or fully decomposed manure should have a dark brown color, earthy smell, and have little original material visible.

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Green Jobs in Forest Resource Management

Forests are one of the most critical ecosystems on the planet, providing us with products from raw lumber for construction to pulp for paper and packaging to fuel sources such as biomass. Managing forests is a crucial part of building a sustainable future in the green economy. With the right skills, an eco-conscious career transition could yield many rewarding opportunities in an environmentally focused job search.

To succeed in forestry, you must rely on your knowledge of biology, quantitative abilities, and technical skill. In addition, you must have managerial skills and know how to encourage people to act in ways that conserve forests. The goals of a forester are many:

• Growing and managing the forest.

  
  



• Extracting the timber in a sustainable way and processing it as a raw material for use in a huge array of products.

  
  



• Reforesting, restoring, and remediating forests that have been degraded, damaged, or destroyed.

  
  



• Managing and protecting wildlife habitat, watershed area, and water resources found in the forested areas.

  
  



• Providing recreation opportunities.

  
  



• Maintaining air quality and water quality while naturally sequestering carbon from the atmosphere.

  
  

What’s happening now in forestry

The U.S. Forest Service is actively working to understand the state of the nation’s forests and the impact of possible climate change scenarios. In addition, the U.S. Forest Service has received $936 million from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) to invest in the 93 million acres of public lands it manages; to go toward fire management, building and maintaining facilities, establishing and repairing trails and roads, restoring watershed areas, and dealing with abandoned mines. The projects have created jobs in 32 states.

According to the American Forest & Paper Association, the U.S. forest products industry that produces wood, paper, packaging, and related products “accounts for approximately 6 percent of the total U.S. manufacturing GDP, placing it on par with the automotive and plastics industries.”

Threats of global deforestation sparked the 1993 establishment of the Forest Stewardship Council, an international forest certification system to encourage sustainable forest management practice. Working with various certification bodies such as the Rainforest Alliance, the FSC provides certifications for organizations that grow and harvest forests, companies that use or sell forest products even though they don’t grow trees, forest management companies that want to ensure that their wood is legally and ethically harvested, and companies that manage and harvest products such as seeds or nuts from forests.

Although several other certification programs exist, such as the Sustainable Forestry Initiative in North America, the American Tree Farm System for privately owned forests, and the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Council, the FSC program is generally seen as the industry standard.

In addition to forest management changes, the forest products industry has made a concerted effort to recycle paper and pulp to recover paper fibers that can be used to generate recycled paper. According to the American Forest and Paper Association, 57.4 percent of the paper consumed in the U.S. was recovered for recycling in 2008. By 2012, the paper industry would like to hit a goal of 60 percent paper recovery. Every ton of paper that is recovered by the industry saves considerable landfill space, energy, water, and trees.

As the climate changes, the U.S. Forest Service’s role as caretaker of the forests is likely to become more important and more difficult. As ecosystems shift in response to rising temperatures, pests and invasive species potentially take hold in new regions, wildfires may rage out of control, and prolonged droughts may take their toll on forested areas.

The American Forest and Paper Association has created a road map to help all stakeholders look to the future of the industry.

The forest products industry has voluntarily committed to reducing its greenhouse gas emissions by 2012 through the Climate VISION program, a voluntary public-private partnership initiative to improve energy efficiency and greenhouse gas intensity in energy-intensive industrial sectors. The industry is utilizing biomass from their production process to produce steam that is then used to generate electricity and dry paper products. The added efficiency reduces carbon emissions and energy costs for forest product plants.

Forest2Fuel, a company that provides pricing information to the timber industry, is tracking trends in the biomass/biofuel arena. Although forestry clearing projects, forest products manufacturing plants, and construction projects produce a variety of woody feedstocks that can be used as fuel, it’s currently unclear whether bioenergy will be a viable new income stream for this industry. The viability depends on how biomass is defined by pending legislation and whether wood-related sources of biomass are designated as a viable source of renewable energy for the Renewable Energy Standard.

Job opportunities in forestry

Forestry has a number of sub-disciplines that cover a broad range of professions and applications

• Forestry and natural resource sciences: Biologist, forester, botanist, naturalist, environmental protection specialist

  
  



• Management and conservation: Forester, urban forester, research forester, arborist, forest consultant, forestry technician, conservation biologist, habitat conservation specialist, natural resource specialist, lumberjack, firefighters

  
  



• Environmental science and technology: Forestry GIS analyst, air and water quality specialists, environmental health specialist, water recycling, watershed program director, water quality specialist, environmental scientists and consultant, and laboratory analyst

  
  



• Wood and paper science: Wood technologist, packaging engineer, resin technologist, energy specialist, wood fiber acquisition and sales, pulp and paper specialist, resin extractor, rubber tapper

  
  



• Genetics and biotechnology: Forest geneticist, tree breeder, biochemist, molecular biologist, genetic engineering specialist

  
  

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Linking Inflammation to Chronic Diseases

Inflammation contributes to the development and symptoms of chronic illnesses, and understanding that link is the first step in knowing how to change your diet in order to combat inflammation and take better care of yourself. Here are some illnesses linked to inflammation:

• Heart disease: Clinical research has linked heart disease — from coronary artery disease to congestive heart failure — to inflammation. Physicians and researchers provide evidence that the fatty deposits the body uses to repair damage to the arteries are just the start.

  
  



• Cancer: Foods and proteins, such as fruits and green vegetables, can help you significantly reduce your risks of cancer. Chronic inflammation has been shown to contribute to the growth of tumor cells and other cancer cells.

  
  



• Arthritis and joint pain: Arthritis has always been linked to inflammation, but it hasn't always been evident that a change in diet could help alleviate the pain and possibly even postpone the onset. Now, however, medical and nutrition professionals see the benefits that natural, vitamin-rich foods can have in relieving the pain of arthritis and possibly even diminishing the inflammation.

  
  



• Weight gain: It's no secret that food is linked to obesity, but certain foods have a tendency to pile on the pounds more than others. Refined flours and sugars, for example, don't get digested properly and turn to fat much sooner than other, unprocessed foods. Obesity increases inflammation throughout the body by piling pressure on the joints and aiding arthritis, for instance.

  
  

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Fixing Figure Drawing Bloopers

Even the most experienced artists make mistakes in their work. Fortunately if you make a figure drawing mistake it doesn’t have to be completely removed to maintain the integrity of your drawing. Here are some clever techniques for fixing figure drawing bloopers:

• Use a kneaded eraser (the advantage is that you have no eraser dust).

  
  



• For correcting darker lines, use the end of a plastic eraser.

  
  



• Rub out the mistakes by using a soft cloth.

  
  



• Use your finger to smudge lighter blooper lines.

  
  



• Use darker lines to trace over the lighter blooper lines without erasing.

  
  

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Sephardic Scrambled Eggs with Tomatoes and Zucchini

Jewish cooks use this recipe’s all-purpose formula as a general way to enliven egg dishes. Adding vegetables, including tomatoes and zucchini, to scrambled eggs gives them a bit of kick.

Preparation time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 12 minutes

Yield: 2 servings

Keeping kosher: Pareve

1 small onion

1/2 bell pepper, any color (optional)

2 to 3 tablespoons vegetable oil or olive oil

2 small zucchini

1 garlic clove

3 ripe, medium tomatoes

Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper or hot sauce, or to taste

3 eggs

2 tablespoons chopped cilantro or Italian parsley (optional)

1. Chop the onion and dice the pepper half.

   
   



2. Heat oil in a medium skillet.

   
   



3. Add onion and pepper.

   
   



4. Sauté over medium heat for 3 minutes.

   
   



5. Dice the zucchini and tomatoes.

   
   



6. Mince the garlic clove.

   
   



7. Add the zucchini and garlic to the skillet.

   
   



8. Sauté for 2 minutes or until zucchini softens slightly.

   
   



9. Stir in tomatoes, salt, pepper, cumin, and cayenne.

   
   



10. Cook, stirring often, for 4 to 6 minutes.

    
    



11. Beat the eggs in a small bowl.

    
    



12. Add beaten eggs and half the cilantro to the skillet.

    
    



13. Scramble over low heat for 2 minutes or until set.

    
    



14. Taste and adjust seasoning, as necessary.

    
    



15. Serve immediately, topped with remaining cilantro.

    
    

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Working with Aliases in Mac OS X

An alias is a tiny file that automatically opens the file that it represents. Although an alias is technically an icon, it's actually an icon that opens another icon automatically. You can put aliases in convenient places, such as on the Desktop, to help you easily open programs and files that you access often.

In effect, Microsoft stole the alias feature from Apple (if you've used Windows, you may know aliases as shortcuts). However, aliases usually don't break when you move or rename the original file; shortcuts do.

An alias is different from a duplicated file. For example, the Microsoft Word 2004 application uses 19.4 megabytes (MB) of disk space. A duplicate of Microsoft Word 2004 would give you two files, each requiring nearly 20 megabytes of space on your hard drive. An alias of Microsoft Word 2004, on the other hand, uses a mere 52 kilobytes (KB).

Aliases can open any file or folder on any disk from anywhere else on any disk — which is a very good trick. But aliases are great for many other reasons:

• Convenience: Aliases enable you to make items appear to be in more than one place, which on many occasions is exactly what you want to do. For example, keeping an alias of your word processor on your Desktop and another on the Dock is convenient. You may even want a third alias of it in your Documents folder for quick access. Aliases enable you to open your word processor quickly and easily without navigating into the depths of your Applications folder each time that you need it.

• Flexibility and organization: You can create aliases and store them anywhere on your hard disk to represent the same document in several different folders. This is a great help when you need to file a document that can logically be stored in any one of several files. For example: If you write a memo to Fred Smith about the Smythe Marketing Campaign to be executed in the fourth quarter, which folder does the document go in? Smith? Smythe? Marketing? Memos? 4th Quarter? Correct answer: With aliases, it can go in all of them if you like. Then you can find the memo wherever you look, instead of guessing which folder you filed it in.

With aliases, it doesn't matter. You can put the actual file in any folder and then create aliases of the file, placing them in any other applicable folder.

• Integrity: Some programs must remain in the same folder as their supporting files and folders. Many Classic programs, for example, don't function properly unless they're in the same folder as their dictionaries, thesauruses, data files (for games), templates, and so on. Thus, you can't put the icon for those programs on the Desktop without impairing their functionality. An alias lets you access a program like that from anywhere on your hard disk.

Creating aliases

When you create an alias, its icon looks the same as the icon that it represents, but the suffix alias is tacked onto its name and a tiny arrow called a badge appears in the lower-left corner of its icon. Figure 1 shows both an alias and its parent icon (that is, the icon that opens if you open the alias).

>

Figure 1: An alias icon (right) and its parent.

To create an alias for an icon, do one of the following:

• Click the parent icon and choose File --> Make Alias.

• Click the parent icon and press Command+L.

• Click any file or folder, press and hold down the Command and Option keys, and then drag the file or folder while continuing to hold down the Command and Option keys.

Presto! An alias appears where you release the mouse button. Better still, aliases created this way don't have that pesky alias suffix tacked onto them.

• Click an icon while holding down the Control key and then choose the Make Alias command from the contextual menu that appears.

The alias appears in the same folder as its parent.

Deleting aliases

Deleting an alias is an easy chore. To delete an alias, simply drag it onto the Trash icon on the Dock. That's it! You can also Control-click it and choose Move to Trash from the contextual menu that appears, or select the icon and use the keyboard shortcut Command+Delete.

Deleting an alias does not delete the parent item. (If you want to delete the parent item, you have to go hunt it down and kill it yourself.)

Hunting down an alias' parent

Suppose that you create an alias of a file, and later you want to delete both the alias and its parent file — but you can't find the parent file? What do you do? Well, you can use the Finder's Find function (try saying that three times real fast) to find it, but here are three faster ways to find the parent icon of an alias:

• Select the alias icon and choose File --> Show Original.

• Select the alias icon and use the keyboard shortcut Command+R.

• Control-click the alias icon and choose Show Original from the contextual menu.

>
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Assess Your Current Web Presence

The first step in developing a plan for a new website for the iPhone or iPad is to assess what you have (or don’t have) in the here and now. If you’re creating a completely new website, you need quite a different plan of action than if you’re developing a new version of an existing site for the iPhone or iPad.

Here are a few common starting places and issues to consider:

• Create an iPhone/iPad site from scratch: If you’re creating a new site from scratch, be sure to start your plan from the beginning. In many ways, this option is the simplest because you don’t have to accommodate legacy content or features that would be difficult to transfer to these new devices.

  
  



• You already have a modern site designed with CSS (cascading style sheets): If your site is already up and running and you created the site following contemporary web standards (which means that you used CSS and HTML to separate the formatting from the content), you're off to a good start.

  
  

  The key point is that separating your design from your content enables you to create your mobile site design from existing content much more easily.

  
  



• You have a very old website: If you created your site years ago and the design is integrated within the HTML, you have your work cut out for you.

  
  

  If your site uses the HTML table tag to create the design, you should start by redesigning the old site before you even begin to create the new, mobile version using the latest HTML5 and CSS 3 technologies or choose the first method in this list (to create one from scratch).

  
  



• Taking the time to transition to the more modern model using cascading style sheets saves you time. Creating your site with a clear separation of content and design by developing a site that stores the information in HTML and creates the design with CSS is the proper way to develop sites according to the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the group that sets the standards for web technology.

  
  

Consider this situation a perfect opportunity to redesign your site to put it to work for you. Start your plan with this first step in mind.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/assess-your-current-web-presence.html

Network Administration: The tracert Command

The tracert command (spelled traceroute in Unix/Linux implementations) is one of the key diagnostic tools for TCP/IP. It displays a list of all the routers that a packet must go through to get from the computer where tracert is run to any other computer on the Internet. Each one of these routers is called a hop, presumably because the original designers of the IP protocol played a lot of hopscotch when they were young. If you can’t connect to another computer, you can use tracert to find out exactly where the problem is occurring.

tracert makes three attempts to contact the router at each hop and displays the response time for each of these attempts. Then, it displays the DNS name of the router (if available) and the router’s IP address.

To use tracert, type the tracert command followed by the host name of the computer to which you want to trace the route. For example, suppose that you’re having trouble sending mail to a recipient at wiley.com. You’ve used nslookup to determine that the mail server for wiley.com is xmail.wiley.com, so now you can use tracert to trace the routers along the path from your computer to xmail.wiley.com:

C:\>tracert xmail.wiley.com
Tracing route to xmail.wiley.com [208.215.179.78]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    27 ms    14 ms    10 ms  10.242.144.1
  2    11 ms    43 ms    10 ms  bar01-p5-0-0.frsnhe4.ca.attbb.net [24.130.64.125]
  3     9 ms    14 ms    12 ms  bar01-p4-0-0.frsnhe1.ca.attbb.net [24.130.0.5]
  4    25 ms    30 ms    29 ms  bic01-p6-0.elsgrdc1.ca.attbb.net [24.130.0.49]
  5    25 ms    29 ms    43 ms  bic02-d4-0.elsgrdc1.ca.attbb.net [24.130.0.162]
  6    21 ms    19 ms    20 ms  bar01-p2-0.lsanhe4.ca.attbb.net [24.130.0.197]
  7    37 ms    38 ms    19 ms  bic01-p2-0.lsanhe3.ca.attbb.net [24.130.0.193]
  8    20 ms    22 ms    21 ms  12.119.9.5
  9    21 ms    21 ms    22 ms  tbr2-p012702.la2ca.ip.att.net [12.123.199.241]
 10    71 ms   101 ms    62 ms  tbr2-p013801.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.10.13]
 11    68 ms    77 ms    71 ms  tbr1-p012401.sl9mo.ip.att.net [12.122.9.141]
 12    79 ms    81 ms    83 ms  tbr1-cl4.wswdc.ip.att.net [12.122.10.29]
 13    83 ms   107 ms   103 ms  tbr1-p012201.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.10.17]
 14   106 ms    85 ms   105 ms  gbr6-p30.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.122.11.14]
 15   104 ms    96 ms    88 ms  gar3-p370.n54ny.ip.att.net [12.123.1.189]
 16    98 ms    86 ms    83 ms  12.125.50.162
 17    85 ms    90 ms    87 ms  xmail.wiley.com [208.215.179.78]
Trace complete. 

The most likely problem that you’ll encounter when you use tracert is a timeout during one of the hops. Timeouts are indicated by asterisks where you’d expect to see a time. For example, the following tracert output shows the fourth hop timing out on all three attempts:

C:\>tracert xmail.wiley.com
Tracing route to xmail.wiley.com [208.215.179.78]
over a maximum of 30 hops:
  1    27 ms    14 ms    10 ms  10.242.144.1
  2    11 ms    43 ms    10 ms  bar01-p5-0-0.frsnhe4.ca.attbb.net [24.130.64.125]
  3     9 ms    14 ms    12 ms  bar01-p4-0-0.frsnhe1.ca.attbb.net [24.130.0.5]
  4     *        *        *     Request timed out.

Sometimes, timeouts are caused by temporary problems, so you should try the tracert again to see if the problem persists. If you keep getting timeouts at the same router, the router could be having a genuine problem.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/network-administration-the-tracert-command.html

Social Media Marketing For Dummies

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Social Media Marketing Rules

Marketing through social media platforms isn't quite the same as traditional marketing. Here are some rules that can help you conduct a successful social media marketing campaign:

• Make sure you give your customers something valuable because they'd much rather spend the time talking to each other about their passions than engaging with you.

  
  



• Recognize that different types of influencers play varying roles at different points in the marketing funnel. Do the research to know who is influencing your customers and where.

  
  



• Tie together all your strategies across the social media platforms. Think about how all your social programs can work together harmoniously.

  
  



• Make your customers brand advocates and partners in your business. Give them the opportunity to impact not just marketing but product development, customer service, and innovations, too.

  
  



• Develop your authentic social voice for the social media platforms. And make your brand a social brand.

  
  

>

>

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Establish a Social Influence Marketing Game Plan

Marketing via social media means marketing directly to influencers — rather than consumers. And social influence marketing (SIM) requires a whole new game plan. Establish your SIM campaign with these tips in mind:

• 
  

  Develop social influence marketing (SIM) guidelines for your organization. It provides critical guidance for your employees as they practice social influence marketing.

  
  


• 
  

  Establish clear objectives for your social influence marketing efforts. Don't experiment for the sake of experimenting.

  
  


• 
  

  Create a roadmap for your social influence marketing efforts to help you plan resources, conduct research, coordinate marketing programs, and deploy new tactics.

  
  


• 
  

  Define your metrics for success up front before you execute your roadmap.

  
  


• 
  

  Recognize that SIM programs don't have neat end dates. Plan your resources and budget carefully to allow for continuous nurturing.

  
  


• 
  

  Make sure you understand your customer base — who talks to each other and who influences who — before launching any program.

  
  

>

>

>

How to Bring Social Influence Marketing to Life

Social influence marketing (SIM) campaigns achieve success in the long term. Here are some tips that will help your SIM campaign flourish during its lifespan:

• Participate where your customers want to participate and be active in the customer communities you create. Remember that your customers are your equals.

  
  



• Design your SIM efforts so that customers are motivated and encouraged to form tribes, bringing others into the fold and engaging with one another.

  
  



• When planning outreach programs, recognize that the "A" list influencers may not be as helpful as the long tail of the other influencers. These other influencers are more likely to listen to your point of view and act on your behalf.

  
  



• Design your programs so that they are extremely easy for your customers and prospects to share with others on the social platforms of their choice.

  
  

>

>

>

How to Measure Social Influence Marketing

Find out if your social influence marketing (SIM) campaign is a success. Part of social influence marketing calls for establishing related metrics and measuring your results to determine the effectiveness of your campaign. Keep these tips in mind:

• Start with the SIM score (your brand's health compared to all of your direct competitors in the social Web) as a single, strategic, brand health measurement.

  
  



• Match your program to the platform and to the metrics available. Different social platforms allow you to measure metrics in different ways.

  
  



• Tie all your SIM metrics to a broader digital strategy and business metrics.

  
  



• Always prioritize metrics regarding sociographics and social action-related metrics over traffic demographics.

  
  



• Don't ignore SIM metrics from your corporate Web site. Your Web site is also a platform for social influence and should be measured and tracked in a similar fashion.

  
  



• Use the APIs (application programming interfaces) from the social media platforms to develop your own integrated metrics dashboard.

  
  

>

>

>

Which Social Media Marketing Platforms to Target

Strong social influence marketing (SIM) campaigns target multiple social networks. Because consumers rarely use just one social platform (for example, only Facebook or Twitter), your marketing campaign should reach each of these social media platforms:

• 
  

  Facebook: The largest social network in the world, Facebook is ideal for marketing at the awareness and consideration stage of the marketing funnel. Fan pages, wall posts, virtual gifts, applications, social ads, and technologies like Facebook Connect make the platform a popular choice.

  
  


• 
  

  MySpace: With its roots in music, MySpace is still considered the best platform for music and entertainment-related marketing activities. Traditional banner advertisements, sponsored music samples, and brand profiles present the greatest opportunities.

  
  


• 
  

  Twitter: Evolving into a news, brand marketing, and customer service tool, Twitter is ideal for reaching out to influencers, handling customer service queries, and forging personal relationships with customers. Sponsored tweets are an emerging ad format on Twitter.

  
  


• 
  

  YouTube: With custom channels and the ability to upload an unlimited number of clips, YouTube is a powerful marketing platform if you have engaging branded content. But don't treat it as a push channel through which to funnel TV advertisements. Focus on building social currency with subscribers and users.

  
  


• 
  

  Blogosphere: Blogger outreach programs are a must, but make sure that you identify the bloggers carefully and reach out to them using blogger outreach best practices. Otherwise, you'll turn them off.

  
  


• 
  

  Niche social platforms: Your users may be very active on the niche social platforms. Conduct research to learn where they're participating and explore the marketing opportunities on those platforms. Try LinkedIn, Ning, CafeMom, deviantART, and Gather.

  
  

>

>
dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/social-media-marketing-for-dummies-cheat-sheet.navId-323648.html

How to Format Web Text in Notepad

If you use Notepad to build your Web page you can use the HTML capabilities described here to format your Web page text. Formatting your text involves setting up headings, choosing fonts and font sizes, and adding other elements for emphasis. The following list discusses these elements:

• Headings: There are six levels of headings in HTML, with the tag pairs <h1> and </h1> used for the largest, top-level heading; <h2> and </h2> next, down to <h6> and </h6> for the lowest (very small) level of headings.

  
  



• Font sizes: HTML allows you to specify relative font sizes that are larger or smaller than medium, or standard, size. You can go two sizes smaller or three sizes larger than medium. This formatting works even if users specify a font size or style in their browser setup or in their operating system.

  
  



• Character formatting: You can make text bold or italic using the <b> and </b> tags to start and stop bold and the <i> and </i> tags to start and stop italic. You can also underline text, but users can easily underlined text for an HTML link.

  
  



• Advanced character formatting: You can specify the fonts used in your Web page, as well as font colors. But different fonts are available on Windows and Macintosh computers, so you have to be clever about how you do this.

  
  

Follow these steps to enter and format text in Notepad:

1. Open Notepad. Enter the beginning and ending HTML, HEAD, and BODY tags.

   
   

   Make sure to spell the tags correctly and check for matching open and closing tags.

   
   



2. Between the <head> and </head> tags, add the tags <title> and </title>.

   
   



3. Enter an appropriate title, such as New Home Page, then click OK.

   
   



4. Move the cursor to a new line after the opening <body> tag.

   
   



5. Type some text introducing your Web page.

   
   

   When someone searches for your Web page, the search engine may display the Web page title and the first few words that appear in the document. So make the first few sentences of text that follow the title an introduction to the entire page or Web site.

   
   



6. Surround the text that you’d like to make a header with the <h1> and </h1> tags.

   
   



7. Identify other text that you want to format.

   
   



8. Surround the text with the tags that support the formatting you want, such as <b> and </b> for bold or <i> and </i> for italic.

   
   

   The surrounded text will take on the appropriate formatting.

   
   



9. Save your file with the extension .htm to specify that it’s an HTML file.

   
   



10. Open the file in a Web browser to preview its appearance.

    
    

    Carefully check that each tag you use in the HTML file has the desired effect in the actual displayed Web page. HTML ignores tags it doesn’t understand, so if you type <n> instead of <b>, for instance, the only ill effect will be a lack of bolding (the </b> tag you follow it with has no effect); a lack of formatting such as bolding is easy to miss when quickly checking a page, unless you compare your tags with their desired effects.

    
    

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-format-web-text-in-notepad.html

How to Dig into Junos Syslog Messages

The most important aspect of logging is understanding what and when something is logged. Events across the entire system, covering both hardware and software conditions, are included in the Junos OS software syslog repertoire:

• Every time the device is accessed, queried, or modified

  
  



• Every time a process starts, fails, or restarts

  
  



• Every physical threshold that is reached (temperature within the chassis, CPU utilization, fan speed, and so on)

  
  



• Various system conditions that affect or reflect the operation of the device

  
  

These events are divided into different categories, called syslog facilities. Each of these facilities is assigned a facility code, which ties a particular message to the syslog facility.

Junos Syslog Facility	Facility Code	Event Source
Any	None	Any facility
Authorization	AUTH, AUTHPRIV	Authentication and authorization attempts
change-log	CHANGE	Configuration changes on the router
conflict-log	CONFLICT	Configuration changes that are in conflict with the router’s hardware
CONSOLE	Kernel messages to the console
CRON	Scheduled processes
Daemon	DAEMON	Individual JUNOS software processes
Firewall	FIREWALL	Packet filtering performed by firewall filters
ftp	FTP	FTP activities
interactive-commands	INTERACT	Commands executed from the CLI or through the XML API
Kernel	KERNEL	JUNOS kernel
NTP	Network Time Protocol process
Pfe	PFE	Packet forwarding engine
SYSLOG	System logging
User	USER	User processes

Each of these syslog facilities contains many different syslog events. To help differentiate among these events, in addition to the facility, each event is assigned a severity level.

Severity Name	Severity Number	Severity Description
any	None	All severity levels
none	None	No severity levels
debug	7	Information to be used for debugging
info	6	Informational events about normal operations
notice	5	Conditions that aren’t errors but are of more interest than normal operations
warning	4	General warnings for significant events
error	3	General errors
critical	2	Critical errors, including hardware failures
alert	1	Errors that require immediate intervention
emergency	0	Conditions that stop router function

All syslog messages contain both the facility and the severity. When searching through the hundreds, or even thousands, of log messages, you can match on these two values so that you can quickly identify the information you need when monitoring your network.

Here’s what a syslog event looks like:

Nov 2 19:02:49 router mgd[8039]: UI_LOAD_EVENT: User 'michael' is performing
    a 'rollback 2'

In addition, this syslog event contains these key pieces of information:

• Timestamp: The system time at which the event occurred.

  
  



• Router name: The configured name of the router.

  
  



• Process information: The name of the process that generated the syslog event, including the process ID to uniquely identify the particular instance of the process. In this example, it was the MGD instance with process ID 8039.

  
  



• Syslog message: The syslog message, including the event name and relevant information to the event. In this example, the user michael has issued a rollback 2 command on the router.

  
  

You can send syslog messages to a number of places. You can view them in real time by sending them to a console, store them in files on the device so you can look through them later, and even store all the syslog messages from all your devices on a single syslog server so you can go to a single place to monitor your network.

The timestamp associated with each syslog message doesn't indicate the time zone in which the device resides. If you have multiple devices across more than one time zone, remembering and translating the different times complicates your analysis.

To simplify this kind of log perusal, configure the system time on each device using coordinated Universal Time Clock (UTC). If all the devices are configured within the same time zone, all the timestamps will show the same time, making your life much simpler when it comes to wading through log files.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-dig-into-junos-syslog-messages.html

Strategic Planning: Check Your Liquidity

In terms of strategic planning, the difference between your current assets (those you intend to convert to cash within a year) and your current liabilities (the obligations you have to pay within a year) is your liquidity.

Of primary importance to all organizations is the ability to pay their bills on time every month. Your liquidity is the safety net that protects you from a financial crisis. You need to look at the following two ratios:

• Current ratio: The current ratio looks out over a 12-month time horizon and measures the cash available to meet current liabilities. The current ratio is determined by looking at your balance sheet and dividing current assets by current liabilities.

  
  

  With $300,230 in current assets and $200,100 in current liabilities, the fictional Konas Corp’s current ratio is 1.5, which means that for every dollar of obligation due in the next 12 months, the company expects to have $1.50 to meet those obligations. You should shoot for a ratio of about 2.0.

  
  



• Quick ratio: The quick ratio is a tighter test of your ability to pay your bills. It uses assets that convert to cash within 60 to 90 days rather than 12 months, typically involving only cash and current receivables.

  
  

  Konas has $271,000 in cash and receivables. Dividing by $200,100 (current liabilities) yields a quick ratio of 1.35. For every dollar in obligations, the company has $1.35 in quick cash to meet them. You want your quick ratio to be higher than a 1.0.

  
  

Konas may be a little concerned because its current ratio is less than 2.0, but with a quick ratio exceeding 1.0, it has a reasonable cash position.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/strategic-planning-check-your-liquidity.html

How to Embedding Video into Your LinkedIn Profile

Add a video résumé or simply share an interesting video on your LinkedIn profile to give it some personality and attract attention from hiring managers. Adding a video to your profile takes a little tweaking, but it isn’t that difficult. Here are the general steps:

1. Upload your video to YouTube (if you haven’t already done so).

   
   

   You need to be able to search for and find this video later.

   
   



2. Log in to your LinkedIn account, choose More from the top menu, and then click on Get More Applications.

   
   



3. Select the Google Presentation app, install it, and make sure it displays on your profile page.

   
   



4. Sign in to your Google account in the Google Presentation app.

   
   

   Your Google account is your Gmail or YouTube account if you have one. If not, you can create a Google account in two minutes.

   
   



5. Click on Create a Presentation.

   
   

   This button takes you to Google Docs where you can create a new presentation.

   
   



6. Navigate to the Insert menu in the new blank presentation document, and click on Video.

   
   



7. Search YouTube until you find your video and then click on Select Video.

   
   



8. Expand the size of this video to the same size as the slide.

   
   



9. Title the presentation and then click on Save Now.

   
   



10. Go to the Share drop-down menu and click on Publish/embed.

    
    



11. Navigate back to your LinkedIn profile and refresh the page.

    
    



12. Select your newly created presentation and click on Post to Profile.

    
    

Go ahead and double-check your profile to make sure the video shows up. Pretty cool, right?

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-embedding-video-into-your-linkedin-profile.html

Investing in the Top Sectors for Dividend Stocks

Several industrial sectors are filled with dividend-paying companies, and some sectors provide better bets than others for your dividend stock investment portfolio. The following sectors offer the top options for dividend stock investing; when you’re fishing for good dividend stocks, you can improve your chances of hooking some keepers by dropping your line in these holes:

• Utilities: Electricity, water, and natural gas (suppliers, not producers)

  
  



• Energy: Oil, natural gas (producers, not suppliers), and master limited partnerships (MLPs)

  
  



• Telecommunications: Carriers (U.S. and international) and wireless services

  
  



• Consumer staples: Food/beverages, prescription drugs, household products, tobacco, and alcohol

  
  



• Real estate: Commercial, residential, or office buildings inside real estate investment trusts (REITS)

  
  

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/investing-in-the-top-sectors-for-dividend-stocks.html

Responding to an eBay Buyer's Initial Inquiry

When you list an item for auction on eBay, you may get an inquiry e-mail from a prospective buyer, and you should respond quickly and professionally. Buyers can ask you a question about your item by clicking the Ask a Question link on the listing page, which can generate an automatic e-mail addressed to you through eBay's e-mail system.

Sellers who take the time to write a short, considerate reply that includes a greeting and a thank-you for writing make more money.

To respond, the safest way is to go to your My eBay Messages page. This way, you won't get sucked into responding to a spammer who's impersonating an eBay e-mail just to confirm that your e-mail address is live. That said, respond quickly, clearly, and politely and (should you feel like it) give a little sales pitch. You can remind the soon-to-be buyer that you can package several items in one box to save on shipping costs. And why not use this opportunity to point out other listings you have that may also interest the writer? That's good customer service as well as good marketing.

Your note can be brief and straightforward. Make sure you note addresses the question in a respectful and personable manner. Writing a note like this doesn't take long. Also, putting your website or eBay store URL in your signature is a great way to get new customers to view your personal Web site or blog.

If you subscribe to eBay's Selling Manager Pro, you can customize and set your stock e-mails to your buyers.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/responding-to-an-ebay-buyers-initial-inquiry.html

Forgotten Your Spotify Device Username or Password?

When want to log into Spotify by using third-party devices (such as the Sonos sound system), you need to use the device username that Spotify assigned to your account when you joined because these devices don’t yet support Facebook logins (for older accounts, your device username and password are the same ones that you use to connect to Spotify).

If you signed up to Spotify after September 2011, you can always use your Facebook login details to connect to the program on your desktop, leaving one less login to remember.

These device usernames come in a hard-to-remember numerical form (unless you were lucky enough to join Spotify in the days when you were allowed to choose usernames) and also require you to set up a password.

So, it’s no surprise that forgetting your Spotify device username or password happens. Thankfully, fixing this problem is no biggie.

If you forgot your password, you just need to set up your password again.

Your Spotify username is displayed next to your real name on your Spotify Profile page and is also used to link to your profile outside of Spotify (in the form http://open.spotify.com/user/yourusername). People who have older accounts (created before September 2011) got to choose their very own username; this name also appears on their profile page.

To view this username in Spotify, click your name at the top-right of the Spotify window and, in the drop-down list that appears, select Profile. Your profile page appears in the main pane. (By the way, if you select Account from this list, you get redirected to your Spotify account page, where you can also view your username.) Whatever appears in the brackets next to your real name (which you use in Facebook) is your username.

If you have an older account and forgot your Spotify username or password, you can reset either of them by following these steps:

1. Go to the Spotify Reset Password page.

   
   



2. In the text box, type either your username or e-mail address, and then click the Send button.

   
   

   Spotify sends you an e-mail that contains a long, unique link.

   
   

   If you only need to know what your username is or suddenly remember your password, fear not — you don’t need to click the link in the e-mail; just safely ignore it.

   
   

   Didn’t receive the reset e-mail? Wait a few minutes, and if there’s still nothing, check your spam or junk folder. Also, make sure that you set the e-mail address account-admin@spotifymail.com as a trusted source in your e-mail filter, if you have one.

   
   



3. Click the link in the e-mail if you want to reset your password.

   
   

   A Spotify web page appears, where you can create a new password. The e-mail also includes details of your username, if you’ve forgotten it.

   
   



4. Enter your new password in the New Password text box, and then retype it in the Confirm Password text box.

   
   

   When resetting your password at your reset page, a special bar lets you know in real time how strong your new password is. This is an important guideline because hackers who know your username could potentially try to crack your password by using age-old techniques such as dictionary attacks, where they use automated programs to try to guess your password.

   
   



5. Click Set Password to reset the password.

   
   

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/forgotten-your-spotify-device-username-or-password.html

Homebrewing Abbreviation Slang

Quite a few technical (and wordy) homebrewing terms exist, so to make it easier to read homebrewing recipes and directions, terms have been abbreviated. Here’s a handy guide for homebrewing abbreviations:

Abbreviation	What It Stands For
AAU	Alpha Acid Unit. A measurement of hop bittering potential.
ABV	Alcohol By Volume. One of two methods of expressing alcohol content in beer. (See ABW.)
ABW	Alcohol By Weight. One of two methods of expressing alcohol content in beer. (See ABV.)
BJCP	Beer Judge Certification Program. National organization for official homebrew judges.
DME	Dry Malt Extract. The spray-dried version of liquid malt extract.
DMS	Di-Methyl Sulfide. An off flavor and aroma reminiscent of cooked corn.
ESB	Extra Special Bitter. A medium-high gravity ale of British origin.
FG	Final Gravity. The measurement of gravity taken at the end of fermentation that allows the brewer to compute the alcohol content of beer. (See OG.)
FWH	First Wort Hopping. The practice of introducing bittering hops to the beer during the sparging / lautering phase of the mashing procedure.
HBU	Homebrew Bitterness Unit. A unit of measurement used by homebrewers to denote the amount of bittering in beer.
HSA	Hot Side Aeration. The unintentional exposure of the still-warm wort to oxygen that can lead to problems in your brew, not the least of which is premature staling.
HCU	Homebrew Color Unit. A crude method of measuring beer color devised for homebrewers.
IBU	International Bittering Unit. An international unit of measurement used by professional brewers to denote the amount of bittering in beer.
IPA	India Pale Ale. A highly hopped Pale Ale.
OG	Original Gravity. The measurement of gravity taken at the beginning of fermentation that allows the brewer to compute alcohol content of beer. (See FG.)
pH	Percent Hydrion (also potential hydrogen). A scale used to measure the acidity and alkalinity of a liquid.
RIS	Russian Imperial Stout. High gravity stout brewed for the Russian Imperial Court.
SRM	Standard Reference Measure. A measurement of beer color.
TSP	Tri-Sodium Phosphate. An effective sudsless, powdered cleanser often used to clean brewery equipment.

dummies

Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/homebrewing-abbreviation-slang.html

The ACTS Method of Christian Prayer

Ensure that your Christian prayer is complete by remembering ACTS — not the book of the Bible, but the acronym. The ACTS method of Christian prayer goes like this:

• Adoration: Give God praise and honor for who he is as Lord over all.

  
  



• Confession: Honestly deal with the sin in your prayer life.

  
  



• Thanksgiving: Verbalize what you're grateful for in your life and in the world around you.

  
  



• Supplication: Pray for the needs of others and yourself.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/the-acts-method-of-christian-prayer.html

Statics: How to Calculate a Force's Moment

In statics, moments are effects (of a force) that cause rotation. When computing equilibrium, you must be able to calculate a moment for every force on your free-body diagram. To determine a force's moment, you use one of two different calculations, as you can see in the following list.

• Scalar calculation (for two dimensions): To calculate the moment about a Point O in scalar calculations, you need the magnitude of the force and the perpendicular distance from Point O to the line of action of the Force F.

  
  
  



• Vector calculation (for two or three dimensions): To compute the moment vector about a Point O in vector calculations, you must determine the Force F in Cartesian vector form and the position vector from Point O to the line of action of the Force F.

  
  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/statics-how-to-calculate-a-forces-moment.html

M&amp;A Investors: Institutions versus Individuals

Most often, Buyers of middle and lower middle market companies in an M&A transaction are institutions (PE firms or strategic Buyers). Individuals can certainly buy these companies, but due to the size of the companies and the amount of money needed to buy them, individuals buying companies in these markets are somewhat rare.

Individuals seeking to acquire a company may be little more than dreamers with no money. Sellers should take appropriate steps to ensure individual Buyers can back a transaction.

Institutions usually have more money than individuals, greater access to other sources of capital, and a certain level of sophistication as compared to most individuals. The executives at a company or PE firm probably have more experience doing deals, more experience running a business, and greater financial acumen than an individual. Not always, of course, but usually.

Note, however, that a wealthy individual may be able to act more quickly than a company. An individual Buyer has far less bureaucratic red tape than an institutional investor Buyer.

An important distinction is an executive backed by a private equity firm, a situation that’s really closer to a PE Buyer than an individual Buyer. In this case, the individual essentially has the financing lined up and is simply seeking the right acquisition.

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/ma-investors-institutions-versus-individuals0.html

Creating a Delicious Dining Experience with Beer

Beer makes an excellent accompaniment to many different foods. The following beer and food pairing tips can help enhance your overall dining experience:

• A very general rule is to think of lagers as the beer equivalent to white wine and ales as the red wine equivalent.

  
  



• The best pairings occur when beer is used to either cut, contrast, or complement the dish. For example, a hoppy India Pale Ale cuts through the oiliness of duck or lamb, a malty Märzenbier or Vienna Lager contrasts the heat of a 5-alarm chili, and a rich Imperial Stout nicely complements fudge brownies.

  
  



• Drink light-bodied beers before eating; save fuller bodied beers for dessert or for after the meal.

  
  



• Lighter bodied and colored lagers pair well with delicate fish; malty, amber-colored beers pair well with chicken; hoppy Pale Ales mate well with pork and lamb; dark Porters and Stouts complement hearty beef dishes — especially when grilled.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/creating-a-delicious-dining-experience-with-beer.html

How to Convert Currency in Windows Vista

The Windows Vista Currency Conversion gadget makes converting currency a breeze. After you add the Currency Conversion gadget to your Windows Vista Sidebar, you can easily access and convert your dollars to euro, yen, pounds, and many other foreign currencies.

1. Add the Currency Conversion gadget to the Sidebar.

   
   

   Adding the Currency Conversion gadget to your Sidebar allows you to access it quickly. Just click the Gadgets symbol (the plus sign) at the top of the Sidebar to open the Gadget Gallery. Then click and drag the Currency Conversion gadget to the Sidebar.

   
   

   If you detach the Currency Converter from the Sidebar an Add tool appears. Click this to select another currency to display. With this feature you can compare multiple currencies at the same time.

   
   



2. Connect to the Internet.

   
   

   Connecting to the Internet allows you to access the latest currency rates.

   
   

Then you can do any of the following:

• Enter the number of dollars; the number of equivalent euro is displayed.

  
  



• Click the arrow to the right of either the dollars or the euro and choose another currency to convert from or to.

  
  



• View the online source for the latest currency conversion rates by clicking and dragging the Currency gadget to the desktop and click the Data Providers link. The MSN Money page opens. Click the Banking tab and then click the Currency Exchange Rates link to view current rates.

  
  

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Source:http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/how-to-convert-currency-in-windows-vista.html