Yes, there is finally an ultimate resource called WordPress Defender – 30 Ways To Secure your WordPress Blog From Attack for us WordPress bloggers to refer to and learn from when it comes to WordPress blog security. It is written by a good friend, John Hoff of WPHost, (you can follow John on twitter @WpBlogHost).

And it is 50% off till Wednesday March 3rd.

The ebook is massive 150 pages and comes loaded with techniques that are easy to follow for anyone and to make it even more useful and easy to understand, John is also providing multiple videos showing how to implement these techniques. You must have heard of the .htaccess files but most non-tech people are afraid of using their power to block hackers. Not now because John has included different codes to use for preventing people from peeking into your sites and manipulate your precious data.

Just Imagining the horrible nightmare of someone hacking into your blog can be crippling to say the least. I have heard many horrible stories in the past two years where someone’s account got hacked by some jerk regardless of the size and/or popularity of the blog being hacked, the hackers don’t really care and don’t have a conscience so they don’t think twice about hurting someone’s feelings or the fact that the blog they are hacking might just be the only means of income for someone.

John learned the hard way when his wife’s jewelry site got hacked into and this is what they saw when they entered their site’s url in the address bar above:

According to John: “I spent a whole week researching and investigating for a solution. It was hard work, and I followed a lot of dead ends. I finally found the problem, but here’s what it had cost my wife and I:

Time: That week I spent tracking down the problem is time I’ll never get back.

Trust: The security breach shook our customers’ trust, and some of them never returned – those are permanent lost sales.

PageRank: The site fell from a strong page rank of 5 to an absolute useless 1.

Heartache: We felt horrible that our customers might have damaged computers because of our site.

Money: My wife’s business went from earning $1,000 a month to zero – overnight. That was money we’d been using to make car payments, among other things, and now we had to juggle finances to figure out where it was going to come from.

More money: We lost sales and customers, and we had to pay more money to rebuild the site.

Sure sounds painful to me.    And to help the innocent bloggers from being taken for a similar ride, John did massive research for over two years and put everything in his ebook.   After March 3rd, this Wednesday, the ebook and the videos will be selling at regular price of $39 which I think is still nothing compared to the price we would end up paying in an unfortunate scenario…

So, hurry and buy the essential WordPress Defender – 30 Ways to Secure Your Blog From Attacks Anyone Can Do @ only $19.99 till March 3rd!

WordPress Defender – 30 Ways to Secure your Blog is half off! is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Today is Blog Action Day and as the day approached, I panicked a bit for I haven’t been writing for some time.  But this year’s topic, Climate Change and it’s implications on our lives, is so huge, I did not want to pass up the opportunity to include my two cents even if there might only be a few readers left who check my blog out these days.

We all know that there is an enormous amount of information on the web about climate change and it is kind of difficult to figure out where to start and what to say in a short message for your post that hasn’t already been said.  But you know what?  Despite ALL of the information out there, many of us are still not taking the steps necessary to slow down the process of climate change, let alone stop it.   We may even have some ideas that climate change is detrimental but still a lot of us do not have a clear picture of what all this means.   So if you are like me and need to see the big picture, check out the  Climate time Machine by Nasa which shows Changes in the Global Conditions Over Time in a very easy to understand flash videos.

I also came across a few sites/forums where some people were upset and questioned why US has to be concerned about climatic changes in the rest of the world.  That’s such an ignorant position to take as the green house gases are not separated by borders like  most countries are.  Gases in our atmosphere don’t need regulations or permission to move from one country to another!    It’s the same air we all breath, in our homes, and in our offices.   Air pollution is a universal problem and each and every one of us has an obligation to do whatever we can do to correct it if we care for a better future for us as well as our future generations.

Look at this video that shows how US isn’t immune to the wrath caused by polluting environment:

And you can download the fact sheet that explains the connection between Climate Change and Flooding.

Now it’s really easy to start feeling that at our individual levels, it’s difficult to do anything about it.   In order to make a difference in the rate at which the earth’s atmosphere is polluting, we don’t have to drop our daily routines and do something out of the ordinary.  It’s the simplest of things that will eventually make a huge difference in clearing our atmosphere.    Simple things like using energy star products, energy efficient cars, recycling and planting some trees (remember we learned in grade school that plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere?).   If you want to be part of the community while planting trees, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has launched a worldwide tree planting campaign and pledged to plant 7 billion trees by the end of 2009.   They allow people to make online pledges to plant trees.  They have already surpassed their original pledge of 7 billion trees.  Here are the instructions on how to plant a tree!

I think I am going to start planting some fruit trees as that can produce delicious results – for us as well as for the mother earth.

What action(s) are you going to take to reduce the climate change?

photo by nattu

PS: This post is part of Blog Action Day 2009. Blog Action Day is an annual event that unites bloggers all over the world in posting about the same issue on the same day. It’s aim is to raise awareness and trigger a global discussion.  It’s not too late to register your blog and be part of “the largest ever social change event on the web.”

Plant A Tree : Blog Action Day ‘09 Climate Change is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

If you keep up with the world news or write a blog,  you must have heard about the massive fires in Australia where  the death toll has risen to more than 300 in just a few days.   It is times like these I feel blogging is a worthwhile activity which tends to unite humanity.

In an effort to help victims of these fires,  SitePoint has decided to give away 5 books for the price of 1 and donate ALL the money to the victims.   Their goal is to raise $50,000 and donate it to Australian RedCross Victorian Bushfire Appeal.

There is a wide selection of books to choose from.  Here is what SitePoint’s website says:

We’re offering our entire range of books — from PHP to Project Management — for the sale; designers, developers, freelancers, managers, and business owners alike will all be able to choose a selection of professional books to enjoy.

If you or someone you know can use these books, then this is a very nice deal as combined these books are worth some $150.. and you only pay less than $30, and the best of all, you feel good making a contribution to help someone in need.     Here are some horrible pictures from an Australian news site.

When I came across SitePoint’s post this morning, I was watching CNN and the bushfire news segment was on and I instantly bought the following 5 books:

The Photoshop Anthology
The Art and Science of CSS
The Principles of Successful Freelancing
Build of your own website the right way
The HTML Utopia

They also have books on flipping websites, and more techie PHP,  JavaScript and AJAX applications for the techie minds.  Perfect opportunity to earn some good karma.

UPDATE: This deal ended on Friday Feb. 13th, 2009.

Buy 5 Books for the Price of 1 at SitePoint – And Earn Some Good Karma is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I have been slow in posting but I regularly moderate comments and delete the spams but lately it has become more and more difficult to distinguish them from legitimate comments.

Following is a sample of what these scum bags have been writing and I just deleted almost 200+ comments that were left on different posts just today!    Reviewing such huge numbers of spam comments is a nightmare and it is possible to delete genuine comments accidentally but I hope I haven’t done that.

Here are some of them:

“great pictures, Especially for me at this winter time ,I am so in love with hot countries,Very peaceful!”

“Wow! this is a really nice blog. I loved reading it.
Thanks!”

“Nice info you have here..
I’ll use this a lot..thanks
and nice site too :D
“Good Afternoon…! ”
“Great Forum & Community!
I’ve been here as a freeloader for a while and finally got around to registration.
I sorta live online – spend most of my days addicted to social sites like MySpace.com and gambling sites like Betot.com.
Besides gambling (this week I made a sweet $2,000) off of betot, I love sports and hiking.
So that’s my self introduction. Happy New Year to All and hope to get to know you all better…
Peace…”

“The concept of holistic health is not new,but it was the first time I am listening to. Medicine is more an approach to how individuals should be treated, as opposed to a treatment method.”

“Howdy Partner, I fell lucky that I located this post while browsing for spyware doctor 3. I am with you on the topic of e going gets tough, tough feels like quitting |. Ironically, I was just putting a lot of thought into this last Thursday.”

“I think your blog need a new wordpress template. Downalod it from http:// genericwpthemes. com . The site has nice and unique wordpress templates.”

“I think you are thinking like sukrat, but I think you should cover the other side of the topic in the post too…”

“What if you are on someone else’s computer say, durning a hurricane evacuation. They dont tell you that have that type of spyware parents use to monitor the pre-teen kids and weeks after you leave, they go into your acocunt and go over all your entries? Is that wrong (ehtically it IS..I mean legally)?    Just asking because my paranoid aunt (erm..uncle’s wife) made my uncle go onto his computer and hell pulled up and printed every journal entry (including somebad ones about her…note – she’s a racist and I complained about it) on a site that you have to be a member of to read the entries, see member pages, etc.. (yes, I changed the passwords on ALL my frequently visited sites) and yes, after going to ther sites on their compy durning the Hurricane Ike evac, I clicked “Tools – Delete Browser History – Delete All” and they still got in…and the passwords were hard and in l33t.)”

HUH?  That last comment really got me thinking..   Is this person really a spammer or they were trying to make a point but I didn’t get it?   This was on the post When the going gets tough, tough feels like quitting
photo: dnorman

Clever Comment Spammers is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Online Profits is a course in Internet Marketing, put together by Daniel Scocco of Daily Blogging Tips.  I have been exploring some aspects of Internet Marketing and there are many many people talking about different aspects of this animal but none of them seem to be covering ALL aspects ranging from

Selecting the Domain Names,
Business Principles,
setting up your website,
working with WordPress,
Web Design,
Online Business Models,
Selecting your Niche,
Blogging do’s and don’ts,
Online Forums,
Mini Websites,
Online Stores,
Coywriting,
Outsourcing,
SEO Basics,
Oursourcing,
Linkbaits,
Keyword Research and Competitive Analysis,
Traffic Generation,
Social Media,
Advertising,
Email Marketing,
All you ever wanted to know about PPC,
Landing Pages,
and finally selling your products.

Phew!

All of the above AND video tutorials, six month membership to private forums.  And what is special about this particular course is that it is put together by the very established people in these areas of expertise.

Michael Gray,  Neil Patel,  Yaro Starak,  Hamlet Batista,  Tamar Weinberg, Daniel Scocco,  Zac Johnson,  Courtney Tuttle,  Nathan Rice and Skellie Wag

I’m very familar with all of the above names except Hamlet Batista so I was really looking forward to signing up but felt the course was a bit expensive for me.  Afterall, I haven’t made my first $100 in adsense from this blog in all of the time I’ve been blogging – which is since April of 2007.

It sucks I know but then I haven’t had the time or circumstances conducive to take my blogging to the next level and couldn’t find any one place to get all the information until now.  So, I thought of signing up for the course at 50% off  ($48 per month) that is running until January 16th. I have been tempted but have still be thinking about it and then came the kicker

Today Daniel announced that the first 10 people blogging about Online Profits on their blogs,  would get this membership for FREE..  And if 20 people blog about the course, you still have a chance to win a free membership.  This left me no reason to think any more as I want that free membership. Wouldn’t you?

Online Profits Course is half-off just this week is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Welcome of this week’s carnival of healing.  Carnival of Healing is a weekly round-up  of personal blog posts on the topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment.

You’ll see many different perspectives in this week’s carnival as Holistic Healing “addresses all parts of the individual, not just the physical aspect of a person where manifested illnesses are most apparent. Holistic healing is not intended to serve as a band-aid or a one time fix. It is an ongoing journey of discovery in search of more answers and ultimately; living better, being healthier, and striving for wholeness.” as described in Phylameana’s blog.

I hope you enjoy visiting and reading the following informational articles in this carnival.

Russ presents Eat Healthier at Work posted at Open Road Open Mind.

Surfer Sam presents NEW !! Vitamins for Good Health posted at Surfer Sam and Friends.

Dr. Davon Jacobson presents Easy Dental Care with Highly Sensitive Teeth posted at *Health and Nutrition Facts*.

Phil for Humanity presents Overcoming Fear posted at Phil for Humanity.

Pregnancy Advisor presents How to Exercise Safely During Your Pregnancy posted at Pregnancy Hut – Week By Week Pregnancy Calendar.

Dean Moyer presents Sciatica and the Saline Story posted at The Back Pain Blog.

praveen presents Make New Year’s Resolutions For One Day Only posted at Tao of Simplicity.

Adam Donkus presents Goals for 2009 posted at Link Building and SEO tips from Pixelhead explaining how he is going to start out the year right by making and monitoring his goals throughout 2009.

Ross presents Are Natural Cleaning Products Worth It? posted at Energise Alkaline Diet & Natural Health Blog.

Peter Murphy presents How to Stay Motivated In The Face Of Office Politics posted at Get Motivated Stay Motivated.

Life Regained presents Dismissing The Detox Myth posted at Your Life Regained.

Kelly Sonora presents The Health Policy 100: The 100 Best Health Care Policy Blogs – Radiology Technician Schools posted at Radiology Technician Schools.

Aparna presents Home remedies for hardened palms posted at Beauty and Personal Grooming.

Xquisitlife presents Who Am I? posted at The best is yet to come!.

Naren Ghimire presents Meditation: The Ultimate Transformation posted at Spiritual Pub.

MBB presents MonaVie Acai Berry Health Benefit Scam posted at Money Blue Book Blog.

Browse the archives for more articles on healing and empowerment.

Last week this carnival was hosted Carnival of Healing #170 at How I Healed

For the next week’s carnival, visit Well Being and health

PS:  Please note that any articles that I felt were not in conformance with the overall theme of this carnival were not included.  To learn more, please visit holistic healing home page.

Carnival of Healing #171 – Positive Perspectives is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Just a reminder to all my readers that the next carnival of healing will be hosted at this blog on Jan. 10th, 2009 (upcoming Friday).

So, if you have been thinking of participating, and if you have recently written anything on any of the topics related to:

Wellness
Holistic health
Spirituality
Personal Empowerment, or
Healthy Lifestyle

Get Your Blog Post Included in the Carnival by submitting here.

Here is an upcoming schedule of carnival of healing.

• #171 – Jan 10 2009: hosted by Pearl, Fresh Perspectives
• #172 – Jan 17 2009: hosted by Evan Hadkins (theme: Authenticity), wellbeingandhealth.net
• #173 – Jan 24 2009: hosted by Elizabeth Harper, Sealed with Love Blog
• #174 – Jan 31 2009: hosted by Nina Dixon, On the Path
• #175 – Feb 07 2009: hosted by Joe Lasiter, Massage 101
• #176 – Feb 14 2009: hosted by Clara Myers, Mind Mart
• #177 – Feb 21 2009: hosted by Pamir Kiciman, Reiki Help Blog
• #178 – Feb 28 2009: hosted by Margarat Nee, La Vida Fresca
• #179 – Mar 07 2009: hosted by Cari Campbell, Your Joyous Life

Next carnival of healing is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I use Justin Tadlock’s Options theme which was recommended and set up by my lovely friend Mig who writes Online Public Relations and I’ve been loving the ease to use this theme.  So naturally I visit Justin’s site often to see the showcase of how other people have tweaked the theme.  I don’t thing any of us keeps up with the premium themes business but I am sure most you will find this discussion at Justin’s site on Automatic pulling premium WordPress.org theme directory interesting to follow.

Don’t know if Abraham Piper followed Jim Estill’s advice in a Copyblogger article – Shorter is better – but with this post he has proven that it doesn’t always have to be a  How To or a Best 101 List to get huge number of comments ^_^

When I visited Jonathan Fields’s blog via reader, as I loved the title mba-shmemba, I found Seth Godin’s Squidoo lens post Instead of getting an MBA, consider spending six months in my office.  In Seth’s words:

If you’re stuck in a dead end job in publishing, or if you made a not-so-great choice in getting your career started, or if you thought Wall Street would be a different place, or if you just got laid off, or if you’re not crazy about fretting away the next six months waiting to get fired and you’re not quite ready to start your own gig… this might be the turbolift you were hoping for. Yes, it’s free.
It’s a chance to get off that track and onto a new track, faster and cheaper than most of the alternatives. And it might even be fun.

The only caveat is that you have to apply before December 14th – which is tomorrow!  That offer by Seth Godin got me very excited and for few hours I was playing in my mind how nice it would be if I applied and got chosen for his course..  I’m telling you, that kind of opportunity doesn’t come often.  I live close enough to the city and could definitely see myself enjoying this rare opportunity except I can’t leave my dead end job yet. So I’m willing to wait for the digital version.  

The different perspectives on the comment thread are interesting and a 17 year old guy Cyrusmassoumi also put together an ongoing list of links to people’s Squidoo lens ‘resumes’  who have applied for this guided 6 month apprenticeship.

If you are like me, I am sure you are visiting tons of social media sites all day long but have not seen consistent traffic to your site, then you want to read 10 ways to improve your results with Social Media today. 

Oh, have you been checking out Google’s Countdown to 2009 Search Tips to make your holiday search easier? 

If you have anything interesting to share, feel free to send me the link and I’ll try and publish it here in next Interesting Links post.

photo by thethi

Interesting Posts Around the Web is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

“This winter,

Heartwarming Usability

Breathtaking Beauty

and

Thrilling Flexibility”

Need I say more?   We’ve come a long long way from 2.2 when I started blogging.

My heartfelt thanks to hundreds of talented people who make up the WordPress team.  We are indebted to you guys for making it a breeze for us to express ourselves and make connections.

WordPress 2.7, Coltrane is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

As many of you have often mentioned I should get back to posting regularly, and have inquired how I spend my time now that I am not blogging regularly, I want to share that I try to stay in touch with the online world doing things that do not require a lot of concentration or time.   I am very much present in the social media scene and often vote your articles up and am always there to help you out in any way I can.   Occasionally, I have also participated in the small group writing projects/contests, especially when the rules to enter were not very difficult.  A lot of things have changed after my father’s passing as now I go to see my mother (after work in the evening) more often than before and that takes away from my time but even when I am at home doing nothing and am not busy, it’s been difficult dealing with all that has happened in the last year but I promise to do better on this blog.

Now this:

Just a few days ago, I received an email from Luciano Passuello of Litemind that he was running a project/contest for his readers to submit their best personal excellence tips.  This did not require a blog post as you would just need to send in a tip to Luciano’s email.

As I am still in need of some good ideas on how to get over my depression, I thought of sending in a few lines that may not be the best advice out there but they have become my mantra to get through my sadness, check out #28 in the list.  Luciano has published ALL personal excellence tips submitted to him, 66 tips so far. Great ideas given by Litemind readers and great blogs to discover.

The best part.

Since there are prizes worth some $800,  Luciano has asked his participants to vote by commenting on this post listing at least their favorite 5 tips/entries,  and as many as they like (no voting for their own entry of course).   This part is going to take some time for me to choose as I am in a position where I could use most of these tips to improve my life.   If you didn’t get a chance to participate,  you are not eligible to vote but I’d still encourage you to head over to Litemind and share your own very best personal excellence tips.

And I’d be delighted to hear your comments here too on what gets you through depression and sadness.

Personal Excellence Tips at Litemind is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

As I contemplated on what I was going to write and how I was going to participate in a Blog Action Day 2008 in which thousands of bloggers all over the world are thinking and writing about the same issue that transcends color, creed, race and or country,  I was taken over by a lot of emotions.   I thought about the lady we often see walking in the downtown area asking people for quarters.  Over the years it has become a joke amongst most people who work in that area, whenever someone sees her or comes across, they’d laugh and say there goes the quarter lady!   People laugh at her because she has a one liner ‘got a quarter?’  for everyone.   You can find her eating a subway sandwich every day at the train station.   I’ve never laughed at her but I’d admit (and I am ashamed of this) that I have ignored her many times and turned my face away thinking I can’t give her a quarter every day?

How selfish I was.  With blog action day theme, as I was reading more and more on poverty, I couldn’t believe I had done that to her.   It is so easy to act like I did and ignore this problem but just imagine if we had to beg someone for every meal, day after day!    I know my heart is at the right place but on this day, I pledge to make conscious efforts to make a difference in whatever small ways I can.

We humans are so strange in that when in United States someone talks about poverty,  they mostly refer to it or think about it as a condition that exists only in some remote 3rd world, under-developed section of the society.  So not true.  America has it’s share of poverty as detailed in this website.    Imagine this for a second, according to the GlobalIssues, almost half the world population – that is over three billion people – live on less than $2.50 a day!

If these numbers on the chart above don’t really do anything for you, I am sure the following video certainly will move you.

As for me, I went over the list of 88 ways to take action against poverty now that Easton Ellsworth made on Blog Action Day blog yesterday, from people’s contributions.   I am going to try to do as many of those things as possible – some I already do, like eating vegetarian meals twice – I’ve been a vegetarian for a couple of years (well I do eat fish, but just that, no mammals and/or even chicken), signed up with kiva to make loans, clicked on the hunger site to give free food to the poor.  I can’t say I am ready to go homeless for a day and night yet but that would be quite a lesson.

But I want to get started today, NOW, with this post.  So, I pledge to donate $1.00 to Kiva.org for each comment on this post.

There are tons of websites to get inspiration from and get involved.   I have met a lot of great people via blogs, who are spending a whole lot of time to make a difference.  Head over to Train for Humanity and see how you can get involved while getting healthy yourself.

Think of Poverty on Blog Action Day 2008 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

These two very different systems may not be comparable but as I was taking one off and putting the other one on, thought this was a great title for this post.  I had signed up with PerformancingAds when there was so much hype about them and just about everyone was jumping on the bandwagon but soon after that I started feeling it was not really doing what we all expected from them.  I just didn’t have the time to remove their code at the time but today finding Michael Jackson on my blog did it.   There are a few things that kind of bothered me about this ad.  1) the blog this ad belonged to did not fit with this blog’s categories or theme 2) I didn’t approve this ad, performancingads crew did, which somehow doesn’t make sense to me.  But in any case,

I logged into their site and thought of removing my site from the system as I thought I didn’t really understand how it worked but upon hitting the delete button, I was taken to the following screen that says that I can’t delete the site since it contains an advertisement that has been payed (PAID) for.

Well, I found that interesting as I hadn’t been writing anything in the last couple of weeks and someone still found my blog worth buying an ad on!   But the reports screen revealed a different story, that a booking was made on my blog but I wasn’t getting paid for it.

Of course, this is not the first time it has happened, in the past also there were a few ads that appeared on this blog but I never got paid for them.   It’s crazy that some ads appeared on my blog for a week or two, for free!

So, today I decided to remove PerformancingAds code and instead stay with much reliable Scratchback, the Fancy Tip Jar!   ScratchBack is a way for the readers to say thank you to the content producers by giving them a small tip and in return gain a link back to their site and get exposure.  Simple and Brilliant!  So go ahead, tip me and get in my list of links.

So, here’s the question.  Have you used PerformancingAds and has the system worked for you?  If you use another ad-network for buying/selling square ads, which one and how is it different from PerformancingAds, good/bad..  your opinion matters!

Off with PerformancingAds, On with ScratchBack is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

photo: sytoha

The Carnival of Healing is a weekly round-up of blogs across the Internet featuring information about healing, self empowerment, and spirituality.   This carnival is organized by Phylameana who writes about Healing on About.com.  My thanks go to Phelameana for letting me host this edition on my blog.

As I was reading through the articles submitted for this edition, I couldn’t help remember a quote by Helen Keller

Although the world is full of suffering, it is also full of the overcoming of it.
– Helen Keller

No matter how big and difficult challenges we face, from illness, grief, losing a job, loss of loved ones, fear of failures in our relationships, or financial matters, no matter how difficult to overcome these challenges might be, we all find ways to get through them and survive but the hurt remains.  The articles that are submitted to this carnival are geared towards emotional, physical and spiritual healing.  They have been helpful to me in my struggle to overcome my challenges and I am sure you will find something to help you as you begin your healing journey.

So here comes:

Sonora presents Top 50 Medical Professor Blogs posted at Nursing School Search Blog.

Daphne presents Joyful Days » Laugh A Lot posted at Joyful Days, saying, “Laughter cures many ills in life. Doctors are starting to admit that patients who decide to think positively and laugh a lot have higher chances of surviving diseases including cancer. There are powerful biological processes that take place when we laugh that we are only just starting to understand.”

Anna Farmery presents Behind the Smile…. posted at Widows Quest, saying, “I try each day to smile, I know that the world lives on and that they have troubles of their own. So I try and listen to people, I try and be there for them, often to the detriment of myself…

SeanBissell presents Even Dogs Get De-Motivated posted at Yummy Fitness | Fitness For Fun People saying, “It’s very easy to get de-motivated if you get off track for too long, and one of the best ways to get back into your routine is just to make it fun for yourself in any way that you can.

Alvaro Fernandez presents ABC Reporter Bob Woodruff’s Spectacular Recovery From Traumatic Brain Injury posted at SharpBrains: Your Window into the Brain Fitness Revolution, saying, “You have may have seen a few weeks ago the interview between former US presidential contender John Edwards and reporter Bob Woodruff. All the resulting media coverage centered on Edwards’ declarations. However, there is something much more remarkable that surfaced at that interview: Bob Woodruff’s spectacular recovery.”

Donald Latumahina presents A Guide to Finding Your Life Purpose posted at Life Optimizer.

Joshua Seth presents Fast Weight Loss Tips | posted at Joshua Seth Blog, saying, “Everyone seems to want to lose weight fast. I’d rather show you how to lose weight permanently. Not all fast weight loss methods are healthy and most of them don’t work long term. Still, a few methods do make the cut. So here is how to lose weight fast…”

AndrewB presents How to Overcome Overeating posted at test, saying, “Do you engage in overeating? Overeating is eating too much. We all do it to some degree, however it can lead to developing an eating disorder.”

mag presents Breathe your way to better health! posted at The Magenpie.com, saying, “Breathe better”

Grace Young presents No slouching! posted at Grace R Young OT.

Sam presents NEW !! Relief for Stress, Anxiety and Tension. Symptoms and Relief. Cope and Manage Stress posted at Surfer Sam and Friends, saying, “Relief for Stress, Anxiety and Tension Symptoms and Relief to Cope and Manage Stress Stress is the plague of the twenty-first century. Pressures at work and demands at home leave us feeling tension, anxiety and stress.
Akemi Gaines presents Heroes Of Healing: Gary Craig posted at Yes to Me.

Astrid Lee presents Pope’s Mass in Paris Brings Focus on Practical Spiritually posted at World Healing, saying, “Yesterday morning, together with a quarter million French people, I managed to participate in the public mass held in Paris by pope Benedict XVI. It was an unusually calming and healing experience…. (pictures)”

Marcus Ryan presents Top 3 Anti Aging Diets posted at Wrinkle Creams Review, saying, “If you want the top 3 anti aging diets for healthy skin, then have a look at this blog entry by Marcus Ryan where the anti aging diets full of superfoods for skin are featured.”

Ginsburg presents Supplement Boosts Immune Function & Helps Diabetic Blood Sugar posted at Live Immune, saying, “well-researched dietary supplement to boost NK fraction”

Brain Blogger presents HIPAA Doesn’t Exist For Doctors posted at Brain Blogger, saying, “Recently a very popular colleague of mine was hospitalized. His frequent visitors coming into the room began to hamper his recovery and his family was forced to try and enforce privacy rules and HIPAA.”

NickIrons presents Exercise — The Fountain of Youth! posted at Get Results! Fitness Blog, saying, “Exercise is the only proven way to drastically combat aging and to regain your youthful body. In fact, most people are able to regain up to 1/3 of their muscle strength and mass after participating in an exercise program for just a couple of months.”

Ginsburg presents Kabbalistic Speech & New Year posted at Live Immune.

photo:eye of einstein

Chris Edgar presents What’s Really Holding You Back: “Morality” Or Anxiety? posted at Purpose Power Coaching, saying, “When we feel anger, fear, or some other emotion we see as unpleasant, we tend to assume “morality” requires us to feel how we do. If someone else is the object of our irritation, anxiety, or something else, we tend to see them as immoral. In this article, I discuss how becoming aware of how we confuse our emotions with morality can help us transcend our fears and gain valuable self-understanding.”

Aanga presents How to Have a Healthy Autumn posted at Ananga Sivyer’s Living by Design Blog.

Bob Crawford presents Aligning with Success posted at Growing Your SELF Blog – Bob Crawford Online, saying, “Learning to become aligned with your inner self is crucial to manifesting your goals and dreams.”

Sagar Satapathy presents Top 100 Health and Wellness Sites for Seniors posted at RN Central.

Pastor WD Favour presents Supernatural Healing posted at WDFavour.com, saying, “A true life story of a miraculous and life transforming healing.”

Alex Blackwell presents 10 things you wish you had never learned

Evelyn created a movie: My Abundance Mind Movie [don’t forget to vote for her wonderful movie at YouTube)

And last but not the least, our very own Phylameana wrote about “Follow Your Heart”

That concludes this edition.

Past Edition: Sept. 13, 2008 Grace in Gravity

Next Edition: Sept. 27, 2008 Natural Pain Relief

Submit your blog article to the next edition of carnival of healing using our carnival submission form. Past posts and future hosts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Carnival of Healing #156 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

This is a short announcement to let you all know that on September 20th, 2008, I will be hosting the #156th edition of Carnival of Healing.

From the carnival home page:  Carnival of Healing is a weekly roundup of posts on topics of holistic health, wellness, spirituality, and self empowerment or healthy lifestyle.

I encourage ALL my readers who write about any of the above topics, to participate in this carnival and submit your most recent posts.  Once you have written the post that you want to submit, click on the image or go here and click on the orange box in the upper right corner to get to the submission form.

Please make sure your articles are related to the topics that are acceptable to this carnival.  Any posts that are not related will not be accepted.  If you would like to host this carnival, check out Carnival of Healing Home Page

Carnival of Healing Coming to this blog is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

One of my good friends Chee Wee Ng from Betshopboy completes a great milestone of blogging for one full year tomorrow and is celebrating first blog anniversary this month.  He has lined up some great gifts to give away to his readers.

I realize I should have announced it on my blog a bit earlier as he had weekly drawings and even early bird draw where if you entered early and secured 20 points, your points would be doubled but still there is one grand prize draw that will be on August 31.. The prizes for this coming week and the rules are listed below but first, check out Chee Wee’s video about his contest..

Prizes for 24 August draw

1st prize – 4GB Sandisk Micro Cruzer skin flash drive
2nd & 3rd – a 125×125 ad book for 7 days (from 25 – 31 Aug) with PerformancingAds on my sidebar

Prizes for Grand draw on 31 August (one winner)

A 2GB Creative Zen MP3 player with 2.5? TFT LCD for videos & audios & SD card expansion slot. Click for specification.

A 125×125 ad book for entire month of September 2008 with PerformancingAds on my sidebar

Early Bird Bonus
The first 25 submissions with minimum of 20 points each will have their total points doubled!

So here is the deal, if you want to win one of the prizes, then here is what you need to do to gain those points:

* Registration and 1 point –> Subscribe to our RSS Feed via email (mandatory) and comment below that you are registered to win. You can use the subscribe option in the sidebar or at the end of this post.

* 1 point: Stumble or Stumble Review this contest

* 2 points –> Follow me on Twitter and Twitt about this contest with link to this contest page.

* 5 points –> Make a *New* blog post on a publicly accessible blog (cannot be on a password protected page such as myspace or facebook) and link to this page and the homepage. Additional 5 points given if you embed the above video(found in this post) in your post.

Earn Bonus Points
15 points –> Make a *New* blog post (separate from above post) and embed anyone of my videos found in below posts with a short writeup and link to the respective posts. That’s 15 points for each new post with a video.

Video post #1: Singapore Toys & Comic Convention 2008

Video post #2: A Prelude To F1 Grand Prix

Rules:

* This contest is all in good fun and is open to anywhere that snail mail goes.

* Participating blogs must be 90 days old and consist of at least 10 posts.

* Comment must contain link to twitter posts and blog posts, Twitter id and StumbleUpon id, so they can be verified.

* Winner must have an active subscription to Betshopboy.net when selected.

* Winners of ad spot must supply your own 125×125 image, which will run during the period stated above.

* Winners will be selected by random draw and will be contacted by email and you have 7 days to response. If there’s no response, a new winner will be drawn

* Contest ends on August 30th at 11.59pm (GMT +8).

* The organizer (that’s me!) reserve the right to reject any entries from websites that are generally offensive or pornographic, and any websites that can be classified as spam.

* The organizer (me again) reserves the right, at my sole discretion, to modify or replace any part of this contest, e.g., depending on the participation rate, additional prizes and/or early bird bonus may be thrown in if my subscription target is hit.

Submit your entries early to qualify for the weekly draws and to double your points for the first 25 submissions with minimum 20 points!

Congratulations Chee Wee

First Anniversary Giveaway Contest – Betshopboy is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Last year, I had joined thousands of bloggers all over the world during Blog Action Day 2007, and the topic of conversation was Environment. 

This year, on Blog Action Day (October 15, 2008), once again bloggers across the globe will unite in bringing awareness to the masses and the topic will be Poverty.  

Many people ask what can one person do about Poverty?  Or how can blogging about poverty make a difference?   There is power in numbers and unity.  When thousands write about the same issue, in a sort of a brain storming way,  giving ideas to each other about ways to end it, educating those who have no idea about it, bringing awareness, inspiring each other to take actions, and changing minds on a global scale, our society can be better.

Also, there is a very compelling video posted on Blog Action Day site just to answer some of such concerns!

And you can also read up a bit on what poverty actually means.  This link explains very that poverty does not hit just the third world countries, or the developing countries,  it spans many families and individuals even in the most developed and so called ‘rich’ countries. 

On this day, some people will write about how they feel about poverty, others will write about what they think should or could be done to eradicate this affliction, and still others will talk about what causes it and it history or whatever else they want to bring forth about the issue. 

As you can tell, I will be joining again this year by writing something on that day and would love to hear if you are planning to join the Blog Action Day this year. 

You can find more websites and resources on ways you can help and also check out topic ideas they have compiled to help promoting the day.

If you want to find more posts on Blog Action Day, keep watching this link : Blog Action Day Posts 2008

Blog Action Day 2008 will be about Poverty is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

For a happy Monday reading, here are some of the wonderful posts I came across this week and am sure you’ll find them interesting too.

8 Attributes of an Olympic Mindset @ Freelance Writing

21 Digg.com Funny Resume Stories @ JobMob

Hit the Digg Front Page with Social Elves @ JohnTP

9 Keys to Running Multiple Blogs @ Traffikd

How Trust Made My Blog Triumph: 1000 Subscribers @ SEO 2.0

Categories, Bookmarks and Tags: Background and Basics @ aimClear Search Marketing Blog

The Curse of a Blogger @ More Than Scratch the Surface

Five Search Queries to find Sponsorship Link Opportunities @ GrayWolf’s SEO blog

4 Search Engines to Search Wikipedia the Pro Way @ MakeUseOf

Sleeping with the enemy @ Brian Gardner

and finally, an awesome link that made my day when Jim Kukral sang the Happy Birthday song for my mom.  ;)

photo by: Stephane

Interesting Posts Around the Web – Aug. 10 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

YES… finally Stumble Upon has listened to so many of us complain about this and are planning to allow us to add unlimited number of friends.  If you remember, back in November last year (can’t believe it’s been that long) I blogged about not being able to add my Stumble Upon friends.

With just 200 friend limit, you had to constantly ‘clean up’ your ‘friends’ to make sure you get relevant stumbles delivered to you.  This limited you from getting those people’s stumbles who added you as friends but you couldn’t reciprocate.   Not any more.  I will be able to see most of my fans’s stumbles now since I can befriend them.

According to Stumble Upon’s blog:

Over the next couple weeks we are going to separate the social & content aspects of friendship on SU, so you can subscribe to someone’s favorites without necessarily becoming their friend, and become someone’s friend without necessarily seeing their stumbles. You’ll also be able to “Subscribe” to more than 200 stumblers, since we’ve changed the way they are stored in the database. Mutuals will just be “Friends”, fans will become “Subscribers” and you’ll simply be “Subscribed to” stumblers who rate great content. We hope these changes will make things a bit easier to understand for new stumblers, while improving stumble quality for everyone.

The upcoming changes are definitely going to make an already wonderful social media site more useful and enjoyable.  I can’t wait to see the changes as the Stumble Upon team fixes some of the other bugs as noted in their post, like removing “ghosts” from the system.  Changes like “Mutuals” gaining a status of friends and “fans” becoming your subscribers.  The option to “opt-out” of stumbles of certain friends whose interests do not match yours, is going to make it even better.   I can’t wait to see the changes.

So, have you subscribed to my stumbles?  If not, check them out, I’m sure you’ll find something interesting there.   Also, if you read this blog, leave your Stumble Upon URL and I’d love to add you to my network and subscribe to your stumbles.

photo: Owlets

StumbleUpon lifts 200 friend limit is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

This is the second part in a two part guest post by Matt of “The Fantastic Site of Lord Matt“.  Read How I Manage Multiple Blogs – Part 1

photo: Nathan Borror

About email

The one thing I do not do is check my email. I loath email and find it irritating to use. One day I’m going to find the time to write a gateway program that will convert email to something using XML… When I do check my email it can kill half a day. Often there will be people that I should reply to and sometimes a spark for a post idea but mostly there will be sixty million system messages, along with the spam, marketing junk and general **** that email is full of. I maintain a lot of in-boxes which helps to segregate the mail and some boxes have a higher priority than others. For example the mailing lists box is just archived via POP3 into thunderbird unless I need to ask a question and then I’ll check the box for a few days before ignoring it again. Email is your worst enemy. You can spend hours corresponding with people and writing short post length replies when the same basic information can be contained in a PM, tweet, Stumble or wall note. IM is sometimes useful although I am rarely on-line these days because I love to gossip and get no work done if I do not watch it. As I said my wife chuckled when I told her I was writing about productivity and time management. (As I said I start at the top and stop at the bottom and I’d got this far before she asked me what I was doing).

The trick behind the trick

I am not very organised and probably will never be. However, I apply patterns of behaviour that are productive along with systematised methods that provide short cuts to getting things made or done quickly. I also stack up my resources ready to use and make sure I have a rich collection of “things to use later maybe”. The result is that when I combine this with social media and interaction with other people is that I make for myself an unending and unstoppable avalanche of ideas and potential. Each morning I step into this fast moving current and “go with the flow”. This works because I find every last part of it interesting and I love to write. In this way I do not manage my time so much as set my surroundings up to rush me from one task to the next in a constant run of enjoyable and interesting things to do. The blogs simply act as strategic placed landing pads for the results. If I do not find the topic interesting enough it dies away and “lesson learned” I move on (the current buzz42 is an example of this). In all that I have big projects on the “slow burner” that I go back to time and again. Eventually they get completed but along the way I produce interesting code or learn new geeky things and this again pushes me back to blogging. It might even be true to say that blogging is a way of not killing myself with an utter overload of interesting things to react to.

Segmenting the day

More by necessity than by intention my day is segmented into parts. 7am until 9am is the morning shift where I try to remember to eat breakfast. At 9am the boys go to nursery (pre-school) and some days I have to take them and some days my wife takes them. So I may or may not work until 10am when the rest of the day is often mine. This does not always work and I have commitments to the local Community Mutual that bite into my afternoons and sometimes the entire daytime period. This acts as a good forced time away from the computer even if I am often thinking about some computer related project. These things called clients also happen to need attention and in solving their problems I often find inspiration for geeky blog posts too. This also pays the bills more efficiently than blogging does. The final phase is the evening which starts around 5pm and although I sometimes work during tea, story time and getting changed time I am working in the same room and the activities and can stop to join in. Once the kiddies are in bed I will often try to bring the day’s activities to an end. However, it is not unusual to see 12 notepad2 files and a firefox with 10 or more tabs open (I had 55 open one time) but this acts as a to-do list for the next day.

A free-form “to do list”

By the end of the week I will have a to-do list that is too long and I start the culling process. Closing tabs, bookmarking pages and saving notes. Often this leads to more ideas and more posts (mostly of the quick type). Recently I wrote a post asking “Does Rich Schefren eat his own dog food?” I had been meaning to write that for almost two weeks before I got around to it. It lead, as I thought it would, to interesting conversation with the likes of Andy Beard and will probably draw a little traffic for a long time to come. Maybe even Rich Schefren will pop by and say something – stranger things have happened. Likewise, I have interviews and reviews that I still mean to get done and will get to one day. This list is always there at the back of my mind and is supplemented by the tabs I leave open for myself and the notes I have yet to do something with. I can do this easily as I have plenty of system resources to waste on browser tabs but it is not something that will work for everyone.

Getting more done

However, not everything I do is an end result. Much of what I do is about automating and simplifying my tasks so that I can do more with the same amount of time. This can mean taking the time to write code libraries that I can reuse or systematically cleaning up my bookmarks. The one thing that is not used are lists. If I made lists of things “to do” I would spend hours making them but start with one item on the list and then free fall from there. This does not work for me so I create a matrix of “stuff” and place myself in the centre. That does not mean I am disorganised but it is just the way that works well for me. What makes me more productive today than yesterday is (a) experience and (b) better tools. Some of these tools I made but others I have found (open source projects are great). For example, I use an ad server to manage my on site adverts and this allows me to see what works and where so that affiliate banner ads that are getting low clicks can be deactivated in favour of more productive stuff. It is a tool that allows me to do more with less time. I use what used to be called phpAdsNew but was renamed to OpenAds and then to OpenX. It’s free to use (Open Source) and for any blogger with more than one blog and some reasonable hosting (or a server) it is worth thinking about.

photo: motumboe

Other tricks are things like getting a bottle of tap water and putting it in the freezer over night. In the morning you take your frozen bottle and put it on your desk. It will defrost over the day so that you have cold water with a big ice cube in it to keep it cold and it is available all day. For php I have the Orbit42 Base Class which was written for a project that was never made. However, it does a few neat things not least of which is that it stops me needing to write safe SQL by stopping me needing to write SQL at all. I hand the function an array and table name and it figures the rest out for me. That alone can save me up to an hour a day in code I never have to write. It also contains an extensive debug system and a plugin system that allows me to create generic plugins that work on most things I create. All that by default – doing more with less time.

Conclusions and thoughts

I work full-time and own my own business. Not everyone has that freedom but everyone does have an optimal way of working. My trick has always been to make sure that what I do I enjoy totally so it’s not so much a case of trying to get motivated as finding a point where I’m willing to stop and remember to eat. My system is not perfect. For example, I have been meaning to re-do my main blog’s theme to a design that I completed almost 7 months ago and upgrade the code base that runs it. The problem is that there are so many interesting things to be doing that I don’t find the time. I may be the only person for whom writing so many blogs is a time saving device (or I may be mad). Who knows.

That’s my fresh perspective on productivity and time management – what’s yours?

Matt has been running many blogs very successfully and has written great content that we can all learn from.  You can follow Matt on some of the popular social media sites: twitter.com/lordmatt, lordmatt.stumbleupon.com and a number of forums, blogs and communities.

How I Manage Multiple Blogs – Part 2 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

You can see the most wonderful spam catcher Akismet has caught more than 31 thousand spam comments on this blog and needless to say blogging would have been a nightmare if all the bad comments had not been caught at the entrance but when my own comment got caught as spam, I got a bit worried.

Have the spammers got so good that Akismet cannot distinguish between a legitimate vs spam anymore?  And that too from the blog author?

Spamming yourself is not allowed? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I was surprised the other day to learn that my brother, who is a veterinarian by profession and oversees his own web site, had no clue about what RSS was.

So, how do you explain to someone why they should ’subscribe to your feed’ when they have no idea what you are talking about?  This is what I told him and fortunately, he got it the first time.

Oh, the RSS… well, lets see: 

Its a way to read new content of any website on a single page, so you don’t have to remember each website’s address!

There are many companies who let you do that… Google does it through their application called Google Reader.

Its fairly simple to have a Google account and then click on Reader option and start adding sites that you want to see the newest content from.  Also see here: A Quick Tour of Google Reader

I personally prefer Bloglines – another company that also lets you read your favorite sites on a single page – after signing up with them of course… you can see the sites I’ve added on my Bloglines here

I then showed him how to set up the his Google Reader since he already had a Google account.

Its easier to understand what RSS is once you sign up with either of the two i mentioned here and see it in action…

Go ahead, click on any one of these orange icons and you’ll be taken to a page where you can choose one of your favorite readers to subscribe to my feed and you’ll be able to read the latest content of this site as I publish it.

While you are here, I urge you to take a look at the Most Commented posts from menu below the header image OR click on any of the posts displaying in the gallery and see if you like the conversations that follow on this blog.

Don’t forget to check out the Archives for some interesting posts either.  Here are some of my favorites:

Who is reading your blog?

Communicating with people you haven’t met

Links, Backlinks, Pingbacks and Trackbacks – What Exactly Are They?

Creating Content From Everyday Life

Don’t let it bring you down!

I cannot add my Stumble Upon Fans as friends

Dilemma of Paid Reviews!

My Best Blogging Achievement

Coordination, Cooperation and Collaboration – Lead to Success

Delete or Edit Comment?

Any questions? still not convinced?  don’t hesitate to come back and ask in the comments.

Read the latest content of my blog at your convenience is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

This is a guest post by Jacob Share of JobMob

Are you one of those people who say they never learned anything in high school? Me neither. I learned a lot in high school, but there were some critical topics that never appeared on the blackboard.

1) Parenting

Carrying an egg around for a week isn't parenting. The sad thing is just doing that class assignment would have already put you "in the know" compared to most other high school graduates.

Looking at how you were raised by your parents will rarely prepare you for the real thing, which is why so many people agonize before having kids and then get stressed out when they do. Or worse, they become bad parents.

2) Financial Literacy

Can you read a company's financial statement? Could you read one when you finished school?

Let's try another example- do you know what the difference is between an asset and a liability?

Most people aspire to buying their own house for when they decide to settle down. Seems like a good asset to have, right? Think again. As long as you're paying off the mortgage on that house, it's a liability, a debt to pay off, not something bringing you any immediate returns. And because you're covering a mortgage, you're actually paying much more than the house cost the bank to buy it for you in the first place.

3) Job Hunting

People should love job hunting. It's a chance to do something better, to raise your standard of living, to move up in the world and improve life not just for you, but your dependents as well.

So then why does everyone hate looking work? Because they were never taught how to do it. As a result, they lack self-confidence and steel themselves for potentially months of the resume-interview-rejection cycle and should hardly be surprised when they meet those low expectations.

What you can do

If the educational system won't educate you, you need to educate yourself:

1. Read – there are many terrific blogs, self-help books and guides that can teach you but do yourself a favor and start reading BEFORE you need to make life-changing decisions on these topics.

2. Learn – consider enrolling in an online course, local seminar or workshops with experts who have a proven track record for what they teach.
3. Network – join support groups, discussion forums and social media sites whose members have similar experience or better. Try to find a mentor you can follow to success.

What do you think?

How were you able to overcome this missing chunk of your education?

About the author

Jacob Share created JobMob to bring together job seekers and jobfinders to find jobs in Israel and all over the world. The blog is filled with straight-talking advice based on real world experience and lots of humor thrown in, so you should subscribe now to JobMob via RSS or email if you're looking for a better job or just want to laugh about it with articles like the 150 Funniest Resume Mistakes, Bloopers and Blunders Ever.

photo by A Y A n

Additional Reading:  Know more about the guy in the picture above dabbawalas

3 Crucial Things That School Never Taught You is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Well, as you can see, Fresh Perspectives gets a new theme couple of days ago.  The previous theme BloggingPro worked fine for some time but I used it for too long, more than a year and I needed a change.  This theme, Options by Justin Tadlock as you can see, displays a lot more content for you to browse through and I'm loving the navigation.  

I had tremendous help (truck loads of it I should say) from my dearest friends Mig from Online Public Relations and Deborah from Life In The Fast Lane.  So, although I was a bit afraid of the change,  I'm starting to really like it. 

There are some features that are not working right now and we are trying to fix them but in the mean time, would love to hear from you guys.  Please let me know in the comments if you find something broken or not working.   If you are seeing this post via RSS, you'll definitely have to come out here to see it.

One of the things that's not working and it has nothing to do with the theme, is inserting images in WordPress 2.5.1 If you follow that link, you'll see so many others who are having problem with inserting images. Some have found the solution by modifying the .htaccess file which I want to refrain from since WordPress 2.6 has been just released today and I am hoping the upgrade will solve this problem.

So, then.. what do you guys think?   Are the colors okay, better or worse than the previous one?   What would you like to see and what feature can be remove?   

What do you think of the new theme? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Simplified Niche Research – I should have read this post before diving into domain buying frenzy I went through some time back. Steven talks about ways to use Commission Junction for finding profitable niches

How to Make an Affiliate Store with Affilistore and Datafeeds Because of Simonne’s step by step instructions on how to set up affiliate stores and niche sites, I ended up buying a few domains and honestly it has given much needed motivation to continue

The Amazing Power of Encouragement Laura Spencer’s article holds so true for me that I had to share it with you all. I am able to come back to blogging because of all the encouragement I have received from you all over the last few months. So, thank you.

Five Tips to Turn Setbacks into Success over at Alex’s blog is an article everyone should read. In Shilpan’s words: “Even the best among us have seen their share of setbacks. Unfortunately, we seldom find their failures in the pages of history.” So true.

Leaning Into the Blogging Dip Ah! Mark Dykeman must have been reading my mind ‘coz I’ve been thinking of reviewing The Dip forever as this book has many times given me courage to just quit the things or projects that are going nowhere or just to hang tough.

10 Reasons You Should Never Have a Religion I starred this article to come back to read it but never had the time but look at the headline, it might be provocative to some but I am always amused at his boldness. Now how many of us can really talk about how such a controversial subject?

My dear friend Mig is re-branding with a New Logo and has asked for reader input on the three logos to choose from. My vote was on 1a because of it’s simplicity and clarity.

Talking of brands, Vivien’s post on Brandwashed in 8 minutes is an interesting one about her and her daughter’s routine going through brands every morning.

{I just realized Vivien’s post is part of a project @ DearJaneSample where I saw some really neat posts about brands.}

On a fun side, Jake shares 7 Funny Newspaper Job wanted ads

And finally, Deborah continues to surprise us including a picture of her hugging a shark in one of her posts on Bizarre Underwater Inventions and Feats

Hope you are all enjoying your weekend wherever you are. We’ve had a temperature of 96 degrees today and it’s just not fun!

Interesting Posts Around the Web – June 7th is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I’m happy to say that Awards, Accolades has become a series in itself..  Check out Awards I and Awards II to see what I mean. 

I can’t begin to thank all the wonderful people I have met ever since I started blogging.  These fellow bloggers who have become good friends make my life better each and every day.   So, once again, I thank these shining stars, who have become part of my life, from the bottom of my heart.

You have heard me talk about the most generous soul,  Mig, who not only comes up with the original posts (like 10 reasons why she loves pearl), but also continues to bestow me with numerous beautiful awards and accolades. 

And what can I say?   Sue from Sueblimely and Kuanyin from Blog Pond and Colin from Free PC Security made me blush by calling me their Blogging Mentor, the award created by Sue.

How can I thank these beautiful people making my world ever so exciting?  Kim the beautiful artist from Laketrees designed another award this year called Significant Blogger Award and it was an honor to receive it from her.

Kim has also spent considerable time coming up with Top 101 Artists’ Blogs which is worth checking out. 

Colin also awarded Best Friends award which is very nice of him.  Colin maintains numerous blogs with a lot of useful information and is always ready to help out anyone in need.  I am proud that he is my friend.   thanks buddy.. (Did I pick up all the awards from you Colin?  I know you’ve been showering me with a lot of them lately lol)

When you get mentioned and recognized by others,  it makes blogging experience even more exciting and makes you want to continue, despite all the struggles that come with blogging.  I started reading Steven Snell’s blog, Vandelay Design, a few months ago and really loved it.   I was surprised when Steven asked to feature me on his new blog, Traffikd, a blog about Social Media and Internet Marketing. Check out this blog for all you want to know about Social Media or Internet Marketing.

Steven was also very kind in including me for his list of 8 Bloggers That Won’t Bite, on PureBlogging.  

What more could I ask?  I am blessed meeting so many supportive and kind friends and I wish the best for all of you. 

Awards, Accolades III is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Wishing all my readers, fellow bloggers and friends on all of the networking sites, a very Happy Valentine’s Day!

If you have befriended me on one of the social media networks and we haven’t had a chance to exchange a hello, please feel free to say a hi in the comments and I’ll definitely visit and comment your blog.  

Remember,  Valentine’s Day is for spreading love.  You comment here and get a link with CommentLuv

Spread Love with Your Comments is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I have a couple of things to ask you today.  

1) Am I the only one writing link posts on a Monday?

2) Do you always link to articles that were written in the preceding week?

Here are a few articles that I am sure you’ll enjoy reading and feel inspired as you start your Mondays.   

Go read them and let these guys know where you heard about them.

Clone and Migrate WordPress Blog to New Server @ Make Tech Easier

I Assure you, Your Interest was Not Peaked @ The Article Writer

The Small Fish Eats the Big Fish Paradox @ Ewriting Pamil Visions

Alternative Search Engines to Google @ Sueblimely

Are Audio Ads the Next Big Thing? @ SuperBloggingTips

Caroline Middlebrook and I Just Disagree @ Making Sales Making Money

How to Get More Bookmarks and Better Links @ Chris Garrett’s Blog

What to Post? When to Post? @ Datmoney

I’ve really loved reading this 3 Part Crash Course on Organizing your Home Office Paper Series @ eMoms

As Steve Pavlina finished his 30 day raw food diet, I think it’ll be interesting to some people to read his conclusions on how the experiment went for him and his thoughts.

And finally, Monica Mundell from the writers manifesto explains how she has reached her targeted full time monthly income as a freelance writer, in a matter of 7 months!

Enjoy!

Interesting Posts Around the Web – Feb 11 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Have you been seeing this pretty image around the web lately?

I noticed it on many many blogs and was thinking what this new thing was. Then one day last month when Vladimir contacted me to ask if I could review this site, I was really excited. My posting frequency in the last few months has really slowed down but Vladimir has been really patient with me, so my thanks go out to him. I am still new to the system but what I read from the site it looks quite interesting.

TNX.net is a newer system of buying and selling links for both publishers and advertisers and a way to promote their sites.

From the website itself: “With the help of TNX System you are able to get large amounts of non-reciprocal links from thousands of relevant websites: In just few minutes you can order thousands of links from high quality Internet resources. Links can be placed on main pages as well as on individual, deep pages of websites that either have few other outbound links or no links at all. ”

So, If you haven’t heard about TNX yet, it behooves you to at least try the system, since joining it is free. The interface is pretty easy to follow. Join with just a few clicks and get thousands of links back to your site and start earning some money by selling links on your blog/site. You can register at http://tnx.net/register.php. You automatically get 2,000 TNX points upon sign up. TNX also has a promo going that Vladimir pointed me to this thread: by posting on this thread in the DP forums, you get an additional 5,000 points free.

The best part is that you will have complete control on the sites linking back to your site. Once the space on your website is sold, you can see the list of sites in your control panel and will have an option of banning any site you don’t wish to advertise on your site. Another great thing is that the list of sites taking part in their program is kept private. So, the search engine lords supposedly cannot create an account and go out on a penalty spree.

TNX Points are easily used as real money, either for purchasing links for yourself, transferring to other TNX users (or even selling to them at a price you decide) or even sell them back to TNX for real cash, (currently @ 0.78 per 1,000 points). TNX then pays you via secure PayPal. Something I have never seen any other similar service offer.

Look at the stats from their site.

As of today there have 43,717 users, more than 32 million links in the system and more than 23 million pages indexed! Those are darn good statistics and the participating sites growing each day at a rapid pace.

What I really like about the system is that as publishers, you can sell links on ALL pages of your site, even the ones with zero page rank and make some money. For publishers (that is all of you who are reading this) there is an added benefit from their referral program. TNX.net is giving you 13.3% of the points your referrals earn, and that is a lifetime payment! which is really great.

Some of the requirements for participating it their system are:

number of visitors: at the present time there are no restrictions!
PR: It is preferable to have pages on the site with PR at least 1. You can check it here: volume check of pages’ PR.
domain: preferred are second level domains with paid hosting registered over 6 months ago
site selection by search engines: at least once per month
Number of pages: at least 30 (with regular ranking)
presence in a major catalogue, DMOZ: preferred
PHP: a must

In short, the system looks pretty neat and should be be a great site for catering to the needs of publishers as well as to the advertisers.  I wish them great success.

Technorati Tags: TNX.net, Review

Text Links With a Difference – TNX.net is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

In the past couple of weeks, I missed my 'most interesting posts around the web' feature although I came across many interesting posts that I wanted to share with you. I hope to continue with it soon but today I want to share with you some very interesting and useful blogs that some of my dear friends have started.

These are experienced bloggers who have accumulated wealth of knowledge in one or more areas of blogging and are nice enough to share their expertise with us. I recommend checking these out, because I am sure you are going to love these blogs.

Steven Snell of Vandelay Design, who, in addition to maintaining a superb blog, also writes regularly at Blogtrepreneur, Daily Blog Tips, Daily Bits and Pure Blogging, has started a blog called traffikd. This blog is all about Internet Marketing and social media. Steven already has a huge list of over 400 categorized Social Media and Social Networking Sites that you definitely want to check out.

My talented friend Simonne from All tips and tricks and the very hard working Diana of 134u.com, started a joint venture called EZ Money On Net, where Simonne and Diana talk about their experiences on what really worked for them in their quest to make money and what didn't. Check out their informative posts like What are conversions and how can you get some – Affiliate Marketing Guide that are going to be useful for not only the beginner bloggers, but also for the ones who have been in the game for sometime.

Jay Shaffstall from Online Opportunity is going to launch a forum called Advisory Panel on Friday, the 8th. It's a membership site designed to create a cooperative community of Internet Marketers. You can join this forum and get tons of free and discounted stuff, like web hosting and other fine products.

Jacob Share of Job Mob has started another original idea blog called Group Writing Projects (an idea, that I kept thinking about but never could act on it ;)). The blog had been launched and then I think it had some issues to be ironed out, but the blog is something you want to keep an eye on because as the name suggests, is going to display all the current group writing projects that I am very fond of.

As if these are not enough, our very own contest blogger, Phil, who already runs Contest Blogger and Romance Tracker sent me an email about his new blog launch Advertising Blogger, that launched in January. This from their About page:

The blogosphere is growing rapidly, and thousands of bloggers are beginning to discover how to make money by selling advertising on their sites. The concept behind Advertising Blogger is simple: we post free reviews about blogs that are selling advertising.

You got that right, dude: our reviews are absolutely free. Whether your blog gets ten thousand visits a day or ten visits a day, if you are selling advertising then we’re interested in telling our readers about you.

So, there. We can learn all about Making Money Online from Simonne, Diana and Steven's blogs, participate in Group Writing Projects from Jacob's blog and bring tons of traffic with Steven's social media blog and even advertise on Phil's advertising blog to make even more money. And if you still have any unaswered questions, don't forget to sign up at Jay's Advisory Panel to get free answers and advice. These blogs should make just about anyone learn all there is to blogging and be successful.

While blogging is very important hobby, lets not forget about saving our environment. Some bloggers are blogging to teach us just how to save the oceans and our environment. Pelf from Chenpn has just completed a 31 days project on Save the Ocean at her The Giving Hands blog. I wrote an article on the importance of supporting our wetlands.

Hope you all check out these excellent blogs and subscribe to their feeds.

New Blogs, New Opportunities is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

The picture above depicts exactly what happens at my job almost every day.  The big meetings are scheduled, by the time the last person enters the conference room, it’s already 5 minutes over the start time.  By the time we are finished, it’s already half hour into the lunch hour.  

Just like many others, I also set my 2008 goals at the outset of the New Year. I have to confess though that I have been awfully busy at my work these days and after getting home in the evenings, I hardly feel like writing anything, let alone write something good and interesting.  That doesn’t mean I haven’t spent hours on StumbleUpon and Digg and Mixx and chatting to people online.  

Although, all along, I am aware that I could be writing a post, but for some reason,  I am not able to.   It is just too easy to spend aimless time on the web when you could really be resting and getting ready for your next blog post.

During this time, I came across a site called measure productivity which lists articles on how to increase productivity.  The site also has a downloadable productivity software that does exactly what the name implies.  It measures your time spent, hence your productivity on various activities while on your computer. 

I downloaded the trial version and just let it run for a while I surfed the net, wrote a couple of emails, opened Word and Excel to do some reports and other stuff.   And some time, interestingly, the report generated by the software showed my time spent on each of the sites I visited,  email, Windows Live Writer (as I was writing this post – I started reading other drafts).  It even listed the time spent on Word ad Excel. 

The software sits in the system tray without interference with other programs and can be disabled at any time.  You can also customize the time period in the reports for analyzing your activities over a few days, week, month. 

The short time I have used this application, I have definitely loved it.   It’s a type of software that anyone who spends a lot of time on computers could use for all their productivity measures and based on the reports, can work to increase productivity by eliminating doing unnecessary things.  

I recommend the software to anyone who is seriously interested in measuring how much time they spend on the computer, doing things that could be avoided.

Measure your productivity to keep up with goals is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Photo stealing, content theft, RSS scrapers, people hacking into your blog – we have heard about it all, but have you ever thought your entire blog could even be claimed by someone else?

But that is exactly what had happened to Ramkarthic some time ago at MyBlogLog. Someone else had claimed Ramkarthik’s blog back in August of last year and I remember freaking out about it! Talk about dishonesty on the net.  Ramkarthik was able to get the blog ownership back but I can imagine how he might have felt at the time.

So if you have an account with MyBlogLog but hardly ever log in the service, at least now you should go there and claim your blog, just like I am doing right now. There are a couple of methods to claim your blog, either by Undergoing MyBlogLog Verification by writing a post about it or by adding a Meta Tag to your website.

And God forbid, if you are the one whose blog has been claimed by someone else, go here to find out how you can get it back.

Don’t Let Someone Else Claim Your Blog is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

photo by Rayphua

When I first started blogging, I remember not getting even a single comment and it hurt real bad. I kept writing and slowly people started reading and commenting and then some also started linking to my posts and the blog which brought more people to read and give feedback and I felt part of this wonderful community. I LOVE getting comments and hearing different takes on what I write and I LOVE discussions taking place here on the blog.

I have gotten to know so many people by their first names and remember their blogs that now when I see them on some social media site, I can immediately tell who this person is and remember to go to their blog and leave a comment on their post of the day or just say a hi via comment form etc.

But what do I do when some inanimate object like Sofa, Dining Tables, Swimming Pools, Stock Trading Software, Printed Circuit Boards or Ghillie Suits leave a comment and I have no way of knowing who this person is? Clicking on the links they leave gets you to their niche site or some made for adsense site.

Sometimes the comment is nothing but gibrish and I don’t have to think twice about deleting it. My dilemma comes when the comment itself is good but the commenter leaves their business name instead of their own name in the ‘name’ box. I wouldn’t want to delete the comment but I also do not like to talk to furniture or circuit boards.

What do you do? Do you edit the comment or delete it altogether?

Delete or Edit Comments? is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

the easiest way to make your community happy @ muhammad.saleem

Top 10 Tips for Briteny Spears and anyone who is feeling lost in life @ LifeLearningToday

Test your web design in different browsers @ Browser Shots

20 Reasons to go to SobCon08 @ Confident Writing

More Stumble Upon Articles @ Robdogg

Push Beyond Fear and Bust Down the Door to a Successful Life @ My Tropical Escape

5 Simple Ways to Get More Blog Traffic in 2008 @ Shoemoney

Send email to a person in the future @ Sizlopedia

Justice Regins: Stumble Troll BANNED by SU @ Collective Thoughts – a must read for anyone who loves SU

Digg's Top 100 Users @ chrisfinke

Remember Randy Pausch and his Last Lecture? 
Check out this post which talks about Randy being offered a role in the upcoming Star Trek movie.

And if you are short on time and cannot read all the great articles yet, check out this contest for an easy 100 bucks.

Interesting Posts Around the Web – Jan 19 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

I won a free ad place

A few days ago I participated in a blogging tips game called ‘use a letter, share a tip‘ at Worknplay where Ritu asked readers to provide a tip from A to Z. At the time I didn’t even know that Ritu had offered perks to participate as I didn’t read all of the instructions, one of which was 125 x 125 banner ad space toa randomly picked winner. Well, to my pleasant surprise, I won the ad space and the banner is on display at Ritu’s blog. The banner was developed by Mayank Gupta of ReviewSaurus. You might remember Mayank from his guest post here Should we drop the Paid Text Links or not.

Here is the banner that Mayank put together. What dyu say?

CLIQ to discontinue

I received an email from CLIQ today that they will be discontinuing their service as of Jan 31st. CLIQ was originally created by Offermatica, Inc. as a way to research and explore the role of content merchandising in Social Media. As of last month, Offermatica has been acquired by Omniture .

I am really sorry to see the beautiful widget go, especially because of this widget, it was so easy to visit the superb blogs of Tad of SEO 2.0, Fred Peters of Newest on the Net, Lid of BlogWell, and Dicky of TechSnack.

I hope we can keep up with each other’s blogs even after they take away the widget, because I will miss them for sure. In the past months, seeing them on my sidebar here felt they were a part of this blog.

Talk about attachment.

And Now, heres something for you.

Since I will miss CLIQ widget and those lovely faces in my sidebar, I thought of filling up the void, umm empty space with your banner. So, here’s the deal.

If you can tell me in the comments where the heading of this post came from, I’ll enter your name in the draw for a free 125 x 125 ad banner placement for the entire month of February.

Keeping You Posted is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.

Okay, that was the first for me too… I mean, I had never heard the word Blogapalooza before either… but this has been a very popular term in the past few weeks at MiddleZoneMusings where Robert held another Group Writing Project called What I Learned from 2007 and you had to pick the posts that taught you something.

I am glad I was able to make the deadline as the project ended last night.  Today all the entries are up at Robert's Blog – Middle Zone Musings. There are some fantastic entries if you are looking for some inspiration.

PS:  you are welcome to check out the most commented list to see the included posts as one of the links is messing up and Robert will be fixing it later tonite.

Blogapalooza – What I Learned from 2007 is a post from: Interesting Observations - On blogging, social media and self improvement! the original blog written by Pearl.

©2010 Interesting Observations. All Rights Reserved.