Google Adsense Player

Posted Under: technology

I’ve been trying to optimize this site. I don’t want it to become overun with ads like some sites. I want it to still appear neat, clean and friendly. I don’t want visitors to think that they’re going to click the wrong thing and end up on a *prun* site at work and end up losing their job. I’ve also decided to “not” get those ads that pop up on the entire page. They are annoying and I usually avoid sites that use them mostly because they wait until you are reading the second line to pop up and take you somewhere out in the Twilight Zone. But these players I like, especially if the information is relevant. Let me know.

7 Ways to Avoid Being an Email Slave This Year

Posted Under: technology

Although email is an essential business tool, it can also turn out to be a real productivity killer.

One survey showed that most of us spend more than a quarter of our working day responding to emails.

So we can free up a lot of time by following these seven tips on managing email effectively.

1. Stop checking your email every few minutes

The sense of speed and immediacy makes most of us want to react as soon as an email arrives. But the old-fashioned daily mail delivery was actually much more efficient. That way you can plan your time more effectively and focus on priorities.

So the first step in getting control over your email is to stop checking it every few minutes and start checking it twice a day. That means logging out of your email account at all other times. And if you have a notification alert that tells you each time an email arrives ‘ you need to switch it off.

2. Set strict time limits on the time you spend checking emails

If you decide in advance how long you are going to spend dealing with emails, it stops you wasting time on the less important ones.

It encourages you to act on the ones that need attention rather than following an interesting link, reading jokes, or following pointless discussions. And we are generally more efficient when we concentrate on one type of task at a time.

For most people, a limit of about 15 minutes at a time is probably appropriate. Yes that is 15 minutes twice a day ‘ which may not seem much. But you’ll be surprised at how disciplined you can become.

3. Use separate email accounts for different purposes.

It’s often worth considering having different email accounts for different purposes. For example keep business and personal separate. And have one business account for important contacts and another for newsletter subscriptions and mailing lists. You can then check the less urgent one less often.

4. Scan first to decide what’s important

Your email account doesn’t know which items are most important so it serves them to you in the order they arrive. Many people are tempted to deal with them in that order too.

Deal with your email in the way you would read a newspaper. Look at the subject line and the name of the sender first. That lets you concentrate your time and attention on the most important emails.

5. Apply a one-touch approach

The best way to remain on top of your email is to handle it quickly and decide whether to do it, delegate it or delete it rather than spending too much time thinking about it.

6. Use technology to make email management easier

Email has time-saving technology built in but few of us make full use of it. For example:

- create an easy-to-follow filing process using folders and sub-folders.

- use the search function to find old emails.

- set up ‘rules’ to apply specific actions to messages that fit these rules.

- set up autoresponders to avoid having to respond to every email manually.

7. Create standard replies to common inquiries

You can create templates or standard wordings that you can re-use by simple cut-and paste rather than creating the same message multiple times.

So remember that email can be a productivity killer or it can play a vital role in building your business and making your day more productive. It’s up to you to decide which you prefer!

Robert Greenshields is a marketing success coach who helps business owners and professionals who are frustrated that they’re working too many hours for too little reward. Sign up for his free tips on earning more and working less at MindPowerMarketing.com.

How To Safely Forward E-Mails

Posted Under: peeves, technology

I am sending you this because I want you to protect yourself and your online friends. I recently received an email from you that somewhat troubled me. Frankly, knowing that someone who gets your mail might invade my privacy, scares me!

This came to me direct from a system administrator for a corporate system. It is an excellent message that ABSOLUTELY applies to ALL of us who send e-mails. And, a good reminder for those of us who already know, but get *too busy to take the time* due to the number of messages we’ve received. Please read the short letter below …

Do you really know how to forward e-mails? 50% of us do; 50% DO NOT.

Do you wonder why you get viruses or junk mail? Do you hate it? Every time you forward an e-mail there is information left over from the people who got the message before you, namely their e-mail addresses & names. As the messages get forwarded along, the list of addresses builds, and builds, and builds, and all it takes is for some poor sap to get a virus, and his or her computer can send that virus to every E-mail address that has come across his computer.

Or, someone can take all of those addresses and sell them or send junk mail to them in the hopes that you will go to the site and he will make five cents for each hit. That’s right, all of that inconvenience over a nickel! How do you stop it? Well, there are two easy steps:

(1) When you forward an e-mail, DELETE all of the other addresses that appear in the body of the message (at the top).

That’s right, DELETE them. High light them and delete them, backspace them, cut them, whatever it is you know how to do. It only takes a second.

You MUST click the “Forward” button first and then you will have full editing capabilities against the body and headers of the message. If you don’t click on “Forward” first, you won’t be able to edit the message at all.

(2) Whenever you send an e-mail to more than one person, do NOT use the To: or Cc:columns for adding e-mail address. Always use the BCC:(blind carbon copy) column for listing the e-mail addresses.

This is the way that people you send to only see their own e-mail address. If you don’t see your BCC: option click on where it says To: and your address list will appear. Highlight the address and choose BCC: and that’s it, it’s that easy.

When you send to BCC: your message will automatically say “Undisclosed Recipients in the “TO:” field of the people who receive it.

(3) Remove any “FW:” in the subject line.

You can re-name the subject if you wish or even fix spelling.

(4) ALWAYS hit your Forward button from the actual e-mail you are reading.

Ever get those e-mails that you have to open 10 pages to read the one page with the information on it?

By Forwarding from the actual page you wish someone to view, you stop them from having to open many e-mails just to see what you sent.

Have you ever gotten an email that is a petition? It states a position and asks you to add your name and address and to forward it to 10 or 15 people or your entire address book. The email can be forwarded on and on and can collect thousands of names and email addresses.

A FACT: The completed petition is actually worth a couple of bucks to a professional spammer because of the wealth of valid names and email addresses contained therein.

If you want to support the petition, send it as your own personal letter to the intended recipient. Your position may carry more weight as a personal letter than a laundry list of names and email address on a petition.

So please, in the future, let’s stop the junk mail and the viruses.

Finally, here’s an idea!!! Let’s send this to everyone we know (but strip my address off first).

This is something that SHOULD be forwarded!

Tim Stelly Invents the Stellku

Posted Under: technology

Sometimes you run across great technology on the internet, and sometimes you just discover something, by complete accident.

Tim, I told you that when you’ve gone ahead and created your own poetry form I’d have to immortalize you on my pop culture blog. So tell us, what is a Stellku?

Let me begin by saying that I am partial to form poetry. Trying to say as much as possible within a limited framework of meter and syllables is challenging, and for me, stimulating. As a fan of Japanese verse, in particular, haiku and tanka, I sought to pay homage by creating something similar in style, but that allowed me a little more wiggle room, hence, what I call “stellku” came to life.

The form is six lines made up of of two (usually) unrhymed tercets. The first line of the first stanza has 4 syllables, the second has 6 and the third has 8. The first line of the second stanza has 3 syllables, the second has 5 and the third line has 7.

Can you give us a few samples?

Our kids need books
and not video games
teach them 2 love 1 another
Don’t say I
“Talk like a white man”
I’m just educated, bro…

A more difficult test was writing a stellku that rhymes

Heat

Absence of light
and you wrap your legs tight
synchronized, fervent, pelvic thrusts
gyrate; push
you make me shiver
your insides moisten; quiver.

One of my favorite Stellkus is:

I must say that as an advocate against abuse of any kind the stellku above touched me very deeply. Lots of things inspire poetry in me, but I wanted to know for you, what inspired this particular selection?

I know two woman who were the victim of such abuse. One day we were discussing “The Queen Bee Syndrome” (when the mother is envious of her mates relationship with the daughter, and there is subsequent tension between the two females). The result was pregnancies and children who were abandoned by their fathers. It dawned on me that perhaps this wasn’t as rare as I first imagined.

Furthermore, we have a generation of young ladies who are the victims of older and irresponsible men, who impregnate them and then abandon the child borne from that tryst. I don’t think pregnancy should be an “Alan Smithee” production. After some thought, the aforementioned piece came to life.

How long have you been writing and is poetry your first love?

I’ve been writing “rhymes” since third grade. That didn’t evolve into poetry writing until I got to college and realized that poetry is more than form, but feeling and message as well. I was introduced to the various European forms through one of my college instructors, Gus Gustafson. At the time, I thought it was largely irrelevant, especially since most poets I knew were writing free and blank verse.

Now I understand the challenge and beauty in such work.

I’ve also experimented with a version of the etheree, which is made up of ten lines, each with an incremental increase of syllables. For instance, the first line has one syllable, the second has two syllables, etc. I’ve “invented” a form I call the “mixed etheree,” made up of ten lines, each with a different number of syllables from one to ten; only they do not have to be in ascending or descending order.

This is becoming one of my favorite styles. Here is an example of what I mean:

Failed Relationship

A muddled beginning, sagging middle…
Damn…
No matter
how carefully we
construct the phraseology of
this collaborative love story
we keep cutting
pasting
finally deleting
‘til we’re back to a blank page

Poetry is not my first love. I prefer writing novels, in particular, what I call “hip-hop poli-sat,” which is my way of saying political satire with a strong urban tenor. I oftentimes write poetry when my novel muse has forsaken me. She’s moody7 that way.

Aside from you own what is your favorite form of poetry?

I love the sonnet. There is something romantic about it. I also like a French form called kyrielle, which is written in stanzas of four, with one line appearing as a refrain in each subsequent stanza, usually the last one. Also, each line contains 8 syllables.

I’ll occasionally use some of the olde English language, such as “ebon,” “alas,” and using “’ere,” rather than before (but this is usually when I need to keep a line in synch). Still, I like the feel of the piece and gives it a different twist.

Tell the readers a little bit more about you, what you’re working on now and where they can read more of your work?

I’ve finished adding some new pieces to my first book of poetry, Stories From The Black Side of the Rainbow, which I hope will drop by July. It is an eclectic mix of love poems, social and political pieces and that runs the gamut from joy to tragedy. I am also pushing to get two novels print-ready, one a sci-fi piece titled Human Trial, and the other a love-gone-estremely-bad piece, Drownin’ In A Sea Of Love.

I am now a regular contributor to the erotic e-zine, Oysters and Chocolate. Several of my essays can be found at afroknowledge.blogspot.com, e-zinearticles.com (most of which focus on poetry,
presidential politics and film noir) and more than 300 humorous and political food for thought at useless-knowledge.com.

I am currently revising my baby, a 600-page coming of age story, Darker Than Blue set against the backdrop of an integrated high school in the mid 1970s. Furthermore, I’m still polishing up a few screenplays, so I’m pretty busy these days.

The Black and Married with Kids Interview

Posted Under: interviews, technology

What inspired Black and Married with Kids?

We wanted to provide a positive face for black families with a mother and father in the household. We didn’t feel like that was being represented enough.

Who runs the site? Do your children have any input?

Just the two of us, the kids don’t really have any input other than giving us material to write about without knowing it, ha ha.

Do you find that black men and women who don’t have children frequent your site as well as singles?

Definitely, I think it’s a pretty good mix of people that are single and married, with or without kids. Our single readers have a lot to add to our conversations, especially concerning relationships and sometimes they provide questions to us that they want us to present to our married readers to get feedback.

Your site does very friendly movie reviews. Do you have any plans to include books?

In the future we plan to expand beyond movies and music to books, plays, events etc…

What is the weirdest thing or question you’ve encountered running the site so far?

All of the questions have been really good but what probably surprised us the most was the response we got to a user question about why married couples don’t wear rings. We thought it would be a post that didn’t generate much discussion but actually it turned out being a hot topic.

What do you find are some of the most popular features on your site?

Definitely the relationship talk. People can’t get enough of it. Some of the topics we’ve covered are how long is too long to date if you want to
get married, why are there so many single black females, beware of advice, and what to do when no one agrees with your relationship.

Are there any plans to feature a couple of the month or run contests for visitors?

You must be a mind reader! Actually we’re starting that feature this month and will do at least one couple a month. When we first started that was one of the main things we wanted to do, show that there are plenty of successful black couples contrary to what you see and hear about us as a people.

I love how you cover politics, entertainment and deal with relationships. It’s a wonderful mix. Are there any plans to add other categories?

As topics come up we add them, the site is flexible and we want to talk about what’s on the mind of people that are black and married with kids. Sometimes, that’s politics, parenting or relationships and sometimes it’s as simple as if I only have a babysitter for one night, what movie do I want to see and is it worth me dropping twenty bucks a piece on the tickets?

What do you feel are the major benefits that visitors will acquire coming to your site?

We think they’ll get a good perspective of a real couple. We’re not perfect but we are in love and we do love our children. We’re living life
day by day and not taking anything for granted and we want to share that.

What do you say to those who say that you’ve alienated those of non-African American descent?

Most of our topics are not necessarily race specific and we think anyone can learn and identify with a lot of the issues we discuss. But we do want stress that the Black family is still alive and kicking. If we don’t who will?

Thanks to the two of you for a very interesting interview.

Visit Married and Black with Kids at www.MarriedandBlackwithKids.com.