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These easy-to-do traditional Chinese techniques form a highly effective stiff neck remedy. The first is a simple
massage technique that warms and loosens your neck muscles to relieve stiffness and pain. The second technique provides stiff neck relief by stimulating blood flow in your neck, shoulders and upper back - all you need is a spoon and a few drops of oil.

Stiff Neck Remedy - Neck Massage

Rub your hands together briskly to warm them up and charge them with energy. Place your palms on the back of your neck with your fingers interlocked. Rub your neck from side to side for several minutes. Feel the heat penetrating your neck muscles. Repeat several times a day.

Or, as above but just use the fingers of one hand to rub your neck with firm, even strokes from the base of your skull to the base of your neck. Make sure you rub both sides of the back of your neck and any painful or tender spots. This technique works well as a preventative stiff neck remedy too - as soon as you begin feeling stiffness or pain, use it to relax and loosen your neck muscles.

Stiff Neck Remedy - Skin Scraping

This is a traditional Chinese home remedy for stiff neck that anyone can quickly learn. As it’s not easy to do on your own neck you’ll need someone else to do it for you. All you need is a spoon and a few drops of oil - massage oil, sesame oil or even vicks vaporub will do. A Chinese soup spoon works well as does the edge of a metal vicks vaporub lid. Basically, you use the edge of the spoon or lid to rub (scrape) the neck for a few minutes until it turns red (or in some cases purple!) The scraping action moves the blood in the underlying muscles and soft tissues of the neck, relieving stiffness and pain almost immediately. It works equally well for acute and chronic stiff neck. Here’re the steps to follow:

1. The person with the stiff neck should sit down and remove any clothing or jewelry covering the neck, and also tie up long hair.

2. Apply a few drops of oil to ONE side of the back of the neck - just enough to lightly lubricate the skin. Too much and the spoon will slip and slide uncontrollably.

3. Stand behind the person and start scraping his/her neck in long, even strokes with the edge of the spoon, from the base of the skull, down the neck and across the top of the shoulder. Press as hard as you can without causing excess pain - it’s the muscles you’re working with more than the skin so you need to apply a little pressure. Apply 30-50 strokes. Notice the skin turning red. There may be lots of tiny red spots which may actually be dark red, purple or even black. This is simply stagnant blood in the muscles - it’s nothing to be concerned about. The darker the spots, the more stiffness, pain and stagnation the person usually has in their neck. All you’re doing is releasing the stagnant blood and improving circulation in the neck muscles. This very often gives immediate relief.

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 on the other side of the neck. People with neck problems often have pain and tension in their
upper back too, so you may also have to scrape down either side of their spine between their shoulder blades.

5. If the person feels dizzy at any stage, stop, and have them lie down and take some slow deep breaths.

6. Depending on the color of the spots, they make take several days to a week or more to fade. Once faded completely, you may reapply the treatment if the person still has pain. One to three scraping treatments over several weeks is usually enough to alleviate most neck problems involving muscular tension, stiffness and pain.

A final note - don’t be fooled by the apparent simplicity of this technique. As mentioned, it very often provides instant stiff neck relief and may be the only stiff neck remedy you ever need. In fact the author has found skin scraping to be a more effective stiff neck remedy than acupuncture.

Matthew Scott is a professionally trained Chinese medicine practitioner from Australia, living in China since 2000. Matthew offers additional stiff neck exercises and techniques on his website at:
http://chinese-holistic-health-exercises.com/stiff-neck-exercise.html

When people look to submit their sites to the major search engines, there are some key mistakes that should be avoided for successful promotion.

Spam

The surefire way of getting your site blacklisted from the major search engines. Many people see creating thousands of cloaked or doorway pages with hidden text as the quick route to ranking success. It isn’t.

Untargeted Traffic

It’s one thing to generate lots of new traffic to your site, but is it the right traffic? If you’re selling DVD’s for example, you want potential buyers to visit, not people who are searching for pictures of a certain movie star. Best to make it clear in your meta information exactly what your site does, then you’ll get the type of clientele you’re after!

Single Keywords

Unless you’re in some incredible niche marketplace where a single word can only be identified with your product with few competitors, single keywords aren’t going to hit the bullseye in a traffic sense. Multiple word keyword phrases are the key to traffic success. Instead of going for “books”, go for “thai recipe books” or whatever your target market is. You’ll have far less competition for that keyword phrase than just a single word. Believe us, we’ve worked on a bookseller’s site.

Poor Design

There’s no way around this one. You can have the best rankings in the world, but if your site looks bad, you’ll lose that traffic as soon as it arrives. Good, simple, clean design always wins - sloppy design and gimmicks don’t!

I Don’t Need Links

Oh yes you do. Links are crucial to the traffic building game. Without links to your site from others (if they’re competitors, even better), good meta information won’t be enough. Most search engines will rank your webpage according to its popularity with its peers. if a lot of sites link to yours, it must be good, so Google & Co. will boost your rating (link popularity algorithms). Read our dedicated article here.

Messy Meta Tags

It’s worth spending a bit of time getting your meta tags in order - they tell search engines what your site’s about, and act as a basic marketing tool to attract visitors to your site. Check the spelling and make them relevant and you’ll be off to a flyer. Read our dedicated article here.

Stickiness

Page design and marketing are inseperable. Once you’ve attracted your visitors, your traffic building exercise has gone well and your site looks good, what are you offering which will encourage return visits? Regular site updates are very useful since your site will appear active and worth revisiting. The most successful sites we’ve worked on have been regularly updated. After all the effort you’ve gone to in gaining traffic, it’s worth considering how to hang on to it.

Messy Code

After the search engine robots have visited your site, they’ll see the meta information first, then they’ll scan your page for the first chunk of relevant text. A large number of sites have cluttered code (Javascript usually) after the meta tags. This will not help your search engine ranking since the relevant text will be too far down the page. Try hiving the Javascript code (or similar) into another file and refer to it from the HTML.

Beware of Rogue “Experts”

Before handing your hard earned money over to “Site Submission Experts”, be sure to find out exactly what you’re getting. They may claim to be able to submit your site to “30,000 engines”, but let’s be honest, there’s only a handful which create almost all the search traffic on the web, so you can submit yourself. Some firms claim to guarantee you a Top 20 ranked page - yes, if your search phrase is 8 words long. It’s not that easy in reality. Reputable firms can help you optimize your pages, and advise you on how best to market your site to your target audience, so best to do some homework first.

Patience

Building traffic is an ongoing activity. After your initial hard work, you should check your pages on the engines and “tweak” them if the results aren’t as you expected. Traffic is the oxygen of the Internet and your site is dead without it, so regularly give your code a tune-up and resubmit if necessary. Don’t oversubmit though. If you look at your server logs, you’ll see the major engine robots visiting on a regular basis, they’ll pick up your changes soon enough if you can afford to wait a week or so.

All the best with your traffic building efforts!

About The Author

James Leckie is editor of http://www.bytestart.co.uk - the small business portal and http://www.trafficgeneration.com - the web promotion portal.

Shelly’s been divorced for several years and finally in the mood to start dating again. Like most women, she took a long time for her broken heart to heal. She waited until her every thought wasn’t about her lost love. She lived with the pain, knowing that she wasn’t ready for a new relationship because she wasn’t emotionally available and had nothing to give. The few dates she had were disasters – everything reminded her of her ex or made her anxious – so she took a time out.

She got busy doing other things. She made a life with her children, poured herself into her job and volunteer work.

One day she realized there was something missing in her life, and that dating sounded good. She was ready for a new relationship. She had ignored herself and her needs for long enough, and was hungry for the love and attention of a man. She had a lot to give.

So what does she find when she steps out into the dating world in earnest?

She finds Anthony. Anthony’s separated and has filed for divorce. He’s sure he’s going to go through with the divorce, is excruciatingly lonely, and in extreme pain, so, like most men, he’s going to make the pain go away as fast as he can, by finding the love of another woman.

It doesn’t matter a whole lot to Bill who the woman is, just as long as it’s now. While not exactly mindful about it, a nurturing, motherly type would be nice, someone who’ll take care of him and not cause him a lot of “trouble.”

So we have a woman who’s waited too long, and has a lot to give, and a man who hasn’t waited long enough, who wants to be given a lot.

Pain and suffering. They’re a part of life we don’t like to think about, don’t like to see others have, and don’t like to have ourselves. Breaking up with someone we love is so hard on us, it’s almost incomprehensible that in the US the first-marriage divorce rate is 50%; the second-marriage divorce rate, 60%; and the third-marriage divorce rate, 70%.

Somebody isn’t learning something!

Men react to emotional pain the way they do to most emotions — as a call to action. If a man loses the love of a woman, he will go out and find the love of another woman. He is not always discriminating about this, nor does he take his time. These transitional relationships usually end abruptly when he does begin to heal, and feels good about himself again.

Women react to emotional pain the way they do to most emotions — feeling them, dealing with them, turning to work and service to others and being reluctant to get involved again.

Women feel the feelings. Men solve the problem.

Imagine the futility and pain when the woman who has waited too long hooks up with the man freshly divorced and moving too fast too soon. She is looking for the new true-love of her life. He is looking for a temporary solution to his problem.

This is a common scenario, and not a good one. The love affair can be a heated one, but one destined to abort, abruptly. Either the man begins to regain his equilibrium and self-esteem, and leaves for what to him are greener pastures, or the woman gets tired of giving and not getting, sees through the smoke screen finally, and reluctantly takes her heart elsewhere. Pain, disillusion, guilt, and anger are the results. And lost time.

The solution? Awareness. Communication. Some EQ (emotional intelligence). The man in this scenario is going to be coming forward with both barrels loaded, and that’s one sign to look for. Protestations of love, promises of babies, and trips to the Caribbean – too much too soon, too good to be true. Women who’ve dated men in this shape via the Internet tell me they’ve been proposed to by the 3rd email. It’s heady stuff, and if you’ve been waiting a long time, hard to resist.

Is this real love? you wonder. Does he mean what he says? How do you judge something like this? Know the scenario, first of all. Then, keep your head about you.

Postponing sex is one good way to keep your head about you. A man who is really interested in a woman for who she is, is more than willing to wait. A man who needs a woman right now, any woman, is not. If that’s all he wants and you deny, better to find out sooner than later.

Those wonderful chemicals released in physical intimacy cloud everything and escalate emotions for women. If you’re just after a nice affair, then go in with your eyes wide open and hang on to your heart. Those wonderful chemicals are the best antidote in the world for depression, so he’s looking.

BTW, according to a recent survey, only 2% of women think sex on the first date is appropriate, and only 20% of men, so if it’s suggested, wonder why.

It’s highly unlikely someone who has just met you sees the real you and loves you “as you’ve always wanted to be loved” in the space of a few days. It happens, but I wouldn’t count on it.

Protect yourself, and take your time. Good things don’t need to be rushed; they tolerate a wait quite well. Listen to what he says in the between-times, and what he does. Obsessing about his ex, being overly demanding, being unable to tolerate arguments, over-reacting to your requests, calling them “demands” and “pressure,” and showing ambivalence are all signs that you’re going to be the “transitional affair”> If you get emotionally involved, you’re going to have your heart served to you on a platter.

This has to be something you do on your own, incidentally. (Coaching is good for objective feedback.) Asking directly won’t produce an honest answer, because likely he’s driven, in denial, and not able to be honest with himself.

Should you date a man newly-divorced (or separated), I mean for more than idle entertainment? Since so many men rush into the next affair, even the next marriage, it’s hard to catch one who’s truly ready and emotionally available for a relationship, but it may be worth your time to let some of the adorable newly-divorced (or separated) ones go elsewhere to cut their teeth considering that the second-marriage divorce rate is even higher than the first. If he rushes on to another broken-heart, it doesn’t mean you need to!

Keep your smarts about you, and good luck!

About the Author

©Susan Dunn, MA, The EQ Coach, http://www.susandunn.cc . Offering coaching, Internet courses, and ebooks around emotional intelligence for your personal and professional success. Relationship coaching, career, transitions, other. I train and certify EQ coaches. Mailto:sdunn@susandunn.cc for info on this fast, affordable, comprehensive, no-residency program training coaches worldwide. Email for fr** EQ ezine.

We are all familiar with gold and silver. Some even value one goodness with the amount of silver and gold they have. People have stolen and killed for the likes of it. This brings me to the question of what is more important, life, good health and peace of mind or precious stones and jewelry (silver & gold.) Let’s see what the Bible says about silver and gold. Look at the book of Deuteronomy 17:17 it says He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold.

Now look at Judges 8: 23 But Gideon told them, I will not rule over you, nor will my son rule over you. The Lord will rule over you. And he said, I do have one request, that each of you give me an earring from your share of the plunder.(it was the custom of the Ishmaelites to wear gold earrings.) They answered, We’ll be glad to give them. So they spread out a garment, and each man threw a ring from his plunder onto it. The weight of the gold rings he asked for came to seventeen hundred shekels, not counting the ornaments, the pendants and the purple garments worn by the kings of Midian or the chains that were on the camels neck. Gideon made the gold into an ephod( an article of clothing), which he placed in Ophrah, his town. All Israel prostituted themselves by worshiping it there, and it became a snare to Gideon and his family.

(Note) Gideon’s Ephod: After the Midianite war, the people gave a share of their plunder to Gideon; one gold earring each. Gideon takes the gold and forms it into an ephod, an article of clothing connected with worshiping God (Ex 28:6). Unfortunately, Gideon’s ephod has no such high purpose. Soon after he makes it, the Israelites begin to worship it. So quickly they forget their miraculous deliverance from the Midianites, so quickly they turn from God to go their own way-a story repeated time after time throughout Judges and throughout the history of the church as well. God forgives, God delivers. We’re thankful and close to him for a time, but then we soon forget and go our own way a cycle that God will continue to work to break).

Now look at Psalm 106:39 it says They defiled themselves by what they did; by their deeds they prostituted themselves. Therefore the Lord was angry with his people and abhorred his inheritance. He handed them over to the nations, and their foes ruled over them. Their enemies oppressed them and subjected them to their power. Many times he delivered them, but they were bent on rebellion and they wasted away in their sin.

Look at Psalm 19:8 it says The law of the Lord is perfect, reviving the soul. The statutes of the Lord are trustworthy, making wise the simple. The precepts of the Lord are right, giving joy to the heart. The commands of the Lord are radiant, giving light to the eyes. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. The ordinance of the Lord are sure and altogether righteous. They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold; they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb. By them is your servant warned; in keeping them there is great reward. Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults. Keep your servant also from willful sins; may they not rule over me.

Now look at Psalms 119:9 it says How can a young man keep his way pure? By living according to your word. I seek you with all my heart; do not let me stray from your commands. I have hidden your words in my heart that I might not sin against you. Praise be to you, O Lord; teach me your decress. With my lips I recount all the laws that come from your mouth. I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoice in great riches. I meditate on your precepts and consider your ways. I delight in your decrees; I will not neglect your word.

In closing look at Proverbs 22:1 it says A good name is more desirable than great riches; to be esteemed is better than silver or gold. Rich and poor have this in common; The Lord is maker of them all. A prudent man sees danger and takes refuge, but the simple keep going and suffer for it. Humility and fear of the Lord bring wealth and honor and life.

Love Always,
Your Sister in Christ,
Mellody Davis

Enjoy more reading at: http://www.hostinghelps.com/allaboutjesus

Take a second and imagine your shopping on a website, find the product you’ve been looking for, and as you go to the order form to purchase it, you find out that the company doesn’t accept payment online. Instead, you must mail a check. If you were like me, you would probably click off the site and search for another company that offers the same products and *does* accept payment online, whether it is by credit card or online check. It doesn’t take a super, intelligent person to realize that it is inconvenient, time consuming, and adds on lag time till you get your purchase when you must sit down, write out a check, and mail it. That is why it is extremely important that you offer some type of online payment solution for your e-business.

Accepting credit cards is the most well known way to accept payment on the Internet. Almost everyone has a credit card and by accepting his or hers, it makes customers’ ordering process much more convenient and time saving, not to mention it encourages them to purchase from you. Accepting credit cards has become a necessity to the survival of e-businesses.
In order to accept credit cards, you’re going to need a merchant account. To obtain one, just do a search on your favorite search engine. You will be provided with a list of many different merchant account providers to choose from. Merchant services contract with several merchant-processing banks that will actually accept and process your business transactions.

For each transaction the bank processes, you will be charged a discount rate, or percentage, of the face value of the amount charged, along with a per transaction fee (usually ranging from $0.20 to $0.30). When you perform your transaction, and receive an authorization number, the charged amount is immediately wire-transferred out of your customers’ credit card account into your merchant account. The merchant bank will then discount, or deduct, the percentage rate and per transaction fee, and wire-transfer the balance of the charge into the business checking account of your choice. At the end of the month, you will receive a statement, for your records, so that you can balance your account.

There are three ways to perform transactions:

1. Terminals/Hardware

2. Point of Sale Software

3. Real-Time (Automatic Online Transactions)

Since this article is focusing solely on online payment solutions for your e-business, I will focus on real-time. How real-time works is when your customer is finished shopping and is ready to pay, they simply go to the secure order form page where they type in their credit card information. In a few seconds, a message appears on their screen, showing whether their card was accepted or declined. A few days later, the money will appear in your business checking account. With real-time, you will be provided with an online database containing all of your credit card transactions so you can balance your account at the end of the month.

There’s a second, and probably more unfamiliar way, to accept payment online, and that is accepting checks by email. Until recently, service bureaus have been responsible for check drafting, but now any business can do it. Federal banking regulations and the Uniform Commercial Code permit this process.

How it works is: a customer submits his checking account information and authorization to draft their account; then the merchant takes the information and enters it into a check printing program on their computer. From that point, the merchant can print it on special check paper (available from the software provider) and take the check “draft” to their bank and deposit it as if the check was mailed directly to them. Not only can a merchant accept checks by email with the program; they can also accept them by phone and fax capabilities, also. This is a great alternate solution to credit cards as you will find some customers who aren’t interested in putting their credit card information on your site. If your interested in this type of payment solution many merchant account providers can help you get this solution along with a merchant account for credit card acceptance.

In summary, I would highly recommend obtaining a merchant account for your business. As the Internet continues to grow, more businesses come online and more people decide to make purchases on the Web, it will become essential that your business accept payment online (especially credit cards) in order to survive in today’s business world.

I hope this helps in your future marketing decisions.

David Bell
# 1 Internet Marketing Agency -Online Advertising Agency
Advertising research and development center

“It is never too late to be what you might have been. “(George Eliot)

I have found that truly successful people surround themselves with the support that makes them excel. Over years of working with clients I have found that people struggle when they put their businesses and their lives in a self-imposed limiting box and keep doing the same things over and over again.

So what I do it is help people dismantle that box – the attitudes, ideas, beliefs, choices and strategies that keep them limited – and I teach them how to connect to the full range of their talents, abilities and resources so that they can bring that immensity and excitement back into their daily planning and choices.

I define a limiting box as any idea of yourself or the world, any attitude, any language you use, any belief or any experience that diminishes you in anyway or robs you of your personal power and prevents you from moving forward in the world.

Living in these boxes keeps us within what we already know – we repeat the same habitual actions hoping for a better result and end up disillusioned and feeling stuck. In order to live the best life possible for yourself you have to master the skill of moving into the unknown. The unknown is really anything outside of the box that we have created from past experiences, beliefs and ideas. It is where fresh opportunity, excitement and more satisfaction reside.

Over and over again in working with new clients we uncover the ways in which they are creating difficulty for themselves by not even seeing the opportunities that are right in front of them – just slightly outside of their box. Often, they feel frustrated in their efforts and even give up on doing what they love most. In doing this they turn away from what could bring their greatest reward.

Here are some symptoms of living “in the box”:

• Frustration

• Anger

• Lack of energy or motivation

• Feeling stuck

• Resentment

• Lack of creativity

• Disorganization

• Cynicism

• Not doing what you love

• Boredom

• A sense of failure

• Despair

There are many boxes that people create for themselves. Here are a few of them:

1.The box of language – the I’m not or you’re not good enough box.

Language is a powerful tool. How we use it both describes and begins to structure our experience for us.

Every time you use language that diminishes you or others – “That was stupid of me”,

“I’m never going to make this work”, “life it just too hard”…..etc, etc. – we strengthen the walls of the box we are in.

2. The box of familiar actions – the I’m safe if I don’t try anything-new box.

Our actions can either open new doorways for us or keep us in the same groove we are familiar with. Someone described his experience of this lately. He said that it is like going down a dead-end street and then having to turn around and come back again over and over again– wasting a whole lot of energy and time in the process. After doing this a number of times people often give up. Seeing and acting outside of the box can allow you a different perspective from which to connect the dots.

3. The box of blame – the I have no power box.

Many people insist on blaming their circumstances, the financial markets, their spouse, dog or anyone else for the situation they are in. Until you can recognize and identify the ways you are perpetuating this box and take responsibility it is very difficult to make real progress. Granted externals have an impact but recognizing how you create a box out of circumstances allows you the power and energy to begin moving out of it.

4. The box of negative expectation – the I know that the same thing is going to happen box.

When faced with something you don’t know notice if you expect either something negative to happen or expect that what you have experienced before will repeat itself. Many people use this as a way to move away from their fear of change and keep the status quo in place. They would rather stay with the known pain than risk something new. The unknown I am talking about has all the possibility in it – if we project our negative or limiting expectations on it there is no room for anything new. Imagine what would happen if this box didn’t hold you!

What are your favorite boxes and what might happen in your personal or professional life if you were guided out of those boxes? Often it is hard for us to do it alone. Sometimes we can’t even identify where we are stuck without a fresh set of very interested eyes.

Coaching can offer you that new vantage point, that broader view and the support and tools needed to move outside your BOX.

About The Author

Connie Butler is a personal and professional coach working with individuals and groups to clarify their greatest vision and cultivate its successful realization – moving them past their growth frontier into new territory. She is available for personal or professional coaching, seminars and can be reached at 305-534-1119 or connie@conniebutler.biz. Ms. Butler appears on Entertainment News and Views On-The-Air on Waxy Radio 790AM between 5-7pm every second Friday.

connie@conniebutler.biz

Are you a procrastinating perfectionist? I once read an article dealing with the fear of failure and success. The author described it as the following: “The curse of the procrastinating perfectionist”.

Boy did I ever associate myself with that statement. I was the kind of guy who would always wait around for the perfect opportunity to come by without attempting anything less than perfect. Did that opportunity ever come by? Not at all… In fact only once I realized what I was doing did opportunities start appearing in my life.

Are you someone like this? Do you wait around hoping to achieve something perfect? Let me tell you a little secret. It’s never going to happen. We simply do not live in a perfect world. Let me tell you something else to try to motivate you.

Imagine the following: you are an old, crippled, lonely man. You have been waiting around almost a century for your dream girl to walk into your life. You are still dreaming of her because she has of course, never showed up. The saddest part is that it doesn’t matter anymore. You’d be too old to make love to her anyway.

Wake up! You’re still reasonably young! Don’t wait until you’re 90 years old and unable to do anything. You need to realize this today!

Don’t let your procrastination stop you from going after what you want. And especially do not let any fears stop you. The sooner you face your fears, the sooner you’ll improve yourself and eventually get what you want. You need to go out there in life and realize that if you want to achieve any success you’re going to have to experience failure. If you don’t believe me then read the following quote:

“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot, and I missed. And I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is precisely why I succeed.”
– Michael Jordan

Failure is not final. So stop waiting around for that perfect opportunity to come by your way. Stop procrastinating! Go out there, face your fears, and go after what you want. If you need more tips visit my website to read more of my articles.

Pete Grand is the author of the breakthrough ebook: “How To Overcome Shyness: A man’s complete guide on overcoming shyness”. To learn more about overcoming shyness, gaining popularity and boosting self-confidence visit http://www.overcome-shyness.com

This is a continuation from my articles on RSS

• Part One - “RSS Mania Addiction - An Introduction to RSS and the Terminology”
• Part Two - Outline of How to Create an RSS Feed”
• Part Three - The Template File”
• Part Four - The Basic Elements of the Channel Element”

In my last article on the major aspects of the “Channel” element, I promised to continue with the sub-elements of the Channel. This I will do in the next article. The time has come to explain how an RSS feed works, as it is critical to understand just what some of the RSS template commands want from us as well as our readers (in their options command.) No doubt towards the end of the series I will return to this information, however before getting into some possibilities in the template file, it is important to understand just what is going on “behind the scenes.”

Years ago before the Internet, Windows and all HTML hit our PC universe, most of us were plugging and possibly blogging away with our computers if we were programmers. I certainly was one of those nutty programmers trying to decipher the innards of Dbase II. At that time instead of the Unicode sets and the various language sets, you were basically limited to the 256 code table of “ASCII”. So what that meant was if you had special characters they sat in the Ascii table above the 128 margin (as below was reserved for English and special characters). That was great for those who wanted to see only English. But in languages such as Hebrew, not only did you have a right to left orientation, but there came to be known, for years, the infamous ALT-141 character problem. Alt-141 was assigned to a Hebrew character “mem-sofit”. The problem was it was also assigned to a “back space”. So instead of users getting a “mem-sofit” when they hit the character they would invariably erase the letter before! So if you were programming a database for instance, and you wanted the user to input information, you literally had to write an entire key-map utility to trap keys and to re-map them while the user was typing in order to display the correct character. It was a royal pain in the butt.

Why do I suddenly go into nostalgia of ASCII and pre-windows? You think we have come a long way? Think again!

One of the most annoying, impossible, crazy conventions is what HTML does with four specific characters. (Indeed to format this document correctly for an article I must go through a great deal more typing.) These are:

1. < (less than sign) which is created by typing "&"+"lt;" (A plus was added as otherwise the system will interpert it as a < less than sign and reproduce it. You ignore the quotation marks and the plus but don't forget the semi-colon ; at the end!.)
2. > (greater than sign) which is created by typing “&”+”gt;” (A plus was added as otherwise the system will interpert it as a > greater than sign and reproduce it. You ignore the quotation marks and the plus but don’t forget the semi-colon ; at the end!..)
3. & (The ampersand sign itself) which is created by typing “&”+”amp;” (A plus was added as otherwise the system will interpert it as an & and reproduce it. You ignore the quotation marks and the plus but don’t forget the semi-colon ; at the end!..)
4. ” (quote character) which is created by typing “&”+”quot;” (A plus was added as otherwise the system will interpert it as a ” quote and reproduce it. You ignore the quotation marks and the plus but don’t forget the semi-colon ; at the end!..)

The normal “Ampersand” which we use often “&” is not beloved by HTML and certainly RSS. Indeed try putting the innocent & into your RSS file “text” without normal conventions and the feed wont validate. You will “grrrrr” and curse up a storm, if you are like me and use the & every other word. HTML and all programmers are familiar with this “little annoyance”. Most are not. After all we do see the & all over the web.

So an IMPORTANT RULE FOR NON-PROGRAMMERS. Do not incorporate a plain “&” into the “TEXT” areas of your document, or the right and left “<>” signs (which are often used in programming).

The Cache
Okay NEXT piece of information which you really should understand about RSS and the RSS feeds.
You come across one of those beautiful little orange buttons and say “Oh Boy! GREAT! Here goes another feed into my Parser!” Or you are even more tricky and smart, and incorporate one of those feeds into your web pages (we will discuss how to do this in a later article!) Before you just go on your happy way, there is one term you should understand and know - CACHE.

You see every time you happily tell your parser to re-read the RSS file, it says to itself, “Okay. This owner of ours is a real nuisance. Once again we have to go travel on the Net, find the file at the web site, make a connection and download the information.” And of course having no ability to tell you to have patience, it goes on its happy way. So it shakes hands with the file on the web and downloads that information. HOWEVER, a few thousand other people are also shaking hands with that same file. And every time it shakes hands it adds to bandwidth usage. Now the creator of the file knows this. What the creator also expects is that your RSS reader sets its cache to something normal like only “reloading” its memory once every 60 minutes or 120 minutes or even only once a day. That is the reason, by the way, that Parsers have a cache command, and RSS templates have Date commands, and even as you will learn a “TTL” - “time to live” command.

And if you are one of those who puts the RSS feed up on your web page, and set the cache to “0″ then every single time someone hits that web page, the page has to go out to find the feed and update the contents. Thus you are adding to bandwidth usage and some RSS farms request that you are careful how and when you set your cache.

Now maybe this fifth piece should have waited. But in our next piece on sub-elements, and then following that on the “items” the nature of the text and understanding how RSS works is critical.
I hope this helps.

Copyright © 2005 Ted W. Gross. All rights reserved. (You may publish this article in its entirety with the following author’s information with live links only.)

Ted W. Gross owns Virgin Earth, a real estate brokerage firm in Jerusalem, Israel. Virgin Earth represents residential and commercial real estate all over Israel. The web site for Virgin Earth is: http://www.virginisrael.com Virgin Earth also maintains an RSS Feed on its current properties which can be found on most pages in the web site of Virgin Earth. Virgin Earth also operates an Israel Tourism Portal. Virgin Earth - Israel Tourism & Information Portal on the same site. Ted Gross can be reached at: virginearth@gmail.com

Ted Gross is also a published author and maintains a web site for his works. This can be found at: http://www.virginisrael.com/twg/iw.html

Do you eat tomatoes? Of course you have known that tomatoes are
now eaten easily around the world. You can find tomatoes
everywhere as part of fruits and vegetables.

Some experts said that tomato is known as a source of power of
nutrition, as it contains a large number of vitamins and
minerals that can support our body’s health.

Tomatoes have been first cultivated in Peru, and then brought to
Mexico. Now, tomatoes are sold everywhere. In American grocery
stores, tomatoes are often picked unripe, and ripened in storage
with ethylene.

Which one is better, unripe or ripe?

Tomatoes that are ripened in storage with ethylene, plant
hormone produced by many fruits and acts as the cue to begin the
ripening process, tend to stay longer, but have poorer flavor
than tomatoes ripened on the plant. They may be recognized by
their color, which is more pink or orange than the ripe tomato’s
deep red.

Based on the nutrition content, red tomatoes have more vitamin A
than green tomatoes. But in this case, green tomatoes have more
protein.

If you eat tomatoes everyday, it is beneficial in preventing
cancer to 50%. Tomatoes will fight different kinds of cancer and
protect your heart from heart attack.

Why tomatoes are beneficial for health?

Tomatoes contain various kinds of ingredients. Here are some of
them:

*Lycopene, one of nature’s most powerful antioxidants. It is
beneficial to fight different kind of diseases, most of all to
fight cancer.

*Fiber in tomatoes prevents diabetes, asthma, colon cancer, and
lowers the amount of cholesterol from the body.

*Vitamin C and A, antioxidants which fight free radical. They
fight against aging, soothe skin and hair.

*Potassium, vitamin B6, folate, and niacin have proven effect in
lowering cholesterol level, lowering blood pressure and works
against heart disease.

*Vitamin K in tomatoes helps to build bone.

*Chromium and biotin make the body’s ability to process sugar
and fat, which may improve fighting diabetes and help nerve
function.

*Riboflavin helps with energy metabolism and fights against
migraine headaches.

So, if you consume ripe, unripe or tomato-based food products
(tomato sauce, tomato pasta etc.) all deliver many nutrients
with multiple mechanisms of action to prevent you from different
kinds of diseases.

Fixing bad credit is possible. Attempts to quickly fix bad credit may be frustrating if your expectations are too high.

If you are disputing information on your credit report in hopes of fixing bad credit, the credit bureaus have thirty days to investigate. If they cannot verify the information, then they are required to remove it and send you a corrected copy of your credit report. They may ignore disputes which they believe to be frivolous. This can mean that you receive no response at all. There are more complaints filed against the credit bureaus than any other single type of company. They are difficult to deal with. Attempts to quickly fix bad credit generally leads to frustration.

Beware of companies which advertise that they can quickly fix bad credit. Find out what services they are offering and what fees they are charging, before you sign up. Lawyers that specialize in fixing bad credit will advise you of a reasonable amount of time to wait for improvements in your credit score. This may be a matter of weeks or months. If your idea of how long it should take to quickly fix bad credit is a matter of days, then you may be disappointed.

Fixing bad credit legally involves negotiating with creditors. Sometimes this can be a fairly quick process. It really depends on your definition of quick. To quickly fix bad credit you will need to use all strategies and methods at your disposal. This usually means that you will need to contact a law firm that specializes in fixing bad credit. They are aware of everything that you can do legally to improve your credit score.

Fixing bad credit legally involves disputing information on your credit report that you believe is inaccurate, obsolete or unverifiable. These disputes probably take longer than negotiating with creditors. The credit bureaus are usually more responsive to certain requests than others. If you hope to quickly fix bad credit, you may need to contact a law firm to find the best way to dispute information.

Fixing bad credit legally includes paying off any judgments or charge-offs listed by creditors. It is important to negotiate with the creditor about removing the information, once you have paid the obligation. If the obligation is not yours, due to inaccurate reporting, divorce, identity theft or for any other reason, it may be necessary to contact both the credit bureau and the creditor. The credit bureau may remove a negative item, but if the creditor reports it again, then it will pop back up. As you can see, depending on the problems that you are facing, fixing bad credit can be done, but trying to quickly fix bad credit may require some help. There are many things that can be done. Each one takes time. Law firms that specialize in fixing bad credit can help you resolve issues more quickly, fix bad credit sooner and lessen your frustration.