Five Cats Blog
~ The life and antics of 5 cats and their human family
TechBot
~ Killer apps, cool widgets, sweet gadgets, hot fixes, must-gets, everything on the web
HELP: BECAUSE YOU CAN
Sunday, March 04, 2007
Personal Finance and Credit Cards
Credit cards have their place in personal finance and it is not in stretching your credit limit. Here are pointers on how to maximise the value of credit cards (and the not):
A) Their value is in:
Receiving 21 days credit free on the purchases you make;
The starter gift most banks offer you;
Consolidating your monthly spending;
Maximising the discounts credit cards offer on shops, restaurants, and gas stations you patronise; and
Enjoying 0% interest on purchases you make (although most have an addendum that you cannot cancel the card until the period is over, e.g. 24 months so read the fine print carefully.
B) Their value is not in:
Buying that big ticket item, car, downpayment on house you can't afford;
Rolling over every month and paying only the minimum sum;
Not paying off the full amount every month.
Should you already find yourself in B, your aim should be:
Pay off as much as you owe every month.
Transfer as much if not all to a lower or even better, 0% interest rate account.
With computers growing more vulnerable to attacks as well as the inherent fallibility of hardware, it is now ever more critically essential to back up your data both offline and online for all home and business users.
IBackup offers an interactive and automated integrated online backup and storage solution for the Windows user, Linux, and Unix user, including support for MS SQL Server and Exchange Server.
Here's a quick review of its offerings:
IBackup for Windows provides incremental and compressed secure updates with 128-bit SSL encryption on transmission you can schedule for Windows desktops, laptops, and servers.
Its familiar Microsoft Windows Explorer helps the user easily navigate and locate critical files like Microsoft Outlook, My Documents, and Microsoft Office documents.
You can also backup Microsoft SQL Server databases running on your computer without any disruption to your MS SQL Server services.
Similarly, with IBackup, you can backup your MS Exchange Server databases without any interruption to your MS Exchange Server services. In addition, you can backup individual mailboxes with the Exchange Brick-Level Mailbox Backup method to a Personal Folder (.PST) file.
The best thing about IBackup is that it supports backups for UNIX and Linux computers with rsync, which with Stunnel, provides 128-bit SSL encryption for data during transmission and the data is stored on RAID-protected storage and mirrored onto another set of devices for added protection.
For AES 256-bit encryption backups, there is the IBackup Professional for which data is transmitted using industry standard 128-bit SSL and a restoration capability of up to 30 versions.
Overall, IBackup is a comprehensive and most importantly, intuitive and easy to use Online Backup solution great 24/7 support via email and live chat. It is a solution worth looking at for your online storage needs.
It's great to be able to make money online so when I came across YourWebRewards, I just had to check it out. Although they're open only to people living in the US now, it's in the works to open it global so do bookmark it for now if you live outside the US.
So how do they work? Basically they are paid by advertisers to provide leads for a 25% commission and give you 25% of that commission. For marketers, getting people to try out their products and services is the toughest hurdle. But once they're there, their offerings speak for themselves.
There are several ways to make money on Your WebRewards and the beauty of it is you can simply choose the ones you like. Here are some examples.
1. Take free surveys which you can logon and take right away.
2. Try out True.com for 7 days and get paid $23.
3. If you buy a case of wine from Four Season's Wine, you get paid $30. Now the case costs $60 + shipping and handling, so if you're a wine lover, you're effectively paying only $2.50 per bottle. Great for me! :D
4. Refer your friend to join and earn a referral fee.
You'll get paid within every 15-20th of the month via cheque or Paypal. It's a great business model that's a win-win solution for everyone and it's free to join. Sign up today! :)
This advertorial was kindly sponsored by YourWebRewards.
Pornography is so prevalent today and with the Internet, accessible to everyone. The average age of children exposed to Internet porn is 11 years old, the largest consumer group for Internet pornography is 12-17 year olds, 90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn online mostly accidentally while doing their homework online.
While we can install Net Nanny at home, who knows what sites children can visit while at school, at their friend's house, or in public libraries. We need to enlist the help of adult site webmasters to make the Internet safer for our children. Install password protection for their sites.
This is an open letter to all adult site webmasters from the mother of a young boy.
Dear webmasters,
We understand that selling porn is your business and we respect your right to make a legal living. But please understand our legitimate concerns and work with us.
You already have the “warning adult content” on your websites. Yet kids, who are not legal customers of your product, may simply ignore the warning.
So to prevent them from having direct access to explicit images, texts and sounds, the simplest way is to have a password-protected login. No more "free tours" before a visitor supplies basic information.
Please let our children have a chance to be children. And thank you for understanding our need to protect them.
This morning Tux woke me up with a huge howl. Turns out Sam stole his food last night. The kids looked hungry but not suspicious at all. If you have been following the saga at FiveCatsBlog you'll note that the cats have been mysteriously blogging.
Anyway, I struggled out of bed, patted Jack who was snoring gently, and then logged on to find out this time Kaku had blogged! Of course, at first I was proud but then perplexed how the cats were managing this.
I'm considering internet monitoring to see what the heck is going on. I can see if they actually log on, what they type, where they visit, what programs they run. I'll keep you posted.
After considering my plight, the rather amused SpectorSoft kindly decided to sponsor this post.
Two articles of note this morning about our favourite topic: ourselves!
In Study: Familiarity Can Muddle Communication, scientists found that because people who are close and familiar have so much history together and accumulated knowledge, they use "short, ambiguous messages" to communicate and this "vague and jargon-loaded talk" often leads to misunderstandings.
I haven't quite come across this in my experience, the misunderstanding part, although I believe because of the closeness, people are more willing to overlook the misunderstandings. On the jargon-loaded talk, I can totally relate. My brother and I have weird noises (they sound like hoots) we make to each other, which friends have found quite hilarious. But that's how we express hilarity. :)
In The Rich See What They Believe, people see what they believe, not what is actual. The psychological study suggests that this, particularly for the rich, keeps moral outrage at bay which is a bad, because it inhibits change.
Research has shown that people become emotionally distressed when confronted with inequality. The privileged minority is particularly affected, and they are likely to have a nagging worry that their cash and prizes are undeserved.
To keep a clean conscience and legitimize privilege, individuals often alter their perceptions of the status quo.
It does explains why inequality is still so prevalent in our world today.
This sounds like something out of the movie The Core where Hilary Swank and team drill themselves into the core to get the Earth spinning again.
Bizarre? But pretty remarkable, especially on the heels of news of the discovery of a sea as large as the Arctic under Beijing. It looks to be an exciting month ahead for science.
As someone who has only ever won a Yakult t-shirt in my life (which I never bothered to collect by the way) in any contest or competition, this is thrilling. :D Like someone who has just won an Oscar, I'd like to thank the peeps at Celebrity Baby Scoop for this great honour and for their wonderful blog which is always a delight to visit.
I must confess how much I love widgets. Especially one that is black and streams videos, podcasts, and pictures. It looks way cooler than the Flickr one you see on my sidebar, the Box.net Widget is sheer poetry.
That said, the usability of the site can be improved. It was not immediately intuitive how to add and move pictures and videos around, and how to create a widget. The option Options should be removed from the dropdown bar as users have to click twice to use its functions.
There are also several technical issues that are most likely due to Flash and Java. My videos don't seem to be playing in the Box and the buttons and fields appear unlabelled. For the same reason, it is very much slower to navigate and use than other photo and video sharing sites.
Still, I'll be sticking with this for a while. It's a fantastic product and I expect a much higher uptake once the bugs are ironed out. The Box's interface is simply beautiful and beauty is what attracts people to add them to their sites.
This review was based on a one-time user experience, just as a regular user would use it. Many thanks to Box.net for this cool widget and for the kind sponsorship.
Only since Jack was born did I become enamoured with the idea of decorating a room for him. Pregnancy books wax lyrical of how mothers in the 8th month of pregnancy obsess over getting things in order for their baby's room. But since Jack had no room to speak of, throughout my pregnancy, I was simply more concerned about eating and resting.
The site is logically categorised by manufacturer and type, accompanied by pictures of their furniture, which fully decorated, shows to full advantage how their range fits in your home. There are ample descriptions and specifications for each piece and the all-important, availability.
Their children's furniture is how I always imagined children's furniture to look like. Looking at their beautiful range reminds me how tender the feeling of having a child is, and how much I want to see Jack in a room of his own. I think I'm going to go hug my baby now.
I wish to thank the kind sponsors Great Priced Furniture for allowing me the pleasure of reviewing their wonderful site. It was sheer delight.
"To be without some of the things you want is an indispensable part of happiness." -- Bertrand Russell
"Non-violence leads to the highest ethics, which is the goal of all evolution. Until we stop harming all other living beings, we are still savages."
-- Thomas Edison (Harper's Magazine, 1890)
A woman's romance with motherhood, green living, finance, and this heady thing called life.
Pornography is so prevalent today and with the Internet, accessible to everyone. The average age of children exposed to Internet porn is 11 years old, the largest consumer group for Internet pornography is 12-17 year olds, 90% of 8-16 year olds have viewed porn online mostly accidentally while doing their homework online.
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where Hilary Swank and team drill themselves into the core to get the Earth spinning again. 
