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Tuesday, March 20, 2007
New Favicon from The Thinking Blog
I was immensely honoured to wake up this morning to find 2 new favicons in my Inbox from the multi-talented Ilker Yoldas from The Thinking Blog, which I reviewed some time ago. Thank you, Ilker. :)
Email compliance is an often neglected corporate expense, even with spam at an all-time high in corporate emails. Shockingly even higher than that of personal email providers such as Yahoo (the most notorious one since Hotmail cleaned up its act), Gmail, Hotmail, and Gmx. But if you stop and dissect this, it makes sense.
Conglomerates like Google and MSN have put in place powerful spam filters used worldwide in all their subsidiaries. For considerably smaller organisations of 1000 and less, the cost-effectiveness of purchasing an expensive logic-based email security program with a growing blacklist may not make financial sense to them.
This decision is often made by management, which may or may not have any technical knowledge of how spam can damage your infrastructure. As spam becomes more advanced and potentially malicious, it falls to those in the IT department to remind the decision-makers once again how critical securing our email is. After all, when the blame comes, we always get it. :p
It is essential to filter content (particularly malicious content which can come wrapped in seemingly innocent image and html files nowadays, in addition to the old school exe files). Hence an effective solution must provide at least attachment scanning as well.
More effective are compliance dictionaries and encryption for your and your organisation's own security. Having a white list and black list helps to an extent, but these must be set and maintained organisation-wide by the security administrator.
Having worked in an IT department where security was much needed and not adhered to very well, I realise policy controls will go only so far and attempts at education moot if users are unable to comprehend the extent of damage their clicking on one file containing a worm can cause. Similarly, the security team needs to read the audits and examine all reports frequently, or slippages will simply be missed.
Whether you are an individual concerned about your email security, or an organisation looking to protect your assets regardless of organisation size, get an effective security solution now. Here is one to consider: BorderWare's suite of Internet security programs. Their trademarked (or trademark-pending) and award-winning solutions provide state-of-the-art security for organisations of all sizes.
This post on email compliance was kindly sponsored by BorderWare.
Managing your personal and family finances is an ongoing learning experience. I never tire of surfing to find ways to save money for my family. As many money management gurus love to say, a penny saved is a penny earned.
Here's what we've done so far:
1. Cancelled our cable TV
If no one is using it, then why waste $22 a month on it? That adds up to $264 a year and $2640 a decade. Or an extra pizza meal a month.
2. Cancelled our home phone account
Everyone uses their mobile phone nowadays so that $8 a month to just keep that phone number alive isn't quite worth it. The humble $8 a month adds up to $96 a year and $960 a decade.
3. Cancel memberships that give no return
I had a supermarket membership card but found that the $9 monthly fee exceeded the 5% rebates I received from shopping there. Plus it compelled me to shop there more which wasn't always so convenient.
4. Redeem your points for cash off your bill
Check with your service providers often if you can use the reward points to reduce your bill or subscriptions – the value is usually more than that of any gift or vouchers.
careOne has a wealth of money saving ideas on their website. This one is a gem: Ways To Stretch A Dollar.
I have been pondering about whether to move my blogs to my own domain. This naturally involves the tempting and very splendid task of having to test out some blogging software.
Primary among the rest are Wordpress(.org) and Moveable Type. General feedback from some kind Posties was that Wordpress is easier to use in general. AnnaBella even sent me the URL for 1500 templates. Kat, however, mentioned that MT may be easier to use but separates the templates which are more helpful.
Now with Blogdrive, the templates are in 3 parts: the main template where all the coding goes, the profile (left nav) and the sidebar (right nav). If MT works like that, I reckon it's a better bet.
Still, we won't know till we test it. Won't we? ;)
When it comes to money, I make sure I make a budget for every calendar year for our home to make sure we never spend more than we earn and maintain a monthly savings of at least 10% for our retirement and Jack's education.
When I was a little girl, my Mom always pointed out the prices of different things, probably toys, and told me which ones were expensive and which weren't, and to differentiate needs from wants. That gave me a pretty firm grounding on money management.
Money is definitely a necessity so talk of money is the root of all evil is inaccurate. It is only evil when there is an excess (an excess of anything can corrupt) or severe deficiency of (starving conditions or if you are obsessed with comparing with the Joneses), or causes a rift in your family.
Unless you are the Joneses, it is impossible to avoid borrowing money. You need to take loans to purchase a home or a car, you need to pay home insurance to protect your home, you can leverage on credit cards to maximise the interest you earn in your current accounts, you need to reduce your debt by taking on a Bad Credit Remortgage.
Read up on debt advice. For good financial management, the goal is to reduce the amount you owe and maximise the amount you save. Ideally the interest you earn on your investments and savings should exceed the amount you are paying.
Although they appear to consider each other as competitors, I find that one can use both Multiply and Friendster with similar ease.
Multiply feels more like a home I'm decorating to invite friends over while Friendster feels more like a fashion show where everyone is preening. With Multiply, I tend to add people I consider really good friends or close friends, or people I have something in common with, not mere social friends. On the other hand, with Friendster, I tend to add friends who I may simply know as acquaintances as well as good friends.
The functions are different too. Multiply has a comprehensive photo sharing network, video sharing, blog, recipes, book and movie reviews, all of which suggest a kind of intimacy with the people you are connected with. With Friendster it is all about social networking: testimonials, a brief profile, featured friends, and an optional blog (they have since removed their RSS feed for external blogs).
Whether they both evolve into each other is yet to be seen, but for now, I'll be using Multiply to share things with close friends, and Friendster to simply network.
The title is indicative of the blog's central topic of interest, the design is clean, layout pleasant to the eye, navigation logical and easy to use with categories lined up on the top bar, and the text is large for the perpetually eyestrained (me!) yet not screaming to the rest who have good eyesight.
Ilker's posts are thought-provoking and ponderous, and I have enjoyed every single word he has typed, in particular, A Shy Blogger's Avatar and MySpamLog when I realised he was actually not the beautiful woman in the picture, yet was even more compelled to read about this shy blogger, and Safeguard the Web for Children, which drove me quickly to write up one up for my own blog too.
The Thinking Blog is probably one of the most usable and useful sites I have ever visited and will definitely continue visiting. An excellently designed site with brilliant content - a real winning combination.
Credit cards have been getting easier and easier to obtain in recent years. From pre-approvals to lowered minimum annual income, everyone is armed and ready to consume with their very own (or ten) credit cards.
Most certainly it is a lucrative business for credit card companies. Defaulters pay an average of 24% per annum in interest and this starts compounding immediately after you sign the dotted line on a purchase. When you do pay your bill in full, you don't pay the interest. But if you pay just the minimum or worse, don't pay at all, the interest starts compounding.
The opportunistic, like myself, claim the free sign-up gifts, pay on time and in full, maximising the 21 days interest free credit (yay 21 days more interest on my money in my savings account), and don't hesitate to call and cancel the card after. Most companies will offer to waive the annual fee as it is easier and cheaper for them to retain an existing customer than acquire a new one.
If you have unfortunately sunk into debt, no worries. Have a plan and you'll eventually dig yourself out of it. Your goal is to pay your debt off as quickly as possible (remember the compounding interest growing exponentially daily?) and minimising the interest you're paying off at the moment.
In the meantime, use 0% credit cards to pay your bills (check the terms and conditions on full repayment and cancellation of card) and utilise 0% balance transfers to stop your debt from growing.
So are credit cards really a bane or boon? Well, it really depends on you.
This post was kindly sponsored by Credit Cards 2 Go 4.
Protecting your eyes is one of the most critical things a mother should do. I can't imagine ever being unable to see, especially with a young son to care for. Hence the great admiration and respect I have for blind mothers who manage to bring up their children themselves.
While I have been religiously slathering sunblock everyday (Sunplay SPF130), I realise I have been neglecting my eyes. In the last few months, my eyesight has been failing. I am not sure why. It could be the excessive use of the computer but then again it's been no less than the days when I was working all day and then playing World of Warcraft all night (where did I find the stamina?).
Anyhow, tomorrow the first thing I'm going to do is to find a good pair of Polarized Sunglasses. ADS Sports Eyewear has some really cool designs, like the one on the model on the front page. It looks like the giant ones Katie and Posh have been wearing.
"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.
I was immensely honoured to wake up this morning to find 2 new favicons in my Inbox from the multi-talented Ilker Yoldas from 
