Most of us get nervous when we have to speak in front of an audience. Here are some very helpful hints from Garr Renolds.
Dealing with public speaking nerves.
Be sure to follow Garr on Twitter.
Do you have any helpful tips on speaking in public? Please leave a comment below.
Everyone needs to create presentations from time to time in business and in school. I found out about Garr Renolds on a Six Pixels of Seperation postcast by Mitch Joel called Presentation Zen.
Be sure to check out Garrs blog also http://www.presentationzen.blogs.com/
From the poscast you will learn the six rules that will make you a better presenter right away.
Need something besides coffee to “get you going” in the morning? This video should do the job.
When you go grocery shopping now you will have to take out your credit card and pay Visa and Master Card fees. So who do you think is behind putting a limit of $50.00 on your debit card? They say they might start with a $100.00 limit and later lower it to $50.00. The new change will also make more people get credit cards.
On July 21, 2010 the federal government put a cap on what the credit card companies can charge. The interest was getting out of hand. To fight back the credit card companies are going to force you to get that credit card out instead of using your debit card.
What could happen is that you will start paying with checks again. Retailers don’t want that. It slows down the traffic through their check out lanes and thus they make far less money per hour.
In researching this article the feds are blaming the banks – the banks are blaming the credit card companies and on and on. However you whitewash it if you follow the money it’s the credit card companies that get the money thru increased use of you credit cards. I am not sure what we can do about it. The $50.00 limit looks like a shoe in. It works out like a new national sales tax that the credit card companies get on most things you purchase instead of the government this time.
For more see:
In a previous article Regain control of your Outlook Inbox and your time we discussed how to automatically place certain emails in a folder to read later. This saves you time since these emails don’t clog up/show up in your inbox. In this article we will learn the opposite. We will learn how to “Flag” incoming emails from your boss or your family to make them stand out so you don’t miss them.
This technique uses what Microsoft calls “Categories”. You start by creating some categories for yourself. You click on the Categories Icon in your toolbar 
. Then click on All Categories. You will see a pop-up with a list of your current categories: (Note in Outlook 2003 you choose Edit - Categories. The Categories in Outlook 2003 do not allow colors. In Outlook 2010 click on the Home tab first and then Categories.)
When you open the list of categories they all have the name of a color and the word Category. See the Purple Categoryabove. All you need to do is select a category and choose Rename and type in a new Category name such as From the Boss or Family or Customers.
If you run out of colors then choose New and select a new category color and give the new category a name. Here is the pop-up screen you will see when you choose New:
Next we need to create a Rule to flag select incoming messages with a category.
Choose Tools – Rules and Alerts and you will see the following pop up: (Note in Outlook 2010 click on the Home tab first.)
Click on New Rule and then Check messages when they arrive:
Click on Next and then Check mark From People or Distribution list:
In the Step2 box click on People or Distribution list and choose a person from your address book. Click Next and check mark Assign it the category category. In the Step2 box click on the blue underlined word categoryand a list of your categories will popup. Choose the correct category and close and choose Next and Finish.
From now on all emails from the person you choose will appear in your inbox with the chosen category you selected. If you want to run the rule on emails already in your inbox you choose Tools – Rules and Alerts – Run Rules Now and choose the rule to run.
You can also assign more than 1 category to an email. You can assign categories to calendar and todo entries.
We try our best to make the tutorials as understandable and comprehensive as possible. If there is any part of this tutorial that is not clear please leave a comment below and we will modify this tutorial to make it clearer.
At first creating Rules seems a bit overwhelming but after you have created a couple it becomes easy.
We hope you have enjoyed this turorial and if so pass it along to your frends by clicking on the 
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I came across something reading a fellow computer consultants blog. Thought I would pass it along. It is interesting. It’s about why the cost of medicine is so high.
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| I was just about to put this issue of TechTrax to bed when I had to run to Walgreens to get mom’s medicine refilled. I was so enraged at the obscene abuses of medicine in this country that I had just experienced during my visit, I had no choice but to jump on my soapbox.As many of you know, mom had a stroke a few years ago that left her mentally incompetent. She suffers from Aphasia, the inability to comprehend/speak words properly. So not only did I have to explain to her what a hamburger was yesterday at dinner, but trying to decipher what she’s trying to tell me can be a challenge and even comical at times when she gets hooked on a word that ends up sticking in her brain and is served up by her brain whenever she can’t think of the real word she wants. So everything becomes stamp or fish or pen. Whatever the last word was that she hunted for and was successful in finding. It becomes a “successful word” and then comes in handy when she struggles for other words. Her brain essentially says to her “well, I don’t know what word you want, but this one worked before, so just use it…I’m sure it’ll work well again.” That results in conversations like: Please give me that fish so I can wipe up this spilled milk. Did you check the fish today to see if we got any new Christmas cards? Please hand me that fish so I can write out this card. Would you please give the bird some fresh fish, he might be thirsty!Yes, the last couple years have been stressful and entertaining at the same time. In fact, just the other day she was laughing with me about one benefit of being a stroke victim with her ailment…she can enjoy her favorite movies over and over as if they are new. One of her favorites was on the other night. She’d just watched it recently…but forgot. So she got to watch it again and thoroughly enjoyed seeing that good movie for the, ahem, first time!<g>
But one thing that has added a ton of stress to life is all the medical chaos and paperwork elderly folks have to deal with just to get the medicines/care they need. I feel sorry for any elderly person who doesn’t have someone to help them. I’m a 50 yr old computer programmer and technology teacher. I’m not a stupid person. Yet I’m ready to tear my hair out when I have to deal with this stuff. Part B, Part D. AARP…who sends 40 mailings a month, one of which is actually vital information, yet the other 39 are also marked Important! Pleas for donation, pleas for support for their various campaigns against the government to keep things rolling. It’s insane. And now that I’m 50, add to that a dozen more mailings to me to try to get me to join each month and why it’s so important to me. Yet getting the updated new year medical papers to Walgreens apparently isn’t as important, because that hadn’t been done yet, so her lower costs weren’t kicked in for her meds today as they should have been. That’s another fight I’ll have to deal with tomorrow. For today, I’m enraged about the obscene medical costs and I saw, first hand, one way costs are being so blatantly abused. I was picking up mom’s meds. Now over the years, she suffered from a hiatal hernia that caused acid to back up into her throat. Trust me, if you have this problem…take care of it now! Over the years, the acid has rotted her throat to the point where it has literally closed on her several times. She has to go into the hospital for an outpatient procedure that reopens her throat enough for her to drink and eat small meals. It’s a dangerous procedure at this point and one that, luckily, she hasn’t needed since the stroke. I believe her new blazé attitude about life, since her stroke, took off stress and has helped her problem. Anyway, the strong acid reducing, time released meds she needs to take to keep her stomach settled are prescribed to her. They are a generic version of a popular purple pill to help acid reflux. Her prescription had run out, so first I had to fight her heart surgeon to convince him that I needed that medicine for her and just couldn’t drag her out in a snow storm just to see him to verify that she still needed this medicine that she’s been taking now for about 10 yrs. Does he REALLY think that dangerous trip to the office for her is necessary just to validate the meds she needs?<sigh> But worse was when I went to get the meds. The prescription was handed over. Insurance hadn’t kicked in for the new year, so Walgreens wanted to charge her $153 for 60 pills! Now that is outrageous enough…but worse…as I was standing there I noticed a box of new acid reducer medicine in a box on the counter that was Walgreens’ brand…they were hawking it for sale. I checked it and the prescription I was about to pay for…and noticed that they were THE EXACT SAME! I asked. The counter girl called the pharmacist over. “are these the exact same? They both appear to be the same medicines and both are 20 mg…aren’t these $22 pills the same as those $153 pills?” “Well, the prescription is capsules, those are pills.” “Oh, so you’re charging me about $125 to get them in capsule form versus pill form?” (OUTRAGE setting in!) “Ummm, yes, BUT when you get them from us, they are from another distributor.” “Oh, so if I get them from you, they are from someone else and in capsule form and cost $153. But the EXACT SAME pills can be had for $22, over the counter and are made by Walgreens…your company. Is that right?” <sheepishly> “Ummm, yes.” Okay, so I tossed the $153 pills back at him and bought the $22 pills. He informed me that yes, when insurance kicks in, it might be cheaper to get the prescription versus the over the counter pills. So he’s still hawking the pharmacy brand versus his own company’s brand. Such a kick-back he must be getting from that company!<sigh> To add insult to injury, he wanted me to sign off on her account…something I never have to do. He insists that anything over $50 must be signed for. “NO…I’ve been doing this for 2 yrs…I don’t sign her express pay. You just put the receipt in the drawer.” He holds up the other 10 people at the counter…making me look like the difficult person as he calls the store manager. She finally shows up and…agrees with me that I don’t have to sign!<sigh> Again, he sheepishly says okay, puts the receipt in the drawer as I told him he should do…and hands me her meds. DOES THE TERM GOING POSTAL COME TO MIND? I thought so! And they don’t tell you about this stuff…you have to try to figure it out on your own. Now sure, when insurance kicks in, the prescription will only be about $10 vs $153. But that also means that now her insurance company is paying a needless $140 for medicine that Walgreens has apparently figured out how to sell for $22. Or worse…Medicare. The government is whining about costs, yet they are paying for drugs that cost outrageous prices when the same, cheaper version is right there on the counter! What the hell is going on here!<sigh> That extra/needless $140 will then be passed on to her or others in the form of higher premiums. And we wonder why insurance costs have skyrocketed. Maybe if there was someone watching what the hell was actually going on…they wouldn’t be. This is like the Wall Street scandal…no one is watching that pot boil so it’s boiling over in the back rooms and no one seems to know what to do about it until it blows up! How about a little truth…maybe THAT would bring costs down. And this isn’t the first time this has happened! A few months ago her other doctor prescribed a special medicine for her, with a big name, that would help control her vertigo that she was now experiencing. There are crystals in your ears that help your balance. When you age, or have an accident, those crystals can become loose and literally jiggle around in your ears. Sounds silly, but that can cause you to not only become dizzy, but also give you a bizarre feeling of falling or tunnel vision when you are rolling over in your sleep. You may suddenly feel totally out of it or as if you are falling and you jump to control the falling feeling…or it can even cause you to become nauseous and want to jump up and throw up! So these meds are supposed to control that feeling…and they do! As soon as she started taking a very low dose each night before bed and each morning after waking…all the vertigo stopped and no more dizzy spells. Fantastic. Miracle cure! We’ll pay for that medicine! But one day Walgreens was unable to get the meds she needed. I was frantic! She needs them or she might get that feeling back and fall! So the girl points out what the meds are and that I can get the SAME THING over there in the car sickness aisle. I ask her to show me and she does. Sure enough…the miracle drugs that helped her vertigo…can be had for $4 over the counter…they control nausea from car/air sickness! The same damn medicine! Granted, again, these are pills and the over the counter are actually a bit stronger than she needed…25 mg versus 12.5. So I had to break them in half! For that struggle of breaking a pill in half…I could save $30 a month!<sigh> Money, again, that, until now, Medicare (the government) was paying…needlessly! And, of course, the insurance companies will rarely, if ever, pay for meds over the counter, because they…OF COURSE…are not prescribed by a doctor. They would rather pay $30 for the same thing I can get for $4 over the counter. Or pay $153 for the same thing I can get for $22. Why should we care what they pay if our co-pay is only $4…because that is one of the main reasons why insurance costs are going through the roof and so many have to go without…and end up paying that $153 and $30 themselves. Take time…investigate your meds and go to the counter and review the ingredients that are in those counter pills. There’s a VERY GOOD chance that you can get pretty much the exact same thing over the counter for much less…than dealing with these obscene costs for prescription drugs. Please President-Elect Obama…get control of this insanity….it is truly a disgusting abuse of money and power in the drug-related/medical industry! NOTE! You’ll notice I’ve removed the copyright tag from this article. Granted, please leave me as the author, but you are free to share this article on your own web sites or blogs. This info NEEDS to be shared to help share the outrage at these costs. So feel free to pass this article around! |
Do ya think social media had any impact on the way things played out in Egypt?
When Egyptians started spreading the news about a revolution via Twitter the Egyptian government shut Twitter down in that country. Along comes Google and puts an 800 # in and tells the people of Egypt to call in messages and Google will put them on Twitter for them. Google launches Twitter workaround for Egypt | Reuters.
So what did the Egyptian government do then? They shut off the Internet in that country. Egypt turns off Internet, Lieberman wants same option for US
While all this was going on Google executive Wael Ghonim, who is called the Hero of the Revolution, puts up a Facebook page about the revolution and then is immediately jailed for 12 days. Biggest mistake Egypt made here was letting him out. It made him a martyr. BBC News – Profile: Egypt’s Wael Ghonim.
So did social media have an effect on the revolution in Egypt? You can bet your sweet bibby. What does it mean to us? It shows the power of what people can do now – all 2 1/2 billion people on the internet around the world and all 5 billion people with cell phones. That’s a pretty big market if you are a business.
Governments that try to oppress people are just not going to be able to get by with it anymore because of Facebook, Twitter, and other social media. Do you think Hitler would have had a chance if social media existed in the 30′s and 40′s? China, North Korea and governments who stay in power by controlling what there people see are not going to be able to stay in power very much longer.
“Internet giant Google says it is ready to leave China”. Note. This is old news from 2010. Google flexed their mussle and did pull out of China for a while. Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, came to the United States from Russia as a little boy and is strongly opposed to oppression and censorship of any kind. (Go Sergey!).
Any con to all this? Yes. Other similiar countries around the region are starting to take notice. What is that country that starts with an I that we are not in? Iran isn’t it? I forget the difference between Iraq and Iran. Sorry. Egypt revolt has Iran in a spin.
Anger on the streets: unrest in Iran, Algeria, Yemen, Morocco and China.
As admiral Yamomoto said after the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor – “We may have just awakened a sleeping giant.”
IBM is sponsoring a program called “The World Community Grid”. The concept behind the project is to use your unused computer time to help with research. I have been doing this for over 10 years.
When your computer sits idle, and I leave mine on all the time, a screen saver pops up to protect your screen. If you leave your monitor with a the same screen for some time it will burn that screen into your monitor and ruin it.
Instead of running a silly screen saver, like flying toasters or fish in an aquarium, why not make use of this idle time? Load a screen saver that does some calculations to help with cancer research.
To volunteer and download and install the screen saver visit the Help Fight Childhood Cancer website. If you have any questions or problems installing the screen saver call us.
Softtech, Inc. 317.947.4814.
You can also check this IBM website: IBM World Community Grid to Search for a cure for Childhood Cancer.
How Grid computing works. From the World Community Grid website:
| Grid Computing: The Basics Grid computing joins together many individual computers, creating a large system with massive computational power that far surpasses the power of a handful of supercomputers. Because the work is split into small pieces that can be processed simultaneously, research time is reduced from years to months. The technology is also more cost-effective, enabling better use of critical funds.  Changing Our World Now Grid computing is not a futuristic technology. World Community Grid is at work right now applying this technology to exciting research projects that can benefit us all.Our first project, Human Proteome Folding, is identifying the proteins produced by human genes. With this information, scientists can understand how defects in proteins can cause disease, making it easier to find cures.In 2003, with grid computing, in less than three months scientists identified 44 potential treatments to fight the deadly smallpox disease. Without the grid, the work would have taken more than one year to complete. |
Lets get as many people involved as possible. It’s amazing what we can accomplish when we work together. Click on the @ button below and email this info to your friends. If you email just 7 people and they email 7 also and so on in just a day or two we can get over a billion people pitching in and fighting cancer. Can you think of 7 people that might like to help fight cancer?
My mother and father both died of cancer. I would help out even if it cost me. I truely can’t think of any reason that anyone would have to not help in this way.
Think about it. You have absolutely nothing to loose and everything to gain.
In order to get your Ad to appear on Google you have to pay so much each time someone clicks on your ad. The nice part is that you only pay if someone comes to your website. The tough part is that you are competing against other providers of your service or product. You say you will pay or “Bid” 50 cents each time someone comes to your site. Your competitor says they will bid 75 cents per click. They will then appear above you on Google. That is some of the time. Google also takes into account how relevant your site is to the keyword the user typed in. Thus you may appear higher up on Google if your site is more relevant to what the customer is looking for.
Take a look:
If you have any questions about how Google Adwords work or how they can help your business please give us a call at 317.947.4814 or email us support@softtechinc.com.
If I am working away and I want to bring up the calculator I hold down the Ctrl and ALT keys with my left hand and hit the C key with my right. Up pops the calculator. I don’t have to click on Start and then Programs and try to remember where the calculator is. All I have to do is associate the C key with the word calculator.
While reviewing a website in internet explorer I want to email the site to an employee. I drag across the www address in the address bar of my browser and hit Ctrl – C and a copy of the address is put in my clipboard. I then do Ctrl-Alt-E and my email program pops up. E = Email. I can then paste the email address into an email from my clipboard and add any notes and send the email. I didn’t have to look for my email icon to start the email program.
Where do all these keyboard shortcuts come from? Many are built into windows like the Ctrl-C for copy and Ctrl-V for paste. Check them out on the Microsoft website. Keyboard shortcuts for Windows. You really should review these every once in awhile.
You can also setup your own shortcuts. It is easy. Go to the Icon thats opens any program, like say the Calculator Icon, and right-click on it. Choose Properties then the Shortcut Tab. You will see the following:
Next click in the Shortcut Key box hit the C key on your keyboard. You will see that windows puts the keystroke keys in for you:
Hit OK and that’s all there is to it. From now on you can hold the Ctrl and Alt keys down and hit the C key and your calculator will pop-up. The Ctrl and Alt keys are always close to each other on keyboards and thus easy to hold down with one hand.
There are 26 letters of the alphabet on your keyboard and 10 number keys. Use any of the letters or numbers for shortcut keys. I use the E key for my email program and the S key for the Snipit program which I use quite a bit. I use the W key if I want to see what the weather is out there.
Use your imagination. How about setting up the B key to bring up your browser and the N key to bring up Sticky Notes so you can make a note to do something while you are on the phone?
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