Thanks for the article from Glenda Hanson

Having been home for 8 weeks on maternity leave, I am not sure what I would do without my television. Right before our son was born, my husband went to www.expertsatellite.com and signed us up for a television subscription. I didn’t realize how lonely it would be at home all day with just a baby. He sleeps a lot (lucky me) but I need something to keep me occupied. I especially need something to entertain me while I’m doing mindless tasks. There is always laundry to fold, bottles to make or dishes to watch. It’s almost impossible to hold a magazine, book or laptop while holding a baby but I can hold a remote and find something to watch when he falls asleep in my lap or on my shoulder! I must admit, I wasn’t convinced that a television subscription was an expense we needed to take on with a new addition, but I am so glad my husband talked me into it. In a couple of weeks when I go back to work, I am definitely going to miss being able to keep up with my daily programs!

How to Find Out Any Website’s Traffic, Visitors and Hits

By braniac

Website Tracking

There are several ways to find out how many visitors or hits your website or any other website generates per month. Website traffic is an important factor in determining how effective your website is, how well it is performing, how many people find it useful and how many customers or sales it can generate. You may also want to know the traffic estimate if you are trying to make money by displaying advertising on your website. Or, maybe you just want to know how well your competitor’s website is doing compared to yours. Finally, it is a key factor in determining the monetary value of a website. It is important to show proof of traffic history when someone decides to sell a website.

1. If you are the owner of the website, you should install visitor tracking code on your website, such as Google Analytics which is free (see link in Resources at the bottom). It will track how many hits, pages views and unique visitors your website receives daily, weekly and monthly. If you have an e-commerce website, it can also track the conversions and sales amounts. Many other handy charts, graphs and tools are also included. This information is private and only available to you, the account owner. It is best to install the tracking code as soon as possible to start building history. If you are using Google Adwords (you pay to advertise your website) or Google Adsense (you place advertising on your website for profit) then you may already have access to Google Analytics.

2. If you are the owner of the website, another popular website analyzer tool is WebTrends (see link in Resources at the bottom). It goes beyond basic analytics and measures all aspects of the online experience and helps you find ways to improve usability and optimize conversions for page views, paths and scenarios. However, it is not free and instead comes with a hefty price tag.

How to Find Out Any Website’s Traffic, Visitors and Hits | eHow.com

Do you need a cheap cpap masks? Then we are sure you have stopped at the right place.
Are you looking for a cheap baby mattress? Then I am sure that in getting here you will find that cheap mattress.
Now what about cheap drafting tables? Do you want to get some? Do you know where to get them?

Look, you want a good company to get these things from. Well Become, Inc. was founded in 2004. Its mission was to help people make the appropriate buying decisions. They knew it was very difficult to research products and their intent was to make it more palatable.

They work with unbiased research information in a comprehensive and relevant manner. They have developed and are developing new technologies and new search services. As such one can find the product at the best price .

One of their greatest attributes is that they want to hear from you. In fact they claim to love hearing from you. Is that not what makes great companies that provide great services?

Meet Apple’s new iPad, now with a Retina Display

By Rachel King | March 7, 2012, 10:47am PST

Summary: Given all of the hype surrounding new Apple products, there are inevitably high expectations for the newest iPad.

Everyone knew it was coming, and here it is: the new iPad.

See also: CNET: Live blogging today’s event
Live Webcast: Let’s talk iPad
New Apple TV announced at iPad event
Apple display spending to double in 2012: report

CEO Tim Cook introduced the newest, 1.4-pound iPad at a special media, invite-only event in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, hailing it as the next step in the “post-PC revolution.”

“In many ways the iPad is reinventing portable computing, and it’s outstripping the wildest of predictions,” Cook told audience-goers, adding that Apple sold 172 million post-PC devices in 2011 alone.

Ever since the unveiling of the iPad 2 last March, rumors have been swirling everywhere as to what the third-generation of the iOS-based tablet would look like. One of the most recent rumors was that the iPad 3 would actually be referred to as the iPad HD.

Yet, it looks like Apple is actually only going to refer to the third-generation as simply “the new iPad” for the time being.

Also as expected, Apple is finally bringing its Retina Display technology (as seen on the iPhone 4 and 4S) to the 9.7 inch screen of the iPad. That includes a 2048 x 1536 resolution with 3.1 million pixels.

Additional hot specs include the A5X quad-core processor, touted as twice as fast and four times better performance than Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip.

Apple developers also stepped up the camera features and abilities considerably from the iPad 2. For starters, the rear camera is now an iSight camera with 5-megapixel, illuminated sensor with a 5-element lens, face detection and IR filter. Another touch of HD on this tablet is the addition of 1080p HD video recording.

Meet Apple’s new iPad, now with a Retina Display | ZDNet

Customers pre-ordering the new iPad will have to wait up to three weeks to receive the tablet device even though it will be on sale in-store on Friday, according to the company’s website.

The device was announced on Wednesday and is due to go on sale from Apple’s retail stores on Friday 16 March. However, the ordering process on the company’s online store in the UK and US says that pre-ordered iPads will be dispatched in "2-3 weeks".
A spokesman for Apple said that demand for the retina display-equipped device had been "off the charts", forcing it to make the change to the expected delivery dates.
The cheapest Wi-Fi only 16GB model new iPad costs £399, whereas opting for a top of the range, 64GB Wi-Fi + ’4G’ model will set UK customers back £659.
The lightly refreshed device adds a higher resolution display, quad-core graphics processor, and faster data network capabilities in comparison to the iPad 2. However, it is also slightly heavier and slightly thicker than its predecessor.

New iPad pre-order delivery date slips | ZDNet UK

Guest written by our friend Donnie Donovan

I love John Grisham so I was excited to see advertisements for the new show The Firm based on his novel of the same name. I was watching Direct TV Newark and saw some previews for the show. I watched the first few episodes and must say I am now hooked. Even better, so is my wife! It’s sometimes hard for us to find shows we want to watch together. Now we have a weekly date on Sundays to sit down and watch! Afterwards we enjoy talking about what happened and what we think might happen! My favorite character has to be the assistant, Tammy. Not because I love the character itself but because I love Juliette Lewis! I’m not sure how they convinced such an amazing actress to take the role but I’m sure glad they did. I can tell you without asking my wife her favorite character is the lead, Mitch, played by Josh Lucas. She’s had a crush on him for years! Not that I don’t like that character as well. His back story and moral compass make him someone you definitely want to root for!

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today

From 1970s minicomputers used for military programs (including nuclear weapons) to an IBM punch-card system still keeping the books at a Texas filter supplier, these are the computers that time forgot.

By Benj Edwards, PCWorld    Feb 19, 2012 8:00 pm

It’s easy to wax nostalgic about old technology–to remember fondly our first Apple IIe or marvel at the old mainframes that ran on punched cards. But no one in their right mind would use those outdated, underpowered dinosaurs to run a contemporary business, let alone a modern weapons system, right?

Wrong!

While much of the tech world views a two-year-old smartphone as hopelessly obsolete, large swaths of our transportation and military infrastructure, some modern businesses, and even a few computer programmers rely daily on technology that hasn’t been updated for decades.

If you’ve recently bought a MetroCard for the New York City Subway or taken money from certain older ATMs, for instance, your transaction was made possible by IBM’s OS/2, an operating system that debuted 25 years ago and faded out soon after.

A recent federal review found that the U.S. Secret Service uses a mainframe computer system from the 1980s. That system apparently works only 60 percent of the time. Here’s hoping that uptime statistics are better for the ancient minicomputers used by the U.S. Department of Defense for the Minuteman Intercontinental Ballistic Missile system, Navy submarines, fighter jets, and other weapons programs. Those systems, according to the consultants who help keep them going, will likely be used until at least the middle of this century.

Here are a few stories of the computers that time forgot, and the people and institutions that stubbornly hold on to them.

Punch-Card Accounting

Sparkler Filters of Conroe, Texas, prides itself on being a leader in the world of chemical process filtration. If you buy an automatic nutsche filter from them, though, they’ll enter your transaction on a “computer” that dates from 1948.

Sparkler Filters’ IBM 402, with self-employed field engineer Duwayne Leafley in the foreground. Sparkler’s IBM 402 is not a traditional computer, but an automated electromechanical tabulator that can be programmed (or more accurately, wired) to print out certain results based on values encoded into stacks of 80-column Hollerith-type punched cards.

Companies traditionally used the 402 for accounting, since the machine could take a long list of numbers, add them up, and print a detailed written report. In a sense, you could consider it a 3000-pound spreadsheet machine. That’s exactly how Sparkler Filters uses its IBM 402, which could very well be the last fully operational 402 on the planet. As it has for over half a century, the firm still runs all of its accounting work (payroll, sales, and inventory) through the IBM 402. The machine prints out reports on wide, tractor-fed paper.

If It Ain’t Broke, Don’t Fix It: Ancient Computers in Use Today | PCWorld

Meet Apple’s new iPad, now with a Retina Display

By Rachel King | March 7, 2012, 10:47am PST

Summary: Given all of the hype surrounding new Apple products, there are inevitably high expectations for the newest iPad.

Everyone knew it was coming, and here it is: the new iPad.

See also: CNET: Live blogging today’s event
Live Webcast: Let’s talk iPad
New Apple TV announced at iPad event
Apple display spending to double in 2012: report

CEO Tim Cook introduced the newest, 1.4-pound iPad at a special media, invite-only event in San Francisco on Wednesday morning, hailing it as the next step in the “post-PC revolution.”

“In many ways the iPad is reinventing portable computing, and it’s outstripping the wildest of predictions,” Cook told audience-goers, adding that Apple sold 172 million post-PC devices in 2011 alone.

Ever since the unveiling of the iPad 2 last March, rumors have been swirling everywhere as to what the third-generation of the iOS-based tablet would look like. One of the most recent rumors was that the iPad 3 would actually be referred to as the iPad HD.

Yet, it looks like Apple is actually only going to refer to the third-generation as simply “the new iPad” for the time being.

Also as expected, Apple is finally bringing its Retina Display technology (as seen on the iPhone 4 and 4S) to the 9.7 inch screen of the iPad. That includes a 2048 x 1536 resolution with 3.1 million pixels.

Additional hot specs include the A5X quad-core processor, touted as twice as fast and four times better performance than Nvidia’s Tegra 3 chip.

Apple developers also stepped up the camera features and abilities considerably from the iPad 2. For starters, the rear camera is now an iSight camera with 5-megapixel, illuminated sensor with a 5-element lens, face detection and IR filter. Another touch of HD on this tablet is the addition of 1080p HD video recording.

Meet Apple’s new iPad, now with a Retina Display | ZDNet

Thanks for the post from Nora Mccoy

I have a dear friend who never lets me down when it comes to introducing me to new & exciting recipes. She has the greatest ideas for simple yet perfect appetizers like Roasted garlic & goat cheese on toasted crostini’s and drizzled with honey, to homemade pasta & Vodka sauce. Girls Night In at her home is a culinary treat for all of us who show up with a nice bottle of red wine & a few hours to catch up on each other’s lives. I am so inspired by her but she brushes it off insisting she isn’t doing anything special (she is so modest) and says she gets the majority of her ideas from the Cooking Channel! After one particularly decadent meal at her home, I rushed home & immediately logged on to www.TVByDirect.com and upgrade my channels. I have been soaking up new & creative dishes like a sponge. My friends & family are going to be blown away by my new creations over the holidays, but unlike my modest friend, I will completely agree that I am doing something very special.

Via: Wpromote

Facebook marketing is more prevalent than one can imagine. The interesting thing is that it is done in a very non-intrusive manner.

Before the advent of Facebook social media marketing was not as integrated. With the integration provided by Facebook that includes plugins and other type interfaces, the corporate use of this form will become ubiquitous.

If your corporation or company or sole proprietorship has never tried social media marketing you should try.In fact most companies’ survival will depend on it.