Surf the Web via Email - Read Web Pages in your Inbox

If you work in an office where employees have no access to Internet but are allowed to send and receive email, the new Web-In-Mail service from Rediff will come very handy.

“Web In Mail” lets you fetch full web pages to your inbox by simple email commands. You may even perform searches on Google Web and Google Image through email.

Full HTML Web Pages Delivered to your Inbox

To browse a web page, send a blank email message to browse@webinmail.com with the page URL as the subject. If you like to search google, send an email to the same address but the subject should say google:query (e.g. google: how to impress your boss).

Also see: Most Useful Email Addresses

You can read emails in Outlook, Blackberry or any email client that understands HTML.

And there’s something smart about Web in Mail as noted by Allen Stern – it rewrites all the links in the web page as mailto. That means you’ll automatically launch a blank email message when you click any of the hyperlinks in the existing email.

To get started, why don’t you just send a blank email to browse@webinmail.com.

 

Six Steps to Stop Smoking

In Six straightforward and easy steps, you can stop smoking and live a normal and healthy life same as that of a non-smoker.

Step 1: Think About Quitting

According to a recent survey, around 15 million smokers try to quit smoking each day. However, less than 3% of these people stop smoking successfully for 3 to 12 months. If you're thinking about quitting or have stopped smoking but failed to quit, don't lose hope because smokers often try to quit more than once before they actually succeed.

In this section, you will learn about the history of cigarette smoking, facts about smoking, smoking cessation and benefits of quitting smoking. To give you a strong reason to quit smoking, this section will also tackle dangerous diseases – such as lung cancer, heart disease, strokes, diabetes, etc – caused by smoking cigarettes. In addition, this section will explain the reasons why it is extremely hard to quit smoking, hurdles in quitting and possible nicotine withdrawal symptoms that you may encounter throughout this process.

Step 2: Effects of Smoking

Years of clinical studies have proven that using Tobacco causes people to become sick, disabled or die. Since the first Surgeon General's Report in 1964, over 12 million smoking-related deaths have occurred. More than 500,000 deaths in the U.S are caused from smoking-related illnesses. Adult smokers reduce their lifespan by an average of 13 to 14 years.

In this section, you will learn about the dangerous effects and health risks of smoking. You will understand the facts about smoking addiction, the hazardous effects of smoking on a pregnant woman, on passive smokers, on your facial charm and on your teeth. You will also learn how stress could play a role in cigarette smoking. This section also deals with the effects on secondhand smoke, effects of smoking on vitamin A and C, dangerous effects of smoking on men and women, as well as the differences between cigar and pipe smoking.

Step 3: Preparing To Quit Smoking

The first key to quitting smoking successfully is planning and preparation. You need to prepare your body and mind before actually quitting. Determine your personal goals, discover your reasons for quitting and get rid of temptations that may become a hindrance to your stop smoking program. Tobacco smoke contains nicotine, a drug that is addictive and can make it very hard, but not impossible, to quit.

In this section, you will face the facts about nicotine addiction before your last stick of cigarette. You will learn the most effective steps to be followed when planning to quit smoking. You will also find out about the real reason why it is so hard to quit smoking. To help you plan your quit smoking program, you need to confront your personal reasons to start quitting and understand what you need to do stop smoking. This section also deals with the psychological recovery stages to stop smoking and provides helpful tips to quit smoking.

Step 4: Stop Smoking Tips

Even if you have no idea where to start and what to do, you can quit smoking as long as you have the mindset and commitment to do so. Stop smoking tips can help you create a good stop smoking plan and lifestyle changes that could lead to a healthier, smoke-free life.

In this section, you will learn some of the simplest ways and useful tips to quit smoking for good. You can choose from several psychological areas that can help you to stop smoking based on your lifestyle. This section also deals with stop smoking tips that will help your loved ones quit this deadly habit and tips on how to overcome nicotine withdrawal symptoms using an effective stop smoking plan, attending support groups and establishing a smoking cessation program.

Step 5: Stop Smoking Aids

When smoking cigarettes has played a large part in your life, quitting smoking may not be that simple. Fortunately, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved seven over-the-counter stop smoking aids – five of these help in managing nicotine withdrawal symptoms, while the other two help in reducing cigarette cravings.

In this section, you will learn about different proven stop smoking methods like Water Therapy, Psychological Therapy and Nicotine Replacement Therapy. This section also deals with other useful stop smoking aids such as nicotine nasal sprays, nicotine lozenges, nicotine inhalers, nicotine patches, nicotine gum and stop smoking pills.

Step 6: Stay a Quitter

After sometime, some quitters get back to their smoking habit due to temptation and persistent nicotine carving. Some may slip and puff "just one cigarette", while others experience total relapse. In fact, according to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, smokers who quit are at greater risk of relapsing in the first three months of becoming smoke-free.

In this section, you will learn effective methods in avoiding nicotine carvings, while training how to control urges through breathing exercises. To understand what you are going to experience through this process, you need to learn and manage nicotine withdrawal symptoms. This section also tackles steps to manage weight gain, discusses FAQ on common frustrations of a quitter, handle traumatic events without a cigarette and other possible solutions for ex-smokers.

 

Three envelopes

An Ode to the Tanking Economy...
 
A man had just been hired as the new managing director of a large high tech London-based corporation.

The previous managing director who was stepping down, met with him privately and presented him with three numbered envelopes. "Open these if you run up against a problem you don't think you can solve," he said.

Things went along pretty smoothly, but three months later, sales took a downturn and the new MD was really catching a lot of heat. It was then that he remembered the three envelopes.

He went to his drawer and took out the first one. The message read, "Blame your predecessor. "

The new MD called a press conference and tactfully laid the blame at the feet of the previous MD.

Satisfied with his comments, the press and the city responded positively. Sales began to pick up and the problem was soon behind him.

However, a mere three months later, the company was again experiencing a dip in sales, combined with serious product difficulties. Remembering the envelopes, the MD opened the second one. The message read, "Reorganize. " This he did, and the company quickly rebounded.

After two consecutive profitable quarters, the company again fell on difficult times. The MD went to his office, closed the door and opened the third envelope. The message said, "Prepare three envelopes."

 

Leadership: Reinventing Failure: Designing Success

I am fascinated by problems. I like to think of myself as a solution oriented individual. However when problems creep into my life as they always do I know that I am in for a major learning experience.

I just finished reading a book this week that belongs on the bookshelf of every entrepreneur. It is called “Juice, The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz.” This book allows you to take a peek inside the labs of the brightest minds and better understand how they relentlessly question and discover the infinite number of ways that we can imagine and create solutions. The book is an awesome expose on how world class inventors on the planet search for problems, seek to understand them and develop solutions that can only come about by perceiving the problem in a different manner. Every entrepreneur should read this book! It is chock full of wisdom that we can apply to our business lives.

Albert Einstein once commented that the most fundamental question we can ever ask ourselves is whether or not the universe we live in is friendly or hostile. He hypothesized that your answer to that question would determine your destiny. I feel that most people have decided that the universe is hostile. In so doing their immediate response to any problem only compounds the hostility. However, the great minds always teach us that regardless of the problem there is a major lesson to be understood if we only learn to look for it. The history of the world is literally the history of transformative breakthroughs.

In the book ““Juice, The Creative Fuel That Drives World-Class Inventors by Evan I. Schwartz” the author clearly demonstrates that the one factor that separates world class inventors from wannabes is that they celebrate the feedback they receive from FAILURE. The most innovative minds recognize that within every failure lies the true and genuine information that is required to learn how to better understand the problem and overcome the obstacles that it presents. They are fascinated by the feedback they receive and are consistently focused on experimenting further because of the feedback that will provide.

A powerful lesson for all of us! Failure is feedback and within that feedback is the wisdom of incredible success. Or as Dr. Wayne Dyer as stated, “When you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.”

Take for example the story of Dean Kamen the inventor of the Segway, the two wheeled personal electronic vehicle that is revolutionizing transportation in our major cities. One day in 1990, Kamen witnessed a wheelchair bound man trying to navigate a curb en route to a shopping center. He followed the man into an ice cream store and was astonished at how the man struggled to reach for the counter and grab his ice cream cone. Within that experience Kamen was both outraged and inspired. The seeds of the Segway were born.

Two years later after numerous disappointments Kamen slipped on a wet bathroom floor and realized that the real problem he was confronting in his technology was one of balance. He and his team of engineers honed in on the enabling technology of electronic gyroscopes that could provide “automatic balance.” It was only after years and years of failure and celebrating the feedback he received that they could focus on the successful introduction of the Segway prototype. Today, according to Kamen the Segway is the answer to the urban transportation problem. 43% of the world’s gas is used by cars and almost 20% of individuals’ disposable income goes to car payments and gasoline. The market for the Segway is several billion people! A fascinating creation brought about by someone who simply disagreed with limitations imposed by the status quo.

What is your greatest problem in life right now?

What is the greatest problem in your business?

The late Dr. Norman Vincent Peale was fond of saying that, “When God wants to send you a gift he wraps it up in a problem and the bigger the gift that God sends you the bigger the problem.”

If the Segway can be born by witnessing a wheelchair bound man in pursuit of an ice cream cone what are the possibilities that can occur in your life if you learn to seek the lesson in your problems?

An Nathan Myrhrvold, the former Chief Technologist at Microsoft Corporation has prophesied “There’s never been a better time to have big ideas.”

Eureka! When you reinvent failure you design your own success.

Be Careful What You Agree With!

 

Firefox & IE Prompt You To Remember Passwords - Do You Say Yes ?

When you type a password into any web form, both Internet Explorer and Firefox prompt whether you would like them to remember your password.

If that’s a personal computer, chances are high that you will click Yes and the password is then saved in the web browser.

 

This “Remember Me” option in web browsers is useful but it actually puts your login credentials at serious risk especially in Firefox.

View stored passwords in Internet Explorer:

Though IE stores your passwords in encrypted form in the Windows Registry database, anyone can easily view your passwords using a free 35kb tool called IE PassView.

The tool automatically displays a list all auto-complete entries saved inside IE. See screenshot.

View stored passwords in Firefox:

With Firefox, it gets much simpler and anyone who knows how to use a mouse can see all your passwords stored inside Firefox.

The route is Tools -> Options -> Security -> Show Passwords. And there you have all the passwords that you ever asked Firefox to remember for you.

Even that short visit to a nearby coffee vending machine could leak your identity as all it takes is few seconds for anyone to view your secret passwords.

To keep yourself safe, uncheck “Prompt me to save passwords” in Internet Explorer and “Set Master Password” in Firefox.

 

First Things First

A Beautiful Story I cam across on Time Management and Setting Priorities.

A professor stood before his class and had some items in front of him. When class began, wordlessly he picked up a large empty jar and proceeded to fill it with rocks right to the top, rocks about 2" diameter.

He then asked the students if the jar was full? They agreed that it was.

So the professor then picked up a box of pebbles and poured them in to the jar. He shook the jar lightly. The pebbles, of course, rolled into the open areas between the rocks. The students laughed.

He asked his students again if the jar was full? They agreed that yes,it was.

The professor then picked up a box of sand and poured it into the jar. Of course, the sand filled up everything else.

"Now," said the professor, "I want you to recognize that this is your life. The rocks are the important things - your family, your partner, your health, your children -anything that is so important to you that if it were lost, you would be nearly destroyed.

The pebbles are the other things in life that matter, but on a smaller scale. The pebbles represent things like your job, house, or car.

The sand is everything else, the "small stuff."

"If you put the sand or the pebbles into the jar first, there is no room for the rocks.

The same goes for your life. If you spend all your energy and time on the small stuff, material things, you will never have room for the things that are truly most important.

Pay attention to the things that are Important in your life.

Spend time with your Family.
Spend time with your people.
Play with your children.
Take time to get medical checkups.
Take your partner out once a while.
Take time to renew yourself.
Find time for maintainance.
Spend time on Preventing than on Solving Problems

***** Take care of the rocks first - the things that really matter.****

Set your priorities, the rest is just pebbles and sand.

 

Save An Hour Each Day... Get Organized!!!

What does your desk look like? * A toxic waste dump? * A bomb exploded? * Burglars had ransacked your office?

In corporate America, most business people associate a messy, dis-organized desk/office with being productive, effective and efficient.

Are you a member of this club?

Did you know that most people are “wasting” an hour each day looking for “STUFF” that’s lost on their desk? How about you? (Do you wish it was “only” an hour?)

And it always happens at the most inopportune time. How many times last week did you call someone up, ask them a question, and they responded, “Hold on a second and let me find the letter/file/proposal. I know it’s here... somewhere.”

And five minutes later they come back and sheepishly said: “I can’t find it, let me call you back later.” Thus beginning another round of telephone tag, stretching a quick five-minute conversation into a five-day odyssey.

If you want to get ahead in life, make more money, and even get home for dinner every once in a while, follow these 6 steps and you’ll be organized. (This complete procedure is explained both in my best-selling “Success is a Journey” and “Time Management for Dummies” books.)

Step #1. Schedule An Appointment With Yourself
For most people, it takes about 2 hours to get organized. Write it on your calendar, and KEEP THE APPOINTMENT!!!

Step #2. No Interruptions
Turn off the telephone, close the door (or put up a Do Not Disturb sign across the entrance to your work space), and allow NO INTERRUPTIONS!

Think of this session as a meeting with your boss or most important client.

Step #3. Bring A Dumpster
Sixty percent of the stuff on most peoples desk can be tossed. That includes you!!!

So keep the papers, documents, and files you need, and throw the rest away.

Remember: Don’t succumb to Cleaner’s Remorse. (Going thru the trash and pulling out the stuff you just threw away because you think you may “Need It Again.”

Step #4. Pickup A Piece Of Paper
Now that you’ve closed the door and turned off the phone, pick up a piece of paper - any one will do - and ask yourself 3 questions

• What is it?
• Why do I have it?
• What am I going to do with it?

If you can’t come up with a good answer, THROW IT AWAY!!!

Step #5. File Your Papers
If you need to keep a piece of paper, (file or proposal), put it in a properly labeled file folder. If one doesn’t exist, create one on the spot.

Step #6. Record Your To-dos On A Master List
If there’s work to do, note it on your Master List, which is a to-do list written on a big piece of paper - like a legal tablet.

You can also record your tasks inside your contact manager - like ACT!, or your PIM - like Outlook, or your PalmPilot.

Before you know it, your desk will look like the flight deck of an aircraft carrier, and your garbage can will be filled to the brim, overflowing, and spilling onto the floor.

You’ll be organized, efficient and productive. You’ll spend your time doing things that make you successful.