Block websites on your computer

Broadband Internet connectivity is so common these days that almost no one has a second thought about connecting to the Internet. Connecting is easy, but what if you need to control or restrict the ways in which the Internet connection is to be used? Sure enough, widespread availability of unlimited, unmetered Internet connections has its pros. But what about the contras? 


Everybody is talking about nowadays how fast their connection is. Fast and unlimited maybe fine for the most home users, but this is not necessarily the same for work or study environments, public places, or specific age groups. The Internet contains enough threats such as spyware and viruses to make you wish to restrict access to certain resources. A virus can corrupt or destroy information on your PC, causing you spending days to recover data. Spyware steals your personal information and slows down your computer's performance, making it a pain to work on. While it is usually possible to fix a PC contaminated with spyware and viruses, it is much safer and easier to prevent the infection in the first place – by restricting the browsing to the list of known, safe Web sites. 


Restrict Internet browsing in Internet Explorer to the defined list of safe Web sites with Ashkon Software WebAllow http://www.weballow.com! WebAllow prevents electronic infections by block access to all but selected preapproved Web sites in Internet Explorer, effectively protecting your computer from spyware and viruses. If a user on your computer tries to access a website that is not on the list of allowed sites, she is redirected to a Web page of your choice to inform her about your access restriction policy. 


While viruses and spyware sound familiar enough, Internet threats are not limited to those. The Internet offers a great variety of resources that are not always appropriate for your audience. Online computer games may be fine for the kids, but they can occupy the employees' attention in an office. Online chats, forums and blogs are popular among students and office employees, occupying their time and taking away from their study or work – wasting valuable time. Finally, while certain Web sites may be appropriate for adults, these same sites are not likely to make you smile when accessed by your children due to coarse language or adult content.

Use WebAllow at home to block all but kid-safe Web sites on your home PC. Use it in the office to prevent your employees wasting their time playing computer games, chatting on the forums or reading breakdown news. Use the same product in the school, college or university to concentrate students' attention on their study by only allowing access to their online class materials. Install WebAllow in a store or in a library and allow your customers to access your book or product catalog and nothing else. Do not let your computer users misuse Internet connection with WebAllow! 


When installed, WebAllow is easy to configure by the administrator, and impossible to disable or uninstall by the regular users. It embeds into Internet Explorer and makes it impossible to visit Web sites other than defined. WebAllow is light on memory and disk space, and is perfect to be used on any computer type from powerful workstations to public computers with small memory and hard drives. 


Once configured, WebAllow requires absolutely zero administration and runs completely unattended. WebAllow will improve your personal privacy and computer security, protect your kids, increase employee performance and motivate students. Download evaluation copy for free at http://www.weballow.com/ 

The Wages of Science

In the United States, Congress approved, In February 2003, increases in the 2003 budgets of both the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. America is not alone in - vainly - trying to compensate for imploding capital markets and risk-averse financiers.

In 1999, chancellor Gordon Brown inaugurated a $1.6 billion program of "upgrading British science" and commercializing its products. This was on top of $1 billion invested between 1998-2002. The budgets of the Medical Research Council and the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council were quadrupled overnight.

The University Challenge Fund was set to provide $100 million in seed money to cover costs related to the hiring of managerial skills, securing intellectual property, constructing a prototype or preparing a business plan. Another $30 million went to start-up funding of high-tech, high-risk companies in the UK.

According to the United Nations Development Programme(UNDP), the top 29 industrialized nations invest in R&D more than $600 billion a year. The bulk of this capital is provided by the private sector. In the United Kingdom, for instance, government funds are dwarfed by private financing, according to the British Venture Capital Association. More than $80 billion have been ploughed into 23,000 companies since 1983, about half of them in the hi-tech sector. Three million people are employed in these firms. Investments surged by 36 percent in 2001 to $18 billion.

But this British exuberance is a global exception.

Even the - white hot - life sciences field suffered an 11 percent drop in venture capital investments in 2002, reports the MoneyTree Survey. According to the Ernst & Young 2002 AlbertaTechnology Report released in March 2003, the Canadian hi-tech sector is languishing with less than $3 billion invested in 2002 in seed capital - this despite generous matching funds and tax credits proffered by many of the provinces as well as the federal government.

In Israel, venture capital plunged to $600 million in 2002 - one fifth its level in 2000. Aware of this cataclysmic reversal in investor sentiment, the Israeli government set up 24 hi-tech incubators. But these are able merely to partly cater to the pecuniary needs of less than 20 percent of the projects submitted.

As governments pick up the monumental slack created by the withdrawal of private funding, they attempt to rationalize and economize.

The New Jersey Commission of Health Science Education and Training recently proposed to merge the state's three public research universities. Soaring federal and state budget deficits are likely to exert added pressure on the already strained relationship between academe and state - especially with regards to research priorities and the allocation of ever-scarcer resources.

This friction is inevitable because the interaction between technology and science is complex and ill-understood. Some technological advances spawn new scientific fields - the steel industry gave birth to metallurgy, computers to computer science and the transistor to solid state physics. The discoveries of science also lead, though usually circuitously, to technological breakthroughs - consider the examples of semiconductors and biotechnology.

Thus, it is safe to generalize and say that the technology sector is only the more visible and alluring tip of the drabber iceberg of research and development. The military, universities, institutes and industry all over the world plough hundreds of billions annually into both basic and applied studies. But governments are the most important sponsors of pure scientific pursuits by a long shot.

Science is widely perceived as a public good - its benefits are shared. Rational individuals would do well to sit back and copy the outcomes of research - rather than produce widely replicated discoveries themselves. The government has to step in to provide them with incentives to innovate.

Thus, in the minds of most laymen and many economists, science is associated exclusively with publicly-funded universities and the defense establishment. Inventions such as the jet aircraft and the Internet are often touted as examples of the civilian benefits of publicly funded military research. The pharmaceutical, biomedical, information technology and space industries, for instance - though largely private - rely heavily on the fruits of nonrivalrous (i.e. public domain) science sponsored by the state.

The majority of 501 corporations surveyed by the Department of Finance and Revenue Canada in 1995-6 reported that government funding improved their internal cash flow - an important consideration in the decision to undertake research and development. Most beneficiaries claimed the tax incentives for seven years and recorded employment growth.

In the absence of efficient capital markets and adventuresome capitalists, some developing countries have taken this propensity to extremes. In the Philippines, close to 100 percent of all R&D is government-financed. The meltdown of foreign direct investment flows - they declined by nearly three fifths since 2000 - only rendered state involvement more indispensable.

But this is not a universal trend. South Korea, for instance, effected a successful transition to private venture capital which now - even after the Asian turmoil of 1997 and the global downturn of 2001 - amounts to four fifths of all spending on R&D.

Thus, supporting ubiquitous government entanglement in science is overdoing it. Most applied R&D is still conducted by privately owned industrial outfits. Even "pure" science - unadulterated by greed and commerce - is sometimes bankrolled by private endowments and foundations.

Moreover, the conduits of government involvement in research, the universities, are only weakly correlated with growing prosperity. As Alison Wolf, professor of education at the University of London elucidates in her seminal tome "Does Education Matter? Myths about Education and Economic Growth", published in 2002, extra years of schooling and wider access to university do not necessarily translate to enhanced growth (though technological innovation clearly does).

Why Does The Sky Glow At Night

  

Have you ever noticed that the night sky is no longer inky black and full of stars like it used to be? Have you noticed the strange orangish glow that's replaced it? The strange orangy glow is a form of light pollution referred to as sky glow.

Sky glow is probably the most recognizable aspect of light pollution. By far the largest segment of the population equates sky glow with light pollution. This is wonderful, as it shows a growing awareness of the problem. As a quick refresher, sky glow is the glow we see above cities and towns when viewed from a distance. The intensity of the sky glow is an indication of the quantity of exterior lighting which is wastefully shining up into the night sky.

To put the problem in perspective, estimates place the cost for the US alone in the neighborhood of$5-10 billion dollars annually. This is not the sum total of all outdoor lighting, this is just that portion of outdoor lighting that is so misdirected as to light up the night sky. This is an incredible sum of money to simplywaste, and yet that's exactly what we do year after year. In fact, the problem is actually increasing in magnitude and cost.

A consequence of sky glow is the dramatic reduction in the number of stars visible in the night sky. Under pristine conditions, some 4000-5000 stars may be seen. In the most light polluted cities, perhaps a dozen or two are visible. You may think that this only impacts astronomers, but you'd be wrong. We are all affected in a profound way. The human race has looked to the stars through out history in an attempt to understand our place in the universe. It is highly unfortunate that the most technologically advanced civilization to inhabit this planet should also be the most detached from the cosmos. It is no wonder that more and more people feel detached, alone and overwhelmed in our continuous motion society. They simply have lost their reference points and are unable to find their way.

Sky glow also changes the surrounding environment. In many areas, it never really gets dark at night. This seriously impacts local wildlife. Many species are simply unable to adapt. Sea turtles are a prime example. All sea turtles that inhabit Florida waters are either threatened or endangered, and according to the Florida Fish & Wildlife Conservation Commission, light pollution is a major contributing factor.

If you'd like to change this situation, its easy to do your part. Simply choose a night sky friendly light fixture. Night sky friendly lights put all the light they emit onto the ground beneath them and do not shine any wastefully up into the night sky. By choosing a night sky friendly outdoor light fixture for your home or business, you can feel better knowing that you are doing your part to reduce sky glow in your area and help to reclaim the majesty of the night sky. 

Multivitamins - A Ticket to Daily Health

An increasingly number of the world's population is now eager and interested in looking after their health and in keeping tune with their well-being. It is important to note that this awareness is progressively contributing to the creation of several health supplements to benefit both the adults and the young ones. Dietary and vitamin supplements have constantly proven their worth to health conscious individuals. 

An excellent daily multivitamin supplement does not only develop your general bodily functions but also improves your mental and physical condition and well being. Occasionally specification is needed in appropriately supplementing nutrientsto deal with any individual needs. An example would be in heart disease patients, they would have to take in CoQ10 in preventing the said condition. Alzheimer's disease can be effectively prevented by a regular combination of Vitamin C and E intake. 

Multivitamin supplements necessarily include all the vitamins and nutrients essential for recommended daily dosage. Multivitamin supplements may also be formulated to meet the needs of individual conditions like pregnancy and specific age brackets. It is a well settled fact that multivitamins in liquid form are more efficient than the ordinary pill forms. This is due to the fact that the body can easily absorb liquid nutrients five times more than ordinary multivitamins in tablet or capsule form. 

Basically, the body needs 13 essential vitamins to function properly. In regulating the crucial performance of the body, it has to have vitamins A, B, C, D, E, K, B12, and the 7 B-complex vitamins. Majority of these vitamins are obtained by our body through the food that we eat. The danger of illness or even mortality is in the deficiency of some of the essential vitamins. This is where vitamin supplementation comes in. It counteracts the illness caused by such deficiency. With this fact, it is very unlikely for someone to refuse vitamin supplementation on a daily basis. So the question now is, why is it necessary for individuals to take multivitamins when majority of our daily diet can provide us with the basic nutrients we need? It may not be compulsory, but everyone can profit from daily multivitamins. 

As previously mentioned, the clear benefit of daily intake of multivitamins it to prevent vitamin/nutrient deficiency. Some personal circumstances may increase dietary needs. Pregnant women, during their first trimester, are recommended by their doctors to take multivitamins. This does not only provide the mothers with sufficient nutrition but also proper vitamins to benefit the unborn child inside their womb. Taking multivitamins everyday reduces the risk of transmitting malnutrition from a pregnant woman to her unborn baby. Other conditions such as old age, alcoholism, smoking, and exposure to excessive pollution have long-term detrimental effects to the body system which can be successfully counteracted by multivitamins.

Stress is also one risk factor which needs serious supplementation that multivitamins can provide. Especially with people who have so much to do and have a hard time in keeping up with their health needs, multivitamins are a must to keep them always on the go without any health complications in the long run. Stress formulations benefit both your mental ability and daily endurance. Aside from the mentioned benefits, daily multivitamins also minimize the risk of cancer or any cardiovascular disease. 

Several people, if not all, testify to have a feeling of comfortable health in regularly taking in multivitamins. This is due to the synergistic or combined effects of the supplemental ingredients found in multivitamins. A fat-solubleantioxidant vitamin, like the Vitamin E, works to neutralize probable harmful free agents in the body. This vitamin also maintains healthy skin through protection of cell membranes, blood circulation, heart, nerves, red blood cells,and muscles. Another antioxidant is the Vitamin C which effectively fights blood cell infection and is vital in collagen formation, wound healing, and formation of bone structures, capillaries, and teeth. Vitamin is also helpful in the iron absorption from plant sources. Vitamins A, D, K and other supplemental nutrients found in multivitamins have specific functions that benefit the bodily functions. 

While daily intake of multivitamins may have proven beneficial, it is not a 100% guarantee to be free of serious illness attributed to other factors. It is often a misconception that symptoms of disease may always be cured by taking multivitamins. Health experts have the better opinion of immediate medical assistance rather than resorting to multivitamins alone. 

Trying To Get Back In Shape

If you have taken a layoff from your exercise program it's tough to get motivated to start back into your training regimen again. What you have to do is set some realistic attainable "written"goals to help push you. 

The reason I have emphasized "written" is because if you don't write your goals down they are merely wishes. Studies have proven over and over that writing your goals down is powerful. 

Let's look at some examples. If you want to get back into running, walk first. Depending upon your level of fitness you may only start with fifteen or twenty minutes. If you have some level of fitness start with 30 minutes and gradually increase it.

Once you have been walking for a couple of weeks ease back into running by alternating walking and running. Walk for ten minutes and run for five and so on. As you increase your level of fitness and your soreness lessens increase the running until you get back to running for thirty to forty five minutes at a time.

If you have been involved in weight training in the past and have taken a layoff of more than a couple of months you really need to take it slow coming back.

With weight training, if you push to hard to early you can end up damaging supporting tendons and ligaments. The key is not to rush in trying to use the same weights you were using and do less sets.

What I do after a long layoff is go to the gym and ride the stationary bike for 15-2o minutes first to warm my body up. Next, I will choose only one body part per day to exercise. If you are an older person or have a larger frame you may want to continue this type of program even after your initial break in period.

Let's look at working the chest for example. If I were bench pressing 300 pounds prior to my layoff I will begin my first work out with 135 pounds and do 3 or 4 sets of high reps in the 15-20 range. Adjust your weights accordingly. Then I may do 3 sets of flat dumbbell flyes again with higher reps so as not to place to much stress on my tendons and ligaments.

Follow these same guidelines for all body parts and increase the weights and reps slowly and within a month you will be right back to hard training again and working towards your goals. 

Success in Business

Here is a secret that may be difficult for you to believe, so prepare yourself. It is an extremely important secret that can have a most profound impact on your small business success, or it's failure. 

Let's start by asking a simple question...Do you enjoy sales? 

The truth of the matter is that when many small business owners are asked this question, they respond with answers like, "No way" or "I can't stand sales, let someone else do it." 

Why is your answer to the above question so important? No doubt you have seen headlines like the following, which glorify how easy and simple it is to succeed in business: 

"The Ultimate Lazy Way To Start Your Own Business" 

"Cash In On A Multi-Billion Dollar Industry In Your Underwear" 

"Easily Generate A Lucrative Income While Sleeping" 

We are constantly being bombarded with these "easy ways" to make a million bucks. Does success in business actually work this way? Not in reality! Is it realistic? Not even close! 

The bottom line in operating a successful long-term business comes down to your ability to sell your product...period. It doesn't get any simpler than that. You can either sell your own product or resell somebody's else's product. Either way, your success or failure will ultimately depend on your ability to market it. If you don't enjoy sales, you have very little chance to succeed in business for yourself.

The most prevalent attitude of many new business owners is that their product, once launched, will miraculously sell itself. After all, the product is awesome and everybody will absolutely, positively want one. People should be lining up to buy it, right? 

Here is another truth about sales. It will take 5-7 sales attempts to close 80% of your sales. Yes, you read that correctly. That's 5-7 attempts before people will say "Yes, I want to buy your product." Running an advertisement one-time or making a sales pitch to a potential customer once in a while does not qualify as effort. Hearing that first "no" and subsequently giving up means the demise of your business and gives someone else an opportunity to turn that NO into a YES. 

What most people don't realize or fail to accept is that it may take weeks, months or even years to get a product to sell according to your expectations. You may have to frequently change your sales pitch, web site, advertisement or even the product until you get it right. This dedication and determination is what separates the very few successful business owners from the many "wannabes" and fly-by-night hopefuls. 

The bottom line is that to be successful in ANY business you will need talent and the ability to sell, sell, sell. 

Earn Money Online With Your Home Business

When you decide to start your own home business, you have three options. You can run your business without using the Web, run your business using only the Web, or do a little of both. The best thing you can do for your home business is to promote or run it via the web. There are several reasons why allowing your home business to be present on the web is beneficial. Take a look at these reasons and then make the choice on whether or not you want to take your home business to a whole new level.

The biggest reason you should consider earning money onlinewith your home business is because it is easy to do. When you need a customer base, you can easily find one online. There are millions of potential consumers online, just waiting for you to get their attention. When you put your home business online, you can instantly start accessing those consumers and make more money.

Another reason you should think about putting your home business online is because it is much cheaper to run your business online than it is to rent office space and pay for all of the utilities. When you think about it, the only thing you have to pay for when you operate your business online is yourwebsite hosting fees and minor Internet fees. So, obviously you can see that it is not only can you find more customers online, but you can save money by running your business online as well.

So, if you are thinking about putting your home business online, you should! You can easily earn money and market your product or service to millions of people around the world. In addition, you really need very little startup capital to make your dream of owning your own home business a reality.