Let’s say you live in an old Italian Market. On your rounds as a door-to-door zucchini salesman, you drop in on two tailors’ shops that are quite different.

The first is run by Roberto Andolini, a very skilled tailor who has a ridiculous mustache and always greets you warmly, asking about your kids and your business. Roberto has a large collection of fountain pens and is always telling you about his latest acquisition.

Each time you see him, he cracks the same joke about making sure to keep the pens away from the clothes he’s tailoring. And each time he tells it, he’s so amused by his own hilarity that he uncorks a big, billowing laugh. You like Roberto very much.

The second shop on your route is Tailor, Inc., run by John Smith. (His name used to be Giovanni Smitto, but he had it legally changed.)

John is also a very good tailor, but he’s incredibly boring. He never rises from his sewing machine, and all he’ll talk about is hemming and fabric types. If you’re lucky, sometimes he’ll tell you about thread.

Got the mental picture? Two tailors of equal ability, one of whom is personable and warm and one of whom is slightly less interesting than a can of hairspray. Now, pretend you have a suit that needs taking in. Who do you go to?

Both tailors are good, so you do what your gut tells you to do. You go to Andolini, because you like him.

It’s the oldest, most obvious sales principle in the world: people do business with people they like. Yet the internet is filled with boring, dry text unworthy of even John Smith’s personality.

But listen up, because you can’t afford to write boring copy. Doing so is a great way to lose your readers to the Andolinis of the world.

What you know is a commodity

Let’s get this unpleasant truth out in the open. The world is far too big for your knowledge to be truly special.

If you write about gardening, there are hundreds of millions of competing pages on the Net. Even if you drill down into a niche (say, “gardening for seniors”), there are still hundreds of thousands of competitors.

The law of averages says that many of those competitors will be good at what they do. In fact, quite a few are even going to be excellent.

This means that even if you’re excellent in your niche-within-a-niche, you’re still just one among thousands.

“Being excellent” is not a USP. It can never be enough to define you. Yet, “trying to be the best” is the way that most people online hope to improve readership and gain popularity.

Yes, you should always seek to improve. Yes, being good at what you do matters.

But no, it’s not enough. Not by a long shot.

To be popular, you need to be likable. For the most part, you’ll need to rely on your writing (whether as text, in a podcast, or on video) to do that. But luckily, learning to write personably is actually more about unlearning how to write like a stiff.

1. Write like a real person

Naomi Dunford of IttyBiz is known for her legendary foul mouth. In fact, Brian Clark recently described her as a “Tourette’s survivor.” And I’ve been known to let the occasional curse word fly myself.

Naomi swears because it’s how she talks in person. I swear because I happen to believe it makes everything funnier. (Picture Donald Duck cursing inventively right now. Hilarious, right?)

I’m not saying you should swear, especially if it doesn’t mesh with your personality. But don’t hide who you are in an attempt to sound “professional.” If you normally pepper your speech with quaint Southern expressions, do the same in your writing. Genuine speech conveys authenticity and allows your best audience to find you and develop a connection.

2. Make it personal

Marketing consultant Marcia Hoeck (who, as it happens, is also my mother) found that when she added personal details to her business’s blog and e-zine, she got a significant increase in clicks and responses.

She wasn’t writing essays about personal issues, but she’d occasionally incorporate anecdotes about her dogs or grandkids into her articles. She might explain how she was conducting a teleclass from our house, but had to hide in my basement to do so because the baby was in a noisy mood that day.

Adding personal details to your copy doesn’t make you look unprofessional. It humanizes you, making you more than just a member of the faceless horde.

3. Be interesting

My own topic is technology, but I started blogging as a humor writer. In fact, I picked up a lot of readers by getting a reputation for funny one-liners on Twitter.

Thanks to this, I’ve become “the funny technology guy.” Even though I’m teaching the same stuff as thousands of others, readers come to me because I’m usually somewhat amusing even when discussing dry topics.

If you can make someone smile a little when discussing the ins and outs of domain forwarding, they’re likely to come to you when they want to know more about, say, how to manage their web hosting service.

Again, you don’t have to be funny when you write. (In fact, if it doesn’t come naturally to you, you should probably use humor sparingly, if at all.) But you do have to be interesting.

Talk about sports teams you like, and why other teams suck. Infuse knitting know-how into a post about salesmanship. Refer to your hatred of Ashton Kutcher in a post about how to do affiliate marketing.

In other words, say what’s on your mind. You’re a normal, well-rounded human being who doesn’t think about one topic 24/7. So be that person in your writing as well. When we find true humanity online, we tend to flock to it.

We’re taught in school that the purpose of writing is to clearly convey a message, or to overcome objections, or to persuade. And all of that is important.

But writing isn’t just about conveying information. It’s about communication. The minute you start being more of a person and less of a knowledgeable robot, the easier it will be for your audience to find you, trust you, and like you. (copyblogger)

First of all, divorce is almost always stressful for children. Most children do not want their parents to separate. Divorce also can strain parent-child relationships, lead to lost contact with one parent, create economic hardships, and increase conflict between parents. For all these reasons, most children have a hard time during the divorce transition. How long the transition lasts depends upon on how calm or how chaotic you and your ex make it.

Second, divorce clearly increases the risk that children will suffer from psychological and behavioral problems. Troubled children are particularly likely to develop problems with anger, disobedience, and rule violations. School achievement also can suffer. Other children become sad for prolonged periods of time. They may become depressed, anxious, or become perhaps overly responsible kids who end up caring for their parents instead of getting cared for by them.

There could also be positive effects of divorce on children. The great majority of children whose parents divorce do not develop these kinds of serious behavioral or emotional problems. Most children from divorced families are resilient, especially when their parents do a reasonably good job managing the stress of divorce. These children feel and function pretty much like kids whose parents are married. They are not “children of divorce.” They are what we want all children to be: just kids.

Most studies stressed the negative effects of divorce on youngsters but there are some positive outcomes of divorce to be reported as well. A few positive outcomes are an increase in maturity and independence, as well as the increased commitment to maintaining relationships. Studies have shown that post-divorce families and single parent or reconstructed families can be successful in improving the quality of life for both adults and children by reducing an environment of conflict.

After being removed from a disturbing parent the children prefer the time after the divorce to the time within the intact family before the divorce, because they said that it is a relief to have no more fighting. The space provided by the separation of the parents enables the older adolescents to develop an emotional detachment from the family and to begin the normal development tasks for an adolescent which is individualization. Continuing to support the positive effects of divorce on children it said that divorce is a preferred alternative to an unhappy marriage. Children can grow healthy in many types of situations if the three following conditions are met: first, the basic needs for the children must be met, such as, love and physical care, understanding, discipline and safety; second, the children need a sense of belonging or being able to say, this is my own family where I am an important and special person; and finally, they also need role models of both sexes in their lives to help them determine their proper male or female roles.

Many resilient children still report painful memories and ongoing worries about divorce, their relationships with their parents, and their parents’ relationship with each other. You may not be able to fully protect your children from the pain of divorce, and you probably shouldn’t try. Children are entitled to their feelings. Children need to be allowed to grieve. Still you can promote your children’s resilience and do much to ease their pain.

Counseling with social workers, psychologists, marriage and family therapists, or psychiatrists can help some children. Many schools and religious organizations also provide support group sessions. In these situations children can explore their feelings and learn how other children from divorced families cope. It often takes two or more years for children to adjust to their parents’ divorce. Through love, understanding and keeping in close contact with your children, you will help them grow into welladjusted and productive adults.

Smoking continues to be one of the greatest causes of illness and death in the world. In fact, the effects of smoking are so debilitative, that often the first step of any health improvement program is stopping the habit immediately, and is thought to be even more important than exercise, diet, or vitamins. Here are a few facts about smoking, explaining why it is so harmful and inappropriate.

Smokers usually have smelly hair, breath, clothes, and, if they smoke indoors, a smelly room. The stench of cigarette smoke is very penetrating and hard to remove. Even if the person quits smoking the odor remains for a long time. It stains the teeth yellow or sometimes even brown. Since this effect is long term, most people are not aware of it when they begin smoking. The truth is that a cigarette stain is very hard to eliminate from the teeth, and it will probably end up costing a considerable amount of money. Yellow teeth are disgusting because they give an unhygienic image and make people look older. Depending on the country the prices of cigarettes can differ. But even at an affordable price the regular consumption of cigarettes will eventually take its economic toll.

Deaths related to smoking are due mainly to Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), heart disease and cancers. Smoking related illnesses kill around half of all smokers. The average life expectancy of a long-term smoker is reduced by 8 to 12 years compared to a non-smoker. The younger one is when smoking is begun, the higher the chances of smoking for longer, and dying early from smoking related diseases.

Nicotine, which is a drug contained in cigarette smoke, stimulates the brain. In people who are regular smokers, when the nicotine levels in their blood falls, they usually experience withdrawal symptoms like craving for a smoke, restlessness, irritability, anxiety, headache, difficulty in concentrating, or just an overall feeling of awfulness. Lighting up another cigarette relieves these symptoms almost instantaneously. Hence, in order to feel ‘normal’, and not get the withdrawal symptoms, smokers need to keep smoking regularly. This is what addiction to smoking is all about.

Secondhand smoke is a mixture of smoke from the burning end of a cigarette, pipe or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers. It is involuntarily inhaled, lingers in the air hours after cigarettes have been extinguished, and can cause a wide range of adverse health effects, including cancer, respiratory infections, and asthma. Secondhand smoke causes the same negative health effects as tobacco smoking, particularly heart diseases and cancer. Nonsmokers who are exposed to secondhand smoke at home or work increase their heart disease risk by 25–30% and their lung cancer risk by 20–30%. Secondhand smoke has been estimated to cause 38,000 deaths per year, of which 3,400 are deaths from lung cancer in non-smokers.

According to three separate studies commissioned by governments in the US and Europe, scientists have identified a genetic link that makes people more likely to become addicted to tobacco. This genetic variation causes individuals to smoke more cigarettes, makes it harder for them to quit and increases their likelihood of developing lung cancer by up to 80%.
Genetic markers of more than 35,000 people were surveyed by scientists in three separate studies, and all three found lung cancer to be associated with similar sets of genetic differences. Possessing a single copy of the mutation raises an individual’s risk of lung cancer by approximately 30%; for two copies the increase is about 80%. The gene was found to be attributable to 14% of lung cancer cases, and it was found to confer similar lung cancer risks irrespective of smoking status or quantity smoked.

There are also the social and emotional effects of cigarette. The social ones are polluting the air, putting others at risk from passive smoking, spoilt clothes and home, increased risk of fire in the home; the emotional ones are constant nagging sense of guilt to give up, non-smokers thinking of the habit as disgusting, not being in control of the habit, increasing pressure from society to quit.

However, there is good news for smokers: Stopping the habit makes a great difference to their health, and it is never too late to quit and benefit from its healthy effects.

Through November, video game sales are up 22 percent over 2007.

According to market researcher NPD Group, U.S. retail sales of video games totaled $2.91 billion in November, a 10 percent jump from a year ago. Overall sales this year through November are more than $16 billion, up 22 percent from 2007.

Anita Frazier, an analyst from NPD, cites the industry’s wide content variety on newer generation consoles such as Nintendo’s Wii, Sony’s Playstation 3 and Microsoft’s XBOX 360 as a reason for the strong performance. Frazier also says that video games are a relatively cheap form of entertainment, considering the hours of value they provide.

Matt Helgeson, senior editor at Game Informer magazine, agrees.

“Video games can take between 10 and 40 hours, sometimes 50 hours, to complete” depending on the title, Helgeson said. “Gamers can often get two to three months out of one game.”

Furthermore, during these recessionary times, Helgeson explains that video games “provide the ultimate escapism.”

According to NPD, some of the top-selling game titles in November include “Gears of War 2,” which sold 1.6 million copies, and “Call Of Duty: World At War,” which sold 1.4 million. Nintendo’s “Wii Play” and “Wii Fit” put up impressive numbers, as well.

With those kinds of sales, video games have potential to be one of the most popular stocking stuffers for kids this holiday season.

Helgeson says that these days, games are a core part of being a kid, and it’s no longer a question of “do you play video games?” Instead the question is “what games are you playing?”
“Ages, races, social groups — video games cut across all platforms,” Helgeson said. Whether you’re shopping for a hardcore gamer or something for the family, “there is something for everybody.”

Midfielder Kasper Risgard claimed the England striker left him nursing “big marks” on his chest following a first-half altercation in the Group E game at Old Trafford on Wednesday.

French referee Laurent Duhamel did not see the incident and the Danish club has yet to lodge a complaint with UEFA.

However, a spokesperson for European football’s governing body confirmed they will consult video evidence before deciding whether to take retrospective action.

Rooney could be banned from future Champions League games should he be found guilty of stomping on Risgard.

After the 2-2 draw which confirmed United’s passage to the knockout stages as group winners, Risgard said: “I do not know what happened and why it happened, he was jumping at my chest.

“Maybe he was a little bit frustrated but Manchester United were playing some good football. It was still 1-1.

“I do not think the referee saw it. Anywhere else but this place (Old Trafford) it would have been a red card. These challenges happen in football. I have some big marks but I don’t think it looks good on television.

“He did come and apologize to me after the game.”

(Courtesy of sportbox.tv)

Well below there is quite a mix including the fan-demanded Heath Ledger posthumous nomination. I was also surprised that Tropic Thunder did actually pick up a couple nominations. A huge surprise because that is the kind of movie I wouldn’t have seen getting nominated in a million years. Anyway check it out..

FILM

Stress refers to the conflict we experience when we face pressures and react to the external environment, and this can take the form of both psychological and physical reactions. Be it competition at your workplace, or conflicts at home or with friends, stress is everywhere and certainly unavoidable. Hence, it is important that you learn how to manage your stress levels to ensure that they continue to remain positive, and not cause a negative effect on your lifestyle.

Below are 5 easy ways to manage stress:

1. Identify the Causes

There are many causes of stress, which we refer to as stressors. These stressors are likely to occur in your everyday life, and you can identify them simply by your own reactions to different events or situations. For example, if you find yourself getting a headache when you are required to give a speech, you are likely to be suffering from performance stress. There are many different stressors, and these can range from bereavement and boredom to frustration.

2. Taking Deep Breaths

This is perhaps one of the easiest and most effective relaxation techniques. When you feel your body tensing, or a headache approaching, close your eyes and focus on your breathing. Take deep breaths and slowly accept the situation without panicking. Tell your body and mind to calm down, and this will help to stave off the approaching reactions that your body has to the stressor.

3. Think Positive

Your subconscious mind picks up and magnifies your positive and negative thoughts! It is important that you maintain a positive attitude towards stress management, and this will help your subconscious to magnify on the positive aspects. Remember that no matter how stressful it may seem, you will learn something from the situation.

4. Take care of yourself

If you take care of your body, it will help your mind to function better. A well rested body and mind can work wonders for stress relief, so make sure that you get the recommended dosage of 8 hours of sleep a day. A balanced diet with plenty of fruits and vegetables will keep your systems healthy and working. For more information visit to www.positive-idea.com. Regular exercise at least twice a week will help your body to relax and unwind from the daily stressed you face. It does not need to be something that is extremely taxing – a brisk walk or yoga practice sessions work just as well as aggressive sports.

5. Relax

Learn to slow down your pace and relax! The psychological and physical reactions are your body’s way of telling you that it needs a break, so take heed. Often, we are the most demanding on ourselves, and you need to remember that taking a break can be more productive than slogging on. A quick break or a power nap can help to rejuvenate your mind, and leave you more motivated than before!

On my previous phone, a Sony Ericsson, there was a wonderful piece of shareware called MyPhone Explorer which kept a reliable synchronisation between Google Calendar and the contacts that I kept in Thunderbird. But it won’t run with modern Nokia phones. They come with their own hideous slow and clumsy software. It only synchronises with Outlook or the Windows Address Book, one of which I don’t have, and the other of which is useless; I believe it also synchronises with Lotus Notes, which I both don’t have and is useless.

The other thing that I don’t have (though it would be useful) is the time and patience to poke new contacts directly into the phone, using my forefinger one letter at a time. I prefer to add contact details at a proper keyboard. Since I work regularly at three keyboards - desktop, laptop and wherever I happen to be in the office - I need to be able to put new contacts somewhere accessible from all of them, which, unless I am crazy, means somewhere in the cloud. That ends up as Google Contacts. They don’t work very well either.

Google Contacts is one of those numerous fringe bits of Google which will be great some day, but until then are full of irritating hesitations and inadequacies. It is cumbersome to import to and export from. There is no way to attach notes or meeting information to people; and if you try to access it directly from a phone that isn’t running Google’s own operating system, the process is so complicated that you might as well fish around in a pocket for the elusive scrap of paper on which the number you want might have been written down. This is the sort of thing from which computers are meant to have delivered us.

Google Calendar syncs without trouble in many ways to lots of mobile phones, and to desktop calendars and there are two services - ZYB and GooSync - which claim to be able to synchronise contacts between Google and a mobile phone. Neither works reliably for me. For a couple of times one or the other may seem to function, but after that they will hang halfway through, and for every hang a duplicate is introduced, until I am looking once more at the 900-entry phone book.

This is all so grotesquely unlike the efficiency of most bits of the web that it must be significant. Of what? The answer comes when you look at the things that do work: money or sex. Corporations have solutions that work perfectly well. When I use the office BlackBerry, it will look up all of the information about all of the contacts to which I am supposed to have access, and it is not impossibly difficult to add new ones. If I used Outlook, and if the office also were plugged into it, I am sure that I could manage the same.

All of the private solutions are designed to make social networks: places where you meet old friends and hope to have sex with strangers. Services like ZYB or Plaxo keep trying to map networks of friends, and all their activities, not just their address books. They are part of the world in which the screen becomes a window into an eternal cocktail party. What is much harder to find is private and personal information sharing, where my addresses are mine alone, but are available to me wherever I am.

It isn’t technically difficult: as I said, there’s a program that does it very well on Sony Ericsson phones. But that is maintained by one man, on the donations he gets for it. In the long run, all of our information will be forced into social and corporate networks, because they will be the only things that work.

The Japanese corporate giant, the latest to be forced into taking crisis measures amid a dramatic decline in global sales, also said it would stop employing another 8,000 contractors, taking the total cut to 16,000 positions.

It said the job losses, the biggest announced by an Asian firm so far in the current crisis, will come in its core electronics division, but did not offer a country breakdown of the cuts.

About 160,000 of Sony’s global workforce of 185,000 are employed in the division, which has been hardest hit by plummeting consumer demand for flat-screen televisions, personal audio players and digital cameras.

Sony said the redundancies would be completed by the end of March 2010 along with a 10% reduction of global manufacturing sites from the current total of 57. The firm also plans to slash investment in electronics operations by 30% from its mid-term plan.

The job cuts announced today comprise about 5% of the company’s electronics division, the driving force behind Sony’s once-dominant position in consumer electronics.

Sony has already lowered inventories and cut production, in line with other Japanese exporters hit by weak demand from the US and Europe, and the strength of the yen against all other major currencies.

It recently said it would end production at a factory in France that makes tape and other recording media, and would shift more electronics production to lower-cost areas.

“These initiatives are in response to the sudden and rapid changes in the global economic environment,” Sony said in a statement.

The measures are a blow to attempts by Sir Howard Stringer, the firm’s first foreign chief executive officer, to reverse its waning fortunes after the first Sony shock of 2003, when poor earnings results wiped 27% off its share price.

Though Sony executives are reportedly evaluating manufacturing operations around the world before deciding where the job cuts will be made, sources refused to rule out redundancies among employees in the UK.

Sony’s 1,750 employees in the UK, including about 600 staff at the Sony UK Technology Centre, a digital camcorder assembly plant in Pencoed, south Wales, now face an anxious wait about their future.

Some analysts doubted if the measures would be enough to improve Sony’s balance sheet. It recently suffered a 90% drop in quarterly profits, and warned full-year profits would be down 58% from the previous year.

“The number sounds big, but this staff reduction won’t be enough,” Katsuhiko Mori at Daiwa SB Investments told Reuters. “Sony doesn’t have any core businesses that generate stable profits. After the workforce reduction, the next thing we want to see is what is going to be the business that will drive the company.”

With Japanese electronics firms resigned to a miserable Christmas shopping season - usually their most lucrative period - others said Sony had no choice but to act.

“Like automakers, Sony and rival consumer electronics makers are suffering a disastrous October-December period, including the Christmas shopping season,” said Fujio Ando, senior managing director at Chibagin Asset Management. “The outlook for the global economy suggests that things would become tougher for Sony next year, and it cannot expect a recovery without these restructuring measures.”

Today’s Sony thunderbolt came on the same day as government figures showing that Japan’s economy shrank faster than expected during the third quarter, raising the spectre of a deep and prolonged recession in the world’s second biggest economy.

GDP contracted at an annual rate of 1.8% in the three months up to the end of September, far worse than the initially estimated 0.4%, according to the cabinet office.

The grim figures have all but dashed hopes that Japan, whose economy is heavily dependent on exports to the US, China and Europe, will emerge from the financial crisis relatively unscathed.

A further expected contraction in the first quarter of next year would mark four straight quarters of decline for the first time since the end of the second world war.

The surgeon, David Nott, texted his colleague back in the UK as he was far more knowledgeable about the procedures required for such a delicate operation. The colleague, Meirion Thomas, responded with ten steps he needed to follow in order to carry out the procedure properly. Then signed off with a simple “Easy! Good luck!”

Personally, I would have felt better having him on a regular cellphone call, but hey—the procedure went off without a hitch. Nott claimed it was as if he had a “guardian angel on my left shoulder showing me what to do.” Indeed, a little cellphone-shaped angel. [CNN]