Very Important Information about Pets, Pregnancy And Parenting And More

Internet fraudsters will try to exploit the global financial crisis by sending fraudulent emails purporting to offer cash-strapped consumers new mortgages, loans or money from failed banks, a Microsoft executive said on Wednesday.Tim Cranton, an Internet safety expert at Microsoft, said there are early signs that criminals have already begun trying to cash in on the economic turmoil.

“It’s especially troubling right now with the financial crisis,” he told Reuters in a telephone interview. “There are more and more people who are maybe in a more desperate or vulnerable situation.

“We have seen an increase in some mortgage refinance type of scams. We are anticipating that they’ll become more sophisticated.

“We have seen that with Hurricane Katrina, the (2004 Asian) tsunami and other natural disasters where the scammers immediately jump.”

Fraudsters may send spam emails to consumers that ask them to pay a fee related to the collapse of a bank or financial institution, he added.

“They will allege it is associated with the refinancing — so because of this bailout you’ll get a much better deal on your mortgage and all you have to do is pay this fee.”

Online criminals have long used promises of easy money to try to defraud unsuspecting victims.

Common scams include requests to help move money out of a developing country. People are offered a cut of the fortune if they first pay a release fee.

Or they are told they have won a lottery in a foreign country and will receive a huge jackpot once they pay an administration fee.

A poll for Microsoft on Wednesday found more than a quarter of computer users thought it was likely they would fall victim to an online scam that would cost them money.

Half said the scams made them more wary of shopping online, while more than a third said it led to them being more reluctant to use the Internet at all.

However, the poll suggested that the actual chances of becoming a victim are far lower than the perceived risk.

Of 5,000 people polled across Europe, only 113 had lost money to an Internet fraudster in the last year. That equates to one in 44 of those questioned.

Microsoft said it has formed a coalition with Yahoo!, Western Union and the African Development Bank to help spread the message about hoax emails.

“What we’d like to do is raise awareness so that people feel more confident about using the Internet,” Cranton said. “We don’t want to see a reduction in e-commerce.”

The next upgrade of Office business software from Microsoft Corp will include a version that edits word processing documents and spreadsheets inside a Web browser, the software maker said on Tuesday.The online version of Office, which includes the Word and Excel programs, aims to prevent competitors such as Google Inc from pecking away at Microsoft’s dominance in software used by office workers, and expand the market for one of its most profitable products.

Microsoft would not comment on when it plans to release the next version of Office, dubbed “Office 14,” but in the past it has shipped an upgrade every two to three years. It introduced the current Office suite of programs in Jan. 2007.

The company said Office Web applications will offer lightweight, online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint presentation software and the OneNote collaboration program. Office files can be managed and edited on a normal desktop computer, a Web browser or a mobile phone.

Microsoft, the world’s largest software maker, has seen a wave of competitors from Web start-ups to Google offering word processing, presentation and spreadsheet software over the Internet for free with advertising or a monthly subscription.

Google Docs offers spreadsheets, word processing, and presentation software over the Internet as a free service.

“Nobody, none of our competitors, will do as good of a job on the phone, the browser or the PC,” said Chris Capossela, a senior vice president at Microsoft’s Office business.

The company announced the news at the Professional Developer’s Conference, Microsoft’s annual gathering of engineers to detail the company’s future plans.

Microsoft has mostly resisted the push to make its Office suite available online, choosing to sell licenses to run the applications locally on a single computer. It allows users to share files through Office Live, which is free with advertising or available with more functions for a monthly subscription.

In the September quarter, Microsoft’s Office business division was the biggest revenue and profit driver, outgaining even its bread-and-butter Windows unit.

In the previous fiscal year, the Office unit generated $18.9 billion in revenue and $12.4 billion in profit.

ADVERTISING FUNDED?

Microsoft said the new Office Web applications will be available for consumers on Office Live, although it did not disclose whether it would be paid for by advertising or subscriptions.

For large corporate customers, they can either pay for a license to run those applications online using their own computer servers, or run those programs in Microsoft’s data centers for a monthly fee.

Microsoft said users will be able to view Word documents or Excel spreadsheets in the same way regardless of whether they are using a Web browser or on a standard desktop. The online Office version also has a similar look and feel to the desktop applications, albeit with less functions.

The new Office Web applications will work on Internet Explorer, Mozilla’s Firefox and Apple Inc’s Safari browsers. They will be available for a technical preview sometime this year, according to Microsoft.

Capossela sees the applications expanding the base of Office users, notably employees who don’t work on a computer sitting on a desk — nurses, truck drivers or factory workers — but require some business software accessible over the Web.

It also offers, Capossela notes, the opportunity to make money in the form of advertising or subscriptions for a software product that is heavily pirated.

“We have a huge number of users. Very few pay us. There is a huge opportunity for us in this space because we can get revenue from people we are not getting anything from,” said Capossela, who did not elaborate on the effect the new service would have on Office’s profit margins.

When it comes to mailing or bulk mailing it has always been a tough job to handle, especially the labeling part. If only if you have an easy way to do it, you will mostly end up in getting it wrong. Hence it is suggested to for a readymade label brands like Avery labels. Thus you can save a lot of time by not needing to create your labels manually and tearing it and pasting it, etc.

With the compatible Avery Labels you get the labels in a tear-away sheet in which you can print and get it torn away easily and stick it on your envelope or wherever you intend to use it.

This Avery Labels surely will be an handy stationary which you can rely upon for your mailing needs and ease most of your handling of mails with its easy to cut and easy to peel away stickers which can be customized according to the size and shapes you want.

Also compatible Avery labels are available readymade for your specific needs. Thus you don’t have to rely on or dedicate any manpower to do these specific jobs. You would actually need hardly few to do this and hence you save cost this way too.

If you think you can easily fool others when it comes to the security that you have to have on your checks, think twice. There is the amazing MICR toner, which is at its best when it comes to the lines that you can possibly see on your check papers. Visible as it is, you may think that it is only a simple derangement of the ink from the printer but actually, it is magnetic ink that can transmit a code when it will be under a special reader and a digital data may be read. In this manner, it will be impossible for other people to make use of it in a bad way. HP MICR is also the same kind as that of the toner that I have regarded above. Through this, people who are on the syndicate will be having a hard time copying certain checks and it will be impossible for them to do such. This is really a great way to be secured and as such, it will be easy to deal with and you no longer have to undergo those other hard ways of securing things that you currently have on hand.

Erectile dysfunction may hold early clue of a heart attack, warns an expert, who expressed concern that the risk was being ignored by doctors uncomfortable with the word ‘erection’.

The warning by Geoffrey Hackett on the British Medical Journal website suggested that erectile dysfunction gives a two to three year early clue of a heart attack.

However, the link between erectile dysfunction and the risk of heart disease is being ignored by doctors, writes Hackett from the Birmingham-based Good Hope Hospital in the UK.

Despite considerable evidence, erectile dysfunction is still treated as a recreational or “lifestyle issue” rather than a predictor of a serious health problem, says Hackett.

“Continuing to ignore these issues on the basis that cardiologists feel uncomfortable mentioning the word ‘erection’ to their patients or that they may have to deal with the management of a positive response, is no longer acceptable and possibly, based on current evidence, clinically negligent,” Hackett stressed.

Hackett reports regularly seeing patients referred with erectile dysfunction after a heart attack, only to hear that they had developed erectile dysfunction two to three years beforea warning sign ignored by their general practitioners.

It is well-known that erectile dysfunction (a symptom of vascular disease in the smaller arteries) doubles the risk of heart disease, a risk equivalent to being a moderate smoker or having an immediate family history of heart disease, the Science Daily online reported.

According to the report, erectile dysfunction in type 2 diabetes has been shown to be a better predictor of the risk of heart disease than high blood pressure or high cholesterol.

There is a lot of information that is constantly traded through the growing population with an Internet connection. People aren’t the only ones sending a lot more data though. Businesses are having to manage much larger packets that are coming and going as part of their everyday operations. This means that they will really need someone who knows how to manage the system and keep everything going. They need someone with ITIL training.

ITIL stands for information technology infrastructure library. You would basically just need to have the proper training to keep files organized and ultimately know where they need to go. It’s just like a virtual librarian who’s in charge of a whole bunch of files. This isn’t as easy as one might think though. The system isn’t like something you’d be used to from personal experience. You need to understand just how complex networks work and how the library software organizes the comings and goings of all the files. For this, you’ll need to take the time to learn ITIL v3 training, especially if you want to be up to date on the latest changes.

There is a lot of demand for someone with the right skills in information technology. If you are willing to get the training necessary, then a whole world will open up to you.

AT&T Inc said on Wednesday it would sell the BlackBerry Bold from Research In Motion Ltd for $299, or 50 per cent more than it charges for Apple Inc’s iPhone.

AT&T, which had set a new bar for smartphones with a $200 iPhone, said it would start selling the high-speed version of Rim’s popular mobile email devices from Nov. 4, just ahead of the unofficial start of the US holiday shopping season.

But with its relatively high price, Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris King said the Bold with likely be more popular among executives than consumers.

“The BlackBerry is going to be almost entirely business focused. iPhone is still mainly attracting consumers,” said Stifel Nicolaus analyst Chris King.

AT&T said it would be the first US operator to support navigation services for customers traveling outside the country with the Bold, which also supports Wi-Fi, a short-range wireless network technology found in coffee shops.

The $299 price tag applies to customers who sign up for a two year contract with AT&T, the company said.

MySpace announced a partnership with digital music distribution company IODA on Thursday that will bring more than one million songs from independent artists to the recently launched MySpace Music. MySpace said the agreement, terms of which were not disclosed, will make IODA’s catalog of indie artists available for streaming on MySpace Music, which the social networking giant launched a month ago with major music labels.

The San Francisco-based IODA, the Independent Online Distribution Alliance, is one of the largest online distributors of indie music labels along with The Orchard, already a MySpace Music partner.

Its catalog includes such artists such as Broken Social Scene, Buena Vista Social Club, Sara Tavares, Billie Holiday, Cake, The Wrens, Black Uhuru, Master P, Ray Charles and The Stills.

“Many of IODA’s labels have been early and active participants in the MySpace Music community, and consider it an essential tool to develop relationships with their fans,” said IODA founder and chief executive Kevin Arnold.

“We’re happy to bring the opportunity to monetize all of this activity to our clients, and look forward to seeing what an ad-supported streaming model can generate with the resources of MySpace behind it,” he said.

MySpace Music (myspace.com/music) is a joint venture between MySpace, EMI Music, SONY BMG Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, and Sony ATV.

It features unlimited ad-supported streaming of songs along with tools for creating personalized playlists and buying tunes online from Amazon’s MP3 store.

MySpace Music also has software tools to help bands and studios make money from their songs, tours, memorabilia, corporate sponsorships and other “e-commerce offerings.”

Dell, the world’s second-biggest computer maker, expects to grow faster than the industry this year but its CEO added it is hard to say whether the global PC market will improve heading into the year-end.While slashing jobs, the company, which made nine acquisitions in the past two years, will continue making buys as the industry consolidates, Michael Dell told a briefing for reporters on Wednesday.

In August, Dell, which trails Hewlett-Packard in the computer sector, posted a steep drop in second-quarter profit, as slow demand for PCs spread from the U.S. corporate sector to the public sector and small businesses, and to Europe and Asia.

PC demand did not rebound in September from the summer lull and Dell said he was not sure whether the situation would improve in the year-end holiday season.

“I don’t know,” he said. “It’s hard to say.”

But Dell added that his company was still performing well in unit shipments compared with the overall industry.

“For the first nine months of this year, according to IDC, Dell grew a few points faster than the overall industry for our unit growth. We expect for the full year, Dell will grow faster than the industry,” he said.

In August, the company said it had cut 8,500 jobs out of a planned 8,900 headcount reduction, as it realigns its business to confront slowing demand.

It has basically finished its announced headcount cuts and has no additional announcements to make on that front, Dell told Wednesday’s briefing.

CONSOLIDATION

The company, which has $10 billion cash on its balance sheet currently, will continue to make acquisitions to boost its technological capability and services, he said.

“We have already made about nine acquisitions in the past two years. I think you will see us continue to do that,” he said.

“There is no question the industry is consolidating … I think there will be a smaller number of survivors. We see Dell as not only surviving but thriving in this kind of environment.”

In China and Hong Kong, Dell has seen 30 percent sales growth so far this year, in line with recent years, although that fast-growing market also poses uncertainties.

Alex Yung, Dell China vice president, told Reuters: “Honestly, how things will turn out next year is hard to say.

“We don’t know what kind of policy the Chinese government will come up with. If they continue to encourage domestic consumption, we wouldn’t be too worried,” Yung said.

“And also if the Chinese banks are not pulled too far into global financial turmoil, we wouldn’t be too worried.”

Yung later told a presentation for reporters that the company was seeing a mixed performance in various sectors of the market in China, with a particularly heavy impact on demand from export-oriented small companies, which have been hurt by the global economic slowdown.

“The consumer segment is doing very well,” he said.

“From the commercial side, we see continued good growth in the public sector, state-owned enterprises and also some of the global businesses that we have locally. We definitely see some challenges in the small and medium-sized businesses.”

With property prices and rents spiralling in the Gulf and the rupee depreciating, Indian real estate developers are actively promoting their products among expatriate Indians in the Gulf.

“Because of spiralling rentals in Dubai and elsewhere in the region, Indians working here prefer to keep their families back home,” Haseeb Ahamed, chairman of the Calicut chapter of the Kerala Builders’ Forum (KBF), told IANS here Wednesday.

“Also because of the depreciation of the rupee, Indians here can invest their disposable income in real estate back home. Given the current global financial crisis, it is better to invest in real estate in India instead of investing in stocks or other investment options,” he added.

KBF Calicut is holding a Malabar Property Show here Oct 23-25 to showcase villas, apartments and commercial space.

“It is a rare region-specific real estate exhibition coming from India,” Ahamed said.

The show is bringing 16 builders from the Malabar region of northern Kerala, who will promote projects in Kozhikode, Kannur, Thalassery and Malappuram.

Of the around 1.5 million expatriate Indians in the UAE, a large number hail from Kerala.

According to Ahamed, Malabar, a trade and tourism centre of yesteryears, is slowly coming back to the limelight after a period of neglect.

“Malabar has been witnessing a lot of development in the healthcare, education, hospitality, transportation and tourism sectors in recent times,” he said.

“The presence of a number of world class hospitals have also come up in the region,” he said, adding Kozhikode was also becoming an educational hub with some premier institutions setting up base.

“Also with the opening of Karipur International Airport, there is good air connectivity with several international airlines coming in,” Ahamed said.

According to KBF Calicut secretary Nityanand Kamath, a lot of expatriate Indians are already investing in property back home.

The government has announced a new airport in Kannur. “Also, two IT parks are being set up in Malabar by the Kerala IT Mission and Kinfra (Kerala Industrial Infrastructure Development Corp),” Kamath said.

Developers participating at the Malabar Property Show are Ace Structures, Alfaone Builders, Alhind Builders, Apollo Build Tec, Crescent Builders, Cosmos Builders, Galaxy Builders, Hi-lite Builders, Calicut LandMark Builders, Malabar Builders, Prisunic Buiders, PVS Aparments, Queens Habitat, Sea Star Holdings, Seiken Proerties, Skyline Builders and Sreerosh Properties.

Leading Indian banks State Bank of India and HDFC Bank have also been brought into offer finance options to prospective buyers at the show.