FuN LivINg Lifestyle

Many people all over the world like going for things they can easily afford. This is mainly because of the persistent economic melt down that has been harassing various economies of the nations. There is also that innate character in man that makes him to like saving more cash all the time. Currently in the realm of the watches, the original versions of the Sohne watches are usually very costly. Since their invention by Adolph Lange in 1845 in city of Saxony in Germany, the Sohne watches have remained very expensive. The low income earners cannot purchase them any longer. In order to abate this, the Sohne watches Replica models are now available.
One main feature of the A.Lange & Sohne watches replica is the fact of their affordability. They are on ground as better alternatives to the expensive nature of the original version. Currently, the Sohne watches Replica come in various wonderful models such as: the Sohne Replica Datograph, Sohne Replica Arkade, Sohne Replica Saxonia and so many others. All these models of the Sohne watches Replica have common low price average. They are going for the price of $300 and below. Some are even selling at $250.
The affordability of the Sohne watches Replica does not make them to be inferior. They still have all the wonderful features seen in the original versions. They have definite model numbers which are well inscribed in their stainless back covers. On their facial regions are drawn, the official logo of the A. Lange & Sohne company.
More over, the Sohne watches Replica have wonderful setting knobs at their sides. They also have the internal date mechanism which also shows in various sections of their facial regions.
In all, the Sohne watches Replica are very dependable always.

What are you doing with your blog over the holidays?

As the end of the year draws nearer I’ve been pondering what to do with my blogs over the Christmas/New Years break.

In the past I’ve done a number of things including:

• Blogging on as normal
• Getting a Guest in to cover the blog over a week
• Running a special series of ‘lighter’ posts
• Running a variety of guest posts

This year I’m going to do something I’ve not done before – take a break from blogging for a whole week.

I will be putting up a few posts over the week that are wrap up posts looking back at the year that has been on different topics – but these will be written in advance and set to go off so that I can have a break from blogging between Christmas and New Years. I won’t be having the week off completely though – I have a couple of other writing commitments that I need to finish off so will use the week to tackle those.

What are you doing with your blog over the holidays?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

What Are You Doing with Your Blog Over the Holidays?

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Updated: this post has been updated.

I don’t want to cause alarm on this but today I’ve had emails from 11 subscribers to two of my different email lists that I administrate at Aweber complaining that they’ve been inundated with pharmaceutical spam. In each case the subscribers have set up email addresses especially for my newsletters which they use for no other purposes.

In each case they’re complaining of getting the same types of emails – up to 20 of them in a few hours.

At first I thought perhaps my account had been compromised – but I began to do some investigating and am beginning to see some others talk about the same problem. For example @planetmike tweeted about a similar problem here.

I’m not sure if he’s talking about my newsletters – that’s a possibility.

Further searching in a few webmaster forums turns up similar discussions.

Webmaster World – “Today I got pharma/ED spam to various of those unique addresses. After a little research, I found the common thread: The companies I gave those addresses to use AWeber’s services. (AWeber provides mailing list services to businesses, e.g. sending newsletters to a company’s customers.)”

WarriorForum – “Today I am getting deluged with spam to addresses that are on aWeber lists, including a couple of email addresses that have ONLY been given to aWeber.”

From another user in the WorriorForum – “I’ve been having EXACTLY the same issue.

I have some test e-mail addresses that I ONLY use within AWeber and just today I’ve started receiving lots of spam to them.

These are e-mail addresses across multiple domains including my own and others such as GMail, etc.

These e-mails are only housed within AWeber so I know that the problem is somewhere within their systems.”

AWeber takes our security measures very strongly and employee tested technologies and measures to make sure that our system is not compromised. After receiving your email our team went through an exhaustive list of checks just to make sure that there are no indications that connects this spam message you received to an issue with AWeber. All of our tests have come back secure with no reports of intrusion or compromise.

Also note that after looking at the spam message in question we see that members of our teams have also received this same message to their personal addresses that have never been used in conjunction with AWeber.

We’ll continue to monitor our system. And of course if you have any further questions, please feel free to let me know.

I’m hesitant to make a call that Aweber has been compromised (I know they wouldn’t have played a part in this, they’re reputable and it’d be business suicide for them to be caught at that) – perhaps it’s a problem with some email service provider (although from the emails I’ve received it’s impacting people who subscribe with a variety of email providers) but something does seem to be wrong here.

I’ve got emails into Aweber and will update you with their response.

In the mean time – if you have received this spam and you’re on the ProBlogger newsletter list (as some are reporting) I sincerely apologise and hope we can get to the bottom of it.

PS: I’ve sat on this story for 18 hours hoping to get a response from Aweber but it seems that their support don’t work weekends (I’m actually a bit surprised that they don’t seem to have put any response on their blog or Twitter account as I’m now seeing more and more buzz about it in forums and on Twitter). I’ve since had another 10 or so angry complaints from readers and have seen the same thing happening for another list I have on a separate account which I use to promote the ProBlogger Book with Chris Garrett. That account is completely separate to my Aweber account and I don’t even have access to the password of it meaning that it’s not just my Aweber subscribers who are being hit.

Again – this could be a wider issue than just Aweber – perhaps some spammer is using some kind of system to target a whole lot of random email addresses – but it does seem that perhaps it’s somehow more centred around Aweber. Time will tell.

I don’t like to post this as I really love Aweber as a service (they’ve been brilliant since I switched to them) – but because readers seem to be unsubscribing and blaming me for it I wanted to make sure word was out that there may have been a problem.

I’d love to get comments from anyone who has similar experience with this in the last few days. Are your lists complaining of spam at the moment too? Hopefully in getting people’s experiences we’ll be able to help Aweber get to the bottom of what’s happening.

Update: Within half an hour of posting this Aweber got in touch. They’re not ready to make a public statement on this but are happy for me to pass on that they’re aware of it and are “doing extensive investigations into any possible issues.”

From what I can tell they’re collecting lots of data – perhaps if you have any specific data from those in your lists including header information of spam emails it could be worth emailing Aweber to let them know of your problem and any data that you have. I’d suspect that specific information would be helpful to them.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

Has Aweber Been Compromised? Reports of Spam Going to Aweber Lists

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One of the most requested featured by readers here at ProBlogger has been for the option to view this site more easily on a mobile device (at least some).

In the last few days we’ve added the WPtouch plugin to both ProBlogger and DPS.

I hope that this will enable a faster and easier to navigate user experience for readers on their iPhones and other mobile devices.

Of course if you’d prefer to view the site as normal you just need to scroll to the bottom of the page and flip the switch there back to the normal view.

Do let me know how the experience is viewing ProBlogger this way on your mobile.

Also – have you optimized your blog for mobile viewing? If so how did you do it?

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

ProBlogger Readable on Mobiles

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This week, on a busier than normal day, I Tweeted that I wish there were more hours in a day (or that there was a pause button so that time could stand still for a bit so I could catch up). The tweet was of course an attempt at humor but the deluge of replies that I received from that Tweet revealed that I’m not the only blogger out there that wishes they had more time.

As I giggled at the responses it struck me that if I’d not posted that message on Twitter about how I wish I’d had more time that I’d probably have had an extra 6 minutes that hour to get the things I needed to get done finished.

While I’m glad I did get on Twitter for those 6 minutes (it gave me a laugh, made me relax and lightened my day a little) I began to think about all the other small little distractions and time suckers we as bloggers face and on a whim (and for a bit of fun) came up with this list of how to be a more productive blogger.

How to be a more productive blogger:

1. Turn off Twitter – 6 minutes an hour
2. Turn off Facebook – 3 minutes an hour
3. Stop checking your Traffic Stats – 2 minutes an hour
4. Stop checking your AdSense Earnings – 2 minutes an hour
5. Stop Tweaking your blog design – 3 minutes an hour
6. Stop checking your Google Page Rank – 1 minute an hour
7. Turn off Email – 5 minutes an hour
8. Log out of your RSS Feed Reader – 2 minutes an hour
9. Stop checking to see if someone Dugg your latest post – 1 minute an hour
10. Stop checking affiliate earnings/e-book sales earnings – 2 minutes an hour
11. Turn off any other Social Media Sites (LinkedIn/StumbleUpon/Plurk/Reddit etc) – 3 minutes an hour
12. Turn of Skype, Gtalk and all other IM services – 4 minutes
13. Stop Reading Blog Tips and Start Blogging – 3 minutes an hour

By my calculations this gives you an extra 37 minutes an hour to do what you need to do. Over an 8 hour work day I’ve just found you a smidgen under 5 hours!

What would you add?

Update: No I’m not really serious. While we could be more productive as bloggers by minimizing a lot of this stuff there can also be a lot of good things come from these activities. I guess it’s about knowing your goals, setting good boundaries and engaging in these kinds of activities to the extent that they help us achieve our goals.

Post from: Blog Tips at ProBlogger.

How to Be A More Productive Blogger [And Add 37 Minutes to Every Hour!]

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On Thursday December 17, while the world was waiting to learn if talks in Copenhagen would produce a plan to keep the planet from heating up any further, the EPA made a flame retardant announcement of its own. Within three years – by the end of 2013 – the two U.S. producers and the largest U.S. importer of the flame retardant known as decaBDE (decabromodiphenyl ether) – used widely in plastics of electronics, motor vehicles, aircraft, in textiles and furniture – will end production, use, and sales of the chemical in the United States.

This may sound arcane but it’s significant in a number of ways, not least because decaBDE is a persistent and bioaccumulative synthetic chemical – one of a class of flame retardants known as PBDEs – that most of us have been encountering daily for years. Contrary to initial expectations, deca- is not staying put in the finished products where it’s used. In numerous scientific studies it’s been shown to migrate out of finished consumer products and has been found in household dust, in vacuum cleaner and laundry dryer lint as well as in rivers, wildlife, food, and people, most disconcertingly in nursing mothers and children.

As Steve Owens, EPA Assistant Administrator for the Office of Prevention, Pesticides and Toxic Substances, said in his official response to the announcement, “Though DecaBDE has been used as a flame retardant for years, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has long been concerned about its impact on human health and the environment. Studies have shown that DecaBDE persists in the environment, potentially causes cancer, and may impact brain function. DecaBDE also can degrade into more toxic chemicals that are frequently found in the environment and are hazardous to wildlife.”

Deca- is one of several PBDE flame retardants that have been used widely in consumer products for years in ever increasing volumes, beginning largely in the 1970s. Other PBDEs have been taken out of use, either voluntarily or by regulation, as evidence of their adverse environmental and health impacts – as endocrine disruptors and possible carcinogens – has grown. Deca- was initially thought to be safer than other PBDEs, but evidence of its adverse effects has also grown, including its ability to break down into smaller more hazardous compounds that can adversely impact thyroid hormones, neurological and immune systems. In Europe, PBDEs, including deca-, are no longer allowed for use in electronics.

PBDEs themselves came onto the market after some of their predecessor flame retardants – among them PBBs (polybrominated biphenyls) and perhaps most notoriously a compound known as “Tris” that was used in children’s pajamas was linked to cancer in animal studies.

While agreeing to the phase-out, PBDE producers continue to maintain their product safety. “While hundreds of science-based and peer-reviewed studies have shown decaBDE to be safe in use and one of the most efficacious flame retardants in the world, Albemarle [one of the two U.S. deca- producers] is committed to delivering safe and effective products with increasingly smaller environmental footprints,” Brian Carter, global business director of Albemarle’s flame retardant group told Chemical and Engineering News.

Concern about PBDEs’ health effects has, in the absence of any federal regulation, prompted a number of U.S. states to ban their use – including that of deca-. How this phase-out will influence legislation remains to be seen but Representative Chellie Pingree (D-ME) has introduced a bill to ban deca- and ensure its replacement with safe alternatives.

PBDE producers say they are working on environmentally friendly alternatives. Exactly what they are and how they behave remains to be discovered – although at least one is yet another brominated compound. Flame retardants already widely in use as alternatives to PBDEs, among them chemicals known as HBCD and tetrabromobisphenol A, or their breakdown products have been identified as environmentally persistent and are turning up in water, soil, wildlife, people and food samples.

One of the big challenges will be getting behind the websites depicting ladybugs and grassy meadows to find out how “green” this next generation of flame retardants actually is. Right now all we have is the manufacturers’ word.

Congregants at a Southern California synagogue were met by a group of neo-Nazis waving swastika flags on the last night of Hanukkah.

Rabbi Suzanne Singer says Friday’s demonstration at Temple Beth El in Riverside was the third at the temple in recent months.

At least 38 flights from Los Angeles International airport to East Coast destinations hit by winter storms were canceled Saturday, airport officials said late today.

LAX spokeswoman Nancy Castles said airport operations began hearing about canceled flights sometime after noon.