Want to improve the quality of your life?

Go scrub the loo! Japanese fortune-tellers are now advising happiness-junkies to start by scrubbing the smallest room. A book titled Cleaning the Toilet to Attract Luck has been published to outline the correct method on how to attract good fortune using a brush and an array of cleaning fluids.

"Don't just wipe the floor, polish it," the book instructs. "It's important to maintain a positive mood while cleaning." So it is bye-bye Dale Carnegie and welcome Harpic! » Continue reading

Read more on Home, Personality Development

Send a hug

Wish you could reach out and hug someone? With the Hug Shirt, you can. It uses Bluetooth technology to send and receive embraces. Wearing a Hug Shirt, the sender hugs herself. Sensors in the shirt send the data (hug pressure, skin temperature, heart rate, length of hug) via Bluetooth to her mobile phone which in turn sends it to the receiver's phone, which relays it to his shirt, replicating the sensation.

Co-creator Francesca Rosella says the Hug Shirt, made of snug-fitting Lycra and cotton, feels as close to the real deal as it can get. They are available in a number of colors and styles for men and women and are washable! » Continue reading

Read more on Cell Phones, Gadgets, Mobile Phones, Technology

Picking up the right web host

Do you host a website or a blog on your own? If yes, you should have gone through the confusing stage of choosing a web host. It could be very difficult to decide which one to choose due to the number of hosts and the number of plans that each one provide.

However, it is really important that you make sure the plan you choose will meet your requirements. Comparing the plans based on just the price, web space and bandwidth may not serve your needs. For example, if you want to host a WordPress blog, you need to make sure the plans you compare include PHP and MySQL. If you are going to use Google Apps, you need to make sure you will have control over your DNS management. If you are going to use ASP, ASP .Net, M$ SQL Server, M$ Access Database, you have to check your web host is going to provide these facilities.

These are just a few of the parameters. Comparing innumerable such parameters could get tedious. Web hosting choice provides an advanced web hosting search that makes it easier to search for a web host matching your requirements. Just select the features you need and click Search for Hosts and voila! You have a list of hundreds of plans from various web hosts that you can choose from. » Continue reading

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4 Ways to Get Things Done at the Office

Demanding job? Get it under control with these tips. After all, there is life beyond your desk.

1. Get someone else to do it.
   "Don't be afraid to delegate. Make sure you know who does what, so you don't waste time taking on work that someone else already does, or should be doing. Delegated work shouldn't be seen as a 'side-stepped' chore. It should help create a stronger, more effective work force. But it has to be conveyed correctly. Explain exactly what you want someone to achieve and always give them a deadline." - Steven Kirkpatrick, Managing Director, Adecco Staffing UK and Ireland
   
2. Stick to a timetable.
   "If you've got a big task in front of you, ask these questions. What has to be done before something else can happen? What things can you manage in parallel? What do you have direct control over? Use the answers and make a flow chart or a timetable of smaller tasks. Breaking it down in this way will stop you feeling so overwhelmed.- Susan Moger, Senior Fellow in Leadership, Manchester Business School
   
3. Recycle your best work.
   "Keep successful project plans, proposals and reports. Use them as templates when you need to do similar work. You may not feel comfortable using old material as the basis for new work. But perfectionists fritter away too much time trying to hit 100%. Remember the 80/20 rule - if you hit 80% you've achieved a high enough standard and trying to achieve the remaining 20% will make more time than it is worth."- Gladeana McMahon, How to Make Life Happen
   
4. Manage your meetings.
   "Get out your diary and grade all the meetings you've attended in the last month. Give a number five to those that were useful and relevant and a number one to those with no use or relevance at all. Take assertive steps to attend meetings only when it helps you achieve priorities or when managing the expectations of others.- Gina Gardiner, founder of Recovering Workaholics

» Continue reading

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Can doing laundry help make you fit?

You'd better believe it, says Ellen Langer, PhD, a Harvard University psychologist. She told 44 hotel maids their job was a good workout. A month later, they'd shed about a kilo.

They say they didn't work any harder, but their mind-set had changed: They believed cleaning could help them shape up, and somehow it did. "If you put the mind in a healthy place, the body will be in a healthy place," says Langer.

But Cedric Bryant, PhD, of the American Council on Exercise, isn't so sure. "I wonder if changing their perception had an impact on their behaviour outside work. Did they think, Jeez, I'm becoming healthy while I work -- now I should eat better? The study didn't measure that." In any case, everyday activities do add up. » Continue reading

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Wanna lose weight sleeping?

Here's a weight-loss strategy that you might find relaxing. A large study has found a link between amount of sleep and risk of obesity. Study subjects between the ages of 32 and 59 who slept four hours or less a night were 73 percent more likely to be obese than those who slept between seven and nine hours. People who got five hours of sleep had a 50 percent higher risk, and those who go six hours were 23 percent more likely to be obese.

"Sleeping less could serve as a trigger to the body to increase food intake and store fat," says the study's lead researcher James Gangwisch, a postdoctoral fellow in psychiatric epidemiology at Columbia University. » Continue reading

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Keeping a tab on music tabs

I was quite intrigued by the wide variety of tablatures available at tTabs.com. I found the selection of over 140,000 guitar, bass, and drum tabs to be quite useful.

Once a dedicated fan of the Online Guitar Archive (OLGA) prior to its legal battles, the discovery of tTabs was music to my eyes. If you have any interest in music tablature, be sure to check out tTabs.com.

An example of the quality tablature available on the site is this rendition of drum tabs for Evanescence's "Bring Me To Life". After trying out the tab last night, I found the trabscription to be quite accurate, though I suspect my neighbors might not have enjoyed my drum solos as much as I did. » Continue reading

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