Tag: Good Chance

Choosing the Right Career

Azmir Yunus asked:

Making a career choice is a tough decision. If you are able to make the right career choice earlier in your life, then you have a good chance of success in the future. The right time to start thinking about a career is when you are a teenager because the decision you make will determine your education or training after high school. But if you’re a university student and you haven’t decided on a career, or if you are a working adult who work in a job that you never really planned, then perhaps it’s time to do a career analysis by taking a closer look at your strengths and your weaknesses and deciding what should be the best career for you.

So how do you know what is the right career for you? Essentially, when you are trying to look for a career, you are finding a match between a career and your own interest, ability, motivation, personality and expectation.

Choose a career that matches your interest

I strongly believe that a person should have a career that matches his own interest because otherwise he will lose the desire to carry out his duties effectively. Unless you are a person who can find love in anything you do, then finding a career that interests you should be an important priority.

Choose a career that matches your ability

Sometimes interest alone is not a strong enough factor for a career decision. You must also look at your ability because sometimes what you like is not necessarily what you are good at. I have interest in football and I like watching football games, but I simply do not have the athletic ability to play at professional league and therefore, a career as a professional footballer is out of the question for me.

Choose a career that matches your motivation

According to Abraham Maslow, human needs have the following hierarchical order: physiological needs, safety needs, social needs, esteem needs, cognitive needs, esthetic needs and self-actualization needs. Although some scholars argued against the hierarchical structure of these needs, I believe that each person has his own unique levels of needs. So examine yourself and try to figure out, for each category of needs, what level you find acceptable and then see how the career you choose can fulfill the needs.

Choose a career that matches your personality

What kind of person are you? Do you like working with people, or do you prefer working with machine and equipment? Are you comfortable handling stress? Do you have specific lifestyle that you are not willing to compromise? Do you prefer high-risk high-reward type of job or do you prefer a more stable job? These are basically things that relate to your personality and you need to consider them seriously before deciding on a career.

Choose a career that matches your expectation

Planning for a career requires you to have a vision of yourself in 10, 20 or 30 years from now. If you have a clear vision of where you want to go, then it is easier to decide how to get there. For example, if your expectation of yourself is to be a millionaire before the age of 35, then your pathway to get there is probably through business ventures. Have a clear expectation of yourself and you will see a much clearer path to reach your destination.

Conclusion

Choosing a career requires you to examine yourself and analyze your interest, ability, motivation, personality and expectation. If you can find a career that matches all these five criteria then you are on the right track. But one thing to remember is that career analysis is not something you do once in a lifetime. As you grow older, you will develop new interest, acquire new ability, and experience a change in your expectation. When that happens, you know it’s time to do a career analysis again and decide what career is best for you.

Fake Reviewers of Montblanc Pens

Kelly Wright asked:

Can you believe that somebody can post a fake Mont Blanc pen review? Why does anybody would want to do that? And what may be the purpose for such review to appear on public websites?

All right, I will do my best to answer these questions because I have reasons to think that it never occurred to some of you that fake Mont Blanc pen reviews pop up on the web like corks.

As you may know, Mont Blanc pens aren’t of the cheapest, especially fountain pens series (and I’m not talking about Limited Editions some models of which can easily be priced over $10,000; yes that’s ten thousands dollars for a Mont Blanc fountain pen LE, I put all the zeroes correctly). Thus it is obvious that some people pretending to write a Mont Blanc pen review, actually never had a chance to hold the reviewed pen. Now what do you think can be written in a review by the author who never held the fountain pen in concern?

To avoid such Mont Blanc pen reviews, I advise you to consider the following steps of precautions. They are very easy to stick to, and won’t cost you a dime.

First, for Mont Blanc pen reviews written by real owners of real pens, head over to highly popular specialized forums visited by lots of pen collectors. Among such I can name just a couple – fountainpennetwork.com and jetpens.com (the former has a separate section for Mont Blanc pen reviews), but there are at least a dozen of respectable communities presented online.

Second, I’d suggest you consider visiting leading shopping resources like Amazon and eBay. Because they sell MB pens to many countries over the world, you have a good chance to come across several reviews for one and same Mont Blanc pen.

A word a caution: if you ever happen to come across, say, a WordPress blog with simple minimalistic design and some barely readable piece of text with artificially inserted words like “discount mont blanc pens’, be sure it is a splog with scraped content. It has no value and has nothing to do with human pen reviewers.

Usually pen owners running blogs have photos of their pens. When we speak about Mont Blanc pen reviews, almost every happy owner will post a picture of the writing asset (consider MB price!) to prove the ownership.

Also, I’d like to point out that owners of Mont Blanc pens usualy have other fountain pens in their possession as well. This is because to-be collectors don’t feel quite sure about spending a small fortune (sometimes not-so-small) on their first fine writing instrument. Fine fountain pens are bought by people with certain taste and previous experience in collecting pens. Therefore expect to find other pen described, apart from a single Mont Blanc pen review.

Should You Promote Business Through Social Networking Sites

Mike Claggett asked:

Networking whether for socializing or for business is what makes the world go around. Not Love. Well love keeps it positive and interesting, but without socializing, love doesn’t have a chance. Don’t think so? Then how do you explain sites like MySpace has literally millions of users and all of the on line dating sites combined have less.

Do you know what the main purpose of a social networking website is? If you are an avid internet user, it’s you likely do. Social networking websites are online communities that make it easier for internet users to meet and communicate with each other. If you are an internet user who enjoys using the internet to meet new people, there is a good chance that you already belong to a social networking website. What about an online blog? Do you have a blog? In a way, your blog is like having your own personal social networking site. If you have a blog, do you know that you could use your social networking website to promote your blog?

The goal of most business owners is to make a profit. There are of course a few that have business web sites only to support their products or provide information. But for the purposes of this article, I’ll only be talking about sites with the primary purpose of making money. Obviously the hope of the site/business owner is to generate income from the selling of a particular product or service. However, to sell that product or service business owners need to alert the general public and preferably a targeted portion of the public at large (Thier niche), to the availability of their products or services. Customers cannot buy a product or a service if they do not know that it exists. Obviously that’s why, as a business owner, you need to advertise your business.

When it comes to advertising there are many business owners who literally cringe at the thought of putting together an advertising or marketing plan or campaign. Have you planned your campaign and are you working your plan? Is it costing you more than your are making? There is a good chance it is because most traditional advertising methods cost money. Many cost a LOT of money.

As a business owner you want to make a profit and not spend any more than is absolutely necessary to make the profit you want/need to, right? Fortunately, if you believe that all forms of advertising take money, you’ll be glad to know you are mistaken. Although you may have to spend some money to make your business as profitable as you want it to be, there are ways to promote your business and the products or services that you sell without having to spend any money at all.

Promote your blog through your social networking site and vice versa? Why would you want to do that? Honestly, in this day and age, if your in business and have to ask yourself that question you probably need to look into the upside of owning operating your own blog and reciprocally linking with one or more of your own social networking site pages. The whole purpose of a blog is to document your thoughts, views, and opinions on a particular topic, issue, or subject to boost your credibility in the eyes of your reader as an authority on what you write about. What good will your blog do if no one reads it. Social networking sites are a way to get readers for your blog.

Is your curiosity peaked yet? There is a good chance that it is and rightfully so. One of the ways that you can promote your online business, without having to spend a dime, is by using something that is readily available online. That thing is an online social networking website. A large number of internet users, in fact literally millions of them, belong to at least one social networking website, if not several.

When it comes to promoting blogs, there are many blog owners who decide to let the search engine do the work for them. Search engines, such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN use special techniques that read/scan the content on your website. That content is then used in part to link your blog website with particular keywords. This means that you run a blog on graduating from high school in New York, there is a good chance that your blog will appear in searches done on New York high schools.

Although many blogs are successfully ranked in search engines, not all are. That is why you are advised against relying solely on search engines, when it comes to promoting your blog. There are other ways to promote your blog besides social networking, such as “blog and ping” or “Tag and Ping” but I’ll leave those subjects for another article you can find at my blog.

When it comes to social networking, there are many individuals who think of building new online friendships or online relationships. While these types of relationships are the most common, did you know that social networking is also used for businesses? A lot of businesses? In fact, that was originally how social networking got started.

As previously mentioned, if you love meeting with or talking to people online, there is a good chance that you belong to a social networking website or community. The individuals that you talk with and that are in your community are likely the individuals that you wish to target. Since most social networking websites work to connect internet users who have the same goals and common interests, there is a good chance that your online friends will enjoy reading your blog. But, before they can read your blog, you have to let them know that it exists.

Although social networking websites are traditionally focused on those that would like to make online friends or develop online relationships, there are networking sites that are designed primarily for business owners. Ryze.com is a good example. These websites will not only allow you to share your business information with other business owners, but it will also allow you to develop close relationships with those that share an interest that is similar to yours. Essentially, this means that you could not only learn valuable business information, but you could also walk away with a new business partner, a new friend or a business prospect.

When it comes to promoting your blog on social networking websites, you have a number of different options. Your first option is to include a link to your blog in your community profile or profile page on your social networking site. This will allow other community members to checkout your blog, only if they wish to do so.

The other way is to inform your online friends of your blog through Private Messages (Or PM’s). Once you join a social networking website and create or join a network of friends, you should easily be able to communicate with those friends. Sending each of your friends a private message with information and a link to your blog tends to be more effective than just placing a link in your profile or on your profile page. As well, a PM is more personal. Naturally, you will want to offer the link to your blog in a kind of “Oh, by the way”, fashion or maybe asking their opinion of one of your recent or past blog posts. The last thing you want to do is make it appear you are soliciting your new friend.

As previously mentioned, social networking websites with a focus on businesses, are a great way to promote your business. However, this does not mean that you should completely forget about the other online social networking websites, the ones that are designed to make online friendships. Although you may not learn any valuable business tips by joining “Yahoo! 360” or “MySpace”, if you are subtle in your approach, you may be able to end up with new customers and new customers is exactly what your business needs.

As you will see, there are like minded people that will join an online community to make friends and or to learn more about what they are interested in from the people they meet in a social networking community regardless whether it is business related or not. There are a number of different ways that you will to go about promoting your own profile or profile page so as to not appear as though you are actually advertising. If you are planning on joining a traditional online social networking website, to gain access to millions of potential new customers, you are urged to be careful when making your online Social Networking webpage or profile. One thing that internet users **** is being solicited for business using the guise of wanting to make friends.

This does not mean that you cannot use social networking to your advantage; it just means that you need to be careful with how you do it. Instead of creating a “MySpace” page or a “Yahoo! 360” page for your business, you are advised to make one for and about yourself, but, of course, you will want to include information on your business as part of your ‘interests’. You never know, but, in addition to promoting your blog, you may also make new friends along the way as well by linking to your social networking profile page from your blog.

By joining a social networking website, especially one that is popular and has a large number of members, you should be able to generate interest in your business, including the products or services that you sell. If your social networking friends are interested in the same things as you, and your blog and is compelling enough to drive your social networking friends to your business site, that interest generated traffic could turn into sales; thus making your social networking experience more than worth your time and effort.

After all, it’s FREE, it’s easy, there is the potential of making additional profits doing it, and it can be a lot of FUN! There is nothing quite like making more money and having fun doing it.

The Security of USB Flash Drives

Derek Rogers asked:

Even the biggest USB flash drive is still smaller than most people’s thumbs. Since we carry these devices to numerous locations, there is a fairly good chance that we will eventually lose them. If this should happen, most of us simply hope there was nothing sensitive on the drive. However, that is not the only thing you can do.

There are some basic USB flash drive security measures available.

If your flash drive carries some sensitive information that you hope to keep from ending up online by the next day, security measures available range from secure partitions to encryption options.

Secure partitions are a rudimentary form of security – a password protected partition is created on the drive, using a utility supplied by the manufacturer, this makes a public partition and a secure one.

In most cases, it is not possible to access these partitions at the same time, it is often necessary to log into the secure partition, hiding the public one. Not all controllers feature this limitation. Using a version of your utility, someone else could re-partition the drive. However, they would not have access to the data you have stored on the secure partition.

There are other USB flash drives that are much more specialised, they offer the same sort of secure, password protected partition. However, they also encrypt data stored on that partition, making it much harder for people to get to your data. While encryption algorithms can be broken, having encryption on your USB drive is an extra layer of security you can offer your data.

The down side to drives that use encryption is that some of them only perform this encryption in software that results in lower performance on the drive when encryption is enabled. Few manufacturers use a hardware based engine capable of encrypting and decrypting files at a higher speed to prevent performance penalties when you access a secure partition that’s using encryption.

The problem with both of these security approaches is that they are mostly dependent on software; the majority of manufacturers of USB flash drives only provide Windows based software support.

What does that mean for Macintosh users and people who use a Linux distribution or other unusual operating system?

Security for USB flash drives is mostly still a matter of keeping good track of them. While it is possible to access public partitions on almost all systems, accessing the secure partition generally requires access to Windows.

USB flash drive security is still in its infancy, since these drives aren’t routinely used by people with a need to secure their data. As they become more widespread and the need for security increases, expect flash drive security options to increase as well. For now, partitioning and encrypting are the major options available, though.

Windows users are in luck and can make use of both of these options effectively to preserve their data. However, users of operating systems that aren’t compatible with the software on the drive must simply try not to let their USB flash drives fall into the wrong hands.