678PC

Archive for June, 2010

HP has reached an agreement with Phoenix Technologies (BIOS-programmers) to buy their instant-on Linux-based Hyperspace
platform for a cool $12 million. Hyperspace is not a full-on OS and is
meant to be used in conjunction with another operating system, i.e.
slow-booting Windows. The instant-on capability of Hyperspace is its
most-intriguing feature; with just the touch of a button the OS boots
in a few seconds, giving the computer user near instant access to the
internet, their music, and a few other basic tasks.

While it’s
more than likely that HP will use the purchase of Hyperspace to further
differentiate their laptop products, we can’t help but wonder what this
might mean for soon-to-be-purchased webOS.
HP was mum on what exactly they intend to do with Hyperspace, but we’re
cheering from the sidelines for at least some of the technology from
the instant-on OS to find its way into painfully-slow-to-boot webOS,
which is also based on Linux. Additionally, since the two operating
systems are Linux-based, there’s the intriguing possibility of
Hyperspace being leveraged to quickly and easily add webOS to HP’s
other portable products. Imagine a dual-booting HP tablet running webOS and Windows 7…

Ever
wanted to upload a folder full of photos to Picasa from a command
prompt? We did, a lot, last summer. It made us want to say:

$ google picasa create --title "My album" ~/Photos/vacation/*.jpg

So we wrote a program to do that, and a whole lot more.

GoogleCL
is a command-line utility that provides access to various Google
services. It streamlines tasks such as posting to a Blogger blog,
adding events to Calendar, or editing documents on Google Docs.

For example:

$ google blogger post --blog "My blog" --tags "python, googlecl, development" my_post.html
$ google calendar add "Lunch with Jason tomorrow at noon"
$ google docs edit --title "Shopping list" --editor vim

GoogleCL is a pure Python application that uses the Python gdata libraries to make Google Data API calls from the command line.

Read more at the GoogleCL project page, or jump right to the examples.
Along with a standard tarball, we have a .deb package ready for
download, and hope to have it included in Debian and Ubuntu
repositories in time for their next releases. We’re adding features all
the time, so check in frequently. Or better yet, contribute.

GoogleCL brings cloud computing to your fingertips, literally!

How this post came together…

A few weeks ago we decided to try to help people who do link
building in industries where links are not always easy to come by.  We
created a form which asked people two questions -

1. What industry do you work in that you believe it is very hard to get links for?
2. If you could get a link from one website in your industry, what would it be?

We’ve received loads of great replies and I’m going to cover as many
as possible here.  The second question was optional and didn’t have
to be related to the industry.  Any websites not related to an industry
will be covered at the end of the post.  I’m hoping to do another post
soon which will cover the rest of the submissions.

My Approach

My usual approach to link building is based on the site itself and
identifying what makes that website link worthy, obviously I can’t use
that approach in this situation!  Instead I’m going to suggest asking
yourself four questions -

Important Note: Please do not bypass “Why will they
link to me?”.  This is probably the hardest question to answer and will
require work to get right.  Link building is hard work mainly because
you need to spend time creating content that someone wants to link to,
if you put time and resource into this part of the process, the rest
isn’t as difficult.

I’m going to follow this process for some of the sites on this list
so that even if non of these sites are in your industry, you can still
use the same process to identify link building opportunities for
yourself.  The rest of the sites will have some quick tips and ideas
for getting links.

Industries that are Tough to get Links for

Here are some of the suggestions we had submitted for tough industries to get links for.

Veterinarians

Who you want a link from: 

Any person who owns a pet and a website

How you are going to get their attention: 

There are lots and lots of forums
and online communities out there based around various types of pets. 
Joining some of these and posting a few bits of free veterinary advice
would certainly get their attention.

How you are going to get a link:

1. Start a Q&A section where users can submit a question
   and receive free advice from one of your expert vets.  Capture a
   persons Twitter, Facebook or website address when they ask a question. 
   Then prioritise questions by those who have a website and answer those
   first.  Ask them to share the answer on their website as a thank you
2. Add a Jobs Board to your site, if you have a Wordpress blog here is a method
   on how to do it.  Allow other Veterinarians to post job vacancies to
   your site and encourage them to promote it on their own site.
3. Ask
   users to submit photos of their animals and award a prize for the
   cutest – design a badge for them to use on their website with their
   pets picture on it – link this to the competition page.  SEOs seem to
   love cats so I had to include a least one picture!

Image source

Quick Link Targets:

1. Veterinarian Business websites, this search of Dmoz gives you a few good sites to contact

 Jewelry Ecommerce 

Who you want a link from: A jewelry making website or blog

How you are going to get their attention:  There are lots of active forums in this industry where you can make contacts and provide good information.  This Twitter list search also provides you with lots of people to contact and interact with.

How you are going to get a link:

1. Run a competition and ask designers and students to
   design a piece of jewelry which you will feature on your website.  Put
   all the entries on your website and encourage the entrants to share the
   link and get their friends to vote for them
2. Create a page
   on your website that calculates the current price of gold, allow it to
   be shared easily and embedded on other websites.  You can approach
   pawnbrokers and see if they want to use the calculator on their own
   website and credit you with a link
3. Link bait ideas – Men
   are notoriously bad at buying jewelry and always need help figuring out
   what to buy and in particular what size ring to buy.  A Mens Guide to
   Buying Jewelry would work quite well.  Another idea would be to name
   the top x ways of proposing to your girlfriend.  I wonder if this would make the list
4. A
   bit of a combination of the previous ideas – create a calculator that
   will tell a guy how much he should spend on an engagement ring

Quick Link Target:

1. Bonus ecommerce tip for all sites which have offline stores
   - find out if any of them are within a shopping centre or complex.  If
   the complex has a website listing all of its shops, ask them for a
   link.  Here is an example of a shop doing this from the Bullring Shopping Centre in the UK -

iPhone Apps for the SEO Industry

I have to admit, this was one of the easiest ones on the list, SEOs love to link to cool apps especially SEO ones!

Ideal person to get a link from: An Experienced SEO Blogger with a Large Following

How to get their attention:  The SEO industry is very active on
Twitter, start following your link target and RT them, ask them
questions and generally be nice!

How you are going to get a link: 

1. If it is a paid app, give out free copies to top SEO bloggers for them to review
2. If
   the app is not yet public, give them super secret behind the scenes
   access to it so they can test it – in exchange for a review
3. If the app is already public, when you add a new feature, ask SEO bloggers to beta test it for you.

Quick Link Targets:

Submit your App to all of these, they give you a link back form your App page

1. http://www.apple.com/webapps/
2. http://www.igoapps.com/
3. http://www.appstorehq.com/developers
4. http://appshopper.com/

Electric Bikes

Who you want a link from: 

A blogger who loves anything eco-friendly, ideally they will have a bicycle of their own at the moment

How you are going to get their attention: 

There are several online communities that you could leverage for
outreach.  These include cycling activists and associations, many of
whom are active on Twitter such as http://twitter.com/CTC_Cyclists.  There is also the “green” community who encourage the use of eco-friendly products.

How you are going to get a link:

1. Create a calculator which tells someone how much they
   currently spend on a petrol car or bike along with how much damage this
   does to the environment.  Make this shareable and send it to bloggers
   who talk about environmental issues
2. Setup a classifieds
   section of the website where users can sell their old bikes, you can
   then ask them to include a link from the British Cycling website if they are a member of the association

Quick Links:

1. http://www.swindonclimate.org.uk/ElectricBikes – there are lots of sites like this in other areas
2. http://www.energysavingtrust.org.uk/Resources/Product-reviews/Nigel-s-eco-product-reviews – get a product review
3. http://www.atob.org.uk/Electric_price_tag.html#h7 – sorry I know that one is a nofollow!
4. http://www.ecobusinesslinks.com/electric_vehicles_bikes_conversion_parts.htm

Sound Masking

Link bait idea – overheard office conversations.  This has the
potential to be a funny piece of content but with a serious end to it -
the need for sound masking in an open plan office.  A good example may
be the Head of the HR department speaking about employees in an office
which has no sound masking, this could lead to a title such as “Office
Conversations you wish you hadn’t heard” etc.

Image Source

These guys have created a few graphics
to help people understand what sound masking is.  This could be
executed and presented in a much better way.  You could create a
“before and after” graphic of a sound masking installation to show the
effect it has on the workplace.  This could even be tied in with some
nice stats and graphs on how it improves efficiency as well.  Eg after
sound masking you can expect an x% increase in efficiency.

Business Training – Business NLP

There is an active forum here – http://nlp-experts.org/forum.php
which seems to have a small Twitter following as well.  The guy who
runs this seems to have some authority in the area and a network of
websites which help promote his main business.  If you do a backlink
check on the forum you’ll find some of these as well as other NLP sites
you could get links from.

Classifieds/Online Marketplace

Here I’d focus on certain sections of the site, for example if you
have a section with classified ads for used cars.  Focus on this sector
and how to get links, one idea would be to go out to car enthusiast websites
and offer them a widget or feed which displays a few of the classified
ads on their website.  This would work well if you found a site with a
focus on a certain make such as BMW.  You could just give them a feed
for this section so that it will be of interest to their users.

Here is an example of how Auto Trader are doing this on the Guardian website -

If you have a pets section, you could also use the ideas outlined above in the Veterinarians section.

Fashion Shopping Portal

Ecommerce websites are often seen as difficult to get links for, I
can see why as it’s hard to attract links to a product page or category
page.  The solution is to think about the industry as a whole and what
content you can add to other parts of your website to get links flowing in.  There are other methods which I talk about in the next section.

I’m going to cheat here and repeat a tip – add a jobs board which
lets fashion students see an updated list of jobs.  The reason I’m
repeating this tip is that you can try to get links from high value
pages such as this and this. 

Another approach would be to write a guide on How to Get a Job in
the Fashion Industry, if you can make this a good guide then you will
appeal to loads of websites including this one.

Link Building to an Ecommerce Site with thousands of Products

The challenge here is finding a solution that is scalable, manually
building links to thousands of individual pages isn’t very practical. 
Here is a great article written by Rob which gives you a few starting points.  There is also this head-smacking tips from Rand which is very scalable no matter how many products you have, its just a case of automating the follow up email.

I genuinely think that the key to a successful strategy here is to
get your customers to do the link building for you.  Try to add user
generated content to every product page along with making products as
easy to share as possible via social media. 

Here is an idea of enhancing a standard product page where buyers can leave reviews -

Get customers to upload their videos and photos of their new product
to you, then when it has been approved, drop them an email to let them
know.  Within this email include a line similar to the head smacking
tip I’ve linked to above.  Ask the person to blog about the content or
share it with friends.  Again this is very scalable as it can be
automated after the review has been approved.

Gambling

Ok, I’ll admit this is a difficult one!  I’d take a similar approach
to link building for ecommerce sites, there needs to be another angle
built into the website to attract links.  People are not going to
naturally link to a small gambling site without a very good reason. 

So give them a good reason, one may be -

Holding the licence to a famous brand that has been turned into a
game – an example being movies that are turned into slot machine
games.  You can reach out to the online communities around the brand. 
Also, many online slot machines started their life as an offline game -
try reaching out to users of the offline game and ask them to spread
the word that there is actually an online version too

Clothing – No Branded Stuff

I’d target a very specific market here to get links from – fashion
students.  If you are not selling branded clothing, then you can appeal
to young, creative clothing designers who want to make a name for
themselves.  You can contact Universities and Colleges to ask if
students want to contribute designs to your site in exchange for some
publicity, they could link to it from the University website to help
promote it.  

The other angle here is to contact individual fashion students with their own blogs such as this one who may want to take part themselves, then link to their design once it is live on your website.  I also found this competition which you could do an online version of.

Web Hosting

A quick win here would be to ask sites who use your service link to
you from their website.  In the same way a web design firm may receive
a link, its something that Fasthosts seem to do as you can see on this website.

Also submitted with this industry was a website that is hard to get links from, the site was http://www.php.net so I’m going to include this here as well.

http://www.php.net/links.php

Here are a few ways to get links from this page:

1. Publish a news feed, you can do this by hiring a guest author if you have limited in-house resource
2. If you have a member of staff who speaks another language, ask them to start writing a section on your site in that languauge
3. Create
   some cool merchandise – the geekiest the better!  A t-shirt which is
   only funny if you are a PHP coder could work quite well

There is also the possibility of getting a link from http://www.php.net/conferences/ if you run a conference on PHP.

Components for Microsoft Visual Studio

This is quite a big area which can improve the scope of the websites that you can target.  I found http://www.mcmsfaq.com/links.asp which links to a number of websites who work with various Microsoft technologies.

Another quick win would be to ask for a link from the companies you
work with, especially if you do any work with .NET on their websites or
have build various components of their systems.

Websites that people struggle to get links from 

Here are a few websites submitted to us that people wanted to get a link from.

http://www.reiclub.com

This is a Real Estate Investing website, they have a few different forums
on various topics.  You can have a link in your forum signature but
they have a number of rules to follow.  Make sure you are contributing
to the forum and helping people before you start dropping links,
otherwise I doubt the links will stay there for long.

If you are a money lender you also may stand a good chance of getting a link from this page http://www.reiclub.com/hard-money-lenders.php

http://www.statefarm.com

State Farm is a US based insurance website, there isn’t an obvious
way to get a link but it is possible if you are an agency.  You can get
a profile page which includes a link to your website.

http://www.education.gov.uk/

This one immediately struck me as being difficult, not just because
of the domain name, but because of the page they have in the top right
corner called “Linking” which outlines their very strict linking
policies!

So lets be creative – get them to tweet a link to your website.  Ok
this can be difficult but there benefits go way beyond the link itself
on this one.  Their following is around 3,000 people, a tweet from them
could bring you a lot of traffic and links from other sites.  You’d
also get a link from their homepage as they display the latest tweet
from their profile, looking at the frequency of their tweets, this link
could be in place for a few days.  I’ll admit this one is a bit sneaky
but it could get you a link from their homepage and bring lots of
attention.

Bit of free advice for the Department of Education

As a sidenote, this website is showing at Google Toolbar PR0 which I
found strange.  Turns out that they recently moved domains which is a
valid reason, however their old site – http://www.dcsf.gov.uk/ is using a 302 redirect.  Unless they are planning to take the redirect down very soon I would use a 301 instead!

Finally – www.seomoz.org

This was actually the most popular site that people wanted to get
links from.  This may surprise you but there are a few ways to do this!

1. Get your Moz points score above 100 to get a followed link from your profile.  Read about how to get Mozpoints here
2. Write a good blog post and it could be included on Youmoz along with a link to you
3. Put
   extra special effort into the post and it could be promoted to the main
   blog – bringing you lots of extra attention, links and readers.  This
   is a great example of how putting extra effort into creating content
   will benefit you when it comes to getting quality links

If you would like more information regarding search engine optimization, Contact 678PC at 678-404-1001

A group of hackers exploited a hole in an AT&T Web site to get e-mail addresses of about 114,000 iPad users, including what appears to be top officials in government, finance, media, technology, and military.

The leak could have affected all iPad 3G subscribers in the U.S., according to Gawker, which broke the story on Wednesday. Among the iPad users who appeared to have been affected were White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel, journalist Diane Sawyer, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, movie producer Harvey Weinstein, and New York Times CEO Janet Robinson.

A group that calls itself Goatse Security tricked the AT&T site into disclosing the e-mail addresses by sending HTTP (hyper text transport protocol) requests that included SIM card serial numbers for iPads, the report said. Because the serial numbers, called ICC-IDs (integrated circuit card identifiers), are generated sequentially, the researchers were able to guess thousands of them and then ran a program to extract the data by going down the list.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel confirmed the breach to CNET, saying the company turned off the feature that provided e-mail addresses on Tuesday, one day after learning of the problem from someone not affiliated with the hacker group.

“AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC IDS. The only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device,” he said in a statement.

“We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained,” he added. “At this point, there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared.”

Representatives from Goatse Security did not respond to an e-mail or phone call seeking comment, but Goatse analyst Jim Jeffers gave an interview to CBS News. The group, whose name references an Internet shock Web site, looks for security holes in software, including browsers.

Jeffers said the attack could have allowed someone to take control of the iPad and that potentially every 3G iPad subscriber was affected. Although AT&T maintains that only e-mail addresses were compromised, Jeffers said “it will allow someone who does the proper research to possibly target iPad 3G users and take over their iPads, and they could sniff traffic, they could act as the user of the iPad.”

Jeffers also said the group had contacted AT&T and waited until the company fixed the hole before going public with it.

Representatives from Apple did not respond to a request for comment.

A Web site issue
The problem is solely related to security on AT&T’s Web site and not Apple’s tablet, security experts stressed. Meanwhile, the type of weakness discovered in the AT&T site is fairly common, they said.

“It is an authentication error to not require user authentication before returning private data,” said Chris Wysopal, chief technology officer at Veracode. “This is the type of vulnerability that would be found with a very basic Web application assessment. Apple should require its service providers to show proof of an assessment of its Web apps if sensitive Apple customer is stored there.”

Neither e-mail addresses nor SIM serial numbers are considered to be sensitive information, experts said.

“Doesn’t seem like a huge deal to me,” said Charlie Miller of Independent Security Evaluators. “It’s not like peoples’ Social Security or credit card numbers were compromised.”

But try telling that to Rahm Emanuel or any of the officials in the Defense Department, federal court system, or Goldman Sachs whose e-mail addresses could be targeted for phishing and other attacks.

“Now everyone in the world knows these people have iPads, and here’s their serial number and here’s their e-mail address,” said Bill Pennington, chief strategy officer at White Hat Security. “This puts them in a more vulnerable state.”

There is also the possibility that a SIM serial number could be used to get other customer information through this or other vulnerabilities on the AT&T site, he said. And there’s a chance that not only iPad users were put at risk. “I believe this number could identify any 3G device on the AT&T network,” not just iPads, Pennington said.

“Obviously, AT&T is using the ICC-ID as some sort of authentication mechanism,” said Kevin Mahaffey, chief technology officer at mobile security firm Lookout.

“The question is: in the back-end are there other systems that are using the number as an identifier for other things?” he said. “There is a trend to use identifiers associated with devices as a way to trigger billing or interact with the account. There is some trust associated with these numbers.”

Another security expert said the breach revealed enough information that a determined attacker could use to target the specific device.

“At least in the United States, some major GSM providers are known to use ICCID values that contain the lower nine digits of the International Mobile Subscriber Identity (IMSI), which is considered to be a protected value. The other digits that make up an IMSI are either known or can be easily guessed by an attacker,” said Don Bailey, a security consultant at iSEC Partners.

“Knowing a subscriber’s IMSI allows a potential attacker to target that specific subscriber’s GSM handsets or devices using an IMSI catcher, which itself is a device that can intercept or manipulate GSM traffic,” Bailey said. “An attacker with access to an IMSI catcher can intercept the traffic of high-profile targets potentially leading to a loss of privacy. With the lowering cost of IMSI catching equipment, the ability for an attacker to correlate ICCIDs with high-profile individuals, then derive the IMSI from each ICCID, is a substantial threat to both corporate and personal privacy.”

According to Gawker, Goatse Security shared the exploit it wrote for the AT&T site with others. But Pennington said it seemed like the hackers were more interested in shaming AT&T over lax security than making money off the situation.

“I don’t think the data would have a lot of value in the underground,” Pennington said. “I think their primary motivation is shame and guilt.”

For more information about protecting your information and personal security please contact 678PC at 678-404-1001

For most office workers, being glued to their desks while typing away at their computers for an average of 8 hours a day is already a part of their normal routine. However, sitting at the computer all day may not exactly be good for the body, as it can bring about back aches due to bad posture and eye strain, among other effects. If your work is also deskbound, or if you face the computer screen for hours, you would have these eye strain symptom:

• 1. Redness
• 2. Tearing
• 3. Itching
• 4. Swelling
• 5. Burning
• 6. Blurred vision
• 7. Headaches
• 8. Sensitivity to glare
• 9. Difficulty adjusting to light
• 10. Worsening of nearsightedness and
• 11. Decreased concentration

Any of these symptoms can also be related to more serious diseases; each needs to be considered in the context in which it occurs.Using your eyes intently for hours in an enclosed space without resting contributes not only to eye strain but also to other health problems.

When a person stares at one spot for a long period of time, the brain is focused on balancing everything-keeping the head, neck, and other parts of the body from moving. These days, people stare most intently at the computer screen. This is particularly hard on the eyes, because they’re not looking at the entire screen, but only at microimages on it. In contrast, when you watch TV, you’re following a panorama on the screen, which doesn’t require the brain to be so fixated or the body to be so restricted.

Working at a computer for long periods at a time without a break can result in a condition called “computer fatigue syndrome,” which encompasses a host of symptoms:

• 1. Eyestrain;
• 2. Heaviness of the eyelids (eye fatigue);
• 3. Blurred vision;
• 4. Flickering sensations in vision; and
• 5. Headaches

At the same time, neck and back pain can also develop and if you are also facing the same then you should also try Yoga meditation exercises for Computer users . From studies, very few people know how to rest their eye effectively. The following eye relaxation exercises will help you to relax and reduce eye fatigue. You should repeat the relaxation exercise after every 30 minutes of computer work.

1. Palming

1. Sit comfortably on a chair. Rub your hands together until they feel warm.

2. Close the eyes and cover them lightly with your cupped palms. Avoid applying pressure on your eye balls. Place the palm so that the nose remain uncovered, and the eyes remain behind the slight hollow of the palms.

3. Make sure that no light rays enter the eyes, and leave no gaps between fingers or between the edge of the palms and the nose.

4. You may still see other lingering traces of colors. Imagine deep blackness and focus on the blackness.

5. Take deep breaths slowly and evenly, think of some happy incident; or visualise a distant scene.

6. Repeat the palming for 3 minutes or more.

2. Looking at Distant Objects

Our eyes are relax when they are made to look at distance.

If you are feeling strain after working at your computer for some time, simply look out of a window or at distant objects about 5 meters away from your work area.

If you eyes feel strained, they can be rested by doing this eye relaxation exercise (i.e. looking at distant objects) for a few minutes.

3. Rythmic Movements – Head Movement

1. Close your eye. With your head, slowly and gently form a figure of 8 in air.

2. Move and breathe rythmically.

3. Continue for 3 minutes or more.

4. Rythmic Movements – Round Swing

1. Stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, arms hanging loosely at your sides.

2. Gaze at a low-lying distant object, Shift your weight to your right foot, and swing your upper body to the right, letting the heel of your left foot come up off the floor. Watch your surroundings as you swing. Breathe rythmically.

If you can see a tree out the window or in the distance, notice how it seems to move opposite to the direction you are swinging.

3. Return to the original position.

4. Continue to swing to your left similarly.

5. While doing this eye relaxation exercises, breathe rythmically and blink as you sway.

Blinking cleans and lubricates the eyes, which is especially important if you spend a lot of time in front of a computer.

6. Continue for at least 2 – 3 minutes. Repeat 100 times daily.

5. Rythmic Movements – Bar Swings

1. Find a window or a door which has verticle bars or grill.

2. Gaze through the bars, and look at distant objects.

3. Sway slowly and rythmically, just like the pendulum of a clock. Keep your breathing rythmically too.

4. Transfer your weight from one foot to the other, and keep your body muscles limp and lax.

5. Repeat 100 times daily, blinking as you sway. Blinking cleans and lubricates the eyes, which is especially important if you spend a lot of time in front of a computer.

6. Continue for 2 – 3 minutes or more.

6. Face and Eye Massage

This eye relaxation exercise is effective in relieving the tension in the facial and eye muscles.

1. Soak a tower in warm or hot water. Rub your forehead, cheeks and neck vigorously with the tower. However, do not rub your eyes.

2. After this, gently massage your forehead and your closed eyelids with finger tips.

7. Splash Water on Closed Eyes

1. Sprinkle cold water from a running tap on the closed eyes for a few seconds.

2. Allow the water on the face to dry on its own, and do not wipe your face dry.

8. Hot and Cold Compresses

This eye relaxation exercise helps to improve the blood circulation around the eyeballs and face.

1. Soaked small towers in hot and cold water.

2. Apply first tower (either the warm or cold one) and compress it to your face, eyebrows, closed eyelids and cheeks.

3. Apply the other, make sure you end the session with a cold compress.

These compresses open up the small blood vessels of the face and eyeballs, and therefore relieve eye strain.

Warnings

• There has never been any peer reviewed research demonstrating improvement in visual clarity by exercise. Some people have weakness in the ability to turn their eye in or out. You may have esotropia (eye naturally turned in) or exotropia (eye naturally turned out). Exercise may help these conditions.
• Consult your optometrist (eye doctor) before doing any of these exercises. The last thing you want to do is add further strain to your eyes, or damage them permanently.
• When doing these exercises, make sure that you’re not facing anybody, or that they know you’re doing eye exercises. Otherwise they might think you’ve gone nuts.
• Doing these exercises when you wear contacts may cause them to suction to your eyeball. They might also move around and possibly become folded and/or dislodged, which can be extremely uncomfortable as well.
• Do not apply pressure on your eyes.
• Wash your hands before doing these exercises to avoid getting irritants in your eye.

Precautions

To reduce computer eye strain (and body strain you develop while working at your computer) include the following:

• Set up your computer correctly. The viewing distance from the screen to the eyes should be seventeen to twenty-six inches. The correct viewing angle is 10 to 20 degrees from midscreen to the top of the screen.
• Place reference material next to the screen, with the screen and reference material at the same distance from your eyes to reduce computer eye strain.
• Adjust screen brightness and contrast properly.
• Make sure overall room illumination is no more than three times brighter than the screen.
• Use a desk lamp, if possible, instead of an overhead light to reduce computer eye strain.
• Control glare from overhead lights and uncurtained windows. Use an anti-glare screen, set up a partition, or move your terminal to an area where glare is less of a problem.
• Rest your feet firmly on the floor. The upper thighs should not touch the supporting surface of the desk or computer table.

Remember to take frequent vision breaks and perform some eye relaxation exercises(discussed above) to reduce computer eye strain.

HP, the soon-to-be-Palm-parent-company is moving quickly and strongly into Internet-enabled printers with its new ePrint Platform and four new “e-all-in-One” printers. These products will enabled users to send print jobs via the Google Cloud (Docs, Photos and Calendar), using new apps from partners like Crayola and Live Nation, and most relevantly for this community, “from any web-connected device – smartphones, iPads, netbooks and more”, according to Vyomesh Joshi, HP’s Executive Vice President, Imaging and Printing Group. The release goes on to very specifically mention the possibility of “an executive on a train sending a presentation from a Palm Pre or Blackberry smartphone to print and pick up at a FedEx Office Store.”

The Times piece, a feature on Vyomesh Joshi, includes a quote which could as easily be talking about future webOS development as printing:

“‘Now that H.P. is going mass-market with this technology, we will more actively program to it,’ said Steve Youngwood, an executive vice president at Nickelodeon.”

While this announcement is not expressly about putting webOS on printers, it shows that HP’s overall strategy of improving mobile data use from creation to production, a strategy for which webOS and the Palm smartphones will be a key component, is both moving ahead and getting positive attention.

For more information call 678PC at 678-404-1001