How to Force Information You are Looking for Come to You – RSS Part 1

This article is written towards Toastmasters International certification requirements.

How do you look for information? Do you use Google to find information? How do you read news on the internet? Do you go to CNN.com or BBC.com or a similar news website? What other websites do you go to? What are your interests? Do you like photography? Where do you get latest news and learn techniques?

What if I told you rather than going to websites everyday to get new information, read news or learn about your hobby, you can force the information you need, to come to you? In next 2 minutes or so, you can learn the basics about how to organize your information, start saving time and stop running around information you need.

What is RSS?

RSS is Really Simple Syndication. In plain English, you identify what information you need and from which website or blog. Then you “subscribe” to the blog or website and start getting the information. This sounds very simple and in fact the idea is very simple but it does wonders. RSS link is also called “Feed”, so if you read “get the feed” what it meant is “here’s the place to get the code.”

Why use RSS?

Rather than chasing the information all over the internet to find an object, RSS technology can get this information to you. So now you don’t have to browse through plethora of waste sites and websites with pop-up trying to sell stuff. Skip the pain of looking around and relax. Let the information come to you.

How to identify RSS?

Before bouncing with all the excitement and starting to hit the keyboard or smack your mouse, wait! First let me show you how to identify the RSS. Below are some commonly used icons/pictures to show a RSS feed is present on the blog/website. Below are the two most commons pictures to identify if RSS is available.

There are lot of other ways to show that the website provides RSS feed. Many websites have a huge collection of different symbols, icons, pictures to show that they provide RSS. However, the one common thing in all these symbols is the dot and two arcs above that.

What’s coming?

In the next part of this article, I will explain the basics of getting started with RSS and will show how to set up your first RSS feed.

Your Thoughts and Questions?

Please provide your thoughts and comments and tell me what you would like to hear in the presentation. Do you have any specific question? Ask it below and I’ll address that in the meeting on Tuesday 5/26.

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Valentine's Day is a Fraud!

Valentine’s Day is a Fraud. Yeah! That’s what Roland Martin from CNN believes:

With retailers hurting and the U.S. president trying to encourage Americans to spend money to restore consumer confidence, what I'm about to say may seem like treason. But here goes: Please boycott Valentine's Day and all that is associated with this horrendous "holiday."

He believes that Valentine’s Day is a marketing scam – a scam perpetrated by “rabid retailers” to give people a reason to spend money. Seems like a good business strategy to me. First start a business, then create a demand for your business and then sell your product. Great strategy that would work. To read the article in detail read Ronald Martin’s Commentary

On the same note, a gentlemen named David Palmer from Central Michigan University writes:

Valentine's Day, unlike Christmas, is an invented holiday. Some wiseacre one day was thinking about how to get rich quick so that he could buy beer. He said to himself, "Self, women are always wanting men to buy them things. Men will get into trouble if they don't. So, the best way to make money is to prey on this." Thus, Valentine's Day was born.

Well folks, whatever may be the case, I think these companies used a really smart strategy and convinced the world to celebrate the Valentine’s Day.

My Independent Research

After some research, here is what I found about Valentine’s Day from Wikipedia and its references:

Numerous early Christian martyrs were named Valentine. Until 1969, the Catholic Church formally recognized eleven Valentine's Days. The Valentines honored on February 14 are Valentine of Rome (Valentinus presb. m. Romae) and Valentine of Terni (Valentinus ep. Interamnensis m. Romae). Valentine of Rome was a priest in Rome who suffered martyrdom about AD 269 and was buried on the Via Flaminia. His relics are at the Church of Saint Praxed in Rome and at Whitefriar Street Carmelite Church in Dublin, Ireland.

So this just tells we don’t know how Valentine’s Day is related to expression of love. Wikipedia mentions that no romantic elements were found in the literature. Here is excerpt from Wikipedia:

No romantic elements are present in the original early medieval biographies of either of these martyrs. By the time a Saint Valentine became linked to romance in the fourteenth century, distinctions between Valentine of Rome and Valentine of Terni were utterly lost

However, Wikipedia does mention that since 19th century handwritten notes about love were exchanged and was a fashion in Great Britain.

Since the 19th century, handwritten notes have largely given way to mass-produced greeting cards. The sending of Valentines was a fashion in nineteenth-century Great Britain, and, in 1847, Esther Howland developed a successful business in her Worcester, Massachusetts home with hand-made Valentine cards based on British models. The popularity of Valentine cards in 19th-century America was a harbinger of the future commercialization of holidays in the United States.

The Conclusion

Folks, there was some importance of Valentine’s Day in the history. However, this day was not related to romanticism initially and later in 19th century the fashion started. So, Valentine’s Day was not entirely fraud. Companies have definitely commercialized it for their benefits. You cannot blame the companies for intelligently designing the plan for expanding their businesses. If you don’t want, don’t celebrate the V-day. You have the power to make that choice. Use it.

For those who want to celebrate the day - “Happy Valentine’s Day”

What is your take on Valentine’s Day? Do you believe in celebrating it? Or do you think its waste of time?? Tell us in the comments.

Photo by Muffet

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Email From a Frustrated Victim

Do you get useless emails that ask you to forward stuff to 200 different people so that God will  give you grace, a promotion or you will win a lottery? Are you frustrated of those emails and feel like you are a victim of mental harassment? Do you cry or pull your hair every time you see an email asking you to forward the email to 20 other people?

Here’s what you should do: Use the email from below and send them the material or link of this page.

Here is the email from a Victim frustrated of chain emails:

I wanted to thank all my friends and family who have forwarded chain letters to me... Because of your kindness:

• I also donated all my savings to the Amy Bruce account. A sick girl that was about to die in the hospital about 7,000 times. (Poor girl! she's been 7 since 1993...)
• I went bankrupt from bounced checks that I made expecting the $15,000 that Microsoft and AOL were supposed to send me when I participated in their special e-mail program would arrive soon.
• My free Nokia phone never arrived and neither did the free passes for a paid vacation to Disneyland.
• I also stopped answering the phone for fear that they may ask me to dial a stupid number and then I get phone bill from hell with calls to Uganda, Singapore and Tokyo.
• Made some Hundred wishes before forwarding those Ganesh Vandana, Tirupathi Balaji pics etc.. now most of those 'Wishes' are already married (to someone else)
• I stopped drinking Coca Cola after I found out that it's good for removing toilet stains.
• I stopped going to the movies for fear of sitting on a needle infected with AIDS.
• I smell like a wet dog since I stopped using deodorants because they cause cancer.
• I don't leave my car in the parking lot or any other place and sometimes I even have to walk about 7 blocks for fear that someone will drug me with a perfume sample and try to rob me.
• I also stopped drinking anything out of a can for fear that I will get sick from the rat feces and urine.
• When I go to parties, I don't look at any girl, no matter how hot she is, for fear that she will take me to a hotel, drug me then take my kidneys and leave me taking a nap in a bathtub full of ice.
• Still open to help some from Bulgaria who wants to use my account to transfer his uncle property of some hundred millions $.

IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you do not send this e-mail to at least 1246 people in the next 10
seconds, a bird will SH** on your head today at any time

Thanks and Regards,
A Frustrated Victim

So the next time you get another email asking to forward the email to 20 friends of yours. Just send them a link of this post or send them the letter yourself.

Experienced a similar forwarding email? Speak up in the comment and I will add it to the list. Any other funny stories? Write them down in the comments below.

Picture Courtesy: hyperscholar

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Top 5 Email Hoaxes of All Time

Get free laptop from Sony for forwarding this email to 20 people. Earn $250 by forwarding this email to 20 people because Microsoft will send you a check to your banking account. Hey get the blessing, get a promotion and win 20 billion in lottery by forwarding this email. Are you kidding me? Do you believe all this crap? Absolute nonsense. In fact, I see this as an extreme insult of human intelligence, both who started it and those who are propagating it… Do you really think people are so foolish? (Update: Apparently yes! Because every now and then I get forwarded email with exactly one of these 5 email hoaxes)

This post has top 5 email hoaxes of all times. Read them and let me know what I missed.

The Top 5 Hoaxes -

1. Get the Blessing by Forwarding an Email – I am sure you have received at least three email in your life time about “send the email or bad things will happen to you.” Sorry folks! That just doesn’t digest. If God was distributing the blessing to those forwarding emails, I guess rich people would be sitting on email 24x7.  Sorry doesn’t work.
2. Sick Kid Needs Your Help – This is one of those emails that claims there is a sick child and every time you forward the email some charity is going to donate 5 cents or 10 cents to the kid. Hello?? There needs to be a email tracking mechanism that can track ALL emails forwarded by everyone on the list. Unfortunately, that doesn’t exist.
3. Bill Gates Giving Away Money – Amazingly foolish. Wonder how people can even believe something like this? Why would Bill Gates send random people money to those people who are forwarding emails? Sorry if you know even how to spell marketing, you would know that this is a pathetically poor business plan. Learn more about this email hoax.
4. Free Laptop from Fujitsu – Similar to the above hoax, this one says you need to forward email and win a laptop from Fujitsu or some company. What the heck?
5. Nigerian Uncle sending You money – Ever got an email from your Nigerian Uncle (or British, American, Bulgarian… any uncle for that matter) who left you a property of $ 200 million and you didn’t know about? They would ask you your bank account number for transferring $ 100 million and you can keep a commission of $20 million. Well, I know they teach us not to talk to strangers but they don’t teach us not to give your bank account to strangers. This hoax probably is based on the fact that since they don’t teach people to not to give bank account to strangers, people will.

The next time you get an email from, send them the letter from a frustrated victim of chain letters, and educate them by sending them information – either send them information available online or simply attach the link to this post.

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