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The free availability of medical information on the Internet has spawned a new syndrome known as Internet hypochondria or cyberchondria. Fortunately, in most cases this is a fairly harmless condition that can be prevented and treated with a good dose of common sense. This article by Anne Solomon describes how this relatively recent phenomenon has developed and advises us to be careful not to get too carried away in our analysis of online medical literature.

The web abounds with websites dealing with medical topics. If you are diagnosed with a medical problem, there are sites which can educate and inform you and those around you about what it is and how to manage your symptoms. Sites can connect you with other sufferers and update you on new medical treatments as they become available. As a tool for self-diagnosis, however, this fountain of medical information can be less helpful and the first step on the road to cyberchondria.

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The popular affiliate network Clickbank released its October newsletter today, informing subscribers that the company has rolled out the second phase of its platform globalization plan. This includes support for both French and German languages on important web pages and in other types of communication involving customer service. Additionally, Clickbank is now able to handle payment transactions in 13 different currencies, which should allow for the possibility of doing more localized geo-targeting and making more sales to international markets. This edition of the newsletter also includes some informative articles about the relatively new recurring billing feature and the benefits of creating affiliate teams as a profitable marketing strategy.

ClickBank is making it even easier for your business to go global! We will soon launch additional international capabilities including the ability to sell and promote French and German language products and accept payments in 13 global currencies.

The upgraded platform will enable all interactions between the customer and ClickBank to be conducted in English, Spanish, German, or French, including the order form, confirmation page, customer service emails, phone support, and customer service pages on our Web site.

This is exciting news for ClickBank clients, because it means you can sell to more customers around the world, and convert your existing international visitors into customers.

Plus, we will further facilitate international e-commerce by accepting the following currencies:

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This article by Cheryl Frost discusses some basic tips and guidelines for writing instruction manuals. I can attest to the fact that this is a much-needed skill for many companies, especially with the increasing number of electronic gadgets and software applications being released to the retail markets. Over the years I have seen many poorly written instruction manuals that were included with PC and console games. Some contained obvious spelling or grammatical errors, while others were so vague and dumbed down that they failed to provide any useful level of detail about how to play the game or what the various statistics in the game really meant. If you are ever in a position where you need to write a technical manual of some sort, you can not only use the tips in this article, but you might also want to look at my post on the importance of English usage and proofreading before you actually have your manual published.

When people read instructions, they typically want the most important information fast. It is likely the reader is already in a bad mood, having been forced to read instructions after attempting a task without them. Simple, easy-to-follow instructions will help reduce further frustration.

Here are a few basic guidelines:

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The days when most of us had one password to log on and one more to access the Internet are gone. Many sites now demand registration and a password, but few of us can remember them. This article by Anne Solomon discusses various strategies for creating memorable passwords and managing them effectively.

Passwords for basic security

The easiest way to simplify password proliferation is to use the same one for everything. This is not recommended unless someone else gaining physical or web access to your details is not an issue. There are hackers and scammers out there and using the same password is like giving them your front door key. Create different passwords for every account and if you can’t remember them then the easiest option is simply to store a list on your computer.

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Traffic to the site is continuing to increase in small increments, with average visitor counts now approaching the 700 per day mark. AdSense earnings were slightly lower last week, however; apparently the high traffic and bounce rates on my quote-related pages are beginning to dilute the quality somewhat even though most of the visitors are coming from search engines. It appears as though I will need to go back to doing SEO research and targeting articles to keywords that can be better monetized either through AdSense or relevant affiliate products. Meanwhile, we had some pretty good questions included in this week’s batch of keywords.

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Energy efficiency is important, but the more airtight our environments become, the lower the quality of air we breathe inside them. This can seriously impact our respiratory health. We spend the majority of our time indoors and although we do have concerns for outdoor air quality, it’s the indoor air quality we can immediately fix. This article by Lorraine Syratt provides several tips on how to do that.

• Open up your windows once in a while. Let the fresh air in and the stale air out. Ventilation is important. Most bathrooms and kitchens are fixed with exhaust fans. Using them will remove bad air.
• Dust mites can be found in upholstery, carpeting, and bedding. An efficient vacuum cleaner is a good investment for your health. A central vac system will send the nasties outside.

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Based in central Austria, Salzburg is famous for being the setting for the movie The Sound of Music and birthplace of Mozart. There is, however, much more to the city’s culture and history, making it an interesting and beautiful location to visit as this latest article in Patrick McGougan’s series on European cities describes.

Salzburg currently has a population of over 148,000 making it the fourth largest city in Austria. Situated on the banks of the Salzach River at the northern boundary of the Alps, it is reachable by train from many areas of Europe and is around an hour and a half from Munich. The old city is a UNESCO World Heritage site as well as Austria’s second most popular tourist destination, behind Vienna.

Human settlement in Salzburg has been traced as far back as the Neolithic Age. Small Celtic communities were residing in the town, which at this point was known as Juvavum from 15 BC. In the 8th century, barges carrying salt on the river running through the city would be subject to a toll, which is where the name Salzburg, meaning “Salt Castle” comes from. In 1077, the Festung Hohensalzburg was built. This is a large fortress overlooking the old town and a focal point for Salzburg.

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People spend a lot of money during the holiday season and sometimes they spend beyond their means. It’s easy to get caught up in December shopping fever, but the new year can hit like a ton of bricks if the shopper isn’t careful. Wouldn’t it be nice to have a January free of debt with no credit card bills filling up your mail box? January can be worry free if you consider these tips from Lorraine Syratt’s latest article.

• Shop for the holidays throughout the year. This way you can buy your gifts when they are on sale and when deals are plentiful. Boxing Day sales are a great beginning for the following year.
• If you start shopping in December, peruse all the ads that come with the daily newspapers and do a lot of comparative shopping.
• Don’t shop in the last minute. It’ll cost you. Firstly, because all the sale items are gone already and secondly, you likely won’t find what you’re looking for and you’ll end up spending beyond your means to find something else.

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The city of Seville (known as Sevilla in Spanish) is one of the oldest cities in Europe, dating back to around the 8th-9th century BC. Today much of its history is still evident, as there are architectural remains left over from both the Roman Empire and the Moorish period, which lasted from AD 712-1248. The population of the city proper is approximately 700,000 while the metropolitan area contains 1,450,000 people, making it Spain’s fourth largest. Meanwhile, this article by Patrick McGougan highlights some of Seville’s main attractions that would be of interest to travelers and tourists.

Based in Andalusia in the south of Spain, Seville is complemented with high temperatures and clear blue skies in the summer. This sexy, colorful, friendly, and interesting city homes a number of attractions to please the touristic eye; however, in many areas you may feel like you are the only non-resident of Spain.

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Applying the same sequence of commands on your images may grow tedious after a while, especially when you are working with sets composed of hundreds of files. Photoshop has a very useful functionality that lets you create, record, and recall command sequences, executed automatically on any number of designated images. This tutorial article by Zoltan Gyalog will explain how to create and utilize these extremely valuable timesavers.

First, we will see how to construct the desired command sequence using a single file. Then, we will utilize this customized Photoshop Action to affect an entire folder of images automatically.

Open a file to start constructing your custom Action on. You can access this functionality by navigating to the Window – Actions palette on the main menu bar, or you can rely on the F9 hotkey which brings up the same palette right away. Photoshop organizes different Actions into Sets. As you will see, the software already has a massive selection of Actions, organized under the Default Actions Set.

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In this follow-up to her article on eliminating double spacing in Word 2007, this brief tutorial by Sarah Borroum tackles the issue of changing program’s default font. Many users want to do this, especially since 12-point font has become standard for most documents that are written as academic papers or manuscripts.

If you’re using Microsoft Word 2007, you might be frustrated by the default font. When you create a new document, Word ’07 starts you off with 11-point Calibri: a nice enough font, but not the right size for every user. Many of us prefer a 12-point serif font like Times New Roman; switching to that setup every time a new document opens gets old and annoying.

The nice thing about Word ‘07’s default templates is that they’re easy to modify. With a few mouse clicks, you can tell Word that you want every new document to have the selected font, in the size that you specify. Here’s how.

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Overall traffic continued to creep upward this week, with a surprising #1 ranking for a fairly popular quote-related keyword adding to the numbers on the search side while a greater focus on Entrecard activity is providing a steady boost to referring site traffic. The visitors from Entrecard are also beginning to add comments at a significantly increased rate. For the first time in this blog’s history, the number of comments finally surpassed the number of posts earlier this week when the totals for each were around 550. Meanwhile, the search queries seemed to take a turn toward mathematical and trivia types of questions along with the usual “how to” phrases. Here is this week’s list.

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This article by Kimberly Spann highlights some sections of the credit reporting laws that may not be known by the majority of the general public. Although I have never had an occasion to dispute a credit report, I actually found out some things that I didn’t know from this article that could be useful later if I should ever encounter such a situation. This could be the subject of a much longer article if we take the time to read through the whole FCRA document and translate most of its sections into simple English.

The Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA) is a legal document that regulates all aspects of credit reporting from the consumer and their creditors, to credit bureaus and credit reselling agencies. Most consumers these days understand the basic principles of credit reporting and understand that they are protected by federal laws and regulations. However, many consumers are simply unaware of some of the protections outlined within the FCRA. Guidelines for civil and criminal actions, reporting periods, permissible purpose, and more can be found in the document.

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Last night, as I was browsing through the Entrecard forums, I ran across another blogger who was offering articles for guest posting in exchange for a link. Naturally, I was not about to pass this one up; I have been wanting people to submit articles for months but have not had any luck until now. Today’s post is from Gary R. Hess of ImpNerd.com and discusses the advantages and disadvantages of becoming an Amazon associate.

There are many PPA sites out there, but one of the largest and well known sites is Amazon. Although they started out as a bookstore, they now have tens of thousands of products ranging from computer accessories to t-shirts and jewelry. No matter what industry you are in, they have something your visitors will buy.

What is Amazon Associates?

Amazon Associates is Amazon’s version of an affiliate program. They have a large list of ways to advertise their products and services. As a personal favorite, I enjoy their product links. Product links are the traditional form of affiliates in which you place a link to the product allowing your visitors to buy. However, there are several others which have known to be quite successful.

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The Libertarian merchandise site LPStuff.com sent out its weekly newsletter today, but this time instead of just showing images of the campaign materials, it actually had a significant amount of content. In addition to offering 10 percent off all items in preparation for the upcoming election, the newsletter includes an interesting template for writing a letter to the editor in states where polls show that the presidential election will not be a very close race. There is also a rather humorous template for a writing a letter to members of Congress regarding the proposed bailout of fiscally irresponsible financial companies.

Meanwhile, in case you haven’t figured it out already, if you want to visit the LPStuff.com site, you’re supposed to click the brightly colored banner below.

As Libertarians, we are very interested in getting our message out to others. LPStuff.com plays a vital role in this effort by providing quality products that help spread the word about the advantages of a Libertarian world. Here are two ideas that cost you nothing and you can use at home to help.

Because of the way the Electoral College works, the presidential election is actually decided in very few “swing” states. In all others, such as Kansas (or Massachusetts), the outcome is a foregone conclusion. If you live in one of these many non-swing states, whether red or blue, consider sending the following letter to the editor of your local newspaper:
(Of course you will need to change it for your state and its “color”.)

Don’t Waste Your Vote

As citizens of the Great State of Kansas, we are lucky when election day comes. Because of the Electoral College, Kansans do not need to feel constrained by such base concerns as politics; we get to actually vote our conscience. It’s a form of freedom not shared by voters in the so-called “swing states.”

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