ISSUE 2 VOLUME 3 February 200 9 ADDRESSING THE NEEDS OF PERSONAL COMPUTER USERSsafe WHO FREQUENT THE INTERNET, WITH SPECIAL EMPHASIS ON GIST SUPPORT GROUP MEMBERS. surfing HEALTH TIPS BYPASS TELEPHONE MENUS SEARCH ENGINES WEB TRICKS Health Tips I apologize for straying from strictly computer- related and internet- related issues. But, as I encounter important information that might be useful, I feel compelled to share it. And what better way to share than on the internet? So that’s how I justify covering some of these not-strictly-internet-related issues in these pages. Bottom Line I used to subscribe to a newsletter called Bottom Line. I found it entertaining and very enlightening. So when the publishers started producing a companion newsletter sense of balance to be both one of the best ways called Bottom Line – Health , I subscribed to that too. I to avoid injury through falls and one of the key already had subscriptions to a number of other measures of physical well-being. Balance can be publications such as Consumer Reports, PC Magazine practiced and improved and Yoga is one easy way to do that. You may recall that the WII game system has a WII Fit board and Yoga exercises that make exercising fun. Another way to and Men’s Health, so I soon became inundated and never practice balance is to stand on one foot while caught up. So I dropped virtually all of my subscriptions. moving the other leg around, bent at the knee. But every now and then one of the publishers sends me a Shoot for the best time, trying for a number of flyer trying to get me to subscribe again and I minutes and then try it with your eyes closed. occassionally fall for their scheme. Most recently I heard You won’t be able to go beyond a few seconds at from Bottom Line, so I wanted to share some of their first. But, by doing it several times throughout the “secrets” which, along with others, are also repeated at day for awhile, you’ll find yourself able to reach www.bottomlinesecrets.com . the 28-second mark, the same time the average 30-year-old can achieve! • Balance - During the recovery and therapy phases following my two minor knee surgeries • Amino Acid - Arginine is recommended as an the issue of balance arose. I had been effective natural substitute for Viagra! researching ways to accelerate my recovery and consistently found that the experts consider a • Strength Keebler and Famous Amos products containing peanut Training - Also butter, and there are at least 16 products recalled by the during my Kellogg Company. Read more here: recovery, I http://www.fda.gov/oc/opacom/hottopics/salmonellatyph.html learned that strength training not only Bypass Telephone Menus restores muscle, Are you frustrated by those automated phone systems? but it increases A well-constructed menu tree can be very helpful and bone density, effective, something I but far too found I needed after a bone density test. often they Additionally, it improves mobility and promotes are weight loss and cardiovascular fitness. ineffective, Surprisingly, you don’t have to spend hours a inefficient week to get these benefits from strength training. and Only a half hour a week is needed. Fred Hahn’s downright book, described and advertised at maddening! www.slowburn.typepad.com/ explains the If my “call process in detail. But just knowing the basics -- is very very slow, repetitive lifting of light weights -- is important” pretty helpful. to you, then why are you trying to drive me crazy? Here are two sites that tell you how to get around the • Decontaminate Sponges – You can easily rid companies’ systems when they just seem to be testing your sponges of germs by simply rinsing and your patience: wringing them out, then microwaving them for 30 to 60 seconds. www.get2human.com • Anti -Inflammatory & Painkiller Substitutes - www.dialahuman.com Here are some simple ways to get the anti- Not only do the site tell inflammation effects similar to Ibuprofen, you, by company name, glucomsamine and even some addictive drugs: how to get around the automated system and o Drink one or two cups of hot or cold tea to a real person, but daily (rich in polyphenols) they also rate the o Take daily vitamin C (500 to 1000 mg) effectiveness of the and vitamin D (400 IUs, which seems to companies’ systems be 10 mcg) supplements based upon their o Try daily willow bark (240 mg) or readers feedback. And boswella (1000 mg) Get2human also rates o Eat grapes (one cup of white or red) for the agents’ the reservatrol antioxident and COX-2 communications skills inhibitor qualities. Purple grape juice and based on impediments red wine also contain reservatrol. such as severe accents. Peanut Butter Oddly enough, although If you haven’t I too have had horrible heard, a Peanut experiences in many Butter Corporation cases, I do not of America facility necessarily agree with the ratings I scanned at in Blakely, Georgia Get2human . For example, although I agree that Dell has been found to almost exclusively employs customer service reps in India, be the source of I have had great success dealing with them on the many some salmonella- occasions I’ve had to call. Get2human gave them five contaminated “red flags” and I would have given them only about one peanut butter and peanut butter paste. The product has (as a precaution to be especially ready and sensitve to been distributed to 85 companies (only 30 are focused on the accent problem). I have many friends who complain right now) iand 470 people have gotten ill in 43 states (at about Dell and, similarly, AOL (also with five red flags), so least six deaths reported). Throw away your Austin, my positive experience may be anomalous. I noted with some satisfaction though that United Airlines got four red search options. See also BabelFish , the flags. That’s about right from my experience. AltaVista translation service. • AOL Search - engine that defaults to “AND” logic DialaHuman does not have as many features or listings and offers an options template for easy search as Get2Human , but it’s a good resoruce to remember in construction; has an option to view results by case you need help finding a “cheat” for a particular popularity; offers a directory based on the Open company. Directory • Ask.com - general search engine enhanced by a number of specialty Search searches including a dictionary, thesaurus, currency converter, Engines encyclopedia, maps, news and more. The site is I know I’ve raved about Google as the only search a merging of the former search engines Ask engine you’ll ever need, but there are other search Jeeves and Teoma engines out there! And there are reasons you may want • BananaSlug - uses the Google search to use one over another. Google is still my favorite. It’s mechanism and seeds your search with a extremely fast, generally accurate and sometimes even random word from the category of your choice to seems to be thinking just like I am! But other engines return unusual results have some interesting • ChaCha - search characteristics too. engine that offers live human guides to help For example, Clusty.com , in answer queries addition to listing the results of • Cuil - searches a very your search like all other large index of Web engines, displays an additional pages and includes list of categories (or “clusters,” thumbnails of sites in its get it?) that show you the search results number of occurences by • Exalead - offers category in parentheses. concept clustering of results, thumbnail URL.com is new to me, and images of retrieved seems very interesting. They sites, and customization rank results based on user options such as voting after similar searches using Google , Yahoo and organization of results by file type, geography or MSN engines. modification date • Factbites - beta engine that searches for full Ask.com and Copernic.com , two old veterans, are still topic matches and returns meaningful, full around and do great jobs, especially for in-depth sentence excerpts of sites in its results list searches. • Google - ranks pages by tracking the links from pages ranked high by the service. Also check out Here, compliments of InternetTutorials.net , is a pretty EcoSmartSearch.com , a Google -powered complete list and description of search engines you can search engine with a black background display try whenever Google doesn’t seem to fill the bill, or just that saves energy. when you want to see what else is out there. It’d be fun • Hakia - accepts plain English queries; derives to try them all sometime if you have about a year of spare results from the Ask.com index time! • IceRocket - offers searches of the Web, blogs, Independent Search Engines and other sources, creates an RSS feed of search results, tracks search terms cited in blog • Alexa Web Search - returns results from its own postings, and offers a free RSS builder index accompanied by additional information • including traffic ranking, number of links to page, iSEEK Education - offers authoritative resources ownership and links to related pages of interest from university, government, and established noncommercial providers; organizes results into • AllTheWeb - returns results quickly from an concept clusters, and also allows users to extremely large database gathered by the Yahoo recommend and rate sites crawler; offers multimedia and news searches; • has a good advanced search interface KoolTorch - returns results organized by graphical icons into general category clusters that, • AltaVista - searches Web sites and Usenet in turn, generate results within that category newsgroups