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Drinks Sets: Wine Or Water Glass -Which Make Better Promotional Items?

Drinks sets come in many shapes and sizes. When you are considering promotional items for your business, consider wine or water glasses with your company logo or slogan on them. The differences between the two are based on what it is that the glasses are being used for. Water glasses are much simpler in design and may or may not have stems. Water glasses may be any shape or size because their purpose is simply to hold water for drinking and water is essentially neutral with no smell or taste. Wines and spirits on the other hand are all considered to be better when they are served in a glass that is specifically designed to bring out the best in the drink. For instance brandy is served in a snifter glass and this is a very large stemmed glass with has a very large bowl and sides that taper in slightly at the top of the glass, this is so the drinker can enjoy the aroma as he drinks and this design is thought to best show off the flavour and aroma of the brandy.

Wines have a host of glassware or drinking sets made specifically for not only wine, but for subsets of wines, Rose, red, wine, etc. Each of these drinks has glassware that is thought to best suit the purposes of that particular wine. There are even tumblers that are also made for specific wines. Most wine glasses have stems which are held between the fingers, this can allow for the bottom of the wine glass to be cupped when appropriate. The glasses for wine are often made from very thin glass, such as blown glass. These glasses will have a very delicate appearance and will often break should they tip over. The bowl of these glasses is very deep in comparison to the glass itself and the sides are tapered inward a bit at the top on all but the glasses for the hearty red Bordeaux…Its glass is big and bold with untapered sides and the glassware design is meant to enhance the enjoyment of the wine and all its gusto. Wine glasses are never coloured in any way and they are only made of glass. The wine is best enjoyed in these kinds of glasses. There are many specialty shops and wine shops, which will happily show you many styles of glasses for drinking wine. They will be able to tell you exactly why you should not drink wines out of other styles of glasses and you can even do wine tastings from specific glasses.

There are some very famous designers and manufacturers of wine glasses and these glasses are all made to unerring specifications. However, some of the less expensive glassware has proven to be just as good in many tasting tests. The main differences that were noted are the weight and balance of the glasses. If you are just looking to stock a home bar with drinks sets, you need only have some glasses for wine, a set for spirits and some tumblers for mixed drinks. This minimum would get you by for social occasions and you could always add more drinks sets as you went along.

Whether you’d like to buy cheaper glassware or more expensive for your promotional campaign, there is little doubt that glassware makes great promotional paraphernalia. In fact, you probably own a few wine glasses or mugs with company logos emblazoned on it, right?

Matt Franks is director of Fluid Branding, the UK’s largest supplier of Promotional Drinks Sets and other Promotional Products at www.fluidbranding.com. For Eco Friendly promotional products, including Recycled, Organic and Sustainable items visit www.ecoincentives.com

Can Promotional Bottle Openers Really Give You More Exposure?

Promotional bottle openers? More exposure? Can they really do that? Yes they can! Anything promotional can give you and your company more exposure, how much exposure you actually get is up to you and your marketing strategy. Anything free is appealing to people, customers love getting free stuff from items they believe they are loyal purchasers of. So why not give them something for free?

Branded bottle openers, they are not the classiest of items, but significance they have. You can make an ordinary bottle opener something much more for your customer. You can have it with a little knife, screw driver, can opener, even a scissor if you want all out in one little gadget! I told you, it has significance.

And who all use it? Everyone needs one, it may not be every single day but when you need one, you really need one! Everyone has one in their homes and when you go somewhere you could use one. Take these situations for example. Your going camping with the family, what convenience a can opener can give you, pen the bottles, use the knife to cut some rope, use the screw driver to tighten some part f the tent, or worse comes to worse, throw it at something you want to stay far away from you! Going on a road trip, have some soft drink bottles with you for a cool ride, fix the radio with its extra tools, going for a simple picnic in the park, you cannot use your teeth to open a bottle! Or maybe you can, but you shouldn’t - dentists are not cheap! So it is useful and it can make someone life easier even in a small way, for that one moment, the product that helped them has your picture on it, and it could just remind them that they need to buy that again!

You can also put some more spice into the can opener by giving it some real cool design that people will look at and think ”I want that!”, cause remember, promotional items wont be there forever, they are promotions! Short time only, and if you want one, get it now or you’ll miss your chance! From colours to patters, the choices are endless… make it attachable to a key chain, that will be even more appealing to customers! Make shinny pink for girls and blue for boys, black for the rockers! All the choices you have are endless, you just have to target the wants of the customer, because to them it is a free item, for you its sales generation.

So now that the idea of a promotional bottle opener is in place, also take a bit of time on when you want to have this promotion given to customers. Some good times would be summer when everyone wants to have a nice cold beer on the beach, or when vacation is about to start for students, Graduation when all the sick-of-books graduates just want to have fun!

Matt Franks is director of Fluid Branding, the UK’s largest supplier of Promotional Bottle Openers and Branded Bottle Openers at www.fluidbranding.com. For Eco Friendly promotional products, including Recycled, Organic and Sustainable items visit www.ecoincentives.com

Ease the Pain- Use Promotional Stress Balls

Stress is a natural thing for everyone and is extremely nasty when not attended to. It basically drains all our energy and leaves us moody, unproductive, cluttered and incompetent. Medically speaking, Stress is also the mother of all diseases since it weakens our immune defence that will soon progress in developing into a disease or an ailment. With the recent findings in the veterinary field, even our pets experience how arduous it is when stressed, what more is it with us?

In other words, stress is universal regardless where we come from.

How do you use stress for your advantage then? Using branded stress items as promotional materials perk up a company or an establishment’s business profile. Let me emphasise to you the need of using branded stress items as promotional materials.

* It helps relieve stress.

* It establishes a firm and good rapport with the people you target

* It also establishes a statement of how important your employees, customers and clients are.

* It simply shows you care.

* It shows you seriously value quality, efficiency and durability.

* And lastly, you are not cheap like other competitors

With these simple yet essential reasons behind it, it develops your edge and your mark compared to others. Weigh the infinite benefits in using branded stress items in optimising your profile. It simply has no comparison with the cheap ones. Maybe also with the volume of purchase, you may be given some discounts or freebies. Why not try to design a marketing scheme that is creative and trendy where you can refund the total cost in an event or two. Tie-up with the producers of these branded stress items to establish a win-win relationship. The formula here is:

They earn from you and in return, by using their brand (FREE ADVERTISING for them) and putting your company logo there will also help promote and accelerate your business profile. Isn’t that a good deal? Both of you are on the same wavelength since you both highly regard QUALITY IN PROMOTIONS.

There are a lot of branded stress items that are available in the market right now that can help you with your concerns in using this promotional strategy. De-stress everyone! Use only branded stress items.

Here is a list of different products in different shapes and styles:

Stress toys

o House

o Book

o Rugby ball

o Globe

o Heart

o Dice

o Telephone

o Mobile phone

o Computer

o Animal

o Flags

o Airplanes

o Ships

o Capsule

o Smiley

o Apple

o Light bulb

o Brick

o Bone

o Hard hat

o Lightning

o Coffee cup

o Aspirin

o Sports car

o Thumbs up

o Hammer

o Water drop

o Truck

o Witches hat

o Dollar sign

o Money bag

o Puzzle

o Star

o Train

o @ Symbol

o T-shirt

o Volkswagen beetle

o Pyramid

o Stop sign

o Semi trailer

o Head

o Rock

o Computer mouse

o Building blocks

Stress balls

o 3 set juggling balls

o Jelly balls

o Basketball

o Soccer ball

o Golf ball

o Volleyball

o Tennis ball

o Walking stress ball

Now go on, take a break from the headache and be part of the solution. Use Promotional Stress Balls to promote your stress-free company and message.

Matt Franks is director of Fluid Branding, the UK’s largest supplier of Promotional Stress Balls and Branded Stress Balls at www.fluidbranding.com. For Eco Friendly promotional products, including Recycled, Organic and Sustainable items visit www.ecoincentives.com

What the Proposed Changes to the UK Equality Law Mean to You

Last week, Harriet Harman announced new equality laws to tackle widespread discrimination. Under these new plans, age discrimination would be removed from all aspects of society, and further changes would be made to prevent workplaces from discriminating against minorities. There is also room for ‘positive action’ that allows business to hire women or minorities without fear of legal action if the candidates are equal in terms of ability.

But how do these changes to the equality law differ from how we act now?

What is actually so different?

The main points of the proposed bill are that:

- Business will be allowed to discriminate in favour of ethnicities and genders underrepresented in their place of work if interview candidates were of equal ability.

- Clauses in contracts that prevent staff discussing their wages with colleagues will be scrapped.

- Age discrimination laws will be widened to encompass the world outside the workplace.

There are also proposals on the table to make public bodies publish the pay gap within their organizations.

Why is the new system being introduced?

The new discrimination laws are being proposed in order to make a more balanced workforce in Britain, hence employers will be able to discriminate in favour of one group ahead of another given two equally matched candidates to diversify their work environment (contrary to tabloid implication, this actually works both ways, and a predominantly female office would be allowed to discriminate in favour of a male candidate).

The section affecting the wages of companies is being included to try and reduce the massive pay gap between men and women on business contracts. Although the gap has narrowed in recent years according to official figures, on average women still only earn 87p for every £1 that men earn. One of the statistics that Harriet Harman has used is that female part-time workers earn up to 40% less than their full time male counterparts. By making companies more open about their wage structures, it is hoped that the gap will close naturally.

Finally, the laws affecting age are aimed at tackling the discrimination people feel based on their age in their daily lives.

Isn’t discriminating against age already illegal?

While workplace age discrimination has been legislated against since 2006, the proposed new equality laws are intended to tackle wider forms of ageism. This is planned to tackle the often costly discrimination that pensioners face in their daily life, from high insurance premiums to doctors putting illnesses down to their age and refusing treatment.

What are the main caveats of the new law?

The important things to bear in mind when thinking on the prospective changes are:

- Firms may be forced to publish pay rates

- Positive action is only an option in interviews where candidates are equally matched and will not be compulsory in any event.

- Some areas will likely be exempt from the age discrimination laws, such as free bus passes for the elderly and holidays for the over 50s and 18-30s.

Given the uproar that’s been made against the positive action section of the bill, it’s not guaranteed that every part of the bill will ever become law. Even if it does become law, it’s almost impossible to put a stop of workplace discrimination, because you can’t know with any certainty what an employer’s reason for passing over a candidate is. For most of us, this legislation will mean very little to our business contracts, and we can carry on picking the best candidate for the job regardless of gender, ethnicity, sexuality or age.

Iain Mackintosh is the managing director of Simply-Docs. The firm provides over 1100 business contracts covering all aspects of business from holiday entitlement to non-disclosure agreements. By providing these legal documents (with content provided by leading commercial lawyers, HR and health & safety consultants) at an affordable price, the company intends to help small businesses avoid costly breaches of regulation and legal action.

Public Speaking – Owning “The Skills” Part II

In order to present at the top, in order to acquire The Skills, you must remember three rules that govern everything you do whilst presenting. They’re really quite simple, but sometimes it’s easy to forget the simple things, and these rules must remain in the forefront of your consciousness at all times.

Rule Number 1 states: If you’re working too hard, you’re doing it wrong!

Rule #2: When you’re doing it right, it’s always Win-Win.

The sad truth is, typical speaker behaviors more often fall into the category of Lose-Lose. Whether it be the way the speaker engages the audience with his eyes, or what she does with her hands, or the pace with which either cranks out the word stream, most things that speakers do work both against their feeling comfortable and the audience’s ability to follow and buy into what is being said.

For instance, think about what you see presenters do with their arms and hands. Instead of using the opportunity to throw off excess energy by using the full swing of their arms and hands to paint pictures of the words they are saying, your average speaker locks them up in some position that not only keeps the excess energy trapped in a re-circulating loop, but in a position that translates to a body-language signal that is off-putting to the audience.

Luckily, as is the case with the other counter-productive behaviors in which speakers engage, these can all be changed simply by engaging in other, learnable behaviors that produce positive outcomes. You don’t need talent to do it right, you simply need to know how to do it right, and then practice those physical behaviors.

When you employ the behaviors that comprise The Skills, not only are you more relaxed, authoritative and convincing, but your audience has a much easier time hearing, seeing, and ultimately agreeing with the message you are trying to impart.

One thing to remember is that audiences, as Yale’s Professor Edward Tufte likes to point out, “are lazy, and audiences are fragile”. You can’t ask audiences to work in order to get your message because they won’t. And you can’t make them feel uncomfortable because they’ll spend their small amount of energy trying to get comfortable and won’t have anything left to spend on trying to comprehend your point.

Proper eye-contact, gesturing, tone, inflection and volume all work to make for a great experience for both speaker and listeners alike. When you’re using The Skills, it’s always a Win-Win.

Rule #3: People only START listening when you STOP talking.

This is an easy concept to understand, but a very difficult one for most people to implement. If you stop to think about it, you don’t so much hear what is being said as you do to what was just said.

In fact, the left hemisphere of your brain, where speech and text are processed, is programmed to not absorb information immediately, but rather put it through a process of analysis before storing or acting on it. It’s a momentary process to be sure, but nonetheless one that is immensely aided when a moment or two of silence follows the words or phrase that the speaker wants his audience to really hear and comprehend.

Think for a moment of what happens when someone tells a joke. Jokes are structured to get the listener thinking that the action in the setup will proceed along the expected path, and the humor comes when the listener realizes that the punch-line has altered that path in an unexpected way. But you don’t laugh at the moment the punch-line is delivered. You laugh only when you realize your line of thought has been diverted, and that always takes a moment, or sometimes, if the joke is really good, two. You only hear what was actually said when the joker stops talking and your mind has the opportunity to recognize the misdirection.

Of course, what most speakers do is continue with an endless stream of verbiage from the moment they open their mouths until they discover that the talk is over and they can (Thank God!) take their seats again. Once people start talking in front of a group it is very difficult to get them to stop, as it goes against what they’ve taught themselves to believe: that as long as they continue to hear words coming out of their mouths they’re still OK. A very common fear is that somehow that stream will stop and they won’t be able to get it started again. But why is this so?

A stitch in time

Because of the physiological changes that occur in the body when you are facing an audience, your perception of time actually s-l-o-w-s d-o-w-n. The universe doesn’t change - just how you perceive it. So although the audience is listening to you in real time, you perceive even a momentary lapse in your word-stream to be much longer that it actually is. A 1-second pause for the audience might feel like 3 or 4 to you.

This is where umm’s and ahh’s are born. We hear that dreaded silence, and in a desperate need to fill it immediately, we grab for the closest thing - a non-word that we don’t have to structure into our word track.

It might be hard to believe, but time goes by quite nicely even when it’s not filled with your words.

As you develop your eye and an ear for The Skills, you will come to see that ALL great speakers not only know Rule #3, but also embrace it. They not only embrace it, it is at the forefront of their thinking whenever they are speaking. It is the Number 1 issue on their minds. And that says a lot, because Rule #1 says that we can’t be thinking about too many things at once.

Being able to resist saying the next thing on your mind immediately after you offer your last thought is the most difficult idea for participants to learn, but it is an absolutely essential.

J. Douglas Jefferys is a principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com, an international consulting firm specializing in training businesses of all sizes to communicate for maximum efficiency. The firm spreads its unique knowledge through on-site classes, public seminars, and high-impact videos, and can be reached through the Internet or at 888-663-7711.

Coffee House Letter Unbiased Review

For many people who are interested in th work from home options of residual income and network marketing, the reality of the experience can still be something that makes them frustrated and angry. The problem is that in many ways, despite the promising new beginning of many of the network marketing plans, that there has been no forward movement in a very long time when it comes to things like getting and keeping customers.

When you realize that the entire industry is suffering from a problem when it comes to retaining customers past a spare 3 months, you’ll find that there is a great deal of good information when it comes to the G.P.T. Marketing Model and Coffee House Letter.

For many investors and work at home entrepreneurs, the G.P.T. Marketing Model and Coffee House Letter has come as a much needed wake up call. Many individuals have discovered that the money that they are looking towards making is a long ways away from the money that there are making and that they are taking a hard look at the industry in and of itself.

If you are in a situation where you are wondering if this type of business is really something for you, you’ll find that simply by making sure that are staying up to date on the good information available can help you go a long way. You don’t need to give up the industry entirely, and you’ll find that there are still people who are making money in this fashion.

When you are considering whether or not you want to consider this resource, it does state that you can use it to go forward and make around 480,000 a year in the home business industry. When you think about how many people you have brought onto your opportunity in the last little while, you’ll find that with this plan, you can actually move forward with a new customer a week, adding a great deal to residual income and making sure that you can go forward and make the money that you need to make in order to leave your day job entirely.

So the question becomes, who is right for this opportunity? Many people start taking a look at things like affiliate marketing and network marketing and hope that at some point, it will replace their day jobs.

Because they want to make sure that they do not get into dire financial straits, they will end up doing things like keeping their day job and working to build up their online business from the ground up. The trouble is that many people are not going to get any further than this, while this particular opportunity is offering the chance to make money fast without needing to worry about creating a downline.

If you are looking for a way to make sure that you continue to grow your business into the future, make sure that you take a look and find out what G.P.T. Marketing Model and Coffee House Letter has to offer you. There are a number of reasons to figure out what they are offering and to integrate it into your marketing.

Learn the Lemons from the Straight MLM Winners and read about the Coffee House Letter from Brian Garvin and Jeff West at MLM Review Kings. This article may be used royalty free provided Bio & Links remain intact.

Creative Ways to Attract More Visitors to Your Trade Show Booth

When you own a business, it can be a great idea to set up a trade show booth at a convention as a way to showcase and sell your products. Trade show booths allow you to be able to gain new customers and make individuals aware of your business and what it has to offer. However, you have to do something memorable at the convention so that potential customers will think of you when they need what you have. You don’t want to get lost amongst the other trade show booths because you have nothing unique that stands out. Just keep in mind that creative ideas sometimes consist of spending money, hence the saying, “it costs money to make money.” But what you will find is that your creative ideas will garner you the attention that you need to make your booth successful.

Unique Ideas

Some ideas may seem a bit off of the wall, but off the wall is what gets attention. Here are some ways that you can really get people to pay attention to your trade show booth:

• Try a money blowing machine. Many businesses use these machines to attract people to their locations. What happens is that people are standing in line to use the money blowing machine and they then see things that you have to offer. They will never forget you for giving them the chance to win some money. All the contestant does is step inside and grab at money or coupons. One or both can be placed inside. It makes for a rewarding experience and is also quite hilarious for the contestant and those watching.

• You can also go the route of offering promotional items. This isn’t saying that you should offer ink pens and magnifying glasses. Yes, a person will use an ink pen, but they tend to be boring. You want to give them something functional such as a canvas bag that has your logo on it. They can carry this around and use it for a lot of things. You can even get water bottles with a private label for your business and offer the thirsty people at the convention a bottle of water. That is another one of those things you can do that they will never forget you for.

• Scratch cards are something people really enjoy. You can have scratch cards made up that reveals that they have won something free or they get a special deal from your booth or your store. People love mystery, so you can use the scratch card for this very reason.

• Prize wheels make for a great tool because you can place the name of certain prizes on the wheel and your visitors can spin for a chance to win one of the prizes listed. This is a great go getter at a trade show and will really bring attention. Next to the money blowing machine, this is something that people will definitely want to participate in.

Don’t be afraid

Don’t be afraid to spend the money and use these ideas because they will definitely pay off. Even if you get a small percentage of customers out of a large percentage of visitors, your endeavors are still going to pay for themselves and then some. These creative ideas are also the way you are going to become the booth to see at any trade show event or convention you attend. You don’t just want to blend in with the crowd. You want to be so much more and that is what is going to happen here.

Ballance trade show displays is a custom manufacturer and provider of custom trade show exhibits. Also provides hanging displays, banner stands and pop-up displays to customize your exhibit.

Public Speaking – Owning “The Skills”

People who get paid well to speak all share one of two traits: either they’re famous, or they own “The Skills”. To be able to move people who don’t know you as a celebrity of some sort, you must know how to keep your audience focused on you and your message, and how to keep them on the same page, on the same wavelength, every step of the way.

Keeping an audience with you is simply not possible with the way 99% of all public speakers behave when at the front of a group. When you speak the way most of us have been taught to do from an early age, you engage in behaviors that send the wrong signals to your audience - in many cases exactly the opposite of what you would like to signal. Worse, these standard behaviors actually reduce your cognitive capacity at the time you most desperately need it.

If these statements seem sweeping, please understand that we at PublicSpeakingSkills.com have been training people from business, politics, the military and the clergy for over 12 years in The Skills.

During that time, we have had the privilege to work with over 10,000 people from all walks of life, and here is what we have learned: 99% of speakers engage in exactly the same behaviors, and consequently produce similar results when it comes to the quality of their speaking.

In fact, in every one of our on-site programs, we begin with an exercise that “benchmarks” how each student speaks prior to training, and we are able to predict to the second what each and every participant will do during their initial delivery. To the second!

Good News!

But that’s the good news. It’s good news because we also know that most people speak the way they do simply because they’ve never been shown the proper way. And though many people take courses in public speaking in high school or college, the format of those courses tends to emphasize the content part of speaking rather than the actual physical behaviors one needs to understand in order to acquire The Skills.

If you have ever taken a course in school, we bet that your assignments were to create a series of different types of speeches: The Informative, The Inspirational, The Motivational, etc., etc. Sound familiar?

But what were you taught about the actual delivery, other than to look at everyone in the audience and watch your umms and ahhs? Worse, during your speaking career you probably have been receiving positive feedback for your behaviors no matter what you’ve been doing by people either too polite or simply not knowledgeable enough to tell you otherwise.

Speaking well: talent or training?

When people learn the proper way; when they understand what the audience expects of them as human beings; when they embrace the idea that it’s OK to go into a presentation without having spent hours and hours rehearsing it; when they become comfortable with not knowing what they’re going to say until just before they say it; and when they come to accept that often the most powerful thing they can say is nothing at all, they never engage in the old behaviors again.

They approach every opportunity to speak to a crowd with desire and enthusiasm, and the larger the crowd, the better. They actually see speaking to a group as one of the most relaxing things they can do, as it is one of the few times left in life where they are free to do only one thing at a time. These people have The Skills.

And we can’t emphasize enough that The Skills are, indeed, a set of behaviors that you learn, and not something that you are born with. Only a very small subset of people is ‘born’ with the ability to move a group to action with their words and actions. Those people have what the rest of us don’t: it’s called “charisma”. Charismatics have been known to lead thousands to action by the power of their spoken words, often for good, and sometimes not.

But charisma alone didn’t get Bill Clinton to the top job in the world. Bill Clinton, believe it or not, was not always a great speaker. What he had was both charisma and the brains to know that he did not know everything - and that becoming a great speaker was both an essential job requirement and something that someone could be taught.

Bill Clinton was one of only a handful of men who was elected president of the United States without great personal or family wealth. He got elected on his ability to motivate people to listen to him, work for him, follow him and support him all the way. He was successful because he didn’t simply speak; he spoke with a manner and a style that caused people to not only listen to his words but also to hear them, remember them, and to believe them. Bill Clinton has The Skills.

The Skills supersede genes, culture, background, heritage, and to a large extent even education. Many clients come to us because they want help with their accents or they feel their voice needs correcting in some way.

Although we grant that there are some people with a speaking voice better suited to silent films, for the vast majority an accent or unique pitch only adds to the level of interest they can create as a speaker. That’s because, as we’ll learn, these traits simply add to one’s “humanness”.

It’s about being you

People are not moved by messages delivered by speakers whom they don’t feel are “real”. And yet most of us were taught behaviors that cause us to adopt completely alien personas when we speak to groups. We try to become “Presenterman!” or “Presenterwoman!”. Sadly, Hillary Clinton does this. Could you imagine spending dinner across the table from Hillary Clinton and having her speak to you the way she does to crowds? Pretty painful thought! Yet you could pretty much imagine that if you were sharing dinner with Bill, or Ronald Reagan, the conversation would be not unlike how you know them to speak in public.

Alas, Hillary does not have The Skills.

J. Douglas Jefferys is a principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com, an international consulting firm specializing in training businesses of all sizes to communicate for maximum efficiency. The firm spreads its unique knowledge through on-site classes, public seminars, and high-impact videos, and can be reached through the Internet or at 888-663-7711.

Gaming, Social Sites and Other On-Line ID Theft Threats

Law enforcement officials have entered on line chat groups and showed up at ball parks to show young kids how something as simple as a photo with a team uniform can lead child stalkers right to their ball field. The public has a heightened sense of protecting children on-line but adults are often just as easy prey when it comes to fraud and identity theft.

What are some other types of On-Line Identity Theft Threats

Pop Ups at Gaming Sites- You’ve Just Won!

It’s easy to get comfortable on your favorite gaming site. It’s hard to resist when a pop-up tells you that you’ve just won a free digital camera, an iPod or a gift card to a popular store if you just simply fill out this claim form. If it’s too good to be true, it usually is. At best, you’ll be asked to buy something else to qualify what’s worse, it may be an identity thief. Identity thieves can use the same technology other marketers do and once you fill out the registration form, they can use your information to get credit cards, mortgages or utilities.

Spearphishing in E-mails- Important Notices

Spearphishing is a method of con in which consumers receive what looks like a very legitimate e-mail from their bank warning of a serious security issue and asking customers to type in their log in and password to rectify this breach. Regardless of how professional and insistent the e-mail appears, don’t do it. If a bank becomes aware of a security issue you will be notified by mail, not e-mail. If this is an identity thief that is spearphishing, following through will give them access to wipe out your bank account.

On-line Communities –So Many Friends

On-line communities are very popular and can be a lot of fun. While you may “feel” that you’re interacting with just a few people, remember that Facebook, for example, has over 80 million active members.

Tips to Avoid Identity Theft in On-Line Communities

1. Never give out your birthday. It seems simple and fun to get all those good wishes but your birth date combined with other information can open the door for identity thieves to come into your life.

2. Be very careful of the photos you post. Is your house number showing in the background? Remember the example above about team uniforms? This would also apply to work uniforms. Look at each photo and think, what can this tell someone about me?

3. Never let your phone number be exposed. Using a reverse search, your phone number also gives away your address. Most people wouldn’t post their phone number on a profile page but it is easy to be lured to in a community chat.

The world-wide web opens a lot of doors for work and fun but remember there’s no “eraser” on the internet pencil. Be very careful about e-mails or promotions you respond to and what you share on profile pages and on discussion boards because you can’t take it back and identity thieves are all ears.

Lisa Carey is a contributing author for Identity Theft Secrets: prevention and protection. You can get tips on Identity theft protection, software, and monitoring your credit as well as learn more about the secrets used by identity thieves at the Identity Theft Secrets blog.

Public Speaking - Masters of the Pause Part II

An Inconvenient Speaker

We have made the claim many times that Bill Clinton is the Master of the Pause. In fact, we have said that it is exactly this mastery that causes more people in polls to name the former president as the greatest living public speaker hands down.

If you doubt Bill Clinton’s ability to embrace the pause might have been responsible for his being elected, it might be useful to look at the other side. A great example of somebody who didn’t until recently have a clue about the pause is Al Gore. Do you think of Al Gore as being a great speaker? Do you think there might be a relationship between his speaking ability and the fact that couldn’t maintain the Clinton dynasty even four more years?

Now before we are accused of being anti-Gore, understand that one of the worst places to go seeking great speakers is your local, state, or federal government. Most politicians’ egos are greater than their intellectual capacity, and many simply won’t take anybody’s advice, period. So we end up having to endure the insincere-sounding shrill of a Hilary Clinton or the mind-numbing drone of a John Kerry.

But back to Gore: When Al Gore delivered his acceptance speech for the presidential nomination at the 2000 Democratic convention, he had a 30 point Program for America that he thought was very important to get out. He had 30 points and 45 minutes in which to deliver them.

What happened was that during the first 20 minutes of his speech, people in the audience would hear things that they liked and, quite naturally, applaud. At least they tried to applaud. But instead of pausing and bathing in the glow for a moment or two, Al would hold up his hands to silence them and just kept on speaking. This went on for 25 minutes - although they would applaud, he wouldn’t stop speaking.

After a while, the audience started to become uncomfortable, because they were applauding over him. The applause then became more sporadic, and eventually stopped altogether. And so for the last 20 minutes of the speech, he continued to speak, and nobody applauded at all. He just spoke for 20 minutes straight. Not a single break.

We think if you were to have given a pop quiz to the audience and ask them how many of those 30 points for America they could remember, it probably would be no more than three, if any. Al thought it was all about the content, without consideration for the audience’s ability to take it all in.

Years later, prior to filming An Inconvenient Truth, Al Gore sought and received professional presentation skills training, and he has a somewhat better grasp on the process that when he ran for president in 2000. In fact, in a May 2007 article in The New York Times Magazine, Gore was asked if he had any regrets about how he ran the campaign.

The reporter was hoping to get him to say something related to the legal process, but instead Gore replied, “If I had had the presentation skills I’ve since learned, I think I’d be in my second term as president”.

J. Douglas Jefferys is a principal at PublicSpeakingSkills.com, an international consulting firm specializing in training businesses of all sizes to communicate for maximum efficiency. The firm spreads its unique knowledge through on-site classes, public seminars, and high-impact videos, and can be reached through the Internet or at 888-663-7711.

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