Technomyths

Farmville Cash - How to Get More Free FV Cash Quickly

2009-12-04T22:21:00.000-08:00

Do you want to get more Farmville cash for free? Well if you want to get more, here are some things that you can do.

Gain More Free Cash By Leveling Up
If you want more Farm money, the easiest way to gain more is to level up. Each new level yields 1 free FV cash. So if you want to gain more, you need to know how to stockpile EXP quickly and level up.

To stockpile EXP quickly, there are 2 main things that you must keep in mind in order to level up quickly. You must know what crops will give you the most EXP and when to plant the crops for maximum experience points. If you master these two concepts, you will be able to level up in no time, thus gaining more FV money.

Free Cash By Taking Surveys Or Quizzes
An easy way to gain more FV money is to fill out surveys or quizzes. You can get to the surveys or quizzes by clicking on the "Get More Farm Coins" tab in the Farmville game.

Although taking surveys and quizzes seems like an easy task, it can be tedious and require you to give out personal information. Choose which surveys and quizzes you take very carefully, as some are scams that get you to buy products or subscription service.

But how do you get lots of free Farm cash without focusing on leveling and doing surveys or quizzes?

Dominate Farmville Without Any Cheats

2009-12-04T22:11:00.000-08:00

By now you've probably heard of Farmville and if you haven't then its a good chance you don't spend much time online. This game has in a very short period of time reached over 60 million monthly active users. That is a huge community of players and neighbors that for months now have been having great fun withe game.

Early in the days of Farmville there were many loopholes and cheats discovered. Cheating in any game is a bad idea and we don't promote the use of it. In fact none of these original exploits are still open to the public and many of been plugged up so that they are no longer effective.

Not to worry though because its still entirely possible to play the game the traditional way. You just need to use the right tactics. Most definitely the basics of the game such as planting, harvesting and crap mastery will never stop and perfecting these to the best of your skills is the quickest way to dominate the game.

Growing crops such as soybeans and raspberries are a good way to accumulate coins and experience quickly which will enable you to level up faster than your friends. Also, adding lots of neighbors is a great way to enable many extra features of the game and advance as quickly as possible within the Farmville universe.

To get coins and experience points its important to follow all of these steps and by accumulating as much as you can you will be able to buy vehicles, animals and decorations. Doing this is sort of the social aspect of domination. You see being the top level is the true test, but of course its always nice to show off to your friends with the most impressive looking buildings and animals.

So follow the basic steps and you'll soon be on your way to being the best farmer in the neighborhood.

Best Ways How to Get Permanent Links For Your Website

2009-10-23T04:10:00.000-07:00

When you build links for your website, it may be big advantage if the links are permanent. Google does not take new links into account and the older the links are the higher value given to them. It is also very time consuming to build links which stay online for a few weeks and then take some action again to build another backlinks. In this article, I will describe the best ways how to get permanent links for your website.

Tip #1:

Write articles and submit them to the article directories. Article directories never delete your articles because these articles are the content which drives traffic to them. The link in the author resource box may also appear on other websites because some article directory owners sell their article databases and the buyers use these databases to quickly build up new articles directories.

Tip #2:

Join various forums and use your signature to get quality backlinks. Use some SEO tool or Firefox extension to check out if the signatures in the forum you are going to use are dofollow. Also make sure that the signatures are displayed even if you are not logged in. Some forums show the signature links only in case you are logged in and this means that the links cannot be spidered by Googlebot.

Tip #3:

When learning something new, find information on weblogs. When you find interesting post, make a comment with link to your website. But use the same strategy like with the forum marketing. Make sure that the links you will get are dofollow. You can use some dofollow weblog search engines to find weblogs which are worth of your reading and which will also give you dofollow link when you post a comment.

Get Free Visitors to Your Website

2009-10-04T19:18:00.000-07:00

A website or blog without visitors is like an idle shop without visitors, even if you sell the most patronized goods in your shop you wont make sales because no customer visits your shop. People think driving visitors to your website is difficult, so they tend to ignore any business involving a website or a blog. But unknowing to them that making people rush to your website is very easy if you know the right thing to do. You can work for 3 hours daily and will still be able to drive up to 10,000 visitors to your web. This is true if you know the simple tricks.

One of the most easiest way to get quick visitors is through article submission, there are more then a thousand article directories you can submit your articles to, you can do this manually or with the aid of am submission software. This can make your work very easy, just write three 400 words articles and then submit them to at least 10 article directories daily and you will start to see a drastic increase in you monthly website visitors.

Also you can submit your website or blog to search engines, either manually or with the aid of a search engine submission software, this type is very important. If you have a blog or a website, all you need do is to ping them. You are to note that when submitting your articles to article directories, you should always include many relevant keywords. Search engine submission makes your website come up on search engines when a keyword relating to your website content is been searched.

You can also make use of forums, search for forums that relates to your website or blog, register with them, start posting solutions to peoples questions, referring them to your blog or website, by this they will be happy to visit your website to get more information. Back linking is a good way you can get free website visitors. There are also many other ways to get unique visitors.

What is Better - Free Website Traffic Or Paid Traffic?

2009-10-04T19:15:00.000-07:00

If you are going to market you website you have basically two options how to do that. You can try to succeed with free traffic or drive paid traffic to your website. The first option cost your time and the second one your money. Which solution will cause the best results? Continue reading to discover the potential of free website traffic and paid traffic.

Good news for all beginners with zero budget is the chance to start online business without any investment. In fact, if you are newbie it is not recommended to spend too much money for paid traffic. You should know very well what are you doing before you spend your first advertising dollar.

You should start with solutions offering free traffic. Post some messages to niche forum, write articles which may be useful for people looking for your products and submit them with links to your website to the article directories. Consider to comment weblogs in your niche, use social bookmarking websites. And do serious keyword research in order to optimize your site for search engines.

When you start earning some money from the free website traffic consider to start paid advertising. With the statistics services like Google analytics you can easily find out which of your free traffic sources are the most profitable. For example, if you are getting good results from traffic coming from particular keyword try to run PPC campaign in search engines for this keyword. If you get good results from blog commenting join some advertising network and pay for ads on niche weblogs.

Organic SEO Services

2009-09-24T05:08:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimization also known as "SEO" is a term associated with Web pages and their rankings. This technique is included in Web pages to improve your rankings in major search engines. Efficient Technology SEO, which can be a list of Web pages earlier or later in a search engine, thereby increasing traffic to your Web pages with users who are looking for a specific keyword phrase or topic. Different algorithms are implemented to attract the attention of the major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Microsoft's Live Search. One such method is the optimization of organic SEO.

SEO experts use various methods for optimizing Web pages such as text optimization, image optimization, flash optimization and geographical optimization. Flash optimization work around the recoding of HTML code for Flash pages with the majority of flash content to be search engines. This is one of the latest methods of optimization in SEO. Previously, it was difficult for search engines to read and index pages with Flash content. Geographic optimization aims to include web pages in search listings for users who are looking for services in a particular county, city or state.

SEO services can be implemented either as a separate service or as part of online marketing. The strategy often involves adding keywords and Meta tags on pages. SEO-specialists are able to insert these tags in your HTML code so that they will be indexed by crawler programs used by search engines to list pages.

Two main approaches to optimize the web site black hat SEO and white hat SEO (organic SEO). Black hat SEO uses fraudulent methods to obtain an immediate high rating, but the rating will be temporary in nature and will have a shorter life expectancy. On the other hand White hat SEO implements algorithms in "normal" or "natural" way in accordance with ethical standards in coding. These algorithms are designed to maintain higher search rankings and will operate over a long period of time.

A good SEO team of consultants can review and recommend changes to the existing design and content. They can also develop and implement a page from scratch with search engine optimization techniques Incorporated. Copywriting Quality of service along with its unique design, easy navigation tools and marketing services are part of an effective search engine optimization.

All the major search engines support the organic SEO techniques implemented in web pages. Most web pages listed in the main search results that have implemented effective services SEO. Small investment in effective Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques will ultimately make your website more visible and to work in a highly competitive and profitable manner with a large return is guaranteed.

Backlinks one of the most essential things for search engine optimization

2009-09-24T05:04:00.000-07:00

Those who have read about search engine optimization they know well what back links are. They have to come across the word at least for once. But who are new to the subject of SEO they must think what the term back links refers and what the importance of back links is. It is nothing but an important thing to build a good SEO. Rather it can be said that Back links have become so important to the scope of Search Engine Optimization, that they have become some of the main building blocks to good SEO.

At first look at the factor why back links are important in search engine optimization. Actually these links are like a voting system and they make the search engine know how much people respect the opinion. Higher the popularity scale, higher the number of back links. They are like voting for you. If lots of people link to your web pages, using anchor text appropriate to your theme, this is taken as validation of your content. The logic is: why would people link to you unless you have something valuable to offer? Exactly for this reason it is considered as a measure of popularity.

Now come to the point that we have hinted at the beginning of this topic. That is web designers and web masters and online publishers take various types of methods both legitimate and illegitimate to get back links. It is indeed very sad that for getting a link you need to give money to another website. For instance, would it make sense if some poker website paid me to put their link on this web design and SEO blog (unless of course I specifically mention that it is an advertisement)? The buying and selling of links has become so rampant that Google is contemplating penalizing people indulging in these tactics?

Now automatically comes the topic how a good position or good way to be found to get quality back links. You should get back links in a normal, natural manner and back linking should be voluntary, not mercenary. For your own satisfaction and in order to keep your business safe and clear you can mention it on your website or blog that you are being paid to publish those links, and Google even goes to the extent of recommending the rel=nofollow attribute for the websites you are linking to if you are publishing external links for extra bucks.

So far the best way of obtaining a higher quality back links is by means of generating valuable content regularly and timely and for a long time. You need to revise it and update it on a regular basis. Your content must be off higher quality and fit the purpose of your website. Webmasters and bloggers enjoying high traffic always like to refer to an external link rather than explaining a topic from scratch. Give people something to link to and see how your traffic surges up.

Tips For Computer Virus Removal

2009-09-19T20:44:00.000-07:00

Computer viruses have been in existence about as long as the personal computer has been. They can cause damage to software programs creating numerous problems. In an office setting, a virus can decrease productivity. For any who unfortunately encounter a virus, it is a frustrating problem.

What is a computer virus? First of all, it helps to know what it is. A computer virus or malware is a software program that has been created by a person with the intention of causing destructive problems such as applications that spy on you, corrupt your data or give control of your computer to someone thousands of miles away. Viruses and malware are generally limited to damage to the software, however hardware can be targeted as well.

Once you suspect that you have a computer virus, what do you do? Here are some tips for computer virus removal:

Don't panic! This is the most important tip. Do not assume that you need to wipe your computer clean and start from scratch.

Determine that you have a virus. If you suspect that your computer has a virus, some symptoms may be your computer is running unusually slow, complaining with lots of errors, random reboots, blue error screens, or tons of pop-up windows. If any of this is happening, make sure you close all of your files and opened windows. Run antivirus software to make sure it is operating. Do this before updating it with the latest virus definitions. If it is operating, update your antivirus with the newest virus definitions and run it again. If it is not operating, the virus may have disabled the antivirus software. To get around this, download the software onto another computer then save to a disk or flash drive. Use the disk or flash drive to load the software onto the computer with the virus. Once loaded, scan your computer and follow the directions given to remove or disable the virus.

Start your computer in "Safe Mode". This may be an option if the antivirus program is still not working. This mode is usually is used when there is a system-critical problem that interferes with the normal operation of Windows and can help troubleshoot the problem. To start your computer in Safe Mode, you can press the F5 key or you can press the F8 key and select Safe Mode from the boot menu. Once started in Safe Mode, try running your antivirus software. This scan may find malware. If you can remove all of the malware applications found, this may correct your problem.

Hire a professional. If you've been through all of this and your PC is still having problems, it is time to call in reinforcements. There are plenty of companies which are more than happy to help. Simply check in your local phone book under "Computers; Repair and Service". When pricing these services, find a company that will take a look at your computer and give you a free estimate. They will charge hourly rates for their services.

Protect the Internal Network From Hackers

2009-09-19T20:41:00.000-07:00

Attention! All the hackers on the systems of various according to their sects and wishes are eager to penetrate your network, but you can defeat these attacks by providing an appropriate combination of security tactics.

Networks are daily threaded with attacks, so you need to provide permanent protection. No doubt that the most common threats are: first, the viruses, which are small programs that in reality is trying to infiltrate your network and fool the computer, entering it as an attachment with an e-mail message, beginning immediately after opening the attached file, repeating the same self in the system of your computer. Secondly, Trojan horses which run through the computer by entering the applications or data files are useful, and that is activated on the Trojans after the mediation of specific programs; even begin to take over the reins in the system of your computer.

Thirdly, the worms that are also working to replicate itself and spread to begin the search for security holes in your system, so as to penetrate your system, and often remain hidden until the right opportunity to start attack of the distributed service (DDoS). No doubt that these three types of attacks pose a major threat to his company's data and your personal data as well. Of course, you don't want or any one of the owners of companies that their networks are points of attack to distributed denial of service attacks. Therefore, we must first ensure that the protection of all devices connected to your company, and the first step to ensure this protection is to provide these devices with firewall, which is a line of defense to it.

But is it enough to spend hundreds of dollars for the provision of firewalls, or that the cost would amount to several thousands of dollars? On the walls at a minimum be equipped with an examination engine of the data package (SPI), which examines the content of packages of data and gives the right of access to your network, in the event it was free from malicious software code.

How to use the firewall?

Firewalls can also be based on certain rules or filters block the movement of inappropriate incoming and outgoing data. It can benefit the choice of Internet Protocol (IP) for example, and to prevent existing staff in the network access to the protocol specific addresses on the Internet or receiving emails from them. Firewalls can also block the movement of data in the network based on a unique identifier named " the title of control to access to the" (MAC). Many of firewalls can control in data by using filters of key words or scope, and permit data which is destined for a particular location. Firewalls also allow the creation of more sophisticated to make more complex rules for the data.

There is a better option than the firewall which is equipped with the test engine of the data packages (SPI), is the firewall, which depends on the engine of test of the deep data packages (DPI). It works great test engine (DPI) to examine the full content of the data package in addition to the advantage of examining the packet header to be performed by the firewall engine equipped with the examination of the data packages (SPI). The engines can deep packet inspection of data, during the examination of the contents of packets to discover and prevent many types of attacks: denial of service attacks, such as (DoS), and rash cache, and attacks the guise of Internet Protocol, in addition to a series of attacks by worms. The more the costs of the firewalls as become more like instruments of security, as a result of processing the applications of intent to combat viruses, spyware and virtual private networks (VPNs).

Know the firewall that you need

When the cost of the firewall is cheap, the process was prepared more easily, because the additional costs of course will provide more options, and as we know that when the number of options are increased and available, The process of the preparation of these options are more complex, so we recommend you first to learn what works well on protection, and what are the threats that want to keep away from you. For that we recommend first to write a list of all the services that users need to access, such as web sites and e-mail servers and FTP servers in addition to the messenger services and remote access of data, because the firewall can filter services on the basis of the nomination of port numbers (a way of addressing a particular service in a computer) used by these services, and Internet Protocol address of the source or destination of data. We will mention the following examples of common services outlets figures, namely: 80 of 23 service and HTTP service Telnet and FTP service for the 21 and 25 of the service SMTP.

There is no doubt that the safest way to build a list of control to access to services is beginning block all data movements, and then revisit it after the disengagement to the services required for the block one after the other, such as allowing the movement of data on port 25, if these data are bound to Internet protocol address on your e-mail in your network. If you need access to services in the internal network of computers outside your network, such as Web servers or e-mail servers, you will build more complex rules of the nomination. You can know if the firewall, which has used an outlet of the neutral area DMZ to connect with these services and to be able to isolate the services open to external networks, on the internal network, but if the firewall does not have an outlet for the neutral area DMZ, then supposed to be allowed to feature passage of the performing the work, a process in which all the movements of short data service on a particular Internet protocol address of an internal party. For those who are afraid of the topic of writing the rules for the nomination to firewalls, we say that the operations are not difficult, as appears to them, they soon learn to establish a simple set of such rules, they will learn quickly accomplish complex rules, but if they insist on their fear of the establishment of rules for the nomination, they then use specialists.

Why Buy a Wireless Printer?

2009-09-16T09:51:00.000-07:00

With the advent of wireless technology it has taken longer than one would have expected for printers to take advantage of this form of connection. Up until recently bluetooth was the proposed form of communication with your printer if you wanted a non wired connection. However with more and more homes now equipped with wireless routers, it makes sense to utilize this method to make more flexible use of your printer.

So what are the advantages of printing wirelessly? Firstly it frees up your printer from having to be within proximity of your computer by way of a cable connection. You can now place your printer anywhere in the home where it fits ergonomically or alternatively out of the way where it can't be easily seen. Secondly with more people owning both a desktop PC and a laptop and possibly also a netbook for the kids, they can all access the one printer without having to be connected to it. Most modern laptops are equipped with wi-fi so it is very easy to connect and print quickly and seamlessly. That means printing from anywhere in the house and even the garden if your wireless signal reaches further afield. Thirdly there is no disadvantage in using a wireless printer as they can print at the same speed as a usb connected printer.

Wireless equipped printers now come as inkjet, photo, laser and all in one models. All in one are so called as they are not only a printer but also a scanner, fax and copier providing you with an all round home office solution. Prices are now very reasonable for wireless printers and the choice of models from the major brands is growing rapidly. Like cable connected models it pays to check the cost of printer cartridges when choosing your wireless printer as this will affect your running costs, particularly if you are printing a large number of pages. In this instance a laser printer may be the best choice as it will be cheaper and more reliable for high volumes of printing.

HP, Lexmark, Epson, Canon, Brother and Kodak amongst others all now produce wireless printers. With these well known names in the market it makes sense to buy the best wireless printer for your needs, and free yourself to print anywhere in your home.

What is a Laser Toner?

2009-09-16T09:49:00.000-07:00

Laser toner is one of the most important components of a laser printer. It is referred to as the ink for laser printers. This toner can be in powder or liquid form packed into a toner cartridge. The cartridge is responsible for holding and controlling the ink or the toner. It is made up of hard plastic. It is inserted into a cartridge rack inside the laser printer, ready to print several pages.

Types of Laser Toner
There are two general types. The dry toner is typically used for home or company printers. It is created from a plastic powder, an amalgamation of styrene and acrylic substances. It produces different colors through the help of the added pigments. The carriers help the toner bits to be charged and be attracted into the printed material.

There are advantages in using a dry toner. It produces more materials because it does not need to penetrate the paper fiber. It means less amount of toner is used to print a page. It prints faster and there's no need for drying time. Furthermore, there is no risk of accidentally staining the printouts. Dry toner is also better for the environment. It has no harmful solvents. Dry toner has more stable colors, as well.

The other type of laser toner is the liquid toner. It is mainly of pigmented acrylic resin elements. The dye or the pigmentation enables the liquid toner to form colors. The resin particles are placed into a protecting liquid. The advantages of using liquid toner are as follows: The printer doesn't need to warm up when printing. The printed texts/images are hard to fade. It is because the printed texts/images are much more attached to the paper.

How Laser Toner Works
How does the printer use the laser toner to print texts or images? The powder is stored into a toner hopper located inside a removable casing most often referred to as the cartridge. The printer gathers the toner from the hopper with the developer unit, a small magnetic bids, charged negatively. These are attached to a rotating metal roller.

The metal roller moves the developer through the toner in the hopper. The negatively charged bids collect the positive toner particles. The roller then brushes the bids past the drum assembly. This process is called an electrostatic image, and it produces a stronger negative charge.

The electrostatic image enables the drum to pull the toner particles away. The drum moves over the paper producing an even stronger charge which collects the toner to the paper. The paper is then immediately discharged by the detac corona wire. To keep the toner on the page, the page passes through a fuser. An internal device then heats the fuser roller. This is called internal quartz tube lamps. This process melts the plastic in the toner as the page passes through.

Toners must be customized separately based on the printer brand it is meant for. There are toners which need to be ground in order to become powder. Also, there are features that need to be considered in buying a toner. These include flow rate, melting point, and thermal and magnetic qualities.

Toner Refill Kits
Toner refills are commonly offered as kits which comprise of all pieces necessary to replenish an empty toner cartridge. Toner refill kits have step by step instructions as well as are easy and fast to operate. Refilling a drain cartridge using the bottled toner that comes with the kit only takes minutes.
Refill kits are also the cheapest alternative for buying a new toner. They can save you dollars as compared to getting new cartridges. And since it is universal, it can always be used whenever you get a new printer.

Campus Network Protocols

2009-09-14T20:01:00.001-07:00

This article discusses the campus protocols found in almost all enterprise networks today including spanning tree protocol, ethernet and gigabit optical fiber with a description of the current specifications and process.

Spanning Tree Protocol

Spanning Tree is an algorithm that runs on Layer 2 campus switches for preventing Layer 2 loops and broadcast storms on a network with at least 2 switches or bridges. The algorithm determines what ports at each switch or bridge must be blocked to create a loop free topology. Primary specifications are IEEE and 802.1d. The spanning tree port states are listening, learning, blocking, forwarding or disabled. Each group of switches will elect a root bridge as part of determining what switch ports must be blocked for a loop free topology. The root bridge is selected by default as the switch with the lowest priority (MAC address). Root bridge selection can be changed with the bridge priority command. It is important to consider your campus switch design and if necessary modify the root bridge selection for performance.

Newer switches that use VLAN's run one spanning tree instance per VLAN. This is important to note since Layer 2 loops occur per VLAN or segment. This allows a switch with dual connections to the same switch or different switches to load balance across those links without the concern of creating a broadcast storm. This is accomplished by assigning two VLAN's to a switch that has dual links to different campus core switches. Each link is configured to forward traffic from one VLAN and block it on the second link. For instance, consider a switch that is assigned 24 ports to VLAN 10 and 24 ports to VLAN 20 and a supervisor engine with 2 Gigabit ports that connect to different core switches. VLAN 10 is assigned to port A and VLAN 20 to port B. If traffic from VLAN 10 were allowed on port B as well, you would have a loop since traffic could leave on port A and return on port B assuming there is a trunk connection between the campus core switches.

Ethernet

This is the most popular campus data link protocol running today. The primary specifications today are 10BaseT, 100BaseT, and Gigabit Ethernet. Many networks today are comprised of 10BaseT and 100BaseT from the desktop and server to the campus switch. Gigabit Ethernet is used from switch to switch and building-to-building. 10BaseT is a specification for 10 Mbps over unshielded twisted pair category 3 cable (UTP). The distance from desktop to switch is 100 meters maximum. The 100BaseT specification is the same except the speed is 100 Mbps over unshielded twisted UTP) pair category 5 cable. Gigabit is a specification for 1000 Mbps across Fiber, STP and UTP cabling. Ethernet uses CSMA/CD as a method of dealing with collisions when two desktops are sending data simultaneously. Both workstations wait for a specified and different length of time before attempting re-transmission. The maximum packet size or MTU of an Ethernet packet is 1518 Bytes.

Optical Fiber Technologies

Gigabit Ethernet uses Multi-Mode Fiber (MMF) and Single Mode Fiber (SMF) for data transmission. Single Mode Fiber uses only one mode of light to travel across the fiber strand using a laser as the light source. Multimode allows for many modes of light to travel across the fiber strand at different angles using an LED as a light source. Modal dispersion results from different light modes transmitted across a fiber strand. The result is that Single Mode Fiber is higher bandwidth and transmits across greater distances. Multi-Mode Fiber is supported with 62.5 micron and 50 micron diameter fibers. The 50-micron fiber will transport across longer distances than 62.5 micron fiber. Multi Mode Fiber uses Short Wave Lasers (SX) and Long Wave Lasers (LX) for Gigabit transmission. Single Mode Fiber is supported with a 9 micron diameter fiber core. It uses long wave lasers to send data between buildings that are 10 kilometers apart.

The Basics of Network Topologies

2009-09-14T19:54:00.000-07:00

Hierarchical Model

A hierarchical model is a modular design for an enterprise network that defines three specific layers that each has network services associated with those layers. The layers are access, distribution and core. The access layer is associated with branch offices that usually run lower speed circuits. These branch offices are aggregated at a distribution office and several distribution offices are aggregated at a core office. Modular designs are more scalable and utilize bandwidth more effectively than flat networks.

Access Level Services

Static Routing, Encryption, Compression, Load Balancing, Access Control Lists, VLAN's, Proxy Services, Queuing

Distribution Level Services

Summarization, Redistribution, Network Address Translation, Protocol Translation, Quality of Service, Inter-VLAN Routing, Access Control Lists (applications, protocols and services)

Core Level Services

Traffic Optimization, Path Optimization, Encapsulation, Quality of Service, Load Balancing

Topologies

The following describes the most common network wan topologies implemented in an enterprise environment.

Hub and Spoke

Each spoke has one or more links to a hub office that will connect the spoke offices. It is the least expensive and easiest to manage. There isn't any circuit diversity unless backup circuits are provisioned at each office. If a circuit fails at a spoke office and there is no backup circuit, that spoke office is without network access.

Partial Mesh

With a partial mesh topology any office could be designated as a hub office. This is more expensive than hub and spoke since there are alternate circuits to different offices. If one link fails that doesn't affect any office since a new route will be discovered with the routing protocol. The bandwidth at each circuit will affect what preferred routes are selected under normal operating conditions.

Full Mesh

This is the most expensive topology type since there is any - any connectivity among all offices. It is the most difficult to manage although most reliable with multiple paths to any destination. For companies such as banks that require 99.999% availability, this topology would be employed.

Cool Things You Can See With Satellite and Aerial Maps

2009-09-14T19:50:00.001-07:00

Online digital aerial maps have become easily accessible in recent years. Today, you can go online and look up any city you want on Google Maps and get a close-up view. There are also a lot of other cool views to be found though, such as ones taken from passing map survey planes that give you a bird's-eye view of manmade landmarks and famous natural attractions. Here are a few of the things you can see with the power of aerial and satellite imaging.

Manmade Landmarks
You can literally spend hours on Google Earth zooming in an out of all the world's major manmade landmarks. It has become one of the most popular time-killers amongst computer users today. Seeing the Great Wall of China from the point of view of an orbiting satellite, for example, can give you a true sense of its size. Just the fact that's visible form space and covers a good portion of the Earth. One particularly interesting city that's full of interesting landmarks is the city of Ashgabat, in Turkmenistan. The aerial map of this city is filled with giant monuments built by the late dictator of the country, Saparmurat Niyazov. From an overhead POV, the place looks like a tapestry of huge, complex symmetrical designs.

Natural Landmarks
It's also a lot of fun to browse the web for aerial images of the world's natural marvels. There are plenty to see in the U.S. alone. The rainbow-colored hot springs of Yellowstone National Park, the huge gorge made by the Rio Grande, and the snow caps of California's Sierra Nevada are all incredible sights, especially when shot from low flying survey planes, which provide clearer images and angled views.

Google Street View
But perhaps the most popular feature of online digital mapping technology today is the ability to zoom in to get a street-side view of almost every major city in the world. I'm talking of Google Map's street view feature, of course, which allows you to go to almost any city in the map and get a virtual tour of it. The images used for street view mode are taken from thousands of van-mounted cameras throughout the world that work every day to keep street view mode as up to date as possible. If you spend enough time exploring, you can find some pretty interesting candid shots. Everything from a freeway car wreck to a guy who obviously drank a little too much the night before.

Blog Design: What Can We Do To Increase Website Traffic

2009-09-13T07:13:00.000-07:00

Today, in this fast-paced world, people get annoyed when they visit a blog that doesn’t look good. They get frustrated and leave. That little X box is clicked on and you have lost a potential visitor. We all want our blog to look good, I know I do.

To get your visitors to read your content and to want to come back for more there are some simple blog design strategies that you can do.

#1: Design

You have a very short time for your blog to make an impact on your reader. Does it hit them in the face with bright colors or does it draw them in so they want to stay and read your content. Having a simple or minimalistic design can create harmony for the reader.

Is your ‘above the fold’ area too cluttered? Does your text tell the reader what the blog name is and what the blog is about?

The use of white space is very effective in drawing your readers into your blog. White space means the empty space on your blog. The human eye needs this space so that we can easily see what is there.

#2: Does the design compliment the content?

Blog design and related content go together. If you visit a blog that sells dog blankets and they have an article on trout fishing, would you stay? Most likely not, I know I wouldn’t. It would confuse me and I wouldn’t go back to that blog.

Font and font size needs to be considered as well. Are your fonts modern or are they curly and old-fashioned.

Images are another important factor in designing your blog to be visibility enticing. Keep your images to one size and place them in the same place in your posts. This gives the reader familiarity and confidence so that when they go back to your blog things will be in the same place.

#3: Is Your Design a Platform for your Content?

The purpose of your blog design is to draw your reader to the content. Are your posts easily found? Or are they buried under uncategorized categories. Do you have ads that detract from the reader and make them want to run from your blog.

#4: Is your design functional?

Blog readers want to know about you, they want to know your story. Have you got your ‘My Story’ and ‘About Me, on your blog.

Navigation Bars – Is your navigation bar on the right side, left side, top or bottom of your blog. Books read from left to right so it makes sense to have our navigation bar at the top and on the left side.

Eyetrack research has shown that our eyes are most often fixated on the upper left of the page. Only after looking at the top of the page do our eyes explore further down the page. It makes sense then to put your navigation bar top and left of your blog.

Take a look at other blogs to give you an idea of want you want your blog to be. While you are looking, write down what you like and don’t like. Then and only then change your blog or get your web-designer to do it. It will be worth it.

8 'creative' Types Of Blog Posts

2009-09-13T07:11:00.001-07:00

If you own a blog you know the importance of keeping your blog fresh and your audience interested. It can be challenging to come up with blog posts that won't bore your visitors and is interesting enough to keep them coming back.

It doesn't matter whether you are blogging for fun or blogging to make money, if visitors are your goal then here are eight types of blog posts that you can use to keep your blog interesting, promote sharing, increase followers and encourage comments.

Type 1 - The 'QUICK TIPS' Blog Post

Quick tips are great “in between” posts. They are short and normally between 100 and 250 words. If you have ideas that you want to share with your readers but it doesn’t justify a full blog post, posting quick tips are ideal. The tip should be focused on one key area of your niche. For example, “How to eat less when eating out” is a perfect 'quick tip' for a dieting blog.

Type 2 - The 'HOW TO' Blog Post

Expanding on the quick tips blog post, let's look at the 'how to' posts. These provide expanded and much more detailed information to your readers on how to do specific things related to your niche such as step-by-step instructional detail or specific examples. You could even separate these posts into two or three part courses.

For ideas on 'how to' posts, have a look at niche topic forums or other related blogs for questions that others are asking on how to do specific things. Well written, detailed informative 'how to' posts are typically very popular and can help recognize you as an authority in your field.

Type 3 - The ‘REVIEW’ Blog Post

Product or service reviews are especially useful to readers because it helps them with the decision buying process. It's also a great way to monetize your blog. This is particularly beneficial to affiliate marketers. When you review a product and include your affiliate link, this gives you the opportunity to make a commission from each sale you generate.

The key to writing a credible 'review' blog post is not to simply go over the major benefits and highlights of the product, but to also mention things about the product that could be improved. This keeps your review balanced and also gives your reader a more objective view. Your blog visitors will appreciate your candid honesty and will be more likely to trust your recommendation.

Type 4 - The RESOURCE Blog Post

Some of the most popular blogs use resource lists. Blog readers love lists because they can easily scan the information and focus on what they are most interested in reading.

For example, if writing a post on the '10 ways to lose weight fast' a resource list would mention the posts from related blogs that also have this information. This gives your reader a much broader view of ideas and tips available to them.

By doing this you will also find that readers will look to you as a useful resource for finding as much well-rounded information as possible on the topic at hand.

Type 5 - The INTERVIEW Blog Post

People love interviews, especially if it's with someone they like and admire. Try interviewing someone in your niche and sharing the results of the interview with your blog readers. This is also a powerful traffic generator as the person you interview will most likely post the interview on their blog and around the web, bringing more traffic back to you!

Type 6 - The 'BEST OF' Blog Post

These are great end of the year or end of season posts. For example, if you do a lot of reading, you might list the 'best of' articles, books or guides that you read during the past year. Additionally, you could also create a post highlighting your most popular blog posts of the year. Whatever your niche, have a look back at the items, events or ideas that were the year's best and create a post around them. This can be a fun, especially for the nostalgic reader.

Type 7 - The PERSONAL STORY' Blog Post

Everyone loves a personal story. Anyone that follows you or your blog would be interested in a personal event or happening related to your niche. Did you attend a seminar? Did you buy a new product? Did you have a mishap that could be made an example of? Without getting too personal or overly detailed, writing a blog post on you personal achievements or activities almost always draws interest and feedback.

Type 8 - The 'NEWS' Blog Post

Every niche has some news related items or happenings. Keep your eyes and ears open to what's going on, then find a newsworthy item and write your personal comments. This is not only an easy to create, quick post; it also encourages feedback from readers. Be sure to link to the post you are referring to along with your comments.

The Best Keyword Search Tools

2009-09-10T19:16:00.000-07:00

You may find yourself overwhelmed looking for keywords that fit your website description and that will be profitable to you in search rankings. The internet has a variety of keyword tools that one can utilize. Why not start with the most popular search engine Google. Google Adwords has a keyword tool you can use. When using the Google Adwords Keyword Search Tool you can enter a keyword, a phrase, or you can even enter your website URL.

Being able to enter your website URL is an amazing tool if you are stuck and can't think of any keywords. Google will go to your website and read it and then return results for what they think are good keywords for you. Google will show return results with suggested keywords, as well as your advertiser competition, the local search volume of the keyword for the previous month and the global search volume.

After looking at keywords on Google you may want to head over to Keyword Discovery. Keyword Discovery has an amazing keyword tool. When searching for keywords it will return the top one hundred keyword searches. Not only will Keyword Discovery return the top one hundred searches and tell you how many people searched for that term in a month, but they also tell you what percentage of those searches were on what search engines.

Keyword Discovery collects data from all the major search engines, which could help you determine where to advertise or what search engines to get your site most listed with. Remember, study all the keywords and data given and choose your keywords very carefully. The keywords you do choose to use for your website and the most important way for people to find your website. Some keywords may be so saturated with advertiser competition (people who pay to have their website listed first) that you may want to go with a different keyword. After choosing your keywords and your website is ready you can go to the different search engine and register your site. The different search engines will go to your site and collect information and then list your website in the search engine. This may take a few weeks but you can be listed with search engines for free.

Robot Parts

2009-09-10T16:53:00.000-07:00

A robot is a complex assembly of several parts and devices which are synchronized to perform specific functions. Whether you are a robot hobbyist or a robotic technician, you require robot parts to customize or repair the structure. However, proper care is required while buying robot parts to ensure that they align with the system.

Essential Robot Parts

Some of the most crucial robot parts are:

Robot sensors: Robots' intelligence depends highly on their sensors. The sensors detect elements in the surrounding environment and send information to the controller. Based on this information, the controller makes its decisions. Generally, a robot has several sensors to scan the environment. Sensors can include ultrasonic range finders to measure point distances, laser scanners to measure 2D and 3D distances for mapping, sound sensors, light sensors and more.

Microcontrollers: Microcontrollers act as the brain of robotic projects. These devices work similar to the central processing unit of the computer. They are capable of collecting information, processing it and deciding the actions of the robot.

Motor: A motor converts electricity into mechanical motion. There are different types of motors, which differ in terms of size, functionality and the amount of power they generate. Motor controller: This device acts as an intermediate between a microcontroller and a motor. A microcontroller is not capable of proving enough power to a motor so instead it sends commands to a motor controller which handles the higher power requirements.

Mechanical parts: Mechanical parts come in different forms and shapes. Mechanical parts are chosen based on the specific objectives of a robot. Certain common mechanical parts are wheels, tracks, casters, connectors, motor mounts, pan and tilt systems, gear boxes, chassis/frame and grippers.

Power system: Most robots require a battery to function. Many employ a Nickel Metal Hydride (NiMH), Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd) or Lithium-ion (Li-ion) battery, though others may use alkaline, lead acid or other less common types. Some robots are powered or recharged by solar energy. Standard power equipments often include battery, charger and adapters.

Communication devices: Optimum performance of a robot depends on successful communication. Robotic structures come with sophisticated communication and control devices for transmitting and processing messages. Essential communication devices include modem, Bluetooth, remote control and telemetry.

Purchase robot parts from authorized sellers who possess considerable industry experience. RobotShop is an internationally renowned source for buying robotic parts.

Delete History - How to Delete History in Different Browsers and Software

2009-09-10T16:40:00.000-07:00

Lets face it, computers and the internet have become part of our everyday life.

Information is readily available and just a keystroke away. But what if you don't want people to know your privacy information? What if you don't want people to know you have been looking at inappropriate material? Then you need to know how to cover your tracks.

You need to realize that everything you do on the internet, leaves a trace, an electronic footprint on your machine that others can see. For this reason, it is important that you know how to retain control of your privacy and delete your history.

There are many programs for sale that will do this for you automatically, but for most people it is just a matter of knowing how to delete your history in the various browsers and software that are out there today.

For example, Firefox has the option to Clear Recent History from the Tool menu, but you can also set it up so it deletes your history, cookies, etc every time you exit FireFox. This is definitely a good thing to setup if you don't want people to see your history.

Microsoft operating systems and programs also retain history settings, such as Windows Media Player, so it is important not just in the browsers to make sure you delete your history, but also in the other applications.

So what sort of history do I leave behind? The answer is quite a lot. Most browsers will have the following things that get cached on a users machine.

Internet Browser History
Your web browser stores all of your history, this includes a list of every web site you have previously visited, every search string you have performed in the various search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live), information you have entered on websites and much much more.

Browsing History can be both convenient and inconvenient. It is useful if you have visited a site and later forget what the address was. Simply pulling up the History window you can find out what the address is. Of course there may also be times when you do not want other users of your computer to see or access such information. For example, if a friend or family member shares your computer, you might prefer that they not to be able to see what websites you've visited or what files you've downloaded.
Browser Cache or Temporary Internet Files

This stores copies of web pages, images, and media that are saved for faster viewing. Even though this isnt the Browsing History users can still get a good idea of what sites you have visited by looking at this data.

Cookies
A cookie is a file created by a website that stores information on your computer, such as your preferences when when visiting that site. An example of cookie is when a web site has a "Remember This" checkbox.Ticking the check box will create a cookie on your computer and subsequent visits to that site will remember you settings.

Saved Form and Search History
Contains a list of phrases you have entered in text fields, such as web searches, and name and address fields.

Download History
Keeps a list of files you've downloaded.

Offline Website Data
Information that web sites have stored on your computer for use without an internet connection.

Saved Passwords
Contains a list of usernames and passwords that you have specified for your browser to remember.

As you can see this is just for the browsers, when you start including other history that is left behind by other 3rd party applications the problem grows.

Maintain A Blog, Make Money Online

2009-09-02T08:39:00.000-07:00

Are you a rank and file employee who would like to earn some more cash in your free time? Or are you a student who has lots of leisure time but want to convert this into money? Or maybe you are a stay-at-home mom who would like to earn some more to have her own savings?

If time is not an issue and you have the passion for writing, why not turn into blogging?

For quite some time, a lot of people have been acquainted with blogging. However, most of them blog because they would like to freely express themselves through writing. They commonly make blogs and write as a hobby.

But what most people don't know is that you could get money from spending some time writing stuff about random subjects and just pouring your thoughts out. How does this work?

Well, for starters, you need to look for possible advertisements and the applications which would continuously supply them to your site. These advertisements could either count the number of visitors in your blog site or the clicks that their ads get as directed from your blog's links. From this, they would compensate you depending on the number of the clicks and impressions that they get from your site. Because of this, it is really important to write about interesting topics and have people get particularly interested with the product or service of the company. It is essential to maintain page rank and site traffic so that you'll earn more.

Maintain a blog, make money online now!

Using Business Blogs For Marketing Your Company

2009-09-02T08:38:00.000-07:00

An increasing number of businesses are establishing an online presence. As a cheaper alternative to websites, they are turning to blogs to promote their products and services. Business blogs are also a good way for companies to communicate directly with their clients. Thus, business blogs are now an invaluable tool for marketing.

How can businesses use blogs to do effective marketing? They can exploit the immediacy of blogs. Blogs are easy to update so posts on new products and services, as well as announcements of upcoming sales, discounts and bargains, can go up on the site as soon as they are written. To complement these posts, you can also include photos and embed videos. In addition, contests can be run on the blog site, which would not only promote the business but also build traffic to the blog.

Blogs also allow for a high level of interactivity between the blogger and the visitor. You can engage your customers by inviting them to post suggestions and share their ideas on your products and services. Blog posts can also be used to answer frequently asked questions. The posts can be updated as new questions arrive.

The secret to a successful business blog is to have new posts frequently. People would lose interest in visiting the site if it is not constantly updated, and it may result in lost customers. A professional-looking design for the blog would also help a lot in making people take your business seriously.

The possibilities in using a business blog for marketing are seemingly endless. Businesses just have to be aware of how to exploit them.

How To Make Money From Your Blog By Utilizing The Space

2009-09-02T04:16:00.000-07:00

You have just set up a blog, worked up a fair amount of enthusiasm, just made a relevant post and you're ready to launch it into the blogosphere. That is all well and good but learning how to make money from your blog is crucial since it will teach you how to actually make money. If you're in it for the money, you should realize that every post and every tiny space in your blog is a possible money earner. You should optimize everything within your space so you'll be able to stretch the benefits as far as it should allow you to.

At the bottom of each post, you'll probably leave an empty space before your comment section. What you don't know is that you can use that space to maximize your income. You can post ad links or links on other topics that are found in your blog. Most people only came upon your blog through search engine searches. Only the page with the information will be displayed and after the reader is through with it, he'll probably move on to another site. To increase page views and to make your other posts known to your visitors, placing related posts will make them curious about what more can they learn from your blog.

If you want to place ads links then make sure this is relevant to your post. Create a way to make the ads part of the content they're reading. People are wary about advertisements and they think it's a waste of time to check them out. By incorporating a sentence with your ad link, it will look like a natural part of the post structure and you'll encourage your readers to click on the link. If you already have build a reputation as a blogger, your readers will take your recommendations and you'll generate a lot of clicks because of it.

Now that you have a little knowledge about how to make money from your blog, make sure that you'll optimize whatever chance is presented to you and build your credibility along with it. The only way to magnetize loyal readers is to gain their trust and that is something you should endeavour to do.

Blogging For Success: What You Need

2009-09-02T04:15:00.000-07:00

Blogging For Success: What You Need

Blogging for success is not a difficult thing to do if you really know what it is that you are doing. There are certain aspects of making money with a blog that everyone should follow and everyone should put into practice.

SEO

Your blog should have proper SEO. SEO stands for search engine optimization and it is the means and the way that you are found for the keywords that you want to rank for and it’s the way Google or Yahoo or MSN sees what’s on your page. A proper SEO’d blog will rank higher than a blog that is not properly SEO’d.

The best way to SEO a blog is with a plug-in. If you use Wordpress and your own host (which if you aren’t, shame on you) then there are a few plug-ins you can insert that will do all of the heavy lifting for you. The best one is the All In One SEO plug-in. You can find it by Googling it. With a few clicks it will properly optimize your blog for you. Good stuff.

You also need to monetize your blog properly. There are several ways to do this. Some people choose to use Adsense and some people choose to use affiliate products. Either way you will be able to make money. There is a lot of argument as to which will make you more money but it really depends on how you market your content. Some people make thousands of dollars a month with Adsense and some people make thousands of dollars a month with affiliate marketing. It all depends on what you want to do. There is a sales aspect to affiliate marketing though so if you want to be just a straight content provider then Adsense is your answer.

Search Engine Marketing And Blogging Techniques

2009-09-02T04:13:00.000-07:00

Search engines are the web’s most used means of driving traffic to websites, and knowledge of search engine marketing is essential to anybody wanting to succeed online. However knowledge of Blogging techniques is also instrumental in gaining you a high position in the search engine listings fore your chosen keyword.

Sure, you can promote your site in many ways and there are more ways than a top listing on a search engine to drive traffic to your website, but there is nothing to beat a top ten listing on Google or one of the other major search engines such as Ask, Yahoo or MSN to provide you with consistent sustained traffic day after day after day.

It is not difficult to get listed in a search engine, but it not so easy to be listed in that all-important top 20 position. The top 10 is the ideal, but if you are listed on one of the first two pages of a major search engine, then the traffic will come to you. That is guaranteed. Naturally, the higher you are listed the better, and you will do an awful lot better on the first page than on the second, but if the best you can do is page three then you are going to need a lot more than search engines to help you attract business.

So what are the main essentials of search engine marketing? You have two objectives, the first being to get listed and the second to reach the top 20. It is easy, as I stated earlier, to get listed on a search engine. Many design their site, submit it to Google and then wait for the Google Dance, when Google carries out its World Wide Web search for websites.

Forget that: do not submit your site to Google or any of the other search engines because that can delay your listing. Instead do one of two things. The best is to write a few articles on the topic of your website and submit them to the top article directories. If you can’t write, or if English is not your main language, then use an article ghostwriter. There are plenty people online offering article services at good rates.

Google and the rest frequently visit the higher ranked article directories and will pick up on the link to your website in your ‘author’s resource’, or bio. When they find your site, you get listed, and that can happen in less than 24 hours. That is the main way, but the other is blogs. Add a blog to your site, and it will soon be listed. Google, especially, likes blogs, particularly if it is a Blogger blog, since Blogger is owned by Google. You are virtually guaranteed a listing. If you are not too keen on Blogger, you can switch once your site has been listed. Word press is arguably the most versatile Blogging software available at the moment, especially if you are running it from your own web space.

Once you are listed, you can improve your position by optimizing each website page for the topic of that page. Don’t forget that search engines list each page separately, and so each page should be optimized separately. However, you should initially focus on your index page, since it is that page which almost invariable gets listed highest. Once your site does have a reasonable high listing, it is possible that another page could get listed higher than your index page, although this is not generally the case.

You can then post a blog on the topic of the page, and add new postings on a regular basis. You should also include a link to your blog from your web pages and a link on your blog sidebar to your website. This will enhance the probability of your home web page being listed, as it also will your blog, since your blog can also be listed on Google and other search engines.

There are some simple things that you can do to make your index page more attractive to the search engines. Bear in mind that your listing is for one search term only, as used by someone seeking information related to the topic of your page. You can receive another listing for another search term (or keyword) on a different index. So, what you must do is to determine the best keyword for which to optimize your index page.

Once you have decided that, include it in the title of your page and place the title in ‘title’ tags. Try to make the title a bit longer than your keyword, so if your keyword is, say, ‘lock design’, make the title ‘The History of Lock Design’, for example. The main heading for the page need not be the same, but should also contain your keyword. A good heading, for example, would be ‘Lock Design from the 18th Century’. Place that in H1 tags to tell the search engine algorithm that the heading contains important text relating to your web page.

In order to accentuate the fact the ‘lock design’ is an important term in your web page, use it in the first 100 characters and again in the last paragraph of the page. You can also use it once for every 300 words if you want, but don’t overuse it. Use plenty of words that relate to the term, in order that the algorithm used to determine the relevance of your page can decide what the actual subject is. Hence, in the example used, it is still not clear if the locks referred to are canal locks or security locks. You should make that clear in the syntax of the page.

For example, your title could be changed to ‘Canal Lock Design from the 18th Century’, and you could make lots of reference to canals, barges, longboats, plan, construction, locks and design. These words will make it clear to the statistical mathematical formula that makes up the LSI (latent semantic indexing) algorithm that determines the meaning of the words used on your page, and determines that the page is about canal locks and not locks and keys.

There are many other ways in which you can optimize your web page to make it more relevant to the search term, and the more relevant the search engine deems it, then the higher the listing in the index for that specific keyword. Blogging can enhance the effect of your SEO, and not only improve your listing position, but also be listed have itself, thus providing evened more traffic to your website.

Search engine marketing involves a good knowledge of search engines and how they work, but if you get it right then the rewards can be very high in terms of traffic highly targeted to your product. The problem is, unless you know how, or have the right advice from people who know what they are talking about rather than trying to sell you a service, and then it takes a long time to learn.

Facebook Knicker Protest In India

2009-03-08T19:08:00.000-07:00

A group of young Indian women is bombarding religious zealots with pink knickers in a Valentine's Day protest.

They now have more than 18,000 supporters signed up to oppose the men who are intent on curbing female freedom on the day for lovers.

Activist Benson Isaac told Sky News Online: "It was started last week by a friend, Nisha Susan, on Facebook but we never thought it would get this big with thousands sending their underwear."

Known as The Consortium of Pub-going, Loose and Forward Women, the group unleashed their frilly fury at male members of Sri Ram Sena - Lord Ram's Army.

"SRS is a fringe element of the Hindi right wing that is very violent and they condemn any Western culture, restricting freedom for women, going to pubs or even unmarried couples enjoying St Valentine's," Mr Isaac said.

Last month several young women were filmed being assaulted by SRS men after visiting a lounge bar in Mangalore.

The Minister for Women, Renuka Chowdhury, denounced the attack as a "Talibanisation" of India, where radicals also oppose cricket cheerleaders and kissing in Bollywood films.

"It is basically an attitude towards women, using the whole thing of Indian culture to restrict movement," said Mr Isaac.

In response the group is urging supporters to visit pubs on Valentine's Day and post pink "chaddi" - Hindi slang for underwear - to the zealots.

"Thousands of young people are sending them chaddi from around the country and groups are even sending them in big packs of 50 to 100 at a time," said Mr Isaac.

He added: "We haven't got a direct response back from SRS yet but we have had very nasty phone calls - this is our protest against the girls who were attacked."

Computer Worm Goes Out Of Control

2009-03-08T18:57:00.000-07:00

A computer virus attacking Microsoft Windows has infected almost nine million machines and is spreading faster than ever before.

Experts say the worm has "skyrocketed" in recent days.

It is sweeping through thousands of offices in the UK and has affected computers at the Ministry of Defence.

The virus - known variously as Conficker, Kido or Downadup - burrows deep into the operating system and tricks the machine into running the infected program.

Once the worm is running on the computer it automatically starts to download more malicious programs from hackers' websites, with devastating effects.

The majority of computers infected by the worm, which was first identified in October, are in Russia, China, Brazil and India. But the virus is now taking hold in the UK.

The worm has password cracking capabilities, often successful because company passwords sometimes match a predefined password list that it carries.

Eddy Willems, a security analyst with anti-virus firm Kaspersky Labs, said that a new strain of the worm was now causing additional problems.

Computer users are advised to ensure their anti-virus software, operating system and firewall is up to date, and that they have installed a Microsoft patch designed to combat the problem.

Experts have also warned the virus could spread by copying itself to USB memory sticks shared between computers, and urged users to use caution.

Track Your Mates With Google Tool

2009-03-08T18:52:00.000-07:00

The latest innovation by Google could let users track the whereabouts of friends, children or even straying spouses.

The Latitude service has been added to Google Maps on some types of mobile phones and BlackBerrys.

Users appear as a small dot on a map, allowing friends to instantly find out where they are.

"Now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather," Google said in a blog post.

Handsets with GPS are extremely accurate, showing where the user is to within a couple of metres.

Without GPS, it could be metres - or even kilometres - wrong, depending on the nearest mobile phone mast.

Dismissing fears of Big Brother-style surveillance, Google said each individual chooses to be tracked by the system - and controls who can see it.

They can even lie by manually changing the location.

"For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere - perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls," Google's blog added.

The search company insist they will not save information on where users have been.

"We store only the most recent automatic update or location you manually enter," a spokeswoman said.

The Google Maps add-on has been launched just weeks after Google axed its Dodgeball service, which used text alerts.

Latitude is available in 27 countries on Android, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Symbian 60, as well as PCs.

Similar geosocial networking services are already provided by smaller companies, such as Loopt and BrightKite.

Water, Water Everywhere... from Nowhere

2009-03-08T00:06:00.000-08:00

RAIN FALLS from a perfectly cloudless sky; or it falls in a faucet-like steady stream or in an impossibly localized fashion. Water drips from a ceiling above which are no pipes; sometimes the ceiling is even dry. The causes for these water phenomena are inexplicable, yet they have occurred on numerous occasions throughout history – and continue to take place.

April, 1842 – It was documented that water poured from the sky in a steady stream over a particular small point in Noirtonfontaine, France. It continued for more than two days without any logical meteorological explanation.

October, 1886 – Although there were no clouds in the sky to account for the phenomenon, a steady rain soaked a piece of land in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. It could have been dismissed at a freak rainfall if it had not lasted for an astonishing 14 days!

October 1886 – Over a three-week period, the Charlotte Chronicle (North Carolina) reported, several eyewitnesses saw rain fall onto a certain spot between two red oak trees every afternoon at 3 p.m. It lasted for one half hour, then stopped. Stranger still, the sky was always sunny.

Fall, 1886 – How is it possible for rain to fall on an area measuring just 10 square feet? It happened in Aiken, South Carolina.

November, 1886 – An area not much bigger – just 25 feet wide – was the focus of a steady flow of water from the sky in Dawson, Georgia.

November, 1892 – A peachtree was sole beneficiary of a bizarre rain that came down in Brownsville, Pennsylvania. Witnesses said the rain seemed to come out of thin air just several feet above the tree and fall in an area about 14 feet surrounding the thirsty tree.

Water poltergeists

Water dropping from seemingly nowhere outside is one thing, but when it occurs indoors without any logical cause, that’s quite another thing. Paranormal researchers have, in many cases, found this water manifestation to an element of poltergeist activity that is occurring in the house. Usually there are other symptoms as well: banging on the walls, doors opening and closing of their own accord, lights going off and on, odd odors and more. It is thought that this poltergeist phenomena is a kind of psychic activity generated by a member of the household.

August 1995 – During a summer drought in Lancashire, England, the Gardner family was plagued by water dripping from their ceilings and walls. This has been going on for 10 months before a paranormal investigator was brought in. The attic space above the wet ceiling was found to be “bone dry.”

November, 1972 – An odd case centered around a nine-year-old boy named Eugenio Rossi in Nuoro, Sardinia. Suffering from a liver ailment, the boy was hospitalized. Shortly thereafter, water inexplicably began to seep up through the floor of his hospital room. Changing rooms didn’t help. Wherever the hospital staff moved him – a total of five times – the puddles would appear.

1963 – The Martin family of Methuen, Massachusetts was forced to move from their home because of their water poltergeist. In this case, apart from the water dripping from walls and ceilings, it was on occasion described as literally “spurting” from various points throughout the house. Unfortunately, moving didn’t help. The phenomenon continued in the Martin’s new home.

August 1919 – A rectory in Norfolk, England had more than water to contend with. When the residents noticed oily patches on the ceiling, investigators were brought in the find the cause. To their astonishment, they began to collect the drippings at the rate of a quart every 10 minutes. Some of it was plain water, but the rest appeared to be kerosene, gasoline, alcohol and sandalwood oil – as much as 50 gallons of the stuff. No cause was discovered.

The Real-Life Wizard Behind "Harry Potter"

2009-03-07T23:57:00.000-08:00

Over 600 years before Hogwarts School was created, an alchemist claimed to have discovered the incredible secrets of "the sorcerer's stone" - possibly even immortality

The phenomenal success of J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter books, and the film based on "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone," is introducing a whole new generation of children (and their parents) to the world of magic, sorcery and alchemy.

What is not widely known, however, is that at least one of the characters - and his magical quest - referred to in "Harry Potter" is based on a real alchemist and his strange experiments.

According to the Harry Potter stories, Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, earned his reputation as a great wizard due, in part, to his work on alchemy with his partner, Nicolas Flamel. And although Dumbledore, Harry and all the other teachers and students at Hogwarts are fictional, Nicholas Flamel was a real-life alchemist who dabbled in some of the most mystical corners of the magical arts, including the quest for an Elixir of Life. Some wonder, in fact, if Flamel is still alive!

When "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" was written, Flamel's age was pegged at 665 years. That would be just about right since the real Flamel was born in France around 1330. Through an astonishing series of events, he became one of the most famous alchemists of the 14th century. And his story is almost as fantastic and enchanting as Harry Potter's.

An Incredible Dream Comes True

As an adult, Nicholas Flamel worked as a bookseller in Paris. It was a humble trade, but one that provided him with the relatively rare abilities to read and write. He worked from a small stall near the Cathedral of Saint-Jacques la Boucherie where, with his assistants, he copied and "illuminated" (illustrated) books.

One night, Flamel had a strange and vivid dream in which an angel appeared to him. The radiant, winged creature presented to Flamel a beautiful book with pages that seemed to be of fine bark and a cover of worked copper. Flamel later wrote down what the angel spoke to him: "Look well at this book, Nicholas. At first you will understand nothing in it - neither you nor any other man. But one day you will see in it that which no other man will be able to see."

Just as Flamel was about to take the book from the angel's hands, he awoke from his dream. Soon after, however, the dream was to weave its way into reality. One day when Flamel was working alone in his shop, a stranger approached him who was desperate to sell an old book for some much-needed money. Flamel immediately recognized the strange, copper-bound book as the one offered by the angel in his dream. He eagerly bought it for the sum of two florins.

The copper cover was engraved with peculiar diagrams and words, only some of which Flamel recognized as Greek. The pages were like none he had ever encountered in his trade. Instead of parchment, they seemed to be made from the bark of sapling trees. Flamel was able to discern from the first pages of the book that it was written by someone who called himself Abraham the Jew - "a prince, priest, Levite, astrologer and philosopher."

The strong memory of his dream and his own intuition convinced Flamel that this was no ordinary book - that it contained arcane knowledge that he feared he might not be qualified to read and understand. It could contain, he felt, the very secrets of nature and life.

Flamel's trade had brought him familiarity with the writings of the alchemists of his day, and he knew something of transmutation (the changing of one thing into another, such as lead into gold) and knew well the many symbols that alchemists used. But the symbols and writing in this book were beyond Flamel's understanding, although he strove to solve its mysteries for over 21 years.

The Quest for Translation

Because the book had been written by a Jew and much of its text was in ancient Hebrew, he reasoned that a scholarly Jew might be able to help him translate the book. Unfortunately, religious persecution had recently driven all of the Jews out of France. After copying only a few pages of the book, Flamel packed them and embarked on a pilgrimage to Spain, where many of the exiled Jews had settled.

The journey was unsuccessful, however. Many of the Jews, understandably suspicious of Christians at this time, were reluctant to help Flamel, so he began his journey home. Flamel had all but given up his quest when he chanced upon an introduction to a very old, learned Jew by the name of Maestro Canches who lived in Leon. Canches, too, was not eager to help Flamel until he mentioned Abraham the Jew. Canches had certainly heard of this great sage who was wise in the teachings of the mysterious kabbalah.

Canches was able to translate the few pages that Flamel brought with him and wanted to return to Paris with him to examine the rest of the book. But Jews were still not allowed in Paris and Canches' extreme old age would have made the journey difficult anyway. As fate would have it, Canches died before he could help Flamel any further.

Successful Transmutation

Returning to his Paris shop and his wife, Flamel seemed a changed man - joyous and full of life. He felt somehow transformed by his encounter with Canches. Though the old Jew had deciphered only those few pages, Flamel was able to use that knowledge to understand the entire book. He continued to study, research and meditate on the mysterious book for three years, after which he was able to perform a feat that had eluded alchemists for centuries - transmutation. Following the exact instructions provided by Abraham the Jew in the book, Flamel claimed to transform a half-pound of mercury into silver, and then into pure gold.

This was said to be accomplished with the aid of a "philosopher's stone." (Incidentally, the British title of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone" is "Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone.") For Flamel, this was reputed to include a strange, reddish "projection powder."

Turning base metals into silver and gold... it's the stuff of superstition, fantasy and folklore, right? Quite possibly. The historical records show, however, that this humble bookseller inexplicably became wealthy at this time - so wealthy, in fact, that he built housing for the poor, established free hospitals and made generous donations to churches. Virtually none of his newfound wealth was used to enhance his own way of living, but was used exclusively for charitable purposes. The transmutation Flamel achieved was not only with metals, it was said, but within his own mind and heart. But if transmutation is impossible, what was the source of Flamel's riches?

Flamel Dies... or Does He?

In the Harry Potter book, the evil Lord Voldemort seeks the sorcerer's stone to attain immortality. The same power of the stone that brings about transmutation can also result in the Elixir of Life, which would allow a person to live forever... or, by some accounts, at least 1,000 years.

Part of the legend that surrounds the true story of Nicholas Flamel is that he succeeded in the transmutation of metals and in achieving immortality.

The historical records say that Flamel died at the ripe old age of 88 - a very great age at that time. But there is a curious footnote to this story that causes one to wonder.

After Flamel's official death, his house was ransacked again and again by those seeking the philosopher's stone and the miraculous "projection powder." It was never found. Missing too was the book of Abraham the Jew. During the reign of Louis XIII in the first half of the 17th century, however, a descendent of Flamel by the name of Dubois might have inherited the book and some of the projection powder. With the king himself as a witness, Dubois allegedly used the powder to turn balls of lead into gold. This startling feat attracted the attention of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu who demanded to know how the powder worked. But Dubois only possessed what remained of his ancestor's powder and was unable to read the book of Abraham the Jew. He therefore could not reveal Flamel's secrets.

It is said that Richelieu took the book of Abraham the Jew and built a laboratory to exploit its secrets. The attempt was unsuccessful, however, and all traces of the book, save perhaps for a few of its illustrations, have since disappeared.

Later in that century, King Louis XIV dispatched an archeologist named Paul Lucas on a scientific fact-finding mission in the East. While in Broussa, Turkey, Lucas met an old philosopher who told him that there were wise men in the world who possessed knowledge of the philosopher's stone, who kept that knowledge to themselves, and who lived many hundreds, even thousands of years. Nicholas Flamel, he told Lucas, is one of those men. The old man even told Lucas of the book of Abraham the Jew and how it came into Flamel's possession. Most amazingly, he told Lucas that Flamel and his wife were still alive! Their funerals were faked, he said, and both of them migrated to India, where they still lived.

Is it possible that Flamel really did stumble upon the secret of the philosopher's stone and achieved immortality? Does the ancient knowledge of transmutation and the Elixir of Life really exist?

If so, Nicholas Flamel might still be alive. In fact, he might be taking great delight in the magical adventures of Harry Potter.

Wizardry That Would Amaze Harry Potter

2009-03-07T23:47:00.000-08:00

These scientists would fit right in at Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry - except that their astounding conjurings were not works of fiction.

The latest Harry Potter book and film, with all their wizardry, magic and bizarre scientific experimentation, puts us in mind of some real-life science experiments that in their weirdness, fantastic ambitions and astonishing implications rival anything conducted at Hogwart's. Mad or not, these scientists managed to conjure incredible manifestations, human invisibility and even attempted to build a Messiah!

John Tyndall and the Test Tube of Beasties

John Tyndall was a respected Irish physicist of the 19th century. Making his career primarily in Great Britain, Tyndall made important contributions to the study of atmospherics and radiant heat, and may be best known for his discovery of "the Tyndall effect" - the diffusion of light by large molecules and dust in the air.

One of his experiments, however, conducted in the late 1800s, sounds like something out of a computer-effects movie. Tyndall had combined a variety of vapors from nitrates, iodides and acids in a test tube to record the effects of beams of light upon them. What he saw forming in the glass tube astonished him. At first the vapors formed clouds of remarkable colors. But then they started to take on distinct and familiar shapes. The vapor clouds began to arrange themselves in the form of vases, bottles, shells and various flowers. "In one case," he said, "the cloud-bud grew rapidly into a serpent's head; a mouth was formed, and from the cloud, a cord of cloud resembling a tongue was discharged."

More incredibly, the vapor then formed itself into a perfectly symmetrical fish. "It positively assumed the form of a fish, with eyes, gills and feelers. The twoness of the animal form was displayed throughout, and no disk, coil, or speck existed on one side that did not exist on the other."

What happened here? Had Tyndall inadvertently inhaled some strange vapors and hallucinated the scene? Or were his thoughts - images from his mind - somehow made manifest in the stimulated vapors? We may never know exactly what happened in Tyndall's laboratory that day.

Sir Thomas Brown and the Spectral Plant

You have no doubt seen the famous Kirlian photographs in which the outline of a severed piece of a leaf still appears in Kirlian energy. A phenomenon similar but much more remarkable is said to have taken place in the laboratory of Sir Thomas Brown, a 17th century physician and author, when he saw the "spectre" of a plant rise from its burned remains.

In this experiment, Sir Brown took a plant and reduced it to ashes through calcination - a process in which an object is turned to powder through high temperature, then by drying, decomposing or oxidizing it. After fermenting the powder, he poured it into a vial. When heat was applied again, something unexplained occurred.

A witness wrote: "This dust thus excited by heat, shoots upward into its primitive forms; by sympathy the parts unite, and while each is returning to its destined place, we see distinctly the stalk, the leaves, and the flower arise; it is the pale spectre of a flower coming slowly forth from its ashes. The heat passes away, the magical scene declines, till the whole matter again precipitates itself into the chaos at the bottom. This vegetable phoenix thus lies concealed in its cold ashes."

In other words, when the vial was heated - even from the heat of a person's hand - a ghostly form of the original plant rose from the ashes out of the vial. All parts of the plant could distinctly be seen, according to this account, then faded away. It sounds like a conjurer's trick, but that is the story that has been passed down.

John Murray Spear and the God Machine

In their efforts to create a Utopia or a more perfect world society, many a well-intentioned scientist have been led down dark roads to the abominable. The experiments of the fictional Dr. Victor Frankenstein (and the not-so-fictional Johann Konrad Dippel) come to mind. But they may have been eclipsed in their maniacal ambitions by the work of a group led by John Murray Spear, who gathered to create nothing less than the Messiah - God himself.

Spear, a minister of the Universal Church, brought together a group in October, 1853 to a cottage on a hilltop in Lynn, Massachusetts with the intention of physically constructing "Heaven's last, best gift to man" - what they hoped would be the New Messiah. Spear was deeply into spiritualism and participated in many séances as a trance medium in which many spirits spoke through him on a great many subjects. In 1853, through automatic writing he began to channel a group of spirits who called themselves the "Band of Electricizers," directed by the spirit of Benjamin Franklin himself.

These spirits and others, claiming to be working for the elevation of humankind, provided Spear with plans for advanced ships, "thinking machines" and great planned cities. A priority, however, was the creation of the New Messiah. Spear and several other spiritualists congregated at High Rock Cottage in Lynn to begin their audacious experiment. Over a nine month period, Spear channeled the instructions for the machine while the others built it, piece by piece, "much the same way... that one decorates a Christmas tree."

The result was a crazy, if somewhat impressive, assembled mass of machined copper and zinc parts, shafts, flywheels, magnets, wires, insulators, chemical compounds and a "brain" made up of copper and zinc plates that were supposed to draw power directly from the atmosphere. All at the exorbitant cost of over $2,000.

Electricity was applied to the machine and then Spear, himself clad in metal and gemstones, sat near it. He fell into a deep trance and it was said that an umbilical of light stretched between the two. Some time later, one of the pregnant members of the group, near delivery, lay on the floor in front of the machine for two hours while she went through labor pains. And when she rose and touched the machine, the group claimed that for a few seconds their God machine actually became animate!

Did it? Critics and skeptics who saw the machine said that it did not move (except for a few dangling parts), but that it was beautifully put together. Eventually, it was torn apart by an angry mob and nothing of it appears to have survived.

Young Scientist and the Invisibility Suit

We know that today's stealth aircraft are virtually invisible to radar, but can true invisibility be achieved through electromagnetic or other means? Some believe exactly that was accomplished with the infamous "Philadelphia Experiment," but the account of that incident has become so muddled and fictionalized (like the alleged UFO crash at Roswell) that the truth may never be known.

In 1934, however, a young British scientist is said to have achieved full invisibility of himself - and he did so on a brightly lit stage in front of an audience. The scientist, whose name seems to be lost to history (might it have been "Potter"?), walked on stage in a crowded public hall in London, England and declared that he had discovered the secret to electromagnetically induced invisibility. Wearing a device he called an Electro-Helmet and other gear that witnesses said made him look like "a deep-sea diver," he stepped into an open-front cabinet. He reached up and touched two contacts above his head with both hands, then gave the signal for the switch to be thrown. The switch appeared to send a current of electricity to his strange devices and through the scientist. His body at first became transparent... and then gradually vanished from his feet to his head!

According to the story, spectators invited onto the stage could touch and feel his body within the cabinet as if he were still there, but they could not see him. "All one could see," the story goes, "was the development of a cone of light such as might be projected between the two poles of a powerful transmitter." Naturally, the inventor refused to reveal how his contraption worked, stating only that it was the result of many years of experimentation. Photos were allegedly taken of this feat, but could not explain how it was accomplished - only that he was visible one moment and invisible the next.

Was he a brilliant scientist? Or a clever magician? Or perhaps he was a graduate of some real-life version of Hogwart's School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

The REAL X-Men

2009-03-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

They have powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men or women. But unlike the characters of the comic book, these extraordinary people were quite real.

The movie version of X-Men was the hottest film in the theaters when it was released. Based on the enormously popular comic book, X-Men features a collection of human mutants - both good and evil - who were born with extraordinary and sometimes bizarre powers. With such names as Wolverine, Storm, Cyclops, Magneto and Mystique, they bound around making blades spring from their knuckles, conjuring hurricanes from the sky or manipulating their environment through telekinesis. These characters, creations of legendary comic book author and illustrator Stan Lee, live only in the imagination, on paper and now on film.

Would you believe there are real X-Men? They may not be genetic mutants, in the strictest sense, and they may not be able to threaten or save the world with their strange and fantastic powers of the body and mind, but they are extraordinary... not at all like you and me. Here's our own gallery of real-life super-powered characters.

Lightning Man
When storm clouds gather, courageous Lightning Man stands in defiance of nature to draw deadly bolts of electricity from the heavens.

Roy Cleveland Sullivan was a Forest Ranger in Virginia who had an incredible attraction to lightning... or rather it had an attraction to him. Over his 36-year career as a ranger, Sullivan was struck by lightning seven times - and survived each jolt, but not unscathed. When struck for the first time in 1942, he suffered the loss of a nail on his big toe. Twenty-seven years passed before he was struck again, this time by a bolt that singed his eyebrows off. The next year, in 1970, another strike burned Sullivan's left shoulder. Now it looked as though lightning had it out for poor Roy, and people were starting to call him The Human Lightning Rod. He didn't disappoint them. Lightning zapped him again in 1972, setting his hair on fire and convincing him to keep a container of water in his car, just in case. The water came in handy in 1973 when, seemly just to taunt Sullivan, a low-hanging cloud shot a bolt of lightning at his head, blasting him out of his car, setting his hair on fire and knocking off a shoe. The sixth strike in 1976 injured his ankle, and the seventh strike in 1977, got him when he was fishing, and put him in the hospital for treatment of chest and stomach burns. Lightning may not have been able to kill Roy Sullivan, but perhaps the threat of it did. He took his own life in 1983. Two of his lightning-singed ranger hats are on display at Guinness World Exhibit Halls.

BeastMaster
With just the power of his mind, he can command animals to do his bidding.

Vladimir Durov was no ordinary animal trainer. As a veteran performer in a Russian circus, he claimed to use a remarkable method for communicating with his canine coworkers - through telepathy. Professor W. Bechterev, head of the institute for the Investigation of the Brain in St. Petersburg, decided to test Durov's claim. Bechterev created a list of tasks that he wanted one of Durov's dogs to perform in a specific order, without any time for training. After hearing or reading the list of tasks, Durov went to his fox terrier, Pikki, took his head in his hands and stared straight into the little dog's eyes - psychicly transferring his thoughts directly into Pikki's brain. Durov released the dog and it immediately went about performing the assigned tasks. Thinking that perhaps Durov was giving the dog subtle clues with his eyes, the test was repeated with a new set of tasks, but this time with Durov blindfolded. Pikki still responded to his psychic commands.

The Electromagneto Team
Charged like superconducting human batteries, they roam the countryside thrilling all they meet with the electrifying power at their fingertips.

There have been several documented cases of people who apparently possess inexplicable electromagnetic properties:

For just a 10-week period in 1846, 14-year-old French girl Angelique Cottin's mere presence made the needles of compasses spin wildly; objects as heavy as furniture would slide away from her if she tried to touch them; objects near her would vibrate unnaturally.
Jennie Morgan of Sedalia, Missouri could emit highly-charged sparks from her fingertips that were strong enough to knock people unconscious. Animals would shun her.
After an 18-month undiagnosed illness, Canadian teenager Caroline Clare became so magnetized that metal objects, like forks and knives, stuck to her skin. The force was so powerful that another person was required to pull them off.
Inga Gaiduchenko, a 14-year-old Soviet student was also highly magnetic. Before members of the Moscow Technological Institute, she showed how spoons and pens stuck to her hands. Even non-metallic objects such as china plates and books were affected.

The Amazing Kinetitron
With her thoughts alone, a steely glance or a subtle gesture, she can move inanimate objects at will.

Nina Kulagina became one of the most famous psychics in the Soviet Union in the 1960s because of her amazing feats of telekinesis or psychokinesis. In films smuggled out of the country, Kulagina was shown to be able to move small objects placed before her on a table. Under close scientific observation, Kulagina would hold her hands a few inches above the objects, and in a few moments they would being to slide across the table top. Wooden matches, small boxes, cigarettes and Plexiglas would all react to her intense concentration. At times, objects would continue to move even when she took her hands away. In the early 1970s, Kulagina was even recruited by the Soviet government to see if she could somehow help a sick Nikita Khrushchev.

Pyro-Elasto Man
Watch him stretch his body to incredible lengths and handle red-hot flaming embers in his bare hands.

Daniel Douglas Home was either one of the most incredible psychic mediums of the mid-1800s or one of the era's cleverest magicians. The feats this Scotsman performed at close range astounded the elite and royalty of his day. In one demonstration, he entered his usual trance state and announced he was in touch with a guardian spirit that was "very tall and strong." While being watched by two witnesses who flanked him, Home shot up an additional six inches in height, and it could be clearly seen that his slippered feet were planted flatly on the floor. Home could also hold burning embers in his bare hands completely without harm, a feat he performed on a number of occasions. Sir William Crookes of the British Society for Psychical Research, once saw Home pick up a hot coal as big as an orange and hold it nonchalantly in both hands. Home even blew on the coal until it became white hot and flames flickered around his bare fingers. Crookes then inspected Home's hands and affirmed that they did not appear to be specially treated in any way - and showed absolutely no sign of blistering, scarring or burning. Crookes remarked, in fact, that Home's hands were as soft and delicate as "a woman's." In yet another performance, Homes floated out of a second-story window, paused, then floated back inside to the utter astonishment of three witnesses on the ground.

The Incredible X-Ray
There's no hiding evil deeds from the Incredible X-Ray whose penetrating X-ray vision sees all.

Koda Box, a stage performer who billed himself as "The Man with the X-Ray Eyes," astonished audiences in the early 1900s. Box first allowed audience members to completely blind him by putting coins over his eyes and fastening them in place with adhesive tape. His entire head was then bandaged in cloth, assuring everyone that he could see nothing. He then proceeded to read messages that audience participants had written on paper. He could also read books and accurately describe objects held up by members of the audience. With is elaborate blindfold in place, Box once even safely rode a bicycle through the busy traffic of New York's Times Square.

Microscopo and Telescopique
Like super-powerd human scientific instruments, these heroes use their fantastic vision to see microscopic details or great distances.

Two gentlemen might share the title of Microsopo, both having the ability to distinguish vinyl phonograph records merely by looking at the grooves with their unaided eyes! Alvah Mason first demonstrated this talent in the 1930s, and more recently, Arthur Lintgen, a resident of Philadelphia proved to none other than The Amazing Randi that he could do the same thing. Veronica Seider, a German dentist, apparently had telescopic vision. In several demonstrations she showed that she could identify people from more than a mile distance. Seider also claimed that she could see the individual red, green and blue dots that make up the picture on a color television set.

Medictron, the Healer
With the unknown force emanating from his miraculous hands, Medictron has the power to heal all forms of injuries and maladies.

John D. Reese of Youngstown, Ohio never studied medicine. In fact, it wasn't until he was about 30 years old that Reese discovered his remarkable if latent power to heal. One day in 1887, an acquaintance of Mr. Reese had fallen from a ladder and seriously injured his spine - a "severe spinal strain" his physician called it. Reese, for some reason, ran his fingers up and down the man's back, immediately after which the man announced that his pain had ceased entirely. He got up and went back to work. Reese likewise healed Hans Wagner, a shortstop for the Pittsburgh Pirates, who had been carried from the field with a back injury; he also instantly cured a politician whose hand and wrist became useless to him from so much handshaking. Doctors had told him he needed weeks and weeks of rest. After his encounter with Reese, he has perfectly fine.

Weird, Weird Rain

2009-03-07T23:42:00.000-08:00

Heads up! There's all kinds of strange stuff falling from the sky: frogs, sardines, jellyfish, alligators and maybe - just maybe - cows! Here are some documented cases of really weird precipitation.

As I sit writing this week's feature and glance out my home office window, it's pouring rain outside. One might say it's raining cats and dogs. Not literally, of course. But that's not to say that at times in many areas around the world that it hasn't rained things just as strange as felines and canines. Sometimes, things even stranger.

Weird rain is one of the more bizarre - and still largely unexplained - phenomena that is periodically (yet continually) reported from all corners of the globe. There have been accounts of frog rain, fish rain, squid rain, worm rain, even alligator rain. The logical explanation for the odd occurrences is that a tornado or strong whirlwind picked up the animals from a shallow body of water and carried them - sometimes for hundreds of miles - before dropping them on a bewildered populace. This explanation has yet to be proved, and it can't quite account for all of the documented incidents, as you'll see below.

Here are some of the more unusual cases - a small sampling from thousands of reports over the years - that defy all rational explanation.

Frogs

In 1873, Scientific American reported that Kansas City, Missouri was blanketed with frogs that dropped from the sky during a storm.
Minneapolis, Minnesota was pelted with frogs and toads in July, 1901. A news item stated: "When the storm was at its highest... there appeared as if descending directly from the sky a huge green mass. Then followed a peculiar patter, unlike that of rain or hail. When the storm abated the people found, three inches deep and covering an area of more than four blocks, a collection of a most striking variety of frogs... so thick in some places [that] travel was impossible."
The citizens of Naphlion, a city in southern Greece, were surprised one morning in May, 1981, when they awoke to find small green frogs falling from the sky. Weighing just a few ounces each, the frogs landed in trees and plopped into the streets. The Greek Meteorological Institute surmised they were picked up by a strong wind. It must have been a very strong wind. The species of frog was native to North Africa!
In 1995, reports Fortean Times Online, Nellie Straw of Sheffield, England, was driving through Scotland on holiday with her family when they encountered a severe storm. Along with the heavy rain, however, hundreds of frogs suddenly pelted her car.

Fish

A powerful whirlwind might explain a rain of small fish, but it cannot account for the ones that fell on a village in India. As many as 10 people reported picking up fish that weighed as much as eight pounds that had come crashing down on them.
In February, 1861, folks in many areas of Singapore reported a rain of fish following an earthquake. How could the two possibly correlate?
Golfers dread gathering clouds and a rain that might ruin their game. But imagine the consternation of several duffers in Bournemouth, England, in 1948 who received a shower of herring.
Priests often pray for blessings from above... but fish? In 1966, Father Leonard Bourne was dashing through a downpour across a courtyard in North Sydney, Australia, when a large fish fell from the sky and landed on his shoulder. The priest nearly caught it as it slid down his chest, but it squirmed away, fell to the flooded ground and swam away.
These things don't always happen in a heavy rain. In 1989, in Ipswich, Australia, Harold and Degen's front lawn was covered with about 800 "sardines" that rained from above during a light shower.
This report is most unusual: In an otherwise clear sky in Chilatchee, Alabama in 1956, a woman and her husband watched as a small dark cloud formed in the sky. When it was overhead, the cloud released its contents: rain, catfish, bass and bream - all of the fish alive. The dark cloud had turned to white, then dispersed.

Flesh and Blood

In 1890, Popular Science News reported that blood rained down on Messignadi, Calabria in Italy - bird's blood. It was speculated that the birds were somehow torn part by violent winds, although there were no such winds at the time. And no other parts of the bird came down - just blood.
J. Hudson's farm in Los Nietos Township, California endured a rain of flesh and blood for three minutes in 1869. The grisly fall covered several acres.
The American Journal of Science confirmed a shower of blood, fat and muscle tissue that fell on a tobacco farm near Lebanon, Tennessee in August, 1841. Field workers, who actually experienced this weird shower, said they heard a rattling noise and saw "drops of blood, as they supposed...fell from a red cloud which was flying over."

Miscellaneous

In 1881, a thunderstorm in Worcester, England, brought down tons of periwinkles and hermit crabs.
In November, 1996, a town in southern Tasmania was slimed! Several residents woke up on a Sunday morning after a night of violent thunderstorms to find a strange, white-clear jelly-like substance on their property. Apparently, it had rained either fish eggs or baby jellyfish.
A Korean fisherman, trolling off the coast of the Falkland Islands, was knocked unconscious by a single frozen squid that fell from the sky and konked him on the head.
In July, 2001, a red rain fell on Kerala, India. At first it was thought that a meteor was responsible for the strange-colored rain, but an analysis showed that the water was filled with fungal spores. Still, where did all of those red spores come from to be rained down in such concentration?
From about 1982 to 1986, kernels of corn have rained down on several houses in Evans, Colorado - tons of it, according to Gary Bryan, one of the residents. Oddly, there were no cornfields in the area that might account for the phenomenon.
In August, 2001, the Wichita, Kansas area experienced an unexplained rain of corn husks. The news report stated that "thousands of dried corn leaves fell over east Wichita - from about Central Avenue to 37th Street North, along Woodlawn Boulevard and on east - each about 20 to 30 inches long."
In 1877, several one-foot-long alligators fell on J. L. Smith's farm in South Carolina. They landed, unharmed, and started crawling around, reported The New York Times.

Perhaps the most bizarre report is one that, unfortunately, cannot be confirmed. It may be just the stuff of urban legend, but it's so weird and so amusing that had to be included. I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not it's true.

Sometime around 1990, a Japanese fishing boat was sunk in the Sea of Okhotsk off the eastern coast of Siberia by a falling cow. When the crew of the wrecked ship were fished from the water, they told authorities that they had seen several cows falling from the sky, and that one of them crashed straight through the deck and hull. At first, the story goes, the fishermen were arrested for trying to perpetrate an insurance fraud, but were released when their story was verified. It seems that a Russian transport plane carrying stolen cattle was flying overhead. When the movement of the herd within the plane threw it off balance, the plane's crew, to avoid crashing, opened the loading bay at the tail of the aircraft and drove them out to fall into the water below. True story or hoax? One investigation traced the story back to a Russian television comedy series.

The Benefit of Infrared Sauna

2009-02-17T06:38:00.000-08:00

What is infrared sauna???
Infrared sauna are just similar to old tradition sauna. But the difference between these two are, generally old traditional saunas uses stem for generating heat so that user can get health benefits. But these latest Infrared Saunas doesn’t work like that it provides its health benefits to user without taking help of stem.

There are numerous health benefits you can get from infrared saunas :

Provides deep relaxation and distress
Helps in reduction of muscular stress, tension, and physical fatigue
Reduce different pain like muscular pain, arthritis pain
Detoxification and sweating process during Far Infrared Sauna therapy helps in removing all the toxins and unwanted material from the user body
Purifies the skin glow, texture and tone and color of user body
Helps in deep cleansing, eradicate impurities and skin cells
Stimulates the immune system and helps in blood circulation
Improve muscle growth, reduce cellulite
Support in hormonal levels growth
Weight loss - User can burn their hundred of calories within few times by availing the facilities of infrared saunas

all such benefits doesn’t create any harm or side effect on your body

You can buy infrared saunas from this site : http://www.eastcoastsaunas.com/

Why I'm referring http://www.eastcoastsaunas.com/??
There are numerous reason
1. They have Safety Certifications such as International
organization for standardization, Intertek's ETL Semko Standards for the
United States of Canada, CE Certified European Safety Standards, RoHS Directive.
2. They provides many features
3. They provides a lifetime warranty on wood components against defective material

So, what are you waiting for, just order at http://www.eastcoastsaunas.com/

MS Windows 7 SKUs Announced... Like Vista Never Existed

2009-02-14T03:49:00.000-08:00

Looks like Microsoft is gearing up for the release of Windows 7, hopefully the successor to Windows XP that Vista never was. They are breaking the versions into much more market specific offerings than in the past.

Windows 7 Starter
Netbook market, can only run 3 applications at once

Windows 7 Home Basic
Limited networking, limited UI sizzle, emerging markets only

Windows 7 Home Premium
Media Center+Tablet, Limited networking, more UI sizzle

Windows 7 Professional
Corporate Version, full networking, security enhancements

Windows 7 Enterprise
Corporate Version 2, more security and workgroup features

Windows 7 Ultimate
Upgrades from Home and Professional UI and feature enhancements

Microsoft is only planning to release 2 versions to major markets for retail; Home Premium and Professional. Both of those versions will contain media for Ultimate and users can go through the online activation and upgrade if they choose. Corporate offerings are similarly twofold; Professional and Enterprise. Final decisions are still being made in regards to rollback options for users who might want to try but only with the option to revert back at will. Q4 09 is the only timeline we have so far and still no hints on pricing. With Vista as the opening act one can only guess that the Windows 7 headliner should rock the house.

Stylish Classic Gaming Ties

2009-02-14T03:47:00.001-08:00

By Andrew Liszewski

I truly feel bad for anyone who has to wear a tie to work (or pants, a shirt, and pretty much anything except pajamas) but they at least provide a wearable canvas allowing you to express yourself to co-workers and the powers that be. For example, any gamers who’ve found themselves stuck in a crappy 9 to 5 can now show their love for 4 different classic titles including Asteroids, Tetris, Space Invaders and Pong. Each ‘Game Tie’ is made from microfiber, no fancy schmancy silk here, and they’re all available from Amazon for just $24.95 each.

Google software for tracking mobile users coming to iPhone

2009-02-14T03:43:00.000-08:00

Google this morning announced new software that will let mobile phone users share their whereabouts with family or friends, and it's due to turn up on the iPhone shortly.

Dubbed Google Latitude, the technology is actually a new feature of the search giant's Maps software for mobile phones and an iGoogle gadget that can be installed on your computer.

"Once you've opted in to Latitude, you can see the approximate location of your friends and loved ones who have decided to share their location with you," Google said.

"So now you can do things like see if your spouse is stuck in traffic on the way home from work, notice that a buddy is in town for the weekend, or take comfort in knowing that a loved one's flight landed safely, despite bad weather."

The new software also ties into the company's existing fleet of communication services, letting family and friends keep in constant touch through SMS messages, Google Talk, Gmail, or by status message updates. Users can also change their profile photo on the fly.

At the same time, the Mountain View-based firm said it recognizes the sensitivity of location data and has thus built "fine-grained privacy controls" right into the application. Everything about the new Latitude is said to be opt-in, allowing users to not only control exactly who gets to see their location, but also what location they see.

"For instance, let's say you are in Rome. Instead of having your approximate location detected and shared automatically, you can manually set your location for elsewhere -- perhaps a visit to Niagara Falls," Google said. "Since you may not want to share the same information with everyone, Latitude lets you change the settings on a friend-by-friend basis. So for each person, you can choose to share your best available location or your city-level location, or you can hide."

Latitude is currently available in 27 countries on the Blackberry, S60, and Windows Mobile operating systems via google.com/latitude. In the coming days, Google plans to expand the service to its Android-powered handsets. Latitude is also coming to the iPhone "very soon" through the Google Mobile App available for download on the App Store, the company said.

Meanwhile, computer users can visit google.com/latitude on their desktop or notebook to install the Latitude iGoogle gadget and share their location right from their computer.

List of ghostcam

2009-02-07T05:24:00.000-08:00

This is the List of ghostcam i found on google:

Willard Library - Evansville, Indiana - http://www.libraryghost.com/
BBC - Lincolnshire, East of England - There is not much to this one - http://www.bbc.co.uk/lincolnshire/webcams/webcampic_ghostcam.htm
Abandoned Hospital - Oklahoma City, OK - http://www.researchwebcam.net/
Linen Mill - Ireland - http://www.irelandseye.com/ghost/webcam/iugeur3ig.htm
Llancaiach Fawr Manor Caerphilly - South East Wales - http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/southeast/sites/caerphilly/pages/ghostcam.html
http://spiritkeep.net/ghosts/ghostcams.html

Top 10 Earth Mysteries

2009-02-07T05:12:00.000-08:00

The Earth is a mysterious place. There is much going on around us every day that goes unexplained. For all our advanced technology and scientific understanding, there are events that occur, more or less, on a regular basis for which (as yet) we have no answers. Here is a list, in no particular order, of 10 of the most perplexing, documented phenomena that have baffled us for years - in some cases, decades and much longer.

1. Animals Encased in Stone

In 1821, Tilloch's Philosophical Magazine carried an unusual item about a stone mason named David Virtue who made an astonishing discovery while working on a large chunk of rock that had come from about 22 feet below the surface. Upon breaking it open "he found a lizard embedded in the stone. It was coiled up in a round cavity of its own form, being an exact impression of the animal. It was about an inch and a quarter long, of a brownish yellow color, and had a round head, with bright sparkling projecting eyes. It was apparently dead, but after being about five minutes exposed to the air it showed signs of life. It soon ran about with much celerity."

There are numerous documented accounts of such findings, mostly involving frogs, toads or lizards. Most often the animals come out alive. And very often there is an imprint of their skin or shape on the cavity in which they are entombed. And this raises a number of interesting questions: How could the animal have gotten in there and survived? How did rock - which geology tells us takes hundreds if not thousands of years to form - take shape around the animal? How long could the animal have been in there?

2. Cattle Mutilations

"We were passing down this road, and there was a thunderstorm a coming up behind us. We smelled this animal as we come by. We came back to check on it, and found it was mutilated. We examined it and its sexual organs was taken out. Its eyes were taken out, and its eyelashes were taken out. Well, there wasn't no predators. Couldn't have been killed by a predator cause all the surgical work was done by an expert..." Such was the report of rancher C.E. Potts in 1990.

The report is typical for the phenomenon, which began to be documented in the early 1970s when reports came in from ranchers in Minnesota and Kansas. The mutilations were like nothing they had ever seen with their cattle; they seemed to have a surgical precision that ruled out predators (whose work ranchers were quite familiar with). The selectivity is also unusual: often only the eyes, tongue or sexual organs have been removed, and quite often there is an unexplained absence of blood from the scene. Theories to explain the mutilations include Satanic cults, aliens, government experiments (unmarked black helicopters are sometimes seen in the vicinity) and bizarre diseases. As yet, however, no conclusive answers have ever been found.

3. Unexplained Hums

Citizens in Britain and portions of the Southwestern U.S. have been complaining about a maddening hum that just won't go away. And researchers have been unable to pinpoint its source. Not everyone can hear the low-pitched hum, and those who do say that it seems artificial in nature - and is driving them crazy. In 1977, a British newspaper received nearly 800 letters from people complaining of loss of sleep, irritability, deteriorating health, inability to read or study because of the incessant hum.

Most famous in the U.S. is the Taos Hum. There the annoyance was so acute for the "hearers" in Taos, New Mexico that they banded together in 1993 and petitioned Congress to investigate and help them find the source of the noise. No conclusive causes were discovered. One prevailing theory holds that the hum is created by a military communications system used to contact submarines.

4. Ball Lightning

In January 1984, ball lightning measuring about four inches in diameter entered a Russian passenger aircraft and, according to the Russian news release, "flew above the heads of the stunned passengers. In the tail section of the airliner, it divided into two glowing crescents which then joined together again and left the plane almost noiselessly." The ball lightning left two holes in the plane.

Ball lightning is another natural phenomena for which science has yet to come up with a full explanation. The problem for scientists is that the manifestation of the phenomenon is so rare that it is almost impossible to study. Attempts have been made to recreate it artificially in the laboratory, but an actual specimen of naturally occurring ball lightning has yet to be captured for study. This may be impossible since the phenomenon is fleeting - floating about for awhile and then fading away or exploding with a loud pop.

What makes ball lighting so fascinating and puzzling is its strange "behavior." Witnesses have said that it moves about as if with a kind of intelligence, following patterns on walls or furniture, and seeming to avoid obstacles. More mysterious still is its ability to pass through solid objects. Sometimes it leaves holes, as with the airliner above, but it has also been seen to pass through window glass and even walls without even leaving a mark.

5. Spooklights

This might be a phenomenon related to ball lightning... then again it might not be. No one really knows what the many "spooklights" reported around the world are caused by. And there are many. Most famous, perhaps, are the Marfa Lights seen for generations near Marfa in Western Texas. The lights appear almost nightly and can be seen at a distance from Highway 90. Yet when investigators try to approach the lights, nothing can be seen.

Other spooklights include: The Tri-State Spooklight near the borders of Oklahoma, Kansas and Missouri; the Brown Mountain Lights near Morganton, North Carolina; the Gurdon Light near Gurdon, Arkansas; the Cemetery Lights of Silver Cliff Colorado; the Hebron Light in Maryland; the Hornet Spook Light in Southwest Missouri; and the Peakland Spooklights in Britain.

There are many unproved theories, of course, including alien activity, mirages, ghosts (usually headless railroad workers), and ball lightning induced by tectonic stresses in rocks.

6. Weird Clouds

Clouds are fluffy, benign masses of water vapor, right? Consider this: In an otherwise clear September sky near Agen, France in 1814, a small, white, spherical cloud appeared. It floated motionless for a while before beginning to spin and head quickly southward. Witnesses reported that deafening rumbling noises thundered from the cloud, and then it suddenly exploded in a shower of rocks and stones. The cloud then slowly faded away.

This is one case of extremely rare and highly unusual behavior from clouds. Other documented reports tell of clouds that move against the wind, clouds that rain insects or carry peculiar shadows. There is even a story of a man from Oyster Bay, Long Island who was attacked by a spitting cloud. It's difficult to come up with any kind of rational explanations for these weird tales.

7. Fish Falls

One of the most recent examples of fish falling from the sky took place the summer of 2000 in Ethiopia. A local newspaper reported: "The unusual rain of fish, which dropped in millions from the air - some dead and others still struggling - created panic among the mostly religious farmers." This is just one of countless case studies of rains of fish, frogs, periwinkles - even alligators - that have been cataloged over the centuries, many by famed paranormal researcher Charles Fort. (Such rains of creatures have been, in fact, come to be known as "Fortean" activity.)

Most often these rains of animals are attributed to severe storms, tornadoes, water spouts and related phenomena. Although the theory has not yet been proved, it holds that strong winds pick up the fish or frogs from bodies of water such as ponds, streams and lakes, carry them aloft - sometimes for miles and miles - and then drop them over land.

The peculiar fact that challenges this theory is this: in most cases, the rains are of one kind of animal only. It rains one species of herring, for example, or a particular kind of frog. How can this be explained? Could a powerful gust of wind be so discriminating? If the storm scooped up water from a pond, wouldn't it rain all kinds of things one finds in a pond - frogs, toads, fish, weeds, sticks and probably beer cans?

8. Crop Circles

I hesitate to include crop circles because I'm nearly convinced that they are all probably manmade. Yet, even though many groups of people have come forward to admit that they have designed and created the sometimes elaborate - and quite often beautiful - crop formations, there remains a diehard faction of believers that insists that at least some crop circles are caused by some unexplained phenomenon.

Crop circles have been reported in nearly every country on Earth. In fact, according to Crop Circle Central, the only major countries that have never reported formations are China and South Africa. Plain round crop circles as we know them began to appear in abundance in the 1970s. But then in 1990, we began to see far more intricate and complex pictograms. Believers suggested they might be a form of communication from extraterrestrials - or from the Earth itself. Those who say they are not manmade point to several peculiarities found in the affected crops: woven stalks, cellular changes in the grain stalks, and strange phenomena experienced by researchers examining the circles, such as unexplained equipment failures, sounds and other physical effects.

9. The Tunguska Event

After 90 years, the explosive event at Tunguska, Siberia in 1908 remains one of the most puzzling natural disasters in recent history. On June 30 of that year, a blazing fireball descended from the sky and devastated an area about half the size of Rhode Island. Trees were felled for miles in a radial pattern, fires burned for weeks and the sound of its thunder could be heard at great distances. It's been estimated that its explosive force was equal to more than 2,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs.

What it was that fell on Tunguska that fateful day is still a mystery. Although for many years scientists thought it was probably a meteor that exploded over the Siberian wilderness, today's best guess is that it was probably a comet. The change in theory came about because no meteor fragments could be found at the scene. In fact, there was very little evidence of any kind to explain precisely what occurred that day. This lack of hard evidence led, as if often does, to wild speculations: a UFO with a nuclear reactor had crashed; a powerful electric weapon created by Nikola Tesla was intentionally or accidentally aimed at the area from somewhere across the globe.

In recent years, the Tunguska event has received renewed attention as we realize more clearly that the Earth is at risk at almost any time from a strike from outer space.

10. Rods

"Rods" are one of the most fascinating and intriguing Earth mysteries of recent times. Discovered accidentally by filmmaker Jose Escamilla in March of 1994, what he calls "rods" are strange flying things that can only be seen on slowed-down film and videotape, and sometimes captured in still photographs. Apparently, these things - whatever they are - move too quickly to be seen with the naked eye. Escamilla first noticed them in film footage he had taken in Midway, New Mexico, and he (along with others) have since filmed and taped them in several other locations.

According to Escamilla's own definition, rods are "cigar or cylindrical shaped objects that travel at high velocities barely visible with the naked eye. They appear to be alive as they move through the air like fish swim in the sea. They appear to have fins or appendages along the torso and the torsos bend as they travel." Escamilla has several film clips and stills of the creatures on his website.

The rods measure from just a few inches to several feet in length and there seem to be a few varieties with different kinds of appendages. They have been spotted and recorded in Mexico, Arizona, Indiana, California, South Dakota, Connecticut and even Sweden. Some have even been seen underwater. Are they some unknown species of animal? If so, why has no one ever seen these creatures at rest?

source:http://paranormal.about.com