Giraffe’s body has dark and contrasting spots all over its body that provide visual stimulation and make itself familiar to your baby. The pleasant-sounding squeaker of the giraffe helps stimulate your baby’s hearing and keeps him amused. Unlike other toys which you don’t want your baby to put in his mouth, the giraffe is made of 100% natural rubber and uses food paint. The giraffe is perfect for your baby’s sore gums when teething and is completely safe.

You no longer need to worry about your child putting something in his/her mouth. Unlike those toys that uses lead paint which is harmful to your baby’s health, this Giraffe uses natural rubber and non-toxic food paint. It’s your choice. Buy a safe toy for your baby than buying some cheap toy with lead paint.

Vulli Sophie the Giraffe Teether is available $20 on Amazon.

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It means that going forward, when you shop online your credit card will be verified under ‘Verified by Visa’ or ‘Verified by Mastercard’ programme by providing a password. After august 1st, card holders who have not created a password under this program will be prompted to create a password for their card at the merchant’s website or the payment gateway.

This initiative by RBI is for sure going to get a lot of phishing emails into your mailbox with links that will look as if they are linking to your bank’s official website but actually may be a trap to get your credit card and other important information. So, make sure that you visit your bank’s official website and register for the password instead of clicking on any links in the emails you might receive in your mailbox.

Let your friends and family members know about this potential phishing attack before it’s too late.

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The Phaser 6128MFP model is a multifunction color laser printer that can print 12 ppm in color and 16ppm in black and white. It can make copies, scan and fax. Based on Emulsion Aggregate High Grade toner, the quality of the image being printed is of high quality and sharper by having smaller and consistent toner particles. The Phaser 6280 printer on the other hand is a single-function printer that can print upto 26 ppm of color prints and 31 ppm of black and white content. via

You may also be interested in color laser printers for sale.

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Spend time with family – I have not been able to spend quality time with my family this year. This is majorly due to the fact that I am not properly organised. Next year I plan to get more organised and spend more time with family and friends.

Listen and not react – I often end up reacting before even the other person is done with what she/he has to say. Next year I will work on this front and be a good listener and avoid reacting under assumptions.

Stay fit – It’s been very long since I have been doing regular exercise. Next year will see myself doing regular exercises like jogging or at least walking.

Get rid of the junk – The computer desk in my home and the office desk at my office are full of things that I don’t use. Some of these junk stuff includes very old magazines, product brochures, old letters, old software CDs etc. I will start the new year by removing all that junk stuff that I don’t use any longer.

That’s it. Those are some of the resolutions I can think of for now. I want my new year resolutions list to be simple and realistic. What are your new year resolutions?

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Wild Planet Hyper Dash

It’s one of the best selling toys for the kids this year that greatly improves the math skills, listening and coordination skills. If you are having tough time teaching addition and subtraction to your kids, this toy can help them hone their math skills while they have fun with it. This is actually a four-in-one game; four different levels help the player’s skills to progress. Level one includes only colors in the calls, level two includes both colors and numbers, level three adds commands to colors and numbers and the final level four require kids to solve basic math problems such as ‘two plus two’. The toy includes five targets and one electronic handheld unit. You can setup the targets around the room, house or throughout the yard. Then follow the announcer’s commands and tag your targets with the handheld unit as fast as you can. These four game levels will help your kids grow their speed, skill, memory, coordination and teamwork.

Blokus Classic (Strategy Games)

One of the best selling strategy board games for both kids and adults, Blokus challenges spatial thinking with its bright colors and simple rules. Blokus has a received a Mensa award for promoting healthy brain activity. The goal of this game is for players to fit all of their pieces onto the board. A piece once placed on the board can not removed and its position can not be changed. This game can be played with two, three or four players. A typical game lasts a 30 minutes and game ends when one person places all their pieces, or when all players are blocked from laying down any more of their pieces. Blokus includes 84 pieces in four vibrant colors, an instruction guide, and one game board with 400 squares.

Hasbro Playskool Busy Ball Popper

This toy has won numerous toy awards, including American Baby’s Best Toy, Child Magazine’s Best Toy, and the NAPPA Gold Award. It can keep your child engaged for longer duration with wacky sound effects and 8 lively songs to help keep the fun rolling along. Drop the five colorful balls onto the track. Watch them pop out of the top, roll down, then pop out all over again. Sometimes the balls spill over for even more interactive, put-and-take play. The busy ball popper toy provides an amazing experience for your little ones. Most ideal for young ones between the age group of 1-5 years.

Fisher-Price Smart Cycle

Smart cycle combines the fun indoor activity of video game with physical activity. Fisher-Price Smart Cycle is an all-in-one stationary bike, video game console, and educational tool. Smart Cycle is a Plug & Play system and doesn’t require a separate game system. Just connect the smart cycle to the TV, insert the game cartridge key and your child can start playing. Your child has to keep the game going by pedaling the cycle and steering through different environment with the movable handlebars. The Smart Cycle includes a game cartridge that features several fun and educational adventures that will keep your child happily entertained. The smart cycle is great source of indoor exercise for your kids, helps develop your kid’s motor skills and is easy to install and use.

EyeClops Night Vision Infrared Stealth Goggles

Can you imagine night vision? The technology that I could only dream about, when I was a kid is now available for our kids to experience for real. Eyeclops night vision provides kids young and old with an authentic night vision experience like never before. It uses the actual infra-red based night vision technology and enables clear visibility upto 50 feet in complete dark environments. There are two modes to choose from. The maximum surveillance mode which emits a barely-visible ring of red LEDs around the eyepiece so they can see up to 50 feet in absolute darkness and the stealth mode to remain completely invisible while they explore the dark landscape immediately around them. This fun and entertaining toy can keep your older kid entertained for hours.

Air Hogs Havoc Heli (RC Helicopter)

This is the smallest remote controlled helicopter in the world. The Havoc Heli offers four-way control for flying in any direction with great accuracy. The Havoc can hover in one spot, just like a real helicopter and is also equipped with a flashing blue LED light for night flying. Extraordinarily lightweight, weighing only ten grams, the helicopter is built for crash resistance. The internal battery offers twice the amount of flight time when compared to other RC helicopters. The remote control offers excellent coverage of upto 100 feet. This amazing toy can keep older kids and adults entertained for hours.

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Doing a search for ‘HD’ in YouTube will show you some videos that were uploaded in that format and from now on when you try to upload a clip to YouTube, you will see the HD upload option there. The HD playback is not the default option, you will have to specifically switch to HD mode (watch in HD) to see the videos in high quality. The normal quality YouTube videos are played at 320×180, 25fps and in mono audio while YouTube HD videos are seems to playing at 1280×720, full frame rate and AAC stereo audio.

Also I can’t seem to be able to embed a HD video from YouTube in my blog yet, perhaps we will have to wait for sometime before we could do that.

via NewTeeVee

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What’s in the kit? – There is a glittering Gmail m-velope, a bookplate style sticker that you can stick onto anything you like and a sheet of keyboard shortcut stickers that you stick onto the keypad of your laptop or desktop.

To get these stickers, all you have to do is send a self-addressed stamped envelope to “Send me some Gmail stickers already, P.O. Box 391420, Mountain View, CA 94039-1420“. And if you are an international user, you will have to enclose an international reply coupon. Send your envelopes soon, free stickers available while supply lasts.

For more info, refer to Official Gmail Blog.

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1. The Dark Knight
2. Sex and the City
3. John Adams
4. Iron Man
5. Stargate: Continuum
6. Heroes: Season 2
7. The Office: Season Four
8. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
9. Jillian Michaels – 30 Day Shred
10. Dexter – The Complete Second Season
11. Sleeping Beauty
12. House, M.D. – Season Four
13. Grey’s Anatomy: The Complete Fourth Season
14. National Treasure 2 – Book of Secrets
15. Mamma Mia!
16. Transformers
17. Batman Begins
18. Very Special Christmas Special
19. Mad Men – Season One
20. Smallville – The Complete Seventh Season
21. Wall-E
22. Stargate Atlantis – The Complete Fourth Season
23. The Bucket List
24. The Wire – The Complete Fifth Season
25. Wanted

To see the complete list of top 100 DVDs of 2008, click here.

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By the way, if you are reading this post because your computer is slow as well and want to find why your computer is so slow, know that there are many reasons due to which your computer performs slower than they actually should.

The main factors that affect the performance of your computer are as follows.

• The amount of RAM in your system.
• The number of applications running simultaneously.
• The amount of RAM that the running applications consume.
• The processor speed and the overall CPU utilization.
• The hard disk capacity, free space on disk and the hard disk type.
• Spyware, Adware and other malwares in your system.

Here are some recommendation that could possibly improve the performance of your slow computer, with immediate effect.

Upgrade the RAM – If your computer is still running on 128MB or 256MB RAM, I recommend that you consider an upgrade. Anything less than 512 MB will be obviously slow. Not because less RAM guarantees slow performance, it’s because of the operating system that eats away a major portion of the memory. RAM chips are a lot cheaper now than what they used to be. Upgrading your computer’s RAM will give you an immediate boost and visible performance difference.

Remove applications from start-up – As we keep installing applications, most of them make their way into the start-up list and automatically launch and sit in the system tray even if you don’t need them. Just get rid of such applications from startup list and free up a lot of memory.

The hard drive – A very old and slower hard disk alone can drastically affect the performance of your computer. As the hard drive becomes older, the read and write activity on the disk takes significantly longer to process than before. A new hard disk could dramatically boost the performance of your computer. That’s exactly what I did to my 4 years old computer.

Greg’s problem, with his slow computer, was resolved by removing an entry from the start-up list. The software that he had downloaded was a shareware game that connected to Internet to update the highest scores list and every time Greg started his PC, the application also loaded up. The software was buggy, I think, and consumed almost 50% of his system’s memory. Ah!

For more tips and details to handle your slow system, see troubleshooting slow system issues.

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Here are some tips and tricks to save fuel. Read them, understand them and share them with others.

1. Top up your gas tanks every time you visit the gas station. Multiple trips to the fuel station may waste a lot of fuel depending on the distance between your home and the gas station.
2. Check the tire pressure at least once every month. Maintaining proper tire pressure helps get more mileage out of your vehicle.
3. Always drive within the speed limits and if your vehicle manufacturer suggests driving in certain speed range for better mileage, why not follow that and save some fuel?
4. Eliminate unnecessary trips to wherever possible. Don’t use your vehicle for visiting friends staying nearby, shopping malls etc. Walking helps you burn calories and stay fit.
5. Use carpooling whenever possible.
6. Switch off your engine if the idle time is more than 1 minute. Every 3 minutes of engine running idle, the engine burns fuel worth 1km.
7. Get your vehicle serviced at regular intervals. A well maintained car is more fuel efficient.
8. Replace the dirty air filter in your vehicle. In most cases, replacing the dirty air filters with a new or cleaned filter improves the fuel efficiency by 10%.
9. Change engine oil at regular intervals. Depending on the type of vehicle, dirty oil can reduce the fuel efficiency by almost 2%.
10. Remove the unnecessary weight from your vehicle. Still carrying those luggage racks? Time to remove them, I guess.
11. Ease your foot off the gas pedal at least 100 meters before the red light or the place you want to stop.
12. Maintain a distance of at least 20-30 feet from the vehicle in front of you. This helps you avoid using the breaks too often. When driving in the city, it helps save a lot of fuel.
13. Make sure that your fuel cap is in good condition. A vast majority of the old cars lose a lot of fuel due to evaporation – thanks to those damaged, cracked and worn out fuel caps.
14. Using the breaks in the right way can save a lot of fuel. Anticipate the driving conditions on the road and apply breaks to stop your vehicle smoothly.
15. Don’t use high octane fuel unless your engine recognizes it. High octane fuels are usually costlier than normal fuel. If your engine can not differentiate between a regular and a high-octane fuel, don’t buy it. Save money by using normal fuel.
16. At lower speeds air conditioner of your car is less efficient. Switch off air conditioner whenever you can and save up to 20% on fuel bills.
17. Minimize idling, an idle running engine is not giving you any mileage. It’s just burning your fuel and money for nothing.
18. Take mass transit or walk or use your bike that gives more mileage than you car.
19. Driving at constant speed gives more mileage than changing speed very often.
20. If you have more than one car, for long distance travel use the car that gives more mileage. I would recommend the same for city driving also, but that’s your call.
21. Use cruise control if your vehicle’s got one. Studies have found that cars using cruise control saves 10-14% fuel.
22. At lower speeds, open your windows and switch off your air conditioner. At higher speeds, close your windows and use your air conditioners.
23. Take the route which has less traffic. Even if a route is a few kilometers longer, use it. Use it to avoid traffic jams and red lights. Sometimes you can save a lot of fuel by using a longer route.
24. On highways, driving behind another vehicle can help you save fuel. Fuel is saved because of less turbulence and wind resistance your vehicle enjoys while at the same time the vehicle in front of you creates the slipstream for you. Maintain safe though. It may be unsafe if at driving at a very high speed. Don’t follow this tip if see a risk to your life.
25. When driving down a steep, place your gear on either neutral or drive at higher gears and easy off the gas pedal.
26. Don’t be fooled by those fuel saver products. Most of the fuel saver products do not work and are not recognized by government agencies. Use a product only if it’s known to not cause any side affects to engine in lieu of the increased fuel efficiency.
27. When using air conditioner and if your car lets you change the temperature settings, avoid using the coldest temperature. Instead, put it to medium and run the blower at higher speed.

What are your tested and proven ways of saving fuel? If you have some tips on saving fuel, please mention them in the comments section below. I will add them to the list above.

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IP over Avian Carriers (IPoAC) was initially described in RFC 1149 and was released by Internet Engineering Task Force on April Fools day 1990.

Until today, I didn’t knew that IETF released RFCs on April Fools day and I believe there are several other RFCs released on April Fools day in different years.

» Further reading on Wikipedia
[tags]Humour, Internet[/tags]

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Today one of my colleague at the office received a new replacement laptop for his out of warranty laptop. The next thing he was expected to do was to take a backup of his data and return the old laptop. While he was taking a backup of his data from the old laptop, he forgot to take backup of few things which could have costed him a fortune later. Fortunately for him, he remembered those things moments before he returned his old laptop. This incident gave me a good topic to write a post on.

Here is a list of applications and different things on your desktops and laptops that you should consider taking a backup before you get rid of your old system or format your hard disk drive.

1. Email Backup – Take a backup of your outlook PST files and if you use any other email client, take a backup of downloaded emails from your respective email client applications.

2. Office Files Backup – Scan your hard disk for all the office related documents such as Word, Powerpoint, Excel, Access, PDFs, e-books etc before your hard disk gets a clean wipe. If you use any accounting application or any other application such as a contact manager that has its own internal database, don’t forget to export the data to a safe place.

3. Backup your pictures – Gone are those days when we used cameras with reels, now everyone has a digital camera and store all the photos in the computer. If you have not uploaded your picture files to any online photo album services such as Picasa or Snapfish, search for them and take a backup.

4. Chat Conversations – Who doesn’t use an IM client? If you don’t, skip to next point. Otherwise, look into your system for the saved chat conversations and take a backup. For some of you who conduct business deals, work on freelance projects and use IM clients as your primary source of communication, there’s a lot you can not afford to lose.

5. Product Keys – Don’t forget to retrieve the product keys of all the applications you had purchased. In most cases, the product key information should be in your mailbox, which you must have received from the vendor at the time of purchasing it, but just in case, make a note of all the applications you had purchased and their respective product keys.

6. Software Drivers and Patches – Did you spent a lot of time searching for the drivers for your obsolete hardware? You may want to take a backup of the drivers, don’t you? You should also consider taking a backup of the patches you had been downloading, as most of those patches may no longer be available on the vendor’s website.

7. Personalized Settings – Some applications lets you customize its settings and store the settings file in the application folder itself. If you had spent considerable amount of time towards customizing an application to your requirements, take a look at all the installed programs and take a backup of your personalized settings. This may also include the files that gets created by the games you play such as snapshot of your current game level, sound settings etc.

8. Browser Bookmarks – There are hundreds of social and online bookmarking services, but most of us [that includes me] still bookmark websites in our desktop browsers. Take a look at your bookmarks, it may have a secret link to some software download page or something you forgot about. Better, export your bookmarks and take a backup.

9. Music and Movie Files – For most of us, it may be the first task on your checklist, but for rest of us, take a backup of your music files such as MP3 and other audio and video files.

Have you have got any thing else to add to this list, what are you waiting for? Go ahead and post it in the comments section below and I will add it to the list.

Don’t forget to bookmark this page, I will keep updating it with more things as and when I discover them. As usual, click on the Share This icon below to add to bookmarks.
[tags]Backup, Hard Disk, Laptop, Product Keys, Software, System Backup[/tags]

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This add-on will enhance your GMail by offering you the following features:

• Integrates Google Reader into the Gmail interface.
• Converts the attachment paper clip to an appropriate icon.
• Gives you a conversation preview window.
• Provide you a search-by-date option.
• Offers a filter creation assistant.
• It provides several skins.
• It contains an attachment reminder.

Of course, you can turn off features you don’t like from the preference window of the add-on.

» [Download Better GMail], found via [CNET News]

[tags]Calendar, Firefox, GMail, GMail Skins, Firefox Plugin[/tags]

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Freerice is a sister of the world poverty site, Poverty.com with two goals.

1. Provide English vocabulary to everyone for free.
2. Help end world hunger by providing rice to hungry people for free.

From Freerice.com’s FAQ section:-

FreeRice has a custom database containing thousands of words at varying degrees of difficulty. There are words appropriate for people just learning English and words that will challenge the most scholarly professors. In between are thousands of words for students, business people, homemakers, doctors, truck drivers, retired people… everyone!

FreeRice automatically adjusts to your level of vocabulary. It starts by giving you words at different levels of difficulty and then, based on how you do, assigns you an approximate starting level. You then determine a more exact level for yourself as you play. When you get a word wrong, you go to an easier level. When you get three words in a row right, you go to a harder level. This one-to-three ratio is best for keeping you at the “outer fringe” of your vocabulary, where learning can take place.

There are 50 levels in all, but it is rare for people to get above level 48.

How do you donate rice by playing the vocabulary game at Freerice.com?

Everytime you get one answer right, you get 10 grains of rice to donate. The rice is paid for by the advertisers whose names you see on the bottom of your vocabulary screen. This is regular advertising for these companies, but it is also something more. Through their advertising at FreeRice, these companies support both learning (free vocabulary for everyone) and reducing hunger (free rice for the hungry).

The rice is distributed by the United Nations World Food Program (WFP). The World Food Program is the world’s largest food aid agency, working with over 1,000 other organizations in over 75 countries. In addition to providing food, the World Food Program helps hungry people to become self-reliant so that they escape hunger for good. Wherever possible, the World Food Program buys food locally to support local farmers and the local economy.

I initially said that Freerice.com is a genuine initiative, you can read more about them on WFP.

Start playing the vocabulary game at Freerice.com and help end world hunger. Also, if you could, please tell your friends about it and let your kids start playing this game. We all can make a difference!

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Bose® Suspension System

It’s only today that I discovered about their innovative suspension system and it dramatically improves the automobile suspension system. You must watch the video below to see it for yourself.

The Bose® suspension uses a modular approach to replace a vehicle’s original suspension. The proprietary Bose suspension system couples linear electromagnetic motors and power amplifiers with a set of unique control algorithms. For the first time, it is possible to have, in the same automobile, a much smoother ride than in any luxury sedan and less roll and pitch than in any sports car. The Bose research vehicle provides superior comfort by gliding smoothly over bumpy roads and superior control by keeping the car body level during aggressive maneuvers.

» Explore the Bose suspension system

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