Important Tips For An InterviewImportant Tips For An Interview

Just as no two people are exactly alike, no two job interviews you will experience are going to be exactly the same. Therefore, no list of interview tips that either we or anyone else may give you is going to be equally applicable in all situations.

However, all interviews are sales situations with the job seeker in the role of a seller. In recent years so much has been studied and written about effective selling and marketing that one could say that what had been the art of selling is now a science.

The interviewing tips that follow are based on the principles of effective salesmanship. Naturally some will be more applicable in your particular situation than others. The purpose of these tips is to help you prepare in advance for every interview. They are intended to help you orient yourself ahead of time as to what it is you have to sell as well as how you hope to make the sale.

Interviewers generally prepare for interviews and have an idea of what it is they are looking to "buy." It is possible, if the interviewer’s original concept does not describe you to a "T," that you might change the interviewer’s mind in your favor during the course of the interview. But in order to convince interviewers that what you have to offer is best for them, you must first be fully aware of what it is you have to offer and how and why it is best for them.

While you should not go to an interview unprepared and simply "wing it" you should not go to the other extreme and conclude that you can handle it all from a prepared script. Ultimately, it comes down to just two principles:

KNOW YOURSELF, which does require preparation and with which these tips can help you, and . . .

BE YOURSELF, of which Shakespeare wrote, "This above all: to thine own self be true, And it must follow, as the night to the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

12 Wordpress Plugins For Your Blogs

Plugins can easily modify and adding more functions without the need to hack into the core of your WordPress codes. The basic idea of the plugin architecture is to keep the core of WordPress relatively simple, but flexible enough that nearly every aspect of its input and output can be modified by plugins.

Click here or here if you wish to write a plugin.

The list below summarizes a few of my favorite plugins.

1. WP-DB-Backup - I lost one of my blog's database because the server could not recover it after their harddisk crashed and I had to use my old backup that was 2-3 weeks. With this plugin, I can set it to backup my database everyday and sent it to my email account automatically.

2. ImageShack Uploader - Currently I do not see that this plugin works with Wordpress 2.5. A good plugin for me since I normally upload my photos there to minimize my server web space usage.

3. Akismet Spam Blocker - The plugin that block comment and trackback spam.

4. WordPress.com Stats - A plugins that provide statistics about your visitors.

5. MyFTP - With this plugin you can navigate files and folders on your server from you blog login page.

6. Widgetize Anything - It enables you to write php script on your widgets.

7. AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget - This plugin help your visitors promote your website or blog and is a great way to gain site visitors.

8. WP-UserOnline - Let your visitors see how many users are online on your Wordpress blog.

9. Wordpress Download Monitor - Display the hits of downloads statistics on your site.

10. Top Commentators Widget - Show the top commentators at the sidebar.

11. Top 10 posts, Views per post - Show the Top 10 posts on your blog.

12. Popularity Contest - Rank your posts by popularity. Not working with Wordpress 2.5 currently.

I have not tried this Wordpress Automatic upgrade plugin. More plugins can be found here.

More plugins codex:
Adding Administration Menus, Creating Options Pages, Plugin Resources, Function Reference, Plugin API, Template Tags

10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job

While searching the internet for "feed favourite articles to you blog", the first link I get is an article titled "10 Reasons You Should Never Get a Job".

Here the reasons:

1. Income for dummies.

Getting a job and trading your time for money may seem like a good idea. There's only one problem with it. It's stupid! It's the stupidest way you can possibly generate income! This is truly income for dummies.

Don't you think your life would be much easier if you got paid while you were eating, sleeping, and playing with the kids too? Why not get paid 24/7? Get paid whether you work or not. Don't your plants grow even when you aren't tending to them? Why not your bank account?

Smart people build systems that generate income 24/7, especially passive income. This can include starting a business, building a web site, becoming an investor, or generating royalty income from creative work. The system delivers the ongoing value to people and generates income from it, and once it's in motion, it runs continuously whether you tend to it or not. From that moment on, the bulk of your time can be invested in increasing your income (by refining your system or spawning new ones) instead of merely maintaining your income.

2. Limited experience.

You might think it's important to get a job to gain experience. But that's like saying you should play golf to get experience playing golf. You gain experience from living, regardless of whether you have a job or not. A job only gives you experience at that job, but you gain "experience" doing just about anything, so that's no real benefit at all. Sit around doing nothing for a couple years, and you can call yourself an experienced meditator, philosopher, or politician.

3. Lifelong domestication.

Getting a job is like enrolling in a human domestication program. You learn how to be a good pet.

4. Too many mouths to feed.

Employee income is the most heavily taxed there is. In the USA you can expect that about half your salary will go to taxes. The tax system is designed to disguise how much you're really giving up because some of those taxes are paid by your employer, and some are deducted from your paycheck. But you can bet that from your employer's perspective, all of those taxes are considered part of your pay, as well as any other compensation you receive such as benefits.

5. Way too risky.

Many employees believe getting a job is the safest and most secure way to support themselves.

Does putting yourself in a position where someone else can turn off all your income just by saying two words ("You're fired") sound like a safe and secure situation to you? Does having only one income stream honestly sound more secure than having 10?

6. Having an evil bovine master.

When you run into an idiot in the entrepreneurial world, you can turn around and head the other way. When you run into an idiot in the corporate world, you have to turn around and say, "Sorry, boss."

7. Begging for money.

When you want to increase your income, do you have to sit up and beg your master for more money? Does it feel good to be thrown some extra Scooby Snacks now and then?

If you have a business and one customer says "no" to you, you simply say "next."

8. An inbred social life.

Many people treat their jobs as their primary social outlet. They hang out with the same people working in the same field. Such incestuous relations are social dead ends.

9. Loss of freedom.

It takes a lot of effort to tame a human being into an employee. The first thing you have to do is break the human's independent will. A good way to do this is to give them a weighty policy manual filled with nonsensical rules and regulations. This leads the new employee to become more obedient, fearing that s/he could be disciplined at any minute for something incomprehensible.

Free human beings think such rules and regulations are silly of course. The only policy they need is: "Be smart. Be nice. Do what you love. Have fun."

10. Becoming a coward.

Have you noticed that employed people have an almost endless capacity to whine about problems at their companies? But they don't really want solutions – they just want to vent and make excuses why it's all someone else's fault.

If you can't call your boss a jerk now and then without fear of getting fired, you're no longer free. You've become your master's property.

Still want a job? Click here to read more of Steve's articles.

If you find this article helpful, please leave a donation for Steve so you can enjoy the spirit of giving too.

How Fast Your Blogs Load?

Some useful web service here and here that shows general statistics about the loaded page such as the total number of objects, total load time, and size including all objects of my blogs.

Bloggers Block Tips

Don't know what to write on your blogs? What you need is to do some research.

If you go to Technorati website, you can find what's happening on the World Wide Web today. Google Trends is a tool to find what favorite topics people are searching every day.

Find out what information people are seeking at Yahoo! Answers. Check out what people hobbies at Google Groups.

Lastly eBay Pulse, a place what people are buying.

Making Money By Writing Reviews

Currently I do not actively write paid posts as I'm not a full time blogger. But I did a few reviews for ReviewMe and PayPerPost to see if I can make a few bucks. I managed to get USD$55 for the 6 reviews I did.

Paid post sites that I had not tried:
Smorty, Helium and Sponsored Reviews, Click Cash, Speedy Ads and CJ.

For more money making resource, you can find it here.

Free Pictures, Videos, Audios And Files Hostings

I'm using free pictures, videos, audios and files hosting services available on the net. It also make moving to a new server much more easier as I have less data to move.

I use these free services for my files sharing:
Image Shack (images), Zorpia (images), 4s hared (images, videos and audio), Z Share (files, images, videos, audio and flash), Vod Pod (audio and video), Rock You (slideshow), Save File, Put File, Rip Way, and Box.

Others services:
liveleak, metacafe, veoh, ovguide, and youtube

How I Select A Web Hosting Company?

Speed of the servers - This may not be accurate, I will first, surf around their website to see how fast the loading time for their main page. If it took more than 5 few seconds, it means that they have a bad server.

Value for money - It is difficult for a Singapore web hosting company to offer big size webspace as datacenter prices are quite high here. If you have one to two blogs, you do not need more than 100MB webspace. Do not go for web hosting that has many limitations, e.g. giving you only a database to use.

For local web hostings, try find it here.

If you are looking for international web hosts, you can try these: DuoServers.com, NetFirms.com, HostGator.com, BlueHost.com, Globat.com and DreamHost.com.

More cheaper web hosts : CirtexHosting.

Since there is a 30 days money back guarantee for most of the web hosting, you can try installing speedtest script on the server to test the actual speed of the hosting you are getting.

If you are not willing to pay for a hosting yet, you can still try using a free hosting available at FreeWeb7, FreeHostia, 50Webs, T35 and Unlimited MB.
More free web hosting can be found here.

Good links about web hosting:
Reseller vs. Shared Hosting
Shared or Dedicated - Which Should You Choose?
GoDaddy Sucks
HostGator Tips
Scams