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By Bill, June 28, 2008 9:23 am

There are many things to look for when you ‘taste’ wines, but first what is the best way to do this? You don’t just drink a glass of wine like you do a glass of water. When you go to a wine tasting, it is to sample many different wines, so that you can tell what you like and what you don’t. This will save you the expense of buying a wine that you may not like. But if you scoff down glass after glass you’ll soon be too drunk to discern the many different flavors. In this article we explore what you need to know to ‘taste’ wines.

 

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At a wine tasting you will be given a small amount of wine in a glass. You must hold the glass by the stem so that the temperature of it remains as it is supposed to be. If a white wine warms up, the taste may be spoiled. Red wines are meant to be a little warmer, but perhaps not as warm as your hands may be. You want to ensure the fullest taste possible. What you are looking for are those delicate aromas that may have been added to the wine by fermenting in oak barrels. Some flavors added by fermentation in the barrels may be vanilla, chocolate, cider, cinnamon, cloves and many others. You may even detect a tang of something that was growing near the grapes in the vineyard.

Using just a wrist movement, twirl the wine around the glass and then take a sniff with your mouth open, allowing the aroma of the wine to penetrate both nostrils and throat. Think about what you can smell and see if you can put a name to it. Allow a few seconds before repeating the process. When you take your first sip, make it a small one, allowing the liquid to roll over and around your tongue for a few seconds. This will ensure that all 10,000 taste buds are reached. Some wine tasters like to ‘chew’ their second mouthful, but swishing it around the mouth works just as well. Go with whatever suits you best. As you swallow the second mouthful, exhale through your nose. This allows the aromas of the wine to linger longer.

As the wine runs down your throat, it will leave trickles called ‘legs’. You will be able to feel whether these legs go off quickly from the throat like water would, or if they linger.  Is it light like water, or more full-bodied, like milk? This is the texture of the wine.

If you don’t like the particular sample you have tasted, don’t force yourself to drink the rest of it. There will be a container available to dispose excess before you go on to the next taste. Your host may be able to supply tasting notes with each sample so that you know what to look for. Wine tasting helps to develop your sensory processes so that you will soon begin to discern and enjoy more subtle aromas than you did before.

I hope you enjoyed today’s featured article, and thanks for reading!
Before you go, would you be interested in a whole short course about being a wine connoisseur that will get you started with your expertise – FAST?
If so, go to this site right now:

http://wineconnoisseur.howto-you.com

Thanks again for reading and have a great day!

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By Bill, June 20, 2008 4:16 pm

Once you’ve decided to go ahead and become a blogger, you will need to download some programs to do it. You should really have a fast Internet connection like broadband DSL or Cable first up. Trying to do it with a slow connection will be much too frustrating. Then you’ll need an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program like Filezilla, with which to upload the files you write from your computer to the server computer. They are mostly free ones and it’s not hard to do. But before you start merrily downloading free software, decide if you want to do every tiny little thing yourself, or do you just want to click your mouse a couple of times and have it done for you?

 

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Wordpress.com is a good software tool with which to build a simple blog site. If you go to the website, you will see the options for building your own site or doing it the easy way with the Wordpress prebuilt sites. If you use the easy prebuilt download option, it is totally free. The other option costs you for the domain name and the host. In some cases the domain name is free. The hosting is very reasonable at about $7.00 per month, with 12 or 24-month payment options.

Some of the hosts offer such features as a free shopping cart – which you may not want for a personal blog, but if you had something to sell you would find it necessary.

If you get the prebuilt option of Wordpress, you don’t have to do anything but register and start blogging. How easy is that? You can have all the fun without any hassles and no learning curve. It only takes about an hour to register, set up and be open to the world – or keep it private for friends and family if you wish.

To get some bells and whistles like audio, you can buy simple software that allows you to upload your own voice to your blog. You will need a headphone with a microphone and use your computer to record your voice. Make sure you have a good quality sound card.

You can get a simple software tool that allows you to record your voice and turn it into a flash button for visitors to click on if they wish. The tool generates the html code you need to do this. All you have to do is copy and paste it onto the website. You can get this tool from www.website-doityourself.com

“I hope you enjoyed today’s featured article, and thanks for reading!
Before you go, would you be interested in a whole short course about blogging that will get you started with your own blog, or a blog for your organization – FAST?
If so, go to this site right now:

http://basicblogging.howto-you.com

Thanks again for reading and have a great day!”

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By Bill, June 19, 2008 4:07 pm

Can You Afford to Retire?

Although you may have looked forward to your retirement for years, the price of living keeps on going up and the value of your investments seem to be going down. Or there may be things that you really need to purchase, or a trip that you are saving up for. So can you really afford to retire? Perhaps you need to visit your accountant before you decide.

 

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You could also search online and use one of the retirement calculators you will find there. They are quite simple to use, but you will need to put in the correct figures. You may have been offered a lump sum redundancy or retirement package deal that looks sweet, but the trouble with them is that you have all this money at once and it’s very tempting to spend up big in the first few years of your retirement.

Instead, you should be investing it in an effort to make more. Retirement years may well last for quite a long time. At least we hope so. But you need money to live on so don’t spend it all. If you do take a lump sum, be sure to roll it over to avoid a big tax bill. It’s bad enough using your hard-earned money to pay bills, let alone giving it to the taxman when you don’t have to.

Some money professionals believe people need to save 12% of their wage from about their mid-thirties on, to fund their retirement adequately. If you start even younger, then you will have the advantage of compounding to aid you in later years.

About 30% of Americans choose not to have a retirement plan, even though they could have one to which their employers contribute. This type of plan is called a 401k plan. The advantages of it are that you can take it with you from job to job and you are able to invest the money as you choose. A 401k plan also saves your tax bill, since the money goes in before being taxed.

Not such a good idea is that the employee decides how much to save and where to invest it. So if you decide to save only a tiny amount or make a bad investment, you’ll lose out. It is wise to look carefully into saving for your retirement. There is much good advice available on the Internet and there are professionals who can help. Just make sure they don’t take too big a slice as their reward.

If you can’t afford to retire, there are several options. You could do part-time work. This could be in the area of your present work, or it could be something completely different. You may have an absorbing hobby that you could make extra cash from. But remember that you won’t always be able to work, so saving is the name of the game.

“I hope you enjoyed today’s featured article, and thanks for reading!
Before you go, would you be interested in learning more tips and ideas
for your retirment planning?  If so, go to

http://retirementplanning.howto-you.com

and check out my book “How to Plan an Enjoyable Retirement.”  It contains
many good ideas and suggestions for you.

Thanks again for reading and have a great day!”

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By Bill, June 13, 2008 4:12 pm

How to Use Blogging as a Marketing Tool

Blogging is an almost ideal way to increase your sales of a product or draw people’s attention to a service that you offer. Because a blog is written in such an informal manner, it gives even the biggest corporation a face, that is, it makes it seem really personal to those who are reading.

 

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People respond to people, not to a faceless corporation. People develop trust and loyalty to other people whom they get to know. Once you develop a face for your business, you’ll find that people will relate to you in a personal manner and they’ll do business with you because of it.

You can provide good customer service through a blog. Because it is so quick and easy to use, people congregate at a blog. Many people don’t feel comfortable writing out a question in letter, or even trying to get help over the phone, so if they can just type in “Hey dude…what’s this little gizmo on the side of my gadget do?” they’ll be much more comfortable. And you may even get another customer answering their query, so your time and effort is saved.

Your blog can also be a place to provide information about your product to your potential customers. Once they see how much valuable information you give out, they will become loyal followers – and so customers.

You can drive blog traffic to your website sales pages through the use of keywords and special links in your information. These links and keywords will increase your search engine ratings considerably and the better they are the better your traffic will become.

Once you have established yourself as an expert in the field through your blog your customers will feel more comfortable buying from you. You can link to your sales pages in a website, or sell directly from your blog. You can also monetize your blog using ads such as those by Google AdSense.

While starting up an ordinary blog for social purposes is quick and easy, a blog for business is a whole new ball game and will take longer. But it’s still fun and can be an exciting challenge. The things to remember are to have great and useful content and update it frequently. If you don’t do this then your audience won’t keep on coming back.

You do need to develop your own distinct voice. Don’t write with the formality of a big company. Be human, be a little vulnerable, and you’ll soon develop a fan club.

“I hope you enjoyed today’s featured article, and thanks for reading!
Before you go, would you be interested in a whole short course about blogging that will get you started with your own blog, or a blog for your organization – FAST?
If so, go to this site right now:

http://basicblogging.howto-you.com

Thanks again for reading and have a great day!”

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By Bill, June 12, 2008 1:42 pm

Do You WANT to Retire?

Many people look forward to their retirement for years before they are old enough to do so. They daydream about all the time they’ll have to do the things they want to do. Or they may think that staying up late and then sleeping in till all hours is what they want most in the world. But do you really want to retire?

 

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For a man especially, the work he does is how he is known. He feels somewhat less a person once this is taken from him, or in the case of retirement, is given up. He is not a mechanic, or a dentist or businessman any more. He is simply ‘retired’. For many people, their work gives them an important reason to exist. Once they don’t have this work to go to every day, they fall in a heap. How many men do you hear of who actually die not long after their retirement?

You may get a great deal of satisfaction from your job. It gives you something to get up for now that the children have all left home and the grandchildren are old enough to go their own ways. Your friends are there. It’s like a second home. Why would you want to retire?

On the other hand, you may have stayed in a job you hate for years simply to get the kids through college. The boss is crabby and someone ten years younger than you was promoted above you only last week. They certainly don’t appreciate your input. You feel unimportant and come home with a headache every day. You only go because – well, what else would you do?

If you fit into the latter category; you hate your job but are reluctant to give it up because you hate the idea of retirement, think again. There are many areas where your expertise could be welcomed. How about traveling to a third world country in a voluntary work capacity? That could be the most fulfilling thing you’ve ever done.

Remember that doing nothing can be really boring. When you are bored, you are not happy. You may even pig out on chocolate so much that you become obese. Then you’d have to give up that bit of sport that is the only thing you look forward to.

But you may have a great plan of all the things you are going to do as soon as you retire. If this is you, make sure you do them. Get out there and have lots of fun while you still can – and forget about growing old!

I hope you enjoyed today’s featured article, and thanks for reading!
Before you go, would you be interested in learning more tips and ideas
for your retirment planning? If so, go to

http://retirementplanning.howto-you.com

and check out my book “How to Plan an Enjoyable Retirement.” It contains
many good ideas and suggestions for you.

Thanks again for reading and have a great day!

Comments (0)

By Bill, June 7, 2008 3:04 pm

<a href=”http://www.podcastalley.com/”> My Podcast Alley feed!</a> {pca-e3fac2c49d761689368b5327e116eec1}

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By Bill, June 7, 2008 8:44 am

Who are Your Current Supporters?

The supporters for any fundraising event are usually those who are passionate or interested enough in your cause and help in whatever way they can. Whether this is by making a donation or asking others to make one, or whether it is by offering their skills, talents or time is up to them.

 

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When you are organizing your event, the first line of supporters will be the committee members. They are voluntary board members who offer their time and expertise to help make the plan a success. There will be the president, treasurer and secretary, plus advertising executive, PR person and the marketing manager. Even if you are only arranging a chook raffle, you will need to have volunteers to sell the tickets.

Your supporters can be anyone who agrees with your cause and would like to see it prosper, but your current supporters will generally be those who actually work to support the fundraiser in some way at the present time. It may be that they simply wear a badge or some other icon to promote and advertise it, they may simply give advice and suggestions on the running of it, or they may get in and work very hard in a number of other ways to support you.

Past supporters may be persuaded to come on board once again in another category if they prefer. Being offered the opportunity to serve in a different capacity could stir their interest anew and your organization will benefit greatly from their past experience.

A supporter – or sponsor – is often the one who donates money to your cause. Since the reason for having a fundraiser is to gain funds for a specific cause, a lack of these supporters will mean your fundraiser is doomed to failure. It is important then to get these supporters on side and give them the opportunity to support your cause. While it is great to be able to use modern technology such as email to alert supporters to the chance of making a donation, nothing can really take the place of the personal touch.

If you are able to make appointments to meet with the heads of business who have shown an interest in supporting your cause, then you will be much more likely to gain a donation of considerable use. Most people are not that free with their checking book that they will hand over a large donation to an operation that is largely faceless. Support at every level is the keyword.

“I hope you enjoyed today’s featured article, and thanks for reading!
Before you go, would you be interested in learning how to raise
money for your organization having all the information you need to
succeed before you start?! (And no, you do NOT have to be a politician
or salesperson to participate!) If so, go to this site right now:

Fundraising.howto-you.com

Thanks again for reading and have a great day!”