Sickles Insight

ROME, Italy (Reuters) — A Sicilian mother took away her 61-year-old son’s house keys, cut off his allowance and hauled him to the police station because he stayed out late.

Tired of her son’s misbehavior, the pensioner in the central Sicilian city of Caltagirone turned to the police to “convince this blockhead” to behave properly, La Sicilia, one of Sicily’s leading newspapers, reported on Thursday.

The son responded by saying his mother did not give him a big enough weekly allowance and did not know how to cook.

… story continued here

Though this article appears technical, I promise that even the least of technology educated persons can follow along and gain value! If you can check your email, you can follow along in this article!Many find themselves given an email address from their university, college, highschool, place of work, or religious affiliation; unfortunately, often times along with this email address comes a poor mechanism for keeping up to date with receiving, sending and organizing these emails - often through some sluggish web based client. I want to share with you an easy to execute method to integrate your email (wherever it may originate) with your favorite email client - be it Outlook, Eudora, Opera, ACT!, etc. and continue to use your provided email address for both receiving and sending emails.

First, the problem: The need to write this article arose from assiting with the setup of a new office for an Aflac representative. Talking with the kind, but unhelpful support desk I found that their only solution to using the professional email domain, ‘@US.AFLAC.COM’, was to forward each rep’s email to a personal address of their choosing. The recommendations made by the support staff were “… your Comcast email, or even your AOL address.” This may appear to be a neat feature, but when you turn around to send an email back to a client, you realize that the neatness is only one way. Now everyone is receiving email from your personal and relatively unprofessional email address. Even worse, if you don’t have the method or knowledge to change the ‘reply-to-address’, any business you email will begin emailing your personal AOL address instead of emailing your business email address. In addition to the number of problems already brewing in your head, what if you change service providers? Well - frankly, you’ll lose access to your email address and all of those contacts who have saved that address as your primary contact venue. This is usually going to be a problem only to those that live or work away from the main facility that provides the email address. Take for example a student that lives off campus, a sales rep that works from their home, or any user who routinely checks their email off-site.

Now, for the solution: It is very rare that an Internet Service Provider (dialup modem, DSL, cable, broadband, AT&T, SBC, Verizon, Comcast, etc) would supply you with an internet connection but not provide you with an outgoing mail relay so that you can plug that setting into your mail program and then be able to send mail from your own computer. Alright - plain english: Your provider, lets say Comcast, allows you to send email through their server with your account with the mask of being any email address of your choosing - yes, now you are with me - this could be your Aflac email address, or that provided by your university. Don’t worry, we’ll get to the specific details on how to accomplish this in just a few minutes.

Over the last few years, more and more ISP’s have started to require their subscribers to use their SMTP server. If you can not send email using the servers of the organization that gave you the email address, you will most likely be able to use the servers provided by your Internet Service Provider.

You should contact your ISP or Network Administrator to get the name of their Outgoing Mailserver, we will need to plug that into the Outgoing Mailserver setting of your email program in just a few minutes. Many ISPs (MSN, Earthlink, Verizon, etc) do not even allow their customers to use any Outgoing Mailserver except their own.

How We Will Do It: In most situations, the origin of your email account provides a bare minimum of POP3 account access. This is a strange acronym that means you can access your email from another location and download a copy of it to a place of your choosing. There are other types of access, but for the sake of simplicity, the expectation that you will use your chosen client as the primary communication platform, and the expectation that your email account allows for POP3 (whether it be AFLAC, your university, gmail, yahoo, aol, etc) we will continue with the directions. This will allow for you to receive your email from that address straight to your computer without having to go to the web page each time you want to read your email.

How to Accomplish This: The steps are extremly simply, if they aren’t - you can leave me a comment and tell me that they aren’t!

For the purposes of this article I will demonstrate using an AFLAC email account, an SBCGlobal service provider, and Outlook 2003 as the mail client. If you differ on any of these, that’s okay - you can still follow along, just make sure you replace your information in the obvious spots!

If this is your first time setting up Oulook, it will prompt you to add an email account. If you’ve dabbled in outlook previously, you’ll need to go to

1. In Microsoft Outlook, select Tools > E-mail Accounts.

2. On the E-mail Accounts wizard window, select “Add a new e-mail account” and click Next.

I am going to select the option for a POP3 account, this is the easiest choice, and most popular.

3. For your server type, select “POP3” and click Next.

Next we are prompted for some information pertaining to the account.

4. On the Internet E-mail Settings (POP3) window, enter your information as follows:

Your Name: Jeff Sickles (Enter your first and last name – this will be seen as the “from” name when others receive your mail)

E-mail Address: jsickles@DOMAIN.com (be sure to include the ‘@’ symbol with the domain name. This is the email address that will receive the email when someone clicks reply. Make sure its right!)

User Name: jsickles@DOMAIN.com (your user name is most often your email address. If you have not been given a specific user name, make it your full email address)

Password: supersecretpassword (Your password should have been indicated to you when you received your email address)

Be sure “remember my password” is checked

Now, for the fun stuff…

Incoming mail server (POP3): mail.DOMAIN.com (this is the most common pattern, though it certainly may vary. Try mail followed by a dot followed by the full domain (this is the name after the @ symbol in your email address - that’s a great first guess, google searches or asking your administrator can reveal more cryptic server names) Here’s an example, Joe@foxnews.com. foxnews.com would be the domain. Get the idea?

Outgoing mail server (SMTP): smtp.Your Internet PRovider.net (As we discussed earlier, this will be your ISP server. I’ve made a short list of ISP’s that block port 25 and in addition provided their last known SMTP address. This should lessen your work.)

NOTE: These settings should work from both onsite and at home, if you experience any trouble with these settings (be sure to test both incoming and outgoing mail)

Your screen should look like the image below. Please make sure the checkboxes and information looks correct.

There are more instructions after the list.

A short list of ISP’s that Block Port 25 in addition to their SMTP address:

AOL: smtp.mail.aol.com
Adelphia: mail.adelphia.net
Ameritech: mailhost.det.ameritech.net
Astound Broadband: smtp.ca.astound.net
AT&T: mailhost.att.net
AT&T Global: smtp1.attglobal.net
Bell internet highspeed (Canadian): smtp10.bellnet.ca
Bell south: mail.bellsouth.net
bigpond.com (Australian): contact service provider for Settings.
CableOne: mail.cableone.net
Charter Communications: smtp.chartermi.net
Charter.net: smtp.charter.net
CharterTN.net: mail.chartertn.net
CharterMI.net: mail.chartermi.net
Cinncinnati Bell/Fuse Dial-up: smtp.fuse.net
coax.net: smtp.west.coax.net /east / central
comcast: smtp.comcast.net
Cox: smtp.west.cox.net - smtp.central.cox.net - smtp.east.cox.net
Earthlink: smtp.earthlink.net
Etisalat (UAE): smtp.emirates.net.ae
epix: out.epix.net
erols: smtp.erols.com
Frontiernet.net: smtp.frontiernet.net
fuse: smtp.fuse.net
iquest.net: mail.iquest.net
ISP.com: mail.isp.com
Juno: smtp.juno.com
Megared (Mexico): contact service provider for Settings.
Mindspring: smtp.mindspring.com
MSN: smtp.email.msn.com
MSN.DSL: secure.smtp.email.msn.com
NEBI.com: mail.nebi.com
Netcom: smtp.ix.netcom.com
NetZero: smtp.netzero.net
OOL (Optimum Online): mail.optonline.net
Optusnet: mail.optusnet.com.au
Pacific Bell (Pacbell): mail.pacbell.net
panix.com: mailhost.panix.com
PeoplePC: smtp.peoplepc.com
Quixnet.net: smtp.quixnet.net
RCN: smtp.rcn.com
Road Runner(NYC): smtp-server.nyc.rr.com (for other states, and regions contact your Road Runner Support team)
Rogers Hi-Speed (Canadian): smtp.broadband.rogers.com
SBC: smtp.sbcglobal.net
SBC Yahoo: smtp.sbcglobal.yahoo.com
speakeasy: mail.speakeasy.net
sympatico: smtp1.sympatico.ca
The-Beach.net: mail.the-beach.net
Verio: smtp.veriomail.com
Verizon: outgoing.verizon.net
Verizon(alt): smtpout.verizon.net
Videotron: relais.videotron.ca yourlink.ca (Canadian): contact service provider for Settings.

This is an important step, do not skip over this!

5. Next you need to click on More Settings

Click on the tab labeled Outgoing Server

Check the box My outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication (If you use comcast, you may be able to leave this box unchecked!!)

Logon using: (Put in your username and password you use to connect to the internet - assigned by your phone company if you have DSL)

THIS NEXT STEP IS OPTIONAL, let me explain.

When you check your mail through outlook, it looks to the email server and removes a copy of the message and puts it on your computer only. If you went to check your mail through the web later in the day, any messages already received would no longer be available for viewing. This is more of a personal choice, but you may also find it suitable for you. We can set an option to leave a copy on the server for a short period of time, so that we can easily access the email in both locations. It’s more about convenience. If you feel this isn’t necessary, skip the rest of this step. If you will find it helpful, follow these short steps.

4a. Click “More Settings.”

4b. Select the “Advanced” tab.

4c. Under Delivery, select Leave a copy of messages on the server.

4d. Now select Remove from server after 10 days.

4e. Select OK to exit that menu.

Click OK to finish in that screen

That’s it, now a message will remain for 10 days after you receive it – this allows you to check your messages from either place and still have past messages available in both locations. This will NOT remove messages from outlook.

5. Click on NEXT

6. Click FINISH.

That’s it, you should be done. You have successfully configured your outlook client to receive email from your email server.

Tips & Tricks – “Motion”

SKILL LEVEL: Advanced

HOW IT WORKS: Giving an image motion often involves blurring in some form. There are many different techniques and approaches to capturing motion, most of which are hard to execute properly, but with practice and a little luck it can be a powerful effect. Anytime you can take a picture using a motion technique, you capture more than just a moment in time, but also a story and the “LIFE” of that moment.

In the example above the blurred motion is in the swirling ride which is the subject of the picture. Normally you want your subject in focus, but the effect works in this case because you have some context around the moving cars which helps to tell the rest of the story. This approach involves holding the camera very still, and allowing the movement to blur on its own for you.

The example above is much harder to pull off however, as it involves panning the camera on your subject as they move. The panning should start before the picture is taken, while the shutter is pressed and also afterwards briefly. The goal is to keep the camera panning at the same speed as your subject so that everything else blurs, and the subject stays sharp or only slightly blurred. Shutter speed is also key as a fast shutter speed (1/60 or faster) will not produce as much blur. The slower the shutter, the blurrier the effect.

In the above picture some blurring effects were added in Adobe Photoshop to enhance the spinning effect. Adding blur to pictures after the fact is becoming a popular technique today, and is very effective when used in moderation. But be careful not to over do it, or repeat the effect to often as it can be easily overdone.
From Behind the Lens is a monthly newsletter made available by this Grand Rapids photographer. This article is one of many produced by Coastline Studios. View the rest of the articles by clicking here.

What’s New with Coastline Studios?

Coastline Studios was proud to sponsor the Compass Film Academy’s 24 hour film festival in April. This is the 8^th festival the Alumni Board of the Academy has put together, and this year’s festival was one of the best since it first started in 2003. The event was a huge success with 29 teams competing, and well over 500 people in attendance at the screening night, held a week after the films were completed.This event is quite unique from other festivals in that each team competing has to create a film from scratch within 24 hours. From concept and writing, to filming and editing … all of it must be completely original and created within the allotted 24 hour time period. To ensure the films are made within 24 hours each team must include 4 elements that are drawn randomly from a hat on the night of the producer’s meeting.

To read more about it and see some of the winning films, be sure to check out Compass Film Academy’s website. The winning films should post later this week on their website. Check it out!

www.CompassAcademy.org

Media of the Month

TITLE: “Spacious Dining Room”

PHOTOGRAPHER: John Pottenger

TECHNICAL: Shutter: 1/100, Aperture: f4, ISO: 200, Focal Length:

12mm – On Tripod.

THE STORY: Coastline Studios was hired to document this beautiful “new build” house both in still photographs and with a video tour through our sister company, “The Ultimate Tour”. The entire house was adorned with hand crafted custom wood work throughout, as well as many accents like crown molding, custom windows and decorative tile work. This spacious dinning room captures you immediately when walking into the home, and was a joy to photograph and video tape. Our compliments to S&L Construction on their fine craftsmanship and attention to detail.

Free Monthly Wallpaper

Here’s something to entertain you for a while. Refrigerator magnets are no longer only for your refrigerator. You know that everyone enjoys playing with magnets!

http://www.sicklesinsight.com/magnetic 

From Grand Rapids, Michigan - this article was sent to me by a friend and reader of Sickles Insight in search of more exposure for Ann and her amazing photography! Some of the images found on her new blog and her gallery are amazing. Many of you know that I lived in Grand Rapids for a length of time, and I’m now anxious to see her pictures of the downtown area. I wonder which locations she will use as points of interest.

Ann Teliczan, our featured artist in June 2006, recently launched a new website, www.michigansweetspot.com.It features HDR (high dynamic range) photography of Michigan highlights.

Teliczan developed the site to increase awareness of the emerging art of HDR photography. This photography has an expanded tonal range and when deliberately exaggerated, it has the visual qualities of a painting. The website will be frequently updated with new photos, each with a google map link to the actual location the photo was taken at.

“When I heard tourism was down in Michigan I decided to use my love for HDR photography as a means to help influence travel plans to Michigan,” says Teliczan of her website. She is currently working on images for the metro Grand Rapids area and is going to be including the Forest Hills Fine Arts Center.

Ann Teliczan is a fine artist who has been recognized for her enhanced hybrid images, which can be seen at her fine art site at www.anntopia.com. Her enhanced hybrid images are for sale at fine art galleries. At this time, she does not have plans to sell the HDR photography images of Michigan that are on www.michigansweetspot.com.

Most students who fall behind in their loan payments don’t do it intentionally. But falling short of meeting your repayment commitment could lead to default—and that’s the last thing you want. A little crisis control at the first sign of trouble will put you back on the right track.

If you have trouble making the payments on your education loans, contact your loan servicer immediately. You may qualify for a deferment, forbearance, change in repayment schedule, or other repayment options that can ease the financial burden on you and make repayment a little easier—especially when you’re just starting out on your own.

Following are some of the repayment programs your servicer may offer to help you avoid default:

• Payment Due Date Change

Adjusting the date your payment is due is an option if you have several loans to keep track of, have many bills due on the same day, or get paid at times that don’t coincide with your loan-payment dates.

How it works: Contact your servicer to see if you can change the date your loan payment is due to help you keep your loan and bill payments in synch.

• Automatic Payment

Here’s a handy way to repay your student loans and build a good credit rating.

How it works: When you enroll in an automatic payment program, you authorize a transfer of money from your checking or savings account to your lender or loan servicer for your monthly student loan payment. Your loan payment is made automatically each month, so you don’t have to worry about writing and mailing checks or missing a payment.

• Change of Repayment Plan

Your servicer offers a variety of different repayment plans to meet your specific needs. You can choose from a standard plan in which your loans are divided evenly over your repayment term; a graduated plan, which means that you start out with small monthly payments and then pay larger amounts later; an income-sensitive plan, which allows you to specify a certain percentage of your income for your loan payment; or an extended plan, which increases the amount of time you have to repay the loans, thereby decreasing your payment amount. Your servicer may also offer additional options.

How it works: Check out your servicer’s Web site or call their customer service number to figure out which repayment option will work best for you. You can also compare how the different plans will affect your payment amount at www.finaid.org/calculators.

• Loan Deferment

If you cannot afford to make the monthly payment on your Federal Stafford, Perkins, or PLUS Loans, you may be eligible for a deferment. This option lets you postpone making monthly payments on the principal (the amount you borrowed) and sometimes the interest, too. You qualify for a deferment if you are attending a postsecondary school at least half time, unable to find full-time employment (up to three years), studying in an approved graduate fellowship or rehabilitation training program for the disabled, or experiencing economic hardship (up to three years).
How it works: Your servicer will tell you if you are eligible for a deferment and how long you may postpone repaying your loan. During the deferment period, the federal government pays the interest due on Federal Subsidized Stafford and Perkins Loans. Federal PLUS and Unsubsidized Stafford borrowers may make interest payments during the deferment period or capitalize the interest—add it to the amount outstanding on the loan—when the loan goes into repayment.

For more information on deferment, visit www.studentaid.ed.gov or contact your servicer. To apply for deferment, you will need to obtain a deferment form from your servicer and submit it with supporting documentation. You must continue to make loan payments until you receive notification that your deferment has been approved.

• Federal Loan Consolidation

If you’re having trouble managing more than one federal education loan, you may be able to combine all your loans into a single debt, extend the length of the loan to as much as 30 years, and reduce your monthly payments. Married couples may also consolidate their loans into one debt and one monthly payment.

How it works: To qualify for loan consolidation, you must have loans eligible for consolidation and be in the grace period or in repayment for each loan to be consolidated. The interest rate is fixed and based on a weighted average of the rates on the loans being consolidated, rounded up to the nearest 1/8 of 1 percent, not to exceed 8.25 percent. Note that by extending repayment from your original term of 10 years to a new term of 12–30 years, the total amount you pay in interest can be much greater than with a traditional repayment plan. Also, if you consolidate your loans during your grace period, your new consolidation loan will go into repayment within 60 days, so you may lose part of your grace period. You may also consolidate your loans while still in school if you are attending at least half time and have at least $10,000 in loans. If you do so, you will forfeit the in-school subsidy on the loan interest and you will lose the six-month grace period you would have had before the loans go into repayment. The loans will officially be in repayment status, even though repayment will be deferred while you are in school. For more information, visit www.loanconsolidation.ed.gov.

• Loan Forbearance

If you are willing but not financially able to make your monthly payments on your federal loans, or have other extenuating circumstances, and do not qualify for a deferment, you may be allowed to postpone making payments—or make lower payments—for a short time.

How it works: Your lender will tell you if you are eligible for a forbearance and how long you may postpone repaying your loan. However, unlike a loan deferment, you must pay the monthly interest due on your loan during the forbearance period, or you may opt to capitalize the interest and have it added to the amount outstanding on the loan when you begin making payments again.
For more information on forbearance, visit www.studentaid.ed.gov or contact your servicer. To apply for forbearance, you will need to obtain a forbearance form from your servicer and submit it with supporting documentation. You must continue to make loan payments until you receive notification that your forbearance has been approved.

Those are just some methods to keep you atop your financial responsibilities. Remember to always keep a close eye on these things. This is the gateway to the rest of your financial life, and though finance may not be the most important topic on your mind - remember that credit scores can be affected by neglect on the student loans. Unfortunately credit scores are the numbers that will keep your interest rates low and your options more open when you are seeking future car or home loans. I’ve never been a fan of taking out a loan, but the loanless cash-life is an entirely different story for an entirely different day. More on that in the future.

I thought this was a fitting time to share with you a small change you can make on your own blog to increase readership and your blogs availability to people and search engines. Following my recent break, I’ve personally experienced this plug-in do wonders for the this blog’s traffic. First, a note up front: I often recommend products and webpages through this blog of my own free will. This is not a paid advertisement. I don’t even know the guy who wrote the plug-in.

Anyone keeping their own blog already knows the importance of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and the never-ending battle of flagging down quality traffic. With that said, I will assume you have already taken some of these measures, some of which are inherent to wordpress, others that need to be configured outside of the package. If you have questions on these things, we can talk about them outside of this post or in the comments below.

For the time being, I wanted to introduce you to the All In One SEO Pack - the out of the box SEO you didn’t know you needed. All In One SEO Pack plug-in for wordpress is a seemingly small and harmless, another wanna-be tool for wordpress bloggers, but in reality - I don’t know why I didn’t install this plug-in months ago! (maybe because it didn’t exist) SEOPACK has very little you need to configure once it is in place, but its effects are absolutely outstanding. Here’s one of it’s best features - If you’ve ever wanted to provide better descriptions and keywords in your meta data for each article with ease, this is the way to do it. I’ve used a few other tools to attempt the same - but even then, they only provided keywords. This can override or work in harmony with those tools to provide the best headers for your page.

I wouldn’t believe it myself, but here’s why I do. This comes at a perfect time for me to install. As many of you know, or now know (I’m Never Coming Back) - I have not written since late May. It is now mid July, and as anyone who keeps even one eye on their stats each week - you know that not writing on your blog will have detrimental effects on your viewership and visitor loyalty. Yup, I’m not immune - I lost near to half of my readers during this time. Two weeks ago I came across the All In One SEO Pack tool and I installed in on my blog. After configurations, I sat back and didn’t really do anything, and I continued not updating this blog. I know, it probably wasn’t the best decision, but I didn’t.

You wouldn’t believe it, but either people were missing me dearly and wanted to visit my blog so badly again, or the SEO plug-in provided my site with more accurate and more complete information to submit to search engines and therefore better traffic arrived at my site by way of some search engines. Either way, my blog has ramped itself back up to numbers where I originally left it in May. In fact, the blog is even beginning to surpass itself - and this is the first time I’ve written in a long time! I can’t wait to see what happens once I pick back up with regular contributions.

I’m not affiliated with All In One SEO Pack authors in any way, but I’m sure they’ll be happy to find another positive comment about their tool. This is not an affiliate link or anything of the sort, I just wanted to keep you well informed, and besides - I thought it was pretty cool! You can go download the tool here. Let me know how you like it!

For those of you that regularly visit this page of my blog, you’ve no doubt become extremely bored and irritated when you arrived at the front page to find the same article time, after time, after time, after time. For those of you faithfully subscribed through some form of RSS tool, you have no doubt become irritated with discovering no new updates on my particular thread - perhaps you’ve even checked to see if my feed link was broken. And let’s not forget those of you subscribed through email. Given the normal accumulation of emails from your many sources arriving to your inbox, perhaps you’ve not completely missed just another email arriving to you each and every morning.

To subdue any qualms about my well being, I have not suffered any sudden fit of sickness or seizure to my livelihood. I have however had a busy couple of weeks with a myriad of events. Some exciting and fun, others perhaps not so much. That being said, I took an unannounced hiatus from blog during which I had no real time or motivation to stir up new content. I apologize for that, but now I’m back (contrary to the title - but it did make you read this! It only seemed like I was never coming back) It’s been a few days more than a month and a half since my last contribution, but I’m hoping to find some time and thought to get back up to speed in these upcoming days.

Though I have not been making article contributions, I have been making some changes under the hood of SicklesInsight to hopefully bring better a better performance and experience to those that visit. There have been many little changes, most of which you don’t need to know about, but I did think it was important to share with you one small change that has made a significant impact. Anyone with a wordpress blog or looking to use a wordpress format in the future should read the following: Search Engine Optimization Made Even Better for Wordpress Authors