Common Laptop/Netbook Positions to Avoid

How to Get a Job Over the Holidays (When Nobody's Hiring)

The holidays come and go so quickly. Jan. 1 will be here before you know it, and many of you will look back on the past year and feel depressed and agitated. Your job searches were filled with missed opportunities and mistakes, and you will feel victimized by the horrible economy. Then you'll stuff your face with cookies and pastries and tell yourself that no one is hiring right now. There's nothing you can do about your unemployment until the beginning of next year.

Fortunately, you are wrong. There are five easy things you can do right now, in December, while you're cramming your face with sugar and carbs, to set yourself up for a successful job search in January.

• Update your LinkedIn profile so that it's 100 percent complete.
This applies to all job seekers. Everywhere. Do it. If you are a customer service representative in Chicago or a flight attendant in Montana, you want an up-to-date LinkedIn account because AOL, Google and Bing are actively indexing every profile on that site. This is important because recruiters and HR professionals are using search engines to type in a few words about their job postings and find candidates. An updated LinkedIn profile means that you can be found easily on the Internet, and we all know that recruiters and HR professionals don't like to work too hard. Take 10 minutes and complete your LinkedIn profile. It's the single-most important thing you can do in December.



• Use social media and search engines to clean up your act.
Create a series of professional profiles on Facebook, Google and other high-profile and heavily trafficked social networks so that the very first thing that comes up when someone searches your name is your résumé and qualifications -- and not your pictures from Cabo.

• Make sure recruiters can reach you easily.
If a recruiter or company has to struggle to contact, it's over. You won't get the interview. When publishing your résumé and profile online, use an easy and relatively simple email address. Your first initial and last name will work.

There's another easy way to be found. You can use a free service called Google Voice to create a phone number that is dedicated to your job search. Publish that number without worrying about stalkers. Although you are worried about privacy, it's important that hiring managers and recruiters be able to reach you without overcoming a series of obstacles. You are not a celebrity. It's time to be found so you can get back to work.



• Work smarter, not harder, on finding job opportunities.
Companies are refining their career Web sites so that search engines index their job postings like Web pages. You can automate your job search by creating a Google Alert. You'll get a daily email with a list of jobs in your area. Even though I am not looking for a job, I created an alert using the keywords HR JOB NORTH CAROLINA so I can see the new opportunities in my area. You can also use a free and automated job search engine like Indeed to make your life easier, too.



• Get yourself on Twitter and find people who are hiring.
Lots of people complain that Twitter is too noisy and narcissistic. I recommend using the site like a search engine. Create a professional account, which helps to bury the more incriminating stuff on the Internet, and start searching for jobs related to your career field.

First things first, though: Pick a professional name and avatar to represent yourself. Then visit the search function on Twitter and type in your ideal job title + your geographic location. See who is advertising for that job, and start a conversation if it seems like a good fit. Be interesting. Ask how you can submit your résumé. Offer the names of other candidates if the job isn't right for you.

Furthermore, there are companies out there like Tweetajob that link job seekers and companies quickly and easily. If there's a free and easy way to find a job on a site like Twitter, get on that opportunity like a dog on a bone.

There are more than five simple ways to find a job in January, but all career advice comes with a caveat. You need to stop waiting for an opportunity to fall in your lap. You need to get out there, scrape the Internet for leads, and ultimately convince a recruiter or HR professional that you're a likable human being with decent job skills who won't cause too many problems if hired.

Career advisers can point you in the direction of an opportunity, but you have to find a way to show that you are the right candidate for the job. It starts by putting down the cookies and the eggnog and vowing to take yourself more seriously in the new year. I know you can do it. Now pass the pie.

The world's most corrupt governments as of 2009

Berlin - The most corrupt countries -- Afghanistan and Iraq, which receive billions of dollars a year in U.S. and other foreign support, are among the world's most corrupt governments, a monitoring group said in a report released Tuesday.

"The results demonstrate that countries which are perceived as the most corrupt are also those plagued by long- standing conflicts, which have torn their governance infrastructure," Transparency International said in its annual Corruption Perceptions Index report.

The report measures perceived levels of public sector corruption in 180 countries, drawing on surveys of businesses and experts. The United States is listed as the 19th least corrupt nation, with the report raising concerns about the lack of government oversight of the financial sector.

The report found that the most and least corrupt countries were:

The world's most corrupt governments:

1. Somalia

2. Afghanistan

3. Myanmar

T4. Sudan

T4. Iraq

6. Chad

7. Uzbekistan

T8. Turkmenistan

T8. Iran

T8. Haiti

T8. Burundi

T8. Guinea

T8. Equatorial Guinea

The world's least corrupt governments:

1. New Zealand

2. Denmark

T3. Singapore

T3. Sweden

5. Switzerland

T6. Finland

T6. Netherlands

T8. Australia

T8. Canada

T8. Iceland

15 Google Interview Questions That Will Make You Feel Stupid (GOOG)

But I feel this credit goes to Question designers ( some questions are really awesome)

http://www.businessinsider.com/15-google-interview-questions-that-will-make-you-feel-stupid-2009-11

Why the world will NOT end in 2012

According to the theories on the internet, the calendar used by the ancient civilisation of the Mayans is due to come to an end in December 2012.

Luckily for conspiracy theorists, this coincides neatly with predictions by an obscure sci-fi author, who wrote about the ancient Mesopotamian civilization of Sumer, that a planet named Nibiru will collide with the Earth on that date.

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The Mayan calendar ends in 2012, but Dr Morrison said this did not mean the world would end

Fears have been further inflamed by an apocalyptic film called '2012' starring John Cusack, which is out this November. A quick search on Amazon reveals there are 175 books listed that deal with 2012 doomsday.

First off Dr Morrison dismisses the possibility that the planet Nibiru even exists.

He writes: 'The bottom line is that Nibiru is a myth, with no basis in fact.

'To an astronomer, persistent claims about a planet that is "nearby" but “invisible” are just plain silly.'

And Dr Morrison laughs off suggestions that the government has been complicit in hiding its existence from the public.

'Even if they wanted to, the government could not keep Nibiru a secret,' he says.

'If it were real, it would be tracked by thousands of astronomers, amateurs as well a professional. These astronomers are spread all over the world.

'I know the astronomy community, and these scientists would not keep a secret even if ordered to. You just can’t hide a planet on its way to the inner solar system!'

He also addresses the concerns of those who worry that the Mayan calendar is due to end in 2012.

'Ancient calendars are interesting to historians, but they cannot match the ability we have today to keep track of time, or the precision of the calendars currently in use.

'The main point, however, is that calendars, whether contemporary or ancient, cannot predict the future of our planet or warn of things to happen on a specific date such as 2012.

'I note that my desk calendar ends much sooner, on December 31 2009, but I do not interpret this as a prediction of Armageddon. It is just the beginning of a new year.'

He added although many believe prophecies by the sixteenth century seer Nostradamus predict the end of the world in 2012, there is no evidence he has correctly predicted anything.

He also tackles the belief circulating on some internet forums that an alignment of planets in our galaxy the Milky Way could in some way disrupt the Earth's gravitational field or reverse the Earth's rotation.

click Q's solved

Performance Comparison of Major Web Browsers

The latest versions of the five major most web browsers (Mozilla Firefox 3.5, Google Chrome 3.0, Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0, Opera 10.0, and Apple Safari 4.0) went head to head under six performance indicators: JavaScript speed, average CPU usage under stress, DOM selection, CSS rendering speed, page load time, and browser cache performance. Each web browser was tested three times under an unprimed cache (except for the browser cache performance), and their average value reported in the results.

Future Designer laptop - ROLLTOP