Business Pundit » Miscellaneous

25 St. Patrick’s Day Toasts

Drea — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 14:54:55 +0000

Impress your friends this year with one of the 25 St. Patrick’s Day toasts and Irish sayings below. If you rattle off one quote per beer, this entire post should get you through the night:

1. If you’re enough lucky to be Irish, you’re lucky enough! –Irish saying

2. Many an opportunity is lost because a man is out looking for four-leaf clovers. -Unknown

3. Here’s to a long life and a merry one.
A quick death and an easy one
A pretty girl and an honest one
A cold beer – and another one!
-St. Patrick’s Day Toast

4. It is better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money! -Irish toast

5. An Irishman is never drunk as long as he can hold onto one blade of grass to keep from falling off the earth. -Irish saying

6. There are only two kinds of people in the world, The Irish and those who wish they were. -Irish saying

7. Irish diplomacy is the ability to tell a man to go to hell so that he looks forward to making the trip. –Irish saying

8. An Irishman has an abiding sense of tragedy which sustains him through temporary periods of joy. –Irish saying

9. The Irish forgive their great men when they are safely buried. –Irish saying

10. Anyone acquainted with Ireland knows that the morning of St. Patrick’s Day consists of the night of the seventeenth of March flavored strongly with the morning of the eighteenth. –Uknown

11. May your blessings outnumber
The shamrocks that grow,
And may trouble avoid you
Wherever you go.
- Irish blessing

12. Never iron a four-leaf clover, because you don’t want to press your luck. -Unknown

13. A best friend is like a four leaf clover: hard to find and lucky to have. -Unknown

14. The list of Irish saints is past counting; but in it all no other figure is so human, friendly, and lovable as St. Patrick – who was an Irishman only by adoption. -Stephen Gwynn

15. St. Patrick… one of the few saints whose feast day presents the opportunity to get determinedly whacked and make a fool of oneself all under the guise of acting Irish. –Charles M. Madigan

16. May misfortune follow you the rest of your life, but never catch up. –Irish saying

17. May your home always be too small to hold your friends. –Irish toast

18. May your glass be ever full.
May the roof over your head be always strong.
And may you be in heaven half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.
—Irish prayer

19. May you never forget what is worth remembering or remember what is best forgotten. –Irish blessing

20. In Heaven there is no beer that’s why we drink it here! –Irish saying

21. May God bless and keep in good health your enemies’ enemies. –Irish blessing

22. May the saddest day of your future be no worse than the happiest day of your past. –Irish saying

23. Here’s to you and yours and to mine and ours. And if mine and ours ever come across to you and yours, I hope you and yours will do as much for mine and ours as mine and ours have done for you and yours! –Irish toast

24. May you live as long as you want and never want as long as you live. –Irish saying

25. Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you fight with your neighbor. It makes you shoot at your landlord-and it makes you miss him. -Irish saying

When St. Paddy’s and Good Friends Don’t Mix

Drea — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 11:18:29 +0000

Source: Failblog

The Faces Behind Social Media

Drea — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 11:09:27 +0000

Win an HP iPAQ Glisten for International Women’s Day

Drea — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:20:26 +0000

Today is International Women’s Day, an annual day that honors women around the world. To celebrate International Women’s Day, we’re offering one reader a brand new HP iPAQ Glisten smartphone for leaving a comment.

Here’s what the iPAQ Glisten has to offer:

* The HP iPAQ Glisten is a stylish, 3G smartphone designed for on-the-go professionals who need to stay connected to the people and information they care about.

* This quad-band world phone, featuring Windows Mobile 6.5, easily moves between work and play with advanced mobile email capabilities, multiple connectivity options, built-in Wi-Fi and GPS functionality and rich multimedia features and applications.

* The iPAQ Glisten runs on AT&T’s 3G network, which is available in more than 350 major metropolitan areas. AT&T also offers 3G data roaming in more than 100 countries, as well as voice calling in more than 215 countries.

* The iPAQ Glisten features a full QWERTY keyboard for fast, easy and accurate messaging, including SMS/ MMS, instant messaging and e-mail.

* A touch-enabled AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) screen delivers a crisp, clear display that easily allows you to navigate through menus, windows, and links at the touch of a finger.

* Through HP’s partnership with AT&T and Microsoft, the iPAQ Glisten customers will have access to a wide variety of applications, music, ringtones, games, etc through the AT&T AppCenter and Windows Marketplace.

To win a new iPAQ Glisten, leave a comment answering the following question:

What is the biggest contribution women make to the economy?

I will select a winner at random on Monday, March 15 (1 week from today). Please leave your email address in the comments form so that HP can contact you.

To stay informed about new HP products and AT&T, follow @hp_pc and @ATTNews on Twitter.

The Placebo Effect Works on Products, Too

Drea — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 14:51:22 +0000

Image: Chemistryland.com

When consumers associate a certain effect with a product, they tend to underestimate the time it took for the product to delivered its desired effect, according to a Journal of Consumer Research study:

“People sometimes feel the effect of product consumption almost instantaneously—within an unrealistically short time after consumption,” writes author David Faro (London Business School). “Such placebo-like effects are typically attributed to conditioning, wishful thinking, or expectations about product efficacy. The present research shows such effects can also occur because, under some conditions, people are prone to underestimate the time-to-onset of products they have used in the past.”

In one of the author’s experiments, participants first listened to music and later took part in a creativity task. Half of the participants were then told the music they had listened to earlier enhanced creativity; the rest were not given that information. “When asked to recollect the amount of time that elapsed between listening to music and the creativity task, the first group thought that the time was significantly shorter,” Faro writes. “Hence, even though both groups had (on average) the same experience with the music and with the creativity task, believing that the two things were related made participants connect them more closely in time.”

In a second experiment, participants first chewed a stick of gum and then took part in an attention-related task. Later in the study they were told that chewing gum increases attention. In that case, participants who considered only the gum as a cause for increased attention gave shorter estimates of time-to-onset than other participants who also considered another contributing cause: practice with the task. On a later occasion, the participants said they experienced the gum’s effect earlier and they were less interested in trying a competing product.

“These experiments show that our recollections of how long products took to have an effect on us when we have used them in the past are intertwined with our beliefs in their causal role,” the author concludes.

The effect this study describes is commonly used, although perhaps unproven in a lab up to this point. The government frequently engineers the very reaction the study describes. They push through various programs, like Cash for Clunkers, then emphasize the beneficial effect of those programs later, putting a spin on voters’ collective memories. All that’s missing is a name for this technique.

Kneber Botnet Steals Login Data from 75,000+ Computers

Drea — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 16:23:42 +0000

The Kneber botnet, a malicious program that steals login information, has compromised 2,500 organizations and an estimated 75,000 computers worldwide. Affected systems include Facebook, Yahoo, some banks, and companies such as Merck.

PCWorld has a good Q&A about the Kneber botnet:

Where is Kneber?

Netwitness says Kneber controlled machines are in 196 countries. The five countries with the most significant instances of infected machines are Egypt, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United States.

Who is getting hit?

Kneber only targets Windows machines, and computers are running Windows XP Professional SP2 make up the majority of the botnet. Netwitness did not report on infections among Windows 7 machines. Kneber is primarily found on machines in corporate and government infrastructures, but home users can be affected as well.

Netwitness hasn’t named which companies have been compromised, but The Wall Street Journal is reporting that affected companies include Merck & Co., Cardinal Health, Paramount Pictures and software company Juniper Networks Inc.

What is being stolen?

Kneber is targeting login credentials for online social networks, e-mail accounts and online financial services. The top sites with stolen login credentials, according to Netwitness’ report are Facebook, Yahoo, hi5, metroflog, sonico and netlog. While the focus has been on e-mail and social networks, Kneber is now targeting banking sites as well.

To protect yourself, don’t download suspicious attachments, and be careful what websites you visit. Also, update your browser’s security settings so that it can alert you about potentially malicious websites.

An Example of Good Park Bench Branding

Drea — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 12:14:40 +0000

Some Products Should Never Hit Store Shelves

Drea — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 12:05:22 +0000

Last Chance to Win 250 Free Business Cards

Drea — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:29:19 +0000

Monday is the final day of a contest we’re running. Three people will win 250 business cards. Join the fun! Details below:

PrintRunner has offered to give away a set of 250 business cards to 3 Business Pundit readers. They’re a full-service print shop offering brochures, flyers, catalogs, posters and more. Based in Southern California, PrintRunner was featured on the 2009 Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing companies.

Here’s what you get when you win:
- A set of 250 quality, full-color business cards
- Single or double-sided
- Glossy or matte
- Water-resistant UV coating
- Customize the cards any way you want
- Next business day or 3 business day delivery

The cards are free, but you have to pay for shipping at checkout. Winners will receive a special code to order their free cards.

How do you win?

The contest will run until January 24. I’ll pick three winners who give the best completion to the sentence below:

In order to fix our financial problems, the US government needs to…

Write your answer in the comments section below. Winners will have the most accurate, original, unusual, funny, or otherwise eye-catching reply.

Official Rules:

• You can only win once
• Open to U.S. residents only
• Must be 18 and over and not an employee or a relative of an employee of PrintRunner LLC
• No purchase necessary

I’ll post the winners on Monday, January 25.

Conan O’Brien Puts His Show on Craigslist

Drea — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 10:01:23 +0000

Priceless:

4 SALE: BARELY-USED LATE NIGHT TALK SHOW – MAKE ME AN OFFER!!! (Universal Studios)

This is a chance of a lifetime to own your very own late night talk show–guaranteed to last for up to seven months!! Really must see to appreciate.

Information for potential buyers:

- Measures 100’ x 100’ x 32’ – plenty of room for a futon!
- Designed for 11:35 but can be easily moved
- Band can be sold separately
- Buyer must honor Barry Manilow booking next Thursday

MAKE ME YOUR BEST OFFER!!!!! (Also willing to trade for Coldplay tickets.)

* Location: Universal Studios