I Learnt Today…

2009-03-14

I have been working with many survey sites in the Internet and I have learnt a lot of lessons. I learnt some of these when I was researching about online survey sites and most of these lessons are learnt by experience. So I thought to share my knowledge with the rest of the world hoping it would help someone out there.

So in this article, I will give a set of advices that I have learnt in the hard way…

Rule 1 – Don’t Select Survey Sites From Lists Rated By Other People

Many people in the Internet are involved in affiliate marketing. Many surveying sites pay bloggers when they refer a new person to their site. So don’t believe in those lists such as “Top 10 Most Paid Survey Sites”, “Top 5 Survey Companies”, etc. because the TOP site of those lists is the site that pays the blogger most! So my advice is not to believe in those ranked lists.

Rule 2 – Ask the site this question: ” What Do I Get For Responding To Surveys? “

The answer depends on the site you are going to work with. Some sites pay money and some sites pay by other means such as coupon codes and sweepstakes entries while some sites are charity sites where you get non-paid public service surveys.

Rule 3 – Work Only For Cash

As I mentioned there are many sites which pays you in indirect methods such as coupon codes. My advice is never work on surveys unless they pay you by money because there is no way to measure the value of your work. They will give you a coupon code or sweepstakes entry at the end of your days work and you still have to go around the corner to get your own earnings. Since most of the times these are given as discounts, you have to spend more money and buy something to apply those discounts. In simple words, you only feel you earn but you never get your earnings into your hands.

The worst problem is some coupon codes may not be useful for you at the moment and some discounts may not be available in your region. You have to take this very seriously if you are not living in the same country or region as the origin of the site where it is operational.

Rule 4 – Check Available Payment Methods

Your computer may simply get surveys through the site without any problems or delays but it doesn’t mean your payment gets to your bank account in the same speed. Go and check the payment options supported by the site. Some sites support various payment methods while some sites only have one or two methods.

For most payment methods there are limitations across countries. This isn’t a problem if you are located in the same country where the site is operational but if you are living in a different region or a country you have to be more concerned about this matter.
For an example, you may be able to create a Paypal account from your country but you may not be able to accept payments to that account because Paypal doesn’t support that service in your country. In such situations if your site does not have suitable options you may lose your money.

Rule 5 – Don’t Go After Fortunes

There’s no such thing as easy money! Remember this as you go on finding for survey sites because you will face sites that say they would pay bulks of money for each survey. My advice according to what I have learnt so far is don’t go for those sites because the more money they promise, the more chances for that site to be a scam. Unfortunately, many people around the world get into these scams everyday. The best thing is to find a site that pays a reasonable and especially practical price for your work.

Rule 6 – Work Hard! There’s No Boss To Push You Forward!

If you are working in a company then you have a boss looking at you to make sure you meet company expectations and to kick you off if you lose performance. In this case, you are your own boss. The good news is there’s no one to kick you off and you own everything you earn. The bad news is you have to take care of everything. Especially you have to keep your motivation up. It’s not easy to do something of your own without postponing. You must dedicate yourself to the work at least till you reach a solid level of ground to stand on.

In this new office you don’t have office times. You have your freedom and at the same time you have all responsibilities on your shoulders. In simple words, It’s your baby go ahead and grow it!

Don’t look for fortunes, Work hard and make your own fortune!

Was this post helpful to you? How can I improve? – Your comment is highly appreciated!

Cassian Menol Razeek

2009-01-08

I wouldn’t be wrong if I say the Brain is the most vital organ in the human body. As we all know brain handles most of critical operations inside our body such as keeping and managing memories, organizing our activities, keep other organs perform, and so much more.

The Brain, as most of us already know, works by sending electric signals through complex meshes of neurons so the brain has to maintain a good environment around to keep the accuracy of this electrical signal flow.

The environment inside the brain is the brain fluid so the ingredients or components of the brain fluids are very critical to the functionalities of brain.

Any organ of the body gets the supplies it needs through blood and so does the brain. Ingredients of human blood vary depending on the situation, food, problems of other organs, etc. so it is obvious that the blood is not the same all the time.

Not like other organs, the brain has to think a lot before extracting anything from blood because if the chemical levels of brain fluid vary it directly affects the signals passed through neurons. If the brain fluid is not maintained in an optimum level, the environment will become too noisy for neurons and sending signals would become like talking in the middle of a party.

So there is this Blood-Brain Barrier (which is also referred to as BBB) which extracts the necessary ingredients such as Oxygen and Glucose and make sure nothing else is taken in.

Blood-Brain Barrier Diagram

Photo courtesy: Malcolm Segal

Where is Blood-Brain Barrier Located?

BBB is located at the brain blood capillaries. These capillaries are unusual in several aspects from capillaries in other organs. Those aspects are briefly described below:

• The end-points of cells which make up the walls of these capillaries are sealed together at their edges by tight junctions which are a key component in the barrier. These junctions make sure that water soluble substances in the blood don’t pass between the edges of cells.
• These capillaries are enclosed by flattened cells which altogether called the ‘end-feet’ which also work as a (partial and active) barrier.
• The only way for water soluble substances in the blood is through the walls of capillaries. These walls plays the other role in the barrier because their cell membranes are made up of a lipid/protein belayed only allowing flat-soluble molecules including those of oxygen and carbon dioxide, anesthetics and alcohol to pass through the walls of capillaries.
• In the capillary wall there are three classes of ‘efflux pumps’ which pumps various lipid-soluble molecules back in to the blood out of the brain.

However, the brain needs water soluble compounds such as Glucose for energy production and amino acids for protein synthesis so there are these Carriers in the walls of capillaries which allow those compounds to go through the wall and move waste products and unwanted molecules in the opposite direction.

The blood-brain barrier plays another key role in keeping the volume of the brain at a constant level. Since the brain is contained inside a rigid skull it is important to keep the fluid from free movement thus keeping volume of the brain static.

Problems Related to BBB

Even though BBB is made in the sole purpose of protecting the brain, it has become a barrier to medicine to access the brain. Since many medicines are water soluble, they are barricaded at the BBB. This process has made it very hard to treat brain tumors and infections such as AIDS virus.

In fact, AIDS virus uses BBB as a shield by hiding behind the BBB from body defense mechanisms.

Due to such reasons medicine has to be made as fat-soluble but then a new problem arises because then the medicine will be absorbed by most cells of the body which may be toxic.

The alternatives are making drug molecules that can ride on natural transporter proteins or use drugs that can open the Blood-Brain-Barrier.

Was this post helpful to you? How can I improve? – Your comment is highly appreciated!

Cassian Menol Razeek

2009-01-07

If you maintain or work around blogs then the word “Permalink” should be familiar to you.

In early stages of the Internet all web addresses or URLs were static or permanent but as the web became more complex where large volumes of content is added daily, it became hard to handle in the usual way.

The involvement of database driven systems was necessary to manage large volumes of web content.

The URLs used with these systems were not human readable and each URL is only brings a main or central page and loads the requested page from their.

Ex/ Non-Permanent (Old) link for the Wikipedia page for Albert Einstein

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Albert_Einstein

As you can see, these dynamic URLs do not provide a permanent link to the relevant page. The part “Albert_Einstein” is only a parameter sent to the internal CGI of Wikipedia.

A Permalink is a permanent link for each item in the web site or domain. With this concept each page of a domain gets a unique permanent URL.

Ex/ Permalink for the Wikipedia page for Albert Einstein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein

Why Permalinks are Helpful for Bloggers…?

In blogs, post goes down the stack as new posts arrive. So when permalink is enabled, each of your post gets an individual URL so that anyone on the Internet can link to your post from their site or blog without depending on what happens at your blog.

Was this post helpful to you? How can I improve? – Your comment is highly appreciated!

Cassian Menol Razeek

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• What Would Google Do?