From Loren Nelson, NelsonEcom
Finding and Building Solutions for Your Internet Goals
Visual Design, Web Sites, Podcasts, Multimedia, & Usability Engineering

May 4, 2008 – Vol. XII, No. 15

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NetBits is the weekly newsletter keeping your informed of various chatter and delicious tidbits of potential relevance.

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In This Issue:

Item One: Really Inconvenient Truths – 6 to 11
Item Two: Coping with jet lag, street food, more
Item Three: Nutrition Tip – Start Smart
Item Four: Word of the Week
Item Five: Importance of Feedback Request Auto Responder
Do you know…

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1. Really Inconvenient Truths
 

An Inconvenient Truth, which is a largely pictorial representation of the movie’s graphical presentation, exaggerates the evidence surrounding global warming. Ironically, the former Vice President leaves out many truths that are inconvenient for his argument. Here are just 25 of them.

6. Heat Waves. The summer heat wave that struck Europe in 2003 was caused by an atmospheric pressure anomaly; it had nothing to do with global warming. As the United Nations Environment Program reported in September 2003, “This extreme wheather [sic] was caused by an anti-cyclone firmly anchored over the western European land mass holding back the rain-bearing depressions that usually enter the continent from the Atlantic ocean. This situation was exceptional in the extended length of time (over 20 days) during which it conveyed very hot dry air up from south of the Mediterranean.”

7. Record Temperatures. Record temperatures — hot and cold — are set every day around the world; that’s the nature of records. Statistically, any given place will see four record high temperatures set every year. There is evidence that daytime high temperatures are staying about the same as for the last few decades, but nighttime lows are gradually rising. Global warming might be more properly called, “Global less cooling.” (On this, see Patrick J. Michaels book, Meltdown: The Predictable Distortion of Global Warming by Scientists, Politicians, and the Media.)

8. Hurricanes. There is no overall global trend of hurricane-force storms getting stronger that has anything to do with temperature. A recent study in Geophysical Research Letters found: “The data indicate a large increasing trend in tropical cyclone intensity and longevity for the North Atlantic basin and a considerable decreasing trend for the Northeast Pacific. All other basins showed small trends, and there has been no significant change in global net tropical cyclone activity. There has been a small increase in global Category 4–5 hurricanes from the period 1986–1995 to the period 1996–2005. Most of this increase is likely due to improved observational technology. These findings indicate that other important factors govern intensity and frequency of tropical cyclones besides SSTs [sea surface temperatures].”

9. Tornadoes. Records for numbers of tornadoes are set because we can now record more of the smaller tornadoes (see, for instance, the Tornado FAQ at Weather Underground).

10. European Flooding. European flooding is not new. Similar flooding happened in 2003. Research from Michael Mudelsee and colleagues from the University of Leipzig published in Nature – Sept. 11, 2003 – looked at data reaching as far back as 1021 (for the Elbe) and 1269 (for the Oder). They concluded that there is no upward trend in the incidence of extreme flooding in this region of central Europe.

11-15 next week…

Iain Murray is a senior fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

 
2. Coping with jet lag, street food, more.
 

Travel tips–such as never take a nap when you have jet lag–from some of the experts quoted in our article, "2007 Scouting Report." Read on for more of their advice.

www.budgettravel.com

 
3. Nutrition Tip – Start Smart
 

Begin lunch and dinner with a vegetable rich salad or broth-based soup, says Pennsylvania State University satiety expert Barbara Rolls, author of "The volumetrics Eating Plan". That lets you fill up first on a big volume of low-calorie food and ends up displacing some of the foods you will eat next — the choices that are usually higher in calories. Here’s a good salad recipe: Mix 1-1/2 cups of salad greens with 3/4 cup of raw vegetables like onions, bell peppers, carrots, broccoli, or cucumbers; drizzle with 2 tablespoons of low-calorie bottled dressing.

 
4. Word of the Week
 

kindred • \KIN-drud\ • adjective

1 : of a similar nature or character : like

2 : of the same ancestry

Example Sentence:
The rock-climbing club tends to attract kindred spirits — outdoorsy, adventurous types who derive satisfaction from conquering new challenges.

Did you know?
If you believe that advice and relatives are inseparable, the etymology of "kindred" will prove you right. "Kindred" comes from a combination of "kin" and the Old English word ræden ("condition"), which itself comes from the verb rædan, meaning "to advise." "Kindred" entered English as a noun first, in the 12th century. That noun, which can refer to a group of related individuals or to one’s own relatives, gave rise to the adjective "kindred" in the 14th century.

 
5. Importance of Feedback Request Auto Responder
 

Once one of your website visitor purchases a service or product on your website, you should subscribe him to your mail list. And a very important auto responder should be assigned to that mail list.

My suggestion is to schedule feedback request auto responder to be sent after 1 month upon subscribing.

In this auto responder, you should thank to the customer and ask if they have any requests or feedbacks about your service or product. Optionally, you can offer them a free bonus if they provide feedback to you.

There are two benefits of this auto responder:

  1. Your customer will remember you after a month and probably check your website for additional services and products.
  2. You will start receiving highly valuable feedbacks and requests from your customers
 
6. Do You Know…
 
On this day:

  • Margaret Thatcher Becomes Prime Minister of the UK (1979)
    Thatcher was Great Britain’s first female prime minister and served longer than any other British prime minister in the 20th century. While in office, she initiated what became known as the "Thatcher Revolution," a series of social and economic changes that dismantled many aspects of Britain’s postwar welfare state.