End of June Music

When you’re scouring the net for mobile content, you’re probably looking for something that’s free and furthermore no hidden ties and simple to navigate and find the content you’re looking for without having to think.

You need look no further than MMCForums.net, a massive online community of mobile phone lovers and more specifically mobile content creators and those who love customizing their mobile phones.

MMC offers mp3 ringtones, Sony Ericsson themes, Nokia themes and a brilliant community of mobile fanatics from over 200 countries all over the world. Though English is the primary language of the website.

So just how can you customize your mobile phone? Gone are the days when ringtones and wallpapers were the only customizations available. There’s now a whole new level of customization available in the form of themes. Mobile themes allow you to completely transform the look and feel of your mobile phone. It seems Nokia and Sony Ericsson are the only 2 manufacturers who have truly offered full support for themes.

Nokia Series 60 phones have the best theme support on any handset to date. You can customize literally every element of your handset including: Wallpaper, clock, battery and signal indicators, menu bars, nokia theme icons, font colors, calendar and music player buttons and much more. Nokia have actually created their own tool called carbide, which allows a user to create their own themes for personal use or to share on websites such as MMCForums. Nokia Phoenix Theme is a great example of what’s possible using carbide.

Sony Ericsson and Nokia s40 themes aren’t quite as versatile but still most aspects of the theme can be customized, minus things like icons and battery indicators. Despite the restrictions, there’s still a massive amount of Sony Ericsson themers at the site and even more who download the themes religiously. Sony have their own tool for creating themes which is a freeware tool and much easier to use than Nokia’s carbide.

Some websites such as Ownskin have even created an online tool for theme creation. Tools like this aren’t quite as functional as the likes of Carbide but they’re much more use friendly and prove very popular with new comers to theming. Veteran themers tend to use Carbide over the online tools, as it’s a more precise and professional tool.

The whole theming thing has an incredible community spirit. Themers unite on the forums and share ideas, wallpapers, icons and all other various resources for themes. Despite monthly competitions for the best theme, the themers are always supportive of one another.

Often users downloading themes, will also want a ringtone to compliment the theme. At time of writing Halloween is coming up and with it tons of halloween themes and ringtones being shared by members. Check out this popular Halloween Ringtone.

All content at MMCForums is free of charge and can all be downloaded at the click of a button. Sign up is required but takes literally 20 seconds or less.

Would you be interested in a business opportunity that costs only £9.99 annually and allows you to tap into the massive global lottery market? 

When you join e-Lottery as an independent affiliate you will discover just how easy it is to run your own lottery business on a part-time or full-time basis from the comfort of your own home.  You can develop a useful part-time income or a significant full time income promoting e-lottery products and services.

e-Lottery offers a low-cost start-up with high residual commissions on player subscriptions and the opportunity to build a sales team and earn rewards based on team volume generated from player subscriptions.  You receive a state-of-the-art ecommerce website with a full affiliate back office and all the assistance and support you could wish for. There could not be an easier, more gratifying way to run your own business.

Millions of individuals play the UK National Lotto and/or the Euro Millions Lottery every week and the e-Lottery syndicate system exemplifies a superb sales product with easy repeat business from your players who will get used to the array of benefits of playing the e-Lottery way.

Ways to Build your e-Lottery Affiliate Business

The e-Lottery pay plan is open to all affiliates based on the accomplishment and maintenance of ongoing qualification criteria dictated by e-Lottery product and service sales volume.  As you progress to the higher ranks in e-Lottery, the pay plan requires you to focus more on the development of your team members so that their objectives can be met.  To help you achieve your targets, you will have the assistance of not only your sponsor but also a number of senior “up line” members, as well as e-Lottery member support.

The 3 Commission Types

Personal Player Volume (PPV) Commission
For each member you introduce to the e-Lottery syndicate system, you will earn 20% ongoing commission for as long as that member remains a subscriber.

Group Player Volume (GPV) Commission
When your team of affiliates begins to recruit players, you can qualify to earn 5% commission on the total player volume in your group (this does not include the members that you personally sponsor who count toward PPV, as described above) up to and including seven levels.  The levels on which you receive commission depend on what your position is within the pay plan.

Global Revenue Share
If you decide to take the e-Lottery affiliate programme seriously and reach the more senior ranks in the commission plan, a brand new bonus awaits you.  Global revenue share (GRS) is a bonus made up of a percentage of all e-Lottery monthly revenues which is then set aside and shared out amongst all qualifying affiliates. 

e-Lottery affiliate benefits include:

• Your very own high end website with unique URL and guest login
• Automated email ‘Prospector’, genealogy and other management and tracking tools>
• Online ‘statement’ so you are able to view your commissions and payments
• Affiliate news bulletin with success stories, events, news and business-building suggestions
• A selection of payment methods available for individuals joining your business
• Player and Affiliate testimonial movies
• Personal assistance from your sponsor and “up line”
• Access to marketing materials including downloadable banners, flyers, and many other promotional tools
• Easy-to-follow ‘getting started’ website
• Multi-lingual customer service team offering live telephone and e-mail support 6 days a week
• Affiliate business training events and web conferences

All this for just £9.99 per year!

• Memory Foam
• Memory Foam Mattresses
• Memory Foam Mattress Topper
• Memory Foam Pillows
• Ecomemory Foam
• Ecomemory Foam Pillows
• Ecomemory Foam Topper
• Ecomemory Foam Mattresses
• Memory Foam Cube
• Memory Foam Lounge Sac

You may have seen memory foam mattresses advertised on TV by companies like Tempur-Pedic, but have you ever wondered just what memory foam is, and how it works to give you a better night’s sleep? Memory foam was originally developed by NASA as they sought ways to cushion the astronauts’ bodies from the crushing G-forces of a rocket launching into space. Since then it has been adopted by hospitals and mattress makers and is now accessible to you and me.

The principle of memory foam is simple. It is designed to provide firm support, while yielding to and molding around the contours of the body to relieve pressure points. Lower density memory foam yields under the pressure of the body, while higher density memory foam actually softens in response to body heat, allowing it, too, to mold itself to the body. Both kinds are made of a special polyurethane blend to achieve these special qualities.

A memory foam mattress offers firm support while relieving the discomfort that can be caused by the pressure of your your body against a traditional firm mattress. Although memory foam products were once priced too high to be affordable for most people, prices have come down dramatically over the last years, and memory foam mattress toppers can be purchased for under $50 for a twin sized bed.

A mattress topper is a layer of memory foam that is placed on top of a traditional mattress to provide increased comfort and a more restful sleep. Thicker memory foam mattress toppers can even add more firmness and support to your old mattress. Padco Memory Foam offers mattress toppers in both high and low density memory foam in thicknesses ranging from one to four inches.

Of course Padco Memory Foam also has a full range of complete memory foam mattresses, but they also have memory foam pillows, and other unique products. They even have memory foam pet beds so your dog or cat can enjoy the space age comfort of memory foam. For the living room, Padco Memory Foam lounge sacs are the modern evolution of the beanbag chair. Memory foam lounge sacs are the last word in comfort for the home theater room, a college dorm room, or a reading room. Some are big enough for two people to sit and watch a movie together.

If you have seen memory foam mattresses advertised on TV, thought it was too expensive for you, you owe it to yourself to check out the amazing variety of products and the great low prices at Padcomemoryfoam.com. Padco Memory Foam knows how to make you sleep comfortably at a price that’s just as comfortable on your wallet and shipping directly to your door is always free.

• Freight Broker
• Freight Broker School
• Freight Broker Training
• Transportation Broker Training
• Freight Broker License
• Freight Broker License Training
• Load Broker Training
• Become A Freight Broker
• Freight Broker

When you take a training class you want confidence that the instructors not only have the book smarts to teach a class, but also the experience that only comes from being in the trenches. Jeff Roach and the other instructors at Brooke Transportation Training System aren’t just teachers, but are also experienced industry professionals who have walked the walk in the transportation industry. Many have owned or still do own their own successful brokerage companies. They know what it takes to start a business and make that business successful. They also know the freight brokerage industry inside and out.

They are ready and willing to share that knowledge with students at Brooketraining.com. Brooke Transportation Training System offer detailed instruction on how to become a freight broker agent and even how to open your own business as a freight broker. They offer week-long basic freight brokerage training classes in Texas, Florida and California or an advanced class at their N. Richland Hills, TX headquarters.

The freight brokerage classes conducted by Brooke Transportation Training System offer participants industry knowledge so that even those new to the freight business can speak to industry veterans with the confidence and expertise that are so important to being viewed as a fellow professional. Students will also learn what it takes to start and run their own business. Jeff Roach and his team of instructors will also provide students with in depth knowledge of the business processes that one needs to follow to be a successful freight broker or broker’s agent.

Bryan Flanagan, one of the Brooke Transportation Training System guest speakers, had this to say about the class, "I have had the opportunity over the past four years to view first-hand the transformation of the participants in this dynamic course. You will be glad you enrolled in this training. It will pay you dividends for years to come." In addition to being a guest speaker at Brooke Training, Bryan is the founder of the Flanagan Training Group, and author of Now, Go Sell Somebody Something.

Brooke Transportation Training System’s Founder and lead instructor, Jeff Roach, has been in the transportation industry for 22 years since graduating from college. The other instructors bring similar experience and skills to the table as well.

The students of the five day course also receive another unique benefit. At the end of the week Brooke Training hosts an exclusive job fair for course graduates where each graduating student sis given the opportunity to meet with representatives of existing freight brokerage firms and discuss agent positions with those companies. The resource and job fair also offers networking opportunities with business in related fields that may be able to complement the businesses of those graduates who plan to start their own freight brokerage companies.

As Angela M., put it after completing the course, "I learned lots of contacts to make the training a success. On Friday we had a job fair with 8 vendors offering us all the chance to ask pointed questions; such as what is involved with the actual percentage the agent or operational agent would receive. Each company has many avenues and great tools to help me become a success. It is all up to me. If you have not tried the training, what are you waiting for?"

For more information, visit the Brooke Transportation Training System Website at www.brooketraining.com.

• HR Software
• HR Training
• HR Consultancy
• HR System
• HR Software
• Human Resources Software
• Absence Management Software
• HR Outsourcing
• HR System Hosting
• HR Software

There’s no hard and fast rule dictating when growing companies should start investing in serious people management technology, but with a headcount of 100 employees, an HR team of five people and ambitious plans to expand, Yes Telecom was stretching its manual systems to the limit in 2006. Founded in 2001 and now a wholly-owned subsidiary of Vodafone, Yes Telecom boasts over 100,000 business-to-business customers for its mobile and fixed line communications services. Operating as an autonomous unit from its giant parent company, it’s seen rapid growth, with headcount climbing from 100 to 160 in the last eighteen months alone. From a people management perspective, however, that growth has brought a number of challenges. Until the autumn of 2006, most of the company’s HR administration was based around a combination of paper-based systems, spreadsheets and Word documents. The paper systems were inherently inefficient - holiday forms were occasionally lost, for example, which made it all but impossible to track employee entitlements with total confidence about the accuracy of the data. And the spreadsheets had their own limitations. “As we were growing in size, we required more and more reporting capability,” says HR officer Mellissa Wong. “We had to rely on the IT department to help us create complicated formulas to report on basic stuff like sickness absence. HR personnel were spending lots of time managing, collating and maintaining data.” Those administrative inefficiencies caused a number of problems for the business. Absence data, for example, had to be entered into one central spreadsheet by every line manager. But because it wasn’t designed for multi-use, as soon as one person started amending the spreadsheet everyone else had a ‘read-only’ view - and if there was a problem with a formula, the whole system could crash. Generating custom reports from spreadsheets can also be tricky - if managers wanted details of all new recruits joining within a certain timeframe, for example, Wong would have to manually search through every start date. Those difficulties alone would have been enough to encourage the company to consider investing in an HR Management System (HRMS), but the balance was tipped in April 2006 when it started subscribing to a benefits service from Thomsons Online Benefits. The service, which was introduced as an incentive for both retention and recruitment purposes, gives employees greater personal control over their benefits, including flexibility to change their pension contributions and the ability to select other features such as childcare vouchers. The new service raised awareness among employees and managers about the potential of internet-based HR systems, helping persuade the company to go to tender for an HRMS. Computers In Personnel’s Ciphr product was selected at the end of that process from a shortlist of five, and the core system, Ciphr People, was implemented at the end of 2006. Ciphr Net, the self-service application, was rolled out in January this year, followed by training and recruitment modules.

Simple HR System Implementation - User Friendly

Wong says the initial self-service rollout was incident-free and relatively low-profile. “A lot of employees didn’t know what to expect. We just informed them that there would be a new HR intranet system that would allow them, for example, to book holidays online. That was pretty much the only bit of information they got pre-training. Once they saw it was pretty user-friendly, there were no more concerns at that stage.” The system is used for a variety of administrative and business intelligence needs. At a basic level, employees can now enter their own personal data and update their bank records, saving HR administrative overhead and reducing the likelihood of errors. By the same token, managers can look up contact details for their own team members, rather than asking HR for information and waiting for information to be emailed. Removing paper forms has also improved efficiency and speed, and created an audit trail in case of future disputes.

From a talent management perspective, employees can log training requests online, which are automatically directed to their line managers for authorisation. They can also apply for internal vacancies through Ciphr Recruitment. And from a management perspective, reporting has improved significantly. Managers can now see a calendar view of absence to spot sickness trends, for example, helping them analyse how much time is being lost and where.

Automating HR Process

Just as important, automation has had a significant impact on efficiency and effectiveness within the HR function. The HR team remains at five people, yet with total employee headcount up 60 per cent, it’s now supporting a far bigger workforce with the same level of resource. Significantly, the nature of its work has also changed, with the balance shifting away from administration to more proactive people management projects. Inevitably, there were one or two teething problems in the rollout. While the system training for the HR team and employees went well, for example, the company hasn’t been able to make the most of the specialist training it received on Crystal Reports, a leading reporting tool that comes bundled with Ciphr. That’s largely because of the big gap between the two-day crash course that the Yes Telecom HR team went through at the start of the year and the time when they started using the tools in anger and wanted to amend the standard reports.

Future System Strategy

Going forward, Yes Telecom is also liaising with Computers In Personnel about enhancing the self-service system for performance management. The system allows managers to enter information about one-to-one performance reviews through web-based forms - Yes Telecom’s managers, however, are used to typing up notes in custom-built Word-based templates. In the short-term, managers continue to use the templates, but future enhancements to the Ciphr Net system this autumn will allow users to attach and post documents. Those issues aside, overall feedback on the new self-service capability is strong. “In the general workforce, overall it’s been very positively received,” says Wong. “We’ve had feedback from new starters who’ve joined from bigger companies, and they’re very impressed with what it does compared to their previous employer.”

• Hunter Wellies
• Garden Furniture
• Flymo
• Flymo Lawnmowers
• Bosch Lawnmowers
• Barbeques
• BBQ
• Barbecues
• Chiminea
• Lafuma Chairs
• Chiminea

Despite the wind and plummeting temperatures, there is plenty to do in the garden at this time of year. Plants sown earlier in the season will now be ready for harvesting, such as broccoli ‘Early Purple’, parsnip ‘White Gem’ and kale ‘Dwarf Green Curled’ (links).

Planning Ahead

To ensure a supply of vegetables throughout the winter months, it is useful to plan ahead. After the summer vegetables have finished, begin preparing your soil and buying your seeds for the next crop. From spring to midsummer, sow ‘Autumn King 2′ (link) for carrots which hold well in the ground until needed. Leek adds a subtle flavour to casseroles and takes only sixteen to twenty weeks to mature. It is also an excellent choice for small plots, taking up little room in the bed. Try ‘Musselberg improved’ (link), which can be harvested from late autumn onwards.

In late April or May, plant onion seeds and store the mature bulbs for winter use. ‘Cipolla Tonda Musona’ is an attractive snow-white variety with a mild taste.

For Something Different

For a welcome splash of colour during dark evenings, sow chicory ‘Cicoria Variegata de Castelfranco’ from May-August. Eaten raw the leaves provide a zesty accompaniment to plain lettuce, or they can be added to soups and stews for extra flavour.

Newcomer broccoli ‘Romanesco’ is a show-stopper when served as part of a hearty winter feast. The pyramidal spears are delicious when steamed and tossed in butter, and can be harvested from early November onwards. Sow in spring for a superb winter crop.

Winter Sowing

Since garlic requires a cold spell to develop, plant in November or January to ensure a harvest in mid- to late summer. Pre-order your garlic with garden4less to avoid disappointment, and store in a cool dry place until ready to sow. Divide into individual cloves and plant approximately ten centimetres below soil level. During August the leaves will begin to turn yellow, indicating that the bulbs are ready to harvest.

Broad beans, such as ‘Aquadulce Claudia’ (link) can also be started in late autumn, although they will require some protection against frost. Try our winter frost fleece (link), an economical way to protect delicate plants.

Storage

To prolong your supply, store winter roots in a cool, dry spot after lifting. Discard (or eat!) any that are damaged to avoid spreading rot to healthy specimens. Line an old wooden crate with an inch of dry sand and lay carrots head to tail in rows. Cover with the same amount of sand and repeat until full. Finally, secure the boxes well to prevent mouse intrusion. To enjoy onions and potatoes throughout the winter, ensure that they are protected from frost. Regularly inspect them throughout the winter, removing any that appear green or damp.