Postpartum Girdle: Myth Or Magic?

If you are considering pregnancy you may hear about a product which is relatively new in the US market called a "postpartum girdle". You may also wonder about the claims that a postpartum girdle may help reduce size of a woman's waist after pregnancy.

The truth is that until now, although no one is absolutely sure what a postpartum girdle does, a postpartum girdle may help and for most women it probably can not hurt.

While postpartum girdles are new in the US, abdominal binders have been around in some form or another in many countries for many generations. Although postpartum girdles are not yet routinely used in the USA after pregnancy, postpartum girdles are basically a type of compression garment. Compression garments are considered routine, standard therapy after many types of surgeries to help in the healing process.

While there have been no clinical studies to prove if a postpartum girdle works, many women do report that after using a postpartum girdle, their abdominal shape returns to near pre-pregnancy condition.

If you are considering a postpartum girdle, why not ask your OB/GYN or health care provider if there is any reason not to give a postpartum girdle a try?

Squidoo Versus Hubpages : Which Is Better?

Before I compare Squidoo to Hubpages I should start by saying that I have alot more experience with Squidoo than with Hubpages. I only have a couple of hubpages, both about footed pajamas, while I have over 100 Squidoo lenses.

While I prefer Squidoo to Hubpages I think that both are important for a valuable SEO strategy. So, I will break this comparison into sections:

What Do I Like About Both Hubpages and Squidoo:
* SEO Value: I can give free, one way inbound links to my websites. Squidoo is better in this regard in that Squidoo links are always dofollow, while Hubpages links will become nofollow if your hubscore and your hubmaster score drop below a certain level. As we know, links are key for search engine placement.

* Free Traffic: Both Squidoo and Hubpages do well in the search engines. My feeling is that Squidoo may do a bit better, but I see them both appearing in Google for my keywords. Therefore, both drive traffic to my websites.

* I earn money. Neither Hubpages nor Squidoo makes me rich, but both generate some money. So, while I am giving myself links and traffic, I also earn a few bucks every month.

What Do I Prefer About Squidoo:
* I think you earn more money from Squidoo. Maybe it is subjective because I have more lenses and more experience, but it seems to me that the money making potential from Squidoo is higher.

* I think that a Squidoo lens looks better than a Hubpage. Again, subjective stuff. You may prefer the look and feel of a Hubpage. But for me this is a plus for Squidoo.

* I like that my Squidoo links are ALWAYS dofollow. I don't like the fact that I must do stuff in Hubpages in order to keep my hubs dofollow. With Hubpages, if your hubscore or your hubmaster score fall below a certain value, your links become nofollow. Bummer. You have to get active in the Hubpages community in order to get your scores up.

What Do I Prefer About HubPages:
* I think that it is easier to get good URLs with Hubpages. With Squidoo, many of the best URLs are reserved by Squatters.

What Do I Not Like About Both
* I wish that both would ease up on the coding restrictions. For example, I use Popshops on my websites, but can not use Popshops on Squidoo nor Hubpages, since they do not allow the coding. Similarly I can not use Amazon widgets in either, again due to coding restrictions. Oh, well. You can not have everything.

Conclusion
As a bottom line, I think both Squidoo and Hubpages are valuable for SEO purposes. Free inbound links, free traffic, money making opportunities, no costs. What is not to like? Why would you NOT use both? I prefer Squidoo, but maybe I am just a creature of habit more used to Squidoo than to Hubpages. I would like to find MORE sites like Squidoo and Hubpages which offer the perfect combination of free links, traffic and money making potential. I am experimenting with sites like Triond, Info Barrel, etc. If you know others I should try let me know.

If you have experience with both Squidoo and Hubpages let us know how you would compare the two.

How To Be Successful With The Opposite Sex

In this Lens about 10 Ways To Meet People, there is a poll for single men and another for single women asking "What Is the Most Important Thing That You Look For" in a potential partner. Nearly 500 men and 200 women have given answers. That is a lot of answers!

I spent a few minutes reviewing the results of these surveys and found something interesting. The number one response for men is "The Face", while the number one response for women is "Values". This is not a huge surprise. More of a surprise to me at least, is that the number two response for both men and women is "Sense of Humor".

So, if men want a woman with a pretty face who can make them laugh and women want a decent guy who can make them laugh, then is this the secret to success with the opposite sex?

Play Pac Man On Google!

Has everyone realized that the Pac-Man Image on the Google search page is a REAL GAME? This is pretty cool technology. Nothing to download. You have to wait about 15 seconds until the game says "Ready", then just click your mouse in the direction you want your Packman to go and he is off to the races.

There are even some sites, such as Rusty Brick where you can download the code to embed the game onto your website. Very cool!!

I never was very good at Pac Man and I still am no good. But I managed to get above 1'000 points a couple of times. I am always amazed at the cool things that Google can come up with.

FREE Baby Songs : Selected By An Expert!

As new parents, we are always on the lookout for something good for our baby. And I will share one of our best secrets with you. When our baby is fussy, tired, grouchy and nothing seems to work, we show him his favorite baby songs and they calm him down like nothing else.

One of the great things about these baby songs is that they are eductional. These baby songs teach our baby about numbers, the alphabet or just "I love you". They never fail to make him smile. The other great things about these baby songs is that they are FREE Baby Songs. Why are these baby songs free? They are hosted on YouTube. But believe me, you will search for hours on YouTube finding quality baby songs. Our baby did the work for you. He listened to many, many baby songs before he selected THESE baby songs.

These baby songs are the work of the people at Super Simple Songs. The people who produce Super Simple Songs are apparently Americans who run an English school in Japan. One of their previous teachers, Jeremy, starred in a collection of videos and these are the baby songs that our baby loves best.

When our baby is tired, grouchy and crying, we just go to his baby songs and sing along with him. This never fails to bring a smile to his face. Maybe other babies will enjoy these free baby songs too/

My painting of Sarah Palin with Oil Rigs and Polar Bears (Drill Baby Drill!) featured on Facebook!

This morning I got an email from Ron Gompertz, creator of the Send Sarah Palin to the Louisiana wetlands to help clean-up the oil Facebook page, retroactively asking permission to use my painting on his site. He also said I should make a Drill Baby Drill Sarah Palin t-shirt. It's customizable (change colors, styles, sizes, add text of your choice) and you can actually stick the picture on any Zazzle product you like.

See Sarah and my other paintings at my Uncle Shlomo's Pushcart Zazzle Store.

Lies, Lies and Triond's Lies

Recently I was checking out Triond as a place to post articles. At first glance Tiond looks interesting. But there is something rather unsettling there.

What is interesting about Triond is that they have many websites. So, if you write an article on health, it can be posted on their health website "Healthmad.com". If you write an article on Sport, it will be posted on "Sportales.com". From the SEO point of view that seems rather interesting.

What is strange about Triond is that they allow their authors to post lies, apparently just to get traffic. I won't name the website because that would only bring them more traffic. But for example, one of their most recent, most popular and most pathetic posts has the title "Death of Bret Michaels". The author of that post writes this about Bret Michaels "Another who chose, in lieu of making a positive impact on the world, to live a life of excess and waste".

The problem is, at the time it was posted Bret Michaels was (and still is) very much alive. In fact, I read that he is recovering and expected to survive his recent stroke. What is Triond's view of this? Nothing wrong, this is just satire. If you look very, very closely, you see that the post is put in the "humor" category. Ha, HA! However, other than that there is nothing obvious on the website that indicates that this is intended to be satire. No humorous titles, no funny pictures. Nada. In fact, if you read the post there is no humor there at all. Just poorly written trash. And many of the commentators to the post, believing the writer's trash, leave their condolences. The same author has previously posted garbage such as "Johnny Depp Found Dead", etc. Triond has been contacted on this subject on numerous occasions, but only shrugs their shoulders and repeats that it is satire. Right.

This falls under the category of "if you post something controversial it will get traffic". This is true, I guess, but it depends on how low you want to stoop for that traffic. Triond must be happy to receive the additional ad clicks that this type of tabloid writing (I can not even call it journalism) will generate. As long as Google allows adsense ads to be put on such websites, I guess it will continue.