10 Home Improvements to Boost Home Security | Home Security ...

Home improvement projects can improve your home security and protect against intruders and other dangers.?Home improvements range from simple maintenance of old rooms to completely refurbishing them. Here are ten easy ways to make your home not only more beautiful and up-to-date, but a safer place to live.

1. Replace old, rusted locks. About 34 percent of burglars enter through the front door and 30 percent do it through unlocked doors. The more wear a lock has, the easier it is for burglars to break in, even if you remembered to lock up before you leave. Installing new locks will also ensure that you are the only one with keys to your home. For more up-to-date technology, you can try using electronic locks that take passcodes, or alarm monitoring allows you to lock and unlock your door whenever you want.
2. Check your smoke alarms and carbon monoxide detectors. Having these helpful devices around the home can save your life in an emergency. Most people won?t wake up during a fire, and carbon monoxide is almost undetectable by humans. You can also look into installing heat sensors and flood sensors for extra protection.
3. Add lighting around your home. Burglars never want to be seen, so installing lights around your home will stop them from approaching. You will also feel safer walking back home at night or driving up to a well-lit area. Light timers can also come in handy. Possible places to implement more lighting are along the sidewalks and driveway, on your porch and around potential points of entry, such as doors and windows.
4. Use a home security system. Today?s home security systems are sleeker, more convenient and more affordable. Wireless systems allow you to place discreet sensors wherever you want, and many system interfaces use touchscreens and extra features such as temperature, weather reports and home automation. Having a security system makes your home easier to control, as well as three times less likely to experience a robbery.
5. Upgrade your doors. If any of them look run-down or damaged, replace them with new ones of metal or solid core. Burglars most often enter through doors and windows, and if they are old and worn, breaking in is quicker and easier for them. Invest in deadbolts for each door to add another level of security.
6. Install a mail slot. With a mail slot, you can ensure that no one is taking your private mail when you are not around. People can access your checks and your personal information from your mailbox if it is right outside your house. Also, a large pile of uncollected mail is a good indicator of an empty home.
7. Clean up with some yard work. A homeowner?s lawn plays a very important role in whether or not a burglar targets the house. Having a well-kept lawn will deter criminals as well as raise property value. Trim down trees and overgrown hedges to remove hiding places for burglars. Store away tools and toys scattered around the yard so potential burglars won?t be tempted to approach your house. You can even have trees completely removed if you think a burglar could climb to the second story, or if they could fall over in a severe storm.
8. Drill a peephole in your door. This way you can check who is at the door without having to open it. Not only is it more safe, peepholes will allow you to avoid answering door-to-door sales people, solicitors and other potentially dangerous or threatening visitors. Drilling and installing a peephole can take less than 15 minutes to finish.
9. Check your windows. Twenty-three percent of burglars enter a home through a first story window, and nine percent through a second story window. Use blocking devices for windows and sliding doors so burglars can?t get in. Putting in security bars for your windows can also be effective, and you can look into decorative patterns to match your home.
10. Buy a safe for your valuables. Burglars know the hiding places people use for their valuables, including the freezer, the bedroom closet, drawers, under the mattress and many more. A safe provides extra guarded protection for the things you want to keep secured, and makes it harder for a burglar to find what he or she is looking for. Make sure the safe is too heavy to be moved, and conceal it in a discreet hiding place.

Home improvements can be a great opportunity to add new home features and increase your personal protection. With these handy tips, you can improve your home along with your sense of security!

This entry was posted in Featured, Home Security Blog and tagged alarm monitoring, doors and windows, home improvement, home security, safety. Bookmark the permalink.

Source: http://blog.safemart.com/2013/01/02/10-home-improvements-to-boost-home-security/

world wildlife fund gsa keith olbermann andrew bynum the time machine michelin tires michelin tires

Brother ImageCenter ADS-2500W

The Brother ImageCenter ADS-2500W provides a good set of features for a scanner at its price, with some nice flourishes like a touch screen and both Wi-Fi and Ethernet connectivity. It can scan to a variety of destinations and showed very good OCR quality in our testing. On the downside, it was slower than its rated speed, and particularly slow at scanning to searchable PDF, and was subject to more misfeeds than is usual for a desktop scanner.

The ADS-2500W is a duplex scanner with a 50-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF). It measures 11.8 by 8.7 inches (WD) when closed, and weighs 7.9 pounds. It has a straight-through paper path from the ADF into the output tray, and supports the scanning of business cards as well as plastic cards. You can control many functions, including scan destinations, from its 3.7-inch color touch screen.

The Brother ImageCenter ADS-2000 is similar to the ADS-2500, but for its lower price it lacks the latter's touch screen, Wi-Fi connectivity, and its ability to scan directly to cloud-based destinations, as well as scan to Microsoft SharePoint through Nuance PaperPort. It offers optical resolution of up to 600 ppi. The default resolution for scanning to file (PDF) is 300 ppi, which should be more than enough for most business documents.

The ADS-2500W lets you scan to a USB key, a PC, a network drive, email, an FTP server, or the cloud. (You can scan directly to Evernote, DropBox, Flickr, GoogleDrive, Facebook, and Picasa WebAlbums.) You can scan also scan to Android phones or tablets over a (user-supplied) cable.)

Other interesting features are 2-in-1 scanning (stitching 2 documents together into a ledger-sized scanned document) and continuous scanning (the ability to scan documents longer than the ADF's 50-page maximum). The ADS-2500W has multi-feed detection, for catching when more than one page is fed through the scanner at once and stopping the scan so you can re-feed the unscanned sheet(s). As was the case when I tested the ADS-2000, I experienced a relatively high number of misfeeds for a desktop scanner in our testing.

Software
Software bundled with the ADS-2500W includes Brother's Control Center 4 scan utility; Nuance Paper Port 12SE (for Windows) and Presto! PageManager 9 (for Mac) for document management and optical character recognition (OCR); Presto! BizCard 6; and Nuance PDF Converter Professional 7 (for Windows), which lets you create, edit, search, and collaborate on PDF files, and send them to Cloud-based services. It also has Twain, WIA, and ISIS drivers, which let you scan from virtually any program that has a scan command.

Neither BizCard or PDF Converter are installed automatically when you install the main MFL-Pro Suite (which is described, peculiarly, on the installation screen as "Full Driver and Software Package"). They're listed below under additional applications, but could easily be overlooked if you took the above description at face value.

Brother's Control Center scan utility is simple and quite useful, with buttons for 4 scan destinations: Scan to Image (300 ppi JPEG); OCR (300 ppi .txt file), Email (200 ppi PDF); and File (300 ppi PDF). By right-clicking on any of the buttons, you can change the settings, such as resolution, scan type (auto black and white, gray (error diffusion), true gray, or 24-bit color), document size, simplex/duplex, and set brightness and contrast. (When you first launch Control Center, you get a choice between simple and advanced interfaces; the advanced one gives you much more flexibility.)

You can also initiate scans from Nuance PaperPort ?(or Presto! PageManager if you use the scanner with a Mac). PaperPort lets you scan to multiple destinations, displayed at the bottom of the screen with icons. The Twain, WIA, and ISIS drivers let you scan to nearly any program that has a scan command.

Speed
The ADS-2500W is rated at up to 24 pages per minute (ppm) for simplex (one-sided) scanning and 24 ppm/48 images per minute (ipm) for duplex scanning, in which each side of a two-sided document counts as one image. I did our timed tests over an Ethernet connection, with the scanner's driver and software installed on a PC running Windows Vista.

In my testing, using the scan utility's default settings to scan to file (color image PDF at 300 ppi), it averaged 13.8 ppm to scan and save a 25-page file, well off of its rated speed. For duplex scanning, its tested speed fell a bit to 21.4 ipm. It was slower in scanning to searchable PDF format, taking 3 minutes 54 seconds to scan our 25-page document in simplex and a ponderous 6:44 in duplex. It took 2:54 to the test document to a .txt file using the scan utility's OCR button.

We do our official timings using default settings, as we've found that users tend to stick to them. But I also tried scanning the same document to image PDF at 200 ppi; the ADS-2500W turned in somewhat faster times of 16.3 ppm simplex and 14.2 ppm/28.4 ppm for duplex scanning. ?(I did not scan to searchable PDF at 200 ppi, as you'll want to use the higher resolution for that format.)

Curiously, when I tried scanning to black-and-white PDFs, these scans actually took longer than scanning to color.

We clocked the Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula DR-C125, rated at 25 ppm/50 ipm, at 25.4 ppm and 50 ipm for simplex and duplex scanning, respectively, to image PDF. Impressively, it maintained the same speeds when scanning to searchable PDF, scanning and processing our test document in a minute flat. The Kodak i2400 has a slightly higher rated speed (30 ppm/60 ipm for simplex and duplex scanning, respectively), and tested at 28.3 ppm and 53.6 ipm. It scanned a simplex document to searchable PDF in 1 minute 34 seconds.

Document Management
The ADS-2500W did very well at OCR, reading our Arial and Times New Roman text documents perfectly down to 6-point type. For business card management with BizCard 5, it did a reasonable job, entering data in the correct fields without an error on about half my test cards, and on most of the others had no more than two or three errors.

The Brother ADS-2500W has a more robust feature set than the lower-priced ADS-2000, including items such as the color touch screen and Wi-Fi that are very unusual for a scanner at its price. It can scan to multiple destinations, and it performed very well in OCR accuracy. Its main downside is that it is sluggish for its rated speed, and lagged even more when scanning to searchable PDF.

The Editors' Choice Canon imageFormula DR-C125 not only was true to its rated speed for both simplex and duplex scanning (which is the same as the Brother's), it lost no time in scanning to searchable PDF. The Kodak i2400 was slightly faster still, and although it lagged DR-C125 in scanning to searchable PDF, it finished in well under half the time it took the ADS-2500W to scan the same document. Although the Canon and Kodak scanners lack many of the ADF-2500W's flourishes, they deliver on the basics, most importantly on scan speed, both to image PDFand searchable PDF formats.

More Scanner Reviews:
??? Brother ImageCenter ADS-2500W
??? VuPoint Solutions Magic Wand with AutoFeed Dock PDS-ST450-VP
??? VuPoint Solutions Digital Film and Slide Converter FC-C520-VPD
??? Ambir MobileScan Pro 100
??? Xerox DocuMate 4830
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/XAbCA_glvBs/0,2817,2413631,00.asp

bcs rankings jay cutler applebees jeff gordon veterans day world war z When Is Veterans Day 2012

Psychiatric exam for suspect in NYC subway death

NEW YORK (AP) ? A woman accused of pushing a man to his death in front of a subway train told police she did so because she blamed Muslims for the Sept. 11 attacks, and because "I thought it would be cool," prosecutors said at a court hearing.

Erika Menendez was charged Saturday night with murder as a hate crime after she told police she spontaneously pushed Sunando Sen.

She laughed so hard during her arraignment in Queens criminal court that Judge Gia Morris told her lawyer: "You're going to have to have your client stop laughing."

Defense attorney Dietrich Epperson said Menendez's behavior in court was no different from how she had been acting when he spoke to her privately, and said his client didn't really think the proceedings were funny. He represented her for the arraignment only and had no further comment.

Menendez was held without bail and ordered to have a mental health exam. Her next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 14.

Prosecutors said Menendez pushed Sen, a 46-year-old native of India, to his death Thursday night because she blamed "Muslims, Hindus and Egyptians" for the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

"I pushed a Muslim off the train tracks because I hate Hindus and Muslims ? ever since 2001 when they put down the twin towers I've been beating them up," Menendez told police, according to the Queens district attorney's office.

Friends and co-workers said Sen, a native of Calcutta, was Hindu. He had lived in Queens for decades and was a graphic designer and copy shop owner. Sen was standing on an elevated platform of the 7 train that travels between Manhattan and Queens when he was shoved from behind as the train entered the station.

Witnesses told police a woman had been mumbling to herself and was sitting on a bench behind Sen until the train pulled in, then shoved him from behind. She then fled.

Police released a sketch and surveillance footage of a woman running from the subway station. Menendez was arrested after a passer-by saw her on the street and thought she looked like the wanted suspect. Witnesses identified her in a lineup and she was questioned by police, when she implicated herself, according to police and prosecutors.

Angel Luis Santiago, who used to work at the Queens building where Menendez's mother and stepfather live, said he was shocked by her arrest.

"It surprised me what she did," he said. "She never acted that way."

According to the district attorney's office, Menendez said, "There is no reason. I just pushed him in front of the train because I thought it would be cool."

Sen was the second man to die after being pushed in front of a New York City subway train this month. Ki-Suck Han was killed in a midtown Manhattan subway station on Dec. 3. A homeless man was arrested and charged with murder in that case and is awaiting trial. He claimed he acted in self-defense.

Such subway deaths are rare, but transit officials said last week they would consider installing barriers with sliding doors on some subway platforms. Other cities including Paris and London have installed such barriers.

___

Associated Press Writer Karen Matthews contributed to this report.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/psychiatric-exam-suspect-nyc-subway-death-074634459.html

MLB Playoff Schedule arizona cardinals Big Bird Adam Greenberg Fall Leaves Jim Lehrer 666 Park Avenue

Venezuelans take in shifting news on Chavez health

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) ? Venezuelans are beginning 2013 with a respite from shifting news about the health of President Hugo Chavez, who underwent his fourth cancer surgery last month.

The country was largely peaceful Tuesday after a New Year's Eve that saw a main government celebration canceled due to Chavez's illness. Bolivian President Evo Morales issued a New Year's greeting to Chavez lamenting the health problems plaguing his "anti-imperialist comrade."

Chavez son-in-law Jorge Arreaza wrote in a Twitter message Monday night that Chavez was "calm and stable, accompanied by his children." That followed a grim announcement from Vice President Nicolas Maduro Sunday that the president had suffered new complications from the six-hour surgery.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/venezuelans-shifting-news-chavez-health-161225404.html

st louis weather guinea bissau google stock google stock china gdp dont trust the b in apartment 23 johnny damon

Council of Foreign Relations website hacked

26 min.

Paul Wagenseil , TechNewsDaily

How would you like it if one of your favorite websites were hacked and rigged to infect you with malware??

That's what seems to have happened to the website of the Council of Foreign Relations (CFR), a New York-based bipartisan think tank with a long list of illustrious members.?

The CFR's website was infected around Dec. 21 with a Trojan that exploited a previously unknown, or zero-day, flaw in older versions of Internet Explorer, setting up visitors using IE for a?drive-by download infection.?

"The vulnerability is a remote code execution vulnerability that exists in the way that Internet Explorer accesses an object in memory that has been deleted or has not been properly allocated," Microsoft said in a?security advisory?posted Saturday. "The vulnerability may corrupt memory in a way that could allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code in the context of the current user within Internet Explorer."?

The malware affects Internet Explorer versions 6 through 8. Internet Explorer 9 and 10 are not affected, meaning users of Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Windows 8 can upgrade to those browsers to avoid infection.?

Microsoft is working on a fix, but in the meantime?recommends?that Windows users who cannot upgrade to newer versions of Internet Explorer set their Internet and intranet security-zone settings to "High," to set up alerts before running Active Scripting and to install the free?Enhanced Mitigation Experience Toolkit. [Update: Microsoft has?posted a "fix-it,"?a script that temporarily fixes the problem while the company continues to work on a full patch.]?

Chinese connection??
The CFR website compromise was first reported by the?Washington Free Beacon, a conservative news blog that quoted anonymous sources as saying the attack seemed to originate in China.?

FireEye, a Milpitas, Calif.-based information-security company, confirmed the CFR website was hosting malicious code in the form of a rigged Adobe Flash file.?

In its blog posting,?FireEye noted?that the code associated with the malware also restricted its victims to only systems using English, Russian, Chinese, Korean or Japanese, and that some internal code used simplified Chinese characters, as used on the Chinese mainland.?

Chinese state-sponsored hackers have been suspected in dozens of major information-stealing network attacks on Western governments, corporations and organizations over the past half decade.?

Such attacks are often politely termed "advanced persistent threats," and while most of the evidence points to China, few of the suspicions have been proven.?

American bigwig jackpot
Because the CFR is so prestigious and influential, experts characterized its website's hijacking as a?"watering-hole" attack.?

Watering-hole attacks are similar to?spear-phishing attacks?in that they target computers belonging to a specific person or a small group of people, but using Web browsers instead of email clients as the infection mechanism.?

In the case of the CFR, dozens of its prominent members would be ripe targets for state-sponsored information thieves. Former Treasury Secretary and Goldman Sachs head Robert Rubin co-chairs the board of directors, while former U.S. Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Colin Powell sit on the board, as do journalists Tom Brokaw and Fareed Zakaria.?

Former secretaries of state Henry Kissinger, George Shultz and James Baker are reportedly lifetime members, as are current Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, as well as Hillary Clinton's possible replacement Sen. John Kerry.?

Other lifetime members are said to include Fox News Channel head Roger Ailes, his boss Rupert Murdoch, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, Vice President Joe Biden, former vice presidents Dick Cheney and Walter Mondale and former presidents George H.W. Bush and Jimmy Carter.

Source: http://www.nbcnews.com/technology/technolog/council-foreign-relations-website-hacked-1C7755879

whitney houston found dead i will always love you whitney houston 2012 grammy awards powerball results pebble beach golf beverly hilton roland martin

9 Feng Shui Steps To Create The Life You Want

The bagua map is a grid of nine areas that can be laid upon the floor plan of a room or home that explains which areas of a home influence specific areas of your life.?

For example, the far right from the entrance door of a home or a room is an area focused on love & relationships. ?

If this area is empty (or, say, used as a mess room), your love life may reflect the same disarray!?

We could discuss the bagua for hours and have a great time, but for today, the important lessons are that the bagua is a diagnostic tool (not your destiny!).?

The areas that comprise the bagua can shine a light on under-valued aspects of your life and the bagua can help you design your dream life!

A little while back I got a call from a fabulous designer on the East Coast asking for my help to coach him in his question to be extraordinary. ?

Instantly I was interested.?

He had a system worked out based on the feng shui bagua map that encompassed engaging a coach in nine separate areas of his life that correlated with the nine areas of this feng shui tool. I was honored, flattered and agreed to coach him in one ?area? of the bagua map. ?

I also sat down and looked at his system and realized the genius that could be extracted from using the bagua as a ?life coaching? tool.

I experimented with y friend?s ?bagua? formula. What I learned was astonishing! While I could never ease myself with nine different life coaches at once, I actually needed help with aspects of my life I?d never seen before looking at the map in this way. ?

If I set a very modest but actionable goal or intention for each of the nine areas of my life that correlated to the bagua, would this make a difference? ?YES!!! A small shift in areas that seemed unrelated to my ?goals? actually moved me forward in every sense and helped me to live a more balanced and empowered life

The holistic life-design exercise I have enjoyed for the last few months is my big recommendation to you as you reflect on 2012 and make plans for 2013.?

Ready? Grab a piece of paper and something to write with!

• Sketch out this map (see above) on a piece of paper.

• Decide on a very small shift in action that you can take in each area of your life for next month and write it in the corresponding area.

1. Self-Empowerment/Money: could you save a few dollars a week, start a new personal business venture with a small step like a blog, hire a life coach that specializes in business? the possibilities are endless!

2. Power/Fame: since this area has to do with how the world sees you as manifesting your purpose, could you start by revamping your image online? (Add a few fresh photos? Tweak your blog design? A freshly designed portfolio? ) Could you try wearing some new colors in the new year that enhance you?

3. Love/Relationships: the classic ?love? area deals?primarily?with romantic relationships, but all kinds of relationships in actuality. If you are already dating with marginal success, maybe you can get more specific in your love search with a reputable matchmaker? Perhaps you can redo your bedroom or get some sexy new bedding? ?Remember, just one action or a shift in attitude in each area is all we need here.

4. Legacy: Do you honor your family? Can you improve your relationship with one family member, learn more about your genealogy, etc?

5. Health: Rather than planning an entire health revolution (you can, for sure, but this is about easy-to-accomplish moves!) could you steadily take a vitamin, take a walk, drink a smoothie or do a few minutes of yoga a day or a week? You know for you what will work, but for the intention of this exercise, pick a small thing like, ? I will eat a vegetable every day.? (I hope you do already! This is just an easy example?)?

6. Children & Creativity: If you don?t have kids, can you volunteer with kids? ?If you have kids, can you find new ways to bond with them? Or can you nurture your own creativity and inner child with a fun hobby or an artistic pursuit that you can act upon in 2013?

7. Wisdom: Learn! ?Decide how you can learn (An app that teaches you a new word a day? A subscription to the New York Times? A class? Webinars? Videos?) and make a bit of time to keep learning.

8. Self/Career: It?s always a good time to tune up your business/life plan and this exercise is already a huge step in that direction! You may have a goal or two in mind for the new year, but here we keep it to a small action. Will you hand out business cards to people you meet? Start a newsletter??You get the gist. A small action that feeds this area of your life without overtaking you.

9. Compassion & Helpful People: How much do you give to others in the spirit of selfless service? How much do you nourish your clients in business? Can you think of a way to give more to others?That energy always comes back, but you don?t really think about it because it feels so good to just give!

Take a walk through your house and see if there are any areas that you seem stuck on in your ?life map? that are also cluttered or neglected in your house. That?s your assignment: to clean it up and beautify what you aren?t excited about in your space?

Now, with no pressure, enjoy getting involved in your life as a whole. These steps may seem insignificant but I promise you, they are not! ?

And they are fun!

Next month, check in. If you dig the actions you are taking, keep them the same. If anything has fallen out of favor, switch up that area?and carry on.?

Published December 31, 2012 at 8:51 AM

About Dana Claudat

Dana Claudat is a Pyramid School Feng Shui consultant, writer, and founder of the feng shui blog The Tao Of Dana. A Stanford-educated Art Historian based in Hollywood, she does very personalized feng shui consultations with an artful slant to a client base composed largely of vanguard hipsters, musicians, the entertainment set and the art world, and also works online with clients spread around the globe. Dana's mission is to help everyone in the world become more positively in control of their environment and, thus, their lives.

Follow Dana on her website,?The Tao of Dana
And on?Pinterest,?Facebook?and?Twitter?

More from Dana Claudat on MindBodyGreen

Is Your Home Making You Lazy?
8 Feng Shui Ways to Get Happy!
7 Feng Shui Mistakes You Don't Want To Make
A Feng Shui Tip for Trusting Yourself
Insecurity Can Be Your Friend

Source: http://www.mindbodygreen.com/0-7227/9-feng-shui-steps-to-create-the-life-you-want.html

winning numbers mega millions megamillions drawing olbermann mega millions march 30 lucky numbers odds of winning mega millions mary mary

Police, firefighters pay respects in Webster, N.Y.

WEBSTER, N.Y.?? Thousands of police and firefighters are paying respects to a police lieutenant slain in a fiery Christmas Eve ambush on the shore of Lake Ontario in Upstate New York.

The funeral of Lt. Michael Chiapperini, 43, was held Sunday in a high school in the town of Webster, where Chiapperini was also a volunteer fireman. Chiapperini and fellow firefighter Tomasz Kaczowka, 19, were fatally shot by William Spengler early Monday morning when they arrived at a fire that Spengler had set at his lakeside home.

Two other firefighters were wounded before Spengler, 62, killed himself. Spengler had served 17 years for killing his elderly grandmother, beating her head with a hammer.

Related: At 1989 parole hearing, Spengler wondered if he might kill again
Related: Human remains found at home of gunman who ambushed firefighters

A long line of police, firefighters, and state troopers, hats clutched across their chests, filed silently past Chiapperini's flag-draped casket in the high school auditorium before the service began.

Kaczowka's funeral is on Monday. He was best friends with Lt. Chiapperini's son.

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Source: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/50324690/ns/us_news-crime_and_courts/

wwdc heart attack grill madden 13 cover dalai lama tamera mowry slow jam the news madden cover