Looks can be deceiving, both in positive and in a negative way.  In the link in the video below it was a very positive surprise that caught everyone off guard.  Some people probably felt bad and embarrassed about making a quick judgment.  Don’t let it happen to you.

Check it out by clicking on the link below (embedding was not enabled):

http://youtu.be/VSrAJsWvEIc

Never Judge a Book by Its Cover is a post from: Worldwide Success

This has been a very busy year, but I am glad we were able to keep up with our weekly schedule of information-filled success articles, taking us to a whopping 259 articles published since the inception of the site.  We are now into our 4^th year – not bad for an activity that is known for not lasting more than a few months.  Coming up with new and interesting success related articles week after week is definitely a challenge but we hope to continue sharing with you great articles to help you in your success journey.

The year 2009 was indeed a tough one as we dealt with the aftermath of the most intense global financial crisis since the Great Depression.  We have not fully recovered yet, and for the one in ten of us in the United States who are without a job, this is truly a tough environment in which to succeed.  But at least now there are signs of hope.  The stock market is certainly showing signs of improvement, and it is quite a relief to look at this year’s investment statements compared to the ones at the end of last year.

But despite of all the trials and tribulations of a tough year, we all have something to be thankful for, and we should always keep that in mind.   I am thankful for the thousands of visitors that come to our site every month and specially to those who contribute with their insightful comments.  I am also very thankful for all of our sponsors.  A special thanks goes to Bettertrades , CashNetUSA and RateDetective who have been our sponsors for years.

Wishing you a very successful 2010!

Wishing You Much Success in the New Year is a post from: Worldwide Success

But if you are not the entrepreneurial type, and you are not willing to taking any risks, but you are still interested in an opportunity to travel the world while performing a regular job, there is another option – working on a cruise ship.  Obviously you will not make the kind of money that was discussed in the article mentioned above, but you can still make a pretty decent living while seeing the world.

The challenge with getting a job on a cruise ship is that it is a very competitive market, and in order to get in you need to know what you are doing – the cruise line industry is one of the most competitive industries to break into.  In order to solve this problem, Neil Maxwell-Keys, an ex-crewmember and hiring specialist for the world’s leading cruise line has put together a eBook called Get a Cruise Ship Job! which provides you with everything you need to know on how to get a job on a cruise ship.

One of the fringe benefits of working on a cruise ship is that, besides visiting incredibly beautiful places, you get to meet a variety of interesting people from many parts of the world.

Make no mistake about it – working on a cruise ship requires dedication and hard work just like any other job.  You are not going to get paid to lay by the pool.  But you will get a chance to take time off and to enjoy the beauty and culture of many foreign locations.  Plus, you will be surrounded by people who are generally happy, and having a good time, which is usually a lot more fun than being stuck in a cubicle farm somewhere.

Take a look at the video below to get a taste for what working on a cruise ship could be like.  But don’t leave to chance your dream to get paid while traveling the world – go into it knowing how to get in so that you don’t get rejected when you apply, potentially further diminishing your chances of getting hired in the future.  After reading Get a Cruise Ship Job! you will be very well prepared to get a great job with a cruise line.

If you are serious about breaking into the cruise line industry get your copy of Get a Cruise Ship Job! and have fun seeing the world while getting paid at the same time.

Get Paid to Travel the World is a post from: Worldwide Success

This is not a political site and we do our best to keep a neutral non-partisan position in all of our articles.  However, we do believe in certain success principles that have broad social and political implications:

Free Markets and Democracy

The United States became the most powerful country in the world, and the home of the most financially successful by following the capitalistic principles of free markets and democracy.  Free market does not necessarily mean no regulations.  The markets do have imperfections and government regulations should be in place to prevent irregularities that result in catastrophic situations like the housing bubble and the consequent economic downturn we are living today.

Small Government is Better

Governments are naturally inefficient.   However, they provide basic services that are important for the well being of the general population.  Government spending should be kept to a minimum to provide these basic services.

People Should Keep the Rewards of their Success

Taxes should be minimized so that people are incented to work hard, be innovative, take risks, and keep their rewards.  Once you start overtaxing successful people, they will be less motivated to do the very things that make them successful.  Consequently, the economy suffers, jobs are not generated, the government collects less tax against lower incomes, and everyone loses.

Voting is a privilege that not everyone in the world can exercise.  To be a true success, you should take your civil responsibilities seriously by exercising your right to vote.

Vote! is a post from: Worldwide Success

Because of the technical challenges with the transfer and the improvement in the performance of the site, the transfer process was put on hold.  However, sometime in September the symptoms started appearing again and in the beginning of October the problem became much more severe and lasted the entire month of October.  As a consequence, there was a greater than 75% drop in the number of daily visitors for the month.

Several contacts were made with Yahoo support, but each contact was an exercise of frustration, as Yahoo would not admit that the problems were with their servers.  Despite of the fact that nothing had changed on the site, it became so slow that many times the browser connection would time out.  Yet Yahoo kept on blaming the site and would not even bother to look at their servers.  Here are some excerpts of responses received from Yahoo support.  It is clear that there is no consistency in their response, only a game of blame on anything other than Yahoo hosting:

Your site is loading slowly because you are loading content from twenty other domains, and because you have thirteen external javascripts and three external style sheets.

 

Thank you again for contacting Yahoo! Customer Care. 

Regards,

Teddy R

Yahoo! Customer Care

 

———————————————– 

 

Yahoo! Web Hosting has a limit of 100 concurrent connections to a mySQL database at one time. If a connection is opened but not closed by a PHP script, that connection will remain open for 20 hours, at which time it will be closed automatically.

 

If your script is not closing connections after the user is done with them, this may result in the connections remaining open long after your user has need of it, resulting in the maximum number of connections and the “500 Error”.

 

Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.

 

Regards,

 

Igor

 

Yahoo! Web Hosting Customer Care

 

 

—————————————————-

 

Our investigation has shown that there are no technical issues with your Yahoo! Hosting account.  We believe that issue you are experiencing is related to your installation or configuration of the following software:http://wordpress.org/support/

* WordPress

While Yahoo! Hosting provides the ability to install this software, we cannot and do not provide full technical support for these products.  We suggest contacting the support services of these software products to fully diagnose this problem.

 

Please do not hesitate to reply if you need further assistance.

Regards,

Leo

Yahoo! Customer Care

 

——————————————– 

 

Pinging ww-success.com [68.142.212.128]:

Ping #1: Got reply from 68.142.212.128 in 2.3ms [TTL=56]
Ping #2: Got reply from 68.142.212.128 in 2.2ms [TTL=56]
Ping #3: Got reply from 68.142.212.128 in 2.2ms [TTL=56]
Ping #4: Got reply from 68.142.212.128 in 1.8ms [TTL=57]

Variation:                0.5ms (+/- 23%)

Shortest Time:            1.8ms
Average:                  2.1ms
Longest Time:              2.3ms

Done pinging ww-success.com!

It is clear from the above details that your domain is resolving at a normal pace. Our servers are running normally, so, you should not experience such inconvenience.

 

Currently, there are no detectable technical complications with the functionality of your Yahoo! Web Hosting account.

 

Regards,

Lee

Yahoo! Customer Care

Do these responses have any consistency?  Do they seem like they are trying to solve the problem or just point the finger at something other than Yahoo hosting?

Well, after being fed up with one lousy response after another, we aggressively moved forward with the transfer and had the site moved to Hostgator in less than a week.  The transfer went more smoothly than expected, and the Hostgator staff helped transfer the files and the database at not charge!  The only problems experienced were one plugin that stopped working unexplainably, and some character set issues with the title of the posts.  The plugin was replaced and the character set issues corrected manually.

We are happy to report that the site is now much faster.  Hostgator is not only much faster than Yahoo Hosting, it is cheaper and has much better support.  If you had visited this site in September or October, you will now notice a significant improvement in the speed of the site.  The results speak for themselves.

There are a few lessons to be learned from this experience that are applicable to success in any field of endeavor.  First, never accept mediocre service from a vendor.  If you are not happy with the services provided by any vendor, leave them promptly.  Second, face your problems head on.  Ignoring the early signs of a problem can result in significant additional risk.  Doing the right thing as soon as possible may mean going through some temporary pain, but in the end it pays off immensely.

Goodbye Yahoo Web Hosting, Hello Faster Blog is a post from: Worldwide Success

Why someone that has virtually everything would risk throwing it all away to be involved in an activity so grotesque and repugnant is beyond anyone’s reasoning.  According to statements by the co-defendants in this case, they, along with Vick, executed “approximately eight dogs… by various methods including hanging and drowning.”  It makes you sick to your stomach.

Is life for some superstars like Vick so boring that they are willing to throw everything away just to take some risks and do what most people would consider totally unacceptable?  Is it possible that success came so easily for some of these people that they find it totally meaningless?  Or is success as experienced by celebrities such a big psychological weight that it totally throws their mind into a spin making them unable to judge right from wrong?

There is a risk of oversimplifying what is probably a very complex issue, but mere mortals like me who work hard for the money and for whom success does not come so easily would like to understand what goes on in the minds of these celebrities.  Walking into a stadium full of football fans cheering you on is not enough of a thrill?  In order to get your kicks, do you really need to train innocent dogs to become so ferocious that they will fight until the opponent is totally decimated, leaving them dead or crippled for life?  Is this how Vick gets his excitement?  I just don’t get it.

Everyone likes success.  But maybe there is an argument that too much success too fast is not so desirable.  If success, when given in too large a dose too fast, makes you do things like seek pleasure is drugs, drive intoxicated, or kill animals for fun, then it may not be such a great thing after all.

It is sad to see a successful young man get himself in such mess.  But if the charges are true, as indicated by his agreement to enter a plea of guilty, then Michael Vick owes more to society than a simple apology.  He must suffer the consequences of his repulsive and irresponsible behavior.

Success, Fame and Fortune not Enough for Vick is a post from: Worldwide Success

I am currently working on transferring the site to another host.  I will write another post with additional details on the difficulties experienced with the current host and will announce the transfer when it is complete.  In the meantime, I am sorry for any problems you may be experiencing with the site.  Once the technical problems are resolved we will return to our regular posts.

Problems with Yahoo Web Hosting is a post from: Worldwide Success

“I am still looking for blogs that have launched since August 2006 which are considered influential based on their readership, traffic and rankings.”

Here are the guidelines for participating in program:

• Write a blog post and pick your choice of 10 (or less) emerging influential blogs. Any blog in the world can be picked. (You can update the same post entry up to July 28.)
• Include a link to this post to help spread the word. (You can also vote for it in Digg)
• Post a comment and let them know about your entry. Only one entry per blogger (Check out some work-in-progress entries)

Every week, beginning May 19, Digital Filipino will:

• List the blogs that you’ve chosen. Only sites that are blogs and were created from August 2006 to the present will be listed.
• List the blog post entries from participants.
• Feature a sponsor. (Interested sponsors can email him through digitalfilipino at gmail.com)

The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007 writing program will run until July 28.  On August 1 ten blog posts will be selected randomly and the winners will get $100 each.

Here is my vote for now:

• Escape From Cubicle Nation

Update:

Worldwide Success has also been voted by Ryan Shamus dot com.

Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007 is a post from: Worldwide Success

Just recently I have experience this first hand and would like to report this unfortunate event so that, united, consumers can fight with the best weapon available to us: how we spend our money.   In the area where I live, cable service used to be provided by Time Warner Cable.  There is no other cable service provider in the area, so if you want cable TV or high-speed internet through cable your only choice was to sign up with Time Warner.  Time Warner’s prices in my opinion were high for the service they provided.

But the real problem with the lack of competition in this market became really apparent when Comcast acquired Time Warner and moved in the area.  Suddenly, I started experiencing constant service interruptions unlike anything I had experienced before.  The internet connection was noticeably slower, and the lack of connection was frequent enough to the point where it became annoying.  Other people in the area seemed to be experiencing similar problems.

To make matters worse, this month Comcast increased the price of their internet service from $44.95 a month to $52.95 a month.  This corresponds to a 17.8% increase, or the equivalent of approximately 6 times the rate of inflation!  And that is not all.  The $52.95 rate will only be available for 6 months.  Comcast has been “kind enough” to give a $10 discount for the first 6 months to previous Time Warner customers.  What this means is that in 6 months the price will be $62.95 per month, AN INCREASE OF 40% OVER THE ORIGINAL PRICE!

This may seem naïve on my part, but I could not simply accept this without at least calling them to express my discontent.  When I complained about the higher prices for lower service their response was to call Technical Support if I was experiencing technical difficulties.  Then they asked if I had any other questions.  What they were really saying is that they don’t care about my dissatisfaction with their worse-service-higher-prices business model.

Although the alternatives to cable companies’ poor and overpriced service are limited, there are alternatives.  If you want premium channels, instead of cable use satellite services such as Direct TV or Dish Network.  Instead of cable, DSL may be an acceptable alternative for high speed internet.  In the future, telephone companies may also provide video service.  I am definitely considering transitioning to DSL.  I cannot fathom paying $62.95 a month or $755 per year for internet service that is at best unreliable.

For more interesting reading on the subject, you can review the following articles:

• Save $$$: End the Cable TV Monopoly
• Deregulation of cable monopoly leads to more options in "black boxes"
• The Market Economy vs. The Monopoly

Consumers must stand strong and fight back against these types of abuses from monopolistic enterprises.   If consumers refuse to pay these outrageous prices for poor service, companies like Comcast will have to change their ways in order to survive.  There is only one way to respond to a situation like this.  Refuse to give them your business.

Cable Companies Monopoly Equals Lower Service and Higher Prices is a post from: Worldwide Success

Many departments have a limited view of other areas of the business.  This occurs naturally because of efficiencies in specialization of labor and the limited opportunities that exist to interact with other business areas.  However, IT is privileged in that it must deal with all areas of the business.  A process-oriented IT resource may have to work on a sales and marketing project, and then tackle supply chain issues, and then move on to a financial software implementation.  IT Project Managers in particular get exposed to many different functional areas.

Many IT resources have transferable skills that could be applied in many other functional areas.  In fact, one could argue that some of these IT resources do not belong in IT at all.  They are internal business consultants that can be placed wherever the business needs them the most.

This transferability of skills is also applicable to executive roles.  Many CIOs not only have transferable skills, they actually have an advantage over other executives because of their broad exposure to many business issues and their understanding of technology.  One CIO who successfully transitioned from IT to other C-level positions is Kevin Turner.  Kevin’s career is a great example of how leadership skills can be transferred from job to job.

Kevin reached the CIO position at Wal-Mart, one of the largest companies in the world at the young age of 34.  At 37 he was promoted to president and CEO of Sam’s Clubs, a $37 billion company.  In 2005, at the age of 40, Kevin took the position of COO of Microsoft where he is responsible for the global organization of more than $40 billion in revenues.  Kevin is part of the leadership team that sets the strategy and direction for Microsoft and overseas corporate operations supporting 71,000 employees.

In an interview with CIO magazine, Kevin describes how as a CIO he prepared for taking on additional responsibilities.  Like any other successful executive, he emphasizes how critical it is to be able to work with people and teams, and how building self-managed high-performing teams with a focused agenda and a clear definition of success helped him transition to the business side.

Kevin also talks about the importance of building relationships with peers in the business and working closely with the people that deliver results so that you can get a good understanding of how the business operates.  He also mentions how being able to understand what is possible with technology and mapping it to business problems and solutions to drive results was instrumental for him.

According to Kevin, the key difference between the CIO job and the CEO job is that the CEO role has a lot of external complexities that are less under your control.  But he thinks CIOs have moments that would be very comparable to the most difficult day of the CEO.

The advice that Kevin gives to prospect CEOs is to take inventory of what you have been exposed to and learned.  Executives aiming for the top corporate job need to manage their careers so that they get broad exposure to many areas of the business and develop a deep understanding of how the business operates, the external marketplace, and how customers respond.

Whether you are an individual contributor, a manager, or an executive in IT, if you apply technical skills to improve business processes, you have a powerful set of skills that can be transferable to many other business areas.  If your career goal is to transition to the business side, you can be a valuable asset to any company that recognizes the power of combining business acumen with technical savvy.

Crossing the IT and Business Divide is a post from: Worldwide Success