Last Minute Online Gifts For Good

It’s the night before Christmas,
and all through the house,
the screams from the office
have upset your spouse.

You made a gift list
and checked it your best.
How could you have forgotten
your brother out West?

It’s a last minute panic,
driven by fear.
Is there anything out there
that can save you this year?

On Google, on Yahoo, on GoodSearch, on Bing!
Visit the K.I.N.D site and you’ll find the right thing.
Now only will you deliver that gift that you should,
You’ll be doing young students a whole world of good.

Instead of calling your brother
to say that you’re sorry,
give a desk in his name
to a kid in Malawi.

A desk will be built,
creating local employment.
A child gets off the dirt floor,
creating school time enjoyment.

Right now you contribute,
in a process that’s swift.
Your brother gets an e-card,
acknowledging your gift.

This couldn’t be easier,
it sure fills a need.
Relax now at Christmas,
you’ve done a good deed

Making a donation to a good cause in someone’s name brightens the day of 3 people. You feel good doing it, the person whose name you are giving it in is both surprised and delighted, and the charity that you help improves the life of a person or animal, perhaps all year long.

This year, we’ve been especially intrigued by the K.I.N.D: Kids in Need of Desks project that is a cooperative project of Lawrence O’Donnell on his MSNBC show, “The Last Word,” and UNICEF. What makes this project so compelling is that for a mere $48, you can have an entire desk built in Malawi and delivered to a classroom in need. This desk will be used for years, perhaps decades, to improve the learning of kids who now sit on the floor and write in their notebooks the best they can. It’s amazing how such a small contribution on our part can make such a huge difference in the lives of youngsters and adults in the third world. Adults? Yes, the adults are hired to build those desks out of metal pipe and wood on-site in Malawi. When ready, they load the desks into a truck and deliver them to delighted students at one lucky classroom. The next load goes to a different classroom.

You can read more about this K.I.N.D project, see the happy faces of the school kids in Malawi and watch a video about the project. Then, go to the K.I.N.D. donation page and contribute what you wish in your own name or for anyone else you want to honor. Your donation will be processed instantly online and an e-card from K.I.N.D. will be sent to the recipient of your choice.

Did someone say it was too late to buy a last minute gift this year? Ho, ho, ho. There’s always time for giving on the Internet. For the animal lover on your gift list, have a look at "I Want a Baby Elephant for Christmas."

Happy Holidays!

Foul Odor of Decaying Prepaid Calling Cards

Prepaid calling cards have become popular for international calls, primarily because of their jaw-dropping low advertised rates. They’ve probably caught your eye in the store with their large numbers of very small cents per minute. You may think that you’re going to call around the globe at will for a couple of cents, but you won’t be calling anywhere when the card goes bad.

Goes bad? You mean like milk and fish? Yes, exactly. You see, most prepaid calling cards decay once you start using them.

Think I’m kidding? Get out your magnifying glass and read the small print on the back side of the card. What will you see? Horrible things. Things like connection fees, minimum call times of 10 or 20 minutes, and weekly service fees.

What’s a weekly service fee? Hold your nose. You’re not going to like the smell of this.

A weekly service fee is a charge placed against your card every week after you first start using it. Buy a prepaid calling card and sit on it for a month. You’ll still have all the minutes you paid for. Buy a prepaid calling card and make a short call on it. Then put the card back in your wallet. Make another call a month later and you’ll probably find that some of the minutes have magically disappeared. They’ve been eaten up by those nasty service fees.

That’s the decay I’m taking about. Your minutes start to go bad as soon as you open the card. You don’t even have to stick your nose in the refrigerator and sniff. After a year or so that card that you thought was good for a few cents per minute has just run out of minutes. Add up the minutes that you’ve actually spent on the phone and you’ll find that you’ve paid over a dollar a minute. Not so cheap in the end, is it?

There are two ways you can avoid the stench of calling card decay. First, when you start using one of these cards use it up as fast as you can. Preferably, just make one long call. That way you’ll only pay one connection charge, not be affected by a minimum call charge, and be done before the service fees start.

What’s the other way? Use a service that gives you the cheap international rates that you want from a prepaid calling card, but doesn’t have the small print and seamy side to using it. A good choice is TEL3Advantage.

What’s different about TEL3Advantage is that there are no little paper cards involved. You order the service online for $10, $25 or so. Then you use it from any phone, including your cell phone. The process is similar to using any calling card. You dial a local access number or toll free number to reach TEL3Advantage. Then you dial the international number you want to reach from the US or Canada. You’ll pay the low per minute rate but no connection, hidden or monthly fees. You only need to avoid letting your account go inactive for a year.

But what about the rates? They can’t beat prepaid calling cards, can they?

What if I told you that you could make calls to China for 1 cent per minute right now? Is that cheap enough? OK, that’s a limited time promotion rate. The standard rate is 1.7 cents per minute. I’ll bet that’s cheaper than most of the calling cards you’ll find at the convenience store.

Here’s a bonus. Depending on how much service you choose to sign up for, you can get free bonus minutes added to your account. How many? Oh, how about as many as 900 free minutes to China? Does that sound reasonable?

Of course, there are low rates to all of Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and so on. You don’t need a special card to maximize your savings to any particular part of the World. Just sign up for TEL3Advantage international calling service and the world is at your fingertips. Call all you like. If you run low on minutes, just recharge your account. Best of all, there are no service fees draining your account. Oh, that does smell sweet.

Of Course Elephants Text

The next time you feel like complaining about how hard it is to text using those tiny little buttons on your cell phone, just remember that somewhere in Kenya an elephant is probably texting right now. You don't hear THEM complaining about big feet, little buttons. What? Elephants text?

Of course elephants send text messages. You expect them to use push to talk? Actually, elephants don't really need to put five other elephants in their favorites list. They can communicate audibly using low frequencies called infrasonics that carry for miles. It's when they need to tell us something that the cell phones get activated.

Don't expect to catch site of an elephant whipping out an iPhone when you are on safari. The text messaging they do is via some very specialized equipment and at our request, not theirs. But it works to everyone's benefit. In this case, the cellular technology has been pressed into service to make sure that elephants and humans can live in harmony.

The idea is to let wildlife rangers know when elephants are going after farmer's crops, so they can be led back to their protected areas before any violence ensues. Even in a land as vast and rural as Africa, there just aren't enough wild spaces left so that people and elephants will naturally keep their distance. As a result of human settlements encroaching more and more on what was once wilderness area, farmers and elephants are competing for the same swaths of land. Elephants go after the farmer's cash crops. Farmer's defend what they have worked so hard to produce and things get violent. Sometimes the elephants win and there are fewer farmers. Sometimes the farmers win and there are a few less elephants.

This is what the wireless notification system has been designed to prevent. The way it works is that a specially designed mobile transmitter is built into a collar that the elephant wears. Inside the electronics box is a mobile phone SIM card, GPS receiver, wireless transmitter and battery pack. A virtual fence is programmed into the system so that when an elephant approaches the limit of the Ol Pejeta conservancy, a warning message is transmitted to park rangers. They can then intercept the wayward elephant before there is a problem.

It works! By redirecting elephants back to their protected territory, crop raiding has been reduced significantly. The elephants also learn where their new territorial limits are and share that information with the herd. In a way, it's like invisible dog fencing but for a much, much larger animal and without anyone getting a shock. Just text messages.

Now if YOU want to send text messages, you'll need a more human scale phone. You'll find many special offers, including free phones, at Cell Phone Plans Finder.

If you want to help protect elephants in their habitat, visit Save The Elephants. In the United States, former circus and zoo elephants are protected and nurtured at The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee and the Performing Animal Wildlife Sanctuary (PAWS).

The Marauding Elephant Network

In the Laikipia district, near the Mount Kenya Forest in Africa, farmers are nervously alert. Danger lurks from the forest. One never knows when an attack may come. With little warning, one could lose valuable crops, livestock or even one's life. Not to guerrilla insurgents or government troops. This is not a military situation. The marauders are elephants. They emerge from the forest wreaking havoc at random. When farmers hear the whistling sound of their approach, they do the only thing that makes sense. They activate their marauding elephant communications network.

The root of this problem is the age-old conflict of man versus nature. In the centuries when there were few humans and a seemingly unlimited bounty of nature, humanity could clear out a niche and protect it by whatever means necessary. But we overdid it. Species after species has been wiped off the face of the Earth or nearly so, as we slashed, burned, and settled our way to an accelerating population currently over 6.6 billion. Only now are we coming to our senses to realize that conquering nature and destroying it diminishes us as a species and ruins a irreplaceable heritage.

From the elephant's perspective, it is we who are intruding on their ancient habitat and defacing the land with our agriculture and settlement. The 5,000 remaining members of the herd live in the Mount Kenya Forest, a national park and forest reserve. It is also a United Nations UNESCO World Heritage Site that has garnered international interest in preserving it. The African elephants themselves are highly intelligent and social creatures that deserve the right to a decent and natural existence.

So, what can help people and elephants co-exist in a situation where both want to occupy the same territory? Technology comes to the rescue in the form of an electronic communications network that farmers can use to warn each other and the Kenya Wildlife Service when elephants threaten. In this case, it's a special PTT or Push to Talk cellular phone system. In the United States, Nextel is known for PTT service on their IDEN network. The African PoC or Push to Talk on Cellular uses the international GSM cellular standard. Handsets can be used for standard phone calls and text messages as well as PTT group communications. Precious communications resources will likely be conserved, however, as places to recharge the handsets are few and far between in this area.

More rapid communications helps farmers stay out of the way of any marauding elephants and lets them alert the Kenya Wildlife Service in time to respond to the threat. This gives the farmers a way to protect their lives and property without getting into conflicts with the elephants that can be fatal to either party.

The GSM PoC communications system is among a variety of techniques that help people and elephants peacefully coexist. One clever low tech solution is for farmers to plant chillis around the perimeters of their fields. Elephants hate chillis, which helps to keep them out of the fields. The chillis can then be turned into hot sauces and seasonings that are sold as Elephant Pepper products.

Another approach to protecting wild animals, such as elephants, is to create sanctuaries where they can live without fear of poaching or intrusion by humanity. The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust conserves elephants and rhinos in Kenya and has a program where you can foster an orphan elephant. The Amboseli Trust for Elephants protects elephants in the Amboseli area of Kenya and is a leader in scientific research regarding elephants.

In the United States, The Elephant Sanctuary in Tennessee and the Performing Animal Wildlife Sanctuary (PAWS) offer care and protection in a natural setting for elephants that are too old or otherwise unwanted by circuses and zoos. Both have web cams that let you view the elephants and their activities from anywhere you have a computer and a broadband connection.