In the last decade or so, the popularity of sugar gliders as pets has grown considerably. The small size of these furry acrobats, their personalities, their plush fur, their large eyes, their agility and their ability to bond closely with humans have attracted legions of new sugar glider devotees.
What is a sugar glider and where did they originally come from? Sugar gliders are small marsupials and members of the possum family. They are found in Australia, Tasmania, Indonesia, and New Guinea. Their scientific name is Petaurus breviceps. Most sugar gliders these days are captive-bred and not wild-caught.
Like their larger marsupial cousins, kangaroos, sugar gliders have a pouch where their infants grow and develop. Their young are called “joeys,” as are the young of kangaroos. You may come across the term OOP while researching sugar gliders on the internet. OOP means “out-of-pouch” and it indicates how long the joey has been completely out of his mother’s pouch. Joeys are ready to go to a new home at approximately 8 weeks OOP.
Sugar gliders are approximately chipmunk-sized, measuring about 9 to 12 inches long (including their long tail), and they weigh about 3 to 6 ounces as adults. Their normal color is steel gray to brownish with a black stripe down the back, but selective breeding in captivity has brought out other color variations, including albinos. In captivity, they can live as long as 15 years, although 8 to 12 years is more usual.
One of the most distinguishing features of sugar gliders is a thin membrane, called a patagium, that stretches between their front and rear legs, much like the more familiar flying squirrels of North America. This is what allows them to glide from tree to tree. When they glide, the skin spreads out, making sugar gliders look like furry kites! When the sugar glider is sitting, the patagium looks like ruffled furry skin, shaped somewhat like the edge of lasagna noodles.
Their tail is not prehensile, unlike their more familiar American opossum cousins. That means that sugar gliders cannot grasp, grip and hang from their tails. Instead, the tail is used as a balancing and stabilizing tool, especially while gliding.
Sugar gliders are nocturnal, which means they are active at night. They have very large (relative to their size) eyes, which help them see at night. They also have large ears, an obvious benefit to an animal who is both preyed-upon and a predator. Those big ears allow them to hear even the smallest sound.
Sugar gliders have fixed teeth, incisors, molars, and premolars. You should not trim your sugar glider’s teeth. Unlike some species, such as guinea pigs, their teeth do not continue to grow once mature. If a tooth falls out, it is not replaced. Wild gliders chew on branches and in the process, clean their teeth. Gliders in cages will also chew on branches.
Sugar gliders have 5 toes on their front feet. Each toe ends with a very sharp claw that helps them land when they glide. Those claws also make gliders very agile climbers. Their hind feet also have 5 toes, but one of them is an enlarged, clawless opposable toe. An opposable toe means that they can use that toe to grip things, much as humans’ opposable thumbs allow us to do the same.
Why are they called “sugar gliders”? In the wild, sugar gliders eat, as part of their diet, manna (a crusty sugar left where sap flowed from a tree trunk or branch) and honeydew (an excess sugar produced by sap-sucking insects). In captivity, sugar gliders have a fondness for sweet foods. They will eat too many sweets if allowed, so sweet foods must be rationed.
In the wild, sugar gliders nest in holes of trees in colonies of 7 to 15 members and have been observed gliding as far as 300 feet! The ability to glide is one of the most amazing features of sugar gliders, and one of the things that makes them such special pets. Teaching your sugar glider to glide to you is very rewarding!
Sugar gliders are social animals, which means they live in groups. They get along with and love the company other sugar gliders, and many sugar glider owners choose to have more than one glider. It is their social nature that allows them to develop strong bonds with their human owners. But it is also that social nature that creates their need for attention from their owners. Sugar gliders are not the kind of pet that can be left for long periods of time without any attention from their owners. The more time you spend with your sugar glider, the more he will become bonded with you.
Many sugar glider owners bond with their new gliders by carrying them around in a bonding pouch for several hours a day while the glider sleeps. Sugar gliders are sometimes called “pocket pets” because they will often curl up in your pocket and go to sleep!
Diet and housing are perhaps the two most important factors in deciding whether a sugar glider is the right pet for you. Sugar gliders require a varied diet consisting of a protein source (meat, insects, etc.), a fruit and/or vegetable source, and a supplement of calcium. There are commercial sugar glider dry and soft-pellet foods available, but it is not recommended that you feed your sugar glider a diet consisting solely of these commercial foods. Sugar gliders require fresh food sources in addition to any commercial food. Calcium is also crucial to their diet, and there are a number of products on the market that will allow you to easily add calcium to your sugar glider’s diet.
Sugar gliders require as tall a cage as possible. They feel safer up high because they are normally tree-dwellers. 30 inches tall is usually the bare minimum for a sugar glider cage, but most breeders and sugar glider experts recommend cages 4 feet tall or higher. Many sugar glider owners buy flight cages designed for finches and other small birds. The flight cages are tall enough and roomy enough for a sugar glider. It is also recommended that sugar glider owners permit their gliders supervised play time in a glider-safe room for at least several hours a day.
Although sugar gliders are loving, affectionate and adorable, it is recommended that an adult closely supervise any young children around sugar gliders.
The cost of a sugar glider is approximately $150 to $250. If the glider must be shipped to you via airplane, there will be an additional cost. Certain desirable color variations can raise the price of a sugar glider considerably.
Miles Fowler is the author of Sugar Gliders: The Ultimate Guide, a comprehensive book for both novice and experienced sugar glider owners. Learn more at:
http://www.sugargliderauthority.com
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Microsoft Access is one of the most awesome prototyping tools anyone in software development could ever use, however there are also some really serious downsides as well. I know the software purists will be rolling over in their graves with my comments but after 20 plus years of commercial software development for some of the worlds largest companies I stand by my comments.
Microsoft Access makes it very easy and very cost effective to develop a database application and then roll it out onto the desktop. One of the downsides to this application is that it has always been incredibly difficult to export reports from Microsoft Access to another format. Most Microsoft Access developers that I know who build these systems use third party applications to export reports like Crystal Reports or Microsoft Word. The downside to using Microsoft Word is that you cannot export OLE Objects, using the merge process, you actually have to use VBA Code in Microsoft Word to call the ole object via ADO. Well that is one technique anyway. Now, with Adobe Acrobat Writer Version 7 we now have a new more effective method.
The exporting of OLE Objects has always been a major downside to Microsoft Access and Microsoft Word, but I was recently working with Adobe Acrobat writer Version 7 and I found that this version of the software now installs itself in all major Microsoft Office Applications. This is a fantastic step forward for Microsoft Access developers as this mean you can develop a report exclusively in Microsoft Access and then print the report straight to a PDF Format, rather than first going to Microsoft Word document then converting it into a Adobe Acrobat PDF File. The other key advantage is that if you are using a OLE Object Datatype in a Report, the Adobe PDF file will accept that data type and show a picture if that is what you are looking for. Alot of my clients have wanted to use Microsoft Access to develop reports that include photos and distribute them using Microsoft Word but up until now that has been able to be done easily. (Without using extensive VBA Code) Adobe Acrobat 7 allows us to create a pdf file from a report with OLE Objects and include them as photos etc within the PDF File. This means organisations that want to distribute staff files or product descriptions can create them using Microsoft Access. First of all they create the descriptions as a report and then convert them to PDF Format using Adobe Acrobat Writer.
Adobe has provided two ways to generate your PDF report. First off it installs an Adobe Drop Down Menu into the Microsoft Access main menu bar and from this drop down menu you can then choose to create the report as an ADOBE PDF. Note you must open the report first. You can even use this menu function to create the report and then email it direct to a third party. I think this feature alone is worth the $700AUD you pay for Adobe Acrobat Writer.
The second method is to open your report and then choose the File menu and then Print. The Print dialog box will open and then you choose Adobe Acrobat writer as the Printer and then choose the OK button which will then start Adobe Acrobat and generate your PDF.
With this new method to build a PDF file, you can even use Visual Basic for Access to automate the print process and then email the file using MAPI or CDO. If you are one of those people who like to use macro’s over using VBA there is no way that I can find where you can achieve this. If you could find someone who could create a module for you that automates this process you could use a macro then by calling the Function in the module from the macro window. All this of course is dependent on finding the write person to write that function. I have not done this directly, because I have been using a form with VBA Code to automate the creation of the PDF and then email it via CDO.
One of the questions I get asked a lot, especially by people from GLobal Organisations who need to write monthly reports,”Would it be possible to automate this process and have the reports email themselves once a month”. The answer to this is, ABSOLUTELY YES! The catch though is you would need to leave Microsoft Access open on a machine and then have a developer to write some code that acts like a timer and then once the computer clock ticks over the Form could simply create the associated reports and email them via MAPI. This seems complex all in all but for a competent VBA programmer, there should not be any problems doing this.
When Microsoft Office 2007 is released in 2007(hopefully), Microsoft has said that they will be including the functionality for producing PDF files from within Microsoft Office 2007, hopefully this functionality will be included for Microsoft Access 2007, which means in the next version, MACRO developers maybe able to export direct to PDF Format and then email direct to clients. If Microsoft does offer this in their new version, this to me would be the major reason I would recommend all companies upgrade to this new version. I wait in hope that this will be the case.
Chris Le Roy is a veteran of the software development having worked in the field for over 20 years and has been developing systems using Visual Basic 6, VB.Net, Microsoft Access and SQL Server, ASP, VB Script and Java Script. He currently runs a specialist Computer Training Centre in Townsville Australia, where people from all over the world, train to learn advanced techniques in programming in these applications. Many of his clients specifically focus on Microsoft Access development training. Chris has written a number of training programs, including Microsoft Access and they are available from his website at http://www.1-on-1.biz
Tags: access, ADO, ADOBE Acrobat, API, CDO, MACRO, MAPI, Microsoft Access, OLE OBJECTSaccess, ADO, ADOBE Acrobat, API, CDO, MACRO, MAPI, Microsoft Access, OLE OBJECTSShare This
The advantages of selling information through ebooks should be quite obvious. There are no production costs, no inventory costs and no shipping costs. And information products sell very well on the internet. If you have the solution to their problem, people are very willing to buy immediately and pay a premium.
But how do you write and market an ebook? Well, the focus of this article is more on the actual creation of an ebook, but let me give you a quick run down on how to write a best selling ebook in one month. First, you need to choose a niche and does some keyword research in that niche.
My favorite tool for this is Wordtracker. Wordtracker will give you the number of times a keyword or search term has been searched in the major search engines for the past 120 days. It will then give you the number of competing web sites for that search term. Find a niche that has lots of search terms with high demand and a low number of competing pages, and you will have a great ebook on your hands! Wordtracker is like a free e-book coach.
Your keyword research will tell some of the major topics for your new ebook, but you can also use a survey to fine tune the topics and create an outline for your ebook. Survey monkey is a great way to send a survey to your niche and it is free.
Now that you have a rough outline of your ebook based upon what your niche is telling you, it is time to create your ebook. Your ebook needs to be in a format that EVERYONE can read. Most people do not need professional e-book reader software. They already have the acrobat reader on their computer. So, you need a quick e-book creator that creates PDF files that all computers can read.
There are many PDF programs out there that make for simple e-book creation and fast e-book publishing. Just do a search at TuCows or Download.net. I suggest you get one that allows you to create clickable hyper-links in your PDF so that your readers will click on the resources and come back to your site. The free PDF programs do not allow this.
Now, a word to the wise. To overcome the perception that your ebook is just a PDF file, you need to create a cover for it. This is the 3-D image you will put on your web page to add pizzazz and increase perceived value. There are many e-book cover creator programs and even some freeware. But spend a little money and get one that works well. Heck, you may even want to use this software to start an affordable ebook cover design business!
Of course, the real question is, “How do I set up a page to download ebooks from?” There are a variety of ways including setting the adobe e-books security function so that your readers need a password to read your ebooks. Of course one of the main problems is that that someone might download your e-book and email it to 100 of their best friends.
If you put your e-book in html form and kept it on the server, then you could control who viewed your e-book (only paying customers) through a registration system and for how long they could view it (that way he doesn’t give the access code to 100 of his best friends so they get your book for free!). Meaning, only paying customers could view this book and because it does not download to their hard drive, they can not pass it alongthey can only print it out. You could even disable someone’s access to your e-book if you needed to.
Another way is to use a product like lockmyproduct.com ebook where you control who downloads your ebook, who reads it and for how long through a password connected to their ip address.
Now, all you need is a way to automatically give people access to your e-book when they pay for it. Meaning, one of the huge reasons people buy e-books is to get the information now! Even if it is 2 am. You can either use a clearing house like Clickbank to accept the money for you or you can use a shopping cart that is tied to an automatic payment gateway.
So when your customer pays, they are immediately sent an email with a registration code that gives them access to your e-book. You can conceivably sell an e-book, take the payment and deliver the e-book while you are skiing with your family in Colorado! Now that is a business idea worth pursuing!
Stephen Beck is an expert on teaching non-techies how to start a business on the internet. He has created an electrifying report, How to Find the Right Products to Sell on the Internet. For a FREE copy, visit:
http://www.familyebiz.com/
Tags: acrobat e books security, e book reader professional software, fast e book publis, free e book coachacrobat e books security, e book reader professional software, fast e book publis, free e book coachShare This