Super hot . Sexy and Beautiful, Moon-faced Actress Leslie Tripathy in Chanda Ae Mor Chanda Re.avi

Lilly Allen wants to marry a rich man

The 23-year-old singer - who was recently romantically linked with art dealer Jay Jopling - says her priority is to maintain her success long enough to meet her dream wealthy partner.

She said: "I just hope I can stay famous enough for a little bit so someone rich will marry me. That's all I really care about these days."

The Fear singer - who has dated a string of older men including Chemical Brothers star Ed Simons - also said she has never felt comfortable with people her own age.

She added to Interview magazine: "I was very unhappy at school. I didn't get on with people my age. I don't know why. Adults were far more interesting. I think I spent too much time with adults, and I just thought kids were stupid."
Despite her aversion to other young people, Lily insists her unconventional choice of friends has helped her.

She explained: "I don't feel like I missed out. I feel like I got quite a lot of stuff out of the way that people my age are just kind of confronting now, like alcohol and drugs and relationships."

Ways to earn that extra money

Looking for ways to earn extra money? Then, consider these ideas:

Sell Things You No Longer Need
Are things that you no longer need or use cluttering up your home? Then, turn them into cash. Sell any items of value on Ebay, in the newpaper classifieds or at a consignment store. Then, have a yard sale to sell the rest.
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Get Paid for Your Time Online
Did you know that there are companies that will pay you to read e-mails, to do web searches and to complete other online activities? It's true. Sign up with several of them, and get paid for the time that you spend online. Check out Volition.com for a list of companies to consider.
Get Paid to Take Surveys
Turn your opinions into cash by answering online surveys. Just sign up with several survey sites, and wait for the survey invitations to roll in.

Get Paid to Take Surveys
Have Your Car Wrapped
Do you spend a lot of time on the road? Then, consider turning your car into a rolling billboard. Many companies – big and small – are willing to pay to have your car "wrapped" with their advertisements.

Car Wrapping – Have Your Car Wrapped for Profit
Earn Money from Hobbies
Hobbies usually cost money, but that doesn't have to be the case. Find ways to turn your favorite pasttime into a source of income, and enjoy playing for profit.

Ways to Earn Money from Your Hobbies
Bank for Profit
Many banks – on and offline – offer cash incentives for opening a new account (anywhere from $25 to over $100). Take advantage of these offers, and turn banking into a more lucrative experience.
Blog
Have knowledge that you'd like to share with the world? Then set up a blog, and put in the work to monetize it.

Directory of Advertising Opportunities for Bloggers
Earn Money Through Advertisements on Your Blog
How to Earn Money from Your Blog (Other Than Using Ads)
Get a Paper Route
Paper routes aren't just for kids with bicycles any more. If you have a reliable vehicle and a need or desire to boost your income by several hundred dollars a week, a newspaper route could be the answer. Talk to your local newspaper to find out what routes they have available in the area.
Tutor
Are you a math whiz? A grammar pro? A chemistry master? Then, become a tutor, and transform your knowledge into a paycheck. Just advertise where parents are likely to look – on campuses, at the library, in the newspaper – and you'll soon build a list of clients.
Deliver Phone Books
Someone's got to deliver all those phone books, and it may as well be you. Contact your local phone company to find out what you need to do to apply for the job. Then, hussle those books from door to door for some extra green.

Note: Often phone companies will place an insert in with your phone bill to announce their need for deliverers. Keep an eye out for this advertisement, and act quickly when you see it.
Become a Mystery Shopper
Like to shop? Yep, you can get paid to do that too. Sign up to become a mystery shopper, and turn your trips to the mall into a source of income.

How to Become a Mystery Shopper
Recycle
Your trash can or cluttered garage could be yet another source for money. Aluminum, steel and many other materials can be recycled for profit – now, that's good news for your bank account and the environment.

Share Your Tip: How do you earn extra money in a pinch?
Share Your TipSell your hair for cash
Sell your hair for cash.. ? Yes, it's possible and many have made great money doing so, like me! Sell uncut hair and wait for a buyer. I sold mine @ thehairtrader.com and had money for myself and to donate for a cause. Tons of people contacted me and i had a choice who to sell to. The site was easy to use. I'll sell my hair again too.
—KittyGraf
yard sale frenzy
My life seems to be a frenzy of buying stuff at yard sales and selling them for more. I either put stuff in my flea market booth, my antique booth and or sell them on ebay, etsy, ioffer, or ecrater. A good way to find out what may sell good is by looking around on ebay and seeing what things are going for. Say maybe yuo have a lot of cookbooks you want to sell. Put them on ebay or half.ebay and watch them make you some money. You could also buy them in very good to new condition at sales for resale. Etsy is a good place to sell your handcrafted items as well as vintage stuff and crafting supplies of all types. I sometimes sell broken items on etxy because a lot of people are looking for them to make other things out of. Game pieces, paper clippings, cards, old jeans, broken jewelry, and many more such things make great items for crafters. I hope this helps someone who is looking for ways to make money.
—Guest Deboriah
Earn money from your website
It is not easy but can be done. With a small website and a subject your interested in you can begin to get a few followers who will sign up for a newsletter. I did this and am making some money now which helps me a lot
—karlp295

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Soon to be the "one president at a time," he starts schmoozing the press

Nothing throws the Washington press corps into a bigger tizzy than being ignored.

Being dissed is something the press corps can live with—in fact, they love being dissed. In the early 1970s, for example, every Washington journalist with a spot on Richard Nixon's enemy list treated the affront as money in the bank. The unlisted felt like failures.

Barack Obama's brain trust understands the insecurities of the press. How could they not? The campaign's chief strategist, David Axelrod, was a star political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. But rather than feeding and caring for the press, the Obama campaign worked the media's insecurities to their man's advantage, largely freezing reporters out in a successful effort to control his message. In what can be described only as a psy-ops coup, the Obama campaign denied the Washington Post editorial board an interview with their candidate. And of that slight they were proud. As the New York Times' Mark Leibovich wrote in December, the campaign bragged about it. "You could go to Cedar Rapids and Waterloo and understand that people aren't reading the Washington Post," incoming Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs told Leibovich.

So having won the election without wooing the press, what is Obama's new press strategy?

Courtship! On Tuesday night, Obama dined at George F. Will's house with name-brand conservatives Charles Krauthammer, David Brooks, William Kristol, Paul Gigot, Peggy Noonan, Michael Barone, and Larry Kudlow. The liberal commentariat got their audience the next day, when Obama met with Eugene Robinson, Maureen Dowd, Frank Rich, E.J. Dionne, and others at his transition headquarters. As I write, he's touring the Washington Post, where he was interviewed by the paper's editorial board and its White House team.

The new romance goes only so far. He's still avoided the "traditional" pre-inauguration interview with the New York Times, as Politico's Michael Calderone reported yesterday. Calderone catalogs the four substantive interviews Obama has given the Times over the last 18 months or so and notes the welter of miniature press conferences Obama has given to make transition announcements. What seems to irritate the Times the most is the president-elect's dismissal of the order of things, which mandates a sit-down session with reporters.
Perhaps the Times should count its blessings. As of late, when Obama does speak, as he did on Dec. 7 on Meet the Press, Dec. 28 on 60 Minutes, and Jan. 11 on This Week With George Stephanopoulos, he tends not to say much. The closest Obama came to giving Stephanopoulos any news was when he answered a question about investigating torture and warrantless wiretapping under the Bush administration. Obama said, "We have not made final decisions."

As John Dickerson wrote last month in Slate, the Bush administration regarded the Clinton administration image-handlers as "day traders," constantly smuggling themselves into the news action, whereas the Bushies thought of themselves as "long-term investors," in former Bush counselor Dan Bartlett's words. Of course, both approaches imagine the media—as opposed to the press corps—as a giant pipe organ that can be played to pacify the citizenry. And neither the day-trader approach nor the long-term approach requires a presidential administration to speak to the Washington press corps.
In a November column, I predicted that despite Obama's skill and luck at managing the press, a war between the two was inevitable. Even though few of my predictions ever come true, I'm willing to double down on that original prophecy. One reason Obama continues to float above the press is that he hasn't had to decide anything yet besides who will fill his Cabinet and senior-staff positions. Obama is so committed to keeping his options open that he's yet to decide between a Portuguese water dog and a Labradoodle for his daughters.

One of Obama's most effective press dodges has been to say that there can be only "one president at a time," which he did twice in one press conference a few days after his November victory—first in discussing the economy and later when asked about Iran. On Dec. 1, he used the phrase again when asked about the Mumbai butchery. In late December, chief strategist David Axelrod invoked it for him on Face the Nation while talking about Gaza.

This "one president" shtick is entirely situational—it didn't prevent Obama from broadcasting his own stimulus plan on Jan. 8, 12 days before Bush was to leave the White House. Perhaps Obama's media outreach this week marks his premature segue into the Oval Office.

In my previous column, I drew on veteran reporter James Deakin's wise 1984 memoir Straight Stuff: The Reporters, the White House, and the Truth (1984) to wager that Obama and the press would soon start rumbling. As Deakin observed, in the press corps's eyes, the president can't win for losing. He's either moving too quickly on the economy or too slowly. He's either coddling hostile nations or baiting them. He's making his predecessors' mistakes. He's ignoring his campaign promises. He's too rigid. He waffles too much.

Share this article on DiggBuzz up!Share this article on BuzzAs our financial crackup widens, the auto industry goes under, and 15 percent unemployment follows, the nation will experience economic pain that aches, then burns, then stings, and finally throbs. Because every political issue connects at some level to economics, Obama will become the focal point of the crisis and the target of the media's critical cameras and hostile pens. Will he wish he'd put some goodwill in the bank? Either way, it will be war as you've never seen before. Grab a hat and a helmet.

How Newspapers Tried to Invent the Web

A moment of sympathy, please, for newspapers, whose readers and advertisers have been fleeing at a frightening rate.

It would be easy to accuse editors and publishers of being clueless about the coming Internet disruption and to insist that the industry's proper reward for decades of haughty attitude, bad planning, and incompetence is bankruptcy.

But newspapers have really, really tried to wrap their hands around the future and preserve their franchise, an insight I owe to Pablo J. Boczkowski's 2004 book, Digitizing the News: Innovation in Online Newspapers. The industry has understood from the advent of AM radio in the 1920s that technology would eventually be its undoing and has always behaved accordingly.

For instance, publishers aggressively pursued radio licenses in the early days of broadcasting and, later, sought and acquired TV licenses when they were dispensed. As early as 1947, Walter Annenberg's Philadelphia Inquirer and John S. Knight's Miami Herald experimented with fax editions of their papers. Seems visionary enough to me.

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CLOSENewspapers and other media entities started experimenting with videotex technology in the 1970s, according to David Carlson's Online Timeline. Newspapers considered themselves vulnerable to new entrants and worried aloud to anybody who would listen about falling readership. In 1979, the Knight Ridder newspaper chain established a videotex subsidiary to develop its Viewtron service, Boczkowski writes. Clunky and toylike by today's standards (see the silly, pre-Donkey Kong-quality graphics), the early system required an expensive, dedicated terminal. Yet after conducting trials in 1980, the system held sufficient promise that Knight Ridder succeeded in selling Viewtron franchises to other newspapers. More than a dozen other dailies played with videotex during the decade, including newspapers in the Times-Mirror chain, Cowles Media, and McClatchy Newspapers, as well as at the Chicago Sun-Times and the Washington Post.

Howard Finberg of the Poynter Institute remembers that Viewtron could fetch from the "Miami Herald or the New York Times the night before the paper hit your doorstep," access the Associated Press, look up airline schedules, access bank account info, and order a meal online. Not bad for the dark ages, eh?

Broadcasters joined the text fray, too. In Los Angeles during the early 1980s, CBS was testing the Extravision teletext service, and NBC was experimenting with its own offering, Tempo L.A., according to the New York Times.

So intense was the industry's devotion to videotex and so rampant its paranoia that some other medium would usurp its place in the media constellation that the American Newspaper Publishers Association lobbied Congress in 1980 to prevent AT&T from launching its own "electronic yellow pages." Washington Post Co. CEO Katharine Graham, then chair of the ANPA, and other publishers met with Sen. Robert Packwood, R-Ore., to discuss the legislation that would free AT&T to start its service.

As the Wall Street Journal would later report, Packwood said to the publishers, "What you're really worried about is an electronic Yellow Pages that will destroy your advertising base, isn't it?"

Graham's response: "You're damn right it is."

Videotex failed to catch on commercially, with Knight Ridder burning through $50 million before closing Viewtron in 1986. The industry's next favorite newsprint alternative was audiotext, and while Boczkowski writes that the format generated modest profits, it never enjoyed the wild enthusiasm that videotex did. As the decade progressed, the Chicago Tribune, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Hartford Courant, and the New York Times revisited the idea of fax newspapers. Some of the fax editions found a niche but not much more.

According to Boczkowski, newspapers didn't rush into videotex because they were visionaries in a hurry to invent the future but because they were "reactive, defensive, and pragmatic" about their mature, lucrative business. Having observed the videotex experiments in England and elsewhere, they feared that if they didn't adopt the technology or at least test it, somebody else would and displace them. Once they determined that nobody could make money from videotex and the technology posed no threat to the newsprint model, they were happy to shutter their ventures.

By the mid-1980s, the industry's biggest worry was that the PC, which had eased its way into homes and the workplace like an algae bloom, would somehow supplant them. Boczkowski acknowledges that newspapers' early online strategies were as much about blocking new competitors as beating a path to the future. That said, by the early to mid-1990s, the New York Times, the San Jose Mercury News, the Chicago Tribune, the Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and many others were producing electronic-edition business, striking deals with the burgeoning proprietary online systems, such as CompuServe, America Online, Prodigy, and Interchange, or throwing content up on bulletin board systems.

Share this article on DiggBuzz up!Share this article on BuzzPublishers adored the proprietary online services because they locked down the user experience to the newspaper's benefit. A Washington Post spokesman quoted in Boczkowski's book applauds the way Interchange "preserves the company's direct business relationship with Post readers."

The publishers were pretty sure that proprietary online services were the next wave, but if you remember having used one, you know how badly they sucked. Let's say you subscribed to AOL to read the New York Times but wanted to read a story in the Washington Post. You couldn't get to the Post from AOL because the Post was published exclusively on Interchange. What you had to do was disconnect your screeching modem from AOL, purchase an Interchange subscription, log onto Interchange, and then navigate to the Post. A return visit to the Times required the reverse of that drill.

The extreme suckage of proprietary online services stemmed from the fact that they were "non-generative" technologies, to borrow a phrase from Jonathan Zittrain's excellent The Future of the Internet—And How To Stop It. Nongenerative technologies can't be tinkered with or otherwise improved by outsiders. The iPhone is a good example of a nongenerative device: Its software updates "actively seek out and erase" unauthorized modifications, to paraphrase Zittrain.
Generative technologies such as the PC, on the other hand, invite improvement by outsiders, making them more and more useful to users as time passes—and often more useful in ways that the original designers never would have imagined. When you connect a generative technology to a nongenerative one, you usually end up crippling the generative one.

Indeed, the proprietary online services—the AOLs and CompuServes—hobbled the PC, turning the versatile and powerful machine into a dumb terminal. It's a tribute to newspapers and their keen sense of the future that they quickly determined that the online services would never attract the masses they desired. No sooner had newspapers taken up residence on the proprietary online services than they were packing up their pixels and starting their en masse migration to the World Wide Web, which was as generative as the online services were nongenerative.

Newspapers were anything but late arrivers to the Web party, according to Carlson's Online Timeline and other sources. Among the earliest pure Web newspapers in the United States were the two dueling dailies started in San Francisco during the autumn 1994 press strike—one by union members and one by management. (As a point of reference, the high-tech sharpies at Wired spun off the Hotwired.com site in October 1994.) The San Jose Mercury News broke from AOL and started on the Web in February 1995. USA Today launched a Web edition in August 1995. Later that year, the Boston Globe started its Boston.com, and the Los Angeles Times announced plans to leave Prodigy. The New York Times and Washington Post got webby in 1996. After that, few newspapers held back. Boczkowski writes that more than 750 North American dailies were publishing on the Web in April 1998, and by July 1999 only two of the 100 largest dailies were not.
Newspapers deserve bragging rights for having homesteaded the Web long before most government agencies and major corporations knew what a URL was. Given the industry's early tenancy, deep pockets, and history of paranoid experimentation with new communication forms, one would expect to find plenty in the way of innovations and spinoffs.

But that's not the case, and I think I know why: From the beginning, newspapers sought to invent the Web in their own image by repurposing the copy, values, and temperament found in their ink-and-paper editions. Despite being early arrivals, despite having spent millions on manpower and hardware, despite all the animations, links, videos, databases, and other software tricks found on their sites, every newspaper Web site is instantly identifiable as a newspaper Web site. By succeeding, they failed to invent the Web.

Addendum 1, Jan. 6: My colleague Adrian Monck adds this sharp take about the newspaper industry's techno dance. He writes:

As I've posted before (and others have pointed out), there were plenty of executives who did make smart strategic decisions about the challenges facing the industry. Robert Marbut, then CEO of newspaper group Harte-Hanks, was absolutely clear about the threat and opportunities offered by new technology back in the mid-1970s:

The fact that the same technology will be used by media other than daily newspapers will mean that others could enter the marketplace for meeting information needs and encroach on the franchise of an established newspaper … new technology will make it possible for the consumer to get his needs met in a variety of ways in the future, again setting the stage for continued fragmentation of media which could lead to further encroachment of the newspaper's share of market.

So in the 1990s Harte-Hanks dispensed with its newspaper, TV and radio interests.

Addendum 2, Jan. 6: My colleague Scott Rosenberg, who helped edit the Free Press during the San Francisco newspaper strike and later left the San Francisco Examiner to help start Salon, offers an additional answer to my question about why newspapers' early Web experiments didn't end up offering "plenty in the way of innovations and spinoffs":

In the '90s, if you were at a newspaper and learned about the Web, you were likely to grow frustrated and disillusioned with how slowly the paper's management was waking up to how the new medium actually worked. They got on the Web, and then just sat there. So if you had any restless or entrepreneurial gene in your body, you would sooner or later give up on your arthritic bosses and go do something interesting online yourself or with some startup. The newspaper industry suffered a steady exodus of the very people who it should have been relying on to navigate the new waters.

Addendum 3, Jan. 6: Wayne Citrin writes that I should have made mention of the work done at Knight Ridder's Information Design Laboratory in the mid-1990s. IDL was working on a portable, battery-powered electronic tablet that its designers hoped would start replacing newspapers by 2001. Knight Ridder shut the lab in the summer of 1995.

Addendum 4, Jan. 6: Chuck Moozakis, editor in chief of Newspapers & Technology, sends me this terrific history of electronic newspaper distribution.

******

2008 saw Healthy Celebs under medication

Christina Applegate diagnosed with breast cancer
"Samantha Who?" funny girl Christina Applegate, 36, shocked fans when she publicly announced her breast cancer diagnosis in August. Applegate's mother is a breast and cervical cancer survivor, so the actress was vigilant about screening and was diagnosed at an early, treatable stage. After undergoing two lumpectomies, followed by radiation therapy, Applegate was tested for the breast cancer susceptibility gene mutation, BRCA. She tested positive for the gene mutation and made the difficult decision to have a prophylactic double mastectomy, a preventive measure removing both breasts.

"It just seemed like, 'I don't want to have to deal with this again. I don't want to keep putting that stuff [radiation] in my body. I just want to be done with this.' And I was just going to let them go," Applegate told Oprah Winfrey in September. Now, Applegate is back at work, undergoing an 8-month reconstruction process, and planning to start a program to help pay for MRIs for high-risk women.

Patrick Swayze announces he has pancreatic cancer
America's favorite dirty dancer announced his pancreatic cancer diagnosis in March, after the National Enquirer ran a story claiming the actor had five weeks to live. Swayze, 56, joined more than 30,000 patients diagnosed with the disease each year, 5 percent of whom live more than 5 years after being diagnosed. He has been successfully undergoing treatment while awaiting the airing of a new TV series, "The Beast." "It's a battle, and so far, I've been winning. I'm one of the lucky few that responds well to treatment," says the actor in a statement to People magazine.

David Duchovny admits to sex addiction
Celebrity rehab isn't a new concept, but "X-Files" actor David Duchovny made news when he announced in August he was voluntarily going into rehab for a sex addiction. Playing a womanizing writer in the TV show "Californication," Duchovny is no stranger to sexual addiction accusations. In the mid-1990s, Duchovny was forced to deny reports that he had attended meetings to control his obsession and told Playgirl magazine, "I'm not a sex addict," in a 1997 interview. Though the American Psychiatric Association doesn't recognize it as a "diagnosable disorder," 3 to 6 percent of U.S. adults suffer from compulsive sexual behavior, according to the Mayo Clinic. Symptoms range from having extramarital affairs to frequently using pornographic materials, but experts aren't sure of the exact cause. As of early October, Duchovny had completed rehab, but was separated from his wife, actress Téa Leoni.


Tim Russert dies of heart attack
Heart disease, the leading cause of death in the United States, claimed another life this June. Tim Russert, 58, the NBC News Washington bureau chief and the moderator of "Meet the Press," died of a heart attack. While recording voice-overs, he collapsed and was rushed to the hospital. Diagnosed with asymptomatic [coronary artery disease], Russert was controlling the disease with medication and exercise and had done well on a stress test in late April. Unfortunately, heart attacks are not uncommon, causing about 150,000 deaths per year. Read about ways to treat those at risk for coronary artery disease.

Britney Spears admitted to psych ward
Former pop princess Britney Spears, 27, started 2008 off with a bang. After divorcing her husband, Kevin Federline, in November 2006 and spending 2007 shaving her head, excessively partying, and checking in and then quickly out of rehab, Spears began 2008 in the UCLA Medical Center for a psychiatric hold. This was her second visit to the hospital, after she was held at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, following a custody standoff with police.

With most of the world questioning her mental stability, two separate sources who are acquaintances of the family told People magazine, "There is no question she is bipolar ... she's had manic episodes for years." Bipolar disorder can cause extreme mood swings, from manic episodes of very high energy to extreme lows of depression. Although Spears has never been diagnosed, there is plenty of speculation. A Santa Monica, Calif.–based psychiatrist said Spears's actions suggested "classic bipolar behavior, including hypersexuality, poor judgment, and impulsivity," according to People magazine. Whether Spears suffers from bipolar disorder or not, the singer seems to be making a comeback, releasing her sixth album, "Circus," and announcing a world tour beginning March 2009.

Heather Locklear goes to rehab
It may have been nearly 10 years since "Melrose Place" went off the air, but drama is still following Heather Locklear, 47. In June, the actress sought treatment for anxiety and depression at a medical facility in Arizona. After remaining under doctors' care for a month, Locklear returned home. Two months later, she was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence and being under the influence of a controlled substance, and then officially charged with driving under the influence. The actress has kept a low profile since then, working on her new movie, "Flirting with 40," but told Jay Leno, "I've been better, but I'm good today," Locklear said on "The Tonight Show." "Here I am, safe and sound."

Janet Jackson suffers migraines
In October, Janet Jackson was hospitalized for an undisclosed illness, postponing three shows. Weeks later, the 42-year-old reported suffering from vestibular migraines, which cause dizziness, nausea, and even hearing loss. Nearly 30 million Americans suffer from migraines, but vestibular migraines are uncommo,n with some doctors estimating only one to two per 1,000 headache-sufferers. Jackson resumed her Rock Witchu tour with no relapses to date.

Jennifer Love Hewitt's Body is a wonderland
After paparazzi shots of her in a swimsuit incited blog headlines such as "We know what you ate this summer, Love Everything!" actress Jennifer Love Hewitt became an advocate this year for women loving their bodies. "To all girls with butts, boobs, hips and a waist, put on a bikini—put it on and stay strong," she wrote on her blog. However, she quickly lost 18 pounds and posed for US Weekly, claiming she lost weight to increase energy levels. Now, she eats tiny snacks every hour and a half and set the goal to run a marathon by the time she turns 30 in February. She encourages young women to appreciate their bodies, saying, "I wish I had been nude from the time I was 12 until I was 28. I looked great!" in a Health magazine interview.

Heath Ledger dies
Oscar-nominated Australian actor Heath Ledger, 28, was found dead in his Manhattan apartment in January. His death was attributed to an accidental mixture of prescription drugs, including painkillers and anxiety and sleep medication. During the filming of "The Dark Knight," in which Ledger played the intense role of the Joker, the actor suffered from an apparent case of insomnia, which affects up to 15 percent of adults. "Last week I probably slept an average of two hours a night," he told the New York Times last November. "I couldn't stop thinking. My body was exhausted and my mind was still going." Sleeping pills for insomnia often have side effects, such as daytime drowsiness, and can be habit-forming, but Ledger's death was caused by abusing several prescription medications.

More important dating tips to be happy

Expand your social circle
Looking to amp up your love life? Then it’s time to expand your social circle. Why? Basically, it’s the law of probabilities. The more people you know, the more you’ll mingle, and the more likely you are to meet The One (or at least someone fun to date).

But how exactly does one go about shifting gears from homebody to too-popular-to-stay-at-home? To answer that question, we culled advice from dating and networking experts on some fabulous ways to meet, greet and get out there! Read on for their simple strategies.

Join a same-sex social group
“Join a networking or social group or a sports team that isn’t coed,” suggests Love Coach Rinatta Paries of Fix Your Love Life. Why the same-sex connection? Well, women and men know men and women whom they are not dating but who may be great for you to date. “Once you create new social friendships, the people in your group will be happy to set you up on many dates with other people they know,” says Paries. “It may be a sibling, cousin, neighbor, a business associate or someone else they run across who immediately makes them think of you.” In other words, making new same-sex friends can lead to love connections you would never have made otherwise.

Keep business cards handy
How many times have you met someone nice in an unexpected place but had no easy way to suggest connecting again? It happens! And then later you kick yourself for not just saying, “Hey, should we get a coffee sometime or something?”

Here’s a really easy solution to avoid those missed social opportunities. If you’re looking to meet your potential match, always, always, always keep a business/contact card with you (in your pocket, purse, wallet, or whatever). “I’ve met interesting people while waiting at the vet’s office,” says networking expert Ronna Lichtenberg, author of Pitch Like a Girl and founder of www.clearpeakcommunications.com. “You never know… you could end up meeting Mr. or Ms. Right over a possible pet adoption!”

Feel uneasy about giving out a card with all your private info to strangers? Print a version with just your first name and an email address. You’ll find that whipping out a card is a lot easier than fumbling for a pen and scribbling down a phone number on an old receipt.

Do things you love
If you’re single, you’ve probably been told to join activities where you are likely to meet other single people, whether or not you are interested in the pursuit involved. FYI, people can see through activity posers. They’ll know the subject at hand isn’t really your cup of tea, and you’ll just wind up looking shallow.

A better bet? Forget about doing what everyone else is doing, and focus instead on what you dig! “You need to spend time doing the things you love so when you see someone that you are attracted to in that setting, you will have plenty to talk about,” suggests dating guru David Wygant, founder of www.davidwygant.com. “You want to meet someone who shares the same passions, and the best places to do that are where you are enjoying yourself. So pick four things you love to do and pursue them.”

Call upon classmate connections
OK, even if you weren’t valedictorian, class jock or on the prom court, you’d be amazed how reconnecting with the past can expand your future. There is just something about those old flames, school cliques and even enemies that can add spice to your adult life (plus, if these people saw you with braces or feathered hair, well… then they are likely to accept you now as well!).

You might also want to check out classmates.com or facebook.com. With just a little sleuthing, you might suddenly find that the cutie who sat in front of you in biology actually lives near you now.

Go outside your generation
Who says Gen X, Y, Z and whatever-other-letters can’t mix? Too many people tend to narrow their social circle to their demographic group. A better bet? Strive to be cross-generational! “Don’t limit yourself to meeting people your own age,” says Lichtenberg. “Everyone has families, and I have heard more than one story about moms, aunts and siblings engineering meetings that turned into marriages.”

Attend seminars
Looking for meaningful relationships? You might want to skip the bar. Though it does happen on occasion that a cocktail leads to happily-ever-after, you might find more people who are interested in something more at seminars and self-betterment workshops.

“People at personal-growth workshops and at seminars are typically more interested in connecting and creating friendships,” says Paries. “You may meet your mate, or you may meet someone who becomes one of your closest friends and becomes instrumental in you meeting your mate. Also, in the process, you will learn to improve the quality of your life and relationships.”

Practice sharing your friends
It’s a pretty good bet that if you really, really like a friend of yours, you’ll probably like at least a few of your friend’s friends as well. For that reason, it’s not a bad idea to invite friends to bring a pal to something you’re doing, even as simple as getting coffee. “It’s OK to say, ‘I want to meet more people like you because I think you’re great,’” says Lichtenberg. “People you like will know other people you’ll like.”

Finally, get in the habit of following up with any new potential friends you make. “There are too many people we meet and kind of like but don’t have a ‘system’ for following up—it can be as simple as emailing people like that the next day,” says Lichtenberg. “However, the more people you know, the more people who will have the chance to know about you.” In other words, go forth and get social. Your love life may thank you!