Friday, 30 November 2012

Wonderful Geeky Toys You've Always Wanted Is Your Thinkgeek-Special Deal of the Day

You don't actually need anything that Thinkgeek sells. But it's really easy to feel like there's a novelty-size hole in your life that can only be filled by Thinkgeek swag. Stuff like this impossibly clever Lightsaber Popsicle Maker, or the iCade cabinet that turns your iPad into an arcade machine, that's the kind of gadget you see and you've just got to have it. Thinkgeek stuff is objectively cool, and it also makes for really memorable, excellent gifts. More »


Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/sUSQ1ejAdF0/wonderful-geeky-toys-youve-always-wanted-are-your-thinkgeek+special-deal-of-the-day

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6 Reasons Your Company Should Blog - Software & Business ...

Does your business blog? Are you wondering why companies blog? This question is becoming more prevalent in businesses today, and a lot of businesses have no idea why they need to be blogging. While you may not think your business needs a blog. There are a number of reasons why blogging is valuable to companies. Need some convincing? Here are 6 basic reasons why you should blog within your company.

1. It Builds Traffic There will always be a correlation between traffic and sales. The more traffic you have coming to your website, the more likely it is you?ll make a sale. With that said, having a blog you update frequently will allow you to

direct targeted traffic to your business website, thereby increasing the chances you?ll make a sale. By linking your blog to other social media platforms, such as Facebook and Twitter, you?ll also be building traffic and connecting with your customer base. Whenever you publish a new blog post, make sure to post a link to it on your social media accounts to attract more prospective buyers and build your brand.


2. It Improves SEO
. Blogging adds more key-word-rich content to your website. This improves your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and helps you climb the ranks on Google and other search engines. Okay, great, but what does this mean? It means that people who are searching for a solution to their problem will find YOUR blog, and suddenly your business is known to the exact audience you need to be in front of. The trick here is to keep your blog content relevant to your target audience and your business.


3. It Increases your Credibility
People are more likely to purchase products or services from businesses they feel like they already ?know,? and having a blog that you regularly update can help foster a community and allow your readers to feel like they know you, even if you?ve never met face to face.

Every time you interact with your readers, by encouraging comments and responding to comments left, you are building your relationship with potential customers. By building those relationships, you are effectively creating a face for your brand, thereby increasing the likelihood of more sales. A blog is a simple way to do this, and allows customers to consistently reach out to you and stay updated on new developments, products or services offered by your business.

4. It Allows for Better Customer Service

By creating a blog for your business, it allows your customers to contact you. They don?t have to be put on hold, or wait for office hours to call you. All of the info about your company should be found on your blog, so customers who have any questions or want to find out more about your business can easily do so.

Additionally, a blog is one of the best ways to update customers on new products or services being offered. You can also respond to customer inquiries quickly and more efficiently, and you can gain valuable feedback from your readership while using that feedback to make improvements and build a better business, as well as business relationships, with your client base.


5. It Establishes you as An Expert

A blog helps establish you as an expert in your field, and if you regularly update it with relevant content, you reinforce the idea that you know what you are talking about. Making sure you update your blog frequently with content that is valuable to readers also helps establish you as their go-to person when it comes to your particular niche, be it consulting, editing or any other type of business.

By blogging regularly, you are building a visible presence on the web and also fostering relationships with potential customers while establishing your expertise for your particular niche.

6. It Gives you a Voice

Every business needs a voice, and a blog is a simple way to do that. These days, anyone can post anything online about a company, be it good or bad. By starting a blog for your business, you can help manage your reputation and give your business the voice and authority it needs to thrive.

The marketplace for any business is normally competitive, so by starting a blog that you update regularly, you are giving your company a voice on the internet. Customers can read your posts and establish in their minds that you are a credible authority, and you can interact with them frequently while establishing your reputation on the web.

While there are many reasons your business should have a blog, these are the most compelling reasons. If you haven?t started a blog for your business yet, you definitely should ? it?s a cost effective, easy way to interact with your existing customer base, gaining new customers and establishing your expertise.

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Source: http://blog.oasisky.com/6-reasons-your-company-should-blog/

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Buying Internet Advertising | Business Solutions

Internet advertising is a very broad term which encompasses hundreds of different methods, all designed to get you traffic and customers. There are many places that you can buy internet advertising: any of the search engines (with Pay Per Click ? PPC ? Advertising), on business websites that attract similar customers to your business, in E zines (online magazines), on paid classified advertising sites, and more.

Sometimes you don?t even need to buy internet advertising. You can do it for free on the social networking sites, forums that are relevant to your business or products/services or through article marketing.

But before you start advertising for free or otherwise, you need to first figure out who you are advertising to and what they are looking for. The more specific you can get about this, the more effective your advertising will be so you need to put in quite a bit of thought and research into this. Where can you find what people are looking for? One of the easiest ways is to do some keyword research. You can use many of the free keyword research tools to see exactly what people in your business area are typing into the search engines. You can then use these keywords in many of your online marketing and advertisements.

You can then go about designing your own internet advertising campaign or you can choose an agency or service to do one for you. Doing it on your own when first starting out may be long and tedious, but hiring someone to do the work for you can be expensive. If you decide to pay an agency, do some research on which one fits your needs best first. Also, it?s better if you can find someone who will actually explain their processes and methods to you?not a company that just takes care of it all for you. This is how you can start learning to make your ads more effective as well.

PPC ads are one form of paid online advertising and perhaps the most popular. These are the ads that you see on the right-hand side of your computer screen when you click a term in your search engine browser. The most popular search engines are Google, Yahoo and MSN, but there are hundreds more out there. With PPC advertising, you create an advertisement based on a keyword or keywords that people are searching for on the internet (after you?ve done your keyword research). You then pay the search engine each time someone clicks on your advertisement.

With E zine advertising, you choose an e zine that fits your target market and place ads within its newsletters. The prices of these ads depend on the size and quality of the e zine subscriber list.

Many business websites grant you the possibility to advertise on their sites as well. Again, prices here will vary.

When you buy internet advertising, you must also make sure that you are tracking which ads work and which ones don?t. This is the only way you can improve your traffic and conversions.

Source: http://www.haz-split.org/advertising/buying-internet-advertising.html

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Re: New tree sync issue? - Family Tree Maker software - Family ...

I am having the same sync error experience. It failed again last night. This has happened half a dozen times now since I bought this software in Fall 2011. The sync errors seem to coincide each time with some of the FTM updates, but not all of them.

Each time I get a sync error, nothing works except to unlink the tree from FTM and re-download it from Ancestry. I have tried rebooting, restoring previous versions ...nothing works except unlinking and reloading.

I am disappointed that I have had to reload my tree so often. Last reload was in July. Today makes the fourth time I have had to unlink and reload it in a year. It seems that the programmers at Ancestry could do a better job of testing the upgrades for this problem.

My tree has over 6000 people in it and takes all day to reload and multiple days for the media to reload. Meanwhile, while it is reloading, I cannot work on it online. I too use it daily. If I had known this, I would have bought genealogy software from the competition.

Tech Specs: FTM 2012 & Win7 Home Premium Service Pack 1, 64 bit. Updates on both current.

Source: http://boards.ancestry.co.uk/topics.software.famtreemaker/9196.3/mb.ashx

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Thursday, 29 November 2012

SEMA president Chris Kersting and Chairman Scooter Brothers arrived at the Perf...

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Source: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151312445201422&set=a.444688566421.231291.12418921421&type=1

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University of Denver professor wins prestigious prize for improving world order

Erica Chenoweth to share $100,000 award with co-author Maria Stephan

DENVER? Erica Chenoweth, an assistant professor at the University of Denver?s Josef Korbel School of International Studies, and Maria Stephan, a lead foreign affairs officer with the U.S. State Department, have won the 2013 University of Louisville Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order.

They earned the $100,000 prize for the ideas set forth in their book, ?Why Civil Resistance Works: The Strategic Logic of Non-Violent Conflict? (Columbia University Press 2011). Chenoweth and Stephan collected and analyzed data on all known uprisings between 1900 and 2006 involving more than 1,000 people that related to a country?s secession, overthrow of a dictatorship or removal of a foreign occupation. They learned that the non-violent campaigns succeeded twice as often as the violent ones?even in the face of brutal repression.

They also found that the governments of countries where the peaceful resistance took place were far more likely to become or remain stable democracies afterward.

In the non-violent campaigns they studied, unarmed civilians used a mix of strikes, boycotts, protests and demonstrations, while bombings, assassinations and armed attacks were predominant among the violent movements.

?The implications of their work are enormous,? said Grawemeyer award director Charles Ziegler. ?Not only do their findings validate the work done by Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr., but they shed new light on the political change we?re seeing today, such as the Arab Spring process in Egypt and other Middle Eastern nations.?

The book by Chenoweth and Stephan also won the 2012 Woodrow Wilson Foundation Award for best book published in the United States on government, politics or international affairs.

The University of Louisville presents four Grawemeyer Awards each year for outstanding works in music composition, world order, psychology and education. The university and Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary jointly give a fifth award in religion.

H. Charles Grawemeyer, industrialist, entrepreneur, astute investor and philanthropist, created the lucrative Grawemeyer Awards at the University of Louisville in 1984 to help make the world a better place. An initial endowment of $9 million funded the awards, which have drawn nominations from around the world.

?It is a tremendous honor to receive the Grawemeyer Award,? said Chenoweth. ?The award is really a testament to people all over the world who choose to fight oppression using nonviolent means. I am so grateful that this idea resonates. And it is deeply humbling to be included alongside prior Grawemeyer recipients, given that so many of them have inspired my own work.?

-30-

Contact:? Jordan Ames
Phone: (303) 871-2781
E-mail:
jordan.ames@du.edu

Source: http://blogs.du.edu/today/news-media/university-of-denver-professor-wins-prestigious-prize-for-improving-world-order

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Wednesday, 28 November 2012

London Markets: London stocks weaken; banks, resources off

By Sara Sjolin, MarketWatch

LONDON (MarketWatch) ? U.K. stocks ended a volatile session on an upbeat note on Wednesday, as rising shares of Vodafone Group PLC provided support, although banks and mining firms on the decline added pressure.

The FTSE 100 index /quotes/zigman/3173262 UK:UKX +0.06% ?inched 0.1% higher to close at 5,803.28, after swinging between small gains and losses.

/conga/story/misc/fiscal_cliff.html 237980

Shares of Vodafone /quotes/zigman/421253 UK:VOD +0.89% ? /quotes/zigman/101873/quotes/nls/vod VOD +0.98% supported the index, up 0.9%, after Fitch Ratings affirmed the wireless telecom firm?s rating at A- and said the outlook is stable. The analysts highlighted that Vodafone benefits from global scale, diverse operations, sound liquidity, and stable cash flow generation.

Also on the rise, shares of United Utilities /quotes/zigman/514680 UK:UU +2.77% ?added 2.6%, after the firm reported a rise in earnings per share for the six months ended Sept. 30 and said it?s on track to meet its regulatory targets. See: United Utilities profit up, on track for targets

Shares of BP PLC /quotes/zigman/210014 UK:BP -0.50% ? /quotes/zigman/247026/quotes/nls/bp BP -0.35% ?gave up 0.4%, after the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said it has temporarily suspended the oil major from new contracts with the government.

Pointing in the other direction, shares of Bunzl PLC /quotes/zigman/378681 UK:BNZL -4.00% ?dropped 4% to 10.31 pounds ($16.50), after Citigroup cut the consumer-products firm?s price target to ?11.90 from ?12.50 to reflect a new earnings forecast.

Resolution Ltd. shares /quotes/zigman/602765 UK:RSL -0.47% ?slipped 0.6%, after UBS cut the insurer to neutral from buy. The analysts said they expect the firm to miss its 2013 targets.

Cars that monitor a driver's health

Auto makers are researching technology that could feed your heart rate, blood pressure and other biometric responses into the car's computers, the better to determine when you're drowsy or overwhelmed with distracting media.

Most U.K. stocks were for most of the session weighed by comments from U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. The Nevada Democrat said late Tuesday that only little progress has been made in negotiations between Democrats and Republicans to avert the so-called fiscal cliff, slated to trigger automatic spending cuts and tax hikes in the new year. See: Senate fiscal cliff bickering spooks market

Stocks, however, staged a comeback late in the day as House Speaker John Boehner, Republican from Ohio, said he was optimistic that a deal can be reached with President Obama to avoid the cliff.

Among other notable movers in London, miners posted some of the biggest losses, as metals prices headed south. See: Gold slumps on firm dollar and See: Crude oil pushes lower ahead of supply data

Mining firms decline in Wednesday?s action, as metals prices fall.

Shares of heavyweight miner BHP Billiton PLC /quotes/zigman/184879 UK:BLT -0.44% ? /quotes/zigman/270355/quotes/nls/bhp BHP +0.28% ? /quotes/zigman/180893 AU:BHP -0.58% ?dropped 0.5%, while Fresnillo PLC /quotes/zigman/510593 UK:FRES -1.46% and Rio Tinto PLC /quotes/zigman/155899 UK:RIO -1.21% /quotes/zigman/182541/quotes/nls/rio RIO -0.70% /quotes/zigman/176317 AU:RIO -1.87% ?both tripped 1.3%.

Most banks were also on the decline. Shares of Lloyds Banking Group PLC /quotes/zigman/255656/quotes/nls/lyg LYG +0.68% /quotes/zigman/126322 UK:LLOY -0.68% ??gave up 1% and Barclays PLC /quotes/zigman/301787 UK:BARC -0.49% /quotes/zigman/152323/quotes/nls/bcs BCS +0.10% ?fell 0.6%.

Shares of Smith & Nephew PLC /quotes/zigman/263642 UK:SN -0.91% ? /quotes/zigman/264745/quotes/nls/snn SNN -0.67% ?gave up 1.2%. The health care firm said it agreed to buy the assets of Healthpoint Biotherapeutics, a wound-care-treatment developer, for $782 million in cash. See: Smith & Nephew buys Healthpoint Biotherapeutics

Shares of Marks & Spencer Group PLC /quotes/zigman/298234 UK:MKS +2.16% ?added 2.2%, after the firm agreed on a 10-year funding plan with its pension trustees. See: Marks & Spencer okays plan with pension trustees

ARM Holdings PLC shares /quotes/zigman/254777 UK:ARM +1.78% ? /quotes/zigman/67211/quotes/nls/armh ARMH +1.91% added 1.9% to ?7.72 a share, as Barclays lifted the chip maker?s target price to ?8.20 from ?7.50.

?We continue to view ARM as one of the best positioned shares globally when it comes to smartphone and tablet growth,? the analysts said.

/quotes/zigman/3173262

UK : FTSE Indices

Volume: 0.00

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

/quotes/zigman/421253

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 85.31M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:24p

Market Cap

?77.16 billion

Rev. per Employee

?517,257

/quotes/zigman/101873/quotes/nls/vod

US : U.S.: Nasdaq

Volume: 7.88M

Nov. 28, 2012 1:19p

Market Cap

$124.24 billion

Rev. per Employee

$824,819

/quotes/zigman/514680

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 4.19M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Rev. per Employee

?307,084

/quotes/zigman/210014

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 57.63M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Market Cap

?82.19 billion

/quotes/zigman/247026/quotes/nls/bp

US : U.S.: NYSE

Volume: 6.65M

Nov. 28, 2012 1:19p

Market Cap

$131.74 billion

/quotes/zigman/378681

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 1.23M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Rev. per Employee

?441,594

/quotes/zigman/602765

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 2.48M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Rev. per Employee

?996,686

/quotes/zigman/184879

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 4.37M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Market Cap

?41.05 billion

Rev. per Employee

?983,627

/quotes/zigman/270355/quotes/nls/bhp

US : U.S.: NYSE

Volume: 1.32M

Nov. 28, 2012 1:19p

Market Cap

$114.63 billion

/quotes/zigman/180893

AU : Australia: Sydney

Volume: 5.33M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:32p

Market Cap

$109.67 billion

/quotes/zigman/510593

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 586,327

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Market Cap

?14.20 billion

Rev. per Employee

?512,014

/quotes/zigman/155899

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 3.48M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:24p

Market Cap

?42.03 billion

Rev. per Employee

?527,959

/quotes/zigman/182541/quotes/nls/rio

US : U.S.: NYSE

Volume: 3.98M

Nov. 28, 2012 1:19p

Rev. per Employee

$836,487

/quotes/zigman/176317

AU : Australia: Sydney

Volume: 3.21M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:43p

Rev. per Employee

$821,334

/quotes/zigman/255656/quotes/nls/lyg

US : U.S.: NYSE

Volume: 884,778

Nov. 28, 2012 1:18p

Rev. per Employee

$574,687

/quotes/zigman/126322

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 90.75M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:25p

Market Cap

?31.76 billion

Rev. per Employee

?360,302

/quotes/zigman/301787

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 32.82M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Market Cap

?29.83 billion

Rev. per Employee

?276,634

/quotes/zigman/152323/quotes/nls/bcs

US : U.S.: NYSE

Volume: 2.66M

Nov. 28, 2012 1:19p

Rev. per Employee

$437,826

/quotes/zigman/263642

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 3.27M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Rev. per Employee

?246,078

/quotes/zigman/264745/quotes/nls/snn

US : U.S.: NYSE

Volume: 11,961

Nov. 28, 2012 1:03p

Rev. per Employee

$384,867

/quotes/zigman/298234

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 11.02M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Rev. per Employee

?122,574

/quotes/zigman/254777

UK : U.K.: London

Volume: 5.50M

Nov. 28, 2012 4:35p

Market Cap

?10.46 billion

Rev. per Employee

?260,113

/quotes/zigman/67211/quotes/nls/armh

US : U.S.: Nasdaq

Volume: 1.48M

Nov. 28, 2012 1:19p

Rev. per Employee

$412,193

Sara Sjolin is a MarketWatch reporter based in London. Follow her on Twitter @sarasjolin.

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/marketwatch/financial/~3/LVgHdly2xHw/story.asp

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