15 Ideas to Start an Internet Business | ApostolicCM.com Answers

It might appear simple to begin an internet business, however the truth is that it is a lot of work. The same as any business you start, there really are a few things that you will need to consider. Here is a list of some suggestions which should be a main concern for you when starting an online business.Find Your Marketplace ? If you don?t know who you are trying to promote your products or services to, then you will not know who to make your business appeal to. Big companies could possibly get away with marketing to everyone, but as a small internet business you will have tens of thousands of other organizations in competition also. Because of the competition, you?ll need to concentrate on one particular industry to make the business run easier and more inviting to potential customers.Pick an Business Model ? You?ll need to choose an online business model which means that your business will run smoothly and efficiently. Having a more focused approach on your business will allow you to give all your power in running and getting your business up. You?ll also learn on which audience you need to market to. Here are a few of the options for a web business model. For just starting out it?s better to stay with one. Then, as your business grows, you are able to included more models into your plan.Sell your own solution. This implies you?ll make your own product or services to sell such as creating a to sell or an artist making goods to sell. You will need to keep in mind that if you are offering a real product like cell phone accessories or candles, you will need more start up time and money to get started. You will have to look at the fact that you will need storage space.Sell a site and will need to ship products. This means that you will provide a support, such as accounting, vacation planning, or career counseling. You need to understand that when you choose to offer a service, you will be trading your hours for cash. This means that you will only be settled when you?re actively working for your clients. When selling something, your income isn?t restricted to by your time.Sell information products. People are willing to purchase good information that will assist them solve problems, achieve objectives, and so on. Educational items are courses that can train the customer how to complete something. The consumer can acquire these lessons quickly the internet. There will be maintenance and customer support to deal with nevertheless, you won?t need to deliver something or use up all of your time.Sell Through Affiliate Programs. When you do not want to provide your own personal products or services, you will get paid to market somebody else?s. You?ll be paid a share of the sales which are created due to your marketing. Organizations like Amazon, PETCO, and eBay all have affiliate programs. You set up a website that?s linked to the product and then recommend that the people on your website get a product from your affiliate company. You will set a link on your website that folks can use to buy the products. The link will have a specific following number about it so that the organization will know who sent them the traffic and possible sell.Direct Sales Company. There are tons of immediate sales companies that sell everything from jewelry to skincare. You will sign on as a representative and get most of the information you need to get started. Then you may make a web presence through websites to market yourself and the items to individuals who are interested.Sell Wholesale Products You Purchase. You can purchase other people?s products and services and market it at a higher value. There are lots of wholesale businesses. You can buy the products before you provide the products and frequently get a better price. Some companies may dropship or pay for all the shipping and handling. You can take orders and turn the orders in to the dropshipping business as you get them. You will make a website that features these products that you want to sell.Choose a Name and Buy It ? For an online business, you will need a website. You?ll have to pick a domain name for the website. What type of business you want to begin and when you have chosen your target market, choosing the perfect domain name will make your business easier to market. You will need a big list of options before looking for a domain name. You must make it easy to remember and adhere to a.com extension.Proofread your Content ? Having an online business, you will not have the ability to market your business face to face. This makes most firms struggle to convince customers that they are legit. But when you be sure that most of the words on your own site are spelled right and syntax is perfect, you will appear to be a reliable organization. You most likely should hire an or at least have a second couple of eyes check out your site to be sure that everything seems great.Get Traffic ? An online business is no good unless folks are looking at it. You will need to do things to get people to your site. Here are so tips about how to have more traffic to your website.Free Search Engine Traffic. You?ll need to get shown on an internet search engine results page and get as high as you can. The sooner you are to the number 1 search result, the more people will dsicover your website record and want to click it. This can be a big marketing tool that requires using those keywords on your website, choosing keywords that people may seek out, and incorporating links to your website from reputable websites.Pay-Per-Click. Traffic can be got by you instantly by paying for ad space on search engines like Yahoo and Google, even though free search engine traffic can have a while to construct. You will choose key words that people who would be thinking about your company will search for. On the internet search engine pay per click internet site a bid is set by all you do is write an ad,. This bet will undoubtedly be the volume that you?re willing to pay when someone clicks on your offer when finding it on the internet search engine. If your bid is the highest for anyone keywords, your ad will undoubtedly be on the first page of benefits in the ad space. You?ll then pay the internet search engine a certain amount every time somebody clicks on your advertising and would go to your website.Having a Sticky Website. This really is among the easiest and cheapest ways to make more traffic for our website. This can get people need to visit your website repeatedly and be excited to visit. So, it?ll make your internet site difficult by making people not need to stay far from it. You can do this by offering readers something to talk about. This implies that you?ll provide information that your market will wish to know and keep them talking. Study questionable. You can also let guests contribute to your site. This means developing a community or letting them leave comments. People can feel like they?re an integral part of your website. You need to keep your site up to date with fresh information so they will also have something new to look at. Sweepstakes and offers always draw an audience. Some individuals might just come for the prize and never come back, but it is a great way to add your organization to clients that could not have visited otherwise.Press Releases. It is possible to launch your own publicity campaign by creating a press release statement that will get people excited about your company. They can be delivered by you to everyone and anyone that can show you in front of an audience like publications, papers, or TV news. This way it is possible to market on the web along with offline.

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Source: http://answers.apostoliccm.com/2012/07/15-ideas-to-start-an-internet-business-3/

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How to make global fisheries worth five times more

ScienceDaily (July 13, 2012) ? Rebuilding global fisheries would make them five times more valuable while improving ecology, according to a new University of British Columbia study, published July 13 in the online journal PLoS ONE.

By reducing the size of the global fishing fleet, eliminating harmful government subsidies, and putting in place effective management systems, global fisheries would be worth US$54 billion each year, rather than losing US$13 billion per year.

"Global fisheries are not living up to their economic potential in part because governments keep them afloat by subsidizing unprofitable large scale fishing fleets with taxpayer money," says study lead author Rashid Sumaila, a fisheries economist and director of the UBC Fisheries Centre. "This is like sinking money into a series of small, cosmetic fixes in an old home rather than investing in a complete, well thought-out renovation that boosts the home's value."

Despite the US$130- to US$292-billion price tag for transitioning global fisheries, the study's authors estimate that in just 12 years, the returns would begin to outweigh the costs and the total gains over 50 years would return the investment three- to seven-fold.

"We should be getting more from our fisheries, rather than less," says Sumaila. "If the environmental and sustainability reasons alone can't convince global governments to take action, the financial incentives should."

"This study shows that politicians can no longer use the excuse that rebuilding fisheries is too expensive," says Daniel Pauly, principal investigator of UBC's Sea Around Us Project and a study co-author. "Not only is rebuilding better for the economy, it's better for ecology."

In addition to eliminating harmful subsidies, new policies would need to address poor regulation, particularly on the high seas, and illegal fishing.

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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of British Columbia.

Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.

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Journal Reference:

1. Sumaila UR, Cheung W, Dyck A, Gueye K, Huang L, et al. Benefits of Rebuilding Global Marine Fisheries Outweigh Costs. PLoS ONE, 2012 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0040542

Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.

Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.

Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/~3/we0cdqmby3c/120713223937.htm

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George H.W. Bush: 'Who the hell is Grover Norquist?' (Los Angeles Times)

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THE RACE: Stagnant jobs numbers a factor in race

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/race-stagnant-jobs-numbers-factor-race-174923133.html

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Awkward '80s, shoulder pads to Swatches

ABC

Joan Collins sported some serious shoulder pads in "Dynasty."

By Gael Fashingbauer Cooper

No one can say the 1980s were the world's most elegant decade. Hair and shoulders were huge, shoes and watches were made out of plastic, jeans looked?as if they'd been battered for hours on river rock, and fashion trends came and went as fast as Pac-Man gobbled ghosts.

But darn it, while the fashions of the 1980s may have been awkward, vapid, random and disposable, they were OUR awkward, vapid, random and disposable fashions.

I love the decade's pop culture?so much that college friend Brian Bellmont and I wrote a book about?it -- "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the 1970s and 1980s?"?And as we toured around and talked about the book, in person and on radio and TV, we found a hidden cult of 1980s lovers in every city and state. When we handed out Pop Rocks and sprayed a little Love's Baby Soft in the air, people responded with their own warm, goofy memories. (And plugged their noses -- "Love's Baby Soft" is still pretty stinky.)?With everything that's happened in the decades since then, parts of the 1980s look startlingly innocent by comparison.

Scott Eklund / Red Box Pictures

Looking through the Awkward Family Photos slideshow, I remember every trend the poor unfortunates are wearing. You could find more than a few of them in my photo albums (and closets) too. Even though I spent almost half of the 1980s at an all-girls' Catholic high school where we wore uniforms that made us look like smallish nuns, my classmates and I found ways to incorporate the signs o' the times into our looks, from giant hair and popped collars to Swatch watches and?jelly shoes ("young lady, you are OUT OF UNIFORM!").

I could write another whole book just on 1980s fashion flubs and faux pas, but here are five favorites.

Big hair
Is that an enormous French poodle on your neck, or are you just happy to see me? Remember when we all got perms? Does anyone get perms any more? Curling irons and hot rollers sufficed for those who couldn't get or didn't want a salon 'do, and Farrah feathered looks and hockey-hair mullets were also popular. Big hair also made the leap into the music world, with bands like Poison and Twisted Sister sporting poofs to be proud of.

Michael Galinksy / rumur.com/mal

Shoulder pads
Shoulder pads kind of made sense inside the peplumed dresses of Linda Evans and Joan Collins on "Dynasty," as they swaggered their way into boardrooms and business meetings, but less so for those of us who mostly just hung around the mall. The worst thing about this fad was that it made many women look like linebackers. The second-worst thing was that you could not buy a shirt or dress without them for years, which led to women cutting them out at home with scissors, which led to stupid tiny holes in your clothes. Our bodies pad themselves just fine, thanks.

Swatch watches
A?fad, but not really a faux pas, at least not to me. I admit, I still kinda love these, and recently found myself lingering over a case of them at the Mall of America Swatch store.? (Yes, Swatch stores still exist.) Come on, these colorful, poppy, plastic timepieces?were?a huge improvement over?the clunky black Texas Instuments digital watches that preceded them. Women who grew up in the 1980s, close your eyes and think back to your "Seventeen" Magazine subscription, which sometimes came with scratch-n-sniff postcards advertising the scented Swatches, called Granita di Frutta. The raspberry scent still lingers in my sense memory, probably crowding out any recollection of math or other more useful topics.

Hoopskirts and crinolines
Prom dresses today are slinky, sexy and sometimes totally age-inappropriate. Not so in the 1980s, where the Scarlett O'Hara style of gowns, like?her beloved?South, rose again. The big debate was?not how much skin to show, but whether a hoopskirt or a crinoline was the best way to poof that skirt out to its desired hugeness -- that is, if you weren't wearing a bubble skirt.?Oh, and forget that hideous homemade outfit?Molly Ringwald made in "Pretty in Pink." (Shoulder cut-outs, really?)

Acid-washed jeans
Supposedly you could?bleach and batter?regular dark-blue jeans to get this must-have '80s look, but COME ON. Most of us just bought them off the rack, the paler and most distressed-looking, the better. Parents who'd grown up in the Depression, when clothing was worn until it literally wore out, were baffled by this trend -- why would you want your clothing to look like it'd gone 12 rounds with Rocky? Pair the jeans with a jean jacket and you've got that 1980s staple, the denim tuxedo. Even Martha Stewart once?sported that too-too blue?look?on her show.

Which 1980s fashions do you admit to wearing? Tell us on Facebook.

Related content:

Source: http://todayentertainment.today.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/07/13/12683481-why-were-the-1980s-so-darn-awkward-from-shoulder-pads-to-swatches-five-fashion-reasons?lite

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How to sign up for iMore and add your own custom avatar

iMore 2.0 will be bringing you a ton of great new features, but one of the ones you can enjoy right now is our fancy new registration and login system, the glorious way it integrates with both the blog comments and the iMore Forums, and awesome way it lets you share the same avatar between the two.

Setting is all up is a breeze. Sadly, until iOS 6 and Safari uploads are generally available, you'll need to use a desktop browser to actually upload your custom avatar file, but everything else you can do just as easily on iOS.

1. Click/tap on Register or Login Here at the very top right of the page, directly beneath the Mobile Nations logo.
2. If you already have an iMore account, simply log in. If you don't, enter the username you'd like, your email address, and enter and confirm your password, and fill out the CAPTCHA so we know you're not a robot (or at least not an evil robot).
3. Our VISOR platform (my nickname for it!) will make sure everything is good, and show you big happy green checkmarks if so. (If you get a sad, red X, it means your username is taken and you'll have to pick another, or your email address was already used, and you can have the password reminder tool send you your login.)
4. Once you're logged in, click/tap on Forums in the top menu bar.
5. Click/tap on the User CP (control panel) drop down, middle left and choose Edit Avatar.
6. If the Use Custom Avatar button isn't selected, click/tap on it to make it selected.
7. Enter the URL of your avatar if it's already store someplace online, or on a Mac or Windows PC (or iOS 6 Safari, when it's released), click on Choose File.
8. Select the avatar you want to upload.
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Understanding how to properly valuate your ... - News and Society

How much home insurance coverage does one really need? There are so many home insurance companies in the market today and they usually offer different types of coverage but because of the wealth of options, it is now so difficult how much is too much and how much is too little when it comes to insurance. If you are looking for a policy for your home, it is important to know which factor you should be basing your decision on, should it be based on your home?s market value? Should it be based on rebuilding costs or are there other factors that one should take into consideration?

Homeowners insurance should never be complicated, in fact, experts say that it should be fairly straightforward. This means that how much insurance you get should be based on rebuilding costs as well as replacing all its contents in an event that you lose everything. You should also add in protection for yourself and the people who are inside your home including those who visit. Some people who get injured in your property may sue you for everything you?ve got. Now this can be a rather unfortunate situation and you would want to be protected from this.

Of course this brings one back to the question ? how much is enough? Getting a ballpark figure is a good thing but one should always put an allowance to the whole figure to ensure that everything is covered in case you get sued r you lose everything inside your home including the very structure that you call home.

One thing that you should learn about is the different types of policies available for homeowners i.e. the HOs. Each HO refers to a certain kind of policy, HO-1 for example is known as the basic homeowner?s policy and based on the word basic, it is indeed very basic because it only covers 11 mishaps which include windstorms, riots, theft, explosions, vandalism, smoke, eruptions of volcanic nature, fire, and lightning making HO-1 very limited. HO-2 on the other hand also known as the broad homeowners policy covers against 17 named perils while HO-3 is a special policy that covers most perils. This home insurance policy is definitely the one that makes most sense for most homeowners. If you are looking for a home insurance however, it is best to take a look at all options.

Source: http://www.libyamusical.com/understanding-how-to-properly-valuate-your-home-when-insuring-it.html

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Softer California three-strikes law would save on older inmates

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A ballot measure aimed at California's infamous "three strikes" sentencing law may be an opportunity for the state to put a dent in one problem besetting prison officials across the country: the high cost of aging inmates.

Under three strikes, a person convicted of a felony in California who has two or more prior convictions for certain offenses must be sentenced to at least 25-years-to-life in state prison, even if the third offense is nonviolent.

The American Civil Liberties Union and other prison-reform advocates point to three-strikes laws (California's was passed in 1994) as the prime driver for an increase in older inmates. Older prisoners are less likely to re-offend, advocates argue, and many can be safely released to ease prison overcrowding.

Yet attempts to reform three strikes in California have stalled both in the legislature and at the ballot box.

Even with a court order, and in a tough budget climate, where reducing the prison population could bring savings, success for reformers in November is far from assured.

"Three strikes has sort of become a sacred cow, sort of this litmus test on 'how law and order are you' in California," said Gloria Romero, the former state Senate majority leader whose 2006 bill to relax three strikes died awaiting a floor vote in her own chamber.

Greg Totten, the district attorney in Ventura County, nearly 70 miles northwest of Los Angeles, said the vast majority of state prosecutors will likely oppose any softening of three strikes.

"The advocates of reform don't want to talk about the crime and the criminal," said Totten, who opposes reform. "You see an aging prisoner, as they get older they probably look a little more sympathetic, a little less threatening."

Almost 125,000 prisoners around the country are 55 and older. At $68,000 per year, they cost the state nearly twice as much to house as younger prisoners, according to a recent ACLU study, largely because of higher medical costs associated with care later in life. More than 14,000 of those inmates are in California prisons.

Prison overcrowding -- and the unconstitutional conditions it creates -- has been litigated in California for over 20 years. In response to a U.S. Supreme Court directive last year to cut the state inmate population by over 30,000 inmates, California began a massive shifting of responsibility and funding for low-level offenders to county jails from state prisons, a process known in California as realignment.

The lower number of incoming prisoners, combined with current inmates being paroled per usual, brought down the number of inmates in state prisons from an estimated 144,000 at the time of the high court ruling to 121,129 in June 2012, according to the state Department of Corrections. That is still roughly 55 percent over the capacity of California's 33 prisons.

Reformers say older prisoners are a prime population to cut.

The ballot measure this November could give roughly 3,000 inmates a chance at reducing their sentences, according to the Committee for Three Strikes Reform. If approved, it would revise the current three-strikes law to impose a life sentence only when the third felony conviction is serious or violent -- unless the second strike is a particularly egregious crime like murder or rape.

The measure would also allow for offenders currently serving life sentences on a third-strike conviction that was not serious or violent to have their sentences reconsidered.

Age 50 is the criminological consensus of when a prisoner becomes elderly since inmates age faster physiologically, according to the National Institute of Corrections. In its report the ACLU highlights reforms in Louisiana that allow inmates to apply for parole hearings if they reach age 60, dubbed "elderly parole."

"Such laws allow states to safely depopulate their prisons of the elderly and save on incarceration costs," the report said, "while simultaneously not forcing aging prisoners into homelessness by ensuring prisoners must elect to apply for parole."

Older inmates who rejoin society can easily find themselves evading one strikeout only to face another: no place to go and few prospects to build a life. Terri McDonald, the undersecretary of operations for California's Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said the prisons work with inmates to set up Medicaid and other benefits as they approach parole.

Still, she acknowledges the difficult planning process.

"If it's your parole release date, we release whether you have housing or not," McDonald said.

The ACLU says the elderly have no greater chance of becoming homeless than any other age group after imprisonment.

California legislators passed a medical parole law in 2010 to allow inmates with certain debilitating illnesses to seek release. The threshold is extremely stringent, however, requiring that inmates be terminally or permanently incapacitated and so cognitively or physically disabled that there is no possibility they could be a threat to the public. Such impairments obviously render a population already vulnerable upon release even more so. Only 37 prisoners have had their requests granted since that law was implemented.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department, alongside a coalition of all California county sheriffs, have sponsored a bill in the current legislative session that would increase the eligible population for compassionate release, which frees terminally ill inmates expected to die within six months, and medical parole on the county level.

The bill's sponsor, Democratic state Senator Mark Leno, said it is odd that the otherwise liberal California trails much more conservative states on the issue of medical parole and compassionate release. "Texas does this significantly more often than we do," he said.

Even the law currently under consideration by the California legislature would affect, at most, 10 prisoners, according to the Los Angeles Sheriff's Department.

The hard-nosed stance on releasing inmates, despite prison overcrowding, is consistent with prior voting in the state. A 2004 effort to amend three strikes failed at the polls after it was opposed by then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger.

A similar reform measure in 2008 did not garner enough signatures to appear on the November ballot.

This year's reform ballot measure is more limited, said Steve Cooley, the Republican district attorney in Los Angeles who has long supported changing three strikes.

"I don't see (Governor Brown) opposing this thoughtful proposal," Cooley said.

Brown's office declined to comment on the initiative. The issue cuts across party lines, with some Republicans like Cooley in favor of reform and many Democrats opposed. A handful of Democrats opposed the reform bill in 2006, Romero said, because they were fearful of losing crucial law enforcement endorsements in an election year.

Even if three-strikes reform doesn't pass, under new prison regulations older inmates will be eligible for housing in cheaper, lower-security institutions, McDonald said. "As people age they're much less likely to escape."

Marvin Caldwell, 63, who occupies a closet-size cell in San Quentin State Prison, spoke to Reuters during a recent visit. Incarcerated for the possession and sale of methamphetamine in 1999, Caldwell was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison under California's three-strikes law. He is eligible for parole in 2024, when he will be 75 years old.

"A lot of people make mistakes in life and live to regret them," Caldwell said, standing in front of his narrow cell as inmates returned from an afternoon exercising in the yard to be counted by prison guards. "Speaking as one of those people, I believe I can make a difference now if given the chance."

(Editing by Lee Aitken and Prudence Crowther)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/softer-california-three-strikes-law-save-older-inmates-050421459.html

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Microsoft bets on advanced touch tech in tablet war

10 hrs.

Devin Coldewey

Microsoft buying Perceptive Pixel last week could easily be dismissed as just another in an endless line of acquisitions by the big movers in tech. But looking a little closer shows that it's part of a trend that may define computing as we know it over the next few years.

One thing that tablet makers have learned over the last few years is that you can't beat the iPad at being the iPad. So Google has focused on being futuristic, Amazon has focused on low cost, and Microsoft has taken two different tacks.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal, but that does not give editors privileged information about Microsoft products and services, nor does it impact our opinions of them.) ?

First, Microsoft has visually differentiated itself with the?Metro UI on Windows Phone and Windows 8. An unmistakable visual style is rarely a drawback. It's striking, divisive ...?and even functional.

Second, Microsoft is focused on capability.?That's why the Surface is built to be a full-on Windows PC (though the RT version of Windows is limited to a degree that is hard to calculate), complete with keyboard and trackpad. And it's why Microsoft bought Perceptive Pixel, a company that does creative things with touchable surfaces, making them powerful and intuitive interfaces.

(Msnbc.com is a joint venture of Microsoft and NBC Universal, but that doesn't give us privileged information about Microsoft products and services, nor does it influence our opinion of them.)

Perceptive Pixel was founded by Jeff Han, one of the people in the world who can rightly be called a pioneer in touch-based interfaces. In a now-famous demonstration done at a TED conference in early 2006, he showed off a multi-touch display with many of the gestures and features that would later be lauded on the iPhone and Microsoft's original Surface table.?

Since then the company has continually advanced touchscreen tech and specialized in oversized implementations like CNN's "Magic Wall." And you'd better believe Han and his engineers are interested in things like Kinect and other new technologies; if they were making multi-touch years before it went mainstream, they've got to have some tricks up their sleeves today.

Perceptive Pixel is a young, innovative company that, with luck, is being treated like an invaluable?treasure by the massive, much-slower-moving company that just bought it. Some young blood and some fresh (and exclusive) new ideas could be the difference between Microsoft's tablets being decent?? and their being essential.

Pen input, fingerprint recognition, 3-D displays, complex gestures. These could all be part of your average tablet in a couple years, but Apple wants to keep things simple and Google is already backing away from full-fledged?PCs. Microsoft isn't the only one focusing on next-generation interfaces (see Google Glass), but it clearly has one foot in the past and one in the future. It's possible that hedging of bets might undo them (it might pay off better to go?all-in on traditional computing, or all-in on next-gen), but it may also be that they hit the sweet spot: iPad convenience married to desktop versatility.

Of course, it'll take time before Perceptive Pixel's young blood makes it through Redmond's?immense circulatory system. And any mishandling (as with Skype, where ads were added to calls) could spoil it. But whether they end up digging their own grave or breaking ground on a New Microsoft, they've got shovel in hand, and that counts for something.

Apple talks about a "post-PC era." Microsoft is trying to?bring the PC into that era anyway. Maybe it'll go nicely, maybe it'll go kicking and screaming. Either way, it should make for an interesting couple of years.

Devin Coldewey is a contributing writer for msnbc.com. His personal website is coldewey.cc.

Source: http://www.technolog.msnbc.msn.com/technology/technolog/microsoft-bets-advanced-touch-tech-tablet-war-874243

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Business Inteligence | iContact Email Marketing

More and more people today are engaging into marketing or business because it has been proven in making people rich or at least earn decent money. However, when entering the marketing industry or the world of business, it is quite risky because of possible things that might happen especially if you are the owner. In business or marketing, you should always think that there are two possible serious things that might happen and these are getting lucky and managing the business right which will possibly make you rich and the other one is being unlucky or improper management of business which will waste your investments. Fortunately, there are certain marketing strategies which will really help you from achieving a successful marketing business such as the iContact email marketing.

iContact is one of the leading companies which offers email or social media marketing. These offers will greatly contribute to the success of a certain marketing company. One of the primary goals of a marketing company is to gain as many customers as possible for higher chances of selling their products. This is now the main use of email marketing especially since a lot of people today are using the internet and sending letters or messages through emails.

Through iContact, you can send emails to different people worldwide and you can even pick a design for your email to look more attractive and interesting for other people. If you have no experience in making a good looking email, they have several templates to choose from which will suit your needs. You don?t even have to woory too much about sending them to different people because they have an email delivery service which has delivery specialists that will automatically send those emails to your clients or customers? inboxes. Also, you don?t have to worry about your email falling into the spam folders because they are certified with spamcheck. All in all, this is definitely one of the easiest and safest way to earn more customers through email marketing to increase the chances of having a successful marketing business.

Source: http://business-inteligence.com/icontact-email-marketing.html

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10 New Meeting Venues in Miami/South Florida

MIAMI/SOUTH FLORIDA

Looking for a space to host your next meeting? Here's a look at 10 venues in Miami/South Florida: conference rooms, convention centers, hotel ballrooms, auditoriums, private rooms in restaurants, and more. Whether your meeting is for 10, 100, or even more, you'll find all kinds of sizes, locations, room styles, and amenities to best fit your needs.

View Slide Show

Source: http://www.bizbash.com/10_new_meeting_venues_in_miami-south_florida/miami/story/23601

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AP Exclusive: Abuses surface at Legion school

VATICAN CITY (AP) ? Dozens of women who attended a high school run by the disgraced Legion of Christ religious order have urged the Vatican to close the program, saying the psychological abuse they endured trying to live like teenage nuns led to multiple cases of anorexia, stress-induced migraines, depression and even suicidal thoughts.

The women sent a letter this weekend to the pope's envoy running the Legion to denounce the manipulation, deception and disrespect they say they suffered at the hands of counselors barely older than themselves at the Rhode Island school. For some, the trauma required years of psychological therapy that cost them tens of thousands of dollars.

A copy of the letter was provided to The Associated Press by the letter's 77 signatories, a dozen of whom agreed to be interviewed about their personal problems for the sake of warning parents against sending their children to the program's schools in the U.S., Mexico and Spain.

"I have many defining and traumatic memories that I believe epitomize the systematic breakdown of the person" in the school, Mary told The Associated Press in an email exchange. She developed anorexia after joining in 1998, weighed less than 85 pounds when she left and dropped to 68 pounds before beginning to recover at home. "The feelings of worthlessness, shame and isolation that are associated with those memories are still vivid and shocking."

Mary, who asked that her last name not be used, blamed her eating disorder on acute loneliness ? girls were prevented from making close friends or confiding in their families ? and the tremendous pressure she felt as a 16-year-old to perfectly obey the strictest rules dictating how she should walk, sit, pray and eat.

It's the latest blow to the troubled, cult-like Legion, which was discredited in 2009 when it revealed that its founder was a pedophile and drug addict who fathered three children. The Legion suffered subsequent credibility problems following its recent admission that its most famous priest had fathered a child and the current Legion superior covered it up for years.

The Legion saga is all the more grave because its late founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel, had been held up as a living saint by his followers and a model of holiness by Pope John Paul II because of his ability to recruit men and money to the priesthood, even though the Vatican knew for decades that he had sexually abused his seminarians.

Pope Benedict XVI took over the Mexico-based order in 2010 and appointed envoy Cardinal Velasio De Paolis to oversee a whole-scale reform of the Legion and its lay branch Regnum Christi. But the reform hasn't progressed smoothly, with defections from disillusioned members and criticism that some superiors remain locked in their old ways.

The all-girl Immaculate Conception Academy, located in Wakefield, Rhode Island opened two decades ago to serve as a feeder program for the Legion's female consecrated branch, where more than 700 women around the world live like nuns making promises of poverty, chastity and obedience, teaching in Legion-run schools and running youth programs.

Because of dwindling enrollment ? 14 seniors graduated last month ? the school recently merged with a Legion-run school in Michigan; in Mexico two programs merged into one that produced 10 graduates this year.

The school's current director said things have changed dramatically recently and many of the spiritual and psychological abuses corrected. But she acknowledged the harm done, apologized for the women's suffering and asked for forgiveness.

"For any errors made by our order in the past, we do apologize," said director Margarita Martinez. "We are sorry these young women have suffered and been harmed in any way."

In an email response to AP, Martinez noted that not all students experienced the same "level of negativity" as those who wrote the letter, and that regardless the movement was listening to everyone's experiences as it undergoes a process of Vatican-mandated reform.

Megan Coelho, 30, recalled how pairs of consecrated women would visit her regularly as a child in northern California where she was homeschooled; they told her tales of the wonderful high school in Rhode Island where she might find a vocation and grow closer to God. Coelho, who wanted to be a nun, left home when she was 14 to join.

By junior year, the occasional migraines she had suffered became frequent and debilitating as pressure to conform to the rules and highly structured schedule increased. The migraines would paralyze one side of her body, making her collapse at times. She developed facial tics. Her eyesight became blurry.

"As sweet as they (her consecrated directors) were I was counseled not to tell my parents about it because then my parents would take me home," she said, referring to the movement's goal of keeping members at almost any cost. "No one contacted my family. Nobody took me to the ER or got me a doctor's appointment."

Eventually, Coelho got so sick she returned home, and the migraines stopped. Feeling better she returned, only to suffer a migraine her first day back. She left for good six months before graduation.

Coehlo's story is the first on a blog she and other former pre-candidates, as the girls were known, started this past spring, a seemingly cathartic experience since many had never shared their pain with their onetime classmates. The blog, www.49weeks.blogspot.com , is an astonishing read ? testimony of a twisted and cruel methodology applied to girls at their most vulnerable age, when even under normal circumstances girls are prone to self-esteem issues, peer pressure and bouts of depression.

Instead of finding support from friends and family, these teenagers were isolated from their families 49 weeks a year, told to unquestioningly trust their spiritual directors and confide only in them. Obedience to the minutest of rules, they were taught, reflected their acceptance of God's will.

They write about their feelings of inadequacy, humiliation and loneliness, and of idolizing their smiling consecrated counselors. They paint the depths of their depression when seemingly overnight they were told they didn't have a vocation and should go home.

"Looking back, I was suicidal," said Sarita Duffy, now a 28-year-old mother of three in Fort Cambpbell, Kentucky. "I never took a bottle of pills or slit my wrists, but I was fully content with the possibility of never waking up again."

In a phone interview, Duffy said she equated being rejected by the movement with being rejected by God, and lost her Catholic faith for years as a result. She acknowledged she can't blame the movement for all her problems but said the "zero self-worth" she felt after being rejected precipitated her descent into depression and rebellion.

"Why do you hate me God? I hate me," Duffy wrote in her journal on June 10, 2002, four years after she entered as a freshman and about a week before she received the final "no" to work in the movement's missionary program.

One of the blog entries was written by Lourdes Martinez, a former counselor or formator at the school from 2000-2005. She admitted that she and her consecrated colleagues would classify the girls into potential leaders, "normals" and those who should be sent home. This would enable the directors and counselors under them to manipulate the girls and prey on their vulnerabilities, giving special attention to those they wanted to keep as potential consecrated leaders and devise strategies to get rid of those they wanted to send home, she said.

Often, information from the weekly reports written about each girl's development would be shared with the priests who heard her confession ? a striking violation of privacy. The priests could then reinforce the directors' decisions in confession with the girls, she said.

"So she's hearing this from everyone and thinks it's the Holy Spirit talking. And we would say 'Yes, of course,'" Martinez told the AP in a phone interview from Monterrey, Mexico.

Martinez described an almost "Lord of the Flies"-like situation in which the counselors were barely older than the girls under their care, with no experience in adolescent development. The counselors themselves lived with the fear that they must obey the rules and their superiors or risk violating God's will.

Martinez signed the letter to De Paolis because she wanted to show solidarity with those who suffered. But she stressed that she believes the reform will work because she knows and trusts the new leadership and is working with them to improve.

Not everyone suffered so much, and not everyone has joined the call to close the program; of the 270-odd people on a closed Facebook group that served as the basis for the blog, 77 signed the letter.

And by many indications, things have changed dramatically for the better at the school, with girls allowed more time with families and much less emphasis on sticking to the rules.

"People who are going into the pre-candidacy and are starting out will not find the same experience as those people did," said Sasha Jurchak, 25, who left consecrated life in May because she simply decided it wasn't for her ? not because of any problem with the program.

In an interview, she noted that De Paolis has instituted new regulations that forbid consecrating girls as young as 18 after a six-week candidacy program. The new rules require a years-long process of assessment similar to that of traditional religious orders. Recruitment is no longer the primary aim, she said. The girls' mail is no longer screened and they have more free time. Girls can wear shorts and pants for athletic activities instead of long skirts and stockings.

Margarita Martinez, the school director, said other changes include better reflection from counselors on when to invoke "God's will" in requiring something of the girls.

She disputed claims that the school failed to provide adequate medical care for sick girls, saying the policy has always been to notify parents and get proper care.

Asked if Regnum Christi was prepared to provide financial assistance to women who needed psychological counseling when they left, she said each case would need to be considered individually.

"The reform process has taken time. It has been a learning process for everyone involved. And we still have a long way to go," she wrote. "But I strongly believe we are moving in the right direction, with the Holy Spirit as our guide."

The letter to De Paolis from alumni said it's too risky to wait and see how it all turns out.

"Today's girls deserve more than to be guinea pigs during the experimental stages of the reform process which may or may not prove in the end to be authentic," it concluded.

___

Regnum Christi is at www.regnumchristi.org

___

Follow Nicole Winfield at www.twitter.com/nwinfield

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/ap-exclusive-abuses-surface-legion-school-122659372.html

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One Jump Shot at a Time ? HandsOn Corps

A family brought in a young man 12-13 years of age who was very overweight. They were signing him up for league sports. While the mother was in the office the father took him to the downstairs basketball court to meet by the league coach for his age group. After a few minutes the coach took the young man to the far end of the basketball courts gave him a basketball and begin giving him instructions.? At no time did he direct the young person to shot the ball. Instead he directed the young man to run back and forth the length of the court holding first without the basketball. The second and third time the young man was directed to first hold the ball above his head. The final time he was directed to hold the basketball chest high and run. The coach watched very closely as the young man ran. With each direction the coach demonstrated and explained the reasons for the directions and exercise.? Between each exercise the coach gave the young man time to catch his breath while explaining the next exercise. The mother joined the father at the far end of the court. Both watched as their son listen and followed the directions of the coach, a volunteer coach.

There?s an afterschool program going on at the other end of the building. Both are housed in the Adamsville Recreational Center. The afterschool program is the first stage of Atlanta?s Mayor Reed?s Center of Hope program at Adamsville. The Adamsville and Thomasville Heights Centers are the first two pilot Center of Hope pilots. Under his leadership recreation centers throughout Atlanta were reopened returning to former activities like sports leagues. Each center provides some form of after school academic support. The mayor?s plan is to make all recreational facilities Centers of Hope with each center expanding volunteers to support academic and character enrichment programming for Atlanta?s inner city youth.

Recreation centers have a rich history of volunteer recruitment and involvement without which many sports leagues would fall by the waste side. Indeed, based on my observations here at Hands of Atlanta, volunteerism is the marrow of Georgian?s life.?

Watching that volunteer coach working with one on one with the young soon to be basketball player demonstrated to me the possibilities that lay ahead in my service to bring volunteers to the after school program.? One day I hope to look in a classroom to see one volunteer, among many working one to one with one young person on spelling, or addition, or subtraction or division or reading or life.?

Gail Ortega

HandsOn Corps VISTA: HandsOn Atlanta

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Source: http://honcorpsmembers.wordpress.com/2012/07/09/one-jump-shot-at-a-time/

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New Armageddon Bio-Warfare Thriller Now Available

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Source: http://news.yahoo.com/armageddon-bio-warfare-thriller-now-available-130213710.html

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angrywhitedude: LIVES, FORTUNES AND SACRED HONOR ? HAPPY 4TH OF JULY, AMERICA! http://t.co/5JKM3dv5 #tcot #teaparty #gop

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Source: http://twitter.com/angrywhitedude/statuses/220688275147464704

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Sony's super-fast XQD S series memory cards | Pixiq http://buff.ly/R5Kc9s

Sony's super-fast XQD S series memory cards | Pixiq www.pixiq.com

Fancy a 64GB memory card with a read/write speed of 168MB per second? What if it could record up to 108 Raw frames in a non-stop burst? How about being able to back-up about 30% faster than using a compact...

Source: http://www.facebook.com/pixiqphoto/posts/490248487655264

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Right Wing Joke of the Day: Anderson Cooper Teabagging Durr Hurr (Little green footballs)

Share With Friends: | | Politics - Top Stories News, News Feeds and News via Feedzilla.

Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/237029320?client_source=feed&format=rss

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Netflix's monthly video streaming tops 1B hours

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2011 file photo, the exterior of Netflix headquarters is seen in Los Gatos, Calif. Netflix subscribers watched more than 1 billion hours of online video last month, a significant milestone that reflects changes in people's viewing habits in the era of mobile devices. It comes as the company tries to wean customers off a DVD service that is more expensive to operate. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

FILE - In this Oct. 10, 2011 file photo, the exterior of Netflix headquarters is seen in Los Gatos, Calif. Netflix subscribers watched more than 1 billion hours of online video last month, a significant milestone that reflects changes in people's viewing habits in the era of mobile devices. It comes as the company tries to wean customers off a DVD service that is more expensive to operate. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) ? Netflix subscribers watched more than 1 billion hours of online video last month as the advent of high-speed Internet connections and high-powered mobile devices change people's viewing habits.

The milestone announced Tuesday by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings came a day after Citigroup analyst Mark Mahaney issued an upbeat report about the company's future. Those factors helped lift Netflix's stock by more than 6 percent in Tuesday's abbreviated trading session.

The stock is still struggling to recover from last fall's sharp increase in U.S. prices, which triggered a backlash among customers and investors alike. Netflix shares gained $4.19 Tuesday to close at $72.04, well off their peak of nearly $305 last July.

The rising usage of Netflix's Internet video service may turn out to be a mixed blessing as the company phases out its DVD-by-mail rental service to focus on its goal of building a lucrative franchise in Internet-streamed video.

Netflix is trying to wean people off DVDs to save on mailing costs and reduce its investment on a format that it expects to become obsolete. Delivering Internet video is quicker and less expensive than discs, but the streaming selection isn't as extensive as what's available on DVDs. To compensate, Netflix has been spending tens of millions of dollars during the past two years to add more compelling titles.

Netflix's increasing popularity indicates that those efforts are resonating with subscribers. That's important because it helps validate a strategy that called for Netflix Inc. to invest heavily in video-licensing fees, even though the spending is expected to saddle the company with an annual loss this year ? the first time that has happened in a decade.

But Netflix's licensing bill could climb even higher, if TV and movie studios interpret the growing streaming viewership as a threat to the revenue they reap from advertising-supported entertainment bundled in cable-television packages.

One of the biggest reasons that Netflix's streaming service is catching on is because it costs just $8 per month to watch an unlimited amount of video without commercial interruptions. The average cable-TV subscription costs about 10 times more, with advertising interspersed with the programming on most channels. Netflix now has 26.5 million worldwide subscribers to its streaming service, more than the 22.3 million TV subscribers at the leading cable provider, Comcast Corp.

Hastings has tried to position Netflix as a supplement to cable-TV subscriptions, but that argument will become more difficult to make as Internet streaming cuts down the amount of time people spend watching traditional TV, Wedbush Securities analyst Michael Pachter said.

In the most extreme instances, some households have canceled their cable packages entirely ? a process known as "cutting the cord" ? and relied on a lower-cost alternatives such as Netflix or another service such as Hulu.

"Netflix is starting to cannibalize cable-TV viewership and it could start cannibalizing advertising, too," Pachter said. If that happens, he expects Netflix's licensing fees to rise even higher than the company has been anticipating as studios try to make up for the revenue they lose from cable providers and advertising-supported broadcasters.

The 1 billion hours of online viewing in June works out to a monthly average of about 38 hours per streaming subscriber. That's up from an estimated monthly average of 28 hours in December, based on the 2 billion hours of combined streaming activity that occurred during the final three months of last year. That was the most recent time that Netflix had quantified its streaming usage.

Mahaney's report said that more than one-third of Netflix's streaming subscribers watch about as many TV series as they do movies over the Internet.

That trend also could reinforce the perception that Netflix looms as a threat to the cable-TV industry.

Hastings, though, has insisted that Netflix helps drive more viewers to some series by making it easier for people to catch up on previous seasons. He believes the availability of the first four seasons of "Mad Men" in Netflix's streaming library, for instance, helped increase viewership for new episodes on AMC this past spring.

Internet video appears to be making Netflix less vulnerable to seasonal shifts than it had been when most of its subscribers used the service to rent DVDs. The company used to experience a slowdown during the summer months when many subscribers were on vacation or spending more time outside to take advantage of the longer days.

Breaking through 1 billion streaming hours in June suggests that pattern is changing now that most subscribers can watch a movie or TV show on the service anywhere they want at any time they want, as long as they have a device with an Internet connection.

As of March 31, Netflix had just 2.7 million customers who subscribed only to the DVD rental plan. About 19.1 million are streaming-only customers and the remaining 7.4 million get both.

Mahaney's report estimated that 35 percent of iPad owners watched a Netflix-delivered video in June, up from 30 percent in September. Netflix consistently ranks among the 20 most downloaded applications on the iPad.

As more Netflix subscribers embrace streaming, Mahaney expects the rate of customer cancellations to decline and the positive word-of-mouth to win over more households, especially those that own iPads and other tablet computers. He predicts Netflix's stock could rebound back to $130.

Pachter believes his fears about Netflix having to pay even higher licensing fees will pan out, forcing the company to either raise its prices or shoulder more losses. He expects shares of Netflix, which is based in Los Gatos, Calif., to fall as low as $45.

Associated Press

Source: http://hosted2.ap.org/APDEFAULT/f70471f764144b2fab526d39972d37b3/Article_2012-07-03-Netflix-Online%20Video/id-05f73b14635a49a3a245c7d1932fdeb6

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Photo tips for a sparkling Fourth of July

16 hrs.

Suzanne Kantra , Techlicious

Heading out with the family for July 4th fireworks celebrations is a time-honored tradition. And, if you're like me, you enjoy capturing those memories in pictures. But photographing fireworks with no camera shake and proper exposure is difficult, unless you know these simple tricks:

1. Use a tripod
When you take picture of fireworks, the camera needs to hold the shutter open long enough to ?see? the fireworks. The longer the shutter is open, the more susceptible your photo is to motion blur. So use a tripod to make sure there?s no movement. For open areas, use a stand-alone model with telescoping legs like the Dolica AX620B100 Proline($38.40). A more mobile option is the Joby GorillaPod($12.30), which can wrap around trees and poles or stand up on the ground.

2. Use the ?fireworks? scene mode
Most point-and-shoot cameras have a button or dial with ?SCN? or ?Scene? on it. Otherwise you?ll find it under the ?menu? button. When you put your camera in scene mode, a list of the available modes will pop up on screen. Select the one that looks like a spray of fireworks and/or says "fireworks."

Most cameras sold today have a "fireworks" mode. Some models I recommend include the GE Smart J1470S (an affordable 14MP camera with a 7x lens, $105.29), Nikon Coolpix AW100 (an extremely rugged 16MP camera, $289.95) and the Canon PowerShot S100 (a 12MP camera with a superfast f/2 lens for great low light photography, $363.95).

You can find all of my recommended cameras in our Digital Camera Buying Guide.

3. If your camera doesn?t have a ?fireworks? scene mode, put it in ?landscape? mode

Your camera automatically tries to find an object on which to focus. And when presented with a black featureless sky, the camera doesn?t know what to do. By putting your camera in ?landscape? mode, you?ll be presetting the focus to infinity and narrowing the lens opening, which keeps both near and far objects?in focus.

4. Turn off the flash
Turning your flash off will let the camera?know that it?only has available light to take a picture. This is important?because the camera will then keep the shutter open long enough to capture the fireworks. The flash button is usually a separate button on the back of the camera. On some cameras, you can?t turn off the flash unless you put it in a scene mode or program mode (P).

5. Turn down the ISO
High ISO will crank up the sensitivity of the camera so it can see details in the dark. However, the fireworks themselves are quite bright. So, to avoid overexposure and reduce film noise, take your camera out of Auto ISO and change the setting to ISO 100 or even lower. The ISO setting is usually found under the main menu. You may have to put your camera in program mode to change this setting.

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Source: http://www.gadgetbox.msnbc.msn.com/technology/gadgetbox/photo-tips-sparkling-fourth-july-858833

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