If You Build It, They Will Come..

...No they won't. On the web, building a web site is not enough. If there are no links to the site anywhere, no-one is going to visit it. The site won't even be listed in any of the search engines without some incoming links. To get traffic, you will need to do some promotion.

Read Full Article Here: http://www.articlesbase.com/online-business-articles/if-you-build-it-they-will-come-368107.html

SES New York: Convincing Visitors To Buy

Suppose you've achieved undeniable search engine success - Google's throwing as much traffic your way as the servers can handle.  A normal business still requires more than sightseers, and a session at SES New York concentrated on converting visitors into buyers.

read more

More...

How to make splurging on a digital camera pay for itself over and over again

This is a guest post by Boston Gal, from Boston Gal’s Open Wallet, a single 30-something Bostonian who is seeking enlightenment and control of her Net Worth.

This past August my 5 year old Kodak digital camera finally stopped working (it may have had something to do with my dropping it on the pavement – twice) and I splurged on a new Panasonic Lumix camera and 2GB card for $180.70 (yes, I checked, and that is how much I spent!) When I say splurge, I mean I could have purchased a cheaper camera – something for about half the price, but when I considered how many ways I put my digital camera to work, paying more for better quality and features seemed easily justifiable.

My digital camera has frequently been pressed into service as my photo copier. Just tack a document up on a cork board at eye level, take a high resolution photo, download to desktop and print. Yes, a bit complicated, but when you don't have a copier or a scanner handy the digital camera is a great record keeper (just ask any 1950's or 60's spy who used to do this with a camera concealed in a lipstick tube).

I used my digital camera recently to successfully fight a parking ticket. A meter maid had the audacity to ticket me when I still had a few minutes left. Lucky for me I had the camera in my car and took a few stills of the time and used the little movie feature to record the scene. My appeal, complete with photos and link to video was approved and the city of Boston did not get my $25. Right there I saved myself enough to cover the price of the 2 GB card.

Lastly, before I leave you with a bulleted list of other ways you can put your digital camera to work for you, I recently discovered a time saving tip. When heading off on a trip, I took a few moments to use my digital camera to document my parking space location at central airport parking. This time, when I returned from my trip, instead of wondering around trying to remember which level I had parked on, I was able to quickly scroll back through my trip photos to find the ones directing me to my car. That experience alone makes my new digital camera worth almost any cost!

Now for the promised list:

• Document the contents of your home for insurance purposes (or document your friend's house with the much better furniture and stuff in it – kidding!)

• Take photos of your treasures to sell on EBay or Craigslist (anyone interested in a once-functioning Kodak digital camera?)

• As a way of peering into dark corners you might not want to stick your face into (is that a bat up in that eave? Let's let the digital camera's telephoto lens and strong flash take a look-see…)

• Moving and need to remember what you put in the boxes but don't want to mark the outside of the cartons being handled by strangers with revealing notes such as "family treasures", "underwear", or "contents of medicine cabinet" – then document them with photos and just number the boxes to correspond.

• Getting ready to tackle a repair which requires that you take apart a multi-piece device and not sure you will remember how to reassemble? Take photos as you remove each piece to give yourself a visual breadcrumb trail to follow when putting it back together.

If you have additional tips or ideas leave them in the comments!

Avoiding Taxes - America's Best Companies Blog

Now that we are a little over a month away from Tax Day and that awful black hole is opening up in Washington again, thoughts are turning to the greatest question an American taxpayer can ask: "How can I keep the tax man from picking me clean?" In a previous post, we discussed the legal way to handle your deductions. Now we'll go over some of the

Comment or Vote on This Article

Votes: 9 Fetch
Submitted By: gowithabc

Public Relations and Your Small Business - America's Best Companies Blog

What do you call advertising without ads? You call it public relations or PR, and it is something that no business, large or small, can do without. At its most basic, PR is the face your company shows to the world, how your organization relates to the public. It can be as simple as the way your employees treat your customers or it can be a complex

Comment or Vote on This Article

Votes: 8 Fetch
Submitted By: gowithabc

Turbulent times - dollar drops again, gold gains ground

These are pretty interesting days as lots of things are going on right now on the financial markets. A couple of hours ago for instance JPMorgan Chase announced they’ll buy Bear Stearns for just $2 a share in a stock-swap deal and also significant is that the Fed agreed to fund up to $30 billion of Bear Stearns’ less liquid assets which protects JP Morgan against losses from buying Bear. At the same time the Fed also announced a new interest rate cut of a quarter percentage point to 3.25%.

Bear Stearns suffered hard from the credit crisis - the company’s stock closed 47.4% lower at $30 per share on Friday. The Wall Street firm has a book value of $84 per share and executives claim the huge discount should give JPMorgan a “cushion of protection”:

Bear Stearns has a book value of $84 per share. Executives said the sharp discount in the purchase price provides a cushion to protect JPMorgan in turbulent times and would provide the company “margin for error.”

Bear Stearns was on the brink of financial collapse Friday when JPMorgan (JPM, Fortune 500) and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York said they would provide the brokerage a short-term loan. Bear was dealing with a classic run-on-the-bank: The firm’s short-term creditors refused to lend the firm any more money and simultaneously demanded repayment of outstanding debt.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said on Sunday that talks about how to rescue Bear had continued throughout the weekend. He defended the Fed’s bailout on Friday as “the right decision” and said the Bush administration was ready to take other actions to bring stability to the financial markets.

After the announcement of this news Asian financial markets plunged, gold rose more than 2.5% to $1032,85 per ounce and the U.S. dollar reached a new record low of 1.5906 dollar per euro. The more the dollar falls the more money gets transferred into oil and gold. Since early 2007 oil prices have nearly doubled and gold gained almost 60% from $650 to more than $1,025.

The collapse of the dollar is very worrying and more and more analysts believe central banks are going to plan a coordinated intervention to put an end to the drop. The last time the central banks made an intervention on the currency exchange markets was in September 2000 to stop the euro from falling against the U.S. dollar.

Just about everyone thinks European currencies and the Japanese yen are hugely overvalued against the U.S. dollar at present levels. Goldman Sachs (GS), for instance, says its “fair value” measure for the dollar against the euro is $1.21, not today’s $1.56. But many analysts now think that in the next few weeks the dollar could be hit with yet more declines.

The dollar’s record-breaking slide may trigger the first coordinated effort to shore up the currency in 13 years, according to strategists at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

The currency yesterday fell below $1.56 a euro for the first time and slumped to the lowest level in 12 years versus the yen. That has prompted complaints from European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet and Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga. U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said yesterday he backs a “strong dollar” and refused to elaborate when questioned at a press conference in Washington.

The challenge for officials is fighting the $3.2 trillion- a-day currency market while the Federal Reserve reduces interest rates and the U.S. economy falters. With traders increasing bets on a weaker dollar, the Group of Seven nations may be compelled to act, some strategists said.

Patenting Patent Trolls

My partners and I were hanging out at lunch last week when Jason brought up the question of whether or not we could patent the business method of “creating or acquiring intellectual property for the primary objection of bring lawsuits against potential infringers.” 

In essence, could we patent the idea of being a patent troll?  After a hearty laugh, Jason looked into it and discovered that this was not possible.  Since our “proposed method” has been used in the public for more than a year, there is a statutory bar to obtaining a patent.   35 U.S.C. § 102(b).

35 U.S.C. 102 Conditions for patentability; novelty and loss of right to patent.

A person shall be entitled to a patent unless —

(a) the invention was known or used by others in this country, or patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country, before the invention thereof by the applicant for patent, or

(b) the invention was patented or described in a printed publication in this or a foreign country or in public use or on sale in this country, more than one year prior to the date of the application for patent in the United States,

While plenty of patents (applied for an issued) violate this, we decided not to stretch things in this case. 

Oh well, it was fun to ponder for a couple of hours.

Zynga Texas Hold'em Poker on MySpace

Zynga has started launching its games on MySpace as part of the MySpace apps program.  Texas Hold'em Poker is up and is currently the #1 game AND the #1 application.  If you are a MySpace dude (or dude-ette), feel free to friend me as I'm completely unloved on MySpace (especially when compared to Facebook.)

今回のMashup Campの話題はケータイ対応 - モバイル - Tech-On!

海外でも携帯電話などモバイル機器で動くマッシュアップサービスが注目されそうだ。問題は、海外で開発されたサービスが日本の携帯電話で動かないことだろう。

Saved By: Yasuo Itoh | View Details | Give Thanks

Tags: mashup, mobile