The AutoXray CodeScout provides access to the trouble codes that trigger check engine lights as well as readiness test status that determine if your vehicle is ready for an emissions test. The user friendly and compact design makes educating yourself on the vehicles performance quick, simple and affordable. For use on all vehicles, 1996 and newer. Software SpecsOBD-II Protocol SupportCAN, VPW, P WM, Keyword 2000, ISO9141OBD-II Generic trouble code descriptionsOBD-II Manufacturer Specific trouble code descriptions Hardware Specs:Multi-line text and graphic display Removable cable,Battery powered (4AAA) with low battery indicator,Data save, Auto off Buy It Now At Amazon!

The latest edition in the best-selling Typographics series, this guide puts designers ahead of the curve, giving them a sneak peek at the sharpest designs currently being produced in the cutting-edge realm of zines and e-zines.

As this inspiring book illustrates, rapidly advancing technological developments in both print and electronic magazine mediums are allowing for unprecedented creativity in graphic design. Designers will discover amazing new ways to use these developments to the fullest of their potential, including examples that take binding, printing and embossing to groundbreaking extremes.

They’ll also find information on the latest design techniques for incorporating film clips, interviews and live interactive events into a dynamic site that is functional as well as engaging. The final section explores the newest trends in magazine publishing that blend print with disk for an exciting, multimedia approach to communicating. Each design offers generous captions highlighting the production process and initial concept, in addition to insightful commentary from the actual designer.

Roger Walton is the Art Director at Duncan Baird Publishers and the editor of Typographics 1, 2 and 3, Hot Sites, Cool Sites, and Sites for Sound. He lives in London, England. Buy It Now At Amazon!

Niches can be lovingly solved or horrifically exploited.  We all have little elements of our lives that aren’t served by the mass market.  These elements often are the things that we identify by or are plagued by.  If we’re involved with a niche, we often have deep knowledge about the minimal products created for it.  Why are niches a business darling?  What leads to them being coddled or corrupted?  This week I had the good fortune to attend a Future Commons session at Institute for the Future in Palo Alto and a panel discussion at the “Leading Best Practice in Language and Literacy” conference in Monterey.  The discussion at IFTF was largely around the iPhone, telecom spectrum ownership, and rapidly irrelevant business models.  The discussion in Monterey was centered around applying emerging technologies to education and assessment. A common theme: they both centered around niches. Niche is a rather overused business term, but here I think it crosses several of its definitions. Webster’s definition of niche includes: a : a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted <finally found her niche> b : a habitat supplying the factors necessary for the existence of an organism or species c : the ecological role of an organism in a community especially in regard to food consumption d : a specialized market In Seth Godin’s recent book, The Dip, he talks about quitting when you can’t be the best at something.  His message is that you have to be the best at something in order to really make it because the number of choices customers have is so massive now. You can never be the best pizza company on earth, so why try?  Which, of course, gives you a big hole to poke in the book - no one is really the best at anything.  But lucky for him, Seth answers this by basically telling you to have a good, tight definition for your endeavor. In other words, find a niche.  The best organic pizza place in Tiburon.  Much more obtainable and focused.  When we compare this back to the multi-definition for Niche, we find it could easily satisfy all four now, and not just “a specialized market”. The last few days have brought forth a few things about niches for me: Niches are nuanced Areas like telecommunications or education often seem like a market - a unified region of human activity which could be served with total equality.  The only seem like that for a second - that second we don’t give them a lot of thought.  So we get companies like AT&T giving us the same limited choices as Verizon or Sprint or T-Mobile.  We get initiatives like No Child Left Behind which seeks unprecedented standardized testing regimens in a world which is increasingly needing and rewarding diversity in problem solving and areas of expertise. Niches need special (thoughtful) solutions. They’re specialized, aren’t they?  Of course they need special solutions.  The thing is, they often don’t get them.  Within education and literacy are a jillion nuanced niches that do not get special solutions because of the reversion to rigid standardization. Special solutions aren’t easy to come by either.   They need to be thoughtful, insightful.  In something like education, the stakes are high.  You’re only 8 years old once.  It’s not golf.  You can’t play the hole over or take a mulligan. In telecom, the niches are hoarded by companies with an economic interest that trumps the interest of those actually in the niche.  This leads to things like spectrum hoarding and defacto price fixing. Niches are conspicuous If you are going to enter a niche, you’d better listen to Seth.  The more focused a niche, the more likely your clientele is to rank high in the niche-geek spectrum.    Niches have experts, those experts, due to their rarity, are listened to both inside and outside the niche.  By sheer need, the smaller the niche, the higher the percentage of experts.  They will tell you exactly what your solution does not do. Niches are also suspicious of newcommers.  If a solution comes from outside the Niche, it will likely be quickly examined.  From there it will either be adopted, watched, or discarded.  This reaction is important because it usually comes with decreasing levels of trust.  Adopted = high trust.  Watched = lesser trust.  Discarded = distrust.  This is very true if the product is discarded because it violates some central belief of the niche’s community. Invasion of a Niche Do you want to exploit a niche?  Sure! We all do! Walled gardens are usually built around a niche.  It’s part of how businesses meet Seth’s demand that you well define your product.  Niches are vulnerable due to the fact that they are often underserved. In telecom, the ugly invasion of a niche might be exorbitant pre-paid cell phone SIM cards sold in low-income neighborhoods. Elevation of a Niche Of course, bad things aren’t universal, and niches can be identified and well-served.  In Fresno, California, there is a magnet school (fighting for funding) that uses innovative techniques to teach it’s massive (over 70%) ESL population English and keep them mainstreamed.  These thoughtfully designed niche techniques have resulted in the best performance ever seen in that population. Killing an Industry to Open the Niches below Google wants to kill the Telcom industry by buying spectrum and opening it for free use.  The current owners of that plethora of niches (who have attached it to and misidentified it as an industry) aren’t very happy about this.  Like education, which is a large collection of niches (learning styles, lifestyles, focuses, desires, competencies) misidentified as one thing (are all kids the same?) So too is telecommunications.  The current telecommunications network was specifically set up to be a distributed network of independent nodes - yet it is managed as a centralized system. Centralized systems abhor non-conformity and thus reward thin and easily manageable mega programs.  No Child Left Behind and “My 5″ cell plans are great examples of mega programs that look like choice but ultimately serve the interest of no one. In both telecom and education we see a vast array of potential niches that would greatly enhance our most basic needs: to learn and to communicate.  The industries around them cannot support this, their very nature of bureaucratic centralization disallows creative problem solving inherent in open networks. Summing Up Telecom and education are both in a hard place.  Telecom has invested billions of dollars in rapidly antiquated communcations technology, making the US one of the worst places on earth for mobile communications.  They need to recoup this investment and can only do it by charging for and centralizing their services.  Yet, it is increasingly clear to even those in the industry that this business model no longer serves the need of the users. Education has a mandate to provide quality and equal instruction for all students regardless of circumstance (economic, mental, physical, geographic).  Offering a large range of choice means that kids will receive different types of education.  How do you defend yourself against law suits or claims that your particular school didn’t live up to its goals?  How do you test students for collegiate entrance when their backgrounds are so different? The obvious response to these issues by the institutions themselves is to largely ignore it.  Indeed with pressures from without to expand diversity, the best way to guard is to increase conformity and defend that as the best way for the system to operate. So, I have a simple plan to fix all this.  Okay, no I don’t.  Of course I don’t.  This is a hard and painful couple of problems.  It’s clear the direction both must take.  Only through overthrow (Telecom: Google, Education: Vocal Parental Involvement) can either of these institutions start to make the changes necessary for their and our survival. Technorati Tags: google, education, spectrum auction, telecommunicatoins, sprint, verizon, at&t, iftf, future commons, leading best practice in language and literacy, niche, seth godin, the dip
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

GZGT: Golden Dragon or Sleeping Snake?
(Click on the links to see larger images of the slides: Cover, Avalon, Global Telcom Holding Ltd, Godels, Solomon, Barber & Co., International Tea Company, Technology Resources Inc., WES Consulting, Contracted Services, Inc, MCG Diversified Inc., Electro Energy, Ivecon, Diane Harrison, Randall Drake) One of the problems with stock spam, is that it preys on the get rich quick mentality. Investors are encouraged to act right away and to take claims at face value. I’ve never been opposed to investing in high risk investments, but you can bet that I do my homework before I jump in. Unfortunately, too many investors don’t take the time to read the SEC filings, before making an investment and when the hype dies down, they get hurt. Another problem with stock spam is that sometimes the companies being promoted, are as much a victim to the fraud, as investors are. Some microcap companies will even issue press releases warning investors that spamming is going on. Even though these companies temporarily benefit from the attention, for legitimate businesses, the volatility can create real problems in the long term execution of a business plan. Because GrowthStockGuru was willing to pay bulk postage rates, just to get my attention, I wanted to take a closer look at the people behind Guangzhou Global Telecom (GZGT), just to make sure they weren’t a victim, in all of this. The deeper I dug, the more ugly things looked. It All Started With $100 In order to better understand the prospects for GZGT to succeed, you need to look at the qualifications of the key players behind the business. Because the company was formed as part of a reverse merger, it’s important to look at the pieces that make up this puzzle before the company merged. Even though, GZGT is being promoted as a Chinese stock market play, a Florida real estate company named Avalon Development Enterprises played a more important role, in creating the company. Avalon was first formed in 1999, after Charles Godels, invested $100 into the company and filed the appropriate paperwork. Shortly thereafter his wife, Marguerite Godels also purchased 100 shares for $100. Between Aug. 2004 and and Feb. 05, the company must have needed more capital because they had another underwriting where they sold 3 shares a piece at a $1 valuation and brought in 44 more investors. On 12/5/05, the company did a forward stock split of 4500:1 and overnight, investors saw their 332 shares turn into 1,494,000. They also filed a registration, that would allow them to sell their shares at .50 cents a piece to other investors. At this valuation, it meant that on a split adjusted basis, their $1 share price was now closer to $2,250. On 01/08/07, Charles P. Godels, Diane J. Harrison, Madanna Yovino, Michael T. Jones, and David E. Dunn all resigned from Avalon’s board of directors. At that time, Allen S. Greenberg officially took over as the company’s president. Two days later, they entered into their merger transaction. In the footnotes of the 8k filing announcing the resignations, I noticed something about Mr. Greenberg’s biography that raises some interesting questions about where the money is going to. “from 2005 until the present, Mr. Greenberg served as the Operations and Customer Service Manager for Global Administrative Provider in Costa Rica. In that capacity, he was the client service contact for all investment advisory firms, was responsible for setting up offshore investment structures for clients, oversaw all incoming and outgoing wires via international custodian banks, and oversaw all company invoicing.” Avalon was supposed to be a local Florida Real Estate company and yet, they brought Mr Greenberg’s in, in order to set up offshore investment structures from Costa Rica? As a Chinese company, I can understand why there would be some need for this, but while doing my research I found several offshore accounts, that can be connected to different players behind Avalon Development. I also found an alarming amount of small shell companies, that are either currently trying to get listed or who have tried, but failed to go public. If GZGT really is a once in a lifetime opportunity, why have so many investors utilized accounts, that are beyond the immediate reach of the US Government? Investors Cool To Hurricane Real Estate, China Gets Bubble Fever Investor were tuning out Real Estate, so if Avalon wanted to make a splash they needed access to a hot sexy growth market that investors like right now. They decided on a Chinese phone card company and agreed to buy them out with stock. In order to get access to Global Telecom Holding Limited,(herein referred to as GTHL) Avalon issued 39,817,500 of restricted common stock, in exchange for 100% of the company. During the merger, the company also executed another forward split, this time at 8.75 - 1. After completing the merger, they had 52,890,000 shares outstanding and could authorize up to 75,000,000. Based on Friday’s closing price of $1.95, this means that on a split adjusted basis, the original $1 per share investment is now worth $77,000 per share. Mr. Godels initial $100 investment is now worth $7.6 million or $15.2 million if you include his wife’s shares (assuming that he hasn’t sold anything along the way, of course ). Not a bad return, given that Avalon admits that Florida real estate wasn’t much of a business in their 10KSB filing. There isn’t a lot of information about GTHL, in the SEC’s database, but we do know that GZGT’s CEO Yankuan Li was by and large the largest beneficiary of the acquisition. He ended up with about 12.3 million shares (about $23 million based on Friday’s close) When all the dust was settled, GTHL ended up with 51% of the company, but a lot of it was in restricted shares. Investors Get Caught In PacificNet’s Tidal Wave In Mr. Li’s bio, it’s disclosed that he worked at PacificNet (PACT) from 2004 until 2005. During that time, the company experienced unusually high trading volume and went from $2.50 a share to as high as $13, before crashing back down again to $7 per share. These gains occurred largely in late October of 2004. According to Bloomberg, Sept 04′ was the highest activity of insider buying, in PACT’s history. Currently, PACT is delinquent in their SEC filings due to back dating issues, which occurred during Mr. Li’s employment with the company. I do not believe that this will end up being a slap on the wrist, there was a lot of insider selling at the top. The company has claimed that they relied on the advice of their auditor, Clancy and Co., P.L.L.C., who has since been forced to withdraw their certifications from that time. Three months before PACT saw their share price spike and than drop, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) performed an audit of Clancy and Co. During that Audit, they reviewed 6 of Clancy and Co’s 15 clients. I don’t know if PACT was one of those clients selected, but the PCAOB’s review did find 14 serious issues with their auditor, including “failure to properly perform procedures related to consideration of the possibility of material misstatement due to fraud.” None of this suggests, that Mr. Li was personally involved in any shenanigans, but it does raise some important questions about the corporate culture at his previous employer. The Bankers, The Bean Counters And The Ambulance Chasers In order to be able to underwrite stock to the public, there are a few key pieces you need in place. Mostly, bankers, attorneys and most importantly, the auditor. Information about GZGT’s banking relationships are scarce, but there is an SEC filing that references a company named Zenith Capital Management, who has agreed to buy 200,000 shares at a price of $2.50 per share. They only committed part of the money up front, which for me, would raise questions about Zenith’s credibility and their intentions to make good on these pledges, especially if GZGT falls apart, before it can get back to $2.50. When Avalon did their 4500:1 forward stock split, Diane J. Harrison was the attorney who wrote the consenting legal opinion. Charles Godels audited the books himself, (under small business rules that allowed him to avoid an independent audit) and later on, the company brought in Randall N. Drake as their official auditor. Mr Drake’s name shows up as the auditor in many of the companies mentioned in this article. In 2001, he audited the books of Mobile Area Networks Inc. (MANW.ob) Investors may have been hoping that MANW would make them rich, but it turned out to be a belly flop. After MANW went public, it briefly kissed $4.87 before it came crashing down to $1.00 over the next month. Today, the stock is at $0.10. Of all of the characters in this bizarre story, Diane Harrison is the one that raises the most eyebrows. She is the attorney. She helped create Avalon. She has been involved, either as an investor or as legal council, in many different penny stocks that can be linked to Godels or his partners. On 10/27/06, the Secretary of Avalon resigned and Harrison was official brought in as the new Secretary and as a Director. Her role at GZGT is unclear, but two days before Avalon’s merger, she resigned from the board. In 1999, her husband, Michael J. Daniels, was convicted of securities fraud and spent 6 months under house arrest and 3 years on probation. He is now officially classified as a stock promoter under the SEC rules. Daniels has had no direct affiliation with GZGT, but he can be connected to Godels through an auditing relationship with Godels, Solomon, Barber & Company, L.L.C. Before Avalon, Daniels tried to raise financing for a company called MCFTY National. The company was originally a mailbox etc. type business, but later tried to cash in on the vitamin water craze and changed their name to the International White Tea company. When Daniels and Harrison started the company, they also brought in Steven A. Sanders and Robert Bedore. Both Sanders and Bedore have also been classified as stock promoters by the SEC. Over the last several years, Ms. Harrison has helped to set up several other companies with Godels and/or his partners. These include WES Consulting, Ivecon, Harcom Products, Technology Resources Inc. (herein referred to as TRI), and Contracted Services Inc. What is interesting about all of these companies, is the number of related transactions between the different individuals involved. They would not only hire each other’s employees, but there was also money changing hands, between various companies. At one point, Godels CPA practice was a significant contributor to Avalon’s revenue. Even after studying the SEC documents on these companies, I still cannot sort out all of the different players involved. If you look at the shareholders, of these investments, there does appear to be another layer to this mystery, but for now, these players are beyond the scope of my discussion on GZGT’s business. In trying to unravel this complex piece of financial engineering, it didn’t take me long to figure out that, everything always ends up coming back to the Godels. Whether it’s the high number of family members who were shareholders of Avalon, or tracing the cash from the different related transactions, the Godels’ family name keeps popping up. It’s as if they are trying to build a dynasty for the entire family. Interestingly enough, in the GrowthStockGuru newsletter, the anonymous author who wrote the report hints that a family may be behind GZGT’s marketing attempts, by using the name Aharon Bronfman. The Bronfman family is a famous name on Wall St. In the 1920’s, they made their fortune selling bootleg liquor to the Northern United States. After prohibition ended, the Bronfman family distilleries were some of the most profitable in Canada. Later they would buy Segrams from the Segrams family and made a killing off the whiskey. The family’s history has always been checkered with allegations that their fortune was linked to the mob. There is no way to know for sure, whether or not the Godels are connected to Mr. Bronfman’s marketing campaign, but the subtle undertones of the alias, raise suspicions that Mr. Bronfman might be working on behalf of a family that is willing to do whatever it takes, for them to build their own dynasty. Electro Energy Shocks Investors Given the level of sophistication involved, in this sort of transaction, it came as no surprise, when I learned, that this wasn’t the Godels first reverse merger. They got their first taste of the profits that could be made, when they first set up MCG Diversified Inc. The company was created by the same players who keep popping up again and again. Diane Harrison wrote the legal opinion on the common stock and Randall Drake provided the auditing. MCG was supposed to be a human resources company. A lot of their revenue came directly from Avalon. Human resource companies seemed to be a common theme among the various public filings. On most of the filings they do not include information about partnerships, but it appears that some of the recruiting gong on, was just individuals shuffling from one company to another. Marguerite Godels owned 50% of MCG and from the filings, you can sense that she was eager to cash out. Things were on track for MCG, but they almost ran into a disaster, when Mr. Drake made a mistake that almost scuttled their plans. Somehow, he had managed to let his registration with the PCAOB lapse, but still filed audit reports for Technology Resources Inc. and for MCG, at that time. The PCAOB denied his application for a new license, after he agreed to a settlement, where he would be allowed to get his license back, in another year. Frustrated, with their attempts to get listed on the bulletin boards, the Godels turned their sites to the white hot alternative energy market and in 2004, they executed a reverse merger with Electro Energy. (EEEI) In exchange for the access to income statements with real revenue, MCG was forced to take a 30% position, following the completion of the merger. Even at 30% though, they still realized obscene profits, considering how little they had actually contributed to MCG’s capital. When EEEI announced their change of auditors, they never mentioned that Mr. Drake’s license was no longer current. After the reverse merger launched, stock promoters immediately jumped in. Had you invested at the first trading price, you would still be down 79%, but if you listened to the hype, you would have lost even more money faster. On 10/11/04 Stockwire issued a press release advertising EEEI’s stock. If you jumped in then, you’d be down 84%. On 11/04/04, Capital Investor Forum Growth, suggested that you look at the stock. Had you taken, their advice you would be down 90% right now. A year later, a firm that that continues to pop up on my radar, WallSt.Net issued a press release showcasing EEEI. Had you listened to WallSt.net’s analysis, you would be down 72%. During this sharp run up, EEEI insiders took advantage and sold out. According to SEC form 4 filings, between 10/19/04 and 11/01/04, Assari Farhad sold a significant amount of stock and options. Given the question marks surrounding the promotional activities going on while he was selling, I thought that it was notable that his form 4 filing reporting the sales, was not filed until 12/04/04. Perhaps, the strangest part of this whole story, isn’t that someone would want to sell inflated stock, it’s how Mr. Bronfman is going about generating the hype behind this bubble. Instead of the traditional email spam, they have been targeting investors by advertising in respected business magazines. On the Friday, that the Investor’s Business Daily ran their ad, their stock jumped very sharply before seeing heavy selling at the end of the day. IBD should be ashamed of themselves for not researching the company further. Their readers trust them to provide excellent financial advice and yet, they are willing to take money from a reverse merger penny stock, without hesitation. If IBD does not issue an apology, then they have lost all credibility in my book. So far, the only mainstream media outlet to pick up on GZGT’s innovative marketing attempts, has been Kiplingers. When the company was first approached, they knew something didn’t look right and took steps to warn their readers. Unfortunately, other business publications seem to be more than willing to sellout. Business Week and Forbes have both agreed to run the ads, regardless of how questionable this might be ethically. I would encourage both publications to take a closer look at GZGT, instead of their advertising revenue, before putting the company in front of their readers. Just because the bulletin boards are the wild west of the investing world, doesn’t mean you still can’t arm yourself with a six shooter. Six months ago, digging through these SEC files would have been much more difficult, but thankfully, the SEC has recently released a full text search feature on their website. It didn’t getting any buzz from the press, but by building the search tool, the SEC has turned over an exponential amount of data to the public. It is a powerful tool and an important development in making sure that the public has access to good data. There is a tremendous amount of information out there, but you need to read it, especially if you are acting on a tip, that someone paid money, in order to give you. In Mr. Bronfman’s report on GZGT, he says that GZGT’s management has a tremendous track record, but when I look at the track records of the investors involved in them going public, I see a very different picture. Many of the companies that they have been involved with have turned into a pile of rubble, after the promotions die down and the stock has been diluted. If investors want to play with high risk investments, that is OK, but just remember to do your homework before jumping in. Disclosures - I have no positions in any company listed in this article. To the best of my knowledge, no one that I have ever come into contact with has ever invested in or shorted, any company mentioned in this article.
Source: davisfreeberg.com

4 Places Where Your Customers Are (Hint: You want to be there, too!)
It’s vitally important to be where your customers are, but how, exactly, do you do that? Here are four actionable suggestions: 1. Forums Probably the most powerful online method to put yourself in front of your customers and hang out where they hang out is to participate fully in one or two popular forums for your niche. The operative words in that sentence being participate fully. Do not join a forum just to see what you can get out of it or so that you can pepper your signature link all throughout the forum. Put your gloves on, roll up your shirtsleeves, and dive right in. Be a real member, a real participant. Be active and involved. Don’t just respond to topics, but start your own. Be as helpful to other forum members as you can possibly be. 2. News Sites Many news websites have commenting capabilities similar to blogs, and some have related forums. People who want to keep informed in a field will be reading news at these sites, and that puts you in front of them. In some cases, these sites have and encourage people to become human editors for a topic on the site (like Topix.net). 3. Magazines Consider magazines as a strategy for placing yourself in front of your customers. There are several ways to do this. Magazines often have their own websites. That means that they are likely to have their own forums you can join and even (more and more) blogs you can leave comments on. Even if a magazine website doesn’t have a forum or a blog, you can contact its editors and writers, introduce yourself, and simply say hello and add people into your network. You can write letters to the editor where appropriate. And certainly, you can advertise in a magazine. For those of you who can write well enough, you may even consider writing a magazine article. Best of all, you could be the subject of a magazine article. It’s not as impossible as you might think. Writers are always looking for new and relevant people to interview and write articles about. Contact them and introduce yourself. Make sure you have read some of their articles so you are familiar with them. Tell them you like their work (be sincere, don’t contact someone whose work you don’t like or don’t know) and that you’d like to present yourself as a subject or at least as a resource because what you do is relevant to what they write about. 4. Trade Shows and Conferences This is a big one, because it involves more than an investment of time. Trade Shows and Conferences cost money to attend. This is where you will do some of your most powerful networking and you will meet tons of new people. If you can speak or have a booth at the show, great! But even if you’re just an attendee, the opportunities are astounding. The opportunities are even more amazing when you go across industries. Here’s an example: say you’re a graphic designer and you have a blog. Sure, it’s great to go to a graphic design conference, but you may not get a lot of new freelance work that way. What if you went to a conference in a completely unrelated industry, like home appliances and furnishings? Don’t people in that business need graphic designers? They sure do! And here you are, one of the few people not directly in the industry, handing out a pile of business cards sporting your URL and phone number. The World Will Not Beat a Path to Your Door There’s an old saying: build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door. We know that’s not true. The world will not beat a path to your door. You go to the world. You need to be where the people are who have a mouse problem. Bookmark or Email This Post  © 2005 - 2007 Remarkablogger, all rights reserved. Feel free to contact me any time at michaelmartine@gmail.com or on Skype at michael.martine. The Secret LinkFauxto is a very cool flash-based web application for editing your images online for free!The secret link only appears for my RSS subscribers as a reward for subscribing to my feed. Who knows what will be here next or when it will change!
Source: www.michaelmartine.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing

WebWire - Xerox Corporation (NYSE: XRX) and 17 digital printing customers were recently honored with nearly 30 awards by the International Association of Printing House Craftsmen, an independent network of graphic arts and printing professionals. Among the
Source: www.webwire.com

Fujifilm. Expand the World of Imaging.
Forbes - From the first Fujifilm Frontier digital minilab that was introduced in 1996, has come a vast national digital printing infrastructure that today allows retailers and commercial labs to serve their customers with much more than a photo print. Today
Source: www.forbes.com

S.A. Informer stops publishing print edition
San Antonio Express News - The cost of delivery and mailing didn’t justify the amount of readership we had,” said Tommy Moore, owner of digital printing company Urban Communications Inc., which published the newspaper. He added that support from the
Source: www.mysanantonio.com

Online Services Are Becoming More Popular In the Declining US
PR Inside - Regulations, however, are declining along with existing barriers of entry with the advent of going online, and in an environment where digital printing requires less of a skill base than previously, capital meets labor midway. Content Outline:
Source: www.pr-inside.com

Feed for Kodak
WebitPR - Businesses effectively communicate with customers worldwide using Kodak solutions for prepress, conventional and digital printing and document imaging; and Creative Professionals rely on Kodak technology to uniquely tell their story through moving or
Source: www.webitpr.com

Northern Virginia Artbeat
Falls Church News-Press - However they too have changed with the times and added digital printing services, and are now able to provide color or black and white archival prints up to 42-inches wide. Printing on roll paper the length of the print is theoretically only limited
Source: www.fcnp.com

Canon U.S.A. and EFI Complete Compatibility Testing of EFI’s
MSN MoneyCentral - EFI (www.efi.com) is the world leader in customer-focused digital printing innovation. EFI’s award-winning solutions, integrated from creation to print, deliver increased performance, cost savings and productivity. The company’s robust product
Source: news.moneycentral.msn.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing

PR Newswire - Businesses effectively communicate with customer’s worldwide using KODAK Solutions for prepress, conventional and digital printing and document imaging; and Creative Professionals rely on KODAK Technology to uniquely tell their story through moving
Source: sev.prnewswire.com

Innovation Inside: Patent Powerhouse: Xerox Boasts 101 Inventors with
MSN MoneyCentral - These inventors have produced a wealth of innovations that distinguish Xerox products and services and have helped create the modern office and the digital printing industry. Mestha is among hundreds of Xerox inventors with specialties ranging
Source: news.moneycentral.msn.com

Consolidated Graphics to Present at CJS Securities Investor Conference
Biloxi Sun Herald - CGX has the largest and most technologically advanced sheetfed printing capability in North America, a sizeable and strategically important web printing capability, industry-leading digital printing services, a rapidly growing number of fulfillment
Source: www.sunherald.com

Students win graphics awards
Asheville Citizen-Times - Michael Altamirano: special judges award, digital printing for Authentically Counter-Balanced. -Drew Anderson: special judges award, screen-printing: 1 color, textile for Time is Money. -Stephen Hartsell: award of excellence, offset
Source: www.citizen-times.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing

This second volume displays the work of 37 of the best designers and design firms from across the United States. Organized by DK Holland of the Pushpin with Chip Kidd and Jessica Helfand, the selection presents such firms as Looking, Los Angeles; Post Tool, San Francisco, Modern Dog, Seattle; Carlos Segura, Chicago; Go Media, Austin Texas; Greteman Design, Wichita, Kansas; P. Scott Makela, Minneapolis; Werner Design Works, Minneapolis; and Design!, Atlanta.
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I can appreciate the work of others and just think this book is beautiful. I get a great sense of how others express themselves by the way this book is presented. The cover and pages are wonderful quality paper and the images are crisp and freshly laid out. I am not a super power pro but as I mentioned, I appreciate and enjoy how artists perceive their world. Nice big book with the quality to be placed on anyone’s coffee table. Buy It Now At Amazon!

RDR Properties, Inc. 513 Bangs Ave. Asbury Park, NJ 07712 Phone: 732-775-5060 Fax: 732-775-5010 E-mail:
Source: www.rdrworld.com

borderThai.swf

Source: www.thailand-yellowpages.com

BusinessCard.wmv
Create Name Card (3.6MB)
Source: www.redder4.com.au

card.swf

Source: www.gladiant.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing

I’m writing this foyer of a hotel in Prague, where I find myself on a press trip.
Source: www.mobilemarketingmagazine.co.uk

MLM Network Marketing Helper 2.0
MLM Network Marketing Helper 2.0 Report spyware MLM Network Marketing Helper description A tool to help you keep good relations with your prospects and affiliates.
Source: www.softpedia.com

Porn sells; Satinpanties too
The real estate investors packing the Renaissance Hollywood Hotel in Los Angeles this week don’t have to worry about interest rates, exploding mortgages and foreclosures.
Source: www.sun-sentinel.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing

Cozy Nublend Russell hood with pouch front pocket. Features your favorite sport in a full-front athletic graphic. Buy It Now At Amazon!

Introduction Chris Shipley is probably best known as the executive producer of the DEMO conference. She is also the founder of Guidewire Group. Between these two roles she talks to hundreds of entrepreneurs every year. In this episode, we discuss both her predictions for where the web is heading and also specifically what she would do if she were a venture capitalist or entrepreneur. She finishes the interview sharing some of the common attributes she’s observed across entrepreneurs who have gone on to be successful. Links Chris Shipley’s Homepage Demo Conference Site Guidewire Group Transcript 00:45 Sean Ammirati: I m here with Chris Shipley at the Defrag Conference. Chris is very well-known probably by most of this audience, but it ll probably be helpful for you to give your background for people who may not be familiar.Chris Shipley: Sure. I think I m probably best well-known for the DEMO Conference which I have been producing since 1997 for 11 or 12 years, which is essentially a launch venue for products. We look at hundreds of products from lots companies of all sizes and try to create a venue where those products can be presented to an audience and thought leaders in the investment community, business development community and the media to try to, again, create an accelerated launch for products that are out and doing something and really changing the market. 01:34 Sean Ammirati: You also are running the GuideWire Group as well.Chris Shipley: GuideWire Group is a market intelligence firm that is focused on early stage companies.So we spend our time talking to startups and trying to not only give them advice and counsel on how to take their products to market and how markets are shaping, but also use those individual encounters to create a collective picture of where the market places are going.Sean Ammirati: Cool. So where do you see the market place going now? 02:05 Chris Shipley: That s interesting. I think we re seeing the end of the web 2.0 frothiness and a return to real business value, what we were talking before we turned on the microphone about companies succeeding based on their ability to serve customers and to deliver value and to extract value in fair exchange from their customers. I think we ve gone through a period of 12 or 24 months of all things web 2.0 must be magic and wonderful to, Wait a minute. It turns out that I can t pay the rent with page views, with clickthroughs. I got to pay the rent with real money. So what s my business model behind this company? I think that s what investors are going to wind up to investing in and what really would create sustainable long-term companies in the market place. So the froth goes away a little bit. The basic principles of the social web that all of this hype was built on remain. We re going to see some really interesting businesses in the next 12 months. 03:16 Sean Ammirati: It s interesting to think about the substance behind web 2.0 remaining and the business models emerging now. What are some of the creative business models that you re seeing on the edge with your view of GuideWire Group and DEMO?Chris Shipley: Ones that are about to go over the edge are the model of: Let s just get a whole lot of people using the site and then we ll figure out later. That s not going to work. It works really well if your ambition is not to create a company but to create some pocket of value that you can flip quickly. I think we re seeing that, and we may have six months or so left in those kinds of quick flip kind of featured companies being created and sold.I think that we are going to see models where we start to understand that there are all sorts of currencies of exchange, and that those models allow them to provide content, for example, to an individual in exchange for valuable personal data which you then sell as a lead to a marketer as an example. So there s a chain of value where the cash that fuels the company may come from a different point than the direct end customer. So you get these multi-tiered businesses that are about attracting customers on one hand who are the end users, the website or service, because the real business is selling leads on the backend, for example. 04:35 Sean Ammirati: So this is an interesting point. I can talk about it both in my role at mSpoke but also just in general as I look at and see things that come through at Read/Write Web. Even in that example that you gave, you still have to get to a certain critical mass of users before there s really an interesting business model there. So do you see it actually changing how people are creating the companies or more just how they re thinking about the destination of those companies? 05:10 Chris Shipley: Probably both. I think you ve got to be building companies thinking about: How is this technology or this product, how is it relevant? mSpoke is a great example in a lot of ways. There s a company here at Defrag: HiveLive. mSpoke and HiveLive have been at trying to understand and crack the nut open the communities they serve for a couple of years before they ever ran these products to market. You understand the customer base really well understand what they need and you re watching and being responsive to your customers.At the end of the day, that s the businesses. We can get all kinds of creative about who is paying for what and how do we amass users and how do we do this and that. At the end of the day, if you re not providing real value, you re not going to continue to really attract but retain customers. So I think a lot of tactics for amassing audience are fairly well-known. The trick isn t about amassing so much as it is about maintaining. It s all about the value to it. 06:16 Sean Ammirati: Right. I think it was Kleiner who said, We’re not going to do anymore web 2.0 deals. Chris Shipley: On the one hand, far be it for me to question Kleiner Perkins. It s obviously a venerable firm. They ve done amazing things. They ve helped build tremendous value for the industry and for a lot of companies. On the other hand, what does he mean we re not going to invest in web 2.0 companies? To me, that s either a really stupid statement or it means they ve been investing dumb for the last 24 months, and I doubt they ve been investing dumb, and I doubt they re stupid, so I m a little confused by the comment.As an investor, your responsibility for limited partners is to put money into companies that you think will return something. Whether that s called web 2.0 or something else is irrelevant. Investing in something because it s full of hype and maybe we can tie it up and put some lipstick on it and parade it around to get sold is maybe a good model, but it s not a model for building sustainable businesses. 07:25 Sean Ammirati: I couldn t agree with you more on that. So as you look out into the market place, what are the verticals where you re seeing people build businesses that you perceive to be sustainable going forward now?Chris Shipley: Let s take the concepts where I think the principles that we ve learned in web 2.0. If we consider that as a moment in time as a label, it s about social dynamics. It s about interactions. It s about engagement. It s about getting technology out of the way and letting people interact. Businesses, whether it s an enterprise business, a small business, it s an eBay auction site doing this, they re transacting business where I involve my customers, I’m in conversation with them, I iterate quickly to satisfy their needs and their interests and I m making some money. That s a good business. 08:20 Take those principles, and I think we re going to see web 2.0 principles applied to a lot of verticals in enterprise business. I think we ll see some shift in the consumer markets because while we re in this age of persistent partial attention. At the end of the day I have to focus somewhere, maybe that’s I have to focus because I’m mid 40s and I m not some teen with like 12 IM windows up but this partial attention, I don t think it s a sustainable mental model to get solid business done. So maybe you ll see these kinds of focus in those areas. 09:05 Another thing we get in this change as we re moving forward is we peel back a little bit and look at all the infrastructure that s acquired when you ve got all these people hitting servers, posting content, and sharing content. What does that mean for bandwidth and security and storage? In all of these different parts of the ecosystem of a connection, there are a lot of business opportunities in making sure that we all get connected in a suitable bandwidth and that our information is secure and the disks and the sky don t crash. So I think there are lots of infrastructure cases we re going to see come out of it as well. 10:09 Sean Ammirati: Let s dig into the enterprise piece of that answer a little bit because it s something that has come up a lot at this conference. I think a lot of people who had been focused on building consumer face and apps either in their current business or in previous startups are really starting to focus on the enterprise. So there was a panel earlier today and had Brad Feld on it and some other people, and Brad made the statement that early on, it doesn t matter if you re building a product for the enterprise or for the consumer until you reach a certain point where you have to sell it. Most of the things are similar.I thought it was an intriguing thought. I m curious where you sit because you talk to people right when they re first creating them. How far along the way do you think people can get before they have to make a decision one way or the other, or do you think they ever have to make that decision, I guess, to give you a complete flexibility in your answer? 10:43 Chris Shipley: I m really old-fashioned, I guess, because I think you make that decision early on before you ever start coding and figuring out, What am I trying to build and for whom, and let me go talk to a lot of those people and figure out what they need. So if you believe you are building a product for soccer moms or for 18-year-old file swappers or for 50-year-old accountants, you have to go talk to those people. So that decision gets made pretty early. Somewhere along the line, you can figure out that the thing that I built for the soccer moms, that s going to work really well for the accountants, and the teenagers actually like it too. We just have to make these changes. But I think you have to focus on the business, and the only focus you can have and be successful is on the customers. 11:30 Sean Ammirati: So as you look at these people launching these enterprise startups then, do you think it s a new group of entrepreneurs or do you think it s a lot of the same people that maybe were at DEMO two years ago or three years ago launching consumer apps?Chris Shipley: A little bit of both. I think we ve seen a little bit more gray hair in the startups. It s great when they team with someone who is a little younger, maybe, but I think that for good or for ill, there is a certain credibility hurdle that an entrepreneur needs to be able to sell into business. Typically, that credibility hurdle comes from a bit of experience in the market. 12:15 Sean Ammirati: Yes. This capital efficient theme or something that was, I think, another thing that we ve seen, right? So people have said that it s one-tenth the cost it was 10 years ago to launch a company, but it ends up taking about the same amount of money to eventually run them. Is that something that you re seeing in the companies, you re seeing at DEMO? Are they one-tenth the cost they were to launch as they were when you were first seeing pitches 10 years ago?Chris Shipley: Absolutely. Open APIs and these sorts of technologies make it very cost effective to start a company to build a product. It takes a lot more money to scale a company and scale in a market place. We re seeing the investment shift to a different place where maybe 10 years ago, a seed round was 5 million or $10 million because you needed that kind of capital behind the development, you had to acquire servers and these sorts of things; pay for energies or that have become commodity. Then you d see an additional layer on top to drive marketing spend. Now, I think you can use a VISA card to setup on APIs start a company. Get a prototype maybe depending on your definition an alpha or beta into market and start to test. I think we re using the leverage of the blogosphere and social media. You can post more on it. You can test what works and observe the community, listen to the community. Then you start pouring money on the things that work. There s less waste in that scaling. 14:05 Sean Ammirati: Yes. I think that s true. The dynamic is interesting because if it is that capital efficient, it does change one of your customers - of GuideWire, I think, which are the VCs. So how are the VCs that you re talking to reacting to this?Chris Shipley: I think we re seeing a lot of firms wrestling with the problem, how do we take hundreds of millions of dollars of fund and put that to efficient work in $500,000 checks? That just isn t the dynamic of a large fund. So we re seeing fund of fund activities and other vehicles creating subfunds and these sorts of things as a way of providing that seed and playing in some of the very early things and allowing them to come back, that money can actually be more money we buy and some of what started off as small investments. 15:20 Sean Ammirati: So let s say that CalPERS says to you, You can take whatever management fee you want but we want you to run a $500 million fund today. What do you do if you re the general partner at a fund like that?Chris Shipley: You don t mean me personally as I have promised my friend to shoot me if I ever decided to be a venture capitalist.Sean Ammirati: OK. [Laughing]Chris Shipley: I think you have to look at efficient ways to put little bits to work, and that s difficult. It means you have to change the way you manage those investments. You ve got to put different controls in the organizations that you can watch where your money is going. You ve got to figure how you observe your bets and keep all plates spinning. That s a harder activity. 16:03 Sean Ammirati: OK. Let s play this game again but now you re the CEO of a startup. If you had to be a CEO of a startup right now, not a research but a product company, what kind of product would you want to be creating right now?Chris Shipley: Well, it so happens that I am the co-CEO of a company that is building a product. I think we re putting into play the capital efficiency models. We re putting into play community leveraged activities. We re putting ourselves on a platform to watch what the people do with our technology so we can be more responsive and make every spend count by a lot of testing. If you think about it, 10 years ago, you put an ad in a PC mag and hope that it worked. There s a lot of waste in that, probably because you didn t know where it was. Here, you can watch. The beauty of web-based applications is that you can watch what the users are doing everyday and you can watch it work so you can respond very quickly. So if I do X and people behave the way I want, let me go spend more money on X until that stops working. Now, there is very little waste in that system. I think that s really the root of capital efficiency. 17:30 Sean Ammirati: So let s change gears one more time. You are a bit of this. It s less fair. Let s make you be a futurist for a moment and say in 10 years, you know the people who are trying to change the way people live, right? That s kind of part of the definition of an entrepreneur. What do you think will be most different about the way people are interacting with technology 10 years from now than the way they are right now? 18:00 Chris Shipley: I ll tell you what I hope. I m not sure if this is how it will be. I hope that people won t be interacting with technology. I hope technology is invisible. I hope that people interact with one another. They focus on business problems. They engage or they support. They do all sorts of things; have a great time, entertain themselves, and the technology is not in the way.Today, you go into any public space and you ve got all these people who are sitting together staring at this very small screen, and they feel that they re so connecting to world because they ve got that buried in their head. The whole world is passing around them, and they re missing it because that device has become their window into the rest of the world.What happens if that device goes away and we could just have that where we can be in the world? That s a little interesting and appealing to me, and maybe I m oddly optimistically utopian or something. When we can kind of get technology out of the way and get to the core value of what we re trying to do. I think that s when it gets really interesting. 19:10 Sean Ammirati: One more thing I wanted to make sure I asked you because probably nobody has seen more entrepreneurs than you have, probably more than any venture capitalist even. What attributes have you been able to derive looking at all the entrepreneurs you ve met and seen the best predictors of entrepreneurs being successful? 19:30 Chris Shipley: A clear vision and focus, hard work and an open mind. I think you have to, as an entrepreneur, know where you want to go, recognize that there are multiple paths to get there, stay focused on your choices. Don t second guess yourself. But also keep your mind open to other alternatives. I think you can get so stuck in your own arrogance that you miss some great advice. It s important not to ping-pong but it s important not to put blinders onto where the market is going. A friend of mine once said, The harder you work, the luckier you get. So I think that s true of any entrepreneur.Sean Ammirati: That s good advice. Chris, I appreciate you talking today.Chris Shipley: My pleasure.
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

BlackBerry Pearl 8100 - Mobile Choice Magazine
BlackBerry Pearl 8100Mobile Choice Magazine, UK - Jan 17, 2008As with earlier BlackBerrys like the 7130, the BlackBerry Pearl features the SureType keyboard, which conforms to the traditional QWERTY layout but carries …
Source: news.google.com

Where Have All the People Gone? (Spending Big Bucks in Second Life to an Empty Room)
There’s a credit card commercial that has become part of our American culture. There are three things mentioned with two having a cost basis and the third being “priceless.” Here Doug Bassett, one of Thomson NETg’s Sr. Technical Instructors (video bio / class calendar), tells his journey in developing an island in Second Life. His suggestions might make your experience “priceless” too! Archive this as a podcast for future reference Download wherearethepeople.mp3 Here’s a credit card-like commercial, but with a less than happy ending. (Queue Announcer) Terraforming Islands - $60,000, Big Opening Party - $50,000, Zero Traffic Worthless! Oops! Companies like Sony, Toyota, Dell, Cisco and Sun have spent tons of money in the virtual reality world of Second Life and wished the ending was Priceless. But no one stays past the first big party. What’s wrong? I’ve created an island for my employer, Thomson NETg. We have more than 3,000 people come and spend an average of 30 minutes per visit each month. We don t pay campers; in fact, we don t pay people to come at all. What are we doing to drive traffic? I’m not going to bore you with what didn’t work or take you through my learning curve, but will share what I’ve done that works and causes people to come back! The big companies have spent a lot of time and effort to make amazing facilities. Dell has a giant computer that you can walk inside. Cisco has wonderful vistas all connected with bridges made of the corporate logo. Heck, some of the car companies give away free cars you can drive around in while on your quest to trick out your avatar with the latest in pixilated fashions. Some GRAND OPENING parties have included concerts with big-name artists. Many do simulcasts with huge corporate stars on the stage to a capacity, read 80 person, crowd. But time and time again, once the initial event is over and the last free virtual t-shirt has been handed out, no one comes back. Lovingly rendered shops are empty. Huge campuses with jaw-dropping features that took months to develop are like the ruins of the ancients, completely void of life. Why? Let me give you just a touch of my journey in Second Life. I know, nothing as riveting as watching someone s vacation videos, but I think it’ll help as I attempt to unravel this dilemma and explain how Thomson NETg s Island has become so popular. I’ve been in Second Life for more than a year. I’ve spent some of that time doing the normal noob stuff like camping, buying junk and generally wandering around. At an innovation summit hosted by my employer, Thomson NETg, it finally clicked. We at Thomson teach over the web. How cool would it be to teach in a three-dimensional environment? Foaming at the mouth and with visions of what could be, I pitched the idea to my boss, and to my surprise, he told me to pilot the idea. Hours and hours and days and days of near non-stop work later, I had put together a proof-of-concept video and showed it to my boss. Here’s the video. It is a 48 meg mov file and may take a bit to download. media.knowledgenet.com/live/sl/netginslversion.9.html As you can see, I put together a fairly pretty building and some interesting ideas. Nothing that was quite show stopping, but enough to pique some interest. My boss then asked, How do we go to the next level? I proposed an entire island. “You get full control, extensive security and you don t have to be next door to a strip club. They’re a bit pricey, but you can t accuse me of thinking small,” I said. Again, to my surprise, he agreed. So I took several months, taught myself Second Life design, building techniques, scripting, multi-media streaming and security. After several false starts, I created Thomson Island. For the quick tour, less than a minute, check out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=LvH1wMXaFFk For the in-depth tour, around 10 minutes, check out: www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HYiHOmaFyk Big deal, you might say. You put together something that a lot of other companies have done, and done a bit better. But it is a big deal - because folks come back time and again! Sure, it’s focused towards education, but how do I get people to come? We didn t have a huge rollout. We didn t spend tens of thousands in marketing, but we have more than 3,000 people come and spend around a half an hour EVERY MONTH. This volume has increased an average of 33% each month since we’ve been keeping track. Many times, the island is so full that Second Life refuses any additional people entrance for fear of a server meltdown! How do we do it? Secret #1 Make it Safe Our customers range from the individual looking to better their careers in Real Life to the Fortune 500. These folks are looking to have a location that’s free from some of the seamier sides of Second Life. Nothing will kill a corporate presentation or disrupt a class like a naked man running around, shooting all your attendees. We’ve implemented a strict ban on weapons and non-PG actions. We’ve included the ability for all presenters and security personnel to permanently ban individuals that violate the code of conduct. We understand that some people are new to Second Life and don t know how to be a good citizen. These folk are warned and the vast majority comply. Those that are still a bit rebellious are permanently removed from access. You may ask, doesn t that encourage griefers (someone who takes perverse pleasure in causing havoc)? As long as you don t feed their need for seeing how annoyed you are, they usually go off for easier and more vocal prey. If they’re gently told why they’re removed and that there’s a process for appeal, the ones that are truly sorry will make amends. The others, deprived of the fun of watching someone turn red in the face, go make trouble elsewhere. Strict adherence to a code of conduct for both staff and customers is key. #2 Have a Customer Orientation There’s so much to see and do in Second Life. People won’t waste much time on things that are just silly. They may come by once to see the great whiz-bang thing your creative team has developed, but if there’s not an ongoing reason to keep coming back, they’ll never return. You can cram a bunch of “things” on your land and it may take them time to go though it all. But most people, especially those immersed in the short attention world of the Internet, aren’t prone to be very tolerant of wasting time with “things” that aren’t useful for them. Remember, it doesn t have to utilitarian. It can just be a nice place to sit and think or a cool place to bring a friend or a relaxing location to hold a quick meeting. Remember, they’re not here to find things that appeal to you, but to them. You need to have a variety to match a diversity of tastes. On Thomson NETg Island, we offer streaming audio and video podcasts in several different formats. Not the video content, per se, but where students sit to get the stream. We have an outdoor theater, several conventional classrooms, and simulated cubicles. For more variety we also have outdoor locations. They may choose to relax in a wicker chair under a nice canopy next to our huge fountain. Or, perhaps they would prefer to watch and listen at our aquarium bar, at a Japanese table, or in several comfy over-stuffed chairs and couches. The idea is to let the customer decide where they want to consume your offering. Your job is just to provide the choices. The cool thing is the behind-the-scenes plumbing is pretty much the same. With some interesting tricks, you can even have two people sitting on the same couch looking at the same video monitor while watching two different video and audio streams. #3 Keep it Fresh I love Disneyland. The rides, the food, the excitement, the food, the colors, the food and, of course the food. But with a 5-day pass, even the Magic Kingdom gets a bit old. How much more stale is content that can be accessed 7×24x365.25 and hasn t been changed or updated in a meaningful way since the big rollout? If you have videos, rotate them. If you do audio, mix it up a bit. It’s okay to have a library that people can access, but have some things that are new and fresh and highlight different aspects. You want people to come back to see what’s new. On Thomson NETg Island, we offer a variety of live classes. We have presentations on everything from how to build things in Second Life, to scripting, to Women s studies, to astrophysics. This is besides our normal offering of Microsoft, Cisco and business development skills classes. These offerings are constantly varied, based on demand and seasons. During Halloween, we offered free classes in spooky trees. Preceding Valentine s Day, we taught them how to make animated cards. For Easter, we host huge Easter egg hunts. You need things to keep it relevant, interesting and useful. I am not saying to have a bunch of silliness and avoid your main business, but I am saying feel free to spice it up a bit. Second Life is a fun environment. You can have fun, but not lose an ounce of professionalism. The biggest problem that businesses have in Second Life is they figure if they make a big splash, people will come. The problem is that, without a compelling reason, people will not return and all that money is wasted. Mix it up. Make it fun. Make it useful. That’ll build loyalty by providing a needed service. Give people a reason to come back and they’ll return often and bring friends! - Doug Bassett Do you have any tips, tricks or techniques in your quest to develop a project in Second Life? Please click on the Comments link below to share the brilliance!
Source: feeds.feedburner.com

What Every Business Should Know About Credit Cards
Navigating the world of merchant accounts can be confusing and intimidating, but every small business should accept credit cards. This can help you grow your sales and simplify collections while providing great customer service. Our featured guest in this episode of Small Business Trends Radio is Samuel Peery, Vice President of Marketing at Propay, Inc. ProPay provides credit card services customized to small businesses. For instance, did you know that: ProPay, Inc. — is not only a service for online sales, but for offline or direct sells as well. And you can begin to accept credit cards immediately without the wait. There’s a fixed — guaranteed rate on every transaction. Monthly fees, transaction fees, and monthly minimums do not exist. Nor are you penalized for not providing zip codes or having the card present during the transaction. ProPay is offering — you 50% off until June 30th! Please visit this page to take advantage of this special offer that is available for a short time to YOU, our loyal listeners. In this episode, Samuel Peery discusses the in’s and out’s of merchant credit card services and the services offered by ProPay, Inc. He explains how ProPay’s services differ from other similar services offered online today and the advantages of choosing ProPay over the others. Stay tuned at the end of the program for the Today’s Trend segment. Today’s Trend is: The Rise of the Big Business/Small Business ecosystem. Gain access to Samuel’s insights by clicking the player below to listen to the full interview.
Source: www.smbtrendwire.com

Keywords: Printing,Publishing,Graphic Design,Printing,Color Copies,Publishing