Find the best christmas pictures and photos for a happy holiday spirit.
"Get Legal, or Get Cheated!"Are you an Ecommerce business owner, or do you just seem to be one? There is a difference, and that difference will hurt your business.When you sell products on the Internet, just like anyplace else, you need to be buying those products from a direct wholesale source. Either the factory itself, or a factory authorized distributor. If you’re not, you’re paying middleman markups that chip away at your profits until you’re barely making enough to pay your hosting fees. Sometimes I think that there are more middlemen on the Internet than there are ECommerce sites, and they’re all targeting YOU! Here’s a scenario: John Doe wants to open an Internet store, and make lots of money. He can’t believe all the news items about new Internet millionaires. He’s seen pictures of these people in the news and on the ‘Net, and lots of them look like they’re one beer short of a six-pack. “If they can do it, so can I!” he thinks, and starts to search around the ‘Net for information on starting a business. He finds boatloads of hosting companies willing to put his site out there for just a few dollars a month. He finds that many of them offer free shopping carts, so that he can take his customers’ orders. He finds services that let him accept credit card payments without even applying for a merchant account. Only one thing left…what to sell? John looks around the Internet for product distributors. He comes across a wholesaler of name brand products that he knows are very popular. He contacts them, and they say, “Certainly! We will “drop ship” products directly to your customer for you, one at a time, at wholesale. All you need to do is fill out some paperwork about your business, and supply us with your Tax ID number.” “Paperwork?” thinks John. “Tax ID number?” Yechh! That sounds like work. Worse, it sounds like LEGAL work. That’s a scary thing to most people, and John is one of them! A little more searching, and John finds a web site called “Stuff R Us”. Stuff R Us is screaming at him: “Thousands of wholesale products you can sell on your website! NO investment for inventory! We send each item right to your customer! No shipping, no handling products, no minimums! Sign up with us and we handle everything! This is your road to Internet Riches!” Well, that’s the road John was looking for, by golly, so he happily sends his name and address to Stuff R Us along with his sign-up fee. Suddenly he can put all kinds of products on his web site, and all he has to do is email his orders to Stuff R Us, and they handle the rest. No paperwork, no hassles. John is creating a new Internet millionaire, all right. No doubt about it. Unfortunately, it’s not him. It’s Stuff R Us. Stuff R Us is a middleman. They sit between John and the REAL wholesaler. Every time John places an order with Stuff R Us, they turn around and place that same order with the REAL wholesaler, who sends it to John’s customer. John never knows this is happening. Stuff R Us is marking up the real wholesale price to John. John will piddle along selling the same over-marketed imports as thousands of other Stuff R Us clients, at over-inflated wholesale prices. Stuff R Us thinks this is great, and they’re laughing all the way to the bank. So, where did John go wrong? What did he do to unwittingly get stuck in ECommerce’s biggest trap, the “middleman rut”? It’s simple. He took the easy way out when searching for a supplier. Stuff R Us said, “we’ll handle everything”, and John said, “Hmmm, that sounds easy!” So, instead of bothering to do some simple legal paperwork for his business, John let Stuff R Us cheat him out of most of his profit, because it was easy. Please remember the following two statements: 1.) You MUST work with REAL wholesale suppliers to be truly successful in ECommerce. 2.) You cannot buy from a REAL wholesale supplier if you are not a LEGAL business. Let me repeat that last one, for those who may have their Real Jukebox software turned up too loud: YOU CANNOT BUY FROM A REAL WHOLESALE DISTRIBUTOR IF YOU ARE NOT A LEGAL BUSINESS! ANYONE who allows you to purchase wholesale products for resale without legal business paperwork is NOT a real wholesaler, and is taking profit that should be yours.In our business, we publish a very thorough directory that helps people like John find and contact real wholesalers that will drop ship products to his customers. Every once in a while, we get a request for a refund on our directory from someone who says, “I don’t have to go through all this legal stuff to use the distributors in your Directory. I can just go to Stuff R Us and do it the easy way!” I have no doubt that Stuff R Us finds this absolutely hilarious. Getting legal is not that hard. Don’t listen to the people who tell you that you don’t have to do it. Here are the basics (in the US): 1.) File a DBA (Doing Business under an Assumed name), or a Corporation. You can do it yourself for surprisingly little. As far as I know, all states in the US have web sites where you can read instructions and print the forms. We did it for $80 here in Florida. 2.) If required in your state, file for a local business license. Here, we paid $35 for this. Many states do not even require it. 3.) Contact your State IRS office (NOT Federal!) and file for a “Sales and Use Tax ID” or “Resale Certificate.” This is what a real wholesaler needs to see in order to do business with you. They use it to justify the fact that they are not charging you sales tax on the products you purchase and resell to your customers. Here in Florida, we got this for $5, and it took about 15 minutes. Getting legal is not hard, and the benefits are tremendous. Don’t make money for a middleman…make it for yourself! Chris MaltaWorldWide Brands, Inc.For more information, visit http://www.youcandropship.com/
Monday, March 31, 2008
Beating Debt with a Stick
Debt is a Product in America The #1 sickness in America concerning finances right now is debt. Debt is a product in our culture and it is vigorously aimed at you and me everyday, everywhere. As a society, we borrow more money than the last two generations times two and your online credit report reflects these habits! Some companies like Sears make more profit from their credit department than from all the physical products they sell. But It's the Norm Isn't It? We are programmed from childhood to make automatic decisions regarding our personal spending habits thus negatively affecting our online credit report. A few 'real world' examples are listed below: ∙ leasing a car instead of paying for it in cash (unheard of right?) ∙ 90 days same as cash (NOT... really the same in more than 75% of the cases) ∙ rent-to-own (translation = paying 2, 3, 4 times the actual value of the product) ∙ 30 year vs. 15 year mortgages (an accepted lengthy and very costly way of purchasing a house) What to do? Well, I hate to give the obvious answer here but how about saving money! Try saving money in a money market account for a couple years and then paying for a slightly used car in cash or with a 50 to 75% down payment. Wow, imagine having that extra money every month that most people dump into their lease or high rate loan. Try saving money for 3-6 months interest and risk free for that thing that you needed and you might find that you can get it cheaper with hundreds OR even that you want to use your hard-earned money for something more practical. Your credit report will thank you as well. Penny Pinching is Boring! Most people today think that to be frugal one must live out of a shack and only make purchases when they are on clearance (or if it's life or death). Well they're only half right. Have you heard the expression "It's the little things that count"? This holds very true when dealing with financial decisions. While large purchases definitely have great effect on one's online credit report as well as their overall situation, it is often the everyday spending habits that accumulate and hold them back from attaining wealth of any sort. What many people fail to realize is that the majority of true millionaires in America (those with net worths exceeding 1 million dollars) got rich from thinking outside the box and not following the crowd. Try thinking a little more about how you handle your money and you might find that you know more than you think you do. Summing Up the Debt Sickness Fiasco A decision as simple as using a debit credit card instead of a credit card showsdiscipline. Report that paying with cash instead of credit shows that you have properly budgeted your money and it just feels better to own something the day you walk away with it. Your credit report will also reflect these positive actions. Since the average consumer has little control over their own spending habits, the credit report picks up the slack and in turn there are more negative items to show for it. Even statistics show that using cash when making purchases will greatly reduce spending thus causing you to think harder as a consumer before swiping that credit card. Get off to a good start by seeing what is on your online credit report. By removing negative items from your online credit report you can improve your credit rating. To read more about how you can get your online credit report free with no obligations, see what is on your file and find out how to fix it go to http://www.cleancreditonline.com
Downloading MP3's The Legal Way
Pay As You Go; The Legal Way to Download Mp3's Many of us have one time or another downloaded our favorite song from the internet. Even though this might not have been the most honest way to listen to music, at the time it seemed like the only way for instant gratification. However, times have changed and music companies are cracking down and suing thousands of people for illegal music downloads. Today, you don't have to worry anymore about being sued for instant gratification. There are plenty of legitimate sites available that allow you to download your favorite song quickly and most importantly inexpensively. Pay as you go mp3 download services has been made famous by iTunes, which is Apple's answer to getting great music on their iPOD's fast and easy. iTunes is a huge hit, delivering millions of songs to iPOD's every year. iTunes cost about $.99 a song and about $9.99 for an album, but remember the reason that you started downloading songs in the first place. Many albums only have two or three great tracks on them anyway. Most people opt to buy a couple of songs instead of spend $20 bucks at a record store for an entire album that is mostly a stinker. If you think $.99 is too much, there are plenty of services that sell mp3's even cheaper, from Walmart, to emusic toa bunch of smaller services that are not widely known. You can usually find mp3's for pennies on a dollar. It is important to do a little research and check out websites and advertising. You may find songs for $.10 to $.20 a piece.
Defeating Credit Card Debt With Self Control
Credit card debt is a major social problem in some Western countries. To rid yourself of credit card debt, it is best to recognize the problem as both a social and individual problem.If you are overburdened with credit card debt, or are in danger of becoming so, it is very easy to see it purely as an individual problem, one from which you may be suffering both physically and mentally. Worry and stress can be silent marauders into your physical and mental well being. Debt can undoubtedly cause both worry and stress, not just to the debtor, but their immediate families too.Why Should You Care About The Social Causes of Credit Card Debt?If you wish to overcome your credit card debt problem, you will benefit from removing some of the social influences. They are a major influence on the way you react, think and behave. Remove the social influences, and you take a big stride in your journey to eliminate your debt.I do not, of course, mean remove the root causes of credit card debt. You cannot do that. What I am referring to is to prevent the social influences from penetrating you and taking over your life. As an individual, you have the right to resist social influences where they are harmful. The liberal, unfettered use of credit cards is an influence you will benefit from resisting.Just by being fully aware of the social influences, you have made an important step. You will more likely be on your guard, and by asserting your individuality, you are more likely to overcome or prevent the credit card debt problem.What Are The Social Causes Of Credit Card Debt?You could spend years analyzing the credit card debt problem. Here are just a few of the influences at work in the society around you:1. Credit card interest rates are high, therefore the profits can be high. Banks and other credit card issuers are after their slice of that big money, including from you. They can therefore justify big marketing budgets to get your money. I deliberately do not say “get your business”. You will resist better if you think “they are after my money.”2. It is very easy to get credit cards, multiple credit cards in fact. Issuers of credit cards make it easy for you, if you have had no debt problems in the past. If they seem to take it lightly, it is understandable that their customers do too. But remember, they take the risk factors into account when setting interest rates. That’s why they are so high.3. Your friends, neighbours and work colleagues will probably all have multiple credit cards, talk about them and flash them around from time to time. That can all influence your own attitude to credit card debt. 4. Depending on what country you are in, yours may be a “have now, pay later” society. Immediate gratification can take precedence over common sense. If everyone else is doing it, it surely must be right? Wrong. Especially if the interest rates are too high.5. You see other people buy new furniture, go on exotic vacations, or go out to expensive restaurants all the time. Even if you never know if they are doing so on credit card, you may want the same. But you do not have the immediate cash, so what do you do? Jump on the credit card train? That is what your society may be pushing you towards.How To Resist the Social Pressures To Succumb To Credit Card DebtDue to the overwhelming pressures of the credit card society, it can be quite a difficult task, initially, to change your own attitudes. But by asserting your individuality, you can steadily eliminate the social conditioning. It is really a matter of how you think in certain situations. You are in charge of the way you think, so all you need to do is what is natural. Not what everyone else seems to be doing around you, but what is natural to you as an individual. Think to protect yourself, assert yourself, and to look after your financial well being.Here are a few ideas to help you:1. Whatever type of loan you may apply for, you are after just one product, money. Different types of loans are marketed as separate products, in different packages, but to you, they should all be one: money. The money, once you have it, is all the same quality. A dollar is a dollar, a pound is a pound, a euro is a euro. Having engrained that upon yourself, knowing you are just after this single product, you need only look at price. Credit card debt is very, very expensive. The interest takes money from you, and reduces your assets. If you need a loan, you want the lowest possible interest rate, one that does not unnecessarily leech your assets.2. A credit card should only be used as a convenience to pay if you have no cash on you, knowing that you can pay off the balance before interest charges kick in. Many cards have an interest free period. Never use credit cards as a loan beyond that free period. Others do, but you have no need to. You can eliminate that idea altogether. You are creating a new habit that will enhance your financial situation, and resisting an old common habit that would ultimately damage your finances.3. Plan all your borrowing. Sit down and write down what you absolutely must buy over the next year, and add what you would like to buy. Total the cost. Write down a budget for each month, making sure you have listed all your regular expenses that are fixed and unavoidable, and those over which there is some flexibility. Compare that total with your income. If you have a surplus, then you can think about those extra purchases you had in mind. If not, don’t think any more about them. You cannot afford them, and cannot afford to borrow.If you have a planned surplus, then maybe you can get those things you wanted. If you can afford all of them, and there are quite a few items on your list,then forget about getting a loan. Be patient, resist the have now pay later syndrome. You can save interest and buy a bonus item with that later if you really must. You are in a great position to pay cash. Prioritize the things you want to buy, and note their cost, and then work out a plan by which you buy one item at a time spread throughout the year. Why pay the banks credit, when you can pay cash? You will save not just the interest but maybe get cash discounts. Cash gives you control. With credit you are subservient.If, on the other hand, there are just one or two more expensive items you want to buy, it is time to compare options and test your resolve. If you save your surplus each month, consider how long it will take to have enough for item 1 and maybe item 2. Are they really urgent? Probably not. Maybe you can save for one after 4 months and 2 after 9 months. That way you are getting into the habit of saving, and living off cash. Cash is king. Your finances will start to look good over time, and you’ll start to feel proud of yourself. You will feel in control.Remember too that by saving, if an emergency comes up, you may have the cash at hand instead of reaching for that expensive credit card.You really cannot wait and save? That is a pity, but now check out all the loan sources suitable for your intended purchases. Get the best plan, the best interest rates, and apply, with the intention of using that loan just for what it is intended, and to pay it off within the time scale of the spending plan. In the example one year. Stick to that discipline, and your credit is still under your control. And, you have avoided reliance on expensive credit cards.4. Remind yourself every day that you are only going to use your credit card when you have no cash on you, as a convenience, and you will repay it before interest starts to accrue.5. Also remind yourself every day that sometimes it is good, or even necessary, to be that bit different, and to resist social pressures. Imagine all the credit card lemmings heading towards the precipice, while you relax in your counting house, counting out your money. Real money; your assets. Anyway, it’s great sometimes to be different, it really does make you feel good about yourself.6. Never, ever feel you have to buy something just because a neighbour or friend has been boasting about theirs. Envy and jealousy are viruses that minimize your individuality, and can, in this case, damage your finances.Resisting the pressures of the credit card society will be a lot easier once you have set your mind to it, and started to feel the benefits. Enjoy the process, and you will be a cash convert for the rest of your affluent life.
Converting Formats Should Be Legal
This is the official stance of K.A.P.A. (Karaoke Anti-Piracy Agency...essentially the RIAA of the karaoke world): If I own my own discs, can I load them onto a hard drive to play them in a show, etc.? No, you MAY NOT load songs from other manufacturers on your hard drive. The licensing rights for music on a hard drive machine exist only between the machine manufacturer and the music provider. These rights do not extend to the owner of the machine, to load songs from other manufacturers on the hard drive player. Copying the discs on to a hard drive is still copying the discs. Legally, it is absolutely no different than burning a copy of the discs. In order to copy your discs on to your hard drive, you have to have the written permission of the company that produced the discs and owns the copyrights. On this page I will attempt to convince you that format conversion should not be a crime and that businesses should be allowed to convert a phonorecord (That's the legal definition for a song) from one format to another. I am not making a case for piracy, the legitimacy of Peer to Peer networks, nor serial copying, but rather the simple process of encoding a compact disc to a compressed digital audio format like MP3. With piracy and serial copying, the artist is not paid for their work. With format conversion, it is assumed the work being converted was legally purchased, and thus the artist was paid his share of the royalties. We'll begin with a little bit of history on the DJ industry. When the DJ industry first started, vinyl records were the most popular medium for their performances. How ever, these were heavy and easily damaged. Because of their weight and cost, many DJs only brought a few hundred records to a performance and much money was spent replacing records that hard worn out or become scratched. While this was good for the record industry, it was bad for consumers because it increased the costs for the DJ which were then passed on to the consumers. When the cassette tape was introduced, most DJ's began using them instead because they were lighter and more durable. It was impractical to copy records on to cassette tape because the noise of the record (especially if it was worn) combined with the tape noise made for a poor quality recording. While tapes were more durable than records, they too wore out. Again, this was good for the recording industry because it meant that DJs would have to purchase the same record they already owned in the cassette format. Of course, this cost was passed onto the consumers through higher prices charged by DJs. When the CD came out, DJs switched formats again. They now had a digital medium that wouldn't wear out no matter how many times it was played. It weighed less than a tape, and it offered the ability to find a particular track as quickly as DJs used to be able to with vinyl records. Now instead of bringing a few hundred records, or several hundred cassettes, DJs could bring one or two thousand CDs. This meant DJs had a consistent product and a wider selection of music than a band, so not surprisingly DJs are now the entertainment of choice at weddings and parties. Now enter compressed digital audio. Most people are familiar with MP3, so I will use that term in place of compressed digital audio, however most DJs use other better compression formats than MP3. With the MP3 format, DJs can store not just one or two thousand CDs worth of music, but hundreds of thousands of CDs. Since MP3's are digital, they never wear out, and because they reside on a computer hard disk, they never get scratched. In 50 years they will sound the same as they do today. They take up less room because they are inside the PC, and not spread out on a 3 foot by 6 foot table. They are lighter because they are not a physical "thing". And since computers are really great at sorting information, requested music can be found instantly by the DJ instead of forcing him to search through thousands of CDs to find that one particular CD that has that one requested song. Compressed audio is a godsend for the DJ because it means he never has to replace a disc/cassette/record, he has less to carry, he can offer the widest selection of music possible, and reduce his cost. This is great for consumers because lower costs mean lower prices. Some argue that compressed audio does not have the same sound quality as a CD, and I have to agree. However, it takes a very good ear and a good set of speakers to detect a difference between a high quality digital encoding and a CD. In a large hall filled with celebrating people the two are indistinguishable. Further, I would point out that CDs do not sound as good as a high quality analog recording like a vinyl record, but the public still embraced compact discs with open arms. The public seem quite happy with a good recording that is more durable than a great recording that degrades. Unfortunately, as with every invention that threatens the status quo, it is illegal. Currently disc jockeys who convert a CD to another format (including another CD) are breaking copyright law because such a conversion is not considered "Fair Use". The courts use four factors set forth in section 107 of the Copyright Law to determine if a use is "Fair Use": 1. The purpose and character of the use, including whether such use is of a commercial nature or is for nonprofit educational purposes. 2. The nature of the copyrighted work. 3. The amount and substantiality of the portion used in relation to the copyrighted work as a whole. 4. The effectof the use upon the potential market for or value of the copyrighted work. In the case of Disk Jockeys, the questions would be answered as such: 1. Commercial use for private performance. It is a private performance because Joe Public can't simply walk into Jane Doe's wedding without an invitation, nor can he attend ACME Corp.'s company Christmas party unless he works there, but because the disc jockey is charging for his service, it is a commercial use. 2. The nature of the copyrighted material is a creative work. Creative works are typically afforded a more restrictive definition of Fair Use than informational works like dictionaries and encyclopedias. 3. The entire work is used in the format conversion process. This should be seen as a plus, since the disc jockey is not altering the work in any way. The DJ is faithfully reproducing the entire work as intended by the artist. 4. The effect of this conversion increases the potential market for and the value of the copyrighted work. By allowing disc jockeys to convert formats, they will be able to carry more music to a performance, and potentially bring the artist more fans and ultimately more fame and money. To add this all up, the fact that it is commercial use of a creative work argues against fair use, but the fact that the entire work is used and its use potentially increases the market for the artist should outweigh the negatives. The fact that it is a private performance is fairly neutral. Another reason it is illegal is because the CD is not consumed during the process of conversion, so by nature of the process one is left with 2 copies of the recording instead of the one that was purchased. In theory the DJ should pay for that second copy. Unfortunately, no method for paying for this second copy is available, and since many DJs would rather have the music in digital format than CD format you would find them selling the CD after making the conversion which would hurt record sales even more since you would now have a glut of discs flooding an already battered market. This would be legal if the DJ were forced to pay for the copy, as the original CDs carry the Right of First Sale (which means you can sell it at a garage sale, sell it on eBay, or trade it in at a used music store). Having the DJ pay for the created copy would imply its legitimacy as a legal copy in and of itself, and thereby imply the Right of First Sale to it as well. "What can I do about this?" If like me you feel that the music industry is trampling your rights, contact your state senators and representatives and let them know that your vote is more important than the money they get from the music industry's special interest groups.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Kondo KHR-2 HV robot
Now you can have soccer playing, dancing salsa fighter robot. The Kondo robot KHR-2 HV has improved its looks taking up a more Robocop-ish style. Its features are much more robust and curved then the square-like head the previous one had. And this pretty, very entertaining little robot can be yours for just $152. And there’s not one of us who didn’t want his or her own robot when growing up.You can also buy him a couple of soccer strips to make the whole thing more real. They only cost $10 each. Now go on and buy yourself a little robotic friend.
S3000, A6000 & M8000 Pavilion Slimline by HP
Three new models of desktop PC series have been launched into the market by HP. The three models of the Pavilion Slimline series are s3000, a6000 and m8000. The first one comes with 1GB of RAM, and you can pick either a AMD CPU or an Intel CPU, but for the later you have to pay an extra 50$. If not you can buy it for 500$. The PC can be set with a low graphic card, maybe a TV tuner and a Pocket Media Drive.You can buy the a6000 at a lower price then the s3000. It’s just 330$ but you would be throwing off some memory because it has only 512 MB of RAM. But the bright side is that it comes with an Intel CPU, a Pocket Media Drive and a graphics card. But the “jewel of the crown” is the m8000. And the price says so to. At 950$ it has a DVD drive and again you can pick between a dual core AMD or Intel processor. All three models have Windows Vista preinstalled.
Pillete
Pillete, the new concept of Bluetooth headset is so tiny, it’s almost invisible to the untrained eye when you are wearing it. So you don’t have to worry anymore about looking like Robocop when walking down the street with it, but you have to consider the possibility of people starting to think you’ve lost your marbles and you’re talking to yourself.The downside is the fact that people have different sized ears and the device might be to small and slip out or to big and not fit. People who often use earphones will tell you I’m right. But once they’ll figure out a way to make the Pillete adjustable, this design will be the future of all headsets.
SGH i400 smartphone
Samsung released this little beauty, the SGH i400 smartphone. Although we already got used to Samsungs S60 Sliders, this one has the Symbian OS trademark in the upper-left corner. It is equipped with a 2 megapixel camera to make sure you don’t miss out on taking really cool photos even if you don’t own a genuine digital camera. And didn’t you got bored of navigating through your whole menu just to try and find an MP3. Well, they have solved your problem by adding up a special MP3 button. It is also equipped with A2DP, Bluetooth and MicroSD expansion for your pleasure and comfort. You also have full support for Internet Browsing (it would have been weird if you didn’t) and you are provided with a 2.3 inch display, so you won’t have to wear your glasses just to make a simple phone-call.
B20, IRiver’s mini DMB television
River has just announced the release of the all-new mini DMB television, the B20. It is equipped with 4 GB of flash memory which you can expand through the miniSD memory card slot. It has a 2.4-inch LCD display with 320 x 240 pixels and a range of colors of 260k. It also has a FM tuner that can be used also as a voice recorder. It supports MPEG-4, OGG, MP3, WMA, WMV9 formats and you can also view JPEG images on it. The battery holds for 26 hours of MP3 playback, 5 hours of videos and 4 hours of DMB TV. The price is set at 267$ for the 4 GB version and 213$ for the 2GB one.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
2009 Hyundai Genesis Sedan's 368 Horses Take on Upmarket Big Boys:
Detroit Auto Show Preview
The debut of the ’09 Hyundai Genesis at the 2008 Detroit Auto Show just might prove that the Korean carmaker can play hardball in the premium sport sedan market. But how will the public receive its styling? With less-than-subtle references to Acura and Infiniti inside and out, we're not sure if the Genesis is distinctive enough to stand out in this very competitive segment. But considering its impressive spec sheet and, more remarkably, its sub-$30,000 price tag, Hyundai’s big new entry will offer a lot of car for not a lot of cash when it goes on sale this summer—unparalleled value in an upscale market.Benchmarked against the Mercedes-Benz E-Class, Infiniti M and Lexus GS, the top-of-the-line Genesis boasts an all-new 4.6-liter V8 that sends power to the rear wheels via a 6-speed automatic ZF gearbox with manual shift control. Named "Tau," the DOHC powerplant is equipped with variable valve timing, and produces an estimated 368 hp. The V8 can run on 87-octane fuel (even though it means sacrificing 7 hp in the name of economy), and, according to Hyundai, the 4006-pound sedan can hit 60 mph in "well under 6 seconds." At least in terms of horses, the flagship Tau mill trumps powerplants found in the Audi A8, BMW 750i, Infiniti M45 and Lexus GS450. For more sedate drivers, 3.8 liter and 3.3 liter Lambda V6s will also be available, producing 290 and 268 hp, respectively. The variable valve-timed six-bangers are hooked up to Aisin 6-speed autos with manual shift control, can also sip regular fuel, and feature timing chains requiring zero scheduled maintenance. All Genesis engines achieve ULEV (Ultra Low Emission Vehicle) certification. The Genesis is built on a high tensile steel unibody platform with an alleged 12 to 14 percent higher dynamic torsional rigidity than the BMW 5-series and Mercedes-Benz E-Class, while offering more interior volume than a 7-series. Five-link front and rear suspension includes Amplitude Selective Dampers (ASD) similar to the technology found in German and Japanese competitors.Standard interior features include a Logic-7 equipped Lexicon audio system, woodgrain accents and Bluetooth, while options range from a nav system equipped with a 30GB hard drive, to a backup camera that works in concert with eight ultrasonic sensors. Incidentally, the only other manufacturer featuring Lexicon audio is Rolls-Royce. Inventive touches include automatic, humidity activated windshield defoggers and an ultraviolet reflective coating intended to keep the steering wheel cool to the touch in hot weather.Eight airbags, active head restraints and radar-based cruise control round out a package that’s covered by Hyundai's 5-year/60,000-mile bumper-to-bumper and 10-year/100,000-mile limited powertrain warranty. We’ll be live in Detroit next weekend so you can judge for yourself whether the looks hold up all that promise. —Basem Wasef
VIDEO: http://www.popularmechanics.com/blogs/automotive_news/4231607.htmlCOMPLETE COVERAGE: Detroit Auto Show
Blasts From the Past at the New York Auto Show
At this year's NYIAS, nostalgia is king. Launch our gallery to see why
The new Soltice hardtop can match or maybe even outperform the Porsche Cayman.We slogged through the rain and traffic all the way across town to the Javits Center for the 2009 New York Auto Show. No, it’s not Detroit or Geneva; but the show still has a fair share of announcements, plus a chance to see up close those cars that recently debuted in other cities.
So far, it’s really been an American show—with big debuts by GM and Chrysler. It was also the year of retro design and nostalgia. Pontiac brought out three new models, including a yet-to-be-named revival of its former El Camino car/truck hybrid—extolled by rapper 50 Cent. Dodge took us back to the seventies, introducing three versions of its revived Charger model. And Mercedes waxed poetic about the glory days of the 80’s, when its belching diesel sedans ruled the upper-class subdivisions. It also introduced SUVs using its new BlueTec clean diesel technology.
Launch our gallery here for a further look at some of these highlights:
Acura fired a BB gun across the bow of BMW, Mercedes and Toyota—introducing its second-generation TSX luxury sedan—aimed to compete with models such as the Mercedes C class and Lexus IS lines. The 2.4-liter engine packs 201 horsepower and 179 pound-feet of torque, but Honda, having earned EPA’s Tier II level of efficiency, claims better fuel economy than that of its predecessor. And it’s wired. The optional “Technology Package” includes a voice-activated navigation system, realtime traffic updates and weather reports, plus a rear-view backup camera and a 10 speaker sound system. “This is the year of the sedan,” they told us. If you’ve seen the new Honda Accord that debuted in the fall, you’ll recognize similar design cues in the TSX. And if you like the new Accord, this is a nice step up.
Nissan grabbed more attention with its hot Maxima revival. In keeping with the retro theme, Nissan reminded us that they “invented the four door sports car,” with the Maxima of the 1990s. “And the original four-door sports car is back,” they said. Instead of dragging out a rusty old model from the Clinton era, they busted out the 2009 Maxima—a suburban beast packing a 290-horsepower V6 engine that cranks a tire-chirping 261 pound-feet of torque. It was tuned on Germany’s famous Nürburgring, where sports cars such as Nissan’s new GTR also honed their game. The interior is pretty slick for souped-up soccer-dad car. And the lines are sleek—sheikh Japanese with a slight German accent.
We heard a stronger German accent from Thomas Weber, Mercedes head of research. Picking up on US election fever, Dr. Weber lead a “Vote BlueTec” rally to celebrate Mercedes bringing its clean diesel engine to its M line of SUVs. (BlueTec first came to the US in 2006.) Mercedes claims that, in a 3000 plus-mile test drive, its diesel SUVs got 11 percent better fuel economy than comparable hybrid gasoline models (though they didn’t say which). BlueTec is now offered on Mercedes’s GL, M, R and E class cars, “and there are more to come,” promised Weber.
Like a rivaling soccer fan, BMW’s North American CEO Tom Purvis took a jab at “our friends from Stuttgart,” saying that his company had diesels that are both clean and powerful. The company’s twin-turbo, direct injection diesel engine produces 335 horsepower and gets 500 miles per tank—or it will, when it gets here. Expect diesel models to hit the US by the end of 2008, Purvis said. An “active hybrid” (also known as two mode) will follow in 2009.
But the big unveiling was for a good ol' fashioned gas-guzzler, BMW’s $65,000 M3 convertible. Its V8 engine cranks 414 horsepower, maxes at 295 pound-feet of torque and spins at a mind-boggling 8400 rpm—making it the highest-revving BMW ever. The engine is mated to a 6-speed, twin-clutch transmission. Sedan and coup versions of the M3 will join the convertible model.
BMW’s Concept CS Gran Turismo also granted its first North American audience. But Purvis spoke no more than the idle car itself about when and how this would turn into a real car.
Back to the US of A, and back to the seventies, Dodge brought out its new line of Chargers. After hearing about its $3 billion investment in fuel-efficient engine, we saw the one car that can wipe out all those gains, the SRT8 Challenger. Its 6.1-liter Hemi engine churns out 425 horsepower and an even-more-amazing 420 pound-feet of torque. That’s enough to get it to 60 mph in 4.9 seconds.
At the other end is the Challenger SE, which will sell at a starting price in the “low 20s.” No performance slouch, it has a 3.5-liter Vs with 250 horsepower and pound-feet of torque. But it promises 25 miles per gallon. The mainstream Challenger RT also starts in the 20s and offers a six-speed manual transmission.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
100,000 IT Recruits on waiting list
BANGALORE: If you think you've cleared a campus interview by an IT firm and your careers made, you might be mistaken. You could be one among over 100,000 campus IT recruits hired last year to be put on "indefinite wait".
Domestic and multinational IT companies are busy sending such bulk mails to candidates hired last year, who would have joined them in the April-June quarter. "The industry is under stress due to the US recession and rupee appreciation. So we have taken a decision to stagger the induction of hundreds of our campus recruits. It makes financial and logical sense for us," said the head of training & hiring in a tier 1 tech firm who did not want to be named. The wait for many could range from a quarter to a year, while for at least 30% it could be for ever. "That means, some may not even be called at all," said an industry source. Kris Lakshmikanth, MD of recruitment firm Head Hunters, said things looked fairly bright at the beginning of the year. "But now, employers are keen to get rid of their bulges and benches." ‘Benches' include employees who do not currently have any work but wait in the expectation they would be offered work as fresh orders come in. Saraswathi Venkateswaran, president, CEO Search (India), said recession in the US had transmitted shockwaves to providers in India. Orders are expected to slow down substantially. "This has forced them to resort to instant cost-cutting measures. Induction and training are pretty expensive." In IT, people costs are over 40%, as against less than 10% in manufacturing and 20-25% in retail, banking and telecom, said Ahmed Ali, MD, Cornucopia, a recruitment process outsourcing firm. A few quarters ago, companies were vying with each other to mop up freshers from campuses across the country. "All these were futuristic hiring’s. The industry has now realized that the margins are shrinking. Many of them already have a large army of one-to-three-year-experience talent on board. So many are delaying or putting a stop to fresh hiring this year," said Gautham Sinha, CEO, TVA Infotech. "There is reason to be apprehensive. But this staggering is mostly precautionary. Some tech firms are even planning not to fill their vacancies," said Anjan Dutta, vice president (staffing) in Cambridge Solutions.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
economy losess employment in feb
WASHINGTON — The worst fears of consumers, investors and Washington officials were confirmed on Friday, as deepening paralysis on Wall Street collided with stark new evidence of falling employment and a likely recession.In a report that was far worse than most analysts had expected, the Labor Department estimated that the nation had lost 63,000 jobs in February. It was the second consecutive monthly decline, and third straight drop for private-sector jobs.
Even before the bad news on jobs emerged, the Federal Reserve was already racing to ease the latest crisis in the credit markets, where seemingly rock-solid companies have been caught short because the markets are devaluing the collateral they had posted to back billions of dollars in loans. Much of that collateral consists of mortgages.
In a surprise announcement early Friday, the Federal Reserve said it would inject about $200 billion into the nation’s banking system this month — with more to come after that — by offering banks one-month loans at low rates and in return letting them pledge mortgage-backed bonds and even riskier assets as collateral.
Though monthly payroll data are notoriously volatile and subject to revision, the jobs report was so bleak that many of the few remaining optimists on Wall Street threw in the towel and conceded that the United States was already in a recession.
“Godot has arrived,” wrote Edward Yardeni, who had been one of Wall Street’s most relentlessly upbeat forecasters. “I’ve been rooting for the muddling through scenario. However, the credit crisis continues to worsen and has become a full blown credit crunch, which is depressing the real economy.”
The convulsions in the credit markets were spurred in part when Thornburg Mortgage, one of the nation’s biggest independent mortgage lenders, and Carlyle Capital, the offspring of one of the country’s largest private equity firms, failed to meet demands by lenders to post more cash or pledge other assets, also known as margin calls, on debts that had been backed by packages of mortgages. Fed officials said Friday that they were pumping money into the system not in response to the poor jobs data but rather to the growing unwillingness or inability of investors to finance even routine business deals. Fed officials have long feared that anxiety about credit losses would create a “negative feedback loop,” or self-perpetuating spiral of rising unemployment, more home foreclosures and yet more credit losses.
“You have big credit losses that make it harder to get new credit, which means the economy starts to slow down and foreclosures go up,” said Nigel Gault, a senior economist at Global Insight, a forecasting firm. “Then you get even bigger credit losses, which makes banks even less willing to lend and you keep spiraling down.”
The Fed’s problem is that its main weapons against a downturn — lower interest rates and easier money — are ill-suited to a crisis that stems from collapsing confidence about credit quality.
Even though the central bank slashed short-term interest rates twice in January, and clearly signaled that it would cut them again on March 18, rates for home mortgages have risen and rates for many forms of commercial loans have jumped sharply.
“There has been a tug-of-war under way between deteriorating credit conditions and monetary policy,” wrote Laurence H. Meyer, a former Fed governor and now a forecaster at Macroeconomic Advisers. As a result, he said, credit conditions have remained almost as tight as ever.
The darkening economic outlook, coming just nine months before presidential elections, puts enormous pressure on President Bush and could pose a problem for Senator John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president. Typically, the party in power has not been able to hold onto the White House when the economy is in a recession in an election year.
President Bush, in a hastily arranged appearance before television cameras on Friday afternoon, acknowledged that the economy had slowed but predicted that it would get a lift this summer from the $168 billion href="http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/subjects/u/united_states_economy/economic_stimulus/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier">stimulus package of tax rebates and temporary tax cuts that Congress recently passed.
“Losing a job is painful, and I know Americans are concerned about the economy,” Mr. Bush said. “The good news is, we anticipated this and took decisive action to bolster the economy, by passing a growth package that will put money into the hands of American workers and businesses.”
Edward P. Lazear, chairman of President Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, said the White House has downgraded its earlier forecasts but still believed that the tax rebates of up to $1,200 for many families will help the economy escape a recession.
Monday, March 10, 2008
Lasik Vision Correction - Important And Useful Facts And Tips You Should Know
Lasik Eye surgery is the logical choice if you are one of the millions of people that are tired of having to wear glasses or pack around a lot of accessories to maintain your contact lenses. For many vision problems,Lasik is a very common and effective treatment.
Do you need to safely correct your vision?
Do your vision problems increase…
While you are playing sports? When you’re reading the newspaper? While you’re out for a swim?
If you’re looking for a safe laser eye treatment, then you must read right to the end of this article…
There are plenty of easy to locate and safe surgical eye treatments for you to check out, especially if you are looking for online information…
The truth about how to benefit from Laser eye treatment
It’s a good idea to weigh your options when selecting a qualified refractive eye treatment clinic that you feel comfortable with. You should get a full eye examination by your refractive surgeon that will help him determine your suitability, if you are considering Laser eye correction.
Regarding the risks, potential benefits and any suitable to alternatives of this treatment, you should get a complete and thorough consultation from the ophthalmologist after your eye exam.
Ideal LASIK vision surgery candidates need to have a realistic expectation of the results as well an understanding of the risks and serious commitment to reducing their dependence on corrective lenses and eyeglasses. There are certain guidelines to meet that will establish if you’re a good candidate for Laser corrective eye surgery.
Some patients have corneas that are thinner than normal.They are not good candidates for this procedure. If your prescription has shown no significant changes in the last twelve months, you are a good candidate for Laser eye treatment.
Laser eye treatment is the first choice of many people opting for refractive eye surgery today. The safety of this procedure is well-documented and you will feel only a mild discomfort. Laser eye treatment is a routine procedure. Both eyes can safely be treated on within the same visit.
A patient’s vision improvement after Laser eye treatment is virtually instantaneous. Even if you’re not a good candidate for this treatment, you can still take advantage of all the many other alternative methods of treatment available to you. Although there can be no guarantees - the majority of Laser eye treatment clients are delighted with the surgical results.
David Parton is a researcher of Eye Laser Refractive Surgery including Types Of Laser Eye Surgery Before you risk Eye Laser Refractive Surgery, Learn what you need to know to have a safe Eye Laser Refractive Surgery procedure.
wicked Laser
Wicked Lasers' Torch Flashlight Melts Everything In Sight—Including ItselfThe Torch, from Wicked Lasers, is billed as the most powerful flashlight in the world. After using this $300 device, we can’t really argue with that, although it might also be the most dangerous flashlight in the world.In addition to pumping out a blinding 4100 lumens (just about every other commercial flashlight clocks in at well under 100), the Torch is supposed to be able to set fire to paper, melt plastic and even scramble eggs. We gave it a try with toilet paper (unused, thank you), and it only took seconds to bring the first whiffs of smoke.Put simply, this thing is like a light saber. Just the reflection off of a paper towel was painfully bright and had us seeing stars. And as we recovered our vision, our sense of smell alerted us to another concern: melting metal from some smoldering contact coils within the flashlight. After less than two minutes, the battery was blackened and giving off smoke, stinking up PM’s test lab. [Check out the ruins in the video here; story continues below ...] We put the used battery to a voltmeter, and found it to be completely dead—not a promising sign. So while the Torch may seem like a camper’s dream (lots of light, instant fire), we’d recommend backpackers stick to Zippos and LED head lamps for now. —Seth Porges
How to Make Consistent Profits Trading Forex
The key to success in making consistent profit in the Forex market is the confidence level of the trader. With confidence as a by product one can take money out of the market. Traders can regularly take small amounts of money out of the market through their knowledge and skills. Therefore the confidence level will grow and in time they will become bigger traders.
Volatility is very good for the Forex trader because it allows the trader to take advantage of the surges due to perceptional buying or selling. This helps in reaping a good profit. The trader should follow one particular strategy and keeps sticking to it in order to attain a consistent profit.
The use of indicators like Moving Average Convergence Divergence (MACD) histogram or Slow Stochastic Indicators indicates the future movement of the market in one direction or another.
Financial knowledge plays a vital role in making the traders to learn and understand the Forex market. This understanding helps them in forecasting the future price movements of the currencies based on economic, political, environmental and other relevant factors and statistics that will affect the basic supply and demand underlying the foreign currencies. The trader’s personal and financial objectives also play a key role.
In order to make consistent profit one should use valid data and get odds on his side. The traders should develop their own trading strategy and verify it through back testing then track the important metrics of the trading to facilitate focused and efficient improvements. Also emotional management is the key to maintain consistency and maximize profit in the Forex currency trading.
Make a Killing Trading Forex! Forex Killer is the place to visit
Forex Currency Trading - The Latest Vogue
Forex currency trading is something that is almost becoming a sort of fad in many parts of the world. Before you take a plunge into forex trading it is always preferable that you equip yourself with at least the basics of it. Such knowledge is always bound to stand by you in the long run. You should for instance always educate yourself about the currencies that you intend to trade. You should always know a lot of things in detail about the country whose currency that you intend to deal with in the forex market. Such knowledge will help you in predicting the market tendency much more accurately.
Experts in the field always recommend beginners to initially go in for smaller accounts and then gradually move on to higher accounts. It is because in the field of forex currency trading it is only through practice that one gets perfect. Starting off with a mini forex account for example is a good option which lets you minimize your losses while you also get to learn about the intricacies of the forex market.
It is only through constant practice and with experience that you will be successful in the forex market. This is one reason why there are more successful corporations than individuals when it comes to the forex market trade, unlike the case of the stock market. Experience teaches you a lot of things in the field of forex currency trading. For instance margin trading by beginners is bound to make them lose a lot of money. Until and unless someone is sure about the entire process of forex currency trading, you should stay away from things such as margin trading.
Forex currency trading is a complex field involving a lot of players such as dealers, global money managers, international brokers and multinational corporations. There are many instances when even the governments of several countries intervene or get involved in the process, particularly when there is a need to provide stabilization to their respective currencies. It is for this reason that you should first of all equip yourself with the adequate knowledge before you deal with forex currency trading. Experts therefore always recommend that you test forex trading strategies initially with a demo account before shifting to bigger accounts. You should always remember that there is a significant amount of risk of loss involved in forex trading. A realistic evaluation of your expectations is what you need when you deal with forex currency trading.
Experts in the field always recommend beginners to initially go in for smaller accounts and then gradually move on to higher accounts. It is because in the field of forex currency trading it is only through practice that one gets perfect. Starting off with a mini forex account for example is a good option which lets you minimize your losses while you also get to learn about the intricacies of the forex market.
It is only through constant practice and with experience that you will be successful in the forex market. This is one reason why there are more successful corporations than individuals when it comes to the forex market trade, unlike the case of the stock market. Experience teaches you a lot of things in the field of forex currency trading. For instance margin trading by beginners is bound to make them lose a lot of money. Until and unless someone is sure about the entire process of forex currency trading, you should stay away from things such as margin trading.
Forex currency trading is a complex field involving a lot of players such as dealers, global money managers, international brokers and multinational corporations. There are many instances when even the governments of several countries intervene or get involved in the process, particularly when there is a need to provide stabilization to their respective currencies. It is for this reason that you should first of all equip yourself with the adequate knowledge before you deal with forex currency trading. Experts therefore always recommend that you test forex trading strategies initially with a demo account before shifting to bigger accounts. You should always remember that there is a significant amount of risk of loss involved in forex trading. A realistic evaluation of your expectations is what you need when you deal with forex currency trading.
13 things your stock broker won't tell you
Axiom One:Where there is profit, there is always risk. Greater the opportunity of profit, greater the possibility of loss:There is a close direct relationship between the risk and the reward. Higher the reward, greater the risk. Though this is fairly simple, it is always observed in breach.Axiom Two: Gentlemen who prefer BONDS, don’t know what they are missing. On Bonds, there is no return ON our money; there is only return OF our money:Bonds being Debt instruments unlike equity, yield only fixed return and with inflation and income tax factored in, there is often no return at all. Axiom Three: Equity Investment is “risk” investment:Investing in equity shares of companies is risk related because returns are linked to the company’s profits unlike investing in bank deposits or bonds or debentures where the returns are fixed and accrue to investors regardless of the company’s profits.Axiom Four: Stock market behaviour is unpredictable:Stock market behaviour is dependent on human behaviour and since times immemorial, it has been established that human behaviour can never be predicted with any reasonable accuracy; and hence we have fluctuations in prices of commodities, things and stocks based on greed, emotions, hopes, fantasies, fear and dreams resulting in opportunities of making money out of such fluctuations!Axiom Five: Not all common stocks are common:Though equity shares as an investment class is one, each company has a distinct identity and performs differently and therefore rewards its investors also differently. Axiom Six: Investing is nothing but arbitrage of ignorance:Investing is basically profiting from pricing and difference in market perception of a given product at a given point of time. Stock market is one place where the buyer and the seller both think that they are smart in their decision. Axiom Seven: Elephants don’t gallop, zebras do:Stock prices of big companies with large capitalizations move up or down rather slowly compared to smaller companies because there is not much of market ignorance on big companies to capitalize on. Hence smaller companies tend to reward its investors more handsomely. Axiom Eight: Equity investment is not for everyone, nor for all times of a person’s life:One needs not only “cash” but also “courage” to be an equity investor. There has to be a positive mental temperament and willingness to absorb occasional losses. Those prone to panic at losses should remain invested in fixed deposits with banks and Government Bonds. If you don’t know who you are, stock market is too expensive a place to find it out! Even for a risk loving investor, there is no single static investment strategy valid from his “cradle” to “crematorium”.Axiom Nine: Investors make mistake in buying not good stocks at high prices but in buying bad stocks at low prices.A lay investor tends to buy unsound companies at cheap prices instead of solid companies at high prices. Axiom Ten: Equity investment can’t maximize your “income”; but it can maximize your “wealth”.Actual yield by way of dividends on equity shares with reference to their market value is often as low as 1 percent on our investment. But capital appreciation in equity values can be mind blowingly high. Ask initial investors of Infosys, Pantaloon to name only two companies. Axiom Eleven: Saving for investment is not a punishment. Investing is making conscious choices about how you will use your money. It is not about choosing to live rich or die rich. It is about how you want you and your dear ones should live during your lifetime and thereafter. Axiom Twelve: On Stock Prices:(i) There is no “high” price or “low” price of a stock. There is only the “market” price of the stock nor any price too “high” for you to buy or too “low” for you to sell.(ii) In isolation, price of a stock is not relevant. What is important is whether a share is “underpriced” or “overpriced”, overvalued or undervalued.(iii) We do not invest in Stock Market Index; nor in Stock Market; nor in individual companies. We invest in a stock at a price at the correct “time”. (iv) You can’t control the “market” nor the individual stock prices; but you can control your “reaction” to the market.(v) Intelligent investing is knowing “what” to buy; smart investing is knowing “when” to buy. (vi) Your profit is determined by your purchase price and not your sale price. Timing your purchase is important. (vii) Don’t ask the price of the stock, ask what is the worth of the entire company to know whether the stock is worth investing. Axiom Thirteen: On Share Brokers:(i) Don’t expect your broker to help you to earn “for” you. He is there to earn “from” you.(ii) The sub-broker made money and the main broker made money and two out of three making money in a single transaction is not a bad bargain. (iii) Never ask a broker whether you should buy a particular stock, it is like asking a barber if you needed a haircut
Open Ocean Lab FLIP Vessel: How it
A carefully choreographed sequence of flooded ballast tanks turns this craft from a boat to a buoy in a half hour.
Horizontal
22.5º
45º
Vertical
The operator floods tanks 7B, 3B and part of 1T. The actual flip begins as 6B fills with water. Tanks 1B, 2 and 4 are open to the ocean and flood quickly; controlled flooding of tanks 1T and 3T slows the descent.
FLIP passes through a point of instability, and then begins to move faster. Flooding of tank 6 is usually stopped at half-full; its level varies according to the amount of cargo.
The vessel is ballasted; all flooding stops. FLIP races through the next 45 degrees at speeds of 3.5 mph vertically and 6 mph laterally.
FLIP hits vertical, bobs and spins in several clockwise 360s. The operator equalizes the water level between the two halves of tank 7 to ensure the vessel is plumb.
Shaped like a giant baseball bat, the 700-ton FLIP, or Floating Instrument Platform, is a Navy barge operated by Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. Once towed to a site, the vessel flips to vertical. “It was built in 1962 to refine acoustic targeting for submarine rockets, but scientists quickly realized that it would be useful for all kinds of research,” says Bill Gaines, FLIP’s program director. “So 45 years later, FLIP still serves the oceanographic community.” And it is still one of a kind.
Click for a more detailed, hi-res version of the illustration above.
Stability
Tanks 5, 8 and 9, and parts of tanks 6 and 7, remain filled with air to keep FLIP buoyant. Like the Louisville Slugger that the vessel was modeled from, FLIP increases in diameter from bow to stern — a profile that contributes to its stability when vertical. “A design criterion for FLIP was that it move less than one-tenth of a passing wave’s height,” Gaines says.
Staying in place
Three nylon lines, each connected to a chain and anchor weighing a total of 9 tons, maintain FLIP’s position. For some research projects, however, FLIP is allowed to drift unmoored — on one occasion, for 150 miles.
Power
Though it has no propulsion, FLIP has a small, hydraulically operated thruster that can rotate the vessel and maintain a heading. FLIP also has three diesel generators that supply 340 kilowatts of power. These ride high above the water so that they don’t contaminate acoustic data collected by FLIP’s underwater sensors.
Orientation
The engines, large galley equipment and bunks are mounted on trunnions, allowing the vessel to rotate around them, and then are locked into place with pins. Every room has a door in both the wall and ceiling, and there are two showers — one for the boat’s horizontal position and one for its vertical.
Flipping back
Reorienting to horizontal takes only half as long, but involves twice as many steps as the vertical flip. Up to 3000 cu. ft. of compressed air, stored at 250 psi, is blown into the ballast tanks — pushing water back out through the flood openings. The operator floods tank 9B so that the keel remains down as the vessel swings back to the surface.
Ocean science
FLIP’s stability and soundlessness make it an ideal platform for listening to ocean acoustics; hydrophones can detect anything from whale calls to underwater earthquakes. One recent find: the sound of all-night fish choruses as loud as fans in a stadium stomping their feet. Other sensors, lowered from the deck by booms and winches, can measure temperature, wave height and water density. Doppler sonar deployed along FLIP can pinpoint the motion inside waves with an accuracy of one centimeter per second in a cubic kilometer of ocean. “It’s hard to measure wiggly things, like waves, from a ship that’s bouncing,” says Robert Pinkel, a physical oceanographer at Scripps. “I’ve spent a couple of years total on FLIP over the course of my life — it’s been a godsend.”
Friday, March 7, 2008
Behind the Scenes of 10,000 B.C.'s Saber-Toothed F/X Realism
Find the best christmas pictures and photos for a happy holiday spirit.
It was late 2005 when Alex Wuttke got the call: He had two years to rebuild the extinct. But it wasn’t the digital archaeology that forced Wuttke, computer-graphics supervisor at London F/X house Double Negative, into what he half-jokingly remembers as “sheer panic.” It was that damn saber-toothed tiger’s close-up—snarling, fur-bristling and, if notoriously over-the-top director Roland Emmerich had his way with the CG frenzy that would become 10,000 B.C., soaking wet.
“Obviously, it’s a lot of trepidation,” Wuttke says, remembering what his team was feeling during early effects planning for the epic action-adventure flick, which opens this weekend. “Whenever you’re talking about fur and close-ups, that instantly raises the bar. But then the fur’s interaction with water—it was majorly obvious that it’d be highly challenging for us to complete this work. But we jumped at the opportunity.”
Creating a photo-realistic animal isn’t like building a kick-ass robot from scratch or even rendering a giant tidal wave that will take out New York City. Creature work is tougher than that, requiring specially modified CGI tools, numerous visual-effects companies, hundreds of hours of HD video of living animals and thousands of photos to get the job done. Even though Wuttke and co. had an animated version of the tiger with the fur package ready six weeks after they landed the job, it took a year to develop the final version.
The saber-tooth, a mythical beast that can speak to only one crucial character in 10,000 B.C., actually had its digital birthday a few months before that frightening phone call, when visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas came onboard. Though mammoths and so-called “terror birds” combine with the tiger to make up 280 of the film’s 641 F/X shots, all those tight shots of the dripping feline made it her primary focus. “Everything on the tiger’s face is moving subtly,” Goulekas says. “Water by itself is really hard, fur by itself is really hard, and suddenly you have the two of them interacting with one another. That frightened me.”
Goulekas, a veteran of The Day After Tomorrow and The Fifth Element, dug through scientific research of saber-tooth fossil records and renderings to create concept art. That allowed Patrick Tatopoulos Studios (I, Robot, Independence Day) to sculpt plastic models, or macquettes, that could be “cyber-scanned” into a computer by a rotating laser that mapped points from the fake tiger. With a topographically accurate model online, Goulekas and her used the scan to create a 3D storyboard of the action, which allowed Emmerich to block scenes.
At the same time, Goulekas passed off the cyber-scanned file to the character riggers at Double Negative, who created a 3D model on top of it. Typically, riggers build virtual bones and place them within a creature to move it, without worrying much about accuracy. But for 10,000 B.C., the artists examined veterinary books to render a scaled tiger anatomy that was accurate even between skin and bones. “We had a skeleton in there that would move digital muscles around as well,” Wuttke says. “In certain shots you can see when a leg moves forward, there’s a whole collection of muscles that’ll fire and drag the skin with it.”
Even as the riggers and animators were making the cat move, Goulekas’s team had to finalize its look. The historical record factored in, but the tiger’s appearance was primarily inspired by the best art reference available: his descendants. The most important part of her team’s research, Goulekas says, was the thousands of photos gathered from zoos around the world. (She’s no stranger to this approach, having snapped over 50,000 pictures of a single New York City block for The Day After Tomorrow.) Goulekas also travelled to the Tala Game Reserve in Durbin, South Africa, to observe how lions, tigers and leopards moved, filming hours and hours of footage with two HD cameras. “The camera operators would take a front and side view of a tiger walking, running, jumping,” she says. “Then we’d sync those videos together so the animators could create movement over them—sort of like a poor man’s motion capture.”
Once they had enough photos in hand, Double Negative broke them into categories and uploaded them to a Web site. Then Goulekas began the painstaking process of picking parts for her tiger—the eyes from a leopard, the nose of one tiger and the nose coloring of another. But the fur was even more complex, with Goulekas and Emmerich eventually settling on a spot-stripe combo inspired by ligers, a cross between a lion and a tiger.
And that was only the beginning of a complex year. “When you first put the fur on, it’s all sticking straight up in the air like it’s got static shock,” Wuttke explains, “so we developed a whole bunch of grooming tools that would allow us to comb it and style it.” This allowed Double Negative designers to determine—albeit painstakingly—the length and density of fur. While the saber-tooth got its CG haircut, texture painters developed maps that would determine the fineness of the markings and the fur system, which they used as a basis for how to color the fur.
Meanwhile, the reference Goulekas had drummed up went to Double Negative’s texture painters, who began adding the skin, nose and whiskers over the model in addition to fur. But as animators simultaneously began to add and modify parts for motion testing, unforeseen consequences—an odd wrinkle, sunken eyes, not enough cheekbone or unnaturally large brow—would crop up. After meeting with Goulekas, her team would make each tweak and release it back into the system, in which expressions were built on separate canvases and fed into a master model to avoid overlap.
While creating a realistic extinct beast is one thing, one trapped in water is another digital headache altogether, with custom tools necessary for any sort of believable soaked fur. “The only real way to sell the motion of the tiger thrashing about in the water was to simulate the water first,” Wuttke says. “Then the question arises: If the fur’s moving around in the water, is there a feedback loop after that? Does the movement of the fur within the water somehow affect the way the water’s moving?” To find out, Double Negative designers took hours of high-def footage of fur rugs being dunked into a water tank.
Once the scenes were shot and the tiger was close to finished, Goulekas scanned the plates and began roughing out the creature’s actions using a low-res model. “Until somebody actually blocks the creatures in, you’re not sure of the speed,” she says, adding that adjustments would go back to the editor and director before final animation and lighting. “That way you don’t waste time with the final animators at the facilities, and you’re making sure you’re having them animate stuff you are going to use.”
The last time Wuttke and Goulekas touched the tiger was probably a year and a half ago. The end product of a solid year of labor—and more than 50 versions of the model—is a saber-toothed tiger that lopes easily across the screen, his muscles rippling under a fur coat that looks real enough to touch. When he snarls, in extreme close-up, there is nary an out-of-place wrinkle. When he comes out of that water-filled pit, he looks appropriately wet and appropriately cranky—just like a cat fresh out of the bath.
“We’re absolutely over the moon with the final product,” Wuttke says. “It was such a long process, and you always take a bit of risk with these kinds of things. But we’re very happy with the look of it.”
It was late 2005 when Alex Wuttke got the call: He had two years to rebuild the extinct. But it wasn’t the digital archaeology that forced Wuttke, computer-graphics supervisor at London F/X house Double Negative, into what he half-jokingly remembers as “sheer panic.” It was that damn saber-toothed tiger’s close-up—snarling, fur-bristling and, if notoriously over-the-top director Roland Emmerich had his way with the CG frenzy that would become 10,000 B.C., soaking wet.
“Obviously, it’s a lot of trepidation,” Wuttke says, remembering what his team was feeling during early effects planning for the epic action-adventure flick, which opens this weekend. “Whenever you’re talking about fur and close-ups, that instantly raises the bar. But then the fur’s interaction with water—it was majorly obvious that it’d be highly challenging for us to complete this work. But we jumped at the opportunity.”
Creating a photo-realistic animal isn’t like building a kick-ass robot from scratch or even rendering a giant tidal wave that will take out New York City. Creature work is tougher than that, requiring specially modified CGI tools, numerous visual-effects companies, hundreds of hours of HD video of living animals and thousands of photos to get the job done. Even though Wuttke and co. had an animated version of the tiger with the fur package ready six weeks after they landed the job, it took a year to develop the final version.
The saber-tooth, a mythical beast that can speak to only one crucial character in 10,000 B.C., actually had its digital birthday a few months before that frightening phone call, when visual effects supervisor Karen Goulekas came onboard. Though mammoths and so-called “terror birds” combine with the tiger to make up 280 of the film’s 641 F/X shots, all those tight shots of the dripping feline made it her primary focus. “Everything on the tiger’s face is moving subtly,” Goulekas says. “Water by itself is really hard, fur by itself is really hard, and suddenly you have the two of them interacting with one another. That frightened me.”
Goulekas, a veteran of The Day After Tomorrow and The Fifth Element, dug through scientific research of saber-tooth fossil records and renderings to create concept art. That allowed Patrick Tatopoulos Studios (I, Robot, Independence Day) to sculpt plastic models, or macquettes, that could be “cyber-scanned” into a computer by a rotating laser that mapped points from the fake tiger. With a topographically accurate model online, Goulekas and her used the scan to create a 3D storyboard of the action, which allowed Emmerich to block scenes.
At the same time, Goulekas passed off the cyber-scanned file to the character riggers at Double Negative, who created a 3D model on top of it. Typically, riggers build virtual bones and place them within a creature to move it, without worrying much about accuracy. But for 10,000 B.C., the artists examined veterinary books to render a scaled tiger anatomy that was accurate even between skin and bones. “We had a skeleton in there that would move digital muscles around as well,” Wuttke says. “In certain shots you can see when a leg moves forward, there’s a whole collection of muscles that’ll fire and drag the skin with it.”
Even as the riggers and animators were making the cat move, Goulekas’s team had to finalize its look. The historical record factored in, but the tiger’s appearance was primarily inspired by the best art reference available: his descendants. The most important part of her team’s research, Goulekas says, was the thousands of photos gathered from zoos around the world. (She’s no stranger to this approach, having snapped over 50,000 pictures of a single New York City block for The Day After Tomorrow.) Goulekas also travelled to the Tala Game Reserve in Durbin, South Africa, to observe how lions, tigers and leopards moved, filming hours and hours of footage with two HD cameras. “The camera operators would take a front and side view of a tiger walking, running, jumping,” she says. “Then we’d sync those videos together so the animators could create movement over them—sort of like a poor man’s motion capture.”
Once they had enough photos in hand, Double Negative broke them into categories and uploaded them to a Web site. Then Goulekas began the painstaking process of picking parts for her tiger—the eyes from a leopard, the nose of one tiger and the nose coloring of another. But the fur was even more complex, with Goulekas and Emmerich eventually settling on a spot-stripe combo inspired by ligers, a cross between a lion and a tiger.
And that was only the beginning of a complex year. “When you first put the fur on, it’s all sticking straight up in the air like it’s got static shock,” Wuttke explains, “so we developed a whole bunch of grooming tools that would allow us to comb it and style it.” This allowed Double Negative designers to determine—albeit painstakingly—the length and density of fur. While the saber-tooth got its CG haircut, texture painters developed maps that would determine the fineness of the markings and the fur system, which they used as a basis for how to color the fur.
Meanwhile, the reference Goulekas had drummed up went to Double Negative’s texture painters, who began adding the skin, nose and whiskers over the model in addition to fur. But as animators simultaneously began to add and modify parts for motion testing, unforeseen consequences—an odd wrinkle, sunken eyes, not enough cheekbone or unnaturally large brow—would crop up. After meeting with Goulekas, her team would make each tweak and release it back into the system, in which expressions were built on separate canvases and fed into a master model to avoid overlap.
While creating a realistic extinct beast is one thing, one trapped in water is another digital headache altogether, with custom tools necessary for any sort of believable soaked fur. “The only real way to sell the motion of the tiger thrashing about in the water was to simulate the water first,” Wuttke says. “Then the question arises: If the fur’s moving around in the water, is there a feedback loop after that? Does the movement of the fur within the water somehow affect the way the water’s moving?” To find out, Double Negative designers took hours of high-def footage of fur rugs being dunked into a water tank.
Once the scenes were shot and the tiger was close to finished, Goulekas scanned the plates and began roughing out the creature’s actions using a low-res model. “Until somebody actually blocks the creatures in, you’re not sure of the speed,” she says, adding that adjustments would go back to the editor and director before final animation and lighting. “That way you don’t waste time with the final animators at the facilities, and you’re making sure you’re having them animate stuff you are going to use.”
The last time Wuttke and Goulekas touched the tiger was probably a year and a half ago. The end product of a solid year of labor—and more than 50 versions of the model—is a saber-toothed tiger that lopes easily across the screen, his muscles rippling under a fur coat that looks real enough to touch. When he snarls, in extreme close-up, there is nary an out-of-place wrinkle. When he comes out of that water-filled pit, he looks appropriately wet and appropriately cranky—just like a cat fresh out of the bath.
“We’re absolutely over the moon with the final product,” Wuttke says. “It was such a long process, and you always take a bit of risk with these kinds of things. But we’re very happy with the look of it.”
Monday, March 3, 2008
Las Vegas Reak Estate: Hotels
The Las Vegas Valley is more than just about bright lights. In fact, it is one of the most desirable properties in the world, especially from a business perspective. Nevada residents do not pay state income taxes, have low unemployment rates, and of course, all the entertainment they could ever want.
As the entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas is home to some of the world’s largest and most expensive hotels, restaurants, malls, and tourist attractions.
An estimated 5000 people move into Las Vegas daily. Las Vegas has a strong economy and boasts a very bullish real estate market. In the last fifteen years, $15 billion has been spent on infrastructure alone. And that’s not all. Experts predict that $25 billion will be spent within the next five years. And you know what that means: opportunity.
With Las Vegas real estate prices reaching new highs, its time to stake your claim now. Start a business. A hotel would be excellent. While there are many hotels in Las Vegas, there is still room for growth. Think of the people moving in and out of Las Vegas daily. These people can be your customers. In fact, they most certainly will be, as long as you have a decent place and offer good service
As the entertainment capital of the world, Las Vegas is home to some of the world’s largest and most expensive hotels, restaurants, malls, and tourist attractions.
An estimated 5000 people move into Las Vegas daily. Las Vegas has a strong economy and boasts a very bullish real estate market. In the last fifteen years, $15 billion has been spent on infrastructure alone. And that’s not all. Experts predict that $25 billion will be spent within the next five years. And you know what that means: opportunity.
With Las Vegas real estate prices reaching new highs, its time to stake your claim now. Start a business. A hotel would be excellent. While there are many hotels in Las Vegas, there is still room for growth. Think of the people moving in and out of Las Vegas daily. These people can be your customers. In fact, they most certainly will be, as long as you have a decent place and offer good service
begin trading with cheap online stock trading picks
Investing has now become very easy through online stock trading. If you are a beginner, the best way to start investing is with small and cheap online stock trading picks.
The good thing about investing in stock online is that you are directly involve with trading itself. There are many brokerage firms that offer start-up accounts, as well as cheap online stock trading for beginners. You essentially become your own stock broker, directly connected to the goings-on on the stock market floor. Try checking out the varied online stock trading firms and pick one that gives you the best leeway in terms of your experience.
There are a lot of online brokerage firms that cater to individual non-professional stock traders who want that hands-on approach in dealing with their investments. For these beginners, many online stock experts say that starting with small and cheap online stock trading picks is the best.
Being guided by online brokerage firms is another advantage for a beginner doing online stock trading. A lot of brokerages offer cheap online stock trading for beginner-investors, before allowing you to move to bigger and riskier stock picks.
Beginners can start investing for as low as five or three, or even one dollar per share! Once you get the hang of doing cheap online stock trading investments, then you can move on to bigger shares.
Getting fresh updates is another advantage when you go for online stock market investing. Many online brokerage sites offer real-time quotes as part of their service and so you do get informed of the current trends and shifts in the stock you’re interested in (buying or selling). Other financial and market online news sites may also offer information about the stock market, and specifics stocks and options you may be looking to buy. However, what they don’t tell you is that making stock trades online is not instantaneous as it is on the floor.
From the time you make out a buy offer, till you get the stock that you want, twelve, or even twenty-four hours may have elapsed. This is where things can get sticky, if the market moves quickly on the stock of your choice, then the trading price that you might be seeing on your PC screen could may not what be the same as the real-time price. Apart from starting a cheap online stock trading account. One thing that the Internet can’t duplicate is the market hours. So, be sure to keep a pulse on what’s happening in your market so you can make adjustments to you online buying and selling.
Of course, the best obvious advantage with starting small and cheap online stock trading is that you can get a feel for online trading, while still learning the ropes. It’s a little like online poker: You start with nickels and dimes before you head to the Big Game. Starting with small and cheap online stock trading as opposed to starting with bigger valued stocks is that even if it is, just five, ten or even twenty dollars of your money, you learn and begin forming your own stock trading strategy. This way, your online stock trading experience begins to grow and making the transition to bigger accounts would be easier. Heck, you could probably do it fulltime, in no time.
The good thing about investing in stock online is that you are directly involve with trading itself. There are many brokerage firms that offer start-up accounts, as well as cheap online stock trading for beginners. You essentially become your own stock broker, directly connected to the goings-on on the stock market floor. Try checking out the varied online stock trading firms and pick one that gives you the best leeway in terms of your experience.
There are a lot of online brokerage firms that cater to individual non-professional stock traders who want that hands-on approach in dealing with their investments. For these beginners, many online stock experts say that starting with small and cheap online stock trading picks is the best.
Being guided by online brokerage firms is another advantage for a beginner doing online stock trading. A lot of brokerages offer cheap online stock trading for beginner-investors, before allowing you to move to bigger and riskier stock picks.
Beginners can start investing for as low as five or three, or even one dollar per share! Once you get the hang of doing cheap online stock trading investments, then you can move on to bigger shares.
Getting fresh updates is another advantage when you go for online stock market investing. Many online brokerage sites offer real-time quotes as part of their service and so you do get informed of the current trends and shifts in the stock you’re interested in (buying or selling). Other financial and market online news sites may also offer information about the stock market, and specifics stocks and options you may be looking to buy. However, what they don’t tell you is that making stock trades online is not instantaneous as it is on the floor.
From the time you make out a buy offer, till you get the stock that you want, twelve, or even twenty-four hours may have elapsed. This is where things can get sticky, if the market moves quickly on the stock of your choice, then the trading price that you might be seeing on your PC screen could may not what be the same as the real-time price. Apart from starting a cheap online stock trading account. One thing that the Internet can’t duplicate is the market hours. So, be sure to keep a pulse on what’s happening in your market so you can make adjustments to you online buying and selling.
Of course, the best obvious advantage with starting small and cheap online stock trading is that you can get a feel for online trading, while still learning the ropes. It’s a little like online poker: You start with nickels and dimes before you head to the Big Game. Starting with small and cheap online stock trading as opposed to starting with bigger valued stocks is that even if it is, just five, ten or even twenty dollars of your money, you learn and begin forming your own stock trading strategy. This way, your online stock trading experience begins to grow and making the transition to bigger accounts would be easier. Heck, you could probably do it fulltime, in no time.
Sunday, March 2, 2008
Trace the place with a call- reverse cell phone look up
Reverse cell phone lookups are a great way to find out information on someone when you only have a phone number or limited information on a particular person. The basic search services given by these reverse lookups are usually free but if you try to dig deeper with your search, you will be charged a certain fee. It is currently the second most popular tool used behind contact information searches.
A reverse cell phone search is actually much more secure then regular directory services because lots of cell phone numbers are already unlisted. These searches are services that actually give you access to a very exclusive database that has been built through painstaking effort, provided they are genuine, of course.
Free searches do not provide this level of information. Free reverse phone lookup services will provide you with the information you need, but they aren't good for anything other than landline numbers. Free reverse traces are pretty easy to do but hardly ever yield correct and up-to-date results. But in the end, whether you are performing a free or a paid search, the process is quick and painless.
The reverse cell phone lookup performs its responsibilities by searching through billions of numbers in white pages, directories, and databases and giving you the information you're looking for. These searches also give you the option to search by name to find cell phone numbers, home phone numbers and business numbers. Besides cell or regular phone numbers, a free reverse phone search has the potential to be utilized to discover emails and addresses. However, these free search tools do not have access to information that is unlisted in the easily accessible public domain.
How do I trace where a cell phone call came from? Perform a FREE preliminary reverse phone number search by visiting http://www.phonereversetrace.com to find the information you seek
A reverse cell phone search is actually much more secure then regular directory services because lots of cell phone numbers are already unlisted. These searches are services that actually give you access to a very exclusive database that has been built through painstaking effort, provided they are genuine, of course.
Free searches do not provide this level of information. Free reverse phone lookup services will provide you with the information you need, but they aren't good for anything other than landline numbers. Free reverse traces are pretty easy to do but hardly ever yield correct and up-to-date results. But in the end, whether you are performing a free or a paid search, the process is quick and painless.
The reverse cell phone lookup performs its responsibilities by searching through billions of numbers in white pages, directories, and databases and giving you the information you're looking for. These searches also give you the option to search by name to find cell phone numbers, home phone numbers and business numbers. Besides cell or regular phone numbers, a free reverse phone search has the potential to be utilized to discover emails and addresses. However, these free search tools do not have access to information that is unlisted in the easily accessible public domain.
How do I trace where a cell phone call came from? Perform a FREE preliminary reverse phone number search by visiting http://www.phonereversetrace.com to find the information you seek
To a newbie learning Online Forex Trading, it looks very simple in the beginning. Take currency pair EURUSD for instance, if you bullish on Euro, simply place a Buy order. Bearish on EUR, just short it. So easy, you may ask? The truth about Forex Trading is that it is a professional activity that not many traders will succeed in.
This being the first article, I will just go through a few very straight forward pointers on how to consistently generate Forex pips.
In the world of Forex currency trading, many newbie traders believe that Forex trading software or system that contains rocket science is more likely able to make money. It may be true, but how many of us will be able to find such a system or methodology? Why not just spend time and money to learn systems or trading methods that are simple but works?
In the Forex currency trading, the fact is simple systems just work best. Simple systems are more robust and easier to trade as you understand the logic and can therefore follow it with confidence when you are in a losing streak.
I personally feel that it is much simpler to trade with the trends rather than the ranging market. For many successful traders, once they are happy with a system or methodology, they stick with it. Remember, you only make money trading Forex, and not having 100 systems or trading methodologies but trading none of them.
In Forex trading, most traders succeeded primarily due to good money management. So long as your system or trading methodologies has a positive profit factor coupled with proper money management, you will succeed in the long run.
This being the first article, I will just go through a few very straight forward pointers on how to consistently generate Forex pips.
In the world of Forex currency trading, many newbie traders believe that Forex trading software or system that contains rocket science is more likely able to make money. It may be true, but how many of us will be able to find such a system or methodology? Why not just spend time and money to learn systems or trading methods that are simple but works?
In the Forex currency trading, the fact is simple systems just work best. Simple systems are more robust and easier to trade as you understand the logic and can therefore follow it with confidence when you are in a losing streak.
I personally feel that it is much simpler to trade with the trends rather than the ranging market. For many successful traders, once they are happy with a system or methodology, they stick with it. Remember, you only make money trading Forex, and not having 100 systems or trading methodologies but trading none of them.
In Forex trading, most traders succeeded primarily due to good money management. So long as your system or trading methodologies has a positive profit factor coupled with proper money management, you will succeed in the long run.
FOREX Trading For Biggeners
Almost all internet marketers have heard of forex trading or online currency trading as it is sometimes referred to and many are curious about how the forex trading system works and where they can go to learn forex trading.
In order to become a successful forex trader you need to know what forex trading is and how to successfully trade forex. In order to achieve sufficient knowledge it is vital to learn forex trading from experts. This can be done in the form of a forex tutorial and there are literally hundreds of forex companies offering online tutorials and guides.
An online forex tutorial will explain how the foreign exchange market works and will also explain the types of forex orders that are available to you as a forex trader. A forex tutorial will also explain about technical indicators and what they mean, the economic indicators you will need to be aware of and the various options and strategies that are available to you as a forex trader.
If you are new to forex trading then it is essential that you learn forex trading before parting with any of your hard earned cash. Many online forex companies offer free training and demonstrations that resemble that of real time forex trading. There are also forex trading courses available and these are also a valuable way to learn forex trading as you can refer to these course time and time again.
The most important aspect when it comes to forex trading is to learn forex trading so that you understand how to trade and how to trade successfully. The more you learn forex trading the more understanding you will have and the more success. Finding a forex tutorial or forex trading course is simple. All you need to do is a brief internet search and you will have a great deal of tutorials and courses to choose from. If you are serious about succeeding as a forex trader, then it’s down to you, learn forex trading now and learn to succeed.
In order to become a successful forex trader you need to know what forex trading is and how to successfully trade forex. In order to achieve sufficient knowledge it is vital to learn forex trading from experts. This can be done in the form of a forex tutorial and there are literally hundreds of forex companies offering online tutorials and guides.
An online forex tutorial will explain how the foreign exchange market works and will also explain the types of forex orders that are available to you as a forex trader. A forex tutorial will also explain about technical indicators and what they mean, the economic indicators you will need to be aware of and the various options and strategies that are available to you as a forex trader.
If you are new to forex trading then it is essential that you learn forex trading before parting with any of your hard earned cash. Many online forex companies offer free training and demonstrations that resemble that of real time forex trading. There are also forex trading courses available and these are also a valuable way to learn forex trading as you can refer to these course time and time again.
The most important aspect when it comes to forex trading is to learn forex trading so that you understand how to trade and how to trade successfully. The more you learn forex trading the more understanding you will have and the more success. Finding a forex tutorial or forex trading course is simple. All you need to do is a brief internet search and you will have a great deal of tutorials and courses to choose from. If you are serious about succeeding as a forex trader, then it’s down to you, learn forex trading now and learn to succeed.
Enterprise Content management
Enterprise content management systems help companies control, manage, utilize and share essential information, thereby optimizing the business process. It integrates with the organization’s applications, enhances the agility of content delivery to users, mitigates risk, and eliminates redundancy largely.
It is essential that companies select the right enterprise content management system (ECMS) as the cost of installing the ECMS can be hefty and an ECMS that is unsuitable for the business can be a very costly mistake. The type of business and how installing an ECMS will affect the business both need to be analyzed. All of the important stakeholders have to be involved in making the choice to select the right enterprise content management system. It will help if the company creates a list of its requirements.
Requirements of a Good Enterprise Content Management System: The most important users of an enterprise content management system are the content creators. All areas within the system have to be analyzed carefully to see what effect they have on the work done by the content creators. They need to have full access to all features to properly set up the system and make sure it is working for everyone who will use it. All systems should allow multiple users as well as non-technical authoring, single sourcing, have powerful linking capabilities, capture metadata, and be easy to use and maintain.
The system should ensure continuous flow of content without interruption. Users must have strict version control and it has to be easy to archive the content. It should have good security to prevent misuse of sensitive data and easily integrate with external systems.
The enterprise content management systems must produce pro-active reports to be used by users as well as administrators. Publishing of the reports is another aspect to be carefully considered and the style sheets, page templates and ability to support multiple formats have to be analyzed. The enterprise content management systems should be user-friendly and content must be easily tracked by good usage statistics. It should be easily accessible and easy to navigate; content must be able to be viewed using any browser. It is essential to train personnel to use the system effectively. The scalability of the enterprise content management system, the IT constraints and the resources required to install the system have to be clearly discussed and determined.
Enterprise content management systems ensure that all applications used in an organization deliver their content to a repository, which makes provides the information needed to the various applications on time. They are used by companies to capture, manage, store, deliver and preserve content.
Enterprise content management systems are a necessity in the ever changing and highly competitive business world. For an enterprise to function optimally, invisible but effective enterprise content management systems are mandatory. Selecting the right ECMS that is cost effective, that helps in organizing and managing a business and that helps users make informed decisions through the reliable availability of secure, accurate real-time information is vital. There are firms that offer products and services to help you run a successful business.
Business Owners all across the country are joining "The Community of Small Business Owners” to receive and provide strategies, insight, tips, support and more on starting, managing, growing, and selling their businesses. As a member, you will have access to true Millionaire Business Owners who will provide strategies and tips from their real-life experiences.
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