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Siof ~ Siof

Apr 23rd 2012, 16:51

Siof

Posted: 21 Apr 2012 09:45 AM PDT

News Alert: U.N. Security Council Unanimously Agrees to Send More Observers to Syria

Posted: 21 Apr 2012 09:19 AM PDT

Breaking News Alert
The New York Times
Saturday, April 21, 2012 -- 11:55 AM EDT
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U.N. Security Council Unanimously Agrees to Send More Observers to Syria

The United Nations Security Council unanimously approved on Saturday a resolution that expanded the number of observers in Syria to 300 from 30 and demanded an immediate halt to the violence that has been escalating since a cease-fire took effect over a week ago.

The resolution approved Saturday gives Secretary General Ban Ki-moon the authority to decide when to deploy the additional observers, based on developments on the grounds including "the consolidation of the cease-fire."

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Halloween Child Safety: What Parents Should Know - Family

Posted: 20 Apr 2012 06:34 PM PDT

People from all over the world often associate Halloween with fun and treats. Parents allow their children to go out and enjoy their trick and treat activities, without thinking about their child's safety to some degree. The truth is, Halloween is not just about fun and treats. Several reports have revealed that compared to the other usual nights, the Halloween nights are more dangerous to children ages 5 to 11. A large number of children were killed and injured during Halloween nights and this happens primarily because of lack of parent's supervision.

So what should parents do to prevent their children from getting injured at Halloween? How can they help their children have a safe and fun Halloween?

There are a lot of things that parents can do for their child's safety at Halloween. To know more about the most advisable Halloween child safety strategies, just read on below some of the worth noting Halloween child safety tips that are perfect for parents, guardians and children as well.

Halloween Child Safety Tips for Children:

* It is a rule of thumb for small children to go only to a well-lit house and remain only on porches rather than entering the house. * It is important to engage on trick or treat activities with a number of peers with you. If possible, a small child traveling in small groups should be accompanied by an adult.* For ultimate Halloween child safety, it is best to keep and know phone numbers and carry coins or cell phone for emergency calls.* Prepare name tags with addresses and attached them to Halloween costumes.* If you are given treats, don't eat them immediately. Instead, bring them home before eating so parents can inspect them.* Use costume swords and knives that are not sharp and rigid. You can consider the flexible ones, instead.* Walk on the neighborhoods with flashlights.* Stay on sidewalks and avoid crossing yards.* If you want to cross the street, cross at the corner, not between parked cars.* Stay together in a group before crossing.* If possible, choose and wear clothing that are bright, reflective and flame retardant.* Don't wear masks for that will only obstruct your vision. Try to use face paint.* Don't wear baggy or oversized costumes to prevent tripping.

Halloween Child Safety Tips for Parents:

* Don't let your children age below 12 to go out at Halloween nights by themselves. For ultimate Halloween childen safety, it is best to supervise them and their outing.* Set a curfew for older children.* Prepare homes for tricks or treaters by cleaning and clearing your porches, sidewalks, and lawns.* Inspect candies and candy wrappers for safety before letting the children eat them.* Make sure that the pedestrian area is safe for trick or treaters.* If you are driving, watch for children crossing the streets. Drive safely and slowly.

Those basically are the Halloween child safety tips. Just follow them and your children will surely have a fun and enjoyable Halloween experience.

Find insightful and useful information about Schooling and Education and Pre-Kindergarden at WebArticles.com.

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News Alert: Judge Sets Bail at $150,000 for Shooter in Trayvon Martin Case

Posted: 20 Apr 2012 08:59 AM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Friday, April 20, 2012 -- 11:35 AM EDT

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Judge Sets Bail at $150,000 for Shooter in Trayvon Martin Case

Judge Kenneth R. Lester Jr. of Seminole County Circuit Court set bail at $150,000 for George Zimmerman, the neighborhood watch volunteer who was arrested last week in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The judge also set conditions, including a curfew, on his release.

Mr. Zimmerman will not be released from jail on Friday. The judge said that he wanted to make sure security measures were in place for Mr. Zimmerman, who has received death threats.

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How to learn magic trick online - Entertainment

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 06:28 PM PDT

People like magic show because it's very entertaining. If youlove to play with your friends, magic shows can enlivenevents with your friends. Magic show full of miracles and make people happy.

Learning magic can be online with free and paid. You can get free magic trickor search for it on youtube or metacafe with the keyword "magic trick revealed" or "magic trick explained.Paid magic trick, you have to buy on magic tricks provider website.

If you are a person who will need to do magic tricks, you can learn card tricks, coin magic tricksor read people;s mind, then you can learn yourself.Learning magic can be learned via the Internet through the ebook and magic video that can be downloaded instantly.

-Learning through magic ebook download

Learning through the magic ebook download, you can buy it in the website that selling magic ebook that can be downloaded, of course we must pay via credit card or paypal. We must read the first effect will be played the trick, after that we canlearn the tricks pages via a secret solution. Magic trick ebook usually equipped with photos for moreeasier to learn. If we learn through the ebook and want to see the tricks that other people played, we canview on the youtube or Metacafe.

-Learning through magic trick video download

Learn magic tricks through magic trick videos are easier because you can watch the trick and find out the secretthrough audio and video. To learn magic through magic trick video download, first download the trick effect, and you can payvia credit card or paypal as cheap as $3, and magic tricks ready for download through your email.

Learn magic online is easy because the magic is varies, from close-up magic, street magic, mentalism, coin magic,pub trick.Learn magic more easily through the video because it provides a means of audio and video, and can be re-started again. Learning through the ebook, moredifficult because we must first read and understand to learn and it can be more expensive.

If you want to learn magic trick instantly, within 5 minute you'll be able to do a new magic trick.More about doing magic tricks

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News Alert: Levon Helm, Drummer and Singer for the Band, Dies at 71

Posted: 19 Apr 2012 01:26 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Thursday, April 19, 2012 -- 3:50 PM EDT

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Levon Helm, Drummer and Singer for the Band, Dies at 71

Levon Helm, who helped forge a deep-rooted American music as the drummer and singer for the Band, died on Thursday in Manhattan. He was 71 and lived in Woodstock, N.Y.

His death was announced by a spokeswoman for Vanguard Records, for which he had recorded several albums. He had been suffering from cancer for several years.

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The Dow is Crashing, and Inventions are Soaring! - Society

Posted: 18 Apr 2012 06:24 PM PDT

What do lipstick, chocolate, Pepto-Bismol and inventive products all have in common? They all sell better during recessions. There's been quite a media buzz about inventive products during this recession; from infomercials being the subject of documentaries, to front-page newspaper and website profiles of new innovations, never before have inventions been so hot. Newsweek even went so far as to declare The Snuggie, that soft blanket-like robe with a hit infomercial "an emblem of our times", as the sensationally funny, yet useful product became the source of jokes for Jay Leno (The Tonight Show), Saturday Night Live, countless blogs and YouTube videos. Whether they comfort or entertain, save money or time, inventions offer newness in a marketplace full of products consumers may already own. The challenge for the inventor is to tap into the needs and desires of the consumer in crisis, so that we may create products that help him in a time of need. Market research shows that while consumers in a recession may have little ability or will to spend money on big purchases like appliances or vacations, they still reward themselves with small indulgences like fancy ice creams, chocolate, modest gifts, or personal amusement and variety products. Because financial desperation is scary, there is an atmosphere of insecurity and anxiety. Candy, and other stress-relievers, such as liquor and movies, help alleviate that anxiety, and make people feel good temporarily. Saving money by "do-it-yourself" (DIY) methods is, of course, the most obvious trend in recessionary products. This includes inventions that are suitable for reuse and those that enable people to repair other products (both of which are cost-saving and environmentally green measures). It is no surprise that gardening has come back in vogue- the success of the "Topsy Turvy" hanging tomato planter and Aquaglobe automatic plant watering device are examples of this. Michelle Obama has even planted a vegetable garden at the White House- the first ever since the victory gardens of World War II. Gardening appeals to people who want to save money, but also to our survivalist, pioneering, do-it-yourself ethos. Gardening associations predict this trend to go up by 40%, while vegetable seed sales have already jumped 30%. This is also a continuation of the green environmentalist trend, and urban, container and rooftop gardening are other niche markets within this category.More Americans are stocking up on food, concerned about shortages and inflationary price gauging. Self-sufficiency is of the essence here, so inventors who create accessories for hunting, fishing and camping equipment could also do very well. Items that help people stow away, store, or can goods are useful. For a more exciting approach to grocery shopping, the fashionable Itslastik spandex bag expands to over twice it's size, and holds up to 45 pounds flexibly in any direction, while bouncing with the step of the user, making the load feel lighter. The product is meant for reuse, and is therefore certifiably "green". It is also inexpensive, bright and appealing to current 'hipster' fashion trends, and proudly made in the USA. Where there is fear, there is a need for safety. Crime rates are already spiking in these desperate times, so sales of security system and personal protection products are up. Meanwhile, the Snuggie did well because of our apparent need for a "security blanket" to comfort us. Stress relieving products (think the "Squeeze Ball") may do very well. Sex, love and romance also relieve stress, and, historically, romance has thrived during recessions, as there is more social upheaval, and the need for security drives people into the arms of another. That's why condom sales and ads for personal dating sites are up. The Snuggie, big enough for two, and clearly geared towards cuddling and nesting, also speaks in the language of love. Because many consumers lack the d isposable income to vacation or go out to restaurants, they are spending more time at home, entertaining, cooking, and organizing, so that their home is more pleasant and functional. Home organization products are critical, as consumers begin to control what little they still have- the home and their current possessions. Organizing and cleaning give a sense of control in a chaotic and unstable world. The highly successful ShamWow super-absorbent, reusable cloths are intended to replace disposable paper towels. Another popular nesting product doing well is The Wonder Hanger, an organization product that triples closet space by holding up to five garments on traditional hangers in a vertical cascade. Consumers during recessions are pushed to take stock of, inventory and repair what they already own, as opposed to going out and buying more stuff. As cheap credit has virtually dried up, the number of Americans driving significantly older used cars has seen a dramatic increase. T hese older cars often need more repair, so accessories related to auto repair and maintenance could see a huge spike in sales. 'Trading Down' to cheaper products is a given during recessions. To obtain a new look, many women replace buying a new outfit with the cheaper trick of buying a new lipstick or accessory. The "Lipstick Index", a term coined during the Great Depression, has never been so high as it is now, as women flaunt their need for visibility, and desirability, by purchasing and wearing lipstick (often red). In recessions, there is a greater need to look one's best- no slouches will be tolerated in the already precarious job market. Clothing repair and reuse is big, as are 'DIY' salon/beauty replacements. For example, the REM Spring facial hair removal tool has become a big hit, as many women who normally would pay for someone to wax off their unwanted hair are now using this reusable, battery-free metal spring instead. Meanwhile, acne and wrinkle reduction treat ment has been revolutionized with the invention of at-home light therapy kits. Verilux offers the ClearWave Soothing Skin System, a hand-held light 'wand' that uses Natural Spectrum light to kill acne bacteria and reduce fine lines. Unavailable several years ago, the market for this only stands to grow.With accessories being paramount during recessions, Tweakerz bra clip, Bosom Button and Winkee cleavage covers have all become popular for their ability to help consumers alter clothes they already own. Tweakerz bra clip creates a 'lift' in a woman's cleavage, reenergizing worn bra straps. Bosom Button is a gem-like pin that enables shirts that are too low-cut to be made more appropriate by fastening fabric together. The Winkee is a piece of fabric that attaches to bra straps and covers the gap in cleavage revealing shirts. These products make women's wardrobes more wearable and functional, saving money and facilitating re-use.The marketing of inventive products has never been more visible than it is now. Major drugstores now have prominent spaces devoted solely to 'as seen on TV' and inventive products. As traditional advertising budgets are slashed, infomercials have gained access to the more expensive primetime ad space on television. The more unemployed and underemployed people there are, the more people there are staying at home, watching TV, and thereby watching infomercials. The internet also expanded the market for inventive products. Asseenontv.com is a great place to learn about inventions on the market.I have been in the invention licensing, marketing, consulting and sales business for over 15 years. This month, in the heart of the recession, my company experienced our highest sales ever. The bottom line is that unique and inventive products do very well in a poor economic climate. If history is a guide, then innovation and invention will be essential to getting us out of this recession. Inventions could not be more relevant; the time to launch yours is now.

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News Alert: Secret Service to Fire 1 Amid Inquiry; 2 Others to Leave

Posted: 18 Apr 2012 03:27 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 -- 6:03 PM EDT

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Secret Service to Fire 1 Amid Inquiry; 2 Others to Leave

The head of the Secret Service has told other government officials that the agency plans to fire one person in connection with the investigation into alleged misconduct with prostitutes last week in Colombia, according to a person briefed on the matter.

The head, Mark Sullivan, has also told others that one other employee plans to retire and another will resign. Among the people leaving the agency are two supervisors.

Mr. Sullivan has also told others that the one employee being fired has threatened to sue.

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News Alert: Dick Clark, TV Impresario, Is Dead at 82

Posted: 18 Apr 2012 01:32 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Wednesday, April 18, 2012 -- 3:54 PM EDT

-----

Dick Clark, TV Impresario, Is Dead at 82

The television legend Dick Clark, who originated "American Bandstand" and the perennial New Year's Eve celebration on ABC, died Wednesday morning, his representative Paul Shefrin said.

Mr. Shefrin said that Mr. Clark, 82, had suffered a massive heart attack.

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Discover Right Ways To Tie Trendy Scarves By Hilary Duff - Shopping

Posted: 17 Apr 2012 06:20 PM PDT

Hillary Duff has been famous dating to her youth and remains a good celebrity symbol. Her body is a bit plump but she knows how to cover it up and make her beautiful. She uses scarves exceptionally well to accent her body positively.

A scarf can be very good to divert the attention so that your stout arm can be ignored. Classic scarf styles may feature multiple layered looks, creating a slenderizing effect. A scarf accompanied by large-sized jewelry in the ears can make you look attractive.

The grid is a common scarf pattern and always looks great. There are mixed color as you wish, like black and white, red and black, or yellow and black. Although not bright, they work nicely with the hair color. That is the attraction of the detail and makes you unique look.

This type of camouflage is slightly masculine and is typically used in the military. But, it may add to your appeal to females as long as you manage the richness of its hue. In addition, the popular element of a fringe can also be added to show your fashion taste. The big earring with a pendant, like antique coin, can make you attractive instantly.

Scarves are an essential part of any outfit, so they must be coordinated with the clothing that one is wearing at that time. If you have thin clothing, scarves made of cotton or linen are good choices. Scarves are easy to wear and make a great accessory, they are also very light since they are made with thin materials.

Even during hot, summer days, stylish women still wear scarves, as they cherish them as a valuable accessory. Black and white is a great color combination for the summer. A scarf that is longer than more than half of your body length is not wanted, however, you can tie it with a downward slimmer to improve it. The style is replete with classic flavor and appears cool during the heat. In addition, black scarves are great for coordinating the overall outfit. The scarf will even be interesting in the dark because the printing can make the layers feel thicker in the evening.

If the above information is not able to convince you, you will believe the magic power from scarves after you do some comparison. You can try the same outfit with or without scarves and see the final look. Serving as an example, a white T shirt goes very well with a typical blue jean. When you put on a proper scarf, you will instantly notice a slimmer body revealed in yourself. Details of your hair style should be careful to add, is to adjust the whole body. If you are familiar with the trick of scarves for the body fit, you will know the power of silk scarves. A heavy appearance is avoided thanks to the light fabric, which also brings a fun accent to your wardrobe.

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Do You Really Know The Christmas History? - Education

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 06:16 PM PDT

The Christmas history in America really lacks a clear pathway and seems to hodge podge many different cultural narratives and traditions all together. Since the American people are really a diaspora of different nationalities, it's not surprising then that our holiday season is packed with so many rich traditions. From the German Christmas trees and English pudding, to Scandinavian yule logs and New England turkeys, Christmas Day rituals have become a larger celebration of Christmases past.

Some religious scholars point out that the Christmas celebration is oddly placed, speculating that a more accurate birth might have been in September or sometime in the fall, when it was easier to travel from Bethlehem to Jerusalem. In fact, December 25th, Christmas Day, had been celebrated as "Winter Solstice" for three centuries before Christ's birth. This time marked a day where the worst of winter was behind them and they could look forward to more sunlight and better days.

In Scandinavia, fathers and sons would bring home large logs that they would burn for 24 hours to bring good luck for the coming year. In Germany, people stayed inside to avoid the pagan god Oden's nocturnal flights across the sky, where he would look down and judge those who would perish and who would survive.

In Rome, the licentious feast of Saturnalia would boast plentiful food and drink, honor children and allow slaves or peasants to become masters for a month. It's commonly believed that the church chose this date purposely to replace the pagan celebrations of the season and encourage people to embrace Christianity instead.

Even though Christmas got off to a rocky start, the Christmas spirit had become so strong that it brought one of the world's mightiest wars to a screeching halt for just one day. On Christmas Day in 1914, an eerie calm spread over the battle field as the sounds of rifles firing quieted and shells ceased exploding.

Across the Western Front, a sound rose up out of the trenches as both German and British troops began singing a Christmas carol across enemy lines. At daybreak, a few German soldiers crept out of hiding, unarmed, calling out a tentative "Merry Xmas" in their enemy's native language. When the Allies saw this was no trick, they barreled out of the trenches to shake hands, exchange cigarettes and plum pudding.

A few of the soldiers played a game of soccer, while others sadly removed some of the bodies during this brief ceasefire. Just five months into this brutal war, this rare anomaly revealed how basic decent humanity shines through, even during the most disheartening times.

In many ways, Americans have become alienated from the Christmas customs we celebrate today. For instance, Christmas trees are a German tradition that has been practiced since the 17th Century; yet the Puritans were hesitant to celebrate in such pagan ways, so stately pines didn't gain widespread popularity in America until a sketch of Queen Victoria, her children and a tree filled with Christmas ornaments circulated in 1846.

Christmas cards had been prevalent in Britain, but America didn't catch on fully until 1850, when German card-maker Louis Prang immigrated and set up shop. Mistletoe, which dates back to the Victorian era, is a Celtic and Teutonic tradition that was believed to heal wounds, increase fertility and ward off evil spirits. Plum pudding harkens all the way back to Middle Ages England.

Caroling is another English practice, where roving minstrels would come through town and play for the rich in exchange for a warm meal, a warm bed and a pittance. The tradition of hanging stockings is said to stem from the legends of St. Nicholas, as well as the Scandinavian tradition of leaving shoes on the hearth in anticipation of gold coins and candies.

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News Alert: 2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

Posted: 16 Apr 2012 12:57 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Monday, April 16, 2012 -- 3:28 PM EDT

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2012 Pulitzer Prize Winners Announced

The New York Times won two Pulitzer Prizes on Monday, one for its reporting on Africa and another for an investigative series on obscure tax code provisions that allow wealthy corporations and citizens to avoid paying taxes. But the bigger surprise this year came from new media. Online news outlets The Huffington Post and Politico both won their first Pulitzer Prizes, a sign of the changing media landscape.

Also notable this year was the lack of prizes in some categories. The Pulitzer Prize board did not name a winner in the editorial writing category and more notably declined to name a winner in the coveted fiction category for the first time in 35 years.

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Seven Secrets Of One Hundred Percent Virtual Property Profits - Marketing - Web Marketing

Posted: 15 Apr 2012 06:12 PM PDT

Imagine being in charge of a business where all of the money you make is profit. Virtual property tycoons are reaping the rewards of this dream business scenario and in this article I'm going to reveal all.

Big profits are achieved by big cost cuts. Mr Henry Ford coined this idea back in 1908 when he applied mass production to car engine production. The result was massive costs savings and even bigger profits. Mr Ford still had to pay factory costs, material costs, wages costs, etc, yet he still made mega bucks. Imagine the profit potential if all costs could be removed from the equation.

In today's digital age minimum cost maximum profit business is now a reality if you adopt the principles of virtual property.

So what's virtual property?

Simple. Virtual property is anything that can be accessed and downloaded from the internet - essentially digital products. Examples include ebooks, audio products, videos, membership sites, web sites, etc. Once created and stored, any online sales won't cost the creator a dime, not a bean. The result is one hundred percent profit! All you need is internet access and these seven secrets:

One. Think of a niche market that you're interested in. For example, golf, fishing, dog training, anything you like.

Two. Source material on your niche subject which you can turn into a virtual property product. A trick for doing this is to look for information that's in the public domain. This means information that has no copyright, such as the works of Shakespeare. As a rule anything published before 1923 in the US is in the public domain and anyone can swipe these and do with them whatever they please. You must be certain that anything you copy is definitely in the public domain. Try gutenberg.org where you can source tonnes of books at no cost.

Three. Create unique products using the content from your public domain books. You could chop up them up and create a series of ebooks, turn them into audio products by reading and recording them, make them into video seminars or home study courses. The list is endless and don't forget an old book reborn as an audio or video product is exactly what people are looking for online in the twenty-first century.

Four. 'Add value' by creating simple web sites to go with each of the ten information products you create. Don't worry this is very easy and you should keep it simple for best results. If you don't know how to create a web site go to and search for "how to build a web site". Now you have ten turnkey virtual property businesses that you can sell.

Five. Set up your own web site to sell five hundred re-sell licenses to each of your ten instant virtual property businesses. Market them for one hundred and ninety seven dollars a piece (proven price point).

Six. Set up your own affiliate program using paydotcom.com. This is so people who want to promote your site can sign up as an affiliate and promote.

Seven. Set up joint ventures with other companies. Go to google.com and search for companies that send out relevant email newsletters (ezines). Type in searches like 'internet marketing ezine' or 'internet business ezine'. Contact these people and tell them that you have a product suitable for their ezine readers. Offer to pay them a commission for any sales they make as a result of promoting your product.

That's it. After you have created the virtual property products you won't have to spend any more money. All the sales you make will be for one hundred percent profit. I'm sure Mr Ford would have loved to have been born in today's generation. He's era is over now but the opportunity for the savvy entrepreneur has only just begun.

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Grab Your FREE StealPips VIP Traders Kit - Publishing - EBooks

Posted: 14 Apr 2012 06:09 PM PDT

Dear Friend,

"Our Robot Isn't Illegal...It Just Performs Like It is!" - Matt Delen

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(Grab your FREE StealPips VIP Trader's Kit)

I just got leaked information on a game changing forex system, dubbed Steal Pips, that will hit the markets soon...something so huge that it will leave you gasping for air. The Steal Pips System claims to ROB the forex market legally, using and exploiting proprietary technology coined Automated Price Action Recognition (A.P.A.R) and Trend & U turn Points Detector (T.U.P.D).

For the first time ever, a proven robust Automated Forex Trading Robot is about to be revealed that will exponentially grow your Forex account month after month. Here an exclusive insiders peek of their website:

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Do you know the story of Matt Delen? He started off trading forex manually, but when that got too time consuming and he started to burn out, he switched to a forex robot, only to be dealt with HUGE LOSSES and mysterious behavior with his trades' "stop loss" and "take profit" points...HOWEVER he quickly figured out that it wasn't his system failing BUT rather the brokers manipulating his trades to pocket $$$ themselves...the brokers knew exactly what the bot was doing...it was as though he was playing poker with all his cards showing.

After hitting the online casinos to chase his losses, he stumbled on a group of underground programmers in a gambling forum. These "black hat" geeks had become experts at creating "bots" to clean up the online poker and blackjack rooms, using the same mix of advanced "game theory" and lightning-fast sleight of hand that card counters use to fleece Vegas pit bosses.

Realizing that if these programmers could beat casinos that had dirty tricks down to a science, they could easily come up with a devastatingly effective forex robot whose trading behavior would be so elusive, the dealers would never see it coming.

After investing much of his remaining savings in hiring them, they built the Steal Pips software, combining his hard-won knowledge of the forex market with the programmers' dealer-beating savvyness.

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As a result, the Steal Pips forex robot doesn't use any of the common lagging-indicators that forex dealers can spot a mile away, and it easily outsmarts common dealer cons like "stop hunting" by camouflaging the stop-loss and take-profit numbers that other robots give away on command.

Instead, its breakthrough Automated Price Action Recognition and Trend & U turn Points Detector technology uses "price action analysis" to spot subtle but repeating patterns in the market and use them to turn the "house advantage" on its head.

And because Steal Pips uses the price itself to predict the market's next move, rather than the usual "wait and see" indicators that stall most robots (until the market's already half-way through a trend before taking action)... it trades faster and racks up more profits automatically from each trade.

As a result, Matt was NOT ONLY ABLE to beat the FX dealers at their own game by keeping his trading strategies under wraps but rather DESTROY them, setting up account after account and keeping them all running on autopilot without having his winnings stolen through the dealers' underhanded tactics.

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Matt and his team of developers are so confident about how well their system performs that they are going to show irrevocable proof to convince even the most diehard skeptics. NO BACKTESTS. They plan on using Live Forex Trading Statements (actual real money accounts...no demo accounts & no backtests), Video testimonials, and Live Question and Answer Sessions to prove their point.

Wow! Unbelievable, right? How is that possible? Those are my exact thoughts. This is a Game Changing moment...the tables have turned against the dealers. That's all the information I have for now. The moment I hear more, I'll let you know ASAP. I am holding my breath!

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To your forex success,

Best wishes,Thanks for reading and I wish you all the success!Johnfox 2003-2010 World Marketing Media, Inc.

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News Alert: Ten Candidates, Including Front-Runners, Barred From Egyptian Presidential Race

Posted: 14 Apr 2012 01:28 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Saturday, April 14, 2012 -- 4:00 PM EDT

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Ten Candidates, Including Front-Runners, Barred From Egyptian Presidential Race

Egypt's election commission on Saturday disqualified 10 presidential hopefuls, including the three front-runners, from running in a surprise decision that threatened to upend the already tumultuous race.

Farouk Sultan, the head of the Supreme Presidential Election Commission, told The Associated Press that those barred from the race included Hosni Mubarak's former spy chief Omar Suleiman; the chief strategist for the Muslim Brotherhood, Khairat el-Shater; and hard-line lawyer-turned-preacher Hazem Salah Abu Ismail. He did not give a reason.

The announcement came as a shock to many Egyptians as three of the 10 excluded were considered among the front-runners. They now have 48 hours to appeal the decision, according to election rules. The final list of candidates will be announced on April 26.

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News Alert: U.N. Security Council Agrees to Send Ceasefire Monitors to Syria

Posted: 14 Apr 2012 09:09 AM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Saturday, April 14, 2012 -- 11:39 AM EDT

-----

U.N. Security Council Agrees to Send Ceasefire Monitors to Syria

The United Nations Security Council on Saturday unanimously authorized the deployment of ceasefire monitors to Syria.
Russia and China joined the other 13 council members and voted in favor of the Western-Arab draft resolution. The first 30 unarmed military monitors are expected to leave within days.

The vote had been expected Friday but was held up by Russian objections to much of the text.. The Russian ambassador, Vitaly Churkin, said Saturday that "substantive changes had been made to make it more balanced."

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Learn the ancient art of Magic with Magician Brisbane - Entertainment - Humor

Posted: 13 Apr 2012 06:04 PM PDT

Brisbane is a well renowned city in Australia that dwells in a number of reputed magicians. The Magician Brisbane enjoys esteemed name all over the world for their unusual and uncommon magical tricks. The magicians of Brisbane have revealed a number of helpful tips and tricks following which, a beginner can become a genius.

The art of magic is not difficult to learn when one is accompanied by the superb assistance of Magician Brisbane art tricks. Often a beginner fails to create a magical feeling or effect in his act that is indispensable in any magical performance. Only a magical touch can leave the spectators puzzled and amazed and bring magician a round of applause for his artistic presentation. Magician Brisbane for this reason has offered several helpful magical tricks that will help a novice to bring the magical effect in his act without putting an extra pinch of effort.

Magician Brisbane methods describe several key stages to learn that will act as a foundation for the entire act one is going to perform. A beginner can actually learn the art of magic only after learning the key stages involved. Come; let's learn the ancient art of magic with Magician Brisbane methods.

* First key stage involves a beginner to perform the magic material manually. This will help the magic to come automatically after complete refinement and the act will look polished and natural. Talking about the material to start with, you have cards and coins that are readily available. They help you to make a commendable introduction to the world of magic. You can master a number of stunning acts with their help. For example, 'the modern magic with coin' can be performed flawlessly with the help of coins whereas you can manage to master the 'Card College' trick by making regular and repeated manual practices with the card deck.* Magic can never be entertaining if it is not accompanied by a captivating presentation. A magic can only be made look natural if one amplifies his natural personal strength in it. For instance, one should not forcibly try to act funny when he is not naturally funny. It will distract the audience attention to the extra effort put for making the a ct hilarious and will ruin the magical element completely.* Magician Brisbane is very confident in performing their magical act that makes it look believable. Magician Brisbane suggests the beginners to be confident in whatever magical trick they are going to perform. A magician trusting himself can actually make the audience trust him and his magical wonders.

SummaryMagician Brisbane provides some helpful magical tricks that help a novice to become a king of wonders. To present the magic in its best form one has to learn the key stages like to first perform the magic material manually with coins or cards etc. naturally and confidently.

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Posted: 13 Apr 2012 09:34 AM PDT

Paddington Bear - News - Business News

Posted: 12 Apr 2012 06:00 PM PDT

History

Origin

Bond based Paddington Bear on a lone teddy bear he noticed on a shelf in a London store near Paddington Station on Christmas Eve 1956, which he bought as a present for his wife. The bear inspired Bond to write a story, and in ten days, he had written the first book. The book was given to his agent, Harvey Unna. A Bear Called Paddington was first published on 13 October 1958, by William Collins & Sons (now Harper Collins).

The toy Paddington Bear

The first Paddington Bear was created in 1972 by Gabrielle Designs, a small business run by Shirley and Eddie Clarkson, with the prototype made as a Christmas present for their children Joanna and Jeremy Clarkson (English broadcaster and writer). Shirley Clarkson dressed Paddington in Wellington boots to help the bear stand upright. (Paddington received wellingtons for Christmas in Paddington Marches On, 1964.) The earliest bears wore small children's boots manufactured by Dunlop until their production could not meet demand. Gabrielle Designs then produced their own boots with paw prints moulded into the soles.

Shirley Clarkson's book describes the evolution of the toy Paddington from Christmas gift to subject of litigation and ultimately commercial success.

Storyline

In the first story, Paddington is found at Paddington railway station in London by the Brown family, sitting on his suitcase (bearing the label "WANTED ON VOYAGE") with a note attached to his coat which reads, "Please look after this bear. Thank you." Bond has said that his memories of newsreels showing trainloads of child evacuees leaving London during the war, with labels around their necks and their possessions in small suitcases, prompted him to do the same for Paddington.

He has arrived as a stowaway coming from "Darkest Peru", sent by his Aunt Lucy (one of his only known relatives, aside from an Uncle Pastuzo who gave Paddington his hat), who has gone to live in the Home for Retired Bears in Lima. He claims, "I came all the way in a lifeboat, and ate marmalade. Bears like marmalade." He tells them that no one can understand his Peruvian name, so the Browns decide to call him Paddington after the railway station in which he was found. Bond originally wanted Paddington to have "travelled all the way from darkest Africa", but his agent advised him that there were no bears in darkest Africa, and thus it was amended to darkest Peru, home of the spectacled bear.

They take him home to 32 Windsor Gardens, off Harrow Road between Notting Hill and Maida Vale. The stories follow Paddington's adventures and mishaps in England.

When he gets annoyed with someone, he often gives them one of his special "hard stares" (taught to him by Aunt Lucy), which causes the person to become flushed and embarrassed.

Characters

There is a recurring cast of characters, all of whom are in some way implicated by Paddington's misadventures. These include:

Mr. Brown (Henry): A friendly and often ineffectual city worker.

Mrs. Brown (Mary): Mr. Brown's equally friendly wife.

Jonathan and Judy: The energetic and friendly Brown children. It is never established if one is older than the other, leading to the perception that they are twins.

Mrs. Bird: The Browns' stern, but ultimately friendly, housekeeper.

Mr. Gruber: Owner of an antique shop on the Portobello Road, with whom Paddington has his elevenses every day. He is a Hungarian immigrant.

Mr. Curry: The Browns' mean and bad-tempered next-door neighbour, who addresses Paddington simply as "Bear!" He often invites himself to many of the Browns' special occasions (though just to sample the snacks).

Aunt Lucy: Paddington's aunt from South America.

Books

A Bear Called Paddington was first published in 1958 and was followed by ten more books. In order of publication, the titles are:

A Bear Called Paddington (1958)

Featured Stories:

Please Look After This Bear - The story of how the Browns first met Paddington at Paddington station, hence his name. He has a sticky situation with some pastries in the station buffet.

A Bear In Hot Water - Paddington's first attempt at having a bath is a disaster.

Paddington Goes Underground - Paddington's first journey on the Underground causes chaos - he finds himself in trouble with one of the inspectors.

A Shopping Expedition - Paddington gets lost in Barkridge's, a local department store. Mrs. Brown has to enlist the help of a police detective.

Paddington and "The Old Master" - This story introduces Paddington's friend, the antique dealer, Mr. Gruber. After hearing Mr. Gruber talk about painting, Paddington decides to try his hand at painting himself. He completely ruins Mr. Brown's entry for a painting competition, but all is forgiven when his abstract painting wins Mr. Brown his first ever prize.

A Visit To The Theatre - Paddington goes to see a play with the Browns, and ends up acting as prompter for the lead actor, who keeps forgetting his lines.

Adventure At The Seaside - Paddington takes part in a sandcastle competition, but his castle is washed away, and he gets lost.

A Disappearing Trick - Paddington enjoys his first birthday with the Browns - he is given a magic set, which he uses to entertain everyone. This story also introduces Mr. Curry, the Browns' bad-tempered next-door neighbour.

Other titles

More About Paddington (1959)

Paddington Helps Out (1960)

Paddington Abroad (1961)

Paddington at Large (1962)

Paddington Marches On (1964)

Paddington at Work (1966)

Paddington Goes to Town (1968)

Paddington Takes the Air (1970)

Paddington's Blue Peter Story Book (1973)

Paddington on Top (1974)

Paddington Takes the Test (1979)

Paddington on Screen (1980)

Paddington Rules the Waves (2008)

Paddington Here and Now (2008)

Special publications

Paddington Rules the Waves (2008) A 1 World Book Day Book

Paddington Here and Now (2008) Published as part of the series' 50th anniversary celebrations..

Blue Peter

Author Michael Bond was also a BBC TV cameraman who worked on the popular children's television programme Blue Peter. After this was revealed in 1965, a special Paddington story in which he got mixed up in the programme itself appeared annually in the Blue Peter Annuals for many years.

They were collected in the novel-length Paddington's Blue Peter Story Book in 1973.

Featured Stories:

"Paddington Goes Halves": Paddington enters a craft competition for Blue Peter. He is allowed to use Mr. Curry's guest room as his studio, on condition that he gives Mr. Curry half his winnings. Paddington wins a prize, but it isn't what Mr. Curry expected.

Paddington is put in charge of looking after Joey, the Blue Peter parrot, whilst the team are away.

"Paddington Weighs in": Paddington sees an item on Blue Peter, and thinks that the team are in trouble. It turns out they were only trying out the fitness machines in a new health hostel. Paddington only finds this out after he has attempted to investigate, resulting in an uncomfortable fitness session with the hostel's over-zealous coach, Mr. Constantine, and a nasty scene in the hostel restaurants when he tucks into a non-too-healthy marmalade sandwich.

A second book based around Blue Peter is Paddington on Screen.

Many other picture books and other publications have since featured Paddington.

Television

The BBC television series Paddington, produced by Michael Bond and London-based animation company FilmFair, was first broadcast in 1975. This series had an extremely distinctive appearance: Paddington was a stop-motion puppet moving in a three dimensional space in front of two-dimensional backgrounds (which were frequently sparse black-and-white line drawings), while all other characters were 2D drawings in one scene, a character hands Paddington a jar of marmalade that becomes 3D when Paddington touches it. Animator Ivor Wood also worked on The Magic Roundabout and Postman Pat. The series was narrated by Michael Hordern. In the United States, episodes aired on PBS, on the syndicated series Romper Room, on Nickelodeon as a segment on the program Pinwheel and on USA Network as a segment on the program Calliope in the late 1970s and early 1980s, as well as in between preschool programming on the Disney Channel throughout the 1990s. The series also aired on HBO in between fea tures, usually when they were airing children's programmes. The series won a silver medal at the New York Film and Television Festival in 1979 the first British animated series to do so.

A second television series, produced by Hanna-Barbera, debuted in 1989 as part of The Funtastic World of Hanna-Barbera. This series was traditional two-dimensional animation and featured veteran voice actor Charlie Adler as Paddington and Tim Curry as Mr. Curry. The character of an American boy named David, Jonathan and Judy Brown's cousin who arrived in London on the same day as Paddington, was added to the stories in the 1989 cartoon.

The most recent series, produced by Cinar Films, was first broadcast in 1997 and consisted of traditional two-dimensional colour animation. The show was called The Adventures of Paddington Bear.

On the game show Who Wants to be a Millionaire in the United States, contestant David Goodman had a question worth $1 Million saying "In the children's book series, where is Paddington Bear originally from? A: India, B: Peru, C: Canada, D: Iceland". With the use of all 3 of his lifelines, he answered with B: Peru and won.

Film adaptation

In September 2007, Warner Bros. and producer David Heyman announced a live action film adaptation of Paddington Bear. Hamish McColl, who penned Mr Bean's Holiday, will write the script. The film will not be an adaptation of an existing story, but "will draw inspiration from the whole series" and will feature a computer generated Paddington Bear interacting with a live-action environment.

Advertising

Paddington Bear features in the Marmite UK TV advertisement (first broadcast on 13 September 2007), in which he tries a marmite and cheese sandwich instead of his traditional marmalade sandwich.

Paddington was featured on the Royal Mail 1st class stamp in the Animal Tales series released on 10 January 2006, and had previously been featured on one of the 1st class Greetings Messages stamps, released on 1 February 1994.

In 2008, the Pobjoy Mint in London issued a series of Paddington Bear legal tender coins under authority of the government of the Isle of Man. Coins were minted in copper-nickel, silver and gold.

Google

On 13 October 2008, Google celebrated the 50th anniversary of the first Paddington publication by placing an image of the travelling bear with a sign showing Peru and London incorporated into Google's logo.

References

Simon Sheridan's book The A to Z of Classic Children's Television (Reynolds & Hearn books, 2004, reprinted 2007) ISBN 1-903111-27-7 contains an informative chapter on the 1970s TV series of Paddington

^ paddingtonbear.com

^ Happy birthday little bear - Sunderland Echo

^ Paddington brand

^ Paddington returns to his station as children's favourite, Andy McSmith, The Independent, 24 May 2008

^ Paddington bear celebrates 50th birthday, Jack Riley, The Independent, 13 October 2008

^ Shirley Clarkson, 'Bearly Believable: My Part in the Paddington Bear Story', Harriman House Publishing, 23 Jun 2008 ISBN 978-1905641727

^ Icons of England - Paddington Bear. Accessed 2008-07-12

^ Michael Bond, 'Paddington Here and Now', Harper Collins, London 2008 ISBN 978-0-00-726940-2

^ Michael Bond and R.W. Alley Paddington Bear

^ The Books

^ World Book and Copyright Day

^ BBC NEWS | England | London | Paddington Bear's birthday book

^ Paddington Bear: a welcome immigrant - Daniel Hannan, Daily Telegraph. Accessed 2008-07-12.

^ /watch?v=IiolajBTuao&fmt=18

^ Adam Dawtrey (2007-09-13). "'WB bears down on 'Paddington' film". Variety. /article/VR1117971958.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. Retrieved 2007-09-14.

^ Paddington Stars in a New Series of Marmite Ads

^ Sweney, Mark (2007-09-12). "Paddington gets taste for Marmite". MediaGuardian.co.uk. /advertising/story/0,,2166949,00.html. Retrieved 2007-09-13.

^ Paddington image at google

External links

Paddington Bear Peru - The Peruvian Website and Store online

Paddington Bear - The Official Website

Paddington at the Internet Movie Database

Michael Bond Biography

wiseGEEK - Who Is Paddington Bear?

Featured Stories:

Please Look After This Bear - The story of how the Browns first met Paddington at Paddington station, hence his name. He has a sticky situation with some pastries in the station buffet.

A Bear In Hot Water - Paddington's first attempt at having a bath is a disaster.

Paddington Goes Underground - Paddington's first journey on the Underground causes chaos - he finds himself in trouble with one of the inspectors.

A Shopping Expedition - Paddington gets lost in Barkridge's, a local department store. Mrs. Brown has to enlist the help of a police detective.

A Visit To The Theatre - Paddington goes to see a play with the Browns, and ends up acting as prompter for the lead actor, who keeps forgetting his lines.

Adventure At The Seaside - Paddington takes part in a sandcastle competition, but his castle is washed away, and he gets lost.

Other titles

More About Paddington (1959)

Paddington Helps Out (1960)

Paddington Abroad (1961)

Paddington at Large (1962)

Paddington Marches On (1964)

Paddington at Work (1966)

Paddington Goes to Town (1968)

Paddington Takes the Air (1970)

Paddington's Blue Peter Story Book (1973)

Paddington on Top (1974)

Paddington Takes the Test (1979)

Paddington on Screen (1980)

Paddington Rules the Waves (2008)

Paddington Here and Now (2008)

Special publications

Paddington Rules the Waves (2008) A 1 World Book Day Book

Paddington Here and Now (2008) Published as part of the series' 50th anniversary celebrations..

Blue Peter

They were collected in the novel-length Paddington's Blue Peter Story Book in 1973.

Featured Stories:

Paddington is put in charge of looking after Joey, the Blue Peter parrot, whilst the team are away.

A second book based around Blue Peter is Paddington on Screen.

Many other picture books and other publications have since featured Paddington.

Television

The most recent series, produced by Cinar Films, was first broadcast in 1997 and consisted of traditional two-dimensional colour animation. The show was called The Adventures of Paddington Bear.

Film adaptation

Advertising

Paddington Bear features in the Marmite UK TV advertisement (first broadcast on 13 September 2007), in which he tries a marmite and cheese sandwich instead of his traditional marmalade sandwich.

In 2008, the Pobjoy Mint in London issued a series of Paddington Bear legal tender coins under authority of the government of the Isle of Man. Coins were minted in copper-nickel, silver and gold.

Google

References

^ paddingtonbear.com

^ Happy birthday little bear - Sunderland Echo

^ Paddington brand

^ Paddington returns to his station as children's favourite, Andy McSmith, The Independent, 24 May 2008

^ Paddington bear celebrates 50th birthday, Jack Riley, The Independent, 13 October 2008

^ Shirley Clarkson, 'Bearly Believable: My Part in the Paddington Bear Story', Harriman House Publishing, 23 Jun 2008 ISBN 978-1905641727

^ Icons of England - Paddington Bear. Accessed 2008-07-12

^ Michael Bond, 'Paddington Here and Now', Harper Collins, London 2008 ISBN 978-0-00-726940-2

^ Michael Bond and R.W. Alley Paddington Bear

^ The Books

^ World Book and Copyright Day

^ BBC NEWS | England | London | Paddington Bear's birthday book

^ Paddington Bear: a welcome immigrant - Daniel Hannan, Daily Telegraph. Accessed 2008-07-12.

^ /watch?v=IiolajBTuao&fmt=18

^ Adam Dawtrey (2007-09-13). "'WB bears down on 'Paddington' film". Variety. /article/VR1117971958.html?categoryid=13&cs=1. Retrieved 2007-09-14.

^ Paddington Stars in a New Series of Marmite Ads

^ Sweney, Mark (2007-09-12). "Paddington gets taste for Marmite". MediaGuardian.co.uk. /advertising/story/0,,2166949,00.html. Retrieved 2007-09-13.

^ Paddington image at google

External links

Paddington Bear Peru - The Peruvian Website and Store online

Paddington Bear - The Official Website

Paddington at the Internet Movie Database

Michael Bond Biography

wiseGEEK - Who Is Paddington Bear?

Further reading

Bond, Michael; and, Ash, Russell (1988). The Life and Times of Paddington Bear. London: Pavilion. ISBN 9781851452866. OCLC 59889284.

Pfeffer, Susan Beth (1999). Who were They Really?: The True Stories behind Famous Characters. Brookfield, CN: Millbrook Press. ISBN 9780585248080. OCLC 40230491.

Categories: Fictional bears | Characters in British novels of the 20th century | Series of children's books | London in fictionHidden categories: Wikipedia indefinitely move-protected pages

News Alert: 5 Ex-Officers Sentenced in Post-Katrina Shootings

Posted: 04 Apr 2012 02:05 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Wednesday, April 4, 2012 -- 4:23 PM EDT

-----

5 Former New Orleans Police Officers Sentenced in Shootings After Katrina

Five former New Orleans police officers were sentenced Wednesday to prison terms ranging from six to 65 years for their roles in deadly shootings of residents on a bridge after Hurricane Katrina. Four of the former officers were convicted of firearms charges in the shootings. Another, assigned to investigate the shootings, was convicted of helping orchestrate a cover-up.

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Writing Articles, But Still Not Getting Traffic? That's Because Your Articles Suck - But I Can Help! (Part 1) - Marketing

Posted: 04 Apr 2012 09:28 AM PDT

Weve all been there. We hear about how articles will generate HUGE publicity for a site, (the old If you build it, they will come) so we sit down, write an article, submit it to places like , , , etc, then wait. A week goes by, you get a trickle, another week, still a trickle, a month, still a trickle (if that). What happened to all the promise of thousands and thousands of people coming to the site? Nothing - thats the problem. Very few (if any) ezines, newsletters, or web sites reprinted your article. Just the RSS feeds (they were probably responsible for the trickle). Lets take a look at how an article should be written for maximum exposure.Headline/Title (This just in)The headline is arguably the most important part of the article. If the reader isnt interested after reading the headline, they wont read the rest. It should be something catchy. My first article was entitled Branded Email: Email Branding is the Next Generation of Email and after posting that to a site or two, I shortened it to Branded Email: The Next Generation of Email. By now, Im sure you realize that the introduction paragraph was describing my first experience at article writing. My title was not catchy, (in fact, it sucked) and nobody came.What is catchy? How to headlines are good. 10 Tips (or 5 tips, or 47 tips) are often read. Case studies are great. Alliteration (putting words that begin with similar sounds together in a row Gary Guesses Googles Gauge Wow, that was bad, but you get the point) grabs a readers attention. Using common phrases and clichs is quite effective, putting a funny spin or changing those same phrases and clichs works well too. Questions get readers. Pique the readers curiosity, and theyll read.Also, depending on your audience, you can use "shocking" words and phrases - mild swear words and words that the industry deems taboo work well to get readers. Shocking headlines create emotion, and emotion gets a visitor to read the article. I probably offended you (or made you laugh) with my headline and youre reading the article now. Just make sure that if you decide to go with a shocking headline, you also propose a solution. - but I can help! takes your offence and changes it to Wow, hes right, Ill read the article and find out how he can help me! Some readers wouldnt keep reading if I just made the headline Your articles suck thats just plain mean. For example: If I was writing an article about plastic surgery, I could make the headline Are you ugly? I can fix that.Byline (By: ME!)Bylines are simple just type your name in the box. Dont use your business name - businesses don't write articles! If you're writing for your business, include it with a copyright at the bottom of the body of the article.Summary (That about sums it all up)Summaries are there to pull the reader in. Their job is to tell the reader what the article is about, and to grab their attention so the reader clicks and reads the article. Much like a h eadline, these need to be fairly catchy, but concentrate on informing the reader about the article. This is not the place to generate emotion (especially if your headline already has), but instead its where you need to leave the reader wanting more.For example, "These tips will help you make over $5000/month" is a good sentence to put in your summary, as is "Find out the secrets of how to start your own business, without a lot of startup costs." Do NOT make this sound like a blatant sales pitch, or your article won't get read.Next Time (Same bat time, same bat channel)Check out Part 2 of Because your articles suck for tips and tricks on how to write a great Article Body and a wonderful Resource Box.

News Alert: Romney Wins Wisconsin Primary, According to Exit Polls and Early Returns

Posted: 03 Apr 2012 07:21 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 -- 9:51 PM EDT

-----

Romney Wins Wisconsin Primary, According to Exit Polls and Early Returns

Mitt Romney won the Wisconsin Republican presidential primary on Tuesday, according to exit polls and early returns, dealing a significant setback to Rick Santorum, who had campaigned hard for a victory there to persuade Republicans that he still has a clear path to the nomination.

Mr. Romney's victory in Wisconsin, a key Midwestern industrial state that many Republicans hope to put in play in the general election in November, showed that he could win the support of a number of groups that are key to Republican candidates. He won pluralities among Tea Party supporters, those who consider themselves very conservative, and those who care about the economy and the federal budget deficit. And he overwhelmingly won the votes of those who said that they most wanted a candidate who could defeat President Obama.

Mr. Romney also easily won the primary in Washington, D.C., where his closest rival, Mr. Santorum, was not even on the ballot.

Mr. Romney's victory in the nation's capital came despite the fact that he has spent considerably less time there over the years than his rivals who did appear on the ballot — Newt Gingrich, the former House Speaker, and Representative Ron Paul of Texas. The city only has 30,000 registered Republicans, but it has 19 delegates to award — more than the 12 New Hampshire had.

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News Alert: Mitt Romney Wins Republican Primary in Maryland, A.P. Reports

Posted: 03 Apr 2012 05:34 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Tuesday, April 3, 2012 -- 8:04 PM EDT

-----

Mitt Romney Wins Republican Primary in Maryland, A.P. Reports

Mitt Romney easily won the Maryland primary on Tuesday night, according to The Associated Press, steadily adding to a comfortable delegate lead that he hopes will soon be formidable enough to drive his lagging rivals from the race for the Republican presidential nomination.

The Maryland primary did not attract nearly as much attention as the one in Wisconsin. Maryland has been reliably Democratic in recent years, while Wisconsin is a swing state that is sure to be contested in November. Maryland has long been seen as a stronghold for Mr. Romney, while the race between Mr. Romney and Rick Santorum appeared to be much closer in Wisconsin. But Maryland still has 37 delegates to award, just five shy of Wisconsin, which makes a victory there important as the nominating contest has increasingly become a delegate hunt.

But few expect his victory in Maryland to augur much for November: the state has reliably been one of the most Democratic states in recent presidential elections. But the state could figure in future presidential politics: its governor, Martin O'Malley, is already being mentioned as a possible Democratic presidential candidate – in 2016.

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Link Baiting Idea - Search Engines - SE Positioning

Posted: 03 Apr 2012 09:24 AM PDT

One of the best and the far most the effective way to gain links to your website or blogs is link baiting idea.

What do you mean by Link Baiting?This is a new idea born among webmasters to gain popularity for their blogs/web page. As you all know getting attention is an old trick, weather in real life or online. Politician uses this often to stay in limelight. This same rule applies to link baiting as well. There are two different flavors in link baiting idea. Good and bad. Good ones are those to create news first like exposing scams and create news, which will surprise everyone.

Bad ones are those you create a controversy or attach some leading personalities in your blogs. Think that you are trying to gain traffic not really hurt anyone. These kinds of tricks or ideas will bring in 1000's of website/blogs linking to your site. Link baiting idea is a blackhat technique that's why most webmasters think it is not legitimate to use it. But the effects of link baiting have profound effect and gradually drive traffic to your blog or site. If implement properly it can draw huge links with minimum effort from your side.

Some link expert's call that "hooks" has mentioned the 5 types of "hooks" as News, Contrary, attack resource and Humor.

Matt Cutts the Google Engineer in his blog about SEO advice has mentioned "LinkBait" as something interesting to catch people's attention. He say's Linkbaiting is not a bad idea. So creating attention is the key to that also person should be creative in his thought to get that idea into place.

You might all have heard of Alex Tew of he created an idea to raise a Million $ to raise funds for his college education by selling 1 pixel for a $ on his website. After four months he accomplished the task. This is the kind of news you should create to get attention. His site was also mentioned in CNN News as well. After his idea there are 100 of sites mushroomed over the web like one cent pixels but they are not gaining to achieve the results Alex could drew to his website. So be first to create news before it gets crowded.

Actually the term "linkbait" was started by Aaron Wall of SEO book in his post way back in August 2005. He says in his post that if "you are in a field that can't build links naturally create linkbait". By creating something on your web site that's funny, controversial, informative, or creative, it will gain natural links--which is the key to top search engine rankings. Andy Hagan's has come up with an idea to throw a contest to get links. The idea is simple give Andy a link baiting idea and if that works you will earn $1000 for that. He has posted that on BizNicheMedia.com blog. So his idea for a contest itself is an example of link baiting.

Generate information or ideas which will make people to talk which will definitely a great to generate a good inbound links.

The Importance of Meta-tags: Providing the Human Touch - Internet

Posted: 02 Apr 2012 09:16 AM PDT

For the uninitiated, meta-tags are pieces of code within your website that contain information about each page. These tags are supposed to tell search engines and users what the page is about.

If you're a little rusty on your Internet jargon, here's a primer. There are essentially three types of meta-tags that concern most marketers:

* Title - This is the text that appears in the title-bar of your web browser

* Description - This is a quick summary of the information on the page

* Keywords - These are words that are important in the article

Up until about 4 years ago, there was a tremendous focus on meta-tags as a method of improving search engine rankings. Webmasters could stuff all sorts of words into the meta-tags to improve their search engine rankings for the words they wanted to rank well for.

It wasn't long before the search engines caught on to this little trick, and as a result the efficacy of "keyword-stuffed" meta-tags dwindled over time. Posts on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) boards heralded the demise of the meta-tag with posters claiming that Google all but ignored the meta-tags. It seemed that there was no use for meta-tags anymore - at least from the perspective of the online marketer.

Meta-tag Re-emergence

But then a funny thing happened. The search market started to fracture. Yahoo and MSN both spun up their own search engines and dropped Google's results from their engines. Both Yahoo and MSN's new engines seemed to use content from the Title and Description meta-tags to display in the SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages).

These observations appear to be the case even today. By running a query for the term, "Online Advertising" on MSN, I got some interesting results (screenshots available at /articles/support/meta_msn.asp)

Now, if you look at the screenshots in the link above, you'll notice that the clickable link on the search engine matches the page's title tag verbatim, and the site's description in MSN starts off with the first sentence of the description tag. Yahoo operates in a very similar fashion. Many of the results on the SERPs of both search engines will use the content from the meta-tags heavily (as long as the pages have meta-tags at all).

Google is less predictable with regard to the use of meta-tags. Google often uses the title tag to determine the clickable link on it's results pages, but only occasionally uses the description tag content in the page summary that it displays.

Remember the Human Beings

Ok, now that I've put you to sleep with technical details and observations it's time to wake up, because there is a very important marketing point that I'm working towards here.

The point that I'm driving at is that although the search engines probably have devalued the SEO value of the meta-tag to a great extent, that doesn't mean that it isn't important.

When people search for keywords in your industry it isn't enough to be #1 on the list of results. You still need to convince those humans to click on your link. The way to do that is to design the most effective page description that can possibly appear in the SERPs.

Steps to Take To Improve Your Meta-Tags

As a general rule, Yahoo uses the first 25-30 words of your Meta Description tag in the site description it displays on your SERPs; MSN uses the first 15 or so.

Write out a 30-word description of each page of your website that is broken up into two parts. The first 15 words need to get across what the page is about - this is all the MSN searchers will see. The second 15 words should support the first - this will be visible to Yahoo searchers.

Google searchers will sometimes see the first 7 - 15 words as well (although you can't count on it). With meta-tags you have to just focus on the things you can control, and right now Google is an unknown quantity so it's probably best not to worry about optimizing for Google.

Don't Drop the Meta-Tags

Several years ago the search engines devalued the use of meta-tags in determining rankings. But because they use the meta-tags as page descriptions in their SERP pages, you must make special efforts to ensure that the content presented to searchers inspires them to click on your links rather than your competitors'.

If you don't put meta-tags on your website's pages, then Yahoo and MSN (with a combined market share of around 45%) will just guess at what to put in the description of your website. They will pull phrases out of context (much the way Google does) from your site and slap them in there. The result is not nearly as inviting as it could have been otherwise. That's why it is always beneficial to learn to write effective meta-tags.

News Alert: Baylor Moves On to N.C.A.A. Women's Championship

Posted: 01 Apr 2012 09:07 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Sunday, April 1, 2012 -- 11:20 PM EDT

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Baylor Moves On to N.C.A.A. Women's Championship

Undefeated Baylor beat Stanford 59-47, breaking the Cardinal's 32-game winning streak and earning a face-off against Notre Dame in the N.C.A.A. women's basketball championship.

With 13 points from star junior Brittney Griner and a strong bench performance from Terran Condrey, the Lady Bears advanced after a tightly contested first half gave way to a largely one-sided finish.

A victory in the championship would give Baylor an N.C.A.A.-record 40 wins.

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News Alert: Notre Dame Advances to N.C.A.A. Women's Championship

Posted: 01 Apr 2012 06:45 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Sunday, April 1, 2012 -- 8:53 PM EDT

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Notre Dame Advances to N.C.A.A. Women's Championship

Notre Dame secured an overtime victory over perennial women's basketball powerhouse Connecticut, winning 83-75 to send the Fighting Irish to the title game.

The result was a repeat of last year's national semifinal, when Notre Dame beat UConn to set up a showdown with the eventual champion, Texas A&M.

Natalie Novosel led No. 1-seeded Notre Dame with 19 points, and Devereaux Peters added 12 rebounds and 4 blocks.

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How To Start A T-Shirt Business, Part One - Getting Started - Business

Posted: 01 Apr 2012 09:12 AM PDT

Selling T-Shirts has become big business and it's a growing industry on the Internet where there are already thousands of shops and websites where you can purchase almost any design or T-Shirt style imaginable. Thanks to the many T-Shirt companies that now print and create the T-Shirts for you, with no risk involved, many people have been able to start their own T-Shirt business without having to invest any money. This however, has turned the T-Shirt business online into a fierce, competitive battle against all T-Shirt shop/website owners.

There are now millions of T-Shirt websites online for customers to choose from and this is why starting your own online T-Shirt business can be stressful, disappointing, and very difficult to attract customers and make the sales that you are expecting. Now, I'm not saying it's impossible, I'm just saying it's going to take a lot of time, effort, and maybe even some money for you to get started and get customers visiting your shop/website.

There are many things you need to consider when starting your own online T-Shirt business. Simply creating a design, putting it on a blank T-Shirt, and expecting it to be a big seller isn't going to do the trick and bring you many sales, unless of course, you are a very lucky person, whom I can assure you, there aren't very many of them around. If you want to start a T-Shirt business just to make easy money fast like many other schemes on the Internet claim, then you're looking at the wrong business. There is no such thing as easily making money fast and you're always going to have to put in the effort to get the results you are looking for, especially for a T-Shirt business.

Now, I'm not trying to scare you from owning your own T-Shirt business, as there are many successful individuals who have started their business in the T-Shirt industry and are doing very well. I just want to give you the facts of reality so that you're not disappointed when your business isn't doing as well as you thought it would. You may succeed at one aspect of the business, but fail in another, or you just might be that person who is successful at all the aspects of the business, which will obviously make your business a success. Either way, you're still going to have to spend the time and work very hard to achieve success.

Below I've listed some of the things you need to consider before you setup or start your own T-Shirt business:

Business GoalsBefore you start your own T-Shirt business, you need to think of your business goals. These goals should be realistic and they should point you in the direction you would like your business to go and what you hope to accomplish. An example of a goal would be to have 100 visitors visiting your shop/website a day or to create two new designs a week and put them up on your website. Whatever the goals may be that you have set for yourself, you then need to strive for them and once you have accomplished your goals, then you know you're on the right track.

PassionYou have to have an interest in what you are doing or you're not going to enjoy spending the time and effort your business requires. Everybody has a passion in one thing or another whether it is creating the designs, promoting, or any other aspect of the business, but you should have an interest in it. If you're not passionate about a certain subject, then you need to think of another theme that you would be more interested in doing. Remember, you are going to spend a lot of time on the subject/theme that you choose, so if you aren't passionate about it, then you're going to get bored very fast and it's not going to be enjoyable.

Subject/ThemeThis is very important in the T-Shirt industry as some subjects/themes do much better than others and receive more customers, but like all styles, they come and go. It's possible to have a general subject/theme, but it makes it harder for you to market/promote your shop/website. I suggest choosing just one subject/theme to begin with as you can start adding other subjects/themes later when you are established. You should by all means choose a subject/theme that you are knowledgeable about and have a passion for, like I mentioned under the passion paragraph.

Target AudienceWho are you targeting? Will you be targeting a certain age group, occupation, style, general public, etc. Finding out who your primary target audience will be or is, will help you with marketing/promotion. This will also help you with creating and designing your T-Shirts and shop/website to suit your target audience. Once again you can choose to go for a general audience, but this will only make it harder for you to market/promote your shop/website.

ResearchYou need to always do your research and find out what's new, what's not, what's in style, what kind of designs people are looking for, etc. You also need to keep up-to-date with your subject/theme as some change on a regular basis (Example: Politics). Keeping informed and up-to-date will give you the leading edge over your competitors, bring back customers time after time, and most importantly it will make sales.

Third Party shops Vs. Your Own WebsiteShould I invest in my own website or use a third party website to host my T-Shirt designs? If you are thinking about doing every aspect of the T-Shirt business yourself (including making the T-Shirts), then I suggest you invest in a website (not a free website hosting service), but first try out a third party website that makes the T-Shirts for you (no risk involved or investment needed) to see if you can make your business a success. Once you're confident in your business, then you can upgrade to making and owning your own website.

There are many online third party websites available on the Internet that you can choose from that will create and ship the T-Shirts to your customers (risk free with no money invested) and therefore, save you the hassle of actually having to deal with the customer aspect of your T-Shirt business. There are as many cons as there are pros when using a third party service. Some of the cons are: You don't get your own website and you are in some way connected to them, you don't make as much profit (you have to pay them to do all the work, like printing the T-Shirts and shipping), and they make all the rules (Example: not providing you with the E-mail address of your customers or refusing any designs that you create). When you sign up with one of these third party services, you are actually working for them and that includes promoting their site. The customers that purchase your T-Shirts are actually their customers meaning they have full control and every time you make a sale , they make a profit. In other words, these third parties depend on your success and if your business goes under, theirs doesn't because there'll always be someone else to take your place.

Marketing/PromotingThis will be your biggest enemy in the T-Shirt business and many businesses fail because of this. I suggest you do your research on the web for SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and about how the basic search engines works, as there is a lot of information about them. Do not just resort to search engines as being your source for traffic as there are many other websites that can help bring in quality targeted traffic to your website like T-Shirt ranking sites (Example: ).

The major search engines (Example: Google) are complicated in how they work and many people have been trying to figure out how they work for years. The search engines change their algorithms on how pages are ranked every once in a while so you're better off not focusing your attention on just getting to the top in the search engines.

If you do manage to make it to the top and are very successful, then your marketing/promotion shouldn't stop there. You have to always be marketing/promoting your site one way or another because it won't take long before someone else over takes you, simply because links can die and you need incoming links from other websites to get traffic.

T-Shirt Ranking WebsitesDo ranking sites work? Yes, ranking websites are a great way to market/promote your T-Shirt designs and shops/websites. Many people don't want to waste their time searching all over the web trying to locate websites that sell specific designs that they are looking for. This is where T-Shirt ranking websites come in handy and allow customers to view thousands of different T-Shirt designs and styles from many different websites. Ranking sites are a great way of bringing many unique and different T-Shirt websites/designs together and help to bring the buyers to the sellers. is a great example and offers many different categories to choose from including: Animal, Artistic, Attitude, Automobile, Biker, Computer, Floral, Funny, Holiday, Kids, Logo, Misc., Movie, Music, Novelty, Occupation, Offensive, Patriotic, Pets, Political, Religious, Sports, Unusual, Vintage, and Western.

Many T-Shirt business owners think that they can just upload their T-Shirt designs to a ranking website and expect to receive sales. This is a myth and it's not true. Ranking sites, like , bring high quality targeted traffic to your website, but it's your T-Shirt designs in the end that have to convince the customer to buy/purchase the product. T-Shirt ranking websites only make it easier for you to market/promote your site/designs and to get the high quality targeted traffic that every business wants.

The next article in this two-part series outlines some advice, problems, and solutions from other T-Shirt businesses that they encountered when they were starting their own T-Shirt business.

News Alert: Kansas Heads to N.C.A.A. Championship With a 64-62 Victory Over Ohio State

Posted: 31 Mar 2012 08:55 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Saturday, March 31, 2012 -- 11:26 PM EDT

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Kansas Heads to N.C.A.A. Championship With a 64-62 Victory Over Ohio State

Kansas defeated Ohio State, 64-62, advancing to the N.C.A.A. men's basketball championship.

After trailing the Buckeyes for most of the game, the Jayhawks took advantage of an Ohio State cold streak in the final minutes, earning their second appearance in the title game in five years.

Kansas plays overall No. 1 seed Kentucky on Monday in New Orleans.

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News Alert: Kentucky Beats Louisville, 69-61, Moving to N.C.A.A. Final

Posted: 31 Mar 2012 06:03 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Saturday, March 31, 2012 -- 8:32 PM EDT

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Kentucky Beats Louisville, 69-61, Moving to N.C.A.A. Final

With a balanced attack led by freshman forward Anthony Davis, Kentucky beat its rival Louisville, 69-61, and moved on to the N.C.A.A. men's basketball championship.

Davis, who earlier Saturday was named The Associated Press's college basketball player of the year, scored 18 points and grabbed 14 rebounds to help the top-ranked Wildcats advance to the title game on Monday, where they will play the winner of Saturday night's game between Ohio State and Kansas.

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News Alert: Jeremy Lin Out for Rest of Regular Season With Knee Injury

Posted: 31 Mar 2012 04:08 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Saturday, March 31, 2012 -- 6:37 PM EDT

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Jeremy Lin Out for Rest of Regular Season With Knee Injury

Jeremy Lin's basketball season has come to an abrupt and untimely end, because of a knee injury that will require surgery.

Lin, the Knicks' point guard, has a small, chronic meniscal tear in his left knee, the Knicks announced Saturday night. He will undergo arthroscopic surgery and is expected to miss six weeks, wiping out the rest of the regular season and possibly the first round of the playoffs, assuming the Knicks make it.

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The Future of Article Marketing - An Interview - Website Promotion - Online Promotion

Posted: 31 Mar 2012 09:05 AM PDT

Chris Ellington is the CEO and Founder of Article Marketer. With over 20 years of marketing experience and expertise, he works with small business owners, clarifying strategic business initiatives. He guides them in focusing on the most important and profitable aspects of their businesses. Less than a year old, the Article Marketer site already serves thousands of authors and has successfully completed more than 3.3 million article submissions.

Question: I stumbled across your site by accident one day when I was approving articles on a list I owned. That's how I found you. Tell me how you got started in article writing and promotion.

Answer: Content is the foundation of any internet marketing campaign. No matter what you choose to do, whether it's hard-core SEO, Google AdWords, search enging marketing, email marketing, or any other form of online marketing - the web is fundamentally built around content.

Creating and providing content to the literally millions of content sites and newsletters just seemed to be a smart move. Did you know that there are now more websites on the net than there are people on the planet? The webmasters of those sites simply don't have time to create the sheer volume of content they need to fill their newsletters.

I started sending articles to people who wanted content, and I was amazed at the results. More targeted traffic started showing up at my various sites. With more targeted traffic comes greater conversion - which means more people to opt-in to my lists, more affiliates join my programs, and more sales of my products and services.

The problem was I was spending too much time submitting articles by hand. I knew there had to be a better way. There were services to do article submission - some charging up to $400 per article! - and there was software to download and install - but I was still chained to my desk to do the actual submission work.

My consulting work with small business owners had taught me that what the market needed was a low-cost, automated, hands-free solution. I set out to build a service that would alleviate all of the problems that I'd seen with article marketing: either time-consuming and tedious drudgework or high expense for the author, while being spam-ridden for the newsletter editors and content site owners.

I put together a team and we created completely automated submission, free article review to help each author get better results, and a team human-spam-blockers who make sure that spam never goes through our servers. Article submission is affordable to small business owners through a unique subscription model that allows an author to submit an unlimited number of articles without having to factor in the expense of each and every article.

Question: What changes have you seen in article writing and promotion since you started your service?

Answer: The article marketing landscape is constantly changing. Some once very popular article sites have completely vanished, overwhelmed by spam and the sheer volume of new articles being submitted. At the same time, new sites come online all the time. Keeping up with these changes is almost a full time job.

As people started understanding that they could get one-way (as opposed to reciprocal) links, better search engine placement, improved pagerank, more traffic and sales just from writing articles, we've seen the inevitable entry of spammers into the market. These are people who are not interested in providing good content, but only want a free link in someone's newsletter.

The result is that the article directories and content site owners are putting more restrictions on the articles they'll accept. While in the early days we could submit short (150-250 word) articles, these days if an article isn't at least 400 words, it's unlikely to be accepted. A number of sites have now banned the use of 'tinyurl' URL replacements because spammers mask their affiliate links or links to bad neighborhoods.

It used to be that we could incorporate URLs into the article body, but more and more article sites are rejecting anything they find with a.com address. We have worked out an arrangement with most of the content sites to allow the specific use of URLs under certain circumstances, and we teach our authors how they can effectively incorporate URLs into their articles and yet avoid having their accounts banned.

We've seen a surge of "Private Label" articles in the market. These are canned, pre-written articles that people can buy and submit under their own names. Unfortunately, only the first few people who submit those articles are successful, everyone else is an "also ran". Private Label articles are like jokes on the internet. The first time you see one, it's funny. The 50th time it's just annoying.

Question: What do you think article writers should be aware of when writing articles?

Answer: There are three rules when it comes to writing articles:Rule #1: Provide Good ContentRule #2: Provide Good ContentRule #3: When in doubt, see Rules #1 and #2

If you follow those three rules, you'll do just fine. What is "good content"? It's approximately 750 words that allows the reader to come away with some knowledge that wasn't there before. Focus on a topic and make sure that the reader gets something of value at the end.

Authors should ask themselves this question:Must a reader buy my product/service in order to take action?

If the answer is "yes", then go back to the drawing board. Of course, the author may need to substitute "visit my website", "subscribe to my newsletter" or any of a dozen other calls to action based on the author's desires.

When providing newsletter content, it's important to remember that you are speaking directly to a specifically targeted audience. These are people who have subscribed to "Dog Weekly" or "Fish Tank Monthly", so if your thing is dogs or fish tanks, this is your perfect audience. Put your best foot forward. Give them really good information and they'll want to visit your site for more information. At that point you can sell them something.

Another important point is that articles stay on the article banks forever. When you include a call to action in your resource box, make sure it's not a 'limited time offer'. Don't use contact information that might go away. It's always best to send your readers to a website you control (and can update) so that if your email address or phone number changes, they will still be able to reach you.

Question: Share a few of your best article writing tips with us.

Answer: The title is key. It's the first thing people see and the first decision they make about your article. If they don't get past the title, they'll never read the rest.

A title should never be a noun. If you have a great article about fish tanks, and you title it "Fish Tanks", you're unlikely to get as many readers as you would with, for instance "How to Keep Your Fish Tank Sparkly Clean" (assuming, of course, that the article is about keeping a fish tank clean.) Add some action and some excitement to your title to draw people into the content.

Your article itself should be about one thing. Don't try to cover all aspects or every angle in a single article. Break it down into component parts and explain the most important points.

Try not to write a multi-part article series. I know that goes against some other advice you may have heard, but there are some important reasons to avoid multipart articles.

The first problem is that a reader may not have access to the other parts. How terrible would it be to find "Fish tanks Part 2" and not know how to find the first part? The second problem is that newsletter publishers may not be willing to commit to running all 16 parts of your masterpiece, and so will not print any of your work. Each article you write must be able to stand on its own, with a beginning, a middle and an end. Don't require that a reader be fluent in parts 1-3 before they read part 4. Never end your article with "to be continued..." or "the rest of this article can be found on my website..." because the content site owners are expecting you to provide content - all of it - in exchange for the link and the targeted audience they'll be delivering to you.

Question: What trends do you see in article writing and promotion, and what do you think the future holds for article writing and promotion?

Answer: We're seeing a shift in the marketplace. While at one time only "polished authors" would submit their articles, it's become much more common to get really good articles from average business owners.

People who have never written an article before are discovering that it isn't that hard. Our editors help them put out a good quality article the first time through. I can't tell you the number of emails we get thanking us for the detailed assistance provided by our review team. Anyone can write an article about a topic they're passionate about (and isn't that why they started a business in the first place?) and they can create interesting content just based on their own experiences.

I believe that the surge of "Private Label" articles will go away as people discover that only original content actually delivers the results of marketing with articles. While re-writing those articles can be effective, just replacing certain words with synonyms is not enough. You can't expect a dog newsletter owner to put "Combing Your Mutt" in the newsletter after publishing "Grooming Your Dog" in last week's newsletter.

I think people are getting more excited about bringing their own expertise to the fore. Different dog groomers can write about combing dogs and have each of them published in the dog newsletter, because each tells a specific story or anecdote, provides original tips and tricks learned "in the trenches", and brings a fresh perspective to the subject.

Will article writing and submission ever go the way of banner ads, pop ups, and FFA sites? No, because content is the foundation of the web. Other forms of marketing have come and gone - even email marketing is difficult these days - but anyone who provides good content to the content-hungry audience will see their work published all around the net, will get links from relevant sites, will see their pagerank increase, and will get more targeted traffic to their websites.

News Alert: Obama Clearing Way to Tighten Sanctions Targeting Iranian Oil

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 11:55 AM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Friday, March 30, 2012 -- 2:22 PM EDT

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Obama Clearing Way to Tighten Sanctions Targeting Iranian Oil

President Obama has determined there is enough oil in world markets to allow countries to rely less on imports from Iran, a step that could ramp up western sanctions to deter Tehran's nuclear ambitions, an administration official said Friday.

Mr. Obama is required by law to decide by March 30, and every six months after, whether the price and supply of non-Iranian oil is sufficient to allow for countries to cut their oil purchases from Iran.

The new sanctions, passed as part of the defense budget and mandated by the Senate in a rare 100-0 vote, penalize foreign corporations or other entities that purchase oil from Iran's central bank, which collects payment for most of the country's energy exports. The sanctions are meant to pressure Iran to curb its nuclear program.

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Advanced Link Checks - Internet

Posted: 30 Mar 2012 09:00 AM PDT

You should be able to find several indispensable facts about SEO in the following paragraphs. If there's at least one fact you didn't know before, imagine the difference it might make.

View the source of each and every page: is there JavaScript and CSS on the page? Remember that spiders may not index pages that have more than 10k or so of JavaScript or CSS embedded in them. Spiders don't enjoy getting tangled up in JavaScript. So as a general rule you should avoid putting out prompts and alerts using JavaScript every time that a page loads. Because of this rule, it is also wise to avoid link partners who do so on the pages that they link to you from. If anything looks fishy, it probably is.

CSS won't give you many problems. If you are going to use CSS, it is best to link to it from another source. Create a separate CSS page and use the tag to work it into the head of your HTML. This method will keep your file size down considerably, and since you will probably be using the same CSS on several pages, decrease your bandwidth usage. Normally a large quantity of CSS within the document isn't indicative of any suspicious behavior on the part of the linker. If you feel that you are, indeed, suffering from the fact that the site uses such an excessive proportion of CSS on the page itself, suggest to the webmaster that he/she may want to create an external CSS document and link to it in his/her header.

Check that you're still on the domain you clicked on a link to, and you haven't moved to another site or a subdomain. Some people will move you to another domain while telling that's their site and your link is there, relying on you not checking the address bar. This trick is all too common and happens to folks who are new to SEO every single day. This sad fact will continue until people begin to catch it every time.

If you don't have accurate details regarding SEO, then you might make a bad choice on the subject. Don't let that happen: keep reading.

If the domain has changed, delete your backlink to the site in question immediately and then email the webmaster with your complaint. If the webmaster does not fix the problem you may even want to request that they remove the link as the site may wind up discredited as a link farm or some such thing that you do not want to be associated with for fear of being banned from many popular search engines with technology used to combat link farms.

On a related subject, when you check your back links, make sure that these links appear in legitimate places. If the site is completely dedicated to linking to other sites and doesn't seem to be a directory or something similar you will want to get your link removed as soon as possible. There is no time when one link is worth the risk of being permanently banned from any popular search engine. Aside from the traffic that you will lose from that one search engine, you may wind up "red flagged" so to speak. It seems to be common practice among search engines that if one finds faulty activity the rest seem to find out soon afterwards.

Overall, if it seems dodgy, leave it alone. It's better to sacrifice one link in caution than to destroy your site's rankings by accepting one you're not sure of. There are hundreds of situations aside from link farms that can and will give you trouble. It would be impossible to list every scam as there are people who make their living (or seem to anyway) in creating and executing these scams. Whenever there is a new form of "SEO" technology that "can't fail," you should watch out because it is almost guaranteed to blow up in your face. The only truly powerful and guaranteed method of SEO is to make your site valuable to your visitors and then let it fall where it may in the realm of the search engine.

It is difficult, after you have optimized your pages and submitted them to search engines and directories, to sit back and wait, but there is not much that can be done aside from attempting to accumulate links from good, solid places. The work that you have done is bound to pay off sooner or later as long as you stay honest. When it comes to the world of SEO, honesty is, indeed, the best policy.

When word gets around about your command of SEO facts, others who need to know about SEO will start to actively seek you out.

News Alert: Apple Supplier in China Pledges Changes After Report Cites Violations

Posted: 29 Mar 2012 02:08 PM PDT

Breaking News Alert

The New York Times

Thursday, March 29, 2012 -- 4:14 PM EDT

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Apple Supplier in China Pledges Changes After Report Cites Violations

Foxconn, which manufactures electronics for such companies as Apple, Dell, Amazon and others, has pledged to sharply curtail the number of working hours within its Chinese factories and significantly increase wages.

The moves come after a wide-ranging inspection by the Fair Labor Association, a monitoring group, found widespread problems — including numerous instances where Foxconn violated Chinese law and industry codes of conduct by having employees work more than 60 hours a week, sometimes for more than 11 days in a row.

Apple, which recently joined the association, had asked the group to investigate plants manufacturing iPhones, iPads and other devices. In recent months, a growing outcry over conditions at overseas factories has prompted protests and petitions, and several labor rights organizations have started scrutinizing Apple's suppliers.

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