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Analyst Meredith Whitney is co-hosting on CNBC, and though she says she’s bearish, she says she’s been “trading bullish” all year, up until Q3 financial earnings came out.

Benzinga notes some of her other comments:

She says the governnment is now out of bullets to support the economy. She says if the economy doesn’t slow down now, it will in Q1.

Whitney said nothing has changed other than the banks refinancing themselves. Meredith Whitney’s comments could help drive down the Financial Select Sector SPDR (XLF) in the pre-market.

Whitney says the overall market is extended. Meredith said she is 100% confident that the consumer is not getting any better and since 70% of the economy is supported by the consumer, the S&P 500 will likely fall in 2010.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Meredith Whitney: Even Without The Pay Czar, Good People Always Ditch Top Firms
• Meredith Whitney: "I Haven’t Been This Bearish In A Year" (XLF)
• Meredith Whitney’s Goldman Downgrade Revealed!

Much of the news surrounding the whirlwind book tour of Sarah Palin has concerned the media itself, and Palin’s open disdain for it. Press coverage that gathers large crowds at book signings and speeches, apparently, is good. Press coverage that takes issue with any aspect of what Palin says or does at […]

Filed under: Truck, Plants/Manufacturing, Toyota

NUMMI‘s loss will be San Antonio’s gain. Toyota is adding a second shift at its truck plant and looking to hire 850 workers for the production increase, and since Toyota’s suppliers are located on-site, they’re also adding a second shift and hiring.

The relocated Tacoma production from NUMMI is projected to roll 150,000 vehicles out per year, still below the 200,000 trucks Toyota wanted to be making when it launched the current Tundra. It’s a way for Toyota to hedge its pickup bets. When the market for the biggies sags, Tacomas may be more appealing; the plant could adjust its mix and keep going. While Toyota’s pickup volume is a small slice of the market, San Antonio may wind up loving the Tundra and Tacoma in a big way.

[Source: Automotive News – Sub. Req.]

REPORT: Toyota to add 850 more jobs in San Antonio to build more pickups originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Social CRM: A Growing Segment
Yesterday’s post on Social CRM vendors not walking-the-talk raised awareness of this nascent space.  However, not everyone was thrilled with the effort, as CTO John Moore gave us an A for effort but a C- for results, and Kim Kobza, the CEO of Neigborhood America (they were an early adopter) left a comment on John’s post suggesting we missed the mark (also, SAP ’s passionate team strongly represents).  Although we stand by our scoring, both John and Kim are right, our evaluation yesterday was only on a small subset of the industry, but a manageable starting ground, as we continue to unearth the variety of players.

Tracking the Market with an ‘Industry Index’
For a few years ago, I’ve created what I call my posts called the Industry Index (see all) lists to track companies in any particular vertical, it helps me, vendors, and buyers to track the space.  I expect this space to rapidly increase in size as social channels will be bolted onto CRM vendors, and many brand monitoring and community platforms are adding workflow, triage, and tracking capabilities. The purpose of this list is to quickly capture the vendors participating in this space, and to acknowledge those that were not on yesterday’s review, I expect there to be many more vendors who leave a comment, which we can quickly add to this list.

We owe it to the market to try to include as many as possible, although it’s going to be very difficult as this space quickly grows. So first, let’s try to put some scope around this space with a definition.

Social CRM Definition
We prefer Paul Greenberg’s definition of Social CRM, which he summarizes as:

“CRM is a philosophy & a business strategy, supported by a technology platform, business rules, workflow, processes & social characteristics, designed to engage the customer in a collaborative conversation in order to provide mutually beneficial value in a trusted & transparent business environment. It’s the company’s response to the customer’s ownership of the conversation.” (also read his 2009 review of this space on ZDnet)

It’s a broad definition, but the key criteria he lists out are enough for me to go on.

List of Companies Providing Social CRM Offerings: (32 vendors total)

Traditional CRM Vendors offering Social Integration (10 vendors)

• ACT!:  This barely fits the scope of social crm, but ACT! allows a single individual to manage multiple types of information, including social, however if this product was extended across an enterprise, it fits the quota.
• BatchBlue: While not a ‘traditional’ CRM like many of the others listed below, has traditional sales automation features, but also connect with existing social graph data, think social aggregation of contact lists.  After watching the demo, it looks like you have to manually enter feeds of contacts, rather than auto-finding data from social graphs by scraping.
• Buzzient: Offers a CRM platform that provides social media analytics that can be used for web marketing, customer tracking, or reporting.  They have partnerships with Salesforce, Oracle, and SugarCRM.
• Microsoft Dynamics:  Offers Accelerators (here and here) that “Allows business professionals to monitor and analyze customers’ conversations on social networking sites, and as a result, provides real-time status updates about their products and services” (thanks Menno, who writes on the topic) They are also partnered with Neighborhood America
• NetSuite:  Offers social CRM with a partnership with InsideView and has Twitter integration (submitted by Paul Greenberg)
• Oracle Siebel Social CRM: Promises the ability to provide insights based on the buying behaviors of similar customers, as well as shared content to be used between sales teams.
• RightNow CRM: Offers several features in their suite such as Support Communities, Innovation Communities, Cloud Monitoring, and Social Experience Design. Rightnow recently acquired Hivelive an enterprise community platform.
• Salesforce: Offers acces to Social Networking like Facebook and Twitter. Salesforce, like SAP is importing the Twitter “firehose” feed, and has offered social features like Q&A, and social networking like Chatter, and has lightweight LinkedIn integration.
• SAP CRM: Imports the Twitter firehose feed, and
• Sugar CRM: Offers “SugarCRM Cloud Connectors connect via Web Services to leading third-party data service providers such as Hoover’s, JigSaw and LinkedIn”

Community Platforms Offering Social CRM (5)

• Jive Software: Community Engagement, offers data integration from Radian6, encouraging management of the discussion.
• Leverage Software:  I recall that Leverage offers built in integration with Salesforce, but I was unable to find it on their site.
• Lithium Technologies offers the Social CRM Suite offering features such as Community Applications, Reputation Engine, Actionable Analytics, CRM Connectivity, and Social Web Connectivity.
• Neighborhood America: Has had a partnership with Microsoft Dynamics, read press release, (they were early on in March 2009) and commentary from Paul Greenberg on ZDNet.
• Concourse:  Offers a variety of integration modules to a variety of apps, including a CRM module that’s prebuilt. (via pjk54)

Brand Monitoring Offering Social CRM (3)

• Radian 6: Offers brand monitoring tools that allow tools to discuss (Conversation Sidebar), triage, and manage disparate conversations, see Dave Fleet’s write up.
• ScoutLabs: Offers teams workflow ability to discuss social interactions.
• Visible Technologies: Offers CRM like features that allow teams to track, manage, triage, social conversations.  Read Jason Falls take.

Social Media/Twitter Clients (2)

• CoTweet: Offers a variety of features that allow teams to monitor, manage, and triage conversations in Twitter, see features page.
• Hootsuite: Provides workflow, analytics, for teams to manage multiple Twitter accounts.

Social Customer Experience (4)

• CrowdEngineering:  Helps to match experts to customer problems, by using a recommendation engine and skill resource set engine.
• Fuze Digital Solutions: Provides a broad and modular multi-channel customer care solution using a community knowledge base as its foundation.
• Helpstream: Offers tools that allow customers to submit questions to each other, with integration into SalesForce in addition to community driven knowledge centers.  see video.
• Parature: Offers chat-like features for support reps to interact with customers, then measures sentiment.
• Get Satisfaction:  Is an off-domain (all the support is done on their site –not yours) community that now offers premium features that offer ability to manage discussions.

Sales 2.0/Social Graph Aggregation (6)

• Flowtown:  Allows marketers to prioritize targets to contact by a variety of influence scores, and their social graph.  It then offers targeted email marketing based on those two criteria.
• Gist: Offers a way to track the social behaviors of your customers and prioritize.
• InsideView: Offers some unique offerings that mine a business social graph to provide alerts as a plugin to traditional CRM systems, Watch this lengthy demo.
• Roving Group: Offers a product called ‘Roving Contacts’ that aggregates the social graphs and contact information from your address book.
• SocioToo: Not the typical corporate enterprise company, this Dutch company offers a search page (and no real corporate site –by intent) that mines social graph data in public.
• Xobni:  This cleverly named (opposite of inbox) Outlook plugin scrapes your social graph and most frequently emailed contacts improving email utility.  This barely falls within the scope of social crm, but if the data was able to export to other systems, it could start to apply.

CRM Applications and Plugins (2)

• Appirio: Offers the ability for companies to create applications on Facebook which then marry data back to Salesforce, called Cloud Connectors.
• SocialCRMTools: Offers integration with Salesforce that imports, monitors, and manages Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn. (via John Perez)

Social Networks and Others

• Twitter: Has made motions they plan to offer premium services to brands, that would offer verified accounts, then management-like features. The specifics are still unknown, as they sort out their business model. They have partnered with Google and Bing.
• Google has announced real time search integration, and Bing has shown some early integrations.  While far fetched we should not completely rule them out as eventually building a dashboard for brands to manage their namesakes, advertising, and website analytics, or Google alerts.  Historically, they generate money off content created by publishers, so this actually falls in line with ‘organizing the world’s information”.

Not on this list? Leave a comment, with justification why you fit in Paul’s definition with a link to your site explaining more, I’ll take a look and add to it, please be patient while I review.  Also, if you want to brief Ray and myself, please read and submit to this briefing form.

Update: Business Partner Ray Wang and I have created a more detailed matrix of this space for our clients.

Comment on White Paper
In The Times, Stephen Burke calls for cross-party support for care home; he mentions that the upcoming White Paper will address the funding gap. (03 Dec)

The Sunday Express writes that the Prime Minister is facing a backbench revolt over plans to axe benefits for pensioners in order to fund care reforms. (06 Dec)

Care Quality Commission Report
The Times, Financial Times, The Guardian, The Independent, Daily Mail, Daily Mirror and The Daily Express cover a report by the Care Quality Commission finding that councils are failing the elderly and that 400 care homes in Britain need to improve immediately or close. (03 Dec)

In another article, The Times reports that the councils criticised in the report have now challenged the CQC’s competency. (03 Dec)

The Daily Telegraph, The Guardian, The Mail on Sunday and Yahoo! UK and Ireland report that Baroness Young has announced she is stepping down as the chairwoman of the Care Quality Commission. (05, 06 Dec)

Fiona Phillips writes in The Daily Mirror that poor conditions in care homes are common. (05 Dec)

General Care
The Guardian covers the Oxfam report ‘Who Cares?’, finding that some British care agencies exploit the migrant carers whom they increasingly rely on. (02 Dec)

The Daily Telegraph reports that elderly people could be offered accommodation in communal purpose-built retirement housing rather than care homes. (04 Dec)

The Daily Mirror reports on research finding that 1 in 6 carers has to give up work or cut their hours to look after loved ones. (04 Dec)

In The Guardian, Polly Toynbee praises inspections under the Labour Government that lead to stricter standards for social care, as well as health and schools. (05 Dec)

The Sunday Times reports that a consortium of banks is to write off more than £800m of loans to Four Seasons nursing homes, following poor lending decisions. (06 Dec)

Dementia in the press
The Daily Mail reports that a GP has set up a website where people can share their experiences of health problems including dementia. (01 Dec)

A feature in The Daily Telegraph, referring to the CQC report, discusses Sir Gerry Robinson’s findings about the poor treatment of dementia patients in care homes, and his proposals for better inspections and training to improve the situation. (04 Dec)

The Daily Express reports that drinking green tea can halt brain diseases including Alzheimer’s. (05 Dec)

General
The BBC reports that the ageing population will increase pressure on NHS dentistry. (02 Dec)

The Times, The Guardian, The Daily Mail, The Daily Express and The Sun write that men in the village of Montacute, Somerset have the highest life expectancy in the country, attributing this to the fact that many of them grow their own vegetables. (04 Dec)

They were up modestly this morning, but stock futures have turned sharply lower with about an hour to go before the bell.

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• The Coming Collapse Of The Global Gold Mining Industry
• Money Pours Into Tiny Speculative Miners As "Peak Gold" Looms
• Now THAT’S A Gold Selloff

Everyone loves to play the guessing game when it comes to Facebook’s, and other social networks’, revenue and worth. Some are more informed than others, but at the end of the day, without any official figures, all they can do is speculate. Not that this is stopping anyone and the Wall Street Journal is revealing (subscrition required) some of the numbers private market advisory firm NYPPEX has come up with.

The firm uses data from internal share transactions and deals made with private-equity companies to estimate what Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter are worth. The social networks have had a very varied price tag put on them over time, but these numbers seem as accurate as it is reasonably possible at this time.

NYPPEX says that Facebook is worth about $7.6 billion, a rather conservative figure but one in line with previous estimations. Most recently Facebook has been valued at $10 billion when Russian investment firm DST bought a small stake in the social network. However, the same firm also bought common shares from Facebook employees at a lower $6 billion valuation.

LinkedIn, a social network geared at professionals which has passed 50 million users recently, is estimated to be worth $1.25 billion, again, a conservative number. Finally, Twitter, the microblogging / social networking sit… (read more)

London, Acre Resources

Our client, one of the largest producers of biofuels in the UK is now looking to recruit a key individual for the organisation, the Head of Biofuels Sustainability. This role has developed as a consequence of the growth of company’s biofuels business and the increasing regulation that is being applied to the sector, and the post holder will be tasked with building on the Company’s expertise in the delivery of sustainable Biofuels.

As a high profile role it will involve a significant amount of interaction with customers and suppliers at all stages of the supply chain as well as consultants, external regulatory and advisory bodies and internal stakeholders.

Key responsibilities are as follows:

– Manage the supply chains for the company’s Biofuels products
– Provide assurance over the integrity of the environmental and social sustainability
– Responsible for the integrity of the carbon data supplied by the supply chain
– Represent the company at expert workshops and stakeholder meetings
– Lead the annual carbon and sustainability audit to the Renewable Fuels Agency

Familiar with technical carbon and sustainability requirements of the Renewable Energy Directive and the Renewable Transport Fuel Obligation, we are looking for a candidate who has proven experience in managing sustainable supply chains whether in Biofuels or other commodities. You will have a keen interest in working within a dynamic and fast moving environment and as such an enthusiastic approach to work is a must.

This opportunity offers the chance to join a recognised leader in the biofuels market who consistently lead the debate on the issues associated with the delivery of sustainable Biofuels to the European market.
 

After Friday’s surprising jobs report, there has been a glimmer of hope that the U.S. won’t be stuck with 10% unemployment for years.

Perhaps, like the stock market, the job market will come roaring right back, in a terrific v-shaped recovery.

Unlikely, says Asha Bangalore of Northern Trust.

Since the peak, Asha says, the recession has wiped out 7.2 million full-time jobs.  2 million of those jobs were in the auto and real-estate industries, both of which have been semi-permanently downsized.

At the same time, the length of the work-week has dropped to a record low, and the number of folks working part-time because they can’t find full-time work has soared.  As new demand kicks in, employers will likely start by hiring temporary workers and giving part-time employees more work.  This will absorb a lot of the initial slack. 

Only when the work-week has returned to normal will hiring of new full-time employees return in earnest.  This will likely keep a lid on hiring at least through 2010.

See the story in charts >

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Now See The REAL State Of The US Labor Market
• Lack Of Seasonal Work Is The Real Reason To Question The Official 10% Unemployment Rate
• Gartman: Here’s Why The Unemployment Arithmetic Must Be Wrong

Filed under: Motorsports, BMW, Toyota

After months in limbo, the FIA has released a short statement to announce that it has approved the Sauber F1 team – formerly owned by BMW – to fill Toyota’s vacant spot on the grid for next year’s F1 championship.

The announcement puts an end to a long period of uncertainty for the Swiss team that started when BMW announced it would withdraw its support. A deal was then penned with a shady investment firm known as Qadbak. But after Qadbak emerged as little more than a shell company for a convicted fraudster, the team’s founder and namesake Peter Sauber negotiated a deal to buy the team back from the departing Bavarian automaker.

BMW motorsport chief Mario Thiessen – who supervised the company’s F1 participation from providing engines to Williams through its purchase of Sauber – has announced that he’ll remain with BMW and not leave with Sauber, leaving old Peter in charge.

The newly independent team has reportedly negotiated a deal to run Ferrari engines next season, an arrangement that powered Sauber F1 cars for eight years, rebadged as Petronas under the sponsor’s name. Reports also suggest that Giancarlo Fisichella – who raced for Sauber in 2004 alongside Felipe Massa – could drive for the team once again in parallel to his Ferrari test duties.

A revised entry list is expected within the next few days. Follow the jump for the FIA’s official announcement.

[Source: FIA | Image: Andrew Yates/AFP/Getty Images]

Continue reading FIA gives Sauber the green light to fill Toyota’s slot

FIA gives Sauber the green light to fill Toyota’s slot originally appeared on Autoblog on Tue, 08 Dec 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This week I want to skirt the whole holiday gift guide thing again and talk basics.

Recently, I asked some of our staff to write about their most useful kitchen tools and three of them have stepped forward so far: Emily, Emma and Faith.

Now it’s my turn.

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An admission, a challenge, and an unnamed diplomatic source, sounds like the beginning of good mystery novel.


The UN Conference on Climate Change in Copenhagen wrapped up its first day of talks with a some interesting developments.


The Admission


The Environmental Protection Agency, of the United States, came out of the closet and finally admitted carbon dioxide as a threat to human health. And while most of us know that breathing from an exhaust pipe is probably not good for you, this admission does have some strength behind it. With this admission, should the U.S. Senate fail to adopt legislation (on emissions) the E.P.A. now has the authority to regulate.


The Challenge


The European Union was beating its chest yesterday, suggesting they will raise their emission reductions from the 20% they have already adopted to 30% if “other major players (read United States and China) undertake ‘comparable commitments’”, however, the statement does not specify what would qualify as being “comparable”. Most agree this move is only meant to keep pressure on the United States and China. Wouldn’t it be great if we didn’t have to bully our political leaders?


Unnamed Diplomatic Source


Financial Times Deutschland is reporting the European Union is ready to put money on the table as a sign of good faith. The money will be earmarked for climate change mitigation and adaption in vulnerable third world countries over the next three years. In a draft obtained by news agency AFP, the amount is just noted as “X billion euros for the years 2010 to 2012”, however according to the unnamed source the X will be replaced by a figure in the range of one to three.


Time Magazine has a great read on the “Five Things to Watch for at the Copenhagen Climate Change Conference.



1. “Will the U.S. lead?” The second Bush administration seemed to enjoy playing the spoiler, often “gumming” up the works on carbon emissions. And we all remember when they walked out during the middle of negotiations at the Montreal summit in 2005.


2. “Will China and India Follow?” While the U.S. is the globe’s largest carbon emitter, China and India are not too far behind. And while they have a lower per capita emissions ratio, under the Kyoto Protocol, they haven’t been required to take any verifiable actions to control emissions.


3. “The Two Step Tango” In 2007 leaders laid out the “Bali road map” a series of steps towards replacing the Kyoto Protocol. Well, the international community got a bit delayed in implementing those measures.


4. “Seeing REDD on deforestation” The loss of tropical forests plays a major role in climate change, contributing to 15% of global greenhouse gases. Slowing the rate of deforestation has a double benefit, but presently there’s no mechanism for developing countries to earn carbon funding by keeping their trees.


5. “Financial Adaption” It’s not all about the smoke, Global warming is coming even if we do act fast. For a long time no one could agree on how much money would need to spent, the numbers range from $10 to $100 billion, its time to nail that number down.


Read the entire article at Time.com


Lets hope day two is just as interesting.

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related.posts:

1. Copenhagen Climate Conference: Day 3
2. Copenhagen Climate Change Conference: Day 8 Recap
3. We Have A Deal: The Copenhagen Climate Change Conference Result

The following Xbox 360 games are now ready for direct download from the Xbox LIVE Marketplace:

Content: Trivial Pursuit

Price: Check pricing for your region

Availability: Australia, New Zealand, Europe except Belgium, Ireland, and Portugal

Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) This game supports English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish. Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". The Trivial Pursuit video game from EA builds on the original gameplay with stunning visual presentation, new question types and all-new questions, and the innovative Facts & Friends game mode. The quick-playing Facts & Friends mode adds a whole new social dynamic to the game that keeps everyone involved by challenging players to guess whether their opponents will answer their questions correctly There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Add Trivial Pursuit to your Xbox 360 download queue

Content: Disney Bolt
Price: Check pricing for your region
Availability: North America and Europe 
Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) This game supports English, Spanish, and French. Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". Join Penny and her super dog, Bolt, as they travel the globe on a dangerous mission to save Penny's dad from the evil Dr. Calico. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts.

Add Disney Bolt to your Xbox 360 download queue

Content: FaceBreaker
Price: Check pricing for your region
Availability: Australia and Canada
Dash Text: (Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB) This game supports English and French. Download the manual for this game by locating the game on http://marketplace.xbox.com and selecting “See Game Manual". FaceBreaker™ brings you a pretty sweet game that you should totally play. There are no refunds for this item. For more information, see www.xbox.com/live/accounts

Add FaceBreaker to your Xbox 360 download queue

Xbox LIVE Members in Japan can now download Diario～Rebirth Moon Legend～

Don’t worry, later today we plan to do a feature on every reason people are skeptical of last Friday’s unemployment report. By our count, people found at least 300-or-so reasons to doubt the veracity of the 10% unemployment number and the 11,000.

In the meantime, Dennis Gartman is the latest to try poking holes in it (via FT Alphaville):

Workers simply have become discouraged and are still pulling themselves out of the job market, thus forcing the participation rate, as it is known, to its lowest level in two decades. Further… and this really does cause us some confusion and casts doubt upon the veracity of Friday’s report… the civilian labour force was actually reported to have fallen when mere demographics… mere arithmetic… said it must increase instead.

We wonder how this can be? Further, there are other anomalies, not the least of which is the continued reliance upon rather faulty seasonal adjustments and an even more faulty “birth/Death” factor, but we shall leave those for another day. The “economic reasons” question and that of the “participation rate” are sufficiently disconcerting for our purposes at the moment to make us just a tad skeptical of the euphoria surrounding Friday’s report. It was a good report. It was a nice report. It was a report consistent with the first few weeks, historically, of an economic rebound, but it was not a report to elicit Hosannas.

Now, see why the government’s data does match up with ADP >>

Join the conversation about this story »

See Also:

• Rosenberg: There’s Just A 1-In-35 Chance Friday’s Employment Number Was Right
• Actually, Government Employment Data Matches Up Nicely With ADP
• TrimTabs: The Real Job Loss Number Was 255,000

As more and more Americans enjoy wine, giving wine and wine related gifts has also grown in popularity. From the special gift to the fun stocking filler, here are some ideas that have caught my eye, including some special (and some not-so-expensive) bottles for last-minute hostess gifts.

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You may recall a few years ago all the negative publicity Yahoo got after it came out that its Chinese operations handed over information on certain users that resulted in some Chinese dissidents being arrested. This resulted in some lawsuits filed in the US. However, in one such case, the court has noted that the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA), which protects user data in such cases, doesn’t apply outside the US, and since this happened entirely within China, there’s not much of a case to be made about it. Either way, Yahoo recognized what a blackeye it got from the PR in these cases, and has settled some of them, and I’m guessing the company is now a lot more aware of the potential backlash in dealing with these kinds of issues.

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Did you stock up on canned pumpkin before Thanksgiving? Did fears of a shortage leave you with a few extra cans? Whether it was all a marketing ploy or not, you can still put that pumpkin to good use. You surely know a few pumpkin dessert recipes, so why not try it in a main course, appetizer or a drink?

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In theory, blogging is not difficult to do. You only have to write posts on a regular basis and include necessary advertising or links in order to be called a blogger. However, if you want to do more than write a few posts every week and your goal is to make a decent profit, you must understand how to create blog posts that will capture the interest of readers, keep  them coming back for more and encourage them to click on the links that will ultimately be your payout.

1. Choose a niche that matches your writing ability and knowledge experience or be prepared to hire a professional blogger who can do it for you.

2. Incorporate multiple media in your blog and blog posts. Images, photos, screenshots, video, charts, graphs or software that can be manipulated by the reader are great for giving your blog an edge over those that use only one medium: writing.

3. Keep your blog posts relatively short and easy on the eyes. Two to six hundred words is the norm for most blogs. Separate paragraphs into blocks of text, creating plenty of white space to make for easier reading as well.

4. Unless your blog is scientific or very technical, make the posts easy to digest for anyone with an 8th grade education. Th

atís right! Studies have shown that the majority of online readers have a junior high reading level. You donít have to ìdumb it downî, just be clear, simple and concise and avoid using verbiage that inspires a ìhuh?î

5. Get personal. Write in first person as though speaking directly to the reader. Talk about things that inspire you and inject some of your personality into your posts. Think ìpersonableî and ìfriendlyî.

6. Unless you are absolutely crazy about a product, donít express extreme enthusiasm. Be honest in your reviews and critiques. This will not only instill a sense of trust between yourself and your readers, it will keep readers coming back to purchase more of the products you DO recommend highly because after trying something you like, they find you that you are trustworthy.

7. Keep your blog fresh. Outdated information will have people running for the hills whereas content that is current and trendy will make them want to stick around. Update your blog at least twice a week ñ more if possible.

8. Do not overwhelm the pages with huge banners and flashing animations when adding advertising to your blog. A few smaller banners scattered here and there along with text links should be enough to get some clicks.

Remember:

Your blog is not the place for the high-pressure sales pitch but a place to discuss relevant information that pertains to your niche and encourage readers to delve deeper into what you have to offer.

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Web apps can be great for many things and Google is a big supporter of anything that lives in the cloud. But they have one major disadvantage, if there’s no Internet connection there’s no app. Broadband is becoming ubiquitous in some countries and wireless connections are increasingly available and reliable, but we’re still far from the point where this is no longer a concern.

In the mean time, Google along with other web companies are working on making web apps usable without the need for an Internet connection with much of the focus being placed on some HTML 5 features which would make this possible. Those are still only half-backed and there may still be a while until most people and developers can take advantage of them.

This hasn’t stopped Google though and the company has launched an offline version of its flagship product Gmail almost a year ago. The feature has been in testing since and Google is now confident that it reached a point where it can be rolled out to everyone.

“Now, we’re happy to announce that Offline Gmail is graduating from Labs and becoming a regular part of Gmail. If you’re already using it, then you’re all set. While you’ll no longer see it on the Labs tab, you can tweak your settings and turn it on and off from the Offline tab under Settings,&rd… (read more)