DIFFERENCE SEO AND MARKETING

SEO and SEM are two terms that are commonly bandied about by webmasters. Sometimes it seems as if the two terms are used almost interchangeably. But is there a difference, and if so, what is it?

In fact, there is a difference. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. It refers to anything you do to your page to make it more search engine friendly. SEM stands for Search Engine Marketing. It forms a sort of umbrella term that can refer to anything you do to get your page ranked higher in search engines, from search engine optimization to requesting backlinks to submitting your URL to search engines.

It's important to know the difference between the two when you're shopping for SEO or SEM services. If the company doesn't specify what services it offers as part of its "SEM Package," then don't hesitate to ask. And don't hand over any money until you know! Some companies may mean nothing more than submitting your website's URL to a few search engines, and you can do that yourself.
Whenever possible, get a list of specific things they plan to do to help surfers find your website. Will they submit your URL to search engines? Get a list of the search engines they plan to submit it to. ("Yahoo!, Google, and 100's More!" doesn't count.) Will they keyword optimize your site? Be sure to ask if they include META and ALT tags.

Ultimately, whether a company uses "SEO" or "SEM" doesn't matter as much as what services they offer. Ideally, SEM would be more valuable than SEO, because it would include SEO as well as other marketing strategies. But this is not always the case. As we've noted before, it can be simply a code for "stick your URL is a few search engines and be done with it." Look for reputable websites, and ask for specific services they offer. Once you've done your homework, you will be able to make an informed decision between SEO and SEM and march forward proudly, knowing that you truly got the best value for your money.

FACEBOOK AROUND 100 BILLION

Facebook may be getting very close to filing for its IPO if a new report is accurate. But take this for what it is. It’s still just a rumor at this point.

Nicholas Carlson at Business Insider says the publication received an email from a source “close to Facebook employees,” saying “that the rumor flitting from employee to employee is that ‘a Facebook S1 filing is coming really soon. Possibly as soon as next month.”

Still, he says another source says Facebook hasn’t even decided what banks will underwrite.

Two months ago, the Financial Times reported that Facebook is aiming for a late 2012 IPO launch.

Earlier this month, CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Charlie Rose “It’’s not something I spend a lot of time on a day-to-day basis thinking about.”

Recent valuations of the company have exceeded $80 billion. That’s reportedly up from about $4 billion in 2008. That’s just amazing. Jolie O’Dell at VentureBeat recently shared this graph depicting the company’s valuation escalation:We’re not going to hold our breath for the Facebook IPO. Why start now? But we can’t help but be a little curious as to how soon this thing really is going to happen, after years of waiting.

Apple: Amazon Is Guilty Of False Advertising Too

Apple has been involved in a beef with Amazon over the use of the term “App Store” since March of this year. Apple’s original trademark lawsuit claimed that they owned the term “App Store,” having applied for the trademark in 2008 after launching the store for their iPhone

Amazon battled back saying that the term “App Store” was simply too generic to be trademarked – that it just describes a store that sells apps. The Amazon App Store for Android launched anyways, much to the chagrin of Apple. In July, a judge denied the injunction and allowed Amazon’s store to remain active.

Apple says that Amazon purposefully started “de-emphasizing” the “for Android” part of the “Amazon App Store for Android” in order to bank of the popularity of the Apple App Store.The brief even provides screenshots to back up their point. In this one, you can see the Kindle Fire being promoted as having the “Amazon Appstore.”

Source:webpronews

SEO TOOLS FOR 2012

There are a number of popular SEO tools available online that will make your work much easier. The SEO experts will advise you about these effective tools that will solve your problem areas. The first and most important tool is Google Analytics.

This is a free tool that gives you an easy solution to analyze the traffic of your website. You can track your site and find out the number of page views you have received in a particular time frame. You can also find out the length and depth of visit and the geographical location of your visit. The three SEO elements covered by Google Analytics are search traffic, search keywords and content performance.

Alexa toolbar is very useful for internet users. This is widely used by many webmasters for many years due to its ability to measure the performance and popularity of a website. Alexa is able to give you accurate results up to the top 100,000 sites existing online.

Another great tool that helps you to find out the right keywords for your site is KeyCompete. You can determine the keywords of your competitors easily. This could be obtained through their PPC programs. This is an online tool with lots of useful features. No one can overlook the usage of this tool to find out the appropriate keywords for their sites.
You can get information about your competitors and receive reports about their performance in major search engines like Google and Yahoo through the SEO tool SEOmoz. This helps you to find out what your competitors are doing and help you to keep track of their progress. Knowing these things will help you plan your future moves accordingly.

This also helps you in site error detection, traffic tracking and keyword research. IWEBTOOL has many tools in one that covers most areas of SEO. The great feature of this is the Google PageRank Prediction. This predicts the ranking in Google. This gives account of the links a domain has and measures the speed of the website. With Website Speed Test you can find out the time taken for site loading.

Widexl helps you to locate pages that are linked to your site. This feature has a meta tag analyzer that helps you to analyze the meta tags, page loading time and keyword density. You can check the links of your site on six search engines and make comparisons among competitors with another great tool of Widexl, Search Engine Saturation.

The SEO tool, Link Diagnosis helps the website owners to examine the link competition. This provides main details about eh links of the competitors. You can get details about anchor text, page ranks, etc. The Link Diagnosis runs only in Firefox browser.

SEO Logs is a combination of many free tools for SEO like Web Page SEO Optimizer, Keyword Difficulty Check, Backlinks Analyzer Tool, HTTP Headers, Domain Age Check, Alexa Rank Comparison, Adsense Profit Calculator, etc.

This helps you to measure the difficulty of keywords to get ranked in search engines. It also can detect the faked Pagerank and give PR value results. With these popular SEO tools you can optimize your site easily.

WHAT IS MANAGEMENT

When I first started my company, I hit the business plan competition circuit for funding and feedback. At each event, I encountered the same question from a judge or a member of the audience: "This seems pretty simple, why doesn't [insert large competitor] just do this?" My response was always the same: "I don't know­--they just don't." The answer was always oddly sufficient, probably because the asker had no idea either.

That question ultimately became rhetorical, in the eventual sale of my company and in general observations on how big companies and startups act. Why do large companies more successfully acquire instead of innovate? They certainly have the talent, the money and the existing market share to launch startups with ease, yet they don't do it very well. What's clearly missing is something in their DNA, but also something in the numbers. As big companies look at growing internally or via a shopping spree, it's important to consider the underlying motivations and math.

People and culture: Startups require innovative entrepreneurs, and that typically isn't in a job description for a large company. Big companies hire people when the workload demands it, not when they can come up for air and think about innovation.

By the same token, people work for big companies when they want a stable paycheck, an eight-hour workday and projects lined up on their desk. Mechanically, the ability to break away from a billable workload to pursue something innovative requires significant buy-in and resources from managers. Those managers are likely evaluated by their higher-ups on the profitability of existing, not future, business.

Cost and organizational structure: Large companies simply can't compete with startups on a cost and execution basis. Organizational hierarchies slow decisions that could be made over lunch or beers in a startup, and established salaries and service providers create costs that would bury almost any early stage company. While startups beg, borrow and barter, large companies follow established processes, protocol and prices to accomplish the same things at a much slower speed and a heavy multiple of the cost.

Risk: Unfortunately, all of those extra dollars and time spent do little to mitigate the risks of the actual concepts and, unlike startups, big companies have a lot to lose. Failed internal ventures not only hurt the balance sheet, but the corporate brand companies invest significant resources in building and protecting. The only risk in acquiring established and derisked companies is overpaying. That premium debatably trumps the risk of having several internal failures to get something right. Like everything else in business, it boils down to math--mainly probability and statistics.

SMALL BUSINESS STILL HESITANT

The economy still seems to be affecting small businesses - especially when it comes to growth and the hiring of new employees.

According to the CBIZ Small Business Emplyoment Index (SBEI), a barometer for hiring trends, October saw a decrease in hiring among companies with 300 employees or fewer.

In October, the index fell 1.28%, after already falling .81% in September.

Phillip Noftsinger of CBIZ said that "this month's SBEI results show a steeper decline than in September, indicating that job growth at the small business level is still struggling."

"In many cases, employers facing a year-end calendar may be opting to slow the replacement process for positions opened due to voluntary attrition in an effort to boost net income. We should see some stabilization to the numbers as we move into the holiday season and hope for job growth during that period as well."

That's the upside, according to the report. As we edge closer to the big holiday shopping season, consumer spending is likely to increase dramatically. In turn, this could boost the economy, which would then increase the all important confidence factor among small business owners.

Confidence = more hiring.

But the harsh reality is that 28% of those companies surveyed said they had a decrease in employees over the last month. Half of the companies remained stagnant, reporting the same amount of employees. And only 22% said that they increased their staff.

Is the economy still having an effect on your hiring practices? Let us know in the comments.

IT'S TIME TO BUY!!

Centuries of natural selection have hardwired human beings to find patterns and imagine relationships. This wiring is the basis of such things as lucky charms, special pre-game meals, ominous black cats and the idea that rising global temperatures are caused by, rather than correlated with, industrialization.

Given our superstitious nature, it could be tempting to dismiss the work of the Stock Trader"s Almanac Now in its 45th year, the Almanac culls market data from over a half-century to uncover seasonal trends and behaviors, outlining patterns that can improve a trader's odds of success. Scoff though you may, the Almanac is a mainstay of trading desks around the world and has uncovered such now conventional wisdom as Sell in May, the Santa Claus Rally, the January effect, and more.

The money question for 2011 is whether this year's horrific news flow will trump the trends, obviating any historical seasonal influences. Despite a U.S. credit rating downgrade in August, or the European crisis that reemerged as a headline story in September, Jeff Hirsch, who replaced his father Yale as the editor of the almanac says "no." He points to stocks suffering through a terrible September and bottoming in October, two events the Almanac accurately foretold. "Historical trends have held true," says Hirsch.

If seasonal patterns stay in place, November marks the beginning of stocks' strongest three-month period. With last month having been the 4th best October on record, history suggests even stronger gains than the norm. Of the 20 strongest Octobers since 1950, the period from November 1st to January 31st has been positive 17 times, with average gains over 6%.

Hirsch is looking for the trend to continue, regardless of the headlines. "The Europe crisis, though scary and serious, is noise," he says. "The market seems to be calloused and has baked it in at this point."

The pattern isn't perfect of course, nothing is. Scary and serious news that's not already baked into the market can trump historical patterns, Hirsch says, citing rising tensions in Iran specifically.

Regardless of the ever present risk of outside shocks, Hirsch is positioning for a rally by going long stocks. He's looking at dips towards the support levels as chances to add to his positions. He uses the Dow Jones Industrial Average to set his levels at 11,500 to 11,700. Given the atypically defined trading range of last summer, support is relatively easy to find no matter what index you choose. Simply find the top of the summer range, draw a line across the stock tops and, viola', you've found support.

Call it voodoo if you like. The fact of incremental moves in the market is this: If enough traders believe something to be true, and act on it, the prophecy becomes self-fulfilling.

As I said, the Stock Trader's Almanac is on the desk of traders all over the world. You can dismiss things like support levels and October bottoms all you want, but if you bet against them you've had some tough years. Or decades, as the case may be

Source:AP

FINANCIAL STRATEGIES

Investment strategists typically draw a base case for the global markets and also an outside case -- low-probability events called "tail risks" that are more "what if?" than "what now?" situations.

But nowadays market volatility has grabbed investors by the tail, and risk-management is front and center. With uncertainty and unrest spreading from Athens to Manhattan's analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch thought it timely to assess some potential tail risks that could develop in 2012 and tell investors how to take advantage of them.

The base case for Merrill Lynch analysts is a relatively optimistic scenario. Here, the global economy slows but avoids recession, emerging markets post respectable growth, and China and the United States muddle through their economic troubles, said Kate Moore, a Merrill global strategist who contributed to the recent research report.

"The prevailing assumption is that companies are going to struggle and we're going to grind to a halt," she said.That's not how we view the world."

1. The Fed hikes interest rates

The idea that the U.S. economy would strengthen enough for the Federal Reserve to raise rates in 2012 strikes most observers as farfetched, if not ridiculous.

"It's a good thing to think outside the box, but that's in outer space," said Ed Yardeni, the president of market strategy firm Yardeni Research.

The Merrill strategists don't disagree -- in fact, their models indicate that the U.S. economy won't be strong enough to support a Fed rate hike until the third quarter of 2014. But that doesn't mean a rosy picture is out of the question.

"It's not a zero-probability event," Moore said. "The big surprise would be that the economy has bigger and stronger growth than we and the rest of the market expect."

Catalysts for U.S. economic growth would include election-year cooperation in Washington on spending and deficit reduction, and low mortgage rates spurring home sales and buoying the banking sector.

What to do

Whenever the Fed does hike rates, look for stocks to outperform bonds. Specifically, investors should then favor U.S. equities over emerging markets, and domestically focused small caps would trump globally oriented large caps, the Merrill report said. Municipal bonds do better than Treasurys, while corporate bonds and gold would come under pressure.
2. Social unrest rises

Seeds of social unrest are sprouting worldwide. In the United States, the fertilizer is double-digit unemployment, while income inequality between the wealthiest Americans and average citizens has hit a level not seen since just before the Great Depression.

Jeffrey Gundlach, the bond fund manager and CEO of investment firm DoubleLine Capital, offers this view of the Occupy Wall Street protests: The average American doesn't watch the stock market day to day, he said, but "they do know something is wrong when the library is closed on Thursdays, the potholes aren't getting fixed, big corporations are doing well and the CEOs look relaxed and tanned." So they are protesting "income polarization and policies that support it."

What to do

Social unrest is one tail risk that appears to be growing. The development doesn't bode well for most stocks, as it reflects deteriorating economic conditions, a stretched consumer, austerity in the absence of growth to repay debt and a lack of leadership and collective will to put people back to work.

The Merrill research noted that protests around the world create an environment that favors bonds over equities, and defensive stocks over cyclical stocks that would benefit from a clearer economic picture.

Treasurys are favored over corporate bonds, and in a more volatile world, safe-haven assets such as gold, and a play on food scarcity through agriculture and agribusiness shares would be warranted.

Source:(MSN)

GOOGLE ENCRYPTING SEARCH

Google has caused quite a ruckus in the search marketing community after it announced some changes to search.Last week, the search giant said that it would begin encrypting looghes in search that users do by default, when they are logged into Google.com. This further integration of a Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) will prevent search marketers from receiving referral data from the websites consumers click on from Google search results.

While this change is only supposed to affect a single digit percentage of referral data, many SEOs are not happy with the move and believe that Google has gone too far.Eric Enge the Founder and President of Stone Temple Consulting told us that he was completely “baffled” when he saw the news

“I hate to say this about Google because they’re a company that I admire and like and respect, but I think this is evil,” she said.

“Google is taking something away that is a very, very valuable tool for anybody practicing SEO,” Lieb added.

I have learned more from the referral data that comes into the that lets me benefit the user – I won’t have that data to mine, “ she said. “Personally, it will make it harder for me to (a) understand what the performance of my pages are and (b) to learn from my pages.”

Google has said that it did this in order to make search more secure, but the SEO community doesn’t agree. Enge told us that he didn’t recall any outcry from privacy organizations in regards to search term data and, therefore, is not convinced that security was Google’s real motive. If this were the case, he thinks that Bing and Yahoo would have had to make changes as well.

GOOGLE +

Google+ hasn’t even been around 6 months yet, and it’s considered a major player in the social media realm. It regularly draws comparisons to both Facebook and Twitter. But, Google+ does have one thing going for it that currently Facebook and Twitter doesn’t: it’s good for rankings… in Google. Imagine that.

At the BlogWorld Expo in L.A., Alltops, Guy Kawasaki and Human Business Works President Chris Brogan had a very interesting discussion about all things Google+.

During the session, a question was raised “Is there now connections between google plus and search rankings?” Brogan stated that:

“Google doesn’t index all of Facebook right now. It’s a lost cause for SEO, they’re also no longer indexing Twitter. Google does index anything publicly for Google+”

It should be noted that Facebook doesn’t allow it. Kawasaki chimed in that this is probably a direct result of the relationship between Facebook and Bing.

If you Google Chris Brogan’s name, you’ll see his Google+ stuff shooting up the rankings. The same holds true for anyone. When you post something publicly it’ll begin working for you, he states “It’s a Google thing”.

Brogan would go on to say:

“Google has such advantages, I don’t see how they can’t be a success with Google+ … I’m amazed that people are so skeptical, especially those in the tech press”.

It’ll be interesting to follow this and see if Google+ does reach the level that both Brogan and Kawasaki think it can.

SAMSUNG GALAXY S II

The Galaxy S™ II has an amazing 4.27" Super AMOLED™ Plus screen. This superb display has razor sharp clarity and breathtaking color. See every detail of videos and pictures. See the full range of hues in all their subtlety and brilliance. And with its superior wide viewing angle, you don't have to be directly in front of the screen to see a perfect image. Truth is, you really have to see it to believe iT

Choose from thousands of premium movies and TV shows on Media Hub and begin watching them in seconds thanks to progressive download optimized for mobile phones.

The Galaxy S™ II utilizes Adobe® Flash® Technology with ease, so you’ll have better access to millions more web pages and videos.
Shoot super sharp photos and videos
Sure, the Galaxy S™ II has a huge screen, but it's a mere 8.89 mm at its thinnest from front to back. That's only .35 of an inch. For such a large phone, you'll be amazed how easily it slips in and out of your pocket.

When you want to shoot your own videos and photos, you'll have an 8MP 1080p camera at your fingertips. You can even output videos from your phone to watch on an HDTV with an optional


Speed Redefined for Faster Browsing and Access

You might want to grab hold of something, because the Samsung Galaxy S II is a whole new definition of fast. Engineered for 4G networks, the Galaxy S II does it all at mach speed—uploads, downloads, surfing, streaming. The immensely powerful C210 Dual Core processor gives you the velocity of two processors acting as one, and delivers an icy-smooth multimedia experience that makes everything you do, from web browsing to intense 3D gaming to accessing your favorite apps, as seamless as it is effortless.


A Dazzling Display Brings Content to Life

Get ready for the brightest, most colorful screen you've ever seen on a phone.* Thanks to Super AMOLED™ Plus technology, the Galaxy S II produces images that break all boundaries—luscious colors, impenetrable blacks and razor-sharp clarity from just about any viewing angle. It's no wonder we gave the Galaxy S II a supersized screen—4.27" (AT&T) and 4.52" (Sprint and T-Mobile)—so that you wouldn't miss a thing.

Movies and games blaze to life, e-book text is ultra-sharp, photos and videos are rendered in stunning HD-like quality. The technology is so advanced that this ground-breaking display even cuts down on power usage, extending your battery charge so that you can do more, longer.

SEARCH ENGINE

Most corporations understand that a great search strategy relies mostly on incorporating the absolute best practices throughout their organizations. It can become a nightmare as a corporation’s activities start to become separated from each other. Departments often have territorial or political reasons for not talking and communicating interdepartmentally, and sometimes the organization of these departments prohibit excellent communication across multiple branches.

The key to great support comes from the top down. If your upper management creates an environment which is central to having search strategies a priority, then it can then be a goal shared by the entire corporation. Upper management absolutely needs to provide the necessary resources for search integration and to make sure that all departments are motivated to create great upward momentum to the search marketing strategy.

Here are some tips to great content architecture across your organization.

1. Make sure that your website has the most useful and functional information architecture possible
Make sure that multiple pages don’t have similar or thin content. Will your website’s visitors be confused at all? Is the page they access relevant to the information they’re looking for? Don’t ever confuse your visitors, and don’t ever show them something they aren’t looking for. Keep it simple!

2. Make sure that the copy on your website speaks to your customer
Keyword research is a huge part of this. You must make absolutely certain that anyone writing web copy has access to (and understands) your keyword research. Make sure they use this research in the writing and development of web copy – if your core demographic is high school children, don’t write using the vocabulary of someone with a PHD.

3. Although your meta keywords tag is not helpful in search engine optimization, it can be helpful in collaboration.
Often, a company will spend countless dollars and time on research about how to speak to their customer, how to create the best marketing calls, marketing segments, and then a copywriter will change the message without realizing all of the energy that was put into the message. To help avoid this, make sure the copywriter has coordinated site wide, and make sure they incorporate the correct keywords into the content. Don’t focus too much on keyword density, but rather on providing valuable content.

4. Remember that every page of your site is a possible entry point.
Every page of your website is a possible entry point for your customer and should be developed using this mentality. Make sure that each page clearly states the primary subject, provides contextual navigation and momentum about the rest of the website, helps the visitor complete a task/find what they were looking for, and to motivate the visitor into your sales funnel. Pages often don’t have a strong call to action and conversions may suffer greatly.

Your corporation should create a checklist for each page to ensure all of these actions get met.

5. Make sure that your website has a great internal linking structure.
This is absolutely crucial to make sure that you have an easily crawlable website. At least one internal link should be in place to each page of your website. A page that does not have an internal link to it is called an “orphan page” and will never be seen by the search engines.

6. Think about what you’re going to link to from the home page.
Your website’s home page is the page that most visitors will see – so it’s important that you link to your most important pages. Search engines also recognize this, and they use your home page link architecture as a sign of what your most important pages are.

Brazil, China and other emerging markets trail US

Developing countries from Brazil to China are expanding much faster than aging economies in the U.S. and Europe, where borrowing during the boom years has been a drag on growth. So the smart money bought stocks in emerging markets, expecting that rapid economic expansion there would provide better rewards. This year, that bet hasn't worked out.

The broadest measure of U.S. stocks, the Standard & Poor's 500 index, is down just 0.4 percent this year. Markets in Brazil, China and the like have lagged far behind, even though their economies are still growing faster than the U.S.

"If you were anywhere in the world other than in the S&P 500 this year, you got crushed," said Greg Peterson, director of research at Ballentine Partners, an investment advisory firm.

The main reason emerging market stocks have suffered deeper losses isn't because their economies are suddenly sluggish. Analysts say it's because people have been worried about the European debt crisis and a possible recession in the U.S. It may seem unfair, but when fear of another financial crisis strikes money managers, they tend to flee emerging markets and stay closer to home.

This summer, panicked money managers dropped the most risky investments first. That meant bonds from deeply indebted countries like Italy and Portugal, small companies in the U.S and emerging market stocks got hit the hardest. Even gold, an asset normally considered safe, dropped as traders shifted money into dollars.

"There was a globalization of fear," says Nathalie Wallace, a senior portfolio manager at Batterymarch Financial Management.

The same thing happened when the U.S. financial crisis hit in 2008. The S&P 500 fell 38.5 percent for the year. But the MSCI Emerging Market index, made up of countries where the banks didn't peddle subprime mortgage bonds, plummeted 47.3 percent.

"Anytime you see risk and fear coming, you see emerging markets get hit a bit more," Wallace says. "It doesn't mean the underlying fundamentals of the economy have changed."

Consider the collection of emerging-market rising stars known as the BRICs, which stands for Brazil, Russia, India and China. All have economies whose growth exceeds the U.S.

-- Brazil: The economy has expanded 3.1 percent over the past year. The benchmark Bovespa has lost 15.3 percent.

-- Russia: Economic growth of 5.1 percent. The Micex has dropped 11.1 percent this year even after a 10 percent rebound in the past month.

-- India: Economic growth of 7.7 percent. The BSE Sensex index is down 14.4 percent.

-- China: Economic growth of 9.1 percent. The Shanghai Composite has slumped 10 percent this year.

By contrast, the U.S. economy has expanded 1.6 percent over the past 12 months. That's sluggish compared to the developing world's stars. And worries that the U.S. could slip into a recession, or that Europe's debt crisis could tip it into one, have weighed on investors for months. Even after those fears dragged down stocks nearly 20 percent in a month, the S&P 500 outshines indexes in nearly all of the world's fastest growing economies.

In fact, if you rank the U.S. against emerging markets this year, it places ahead of 20 countries and behind just one, Indonesia.

China and other emerging markets long relied on shipping toys, timber and other goods to consumers in the U.S. and Europe. Trade helped them grow. But that has a downside, says Tim Morris, a portfolio manager at J.P. Morgan's asset management unit. When a small country hitches its fortunes to U.S. shoppers, it's bound to suffer when the U.S. economy slows down.

A related problem for many emerging market countries is that they're dominated by energy and material producers, the type of companies most vulnerable to a global slowdown. Todd Henry, an emerging markets equity specialist at T. Rowe Price, points to Brazil, a country that isn't as dependent on exports for growth. "It's a relatively closed economy," Henry says. "But commodity and energy companies make up a large part of their stock market. So if the world is slowing down, that gets priced in."

The largest company in Brazil's stock index is the oil giant Petrobras. When the U.S. economy looks weak, the price of oil falls and the companies that sell oil fall, too. That pushes down Petrobras, which tugs on the Bovespa. In other words, when the U.S. has the sniffles, Brazil's stock market still catches a cold.

SOURCE: Associated Press

BIOMASS CONVERSION PROCESS

There are a number of technological options available to make use of a wide variety of biomass types as a renewable energy source. Conversion technologies may release the energy directly, in the form of heat or electricity, or may convert it to another form, such as liquid biofuel or combustible biogas. While for some classes of biomass resource there may be a number of usage options, for others there may be only one appropriate technology.

Thermal conversion

These are processes in which heat is the dominant mechanism to convert the biomass into another chemical form. The basic alternatives of combustion,toreffaction,pyroliss are separated principally by the extent to which the chemical reactions involved are allowed to proceed (mainly controlled by the availability of oxygen and conversion temperature).

There are a number of other less common, more experimental or proprietary thermal processes that may offer benefits such as hydrothermal upgrading (HTU) and hydroprocessing. Some have been developed for use on high moisture content biomass, including aqueous slurries, and allow them to be converted into more convenient forms. Some of the applications of thermal conversion are combined heat and power (CHP) and co-firing. In a typical biomass power plant, efficiencies range from 20–27%


Chemical conversion

A range of chemical processes may be used to convert biomass into other forms, such as to produce a fuel that is more conveniently used, transported or stored, or to exploit some property of the process itself.

eBay

There is a lot of money to be made as a seller on eBay. Thousands and thousands of sales are made each day, resulting in a lot of income for a lot of sellers. And there is still room for you if you want to get involved – whether you want to earn some part time cash or set up a whole new full time business on the side.

But where do you get your stock from? How do you get started? And how can you build a business that gives you PowerSeller status? Relax – you’re about to find out.

It’s easy work to get started earning money on eBay. Once you’ve signed up for your free account the best way to get a feel for what selling is like is to auction off some of your personal items that you no longer want. If you are going to start buying stock to resell, you’ll do better by getting some basic selling experience first.

While we are on the subject of stock, you’ll need to decide what kind of business you are going to set up. Of course you can sell anything you like, but if you want to make a name for yourself it helps to become known for selling a specific type of product.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean your product area needs to be a small one; on the contrary it could be quite large. You could sell toys for example – there’s plenty there to keep any seller going for months on end without selling the same thing twice. You do need to pick a popular product though, and it’s worth doing some research using eBay’s advanced search feature to find out what is selling and how much it’s selling for.

So let’s say you want to sell computer games, for example. There are hundreds of games you could buy to sell here, but if you don’t know which ones will sell you could lose a lot of money buying the wrong stock. By searching the ended listings you can see which titles consistently sell well, and which ones will produce the best profit for you.

Okay – so you know how to figure out what to buy. Now you need to know where to get it from. It stands to reason that no seller is going to tell you where they get their stock; that would be like giving away the keys to their business. In order to find the best sources for stock you need to do a bit of legwork.

We should mention here that there are two main sources for stock – wholesalers and dropshippers. Both have their pros and cons; it just depends on which method you personally prefer.

Dropshippers hold all the stock for you, so you only actually pay for an item once you’ve received payment from the customer. You may have to pay a fee to join the scheme in the first place though. If you choose to go with one or more wholesalers you will need to have the room to buy the stock, and the money to buy it in advance. This comes with more risk since you could buy stock that doesn’t sell, but with the tactic we’ve already covered for checking completed listings before you order anything, the risk here should be kept to a minimum.

So – back to where to find these sources. If you have a particular product in mind that you want to sell, the simple act of looking at the packaging can often reveal the name of the supplier. You can then check out their website to see what else they do.

Another method is to search for what you want on Google. This sounds deceptively simple and in fact many people don’t think of doing this. It can be a bit hit or miss, but it’s possible to find some excellent wholesalers through this method. Over time you will go from having one wholesaler to a handful of sources to get your stock from, and you can build up your product range as you start to grow.

Building your feedback is an important part of being a good seller and the higher you can get your score the better. It sets you apart as being a dedicated seller. And the faster your score climbs, the closer you get to attaining PowerSeller status.

The PowerSeller symbol is highly prized among serious eBay sellers, and there are five levels to strive for. The first is Bronze, and it’s a lot easier to reach than you might think. While you might set a goal for yourself to reach PowerSeller, you will find that if you build up your product range and gradually increase your sales, you will reach it in no time. And if you get off to a great start you might just do it in three months – the minimum time you can actually do it in.

Many sellers have their own shop on eBay, but it’s not necessary when you first get started. In fact you are often better off waiting until you have a good range of stock before opening a shop, since it can look rather empty if you only have a handful of items.

The final thing to think about is the price of the items you are selling. It stands to reason that if you sell a hundred different products in the $5 to $10 price range, you won’t make as much cash as you would selling a hundred in the $50 to $100 price range.

But you need to work out what you enjoy selling and what you can sell lots of to experience real success on eBay. Don’t go for expensive products just because they might bring a bigger profit. Go for your calling – that’s where you will experience the biggest

Oil above $94 amid signs of US economy improving

Oil prices hovered below $94 a barrel Friday in Asia amid signs the U.S. economy may be improving.

Benchmark crude for December delivery was up 5 cents at $94.12 a barrel at midday Singapore time in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.56 to settle at $94.07 in New York on Thursday.

Brent crude was down 33 cents at $110.50 a barrel on the ICE Futures Exchange in London.

Crude has jumped about 25 percent from $75 on Oct. 4 amid growing investor optimism that the U.S. economy will avoid a recession.

On Thursday, the Labor Department reported that the number of people who applied for unemployment benefits dipped slightly last week to the lowest level in five weeks. And the Commerce Department said factory orders had the biggest jump in six months in September.

"The general global economic outlook inched away from the edge of collapse," energy trader and consultant The Schork Group said in a report.

Investors will be closely watching the latest unemployment figures for October due to be released later Friday.

Doubts that a plan announced by European leaders last week will contain Greece's debt crisis weighed on oil prices.

After meeting with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy earlier this week, Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou backed off earlier pledges to call a referendum on his country's bailout package. But traders are still worried the plan will not be fully implemented or enough to stanch Europe rising debt levels.

"Markets are skeptical of the latest final agreement to stave off European contagion," Schork said.

In other Nymex trading, heating oil rose 0.7 cent to $3.05 per gallon and gasoline futures slid 1 cent at $2.65 per gallon. Natural gas added 1.9 cents at $3.80 per 1,000 cubic feet.

SOURCE: AP

BIOMASS

Biomass, as a renewable energy source is biological material from living, or recently living organisms.As an energy source, biomass can either be used directly, or converted into other energy products such as biofuel.
In the first sense, biomass is plant matter used to generate electricity with steam turbines & gasifiers or produce heat, usually by direct combustion. Examples include forest residues (such as dead trees, branches and tree stumps)yard clippings, wood chips and even municipal solid waste. In the second sense, biomass includes plant or animal matter that can be converted into fibers or other industrial chemicals including
biofuels .

Industrial biomass can be grown from numerous types of plants, including ,mischantus,switchgrass,hemp,corn,poplar,willow,sorghum,and a variety of variety of free tree species ranging from eucalipthus,to oil palm.

Biomass is carbon, hydrogen and oxygen based. Biomass energy is derived from five distinct energy sources: garbage, wood, waste, landfill gases, and alcohol fuels. Wood energy is derived both from direct use of harvested wood as a fuel and from wood waste streams. The largest source of energy from wood is pulping liquor or "black liquor a waste product from processes of the pulp, paper and paperboard industry. Waste energy is the second-largest source of biomass energy.

CORPORATE CREDIT

Now a day women are also running the business perfectly. In modern world women are not behind the men. They can be run ahead as compare too men. To run a business is not a joke because business demands lots of investment. To solve the problem of working women here is the introduction of new Small business loans in the fiscal market. With the help fiscal assistance you can avail the amount without any hassle. This is user friendly aid you can attained the amount without any mess and time consuming formality.

The basic purpose of business loans for women is to provide assistance to establish their own business or to expand the business. With the help of this loan you can arrange amount for your self without following tiring and long procedure of loan. To make the process easy and fast in this internet plays an important role. You need to fill the application of loan for your comfortable place through internet. In that form you need to fill all your necessary detail which will later on goes under verification. No, need to worry verification in not too time consuming. In fact you will get the amount into your account with in the short span of period.

In Small business loans you would be offer two types of loan secured and unsecured loan. In secured loan you have to pledge your valuable assts with lender. He offers you amount according to the worth of that asset. You would be offer amount that varies from£3000 to £75000 and you have to pay back amount that varies from 5 to 10 years.

In unsecured loan you are not required to pledge any of your property to avail fiscal help. In this non-homeowner and tenants can avail this loan on time. In this lender would offer you amount that varies from £1000 to £25000 and you have to back loan that varies from 1 to 5 years.

In business loans for women there is no process of checking credit score. In this no lender would ask your credit report at the time of applying for loan.