Economic Threats

There are always outside threats which can come from anywhere. Things like Terrorism, and terrorists with all of their terroristic acts and bombing buildings because they want more money for their oil and we cannot pay because we already owe them too many trillions of dollars. So if some of the ideas discussed here, or something similar to them, are not implemented soon, then the only alternative is to be the host country of a war. Maybe we should call it the war on terror, and get everybody scared of terrorists. We can demolish another old building, because it needed to be upgraded anyways and call it an act of war. Sound good? No, here’s the real story:
Alan Greenspan called the financial crisis of 2008 “a once in a century credit tsunami”, and referred to it as something that nobody could see coming (Greenspan, A., 2008). This caused many people who work in macroeconomic fields to take a different look at fiscal and monetary policies. The thing that is most troubling is that nobody claims to have seen this tsunami coming towards them. If you are not familiar with what a tsunami is, then just think of it as a big wall coming towards you, ready to destroy everything in its path and try to tell me you couldn’t see it coming.

Economic Crisis Prevention

People say we need to step up foreign investment, but our economy is such an upside down situation because of irresponsible actions taken by our leaders. Policies that were meant to give good short term returns, did not turn out as well as expected, which made things even worse in the long term. Again, the comment published in the London Times in 1865 (link below), should have been taken as a compliment, and therefore given our citizens more reason to protect it even more. We have never been free from England.
How well fiscal and monetary policies work together, towards making the citizens of the United States live more comfortably is reflected in GDP. Our country is taking steps in the right direction as of 2011. After looking at the GDP charts, you can also see that our government has done a pretty good job in getting us out of the hole, and growing again. However there is still a long way to go.
As they say, “Hindsight is 20/20”, and there are some things that I would have done differently. However the people with the tools, the knowledge to use them efficiently, and the ability to use them effectively were either sleeping on their desks, working towards greedy goals, simply under-qualified for their jobs. If I were to say that I would have done anything differently, I would have taken the advice given in the London Times in 1865, and given the control of my people’s money back to them.

HR Management: Business Leadership

The business leadership discipline focuses on leading the business. They are in charge of things like: innovation; intellectual property, mergers and acquisitions; finances; budgeting; benchmarking; audits; quality control; marketing; insurance; project management; outsourcing; proposals; vender selection, and contracts. This discipline uses data from areas of the company like sales, marketing, IT, and finance in order to come up with strategic plans to lead the company toward its specific goals.

If you were looking for a job in the Business Leadership discipline, then you would likely be working on or very closely with a board of directors. As far as knowledge and experience, to get a job in Marketing takes a minimum of Bachelor degree and several years of experience. In the position of marketing manager for World Wrestling Entertainment some of the responsibilities are to be able to co-brand other products with the WWE. As you can imagine, there are quite a bit of education and responsibilities involved with something like that.

Someone could safely assume that it takes a good education to get a job under any responsibility in the Business Leadership discipline. Certifications are also good to have, but there is a bright outlook for jobs in this discipline. While certifications are good to have, you should keep in mind that many companies have placed people with no human resource management experience as the head of the entire human resources department. Of course, if you already know this stuff, then it will show in your work ethic and you will not necessarily need to be certified.

Managers should be aware of the strategic human resources management discipline of business leadership, because leading the business is part of their job description in some form. You would be climbing the corporate ladder, if you worked in the business leadership discipline.

The object of this series is to explain Strategic Human Resource Management as well as Strategic Human Resource Planning in an easy to follow way. You can become familiar with reading Strategic Human Resources Management Disciplines Overview. If you are a manager or want to be a good manager, then you should be familiar with each of these disciplines: Benefits; Business Leadership; Compensation; Consulting; Diversity; Employee Relations; Ethics & Sustainability; Global HR; Labor Relations; Organizational & Employee Development; Safety & Security; Staffing Management; and Technology. Then everything is put together in the final conclusion, where you are shown how to use Strategic Management Skills in order to put it all together and become a successful manager for any business.

SOPA: Kill the Internet

Two days ago, ten thousand websites protested against the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act, known as SOPA, which seeks to control and stop piracy on the Internet. In an unusual fact, some covered their owners, others "hung" messages to declare their opposition to the project and others, like Wikipedia, suspended their services for 24 hours.

The main idea of the act is that, which was exhibited in the United States Congress aims to, among other things, investigate, prosecute and disconnect from the world wide web pages or companies that are accused of uploading content without permission, which is subject to copyright laws within and outside the country.

Many people do recognize the need for legislation in this respect and are aware that there are private individuals and companies who profit from the pirated content they get from the web, while ignoring the issue of legal implications: respect copyright and intellectual property. And, no doubt, deeply hurt the original work of video, musical, and literary products.

We believe that the investigation, prosecution, and trial of suspected cases of piracy and violation of copyright is the responsibility of each individual Government in accordance with the laws of each country, or based on agreements previously signed between various nations.

The digital switch was visibly an issue that goes beyond the voluntary suspension of services on the web. Raised, from our point of view, two questions: What law prevails in Internet issues: freedom of expression or copyright? And where interference begins and ends each government to protect these rights?

Both are civil rights, and as such implied duties, but from there to the U.S. Congress to decide which is the best policy beyond its geographic boundaries, there is still much to discuss and evaluate. Just think of the consequences that this rule could lead to businesses who are legitimately constituted.

Hence the strong opposition of digital empires like Google, Facebook, and Twitter, which would take the brunt of the possible adoption of SOPA, would have to verify the accuracy of its users who share links across the web, or blocked in any country, on behalf of an order issued by the Department of Justice of the United States.

This raises another concern: an initiative such as SOPA does not break with the essence of the spirit of the Internet and its purpose of sharing information? Of course, without infringing intellectual property or gaining compensation for sharing pirated files, the Internet is mainly recognized for that use.

Open debate is valuable and necessary, but as such scenarios require time, reflection, and analysis. This is a soup that still needs to be cooked, and if collective, it will turn out to be much better.

Steve Jobs: Super Marketer

Steve Jobs changed the world with great determination and vision, and his leadership as CEO of Apple was synonymous with great success. In other words, from the beginning, maintaining the functionality and aesthetics as pillars, Apple grew enormously. Not only were refined as the iMac computers and laptops rethought as the Macbook and MacBook Air, but also broke down paradigms and restructured the world and the way we consume information and digital content, thanks to devices like the iPhone, the iPhone and the iPad.

With the launch of the iPod and the presentation of the iTunes music store, Steve Jobs and Apple managed to revolutionize (and reviving) the music industry, which was left unstable from conflicts such as the famous case of Napster. Applying this same idea, and the same formula, Apple managed to move the world of development and software with the introduction of the iPod Touch, iPhone, iPad, and the App Store. In other words, the way we know, multi-touch, mobile devices and tablets, is largely thanks to him.

As for her personal life, we all remember that Steve Jobs was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, and has since died. Originally an immediate death sentence, after a series of medical studies was found to be a very rare type of cancer that could be operated. This surgery was carried out and Steve was "born again". But it was not long before his health condition was characterized as unstable and uncertain. Jobs had to step aside and take medical leave to give his body a break. Closely related to this, in a few months prior, Jobs presented his resignation as CEO of Apple. Tim Cook took his place, at the position of Chairman of the Board of Directors.

The last 48 hours of Steve Jobs’ life seem to have been really chaotic and overwhelming. As many know, the day before his death, a company based in Cupertino announced, among other things, the launch of the iPhone 4S, icloud service, and iOS 5. A day later, his website published the picture of Steve, revealing that the father of Apple is dead. This was an unexpected blow for everyone.

Economics: Positive vs. Normative

The United States tax system is our government’s budget, which is used to fund different programs and pay down on the debts that have been acquired by our country. The main word to be taken from that statement is “budget”. Anybody who has had to set a budget knows that one of the most important pieces of information that is needed is the total amount of money that is being contributed to the budget. There are so many variables and loopholes in the tax system which make coming up with an accurate number nearly impossible, and the main people who are able to take advantage of these things are the rich.

Looking at this situation from a positive economical point of view, one would realize how unfair this system actually is. The highest earning twenty percent of our population holds about 50% of the money, while the lowest earning twenty percent holds about 3% of the money. At the same time, households which earn over one million dollars only pay about 14% of their money in taxes, while the families that make about 13,000 a year pay close to 30% of their money in taxes. The biggest loophole for the rich is with dividends and capital gains, which are taxed at less than half of normal income.

The view of how things should be when it comes to the economy is called normative economics. Normative economics says that the poor should pay less, and the rich should pay more. It is only right to pay your fair share. That is how many households work, and should be how the government works, but our government is run like a business, and a business is designed to give most of the profits to only a select few, while everybody else is stuck pulling the weight of those few. The way the tax system currently operates discriminates against the poor so the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

In order to make the tax system fairer, each dollar that is in the country should be taxed at the exact same rate. After all, the government has the final word over how businesses can be run, so they are in control of everything. If there was a flat rate tax system at the national level like there is for things like sales tax, property tax, and vehicle registration fees then the system would be more efficient and give our leaders a better idea of the actual health of the economy that they control.

Charging different tax rates based on who is being taxed, and how the money was earned is only one way the government discriminates against the poor. Charging a flat rate tax on every dollar earned is the only fair way to look at this issue. If a business was to charge different prices to different people for something like a gallon of gas, then the owner of that business would surely be brought up on criminal charges. Taking the current tax system into consideration from this point of view, what makes our (elected?) government any different than the type of criminal who charges different rates to their customers? Tax reform will change a lot of things like this, and give our economy a chance to get out of the red, simply because everybody will pay their fair share automatically without being discriminated against.

Presidents get elected based on what they say, not on what they do. This has been proven on hundreds of different situations, and the tax system is a big part of it. Obama said: “If you make more than $1 million a year, you should pay at least the same percentage of your income in taxes as middle class families do. On the other hand, if you make under $250,000 a year – like 98 percent of American families do – your taxes shouldn’t go up. You’re the ones struggling with the rising cost of everything from college tuition to groceries. You’re the ones who deserve a break”. Unfortunately, there have been no actions taken in this direction, nor do there appear to be any plans for actions to be taken. Instead, we get slapped with something like the mandatory health insurance laws, which make the poor even poorer.

PPF Curve: Production Possibility Frontier Basics

Our country makes food and clothing, and is currently operating at maximum efficiency, given the availability of exhaustible (scarce) resources like, land, labor, and technology. The PPF curve shows the economic choices a country can make about production given scarce resources, a given technology. If foreign economies start investing in our country, then we will have to make a choice between making more food or clothing.

We could apply that investment money to purchase more scarce resources in order to become more efficient and produce more, of the certain product. Of course if we make more food, then we cannot make as much clothing, which lasts longer and makes our people happy to look good. That is an example of opportunity cost in this situation.

On a chart, the PPF curve can shift to the left or the right. Scarce resources are what keep the chart from shifting out to the right, which means more production. If the country has investors, it can shift to the right. Of course a shift to the left can be done at any time, because this means the country is not working at its maximum efficiency.

If you have a country that makes 2 things, and wants to produce more of one of those things, then there will be costs. The PPF curve also shows what those costs are, the main one being being able to produce less of the other thing. This is just a simple explanation of the PPF, and how it works. Now you should be a little more familiar with the production possibility frontier (PPF) of an economy.

Ebay and Purina: Easy Money!

Hello friends I am here with another great way to make money from home. This one does involve spending some money and it takes a couple of weeks before you get the envelope full of checks, but it does work. You see, companies run promotional deals on their products. Coca-Cola uses points, Marlboro uses “miles”, and other companies use similar types of points. Fortunately, the requirements for redeeming any of these points are usually beyond reach for any normal consumers, so they just combine all of their points and sell them on the Internet.

You can buy promotional points from various companies on eBay. I am sure there are many other sites of this nature that sell them, but just use that one as an example. We will use Purina Animal Food Company for this example. Purina has “weight circles” on the packaging, and the payment you can get for redeeming them is 7,000 points pays you $70. Here is a link to the Purina Weight Circle claim form. Using the form is easy, simply fill it out and mail your points in with it. In about 3 weeks you will get an envelope full of checks. There will be ten checks for seven dollars each, for a total of $70. Now how much will this cost to get started?

Look at the eBay results for “Purina Weight Circle”, and you will see that you can get about 1200 pounds for close to $50. When a pound is worth about 10 points depending on the brand on the weight circle could be more or less, you would see that 1200 pounds is 12000 points. Each point is worth a penny, but you can only change hem in at 7,000 point increments. So you would essentially be paying $50 for $120.

Eventually the one you just learned about will end, but now you are aware of a real way to make money. You have just learned that you do not have to get in the stock market in order to be an investor.

Windows 8 Features

Windows 8 is awesome! In order to look at exactly how awesome it is, we need to look at how far computer technology has come over the last few years. Over 60% of the computers that are being used in this day and age are mobile. Desktop personal computers are old news in a world where things like laptops, net books, notebooks, tablets, cell phones, and slates are the usual tools. This is possible because almost every device is capable of some sort of wireless networking. It is also no surprise that there are many different sizes and types of monitors, like small monitors; wall mounted ones; and even television sets that are capable of accessing the Internet. Technology has also let the amount of storage these machines use multiply by thousands of times, and now it seems that storage is moving to the cloud. Processors with multiple cores and powerful on-board graphics come in most computers shipped from the factory, when not very long ago these kinds of things only seemed possible in the latest science fiction movies.

The current generation of cellular phones combines many of these technologies, and this has significantly changed the way people view the entire aspect of computing. Apps give powerful new ways to connect with others, and share almost anything with the simple push of a button. Now, operating systems are designed to be centered on the people that use them, instead of the technology that is used to run them. Microsoft has noticed these changes, and is adapting to their environment. Their answer to the new computing environment is dubbed: Windows 8.

Windows 8 has all the basic necessities addressed in Windows 7 like speed, reliability, security, and compatibility. There is no doubt that Windows 7 operating system is Microsoft’s finest work, but it did not come without the Vista mistake. Windows 8 is designed to enhance Windows 7, while giving more features, longer battery lives, improved startup speed, while still offering the newest security features. Windows 8 is also designed to be compatible with many different kinds and types of chipsets. One of the greatest things about Windows 8 is it also expands the touch screen capabilities that come with Windows 7.

If you like to build apps and websites, then Windows 8 is going to be your favorite operating system to date. This is because the developers give you the same tools that they used to design the program. This will let you create the highest quality web apps possible. Then you can sell your app in the Windows Web Store, if it meets certain requirements. This alone can make you a very rich person. To sum it all up, Windows 8 was designed for you!

If you want to take a test drive of Windows 8, you can do that for free! Click the link for basic instructions on where to download and how to install the Windows 8 Developer Preview.

Kepler 22b: New Planet Discovery

Kepler 22b is a new planet that has been found in a different solar system. It has the same temperature as our home planet, the Earth. The temperature is optimal for supporting life, and the main thing that supports our type of life, which is water. It is still unknown what the planet Kepler is made of, and if it has water on it, but the blue tint to the planet is a good sign that there is water on Kepler 22b.

The planet was discovered by NASA telescopes, and is identified as an Earth like planet that orbits a star that is similar to our Sun. Going to visit the planet will prove to be quite difficult, at this time, as the planet is about 600 light years away from us. That is six hundred years, traveling at the speed of light. Also, since it takes 600 years for the light to reach us from the planet, then who is to say that the planet is even still there and was not wiped out by some asteroid.

The discovery of this planet comes just in time for the current doomsday fears of 2012. Maybe there will be books and movies about Kepler, and people will make millions of dollars promoting them. However, just because we do not currently have the technology to travel at the speed of light, I believe we will have it in a few short years. Of course, since the Mayan calendar ends next year, and therefore, so does the world, we might not be here to see it happen.

If the Earth starts getting attacked by asteroids and aliens, I want to be able to say "beam me up Scotty" all the way to a new beautiful home planet of Kepler 22b, but the name would have to be way cooler for it to catch on, don’t you think?

Make the Best Tamales

My sister makes the best tamales in the world and shared her recipe with me. She uses authentic corn husks, tamales masa mix, a can of Salsa Verde with tomatillos and a bag of dry chile peppers, and she has a 16 qt tamale steamer good for making up to 7 dozen tamales at a time!

Here is a copy of the authentic recipe provided by Maseca and used by my sister to make the real GOOD Tamales! There are many ways of making different tasting tamales. All the popular fillings range from vegetables, beans, beef, pork, chicken, and seafood. There are even versions of sweet, fruit-filled dessert Tamales. You name it, you can make a great tamale out of it.

Here is a breakdown of the easy steps she takes to make these muy bueno tamales!

RECIPE INGREDIENTS

6 cups Maseca corn masa mix for tamales

6 cups Chicken broth

1 cup corn oil

2 tsp salt

1 tsp baking powder

1 1/2 large rotisserie chicken

2 cans Salsa Verde or tomatillo sauce

1 bag corn husks

RECIPE INSTRUCTIONS

1. Soak the corn husks in warm water until soft.

2. Blend with an electric mixer Maseca corn masa mix for tamales, corn oil, salt, baking powder and the chicken broth to obtain a consistent mixture.

3. Shred the chicken and marinate in the green salsa or tomatillo sauce (whichever you use). Then, spread masa evenly over the corn husks, and spread a spoonful of marinated chicken on top of the masa (this is the trick to not drying them out).

4. Fold the sides of the corn husk to center over the masa so that they overlap to make along the package.

5. Fold the empty part of the husk under so that it rests against the side of the tamale with a seam.

6. Place the tamales in tamale steamer and cook tamales for 35-40 minutes. Check every 20 minutes. The tamales are cooked when they separate easily from the corn husk.

There you have it. there is how to make the best tamales in the world. But you might have a hard time finding the things to make them.. especially the steamer pot. Well, luckily, the same site she got the recipe from, also has a whole kit for making tamales. The pan is a little expensive, but it makes lots of tamales at a time. You could even sell them to your friends or other people you know. People on construction sites usually will buy all of your tamales at lunch time. OK, her The Deluxe Tamale Making Kit came from mexgrocer, and I tell you what, it was well worth it. They even offer a ten percent discount if you enter a code "MEXITEN" when you are in the checkout.

Thanks for reading, I'm off to some great eating!

SOPA and PIPA: Website Strikes

Wikipedia was not available yesterday, and it was not a glitch. It was a political protest against U.S. plans to pursue the violation of intellectual property rights sanctions on the network, with the “Stop Online Piracy Act” (SOPA), and “Protect Intellectual Property Act” (PIPA). "The sites are on strike," says a member of the protest movement against SOPA and PIPA with the United States, who wants to regulate the violation of copyright laws.

SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act, a law against Internet piracy) and PIPA (Protection of Intellectual Property Act) will be debated in the House of Representatives, which will then be taken to the Senate, who wants to throw bolt the violation of intellectual property rights. These measures that want to pass are against "intellectual property theft." This not only means copies of music, movies, books, or software: but also the use of protected works and other items that... contain part of the protected work.

To combat the violation of the copyright laws in foreign websites, Internet providers must observe the entry of addresses. The law allows justice to go against the provider’s websites and punished. But there are techniques, such as those used by dissidents in China or Iran to circumvent Internet censorship.

Search engines will also be forced to remove from its pages, links to offending foreign websites, five days after the order of the prosecutor. The Google search engine also is against the rules SOPA: in the U.S., the logo of the famous search engine yesterday was covered by a black curtain.

Despite numerous requests from Internet activists in the blackout are also involved commercial Internet providers because of economic interests. "SOPA and PIPA is a badly designed set of laws that do not lead to the main objective (to stop the violation of copyright) and it severely damages the Internet, which is free," added the Wikipedia team to explain their 24 hour blackout.

Home Improvement: Skirting Choices

When thinking about different ways to put skirting around your house, you need to think about what the actual job of the skirting is. Skirting has a few different responsibilities including the obvious ones like keeping animals from under your house, and keeping the floor temperatures warmer in the winter. To get the best return on your investment, you should keep those things in mind when considering the different possibilities.

There are also decorative aspects to consider when choosing the kind of skirting you plan on using. You want to pick something that will make your house look better, and that will not make it stick out like a sore thumb. There are many different things you can use for skirting. The most popular choices for skirting are wood, vinyl, and metal. Though each material has its own advantages and disadvantages, you should go with the choice that best fits your needs. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of the different types of materials you can use to skirt your house.

Wood skirting looks very nice, and can match up with almost any house. It is also easy to maintain by painting or sealing the wood, but paints and sealers are not cheap and the maintenance costs should be considered when planning to skirt your house with wood. Since it is much thicker than the other popular choices, wooden skirting will provide the best kind of insulation for the bottom of your house, too. Because it is much thicker though, it is heavy, and not very easy to work with. Think about if you had to do something under the house and how easy it would be to move the skirting. Even though wood is a personal favorite for many, there are other materials to use.

Vinyl skirting is very simple to install, lightweight, and affordable. Because it is so thin and lightweight, the “insulating factor” is not as good as you would get with other materials. Another good thing about vinyl siding is it requires very little maintenance, and will not rot away as fast as wood or metal. It can also be recycled, making it the top choice for those who care about the environment.

Metal skirting is more expensive than vinyl siding, and can even offer the same (or even better) resistance to rotting away when compared to vinyl or wood siding. If you decide to go with a metal skirting material, make sure it is made of a non ferrous metal, so it does not rot away. Non ferrous metals are the ones that a magnet will not stick to. Lightweight metal panels can be removed and replaced fairly easily if there are any repairs need to be done under the house, also.

So now you know a few of the most popular material choices, and a little bit about the good and bad things about using each one. Hopefully you have enough information to make an informed decision on which type of skirting to put around your house. Though that choice is completely up to you, one thing that all of these materials have in common is that when used and installed properly it that they can enhance the beauty of your house, as well as aid in lowering your utility bills when it comes to heating and cooling.

Human Resources: Technology

The only reason why people are not extinct is because of their ability to adapt to their environment. In the discipline of technology, businesses should definitely keep up with current technology, or face extinction themselves. Web site designers need the latest programs for building websites. Film editors need the latest copies of the film editing software that they use. A plumber that sticks a camera in the drain pipe to find where the roots are coming in has to have a highly sophisticated piece of equipment. As you can see, technology comes in many different shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, so do the different kinds of problems that come with the technology. Not to mention the extra training that needs to be done when a new type of technology is introduced into the company… checks and balances.

Keeping up with technology helps everything go faster and easier, but face it, sometimes Technology has problems. Computers glitch, programs crash, servers go down, and mice chew wires. Lucky for you, the IT department comes in to help fix the problem. People who work in this discipline will have computer service types of knowledge and experience. Some will know hardware, and others will know software. From time to time, there will need to be some outsourcing of IT, and that is a security threat. So all good managers should also have a good working knowledge of the technology they use so they can be as effective as possible, and be able to fix most types of common problems that come up with the particular type of technologies that they work with.

The object of this series is to explain Strategic Human Resource Management as well as Strategic Human Resource Planning in an easy to follow way. You can become familiar with reading Strategic Human Resources Management Disciplines Overview. If you are a manager or want to be a good manager, then you should be familiar with each of these disciplines: Benefits; Business Leadership; Compensation; Consulting; Diversity; Employee Relations; Ethics & Sustainability; Global HR; Labor Relations; Organizational & Employee Development; Safety & Security; Staffing Management; and Technology. Then everything is put together in the final conclusion, where you are shown how to use Strategic Management Skills in order to put it all together and become a successful manager for any business.

Coffee: Supply, Demand, and Equilibrium Price

In the beginning, people drank coffee, and made money from coffee, this is supply and demand at the most basic form. The relationships between supply and demand determine the price, and economists call this the equilibrium price. Equilibrium basically is known as balanced, so as you can imagine, prices fluctuate, and this is why. Here is a basic chart of supply and demand, and how prices are determined.

Back before Starbucks went into business, there was too much coffee being produced that the prices were driven below the production costs. People were losing money on coffee because coffee prices were very high before this, and coffee producers flooded the market, while people still only drank the same amount of coffee. Economists see this as a situation where supply moved up, and demand stays the same. This will cause a drop in prices, like you can see on this chart.

Coffee prices went down even further, probably because there was so much of it getting old and stale that people did not want to buy it or they already had way too much on their shelves at home, and this made the coffee industry have its own little depression because coffee was coming to a halt around the world. This is when places like Starbucks came into business and the five dollar cup of coffee was born. Location is everything, and coffee houses started popping up in the “high rent” districts around the country, and possibly around the world. Economists see this as an increase in demand, while supply stays the same. This would cause the new equilibrium price of coffee to meet at the point of Demand 2, and Supply 2 in the chart below:

As you can imagine, the $5 cup of coffee made coffee producers excited again, so they made a lot more coffee and flooded the market with so much coffee that the prices were driven lower again, while the consumer still wanted more, and there were probably experiments with the $7 cup of coffee out in the market. Economists would see a bigger supply, with an even bigger demand. On a chart one would look at the demand curve 3, and supply curve 3, to come up with equilibrium price 4. So the coffee makers were almost as good as they used to be , if you can still make out the original equilibrium price, and they still had to make more to make just a little less than they did 20 years ago.

Well, the best coffee is grown in tropical areas, and tropical areas are known for having some pretty crazy weather from time to time, and some bad weather knocked out quite a few farms, so they could not deliver as much coffee for a while, and there was a shortage of coffee at a time when there was a high demand. Economists will see this by looking at demand 3, supply 4, and they will see how the decrease in supply raises prices, and how kind Mother Nature is to people who care about, and use her gifts properly.

The demand curve slopes downwards, and the supply curve goes up. Where they meet is the equilibrium price. When supply increases, the “supply curve” line moves away from 0, and when it decreases it goes towards 0. The same is true for the demand curve line. This is the macroeconomics behind how you spend your money on the microeconomics level is determined and controlled.

Microeconomics vs. Macroeconomics

When looking at the difference between supply and demand and Aggregate supply and aggregate demand, regular supply and demand is what households look at, since they are only a small piece of the pie in the overall big picture. Aggregate supply and demand is something that economists look at. A quick explanation could be the total amount of a product that is made, compared to the total of a product is consumed, and how these factors determine the cost. When things sell for high prices, more of it is produced, and when prices are lower, there is not as much money to be made so less is produced. All of this might seem confusing without a proper explanation, so some examples will be used. Since many people enjoy coffee, it can be used as a good product to use in order to explain the idea of aggregate supply and demand.

After hurricane Katrina, the price of fish rose because the area’s supply of fish was damaged. So this is an example of the Microeconomic definition of supply and demand. On a graph the supply curve shifts to the left and demand stays the same, so equilibrium prices rise.

When microchips are invented, the price of computers rise again. This is a microeconopmics concern. When demand increases then so does the price. On a graph, the chart the demand curve would move to the right, and the supply curve moves to the left. The price increases because microchips are new technology, so there are not many on the market, while everybody wants them.

When the government raises tariffs on imported cheese, the price of domestic cheese will raise at the macroeconomic level because the government controlls macroeconomics. If polyester suits have become trendy again. The prices will go up because of the demand increase on the microeconomic level.

The government raising taxes is a Macroeconomic concern. The dollar does not go as far, so this would be a money supply decrease that makes the demand for paper money higher because there is less of it to go around.

As inflation increases, the dollar is worth less. This is another example of Macroeconomics – this is why taxes go up, so we can pay back the interest on the money that our government borrows from us. Make sense? Hardly, but it is like co-signing for a loan and the person getting the loan does not make the payments, so now it is on you. Economists would see this on a chart as demand and supply increasing.

As you can see there are some situations where microeconomic situations will have an effect on macroeconomic situations, just as it works the other way around. The easiest way to remember this may have been mentnioned earlier and that is by simply remembering that micro is small, like your home budget, or a smaller section of an entire industry. Then Macro is big, like governments and entire industries.

Hope you have learned something useful!

Flu History and Prevention

With catching the flu at least once in my life encountered, it is not surprising, because of the disease - one of the most common infectious diseases that can lead to massive outbreaks and even epidemics almost every year. Therefore, it is important to know the "enemy entity": how it is dangerous, both from its defense and the best way for it to move.
Why is it so common? Why annually around the world a huge number of adults and children suffer from this ubiquitous disease that can lead to serious complications?
The virus of influenza is extremely volatile. Every year, new subspecies (strains) of the virus, with which our immune system has not yet met and therefore, cannot easily handle. That is why the vaccine against the disease does not provide 100% protection - there is always the chance of a new mutation of the virus.
History
Influenza has been known to mankind for centuries. The first documented epidemic occurred in 1580. It is true, then nothing was known about the nature of the disease.
The pandemic of respiratory infection in 1918, 1920gg, which captured the globe, and was called "Spanish flu" most likely was nothing more than a severe epidemic of influenza. It is known that the Hispanic mortality differed incredible - lightning lead to pneumonia and pulmonary edema, even in young patients.
Reliably viral nature of flu is set in England only in 1933, Smith, Andrews and Laidlaw, singled out a specific virus effecting primarily in the airways of the lungs of hamsters infected with washout from the nasopharynx of patients and designated them as the influenza virus A. 1940godu Francis and Madge opened the influenza virus B, and in 1947, Taylor committed another new variant of the virus type C.
Since 1940, the opportunity to actively explore the influenza virus and its properties - the virus began to grow in chicken embryos. Since then, the study of disease was a major step forward - was discovered ability to mutate, and identified all the areas of virus capable of variation. Important finding, of course, was to create a vaccine.
What is influenza
Influenza - an acute viral disease that can infect the upper and lower respiratory tract, accompanied by pronounced intoxication and can lead to serious complications and deaths - mostly in the elderly and children.
Flu and colds - close to one another disease - and the way of infection, and major manifestations, but this is not the same thing. The disease causes much greater intoxication, often runs hard and leads to various complications.
Infection with influenza
The source of infection is a patient man. Viruses are distinguished with saliva, sputum, nasal discharge - coughing and sneezing. Viruses can get on the mucous membranes of the nose, eyes or upper respiratory tract directly from the air, in close contact with the sick person, and can settle on surfaces and then exposed to mucous membranes or through the hands when using shared with the patient hygiene.
The virus enters the mucous of the upper respiratory tract (nose, pharynx, larynx or trachea) enters the cell and begins to actively replicate. Just a few hours the virus affects almost the entire mucosa of the upper respiratory tract infections. The virus is "love" is lining the respiratory tract, and cannot infect other organs. It is therefore wrong to apply the term "intestinal flu" - disease cannot infect the intestinal mucosa. Most often, what is called intestinal flu - fever, intoxication, accompanied by diarrhea - is a viral gastroenteritis.
Not precisely determined, due to some protective mechanism stops the virus from replicating and recovery occurs. Typically, after 2-5 days the virus is no longer released to the environment, i.e. when a sick person ceases to be dangerous.
Who suffers the most from the flu
The most susceptible people with weakened immune systems:
• Children under 2 years old, because their immune system is formed inconclusive
Persons suffering from a variety of immunodeficient states: congenital immunodeficiency or
HIV
• Older people
Who carries heavier flu
• Persons suffering from chronic diseases with cardiovascular disease: especially congenital and acquired heart disease (especially mitral stenosis).
• Persons suffering from chronic lung disease (including asthma).
• Patients with diabetes mellitus.
• Patients with chronic kidney disease and blood.
• Pregnant women.
• Elderly people over 65 years, since in most cases they have a chronic illness in varying degrees.
• Children under 2 years of age and persons suffering from immunodeficiency, also at high risk for complications of influenza.
Now you have an idea of the dangers of the flu, and some of the history behind how it is fought off to keep your body safe and healthy.

Groundhog Day: American Tradition

Phil, the American groundhog, is supposed to predict the annual arrival of spring. Today, he announced six more weeks of winter by seeing his shadow and being spooked back into his house for some more hibernation and laziness.

While the eastern United States took advantage of unusually high temperatures for early February, the groundhog, Phil, has "seen his shadow " Thursday morning after leaving the den where it hibernated in Pennsylvania, unmistakable sign of a longer winter. According to tradition groundhog day is the day that the groundhog decides to keep hibernating through the winter. If he is spooked by his shadow, then there are six more weeks of Winter. Contrary to popular belief, winter is still upon us for a few more weeks.

The meteorologist’s tradition, which falls every year on February 2, was imported to the United States by German farmers who relied on animal behavior to know when to sow their fields. The town of Punxsutawney, where Phil has his burrow, had observed the tradition since the nineteenth century.

If the groundhog sees his shadow, because the day is sunny, the Groundhog Club of Punxsutawney concludes that winter will last another six weeks and may return the mammal to hibernation. But when it's overcast, Phil sees no shadow, and everyone can rejoice, because Winter is over!

Since its inception, the Groundhog Day has become a media phenomenon in the United States, where thousands of people - and dozens of journalists - converge on the town of Punxsutawney to witness the event. Groundhog Day events also occur in other parts of the country and Canada. A movie was even filmed on the subject, Groundhog Day (1993) starring Bill Murray as the jaded journalist who is covering the event. It was a comedy that kept replaying the same day over and over.

2012 NBA All Star Game

The NBA all star game is an annual sporting event that gathers the best basketball players from the league, and places them against each other in an East vs. West battle. This is a star studded event, as you can imagine because of the basketball fans that make the players popular. We will discuss the 2012 NBA all star game and let you know who will be playing in it.

Four basketball player’s franchises in Los Angeles will be participating in the Western Conference during the traditional all-star game (All-Star Game) in the NBA, on Feb. 26 in Orlando (Florida). The teams are composed of basketball players like Chris Paul (leader, Clippers), Kobe Bryant (back, Lakers), Blake Griffin (power forward, Clippers), Andrew Bynum (pivot, Lakers) have been chosen by the public to appear with the Oklahoma City. Kevin Durant is also in the starting five in the Western Conference, which was announced by the NBA on Thursday.

In the East, the five team members are Dwight Howard (pivot, Orlando), who will play at home and received the highest number of votes (1,600,390 to be exact), LeBron James (power forward, Miami), Carmelo Anthony (winger, New York), Dwyane Wade (back, Miami) and Derrick Rose (lead, Chicago). The player who received the most votes was the West's Kobe Bryant. (1,555,479), which will hold for the 14th straight time in this exhibition match which brings Together the best NBA players will play in a festive atmosphere.

Bryant's shot tied the record previously shared by Jerry West, Shaquille O'Neal and Karl Malone. Replacements (7 per team) will be designated by the NBA coaches and their names will be announced Feb. 9. Composition teams (owners): * Eastern Conference: Derrick Rose (Chicago), Dwyane Wade (Miami), LeBron James (Miami), Carmelo Anthony (New York), Dwight Howard (Orlando) * Western Conference: Chris Paul (Los Angeles Clippers) Kobe Bryant (LA Lakers), Kevin Durant (Oklahoma City), Blake Griffin (Los Angeles Clippers, Andrew Bynum (LA Lakers).

Intellectual Property and the Law

Ahead of the Sipo (International Exhibition of original) to be held from March 28 to 30, 2012 at Caistab Plateau, the League Euro communication system, in collaboration with the OIPI (Ivorian Office of Intellectual Property) held the CRRAE-WAMU, a press conference on the theme of copyright and intellectual property: "Which acts out and strategizes for an effective fight against counterfeiting in the Ivory Coast." This is done in order to educate the public and the different world governments about the need to promote original products.

According to a reputable, specialist in intellectual property law, Dg of OIPI, the major objective is to enable companies to promote their products authentic to the people, public authorities and economic operators. This is to address the problem of all of the “counterfeiting companies” that gnaw at, and kill the U.S. economy, as well as other economies around the world.

Anything that results, he said, by multiform consequences. "At the state level, counterfeiting causes a significant tax leakage, including VAT, business license and tax on income. Against undertakings performing a legal activity, the unfair competition that is inflicted by counterfeiters leads to considerable losses of market share" he lamented.

"There are also health risks, some still remember the deaths of 2,500 people in Niger in 1995, caused by counterfeit vaccines that were administered to over 50,000 people during a meningitis epidemic," he said. Prior to indication that the use of fake medicines, or food, fraud generates side effects that may affect the consumer’s health. Therefore, faced with such a scourge, the mobilization must be general and should provide adequate structures and there should be a strong private sector involvement.

There you have it, bootleg movies and programs are just as bad for you as AIDS. So make sure you only use programs that you have the rights to use, and never try to share your programs with others for hopes of making some money, because it will likely soon land you in jail.

Linux: Download and Install

To install Linux as a second operating system on your computer is not hard, if you are running Windows. In fact, some people even install Linux as the only operating system on their machine, depending on how the computer will be used. One major benefit to Linux operating systems is that they are “open source” which basically means that you can edit the operating system to your liking, even more than a Windows operating system, which is “protected”. Plus the price of Linux is free when compared to Windows, where some versions can cost a lot of money. Now that you have been slightly introduced to Linux, you can get started with it, and run it as a second operating system. Here is how to do it.

Make sure you find a reputable source to get your Linux download from linux.com is a good place to start. Also pay attention to the size of the operating system. There are “bare” copies of Linux which are only 10MB, and run from the RAM in your computer, and there are other versions which take up several gigabytes of space on your drive. Here the choice depends on the use.

Once you find the Linux version you want (Download Linux TURNKEY version). You can either save it to a disc or burn it to a CD or DVD for later installing it, or save it to a file and run it when you like. When you run the install, you want to make sure your computer boots from the disc, and the process will take you through and ask you if you want it to install it “next to” your Windows operating system. If you do this, then when your computer first starts up, you will have to choose to boot with Linux or Windows. You can also have the “dual boot” option in some installer versions of Linux.

If your version does not offer dual boot when you install it, then you can find information on how to do this by doing a quick search on your favorite search engine, or I can write another article about how to do it. Just let me know if you would like to know how to set up a computer to run multiple operating systems at the same time.

Now you know more about Linux, and where to find the best versions of the operating system. Linux has many uses and is not “normally” used for casual “Internet Surfing”. But its main advantage over Windows is that it is free, and therefore people are not so interested in “hacking” it. Now you are ready to install Linux as a second operating system.

How to: Animate Twitter Avatar

Have you seen the Avatars on Twitter that move? That is one way to gram someone's attention and get some followers. I have recently added an animated avatar to one of my Twitter accounts, and the results have been amazing. I have gained about 600 followers in the first 2 days, and I want to tell you how to do it so you can get some popularity yourself, too!
There are some things you need to know before finding your moving avatar to use for Twitter, which are:

1. Twitter does not really support GIF files, though the website says they do.
2. You need to keep the file size of the avatar below 700kb.
3. You should know how to upload the avatar to your Twitter account through your "profile edit" page.
4. Figure out how you are going to handle your new found Twitter fame!

Now that you know the basics, you can go look for a picture to use. Try looking for a picture that is related to your profile. For example, my Twitter profile is about cars, so I searched for the term "animated gif, engine repair", through the images section of Google. Make sure to look at the file size (700kb maximum), and keep the image size at about 100x100 (maximum).

Once you find the avatar you wish to use, you can right click the image and then select "Save As". The window will pop up on your desktop asking you how and where to save your chosen animated twitter avatar, and you can then select the dropdown menu at the bottom of the box, and change the "GIF" choice to "All Files". Then in the box above the dropdown, name the file anything you like, but put ".png" at the end of the file name (without the quotes). You have now saved the animated GIF as an animated PNG file which will work great on Twitter. Now you are ready to upload the file and check it out.

You might find that sometimes the image does not fit, and you can probably resize the animated Twitter avatar in an image editor, or you can find a new twitter avatar to use. Alternatively, if you cannot find an animated Twitter avatar by searching for one, you can also make one for free online. There are many sites that help you make animated images, and a quick search will point you in the right direction. I do not want to recommend any particular websites to do this because each of them has different strengths and weaknesses.

I hope this article has helped you find a way to bring life to your Twitter page and popularity to your good name. Enjoy!

Reasons to Ride a Bicycle to Work

There are quite a few good reasons to try using your bicycle to get to work. These are things like saving money, losing weight, helping the environment, and staying healthy so we can all live longer. Another thing to consider is that a bike is a lot cheaper than a car. If you own a car, you have to pay for the tags, gas, insurance, maintenance, and be the taxi for those who do not have a car, or a bicycle. Bikes are one of the most environmental friendly forms of transportation, since a person’s energy is a highly renewable resource.

Riding a bike to work is a great way to save money in times of bad economic situations. If you cannot see how, just compare how much the monthly oil change costs on your car, and how much it costs to change the oil in your bicycle. Your bicycle does not use oil, does it? That is only 1 way and you do not have to think very hard about other ways riding a bicycle can save you a lot of money.

Bike riding (not only to work) is also a good answer to the problem of being overweight. Riding a bike for 10 minutes a day will keep burning calories for 8 hours. This boosts metabolism, and helps overweight people shed those pounds, and keep them off. Riding a bike is good exercise for anybody, and it should be done even if it is not the main form of transportation. Touching back to a person’s energy, this will also help the bike rider make healthier choices when it comes to what to eat and drink.

Even though cars are designed to use less gas and require less maintenance these days, the simple fact is that they still use those things. Electric cars even use gas and oil because of the fuel needed to charge the batteries. This is not acceptable, and with all of the technology we have access to there is absolutely no reason why car manufacturers are still making vehicles that run on gasoline, diesel, or any other kind of petroleum based product. Petroleum based products have to e burned to create energy, and burning them creates hydrocarbons, which is the reason that there is a hole in the atmosphere causing global warming. This is also the reason why HAARP uses chem-trails to thwart the effects of that global warming. The bad thing about chem-trails for cloud seeding is that they throw the magnetic field of the planet off, which causes earthquakes on the other side of the world. As you can see riding a bike can very easily help save the planet, and if you don’t believe any of this to be true a quick Google search will straighten things out for you.

Cap and Trade vs. Cap and Tax

Cap and Trade is the policy in the United States that says companies are issued a certain amount of pollution credits that let them release pollutants into the atmosphere. Examples of this program in action are NOx Budget Trading and Acid Rain programs; another example is the Clean Air Interstate Rule (epa.gov, 2010). Under Cap and Trade, companies can trade any of their unused “pollution credits” to other companies who need them, in order to legally pollute more.

Cap and Tax is similar to Cap and Trade in the fact that emissions are limited by the Government, however if a company pollutes too much, then they pay a tax on the “extra pollution”. As you can imagine, companies do not want to go over their cap, because they will pay taxes if they do. Not only are the “cap and trade” and “cap and tax” policies beneficial to the environment, but they are also good for the economy, in the eyes of the Government.

Command and Control policies can be beneficial to Cap and Trade and Cap and Tax policies because the Government can actually show companies how to lower their emissions without making the companies figure it out for themselves (agcarbonmarkets.com, 2010). The cap and trade, along with cap and tax policies, open a new market for companies to exploit, and profit from. Carbon credits can be traded like stocks, and even saved in banks, and that is just scratching the surface of the situation. Since companies can also profit from trading credits in lieu of paying taxes on them, this could be a boost to any economy. Either way, the Government is making money from it, because companies will either pay taxes on their pollutants, or they will pay taxes from the income off selling and trading their credits.

Pigovian Tax is more commonly referred to as the “sin tax”, and gives the Government the right to make money from people who do bad things, like pollute the environment. Since polluting is a crime, then the very fact that the Government makes money from it makes them an accessory. Pigovian tax is not only unethical, but it should be illegal.

When looking at Coase Theorem and how it applies to the “Cap and” policies, you have to look at how Coase Theorem is defined. A loose definition of Coase Theorem says that there are no transaction costs, or disputes over property rights no matter how the property was assigned (about.com, 2012). This applies to the “Cap” policies and is the reason why companies can sell and trade their pollution credits.

As you can see there are many benefits to the programs that tax emissions, but there are also some negativities, which include crooked governments profiting from pollution.

Poverty and Injustice

For many people this would not be such a big deal, but when thinking about the group, or subculture, that one belongs to, the description is clear. For me however, this is not exactly the case. So I read through some of the other articles about subcultures to try and get a better feel of where I might belong, and I still see many problems. Since the only group that I seem to belong to is poor people, then I will call that my clique. Notice that I did not say “click” as most other people do, and that is because I know the difference between how something sounds, and how things actually work. Maybe I am too smart to belong to any clicks, but too poor to belong to a real clique. So we will stick with poverty stricken as the name of my subculture.

Some of the language that comes with belonging to the poverty stricken clique are words like food stamps, Medicaid, welfare, TANF, case worker, gas money, low life, loser, drug addict, lazy, and several other expletives that one might use when referring to describe people that belong to the subculture that I am a member of. Some of the common values that my group holds include doing what we have to do in order to survive. Whether good or bad, we make sure that our needs are met. This brings us to the next point of the experiences that only members of my group will experience, that non members simply have no idea about.

So you can see the injustices that are brought upon my clique, you should know about a test that my family and friends ran on the “system” in order to see who can get help the fastest: a white family with children, or a single black man who got drunk (on purpose). We went into the “food stamp” office (in Cleveland, Texas) separately and applied for benefits. The white family had a black case worker, and was issued an appointment to come back for a separate interview after 6 weeks. The drunk black man, who had a white case worker, was in the office for less than 30 minutes and came out of the office with a food stamp card that already had money on it. If that does not give insight into how the poor are treated, then you should stop reading this right now.

The group identity affects my individual identity in an extremely negative way. It depletes any good feelings that I might have had about our government, and what it does with the tax money that I pay into it. Politicians are too worried about being “politically correct” to simply be “correct” in the things they do. No wonder why our country is going bankrupt and unemployment is at an all time high. I have not been able to find anybody to hire me for a job ever since Bill Clinton was the President, and even though my neck is broken in 2 places, I cannot get disability benefits because it is my responsibility to pay into it, not to collect it. So that brings us to the last point of what people get out of belonging to this subculture, and I really cannot think of anything good, unless you are a drunk black man looking for some free government money. Other than that, the only thing you will get from belonging to this group is cast from society and labeled all kinds of things that cannot be repeated in this venue.

SocialScripter for Free Promotions

Ever since Experts Column stopped taking traffic from short url services such as bit.ly and goo.gl, there have been many good questions raised about how to promote our articles on social networking sites like Twitter. The purpose of this article is to address that, and help everybody get back to making money as usual. I am going to tell you about a legitimate way to promote your articles on Twitter, while still following the rules of Experts Column. Like anything else, it takes time to set up, and I can even help you out with that, if you find it is something you can not do, but still want it done to your articles.

I am going to tell you about a way to automatically post to Twitter with content from your article that has a link at the end of your sentence, or article exerpt. Of course, separating each sentence of each of your articles is the most time consuming part of the job, you can get a program like Tweet Attacks to generate the tweets. Then you add the link to the end of each sentence. You will end up with about 10 tweets for each article after you meet the 140 character limit for Twitter tweets.

Now that you have your tweets made and all on one notepad with one tweet per line, you can open your browser and go to a site called SocialScripter. It is free just sign up and add your Twitter and Facebook accounts. Then you can write your script. The script I use looks like this:



#start
[tweet] !
[tweet] ?
[tweet] ,
[tweet] .
[tweet] '

#tweet
"sentence here" link here
"sentence here" link here
"sentence here" link here
"sentence here" link here
"sentence here" link here

Then I make the settings to post how I want. This script can post 5 times per day, so you will have to make multiple scripts. My scripts are named something like "account" "article" "set #" So to be more plain English it would look like this: carmaster-when to change oil-part 1. Of course most articles have more than 1 part since you can only post 5 times a day per script.

Once this is all done you can see how many times each script posts in the Social Scripter stats page, or you can just watch your earnings and stats rise from the real traffic you are getting from Twitter and Facebook in your Experts Column account. The entire URL is posted to your article, not some random short link or even a t.co link. So there is no question as to the website you are promoting in your tweets. This also adds "link juice" to your articles because it is actually posting the real link, and not giving it all to a site like bit.ly.

I hope this helps you get your earnings back up since the recent policy change here at Experts Column. Even though it was not a very welcomed change, I can say that it is better for the website because of the whole "link juice" thing. Google LIKES Experts Column, so let's do our part (as authors) to make Google like us more. Hopefully we will not just get screwed out of our legitimately earned money again.

Happy earnings!

How to Use Twitvid

Twitvid is an add-on website that can be used with Twitter or Facebook. Twitvid allows you to post pictures and videos with your profile status updates. It is an alternative website that you go through in order to make new posts on your Twitter profiles, Facebook profiles, and Facebook pages. For most people, Twitter and Facebook are places to share their daily activities with the world. Being able to instantly post pictures and videos to these profiles is one of the best things that could ever happen to them. For all of you marketers out there, there are numerous possibilities for something like Twitvid when it comes to figuring out different ways of making money with a Twitter or a Facebook account. Twitvid is easy to use, and here are a few tips and pointers on getting the most out of Twitvid.

When you go to the Twitvid site, you will have to sign in and allow access to your Twitter or Facebook account. It is easy to find the buttons at the top of the screen. Once you click the button and sign into your account and authorize the application, you are ready to start posting your pictures and videos online. To get started on that, all you have to do is click “Upload Picture or Video” at the top of the page, and you will be presented with the new panel for you to post from.

On the post page, you can either choose an image or video file from your computer, or you can make a recording from your webcam. Doing each of those is easy and self explanatory. Once you are done with your file or recording, the next step is to write your post. The Twitvid website gives you 112 characters, in order to allow space for the video in the post. Write a good post and use hash tags, on important words, and then click the Upload button.

Once you click the upload button, a new screen will open up where you can add a title, choose a category, and add tags to your post. This is for a few reasons such as being picked up and indexed by search engines, and being able to find the post a month later when you want to send it again. Another cool feature of Twitvid is when you view the page that is made for your picture or video, you can also see how many views it has. There is even a comment section, and a handy tool that lets you link to the page, or even embed the image into other web pages.

Though the basic way to use Twitvid has been covered, there are also many other features like branding the video player, editing titles and tags, deleting the post, downloading the picture or video in the post, and customizing the page that the post is on. All of those features are very easy to use and self explanatory. Some of the services like customizing the page, and branding the video player are only available to paying customers. So if you are a marketer, it would be smart to upgrade your Twitvid account to Platinum status.

As you can see Twitvid is easy to use and offers many different tools. Normal users can easily post videos and pictures to their accounts, and marketers can use Twitvid for something like finding out how responsive their friends and followers are towards certain hash tags and keywords. No matter how you use your social networking sites, Twitvid is one of the tools that you should use the most. Now that you have been given some tips on how to use the Twitvid service, you should be able to make the most out of your status updates.


No matter how you use any social media site, you want your profile to be on a personal level. You should know some of the different things you can learn in the following columns:"Social Media Spam: Twitter"; "How to customize your Twitter background"; "A Great Way to Promote Your Articles"; "Twitter terminolgy made easy"; "Customer service on Social Media"; "How to sell on Twitter"; "Twitter Hashtag Tips"; and finally "Twitter Ettiquette: Business Tweets". Feel free to leave any comments if you like.