Archive for the ‘business’ Category

12.19
11

Local Biz Lead Generation: An Honest Critique

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Lead generation is one of the most crucial parts of conducting business both online and offline. When you want to profit from your project, you need to be able to generate leads whom you will eventually be able to persuade into paying for your products and services. Some people have even succeeded in making full time businesses out of generating leads for other people. This is exactly why it’s so crucial to invest in products like Local Biz Lead Generation. Continue reading to learn more about Local Biz Lead Generation and to determine whether or not it is really worth your time and money.

The first thing that you must understand is that this is actually a course. Local Biz Lead Generation is a course that was made to teach you how to use the internet to gather leads. The course is designed for a US based audience but the techniques it teaches could be implemented outside of the United States as well. One reviewer was able to generate fifteen promising leads after just four days of completing the course. This is a great sign. Nevertheless, if you are hoping to come across some sort of magic product that will do all of the work for you, this is not a good product to purchase. If you are seeking something that will show you how to do what you need to do, this course is a great product.

Yes, it’s a bit weird to call something a superb buy early in a review but don’t worry, were still going to be impartial.

There are, apparently, disadvantages to this course. The course is entirely based on video. There aren’t any video transcriptions for helping the people who are deaf or who do not desire to sit through a bunch of videos. On occasions the creator, Reuben James, tend to be a little flat and if you don’t have a great deal of time to sit and watch videos, you might want to find another product.

One other thing that has us a bit hesitant about this product is that the creator refers to it as a “work for just five minutes a day” system that can make you a lot of money. You must remember that how this system makes you money is through lead generation. These individuals will, fingers crossed, be paying you for every lead you find for them. So there is absolutely an opportunity to earn hundreds of dollars in just several days without having to do a bunch of work.

You can use the Local Biz Lead Generation system to help obtain leads for your own business too, if you are interested in such things. You must remember, though, that a lead is not the equivalent of a sale. You still have to convince your lead to do business with you. Nevertheless, at the low asking price (the up-to-date Warrior Forum WSO asks just a little over ten dollars per course), it seems like a pretty good investment.

Naturally, it is still your choice whether or not to really get the product. Local Biz Lead Generation won’t make you millions of dollars overnight but it gives you the ability to set up your own business and earn hundreds of dollars a day. That’s pretty good, right?

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12.19
11

For Those Who Have An Online Business A Website Is Really Important

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There are loads of folks nowadays that are turning to the web in order to make some extra cash or even to replace their current income. You will discover that you can find a lot of different approaches you can take if you want to start earning money from the internet. In fact the ways to make cash online are only limited by your imagination and to the volume of work you are willing to put into it. In This Article we are going to be speaking about the importance of having your own website when you’re trying to earn money.

I know that there are many of you who understand that you need your own internet site but newer folks to the internet don’t see how important this is yet. Word Press offers men and women free blogs and you’ll discover that loads of individuals think that this is just as good as having their own internet site. One thing that individuals do not understand concerning this approach is that Word Press can cancel your account with them without any reason, and they do when you try to get individuals to go to yet another site to purchase something. I am certain you can see that this is something which is not good, as you put a lot of time into getting your blog set up how you wanted it.

Another thing that you’ll not have the ability to do is to include Google ads on a free blog that you receive from Word Press. Needless to say if you have your own website and domain name you’re not going to need to be concerned with somebody canceling your site or not enabling you to add extra ways to make money. A site is in addition a good method to get people to know who you are and it’ll additionally let you tell others about your product. You will additionally not be limited to advertising just one product, as you can in fact promote as many products as you would like.

And now for the most important part of having your own domain and web hosting, you will be able to start building your own list so you can email them with various other offers you may have. You’ll of course have to get a script that you can run on your server that will permit you to manage your list and also make it simple to contact every person on your list at once. You will find individuals who will email their lists on a daily basis and they figure out the hard way that because of this their subscribers wind up un-subscribing quickly. These are just a few of the reasons why it is so important for any internet marketer to have their own website and domain name.

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12.17
11

Business Facility Maintenance Services

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Every individual case, a productive method for its buildings clean and hygienic. Getting a plant upkeep company can be a remedy for this concern. Examples of corporations that has to become cleaned, his lectures, Trattoria, hospitals and automobile agencies react. A clean install can be a rep for an organisation and gives a secure environment for workers and consumers. Most firms can contribute time to scrub the obtain of a commercial cleaning service effectively to save their establishment. Outsourcing of cleaning to a facility upkeep company suggests that the operation be carried out by executives.

Lineups will likely be a fair chunk with the advantages for a mentioned value. The selection to hire a girl for cleaning chemical substances and hardware skilled staff. If a worker, becomes unwell from the cleaners, then with the organisation towards the location with the genuine person to someone else. Entrepreneurs are ready to keep away from loss of time by a facility maintenance staff to uncover a cleaning company.

Some firms will interview and train cleaning staff inside the organization. The production of picking a firm saves on cleaning time and cash. Outsourcing worker for the job doesn’t quit coughing for insurance, paid sick leave and / or vacation spend. It might be a headache for a firm and attempt a consultant cleaners are met. Several corporations assume they can save money by getting the apparatus as well as the recruitment part-time staff. This really is really an alternative for some associations, though not frequently the quite very best. Yet another aspect to consider feasible repairs for the clobber using a detergent. It could be terribly expensive to scrub up the industrial shocks employed to clean buildings. Staff are trained to employ the stuff and it ought to be maintained at different occasions to produce sure that it is safe for cleaning. Using a commercial recovery provides a straightforward cleaning, and signifies you also have the most recent items.

High pressure equipment are required to clean the factory floor or the outside of a constructing, prepared to heavy detergents and heavy water under high pressure jets to use for jettisoning sludge. Commercial cleaning use high-spec gear with a high pressure can often clean oily floors with dirty gear. Also be checked by vets who complete the job inside a fair time. A large number of configurations and may be cleaned straight after opening and can be met with no interruptions in the management in the firm.

A pro cleaning could be the specific cleaning of enclosures for the gear and water. Examples of attachments are spinning nozzles, pipe cleaning attachments, tank cleaning and cleaner minds. The permitted worker about what attachments are informed roles in selected applications. The rationale for the option of a business concentrated on developing cleaning is at risk of becoming exposed to harmful chemicals inside the direction in the atmosphere. It’s feasible on the web, and corporations that control of waste.

12.15
11

Businesses Choosing to Go Green May Save A Considerable Amount Of Energy

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If people can go green in their households, can’t those self-same people begin making the commercial enterprises where they are employed, go green too? With all of the waste in the workforce, an astounding amount of money and energy could be saved with only a little initiative. There seems to be so little concern for keeping things clean any more, or for reducing waste. Before, each person lived the truth of the saying “waste not, want not.”

There are simple tips that could allow business organizations to become earth-friendly, which would be great. The office printer is a conspicuous example of office equipment that needs to be changed in the office. Numerous trees may be spared if less paper was consumed. Paper usage can be cut by 50 percent just by using both sides of the paper. Trees perform a task which is valuable to the environment, which is to take out carbon dioxide from the atmosphere during photosynthesis. Reducing the use of paper is merely one way for an office to become green.

Surely business travel could be cut back, given how the internet today links business organizations worldwide. Think how much energy and money could be saved by doing away with business conferences in remote places. The coonsiderable amount of business travel that takes place, oftentimes using fuel gluttons and carbon spewers such as jets and big vehicles, places great demands on our planet. Video conferencing could be done more inexpensively as opposed to jet travel. The internet makes it possible as well to save on travel and office expenses by letting people do many jobs at home. This can make a great difference, even though not each and every job can be done in this fashion.

Switching to email instead of paper-based communications is an obvious way for a business to become green. By just paying bills online, a huge amount of paper can be saved. Our planet will be well-off, with more done electronically rather than with paper. Laptop computers use far less than energy than desktop computers and monitors, so there’s an additional way offices could save energy. The most energy a laptop computer utilizes is 50 watts, whereas roughly 270 watts is consumed by a desktop computer and a monitor. Laptops can be programmed to go into sleep mode, saving a further amount of energy, after they have been inactive for some time, typically 15 minutes.

Screensavers utilize more energy, so don’t be duped into thinking the opposite. Still, if businesses turned off all laptops and computers during periods of non-use, that would be the best way for them to become earth-friendly, and they would save a lot of money. The city of Chicago could be powered for a while year, by what would be saved, if all business enterprises did this.

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12.13
11

Making Use Of Forums For Obtaining Traffic And Increasing Sales

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The one thing that I am certain you comprehend would be that if you’re looking to make money online you need to get folks to see your offers first. While there are plenty of different ways to start getting your offers viewed, there are a few methods that are both free and can also be very effective. The greatest thing about using free traffic methods is the fact that you will not be wasting cash on advertising, so you’ll not need to pay promoting fees, which means you get to keep all the cash you’re making. It is for this main reason that we have chose to go over the advantages related to forum marketing.

When you join a forum you are going to be allowed to make a signature that will be added to every single comment you make on the forum. The reason this is so important is mainly because not only can you add a signature so folks know who you are but you are able to in addition put a website link pointing to your site. Then when you participate in the forum and leave comments or make inquiries you’ll find that you’ll be building backlinks which are pointing back to your site. For those of you who are familiar with Internet marketing you should already be aware of the power that comes with backlinks with regards to search engine ranking.

Additionally in case you are advertising your own products you’re going to discover that you’ll in addition have the ability to build awareness about your product. And you’ll additionally discover that you will be able to brand yourself as an expert in the field you are in. When you participate in conversations in the forums and you provide people with good as well as valuable information that they can make use of they will start to trust your recommendations. Additionally once you get the trust of these people you will automatically have trust in your product.

You ought to in addition know that you’re not limited to joining just one forum. If you just do a search in the search engines you’ll find that there are tons of forums that are in all different markets. This will help you to multiply your results, both with the amount of backlinks you’re building to your web page and with the amount of men and women who may be viewing you as an expert in your field. This will naturally lead to getting more product sales, both due to the backlinks and your new found reputation as an expert in your field.

As I know you are able to now see, forums are really a wonderful way to get more promoting for your website. In relation to the reasons that you should use forums I know you will have the ability to come across other reasons for using them. You will additionally realize that you’ll be able to advertise things like banners on these forums providing your Internet site with a lot more advertising. Of course for this kind of advertising there is usually a fee, but at least you know you’ll be promoting to people that are interested in your product. If you’ve ever tried using a pay per click program you’re going to find that this sort of marketing will be a lot less expensive.

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12.11
11

What to Keep in Mind When Purchasing a WordPress Shopping Cart

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Deploying a WordPress shopping cart on your website allows people to buy from you, whether directly or through a third-party such as PayPal, Amazon Payments, and Google Checkout. As no such software can possibly account for all the vagaries of business, you must thoroughly examine whether a cart system will meet your particular needs. Though software developers naturally try to accommodate all the business requirements they can imagine, it’s inevitable that someone, somewhere, will some day “break” the program somehow! For the overwhelming vast majority of offerings on the market today, however, you needn’t spend much, if any, money at all trying out all the different systems that exist today.

12.8
11

Marketing On Twitter – Is It A Lucrative Way To Build Your List?

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Many years ago, there was a big campaign on Twitter marketing tools. It was considered that you could use Twitter as an effective means to grow a list of potential customers for your products or services. Nevertheless, how much of a bang for your buck do you get from any of these tools that were pushed at us to improve our sales figures? In today’s article, we will talk about Twitter marketing and if it is even worth it for you to use it.

I was one of those who wanted to find out if getting a huge following on Twitter was going to help my product promotion campaigns and so paid for the tools. I ended up purchasing and joining programs that would get me followers and programs that would basically promote my products for me. All in all, I think I bought about 8 software programs to help with my Twitter marketing venture.

I invested in a program that would automatically follow people for me in an attempt to have them follow me back. People who were not following me on Twitter would be automatically removed from my follow list by another program I had purchased. Removing non-followers meant I could concentrate on other people who might be swayed to follow me. On top of some other programs that are not really worth noting, I bought a program that would automatically take my blog posts and automatically Tweet them as soon as they were published on my blog. And when I began using all of these software the results seemed to be astounding because they all did precisely what they said they would do. I was speedily brought down to earth when I looked at my spreadsheet and found that I wasn’t actually pulling in any money! My strategy was to post multiple blog entries each day and each of them was then sent straight to appear on Twitter. Then I found a way to have all the blog entries done for me automatically, believing that the more posts I would have the more people who would see them.

The results of my efforts are as follows: Utilizing this strategy over three years generated nearly 10,000 people following me on Twitter. You might think this is an awesome number, but that’s not the complete story: In the same 3 year period, my Twitter account gathered over 15,000 blog posts that had links to my affiliate offers. Other than that, I did no extra promotion for that blog, as a matter of fact I didn’t even ping the new blog entries to determine how good Twitter was could be. Well, you can’t say that 3 years isn’t long enough to obtain decent results but using Twitter I just got 2 – 4 visitors daily to my blog. My affiliate earnings from 2 transactions was $47 and to that you can add $8.65 Adsense revenue – extremely dismal all around!

Even with nearly 10,000 Twitter followers and using software automation, it seems that this is not sufficient to generate money marketing with Twitter. As a matter of fact, in the last 3 years I have not even made good money from that blog to pay for the Twitter programs that I had invested in. There may be other more successful means of marketing on Twitter, but from my experience, using automatic software tools is not one of them.

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12.7
11

A Review of The Bookmarking Demon Program

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It is common knowledge that you have to build backlinks to your web site if you hope to get better rankings in the search engines. The disadvantage to creating links is the amount of time takes to get the job done. One of the most effective ways to get links especially if you have a blog that you update each day or if you create new sites daily is to use social bookmarking. Since you have to manually log on to each social bookmarking web site each time you wish to add a blog post or site, this process can take a lot of time. So, you might want to consider using something like Bookmarking Demon.

With this program, you’ll be really happy to find that you can open social bookmarking accounts at the push of a button. You won’t have to spend time activating each account because Bookmarking Demon will do it for you. As a matter of fact, the software will even give you the ability to create dozens of accounts at all the websites so you could have one account for every website you own. This also keeps a record of the different memberships you have so you don’t have to figure out a way to do it yourself–and this is a great feature if you manage numerous websites.

Then of course you will find that Bookmarking Demon will be able to start submitting your web pages and web sites to the social bookmarking sites. If you prefer, you can set up your submissions to occur randomly so that a certain blog post is submitted to only twenty of the bookmarking websites. When you’re ready to submit your next blog post, you can select to submit it to a new set of twenty sites. This is an awesome idea so that Google will not suspect you are doing anything unethical to get backlinks and so that there is less likelihood of your social accounts being deleted.

And again once you have everything set, the social bookmarking will all be done for you. All you need to do is to add the page you want to bookmark in Bookmarking Demon. Another thing you will find is that you can even add proxies so the social bookmarking web sites where you have several accounts will not realize that you have multiple accounts. In many cases, social bookmarking sites only let you have one account and will deactivate all of your accounts if they find out you have several. Hence, you can understand the importance of this specific feature.

You will be able to buy Bookmarking Demon right now for $147, and when you think about all the hours of time this software will save you, this is actually a superb price. Additionally, if Bookmarking Demon fails to meet your expectations, you can have your money refunded. You can be at ease when you get Bookmarking Demon thanks to the no questions asked 60-day money back guarantee.

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12.6
11

If You Are Seeking To Monetize Your Website Here Are Some Tips

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Earning profits from your site can be achieved and one of the best approaches to do this is to ensure that you have your site monetized using several methods. Most individuals never tell you this when you buy a program for earning on the web. They normally tell you to obtain a clickbank product and advertise it on your site. Some individuals have been very profitable using these techniques, but you will see that this is not the best way to profit from your site. Fortunately, we will explain a few ways that you’ll be able to earn more money with the same work.

Google Adsense is one thing which will help you make more money from your site. You may hear some individuals tell you that you need to be getting tons of traffic in order to make anything with this platform. Even one dollar each day will be worth it because this will add up and in time your site should be getting more visitors. And while one dollar a day only works out to about $30 a month, this is still a little bit more money. Because you don’t have to do any upkeep on the ads it is as easy as putting them on your site and collecting the money. So for around 10 minutes work, you can be generating $30 a month each and every month for as long as you have that site up on the net.

Make sure you remember about clickbank ads as this can be one more great way to earn more money through your website. Putting a simple banner for a clickbank affiliate product could also work out great, as you again simply have to set it up once and you will be done. In fact for those who have a number of websites you will see that you will be able to make even more money by adding a product to each and every website you own. Many of the programs that you come across in clickbank will even wind up paying you 75% for every sale your website gets for them. So 1 sale a week might end up being yet another $30 for every sale or $120 monthly.

An additional way to get started making a steady cash flow is by renting out space to advertisers. Many people would love to pay a flat fee to market on your site so long as you are getting visitors, and you will additionally be able to earn $20 to $50 per month extra, depending on your site traffic. Make sure that before you take the advertising, the product or service complements your site content. Simply by linking to a product or service connected to your website, this may actually help your search engine positions. And you can additionally end up renting out ad space to more than one person, which will double or even triple the money you’re making.

You should also remember that the amount of extra money you could be making is dependent on you owning only one site. Not surprisingly once you start making an extra $200 a month from your one site, it would seem sensible to build another site that will help you make the same extra money, and on and on. Therefore by setting up your websites correctly and adding the right money making opportunities you can generate money, and when you decide to keep making more websites like this you could end up replacing your existing income.

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10.17
11

Ethics Continuing Education for Murdoch

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Ethics continuing education seems all the more necessary in today’s world, what with the continuing saga of the Rupert Murdoch/News of the World tabloid scandal. Murdoch is one of the world’s richest people, lording over a corporate empire that includes lucrative businesses such as the News of the World paper. A long-time money-maker for him, this property has now become his greatest challenge yet, both personally as well as professionally.

What does any of that have to do with the need for ethics continuing education? Only that the entire sordid episode would never have existed had someone with a sense of ethics been at the helm. The matter was originally one of a lost young girl. What with all the demand for the latest information on the case, The News of the World resorted to drastic measures to out-snoop its competition. What Murdoch’s News of the World did was hack into the girl’s mobile voicemail account.

That was already against the law, but what makes this matter one involving ethics continuing education is on account of the destruction of evidence they engaged in by deleting voicemail messages to make room for new ones to listen in on! This created the impression to investigators that the girl was still alive, checking in and deleting old messages. Unfortunately, the girl had been long dead, and even more unfortunately for the News of the World, their hacking was soon found out.

Not even the royals and their prime minister were immune from Murdoch’s prying henchmen (and women)!

The upshot of it all is that a hundred year-old paper’s closed, wtih workers out of a job, while a grieving family feels toyed with, and the public’s trust in its police force (Scotland Yard had previously on two occasions denied any phone hacking at all by Murdoch’s company) shattered once more. Moreover, the tycoon has had the Sky Network acquisition fall through on account of intense concern over his control of the media!

09.15
11

Lois Lane’s Quick Tips for Property ROI

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What’s to be done when you owe more on the house than what it’s worth? This is the crux of the matter for both mortgage holders and those that lend them. And it is what caused The Great Recession, when the housing buble finally burst. Those that were not qualified under norm conditions still managed to secure loans for property that they ordinarily would never have been able to purchase in the first place because the original lenders had always planned on reselling those loans onward — risking nothing themselves.

No need to be a real estate professional yourself like Isaac Toussie to see the writing on the wall about this one. With all the defaulted mortgages and foreclosed homes, a terrible self-perpetuating cycle set in from which the economy has still not fully recovered. That’s not even to mention the other side of the matter, the fraudulent lenders and cynical gamblers involved!

Indeed, many, many other factors have contributed to the mess, and in a sense no one is entirely blameless. Being easy to understand, however, has made most people focus on this matter of subprime loans, and even exclusively on the lenders and borrowers. And so two to three years on, what does the real estate picture look like in the United States?

Bad, very similar to years past. Interest rates are a historic lows but banks are now unwilling to lend. So all those foreclosed homes are just sitting there, often boarded-up and abandoned. And despite profits at historic highs, businesses refuse to hire. This means an uncertain jobs outlook that has people afraid to make the sinle most expensive purchase they are likely to make in their entire lives.

So for all the talk about The Great Recession being over, it’s 2011 and no citizen imagines that the immediate future is going to be any different.

08.7
11

Starting An Online Business A Good Idea

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Starting an online business is really a great way to earn that extra money you need every month but can you handle it? The problem is people seem to think that it is simple to start making money online. The truth is that for the most part, it takes hard work and you will have to invest time in order to make your online venture successful.

While this can bring in a good amount of extra money, it may not be for you. If you are one of the people who think you can just set up a website and people will come and buy your products, stop now. Just like any business, you get out what you put in. Don’t waste your time or money if you don’t think you can put in at least 2 to 4 hours a day to build your business up.

Now, I realize that most of you already know that work is required and you can’t simply set it and forget it like a pot roast. For you people congratulations this is a great choice. If you’re still reading, we will show you how to get going.

One thing that truly is a must for long term success is for you to create your own blog or web site. Honestly, you can generate money without a domain name or hosting or any web site whatsoever, but it is highly recommended. One of the terrific things about putting up your own web site or blog is that you will have the opportunity to establish yourself.

After you obtain your domain name and web hosting, you need to put up a website or blog and figure out the best possible ways to earn money from it. Most folks use Adsense as a means to make money from their website. Even though you can pull in a good amount of money with Adsense, if you want big money with them you need loads of traffic. Another way to make money from your site is to sign up as an affiliate of a product that is related to your website. By using affiliate marketing, you can actually earn enough money to replace your current income. You will be able to earn up to 75% commissions on every sale your website generates. One good place to get started in affiliate marketing is with a company called Commission Junction.

Now for the hard part, you will need to start building traffic to your site or blog. If you really want to make money, you have to have steady traffic to your site. Without traffic, you won’t be successful. One way to start getting the traffic you need to survive is by using PPC. When you utilize pay per click methods, you have to spend to get people to your site, whether they buy anything or not. What this means is each time an individual sees your PPC advert and clicks on that advert, you will need to pay for that visitor. The main issue is that if you have no clue what you’re doing, these little 5 cent to 1 dollar charges can add up fast and there is no guarantee of generting a sale.

Another choice for obtaining traffic is the gratis method. There are hundreds possibly even thousands of traffic exchanges that can help you obtain free site traffic. These free-of-charge traffic programs can be found in any search engine and they actually can be a terrific way to start receiving the traffic you need.

In a nutshell, if you realize it involves time and you will need to work at it, putting up an Internet business could be a terrific choice.

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07.31
11

Verizon Wireless Phones Go for the Gold

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Verizon wireless phones are mobile handsets that come along with a subscription to one of North America’s largest cellular network service providers. With Apple’s recent foray into the Verizon catalog of handsets, however, customers of the wireless communications giant now have more chatting choices than ever before!

On the other hand, these devices are just commodities now and people don’t really talk about Verizon wireless phones no matter what the roster of available brands are. Things have gotten to be rather like that of table salt, another commodity where there’s more in common than not between competitors. Chalk it up to much changed times: a decade or so before these phones would have been highly sought-after status symbols! Nowadays such electronics is affordable to one and all and it’s the not having one that would seem unusual.

And so this is why folks don’t specifically speak of Verizon wireless phones – they’re just looking for a handset, whatever the make or model! This attitude has lead carriers, however, to “lock” their phones, programming them in such a way that the handsets cannot work over a competitor’s network. Correct: the phone is rendered inoperable when customers switch service providers! Even though the customer did pay for the phone – even though the phone belongs to the customer….

Think again! Carriers say that because they actually subsidize part of the cost of the phone, they reserve the right to lock those phones when someone is no longer a customer. Curiously, there has been no class-action lawsuit against such a potentially anti-competitive policy, one that’s long been adopted by all the carriers in the industry. Surely there are legal loopholes involved, though one wonders why tobacco companies can be successfully sued but not wireless service providers which purposely render people’s handsets useless!

Luckily, there’s a way around such a restriction: “jail-breaking” or unlocking the phone. In many cases, a phone can be unlocked by just entering a certain code into it!

07.10
11

Some Unique Standard Business Cards

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Standard business cards are exchanged every day by Japanese from all walks of life. Did you know that? It’s been long observed, since The Eighties if not The Seventies or even before that, how the typical Japanese, and not only the average salaryman, carries around business cards to exchange with people by way of an introduction. In fact, the practice is so commonplace that it’s become quite the stereotype for Japanese people the world over!

The inclination towards using signs and symbols as masks formed the subtext of the hilarious “Good Morning” from director Yasujiro Ozu. While set in postwar Japan, the society shown onscreen is a fairly comfortable one and would not seem too much out of place in our own times for the most part. This was a long time before handing out business cards became a customary greeting on par with the handshake, but the psychological motivations remain the same – as so ably and mostly humorously pointed out by the movie.

It’s true that human beings are naturally drawn to abstractions and thus sign and symbol-making. But the Japanese are justly noted for having taken such instincts to a higher level of development, of formalizing them so much more elaborately than many, to the point that their very language reflects social status by offering alternating forms of address depending on the listener’s place in the greater hierarchy: words will take on different suffixes simply to recognize such social distinctions!

And so today’s practice of trading business cards. It’s the ultimate in getting to know one another in a way that’s really important: one’s relative ranking! This is Japan, after all, a country with a cultural heritage that doesn’t pretend to be egalitarian and so has no qualms about formally identifying people’s social standings.

A militaristic mindset, potentially. It isn’t limited to Japan, of course – at least not in kind, though few other places can match it to the degree of its intensity, the degree of its prevalence and common observation.

One most conducive to modern business.

Business cards. Indeed, much too much could be made of something so straight-forward. But so can too little be; so is it possible that important cultural currents are ignored.

Indeed, non-Japanese businessmen and women trade cards all the time as well. Indeed, the practice originated in the West, with Europe and America. But there isn’t the same “moral authority,” for lack of a better phrase – there isn’t the same “cultural force” (for continuing want of a good way of putting things) – attached to the business card in the West as there is in Japan.