The more you know: switching to Gmail like a pro

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Every day, tens of thousands of people switch from Microsoft Outlook® and other client-based software to Google Apps. To make the transition as smooth as possible, we thought we’d share some tips on using Gmail.

Embrace conversations

Emails rarely come just one at a time; they’re usually part of a larger exchange. Gmail helps you manage messages more efficiently by grouping related emails into conversations. Conversations are a collection of messages with the same subject line and other similarities. When you click to read a conversation, you'll see all of the back-and-forth email responses that happen over the course of the entire email conversation.

This makes it easier to follow the full context of a conversation, and keeps your inbox less cluttered and more organized. If you prefer a more traditional view of your Inbox, you can always turn off Conversation view so that all emails arrive individually.

Forget delete, and archive your way to “Inbox Zero”

The average corporate inbox is only 300MB, which means too many people are forced to spend way too much time managing their inbox -- deciding which email to keep, and deleting the rest. With 25GB of storage, you probably won’t ever need to delete an email again because of storage limitations. And if you thrive on clearing your inbox, simply archive your emails to clear the clutter. They’re still fully searchable in an instant!

Search to sort

You may be accustomed to sorting email to find saved messages, which is a pretty limited way to find information because you usually know what you’re looking for. Gmail uses the power of search to help you quickly find what you want. You can even use advanced search operators to search by sender, date, attachment or a variety of other attributes. Try it and you'll find some of the qualities that Google.com is known for: great accuracy and really fast search results. Search is particularly more effective than sorting when you’re looking through multiple gigabytes of email!

Labels instead of folders

While you won't find folders in Gmail, labels give you even more flexibility to organize your email. You can’t put an email into multiple folders, but you can apply multiple labels to the same message, which makes it easy to manage information that may fall into more than one category.

By clicking on a label, you can view a chronological list of all conversations that have been tagged with that label. And you can even organize labels hierarchically, using the “Nested Labels” lab. (Your administrator needs to have enabled Labs for you to access them.)

Work offline

These days you’re probably almost always connected to the Internet. But in those increasingly rare moments when you’re not, you can still access Gmail. When you’re offline, you can work in your browser to compose messages, search, organize mail, and do all of the things you're used to doing while accessing your email online. Any messages you send while offline will be placed in your outbox and automatically sent the next time Gmail detects a connection. To enable offline Gmail, go to the ‘offline’ tab in Settings, select ‘Enable’ and then save changes.

New features

As a web application, Gmail can be updated and improved without the trouble of purchasing, downloading and installing updates. This means Gmail will continually offer new functionality to help you be even more productive, like Priority Inbox, integrated voice and video chat, and labs such as Apps Search and Desktop Notifications. To stay current on new features, we encourage you to subscribe to our RSS feed for updates to the Google Apps suite.

We hope you enjoy the experience we offer -- we believe that ultimately, a fully-searchable, delete-nothing inbox makes for happy, productive people. But if you’re still not quite ready to use Gmail’s web interface, you can keep using Outlook or other clients of your choice. For more tips, check out our detailed transition documentation, and let us know what else we can do to make your move to Gmail easier in the comments below.

Posted by Rajen Sheth, Google Apps Product Manager

Got By with a Little Help from my Friends

In the end we had a bit of extra help coding Flo. For those who haven't read about Flo, she's a trading "bot" that Kiki and I created a few months back. A labour of love and very frustrating.

While there will always be money to be made by discretionary traders, I wanted to leverage my skills and be able to trade a multiple of markets at the same time. I realized that the performance of Flo couldn't match that of a discretionary trader but I believe the fact that she doesn't tire or lose focus and if Flo can consistently grind it out on 5 or 6 or more markets at a time, it would be worth the effort.

We had a number of issues with slippage and missed trades along the way but now feel that we are closer to what is possible for someone trading from Europe using commercial software. The recent help with an extra bit of code took us to the next level.

You can see the results for today. Awesome if I say so myself. The contract is December DAX - the German stock index future. Flo has two feeds connected: eSignal for analysis and the broker's feed for execution. The orders are automatic with no human intervention.

The numbers are Euros not $. I think that the draw down of 2054 Euros is great as are the other metrics.

The DAX is a very volatile and big tick stock index that trades on the Eurex exchange in Germany. It takes no prisoners. Using Flo to trade it is much easier than trading it live and almost as profitable for me.

One of the guys coming to the October seminar in Chicago (see details here) is a computer guy who wants to talk to me about automated trading. I'm looking forward to it as I always learn something when talking to other traders. We each have a different perspective and a way of looking at things. While the seminar will be about discretionary trading (and I will be trading live), there is a lot of back testing involved in becoming a discretionary trader and sharing ideas and techniques will be fun.

Flo starts work on DAX at 8am London time. There have been some great trades and she seems to have caught all the major turns. The entries and exits are marked and you can see the stats info below. There was a short trade still on when I snapped the pic.

The ES was just as good. The Euro FX future was also profitable but with more trades and a lower win rate. One of my main criteria for a system is the money earned per annum divided by the greatest draw down and this provides a good metric.

Total disconnect

Albert Haynesworth is being paid $100 million over seven years to play a game. And after his offseason of complaining and refusingto practice during mini-camp, he isn't playing that game very well anymore.

So he went on a Washington radio station and made one of the dumbest and most asinine comments I have ever heard. He's bitter and clinging to his guns and religion because the Redskins want him to play a different defensive scheme than he was accustomed to in previous years. I don't have a lot to say about this idiot because I'll let his own words do all the talking.

"Just because somebody pay you money don't mean they'll make you do whatever they want or whatever. I mean, does that mean everything is for sale?" Haynesworth said last week. "I mean, I'm not for sale. Yeah, I signed the contract and got paid a lot of money, but ... that don't mean I'm for sale or a slave or whatever."

No, you're not a slave. You get paid for what you supposedly do for a living. But you WERE for sale two years ago when you signed that record-breaking contract with the Redskins. They may not own your soul, but they are paying you enough money to tell you what to do while at the office

The Buzzwords this Year: Context and SIM

"Context" is the word of the year. It is good to see that all the things I started writing about and teaching Kiki have filtered into the forefront of many peoples' consciousness. Trading in context is the difference between CP and not.

There are two seemingly identical setups on the bar chart. One becomes profitable and the other is a loser. The difference is the context, most of the time. That is why automated trading systems do not perform as well as a competent discretionary trader. It's almost impossible to program the context into an automated system. The result can still be a very profitable system, but should not be compared to discretionary trading.

The other big thing in the last year has been greater acceptance of SIM trading as a critical tool for learning, to perfect your trade without losing a ton of money while you do. To me, it has been a no brainer. Why would you not perfect EVERYTHING, except the feeling of risking your money, in SIM? No, it's not exactly the same as live trading but it almost is. And you then only have to resolve the one difference when you go live, after you KNOW that you can be consistently profitable.

Trading the Euro FX again. This market is still going places. It had another pop this morning in London. And then it turned. It's important to keep listening. The overnight Profile provided the setup for the upmove. Price then broke back into value of both the overnight and the last distribution of yesterday, which had about equal VA. That was the clue to the breakout when the bar charts timed the entry. Same picture in a context that fit.

There is still room at the Chicago seminar, so come along if you want to learn how to do this stuff.  I'll be teaching it in real time.

Here are the first three trades from this morning, London time.

A few ideas and loose ends

This week I learned that the NASA Nanosat prize is funded, (I thought it was a proposal not a funded prize.) So this clearly puts a bulls eye on a project target. This process starts with a notional vehicle and works backwards from the last stage. With a 1Kg payload I think that I can build a three stage launcher with a gross liftoff mass of less than 1000lbs.
To do something on this scale every gram matters. I'm starting to designbthe best 3rd stage I can and works backwards... (If you do a good enough job you only need two stages)

One needs:
Efficent light high expansion motor. Working on small motors via the DMLS project.

Really light tanks.....I've purchased all the large beverage containers I can find and am weighing and pressure testing them. So far the best tank is a 2l soda bottle. 100+PSI and mass ratio of > 40. A single soda bottle is not really enough. Any scheme to group them together is heavier than the bottle. So I'm looking at maybe fabricating my own tanks. The idea H2O2 tank would be mylar lined (mylar is another version of PET like in soda bottles) with chemically compatible resins and kevlar. Normal Epoxy and normal Carbon fiber are not happy with H2O2. All the tanks at this scale are up against minimum gage issues so whatever pressure you get in the tank will be more than really needed. In concept these seem very similar to the H2O2 tanks shown by Richard Speck of Micro-space at the 2007 LLC. I've got most of the materials to try this on the way. The biggest unknown issue is how to build the liner. If I can make the process in patent #3661675work that would be ideal.

Really light valves and actuators... probably all based on brushless model airplane servos. one can get lighter brushed parts, but must trade against the requirement to put them in a pressure box and the smallest brushless ones seem to be a win.

Guidance.... more on that later...


Regulation... This one is hard because the regulatory framework that applies to orbital launches is tailored toward something like a big Atlas. My current concept is to make the 2nd and 3rd stages really light and fluffy. Almost all plastic, including the valves and plumbing. Only the thrust chamber will be non-plastic. The first stage will probably be metal. The concept is to launch off shore so that thrid party safety from the first stage is constrained by physics and the 2nd and 3rd stages are too light to survive reentry. The real trick will be proving that and path taken by the 2nd stage will either burn up or land within the 1st stage constrained by physics zone. IE if it shoots straight back down its not going so fast so it might burn up. If it flies perfectly by the end of its burn then its going to fast to survive reentry. The question is what happens between these two zones. My nominal vehicle meets all of the amateur limits except the no orbit allowed rule. IE less than 200Klb/sec and orbital altitude less than 150km. (Rules say you only need to go around once.) more rambling to follow as I figure things out.

Anyone in SoCal with access to a 14" diameter 20" long vacuum oven that I could use to try the process described in the patent above would be really helpful.

Google Places Tip and Tricks - September

Hope you had a great summer and are ready to jump into fall! Here are a few tips to further engage with your customers, and we've also shared the experience of Dr. Jeffrey Prager, whose use of Google Places to connect with potential clients for his dental practice sheds light on how other businesses and professional services can achieve similar success.


Post to your Place page

Connect with your customers through Place page posts. These 160-character posts allow you to share a short update or special with users. Check out some examples and sign in now to write a quick post!


Make sure your free listing has everything it needs

You can update your business hours, add photos and make many other edits through your Google Places account. Some of the information you can update includes:

• Photos and videos
• Business hours
• Description
• Address and service areas
• Much more

Use the Report a Problem tool in other cases, such as:

• Duplicate listings
• Inaccurate information, including personal contact information or information about another business, that appears on your Place page

See more examples of updates and sign in now to edit your page.


Success Story

Through Google Places, Dr. Jeffrey Prager's Bellinghamsmiles.com Dental Care has a continual influx of new customers, reduced marketing costs, and a high ROI.

As his practice continues to evolve, he updates his Place page to reflect any new services he offers. He might add a new video or update his business description. The listing also helps him market his business niche - laser procedures to help patients avoid painful gum surgery. Read more.

You can update your Places account at any time by signing in at http://google.com/places with your email address and password.

Posted by Bernadette Cay, Associate Product Marketing Manager

Scores on the Doors

Many of you have emailed me wanting to see the trades in more detail so you can see what kind of money can be made using my methodology, so I have brought back the P and L grid that I used earlier in this blog. I am using a trade size of 3 contracts because I trade in multiples of 3. The more contracts that you trade, the more granular you can make your scale outs. If you trade, say, 12 contracts, you may want to scale out 4 times not 3, and so on.

Those of you who have taken the course or have the DVDs will recognize the trades. Those coming to the seminar in Chicago at the end of October will learn them and see me teach by trading them live.

This stuff can be easily learned. The road map is very structured and through very specific trade plans and SIM trading, your muscle memory eventually takes over. Its a matter of following the order flow in context. I trade the price bars and use the indicators to confirm what I am seeing, all within the context of Market Profile.

Today's trades are my London morning in the Euro FX futures.

Event recap: How to run a successful social campaign

[Cross posted from the AdWords Agency Blog.]

Last week, YouTube and SEMPO hosted a social marketing panel, "How to run a successful social campaign," for SEMPO's San Francisco and Los Angeles working groups. The panel featured speakers from YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and Athena East, and highlighted the unique products available to marketers, and best practices for executing measurable, impactful social advertising strategies.

Derek Gordon of Yield Software was there, and shared what he learned in today's Mediapost Search Insider column.

Click here for his complete update.

Posted by AgencyAd Solutions Blog Team

Exits

On Friday afternoon I was talking to one of the people I mentor. We were talking about exits. This trader was one from the July training and had hit a win rate of almost 70% fairly consistently. The main issue this trader had was exits. When to exit.

I think you all know by now that I believe in scaling out if the market allows. My trading plan has a first exit a the "first logical scale out point". I then have a requirement to scale out at every resistance point. Pretty simple but there is a plan. Without having a pre-ordained and tested plan, a trader has to make the most critical decision in trading - when to exit - in the heat of battle, not the time to try and figure things out. There is no time.

It's pretty critical to know where you will exit before you enter. Now, you have really no idea how far the market will go in your direction or whether it will at all, but I make an assumption that my first logical scale out point will be hit - and more than 70% of the time, it is. My only decision when I am approaching that first scale is to decide what percentage of my contracts I should scale out or even whether I should be all out.

Today was great. Morning was the Euro FX future (6E) which had three nice pushes up. I then switched to the ES for the RTH. No Gap trade today but there was still money that you didn't have to bend down to pick up around. Another of the EL pictures. See it in the vid. Indicator on the bottom is in test. Remember, you can see it in HD. One of our blog readers said:

If you click inside the video once it has started it opens up in Youtube. You can then click on the lower right to expand it to full screen. You can also change the resolution to 720p and get what you are looking for and more.

Rino

Radio killed the radio star

This wasn't the first time "they" pulled the plug on Stan and Guy. But once again, Pittsburgh is left without the most trusted men in Yinzer sports.

ESPN Sports Radio 1250 will cease to exist after this week because Mickey and Minnie decided that childish radio shows such as Hannah Montana will somehow be more lucrative in this cradle of sports than, well, sports. I knew something wasn't right while driving to the grocery store yesterday morning and 1250 had a national feed talking about the Cowboys instead of the Steelers. Really? The freaking Cowboys! I immediately turned the dial to NPR to find something more interesting.

But this was just a precursor to the real tragedy. ESPN Radio is pulling out of Pittsburgh and firing the entire staff. I ridiculed Ken Laird earlier this year when he erroneously predicted the end of the Bruce Arians era. However, I still think he is a good reporter with excellent insight on the Steelers. Hopefully he will be able to catch on with another radio station in the region.

This decision to end Pittsburgh's most prominent sports radio station is just another example of the demise of journalism. Whether it be newspapers that try to offer token services on their websites or radio stations that can't compete with bare bones staff, it's clear that the viewer/reader/listener no longer wants to pay for his/her services.

And that makes me sad, because this isn't the first time sports fans have faced cutbacks. Fox Sports Pittsburgh neutered us two years ago when they ended SportsBeat and the Steelers postgame coverage. For some bizarre reason, they kept the postgame show of the Triple-A team that currently plays at PNC Park.

There is no such thing as a free lunch, and this decision by Mickey Mouse proves that fact. We do not want to pay for news, but we are quickly realizing that the only free services we can find nowadays are barren news pages and dead airwaves.

Finding your hidden treasure: international campaigns with AdWords

[Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog]

In 2000, Antoine Assi founded Middle Eastern export website www.aldoukan.com—it was one of the first e-commerce business in the Middle East. He was just 20 years old and he made time to develop the business in between computer science classes at his university. He needed a way to advertise his website from the comfort of his own dorm room, so he decided to test out Google AdWords.

His friends didn’t believe him when Antoine said he was going to sell and advertise traditional Middle Eastern foods and goods online. However, by 2004, his business had grown so rapidly that he decided to take leave from school to run it full-time. He then started his second company, www.mosaicmarble.com, which sells handcut decorative tiles online internationally.

Antoine believed there was a gap in the mosaic market and he wanted to share these artistic and historic decorations abroad. He knew there was a market for these tiles internationally—he just didn’t quite know where the opportunity existed. To identify these international growth opportunities, Antoine built on his knowledge of AdWords: He ran several AdWords campaigns, each targeted at the location and language of the test country.


From there, Antoine measured sales and percentage of website traffic from each country and campaign. He ended campaigns for countries with low sales volume and invested in campaigns for countries with higher sales volume and greater return on investment. Where he saw steady product sales, Antoine even had the company website translated into the language of the successful host country. As you can imagine, translating the site to the language of a country in which he’d already seen success only further promoted sales in that location.

Antoine refers to his AdWords campaigns as his hidden treasure, telling us that “the second month we started advertising on Google, we started feeling overwhelmed by the orders and the inquiries... We had to hire new employees on a weekly basis.”

Mosaic Marble quickly grew from two employees and eight artists to more than 40 employees and 120 artists. And the company’s website is now available in seven languages: Arabic, English, Finnish, German, Italian, Portuguese and French.


In addition to helping him expand his business, these international campaigns helped Antoine and his colleagues share these cultural icons with a larger part of the world. There are now homes and public spaces adorned with these ancient Greek creations in more than 50 countries worldwide. “Due to Google,” says Antoine, “we have customers such as the President of Congo, the Dubai Minister of Internal Affairs, the Princess of Jordan, and the Royal Music Academy of London.”

Posted by Elias Darwish, Account Manager, Dublin

Going Google across the 50 States: Connecticut-based ice cream franchise decides to ‘gofer’ Google Apps

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: Over the past couple months, thousands of businesses have added their Gone Google story to our community map and even more have used the Go Google cloud calculator to test drive life in the cloud. To highlight some of these companies’ Gone Google stories, we decided to talk to Google Apps customers across the United States. Check back each week to see which state we visit next. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map.

“It’s always a good day to ‘gofer’ ice cream,” according to Jay Ragusa, President of Gofer Ice Cream. Jay has opened five stores throughout Connecticut that provide high quality ice cream and unique treats such as razzles, smoothies, hand dipped ice cream, and soft serve ice cream with a flavor twist. Jay relies on Google Apps to keep his business running, and today he shares how it has helped him and his staff work more efficiently.

“Between our online accounting software and the use of Google Apps, which has become an integral part of our daily operations, we are gradually putting the entire company in the cloud.

Google Sites, part of the Google Apps suite, is used to create specific pages on our external website (gofericecream.com) so we can easily edit content without the use of a webmaster. Internally, we built multiple intranet sites including the Gofer Network where store managers and franchisees communicate, organize, and operate their part of the company. The Gofer Crew Portal is a site designed for the staff to access information such as contact numbers, store schedules and the internal Gofer Blog, and submit time card exceptions.

We rely heavily on Google Docs to update manuals, recipes, and employee schedules all of which are posted on the Gofer Network for store managers to access and share with employees at each store. For financial reporting, we created custom Google forms to efficiently collect data on point-of-sale purchases every night — store managers input their sales numbers into the form and everything is automatically populated in my spreadsheets. The forms are a great way to get the data quickly without having to expose sensitive revenue information across all the stores.

Whenever possible, we’re developing business processes around the functionality in Google Apps. It’s low cost and we get the security of knowing that Google is backing up our data. I’m looking forward to finding more ways that Google Apps can improve how we work.”

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps Team

Thanks for Coming

I had a great time at the webinar yesterday. The room count was up to 317. WOW!! I hope you all benefited. I set out how I do the Gap Trade, as well as how a trader needs to train his muscle memory so that trade recognition and trade execution can take place almost without thought. There were a bunch of questions I did not answer, as we ran out of time and the room was going to be used by someone else. However, I'll try and answer them over the week-end and post the answers here.

As far as the recoding of the event is concerned, we have some sound issues and Kiki is going to try to work her magic and resolve them so we can post it here on the blog. Watch this space.

Today the market opened more than 12 points up from yesterday's close. I was looking to trade the Gap. It didn't happen. You can see how I traded it in the video today. I call these failures the Anti-Gap Trade. It's like Sherlock Holmes said about the dog that didn't bark during the night - what doesn't happen can tell you almost as much as what does.

How to Become Consistently Profitable

Becoming CP is the goal of every new trader. I'm going to show exactly how to do that in a free webinar today after the close of the NY Stock Markets - 4.30pm in NY, 9.30pm in London. If you would like to join us, then click on this link: http://onlinetradercentral.com/presenter_WATG35.asp

As I have said over and over, becoming CP is not only what you learn but how you learn it. I will be illustrating this whole process using just one of the pictures that I trade. To be a wholly discretionary trader, I need a whole bunch of arrows in my quiver - inside out trades and outside in trades - in order to manage and profit from all the trades that the markets have to offer.

Hope to see you there.

Today I traded only the London morning, as I had to prepare for the webinar. It was the Euro FX again and it was a happy little ATM machine. See the vid.

More Printed Motor news...

The DMLS machine that is most common is an EOS270. The company that makes these machines has recently started adding some new materials. The new Material I'm most interested is Aluminum for chambers, and maybe Inconel 718 for a possible turbo pump.

I'd gotten some chamber quotes a year or so ago and it was still too expensive. When I had GPI quote my design again this year it was half of what last years quote was and I ordered the part on the spot. (In Stainless) GPI was also very helpful in making geometry suggestions that woul d improve the quality of the resultant part.

After placing this order I thought I'd do some more price research and sent the same file to Morris Tech to quote. The response from Morris was very competitive and its clear that this industry is seeing significant price declines. (Neither vendor knows what the other quoted) I hope its a sustainable trend and not a bloody battle to bankruptcy.

I really don't like beating vendors against each other because any long term relationship needs to be win-win and you can't do that by abusing your vendors. While it might be tempting to beat vendors prices against each other, its not some thing I do.

I also asked both Morris and GPI about the availability of Aluminum.
GPI indicated that they would soon be running Aluminum and Morris indicated that they had already run some Aluminum parts and that in the next few weeks they would be running some more aluminum test parts.

Since I was doing interesting stuff as an individual inventor not a big corporation Morris offered me the chance to add a single part to the Aluminum test run for approximately their direct cost. Its an offer I can't refuse. So I will soon have small DMLS chambers in two materials!

The Aluminum Motor is actually a bit bigger than the stainless motor as it needs to be cooled the whole length with a stainless cat pack support thermally isolated from the cooled aluminum chamber as a sleeve inside.

So if you need DMLS parts there are at least two really awesome DMLS vendors in the U.S.

http://www.morristech.com/
and
http://gpiprototype.com/

How to edit Google Maps and local business listing data

[Cross-posted from the LatLong blog]

The world is a big place that’s constantly changing, so in digitally replicating it on Google Maps, you can imagine how much information we’re working with. We get data for Google Maps from a number of sources, including third party providers, business owners and users like yourself. And while for the most part, our algorithms do a great job of accurately reflecting the real world on the map, there are some instances when we get it wrong.

If you notice something that’s incorrect on Google Maps, chances are it’s either an issue with our map data - things like city and road names - or with our business listing data. We have a number of simple tools that make it easy for you to correct or report any issues so that we can get the maps right. Your assistance helps us provide the most accurate and up-to-date maps possible, so you and other Google Maps users can find what you’re looking for and be on your way.

Report a problem with our map data

• Use the Report a Problem tool in the U.S. and Canada, most easily accessible by right-clicking on the map or clicking the link on the bottom right-hand-side of the map.
• If anything with our map data is wrong, such as a road being renamed or a new highway on-ramp opening up, please submit a report. We work hard to fix the map based on user submissions, and try to resolve these issues as fast as we can.
• Countries outside the U.S. and Canada should contact the Google Maps data provider to correct the information.

Edit business listing information directly on Maps

• If you see incorrect information appearing on Google Maps listings in the U.S. (and many more countries), you can make updates to listings directly on Google Maps.
• Once we've reviewed your edits, updates to the listing will go live within several hours.
• If you are the business owner but have yet to claim your listing, see below for more information about Google Places.

Report incorrect business listing information

• The best way to report incorrect information is to use the “Report a Problem” tool, where available. Report a Problem allows you to specify exactly what is incorrect about a listing.
• Once these user-submitted reports are reviewed, updates to the listing will go live in a few weeks.

If you’re a business owner, you should also claim your Google Places listing so that you can edit and update the listing that appears on Google, Google Maps and GOOG-411. Verifying your free business listing allows you to not only ensure that accurate information appears on the Place page for your business, but also enhance your online presence by adding photos, videos and even real-time updates like weekly specials to your Place page.

Claim your Google Places listing

• Claim your Google Places listing by adding it at http://www.google.com/places or by clicking “Business Owner?” on the Place page for your business.
• Verify your listing by PIN (postcard or phone). Within an hour, click the “See your listing on Google Maps” link in your account to see your listing’s Place page.
• If incorrect information is appearing in your listing, there are a number of different ways to let us know and get the information corrected.

Posted by Brianna Brekke, Senior Strategist, Google Places

Competing and Adapting

Traders seem to be complaining again about not making money. This happens from time to time as things change in the markets. Whether it was the stock market doing away with fractions and going decimal or the growth of High Frequency Trading or something else we have yet to experience, traders need to continue to compete and adapt.

Adapting does NOT involve throwing away everything you are doing. If you have a sound methodology that is built upon identifying the order flow then the basis will never change. What does change is the rhythm or fingerprint of a particular market.

When you decide to trade, you are faced with quite a big decision before you really know anything about what you are to do. You really don't even know the questions. How do you start? What do you do?

When I started intraday trading really did not exist, unless you were on the floor or worked for a broker with a close enough access to the floor. Markets were much slower. News traveled slowly. We just started to trade by trial and error. I can't remember anyone ever telling me what I had to do to make a trading decision. People used to phone their broker and started the conversation with "What do you think about.......". Of course the broker didn't have much of a clue because he was a broker. He was a salesman not a trader.

Those of us that survived the early losses sought out ways of educating ourselves. How we did that varied a lot because there was no internet, no prominent information. Books and magazines were only sold by specialist shops which were hard to discover.

I was fortunate to discover charting in about 1969 - the good old Edwards and McGee book that is still the bible for chartists today. Then in 1979 I joined CompuTrac, the first computerised technical analysis group, based in the U.S. I was in Australia then. We used old Apple IIs with 64Kb of RAM and two floppies if I remember correctly. Steve Jobs was just out of his garage and starting to shave. He and Wosniak were the team.

Today, someone who wants to enter trading can get his education, learn his craft and reach CP (consistent profitability) all without risking one cent of his capital trading. Yet we are told that 90% plus of traders still lose. Why? Because they are not doing a good job of getting educated and training themselves. they risk their money trading and do not spend the money, time and effort to become a CP trader. I wonder how many surgeons would want to operate before going to medical school. It doesn't matter because there are laws to protect us from untrained doctors. But we all have the right to p*ss our own money away without any supervision. Those guys are the other side of our trades. Its cheaper to get educated than to lose the money to the market.

Today's trades, sometimes I try and get on the bus before it arrives.

Strengthen your advertising strategies with the Train & Gain challenge

[Cross-posted from Inside AdWords]

Today we’re announcing the first AdWords Train & Gain challenge.

You’ve asked us how to improve the performance of your AdWords account, so we’ve put together a series of simple steps to help you become more successful online.

(click for full size image)

Sign up for the AdWords Train & Gain challenge starting October 4th. You'll receive a weekly list of simple steps for improving your AdWords account. Sign into your account twice a week and take the suggested actions on how to better manage your account. At the end of four weeks, you’ll be armed with many different ways to improve your AdWords account.

If you complete all the steps and answer a short questionnaire to let us know what you’ve learned, you could win an Android Phone or a trip to meet with an AdWords consultant in Sydney, Australia for you and a colleague.

Sign up for Train & Gain now

Here’s a sneak peek of the fast and easy tips you’ll get:

Improve ad text: Stand out from your competition by writing ads that highlight your most competitive features (low price, special services, free delivery, etc).

Use negative keywords: Specify which search terms you don’t want your ad to appear on. This will help you keep costs down because it prevents clicks from people looking for things you don’t offer.

Track sales and leads: See where your ad spend is working best and focus your money on the efforts that are generating business.

This challenge doesn’t take up a lot of time and it can make a big difference for your business. Learn more and see the official rules for details about the challenge, who is eligible to compete and how we’re selecting winners. Terms and conditions can be found here.

Also, if you’d like to learn more about your AdWords account, check out our brand new AdWords Small Business Center, which we announced in last week’s post. The site is a one-stop shop for small and medium businesses. It allows visitors to explore beginner, intermediate or advanced AdWords topics and connects you to the latest AdWords news and best practices.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew

Waiting 4 the Fed but Euros are Still Euros

The stock market is waiting for the Fed, but here in Euroland, life goes on. We have our own issues and dependencies. There are a bunch of countries trying to use the same currency but each with different fiscal disciplines.

May it go on forever because it's opportunity every day.

And that's what we want as discretionary traders. It's not about hitting home runs. It's about making as many trades as you are comfortable making and having a consistently high win rate. It's about making money every day. Trying to find 3 winners to make up for your 7 losers and still give you a profit won't happen. It's the win rate that I build my strategies around. Win rate. Win rate.

Today was another nice Euro day.

 

Man versus Machine - survival of the fittest

Since the so called Flash Crash, I have seen lots of articles and comments about the wickedness of high frequency trading.  The wickedness of the masters of those bots and how people can never make money again. These types of comments are still appearing with many people showing a lot of anger.

I'm sad to say that most of these detractors of computerised trading are just plain wrong.

Now, I'm not referring to a situation where someone has insider knowledge and can front run using that knowledge. That's plain dishonest.

What I am talking about is using computers to trade and co-locating those computers at exchanges.That's smart.

Order stuffing is a real pain, but it's using the technology and presently within the rules. An electronic exchange that wants to stop it can stop it easily with rules and with technology.

While true HFT may be only available to entities with enough money, that's fine with me. So is investing money in finding cancer cures and then selling the cure. That's business and some businesses require more capital than others.

As far as competing in the markets with the bots, I've been competing in the markets in one form or another for more than 45 years, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. Just because I may not be good enough to win does not mean the fittest should be handicapped. We all need to find our place in the market to compete successfully (read profitably). While the markets' volumes and volatility and rhythm change, markets still feed on order flow. It's my job to read the flow and ride my surf board with those waves. If I can't do that then I have to learn the flow or not surf. Trading requires me to observe and pay attention to what "they" are doing if I want to trade profitably. If I couldn't trade profitably then I can't blame the bots.

Darwin determined a long time ago that it's the survival of the fittest.

BTW, this is one of my best years yet for trading.

REMINDER: Free 1 Hour Webinar on Thursday Sep 23 - A taste of EL
http://onlinetradercentral.com/presenter_WATG35.asp
where I'll show you how I trade and more importantly, how to learn to trade. It's not just setups but the method in the madness. 

A more secure cloud for millions of Google Apps users

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Cloud computing is about making your information easily accessible from anywhere, on any device. Until today, organizations looking to secure their information beyond a password have faced costs and complexities that prevented many of them from using stronger security technologies. Today we are changing that with the introduction of a more secure sign-in capability for Google Apps accounts that significantly increases the security of the cloud: Two-step verification. For the first time, we’re making it possible for organizations large and small to use this technology in just a few clicks for free. In the coming months, we’ll also be offering this same security to our hundreds of millions of individual Google users.

Two-step verification is easy to set up, manage and use. When enabled by an administrator, it requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account, something you know: a password, and something you have: a mobile phone. It doesn’t require any special tokens or devices. After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone (coming soon) device. This makes it much more likely that you’re the only one accessing your data: even if someone has stolen your password, they'll need more than that to access your account. You can also indicate when you're using a computer you trust and don't want to be asked for a verification code from that machine in the future.

Two-step verification is built on an open standard designed to allow integration with other vendors’ authentication technologies in the future. We are also open sourcing our mobile authentication app so that companies can customize it as they see fit.

Two-step verification continues Google’s stream of security innovation. In early 2009, we added the ability to view password strength and set minimum password length requirements for Google Apps accounts. Later in the year we were the first to provide HTTPS encryption to millions of users, and in 2010 Google Apps was the first cloud messaging and collaboration service to gain US government security certification.

Administrators for Google Apps Premier, Education, and Government Editions can activate Two-step verification from the Admin Control Panel now, and Standard Edition customers will be able to access it in the months ahead.

Posted by Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security, Google Apps

Why the motor has horns.

If you look at this post from July. You will see how the finished motor will look. Rather then spend lots of $$ making the simple upper section I only had the lower part printed with DMLS. The upper section where the cat pack will go is fabricated in the normal way from a sanitary fitting. It will and then be welded to the motor bottom.

The horns sticking out the side are the fuel feed. The fuel goes in the curved part and a 8-32 Set screw with a orifice drilled in it goes down the straight section. Then the end of the straight section gets plugged. You can buy predrilled orfices in 8-32 set screws from Mcmaster Car.

Here is a picture of all the bits before welding:

The two small parts are the machined elbows to connect the vertical feed tubes with the Chamber top.

Pittsburgh: Home of the Truthiness

I couldn't stop laughing while watching last night's "The Daily Show" and "Colbert Report" on Comedy Central. Those two nuts, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, announced they are hosting competing rallies in the shadow of the Washington Monument on 10-30-10. It's a big joke, but I imagine thousands will attend (including me) in a defiant gesture that there are millions of us out there who are sick of the rancor going around America like a bad case of the swine flu.

After weeks of hearing doomsday clown Glenn Beck constantly blabbering about his Restoring Honor rally, I assumed it was only natural that the professional comedians launched their own rally.

So a few weeks ago, someone from The Series of Tubes launched a website to push Colbert into hosting a "Restoring Truthiness" rally on 10-10-10. It blew up on Facespace and the Twatter like you wouldn't believe. But what we didn't know was that it was the work of a Yinzer to get the faux conservative pundit and his Comedy Central pal/rival to organize a real event in D.C.

Joseph Laughlin, 28, of Pittsburgh, made the pioneering suggestion last month on Reddit. "I've had a vision and I can't shake it," he said when others begin chirping about a response to Beck. "Colbert needs to hold a satirical rally in DC."

It turned into an Internet sensation that has raised a quarter-million dollars for charity. It also pushed the comedians into a corner where they had no choice BUT to rally their troops. Colbert begged his viewers last week to stop sending him live doves and Beanie Babies after Laughlin's website encouraged just that.

I don't know how many people will show up for the Rally to Restore Sanity when it collides on Oct. 30 with the March to Keep Fear Alive. But I'm proud to say one of our own helped to bring the Colbert Nation and Daily Show news junkies on a collision course that very well could bring the end of days.

Well done, Mr. Laughlin. You've made the Steel City proud.

Google and The Globe and Mail Launch "Web Strategy" Resources for Canadian Small Businesses

According to Statistics Canada, 98 percent of Canadian businesses are considered small, and they employ close to half the country’s private sector workforce. Given that metric, it's obvious that a healthy and vibrant small business sector is essential to Canada’s economic growth.

With the proliferation of the Internet, it’s easier than ever for entrepreneurs and small business owners like you to reach new customers, promote your products, and access new markets in ways that only large corporations could manage in the past. For example, powerful and intuitive online applications such Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Docs can help you slash IT costs and enable your employees to collaborate more effectively.

To further this movement towards taking advantage of online resources, we're launching a partnership with The Globe and Mail to help Canadian small business owners and entrepreneurs expand their Web presence and use the Internet to boost sales and long-term growth. The Web Strategy section on The Globe and Mail website will bring together Google's knowledge of business in an online environment with The Globe and Mail’s insight into strategy and economic issues. The site will feature information and stories for small businesses, as well as provide tutorials about how to get started with Google’s many business tools, including Google Places and AdWords.


In the coming weeks, the Web Strategy page will explore topics such as how the Internet can transform the ways you reach new customers and how you operate your business. If you have suggestions or questions, we would love to hear them. Click here to use Google Moderator and start sharing your ideas with us.

Posted by Brett Willms, Canada Marketing Manager

If the Earth is Flat, Where's the Edge?

Since starting this blog, almost a year now, I decided to trawl the web to see what other people are writing about and doing.

People are still trying to become CP (consistently profitable) by jumping from one "system" to another in search of that perfect edge where all trades are winners and where you don't need to spend any effort in learning. 

It's like when I was single and met a new girl - that first few months of romance was intoxicating and unreal, everything worked. A few months would go by the relationship "wasn't working"out and I was off again.  It wasn't until I found someone that I wanted to keep forever, that I saw the value (edge) in it.  That I needed to work hard to keep the relationship at it's best.

Trading is an endeavour when the real possibility of what you are doing  may be a loss yet you still go ahead. Why? Well, after you have completed your SIM trading and have reached CP, you have gathered statistics to show that, say, out of every 40 trades, 28 are winning trades and 12 are losing trades. The only problem is that you never know in which order the winners and losers will appear. In theory, you could have 12 losers followed by 28 winners or visa versa or any mixture in between. The entry for a winning trade looks just like the entry for a loser. What makes the difference? A big trader or group of traders may take the opposite side of your trade and the order flow reverses and you have a losing trade. Unpredictable.

But if you are trading your plan with it's built in edge, then you are successful no matter the outcome because over time, you know you will make money.

The second thing I noticed was that the things people are trying to teach, in many cases is something that they can not articulate clearly and while they may or may not be making money doing it, they certainly don't seem to be successful at knowledge transfer. A critical part of teaching is to be able to transfer your knowledge to a student so he can replicate your success. Your success not necessarily your style. The methodology you learn needs to be market agnostic and time frame agnostic to have longevity. It must keep on working forever. Markets change in volatility and rhythm but all liquid markets have an order flow that you can trade successfully if you know how to read it.

That is what trading is.

Great opportunity today in the ES. i was exchanging emails with one of the guys I mentor and we were talking about the gap trade. The market was way above yesterday's close and there was my favorite: a zipper.

You can see the result in the video. BTW, fyi, Youtube massages the video for what looks like the first 15 minutes after it's posted to improve HD.

Going Google across the 50 States: Minnesota-based allnurses.com gets rid of its email servers

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor’s note: Over the past couple months, thousands of businesses have added their Gone Google story to our community map and even more have used the Go Google cloud calculator to test drive life in the cloud. To highlight some of these companies’ Gone Google stories, we decided to talk to Google Apps customers across the United States. To learn more about other organizations that have gone Google and share your story, visit our community map.

Based in Minnesota, Brian Short is a Registered Nurse, as well as the Founder and CEO of allnurses.com, one of the largest online nursing communities with more than 430,000 members. Brian started the website as a hobby in 1995 when he was attending nursing school. He’d search online for relevant nursing information without success — it was easier to find websites on planting trees or feeding babies than reliable sources on clinical nursing.

So what started out as a website with a few links spawned into an online community and central hub of nursing information. The website now includes blogs, articles, and discussion forums across all specialities, with more than nine million global page views a month and 2,500 new posts submitted by members every day. To support this growth, Brian shares how he’s using Google Apps to remove location barriers and increase process efficiencies.

“I started out with my own internal email servers which were clunky and hard to manage. I was also dissatisfied with the accompanying email client. It would take forever to search, find, and organize all my email, and I was constantly deleting emails to avoid slowing down my machine. When I learned about Google Apps it was an easy decision to switch. I love the concept of cloud computing and being able to access all my applications through a browser.

Now, I've been using Google Apps for several years and it has helped the company tremendously. There are over 30 staff members scattered throughout the US and internationally. Google Apps allows us to communicate with ease by using instant messaging, email, shared calendars, and online documents.

I’ve also used Google forms to support marketing initiatives that increase awareness of allnurses.com. In one of the print ads, I included a URL that leads to a landing page with a form embedded in it. Educators can use the form to request pens for their nursing students. It’s a good way to engage with my audience and scale a manual process.

Not only is Google Apps a great financial decision for us, but it has helped increase our efficiency and productivity more than any other product we've used. I love how Google is always improving and upgrading its applications by listening and implementing user feedback.”

Posted by Michelle Lisowski, Google Apps Team

Making AdWords Account Management Easier

As a small business, you may find that investing in marketing can be a catch-22; while you are looking to grow your business, your time is limited and budgets are tight. While AdWords has always been about making advertising as measurable as possible, we are well aware that time is money - especially when you are a small company. So, in an effort to help you preserve your most precious asset, we wanted to share a few of tools we’ve developed as part of our effort to make account management less time-intensive.

Use the Opportunities Tab to Find Customized Account Optimization Suggestions
Incorporating data from both user search behavior and the performance of your own account, the Opportunities tab is an excellent tool for garnering suggestions that can help you to improve targeting, expand your reach or increase the effectiveness of your marketing spend. To make improving your campaigns as easy as possible, the Opportunities tab lets you review ideas and apply them directly to your account. You can also save these ideas as “pending changes” in case you want to think about them and add them later.

The ideas shown on the tab are generated by our system just for your account, so look them over carefully before you try them. Some may not fit your own needs, but some may help to improve your campaign performance.

Simplify Bid Management with Automatic Bidding
Automatic Bidding is the easiest of the AdWords bidding options. With automatic bidding, the AdWords system automatically adjusts your maximum cost-per-click (CPC) bids on your behalf. You still set your daily budget, but rather than specifying individual bids for ad groups, keywords, or placements, the AdWords system actively seeks out the most clicks possible within the budget you set.

Let Us Help You Gain More Conversions with Enhanced CPC
Enhanced CPC is an easy-to-use automatic bid management tool intended for advertisers already using conversion tracking who are looking to turbo-charge their return on investment. The tool automatically adjusts your Max CPC bid each time your ad is shown in order to maximize the likelihood of your ad will converting. As a result, your ad should receive more conversions while maintaining or reducing your overall cost-per-conversion.


To learn more about Enhanced CPC, you can visit our help center or watch a short video.

Monitor Account Changes with Ease Using Custom Alerts
You can create custom alerts in your AdWords account so you're automatically notified when certain behaviors and/or changes occur within your campaigns and ad groups. This enables you to constantly track increases or decreases in the metrics that matter to you or metrics that have reached a certain threshold you set. To learn more about this feature, please visit our help center.

For even more tips for saving time and improving AdWords performance, please visit our new Google AdWords Small Business Center.

Posted by Yael Davidowitz-neu, Sales Strategy Analyst

Is everyday a ground hog day?

Since starting to write this blog I have received a steady stream of emails and comments from traders searching for CP. Many have said how they achieved CP using some of the information from this blog.

I congratulate you! How terrific.

Others are still on their way, or not.

Sometimes it's easier to teach newer traders to trade than ones with a history of not being profitable. These traders, and I was one (as are most self taught),  have picked up habits that become part of their daily methodology. Some of these habits are preventing them from achieving CP. This bad habits have to be resolved before as they are a barrier to CP. If this is you read on.

Einstein said that the definition of insanity was doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

One of the exercises a trader can go through is to try and list the causes of his losing trades and the causes of his winning trades. Just two lists. A few words on each point. A winning trade can be the result of good luck or good management. Describe it. A trading journal can be golden when you use it as a source to make this list.

Once you have these two lists, you have something to work with.

The next step is to write a trading plan paying particular attention to the issues you found on your two lists, putting a trading structure into place within which you can exercise your discretionary rules.

Morning in Europe was OK but after our lunch, not much was happening.

A few nice Euro trades.

Stainless Chamber bottom on the way.

I received this picture today:

Broadcast your business through the TV for All Contest

[Cross-posted from Inside AdWords]

Today we’re announcing the second annual TV for All contest, where your business has the opportunity to win $25,000 in national advertising with Google TV Ads and online video partner sites, including YouTube.

click for a full size image

We originally launched this contest last year and received nearly 250 submissions. Three winners, including Owners.com, won free TV media through Google and successfully extended their brands across the nation.

“It’s always exciting to see what other marketers think of your work,” says George Karavaras of Owners.com about why the company entered TV for All in 2009. The best part, he says, is that “it doesn’t take a lot of time or money to create a high impact TV ad through Google’s creative network.”

click for full size image

Now it’s your turn! Entering is easy: simply create a video ad for your business, upload it to YouTube and submit it to our TV for All YouTube Channel between September 15th and October 12th. If you don't have a video ad or the tools to create one, professional tools by SpotMixer will be available for free to help you make a polished ad in just minutes.

Three winners whose ads best exemplify creativity and a compelling message will receive $25K, $15K, or $10K in national TV and online video advertising using Google AdWords.

If you've never promoted your business using TV and video, the TV for All contest is your chance to get started. For more details and to enter the contest, visit www.youtube.com/tvforall.

Posted by Nathania Lozada, Inside AdWords crew