In trying to determine the scope of a Nano sat launcher project I generated the following list or physical hardware. There is an equivalent scope of work for Ground support, Software, Logistics, Regulatory issues etc...
Welcome to this effort to reach out to more of the entrepreneurs and small business owners of Southeast Missouri. I hope you will come back to this blog from time to time as I plan on weekly updating it with tips and news about the small business world. I really would like for this to be a vehicle for you to communicate to me also. For my first entry, let's talk about making money online with
Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.
Welcome to Google Custom Search These days, content is being created faster than ever. In fact, the data equivalent of 250,000 years of DVD-quality video is created every two days, which is more than the entire amount of digital information that was created from the birth of the world up to 2003. Users are faced with the challenge of wading through all of this data to find the information they are looking for, and businesses are faced with the challenge of making this easy to do for their customers and employees. Most businesses consolidate their information on a public-facing website, internal micro-sites, product blogs and customer portals to help visitors surface relevant content. But even with this type of organization and structure, information can still be difficult to locate. That’s why we are pleased to introduce Google Apps customers to a product that will make finding easy for their employees and for their customers: Google Custom Search.
Google Custom Search brings the power, speed and relevance of Google.com to any website through a hosted search bar.
Custom Search allows visitors to your site to scour your web pages in fractions of a second with the same speed and familiarity that they are used to when performing a search on Google.com. The technology behind Google Custom Search powers the built-in search capabilities of Google Sites and Blogger, so if you organize your web content using these tools then you’re already using it. For other websites you create, set-up takes only a few minutes and adding the search box is as easy as pasting a few lines of pre-generated code to the HTML of the page where you want the search box to appear. Just like Google Apps, with Google Custom Search there’s no hardware or software to maintain or upgrade - it gets better as Google gets better.
Google Custom Search will automatically display advertisements and allows you to monetize them using AdSense for search. If you prefer that ads not be displayed you can upgrade to Google Site Search.
Learn more and get started Google Custom Search can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.
Tracking my trades has made me a better trader. I am able to see which trades work and which don't. The structured trading that I both advocate and teach has the important benefit of being able to be measured. The measurement allows me to make changes both in the pictures I trade and decide whether to take them at all.
One of the pictures that is the most consistent is the Gap trade. I trade it on the Dow Euro 50 and on the ES. I am presently working on extending it to the Euro future. This has proven to be more challenging, as there is no exact open. When the traders roll into the office every morning and get the book handed over to them from the previous time zone, they trade. The actual time is not the same in each of the houses. It is the new beginning and catch up that gives the Gap trade it's juice.
The Gap today in the Dow Euro 50 was nice and calm. Often, I take exactly the same looking trade in the ES 7 hours later as history repeats itself. This trade has been one of the most profitable and consistent in my arsenal. The timing of the trade is critical, as just shooting bullets at the open could result in costly stop outs before the market goes in my direction. I lean on something to do this trade and have the trade meet my picture requirements.
When we announced the availability of Hotpot last month, we knew from the beginning we were going to take a different approach to marketing the product and engaging with our users, both businesses and consumers.
To that end, we’re excited today to start testing this new approach by launching our first local marketing campaign in Portland, Oregon. Portland is a tech savvy, forward-thinking city with a history of innovation and some of the best coffee houses, microbreweries and parks in the country. Whether you know it as The City of Roses, Stumptown, P-Town, Rip City or just PDX, Portland’s thriving local business community and strong heritage of being a trailblazer made it a great choice for us to try something new.
So starting today and over the course of the next few months, we’ll be out and about in Portland. Here’s a taste of what’s in store:
Business Kits and Window Decals
Every day millions of people search on Google.com to find local businesses, and we want to make it seamless for standout businesses to get discovered online. To achieve this, we’ll be working directly with some of Portland’s top businesses to educate them about Google Places for business and all its benefits. In addition, to help these businesses spread the word, we’re providing owners with special Google Places Business Kits. These kits are a multi-flavored sampler of marketing materials that can help businesses get even more exposure, get them rated and reviewed online, and get more customers through their door. We’re already distributing these to some of Portland’s top businesses, but any business in Portland who has claimed their Place page can request a box.
A central part of the kit is the bright red “Recommended on Google” window sticker. This is not your ordinary sticker. Unlike others, this is an interactive sticker that has Near Field Communications (NFC) technology built right in, allowing people with cutting edge phones like the Nexus S to simply touch their phones to the sticker to find out more information about the business. Suddenly stickers are cool again!
Community Events
Sure, Hotpot’s about sharing recommendations with friends online. But we thought it’d be fun to take things offline. To kick things off, we’re partnering with Portland’s beloved Voodoo Doughnut. Because we at Google are such big fans of their tasty treats, we wanted to spread the love — so if you like doughnuts and coffee, be sure to stop by both locations starting this Saturday at 10am for a special treat.
Hotpot Jackpot
We’re also launching our second Hotpot Jackpot competition to encourage Portlanders to start rating the places they know and share them with friends and family. Everyone over the age of 18 who lives within a 50-mile radius of Portland can participate, and the top five raters at the end of the competition will win dinner for 10 at any restaurant in Portland, courtesy of Google. To kick things off, all of the fans at tonight’s Trail Blazers vs. Magic game will receive t-shirts announcing the competition and supporting the Blazers.
This is just the beginning and we’ll be doing a lot more in the upcoming months. For the latest and greatest of what we’re up to in Portland (and elsewhere), keep an eye out by staying up to date via the Hotpot Blog, and by following us on Twitter and liking us on Facebook.
Posted by Bernardo Hernandez, Director of Emerging Marketing
Editor’s note: We recently launched an improvement that makes over 60 additional Google services available to Google Apps users. This series showcases what’s new and how your organization can benefit.
Welcome to Google Website Optimizer Making changes to your website can be a challenge. Websites are often built with little data available in the design phase but once the site launches, tracking tools such as Google Analytics can provide tons of information about visitor behavior, and can highlight areas that aren’t performing as expected. But how will you know what kind of revisions will better achieve your goals? How can you be confident that changes won’t actually result in worse performance? How can you reconcile the different ideas that stakeholders throughout your company contribute about what the site should look like? Now, Google Apps users can address these questions using Google Website Optimizer for free with their Google Apps accounts.
Google Website Optimizer is a tool that lets you eliminate guesswork from website design by testing variations of your webpages. When you identify a page that might need a change, you can create alternate versions of that page and use Google Website Optimizer to send a fraction of the users visiting your website to each alternate version. Website Optimizer then runs an analysis to tell you how visitors to each version of the webpage behave. With this data, you can make much more informed decisions about website updates.
The key advantages of running website tests using Google Website Optimizer are:
Base website design decisions on data, not intuition. You probably hear a different opinion about what’s best for your website from each person you ask. Controlled tests provide objective data that can be used to support or disprove different hypotheses.
Try multiple ideas at the same time, instead of just one. Instead of putting all your eggs in one basket, Google Website Optimizer lets you test many ideas at once and pick the winner as it emerges.
Experiment, with a safety net. If the new page you are testing performs well, you can keep that page and maintain the conversion gains. If the new page doesn’t perform well, you can easily stop the test. Google Website Optimizer even monitors page performance and can be set up to automatically disable website variations that begin to perform worse than your original page.
Take, for example, our landing page for a Google Maps Driving Directions widget. The team wanted more visitors to add the widget, but wasn’t sure what design elements would work best. Using Google Website Optimizer, the team ran an experiment to compare the original page to three alternate designs. You can see the four versions below (including the original in the top left):
The result? The Google Maps team found that the lower right-hand design outperformed the original with a 75% conversion rate increase, meaning more users added the widget. Google Website Optimizer made it easy to select the best version of the webpage.
Learn more and get started Google Website Optimizer can be enabled by your domain administrator from the Google Apps Control Panel at https://www.google.com/a/[your_domain.com] (replace [your_domain.com] with your actual domain name). If your organization isn’t using Google Apps yet, you can learn more and sign up today at http://www.google.com/apps/more.
You can learn more about using Website Optimizer from the team’s Help Center, and more technical users should also read the Techie Guide to Website Optimizer (PDF). You can also follow the latest news about Google Website Optimizer on our team blog.
The last few days have been particular satisfying ones for me, as one of the people I am mentoring has now turned the corner. This particular guy, one of the students from the July seminar, is a real hard worker who has tremendous focus, determination and discipline. He only trades a couple of hours a day while he holds down his day job, so not a lot of screen time. Within the last week everything changed and he has CP within his sights. Great work! You deserve it.
As far as people reading this blog are concerned, this should be an inspiration. The guy in question is not the only one who has reached or is approaching CP. Between the seminar, the webinar and the DVD students, lots of them have made it, but not without a lot of work.
I am reading another book, Mastery, recommended to me by another student. The author, an akido master, talks about the learning process and describes it as a lot of hard work followed by a spurt of progress followed by a plateau, when not much seems to be achieved, until suddenly there is another spurt of progress followed by another plateau. This seems to be the case with many of my students.
The harder they work, the luckier they get.
The market, it just keeps on going, and going ............
I started the morning with the Gap trade as you can see. I leaned on my one and only Fib number. From there, I just traded the pull backs, scaling as I went and covering when it looked like the party was over, but starting again when the picture set up again. I finished the day going long into the number and the fundamentals fit the technicals beautifully.
