More Than Just a Yellow Dish Rag

By Mike Jones
Chartiers Valley Patch
Jan. 26, 2011

In the early 1990s when the Penguins were winning Cups and Pirates were still relevant, I tended to follow those teams rather than root for the downtrodden Pittsburgh Steelers.

They had won four Super Bowls a few years before I graced this Earth, but had fallen on tough times in the 1980s.

That all changed when Bill Cowher took the reins in 1992 and rejuvenated the team and catapulted it to a playoff berth against the Buffalo Bills. However, I still didn’t quite grasp what it meant to be a Steelers fan at the tender age of 9.

That is, until my mother handed me a yellow dish rag and told me to start waving it around.

“Are you crazy?” I asked her. “Why would I do that?"

It’s probably the same question people in Baltimore or New York or maybe even Green Bay ask themselves when they see those golden cloths twirling in the stands. But that was just about the time when I began to understand the lore of the Pittsburgh Steelers and The Terrible Towel.

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Tips for creating a free business listing in Google Places: Adding useful descriptions and relevant categories

(Cross-posted from LatLong)

With this blog post, we’re concluding our three part series about the Google Places quality guidelines. Today, we’ll discuss how to choose the best fitting categories for your business listing as well as how to provide a useful description. In case you missed the first two blog posts, you can find here the first post about business titles and here the second part about business types.

Adding useful descriptions

As a business owner, we encourage you to add a specific description of your business in the “description” field. This gives potential clients more information to understand what your business is about and see if your business matches what they are seeking. You can also use this field to provide further guidance about the location of your business which might be useful in some cases where it is hard to find, e.g. if the entrance of your business is only accessible via the rear.

Keep the description clean and concise, so it is helpful to users and catches their attention. A series of repeated keywords or categories may turn off potential customers, but a crisp and catchy summary of the services you offer help users determine if your business is right for them.

Choosing relevant categories

If you provide appropriate and accurate categories, we can better match your business listing to relevant user searches. We recommend choosing specific categories that describe the core of your business well instead of broad ones. A good way to find representative categories for your business is asking yourself the question “What is my business?” Be sure to capture what your business is as opposed to what it offers or sells - in that sense, “bakery” would be a good category as opposed to “cakes” or “bread”.

Also, do not include location information in the categories field. If you would like to provide such additional information about your business, you can use the description field and, if appropriate, the service areas feature.

You will be asked to choose at least one category from our standard list - just start typing in the categories field to see what is available via the auto-suggestions.

We recommend always choosing the best matching and most specific category for your business - for any specific category, Google will be able to automatically determine the more generic category as well. That means, if you are a Mexican restaurant, you should go for ‘Mexican Restaurant’ and not ‘Restaurant’ - Google then automatically knows that if you are a Mexican restaurant, you are also a restaurant.

You can provide up to five categories for your business listing. After picking a standard category, you can add up to four customized categories. To add another category, just click on ‘Add another category’ and an additional field will be triggered. Put only one category per entry field. Entering more than one category into a category field is not compliant with our quality guidelines and could result in your listing being suspended and not appearing in Google Places. In case you find it difficult to find an appropriate standard category to start with, just pick a category that fits best and add more specific custom categories. If you are uncertain about categorizing your business, you can also ask for advice in the Google Places help forum and discuss with other business owners.

We hope that this information helps you add a concise description and accurate categories to your business listing in Google Places. This gives potential clients more information to determine if your business matches what they are seeking. For further questions you can visit our Google Places help forum.

Posted by Sabine Borsay, Consumer Operations

I'm sitting here, shouldn't I be doing something?

We sit in front of our workstations way too long. The result is often a loss of discipline with impulse trades, going off piste, fudging our trading plans, and trading when we shouldn't be because the odds are not in our favour.

I've made trades where IMMEDIATELY after I click my mouse I think to myself, What in the world did you do that for?

In testing, one of the things that can be tested for is "time of day". When do your setups work best? I've said that I knew lots of locals who only worked the opens and the closes and, in London, the opening of the U.S. markets.

One clearing firm I used had a room that became the poker room where we could try and pick each others pockets off the floor. It was a way of staying away from markets we didn't want to be tempted to trade.

Most markets have definite sweet periods and confining trading to these times makes more money. I make money when a market is out of balance and is trying to find new balance - balance between buyers and sellers.

Another way to limit myself is by taking my Market Profiles and marking out the areas where I want to do biz.

Today's vid shows an attempt at the Gap trade in the ES and then a change of mind and why.

Google Boost: Now Appearing On Mobile Phones

(Cross-posted from LatLong)

Back in October we announced Google Boost, a new advertising solution to help local businesses connect with potential customers in their area. Today we are excited to announce that Boost ads can appear on Google Search results pages on Android and iPhone devices.

Consumers increasingly use mobile devices to search for products and services, and Boost will give advertisers the opportunity to reach these customers exactly when they are looking for local businesses on their phones. This feature will automatically take effect for current and future Boost advertisers.

In case you aren’t familiar with Boost, it’s Google's new advertising product that helps business owners quickly create an online advertising campaign that targets local customers. Using information from the business’s free Google Places listing, Boost automatically suggests and creates text ads that appear on Google Search and Google Maps results pages.

Google Boost is now available in all U.S. cities to select business types. To find out if your business is eligible, sign in to your Places account (or create a free one if you haven’t yet) and visit the Dashboard. If Boost is not currently available to your business, fill out this short form and we’ll notify you when it is.

Posted by Kiley McEvoy, Product Manager

EL in the Cloud

I've moved to the Cloud. Well, to a data centre (center) in the New York area to be more precise.

The internet is getting more congested. I'm having to fight through the traffic like a London cabdriver trying to get into the City from Knightsbridge. What's more, the cloud has given me other advantages besides reducing the congestion problem. Not only has my ping time to my broker gone from 144ms to less than 2ms, but I have fantastic redundancy. The reduced latency should translate into extra dollars in terms of trading results by getting better exits. My entries seem fine, but the latency of exits were definitely costing me money. This is valid for both auto and discretionary trading. Everything is just that much faster.

For those who are not too technical, there is a site here, that allows you to check how long it takes for your orders to hit the city where your broker's servers are located. When you access the site, your location is pinpointed. You just need to move the rectangle on the small lower map into the area where your broker is and then hover over the cities until you find the right one. After clicking on it, the broker city is selected and when you run the app you first get a "ping" number. My ping rate from France is between 123 and 144, too high. When I ping from Flo's new Cloud location I get 2 or even 1.

Better yet, I am completely mobile and can access my usual workstation from anywhere. This is a big plus as I spend time between London, France and OZ.

Additionally, I feel much more confident in my auto trading with Flo living in the Cloud, as I am much less likely to lose connectivity in a data centre environment.

Choice of technology that creates the VPS (virtual private server) is critical. There are a number of solutions out there, but the one I wanted was using Microsoft's Hyper-V. The reason for this is that the resources I am allocated (CPU and RAM) are locked to ME. When my VPS was set up, my CPU and RAM were hard wired into it, which means that my VPS has part of the actual hardware that it is virtualised on, allocated only to me. Practically speaking, my 4Gb of RAM cannot be used by anyone else who is virtualised on the same server hardware. Typically, lots of VPS solutions being sold allow a server with, say, 32Gb of RAM to be allocated out in, say, eight 4Gb VPS. That means that if everyone needs to use their 4Gb, they cannot and are fighting each other for memory.

The only disadvantage of the VPS is the single monitor. I am used to using four 24 inch monitors, so I had to make a few changes to my desktop to accommodate this. I'm still working on the best solution.

Great trade today in the Dow Euro 50. See the vid.

I had a second Gap trade, but from the long side, in the ES. The vid, as usual, shows it all. My comment at the end was very prophetic. You can see the orange line on the bar chart at just under 1278.00.

Google Apps for Business now available for Verizon customers

[Cross-posted from the Google Enterprise Blog]

Editor's Note: We're excited that beginning today Google Apps for Business is available through Verizon. We've asked Monte Beck, Vice President of Small Business Marketing for Verizon to share more details.

At Verizon we make it easy for companies to get online and be productive in the office or while on the move. We do this by offering business owners a bundled solution of essential services to fit their particular needs.

Beginning today, our small- and medium-sized business customers will also be able to access the same applications that come with Google Apps for Business: Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Google Sites, Google Video, and more.

Most of Verizon’s service offerings are in the cloud and delivered to any business connected to the Internet with a click of the mouse. So it makes sense for us to offer Google Apps for Verizon to allow businesses to communicate and collaborate in the office or on the go.

Google Apps for Verizon – with three free user accounts – is available to business customers that subscribe to a bundle consisting of Verizon Internet service and either Verizon voice or TV service or both. Customers have the option to buy additional accounts. Also included is a domain name free for one year (i.e. yourbusiness.com).

Other small business essentials provided in Verizon’s bundled solutions include an easy do-it-yourself “kit” to develop your business’ professional website, Internet security, online backup, and more. Most importantly, we offer WiFi access – a necessity today to quickly respond to customers and access programs and files while out of the office.

Verizon’s business bundled solutions are available in parts of 12 states (CA, CT, DE, FL, MD, MA, NJ, NY, PA, RI, TX, and VA) and Washington, D.C. Those who just need Apps can subscribe to Google Apps for Verizon for $3.99/user/month.

To better help and inform small businesses, my team also developed the Verizon Small Business Center, a one-stop online portal with free resources, industry news, expert advice delivered through free webinars, networking opportunities, discounts, and much more. In combining these free resources with cloud products and services, we’re helping small businesses gain a competitive edge. Even the smallest companies now have access to technology that’s being used by larger businesses at minimal cost.

Google Apps for Verizon helps Verizon’s business customers harness the power of the web in new and exciting ways.

Posted by Monte Beck, Vice President of Small Business Marketing, Verizon

Something's Broken? Part 3

I have a roulette "system" that usually wins. Everybody says there is no such thing, but I can go to a casino and can usually walk away ahead. That's the key: "walk away ahead". I discovered that my methodology in roulette results in cyclical swings a lot of the time. I play for fun, not money, as there is no real edge. But how I win is that when the cyclical swing is in my favour and I'm ahead, I stop as a winner.

There are advocates of this "system" in trading. Every time I put a trade on, I assume risk. So if your stats show that you can usually get to a certain profit per contract a day, or if you need certainty of a daily profit, then maybe it's something to consider. The question then is, do you stop at a maximum loss for the day and if so, what multiple, if any, of the daily profit target should it be? Or if there is no profit target, should one use a daily loss limit?

One of the programs we have in Flo is exactly that. We can optimise what daily profit and loss targets give the "best" result. I have put "best" into quotes because "best" means something different to different people. Is it return on account size? Return on maximum drawdown, most absolute profit, etc?

The beginning point to answering all this is defining what is important to the trader and to his psychological requirements. If the most important thing is to make $500 per day, then the whole trading plan should be built around the achievement of this goal.

In designing a trading plan, it's not only setups and profits & losses, but the achievement of a business aim. Just saying "I want to earn as much as I can" without defining the numbers around this goal will often put a trader into the situation of having to make hard decisions in the heat of battle, without having the back tested results on which to base an intelligent decision.

The chart above shows a great example of managing trades that were entered automatically. As you can see, there was a short @ 1.3573. However, I saw the support from the Fibs below - context - and decided that support should hold and covered making a tick. I then had the option of re-instating the trade but at a better price at a better trade location, or, just waiting for the next trade to be auto traded. I chose re-instating it and carried the same dollar stop but at a better location, which allowed me to hold the trade and it became profitable.

Today's trading was a bit boring. I talk about how the markets' characteristics can change from one time zone to another and you need to adapt.