U.S. Stamp Prices Going Up Monday May 11, 2009 I just wanted to remind everyone that stamps will be going up in price this Monday. In case you haven't heard here's some information from the United States Postal Service: On May 11 the price for a 1-ounce First-Class Mail stamp will increase from 42¢ to 44¢. Prices for other...
How to Increase Blog Traffic with Blog Carnivals One of the easiest things that you can do to build traffic is to submit your content to blog carnivals if you want to learn how to increase blog traffic. In as few as four simple steps, you can bring new visitors to your blog and you can build excellent,...
Increase Blog Traffic - Find New Visitors and Gain Back Links With Blog Carnivals in 4 Easy Steps Increase Blog Traffic - Find New Visitors and Gain Back Links With Blog Carnivals in 4 Easy Steps By Keith Goodrum Submitting to Blog Carnivals is one of the easiest traffic building tasks around. In four simple steps you only can have new visitors coming to your blog, and building...
Webmasters Need Web Traffic Secrets What is the biggest problem facing anyone with a website? Here is a hint...without this one thing you might as well not have a website. Got the answer yet? Well here it is...TRAFFIC. Driving traffic to your site is essential if you plan on having any success at all. This...
Google Public DNS Aims to Speed Up Your Browsing Google today launched a new, free DNS service—called Google Public DNS—aimed at making your web browsing experience even faster. Here's how it works: For those of you who are unfamiliar with DNS (and it's cool if you are—as long as DNS is working, most people never need to know...
Google Profiles Turn Into OpenIDs Image via CrunchBase [ad#ad-2] As part of its push to go more social, Google has been attempting to unify its various account profiles into one Google Profile. And now it’s more useful. Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick has just tweeted out that Google Profiles can now be used as OpenIDs. What...
Macau Gaming Tax Revenue Drops 2% The government of Macao Special Administrative Region (SAR) saw its income from direct gaming taxes for the first 10 months of 2009 decreased by 2 % year on year, according to a report published by the Macao Post Daily this week. Macau City The SAR government's income from direct gaming...
London's role as the Hong King of Europe is drawing to a close. According to Thomas Huertas, the banking director at the U.K.’s Financial Services Authority, London’s role as the European Union (EU) equivalent to Hong Kong as a self-regulating financial center, is drawing to a close. The group of 27 European states that comprise the EU plans to centralize oversight of...
Windows 7: Tips & tricks Dual Boot Windows 7 With Windows XP and Vista Windows 7 is still in beta and it would be a tad bit early to get a brand new PC to just run Windows 7, so it makes more sense for users to stick to a current machine and dual boot Windows...
Games for Traveling with Kids So, how was your holiday season? Did you travel to be with loved ones? Did you go on a long journey by car? How was it traveling with your children? Was it stressful? We thought it would be helpful to devote this post to traveling with children. While there are...
A Brief Personal Update: Where I have been Here is an update on what I have been up to these past two weeks. November 8th through November 13th, I was on a business trip for the company I work for. They put me up in a pretty nice hotel, provided meals, etc so I could do some training....
I will not eat green eggs and ham Over at MSN Money thereâs an interesting article on saving titled âGo Vegetarian to Save Moneyâ. Go read it â" thereâs another article at MSN on the same topic here. Thereâs a compelling case to be made that a vegetarian diet is superior, including reasons beyond those listed in the...
3 Ways to Increase Your Cash Flow If you’re finding it difficult to get by, one of the easiest ways to combat this issue is by increasing your monthly cash flow. While you may not be able to make a huge difference right away, slowly building up the amount of money that you have coming in, building...
If you run an online store, and still have any doubts about how social networks can help you drive traffic, you may want to strongly reconsider as the holidays approach. Twitter and Facebook are driving major traffic to online stores as consumers reach out to not only their friends, but businesses themselves through Facebook and Twitter (among other popular networks).
The top retailers to receive traffic from Facebook on Thanksgiving, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were Amazon, Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Toys R Us. Being a small business, you may not get that much traffic, but if you can build a fan/follower base and get marketing messages out to them through these social networks, there is a good chance you can drive some of their business your way as they scramble to get their holiday shopping done. It's not only about offering them deals though. It's about staying in front of their eyeballs. You can do this with updates that will appear in their feeds. Another great part about that, is that they can easily pass attractive offers onto their friends, who may not necessarily be a fan or follower of yours. From there, it can go viral if your offer is attractive enough. The bottom line is that if you want to increase your holiday sales for your online store, it is hard to imagine ignoring these popular channels. Facebook alone just announced that it has surpassed 350 million users. How can you ignore that?
Proven Techniques You Can Use To Get A Flood Of Sales From Your Landing Pages If you’re doing any type of internet marketing that requires you to create sales letters or landing pages, you need the appropriate combination of components like pre-headlines, sub-headlines, guarantees etc. to increase your immediate conversions. Now I know you've probably heard this one a million times before but...
Using PLR To Improve Page Rank Use PLR (Private Label Rights) material to increase website page rank! When people search on the Internet they’re looking for one thing… information! Your job as a website owner is to provide them with the information they’re looking for. There’s a saying in Internet Marketing that “content is king” and...
Increased Conversions with Split Testing In the world of internet marketing one thing that does not get talked about enough is testing. All big name marketers test everything. They test their headlines, sub-headlines, design, and guarantees. Now you can too! If you can perform testing then you can explode your conversion rates once you find...
Article Writing 2.0 Maximize Your Article Marketing Writing for and marketing with web 2.0's New Media for Virtual Real Estate Naturally internet marketers know that if you want to drive quality traffic to your site what you really need is quality information creating the push. That is the way marketing has been done...
Check your Page Speed in Google webmaster tools. Check your Page Speed in Google webmaster tools. Want to know how fast you site loads? Sign in to Google Webmaster Tools and you can find out. We have been warned by Google that come January page speed is going to be a factor when Google Caffeine comes out....
Google Fade home page goes live - Official Announcement Google Fade home page goes live - Official Google Announcement Well after months of different people reporting seeing a fading homepage Google has finally launched it and made it official. In a recent announcement about the fading home page Google had this to say. “…the variant of the homepage...
Social Media Sites & 'Privacy' Issues at Work – ‘In Private’ Browzing In follow-up to my previous articles on this subject, today I would like to offer my thoughts on email scandals, privacy and security, ‘in-private browzing’ capabilities, and the challenges that these processes present for us all. As a result of the proliferation of social media sites like Facebook®, LinkedIn®,...
Why You Should Consider Launching a Home Based Business Now There are several ways that budding entrepreneurs can get on the road to success. Some may decide to pursue franchise opportunities and later build a different business. Now there are of course, many things that one can say about franchising. For one thing, franchise opportunities allow you to enter markets...
Personal Finance Lessons Learned the Hard Way Today is the first anniversary of the Tough Money Love blog. I am honored by those who read what I have to say and thankful for all of your comments. Your input is always educational and, at times, quite entertaining. I hope that you can say the same about my...
Best Colon Cleaning Remedies There are some colon cleansing secrets out there, knowledge that is keeping certain well informed people away from the pain and suffering of body toxins. Flushing body of toxins is as important as anything when it comes to having a healthy and well functional body. One of the most effective...
Getting A Green Mortgage And Using An Eco-Broker. Getting a what? Using a who? That's exactly what I thought while I was reading an issue of Natural Home magazine I borrowed from the library. I never knew there was such a thing as a green mortgage, but I guess I did know there were real estate brokers who...
Credit Karma - Got Some? This post is a follow-up post to our post about credit scores last week. SD Gal and I were doing some financial maintenance over the weekend, getting our free credit reports (not from freecreditreport.com, either, but more on that later) and we came across this nifty little tool: CreditKarma.com How...
6 Ways Social Media Can Help Your Websites Social media normally refers to a category of websites where content is created by the participation of the users of that website for the remaining community. In short, we can say that social media websites are basically tools to share the information among their users. It gives its users a...
Free Traffic with Advanced SEO Techniques So you have been studying SEO for a little while and you are starting to see some results in your search engine results, now what? Well you obviously need Advanced SEO Techniques to take you over the top. Most webmasters are utilizing search engine optimization to help get free targeted...
How Do I Plan For Retirement? One of the most common questions people have is how do I plan for retirement? Whether you’re looking at retiring in five years or thirty five, it is important to come up with a plan that will provide you with more than enough to live comfortably. It is no longer...
Farmville Facebook Cheats Facebook is really the number one(1) social networking site the in the whole universe. (Exaj!)LOL. Agree?! Everywhere I see - in Inet cafe, office, etc. - people using Facebook. Well, we can't deny the fact that we are hooked-up and addicted to this site. From communicating to our friends to...
Property Management Software /caption] Greetings from the metropolis of Cedar Crest New Mexico. VBS (Vacation Bible School) is on my agenda every morning this week....and I could not be happier. I have the 4th and 5th graders and they are just too cool. Reminds me of what is important....or at least what...
How to Fix Almost Anything with Duct Tape /caption] If you're an aspiring handyman but you don't know about the value of duct tape, you probably have a lot to learn. Anyone who's ever been interested in modern home repair soon learned the value of duct tape and its various uses around the house. Not only does it...
New Hope for Fixing Broken Hearts - Research Shows Heart Damage Can Be Reversed It has long been thought that damage to the heart is irreversible, but new research is challenging that assumption. Investigators from Children's Hospital Boston were able to reverse heart damage in mice by stimulating the growth of new heart muscle cells. They did this by injecting the mice with the...
creepy and hatboy - the mambo of doom /caption]the mambo shirt of creepy horror i munched into the splice. instant ice-cream headache. i doubled over in pain and screamed my agony to the mall. shoppers hurried past, and i reached for a young girl who looked like she might know some kind of herbal cure. “help me,”...
New Home We've moved and I love the new place. Its a 3 minute drive to Pavilion and Starhill (if there's no jams) and we've got a nice view of trees and a golf course amongst the city buildings and the main Jalan Tun Razak thoroughfare. This is one move where i've...Large equipment needed to construct the subway will be moved from the Lake Elizabeth area to the eastern side of Fremont Central Park at Stevenson Boulevard. The equipment will be moved over a two-day period in the first two weeks in December. During the move construction workers will direct traffic in the dog park parking lot area. Please watch for signs and notices regarding the move and reduce your speed in these areas.
Construction of the mile-long subway beneath Fremont Central Park will begin once the equipment is in place. The duration of the construction is approximately three years. During the work you can expect increased noise, dust and inconvenience from construction. Fremont Central Park facilities will remain open and accessible during construction; however access to some areas may be re-routed. Please watch for signs and posted information regarding access changes.
Additional impacts include:
If you have questions regarding this activity, please contact BART's project information line at (510) 476-3900 or email bartwarmspringsextension@bart.gov.
Interesting concept by Damjan Stankovic, a Serbian designer/innovator. While Damjan lists several green attributes to the light, I'm more sold on the one that deals with stress. One of the fundamental tenets of good usability and user experience is providing the user with an awareness of a system's status. Doing so allows the user to set expectations for system behavior and plan for their next actions. This light accomplishes this sharing of system status information in a very elegant way.
From the site:
Eko light is a simple yet, highly practical concept for traffic lights that not only helps preserve the environment by reducing pollution but promotes safer driving as well. Eko can be easily installed onto existing traffic light systems without much effort while significantly improving overall traffic dynamics. There are many benefits of the Eko light, the main ones being: Less pollution. Drivers can turn their engines off and cut carbon emissions while waiting for the green light. Turning off your vehicle while waiting on the traffic light can lower fuel consumption in the long run. Less stress
Since you know exactly how long you have to wait you can sit back and clear your head for a while. No need to keep your foot on the gas. Relax. Safer driving
With the Eko light both drivers and pedestrians can be fully aware of how much time they have left before the light changes and that way reduce the chance for potential traffic accidents.
In any case, I think it's a great concept that's accompanied by several other interesting concepts on Damjan's Relogik site.
Make Blogging Work for Your Business pt 2 Are you ready to make blogging work for your business? If you already know the benefits associated with corporate blogging, then the next step is to put these concepts to work by creating your own corporate blog and sharing your company with the world. This is part 2 in a...
Make Blogging Work for Your Business pt 2 Are you ready to make blogging work for your business? If you already know the benefits associated with corporate blogging, then the next step is to put these concepts to work by creating your own corporate blog and sharing your company with the world. This is part 2 in a...
Lessons from Battle Studies: Keep breaking the mould This is part of my Lessons from series, these are a collection of lessons which I've learnt from looking at everyday things differently. I've been sitting on Battle Studies for 2 weeks now, and like the pot of pasta with a do not disturb sign in the back corner of...
Guide to Successful Online Freelancing (Kindle Edition) The moment you decide to become a freelancer, everyone you talk to will probably tell you how cool it is to be your own boss.You are in control of your work and nobody else (except for your clients) can tell you what to do. If you don’t want to...
Getting Out of Debt Quickly pt 3 This is part 3 of a 4 part series on getting out of debt quickly. Make sure that you read all four parts in order to get the most out of this sequence of hints on getting yourself or your family out of the debt trap. Make sure that you...
My Financial Tipping Point. 3:00 A.M. Sunday night - no, Monday morning! It was 3:00 A.M. Monday morning, and I was wide awake with financial terror. My mind was busily doing laps on that mental hamster wheel so common in the hours between midnight and dawn. You know the one. Everyone has taken...
Great Gifts for Men Great gifts for men can vary according to a man's style and his personal tastes. While there is no perfect gift that will be suitable for all men, putting a little extra time and thought into what an individual man likes can make all the difference between a gift...
Renting Ski Equipment When you are just getting started in skiing, or when you are trying to figure out whether or not this is the right type of sport for you, then it is definitely going to make sense for you to rent the ski equipment that you need in order to get...Signal fading on radio traffic reportsBy DAISY NGUYEN (AP) – 1 day ago
CORONA, Calif. — For more than 20 years, Mike Nolan was known to radio listeners as the "eye in the sky." He flew over Southern California freeways in his single-engine plane, reporting on the nation's worst traffic.
These days, he broadcasts about traffic snarls and lurking gridlock without leaving the ground — without even leaving his home in this Los Angeles suburb. Sitting in a chair behind computer monitors and a television, Nolan gathers traffic data and broadcasts live on two radio stations a day.
"What I'm best suited to do is look out the airplane window and tell people what I see," Nolan, 60, said. "When I was grounded, that world changed considerably so I had to reinvent myself."
His return to earth reflects the evolution of the traffic reporting business as a faltering economy forces news operation cutbacks, technology displaces traditional reporters and motorists increasingly rely on cell phones and GPS to monitor live traffic.
Most traffic news is now generated by reporters on the ground monitoring police reports, live highway cameras, data from ground sensors that can detect traffic speed and tips from drivers.
Reporters can be hundreds of miles away away from the scene and detail the latest traffic jams to three or four radio stations in the same hour, sometimes using aliases. Rebecca Campbell might report at the top of the hour for the Fox sports station using her own name, then 20 minutes later appear as Toni Jordan on an alternative rock station. For a station popular with Latino listeners, she goes by the name Lena Macias.
Even as traffic reporters have had their wings clipped in recent years, the airwaves ahead appear even more bumpy.
Music stations competing for listeners have been cutting back on disc jockey banter, and some industry veterans believe traffic reports could fade altogether.
"A number of years ago it'd be unheard of to have an FM station in L.A. without traffic reports," said Don Bastida, vice president of operations for Airwatch, one of the nation's largest traffic-reporting services. "Now traffic reports on the music stations become just an interruption that gives the listener an opportunity to hit the button and move on to the next station."
He said traffic reports will remain on the AM dial, but they'll decline to the point that they'll only be offered as part of a news story when a major incident happens.
The region's top-rated pop station, KISS-FM, recently dropped afternoon traffic reports after AMP-FM, a new Top 40 station received higher ratings without traffic updates.
Metro Traffic, a division of Westwood One Inc., began consolidating its 60 traffic reporting operations around the nation last year to just 13. As a result, reporters in the Washington D.C. hub also cover traffic news for Maryland, Virginia and North Carolina. Some plane and helicopter reporting flights were cut as part of cost reductions that will amount to $55 million to $63 million annually.
Airwatch, a subsidiary of radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc., has 60 reporters and producers working around the clock to provide traffic updates to more than 40 Southern California stations. They sit side by side in a small studio overlooking an Orange County freeway, staring at computer monitors and TV screens as they speak into the microphones, sometimes talking over each other as they file live reports.
Airwatch's revenue grew each year for nearly 10 years. But in late 2007, seven reporters lost their jobs when Clear Channel downsized the operation.
Nolan was one of them. He took a substantial pay cut to work from the ground. He chose to work from home rather than commute 40 miles roundtrip to the Airwatch studio in Santa Ana.
He now takes a few steps from his bedroom to his study to start his split shifts, from 5 to 9 a.m. then 3 to 7 p.m. He puts on a headset, turns on the stopwatch application on his iPhone, and pulls up a half-dozen Web pages to gather traffic information.
When it's his turn to come on at the top of the hour, 20 minutes past and bottom of the hour on KFI-AM and twice per hour on KOST-FM, Nolan rattles off a list of congested freeways in 40 second to one minute bursts.
Growing up in the San Fernando Valley in the early 1960s, Nolan saw freeways expand deeper into suburbs. Flying over Southern California day in and day out gave him an understanding of traffic patterns that enhance his reports from the ground.
When he reads traffic maps on the computer, he can picture every tunnel, hill and curve and knows when drivers should be slowing down. He can suggest alternate routes and knows what type of incident is likely to cause more misery.
He said that kind of knowledge can't be replaced by GPS-equipped gadgets.
"The radio reporter is going to tell you what's going on where you're going to be in addition to where you are," Nolan said.
Bastida at Airwatch predicts that in a few years, motorists will steer further away from the radio as carmakers add even more navigation systems and Internet-access equipment to vehicles. Airwatch has a growing service providing traffic updates directly to navigational units in vehicles.
"There will be jobs for people gathering and inputting the traffic data, but jobs for broadcasters will be going away," Bastida said.
Not everyone has a bleak outlook.
John Frawley, executive vice president of broadcast operations for Metro Traffic, said traffic news remains a big draw on news and talk stations. He says a device may tell drivers where the traffic jams are and how far the backup is, but it doesn't explain the cause.
"When our people come on, people pay attention," Frawley said. "They're interested that somebody else is suffering in traffic, too."
Copyright © 2009 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
While I program two radio stations with traffic reports, its kind of hard to argue with the facts in the story. If you haven't seen the live traffic on Google Maps, especially on a mobile device, you'll see shy traffic reporting is about to become a personal choice as opposed to something that's pushed via radio or TV.
Unique SEO Content You are probably already aware of how important link building is, and how important it can be to select the right meta tags, and to select frequently searched keywords that can be added to your website for the purpose of boosting search engine optimization or SEO, but are you also...
Blog Search Engine Optimization Blogging has become a truly popular form of media for the sharing of ideas, the facilitation of communication and other methods of collaboration on the internet, and as a result it has generated a great amount of interest and buzz traffic to all kinds of different website. When it comes...
SEO Tips for Blog Traffic Generation While it may be true to say content is king when it comes to blog publishing, the truth is that writing your blog content is not by far the only thing that you should be focusing on when it comes to attracting a readership following. Quality SEO, or search engine...
SEO Tips for Blog Traffic Generation While it may be true to say content is king when it comes to blog publishing, the truth is that writing your blog content is not by far the only thing that you should be focusing on when it comes to attracting a readership following. Quality SEO, or search engine...
How do Backlinks Help Your Corporate Blog? Most people understand the basics when it comes to blogging or corporate blogging, but unless you have been trained in SEO, you probably do not understand what goes on behind the scenes. For example, are you aware of how backlinks are vital to the success of your corporate blog? If...
Tools and Services for testing Web Projects Load Impact Can your site handle being on the front page of digg? Load Impact is a free tool which tests your site at different load levels and then displays your results in an easy to understand graph. Careful this tool has powerful load generators and may take your...
Squeeze Theme Discount I am not going all out to promote the recently launched Squeeze Theme though I have signed up for the affiliate program. The main reason being, I have not used it and have no urgent reason to be using it as I already have the Flexsqueeze Theme which I...
The Bubble at City of Dreams Wins Prestiges Award City of Dreams is proud to announce that Dragon's Treasure, the iconic landmark showcased in The Bubble at City of Dreams, was honored with the 2009 THEA Award for Outstanding Achievement from the Themed Entertainment Association (TEA). The prestigious THEA awards, now in their 16th year, recognize and honor excellence...
Happy Turkey Day! To those who are celebrating Thanksgiving today, I hope you and yours have a festive Thanksgiving day and weekend. I hope you celebrate the merriment and cheer that is Thanksgiving, enjoy the time with loved ones, and stuff yourself full of food prepared with loving care. To those who aren’t...
LG: New LCD monitors M62 LG Electronics has currently launched a new line of monitors, which is aimed at the widest possible user base. Attention of the press conference participants were first presented: two monitors using the latest LED technology - a stylish 24-inch Full HD monitor LG W2486L and professional monitor LG W2420R; line Color Pop...
Commit to fewer goals for greater success /caption] In the course of everyday events we face battles . No one of these battles will win us the war but losing a few key stand offs could close of a lot of options to you temporarily or permanently. When engineering the course of your personal development it's important to...
Searching for a Job? Try One Day, One Job Are you looking for a job? Do you want to work at a place that is unique and looking for new graduates? If so, try One Day, One Job. I love the site and the concept behind it. Willy Franzen does a fantastic job digging for fantatic, interesting jobs...
Applauding the Romance Publishers by Susan Sigler, guest blogger I’d like to take a moment to applaud the following publishers. Not only do they publish the greatest books ever, but they offer wonderful discounts, sponsor contests, most keep up blogs, and many have Yahoo groups. It goes without saying, authors work extremely hard...
Welcome to the New News/Blog! On Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 I began the process of merging my corporate website with the Blog I had originally built at SilkRoadMusings. The purpose of the SilkRoadMusings blog was to publish articles about international business, global trade (including fair trade) and environmental sustainability. I will continue to post on...