Starting Your Own Blog.Written by John Taylor
I was sitting in my local Internet Cafe yesterday, I like to get away from my "home office" from time to time and it's a great place to go for a cup of Espresso and to meet interesting people. The rather attractive lady sitting next to me was typing away furiously and, when she had finished, I asked her what she was writing - I'm interested in learning how other people use Internet... some people call that being nosey!It turns out she was a "Blogger" and she was updating her web site through a web browser. She was really interested in vegetarian cookery and she was adding a new restaurant review to her blog. If you spend any time at all online these days you simply can't avoid reading something about blogs, they are becoming increasingly more popular; and they are a great way of building an online presence without need for any technical knowledge. A blog is an abbreviation of term 'web log' which is a relatively simple content management system. Quite a few years ago, web surfers began collecting information and interesting links that they encountered during their online travels. As time passed they started to create logs of information that they collected and they soon started to develop their own web logs. These web logs enabled them to update information and links as often as they wished. Blogs are more permanent than posts to an online forum or to a discussion list, they are much more dynamic than traditional style home pages. They are also more personal than standard journaling, and definitely more public than diaries. A blog is often a mixture of what is happening in a person's life and what is happening on Web, a kind of hybrid diary site. So, there are as many unique types of blogs as there are people. There are a few common characteristics of a blog, but there may be slight variations within classification. Some blogs provide succinct descriptions of links within chosen theme of blog. Some others contain commentary and links to news of day. A few are endless stream of blurts about writer’s day. Others are - political blogs, intellectual blogs, some are hilarious and some topic driven. They are all - Weblogs.
| | Online Coupons Furthering ConsumerismWritten by Richard Dows
Consumerism is public face of capitalism. Ultimately, everyone is a consumer regardless of political system in position - even communists had to buy things. But, consumerism has reached giddy heights in "West", where culture itself is one of "I want". Perhaps a more recognizable face of this is "one up on Jones'" ideology - Jones' have a new car, then you had better get next model.Retailers have bottom line in mind of course, their goal is to make as much profits as possible while attracting as many consumers as possible. Traditionally this is a razor's edge - if they charge too much for an item there will be other retailers who offer it at a reduced price, thus their profits dip. If they charge too little they will be swamped with consumers and sell out of their stock. They have to find that point where they can just sell out of stock and charge just enough to attract hoardes of hungry consumers. So how do they make lots of cash and still beat their competitors? One way is to offer coupons. Give 5% off and they'll start to attract a whole lot of consumers eager to take advantage of them (the real question is, who is being taken advantage of?). Another method is rebate, which it should be said, not everyone fills out and sends back in. They make a lot of money on attracting people via rebates but who don't actually send them in.
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