Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/291787143?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Tuesday, March 19, 2013
Thursday, January 10, 2013
Follow the "Freeze First" Rule to Prevent Yourself from Wasting Food
Has this ever happened to you? You make a big pot of soup, stew, or other dish thinking you'll freeze a batch for convenient meals later...only you never get around to freezing it and then you have to toss the batch. The Kitchn recommends a "Freeze first, eat second" rule to solve this problem.
Basically, as soon as you've finished cooking the food, set aside the extra portion you want to freeze. Then you no longer have to worry about forgetting to get those meals into the freezer and you can stop wasting so much food in the kitchen.
Waste Not: Freeze First, Eat Second | The Kitchn
Photo by Calgary Reviews
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Microsoft retiring Messenger on March 15th, wants you to use Skype instead
While we knew Microsoft Messenger was due to retire sometime in the first quarter of this year, we now have a confirmed date. According to The Next Web, Redmond has informed users via email that they have until March 15th to use the IM platform, after which they will need to hop on to Skype to chat with their Messenger pals. Your buddy list will automatically be migrated to the VoIP-focused offering. Desktop users of the outgoing service (globally except mainland China, where it will live on) should receive a banner notification to install Skype and, as it turns out, clicking on said banner will also uninstall Messenger. Road warriors are also taken care of, with Microsoft account support already baked into iOS, Android and Windows Phone 8 versions of the Skype app. Nostalgia notwithstanding, fans of the long-standing MSN descendent can at least take solace in the broader set of features Skype sports.
Filed under: Internet, Microsoft
Via: The Next Web
Source: http://feeds.engadget.com/~r/weblogsinc/engadget/~3/ySwIXFfIapk/
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Wednesday, January 9, 2013
By a landslide, 2012 smashes heat record for the U.S.
WASHINGTON (AP) ? America set an off-the-charts heat record in 2012.
A brutal combination of a widespread drought and a mostly absent winter pushed the average annual U.S. temperature last year up to 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, the government announced Tuesday. That's a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998.
Breaking temperature records by an entire degree is unprecedented, scientists say. Normally, records are broken by a tenth of a degree or so.
The National Climatic Data Center's figures for the entire world won't come out until next week, but through the first 11 months of 2012, the world was on pace to have its eighth warmest year on record.
Scientists say the U.S. heat is part global warming in action and natural weather variations. The drought that struck almost two-thirds of the nation and a La Nina weather event helped push temperatures higher, along with climate change from man-made greenhouse gas emissions, said Katharine Hayhoe, director of the Climate Science Center at Texas Tech University. She said temperature increases are happening faster than scientists predicted.
"These records do not occur like this in an unchanging climate," said Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "And they are costing many billions of dollars."
Last year was 3.2 degrees warmer than the average for the entire 20th century. Last July was the also the hottest month on record.
Nineteen states set yearly heat records in 2012. Alaska, however, was cooler than average.
U.S. temperature records go back to 1895 and the yearly average is based on reports from more than 1,200 weather stations across the Lower 48 states.
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. last year also had the second most weather extremes on record, behind 1998. There were 11 different disasters that caused more than $1 billion in damage, including Superstorm Sandy and the drought, NOAA said.
The drought was the worst since the 1950s and slightly behind the dust bowl of the 1930s, meteorologists said. During a drought, the ground is so dry that there's not enough moisture in the soil to evaporate into the atmosphere to cause rainfall. And that means hotter, drier air.
The last time the country had a record cold month was December 1983.
"A picture is emerging of a world with more extreme heat," said Andrew Dessler, a Texas A&M University climate scientist. "Not every year will be hot, but when heat waves do occur, the heat will be more extreme. People need to begin to prepare for that future."
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Seth Borenstein can be followed at http://twitter.com/borenbears
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/us-roasts-hottest-record-landslide-180545899.html
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AaramShop PRO: 10 ways to encourage customer reviews online ...
Customer reviews are a hugely important in ecommerce for improving your conversion rate, and?can lead to an uplift of 18% in sales.
Research has shown that 61% of customers read online reviews before making a purchase decision and 63% of customers are more likely to make a purchase from a site that has user reviews.
Annoyingly though, customers generally can?t be bothered to leave their feedback.?As such you need to find ways of encouraging your customers to leave their feedback without coming across as desperate.
It?s a topic we?ve previously touched on in posts looking at?how to organise ecommerce product reviews?and?how to optimise reviews for higher conversion rates.
And here are 10 tips to help you drive up the number of reviews on your site...
1. Ask the question
It's an obvious one, but you need to make sure you're asking people for their feedback wherever possible. Obviously don't flood your site with?calls-to-action?begging for reviews, but think about places where it wouldn't seem out of context to request feedback.
Tesco isn't alone in asking shoppers to leave reviews on every product page, which ensures that customers are aware that their feedback is important.
2. Make it easy
There?s always the concern that removing all barriers to leaving reviews will result in a tidal wave of spam and useless comments ?- at Econsultancy we use the dreaded CAPTCHA for our comments section but spammers still slip through the net.
However any amount of form filling is going to put off most reviewers, so you need to make it as easy as possible to leave a review.?For example, if a customer is already logged into your site then there is no reason to make them validate themselves again in order to leave feedback.
Personally the only site I ever leave reviews on is Lovefilm, and that?s because you can rate a movie just by giving it a number of stars out of five.
While a four out of five star rating isn?t as valuable to your conversion rate as a written review, it?s still a great way of making it easy for users to leave their feedback, which in turn might encourage others to write a review.
3. Put reviews where people can see them
Customers aren?t going to read or leave comments if they don?t know they can, so it?s important to think about the placement of product reviews on the page.
All the stats show that reviews are vital for reassuring customers and increasing sales, so put your star ratings and links to reviews above the fold in a place where they can?t be missed.
Kiddicare?is a great example of this ? every product image shown on its homepage includes a star rating, and product pages include links to reviews immediately under the price.4. Solicit reviews by email
The best time to capture a product review is when the customer has just received their new item and is still excited about using it.
Taking into account your own delivery times, send out an email a week or 10 days after the customer received the product to say you hope they are enjoying their new iPad/jeans/headphones and ask them to leave feedback.
If they?re enjoying the product they?re likely to be open to telling people how much they love it, and if they hate it they might want to warn others off buying it.
Which leads me to my next point...
5. Publish good and bad reviews
It might seem like a good idea to filter out the bad reviews from your site, but in reality people expect to see negative feedback and won?t trust the reviews if they are all glowing.
So although it might seem counterintuitive, it?s important to publish negative feedback as not only does it reassure buyers, but it also means that customers will be confident that their comment will actually be published if they take the time to write a review.
6. Incentivise
While it's probably a bad idea to offer a discount or reward to everyone who leaves a review, there are ways of incentivising feedback that doesn?t undermine the whole process.
For example, you could run a monthly prize draw for all customers who leave a review. This doesn?t need to be overtly plastered across the site, but you could mention it in post-sales emails or by placing a flyer in the product packaging.
Or you could try to gamify the process. Gamification CEO Gabe Zichermann said that even more than free stuff or exclusive content,?the most powerful incentive for consumers is status above their peers.
Though it isn?t an ecommerce example, music magazine NME rewards frequent commenters with a star next to their name and a title saying ?Top commenter?.?The same tactic could be used to encourage product reviews and also reward loyal customers.
7. Use reviews to deliver a more relevant user-experience
If you a review a product on Amazon or Lovefilm then it feeds back into your profile so you are recommended more relevant products in future.?This is a fantastic incentive as it means the user receives a more personalised experience on your site and also helps to increase your number of reviews.
It encourages them to leave further reviews and improves customer loyalty, as the more feedback they leave the more enjoyable the shopping experience becomes and vice versa.
8. Never miss an opportunity to bag a review
While researching this article I looked back at a few items I?d previously purchased on Amazon and was surprised to find that it didn?t target me for reviews on the product pages.
As you can see here, it remembered that I bought this book back in 2010 but there?s no call-to-action to ask for a product review. It might be that Amazon doesn't feel it's necessary to badger me for reviews as it already has enough, but for most sites this is a great opportunity to capture feedback.
9. Ask your fans
What?s the value of a Facebook fan? Diddlysquat unless you do something with them.
Assuming you?ve spent a fair amount of time and effort building up ?likes? on Facebook and followers on Twitter, then put your community to good use by asking them for reviews.
Again, make it as easy as possible by posting a link to the review page next to a simple question asking what they thought of your product, or whether they would recommend your service and why.
10. Turn every piece of feedback into a review
Assuming you have a great product or service that your customers enjoy using then the chances are you often receive?positive feedback either by email, telephone or social media.
Just because these aren?t submitted on your site as a review doesn?t mean they can?t be used as testimonials or praise for your business. So either ask the customer if they mind being named or are happy to leave an official review, or use it as anonymous feedback for your site.
Source: http://www.aaramshoppro.com/2013/01/10-ways-to-encourage-customer-reviews.html
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Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Samsung sees record-high 4Q profit
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) ? Samsung Electronics Co., the world's largest technology company by revenue, expects record earnings for the fourth quarter of 2012 as shoppers continued to snap up its smartphones and tablets.
The company said Tuesday its operating profit for the October-December quarter would be about 8.8 trillion won ($8.3 billion), up 89 percent from a year earlier and higher than expectations. It will release its full quarterly result including net profit at the end of this month.
The maker of Galaxy smartphones and tablets said fourth quarter revenue likely rose 18 percent from a year earlier to 56 trillion won.
Analysts said nearly 70 percent of the operating income for the quarter was likely generated by Samsung's mobile division that makes and sells smartphones and tablets.
Samsung's mobile business, which recently overtook Apple in smartphone sales and Nokia in mobile handsets, has driven Samsung's earnings growth in recent quarters. Samsung's quarterly operating profit has risen steadily since the final quarter of 2011, while rival mobile-phone makers such as Nokia, Research In Motion and HTC have experienced falling market share and profits.
Samsung shipped at least 60 million smartphones in the last quarter of 2012, according to analysts' estimates, about 10 percent growth from the previous quarter.
The launch in September of the Galaxy Note II, a giant smartphone with a 5.5-inch screen and a digital pen, helped Samsung retain its market dominance during the Christmas holiday season despite competition from Apple's iPhone 5, analysts said. Samsung's flagship Android device, the Galaxy S III, also sold strongly.
Jin Sung-hye, an analyst at KTB Securities, estimated Samsung shipped 15 million S III smartphones and 7 million of the Note II during the final three months of 2012. The surprise popularity of the Note II device prompted other handset makers to increase the screen size of their smartphones as consumers embrace a wider mobile-phone screen to watch videos.
Market watchers speculate that Samsung will introduce a new Galaxy S smartphone, likely to be named the Galaxy S IV, before the end of April. Samsung usually rolls out the latest iteration of its Android-based flagship smartphone before the end of the second quarter, taking advantage of the time when rivals are months away from introducing new smartphone models.
With the early rollouts of the new Galaxy S model and an update to the Note series later in the year, analysts predict Samsung will sell at least 300 million smartphones in 2013, widening its lead over Apple. Samsung's smartphone shipments likely surpassed 200 million for the first time in 2012.
The company plans to act more aggressively to increase its share of the tablet PC market this year, which is still dominated by Apple's iPad, its executives said in an October conference call. The release of mini tablets that are between the size of smartphones and standard tablets also opens up a new growth area for Samsung.
While the mobile phone division has replaced Samsung's semiconductor business as the biggest profit generator, robust demand for smartphones around the world is benefiting Samsung's semiconductor operation as well. The company is the world's largest supplier of TVs and memory chips.
Analysts said Samsung's semiconductor division fared better in the last quarter than the quarter before as higher Samsung phone sales and launches of new mobile products by its customers lifted demand for Samsung's mobile processors.
In the first quarter of this year, market watchers said the strengthening of the South Korean currency against the U.S. dollar and the Japanese yen could hurt Samsung's component businesses, which is facing seasonally weak demand for TVs and display panels. But others predict Samsung will ship more smartphones than the previous quarter, which could outweigh lower TV and panel sales.
The South Korean company has been in global legal battles with Apple, one of its biggest clients, for nearly two years. Last month, Samsung dropped its bid to seek a sales ban against Apple's mobile products in Europe, saying it would like to protect consumer choice. Samsung, which is under investigations by the European Commission over its practice of licensing key mobile patents, is maintaining its lawsuits against the iPhone maker in other countries.
Shares of Samsung Electronics fell 1 percent in Seoul after earnings release. Samsung's shares, which gained 11 percent in the fourth quarter, hit a record high level earlier this month.
If Samsung's fourth quarter results are in line with Tuesday's guidance, the company will report 29 trillion won ($27.3 billion) operating profit on revenue of 201.1 trillion won ($189 billion) for 2012.
___
Follow Youkyung Lee on Twitter: www.twitter.com/ykleeAP
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/samsung-sees-record-high-4q-profit-045244220--finance.html
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