Powwow draws tens of thousands to NM (Providence Journal)

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Jennie Garth to Play Nancy Grace in a Lifetime Movie?

Nancy Grace sure has had an interesting life. And now Jennie Garth is playing her alter ego in a Lifetime movie based on the legal analyst's 2009 best-selling novel, The Eleventh Victim. Garth will play Hailey Dean, a young assistant D.A. who prosecutes a case against her fiance's killer. And then -- oh no! -- he targets her when he gets out of jail. Sounds very dramatic and Lifetime-esque, doesn't it?

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GM: Explosion at battery research facility ?unrelated to the Chevrolet Volt?

One person was hurt at the GM research site in Michigan during ?extreme testing on a prototype battery? unrelated to the Volt ?or any other production vehicle,? the company said.

An explosion during "extreme battery testing" Wednesday morning of a prototype energy cell at a General Motors battery research facility in Warren, Mich., injured one person and did major structural damage to the building.

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At the heart of the explosion was a lithium-ion battery, according to a fire department official cited in local news reports. The morning blast did not, however, involve batteries that power the Chevrolet Volt, the new plug-in hybrid car whose batteries caught fire weeks after a crash test, General Motors said in a statement.

But the flap over the Volt battery fire has left some insiders feeling more than a little peeved and defensive at the amount of news media attention being devoted to what they say is an almost inevitable, if not routine, event in the business of battery research and extreme testing.

"The whole reason they have these labs is precisely to do this kind of aggressive testing ? anticipating the worst thing a consumer could do with this product," says one expert with direct knowledge of the circumstances surrounding the explosion, who asked not to be named. "This is going to turn out to be a mountain out of a mole hill. Yeah, we're doing a lot of testing. That's what we have to do. Sometimes things explode."

?The incident is still under investigation by GM and the Warren authorities," the GM statement said. "Any information or discussion of the nature of the work in the lab or cause of the incident is entirely speculative and cannot be confirmed at this time. The incident was unrelated to the Chevrolet Volt or any other production vehicle. The incident was related to extreme testing on a prototype battery.?

Despite criticism of the Volt by conservative pundits, a follow-up investigation by the National Highway Transportation Safety Administration concluded the new car was no more prone to fire than any other vehicle.

"The debate over batteries recently really hasn't been about safety so much as about their longevity," says Tom Turrentine, director of the plug-in hybrid and electric vehicle research center at the University of California, Davis. "I think we are mostly over the hump with battery safety. But there's no question that battery labs are notorious for explosions when they're testing."

Lithium-ion batteries are attractive to automakers because they can hold so much power ? about four times the amount of energy a conventional lead-acid battery. Even so, earlier lithium-ion batteries used in other commercial applications burst into flame on occasion. Laptop computer manufacturer Dell Computer recalled millions of batteries after a handful of its laptops burst into flames several years ago.

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PSA: Pottermore is no longer colloportus, open to muggles and magicians alike

It's been a waitus longissimus, but finally Pottermore has raised the portcullis to the rest of us muggles. You can sign up right now, after which you'll be allocated to your respective Hogwarts house, but it might take a few more days before you're fully initiated into the hallowed halls proper. Just don't tell Voldemort.

[Thanks Daniel]

PSA: Pottermore is no longer colloportus, open to muggles and magicians alike originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 14 Apr 2012 07:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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HTC fixes rare One S chipping finish issue, swaps phones for free

The black HTC One S uses a process called micro arc oxidation (MAO) to harden its aluminum unibody and make it feel like ceramic. We've recently experienced some chipping on the finish of one of our review units, so we reached out to HTC to find out if this is a known problem. Turns out we're not the only ones to report the issue, and while rare, the company's gone ahead and tweaked its manufacturing process and is offering to swap affected phones for free for existing customers. Here's HTC's statement:

HTC is committed to delivering a high quality product and great experience for all our customers. There have been a few, isolated reports of this issue. The finish on the One S was laboratory tested as being at a hardness similar to ceramic. While that's hard, it doesn't mean it's impossible to damage. Regardless, HTC takes quality very seriously and are providing all customers with an immediate fix and we are implementing some small changes to ensure customers do not experience this issue in the future.

HTC fixes rare One S chipping finish issue, swaps phones for free originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 13 Apr 2012 19:55:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Romney makes pivot, courts NRA (CNN)

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Spouses of Cancer Patients May Have Raised Risk of Heart Disease, Stroke

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Top 5 Ideas to Grow Your Business - Circle Marketing

You need some fresh ideas on how to grow your business, right? Well you have come to the right place! We will focus on the very top 5 things you can be doing right away to start increasing that bottom line and widening your profit margins as your business grows. Let?s get right into it!

1. Understand How It All Works Together
I was going to make this one the last one and tie everything up nicely, but people are impatient nowadays, so let me give you the most important one first, then randomly spread the other ideas around.

You need to understand how all of the different elements of your business work together to create one finely-tuned machine. You have your branding and messaging, your sales staff, your website, your social media, and your advertising. You also have your products and your e-mail list and your employees. Let?s quickly work this out, and in a later blog post we can get more detail focused, or just contact an expert marketing strategist for some friendly advice.

Your branding and messaging must be clear and aspirational to your target marketing and customers. Those customers need to see that messaging in your advertisements, social media marketing, and read it on your website blog.

Your website must be able to capture customer information (i.e. sign them up to an email list), direct them to your social network pages, and provide them with a clear path to find the information and products they?re looking for on your site.

Your social media pages should have a very clear and easy way to send your traffic back to your lead-capturing website, and the source of all this great content: your blog.

Your advertising should speak with your brand voice, attract customers to a landing page on your website or social network page, and capture their information into the same list as your website?s standard lead generation strategy does.

Start with your website, because you own that and it?s not going away unless you go away. Your website should be the main hub of all information, and everything should be directing traffic, leads, and customers into your website.

2. Repeat Business?Keep Them Coming Back
Your customers are your best friends. They put the roof over your head, and keep the lights on. Why wouldn?t you want to see your best friends more often, right? Once you have a customer, do everything you can to get their information. You?re not going to spam them or annoy them (at least I hope not!). Rather, you?re going to occasionally keep in touch with them, check in on them, and remind them that you would love to see them again soon.

Let?s say you?re the owner of a restaurant, then you can offer them social media only specials of the day, or leave comment cards with the bill, or offer them a free desert on their birthday. Or, maybe you own (or work for) a car dealership. You can call on your customers to see how they?re loving the car you sold them and remind them about the great benefits of keeping the car maintained. Remind them how your staff knows that car inside and out and would love to help keep it on the road and never break down on them.

Whatever your business is, there are things you can do to reach out in a helpful and friendly way. Make sure you do this from a purely helpful frame of reference and not as an up-sell. The up-sell will take care of itself when your customers know for a fact you?re taking care of them and their needs.

3. Referrals, Referrals Referrals
Now we have our best friends, aka customers and clients, coming back more often. Let?s ask them to do some free advertising for us. Ask them to post on Facebook or tweet on Twitter about how much they enjoyed your business or service. Incentivize them if you like. Maybe offer whomever spreads the word a free desert, free standard oil change, whatever you can offer that would be cheaper than an ad and more effective.

Why is this more effective? Because people will believe other people?s word over any advertisement they hear or see. Social Proof is what it?s called, and it?s one of the most effective (and cheapest!) forms of marketing.

What if you?re a realtor? Then referrals are an absolute must in your field as you most likely already know. In real estate, 99% customers won?t buy more than once every 5-10 years, so your referrals are your life-line to a great percentage of your sales opportunities.

Also, on your blog, have social sharing buttons so those who found your blog post interesting can share it on their social networks and/or with their friends and colleague.

Hey, look at that, at the bottom of this blog right here are a few social sharing buttons! Maybe you should give it a shot, click a few, and kindly share this post with some of your friends and colleagues. We would really appreciate it, and it?ll make you look really smart for directing other business owners to the valuable information you?re getting right now.

4. Keep the Mindset Which Got You Here
When you first started your business, you knew the risks and the challenges. That didn?t deter you, though, did it? You forged forward against all odds, put in the extra work and did everything it took, and more, to get the job done and grow your company.

Then, you start getting busier in the day-to-day, and you start to get used to the sales and the money that you?re now counting on to maintain your standard of living. You now have a different mindset. While you would love to still keep growing, the fear of losing what you?ve built up forces you to reverse your thinking and you suddenly stop taking the risks and doing many of the things which worked for you in the beginning.

Then, your business starts to level off, plateau, and eventually (if it hasn?t already at this point) start to wane and slide. Why?

Because you stopped taking risks. You have the experience now of what worked and what didn?t work. You can?t afford to take risks, you say? Well, with competition and technology constantly improving, and customer desires constantly changing, you simply can?t afford not to take risks. Risks, well I should say calculated risks, are just a part of the nature of being in business. If you?re afraid of calculated risks and trying things out to keep the company growing and remain competitive, then close up shop and work for someone else.

Reverse that reversed thinking and start thinking of strategic ways to get your profits growing.

5. Create an Efficient Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad Campaign
So, let?s finish up with a calculated risk option that is far less risky than you might think. We are going to quickly go over creating an efficient Pay Per Click (PPC) Ad campaign. Circle Marketing has a blog on split-testing PPC Ads, so please see that as we won?t cover it here, due to space.

First thing to do is keyword research. Use Google?s AdWords Keyword Tool, and find the best combination of volume and relevancy to pick the best ones. This is more of an expert?s job, so just contact us, and we can help you get this optimized.

Next, create aspirational copy and an image for the ad (unless it?s a text-only ad) that is very targeted. Create a few different versions of the ads, and do the split-testing model for very little money up-front until you find the ad or ads which have a far superior click-through rate.

Next, create a couple different landing pages. A great landing page delivers on the promise the ad made, and gives more information, incentive to order right then and there (or at least the very least capture the potential customers? information), and have a very clear and appealing call-to-action to encourage the conversion into either a lead or customer (depending on your offer).

Once you found the best ads with the best click-through rates, and used analytics to find out which landing page was converting the highest numbers, we now know what is working and what isn?t. Here?s where we spend our money knowing what our educated projected ROI will be.

Instead of spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars on a campaign you hope will work, you now have spend a coupe hundred to test the PPC ad and now can spend the large balance of the Ad Campaign?s budget on what you know for a fact works.

Of course, all of these are very broad strokes kind of advice, and every business and strategy needs to be honed and developed with your specific business in mind for maximum effect and ROI. If you have any questions, please comment below and we?d love to answer every single one of them! Talk soon, and enjoy growing your business!

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