A few nice Business images I found:

Pandora’s Web2.0 Business Model


Image by Alex Osterwalder
Check out my blogpost about Pandora’s Business Model at:
business-model-design.blogspot.com/2006/07/eternal-beta-p…

Recession business


Image by maistora
A new shop opened in our neighbourhood – wonder if it has to do with the (effects of) the financial crisis?..

Disclaimer: Couldn’t help the association: unusual to open a business right now, when most others are closing. No mockery intnded in respect of a dignified business serving a community need, or (even less) a bad-taste joke on its ccustomers.

(Published on ‘Local Services for Mobile AI’ Feb-09)
(Also used in article ‘isn’t It A Good Time To Start Building Your Own Business’ on Chris Charabaruk Online Feb-09;
Also published on Ebookslab.info Dec-09;
On ‘Information for Read’ 30-Dec-09)

Environmental Forces – influencing competitive strategies and business models


Image by Alex Osterwalder
Some thoughts I had a while ago on the environmental forces that act on a company and its business model.

Read more about it at:
http://business-model-design.blogspot.com/2005/12/5-forces-acting-upon-your-business.html

HCG diet is a much controversial subject. It has its supporters and its detractors. The controversy in this case is compounded by the fact that there is no published data to medically verify either side of the argument.

What is HCG?

HCG refers to human chorionic gonadotropin. HCG is a protein-rich hormone. It is made by placenta cells. A liquid form of this hormone can be acquired in oral form or taken by injection. HCG can be used for the purpose of promoting weight loss. It could request the brain to break down the fats in the body. HCG can increase the metabolism rate of the body. It can cause the calories in the body to burn quicker.

The HCG Diet

To encourage weight loss, HCG hormones are used in conjunction with a practical diet program. For weight loss purposes, HCG is sold in form of oral supplements and injections. A person taking part in the HCG Diet takes HCG drops or injections and eats at most 500 calories per day. No more than 200 i.u’s. of HCG drops per day might be consumed or injected by any person who is on on the HCG diet. The HCG is taken by participants for 30-40 days.

Exercise is required and a person should walk for no less than 30 minutes a day. Besides, while on this diet, participants should drink plenty of fresh water. Sugars and starches need to be avoided throughout the course of the program. Some versions of this eating regime include oral appetite suppressants.

HCG Side Effects

Some HCG diet participants complain of insomnia, headaches, and weakness however these negative effects do not endure for long periods of time.

Financial Markets (ECON 252) Behavioral Finance is a relatively recent revolution in finance that applies insights from all of the social sciences to finance. New decision-making models incorporate psychology and sociology, among other disciplines, to explain economic and financial phenomenon, such as erratic stock price variations. Psychological patterns such as overconfidence and perceived kinks in the value function seem to impact financial decision-making, but are not included in classical theories such as the Expected Utility Theory. Kahneman and Tversky’s Prospect Theory addresses such issues and sheds light on irrational deviations from traditional decision-making models. Complete course materials are available at the Open Yale Courses website: open.yale.edu This course was recorded in Spring 2008.

Niall Ferguson, Harvard professor, discusses the history — and future — of finance with Harvard Business Review editor-in-chief Adi Ignatius.

commoncraft.com A video for people who wonder why blogs are such a big deal. This video comes in an unbranded “presentation quality” version that can be licensed for use in the workplace. http
Video Rating: 4 / 5

For people who are employed by larger companies or institutions dental insurance for individuals is a common perk. However, for those who are self-employed, or who work for companies with less than four employees, finding affordable dental insurance can be tough. The different types of dental plans vary from one company to another. Some offer traditional dental insurance and some may offer discounted dental plans.

Some of the most reputable companies gain their reputations by offering the best dental plans at the cheapest costs, while still keeping the integrity of their companies. Dental plans that are made for groups and families give the cheaper rates for people who desire to spend less on their dental care needs. The dental care providers who take part in these plans agree to accept a reduced fee from dental patients as payment in full for the services that they perform. In most instances, a plan member only need to show a membership card when visiting the participating dentists’ offices.

Different plans are typically grouped by who needs the insurance. For example, there is dental insurance for individuals, plans for families and dental insurance for businesses or groups. Normally, the family dental plans do the most to provide affordable dental insurance to make it easy for families with children to get the proper dental care they need. Insurance companies usually consider any group of 5 or more people eligible for group rates. Members of the group need not have to work together, nor be affiliated other than as part of the group that forms to get lower insurance. You can get all the insurance details from a professional insurance agent.

Check out these Regional images:

448 RENFE Regional


Image by .Robert.
Una unidad 448 Regional en la Estación de Francia de Barcelona.

Una unitat 448 Regional a l’Estació de França de Barcelona.

Shakespeare Regional Park, Auckland


Image by Adam Foster | Codefor
Shakespeare Regional Park, Auckland, North Island, New Zealand

We took a 2-3 hour walk up into the hills of Shakespeare Regional Park. It sits on the coast and has a great view of Auckland City from across the water. It was a nice end to the holiday to get some last minute sun and fresh air. The yellow and green rolling hills, coast line and sea were all awesome to shoot; I was just annoyed I had so little space left on my camera.

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View more on my photography portfolio,
or say hi on Twitter

Museo Regional de Nayarit


Image by Christian Frausto Bernal
See where this picture was taken. [?]

Can you really get paid for taking surveys online? Surprisingly, the answer is yes. It is possible to earn money through paid survey online. Many research companies, who are studying the market for large firms, are paying people for taking part in online surveys, focus groups, and product tests. They are going to pay the participant in order to understand how the public think of products made by their clients.

Earning hundreds of dollar per hour is possible. However unless you are participating in an important study or focus group, you are going to generate much less income since the average paid surveys would pay few dollars to less than $30.

You will discover two types of paid surveys site:

• Actual paid survey companies: These paid survey companies are free to join. They are the actual companies that give you the paid surveys. After you have joined the site, you would be alerted by email when your contribution in a paid survey is wanted. You are going to be told the amount you can make from these surveys and how much time is required for each survey.
• Paid survey directories: The paid survey directories are sites that contain a list of paid survey companies. These directories are not the company that pays you for doing the survey. These directories will not provide paid surveys. Although some of these directories are free to join, they are many that charge membership fees, which range from $20 to $60.

Online paid surveys may make you some extra money without much effort. Nonetheless in case you are looking for a full-time income, paid surveys will not be the thing for you. It will never make enough to help you be rich. The key of getting paid to take surveys online is to become a member of as many survey companies as you possibly could. Since many of these paid survey companies are only going to mail out few paid surveys every month, the more paid survey companies you join the more paid survey invitations you will receive. Hence the more money you will make.

Only the top paid surveys companies would send you paid surveys regularly. The best way to start is to join these companies. Below are some good paid survey sites:

• Test Spin
• Global Test Market
• Survey Savvy
• GoZing surveys
• Greenfield Online
• ECN Research
• Lightspeed Research

Some cool Travel images:

Help Save Ted the Traveling Bear!


Image by antonkawasaki
Ted the Traveling Bear has been visiting us lately!
Ted’s been given tours of various cities from a few people already, but he originally started his traveling in Cairns, Australia with Sandy Edgar. We’ve been giving him a tour of the Big Apple, and we even took him with us to Spain! He LOVES to travel.

Unfortunately, ever since he’s been staying with us, our other bear, Rojo, has been a bit…jealous, so to speak. I think we may need to send Ted off to his next destination soon…for his own good. Do you want to be one of Ted’s next tour guides?

To find out more about the Ted the Traveling Bear project, please click here for information on how to be a host, or contact Sandy Edgar directly. Ted’s dying to see the rest of the world, so please help him with seeing as much as possible! (And save him from Rojo!)

You can see more of my own Ted pics here.

Update: Ted is now safely traveling the rest of the world, continuing on his adventures. He sends postcards to Rojo, which I think is really sweet.

Taken with a Samsung SL202
At home.

parallel travels #1


Image by lorenzo cuppini verducci
Two trains travel in parallel, like two frames of the same film. Different directions, different histories, single moments which never repeat.

Fuji Sensia film + Nikon F70 + Tokina ATX-PRO 28-70 f:2.8 // Minolta DIMAGE IV scanner >> digitally post-processed

Some Rights Reserved for non commercial use only, All Rights Reserved for commercial use: Lorenzo Cuppini
The owner of this image is Lorenzo Cuppini. This image was published under a
Creative Commons "Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works" License. This image can not be modified.
The name Lorenzo Cuppini must always be shown below the photo. They are not accepted tooltips or links visible only by mouse over, thank you.
Lorenzo Cuppini must be interested in case of use of publication. Any different use must be considered a copyright abuse. The original high definition master of this image is owned by the author of the work.

Traveling to Albany


Image by Barb Henry
travel at dusk

Some cool Entertainment images:

[entertainment]


Image by bass_nroll
Farabuboag

.. giovedì sera da favre..

♫ ♪ ♫

See it’s only entertainment
superficial urgency,
posterboard mentality…
Only entertainment,
tightly constrained,
the buzz that remains,
it’s the story of how we run our lives

.

“CHIJMES” from a Convent to an Entertainment Hub, Singapore


Image by williamcho
A beautifully restored convent housing art gallleries, souvenir shops, pubs and restaurants. It was once home to The Catholic girls’ school, the Convent of the Holy Infant Jesus (CHIJ).
There is a special door called "Gate of Hope" in the former convent where babies were abandoned by poor families for the Catholic nuns to look after.

The process of file system troubleshooting for Windows 2000/XP and Windows 9x are very similar. The key difference is the use of Window Recovery Console, which is clarified here:

• If the Recovery Console was added to the boot menu, start the system normally. If you are asked for login credentials, key in your administrator account information. Then select the Recovery console.
• If the Recovery Console was not previously added to the boot menu, start the system using the Windows CD-ROM or the Windows setup disks. Select repair from the Welcome to Setup menu, and then press C to start the Recovery Console when prompted.

If your system can not boot from CD-ROM or the floppy, you could have more severe problems with your hardware. It will be a great idea to examine your drive, BIOS configuration, and motherboard for proper installation and configuration. Set the floppy disk as the first boot device and the CD-ROM as the second boot device and restart the system.

You should do the following steps when the Recovery Console begins:

1. To access to a list of Recovery Console commands and assistance, you may type HELP at the command prompt.
2. Run DISKPART to examine your partitions
3. You must make sure that the bootable partition is define as active if the partition is shown.
4. You may use FDISK to make new partitions if no partitions are shown and you do not want to recover any of the data existing on the drive. Then you may use FORMAT to format the partitions. The FORMAT will overwrite any data on the drive.
5. A data recovery program is necessary to retrieve data if you want to recover the data on the drive and no partition are being displayed.You may use Norton Disk Editor or Remo Recover. Remo Recover is PC and Mac data recovery software that can be used for PC and Mac hard drive recovery. With its user friendly interface, user can use the program to recover files Mac and pc easily.
6. If all the partitions appear in DISKPART and one is defined as active, run the FIXBOOT command to restore the system files.
7. To restart your system, type EXIT command. Remember to remove CD-ROM from the CD-ROM or disk from drive A.
8. Your drive could be incorrectly configured or damaged if the problem is still there after you restart the system.
9. Restart the Recovery Console and run CHKDSK to look for problems with the hard disk.