Not long ago, a diary was a deeply personal thing — a journal of thoughts and observations, kept under lock and key and often buried in a dresser drawer.

The Web has a way of changing things. Now, a diary of thoughts, observations and insight — posted on the Internet — may be a way to boost your business.

Web logs, or "blogs" as they're better known, have become a way to engage readers and potential customers of businesses big and small.

A blog is a journal posted on a Web site, updated on a regular basis and containing news, opinions, ideas and brainstorms. It might also have links to other sources of information, other Web sites and other blogs.

Many blogs cut both ways, inviting readers to post feedback on what they see. While that can apply to everything from sports and entertainment, it can also generate interest — and, ultimately, income — for your business.

No, blogs aren't for everyone. But see how they can accomplish these five basic business objectives.

1. Expose a new or little-known product or idea

For Grant Smith, blogging makes a world of sense on a number of levels. Smith operates a business that provides streaming video e-mail and related video communications products. Since many prospective clients might know little about video e-mail, Smith says his blog is a natural way to provide specifics.

"I began blogging to get established in the technology," Smith says. "It can have a positive impact for business. Readers are always looking for more ways to find out information about companies and for ways to interact."

That, in turn, can lead to a more informed customer and a more time-effective sales process. Rather than taking time to pitch your product or service to a client who may not need it, a blog supplants you as an information source. If a prospect contacts you, that's great. If not, you've wasted no time in explaining something that generates nothing in return.

2. Improve your search engine rankings

Blogging also puts you in touch with prospects in other ways. As any company with a position on the Internet realises, Web site visitors that come via Google, MSN and other search engines can provide numerous leads. Blogs can add to the frequency with which search vehicles identify you and your company, particularly if your blog allows readers to post a response.

If done properly, blogs have a tremendous benefit relative to search engines, according to Brad Fallon, president of SEO Research, a search engine marketing firm. "With blogs that allow comments, every new post and every new comment becomes an additional Web page filled with additional keywords to be picked up by the search engine spiders," he says.

3. Position yourself as an expert in an industry or field

Blogging also can also prove an effective marketing tool to establish yourself as an authority in your field. Not only can that generate leads, it also sends a positive message about your credentials through the marketplace and also gives your business a face and a personality.

4. Influence public opinion

Blogging also allows users to bypass traditional journalistic venues and, in effect, become a publisher of their own thoughts and viewpoints. For Steve Rubel, vice president of client services at a public relations firm, blogs are also fast becoming a powerful influence on public opinion.

"Blogs have evolved into legitimate alternative sources of news on niche and micro-niche topics," Rubel says. "Anyone with a passion and dedication could become an amateur journalist. I feel some of these sites — in aggregate — are having just as much sway on public opinion as larger, more established media brands."

5. Engage in a forum openly with your customers

Just as important, blogs that solicit reader comments can provide a sense of immediacy with your customers. In one respect, that's a ready source of feedback on what you're doing right and what you need to improve.

"My blog provides a forum for customers to give feedback after plunking their money down," says Fallon. "The result? While the normal market is lucky to have one-half of 1% of customers send an unsolicited testimonial, I have already collected glowing testimonials from over 15% of my customers."

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If you own a warehouse, storage facility, or industrial business, you probably realize the importance of safety, productivity, and energy conservation. Old doors to divide your plant sections or warehouse storage areas can be a hazard in more ways than one. That's why it's a good idea to replace your old doors with new, energy-efficient roll up doors. Here are some benefits and key features of roll up doors.

Easy to Use

One issue that's often overlooked in manufacturing facilities is ease of use for the doors. Doors can be a hassle, especially those that swing outward or upward when opened. They must be held open or "held up" by some type of device or they could possibly fall or close suddenly on a worker or on your equipment. This can pose a threat to workers on the job every day without their realizing it. For instance, someone operating moving equipment such as a forklift could easily crash into an open door and get hurt or damage the products they are carrying.

With commercial rollup doors, workers can easily and quickly open and close the doors for a fast entrance or exit. This helps to improve productivity and prevent door hazards. When you replace your doors with rollup doors, you can choose the method of opening and closing such as manual push-up, chain, or motor operated doors.

Heavy-Duty for Protection

Rollup doors come in heavy-duty materials for protection against burglary, weathering, and on-the-job accidents. The doors usually come in materials such as steel, wood, or concrete to provide safety and insulation against cold and heat. Many rollup doors provide protection against dust or contaminants in the air for food processing plants or chemical plants. If you live in an area where there are frequent hurricanes or high winds, there are rollup doors that can withstand high winds and heavy rains.

Customized for Your Needs

Industrial roll up doors can be customized to meet your needs. A rollup door specialist can measure your door openings and create rollup doors to fit perfectly with your building. They come in many colors that are bright and easily recognized by workers, day or night.

Save Money with Commercial Roll Up Doors

You can save money on energy costs by installing insulated rollup doors. These can keep cold air in and hot air out during the hot months, and vice versa during the winter months. Another way to save money is by reducing the number of safety hazards for workers. This helps reduce injuries on the job, workers compensation, and insurance premiums. Rollup doors provide a safe alternative to other types of doors or sectional barriers.

Other Rollup Door Products

Even if you don't manage a factory or warehouse, there are still many other uses for rollup doors. There are mini storage doors, roll garage doors, and self-storage doors to provide you with safe, convenient storage or garage doors.

With rollup doors, you can make life easier for your workers and enjoy a safer, more productive environment at your plant or warehouse. Check out the rollup door advantages and features online to see how they can benefit you.

Undoubtedly, you have visited various websites as you search the Internet for information, and you see icons or read messages that invite you to subscribe to the site's "RSS Feed". But you may not really understand what an RSS feed is.

RSS stands for "really simple syndication". As you surf the Internet, you invariably find a number of sites that have information that you would like to see more of or which you wish to track. The problem you face is having to manually go to the sites checking for any new updates.

RSS is a technology that allows you to check new information on the web sites you're interested in right from your desktop browser, without having to visit the site itself. RSS solves the problem of having to manually visit and check a site for new information by bringing the web pages to you instead of you going to them.

In order to use RSS, you simply need to have access to a computer and an Internet connection. You also need an RSS reader or an aggregator. The RSS reader will display a headline of the new posting along with a brief synopsis of the related content. You read the synopsis and if it interests you, you click on the headline, which will take you directly to the web page it is published on. You can have as many RSS subscriptions as you want.

As a webmaster, you can use RSS to promote your own website. When used properly, RSS can be a potent marketing tool. You enlist other sites to subscribe to your RSS feed, and display your updated content on their home pages. This allows you to reach new audiences to which you would not otherwise have access, and helps to spread your information exponentially.

RSS is simple to offer (no pun intended) and equally simple for your subscribers to use. Because of its simplicity, it is sometimes a preferred marketing method when compared to email newsletter marketing. Many people are choosing to subscribe to RSS feeds for instant information rather than subscribe to email newsletters.

RSS is a convenient form of information distribution, and because people can easily subscribe or unsubscribe at any time, it's a tool with which they're very comfortable. The benefit to you is that as a webmaster, you get your web site broadcast to potentially millions of people through RSS, and you can also use RSS as a means to get fresh updated content for your site too.

Introduction - Many of our clients are in need of an escrow based in Panama to buy or sell an asset. In Panama unlike other countries, lawyers are not allowed to run escrows themselves. The services of a licensed entity able to lawfully open, manage and successfully close an escrow would be used. Panama Legal Law Firm would be representing you as the buyer or seller and protect your interests in the transaction and at close of the process.

Sales Contracts - Our law firm can create the required sales contracts compliant with the Laws of Panama. These contracts re incorporated into the escrow instructions. We follow the escrow every step of the way to make sure you get what is agreed upon.

Escrow Instructions - We generate full and complete escrow instructions assuring you of a fully protected position during and after the escrow process.

Non - Escrowed Asset Sales - This is possible if the buyer and seller are friendly. Some basic precautionary measures can be taken but it does not provide the protection of an escrow but there are some things that can be done if the buyer and seller are cooperative and not on adversarial terms.

Corporate Owned Assets - In some instances a Panama Bearer Share Corporation owns the asset to be sold. In such cases one is merely transferring the stock in the corporation, which allows the buyer to then control the corporation, and of course in turn they get control and/or possession of the asset.

Foundations and Escrows - A Panama Private Interest Foundation can of course buy or sell assets using an escrow or not using an escrow, as well. A Panama Foundation is a judicial person and as such has the right to own, control, buy or sell its own assets which are separate from private individuals assets even though the private individual in question may be a foundation beneficiary or foundation protector.

Real Estate Escrows - Most Panama real estate transactions are conducted through the use of an escrow. Guarantees of clear title are one component of the escrow. We are quite well versed with real estate escrow transactions and would be happy to take you through the real estate sale or purchase experience from start to finish. We do not represent any real estate seller or developers and do not have any conflict of interest; we represent you and you alone.

Selling Your Business Using a Panama Escrow ? This is a way to easily get business sale proceeds into a Panama Corporation or Foundation. Have the ownership of the business transferred to a Panama Corporation or Foundation before the sale. Remember the Panama Corporation can be owned by a Panama Foundation thus removing you from being the owner of the corporation. Under Panama Law no one owns a foundation so even though you might be a foundation beneficiary or a foundation protector you are never going to be the owner of a Panama foundation. You can control the corporation and foundation through a general power of attorney and a general management agreement if needed. The Panama escrow deposits the funds into your Panama Bank Account belonging to the Panama Corporation or Foundation, which you are not the owner of but you do sign on the bank account. A check of Panama public records would not reveal that the corporation changed owners.

Sale of Non Panama Real Estate - If the non Panama Real Estate is owned by a Panama Corporation the sale can be accomplished through an escrow in Panama. The shares of the stock, which lets one control the corporation, would be transferred. This would give the buyer control over the assets of the corporation, more specifically in this case the real estate owned by the corporation. The title of the real estate need never change in the other country since the same corporation owns the real estate, just the ownership of the corporation changes. Ownership of Panama Corporations is not recorded in any registry or database and the government does not know who owns the corporations. There is also no requirement to report changes in ownership to anyone in Panama.

Sale of Boats and Marine Vessels in Panama - The same principles apply. The boat is titled to a Panama Corporation and the shares of the corporation change hands through the sale with or without an escrow and the new owner gets control of the corporation and all its assets, in this case the boat. The registration of the boat stays the same since it is still titled to the corporation.

If you are in need of legal assistance to arrange the purchase or sale of an asset in Panama we would be glad to assist as your legal representative. Please feel free to inquire.

Machining center manufacturers are all looking for and touting the ability to reduce part cycle times by offering faster and more efficient machines. That is what the job shop and part production customers of these products demand, because their end-product customers are driving a purchasing philosophy of lower costs per part.

While the choice of a high-speed machining center makes a major difference in operational productivity and part cost, the tooling utilized on that machine can be another dominant factor. The efficiency of such new, special purpose proprietary tooling can even further enhance the output of a horizontal machining center. It can provide a wide degree of flexibility in compressing several machining processes, especially in parts production.

Makino, a global provider of advanced machining technology, says that the use of special-purpose and multifunctional tools, like the SmartTools it manufactures, helps in this process compression. These specially designed and patented tools reduce cycle times as well as production costs, which saves money.

As an example, there are a number of unique, special tools that can reduce the initial capital investment and drive out substantial process time in the machining of engine blocks. Cylinder bores can be finished and honed with a precise closed-loop boring system that automatically compensates for tool wear or thermal distortion and produces exceptional repeatability.

You can also grind bimetallic surfaces utilizing a cubic boron nitride superabrasive grinding wheel all on a standard machining center.

Machines incorporated with this special, multifunctional tooling will outperform a number of individual specialty-purpose machines when used in an integrated system. Mid - to high-volume parts manufacturers often invest in state-of-the-art machine tool technology, and can further enhance their flexibility and productivity with the use of such special-purpose tooling.

With more and more demand to streamline processes and production cycle times, especially from original equipment manufacturer outsourcing operations, there is a growing need for more valuable and cost-effective solutions for jobs shops and production facilities. And, the solutions exist to allow them to "work smarter."

A lot of people are asking themselves if they can make money from their web pages hits in case they do have a webpage. The answer is not directly a yes. This is because web page hits are simply those number of times that other people are visiting your website. It shows your popularity or otherwise ion the cyberworld.

However, you can make money from this if only you know how. There are plenty of ways on how to do this and you can also make use of multiple ways as to how to gain money from multiple streams of opportunity available.

The first one that you can translate into money is the advertising stream potential of your website in case you do are getting a considerable number of hits. You can advertise by either using Google's Adsense wherein they put automatic ads for you and then you can gain a commission every time that someone actually buys a product through the ads in your website.

If you don't want to use Google, then you can use Commission Junction wherein you can personally choose the kind of ads that you will be putting up on your website. There is of course countless number of advertisers that lets you do the same thing. The only difference between them is probably the policies involved when dealing with the payment and other details.

You can also certainly try to sell products that you made yourself. Since your website is already having a considerable number of web page hits, it is more likely that a certain number of your visitors will be interested in what you have to sell.

It is presumed that you have already done the hard part of selling yourself to your audience. The companies whose product that you are advertising or selling directly is more than willing to pay you a handsome commission because the hard part of attracting the people's attention has already been done by you.

There are also other unconventional ways of getting money in return for your sites popularity. You can try selling your website to others who want to ride in the popularity that your website has.

It does not mean that you will be giving them complete control, rather you will simply be giving attention to their products as if they were your own or you can use your website as a place where they can have their links piggyback to you.

This will automatically place their websites in a higher page rank with Google which in turn translates to more money for both of you.

The recent debate over immigration policy commonly depicts immigrants as undocumented, uneducated people who flood our borders without inspection.

Although many immigrants who enter this country are unskilled laborers who provide essential services in many sectors of our economy, of equal importance to the immigration debate are the highly educated foreign professionals whose skills play a vital role in the enrichment of our economy.

The U.S. economy has shifted significantly over the past 50 years. We are no longer the blue collar nation that we once were. The transformation from a manufacturing to a knowledge-based economy has created a growing demand for skilled technical workers. This demand has been accompanied by a decline in the number of native-born students seeking degrees in the fields of science, engineering and technology.

Our prestigious graduate institutions currently train more foreign nationals than U.S. citizens in these fields. To alleviate labor shortages, U.S. businesses must be able to recruit and hire additional foreign-born professionals.

We must retain the educated professionals whom we have trained internally in order to benefit from the unique skills that they possess. By sending the best and the brightest workers back to their respective countries, we only create competition for ourselves, thereby diminishing America's economic clout.

In order to increase the number of highly skilled professionals in this country, it is necessary to reform the employment-based immigration system and provide a sufficient amount of avenues through which U.S. businesses can legally employ specialized workers. We must increase the number of specialized worker visas awarded.

H-1B visas, or temporary skilled worker visas, are currently capped at only 65,000 annually. Yet, this "cap" is reached in a couple of months, and U.S. businesses are barred from hiring foreign-born professionals for the remainder of the fiscal year.

At the same time, we must increase recruitment and training of U.S. students. H-1B visas accelerate this process; a hefty portion of the processing fees for the H-1B visas are directed to the education and training of U.S. students in science and technology.

It is important that skilled workers are not overlooked in the current debate regarding comprehensive immigration reform. Raising the H-1B visa cap is vital to maintaining our leadership in the world market. By retaining foreign nationals, we may ensure that U.S. businesses have the most highly qualified workers in their fields, helping America maintain its edge in an increasingly competitive global economy.

Deborah Notkin is president of the American Immigration Lawyers Association.  - NU

International Drivers Licenses - These are sold on the Internet. Legitimate ones are issued by the recognized auto club in your country and are ONLY valid with the normal government issued drivers license. The legitimate International Drivers License is little more than a translation document in numerous languages enabling authorities to see that you do hold a valid drivers license from your country. It is never a permission to drive by itself. It is never an identity document by itself since it was not issued by any government agency and if it is a real international drivers license you would have had to show a real drivers license to get one, so where is your real drivers license. Occasionally someone asks us if we would accept this as a form of identification and the answer is of course not.

Drivers Licenses - There are replica or false drivers licenses sold on the Internet. The banks are quite capable of knowing what is real and what is not real. People that buy these licenses are fooling themselves more than anyone else.

Passports - A few times a year our law firm gets presented with a hand written passport. Most large countries have not used hand written passports for over 35 years. Some of the less developed countries used them until the post 9/11 era, say around 2002. While it is possible to have a valid handwritten passport that is still current, the offshore banks will never accept one as an ID document. It must be a machine-readable passport. I would also say that traveling on a handwritten passport into the modern world would be difficult if not impossible. Most countries have machine readable passports with digitized photos, some even have RFID chip passports now and along you come with a handwritten passport and a picture glued into the passport with a stamp and signature across the bottom of the picture. I would think big problems. Get your country to issue you a new machine-readable passport with a digitized photo.

Camouflage Passports - A camouflage passport is a non-official document printed in a passport type booklet. Such passport booklets could be ordered from printers in Asia, not sure if this is still allowed to go on, doubt it. The camouflage passport was issued from a recently defunct country like Rhodesia. So the name of the issuer sounded quite real because at one time it was. When these first came out some offshore banks opened accounts based on them. After they were on the market for a while that soon stopped and the people who used them to open the accounts had their funds locked down. Perhaps they were allowed to show new identity documents; perhaps they were treated as criminals defrauding the bank and lost their money. Not sure since these countries at the time had bank secrecy. We are going back a number of years here. We are sure that numerous memos have been sent to offshore banks warning them of this and it was also a topic at numerous due diligence seminars. Again the person fooled the most by one of these camouflage passports is the buyer. Using one of these in the event of a terrorist detention in an airplane, hotel or elsewhere is unwise. You would be treated as a person of interest and probably questioned vigorously. If they simply decided you were nothing more than a person who likes to play games they would possibly lose interest in you but then again you came to their attention and became singled out and that is never a good thing is such a scenario. Contrary to what you see on TV and in the movies serious terrorists would be likely to do what any self respecting Mexican Road Bandito does and that is strip 100% naked the victims. This does not play out well on family oriented TV shows. This enables the bad guys to find things like identity documents, official credentials, keys, discrete weapons, money, contraband, and anything else that might have been concealed. So they will now find your other real passport and again you are a person of interest to the bad guys.

Traveling with a camouflage passport is of course idiotic. If the authorities of some country find one on you it would be likely that you get detained and experience a long interrogation or worse especially if the name was different. This is a novelty item, not a second passport. These camouflage passports can only come back and hurt you. If you really fear traveling on your own passport go through the trouble of processing through immigration in another country and get a real second passport. Then you should have a government issued residency card, a driver?s license from the country and a visa card from a bank in that country, as we suggest and help our clients obtain. This is a full set of real legitimate ID that will pass scrutiny in any country.

Fantasia Passports - These are passports issued from non-real countries. A famous one is Hutt River. There is a fellow who has a very modest parcel of land in Australia. He read some law and as a result declared war on Australia. They apparently did not mobilize the army and just ignored him, which left him able to declare his independence, or so he thinks, claims, or whatever. He calls himself a country and issues passports. He bought the passport books most likely in Asia. I believe his are printed but not machine readable so he probably is not able to get newer ones or he just wants to use up the ones he has. I even saw a diplomatic version of one of these once.

These passports are not good for much. Maybe if you were in a real depraved third world country and tried a land crossing through an obscure border crossing going from one depraved third world country to another depraved third world country and there was an illiterate guard there it might work. People often take these fantasy passports and submit them for entry visas to third world countries in Africa who are happy to sell anyone a visa stamp. They collect a few entry visas and then try using it since it looks more real in that other countries have accepted it. Of course all the countries they have allegedly visited have only entry visas without an exit visa, which will raise many red flags in a civilized country.

Another instance of these involved an old WWII oil platform a few miles off the cost of the UK called Sea Land. This was an oil platform that declared itself sovereign and issued passports. For a funny touch of humor. Over the years counterfeiters have printed their own versions of the fictitious countries selling passports and sold them thus cheating the original promoter out of sales knowing a prosecution would be almost impossible since the country in question is not real. The Florida Keys tried issuing their own passports some years back issuing Conch Republic passports. Conch is a fish used in seafood in the Florida Keys. These are very real looking fantasy passports. I imagine by now they have been pressured into stopping this practice. In a nutshell you are far safe and better off without one of these fictitious country passports than with one.

Office Max operates nearly 1,000 superstores throughout America including Puerto Rico and the United States Virgin Islands, in addition to several others in Mexico. Besides offering office products, business machines and related items, OfficeMax superstores also feature their CopyMax and FurnitureMax departments which are what the company refers to as convenient store-within-a-store sections of their operation. They also provide two national call centers for any questions you might have about the products they market and sell, in addition to 19 delivery centers throughout their various store locations.

OfficeMax markets its services and products to their customers by providing over 30,000 items via its award winning eCommerce site, OfficeMax.com and the direct-mail catalogs it sends out. Let’s take a look at some of the numerous products and services they have to offer.

Supplies

In the area of supplies, you can go online or directly to the store to view an abundance of business and school related items. Beginning with the basics of different kinds of pencils and paper, you can also explore the assortment of binders, presentation boards, folders, staplers and paper clips they have. There are also numerous types of pens, markers and other writing elements. Various kinds of correction tape, adhesive tape and self-stick notes and flags are a few more of the items you can purchase at OfficeMax.

Technology

OfficeMax offers a wide variety of Audio-Visual products and accessories including microphones and speakers, TVs and VCRs, laser pointers, multi-media, overhead and slide projectors and screens. They also have a wide range of calculators which include graphing, scientific and financial varieties in addition to the basic mathematical kinds.

Furniture

If you’re looking for anything from a bookcase, to mat that goes under your office chair to help it roll easier, you can find it at OfficeMax. They also sell different types of filing cabinets, desks and drafting tables. OfficeMax even carries a wide variety of home-based and commercial safes.

Print Services

OfficeMax provides print services in quite a few areas which include business cards, invitations, labels and custom-made calendars. You can order one of their ready-made designs or by uploading your files through their website, get a quote on what it will cost to have your own, personal designs and documents printed, and the timeframe you can expect it to be completed in. Some additional services are binding and finishing, digital color prints of your files or photos and also large format printing.

For more on the products and services OfficeMax provides, visit one of their store locations which are open to serve you seven days a week including most holidays. The items they offer are also easily accessible on the web for browsing and ordering at www.officemax.com.