The task of creating an indelible impact on the memory of your target market is arduous but can be made much easier with a well thought out logo. The word comes from the ancient Greek where it was used in philosophy and theology to mean “the divine reason implicit in the cosmos, ordering it and giving it form and meaning.” The function of a logo in today’s business world is much the same – to make the visual identification of your company implicit by giving it form and meaning.

The form and meaning of a logo are expressed in three elements – name, slogan, and icon. Think for a moment of the fabulously successful sporting goods and apparel company, Nike. The name obviously, is the name of the company. The slogan “Just do it” explains the meaning, philosophy, or emotional expression of the name. The “swoosh” icon is a visual representation of the name. Together the name, slogan and icon form a powerful “logo-ized” representation of the company which is vital to the brand. Today, because of their constant use, logos of many national companies (think Nike, McDonalds, Travelers Insurance) are indelibly imprinted somewhere in our brains.

While the logos of most companies will never attain that level of memory retention, it will be a great advantage to make their logo more memorable and identifiable to their marketplace – the prospects, clients, and possible prospects in the geography or industry they serve.

Here’s the first step. Get out your business card. Look at it. First see if you actually have a logo (name, slogan and icon). If you do, and it is over three years old, analyze it to determine if it is still relevant or whether you may benefit from a “logo makeover.” If you don’t have a viable logo, get to work on the missing elements starting with the slogan that describes the business, its products or services and the emotional benefits of the company in very few (1 – 7 words) catchy words – this will take time and worthwhile effort. Lastly, have the name and slogan visualized graphically.

Increased retention and understanding of your company will be the immediate benefit that goes out to your marketplace with every communication so logo-ize and start communicating better now.

Larry Galler coaches and consults with high-performance executives, professionals, and small businesses. He is the writer of the business column, “Front Lines with Larry Galler” Sign up for his newsletter at http://www.larrygaller.com

If you are interesting in learning more about merchant services, you will need to know something about setup merchant account details. This may seem like the hardest part of getting a merchant account, especially if you are uninvolved with many e-commerce or technological business systems. Here are some details that can help to give you a better idea of merchant account setup.

For setup merchant account information, you will want to contact the merchant account provider that you are thinking of working with. This could be your local banker, the one that manages your company’s regular accounts at present. Or it might be another lender with a better merchant account deal that includes lower terms or more useful services. When you select the underwriter for your merchant account, find out which fees will apply. Some merchant account providers seem to charge for a host of things, including the application, setup, gateway, membership, and maintenance, among others. After applying to your account provider of choice and being approved for merchant services, an account representative can work with you to set up merchant account details that will soon have your business equipped for credit card payments.

At that point you can ask more detailed questions about setup merchant account services. For example, if there is a service fee for setup, will you need to pay it first, will it be billed, or will it be deducted from your first month’s sales? Find out who will install the credit card processing software program and whether you must pay for it. Perhaps it will pay for itself in a few months, saving you this initial start-up cost. It is important to find out whether a customer services representative will be standing by to answer customers’ questions and deal with problems that may arise at the Website. Up-to-date contact or email information is essential to reassure customers they can get help when needed. You will need to know if you must find and pay someone for backup of this type or if the merchant services provider will handle this for you.

Your setup merchant account fees should be minimal, but make sure you find out ahead of time what to expect so there are no unpleasant surprises when you can least afford them. After all, you don’t want to go to the trouble and expense of opening a merchant services account only to find that you cannot afford to provide the necessary components to make it operational and customer-friendly. If possible, get a list of services and their prices before signing the contract on your merchant account.

The timeframe for setup merchant account operations should not be excessive. Most underwriters can have your Website ready to start accepting credit card payments within a few days. When they do, you will probably ask yourself why you waited so long to apply for this helpful tool. You also may be interested in getting a wireless credit card processor for travel-related sales and a pager to maintain office-to-employee communications. An e-check processor may be the logical next step.

The commercial sky is the proverbial limit when you inquire about setup merchant account options.

Shane Penrod is the owner of www.merchant-account-quotes.com A site where you can shop and compare multiple quotes from national leading merchant account providers. www.merchant-account-quotes.com

If you are an impassioned young author, natural writer or a rather inspired enterprise hoping to disseminate smart suppositions or maybe impart your personal mark upon today’s weird world then maybe more traditional publishing will generally be an uncomfortable stumbling block to releasing your loving innermost thoughts out and about, into the marketplace. Take heed you who may be discouraged, there are also intelligent digital and original online options to be had that will probably take the grief, sadness and a certain amount of the struggle out of broadcasting one’s textual treasures. No doubt you will probably be extremely please to hear that you might well sidestep all of the editors, sub-editors and egotistical publishers with taking your own confident actions to broadcasting your own works.

So you have a fanciful story that you have been working very hard on for possibly many years, or perhaps highly valuable facts that you just know users would more than happily their own souls to have. You might have spellbinding information from a dedicated research study, or possibly even an assortment of inventive photographs, pictures or other breakthrough artwork that you’d like to have compiled as a compilation of innovative works to display your artistic knack or perhaps to get beneficial publicity to the exceptional services you provide and get your focused products recognition. How about only having your analysis with regard to those things that truly bug you; maddening people, controlled politics, society, shallow culture and revealing your outlook with other likeminded people.

Currently you might find yourself in a wonderful place where you could have put in the vastly difficult labour and have got the wares; a unique piece of ingenious work that is hugely beneficial, however you could still need to get past with a publisher and convince them that your life’s lovingly created product is worthy to be forever immortalised in print. Regrettably this can commonly be the finish of the line for legions of enthused authors, wordsmiths, poets, scribes, reporters and biographers. Even if the publisher has been persuaded another frustrating tripping post will be brought to the fore. This elevated costs of all the extras; editors, designers and other resources required to convert a fanciful idea into a completed fruition might well fall way outside of what it is likely that you feel is affordable or it is likely that you may not be able to give good reason for the rate.

The money entailed in broadcasting is not the only restraint or exasperating stumbling post, for many writers the turn around times for more traditional broadcasting are much too long. This is often the case in the instance of stories, data or facts and figures that are also truly fresh, relating to hot trends or topics and might regularly devalue as time passes and the limited window of opening for impact starts to close.

Modern technology comes to the rescue once again, offering you a fast track alternative method. In our chaotic, technologically advanced weird world a vast array of services which have ordinarily been offered offline are also fast making the migration into the insubstantial pioneering online sphere, making these services far more accessible to all who needs to use them and often at a far lower cost to the user too. Intelligent digital broadcasting is just one of those services and it provides you, the prodigious writer, with the power to publish your lovingly created special work yourself without the annoying wait and costs associated with the more “historical” mediums.

Digital broadcasting will often also allow you flexibility that you could be seeking for in terms of the trouble-free ease of updating information, data or even adding entire sub-sections to an already published works. Then there is the growing attraction of rich media such as; interactive applications, animations, videos and widgets. With an online or digitally published lovingly created handiwork this flexibility is fully attainable and a range of extras and rich media are easily integrated into the magazine, article, or e-book. Digital magazine authors and compilers are finding online publishing services more and more useful.

In summary, a prodigious composer, small research inspired enterprise or photographic studio no longer needs to kiss up to haughty publishers or hold up a small bank to see their lovingly created works out and about in the marketplace. We live in the clever digital age and this mad world of sharp digital has come to rescue to help you realise you own publishing dreams.

As you sit at your computer reading this somewhere in the
back of your mind may be the little words, “Back me up!”
floating around trying to alert you to something truly
important.

You swat the thought away like a pesky fly telling yourself,
“I will, I will..!” and ignore that silent, almost esp-like
intuition trying to help you and save you from computer
disaster.

For a fleeting moment you give in to the voice, saying to
yourself, “Boy I AM way behind on my backups.” But…

And then it happens… WHAM! And you’ve lost everything

After having suffered two crashes in the Fall of last year,
and a few problems in this new year, I can with all honesty
tell you that being prepared in the event of a computer
emergency is worth every second it takes along the way.

Sure it’s still gut wrenching to have it happen, but putting
it all back together takes less and less time the more and
more you are ready for it.

What Needs Safekeeping?

Your website should be one of the first things you
download on a consistent basis unless you know you have
the complete website files and databases already on your
own computer and you only make changes from your computer
and upload to your website.

If you’ve been in and out of your website via FTP making
a tweak here and a little, but important one there, and
haven’t downloaded those changes to your working folders,
yikes!

Relying on the hosting company to keep your site safe is
cool, but it is your site and overall your responsibility.

If you don’t change it often, then once every few weeks
would be fine. But, if you’re like me and in there every
day, more often is definitely called for… a lot more
often!

Then what?

Sure I have my files on the hard drive, but if I can’t
access them, what good are they?

I’ve got both a read/write CD-ROM and an external drive,
and my preference is the external drive. Call me stupid,
but it’s just like accessing an A disk only much bigger.
It’s just really easy to use, quick to install, and
inexpensive to purchase.

So back ‘em up!

Next, your email – every receipt for purchase, every
password and username, every download link and unlock
code, and… well you get the idea. Save them to disk!

If you just knew how many programs, products, and ebooks
I lost last year you wouldn’t even bother to finish this
article, you’d just high tail it to your inboxes and
start now.

Which, of course leads me to the ebooks, programs, etc.,
that you’ve purchased along the way. Are you 100% sure
that you can remember the urls to the websites where
they all came from…? Are you counting on your trusty
Favorites folder to help you out? Think again.

If catastrophe hits, bye bye Favorites. Back them up,
too.

Yes it’s time consuming now – to some extent – and we
all believe there’s “always tomorrow.”

But should tomorrow ever come… don’t be caught short!

© Theresa Cahill – All Rights Reserved. Feel free to distribute this article. Please keep it intact and with the resource box included below.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Theresa Cahill, a two decade veteran of marketing, is the owner of http://www.mywizardads.com and invites you to take a look at the services of MWA and download fr.ee helpful information and more at http://www.mywizardads.com/sitemap.html

There are lots of reasons why people learn a foreign language – love, business, travel, hobby, necesity etc., but one reason that seems to pop up more and more is to connect with their roots. Many learn in order to speak with or write to relatives still using the language, others learn just to make a connection with their ancestry, to immerse themselves in their own heritage.

How many people have a grandmother from ‘the old country’ who still speaks with a heavy accent, or an aunt who speaks more in her first language than English? Or how about some newly arrived cousins still struggling with English? Even if your family has been speaking English for generations, the vast majority of people whose native language is English have ancestors from other countries and communities whose native language was not English. Many of us still have a fascination and an affinity with things associated with that ‘old country.’ As an example, I see many people who have a Cead Mile Failte plaque outside their front door. It means “a hundred thousand welcomes” in Irish Gaelic, and is a proud declaration of their heritage, as well as a warm welcome into their home.

People of Irish ancestry living outside of Ireland (the U.S., Canada, England, New Zealand, Australia etc) often study Irish in order to make some connection with their ancestry, even if only to learn how to pronounce Cead Mile Failte or all those interesting looking place-names in Ireland. Celtic place-names have a peculiar tendency to last, even long after their original inhabitants have moved on and been replaced by people speaking different languages. Continental Europe has many such names, perhaps owing to the unique qualities of the Celtic people embodied in their languages. To quote John Millington Synge – “There is no language like the Irish for soothing and quieting.”

We often come to a time in our lives when we think about who we are and how we got here, and a lot of that was determined by our ancestors long before we were born. When combined with the needs and goals in our present lives such as business, travel and caring for our family this can become a powerful incentive to learn a second language, particularly a language which we already have a connection to.

The concept of family or community does not have to exist only in the present. There is a wonderful quote by Christopher Ricks which sums this up nicely – “When a language creates, as it does, a community within the present, it does so only by courtesy of a community between the present and the past.”

In some small way, learning our heritage languages can open the door to understanding what kind of people our ancestors were and ultimately gaining a better understanding of ourselves. What better way to define who we are in the present than by reaching back into the past and learning more about our ancestors that got us here.

Ron is a long-time language enthusiast, exploring Spanish, French, Swedish, Esperanto and others. Learn more about studying a language on your own at Language Learning Advisor
This guide for self-study language learners has reviews and recommendations of language learning methods and products, links to online learning resources, learning tips to maximize your study time and effectiveness and articles on language learning.

The success of your fundraiser depends on how much publicity your group can attract. Community awareness of your fundraising need and your fundraising offering will always increase your results.

Here are some fundraising publicity tips:

Publicity Tip #1 – Use your website
If you don’t have one, get one. Use it to communicate your goals,thank your sponsors, highlight periodic offerings, recognize successes, honor individual contributors, etc.

Promote your web site on all your materials.

Publicity Tip #2 – Actively seek more publicity
Get the word out about your fundraiser in as many ways as possible. Get into as many neighborhood newsletters and other public forms of communication as you can.

Send out press releases to the local media and invite coverage with photo opps at your fun events.

Publicity Tip #3 – Utilize any gathering
Make announcements at other events to spread the word, display products, take orders, make sales, and recruit volunteers.

Take a joint venture approach to marketing your group by giving something of value back to all those who join your team.

Publicity Tip #4 – Goal awareness
Heavily promote the goal of your fundraiser in all communications, particularly between sellers and buyers. A good cause gets the money out.

Make sure that all participants know the specific reason why the money is being raised.

Publicity Tip #5 – Communication
Use all available means of increasing awareness of your group’s efforts including roadside signs, e-mail lists, phone calling tree, newsletter, flyers, posters, bulletin boards, recorded hotline messages, etc.

Publicity Tip #6 – Sponsorship decals
Offer these free to supporting merchants. Sell to membership level supporters. Use the glass stick-on type for storefronts or vehicle windows.

This “branding” gets the word out to the community that your organization has a strong support base.

Publicity Tip #7 – Bumper stickers
Sell your organization year round with every fundraiser by offering one that says “Proud Supporter of _____.” Give one to every volunteer and group member.

Publicity Tip #8 – Flyers everywhere
Hit local mailboxes (follow postal regulations) and car windshields in shopping centers. Give fundraiser details in your flyer in a way that promotes sales and gives contact information.

Put a coupon or free gift offer into the flyer that will keep it from being thrown away. Your merchant base will help provide the offers because this is free advertising for them.

For example, a flyer including a car wash, dry cleaners, or oil change coupon. (Or even all three!)

Publicity Tip #9 – Build an e-mail list
Ask for an e-mail address for a newsletter distribution when you’re fundraising. Have opt-in links on your web site.

Build an online community of supporters by offering them extras available only at your site.

Put your fundraising publicity plan in place today. You’ll reap the benefits in continued growth and additional fundraising success for years to come.

Kimberly Reynolds writes about fundraising and helpful tips on organizing fundraising publicty tips on her website FundraiserHelp.com. Sign us for her free monthly newsletter at www.fundraiserhelp.com

Online brokers negotiate financing deals with several lenders. This may mean that you can find a better deal through their site than by working with the lender. Not all mortgage brokers guarantee the lowest refinancing rates, so you should also compare brokers.

Understanding Mortgage Brokers

Mortgage brokers specialize in finding financing. They work with many lenders to offer you several financing choices. They partner with traditional banks as well as thrift institutions, credit unions, and mortgage companies. They can even connect you with subprime lenders if you have poor credit.

Not all brokers call themselves “mortgage brokers.” But any site that offers bids from more than one lending company is a broker. Make sure you know if you are dealing with a broker, since this will affect your closing costs.

Brokers collect a fee for each loan they refer to a lender. Sometimes you will pay this fee as part of the closing costs, other times it will come out of the mortgage company’s fees. Even with the additional expense of a fee, brokers can usually find you better deals than if you shop alone.

Working With Broker Sites

Online broker sites enable you to make quick comparisons from basic financial information that you provide. Usually, you will need a general idea of your credit score, loan amount, and down payment. The quote you receive gives you a rough idea of rates and closing costs.

Take the time to check with a couple of broker sites to find the best deal. Each broker works with different lenders and negotiates unique deals. Spending a few extra minutes analyzing quotes can save you thousands in interest costs.

Taking The Next Step

Once you have narrowed your choices down for refinancing, request a detailed quote from the lender. This will require the financing company to look at your credit score. You don’t want to request too many detailed quotes, since your credit score is temporarily lowered every time a lender makes a credit inquiry.

The detailed quotes will list rate along with terms, such as required points. Even with this accurate quote, it can change hourly based on market indexes and bank rates. If you find a good deal, it is best to act on it quickly to lock in rates.

View our recommended mortgage refi lenders.

1. Try something new and you might be surprised. Let the staff make suggestions. Compare the wines aged in steel to those aged in oak barrels.

2. Take Notes especially if you are gone all day. Most wineries offer a list that will assist you on keeping track. When you get home to your local wine shop, you will appreciate having a cheat sheet.

3. Visit during off season. November through May is an excellent time. You might be only one of the few guests all day, so the staff can give you some extra time.

4. Ask Questions. Winery staff love to be engaged and help educate. They are trained to know a lot about the wines you taste.

5. Eat the crackers. They help you clean your palate and absorb the alcohol.

6. Don’t just stick with the big-name wineries. Check out some of the smaller ones in the area.

7. The nose, knows. Try not to use too much perfume or aftershave. The aroma of the wine is half the fun of tasting.

8. Call ahead for large parties. If you call ahead some wineries will even arrange cheese and fruit trays.

9. Be patient. If you prefer to visit during the peak seasons, you will have a great time tasting, but it may take a minute or two for the staff to serve you.

10. To test for a really good wine, swirl it around the glass. Legs or tears are what is left trickling down the glass after swirling. The stickier and longer the legs the better the quality.

About the Author

Contributor: Stuart Glasure [A wine enthusiast and publishing member of the wine source: http://www.WineDefinitions.com.]

As we all know cycling is a great way to improve your overall cardiovascular fitness. However, what you may not know is that over time the demands of cycling can lead to muscular imbalances which can limit the body’s ability to perform at peak level and dramatically increase chance of both over-use injury and chronic pain.

To get a clearer idea of how these imbalances can occur we’ll take a look at the riding posture starting from the feet and moving up to the head:

Pedaling places a lot of stress on the calves. Tight calves can cause the feet to flatten and place undue stress on the heel cord, plantar fascia and knees. The major muscles involved in cycling are the quadriceps. You can see that by looking at any professional cyclist. However, miles of cycling in the bent over cycling position can create tightness in the quadriceps and the psoas (hip flexors). These tight quads and hip flexors pull the pelvis out of optimal position into a forward tilt. This anterior tilt of the pelvis sets in motion a cascade of muscle imbalance. The forward tilt of the pelvis causes an increased arching of the lower back. This over loads the muscles of the lumbar spine while at the same time lengthens and weakens the abdominals. Another muscle group negatively affected by these dominant quads and hip flexors are the gluteals. The glutes are a major pelvic stabilizer and the main hip extensors of the body. Tightness and over-activation of their opposing hip flexors cause the glutes to become weak and under-active. In this situation, because the glutes cannot effectively extend the hip, the hamstrings must pick up the slack. As a result, the hamstrings get over worked and become tight.

Moving up to the shoulders and mid-back, we see the back rounded. A rounded upper back causes the shoulder blades to elevate and protract. As a result, the muscles in the chest and upper trapezius become tight leaving the shoulders hiked up and pulled forward. Tight pecs major and upper traps weaken the mid-back and scapula stabilizers. Weak scapula stabilizers can place undue stress in the shoulder joint during overhead movements while tight upper Traps are a major contributor to neck tension and pain.

The last body part to look at is the head. Cycling posture pulls the head forward. The cervical spine was designed to efficiently support the head and evenly distribute its weight among the seven cervical vertebrae. As the head is pulled forward the distribution of its weight shifts and more force is placed on the vertebrae at the base of the neck. This can lead to calcium deposits and arthritic changes in the cervical vertebrae. A forward head also leads to tightness of the neck flexors and weakening of the neck extensors. This places undue stress on the muscles in the back of the neck and commonly results in neck pain and tension head aches.

As you can see, cycling can cause some serious muscle imbalances that can lead to pain in the body. The next article will look at how to correct these imbalances using an integrated training approach that encompasses muscle balance, postural efficiency, core stability and flexibility.

Dave Radin, CSCS, NASM-CPT, is a personal trainer with Precision Fitness. Precision Fitness is located in the Lake Norman area of Charlotte, North Carolina. Check out their website at http://www.lakenormanfitness.com. You can contact Dave at Precision Fitness at 704-662-8664, or by email at dave@ncprecisionfitness.com.

For the past ten years USB and FireWire have struggled to dominate the desktop interface market. Until five years ago, because of the relatively fast 400 Mbps offered by FireWire, USB, jokingly referred to as Ultra Slow Bandwidth, was relegated to low-bandwidth applications such as keyboards and mice. At the end of 2001, however, USB dealt a fatal blow to FireWire with the release of the new USB 2.0 standard offering a maximum speed of 480 Mbps, faster than the theoretical limit of FireWire (though, in practice, usually slower).

It seems that USB has essentially won the standards battle with FireWire because of its relative low-cost and high availability. The limitation of USB (both the 1.1 and 2.0 standards popular today) is the 16 foot limit. When you have more than 16 feet between your computer and your USB device you will see significant degradation in the signal that can cause problems ranging from slower transmission speeds to an entirely dropped connection. This causes problems for people who want to run a USB cable to a printer located in another room, to a presentation keyboard/mouse combo or any other USB device that may be in a remote location.

The cheapest (and arguably easiest) way to extend the distance to your USB device is by using a USB Active Extension Cable. These cables have built-in USB repeaters that actually boost the USB signal, allowing you to go further than the 16 foot maximum distance. The most common length for these cables is 16 feet and you can chain up to four of these together with no loss in signal. Assuming you are using the longest USB device cable available (also 16 feet), USB Active Extension Cables allow for a maximum distance of 80 feet between your computer and USB device. They are available in USB 1.1 (12 Mbps) and USB 2.0 (480 Mbps).

For most USB extensions 80 feet is long enough, but what if you need to go further? Super USB Extenders allow you to extend the distance to your USB devices up to 150 feet with no loss in signal. The Super USB Extender uses similar technology for the male and female interfaces, but rather than have a regular USB cable in the middle, it uses a Cat 5 cable (also known as a networking cable). The advantage of Super USB Extenders, other than the increased maximum distance, is the ability to create a custom length. If you need to go 63 feet, for example, you can simply use a Super USB Extender with a 63 foot Cat 5 Cable between the booster and receiver. Super USB Extenders are also available in USB 1.1 and 2.0 interfaces.

If you are looking for a connection beyond 150 feet, many manufacturers offer a special Super USB Extender capable of USB transfer with no signal loss at 330 feet, though this is limited to USB 1.1. Black Box has created a USB 1.1 extender capable of transmission up to 1000 feet without signal loss, perfect for connecting your computer to a security camera or webcam hundreds of feet away from your computer.

Another exciting innovation for USB extension technology is the pending release of Wireless USB. Wireless USB hubs and devices are anticipated to show up in early 2006 with maximum distances over 100 feet. Keep in mind that this is the first release and as the technology matures this distance limitation will inevitably be lifted in favor of much further distances.

Preston Wily is the Marketing Director for Sewell Direct, an internet retailer of USB extension solutions and other fine extension products.