Hub You - News and Society

How Local Merchants Can Succeed On The Internet
For decades, local mom and pop businesses could rely on word of mouth and traditional print services to garner customers. If the local businesses had a good or service that they wanted to promote, they could just call up the local newspaper and ask for an advertisement. However, as media has evolved towards more sophisticated routes such as the Internet, it has become increasingly more difficult (and oftentimes prohibitively expensive) for local businesses to stand-out against the crowd by advertising in both newer and older types of media. Yet, local businesses continually find themselves facing a problem. As potential customers become more Internet savvy, local companies could be doing themselves a great disservice by not having some sort of exposure on the Internet.According to Kelsey Research, 70% of US households now use the internet when searching for local products and services. In fact, it is projected that over 20 billion searches for local information will be made in 2007. 75% of Internet users have looked for services and products within an area close to their home or business. Moreover, recent Internet studies have found that some of the most searched queries in search engines such as Google or Yahoo are words such as ‘local business,’ ‘free,’ ‘discount,’ ‘cheap,’ and other terms bearing the connotation that the searcher is looking for something to purchase.Although many may be trying to look for cheap electronics that can be shipped to their homes, it is also extremely apparent that consumers are searching to for businesses in their local area that they can patronize. Most consumption on a day to day basis is not on items such as electronics that can be purchased online. People need automotive

down that day. Kinda odd to us that know. We even have a tape of this man saying he gave orders to "pull" his third building and darn if it didn't come down like a controlled demolition. No one asked him how he did that and how do you pull a building the same day? We have no idea why the media won't ask this man to explain himself. After all, all three of his buildings came down exactly the same way that day. We're not stupid, but we do live in a climate of a bit more fear of our current government than ever I remember being under. After all, we also have a government that listens to us at will and minds our business for us, again as we used to make fun of others for doing to their citizens. We even have a President who only obeys the laws he likes and signs off on the ones he doesn't wish to be held to. Boy, I tried that once. Didn't go over real good with dad! He's done it over 750 times and his dad never says anything to him it about it. Go figure. We know our President has broken a lot of laws in this country in the name of taking authority to himself that he is not entitled to. We hope to address that issue with him someday. Now we find that even those who investivaged 9-11 are admitting that this current administration was less than forthcoming and actually impeded their investigation when they could. Where I come from, that can only mean one thing...

Video Card Purchases: The More You Play...The More You Pay
In case you haven't noticed, the high-end video cards are expensive with every release, and the same high-end video cards disappear from their pole position within 6 months or less due to another model replacing it. There are video card owners who feel betrayed after spending $700 on a graphics card, only to discover several months later the card can be purchased for half the amount. Are these consumers justified in being confused and at a loss for why their video card is outdated before their next birthday?The New Marketing Of Video CardsVideo card manufacturers began to discover the Relentless Pursuit Of Speed as they competed with each other. At the time, 3dfx, nVidia, and ATI were the top competitors. They also realized consumers were not satisified with overclocking their motherboards and memory alone, and were now diving into another area which could be tweaked, modified, manipulated, and OC'ed to levels higher than what was recommended by the manufacturer: Video Cards! When the video card became a brand new area to tweak and boost, the race was on for the fastest, most powerful card ever.Not so long after, came several different video card versions of the same graphics chip, each offering a slightly different modified model, at a slightly different price. For example, 3dfx came out with the Voodoo3. There was the Voodoo3 2000, Voodoo3 3000, and the Voodoo3 3500. Instead of the consumer spending time overclocking the card, there were now many different models offered for that particular need. In other words, the more you paid for the card, the more the performance. This seemed like a great deal initially. Why bother tweaking a card and voiding the warranty when you could spend a

It disturbs me personally when I read in yours or our media that "the Americans" are doing or not doing this or that in Iraq, standing by while Israel does this or that to Palestinians and the Lebanese and are about to do this or that to Syria and perhaps North Korea. You need to understand that most Americans are doing no such things. It is our elected or perhaps fraudulently selected government that is doing this. It is not even all the government but more specifically THIS Administration made up of the Bush family Dynasty, in the form of the President and all those under his immediate control depending on who one thinks controls who in this administration. It is not the American people against the Palestinian, Iraqi, Syrian, Lebanese and other people! It is not the average easy going, live and let live Christian against Islam. We are a live and let live type of people and expect the same from others. I know you don't see that side of us in the actions of our leaders. Neither do we. This current, and soon to pass from the scene, we hope, has lost sight of what a Democracy really is and what constitutes a real American. If we had our way, we'd pass a law that forbid any two people in the same family from ever being allowed to run for President. It would prevent dyanastic rule and allow us to cut short any foolishiness that is more self serving than supportive of American ideals and our over all best interests.

The extreme literalists in Christianity, fundamentalists as we call them too, do not speak for the average Christian. And many Christians do not speak for the average American. They are the God haunted Christians who see every turn of events in the Middle East as a sure sign that Jesus return is just around the corner, again, and we are all going to be forced into unspeakable joy with them at the helm of the Jesus Kingdom on earth...I am being sarcastic, I hope you know! They have leaders who are also God haunted and seem bent on playing a part in CAUSING Bible prophecy to APPEAR to be coming true. They don't know that many so called, "Bible Prophecies" are not prophecies at all, or were written after the fact appearing to be have come true. It's how religious people in the past play fast and loose with scripture to our harm. In our country, we call it a "meme" which is a mind virus that is more of the problem than the solution to our spiritual needs.

Our President says he hears the voice of God, and you need to know that makes the vast majority of us average Americans very nervous when he says that. Our President has a way of speaking that often embarasses us and mannerisms that, while funny, aren't. Most of us don't believe for a minute that he nor his extended family have any understanding of the average American, much less respect. His mom actually felt that the victims of hurricane Katrina were really having quite a good time and much better off having to flee to strange cities and stay in public arenas because they were actually living better there than where they were. We don't hear much from her anymore. Someone once said "he who can convince you of obsurdities, can provoke you to commit autrocities..." Feels a bit like that now and we don't care for it one bit.

Eternal life under Christian fundamentalist control would be the classic definition of Hell where I come from. Our fundamentalists would have to eliminate your fundamentalists in great battles fought in the love of Jesus to get you to see the light. Of course, your fundamentalists would feel compelled to do the same. Perhaps you and I can sit on a hill somewhere and watch them make even more fools of themselves and have a good laugh. The best we can hope for is that each side will eliminate the other side and we the people, the average, the we are all one crowd, can pick up the pieces and clean up in the hope of bringing a tolerance and leaving people alone approach back to life on planet earth.

We the people believe that all of you deserve a safe place to live and work with your families and especially your children getting to grow up as children should be able to. We agonize over the pictures of your losses and the cruelty that you are experiencing at the hands of Israel and our Government. Yes, we support our own young men and women in the armed forces, because they are our kids and we want them home safely. No one raises their kids to be blown to bits or to loose their minds in a war zone that is so frightening, they do terrible things to feel in control of it all until they can get home. We understand they make choices and, as parents, understand that they can have sincere beliefs about what they are doing and for whom, and yet not know they too are and can be being used for the less than noble agendas of those who would never send their own children into harms way.

We're still trying here to figure out who really killed John Kennedy, Bobby Kennedy, John Jr., if that could be what really happened, Martin Luther King Jr, and a host of others who seem to have gotten under the skin of those who had the power to stop them. We are losing our naive beliefs about how our government works and that our vote counts. Our last two elections in the country feel more like third world elections we grew up making fun of, more than ever before. Most of my friends believe that those who got to be in charge of America for a time, and who have caused far more problems in our world than they have ever solved, are not really those the American people meant to elect. Someone once said you won't ever be a mature person in our country until you realize that Presidents are not elected, they are selected. I hope that is not true, but sure seems so at this point. I just wanted you to know that we know that too. I see more and more signs that say "he's not my President" where once you'd get your car rammed for having that on the bumper. You still can where I live, but less and less likely as Bible prophecy does not unfold with the appropriate ending and the Christian fundamentalists end up with a big sanitation problem, which I am sure they will tell others to clean up, and no Kingdom of God on earth for them. We have a saying around here here..."God, save me from your followers," that seems pretty true. I just wanted you to know we have that perspective when we see

We even have some rather grave doubts about what really happened in this country on 9-11. We had buildings come all the way down that should never come down. We have a building that came down that few even know about that should never have come down, owned by a man who owned the only other two building that came down that day. Kinda odd to us that know. We even have a tape of this man saying he gave orders to "pull" his third building and darn if it didn't come down like a controlled demolition. No one asked him how he did that and how do you pull a building the same day? We have no idea why the media won't ask this man to explain himself. After all, all three of his buildings came down exactly the same way that day. We're not stupid, but we do live in a climate of a bit more fear of our current government than ever I remember being under. After all, we also have a government that listens to us at will and minds our business for us, again as we used to make fun of others for doing to their citizens. We even have a President who only obeys the laws he likes and signs off on the ones he doesn't wish to be held to. Boy, I tried that once. Didn't go over real good with dad! He's done it over 750 times and his dad never says anything to him it about it. Go figure. We know our President has broken a lot of laws in this country in the name of taking authority to himself that he is not entitled to. We hope to address that issue with him someday. Now we find that even those who investivaged 9-11 are admitting that this current administration was less than forthcoming and actually impeded their investigation when they could. Where I come from, that can only mean one thing...

Is Microsoft Going Down?
May be, but it won't be evident in the next decade at least! As people say everything starts as a small spring. Maybe the downfall is imperceptible... But it is high time they start re-inventing themselves.An interesting lesson from "Paranoid Survive"... from which we can understand that there is a shift in the computer industry, Software is becoming a commodity. The fact is, the number of customers realizing that are on the rise. Customers now tend to pay for the service offered by the company, and not the software. This pardigm shift, could be hard to digest for B'Gates. Because they are no where in the services domain... as an outsider of microsoft, this is my perception...Going forward, I would like to take the privilege of comparing Microsoft and GE. Jack Welsch, restructered GE, and gave a new management mantra... "If something is working then fix it." When this was pronounced by Jack, it was widely criticized as a fallacy, which could lead to the downfall of GE. But look at GE now, because of his diversification and "vision" of the future,. they are the No: 1 in medical equipments. In the course of their growth, he had to make sacrifices to bring GE to what it is now... so what is thebig deal? Well! I'm not asking m'soft to completely change their path... but I don't see anything happenning...In my humble opinion, any entereprenuer should not have ego. It is bound to kill the company! B'Gates seems to have more of it... he has to shed it and be humble enough to embrace change. The major advantage you get by shedding your ego, is the ability to get a kickstart from other people meme's (courtesy: Seth Godwin's Survival is Not Enough). To do this he has to understand the modern customer and "vis

turn of events in the Middle East as a sure sign that Jesus return is just around the corner, again, and we are all going to be forced into unspeakable joy with them at the helm of the Jesus Kingdom on earth...I am being sarcastic, I hope you know! They have leaders who are also God haunted and seem bent on playing a part in CAUSING Bible prophecy to APPEAR to be coming true. They don't know that many so called, "Bible Prophecies" are not prophecies at all, or were written after the fact appearing to be have come true. It's how religious people in the past play fast and loose with scripture to our harm. In our country, we call it a "meme" which is a mind virus that is more of the problem than the solution to our spiritual needs.

The Five Words That Will Kill Your Service Business
“Is my vehicle ready, yet?” may seem like pretty innocuous words. However, these are the five little words that could hurt your dealership’s bottom-line. Anytime your customer initiates a call AFTER the promised delivery time, you have damaged your image in your customer’s heart and mind. Granted, if our answer is “Yes, Mr. Jones, I was just about to give you a call. We have completed all the work on your vehicle. You can come and pick it up at your convenience,” it may stem the bleeding. But if we say, “Oh, let me check. No, we haven’t gotten to your car. Boy, have we been swamped today,” you are adding insult to injury.Think about it from your customers’ perspective. They are busy people who are already inconvenienced by the loss of their vehicle. If they call you, you have compounded that inconvenience. They are worried about when they can get their vehicle back, AND they had to take time from their day to find out whether you have completed the work. One of the reasons customers take their vehicles to an independent service center, instead of a dealership service department, is that they can be in control of when their vehicle will be ready. For example driving up to a quick lube center (“in and out in 10 minutes”), the customer feels in control. If there are too many cars in line, they can choose to drive away. But if the place is empty, they know that they can drive in and out in a few minutes. Time is an important factor for most clients. Remember, in most of our customers’ minds…time IS money. So, you are COSTING your customers. Your lack of consideration has just added more cost to the bill. You probably know that for customers to continue doing business with you, value has to exceed pri

f Hell where I come from. Our fundamentalists would have to eliminate your fundamentalists in great battles fought in the love of Jesus to get you to see the light. Of course, your fundamentalists would feel compelled to do the same. Perhaps you and I can sit on a hill somewhere and watch them make even more fools of themselves and have a good laugh. The best we can hope for is that each side will eliminate the other side and we the people, the average, the we are all one crowd, can pick up the pieces and clean up in the hope of bringing a tolerance and leaving people alone approach back to life on planet earth.

Website Promotion Technique - Extremely Effective
There is tremendous power in writing your own articles. Let me briefly explain this for you if you are not already aware. Let's say that you have a website promoting one or many different products. You could have the best website and the best products available today but you know as well as I do that that doesn't mean a thing if no one sees that website. So instead of going out and joining thousands of safelists and posting to tons of FFA pages, which are just a couple of methods many still use today with very little or no success, I want you to try a different method.Lets say your website sales a product for people who play golf. For this example, lets pretend it's some new type of golf club to improve your swing. You can develop what the top 5% of internet marketers create and that is called a "pre-sell" page. It can be a personal recommendation for using the product giving examples of how it worked for you and you might want to include a little history about yourself like how long you have played the sport and things you have tried in the past etc. etc... Build a little bit of a rapport with the prospective customer. Let them begin to get to know you and trust you. But never ever make it sound like you are selling something and do not mention a price.You might try including a link casually within your conversation which will actually be a link to your website. Your customers will be much more inclined to buy from you since they didn't feel like you were trying to "sale" them. You may have mentioned something in your story that they could relate to.Now once this page is set up, you will want to start writing your articles. I would recommend 10-20 a day if you can. Go through your we

g Jr, and a host of others who seem to have gotten under the skin of those who had the power to stop them. We are losing our naive beliefs about how our government works and that our vote counts. Our last two elections in the country feel more like third world elections we grew up making fun of, more than ever before. Most of my friends believe that those who got to be in charge of America for a time, and who have caused far more problems in our world than they have ever solved, are not really those the American people meant to elect. Someone once said you won't ever be a mature person in our country until you realize that Presidents are not elected, they are selected. I hope that is not true, but sure seems so at this point. I just wanted you to know that we know that too. I see more and more signs that say "he's not my President" where once you'd get your car rammed for having that on the bumper. You still can where I live, but less and less likely as Bible prophecy does not unfold with the appropriate ending and the Christian fundamentalists end up with a big sanitation problem, which I am sure they will tell others to clean up, and no Kingdom of God on earth for them. We have a saying around here here..."God, save me from your followers," that seems pretty true. I just wanted you to know we have that perspective when we see

Abridging Books Into eBooks
For people who are authors of books and have perhaps self published previously it might be a good idea to turn your book into an eBook. If your book is a nonfiction book it may be possible to break the chapters down and perhaps elaborate on some of the subjects and 2-3 E-books from that one work. It does not make sense to take a book which you may have produced that perhaps sold less than 10,000 copies since you self published it and then not turn it into something that can be seen by many more people.If you break down the subjects properly into the books you may be able to get quite a few more people reading your book and you can charge a very low price. The lower the price the more people who will afford it can buy it and eBooks cost very little to produce.There are many successful online eBook writers and authors and you can go to Lulu.com and see all the eBooks there available to all online Internet buyers. What do you have to lose? And why would you allow such information that you spent so much time and hard work and effort in producing go to waste. Isn't it time that you made a second edition anyway and this might be a way. Think of this in 2006 and maybe you might find success in the eBook business.

We don't know why our airforce was so slack on 9-11 either. They snagged a run away Lear Jet a few years ago, out West, in minutes, but couldn't snag a jet liner in our most crowded air corridors of the East in hours. Some feel they were not so slack as uninformed. We have heard that our own Vice President told someone that the order to not shoot anyone down "still stood." Pretty creepy stuff.

And most of us know that a live Osama is better than a dead one when you can't find him, and no one really wanted him dead or alive. But I suspect when the time comes, he'll show up deader than alive. Dead men don't tell tales you know. Oh, and most of us know that there were no WMD's to justify going to war anywhere and we weren't in near as much danger then as we are now. On 9-11 we had a lot of sympathy, but our government, not our people, managed to squander that pretty darn quickly worldwide. Some say the administration needed a "Pearl Harbor" to go to war...but I can hardly think of the implications of that myself. I do know that truth tends to rise to the surface in time and if we ever find out what we merely suspect, you'll see what a true American is and how a genuine Democracy can work in the best of ways. We are that kind of people at the grass roots.

Understand that not all of us by any stretch, think the nation of Israel can do no wrong. They have an agenda, and it's obvious it is by permission of President Bush and Tony Blair. These men can speak up, but won't or when they do, it is weakly until agendas are met. Now Christian fundamentalists in our country think it is God's chosen land, but we know better. Funny how on the one hand our fundamentalists think the Jews killed Jesus, but on the other hand, think God loves that waste howling wilderness more than others and they are the special chosen ones to usher in the Kingdom of God, ala their ideas. Just so you know, the Romans killed Jesus, for sedition, just as they had thousands before him, but the Fundies aren't all that wild about ruling from Rome, where Satan lives. Most of my friends think Satan lives here or at least has a summer home here too.

The world has changed since these people came to "power." We wish they had come to "responsibility" instead of power, but we're stuck with the fruits of their thinking until we decide not to be. The average American knows they have no way of knowing just what is going on, who is pulling what on who and what the agenda really is. I do know that nothing we are being told is really what is and that nothing is as most in high places would lead us to believe. We are not stupid, but we feel powerless at times like you do. We also get amazed as to how so few can cause such misery and deception for the many. It's an enigma wrapped in swiss cheese covered with baloney. We know this, but don't always know what to do about it or who to trust in bringing out sincere change for the good of all not just the few. Right now, we have a government that is a benefit to the few, very few. I feel they laugh at us behind closed doors and are all smoke and mirrors in public. The people they hire to tell us what they mean or meant are like comedians to us. Remember the guy in Iraq that said the Americans were fleeing and he could not hear the bombs dropping the background?..like that! We have our own apologist who think we believe them, but we don't.

Some day all of us would love to meet all of you who have suffered so under the badly managed leadership of all our elected, selected or self appointed leaders. We'd like to get to know you as the human beings you are. Laugh a bit with you and cry over your losses at the hands of those that have never suffered such losses but seem freely capable of inflicting them. I honestly don't know how these men sleep at night, but they do. Maybe good drugs. Perhaps there is a drugs for thugs program in America we also don't know about...

So until this time passes, please know that we, the average Americans, those who don't see the world through the eyes and filters of the fundamentalist Christians nor the zealots of confrontational and pushy government, are thinking of you and feeling the pain of your being in harms way. It will change somehow and for the good. I am not sure how, but I do know that sometimes we have to experience others losing their minds so we then can all come to our senses. Perhaps that time is just around the corner. That is what we hope. We just wanted you to know that we are thinking of you and not a part of the "They", "Americans" or "the American government," that is imposing it's misguided will upon people who simply want to be left alone and would be excellent friends to have if one ever took the time to get to know them before blowing them into whatever their idea of Kingdom Come is.

I see some hope in demonstrations like these...

"Fury at Blair as 100,000 take to the streets over Lebanon Some 100,000 protesters took to the streets of London on Saturday to demand an end to Israel's assault on Lebanon and Gaza - and to express their fury at Tony Blair's refusal to call for an immediate and unconditional ceasefire

Protesters booed as they filed past the US embassy in Grovesnor Square. They left 1,500 pairs of children's shoes outside Downing Street to symbolise the children Israel has killed in Lebanon and Gaza.

The demonstration's anger was not just directed at Israel, but also at the US and British governments for their complicity in the carnage now engulfing the Middle East."

Warmest Regards

The Average American- who knows you don't hate our freedom...and want you to know we don't think like they do either.

For now let us pray that God will bless and keep "them"........... far away from us and you.

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Hub You - An Open Letter To the Good People of the Middle East From the We're Not that Stupid Americans

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