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The Following was taken from the Ghana Microfinance website...

Title: Explore online marketing ? Haruna Iddrisu advises MSMEs
The Minister of Trade and Industry, Mr Haruna Iddrisu, has said the Internet provides enormous opportunities for business, particularly Micro Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) in the country to make their products and services known to the global market. He has therefore urged players in business of small and medium scale to take advantage of the Internet to market their products and services to the international market.
Mr Iddrisu who is also the Member of Parliament for Tamale Central of the National Democratic Congress (NDC) said this when he launched the web-based product gallery in Accra.
The National Web-Based Gallery is a platform designed to enhance the MSMEs competitiveness by providing reliable products and company information of participating Ghanaian firms.
hrough the establishment of the website, the government intends to create more job opportunities while strengthening Ghana?s international trade by putting businesses in a position to be part of the global supply network.
The site has a total of 300 products on offer presently from 71 different companies.
In its simplest form, the term online marketing refers to using the power of Internet advertising to generate a response from your audience.
Also known as Internet marketing or web marketing, online marketing is used by companies selling goods and services directly to consumers as well as those who operate on a business-to-business model.
The Internet, it has now become a primary tool for the delivery of information, businesses of all sizes are using online marketing to increase awareness of their company's goods and services.
According to Philip Kotler and Gary Armstrong in their book, Principles of Marketing, there are enormous advantages of online marketing.
There are a number of benefits to the consumers and marketers as consumers can shop 24 hours a day from anywhere without going to the store physically;
Internet shopping is equally interactive and immediate as consumers can interact with the seller's site to find the information, products, or services they desire.
To the marketers he or she can build good customer relationship and equally interact with customers to learn more about their needs and to build customer databases.
Internet marketing reduces costs and increase efficiency thereby avoiding the expense of maintaining a physical store, costs of rent, insurance, and utilities. Digital catalogs cost less to produce than printing and mailing paper catalogs
There is also the issue of greater flexibility in marketing online. Unlike a paper catalog whose products and prices are fixed until the next printing, an online catalog can be adjusted daily or even hourly, adapting product availability, prices, and promotions to match changing market conditions.
The Internet is a global medium, which allows buyers and sellers to click from one country to another in seconds.
Creating an Electronic Storefront? companies can buy space on a commercial online service or it can open its own Web site. These sites are designed to engage consumers in an interaction that will move them closer to a purchase or other marketing outcome;
Placing Ads Online? companies can place online ads in three ways: (a) classified ads in special sections of major commercial online services (b) ads in certain Internet newsgroups set up for commercial purposes (c) buy online ads that pop up while people are surfing the web. Such ads include banner ads, pop-up windows, "tickers" (banners moving across screen), and "road-blocks" (full-screen ads that users must go through to get to other screens they wish to view);
Participating in Internet Forums, Newsgroups, or Web Communities? companies may participate in or sponsor Internet forums, newsgroups, and bulletin boards that appeal to specific special interest groups;
Use Online E-mail or Webcasting ? companies can send out customer newsletters, special product or promotion offers based on customer buying histories. Webcasting or "push" programming delivers information of interest to consumers' desktops
The Minister, however regretted that in spite of the potential and benefits of growing businesses of the MSMEs, they were yet to take full advantage of the Internet to stand up to international competition.
?The unfortunate situation is that we have not taken full advantage of this massive opportunity as most of our MSMEs lack the capability to stand up to international competition,? Mr Iddrisu said.
He expressed the hope that the newly created platform would be used as a powerful marketing tool for them to advertise information about their products, prices and contact details to the world market.
Mr Iddrisu stressed that ?today with the click of a mouse products made in Ghana are available to the rest of the world.?
To compete effectively in the international market, he further underscored the need for MSMEs to improve on their products to attract the taste of potential international consumers.
The President of the Ghana Chamber of Commerce, Mr Seth Adjei-Baah, who chaired the programme said it was a ?matter of urgency? for Ghanaian businesses to integrate into the global economy as the Internet was in the process of replacing traditional forms of advertising.
A representative from the World Bank, Mr Kofi Boateng Agyen, encouraged the ministry to continue to support private sector growth and expressed the hope that the initiative would help MSMEs to identify ways to grow and employ Ghana?s youth.

Paulina Opoku-Gyimah says: As you can gather from the above text, Ghana Microfinance is full of must-read news concerning business in Ghana?and in particular about funding and how to access it.?

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My only grip with Ghana Microfinance is that when it talks about ventures and in this case ---a new, ?web-based product gallery in Accra? known as Ghana Trade, Ghana Microfinance should supply a link to the website in question so that their readers can access said service.

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Of course they are not the only service/business failing to add links to businesses they are talking about, think newspapers, magazines, websites, blogs in Ghana that ---for some reason(s) are at loathes to supply links to other people?s businesses.. I personally think its tacky and a lost opportunity.??Anyway the Ghana Trade website is: http://ghanatrade.gov.gh/

Please note, as far as Ghana Rising Blog is concerned, the Ghana Trade website should be known and used by all Ghanaians aged 18 and over- wherever they are located in the world!!!!
For more info about Ghana Microfinance ? a business offering much needed funding advice for SME?s looking for funding in Ghana visit: http://www.ghana-microfinance.com/

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Source: http://ghanarising.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-must-visit-website-ghana-microfinance.html

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Bodies By Design welcomes Heather to our personal training team ...

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Being brought up in a family with a strong love of the outdoors, a sedentary life is not something I am very familiar with.? I grew up spending every summer camping, canoeing and hiking in northern Ontario and still continue with that passion at any chance I get.? When summer was over and done, my evenings after school were filled with swimming lessons, soccer practice, intramural volleyball games and dance lessons.

After graduating high school, I moved west of the city from Etobicoke to Waterloo to attend Wilfrid Laurier University.? The new and exciting university lifestyle came with an overload of eating out and celebrating with friends.? In attempts to avoid the most undesirable ?Freshman Fifteen?, I found herself getting well-acquainted with the gym.? Following my graduation four years later with an honours degree in English Literature and still no clear idea of what to do, I decided to take that interest I developed for exercise and further my education at Humber College in the Fitness and Health Promotion program.

The Bodies By Design program works because it fits with your lifestyle.? The friendly, passionate and motivating trainers here will push you to maximize results and help you reach your full potential.? By combining rigorous exercise programs with a balanced and healthy diet, all that extra weight that?s been bringing you down will start to melt away.?? All we need is your commitment.

Exercise and weight loss is not something we do just for ?bikini season? or to prepare for a big event.? For lasting results, it requires a real lifestyle change and true, honest dedication.? And most importantly, anyone setting out on this journey towards a fit and healthy lifestyle must be willing to acknowledge that it takes time, patience and perseverance.? We?ll all fall down at one point, but we need to get back up and keep on pushing, pulling and lifting!?

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Source: http://www.bodiesbydesign.ca/bodies-by-design-welcomes-heather-to-our-personal-training-team/

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Bernanke defends Fed's low-interest-rate policies

WASHINGTON (AP) ? Chairman Ben Bernanke is standing by the Federal Reserve's low-interest-rate policies, cautioning that any move to raise rates prematurely could derail a still-modest economic recovery.

Bernanke also sought to calm fears that super-low rates risk igniting inflation or rattling investors, during a speech late Friday in San Francisco to an economic conference sponsored by the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank.

The central bank's low-rate policies are intended to encourage borrowing and spending to boost the economy. Higher rates would make borrowing more expensive.

Bernanke said the Fed's policies mirror what other central banks around the world are doing.

"Long-term interest rates in the major industrial countries are low for a good reason: Inflation is low and stable and, given expectations of weak growth, expected real short rates are low," he said.

"Premature rate increases would carry a high risk of short-circuiting the recovery, possibly leading ? ironically enough ? to an even longer period of low long-term rates," he said.

His comments amplified testimony he gave to Congress this week.

Critics, including some Fed regional bank presidents, have expressed concerns that the Fed may be raising the risk of inflation through its purchases of Treasury bonds and mortgage-backed securities.

As he did in his appearance before House and Senate committees this week, Bernanke sought to provide reassurance that the central bank is closely monitoring developments in financial markets to guard against such risks.

He said 2010 financial regulatory overhaul has forced banks to boost the required capital on hand to cushion against losses. The Fed also conducts annual stress tests to make sure that the nation's largest financial institutions have sufficient resources to survive adverse economic conditions, he said.

"We pay special attention to developments at the largest, most complex financial firms, making use of information gathered in our supervision of the institutions," Bernanke said.

During a question period after his speech, Bernanke was asked what he believed were the most significant lessons learned from the financial crisis. Prior to serving as Fed chairman, Bernanke had been a college professor at Princeton who researched mistakes made by the Federal Reserve during the Great Depression.

Bernanke said there was a need for better oversight of the financial system. And he noted that assets such as housing can quickly become significantly overpriced. But he said in many ways, the 2008 crisis had all the elements of a typical bank run.

"It was analogous to things that happened in the 19th century," said Bernanke. "It is just that it is a much more complex framework" today.

In his speech, Bernanke said current forecasts project long-term interest rates will rise only gradually in the next several years. Rates for 10-year Treasury bonds might rise by between 2 and 3 percentage points between now and 2017, he said. The 10-year Treasury is currently trading around 1.9 percent.

But Bernanke also referenced a time in the past when the Fed began tightening credit and rates rose more rapidly. In 1994, the yield on the 10-year Treasury rose more than 2 percentage points in just 12 months, he noted.

He said this increase reflected an unexpected acceleration in the pace of economic growth and signs of building inflation pressures.

Bernanke said such a big increase in one year was at the "upper end" of what private forecasters are predicting could happen when the Fed begins tightening interest rates this time. And he said the Fed's ability to communicate its future moves to markets have improved considerably since 1994.

By providing greater clarity about the future course of interest rates, Bernanke said the Fed's improved communication efforts should reduce the risk that market misperceptions about the Fed's intention "would lead to unnecessary interest rate volatility."

The Fed said at its January meeting that it will not halt its bond buying until it has seen a substantial improvement in the labor market.

In December, it set a goal of keeping its key short-term interest rate near zero until unemployment has fallen below 6.5 percent. Unemployment in January stood at 7.9 percent and many economists believe it will not drop below 6.5 percent until late 2015 at the earliest.

The Fed's low-interest-rate policies were approved on an 11-1 vote at the January meeting, although minutes of those discussions showed that a minority of Fed officials expressed concerns about the current level of the bond purchase program.

However, Bernanke's appearances before Congress this week and in his Friday speech sent a strong signal that he still believes the low-rate policies are needed to provide support for an economy still burdened by high unemployment.

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/bernanke-defends-feds-low-interest-rate-policies-180917807--finance.html

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Iditarod kicks off with festive ceremony

ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Dogs barked and spectators cheered as 66 mushers and their teams in the 1,000-mile Iditarod race set out from downtown Anchorage on Saturday after religious blessings, singing and glad-handing with fans.

The 11-mile (17-kilometer) first leg ends at a wooded park in the southeast part of the city, in the ceremonial launch of the 41st annual Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

Timed racing will not start until Sunday when the mushers reach Willow, a small community about 80 miles north of Anchorage. The competition will eventually see them glide into Nome, a city on the coast of the Bering Sea.

On Saturday mushers mingled with fans in Alaska's largest city and reflected on the long road ahead.

Fans serenaded Jamaican musher Newton Marshall, who turned 30 on Saturday, with "Happy Birthday." A Russian television crew asked him about his decision to leave the sunny Caribbean climate for the snowy Iditarod trail.

"Well, you can't do it in Jamaica," Marshall said.

A Catholic priest, a Russian Orthodox priest and a minister from a Korean church blessed the dogs in racer Scott Janssen's team. Janssen, an Anchorage funeral director, calls himself "The Mushin' Mortician."

Four-time champion Martin Buser, the first competitor out of the chute, reminisced about the days when the race clock started in Anchorage and mushers sprinted out of town.

"It used to be wild," he said. "This is a bit more relaxed, a bit more at ease."

The Iditarod began with timed competition in Anchorage until the mid-1990s. Back then, the racers rushed to the suburb of Eagle River, where they had to load their dogs into trucks, speed 30 miles up the highway and restart the competition in Wasilla.

Sleds crashed into cars, snowmobiles, people and even trains, Buser recalled. Buser himself once hit a police cruiser with one of his sleds.

STILL SOMETHING AT STAKE

Concerns about safety as development spread to the edges of Anchorage caused race organizers to change the format to the current two-day start.

Even though Saturday's trot through Anchorage does not count in the race rankings, there was something at stake. The winner will receive $50,400, part of a total race purse of $600,000, and a new truck.

"I suppose, if everything goes right for them, anybody can win," said 2011 champion John Baker, who holds the race speed record of eight days, 18:46 hours. "I would hope my chances are better than everybody else's."

Baker and Buser are in a crowded field of contenders this year. Also in that group is defending champion Dallas Seavey, who at 25 was the youngest Iditarod winner. Last year's runner-up, New England transplant Aliy Zirkle, could become the first female champion in more than two decades.

Many of this year's racers have no ambitions for victory.

"My biggest goal is just to finish it. I'm not looking to compete whatsoever," said Charley Bejna, a race rookie from Addison, Illinois.

Bejna said he hopes someday to move permanently to Alaska, where he has built a cabin. For now, he said, he is maintaining a reverse-snowbird lifestyle, spending winters in Alaska to train with his dogs and summers in Illinois, where he runs a landscaping business that provides the money for him to pursue his dog-mushing dreams.

"Everybody says, ?Why would you do that?'" Bejna said.

His reply?

"I can't run dogs in the summertime."

(Editing by Alex Dobuzinskis and Xavier Briand)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/iditarod-race-starts-songs-blessings-hopes-victory-021713770--spt.html

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Thirty Seconds To Mars To Launch New Single ... Into Outer Space

Band will send the first copy of 'Up In The Air' into orbit on board a SpaceX rocket.
By James Montgomery

30 Seconds To Mars' cover for "Up In The Air"
Photo: Jared Leto

Source: http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1702763/thirty-seconds-to-mars-up-in-the-air-outer-space.jhtml

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Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy (4GB)

The world is a scary place, and some of your most valuable data?be it medical information, business records, or government secrets?lives not on paper, but in zeros and ones. To keep your private data safe and secure, Kingston has the DataTraveler Vault Private, the single-user companion to the Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy-Managed Edition. With end-to-end encryption and a rugged design, it protects your data from almost anything that gets thrown at it.

The 4GB drive has very little preinstalled software, leaving you 3.68 GB of storage space. Formated in FAT32, the drive works with both Windows and Mac operating systems, letting you go from one to the other and back again without having to reformat the drive or install and conversion software. And unlike the consumer-grade Kingston DataTraveler Locker+ G2 (16GB), the DataTravaler Vault Privacy also supports Linux.

The drive earns the Vault Privacy name with 256-bit AES encryption in Cipher Block Chaining (CBC) mode. This is end-to-end hardware based encryption, meeting the same requirements needed for storing actual Top Secret government documents. On a regular drive, you'll need to use something like the CipherUSB to protect it with similar levels of encryption. With the DataTraveler Vault Privacy, you'll just need to set up a password. You'll need a password to even use the drive, and then unlock the drive with that password everytime you need to use it.

The design is also rugged to physically protect your data against moisture, dirt, and more. The aluminum case and locking cap provide protection against shock and crushing forces, while the cap seals out water up to four feet deep. While that ruggedness makes for a well-protected drive, it's a little chunky, measuring 0.5 by 0.9 by 3.1 inches (HWD)?just enough to potentially crowd an adjacent USB port?and weighs 0.5 ounce.

The initial setup is very simple?the entire process involves choosing a password, and it takes moments?but be sure you pick a password you'll remember. Once you've set your password, the drive will be discoverable by the PC, and you can open and use it just like any other drive. For a slightly easier, yet equally secure, option, there' always the Aegis Secure Key, which offers hardware based locking.

Don't forget the password! The drive's security has a lock feature which only allows 10 incorrect password attempts in a row before reformatting the drive and wiping out the data. This security feature prevents brute-force attacks from unlocking the drive. As an added dose of security, this 10-count doesn't reset when the drive is unplugged and plugged back in?so make sure you remember your password.

Also included on the drive is a program called Drive Security, a product of ESET and ClevX, which can be used to scan the drive for any security issues, such as malware or viruses. Kingston guarantees the drive with a five-year warranty and free technical support.

In our timed data transfer test, the drive offered 35 MBps write speeds and 10 MBps read speeds. That's faster than the consumer-oriented Editors' Choice, the DataTraveler Locker+, which had an average of 21MBps read and 12MBps write speed. It's also reasonably priced. While the 4GB capacity is a bit small?larger models are available (8, 16, 32, and 64GB)?the drive sells for $42.00 list, or $10.50 per GB. By comparison, the hardware locked Aegis Secure Key sells the same 4GB capacity for $65?or $16.25 per GB.

The Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy is a solid option for the security minded, with high-grade hardware-based encryption, a rugged design, and a decent price. Add it all up, and it takes a place alongside the best secure drives we've reviewed, though the Aegis Secure Key remains our top pick due its innovative physical keypad.

COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy (4GB) with several other flash drives side by side.

More flash drive reviews:
??? Kingston DataTraveler Vault Privacy (4GB)
??? IronKey Workspace W300 (64GB)
??? Roccat Apuri
??? PocketDesktop (16GB)
??? LaCie XtremKey USB 3.0 (32GB)
?? more

Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ziffdavis/pcmag/~3/vwMGtFSNdlU/0,2817,2416020,00.asp

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Regulators looking at a Heinz derivatives deal in London: NY Times

(Reuters) - U.S. authorities investigating possible insider trading in ketchup maker H.J. Heinz Co are studying a derivatives bet that was routed through London, the New York Times reported, citing two people briefed on the matter.

Industry watchdogs, including the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the FBI, are investigating unusual trading activity a day before Berkshire Hathaway and Brazil's 3G Capital agreed to buy Heinz for $23 billion in cash earlier this month.

The SEC has obtained an emergency order to freeze assets in a Goldman Sachs Group Inc Swiss account linked to suspicious trades in call options.

The SEC is now examining a product known as a contract-for-difference, a derivative that allows investors to trade on stock price changes without owning the shares, the New York Times said. Such contracts are not regulated in the United States but are popular in Britain, it said. (http://r.reuters.com/fav36t)

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA), Wall Street's self-regulator, has also recently referred suspicious stock trades to the SEC, the paper quoted one person as saying.

FINRA and the SEC declined to comment to the New York Times.

Spokespersons at Heinz and FINRA could not be immediately reached by Reuters for comment outside of regular business hours.

(Reporting by Aman Shah in Bangalore; Editing by Richard Pullin)

Source: http://news.yahoo.com/regulators-looking-heinz-derivatives-deal-london-ny-times-054537123--finance.html

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