blackberry-curve-8900-smartphone

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A sleek new twist on a classic style. You can keep your finger on the pulse of what’s important to you with the BlackBerry® Curve™ 8900 smartphone.

The striking 480x360-pixel screen offers up crisp on-the-go video, images, text, maps and more. With a refined design, the BlackBerry Curve 8900 smartphone is an easy-to-use device that delivers expanded functionality and reliable results.

Learn about the BlackBerry Curve 8900 smartphone features

TIPS TO INCREASE BLOGTRAFFIC & RANKINGS

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How To Boost The Rankings Of Your Pages

It is worth cataloguing the basic principles to be enforced to increase website traffic and search engine rankings.

Create a site with valuable content, products or services.

Place primary and secondary keywords within the first 25 words in your page content and spread them evenly throughout the document.

Research and use the right keywords/phrases to attract your target customers.

Use your keywords in the right fields and references within your web page. Like Title, META tags, Headers, etc.

Keep your site design simple so that your customers can navigate easily between web pages, find what they want and buy products and services.

Submit your web pages i.e. every web page and not just the home page, to the most popular search engines and directory services. Hire someone to do so, if required. Be sure this is a manual submission. Do not engage an automated submission service.

Keep track of changes in search engine algorithms and processes and accordingly modify your web pages so your search engine ranking remains high. Use online tools and utilities to keep track of how your website is doing.

Monitor your competitors and the top ranked websites to see what they are doing right in the way of design, navigation, content, keywords, etc.

Use reports and logs from your web hosting company to see where your traffic is coming from. Analyze your visitor location and their incoming sources whether search engines or links from other sites and the keywords they used to find you.

Make your customer visit easy and give them plenty of ways to remember you in the form of newsletters, free reports, reduction coupons etc.

Demonstrate your industry and product or service expertise by writing and submitting articles for your website or for article banks so you are perceived as an expert in your field.

When selling products online, use simple payment and shipment methods to make your customer's experience fast and easy.

When not sure, hire professionals. Though it may seem costly, but it is a lot less expensive than spending your money on a website which no one visits.

Don't look at your website as a static brochure. Treat it as a dynamic, ever-changing sales tool and location, just like your real store to which your customers with the same seriousness.

Experts feel that web pages have to be search engine friendly in order to improve search engine rankings. Having a well designed and relevant web copy is crucial. This will help search engines easily index your web pages and rank them high.

Selling an e-book

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-books always have and always be big sellers
online no matter what anyone says. The fact that
you can get information in your possession in a
matter of minutes makes e-books a big winner over
physical products.
Of course there are down sides to every business,
and the e-book business is no different. The
biggest complaint about e-books are the fact people
are either A) buying them and asking for refunds or
B) illegally giving away and selling the authors
work without their consent.
But even though there are downsides, it is still
more than worth it to sell your own e-book. Because
the upsides greatly, and I do mean greatly outweigh
the downsides.

To start, it costs virtually nothing to create e-
books. All you need is to think of a hot subject,
do some research and make that research into a
book.

If you want more info on creating e-books, here are
a few good resources:

http://www.ebook-marketing-revealed.com/

http://www.7dayebook.com/

Today's currency world

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In the 30 years since the collapse of the last gentlemanly agreement on currency rates, many momentous events have occurred that have affected currencies worldwide. The Japanese yen gained prominence because of Japan's heavy export relationship with the United States. The USSR collapsed. We have had several undeclared wars, the south Asian economies have risen and collapsed, and several investor bubbles have come and gone.
Each time, currencies have come away with a newly earned respect by the masses. There has also been a constant element of surprise that keeps you guessing what's next.
Current conditions, such as the United States' perpetual war on “terror”, the permanent introduction and dominance of the euro currency, the steady O.P.E.C. increases in oil prices, and gold's renaissance as a store of value, will likely have a tremendous impact on the future of what it means to trade currencies.
This could be a fundamental shift in the next phase of currency d

New rules of currency

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In 1971, the Smithsonian Agreement replaced the Bretton Woods Agreement and authorized “forward currency contracts”, adding validity to the Eurodollar phenomenon. It didn’t work. A year later the European Joint Float was established. It, and the Smithsonian Agreement, were scrapped in 1973. Even though they were dissolved the concept of “forward currency contracts” stayed as part of the banking system.
Once currencies began to “free-float”, they immediately moved away from their gentlemanly 1% fluctuations on either side to huge price ranges, going anywhere from 20-25% daily.
From 1970-1973, the total foreign exchange volume went from US$25 Billion to US$100 Billion. With oil prices up, gold prices up, and an economy still reeling from the rapid currency shift, “stagflation”, rising inflation while real incomes remained the same, soon hit the United States.

Market size and liquidity

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Presently, the foreign exchange market is one of the largest and most liquid financial markets in the world. Traders include large banks, central banks, currency speculators, corporations, governments, and other financial institutions. The average daily volume in the global foreign exchange and related markets is continuously growing. Daily turnover was reported to be over US$3.2 trillion in April 2007 by the Bank for International Settlements. [2] Since then, the market has continued to grow. According to Euromoney's annual FX Poll, volumes grew a further 41% between 2007 and 2008.[3]
Of the $3.98 trillion daily global turnover, trading in London accounted for around $1.36 trillion, or 34.1% of the total, making London by far the global center for foreign exchange. In second and third places respectively, trading in New York accounted for 16.6%, and Tokyo accounted for 6.0%.[4] In addition to "traditional" turnover, $2.1 trillion was traded in derivatives.
Exchange-traded FX futures contracts were introduced in 1972 at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange and are actively traded relative to most other futures contracts.
Several other developed countries also permit the trading of FX derivative products (like currency futures and options on currency futures) on their exchanges. All these developed countries already have fully convertible capital accounts. Most emerging countries do not permit FX derivative products on their exchanges in view of prevalent controls on the capital accounts. However, a few select emerging countries (e.g., Korea, South Africa, India—[1]; [2]) have already successfully experimented with the currency futures exchanges, despite having some controls on the capital account.
FX futures volume has grown rapidly in recent years, and accounts for about 7% of the total foreign exchange market volume, according to The Wall Street Journal Europe (5/5/06, p. 20).
Top 10 currency traders [5]
% of overall volume, May 2008
Rank Name Volume
1 Deutsche Bank 21.70%
2 UBS AG 15.80%
3 Barclays Capital 9.12%
4 Citi 7.49%
5 Royal Bank of Scotland 7.30%
6 JPMorgan 4.19%
7 HSBC 4.10%
8 Lehman Brothers 3.58%
9 Goldman Sachs 3.47%
10 Morgan Stanley 2.86%
Foreign exchange trading increased by 38% between April 2005 and April 2006 and has more than doubled since 2001. This is largely due to the growing importance of foreign exchange as an asset class and an increase in fund management assets, particularly of hedge funds and pension funds. The diverse selection of execution venues have made it easier for retail traders to trade in the foreign exchange market. In 2006, retail traders constituted over 2% of the whole FX market volumes with an average daily trade volume of over US$50-60 billion (see retail trading platforms).[6] Because foreign exchange is an OTC market where brokers/dealers negotiate directly with one another, there is no central exchange or clearing house. The biggest geographic trading centre is the UK, primarily London, which according to IFSL estimates has increased its share of global turnover in traditional transactions from 31.3% in April 2004 to 34.1% in April 2007. The ten most active traders account for almost 80% of trading volume, according to the 2008 Euromoney FX survey.[3] These large international banks continually provide the market with both bid (buy) and ask (sell) prices. The bid/ask spread is the difference between the price at which a bank or market maker will sell ("ask", or "offer") and the price at which a market-maker will buy ("bid") from a wholesale customer. This spread is minimal for actively traded pairs of currencies, usually 0–3 pips. For example, the bid/ask quote of EUR/USD might be 1.2200/1.2203 on a retail broker. Minimum trading size for most deals is usually 100,000 units of base currency, which is a standard "lot".

These spreads might not apply to retail customers at banks, which will routinely mark up the difference to say 1.2100/1.2300 for transfers, or say 1.2000/1.2400 for banknotes or travelers' checks. Spot prices at market makers vary, but on EUR/USD are usually no more than 3 pips wide (i.e., 0.0003). Competition is greatly increased with larger transactions, and pip spreads shrink on the major pairs to as little as 1 to 2 pips.

Hedge funds as speculators

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About 70% to 90% of the foreign exchange transactions are speculative. In other words, the person or institution that bought or sold the currency has no plan to actually take delivery of the currency in the end; rather, they were solely speculating on the movement of that particular currency. Hedge funds have gained a reputation for aggressive currency speculation since 1996. They control billions of dollars of equity and may borrow billions more, and thus may overwhelm intervention by central banks to support almost any currency, if the economic fundamentals are in the hedge funds' favor.

marrket psyscology

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Market psychology and trader perceptions influence the foreign exchange market in a variety of ways:
Flights to quality
Unsettling international events can lead to a "flight to quality," with investors seeking a "safe haven". There will be a greater demand, thus a higher price, for currencies perceived as stronger over their relatively weaker counterparts. The Swiss franc has been a traditional safe haven during times of political or economic uncertainty.[12]
Long-term trends
Currency markets often move in visible long-term trends. Although currencies do not have an annual growing season like physical commodities, business cycles do make themselves felt. Cycle analysis looks at longer-term price trends that may rise from economic or political trends. [13]
"Buy the rumor, sell the fact"
This market truism can apply to many currency situations. It is the tendency for the price of a currency to reflect the impact of a particular action before it occurs and, when the anticipated event comes to pass, react in exactly the opposite direction. This may also be referred to as a market being "oversold" or "overbought".[14] To buy the rumor or sell the fact can also be an example of the cognitive bias known as anchoring, when investors focus too much on the relevance of outside events to currency prices.
Economic numbers
While economic numbers can certainly reflect economic policy, some reports and numbers take on a talisman-like effect: the number itself becomes important to market psychology and may have an immediate impact on short-term market moves. "What to watch" can change over time. In recent years, for example, money supply, employment, trade balance figures and inflation numbers have all taken turns in the spotlight.
Technical trading considerations
As in other markets, the accumulated price movements in a currency pair such as EUR/USD can form apparent patterns that traders may attempt to use. Many traders study price charts in order to identify such patterns.[15]

switzerland : a look back to july

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It is four weeks since the last issue of Weekly Focus, so there is good reason to take a look back at the most important events in the Swiss market over the past month. Macroeconomic data have generally been on the weak side, and a look at how incoming data have compared with consensus expectations (as illustrated by the "surprise index" in the chart below) shows that the market has also generally been disappointed. This was confirmed most recently by an unexpectedly sharp drop in the KOF leading indicator, which fell to 0.90 in July, dragged down by a weak outlook for domestic consumption, whereas the financial sector seems to have stabilised. Besides relatively weak activity data, consumer price inflation in Switzerland remains high, hitting 3.1% y/y in July, the highest rate for almost 15 years. Once again inflation was fuelled by higher prices for energy and other imported goods.
All in all, the data for July confirm our view of the Swiss economy: (i) the economy has peaked and growth is expected to slow significantly; (ii) inflationary pressures have mounted, albeit less markedly than in Euro-land; and (iii) the labour market is still strong but indicating an imminent downturn.
This situation was reflected in the financial markets in July. Swiss yields fell, primarily on instruments with short maturities, and so the yield curve has steepened. The yield spread to Euroland (2Y swap yields) hit a new peak of 198bp the day before the ECB raised its key rate by 25bp on 3 July, but has since narrowed again and is currently at 188bp. This narrowing of the spread is mainly due to the market no longer dis-counting further interest rate hikes from the ECB. The market is, however, pricing in at least one further 25bp hike from the SNB in the next year, with a 28% chance of the SNB raising its target range by 25bp at its September meeting.
Movements in the FX market have been rather surprising. CHF fell 1.5% against EUR in July, sending CHF/DKK down from 4.63 to 4.57, and was second only to the NZD as the worst-performing G10 currency against EUR over the month. This was a surprise, as there were only comparatively small movements in relative yields, whereas there were broad falls in the stock markets. This should have led to a stronger CHF, as historically the CHF has performed when stock markets fall. However, this was not the case in July, which indicates that the negative correlation between CHF and the stock market has weakened recently.

pre currency era -- 1950s

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Entering into the 1950s, the United States of America had a distinct advantage over war-torn Europe. While Germany was heavily sanctioned, England, France, Italy, and several other Old World nations were just coming to terms with the heavy investment needed to rebuild their countries.As a way to make it easier for the rest of the world to rebuild, the Bretton Woods Agreement was adopted. It was innocuously simple: in an effort to keep the United States of America (USA) from buying everything in sight, the Bretton Woods Agreement kept the USA in check by requiring all foreign currencies be pegged to the US Dollar. Some pegs were strong, some pegs were weak, but at the end of the day they never moved more than 1% in any direction. Like today's problem with the Chinese Yuan, forced to a peg against the dollar, it kept a constant, controlled flow of US dollars out of the country.The peg would not have been so bad if not for the fact that the US dollar also had a unique relationship with gold. Just like currencies, gold was pegged to the dollar at a fixed value of US$35/ounce. What made it even worse was that US currency, at the time, was directly exchangeable for gold. This strategy was fine as long as the Fort Knox gold reserves exceeded $23 billion.After World War II, the USA became the primary economic super power. Many foreign countries began to acquire US currency in lieu of gold. The dollar gained prominence in a way no other currency ever had before.At the same time, we began to see the rebuilding of the Old World and foreign trade began to gain momentum. In 1950, foreign countries held US $8 billion. We also saw the oil business begin its ascent as a prominent import/export industry.