The editors writers, columnists, and teachers who contribute to this magazine are all affiliates who speak from their own experiences. The aim of this magazine is to help keep you informed of emerging marketing trends, increase your website traffic, and raise you conversions and revenues. This is a must read for every entreprenuer who wants to keep up with the fast-paced wold of modern commerce which uses the internet as groud for players to move around and get their share of opportunities.

This issue offers CPA success tips from experts and managers! [more...]

This guide is the U.S. government’s most comprehensive and widely distributed export resource, a listing of all federal government programs that aid U.S. companies in exporting their goods and services around the world. Nineteen different agencies have united to offer this publication and the many programs to help American firms succeed in the global marketplace. Dedicated to improving federal trade promotion programs, these agencies comprise the Trade Promotion Coordinating Committee (TPCC).

For example, Asia Now and Access Eastern Mediterranean are two initiatives that provide exporters with a single point of access for information on regional trade events, business counseling and marketing services, and market research specific to their respective regions. Other regionally focused resources include the China Business Information Center and the Middle East Business Information Center. These centers make available comprehensive Web sites and both offer access to a call center staffed by trade specialists.

For additional information on the listings in this guide or for any export questions you have, please contact the Trade Information Center (TIC), of the U.S. Department of Commerce. The TIC is the first stop for information on federal export assistance programs plus general, regional, and country counseling. The TIC has a team of international trade specialists available to give you tailored export assistance.

Now that winter is over, it’s time to break out the lawn and garden tools. Using our Utility Cart, you’ll have everything handy for your outdoor chores. Spring also inspires creativity, so we’ve designed a Desktop Easel to assist the artist, writer, and reader. And finally, we created a project for that special member of the family—your dog or cat.

What is the range of performance for leading institutions? How deep is the sector in each sub-region and what are the major intra-regional differences and similarities? Where do regional strengths (and weaknesses) lie? Which types of institutions are strongest along which dimensions of performance? By taking a look at individual institutional performance, using a sample that is both broad and deep, MIX and ADB provide the framework in which to answer these important questions.

With rankings that include the Hedge Fund of Funds 50 and profiles on the top hedge fund investors, Alpha magazine is quickly becoming the must read publication for everyone involved in the hedge fund industry.

Alpha magazine was created exclusively for those working in the hedge fund industry providing independent and objective commentary. With rankings that include the Rich List and the Hedge Fund 100, profiles of the top hedge fund players, analysis and in-depth investigations, Alpha magazine is the must read for the global hedge fund industry. (Zinio.com)

Institutional Investor is a leading international business to business publisher, focused primarily on international finance. It publishes magazines, newsletters and journals as well as research, directories, books and maps. It also runs conferences, seminars and training courses and is a provider of electronic business information through its capital market databases and emerging markets information service.

You probably don’t have the time to read every legal blog (blawg). But many blawgs contain excellent content worthy of your attention. Enter BlawgWorld 2007—a collection of 77 thought-provoking essays from 77 of the most influential blawgs. Handpicked by each respective blogger, these essays provide a window into their blawgs, making it easy for you to figure out which ones merit your ongoing attention. To visit a blawg, click on its Web address.

You can quickly find essays of interest in BlawgWorld 2007 by using the interactive table of contents. From any page, click on the Blawgs navigation tab. From there, two more clicks will take you to any essay.

2007 TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide: The Product Guide Reinvented

You have problems. Lots of them. These problems range from choosing accounting software to reviewing email obtained in discovery to scanning documents into PDF format—and many others.

Enter 2007 TechnoLawyer Problem/Solution Guide—the product guide reinvented! In this revolutionary new sponsored resource, you’ll find 185 Problems and corresponding Solutions. Written from the point of view of a law firm, each Problem/Solution consists of a question and answer as well as a button that links to a Web page with more information.

To find the Problems of interest to you quickly, we’ve created not one, but two tables of contents. From any page, click on the Problems navigation tab to find Problems by topic, or click on the Products navigation tab to find Problems by product or company name.

The UNEP Year Book 2008 highlights the increasing complexity and interconnections of climate change, ecosystem integrity, human well-being, and economic development. It examines the emergence and influence of economic mechanisms and market driven approaches for addressing environmental degradation. It describes recent research findings and policy decisions that affect our awareness of and response to changes in our global environment.

In three sections, the UNEP Year Book 2008 focuses on recent environmental events, developments, and scientific findings:

The Global Overview surveys the significant environmental events that gained prominence during 2007. Using graphs, charts, and photos with examples from regional experiences, the overview also tracks new scientific and policy developments on the environmental front.

The Feature Focus documents some of the creative efforts already working in markets and financial circles to fight the growing climate crisis. The section also examines patterns that are emerging after a decade of carbon market experimentation. Finally, it attempts to map the next important steps that will assist the transition to an
environmentally-sound economy.

The Emerging Challenge examines recent scientific findings on the role of arctic climate feedbacks. Release of methane from thawing permafrost and from hydrate deposits are amplifiying warming trends. The section emphasizes the urgent need for increased investments in climate and energy research, knowledge partnerships, and global political responses to meet these serious challenges.

The UNEP Year Book 2008 is essential, informative, and authoritative reading for anyone with a role or an interest in our changing environment.

If you’re a gardener, you know that working the dirt is only part of creating a beautiful outdoor environment. Hardscaping—decks, patios, pergolas, and walkways—provides a showcase for your landscaping, with its rich color and texture. Both elements add up to comfortable, beautiful outdoor spaces that work almost like rooms inside your house.

We have recently changed our name to Lowe’s Creative Ideas for Outdoor Living to reflect that relationship. You’ll still see nuts-and-bolts gardening information, but we’ll also include stories on outdoor decorating and entertaining.

I hope you enjoy everything that this refreshed newsletter offers to enrich your life outdoors. Let us hear from you! Fill out a quick survey at LowesCreativeIdeas.com/OLSurvey, and you’ll have a chance to receive a $100 Lowe’s gift card. Hurry, the survey ends April 11, 2008.

Being a true account of the infamous Mr. Bungle and of the author's journey, in consequence thereof, to the heart of a half-real world called LambdaMoo.

From In Cold Blood to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, readers have been gripped by the novelistic rering of eccentric communities torn apart by violent crime.

Julian Dibbell's reporting of the "Mr. Bungle" rape case first appeared as the cover story in The Village Voice. Since that time it has become a cause célèbre, cited as a landmark case in numerous books and articles and a source of less discussion on the Internet. That's because the scene of the crime was a "Multi-User Domain," an electronic "salon" where Internet junkies have created their own interactive fantasy realm.

In a "place" where race, ger, and identity are infinitely malleable, the addictive denizens had thought they'd escaped all traditional cultural and moral limits. Yet Mr. Bungle's primal transgression challenged all their illusions, confronting even this electronic utopia with the same issues of order and social norms that humanity has faced since the Stone Age. When this fantasy imbroglio threatens Dibbell's actual marriage, we see how the virtual world at once mirrors and mocks real life.

Cells are the smallest form of life—the functional and structural units of all living things. Your body contains trillions of cells, organized into more than 200 major types.

At any given time, each cell is doing thousands of jobs. Some of these tasks are so essential for life that they are carried out by virtually all cells. Others are done only by cells that are highly skilled for the work, whether it is covering up your insides (skin cells), preventing you from sloshing around like a pile of goo (bone cells), purging your body of toxic chemicals (liver cells), or enabling you to learn and remember (brain cells). Cells also must make the products your body needs, such as sweat, saliva, enzymes, hormones, and antibodies.

In Chapter 1, "An Owner's Guide to the Cell," we'll explore some of the basic structures that allow cells to accomplish their tasks and some of the ways scientists study cells. In Chapter 2, "Cells 101: Business Basics," we'll focus on the functions shared by virtually all cells: making fuel and proteins, transporting materials, and disposing of wastes. In Chapter 3, "On the Job: Cellular Specialties," we'll learn how cells specialize to get their unique jobs done. In Chapters 4, "Cellular Reproduction: Multiplication by Division," and 5, "The Last Chapter: Cell Aging and Death," we'll find out how cells reproduce, age, and die.

Much of the research described in this booklet is carried out by cell biologists at universities and other institutions across the nation who are supported by U.S. tax dollars, specifically those distributed by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS) a component of the National Institutes of Health. NIGMS is keenly interested in cell biology because knowledge of the inner workings of cells underpins our understanding of health and disease.

Although scientists daily learn more about cells and their roles in our bodies, the field is still an exciting frontier of uncharted territory and unanswered questions. Maybe someday, you will help answer those questions.

I was persuaded to write this book by colleagues who liked my other book Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives, but found the material a little too advanced for their students. Fundamentals of Futures and Options Markets (formerly Introduction to Futures and Options Markets) covers some of the same ground as Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives—but in a way that readers who have had limited training in mathematics will find easier to understand. One important difference between this book and my other one is that there is no calculus in this book.

The text can be used in a number of different ways. Instructors who like to focus on one- and two-step binomial trees when valuing options may wish to cover only the first 10 chapters. Instructors who feel that swaps are adequately covered by other courses can choose to omit Chapter 6. There are many different ways in which Chapters 11 to 21 can be used. Instructors who feel that the material in Chapters 14, 16, 17, or 18 is too specialized can skip one or more of these chapters.

Understanding money means understanding how much money you have and where it goes. It means being in a position to make the most of what you’ve got. And it means protecting what’s yours.

No matter who you are or what you earn, it’s easier than you think to take control of your money. This handbook can help you to understand money better. Obviously it can’t provide detailed advice, because that depends on your personal circumstances, but it does contain loads of information that can help you to make your money work harder for you.

The need for a modern source-code management strategy in the distributed open-source community is paramount. The benevolent dictatorship model of open-source maintainers is only quasi-stable, but it is far better than the other extreme: the chaos of democratic code development.

The best available compromise is the concurrent versioning system (CVS), which introduces proctored code merging into source code management. CVS is ideally suited for worldwide open-source development, and the world is ready for monographs that address the management issues that Per Cederqvist explicitly avoided in his fine 164-page postscript manual distributed with the CVS tar-ball. What is the role of a maintainer/manager in establishing test protocols for code merges? What minimal functional level of developer communications is necessary for merges to remain stable? Is a maintainer-less release possible?

These questions go largely unanswered in Karl Fogel's new Open Source Development with CVS. Fogel's 300-page book consists of chapters alternating between CVS basics and common code maintenance issues. He includes a few anecdotes from open-source lore and lots of nonspecific commonsense guidelines on team software development.

Fogel is at his best when he is engaging us in thinking about what should and should not be under CVS control. He points out that complex relationships exist between developing code and its dependencies on intimately related applications, such as build tools themselves (gcc, autoconf) or partner applications (e.g., the server's client or the client's server). His brief discussion of strategies is too short to be satisfying.

Frustratingly, this book is chock-full of postmodern self-indulgences, such as his boasting reverence for technological ignorance. The discipline needed by good maintainers is missing here; Fogel's informal prose is often grating, and his copious parenthetical remarks are distracting or bullying (they sure are); one wonders where his editor was. Ultimately, his management arguments boil down to an endorsement for the benevolent dictatorship model--a safe conclusion, but one that seems not to use CVS's merging capability for all it's worth. To the question of how to run a project, he responds, "Well, we're all still trying to figure that out, actually." True, and he isn't there yet, but at least he has the questions right. --Peter Leopold (Amazon.com)

The German biotech industry continues to play a leading role in Europe, both in terms of corporate representation and capacity to generate new intellectual property. Invigorated by a phase of healthy consolidation, biotech companies in Germany are launching exciting new products and have many more in the pipeline. These companies have gained maturity and are once again demonstrating their ability to raise capital. While highly renowned program funds actively support early-stage enterprises, the venture capital industry is raising additional funding to help promising companies grow.

This should serve as an invitation to enter the German biotech market and reap the rewards of Germany as a business location in general.

It’s our goal and commitment at Invest in Germany to assist you in setting up your business in our country. With our multifaceted network involving industry, government and academia we are in an excellent position to help you profit from biotechnology “Made in Germany”.

This first of its kind study utilized the Thomson Financial database to examine the nativity of the founders of all U.S. venture-backed publicly traded companies. Separately, the authors surveyed over 340 privately held venture-backed companies to discern their views on U.S. immigration policy and obtain demographic data on their founders. The result is a portrait of the positive impact immigrants have in starting and working for America’s leading edge companies.

American Made: The Impact of Immigrant Entrepreneurs and Professionals on U.S. Competitiveness, commissioned by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), is part of NVCA’s MAGNET USA initiative.

World Trade magazine: The trusted source of information and analysis for executives at the highest level of midsized to large U.S. manufacturers engaged in domestic and international trade.

Monthly, World Trade Magazine examines each sector of world trade - transportation, logistics and supply chain management, technology, finance and trade services, and domestic and international economic development. Emphasis is on executive interviews and in-depth company profiles designed to assist our readers in making their businesses more profitable.

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Through in-depth coverage of IT case studies, emerging technologies, and the implications of digital technology on the policies and management of public sector organizations, Government Technology chronicles the dynamics of governing in the information age.

Managers, elected officials, CIOs and technology staff at all levels of government gain IT news and event information from Government Technology magazine.

Today's governments simply can't operate without technology. It's intertwined with every facet of their business processes. Government Technology and its award-winning publications are uniquely focused on helping state and local professionals understand IT's role in driving the business of modern governments.

Discover how Government Technology's long-standing connections and multi-media platform delivers maximum ROI with the highest-concentration of technology buying influence. Government Technology is up to any marketing challenge, and we're ready to get you results.

Dr. Dobb's Journal is the essential multi-language/multi-platform resource for professional programmers and software developers. You'll read about algorithms, coding tips, working code, discussions of fundamental design issues and actual program listings guaranteed to make you a better programmer.

Blue Care Network of Michigan is an independent, nonprofit affiliate of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, one of many individual Blue Cross® and Blue Shield® plans in the United States. Blue Care Network is controlled by a board of directors including private citizens, business, labor and health care professionals. The Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association licenses Blue Care Network of Michigan to offer certain products and services under the Blue Cross and Blue Shield names.

Blue Care Network of Michigan is an independent organization and solely responsible for its own debts and obligations. Neither the association nor any other organization using the Blue Cross and Blue Shield names acts as a guarantor of Blue Care Network of Michigan’s obligations.

Drawing on a diverse range of disciplines, including finance, history, economics, and psychology, Government Guarantees: Allocating and Valuing Risk in Privately Financed Infrastructure Projects aims to help governments give guarantees only when they are justified. It reviews the history of government guarantees and identifies the cognitive and political obstacles to good decisions about guarantees.

It then develops a framework for judging when governments should bear risk in an infrastructure project (seeking to make precise the oft-invoked principle that risks should be allocated to those best placed to manage them); explains how guarantees can be valued; and discusses how aspects of public-sector management can be modified to improve the likely quality of government decisions about guarantees.

This booklet was written and designed to help educate and guide its readers so they might:

• Better understand the data included in financial reports and how to analyze it.
• Learn more about companies that offer employment or provide investment opportunities.

A good starting point for achieving these goals is to become familiar with the main components of a company’s annual report.

“Summer afternoon— summer afternoon ... the two most beautiful words in the English language,” Henry James said. And I couldn’t agree more. As warm spring afternoons quietly become warmer summer afternoons, we find ourselves spending just as much time outdoors as in.

The grill is working overtime, your early spring garden plans are coming to fruition, and your spirit is boosted by the extra hours of sunshine. In this issue, find out how adding French doors can blend the lines between indoor and outdoor spaces.

Also, if you’ve wanted to upgrade your kitchen or bath or refresh other rooms in your home, we have a budget-wise kitchen and bath as well as two unique rooms that do double duty. Now you’re all set to take advantage of the coming season and those beautiful summer afternoons!

It includes eight country studies: Republic of Korea, Australia, Malaysia, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and Nepal. It is based on the IFC-sponsored South Asia Debt Market Symposium held in October 1999 in Sri Lanka, which brought together regulators and market participants from around Asia and other parts of the globe to discuss issues in developing local markets. The book should provide valuable insights for countries that are addressing these issues today.

Regulations affecting 10 stages of a business’s life are measured: starting a business, dealing with licenses, employing workers, registering property, getting credit, protecting investors, paying taxes, trading across borders, enforcing contracts and closing a business. Data in Doing Business 2008 are current as of June 1, 2007. The indicators are used to analyze economic outcomes and identify what reforms have worked, where, and why.

The Doing Business methodology has limitations. Other areas important to business—such as a country’s proximity to large markets, the quality of its infrastructure services (other than those related to trading across borders), the security of property from theft and looting, the transparency of government procurement, macroeconomic conditions or the underlying strength of institutions—are not studied directly by Doing Business. To make the data comparable across countries, the indicators refer to a specific type of business—generally a limited liability company operating in the largest business city.