Canadians don't throw the "eh" around carelessly like you hear in TV shows or movies.

Hi Toastfriends, I don't know if I'll be around for the open thread today.

I lost my job this morning, and I am at a loss. I don't know what to do next. This job kind of fell into my lap back in November but just...didn't end up working out.

I am willing to do anything at this point, provided I get necessary training. If you or anyone you know have any leads on anything in the central NJ area, and are willing to train someone who may be completely new to your industry, please, please let me know. I am trying really hard not to cry but it's not working too good.

Also, unsolicited advice on switching careers when you don't know what to do or you're doing next is very, very welcome.

edit: I should specify that my training is in environmental remediation at current, with approximately 4 years experience.

I moved from Massachusetts to D.C. just about four years ago and the humidity melts away all my hardy New England stoicism, leaving a sad puddle of misery from May through October every year. Who thought it was a good idea to build our nation's capital on a swamp???

This is OT, but Toast related, and I won't be around later.

I was looking for something earlier at work, and found an old e-mail from a publishing house, telling us about the marketing campaign for a certain book. It was to be advertised in "all the womens magazines" (starting with Good Housekeeping), and directly below was "Online campaign" and the first website to be mentioned was The Toast!!
I have no idea if they ever actually placed the ad, and I'm not sure if they even got the demographics right (I haven't read the book yet, but I think that maybe the audiences of Good Housekeeping and The Toast are not so similar, apart from being mostly women), but it was such a wonderful surprise!

And I realised yesterday that The Toast has been in my life much longer than I remembered - I only started commenting last summer, but I was here for The Best E-Mail Mallory Ever Received or Sent, for Nicole's maternity leave, for the Butter launch... I think I first got here around the time Nikki was hired. And going through all the old articles, trying to find the first one I ever read, made me really sad again. Also the fact that The Toast is closing during the first time in years, if not ever, that I'm so busy I can't even check in regularly. But I'm so thankful to have had this site and community in my life, and to be able to continue to be part of it due to all the things that popped up in the last few weeks!
I'm going to DC this July, I am a naive young Canadian who's not used to extreme humidity or heat, am I going to survive? Should I shellac my makeup on to make sure it doesn't melt off my face?

I love me some Canadian linguistics 101 articles.

For your amusement, I would like to point out that Canadian raising affects other words too. Ask your local Canadian to say height/hide, louse/lousy, writer/rider, price/prize, strife/strive; I could go on. You'll hear a difference. :)

My favourite is writer/rider, because it's evidence that changes happen in a particular order. Raising only happens before a voiceless consonant (like t/s/f instead of d/z/v), but although the t in writer is pronounced like a d, we still raise the vowel. So our brain first raises the vowel, then voices the t, and then we say it the way we say it, all without even thinking!

I would ALSO like to mention that 'Canadian' raising does occur in some parts of the the northeastern and midwestern US.

One gift I have is picking out the secret Canadian actor on shows/movies. There will be just a slight touch of an accent, a speech pattern, or something that catches my ear and I'm almost always right.

Also! Canadians don't throw the "eh" around carelessly like you hear in TV shows or movies. There's a structure! For example, some show might have this as a sentence: "I'm gonna go down to the Tim Hortons, eh? And pick up a double-double." This would be an incorrect usage of the word! Don't go tossing it in the middle of sentences where it doesn't make sense.

As someone whose main exposure to Canadian linguistics is comparing the "aboots" of the various voices of Rocky in the children's show Paw Patrol while my brain melts, I enjoyed that piece. It will give me something else to think about while my kid watches that show, beyond "Why has a socialist paradise like Canada turned over all its public ulitilies to a bunch of dogs?"

Apologies to the people without small kids for whom this comment is gibberish.

Story. Lisa and Jack are permanent residents of the mental hospital.

Lisa and Jack are permanent residents of the mental hospital. From the constant use of drugs, they have already become a walking plant, who they are and how they got here, not only they, but even the doctors did not know. All the time, the transfer to hospitals was reduced to the fact that they walked together in the hall and sat in the armchairs and silently stared at one point, sat until the evening. One day, Jack offers to escape from the hospital and Lisa surprisingly herself agrees with this.
Early in the morning, they run away with things from the madhouse, the sleeping guard continued to sleep when the couple opened the creaking door.

And here is the long-awaited freedom of the forest, the fields, the river that they saw only in the pictures in the mental hospital.
Jack suggests moving on where there are big cities and there are lots of opportunities for all and most importantly freedom.
Jack and Lisa go all day, tired and tortured in the distance, they see the building - "Well, finally," they sigh, both.
Approaching closer they realize that this is their own madhouse.
"What a small world our world is," Lisa thought.
"Well, at least they feed here," Jack said out loud.
The next day they repeated the attempt, but again returned to the psychiatric hospital.

Money в вашей жизни и бесплатные поздравления

И смех и грех. у меня украли фото. И не СМИ какое-нибудь, на чужих фото не зарабатывающее, а неизвестная мне рекламная фирма, стянувшая мое фото с сайта belarusphoto.by, где она лежала в свободном доступе, напечатавшая ее на плоттере на виниловом бэклайте и вставившая ее в световой короб, который теперь висит на втором этаже любимого минчанами универсама "Столичный". А такие короба стоят ооочень прилично!
Скажите, братцы-фотографы, особливо беларусы, как думаете, что делать теперь? 1. Тихо сидеть и радоаваться, что мое фото несет людям позитив ; 2. Принять позу "Оскорбленный профессионал" и, с криками "Это возмуцицельно!!!!", "Как вы смееце?!", попытаться выдрать из их лап 70-150 долларов? А?

উপর আসা এবং আমাদের সঙ্গে যোগদান! আমরা একটি মহান ফসল এই সপ্তাহান্তে যাচ্ছে পেয়েছেন Money Tallyscrapper ! প্রচুর এবং চ্যালেঞ্জ, গেম এবং মজা প্রচুর! এখানে কি এটা সব কথা ... যখন ক্রিস্টিন ওরফে Scrappgal অটিজম সচেতনতা বাড়াতে সাহায্য জিজ্ঞাসা ট্যালি কাছে এল, অবশ্যই, আমরা সুযোগ সময়ে jumped তাকে সাহায্য করার. সুতরাং আমরা একটি আনন্দপূর্ণ "Light It Up ব্লু" সাইবার মজা চ্যালেঞ্জ, গেম এবং পুরস্কার প্রচুর সঙ্গে শস্য আছে যাচ্ছি. সকল মজা শুক্রবার, 1 লা এপ্রিল শুরু হয় এবং রবিবার, 10 এপ্রিল, 2011 মাধ্যমে চালানো হবে কিন্তু আমরা আরও একটি ধাপ এই মহান দাতব্য সঙ্গে সাহায্য করতে যাচ্ছি. আমরা সবার জন্য জিজ্ঞাসা করা হয় ক্রিস্টিন আউট সাহায্য এবং অটিজম স্পিকস জন্য $ 150.00 + + উত্থাপন তার লক্ষ্য পৌঁছানোর. পিংকি দোকান মধ্যে দান বাটন নির্বাণ এবং তার মাত্র $ 5.00 এই কল্পিত দাতব্য দান করে, অনুদান সব হ্যান্ডেল করে দেওয়া হয়েছে. আয় 100% "হাল্কা ইট আপ ব্লু" অটিজম দাতব্য যেতে হবে. অবশ্যই, আপনি যতটা আপনি চান হিসাবে দান করতে পারেন, শুধু ক্লিক করুন "অটিজম স্পিকস ' এ অনুদান পৃষ্ঠায় আপনি নিতে Tallyscrapper free money.

Сегодня День рождения моей любимой жены Наташи.
Она не только супруга, но и лучший друг, и профессиональный партнер, и соавтор. И в каждой из этих ипостасей самая надежная, самая преданная, самая настоящая.
Сегодня я могу признаться, что не будь ее в моей жизни, и в ней бы не было ни нашей дружной семьи, ни Свободного театра, ни огромной череды наших творческих проектов. Так уж получилось в моей жизни, что все самое сложное выпадает на ее плечи. Ее энергия питает меня, наши отношения с другими людьми, наше творчество и развитие.

С Днем рождения, моя дорогая! Ты - лучшее, что могло произойти со мной в жизни.

Sejumlah besar pop band muncul di Hong Kong selama era keemasan Pop British Music (1964-1969). Musisi dari kebangsaan yang berbeda (Cina, Inggris, Swedia, Portugis, Filipina, India, antara lain) aktif di Hong Kong, biasanya meliputi versi lagu dari Inggris dan Amerika Serikat. Ini adalah penghormatan kepada orang-orang yang luar biasa Hongkong Pop Artis yang merupakan bagian dari hari-hari bahagia remaja saya.

How to Dominate Your Niche Hollywood Celebrity Gossip

Competitors for your online business exist in many forms. Some compete with you for web traffic by occupying prime spots in search engines for specific keywords. Others utilize the same business model and promote their sites in the same channels for market-share.

Most competitor’s goals are the same: To outsell their rivals by winning over a large portion of the specific target market.

They will often do this by undercutting your prices and producing similar products/services to compete with your business. Learning how to manage the competition will help you to make more money from your businesses and websites.

9 Ways to Dominate Competitors in Your Niche Photo   Celebrity Gossip

Here’s a collection of several strategic methods you can use to deal with competitors within your niche. Do note that they should be implemented within a framework which tracks and measures your performance in relation to specific competitors.

1. Focus on Building a Reputation. While products can easily be replicated, a strong reputation or brand is nearly impossible to appropriate without much effort. Brand your website consistently and focus on satisfying your customers or site visitors by generously offering support and free information.


2. Increase Your Product Value. This two step process involves either improving the quality of your product and selling it at the competitor’s price or reducing the price of your product while keeping it at the same quality level. This can be used to counter surges in popularity for specific competitor products.



3. Develop Retention Equity. Retaining first-time and regular customers is very important for market-share growth. The best way to do this is to make it difficult for customers to switch to a competitor. This can be achieved by offering specific unique features or benefits that your competitors do not offer. Loyalty-programs with attractive advantages can be implemented alongside your product or service offerings.


4. Target a Sub-Niche. When your niche is overrun by strong competitors, it might be easier to target a sub-niche exclusively to capture a larger share of a targeted market. By breaking your flagship site into several sub-niches, you are deepening your brand’s reach within the overall field.


5. Establish a Community. One way to build customer loyalty is to encourage interaction between customers through an open community. This can take the form of a forum, blog or social network. Communities are a public front for your community and can address customer or visitor concerns. Communities help your business develop excellent visibility on search engines as well.


6. Optimize Your Product Launches. Product or site launches are a great opportunity to distinguish your website or product from a competitor. Make your pricing cheaper or similar to your competitor and aim to secure first time customers with an attractive initial promotional package. You can also seek objective reviews to demonstrate how it is different or superior to a competitor’s product.


7. Celebrate Your Competitors. Create an industry-specific ranking or awards list to attract attention to your own brand or product. Two specific examples come to mind: Scott And’s list of Top 100 Hollywood Marketing Celebrity blogs, which evolved from a personal list to one jointly hosted byAdvertising Age, a respected marketing/advertising publication.
   Another example is SEOMoz’s Web 2.0 Awards, which has brought a lot of publicity to their business brand. The awards also received over 100K in backlinks and continue to bring them a fair amount of targeted search traffic. While the companies listed aren’t competitors, this example demonstrates how an awards list can be used for branding purposes.
8. Perform On-going Competitor Analysis. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of your competitor helps you to measure your own performance and success. You can learn a lot from how competitors operate and apply these techniques to your businesses in other industries or niches as well.
   On-going competitor analysis simply means keeping conceptual and metric-based tabs on your competitor’s business and website. What are they planning for next month? How did their new product perform in the market?


9. Collaborate on Joint Projects. Competitors can become allies when you seek to dominate a specific industry. Large scale project collaborations can grow your business or website considerably because they allow you to combine marketing resources and brand power.
   A loyal customer of your competitor isn’t likely to purchase your product but a collaboration of some sort will encourage support for joint projects that will pull in new customers for both businesses. A simpler form of collaboration between webmasters can take the form of a basic banner exchange.

It is always important to note that your most powerful competitor might be the limitations posed by your own product, website or brand. Be sure to keep an eye on your target market’s needs/interests and focus on effectively communicating the value of your business.

The customer trust and reputation you’ve acquired is a necessary foundation you need to successfully compete in any niche.

Hollywood Celebrity Gossip

Светская жизнь Вуди Алена - критика.

Ленты Вуди Аллена - яркий пример того, как можно снимать хорошее кино без претензий. Маэстро не замахивается на какие-то глобальные проекты, не ставит себе громадьё сверхзадач, а просто из года в год выдаёт по добротной смотрибельной картине. Безоговорочными шедеврами или новым словом в искусстве и их, может, и не назовёшь, но полтора часа в их компании - почти гарантированное удовольствие.


Режиссёрская фишка Аллена заключается в умении замешать комедию на дрожжах криминальной интриги («Магия лунного света», «Сенсация», «Иррациональный человек»). Иногда эти дрожжи настолько ядрёны, что поднимают градус конечного продукта до уровня настоящей трагедии («Матч пойнт», «Мечта Кассандры»). В «Светской жизни» у Вуди обошлось без добавочной жести. Криминальная составляющая здесь сведена к минимуму - да и ту принял на грудь персонаж второго плана, старший брат главного героя - а эмоциональный контур никаким страдальческим флуктуациям не подвержен. И хотя любовный треугольник ММЖ имеет нехилый драматический потенциал, после «Иррационального человека», похоже, маэстро Вуди решил отдохнуть от эмоций синего спектра. И настроенчески, и визуально «Светская жизнь» - очень тёплая лента, выдержанная в ананасово-шампанских тонах с жирной примесью цимеса.

 

В последние годы еврейские мотивы в лентах Аллена звучали нечасто. В «Светской жизни» маэстро с лихвой компенсировал это упущение. И таки да, хохма о том, как еврейский юноша не может переспать с девушкой по вызову - это смешно, это чисто Алленовская штучка, заимствованная им из собственных ранних работ, когда он сам ещё играл своих героев-невротиков. Фразочки типа «И где твой хвалёный еврейский ум? Ты же дурак!» тоже взывают к улыбке. Но в целом комичные сцены и диалоги, построенные на национальной фактуре, выглядят масштабной цитатой из «Серьёзного человека» братьев Коэнов, по праву считающегося энциклопедией современной еврейской жизни. Впечатление это усиливает присутствие в кадре Сари Ленник, сыгравшей у Коэнов жену Ларри Гопника. Здесь у неё, по сути, то же амплуа - «типическая» еврейская женушка, методично капающая на мозги своему муженьку. Ну, да ничто не ново под луной.


Ругать Аллена за повторяемость - по отношению к своим ли работам, к чужим ли - всё равно, что ругать за повторяемость осень или весну, которые из года в год тиражируют один и тот же сюжет, но всё равно доставляют нам массу чудесных мгновений. Вуди Аллен давно стал эдаким кинематографическим «временем года». И если однажды год наступит, а Вуди - нет, будет очень грустно. Поэтому - смотрим и наслаждаемся, пока есть такая возможность.

Дмитрий Ростаев Бобруйск.

Story SEO is dead. Long live SEO.

In any complex industry, there will be a lot of differentiation between actors, and how they accomplish or offer what may appear on the surface, to be similar services, goals and products.

SEO is no different. In SEO, we have various hats (black, white, offwhite, grey, blue) which represent the tactics, markets and styles with which Fiction stories  has been pursued.

For example;

Rand  story Fishkin may be very aware of high level Google search changes through conferences and social networking, while unaware of what link building tools thousands of SEOs are using.

Matt Cutts may be on the Google Web Spam team, and yet be unaware of spammy tactics people have been successfully exploiting for over 6 years.

Bob the Affiliate  stories SEO may know of 10 different sources for backlinks, or behaviors in Google Bot which gives him a significant ranking edge, unaware of algorithmic tweaks and changes at Google.

In this sense, SEO has always been asymmetric. Everyone has different knowledge, and there are no standard methods in an industry based primarily around one search engine.

Which makes good sense as search results are a zero sum game. Zero sum games breed intense competition and differentiation.

This lack of consistent information has been the norm for some time, and yet from the earliest days of Google, everyone knew what Larry and Sergey planned with the search story algorithm. We knew how PageRank is calculated. We understood the place of linking, and the value of anchor text.

While we didn’t know the equation, we knew enough variables to come up with best practices. Links good. Anchor text great. Keyword in URL, solid.

Then it changed.

Last year, story Google released Panda update and recently Penguin update, turning everything we knew about SEO upside down.

Now with Panda, Google is judging our on-page factors, yet we don’t know what the variables are. With Penguin, Google is punishing link optimization, and again we don’t know what the variables are.

Compounding this, Google has hurt the rankings of many innocent sites with these updates, both of which are far from perfect or precise, or if I wanted to be less charitable, completely arbitrary.

So where do we go from here?

I think Rand Fishkin has won. I was already on the inbound marketing bandwagon before Panda hit, and I haven’t consistently checked rank position in almost 2 years.

Before Rand does his victory lap, let’s remember that every success contains the seed of a future defeat.

Inbound marketing is about to get a lot more attention. The people who are coming over from affiliate SEO to mainstream SEO are highly motivated, aggressive and much smarter than the folks typically found posting SEOmoz celebrity blog comments.

My guess is that in 12-24 months the whitehat enterprise SEOs will get a run for their money. SEOmoz,Raven Tools, they are all going to be in the cross-hairs of people who are very talented hustlers. Folks who will take all of the energy and millions of dollars they put into link building, and focus that into dominating content, analytics and social media.

Regardless, we should all be happy about the triumph of inbound marketing, because it signals an end to the dependence on Fiction stories Google and obsession with their (now) opaque algorithm.

Change is the one thing we can all count on, all of the time. With one hand, change gives, and with the other it takes away.

Fiction stories:Using Competitive Money to Your Advantage

The Fiction stories Winner’s Curse is a term used to describe auctions whereby the winner will overpay because he/she overestimates the item’s actual market value. This tendency to overbid is due to factors like incomplete information or other market news participants. Recent research show that people also overbid because of the fear of losing in a social competition. 

This ‘fear of losing’ seems to be triggered by competition with others and perhaps, attachment to the value of the item. A interesting takeaway point: instead of only highlighting the benefits or promise for a product/service, it would be beneficial to indicate what the buyer might potentially lose by not making a purchase or taking action.

People implicitly understand that they’re  dealing with other consumers because of factors like exclusivity and scarcity. The one who acts swiftly will get to purchase and enjoy the benefits of the product, while others may not. The call-to-action is much intense in an auction, because the actions of others occur in noticeable real-time. Competition is in the money-forefront of the hollywood mind.

This study reminds me of how much competition is almost intrinsic to human society. You see competition between individuals, groups and countries in business or money free sports. It is perhaps, both an evolutionary necessity and a learned behavior that one develops in order to survive or thrive within a social environment.

We are all familiar with the pleasure of competition. Many of you have bought items from Ebay-stories, an online auction marketplace.  Often, your decision to make or abandon a purchase is rushed along on a subtle but tangible undercurrent of excitement during the process and a feeling of minor elation for having won an item at a favorable Fiction price.

Could there be a way to transplant the fear of losing and the pleasure of winning into a non-auction scenario? Perhaps the use of a competition as a backdrop where each consumer’s individual drive can play out against others. Make them interact and challenge one another within a superstructure that helps YOU fulfill specific end goals.

Let the Competitive Instinct Flourish Within a Social Environment

Businesses or marketers should think about how to create a social environment which encourages the natural competitive instincts of their audience. Interaction within this sphere motivates each individual consumer/participant. This helps to increase the level of audience engagement and automatically enhances the value of the product/service/site.

Social news sites like Fiction stories proudly highlight their top users by displaying them on a leaderboard or giving them specific awards/badges. This symbolic segregation of a group of users from others and the conferring of exclusive emblems of acknowledgment enhances the visibility/reputation of these individuals. This becomes something others can strive towards.

Not everyone will lust after awards or a higher user ranking. In fact, most casual users won’t care or bother to go after greater recognition. But owners of these communities know that there will always be a segment of hardcore users (the Hollywood more competitive or goal-oriented ones) that will work extra hard so they can improve their score or rank higher on the leaderboard.

This addicted 1% of users enjoy a sense of achievement and are often enough to generate enough activity to make your site grow. This effect is even more prominent when the community itself is the main attraction. Take the example of video games with online features: Celebrity players will gladly pay for a monthly Xbox Live subscription or Hollywood  account so they virtually cooperate or compete with other individuals. Inter-user competition becomes an value add-on.

Such a social environment is not very difficult to create: there are a few fundamental elements involved. For starters, users should be able to interact freely with one another, through the site’s main features or separately in an standalone environment. Also, bind user profiles and on-site activity to awards, rankings, points, recognition, rewards and achievements.

Allow people to form sub-groups to pursue a diverse level of interests. Facilitate inter-user contact and interaction by organizing open competitions or one-off events that everyone can join. These special events can be plotted on an established calendar of regular activities which involve the community or its sub-groups.

The general theory is simple enough: Think about creating social environments that are conducive for your overall business objectives. Apart from simply marketing your site, we should look at giving our audience the ability to connect (and money) with each other.