Category: Uncategorized
September 11th, 2014 by Elma Jane
Every year Americans take more than 59 million trips abroad. Yet many of us don’t know which questions to ask regarding the use of credit cards. Before you hit the road, let your card issuer know where and when you’ll be traveling, so it doesn’t mistake those overseas charges with fraudulent activity. Start asking some questions below:
Does my card charge a foreign transaction fee? Because these fees can run as high as 3% and can be quite costly.
Does my card have an EMV chip? A smart chip widely used in Europe and other places. Contact your credit card provider and see if they can provide you at no cost a chip-and-PIN card if you don’t already have one. Most of the card companies are moving this way, but typically you have to request it.
Does my card offer any travel perks? You may want to inquire about additional coverage your card may provide you when you’re abroad such as insurance for accidents, lost luggage or auto collision.
How can I get cash overseas? Reach out to the bank or credit card provider and find out what relationships they have in the local market you’re traveling to. This will be helpful for avoiding ATM fees. Additionally, if you need to access cash from your credit card, they’ll be very helpful if you do it through a banking institution that has a relationship with your provider.
Will my card be accepted at my destination? Thirty to sixty days before traveling contact your bank or credit card provider and ask some important questions. Find out if their card is going to be accepted or if there will be any restrictions for it to be used abroad.
The best thing to do is to have a plan before you travel. Know how to minimize your fees and protect your credit cards. Then you can enjoy your adventure.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: atm, ATM fees, bank, banking, banking institution, card, card issuer, chip, Chip and PIN, chip-and-PIN card, credit card provider, credit cards, EMV, EMV chip, fee, fees, foreign transaction fee, institution, PIN, provider, transaction, transaction fee, travel
August 29th, 2014 by Elma Jane
The God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, support strengthen and establish you. ( 1 Peter 5:10)
We may feel saddened or bewildered by a turn of events. Even when our spirits are low, we need only look to the Christ within us to feel strengthened, comforted and renewed in faith and courage. Within our souls, we find enduring comfort and hope in God’s infinite good. We feel a resurgence of faith and courage, as we are filled with love for life and the will to go on. Through the power of our inner Christ Spirit, we have the strength to meet any challenge. There is no pain in the world that the indwelling Spirit cannot reach and heal.
Posted in Uncategorized
August 22nd, 2014 by Elma Jane
Turn Around Strip Down
There was a bit of confusion at a supermarket. When this senior was ready to pay for his groceries, the cashier said, Strip Down facing me.
Making a mental note to complain about excessive security running amok, the senior did just as the lady cashier had instructed.
When the hysterical shrieking and alarms finally subsided, he found out that the lady cashier was referring to his credit card, to turn around the card, strip down and swipe it.
The senior have been asked to shop elsewhere in the future.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: card, credit, credit-card, swipe
August 22nd, 2014 by Elma Jane
LIVE IN A FIELD OF UNLIMITED POTENTIAL (PROSPERITY)
You visit the earth and water it, you greatly enrich it. (Psalm 65:9)
Every seed we plant, whether physical or spiritual has within it the potential for a healthy yield. When the soil is properly prepared and the seedling carefully nourished, the plant flourishes. What may seem like an empty field is actually abundant potential, which will soon be ready for harvest. Plant affirmations and intentions and nurture them with faith and action. As we do, a prosperous crop of good comes to fruition.
Posted in Uncategorized
August 14th, 2014 by Elma Jane
To make a strong first impression on consumers, businesses need an impactful logo. Despite the importance of a logo, businesses with just a handful of employees often struggle to design a memorable one with their limited budgets. Fifteen percent of small businesses with five employees or less have no logo at all, with 56 percent of businesses having designed their own logos without any professional help.
A standout logo and impressive Web presence are important parts of building a brand even at the very early stages of building a business. The research revealed that more than a quarter of small businesses are planning on changing their logo in the next few months, and when thinking about logo design, it’s best to keep it simple.
Small business owners should choose a design that has staying power, but it’s important to be open to small iterations over time. Brands may need to refresh their logo as the company evolves, expands, and takes on new audiences just don’t lose sight of what makes your brand recognizable whether it’s a signature color or graphical element.
Here are some tips to help small businesses refresh their logo.
Ask your audience. Social media makes it easy to communicate directly with customers. Engage customers in the process by asking for input and even allowing them to judge potential designs.
Communicate the change. To avoid confusion, the refresh should be consistent at every touch point for customers. Ensure a seamless experience by communicating the change with employees and updating marketing materials.
Keep it simple. A complete brand overhaul may alienate customers, so less is more when it comes to a refresh. Focus on one or two elements and make subtle changes.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: business owners, businesses, consumers, customers, marketing, social media
August 13th, 2014 by Elma Jane
No sales manager wants to hear that his or her team is losing sales. For some companies, customers jump ship or don’t give them a chance at all, because of a negative experience with an individual sales representative. The outcome of a bad in-person sales experience is more dramatic than just a delay in the sales cycle. In fact, according to a recent survey and research, 70 percent of marketing and sales professionals said a bad sales call results in a loss of revenue and 70 percent noted that it can take months or even years, to recover from it, but for many organizations, lost revenue doesn’t just occur because of bad sales calls. Often, small inefficiencies in the sales process add up to a lot of wasted time and by extension, wasted opportunities.
Sales teams spend 30 to 50 percent of their time not selling, they’re calling, chasing and waiting, trying to get the customer to agree to an appointment. When you change this behavior and drive it down, sales go way up.
How can sales managers solve these issues that stand in the way of growth? Gathering customer feedback may seem like the obvious answer, but before you do, try seeking internal feedback from your team about where they’re struggling.Managers should look at underperforming sales reps and inquire about the obstacles that are keeping them from being successful, is it training or the enablement material? Can they find the right material for each stage of the sales cycle? It’s important that managers understand both the positive and negative patterns so they can provide critical feedback to marketing on content effectiveness and help salespeople orchestrate better conversations.
Another effective strategy for collecting useful feedback is to ask employees what tactics are helping them to succeed. Ask them for the single best thing they’re doing relating to sales. Questions that ask for just one thing generate the best results. It’s easy to act on those answers and it’s valuable and engaging to share them transparently with the rest of the team. Once you’ve asked your team about their process and figured out what’s working, there’s one last question you need to ask yourself as a sales manager, what do you need to stop doing as an organization to free up more time for the tactics that actually work?
If your team is wasting a lot of time on nonselling activity, the best thing to do is eliminate that dead time of waiting around for the phone to ring. Sales teams confuse making 70 phone calls to prospective clients and leaving messages with selling. That activity is not selling. Get prospects engaged in a productive conversation the first time you pick up the phone or meet them by finding out what the customer’s problem is, and if your product or service can solve it.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: companies, customers, marketing, organizations, product, sales, sales calls, sales process, Sales teams, service
July 24th, 2014 by Elma Jane
You may only think of Instagram as a place to edit and share snapshots of your fancy vegan lunch or your adorable new kitten, but the photo-sharing app can be highly useful when it comes to building your business’s brand. Social media not only Instagram, is an incredible platform for people to use to drive more interest to their business. When it comes to building up your following, having good content is the most important factor. While paid traffic is a useful way to gain traction and drive more interest to your pages, she said that at the end of the day, word-of-mouth is the most beneficial.If you want to have more people inviting their friends to your page, you have to have something that’s worth sharing or talking about. Since content is king on social media, businesses looking to market on Instagram in particular should make sure that their posts are relevant and eye-catching with high-quality photos and videos. Most important tip for Instagram success however, isn’t about what hash tags or filters and photo effects to use. It’s even more straightforward: Social media is just like the rest of your life relationships. People want you to be real, honest and address issues we all have on a day-to-day basis. Instagram is a fairly simple social network to use, because unlike other social networks such as Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter, where text is the focus and no form of multimedia is off-limits, you’re limited to only posting photos or videos (15 seconds or less) with captions. For this reason, maintaining an active Instagram presence may seem almost effortless. However, Insta-fame doesn’t come without issues. The biggest challenge would be trying to help everyone. Obviously, the more interest and followers you gain, the more unique problems and questions you receive. For businesses looking to grow their Instagram pages, just remember. It’s all about quality. Great content, honesty and a personable, likable brand voice are all you really need for Insta-success.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: Facebook, Instagram, multimedia, platform, social media, social network, Tumblr, twitter
July 22nd, 2014 by Elma Jane
An Android tablet is a great tool for work, but not every Android app was made for tablets. In fact, most Android apps were made for smaller smartphone displays. While those apps will run just fine on your tablet, they don’t do anything to take advantage of the extra screen space, and while smartphone apps are forced to hide options deep in menus, tablet apps have more room to put those controls front and center. Plus, phone apps just don’t look very good on a tablet. The interface is usually stretched and skewed to fill the larger screen. With that in mind, here are apps that will help you get to work on your Android tablet.
Android Device Manager (Free) – a good tool to help you find a lost or stolen Android device. Keeping it installed on your Android tablet will enable you to quickly locate your business phone if it’s ever misplaced. The app can force your phone to ring even if it’s in silent mode. Lock it to prevent thieves from accessing private or confidential business data and even locate your phone using its built-in GPS sensor. Using Android Device Manager on a tablet gives you plenty of space to view and pan around the map while you’re pinpointing the location of your phone. As a last resort, you can use the app to remotely wipe all the data from your smartphone.
Evernote (Free) – is a great app for taking notes, making to-do lists and saving photos and it’s even better on a tablet. The biggest difference between the smartphone and tablet version of Evernote is that the latter features a persistent sidebar that lets you quickly flip between notes, notebooks and tagged items. It has large buttons that let you create a new note, snap a photo or quickly dictate a voice memo. Those options are hidden in a slide-out menu in the smartphone app. You also get more space to view each individual note, which means you can see your entire memo or list at once with less scrolling and swiping.
Google Docs (Free) – Let’s face it: a word processor like Google Docs isn’t all that useful on your smartphone. Sure, it can come in handy when you need to make a few tweaks to an existing document, but you’ll need a bigger display to get much work done. The Google Docs app was really made for tablets, especially when you pair your slate with a Bluetooth keyboard to use it like a laptop computer. Not only do you get a better view of your entire document on the tablet, but you also get quick access to formatting options at the top of the interface, letting you change fonts, colors, text alignment and more. Those options are tucked away in several layers of menus in the smartphone app. Google’s Sheet spreadsheet editor and Slides presentation maker are also better suited for a large tablet display than a smartphone.
Google Drive (Free) – is a solid cloud storage platform for Android users, and a large tablet screen makes it easier to navigate your file library, thanks to a persistent sidebar that lets you jump to any folder with one tap. It also helps you search through shared and starred documents, or jump to a view of your recently uploaded files. But the best reason to use Google Drive on your tablet is that it lets you open those documents on the tablet version of Google Docs, which is much more functional on a large screen than on a smartphone.
Google Keep (Free) – is a minimalist productivity app that lets you quickly capture notes, voice memos and photos, then view all items in a colorful pinboard-style layout. It works fine on smartphones, but on tablets the app scales beautifully to fill the entire screen, letting you view more notes and photos at once. Otherwise, the app offers identical functionality on smartphones and tablets. In addition to pinning new notes to your board, you can create a to-do list and check items off with one tap. You can also set reminders for any item on your tablet and receive an alert on your smartphone when the time comes.
Hangouts (Free) – is an all-in-one messaging app that combines text messaging and videoconferencing functionality. The app imports your contacts from your Google account to let you create new conversations quickly and the ability to add and remove participants in the middle of a conversation helps it stand out from other messaging apps. You can start a video chat session at any time by tapping the video call button during a Hangouts session. That comes in handy when you need to meet with an employee, colleague or client, but can’t meet face-to-face. Hangouts works fine on a smartphone, but it’s better on a tablet. A persistent sidebar makes it easier to browse through your past conversations, and a larger touch-screen keyboard makes it easier to type out messages.
Informant 3 ($9.99) – is a powerful productivity app that combines a business calendar and task manager in a single location. The calendar automatically imports all your events and appointments from the stock Android calendar, so getting started with Informant 3 is easy. Once it’s set up, you can view your agenda at a glance. Change the view to get the optimal view of your day, week or month and add, move and delete items with a few taps. Meanwhile, the task manager lets you add items to a dynamic to-do list, set reminders and alerts, sort tasks by importance and more. Informant 3 works best on a tablet. Browsing your calendars and lists is easier and more comfortable on a larger display. The app also features a special tablet mode with a sidebar that lets you quickly jump between calendar dates.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: Android, Android Device Manager, app, Bluetooth keyboard, computer, data, evernote, Google Docs, google drive, Google Keep, hangouts, Informant 3, laptop, notebooks, notes, phone apps, platform, smartphone, tablet
July 22nd, 2014 by Elma Jane
Facebook has begun testing a buy button which lets users purchase products advertised on the social network. Meanwhile, Twitter is also stepping up its commerce game, acquiring payments outfit CardSpring.
Facebook users on desktop or mobile can now click a buy call-to-action button on ads and page posts to purchase a product directly from a business, without leaving the social network. Users can pay with a card that Facebook already has on file or enter new details and save them for future use or have them forgotten. No payment details are shared with advertisers. So far, the system is only being tested with a few small and medium-sized businesses in the US.
Separately, Twitter is also looking to strengthen its commerce credentials, buying CardSpring for an undisclosed fee. CardSpring provides an API designed to make it easy for developers to link digital applications to payment cards. It is expected that CardSpring’s technology will help merchants offer discounts in tweets, with customers entering their card details so that when they make a purchase at a later date, the saving is automatically applied.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: api, card, card details, CardSpring, customers, desktop, digital applications, discounts, link, Merchant's, mobile, network, payment cards, payments, product, purchase, technology, twitter
July 21st, 2014 by Elma Jane
European authorities dismantled a Romanian-dominated cybercrime network that used a host of tactics to steal more than EUR2 million. As a direct result of the excellent cooperation and outstanding work by police officers and prosecutors from Romania, France and other European countries, a key criminal network has been successfully taken down this week.
Hundreds of police in Romania and France, backed by the European Cybercrime Centre, carried out raids on 177 addresses, interrogating 115 people and detaining 65. Those held are suspected of participating in sophisticated electronic payment crimes, using malware to take over and gain access to computers used by money transfer services all over Europe. They are also accused of stealing card data through skimming, money laundering and drug trafficking.Proceeds of the crimes were invested in different types of property, deposited in bank accounts or transferred electronically, says the EC3. Large sums of money, luxury vehicles and IT equipment were seized during the raids.
Posted in Uncategorized Tagged with: accounts, bank, bank accounts, card, card data, cybercrime, data, electronic payment, host, Malware, money transfer, network, payment
