News and Society Blog-Environmental Info: Different Volunteering ...

ByRobert A. Anderson

Almost all of us are aware of the term volunteering. It refers to the practice of working for a specific cause or in support of others and that too without getting paid. In-spite of today's busy and hectic schedule, still there are many individuals seen interested in this practice. The rising demand and popularity of volunteering among individuals has resulted in the emergence of many professional companies offering volunteer work to the interested individuals. Individuals are involved in different volunteering service programs. Some of the major ones include:

Environment and wildlife protection

Plenty of environmental and wildlife conservation programs are organized by professional companies these days aimed at taking the best care of wildlife and preserving the environment for future generations. Preserving the health and wellbeing of the natural world is the major focus of such programs. Being a part of such programs enable individuals participate and contribute towards the preservation of different flora and fauna species.

Women and youth

This is another major program that involves working in street youth centers, orphanages and health care facilities. Care and sympathy forms the basis of one such program. Under this program, individuals can work for the disregarded segment of society. They can work for the education, health and wellness and empowerment of poor. Today, maximum number of individuals is found interested in this volunteering service program.

Community development

This is another important area providing keen individuals the opportunity of volunteering. Working towards the betterment and development of the community is an excellent step in the direction of community improvement. Many areas are still devoid of electricity, sanitation, permanent shelter, potable water, schools, roads, etc. Bringing water to a community, making permanent homes for families, installing solar generation system for electricity, etc. are some of the important steps that can together contribute towards community improvement.

Teaching overseas

Teaching overseas is also a popular Volunteer program. The project involves teaching children basic things to educating adults in a proper way.

These are some of the prominent programs that have been grabbing a huge attention these days. For individuals willing to work in any of these areas can take assistance of a professional company. Always make sure that you choose a reliable company for getting the volunteer work. Internet is the best medium that can help you find a company of your type. There are many websites informing people about these services in detail. Go through a reliable website to choose a reliable company.

Go Voluntouring is an organization that provides volunteering services to customers. The company organizes various volunteer programs where interested individuals can work towards the welfare of society.

Article Source:http://EzineArticles.com/?expert

Source: http://newsandsocietyblog-environmentalinfo.blogspot.com/2012/02/different-volunteering-service-programs.html

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Can Pinterest Help Your Freelancing Business? | FreelanceFolder

Posted February 3, 2012 in Social Media

If you?re active in social media, you may have recently heard of Pinterest, a new social media site that is gaining popularity. In fact, it seems like everyone is suddenly talking about Pinterest. From all the talk it?s hard to tell whether it?s a trend or a fad.

You may even wonder if there is any way that your freelancing business could possibly benefit from using Pinterest. You may be asking yourself whether you should get involved in Pinterest.

In this post, I?ll take a look at Pinterest from a freelancer?s perspective. I?ll explain what it is and also take a look at some benefits and drawbacks of the site for freelancers.

Of course, ultimately every freelancer needs to make their own decision about Pinterest.

What It Is

Pinterest is known as a pinboard. Offline, a pinboard is a type of bulletin board that you pin photos and other images to.

Online, a pinboard is basically a bookmarking service that lets you save the images of things that you are interested in. While Pinterest is currently the best known pinboard, others include Pinboard and Trello.

One thing that distinguishes pinboards from other social sharing sites is the visual aspect. Members are invited to share and comment on images that interest them. Pinboards (and especially Pinterest) are heavy on the images and light on the text.

If you?ve ever visited Pinterest, you?ll find a variety of topics. Here?s a small sampling of what you might find:

• Recipes
• Decorating Ideas
• Fashion Ideas
• Organizing tips
• Inspirational quotes

There?s even a category titled ?Design,? although it?s not necessarily just about graphic or web design.

Benefits of Pinterest

I can see four possible benefits of Pinterest for freelancers:

1. Great for finding inspiration?Whatever it is you need to be inspired about, there are probably images of it out there. Do you want to do a design based on a sunset? With Pinterest, you can see hundreds of photos of sunsets. What about creating a design based on leaves? Again, with Pinterest you can find lots of different leaf images.
2. Visual emphasis?Pinterest has a visual emphasis and as such it?s great for visually oriented freelance professions such as design, art, and photography. Of course, you will find some quotes out there and other short bits of text, but for the most part the content on Pinterest is graphics and photos.
3. Good for branding and building an image?Pinterest can be great for building a brand or an image. Pinterest is still in its early days, so for the most part big name brands aren?t out there yet. However, I can see some visually oriented freelancers creating a gallery of their work and possibly referring clients to it.
4. Links to Facebook?Right now it?s easy to share to your Facebook account when you pin an item to Pinterest. All you need to do is check a box. Currently, there are no links to other social media sites, but who is to say what the site has planned for the future?

Now that we?ve looked at the benefits of Pinterest for freelancers, it?s time to look at the drawbacks.

Drawbacks of Pinterest

I can also see four possible drawbacks of Pinterest (based on the current version) for freelancers.

1. Privacy?Right now, as I understand it, there?s no way to restrict who can view your pinboard. That means that right now it?s really not a good tool to work on or share proprietary materials. With such a restriction in place, however, Pinterest could possibly be used for collaboration.
2. Possible copyright issues?Of course, any time that you share something that is copyrighted online you run the risk of it being stolen. When I discussed Pinterest with some of my Google+ friends, they expressed concern that sharing on Pinterest somehow transferred the rights of what was being shared to the platform. (I?m not a lawyer, so I don?t know if this is true.)
3. Not widely available?Probably one of the biggest drawbacks for freelancers who want to use Pinterest is that it?s not widely available. You have to ask for an invitation. In fact, to write this post I had to look on with a friend to get an idea of what Pinterest is about since I haven?t received my login yet.
4. Limited user profiles?The final drawback that I see for freelancers is that user profiles seem to be very small?just a photo and a few lines. So, Pinterest isn?t really about meeting and getting to know people so much as it is about sharing things that you are interested in.

More Resources

Are you ready to learn more about Pinterest? Here are five more resources:

Your Turn

Are you already using Pinterest? If so, how are you using it? Share your answers in the comments.

Image by 7263255

Related posts:

1. Branding Your Freelancing Business: Personal Name vs Business Name

About the author: Laura Spencer is a freelance writer from North Central Texas with over 20 years of professional business writing experience. If you liked this post, then you may also enjoy Laura?s blog about her freelance writing experiences, WritingThoughts. Laura is also on Google+.

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Source: http://freelancefolder.com/can-pinterest-help-your-freelancing-business/

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Facebook's IPO guarantees a peek at its privacy

By Helen A.S. Popkin

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While you probably won't receive so much as a virtual sack of FarmVille pumpkin seeds from Facebook's long-awaited IPO ??set to grant Facebook's shareholders millions and billions ??there is one thing you'll get out of the deal: a chance to ogle the social network's private business, sort of like it's been doing to you for years.

Privacy advocates have long scrutinized how Facebook deals with privacy and security of its users, but now that Facebook is going public, "disclosure rules affecting publicly traded companies may force Facebook to reveal privacy-related investigations that it otherwise might have kept secret," Ars Technica notes. What's more, the filing informs us about Facebook's own concerns.

Facebook

The required IPO filing references Facebook's recent settlement with the Federal Trade Commission, stemming from social network's massive privacy rollback in 2009. It also makes note of a current privacy audit by the Ireland?s Data Protection Commissioner, the result of 22 complaints made against the social network by Austrian privacy advocacy, Europe versus Facebook.

Given Facebook's growing omnipresence in our daily lives, you've probably heard about one or both of these investigations, thanks to privacy watchdogs. But as Ars Technica points out, Facebook, as a private company,?was never obligated to tell you. Now that it's going public, Facebook must tell the world what's going on, and how it might affect shareholders. Take, for example, this segment from Facebook's filing:??

It is possible that a regulatory inquiry might result in changes to our policies or practices. Violation of existing or future regulatory orders or consent decrees could subject us to substantial monetary fines and other penalties that could negatively affect our financial condition and results of operations. In addition, it is possible that future orders issued by, or enforcement actions initiated by, regulatory authorities could cause us to incur substantial costs or require us to change our business practices in a manner materially adverse to our business.

What else is Facebook worried about? The Sophos security blog points to No. 23 in the Facebook filing, under risks that may harm the business:

Computer malware, viruses and computer hacking and phishing attacks have become more prevalent in our industry, have occurred on our systems in the past, and may occur on our systems in the future ... As a result of spamming activities, our users may use Facebook less or stop using our products altogether.

"Facebook acknowledging the risks of privacy investigations, malware harming its systems and users and people abandoning the service if it becomes overwhelmed with spam shows they are cognizant of the risk and will now be even more motivated to reduce it," writes Sophos Senior Security Advisor? Chester Wisniewski.

Even though most of us won't earn a dime from Facebook's IPO, our privacy and security may be all the richer for it.

More on the annoying way we live now:

?Helen A.S. Popkin goes blah blah blah about privacy and then asks her to join her on Twitter and/or Facebook. Also, Google+.?Because that's how she rolls.

Source: http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/02/02/10302181-facebooks-ipo-guarantees-a-peek-at-its-privacy

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High Quality Large Fowl Cages for Your Family pet Bird's ...

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Germany's Merkel urges China to use influence on Iran (Reuters)

BEIJING (Reuters) ? German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Thursday urged China to use its influence to persuade Iran to give up its nuclear program, at the start of a three-day visit when she will also seek China's support for the ailing euro.

Merkel is expected to make the case for tighter sanctions on Iran, originally proposed by the U.S. and designed to prevent it from developing nuclear weapons. She said she has already had "long discussions" with President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao over Iran sanctions.

"If we talk about the European sanctions against Iran, the question is how China can make better use of its influence to make Iran understand that the world must not have another power with nuclear weapons," Merkel told an audience at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

She added that she hopes the U.N. Security Council can pass a unanimous resolution on the matter.

The United States imposed the harshest sanctions so far on Iran when President Barack Obama on December 31 signed into law new sanctions on transactions involving Iran's central bank.

The European Union last week imposed a ban on the import, purchase or transport of Iranian oil.

China has long refused to support sanctions on Iran, although Wen Jiabao said last month that Beijing "adamantly opposes" Iran developing nuclear weapons.

The Islamic republic, China's third-largest source of foreign oil, says its nuclear program is for civilian use.

Merkel could urge Beijing to further cut its crude imports from Iran, a German source said earlier, but that is likely to go unheeded.

Li Xiangang, an expert on China-Middle East relations at the China Institute of International Studies, said China would only act after the International Atomic Energy Agency sends inspectors to Iran.

"China opposes the use of nuclear energy for proliferation but believes it is possible to use it for peaceful purposes," said Li, who served as an official in the Chinese embassy in Iran in the 1990s.

"Energy sanctions against Iran will only cause world oil prices to rise and hurt the global economic recovery. That is why I think China is not supportive of further sanctions on Iran."

A CALL FOR OPEN MARKETS

Merkel also pressed China to improve protection of intellectual property rights, calling on Beijing to ensure that German businesses had reciprocal access to its markets.

That concern will likely be repeated when she travels to Guangzhou on Friday for a business summit. Merkel is accompanied by a number of German CEOs, who during a similar summit two years ago also pressed for more market access.

Germany enjoys strong exports to China, especially in machinery and high-tech products. But Chinese exports have eroded manufacturing in its European neighbors, and Chinese efforts to move up the value chain could also threaten German business in the future.

For China, the visit is a chance to be briefed directly on the European crisis. In her speech Thursday, Merkel emphasized that European countries will need better fiscal discipline , more budgetary integration.

European countries will need to cut red tape and barriers to employment if they are to grow, she said.

Chinese leaders view Merkel -- and Germany -- as the definitive voice on the European crisis, in part because of Germany's economic strength compared with its European neighbors, analysts say.

Market fears over the fate of the euro zone economies have eased somewhat since the European Central Bank extended liquidity to banks in December, but serious fiscal and structural problems continue to undermine investor confidence in Europe, China's biggest export market.

China has said it is interested in buying assets in Europe but is less enticed by European bonds. About a quarter of China's $3.2 trillion in forex reserves are already in euro-denominated assets.

In the past few months, state-owned Three Gorges Corp paid the Portuguese government $3.5 billion for its stake in utility EDP, and China's sovereign wealth fund bought a nearly 9 percent stake in London water supplier Thames Water.

The appetite for deals isn't limited to the Chinese state. Private Chinese firm Sany Heavy Industry agreed to pay about 360 million euros for privately held German concrete pump maker Putzmeister.

(Additional reporting by Sui-Lee Wee; Editing by Don Durfee and Jonathan Thatcher)

Source: http://us.rd.yahoo.com/dailynews/rss/iran/*http%3A//news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20120202/wl_nm/us_china_germany_merkel

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Komen for the Cure Cuts Planned Parenthood Funding for Breast Cancer Screening and Health Services (Balloon Juice)

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Meat of the People

The Pushiness: How did the boar get from Brooklyn to Fort Worth? Well, Boar?s Head is a really, really aggressive company. ?It?s not known by very many consumers,? says Mark Lang, a former director of marketing and research at Publix Super Markets, ?but in the industry they?re known for aggressive distribution and expansion strategy.? Boar?s Head empowers an army of independent distributors to get its meat into deli counters. When it elbows its way in, sometimes it elbows out rival meat brands with exclusivity agreements. In 2009, Harris Teeter, a chain of grocery stores in the South and on the East Coast, announced it would sell Boar?s Head meat and not that of its archrival, Dietz & Watson. A Dietz & Watson executive later called the two companies ?mortal enemies.?

Source: http://feeds.slate.com/click.phdo?i=9b623778c804e5a023289959d6956bf5

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