Go Fishing This Holiday Season

Holiday season is fast approaching, and if are still wondering about the best gifts that you can give to yourself and your family, then why don't you go fishing with them while at the comfort of your own home. Here are some of the fishing games that you can play with your game consoles, which will definitely make your holiday more fun and enjoyable: 

Rapala Tournament Fishing is a game for Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360. This game is considered as one of the best fishing games today. It allows you to go fishing in some of the most popular fishing spots in the world. With its top-notch graphics, generating the feeling of fishing for real is not impossible. 

Reel Fishing: The Great Outdoors is a mobile game that can be played with PSP. Fishing already became so small that you can hold everything in your palm. The graphics and Audio of this game is one of the reasons why it is considered as one of the best fishing games. 

Bass Pro Shops Trophy Bass is a game developed Vivendi Universal Games and is the sixth installment of the game Bass Pro. The realistic view of this game made it possible to go fishing right within the comfort of your own home. Bass Pro is available for PC and Xbox users. 

And finally, the Fisherman's Bass Club, a game for Playstation 2, and is one of the best games if you want to test your skills as a fisherman. Providing realistic game play and graphics, this game will definitely make your holiday season more enjoyable and memorable. 

Hundreds of fishing games can make your Christmas more fun. If you were not able to find something for you using the list above, there are still a lot of games available for you. All you have to do is visit some gaming forums and blogs to learn more about fishing games. So, what are you waiting for? Drop the anchor, sit back, relax, and have fun while fishing inside your living room.

Reasons Why Local Business Owners Should Know About Google +

Despite the fact that Google+ is still in the beta testing stages, it is looking to be one of best tools for local business owners to use to help increase public awareness of their businesses and their brands.

One of the things that makes Google+ such a valuable tool for local business owners is the fact that business owners are able to use the +1 feature to enhance their SEO. Local businesses often rely oninternet marketing via their website to drive customers to their physical stores, and nothing is as effective as SEO for driving traffic to a website. In order to increase traffic to a website, the Google+ social network allows people to +1 a post or website, which is similar to the "Like" feature of Facebook. The more +1s a website or blog post gets, the higher it will be ranked on Google. This makes this aspect of Google+ a much better use for local businesses, as they can stay away from unethical SEO practices by using the Google+ social network.

Another reason for local business owners to find out as much as possible about Google+ is the fact that they are much more easily able to find their target markets. Social networking is one of the best ways for business owners to reach their demographic and target customers, and the Google+ social network is shaping up to be one of the largest and most advanced of the social networks.

By using Google+, you are able to send out your information and content to as many people as possible, and more people will be able to find this interesting content thanks to the wide reaching network that Google+ will offer. By using Google+ more and more, the programming of Google+ will be able to find and present you with more original content that you will find useful. The content brought back to you by Google+ will be more targeted, meaning that the people who use Google+ will be more easily able to find valuable information.

As with Facebook, Google+ will have communities which will be called "Circles". These Circles will act just like the Facebook communities where people can share content and information much more easily. Marketers are able to target their customers much more easily thanks to these specific circles, and they are able to direct the marketing at only the people who will be interested in what they have to offer. This means that few people will "un-follow" or dislike a certain type of marketing, which usually contributes to lower SEO rankings. Being able to customize a marketing campaign or promotion to reach specific "Circles" will make internet marketing much easier and much more targeted as well.

Another advantage to using Google+ is that Google is much more likely to keep a tight rein on spamming and spam content than Facebook or Twitter have been able to. This means that fewer spam messages will be sent out to people, which will make the market conditions much easier for internet marketers. An overload of spam causes people to become jaded to be advertisements and marketing campaigns that they see, but keeping the amount of spam reduced will help Google+ to be a much more conducive environment for those who are looking to do internet marketing via Google's upcoming social network.

One of the things that makes the content on Twitter slightly less trustworthy than on other sites is the fact that information can be auto posted. This means that posts can be automatically done without the content being revised or checked for value. Google+ is not giving the option of auto posting, something that is being greeted with mixed reactions. In a way this makes it more difficult for frequent posters, as they are being forced to actually post manually. However, this ensures that the quality of posts will be much higher, as only content that is actually valuable will be worth taking the time to post manually on the Google+ network.

The contextual relevance of the Circles on Google+ will make it much easier for people to obtain useful links, thus making link building on Google+ much more effective than on Facebook. Google+ will offer the Circles feature, which will enable users to establish communities and find topical authorities on subjects of interest. This will mean that any links posted by these topical authorities will be treated with much more attention, which will in turn lead to much more effective link building for those who can be considered authorities on a particular topic. This helps to indicate how large a person's sphere of influence is.

As the world of social networking is becoming more and more important for local business owners, most business owners will find that Google+ is one of the most valuable online tools that they have at their disposal to help enhance public awareness of their business and their brand. Though Google+ is still in the works and fairly far off, business owners will find that the options open to them through Google+ will be well worth the wait as the social network in launched in the distant future. Google has not yet released an established timeline for the release of Google+, but social network users and local business owners around the world are waiting with baited breath for the new tool that will make their marketing campaigns much easier.

Google + for Business: Moving Beyond Traditional SEO

Those stuck in the past are doomed to failure. While this axiom has always been true, it speaks even more clearly in the age of the internet. Companies who don't stay abreast of every new development in the search engine optimization world will quickly fall behind those who do. While the product will likely always be king, promotion will always be prince, at the very least. Those companies already looking into Google + for business and figuring out how to best leverage the new technology to their advantage will find that the benefits are there for the reaping. Here are a few ways to get started.

Buttons

Buttons are those icons every social networking site has for websites to put up on every article they publish. These buttons give other networking users an easy way to share the article or site with their network of friends and it is one of the cornerstone reasons why this method of promotion works. If you intend to take advantage of what Google + for business offers, you'll need to grab one of these buttons and put it on your site. In addition to sending an article or site to a person's network of friends, it will also be taken into consideration when Google is modifying its search rankings, meaning with every "+1" you get, you could go higher.

Expanding your Reach

A social network is only as good as the people in it. If you have a very limited circle filled with customers and employees you already interact with on a regular basis, you're not going to maximize your returns from Google + for business. Instead, make it a point to add other businesses to your circle. Preferably, you'll want to add businesses that are in the same field as your own. This will give you an expanded reach and will also give you a bird's eye view of what your contemporaries are doing to use the system to their best advantage.

Encourage Visitors to Use Your Buttons

It's not yet clear what kind of view Google + for business is going to take on encouraging visitors to click the +1 button. Until they come out and say they frown upon it, however, there's nothing wrong with throwing some subtle encouragement at your readers and visitors. Considering the potential impact of getting more of these votes, it's worth it to try. Do not, however, make clicking the button a condition of reading your content, as this is against the TOS and is also a huge turnoff to your typical web surfer.

Growing and Caring for Hydrangeas

Hydrangeas are a very popular landscape plant, prized for their abundant blooms and easy care. How you care for the hydrangeas in your landscape will depend on what type of hydrangea you have.

There are four categories of hydrangeas. These are Hydrangea macrophylla, commonly called Big Leaf, Mophead or Lacecap hydrangeas; Hydrangea arborescence, which includes “Annabelle” and its relatives, also known as Smooth hydrangeas; Hydrangea quercifolia, also known as Oakleaf hydrangeas; and finally, Hydrangea paniculata, which are commonly called PeeGee hydrangeas.

Big Leaf hydrangeas are some of the most popular hydrangeas in landscapes. Most of these bloom in July to August in either blue or pink, although a few varieties are white. Except for the white varieties, any of these can be grown as either blue or pink, depending on the acidity of the soil they’re grown in. We’ll talk more about changing the bloom color in another article.

If your Big Leaf hydrangea needs to be pruned, this should be done in early summer, before the flower buds are formed for the next season. These hydrangeas bloom on old wood, which is wood that was formed during the previous growing season. The flower buds are formed in August through October, so do any necessary pruning in the summer, prior to August. Prune out any dead wood each year, and after the plant has reached five years old about a third of the stems can be pruned back to the ground each summer to help revitalize the plant.

It’s best to plant Big Leaf hydrangeas in a spot where they can grow as large as they’d like. They can be cut back in midsummer if they’re getting too large for their space, but they’ll soon grow back to their large size.

Annabelle hydrangeas have large white blooms which often reach up to ten inches in diameter. A native plant of the eastern U.S., Annabelle prefers to grow where it can have morning sun and afternoon shade, or dappled shade all day. Hot afternoon sun will make Annabelle’s heavy blooms fade more quickly. Annabelle hydrangeas bloom from early summer through August or September.

Annabelle is a popular landscape shrub because it will bloom reliably even after heavy pruning or a severe winter. In the far north, the plant will die back to the ground each year, send up new growth in the spring and still bloom profusely. The blooms tend to be quite heavy, sometimes bending the stems to the ground. The stems may be staked to prevent this, or pruned to about 24 inches to help the stems become stronger and better able to support the heavy blooms. Annabelle hydrangeas bloom on new wood, and should not be pruned in the spring while they are preparing to bloom. They can be pruned any other time of year, but it isn’t necessary to prune Annabelle each year except for removing dead wood or branches that don’t contribute to a nicely shaped plant.

Oak leaf hydrangeas are also native to the U.S., and as their name suggests, they have large, deeply lobed leaves. The white blooms of oak leaf hydrangeas are beautiful in early to mid summer, tending to turn pink as they age. Oak leaf hydrangeas also add color to the landscape in the fall as the large leaves turn brilliant red, burgundy, orange or yellow, especially if they receive some sun. These hydrangeas are more tolerant of sun and dry conditions than other types, but they will not tolerate wet feet. Oak leaf hydrangeas should be pruned at the same time and in the same manner as the Big Leaf hydrangeas.

PeeGee hydrangeas are very popular because they will grow in a variety of climates and are hardy up to zone 3. Like the oak leaf hydrangeas, PeeGee’s white blooms tend to turn pink as they age. PeeGees often grow very large, up to 8-10 feet tall and just as wide, and should be planted where they’ll have ample room. They do like some shade in very hot climates, and are tolerant of sun if they receive enough moisture. PeeGee may be pruned at any time except in midsummer when they are preparing to bloom, and they can also be pruned to a tree shape.

All hydrangeas will grow well and bloom with morning sun and afternoon shade. But they will not do well in heavy shade and wouldn’t be happy if planted beneath a shade tree. If you live in a cool northern state, your hydrangeas may grow well in more than a half day of sun, but if your landscape is hot and mostly sunny, you may want to stick to the PeeGee varieties. It may be difficult to grow hydrangeas in far southern areas that rarely see frost.

Hydrangeas don’t require much special care. You may want to give them a balanced, slow-release fertilizer once a year in late spring to keep them happy. Spread the fertilizer under the plant, but not right next to the trunk, and remember that not enough fertilizer is always better than too much.

How To Save $500 On Gap Auto Insurance

The average price for gap auto insurance sold by an auto dealership or finance company is $578. 

Q. So why would anybody in their right mind pay $500 more they should? 

A. They don’t know any better. 

Imagine you’re in a car dealership and you’ve just purchased a brand new car. You’re sitting there with a self satisfied smile on your face that lets everybody in the showroom know you just brought the salesman to his knees with your finely honed negotiating skills. 

Next you go see the finance person to arrange a loan. This is where you’re casually informed that if you wreck your beautiful new car during the next year or two you’re going to have fork over maybe five grand because the car will be worth that much less than what you still owe the bank. 

Lucky for you the finance guy has a tailored made solution to the problem. For a measly $578 one time fee you can purchase a gap policy that protects you from a potential shortfall, up to $5,000, if you owe the bank more than the car is worth when that bus hits you. 

Of course you’re going to say “sure, go ahead” because you’re afraid of losing your shirt and, by the way, did I tell you the premium could be rolled right into the loan? 

On one hand, you’re relieved to know the value your asset is protected, but on the other hand you’re asking yourself why it had to cost so much. 

Well, it doesn’t. But who knew that there was even such a thing as gap insurance much less how much it’s supposed to cost. The problem is not with you, but with the major insurance companies and their brokers. 

The reason you don’t hear anything about gap from your insurance agent is that it isn’t exactly a big money maker. With an average gap endorsement costing around $35 a year, there isn’t a lot of profit incentive to buy 30 second spots on American Idol. 

Besides the price, there’s another difference between the gap insurance sold by a car dealer and the policy rider sold by a name brand gap insurance provider. When you buy gap from a major insurer you can cancel the rider as soon as the loan balance and value of your car reach parity – usually within the first two years of ownership.