Lead Generation Mistakes and How to Avoid Them | AllBusiness

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Good content marketing starts with good lead generation. You’ve probably heard something like this before. But what is lead generation in the first place?

Lead generation is the act of collecting a list of names and contact information of people who will play a critical role in your content marketing strategy. These are the people that your search engine optimization SEO team will forge relationships with to promote your products.

Lead generation is usually the first step in any comprehensive SEO strategy. Establishing contacts will get the ball rolling in your campaign, allowing you to reach a targeted audience that will be more receptive to your business.

This is why it is incredibly important that you are able to conduct lead generation early on, and do it the right way. What are some of the pitfalls to avoid? Let’s take a look at some of them.

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How to Keep the NSA Out of Your Computer | Mother Jones

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JOSEPH BONICIOLI mostly uses the same internet you and I do. He pays a service provider a monthly fee to get him online. But to talk to his friends and neighbors in Athens, Greece, he’s also got something much weirder and more interesting: a private, parallel internet.

He and his fellow Athenians built it. They did so by linking up a set of rooftop wifi antennas to create a “mesh,” a sort of bucket brigade that can pass along data and signals. It’s actually faster than the Net we pay for: Data travels through the mesh at no less than 14 megabits a second, and up to 150 Mbs a second, about 30 times faster than the commercial pipeline I get at home. Bonicioli and the others can send messages, video chat, and trade huge files without ever appearing on the regular internet. And it’s a pretty big group of people: Their Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network has more than 1,000 members, from Athens proper to nearby islands. Anyone can join for free by installing some equipment. “It’s like a whole other web,” Bonicioli told me recently. “It’s our network, but it’s also a playground.”

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Your Thoughts Can Release Abilities beyond Normal Limits|Scientific American

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Better vision, stronger muscles—expectations can have surprising effects, research finds.

There seems to be a simple way to instantly increase a person’s level of general knowledge. Psychologists Ulrich Weger and Stephen Loughnan recently asked two groups of people to answer questions. People in one group were told that before each question, the answer would be briefly flashed on their screens — too quickly to consciously perceive, but slow enough for their unconscious to take it in. The other group was told that the flashes simply signaled the next question. In fact, for both groups, a random string of letters, not the answers, was flashed. But, remarkably, the people who thought the answers were flashed did better on the test. Expecting to know the answers made people more likely to get the answers right.

Our cognitive and physical abilities are in general limited, but our conceptions of the nature and extent of those limits may need revising. In many cases, thinking that we are limited is itself a limiting factor. There is accumulating evidence that suggests that our thoughts are often capable of extending our cognitive and physical limits.

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Tesla Is Beginning To Put The Hurt On The Competition | Forbes

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Upstart automaker Tesla Motors TSLA +3.05% won’t sell as many cars this year as Chevrolet sells in 3 days, but its early success with the all-electric Model S sedan is already keeping the competition up at night. An examination of sales data from across the U.S. and in California for the first half of 2013 paints a picture of just why that is. While Tesla delivered right around 10,000 cars through two quarters, those sales appear to be coming at the expense of BMW, Mercedes, Lexus  and Porsche. And Tesla’s sales are remarkably — though perhaps not surprisingly — concentrated in California thus far, with nearly half winding up in the Golden State. As the automaker continues to open new sales and service locations across the country while simultaneously growing its network of high-speed Supercharger stations, things are likely to get a bit worse for the imports.

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Have a Rocket to Launch? NASA’s Massive Launch Platforms Are Now on Sale | Wired.com

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Saturn V SA-506, the space vehicle for the first lunar landing mission, is rolled out of the Vehicle Assembly Building and down the 3.5-mile crawlerway to Launch Complex 39-A. Photo: NASA

Space pioneers, super villains, and delusional architects, get your checkbooks ready. NASA is putting its Mobile Launcher Platforms up for sale, and if you’ve got the cash and a business case, you can snag one of three 4,115-ton space shuttle platforms. But you won’t be able to drive it home.

Built in 1967, the trio of MLPs were designed for the Apollo and Saturn programs, and then modified in the ’70s to support the Space Shuttle. The platforms stand 25 feet tall and measure 160 by 135 feet, with an unladen weight of 8,230,000 pounds. Add on an unfueled Shuttle, and it tops 11 million pounds.

But there’s a problem.

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Justdelete.me Wants To Help You Pull The Plug On All Those Pesky Online Accounts | TechCrunch

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It’s tiring, isn’t it? Doing everything online, I mean. Everyday you log into services tailor-made for shopping, searching, sharing, watching, chatting, curating, reading, bragging — that’s a lot of places to keep your personal information, and no one could blame you if you wanted to try to pare down on those extraneous connections. Hell, I’d like nothing better myself sometimes.

A U.K.-based duo consisting of developer Robb Lewis and designer Ed Poole seem to understand that desire awfully well, and they teamed up to create what may be a truly indispensable resource. It’s called Justdelete.me, and as the name sort of implies, it’s a directory of links to pages where you can lay waste to your myriad online accounts.

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Mysterious Pentagram on Google Maps Explained | LiveScience

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Conspiracy theorists, start your engines: On the wind-blown steppes of central Asia, in an isolated corner of Kazakhstan, there’s a large pentagram etched into the Earth’s surface. And now an archaeologist has revealed the source of the mysterious structure.

The five-pointed star surrounded by a circle, located on the southern shore of the Upper Tobol Reservoir, shows up vividly on Google Maps. There are almost no other signs of human habitation in the area; the closest settlement is the city of Lisakovsk, about 12 miles (20 kilometers) to the east.

The region surrounding Lisakovsk is riddled with ancient archaeological ruins. Bronze Age settlements, cemeteries and burial grounds — many of which have yet to be explored — dot the windswept landscape.

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WTF? Crazy B***h Wedding (NSFW) | You Tube

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WTFMod

This has been on You Tube for exactly one week and has 1.2 million views. That is either an indication of our horror or our embrace of truly alternative culture. Whether you find this horrifying or hilarious, it is the proverbial train wreck. You will not be able to look away:

REMEMBER: THIS IS NOT SAFE FOR WORK!

Ed: Lydia adds, “All she needed to be was pregnant and the scene would have been complete.’

The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship | Inc.com

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By all counts and measures, Bradley Smith is an unequivocal business success. He’s CEO of Rescue One Financial, an Irvine, California-based financial services company that had sales of nearly $32 million last year. Smith’s company has grown some 1,400 percent in the last three years, landing it at No. 310 on this year’s Inc. 500. So you might never guess that just five years ago, Smith was on the brink of financial ruin–and mental collapse.

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