Crowdsourcing the inventory selection

Firstly, rather than populating its site with objects selected by a group of buyers operating autonomously based on their own taste, LuxeYard is taking cues from its users on what items to sell. LuxeYard members can post photos of the type of items they’d like to buy on social media platforms, and other members can vote up on products they would also like to buy. Essentially, the items for sale on site will be crowdsourced according to users’ wants.

LuxeYard screenshot (click to enlarge)

“We’re really establishing a pattern of listening,” LuxeYard COO Steve Beauregard said in a phone interview Monday. “We’re really trying to build a conversation around certain pieces, and that will help focus our buyers and attune them to our users’ tastes, rather than just buying something they think is interesting.”

Taking group buying one step further

Secondly, LuxeYard is employing truly flexible group buying. This is where members use their social networks to encourage their friends to buy the same product on LuxeYard they’re buying, thereby driving down the price of that item. For example: I could buy a chair on LuxeYard for 0, and then post about that chair on Facebook. If a certain number of other people end up buying the same chair, the final cost for everyone buying the chair could be driven down to 0.

A unique financial starting point

And another unique thing about LuxeYard is that it’s hitting the ground running from a financial perspective. The company has raised .5 million from private investors, but has technically already gone public by conducting a reverse merger into a publicly-held shell company. Details are still being ironed out, so there is no public float to LuxeYard’s stock, but it will begin trading under the ticker symbol “LXRD” at some point in the coming months. Access to public market investors will potentially give LuxeYard the monetary wherewithal to compete head-to-head in the flash sales and group buying space already filled with solid players such as Wayfair, One Kings Lane and others, not to mention more general e-commerce sites such as Amazon.

But how long can exclusivity last?

Now, LuxeYard also claims it will be more choosy about the items it selects to sell on the site. According to Beauregard, if a company’s products are already being sold on existing e-commerce sites or major chain stores, LuxeYard will not sell any of its products. That’s an honorable goal, but true exclusivity is not always an easy thing to maintain when you’re also balancing the demand from investors for constant growth. And being that LuxeYard is starting out as a public company with notoriously demanding Wall Street-style investors, that could be an even harder balance to strike. But overall, LuxeYard’s offering seems unique enough that the company has a good shot at success — even in the hyper competitive world of e-commerce.

Here’s one more screenshot of LuxeYard (click to enlarge):

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Remember those iPad textbooks from Kno? Well, conveniently in advance of that other education announcement this week, the company has added two new features to the edu-party: Kno Me and Kno Flashcards. The former is an interactive graphical dashboard that details your learning habits, such as time spent in a book, understanding of key terms and test grades — perfect for nosey moms. Kno Flashcards, on the other hand, puts a new spin on the classic analog memory-jogger. Key points are automagically drawn from the book and compiled into cards, the software then uses metacognition, spaced repetition and episodic memory — three terms that need flashcards right there — to help you learn. Both are detailed in the video and PR after the break. Yes, there will be a quiz later.

Continue reading Kno adds new smart textbook capabilities: Kno Me, gets to know you (video)

Kno adds new smart textbook capabilities: Kno Me, gets to know you (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:48:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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first of all, ensure that you write an article for any human and not for the search engines. Alot of marketers get swept up in using a niche finder software tool to choose a keyword and then create a page that is part gibberish to please the search engines. While this may work to secure a backlink, it will not work for getting traffic.

next, you should pick one keyword using your niche finder software and then write a sales sort article and post to your main site or site. Then, create another informative article and link the keyword to your sales article. Finally, create another article and help it become informative and submit this to 4-5 different article publication sites and link to both from the other articles.

If you do this properly, you’ll have the ability to get alot of decent traffic when you wrote a good article.

There is no should spin the article, because there’s no such thing as duplicate content a minimum of for the article web sites. Your next job is to throw some backlinks near your article using sites like imautomator or social marker. These sites are cost-free to join and use all of which help build you the right backlinks.

Finally, take your article and spin this and post into products like seo linkvine, articleranks, myarticlenetwork or maybe syndicate kahuna. All of these can present you with 100′s of links. Boosting your article on the top of the search engine results.

Perhaps the easiest games to understand are slots which don’t require any real skill, just luck. All you do is pick how many lines you want to bet on (1-9) and how much you want to bet on each of them and that’s it.

All that is left to do is press the button to spin, then wait to see if your luck comes in. There is on the other hand the game of roulette, this is seen as the ultimate game of chance by many people and it takes a bit more time to learn.

This game has a ball and a spinning wheel and you need to guess where you think the ball will land on this wheel in the game. There is a whole host of bets that you can make, they will all pay out differently if you win.

You will need to take quite a bit of time to learn this game however, so it is probably worth playing free roulette for a while before playing real roulette. You will be able to learn more about the game playing for free and you might even think of a good strategy to use.

Blackjack, a card game, is another popular one. The card values are from 1-11 and you play against a dealer. The idea is to get as close to 21 as you can without going over, if this happens you go bust and the dealer wins that bet.

You begin the game by getting as near to 21 as you can, then the dealer will take their turn. You will lose the bet if the dealer gets closer to 21, but if you do then you will win.

So, these are the three most popular games you will find, the next thing you need to do is find a fair casino. Here is somewhere where you can read about one of the best ones – http://www.onlinerouletteking.com/Bet365-Casino-Review.html

Originally posted at Dialed In

Most people struggle with strumming because it’s not black and white like other guitar techniques. This is not entirely true. It’s true that when you learn a chord you either know it or you don’t. The same can be said about a scale. What you need to realize is that strumming patterns can be learned too.

Strumming is done with a pick or your thumb. You can’t just jump into playing massive solos and complicated finger picking without some guitar strumming lessons.

Allowing your hand to relax is the first secret to strumming correctly. Just like any other exercise you need to stretch your muscles beforehand. You are attempting to get the tension out of your fingers. This is very important because a tense strumming hand will translate to poor playing.

When you have stretched your hands relaxed it’s time to start strumming. Start by playing just down strums and remember to count even beats out loud to get your timing correct. Play one chord at first then begin alternating between chords.

When you have down strums mastered it’s time to make things more complicated. You are going to add up strums to your playing You do not make up strums as ‘loud’ sounding as down strums.

There are loads of more ways you can start improving at a guitar To learn more about playing the guitar check this out – [spin]learn acoustic guitar