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A couple visiting San Francisco's Golden Gate Bridge on Valentine's Day discovered an unattended camera bag in a nearby parking lot. Inside the bag: credit cards, some papers and (wait for it) over $11,000.

The couple, Carlos and Barbara Landeros of Vallejo, Calif., had driven down to San Francisco for a romantic dinner, according to NBCBayArea.com. Setting out on a presupper walk across the bridge, Barbara spotted camera bag. Thinking its owner would soon return, they waited to make sure it wasn't stolen.

After 45 minutes, their patience ran out, and Barbara opened the bag. Inside was the massive stack of cash. "I got nervous at first, it could be drug money," she told NBCBayArea.com. "I was scared."

While the couple could have had one heck of a Valentine's Day celebration, they turned the bag and its contents over to the police. Detectives were able to locate the owner, a Chinese tourist, Mark, who'd accidentally left the bag in the lot. He was understandably excited to have his bag returned. And the cash, it turned out, wasn't all his: Mark was holding it for several other families with whom he was traveling.

Mark went out of his way to thank the Landeroses. First he tried to call them, but had the wrong number. He then drove his family across the bridge to the Landeros' house, only they weren't home. Finally, they connected over the phone after Mark got the right number. He told them he put a check in the mail as a reward.

NBCBayArea.com notes that the Landeroses never got their nice Valentine's Day dinner. They wound up in traffic and had a not-so-romantic dinner for two at McDonald's.
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/couple-finds-returns-over-11-000-cash-found-162429540.html

Pope Benedict XVI resigns owing to age and declining health

Pontiff, 85, who has arthritis, says he will step down on 28 February after nearly eight years as head of Catholic church


Pope Benedict XVI stunned the world and left the Catholic church reeling when he said on Monday that he would resign – the first pope to do so since the middle ages.

The move, announced without warning, will take place on 28 February and leave the papacy vacant until a successor is chosen.

A Vatican spokesman said the pontiff's aides were "incredulous" when he told them he would step down because he was too weak to fulfil his duties. The pope summoned a meeting of cardinals to tell them of "a decision of great importance for the life of the church".

One of those called to hear the announcement, the Mexican prelate Monsignor Dr Oscar Sánchez, said none of the cardinals had expected it. "The pope took a sheet of paper and read from it. He just said that he was resigning and that he would be finishing on February 28," he said.

"The cardinals were just looking at one another. Then the pope got to his feet, gave his benediction and left. It was so simple; the simplest thing imaginable. Extraordinary. Nobody expected it. Then we all left in silence. There was absolute silence … and sadness."

A deeply conservative pontiff, whose tenure has been overshadowed by sexual abuse scandals, Pope Benedict, 85, leaves with a chequered reputation after a papacy that was at times both conservative and divisive.

One of the organisations representing victims of Catholic clergy in Ireland's notorious orphanages and industrial schools said the outgoing pontiff had broken his promise to offer justice for the crimes of priests and other members of religious orders.

John Kelly, co-founder of Irish Survivors of Child Abuse, said: "In our view we were let down in terms of promises of inquiries, reform and most importantly of all the Vatican continuing not to acknowledge that any priest or religious found guilty of child abuse would face the civil authorities and be tried for their crimes in the courts."

The announcement of the resignation was immediately followed by intense speculation about a likely successor, with potential contenders including Cardinal Angelo Scola, archbishop of Milan, Cardinal Christoph Schönborn, archbishop of Vienna, and Cardinal Marc Ouellet, the Canadian head of the Vatican's office for bishops.

Georg Ratzinger, the pope's brother, told the German media the papal resignation had been part of a "natural process". "My brother would like to have more rest in his old age," he said, adding that he had been informed of Benedict's plans some months ago.

His successor is expected to be elected by the end of March and possibly for the beginning of holy week on 24 March. Pope Benedict will honour public commitments and engagements until the date of his resignation, after which he will move to a summer residence near Rome and then to a former monastery within Vatican territory.

He will take no part in the process to elect a successor. Cardinals will meet and vote on nominees in a series of ballots until a new pope is chosen.

Federico Lombardi, a Vatican spokesman, said the pope had resigned not because of "difficulties in the papacy" or a specific illness but instead a progressive decline in his strength.

"In the last few months he has seen a decline in vigour, both of the body and spirit," Lombardi told reporters. "It was his personal decision taken with full freedom, which deserves maximum respect."

In a statement, the pontiff said: "After having repeatedly examined my conscience before God, I have come to the certainty that my strengths, due to an advanced age, are no longer suited to an adequate exercise of the Petrine ministry.

"For this reason, and well aware of the seriousness of this act, with full freedom I declare that I renounce the ministry of bishop of Rome, successor of Saint Peter, entrusted to me by the cardinals on 19 April 2005, in such a way that as from 28 February 2013, at 20:00 hours, the See of Rome, the See of Saint Peter, will be vacant and a conclave to elect the new supreme pontiff will have to be convoked by those whose competence it is."

Benedict, who became the 265th pope in 2005, has arthritis, particularly in his knees, hips and ankles. He had been due to travel to Brazil, the largest Catholic country in the world, in July for a youth festival, but concerns had been raised among Vatican observers about whether he was fit enough.

A voluntary papal resignation is rare – certainly in recent centuries. Pope Celestine V exercised his right to abdicate in 1294. Pope Gregory XII resigned in 1415 to end the western schism.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/feb/11/pope-benedict-xvi-resigns-age

Enter Noah

For some reason, people love to make excuses about why they haven’t created their dream business or even gotten started. This is the “wantrepreneur” epidemic, where people prevent themselves from ever actually doing the side-project they always talk about over beers. The truth of the matter is that you don’t have to spend a lot of time building the foundation for a successful business. In most cases, it shouldn’t take you more than a couple days.

We made the original product for Gambit in a weekend. “WTF?!” Yes, a weekend. In just 48 hours, some friends and I created a simple product that grew to a $1,000,000+ business within a year.

Same deal for AppSumo. We were able to build the core product in one weekend, using an outsourced team in Pakistan, for a grand total of $60.

Don’t get me wrong–I’m not opposed to you trying to build a world-changing product that requires months of fine-tuning. All I’m going to suggest is that you start with a much simpler essence of your product over the course of a weekend, rather than wasting time building something for weeks… only to discover no one wants it.

I know what you’re thinking: “Yes, Noah, you are SO amazing (and handsome), but what can I do this weekend to start my own success story?”

Here are the steps you can take right now to get started on your million dollar company:
Step 1: Find your (profitable) idea.

At this stage, you are simply looking for something that people are willing to spend money on. So grab a seat and write down a list of ideas that you think might be profitable. If you’re having trouble coming up with ideas, try using the methods below to speed the research process along:

Review top sellers on Amazon. Find products that already have guaranteed customers, then build something complementary. A good example of this is Dodo making a gorgeous $60 case to buy for your iPad (which costs over $500, and over 5 million sold).

Think of all the things you do on a daily basis. Anything done more than once has potential for a product or service to improve the process. For me, one of those products was a mirror I could hang in the shower. It saves me tons of time while shaving, and now I don’t know how I ever lived without it.

Be cognizant of products you use and frequently complain about. Before Gambit, we were constantly asking our payment tool partners for certain features, yet our requests were always rejected. That was the impetus for us to create Gambit for our own games.

Check completed listings on eBay. This allows you to see how well certain products are selling. It’s also an easy way to measure sale prices of items and gauge the overall percentage of the market that’s receiving bids (i.e. in demand).

Look for frequent requests on Craigslist gigs. These listings are from people actively searching for someone to give their money to in exchange for particular services. Try searching for certain keywords (e.g. marketing, computers, health) and keep track of the total number of results displayed. Evaluate the most popular keywords and see if you can create a product or service around those requests.

Browse the Q&A on LinkedIn. On average, LinkedIn users are worth $134, so there is a good chance they’ll have money for you if you can provide solutions to their problems.

Step 2: Find $1,000,000 worth of customers.

Now that you’ve found an idea, it’s time to assess whether there’s a big enough pool of prospective buyers. In this step, you’ll also want to ensure your market isn’t shrinking, and that it fares well compared to similar markets.

I use Google Trends, Google Insights, and Facebook ads when I’m in this part of the process. They’re great tools that help me evaluate the growth potential of my target market.

For example, let’s say you decide to build information products for owners of Chihuahuas (remember “Yo quiero Taco Bell”?). Here’s how I would check to see if there are enough customers:

1. Search Google Trends for the term “chihuahua” and other similar words (e.g. poodle, dogs) for comparison:

(Click image to expand)

We can see that the word “chihuahua” has a decent search volume (relative to “dogs”), and that “poodle” isn’t as popular. It also looks like the number of searches for “chihuahua” has been relatively stable for the last few years.

2. Double-check on Google insights:

Google Insights is great, because it breaks down the search data by location (i.e. what regions the searches are coming from), by date, and what they’re searching for (news, images, products). Click here to see the full report for the above chart.

3. Look at the total number of people available on Facebook for dogs:

3.1 million. Not bad, not bad.

And for Chihuahuas:

84,260 people. Score.

You can also see if there is a large property that you can piggyback on.

Paypal did this with eBay, AirBnb is doing it with Craigslist home listings, and AppSumo looks to the 100 million LinkedIn users. If you can find a comparable site with a large number of potential customers, you’ll be in good shape.

What helped me with finding $1,000,000 worth of customers for AppSumo was studying my successful competitors; specifically, Macheist. Their site did a Mac-only deal that generated more than $800,000. Macheist shares their sales revenue publicly, but you can use your own business acumen on the CrunchBase list to see which business you want to replicate. For instance, you might research Airbnb.com, discover that they have a profitable and growing marketplace, then decide to create a similar service for alternative verticals.

I like to create a Google Spreadsheet of the key numbers for my competitors’ businesses. Below is an example of what that might look like for Macheist in their Mac bundles. [Warning to the haters: This may not be accurate, but I used these numbers just to get a rough idea of the business’ potential.]

Step 3: Assess your customer’s value.

Once you’ve found your idea and a big pool of potential customers, you’ll need to calculate the value of those customers. For our example above, we’ll need to estimate how much a Chihuahua owner (i.e. our customer) is worth to us. This will help us determine the likelihood of them actually buying our product, and will also help with pricing. Here’s how we do that:

1. Find out how much it costs, on average, to buy a Chihuahua (about $650). This is the base cost.

2. See how much it costs to maintain a Chihuahua each year (i.e. recurring costs). Looks like it’s between $500-3,000. For this example, we’ll call it $1,000.

3. Look up their life expectancy, which is roughly 15 years. This is the number of times they’ll have to pay those recurring costs.

Therefore, a Chihuahua’s average total cost of ownership is:

[$650 + ($1,000*15)] = $15,650

Damn… you could buy a lot of burritos with that kind of cash. Silly dog owners.

In any case, these owners are already committing to spend a LOT of money on their dogs (i.e. they are valuable). After putting down $650 on the dog itself and an average of $80/month on maintenance (a.k.a. food), spending $50 on an information product that could help them train their Chihuahua–or save money, or create a better relationship between them, etc.–does not seem unreasonable. Of course, the product doesn’t have to cost $50, but we now have some perspective for later deciding on a price.

Now we need to utilize the TAM formula (a.k.a. Total Available Market formula), which will help us see our product’s potential to generate a million dollars.

Here’s the TAM formula for estimating your idea’s potential:

(Number of available customers) x (Value of each customer) = TAM

If TAM > $1,000,000, then you can start your business.

Let’s plug in some basic numbers to see the TAM for our Chihuahua information product:

(84,260 available customers) x ($50 information product) = $4,213,000

We have a winner!

Okay, obviously you are not going to reach 100% market penetration, but consider the following…

1. This is only through Facebook traffic.

2. This does not include the 5,000,000 monthly searches for “Chihuahua” on Google:

3. This is only for one breed of dog. If you find success with Chihuahuas, you can easily repeat the process many times with other dog breeds.

4. This is only for one product. It’s far easier to sell to an existing customer than it is to acquire new ones, so once we’ve built up a decent customer base, we can make even more products to sell to them.

By all measures, it appears that we have a million dollar idea on our hands. Now we can move on to the final step!
Step 4: Validate your idea.

By now, you have successfully verified that your idea has that special million-dollar-potential. Feels good, right? Well, brace yourself — it’s time to test whether people will actually spend money on your product. In other words, is it truly commercially viable?

This step is critical. A lot of your ideas will seem great in theory, but you’ll never know if they’re going to work until you actually test your target market’s willingness to pay.

For instance, I believed AppSumo’s model would work just on gut-feeling alone, but I wasn’t 100% convinced people wanted to buy digital goods on a time-limited basis. I mean, how often do people find themselves needing a productivity tool (compared with, for instance, how often they need to eat)?

I decided to validate AppSumo’s model by finding a guaranteed product I could sell, one with its own traffic source (i.e. customers).

Because I’m a frequent Redditor and I knew they had an affordable advertising system (in addition to 3 million+ monthly users), I wanted to find a digital good that I could advertise on their site. I noticed Imgur.com was the most popular tool on Reddit for sharing images, and they offered a paid pro account option ($25/year). It was the perfect fit for my test run.

I cold-emailed the founder of Imgur, Alan Schaaf, and said that I wanted to bring him paying customers and would pay Imgur for each one. Alan is a great guy, and the idea of getting paid to receive more customers was not a tough sell The stage was set!

Before we started the ad campaign, I set a personal validation goal for 100 sales, which would encourage me to keep going or figure out what was wrong with our model. I decided on “100″ after looking at my time value of money. If I could arrange a deal in two hours (find, secure, and launch), I wanted to have a return of at least $300 for those two hours of work. 100 sales ($3 commission per sale) was that amount.

By the end of the campaign, we had sold more than 200 Imgur pro accounts. AppSumo.com was born.

I share this story because it illustrates an important point: You need to make small calculated bets on your ideas in order to validate them. Validation is absolutely essential for saving time and money, which will ultimately allow you to test as many of your ideas as possible.

Here are a couple methods for rapidly validating whether people will buy your product or not:

Drive traffic to a basic sales page. This is the method Tim advocates in The 4-Hour Workweek. All you need to do is set up a sales page using Unbounce or WordPress, create a few ads to run on Google and/or Facebook, then evaluate your conversion rate for ad-clicks and collecting email addresses. This is how we launched Mint.com (see one of our original sales pages here). You are not looking for people to buy; you are simply gauging interest and gathering data.

[Note: With Facebook advertising, $100 can get you roughly 100,000 people viewing your ad, and about 80 people visiting your site and potentially giving you their email addresses.]

Email 10 people you know who would want your pseudo-product, then ask them to send payment via Paypal. This might sound a bit crazy, but you’re doing it to see what the overall response is like. If a few of them send payment, great! You now have validation and can build the product (or you can refund your friends and buy them all tacos for playing along). If they don’t bite, figure out why they don’t want your product. Again, the goal is to get validation for your product, not to rip off your friends.

Of course, there are other techniques for validating your product (like Stephen Key leaving his guitar pick designs in a convenience store to see if people would try to buy them). However, I’ve found these two methods to be super efficient and effective for validating ideas online.

No need to get fancy if it does the trick.
The Final Frontier: Killing Your Inner Wantrepreneur

We made it! You officially have a $1,000,000 idea on your hands and you know for a fact that people are willing to pay for it. Now you can get started on actually building the product, creating your business, and freeing yourself from the rat race!

I can just see it… You’re all nodding and thinking, “Hey, this Noah guy is pretty snazzy!” (Sorry ladies, I’m taken.)

So, what now?

- You are inspired. Check.
- You want to do something. Check.
- You get a link to a funny YouTube video, then you open up Reddit. Check.
- Suddenly, everything you thought you were going to do goes down the drain. Check.
- You and I softly weep. Check.

I want to challenge you! Whoever generates the most profit (not just revenue) within 14 days of this article will win some fantastic goodies. First, here are the basic rules and the process:

- Contest void where prohibited.
- The business/product must be new. This means either a landing page created from scratch using Unbounce or WordPress above, or via the latest Shopify competition (not too late to sign up). If from Shopify, it will be your *increase* in profit over the next 14 days vs. the prior 14 days, not the *total* profit of 14 days.
- Results and proof of some type must be submitted as a comment below no later than 1am PST Saturday on October 8, 2011. Don’t cut it too close; if a timezone misjudgment knocks you out, we can’t make exceptions.
- Put your 14-day profit number (or increase) in the FIRST line of your comment.
- Ultimately, verifiable proof with lower number beats unverifiable proof with higher number.

[NOTE: THIS CONTEST HAS ENDED. THANKS!]

The prizes:

- $1,000 credit from AppSumo.com
- Roundtrip flights to Austin, Texas to have the most delicious tacos in the world with Noah Kagan, CEO of AppSumo. Sorry, but we can only cover flights within the USA. If you want to hoof it to the US, we can then pick up from there.
- Above all: your $1,000,000 business, of course!

Don’t let this post become another feather in your Wantrepreneurship cap. Just follow the steps and start working towards your $1,000,000 business! Remember, you can start laying the foundation for your product without building anything.

All you need is one weekend.

I first met Noah Kagan over rain and strong espressos at Red Rock Coffee in Mountain View, CA. It was 2007. We were both in hoodies, had a shared penchant for the F-bomb and burritos, all of which led to a caffeine-infused mindmeld.

It would be the first of many.

The matchmaker then introducing us was the prophetic and profane Dave McClure, General Partner of 500 Start-ups, which is now headquartered just down the street from Red Rock.

Mr. Noah has quite the start-up resume.

He was employee #30 at Facebook, #4 at Mint, had previously worked for Intel (where he frequently took naps under his desk), and had turned down a six-figure offer from Yahoo. Since we first met, Noah’s helped create Gambit, an online gaming payment platform and a multi-million dollar business; and AppSumo, loved by entrepreneurs and moms everywhere. He also helped pour fire on both the 4-Hour Workweek and 4-Hour Body launches.

The purpose of this post is simple: to teach you how to get a $1,000,000 business idea off the ground in one weekend, full of specific tools and tricks that Noah has used himself.

He will be your guide….....

chakaz: better still buy glo BB for N1200 that gives 3GB for 30 days. Just, create a new profile with Glo BB and your APN as blackberry.net, no username, no password and no port.

chiboy11: S dis pastor God, let him go slep joor, only God haz d power, una don dey praize dis guy wel n his head s sweling

rozayx5: you got it right mate

i call it mad swing trading

wizecoder.:
To all the traders in the house.....keep hope alive .. Seek first to understand how the fx market is structured and the inner working ... That is when you will start taking your own share of the daily free USd... .....
Rozay and naijababe .... Keep up the good works.
plan your trade
Trade your plan
Lose responsibly....

webcalculator: if airtel is not the worst network for browsing, which network is?
How is airtel network in your area

Chuksxp: Ok, thanks for the info. IBAN = international bank number, right? Is that all? What of stuffs like swift code? Is that necessary too.

pascenta: i need sound trucks to hire in port harcourt to help me supply sand.its urgent if you interested pls call 08063689193 , 08189405341 or mail me with augustine.igwe@yahoo.com

Chuksxp: I've thought of that but c'mon it's useless going through the long process of opening one just for a one-time use. Besides you'd need a current account first and I don't have one.



I just want to send a small amount of money (just ten thousand naira) to a friend for charity purpose. I don't see any harm in that. If you'll help, how do we go about it? Thanks

unclenna: who told you that vpn cost $10 per month. Don't say what u don't know.

presegsADESIDA: Clickbank accepts Nigeria IP but you need to be on UK IP the first time you want to register with UK address which can be bought legally from UK Mail Service Provider.

and for paypal concerning IP,you need to buy Dedicated IP/VPN which as an expert in this field,I worked on one very effective and cheap which goes for just N6,000 yearly against monthly $10 most Nigerians are paying to VPN providers such as worldvpn,hidemyass,microvpn and all sort.

You understand?

Geomac: The charges is for the Consent which is 6% of the cost of the Land/Property, it depends on each State. In some states 5% of the value of improvement goes to Land and 1% goes to Board of Internal Revenue. In order to legalize the transaction (Assignmnet - Change of Ownership) there is need to get the Consent of the governmnent. Lagos state has not done anything wrong.

olokfor: Well, like we would say, these kind of things only happen in Nigeria.

We really can’t figure out the concept behind this wedding reception, but our rough guess is that the couple love the idea of Burj Arab in Dubai, and were keen on recreating something close to it here.

However, they scaled down theirs to a swimming pool, not the middle of an ocean.

SOURCE-http://informationnaija.com/photo-nigerian-couple-hold-wedding-reception-in-the-middle-of-a-pool/

doctokwus: Our things always dfferent& always we appear not to know what to do.Why disembark frm d transport aircraft wt guns @combat positions;d rebels were dfinitely not @ d airport.More organised settings disembark wt guns far off sight& begin to prepare demselves @ d camp

why must we alway critisie our own.If it is oyibo that did this all of us we be hailing them as being already ready for combat.

unclenna: Do you remember that quote..........Still raking in pips

from 15pips to 70pips and still counting...........

unclenna: Selling EU