Business, finances, forex

The Staff of Novinite.com (Sofia News Agency) and Novinite.bg would like to wish a very Happy New Year to you, our readers from all over the world!

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A 70-year-old fisherman has his home in the easternmost location in Bulgaria, and is the first to celebrate New Year’s on the country’s territory.

The man known as “Bai Pesho” is one of the most popular characters in the easternmost Bulgarian town – the Black Sea town of Shabla – and his home is most eastern-located house in the country, the BGNES news agency reported in a story dedicated the fisherman, who also owns a small pub.

“It’s important to be in Bulgaria, not to leave it….

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Iraq’s Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has turned December 31 – the day of final withdrawal of US troops from the country – into a national holiday.

Iraq’s prime minister said Saturday the end of the American military presence in Iraq is a new dawn for his country.

In a celebration in Baghdad broadcast on state-run Iraqiya TV, Nouri al-Maliki declared the day a national holiday.

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Bulgarian striker Dimitar Berbatov scored two goals for Manchester United against Blackburn Rovers in the English Premiership match Saturday.

On their Manager Sir Alex Ferguson’s 70th birthday, United were ultimately humiliated 2:3 by Rovers, with Berbatov’s violation also getting Blackburn a penalty kick.

Yakubu gave Rovers the lead from the spot after Dimitar Berbatov had pulled down defender Chris Samba, the BBC reported.

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Vehicles have been stranded in Southern Bulgaria near Plovdiv as a result of surprisingly heavy snowfall in the afternoon on Saturday, the last day of 2011.

The inclement weather is reported to have created greatest problems near the town of Asenovgrad where snow drifts have reached 60 cm in height.

Traffic is difficult all over the Rhodope Mountains in Southern Bulgaria, with the snow cover in the ski resort of Pamporov reaching 90 cm.

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Monaco’s Prince Albert II has confirmed his participation in a charity event organized by his Star Team for Children association and the Bulgarian Ski Federation at top Bulgarian winter resort of Bansko.

The emblematic celebrity has sent a letter of the President of the Bulgarian Ski Federation Tseko Minev assuring of his presence at the sixth annual charity show – World Star Ski Event, to take place in Bansko on January 28-29, 2012.

This has been announced on the website of “Yulen”, the concessionaire of the “Bansko” ski zone in the Pirin Mountain in Southwestern Bulgaria, which itself has been widely criticized by Bulgarian environmentalists for resort construction in protected areas.

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The Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia have greeted 2012 with much excitement and splendid fireworks.

New Zealand’s Auckland welcomed the New Year at 1 pm Eastern European Time / 12 am CET, while Australia’s Sydney enjoyed tremendous fireworks over the world-famous opera house two hours later.

The New Year’s Eve parties started a whole day early on the South Pacific island nation of Samoa, after a hop across the international date line transported the country 24 hours into the future — making it the first in the world to ring in the new year, the Time magazine reported.

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The Pacific islands, New Zealand and Australia have greeted 2012 with much excitement and splendid fireworks.

New Zealand’s Auckland welcomed the New Year at 1 pm Eastern European Time / 12 am CET, while Australia’s Sydney enjoyed tremendous fireworks over the world-famous opera house two hours later.

The New Year’s Eve parties started a whole day early on the South Pacific island nation of Samoa, after a hop across the international date line transported the country 24 hours into the future — making it the first in the world to ring in the new year, the Time magazine reported.

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At the end of each year and into the beginning of the next, we take stock of where we’ve been and where we are about to go.   TV shows and magazines look back on the significant events of the year, and then prognosticators predict what’s yet to come.

One of the best prognosticators out there (although he may not take to being called that) is Brian Solis (@briansolis).  In 2010 he wrote the book Engage, which leads you through the specific steps you need to take to conceptualize, implement, manage and measure a social media program.

I had the privilege of interviewing Brian Solis for an article I wrote for Personal Branding Magazine.  In some ways, he reminded me of Matthew Broderick’s character Ferris Bueller; fun, smart and super-savvy about the ways of the social media environment and how to play it.  Solis knows how to navigate, pull the technological strings and use these tools to business advantage.

But wait, there’s more

And new for 2012, Solis has released The End of Business as Usual: Rewire the Way You Work to Succeed in the Consumer Revolution.  This book takes you to the next level, taking social media away from the context of tool and into the context of strategy.  Let me put it another way:  We don’t write about telephones or microwaves or stoves as revolutionary tools for communication or cooking.  We’ve integrated these items into our lives.  Business as Usual does the same thing for us in terms of social media.  Solis is taking the tools and technologies we’ve been enamored with and pushing us into accepting them as tangible, real and unimportant as tools, but vitally important in terms of what we do with them.

The End of Business as Usual is a bellwether

If you like Groundswell, then you will love this. This is a business book, a social media book and a trend book all in one.  It’s 20 chapters and 300 pages of lesson after lesson, insight after insight, and terrific charts and graphics that give you a perspective on what Solis is talking about.

There are so many facts and figures in this book relating to what’s going on in social media that you could probably tweet out a stat every day and have enough to last you a couple of years.  I’m not sure if I’m exaggerating, but I think I’m pretty close.

Here are just a few chapter names that will give you some idea of what to expect:

Chapter 3: The medium is no longer the message. This is the core message of the book. People are spending more time on social networks, TV shows are live tweeted, news comes from Twitter online video networks – in other words, social is as integrated into our lives as phones and appliances.

Chapter 4:  Attention deficit crises and information scarcity: This chapter addresses one of the key reasons I admire Brian Solis: “If you don’t have anything interesting or productive to say – then don’t say it.”  While Solis is a social media expert and evangelist, I respect his integrity in terms of using social media as a valuable communication channel rather than a vehicle for pabulum.

Chapter 7: Your audience is now an audience of audiences with audiences: This chapter has terrific visuals and charts to show you exactly how communication and information functions in the social media world.  This chapter is worth reading and rereading.

Chapter 11: The rise of connected commerce: You’ve already heard the phrase “blurring the line between personal and business. This chapter gives you the background on how and why this is happening.  Mobile devices, constant connection and communication will force business to look and feel more personal.

Chapter 14: Reinventing the brand and sales cycle for a new genre of connecter commerce: The message in this chapter is to plug into decision making. We’ve never had better access to data about our customers’ behavior.  Businesses will have to become masters at managing their brand promises.

Who should read this book?

To say that anyone who intends to be in business over the next three to five years should read this book is an understatement.  Business owners will see data and research that will help them create a context for the world that they and their customers are participating in.

Sales and marketing professionals will get insights and be able to develop much more powerful marketing strategies that get to the heart of what’s important to their customers.

Social media practitioners will have evidence and resources to share with their clients that will show exactly why the strategies they are proposing will work.

At the risk of sounding over the top, The End of Business as Usual is a book you absolutely, positively must read to succeed in 2012 and beyond.

From Small Business Trends

Read The End of Business as Usual for Social Media Insights, Research and Trends

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The Holy Synod of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church has declared “reservations” against in vitro fertilization and surrogacy, viewing them as a “human interference that is counter to God’s will in the existential foundations of life.”

This has been made clear in a statement of the Bulgarian Patriarchate on the website of the Bulgarian Orthodox Church discussing assisted reproduction and surrogacy, as the two are becoming more popular in Bulgaria, with surrogacy just being introduced.

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