On Tuesday, gold held steady with prices struck in a narrow $15 range over three sessions as investors stayed on the sidelines amid the year-end holiday season watching for developments in the euro zone debt crisis.

Spot gold edged down 0.1 percent to $1,603.29 an ounce by 7:32 p.m. EST and U.S. gold was little changed at $1,605.20.

Gold and silver speculators cut their bullish bets for the third running week in the week to December 20, with silver net long positions down by more than half, according to the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The largest gold producer of the world, China, churned out 31.75 tons of gold in October, bringing the output in the first 10 months of the year to 290.752 tons, up 4.96 percent from a year earlier.

Italy and Greece technocrat leaders rushing to form governments would be facing a critical test of their ability to limit the damage from the euro zone debt crisis when financial markets open in Europe on Monday.

The President of Italy asked former European Commissioner Mario Monti on Sunday to form a government for restoring market confidence in economy of the country.

Investors will pass initial judgment on his leadership when Italy’s Treasury asks investors on Monday to bid for up to 3 billion euros ($4.1 billion) in five-year government bonds. At an auction last week, the government’s borrowing costs surged above 6 percent and kept rising to levels well beyond what the country could afford to pay over the longer term.

In Asia, stocks and the euro rose on hopes that Monti and Greece’s new prime minister, Lucas Papademos, would take decisive action.

“Symbolically perhaps it’s (Berlusoni’s exit) a positive — it sends the message that it’s putting a certain chapter behind them but the fact remains is that this is difficult medicine to administer and it doesn’t really matter who gives the order, it’s going to be a difficult pill to swallow,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at Harris Trust in Chicago, which oversees $50 billion.

The Internet has opened the doors of comfort and convenience for one and all and the same is very much evident from the success of online shopping. The best part of online shopping is that a customer can buy anything such as a power megaphone with just a few clicks of the mouse, irrespective of the geographic location or hour of the day or night.

However, the decision to buy power megaphones online is influenced by many factors. Reputation of the seller, quality of the products, customer service, flexible payment options, and good performance are just few of these factors. It is, therefore, recommended that power megaphone buyers should observe a high sense of care and diligence while making an online purchase and trust ONLY a reputed provider of safety care equipments. This is primarily because a power megaphone is not a product that is purchased every alternate day; it has to be the most durable and performance-packed equipment that outclass the usage expectations.

If you are new to the world of online shopping and power megaphones and want to get the best power megaphone deals, it is recommended that you try searching for an eminent provider by visiting Google and making a search using “buy power megaphones“, “best shop to buy mega phones” or “affordable megaphones.” This will help you get redirected to sites of the best power megaphone sellers from where you can choose the best and derive the best value for the money spent on the online purchase of the megaphones.

Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), the largest IT software services exporter of India, recently posted a 23-percent rise in quarterly net profit, beating street forecasts.

The gains were made on rising demand for outsourcing services from western clients.

From in.finance.yahoo.com:

The total income for FY11 increased to Rs 37,324.51 crore from Rs 30,028.92 crore in the financial year ended March 31, 2010. This signifies an increase of 24.30%. The income received a major boost from sale of equipment and software licences that reported an increase of nearly 35 per cent.

Within the income segment, banking, financial services and insurance (BFSI) contributed the largest share followed by telecom, retail & consumer packaged goods and manufacturing. Meanwhile, the company took a hit of Rs 36.23 crore on account of foreign exchange loss in FY11.

The board of the company has recommended a final dividend of Rs 8 on equity share of Re 1 each, which shall be paid on the fourth day from the conclusion of the annual general meeting, subject to the approval of the shareholders of the company.

Shares in TCS, valued at about $54 billion, have risen more than 4.6% this year, outpacing a 9% fall in the sector index and a near 5% drop in the broader market.

The Q4 quarter numbers were boosted by excellent execution and constant customer focus, according to the software exporter.

Britain’s top electrical retailer DSG International, the owner of high street chains Dixons, Currys and PC World, enhanced its online presence when it took a controlling stake in one of Europe’s leading internet retailers.

DSG agreed to pay €266m (£185m) for a 75% stake in Paris-based Fotovista that owns the Pixmania online retailer of digital photographic and other consumer electronic products.

From Guardian.co.uk:

The deal was the second big shake-up for DSG in a week after earlier announcing plans to ditch the Dixons brand on the high street and replace it with the name Currys.digital. Dixons will live on in cyberspace as one of DSG’s online brands.

DSG has already made a push into Europe and has stores in 14 countries including Italy, Spain, France, Greece, Sweden, the Czech Republic and Poland.

Pixmania operates in 25 European countries, served from a central operation in Paris. Of those markets, DSG said Pixmania is the leading online electrical retailer in Italy, France, Spain and Portugal. The business owns online digital photo services, a 250 store based photographic operation in France and specialist studio and portrait services in France and Belgium.

Fotovista had sales of €354m and profit of €6.2m in the relevant last year.

Telecom Minister Kapil Sibal, in a major shift in policy that may make mobile telecom services costly, said henceforth all operators would have to pay market price for initial as well additional spectrum.

Sibal said, “In future, the spectrum will not be bundled with licence. The licence to be issued to telecom operators will be in the nature of ”Unified Licence” and the licence holder will be free to offer any of the multifarious telecom services while delinking spectrum from the licences in the aftermath of the 2G scam.

From in.news.yahoo.com:

As of now the telecom operators were getting spectrum bundled with the telecom licenses which had paved the way for low tariff regime and intense price war among the service providers.

But now, the new operators, if their licences are held valid, would have to pay a market price for the additional 1.8 Mhz of 2G spectrum and this may make their operations financially unviable.

For the old operators like Bharti, Vodafone and Idea, who are holding spectrum beyond 6.2 Mhz, they would have to pay market driven price for the extra airwaves.

These changes would be implemented with immediate effect, Sibal said.

One of the new operators, when contacted, said that the new regime has given a major advantage to the old operators by allowing them to retain 6.2 Mhz of spectrum while the new operators would be at loss as they have to pay market price for the additional 1.8 Mhz spectrum.

At a time when the new operators are struggling to get new subscribers, additional cost on them would hit them hard.

“In the event, the licence holder would like to offer wireless services, it will have to obtain spectrum through a market driven process,” Sibad added.

Blogs and Reviews was recently appreciated for its contributions in varying fields of blogs, social networking, web marketing, and business quotes by Reviewallblogs.com. We acknowledge support and appreciation of all our site visitors in helping us win this big award.

Every one today wants to have an identity as a blogger, be it an individual or an organization as a whole. Like wise even reviews are catching great rage among consumers who rely on them before making a transaction or even visiting a site for that matter. A fair example would be the number of review sites that have come up, not to mention the amount of traffic they attract.

In the same context, ‘paid blogging’ might come across as a relatively new term but it has been receiving a lot of attention lately. Services like ‘PayPer Post’ have created an innovative business model to smoothly connect the advertisers with bloggers. And this indeed has been working extremely well for some marketers. Same goes for reviews as well. A few days back one of my friends bought a few reviews directly from the bloggers with an intent to gain publicity and improve traffic on his site. What surprised me was this not only helped in achieving his target but also improved his site’s search engine ranking as well.

Let’s have a look at some junctions which provide sponsored reviews for a wide category of readers. These are exclusively written by bloggers who place their honest comments and hence are greatly liked by the audience.

SponsoredReviews.com: What’s special about this site it asks for complete disclosures and accept both positive as well as negative reviews. Another benefit of SponsoredReviews is that they allow bloggers and advertisers to negotiate the price directly, there by reducing the transaction fees to a great extent. Marketers are finding this business model to be highly credible – the reason it is seen to gain such prominence in market today.

ReviewMe: ReviewMe is one of latest entries to the market, and is apparently performing extremely well. Their website says that, “We like to keep the guidelines loose, so bloggers can write in a way that makes sense for their unique niche and audience.” Their uniqueness lies in the fact that they automatically calculate the review prices based on parameters like page ranks, traffic, etc.

However there are still a few marketers who are finding this concept a bit ambiguous but on web, anything that brings traffic and gives you publicity is welcome. And considering the kind of visibility blogs and reviews are receiving in present times, this phenomenon is here to stay!

The reason why corporate blogging plays a big role in success of modern-day business is simple. Blogs are the most effective marketing and promotion mediums. This is because blogging helps one, including a business, to communicate and share beliefs, facts, and ideologies with just a few clicks. Moreover, blogs are great for marketing, especially search engine marketing.

In addition to that, corporate blogs helps a business create and maintain trust and satisfaction among customers besides indirectly bringing qualified leads for the business.

The fact that business blogs have lots of informative text, constantly updated content, and web links make them the obvious choice of every business that strives for creating a distinctive niche in today’s cutthroat business markets. It is also seen that some businesses use blogs as great crisis handlers and forwarding business’ view point when things start going wrong. The fact that blogs help in putting a “human voice” to a business is nothing less than a revelation.

In order to reap optimum benefits of corporate blogging and blogs, a business can include RSS readers on blog sites since they facilitate easy access to search engine’s top rankings. The fact that RSS readers also facilitate an easy way to update content on a regular basis without fussing about HTML or actual webpage truly justify their usage.

In short, corporate blogs are not luxuries but necessities that need to be worked upon by every business that aims to stay ahead of the competition.

If the recent statistics revealed by many eminent Web Agencies are relied up on then one can be quite sure that an effective presence on the web via blogs is almost essential and conducive to future success and development, whether for a business or an individual.

In today’s web-dominated world, Blogging is something that cannot be left out of a business’s calculative plans for promoting its presence on the web. While corporate blogs addressing queries and satisfying informational needs of its potential customers are on all-time high, business blogs that are seen promoting business products and services often face the axe and are virtually pure waste of time. This is simply because while a business website is for promoting products and services, a blog is for addressing queries of the customers.

Statistics reveal that as much as 81 percent of businesses that addressed customer’s queries via blogs by asking specialized staff to handle blogs were trusted by readers (potential customers). On the other hand, as little as 12 percent of customers trust a business that promotes its products and services through its corporate blog.

With more and more potential customers going the online way via blogs, a business needs to be proactive enough to encourage or appeal to the bloggers to write positive about the positive to stay ahead in the competition and attain its predefined objectives. This is the reason why modern day businesses are not shying from creating and maintaining an effective online presence to woo the customers by emphasizing more on customer satisfaction these days via corporate blogs.