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14 ON THE WEB WEBSITES TO GET TO KNOW BASECAMP is a reliable, easy-to-use project management tool that makes it easy for team members who have different roles and different responsibilities to communicate. Use Basecamp to perform any number of tasks associated with project management, including assigning tasks, collaborating on documents, checking due dates, sharing files, and much more. Basecamp securely stores everything, and anyone can access it at any time from anywhere. It works with any operating system or browser and integrates effortlessly with email. is survey platform allows you to easily create, target, and analyze any type of survey, whether you need to make a simple poll or do in-depth market research. Customize the survey with your company's logo and send the survey out via the web, mobile, or social media. You can target your survey using SURVEYMONKEY Audience to reach millions of respondents, then get your survey's results in real time and use SurveyMonkey's analytics to reveal insights and make data-driven decisions. DROPBOX is a cloud-based storage service that acts like another hard drive on your computer. You can store documents in Dropbox without eating up your hard drive's memory, which means you can keep those old docs from completed deals that you don't want to throw away but you won't be looking at very often. A free version of Dropbox gives you 2 GB of space, or get more space with the PRO plan for $9.99 per month. SURVEYMONKEY.COM 2 BASECAMP.COM 1 DROPBOX.COM 3 CONSUMER, GOVERNMENT SPENDING BOOST REVISED Q3 2014 GDP RATE UP TO 3.9 PERCENT e U.S. economy continued to outperform in the third quarter of last year as consumer and government spending provided a boost to gross domestic product (GDP). According to a second estimate from the Commerce Department, GDP grew at an annualized rate of 3.9 percent in July, August, and September of 2014, down slightly from the second quarter's growth rate of 4.6 percent and up from the first quarter's 2.1 percent downturn. A group of economists surveyed by Econo- day had forecast a growth rate of 3.3 percent, a slight cut from the government's initial estimate of 3.5 percent. e Commerce Department said its second estimate received a lift from private inventory investment, which was down less than previ- ously thought, and larger increases in consumer spending and nonresidential fixed investment than were first reported. at was offset in part by a smaller increase in exports. According to the department's Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), consumer spending increased 2.2 percent in the second quarter, up from a first estimate of 1.8 percent. Spending increased for both durable goods (8.7 percent) and non-durables (2.2 percent). e price index for domestic purchases, a gauge of prices paid by American consumers, rose 1.4 percent, 0.1 percentage points higher than in the advance estimate. Meanwhile, nonresidential fixed investment increased 7.1 percent, fueled largely by a 10.7- percent increase in investing in equipment. Government spending also contributed to the third-quarter's expansion. According to BEA, real federal government consumption expen- ditures increased 9.9 percent in Q 3, a marked turnaround from a decline of 0.9 percent in the second quarter. Much of that increase came from defense spending, which was up 16 percent. e continued good news for the third quar- ter comes as Japan heads into a new recession and economic woes continue in the eurozone. With GDP looking relatively stable com- pared to the rest of the globe and employment indicators looking strong, economists say the Federal Reserve—which recently concluded its monthly bond-buying program launched to stimulate the economy—has more reason to consider moving ahead to hike interest rates sooner rather than later. While many investors expect the first increase to be around the middle of the year, some analysts say it could be earlier than that. "e unexpected strength of third-quarter GDP growth. . .is another reason to expect the Fed to begin normalizing interest rates sooner than expected next year," said Paul Ashworth, chief U.S. economist at Capital Economics. "We still anticipate the first rate hike coming in March next year."

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