About Me 0113: January 2011

Monday, January 24, 2011

personal finance books

By the end of 2010, Harlequin Enterprises will have sold a grand total of more than 6 billion books in the company's 60-year history. But on Dec. 28, Harlequin will try to sell its first personal finance book.

The Frugalista Files, written by former Miami Herald personal finance blogger Natalie McNeal, is a diary of the year that one 34-year old spent trying to pay off her credit card debt -- "without giving up the fabulous life."

McNeal's book is written in a diary format, with all the personal details and emoticons entailed in that approach: "I admit it. My name is Natalie. I am a spending slut." It's certainly not a book that targets my college-age demographic, but many readers will find her story inspiring. If Natalie can do it, so can you.

"My book is for anyone who is a promiscuous spender and is looking for real-life tips on how to be financially chaste," McNeal tells DailyFinance. "It's highly personal personal finance."

Katherine Orr, Harlequin's vice president of public relations, sees the move into financial advice as a logical step for the world's largest publisher of romance novels.

"For 60 years, we've provided escape from problems, and now we can help solve the problems," she says. She calls McNeal's book "very prescriptive. It's clear and simple, and it's helping young singles navigate in a tough world."

Harlequin first began publishing nonfiction in October 2008 with a book from syndicated radio host Delilah. Subsequent titles have included fitness guru Tosca Reno's best seller Your Best Body Now: Look and Feel Fabulous at Any Age the Eat-Clean Way, along with titles like The Happy Baker: A Girl's Guide to Emotional Baking; Life Beyond Your Eating Disorder; The Dog Who Healed a Family; and Queen of Your Own Life.

The market for pink-covered personal finance books for women hasn't been especially strong. None of financial adviser Suze Orman's mega-bestselling money books have boasted a pink cover, and none of the slew of recently released girl-talk guides for women have sold well. Titles like Shoo, Jimmy Choo!; Bitches on a Budget: Sage Advice for Surviving Tough Times in Style; andA Purse of Your Own: An Easy Guide to Financial Security have all failed to register much of an impact in terms of sales.

Kimberly Palmer, the personal finance editor with US News & World Report and the author of Generation Earn, says many financial guides for women are marketed as "simplified [and] dumbed-down."

"Women don't like to be talked to as if we're bad with money, because we're not," she says. "Too many books for women assume that we overspend on shoes and cosmos when we're really just looking for the same kind of smart, solid financial advice that men want."

But if there's one publisher in America that knows what women are looking for when they buy a book, it's Harlequin. Perhaps it'll be able to reach a segment of the population badly in need of financial advice -- one that other publishers have so far been largely unable to connect with.

Authors, publishers and agents live and die inside — mostly die — by monitoring their product's position on the Amazon charts, which are adjusted hourly. Thomas, an author who penned the Kindle book Wealth Hazards, says literary types should take a step back because the system is easily corrupted. He says he's manipulated the system by buying his book 200 times and posting fake reviews hailing his self-described masterpiece.

Now he's peddling a new e-book, The Day the Kindle Died, in which he describes how he pulled off his ruse. He writes:

I've purchased my own book, Wealth Hazards, close to 200 times now. I wrote 42 customer reviews and voted on them 108 times. Not once was a review or vote rejected by Amazon. It took about 45 days to move the book up to #1, but after it got there I didn't feel it was appropriate to promote it - so I have not profited from it. I continue to buy 2 or 3 copies a day, write reviews and vote on the reviews and wait for Amazon to notice.

They haven't. They pay me royalties every month and recommend the book to people who buy similar personal finance titles. My new book The Day the Kindle Died is even more obvious - but Amazon hasn't noticed. They even recommend it to customers who purchase Amazon's own Kindle publishing manual. Amazon clearly has a problem with ranking books, creating the bestseller lists and making suitable recommendations to customers, but they don't appear to be in a hurry to correct this.

What purpose do Amazon's reviews and rankings serve for you when you're shopping for books?

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

Polson Kanneth reports: Daniel Hernandez Jr., one of the heroes of the mass shooting in Tucson, Ariz., two weeks ago, tells ABC News that he will be sitting, along with his father, Daniel Hernandez Sr., with Michelle Obama at the.

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

All the US government was interested in, Erekat went on, was "PR, quick news, and we're cost free", ending up with the appeal: "What good am I if I'm the joke of my wife, if I'm so weak?" | Facebook | Reddit | Digg | StumbleUpon ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

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Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Tucson Hero to Sit With Michelle Obama at State of the Union on ...

AMERICAblog News: WikiLeaks: Middle East peace process exposes ...

Hype Is Not News But We Keep Acting Like It Is

This morning I read a headline from the Wall Street Journal that had promise, especially as it could impact online ...

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Making Money Software

(Editor’s note: Serial entrepreneur Steve Blank is the author of Four Steps to the Epiphany. A longer version of this story originally appeared on his blog.)

As we wrap up 2010, things might seem bleak. The common wisdom says that the chickens have all come home to roost from a disastrous series of economic decisions including outsourcing the manufacture of America’s physical goods. The pundits say the American dream is dead and this next decade will see the further decline and fall of the West and in particular of the United States.

Personally, I think there’s a chance that the common wisdom is very, very wrong – and that the second decade of the 21st century may turn out to be the West’s – and in particular the United States’ – finest hour.

I believe that we will look back at this decade as the beginning of an economic revolution as important as the scientific revolution in the 16th century and the industrial revolution in the 18th century. We’re standing at the beginning of the entrepreneurial revolution.

This doesn’t mean just more technology stuff, though we’ll get that. This is a revolution that will permanently reshape business as we know it and, more importantly, change the quality of life across the entire planet for all who come after us.

You see, it’s only in the last few years that we’ve come to appreciate that past startups were constrained by:

long technology development cycles (how long it takes from idea to product),

the high cost of getting to first customers (how many dollars to build the product),

the structure of the venture capital industry (a limited number of VC firms each needing to invest millions per startups),

the expertise about how to build startups (clustered in specific regions like Silicon Valley, Boston, New York, etc.),

the failure rate of new ventures (startups had no formal rules and were a hit or miss proposition),

the slow adoption rate of new technologies by the government and large companies.

What’s happening now is something more profound than a change in technology. What’s happening is that all the things that have been limits to startups and innovation are being removed. At once. Starting now.

Compressing the Product Development Cycle

In the past, the time to build a first product release was measured in months or even years as startups executed the founder’s vision of what customers wanted. This meant building every possible feature the founding team envisioned into a monolithic “release” of the product.

Yet time after time, after the product shipped, startups would find that customers didn’t use or want most of the features. The founders were simply wrong about their assumptions about customer needs. The effort that went into making all those unused features was wasted.

Today startups have begun to build products differently. Instead of building the maximum number of features, they look to deliver a minimum feature set in the shortest period of time. This lets them deliver a first version of the product to customers in a fraction on the time.

For products that are simply “bits” delivered over the web, a first product can be shipped in weeks rather than years.

Startups Built For Thousands Rather than Millions of Dollars

Startups traditionally required millions of dollars of funding just to get their first product to customers. A company developing software would have to buy computers and license software from other companies and hire the staff to run and maintain it. A hardware startup had to spend money building prototypes and equipping a factory to manufacture the product.

Today, open source software has slashed the cost of software development from millions of dollars to thousands. For consumer hardware, no startup has to build their own factory as offshore manufacturers absorb the costs.

The cost of getting the first product out the door for an Internet commerce startup has dropped by a factor of a ten or more in the last decade.

The New Structure of the Venture Capital industry

The plummeting cost of getting a first product to market (particularly for Internet startups) has shaken up the venture capital industry. Venture capital used to be a tight club clustered around formal firms located in Silicon Valley, Boston, and New York. While those firms are still there (and getting larger), the pool of money that invests risk capital in startups has expanded, and a new class of investors has emerged.

New groups of VC’s, super angels, smaller than the traditional multi-hundred million dollar VC fund, can make small investments necessary to get a consumer internet startup launched. These angels make lots of early bets and double-down when early results appear. (And the results do appear years earlier then in a traditional startup.)

In addition to super angels, incubators like Y Combinator, TechStars and the 100+ plus others worldwide like them have begun to formalize seed-investing. They pay expenses in a formal 3-month program while a startup builds something impressive enough to raise money on a larger scale.

Finally, venture capital and angel investing is no longer a U.S. or Euro-centric phenomenon. Risk capital has emerged in China, India and other countries where risk taking, innovation and liquidity is encouraged, on a scale previously only seen in the U.S.

The emergence of incubators and super angels has dramatically expanded the sources of seed capital. The globalization of entrepreneurship means the worldwide pool of potential startups has increased at least ten fold since the turn of this century.

Entrepreneurship as Its Own Management Science

Over the last ten years, entrepreneurs began to understand that startups were not simply smaller versions of large companies. While companies execute business models, startups search for a business model. (Or more accurately, startups are a temporary organization designed to search for a scalable and repeatable business model.)

Instead of adopting the management techniques of large companies, which too often stifle innovation in a young start up, entrepreneurs began to develop their own management tools. U

sing the business model / customer development / agile development solution stack, entrepreneurs first map their assumptions (their business model) and then test these hypotheses with customers outside in the field (customer development) and use an iterative and incremental development methodology (agile development) to build the product.

When founders discover their assumptions are wrong, as they inevitably will, the result isn’t a crisis, it’s a learning event called a pivot — and an opportunity to change the business model.

The result: Startups now have tools that speed up the search for customers, reduce time to market and slash the cost of development.

Consumer Internet Driving Innovation

Today, consumers – specifically consumer Internet companies – drive innovation. When the product and channel are bits, adoption by 10’s and 100’s of millions of users can happen in years versus decades.

The barriers to entrepreneurship are not just being removed, they’re being replaced by innovations that are speeding up each step, some by a factor of ten.

And while innovation is moving at Internet speed, this won’t be limited to just internet commerce startups. It will spread to the enterprise and ultimately every other business segment.

The economic downturn in the United States has had an unexpected consequence for startups – it has created more of them. Young and old, innovators who are unemployed or underemployed now face less risk in starting a company. They have a lot less to lose and a lot more to gain.

If we are at the cusp of a revolution as important as the scientific and industrial revolutions what does it mean? Revolutions are not obvious when they happen.

Yet it’s possible that we’ll look back to this decade as the beginning of our own revolution. We may remember this as the time when scientific discoveries and technological breakthroughs were integrated into the fabric of society faster than they had ever been before. When the speed of how businesses operated changed forever. As the time when we reinvented the American economy and our Gross Domestic Product began to take off and the U.S. and the world reached a level of wealth never seen before.

It may be the dawn of a new era for a new American economy built on entrepreneurship and innovation – one that our children will look back on and marvel that when it was the darkest, we saw the stars.

Next Story: Image Space Media raises extra $1M to turn photos into cold, hard cash Previous Story: The Cartographer app brings gorgeous custom and offline maps to your iPhone

Rick Thompson is hoping that lightning strikes another time. Thompson was the chairman and co-founder of Playdom, the social game company that Disney bought last year for as much as $763 million. Now he has started a new game company, Wild Needle, focused on social games with a location twist.

“Wild Needle represents a shift in the way smart money is thinking of social games,” Thompson said in an interview.

It used to be smart to invest in a game company making social games for Facebook. But Thompson is putting money on the idea that mobile is becoming a larger opportunity. His six-person company will focus on making games for the iPhone and then expand to other mobile platforms. Japan’s DeNA validated this “mobile first” strategy when it bought iPhone game publisher Ngmoco earlier this year for $403 million.

Thompson said he isn’t looking for a similar transaction anytime soon. But because of Zynga’s dominance and Facebook’s crackdown on viral distribution, he doubts that small startups can make an impact on Facebook.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Wild Needle has raised $2.5 million in funding from Thompson and Shasta Ventures. Thompson said that he didn’t need the money to start the company, but he did want access to Shasta’s managing director, Robert Coneybeer, who is joining Wild Needle’s board. Wild Needle’s other top executives include Heidi Carson (vice president of product), Chris Kirmse (vice president of engineering), and Minglei Xu (software architect). Thompson also was founding chairman of online ad networks Flycast and Adify. Kirmse is a veteran game developer who worked at Xfire and was the co-creator of Meridian 59, the world’s first 3D massively multiplayer online game.

Thompson said that there is enormous untapped potential in mobile games that use a device’s location awareness and its always-on connectivity to a social network. Mobile games have lower distribution costs and potentially new kinds of game play around location awareness. Smartphones are also likely to be ubiquitous.

“Things go in cycles,” Thompson said. “Facebook is very challenging for startups now because of high-distribution costs and lack of virality. He said he has investments in a couple of Facebook game companies, one of which is Funzio.

Thompson said Wild Needle is aggressively hiring now. Dan Yue, co-founder of Playdom, and John Pleasants, who was CEO of Playdom, remain at Disney. Thompson said the company’s first game will be targeted at women and feature cool game play. He said he doesn’t think he has direct rivals, but other location-based game companies include Foursquare, Gowalla and Booyah.

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Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

Soap News: 'AMC's' Debbi Morgan Has Lyme Disease and More

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[Updated at 4:05 p.m.] A suspect in an apparently accidental shooting at Gardena High School in California has been caught and handcuffed by police, according to footage aired by CNN affiliate KTLA shortly before noon PT.

Friday, January 14, 2011

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Similarly, if part of the argument was over a bank account, Legal Aid will want repaying if there is a successful outcome with a value over £5,000. Let me give you a scenario. A couple are getting divorced and they are arguing over who owns the £50,000 in a bank account. The funded party claims that 50% of the money is theirs and the non-funded party is claiming that all the money belongs to them. The matter goes to court and the court decides that the money should be split 50/50 and awards £25,000 to the funded person. The bill for arguing litigation was £10,000.

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The board would want £10,000 of the £25,000.00 that was awarded leaving the legal aided person with only £15,000 out of the £25,000. Ouch! With regards to the exemption, if the amount that was being argued over was £10,000 and the award was 50/50 then half of £10,000.00 being argued over (assuming 50/50) is £5,000.00. There is a £5,000.00 exemption ring fenced and therefore the board would get nothing.

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Make sure to pay ALL future fills and obligations online. This is an obvious one of course, but it is so very important to keep things completely clean at all points forward.

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There are several other specific and little-known steps that can accelerate your success with getting the right kind of mortgage and can help you avoid a bad credit mortgage--make sure to keep reading and researching.

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Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

This news is devastating to the Southern Coal Fields and our entire state. The Spruce Number One permit was issued years ago after undergoing a comprehensive permitting process. It is hard to understand how the EPA at this late hour ...

Hybrid Streetlights: Good Or Bad News For Utilities?

Urban Green Energy — a New York City startup that designs and manufactures small wind turbines — has released and installed the first of its new,

Thursday, January 13, 2011

personal financeonline personal finance

[blogsearch]
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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

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Some Good News! | PerezHilton.com

The economy seems to be finally be rebounding, with stocks climbing to a two year high yesterday!

Breaking news: EPA vetoes Spruce Mine permit « Coal Tattoo

Bad News, About Virgin Mi-Fi and Verizon Upgrades - NYTimes.com

Two announcements this week. Two big bummers. Two good things gone.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Money Cash

(Editor’s note: Charley Polachi is a partner at Polachi, an executive recruiting firm. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

2010 is winding down rapidly with all indications that the worst is behind us – hopefully. At the very least, that’s the sentiment of many of the executives we deal with.

As we gave forward into 2011, we queried several of our executive search partners around the world to get their input on what they see happening in their back yards and what they anticipate for the year to come. Here’s what they had to say:

Sean Carroll, Polachi (NYC)

“If there is any meaningful uptick in the economy, good talent that may be on the sidelines will be gone and entrepreneurs will have a tough time hiring on their own. Also, I suspect there will be a strong M&A market as we’ve seen with Netezza, Unica, Coremetrics, etc. Corporations have lots of cash and will buy at the right price.”

“Lastly, as entrepreneurs pioneer innovative solutions, there will always be a shortage of skills as the experience or domain does not exist yet. A good example is SEO products. Automating SEO is an interesting problem to solve but there are only a few young product companies, so the only place to get SEO experience is the agencies…no SaaS or product experience there. Entrepreneurs need to make bets that talent can step up in a new sector.”

Andy Price, Schweichler, Price, Mullarkey and Barry (Silicon Valley)

“My view is that the talent pool is getting snapped up pretty fast and once again we’re seeing a very competitive landscape for people. We’re competing against two forces: Other companies recruiting, and inertia driven by either risk aversion or someone’s low priced options are suddenly in the money and they’re inclined to take risk off the table. That said, people believe startups have a chance again so they’re willing to talk to you. Closing people is the hard part right now.”

Steve Lavelle, Gillamor Stephens (London)

“In Europe, access to the talent pool is there, provided the company’s proposition is compelling enough. Closing candidates can be challenging though and having been through the low point of hiring activity, it’s only going to heat up as we move into next year.”

Sal Rocco, Stonewood Group (Toronto)

“We are seeing more product development, engineering-oriented searches than in the past 2-3 years. The only thing we can attribute this to is that when the market tanked and companies were cash strapped, the focus was on revenue generation and selling what we had. They gutted costly product development and engineering teams. The thought was: Don’t worry about new product development because we may not be alive in 2-3 years if we don’t get cash today.

“To the extent they were doing searches in the past 2-3 years, the searches were on either outward looking sales & marketing types focused on making money or CFOs/Finance types focused on raising cash or slowing the bleed. Today, as the future looks brighter and companies realize that their products are dated, they need to hire engineering leads and product development types, which they were laying off over the past 2-3 years.”

So, for 2011 the future looks fairly bright. VCs are investing and companies are hiring. A few things entrepreneurs can expect to see and look out for are the following:

Senior talent is getting scarce again

Social media works for staffing at many levels, but not at the executive level

Cleantech continues to march on – and more opportunities will be there for investors

Venture capital is emerging from a difficult stretch, but there is money for good ideas and strong teams in mobile applications, gaming and health care IT

Candidates want cash and equity.

Acquisitions will provide the bulk of exits in 2011; the IPO market isn’t here yet.

Next Story: Verizon iPad 2 to join the Verizon iPhone in 2011? Previous Story: Computer platforms with the biggest buzz will be the biggest malware targets in 2011

(Editor’s note: Charley Polachi is a partner at Polachi, an executive recruiting firm. He submitted this story to VentureBeat.)

2010 is winding down rapidly with all indications that the worst is behind us – hopefully. At the very least, that’s the sentiment of many of the executives we deal with.

So, for 2011 the future looks fairly bright. VCs are investing and companies are hiring. A few things entrepreneurs can expect to see and look out for are the following:

Senior talent is getting scarce again

Social media works for staffing at many levels, but not at the executive level

Cleantech continues to march on – and more opportunities will be there for investors

Venture capital is emerging from a difficult stretch, but there is money for good ideas and strong teams in mobile applications, gaming and health care IT

Candidates want cash and equity.

Acquisitions will provide the bulk of exits in 2011; the IPO market isn’t here yet.

Next Story: Verizon iPad 2 to join the Verizon iPhone in 2011? Previous Story: Computer platforms with the biggest buzz will be the biggest malware targets in 2011

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This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

News Corporation (News Corp) is the world's second-largest media conglomerate (behind The Walt Disney Company) as of 2008 and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive. ...

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

This Week's Health Industry News - NYTimes.com

An F.D.A. panel considers what to do about menthol flavoring in cigarettes.

News Corp. Insiders Talking About Selling MySpace To Yahoo

Top news stories in China 2010

A Sinica podcast and lists from the Chinese media and Internet of the top news stories of 2010, year of the Tiger.

Friday, January 7, 2011

personal finance budgets

Intuit-owned Mint.com is heading to schools today with the launch of a free, online program designed to educate middle-school students about personal finance and financial management.

Mint has partnered with educational publisher Scholastic to develop materials that parents and teachers can use to teach children the ins and outs of personal finance management. The materials includes lesson plans as well as an interactive game, to teach children money management, budgeting and goals.

For example, the program teaches children the concept of compound interest with real-life math problems, and encourages children to set goals and budgets with their own current work opportunities (i.e. babysitting).

Mint says the curriculum will be expanded to 30,000 classrooms nationwide early next year. Considering the state of the economy and credit, teaching children financial literacy and sounds personal finance practices at an early edge is an incredibly important initiative. In terms of branding, this is a big win for Mint, which can start building awareness of its tools among students at an early age.

So thinking about starting 2011 with a new and fresh finance app for your new and fresh WP7 device?

You have the chance now! moBudget has just been released for Windows Phone 7.

moBudget is a user friendly budgeting and expense tracking application. It will help you drive and organize both your personal income and outcome budgeting. By doing so, moBudget will also hint you about possible budgeting and money saving opportunities. Its main screen features a summarized dashboard with a set of intelligent indicators which will tell you how you are doing depending on your budgets and on the current date.

Forget about grabbing a calculator each time you need to get any numbers or if worried about making it to the end of the month or not; moBudget will tell you all: what you have, what you will have, what you owe and more. It will either inform, alert or advice you when needed so you don’t need to worry.

By allowing stepping through months, allows you to whether look back to see how you did on previous months or how you will be doing in the upcoming months, so you can fine tune your budgets to the optimal.

Take it with you, record your data and you will see how money won’t cause you a headache anymore!

More after the break.

Key features

Today Hub featuring a main dashboard with intelligent indicators

Upcoming and overdue payments, incomes, bills

Color-based and snapshot styled budget bar graphs for easy reading

Easy and fast input for tracking either expenses, incomes or transfer between accounts

Budget adjustment helper

Actual balance and budget balance adhoc *

Accounts and credit cards usage recording *

Cash flow bar graphs and out of funds predictions *

Credit card payment estimations and warnings

Can create future operations and recurrent operations

Multi currency support

Easy month back and forth navigation

Account balances reconcilation

Password protection in two ways (partial and complete)

Encrypted backups

More…!

* Estimated. Does not pull your bank information, however you can sync balances up to a specific date and moBudget will estimate the current and future balance and cash flow according to the data you register day to day.

Screenshots

So give it a try! App has a 15 day free trial period and currently is at 50% sale for Christmas.

– or- direct download link for Zune.

free rental agreement forms

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Thursday, January 6, 2011

how to budget personal finances

The party is over in Australia. Many anti-dollar investors and Pollyannas living down under just don't realize it yet. Nonetheless, Australia faces an economic crunch as family finances collapse under the burden of record debts, rising interest rates and utility bills.

Please consider Australians sinking under debt burden

With banks warning they will be forced to raise mortgage rates by 0.50 per cent in 2011 and Sydney rents forecast to rise by between $160 and $190 a month, according to analysts Residex, householders look set to suffer.

Repossessions and tenant evictions are expected to rise sharply. "It's going to be tough" said Shane Oliver, chief economist at AMP Capital. "Families face many rising costs and while most people have slowed their borrowing, our debt is still growing and that's a big problem."

Despite more cautious spending in recent months, household debt is still up by 5.8 per cent on a year ago and a recent survey by Westpac found only about 20 per cent of people thought paying off debts was the best use of their money. Most households in the US, UK and much of Europe are still busily paying down their borrowings, particularly unsecured debts such as personal loans and credit cards.

"Unlike the rest of the world, Australia has slipped back into its old habits," said Steve Keen, professor of economics at the University of Western Sydney. "We're spending ourselves right back into trouble. With so much extra debt to service, we don't need interest rates to reach anything like the 9.6 per cent they hit in 2008.

"We may find repossessions spiking much more quickly than they did two years ago."

Weekly Living Costs Up $100

Real estate has peaked and so has the shopping center economic model based on the strong Australian dollar. There is no reason here to like either Australian equities or the Australian dollar. Strong commodity prices will no longer help Australia.

Australian real estate has already been hit by rising interest rates and with Weekly living costs up $100, more rate hikes may be coming.

FAMILIES face cost-of-living increases that could drain the weekly budget by up to $100 this year.

New data shows Australians are being levelled with record expenses for basic services and Sydney residents are some of the hardest hit in the country.

After floods that have wiped out crops in Queensland and NSW, fruit and vegetable prices are predicted to rise by up to 50 per cent.
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Any hope the strong Australian dollar would shield motorists from increases in fuel prices have been dashed - global oil prices are tipped to hit record highs.

This year's price increases will compound the cost pressures already inflicted on households.

The trio of utility costs alone represents an extra yearly burden of about $1000 - or $20 a week - for an average household of four, while grocery bills are set to rise on average by $50 a week, based on a weekly bill of $150.

Housing affordability has taken another dive, with industry figures showing the largest annual decrease in a decade.

A report by the Real Estate Institute of Australia showed the proportion of income required to meet loan repayments increased 5.8 per cent to 34.8 per cent over last year, a 10-year high.

Additionally, the amount of rent people are paying has increased by 18.6 per cent in Sydney over three years, above the national average.

The Bureau of Statistics also identified health costs, communications services and petrol prices as having risen sharply over the year.

$AORD - Australian Stock Market Index Monthly

$AORD - Australian Stock Market Index Weekly

$SSEC - Shanghai Stock Market Index Weekly

Both the Australian stock market and the Chinese stock market have been weak. This is in spite of the fact that commodities have been on fire. Both countries have had overheating economies led by real estate bubbles.

It will be interesting to see how the Reserve Bank of Australia handles this. Failure to hike rates would hurt the Australian dollar and increase the price of imports while hiking rates further will crush the real estate bubble.

China's problem is far more complex. For more on China please see

Misguided Love Affair with China; China's Massive Monetary Expansion and Crackup Boom
China Hikes Rates, Ponders Capital Controls to Halt Currency Inflows; Eight Reasons China Faces Hard Landing

There are no good solutions when the central bank lets real estate bubbles get out of hand as has happened in the US, China, Australia, Canada, Ireland, Spain, the UK and numerous other places.

The difference so far is the US, Ireland, and Spain property bubble have popped, while those in Australia, Canada, and China are just now facing the pressure.

Mike "Mish" Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Click Here To Scroll Thru My Recent Post List

Did the author actually say that "borrowing now exceeds tax revenue"? How embarrassing!

I hate to be the one that tells you, Megan, but every nation DESIGNED their currency operations to work that way, when they went off of the gold std back in the 1920s & 1930s. The last vestige, pegging to the $US & thereby to gold, disappeared in 1973. That's been a long time. In 2010 there is simply no excuse for not knowing how simple monetary operations work. It's not rocket science.

In nearly every country in the world, currency creation & currency supply is now fairly directly linked only to public initiative and the general well being of the populous. If population or economic activity increases, OF COURSE currency supply must increase faster than taxes. What part of economic growth don't people understand? Currency operations are not so different from motherhood. You feed the fetus & baby first, often for years, keep accurate growth records, and your family, tribe or nation benefits only in the long run. There's no inherent value in the record keeping itself. Keep that in mind & everything else falls into place.

CURRENCY ISSUERS manage real goods budgets, and issue currency only for internal bookkeeping, to denominate real transactions. (& issuers tax ONLY to control inflation and/or to serve narrow political interests; usually to keep the poor poor & make the rich richer)

CURRENCY USERS typically use currency budgets as an accurate, short term proxy for a local real goods budget. But even currency users should never be confused enough to try to save "fiat" instead of building capabilities or at least hoarding more real assets.

Beardsley Ruml pointed out the obvious, in 1946, "Taxes for Revenue Are Obsolete" http://tinyurl.com/y3dkda3

If anyone has trouble understanding how monetary operations actually work, try these intro texts.

http://www.monetary.org/briefusmonetaryhistory.htm

http://www.cfeps.org/pubs/pn-pdf/PolicyNote2006-1.pdf

http://moslereconomics.com/2009/12/10/7-deadly-innocent-frauds/

http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=2943

http://www.moslereconomics.com/2009/11/04/short-rate-thoughts-deflation-radical-thesis-turnaround/

http://www.eh.net/book_reviews/handbook-world-exchange-rates-1590-1914
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PHP: News Archive - 2011

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