About Me 0091: January 2011

Monday, January 24, 2011

Making Money With Website

Popular financial news and commentary website Seeking Alpha seems to have a pretty sweet setup — the site has built up a large readership (40 to 45 million pageviews per month) with articles that are written for free. So the announcement that the site will start paying its contributors looks a bit odd — why start paying for something you were already getting for free?

The move seems especially risky since Seeking Alpha’s Premium Partnership Program will pay a rate of $10 per thousand pageviews. That means a big chunk of the money the site makes from each article will go to the writer. (On the other hand, Seeking Alpha founder and CEO David Jackson told me last week that the site charges its advertisers premium rates thanks to its high-quality audience.)

So why change things? Jackson said it’s because the pay model allows Seeking Alpha to reach a new set of writers. Until now, most contributors were financial advisors or other professionals who saw their articles as a way to build their reputation and attract new customers. But there’s a big pool of writers who have expertise in a specific financial subject but aren’t looking for customer leads (for example if they’re retired, or if they’ve built up knowledge as an individual investor). Those writers need a different incentive to contribute — namely, money.

The ultimate goal, Jackson said, is to become “the eBay of financial content, to put people in business who otherwise wouldn’t be in business.” Your average Seeking Alpha article receives between 2,500 and and 20,000 pageviews, he added — which means a payment of between $20 and $200. (The payments will be made quarterly, and to reduce the company’s overhead, you won’t get paid until you’re owed at least $100.) For some contributors, the payments will just represent an extra bit of spending money, but for others it could be a nice income.

Some of Seeking Alpha’s existing writers will switch to the new model, while others will not, Jackson said, because if you want to get paid, the site will require exclusive rights to the article.

One of the risks of the pay-per-pageview model is that it might encourage sensationalism for the sake of chasing traffic (and making more money). Obviously, the site wants to grow pageviews, but Jackson said he’ll be relying on its editorial team to act as a quality filter as the amount of submissions grows.

Seeking Alpha already has 4,000 registered contributors, Jackson said. The site’s investors include Benchmark Capital, Accel Partners, and DAG Ventures.

Next Story: iPhone 5, iPad 2 rumors abound: dual-core processors, high-resolution display Previous Story: Evidence suggests Stuxnet worm set Iran’s nuclear program back

BigGov: Chevy's Green Efforts Due To "Leftists Tak[ing]
Over" And Are Funded By Taxpayers

BigGov Claims Chevy's
Green Efforts "The Kind of Business Model That You Get When Leftists Take
Over." A January 13 post on Andrew Breitbart's blog Big Government
mocked Chevrolet's Carbon Reduction initiative, which focuses on "investing in
greenhouse gas-reducing projects...like wind farms, solar and energy efficiency,"
according to the initiative's website. [Chevycarbonreduction.com, accessed 1/14/11]

Including a video clip of a
recent ad for the Chevy Volt, the Big Government post
claimed:

There was a time when Chevy built
cars and trucks. The Corvette and Camaro were legendary sports cars, and the
Impala offered full size comfort [sic] a middle
class price. But that was before Change came to town. The brand that used
to compare itself to Baseball, Hot-Dogs, and Apple Pie is no longer content to
just make reliable vehicles, it is now as green as a wheatgrass and algae
smoothie.

For instance, in the following
commercial: Chevy isn't just building cars anymore, it's "investing" in
windmills, and planting trees.

[video clip]

This is the kind of business model that you get when Leftists take
over. Before 2008, GM just tried to make cars that people would buy, for a
little more money than they cost to build. Now, they have to plant a forest.
[Big Government, 1/13/11]

BigGov Claims GM
Using Taxpayer Money On Green Effort. The Big
Government post also
suggested that GM is using taxpayer money to "plant windmills and trees." From
the post:

It's for reasons like this that General Motors is never expected
to fully pay back the bailout money. According to the
Congressional Oversight Panel, Taxpayers will lose about 19 billion dollars on
the General Motors bailout.

That's a lot of green. You can't really blame General Motors. When
you have an extra 19 billion to play with, why not plant windmills and trees?
It seems like the corporate suites, are working on a bigger Buzz than the one
they hired to do the voice-over. A more rational voice might ask about the
forest that had to be cut down to print all that money. [Big Government, 1/13/11]

In Fact, Chevy's Initiatives Are Not Government Mandated, Do Not Use Taxpayer Money

Chevy Carbon Reduction Site: "The
Government Had Absolutely No Role In This" Project. On the Questions and
Answers section of Chevrolet's site about the green
initiative, Chevrolet states that the government "had absolutely no
role" in the project and that the company "is making this commitment
voluntarily." From the site:

[ChevyCarbonReduction.com, accessed 1/14/11]

Chevy Site: "Funding For This
Initiative Comes From Existing Advertising Budgets." In response to the
question, "Is Chevy spending taxpayers' money on this initiative?" the website
lists the answer:

[ChevyCarbonReduction.com,
accessed 1/14/11]

Chevy Site: Project To Cost An
Estimated $40 Million. The site also states that the projected cost of the
project is $40 million:

[ChevyCarbonReduction.com,
accessed 1/14/11]

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Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Business Making Money

Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition

Our report, “Koch Industries: Secretly Funding the Climate Denial Machine,” exposed Charles and David Koch, the billionaire oilmen who control Koch Industries, as a chief source of funding for the climate denial machine. As it turns out, doing everything possible to delay the clean energy revolution is something of a family business. We’ve released a dossier on Bill Koch, David’s twin brother and the principal funder of opposition to Cape Wind, the project to build the nation’s largest wind farm off the coast of Massachusetts.

Bill Koch made his fortune through his privately-held, carbon-intensive company, Oxbow. (Koch founded Oxbow with the fortune he received from suing his brothers in 1983 after they ousted him from the family business.) Oxbow Corporation, with $3.7 billion in yearly sales and over 1200 employees, sells 10 million metric tons of petroleum coke and 8 million metric tons of steam coal annually.

After making a killing peddling dirty energy, Bill Koch turns around and uses his immense personal wealth to fund the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound, the primary group that finds every possible way to delay Cape Wind from moving forward. Even worse, he pays lobbyists through his Oxbow corporation to try and quietly kill the wind farm project altogether.

We compiled the full story behind Bill Koch into a brief dossier which you can read below or download by right-clicking here: Bill Koch: The Dirty Money Behind Cape Wind Opposition.

See also “New Yorker exposes Koch brothers along with their greenwashing and whitewashing Smithsonian exhibit” and “From promoting acid rain to climate denial — over 20 years of David Koch’s polluter front groups“).

Glacier melt in Peru becomes more than a climate issue

HUARAZ, Peru – Glacier melt hasn’t caused a national crisis in Peru, yet. But high in the Andes, rising temperatures and changes in water supply over the last 40 years have decimated crops, killed fish stocks and forced villages to question how they will survive for another generation.

Without international help to build reservoirs and dams and improve irrigation, the South American nation could become a case study in how climate change can destabilize a strategically important region, according to Peruvian, U.S. and other officials.

“Think what it would be like if the Andes glaciers were gone and we had millions and millions of hungry and thirsty Southern neighbors,” said former CIA Director R. James Woolsey.

Peru is home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, which are also found in Bolivia, Ecuador and Chile. Peru’s 18 mountain glaciers, including the world’s largest tropical ice mass, are critical to the region’s water sources for drinking, irrigation and electricity.

Glaciers in the South American Andes are melting faster than many scientists predicted; some climate change experts estimate entire glaciers across the Andes will disappear in 10 years due to rising global temperatures, creating instability across the globe as they melt.

See also “Another one bites the dust, literally: Bolivia’s 18,000 year-old Chacaltaya glacier is gone.”

If Peru and its allies don’t fund and create projects to conserve water, improve decrepit water infrastructure and regulate runoff from glaciers within five years, the disappearance of Andean glaciers could lead to social and economic disaster, said Alberto Hart, climate change adviser at Peru’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“This will become a problem for the United States,” he said. “When you have a dysfunctional country, you have a problem for the entire region.”

The United States spent $30 million on climate change assistance in Peru in fiscal year 2010, according to documents provided by the State Department. The funding, allocated as part of the 2009 Copenhagen Accord, went mostly to preserving the Amazon rainforest in Peru.

Peruvian officials would hardly turn away money to preserve the Amazon. But the immediate problem is adaptation to rapid glacier melt, Hart said….

The Peruvian government is asking Washington and other allies for at least $350 million every year through 2030 to build reservoirs and dams, and improve irrigation, said Hart.

Japan, Australia and Switzerland also have offered assistance for climate change, Hart said. The World Bank is also working in Peru to monitor water supplies and implement drought-resistant agriculture, part of a larger climate change project that includes several Andean nations, according to Walter Vergara, a World Bank engineer who started the project in 2004.

But Peruvian officials say the United States has a majority share of the responsibility to help Peru, because of the close trade alliance between the two nations, and because the United States is the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases….

Bolivia and Ecuador are also threatened by glacier melt and Colombia’s costal and riverside cities are being wiped out by floods and landslides – disasters that are only expected to get worse, according to a study by the Pew Center on Climate Change.

Climate change is “a significant threat” to the region, and the United States must “really come to terms” with the security challenges it poses, Assistant Secretary of State for the Western Hemisphere Arturo Valenzuela said recently….

“It used to take you two or three hours walking to reach the ice. But now you have to walk five, six hours to reach ice,” said Maximo Juan Malpaso Carranza, a farmer in Utupampa, a small community high in the Cordillera Blanca.

“We all get water from there,” he said, pointing to Huascarán. “But if the ice disappears, there won’t be any more water.”

More than 2 million people, stretching from the Andes to the coastal cities, get their drinking water and irrigation from rivers fed by glacier runoff from Cordillera Blanca. But research by Cesar Portocarrero, the Peruvian government’s lead glacier scientist, shows the Cordillera Blanca has lost 30 percent of its glaciers since 1970.

Most of Peru’s agriculture is fed by water from the Andes. Glacier-fed rivers also support the nation’s largest hydroelectric plants. Lima, the world’s second-largest desert city, is almost totally dependent on Andean rivers from the Cordillera Central, where some mountains have lost more than 60 percent of their glaciers in the last 40 years.

Water conflicts have been frequent in southern Peru over the last few years, and glacier melt will create even more across the country, and, in extreme cases, spreading to neighboring countries, said retired Maj. Gen. Luis Palomino Rodriguez, head of Peru’s National Civil Defense Institute, in an interview.

The Pentagon is starting to address the impacts of climate change. It gave the Southern Command, in charge of Latin America, $600,000 to develop a mapping tool that will allow Latin America and the United States to share information about climate change risks. It is also spending $1.4 million to study the climate change effects on foreign military bases….

Peru has taken steps, but lacks resources. It created a national strategy on climate change in 2003 and has set up a Ministry of Environment with oversight of climate change programs. Officials are working with USAID and non-profit organizations to build reservoirs in Andean communities and monitor water flow from the glaciers.

“We may think that current wait-and-see policies are adequate to the task,” said Chad Briggs, Minerva Chair for Energy and Environmental Security with the U.S. Air Force. “Peru may be a looming example of how that is not the case.”

Must-see video: Time-lapse proof of extreme ice loss

By Lindsay Beyerstein, Media Consortium blogger

Meet the new global elite. They're pretty much the same as the old global elite, only richer and more smug.

Laura Flanders of GritTV interviews business reporter Chrystia Freeland about her cover story in the latest issue of the Atlantic Monthly on the new ruling class. She says that today's ultra-rich are more likely to have earned their fortunes in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street than previous generations of plutocrats, who were more likely to have inherited money or established companies.

As a result, she argues, today's global aristocracy believes itself to be the product of a meritocracy. The old sense of noblesse oblige among the ultra-rich is giving way to the attitude that if the ultra-rich could do it, everyone else should pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Ironically, Freeland points out that many of the new elite got rich from government bailouts of their failed banks. It's unclear why this counts as earning one's fortune, or what kind of meritocracy reserves its most lavish rewards for its most spectacular failures.

Class warfare on public sector pensions

In The Nation, Eric Alterman assails the Republican-controlled Congress's decision to scrap the popular and effective Build America Bonds program as an act of little-noticed class warfare:

These bonds, which make up roughly 20 percent of all new debt sold by states and local governments because of a federal subsidy equivalent to some 35 percent of interest costs, ended on December 31, as Republicans proved unwilling even to consider renewing them. The death of the program could prove devastating to states' future borrowing.

Alterman notes that the states could face up to $130 billion shortfall next year. States can't deficit spend like the federal government, which made the Build America Bonds program a lifeline to the states.

According to Alterman, Republicans want the states to run out of money so that they will be unable to pay the pensions of public sector workers. He notes that Reps. Devin Nunes (R-CA), Darrell Issa (R-CA) and Paul Ryan (R-WI) are also co-sponsoring a bill to force state and local governments to "recalculate" their pension obligations to public sector workers.

Divide and conquer

Kari Lydersen of Working In These Times explains how conservatives use misleading statistics to pit private sector workers against their brothers and sisters in the public sector. If the public believes that teachers, firefighters, meter readers and snowplow drivers are parasites, they'll feel more comfortable yanking their pensions out from under them.

Hence the misleading statistic that public sector workers earn $11.90 more per hour than "comparable" private sector workers. However, when you take education and work experience into account, employees of state and local governments typically earn 11% to 12% less than private sector workers with comparable qualifications.

Public sector workers have better benefits plans, but only for as long as governments can afford to keep their contractual obligations.

Who's screwing whom?

Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich is calling for a sense of perspective on public sector wages and benefits. In AlterNet he argues that the people who are really making a killing in this economy are the ultra-rich, not school teachers and garbage collectors:

Public servants are convenient scapegoats. Republicans would rather deflect attention from corporate executive pay that continues to rise as corporate profits soar, even as corporations refuse to hire more workers. They don't want stories about Wall Street bonuses, now higher than before taxpayers bailed out the Street. And they'd like to avoid a spotlight on the billions raked in by hedge-fund and private-equity managers whose income is treated as capital gains and subject to only a 15 percent tax, due to a loophole in the tax laws designed specifically for them.

Signs of hope?

The economic future looks pretty bleak these days. Yes, the unemployment rate dropped to 9.4% from 9.8% in December, but the economy added only 103,000, a far cry from the 300,000 jobs economists say the economy really needs to add to pull the country out its economic doldrums.

Andy Kroll points out in Mother Jones that it will take 20 years to replace the jobs lost in this recession, if current trends continue.

Worse yet, what looks like job growth could actually be chronic unemployment in disguise. The unemployment rate is calculated based on the number of people who are actively looking for work. Kroll worries that the apparent drop in the unemployment rate could simply reflect more people giving up their job searches.

For an counterweight to the doom and gloom, check out Tim Fernholtz's new piece in The American Prospect. He argues that the new unemployment numbers are among several hopeful signs for economic recovery in 2011. However, he stresses that his self-proclaimed rosy forecast is contingent upon avoiding several huge pitfalls, including drastic cuts in public spending.

With the GOP in Congress seemingly determined to starve the states for cash, the future might not be so rosy after all.

This post features links to the best independent, progressive reporting about the economy by members of The Media Consortium. It is free to reprint. Visit the Audit for a complete list of articles on economic issues, or follow us on Twitter. And for the best progressive reporting on critical economy, environment, health care and immigration issues, check out The Mulch, The Pulse and The Diaspora. This is a project of The Media Consortium, a network of leading independent media outlets.

Source:http://removeripoffreports.net/

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Friday, January 14, 2011

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It has always been the case that anyone who has the benefit of Legal Aid would go running to their solicitor at the first sign of any problem. They did this on the basis that they weren't paying for any legal advice so they would have as much as possible! Sometimes however this shot them in the foot.

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Very often, funding is not a free lunch. If, (in a divorce for example) the parties are arguing over money or a house then some of the value of their house or their money may be at risk. There is an exemption which (the last time I looked) was £5000 but other than that any monies or property in dispute were at risk. In a nutshell, if the fund paid for someone to fight over the old matrimonial home then in the event that the matrimonial home was awarded to the person with the benefit of Legal Aid then the Board would want the costs they had paid, repaying from the value of the home.

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Talk with your local branch banks. Credit unions are another great route to take and you should explore membership with a credit union to have more options open to you. The small, local branches are often more inclined to work with someone who has credit challenges. There is something special about the small-town effect when it comes to your relationship with the bankers.

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Thursday, January 13, 2011

Making Money Opportunities

There are probably 10 events equivalent or larger than Le Web throughout the year, as well as smaller events every day. We regularly ran into Robert Scoble and other major blogs, and they were very keen on listening to us. Local event organizers were even eager to help make a Finnish Angry Birds event happen and to introduce us to hundreds of people!

Readjustment of Expectations

These elements fit with each other and form the ground for growth business to happen. The old continent often looks up to the Valley as a sort of Eldorado of IT. Countries such as the UK, Russia and Finland are trying to replicate its ecosystem, to stimulate their local industries. Silicon Valley is a hub. Its value lies in two generations of people with unique know-how that are given all the tools necessary to create growth. No amount of EU or taxpayer money is going to recreate this perfect storm.

Not Businessmen, Entrepreneurs

We Europeans think of entrepreneurs as businessmen. This might be valid for lifestyle, predictable businesses, but the job of a startup entrepreneur is different: to test assumptions, to learn, and to create something new.

A trader on Wall St. can make money circulate without ever creating anything of value. In contrast with a startup such as Kiva, the drive to fix real problems, make and impact and give to the community makes traditional business feel vain, and startups all the more inspiring.

Down to Earth

Hearing and meeting thought leaders such as Eric Schmidt, Paul Buchheit or Steve Blank gave me a lot of food for thought. I have yet to see a Nokia executive at a startup event; these people on the other hand were approachable, down to earth, and relaxed. The pursuit of quality people makes this a meritocracy. Quite the contrast with our local successes who tend to behave like suits. Talent takes precedence over nationality or title, which would explain why Loic Le Meur and Om Malik are so well integrated, and Carol Bartz isn’t.

Cultural Edge

We received better customer service from Taco Bell and the police department than from Stockmann, the top tier department store in Finland! One time, a bus driver was more comfortable at speaking than most startups I’ve heard pitching. It seems they are more comfortable with small talk with the customer.

This tendency to be more outspoken could also be seen in networking and pitching, where there was much less awkwardness than with Europeans. Though it rarely feels genuine, it certainly is more effective.

Bigger is Better

More events, money and startups, means more competition, making it all the more necessary to stand out by hiring outstanding people, being more ambitious, more risk-taking. Unsurprisingly, this seems to weed out the less passionate people, while encouraging others to put in sweat equity in their own ideas.

This is something I feel we Europeans aren’t very good at. It’s compelling to start in your home country rather than aiming big, because it feels safer. The last thing you want when you launch is to tailor to several languages, cultural differences, distribution channels and small blogs and other media. You can easily get complacent when you succeed in your own country, but if we mitigate risk, we place the odds against us from the start.

Access to Finance

The most striking difference was to see a fully fleshed out capital market, where hobbyist and professional angels, superangels, top tier VCs and smaller firms compete for the more attractive deals. This makes for a more fluid deal flow, with more standardized and competitive terms, with more contacts and experience on top.

It wouldn’t surprise me if there were more angels and VCs in the region than on the entire European continent. In 2009, business angels invested 160 times more than their counterparts in continental Europe. It is also unclear whether we have any superangels (e.g. we don’t). Like our startups, our VCs tend to aim locally or regionally. Many of them aren’t reviewed on TheFunded, so there is little track record to refer to. With major exits being few and far between, the amounts of money reinvested as well at the experience offered is less.

Still Insular

At times, the Valley feels like a bubble, its inhabitants sheltered from the real world. Foreign markets seem to be an afterthought, space for local startups and copycats. It is unclear whether foreign companies can realistically raise money from where they're at: though Accel invested in the Lithuanian company GetJar, and more recently Esther Dyson invested in Finnish Valkee, I was also told that some VCs would only invest in startups within a short drive.

U.S. legislation is not on the foreign entrepreneur’s side. For some odd reason, it is easier to get a visa by being hired, than by establishing a U.S. company and creating jobs. Hopefully, the Startup Visa can correct this in the near future. This process should be streamlined, as I believe many European startups have a lot to offer.

3 Choices

Silicon Valley is an unfair advantage for startups. Its ecosystem serves as an accelerator for world-class growth business. In comparison with Europe, lesser teams with lesser technology have access to more resources and will get further, faster. Ambitious European entrepreneurs face three choices: should we aim smaller and within our comfort zone, take greater risks in the Valley, or try the hard way in the old continent?

Photo by luigig

The news that Tapjoy, formerly Offerpal, raised $21 million in funding last week, is not only a feel-good comeback story for a company tainted by the Scamville Facebook case. It also shows there’s a big opportunity to be had by helping the freemium model expand on mobile. In addition to Tapjoy, there are other companies hoping to ride the freemium app boom.

For example, W3i, a longtime web application recommendation service, is looking to help match up advertisers who want to promote their mobile apps with developers who are looking to make money through in-app purchases with a new ad-funded payment platform for iOS. Similar to Tapjoy’s platform play, W3i is looking to exploit the growth in in-app purchases by uniting developers, advertisers and users.

A user who wants to buy virtual currency or goods in an app can choose to install another app in lieu of payment, which the advertiser delivers to the developer upon installation. I talked with the CEOs of both companies about the opportunities in alternative payments for mobile apps and why they feel that they’re on to a big opportunity, helping fuel the in-app purchase economy and taking advantage of its growth.

Mihir Shah, CEO and president of Tapjoy said a year ago, the company began testing out a freemium model for one of its mobile games Tap Defense a year ago and found that within a week, it was making six times more money going freemium than paid with traditional display advertising. Eventually, the game was making 10 times what it was before. The news spread, and other developers came on board with Tapjoy’s virtual currency model. Shah said the market for freemium mobile apps went from about 20 a year ago to about 2,500 today, of which he said 90 percent use Tapjoy. It’s unclear if these numbers are accurate, but as I reported a few months ago, we’ve seen a big spike in the number of freemium apps on the top-grossing rankings of the Apple App Store

Tapjoy employs its platform on iOS primarily and is also on Android. The company’s move to mobile has attracted some 400 developers, who are now partnering with Tapjoy for its in-app currency platform. And big brand names are also lining up with Tapjoy because of its success in helping distribute apps. Companies like Kayak, Fandango, Tapulous and Groupon pay for each user who installs their app in exchange for virtual currency. Shah said it only works with apps that have already been approved by Apple so it helps assure users the downloads are legitimate. He said the messaging is also made clear when users agree to download a paid app in exchange for currency. That has allowed Tapjoy to avoid the problems caused by the earlier Scamville episode, in which Facebook users were encouraged to use offers to pay for virtual currency in Facebook games, sometimes unwittingly buying things or subscriptions.

Shah said alternative payment through offers is still emerging; most iOS users still pay for virtual goods and currency directly. But he said it’s a significant business that will grow over time. He also said while many freemium apps right now are games, the model can work for many other types of programs. Communications app Pinger offer users currency for the service in exchange for app downloads. “The amount of content that is switching to this (freemium) model is astronomical,” said Shah. “And the top of the curve is not leveling off.”

This helps explain W3i’s move into this space. Andy Johnson, CEO of W3i, said its W3i Ad-Funded Payment Platform is trying to create a win-win-win for developers, advertisers and users. He said developers are able to better monetize their apps, a struggle in increasingly crowded app stores. Advertisers can get better distribution of their apps and insight into their marketing efforts while users are able to get something for free, which is overwhelmingly how they like to obtain things.

W3i is just getting started but has a lot of experience in helping distribute desktop apps. The company, which launched in 2000, has built a profitable business out of its InstallIQ app installation manager, which has helped W3i hit 500 million app downloads in its network. Now, W3i believes it can take its learnings to mobile, which Johnson believes can be an even bigger market.

“We see the mobile platform as the dominant platform moving into the future,” Johnson said. “We think this entire application distribution ecosystem is just beginning and there is so much market created each day, we don’t think there is one company that owns it.”

As I wrote about last week, in-app purchase revenue on the iPhone is now basically on par with paid download revenue, according to Distimo, an app analytics firm. With in-app purchases expected to be the dominant revenue driver for mobile apps, it’s smart for Tapjoy, W3i and others to try to take advantage of this momentum.

Related content from GigaOM Pro (sub. req.):

How To Ride The Freemium App Wave To Success

Will Killer Apps Affect Which Handsets Consumers Buy?

How Carriers Can Crack the App Discoverability Nut

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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.

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Perhaps the label should be something like “Percentage of respondents.” (The folks who collected the data allowed respondents to cite two “main” sources of news, which confused me.) I'll make the change. Thanks! ...

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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.

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

bench craft company reviews bench craft company reviews

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

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

Keira Knightley is Single and Other News - The Superficial ...

We only had to go back six years to find find a photo of her not looking like Gollum.) - The paparazzi ruined Keira Knightley's relationship. - Wendy.

Visualize This: Where the public gets its news

Monday, January 10, 2011

Making Money Scams

People blaming the government:

As all of us know that India is a democratic country. Democracy, in simple words, means Government by the people and for the people. This gives every Indian citizen to practice his/her rights and also to select the government by casting their votes. But here the main problem is that majority of people don’t cast their votes and when the government goes into the wrong people’s hands they start blaming the government. This is the main reason for the rising scams, prices and also the reason for the rich becoming richer and poor becoming poorer. May be one day will come when we have to buy a license to take birth in India!

These are the reasons which are favoring corruption in India. The youth has seen it all and wants to change the current situation of India. India is a really good country but as you may have heard that one rotten mango rotten the others in the basket too! The corrupt politicians are those rotten mangoes which are less in quantity but can cause destruction to the majority. This is called as misuse of power and authority. One of my very good friends gave me the idea to write on this topic. So, all credit goes to her for this article. I wish her all the best for life and being a big inspiration in my personal life. We both were discussing on the same topic and decided to work hard and change the face of India. I hope this article makes some difference. One day we, the energetic youth of India, WILL turn India into a golden country!

Jai Hind!

You've heard of "flipping" houses, well now there's "flopping." While the first was speculative, this one is outright fraud.

"Flipping" refers to when home values were rising so fast and the market was so hot that you could buy a house, slap on some new paint and fix up the yard and throw down some marble countertops and turn it around and sell it for a tidy profit.

Now that the bubble has burst and people are trying to offload all these houses, one of the ways they are doing it is in a "short sale" where the bank agrees to allow the house to be sold for less than the value of the mortgage. Doing so lets them avoid the costly foreclosure process and gets the bad loan off their books.

But what "floppers" are doing is pay a crooked appraiser to say that the house is worth even less than its real current market value. They then have a "straw purchaser" buy it, and then they turn around and sell it for what it's really worth.

The Federal Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) recently released a report indicating that mortgage fraud suspicious activity reports rose 7% in the first half of 2010, the terms "short sale" and "broker price opinion" showing up 827 times and 41 times, respectively.

THE TAKEAWAY: What this means for homeowners is that banks are making it harder to do short sales, preferring to instead go for foreclosure, even when it costs them more money. Several cases have come out where the bank has insisted that the short sale price was too low to allow the sale to go through, only to turn around and try sell the house at auction for less than what the short sale price was.

What you can do if your short sale is initially declined is try to convince the bank that the "auctionable cash-price," the price they can sell the house for at auction, is lower than what they think. Submit in one big packet at once any interior deficiencies, renovation costs, or engineering reports that you think will make the case. Include several different contractor estimates and bids and broker price opinions to help make your case.

For more information on preventing foreclosure, check out this Consumer Reports article.

Mortgage Fraud Suspicious Activity Reports Rise 7 Percent Increase in the First Half of 2010 [FINCEN.gov]Wary lenders denying short sales [Boston] (Thanks to chiieddy!)

SIGTARP Quarterly Report to Congress April 20, 2010 (PDF) [SIGTARP.gov]

Short Sale Denied; Advice to make Bank Reconsider? [ths.gardenweb]

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AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

This might actually be a smart move - the audience is exactly what "wtfinator" described. The news team there is often called out for leaning left in the comments on any stories posted on aol.com. Plays to their core. ...

Grading the Spring 2011 Campaigns, Part 1 – Fashionista: Fashion ...

Fashion Industry News, Designers, Runway Shows, Style Advice. Send Tips � Advertise � About Us � Network � Above the Law � AltTransport � Breaking Media � Fashionista. Search for: Home � Fashion Shows ... Posted in: News ...

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AOL Hires Fox News Vet To Double AOL.com Traffic By End Of Winter

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

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

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Friday, January 7, 2011

Making Money Without

Even the long fawning UK press is now saying what any startup who has tangled with the music industry has said all along: Spotify will not be able to launch its free any-song-you-want-to-hear-the-second-you-want-to-hear-it service in the US. The Telegraph is reporting that at the last minute the labels demanded too much upfront cash, killing a hard negotiated potential deal.

This is sad, but not a surprise. Despite all the reasons consumers would love it and labels should be empowering a rival for iTunes, the labels are in defensive mode and have never been rational when it comes to these things. My issues with how Spotify has handled this aside, I actually didn’t want to be right on this one. It’s a sad day for users.

But this will be the interesting thing to watch: Does Spotify just roll these we’re-definitely-launching-in-the-US assurances forward to 2011, the way the company has the last two years or does it pivot, and focus on building a profitable site for Europe and other less guarded pockets of the emerging world? In the Telegraph link above an unnamed source says the year of brutal negotiations has forced Spotify to “stop and think about whether it can afford the move to the US and indeed whether it is worth it,” while the article quotes a Spotify spokesman as saying the negotiations are “on-going.” Oh, Spotify.

Here’s my advice: Pivot. Spotify has spent two years, and undoubtedly plenty of money and focus, fighting what was always a Don Quixote like battle to make the US labels listen to reason. This is the same industry who sued their users. It was a valiant effort, but it didn’t work. We can argue why they should back Spotify all day long, but the last two years has proven that they are just not going to listen without Spotify having to make some major concessions.

I think Spotify should walk instead of making those concessions. No matter how hot of a startup you are, money and time are exhaustible commodities. Spotify should start directing them at challenges elsewhere until there is enough of a sea-change in the US music market that labels see reason. Giving into the labels’ demands isn’t the answer. Instead, Spotify should retreat, build in other countries, perfect its model, get to profitability, and then come back to this market when the labels are weaker and Spotify is stronger, boldly proving cynics like me flat wrong. Use your international headquarters as an advantage, not a liability.

Spotify board member Klaus Hommels told me in an interview late last year that he believed Spotify may be the venture industry’s last-ditch effort to build an online music company. (Other than Pandora, of course, the online music company with nine-lives that finally won the right to exist.) He told the labels in negotiations that if they opted instead to drain Spotify’s venture cash and leave it for dead the way they have to so many others, they may never get another hot upstart to back. And that would resign them to an Apple dominated world.

He may be right. So why not play the long game, instead of the short one?

(Note: Don’t worry, I’ve put two dollars in the TechCrunch Pivot/Swear Jar.)

Mike Huckabee featured a canned interview with Sean Hannity on his show this weekend as part of a year-end retrospective in which they discussed the Tea Party. The amusing part came when they discussed Teh Awesome Power of the Tea Parties, which Hannity identified with the American people themselves. Both of them argued vehemently against the notion that the Tea Parties were mere corporate Astroturf.

Completely absent from the discussion, naturally, was any mention whatsoever of the role played by Fox News. And while the role of astroturfers like FreedomWorks and Americans for Prosperity in fact was indispensable, none of them came close wielding the sheer energizing and organizing power that having a national "news" network openly propagandize for a movement can bring.

As John and I explain in Over the Cliff: How Obama's Election Drove the American Right Insane (pp. 121-127):

It costs advertisers thousands of dollars to air a single thirty-second commercial on a few cable stations for a week, even in relatively cheap rural markets. To advertise nationally on Fox News – the ratings leader in cable news – costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, even millions if the ads air often enough and in prime-time programs.

So what Fox News offered up the organizers of the tea parties -- and the conservative movement opposing Obama’s presidency -- was something you couldn’t measure in dollars and cents, because not only did Fox air a steady onslaught of “tea party” promotional ads, they embraced the outright promotion of the events in their news broadcasts and on their “opinion shows.” Their on-air personalities as well as their websites took an active role day after day and night after night promoting and urging the Fox audience to join in the tea party protests. Media Matters, a non-profit organization that tracks the conservative media documented 63 instances where Fox News anchors and guests openly promoted the tea parties and discussed them as a legitimate news event.

Initially, there was a lull; there was only passing mention of the tea parties on Fox again for the two weeks after Van Susteren’s show. Then, on March 16, three Fox anchors – Glenn Beck, Bret Baier, and Bill O’Reilly – featured segments discussing the tea parties, again in glowing terms. O'Reilly told his audience that "big government spending protests are taking place all over the country. The latest in Cincinnati, where about 5,000 folks showed up, showed their displeasure with the Obama's administration money strategy. These gatherings are being dubbed tea parties."

But it was Beck in particular who most avidly embraced the tea parties, making them his own pet cause. Some of this had to do with the ease with which the tea-party themes – an embrace of small-government philosophy, with an anti-tax and pro-gun fervor thrown in for emphasis – melded with the populist themes Beck was already exploring in depth on his show. On March 13, he had hosted a special one-hour program themed “You Are Not Alone” that was most notable for some of Beck’s most maudlin crying jags, including his oft-lampooned sob, “I just love my country – and I fear for it!” The show – like Beck’s later Tea Party promotions – featured broadcasts from specially gathered audiences in locations around the country who wanted to join Beck’s cause of “standing up to big government”. Its purpose was to launch Beck’s “912 Project” – named dually after Beck’s wish to bring the country back to “where we all were on the day after 9/11,” as well as the “9 Principles and 12 Values” Beck espoused, drawn from a 1972 book titled The 5,000-Year Leap, by far-right conspiracy theorist W. Cleon Skousen, which Beck promoted on his show and website.

After March 16 – when Beck noted the tea parties mostly in passing – the tea-party themes began to meld seamlessly with Beck’s “912 Project”. On March 18, Beck remarked: "People are starting to get angry. These tea parties are starting to really take off." On March 20, Beck began making the connection explicit. Once again denouncing the Missouri law-enforcement report on right-wing extremism, he connected the “extremists” described therein to the tea partiers:

But if you're concerned about the government, you're considered dangerous now in America. More than 160,000 Americans have already signed up to be part of our 9/12 Project, "912project.com," since we launched it a week ago -- 163,000 people have signed up. Who are these people? They're people just like you that are just concerned about our government and they're concerned about our country.

You know, are they militia members? Yes. Yes, sure they are, along with all the other people that are now on the tea parties nationwide. There is one here in Orlando, Florida. Tomorrow is supposed to be huge.

He mentioned the Orlando tea party warmly on March 23 as well, and then on March 24, Beck hosted two of the event’s tea-party organizers, Lisa Feroli and Shelley Ferguson, saying: "I have been telling you for weeks that you've got to stand up. And a lot of people around the country are doing these tea party things. But please, make them about principles, not about the parties. Make them about the principles."

Beck continued promoting the show each night through the rest of March. On his April 2 program, he announced that he would be hosting a special tea-party broadcast on April 15: "Tax Day, two weeks away. All right. More Americans are fed up with the nonsense in Washington both left and right. They are holding tea parties on April 15th. In this show, I can now announce that we're going to have our program live from the only place in America where I think it really, really makes sense - the Alamo. Plant your flag, America. It's in San Antonio, Texas. We will see you there on Tax Day!"

Beck was only leading the way for the other Fox anchors. A few days later, on April 6, he announced that not only would he be hosting his San Antonio “Tax Day tea party” on the 15th, but so would Neil Cavuto, Sean Hannity, and Greta Van Susteren, who planned to do similar broadcasts from respective tea parties in Sacramento, Atlanta, and Washington the same day. Fox was planning to flood the airwaves with tea-party protests.

Beck was prolific in promoting the tea parties. Between March 16 and April 14, Beck urgently implored his audiences to take part in the Tax Day protests a total of 17 times (out of a total of 21 shows). One of the more piquant episodes came when he hired a motivational speaker and sometime actor named Bob Basso to dress up in colonial costume and pretend to be Thomas Paine, embarking on a tea-party-loving rant:

The time for talk is over. Enough is enough. Your democracy has deteriorated to government of the government, by the government, and for the government. On April 15, that despicable arrogance will be soundly challenged for the whole world to see. Our friends will applaud it. Our enemies will fear it.

In an unprecedented moment of citizen response not seen since December 7, 1941, millions of your fellow Americans will bring their anger and determination into the streets.

… Your complacency will only aid and abet our national suicide. Remember, they wouldn't dare bomb Pearl Harbor, but they did. They wouldn't dare drive two planes into the World Trade Center, but they did. They wouldn't dare pilot a plane through the most sophisticated air defenses in the world and crash into the Pentagon, but they did. They wouldn't dare pass the largest spending bill in history, in open defiance of the will of the people, but they did!

Beck’s fellow Fox hosts did their best to keep pace. Sean Hannity featured segments on the tea parties a total of 13 times between March 12 and April 14, while Neil Cavuto’s afternoon business-oriented show featured a total of ten segments devoted to the protests during that same time. Nor were the “opinion shows” the only ones to do so: Another 15 or so tea-party promotional segments ran those weeks on such “news” shows as Fox and Friends, America’s Newsroom , and Special Report with Bret Baier.

Fairly typical was a March 23 broadcast in which America’s Newsroom anchor Bill Hemmer directed people to a list of tea party events on FoxNews.com and promised to "add to [the list] when we get more information from the New American Tea Party." Likewise, on the March 25 edition of Special Report, host Bret Baier said that the tea parties are "protests of wasteful government spending in general and of President Obama's stimulus package and his budget in particular." Another America's Newsroom broadcast on April 6, Fox contributor Andrea Tantaros described the protests: "People are fighting against Barack Obama's radical shift to turn us into Europe." Fox News also aired on-screen text stating that the "Tea Parties Are Anti-Stimulus Demonstrations."

Despite the obvious anti-Obama bent of all these protests, Beck and other Fox hosts worked hard to present the tea parties as “non-partisan,” bringing on guests who were either disappointed Democrats or conservatives still angry with the Republican Party too. Yet the nonstop drumbeat around the protests made clear that they were primarily in response to Obama administration policies.

The March 24 segment of America’s Newsroom promoting the tea parties was a classic instance of this. In it, Hemmer interviewed a man named Lloyd Marcus who was president of the National Association for the Advancement of Conservative People of Color, who told Hemmer that he previously "was on a 40-city 'Stop Obama' tour". Marcus' wrote a song, posted on FoxNews.com, which made clear that this was about Obama:

Mr. President!

Your stimulus is sure to bust.

It's just a socialistic scheme,

The only thing it will do

Is kill the American Dream.

You wanna take from achievers

Somehow you think that's fair.

And redistribute to those folks

Who won't get out of their easy chair.

We're havin' a tea party across this land.

If you love this country,

Come on and join our band.

We're standin' up for freedom and liberty,

'Cause patriots have shown us freedom ain't free.

So when they call you a racist cause you disagree,

It's just another of their dirty tricks to silence you and me.

Indeed, Fox News’ website was rich with tea-party promotion, as were its affiliated sites like the new FoxNation site, which tried to act as a sort of “information central” for the tea parties, with numerous links discussing and promoting the protests. One link, titled "Find a Tea Party!", directed readers to a Google Maps page for "2009 Tea Parties." Another link to you to a YouTube video headlined, "The Trillion Dollar Tea Party Video!", which featured Tampa Bay Area Tea Party organizers explaining why viewers should "join your local tea party." For those who couldn’t make it, Fox News announced that viewers could also attend “a virtual tax day tea party” at FoxNation instead.

Sean Hannity’s website at Fox featured a graphic with links to a message board discussion: "This thread is for the sole purpose of getting the word out about organized tea party events around the country. If you know of a planned event, please post the information here." Hannity’s producers wrote a blog post on his site proclaiming, "Get your Tea Party Tees at CAFE PRESS and wear them on April 15!" There were also "some helpful links" to AtlantaTeaParty.net and TaxDayTeaParty.com.

Then there were the promotional ads. In the 10 days leading up to the April 15 protests, Media Matters reported that Fox News aired 107 ads promoting them.

At times, Fox tried to deny that this deluge of glowingly sympathetic “reports” and barrage of commercials on the tea parties actually constituted promotion of the event. On the morning of the protests April 15, Fox and Friends broadcast, host Steve Doocy told his audience that “Fox is not sponsoring any of them, but we have been covering them.” This was a peculiar (not to mention disingenuous) remark, considering that Fox had repeatedly run onscreen graphics describing the events at which its anchors were to appear as “FNC Tax Day Tea Parties.”

Of course, this history will never be aired on Fox -- especially now that Rupert Murdoch denies promoting the Tea Parties.

free rental agreement forms

Monday, January 24, 2011

BigGov: Chevy's Green Efforts Due To "Leftists Tak[ing]Over" And Are Funded By Taxpayers

In Fact, Chevy's Initiatives Are Not Government Mandated, Do Not Use Taxpayer Money

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Friday, January 14, 2011

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Readjustment of Expectations

Not Businessmen, Entrepreneurs

Down to Earth

Cultural Edge

Bigger is Better

Access to Finance

Still Insular

3 Choices

Monday, January 10, 2011

BigGov: Chevy's Green Efforts Due To "Leftists Tak[ing]
Over" And Are Funded By Taxpayers