Archive for February, 2011
As We Inch Closer to Spring, The Real Estate Market Prepares to Rev Up
Although 60% of people who would like to own a home still worry about job security and creditworthiness, according to a recent survey of 3,500 US homeowners and renters conducted by Harris Interactive, as interest rates continue to climb many prospective buyers are starting to believe they need to get back into the buying game. Interest [...]
U.S. Housing Market Recovery Backtracks with 23% Year-Over-Year Rise in National Price Reductions
Trulia.com’s December price reduction report found that the number of listings with at least one price cut grew nationwide by 23 percent from 22 percent in December 2009 to 27 percent in December 2010. Meanwhile, average reductions remained flat at 11 percent in a year-over-year comparison, although it has risen by 10 percent since last [...]
Lybia & Oil Prices 2011
Insanity! As Libya continues to riot for freedom, a barrel of oil is rising quickly toward the psychologically important $100 a barrel mark. In fact, just today the price rose beyond $100 per barrel before sellers were confident enough to take short term profits. Turmoil & Oil You’ll notice a very common theme with countries [...]
Can Wal-Mart Be a Growth Stock Again? Let’s Start With a Dividend Hike
I have been saying for some time now that an investment in Wal-Mart (WMT) is dead money. Shares of Wal-Mart were down nearly 4% Tuesday as the stock has dropped to $53 per share. The company released earnings and the results were a mixed bag. The good news is that Wal-Mart had total revenues of [...]
Symposium on “The Future of Legal Education”
The Iowa Law Review is holding a Symposium on “The Future of Legal Education” this Friday and Saturday. America’s law schools are reevaluating the way they teach the law. Recent research has suggested new techniques for legal education, and some law schools have either made pedagogical changes or are considering doing so. Iowa Law Review’s symposium, [...]
Indicting Hezbollah in Mexico
A few months, the United States issued an extraterritorial indictment against Jamal Yousef, a senior agent of Hezbollah, an Iranian-sponsored and U.S.-designated terrorist organization. The agent was conducting a business deal to provide thousands of new U.S. arms stolen from American forces in Iraq that had been shipped and stored in Mexico and were to [...]
Review: The Way to Texas – By Liz Talley
“Her stay in Oak Stand, Texas, is only temporary. After a series of setbacks, Dawn Taggart is giving herself one year to pull everything together so she can start over somewhere else. No putting down roots here. No romantic entanglements. No exceptions! Not even the very persuasive Tyson Hart can change that. A contractor looking [...]
Review: One Night is Never Enough – By Anne Mallory
I’m squeeing all over the place with this book. One Night Is Never Enough is not enough! I want it to be 5 times longer – and that’s only a slight hyperbole there. I loved the hero. He’s all kinds of toe-curling wonderful. Let’s start with his name… Roman Merrick… two of my favorite first [...]
The Opiniator 6 Laws of Customer Feedback
Matt Selbie, president of Oberon3 and creator of Opiniator, is passionate about customer feedback. In fact, that’s how he and I connected. My post Big Bob’s Flooring Outlets Customer Comment Cards got us talking about the customer retail experience and customer service and led to another post, Meet Opiniator’s Matt Selbie. This past Surfaces 2011, Matt [...]
E-Commerce Shopping Carts: How a redesigned checkout process led to a 13% increase in conversion rate
As an avid online shopper, I often wonder why the checkout process is so markedly different and bare-bones when compared to the rest of the shopping experience. Sure, during this process customers aren’t shopping, they’re making the purchase. But for someone like me – someone who often loses confidence in the final steps of the [...]
The Polynomial: Space Of The Music
The Polynomial is a 3D musical ‘space shooter’ game, with non-shooter mode and built in fractal editor. Visuals are generated mathematically and animate to your music or microphone input; there are 4 music-driven animators and 38 arenas to choose from (12 arenas in free demo). You can create your own arenas using built in editor, [...]
The First, SPECTACULAR Gameplay Trailer For The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
In December we found out that there would be a new Elder Scrolls in 2011, a sequel to the massive 2006 role-playing game Oblivion. Today, we’ve got our first look at the game in action. They said it would have a new engine. They promised it would look better than the last one. They told [...]
Explore our U.S. Presidents On a Map
When I was in elementary school, I got two days off every February; one for George Washington and another for Abraham Lincoln. I remember classrooms were usually wallpapered with a potpourri of decorations left over from Valentine’s Day and token silhouettes of these two Presidents thumb-tacked to the bulletin board. My teachers would talk about [...]
First Windows Phone 7 Update Not Going Smoothly For Some Samsung Handsets
So this is why they do phased rollouts, eh? If Twitter is the font of truth and reality that we suspect it to be, it sounds like users of some Windows Phone 7 models by Samsung are struggling with that minor first update that Microsoft started pushing this week. Basically, it sounds like the update [...]
Newquists Sell 300 El Brillo Way for $9.5M to Trust
Aileen M. and Scott C. Newquist have sold their 1935 Maurice Fatio-designed red-brick estate at 300 El Brillo Way for $9.5 million, according to a deed recorded Tuesday by the Palm Beach County Clerk’s office. With a little more than 13,000 square feet of living space inside and out, the home had last been listed [...]
Are Fit’s Going to Pay Long Term?
If you generate your own green power then you could be earning yourself some cash as well as being eco-friendly. The government feed-in tariff (FIT’s) was launched last April and allows homeowners the chance to sell their home grown electricity and get paid for each unit that they produce. Payments are around 41.3p per kilowatt-hour [...]
Portfolio Construction Philosophy
Seeking Alpha contributor David Van Knapp asked the following question on my post the other day about efficient portfolio construction in relation to account size; Roger, do you have a template for general asset allocation, one that perhaps serves as a starting point (with variations for individual circumstances)? I find myself wondering about narrower and [...]
3 Strategies for Profiting From Middle East Unrest
Middle East unrest is becoming increasingly widespread with Egypt and Tunisia no longer looking like isolated incidents. We now see populist revolts taking shape in other North African and Middle Eastern countries such as Yemen, Libya, Morocco, Iran, and Algeria. Other major US allied countries in the region such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Kuwait [...]
Some States “Just Say No” to Harmful Immigration Enforcement Laws
If Arizona had its own television show, the warning “don’t try this at home” would appear after every commercial break. (Cut to tumbleweeds and Arizona businesses pulling their pockets inside out) This week, some states—like Virginia, South Dakota and New Hampshire—actually heeded that warning and rejected a host of enforcement measures targeting undocumented immigrants. States [...]
Lobbyists Spin GAO Report on H-1B
We have previously reported that the GAO has released a new study on the H-1B program titled “H-1B Visa Program: Reforms Are Needed to Minimize the Risks and Costs of Current Program”. As you can tell from the title, this report does not paint a pretty picture of the H-1B program, like all the other [...]
