Archive for February 11th, 2008
Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0
Ever wish you could find one web site that works as a social networking site, an IM service, a way to discover new music, sell your artwork, or store files on the web using a web-based desktop? Yeah, neither did we, but those are just a few of the services offered by Hurox, a site that’s so jam-packed with features that it nearly defies description.
Don’t get us wrong, Hurox is hardly the only company trying to control all of your online activities. Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, and others would like you to use their email, IM, calendar, pic, and video sharing services. The difference is that most companies don’t try to cram everything into a single URL. And there’s a good reason for that. Hurox is kind of pretty, but it also seems horribly complicated.
When you first sign up for a free account, Hurox asks you a series of questions to determine whether you’re more interested in things like celebrity gossip or tech news; folk music or heavy metal; reading or watching movies; and so on. Then you get a little tour that attempts to explain what you can do with the site, but it’s hard to keep everything straight when you can do everything from creating and sharing personal web pages to creating an on the internet marketplace for selling goods.
We’re all for all-in-one solutions. We love programs like 8hands or Flock that let you manage multiple social networking services at once. And Digsby does an awesome job of acting as n email notifier, chat client, and social networking monitor. But Hurox is something else altogether. It doesn’t let you manage activities you were already doing on the internet. It asks you to join yet another social network. Sure, it’s a social network that’s full of features, but it has so many features that we can’t help but think of Hurox as a kitchen sink site. It seems like the company just added every feature they could think of without taking the time to make sure that they all make sense together.
[via Mashable]
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Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0
StumbleUpon is a web discovery service that makes it easy to find cool and interesting web sites. All you have to do is install a browser toolbar and begin hitting the “stumble” button whenever you’re bored. The service also begins to get a sense of your tastes as you give various pages a thumbs up or down.
But there’s at least one problem with StumbleUpon: There’re no toolbar for Opera, Safari, or any web browsers besides World wide web Explorer and Firefox. So what’s a bored Opera users to do? Well, fortunately StumbleUpon has a nifty demo feature that lets you stumble pages using a virtual toolbar. All you have to do is enter http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url= into your browser’s URL window, and then add the site that you want to begin at. For example, http://www.stumbleupon.com/demo/#url=http://www.downloadsquad.com/.
You should now see a virtual toolbar with all the features of the regular StumbleUpon toolbar. But since this is just a demo, you can’t actually vote on sites or submit new sites. And there’s no way to enter your account information. But you can hit the stumble button as many times as you like.
[via Digital Inspiration]
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Filed under: Banks, Borrowing, Debt, Ripoffs and Scams
 Countrywide has just announced a plan to “help out” more borrowers who are in trouble on their home mortgages, particularly the ones with adjustable rates. The goal is to help people avoid foreclosure through a change in repayment terms. If you’ve got a loan with Countrywide and you’re behind on your payments, now may be the time for you to cash in.
Full details of this new plan aren’t available quite yet, but this looks to be something that’s going to piggyback on the previous program that would grant borrowers to keep their low “teaser” rates. Of course, there are some crying that the poor homeowners aren’t being helped enough.
I say hogwash! Borrowers got into adjustable rate mortgages with the knowledge that interest rates could increase once it came time for their rates to reset. They knew they’d probably have to refinance (maybe at higher rates), but took the risk on the interest rates anyway. Many of them bought more expensive houses than they could afford, banking on the hope that interest rates would stay low. But now it’s time to pay the piper, and someone should bail them out?
I’ll tell you what… I’ve my mortgage through Countrywide, and it’s at an adjustable rate. When it comes time for my rate to reset, somebody BETTER help me out. I’ve never had one late payment, but that superior not stop them from giving me a good deal on my new rate. And if it does stop them, then I’m prepared to do what’s necessary to get a better rate. As I said in the past, I think it’s time for me to lower my credit score a bit and get on the gravy train. No sense in being a responsible borrower these days!
Tracy L. Coenen, CPA, MBA, CFE performs fraud examinations and financial investigations for her company Sequence Inc. Forensic Bookkeeping, and is the author of Essentials of Corporate Fraud.
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Filed under: Budgets, Debt, Home, Saving, Simplification
 Many people get uptight when they consider the process of creating a home budget. They see dark visions of three column ledgers filled with six digit numbers and lots of black and red ink. Home budgeting doesn’t need to be like that at all. In fact, home budgeting can be quite simple. Most often, just getting a system started is the single hardest part.
You can start by looking at it this way, your budget will only have four main parts. Part one is income, which is the total of all funds you receive each month. The second part is expenses, which are all the things you need to pay out every month. The third part is disposable income, that’s the money which is left over after you subtract your expenses from your income. Part four is savings, that’s the part you get if the other three parts play nice together.
The way my wife handles our monthly home budget is easy. Income is tracked in our checkbook because all available funds go in there first. Expenses are tracked with a Monthly Bill Organizer that she purchased from Walter Drake. It’s a handy notebook-sized organizer with pages for each month and pockets to put billing notices in. Each page has simple tables where we have the ability to record budget transactions as they occur. We simply slip our bills into the pockets, make a note of the date that they’re due and then check them off as we send out the payments. Disposable income is tracked daily simply by using our checkbook balance. If we want to go out for dinner, we cross reference the checkbook balance against payments yet to go out. If the available balance plus expected income exceeds pending payment stipulations, we’re good to go for some shrimp stir fry.
Our savings program is handled from two angles. First, about 2% of my weekly paycheck goes directly into my IRA where the company I work for matches me dollar for dollar up to a maximum percentage. I also have $5 extra withheld each week by the federal government to avoid paying any tax withholding shortfall at the end of the year. As it turns out, because of some untaxed income increases this year, that strategy shall justify itself. Finally, as disposable income is revealed each month, we try to put at least 10% of any cash surplus into one of several small savings accounts.
Budgeting isn’t anything you need to be afraid of. It’s a easy matter of visually tracking what’s going on in your money life. You can greatly benefit by starting to write down a record of what money is coming in and what money is going out. By giving your monetary transactions the attention they deserve, you’ll swiftly learn the actual state of your financial health and you’ll be in a far superior position to do something about it.
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Filed under: Bargains, Debt, Home
 Not that I’m looking, or anything, but experts state if you’re in the market for a new HDTV, now is the time to buy it. Conventional wisdom has it that the ideal time to purchase a new TV is in the weeks just after the Superbowl, when retailers are moving out the old to make room for the new.
Of course, actual HDTV sales weren’t as spectacular as retailers had hoped…a taste of tapped-out consumers perhaps?
Hope springs eternal. According to some reports, analysts at Pacific Media Associates say we can anticipate a 15.6% drop on flat panel display prices this year. According to the research company, last year saw a 14.7% price drop on HDTVs, which increased sales by 41%. Sales will continue to skyrocket in the period leading up to the switch to Digital Television next year.
We all know that HDTV’s are about the only thing going down in price these days. Will the recession we’re in or about to enter (depending on who you’re reading) have any affect on this symbol of American consumerism?
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