Such a majestic light out right now, practically perfect climate, of the sort most agreeable to a nice stroll about town, checking out all the visitors checking out the city, past both world-renowned landmarks and establishments of a more local fame such as On Off Digital World, one of those old-time retailers you hear stories about from grandparents and history books (though they do carry modern merchandise, of course). Just looking around — that’s how come a day can be so perfect, after all! It’d be awesome to just wander all over, yet later on I’m going to have to go to the gym, considering that I’ve not been there for a few days now. Then again, perhaps I can bike-ride into the city, to a gym over there and get a bit of incidental sight-seeing in that way!
Posted on 30 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Affiliate marketing is a superb way for the tech-savvy hobbyist to make some money on the side.
For a select few who have been able to put their finger on the Zeitgeist, however, it means full financial independence, with income in the tens of thousands per month!
Probably the most celebrated cases of affiliate marketing made good has been that of Dr. Arnold Kim, M.D.
Though still a medical student, he started a website focused on rumors about Apple products.
This was back right at the turn of the century, before the word “blog” had entered into the well-known lexicon.
Even while diagnosing patients, Dr. Kim kept up the site, though subsequently it took on a life of its own, with forty million page views per month, as certified by independent research firms.
Dr. Kim was already well-off because of his medical practice, but affiliate marketing also generated a six-figure income – and he was only devoting relatively little time to his site!
Believing that things could grow so much more were he to dedicate his whole day, Dr. Kim gave up his stethoscope and plunged whole-heartedly into the realm of professional blogging.
Similar types of internet riches abound, such as that of the teenager who became a millionaire by producing free MySpace designs for individuals to download, or the college student behind “The Million-Dollar Homepage” which made money by just selling space to advertisers.
What they have in common is that their success is completely traffic-driven: it’s all about the eyeballs, the number of visitors per month, week, day, even hour – both repeat and first-time (known in the industry as “unique”).
Get the numbers, and you will generate income.
But how do you receive the numbers?
Content.
“Content is king.”
If you have something lots of people are interested, such that they will keep visiting your site, you will make money – confirmed.
The only real question is what content or material to serve up!
Posted on 30 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
So you want to be a lawyer. You know it is going to mean a lot of researching, a lot of time invested with books – but you like reading, and figuring things out, and you enjoy words, language, and all the semantic nuances involved.
You even know that the LSAT examination for admission to law school is tough, and something to pay hundreds or even thousands of dollars for, for special prep courses, coaching classes and so on. You also know that law school itself will be challenging as nails, at least throughout the all-too-crucial First Year.
Great. Maybe you even know that you will be forever hitting the books as a practicing lawyer, forever taking online CPE courses and their examinations, one after the other, in order to maintain your ranking with the professional association governing your licensure.
Super.
But did you know it will be rather tough getting a high-enough-paying job as lawyer in order to repay your student loans? In reality, those online CPE courses will definitely cost some money, too.
Oh, you probably think you have that covered. You’ll graduate at the top of your class, or you’ll be accepted into an Ivy League law school and graduate none too low in the ranks so as to get hired by a top corporate law firm and easily recoup your investment in two to three years’ time.
And certainly, if such a thing does happen, your odds would be much better than those for virtually the rest of your peers, even in this economy. But “better than” does not mean “inherently good.” ’Cause guess what – globalization is coming to the legal profession as well.
Yes, that’s right – outsourcing. Indeed, some of the online CPE courses available on the worldwide web were developed overseas! And though the legal profession has tried to resist it (after all, it took a whole decade for everyone to change from WordPerfect to Microsoft Word!), it’s finally started to affect the industry.
Posted on 29 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
It isn’t necessary to be an industry veteran like Isaac Toussie to know that different jurisdictions can handle real estate matters differently. It’s what makes real estate law so fascinating – and often so challenging! Look at Alabama, for instance. There, property buyers cannot rescind their purchases even in cases of demonstrable seller fraud – since the property is recognized as being sold on an “as-is” basis. Yes, it’s true: Alabama case law takes the old dictum of caveat emptor very, very seriously, to the point of, in effect, allowing for otherwise illegal activity!
The Yellowhammer State takes the notion of “as-is” so literally that unless somehow superseded, the terms means exactly just that, even if the seller described the property with lies. In this particular case, a pre-sale misrepresentation was made that was only found out (that is, proven false) post-sale. Normally, this would constitute fraud, but an Alabama court has ruled that as the as-is clause in the sales contract was not superseded by any other provision signed onto by both parties, the as-is clause shall be interpreted literally!
That was an ambiguous situation in the eyes of Alabama law, but it should be noted that not everything is always as draconian as that. As if evidence of a peculiar regional preference for legal loopholes of all kinds, Alabama law will only hold such a strict view towards used property, not new ones. Another caveat to the caveat emptor ethos governing Alabama real estate is that misrepresentations that are not obvious but potentially harmful to health or safety will not be tolerated.
Alas for the plaintiff in Teer v. Johnston, however, while the misrepresentation was not something obvious it was not deemed harmful to health or safety, making nothing more than an inconvenience or nuisance at most. What the complainant ought to have done was stipulating in the contract or the deed that pre-sale disclosures hold despite the sale!
Posted on 28 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
The affiliate marketing testimonials just keep pouring in: the latest case history concerns one Ashley Qualls, a seventeen year-old who’s become a millionaire by simply giving away free MySpace layouts.
Yes.
It’s really no joke.
A teenage girl in high school makes seventy thousand dollars a month by giving stuff away for free.
Chalk another one up to the magic of affiliate marketing and its exponential power.
Ashley Qualls made a website that’s nothing more than a repository of her styles for MySpace profile pages which anyone can download completely free.
Her site attracts seven million visitors each month and sixty million page views.
That’s gold to advertisers.
And it’s become gold for Ashley Qualls.
Affiliate marketing works.
The true challenge lies in coming up with something that lots and lots of people goes crazy for.
Another great internet riches success history concerns an Arnold Kim, who as a professional blogger now makes income in the same six-figure range he used to as a medical doctor, only he gets to stay home with his four year-old daughter.
He happened upon his financial destiny whilst still in school, having started up a site dedicated to rumors about Apple products.
As among the first, he quickly developed quite the captive audience and, with all those eyeballs, advertisers emerged calling in equally quick succession.
That’s all it takes to make money online – traffic.
Eyeballs.
Visitors, repeat and unique (first-time).
It’s basically monetized like any other medium, whether print or broadcast.
Important differences do exist, but where fundamentals are concerned you need numbers; you’ll need people.
Just how to get all those people?
Again, providing something of great interest to a vast amount of people.
Basically, the same first principle of any enterprise.
Determine a need and fulfill it!
Posted on 27 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
China, China, China – what’s the big deal?
Why is everyone going on and on about China all the time?
Okay, so they own billions (or is that trillions) in American securities, currency, whatever.
And they make lotsa stuff.
Like NFL beach towels and stuff.
Yeah.
Okay.
It’s not like most people wish to work on an assembly line anyway, making trinkets and curios for Walmart.
But whatever.
Okay, so it’s not simply NFL beach towels that they make.
It’s that they are also climbing up the food chain, making stuff that’s more and more high-value, such that good-paying jobs may be the next to go.
They’re hardly making textiles any more – notice that many of the clothing nowadays come from even more exotic locales – like Indonesia and Sri Lanka?
In fact, to be fair, it isn’t NFL beach towels that anyone’s upset over.
It’s the fear that aircraft manufacturing could be next!
Already the Chinese government is on record as gunning for leadership in green energy products including wind mills and solar panels, and witout a doubt they are well on their way towards dominating those industries.
But does it need to be a zero-sum game?
Does China’s rise mean everyone else’s loss?
Put another way, are they merely gobbling up ever more slices of the pie – or could Chinese ascendancy grow that pie for everyone concerned?
Well, speaking of the NFL, it’s interesting to compare and contrast that sporting league’s business decisions with that relating to the NBA.
Basketball is growing in popularity over there while years ago an organized exhibition game of American football was canceled virtually at the last minute.
If this serves as any indication, it may be that being in place surpasses staying on the sidelines!
Posted on 27 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Tax continuing education is vital for accountants as tax laws change all the time and with every Republican victory at the polls comes a new set of corporate giveaways.
With a tax code that spans some sixty thousand pages, somebody’s got to keep track of it all!
And those somebodies have a lot on their plate.
Hence all the frequent keeping up with industry developments – particularly, changes in the tax code.
So chalk it up to the wise bean-counters at General Electric and their tax continuing education training for helping the company post its latest achievement in the history of corproate notoriety: zero tax liability for the filing season ending in 2011.
That’s right: this year, one of the world’s richest multi-billion-dollar companies will pay
no taxes.
None whatsoever!
And that’s not all.
They may actually be owed some money instead!
That’s right – the government may truly have to pay G.E. some money.
How’s that for tax continuing education!
It’s extraordinary but all flawlessly true.
Through the imaginative use of loss write-offs and the like, the accounting department at G.E. has been able to save its employer big money, with the probability of getting money “back” from Uncle Sam in addition.
This is in addition to the use of unpaid labor throughout the business in the form of college interns, such as at its NBC subsidiary.
Of course, it isn’t just G.E. and NBC that’s benefiting from such unethical and even illegal practices.
Viacom and subsidiary Paramount Pictures also makes use of such loopholes.
Most corporations of a specific size do.
’80s boogeyman Leona “Queen of Mean” Helmsley was only telling the truth when she scoffed that “only little people pay taxes.”
Under the right conditions – which are not as rare as one might imagine at first – it is entirely possible to keep all the money you generate while employing public services.
Posted on 27 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
One of the most surprising uses of wind chimes has been as musical instruments in their own right.
This looks quite impossible at first glance, as common varieties appear to consist of just tinkling cylinders, with the sound only slightly different depending on whether stone, wood, metal, or glass is used.
And so it is that [wind chimes] do indeed possess only a very limited set of musical abilities, whether melodic or percussive, but that has not stop some ingenious musicians from deploying them into their work.
And in fact, one of the most famous uses of one has been in probably the most popular videogames of all time.
That’s right, in a videogame.
Koji Kondo is a long-time sound director at Nintendo, responsible for scoring some of the company’s biggest hits, standard-setting bestsellers such as Super Mario Bros. and The Legend of Zelda.
In the sequel Super Mario World, wind chimes figure rather noticeably in the theme for the “Vanilla Dome” game level (or “world,” in the parlance of the Mario games).
Chimes have also been featured in the works of musicians as diverse as modern composer Oliver Messiaen and rock guitarist David Sitek.
Perhaps what’s most amazing about their use is the truth that there are already a handful of chime-like instruments available – the mark tree is even occasionally mistaken for one!
Tubular bells are another such instrument which are often mistaken for wind chimes.
Yet these misconceptions by casual observers can be easily forgiven, given that one cylinder can only so different from another, even when on an altogether different instrument – and, perhaps, none of this class of instruments look very different!
Tubular bells, however, are much more widely used out of all the chime-like instruments.
The theme for the well-liked animated television series “Futurama” is played with tubular bells, as was that during area of the closing credits for the renowned children’s television show “Sesame Street” during the 1980s.
Posted on 26 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
Probably the most crucial developments in the field of professional continuing education (CPE) is the relatively recent stress on ethics, triggering the proliferation now of many an ethics CPE course.
While certainly a good thing when the professions insist on not just what is legal but what is ethical and, even, moral, it’s also quite sad that simple human decency should today be so unusual as to warrant an explicit prerequisite.
Of course, malpractice jokes roasting doctors, lawyers, and accountants have long been a staple of humor and given such a context the now-official understanding for proper behavior is to be applauded.
There are certainly more intense scenarios than having ethics CPE needs – namely, the lack of them with the world still being the way it is: the very way which initially made such courses so essential!
But there’s no doubting the fact that when basic human decency has to be taught so many years after kindergarten, where they were initially encountered (likely an unlucky fact in itself, as the first place anyone should come across their ethics should be the home!), society is doomed to an evermore miserable race to the bottom for all.
Why, just take a look at the well-established practice now of companies hiring unpaid interns to do full-time jobs – real jobs, for which these volunteers are not even given the defense of common workplace discrimination and harrassment laws.
No, really!
Even multi-billion-dollar corporations, including General Electric (which managed to pay no taxes for the filing season of 2011), make substantial use of these unpaid workers daily.
What good has all the ethics CPE courses in the world actually achieved when corporate bean-counters still continue to easily invent new ways of posting a profit while raising productivity and lowering costs on the backs of young people without money?
Posted on 26 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.
The recent Japanese catastrophe has shone a spotlight on the country’s apparently unique social structure.
Unlike many other instances of natural disaster elsewhere, no looting or rioting has followed to compound the tragedy — and this has tremendously impressed many a non-Japanese observer.
From the patient orderly lines to the return of valuables, “yamoto-damashii,” or the Japanese spirit, has elicited admiration and further sympathy from the world.
As can be imagined, articles have made an appearance trying to reveal the phenomenon of people who remain law-abiding citizens even with being deprived of not only creature comforts but everything they own and even of loved ones.
Police stations all along the coast are filled to capacity with the personal household safes of persons which have washed back to ground or been recovered from the rubble by rescue workers.
Then there is the seemingly suicidal heroism and self-sacrifice of many nuclear power plant employees.
Even animals have displayed yamoto-damashii: a dog made worldwide headlines for standing by another dog caught under rubble, declining to leave!
Much has been written both for and against the “Japanese-spirit interpretation” of events.
On one side, people remember that the country is a wealthy one, a highly advanced one, and one that is arguably uniquely homogenous among the leading industrialized societies of which it is a member.
Certainly household safes and other belongings have been returned or at least still left unmolested!
It figures, argue such people, because there is no incentive to loot and riot when the country all together offers so many resources to provide succor.
Others remember that the spirit of Japan is such that rules are witnessed given that they are rules – Japanese rules – and one is Japanese.
Safes are not broken into because that is not what a Japanese person does, basically.
This side of the argument notes that no matter how rich the society, individual victims continue to suffer – yet they generally do so patiently, in a manner uniquely Japanese.
Posted on 25 April '11 by , under Uncategorized. No Comments.