Writing Debt Collection Letters

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Debt collection is something that nobody enjoys but that is nevertheless an important fact of business. If you are owed money that that will mean that you invested in an individual or a business in the hope that you would be able to make more back.

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Bullish Options Plays On Three Gambling Stocks

We decided to take a closer look at a few casino stocks with the potential to capitalize on an exodus from bearish positions: Wynn Resorts (WYNN ), Melco Crown Entertainment (MPEL), and Penn National Gaming (PENN).

Source: http://blogs.forbes.com/greatspeculations/2011/07/05/bullish-options-plays-on-three-gambling-stocks/

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10 Ways to be an All Pro Dad

Brought to you by All Pro Dad

1. Love Your Wife

True love is not a feeling. It is a decision. It?s an act of the will to be patient, kind, humble, hopeful, giving, faithful and trusting. When you commit to loving your wife this way, your feelings for her, and hers for you, will follow. Actively loving your wife will radically strengthen your marriage and will also be incredibly beneficial to your children. The number-one source of security for kids is to know that their dad loves their mother and is steadfastly committed to her well-being.

2. Spend Time With Your Kids

How you spend your time is a reflection of what?s important to you. If you value your kids, you?ll want to be with them. You don?t need to wait for the perfect time. It doesn?t have to be when you can take a vacation or an afternoon off from work. Instead, grab those small pockets of time as they present themselves throughout the day. Call your kids on your cell phone between appointments just to say ?hi.? Send them an email from work. Read to them at bedtime. Carve out a few minutes to help them with their homework. Go to breakfast and drop them off at school. Grab every moment you can get with your children.

3. Be A Role Model

It?s impossible to underestimate the importance of a father modeling the type of behavior he desires to see in his children. Role models don?t just talk the talk?they walk the walk of an honorable man. A great place to start is consistency. Do you keep your word? Do you stand up for what is right even when it costs you? Are you trustworthy? Are you loyal in your relationships? Be what you want your children to be!

4. Understand And Enjoy Your Children

Like you, every child has unique DNA, unique fingerprints, and a unique personality. In order to be the best father you can be, you?ll need to understand your children as individuals. How do your kids think? What do they like or dislike? You?ll also want to know what each of your children need from you the most. One may need encouragement. Another responds better with affection. This crucial understanding can only come if you?re committed to really getting to know them. Remember, too, how fast your kids grow up, and just enjoy being with them. Don?t get tempted to wish for the next stage of their development. Have fun with them now, and make memories that last a lifetime.

5. Show Affection

Children long for a secure place in this fast-paced world. They find it most often in the warm embrace of a parent. As children grow, so does their need for acceptance and a sense of belonging. Such a need is met when a father offers a hug or a kind word and expresses his appreciation and love for his children. But showing affection doesn?t stop there. Make sure to say, ?I love you? every day.

6. Secure Your Family's Financial Future

Financial stress is one of the leading factors that tears families apart. In order to put your family in a position of strength, you have to shore up your finances. First, hate debt. Do everything you can to get out of it as quickly as possible. Then, make sure you establish a budget that not only trims expenses, but also allows you to save and share with those in need. Have proper insurance. Finally, make sure you live and teach these frugal principles to your children as well.

7. Eat Together as a Family

Most children today don?t know the meaning of a family dinnertime. Yet the communication and unity built during this time is integral to a healthy family life. Sharing a meal together?breakfast, lunch or dinner?provides structure to an often hectic schedule. It also gives kids the opportunity to talk about their lives. This is a time for fathers to listen as well as give advice and encouragement. Most importantly, however, it is a time to be together on a daily basis. Need help? Get easy dinner menus for busy and frugal people at e-mealz.com.

8. Discipline With A Gentle Spirit

True discipline is a function of a father?s love for his children, which is why it should never be hard-nosed or harsh. Discipline?s role is not to intimidate or tear down, but to mold and to correct. Correcting your kids should be done in private, and you and your wife should be unified in how you discipline. Strive to be consistent.

9. Pray and Worship Together

Families that have a healthy prayer life and take worshipping God seriously help their children to understand that there is an ultimate authority in their lives?an authority who provides moral absolutes for them to live by. Every child needs to know that there is right and wrong, good and evil. Living under the authority of God will give them that knowledge

10. Realize You?re a Father Forever

Someday every father must let go of the youthful activities that bond him with his children. As he allows his children their freedom to direct their own lives, a good father realizes that he doesn?t abandon them at a dorm room, a wedding altar, or the door of their first job. He continues to encourage, coach and convey his wisdom to his children forever.

All Pro Dad is Family First's innovative program helping men to become better fathers. All Pro Dad has 53 NFL spokesmen, multiple events with NFL teams, almost 1,000 All Pro Dad's Day chapters, and Play of the Day daily emails that reach over 60,000 fathers each day. Learn more about All Pro Dad.

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Source: http://www.daveramsey.com/article/10-ways-to-be-an-all-pro-dad/lifeandmoney_relationshipsandmoney

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Internal Memo On TouchPad From Jon Rubinstein: Don't Forget Critics Trashed MacOS X, Too (AAPL, HPQ)


jon rubinstein

The first batch of reviews for HP's TouchPad were mixed.

For the most part critics said there was no reason to buy a TouchPad over an iPad, however, they did note there was great promise in the software.

Not exactly what you want to hear if you're at HP.

But, Jon Rubinstein, the man in charge of the TouchPad's software, has a message for his employees: Haters are going to hate.

In a leaked internal memo on the TouchPad, Rubinstein reminds employees that early reviews of MacOS X, which proved to be a revolutionary product, were also pretty harsh early on.

Here's the memo which PreCentral picked up:

Team,

Today we bring the HP TouchPad and webOS 3.0 to the world. The HP team has achieved something extraordinary – especially when you consider that it’s been just one year since our work on the TouchPad began in earnest. Today also marks the start of a new era for HP as our vision for connected mobility begins to take form - an ecosystem of services, applications and devices connected seamlessly by webOS.

If you’ve seen the recent TouchPad reviews you know that the industry understands HP’s vision and sees the same potential in webOS as we do. David Pogue from the New York Times says “there are signs of greatness here.” (I’ve included links to David’s review and others below.) You’ve also seen that reviewers rightly note things we need to improve about the webOS experience. The good news is that most of the issues they cite are already known to us and will be addressed in short order by over-the-air software and app catalog updates. We still have work to do to make webOS the platform we know it can be, but remember…..it’s a marathon, not a sprint.

In that spirit, Richard Kerris, head of worldwide developer relations for webOS, reminded me yesterday of the first reviews for a product introduced a little over ten years ago:

"...overall the software is sluggish"

"...there are no quality apps to use, so it won’t last"

"...it's just not making sense...."

It’s hard to believe these statements described MacOS X - a platform that would go on to change the landscape of Silicon Valley in ways that no one could have imagined.

The similarities to our situation are obvious, but there’s also a big difference. Like David Pogue, our audiences get that webOS has the potential for greatness. And like me, they know that your hard work and passion, and the power of HP’s commitment to webOS, will turn that potential into the real thing.

Via Daring Fireball

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Credit Counseling - Help Is Available

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If you have fallen into debt there is help available to you. When you get into debt it seems as if you will never get out of it. You may need help to get out, but there is a way.

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Ultimate checklist for Internet startups & online businesses


Unlike traditional businesses, which often have structure imposed on them by the financial entities that finance it, starting a business online often requires nothing more than an idea and a website or blog. You don't have to write a business plan because you don't need finance to start blogging, set up affiliate relations, and so on.

The barrier to entry into the online market is much lower than traditional businesses, which is great. But, it's a double edge sword because the easier it is to do something, the more people try it out. This means that you have to work harder at distinguishing yourself from the melee of other startups out there - because, believe me, there are a lot.

Less than 5% of all purely online businesses (i.e. business that have no traditional, physical counterpart) ever actually make any money. It's hard to draw a decent living from the Internet, but because it is easy to setup, the allure is great enough to keep people trying. If you are to be successful it is imperative that you avoid the mistake of not being disciplined in your approach.

Here's a checklist of all the things you need to consider before starting a business online (I'll explain each step after):

  • Understand your value offering
  • Identify the market
  • Market discovery & research
  • Identify the needs of your online business
  • Select a suitable web platform
  • Design and develop your web presence
  • Generate content
  • Deliver content & drive traffic
  • Convert traffic
  • Monetize
  • Traffic analysis
  • Refine

Starting a business: Market research

The first three points in this startup checklist basically require you to do adequate research into your market. You have to know what the value of your offering is to the people you are offering it to. For example, there's no point in pricing your premium content at $3 a posting when the exact same content is being given away at a larger, more established site.

It might sound redundant, but often small businesses take far too long to understand where value lies in what they offer. By understanding:

  • what you offer
  • who you are offering it to
  • why there is a demand for your offering
  • where those people are
  • how to get your message through to them

you are well placed to start a business.

Starting a business: Online implementation

The following three steps in the Internet business startup checklist deal with setting up a suitable web platform from which to start generating revenue. You know what your business needs to deliver and who it has to go to, so now you need to decide on the best way to meet those business requirements.

If you are an affiliate marketer, then a free Wordpress blog might well be suitable. However, free online tools might be easy to setup but they are not as flexible and powerful as other web platforms.

If you want to take control of your own online advertising, create an eCommerce website, operate a forum, support center, and so on, then you will most likely need to use a good CMS platform like Drupal. You might also need to speak to a professional designer or developer to help you set up your website quickly and efficiently.

Remember that it is really important that you look to the future before deciding on a web platform. You will have to do some marketing, so make sure you can easily add new content to your site. You might want to make revenue from advertising down the line, so make sure you have the facilities in place ahead of time... you get the idea.

Starting a business: Internet marketing

Recall that at the start of this article I mentioned how easy it was to start an online business? The other side of that coin is that every man and his dog is doing exactly that. Online consumers are jaded, and impatient. It is not easy to convince them to spend their dollars with your relatively unknown startup because there are millions of relatively unknown startups, and most of them are complete rubbish.

You distinguish yourself from the sea of competitors by creating great content. I'm not joking either. Creating high quality, highly relevant, engaging and SEO enhanced content is arguably the most important marketing exercise you can undertake. It takes a while for your content to be indexed by Google, but once it is the effects are cumulative (the more content you add, the more traffic you generate) and persistent (unlike online advertising, which offers no long term benefits).

Good content can also have incredible short term effects using social media. Write an informative article relating to your niche and spread it around twitter, Facebook, Digg and so on. You never know who might pick it up. Your article could lead to thousands or millions of hits, news articles, radio interviews and so on - and this can happen overnight. The world is changing rapidly and good content with a sound methodology for disseminating it, is the most powerful marketing tool you have.

Starting a business: Convert & monetize

You must make your site as easy to use as possible. Potential customers won't waste their time trying to work out how to use your site. If it's not immediately obvious how they can get what they want, they won't do it. Not only should the UI (User Interface) be optimized, but the site itself should be designed to make it as easy as possible for visitors to convert to customers - i.e. it should be optimized for conversions.

Apart from converting customers, there are other ways to monetize a website. If you have done a good job of persistently creating engaging, highly relevant, SEO enhanced content then it is likely your site will begin appearing on the first page of the search engine results. When this starts happening, advertisers sit up and take note. You might find offers to advertise on certain high ranking pages start trickling and then flooding in.

The beauty of content based marketing is highlighted by this situation: You create content that helps you to market your business. The content then becomes so desirable that other companies are willing to pay you to advertise on it. In other words, you are being paid by other companies to market your own website.

Creating great SEO content is not simple. It takes time, patience and plenty of practice to get the hang of doing SEO keyword research, structuring your documents to be SE optimized, and so on. It's not hard, certainly not impossible, but it is a skill you need to learn.

Starting a business: Analyze and refine your business

On paper, this whole checklist might seem like your business should run like clockwork. In reality, you will not get everything right the first time (no one ever does). You might be losing customers during checkout, your content might not be competitive enough to show up in search engines, your business value offering might be misdirected , and so on.

It is important to regularly analyze how your online business performs and look for areas of improvement. In particular, you will need to implement some form of traffic analytics for your website. Analytics (I recommend the free Google analytics) allows you to see where traffic has come from and what it does on your site. This helps you position your marketing efforts and improve on under-performing areas, while driving home your advantage in areas you are succeeding.

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European stocks mixed, Carrefour tumbles; DAX up 0.1%


Forex Pros ? pros &ndash; European stock markets were mixed on Tuesday, pausing after a six-day rally, as ongoing concerns over Greece&rsquo;s sovereign debt woes and fears over a possible rate hike by China prompted investors to shun riskier assets.&nbsp; <br /><br />During European morning trade, the EURO STOXX 50 edged 0.3% lower, France&rsquo;s CAC 40 dipped 0.35%, while Germany's DAX 30 eased up 0.1%.&nbsp; <br /><br />Local media reports in China said a brief statement from the country&rsquo;s central bank raised expectations of an imminent rate hike, possibly as soon as this weekend.<br /><br />Meanwhile, ongoing concerns over Greece&rsquo;s debt crisis continued to weigh on shares in the banking sector. <br /><br />French lenders BNP Paribas and Societe Generale slid 0.9% and 1.1% respectively, while Commerzbank declined 1.2%. Peripheral lenders were also broadly lower, with Intesa Sanpaolo down 1.05% and Banco Santander falling 1%.<br /><br />Shares in the world&rsquo;s second largest retailer Carrefour plunged 13.4% amid worries over the future of a planned deal with Brazilian retailer Companhia Brasileira de Distribuicao Grupo Pao de Acucar.<br /><br />CBD&rsquo;s existing partner Groupe Casino said Monday that a deal with Carrefour would violate terms of a prior agreement.<br /><br />On the upside, Europe&rsquo;s largest automaker Volkswagen advanced 1.3% after it said that it had acquired a majority stake in truck maker MAN without paying a significant premium. MAN shares traded 1.8% lower following the news.<br /><br />In London, the FTSE 100 eased up 0.1% as shares in Tullow Oil jumped 1.8% after saying it expected to deliver record results for the first half of the year.&nbsp; <br /><br />Gains were limited as commodity-linked shares declined amid fears over a slowdown in demand from China. <br /><br />Mining giants BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto fell 0.9% and 1.2% respectively, while copper producer Xstrata slumped 0.85%.<br /><br />The outlook for U.S. equity markets was modestly downbeat. The Dow Jones Industrial Average futures pointed to a decline of 0.1%, S&amp;P 500 futures eased down 0.05%, while the Nasdaq 100 futures edged 0.2% lower.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <br /><br />Later in the day, the U.S. was to publish government data on factory orders.<br /><br />


Forexpros - Forex Pros offers a diverse set of professional tools for Forex, Futures and CFDs. These include real-time data streams, technical and fundamental analysis by in-house experts, and a widely used economic calendar and Forex News.

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The Future of Search: Why Humanoids Will Rein Over Androids


Social Search Series: This summer I am embarking on a journey through on the emerging web of Social Search.  Traditionally known as the Questions & Answers industry, this category is currently being transformed by social and mobile technologies.  No more asking a site questions and finding old answers.  I believe the future of the web is ingrained in the dynamic interdependence of social and informational networks.  This is part II of the series, you can find part I here.

In my last post I briefly covered how the nature of the web is  rapidly shifting toward social.  I also noted the future of search does not look bright for Google, who seems to constantly struggle connecting social dots.  I call this new category (formerly known as Q&A) Social Search and here's why I think it is emerging as the future of the web.

Semil Shah, in a recent post suggested Google is Asking the Wrong Question With Social.  He seems to agree with my stance:

Before the Internet, most “search” was conducted through offline directories and by the time-honored evolutionary tradition of asking questions. “Where would you recommend I stay on my trip to Hawaii?” “What dish did you order at that new restaurant in the hotel?” “Where can I get the best deal on that hotel?” Google has elegantly stripped down these queries and trained us to, instead, enter the following text in a search box: “Hawaii + hotel deal” or “Hawaii + restaurant + popular dish.”

Now, that might be how some geeks actually ask questions in real life, but this is not how we are wired to search. We are most accustomed to asking questions as an extension of our own curiosities.  And while Google keyword search is incredibly efficient, the content it points us to is unfortunately declining in quality. The bottom line is that although it’s never been easier to search online, it’s getting harder and harder to find exactly what we’re looking for because there are perverse incentives to not only create, but also promote, keyword-optimized content.

Eloquently put: traditional online search goes against our biological inclination of gathering information - asking questions.  Naturally, humans tend to search for information through asking other people questions because we intuitively know everyone is an expert at something.  And as hard as Google tries it cannot create an algorithm as intelligent as a human being, let alone harness the quality of knowledge curated from many different people and perspectives.

So what's the point of social Q&A and why is it merging into the next form of search?

I would postulate the original point of asking questions - even dating back to prehistoric times - was actually search.  It was how humans searched for information before Google, PageRank and keywords were available.  Cavemen conducted searches when they asked others where they made their last killing for the same reason we, in the 21st century, type "pizza" into a Google search bar; to find out where to have dinner.  Because most humans are now constantly connected, it feels more natural to use social tools to find information.  Notice how often we send out messages on Facebook or twitter asking our friends  this or that, if they have eaten at a certain Pizzeria or seen the latest Transformers movie.  It is not a coincidence social questions are increasing at a rapid rate.

As I was talking to a CEO the other day he made an interesting analogy I think fits well in this discussion.  During the first internet wave (mid 90's), it was fascinating how you could sit in a coffee shop in Seattle and somehow find information, communicate and do business with another person in a place like Tokyo.  Borders became irrelevant as the web layered on a communication system that spanned the globe.  Never before in human history had we experienced this phenomenon and it certainly was socially and economically transformational.  But today, do we really care about what is available to us in Tokyo?  More than what's available in Seattle?  Do we want 1,000 different options displayed on 100 pages to requiring time and attention to sift through?  No, the pendulum seems to be swinging back the other way.  We care about what is going on down the street, in our social circle and in our immediate local surroundings.  We want to be shown what is MOST relevant to us at the moment (and not have to see the rest).

It seems the cycle in Search has followed the same trajectory.  Google broke through because it discovered the very best way to 1) index and organize the web and 2) bring us information matching specific keywords when we searched.  But it's a different web now.  The problem is there's just too much information on the web today.  Like, waaaaaaaaay too much.  The major player(s) are struggling to instantly sift out 99.999% of the information in the world so they can provide us the most relevant and useful .001% - our answer.  What they lack is intuition.

For example I live in Seattle and right now I am hungry for pizza, in fact New York Style Pizza, so I choose to do a quick search on Google "New York Style Pizza" to find an viable option.  Observing the image above, it is clear Google is lacking in the contextual department.  Lil' Frankies and Big Al's are both pizza joints in New York City!  Amazingly, nothing on the page has anything to do with pizza here in Seattle.  This is not good.  I'm pretty sure my friends on Facebook or even growing local social search platforms such as CrowdBeacon or LOCQL would provide me a New York style pizza option closer than 2,400 miles.  I am aware Google has made strides in localization, but it is not apparent when I quickly use their main search tool.  This simple query illustrates how broken search is at the moment.

It is becoming clear to me, as more  and more information gets created each day, how important our network of social contacts are in bringing us information.  More specifically, those two phenomenons are inversely related - as the amount of information grows, the tighter and more important my social contacts become.  Why?  Because as the amount of information increases we need context and location to help determine relevance.  Context can help determine if I am searching for a pizza place in New York or if I am looking for New York style pizza.  Location helps define if I am indeed looking for a New York style pizza joint here in Seattle.

Another noteworthy contextual observation is the innate difference between certain search decisions, for instance searching for a clothing retailer versus searching for a restaurant.  I would be fine buying a shirt from a distant retailer in New York City.  Ordering pizza...?   Not so much.  Google's Android DNA doesn't seem to understand humanoid nuances at all.  I guarantee a social search application (powered by my friends) would intuitively understand the contextual and location nuances within my searches.

Understandably, this is freaking Google out and forcing them to push socially awkward applications onto their users at an increasing pace.  Unfortunately this is not how social works, you simply cannot rush things on the first date or you will never have the opportunity for a second one.   Google+ looks to be their best social offering as of yet, but only time will tell if they have finally aligned the social dots.

It is now clear why Google purchased Aardvark, one of the social search companies I highlighted in my last post.  Just read this brief overview and think of how it could help us search:

Aardvark is a way to get quick, quality answers to questions from your extended social network. You can ask questions via an instant message buddy or email. The questions are then farmed out to your contacts (and their contacts) based on what they say they have knowledge of. If you ask taste related questions about music, books, movies, restaurants, etc., they’ll ask people who tend to show similar tastes as you in their profile.

It will be interesting to see how (and if) Google integrates Aardvark to help navigate this new search territory.   Regardless of the outcome, I do not think Google will loose its shirt anytime soon.  They have a stranglehold on the overall search market and most realize there are many different channels in search.  I agree with Semil,"This type of search, or social discovery, will become important, but it won’t dominate search—it’s just one channel, and different social networks exist for different parts of our lives." 

This is just the beginning of an incredible change in how we will find and use information and I cannot wait to see what emerges.  In five years (2016)  we will not be looking at a white screen with blinking cursor begging us to type a few short words into the search vault so it can pull thousand's of links for us to plow through.

In my next post I will go in-depth on the first of the four quadrants of social search, an area I believe has yet to fully experience this massive technological revolution.

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