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Jesus. Maybe literally. Fox News has a long and illustrious history of saying some fairly outrageous things. A story today on FoxNews.com may be one of the best yet -- certainly from a tech perspective. The post entitled.

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Will President Obama Appoint Elizabeth Warren to Head the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau?

July 20, 2010 12:18 PM

President Obama will soon appoint a director to run the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, White House officials said Tuesday morning, but it’s unclear if he’s interviewed any candidates for the job, which will be officially created tomorrow when the president signs the Wall Street reform bill.

“He’ll turn this in fairly short order,” deputy Treasury Secretary Neil Wolin told reporters this morning.

Behind the scenes of the Obama administration there some is something of a storm brewing as liberals, progressives, and labor unions push President Obama to appoint Elizabeth Warren to head the new agency – against the wishes of others in the administration.

Warren chairs the Congressional Oversight Panel of the Troubled Assets Relief Program and has been seen by many on the Left as a force for greater accountability and transparency, and a check against the forces in the Obama administration that are closely allied with the financial sector, most notably Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner.

Geithner, sources say, has concerns about her appointment given some of the pointed criticisms Warren has made about the Obama administration’s policies.

• In Warren’s April 13 report on Treasury’s $75 billion foreclosure prevention program, she wrote that “Treasury’s programs are not keeping pace with the foreclosure crisis. Treasury is still struggling to get its foreclosure programs off the ground as the crisis continues unabated.”


• In her May 13 report on Treasury’s attempts to help small businesses, she wrote that “Because small businesses play such a critical role in the American economy, there is little doubt that they must be a part of any sustainable recovery. It remains unclear, however, whether Treasury’s programs can or will play a major role in putting small businesses on the path to growth.”


• In her June 10 report on Treasury’s AIG bailout, she wrote, “The government argues that AIG’s failure would have resulted in chaos, so that a wholesale rescue was the only viable choice. The Panel rejects this all-or-nothing reasoning. There is no doubt that orchestrating a private rescue in whole or in part would have been a difficult – perhaps impossible – task, and the effort might have met great resistance from other financial institutions that would have been called on to participate. But if the effort had succeeded, the impact on market confidence would have been extraordinary and the savings to taxpayers would have been immense.”

Warren has been an aggressive watchdog over the Treasury Department and, more personally, a tough questioner of his in oversight hearings, for instance asking why shareholders and officials with US automakers had to make severe sacrifices to continue while recipients of TARP funds have made millions; or pushing Geithner to explain why AIG counterparties such as Goldman Sachs were paid 100 cents on the dollar.

On a conference call with reporters last week, Senior White House Adviser David Axelrod said that Warren was “obviously a candidate to lead this effort, but there are other candidates as well.”

One administration source said that it would be a "bloody battle" in the Senate to get her confirmed, since she would be opposed so strongly by Republicans and conservative Democrats, so the question is whether the president wants a big political battle over her. Warren has good relationships with many administration officials and has intellectual firepower, if not much managerial experience.

Two other candidates, sources say, include deputy Attorney General Eugene Kimmelman, who has worked at Consumer Federation of America, Consumers Union, and Public Citizen; and Assistant Treasury Secretary Michael Barr.

Today Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, wrote the president urging him to appoint Warren to the post, noting that Warren “was the first to broach the idea of such a commission in an article published in Democracy: A Journal of Ideas in 2007… Professor Warren has a proven track-record as a smart and tough consumer advocate. As head of the TARP Congressional Oversight Panel she is seen, across the breadth of America, as a champion of open, honest and responsive government.”

You can read Warren’s 2007 story HERE.

Sanders notes that he has “no doubt that some in the Senate will oppose her confirmation. Good! It will allow for a serious debate as to the role that government should play in protecting the American people against the outrageous behavior we have seen on Wall Street.” 

As first reported by the Huffington Post’s Sam Stein, today AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka released a statement saying “In our view, there is only one candidate who is uniquely qualified and equipped to head this new agency. Harvard Law School Professor Elizabeth Warren originated the idea of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and has proven as Chair of the Congressional Oversight Panel to be a strong and fearless advocate for the American public. We therefore strongly urge President Obama to appoint Professor Warren as Director of the new consumer protection bureau. Professor Warren's appointment would make clear that under President Obama's leadership, there truly will be accountability for Wall Street and fair treatment for the American public in the financial marketplace.”

The SEIU issued a statement offering similar support.

-Jake Tapper and Matthew Jaffe

July 20, 2010

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Click on graph for larger image in new window.

This graph shows the Notices of Default (NOD) by year through 2009, and for the first half of 2010, in California from DataQuick.

Although the pace of filings has slowed, it is still very high by historical standards.

From DataQuick: California Mortgage Defaults Hit Three-Year Low; Foreclosures Rise

The number of California homes pushed into the formal foreclosure process between April and June dropped for the fifth consecutive quarter to the lowest level in three years. The declines were greatest in the most affordable areas, where foreclosure activity continues to fall from extremely high levels over the past two years, a real estate information service reported.

A total of 70,051 Notices of Default ("NODs") were filed at county recorder offices during the April-to-June period. That was down 13.6 percent from 81,054 for the prior quarter, and down 43.8 percent from 124,562 in second-quarter 2009, according to San Diego-based MDA DataQuick.

Last quarter's total was the lowest since second-quarter 2007, when 53,943 NODs were recorded. The peak was in first-quarter 2009 when 135,431 homeowners received foreclosure notices.

"Obviously, motivated sellers and accommodating lenders have played a part in bringing the default filings down, especially when it comes to short sales. Public policy has also been a factor. We also need to remember that prices have come up off bottom over the past year. If they continue to rise, fewer homeowners will find themselves under water, which is a significant factor in letting a home go," said John Walsh, DataQuick president.
...
The number of Trustees Deeds (TDs) recorded, which reflect the number of houses or condo units lost at the end of the foreclosure process, totaled 47,669 during the second quarter. That was up 11.2 percent from 42,857 for the prior quarter, and up 4.4 percent from 45,667 for second-quarter 2009. The all-time peak was 79,511 in third- quarter 2008.

As I've noted before, in terms of new NOD filings the peak was probably in 2009. A few key points:

Because of the number of homes in the foreclosure pipeline, the number of distressed sales (foreclosures and short sales) will probably increase throughout 2010 - even as NODs decline.

As prices fall later this year, we might see another pick up in NODs.

Although NODs will decline in 2010 from 2009, the number will still be very high. The number of filings in the first half alone is at the peak of the previous housing bust.

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Sony unveils 24mm F2, 35mm F1.8 and 85mm F2.8 Alpha lenses: Sony has released three prime lenses for its Alpha SLR system. First up is the eagerly-awaited Carl Zeiss Distagon T* 24mm F2 SSM, which we saw in prototype form at PMA.

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Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an Internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing. Download her newest e-book, “Content is Queen: How Article & Blog Writing Will Increase Your Sales.“

Companies love positive feedback. They share it on Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter, post it on their website and use it as marketing fodder. But what about when feedback is, well, less than pleasant? What can you do with a handful (or more) of irate customers? Do you ignore them? Bury them out back? Not in today’s social atmosphere.

Rather than try to sweep these unhappy customers under the rug, look at them as a challenge and an opportunity to improve your brand and leverage them for some publicity.

Why You Want Angry Customers

Well, maybe you don’t want angry customers, but let’s be honest — you’ll never have 100 percent customer satisfaction. No one does. So use those unhappy customers to better understand what you’re doing wrong, and learn from the experience. And while you’re at it, turn the angry customers into brand evangelists.

There are several ways to connect with unhappy customers in a meaningful way:

• Hold a panel or forum in person; give them a tour of your facility and hold a venting session
• Work virtually; host an online panel to get feedback from them
• Work one-on-one to understand their concerns and address them individually

In-Person Events

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Dell recently held its first Customer Advisory Panel event at their headquarters in Round Rock, TX. They invited two groups of 15 bloggers and social media gurus. One group was full of people who had negative experiences with the company and who were vocal about their displeasure. The second group was made up of people that Dell considered brand evangelists; people who loved Dell and told others.

The attendees started the morning with their gripes; customer service issues came up again and again. The heads of customer service and marketing were present and actively engaged. As they listened, they took notes, then asked questions and they promised they would make changes.

That type of customer empowerment is important. Now, whether they’ll go through with the promised changes is another story, but it was clear that Dell understood it was time to start paying attention to the public’s perception of its brand, and make some changes to keep their customers.

Nestlé is another company that has been successful at holding an event to let people engage with its brand directly. After a resurgence in interest in the Nestle Boycott a few years ago, Nestlé decided to invite a group of bloggers to what it called its “Happy, Healthy Gathering” in 2009. Mommy bloggers, who’d been tweeting up a storm about the company’s stance on breastfeeding in third world countries, were invited to tour the facilities and give their input on the company.

Whether the event truly changed perceptions remains to be seen, but it did a great deal to show that Nestlé was putting in the effort to reach its audience.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers invited to participate Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel.

Virtual Panels

Virtual panels are decidedly less effective than in-person ones. But they can be good replacements for focus groups. Pssst is General Mills’ online testing ground for new products. The company sends participants coupons and free products to try, and in return they are asked to fill out surveys. The program is so successful that bloggers who write about saving money are gladly turning others onto joining Pssst.

Similarly, the Starbucks Passion Panel was designed to get customer feedback — for better or worse. The community of Starbucks drinkers gives their input via surveys and forums.

Passion Panel member Jennifer Boyd said, “Being on the Passion Panel means that I have access to direct input and discussion with other members. It enables me to give my opinion on Starbucks’ current and future products through surveys. The panel is a great way to engage with their loyal customers and solidifies a relationship with a consumer to a brand.”

Wal-Mart’s Elevenmoms platform is another example of how a mix of online community, shopper experience and in-person visits can work together to help the company gather new insights. John Andrews, former Senior Manager of Emerging Media for Wal-Mart and founder of the Elevenmoms, said the community succeeded in getting Wal-Mart’s attention in a few areas where it was lacking.

When the iPhone was launched in Wal-Mart stores, the Elevenmoms were invited to go through the purchase process. Some had no problems, but others did. It took one blogger two hours to buy a phone. Each blogger published her experience, and Wal-Mart took the feedback to its operations staff, who took notes and improved the purchase process.

“The Elevenmoms used direct social media interaction to improve the shopping process,” said Andrews.

Other feedback caused Wal-Mart to reconsider its layaway strategy. Having canceled the layaway plan due to costs, Wal-Mart got some flack from the Elevenmoms, who felt it made it easier to make big purchases. As a result, Wal-Mart developed its Site to Store platform, which provided the benefit of layaway online, so that local stores didn’t incur extra costs.

Disclosure: John Andrews now works with Collective Bias, a company with which I have collaborated on projects.

One-on-One

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Solving a customer’s problems and changing their perception individually is the least cost-effective method, but a little work goes a long way. And it starts with customer service personnel being properly trained to solve problems, and not to simply stick to “the script” at all costs. Look at Zappos or Disney for great examples of how service reps are empowered to solve problems.

Disney empowers each of its “cast members” (staff) to solve a guest’s problem. From the street sweeper to the reservation specialist, everyone has the ability to turn a negative situation into a good one. That might mean replacing a fallen ice cream cone, upgrading a guest’s hotel room, or simply answering politely the most commonly asked question on Disney property: what time is the three o’clock parade?

Disney is so good at customer service, they’ve opened the Disney Institute, a customer service training program helps other corporations use the same techniques that has made Disney such a success.

Likewise, Zappos is also famous for its customer service tactics. The reps don’t use scripts, and seem to genuinely care about solving problems. Many customers are pleasantly surprised when their shipping gets upgraded and they get their shoes even faster – at no additional charge.

By providing instant happiness to the customer, these brands can prevent a lot of the bad karma that comes down the road when an unhappy customer becomes an enraged customer who tells everyone he knows about how bad the company is (no one wants their own version of DellHell).

Conclusion

No matter how you interact with unhappy customers, the point is not to brush them off, and make sure you learn from it. Don’t just pretend to listen and then go on doing business as usual. Take the feedback as constructive criticism that can help you determine your company’s future. How you handle your failures could make you or break you.

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There is no Antennagate.

Well, that’s not true. But what Jobs called Antennagate at today’s press conference is more than just the design flaw in the iPhone 4 they insisted was a non-issue. It’s a design flaw with the entire way the issue was handled — by them and by us. The feeding frenzy around the iPhone 4 has been a months-long affair, for a combination of two reasons: one, that Apple has a unique position in tech coverage, and two, that controversy generates traffic. The result is outrage, confusion, expenditure, flamewars, and everything else that’s been happening online since the launch.

Sorry about that. We’re not perfect.

See, as you may know, Apple enjoys a bit of a coverage bias here and elsewhere on the net. Why is that? You know why, for the most part: sexy products, charismatic leader, a whiff of elitism. They’re fun to write about and many people enjoy reading about them — that’s enough for us. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that, when a design flaw, plain for all to see, was detected in what was heralded as the best smartphone ever to be released, the response in the tech community was mixed and misleading.

I say mixed because Apple coverage seems to be opinionated for more than other coverage, anywhere you look on the net. There is very little emotion in reporting on HP or Palm — perhaps it is because, as MG suggests, Apple works hard on building an emotional bond with its customers, something which its detractors see and abhor. Whether that’s the case or not, Apple news is often delivered with a slant. And I say misleading because in some ways, how Antennagate (which I am going to stop referring to as such; “-gate” terms are overused) was reported exposed many of the weaknesses in the online reporting structure of which we are a small part. Let’s get into that.

Apple’s ubiquity in web culture usually works in their favor: a press conference with a couple hundred people becomes an internet-wide festival of love and hate. Of course, part of that is their knowing how to put on a presentation, the value of which is something many companies deeply underestimate. Even when revealing the iPhone’s flaws and return rates, Steve treated it like he was revealing new flavors of candy. But the coverage is unstoppable and in a way, free. A major part of advertising is getting people talking about your product; with Apple, people are so primed to talk that all they have to do to advertise is show a picture with the name of the product. Considering Apple’s marketing reach, the excesses and Jobsian quips that do routinely set the internet on fire are mercifully few and far between.

In the last few weeks, however, that self-same ubiquity has been Apple’s worst enemy. Imagine if everything you did propagated, memelike, to the farthest corners of the internet, where even the die-hard Apple hater must acknowledge every announcement, even if it’s just to criticize it (something I enjoy occasionally). After using that power judiciously and deliberately for years, the inevitable finally happened: they dropped the ball — and it dutifully propagated. When your failure becomes a meme, you’re cooked.

For the record, these were my two contributions:

The signal drop heard ’round the world was followed by many more reports of launch issues. It was rough, and because of the way the internet has set itself up to instantly propagate exactly this kind of thing, soon people were hearing about iPhone 4 issues before they even knew there was an iPhone 4. The launch problems became a bigger story than the launch. Why? Because we liked it that way.

The appetite for this kind of thing is bottomless. Reasons for interest include fanboyism, professional interest, idleness, schadenfreude, legitimate concern… there was something for everybody. Then Apple, knocked off-balance by their own unpreparedness, gave a response that simply made things worse. “Non-issue. Just avoid holding it in that way.” I can’t think of a response that could have garnered a more comprehensively varied response. Shock! Defensiveness! Rationalizing! Minimizing! The circus became a feeding frenzy. And then the official statement, in which they revealed that iPhones had been using a ridiculously inaccurate signal display for years, and that they were going to make the bars bigger? My god!

So Apple was far from innocent in this whole affair, right up to the non-apology given by Steve today. Their only mistake, Steve implied, was a visual element that caused users to involuntarily ruin their own signal. Steve could talk his way out of a sunburn, as the saying goes, but not this time. Scott noted when we were chatting about this that according to Apple, the iPhone is unlike every other phone on the market — except when there is a problem, at which point it’s just like every other phone on the market. That said, I’m glad they decided to give out bumpers, and of course you can always return the phone for a full refund, so as far as I’m concerned, customers are completely provided for. Class-action lawsuits are pending but I wouldn’t hold out much hope for a settlement.

But were we innocent? One could say we just did our jobs, and wrote up what was going on. We detailed it step by step. Was that the extent of our responsibilities, though? If it was, then Twitter did our job as well as we did, and maybe better. I wrote a while back: “Real time, real discussion, real reporting – choose two.” Looking back on all the coverage, there was a lot of real-time discussion, but almost no reporting at all. Some very valuable input came from Anandtech, when Anand systematically tested the attenuation caused by shorting the antenna, but by and large it was theories, counter-theories, rumors, and fabrications getting multiplied and amplified by blogs like this one. Even ostensibly reliable outlets in the old media posted garbage of every kind. Publishing rumors is, of course, a valuable part of the job, since many are true or end up resulting in interesting discussion. I’m glad we posted all the things we posted. But I also think Steve is right: this was a pretty serious mountain-molehill situation.

The antenna problem is real, of course. How much of a problem it really is — that’s harder to say. Although I would normally say that it’s under-reported in those Apple statistics, that probably isn’t the case here. After all, this is probably one of the most widely-publicized product launches in history, partly because of the huge amount of attention given to this very flaw. If a user has an iPhone, they are almost certain to know of the issue. And if they know of it, they are almost certain to notice it when it happens. Although as Apple and others have noted, it mainly occurs in areas with marginal reception, so many people may find later that they are death grip sufferers and didn’t know it when they take a trip to the boonies. For this reason I’d suggest getting a case even if you don’t really need it where you live.

But those numbers: half a percent of iPhone 4 users complaining? 1.7% return rate? Nearly identical call drops to 3GS? Out of 3 million users, that’s around 30,000 — not a trivial number by any means, but in retrospect, does it justify the international wave of mockery? It ain’t exactly Side Talkin, after all: 2.9 million people seem to be happy with their phones.

The Point

What am I getting at here? Well, I think this whole debacle demonstrates the power of the Internet to report in the wrong way, as opposed to the Tiger Woods incident, which I think demonstrated the Internet’s strengths (though it also resulted in my writing the “Choose Two” article I mentioned). When the event is what matters (e.g. Tiger Woods crashing his car with his wife beating on the windows), and updates on the granularity of minutes are warranted, the Internet is the perfect medium. But by applying that toolset to something it is totally unsuited for, we found ourselves groping in a dark and crowded echo chamber, grasping at factual straws and thrusting them into the faces of everyone we encountered. How little it accomplished! Apple is temporarily humbled, but they would have been one way or another. But they have the benefit of being unfairly set upon, of being able to quote hundreds of articles spewing FUD and unconfirmed nonsense — after all this, they get to play the victim card! That’s the real Antennagate.

Unfortunately, the solution is an impossible one. This is because the solution is discretion. Discretion and restraint are things that have more or less disappeared, since the benefits of being first and wrong outweigh the benefits of being late and right. The short-term benefits, I should say, in the form of traffic and popularity — very important metrics to the powers that be (advertisers and such). The long-term benefits of being a reliable source for news and analysis are becoming more and more difficult to discern, which is disturbing to me. Yet I still believe, and this whole thing has made me believe more, that perspective and discretion are as important as ever — and probably only as rare as they ever were to begin with. I’m not going to get all emotional on you here and say “oh no journalism is dying,” as if I know a thing about that, but let’s be honest: sometimes journalism can be pretty hard to find — even if you think you know where to look.

There you have it. I just wanted to put my own lid on this whole iPhone 4 thing, with the conclusions I’ve drawn from it. If it came off like Apple apologia, I don’t think you read closely enough. The way the world reports and is reported is going through all kinds of transitions, and one day I think that this whole thing and other stories like it are on their way to becoming case studies in Mass Communications 101.

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Pro-Gun Dems May Get a Boost « Liveshots

With the mid-terms looming large in a year where incumbents are expected to take a beating at the.

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And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the “family stampede.” Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies “outperform” their guesses. "The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.

"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."

So why don’t the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a “nag factor” from young children, wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?

"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.

Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film “This Is It” could ring up “$40 million or more” on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.

“Despicable Me” is a great example of the “out-performed expectations” story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the “experts” expected a much lower $30 to $35 million weekend.

"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested “tepid” interest from consumers.

Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute “behind the scenes” infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.

Only one R-rated movie has grossed over $100 million this year, the Leonardo di Caprio horror flick “Shutter Island.” It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by “Despicable Me.” Three movies have grossed over $300 million to top the 2010 list: “Toy Story 3” (a daring G), “Alice in Wonderland” (PG), and “Iron Man 2” (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed over $200 million: “Twilight: The Eclipse Saga” (PG-13) and the family cartoons “Shrek Forever After” (PG) and “How to Train Your Dragon” (PG).

Why can’t greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public’s eyes want to go?

Here’s what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. “Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it “isn't merely the best movie of the summer -- even with summer just kicking in -- but an immediate candidate for best of the year.” Don’t bet the mortgage.

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• Top 5 Reasons Why Your Startup Needs an API


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• InDinero Launch Gives Small Businesses Real-Time Financial Tool


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Sad <b>News</b> From NPR: Daniel Schorr, Veteran Newsman and NPR Staple <b>...</b>

The journalism profession lost a lion today — Daniel Schorr, longtime NPR senior news analyst and, before that, CNN correspondent and member of CBS's news.

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personal finance budgeting

In 2006, recent Harvard grad Alexa von Tobel was headed for a job at Morgan Stanley. But though she would soon be managing the bank’s investments, she realized she didn’t know the first thing about her own finances. Most financial guides seemed to be written for middle-aged readers with millions in assets, rather than recent college grads. "I was reading every book I could find, but none of them spoke to me," she says. So she came up with the idea for LearnVest, an online personal-finance resource for young women like her, and ended up writing an 80-page business plan.

After two years at Morgan Stanley, von Tobel entered Harvard Business School in 2008. But upon winning a business plan competition held by Astia, a non-profit that supports women entrepreneurs, she took a five-year leave of absence and invested $75,000 of her Wall Street earnings to start LearnVest in November. She quickly enlisted advisors, including Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, and Catherine Levene, the former COO of DailyCandy, to help develop the site’s content and technology. In January 2009, she secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs.

LearnVest’s site launched a year later and has since signed up more than 100,000 members. It offers online budgeting calculators, video chats with certified financial planners on the company’s staff, and free e-mail tutorials on topics such as opening an IRA. The company earns revenue from advertising and by referring its users to companies such as TD Ameritrade. In April, after just four weeks of fundraising, von Tobel closed a $4.5 million investment round led by Accel Partners, which has also invested in Facebook and Etsy. (Incidentally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lived in the same dorm as von Tobel at Harvard.)

Von Tobel likens LearnVest to an online version of The Suze Orman Show, but with the goal of reinforcing positive finance habits early on. “Suze Orman helps 45-year-old women get out of debt,” she says. “Why not reach 20-year-olds to keep them from getting into debt?”

Forget the coupon clipping. A straightforward, realistic budget is the best deal you'll ever find.



Why is a budget the best deal? Because, just like your childhood puppy your budget will always be there for you, no expiration dates, no fine print to yank away the savings after you've already been whipped into a furry of consumerism. If you care for your budget it will take care of you so that "saving" isn't just not unnecessarily spending an extra $5 at the grocery store this week; but actually saving money in a high yield savings account. Another great thing about a budget is that, again like your puppy, it will take you back even if you screw up.



Think outside the sale. For years I chased after deals and discounts like they were the oxygen keeping me alive. It didn't matter if I needed an item or not -- if there was a sticker advertising 60, 70, 80 or 90% off a gadget, I wanted to buy it. How could I pass up the savings?



It wasn't until recently that I realized a budget is the best deal you can find. After taking a few minutes to look at how to put together a budget I realized that it takes less time to set up and follow a budget than it does to look for deals every day of the week.



Thanks to great free personal finance management (PFM) tools from sites such as like Mint.com, Rudder and others you can easily create a budget and track how well you are following it each day. These tools will even send you a notification when you go outside of your budget so you aren't shocked at the end of the month. If you don't already have a successful budget don't start creating one yet. First go read these tips for setting realistic budget.



Advice on Budgeting

• Reverse Budget - A savings first solution from FiveCentNickel


• Budgeting basics - a Budget primer from Consumerism Commentary including suggestions on how to get started.

My personal favorite and current method of budgeting isn't so much a budget as it is smart spending. Ramit Sethi explains the model in his book I Will Teach You to Be Rich, calling it, "Conscious Spending." Instead of focusing on the minutia Sethi concedes that it is in fact OK to, "Spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't."



A budget may be the best deal, but that doesn't mean you need to give up on coupon clipping and bargain hunting; just make these tools that support your plan instead of the main focus. If you plan for your purchases, by saving up at SmartyPig or setting a goal in Rudder, you can still go looking for a deal on your next purchase and pay in cash. Trust me, there's something really incredible about paying in cash for the new camera that you've researched and found the best deal on.Thanks to great free personal finance management (PFM) tools from sites such as like Mint.com, Rudder and others you can easily create a budget and track how well you are following it each day. These tools will even send you a notification when you go outside of your budget so you aren't shocked at the end of the month. If you don't already have a successful budget don't start creating one yet. First go read these tips for setting realistic budget.



Advice on Budgeting

• Reverse Budget - A savings first solution from FiveCentNickel


• Budgeting basics - a Budget primer from Consumerism Commentary including suggestions on how to get started.

My personal favorite and current method of budgeting isn't so much a budget as it is smart spending. Ramit Sethi explains the model in his book, I Will Teach You to Be Rich, calling it, "conscious spending." Instead of focusing on the minutia Sethi concedes that it is in fact wise to "spend extravagantly on the things you love, and cut costs mercilessly on the things you don't."



A budget may be the best deal, but that doesn't mean you need to give up on coupon clipping and bargain hunting; just make these tools that support your plan instead of the main focus. If you plan for your purchases, by saving up at SmartyPig or setting a goal in Rudder, you can still go looking for a deal on your next purchase and pay in cash. Trust me, there's something really incredible about paying in cash for the new camera that you've researched and found the best deal on.
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Navigate The 3D Globe of <b>News</b>

TV network ABC has released a custom ABC News iPad app that's interesting for two reasons—its clever use of HTML5 and the amazing rotating Globe of News.

More Touchscreen Innovation: ABC <b>News</b> for iPad Launches

Launched this week, ABC News for iPad is a notable free application which continues the trend of companies developing innovative and creative interfaces designed specifically for tablet-sized touch ...

Andy Plesser: BBC Launches U.S. <b>News</b> Site with Video Lifestyle <b>...</b>

In an effort to maximize advertising dollars around the big US market for online news, the BBC has launched a US destination.   The site will be more US-centric, surfacing up more US based coverage.  In the US, ...

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Navigate The 3D Globe of <b>News</b>

TV network ABC has released a custom ABC News iPad app that's interesting for two reasons—its clever use of HTML5 and the amazing rotating Globe of News.

More Touchscreen Innovation: ABC <b>News</b> for iPad Launches

Launched this week, ABC News for iPad is a notable free application which continues the trend of companies developing innovative and creative interfaces designed specifically for tablet-sized touch ...

Andy Plesser: BBC Launches U.S. <b>News</b> Site with Video Lifestyle <b>...</b>

In an effort to maximize advertising dollars around the big US market for online news, the BBC has launched a US destination.   The site will be more US-centric, surfacing up more US based coverage.  In the US, ...

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manage personal finances

Web technology has revolutionized finance by making it easier than ever to monitor cash flow and track trends in your spending. Mint.com has been a leader in this realm for personal finance: its technology helps you track multiple accounts, analyze spending trends, and manage financial goals.

There isn’t a clear counterpart to class='blippr-nobr'>Mintclass="blippr-nobr">Mint for businesses, though. That’s where inDinero, a Y-Combinator-funded startup, comes in.

inDinero, which launches today, is a web-based financial dashboard for small businesses. Like Mint, it aggregates financial data from bank accounts, investments, and other sources and places them in a simple, easy-to-navigate interface where you can quickly see your income, spending, recent activity, and your financial runway.

The app is divided into five parts: Dashboard, Income, Spending, Planning and Trends. Dashboard provides an overview of your business finances, Income provides detailed information about your income streams, Spending breaks down your different costs, Planning helps you set goals for your business, and Trends analyzes and graphs out spending and income trends in order to provide useful insights.

Businesses need this type of information in order to minimize costs while maximizing revenues. While solutions such as Mint also aggregate financial information and analyze it, they are not focused on small businesses. We look forward to seeing inDinero’s business toolset grow and evolve.

Image courtesy of iStockphotoclass="blippr-nobr">iStockphoto, jwohlfeil

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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Shirley Sherrod | Media Matters | Fox <b>News</b> - Breitbart | Mediaite

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Charley Gallay / Getty Images

His once-promising career in tatters, his family and finances ravaged by his drug addiction, former Party of Five star Jeremy London is now claiming he was kidnapped and forced to get high. Jacob Bernstein talks to addiction specialists about what to make of the tale.

The way Jeremy London later told it, it was one of the worst days of his life.

On June 10, while attempting to change a flat tire on his car, he was abducted by three men and taken on a 12-hour joyride, during which he was forced to smoke crack cocaine and distribute drugs and alcohol in a gang-infested part of Palm Springs.

“It’s been an absolute nightmare,” the Party of Five star said in a video statement provided to RadarOnline. “First of all, I want to say [the incident] actually did happen... I thought I was going to die. Thank God I made it out alive.”

He added: “I had a gun put to my head. I had my family threatened. We’re working closely with the Palm Springs Police Department to get the rest of the guys. There’s one guy in custody. There’s two more out there.”

“I think that when people are found with drugs, just as when they’re found with lipstick on their collar, they have all sorts of excuses.”

If he suspected people might be skeptical, that’s because they were.

Indeed, in the rooms of Alcoholics Anonymous, the case has been a source of particular fascination and gallows humor. While to other segments of the population the story has seemed terrifying and bizarre, with recovering addicts there’s been a knowing nod—a remembrance of what it was like to minimize one’s problem and tell outrageous tales to keep from getting caught.

London’s personal history hasn’t exactly helped establish his credibility. He has a long history with substance abuse, and a neighbor recently told reporters that he’d been begging to wash their cars for cash. And London’s twin, Jason, said his brother’s story didn’t “add up.” He urged him to get “psychological help.”

Last week, Radar reported that London had recently lost custody of his child and was being regularly subjected to drug testing. A positive test could have terrible consequences for him. (His spokesman, Dominic Friesen, confirmed that actor is being tested, telling The Daily Beast, “Jeremy is currently undergoing drug testing for his custody case and has passed all thus far.”)

One recovering addict I spoke to had posted a status update on his Facebook page: “Look! It’s the old ‘They kidnapped me and forced me to take cocaine excuse.’ Yawn.” Another said, “I immediately thought of the Six Feet Under episode where the gay guy gets kidnapped and forced to do drugs. Anytime something sounds too much like a television episode, it’s suspect.” A third said, “I’m sorry, but that’s such a lie. I have a friend who told that same story. When she withdrew all the money from her grandmother’s bank account, she claimed she was kidnapped and that they stole it from her. She even said she was raped.”

Plus, this person pointed out, most people who resort to crime because of their drug use don’t want to share their goodies with resistant kidnap victims. “For someone to say they were abducted and forced to do drugs is absolutely ridiculous. Who the f--- is going to force you to do drugs? For what? It makes no sense.”

That skepticism was echoed by three out of three addiction specialists reached by The Daily Beast. Combined, they have more than 60 years’ worth of experience treating drug addicts; all three were listed recently in New York magazine’s recent Best Doctors issue.

In each case, the specialists said they wanted to avoid casting aspersions on a man they hadn’t treated, but that they'd never encountered a person who was forced to consume illicit substances against their will.

“I can’t recall anyone ever being forced to take drugs, though I’m sure in the history of humanity someone has been,” said Kenneth Rosenberg, an addiction psychiatrist in private practice on the Upper East Side and a member of the voluntary faculty at Weill Cornell Medical College.

“People experience peer pressure, but I myself haven’t ever encountered anyone who’s been forced to take drugs,” seconded Marc Galanter, a professor of psychiatry at New York University with a practice on the Upper West Side. “Often you see people in denial that are greatly at variance with reality. It wouldn’t be surprising for someone to make a statement that seems nonsensical.”

Added Carol Weiss of NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell, “I think that when people are found with drugs, just as when they’re found with lipstick on their collar, they have all sorts of excuses.”

In 2006, recent Harvard grad Alexa von Tobel was headed for a job at Morgan Stanley. But though she would soon be managing the bank’s investments, she realized she didn’t know the first thing about her own finances. Most financial guides seemed to be written for middle-aged readers with millions in assets, rather than recent college grads. "I was reading every book I could find, but none of them spoke to me," she says. So she came up with the idea for LearnVest, an online personal-finance resource for young women like her, and ended up writing an 80-page business plan.

After two years at Morgan Stanley, von Tobel entered Harvard Business School in 2008. But upon winning a business plan competition held by Astia, a non-profit that supports women entrepreneurs, she took a five-year leave of absence and invested $75,000 of her Wall Street earnings to start LearnVest in November. She quickly enlisted advisors, including Betsy Morgan, the former CEO of the Huffington Post, and Catherine Levene, the former COO of DailyCandy, to help develop the site’s content and technology. In January 2009, she secured $1.1 million in seed funding from executives at Goldman Sachs.

LearnVest’s site launched a year later and has since signed up more than 100,000 members. It offers online budgeting calculators, video chats with certified financial planners on the company’s staff, and free e-mail tutorials on topics such as opening an IRA. The company earns revenue from advertising and by referring its users to companies such as TD Ameritrade. In April, after just four weeks of fundraising, von Tobel closed a $4.5 million investment round led by Accel Partners, which has also invested in Facebook and Etsy. (Incidentally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg lived in the same dorm as von Tobel at Harvard.)

Von Tobel likens LearnVest to an online version of The Suze Orman Show, but with the goal of reinforcing positive finance habits early on. “Suze Orman helps 45-year-old women get out of debt,” she says. “Why not reach 20-year-olds to keep them from getting into debt?”

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Intuit's Quicken was one of the software programs that was bundled with the first computer I owned and I have been using it ever since. What I love about Quicken is that it uses a familiar and user friendly interface that makes sense to the average user. Working in Quicken is just like balancing your checkbook.

Quicken's most powerful features are released by linking your accounts to the program. This can be accomplished in one morning of work if you are organized. I have all my checking accounts, savings accounts, mutual funds, mortgages, and auto loans linked to Quicken. When the program is opened the latest financial transactions are downloaded from your various accounts and you have an instant snap shop of your financial picture.

Twice a month I spend a couple of hours in Quicken planning my cash flow. At the start of the month I estimate all of my income, I input my fixed expenses and estimate my other expenses. (These tasks can all be automated if you prefer). In the middle of month, I do an update to see where I am. My bank account downloads all of my transactions and I compare them to my beginning of the month plan. It has been a great way to get control of my finances.

Quicken has many features beyond basic cash flow planning. It has excellent charts that allow you to see how your money has been spent, what your income and expense trends have been and are projected to be and that gives you a snapshot of your net worth. You can print out very detailed reports with the program, print your checks and sign up for Quicken's bill paying service.

A feature that users in today's financial climate will find especially useful is the programs debt elimination wizard. This wizard collects all of your financial data and helps you create a strategy for getting rid of debt as quickly possible. The wizard also tracks how you are doing on your plan and offers suggestions for getting you back on track.

Quicken's retirement and investment planning features and wizards are very helpful and easy to use. These give you a realistic picture of what you need to do in order to reach your investment goals and tracks how you are doing.

Quicken is an old standby in the financial software market that still does the trick.


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Hyperlocal <b>News</b> Site Fwix Debuts Local Trend Search

Fwix, a news site that offers a stream of hyperlocal, realtime news by location, is launching a new portal today that aims to give anyone a real time view of what's happening in a location. You can access the new search portal here.

Tropical Trouble? « FOX <b>News</b> Weather Blog

Good morning all! Just read that New York is about to have its hottest July on record, and I can.

Good <b>news</b> everyone | Firedoglake

30 Responses to “Good news everyone”. Teddy Partridge July 20th, 2010 at 2:08 am. 1. I am fascinated that American politics now revolves around the inclinations of a Cosmo centerfold who succeeded Edward Kennedy in the United States ...

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with "Hive Five" in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is a very unique and versatile information system. Standing alone, the systems functions depict that of an executive information system as well as a management information system. With the purchase of additional software QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions also supports transactional processing, streamlining virtually all business processes to a single origin. Detailed information of the benefits of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions will be described further within this purchase proposal, as my associates and I (we) believe this would be a key investment decision that would have a strong influence on increasing the efficiency and overall profit level of the firm from its current state. For information regarding the producing company Intuit, a breakdown of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions into the five components of a standard of information systems, and a case study of a real world application of this proposed system; please refer to appendices A, B, and C respectively.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is a system tailored to meet the needs of small to medium sized businesses. The system also has the capacity to uphold internal stability as businesses grow. Given the current size of our firm, as well as the 20% annual growth rate for the next 5 years which was received from the Department of Finance, there is assurance that full use will be made of this investment.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions also suits every aspect of our business needs as a retailer, along with a full range of other industries if the firm ever sought to expand into different areas, such as manufacturing our own product line, or providing professional services to our customers.

Initial pricing of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is prorated depending on the number of simultaneous users needed by the firm, as follows:

5 users for $3,000
10 users for $5,000
15 users for $7,000
20 users for $9,000

After the initial purchase, which then enrolls the buyer into the "Full Service Plan", there is a yearly fee, which varies with current user requirements:

5 users for $750
10 users for $1,200
15 users for $1,600
20 users for $2,000

The number of simultaneous users decided at purchase can be upgraded if needed at any point in time. There is also a piece of add-on software by Intuit that would directly correlate as well as fully integrate with our processes and this system. This software, called QuickBooks Merchant Services, is a POS processing system that goes hand-in-hand with Enterprise Solutions, as well as our industry of retail. Not only is it compatible, but also the costs associated with using this POS by Intuit versus our current system are considerably lower, which would save the company up to a minimum of $2,000 annually.

There are different editions of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, such as QuickBooks Pro. These editions however are designed for very small firms with no intention of expanding and do not suit the goals of our firm. Also, unlike these smaller versions, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions offers a vast amount of industry specific, built-in, and customizable reporting solutions for upper level management and executives. These many reports, ranging from in-depth financial analysis to inventory to retail specific, offer immense insight into a detailed look of how the business is functioning. The system also allows the exportation of reports to Microsoft Excel if there is a need to perform a more extensive analysis.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions also offers quite a few security features. Secure password protection and data input tracking allow executives to be sure only those with proper authority are accessing and modifying important internal data. Limited access is another high-end security feature within this system; it allows access to be limited so certain users can only access information relevant to them. These features eliminate most possibilities of accidental and intentional disruptions of secure data and help keep the system and the business running smoothly.

Yet another benefit to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is the fact that it does not require professional installation. The installation process itself is rather quite simple. Upon purchase, and enrollment in previously stated Full Service Plan, the buyer receives a free 6-disk Enterprise Solutions training course. This course can be implemented at the company's own pace, and on their own time. It eliminates costs associated with outsourcing, and the need to bring in a 3rd party for installation and/or training.

Problems may arise during training and installation; in such cases, Intuit and the Full Service Plan offer several methods of resolution. Every customer that purchases Enterprise Solutions is assigned a dedicated support team, which includes QuickBooks specialists who are on call 24/7 to assist in the resolution of any problem that may arise, be it from data migration or other technical issue. Software updates are another issue, and Intuit has their bases covered. The developers of Enterprise Solutions provide online updates via the QuickBooks website so firms can get their entire system updated with a single download quickly and easily.

Once QuickBooks Enterprise Solutionsis up and running, companies may find they need more applications to manage unique business processes, such as a web component for e-commerce management. Intuit's website provides links to hundreds of 3rd party software designers with products that integrate perfectly with Enterprise Solutions. One such component is the IBiz QuickBooks Integrator. This application is a development tool created by /n software that in-house developers use to update and maintain a web presence and e-commerce website. The Integrator uses preformatted methods to reduce the time it takes to write mundane lines of code, which in turn increases efficiency. It also functions as a remote access tool so users of the system can access the data while traveling. This piece of software starts at $599.

We believe QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions encompasses every needed aspect of the business and its most efficient operation. While we have no recommendations of attributes to increase value, provided below is an extensive report on the competitive advantages of adopting QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions provides value not only to the firm internally, but to its customers as well, and greatly increases the worth of the firm by bringing it to the cutting edge of the market. In using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions our firm could create new services for our customers; such as more appealing financing plans for our expensive line of products or could reduce rates on our current plans due to lower costs within the business. This would also provide differentiation amongst our competitors, which would drive increased sales. Our firm could offer more frequent promotions with the increased profits from the many sources of cost reduction QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions naturally implements, such as broader marketing activities and offering better rates when purchasing business miscellanea, giving us access to more customers and more suppliers. These advantages increase our overall market share through enhanced service to our customers which gives us the competitive edge to overcome any new competition that emerges, as well as establish respected relationships with our peers in the industry. The increased profit margin through cost reduction of switching from our past system to QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is above all the greatest added value the system brings forth.

The specific cost-benefit model of using QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is unknown. However, it is our conclusive belief that relative to our current costs as well as the costs of similar products and services other information system producers provide, Intuit's products are the most efficient and effective resources for the price. Overall reducing the time factor will drastically reduce costs of operations across all business venues. As an example, we'll use the enhanced POS processing this system provides. Assume we have five front-line sales associates who are salaried at $50,000 per year. Using our current and presumably past system, each associate took an average of two minutes to service a customer per register sale. Now assume we integrate Enterprise Solutions which reduces that time by half. The estimated value is that of five additional employees or $250,000 in annual salary less the cost of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions, which ranges between $3,000 - $9,000, and $750 - $2,000 thereafter in annual upkeep. In this respect alone QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions pays for itself ten times over. An extensive business analysis would most assuredly reveal more benefits QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions provides, as it streamlines all business activities through one source, reducing time across the board for most processes.

In conclusion, QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions fully integrates business processes, from the executive level to the front-line transaction level. With this streamlined integration we would be able to reduce time for various functions within the business and increase our profit margin substantially. This leads to more opportunities for expansion and even further growth than we had previously forecast. We feel that QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions would be an impeccable investment and asset to our firm and request authority to purchase immediately and begin the transitioning processes.

Intuit: Company Summary
Appendix A

Scott Cook and Tom Proulx first founded Intuit in Mountain View, CA during 1983. Among the first in their system design was a product called Quicken. Quicken was a financial management tool used by a single individual to better manage personal finances. The product design was geared toward individuals who had little or no expertise in the fields of accounting or finance. Early on, Intuit made it a point to issue top-of-the-line customer service and support as well as molded their products to be as user-friendly as possible. Their customer oriented reputation coupled with their extremely useful personal finance tools spread quickly across the nation, making them a top competitor amongst similar system production companies and a best seller in 1988.

In 1993 Intuit went public, issuing stock to fund new capital expenditures and acquisitions such as the purchase of Chipsoft, a company that engineered tax preparation software. Towards the late 1990's, Intuit began competing with other big names such as Microsoft for market share revolving around their core products like Quicken. In response, Intuit established a web presence as well as put more emphasis on their other business solution products, such as QuickBooks and add-on software. With their esteemed customer service and award winning products Intuit continues to hold a strong grasp on the market, based on the positive growth trends of their shares which reflect the performance of the business.

Component Breakdown of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions
Hardware - Software - Data - Procedures - People
Appendix B

Hardware:

Recommended QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions requirements consist of a 2.0GHz processor for clients and 2.8GHz for servers. Minimum RAM requirements are 512MB for clients and 1GB for servers, although additional RAM is recommended when using multiple integrated applications with the system. More hardware will be needed to support growing operations; initial hardware costs are estimated at $1,000 minimum.

Software:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions is compatible with Windows XP (SP2) as well as Vista. Linux also will run server versions of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions beginning with version 7.0 or later. To prepare letters and export reports Microsoft Word and Excel 2000, 2002, 2003, or 2007 will suffice. To synchronize e-mailing with business contacts Microsoft Outlook 2000, 2002, 2003, or 2007 is required. Lastly, to make use of the Business Planner requires Adobe Acrobat Reader 5.0 or greater.

Data:

QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions has the capacity to hold hundreds of thousands of unique IDs. These IDs can be in the form of customers, employees, vendors, accounts, etc, and have almost endless descriptors for each ID. The data is secured and encrypted for optimal protection, with up to 10GB free of online backup storage provided by Intuit.

Procedures:

The procedures for use of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions are first extremely user-friendly. Users can add, update, and move existing data. Users may also print over hundreds of different reports that can be customized for specific needs at simply the click of a button. Intuit also offers a new business intelligence tool to further enhance procedures of use with the system. The BI tool allows businesses to view strategic analysis trends and forecasts through easily online, so that executives can see a working detailed summary of how the business is performing.

People:

A wide variety of people are involved in the application of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions. There are the users from all of the various departments of the business such as Sales, Marketing, Shipping/Receiving, Finance, and Operations. There are the customers and suppliers the firm sells and buys from. Also, the system engineers behind Intuit who provide the technical support and regular system updates for the system serve as an integral part of its functional application.

Case Study
Appendix C

This case study is a brief summary of a real world application of QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions to depict additional benefits that could be possible by adopting the system. (Note: Information taken from a testimonial from the Intuit website, see references)

Business: Energy Meter Systems (EMS)

Industry: Natural Gas Hardware Manufacturer

EMS is a company that previously used Peachtree, a similar system to manage business processes but not near as effective as QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions.

EMS has been up and running since 1985, producing a variety of hardware and equipment for use of measuring natural gas expenditures. Since July of 2006 they have been using Enterprise Solutions, and testify to the following benefits over their previously implemented information system

Extremely simple installation.
Minimal training at no extra cost, with a fully operational system in just under one month.
A massive decrease in time spent on tasks that used to take hours, but now take minutes.
Overall increased work efficiency of the firm across various departments.
Very user friendly and easier to accomplish business objectives.

References

"Account & Business Management Software - QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions."

Intuit - Personal Finance, Small Business & Tax Software. 2008. Intuit. 25 April 2008 http://quickbooksenterprise.intuit.com/

Energy Meter Systems, Download Case Study. "QuickBooks Enterprise Solutions Online

Resource Center." Intuit - Personal Finance, Small Business, & Tax Software.

2007. Intuit. 26 April 2008.

http://quickbooksenterprise.intuit.com/resources/case_studies.jhtml

"Intuit - Corporate Profile." Intuit - Personal Finance, Small Business & Tax Software.

2008. Intuit. 25 April 2008.

http://www.intuit.com/about_intuit/company_history.jhtml

"Intuit (INTU) Stock Research - Stock Quote, Charts, News, and Analysis"

Investing, Stock Quotes and Research, Personal Finance and Business News

InvestorGuide. 2008. InvestorGuide. 2 May 2008

http://www.investorguide.com/stock.cgi?ticker=INTU&more=0.

"/n software inc. - Ibiz QuickBooks Components." /n software inc. - The Leading

Provider of Internet Components. 2008. /n software inc. 25 April 2008.

http://www.nsoftware.com/ibiz/quickbooks/


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