Gold bubble burst with gold prices going down

People are starting to talk about a gold bubble burst. During the global financial crisis, many thought gold was the best place to invest money. But after increasing in value steadily since October 2008, the gold bubble may be reaching the bursting point as the global financial crisis fades. If investors discover no need to invest in gold any longer, then the demand for gold is going to drop a lot. Gold went down quite a bit already from June 21 from $ 1,266.50 to $ 1,185. Article resource – Falling gold price could mean the gold bubble is about to burst by Personal Money Store.

Signs of a bursting gold bubble

Gold prices have been so unstable that many say the gold bubble might burst soon. Brian Rezny at Seeking Alpha writes that India and China, the world’s first and second largest gold markets respectively, are buying a lot less gold. He said that gold is a commodity with a value based entirely on the assumption that it will increase in price. This is why individuals invested their lives into gold during the global financial crisis. Gold’s value is solely depending on what people value it at. A gold bubble burst would change that perception overnight.

Credit crisis difficulties in Europe

One reason the gold bubble may be about to burst is since the markets may have exaggerated the effects of the credit crisis in Europe to the global economy, according to Ron Acoba at Daily Markets. With recent news about the surprise earnings of European and U.S. banks, Acoba said the effect of the credit crisis on their business turns out to be minimal. Rezny said the gold bubble is about to “end in tears,” and that the recent decline in gold prices will get worse. He reminds us that back in 1980, gold was used as an inflation hedge, and it peaked at $ 850 an ounce. That is $ 2,300 when adjusted for the inflation that has happened since then. Then it went down drastically by 1999 to $ 253.

A safe haven gets risky

The gold bubble is precariously large as millions of individuals are getting gold. Even celebrities say gold should be bought. Hucksters like Glenn Beck are convincing average individuals to dump a large percentage of their investment portfolios into gold — even their life savings — to be safe when the global economy collapses to the stone age. Beating Broke is concerned about what will happen after the economy recovers. Gold buyers could be sad to see their investment of $ 1,100 or $ 1,200 an ounce change to be $ 800 or $ 900 an ounce instead. If 30 percent of everyone’s money is lost here, the gold bubble is bound to burst. When people try and sell their gold, prices will drop more. True believers in gold will lose even more.

More on this topic

Daily Markets

dailymarkets.com/forex/2010/07/28/did-the-gold-bubble-just-pop/

Beating Broke

beatingbroke.com/is-gold-the-next-bubble/

Boston missing pets - citizens believe fisher cats are to blame

In Boston, Mass., precious family animals are vanishing left and right and turning up deceased at a rising rate. Numerous residents are pointing the finger at fisher cats in the area. The wild, sharp-toothed, weasel-looking fisher cat has been seen in residential neighborhoods, and people are recommended to be cautious.

Possible fisher cat assaults reported in Boston

Residents within the Boston area say fisher cat assaults are the reason many animals are vanishing. Reports of missing animals continue to increase, and families are warned to take precautionary measures to protect their animals and small children. Numerous residents say that fisher cats have been spotted in people’s back yards, in fences and on back porches — right out in broad daylight. According to reports, a man from Andover was even able to record a video clip of a fisher cat spotted in a tree.

Linda Ribeiro, a Dover resident who has lost two cats and a dog, said she saw a fisher cat two weeks ago that was as big as a coffee table. “Almost looked like a sea serpent or something,” she said. “The head was up and then it came down to short front legs and then the back goes up and arches and then this long tail that’s stuck up in the air.”

What is a fisher cat?

Fisher cats are from the very same family as mink, otter, weasels and skunks. These medium-sized fisher cats are thin, long and low to the ground, and they will eat almost anything they can find. Fisher cats, according to Wikipedia, are among a few predators that will really try to find and kill porcupines. They are active throughout the year and are quite possibly most lively in dawn and dusk hours.

What to do

Missing posters across the region are turning up as troubled pet owners attempt to locate their animals that have vanished without a trace. According to wildlife officials, the fisher cat was nearly extinct not too long ago, but it seems the species has bounced back within the Boston area. For pet owners and families will small kids, the best thing to do is to remove or secure anything around the home that may attract the fisher cats. Get rid of garbage and compost and keep pet rabbits and birds also as their food secure, as the fisher cats “view domestic cats and rabbits as food and will prey on them when hunting.”

Gorilla glass shields your TV from Wii damages

Video gamers know about Wii damages involving TV glass, and now there’s a business that thinks they have a remedy. According to the AP, Corning Inc. has taken their 50-year-old Chemcor invention and made it marketable as Gorilla glass. Soon, Corning will use Gorilla glass in high-end TVs and touch-screen tablets.

Gorilla glass started to come on strong in 2008

After decades of nothing, Corning started to use Gorilla glass in cell phones in 2008. What started then as a $ 170 million annual business will surely explode once flat screen TVs and touch-screen devices take on Gorilla glass. In specific, Gorilla glass could possibly be used for frameless flat screen TVs that would look like artwork on a wall, rather than a television. The strength of the product would protect against such things as Wii accidents, yet the products would nevertheless appear elegant.

Triple strong and less than half as thick

As outlined by the AP, Gorilla glass beats standard glass by a mile. It’s three times as strong and much thinner. As a result of the less-than-a-dime thickness, it’s quite light in weight. Corning is preparing with Asian TV manufacturers to get the Gorilla glass out there by the beginning of 2011. Share prices of Corning have already increased in anticipation of increased business. Considering that high-end LCD glass generated the bulk of Corning’s sales in 2009 ($ 5.4 billion), there would likely be demand. A rise of only $ 30 to $ 60 per unit is expected during the Gorilla glass transition, which shouldn’t deter buyers.

Gorilla glass – ready for other products?

Corning is confident that Gorilla glass is suitable for myriad products. Refrigerator doors, automobile sunroofs and even touch-screen advertising in companies like hotels are all possibilities. For the moment, Corning is on the precipice of making large money with Gorilla glass in high-end televisions.

Discover more information on this subject

Associated Press

cbsnews.com/stories/2010/08/01/ap/tech/main6734387.shtml

Coasting in neutral won't help anybody

Everyone wants to know the ways they can conserve the most gas. Various additive products exist that supposedly improve a car’s fuel economy, but these products are met with skepticism by experts. You will find a couple of things that will help for sure like hypermiling. However, one driving technique that some associate with fuel economy – coasting in neutral as the engine is idling – has little to do with effective hypermiling, reports Popular Mechanics. Not only does it not save gas, but it is unsafe.

While coasting in neutral, one can’t accelerate

When coasting and seeing road hazards, accelerating to keep away from isn’t an option. Not only that, but handling around sharp corners is severely hampered while coasting in neutral. This is as the engine is disconnected from the drive train at that time.

Saving gas?

It is an illogical claim that a car experiences greater fuel economy while coasting in neutral. When a car is just sitting there, Popular Mechanics explain one gallon of gas goes each hour. You will use .033 gallons of gas just being in neutral down a mile hill at 30 mph.

There is still rpm

The pulse-width-modulated wave signal varies between 5 percent and 80 percent just when the car is idling to when the car has full throttle going. There is more rpm with percentage going up meaning more gas is being used. 1,000 rpm is what the idle rpm is. Of course your automobile may be a little different. At that point, the car’s fuel injection starts adding fuel to keep the engine from stalling out. The driver feels a rev up at the same moment a pulse increases on the oscilloscope. Thus, gas is really being wasted when the car shifts into neutral, claims Popular Mechanics.

Trip computer tricks

When a car is in neutral, the trip computer sees something different than what is happening. Increased mileage which is a “false positive” is shown to your computer. That’s why gallons into the tank divided by odometer mileage (and checked against a handheld GPS device) are more useful when analyzing fuel economy. All told, Popular Mechanics believes that drivers will conserve more fuel if they simply turn off the engine at a traffic light than if they used the unsafe driving technique of coasting in neutral.

More on this topic

Popular Mechanics

popularmechanics.com/cars/how-to/repair/coasting-in-neutral-fuel-economy

A “gravity hill” in Chenju, South Korea

youtube.com/watch?v=yBXjwnc51Pc

Five solutions to keep yourself from a traffic ticket

The first stop to avoiding a traffic ticket is avoiding getting stopped. Avoiding a police offer’s gaze, though, isn’t always easy. There are a couple of things you are able to do to help ensure that your vehicle is not the one that the police notice.

Follow all laws

First, don’t make an effort to break as numerous traffic laws as you are able to – try to follow the rules. Follow the speed limit, come to full stops, and be nice to pedestrians. If you drive defensively and avoid obvious mistakes, police are less likely to notice you.

Choose your ride carefully

While urban legend is that certain colors of automobiles get ticketed more or less often, very few studies have been done one way or one more. There are some models of cars that do get ticketed more often, though. If you’ve a choice, do not choose one of the automobiles on the top 10 most ticketed list.

Stay with the group

Though striking it out on your own and feeling the wind inside your hair sounds good, you are less likely to get a ticket if you are a part of a pack. Keep your speed consistent with the rest of the cars on the road.

Drive with the big boys

Though they may go a bit more slowly than a sports car, large rigs on the freeway are your friends. Semi drivers generally warn each other of speed traps that are ahead. Staying close to a semi and driving as slowly as they do will help you keep away from a ticket.

1 – Fix all the little things

Damage to your car makes it stand out, no matter where you are driving. A brake light that has gone dark may not seem dangerous, but it does give an officer a legitimate reason to pull you over. Don’t risk it; spend the cash now to conserve on insurance costs and stress later.

Get information from any person off Facebook with the Facebook torrent

Data off of Facebook is now accessible to anybody with the Facebook torrent which was created by a hacker with a lot of free time. Ron Bowes wrote a web crawling code that scraped the Facebook directory for details about 171 million Facebook users. Bowes put the 2.8 GB file online as a torrent. Facebook says this is the same information found with any kind of Facebook search making it unimportant. Many feel like this is just an additional example of how easy it is to hack Facebook with all of the privacy issues they’ve been having recently. Source for this article – Facebook torrent hack makes free download of personal user data by Personal Money Store.

171 million Facebook users exposed

The Facebook torrent contains names, profile URLs and unique user IDs for 171 million Facebook members. Skull Security head, Bowes, was reported by the Daily Tech to have posted this torrent on Pirate Bay. As of the morning of July 28, the Facebook torrent had about 13,000 active downloads on Pirate Bay. The data that Bowes scraped and packaged contains details Facebook users have either chosen to share or neglected to protect. Any person who worked out their privacy settings to say only friends could see their information aren’t in this torrent that Bowes created.

Facebook and privacy

Facebook privacy setting were changed most recently for commercial use which is why people are more concerned with this Facebook torrent. In a statement to BBC News, Facebook said personal information individuals have “agreed to make public” was collected by a researcher, and that no one’s privacy has been compromised. However, Tech Crunch said with the advent of the Facebook torrent hack, now would be a good time for the default Facebook privacy settings to change to “Friends Only.” Letting “Everyone” see your Facebook info involves a hacker who can grab your personal data, package it and sell it to the highest bidder.

Nothing can change what’s happened with Facebook torrent

Facebook said the personal info mined and distributed within the Facebook torrent could be found by any person on Google, Bing or Facebooksearch. But Future of the Internet makes the point the Facebook torrent is a snapshot of Facebook’s directory that lasts forever. If you’re in it, you’ll never have that information deleted, even if you try to delete you account completely or change your privacy settings to something else.

Facebook torrent and what it targets

In addition to the personal data for one fifth of all Facebook users, the Facebook torrent contains the programs Bowes used to mine the data. Tech Crunch explains that Bowes wants more than just searchable users and intends to get the rest. Until Facebook switches to friends only by default, which is unlikely, users opt out-

Go to Account and Privacy Settings and Applications, Games, and Websites (link near the bottom, in a box) and Public Search and (Uncheck box).

Additional reading

Daily Tech

dailytech.com/Info+on+100M+Facebook+Users+Harvested+and+Posted+in+Torrent++Legally/article19198.htm

Tech Crunch

techcrunch.com/2010/07/28/hacker-proves-facebooks-public-data-is-public/

Future of the Internet

futureoftheinternet.org/facebooks-ocean-of-names-becomes-a-torrent

Slim your bill and waistline down by saving money on food

It easy to become overwhelmed when it comes to saving money, but it can be very simple. Many individuals believe that saving money on food, vacations or even retirement is a difficult task that demands lots of skill and sacrifice. Nevertheless, it doesn’t have to be that way, particularly for individuals who start off small and slow with a couple of small changes at home.

Tricks to saving money on food

First off, make sure to keep things simple — focus on relatively easy solutions to conserve, like saving money on food purchases. Although the price of food continues to increase, you can nevertheless dodge the need for pay day loan if you know a couple of simple tricks on how to really save money on food. Overtime, your little savings will add up and you will slowly notice a optimistic change in your finances if you keep on practicing good eating and saving habits.

Consider getting store brands

An easy way to slim down on the grocery bill is to buy store brand food. As budgets get tighter and food prices run high, increasingly more consumers are turning to store brands — including higher income families. Store brand offerings that are just as good as or better than name brand products can be found almost anywhere you go. More than ever, many supermarket chains are offering store brand products of better quality, so you typically can’t quite possibly tell the main difference with name brand items.

Advantages of getting in bulk

One other way to conserve cash on food and avoid the probable need for pay day loans is to buy in bulk. Try to find the items that cost the most and find out whether buying in bulk will save you more money in the end. You may want to stay away from buying highly perishable items like fresh fruits and vegetables in bulk, but things like rice, potatoes, beans and pasta can be stored for a long period of time. Be careful, though, because purchasing in bulk can also work against you if you overstock and throw things away. You’ll essentially be throwing hard-earned cash down the drain.

Stay from impulse getting

Write a shopping list before you head out to the supermarket. Write down your weekly or monthly necessities while understanding the difference between your preferences and wants. Impulse buying could be deadly to your budget, so plan ahead and stay within your boundaries. Start a separate list for things you need but can do without and put it away for the meantime. As you watch your cash grow by saving money, go back to that list and spending budget for one item at a time. Always compensate efforts to conserve money, but keep in mind how the greatest rewards in life are free of charge.

Tip: The busiest time of the day is the best time to plan a small purchasing trip. Make certain you’ve your shopping list with you. Once you are there, you can get in, get it and get out in no time, leaving no room to snoop around and spark temptation.

Make meals at home

For those who have a busy day-to-day schedule, this could be a bit tricky. Bear in mind, nevertheless, that you can save some severe cash just by making your own meals at home. One more thing to keep in mind is the truth that excessive intake of processed foods and eating out constantly can leave a negative effect on your weight and overall health. For those of you who run busy lifestyles, planning ahead of time will help a great deal. And that’s where the magic of the crock pot comes in. Start preparing the night before by putting all the ingredients within the slow cooker. On your way out the door the next morning, take a couple of short moments to pull it out of the fridge and have it cook all day while you’re out and about. It’s as quick and easy as getting online pay day loans. You can come home after a long, busy day to a delicious home-cooked dinner everyone will enjoy.