I have long thought that “Real Estate Investing” by McLean and Eldred was perhaps the top book for beginning real estate investors. But after reading “Real Estate Investing for Dummies,” I now think the Dummies is equally as good, although it may not cover quite as much ground. Dummies is excellent in what it presents because it written in a manner that is easily understood, it provides sufficient depth, and it covers the key topics.

I particularly like the chapter on “Due Diligence.” The chapter does an outstanding job of describing the components of reviewing books and records, and inspecting a property that you have bid on and have had the bid accepted by the seller. Purchase contracts provide that the sale can be canceled without loss of earnest money if the buyer’s physical inspection isn’t satisfactory. Following the suggestions in this chapter assure that you won’t be surprised with what you get, and gives tips on how to cancel or renegotiate the deal, if you need to.

I also like the final chapter, which lays out in plain English the time tested (non-infomercial guru) principals of how to make money in real estate. Buy when market conditions are conducive to buying, when properties are distressed and available as foreclosures or on favorable terms with seller financing. Add value to properties. Hold on to properties that offer long-term stable growth in rental rates. Refinance to tap into investment property equity and to further your real estate investments. Read…

I was particularly interested in this book, especially as our nation is facing a weakening dollar, because I hear so much nowadays about the foreign markets and how many are investing in and trading currency. Apparently, the Forex market really is an accessible investment that can pay the investor quite well if he or she knows how to get involved in the Forex market and understands how it works.

That is why I felt Burrell’s book was so helpful for me. It explains how the Forex market works, why the United States is such an important player in the world market, how to get involved, and does a great job illustrating the many indexes, factors, and issues that contribute to currency-value fluctuation and the overall global economy. Read…

Few examples from this book that I know I will never use but who knows, other users may find that:

-This book is great if you’re into emacs and vi(m) since it dedicates over 100 pages on these two text editors but I prefer using nano so for me these chapters were more or less wasted.
-This book is great if you’re into shell programming.

Why spend 100+ pages on vim and emacs when at least some pages could’ve been dedicated to a Security Section that this book doesn’t have? Perhaps emacs and vim are important because programming requires a good set of text editors..? Read…

Reflexivity is Soros’s pet theory. He outlined it in the Alchemy of Finance. Basically the idea is that events can become self reinforcing. How does that relate to the mortgage collapse?

The mortgage bubble and collapse was just like any other. Banks and other institutions noticed that lending money was profitable when the economy was expanding. All the loans seemed to be turning out well. The banks were printing money and decided to loan more and more. As more credit became available, the economy continued to perform strongly (the easy availability of money spurs on the economy) causing existing loans to perform even better. Banks were enticed to lend even more. All the while, institutions of all stripes continued to pile on leverage as their investments blossomed. Eventually someone decided to take their chips off the table. All of a sudden, credit came into question. Institutions started to de-lever, worried that they wouldn’t be able to get their money off the table fast enough. No one would extend more credit. Money became scarce. Loans defaulted. The housing market crashed. Read…

By now, Vista is over a year old, and Microsoft has just issued its last Service Pack (SP3) for XP, and support for Windows XP with Service Pack 3, according to Microsoft’s support page, ends 12 months past the 3/30/2008 release date for regular folks like you and me (developers and businesses get 24 months of support).

Of all the Operating Systems (O/S) introduced by Microsoft, Vista has been dissed more than any other, at least to my memory. Vista has really felt a terrible backlash from the business community, namely because it requires at least 1 GB of RAM to run and 15 GB’s of disk space to install (versus 128MB of RAM and 1.5 GB of disk space needed for XP Professional to operate). This coupled with most businesses feeling that Vista doesn’t have enough improvements to warrant an upgrade has even lead to many businesses balking at even buying computers with Vista installed on them. You may remember how Dell had to go back and start re-offering XP on the computers after they fazed it out after Vista has been on the market about six months because of new computer sales dropping because of Vista. Read…

Including Tips, Tricks, & Strategies to Create a Winning Advertising Plan

I have a burgeoning pet toy company and website, so I was eager to find the best way for me to ensure my website and my company is easily found by people doing web searches.  Reading a bit of the history of web advertising was very interesting to me, how it has evolved and continues to evolve is very useful to understand how it works.

This book really helped me understand exactly what effort was required on my part to make sure that I was able to achieve the results I wanted. It not only helped me figure out the kind of marketing plan I needed, but also helped me simplify it so that I didn’t let the planning side of the marketing overwhelm me.

Additionally, the book covered a lot of useful tips for the actual content we could add to our website. Things like a “privacy policy” or “about us” can be useful to helping us keep customers!

So many words are thrown at us on the internet when it comes to looking for information about advertising your website, this book truly helped me understand what things like “PPC” “Keywords” “Adwords” or “SEO” are!  Thoroughly understanding how a PPC account really works is very useful to someone who would want to set up their own account.

This book really has so much valuable information, it can be a lot of almost overwhelming information for a small non-computer savvy small business owner, but I really think that its an invaluable tool for business owners of all levels. Read…

As an “early adopter” I have lived through the first Palm Pilot, Blackberry, a Rocket E-Book, and and iPhone. Some of the experiences were great, some not so great. The Kindle technologically ranks among the great – the wireless interface is flawless, the reading quality excellent and the size just about perfect to substitue for a printed book in the hand. I’ve had my Kindle about three weeks ago and except for a little work to be done on the keyboard and a case with access to the “On and Off” buttons without tilting the device, I find it enjoyable.

But, come on Amazon, get real content out there! An avid reader, I spend about $400-$600 per month on books. These are usually newly published items. While the Kindle has thousands of titles you are stuffing in “classics” as fast as you can. Which is nice if I want to read Thackeray but at the moment I don’t. In the last week I’ve searched for several books that have sold well in the last several weeks and months only to find them unavailable on Kindle.

You’ve got a great device – it deserves 5 stars. But until you get on top of current content as well as classic backfill, Kindle will still send me off to Borders each week.

More customer review can be read here.

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