by Chris Devers

Question by Nick: What arand e some reputable reverse mortgage companies?
My great grandmother is 80 and has quite a bit of credit card and medical debt but not much income. She owns her house outright, and compared to other options, a reverse mortgage seems to be the best option. It would make her life a lot less stressful. She realizes that if it isn’t paid back, her children won’t inherit the house. Anyways, what are some reputable reverse mortgage companies? How long should it take to process loan requests? How long (from the time of the intitial request) does it take to sign on the dotted line and get the money? She gets tired of creditors calling all the time not understanding that there is no money to give them.

Best answer:

Answer by Aurelia V
here’s a site i can highly recommend for you. give it a shot!

Give your answer to this question below!

by kelly cree

Question by whoanelly: What are some realistic ways that a person can do better financially?
When my daughter turns 18 soon, child support payments will cease. This will in turn leave me with only one income. My net income (from work, minus child support) will be 771 dollars less than my money going out. The only bills that can be eliminated are phone/internet, cell phone, and student loan. The latter will be paid off shortly. Eliminating those three will still have me in the red. I live in a rural area, so public transportation is unheard of. I make “too much” money to qualify for any welfare assistance, subsidized housing, etc. I am classified as working class, lower middle class. I have two teenagers. The oldest will be graduating. I work 3rd shift. I can go to 2nds and make the same but not see my kids. My boyfriend gives me 40 a week toward food. He will not move in, though. I have a relative in California who will take us in, but that doesn’t solve my long term problem. And the cost of living is high. I have only an AA degree. Any suggestions

Best answer:

Answer by north
For starters, invest only in yourself. That means buying and keeping non-perishables on hand – in bulk. Buy large. Stay stocked.

You will always need to go to the bathroom. Keep toilet tissue, kleenex and sanitary items on hand – always.

You will always need to wash yourself and your hair. Buy bar soap in bulk – on sale. Don’t be afraid to stock up when you have the opportunity. You don’t need shampoo for your hair – bar soap works just fine. And you don’t need dish detergent for your sink nor your dishwasher. Wash by hand, save water and use a scrubbing spnge after rubbing it on a bar of soap. Economize.

If you always use paper towels, stock up on them. Vitamins, stock up on them. Buy the generics that say on the label to “compare to_____.”

Keep freeze dried foods on hand – these are better than dehydrated because the nutritional values stay in.

How does this help? These are things you won’t need any more because you have them on hand. That will curb your spending needs in the future. Never let your stocks run short to the point of having less than a case on hand.

You will always need deoderant – buy the generic and save big on multiple purchases. In many states, Suave or the store brand is just as good as the more popular brand names.

keep a good supply of sugar, honey, low cal sweeteners on hand as well as flour, baking soda and baking powder. You know you need these items – stock up on them while you can.

When you are hit with leaner times, the more you stock up on now the less you will have to buy when your really can’t afford to get all the things you usually shop for.

What do you think? Answer below!

by CGIAR Generation Challenge Programme (GCP)

Question by Lowell Mass: I want to sell renters and some specialty insurance on the side, is this easy to set up?
I know a lot of residents in large complexes, and would like to start a side business that could potentially have some residual income also. I am thinking of linking up as an agent or possible working freelance with an agent. Is this possible?

Best answer:

Answer by Zarnev
Yes, it is possible.

Give your answer to this question below!

Question by DC: What are some free, good, website building tools available for download?
I’m interested in building a hobbyist website (not a blog though) and hoping to create some residual income from affiliate advertising. I know some HTML.

Best answer:

Answer by Justin H
Have you looked at Joomla? A lot of really nice websites are built using it:

http://www.joomla.org/

Give your answer to this question below!

Today is World Art Day and it’s around two years since we launched Google Art Project. In honour of this and all our partners, large and small, traditional and modern, let’s take a quick look at how people are interacting with art online.

The Internet brings paintings to life and it seems that The Starry Night by van Gogh is the one that visitors to Art Project admire the most. In the past six months, this was the most viewed painting in gigapixel—an extremely high resolution painting which allows viewers to zoom in to brushstroke level. While nothing beats seeing a painting in real life, the ability to examine a work of art in this level of detail seems to be encouraging viewers to linger. One minute is the average time spent looking at any given painting on the Art Project website, compared to under 20 seconds (according to several studies) in a museum.

The Starry Night is also the most frequently included painting in user galleries, where individuals create and share their own virtual art collections. We have 40,000 works of art on the platform but some remain perennial favourites. The other most popular inclusions in user galleries (in order) are :

• Botticelli: The Birth of Venus
• Rembrandt: Self Portrait Drawing at a Window
• van Gogh: The Bedroom
• Manet: In the Conservatory
• Bruegel (the Elder): The Harvesters
• van Gogh: Sunflowers
• Holbein (the Younger): The Ambassadors
• van Gogh: Field with Flowers near Arles
• Böcklin: The Isle of the Dead

Viewings of user galleries were in fact higher than any individual artist or painting. To date, 360,000 galleries have been created, 14,000 of which are public on the web. To mark World Art Day, we asked some of our partners to curate user galleries of their own. Take a look through the selections of eight museum directors here.

Given the list above, it’s clear the classics remain popular with viewers, but there is increasing interest in modern art as well, with Dali and Klimt featuring among the most searched for artists. The Internet has also allowed users to explore multiple genres in a single destination. More than 30 different mediums co-exist on Art Project with oil on canvas next to over 5,000 objects including silk textiles, sculptures and furniture. There can’t be many places where you can find Brazilian street art alongside Botticelli.

Many partners who have contributed an art collection have also opted to put their museums on Street View. On average, visitors spend around two minutes exploring the interior of the buildings and viewing the paintings on display. The most-visited Street View destination on Art Project is The White House. As the majority of us will never get the opportunity to go inside, the Internet allows a rare glimpse into a global institution that also houses an extensive art collection.

With over 200 partners from 43 countries, we continue our quest to open up access to art to millions of professionals, students, beginners and amateur enthusiasts. At 1pm ET today, we’ll be holding the latest in our Art Talks series on our G+ page, which aims to put art lovers in touch with art experts online. Sign up here to hangout with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to chat about multimedia in the arts from the comfort of your armchair on World Art Day.

Posted by Amit Sood, Google Cultural Institute
The Official Google Blog

by benhulley

Question by nikkilee911: What are some good ways to budget money?
Or save money? or spend less money? any tips, or good ideas would be awesome. It seems my family is living above thier means and I’d like to fix that without sacrificing everything. any ideas?

Best answer:

Answer by makeloans2
If you do not have a savings account, open one. Each pay day, make yourself put a set amount in the account. It can be a small amount, but it gets you into the habit of saving. (You can always withdraw the money if you have an emergency). Many people save alot of money by shopping when stores have items on sale and using grocery store coupons. Don’t buy anything on credit.

Give your answer to this question below!

Question by : What are some great ways to make money online?
I’m looking for some legitimate ways to make money online. I really want to be able to make some money from home to help me with the state of the economy. Please let me know of some legitimate ways to make money online without having to pay anything. I am also not looking for anything that is a scam because that seems to be all that I can find online these times. Please let me know of some websites that any of you have tried and are known to easily work. Thanks in advance and your help would be greatly appreciated.

Best answer:

Answer by Sander
Clickbank
Amazon
Maxbounty
google Adsense
Commission Junction

and there is alot more

Check dp forum in google and you are able to learn very much ways.

Add your own answer in the comments!

The stats are in, and one clear winner from this year’s summer sports has emerged: digital media. Here’s a quick look behind the “screens” at how the web blew records away around the world, at the most wired Games ever.

Searches set a new pace
Mirroring the growth of the web and digital media, Google search volume around the world was dramatically higher this year than during Beijing in 2008:

• Driven by a 900 percent increase in [ryan lochte] searches, American interest in [swimming] spiked 25 percent higher than 2008 levels.
• The “Fierce Five” vaulted U.S. searches for [gymnastics] to almost double the 2008 peak.
• Spurred on by a record-breaking performance by sprinter Usain Bolt, Jamaican searches for [track and field] raced up 40 percent from 2008.
• Japanese gymnast and first-time gold medalist [kohei uchimura] proved he’s a “superman” in search as well as on the tumbling mat, with search volume in his home country up 420 percent over the last games.
• Success may have been sweeter the second time around for wrestler [sushil kumar], the first Indian athlete to win an individual medal at successive Olympics, with searches up more than 375 percent from the 2008 games.

Here are a few more search snapshots:

Global streaming goes the distance
YouTube powered the live stream for NBC Olympics and for the International Olympic Committee’s YouTube Channel, making the world’s games even more global and accessible. NBC Olympics saw more live streams than during the entire Beijing Games—more than 159 million total video streams and more than 64 million live streams across YouTube’s online, mobile and tablet experiences. In all, more than 20 million hours of total video was streamed over 17 days. And of course, the Games were also streamed on the IOC’s channel (youtube.com/olympic), with tens of millions of streams to 64 countries in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. We’ll have more details on the YouTube blog soon.

The multi-screen relay
More than ever, people experienced the Games not just via the TV broadcast, but on desktops, mobile phones and tablets. Through research panels conducted in partnership with NBC in the U.S., we learned a bit more about how this played out:

• Mobile makes a strong showing: Many viewers turned to one or more “second screens” beyond TV to keep updated on the Olympics—nearly half of those who did (44 percent) did so via a mobile phone or tablet.
• Power viewers: Second-screen viewing didn’t seem to diminish participants’ interest in watching the games on TV…in fact, it increased it. People who followed the Games on TV plus one other screen watched 52 percent more Olympics on TV than those who didn’t; people who followed on two additional screens spent more than twice as much time (105 percent) with TV. And people who watched live streams of events online watched 66 percent more Olympics on television than people who followed exclusively on TV.
• Synchronized usage: Overall, nearly 56 percent of people who followed the Games on TV and at least one other screen did so simultaneously. These simultaneous viewers also watched TV for 67 percent longer than those who only watched TV.

Gold for digital businesses
Brands who invest in digital marketing to connect with customers grow their own businesses and help make great content possible. A few campaigns that caught our eye:

• Visa’s global “Go World” campaign invited fans to show their support for Team Visa athletes in the form of cheers across social media. The campaign generated more than 59 million cheers, and Visa’s YouTube channel accounted for more than 47 million views of Visa’s commercials and athlete training videos from around the world.
• Insurance provider Zurich launched a successful “Share your Sports Moments” marketing campaign on Google and YouTube, featuring members of the German Olympic team. The result: a significant uplift in the number of leads who then signed insurance contracts.
• Lloyds TSB Bank, presenting partner of the Olympic Torch relay, conducted a successful AdWords campaign that kept pace with the Olympic torch as it passed through towns in the U.K., resulting in more than 190,000 clicks and more than 2 million impressions over three months.

Higher traffic and increased investment in the web also helped online publishers in a big way:

• In the U.S., across 2 million sites in our Google Display Network and the DoubleClick Ad Exchange, ads shown on sports-related websites increased by 19 percent, while revenues (RPMs) for these sites increased by 14 percent, compared to the two previous weeks.
• Our premium ad serving platform for publishers (DoubleClick for Publishers), which helps some of the web’s largest publishers make money from their content, broke a new record, with one major publisher serving more than 400 million ad impressions in a day across its website and mobile content—driving higher revenues and more free content.

A fun note to end on: showing how the web can fuse data and creativity while opening the playing field, one of our software engineers used Google App Engine to create a “per capita” medal tally (the data is real, the accounting is somewhat creative). On this basis, one country stands above all others—congratulations to the most successful nation of the last two weeks, Grenada!

Posted by Richard Keelty, Product Marketing Manager, U.K.

The Official Google Blog

Question by redsoxrae: How can I make money blogging? I have lots to say, and also need some extra cash.?
I have researched this a little bit, but still not sure how to get started. Straight forward answers from experienced bloggers would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks in advance!!!

Best answer:

Answer by CoolFlowr2k
How to make money from your blog: 5 tips

By Jeff Wuorio
Many of the people who write blogs today simply want to share their opinion on something. But then there are the business-minded folks, who have found a way to use blogs, or Web logs, to bring in a little extra cash too.

I recently wrote a column detailing how to get a blog up and running to boost your small business.

If you’re interested in taking it further — blogging for bucks, if you will — here are five strategies that could turn your blog into a moneymaker.

1. Sell advertising. This is likely the most common means of leveraging a blog to generate income. If yours happens to become a well-known blog, or one that is well-received in a particular niche, it’s always possible to sell ad space on your own. For lesser-known blogs, services such as Google’s AdSense or BlogAds enable bloggers to establish ad programs.AdSense’s — which lets you select several ads that are consistent with the content of your blog — pays you based on how many readers click on the ads for further information. Even better, it’s free. BlogAds, on the other hand, hooks bloggers up with would-be advertisers and levies a commission in return for any ad placements that result. “The nice thing, too, is that the ads are relatively unobtrusive,” says Scott Allen, co-author of “The Virtual Handshake: Opening Doors and Closing Deals Online.”

2. Help sell others’ products. Here is another click-through opportunity. Affiliate programs enable your blog to serve as a conduit between readers and online sites offering various goods and services. One popular choice is Amazon.com. If, for instance, you offer book reviews or even just mention a book in passing in your blog, an affiliate program provides a means for your readers to click directly from your blog to Amazon to obtain further information about the book. If they break out the checkbook or charge card, you get paid as well.

3. Solicit contributions. Not every blog-related income opportunity involves hawking goods or services. As Blanche DuBois did in “A Streetcar Named Desire,” consider relying on the kindness of strangers. Ask for contributions. If, for instance, your small-business blog supports a cause or issue in some fashion — say you repeatedly mention tax reform, health care or some other topic — you can always ask for reader support.Even if you’ve attracted a group of regular followers who simply enjoy reading what you have to say, they may be willing to underwrite their loyalty with a little financial help.

Programs such as PayPal make it easy to establish a simple on-site contribution collection button. “There are lots of worthy ’cause’ blogs that would qualify for donations from grateful members of the blog community,” says Las Vegas communications consultant Ned Barnett.

4. Market your services in your blog. Many people associate blogs exclusively with a cyberspace-based soapbox — a place to shout your opinions and little more than that. Granted, blogs are an ideal venue to share your thoughts with others, but don’t overlook their capacity to generate new business as well. When appropriate, work in references to what you do and, in turn, what you may be able to offer any would-be client or customer who may be reading your blog. That can spread your opinion and your business moxie at the same time.”Instead of short commentaries that begin a dialogue with readers, as many blogs do, I write the equivalent of journal articles that demonstrate my abilities, strategies and perspectives on specific issues,” Barnett says. “When it resonates, it means money. Since starting this approach, I have generated three new paying clients and brought in about $ 10,000 on revenue — directly attributable to specific blogs.”

5. Use a blog to deepen your existing customer relations . Nor does any marketing material inserted in blog content have to be limited to bringing in completely new business. By using a blog to regularly communicate with existing clients as well as other readers, you can take advantage of the opportunity to fully inform them about everything your business does. That may expand your readers’ understanding of the full scope of your products or services.”My blog has helped existing clients determine the range of my skills and services,” says Ted Demopoulos of Demopoulos Associates, a Durham, N.H. consulting and training concern. “One client who had only used me for training in the past was surprised at my range of expertise and is now using me for a consulting project. Another who only used me on technical projects is now considering me for a more business-oriented project.”

Good Luck:-)

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Question by : I’am a senior on a fixed income I need to find some information to fix the thermostat on my pellet stove mysel?
my automatic thermostat on my pellet stove won’t turn off when it reaches a certain temperature it just keeps running.

Best answer:

Answer by generalw13
You’ll either need to have a little bit of knowledge of electricity and some test equipment or get a hold of a schematic.
Depending upon the size and model, the thermostat may directly control the unit’s operation or it may be linked to a control board with several relays or contactors. I’ve heard about many circuit board failures on pellet stoves. It’s possible that many of them are attributable to burned contacts on relays sticking.
We may be of a little more help if you can post the brand and model.

What do you think? Answer below!