Personal Finance Blog

Tips And Stories To Help You With Managing Money

What You Can Learn From Reading Google Patents

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Google patent search allows you to search for patents that are registered with the government. Their advanced search allows you to state several search parameters. You can search by patent number, company or individual who was given the patent, date of getting the patent, date of filing the patent and several other options.

When you search all the patents filed and assigned to Google, Inc. you will get back a plethora of information. If you want to know what Google is up to in new developments, you can search by their most recent filings.

Google Patent Search
Google Patent Search

Recent filings for 2010 include search query optimizations for business listings. Businesses will benefit from the new patent because it will deliver more relevant business results. For example, when a searcher does a search for film development an association can be made with the words photo finishing even though the two words have no actual words in common. Refining a process of categorizations for businesses can help return better search results.

Google uses training data to artificially learn from search entries. According to the patent filing, the first thing that needs to be done is to create business categories relevant to specific search queries. The categorization classification component can learn from the search queries and business categories, based on training data. Data is selected from predefined yellow page listings, categorized business websites, consumer report information, restaurant guides, query traffic data and advertising data. The input is then stored as a series of possibilities.

If you are totally baffled by now, just know that business searches are going to become much more relevant, which is good news for business websites.

Try a search in the Google patent search and see what you come up with. Perhaps you’ll search by patent number and learn that patent number 1,000,000 was for an improvement made in vehicle tires, patented in 1911.

Tips On Outsourcing Computer Work

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Outsourcing computer work and customer service work has become extremely popular lately because it is easy to find someone qualified to help you with your business needs. The types of jobs that are most frequently posted in major outsourcing websites range from basic computer tasks, database work, web design, logo design, software creation, creative writing, finance and accounting.

There are many outsourcing websites that have very good reputations, but our main focus is going to be on Odesk.com.  Odesk.com provides three things that make it unique and reliable.

Odesk provides online tests for employees to take to prove their skills. They have a total of 341 different tests that service providers can take. Each test is a forty question, online test. Only 57% of the people who take these tests pass them.

When workers take tests in their skill areas their scores are published in their profiles. You will be able to see the name of the test and the percentage of questions they got right. This type of information is a time saver and such a blessing. It helps contractors find people that really are capable of completing your job. If you find someone who ranked in the top ten percent of the skills tests that you feel they need, then chances are you’ll have a satisfying experience with them.

Odesk.com also allows work providers to give an honest evaluation of the person they are working for. So if you are a pain in the neck to work for, it won’t be long before that reputation will follow you. On the other hand if you are considerate, explain your job well and are patient with your work providers, they are able to provide that feedback for others to see. It’s important that you are a good employer so people will apply for your jobs and feel comfortable working with you.

The third thing Odesk.com does is provide hourly workers with a program that records their work. If you are paying someone by the hour, the program intermittently takes screen shots of the providers’ desktop so you can see what they are working on. This helps you to keep track of what they are doing. Working time is automatically tracked for you. Payments and billing are handled through software at Odesk.com. Your workers get paid in a timely manner and you will receive an invoice for tax purposes.

Outsourcing some of your work to people who have specific skills that you don’t, is invaluable. With the rapid pace of technology improvements, the smart business person will benefit from the thousands of workers that are seeking more work. You may even find that many of the workers are extremely grateful to you for giving them a chance to get started. One worker said, ” I want to tell you that you gave me a lot of scope to work for the first time in Odesk. Thanks again for that. I will be grateful to you ever.”

Can You Qualify For A Second Mortgage?

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If you are thinking about getting a second mortgage, you may discover that you just don’t qualify.

The Wells Fargo formulas for deciding whether you will be offered an increase in a home equity line of credit are making it more difficult for the average American.  Self employed business owners seem to be affected deeply.

If you were caught up in the economic problems that started in 2008, you may have lost your job and had to look for other work or make other plans. So maybe it wasn’t the end of the world for you, but it wasn’t fun either. So you try something new and decide to go into a new type of work or something totally different than you were used to doing. You end up building your own business and it doesn’t start off with a bang, but hey, it pays the bills. Good for you.  You helped yourself cope with a difficult situation.

So your business begins to grow and your 2009 income isn’t too bad.  In fact it’s rather decent so you want to do the best thing for your financial situation by consolidating your debt and getting rid of any credit card debt so that while you are working to pay off debts you are getting a lower interest rate and can use the interest you pay to lower your taxable income.  That would help you out.

Well, 2010 comes along and you’re business is really doing well. The best you could have ever hoped for and it’s growing. Congratulations! Great news. Life looks better in 2010 doesn’t it?

Not to Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo uses this procedure to decide whether they can increase your home equity loan. They require that you send in two years of tax returns. Well, remember that in 2008 with your new business just starting, you may have made over $10,000  and had $4,000 in deductions. Now Wells Fargo says that well in that year, you get credit for making $6,000.  They won’t even count the rest of 2008 because it was in a different field. They then divide that by 12, because of course that is how many months there are in a year.

So they calculate that you are making $500 a month.  Do they consider the 2009 income at all?  Well sure they do, but because there is such a huge discrepancy, they have to go with the smaller amount of money that was made in 2008. But they will give you what they call a cap of 125%. They then multiply 125% times the $500 a month and come up with a $626.25 figure . That is the new figure of how much they think you make per month, regardless of what you made in 2009. Isn’t that smart?

Then they look at your current minimum payments for your mortgage, association fees and revolving credit and come up with your debt to income ratio. It doesn’t take a rocket scientists to figure out that most mortgages will exceed $626.25, so right there you’ve gone over 100% debt to income ratio and they come to the brilliant decision that they shouldn’t give you a loan, because well…your debt to income ratio is too high.

For people who have the guts to start their own business and pursue it, you are going to have to have to know that it is pretty useless to try to borrow any money until you’ve had a solid two years of income that they can wave their magic formulas on to predict what you will do in the coming years.It’s a good thing that entrepreneurs have more insight and determination to grow a business than the banks have to risk lending their money to you.

Facebook Characters In The Social Network Movie

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Today, Oct. 1, 2010 marks the release of the movie, “The Social Network.”  The story about the development of Facebook.  Facebook has been recently estimated  to be worth $22 billion dollars.  Mike Morwitz, a venture capitalist said, “the product (Facebook)  helps solve a real problem for many people in a simple, elegant way.” Mark Zuckerberg created the social networking platform that changed the way the millions of people communicates.

As with any company, Facebook has interesting twists and turns during the creation phase and the building out phase of their product. Knowing a little bit about some of the other key players in this company can help you appreciate the evolution of a social network.

Previewing the Social Netwok
Social Media Fans in SLC, Utah, Watch The Social Network Movie Together

Eduardo Saverin

Eduardo Saverin, a 26 year old born in Brazil, is a graduate of Harvard holding a degree in economics. He assumed the role of Mark’s business manager at first, however his role in the company diminished when Sean Parker was able to acquire venture capital form Peter Thiel.

He was the person behind the development of  the movie, “The Social Network.” At the urging of a friend, Will McMullen, Eduardo eventually  disclosed behind the scenes information to Ben Mezrich who later published a book called, “The Accidental Billionaires.”

Eduardo Saverin  won a lawsuit against Mark Zuckerberg which allowed his name to be listed as the co-founder of Facebook. He owns a 5% share worth $1.1 billion dollars. Part of the settlement agreement stipulates that he does not discuss this situation any further. Eight days younger than Zuckerberg, he is the newest member of the Forbes 400 Richest People In America List.

Sean Parker

Another key player is Sean Parker. Sean’s childhood brings to light how he became involved with Mark Zuckerberg.

Sean’s father, a  U.S. government oceanographer, began teaching him programming at age seven. When he was just 16 years old he was successfully hacking into various networks, some included the military and large national foundations. His obsession with computers led him to spend odd hours working through the night and basically having a hard time completing school work.

One night his father got angry with him because of his poor performance and grabbed the computer keyboard away from him. Although he told his father he hadn’t logged out of the program he was working on, his father ignored his pleas. He knew that his activities would be discovered.

The next day, his father pulled him out of school for a so called “orthodontics” appointment. Uncomfortable with the “orthodontics” appointment excuse, since he had no orthodontics, he anticipated his consequences. When he arrived home, the FBI was there waiting to interrogate him.

He was given community service for his punishment and for obvious reasons, barely graduated from high school.

At age 19, he invented the popular music sharing program, Napster.

In 2004, he emailed Mark Zuckerberg about Facebook and soon after they became partners.  Mark Zuckerberg said, “few people are as smart as he is.”  Once the President of Facebook, Sean was asked to step down because of his involvement with cocaine.

David Kirkpatrick, author of  “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World, says “He is one of the great serial entrepreneurs of his generation.”

“The Social Network,” opens today and should prove to be interesting for many social media fans and entrepreneurs.

Related Information:

Owners of Facebook:

Mark Zuckerburg – 25%
Accel Partners – 10%
Digital Sky Technologies –  10%
Dustin Moskovitz – 6%
Eduardo Saverin – 5%
Sean Parker -4%
Peter Thiel – 3%
Greylock Partners – 1.5%
Merich Capital Ventures – 1.5%
Microsoft – 1.3%
Li Ka-Shing – .75%
Interpublic Group – .5%
Five early employees – less than 1%
Mark Pincus & Reid Hoffman – undisclosed
Western Technology Investments – undisclosed

Google Awards $2 Million Dollars To Sal Khan

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On Friday, September 24, 2010, Google awarded $2 million dollars to Sal Khan for his contribution in educating the world through his math and science videos. His website, Khan Academy is the largest virtual school on the web and it is free. When asked what he was going to do with the money, he explained that he is going to translate the videos into Spanish, Mandarin, Arabic, Hindi, Portuguese and all the major languages of the world.

Sal began creating teaching videos in 2004, while working as a hedge fund manager. He wanted to help a family member learn math. The videos he made were posted to YouTube and started becoming popular with people all over the world. People would write in and tell him that they were able to pass algebra because of him. He saved some people from dropping out of school completely. He received so much positive feedback, that it inspired him to keep creating videos.

Since then, he has created over 2000 learning videos on subjects like algebra, basic math, calculus, chemistry, economics, finance, geometry, linear algebra, physics, venture capital, statistics and trigonometry and his web site has attracted close to 2.5 million views.

There couldn’t be a better qualified individual to learn from. Sal received a perfect score on the math portion of the SAT exams. He earned three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one in mathematics, one in computer science and one in electrical engineering. He earned two master’s degrees, one MS from MIT and an MBA from Harvard.

Creating simple videos with basic tools, Sal has an exceptional ability to take complicated concepts and make them simple. Watching the videos is like being in math class where the teacher writes out equations on the blackboard. He is so engaging that some people say that they like him better on video than they do in person.

Sal has been dubbed as Bill Gates favorite teacher. “This guy is amazing, said Gates. “I’d say we’ve moved about 160 IQ points from the hedge fund category to the teaching-may-people-in-a-leveraged-way category. It was a good day when his wife let him quit his job.”

At a recent gathering held in Aspen, Colorado called the Aspen Ideas Festival, where leaders from around the world gather to discuss ideas and issues of global concern, Bill Gates spent time speaking about Sal Khan and his contribution to the world. Mr. Gates has used the videos to help his own children learn biology and algebra. Sal Khan was probably not surprised by this recent public attention because in 2009, he was awarded the Microsoft Tech Award for education.