I wanted to update, to write something clever, something intricate, something meaningful.

But...

I am so very, very tired.

Frankly I'm stalling so that I don't go to bed so early that I can't actually fall asleep.

Today, we link for no reason to this article about discount premium bonds and then we away for slumber.

 

Here comes tax day. Taxes are not due today, taxes are due on April 17th this year.

How fast can investing make you rich?

There are many things standing in the way of a successful investment strategy. One of the most common is an unrealistic expecatation of how long it should take for investing to make you wealthy.

I had completely forgotten about my Posterous accounts until the company announced it had been acquired by Twitter.

Now, I like Twitter as much as the next tech-savvy guy, but it's never been as useful for me as it has been for others. I wonder if the integration between Twitter and Posterous will change that?

In the meantime, check out some of the writings from ArcticLlama at FinanceGourmet and elsewhere around the web.

• Credit Check Total Review
• Credit Karma Monitoring Review
• Using My Blog Guest
• Is Traditional Television Dying

See you soon. I miss my Posterous, now that I remember it is here :)

An online financial service called Credit Karma offers registered users a way to look at their credit score for free! But, is CreditKarma.com a legitimate business offering?

Check out these articles over on FinanceGourmet.com for answers:

1. Is Credit Karma a Scam?
2. Full Credit Karma Review
3. Review of Credit Karma Credit Monitoring

Don't forget to look at these posts with information about credit reports and credit bureaus, as well as Fair Issac, purveyor of the FICO credit score.

• Understand Credit Reports
• Credit Score Basics
• Understanding Credit Bureaus

Keep your eyes open for more reviews of financial services and clever online resources.

Is Chrome getting heavier, or is Firefox getting lighter?

It doesn't seem like Google Chrome is any heavier than it used to be, but Firefox seems a lot lighter on its feet these days.  Maybe it's the Vacuum Places add-on or maybe it's the latest software updates.  Either way, I no longer start Chrome to be fast.

These days, Chrome is my JavaScript enabled, non-ad blocking browser (with cookies set to delete on browser close) and Firefox is my NoScript, ads blocked, fully customized and tricked out browser.

Oh, and Firefox is my business browser and serious browser mostly because although there is finally a PDF viewer in Chrome,  Google Chrome STILL does not have a Print Preview function.  I guess Googlers don't believe in hard copy.  I copy and paste URLs from Chrome to Firefox all the time in order to get a look at how many pages I need to print in order to get just the article to print and not the 11 pages of comments with it.  Oh, and the percentage size print feature (fully integrated into the print preview functionality) is GOLD.  I love using print preview to see that a print out will be one page and two lines on the second page, then click 80% and get the whole thing on a very readable single page.

Have a nice Wednesday.

 

Although the case is being misinterpreted all over the Internet, it is true that police officers and other government law enforcement agencies can search your cell phone without first obtaining a warrant. The part that everyone is leaving out, is that they may search your mobile phone without a warrant after you have been arrested.

In other words, just like your coat pockets, and other personal affects, your cell phone may be looked at by police officers once you have been legally detained for probable cause (arrested). It's not like a cop can just grab your iPhone and go through it for no reason. Also, police have no more access to calls you make and recieve on your cell phone than they do with your regular phone.

If you are waiting for this court decision to be overturned, don't hold your breath. This case went 5-2 in California, one of the most liberal courts in the land, so chances are not good for this one to be thrown out higher up the legal food chain.

I finally stumbled across a mainstream journalist who refuses to buy into the hype around Facebook and call it like everyone who isn't a techie blogger sees it. Facebook doesn't make all that much money now (profit-wise) and its only hope for the future is to cash in while everyone seems ignorant of the fact that users are not the same thing as dollars.

Facebook's valuation climbs with every investment, if and only if, you subscribe to the theory that the value of a company is what the last buyer paid for it. That doesn't mean that it has figured out how to turn users into profits. And, it most certainly doensn't mean that it has insulated itself from being the next AOL.

The only question is, will Facebook cash out before everyone sees the smoke and mirrors or will is sink slowly taking all of that temporary wealth with them? It looks as though Goldman Sachs' clients will get a front row seat to that contest.

Yesterday, the personal finance blog Finance Gourmet speculated on how overvalued Facebook might be right now, and more specifically, if any of the company valuations being thrown around by financial analysts and private share exchanges are anything more than wild (optimistic) guesses.

I had a different thought today as I went through my usual social media routine. As one of Facebook's 500 million users, I became a "Fan" of a bunch of things and then when Facebook changed the rules, I started to "LIKE" a bunch of things too. However, whenever one of those things that I am a fan of posts something lame or posts too often, I click the HIDE button and they disappear forever from my Facebook News Feed.

Here is the issue. I am still a fan of all of those things, but I never see a single word from them, nor do I interact with them again in anyway. The question is, how many "fans" out there do the same thing on a regular basis?

In other words, if you have 50,000 fans is that worth anything? How many of those 50K fans have hidden you? How many are ignoring everything you post or using one of the friends lists to screen out your status updates?

Has Facebook made its service less valuable by making it less apparent how well any Facebook business, social group, interest, or marketing attempt is working?

Just because you have 30,000 fans, doens't mean that you have 30,000 users getting your posts.

Or, am I just being overly analytical?

These aren't meaningless questions. They go right to the heart of the business strategy value of using Facebook as a way to stay in touch. Contrast this to Twitter, where followers are always recieving every one of your tweets. (Whether or not they are reading them or paying any attention is another matter.)

 

Google has done everyone a big favor with its Google Chrome web browser. Like all other major web browsers, Chrome allows users to install extensions which allow for additional or customized functionality to be added to individual software installations. In this way, every user can get the features and functions that they need and want from their web browser without the original developer having to build, test, and install every one of those features into the main browser software installation package. In this world of over-bloated software (I'm looking at you Adobe), extensions have the added benefit of providing what some users want, while not forcing other users to have the code installed but never used.

Unfortunately, installing extensions is a lot like installing other software or utilities on your computer. By installing them, you are giving the software access and permissions to do things with your data. That means that it is very important to only install software or extensions from developers you trust. The catch is that it is not always easy to know for sure that the extension you are installing is from a trusted developer, especially if you are trying to install a Chrome version of an extension you already know and trust from another browser like Firefox, because there is nothing to keep an unscrupulous developer from taking the same name.

Google verifies extensions offered in its Extensions Gallery for Chrome by telling you what domain name or web address the developer has. If you like the Xmarks extension on Firefox and you know that extension comes from a developer at Xmarks.com, all you need to do to trust the Xmarks extension from Google's Chrome Extension Gallery is look for the Google verification that the extension you are looking at has been verified as from xmarks.com.

Stay safe, and happy web surfing.