If you are seriously considering investing on foreign exchange market you need to study the whole thing first. One of the resources in the web you can use to learn more about foreign currency trading is www.money-forex.com. This is a new trading portal that provides the more relevant and the more basic information about foreign currency trading.

As a trader, the most important feature of this website which attracted me, is the comprehensive feed of relevant financial news. You need not surf the net to research other sources of news that matters to your trading activity because this website gives you a complete rundown of the more relevant financial news. The website saves us time and effort by providing us real time news feeds as it happens. We need not sift through the clutter of financial news available in the net and determine which news matters most...the website does all that for us.

On top of the that, the website features its own review of the more trusted online brokers to help you decide which online broker is trustworthy enough for your use! Www.money-forex.com also has a whole section devoted to trading strategy - a good resource to beef up your trading skills.

Information is vital to trading the currency markets successfully. This is what www.money-forex.com gives you - financial news that matters, when you want it and where it counts the most plus a wealth of trading resources vital to your daily trading needs.

It is easy to create and publish your blog. But when you talk about website traffic, readership and inter-activity with other bloggers- this is where the hard work comes. There are many blogs around giving free and useful advice on these essential subjects. I am still a neophyte blogger and so I won't dare give you any advice on the matter. But what I can do is rob you of some fun in surfing the web and discovering new sites by sharing with you a list of some of the helpful sites I have visited to cut your surfing time. Cheers!

Here is my initial list of websites which I believe can be of great help to all upstart bloggers. (Site description adapted from http://Go2Web20.net)

1. zemanta.com
Making Blogging Fun Again
Have your browser understand what you are blogging about and suggest pictures, links, articles and tags to make your posts more vibrant.


2.blogcatalog.com
A Social Community for Bloggers
BlogCatalog's purpose it to list Blogs available on the Internet. The goal is to provide a service that drives traffic to Blog owner's sites as well as give users searching for Blog's an easy way to find them.


3. mybloglog.com
For all This Talk of a Global Conversation Throughout the Blogosphere
MyBlogLog is a communities service to empower authors and readers to operate at the same level. For the first time, everyone who reads a web site or blog can learn about and engage with one another, and in the process take the conversation to a whole new level.

4. blogrush.com
Your Blog Syndication Network
BlogRush is a free service that was created to help bloggers solve their #1 need:
More Readers For Their Blog. By adding the BlogRush Widget to a blog, a blogger can get instant distribution for their latest blog post titles across a network of related blogs.

5.technorati.com
Explore the blogosphere
Technorati is the authority on what's going on in the world of weblogs. The power of weblogs is that they allow millions of people to easily publish their ideas, and millions more to comment on them. Blogs are a fluid, dynamic medium, more akin to a 'conversation' than to a library — which is how the Web has often been described in the past. With an increasing number of people reading, writing, and commenting on blogs, the way we use the Web is shifting in a fundamental way. Instead of being passive consumers of information, more and more Internet users are becoming active participants. Weblogs let everyone have a voice.

6. feedblitz.com
Email your blogs, boost your readership
FeedBlitz is a service that monitors blogs, RSS feeds and Web URLs to provide greater reach for feed publishers. FeedBlitz takes all the headache out of converting feed and blog updates into email digests, delivered daily to subscribers' inboxes. NEW LAYOUT!

7. bloglovin.com
New Blog Posts from your Favourite Blogs in one Place
bloglovin´ gathers new blog posts from your favourite blogs in one place. Just add all the blogs you want to follow, and then you’ll get notified every time one of your favourite blogs has written a new blog post.

8.business.blinkweb.com
Website Creation Tool
Want a website to sell your product, but don't know where to begin? If you know how to point and click, you can create your very own professional, "sales letter style" website or blog in minutes.

9.sikbox.com
Live Search Engine for your Blog
Sikbox is a service that allows you to add a full featured live search to your site or blog within minutes.To use Sikbox you just need to add the code into your site and Sikbox will do the heavy lifting for you. The code is just a single line Javascript code that can be placed anywhere in your website, simple and easy, no complications. (Updated 10/8/2008 9:47 AM)
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10.edicy.com
Build and Edit Websites with Ease
Create a fresh site with nice design and web hosting on any domain in seconds. It’s seamless, all in one and unprecedentedly easy to use. Oh, and it’s free too.

11. madmimi.com
Simple. Lovely. Email Marketing.
Mad Mimi is a simple, intelligent and powerful email marketing utility that anyone can use. Mad Mimi makes email marketing easy for the creator, and easier on the eyes for the receiver. With ground-breaking technology, Mad Mimi is the simplest way to create branded, well-designed newsletters and promotions. Sign up free today and get started with simple, lovely email marketing.


12.tineye.com
Image Search Engine
TinEye is an image search engine on the web to use image identification technology. Given an image to search for, TinEye tells you where and how that image appears all over the we - even if it has been modified.


13.addtoany.com
Subscribe and Bookmark Widgets that Include Every Service for Your Visitors
Add to Any's "Subscribe" and "Bookmark" widgets let your visitors subscribe using any feed reader, bookmark using any bookmark manager, and share using any social service. Widgets contain a searchable menu of every applicable service, with the most popular displayed by default.


14. disqus.com
Track your Comments and Replies
Disqus is a new, distributed comment system for blogs and websites. The comment system works hand-in-hand with a dedicated forum backend, so the conversations are never fragmented.


15.lijit.com
A Better Way to Search for Information
Lijit Creates a social network search, based on your blog(s), your opml, and your social networks and web 2.0 sites including digg, flickr, reddit, myspace, linkedin, and youtube. It creates a Google CSE using an Google account you provide.


16.hyplet.com
Your Online Signature
Hyplets are FREE personal IDs and online Flyers, which you can easily add to emails and Web pages, allowing you to enhance your online presence and promote your content with a single click.


17.blogmailr.com
Publishing to your Blog Made Easy
BlogMailr is all about making publishing to your blog easy. There is nothing to download, nothing to install, it’s free for personal use, and works with all popular blogging software. BlogMailr allows you to publish to your blog from anything that can send an email whether it’s your PC, Mac, Phone, PDA … you name it. If you can send an email you’ve got everything you need to use BlogMailr.


18tellafriend.socialtwist.com
Leverage Word of Mouth Marketing
Tell-a-Friend is a complimentary tool that lets readers recommend and share content directly with their friends word of mouth style via any method: e-mail, IM, social networks, Twitter or even their blog. Without taking readers' attention away from the content page, Tell-a-Friend taps their internal address book to access their lists of friends from each of the supported networks and contact them individually or as a group.


19. findmeon.com
The Cure for Multiple Web Personality Disorder
FindMeOn is an online profile management service that connects your identities across social networks, blogs & more. Instead of collapsing all of your network identities onto one site, FindMeOn helps you manage your circles of friends, family, colleagues and others… respecting the divisions of your real life online.

20.askablogr.com
A Free Blor Q & A Widget
Askablogr is an integrated blog question and answer (Q&A) service that:
- Makes it easy for blog readers to submit questions to their favorite bloggers
- Makes it easy for bloggers to answer some questions and decline others
- Automagically publishes these Q&A exchanges to the blogger's blog
- Creates a master index of all the participating bloggers, readers and Q&A sessions.

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What a way to start the week! I got an e-mail from entrecard saying my accounts have been deleted for multiple violations. At first I panicked! 45% of my daily site hits come from entrecard members dropping ec's on my site! I frantically tried to contact support to try to appeal the case. One of the reasons they deleted my account was for having a pop-up advertisement that plays audio on openning. Actually I wasn't aware of such an ad but I do know I have a linkword ad with Linkworth which was just recently approved. I received an email saying the ads will be coming out soon. I never really see the ads. I presume the ads are one of those that pops up only for selected ip addresses. Other than this, I don't know of any applications or widgets or posts in my sites that plays automatic audio. I tried posting a video from Floglo one time but when I noticed it affected the loading time of the site, I deleted the post. The other reason they gave me is for copying content from another site (plagiarism?). In one of my posts (THE BILL AYERS FACTOR IN THE COMING ELECTIONS!), I quoted sections from Wikipedia but I was careful enough to cite the source and even put a link to the site. But, ahh, they still considered this as plagiarism. (I thought Wikipedia is public domain and you are free to cite data and information sources from it?). The other reason they gave me is for not having original content....for plagiarising myself! I have two mirror sites for Swirling Thoughts and they are deleting my EC account for posting similar contents on all three. (I would have gladly deleted my mirror sites had they asked me!) My intention was to nurse all three sites until I am able to generate sufficient readership for each one of them for me to decide to spin them off with their own unique content and identity. And it's kind of funny that EC had to do this to me after that controversial post on Bill Ayers and his links to Obama when I have had my EC account for the past two months..

Anyway, after a while of pondering and sulking for a while, I went to my site analytics and saw that there is still the other 55% non-entrecard visits. My hopes surged once more. A close look at the stats showed that these are unique visits - Mostly coming from my Blog Catalog and Mybloglog communities. These visits are real visits...with purpose...to look at the site that attracted them on the onset from the dashboards of the two social networks.

This made me realize that EC is not a great loss after all. In fact, EC provides artificial website traffic since 90% of the visits are for EC dropping only and the droppers would be in your site only for a few seconds and that's it! To me, this defeats the purpose of blogging. So, I am now back to basics....which is to keep on writing good posts that are relevant and would rouse the interest of site visitors. I believe there is no better way than this because people visit a site a second and a third time (even subscribe to its feed) because they like the content.

I did some SEO work on all three sites and subscribed to Google analytics. I also decided that this will be my last common post on all three sites. I will start creating a unique identity for each of my sites. Swirling Thoughts (http://bigdaddyrichard.blogspot.com/) will be about my random thoughts on life and will delved on general topics of interest to all - sort of a personal journal. Traders Hub (http://bigdaddyrichard-swirlingthoughts.blogspot.com/) shall have contents solely about online investing, foreign currency trading, and forex scam. Big Daddy's Trunkated Ideas (http://bigdaddyrichard.wordpress.com/) will deal on general business topics and political insights.

So for those who have been following my blogs and my topics you may need to visit all three sites after this post to get all of Big Daddy's ideas (LOL)! But ahh, I will install my content widgets on all three sites so that if there is any post that may interest you from myother sites you can just click on the link!

I wish to thank all those who have supported my blogs for the past two months and hope that you will continue visiting my sites. I will strive harder to bring you contents which will be useful and of interest to all of you.

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Image via CrunchBase

I am barely two months now as a blogger. And like any other upstart blogger, I want to improve traffic to my site and at the same time improve my ranking with such sites as Technorati, Alexa, Google, etc. (You guessed it right! I also want to monetize my blog.) My membership with Entrecard (with their "U drop I follow promo) is helping my daily traffic a lot up to now. (A million thanks to all of my regular EC droppers!) My Mybloglog and Blogcatalog memberships are also doing me a lot of good in accumulating quality readers, gaining good friends and establishing new contacts. To help myself and other upstart bloggers just like me who visits this site, I thought of adopting a "Banner Exchange" program of my own and make the visit worth your while. I found out about this from being a co-sponsor to a blogger friend's blog contest (Help Children - Win EC credits - see the post below with the same title). When the contest got underway and banners and linkages were posted, my ranking improved a lot. From an Alexa ranking of 1,036,00, it improved to 782,000 while my Technorati Authority jumped from 4 to 14!

It is simple and it will do wonders for your blogs. We exchange banners and our links become more permanent and more visible to Search Engines. (I noticed that subscription to rss feeds is not really helping much to boost our ranking.) All you need to do is reserve a section in your side bar or your footer and post my banner code there. I will even make it easier for you by making the banner for you - I will make the banner for you using a screenshot of your site ( or your EC banner if you have one, or you can send me your chosen graphiccs via email!) Here's what you need to do:

1. Copy the code of any of my banners below and paste it in your site.
2. Click "comments" at the end of this post and post a comment indicating whether you want a new banner or if you want me to use your EC banner ( if you have any). Please post your URL and email address too.
3. Post a message in my shoutbox (at the sidebar) after you've done steps 1 & 2 and you are done.

Every time a new member subscribes to our exchange, I will be sending all of you an updated code so you can update your own. For this site, I placed the banner exchange at the footer!




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HAPPY BLOGGING!

What a nasty situation U.S. congressmen are finding themselves in courtesy of the $700M financial bail-out plan. The U.S. senate has now passed on the ball to the U.S. Congress after approving a sweetened version of EESA to force another showdown at the lower house. Lobbying is being done around the clock to insure the passage of the bill. Concessions from both parties are being offered and accepted without hesitation or second thoughts. And why not, everyone was a given a terrifying preview of what might happen again if approval of the modified Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 is once more derailed. The 778 points Dow dive last Monday after Congress failed to pass the bill, sent a terrifying reminder to everyone concerned. The spill off effect in other bourses worldwide was just as unnerving.

A lot of finger pointing ensued in the aftermath of the failed passage of the bill. Had the congressmen simply done their jobs clean without the unnecessary political grand standing and uncalled for fire brand speeches aimed at gaining political advantage over the issue, the Dow would not have dropped that much. The current scenario is a chilling reminder of the stock market crash of 1929. Stocks started to nose dive on October 24, 1929 - Black Thursday. Leading Wall Street Bankers tried to remedy the situation by pooling their resources together. Their efforts failed resulting into the now infamous Black Tuesday Stock Market Crash of October 29, 1929. This pulled down the country into the era of the Great Depression.

We may really see a repeat of 1929 , and, what a friend and fellow blogger aptly termed as "The Collapse of The House of Card." The effect will be felt in all corners of the globe and will be long lasting. Recovery will be slow and painful.

The congress men who will once again shoot down this bill come Friday will be praised by the growing number of their discontented constituency. But, will they be willing to put in their hands the blame for not doing anything to prevent another Black Friday scenario in the U.S. I doubt it. On the other hand if they choose to support the bill and pass it, they may prevent a world wide financial crisis but they risk the chance of not being voted back into office by their disgruntled constituents.

DAMNED IF YOU DO, DAMNED IF YOU DON'T INDEED!

It's truly amazing how politics can stifle efforts to plug the bleeding U.S. economy. To the surprise of many, the much anticipated approval of the $700B Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 didn't happen. An agreement was not reached contrary to the much publicized forecasts made by both political parties over the weekend. Each of them wants to prevent the other from taking credit for this bold move to prevent a meltdown of the U.S.financial markets. With the presidential elections just around the corner, this is politics at play!

Both the Democrats and the Republicans know that a bail-out is necessary. The country has been bleeding for along time now from the bubble burst effect triggered by the mortgage industry subprime crisis. A government intervention in the form of a bail out is long overdue. The situation has placed the Democrats and Republicans alike in a classic "damn if you do and damn if you don't" type of a situation.

Could it be that the Republicans really waited this long before solving the crisis so they can use the issue as a political propaganda to boost the sagging popularity of their candidate?

Could it be that the Democrats intentionally remained passive about the issue since the Mortgage Industry's "bubble burst" happened earlier on so they can pin the blame on the Republicans and wrest control of the white house?

We may never really know. What I do know is that both parties are aware of the fact that something must be done to correct the country's financial woes immediately, because if nothing is done right now it will send the U.S. economy into a tailspin which will send the country and the the rest of the whole world into a long drawn recession. I believe the Democrats realize too that such a scenario will not be to their advantage even if they wrest control of the white house by November because by then the job of reviving the economy will be a herculean job and their white house residency may be short lived if they fall short of expectations.

I am sure by now both parties are trying to map out their own strategies to resolve the impasse. I even believe a solution will be had before the week ends. Each of them just want to make sure that the other will not unduly gain politically from the passage of EESA 2008. Already the stock market made the steepest dive since the last depression! Further delays may cause long lasting damage to the U.S. economy and ultimately the rest of the world.

Below is a short summary of EESA 2008 which amazingly, had to come from Xinhua, China's People's Daily Online (http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/90001/90778/90858/90864/6508590.html):



The following is the summary of U.S. financial bailout bill draft, which will authorize the U.S. government the largest financial intervention since the Great Depression.

I. Stabilizing the Economy

The Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 (EESA) provides up to 700 billion dollars to the Secretary of the Treasury to buy mortgages and other assets that are clogging the balance sheets of financial institutions and making it difficult for working families, small businesses, and other companies to access credit, which is vital to a strong and stable economy. EESA also establishes a program that would allow companies to insure their troubled assets.

II. Homeownership Preservation

EESA requires the Treasury to modify troubled loans many the result of predatory lending practices wherever possible to help American families keep their homes. It also directs other federal agencies to modify loans that they own or control. Finally, it improves the HOPE for Homeowners program by expanding eligibility and increasing the tools available to the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help more families keep their homes.

III. Taxpayer Protection

Taxpayers should not be expected to pay for Wall Street's mistakes. The legislation requires companies that sell some of their bad assets to the government to provide warrants so that taxpayers will benefit from any future growth these companies may experience as a result of participation in this program. The legislation also requires the President to submit legislation that would cover any losses to taxpayers resulting from this program by charging a small, broad-based fee on all financial institutions.

IV. No Windfalls for Executives

Executives who made bad decisions should not be allowed to dump their bad assets on the government, and then walk away with millions of dollars in bonuses. In order to participate in this program, companies will lose certain tax benefits and, in some cases, must limit executive pay. In addition, the bill limits "golden parachutes" and requires that unearned bonuses be returned.

V. Strong Oversight

Rather than giving the Treasury all the funds at once, the legislation gives the Treasury 250 billion dollars immediately, then requires the President to certify that additional funds are needed (100 billion dollars, then 350 billion dollars subject to Congressional disapproval). The Treasury must report on the use of the funds and the progress in addressing the crisis. EESA also establishes an Oversight Board so that the Treasury cannot act in an arbitrary manner. It also establishes a special inspector general to protect against waste, fraud and abuse.

Filipinos in general couldn't careless as to who will win the upcoming U.S. presidential elections. Most of them are too pre-occupied with their day-to-day struggle for survival to even bother about it. Besides, there's nothing much anyone here can do for any favored candidates if ever they have any. However, immediately after campaign started in the U.S., there was one section of the Philippine business community that went abuzz with some election rumors which somehow found its way to the country. Word quickly got around the business community here that Obama will close all call center operations outside the U.S. Obama is not in favor of outsourcing call center services and would want these jobs offered to Americans and confined to the U.S. only. According to the spreading rumor, an Obama win is bad news for local call center companies here.

Call center companies are actually making very significant contributions to the Philippine economy. Not only do they provide easy-to-land employment opportunities to the ever growing local work force here, they have also triggered significant adjustments in salaries and wages of white collar workers. Before the proliferation of call center outfits in the Philippines, local companies feasted on hiring underpaid, over qualified workers who were left with no choice but to accept whatever employment opportunity that comes around their way. Now, these local employers need to adjust wages to compete with job offers made by call center companies to the great benefit of the local workforce.

If the rumors are true and if Obama does win the elections in November, it will be goodbye time for the call center companies and hello once again to low wages and widespread unemployment. However, a McCain win will be a welcome relief and will mean a continuance of the call center contribution to the local economy.

Yes! That is his name - Takayuki. My wife and my three daughters fondly call him Taka. His parents moved in to our neighborhood while his mother was still pregnant with him barely a year ago. His father is a Japanese national while his mother is a Filipina. Yuki was born a month before I left for the U.S. I still remember seeing him being taken out in the mornings by her mom for his daily sunning sessions. What I never expected was this slinky eyed baby will be the jewel of the eyes of my wife and my three daughters.

My own daughters are grown ups now although all three are still attending college. Having grown up together with barely a year each in between them, they never really had the joy and the experience of taking care of a kid brother or sister. So all three have always been fond of babies. They, including my wife never really mind babysitting for neighbors. In fact they love it. There is a different joy and excitement in the house when there is a baby around.

At one time when one of my daughters came home from school, she chanced upon Taka crying so hard in the hands of his mom. My daughter, a nursing student, offered to help. The mom without hesitation, handed over the crying Taka to her and lo and behold the baby stopped crying. My daughter was allowed to bring Taka home to the delight of everyone in my house. From then on, Taka became a regular in the house. And lately, I heard that the baby Taka sleeps over frequently with my daughters. There is not a day that Taka won't be at our house after my daughters come home from school because whoever among them comes home first will pass by our neighbor's house and borrow the baby.

Today, a certain sadness is felt by everyone in the house. Taka is going home to Japan with his family on October 9. All that will be left will be the fond memories of this adorable, slinky eyed Takayuki. My daughters and my wife know that baby Taka is too young to ever remember the 3 young misses who adorably love him so much and the misses's mother who Taka has also learned to call mom. For posterity's sake, and to at least perpetuate the memory of my family's lovely experience with baby Taka, I am posting their pictures together in my blog.