So… 2008 comes to a close in a little over twelve hours now (CST) and while most people will be thrilled to put the bitch that is 2008 to rest I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wouldn’t miss it a little. 2008 was the year where the notion of global warming took a few on a chin, Democrats took over our government and O.J. was finally convicted. The Giants won the Super Bowl, the Phillies the World Series and the price of gas fluctuated more than Star Jones’ weight.

This year has had plenty of bad news including over 220,000 disaster related deaths world-wide and 151 US service men and women lost their lives in Afghanistan while 309 perished in Iraq. Economies around the world are in crisis thanks to economic lows not seen since the great depression while the cornerstones of the American economy, Ford, GM and Chrysler are fighting tooth and nail just to survive.

Still, with all of the horrible things that happened in the year 2008 she was also a great year to be had. 45 years after Martin Luther King Jr.’s "I Have a Dream" my fellow Americans and I elected our first African American President in Barrack Obama. We found water on Enceladus, sent the Phoenix Lander to northern Mars and the Mars Rovers have been trucking on Mars for nearly 5 years.

I could go on and on about the good and bad that 2008 brought us all but at the end of the day (and year) we’re still standing… maybe not with as much money in our retirement accounts as before but we’re still here fighting, striving and moving forward. The end of another year is always bitter-sweet to me, and 2008 is no different… okay, it may be just a tad more bitter this year seeing as I just turned 30…

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I know that trading stocks isn’t for the faint of heart but I figure I throw plenty of my money away on new gadgets and nights out on the town so I might as well start doing something constructive with my spare cash. SogoTrade seems to be the perfect online broker for an amateur trying to make their way into the Wall Street game as they offer the cheapest trades on the Internet. When you sign-up they give you 100 free trades (as most online brokers do) but the trick is, their standard trades are just $3.00 each… that means as a day trader your total swing on a trade is just $6.00 in total commissions, which makes a huge difference when dealing in small trades. Better yet, if you become a premium member for just $10.00 a month your trades are just $1.50 each!

Now, I don’t encourage anyone out there to just jump into day trading head first, I hope they all take time to think about it, research it and then make a decision. I’ve read a lot of great information regarding day trading and plan on reading even more. I’m about 100 pages into The Complete Guide to Day Trading and still have the following books waiting for a read: A Beginner’s Guide to Day Trading Online, The Complete Guide to Investing in Short Term Trading: How to Earn High Rates of Returns Safely, The Little Book of Bull Moves in Bear Markets: How to Keep Your Portfolio Up When the Market is Down and The Neatest Little Guide to Stock Market Investing. Bottom line: read, read and read some more. Day trading is not a get-rich-quick scheme.

Excitingly enough, I made my first trade yesterday afternoon, buying 100 shares of the CIT Group (CIT) at $4.43 a share… and just about 30 minutes later I unloaded the stocks for $4.83 a share, scoring $40.00 in profit. I had done it, I purchased 100 shares of an American company and turned a profit! Sure transactions like my first one won’t make me rich overnight but it isn’t a bad start either, especially considering the past 48 hours the Dow Jones Industrial Average has lost over 800 points. I am going to continue to make "safe trades" like CIT over the next several weeks until I can refine my plan for trading. The goal I am making for myself during these first weeks is trying to prove to myself that even during the current turmoil on Wall Street that there is money being made.

My current plan is simple, I plan to buy and sell shares of low dollar stocks ($1-10 per share) multiple times a day to hopefully pull in $50-300 of profit a day… during these first weeks I am going to limit myself to a maximum of 100 shares per purchase. This is where SogoTrade’s low dollar trades come in so handy for beginners. For example: let’s say I buy 100 shares of GM (GM) at $4.50 a share, then an hour later I resell those 100 shares at $4.80 for a profit of $30, with SogoTrade’s premium account buying and selling those shares cost me a total of $3.00 leaving me with a profit of $27. Taking those same numbers and using Scottrade ($7 per trade) my profit would only be $16 while TD AmeriTrade ($9.99 per trade) would only be $10.02… you see where I am going with this?

In the end I’m hoping to continue to improve upon my plan while making damn sure that I stick with that plan. All information regarding day trading mentions making a plan, refining that plan and sticking to that plan… "your plan is your life-line" as they say. My current plan is watching 61 low dollar stocks from the S&P 500, purchasing a maximum of 100 shares at a time and selling all shares by the end of the trading day (3:00PM CST). Over the coming months I hope to leverage the profits I make in my trades as more buying power to diversify my daily portfolio allowing me to buy more and more stocks at 100 shares each, so I can turn those $40 profits per trading day into hundreds of dollars a day.

Why low dollar stocks? Well, there are a few reasons. First, the risk is much lower on low-dollar stocks… 100 shares of a $4.00 stock is a lot easier to swallow than 100 shares of a $20.00 stock. Secondly, low-dollar stocks generally have a lot of trading volume when compared to other high-dollar stocks. Sure there are exceptions to this rule but the vast majority of the stocks I’m watching have at least two million shares bought and sold in an average trading day with some going as high as one hundred million shares. That kind of volume pretty much guarantees that these stocks will fluctuated a minimum of 10-20% in a trading day, which is the kind of movement I look for in making those $40-$50 sales.

I know I have an uphill battle on my hands and I know I will have my good days and most importantly my bad ones, but the key is that I learn from those bad days so I make them few and far between. Today I’m going to keep my eyes on Ford (F) and GM as they both release their earnings reports this morning which should be dismal considering their asking for a 25 million dollar government bailout. I’ll also be keeping my eye on the National City Corporation (NCC) and Wachovia Corporation (WB) as both of them may see another 100 million volume trading day today. National City just happens to be my mortgage lender… funny how that works, as I’m sure they’ve seen better days; they’re down over $15.00 a share for the year, OUCH!

Over the coming days, weeks and months I hope to post frequent updates and reviews about my trading experiences… including reviews on all the books mentioned above. So stay tuned and wish me luck!

Have a blog that you wish you would update more often? I know I do… well Microsoft recently released a free tool dubbed Windows Live Writer that may help speed up the process a bit. In late May I made a quick post about using Adobe Contribute CS3 for the first time and when I made that post I thought I would actually use the software to update my blog… but that never happened. I didn’t like the look or feel of the software and I found it was faster to simply log into my WordPress blog and post it all the old-fashion way.

Well, here I am back touting another blog publishing product but this time it is free and from Microsoft, and being a professed Microsoft fanboy I’ll actually probably use this one more often. The software works with most major blogging platforms including Windows Live Spaces, SharePoint, WordPress and Blogger. Basically you use the software like you would Microsoft Word and when you’re ready to publish to your blog you just hit the publish button… and *tada* like magic your blog is updated.

I’m going to give this a shot for a few blog posts and see how it goes… if nothing else comes out of it at least it will get me off my lazy ass long enough to make a few posts. If I like the software I’ll take the time out to post a quick "HOW TO" article on it in the next several days… stay tuned.

There are few things in this world that I love more than music… and that’s why I truly enjoy the site Pandora. Pandora is a musical and scientific marvel; it is an extremely intuitive and free automated music recommendation and Internet radio service created by the Music Genome Project. If you’re tired of the same ol’ stale FM radio dial then Pandora is the place for you. This amazing service will introduce you to hundreds of musical acts you’ll love even though you have no clue who they are.

The Music Genome Project uses 400 distinct attributes and 2,000 focus traits to scientifically and mathematically break songs down… so it recommends similar sounds and tempos to you on the next play. You simply enter a song or artist into the Pandora player and it creates a channel for that artist or song. From there it automatically starts playing a song which you can give thumbs up or thumbs down… and it works its magic from there.

Pandora recently released along with the launch of the new iPhone 3G a mobile application that allows you to stream music directly to your phone. This service is also free and is currently compatible with the Sprint and AT&T mobile networks… although you can use it with just about any cell phone with a data plan if you know where to look. I haven’t had a chance to try it out on my phone as of yet but from what I’ve read the Pandora iPhone application is great.

Nothing in life is free, so what’s the catch? Thankfully there really isn’t a catch. The service is free but does have ads that rotate every time you vote for a song. The player also links directly to Amazon and iTunes profiles where you can purchase the track being played, but other than that it is free. You don’t even have to create a profile, but if you do you can share your stations with your friends and vice versa.

Pandora has made my daily music listening habits extremely easy. I no longer have to carry around a ton of songs on my iPhone, or a thumb or portable drive full of tunes. I can simply log onto Pandora, hit play and have fresh music the entire work day… you can’t beat that. I’ve tried similar services like Last.fm in the past but they don’t hold a stick with the excellent recommendation services that Pandora offers.

The title of this blog post pretty much says it all. The movie is everything I dreamt it would be and more… I watched it in the wee hours this morning on IMAX, and it was simply amazing. Christian Bale who is my current favorite actor (Deniro and Pacino have fallen greatly over the past decade) plays yet another perfect role… but this movie belongs to the late Heath Ledger and his Joker.

Ledger was always my favorite "young actor" (my age/my generation) and this role just makes me miss the thought of having him around for years to come even more. I was truly saddened when he died in January, and now the thought of not seeing him come back as the anarchist Joker just pours salt in the wounds… but there is a light at the end of the tunnel, he went out in a masterpiece.

I could ramble on for hours about how amazing this film is, and it is truly amazing but  I’ll simply steal the words of Kevin Smith from one of his recent blog posts:

“Without giving anything away, this is an epic film (and trust me: based on the sheer size and scope of the visuals and storytelling, that’s not an overstatement). It’s the “Godfather II” of comic book films and three times more earnest than “Batman Begins” (and fuck, was that an earnest film). Easily the most adult comic book film ever made. Heath Ledger didn’t so much give a performance as he disappeared completely into the role; I know I’m not the first to suggest this, but he’ll likely get at least an Oscar nod (if not the win) for Best Supporting Actor. Fucking flick’s nearly three hours long and only leaves you wanting more (in a great way). I can’t imagine anyone being disappointed by it. Nolan and crew have created something close to a masterpiece.”

I couldn’t say it any better. I will be heading back to the theater at least a few more times before this film has run it’s course at the box office. With that said, make sure you catch a glimpse of the new Watchmen trailer that debuts before Dark Knight… it looks like a hell of a ride as well. Zack Snider the amazing director of 300 and Dawn of the Dead brings his visionary look and feel to this sci-fi comic book juggernaut.

This position has been very exciting from the start but I’ve had to soak up as much information as a can as fast as I can… the transition period for the Team Lead I’ve replaced has been very short lived and I’m now flying solo. So far Avanade and my direct client have been fantastic companies to work for and it is off to a great start. I’ve already taken some technical training that Avanade thankfully footed the bill for and I’ll continue to do so over the next couple of months…

Anyway, I’ll post a little later just had to get the ball rolling again and force myself to make a blog post… once I get started I can’s stop myself.

Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails just can’t be stopped. When you think he’s done everything an artist can do promote digital distribution and give a giant middle finger to the record labels he blows your mind again. Nine Inch Nails Lights in the Sky Tour Sampler was released yesterday via digital download from www.nin.com. It has been a busy time for Nine Inch Nails, in the past three months Trent and company have accomplished the following:

• Released a 4 disk 36 track instrumental album. 9 tracks were released completely free via BitTorrent. He also offered a digital download of the entire set for only $5.00. A download and physical CD for $10.00, a special edition including a picture book for $75.00 and a signed limited edition for $300.
• Released the single Discipline to radio stations just hours after it was mastered.
• Released the single Discipline along with Echoplex directly to fans for a free download.
• Released a new 10 track album "The Slip" for absolutely free in MP3 and high quality formats. This one was "on him."
• Purchased a large amount of tickets from each of his tour stops to release a pre-sale to keep the best tickets out of the hands of scalpers and in the hands of true fans.
• Releases a free 5 track sampler album of all acts opening for Nine Inch Nails on tour this summer… dubbed "Lights in the Sky." Trent also released a download of more HD 1080p Wallpapers with the release, see below for a preview.

It’s a great time to be a fan of Nine Inch Nails… for nearly a decade Trent would come out with new material every 4-5 years and now without being under the lock and key of a record label it looks like we may have new material 4-5 times a year. Below is a preview of the wallpapers that you can download here.

As a self-proclaimed gadget whore I’ve purchased and owned my fair share of amazing new gadgets. TiVo/DVRs, iPods, Zunes, an iPhone, an Xbox 360, a Nintendo Wii, a 50" Plasma, a 52" LCD and on and on and on… and the one gadget that I’m glad to have in my life now is my HP MediaSmart Server running Windows Home Server. Sure Tivo has replaced canines as man’s best friend but out of all of my current gadget loves my Windows Home Server is now my savior.

So why so much love for Windows Home Server? Well, there are a ton of reasons why this little black box is the most important item in my house… and I’ll let you know of a few of them. First of all I love it because all of my precious files that I’ve been hording over the past 12+ years are now tucked safely away in a central location that automatically backs itself up every morning. I have over a decade of MP3s, movies, pictures and personal files that I’ve spent hundreds of thousands of hours acquiring and arranging just how I want them and it is good to know that those files are safe.

Secondly, not only are my files stored away on the server and backed up but all of the computers in my house are backed up nightly as well. If I have a computer crash or hardware failure all it takes it popping in a recovery CD and after a few minutes my precious notebook or desktop are back up and operational saving me hours of frustration and loss. Unfortunately at this time my desktop is running the 64-bit version of Windows Vista Ultimate which isn’t currently supported by WHS so it isn’t being backed up right now but with the upcoming release of WHS Power Pack 1 I’ll be nearly loss-proof (I’m in the beta of the Power Pack and will make a post about the install and improvements).

The third reason I love my Windows Home Server is STORAGE, STORAGE, STORAGE! That’s right, now with a ton of centralized storage I no longer have to transfer files back and forth from my desktop to my notebook and back again, now I can have them in one centralized location and use offline files as needed on the notebook. I also can keep multiple versions of all files and never delete any unneeded file if I don’t want to. It might sound silly but it is awesome being able to pull up any of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken in the past decade, good or bad. With three spare drive bays and a USB 2.0 port storage for my server is easily expandable, I’m now up to 2TB with a third coming soon… and an external drive will be added for extra backups. With 1TB drives for only 200 dollars storage will never be a problem for me again.

Since I have enough space to do literally whatever I want that brings me to the fourth reason why I love this little black box. I am currently going through the process of ripping my gigantic DVD collection of over 500 DVDs and HD-DVDs to the Divx format so I never have to go to the DVD shelf again… Since I own a PC and Notebook running Vista Ultimate I get to enjoy the beauty that is Windows Media Center, and since I own an Xbox 360 I can use that as a Media Center Extender. So now I can watch my entire DVD collection via my televisions and my computers and/or Xbox 360 running Windows Media Center. Burning all of my DVDs to a digital format will be time consuming, I have over 150 so far but in the end it will be well worth it.

The fifth reason I love my Windows Home Server is Microsoft’s brilliant inclusion of Add-Ins. Microsoft has allowed the WHS community to spawn a group of people who develop Add-Ins to expand upon the functionality and accessibility of your Home Server. My favorite Add-In to date is WebGuide, an easy to use and easy to setup plugin that allows you to view all of your multimedia files online via your WHS logon. You can stream your music and videos as well as view all of your images right from your server.homeserver.com address. This Add-In was so popular that Microsoft actually purchased it. Microsoft made it easy to access your server from the web with it’s super-simple Remote Access configuration.

I could literally talk for hours about how much I love Windows Media Server, and HP’s MediaSmart server is a great deal and a nice and sleek product for the price… you’d be hard pressed to build your own for the price, especially one with a hot-swappable drive bay. With Windows Home Server Microsoft has produced a fantastic product that is completely expandable and they’ve made it easy to personalize your WHS to do just about anything you’d like. Their inclusion of IIS and a free security certificate allows you to access your home server from anywhere in the world… you can do nearly everything with your WHS that you could do with an actual full-blown server, they’ve simply made it easier. Every twenty-first century home should have a Home Server.

Look for more information regarding Windows Home Server soon…

This morning I stumbled across an article on CNN Money discussing why Macs aren’t right for the small business and it got me thinking about the use of Macs in the corporate and enterprise environments. I know I may get flamed for this and I’m sure the author of the above article is going to get smacked hard with the Apple fanboy bat as well, but the truth is Macs and other Apple products are a bad idea for any company. I know I am a self-proclaimed Microsoft fanboy but my opinion on this matter is based solely on my information technology experience in corporate America with multiple fortune 100 companies and not for my love on everything One Microsoft Way. I’ve purchased and support both PC and Macs for nearly a decade and my opinion in this article is based solely from that perspective.

Every since YouTube first began to catch on in late 2005 the landscape of the internet has changed. Everywhere you look nearly every website across the globe has changed and integrated video to help improve their site and their message to their visitors… the once text based world of the internet is now returning back to a visual experience which will help drive even more people to the interwebs. The easier websites and the internet are to understand, the more casual users will give it a chance and stick around. So easy even a cave man can do it.

The overnight sensation and popularity of YouTube has spawned a flock of copy-cats and clones who are trying to get a piece of the video sharing pie… however it will take a small miracle for one of the many clones to grab a bite seeing as YouTube now has Google’s large elbows like a prisoner in the mess hall. Many of the other video sharing sites have improved upon YouTube’s model and actually offer a better service. Veoh, BrightCove, Revver, Blip.TV, MetaCafe, iFilm, DailyMotion and others have helped improve the video sharing experience and in my opinion are better sites than YouTube… however one site stands above them all, and that site is Vimeo.

Vimeo is an amazingly well designed Web 2.0 video sharing site and is really like no other on the internet. When you visit the home page of the site you can see some videos that the Vimeo team likes, you can explore via groups, channels or projects or you can view their High Definition videos. That’s right; Vimeo is the premiere HD video sharing service and allows users to upload videos in 720p resolution (1280×720). Since Vimeo is the best at user created HD video sharing they have a very technically competent and helpful user base. Reading the comments on HD videos you’ll notice a very interactive experience with intelligent dialogue back and forth, unlike most other video sharing sites.

Vimeo’s user experience is also easy to use and navigate. When you log into your account you are greeted with four tabs that help you around the site. Your inbox informs you of any new messages/comments as well as lets you know if any of your favorites has posted another video. Your My Stuff tab lets you keep tabs on your uploaded videos and albums. The Activity tab lets you browse what is going on across all of Vimeo or just what you and your favorites have done lately. Finally the Discover tab shows you other popular videos from around the site to help you expand your horizons. Vimeo also has an intuitive and simple voting process, you either can vote to like a video or not like a video… no more silly star system! 

The video view page and the flash player are slick as well. The flash player has the user controls superimposed over teh video and they show up and disappear as you mouse over and off the video. You can play and pause the video, use a timeline slider, share the video, grab the embed tags, enable or disable HD (to improve the loading time) and maximize the video to fit your entire screen. The page shows the video’s credits, associated tags, a list of people who liked it, a threaded comment system and the video’s statistics. Unlike most other video sites Vimeo’s main focus on each video’s page is the video itself… where most other sites have a small video with tons of clutter Vimeo shows you a large video with the clutter taking the back seat, which is how it should be.

Overall in terms of design, delivery and use Vimeo just blows the rest of the internet video sites out of the water; in my opinion there isn’t anyone even close to the amazing service Vimeo offers. Vimeo’s only real problem is that they limit their users to 500MB of upload storage a week. The cap of uploads is obvious for a few reasons. One, they limit their overhead costs of having to have an insane amount of storage available at any given time. With their membership and growth metrics they can easily estimate the amount of needed storage from week to week. It also helps them keep spammers and illegal videos off of their site. If people can’t upload entire seasons of copyrighted TV shows they’ll probably just move on to a site where they can (and they obviously do).

As of June 2008 Vimeo has roughly 440,000 members which is just a fraction of what YouTube has. I sincerely hope that Vimeo will continue to grow and gain market share as I’d hate to see such amazing site fall victim to not being able to catch on with the masses. With that said, Vimeo’s intelligent users are one of the strongest reasons to use the site, so I imagine most involved are trying to walk the fine line between driving more users to the website while keeping the trash of the internet at other video sites. The numbers from Compete and Quantcast are very promising and show growth of over 200% from April 2007 to April of 2008 with a continued growth of about 20% per month… so the outlook for Vimeo is promising.