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By Tess Alps: Why is TV-dissing such a big part of internet orthodoxy? Clay Shirky has been out promoting his new book, Cognitive Surplus, which states that internet activity is displacing TV among the young and that this is a good thing. There have been newspaper reviews like this and yesterday he was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme.

To be fair to Shirky, he doesn’t say that all TV is “bad”, but he believes that being online is better – connecting, creating, sharing. I would have to be a philistine not to recognise the many positive benefits that the internet has brought us, and I share Shirky’s idealistic hope that it will promote democracy, knowledge, peace, love etc.

My problems with his book are three-fold: I dispute some of his facts, some of the distinctions that he draws and some of the science that he employs.

Facts first: is TV viewing declininTo be fair to Shirky, he doesn’t say that all TV is “bad”, but he believes that being online is better – connecting, creating, sharing. I would have to be a philistine not to recognise the many positive benefits that the internet has brought us, and I share Shirky’s idealistic hope that it will promote democracy, knowledge, peace, love etc.

My problems with his book are three-fold: I dispute some of his facts, some of the distinctions that he draws and some of the science that he employs.g for the first time ever among the young? Not in the UK or Europe, and TV catch-up services online are extra. TV viewing is booming in developing markets. Anyone who has watched the World Cup coverage will have been moved to see young African children joyfully watching their first TV football match.

Secondly, to position the internet as an alternative to TV is meaningless – and I don’t say that lightly, because Clay Shirky is clearly a very intelligent person. The internet is a vast and transformational technology, but it is not a homogenous medium.

Many human activities that once took place offline can now be conducted online, including watching TV. A growing percentage of young people’s time online is spent watching TV and video – and then talking about it, as a quick glance at Twitter will prove. Sadly, there is about a 1:99 ratio between people who create things online and those who just consume them, much as in the real world; and TV inspires online creativity.

Finally, a bit of science. The word “passive” is often used to denigrate TV viewing. There might be less physical movement than twitching with a mouse but the brain is deeply engaged watching TV. The brain is a complex organism; the very title of Shirky’s book indicates he overvalues rational and cognitive processes over emotional intelligence and education; action over feelings.

We have just finished some neuroscientific research looking at the difference in the brain activity between watching TV and browsing websites (largely text based) and the differences are marked. TV is much stronger in areas such as emotion and long-term memory encoding and web browsing is stronger for visual attention. So they are different – but complementary.

Watching TV is a mostly shared experience; the real-life conversations within families that TV provokes are enormously valuable. Entertaining people and promoting happiness is a noble pursuit; TV is the master. But we should also recognise TV’s vast role as an informer, educator and promoter of democracy every bit as important as the internet.

Most of the time, the ease that the internet brings to human endeavour is brilliant, but I can think of areas where it has casualised and arguably cheapened some things. What’s the exchange rate between an online click on a petition and a Jarrow marcher? Birthday wishes on Facebook take a mere two seconds.

I could reverse what Shirky does and make unfair comparisons between the best of TV and the worst of the internet: is it better to watch Survival and Dispatches or to play to World of Warcraft and poke a friend? But I’d rather value both these massive cultural treasures for all the good they can do, separately and together.

Tess Alps is chief executive of Thinkbox, the marketing body for UK commercial TV

By Tess Alps: Why is TV-dissing such a big part of internet orthodoxy? Clay Shirky has been out promoting his new book, Cognitive Surplus, which states that internet activity is displacing TV among the young and that this is a good thing. There have been newspaper reviews like this and yesterday he was interviewed on Radio 4’s Today programme.

To be fair to Shirky, he doesn’t say that all TV is “bad”, but he believes that being online is better – connecting, creating, sharing. I would have to be a philistine not to recognise the many positive benefits that the internet has brought us, and I share Shirky’s idealistic hope that it will promote democracy, knowledge, peace, love etc.

My problems with his book are three-fold: I dispute some of his facts, some of the distinctions that he draws and some of the science that he employs.

Facts first: is TV viewing declininTo be fair to Shirky, he doesn’t say that all TV is “bad”, but he believes that being online is better – connecting, creating, sharing. I would have to be a philistine not to recognise the many positive benefits that the internet has brought us, and I share Shirky’s idealistic hope that it will promote democracy, knowledge, peace, love etc.

My problems with his book are three-fold: I dispute some of his facts, some of the distinctions that he draws and some of the science that he employs.g for the first time ever among the young? Not in the UK or Europe, and TV catch-up services online are extra. TV viewing is booming in developing markets. Anyone who has watched the World Cup coverage will have been moved to see young African children joyfully watching their first TV football match.

Secondly, to position the internet as an alternative to TV is meaningless – and I don’t say that lightly, because Clay Shirky is clearly a very intelligent person. The internet is a vast and transformational technology, but it is not a homogenous medium.

Many human activities that once took place offline can now be conducted online, including watching TV. A growing percentage of young people’s time online is spent watching TV and video – and then talking about it, as a quick glance at Twitter will prove. Sadly, there is about a 1:99 ratio between people who create things online and those who just consume them, much as in the real world; and TV inspires online creativity.

Finally, a bit of science. The word “passive” is often used to denigrate TV viewing. There might be less physical movement than twitching with a mouse but the brain is deeply engaged watching TV. The brain is a complex organism; the very title of Shirky’s book indicates he overvalues rational and cognitive processes over emotional intelligence and education; action over feelings.

We have just finished some neuroscientific research looking at the difference in the brain activity between watching TV and browsing websites (largely text based) and the differences are marked. TV is much stronger in areas such as emotion and long-term memory encoding and web browsing is stronger for visual attention. So they are different – but complementary.

Watching TV is a mostly shared experience; the real-life conversations within families that TV provokes are enormously valuable. Entertaining people and promoting happiness is a noble pursuit; TV is the master. But we should also recognise TV’s vast role as an informer, educator and promoter of democracy every bit as important as the internet.

Most of the time, the ease that the internet brings to human endeavour is brilliant, but I can think of areas where it has casualised and arguably cheapened some things. What’s the exchange rate between an online click on a petition and a Jarrow marcher? Birthday wishes on Facebook take a mere two seconds.

I could reverse what Shirky does and make unfair comparisons between the best of TV and the worst of the internet: is it better to watch Survival and Dispatches or to play to World of Warcraft and poke a friend? But I’d rather value both these massive cultural treasures for all the good they can do, separately and together.

Tess Alps is chief executive of Thinkbox, the marketing body for UK commercial TV

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NASCAR Pushing For Diverse Drivers « Liveshots

When you think of a NASCAR driver, you may not picture a young woman zipping around a racetrack.

Google Bows to Criticism, Changes Google <b>News</b> Design

Just two weeks after launching a new version of its Google News site with additional personalization features, the web giant has changed the design in response to complaints from users, giving them the option to revert to a design more ...

Heat Wave to Scorch America&#39;s East Coast; Power Blackouts a Concern

(July 6) -- Temperatures in the triple digits along America's East Coast are prompting cities to open cooling shelters and offices to crank up their air conditioners -- sparking fears of blackouts amid increased electricity demand.

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We're pleased to announce ReadWriteWeb's latest premium report, Augmented Reality for Marketers and Developers: Analysis of the Leaders, the Challenges and the Future. This report will help you develop a sophisticated understanding of Augmented Reality (AR), the mobile and Web technology that places data on top of a user's view of the physical world. The research included will help you decrease your AR development time to market by learning from the first wave of early adopters. AR offers a new marketing and product paradigm for a high impact, high value customer experience. More than 1,000 AR campaigns were kicked-off last year and we expect to see many more in 2010. In this report, we profile key AR development companies, their campaigns as well as development lessons learned. For more information or to buy the report, visit here.

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There’s a reason Prince made it onto Time’s 100 Most Influential Celebrities list.  His musical legacy is easily apparent, and his opinions are still making headlines.  Recently, the purple-clad eccentric has endured great scorn for his statement, “The Internet’s completely over.”  Just so you know he’s serious, Prince has banned his music from YouTube and iTunes, shut down his own website, and announced his newest album 20TEN will only be distributed as a free CD inside the British paper the Daily Mirror (much to the chagrin of my wife and sis-in-law, huge fans).

After blasting online music distributors, Prince calls the technology itself a fad that’s on the way out:  “The Internet’s like MTV.  At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good.”  Obviously, he’s out of touch; MTV was a diversion, not a tool that expanded the potential accomplishments of virtually every business and individual in the world.   Nor were millions of people physically addicted to MTV and its content.

 Though his statement is demonstrably false, there’s something to the sentiment behind it.  I’ve rarely bought mp3s online that I could buy on a physical format for two reasons:  first, lower sound quality (to bring the file sizes down, they remove frequencies and decrease the audio’s resolution), and I prefer the limitation of having to choose and listen to one CD at a time.  Just browsing through a collection of mp3s ripped from the same CDs, I appall myself, getting so easily bored and skipping through music that I find exhilarating when I commit to it.  Despite an age difference of three decades, Prince and I find solidarity in this anachronism.

But aside from personal taste, the problem with online mp3s is that the music industry has long been plagued by piracy– much more than TV or film due to smaller file sizes.  Despite the option of cheap, convenient, buffet-style digital music stores, pirates are still ubiquitous, and they cost record labels serious money.

For those conservatives not familiar with the concept of receiving a good or service without paying for it, online piracy is the unholy union of the West’s appalling entitlement mentality, anti-corporate zealotry, and a warped sense of economic progress.  For the uninitiated, here is a list of what I’ve dubbed the Six Levels of Piracy:

Level 1:   Listening to burned CDs from friends (technically illegal, but akin to the virtuous Before Christ residents of Dante’s Inferno)

Level 2:  Downloading mp3s from music blogs which host songs without permission from artists

Level 3:  Paying for a Rapidshare Premium account but not paying for music

Level 4:  Downloading torrents

Level 5:  Leaking content onto torrent sites

Level 6:  Openly promoting piracy

What online pirates (generally anti-corporation leftists) fail to realize is that music distribution, like any business, has costs that need to be made up when selling its product:  payroll for songwriters, artists, producers, and recording engineers who actually make the music; manufacturing, packaging, and shipping CDs; promotion, marketing, and expensive ads called music videos; plus administrative and legal costs and taxes (most labels are international and have to pay European VAT taxes).  Then, retailers buy the music and have to sell it at a higher price to cover their own costs and make a profit (profit is how these people stay in business and make sure we can still have music in the future).

Artists such as 9 Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor have fueled pirates’ costless fantasy world, lamenting,

“Wait – you sell for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it? Who the f**k made that rule? Oh! The record labels made it because artists are dumb and they’ll sign anything.”  

In response, let’s think up a little analogy that progressives like Mr. Reznor can understand.  If the benevolent feds charge NASA with building a new shuttle that will collect tons of pure gold on a distant planet, the astronaut who pilots the shuttle will not receive the majority of the gold.  Congress funded the building of the ship. They authorized the mission. They took the financial risk, so they will reap the majority of the financial reward. The astronaut will still get copious amounts of money; it’s just that most will be from the speaking tour after the mission. 

Regardless, Reznor and fellow ‘90s sensations Radiohead have tried a novel idea—allowing customers to set their own price for albums. In 2007, Radiohead released a self-produced album, In Rainbows, and before it hit stores, anyone could log onto their website and type in how much they would pay for the twelve tracks.  I’ll admit that I paid nothing, mostly because I find Radiohead disgustingly overrated.  The band hasn’t released any sales figures for the experiment, but they’ve said they won’t do it again. 

For bands such as Radiohead, their established fan base (which exists largely because of the evil music industry corporations) can potentially make this donation-based distribution work.  It may also work for smaller indie bands that have low production costs.  But for developing artists trying to go national, a small core of rabid, paying fans likely won’t be able to cover the costs of ambitious, professional recordings, so I doubt that many will adopt In Rainbows’ strategy.  Sites with free song streaming plus ads, such as Grooveshark.com, show potential also, but between the Wall Street Journal, Hulu, and (allegedly) MySpace deciding to adopt subscription-based services for online content, this business model might only yield the results of Keynesianism in time.

Therefore, what Prince says may be true to a point.  Digital distribution of music could end up a bust; that may be the reason that sales of vinyl records are on the rise.  It’s certainly a much more credible assertion than Radiohead’s Thom Yorke predicting that the entire music industry will collapse within “months” (he gets a pass from the press, cuz he’s a courageous crusader against climate change).  Regardless, it’s good to see such a bizarre, entertaining character—read the whole interview; you’ll thank me—retain some semblance of free thought instead of slipping into leftist orthodoxy after so many years in the music business.

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Hacker <b>News</b> Daily

At the same time, there are a lot of very interesting articles on Hacker News. Several times recently I've read a fascinating article elsewhere and submitted it to Hacker News, only to find that it had already been on Hacker News ...

New Harry Potter supports Kinect Xbox 360 <b>News</b> - Page 1 <b>...</b>

Read our Xbox 360 news of New Harry Potter supports Kinect.

Sony unveils NEX-VG10 E-mount HD camcorder: Digital Photography Review

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Please join us at TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco on September 27-29 2010.

It started as an experiment in New York this past May. We sensed a fundamental shift taking place with technology and media—a shift in platforms, applications, revenue models and consumer behavior—and we wanted to talk about it. Appropriately, we found an old Merrill-Lynch office building and took it over for three days to test a new event format, TechCrunch Disrupt. We had 3 objectives: (1) gather the best minds to debate what’s changing now and what to do about it; (2) showcase the hottest new startups we could find and (3) have fun and meet a ton of new people.

The response was more than we could have hoped for. Charlie Rose opened the show. Mayor Bloomberg stopped by for a surprise visit. Carol Bartz even made me blush (sort of). Twenty five new startups launched on stage. Over 100 other startups demo’ed their services in the wings. 1,700 tech enthusiasts showed up—rivaling our biggest events to date in San Francisco.

So we’re going to keep blowing it out, and we hope you’ll join us for TechCrunch Disrupt San Francisco, September 27-29 at the San Francisco Design Center Concourse. The main agenda will run 9 am – 6 pm, but save your evenings for after-parties and lots more networking fun.

Disrupt SF will explore the Third Wave, a phrase coined by John Doerr in his interview with Charlie Rose. If the First Wave was the PC, and the Second Wave was the Internet, now the Third Wave is a combination of the social and mobile layers accelerating everything on the Internet once again from geo apps and tablet computing to social commerce.

Disrupt SF will also feature our new startup competition, the Startup Battlefield, where approximately 25 new startups will participate in a tournament-style launch competition to demonstrate their technology, business and marketing disruptions. One lucky company will take home the grand prize Disrupt Cup trophy (passed on from last May’s winners, Soluto) and a $50,000 check, and others will receive special awards and accolades.

So let the disruption begin. Startup applications are open today, hosted by Producteev, through midnight PST, August 8. We review applications on a rolling basis, so please apply as soon as you are ready for consideration. You can read all the fine print for rules and eligibility here. Just remember our motto: Create, Destroy, Repeat.

The Disrupt SF list of speakers and agenda will be announced on over the coming months, but grab our extra early bird tickets asap (best prices through July 31 via Eventbrite.)

The Real Results series is supported by Gist, an online service that helps you build stronger relationships. By connecting your inbox to the web, you get business-critical information about key people and companies. See how it works here.

Over the past two years, real estate professionals have found creative ways to overcome the real estate crisis, including finding innovative uses for social media. After facing drops in home sales well into 2010, real estate pros have been forced to utilize their offline skills in an increasingly social way online. By using photo and video sharing to enhance listings, along with professional networking sites to hone their sales skills, real estate veterans have made strides in moving inventory in tough times.

Agents, brokers and realtors have found successes in lead generation, sales and brand building through use of mass audience social platforms, including Twitterclass="blippr-nobr">Twitter, Facebookclass="blippr-nobr">Facebook, YouTubeclass="blippr-nobr">YouTube, Flickrclass="blippr-nobr">Flickr, Meetup, and LinkedInclass="blippr-nobr">LinkedIn, as well as real estate specific platforms, like Trulia, Zillow, WellcomeMat and Architizer.

Whether they are sharing videos, listings or advice with their communities and prospective buyers or sellers, real estate pros are making progress in using social media for real results.

Attracting Buyers and Sellers

The core goal of real estate pros utilizing social media is to attract sellers looking to list their homes or buyers looking to purchase homes. Naturally, the 1.0 version of social media for real estate is setting up pages on social networks that fit your company’s content and audience.

Corcoran Group, the largest residential real estate firm in New York City, is a fitting example of how real estate agencies are going above and beyond to make themselves available for buyers and sellers. Corcoran differentiates itself by simply being available and open. The “Do More” tab on their Facebook page says it all — you can find them on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Foursquareclass="blippr-nobr">Foursquare, and Gowallaclass="blippr-nobr">Gowalla, among other sites. And if you need more, you can download their iPhone app, where you can find nearby homes for sale or rent and open houses. The app also promotes their Twitter, Facebook and YouTube pages. If you dig a little deeper, you can also find Corcoran on Tumblrclass="blippr-nobr">Tumblr, Blip.tv and Vimeoclass="blippr-nobr">Vimeo. Simply put, Corcoran has found a way to be everywhere for its clients. This is the first step to converting fans and followers into buyers and sellers.

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managing personal finances

Women are becoming more knowledgeable about finances, becoming more confident managing their own investments and talking more openly about moneywith their kids, colleagues and peers. This, according to new research conducted by Citi's Women & Company.



I recently chatted with Lisa Caputo, president and CEO of Women & Co, and she says that it's about the recession and its aftermath. "Women are ushering in this new era of responsibility. They're stepping into the role of 'Chief Financial Officer' and building quality lives for themselves and their families."



They're going to graduate school. Starting companies. Becoming breadwinners. Even outgrowing the number of men in the workforce -- for the first time in American history. "We're taking the financial lead," says Caputo, "and becoming more empowered."



Here's how you can do it -- at any age:







In Your 20s

Time is on your side - use it to build a solid financial foundation.Start living on a budget, identifying financial goals and putting a plan in motion, and most importantly, setting aside income, says Caputo. Ideally, aim to set aside 15% of your gross salary. Not possible? This money doesn't have to come out of your pocket so it's not be as painful as it seems. For example, say you're single, and making $50,000 a year. If you have just $250 a month of pretax dollars automatically deducted from your paycheck, and deposited in your company's 401K plan, and if your company matches those contributions (50 cents on the dollar up to 6% of your salary), you're already more than halfway there!



In your 30s

Set up an emergency fund (ideally, 6 months worth of living expenses), max out the contributions, and "define your investment strategy and structure a well diversified portfolio," says Caputo.That may require your working with a financial advisor, particularly since you're probably having a tough time budgeting given your new status (married? kids?). You can find one through napfa.org.



In your 40s

You may be juggling the needs of a growing family and aging parents, but don't take a break from retirement savings. And think about protecting your legacy, says Caputo. "We're talking wills, naming guardians for small children, and getting life insurance if you have dependents."



In Your 50s

This is when you want to get serious about crunching the numbers -- specifically, estimating your retirement expenses and your projected income.There are calculators on the web to help you do this. Once you're age 50, you can add an extra $5,500 in catch-up contributions to your 401(k); IRA savers can throw in another $1,000. Take advantage of this. Caputo says you should also rebalance your portfolio, and review your life insurance coverage at this age.



In Your 60s

You're eligible to collect Social Security benefits beginning at age 62 -- the median retirement age -- but if you can wait a few years the payouts will be bigger. In fact, every year you delay drawing Social Security between age 62 and 70 increases your eventual payout by about 8% a year. Just something to think about, says Caputo, who also suggests you go back to budgeting basics as you learn to live on a fixed income, and that you additionally update your estate plans.

One of the big bits of gossip at Bristol between certain British comics professionals was the fate of Insomnia Productions. British independent graphic novel publisher, with books like Cancertown and Burke & Hare on their roster, they’ve been expanding of late. And naturally have been exhibiting at Bristol Comic Expo.

But something happened this weekend. What no one seems to be exactly sure. But harsh words were meant to have been exchanged. Certain people didn’t show up when they were meant to and neither did certainb books. To the extent that people believe the company may be breaking up, or parts sold off. Lots of huddled conversations and behind back briefings, some people feared the worst.

When approached, Crawford Courtts, one of the co-founders and Managing Director of Insomnia Productions replied;

Hi Rich,

Thanks for your email.

When we first started, our ambition was to change how the industry worked and the time has come for us to change again to move away from possible threats and make the most of new opportunities. In particular, we’ve been attempting to adapt to the growth of digital content for example the expansion of our range on the Digital Comics service on the Sony PSP.

As you know all companies have their internal debates but unfortunately, in this case, one of our team made this public and they will be held accountable for their actions.

Yes, we have different visions for the future of the company, but we are moving forward and we will continue to do so.

In particular we are looking forward to the release of Burke and Hare the Movie later in the year, which will no doubt increase the companies exposure and further the case of Graphic Novels as a Medium rather than just a Genre.

The historically accurate theme of the novel and the movie we believe will truly show the strengths and opportunites of graphic novels and hopefully broaden their appeal to a wider market.

I’m told that Creative Director Nic Wilkinson, who had recently moved into the marketing side of the company, will be stepping down for unrelated personal reasons, And while there were some issues getting stock and attendance arranged for this year’s convention, that the publisher is not for the chop, the vultures can stop circling and planned projects will continue.

We’ll be looking to the letterhead for any changes though…

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There are so many articles and blogs addressing the problems of the management of personal finances and provision for retirement, particularly for those living in difficult circumstances such as on a single income, through loss of job, health problems etc.

In regard to investment for retirement, there must be three keys:

decisions on your financial needs for retirement

your changing ability, over a lifetime, to meet those needs; and

the particular choices to be made regarding actual investment for retirement

Nearly all the advice in these types of articles concentrates on the different types and mixes of investments that might be appropriate.

More important perhaps, is the need for basic personal financial management to determine as time goes on, how much is available for investment for retirement; and the lifestyle changes that might be appropriate if these amounts are deemed insufficient.

Most financial management articles concentrate on potential changes to expenditure, all with a view to achieving a better overall balance between the increases and decreases. The only problem with this approach, so far as it goes, is that it is always difficult to keep track of the effects of each change and to be aware of how much of a difference each change makes in the bigger picture. The other thing is what is the best balance? How do you know if all the different aspects of financial responsibility are receiving the proper attention they deserve, not only now, but on a continuing, lifetime basis?

The answer surely is a more systematic approach. What we actually talking about is managing and controlling finances - of a particular type - our domestic or personal finances.

We all probably know that in business, the only way, indeed the legally required way, to manage finances is by the use of accounting. Accounting has evolved over hundreds of years with national and international supervisory authorities ensuring that it best meets the needs of the many different forms of business in place throughout the world.

Surely I am not suggesting that we should all start using accounting for managing home finances? Isn't it much too difficult and time consuming; and help - I do not understand all the terms and techniques!

Well, yes, I am suggesting that we all start to use accounting for managing and controlling our finances, but not quite the sort of accounting that businesses use. The reason is that with appropriate modifications, domestic accounting can be made easy to understand, implement and use. Most important, it can actually produce the information we really need to manage and control our finances, on a continuing basis.

Now well retired, I decided to start using accounting along time ago to manage my own finances. I had learnt a little about accounting through a business correspondence course and much later, decided to try using it for my personal finances. I bought an off-the-shelf accounting package and set to work. I soon realised that it was all very difficult to do and that it didn't actually help very much once I got it set-up. The problem was that the focus was all wrong and the reports didn't relate to day-to-day personal financial transactions.

The business accounting focus, understandably, is all about profits and owner's or shareholder's value. The reports such as the Trading account and Profit & Loss account are designed to track and help maximise these values. Most personal accounting packages are based on business accounting with the problems I encountered, or only address simple features (all very useful as far as they go) such as bank statement reconciliation or budget lists.

Over many years, I evolved a new domestic accounting model. By this, I mean the set of reports and individual accounts needed to implement this new form of accounting, all with a new focus on what I called, Domestic Well-Being (DWB).

As a model, the method is capable of being implemented on off-the shelf personal accounting software packages on a home PC. I initially used the well known Microsoft Money© software package but now prefer a package called Personal Accountz©. The differences relate to alternative accounting architectures embodied in these two products - categorisation versus 'nominal' accounts - one account for each expense category.

DWB Accounting is all about maximising the effect or balance of the decreases compared to the increases, in a way that ensures that appropriate emphasis is given to all of the different categories of each, corresponding to the nature of the financial transactions that characterize domestic life.

What this means is that we have a pre-defined DWB structure for domestic change (the increases and decreases) that goes into successively more detail down this hierarchical structure. From the top level of Basics, Discretionary and Others, the Basics are categorised at the next level in terms of Essentials, Responsibilities and Family Circumstances. Discretionary is sub-categorised as Nice-to-Have, Investment for the Future and Luxuries. At a lower level, Essentials include Utilities, Food and Drink, Clothing, Health and Transport, whilst Nice-to-Have includes Vacation, Leisure and Entertainment, Hobbies, Charities and Timeshare, Mobile home and Caravan, with more and more detail as needed, at successive lower levels.

The model facilitates the bookkeeping which is the means (using individual accounts and/or categories) to enter transactions from bank statements and credit card statements to match the DWB structure; often semi-automated, this typically takes only a couple of hours a month which is trivial compared to the benefits available. Other techniques include naming conventions for the accounts to make it all easy to understand what is going on, in terms of what I call, the Domestic Accounting Equation.

The main tool or benefit of the model is the Domestic Well-Being Statement (DWBS) which is a structured report showing from high, medium to low sub-category levels, the amounts of increases and decreases over any period - a week, month, quarter, year or whatever. From a management and control perspective, at the top level, you can see the proportions of total expenditure between the Basics, Nice-to-Have and Others. A first question is 'are these proportions about right'? At a more detailed level, if the Basics are considered too high, you can then see at progressively lower levels in any of the areas, where there might be scope for planned reductions or increases in certain sub-categories, over future periods. It is all about searching for and achieving the best balance across the out-goings!

Of particular interest in this context is Investment for the Future (IFF); are the amounts sufficient and more important if they are not, where is the scope for increasing this amount? Where are the imbalances and which other subcategory amounts are potentially ripe for change?

The key is visibility. Suddenly, everything is exposed. You can see whether appropriate amounts are being put aside for the future; you can see where dangers might be lurking with potential debt problems; and for those with some existing debt, the management of its reduction is much easier to plan and execute.

Budgeting can set up to plan future expenditure with warnings triggered if spending over the next period approaches pre-set levels in whatever categories or sub-categories are being watched.

For the more adventurous, the model includes new domestic financial ratios for additional control capabilities, as well as numerous graphical displays (a picture speaks a thousand words!).

With a best possible financial balance achieved through maximizing Domestic Well-Being, provision for retirement will be at the fore. Decisions can be made on how best to provide the appropriate amounts for retirement investments and if necessary, change other lifestyle priorities to ensure that the required amounts are made available. Advice will still be needed on the choices and tailoring of investment plans but that is specialized and different from the basic personal financial management required to provide a rock-steady platform for all other financial decisions throughout life.

In the global financial turmoil today, everyone can take advantage of new ideas as a basis for starting to better manage and control their personal finances. DWB Accounting offers the potential for lifestyle improvements and goal achievement since good financial management can point to the need for many other initiatives such as job change, better qualifications, re-location and so on.

In summary, by using accounting for managing and controlling home and personal finances, based on the new Domestic Well-Being accounting model, you will always know in detail, the past and present state of your finances as a proper basis for comparison and control. You will be able to ensure that all aspects of your financial responsibilities are being met through achieving the best possible balance across all of your categories of increases and decreases, based on your own priorities and approach to indebtedness.

All that is demanded is an appropriate sense of responsibility from those in some form of family situation, be it a marriage or partnership, with or without children, or even just a single person. The sooner domestic accounting is underway, the greater the potential for lifetime and continuing benefit. It will take a few months to get things going and to accumulate sufficient figures to start seeing a meaningful basis for gaining and exercising control. Now is the time surely, to find out more about DWB Accounting.

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From Entrepreneur:

Next month, Matt Kersten will be up to his neck in Christmas cards. The founder of Kersten Cards, a Scottsdale, Ariz., greeting card company, says 80 percent of his 4,000 orders per year are Christmas cards, which typically hit between July and early December. That leaves fully half of the year with minimal orders--and scant new revenue.

"It's definitely tough, but we do it," he says. "It's important to manage costs, and you constantly have to reinvest in your business. You can't stay stagnant."

That balancing act is one that most seasonal businesses face, says Dexter P. Morgan II, founder of MFS Consulting, a Newport News, Va., management consulting firm specializing in small businesses. "The seasonal business, regardless of size, needs to save money and resist the urge to spend when flush with cash," he says.

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Mint.com has earned a great reputation in the US for its online money management tools, allowing users to keep track of their finances in real time via web-based and mobile apps. The problem? It’s only available to US residents. Stepping in to solve this problem, at least for the UK, is Money Dashboard.

After several months in private beta, the service opened to the public this week. So, should you sign up? We’ve given it a roadtest and here’s what we think.

Getting set up

In order to use Money Dashboard you’re going to need to have Microsoft Silverlight installed. This is a pain if you use a non-supported browser (we had problems with Chrome on the Mac, even though Money Dashboard assures us it is supposed to work) but Money Dashboard’s Dave Riley tells us that they opted for Microsoft’s proprietary technology as it allowed them to provide a good looking, secure, cross-platform experience.

Once you’re set up, it’s time to add your various bank accounts. You do this by entering your internet banking login for each account. While this can feel a little disconcerting, Money Dashboard uses the same system, Yodlee, that Bank of America, PayPal, Mint.com and even Fort Knox use to secure their financial information. More details on how that works here.

Keeping track your finances

The benefit of services like Mint and Money Dashboard is that they visualise your financial activity in ways that make budgeting incredibly easy. Being web-based they’re much more convenient than traditional personal finance software like Quicken, too.

Money Dashboard’s UI is split into four screens which you can click left and right between using some fancy Silverlight-powered animation. To the left of this is a ’speedometer’ showing graphically how your finances are doing.

Your Dashboard shows the latest transactions, while ‘Set Budgets’ allows you to mark an amount of money that you want to try to limit yourself to for different type of spending. Savings, investments, groceries, gadgets and travel are among the suggested things you can set budgets for, although it’s completely customisable. If you want to budget your spending on doughnuts and iPhone apps that’s completely fine.

How does Money Dashboard know what you’re spending on each type of item? Tags. The ‘Tag Your Transactions’ screen allows you to apply, for example, a ‘Rent’ tag to the direct debit that goes out to your landlord every month. The service does quite a good job of auto-tagging many transactions based on their descriptions but you will probably have to spend some time tweaking the tags to get them exactly as you want them. It’s important to set tags as that help with your budgeting; it’s hard work at first but it will pay off in the long run.

Finally, ‘Track Spending’ shows a graph comparing how you’re doing this month with the budgets you’ve set yourself. This is a hand ‘at a glance’ look at whether you have money to burn or whether it might be a good idea not to splash out on that new MacBook Pro this month.

Alert!

Alerts are potentially the most useful part of the service for many users. Money Dashboard has an alert and messaging system that you can set to send out an SMS or email when your bank balance drops below a set amount, you’ve overspent in one category or when it’s time to pay a bill, among other things.

Monetisation

Money Dashboard is monetising its service via the ‘Ways to save’ section. If you do find yourself overstretching yourself, you’ll find advice on saving money along with affiliate links to insurance websites and the like.

Conclusion

Money Dashboard has made a strong start in providing an alternative to Mint.com for the UK. Plans for the future include mobile apps later in the year. We’d like to see more graphs and charts of how our money is doing added into the service too, but then we’re suckers for data visualisation.

The personal finance data market is set to grow over the next few years and Mint.com’s owner Intuit is likely to expand the service beyond US shores sooner rather than later. Money Dashboard will have to keep an eye on emerging competition like this, while also bearing in mind the fate of a similar service, Kublax, which was serving the UK market until it went belly-up earlier this year after experiencing funding difficulties.

Money Dashboard is showing a strong start here. They’re definitely a name to watch as they develop. The product is still in beta and the company is encouraging users offer feedback by getting in touch via the company’s user forum on their website.

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A lot of people are struggling with finances these days. There are a lot of reasons to blame for this including lack of employment, rising prices, and the current state of the economy. One of the biggest problems though, is that a lot of people do not budget their money. When you Budget your money it has a lot of advantages. The main advantage is that you get a better understanding of where your money is going when you spend it. The best way in my experience to budget money is to do so visually. By this I mean with pencil and paper, or my favorite method which is the computer.

I've made a budget for my-self using Microsoft excel and I find it to be very useful. Excel makes it easy to create a budget because you can utilize the formula feature to make any necessary calculations to give a better understanding and view of your money.

When starting an excel budget, the first thing that you want to do is to create a tab with your income information. You want to include things such as days and hours worked weekly pay, monthly pay, yearly salary, and any other sources of income. Then you should create a tab for each month and on those tabs, list your income for the month and then start to list any expenses that you may have. You can choose how in depth and accurate you want your budget to be by what you include in your list of expenses. Some people chose to make a budget for bills while others such as my-self opt to include bills as well as any additional expenses such as groceries, toiletries, apparel, and other personal spending.

Set up formulas to automatically deduct any and all monthly expenses from your monthly earnings and you'll have a more accurate count as to what you'll have left for the month to either save or spend on other things that you may want. Doing this will allow you to be more responsible with paying bills and designating your money properly.

I hope this helps everyone! Happy spending!

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I am not an android or Mint user but still skeptical about my money and the information which I am making available by using internet which is still vulnerable due to some brilliant mind who explore and penetrate technology on a 24×7 hrs basis.And when I read the User agreement with MINT this is what I found..Its a service which of course FREE but you have HUGE RISK associated with the same. No offence but a little skeptical because of being involved in penetration testing.

THE CONTENT AND ALL SERVICES AND PRODUCTS ASSOCIATED WITH MINT.COM OR PROVIDED THROUGH THE SERVICE (WHETHER OR NOT SPONSORED) ARE PROVIDED TO YOU ON AN “AS-IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE” BASIS. INTUIT MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS OR WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, AS TO THE CONTENT OR OPERATION OF MINT.COM OR OF THE SERVICE. YOU EXPRESSLY AGREE THAT YOUR USE OF THE SERVICE IS AT YOUR SOLE RISK.

INTUIT MAKES NO REPRESENTATIONS, WARRANTIES OR GUARANTEES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, REGARDING THE ACCURACY, RELIABILITY OR COMPLETENESS OF THE CONTENT ON MINT.COM OR OF THE SERVICE (WHETHER OR NOT SPONSORED), AND EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES OF NON-INFRINGEMENT OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. INTUIT MAKES NO REPRESENTATION, WARRANTY OR GUARANTEE THAT THE CONTENT THAT MAY BE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE SERVICE IS FREE OF INFECTION FROM ANY VIRUSES OR OTHER CODE OR COMPUTER PROGRAMMING ROUTINES THAT CONTAIN CONTAMINATING OR DESTRUCTIVE PROPERTIES OR THAT ARE INTENDED TO DAMAGE, SURREPTITOUSLY INTERCEPT OR EXPROPRIATE ANY SYSTEM, DATA OR PERSONAL INFORMATION.

I've been using previous interations of Quicken for 15 years and have grumbled and spat over them the entire time. Intuit is just a lazy and mediocre (some might say lousy) Mac developer, period.

But inelegant though Quicken has been, it manages to do what I need, and after so many years, there are a few small features that we've come to rely on that would really be missed if I switched to iBank or MoneyWell. So against my ideal preferences, I've stuck with Quicken 2007.

Now I'm looking and QE and wondering if it's worth it or not. I don't use or need most of the 'missing' features (bill pay, portfolio tracking, check printing, etc), but I'm really on the fence about it.

Which brings me to my newest grumble about Intuit:

WHY IS THERE NO DEMO VERSION!?!?

To me this is further proof of Intuit's complete disconnect with the Mac user base. They continue to come across as oblivious to our expectations and needs, year after year after year. They are frustrating beyond belief. The day iBank adds a calendar feature, I'll be ditching Quicken for good. But until then, I'm waffling on QE.

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