photo: alancleaver2000

High-interest credit-card balances, crushing mortgage payments, student loans, car payments: if you feel like you’re barely holding your nose above water at the end of the month, it may be time to consider debt consolidation.

The idea: take out one low-interest loan to repay all those high-interest debts and breathe easier knowing you’ve got just one – and more affordable – payment to budget for each month.

That’s easier said than done these days, with lenders tightening the belt even for their most creditworthy candidates–but it’s certainly not impossible. Here are your options:

Tap Your Home Equity

Taking out a home equity loan or line of credit (also known as HEL and HELOC) used to be the most common form of loan consolidation in the real estate boom days, when banks were willing to lend to anyone who could sign on the dotted line.

With one in four homeowners under water (i.e. owing more to the bank than their home is worth) and ever tighter mortgage-lending standards, borrowing against your home equity is a strenuous process. Banks are still lending, but you’ll need perfect credit (a FICO score of at least 720, if not 740), says Keith Gumbinger, a vice president at HSH Associates, which tracks mortgage rates.  You’ll also need a sufficient equity cushion: together, all loans you have against your home cannot exceed 80% of the home’s value. (On a house that is now appraised at $200,000, that means you must owe no more than $160,000.)  That said, if you do qualify, the cost of borrowing against your home remains comparatively low: home equity loan rates now average 8%, while HELOC rates (which are typically pegged to the Prime rate) are around 5.5%.

Borrow From Your Peers

When banks started tightening their lending standards during the credit crunch, peer-to-peer lending gained traction with consumers. Borrowers who couldn’t find loans elsewhere headed to web sites like Prosper.com and LendingClub.com home.action to seek loans from, well, their peers: individuals with spare cash hoping to earn a higher yield offered by their bank.

Not surprisingly, the majority of loans made through Prosper and Lending Club these days (60% at either site) are consolidation loans.  Rates will depend largely on your creditworthiness – and on how much your prospective lenders are willing to pay. At Prosper, you need a minimum 640 FICO score to apply, rates range from 7.5% to 30%. (The borrower sets the maximum rate they’re willing to pay.)  At Lending Club, the minimum FICO score is 660; rates range from 6.39% to 21.64%. To be sure, those loans aren’t free: both sites charge origination fees as well. 

In addition to consolidating high-interest credit-card debt into a lower-interest loan, p2p lending can be good for your health, says Gerri Detweiler, a consumer credit adviser at Credit.com.  Prosper and Lending Club report debts to the credit bureaus as “installment loans,” which together with lower credit-card balances (presumably paid off through the p2p loan) can push up your credit score.

A word of caution: online consolidation loan scams are a dime a dozen these days and you should think long and hard before going with a loan offer you found on the internet. “At best, you’ll end up with a very high interest rate,” Detweiler says.  “At worst, you’ll be scammed.”

Take advantage of low-rate credit-card offers

These days, credit card companies certainly aren’t tripping over each other to mail out 0% APR offers. But if get one, you might as well take advantage, Detweiler says. Thanks to new legislation (known as the CARD Act), these offers are much more transparent and predictable than they used to be.  “Now issuers can’t retroactively raise your rate unless you fall 60 days behind [on payments],” Detweiler says.  “If you’re lucky to get one of these offers, at least you know what you’re getting.”

One caveat: watch out for high balance-transfer fees. Some banks these days charge as much as 5%, with no cap. That means shelling out a $500 fee for a $10,000 balance transfer.  And once the promo period is over, you’ll go back to paying the card’s regular APR.

Your 401(k)

Most financial planners will shriek in horror if you as much as hint at borrowing from your 401(k). “You’re mortgaging your future,” they’ll cry. “You’ll miss out on market gains and interest compounding!” You get the picture. For the most part, they’re right: 401(k) accounts should be funded, not depleted.  But if you’re carrying a 27%-APR credit-card balance around your neck, you may be better off taking care of that first. (After all, why pay someone 27% while earning far less?)

The good thing about borrowing from your 401(k) is that any interest that you pay you’ll pay for yourself, says Detweiler. The rates are pretty low, too: still in the low single digits.  But because these loans typically need to be repaid within five years, your monthly payments may remain high.  “Many people realize [after taking on a loan] it doesn’t provide as much relief as expected,” Detweiler says. 

The biggest risk with 401(k) loans: should you leave your job, voluntarily or not, most companies require that you pay back the loan, pronto. Fail to do so, and it will be considered a “hardship withdrawal,” which means you’ll owe income tax on the outstanding balance, plus a 10% early distribution penalty if you’re younger than 59 1/2.

The bank of Mom and Dad

They say that friendship and money don’t mix, and with good reason: too many a friendship has been ruined by loans gone bad and awkward loan-collections attempts.

If you must borrow from a friend and relative – even your parents – make sure you document the loan, says Detweiler. This will not only keep the Internal Revenue Service happy, it will give your lender peace of mind, too. Online services like LendingKarma.com offers a loan forms kit for as little as $14.95. (For $59.95, you get all necessary forms to document the loan, plus payment tracking and year-end reporting that will come in handy at tax time.)

Police surrounded a health club on Tuesday evening after a frightened employee reported that a bearded man who appeared to be covered in blood had entered the club to use the facility's showers.

It turned out that man was Lee Backhaus of Alexandria who had just played “Jesus” in the annual Passion Drama presented by Zion Lutheran Church and Good Shepherd Lutheran in Alexandria, Minnesota.

Three Alexandria police officers responded to Racquetball Plus Fitness Center on Tuesday, March 30th, on a report of a suspicious male with dark hair, bearded and bleeding. The caller had stated the suspicious man walked down to the showers.

Upon arrival, Backhaus informed police he is actually a member of the club and was taking a shower after playing “Jesus” in Zion Lutheran's annual Easter Passion Drama. He also told police he had informed Racquetball Plus' management he would be using the club's showers following the conclusion of the Passion Drama. When police realized the circumstances of the incident, they left the scene.

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In a recent report, Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker Meeker claimed that mobile will revolutionize e-commerce. She cited location-based services, push notifications, transparent pricing, and instant mobile delivery as four potential areas where this will occur.

Mobile advertising is also a growing segment. In November, Google acquired AdMob, a mobile display ad serving platform, for $750 million. In January Apple acquired Quattro, a relatively unknown mobile advertising network, for an estimated $275 million. Later in January, Opera bought AdMarvel. In April, Apple announced an advertising platform called iAd.

Cloud Computing

According to a recent study from Juniper Research, the market for cloud-based mobile applications will grow 88% from 2009 to 2014. The market was just over $400 million this past year, says Juniper, but by 2014 it will reach $9.5 billion. Driving this growth will be the adoption of the new web standard HTML5, increased mobile broadband coverage and the need for always-on collaborative services for the enterprise.

Explained ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez in February, "there are already a few well-known mobile cloud apps out there including Google's Gmail and Google Voice for iPhone. When launched via iPhone homescreen shortcuts, these apps perform just like any other app on the iPhone, but all of their processing power comes from the cloud."

Health

Mobile health applications will play a large and important role in shaping the future of the health care system, wrote Mike Kirkwood at the mHealth initiative conference in February. He wrote that mobile and wireless health applications "directly impact the individual's health and have the promise of ensuring that when a patient leaves a doctor visit, they don't become “lost” in the system. It allows consumers to be engaged with health and wellness in their daily lives and connect back to their health care provider."

It's not just from within the health system where mobile services will change health care, it's also in the applications that consumers are downloading to their smart phones. In February I surveyed the latest health and fitness apps on the iPhone platform. For example, an iPhone app called Diamedic allows diabetics to record their blood sugar levels and insulin doses.

Top 10 Mobile Trends of 2010:
- Part 1: Design & Development
- Part 2: Apps, Apps, Apps
- Part 3: Emerging Markets

We'd love to discuss these and other mobile topics with you at our ReadWriteWeb Mobile Summit 2010. See our announcement post for more details.

If you're a company in the Mobile Internet market, you may be interested in becoming a sponsor for this event. Please contact our COO Sean Ammirati for more information about sponsor packages. And a big thank-you to our current event sponsors: CallFire, WorldMate, Alcatel-Lucent and Ipevo.

The first thing that seems to disappear in the life of many new moms is “their fitness routine”. It is very easy to get caught up in the “mommy world” and put everyone else first but ourselves! For women who have toddlers and pre-school aged children at home, finding the time to work out can be quite the challenge. Not everyone has a nanny, a cousin or even a babysitter to watch the children while you get a quick workout in at the gym. However, do we really need to go to the gym all the time to get an effective workout? As a spokesperson for various fitness products , I knew all too well about the options for home workouts. However, as a former gym groupie it was very difficult for me to think about exercising at home. However, with two sets of pre-school aged twins at home, going to the gym was not an option. I was lucky to be able to brush my hair and throw a on a coat of lipgloss. Who was I kidding with my thoughts of going to the gym for an hour? What most of us don't realize is that working out at home can keep you in the loop of the fitness world!

The most rewarding element about home workouts is that you can exercise with your children. We should all be teaching our children about exercise as early as the toddler years. Believe it or not, you CAN workout with your children. You just need to be a little creative and get back to the basics.. My favorite workout with my four little ones involves creating your own obstacle course. All you need are fairy wings or superhero capes, a tambourine, hopscotch mats and hula hoops. Simple moves like skipping is great for the quads. Jumping in and out of the hula hoops tones the gluteal area or buttocks and incorporating a tambourine increases the overall aerobic intensity. Check out the video to see how you can workout with your children right in your own backyard. The best part about this workout is what your neighbors will be saying when they see you skipping around the yard in fairy wings. Stir things up in the neighborhood this Spring & give this workout a try

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Sourse :Seafood Salad Recipes

Paul Newman (who died in 2008) may have still been alive when this bottle of salad dressing was manufactured. Bridget in Minnesota told Consumerist that sge purchased it at her local Target. She got a refund from the store, but she's still a little alarmed that they would sell her such a thing.

Bridget writes:

I am writing to expose Target Retail for stocking on their shelves
expired salad dressing – severely expired salad dressing. I purchased
a bottle of Newman's Own Southwest Dressing, 16oz bottle on March
23rd. When I got back to work to use it, as I was opening it I
noticed the neck of the bottle had an expiration date, and at first I
thought I must be reading that incorrectly, because it said “20OCT09M”
I quickly got second and third opinions on the issue, and we all
decided it was from '09. I called the Target store I had purchased it
and asked them to verify this, I spoke with the grocery department,
and when the employee came back to the phone she confirmed that it was
expired and she apologized.

It's not even worth my time to return a $3 bottle of salad dressing
that expired 5 months ago. This dressing contains milk & egg, and
more attention should have been paid to expiration dates.

Let this serve as a reminder: expired food may not kill or even significantly harm you, but it's still a good idea to check labels before buying.

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Material from:How To Publish A Childrens Book

Writing partners Ken Daurio and Cinco Paul are starting the decade off in fine fashion. They've got “Dinner for Schmucks” and 3-D, CG-animated supervillain showdown “Despicable Me” coming this year and the Easter-themed dark comedy “I Hop” coming in 2011. Most exciting however is their 2012 adaptation of the Dr. Seuss classic “The Lorax,” another CG-animated effort which will also be the first Seuss book adapted for 3-D.

Daurio and Paul, who also wrote the adaptation of “Horton Hears A Who!,” took some time out to chat with MTV's Eric Ditzian about their plans for “The Lorax,” which is still the very early stages. “We're in script phase and designing characters, just coming up with this world and doing all the art,” Paul said. He went on to acknowledge that he and Daurio are very much aware of this being the first 3-D Seuss, and the possibilities that offers.

“It really is an opportunity,” he said. “Every time you stop and think about a scene and consider the 3-D of it, it really does open your eyes and make you think, 'Oh, we're in Dr. Seuss's world. Let's not forget we can go into that 3-D dimension and explore it.'”

“The Lorax” isn't as widely known as “The Cat in the Hat” or “Green Eggs and Ham,” but it remains one of the most referenced Seuss books out there for its universal message, warning against destroying the environment for industrial gains. A being called the Once-ler shows up in the beautiful Truffula Forest and proceeds to cut it down as he builds a business. It's a tale told in flashback; the present day reality of the area is a desolate, over-industrialized town. Paul and Daurio are committed to preserving as much of the source material as they can… and they wouldn't have it any other way.

“In the early stages you kind of explore everything, all kinds of options. We can use the book as a starting point and just go crazy,” Paul explained. “Almost in every case you come right back to his drawings and his designs, because they are Seuss. They're perfect. We've done everything we can to remain true and bring the book to life.”

“We're dealing with Seussian humans. We're dealing with the creatures in the wilderness. There's all these different worlds that we recognize from “Lorax” and the other Seuss books that we get to play around with.”

They don't have any favorite “scenes” to point to, what with it being so early in the development process. But Daurio is already looking forward to seeing a number of elements realized in 3-D. “I think about that scene where the Once-ler is pulling his wagon into the valley for the first time. He see the Truffula trees, and there's the Bar-ba-Loots, and the Swomee Swans, and the Humming Fishes. I just can't wait to roll into that 3-D world and really explore it and really get to live in it.”

Paul is more looking forward to the general transformation that plays out over the course of the story, a “book of contrasts,” as he describes it. “Everything starts off beautiful and it's the wonders and glory of nature and then you end up with complete devastation. And so that's going to be great to have 3-D as an added dimension be able to show that visually.”

Daurio added, “To see the dark side of Seuss, the machinery, the factories pumping out smoke — visually there's going to be a lot of really stunning images in this movie.”

With 2012 targeted for release, that doesn't leave a whole lot more time for the development stage, not for a 3-D, CG-animated flick. “We're still finalizing designs on characters and sets and things. We're just about ready to lay it out,” Paul said. “It's a tight schedule. It's two years away basically.”

It also sounds like some preliminary casting has been done, but specific names are being kept off the table… for now. “I don't think we can talk about it. We will get in trouble. I think you'll recognize some of the voices,” Daurio promised.

Are you a fan of “The Lorax”? Are you looking forward to see it turned into a film? Who would you cast for the key voice roles?

After Henry Blodget fired editor John Carney from his role as the editor of Clusterstock last week, some clearly felt that Blodget, the Business Insider cofounder and CEO, owed an explanation. Blodget and Reuters finance blogger Feliz Salmon got into a Tweet-spat, which culminated in Blodget serving up something like a master class on New Media Economics Friday evening. Blodget was direct, laying out the numbers behind running a web site. His arithmetic checks out—but that doesn't mean his math makes sense.

First of all, here's Blodget's numbers, laid out on Twitter and then slide-showed, with annotations.

• He starts with a $60,000 yearly salary for an editorial staffer, which he then prorates to $5,000 a month. (Check.)

• He introduces an ad rate of $10 CPM for the website at which that staffer works. (CPM is, yes, the rate advertisers pay for the delivery of one thousand ad views—called impressions.)

• He notes that a $10 CPM is more than most general news and gossip sites can hope for, but that a business/finance site should be able to do that or a little better. (True. Most sites can't sell all of their impressions; the rest of the inventory is filled by remnant networks–all those diet supplement and work at home ad-sellers are not contracting with each web site on which they appear. A network sells these extra impressions for a very low CPM–$4, $2 or even less–then takes a cut in neighborhood of 50% for serving the ads to their network members. When figuring out a site's revenue, one must first determine how much of their impression inventory they are selling for high rates and what is being filled for pennies. So if a site sells half their inventory for $10 CPM and half through a network for $1 CPM, overall their traffic is worth $5.50 CPM. A business site is probably selling directly for more than $10, perhaps considerably more so, and their network sales are on the higher end as well. Still with me? Almost through with the math!)

• Blodget then points out that benefits need to be paid. He estimates that this raises monthly compensation to about $6000. Given our nice, round and sort of invented $10 CPM number, this means the writer needs to generate about 600,000 page views a month in order to "earn" his salary. (Check. Thus concludes the multiplication and division!)

• But writers are not all one needs for a site! What about editors? What about designers and coders? The ad sales guys? The lawyer? Rent for an office? Also, according to Blodget, "food." (Yeah, I don't know either.) But coffee machines and editors, as similar as they are, do not produce content, at least not in the way that writers do. You just can't sell ads on the labor of office furniture. So in Blodget's econ class, the writers are responsible for them as well. Those 600,000 monthly page views a writer has to pull down are now 1.8 million. (OK, one little additional bit of math: that's from Blodget saying that two-thirds of his costs go to things other than writers.) And but wait, there's more! In some cases—including, apparently, Blodget's—there are even more website costs: investors expect to earn on their investment.

Felix Salmon responded at length via his Reuters blog; no lesser authorities than Gawker Media owner Nick Denton and professional blog business person Elizabeth Spiers suggest that he doesn't understand running a web business. Denton asks Salmon to "stop pretending expertise. It's becoming embarrassing." Spiers says, "Blodget sounds like someone who runs/has run a new media business before and Felix sounds like someone who’s never been anywhere near the business side."

Salmon's surprise at the disparity between Business Insider's rate card and the monetization rates Blodget discussed reveals him to be unfamiliar with basic ad sales practices. ("ALL sites discount from rate card," Denton snapped at Salmon, meaning that a $10 CPM might often look like a $7 or $8—or a $4.) To oversimplify grossly–which he will, to be fair, hate–Salmon argues that Carney is a loss leader.

Think of Carney like a Black Friday flat panel television. (This my own ugly analogy, not Salmon's.) Business Insider loses a little on Carney in the hopes that they will make their money back on the stuff that is cheap to produce: slide shows, lists, pics of hotties kissing. Salmon says, with not a little derision, that serious people–like Salmon himself–will turn out for deeply researched original reporting, and that, furthermore, without the serious people, the ad rates will plummet. ("he key is to maintain a high-value, high-reputation brand, which readers are proud to be associated with.")

So Salmon believes that even if John Carney isn't directly earning back his salary–his stories don't create enough ad inventory to support what he is paid–his work buoys the prices of ads across the board by bringing in a high quality audience and protecting the reputation of the brand.

Salmon wants making money to square with good (or at least smart) editorial practices. I think many of us would like that to be the case. It justifies our tastes, and flatters us as writers and readers because it casts us as desirable for being smart and savvy. Is it really the case? It is probably a lot naive, though, to believe that the ad market will move away from Business Insider—which is, after all, going to draw the business audience that advertisers want, whether the readers are "smart" or "stupid"—any time soon as the result of any particular personnel move. And it's a little overly simple to believe that one personnel move reveals very much about long term trends at the site. It is easy to see why Salmon would want this to be the case, though. Carney is, in Spiers's words, a "smart and agile writer." Good writers want their readership to "be less stupid." Perhaps advertisers have a vested interest in the reverse?

A few years ago in the comments on Business Insider Henry Blodget made the case for star writers thusly: "Gawker, et al, will soon start adding a lot of star reporters from trad media who see the light. This will bring more traffic, breaking news, and credibility. The staff will grow (as will costs), but the growth in traffic should help offset." So it seems that he at one time agreed that high quality writing and reporting drive revenue, but that he's long believed in traffic as a bottom line.

Returning to that fifth bullet point, where Blodget says that roughly two thirds of his costs go to things besides editorial. It strikes me that there is no longer very much that can be considered a fixed cost in publishing, and that there are other ways to push the curve around beyond driving more traffic. Even if better editorial doesn't push CPMs up, better ad sales might. More to the point, lower costs could allow you to make different editorial decisions. Once you open the Pandora's Box of looking at a writer as someone who does or doesn't justify his expense, doesn't every outlay become the same? Would cheaper offices decrease page views? Would a WordPress installation underperform a custom-built content management system, and if so by how much? Did that expensed lunch add 10,000 pageviews of value? Maybe Blodget could nearshore the whole operation to Boise and save!

I don't know that these specific suggestions make sense for his enterprise–although Boise would probably appreciate a top-tier financial publication with the city limits; heck, they'd probably throw in tax breaks worth at least 200,000 pageviews a month–but I am certain that he should be rethinking everything about how a media business is run. If Blodget is for metrics and accountability, every expense should be held up and examined; if two-thirds of his costs are not related to editorial, as he suggests, then editorial should not bear one-hundred percent of the responsibility for the bottom line.

Christopher Conklin actually has worked in internet advertising, so don't all yell at him at once.