The Online Investing AI Blog

pic by stopnlook @ Flickr

There are always some great memes and ideas from around the personal finance web. Here are some thoughts and quotes I’d like to share with you.

“Just like a horse needs to wear blinders to block out distractions, you need blinders to focus on paying down debt. So what the heck are financial blinders? A budget and a debt snowball.”
–Deliver Away Debt

“Definition of a Frugalite: One who is frugal, yet fun. A person who wants to save as much of their hard earned cash as possible – but in creative ways.”
–Money Funk

“There are quite a few things that you can do to improve your financial and personal state without spending even a single dime. One of the biggest is simply improving your attitude – the way you interpret the things around you and the way you relate to others.”
–The Simple Dollar

Read more…

Internet, Investing, Money, Online Investing AI attitude, frugal, ideas, Links, memes, Money, positive attitude, posts, quotable, quotes, saving, thoughts, wealth, wealth creation

Google just released Buzz, sort of a souped up Twitter. It’s an awesome idea, and as usual, Google has refined an existing idea to make it better.

First it was search, and Google made its first billion by dominating the search engine market with a better service. Yahoo and a dozen other search engines have faded into the background with the success of Google’s search algorithm. Then it was GMail, the application that made web based email actually work well. Then Chrome, which is way faster than Firefox and I raved about in this post.

And now Buzz, which allows us to aggregate and communicate Tweet-like messages. And it goes farther by inlining images and creating more communication with less clicking. It also integrates with Twitter, Flickr, and Google Reader.

Why is Buzz a revolution?

Read more…

Accelerating Technology, Internet applications, buzz, collective intelligence, emotion, google, ideas, popularity, search engines, yahoo

Pic by Peter Zoon @ Flickr

Americans know how to market.

From the pet rock to Milli Vanilli, Americans can package and promote the most unlikely products. It’s nothing new. Gone with the Wind made the Civil War sexy. The Wizard of Oz let people look over the rainbow in the depths of the Great Depression.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with that. But, a preoccupation on marketing is weakening product development. Companies, for instance, are spending more time and effort promoting products than conceptualizing and creating them.

It’s become a global obsession.

Read more…

Accelerating Technology, Internet, Money, Online Investing AI, Success, US Economy global, ideas, innovation, internet marketing, market, marketshare, products, value

People say that the economy is tanking. Or that it’s hard to find a job. Or, you need money to make money. I disagree. I think it’s possible to make as much money as we want, regardless of the economy. How?

Through the power of ideas.

Have you heard of the Korean Taco Truck?

Unless you live in LA, you probably haven’t heard of it. Some Korean guys went out and bought a regular taco truck, and then did something really smart: they put a spin on it to make it special. Instead of just another taco truck (they seem to be everywhere in LA), they made theirs different. And special.

They started by creating outstanding Korean tacos and other Korean foods. And then, they added the magic. They created a marketing system that successfully created enough buzz that people line up for hours to eat the tacos!

How did they do it?

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Business Strategy, Money, Success action, dreams, food, ideas, korean taco truck, Money, Success

We’ll explore one more mistake people make to forge the chains of wage slaves–people who give their time for money.

Wage slaves don’t believe their ideas matter.  During the day they’ll have dozens of ideas that can range from time-saving methods to money-making concepts. But they rarely act on them.

They’re just ideas they think. And ideas are a dime a dozen. Plus, these ideas are the boss’s property. He or she deserves them.

Each day, they use their brains to solve problems and seize opportunities to make someone else money. But they never try to turn that knowledge into money.

After all, anyone can do what they do.

People who have freed themselves from wage slavery know this is not true.

Read more…

Business Strategy, Dreams Come True, Online Investing AI, Success ideas, innovation, invent, invention, wage slavery

Ever have an idea to fix a problem or surmount a challenge and then see that very same product in a store a few years later?

And you think, “Hey, they stole my idea!”

Chances are, unless your telepathic powers are fairly high-level, the inventor didn’t steal your idea. He or she just acted on the same concept that was floating around in the collective conscious. The difference is action.

If you have seen your ideas reproduced later by other inventors, don’t be discouraged. In fact, you should be encouraged. Here’s why:

Correctly identifying needs and solutions is a good sign that you can be an inventor or a product developer. To take that next step, you need to learn how to introduce your product into market. There are primarily two ways to accomplish this. You can either invent, produce, and sell the product yourself; or, you can license the invention to someone else and collect a royalty, a percentage of the sale of that product.

Most inventors prefer that latter, since it’s more hands-off and inventors like to keep their “hands on” new ideas. It’s another form of residual income that will help you secure your financial freedom.

Ideally, you would get a patent in order to license your product. However, as more companies trim their research and development staffs, part-time inventors are finding that companies are opening to new ideas, even ideas that are patented.

Obviously, making a best-selling product isn’t without its pros and cons. Here’s the break down.

Read more…

Dreams Come True, Money, Online Investing AI, Success ideas, invention, inventions, liscensing, Money, products, residual income, royalties

When you and your group of entrepreneurs are faced with a problem, or are looking for new product idea or business strategy, you should consider a “brain jam.”

The brain jam, according to an article in the Investor’s Business Daily, is a brainstorming session that is more like a jazz jam session than an idea-collecting event. Usually, this creates static and stale sessions with staff competing against each other, not cooperating with each other.

Brainstorms usually have individuals pitching their own ideas, but a brain jam builds on ideas and gives people the freedom to mash up ideas and collaborate on idea generation.

Here’s how to start:

Read more…

Accelerating Technology, Business Strategy, Internet, Online Investing AI collaboration, cooperation, idea collection, idea generation, ideas, innovation, jazz, solo

I had a chat with a friend last week.

It was quick because he told me he was on the way to meet some potential partners for a new business. He’s got big ideas about mobile phone technology.

“Starting a business in this economy?” I asked, somewhat surprised, even though we’re doing the same thing.

He said, “Great ideas don’t read the papers.”

Wow. That blew me away.

I don’t believe in big media. I really don’t believe in big corporations. The layers of yes-men and yes-women form a barrier to innovation.

There’s only one thing worse than big corporations and that’s the biggest corporation in the world: the United States government. If corporations make innovation difficult, a myriad of mini-corporations called departments and agencies, form an impenetrable swamp to the entrepreneur. What’s worse is that a corporation with an unsound business model will eventually collapse; a poorly-performing agency is given more money.

What I do believe in, however, is my friends and their ideas. There are a lot of smart people out there who have the courage to pursue their visions, no matter what challenges arrayed against them. We should not hamper them.

Unlocking free minds is the soul of innovation and the only cure to our economic ills.

Business Strategy, Dreams Come True, Online Investing AI business, government, ideas, individual, individuality, innovation

How does your brain work? Did you ever stop to think about all the incredible things that it does?

Here’s just a few things your brain does:

• Controlling Your Body
• Giving You the Power of Thought
• Creating the Ability to Learn

The funny thing about the brain is that nobody knows how it works. Yet! Understanding how your brain works is probably the biggest challenge to understanding human existence right now. We can understand how other organs of the body work, how bodily functions work such as digestion and reproduction, and even our evolution.

There is however, one machine created by humans that is similar to the brain.space Although it has certain distinct differences, the computer can be compared to the brain. The human brain is far more powerful, and works a little bit differently.

So that leads us to the question, is there a way we can use the paradigm of the computer to understand our own brain?

But computer users code written in a programming language to get it fixed instructions and tell it exactly what to do. And in a way, our human brains have their own code. The source code for our own brains are ideas. It’s our ideas that get incorporated and develop our entire mind. It’s the integration of all the ideas and beliefs inside our mind that create a code for our brains to run.

All of the above source code gets compiled into a persons actions. If someone’s actions can be determined by all of their beliefs and ideas, then these beliefs are like a program that the brain runs. And as the brain runs this program, the result is a persons actions.

A wise man once said,

Stand Guard at the Door of Your Mind!

Maybe, this is to prevent unwanted source code from entering!

Success beliefs, brain, compiler, computer, ideas, source code, Success

Dan Heath and Chip Heath might not know the answer to the perennial question, “Where’s the beef,” nor, do they explain how people can be lured into kidney-harvesting operations, but they do know why these marketing messages and urban legends have a viral appeal.

They know why these ideas “stick,” in other words. And they tell you how this stickiness can help you build your business, promote a cause, or become a better teacher.

In fact, they have identified the principles that make sticky ideas so… well… sticky.

The Heath brothers’ book, Made to Stick, outlines the six features of highly-sticky ideas:

• Simple–make your message quick and clear.
• Unexpected–add a twist.
• Concrete–keep it real.
• Credible–add veracity.
• Emotional–appeal to emotions.
• Stories–tell it in story form.

You don’t have to be a marketer or a would-be urban legend writer to benefit from these tips; almost anyone can learn how to make your messages stick. Everyone–from non-profit leaders to teachers to CEOs–can improve their ability to communicate by making their messages more interesting and more memorable.

The authors of Made to Stick also have a blog.

Give both a read and tell me what you think.

And make it stick.

Business Strategy, Great Books, Online Investing AI ideas, make it stick, marketing, rumors, urban legends