LearnVest founder and CEO Alexa von Tobel turned down Harvard and a life on Wall Street to make personal finance education accessible to women, and she has no intention of failing.

She thinks learning how to manage your money should be simpler, a passionate belief which comes from her personal need for her New York-based company’s product, a series of online tutorials on personal finance which have led some to dub her “Suze Orman 2.0.” On Tuesday, LearnVest announced the launch of three new on-demand, online Bootcamps covering basic personal finance, cutting costs, and investing. These products are just the latest iteration in von Tobel’s quest.

The 26-year-old von Tobel got the idea for LearnVest while working at Morgan Stanley, realizing that she had no idea how to manage her own finances.

“Here I was responsible for millions and millions of dollars and I didn’t know the first thing about getting a credit card or insurance,” von Tobel said. “I needed tools like these.”

Instead of attending Harvard Business School, von Tobel put all the money she’d earned after college into building LearnVest. Since then, the company has raised over $5.5 million in financing, most recently closing a $4.5 million round led by Accel Partners in April.

The LearnVest  CEO has been spending a great deal of time in the media spotlight recently. She was recently named to Inc.’s 30 Under 30 list of young entrepreneurs and has received media coverage from a number of local and national outlets including BusinessWeek and the New York Times. The ‘Suze Orman 2.0’ moniker first came from a Fox reporter.

But behind the media attention that even has the attractive blonde’s coworkers teasingly calling her ‘Finance Barbie’ is an entrepreneur possessed. Her self-deprecating humor and amiable demeanor are genuine, but von Tobel is shrewedly packaging herself and LearnVest as an accessible and fun medium for learning about personal finance. And she’s doing it from a cubicle alongside her employees in Learnvest’s cozy New York office.

Usage statistics suggest it’s beginning to work, with Learnvest receiving about 360,000 unique visitors in the U.S. per month according to Quantcast, a Web-traffic-measurement service..

While von Tobel is certainly passionate about giving women unbiased advice on their personal finances, she is also keeping her eye on earning money to repay her investors.

And that’s where LearnVest’s latest product, the online bootcamps, come in. The three-week programs consist of daily emails with information and easy to do items that take minutes, according to von Tobel.  The investing bootcamp is LearnVest’s first paid offering, costing users $7.99.

“It’s cheaper than ‘Personal Finance for Dummies’ and easier to understand and accomplish,” von Tobel said. “We don’t want users to be overwhelmed.”

LearnVest’s content also provides affiliate marketing opportunities for the New York startup, where LearnVest earns money by suggesting personal finance products like credit cards.

Besides affiliate fees, LearnVest also sells advertising, in the hope that financial services firms and other brand advertisers will pay a premium for female users taking advantage of LearnVest’s educational content over what they’d pay for such users on general-interest websites.

Next Story: Your mobile app is spying on you Previous Story: Dark Roast Media integrates Publishers Clearing House sweepstakes into its social game

Large animal medicine takes a different tack. These animals are used for industry — food production, breeding farms, racing, and so on. (The lines are blurred in some cases, such as horses that are really pets, and greyhounds used for racing.) "The client" here is the manager, producer, or trainer, while the "patient" is the dairy herd, the swine operation, or the overall breeding potential of a winning stallion. While humane treatment is an important factor, the goals are maximizing performance, productivity, and profit. Large animal medicine focuses on designing a Herd Health Program, where the outcome of an individual case takes a backseat to the cost and benefit for the overall group.

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Deep-sea Oil Plume Goes Missing - Science <b>News</b>

Controversy arises over whether bacteria have completely gobbled it up.

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News Corporation (News Corp) is the world's second-largest media conglomerate (behind The Walt Disney Company) as of 2008 and the world's third largest in entertainment as of 2009. The company's Chairman, Chief Executive. …

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Fox News has been fairly merciless in its criticism of the 'Ground Zero Mosque.' Commentators on the station consider the mosque to be dangerous and.

In the wake of recent reports that Shorebank’s financial status worsened in the second quarter, some interesting new developments have surfaced.

Yesterday afternoon, Fox Business News reported that Shorebank will now be the target of a federal investigation, to look into whether political pressure was exerted on Wall Street banks to give money to help the troubled Chicago community lending bank reach the monetary threshold needed to allow the bank to qualify for federal TARP funds.

Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), has said that he will begin looking into whether or not top-level political operatives (e.g., Eugene Ludwig, former comptroller of the currency under President Bill Clinton) and FDIC chief Sheila Bair were involved in exerting direct pressure to force Wall Street banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and others to give money (which now totals more than $150 million) to the ailing bank.  Interestingly enough, Shorebank has been involved in raising private capital to qualify for TARP funds despite the fact that Shorebank senior vice president Michelle Collins emphatically stated just last year that Shorebank would take “no TARP money.”

Although the Obama administration has officially denied any involvement in helping to prop up Shorebank, the rush by other banks to come to its aid has been nothing short of remarkable.  More than a few eyebrows have been raised in response to the general flurry of activity shown by other, larger banks seeking to involve themselves in helping to rescue Shorebank.

For example, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sach’s chief executive, was personally involved in making phone calls to encourage other Wall Street banks to inject capital into the the failing Shorebank.  This, in a stated effort to allow Goldman Sachs to fulfill its obligations under the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.  (Interestingly, Ron Grzywinski, one of the founders of Shorebank, was the only banker to testify before Congress in favor of the Community Reinvestment Act.)

According to the Financial Times (UK):

John Taylor, the president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said banks such as Goldman were under pressure to “do something good”, especially for a bank widely seen as a “favourite son” of the community banking movement.

The involvement of FDIC chief Sheila Bair is not surprising, given her previously stated appreciation for Shorebank’s founder, Ron Grzywinski.  In due time, Barofsky’s investigation should be able to tell us more as to whether or not she was actually more closely involved in trying to bring about a Shorebank rescue.

In a related story, it is looking more and more as if Shorebank may not be able to keep its doors open, after failing to receive a much-anticipated $75 million in federal funds.  The approximately $150 million received from Wall Street banks earlier this summer (which has been sitting in an escrow account since that time) will be given back to investors later today unless federal funds are made available or some other solution is proposed.

So Scott Pilgrim came fifth for its opening weekend, with a total of under $11 million in the US and Canada. Hardly stellar performance with a budget of $68 million and a marketing budget on top that was rather high. So. What next?

Well. the movie will continue to play, possibly with a fair few repeat viewing from the hardcore, open in the UK (where it will do significantly better in comparison) and many other territories around the world. Money will trickle in.

And the then there’s the DVD, the Blu Ray and the download.

Kick-Ass came out in North America last week. And Kick-Ass blasted into number one, on DVD, on BluRay, on iTunes download, Zune and Sony/Playstation platforms. It gave the Kick-Ass studio Lionsgate its biggest digital week’s performance for any movie to date. It may have had to pull all sorts of dodgy statistics to claim number one for the week it debuted in the cinema, but there was no need here. But that’s not where the achievements end.

More people bought the DVD compared to how many saw it in cinemas than any other major released of the quarter, something Lionsgate has been specialising in. Just not as well as Kick-Ass with 1.4 million in disc sales.

The Blu Ray release accounts for a staggering 42% of all sales, which means that Kick-Ass is making even more money comparatively.  Indeed, added all together, it’s well over the gross for the first week in cinemas and won’t be far off the cumulative gross. And this is just the first week.

Scot Pilgrim take note. Hell, you’re mentioned in the Kick-Ass movie after all.

Note: Adverts for CLiNT Magazine appear in the UK Kick-Ass DVD and Blu Ray, out in September.

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In the wake of recent reports that Shorebank’s financial status worsened in the second quarter, some interesting new developments have surfaced.

Yesterday afternoon, Fox Business News reported that Shorebank will now be the target of a federal investigation, to look into whether political pressure was exerted on Wall Street banks to give money to help the troubled Chicago community lending bank reach the monetary threshold needed to allow the bank to qualify for federal TARP funds.

Neil Barofsky, Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), has said that he will begin looking into whether or not top-level political operatives (e.g., Eugene Ludwig, former comptroller of the currency under President Bill Clinton) and FDIC chief Sheila Bair were involved in exerting direct pressure to force Wall Street banks such as JP Morgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and others to give money (which now totals more than $150 million) to the ailing bank.  Interestingly enough, Shorebank has been involved in raising private capital to qualify for TARP funds despite the fact that Shorebank senior vice president Michelle Collins emphatically stated just last year that Shorebank would take “no TARP money.”

Although the Obama administration has officially denied any involvement in helping to prop up Shorebank, the rush by other banks to come to its aid has been nothing short of remarkable.  More than a few eyebrows have been raised in response to the general flurry of activity shown by other, larger banks seeking to involve themselves in helping to rescue Shorebank.

For example, Lloyd Blankfein, Goldman Sach’s chief executive, was personally involved in making phone calls to encourage other Wall Street banks to inject capital into the the failing Shorebank.  This, in a stated effort to allow Goldman Sachs to fulfill its obligations under the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act.  (Interestingly, Ron Grzywinski, one of the founders of Shorebank, was the only banker to testify before Congress in favor of the Community Reinvestment Act.)

According to the Financial Times (UK):

John Taylor, the president of the National Community Reinvestment Coalition, said banks such as Goldman were under pressure to “do something good”, especially for a bank widely seen as a “favourite son” of the community banking movement.

The involvement of FDIC chief Sheila Bair is not surprising, given her previously stated appreciation for Shorebank’s founder, Ron Grzywinski.  In due time, Barofsky’s investigation should be able to tell us more as to whether or not she was actually more closely involved in trying to bring about a Shorebank rescue.

In a related story, it is looking more and more as if Shorebank may not be able to keep its doors open, after failing to receive a much-anticipated $75 million in federal funds.  The approximately $150 million received from Wall Street banks earlier this summer (which has been sitting in an escrow account since that time) will be given back to investors later today unless federal funds are made available or some other solution is proposed.

So Scott Pilgrim came fifth for its opening weekend, with a total of under $11 million in the US and Canada. Hardly stellar performance with a budget of $68 million and a marketing budget on top that was rather high. So. What next?

Well. the movie will continue to play, possibly with a fair few repeat viewing from the hardcore, open in the UK (where it will do significantly better in comparison) and many other territories around the world. Money will trickle in.

And the then there’s the DVD, the Blu Ray and the download.

Kick-Ass came out in North America last week. And Kick-Ass blasted into number one, on DVD, on BluRay, on iTunes download, Zune and Sony/Playstation platforms. It gave the Kick-Ass studio Lionsgate its biggest digital week’s performance for any movie to date. It may have had to pull all sorts of dodgy statistics to claim number one for the week it debuted in the cinema, but there was no need here. But that’s not where the achievements end.

More people bought the DVD compared to how many saw it in cinemas than any other major released of the quarter, something Lionsgate has been specialising in. Just not as well as Kick-Ass with 1.4 million in disc sales.

The Blu Ray release accounts for a staggering 42% of all sales, which means that Kick-Ass is making even more money comparatively.  Indeed, added all together, it’s well over the gross for the first week in cinemas and won’t be far off the cumulative gross. And this is just the first week.

Scot Pilgrim take note. Hell, you’re mentioned in the Kick-Ass movie after all.

Note: Adverts for CLiNT Magazine appear in the UK Kick-Ass DVD and Blu Ray, out in September.

Small Business <b>News</b>: New Business Tools | Small Business <b>News</b> <b>…</b>

The new tools of business will change how everyone works. They will change your business too. If you haven't done any thinking about how new tools are already.

Montana Fishburne shunned by father for not using a porn name in <b>…</b>

about this blog. The FOX411 Blog is your first call for celebrity and entertainment news. FOX411 brings you the latest scoops using FOX's unmatched reach in news, entertainment, TV and the Internet. Click on back now, ya hear? …

Yahoo! Search Blog » Blog Archive » <b>News</b> About Our SearchMonkey <b>…</b>

News About Our SearchMonkey Program. We've been very pleased with the benefits that the SearchMonkey Program has provided to Yahoo! Search users over the last two years and want to share our plans for SearchMonkey with respect to the …

As you’ll read tomorrow (or Monday), I’ve entered a new phase in my life. After years of hard work and long hours building this blog (time that I’ve enjoyed), I’ve been shifting things around so that I have more free time. As a result, I’m going to have more time to devote to creating quality blog posts, instead of rushing around at the last minute looking for something to write about.

Because of this, it’s time yet again to take requests. I do this about once a year, and it’s a great way to get a feel for what GRS readers are interested in. I’d be grateful if you’d take the time to leave a comment below with topic suggestions or article requests. It doesn’t matter if we’ve covered the subject in the past. If you’d like me (or one of the other GRS staff) to write about it, let me know.

Have there been too many articles about credit cards? Too few articles about credit cards? Would you like to know more about individual savings accounts? Do you like the articles about the psychology of spending? Would it be helpful to have somebody come in to explain insurance concepts in plain English? Should I try to persuade my wife to share more of her recipes now and then? Let me know what you’d like to read about!

While you’re all providing feedback about the site, here are a few recent articles of note:

Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent and his readers had a thoughtful discussion about the obligations of wealth. “I think there is some inherent distrust of the rich in the mainstream of American society,” Trent writes as he describes how a wealthy person can keep from alienating his friends. There’s so much to say about this topic; I’m tempted to write an entire article about it.

GRS reader Steven writes a blog called Hundred Goals, which is about achieving your goals while managing your finances. After Sierra’s post this morning about travel, he dropped me a line to let me know that he has a recent article about how to have a great vacation.

Speaking of vacation, my pal Jason over at No Credit Needed spent time compiling day-use fees and free days for state parks across the United States. Handy page to bookmark!

And here’s more travel! At The Art of Non-Conformity, my good friend Chris Guillebeau has posted a beginner’s guide to travel hacking. I’ve been asking him to share this info for a long time; now I’ve got to take responsibility to use the knowledge he’s shared.

Finally, I’ve been giving a lot of interviews lately. I’m much more comfortable with these than I used to be. (They used to scare me to death!) Some examples:

• Colleen from The Frisky interviewed me about how to save money even when you’re living paycheck to paycheck. This is a tough quandary, something I’m asked about a lot.
• In an interview with BeFrugal, I discuss frugality, happiness, and conscious spending. (Note: “the ballot” should be “the balance” — I must have mumbled.)
• Jeff Rose at Good Financial Cents also interviewed me. This interview is very much about the process of writing a book, which may or may not interest you.
• I also spoke with Beverly Harzog from Card Ratings. We chatted about credit cards, of course, but also about other aspects of personal finance.
• Finally, USA Weekend has a short piece on how to give your 401(k) a midyear check, for which author Richard Eisenberg interviewed me back in May. This is a perfect example of how much work goes into even a small newspaper article. Eisenberg spent 20-30 minutes on the phone with me, and I’m sure he did the same with the other folks he quotes. Plus, I’ll bet he spent a lot of time writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 4-6 hours in this small piece.

Okay, one last thing before I go. Tim pointed me to a two-year-old New York Times series about the debt trap, which includes an interactive infographic showing average household debt loads over the past century.

That’s enough links for today. Please do leave a comment with topic requests or other feedback. Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go do some yardwork…

deals, Software, VC

Jive Software Nabs $30M in Round From Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital

Thea Chard 7/21/10

Jive Software, the Palo Alto, CA-based software company started in Portland, OR, has received $30 million in Series C financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

This latest shot of cash, part of which comes from Sequoia Capital, means the company has raised more than $57 million in the last three years. Sequoia had been Jive’s sole investor up until this point, providing $12 million back in October, and $15 million in 2007.

“This is the biggest joint investment that Kleiner and Sequoia have done since they partnered up with Google,” says Bryan LeBlanc, Jive’s chief financial officer.

The investors are betting big that Jive has figured out how to harness some key elements of social media for business. Jive provides social-networking, communication, collaboration, and social media monitoring tools to more than 5,000 businesses, a group that ranges from small and mid-size companies to huge global brands. Jive’s customer roster includes Nike, Starbucks, SAP, Cisco Systems, Charles Schwab, and Intel. The company also provides social networking and collaboration software for a number of U.S. government agencies, as well as congressional members and their staffs.

“We’re the largest and fastest-growing company in this new category,” says Christopher Lochhead, Jive’s chief strategy advisor. “It’s about a $5 billion dollar market growing at about 40 percent, and we’re the clear leaders.”

The company’s biggest competitors include Microsoft and IBM. But according to Lochhead, Jive has an advantage—the support of some significant VC dollars, which he says will give Jive the ability to expand its product offerings and hire the best talent Silicon Valley has to offer in “multiple gene pools.”

As part of the deal, Kleiner Perkins managing partner Ted Schlein will be joining the Jive board of directors. The $30 million capital will be used to “accelerate Jive’s rapid growth and further drive the company’s leadership in the social business market,” according to a company statement.

What does that mean for potential clients? That the company will be expanding on its current social business software—the “doppler weather radar” of what’s going on in specific markets as Lochhead puts it. It will also allow Jive to focus on developing four strategic pillars moving forward. First is what Lochhead calls  ”Jive What Matters,” a one-stop command center that encompasses “everything that you need to get your job done,” in terms of monitoring deadlines, status updates, sales numbers, all in one place. Then there’s Jive mobile apps; social widgets, such as YouTube and SalesForce, integrated into the software; and seeking out more strategic partnerships with companies like Google and Twitter.

“What social business software entails is a new way to engage with your employees, customers and the web,” Lochhead says. “Why is it so fun, effective and easy to do all of this stuff in my personal life, and yet work sucks? All of those innovations in the consumer social web, Jive is bringing to the enterprise.” He adds: “It’s a new way to do business that allows people to work together, interact, in a way that just wasn’t possible before.”

LeBlanc, the finance chief, added: “$30 million allows us to have the currency to execute that strategy.”

Though Jive, founded in Portland, OR in 2001, relocated its headquarters to Palo Alto, CA last May, it continues to maintain a growing presence in the Pacific Northwest. The company laid off one-third of its employees—around 40 people, including the vice president of engineering and vice president of sales—after the economic down turn in 2008. But Lochhead says it’s maintained profitability and is growing again, with 270 employees spread throughout the offices in Palo Alto, Portland, OR, and Boulder, CO, as well as two outposts in Europe. In January, the company posted record profits—an 85 percent increase in full-year revenue in 2009 when compared to the previous year.

And although LeBlanc could not give us exact figures on how Jive is doing this year, he did say that the financial support from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia is a strong indication of the company’s potential.

“We do intend to build a large, relevant software company, and often when you look at large, relevant software companies, they’re $1 billion companies,” LeBlanc said. “Having that capital now—I think it’s a testament that Sequoia has been very bullish about this space…it’s unusual and we feel, frankly, very honored to have two of the titans of Sand Hill Road both behind us.”

Thea Chard is the Assistant Editor for Xconomy Seattle. You can e-mail her at tchard@xconomy.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/theachard.

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As you’ll read tomorrow (or Monday), I’ve entered a new phase in my life. After years of hard work and long hours building this blog (time that I’ve enjoyed), I’ve been shifting things around so that I have more free time. As a result, I’m going to have more time to devote to creating quality blog posts, instead of rushing around at the last minute looking for something to write about.

Because of this, it’s time yet again to take requests. I do this about once a year, and it’s a great way to get a feel for what GRS readers are interested in. I’d be grateful if you’d take the time to leave a comment below with topic suggestions or article requests. It doesn’t matter if we’ve covered the subject in the past. If you’d like me (or one of the other GRS staff) to write about it, let me know.

Have there been too many articles about credit cards? Too few articles about credit cards? Would you like to know more about individual savings accounts? Do you like the articles about the psychology of spending? Would it be helpful to have somebody come in to explain insurance concepts in plain English? Should I try to persuade my wife to share more of her recipes now and then? Let me know what you’d like to read about!

While you’re all providing feedback about the site, here are a few recent articles of note:

Over at The Simple Dollar, Trent and his readers had a thoughtful discussion about the obligations of wealth. “I think there is some inherent distrust of the rich in the mainstream of American society,” Trent writes as he describes how a wealthy person can keep from alienating his friends. There’s so much to say about this topic; I’m tempted to write an entire article about it.

GRS reader Steven writes a blog called Hundred Goals, which is about achieving your goals while managing your finances. After Sierra’s post this morning about travel, he dropped me a line to let me know that he has a recent article about how to have a great vacation.

Speaking of vacation, my pal Jason over at No Credit Needed spent time compiling day-use fees and free days for state parks across the United States. Handy page to bookmark!

And here’s more travel! At The Art of Non-Conformity, my good friend Chris Guillebeau has posted a beginner’s guide to travel hacking. I’ve been asking him to share this info for a long time; now I’ve got to take responsibility to use the knowledge he’s shared.

Finally, I’ve been giving a lot of interviews lately. I’m much more comfortable with these than I used to be. (They used to scare me to death!) Some examples:

• Colleen from The Frisky interviewed me about how to save money even when you’re living paycheck to paycheck. This is a tough quandary, something I’m asked about a lot.
• In an interview with BeFrugal, I discuss frugality, happiness, and conscious spending. (Note: “the ballot” should be “the balance” — I must have mumbled.)
• Jeff Rose at Good Financial Cents also interviewed me. This interview is very much about the process of writing a book, which may or may not interest you.
• I also spoke with Beverly Harzog from Card Ratings. We chatted about credit cards, of course, but also about other aspects of personal finance.
• Finally, USA Weekend has a short piece on how to give your 401(k) a midyear check, for which author Richard Eisenberg interviewed me back in May. This is a perfect example of how much work goes into even a small newspaper article. Eisenberg spent 20-30 minutes on the phone with me, and I’m sure he did the same with the other folks he quotes. Plus, I’ll bet he spent a lot of time writing. I wouldn’t be surprised if there were 4-6 hours in this small piece.

Okay, one last thing before I go. Tim pointed me to a two-year-old New York Times series about the debt trap, which includes an interactive infographic showing average household debt loads over the past century.

That’s enough links for today. Please do leave a comment with topic requests or other feedback. Meanwhile, it’s time for me to go do some yardwork…

deals, Software, VC

Jive Software Nabs $30M in Round From Kleiner Perkins, Sequoia Capital

Thea Chard 7/21/10

Jive Software, the Palo Alto, CA-based software company started in Portland, OR, has received $30 million in Series C financing led by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.

This latest shot of cash, part of which comes from Sequoia Capital, means the company has raised more than $57 million in the last three years. Sequoia had been Jive’s sole investor up until this point, providing $12 million back in October, and $15 million in 2007.

“This is the biggest joint investment that Kleiner and Sequoia have done since they partnered up with Google,” says Bryan LeBlanc, Jive’s chief financial officer.

The investors are betting big that Jive has figured out how to harness some key elements of social media for business. Jive provides social-networking, communication, collaboration, and social media monitoring tools to more than 5,000 businesses, a group that ranges from small and mid-size companies to huge global brands. Jive’s customer roster includes Nike, Starbucks, SAP, Cisco Systems, Charles Schwab, and Intel. The company also provides social networking and collaboration software for a number of U.S. government agencies, as well as congressional members and their staffs.

“We’re the largest and fastest-growing company in this new category,” says Christopher Lochhead, Jive’s chief strategy advisor. “It’s about a $5 billion dollar market growing at about 40 percent, and we’re the clear leaders.”

The company’s biggest competitors include Microsoft and IBM. But according to Lochhead, Jive has an advantage—the support of some significant VC dollars, which he says will give Jive the ability to expand its product offerings and hire the best talent Silicon Valley has to offer in “multiple gene pools.”

As part of the deal, Kleiner Perkins managing partner Ted Schlein will be joining the Jive board of directors. The $30 million capital will be used to “accelerate Jive’s rapid growth and further drive the company’s leadership in the social business market,” according to a company statement.

What does that mean for potential clients? That the company will be expanding on its current social business software—the “doppler weather radar” of what’s going on in specific markets as Lochhead puts it. It will also allow Jive to focus on developing four strategic pillars moving forward. First is what Lochhead calls  ”Jive What Matters,” a one-stop command center that encompasses “everything that you need to get your job done,” in terms of monitoring deadlines, status updates, sales numbers, all in one place. Then there’s Jive mobile apps; social widgets, such as YouTube and SalesForce, integrated into the software; and seeking out more strategic partnerships with companies like Google and Twitter.

“What social business software entails is a new way to engage with your employees, customers and the web,” Lochhead says. “Why is it so fun, effective and easy to do all of this stuff in my personal life, and yet work sucks? All of those innovations in the consumer social web, Jive is bringing to the enterprise.” He adds: “It’s a new way to do business that allows people to work together, interact, in a way that just wasn’t possible before.”

LeBlanc, the finance chief, added: “$30 million allows us to have the currency to execute that strategy.”

Though Jive, founded in Portland, OR in 2001, relocated its headquarters to Palo Alto, CA last May, it continues to maintain a growing presence in the Pacific Northwest. The company laid off one-third of its employees—around 40 people, including the vice president of engineering and vice president of sales—after the economic down turn in 2008. But Lochhead says it’s maintained profitability and is growing again, with 270 employees spread throughout the offices in Palo Alto, Portland, OR, and Boulder, CO, as well as two outposts in Europe. In January, the company posted record profits—an 85 percent increase in full-year revenue in 2009 when compared to the previous year.

And although LeBlanc could not give us exact figures on how Jive is doing this year, he did say that the financial support from Kleiner Perkins and Sequoia is a strong indication of the company’s potential.

“We do intend to build a large, relevant software company, and often when you look at large, relevant software companies, they’re $1 billion companies,” LeBlanc said. “Having that capital now—I think it’s a testament that Sequoia has been very bullish about this space…it’s unusual and we feel, frankly, very honored to have two of the titans of Sand Hill Road both behind us.”

Thea Chard is the Assistant Editor for Xconomy Seattle. You can e-mail her at tchard@xconomy.com or follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/theachard.

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Small Business <b>News</b>: The Online Entrepreneur | Small Business <b>News</b> <b>…</b>

Planning a new small business? You may want to consider doing it online. In this small business news roundup, we look at a variety of tools and tips for.

Introducing the CNET <b>News</b> iPhone app | Digital Media - CNET <b>News</b>

We know you've been clamoring for an official CNET News iPhone app, and we're happy to let you know it's finally here. Read all about what it does and why you should download it. Read this blog post by Josh Lowensohn on Digital Media.

RoboForm Version <b>News</b>

Version News. News and details from current and past versions of RoboForm. Version 6.10.0 * Add import of logins and bookmarks from LastPass and KeePass. * Add welcome help balloon on new install. * RoboForm2Go installer can be started …

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Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

Five Best Personal Money Management Sites

Web-based financial management tools have grown in sophistication to the point where many people manage their entire financial lives with online tools. Here's a look at five of the most popular personal money management sites.

Photo a mashup of images by Leonardini and Wilton.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite personal money management site; now we're back to highlight the five most popular contenders.

Click on the screenshots below to take a closer look.

Buxfer (Basic: Free, Premium: From $2.79/month)

Many people are hesitant to use online banking services because of security concerns. Buxfer's compromise to provide ease of use while also assuring users and keeping things as controlled as they would like is to offer multiple methods for storing your credentials. You can manually synchronize your financial accounts with the site, you can store your passwords and login credentials locally using Google Gears, Firefox, or Safari, or you can use the Firebux Firefox extension—Firebux helps you automate the process of downloading financial data from your banking institutions and reviewing Buxfer data. If you'd like to skip the hassle of handling your own syncing, Buxfer offers automatic nightly syncing of your financial data, automatically logging into and pulling data from your various online money portals. Buxfer comes in three flavors: Basic (free), Plus ($2.79 per month), and Pro ($3.79 per month). All accounts include features like split bills, automatic tagging, and mobile access, but you'll pay a premium for unlimited budgets, bill reminders, and balance projections. You can try a live demo of Buxfer here.

Yodlee MoneyCenter (Free)

As many readers were quick to point out, Yodlee provides the guts to the user sites for hundreds of banking and financial services. Organizations like Mint, Thrive, and large banks like Chase use rebranded but Yodlee-powered interfaces. Yodlee users will often characterize Yodlee as similar to Mint, but without such a strong emphasis on flashy graphics. Instead it focuses more on analyzing your raw data—transaction descriptions, for example, are easier to search and more detailed. Yodlee can import data from thousands of institutions, help you generate a budget, automate your bill paying, and send out user-defined alerts. If you like the idea of a site like Mint but want more fine-grained control and the ability to manually tweak things when necessary, Yodlee is a solid alternative.

Mint (Free)

Mint has risen to prominence as a major player among web-based financial management tools by putting an extreme emphasis on user-friendliness and automation. The focus on automation is so strong, in fact, they only recently added the ability to add in any sort of manual transactions. By providing Mint with your various logins, you can track all your financial accounts in one place—checking, savings, credit cards, investments—and easily generate budgets and projections based off your data. Mint has won many people over, especially in the younger demographic, by being the first tool they've used to really get a good look at their money and where it's going.

ClearCheckbook (Basic: Free, Premium: $4/month)

ClearCheckbook is a web-based checking account ledger on steroids. You can track your spending, input your daily expenses from the web-interface or from your iPhone, Android, or Palm, and generate a budget with spending limits. Upgrading to a premium account gets you a custom report tool, custom transaction fields, future balance projection, and editing of the auto-suggest feature. Visit ClearCheckbook at the link above to check out the video tours of both the free and premium accounts—available at the bottom of the main page.

Mvelopes ($39.60/quarter)

Mvelopes is a robust web-based financial tool built on the old principle of budgeting with envelopes—each budget category gets an envelope with a set amount of money. Its focus on an old budgeting technique, however, doesn't mean you're stuck with dated tools. Mvelopes automatically pulls transaction data from hundreds of financial institutions, supports automatic bill payment, and helps you generate snapshots of your net worth as you adjust your budget and goals. Mvelopes is notable for being the only contender in the Hive without a free account option, a testament perhaps to how happy people are with the service that it made an appearance in the top five despite the lack of free-as-in-beer option.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the top five contenders for best personal money management sites, it's time to cast a vote for your favorite:

Have a favorite web-based tool that didn't get a nod or want to talk up your favorite a bit more? Let's hear it in the comments. Have an idea for the next Hive Five? Send us an email at tips@lifehacker.com with “Hive Five” in the subject line and we'll do our best to get your idea the attention it deserves.

Send an email to Jason Fitzpatrick, the author of this post, at jason@lifehacker.com.

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Transfer <b>news</b> England goalkeeper David James agrees to sign for <b>…</b>

England keeper goes from World Cup finals to the Championship.

AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments | Nanotech - The <b>…</b>

AMD passed Nvidia in graphics chip shipments in the second quarter, according to a marketing research firm. Read this blog post by Brooke Crothers on Nanotech - The Circuits Blog.

<b>News</b> Quiz | July 30, 2010 - The Learning Network Blog - NYTimes.com

See what you know about the news of the day. … A 'View' of Obama. 6 Q's About the News | Why do you think the president decided to appear on “The View”? A guest post by our college intern, Carrie Montgomery. July 30 …

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Transfer <b>news</b> England goalkeeper David James agrees to sign for <b>…</b>

England keeper goes from World Cup finals to the Championship.

AMD tops Nvidia in graphics chip shipments | Nanotech - The <b>…</b>

AMD passed Nvidia in graphics chip shipments in the second quarter, according to a marketing research firm. Read this blog post by Brooke Crothers on Nanotech - The Circuits Blog.

<b>News</b> Quiz | July 30, 2010 - The Learning Network Blog - NYTimes.com

See what you know about the news of the day. … A 'View' of Obama. 6 Q's About the News | Why do you think the president decided to appear on “The View”? A guest post by our college intern, Carrie Montgomery. July 30 …

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That's so this year. What's that? Silly Bandz? Twilight? As Mark Cuban writes on his blog, “Location check in is so 2010.” Cuban explains that he just invested in a company that, through video footage, determines how many people are in a given area at a time, ostensibly for security and traffic-pattern analysis. For now anonymity is given to crowd members, but Cuban wonders if adding facial recognition software would allow locations to forego checkin applications because “we would already know you are there.” Sound a little like Minority Report? TechCrunch thinks so. “It sounds like a future we're inevitably headed toward.”

Behind the scenes at Gilt Groupe. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Alexis Maybank shares the story of how she and co-founder Alexandra Wilkis Wilson built Gilt Groupe, the online flash sales site for men's and women's luxury fashions. The company, founded in 2007, reported $170 million in revenue last year and now boasts three million members who shop for designer brands at up to 70 percent off retail prices. Maybank talks about the challenges of getting the word out there, signing up initial designers, and raising VC as a woman. She explains to the Journal that “it's an old boy's network, and that's intimidating for a lot of women. So when explaining fashion to a bunch of men in khaki pants and blue button-down shirts, their response was always 'Oh, let me see if my wife thinks if this is a good idea.' But it worked.”

Our annual 30 Under 30 list. They're running innovative companies, they're building communities, they're setting trends, they're giving back–and they're all under 30. Here's this year's winners, from Sprouter, to Agile Sports, to The Man Registry. Did we miss anyone? Let us know in the comments.

Foursquare is prowling for a partnership. Yet another 30 Under 30 winner is making headlines this morning as it attempts to snag a whale of a partnership. Foursquare, the game/ social network that recently raised $20 million in Series B funding, claims it is in talks with Google, Yahoo and Microsoft about deals involving their location-based data (via GigaOM). While the novelty of being the mayor of your local mall might gradually wear off it can still be a useful tool to make money for your business. Also, this type of partnership is what catapulted Twitter to profitability.

Facebook's co-founder on the Facebook movie. When you're trying to revolutionize social networking while you're still at Harvard, you're probably not thinking about how Aaron Sorkin might portray your life in a feature film six years hence. In SocialBeat, Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, gives his take on the silver screen adaptation. In short: it overplays the sex and booze. “It is interesting to see my past rewritten in a way that emphasizes things that didn't matter . . Other than that, it's just cool to see a dramatization of history. A lot of exciting things happened in 2004, but mostly we just worked a lot and stressed out about things; the version in the trailer seems a lot more exciting, so I'm just going to chose to remember that we drank ourselves silly and had a lot of sex with coeds,” writes Moskovitz, who is currently working on a productivity startup Asana, backed by Benchmark Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. As for Zuckerberg, he adds, “At the end of the day, they cannot help but portray him as the driven, forward-thinking genius that he is.”

What financial reform means for angel investing. In a guest post at VentureBeat, Scott Walker, CEO of a law firm that specializes in entrepreneur representation, breaks down the impact of the financial regulation bill on angel investing. The verdict: it's a mix of good and bad.  

Renting a room to save a home. Today's BusinessWeek explains how San Francisco-based startup AirBnB is helping homeowners escape foreclosure. The site allows people from 142 countries to rent out empty rooms and pull in a little extra income. One New Yorker tells BusinessWeek, “This has been our stimulus package…we were going to lose our house.” Founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia say they got the idea for the company when they were cash-strapped, themselves. After renting out space in their own home, they decided to turn the idea into a business, enlisting the help of their friend Nathan Blecharczyk. All three founders made it onto our 30 under 30 list this year, having seen a tremendous amount of growth since the site launched just two years ago.

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Hard to say who the worst member of Congress is. But there are few short lists that would exclude narrow-minded and extremist Minnesota religious fanatic Michele Bachmann. However, today isn't about Bachmann. You want Bachmann, you go to DumpBachmann; no one does it better. At the time of the 2008 election, Bachmann was just as odious as she is today. Blue America didn't get involved in that race though because her opponent simply seemed… “better than Bachmann.” That standard is too low for us.

And today we're going to meet state Senator Tarryl Clark (below in the comments section), a hard working leader with a proven track record who would be a great candidate whether she were running against Michele Bachmann, or just some garden variety Republican.

People say this suburban/exurban district mostly north of the Twin Cities is too red for a Democrat. But that isn't true. Bush won it in 2004 with 57% and 4 years later McCain took 53% but, the district has also voted to elect Amy Klobuchar to the Senate– and against Mark Kennedy, the kook who represented the district before Bachmann. And in the 15th senatorial district near St Cloud, the part Tarryl represents– and which was a GOP bastion before she came along– the vote totals in that 2006 race were very interesting. Because she knows what it means to work hard and work smart, and with a very committed Wellstone-style of campaigning, Tarryl outpolled everyone on the ballot:

Clark 15581 (56.30%)
Klobuchar 14980 (53.45%)
Pawlenty 14307 (51.1%)
Wetterling 13082 (46.81%)
Bachmann 12542 (44.88%)

MN-06 has the most devastating unemployment rate in Minnesota and the worst foreclosure crisis in the state. But Bachmann has neither understood nor been sympathetic to her constituents finding themselves in a jam because of the vicissitudes of an economy buffeted by disastrous conservative ideological experimentation. She has not only not contributed to finding solutions to these very real problems, she has tried to capitalize of politicizing them.

Tarryl's reaction, as a state legislator, has been the exact opposite. Instead of running around the country and ranting and raving at tea parties, she proven herself an effective leader for the people she represents, working to secure the funds to upgrade the facilities at Saint Cloud State University, working to ensure Central Minnesota’s nursing homes are paid fairly, working to establish a special law enforcement unit to fight gang activities in Central Minnesota.

Tarryl’s been a champion for issues including early childhood and higher education, health care, serving veterans, protecting Minnesotans from predatory lenders, and investing in the local communities that make America strong. Because of that her colleagues elected her to serve as the Senate’s Assistant Majority Leader. Bachmann's colleagues have recognized her as a clown and have tasked her with going on Fox to stir up divisiveness and animosities.

Tarryl’s record of results on reducing unemployment:

• Created 22,000 jobs with last session’s bonding bill

• Helped small businesses add new jobs with Angel Investor Tax Credits

• Authored the Central Minnesota Bioscience Initiative to bring jobs in the biotech industry into the 6th district

• Authored economic development bill that improved workforce development (job training) and expanded the Small Business Growth Acceleration Program, and entrepreneur and small business development grants.

Tarryl’s record of results on reducing foreclosure:

• Authored legislation to protect seniors from predatory lenders and reverse mortgages

• Helped families in keep their homes with the MN Subprime Borrowers Relief Act

• Authored legislation to reduce the burden of property taxes on middle class families

Tarryl is the newest member of the Blue America family. If you can volunteer for her campaign, there's a sign up form here and if you can help the campaign financially, she's on the Blue America endorsed candidates list.

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Housing markets: Hooray for bad <b>news</b> | The Economist

Hooray for bad news. Jul 26th 2010, 19:56 by R.A. | WASHINGTON. STRANGELY enough, many news outlets have reported todays figure on new home sales for the month of June in a positive fashion. Bloomberg, for instance, noted: …

Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image - Flying car gets closer to <b>…</b>

View Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image in CNET News' 'Flying car gets closer to takeoff (photos)' slideshow - CNET News.

Econbrowser: More disappointing <b>news</b>

More disappointing news. Just a quick note on a couple of new data releases today. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index aims to summarize in a single number 85 separate measures of real economic activity that are now available for …

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Housing markets: Hooray for bad <b>news</b> | The Economist

Hooray for bad news. Jul 26th 2010, 19:56 by R.A. | WASHINGTON. STRANGELY enough, many news outlets have reported todays figure on new home sales for the month of June in a positive fashion. Bloomberg, for instance, noted: …

Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image - Flying car gets closer to <b>…</b>

View Meet the 'roadable aircraft' image in CNET News' 'Flying car gets closer to takeoff (photos)' slideshow - CNET News.

Econbrowser: More disappointing <b>news</b>

More disappointing news. Just a quick note on a couple of new data releases today. The Chicago Fed National Activity Index aims to summarize in a single number 85 separate measures of real economic activity that are now available for …

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And yet, The Hollywood Reporter finds the movie market gurus slightly embarrassed at what they call the “family stampede.” Family films have well outpaced pre-release projections repeatedly since May, and the studio bosses are puzzled over why these movies “outperform” their guesses. "The simplest answer is that the tracking doesn't include the young kids themselves," Disney distribution boss Chuck Viane said.

"It's just harder to get a handle on what kids are thinking," another brilliant marketer guessed. "Tracking surveys are based on what people express in phone and Internet surveys, and you're not going to find the young kids that way." Pre-release tracking surveys focus on parents. "The nag factor is what drives those kind of movies," a studio executive tartly declared. "The parents might be less inclined than the kids to see a picture, but then the kids pester the parents, and the rest is history."

So why don’t the studio bosses start factoring in the possibility of a “nag factor” from young children, wanting to go to the movies with parents who demand quality for their children, and make some movies accordingly? No million-dollar marketing exec has thought of that yet?

"There can be a disconnect in tracking sometimes about how far a picture will reach across all audiences," said Sony distribution president Rory Bruer, whose gone-to-China remake of "The Karate Kid" debuted last month with a much-better-than expected $55.7 million. "There's no doubt that word-of-mouth is important in that aspect." Maybe the studio underestimated the affinity of parents for the first version of the film, released back in 1984. It's well on its way to grossing $200 million.

Sometimes, pre-tracking surveys are wrong the other way, overestimating turnout. Last fall, pre-release surveys suggested the Michael Jackson tribute film “This Is It” could ring up “$40 million or more” on its first weekend. The actual figure was a lot less: $23 million.

“Despicable Me” is a great example of the “out-performed expectations” story line. The Universal cartoon with the inept bald-headed villain who learns to love and parent three young girls grossed $56.4 million in its opening weekend, although the “experts” expected a much lower $30 to $35 million weekend.

"People think it was a whole host of things contributing to the big opening," one executive told the Hollywood Reporter. "You had some fresh-looking characters, funny trailers and a huge boost from running those trailers with other hit family films over the past several weeks." Surveys had suggested “tepid” interest from consumers.

Anyone watching NBC or Universal's cable channels were subjected to repeated on-screen promos during their favorite shows. NBC also ran a 30-minute “behind the scenes” infomercial on the opening night of the film, since Friday night TV in the summertime isn't a hot spot for advertisers.

Only one R-rated movie has grossed over $100 million this year, the Leonardo di Caprio horror flick “Shutter Island.” It has just been squeezed out of the top ten by “Despicable Me.” Three movies have grossed over $300 million to top the 2010 list: “Toy Story 3” (a daring G), “Alice in Wonderland” (PG), and “Iron Man 2” (PG-13). Three more movies have grossed over $200 million: “Twilight: The Eclipse Saga” (PG-13) and the family cartoons “Shrek Forever After” (PG) and “How to Train Your Dragon” (PG).

Why can’t greedy Hollywood just look at the math and put their money where the American public’s eyes want to go?

Here’s what should follow: more respect from the movie awards shows for these animated films. “Toy Story 3" drew rave reviews across the board. The St. Petersburg Times said it “isn't merely the best movie of the summer — even with summer just kicking in — but an immediate candidate for best of the year.” Don’t bet the mortgage.

NewsBusters is turning 5. Enter our free t-shirt contest to help us celebrate!

Susan Payton is the President of Egg Marketing & Public Relations, an Internet marketing firm. She blogs at The Marketing Eggspert Blog. Follow her on Twitter @eggmarketing. Download her newest e-book, “Content is Queen: How Article & Blog Writing Will Increase Your Sales.“

Companies love positive feedback. They share it on TwitterTwitter, post it on their website and use it as marketing fodder. But what about when feedback is, well, less than pleasant? What can you do with a handful (or more) of irate customers? Do you ignore them? Bury them out back? Not in today’s social atmosphere.

Rather than try to sweep these unhappy customers under the rug, look at them as a challenge and an opportunity to improve your brand and leverage them for some publicity.

Why You Want Angry Customers

Well, maybe you don’t want angry customers, but let’s be honest — you’ll never have 100 percent customer satisfaction. No one does. So use those unhappy customers to better understand what you’re doing wrong, and learn from the experience. And while you’re at it, turn the angry customers into brand evangelists.

There are several ways to connect with unhappy customers in a meaningful way:

• Hold a panel or forum in person; give them a tour of your facility and hold a venting session
• Work virtually; host an online panel to get feedback from them
• Work one-on-one to understand their concerns and address them individually

In-Person Events

Dell recently held its first Customer Advisory Panel event at their headquarters in Round Rock, TX. They invited two groups of 15 bloggers and social media gurus. One group was full of people who had negative experiences with the company and who were vocal about their displeasure. The second group was made up of people that Dell considered brand evangelists; people who loved Dell and told others.

The attendees started the morning with their gripes; customer service issues came up again and again. The heads of customer service and marketing were present and actively engaged. As they listened, they took notes, then asked questions and they promised they would make changes.

That type of customer empowerment is important. Now, whether they’ll go through with the promised changes is another story, but it was clear that Dell understood it was time to start paying attention to the public’s perception of its brand, and make some changes to keep their customers.

Nestlé is another company that has been successful at holding an event to let people engage with its brand directly. After a resurgence in interest in the Nestle Boycott a few years ago, Nestlé decided to invite a group of bloggers to what it called its “Happy, Healthy Gathering” in 2009. Mommy bloggers, who’d been tweeting up a storm about the company’s stance on breastfeeding in third world countries, were invited to tour the facilities and give their input on the company.

Whether the event truly changed perceptions remains to be seen, but it did a great deal to show that Nestlé was putting in the effort to reach its audience.

Disclosure: I was one of the bloggers invited to participate Dell’s Customer Advisory Panel.

Virtual Panels

Virtual panels are decidedly less effective than in-person ones. But they can be good replacements for focus groups. Pssst is General Mills’ online testing ground for new products. The company sends participants coupons and free products to try, and in return they are asked to fill out surveys. The program is so successful that bloggers who write about saving money are gladly turning others onto joining Pssst.

Similarly, the Starbucks Passion Panel was designed to get customer feedback — for better or worse. The community of Starbucks drinkers gives their input via surveys and forums.

Passion Panel member Jennifer Boyd said, “Being on the Passion Panel means that I have access to direct input and discussion with other members. It enables me to give my opinion on Starbucks’ current and future products through surveys. The panel is a great way to engage with their loyal customers and solidifies a relationship with a consumer to a brand.”

Wal-Mart’s Elevenmoms platform is another example of how a mix of online community, shopper experience and in-person visits can work together to help the company gather new insights. John Andrews, former Senior Manager of Emerging Media for Wal-Mart and founder of the Elevenmoms, said the community succeeded in getting Wal-Mart’s attention in a few areas where it was lacking.

When the iPhone was launched in Wal-Mart stores, the Elevenmoms were invited to go through the purchase process. Some had no problems, but others did. It took one blogger two hours to buy a phone. Each blogger published her experience, and Wal-Mart took the feedback to its operations staff, who took notes and improved the purchase process.

“The Elevenmoms used direct social media interaction to improve the shopping process,” said Andrews.

Other feedback caused Wal-Mart to reconsider its layaway strategy. Having canceled the layaway plan due to costs, Wal-Mart got some flack from the Elevenmoms, who felt it made it easier to make big purchases. As a result, Wal-Mart developed its Site to Store platform, which provided the benefit of layaway online, so that local stores didn’t incur extra costs.

Disclosure: John Andrews now works with Collective Bias, a company with which I have collaborated on projects.

One-on-One

Solving a customer’s problems and changing their perception individually is the least cost-effective method, but a little work goes a long way. And it starts with customer service personnel being properly trained to solve problems, and not to simply stick to “the script” at all costs. Look at Zappos or Disney for great examples of how service reps are empowered to solve problems.

Disney empowers each of its “cast members” (staff) to solve a guest’s problem. From the street sweeper to the reservation specialist, everyone has the ability to turn a negative situation into a good one. That might mean replacing a fallen ice cream cone, upgrading a guest’s hotel room, or simply answering politely the most commonly asked question on Disney property: what time is the three o’clock parade?

Disney is so good at customer service, they’ve opened the Disney Institute, a customer service training program helps other corporations use the same techniques that has made Disney such a success.

Likewise, Zappos is also famous for its customer service tactics. The reps don’t use scripts, and seem to genuinely care about solving problems. Many customers are pleasantly surprised when their shipping gets upgraded and they get their shoes even faster – at no additional charge.

By providing instant happiness to the customer, these brands can prevent a lot of the bad karma that comes down the road when an unhappy customer becomes an enraged customer who tells everyone he knows about how bad the company is (no one wants their own version of DellHell).

Conclusion

No matter how you interact with unhappy customers, the point is not to brush them off, and make sure you learn from it. Don’t just pretend to listen and then go on doing business as usual. Take the feedback as constructive criticism that can help you determine your company’s future. How you handle your failures could make you or break you.

More Business Resources from Mashable

- HOW TO: Evaluate Your Social Media Plan
- Why Your Next Business Card May Be Virtual
- HOW TO: Improve B2B Sales Productivity with Social Media
- HOW TO: Use Social Media for Lead Generation
- HOW TO: Use QR Codes for Small Business Marketing

Stock: Image courtesy of iStockphotoiStockphoto, biffspandex

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<b>News</b> Roundup: Gabriel Macht Joins USA Network Pilot, 'Glee' Casts <b>…</b>

Gabriel Macht, known to many for his role in 'The Spirit,' is getting a very 'Legal' state of mind. Macht has joined the cast of USA.

Small Business <b>News</b>: Getting Things Right | Small Business <b>News</b> <b>…</b>

Marketer Mark Brimm hates when gurus tell entrepreneurs and other marketers they're doing it wrong. Though there are certainly right ways and wrong ways to.

Housing markets: Hooray for bad <b>news</b> | The Economist

Hooray for bad news. Jul 26th 2010, 19:56 by R.A. | WASHINGTON. STRANGELY enough, many news outlets have reported todays figure on new home sales for the month of June in a positive fashion. Bloomberg, for instance, noted: …

If you’re seeking a job in social media, we’d like to help out. For starters, Mashable’sMashable Job Lists section gathers together all of our resource lists, how-tos and expert guides to help you get hired. In particular, you might want to see our articles on How to Leverage Social Media for Career Success and How to Find a Job on Twitter.

But we’d like to help in a more direct way, too. Mashable’s job boards are a place for socially savvy companies to find people like you. This week and every week, Mashable features its coveted job board listings for a variety of positions in the web, social media space and beyond. Have a look at what’s good and new on our job boards:

Mashable Job Board Listings

Senior Manager, Social Mediasocial media & Marketing at Electronic Arts in Redwood City, CA.

The Senior Manager, Social Media & Marketing is responsible for developing, communicating and implementing a comprehensive social marketing strategy against EA’s priority titles and initiatives.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Area Sales Manager at AT&T in Tulsa, OK.

Join us as an Area Sales Manager-InternetInternet.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Account Executive at Social Media Link in New York, NY.

This position demands a skilled and creative strategist, able to communicate technical topics in a clear and concise manner.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Strategist at iCrossing in New York, NY.

As a Senior Analyst in this group, you will help plan and execute social media marketing programs for clients.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Digital Strategy at Hill Holiday in Fairhaven, MA.

While serving as the digital marketing lead for a set of clients, you will build the case for digital solutions and help conceive and execute marketing programs that cross digital channels, integrate with offline media and push interactive innovation.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Art Director at Digitas in Philadelphia, PA.

The Art Director at Digitas will be responsible for the conception, design, and execution of innovative visual materials for integrated, cross channel initiatives including: large web initiatives, online advertising, digital marketing, direct marketing and/or print advertising.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Web Developer at Clorox Creative in Oakland, CA.

We are looking for a contract Senior Web Developer experienced in building modern web sites and web apps utilizing OO PHP5 and Javascript/Ajax functionality.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Experienced Front End Developer at Clorox Creative in Oakland, CA.

Looking for a true front-end HTML and CSS guru that hand codes.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Project Manager at Infuse Creative in Santa Monica, CA.

The Project Manager’s role is a mission critical client interface and project management role.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Vice President, Digital Strategy at Ketchum in New York, NY.

We’re looking for a Vice President/Digital Strategy to join our ranks, an individual deeply ingrained in media culture, “pull-not-push” marketing and the dynamics of on- and off-line community building.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Ambassador at Buick in Chicago, IL.

To kick-off this program, Buick is seeking three Brand Ambassadors in Chicago who will serve as the in-car Buick representatives during Tweet to Drive.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Facebook Engineer at Demandforce in San Francisco, CA.

Demandforce is looking for an outstanding individual to join the engineering team, reporting directly to the CTO.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Engineering Manager at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.

We are seeking an Engineering Manager to direct the development, creation, and modification of computer applications software and specialized utility programs.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Online Marketing and Engagement Manager at Make-A-Wish Foundation in Phoenix, AZ.

This position is responsible for the tactical implementation of online marketing and key audience engagement functions at the National Office to advance the Foundation’s goals in corporate and individual fundraising, mission delivery, chapter support and brand advancement.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Manager at PETA in Los Angeles, CA.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) seeks a social media manager to lead PETA’s award-winning social media efforts which include PETA’s Facebook and Twitter presences, PETA’s popular blog, The PETA Files, and online activism efforts.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Community Editor at AOL in New York, NY.

Urlesque.com, AOL’s internet trends and web humor site, is looking for a NYC-based temporary freelance community editor to engage, grow and interact with the Urlesque audience.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Director of Engineering at Synacor in San Francisco, CA.

We are seeking a Director of Engineering who will be responsible for leading a team of Internet developers and architects in a fast-paced and quickly growing company.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Intern at All Wet Beachwear in Hollywood, FL.

We are seeking a Social Media Public Relations Intern who has the passion, drive and knowledge to develop an effective and cutting edge social media campaign.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Director of Engineering at Synacor in Buffalo, NY.

We are seeking a Director of Engineering who will be responsible for leading a team of Internet developers and architects in a fast-paced and quickly growing company.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Editor in Chief, Startup at Life and Home Style Digital Network in Los Angeles, CA.

You must have digital exp., knowledge and interest in consumer/lifestyle, emerging home design and its customers.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Manager, Marketing at Digitas in New York, NY.

Day-to-day management of all digital media (online advertising), offline media (print, direct mail) strategy, production and execution through strong partnership with extended teams.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Senior Platform Engineer at Gilt Groupe in New York, NY.

As a hands-on Senior Software Engineer for Gilt Groupe on our platform team, you’ll help develop and maintain the scalable data and services platform upon with the Gilt Group sites are built.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Application Engineer at Gilt Groupe in New York, NY.

The Application Engineer is responsible for developing applications for the production websites ranging from search, product presentation, usability etc.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Multiple Job Openings via UrgentCareer in New York, NY, Silicon Valley and elsewhere.

We currently are managing over 80 positions from more than 50 top companies.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Director, Social Media at National Association of Home Builders in Washington DC.

This position serves as the technical point of contact for the NAHB social media and social networking activities.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Applications Engineer at Triton Digital Media in Kentucky.

Triton Digital Media, a quickly growing media company,is looking for experienced social media application developers in Cincinnati, Ohio and the surrounding area.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Director, Online Content at National Association of Home Builders in Washington DC.

This newly created position is responsible for ensuring that NAHB’s website and social media networks clearly and effectively communicate the association’s messages, promotes its products and services and provides high-quality information and content to numerous publics.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Online Marketing Specialist at Quikbook.com in New York, NY.

Group of successful ecommerce travel websites seeks a new team member to head customer acquisition efforts.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Director of Engineering at Gilt Groupe in New York, NY.

Lead software development activities such as software design, development, unit testing, documentation, integration testing, deployment documentation, code reviews, adherence to software development standards

Read more about this opportunity here.

Senior Planner at Wunderman in New York, NY.

The Senior Planner (eCommerce) will articulate consumer insights to drive digital demand generation communications strategies and programs related to eCommerce for local sales units.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Youth Marketing Manager at PETA in Los Angeles, CA.

People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) seeks a youth marketing manager to build awareness and recognition of PETA’s campaigns and reach the youth (teen, high school and college) audience with PETA’s message through media, special events and peer-to-peer marketing.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Manager of Creative Media Design and Development at The Children’s Museum of Indianapolis in Indianapolis, IN.

The Manager of Creative Media Design & Development is a hands-on management position responsible for the design, development, implementation and maintenance of gallery creative media to drive significant new and repeat visitation to the museum and to enhance the visitor experience.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Intern, Marketing at The Walt Disney Company – Disney Retail in Los Angeles.

The successful candidate will join our internal marketing team as an intern to monitor our social media presence, become an ‘intra-preneuer’ serve as a customer service agent, develop, implement and monitor successful campaigns resulting in real world results and author social media activities.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Sr Software Engineer at IGN Entertainment in San Francisco, CA.

IGN Entertainment is looking for a passionate Rails engineer who believes an agile development and believes in vertical ownership of technology stack. ExperienceeXperience with large scale production systems and Java is a plus.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Senior Digital Communications at Bayada Nurses in New Jersey.

We seek an experienced and results-driven Senior Digital Manager to join our Communications team to develop and direct digital strategies for Bayada Nurses.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Senior Storage Administrator at Synacor in San Francisco, CA.

We are seeking a Senior Storage Administrator who will work under limited supervision, administer all aspects of an advanced storage area network.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Senior Storage Administrator at Synacor in Los Angeles, CA.

We are seeking a Senior Storage Administrator who will work under limited supervision, administer all aspects of an advanced storage area network.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Webmaster at Pacific-10 Conference in Walnut Creek, CA.

The webmaster will oversee the editorial and technical operation of Pac-10.org and also contribute to our long-range site strategy and planning.

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Analyst, Strategy and Analysis at Digitas in Detroit, MI.

The Digitas Strategy & Analysis Group is responsible for driving strategic thinking and economic insight across multiple client engagements

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Sr Copywriter at Digitas in Philadelphia, PA.

As an Integrated Sr. Copywriter for Digitas you are responsible for the conception and execution of innovative copy for integrated, cross channel initiatives including large web initiatives, online advertising, digital marketing, print advertising and/or direct mail.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Customer Experience Manager at GigMasters.com in Redding, CT.

GigMasters.com, based in Redding, CT, is seeking an experienced manager to supervise our dynamic Customer Experience Team.

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Product Manager, Mobile at HealthCentral in Arlington, VA.

Understand the company’s vision and lead product and business development for our mobile services in tracking health symptoms and care.

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Front End Developers at Modea in Blacksburg, VA.

Modea is looking for developers who can create engaging, interactive experiences on platforms ranging from small micro-sites to large, global, multilingual enterprise systems.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Interactive Website Project Manager at TIG Global in Chevy Chase, MD.

As a result of continued growth and expansion, we are currently seeking an Interactive Website Project Manager

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Director, Social Marketing at Yahoo! in Sunnyvale, CA.

We are seeking a dynamic, creative and innovative leader to drive social marketing programs at Yahoo!

Read more about this opportunity here.

Social Media Manager at Milestone Internet Marketing in Santa Clara, CA.

Milestone Internet Marketing in Santa Clara, CA is seeking a Social Media Manager within the travel vertical.

Read more about this opportunity here.

Intern – Social Media at Vans in Cypress, CA.

The Vans Direct to Consumer Communications intern assists the department with social media efforts both internally and externally

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CSS Producer at Buddy Media in New York, NY.

Work extensively implementing sites into our Platform/CMS from HTML/CSS templates.

Read more about this opportunity here.

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Today I was able to catch up with Gary Key who is a Technical Marketing Manager for ASUS to ask him a few questions about Internet Explorer 9 Platform Preview 3.

James : Thanks for your time Gary. As a Technical Marketing Manager, how have you been involved with the release of Internet Explorer Platform Preview 3?

Gary : It’s really exciting to be involved! ASUS has been providing both mainstream and cutting edge hardware to Microsoft to ensure the best possible user experience with Internet Explorer 9. Not only have we been supplying exciting hardware for testing but we’ve also been providing input and feedback on how to make IE9 perform its absolute best on ASUS products.

James : You said that it’s been exciting being involved with Platform Preview 3. What’s been most exciting for you?

Gary : Here at ASUS we’ve been at the forefront of netbook and notebook innovation by providing the type of CPU and graphical processing power that Internet Explorer 9 thrives on. For example, we shipped the first Intel Atom dual-core with NVIDIA ION powered netbooks, NVIDIA 3D Vision enabled notebooks and one of the first DX11 gaming notebooks powered by ATI’s Mobility Radeon HD 5870 GPU. It’s this type of power that enables IE9 to provide an extremely responsive and interactive user experience on the Web. ASUS’ continued commitment to provide excellent CPU and GPU performance in its mobile products along with Microsoft’s innovative use of hardware acceleration in IE9 will help to create an unlimited possibilities for new Web applications that are both graphically and functionally rich.

James : You mentioned some of your innovative hardware. I’ve had my eye on your U30Jc or UL80Vt notebooks. How will they perform with the latest Platform Preview?

Gary : Thanks to the Intel dual-core processor and discreet graphics performance of the NVIDIA mobile GPU chipset in either notebook the user experience with Internet Explorer 9 will be incredible. In fact, even our AMD based Eee PC 1201T netbook will provide enough graphical and CPU processing power to ensure the user has a terrific web experience with IE9.

James : How about elsewhere in your range? Is there a price point or a particular type of machine I should be looking for?

Gary : We have a vast number of new mobile products launching this summer that are built with Internet Explorer 9 in mind. Everything from our upcoming Eee PC 1215N netbook and slim and light U35Jc notebook to the new 3D capable Republic of Gamers G53 gaming notebook will offer users a rich and interactive internet experience with IE9.

James : So do I need to buy a new notebook or workstation to take advantage of the hardware acceleration in Internet Explorer 9?

Gary : Not at all. We’ve been using discrete graphics and multi-core processors in most of our machines since we started shipping Windows Vista and Windows 7 machines so Internet Explorer 9 will be able to take advantage of that horsepower too. Of course, buying a new shiny notebook with an aluminum body never hurts does it?

James : You’re really trying to talk me into that U30Jc aren’t you? One last thing, what’s your favorite Platform Preview 3 demo on the www.ietestdrive.com site and why?

Gary : That’s a very difficult question to answer. I really do not have a single favorite Internet Explorer Platform Preview 3 demo as they all show how the combination of IE9 and the processing power available in ASUS mobile products will provide a uniquely rich, responsive and interactive Web experience for the user. However, I would have to say during testing that we probably ran the Flickr Explorer demo the most as it truly displayed the power of our current and upcoming mobile products when using IE9.

James : Gary thank you so much for your time.

Gary : It’s been a pleasure.

Small Business <b>News</b>: The Social Media Trend | Small Business Trends

Social media as a small business tool is definitely no fad. Look at how social media, from blogs to Twitter to Facebook, has changed the way businesses operate,

Tech <b>News</b> Sites Tout Misleading BitTorrent Piracy Study | TorrentFreak

Unfortunately, the results of these type of studies are pushed by anti-piracy outfits and taken for granted by outsiders, even by respected news outlets on the Internet such as Ars Technica and ZDNet. In this case their reporters were …

BBC - BBC Internet Blog: BBC <b>News</b> mobile apps

A place where senior staff from the BBC's Future Media and Technology teams, will discuss issues raised by you about BBC Online, the BBC's digital and mobile services, and the technology behind them.

how to lose weight fast

Jeff Yeager's latest book, The Cheapskate Next Door, landed in bookstores on June 8 and is the perfect personal-finance book for the new economy.

In the past, most personal-finance books have tried to teach readers how to build a seven-figure net worth. Yeager traveled around the country talking to some of the cheapest people in America and learned the secrets to living happier, more fulfilled lives with less stuff.

DailyFinance: What's been the most surprising thing that you learned about cheapskates working on this book?

Jeff Yeager: You know, I surveyed more than 300 self-described cheapskates for this new book — and interviewed many of them personally — and while there were many surprising things I learned along the way, overall it was that for the vast majority of them, like 90%+, their decision to live the frugal lifestyle wasn't about money at all. It was almost always grounded in a bigger belief. Sometimes it was a religious belief, sometimes environmentalism, sometimes something else. These aren't greedy, Scrooge-like, pensive penny-pinchers I write about. These are people who recognize that there's a lot more to life than money and stuff, and they've found creative ways to make money a less important part of their lives. They know what they want, and they skip the rest.

In your book, you mention that cheapskates hate debt. But I think there's a popular perception that people who “win” with money rely heavily on what many consider to be “good” forms of debt. In your experience, how do cheapskates feel about things like student loans and mortgages?

Well, I'll bet you that there are a whole lot fewer people who believe that stuff about “good debt” than there were a few years ago, don't you think? For the cheapskates next door, debt still stings. They understand that there's a big difference between “affordability” — Can I really afford it? — and what I call “borrowability” – Can I borrow enough money to buy it now? Ninety-five percent of them live debt free, with the possible exception of owing on a home mortgage, and even then the vast majority of those with a mortgage told me that they plan to pay it off early, or already have. Admittedly we're talking an old-school attitude toward the perils of borrowing money, but I think the wisdom of the cheapskate ways is being proven out these days in a very visible — and in many cases, painful — way. As for using debt to create wealth, let me be really clear about this: I don't write books about how to get rich, which is what the vast majority of personal finance books are ultimately about. I write books about how to get happy, perhaps with what you already have. Part of that is showing people how to spend smart, regardless of how much money they have, but the bigger part of what I write about is quality of life, and issues regarding human happiness. As I said in my first book, I'm afraid we live in a culture that's more concerned about amassing a quantity of stuff, rather than amassing a quality of life.

You talk in the book about buying used. What are some advantages to buying used that a lot of people don't necessarily think of?

Obviously there are positive environmental aspects. Mother Nature thanks you for using it up and wearing it out, rather than rushing out to buy a new one. But of the cheapskates I surveyed, the environmental impact of their frugal lifestyles was only important to about half of them, even though their frugal behavior is inherently green — greener, in fact, than those self-proclaimed environmentalist who rush out to buy the latest expensive, eco-friendly products when they don't even need them. Sorry for the tangent, but I've been an ardent environmentalist my whole life, and some of the current consumer-driven trends in environmentalism bother me. Of course, there's also a tremendous economic advantage to, as one cheapskate told me, “letting the other guy pay for depreciation,” which is what you're doing, at least to some degree, when you buy used. Most of the cheapskates I interviewed we're also very tuned into the issue of “appreciation,” always looking for items that might actually increase in value over time rather than lose value. That's why the Amish, for example, often buy antique furniture. Cheapskates think about appreciation when buying a wide range of consumer products … cars, furniture, even clothing. Let's face it, most consumers only stop to think about appreciation when they buy a house, and even then, they're often not very smart about it.

One of the things you talk about is how being a cheapskate will actually make you happier. But a lot of people think buying cool stuff will make you happier. Why isn't that the case?

Of course, pretty much all the social science about human happiness suggests that more money and more stuff really doesn't make us happier, at least once we're above the poverty level. Most “stuff” tends to eventually disappoint us. Americans eventually express at least some regrets about almost 80% of the discretionary items they buy. “Buyer's remorse” is an epidemic in our culture. On the other hand, the cheapskates I surveyed regret only about 10% of their discretionary purchases. So, it's not that they're depriving themselves of things — or, if they are, they're mostly depriving themselves of the 80% of the crap that most people buy, only to regret later. The fact that that type of smart spending allows the cheapskates next door to live debt free — and therefore a less stressful, less money-centered lifestyle — is one of the secrets to happiness that they have to share with the rest of us. More than 9 out of 10 of the cheapskates in my survey said that they think about/stress out about money less than most non-cheapskates they know. They also get divorced at only about half the national rate, in part because they rarely have “money problems.” I'd also be remiss if I didn't mention that of the cheapskates I polled, they donate nearly twice as much to charity as the average American. Again, that's because for most of them, their decision to live a frugal lifestyle isn't about the money at all.

I met James Montier at a value investment seminar in Italy in 2007 where he presented. We had long discussions later the day and into the evening on value investing and investment strategy.

James was kind enough to put me on his distribution list and I really looked forward to each of his articles as they always taught me something.

Unfortunately James decreased his writings since taking a position with the asset manager GMO in 2010.

I decided to put this resource page together so Eurosharelab visitors can also benefit from James’s investment wisdom.

James Montier’s Amazon Page shows all the books he has authored as well as the following short biography:

James Montier is a member of GMO’s asset allocation team.

Prior to that, he was the co-Head of Global Strategy at Société Générale and has been the top-rated strategist in the annual Thomson Extel survey for most of the last decade.

Montier is the author of four market-leading books:

• The Little Book of Behavioral Investing: How not to be your own worst enemy (Little Book, Big Profits)

• Behavioral Finance: Insights into Irrational Minds and Markets

• Behavioral Investing: A Practitioners Guide to Applying Behavioral Finance

• Value Investing: Tools and Techniques for Intelligent Investment

He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Durham and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

2010

In this May 2010 article called I Want to Break Free, or, Strategic Asset Allocation does not equal Static Asset Allocation James Montier talks about in the beginning investing was a simpler and happier.

The essence of investment was to seek out value; to buy what was cheap with a margin of safety. Investors could move up and down the capital structure (from bonds to equities) as they saw fit. If nothing fit the criteria for investing, then cash was the default option.

But that changed with the rise of modern portfolio theory and, not coincidentally, the rise of “professional investment managers” and consultants.

In March 2010 Miguel Barbosa in his Simolean Sense blog interviewed James Montier about his book Value Investing: Tools & Techniques For Intelligent Investing.

In the second part of the interview Miguel talks to James about his other book The Little Book of Behavioral Investing – How Not To Be Your Own Worst Enemy.

In this February 2010 article, the first since joining GMO, James Montier asks Was It All Just A Bad Dream? Or, Ten Lessons Not Learnt from the financial crisis.

2009

In November 2009 article titled Only White Swans on the Road to Revulsion James Montier makes the argument that that the housing bubble and the crisis following its collapse was not an unforeseen event but rather the result of over optimism and the illusion of control, two classic human behavioural mistakes.

This article is the text of a speech called Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast, or how EMH has damaged our industry which James Montier delivered at the at the August 2009 CFA UK conference on “What ever happened to EMH”. Dedicated to Peter Bernstein (EMH = Efficient Market Hypothesis)

Here is the video recording of the above mentioned speech by James Montier: Six Impossible Things Before Breakfast. The video is 42 minutes long, but well worth watching.

The financial times in this 24 June 2009 article EMH, AMH: Edwards and Montier ride again motions James Montier leaving Societe Generale to join US investment manager Grantham Mayo Van Otterloo & Co, just after he and Albert Edwards won the Thomson Extel European analysts award in May 2009 as the top global strategy team.

In this 2 June 2009 research paper Forever blowing bubbles: moral hazard and melt-up James Montier explored the bubble phenomenon and what happens in the future after a bubble pops. He explores the possibility that all the government rescue packages initiated in 2008 have the possibility to again inflate a substantial bubble.

In this 24 June 2009 Financial Times article called Insight: Efficient markets theory is dead. James Montier explains why the efficient markets theory is dead but still lives because of academic inertia.

In June 2009 James Montier’s published this list of his Favorite Investment Books as well as a Summer reading list of more recent titles.

In May 2009 shortly after the market started its recovery from its March 9 2009 lows James Montier in this article titled Sucker’s rally or the birth of a bull? asks if this is a suckers rally and if so what investors could do to protect themselves. He also gives a few short ideas from his shorting screen.

In this 27 January 2009 article Clear and present danger: the trinity of risk, James Montier writes about the three primary and interrelated sources of investment risk; Valuation risk, business or earnings risk and balance sheet or financial risk.

2008

In this excellent review of James Montier’s book – Behavioral Investing: A Practitioner’s Guide to Applying Behavioral Finance, Bruce Grantier summarises the main points of the book with emphasis on mistakes and biases followed by a discussion of number of behavioral phenomena.

In the article The psychology of bear markets published in December 2009, during the brunt of the bear market James Montier writes about that the mental barriers to effective decision-making in bear markets are as many and varied as those that plague rationality during bull markets but that they more pronounced as fear and shock limits logical analysis.

In this 25 Nov 2008 article called The road to revulsion and the creation of value, James Montier argues that the road to revulsion – sharply declining prices – ends in an investment nirvana with unambiguously cheap assets.

In this 25 November 2008 Bloomberg article Montier Has ‘Never Been More Bullish’ on Stocks James Montier makes the cast that stocks are “distinctly cheap” because they trade at 15.4 times the 10-year moving average of its companies’ profits, compared with an average of 18 for the U.S. market since 1881.James wrote that fifteen stocks in the U.S. index, pass his test for “deep value,” while a tenth of shares in Europe and a fifth in Asia qualify.

In this 27 October 2008 article – An admission of ignorance: a humble approach to investing James Montier details his investment strategy.

It makes no sense to forecast, the importance of a margin of safety, avoid trying to time the market and buy cheap insurance. But most importantly, humility should be the central theme of a good investment process.

In this October 22nd, 2008 Financial Times blog post by Paul Murphy summarises an article Analysts are rubbish by James Montier about the bullish bias built in to the investment industry by the analysts and that analysts are exceptionally good at one thing and one thing only – telling you what has just happened.

In this 9 September 2008 article – The dangers of DCF James Montier writes about the dangers Of Discount cash flow (DCF) saying its implementation is riddled with problems but the good news is that several alternatives exist.

In this 23 June 2008 article – You are still wasting your time, or, are analysts just overpaid secretaries? James Montier writes about the whether company visits are useful for fund managers. The answer in general is no but they can be improved by learning to look for evidence that disagrees with us, and seek to disprove our ideas, rather than illustrate them with supportive evidence.

In this article The Road To Revulsion 16 June 2008 James Montier writes about bubbles, that bubbles are a by-product of human behaviour, and that human behaviour is sadly all too predictable.

The details of each bubble are different but the general patterns remain very similar. He also touches on the propensity for commentators to continually proclaim the end of the problem and a resumption of business as usual.

In the 30 May 2008 article Inflation Not The Problem Albert Edwards and James Montier explain why they are sceptical of all the market commentators saying that the worse market decline of the recession was over. How right they were, but it’s the way they arrived at their conclusion that makes the article worthwhile reading.

If you have any interest at all in short selling this is an article for you. On 26 May 2008, with the markets particularly overvalued James Montier turned his thinking to short selling writing Joining The Dark Side: Pirates, Spies and Short Sellers.

In the article he explains a simple short screen with surprising results shown through back testing in the USA and Europe.

In the article with the catchy title Asleep at the wheel, or, How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb published on 7 April 2008 James Montier points out that company management and analysts are unwilling to revise their profit estimates in spite of the looming recession as everyone thinks their business is recession resistant. He points out that this is why they are all overoptimistic and how you can avoid falling into the same trap.

In this 13 March 2008 research article called Remember, Cassandra was right! James Montier makes a strong argument that the mess in the US economy and housing market was not caused by a black swan event (unpredictable) but rather was sadly predictable.

It follows the standard pattern of a bubble deflating, some thing that we have seen a thousand times before.

On 12 January 2008 James made the last post on his blog called Behavioural Investing – The application of psychology to finance and the home of an investing sceptic.

The articles he wrote is luckily all still there and it’s a real treasure trove of information.

In this 15 January 2008 article The Dash To Trash And The Grab For Growth James Montier wrote just shortly after the absolute peak in the 2008 bull market he suggests that if you cannot move to cash because of career risk then invest in large dividend paying companies as what is going to happen to growth stocks at already high valuations is not going to be pretty. How right he was.

2007

In this blog post called The Sources of Value, written in October 2007 James Montier analyses which of the component sources of return leads to value, over reasonable periods of time, to outperform growth?

On 3 October 2007 James Montier posted a blog article titled Sector rotation: an investment dead end? He argues that investors focusing on sectors rather than stocks are barking up the wrong tree.

James Montier’s book Behavioural investing: a practitioner’s guide to applying behavioural finance was published in September 2007. At the link above you can read parts of the book at Google Books.

In this 24 September 2007 blog post called The myth of exogenous risk and the recent quant problems James Montier argues that many aspect of investment risk are endogenous (like a gambler playing poker, where the actions of the other plays are integral to the game) to the way in which we invest.

The problems experienced by the quant funds in August may help highlight some of these issues.

In this 10 September 2007 blog post Yet more evidence on the folly of forecasting, or why we don’t need economists! James Montier presents even more evidence that humans cannot forecast and why you should avoid listening to anyone who says he can as well as avoid it yourself.

On 21 August 2007 James Montier posted a blog article titled Earnings manipulation as a source of short ideas. He identifies shorting candidates through a measurement called the M score. Past results are impressive in identifying under-performing companies.

On 15 March 2007 James Montier posted a Macro Research article titled Global Equity Strategy . Investing 101: A reading list. Here he comes up with a collection of his best books in different categories (classics, modern, psychological and hidden gems) that is arguably the best reading list for any aspiring investor.

In the 30 January 2007 article by James Montier CAPM is CRAP James says that the capital asset pricing model (CAPM) is insidious. It creeps into almost every discussion on finance. And them he goes on to systematically take the model apart with real life examples and evidence.

In his 10 January 2007 research paper Contrarian or conformist? James Montier, in his usual style puts himself against the common view saying that the then biggest consensus portfolio bets to him seemed to be small cap and low quality however large cap, high quality looks like the better bet to him. To emphasise he quotes Sir John Templeton once observed, “It is impossible to produce a superior performance unless you do something different from the majority”.

2006

In this 30 November 2006 article with the enticing title Improving returns using inside information James Montier explains the results of a unknown but interesting research paper on share buybacks and how they, when implemented, are a powerful indicator for positive returns.

In this July 2006 research note titled Come out of the closet, or, show me the alpha James features a study that suggests
closet indexing accounts for nearly one third of the US mutual fund industry. Stock pickers account for less than 30% of the market, yet they have real investment skill. A fascinating read.

The article Prophet Among Pinstripes in the April 2006 issue of Fastcompany magazine features James Montier where he gives his five laws about investing bias, evolution, and true happiness.

In March 2006 shortly after the release of Joel Greenblatt’s book The Little Book That Beats the Market James tested the strategy worldwide and in this article called The little note that beats the markets found that on average the Little Book strategy
beats the markets by around 7% p.a. between 1993-2005, and with lower risk than the market! Value plus quality seems to make sense.

In the article Behaving Badly published in February 2006 James Montier features a short test you can take after which you will also become a strong believer in behavioural finance. Give it a try!

2005

In November 2005 James Montier wrote the article Seven Sins of Fund Management – A behavioural critique where he explores some of the more obvious behavioural weaknesses inherent in the ‘average’ investment process.

For example he writes that the first sin was placing forecasting at the very heart of the investment process. An enormous amount of evidence suggests that investors are generally hopeless at forecasting. So using forecasts as an integral part of the investment process is like tying one hand behind your back before you start.

In this 31 March 2005 article called Bargain Hunter James Montier confesses that he is an unabashed value investor. He adds that if the reader does not share this viewpoint, or isn’t open to be persuaded of the merits of such an approach, he should stop reading now for what follows will only distress his.

James teams up with Rui Antunes his “usual accomplice and compatriot in adventures involving large amounts of data” and embarked upon an investigation of value strategies.

In the article Abu Ghraib: Lessons from behavioural finance and for corporate governance, wrote at the end of January 2005 James Montier says even though it is tempting to believe bad behaviour is the result of a few rotten individuals. However, the overwhelming psychological evidence suggests that if you put good people into bad situations they usually turn bad.

2004

In the June 2004 paper If it makes you happy James Montier leaves investment advice aside and explores one of Adam Smith’s obsessions: what it means to be happy.

He also discusses why that’s important to investors, and how we can seek to improve our own levels of happiness. The article further lists
James’s top ten suggestions for improving happiness.

In the article Who’s a Pretty Boy Then? Or Beauty Contests, Rationality and Greater Fools James Montier in February 2004 played a classic Keynes’ beauty contest with over 1000 professional investors.

He found that on average professional investors are using between one and two steps of strategic thinking in forming their expectations. He also found that many investors suffer the curse of knowledge and end up either picking zero or severely underestimating the irrationality of other players.

These results speak directly to the ability of investors to exit the market before the mass exodus. He found, unsurprisingly, that only a very small minority shows the required level of strategic thinking to beat the gun.

In this 76 page presentation Insights into irrational minds and market Applied Behavioural Finance: Insights into irrational minds and market James Montier gave in 2004 he in great detail described the behavioural biases investors are prone to. Its a great summary of a lot of his previous work in a presentation format, summarised in bullet points and graphs.

2003

This November 2003 issue of welling@weeden James Montier offers a reality and earnings checks.

In this January 2003 research paper Running with the Devil: The Advent of A Cynical Bubble James Montier explores the nature and underlying psychology of four different kinds of bubbles. To assess which comes closest to describing the current market.

To us, the current market environment is largely a greater fool market. Because such markets lack fundamental support, they are liable to precipitous declines.

2002

In Darwin’s Mind: The Evolutionary Foundations of Heuristics and Biases James Montier in December 2002 writes that a catalogue of biases that cognitive psychologists have built up over the last three decades seem to have stem from one of three roots – self-deception, heuristic simplification (including affect), and social interaction.

In this paper James explores the evolutionary basis of each of these roots. The simple truth is that we aren’t adapted to face the world as it is today. We evolved in a very different environment, and it is that ancestral evolutionary environment that governs the way in which we think and feel.

In 22 November 2002 James Montier wrote in Part man, part monkey that leaving the trees could have been our first mistake. Our minds are suited for solving problems related to our survival, rather than being optimised for investment decisions. We all make mistakes when we make decisions. The list below gives a top ten list for avoiding the most common investment mental pitfalls.

1. You know less than you think you do
2. Be less certain in your views, aim for timid forecasts and bold choices
3. Don’t get hung up on one technique, tool, approach or view flexibility and pragmatism are the order of the day
4. Listen to those who don’t agree with you
5. You didn’t know it all along, you just think you did
6. Forget relative valuation, forget market price, work out what the stock is worth (use reverse DCFs)
7. Don’t take information at face value, think carefully about how it was presented to you
8. Don’t confuse good firms with good investments, or good earnings growth with good returns
9. Vivid, easy to recall events are less likely than you think they are, subtle causes are underestimated
10. Sell your losers and ride your winners

>

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Keith Olbermann Blasts Fox <b>News</b> Over Shirley Sherrod, Begs Obama <b>…</b>

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J.D.’s equation is correct, but it’s only part of the story. cash flow is in fact income minus expenses like the article states. However, cash flow does not correlate directly to wealth. You would naively think that wealth is the integral of cash flow with respect to time. It isn’t.

Suppose you earn $50,000. You immediately spend this money on building supplies and build a house with it. Your net cash flow is $0, but you now have a house that’s worth more than what you paid for it. You’ve got a property with a value of, say, $60,000. This is investment. Certainly you needed some cash flow to start the investing process, but cash flow itself is not wealth. Also, you now have the ability to generate $60,000 new dollars in positive cash flow by selling the house you built, in which case you can invest in something new.

The average American household income is about $3,000/month, after taxes. If you spend *all* of that on living expenses, you will never save your $50,000 to build your house. If you manage to cut your living expenses by half, you can now save your $50k in about three years. However, if instead you were able to double your income, you could save your $50k in half that time. If you take this even further and double your income again (to $12k/month) you could save you $50k in only 6 months. However, if instead you cut your living expenses by half a second time (to $750/month) it would still take you 22 months to save $50k.

You quickly hit a point of diminishing returns with cutting expenses, where each additional percent cut from your budget buys you less and less. The opposite is true for increasing your income. There is absolutely no way to save $50k in less than 16 months on $3,000/month. However, if you’re making enough money, there’s no limit to how fast you can do it.

Here’s one more example that’s not so extreme:

Set a goal to save $250,000. Pretend you want to buy a house in cash.
Start off with the same $3,000/month salary.
Start with the same $3,000/month living expenses.

Scenario 1: Your living expenses never change, but each year, you manage to increase your income 7% over the previous year. This seems feasible, it’s not a “get rich quick” scheme, you can probably find some way to improve your performance in whatever business you’re in by about this much.

You save your $250,000 in a bit over 12 years. At the end of the 12 years, you make about $120k/year. This is definitely a good salary, but it’s not ridiculously, infeasibly high.

Scenario 2:
You keep the same salary every year, but cut your expenses by 7%.

You save your $250k in 17 years, which is significantly longer. You’re also living on $920/month at the end of this, which is probably infeasible in real life. You just can’t keep cutting and cutting and cutting to this degree.

Scenario 3:
You combine both 1 and 2, both increasing your income by 7% every year, and cutting expenses the same amount. You’d think this would make a huge difference, right?

You’ll save your $250k in 10 years. This is definitely an improvement over either one of the other scenarios, but it’s not nearly the same sort of improvement you see if you solely increase income instead of solely decreasing spending. It also requires you to live on $1500/month at the end, which is certainly a lot more feasible that $920, but you still may think that’s a bit low.

This whole calculation ignores inflation (meaning, your 7% raise per year is probably more like 10% in absolute terms). It also means that at the end, when I say you’re living on $920/month, that’s $920 dollars at 2010 value, not 2027 value.

This is essentially the same concept that J.D. likes to call ‘the power of compound interest’, except applied in a slightly different way.

One other note on this example: selling your ’stuff’ makes almost no difference here. Even assuming you had $10k worth of stuff to get rid of at the beginning of this, it only buys you a few extra months in any of these scenarios. This is because a single, one-time influx of $10k is small in a scenario that takes 10-17 years to play out. At the end of these scenarios, you’re saving in the ballpark of $2000-$5000 every month. The extra $10k just isn’t that big of a deal any more. Selling ’stuff’ can help you reduce debts and stop paying interest to other parties if you can do it all at once, but it really doesn’t help you build long-term savings very well.

I know the site is called “get rich slowly”, but I like to think that is meant to convey an idea of perseverance and the fact that “get rick quick” schemes don’t work. It’s not meant to imply you should go artificially slower than you have to, just because.

In short: ask for a raise every year, even if you don’t always get it. Don’t be afraid to take a job at a competing company if they’ll offer you a better salary (assuming the job is otherwise similar). You don’t need to start your own company to make a few more percent every year. Just be valuable in your industry, show that to your employers, and don’t be afraid to ask for raises.

Mint Goals Attaches Real-Life Plans to Your Accounts

Mint.com has always offered a great view of your money, but you made the call on where it all went. The free webapp's new Goals section bridges the gap, offering smart tools for setting up plans and attaching accounts to them.

The goal offerings are suitably diverse and individualized, from the big-picture stuff like “Get out of debt” or “Plan for retirement” to the shorter-distance “Take a trip” and “Improve my home.” If none of them quite fit, create a custom goal. After picking your goal, you're asked a series of questions about the cost, the date, and, most importantly, how you're going to finance this goal.

Mint.com can recommend new savings or deposit accounts for goals that involve saving, or start tracking one of your existing accounts to make sure you actually put in the, say, $100 per month that you said you would put aside. On the Goals page, you'll see exactly how you're doing, and Mint can gently nudge you by email or SMS when things aren't going so hot. It's like having that wise, steadfast uncle who's really good with money and willpower—except you don't risk family embarrassment with Mint, just personal let-down.

Mint.com's Goals are a part of the free service. If you've given them a test run and created some neat goals of your own, tell us about them in the comments.

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