Tips For an Effective WoW Grind in the Outland Zone

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Everyone wants to gain experience as quickly as possible in World of Warcraft. However, many players dread the thought of the WoW grind. Hunting creatures over and over again to gain levels can quickly become dull and boring. However, you can make it more exciting by exploring the best WoW grind zones in the Outlands while practicing helpful tips to make the process easier and faster.

Suggestions for an Interactive WoW Grind

One of the biggest complaints players have about the it can become terribly monotonous with little thinking required. There are ways to make it more interesting, or at the very least, make the time go by faster. The first way is to try multi tasking while you WoW grind. Put on your favorite movie or television show, or play some good music to keep your mind entertained.

Another great way to keep the painless is to do it in good company. Consider bringing along a friend or two to chat and spend quality time leveling together. If you are looking for efficiency and prefer to not split the experience and loot, then chat in a chat channel or use voice chat. By having someone to converse with, your WoW grind will be far more bearable.

Levels 60 to 61

When you begin on Outlands, you will probably be around level 60. First, head to the lowest level zone, Hellfire Peninsula. The most ideal WoW grind location is the Legion Front. Here you can hunt Wrathguards for good experience. They die rather quickly so you can level on to the next zone fast.

Levels 61 to 63

After you have out leveled the Wrathguards, move on to Funggor Cavern. Here, you can hunt Marsh Elementals. These also die quickly and do minimal damage to players. The scenery is also interesting and a nice change from the fiery Hellfire Peninsula.

Levels 63 to 65

Next, move on to the Terokkar Forest zone. Firewing Point may be a challenging hunting area, but his is where you will reap the most experience. Be prepared for mobs to bring a friend. Prior to heading out for the WoW grind, make sure you pick up all available quests. You will finish many as you kill creatures which will give you even more experience.

Levels 65 to 67

Spend levels 65 to 67 in Nagrand. Head to the area around Oshu'gun, focusing around the three small crystals there. Here, the Vir'aani Clan roams and makes for great experience. Voidspawns appear in this region as well and can be quickly killed for another experience boost.

Levels 67 to 68

This is where your WoW grind gets a little tricky. You will next move on to the Blade's Edge Mountains. This inhospitable zone is not a great place for a WoW grind. If you want to get through this level fast, then it is highly recommended you focus on completing quests in Blade's Edge instead.

Level 68 to 69

Once you have quested out of Blade's Edge, it is time to move on to the ravaged zone of Netherstorm. Much like Blade's Edge, Netherstorm is not a good place to WoW grind. Try the Ethereum Staging Grounds, but be prepared to quest instead.

Levels 69 to 70

This is the home stretch for Outlands, so head to Shadowmoon Valley. The best WoW grind location here is the Legion Hold. Kill Shadow Council Warlocks because they die quickly and often drop good items. Beware that the occasional elite mob lingers here.

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Source by Will Wyndam

What to Go With? An ICO (Initial "Current" Offering) OR an IPO (Initial "Pre-Historic" Offering)

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The Introduction:

INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING: IPOs have a very old and interesting beginning. An IPO is a concept of inviting public investment for a company when it launches public issues. This apparently makes the company, out of the boundaries of being just a "limited" company and opens the doors of ownership and profit share for people who are not "actively" involved in the operations of the company. These "shareholders" are mostly no decision makers and are just the equity holding individuals or companies. They are neither employed nor sponsored by the company. They could get benefited by securing the shares for longer and could wait for the exponential growth in the cost of shares, it could, however, go in an opposite direction too if the calculations don't go according to the plan expected.

INITIAL COIN OFFERING: ICO, however, is more of an advanced version of an IPO, several glitches are resolved and removed, the boundaries of practical and materialistic objects and planning have been overcome and projects introduced have been focused upon, in an ICO. It is about "crowdfunding", focusing towards "cryptocurrency", which is used as a capital for startups. These startups are mostly owned and operated by the youngsters, who have new and innovative ideas for the business. Before or after the "tokens" become "coin" and come to the exchange, a lot of procedures have to be taken care of. People who buy tokens could sell the stakes, any time they wish to, even before the "exchange" phase comes. After the "token" comes to exchange and becomes a "coin", it's free from the introducer and completely comes to the "demand and supply" roller coaster".

History: The Similarities and Differences.: there are several similarities, but significant differences too, when it comes to comparison of IPO and ICO. Historical evidence could be analyzed and studied for a better comprehension of the relativity, requirement, and longevity of the practicality of both, in today's economic and technical world.

Initial Public Offering:

The first IPO was introduced during the reign of Roman Republic (509 BC - 27BC) when Publicani, those were the independent legal bodies, whose ownership was distributed into Partes (shares). These Partes were evidently sold to public investors and it was an open market, with fluctuating prices of Partes. There used to be spectators and it is not much different than the current scenario of share markets we can see these days. The existence and importance of Publicani were lost after the Roman Empire rose in 27 BC and so had the oldest stock exchange existed.

The first "modern IPO" occurred in 1602, when VOC (Dutch East India Company), opened a public issue for the company in order to raise funds. The Dutch East India Company was raising funds for the expansion of the worldwide business and the establishment of colonies in different parts of the world. The public was made a part of the endeavour and was offered profits with the growth of the company. VOC became the first company to introduce shares and bonds to the General public. So VOC officially could be credited as the first ever company to be listed on an official stock exchange.

During about the same time frame, in the United States, the first IPO was the public offering by Bank of North America. This private bank was adopted by The Confederation Congress, in may 1781, and was opened in Philadelphia, on 7th January 1782. The first IPO issued by Bank Of North America was issued in 1783.

Initial Coin Offering:

Mastercoin initiated the first token sale or "Initial coin offering" in July 2013. It started the trend of accepting legal tender (govt. approved currency) or exchangeable coins in order to buy a token.

ETHEREUM raised money in 2014, by a token sale, at a collection of 3700 Bitcoin in the first 12 hours, which was equivalent to $2.3 million at that time.

Karmacoin initiated a token sale in April 2014, for Karmashare project.

The trend, however, started in the year 2017, when ICOs and token sales became popular and there were significant numbers for the listings, advertisements and token sales till July 2017.

Now since it is a recently introduced thing and has not been followed by many (considerably), it doesn't carry a very long history to be told about. Still, considering the popularity and growth this phenomenon has gained in last less than a decade, has made it an unavoidable chain of events.

It has lately attracted the consideration and interest of not only the youth with innovative ideas and startup plans but also established names and successful business around the world. One of the most relevant fundamental behind launching a token sale, or offering a coin is, how you back it up with the future plan about it, and how you represent it with the vision, which could be shared and felt by the general audience.

As much one could generalize the concept behind the coin and make it connected to the maximum number of "kinds" of people, more is the probability of its, touching the hard cap sooner. (Hard cap is the maximum number of tokens to be distributed during an ICO).

Marketing differences, traditional similarities:

Although both of these are different in terms of the business generation, the public participation and the probable "kinds" of people interested in either of them respectively, they have multiple traditional similarities.

1) 'KIND' of people, who are monetarily progressive, up to date on the market trends and are ready to be benefited on the cost of risk involvement, are the "pro interested" people who get into IPOs or ICOs.

2) Open for everyone, both of these present and create no restrictions at all, when it comes to investment, for people. IPOs, however, are missing the leverage those could be given in ICOs, for overseas customers.

3) A 'PROSPECTUS' in an IPO, which describes the shareholding, mutual fund forecast, company's plans and IPOs vision at a glance, becomes a 'WHITE PAPER" in an ICO, which describes the ICO's specifications, the unique selling points of the token, the announcements and initial plans of the ICO, and the advanced roadmap for the whole ICO period.

4) Shares or bonds could be bought or sold, anytime. There is no time/person bound activity which makes it a nontransferrable entity. Throughout the IPO, a person could buy it from any other person, (if not directly from the introducer). This has been a practice in both, IPO and ICO respectively. In terms of profit, people do internal selling/ buying.

5) An IPO normally has been introduced by an already established company or firm. It generally doesn't get connected or related to an individual. On the contrary, an ICO gets introduced by a sole responsible person or individual. The marketing, trust building and vision sharing happen simultaneously, while the ICO gets launched and the ICO period goes on.

6) ICOs and IPOs are different in terms of how they present themselves in front of the investor community. An IPO has to build the trust about the product and related plans have to be shared with a long-term stability factor. IPO is a completely controlled phenomenon and the introducer remains responsible for the cost and price of the share/bond forever. On the contrary, in an ICO, as soon as the "token" becomes a "coin", the introducer's control is considered to be done and the price varies with the "demand and supply" fundamentals.

7) An IPO is about a new project/plan or a new venture to be started that has a foresighted execution strategy and calculations about pros and cons, if then else considerations and worst case scenario fail-safe plans for everything (almost). Nothing can, however, predict the market deployment of an IPO, and IPOs do fail too. An ICO however, is just to collect the capital for some other business, which has nothing to do with the purpose of the coin(mostly) and is used just to generate the required fund for a business. The introducer could be a youngster, a tech geek or a not so known programmer. Once the token becomes a coin, even the investors are not keen to follow him for future, as they have already been benefited throughout the ICO period and even afterward.

THE DECISION IS YOURS:

An ICO is the progressive era's choice, things go fast, no big names, no brand connection and no long-term investment plans and equally awaited returns. The option to chose an ICO certainly is quick benefit rewarding, provided you are well versed with the quality of a token's projections and you could be certain (even the slightest ) about the future of the token's destiny in the market. Just by giving some extra time to a so-called "geek" next door, you could learn all about it. Then you could start re-defining your fortune.

An IPO is a way traditional way of "fetching fruits" from someone else's tree, while you have been watering it when it was a sapling. It is equally risky, uncertain and even the projections and predictions could not be defined well. Yet it has been a successful way of making hundreds of people, millionaires. It is, however, quite slow of a process and that "feeling of awe" remains for a very long period of time, compared to that in an ICO.

One has to decide on his own about where to go. Considering everything, considering the fact that people are still investing in both. They are getting richer. They are sharing their success stories with you. Which way would you like to go now?

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Source by Shrey Shukla

Outland Fast Powerleveling / Grinding Guide

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Want to get to 70 fast but don't know where to start? This guide will show you exactly how to grind your way to 70, and will show you the best leveling spots in each zone.

Hellfire Peninsula 60-61

The best grinding spot in this area are the Wrathguards at the Legion Front. Most of the mobs in this zone are non-squishes, so these are the mobs that die quickly.

Zangarmarsh 61-63

Funggor Cavern is the best grinding spot in the zone as the Marsh Elementals die quickly and do not deal much damage. It's a good place to hang out for awhile, however you should focus more on doing the quests in this zone though.

Terokkar Forest 63-65

Although not all of the mobs in Firewing Point are easy, they are the best mobs to grind in the zone. Sometimes the adds may slow down the grinding a bit. This may not be a great grinding spot but it's probably the best one in this zone. Make sure you get the quests for Firewing Point before you go there.

Nagrand 65-67

The Vir'aani Clan around Oshu'gun (especially at the 3 little crystal areas) are the best grinding spots for this zone. also the Voidspawns around this area die fast too.If you find you can't get enough XP doing the quests, then you can hang out here for a little bit grinding these etherals.

Blade's Edge Mountains 67-68

Questing is the easiest way to level up here as there is no single good grinding spot.

Netherstorm 68-69

This zone really does not have any good grinding spots, the Wrathbringers and Terrorguards are probably the best mobs to grind in this zone. Another decent place could be at the Ethereum Staging Grounds, at 55.39

Shadowmoon Valley 69-70

The Legion Hold is one of the best grinding spots period. The Shadow Council Warlocks die extremely fast and drop good loot. Occasionally there is an Elite that you need to watch out for.

Now you know exactly where to grind. Happy leveling!

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Source by Thomas Gates

Blockchain & IoT - How "Crypto" Is Likely Going To Herald Industry 4.0

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Whilst most people only started to learn about "blockchain" because of Bitcoin, its roots - and applications - go much deeper than that.

Blockchain is a technology unto itself. It powers Bitcoin, and is essentially the reason why *so many* new ICO's have flooded the market - creating an "ICO" is ridiculously easy (no barriers to entry).

The point of the system is to create a decentralized database - which essentially means that rather than relying on the likes of "Google" or "Microsoft" to store data, a network of computers (generally operated by individual people) are able to act in the same way as a larger company.

To understand the implications of this (and thus where the technology could take industry) - you need to look at how the system works on a fundamental level.

Created in 2008 (1 year before Bitcoin), it is an open source software solution. This means its source code can be downloaded edited by anyone. However, it must be noted that the central "repository" can only be changed by particular individuals (so the "development" of the code is not a free for all basically).

The system works with what's known as a merkle tree - a type of data graph which was created to provide versioned data access to computer systems.

Merkle trees have been used to great effect in a number of other systems; most notably "GIT" (source code management software). Without getting too technical, it basically stores a "version" of a set of data. This version is numbered, and thus can be loaded any time a user wishes to recall the older version of it. In the case of software development, it means that a set of source code can be updated across multiple systems.

The way it works - which is to store a huge "file" with updates of a central data set - is basically what powers the likes of "Bitcoin" and all the other "crypto" systems. The term "crypto" simply means "cryptographic", which is the technical term for "encryption".

Irrespective of its core workings, the true benefit of wider "on-chain" adoption is almost certainly the "paradigm" that it provides to industry.

There's been an idea called "Industry 4.0" floating around for several decades. Often conflated with "Internet of Things", the idea is that a new layer of "autonomous" machinery could be introduced to create even more effective manufacturing, distribution and delivery techniques for businesses & consumers. Whilst this has often been harked to, it's never really been adopted.

Many pundits are now looking at the technology as a way to facilitate this change. Reason being that the interesting thing about "crypto" is that - as especially evidenced by the likes of Ethereum - the various systems which are built on top of it can actually be programmed to work with a layer of logic.

This logic is really what IoT / Industry 4.0 has missed thus far - and why many are looking at "blockchain" (or an equivalent) to provide a base-level standard for the new ideas moving forward. This standard will provide companies with the ability to create "decentralized" applications that empower intelligent machinery to create more flexible and effective manufacturing processes.

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Source by Richard Peck

Telephone Meets Web - A Cleverly Executed Idea

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I'm sure that there are other companies doing what Ether is doing - it's just that their name keeps popping up.

Their business in a nutshell is to make it as easy as possible for an individual or business to sell advice over the phone.

Here's how it works. You sign up with them (it's free) and give them your phone number. They give you a unique 8 digit extension for their main number. All paid calls to your extension are forwarded to your number.

You have control over everything that is important. You can set the pricing however you wish - per minute, per hour or per call. You can also specify the hours where you wish to take calls.

You market the Ether phone number and your extension however you wish.

When someone calls your extension, Ether does all the billing and forwards the call to you only AFTER someone has paid them.

The cost of this is 15% of whatever you charge.

Positives are the simplicity of the whole system, the fact that you only receive paying calls, and the fact that there are no up front or monthly costs.

Negatives are the relatively large 'bite' that they take - and the fact that you only receive paid calls. :-)

For many types of advice, there will be people perfectly willing to pay you who DO have legitimate pre-sales questions that could be quickly answered by you. "Do you have experience with" - that kind of question. Needless to say, the less sure they are that you have the specific experience and expertise to help them, the less likely it is that they will pay to find that out.

So, if you were going to use this service, it would make a lot of sense to at a minimum promote an email address where people can ask pre-sales questions.

If you are interested in selling personalized advice, this might be a good way of testing the waters.

Ether

http://ether.com

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Source by Gregg Terry

Choosing the Right Language Interpreter

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Language interpretation is a fast growing service that has become imperative for organizations when they expand their business. Finding the right interpreter is of utmost importance in ensuring accurate translation. Read on to learn more about different types of interpretation services:

1. Simultaneous interpretation

Simultaneous interpreter services are provided when there is a need to translate a speech simultaneously with the speaker. This kind of interpretation happens at conferences and seminars wherein there is an international participation. The professional translates the speech sitting in a booth, listening to the speaker through the headphones. This requires immense linguistic skills as the translator does not have the luxury of time to translate one language to the other. In such cases there has to be more than one professional doing interpreting in order to take turns to keep up the quality of interpretation.

2. Consecutive interpretation

In consecutive interpreting services, the translator gets to listen to the speaker first and then when the speaker pauses, the expert translates what the speaker has been saying. Then the linguist listens to the answer from the second person and translates it to the first speaker when he pauses. This is less tiring when compared to the aforementioned type and thus would not require more than one professional to do the job. It is important to note that the speakers do not continue the speech without pauses between sentences and phrases. This is mostly used in diplomat meetings, business meetings, medical appointments and courts.

Getting prepared for noise-free communication
It is important to source the right translator from companies who work with professionals that have a sound knowledge of the English language. A wrong translation of word or phrase can be detrimental when it comes to businesses and the healthcare industry. Thus when hiring a company, make sure that the interpreting professionals are versatile and have experience in interpreting the language pairs that you are looking for.

Follow these steps to ensure that you hire the right professional:

1. Give the company a detailed idea about you requirement. The date, time and venue should also be informed beforehand.

2. The nature of interpretation must be explained. What type of interpretation or translation are you looking for? Simultaneous or consecutive? Or is it a tele-conversation? Does it involve body language interpretation? Giving a comprehensive idea about your requirement will help the language interpreter companies to assign the job to the right expert.

3. Do you have any additional requirement? Depending on the situations and settings, it is possible that you have an additional requirement. Eg, you have a long term care patient and you need the same person to be doing the interpretation. In this case, you can always ask the interpreting companies to provide you an expert who can comply with this need.

If you are planning a conference, it is better to work with a local translation service company. This ensures that the professional is always at your reach and can be contacted when required.

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Source by Ingrid Chirstensen

How Bitcoin Could Make Asset Managers of Us All

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The Bank of England's recent report on payment technologies and digital currencies regarded the blockchain technology that enables digital currencies a 'genuine technological innovation' which could have far reaching implications for the financial industry.

So what is the block chain and why are y'all getting excited?

The block chain is an online decentralised public ledger of all digital transactions that have taken place. It is digital currency's equivalent of a high street bank's ledger that records transactions between two parties.

Just as our modern banking system couldn't function without the means to record the exchanges of fiat currency between individuals, so too could a digital network not function without the trust that comes from the ability to accurately record the exchange of digital currency between parties.

It is decentralised in the sense that, unlike a traditional bank which is the sole holder of an electronic master ledger of its account holder's savings the block chain ledger is shared among all members of the network and is not subject to the terms and conditions of any particular financial institution or country.

So what? Why is this preferable to our current banking system?

A decentralised monetary network ensures that, by sitting outside of the evermore connected current financial infrastructure one can mitigate the risks of being part of it when things go wrong. The 3 main risks of a centralised monetary system that were highlighted as a result of the 2008 financial crisis are credit, liquidity and operational failure. In the US alone since 2008 there have been 504 bank failures due to insolvency, there being 157 in 2010 alone. Typically such a collapse does not jeopardize account holder's savings due to federal/national backing and insurance for the first few hundred thousand dollars/pounds, the banks assets usually being absorbed by another financial institution but the impact of the collapse can cause uncertainty and short-term issues with accessing funds. Since a decentralised system like the Bitcoin network is not dependent on a bank to facilitate the transfer of funds between 2 parties but rather relies on its tens of thousands of users to authorise transactions it is more resilient to such failures, it having as many backups as there are members of the network to ensure transactions continue to be authorised in the event of one member of the network 'collapsing' (see below).

A bank need not fail however to impact on savers, operational I.T. failures such as those that recently stopped RBS and Lloyds' customers accessing their accounts for weeks can impact on one's ability to withdraw savings, these being a result of a 30-40 year old legacy I.T. infrastructure that is groaning under the strain of keeping up with the growth of customer spending and a lack of investment in general. A decentralised system is not reliant on this kind of infrastructure, it instead being based on the combined processing power of its tens of thousands of users which ensures the ability to scale up as necessary, a fault in any part of the system not causing the network to grind to a halt.

Liquidity is a final real risk of centralised systems, in 2001 Argentine banks froze accounts and introduced capital controls as a result of their debt crisis, Spanish banks in 2012 changed their small print to allow them to block withdrawals over a certain amount and Cypriot banks briefly froze customer accounts and used up to 10% of individual's savings to help pay off the National Debt.

As Jacob Kirkegaard, an economist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics told the New York Times on the Cyrpiot example, "What the deal reflects is that being an unsecured or even secured depositor in euro area banks is not as safe as it used to be." In a decentralised system payment takes place without a bank facilitating and authorising the transaction, payments only being validated by the network where there are sufficient funds, there being no 3rd party to stop a transaction, misappropriate it or devalue the amount one holds.

OK. You make a point. So, how does the block chain work?

When an individual makes a digital transaction, paying another user 1 Bitcoin for example, a message comprised of 3 components is created; a reference to a previous record of information proving the buyer has the funds to make the payment, the address of the digital wallet of the recipient into which the payment will be made and the amount to pay. Any conditions on the transaction that the buyer may set are finally added and the message is 'stamped' with the buyer's digital signature. The digital signature is comprised of a public and a private 'key' or code, the message is encrypted automatically with the private 'key' and then sent to the network for verification, only the buyer's public key being able to decrypt the message.

This verification process is designed to ensure that the destabilising effect of 'double spend' which is a risk in digital currency networks does not occur. Double spend is where John gives George £1 and then goes on to give Ringo the same £1 as well (Paul hasn't needed to borrow £1 for a few years). This may seem incongruous with our current banking system and indeed, the physical act of an exchange of fiat currency stops John giving away the same £1 twice but when dealing with digital currencies which are mere data and where there exists the ability to copy or edit information relatively easily, the risk of 1 unit of digital currency being cloned and used to make multiple 1 Bitcoin payments is a real one. The ability to do this would destroy any trust in the network and render it worthless.

"What the deal reflects is that being an unsecured or even secured depositor in euro area banks is not as safe as it used to be."

To ensure the system is not abused the network takes each message automatically created by a buyer and combines several of these into a 'block' and presents them to network volunteers or 'miners' to verify. Miners compete with each other to be the first to validate a block's authenticity, specialist software on home computers automatically seeking to verify digital signatures and ensure that the components of a transaction message logically flow from the one preceding it that was used in its creation and that it in turn reflects the block preceding it that was used in its creation and so on and so forth. Should the sum of the preceding components of a block not equal the whole then it is likely that an unintended change was made to a block and it can be stopped from being authorised. A typical block takes 10 minutes to validate and therefore for a transaction to go through though this can be sped up by the buyer adding a small 'tip' to encourage miners to validate their request more quickly, the miner solving the block 'puzzle' being rewarded with 25 Bitcoins plus any 'tips', thus is new currency released into circulation, this incentivisation ensuring that volunteers continue to maintain the network's integrity.

By allowing anyone to check a proposed change against the ledger and validate it the block chain removes the need for a central authority like a bank to manage this. By removing this middleman from the equation a host of savings in terms of prescribed transaction fees, processing times and limits on how much and to whom a transaction can be made can be negated.

Sounds to good to be true.

It is, every type of system has its own particular risks, a decentralised one being no different. The main threat to Bitcoin's decentralised network is the '51% threat', 51% referring to the amount of the network's total miners working collaboratively in a mining 'pool' to validate transactions. Due to it becoming more costly in terms of time and processing power for an individual to successfully validate a transaction as a result of the network becoming bigger and more mature individual miners are now joining 'pools' where they combine their processing power to ensure a smaller but more regular and consistent return. In theory, should a pool grow large enough to comprise of 51% or more of total network users it would have the ability to validate massive double spend transactions or refuse to validate authentic transactions en mass, effectively destroying trust in the network. While there is more incentive built into the system to lawfully mine Bitcoin than destroy it through fraud the 51% threat represents a risk to such a decentralised system. To date mining pools are taking a responsible approach to this issue and voluntary steps are being taken to restrict monopolies forming, it being in everyone's interests to maintain a stable system that can be trusted.

So... despite this risk the Bank of England likes the thing that sounds like it could put them out of business?

The BoE are looking beyond Bitcoin and digital currency payments specifically and envisioning ways that the block chain can make existing financial products and platforms more efficient and add value to them. One needs only to look at existing financial assets such as stocks, loans or derivatives which are already digitised but which sit on centralised networks to appreciate the opportunities that exist for the individual by removing the middleman...

... and becoming your own stockbroker. Coloured Coins is a project that aims to allow anyone to turn any of their assets or property into something they can trade. Think 'The Antiques Roadshow'. I love that show, especially when a little ol' dear finds that she's been using a 14th Century Ming dish worth £200,000 to keep fruit in on her sideboard. Coloured Coins would allow the owner of the dish (or their car or house) to have one or more of their Bitcoins represent a part or whole of the value of their asset so that they could be traded in exchange for other goods and services, a single Bitcoin holding a value of the entire £200,000 or they issuing 200 coins each with a value of £1000.

Similarly, a business could issue shares represented by digital currency directly to the public which could in turn then be traded without the need for an expensive IPO or traditional stock exchange and shareholders could vote using a secure system similar to how transaction messages are currently created. Patrick Byrne, CEO of one of the US's largest retailers which was the 1st major on-line retailer to accept international Bitcoin payments is currently exploring plans to create such a stock exchange powered by the block chain which he hopes will negate current inherent problems such as 'abusive naked short selling' where traders can sell shares they don't own which drives down share prices and which was felt contributed to the fall of Lehman Brothers.

The digitising of assets could also revolutionise the crowdfunding industry. Kickstarter is an example of a platform that facilitates the funding of products by micro-payments from interested members, often in return for small mementos upon completion of the project such as signed merchandise or a copy of one of the first products to be produced. With the ability to easily digitise an asset and issue shares in it and all future profits for example investors may be more inclined to invest more heavily.

And speaking of crowdfunding... Vitalik Buterin recently raised £15m in crowd-sourced funding for his Ethereum Project which he believes will represent the future of the block chain. The project supports numerous programming languages so as to allow developers to build online products and services like social media, search or chat forums as alternatives to those run by corporations like Google, Facebook and Twitter. "You can write anything that you would be able to write on a server and put it on to the blockchain," Buterin told Wired. "Instead of Javascript making calls to the server, you would be making calls to the blockchain." Currently a community of 200 users are building voting apps, domain name registrars, crowd-sourcing platforms and computer games to run on Ethereum, 'ethers' mined through the maintenance of the platform by volunteers being required for this.

The potential of the block chain to improve the way we communicate, bank, manage our assets etc is huge and only limited by the imagination of people like Vitalik Buterin and the Ethereum community and the willingness of current institutions to change.

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Source by Phil Sturgeon

Muxe - The Innovative Platform for All Your Real Estate Needs

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MUXE is a one-stop platform that facilitates from buying your DREAM HOME to getting RENTAL income from your extra space, inspired with latest INTERIOR DESIGNS tips, sourcing best MAINTENANCE contractors for your property to ordering HOME IMPROVEMENTS to spruce up your current pad.

This is easily navigated by MUXE interactive platform that can help even the average users to find their needs adopting latest technology on Augmented Reality and Virtual Reality apps. With these tools, it will help the user to make important decisions better in a secured P2P platform.

Muxe has complete transparency, extravagant research, a revolutionary blockchain, delivered with the ultimate security. Wonderfully stabilized which is fully encrypted with unlimited accessibility. A wonderful unique of a kind technology. Completely comprehensive and most certainly completely flexible. And in the end, it's suited to your choice.

On the 17th of May, we were invited to speak about Blockchain and Crypto at an event by Ondernemen in Bedrijf and Pakhuis met Pit. During this day we shared an advanced workshop on Blockchain and Crypto. The main topic that we spoke about was "The impact of Blockchain", Ondernemen in Bedrijf has hosted multiple sessions about Blockchain and Crypto at different locations in the Netherlands. According to several specialists, Blockchain will change the world like the Internet has done.

There is a lot being written about blockchains, bitcoin, and related technologies, and for many real estate professionals, this is part of a brave, new, confusing world of technology. Like the original internet, the blockchain is a revolution in technology that will touch all people and all businesses. So people are paying attention, but many still don't understand what the blockchain is.

Imagine that you and your best friend Bob are standing on a stage in an auditorium, and there are 1,000 people in the audience. In front of these 1,000 people, you hand your car keys to Bob, and Bob hands you his watch. You declare, "Bob, you now own my car."

Bob declares back to you, "You now own my watch." There are 1,000 witnesses who can each declare, without doubt, that your car now belongs to Bob, and the watch belongs to you. If anyone in the audience later tells a conflicting account of who owns the car or the watch, the other 999 people will refute it. And, if you take a spare set of your keys and try to give that same car to someone else, the 1,000 audience members will confirm that Bob owns the car, as each of them witnessed the "transaction." This is the essence of how the blockchain works.

We are happy to introduce the innovative search engine for Real Estate. http://www.searchestate.net search results are carefully selected by our team. When you are looking for a house or service the Search Estate help will help you find what you are looking for in no time.

Search Estate is the innovative search engine for all your real estate needs. Whether you are looking to buy a new home or to find the latest demands in the real estate industry you can find it all on Search Estate.

We are only adding the best real estate websites to the engine to ensure the highest possible quality of search results. The Search Estate currently provides 3 ways of searching. That includes Web results, Photos, and Videos.

searchestate.net

But you can also check out searchprofession.com searchmaintenance.com or http://www.searchexchange.net We plan to introduce more of these search engines over time.

UI & UX

Our UI features will allow the user to quickly search, view, locate and trace their preferred or favorite products and services for future

references. It will have a clean, user-friendly and simple design to cater to the wide age group of users. Recommendations, Guides, and Tips

It is essential to place a system for recommendations, guides, and tips that can be turned on or off when desired by users during their

browsing, search or transaction. These components can assist the user in their decision making and optimize their experience on the

platform. Up to Date Technology

MUXE will offer new and up to date technologies and plug-ins such like AR and VR apps to assist our users when choosing paint colors, interior designs, furniture, viewing of an apartment, comparing new designs and layouts, which traditional method would not have been possible.

The MUXE platform allows their users to list for rent, buy or sale of properties, contract services, scheduling movers, to purchasing home improvement equipment. MUXE token is the cryptocurrency for all transactions on the platform. Our blockchain technology is based on Ethereum ERC20 platform.

The community of MUXE token holders helps create the value and relevance of the token. The business we are building on blockchain and cryptocurrency provides a huge opportunity for growth and expansion for the various industries supporting real estate. This is the way, MUXE can revolutionize and evolve with the ever-changing demands of the consumer's world.

To be a transparent hub for buyers and sellers to interact and work together. We aim to better the crypto market as a whole,

incorporating one more cryptocurrency that is genuine.

The past 2 months a lot of changes occurred within the MUXE project. The core had to meet up with a lot of people and great partnerships were established. We have spoken to many interesting people among them #jameskeddie #mikemorrit #kingsleyennis #andreledoux #silvanosoares #rutgerjanse and many other great people and companies that operate in the crypto and blockchain industries. Many of them are showing great faith in our project and mentioned that the potential of the project is huge.

The past 2 months was all about finalizing our Whitepaper and Roadmap. We are proud to say that we have finished both our Public and Investor whitepaper and a 3-year plan Roadmap.

To learn more about what we are building please visit our website.

http://www.muxe.io

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Source by Jaimy De Vries

A Brief Introduction To Blockchain - For Normal People

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Crypto-what?

If you've attempted to dive into this mysterious thing called blockchain, you'd be forgiven for recoiling in horror at the sheer opaqueness of the technical jargon that is often used to frame it. So before we get into what a crytpocurrency is and how blockchain technology might change the world, let's discuss what blockchain actually is.

In the simplest terms, a blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions, not unlike the ledgers we have been using for hundreds of years to record sales and purchases. The function of this digital ledger is, in fact, pretty much identical to a traditional ledger in that it records debits and credits between people. That is the core concept behind blockchain; the difference is who holds the ledger and who verifies the transactions.

With traditional transactions, a payment from one person to another involves some kind of intermediary to facilitate the transaction. Let's say Rob wants to transfer £20 to Melanie. He can either give her cash in the form of a £20 note, or he can use some kind of banking app to transfer the money directly to her bank account. In both cases, a bank is the intermediary verifying the transaction: Rob's funds are verified when he takes the money out of a cash machine, or they are verified by the app when he makes the digital transfer. The bank decides if the transaction should go ahead. The bank also holds the record of all transactions made by Rob, and is solely responsible for updating it whenever Rob pays someone or receives money into his account. In other words, the bank holds and controls the ledger, and everything flows through the bank.

That's a lot of responsibility, so it's important that Rob feels he can trust his bank otherwise he would not risk his money with them. He needs to feel confident that the bank will not defraud him, will not lose his money, will not be robbed, and will not disappear overnight. This need for trust has underpinned pretty much every major behaviour and facet of the monolithic finance industry, to the extent that even when it was discovered that banks were being irresponsible with our money during the financial crisis of 2008, the government (another intermediary) chose to bail them out rather than risk destroying the final fragments of trust by letting them collapse.

Blockchains operate differently in one key respect: they are entirely decentralised. There is no central clearing house like a bank, and there is no central ledger held by one entity. Instead, the ledger is distributed across a vast network of computers, called nodes, each of which holds a copy of the entire ledger on their respective hard drives. These nodes are connected to one another via a piece of software called a peer-to-peer (P2P) client, which synchronises data across the network of nodes and makes sure that everybody has the same version of the ledger at any given point in time.

When a new transaction is entered into a blockchain, it is first encrypted using state-of-the-art cryptographic technology. Once encrypted, the transaction is converted to something called a block, which is basically the term used for an encrypted group of new transactions. That block is then sent (or broadcast) into the network of computer nodes, where it is verified by the nodes and, once verified, passed on through the network so that the block can be added to the end of the ledger on everybody's computer, under the list of all previous blocks. This is called the chain, hence the tech is referred to as a blockchain.

Once approved and recorded into the ledger, the transaction can be completed. This is how cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin work.

Accountability and the removal of trust

What are the advantages of this system over a banking or central clearing system? Why would Rob use Bitcoin instead of normal currency?

The answer is trust. As mentioned before, with the banking system it is critical that Rob trusts his bank to protect his money and handle it properly. To ensure this happens, enormous regulatory systems exist to verify the actions of the banks and ensure they are fit for purpose. Governments then regulate the regulators, creating a sort of tiered system of checks whose sole purpose is to help prevent mistakes and bad behaviour. In other words, organisations like the Financial Services Authority exist precisely because banks can't be trusted on their own. And banks frequently make mistakes and misbehave, as we have seen too many times. When you have a single source of authority, power tends to get abused or misused. The trust relationship between people and banks is awkward and precarious: we don't really trust them but we don't feel there is much alternative.

Blockchain systems, on the other hand, don't need you to trust them at all. All transactions (or blocks) in a blockchain are verified by the nodes in the network before being added to the ledger, which means there is no single point of failure and no single approval channel. If a hacker wanted to successfully tamper with the ledger on a blockchain, they would have to simultaneously hack millions of computers, which is almost impossible. A hacker would also be pretty much unable to bring a blockchain network down, as, again, they would need to be able to shut down every single computer in a network of computers distributed around the world.

The encryption process itself is also a key factor. Blockchains like the Bitcoin one use deliberately difficult processes for their verification procedure. In the case of Bitcoin, blocks are verified by nodes performing a deliberately processor- and time-intensive series of calculations, often in the form of puzzles or complex mathematical problems, which mean that verification is neither instant nor accessible. Nodes that do commit the resource to verification of blocks are rewarded with a transaction fee and a bounty of newly-minted Bitcoins. This has the function of both incentivising people to become nodes (because processing blocks like this requires pretty powerful computers and a lot of electricity), whilst also handling the process of generating - or minting - units of the currency. This is referred to as mining, because it involves a considerable amount of effort (by a computer, in this case) to produce a new commodity. It also means that transactions are verified by the most independent way possible, more independent than a government-regulated organisation like the FSA.

This decentralised, democratic and highly secure nature of blockchains means that they can function without the need for regulation (they are self-regulating), government or other opaque intermediary. They work because people don't trust each other, rather than in spite of.

Let the significance of that sink in for a while and the excitement around blockchain starts to make sense.

Smart contracts

Where things get really interesting is the applications of blockchain beyond cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin. Given that one of the underlying principles of the blockchain system is the secure, independent verification of a transaction, it's easy to imagine other ways in which this type of process can be valuable. Unsurprisingly, many such applications are already in use or development. Some of the best ones are:

• Smart contracts (Ethereum): probably the most exciting blockchain development after Bitcoin, smart contracts are blocks that contain code that must be executed in order for the contract to be fulfilled. The code can be anything, as long as a computer can execute it, but in simple terms it means that you can use blockchain technology (with its independent verification, trustless architecture and security) to create a kind of escrow system for any kind of transaction. As an example, if you're a web designer you could create a contract that verifies if a new client's website is launched or not, and then automatically release the funds to you once it is. No more chasing or invoicing. Smart contracts are also being used to prove ownership of an asset such as property or art. The potential for reducing fraud with this approach is enormous.


• Cloud storage (Storj): cloud computing has revolutionised the web and brought about the advent of Big Data which has, in turn, kick started the new AI revolution. But most cloud-based systems are run on servers stored in single-location server farms, owned by a single entity (Amazon, Rackspace, Google etc). This presents all the same problems as the banking system, in that you data is controlled by a single, opaque organisation which represents a single point of failure. Distributing data on a blockchain removes the trust issue entirely and also promises to increase reliability as it is so much harder to take a blockchain network down.


• Digital identification (ShoCard): two of the biggest issues of our time are identify theft and data protection. With vast centralised services such as Facebook holding so much data about us, and efforts by various developed-world governments to store digital information about their citizens in a central database, the potential for abuse of our personal data is terrifying. Blockchain technology offers a potential solution to this by wrapping your key data up into an encrypted block that can be verified by the blockchain network whenever you need to prove your identity. The applications of this range from the obvious replacement of passports and I.D. cards to other areas such as replacing passwords. It could be huge.


• Digital voting: highly topical in the wake of the investigation into Russia's influence on the recent U.S. election, digital voting has long been suspected of being both unreliable and highly vulnerable to tampering. Blockchain technology offers a way of verifying that a voter's vote was successfully sent while retaining their anonymity. It promises not only to reduce fraud in elections but also to increase general voter turnout as people will be able to vote on their mobile phones.

Blockchain technology is still very much in its infancy and most of the applications are a long way from general use. Even Bitcoin, the most established blockchain platform, is subject to huge volatility indicative of its relative newcomer status. However, the potential for blockchain to solve some of the major problems we face today makes it an extraordinarily exciting and seductive technology to follow. I will certainly be keeping an eye out.

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Source by Marc Crouch

Quantstamp ICO

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The Quantstamp protocol relies on a distributed network of participants to mitigate the effects of bad actors. The protocol allows automated security checks on the smart contract code, and does so in a trustless manner. The protocol allows the end user to directly submit programs for verification, with out the possibility of a bad actor manipulating the results of an audit.

Quantstamp also incentivize miners by making the verification and certification of smart contracts part of the validation node software on Etherium.

The biggest advantage I see with Quantstamp is when blockchain goes main stream. The thousands of contracts made by regular people will have to be audited by a system, that is where Quantstamp will become an integral part of the blockchain eco system.

It is well placed within the space of block chain and very much required for any smart contract to be executed with minimal issues.

Securing smart contract is an integral part of the block chain eco system. This space has seen several security breaches which could have been avoided by a validation process of smart contracts.

If we consider the DAO, the Parity multi-sig hack and other well known hacks, currently over $80 million dollars worth of Ether were stolen because of faulty smart contracts. Despite these hacks, smart contract code has not improved. A recent study found vulnerabilities in 45% of existing smart contracts and the number of contracts on Ethereum has exploded to over 2 million that collectively hold over 12 million Ether. This means that potentially $1.6 billion USD worth of Ether is currently vulnerable to exploitation.

By using both automated and crowd sourcing methods to validate the contracts, Quantstamp is trying to bring high degree of assurance. Also what makes Quanstamp interesting is that it is an upgradable protocol. The governance system is controlled by the token holders. This is very important for the protocol to scale with the increasing demand in block chain.

The technology that performs security audits is based on the cutting edge research in to verification algorithms and block chain technology. Quantstamp nodes handles the validation protocol for security audits and adds it to the data fields of transactions.

ContractS has to be audited periodically. Security library is always being updated and the validation done against the current library will get outdated and will have to go through a periodic check for any vulnerability.

I personally feel Quantstamp is one of those process that cannot be avoided with in the blockchain system.

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Source by Vineeth Ravi

ICO Token Valuation and the Misplaced Emphasis on Blockchain Technical Experts And ICO Advisors

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The statistics could no longer be ignored. Most ICOs tank, and stay tanked, once the tokens get to the crypto exchanges, after the frenzy and 'FOMO' attending the crowdsale is over.

Most watchers keeping track of the ICO phenomenon universally agree that the trend in the last few months has been for ICOs to lose value post-crowdsale, with many buyers waiting in vain for the 'moon' they were promised, once the cryptocurrency hits an exchange portal.

What is however not being discussed is the principal reason why we are witnessing this phenomenon, and what participants in a crowdsale, including the rating companies most of us rely on to make a choice, must be doing wrong in picking which ICO have most value, or has the best probability of rising in value once the crowdsale is over.

While there are a lot of reasons one could legitimately proffer for the phenomenon, there is one fact that I think is probably more responsible for this than most other contending reasons: ICO token valuation and the misplaced emphasis on 'blockchain experts', 'ICO advisors' or 'technical whizkids' for erc20 tokens.

I have always thought the need for blockchain technical experts or ICO technical advisors is exaggerated, or even outrightly misplaced, when a project is judged by that criteria, unless the project is actually trying to create a brand new coin concept. For most ERC20 Tokens and copycat coins, the real important consideration should be the Business Plan behind the token and the managerial antecedents and executive profiles of the Team leaders.

As anyone involved in the industry should know, creating an ERC20 token from Ethereum, or similar tokens from other cryptocurrencies, does not take any great technical skill or require any overrated blockchain advisor (as a matter of fact, with new software out there, an ERC20 Token can be done in less than 10minutes by a complete technical newbie.

So technical should no longer even be a big deal for tokens anymore). The key should be the business plan; level of business experience; competence of the project leaders and the business marketing strategy of the main company raising the funds.

Frankly, as an Attorney and Business Consultant of over 30 years myself to several companies globally, I cannot I cannot understand why people keeping looking for some Russian or Korean or Chinese 'Crypto Whiz' or 'Crypto Advisor' to determine the strength of an ICO for what is basically a crowdfunding campaign for a BUSINESS CONCEPT...

I am of the strong opinion that is one of the major reasons why most ICOs never live up to their prelaunch hype. In an era where there is an abundance of token creation software, platforms and freelancer, the disproportionate focus on the blockchain experience or technical ability of the promoters is mostly misplaced. It's like trying to value the probable success of a company based on the ability of its staff to create a good website or app. That train left the station long ago with the proliferation of technical hands on freelancing sites like Guru; Upwork, freelancer and even Fiverr.

People seemed too caught up in the hype and the technical qualifications of people promoting an ICO, particularly ERC20 Ethereum based tokens and then wonder why a technically superior Russian, Chinese or Korean guy cannot deliver the business end of the company after the fundraising campaign.

Even a lot of our ICO Rating companies seemed to allocate a disproportionate number of points to crypto experience of team member, how many crypto advisors they have, and the ICO success experience they have on their team, rather than focusing on the underlying business model to be created with the funds raised

Once one understands that over 90% of the cryptos and ICOs out there are simply tokens created to raise crowdfunds for an idea, and just not a token for token's sake, then peoples emphasis will shift from technical angles, to the more relevant work of evaluating the business idea itself, and corporate business plan.

Once we move into this era of evaluation before deciding whether to buy or invest in a cryptocurrency, then we will start valuing future prospects or value of our tokens based on sound business considerations such as:

- Swot Analysis of the company and its promoters

- Managerial competence and experience of the team leaders

- The soundness of business idea beyond the creation of a token

- The marketing plan and strategy of the company to sell those ideas

- The ability to deliver the underlying products to the marketplace

- The customer base for the products and services to be created by the company

- and basis for projecting adoption in the market place

What most people failed to realize is that the potential for their tokens to rise in value post ICO is not so much dependent on anything technical but on the good things happening in the company raising the funds and the perceived increase in the valuation of the company as it rolls out its business plan and delivers on its business products.

Of course, buying cryptocurrency is not buying stock, and it's not buying the security in any company. We get that, but tokens react much the same way as stocks react to good news or bad news about a company. The only difference is that in the case of cryptos, the effect is magnified a 100 fold.

So, when a company meets some financial or business milestone, the price of its token on the exchange will go up... and it goes down fast when nothing good is happening. So, what the company will do and how it will do it after the ICO should of the utmost importance to anyone who does not want to see the value of his Tokens plummet and stay down forever.

Sure, tokens most tokens would plummet once the tokens hit a crypto exchange after the ICO, because of those who want to take immediate profits, but whether it would ever come back up to give you the expected multiple digit profits will always depend on the criteria I already outlined above. After you have purchased a token, the value of the 'crypto advisor's and 'technical whizkids' go to zero in relation to the potential of your tokens to moon.

Following this reality, I think a smart crypto buyer or investor should focus less on how many crypto advisors a project has or how technically sound the team is (unless the underlining business of the company is technical in nature) and focus more on the managerial, marketing and potential customer base of the company raising funds through an ICO.

In other words, allocate more points on the business and management side of the ICO rather than the technical jargons which won't help your token in the marketplace when the money has been raised!

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Source by Dr. Ope Banwo

Cryptocurrencies: Real Money or a Fad?

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2017 is the year of cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin jumped from a few thousand dollars' worth and broke records by crossing the $20,000 mark. Ethereum's Ether is higher than ever. New currencies are popping up every day and people are buying them in a frenzy.

So, are these codes of programming real money or a fad that will die in time? Let's review:

SAVING MONEY

Have you ever sent money to someone through banking channels? Different banks have different protocols, but all have one thing in common: They charge you for it. Yes, you might say that your bank gives you a few fee transactions a month, but it puts other restrictions where you are forced to pay for those particular services.

With digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum, you still have to pay to transfer money over to someone, but the transaction "charges" you give to miners are much lower than what traditional banks offer you.

SAVING TIME

Sending cryptocurrency to someone living in any part of the world is as easy as writing an email. All you have to do is to ask for the receiver's address, log in your wallet and send the desired amount. You can then go around doing whatever you do in your daily life and the money will be transferred.

UNIVERSAL CURRENCY

OK, so the title is misleading a bit. There are tons of cryptocurrency out there, so you and the receiver may not have the same currency wallet. If the receiver is flexible (and you have the convincing power), he or she can set up an electronic wallet for your currency in no time.

The most widely accepted currency is Bitcoin and if you have it, you will not face any problem of different currency acceptance.

INVESTMENT

With financial crises everywhere and the inflation rate rising rapidly, you will one day find that all those dollars you saved don't have much buying power in a decade or so. The wise thing is to invest them in something that will not depreciate over time. Enter Cryptocurrencies! Mostly because of the way these currencies are programmed, they will be very limited in circulation, unlike paper based currency where you can just print off more.

A simple case of supply and demand will always ensure that cryptocurrencies will have an ever increasing value.

So, there you have it: Cryptocurrencies are not a fad in my opinion. All you have to do is know which one to buy.

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Source by Saad Ullah Butt

10 Tips For Building Your First Log Home

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For some, the idea of building a log home elicits romantic dreams of a return to nature and a simpler way of life but for others it conjures up nightmares of budget overages, poor quality work and absent customer service. While there is no way guarantee an absolutely trouble free build of your log home there are certain steps you can take to minimize the risk and in the process save you some money. Below are 10 tips to help you avoid the pitfall of log home construction;

1. "You get what you pay for" there is no secret here the lower the price the less that is included in your "package" This is true for materials and service.

2. Only buy quality materials- keep in mind that the log package which usually includes the walls, support beams, and roof beams is the only portion of the house that cannot be retro-fitted at a later date. Always buy the highest quality materials you can afford. The best materials for log home construction( in descending order) are Cedar, Fir, Spruce, Pine

3. Deal with reputable a reputable company- make sure the company you are dealing with is legitimate- stay away from offers that are too good to be true. Visit the log home company's construction site and look around- Is the machinery in good shape? Are the crew members respectable looking? Is the owner present? Are they insured? A reputable company will answer yes to all these.

4. The contract. A good reputable log home company will have a good contract that clearly details exactly what is and what is not included in its package. Be wary of a company that has a vague contract which does not include details.

5. Be prepared to pay- You won't get something for nothing. If you grind the company too much on the price they will grind you on the quality or service. Keep in mind that "they have to eat too" and that building a log home requires large amounts of expensive materials and labour. Before you interview builders determine you budget for the log shell and the overall home. This may require price shopping on your behalf but remember if the price you get seems to good to be true then it probably is.

6. Be flexible- building a log home requires a skilled labour force that is in short supply. If you can be flexible with your delivery date you can usually negotiate a better price.

7. Financing- financing log homes is a little different than regular construction because you will be required to pay for the log shell prior to delivery. This can be 30% of the overall cost of your home and some "un-educated" mortgage companies will not release funds until certain milestones are reached. This can put you in a tight situation where the builder won't ship the home until he is paid but the lender won't release the money until the log shell is re-assembled. Your best course of action here to ensure smooth and timely delivery is to ether arrange bridge financing or deal with a mortgage company that specializes in log homes- they are out there and they understand the process. Failure to do so could result in penalties or even storage fees until you can arrange financing.

8. Be ready for delivery- nothing could be worse than not having your foundation and or jobsite ready for the delivery of the log shell. This means that the foundation is finished, backfilled, and the site is accessible. Do not overlook the seriousness of this as most builders have it written into their contract that if the site is not accessible or ready then they are under no obligation to deliver the log shell and instead will off-load it at an accessible location and then leave. Be sure that if you are supplying the crane that it is suitable for the job and that the operator is competent and has the skill as a slow and incompetent crane operator can cost you a lot of money.

9. A good contractor- finding a good contractor who will finish the home is where your budget is "make or break". Do not automatically assume that your contractor shares your same vision and budget constraints. It is imperative that you stay close to the project and make you contractor stick to your budget. If you contractor seems to be spinning his wheels or is absent or keeps coming up with more hidden costs don't be afraid to fire him- its your money and he works for you not the other way around.

10. HAVE FUN. Enjoy the whole process. Along the way you will meet many great people if you let them in. Log homes, from the builder on up attract a certain type of warm and hospitable person and you will become life long friends with these people because after all you are all working on something more than just a home you are all working on a dream- your dream so enjoy it as much as you can.

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Source by Darwin Forcier

The Tech Bargain You've Been Waiting For

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Everyone loves a bargain.

We love that feeling of uncovering a hidden gem that everyone else has overlooked. The mispriced vintage Corvette with the small scratch in the quarter panel that you could easily buff out. The big-screen HD TV in the open-box area of your local electronics shop.

You get the picture.

But even your most savvy bargain hunters have nothing on investors looking for "the next big thing." In fact, this speculative drive to "get in early" often leads investors sorely astray.

Their emotions get the better of them, as they inflate what are essentially short-term market trends into major stock-trading drivers.

This leads to unreasonable expectations and equally unreasonable stock prices.

It leads to irrational trading.

One of the best examples of irrational expectations this year is Advanced Micro Devices Inc. (Nasdaq: AMD).

Cryptocurrency Craziness

In July, the stock was riding high on an influx of revenue from the growing cryptocurrency mining market. Ethereum was the "next big thing," and investors were speculating heavily with AMD's value despite signs that this fad wasn't going to last.

Even Wall Street analysts were guilty of pumping up AMD stock amid the Ethereum fad, with several boosting their ratings and price targets to, honestly, unsustainable levels. AMD stock quickly shot into overbought territory, driven by a fad and a wild surge in emotional investing.

Back then, AMD was due for a correction as "profit-takers emerge, and the more bearish contingent in the brokerage community begins to sound off on valuation concerns and cryptocurrency pitfalls."

This week, Morgan Stanley did just that. The brokerage firm said that "cryptocurrency mining-driven sales for AMD's graphics chips will decline by 50% next year, or a $250 million decline in revenue." Morgan Stanley also noted that video game console sales would drop by 5.5% in 2018, but that's a drop in the bucket for AMD, and investors were likely already expecting this given the age of the current generation of consoles.

You could almost hear cryptocurrency speculators' hearts break as AMD stock plunged 9% following the report.

The Real AMD

To remember the real reason you should be investing in AMD, we have to look back to 2016. The company caught fire early last year when it previewed several new chips, including its new central processing unit (CPU) chipset, Ryzen, and its new graphics processing unit (GPU), Vega. Both products held considerable promise, and AMD was expecting strong sales once the chips launched.

But both Ryzen and Vega blew analyst expectations out of the water. When they hit the market earlier this year, Ryzen and its sister chip, dubbed Threadripper, not only outperformed competing chips from Intel Corp. (Nasdaq: INTC), they beat them in pricing as well. At the same time, Nvidia Corp. (Nasdaq: NVDA) was touting its Titan Xp GPU as the fastest in the world, but AMD's top-of-the-line Radeon Vega Frontier Edition GPU quickly stole that title.

As a result, AMD saw its market share in the desktop PC market rise roughly 45% to its highest level of that past 10 years at 31%, while Intel's fell to 69%. It is also stealing server-side and data center market share from Intel via the increasingly popular Threadripper CPU.

And that is just AMD's core business operations. When we get to areas like virtual reality, driverless vehicles and artificial intelligence, AMD is already on the cutting edge and poised to be a market leader.

Many of you at this point may be asking: "But what about AMD's weak earnings report last week?"

And I would counter with: "What weak earnings report?"

Just look at the numbers. AMD earned $71 million last quarter on revenue of $1.64 billion. Not only did this top Wall Street's expectations, it put last year's loss of 50 cents per share on revenue of $1.31 billion to shame. What's more, AMD boosted its full-year revenue growth forecasts from mid- to high-teens to above 20%.

So why did AMD stock plunge roughly 20% after such a stellar report? Because the company said that fourth-quarter earnings would fall 15% sequentially (even though that's still a 20% increase year-over-year). Once again, it all comes down to an irrational level of bargain hunting, and an excess of emotional trading.

Investing in Advanced Micro Devices

But you are in luck! This emotional storm has left AMD trading at a considerable discount... and quite a bargain given its considerable growth potential - AMD is expected to see sales grow about 17% next year, compared to 12.3% for Nvidia and a measly 2.3% for Intel.

The stock has more than 30% upside through next year. How many other large companies, aside from Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. (NYSE: BABA), can you say that about?

So, ignore the cryptocurrency hype and focus on AMD's core products and its potential with leading technologies like AI and data centers. I won't promise you a smooth ride, but it should be quite a profitable one.

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Source by Joseph Hargett

Setting Up a Small Business in 2018 - It's Not All About How Much Money You Have

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When you think of starting a business, the first thing that comes to mind is money/capital. Of course, you need money to start a business, even if it is very little considering the fact how easy it is to start a business in the digital age. However, there could be many other factors that affect a business in today's digital economy-some you show serious concern to and some you don't really pay attention to much.

Blockchain Is Affecting All Types of Businesses

One of the biggest concerns for today's entrepreneurs before they start business is probably blockchain or crypto technology. The world is seeing the rise of crypto technology and how it is being integrated into the existing business ideas. A little more than a couple of years ago, you must have heard the term "bitcoin". From bitcoin, people still believe that blockchain is all about digital currency i.e. money in the digital world. However, this is far from truth. Blockchain is expected to affect all types of businesses and industries in the world in the coming days.

It is a technology that redefines the security aspect of many businesses in 2018, introduced decentralization in modern business technologies and benefits the end consumers in multiple ways. For example, you could launch a gaming platform where no one needs the existing currencies. You could launch your own platform with your own money today. You don't really have to start everything from the scratch; instead you could base your currency on the existing blockchain platforms like Ethereum. Through ICOs, you could have investors from around the world invest in your idea. So, blockchain is definitely a consideration for all businesses starting in 2018 and the coming years.

Physical Warehouses Are Not Necessary

A few years ago, only a certain types of business could be called truly online businesses. For businesses where products have to be stored for some time, a complete online presence was not the solution. Entrepreneurs who had such business ideas in mind had to have enough money to have their own warehouses. However, this has also changed quite a bit in the past couple of years. With the idea of drop shipping becoming common with time, it is becoming easier for businessmen to start their own businesses without much investment.

In a drop shipping model, all you have to do is collect orders from customers, forward those orders to the manufacturers or suppliers and have the goods shipped. You only act as a liaison in this particular model because it is the supplier that sends the products directly at the customers' doorsteps. You will still need an online store with all the products listed for customers to see. However, you don't need any warehouses because you don't have to own, buy or store any products. The good thing is that this model now allows drop shippers to offer much more competitive rates so penetrating into the market is easier for them.

Big Data Is the Big Difference

Another technology that has been influencing business decisions and the way businesses operate is big data. While the term "big data" seems that you are referring to just large amounts of data but in reality, you are also referring to the methodologies and technologies that are in use to handle big data. You will be completely wrong to think that traditional software and hardware solutions can deal with big data in any way. Let's take the example of a bank. A bank could have hundreds of branches located all around the country. In these hundreds of branches, the bank will have hundreds of thousands of customers.

The bank has account information of hundreds of thousands of these customers. In addition to that, the bank is constantly investing in stock and foreign markets, storing and utilizing that information. The same bank handles the data of all micro and macro loans it is forwarding to its customers. It is also storing information about customers through its mobile application to know what customers expect from the mobile website. On all of those hundreds of branches, the bank also has CCTV cameras collecting terabytes of footage on a daily basis.

Do you think all this data goes to waste? No, the data bank collected from banks is utilized in making bank branches securer. Data from mobile devices helps bank refine their mobile application. Data collected through financial softwares helps a bank improve its insurance, loan, mortgage, etc. offerings. It may seem on the surface that big data is a headache for big businesses only, but big data is just as important for small businesses as well. What this mean is that businesses starting in 2018 will have to have a big data approach right from day one.

Internet Security Is the Biggest Threat Now

It is unfortunate that rather than making the world a safer place, the new technology has led to greater internet threats. Cyber attacks are becoming more frequent with time, and much more sophisticated too. In the past few years, cyber attacks on some of the biggest companies of the world, including tech companies have proved that security has to be the major concern for every business-small, mid-scale or large. If you think starting a new business or having a small business gives you any advantage over large ones.

As a matter of fact, it's the small businesses that are at a higher risk when they are under any type of cyber attack. This is because large businesses have the technologies and capital to fight the attack, recover and get back on their feet again. On the other hand, small businesses usually don't have any of that.

Final Thoughts

The challenges for any small businesses in 2018 are much bigger and technology-related than they have ever been in the past. The need of the time for small business owners in 2018 is to say goodbye to the traditional thinking and embrace new technologies to be successful. They must also remember that in the modern age and coming years, every business is (like) a tech business to some extent due to its dependence on technology to collect customer data, create marketing campaigns and secure customer information.

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Source by Pierre Jean-Claude

2018 Is the Year of the Masternodes Cryptocurrencies

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Digital currencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are in the news headlines everyday. The properties that make these cryptocurrencies unique is their abilities to act as a store of value, and lightning quick transfer speeds, or at least with the introduction of the lightning network for Bitcoin, and Ethereum' Casper switch to pos and its smart contract capabilities allow cryptocurrencies to be more than just money. Now Masternodes coins are all the rage due to the added incentive it gives to owning a percentage of a certain currency.

If you could imagine your good old blue faced hundred dollar bill being on steroids then you would be close to imagining a masternodes coin. In the world of cryptocurrencies, proof of stake is the method of confirming transactional hash that maintains the consensus and keeps all the notes on the same page, so that there cannot be double spending of any certain transactions and all is well with the network consensus. Staking your coins is a way of utilizing the amount of currency you own and syncing your digital wallet with the network to help maintain it, and in return you receive an incentive for helping validate the transactions. To run a masternodes, one must have a set number of coins running on a network and follow the Masternodes setup instructions for whichever currency you are planning on investing in. The added incentive is amazingly more than just staking your coins, in some cases, upwards of 1500 percent annually. It is these astronomical return on investments that is really bringing a ton of attention and investment into the Masternodes market.

One crypto planning on releasing a Masternodes coin early 2019 is the Tattoo Allince Token, to be a side chain on the Egem blockchain,whichs on disrupting the tattoo industry by creating a tokenized rewards system for both people wanting to buy tattoos and the artists who look forward to applying the artwork in return for the token. I believe this will be an amazing and refreshing idea and a great way to add long term benefits for tattoo artists who up till now have no 401k or incentive program in place. I am optimistic about this crypto since it strives to achieve great rewards and add value to a cash heavy industry. I believe that alongside the Masternodes capabilities, it will also have staking and a smart contract protocol as well as offering decentralized autonomous governance and a memberships rewards program. Look for more on TAT Masternodes token, coming early next year.

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Source by Christopher Cunningham

The "Experts" Are Getting Crypto All Wrong

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Bitcoin peaked about a month ago, on December 17, at a high of nearly $20,000. As I write, the cryptocurrency is under $11,000... a loss of about 45%. That's more than $150 billion in lost market cap.

Cue much hand-wringing and gnashing of teeth in the crypto-commentariat. It's neck-and-neck, but I think the "I-told-you-so" crowd has the edge over the "excuse-makers."

Here's the thing: Unless you just lost your shirt on bitcoin, this doesn't matter at all. And chances are, the "experts" you may see in the press aren't telling you why.

In fact, bitcoin's crash is wonderful... because it means we can all just stop thinking about cryptocurrencies altogether.

The Death of Bitcoin...

In a year or so, people won't be talking about bitcoin in the line at the grocery store or on the bus, as they are now. Here's why.

Bitcoin is the product of justified frustration. Its designer explicitly said the cryptocurrency was a reaction to government abuse of fiat currencies like the dollar or euro. It was supposed to provide an independent, peer-to-peer payment system based on a virtual currency that couldn't be debased, since there was a finite number of them.

That dream has long since been jettisoned in favor of raw speculation. Ironically, most people care about bitcoin because it seems like an easy way to get more fiat currency! They don't own it because they want to buy pizzas or gas with it.

Besides being a terrible way to transact electronically - it's agonizingly slow - bitcoin's success as a speculative play has made it useless as a currency. Why would anyone spend it if it's appreciating so fast? Who would accept one when it's depreciating rapidly?

Bitcoin is also a major source of pollution. It takes 351 kilowatt-hours of electricity just to process one transaction - which also releases 172 kilograms of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That's enough to power one U.S. household for a year. The energy consumed by all bitcoin mining to date could power almost 4 million U.S. households for a year.

Paradoxically, bitcoin's success as an old-fashioned speculative play - not its envisaged libertarian uses - has attracted government crackdown.

China, South Korea, Germany, Switzerland and France have implemented, or are considering, bans or limitations on bitcoin trading. Several intergovernmental organizations have called for concerted action to rein in the obvious bubble. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, which once seemed likely to approve bitcoin-based financial derivatives, now seems hesitant.

And according to Investing.com: "The European Union is implementing stricter rules to prevent money laundering and terrorism financing on virtual currency platforms. It's also looking into limits on cryptocurrency trading."

We may see a functional, widely accepted cryptocurrency someday, but it won't be bitcoin.

... But a Boost for Crypto Assets

Good. Getting over bitcoin allows us to see where the real value of crypto assets lies. Here's how.

To use the New York subway system, you need tokens. You can't use them to buy anything else... although you could sell them to someone who wanted to use the subway more than you.

In fact, if subway tokens were in limited supply, a lively market for them might spring up. They might even trade for a lot more than they originally cost. It all depends on how much people want to use the subway.

That, in a nutshell, is the scenario for the most promising "cryptocurrencies" other than bitcoin. They're not money, they're tokens - "crypto-tokens," if you will. They aren't used as general currency. They are only good within the platform for which they were designed.

If those platforms deliver valuable services, people will want those crypto-tokens, and that will determine their price. In other words, crypto-tokens will have value to the extent that people value the things you can get for them from their associated platform.

That will make them real assets, with intrinsic value - because they can be used to obtain something that people value. That means you can reliably expect a stream of revenue or services from owning such crypto-tokens. Critically, you can measure that stream of future returns against the price of the crypto-token, just as we do when we calculate the price/earnings ratio (P/E) of a stock.

Bitcoin, by contrast, has no intrinsic value. It only has a price - the price set by supply and demand. It can't produce future streams of revenue, and you can't measure anything like a P/E ratio for it.

One day it will be worthless because it doesn't get you anything real.

Ether and Other Crypto Assets Are the Future

The crypto-token ether sure seems like a currency. It's traded on cryptocurrency exchanges under the code ETH. Its symbol is the Greek uppercase Xi character. It's mined in a similar (but less energy-intensive) process to bitcoin.

But ether isn't a currency. Its designers describe it as "a fuel for operating the distributed application platform Ethereum. It is a form of payment made by the clients of the platform to the machines executing the requested operations."

Ether tokens get you access to one of the world's most sophisticated distributed computational networks. It's so promising that big companies are falling all over each other to develop practical, real-world uses for it.

Because most people who trade it don't really understand or care about its true purpose, the price of ether has bubbled and frothed like bitcoin in recent weeks.

But eventually, ether will revert to a stable price based on the demand for the computational services it can "buy" for people. That price will represent real value that can be priced into the future. There'll be a futures market for it, and exchange-traded funds (ETFs), because everyone will have a way to assess its underlying value over time. Just as we do with stocks.

What will that value be? I have no idea. But I know it will be a lot more than bitcoin.

My advice: Get rid of your bitcoin, and buy ether at the next dip.

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Source by Ted Bauman

Crypto TREND - Fifth Edition

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As we expected, since publishing Crypto TREND we have received many questions from readers. In this edition we will answer the most common one.

What kind of changes are coming that could be game changers in the cryptocurrency sector?

One of the biggest changes that will impact the cryptocurrency world is an alternative method of block validation called Proof of Stake (PoS). We will try to keep this explanation fairly high level, but it is important to have a conceptual understanding of what the difference is and why it is a significant factor.

Remember that the underlying technology with digital currencies is called blockchain and most of the current digital currencies use a validation protocol called Proof of Work (PoW).

With traditional methods of payment, you need to trust a third party, such as Visa, Interact, or a bank, or a cheque clearing house to settle your transaction. These trusted entities are "centralized", meaning they keep their own private ledger which stores the transaction's history and balance of each account. They will show the transactions to you, and you must agree that it is correct, or launch a dispute. Only the parties to the transaction ever see it.

With Bitcoin and most other digital currencies, the ledgers are "decentralized", meaning everyone on the network gets a copy, so no one has to trust a third party, such as a bank, because anyone can directly verify the information. This verification process is called "distributed consensus."

PoW requires that "work" be done in order to validate a new transaction for entry on the blockchain. With cryptocurrencies, that validation is done by "miners", who must solve complex algorithmic problems. As the algorithmic problems become more complex, these "miners" need more expensive and more powerful computers to solve the problems ahead of everyone else. "Mining" computers are often specialized, typically using ASIC chips (Application Specific Integrated Circuits), which are more adept and faster at solving these difficult puzzles.

Here is the process:

• Transactions are bundled together in a 'block'.


• The miners verify that the transactions within each block are legitimate by solving the hashing algorithm puzzle, known as the "proof of work problem".


• The first miner to solve the block's "proof of work problem" is rewarded with a small amount of cryptocurrency.


• Once verified, the transactions are stored in the public blockchain across the entire network.


• As the number of transactions and miners increase, the difficulty of solving the hashing problems also increases.

Although PoW helped get blockchain and decentralized, trustless digital currencies off the ground, it has some real shortcomings, especially with the amount of electricity these miners are consuming trying to solve the "proof of work problems" as fast as possible. According to Digiconomist's Bitcoin Energy Consumption Index, Bitcoin miners are using more energy than 159 countries, including Ireland. As the price of each Bitcoin rises, more and more miners try to solve the problems, consuming even more energy.

All of that power consumption just to validate the transactions has motivated many in the digital currency space to seek out alternative method of validating the blocks, and the leading candidate is a method called "Proof of Stake" (PoS).

PoS is still an algorithm, and the purpose is the same as in the proof of work, but the process to reach the goal is quite different. With PoS, there are no miners, but instead we have "validators." PoS relies on trust and the knowledge that all the people who are validating transactions have skin in the game.

This way, instead of utilizing energy to answer PoW puzzles, a PoS validator is limited to validating a percentage of transactions that is reflective of his or her ownership stake. For instance, a validator who owns 3% of the Ether available can theoretically validate only 3% of the blocks.

In PoW, the chances of you solving the proof of work problem depends on how much computing power you have. With PoS, it depends on how much cryptocurrency you have at "stake". The higher the stake you have, the higher the chances that you solve the block. Instead of winning crypto coins, the winning validator receives transaction fees.

Validators enter their stake by 'locking up' a portion of their fund tokens. Should they try to do something malicious against the network, like creating an 'invalid block', their stake or security deposit will be forfeited. If they do their job and do not violate the network, but do not win the right to validate the block, they will get their stake or deposit back.

If you understand the basic difference between PoW and PoS, that is all you need to know. Only those who plan to be miners or validators need to understand all the ins and outs of these two validation methods. Most of the general public who wish to possess cryptocurrencies will simply buy them through an exchange, and not participate in the actual mining or validating of block transactions.

Most in the crypto sector believe that in order for digital currencies to survive long-term, digital tokens must switch over to a PoS model. At the time of writing this post, Ethereum is the second largest digital currency behind Bitcoin and their development team has been working on their PoS algorithm called "Casper" over the last few years. It is expected that we will see Casper implemented in 2018, putting Ethereum ahead of all the other large cryptocurrencies.

As we have seen previously in this sector, major events such as a successful implementation of Casper could send Ethereum's prices much higher. We'll be keeping you updated in future issues of Crypto TREND.

Stay tuned!

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Source by Martin Straith