Aggressive Investors and Traders should play the market to the downside.<\/em><\/p>\n What do I make of this? VV has a pretty good record on market calls. Hence I’m cautious, certainly staying away from “hot” stocks with huge P\/Es, but searching for nice stocks, with good buzz and nice earnings growth.<\/p>\n P.S. VectorVest’s “crazy” portfolio which I mentioned recently is now down 10%.<\/p>\n Evaluating real estate. <\/strong>I’m eying a syndication of a commercial office building being bought today for exactly half<\/strong> what it sold last for in 2005. The price you pay for a property is the major determinant<\/strong> of the success of your investment in the property. You should re-read this sentence several times. Accept the fact that you cannot influence what rents are, what interest rates are on borrowing, how much you’ll spend on fixing up the property for new tenants and how much you’ll sell it. It all depends on how much you pay upfront.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Rents have come down dramatically. But there are tenants around at lower lease prices. The economy is picking up, albeit slowly. Long distance with VoIP.<\/strong><\/span>32% of American households (and rising fast) don’t have landlines at their house. They use their cell phones. For people with poor cell phone reception landlines remain critical. Getting long distance and international service from a landline is a quagmire. your phone will probably rip you off with a high monthly flat rate service, which you’ll probably never use. There are so-called long distance providers that you can be equal accessed to. And we used one until they cut us off because my credit bounced — it was hacked and Citu changed the card. And the long distance provider decided it was no longer in that business. Which forced me to hunt around for another alternative. (This gives boredom a whole new meaning.)\u00a0 The good news is that I found netTalk. It’s totally super. It’s about the size of cigarette box. It has three plugs — one for a phone, one for an RJ-45 standard Ethernet connection to your broadband service (i.e. your router) and one for power:<\/p>\n That netTalk costs just under $50 one time charge, but that includes a year’s worth of unlimited phone calls (the U.S. and Canada) and your own phone number, which you choose from a list they give you.<\/p>\n You can plug netTalk into your home cordless and use it around your house or office. Many people use netTalk as their only home phone – it will make and receive — just give your friends your new number.<\/p>\n I made and received many calls on netTalk on the weekend. I gotta say: it’s the best quality phone service I’ve spoken on for years. It’s crystal clear. Everyone I called was impressed.<\/p>\n You can buy the netTalk for $49.95 from Walmart.<\/strong><\/a> NetTalk is just out with a WiFi version, which is just out and costs a little more. I haven’t tested the Wifi unit. I’ generally prefer to plug in. You get stronger signal strength. Oh yes, I’m running netTalk on a DSL in the country, miles from civilization. And its sound is better than the landline the local erstwhile bankrupt phone company (Fairpoint) delivers.<\/p>\n How to search any web site, including this one. <\/strong><\/span> favorite ipad apps inurl:technologyinvestor.com<\/strong><\/p>\n You can read more on how Google searches in\u00a0 Google:Inside Search<\/strong><\/a> and Google Search Features.<\/strong><\/a> The latter is most interesting since it will tell you how to use Google to convert temperatures, find stock quotes, find the time in Sydney, Australia, find a restaurants, and get movie times in your area.<\/p>\n The key to successful searching is to keep your search simple<\/strong>. search for one or two words. Try different words with the same meaning. What you remember may not be the precise words I used.<\/p>\n You can search for companies, e.g.<\/p>\n aapl inurl:TechnologyInvestor.com<\/strong><\/p>\n Google doesn’t care about capital letters.<\/p>\n Don’t use the url www.InSearchOfThePerfectInvestment.com. It’s not a real site. It’s simply a site that points all its visitors to the main site, which is called www.TechnologyInvestor.com. There’s no logic for this. It’s historical. I started with tech stocks on www.TechnologyInvestor, but then broadened the focus when I discovered others stocks.<\/p>\n If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to email me.<\/p>\n Favorite recent New Yorker cartoons:<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n
\n<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.technologyinvestor.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/04\/Nettalk.jpg\" "\\"Nettalk\\"")
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\nGoogle searches and indexes my blogs and your comments. Let’s say you are looking for my favorite iPad apps (the ones I mentioned recently. Type this into your Google search box:<\/p>\n