Investing in Gold with non-USD

Greetings,
The move of the USD and the gold prices are very interesting these days and can be easily exploited by non-USD holders.

When the USD devaluate, the gold prices would hike and the non-USD currency as well (CAD for example). Hence the net profit would be a bit less (in CAD) because there is a gain in the gold price but a loss because of the currency exchange.

However, this might protect the downside when the USD gains in value. In this case, the price of gold (very short term) would decrease. However, the conversion into CAD would give an extra profit (due to currency gains).

This is not a perfect relation (although it is linear and might hold under various conditions). However, it might encourage people to invest if they want to avoid the steep downturns.

Amazon PayPhrase Integration for a Shopping Cart: Too complicated

I have been reading about the PayPhrase for a while and trying to figure out a way to integrate it into one of my clients' shopping cart. The system looks promising but it is not as simple as it is especially for merchants to understand.

At one end, it really simplifies lives for frequent book buyers (they are not few on the net). All you have to do is to create your payphrase and your pin on Amazon site and then you can use it on any third party site. It is an interesting way for Amazon to capitalize on its One-Click-Buy system for other websites.

It might be more secure as well so people do not have to leave their private information on any third party site. In addition, one can limit the allowed balance that can be used with this method for a given period. This is great to let teenagers knew that there is a limit for shopping online.

The downsides are not few! First of all, the configuration is really tough. It requires developers of shopping carts to comply with Amazon. Developers are really bad to simplify things and it seems the PayPhrase developers could not go our of their engineering environment when they have designed this flow chart.

Although it is not very hard. However, it can be simplified. I was showing the system to a developer to handle this task and he thought that it would take him for ever to build such a plugin to integrate one popular e-commerce system (Magento) with Amazon PayPhrase. It is not in fact, but the way it is being described in this schema discourage people.

In addition, the XML orders report is not well structured and can be smoothed further. The same can be said about the return information to the merchant site which is the most important: They are not enough. Much more parameters should be added and defined in order to allow people to explain better to the client what happened.

Security is another major concern as much of the information is being sent using front end tools (JS and AJAX).  I did not have much time to look into this but Front End tools have higher odds of being affected by spyware.

Canadian Gold in the eyes of the Southern Neighbours !!!

It is very interesting to see how Americans look at Canadian goods including the most precious goods ever (Golden bullion).

When reading the following story, you should take into consideration that both countries share the same economic values although the social values are widely different.

“Mark Dice, a California native, tried to sell a one ounce Canadian gold bullion coin for $50 but no one knew how much it was worth, nor were they interested. Unfortunately for them, one ounce of gold is $1,100 USD.  According to Daily Paul, Mark Dice, founder of The Resistance and proponent of the 9/11 Truth Movement, stood in a California neighborhood near the beach trying to sell a one ounce Canadian gold coin but nobody in the area had the vaguest idea of how much it was worth nor were they interested. Some were not interested just because it was Canadian. Dice talked to one couple and the gentleman said it is actually worth $200. Majority of people who Dice asked said they did not have any money on them nor would they pay anything for the gold coin, not even $5 or a Starbucks cup of coffee. In the past, Dice has produced similar videos where he asked students at Berkeley what year the September 11, 2001 attacks occurred and surprisingly no one knew the answer.” –from Digital Journal.com

Best business Use for Google Wave

This entry would be a simple copy-paste for a thred that I have started on Google Wave with some business friends to read their impression about Google Wave.


Greetings,

As you can see, Wave is far from being a replacement for regular email and even Group Ware.

I think it would be very nice to help prepare for a visual presentation, to prepare a project that involves meetings and a lot of take and give.

It is very nice also to collaborate in a Sudoko game. I have tried that ;) I have not tried the video chat but I guess it is not synchronous. Maybe each one would upload his own video clip and pass it on. Or it would be like a web video chat applet that facilitates the start of a video conference.

Document versioning is another great feature as well for shared reporting. It helps keep track of what is going on with the wave.

Can you please suggest other usages that are important for you in your work?

I wanted to say that I have selected some of the contacts I have in my list but I could not remove after that any of them. Do you face the same situation or there is a hidden way to remove a contact from a wave after adding it?

I was asking about the business needed features in order to write about this aspect.

How can you add someone with just an email account (not a wave account yet)? I read that there would be inter-operable servers but until that time, I think Google Wave is the only venue.

When Google would launch this service publicly, do you think people are willing to adopt it like emails? Other competitors would not follow google on this for sure and we might end up with some communications tools for Microsoft for example that can not communicate with the Wave. Do you expect this?

Feel free to contribute to this message and feel free to discard it as well.

A drunk President: Medvedev

Yelstine went out of the white house in his underwear looking for a taxi after drinking 4 gallons or more.
Sarkouzi had one of his worst political press meeting after getting several bottles

Now this is the turn of Medvedev. Look at him and guess what kind of people are ruling our world.

The Novice: How I became a Buddhist Monk, Why I quit and What I learned

I am always interested to read about religions and compare one to another for the sake of enlightenment and moral enrichment.

I have seen people in the West going into Buddhism, Islam, Atheism, Catholicism... and people leaving their original religions as well and looking into the no-religion, no-belief, or the radical move into something totally contradicting with their own past.

This book talk about the rich experience of Stephen's, the frustrated Catholic in dreary England, from his own teenager self into the eventual happiness in India as a Monk. This "relentless truth seeker" has looked deep into Buddhism, meditation, enlightenment, and Monk's philosophy. However, at the end, all of these could not satisfy his need for the truth and decided to go back.

Back into what? This is not clear from his book but I bet that he would be continuing looking for the real truth somewhere else in order to avoid being raked through the embers of his past as a Catholic first and his past as a Monk when he devoted his entire [mature] self for the study and practice of this new religion and culture that looks appealing from the first sight.

However, after some analysis, Shettini found out that although he was teaching, learning, and worshiping, he could not go out of his frustration and sadness. It was all prescriptive for him.

Finally, he left us with a lot of lessons in his text and I bet that any reader would be impressed with his focus and direction to the conclusion he made.

New CIBC Unlimited Business Operating Account

The adverstisement for this account made it very interesting. However, once you decide to contact the bank, there is another story.

The main call center which number is announced on the ad will respond to you quickly. However, once you ask them about this account, they will say. Ohhh what? then Ohh no you have to contact the business division of the branch directly.
Ask them for the number??? then she will be: Oh I lost it. Wait. Then you have to wait for two other minutes until she can fetch up the number for the biggest branch in Montreal. Of course she is in a hurry so she would not even ask if you need anything else and close the phone.

Call the branch, they would not give you any information on the phone as if you are asking them about the bank secrets. So unless you want to book an appointment and go wait for someone to meet you at the branch, you can not get any single bit of information.

It might be time for some Canadian banks to open up and learn how to do business for the century.