Get a FREE iPhone 4s

Give Your Valentine a FREE iPad

Give Your Valentine a FREE iPad
Click Here: http://tinyurl.com/7awaggh

Give Your Valentine a FREE iPad
Click Here: http://tinyurl.com/7awaggh

Who Will Win the Super Bowl?

Who Will Win the Super Bowl? Patriots or Giants?
Click Here to Vote: http://tinyurl.com/6w56khm

Who Will Win the Super Bowl?

Who Will Win the Super Bowl? Patriots or Giants?
Click Here to Vote: http://tinyurl.com/6w56khm

Check out Tiger Woods' sparkly new $50 million bachelor pad

If you happen to be a single dude in south Florida and you think you're going to impress the ladies with your car or your oceanfront condo, you might just want to pack it in now. Tiger Woods is in town, friends, and his place has room to store yours in a forgotten corner of the attic.

Behold Tiger Woods' personal Xanadu, the recently completed $50 million estate in Jupiter Island, Florida. In this aerial photograph, commissioned by Jeff Lichtenstein Realty, you can clearly see not only the $35 million original estate but much of the $15 million sunk into improvements. As FanHouse noted when Woods purchased the property in 2007, the original estate was 9,729-square feet on a 12-acre lot. The additions included a 6,400-square-foot gym/media room/bar, as well as an elevator, a reflecting pond, and a slim lap pool.

Eagle-eyed observers will note that there appears to be several golf-type formations scattered around the estate. Cary Lichtenstein, part of the real estate group that took the photographs, offered this assessment of the golf aspects of the estate. [Note that this photo is taken looking eastward, so north is to the left and south is to the right.] Lichtenstein's take:

It appears he has one tee box in the southeast ... corner to hit drivers. The entire area just west of the lap pool can be used to hit long, medium and short irons into any of the 4 greens. Each green is guarded by a single trap except the green in the northwest corner which appears to have 3 pot bunkers.

Tiger has enough open space to practice his short game from any angle, any wind condition, which really appears what this practice area is all about.

His putting green is totally surrounded by dense vegetation. One wonders if he is trying to block out the wind by doing this or if he is cutting off both sunlight and air circulation. He probably has a sub-air temperature/humidity control system beneath the green, otherwise it would be worthless in the heat of the summer, especially if the grass there is bent or some northern grass.

What, no windmills?

News broke about Woods' mansion right about this time last year, and at the time it appeared to be a fortress for him and his beloved Elin to hide from the world's prying eyes. Shortly after that, Woods had a close encounter with a certain hydrant, and pretty much everything changed forever.

Regardless of all the hue and cry about Woods, both pro and con, the guy made his own bed, and now he's going to have to sleep in it. Clearly, though, that bed's going to be in one heck of a swank house.

What is Facebook Worth?

More than 50 mutual funds say they own shares of the closely held social-media giant Facebook, according to investment-research firm Morningstar. And some closed-end funds are investing the bulk of their portfolios in private firms, including Facebook. The catch: No one seems to agree how much the shares are worth.

Facebook could file papers for an initial public offering as early as next week, The Wall Street Journal reported, with a valuation of $75 billion to $100 billion. As of the end of 2011, funds had widely differing estimates of its value—and that could have significant implications for investor returns.

Fidelity Investments, which has two dozen mutual funds with Facebook shares, valued the company at $25 a share. T. Rowe Price Group, which has a dozen funds with Facebook shares, valued them at about $31.15. Other funds priced the shares somewhere in between.

Over the past couple of years, small investors have been keenly interested in getting exposure to pre-IPO companies but have had few vehicles for doing so, because the Securities and Exchange Commission restricts the sale of such shares to "accredited" investors with a net worth of more than $1 million, excluding their home, or an annual income of more than $200,000.

The restrictions leave mutual funds and closed-end funds as the easiest avenues for individuals to get a stake in such companies, though the stakes typically are small and diluted among many other fund holdings. But the pricing discrepancies mean that buyers of the funds are effectively paying different prices for their stakes in Facebook and other private firms, experts say.

Lawrence Friend, a former SEC chief accountant, says that in an open-end fund, either the buyers or the sellers will suffer: "You're hurting the purchasers if your price is too high, or the redeemer if it's too low."

At the end of last year, for example, the Morgan Stanley Focus Growth fund had 3.68% of its portfolio in Facebook, valuing it at $27 a share, according to its portfolio disclosure form. At the time, investors could buy the fund at $33.63 a share.

If Morgan Stanley Investment Management had instead used T. Rowe Price's valuation of $31.15 per Facebook share, investors would have had to pay about $33.82 a share of the fund, a 0.57% increase. On the other hand, investors redeeming shares of Morgan Stanley funds made less money than they otherwise would have using T. Rowe Price's higher valuation. By comparison, the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index's return for 2011 was 2.11%, including dividends.

Since the end of the year, Morgan Stanley or T. Rowe Price and other fund companies may have changed their valuations.

A Morgan Stanley spokesman declined to comment. A T. Rowe Price spokesman said the company's fair-valuation process includes a variety of factors, including a company's financial performance and prospects, and subsequent transactions between other parties.

The law allows fund companies some discretion in deciding how to price private companies, says Doug Scheidt, the SEC's associate director of investment management. Some firms use price quotes from third-party brokers, such as SharesPost or Second Market, while others use internal valuation models with multiple inputs.

The Tocqueville Opportunity fund, which had about 1.87% of its portfolio in Facebook at the end of last year and priced the company at $27.90 a share, takes quotes from secondary markets and applies a discount based on illiquidity and share restrictions, says fund manager Thomas Vandeventer.

He says one of the issues he has brought up with the valuation committee is that if Facebook goes public at a premium, "we have a hidden discount."

The lure of private companies has grown stronger since the tech bubble, as high-profile technology firms wait longer to go public, says Kevin Landis, portfolio manager of Firsthand Technology Value, a closed-end fund with almost its entire portfolio in private investments like Facebook and social-media company Yelp. Closed-end funds have a fixed number of shares and trade throughout the day like stocks. Their share prices can deviate significantly from the value of their underlying assets.

The Firsthand fund sells at about $17.25 a share, which the company says is a 30% discount to the value of its underlying assets. But because nearly all of its investments are in private companies, investors won't really know how much those assets are worth until the companies go public, says Geoffrey Bobroff, a mutual-fund consultant based in East Greenwich, R.I.

Mr. Landis says Firsthand uses an outside firm to value its holdings: "We want to have the most accurate values that we can."

The pricing issues mean that investors hoping to catch the IPO wave in a mutual fund have to be wary, Mr. Friend says.

"It's similar to figuring out what your home's worth when you apply for a mortgage," says Tocqueville's Mr. Vandeventer. "We try our best but all have different methodologies."

Vicks VapoRub: Cough Remedy

VICKS VapoRub - INTERESTING



During a lecture on Essential Oils, they told us how the foot soles
can absorb oils. Their example: Put garlic on your feet and within 20
minutes you can 'taste' it.

Some of us have used Vicks VapoRub for years for everything from
chapped lips to sore toes and many body parts in between. But I've never
heard of this. And don't laugh, it works 100% of the time, although the
scientists who discovered it aren't sure why. To stop night time coughing in
a child (or adult as we found out personally), put Vicks VapoRub generously
on the soles of your feet, cov er with socks, and the heavy, deep coughing
will stop in about 5 minutes and stay stopped for many, many hours of
relief. Works 100% of the time and is more effective in children than even
very strong prescription cough medicines. In addition it is extremely
soothing and comforting and they will sleep soundly

Just happened to tune in A.M. Radio and picked up this guy talking
about why cough medicines in kids often do more harm than good, due to the
chemicals in them This method of using Vicks VapoRub on the soles of the
feet was found to be more effective than prescribed medicines for children
at bed time. In addition it seems to have a soothing and calming effect on
sick children who then went on to sleep soundly.

My wife tried it on herself when she had a very deep constant and
persistent cough a few weeks ago and it worked 100%! She said that it felt
like a warm blanket had enveloped her, coughing stopped in a few minutes. So
she went from; every few seconds uncontrollable coughing, she slept
cough-free for hours every night she used it.

If you have grandchildren, pass this on. If you end up sick, try it
yourself and you will be amazed at how it works.

DON'T SHUN THIS ONE.. TRY IT THE NEXT TIME YOU GET A BAD COLD.
THE ONLY THING YOU CAN LOSE IS YOUR COUGH.