Why Gold Is Special and Why You Should Own Some

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Gold was, through out history, a most important commodity. It is because it was and still is a secure refuge for people who are concerned about the changes in the international markets. They can
turn their money to gold knowing that the price of gold is, usually, stable. The price of gold rises when there is concern with wars, instability or other fear of those investors that use their money
to buy shares,because the value of gold is, relatively, stable.

Issac Newton linked the British Pound to the gold and the era in which coins are tied with metals,has begun. Each country held a gold depository and, it is safe to say that dependency on gold was
almost total. After the first world war, countries started to dismiss the linkage to gold. as a result the value of the us $ has plunged and it is now worth less. (If the U.S. decides to go back
to linkage to gold, that is to back the full amount she printed out to the amount of gold it has,gold price Will rise to $ 23,000 per ounce compared to $ 1,000 today. This is because on every dollar it would have to pay the price in gold and as she printed massive amounts of dollars (since the official cancellation of linkage to gold, the value of the dollar has plunged).

What so special about gold?
Gold is the element from which most jewelry is produce.
Gold was familiar to man since antiquity and it is apparently one of the first metals that the man has used. evidence exist of immemorial use of gold, among them evidence from Egypt from year 2600 b.c. that describes use of gold. Additional evidence from geographical rich areas in gold and in stories, mythes and lore.

As a result of it's low chemical activity, gold is typically found i nature appearing as an alloy (in ore) or in free form, often as tiny grains. Gold's concentration in the Earth's crust is 0.03
parts per million (ppm) and the main commercial source is volcanic rock. Sea water also contains gold, with concentration ranging from 0.2 to 1 milligrams of gold per ton of water. Refining process
of gold from sea water is an expensive process and therefore has no commercial use.

Pure gold has a high specific weight of 19.32 grams per cubic centimeter, It is poured in 1064.141 degrees Celsius. Another special feature of gold is the great difficulty it has combining with other materials, this special nobility feature makes gold appear in nature as close to pure as stone and makes him look brilliant in almost every condition. It is a combination of these features:
rarity, radiance along with the relative softness that makes it easy to mold, that has earned gold a special status symbolizing social rank using blazonry, representative and ceremonial uses,
including the use as the basis for money.

Exploitation of gold properties for industrial purposes is relatively new, when, among other things used to make glass a one way mirror and coated electrical contacts in the electronics industry, to maintain quality of the transmission properties. Gold has a critical role in computer and communications components. Gold's high resistance to corrosion is harnessed to use as a thin coating material for several types of surfaces. Gold is used in nanotechnology too.

Since the start of the current economic crisis in 2009, demand for gold is rising and its price is breaking previous records. Studies have shown that gold price rises in a period of instability and
economic uncertainty, and falling When the economic storm subsides.

Today gold prices are among the highest of all times (more than $1,800/oz. as i'm typing), if not the highest and experts predict it would keep on rising (target price in 2015 - $15,000/oz.).

If you have gold? You have money...

barakd is a free thinker and he likes to tell it as it is. Be prepared. Take action now. Purchase Gold Coins now!

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Should You Buy Pandora Today? - msnbc.com

Pandora Media took the plunge and hit the public market. Now you, too, can own a piece of your favorite streaming music service. But Mr. Market has hated this stock so far -- if you were first in line to buy shares on Wednesday, you've lost 44% of your investment already.

Fellow Fool Rick Munarriz called it: Amid Pandora's scorching hot IPO, he told you to stay away from the launch. Though revenue is growing like gangbusters, costs are tagging along as well and the company hasn't figured out how to turn a profit. And the share offering price more than doubled from the initial plan as fellow online darling LinkedIn and others threw chum in the IPO waters. LinkedIn hasn't done much better, by the way. Just short of a month into its public life, the stock has taken a 25% haircut from where it opened on its first day.

I have publicly stated that I want to own Pandora shares, going so far as calling it a serious threat to Apple iTunes andSirius XM Radio. I still think that's true because Pandora out-Apples Apple itself in the user friendliness department, and that's worth a lot. But I'm not interested at any price, and the introduction prices looked too frothy even for me.

Where's the trigger?
So what's Pandora really worth? At what prices would I make good on my intention to buy in?

Well, like Netflix before it, Pandora is treading new ground in media-based business models. But Netflix has figured out how to turn its 23 million customers into profits and even stretching its income to cover the cost of buying more and better streaming-media licenses. This is a story I know well, a model that the market at-large is starting to appreciate, and it all just works.

By contrast, Pandora's prospectus is a bit ominous: "We offer our service to listeners at no cost and we generate revenue primarily from advertising. We also offer a subscription service to listeners." So advertising first and foremost, supplemented by premium subscription services. I'd be more comfortable the other way around, except Pandora would instantly lose millions of subscribers by imposing mandatory fees on everyone.

Of course, Google makes most of its billions in advertising, even monetizing media services like YouTube these days. So why not Pandora?

And that's a great question that I would like to see answered before buying in. You see, Pandora's a pretty light advertiser. The browser-based version sometimes goes hours between ad displays -- the company features less than one minute of advertising per streaming hour -- though I do see a new "buy" tab on each song nowadays that rips a page from Google's YouTube playbook by directing you to iTunes and the Amazon.com music store. On my Android phone, the ads are ubiquitous -- but it's almost always the same annoying LivingSocial spot obscuring the album art.

In short, Pandora needs a more varied set of advertisers and a better method for displaying the ads. What's going on right now just isn't working and probably annoys consumers more than it inspires them to click on the pretty picture of a frozen yogurt.

So I don't have a set price in mind but a corporate event: I'll take a serious look at Pandora shares when the company figures out the advertising game. Until then, this ticker belongs on my Foolish watchlist but not in my portfolio. Here's an idea: Why not partner up with online ad-space leader Google to manage the ad flow?

Everything you can do, I can do better
Oh, but Google is a wannabe competitor, right? I'm using the beta version of Google Music right now, and it's not a bad substitute for Pandora sometimes. The service gives me access to my own music library on the go without investing in multiple 32-gigabyte memory cards to store it all on. Google hosts my files and lets me listen anywhere. It's good if I know exactly what I want to hear and already purchased the media.

But then, Pandora is different. Like set-schedule radio services such as terrestrial radio or Sirius XM, Pandora stations often lead me to music I've never heard before. For example, I like Snow Patrol and spun up a Pandora station based on their haunting hit "Run." On my way to the grocery store, the station surprised me with an Armin Van Buuren trance mix of that song, and I hit "thumbs-up" because it was darn catchy. Now I'm a bigger fan of Van Buuren than of Snow Patrol, and went through a four-month spell of listening to nothing but progressive trance. And so we grow. None of that could have happened by using Google Music because I didn't own the trance mix of "Run."

For the record, the just-announced iCloud music service from Apple looks like the worst of both worlds. It's limited to the music you already own and will never lead you anywhere new, and it's reliant on iTunes versus the more open Web format seen in Amazon's and Google's offerings.

And Google does ad business with competitors all the time, so rivalry is no reason to stay away. Hey, Amazon's cloud services manage huge chunks of Netflix's online services. "Co-opetition" is the name of the game.

What do we do now?
Pandora is great, but its business model isn't. Don't invest a penny here until you can see and understand how the company plans to make money. The following model has been proposed many times and typically ends up in tears and disaster:

Start an online service with millions and millions of members.???Profit!

You need to know what the question marks in step 2 really mean. Right now, they don't mean much in Pandora's case. Just add the stock to your watchlist and walk away.

You could also watch this video that explains how Pandora-style cloud computing is changing the face of both media and business. You'll even find a cloud-focused business that's making money today and even more money tomorrow. It's fun, free, and informative -- why not watch it now?

Source : Click Here