Investing in Real EstateThursday, September 10, 2009

Many investors are finding that investing in real estate is a great way to supplement their current income and help others at the same time. This is in part due to the economic status of the country and the foreclosure status of many homes. Before investing into any investment property you should consider a few things such as the market, your initial investment cost, management costs and resale possibilities.

When considering investment property, it is vital that you consider all of these things and ensure yourself that you are making the right purchase. For instance you must consider where the demand is the greatest. You may want to purchase a home in a prestigious area of the city but there is no demand for rental property there so your investment is not a good one if the home sits empty for long periods of time. Next consider what type of property you will purchase. Sometimes purchasing multi-unit homes can be more work to maintain but bring in the greatest return for your money.

Purchasing real estate that is substandard can cost you a great deal of money before ever getting a penny on your return. There are thousands of homes that can be purchased at a discount due to being in foreclosure. This enables investors to purchase a property low and after only a few years of ownership, sell high once the market begins to recover. Many of these homes have been well taken care of and need little to no repairs before being able to rent them out.

Java & .NET: Same idea, two solutionsMonday, August 24, 2009

Java and .NET were developed a few years ago at the same time. Despite the fact, that they were developed by two different companies, Sun and Microsoft, both technologies have similar features and represent the same concept. Both have been successful and these technologies are implemented on mobile devices, such us cell phones and smart phones.

Java and .NET were based on the definition of managed applications. Every application running on mobile device, for example a notebook or calculator, is executed in a special environment, called a sandbox. This environment separately manages that running application and can not reach information on a mobile phone, which is not available for this application. In addition, a sandbox guarantees more stable operation of applications and prohibits them to run unauthorized code or even break the operating system.

An additional advantage of sandbox, is that fact that it can be easily adapted to different hardware-platforms, which is especially valuable for mobile devices. Around the World, we have a numerous number of cell phone producers, and every producer makes a number of models and types, so the variety is enormous.

Navigation in Aimiya: fast and easy‎Monday, August 24, 2009

 Applications for mobile devices have some differences compared to applications for PC.  One fundamental difference – is the user interface. Usually, mobile devices have small display, there is no mouse or pointer device and their resources (memory, processor) are very limited. If the device has a touch screen, you need to consider the following factors, size of the finger or pointer, which can hide the biggest part of the screen while pressing items on the screen. You need to remember as well, that majority of people would like to use only one hand in order to manage the device, keeping the device and the management of the application in the fingers of the same hand.

Usually, working with a mobile application represents movements between screens, while working with desktop or laptop PC the user is allowed to operate with number of screens. If the mobile application has a deep internal structure and logic, the number of screens could be 20 or even more. Cell phones are not very suited for navigation using menus: they have small buttons with tight press, small screens with small type and usage while you are walking or traveling is never convenient and can be dangerous.

During development of the Aimiya Financial Goal application, we used special utilities in order to make navigation very convenient and comfortable for end users. First of all we use hardware buttons of the cell phone. We utilize all four main buttons UP, DOWN, LEFT and RIGHT. Buttons LEFT and RIGHT usually correspondent with the BACK and SELECT (FIRE) actions. From any menu screen you can reach help menu by pressing the 0 button.

Our story, how we created our businessMonday, August 24, 2009

I.       In the Beginning

Amerco International Limited and the Aimiya Software brand began as a project designed by two friends who spent many years working for a large company dealing with the implementation of accounting and management systems.

One of those two people was a specialist in finance and the other was a lead programmer. The work was tedious and routine and they spent many hours training people and maintaining the already designed systems. Corporate finance being what it was, there was not much room for advancement and no room for creativity. There had to be a better way to make a living and the time had come to make a move.

Personal Finance was a new venture for both people. The core concept behind the Aimiya Software was developed using a spreadsheet on Microsoft Excel. Several years of trial and error lead to a data model that left only the most valuable instruments which immediately showed performance and position.

The model was initially based on an individual achieving financial independence by the age of 40 and to design all the aspects and conditions of the finances around achieving this goal.

One of these portfolio decisions was the creation of a personal business.

Going into Debt – Is it Good or Bad‎Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Debt is a common problem in our fast paced world today. You purchase an item and pay for it later, spend without any consideration to how much you are spending, open credit accounts with the intention of building credit and keep our economic world turning, right? Wrong! Going into debt costs everyone in the long run. Consider this; your neighbor borrows $22,000 to purchase a new car. Their payments are more than they can afford and they end up defaulting on the loan. The loan company therefore must raise their interest rates in order to recover from hundreds of customers defaulting which in turn costs every new customer they deal with.

Let us examine some of the pros and cons of going into debt. On the pro side we have the fact that you can get something you really wanted quickly and pay for it later, build your credit score for future large purchases, maintain a certain lifestyle and join the ranks of the plastic world. The cons tell us that sometimes our spending habits get us into trouble and we find it hard to get out of debt, the interest rates we pay on credit purchases ends up costing us more than double for one item, we can maintain our lifestyle by saving for purchases and more people end up filing bankruptcy than paying their debts off.