Go East! Holiday Destinations to the Far East for 2009

The current economic crisis is causing many of us to consider travelling further afield than the Eurozone this summer. With many tour operators and airlines offering cheap flights to the Far East (including Eastern and South Eastern Asia), I thought I would have a look at some of the key destinations in this vast, diverse, and utterly unique area of the world.

Bangkok:
Thailand’s capital is one of the most visited cities in the world. The area is home to two primary centres, Rattanakosin and modern Bangkok, which both contribute to the wider metropolitan area covering almost 8,000 square kilometres. As a result, there are a great many of attractions in the city, ranging from the historical sites of ancient palaces, to the bustling nightlife in areas such as Patpong. The city is also a haven for shoppers in, for example, Pratunum Market, as well as those in search of culture via arts and museums.

Hong Kong:
The Hong Kong region in Southern China is one of the most densely populated areas in the world. As a result, the destination is regarded as a cosmopolitan and commercially orientated business centre, but it also offers an unforgettable experience for tourists. The region is a meeting point for Eastern and Western culture, and consequently old and new. This means you can stroll through the city’s futuristic architecture in the morning, and take a ride on a traditional Junk in the evening. The Hong Kong Tourism Board calls this the Cultural Kaleidoscope.

Mumbai:
The capital of Maharashta in India is one of the most populous cities in the world, and home to almost 1f million people. Like the others on this list, the city has an array of attractions to offer to tourists, though they are arguably more steeped in historical and cultural values than the others. Its most popular places of interest include the Elephanta Caves – a network of caves and caverns beautifully carved into shrines and temples, and The Gateway of India – Mumbai’s most famous monument.

Beijing:
The capital of The People’s Republic of China has always been popular with tourists but has recently undergone a boom from hosting the 2008 Olympic Games. Subsequently, the city has had a significant amount of development to accommodate visitors. Spots such as the Forbidden City and Beihai Park are inspirational in their beauty and form, whilst traditionally unique leisure activities come in the form of theatre and tea drinking.


Article Source: http://www.ArticleStreet.com/

The Top 7 Keys to Buying Lottery Software

You like to play the lottery. It's fun. It's exciting. And you enjoy studying the past winning numbers. You're convinced there are trends and patterns in all that data that would give you an advantage, but they're elusive and seem to be just out of your reach. You know that all major businesses, industries and governments use computer software to make forecasts and predictions about tomorrow. So, why not you? You've decided to buy some lottery software and create a little luck for yourself.

Well, good luck. You're about to enter a minefield filled with hype-masters and hucksters, with dazzle and glitz, with outrageous claims and expectations. Welcome to the world of Lottery Software.

I'm not trying to dissuade you; I'm trying to alert you to what's in store. There actually are about 4 or 5 descent products out there, but which are which. Well, perhaps this checklist will help you with your quest.

Hype is the Standard

This shouldn't surprise you. We're surrounded and inundated with advertisements continuously throughout the day. The Internet is more like a seething cauldron than a market place. So, you're going to find page after page of lottery software companies hawking their wares. Here's what to look out for.

If they promise you that 'YOU Will WIN the Lottery in 1 Week, GUARANTEED!' you should be a bit skeptical. You won't win the lottery and, as far as that guarantee is concerned, you'll never see your money again. These charlatans are here today, gone tomorrow. They can form a new company and set up an internet site in a day. They scam as much money as they can until they feel some heat and, poof, they're gone. The next day they're open for business again under a new name. They're ghosts on steroids.

Experience and Confidence are Brothers

If a company has been in business a long time you learn 3 things:

1. They must believe in their product.
2. They have sustained a level of sales over the years to remain profitable.
3. They have been able to maintain a good reputation in the marketplace.

And, it is these facts that instill Confidence in the consumer.

Testimonials Aren't Necessarily Hype

Some would say that Testimonials have been over used and, besides, who believes that crap anyway? The people probably don't even exist. They were made up just like the Testimonial. Unfortunately, the skeptics have a point. Why should you give any credence to Testimonials? Why? Because, you can learn much more by reading them than you can by not.

If a huckster made them up, his only motive was to get you to buy. If customers wrote them, they are thanking the vendor. Hucksters speak from avarice but satisfied customers speak from the heart. The next time you read some testimonials, keep this in mind and you might just learn more that you expected.

Help I Need Somebody

Boy, ain't that the truth. Ever need some help with some software and, when you click on Help, all you get is &$%^@#? Nada. Nothing. Squadush. Ever read the Help screen and it just made you mad? Oh, here's one. Ever click on Help only to have it tell you to look in the Manual? Help files like these are all written by people who could care less if you get any help. They only care about getting it done quickly so they can take your money faster. Contrast that with the attitude of a company that actually has a good product that they are proud of.

Oh, here's another. Every click on Help and discover it was written by a person who knows the product backwards and forwards and, so, he wrote the help screen for someone who knows the product backwards and forwards? Microsoft is notorious for this and, rightly so, it has become the brunt of an unending torrent of internet jokes.

So, do a little investigation into the Help screens the product provides. It might save some of your precious household items from being broken.

Manual Labor Should Be Rewarding

Software generally is notorious for having schlock product manuals but the problem is even worse with Lottery Software. This is due, in no small part, to the unsavory characters that market on the fringe of our business. It particularly frustrates me because, undeservedly, some of that tarnish rubs off on the white hat guys in our business.

Here's a pet peeve of mine that I'm sure many of you share. The manual explains exactly how each part of the software works, but never tells you how, when or where to use it. What are you supposed to do; spend the next two years learning how to use the software by trial and error? You finally learn how to use it about the time the next version hits the market. So, find out what you can about their software operations manual before you purchase.

A Picture May Be Worth a Thousand Words - But a Video Is Worth the Whole Book

With all the technology available to companies today, there is no excuse for not providing the customer with Training or Tutorial Videos. Five minutes watching a training video can save hours of frustration and turn an angry customer into raving cheerleader. So, find out if the company provides training on their product?

What Are They Selling On Their Website?

Today, that's a good question. On many websites it is very difficult to determine exactly what they are trying to sell. You went there to buy Lottery Software and you're inundated with audio messages, pop-up advertisements and video pitches for things you don't want and had no intention of buying. You're surrounded, top, bottom, left and right, with ads selling everything from 'The Original Cave Etchings of the Dingbat Tribe of South of Nowhere' to 'Uncle Charley's Homemade Itch Cream'. If the company can't make up its mind who it is, you probably shouldn't reward their confusion.

Lotto Blog

Does the company love what it does? Does it have a passion for lottery software? Nothing demonstrates a company's commitment to its product more than a Blog. Why, you ask? Because a Blog is a lot of hard work. Making a Blog post every day is a major commitment by the company to support its customer base and engage the serious lottery playing community in discussions about their favorite topic.

Now, some vendors have blogs that they created for the sole purpose of being able to say 'We have a blog'. Maybe they make a post once a month if they remember. These are faux lottery enthusiasts. They have no love for the topic itself other than to create a revenue stream.

Beyond the Manual and the Help files, a Lotto Blog is an excellent place to learn more about your software, to learn new lottery strategies and to ask those burning questions you have. Nothing says a company is for real than a real Lotto Blog.

I hope these tips help you in your quest for some serious lottery software and, hopefully, save you some wasted time and money.

Good luck and I hope YOU Win the Big One.

Author : Professor Dolph

http://www.isnare.com/?aid=323667&ca=Recreation

Horse Race Trading Formula - Strategies, Systems And Success For Betfair Part-1

In any form of financial trading there are two terms which you will first need to fully understand before proceeding to the next stage.

The fundamentals of any trading system are the same whether it be stocks and shares, bonds, forex, spread betting or of course the betting exchanges.

1. Liquidity - Cash
2. Volatility - News

Lets start with liquidity or "cash".

1. Cash is what physically creates/ moves markets.
2. Cash is what physically drives prices up or down, (bullish or bearish).
3. Cash determines how far a trend goes and when it will end.

The more cash coming into a system (buying positions) the longer a trend will last, so making it easier to trade successfully (in theory).

Markets of all types are self perpetuating, as we have seen over the last few years in the UK, bubbles are created, just like for example, in the UK residential housing market.

While buyers will meet sellers with available cash, prices go up and up and up, all other factors are irrelevant. Anyone could see that the housing market was overbought except the mug punters who believed the dross churned out in the form of hour after hour of prime time property porn TV.

Punters were falling over themselves to buy rabbit hutches in city centres that were genuinely worth about a fifth of the price they were actually paying.

The result was inevitable. Crunch!! Credit dries up, Cash dries up, the bubble bursts, sellers will not match buyers and not only do prices fall, but the volume of transactions collapses as well.

So here we are with factor 2.

Volatility. What are the factors that create the initial switch event?

Well they are quite basic - NEWS.

The news can come from anywhere, any angle, any source, there are hosts of sources of news that affect markets.

The economics of accounts and balance sheets, the movements of fiscal indices such as interest and inflation. Movements of exchange rates between currencies.

Oil prices, food prices, availability of credit and cash are recent movers of markets.

Even the climate and global terrorism play their part in disturbing regional markets.

For the housing market in the UK, the warning signs began early in 2007 with information that sub prime lenders in the USA were dangerously over exposed.

Even then, property prices in the UK continued their upward run for another 6 months such is the power of media propaganda and the nature of human greed and entrenchment.

Basically if you are playing the stock market, the property market or any other market and are trying to keep tabs on the number of things that might affect your trades, you have to attempt to follow all these sources of news 24 hours a day, piecing them together, attempting to predict their effect on the market along the way.

And, to be frank this is nothing short of gambling. Its also extremely stressful.

Part of the problem with stock market day trading is the competition.

Huge corporations, pension funds, investment banks and Wall Street itself are working on huge commissions to profit from these markets.

Their technology is second to none, high tech automated robots compete for easy money.

Insider trading is rife and unless you are "in the know" you will always be fighting to beat these markets as an independent.

To make matters worse the incoming news can occur night and day, and you can awake to an important piece of news that sent your stock into freefall at opening.

In part 2 of this article we examine how and why Betfair has become the platform of choice for traders and other punters, and the software, systems and strategies that are making them consistent profits.

Author : Mike Davies

http://www.isnare.com/?aid=325775&ca=Recreation

Horse Race Trading Formula - Strategies, Systems And Success For Betfair

Regardless of platform, all traders will be faced with a series of tough questions, mental debates and challenges on a daily basis.

Here are four important questions, one of which will be in any traders head at any given time.

1 If the price of a stock that I hold is still rising I would be foolish to sell when it could go up even further?

2 Should i wait till the stock starts to fall before selling? The price has been rising steadily, it won't crash overnight will it?

3 If the stock has just plummeted then something is wrong with this company and it is not worth buying?

4 The stock is soaring, I must buy now or I will lose out?

Although all these four statements appear to make sense, on closer analysis it can be seen that for basic fundamental reasons an experienced trader should know innately that all four statements are in fact incorrect, for one of the fundamental reasons outlined below.

1 When a stock is "oversold" we can say that supply exceeds demand and so the price will fall, conversely if demand exceeds supply the stock is "overbought" the price will rise. How do we as traders pinpoint the specific point where the demand/supply ratio is about to switch?

2 This is of course the eternal, essential question and the answer is we don't. It is impossible to predict the "exact" point at which a market switch event will occur, despite hundreds of attempts involving expensive computer programmes etc.

3 The volatility of your stock is intimately linked to news and events that in some way will affect your stock. Some of this news can of course at first glance seem completely unrelated to your particular stock ie the global economy can affect the entire index for your stock and movements of the index then directly affect your given stock.

4 We have seen in the recent credit crunch how corrections in one particular sector - the banking sector can affect the entire market around the globe wiping billions of dollars off literally every index, from commodities to pharmaceuticals. The Market is NOT king. Confidence in the market IS king.

5 When a market "switch" event does occur it can often create a stampede amongst traders which can wipe out recent gains in a matter of minutes, this is the herd mentality and can leave stocks hugely undervalued after a selling spree.

Experienced traders know that following a market crash is in fact not a time to be negative, and in fact this is the prime time to buy certain stocks which have been "oversold" as they represent "value" buys.

But as always there are important caveats, if a stock has crashed because a company is being liquidated then it obviously does not represent value at any price.

If it is undervalued because the entire index has simply suffered a bout of selling or a crisis of confidence then we can be assured that at some point confidence will return and the stock will rise again.

However in times of crisis it can seem difficult to muster up the courage to start buying again, and this is where novice traders lose out.

So how do you as a day trader make use of this mass of information to trade on the stock market.

Well you do it because it is your job, but many day traders fail and many are indeed turning to the betting exchanges as an alternative where their skills can be put to better use.

In many ways the betting exchanges offer a more coherent overall view of the market and volatility. With fast internet and racing TV a race trader has ALL the means to assess relevant aspects of volatility In advance of the market. Its all about control.

Also as the stock only exists for less than one day, the trades are closed at the end of each race and a trader can go to sleep knowing that nothing untoward can happen to his equities overnight.

Day traders come to the betting exchanges with a solid background in Technical Analysis and Fundamentals, they will have experienced the pain of losing trades and will understand the relationship between volatility, liquidity and the market spread.

For day traders used to working the stock market, the betting exchanges offer fast turnover, quicker more agile trades.

Why bother with the slow torture of leaving medium/ long term trades open in the stock market when you can have made 5 or 6 trades in 15 minutes on one single horse race.

Lets look at the benefits of trading horses on Betfair

* You choose which horse and which race to bet on.

* You know the exact time of the race and therefore the time that the trade will close.

* Medium term trades can be opened early morning or the night before and closed during the afternoon of the race.

* Pure scalpers can use short term scalp, swing and momentum trades which can be opened and closed in the 15 minutes before a race as liquidity soars.

* Trades can even be placed during the actual event taking advantages of extreme volatility. (not for the faint hearted and not for those without racing TV).

* At the end of each days racing a trader can examine the profit and loss account to see precisely the fruits of his days labour.

* You can forget about the global economy, forget about events out of your control, forget about the 8.30 am opening time on the markets and forget about boring economics and accounting.

The fundamentals which are part of your armoury are all online at:

1. http://www.racingpost.co.uk
2. http://www.oddschecker.com
3. http://www.attheraces.com
4. http://www.sportinglife.com

Technical Analysis platforms allow you to take your trading to the next level and they are a steal compared to the expensive financial packages that day traders will have been used to.

Bet Angel Professional is the flagship trading platform for Betfair, the real time Supercharting facility is recognised as second to none.

Ladder trading allows you whole market views of liquidity, and one click trading with offset allows you to fire trades into the market in microseconds stealing a big advantage over users stuck with the standard Betfair interface.

Simple chart setups using Quick Moving Average Back Price, Price Envelope's, and Long Weight of Money Moving Average highlight simple scalp, swing and momentum trades in the pre race markets.

Most importantly you need to decide on your opening pot, you need a willingness to learn your new trade or platform and the confidence that your mindset is strong enough to cope with this type of career.

So just for the record what has since become of the poor online casino operator.

By Oct 2 2006 from a peak of 176p PartyGaming was down at 47p, following one of the biggest one day losses (56%) in FTSE 100 history.

Today it totters happily around 25p, a realistic price/earnings ratio, using a realistic and sustainable business model without flouting any established legislation.

Who knows, with the recent change of leadership in the US, the gambling legislation may be reversed and the reverse fortune could occur for this particular operator.

What can we take from this cautionary tale as we sail off to the betting exchanges; Quite simply, make volatility and liquidity your best friends as the alternative situation could truly represent Armageddon for your finances.

What can we learn?

1 Learn to spot trends early on

2 Identify and analyse potential risks using fundamentals

3 Use technical analysis software to take the heat out of timing your trades.

4 Get in early before the herd stampedes onto a likely winner.

5 Get out early before the herd flies over the edge of the cliff.

Remember if volatility scared you in stocks it will terrify you in horse racing.

Author : Mike Davies

http://www.isnare.com/?aid=326183&ca=Recreation

Those Wily Canadian Walleye Fish

Walleye fishermen are a breed of their own. They may go out on weekend and catch a ton of those Walleyes. Yet next weekend or the next fishing trip to Canada - everything is exactly the same and yet they come back after a full day or evening or fishing empty handed. Walleye fish can bit like crazy one day, and then disappear almost invisibly over the next fortnight. For no apparent reason what so ever. And it’s to the fishing gods. Once gone - these Walleye fish – these wonderful Walleye fish – nothing but nothing can bring them back or change their determined and wily brains. Not for love, not for money, not for experience on the fishing trails of life. Nothing it seems will bring back Walleye fish when they decide not to prevail.

But, in spite of, or perhaps for these very reasons, of their unpredictable or even elusive behaviors, walleyes rank among the most popular of game fish – whether it is in the northern US states such as Minnesota, North Dakota or Wisconsin or up in Ontario or Manitoba Canada. Some fisherman or anglers choose walleye fish and fishing themselves for the challenge alone. It can be said by less dedicated or avid fisherman that it is their choice of fishes mainly because walleye fillets make for ultra prime table fare.

Walleye fish have become more widespread geographically not only because of their inherent difficulty as a caught fish but also as a result of widespread fish stocking programs they are now found in almost every state and province. It has even been tried and attempted to introduce walleyes outside North America. Such are the lure of these wonderful Walleye game fish and the challenges of Walleye fishing.

Two subspecies of walleyes have been identified in North America: the yellow walleye and the blue walleye or blue pike. The blue Walleye or blue pike species is extinct currently. All that remains to fish in the wild are the yellow walleye species. These are commonly referred to simply as "Walleye". Since it is the only type of Walleye fish still around for anglers to go after and pursue.

In terms of coloration and coloration yellow walleyes usually have an olive-green back, golden sides and a white belly. Distinctive markings include a milky-white tip on the lower lobe of the tail and a black blotch at the rear base of the spiny dorsal fin.

In many waters, fishermen mistake the walleye for its close relative – the Auger fish. To tell the two apart it is wise to know that Saugers have a distinctly different coloration and do not grow anywhere near as large as walleye fish. To further complicate matters, walleyes and saugers sometimes mingle and hybridize, producing an offspring, who has named or nicknamed “saugeye”. These saugeye fish can be said to appear with characteristics, colorations and markings intermediate between each of the two parent fish – walleye fish and sauger fish. Luckily walleye and their close relatives – the sauger fish, have no other North American relatives. However, walleyes are closely related to the European zander fish, or pike-perch. It can be said that in comparison the two look remarkably similar but that walleyes distribute their eggs are random while their close relatives – while zander fish are nest builders.

The walleye's common names lead to much confusion among fisherman – even avid experienced anglers. In much of Canada, walleyes are called pickerel, jackfish or Dore, the French name for the species. In the United States they are often called “Walleyed Pike”. But then again that name is a misnomer because Walleyes belong not to the pike family but instead to the perch fish family.

However no matter what a walleye is a walleye fish and no matter what a bad day spent trying to catch those elusive walleyes is always better than the best day spent at the office back in the city.

Author : Jadran N. Transcona

http://www.isnare.com/?aid=347485&ca=Recreation