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In today’s fast paced planet, the internet is quickly becoming a necessity when planning any event. Getting married can prove to be an organizational nightmare. Trying to get your friends and family to the same place at the same time alone can prove to be no small task. The answer is a “Wedding Website”.

Wedding websites and online wedding organization tools are a fast and efficient method of helping organize your guests, provide them with the information they need to share your special day and share with your guests far and away the pictures, video and other mementos after the wedding itself.

Keeping track of who is having chicken and who’s having fish isn’t always as easy as it sounds. That first list you made up has so many changes to it you can’t remember if Aunt Peggy is still single or not. The tools available through wedding websites can help you keep track of who has rsvp’d and who is sitting where.

“Will you Marry Me?” If only it were that simple. Plan on spending the next many months answering the phone every few minutes to tell uncle morty … AGAIN … how to get to the church. By including the URL to your wedding website on your invitations you can prevent last minute confusion and save yourself the headaches. v Sharing all the photos and video clips from your wedding has become a much easier task as well. Wedding websites allow the married couple to easily share photos and video of the events with family and friends around the world right away. Uploading the photos to the wedding website has become very easy to do and makes sharing the moments easy.

Having a wedding website is no longer an option. By alleviating much of the stress involved with getting married, wedding websites have become as much a wedding staple as the cake.

written by Shane Todhunter
the President and CEO of Nutshell Media Inc. a template designed website services for wedding industry. The company is based in Vancouver BC, Canada.

A vital skill in becoming an effective communicator is the ability to listen. Listening skills are not taught in school, and sadly are largely undeveloped skill in many people. To listen effectively is a powerful skill that can be learnt and practiced. You will gain more respect and esteem through listening rather than through talking

It’s funny how sometimes you associate a certain phrase with someone. I knew someone called Ray and what I remember about him the most was when he was listening to someone talk he would keep saying ‘I hear you’ I would wonder whether he was saying that because he heard, but disagreed with what the person was saying, or if it was a noncommittal filler

There is however a great difference between hearing and listening. Hearing refers to the physical dimension of the sound waves striking the ear and the brain processing them into meaningful information. Listening, however, involves far more than the hearing process. It incorporates paying attention and focusing with the intention of understanding and responding appropriately.

The most basic of all human needs is the need to understand and to be understood. The best way to understand people is to listen to them. Not only that but when people feel that you have really listened to them, you will gain their respect and they will value and give you the credibility to speak.

Consider how you feel when you sense someone is really listening to what you have to say. You feel good, you feel understood, and more connected to the person who is listening. The fact that they are interested causes you to feel cared for.

One important element of listening is the ability to attend. Attending is the process where we focus in on a message and filter out others that are distracting. It is to be able to focus on what the person is saying, and filter out all the other things that may be happening at the same time.

Someone once said (his name was anonymous) that the reason history repeats itself is because no one was listening the first time. When I first heard that, I realized history always repeating in my house especially around bedtime! That is the time when my kids practice attending. They focus on what they are doing (and it’s not homework) and filter me out as a distraction each time I remind them that it’s bedtime!

One of the biggest distractions to attending is our desire to talk The desire to talk is so strong that while the other person is talking we can be thinking about what we are going to say next, and waiting for an opportunity to speak. As we focus on what we are going to say or interject, our attention goes from what the person is saying to our own thoughts. Although appearing to be interested and attentive, we can easily be distracted by our thoughts or something else that may be happening at the same time. At that point perhaps we do fall into merely hearing and not listening. Our mind’s attention has drifted onto other things and is no longer intent on understanding and responding.

True listening is a skill which needs to be learnt and practiced because the mind functions seven times more quickly than it is possible to speak. Therefore the mind needs to be slowed down and focused on what the person is saying, and not pay attention to other irrelevant thoughts or distractions.

One of my all time favourite books is ‘The Success Principles’ written by Jack Canfield.

One of the Principles he writes about in the book is how to use the power of listening as a way of building rapport and connecting with people. Jack created a series of four questions that he uses in personal and business situations. He asks the questions one after another. The first time he tried it was with his sister Kim. He asked the first question and listened to her response. When she had finished he asked the next question, and continued in this manner through all the questions.

Afterwards Kim smiled said to him “That’s the best conversation” I think we’ve ever had. I feel so clear and focused. I know exactly what I need to go and do now. Thank you. He was amazed as he hadn’t said a word except to ask the four questions, and had resisted the inclination to jump in with his own responses. He has found this works everytime and uses the questions frequently.

I have used this strategy, but by using my own questions and have been amazed at the results. Not only have the questions given me a greater understanding of the person, but through the fact of actively listening to people without commenting or putting my 2 cents worth in they have experienced encouragement and a sense of connectedness. I now make sure that I ask questions and listen more than I speak.

I want you to take a moment now to think of a question that you could use to practice actively listening, and resist the impulse to speak. When you have the opportunity, use your question or questions and experience the power of building rapport with others through the power of listening.

written by Barbara White
The founder of Beyond Better Development has a passion to inspire and equip others to experience more success in their life. She is a speaker and trainer in personal development and communication skills in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

For downhill skiers, “powder snow” provides the ultimate skiing experience. For most skiers however, good powder skiing is a short-lived and infrequent event. Ski areas in some geographic areas enjoy fairly frequent “powder days” but in most areas, powder days are rare and the dryness and depth of snow is often marginal.

In most ski areas too, when powder snow does occur, it is only a matter of hours before it is completely “tracked out”, lumped up and beaten down. Only those few early birds that ride the first chairs in the morning get the ultimate run of the day, in deep, consistent, smooth, untracked snow.

For years, diehard powder snow enthusiasts have headed for the backcountry to “ski the powder” among remote alpine peaks, far from crowded ski areas. Many enjoy the peace and quiet of ski touring and move and ski at a pace governed by their own physical fitness.

Others who may be less ambitious or have less time, but who have ample disposable funds, have headed for the backcountry in helicopters. For about $1000 per day or more, heli-operators offer small groups of proficient skiers 5 to 7 days of guided skiing on huge pristine slopes, high in the mountains. Guests stay in comfortable lodges and spend their days being shuttled back and forth with their guides, with each run on a fresh untracked slope. Heli skiing has its problems. There are “down days” when storms make flying impossible and there is always the inherent risk of all backcountry skiing: avalanche.

Avalanche risk depends on many factors. All reputable backcountry operators provide highly qualified guides who choose areas for skiing and a safe route down the hill. On days of poor weather or unstable snow, guides may avoid alpine areas and restrict their groups to “skiing the trees”. Tree skiing is a fixture of all mechanized backcountry skiing and is preferred by some skiers to the more open “alpine” skiing.

In recent years, a new type of mechanized backcountry ski operator has emerged. Snowcat skiing operators use snowcats to transport skiers and snowboarders into backcountry regions. Snowcats are fitted with a large cab that seats clients in a warm, comfortable environment. A snowcat typically carries a group of 12 clients, two guides and a driver.

Of course, snowcats are much slower than helicopters. They are also much less expensive and guests can expect to pay between $500 and $600 a day, including transportation, lodging, meals, and guiding. As slow as snowcats may be, most clients will wear themselves out every day and get just as much skiing as their group can handle.

The great advantage of cat skiing is that “down” days almost never occur. Clients ski every day and bad weather can often mean extra-good snow. Cat skiing is more relaxed and “laid back” than heli skiing as there is no need to share equipment between groups or to maximize equipment usage. Cat skiing is very “client-friendly”. Each group has a dedicated machine and it moves at the group’s pleasure. Weaker skiers can feel at ease and not “pushed”.

Snowcats provide a relatively quiet, comfortable, warm and relaxed environment in which the trip back up the hill can be almost as much fun as the run down. Guests can “unbutton”, dry out, warm up, converse and browse on sandwiches, cookies, cake and drinks. If a guest gets tired, it’s easy to “sit out” a run and ride down to the next pickup with the cat driver.

Snowcat skiing is more restricted geographically than heli skiing. However, that has a drawback. Since they can operate in a larger area, heli-operators may sometimes be less familiar with changing snow conditions and risk factors than snowcat operators who work in a more restricted area.

Most snowcat operators have ample terrain to consistently provide good snow, even in periods of drought, and to ensure that clients exhaust themselves every day. Chatter Creek Mountain Lodges Ltd. operates in a 95 sq. km area and ski between the elevations of 5400ft and 9500 ft. Monashee Powder Adventures advertises an area of 66 sq. km and operate between the elevations of 7800 ft and 3,000 ft.. Baldface Lodge uses over 140 sq km. Guests need not worry about running out of terrain!

Snowcat skiing provides a wonderful holiday for intermediate and advanced skiers alike. Individuals, family groups, groups of friends, business associates can have a “trip to remember”. Operators with remote lodges offer a real “backcountry” experience, usually with good food and very comfortable accommodations.

written by Lockie Brown
Cat skier for about 10 years, he is taking groups of 12 and 24 friends to different cat ski venues in British Columbia. For more information, please refer to the Chatter Creek Web site at http://backcountrywintervacations.com/

Deep within each of us lie two things that control our lives and the way we live them. Our behavior and attitudes and lifestyle are governed by them. If we want to change our life then we need to look at these foundational things that have governed us all our lives. These foundations are our beliefs and our values. They color our lives even though we may not be aware of them. They are deeply affected by our upbringing and the things that have happened to us and the conclusions we have drawn from those things.

Let us look at our beliefs in particular. Our beliefs have a positive or negative influence on us. If we have experienced bad parenting we will have some basic beliefs based on the experience with the first two important relationships in our life. Perhaps your father was abusive, or neglectful. That will have set up a unconscious foundational belief based on that experience that will flow into your perception of all other men. You will compare men to the first role model of a man that you had. You may even have a deep belief that all men are like your father and a response of distrust of men, or an expectation that all men will neglect you.

Here are 3 quotes that demonstrate the power of our beliefs.

“If you believe you can, you probably can. If you believe you won’t, you most assuredly won’t. Belief is the ignition switch that gets you off the launching pad.” — Denis Waitley

“The most important thing about a man is what he believes in the depth of his being. This is the thing that makes him what he is, the thing that organizes him and feeds him; the thing that keeps him going in the face of untoward circumstances; the thing that gives him resistance and drive.” — Hugh Stevenson Tigner

“If you think a certain thought long enough and hard enough, it becomes a fixed belief and you will find yourself behaving on the outside in a manner consistent with it.” — Brian Tracy

Our beliefs will have a positive or negative effect on our life. We do however have a choice. We can choose what we believe, we can change what we believe.

First however we need to uncover what we believe. Take notice of fears and reactions as you live your life. They come from beliefs that you have, but you need to dig down to find the root. If, for example, the root is your experience of a bad father -face that experience and uncover the lie that you have believed from that experience. Your father was only one man; he made choices that were not good for you. Every other man is not your father, every other man does have to not make those choices and behave that way. You can choose to recognize the reality of your experience with your father and his actions, yet at the same time choose to believe that he does not typify what all men are like. He was a bad role model to you of what a man is like, but there are many men who are good fathers and treat their children the way you yourself would have liked your father to treat you.

That belief has been fed by your perceptions and expectations of men colored by your experience over many years and is deeply rooted in you. It will not change over night, but you can make a start to re-evaluate that belief and choose to believe differently. As you choose to change a belief, you will start to see changes in your behavior and responses. Start affirming the new belief that you have chosen, and look for evidence around you that confirms its truth.

written by Barbara White
The founder of Beyond Better Development has a passion to inspire and equip others to experience more success in their life. She is a speaker and trainer in personal development and communication skills in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.

If you have a website or would like a website you’re going to need a website hosting company. The good news is there are tons out there to choose from. The bad news is you’re going to have to learn a little bit about web hosting to be able to choose the right one for you. That is what we are going to discuss in this article, to help you choose the right web host for your company/personal website.

What is a web host company?

A web host provides the service that allows you to store the information that makes up your website. A web host stores your website’s information on a web server. Each time you type a web address into your browser , the browser asks for your website’s information from the web hosts server and then the browser displays it on your screen. Basically, if you don’t have a web host or your own server, you don’t have a website. Some ISP’s (Internet Service provider) provides web space but, this is not the type of web hosing we will be discussing.

Types of hosting plans

The next thing you are going to need to know is that there are different types of hosting that is available to you. There is virtual / shared hosting. What that means is that the web host company hosts more than one account on that server. There is also dedicated which basically means you would get your own server. Another typeA^ (which is not as common as the first two) is VPS (Virtual Private Server) and what it is, is ” virtual ” servers on the actual server and the user can add different modules within their server. The user can also allocate how much CPU usage or memory easy module gets. Most users will generally only need shared hosting unless you have a large website with over 5,000 visitors per day and large scripts. If that is the case you will need dedicated hosting.

Types of Operating Systems

There are three different types of operating systems for servers. There is Linux, Unix and of course Windows. Just because your computer is a PC doesn’t mean you have to opt for Windows web hosting. The operating system you use on your desktop has little to do with your choice of web hosts. As long as you understand how to use your FTP or web publishing software, your can use either operating system.

When it comes to Web hosting, Linux has for some time, been widely considered the best Operating System for Web servers. It’s typically found to be the most reliable, stable and efficient system. If your website, like most web sites, is what might be termed “brochure-ware” then Linux servers are ideal. A web site housed on a Linux operating system will have very high up-time and very low downtime.

If you intend to create your website using ASP, FrontPage, the .NET environment, Windows Streaming Media, Access, MSSQL, or any of the other Microsoft proprietary technologies then you probably need to use a Windows host. All other languages are able to be hosted on either platforms. Basically, unless you are specifically using features that are unique to one platform or another your time will be much better spent looking for a really good quality host than a really good quality server.

Email

If you have your own site, you would probably want to have email addresses at your own domain, like you@yourdomain.com. Does the host provide this with the package? Does it allow you to have a catch-all email account that allows any_e-mail@yourdomain.com to wind up being routed to you? Will you have the option to send auto responders for your e-mail accounts? Can you retrieve your mail with your email software? Can it be automatically forwarded to your current email address? Can you check your e-mail on the web?A^ These are questions that you should ask when searching for the right web host.

Down time

This is extremely important. A website that is frequently down will lose a lot of visitors. If someone finds your site on the search engine, and clicks on it to find it us unavailable, they will simply shop somewhere else. Slow access is also very frustrating for visitors. How do you know if a web host is reliable or fast? The best way to find information about a web hosting company is to search the net. Once you have decided on a web host to check out, typetheir name in Google. As you look through the results, you will see that some of the pages that come up are actually reviews of that company. Now look at the review websites to see what everyone else is saying about potential web hosting companies. Remember to take reviews with a grain of salt. As reviews can usually be posted by anyone anonymously and you can’t please everyone all the time!

Traffic or Data transfer

Data transfer is the amount of bytes transferred from your website to visitors when they browse your website. Always look for details on how much traffic the package allows. To give you a rough idea of the typical traffic requirements of a website, most new websites are likely use less than 3GB of bandwidth per month. Your traffic requirements will grow over time, as your website becomes larger and more popular. You will need to check to see if you will automatically be charged for going over your bandwidth limit or are you expected to pre-pay for it. Personally, with my web host I have 30 GBs of data transfer and I host 7 domains and one sub-domains. I currently only use 750 MBs /month. My websites have a total of 30, 000 visits per month and have about 2 million hits/month.

Price

Unfortunately price is always a factor. You should realize that you often get what you pay for, although it’s not necessarily true that the most expensive hosts are the best. Your best bet would be to go with a web host that is neither cheap nor expensive but, in between. Technical support Does the web host company’s technical support function 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year around? Make sure you get a response for the web host company quickly not just the next day. Another thing to check is that the phone number they provide actually is answered by a real person. This I know from personal experience. Make sure it is not an automated system that eventually ends with an answer machine that asks you to leave your name and number. Besides speed of responses, check to see if they are technically competent. You wouldn’t want to sign up for a host that is run by kids. Would you?

written by Alicia Harper
Professional website designer and internet marketing expert. She lives and works in Vancouver BC. Her company, Be Seen Web Design specializes in creating search engine friendly websites

A number of years ago Educational Testing Services (ETS), the people responsible for the TOEFL test, brought the test into the computer age by transitioning it from a paper-based test to a computer-based test. This allowed them to stop the practice of previewing questions and answers while listening to material, and it allowed them to add some unique testing questions, such as matching up items and placing a sentence within a paragraph. It also allowed them to individualize the listening and grammar sections of the test by catering items to the ability of the student. A student’s score was no longer dependent on the number of correct answer he or she gave but the degree of difficulty of questions he or she was able to answer correctly.

However, the computer-based TOEFL was an assembly of separate skills - reading, listening, grammar, and writing. In this format it was possible for students to learn tricks to increase their performance in each of these areas, a practice that did not reflect their true ability to handle the language. Students could demonstrate their reading skills separate from their listening skills and writing skills, but true language is seldom so fragmented. This weakness in the test was made worse by the absence of a speaking component. If a student wanted to demonstrate a competency in this skill, he or she had to take a separate speaking test such as the TSE, the Test of Spoken English, also produced by ETS. It became obvious that a change in the TOEFL was necessary to reflect the true nature of English to see whether a testtaker could handle the language in more true-to-life situations. Enter the Internet, the ultimate medium.

With the Next Generation iBT TOEFL, students go on-line and take the test directly from ETS at test centers throughout the world. There are roughly forty-five sessions a year, all on Fridays or Saturdays. Details can be found on the ETS web site at http://www.ets.org. The iBT, Internet-based test, is an integration of all four language skills - reading, listening, speaking, and writing - in which grammar plays a more minor but still a necessary component. In other words, there is no longer a grammar section on the TOEFL, but grammar is taken into consideration in the evaluation of both the speaking and writing sections. Another change is in the scoring. Whereas the computer-based TOEFL was scored out of 300, the iBT is scored out of 120, 30 in each of the four skills. To succeed in this new format, students need to be good note takers as they will be required to read passages and then listen to lectures or long conversations in order to respond either orally or by writing to questions, usually about how the written material relates to the listening material. The language skills of gist, details, inferences, vocabulary, reference, and insertion are still tested along with the new skills of paraphrasing and determining overall organization and purpose. The addition of these new skills, along with the integration of the sections, makes the Next Generation iBT TOEFL a more valid evaluation of a student’s real-life language skills and his or her ability to succeed in a real academic setting.

Since preparing for the Next Generation iBT TOEFL is challenging, a student is well advised to take a class or join a study group to develop the necessary skills to pass. Also, it is essential that a student get a good preparation textbook, but there are only a few that have kept up with the changes in the test, such as Longman Preparation Course for the TOEFL Test , Next Generation iBT and Delta’s Key to the Next Generation TOEFL Test. Many private and community colleges offer one- or two-term preparation courses, but there may be prerequisites a student must satisfy before being admitted to these classes. There is an alternative, however, for people who want to bypass prerequisites or are unable to invest three to six months preparation time. The TEST PREP Team offers a 45-hour intensive TOEFL Preparation Course over ten Saturdays. This course is available only in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia, Canada. Information on this course, as well as a number of learning tools to help students prepare by themselves, is available at http://study4toefl.com, but hurry - the next class starts on October 8th.

written by Ambien Malecot
TOEFL specialist, who has been helping students get high TOEFL scores since 1997. Ambien is certified as a specialist in the Next Generation iBT TOEFL, more info at his website Study4toefl.com

Investment is a term that refers to the money used to buy capital assets, including real capital assets such as land, houses and buildings. Real capital assets are a special type of consumer goods, in that they are not consumed instantaneously but, rather, they are used for accumulating future wealth. In fact, since this type of assets are non-productive by nature, their sole purpose to exist serves the accumulation of capital.

Clearly, without investment the accumulation of capital would be at a standstill, since one’s personal capital stock would gradually wear out. This is, in fact, one of the axioms of economics, since for economic growth to occur, new investment must be sufficient not only to add to the capital stock, but also to replace what amount of capital stock is wearing out. Hence, for investment to generate growth, the rate of capital accumulation must be always over and above the current rate of inflation, to make economic sense. Furthermore, the more money that is saved, i.e. that is not spent on consumption, the more money is available for investment.

Investment operates as a function and as a direct and proximate cause and effect - of the equilibrium between income and interest rates. An increase in income will encourage higher investment, whereas a higher interest rate will discourage investment as it becomes costlier to borrow money. Even if an investor does not need financing and chooses to use his own funds, the interest rate represents one measure of the opportunity cost associated with the choice of investing those funds rather than putting them out to different uses.

Cost of opportunity is best described as the benefit or benefits forgone by investing capital stock in a certain way as opposed to the best alternative way. Given the innate scarcity of resources of investors, that is the limitation of capital available to them, investors will invariably try to maximize growth by, among other things, reducing costs. Suppose that an investor is willing to increase his investment so as to increase the accumulation of wealth. The investor will have to divert resources away from other purposes, to acquire a real or other capital asset. Therefore, the opportunity cost that the investor must bear is the loss of the gain(s) he would have received by investing the money elsewhere in the most valuable alternative.

Opportunity cost need not be assessed in monetary terms but, rather, it can be assessed in terms of anything that is of value to the person or persons doing the investing. The consideration of opportunity cost is one of the key differences between the concepts of economic cost and those of accounting cost. Assessing opportunity cost over a scale of values to investors is fundamental to assessing the true cost of any course of action. In the case where there is no explicit accounting or monetary cost (price) attached to a course of action, ignoring opportunity cost may produce the illusion that the benefits derived out of a certain course of action cost nothing at all. The unseen opportunity cost then becomes the hidden cost of that course of action

It is important to note that opportunity cost is not the sum of all available alternatives, but it is instead the benefit that could have been derived by opting only for the best alternative. Thus, the opportunity cost to a real estate investor might be the benefit he forwent by not investing his capital into stocks, or in a different property, or not at all (as in the case of an investment resulting in a capital loss, for example). Although opportunity cost needs not to be expressed in monetary terms, the following practical example perhaps best describes the cost of opportunity to be borne by a typical real estate market participant.

Let’s assume that an investor is given the choice to buy one of three rental properties offered for sale. Property A costs $600,000 and yields a net annual rate of return of 7 percent. Property B is priced at $700,000 and has a net yield of 7.5 percent per annum. Property C is offered at $650,000 with a yearly capitalization rate of 7.75 percent. Our investor has $200,000 of his own for the down-payment, and qualifies to purchase any one of the foregoing three properties. Whatever he buys, his best option is to finance the deal with a 3-year term closed mortgage. The $200,000 are invested in a term deposit bearing interest paid semi-annually at the rate of 4 percent per year and accruing to the benefit of the investor . The investor decides to put in an offer to purchase Property C.

The factor in the determination of the hidden cost of opportunity in the foregoing example is that had the investor opted not to purchase any rental property and, in fact, had he decided not to do anything at all with his money, the term deposit would have yielded 12 percent in three years’ the length of the term of the mortgage he is about to take on. By electing to go ahead with the purchase, he is now going to invest his $200,000 at the new net rate of return of 7.75 percent per year, equivalent to 23.25 percent in three years. Since $200,000 amounts to 30.77 percent approximately of the purchase price, the net yield attributable to the down-payment is going to be (23.25 x 30.77%) = 7.15 percent, so that his cost of opportunity spread out over three years will be 12 - 7.15 = 4.85 percent.

Hence, our clever investor will target a purchase price of a maximum of $618,475, say $618,000, to recover $31,525 over and above the standard negotiating discount, which is equivalent to the 4.85 percent opportunity cost on the purchase price of the acquisition (in this example assumed to be $650,000 - the asking price, for the sake of simplicity) spread out over three years.

written by Luigi Frascati
Real Estate Agent based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He He holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics and maintains a weblog entitled to the Real Estate Chronicle at realestatechronicle.blogspot.com

As the Yankee Dollar continues to slide and the Loonie breaks the 90-US cent barrier for the first time since 1977, all of a sudden everything that is American from MacDonald’s hamburgers to real estate looks darn cheap to Canadian eyes.

The $US/$CAD Noon Rate hit 0.9032 on May 5, 2006 as reported by the Bank of Canada, and the Loonie is predicted to equal the Greenback by close to year’s end. There are essentially four major key reasons for the recent surge of the Canadian Dollar vis-a-vis its American counterpart:

• A substantial increase in demand for Canadian commodities, most notably oil and precious metals, from the United States.
• A rising participation of American interests in the exploration and development of Canada’s natural reserves, and a subsequent increased demand for shares in Canadian companies.
• A steady increase in Canadian interest rates, which are moving at a faster pace than the corresponding increases of the Feds, and which in turn attract foreign investors.
• Financial leverage, which is higher in Canada than in the U.S.

This last point deserves a closer scrutiny, as it is directly related to real estate, my field of expertise and practice. Financial leverage takes the form of borrowing money and reinvesting it in hopes to earn a greater rate of return than the cost of interest. Leverage allows greater potential return for the investor than otherwise would have been available. Because real capital appreciation has been constantly more remarked in Canada than in the United States these past few years, it turns out that leverage is stronger in Canada than in the U.S., meaning the spread between real capital appreciation and cost of borrowing is higher in Canada. And this notwithstanding the fact that mortgage rates in Canada are typically nominally higher than in the States and that, in fact, wages in Canada are typically nominally lower.

The last time the Canadian Dollar was at par with the American Dollar was in 1976, just before the election in Quebec of the separatist government of Rene Levesque (1922 - 1987). Following that election, the Loonie began a long downfall, greased by weakening commodity prices and rising government deficits and domestic debt. The slide culminated in the record low of 62 cents U.S. for one Canadian Dollar in January, 2002.

The current exchange rate, therefore, represents a huge increase with drastic consequences on both sides of the border. For instance, a house priced at U.S.$350,000 would convert in CAD$564,500 approximately using the U.S.$1.00=CAD$0.62 exchange rate of 2002. The same U.S.$350,000 residential property costs a mere CAD $387,500 using today’s U.S.$1.00=CAD$0.9032. That’s a difference of CAD$177,000 in a little more than four years or, to put it differently, a price depreciation of approximately 31.35 percent in four years, or 7.838 percent p.a.

It sure beats the yield of treasury bonds, both in Canada and in the United States!

It is even easier to see how appealing has American real estate become for Canadian investors if we look, for instance, at the average rental property that would sell across the border from where I am. In 2002, rental properties would sell for an average US$80,000 in Washington State, or CAD$129,000 using the 0.62 cents conversion rate of that time. Now the same rentals sell for an average US$115,000, or CAD$127,300 approximately using the 0.9032 rate. Even though they have appreciated in value and are, therefore, more expensive for Americans, they have become actually less expensive for Canadians.

Interestingly enough, the Loonie has not been rising rapidly against other key currencies like the Euro and the Yen. A fact, this, which underscores that Canada and the United States have become mutual major trading partners, setting aside disputes and differences of opinion in the matter of salmon fishing and lumber subsidies of years past. In fact, the Canadian Board of Trade reports that over 70 percent of the manufactured goods produced in Canada are destined for the American markets, as opposed to only 25 percent in 1980. And Uncle Sam has increased his stake in Canadian holdings by 55 percent in the same period, with the latest acquisition being the purchase in December, 2005 of the entire stock of Terasen Gas, the exclusive distributor of natural gas in British Columbia and Alberta, by Kinder-Morgan LP of Austin, Texas.

There are, to be sure, some economic downsides that attach to an equal conversion rate, mostly because the two economies are significantly different. Not only is the American GDP (US$13.049 trillion) approximately 15 times larger than the Canadian (US$880 billion) - the very economic philosophies of the two countries are diametrically opposed. America’s capitalism is based on consumption and gives priority to consumerism, that is spending as opposed to saving. Canada, on the other hand, gives precedent to saving, so that Canadians are cash and equity richer, even in the instances when they actually make less money. Which, at the end of the day, makes Canada a much more stable environment.

This goes a long way to explain why the American economy is far more susceptible to interest rates variations: with a domestic debt load nearly double, the economic ripples caused by shifts in cost of lending travel twice as far in the U.S. than in Canada. A fact, this, that is also reflected in the weakness of the Greenback vis-a`-vis the Loonie.

So therefore, Canadian companies stand to lose competitiveness in Trade from a situation of exchange equality or near equality, since manufacturers North of the 49th parallel have to reduce productions costs and, at the same time, apply leverage on the economy of scales to increase productivity, in order to remain competitive in American markets. But, on the other hand, an increased international demand for the Greenback caused by a surge in demand for American real estate products by Canadian investors may cause a corresponding surge in domestic interest rates, which in Finance may cause a further imbalance in the US ‘debt service ratio’ - the ratio of the mortgage payments to disposable income, already at a whopping 47 percent in the United States.

written by Luigi Frascati
Real Estate Agent based in Vancouver, British Columbia. He He holds a Bachelor Degree in Economics and maintains a weblog entitled to the Real Estate Chronicle at realestatechronicle.blogspot.com

To start talking about this beautiful province, British Columbia (also known as BC) dates back to July, 20 1871, where it was the sixth province to join the Confederation. The people of the province settled in different cities. Vancouver, Vancouver island, Surrey, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Richmond, Delta, and New Westminster in the Lower Mainland, Abbotsford and Langley in the Fraser Valley, Nanaimo on Vancouver Island, and Kelowna and Kamloops in the Interior.

Quick Info
-The official language is English
-Capital city of British Columbia is Victoria
-Vancouver is the largest city
-The population is 4,220,000
-The most populated western province
-Host of the 2010 winter Olympics
-Borders the Pacific Ocean to the west
-Half of all British Columbians live in the Greater Vancouver Regional District, which includes Vancouver, New Westminster, Surrey, West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Langley, Port Coquitlam, Maple Ridge, Delta, White Rock, Richmond, Port Moody, Anmore, Belcarra, Lions Bay and Bowen Island.

There is so much to do and see that it is hard to sum up in a few words. You can go rafting down Fraser River, tour Victoria City, golf and water sports in the Okanagan during the summer time and ski and snowboard in the winter time. This is one province that I would not want to miss out on. The natural beauty of the mountains to your east and to the west is the Pacific Ocean where you can take countless cruises up the side of the province to take in the breath taken beauty.

written by Ashton Billesberger
The owner and operator of British Columbia Canada Guide - http://www.british-columbia-canada-guide.com, which is a site on the internet for all British Columbia related information.

If you are a person who likes to keep up with current trends you will know that it is important to have your own website. After all anybody who is Anybody Important has a website of their very own. However one of the dangers of having a website is that someone browsing on the internet might discover it one day and what is worse, actually pause to visit your site and read its contents! They might even be interested stopping for a while to read what you wrote in it, or want to buy the widget you thought might be good to sell as you have more than one of them. If you would like to reduce the possibilities of that happening be sure to follow these ten tips, and you can be sure that very few people will even know your website exists.

1. Choose an obscure domain name. Make sure the name you select has no relevance to the content of your site, to you or your business. Whatever you do make sure the domain name contains NO keywords that would indicate what your site is about and attract attention when someone searches for a site with your content or product.

2. Do not submit your website URL to any search engines, especially the big ones like Google, Yahoo, or MSN. Do not participate in any offers for your website to be submitted to search engines for free.

3. Never add fresh content or pages to your website. In fact it is a better idea to identically duplicate your content on every page.

4. Avoid reading anything about how to promote traffic to your website. One of the strategies might sink into your sub conscious, and you might find yourself promoting your site by accident.

5. Set up your website and then just leave it. Try not even to visit it yourself if possible in case your computer has tracking cookies. Any visits to your site could attract attention.

6. Make sure that you have a generic e-mail address that you use all the time. An example of this might be a hotmail or yahoo address. Then when you write emails no one can track down your website through your email address. An address like me @mywebsite.com would just give the game away.

7. Even if you are passionate about writing, do not even consider writing an article and submitting it to a free article submission site such as Articles Beyond Better.Com. The problem with submitting an article is that you have to put something in the resource box which tells other people who you are and how to visit your website and buy your widget. It’s amazing how just one article can be reprinted all over the internet, and read by people all over the world. That kind of exposure is very harmful to secret websites which do not want to receive any visits.

8. Do not put a blog or bulletin board on your website. This just encourages all sorts of visitors who want to read what you write and ask you questions. Some people often make return visits, or even become regular visitors to blogs, forums and bulletin boards. After all it would be terrible if someone actually ‘bookmarked’ your site and came back because they liked it!

9. Do not ever mention or put your website address on your business card, any promotional business material, or as a signature file on every e mail you send.

10. Choose an unreliable hosting service that has a bad reputation. In this way the server will not be up all the time, and people will not be able to access your site even if they wanted to.

By following these guidelines you can be pretty sure that no one will notice that your website exists. I hope you have plenty of money though, and are not wanting to make any income from your website. The problem with a website that is un noticed is that you still have to pay your hosting server every month for the privilege of your website taking up space on their server even if no one comes to visit it.

written by Barbara White
The founder of Beyond Better Development has a passion to inspire and equip others to experience more success in their life. She is a speaker and trainer in personal development and communication skills in Vancouver, B.C. Canada.