Below is a very interesting picture.  The picture is of sculpture created by Chinese artist Chen Wenling which critiques the global financial crisis. The sculpture depicts a man with horns (or the devil) pinned to the wall by the Wall Street bull who propels himself/herself by a boost of “personal air” .  The man/devil said to be pinned to the wall is  jailed ponzi scheme financier Bernard Madoff.  The sculpture is on display at a Beijing gallery.

Related Articles:

• The Madoff Affair by Frontline
• Bernie Madoff January 2008 American Express Bill

From time to time over the years I would forget to pay a bill on-time and would incur a late fee.   One of the reasons is that the bills all had different due dates.  I hate paying late fees so I’d always call the company charging the late fee and request for them to remove it.  Most of the time they will remove the late fee, but this takes unnecessary time to do.  

Now I don’t have to worry about this because thanks to technology all my recurring bills are paid automatically.  I’ve put my bill payments on auto pilot.  No more remembering to pay the bills, writing checks, buying stamps and mailing the checks.

I use 3 credit cards which are paid automatically.  Of course before the bills are paid I’ll review it to make sure there are no fraudulent charges.  My mortgage, satellite, phone / Internet, cell phone, gym membership, water, electric, garbage and home alarm are all paid automatically.

Most companies will offer auto-payment which will bill your credit card or deduct the money from your checking account.  If a company doesn’t offer auto payment I’ll setup auto payment via my bank account.  For instance, my water company doesn’t offer auto-pay, so I set up an auto-payment in my bank account to send a payment every month of $50.  My water bill fluctuates below $50 so I carry a credit in my account.

Having my bills on auto pilot saves time (no writing checks, mailing checks or calling for a late fee to be removed), money (no late fees, buying stamps, envelops, and driving to the post office) and having to remember to pay bills.

Related Article: Five Things I Don’t Like Paying For

Below is a very interesting video by The Economist of how social media, the Internet, cell phones and technology has changed our lives.

Mixcloud is an online radio site that wants to be the “YouTube of Radio”.  The site helps connect radio content to listeners via radio shows, Podcasts and DJ mixes. And best of all, it’s free!  (See video below).

Mixcloud refers to the radio content as Cloudcasts; audio shows that are stored in the “cloud” and available to be streamed on-demand.

Like YouTube, anyone can create an account and upload their content. The community then decides what they like and what gets to the top of the popularity charts.  Mixcloud accepts all types of radio content from talk to music shows that have 5 tracks or more in MP3 format.

Video: What is Mixcloud.com?

For more information visit Mixcloud.com.

Who do you think is better at money management, men or women?  According to Financial Finesse, a financial education company, in the first quarter of this year more than twice as many women as men called to a financial helpline regarding strategies to reduce debt.

Financial Finesse conducted a survey of over 3,000 responses to an online financial planning questionnaire and found the following:

From the data is does appear that men are better at money management.  However, from the survey maybe women are more open to reporting their flaws as opposed to men who hide their flaws.

What do you think?  Please leave your responses below.

According to the Wall Street Journal, the government is using Facebook and MySpace to find tax deadbeats.  State revenue agents have been mining through information posted on social-networking Web sites to find relocation announcements, professional profiles and financial boasts.

On MySpace a long-sought tax evader was found and forced to pay back taxes after he posted that he would be returning to work in his hometown as a real-estate broker; for which he gave the name of his employer.  The state of Minnesota ended up collecting several thousand dollars, the full amount due.  In Nebraska, agents collected $2,000 from a deejay after he advertised on his MySpace page that he would be working at a big public party.

Read full article.

One thing I love about Google is that they offer so many free tools that makes your life easier, allows you to conduct business and even make you money.  

I currently use Google Documents, Google Reader (tracks RSS feeds from multiple websites), Google Base (list products for sale), Google Checkout (process orders, like PayPal), Google Webmaster (optimize website), Google Analytics (track visitors to website), Google Calendar, Google Adsense (make money from advertising), Google Sketch (create 3-D drawings), Google Mail, Google Alert (track new topics on the Web), Google Chrome (Web browser), Google Search (search engine for website) and Google Maps all for free.  Google however offers many more free applications that I’ve never used.

One interesting new Google application just released is the Google Checkout Store Gadget that makes it easy and quickly to create an online store using Google Docs spreadsheet.  The application allows you to easily add a store to an existing website or Blog.  This is great if you are novice and want to sell items on the Internet.  Google Checkout handles the credit card transactions for you (like PayPal).  With the Google Checkout Store Gadget no complicated coding or technical skills are required.  You can get your online store up and running in under 5 minutes, according to Google.

For more information visit StoreGadget.GoogleLabs.com.

To see all Google Applications visit http://www.google.com/intl/en/options/