20 Plus Tools To Sell Your House

Thinking of putting your Katonah house on the market in this current real estate market :(

Here is a listing of Real Estate online tools that might be of help.

Katonah Walk Score Widget

Update July 14, 2008: The commenter (Petr) to this post cites a driving score service for those who don't live
within walking distance of the business area of Katonah.

"I ve found one more service called drive score at
http://drivescore.fizber.com/ -

---

Walk Score is a widget that shows you a map of what's nearby and calculates a Walk Score for any property.

Selling your house or thinking of buying in Katonah?

See how your Katonah Walk Score stacks up. Enter your address and Katonah NY below.

Baby Boomer Animation

For all baby boomers plus - Enjoy!

Enjoy Spring's Locally Grown Freshest Foods

Locally grown food is the new exotic. Consumers are realizing the benefits of eating food that is grown locally:

• Higher nutrient levels from locally picked produce
  
• Better Flavor
  
• Think green less fossil fuel for transport
  
• Tastes better because it is really fresh
  
• You are getting food that is truly in season
  

Here is the site that can get you up to speed on locally grown food.

Update 4/30/08

Here is a link to your local online Farmers Market with personal delivery.

Sprout Builder Now Available to Everyone

On February 3 I posted to this blog a prototype made using the Sprout Builder widget tool available from sproutbuilder.com.




Although still in beta, last week Sprout Builder became available to everyone. What is also great is that the tool as I post this is FREE!

The applications for this tool are endless. For creative folks (writers,musicians, artist, photographers, etc) who want a way to get their work distributed on the net becomes in a word EASY to create,publish and manage.

To get some idea of how the tool is being used, here is a link to the sprout gallery.

If you create a sprout let us know by posting to the comment section of this post.

Hopefully this could turn into a community project where sprouts created locally can be posted on the Katonahny.com website as a local sprout gallery to be shared with other visitors to the site.

Here is one idea: Sprout Builder can be used for donation purposes by local organizations:

1. Community Services
   
2. Sports teams - Little League etc.
   
3. Fire Dept
   
4. Churches
   
5. Politicians
   
6. etc.
   

Here is an example of how this was done using the ChipIn services available at Sproutbuilder.com

Spring Preview - Riding the Carousel @ Katonah Carnival

With Spring around the corner here is a preview of the joys of outdoors to come.



Video by: atmasphere

A Visual Drive On Scenic Route 22 - Bedford to Katonah

Here is a video to brighten up the Winter blahs!

A visual drive on scenic Route 22 from Bedford to Katonah.

This video (which as of today has been viewed 4,000 Plus times on Youtube) was done by
atmasphere Katonah, NY - http://www.atmasphere.net/wp

Have Cabin Fever Need To Get Away?

Have cabin fever need to get away? TripTouch, is a service meant to be an aid for travelers.

TripTouch claims to cover more than 4,000 destinations worldwide in its database - through basic blogging software.

Katonah is included as a destination and gives a good overview of the village.

Furthermore, the website allows users to invite friends to follow and/or share in a journey, as well as find fellow TripTouch fans to interact with, and even meet in various places.

TripTouch is something to try if you happen to be in the market to go places - worldwide or a couple of hours away.

Democratic Primary Candidates Sproutbuilder Update

Sproutbuilder.com is a website that enables anyone to build great content online. I have been playing around with it this weekend (as a beta tester) and I think it is very easy to use.

The end product you create is called a sprout that you can share with anyone on the net.

Update: on 2/8/08 I updated the sprout widget to include a news feed and daily gallup poll updates:

2/8/08 According to Time, McCain and Clinton would be in a dead heat 46% to 46% but Obama would overwhelmingly beat McCain 48% to 41%, suggesting that Obama is more electable than Clinton.

But according to the Democratic national polls, Clinton is the most likely nominee.





Here is the link to find out more about sproutbuilder what I think is a fantastic online tool.


Comments welcome.

The Worst Market Crisis in 60 Years By George Soros

Katonah resident George Soros has just published in the The Financial Times a
very insightful piece on why we are where we are with regard to the current financial crisis that seems to be going into deeper free fall.

The equity market sucks.
Where does one put their money to invest? Bonds don't seem a safe haven in the current financial environment.

IS IT SAFE ANYWHERE TO INVESTMENT (Soros seems to have an answer - outside of the U.S)




Here is the piece in the FT.

The worst market crisis in 60 years

By George Soros

Published: January 22 2008 19:57 | Last updated: January 22 2008 19:57

The current financial crisis was precipitated by a bubble in the US housing market. In some ways it resembles other crises that have occurred since the end of the second world war at intervals ranging from four to 10 years.

However, there is a profound difference: the current crisis marks the end of an era of credit expansion based on the dollar as the international reserve currency. The periodic crises were part of a larger boom-bust process. The current crisis is the culmination of a super-boom that has lasted for more than 60 years.

Boom-bust processes usually revolve around credit and always involve a bias or misconception. This is usually a failure to recognise a reflexive, circular connection between the willingness to lend and the value of the collateral. Ease of credit generates demand that pushes up the value of property, which in turn increases the amount of credit available. A bubble starts when people buy houses in the expectation that they can refinance their mortgages at a profit. The recent US housing boom is a case in point. The 60-year super-boom is a more complicated case.

Every time the credit expansion ran into trouble the financial authorities intervened, injecting liquidity and finding other ways to stimulate the economy. That created a system of asymmetric incentives also known as moral hazard, which encouraged ever greater credit expansion. The system was so successful that people came to believe in what former US president Ronald Reagan called the magic of the marketplace and I call market fundamentalism. Fundamentalists believe that markets tend towards equilibrium and the common interest is best served by allowing participants to pursue their self-interest. It is an obvious misconception, because it was the intervention of the authorities that prevented financial markets from breaking down, not the markets themselves. Nevertheless, market fundamentalism emerged as the dominant ideology in the 1980s, when financial markets started to become globalised and the US started to run a current account deficit.

Globalisation allowed the US to suck up the savings of the rest of the world and consume more than it produced. The US current account deficit reached 6.2 per cent of gross national product in 2006. The financial markets encouraged consumers to borrow by introducing ever more sophisticated instruments and more generous terms. The authorities aided and abetted the process by intervening whenever the global financial system was at risk. Since 1980, regulations have been progressively relaxed until they have practically disappeared.

The super-boom got out of hand when the new products became so complicated that the authorities could no longer calculate the risks and started relying on the risk management methods of the banks themselves. Similarly, the rating agencies relied on the information provided by the originators of synthetic products. It was a shocking abdication of responsibility.

Everything that could go wrong did. What started with subprime mortgages spread to all collateralised debt obligations, endangered municipal and mortgage insurance and reinsurance companies and threatened to unravel the multi-trillion-dollar credit default swap market. Investment banks’ commitments to leveraged buyouts became liabilities. Market-neutral hedge funds turned out not to be market-neutral and had to be unwound. The asset-backed commercial paper market came to a standstill and the special investment vehicles set up by banks to get mortgages off their balance sheets could no longer get outside financing. The final blow came when interbank lending, which is at the heart of the financial system, was disrupted because banks had to husband their resources and could not trust their counterparties. The central banks had to inject an unprecedented amount of money and extend credit on an unprecedented range of securities to a broader range of institutions than ever before. That made the crisis more severe than any since the second world war.

Credit expansion must now be followed by a period of contraction, because some of the new credit instruments and practices are unsound and unsustainable. The ability of the financial authorities to stimulate the economy is constrained by the unwillingness of the rest of the world to accumulate additional dollar reserves. Until recently, investors were hoping that the US Federal Reserve would do whatever it takes to avoid a recession, because that is what it did on previous occasions. Now they will have to realise that the Fed may no longer be in a position to do so. With oil, food and other commodities firm, and the renminbi appreciating somewhat faster, the Fed also has to worry about inflation. If federal funds were lowered beyond a certain point, the dollar would come under renewed pressure and long-term bonds would actually go up in yield. Where that point is, is impossible to determine. When it is reached, the ability of the Fed to stimulate the economy comes to an end.

Although a recession in the developed world is now more or less inevitable, China, India and some of the oil-producing countries are in a very strong countertrend. So, the current financial crisis is less likely to cause a global recession than a radical realignment of the global economy, with a relative decline of the US and the rise of China and other countries in the developing world.

The danger is that the resulting political tensions, including US protectionism, may disrupt the global economy and plunge the world into recession or worse.

The writer is chairman of Soros Fund Management

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008

Here is the link to the FT piece.

Comments welcome.

Think Green Locally For 2008

Here is an excellent New Years resolution for 2008.With all the concern about global warming here is something you can do on a local level to be part of the solution. Earth911.org is an excellent resource for ideas and how to's in helping you and your family on a local level do your part in keeping the earth green.

Happy New Year!

Holiday Treat - A Big List Of Sites That Teach You How To Do Stuff

Here is a link to a big list of sites that teach you how to do stuff on the Internet.
This ia a great way to enjoy the holidays in a leisure way and learn something new in the process. Enjoy the Holidays.

I belated Merry Christmas. Enjoy this little Merry Christmas animation!

Neighbor's View: An Interview With George Soros

Katonah resident, George Soros in conversation with Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussing his book The Age of Fallibility: Consequences of the War on Terror and other domestic and world view opinions as part of the Authors@Google series.

This conversation took place on August 9, 2006, at Google's headquarters in Mountain View, CA.

Free Books on The Internet - Early Holiday Present

I just came across this and thought I would share it with readers of this blog.

I think it is really neat.. you can download these books for FREE! Seems to be no hidden agenda going on.

It is like a virtual bookstore for FREE!

Here is is the site: wowio.com


Comments welcome.

Chief Katonah (Song For Marthat Stewart) Download

Katonah resident and singer Marc Black's "Chief Katonah(Song For Martha Steward)" - a take on the Katonah Trademark issue - can be sampled/downloaded from here:




On a serious note (excuse the pun) Marc is an accomplished musical artist.

Check out his website to listen to some of his work.

Katonah "Trademark" Dispute Settled

Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc., the Katonah Village Improvement Society, Katonah Paint and Hardware, Inc. and Katonah Architectural Hardware Ltd. have reached an amicable resolution to their trademark dispute.

Here is the link to a joint statement.

Halloween Day Sightings

Here are Halloween Day Sightings in the neighborhood.

Halloween Night Sightings

Here are some Halloween Night sightings in the neighborhood.

Katonah Area Fall Foliage Update

Katonah area is still seeing low levels of color change and are at midpoint.

New York Fall Foliage Forecast

Week of October 10-16 2007

In the Katonah Area green leaves still predominate with hints of red and orange beginning to emerge.