How to Invest in the Best Bond Funds for 2012

Unless you know how to invest in the best bond funds for 2012 don’t invest in bond funds at all. For thirty years these funds were a great way to earn higher interest with only moderate risk, but the game has changed. Invest in the wrong funds now and 2012 and beyond could be a financial disaster waiting to happen.Our Government has driven interest rates down to levels not seen in over 50 years, in an attempt to stimulate a struggling economy. This makes what used to be the best bond funds for safety a poor investment today. These funds invest in U.S. government securities: notes and bonds. If you invest in these funds today you will be lucky to earn 2% in interest income, and could end up losing money for years as the share price of these funds lose value. Let’s look at how to invest for higher income for 2012 and beyond with less risk.There are three ways to invest in bond funds to increase your interest income, and two of them involve higher risk. The first way to get higher interest income is to invest in long term funds that invest your money in debt securities (bonds) that mature in 20 to 30 years. This is the riskiest thing you can do today, because long term funds will take a beating when interest rates eventually turn around and go back up. This is called “interest rate risk”, and above all else you want to control this, because this is the primary risk facing bond funds today. When interest rates go up bond prices fall, and long term issues get hit MUCH WORSE than shorter term securities and the funds that invest in them.The first key to how to invest in the best bond funds for 2012 is to avoid the high risk of long term funds, and go with INTERMEDIATE term funds that invest in debt securities maturing in 5 to 10 years. Remember, interest rate risk is by far the greatest risk for bond investor for 2012 and beyond.The second key to how to invest in bonds for 2012 is to avoid funds that invest in the highest grade or safest debt securities, especially those that invest in U.S. Treasury securities. At today’s interest rates you won’t even earn 2% interest (before expenses) in these intermediate term funds. The best bond funds to invest in to significantly increase your interest income without significantly increasing your risk: funds that invest your money in medium to high quality corporate bonds. Corporate America is in good financial shape, so there is little risk of default when you own a small part of a large diversified portfolio of these securities.The third and best way to increase your interest income from bond funds in 2012 and for years to come involves no extra risk whatsoever. Every dollar you can cut from fund costs and expenses translates to money in your pocket. You can pay sales charges (loads) of 3% or more to invest with yearly expenses of more than 1% every year, plus additional charges and fees if you invest in the wrong funds. That doesn’t make much sense when you are simply trying to earn 3% or 4% (before expenses). The best bond funds charge zero in sales charges and less than ¼% a year for expenses. They are called NO-LOAD funds, and are offered by some of the biggest and best fund companies in America. The simplest key to how to invest in bond funds is to always keep your cost of investing at a minimum.In summary, the best bond funds to invest in for 2012 and beyond are NO-LOAD, MEDIUM to HIGH QUALITY CORPORATE, INTERMEDIATE TERM bond funds. That’s your best way to invest and earn a respectable interest income without taking on more risk than most folks want to accept.

Customized Toolbars and Plug-Ins – Economical Browsing Is Just a Click Away

A toolbar is a graphical representation of frequently used commands. A web toolbar is a feature that can be found on many modern websites/browsers. Deskbars and search toolbars are also in-demand. While optimizing the access, toolbars provides quick and efficient search. Toolbar buttons are usually represented of an icon. The buttons indicate direct link to the application, we use the most. They have a very comprehensive look and are used to access a small number of frequently used commands. A toolbar must serve all the purposes in an organization efficiently; therefore, a toolbar development is taken as a challenge. Custom-made toolbars are possible and many open-source plugins are also freely available for this purpose.Can I develop toolbar for my organization?There are many toolbar development organizations/companies in the market that help you get your fully-functional and interactive customized toolbar in accordance to your need. The most frequently used applications in your organizations are placed on the toolbar for direct, fast, and efficient access for your employees. Customized toolbars include IE toolbar Development, Development of Mozilla Firefox toolbar, toolbar for Google chrome, etc. These toolbar development companies are determined to reach your target market, meet company goals, and sales strategies. It is possible to develop a dynamic toolbar and web site to enhance your particular business needs. A customized toolbar keeps the applications like Bing, pop-up blocker, eBay, You-tube that is used frequently and keeps you updated about the on-goings on such websites.Is toolbar meant for you?By analyzing some of the following points, you may understand whether or not you need a toolbar developed for your company:• Primary window: Toolbar work well with primary windows, however if you try to install toolbar on secondary window, your search will become slow and the optimization of toolbar won’t be to a great extent.• Small no. of frequently used commands: Toolbars work best with small no. of frequently used commands.• Well-represented icons: Toolbars consist of icons; therefore, it is necessary for icons to be self-explanatory. Menu bar is a better choice than a complex toolbar.• Are most of the commands immediate? Toolbars require commands that don’t require additional input. To be efficient, toolbars need to have a direct and immediate feel.An Ideal design of a customized toolbar:• Organize the commands within a toolbar into related groups.• Place the most frequently used groups first.• Avoid placing commands such as delete near to important commands.• Grouping of commands helps in easily locating a command.• If there are many commands that do not fit in your comprehensive toolbar, make sure you use overflow chevron.• Make sure that the most frequently used commands are directly accessible from the toolbar.What about Plug-ins?Having discussed toolbars, let us put some light on what plugins are. In addition to the toolbars, customized plugin can also be developed as per your need. Just like toolbar provides you with the added functionality, software is an add-on for a program that adds functionality to it; for example: A browser plugin allows you to play certain multimedia files within your Web browser. Plug-ins is commonly used to play video, scan for viruses, and display new file types. Adding it is a simple and convenient way to enhance your program capabilities; therefore, most graphics and audio programs opt for plug-ins these days.Most companies develop it as a separate product. Mozilla Firefox plug-ins Development, Internet explorer (IE) plug-ins, add-ons for Google chrome are also developed exclusively for your needs.Some real-time usage of Firefox Add-ons• Social Networking: Firefox Add-ons help us to find amazing new things on the Web with all the top social networking sites and other bookmark web sites.• Conversations: Mozilla Firefox Plugins helps us to enhance the instant messaging. It also facilitates to stay in touch with friends through all the top social networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, and My Space.• Alerts: Firefox Plugin are useful for displaying instant alerts and latest information about weather, sports score or eBay auctions. Real time information shows up in browser; no matter which site user happen to be on.

Custom Website Graphics And The Reason They Should Be Light In Size

Website graphics come in various shapes, sizes as well as formats and they are built to carry out certain tasks in the cyber globe. No matter what image-editing applications are employed to design custom web graphics, the overall sizes of the images prepared for online projects and activities can be of paramount importance and it would be an egregious mistake to make use of heavy files that take minutes to load on browsing applications. Professionals and multimedia geeks always recommend to stick to pretty light web solutions when it comes to making new graphics.You may protest that nowadays almost everybody is using super fast internet connection lines even in remote areas, you might be absolutely right but adding to the overall weight of web bodies would just cause bandwidth problems, leading to heavy web pages and HTML documents that will take a long time to fully appear on the audience’s browsing panels. Such problems will be enough to experience a sudden drop in traffic share because even loyal visitors will decide to move on to some other better online resources, where they will not have to wait before contents load.Have a brief look at templates which have been developed artistically by geeks to find images in light sizes. It is definitely possible to import various beautiful stock photos, logos, animated banner ads plus static sets of icons onto HTML pages and still maintaining a fast-loading internet platform. When using image-editing applications such as the Adobe Photoshop, try to manipulate settings and play with options until you come up with the perfect solution in size and overall quality of your files. Then go to the output panel to generate the ultimate images that look wonderful.Every professional website these days comprises sets of images, graphical units as well as static artworks and it would be almost impossible to consider making new websites from scratch and completely forgetting about picking pictures because a text-laden internet project will not make a big impression on the audience and may suffer a heavy bounce rate in the long term as well. A wonderful internet interface can contain sets of images in both animated plus static shapes, yet loading quickly and smoothly on default browsing applications such as Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome.Please note that pictures, graphics and other kinds of multimedia elements must be employed to decorate HTML pages like a pro, not interfering with overall functions of the websites through causing slowdowns and loading delays. Haven’t you ever arrived at certain web pages and due to long delays, decided to move on to some other better and lighter online portals? Now consider the same situation when running a business online and maintaining a portal which is very heavy in size. Naturally, a lot of visitors will almost instantly turn to other competitors’ websites.If you have recently purchased a complete web package from a vendor, like a cool template or have even fully bought a domain from an individual, check out images inside folders to make sure they are light in size. When approaching some heavy graphics, attempt to have them edited through using image-editing applications or get in touch with gurus and reputable agencies to purchase new files. There is nothing wrong with using even a multitude of pictures when making new web pages but each of the picked graphics must be light in size, serve specific tasks and load smoothly online.Sometimes shifting to other file types can be the solution to dilemmas encountered. As an example, if there are a few wallpapers or full-screen pictures on a few of your HTML documents which are in BMP format, you can use image-editing tools and have them converted into the good old JPEG shape. You will then experience a huge difference in size and all of your files will become much lighter. High quality multimedia units can be very compact at the same time, appearing on the visitors’ browsing panels within a few seconds and help make a big impression on the audience too.