The Advantages of Buying Penny Stocks

A penny stock is a common stock trading at five (5) dollars or less.  Penny stocks are traded outside the major markets (NYSE, AMEX, or NASDAQ).  Instead, they are traded “over the counter” (OTC) via quotation services such as the OTC Bulletin Board and the “Pink Sheets.”  Perhaps most importantly, penny stocks offer an incredible upside for potential investors.

Penny stocks are sold at such low prices that they entice many investors, particularly first-time investors.  These low prices allow novices to explore the markets, without risking an extensive amount of money.  Furthermore, if the stock were to dip in price, the investor will not have lost excessive amounts of money.

Another advantage to penny stocks is that they are easy to buy.  Penny stocks are sold as common shares, and are readily available to the public.  Furthermore, penny stocks are listed in each of the stock exchange markets for the benefit of the general public and potential investors.

The biggest advantage is the potential for very high returns on investment. It is not uncommon for some penny stocks to double or triple in price in extremely short periods of time; something that is nearly impossible for the average stock.

While investing in penny stock, and choosing which penny stocks to buy might seem like a daunting task, it doesn’t have to be.  There is one website that offers sound financial advice, with a proven track record of success: AwesomePennyStocks.com.
AwesomePennyStocks.com provides far more than general advice: the site offers a free subscription to a newsletter filled with specific penny stock picks.  Each and every stock featured has a much bigger potential than other penny stocks, because they tend to jump very shortly after they are alerted.

In fact, AwesomePennyStocks.com’s results over the past two years have been nothing short of astounding.  Their most recent pick was alerted at 10 cents and quickly skyrocketed all the way to 1.20$ in just 2 weeks. This represents an outstanding increase of 1100%! Their members have also seen gains of over 2500% in the past. 

Because their newsletter has had many other successes like these, an increasing number of investors are becoming subscribers and dedicated followers.

If you’re interested in receiving these high-potential penny stock picks straight to your email, sign up for this free, insightful penny stock newsletter today at AwesomePennyStocks.com.

Heath Ledger’s Tree House Bought By Hunger Games Star

Heath Ledger’s $3m tree house has been snapped up by Hunger Games star Josh Hutcherson.

The 19-year-old actor is the latest in a line of celebrities to have owned the two-bedroom, two-bathroom property; Ledger and his girlfriend of the time, Michelle Williams, first bought the house from talk show host Ellen DeGeneres in 2006. The Hollywood Hills home, which was constructed in 1951, is nicknamed ‘The Treehouse’ because of its predominantly wooden structure and the views of its ‘Alice in Wonderland’-style garden.

After Ledger died of an accidental drug overdose in January 2008 while still only 28 years old, his estate sold the property later that year. The owner who bought the home from Ledger’s estate put the property on the market in September 2011 for $2.995 million – though it’s not known if Hutcherson played the full asking price.

The house is set on almost an acre of land and boasts large rooms with a wide deck area. The deck has spacious seating areas, an outdoor screening room, grill and fire pit. It is located on a secluded hillside location across nearly half an acre of land, and features two bedrooms, two bathrooms and a modern kitchen.

As well as getting his feet on the property ladder, 19-year-old Hutcherson has been taking a break from acting to indulge his inner petrolhead. On Saturday, the actor tweeted about how he was zipping around a track in California, telling followers:

“holy s**t. I’m at the Infineon raceway in Napa with @audi ripping around the course in an R8. So fast. #bestimeever (sic)”

Liquid Robotics launches swarm of ocean-patrolling robots

CNNMoney) -- Joe Rizzi first heard the underwater songs of humpback whales a decade ago while scuba diving near Hawaii. Enthralled, he decided to pipe their migration music into his beachfront home.

Here's the difference between Joe Rizzi and your average souvenir seeker: He's a rich venture capitalist. Rizzi's quest to capture the whalesong started with a glass pickle jar, a hydrophone and a kayak. It ends with Liquid Robotics, a Sunnyvale, Calif., company with $22 million from investors, 80 employees and customers like BP Oil and the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration.

Liquid Robotics operates a fleet of wave-propelled, solar-powered ocean robots. Designed to capture Rizzi's elusive music, they have the potential to do much more: predict tsunamis, track fish, snuff out offshore oil leaks and patrol waters for national security threats. They use no fuel, produce no emissions and can travel up to 2,000 miles using wave power alone.

None of that was part of Rizzi's original plan. The Silicon Valley venture capitalist planned to retire at his home in Kona, Hawaii, after two decades of starting and investing in tech companies like Symantec (SYMC,Fortune 500) and SanDisk Corp. (SNDK, Fortune 500) Then he heard the humpback whales migrating to Alaska.

"It's an enigmatic sound," Rizzi says of the songs that became his obsession. "The more you listen to it, the more captivating it becomes."

On a lark, he convinced his neighbor to help him transmit the sounds to his home using a hydrophone (an underwater microphone), a kayak and a cable strung a hundred feet from the shore. But they couldn't hear the whales.

Rizzi needed to move the hydrophone further into the ocean. His solution: a ham radio transmitter inside a pickle jar and a wireless hydrophone hung off a kayak anchored a few hundred yards off the shore.

The police soon showed up. When they found the empty kayak, they thought someone had drowned. No humans died, but the battery did within two hours.

About that time, Rizzi started a nonprofit, the Jupiter Research Foundation, to study humpback whales. He invited several techie buddies to come stay with him in Hawaii, drink beer, play in the water and help with his whale project.

Together, they upgraded his invention with a waterproof case and a motorcycle battery charged via solar panel. Still, he couldn't hear whales -- all he got was a noise that sounded like frying bacon. The group tweaked and tested the electronics for months before locals explained that the noise was tiny snapping shrimp. Rizzi's device needed to be at least a mile from shore, they told him, to hear the whales.

Rizzi tried launching his contraption out to sea, but 50 m.p.h. winds and 10-foot waves battered the craft.

In spring 2005, three years into his quest, Rizzi had lunch in California with Roger Hine, the former director of robotics at semiconductor equipment maker Asyst Technologies. Hine offered Rizzi a solution: How about a floating surfboard powered by a fin 20 feet below the water?

The fin would act like a whale's tail and propel the craft using the motion of waves for energy. A week later, Hine made a miniature model that floated inside a fish tank, which he presented to Rizzi and several others at the Jupiter Research Foundation.

"Here we were, six grown men sitting around a fish tank for five hours watching it crash into the sides," Rizzi recalls. "Roger had an absolutely unique idea and a design that looked like it might work."

A test run of a life-sized version off the shores of Hawaii's Big Island caught the eye of Coast Guard officials, who said they could use one for the agency. As word began to spread, Rizzi got more phone calls -- and soon, he and Hine knew that this was no longer just a personal project.

Rizzi and Hine launched Liquid Robotics in 2007. For the next two years, they refined their prototype into a dependable craft they could actually sell. It needed electronics that would work consistently in salt water. It needed to survive severe weather, 100 m.p.h. winds and 50-feet waves. And it needed the ability to propel itself when there were few waves or none at all.

"It was deceptively complex," Rizzi says.

Today, solar power runs the robots' computers, which chart a course using GPS and collect environmental data with onboard sensors. A cable dangles an underwater glider that looks like window shutters, flapping to push the craft forward.

"They had inadvertently solved one of the great conundrums -- they found a way to harness wave power for propulsion," says Alan Salzman, CEO of Vantage Point Capital Partners, a prominent Silicon Valley venture firm that invested in Liquid Robotics. "When I saw it, I said, 'Oh my god, this is brilliant.'"

The company has since built 120 robots, called wave gliders, that can be deployed to collect data for a wide variety of customers, including oil and gas companies, fisheries, and defense, meteorology and maritime security firms. Traditionally, those industries have relied on ships, buoys or satellite imagery to collect oceanic information.

None are cheap: a ship could cost $150,000 a day and sending out a buoy can run $1 million to $3 million. Liquid Robotics sells its robots for $200,000 each, or rents them for data collection at $1,500 to $3,000 per day.

"You just put it off the dock, tell it where to go and a month later, it's there," says Dr. Jonathan Berger, senior scientist at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego. His agency purchased two $200,000 robots for real-time monitoring of tsunami threats across the globe.

The company's biggest challenge, Berger says, will be convincing more people that the technology will be reliable for the long-term.

As for Rizzi? He is not entirely retired, still serving as chairman of Liquid Robotics. But he can finally listen to whales sing from his living room -- and he even broadcasts the sounds online at JupiterFoundation.org. 

Former Israeli PM: Jerusalem must be partitioned

JERUSALEM (AP) — Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday urged Israeli leaders to relinquish the idea of a unified Jerusalem if they truly want peace, contending in a pair of interviews that years of government neglect have kept the Jewish and Arab sectors irreparably divided.

The comments, made as Israel marked the 45th anniversary of capturing east Jerusalem, were nearly unprecedented for a mainstream Israeli leader and put Olmert at odds with his successor, Benjamin Netanyahu. Celebrating Israel's control of the city on the Jewish state's "Jerusalem Day," Netanyahu declared his government was committed to keeping it the country's undivided capital.

"No Israeli government since 1967 has done even a smidgen of what was needed in order to unify the city in practical terms. That is a tragedy that is going to lead us, for want of another choice, to making inevitable political concessions," Olmert told the Maariv daily.

Israel captured east Jerusalem in the 1967 Middle East war and immediately annexed the area, home to sensitive Jewish, Christian and Muslim holy sites as well as a large Arab population. The Palestinians hope to make east Jerusalem the capital of an independent state including the neighboring West Bank and Gaza Strip.

Speaking Sunday evening from the site of a Jerusalem battle from that war, Netanyahu said the city will not be partitioned.

"Israel without Jerusalem is like a body without a heart. And our heart will never be divided again," he said.

The future of Jerusalem is one of the thorniest issues at the core of the conflict. Jerusalem's old city is home a compound sacred to Jews as the Temple Mount and to Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary. Jews revere it as the site of their two biblical Temples and Muslims regard it as Islam's third-holiest site.

"There are those who believe that if we only divide Jerusalem, and that means giving up the Temple Mount, they believe we will have peace," Netanyahu said. "I am doubtful, to say the least, that if we deposit that square of the Temple Mount with other forces, that we won't quickly deteriorate to a religious sectarian war."

"I know that only under Israeli control is accessibility and religious freedom is ensured, and will continue to be ensured to all the religions. Only under Israel will the quiet be preserved, only under Israel will the peace between the religions be ensured," Netanyahu said.

Olmert said the notion of a united Holy City is unrealistic. He pointed to a number of Arab neighborhoods in east Jerusalem, saying they have not been integrated into the rest of the city.

"We can't unite them and connect them to the real fabric of life in Jerusalem, and except for grief, we haven't gotten anything from them," he said.

Olmert went through a dramatic political transformation late in his career.

As mayor from 1993 to 2003, he was an outspoken hard-liner opposed to concessions to the Palestinians. Then, while prime minister from 2006 to 2009, he pursued a peace agreement envisioning broad territorial concessions to the Palestinians before a corruption case forced him to step down.

In those talks, Olmert offered to turn over parts of east Jerusalem to the Palestinians, and have Jerusalem's Old City, home to the most sensitive religious sites, be administered by an international consortium including Israelis, Palestinians, Americans, Jordanians and Saudis.

Olmert claimed his talks with the Palestinians came tantalizingly close to an agreement. The Palestinians have said Olmert did not go far enough.

Since taking power three years ago, Netanyahu has repudiated Olmert's willingness to partition the city. With a newly expanded coalition, Netanyahu has cemented a formidable majority for his hardline policies.

The Palestinians have refused to conduct peace talks with Netanyahu unless he halts settlement construction in east Jerusalem and the West Bank. About 200,000 Israelis live in east Jerusalem, approaching the Arab population of about 280,000. Netanyahu says talks should resume without any preconditions.

Israel marked Sunday's anniversary with a series of marches and speeches throughout the city. The Palestinians' chief peace negotiator, Saeb Erekat, said the Israeli celebrations were "clear proof" that Israel is not interested in peace. "Clearly, this behavior reflects the mentality of a colonizer, rather than a supposed peace partner."

Also Sunday, Israel's Shin Bet security service said it had arrested nine Palestinians who tried to kidnap Israelis in the West Bank. The agency said in a statement that the ring made three unsuccessful kidnapping attempts in March, hoping to ransom the Israelis for Palestinian prisoners in Israel.

Last year, Israel released more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners in exchange for a captive Israeli soldier.

Alien Life Found??

This bacterial cell resembles the single-celled organisms found in 86-million-year-old sediment.

Bacteria 'good bet' for alien life

Forget the bug-eyed green aliens with advanced technology. Life on other planets may exist in forms too tiny to see, if mysterious tiny organisms like those found under our oceans live elsewhere.

Scientists have discovered bacteria living in 86 million-year-old red clay under the ocean floor, cut off from sunlight and all other life, that may be subsisting on the minimum bit of energy required to sustain life. They use up oxygen extremely slowly, and are still recycling material that fell from the ocean's surface millions of years ago.

"If you wanted to look for life for another planet, I think this is a really good bet," said Hans Røy, biologist at Aarhus University in Aarhus, Denmark. Røy is the lead author of a new study about the bacteria that appears in the journal Science.

Røy and colleagues found the microscopic organisms about 30 meters (100 feet) below the ocean floor in the northern Pacific Ocean. Most of the genes from the bacteria don't look like anything we know on the surface.

"The paper is really fascinating, because the first time you really have a sense of the respiration rates for these buried microbial communities, you can speculate more about how long can these cut-off communities actually last, and how fast can they grow, how old can they get," says Antje Boetius of the Max Planck Institute for Marine Microbiology, who was not involved in Røy's study.

The bacteria have been sitting in 86 million-year-old sediment – mostly dead algae, small crustaceans, and dust – making the environment essentially an 86 million-year-old experiment. And you can't watch them grow – that'd be like staring at a tree waiting for it to get taller, Røy said.

"We don’t know if they’re just the remnants of those who were once at the surface and are just not dying," Røy said. "It seems like they are adapted to the environment where they live."

But it's hard to believe that the bacteria themselves are 86 million years old. Boetius estimates, given the respiration rate that Røy found, this particular group is up to 500 years old. But that's not proven, and it's still mysterious how they are getting and using such minimal energy.

There are other single-celled organisms found beneath the seafloor that appear to live for about 1,000 years before dividing. By contrast, E. coli bacteria – the pathogen found in spoiled food – reproduce about every 20 minutes.

To give you a sense of what sediment buildup means, think of the dust in your apartment or bedroom. If you never vacuumed, the dust layer would grow. If you assume a certain dust settling rate, you could calculate the time it would take to fill the entire space with dust.

"The seafloor is nothing but an accumulation of dust from the overlying seawater," says Boetius.

About 90% of the single-celled organisms on Earth live below the seafloor.

"They have no clue that we are around," Røy said of the bacteria his group studied. "They have no contacts with the surface anymore, and they just apparently keep on living for a very long time on the inside of our planet."

Similar bacteria could theoretically be buried on other celestial worlds, he said. If a planet once had life or some other energy sources, microorganisms could be cut off from the surface but still be living a long time, Boetius said.

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Artist Berndnaut Smilde creates indoor clouds

Berndnaut Smilde can control the weather. The Dutch artist can turn a clear sky cloudy — indoors. In his latest project, he’s installed real Nimbus clouds in empty gallery spaces in Amsterdam.
“Nimbus” (Berndnaut Smilde - Courtesy of the artist)

Smilde’s godlike powers come from simple science — he carefully regulates the temperature and humidity of the space, ensuring that conditions are perfect. Then, he sprays a short burst from a fog machine to create a cottony cloud suspended in the middle of the room for just an instant before it collapses.

“I’m interested in the ephemeral aspect of the work,” Smilde said in an e-mail. “It’s there for a brief moment and then the cloud falls apart. It’s about the potential of the idea, but in the end it will never function.”

Smilde’s clouds dissipate so quickly that they exist mainly in photographs. He chooses surreal spaces, such as empty churches or galleries, as his setting. One photo, taken in a room with bright blue walls, is evocative of the painter Rene Magritte’s azure skies and puffy clouds.

“Nimbus II” (Berndnaut Smilde - Courtesy of the artist)

“I wanted to make a very clear image, an almost cliché and cartoon like visualisation of having bad luck,” writes Smilde in his artist’s statement.

However, the rare audience that got to see Smilde’s work in person — captured on video for a Dutch Web site, below — was all smiles.