ALWATAN News

The digital home of the future is sure to include all these products and more. The big challenge for product manufacturers is to make everything work together without a fuss. Devices have to connect quickly to a home network, and it all has to be easy to manage.

Walk into a retail store or search online these days, and you’ll find a growing number of devices with networking capability: cameras, MP3 players, HDTVs, audio receivers and clock radios. Until these hurdles are overcome, consumers won’t fully embrace a digital lifestyle. The networked home is supposed to help people save time and/or money. It’s supposed to make it easier — not harder — for consumers to entertain themselves or lead more productive lives.

Seen from that angle, the digital home still exists mostly in the minds of product developers. Yet consumer-electronics and entertainment companies, dreaming of potential profits, are working hard to find stress-free solutions.

Foreclosed houses are everywhere you turn in this market. But while their sticker prices are low, buying one can be a risky endeavor. This is mainly because you won’t have the same protections as you would for a conventional house.

1. Don’t pay a fee for property listings. You can find free information on foreclosed homes in your area by checking with a local agent. Usually there will be someone who specializes in foreclosed properties at the broker’s office. This person is a great free resource.
2. Invest in a home inspection. This is always a good idea whenever you buy a house, but for a foreclosed property it is especially the case. The property may have been vandalized. Fixtures and appliances may be missing. Also, with utilities shut off it will be impossible to test for the water pressure in the shower. Try to arrange for the utilities to be turned on before you buy. The inspection will cost between $250 and $400, but it will end up saving you if there is a problem with the home’s structure or its systems.
3. Don’t assume the sale is final. In some states, a homeowner may have up to 180 days after the foreclosure to pay any outstanding debts and reclaim the home even if it has been bought by someone else.
4. Buy some title insurance. The title insurance will protect you against any liens that you might not know about. It will also prevent a previous owner from making a successful claim on the house after you buy it.

Marshall Loeb, former editor of Fortune, Money, and the Columbia Journalism Review, writes for MarketWatch.

After a spa visit, if you could apply what you learned to your daily life, your chances of maintaining healthy results increased. But few people did. Within the past decade, two ways of addressing health and beauty have proliferated.

First came the day spas - Some offer massages, facials, yoga and skin treatments ; while others are essentially beauty salons with a massage chair. Either way, the demand for spa services that produce a relaxed, “detoxified” state — without having to spend a whole weekend out of town — keeps consumers happy. But this is not enough. What keeps them coming back, even in a recession, is the desire for self-improvement. “To be successful in North America, you have to provide immediate results. Americans expect some miracle. That’s why Botox is so popular, as well as alpha hydroxy.

That lead to second development of beauty treats - Medical Spa. On these shores, the shortened term “medi spa” is used indiscriminately to describe quasi-medical practices emphasizing skin care and anti-aging treatments; they can offer anything from chemical peels to to dermatology to plastic surgery. Such treatments may not sound relaxing, but they sure produce results.