Lane Houk

Huge TILA Rescission Victory in Oregon

Lane A. Houk — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 02:47:53 +0000

A homeowner who retained our services to investigate his mortgage loan just recently scored a major victory in US District Court in Oregon in Barnes v. Chase Home Finance.

Our investigation revealed that the borrower, Timothy Barnes, had the extended right to rescind his loan under TILA/Regulation Z due to material disclosure violation by the original lender. We assisted Mr. Barnes in drafting the appropriate notices to rescind his loan and he subsequently elected to send the notices and rescind.

At the time the first notices were sent, Chase Home Finance was the servicer. Chase failed to respond appropriately to the rescission notice. Chase subsequently decided to transfer servicing to IBM Lender Business Process Services. Notice of Chase’s failure to rescind and/or respond according to the requirements under TILA/Reg. Z was provided to IBM. IBM also failed to respond according to the regulations and refused to rescind.

Mr. Barnes subsequently drafted and filed a Pro Se complaint in federal court. Chase and IBM have been playing games in this case and they filed a Motion to Dismiss (predictable). The federal magistrate assigned to the case seems to have a real bias for the banks and handed down a terribly misguided decision dismissing Mr. Barnes’ claims. He objected to the magistrate’s jurisdiction and essentially appealed the woefully wrong conclusions.

Judge Anna Brown analyzed the issues, pleadings, etc. and handed down a near complete reversal of the magistrate’s decision. Her brief has since been published on WestLaw and multiple legal databases since it so complete. She goes into great detail on the actual law which we stand on in this case.

CLICK HERE to get the slip copy of her brief published in WestLaw. It goes through the entire history of this case in great detail along with her reasoning and findings.

This is a major score for the homeowners in Oregon especially but really all over the US. I have been saying for years and years that TILA Rescission is a complete defense to foreclosure and provides the most comprehensive remedy to a homeowner when PROPERLY applied.

The key issue is that most attorneys do not truly understand TILA Rescission and really don’t know how to apply it and argue the elements. That’s ok if they have an expert like myself helping them but it’s so important for homeowners to understand that TILA Rescission is an excellent tool to fight with when you have the statutory right to rescind.

The other problem I have seen though is that most of these “forensic auditors” out there who are not experts, many, if not most are actually scammers, and the few who aren’t an outright scam have no clue how to properly apply the elements of TILA rescission and analyze the issues to elicit if the homeowner has the right to rescind. In fact, I have seen many many cases where the homeowner thinks they can rescind but really don’t have the right under TILA to do so.

Yes, there are instances where fraudulent inducement or fraudulent concealment or mortgage fraud may provide for a claim of common law rescission but that is completely different from TILA rescission. It’s important to have an expert truly analyze your loan.

For Tim Barnes, way to go. Great victory and anxious to see how this case progresses now that we have a real judge involved who cares about the law. Way to go Judge Brown. It’s refreshing to see a judge who takes the time to understand the issues and truly cares about applying this consumer protection statute properly, without bias.

http://www.aviva.co.uk/home/

6 Tips for Using Promoted Tweets to Boost Your Brand’s Visibility

Lane A. Houk — Mon, 31 Oct 2011 20:47:39 +0000

Twitter now has 100 million active users generating some 200 million tweets and 1.6 billion search queries every day. Despite the promise of reaching such a massive, highly-engaged audience, many advertisers have struggled to find the best way to connect with Twitter users.

Brands have had success using Twitter to distribute coupons and special offers – gaining followers on the lookout for deals – but have stumbled when it comes to building brand reach and engagement on the network.

Promoted Tweets are ordinary Tweets purchased by advertisers who want to reach a wider group of users or to spark engagement among their existing followers – and they are an effective way to use Twitter for brand marketing.

All Promoted Tweets are first displayed as regular Tweets to the people following an account, but advertisers can then promote these Tweets to spark additional conversation – paying for them to show up at the top of relevant search results pages, in users’ timelines the Promoted Tweet is relevant to that user, in Promoted Trend search results, and other places. Though these tweets are clearly labeled as “promoted”, in every other respect, these Tweets are just like all the other 200 million tweets generated every day on Twitter; they can be retweeted, replied to, forwarded, and more.

Getting Promoted Tweets right takes a bit of finesse. Twitter users are a savvy bunch, and they will ignore Promoted Tweets if they are too salesy, pushy, or out of sync with their interests. Here are six proven tips to use Promoted Tweets to boost your brand’s visibility among Twitters millions of users.

1. Promote Great Content

Make sure the content you’re promoting is engaging and interesting; think informational or inspirational, not salesy. Remember, a Promoted Tweet is only the beginning of a long engagement conversation. You’ll need to continue tweeting great, shareable content via both regular and Promoted Tweets, so your followers continue to get frequent updates on your messages and promotions.

One great thing about Twitter is you can use your 140 characters to promote longer-form content via links. Why not offer your followers – and the wider Twitter community via Promoted Tweets – access to free white papers, blog posts, webinars, exclusive video content, games, contests, deals, and more.

2. Keep Watch

Check in on your Promoted Tweets regularly. As your Promoted Tweet campaigns are running, make sure to analyze the impact in real-time using Twitter’s campaign tools.

Marketers shouldn’t just set the Promoted Tweet and forget about it; instead, shift the main messages of your Promoted Tweets on the fly, as you see in real-time what’s working and what’s not to generate clicks and traffic. Run A/B tests to see exactly how you should tweak copy or update landing pages.

3. One is Good, Six is Better

Twitter recommends using up to six tweets in a rotation for your Promoted Tweet campaigns – all aimed at one specific landing page. Having six different tweets to play with means you can tweak messaging and give additional info about your campaign or offering when you can’t it all into just 140 characters.

Having multiple tweets also enables you to craft an ongoing story over the course of the campaign – adding new messages every few hours or each day. Don’t forget to test the copy of these tweets.

4. Own the Hashtag

Promoted Tweets are a great way to introduce a new hashtag you intend to use either for an event, new product, or new brand campaign. Introduce and use the new hashtag in all your Promoted Tweets. Remember, creative and interesting content is what gets shared – but an added bonus is your new hashtag will get shared along with this pass-along.

5. Study Up

Before you blast out a Promoted Tweet campaign, make sure you understand the basics of Twitter. Use it for awhile before paying for Promoted Tweets, learn Twitter etiquette, and see what type of content resonates with your followers.

After you have the lay of the land on Twitter, you can then experiment with Promoted Tweets at the right times and with the right messages. For example, if you launch Promoted Tweets during a time where traffic levels and conversation are at extremely high volumes – such as right after a huge news story – your Promoted Tweets will get lost in the shuffle.

Research upcoming events that could impact traffic to Twitter in your area of influence. You can ride the wave of certain conversations, but you can also create a bigger impact when overall activity is muted.

6. Think Twice Before Jumping on a Topic

While jumping onto memes and hot topics can be an easy way to get attention for your Tweets, think twice before jumping on these bandwagons. A conversation storm can easily take a turn for the worst – and your brand would then be in the middle of the fallout.

There’s a fine line between being clever and being a headline (not the good kind). Make sure you’re on the right side of that line by carefully considering all the potential consequences of jumping onto a trending topic.

Summary

Twitter is a unique universe where instant conversation fuels millions of large and small chatterstorms among millions of users every day. By carefully using Promoted Tweets, marketers can be a part of the Twitter conversation and spark deeper engagement with their brands. But before you rush out and buy tons of Promoted Tweets, make sure you know Twitter 101 and have mastered the simple tips above.

via searchenginewatch.com

Editors Note: As always and as will always be… great content is the key to everything. Users, viewers and readers still search for and long for great content. You just cannot ever get away from that if you want to have success online or in Twitter-world for that matter. Twitter is a great platform to get short snippets out to your audience to catch their attention so make sure you focus on the exact wording of your hashtag and title!

Facebook Drives 44 Percent Of Social Networking Connections Online

Lane A. Houk — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 22:27:51 +0000

So the question is… is Google+ the new Facebook?

There may be many ways to answer that question… one of them should be in terms of statistics on sharing in the social context and category, the answer would be appear to be “no, not yet.”

If you are still wondering why Google is pushing so hard with its new product Buzz, it is because it wants in on the social traffic scene, not just search traffic. For many sites on the Web, social traffic coming through Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace is beginning to rival, and in some cases overtake, search traffic as the single biggest source of traffic. This traffic comes from shared links, photos, and videos that have been shared on these social networks. By its own numbers, 5 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every week.

What isn’t easily appreciated is the extent to which such social sharing is tied to different identity and authentication platforms across the Web. If you can log into a site easily using your Facebook or Twitter account, it is easier to broadcast links from that site to your friends.

To get a sense of which services on the Web drive the most sharing, I asked Gigya for some stats. Gigya powers sharing widgets on more than 5,000 content sites, including ABC.com. NBA.com, PGA.com, Answers.com, and Reuters but small businesses and professionals can look elsewhere… Gigya wants something in the $20k range just to get going using their products but plenty of social sharing widgets and plugins about for free or for very small amounts (ie. under $100).

Consumers can click a share button on these enabled sites and send an article link, photo, or video via a menu of different services including Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Yahoo Mail, Gmail, and AOL. Over the past 30 days, people have shared almost a million items over the Gigya network alone. Facebook and Twitter dominate with about three quarters of all shared items between them. Here is how the services break down (note that these are relative numbers):

Distribution of shared items via social networks
Facebook: 44%
Twitter: 29%
Yahoo:18%
MySpace:9%

It makes sense, people prefer to broadcast links rather than share them one at a time via email, even compared to a broadcast email to a larger group of friends, colleagues, etc. Although Yahoo makes a strong third-place showing, when it comes to authentication, simply using your existing username and password to log into another site, Facebook is still the most popular via Facebook Connect, but only just barely. Google via Gmail and Yahoo are almost equally popular, at least on certain types of sites where people are just reading for themselves like news sites. On entertainment sites where people are more likely to share content, Facebook Connect makes up the majority of logins.

So Facebook and Twitter are still #1 and #2 in the world of social sharing, at least it would appear that way and it seems quite logical and plausible that this would be the case. But make no mistake, Google+ is coming and if the latest report from Paul Allen, founder of Ancestry.com and independent Google+ statist, are accurate, then the Google+ user-base now stands at 18 million and counting. Facebook on the other hand claims to have 750 million active users or about 732 million if the 18 million users mentioned migrated to Google+.

In recent polls conducted by The Christian Post, more than 40 percent of 10,000 people stated that they believe Google+ would dethrone Facebook as the biggest social network while the other 40 percent believed that Google+ and Facebook would co-exist.

Author Info: Lane A. Houk is an Internet Marketing and SEO Expert whose cutting-edge SEO strategies and website development expertise can dramatically increase your results! If having a highly SEO optimized WordPress blog or web site is something you’re interested in learning more about, check out http://affordableinternetmarketing.org>Affordable Internet Marketing for more details

See the full gallery on Posterous

Microsoft Sends “One Across the Bow” of Google – Snipes Gmail in Funny Advertising

Lane A. Houk — Fri, 29 Jul 2011 15:50:52 +0000

This is both quite funny and a little eye-opening if you're a Gmail user. Yes, Gmail is crawling your email for keywords which is what then produces those "Ads" on top of your email screen if you're a free Gmail user. Personally, I use Google Apps for several reasons but Apps users don't have the ads either. Nevertheless, Microsoft really rips Google here on these video commercials. Enjoy the rip!

via Mashable.com

In a nice break from Google‘s slick-but-cute explanatory videos and ads, someone at Microsoft has unleashed a rather vicious attack video targeting Gmail.

The video shows Gmail Man, a delivery guy who has the creepy habit of scanning your mail for keywords and then showing you a related ad. You may be fine with that when you’re online, but when dramatized in real life, it might make you question the practice. If nothing else, the attack video makes a compelling case for going with Office 365 instead.

Creatively, Gmail Man falls into a burgeoning category of videos that dramatize Internet activity IRL, like a recent ad for English National Operas showing a man trying to friend and follow people on the street and another from T-Mobile dramatizing Angry Birds played out in a park somewhere.

Maybe Google had it coming, particularly after its own recent snarky video offering a Gmail Intervention.

Get lots of great internet marketing strategies on my Affordable Internet Marketing blog

Rep. Darren Soto, Orlando Requests Records Pertaining to Ouster of Bondi’s Former Foreclosure Investigators June Clarkson and Theresa Edwards | Foreclosure Fraud – Fighting Foreclosure Fraud by Sharing the Knowledge

Lane A. Houk — Thu, 28 Jul 2011 04:44:16 +0000

via 4closurefraud.org

I am just going to go out on a limb here and predict that we are at the very beginning of this scandal and that Pam Bondi is in a heap of deep doo, at least politically speaking. This has bad news written all over it for the new Atty General of Florida and I support all efforts in getting to the real truth of what’s happening here in Florida.

It really is wrong to see what amazing crimes the banks and their robo-employees are getting away with. If I didn’t see it everyday with my own eyes and see no one going to jail for this stuff, I’d say you were a quack and that there was no way that any white collar criminal could get away with this stuff so often in such massive quantity. Especially when you marry these crimes to the confiscation and illegal seizure of people’s homes! Frickin amazing….

Think Big featured in St. Pete Times Business Column

Lane A. Houk — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:18:04 +0000

Internet is marketer’s method of choice

RIVERVIEW — Think Big Enterprises, which welcomed its first client three months ago and has been growing steadily ever since, helps businesses find affordable methods to use the Internet to increase visibility.

Lane Houk, Think Big’s chief executive, said the Internet offers all sorts of free or very inexpensive ways for small business to connect with potential customers. New ways to do that are being developed all the time, and business owners may not have the time or expertise to keep up with the latest.

“A lot of times, business owners aren’t aware of those resources, or they just don’t know how to use them,” Houk said.

Think Big also will create websites for businesses and can develop office automation systems to help businesses run more efficiently.

One tip Houk offers to small businesses is that they create blog sites so they can position themselves as experts in their fields.

The Think Big Enterprises office is at 12307 Boyette Road. The company’s website is lanehouk.com. For more information, call (813) 438-2428.

If you know of something that should be Everybody’s Business, please contact Marty Clear at mclear@tampabay.rr.com

Here’s the link to the original story in the St. Pete Times: http://www.tampabay.com/news/business/retail/citylynccom-unites-consumers-with-deals/1173002

What is an E-Commerce Site?

Lane A. Houk — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 22:20:14 +0000

Most people refer it as a shopping cart on their website, however the actual shopping cart is only part of a true E-Commerce platform – which is really required to actually conduct business on the internet (ie. sell your product online). To conduct e-commerce, you also need a merchant account, a payment gateway, the shopping cart technology, distribution channel management, affiliate/reseller technology, email marketing and autoresponders for new and past customers – just to name the major components.

When considering how to open your new online business, one must truly evaluate the likely need for most of the above mentioned solutions to really conduct business online. You need to get a merchant account or payment system like Paypal and you’ll need to enlist a payment gateway, the major one being Authorize.net which I highly recommend.

If you want to develop, build and manage your own e-commerce site, I’ll just go ahead and give you my secret. 1ShoppingCart.com

That’s it… I use it myself and if you’re a “roll up my sleeves” kinda person and want to do it yourself, there is no better, cheaper solution out there and they have the training videos to tutor you through the process. Of course, if you want a truly complete solution, you’ll want your website and content management system (ie. blog platform) developed and built as well and then integrated directly with your E-Commerce solution like 1ShoppingCart.com

Building this as a complete solution and getting everything working and integrated is not easy and most business owners simply hire experts liks us to complete the work for them. If you want to inquire about us doing the development and build for you, please use our Contact page or call Lane directly at 813-438-2428.

Here’s more on what Wikipedia has to say about E-Commerce…

Electronic commerce, commonly known as e-commerce or eCommerce, consists of the buying and selling of products or services over electronic systems such as the Internet and other computer networks. The amount of trade conducted electronically has grown extraordinarily with widespread Internet usage. The use of commerce is conducted in this way, spurring and drawing on innovations in electronic funds transfer, supply chain management, Internet marketing, online transaction processing, electronic data interchange (EDI), inventory management systems, and automated data collection systems. Modern electronic commerce typically uses the World Wide Web at least at some point in the transaction’s lifecycle, although it can encompass a wider range of technologies such as e-mail, mobile devices and telephones as well.

A large percentage of electronic commerce is conducted entirely electronically for virtual items such as access to premium content on a website, but most electronic commerce involves the transportation of physical items in some way. Online retailers are sometimes known as e-tailers and online retail is sometimes known as e-tail. Almost all big retailers have electronic commerce presence on the World Wide Web.

Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses is referred to as business-to-business or B2B. B2B can be open to all interested parties (e.g. commodity exchange) or limited to specific, pre-qualified participants (private electronic market). Electronic commerce that is conducted between businesses and consumers, on the other hand, is referred to as business-to-consumer or B2C. This is the type of electronic commerce conducted by companies such as Amazon.com. Online shopping is a form of electronic commerce where the buyer is directly online to the seller’s computer usually via the internet. There is no intermediary service. The sale and purchase transaction is completed electronically and interactively in real-time such as Amazon.com for new books. If an intermediary is present, then the sale and purchase transaction is called electronic commerce such as eBay.com.

Electronic commerce is generally considered to be the sales aspect of e-business. It also consists of the exchange of data to facilitate the financing and payment aspects of the business transactions.

Opportunity for you to create “Social Efficiency”

Lane A. Houk — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:37:18 +0000

One thing I really, really get excited about is efficiency opportunity. You know, those cool times when you see a real, bona fide opportunity to increase your efficiency in business and life. I’m going to share one of these opportunities with you… it’s simple, go check out www.posterous.com - love it. I input my facebook, twitter, flickr, youtube account info ahead of time, add a post of any kind (blog, text, video, audio) to posterous account and posterous automatically sends same to all my social accounts. One to many efficiency. Very nice. My posterous site: lanehouk.posterous.com - Have fun with it!

Oh and by the way, Posterous makes it so easy to add a new blog post… all you have to do is email your new post to post@posterous.com and Posterous knows it’s you by your email address so they automatically create the new post for you, publish it on your Posterous page and submit the same post to all of your Social Network sites! That is awesome. Best of all, it’s FREE folks.

By the way… I found one video on YouTube that was short and shows how you can use Posterous to be more efficient!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=b6iYxbcGqNo

Likes & Personal Comments On Facebook To Be Shared With The World – Online Privacy Issues

Lane A. Houk — Wed, 02 Feb 2011 20:11:17 +0000

by Dietrich

Facebook Ads – New Insiders Secret For Big Companies and Marketers …

Your “likes” on Facebook, comments on Facebook and other areas that you would normally consider private, are up for grabs again. Anyone that has been on Facebook for any period of time should be used to FB’s ever evolving changes in privacy and terms of service policies. The real problem is many people do not know of these changes before it’s too late.

The new Facebook privacy setting is called “Instant Personalization” and it is being rolled out right now!

It’s obvious that Facebook has made these changes to bolster their ad revenue and capitalize on additional methods to make more money. These new changes are a dream for big companies and marketers alike. Now being a marketer myself, I think this is great, but many of you may not share my enthusiasm.

Think about this…

Facebook Pages that you “like”, comments that you make and even your picture can be used in company ads and promotion without your knowledge! So before anyone gets all up in arms I’m going to show you how you can shut the door on this privacy loophole.

CLICK HERE to go to the full post by my friend Dietrich where he shares how to shut the door on this loophole…

Online Privacy and Anonymity

Lane A. Houk — Sun, 23 Jan 2011 06:19:27 +0000

Let’s face it, if you spend just about any time online these days, you’re at risk of your privacy being invaded and your identity and personal information may be unsecured. You need to be pro-active and arm yourself with a few good tools. I’m alarmed at how few people have basic anti-virus, anti-spyware and proper cookie settings so their online traffic isn’t watched (yes literally) by tracking cookies or spyware.

More importantly to me is the fact that just about anybody with some know how can track your online browsing history and get information from that. Sure there are some devious reasons that someone might want to block their online browsing history but for me, I don’t want anyone knowing what sites I go to or worse, getting personal information off of my web traffic. It’s just the principle of the idea that my business is only my business and no one else’s.

If you share this concern, there are solutions. I’ve included a great video to intro the idea to you. I highly suggest you check out www.torproject.org and download the “TOR Browser Bundle” – for Windows or Mac depending on what type of computer you use.

TOR essentially sets up a tunnel of your internet traffic and relays the request all over the world (literally) so that someone trying to watch your traffic wouldn’t know that request for a certain site came from your computer. I’ve tested it and it works – fantastically. The first time I setup a connection to the TOR network and opened the TOR browser (which is basically a customized version of Firefox), Yahoo thought I was located in Germany based on the IP address that was requesting the Yahoo page from my browser.

If you want anonymity online and you want to keep any and all prying eyes off your online traffic, TOR is the best way to go right now.