AOL is still the weirdest successful tech company in America

You probably know AOL as a conglomeration of websites that presumably make money by selling advertising next to their articles. But in fact, AOL as a media company is a constant money-loser. It lost $17 million in advertising on its fleet of sites—AOL.com, Huffington Post, Moviefone—in the first quarter of 2012 and another $5 million in the first three months of this year.

So, as a business proposition, AOL is a media company—an ad company—with diminishing losses. But as a profit-making business, AOL isn’t a media company, or an advertising company, at all. It’s a vestigial subscriptions business gleaning cash from people who haven’t graduated from the era of pshhhkkkrrrrkakingkakingkakingtshchch*ding*ding*ding”.

Earnings filed under “membership,” which includes $168 million in subscriptions plus revenue associated with services like AIM, accounts for more than 100 percent of the company’s profit, just as it has for years. As Peter Kafka notes, this is both mind-boggling and not even close to being news.

How to Mine Bitcoins

Simple article on how to mine bitcoins.

Mining bitcoins – a process that helps manage bitcoin transactions as well as create new “wealth” – are the new Beanie Babies. Luckily for us, however, bitcoins seem to be going up in value and should maintain their value over time, unlike your mint condition Tiny the stuffed Chihuahua.

But how do you get bitcoins? You can begin by buying them outright, but the market is currently wild. At $188 per coin, the direction of the bitcoin is anyone’s guess right now and, unlike equities, these things don’t split. In short, you should probably mine. But what is bitcoin mining?

Think of it as work done by groups of people to find large prime numbers or trying keys to decrypt a file. You can read a lot more about it here but just understand that for every block mined you get 25 coins or, at current rates, $4,722.25. Currently a single bitcoin is valued at $188, an alarming result that is probably caused by money movements related to Cyprus and a general bubble-like excitement over the platform in general. In fact, many wager that the DDOS attacks on many bitcoin-related services are direct action by hackers to inject instability in order to reduce the price.

Wallaby Card - Interesting New Credit Card Aggregator to Maximize Rewards

The Wallaby card aggregates all your credit cards into one card, and then applies charges to the appropriate credit cards you own in order to maximize your rewards.

The first 1000 people to sign up get a free lifetime membership. Sign up here.

Dwolla Adds Support For LinkedIn, Allowing You To Send Money To Your Professional Contacts

Web and mobile payments platform Dwolla announced today that it now includes integration with LinkedIn’s API, allowing users to send and receive payments to their connections on LinkedIn’s social network. Previously, Dwolla had integrated with Facebook and Twitter to offer similar functionality. And just last week, Dwolla added Foursquare support, too, allowing Dwolla users to passively check-in to a location when making a purchase.

Dwolla, for those unaware, is a company attempting to disrupt how payment networks operate by creating a network that’s devoid of personal information. With the service, users can send and receive funds to and from other Dwolla users as well as with a select group of supported merchants. But most importantly, Dwolla’s distinction from other players in the payments space is its focus on cash, an under-represented market in electronic payments. Users fund Dwolla accounts with cash from their own bank account, and can then use the company’s Web-based platform or their mobile phone to perform the payments at rates that are often far less than on PayPal.

Bye-Bye California Real Estate... And I Mean it This Time

During the ‘08 panic, the government was doing whatever it could in an attempt to stimulate the economy. Programs like TARP and Quantitative Easing were covered in the media, but a lesser-known stimulus was the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008. The Act increased the loan limit that could be backed by the FHFA in some bubble areas as much as $729,759. Essentially, regulators would find the median sales price for the county with the highest median values and would then use that price to derive the loan limit for…