It has never been easier to create well-produced tunes and broadcast your music to the world. Here are some tools that every aspiring musician can use.

Songwriter’s Pad

This is a cool app for potential songwriters. It’s not only an editor for your songs, but it will make suggestions to help you when you are struggling for the words. It can present rhymes, words and phrases, and definitions to words, too. The app costs $9.99, but you can get a free version. It also works on the iPad.

Rhymezone

This is a rhyming dictionary that gives you words and phrases that you can use. While it might not help you write your next hit song, it can provide some inspiration to get you back on track.

We all know the emotional drain keeping a secret can cause you, but what about the physical consequences? According to research done by experts in the field, your body physically responds to the stress of keeping a secret.

What They Learned

The research is listed in the Journal of Experimental Psychology and demonstrates the effects of keeping a secret. Participants were asked to write down a secret they were keeping; it could either be a serious secret, or one that was more trivial. Then, they were asked to rate the level of steepness of a hill that was in front of them. Those that had listed a serious secret rated the steepness as higher.

Another study found that people would rate distances as greater if they carried a burdensome secret. It was as if they were carrying a physical load, instead of an emotional one. These people judged tasks to be more difficult than they really were. They would also be less likely to help others since they would regard the effort as more extreme.

of a housing market on the road to recovery. Figures released by the Census Bureau show that homeownership fell during the first quarter as more Americans lost homes to foreclosure and chose to rent homes. During the first three months of this year, the homeownership rate was 65.4 percent, down from previous year’s first quarter rate of 66.4 percent. 

Released in March of this year, the homeownership rate is the lowest it’s been since the first quarter of 1997, down nearly 4 points from high-flying days of the housing boom in 2004. Sales of previously-owned homes in January and February marked the best winter in five years. Despite disappointing sales in March, a recently released report tracked the number of signed contracts to purchase homes, which is the highest it’s been in two years. If the past 100 years of real estate tell us anything, it's that the housing market is one that continually adapts to economic, political, and social changes. History shows us that opportunity awaits on the other side of this 15-year-low. Now that the market has found the "bottom," prices will soon bounce back, houses will be sold at market value, and the construction industry will experience renewed demand for new homes and commercial development.

Creating ASCII art manually is time-consuming, but the new Textaizer Pro make it fun and easy.  Textaizer Pro is a Windows-based program that creates beautiful pictures from text.  It is a text mosaic and ASCII art creator.

What is ASCII Art?

For those not familiar with this type of graphic design, it is pictures created out of text.  It can be created with any text editor, but automatic programs make the job much simpler.  With Textaizer Pro, you can take any photo and turn it into ASCII art.

How Does it Work?

Textaizer Pro allows you to take a picture and text and the program will recreate the bitmap of the photo with text.  You can hide a secret message in a picture or create a picture from words.  It allows you to change the font, brightness, and contrast.  You can even increase the size without changing the level of sharpness.

In the main interface of the program, you will see all of your options.  The original picture is in a small box in the right side of the screen, while the created image is in the left pane.  With the Text Mosaic choice, you can multiply the font size, change the font style, and color match to the picture.

Is it time for your child to go off to college? Are you thinking about ways to save money? There is a way that might not have occurred to you, to help your child through college and make money, too.

Many parents are opting to buy a house rather than pay for a dorm room or apartment rental while their kids are in college. This may seem like a major decision for a few years of savings, but there are many benefits...

Invest for Your Retirement

Once your child graduates and moves out, you can rent the house and put away the money for your retirement. Once the house is paid for, you can get a good return on your investment. When you retire, you can either continue to get rental income to supplement other retirement funds, or you can sell the property. Since property usually increases in value, you could end up making a good profit.

Save Money on College Expenses

Besides saving on the cost of a dorm or an apartment, you will save money on food, too. Your student can skip the cafeteria plan and eat at home.