Dividends
Edited by Toddi Gutner
GADGETS
Clever Camera
 With two new Casio digital cameras, you'll never have to ask a stranger to take a picture of you and a friend. The $400 3-megapixel QV-R3 and the $500, 4-megapixel QV-R4 lets two people snap each other separately against the same background. The cameras then line up the images so it looks like one photo.
By Larry Armstrong
IDENTITY THEFT
That Wasn't Me!
Noticed some strange charges on your credit-card bills? Someone may have gotten your Social Security number. Here's how to counteract the growing crime of identity theft:
-- DON'T carry your Social Security card with you.
-- REQUIRE credit-card companies to contact you before approving additional credit.
-- REPORT misuse of your SSN to Social Security Fraud Hotline at 800 269-0271.
By Ellen Hoffman
IDENTITY THEFT
TIME OFF
Trains Get Their Day
Admit it. Many of you haven't outgrown your fascination with trains, trucks, and things that go. To stir up those old feelings, hobby-magazine producer Kalmbach Publishing declared Nov. 15 Take a Model Train to Work Day. The idea is that show-and-tell by many of the 500,000 model railroaders will spark interest in the pastime . Tom Peters sees in trains the same things he appreciates about the cars he designs for General Motors (GM
): "the functionality, variety, and technology." That's called mixing work with pleasure.
INVESTING
Hedge Heaven
Hedge funds have historically been about as secretive and exclusive as Freemasons. But they're raising their profile, if just a bit, by offering their funds in a new financial supermarket at HedgeWorld.com. It's an important step toward making the industry more investor-friendly.
HedgeWorld hopes to do for hedge funds what Charles Schwab did for mutual funds. The supermarket now carries only 100 hedge funds, but 3,000 others have inquired about shelf space. You still must have at least $1 million in assets to invest. But now you can research, track, and trade them in one place. Traditionally, this business "required investors to make many phone calls and analyze the hedge fund themselves before buying it," says Johann Wong, CEO of HedgeWorld in White Plains, N.Y. "This simplifies the whole process."
That said, trading at the site is not as simple as making mutual fund transactions. You also have to wait to get in and out of a fund. Still, it beats begging your buddies for help into an oh-so-exclusive hedge fund.
By Lewis Braham
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Copyright 2002, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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