There’s a technology which has been on the horizon for a while now. Something I’ve been very interested in. location based services. In a nutshell, your mobile phone signal can be triangulated to identify your actual location. This concept can seem slightly disturbing to some. It might have overtones of Orwellian big brother about it, but imagine this….

Emergency Number Service – say you’re in an accident and you call the Emergency services. Wouldn’t it be easier for them to find you and get help to you if they could read your exact location straight from your phone call?

Or in business. With the massive growth in delivery services due to shopping online, wouldn’t it be great to be able to monitor the location of all your delivery drivers and be able to redirect them to your customers more efficiently?

There are so many uses for this, it’s difficult to imagine that it won’t become one of the most important new technologies of the decade.

My dad doesn’t have much luck with computers. He’s always breaking them and loosing all his software and photos etc. He asked me what to do about it, so I did a little research and decided on the PC Magazine editors choice award winning Ibackup. It does everything he needs to back up his home PC, even though it’s really aimed at small businesses.

It’s an Online Backup service which supports open file backups, which is perfect for backing up things like Microsoft outlook and other ‘in use’ data. It’s the best of it’s kind I found, and at only $10 per month for 5GB of backup it’s a great solution for my own small business too.

I have seen some great developments in the credit card industry recently which I would lie to share. Firstly pre-paid credit cards. Often times you can’t use cash anymore, but not everyone can have a credit card. Especially useful for your kids as an emergency measure, these pre-paid credit cards are going to open up a whole new market.

Here are some useful links for you if you’d like to read about the subject further

credit cards - http://www.cardguide.co.uk/
compare credit cards - http://www.cardguide.co.uk/best_buys.html

low interest credit card

Of course, the traditional credit card market is still incredibly strong. It’s an easy way to borrow. It can be expensive in terms of paying back interest, but that’s not how credit cards should really be used. The best thing to do is to use the credit and clear your balance every month.

Operating a business which is considered by the merchant account providers as ‘risky’; ie adult entertainment, online shopping, internet dating, travel agencies, legal gaming or online pharmacies, it can  help to use an offshore international merchant account.

One of the leading companies that can help you with investigating the offshore processing option is Ms Merchant

Discount Click are an affordable option for SMEs to increase the natural Search traffic to their business. For monthly fees as low as $50 a month, discount click offer you search engine marketing and promotion services which will help you achieve higher rankings in Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Inktomi and more.

Although you can expect it to take several months to achieve top 10 rankings for most search engines, you should start to see increase in rankings and traffic performance within 2-4 weeks.

Have a look at discount click - it could be the best marketing spend you make this month.

I’m starting to feel more and more exposed on the internet. It’s not the technology that’s changing, just that there are more and more people out there who are one step ahead of us regular folks. One of the main things to worry about is broadcasting your IP address. ANYONE can send an official request for your private details straight to your Internet service provider, and your identity is wide open.

This problem can be addressed by using an IP hiding service. I had a look around for some software to help me out, and found there are many options. One of the best sites I found however, was “www.hide-my-ip-address.com”. With good advice, and sound, solid, well priced software you can surf the internet safely, and more importantly, anonymously.

Weblink: hide IP address

I love to play backgammon, and playing online is a way to find excellent playing partners quickly and easily. Backgammon is a board game that relies heavily on both skill and luck. The game is in essence a race between two players with each player aiming to bring his own pieces into the home board and then to take them off before the other player does. BackgammonMasters is the best software I’ve found for playing in a lively community.

Why is BackgammonMasters different? Because it is the only free software which offers every one of it’s games in a single download form a single site. You can download the games in 10 Languages, Including Arabic and Hebrew amongst others.

BackgammonMasters has added Blackjack to the family of games included in it’s family of community games. It offers a multiplayer table allowing up to 5 players to play at the same time. You can even sit in on an existing game and watch the action before joining in.

To celebrate the launch, the company are offering some special free tournaments, so if you’ve ever played blackjack and would like to try a multiplayer community version, get over to BackgammonMasters.com to find out more details.

Sometimes I wish I were American. When I started smoking pot, drinking and generally displaying self-destructive behaviour when I was in my teens it seemed fairly normal to me. Part of growing up. Part of growing up in the states appears to be rehab. We don’t really go in for that as much over here in Europe. It’s a shame because I think it would have really helped me avoid the problems I still have in my 30’s.

So if I were a teenager, I’d want to be in rehab here ‘<a href=”http://www.echomalibu.com”>Teen Rehab ECHO MALIBU</a>’. It’s just beautiful, and it sounds like heaven. The list of activities – surfing lessons, sports, hiking, theatre outings, horse riding – all that sounds amazing, but also the Malibu teen drug treatment facility has expert staff on hand and classroom and certified teachers to make sure you don’t fall behind at school.
<img src=”http://tinyurl.com/2xtffh” />

Well, it IS certainly easy to get a loan, but I don’t think it’s too easy, no. The fact that there are companies out there who are ready to lend money to people allows us to develop our lives in ways that weren’t possible back in the olden days.

http://www.thriftyscot.co.uk/money/compare-loans.html - loans
http://www.thriftyscot.co.uk/money/secured.html - secured loans

Of course people often get into trouble with debt, but that’s to be expected. To get a loan you have to be a grown up, and as a grown up you have to take responsibility for your actions. I’ve been in debt with plenty of personal loans, and I’m still in it. Debt is good. It puts you on the radar and makes you a proper person. It gives you gravitas.

I really love my new camera, but if I had the choice, the camera I’d go for would be the Nikon D3. It’s really been designed for sports photographers, which is what I’d want to use it for. Those incredible powder day skiing shots. It’s also the fastest camera in it’s class, with a shutter release time lag of only 37 ms with the capability of shooting up to 9 frames per second. It even starts up quickly – only 0.12 seconds. If I were to start to take my photography further, then this is the camera I’d aim to acquire. Of course, with a $5000 price tag, it’s not a cheap piece of equipment, but the results would be worth it professionally speaking.