Technology posts

Lucia, one of my regular visitors, recently left a comment on my previous post: "Interesting personal blog" about my posts on technology. According to her,

"you started writing about technology, business and e-commerce was because they are sponsored posts."

First, I was thinking of just replying to the comment but then I thought the reply would make a nice post.

I have to disagree with Lucia. I have been writing about technology ever since I started this blog. Here are my few first technology related posts (All of them were written in Sept. 2003):
1. Are most bloggers, Girls?
2. Lot of great FREE stuff on the net
3. Spy in your computer?

One of my blog posts on "Top 5 Ecommerce Companies of Malaysia", also received a lot of interest from my visitors, which also resulted in some collaborative projects with academics.

But she's right. Of late I have been doing a lot of sponsored posts. It's my source of income now.

Anyway, I am visiting a lot of technology related blogs now to catch up with the latest tech developments. One of them is the "SQKIKI Simple Tech" blog. She has some great tips. Just learned about a new Internet advertising services and promotion website called Dclickads from her blog. I might sign up.

Tags: blogs technology

Loans for people with bad credit

When you start a family of your own you start building debt in so many ways - for buying a car, buying a house and so on. In our case, it was worse because we were working at different place, me in Kedah in the north of Malaysia and my wife in Kuala Lumpur. We had to maintain 2 separate houses and we also had our own cars. We also decided to buy an apartment on a loan which we have to repay for 25 years.

This caused a severe strain on our finances. We were fortunate because both of us were working. However, things would suddenly turn up that we had no chance but to borrow money (using our credit cards). Like the time my wife had to go for a Caesarean birth. We decided to go to a private hospital and as you know these places are not free or even cheap. Fortunately our bank credit history was good.

We are still in the process of repaying of our house loan. Thank God! we got rid of both our car when we came to the UK, otherwise we would have been paying for that too.

I am sure many people are in a similar situation and maybe worse. Some of these people come under what is known as a bad credit history. Whenever we apply for a loan, our credit history is reviewed. If you have a bad credit history, you may have to settle for a bad credit loan, which has less favourable terms including higher interest rates. There are several Loans For People With Bad Credit. This includes Bank loans for financing your business and Secured loans for people with bad credit but who have property, among others.

Interesting personal blog

A friend told me that my blog has become less interesting after I starting writing about technology, business and e-commerce. According to her, it was more interesting when most of my posts were about my personal life.

I don't know why but I too prefer personal blogs over blogs with technology or any other specific theme. Somehow I feel more involved. "Where’s Mommy’s Prozac?" is such a blog. The 30+ mother to two teenage girls and a teenage stepson writes that

"My life is all about drama, drama, drama."

One of the posts I really found deeply touching was about the death of her brother - "In Memory of My Brother".

I also found out that we share the same interest in music. Most of her favourites are also mine too.

Buying Euphoria

Euphoria is the new fragrance from Calvin Klein. My wife wanted it and so I thought it would be an ideal Mother's day gift.

Checked out a few online retailers and as I wanted to pay with Paypal, I narrowed it down to Harrods and Boots.

The prices of Euphoria Eau de Parfum 30ml, were same in both: £28 (approx. US$55/ RM192). The only difference was the delivery charges. £4.95 for Harrods and £2.95 for Boots. So naturally I choose boots.

The final charges was £ 33.90. This included "Gift boxing" (£2.95) and a free card.

Looking on the net, I discovered that I could have got it cheaper. The cheapest prices are at:
1. Fragrance Direct: £26.94 (£24.99 + P & P: £1.95)
2. Cheap Smells: £26.45 (£25.50+ P & P: £0.95)
3. Supaperfume: £26.45 (postage free).

Do you know of any place I could have got it cheaper?

Next time before I shop online, I will definitely do a little bit more research to find the best prices.

Tags: Boots Calvin Klein Euphoria Fragrances Harrods Perfume

Web directory with a new concept

There are so many directories on the web today and all of them seem alike. However, I just learned about one which has a slightly different concept not used by many directories.

So how is this directory different?

Well, instead of sorting listings by popularity, Page Rank, or alphabetically, Big Web Links Directory aims to list the best and most popular websites on the Internet, sorted by the contribution amount. The mininimum is US$29.90 for a new listing. You can contribute to a listing to increase its ranking.

Every submission will receive two direct links: one within the specified category and one on a dedicated page. The top 10 listings are shown on the homepage, while the top 20 listings are shown on the top links page, which is a significant benefit for those listings.

The owners of this new site hope to have a very respectable Google PR soon.

So what do you think of this concept?

Car booting March 18

I have posted a few posts about our favourite pastime here in Coventry - searching for bargains at car boot sales. From today I am going to post a list of stuff we bought at every car boot sale we go to over here starting from today under the label: booting.

Here is the list of stuff we bought at the CJ's car boot at Stoneleigh sale last Sunday:



1. 3 books:
i) Bag of bones by Stephen King. 30p
ii) The sigma protocol by Robert Ludlum. 40p
iii) The reality dysfunction by Peter F. Hamilton. 50p

2. 2 folding camping stools. £5

3. 3 jigsaw puzzles. 50p

4. A frying pan. 50p

5. Pair of rubber gloves. 50p

6. 4 framed drawings of classic cars. £2

7. A Mothercare framed baby carrier (not in picture). £3

Total spent: £12.70

Related post:
- Rainy carboot day
- Car Booty in Coventry

Tags: Car boot CJ's Car Boot

Eco tourism in Hawaii

Ecotourism is not a new thing and this concept of tourism is slowly but steadily gaining in acceptance. People can define ecotourism in several ways but I would like to describe it as:

Leave nothing but your footsteps and leave with nothing apart from your nice memories (and the pictures).

There is also a growing breed of eco-friendly tourists - the ecotourists. People who love to travel but are environmentally conscious and friendly. Like millions of people around the World, I love traveling and I would definitely wouldn't want to do any damage to the environment of the places I visit.

One place I have always wanted to visit was the islands of Hawaii. I found out that there are environmentally friendly Hawaii trips for the eco-tourist too.

As opposed to trips offered by the automated sites
Kauai Ecotourism Vacation Rentals hand-picks their properties and offers first class service for you. This local agency claims to lessen "the damage to the spectacles of nature on Kauai and the other Hawaiian islands".

So if you are planning to visit Hawaii, do check out their site.

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