Our boat

We have a great boat we call Jala which has a Mariner 25hp engine on the rear.

Should savers be protected from the ramifications of the Credit Crunch

Why should money people have put into building societies be protected at all?  After all aren’t may of them to blame for the banking system failure as much as anyone else.  Didn’t all the Bradford and Bingly depositors have rights too vote to lose their mutual status?  Didn’t they get an immediate benefit from the change?  Why should they be protected now?

The answer is because to do otherwise would shake confidence in the system worse than it is already.  That is the only reason.  They are as culpable in my eye as anyone else.

Cheap Flights, my ****

Image via Wikipedia

I have just spent a whole day chasing some cheap flights.  What a minefield.  Mind you I consider myself an expert in such matters.  It is just that flight search engines are generally pretty poor – and that includes even the best of them.  I have used top-flight ones.  They try to be good, they try to be great.  But they have a long way to go.

Let me cut to the chase by saying that what I want out of a flight search engine is, well:

1. No bullshit: Many of them start by saying we search all the flights.  What they actually mean is they search most of the expensive airlines.  They also throw in a few cheapo carriers to look good.  What they do not say and what they do not do is a comprehensive search across all cheap carriers.  To do that you have to go hunting and you largely have to do it yourself.
2. Search by destination: My next thing is that often I know where I want to go.  Where I fly from is very flexible.  None of the search engines I have tried understand this.  You see if I travel locally then I can stay with friends overnight in order to make an early morning flight.  This extends the holiday – so no loss to me.  So I don’t want a search engine that says that I have to check each airport in turn.   That is a big waste of my time, and I have just spent a whole day searching – so believe me it is a waste of time.
3. Flexible Dates: Yes, some are adding flexible dates but generally they are poor at it.  Some just add a day either side, others perhaps 3 days.  What is flexible depends so much on how much choice of flights there are.  If there are around 3 flights per day then yes one day either side might be okay.  If you have only one or two flights per week then any concept of flexible date searching needs to understand that.  All the websites that I tried today did not do that.
4. No Hidden Extras: Some websites kindly provide flight times and extras up front.  Others hide these things until you are a looong way down the purchase process.  What a real turn-off that is.  One for example at the last page suddenly added in fuel surcharge, just before committing credit card information.  If I had not noticed it then I could have bought into the wrong deal.  I know, websites consider such things as “sales strategies” to boos their profits by providing headline cheap seat prices, but hidden extras are going to stop people buying again – and again.

Let me finish by saying what we have available today as flight search engines are a lot better than they were. However there is a lot of money to be made by the airline or flight search engine who implements the above principles – in full.

Owning versus renting your home

In this climate of house prices plummeting, owning a home does not seem very attractive.  They say it is okay if you stay for they long-term, whatever that is.  We had financial problems and decided two years ago to sell our family home and rent instead.  That decision has been absolutely wonderful for us, and so this article is about that story.

First of all may I refer you to a web page that does a kind of comparison of owning versus renting.  The first thing you should notice is the title of the right hand column “considerations”, which really means “disadvantages”, bu they don’t want to say that because this website like a lot of others is in the game of selling mortages.

Yes, if you have a home you have an asset.  That asset you hopefully realise at some point in the future.  This is based on the premise that the rest of the world desires that asset.  If they do not desire your asset then your asset has less value over time.  The general argument as to why people desire such an asset is two things: firstly general government propaganda that says “owning your own home is best”, and the general rise in population implying there is a continual demand for new homes.

Hmm.

So where is this wrong?  Well let me start and look at the needs of a family, over time.  You grow up, start courting, get married, have a baby or two, establish your home, the kids grow up and they leave home and you retire.  Look at this in terms of your housing needs.  Initially you live in your paents home, so no cost to you.  Then when you get married (excuse me for taking societal “norms”, whatever they are) and you at least need a home big enough for two people.  Then you have kids and suddenly you need a home big enough for, say four people.  Then your kids leave home – and lo and behold what are your needs?  Two people a gain, plus some spare for visitors including your kids.  Then, sad to say, one of you (or me) will die and you have a huge house around your neck with just you in it.

So for 20 years of your home owning life you need a large house.  Before and after all you need is an apartment or a small home.  People stay in their large mansions for several reasons.  Primarily it is memories. Another argument is something like “stabilty”.  But we are talking about the biggest investment of your life. Is it right to put all your eggs in one basket?

Don’t get me wrong, owning our own home is a great thing. Just the propaganda is so huge that you need to see it for what it is, and realise there are other options, and options with big upsides.   And that is renting.

We rent our home.  We did not do this out of choice, but it has been a great decision for us.  Previously our mortage hung around our neck like a vice, if you excuse the cliche.  So what have been the advantages of renting.

Firstly we were able to get a home that was larger for less money, much less loney, like a third cheaper on our monthly outgoings.  Not only was the new house larger it was very much more interesting.  When you hunt for a home to rent there are some damned fine properties out there with real character that to buy would be very difficult, very traumatic – but renting is a easy.

So the home we rented was old, described locally as the gingerbread cottage because it was so pretty.  Everyone who viisted it loved it.  People walking by would stop and talk about it.  Truly jaw dropping.  All this for less money?  Now if we had owned this home there would have been high maintenance costs.  But when renting maintenance drops to zilch, zero.  Not only that you have no probelms, no hassle getting a plumber or a carpenter.  You have no problems fixing the boiler.  You don’t even have to take time off work and stay at home for one of these handymen to appear, or not.  Instead you just make one phone call to your landlord and that is it, job done.

My second major point is the cost and trauma of moving home.  If you rent then moving home is a doozy. It is so easy & cheap.  You do not have to pay an taxes to the government, you don’t have to pay estate agent fees, you don’t have to pay legal fees.  Our last move cost us nada, nothing.  Well perhaps that is a slight exaggeration, probably it cost us say £200 total.  Compare that with the cost of moving home when you own it and my guess is that could add up to £10,000?

Oh, and in the UK now we have HIPS so even before you begin to move home you have to pay £500 for a document to prove your home is worth selling.

There is one final point that I would like to make.  This is about the general concept of downsizing.  Most people who own their home do so and store absolute garbage in tehir lofts or attics.  Yes, they may be family treasures but often the real value is nothing.  And what you are realy doing is having a large home to store – garbage.

Okay that is controversial.  I hear you say, “other people have garbage, I don’t”.  But do you really need all this stuff?  I recommend downsizing.  Getting rid of this stuff that is cluttering up your life is very therapeutic.  It is hard to start, but if you don’t do it then when you die you are just storing problems for your children to sort out.

Monetize some of it.  Give stuff away. The key thing is to think about what is important to you.  In my opinion that is your family and your friends.  It also includes your career.  What it does not include is a pile of bricks.

One final thought.  If you are in financial problems due to high mortgage costs then changing from owning to renting is a big change.  Do not take the decision lightly.  Do not take it based on my advice.   Think about what is important to you.  Also in today’s climate selling your home could be very difficult.  However, my prediction, for what it is worth is that selling is not going to be easy for let us say another 10 years?  Yes, I suggest that house prices are not going to reach the previous high for another ten years.

The Teams

Here is what i think the teams doooooo

• Aidtally – Where aid adds up
• basekit – try to drum up support
• DeepMemo – think about playing chess
• Entrip – Rip things ten times!
• Fdream – A new size of paper
• Kyko – Knowledge Yin, Knowledge Out
• MobClix – Tapping the heads of mobsters
• Quillp – Willing your P’s and Q’s
• Saplo – When your strength is sapped, you feel very low.
• Scred – Scared Stiff!
• Soup – Mine, mine, minestrone
• Soylent Systems – Green with Envy
• SpeedSell – When learning to drive, you only have your “L” plates on for 1 day maximum.
• Stupeflix – Watching stew being cooked at the cinema
• TickerTXT – Being stung by flies flying vertically down
• Toksta – Learning baby talk
• ThoughtTrail – Seriously The Pennine Way is not in London
• TripWolf – Wild dog needs new legs
• UberVU – Looking at London from the top of the London Eye
• Uniki – If I lose this one and unique key then how on earth am I going to unlock my bike!
• Yoose – Mees and
• Zoombu – Surprising Venture Capitalists in the London Zoo.

(only joking)

Now the real challenge begins…

Image via Wikipedia

My esteemed colleagues were voted the best startup at Seedcamp in Berlin last Friday.  As always with startups it seems like one step forward and ten steps back!  Well last Friday we made a huge step forward with our GroupDNA and TickerTXT project.

SeedCamp has a great concept of how votes are cast, which is that each authorised attendee has a vote.  Sadly I was unable to attend due to committments elsewhere butwe now go forward to the next stage in September, and that I will attend.  Between now, and then there is much work to do.

So I guess no change there!

Motorbikes

Image by jlanctot via Flickr

We bought a motorbike yesterday.  This is a Yamaha YBR 125cc in Yamaha Blue.  Ideally we wanted black but settled on this since it was more important to us to “get going” rather than our first choice which was black.  When we get the bike we want (after passing driving tests) then we intend to trade-up.

If David Davis was my MP would I break a covenant?

I have never voted Tory in my life, but the stand that David Davis has made may just change my mind – if I lived in his constituency. The paranoia of today’s society for increasing anti-terrorist measures is a self-fulfilling prophesy that was used by Bush to gain power, maintain power and now that his era is almost over – he regrets.

The UK lags behind the US. Let us learn from that regret and not make the same mistakes.

Polonium Possibly Pulverises Planes

If the Polonium scare shows anything it demonstrates quite clearly that protection agencies can do very well with easily identifiable and well understood hazards. With less well known, less likely threats they seem to be at an almost complete loss initially. Yes, they get better at reacting, but so do the people who purport to cause threats, whether they be individuals, terrorists, States or whatever / whoever.

On line in the Internet we see the cat and mouse game of threats played out on a daily basis with viruses, Trojans and the like. What value is there in having a virus checker that catches a virus that was around 10 years ago? Probably not very much. Any hacker would be too embarrassed to send a new variant of an old virus, knowing that, and also unless this was a significantly different variant (which would then probably qualify it as a new virus) then it would have great difficulty getting of the starting grid. So a lot of hacker effort would go nowhere.

Would it not be more fun, interesting, challenging, and ultimately rewarding to a virus writer to create a new virus that has no defense in traditional anti-virus programs? I just received an email from British Airways announcing their position on the Pulonium scare. And not surprisingly it takes a similar position to announcements from Microsoft. Microsoft announce / release security hot fixes when the problem is “solved”, when it is history. Before that moment they say very little, if nothing. Announcements tend, as with that from BA, focus on the good news, leaving debatable points and further negative issues in the background for those interested in reading between the lines.

So what lines could one read if interested? What about other planes? ok so the originally suspect planes are ok, but what about all other planes? What guarantees are their that a pulonium scare is possible elsewhere? Obviously we should not stop flying or travelling. Also we should not let scares such as this stop us from living our normal lives.

Is Office 2007 going to be too little too late?

Google is going from strength to strength with its fledgling on-line documents and spreadsheet editing facilities.  More and more small companies will find these totally and seductively attractive.  They will not be wowed by sexy toolbars – just the ease of collaborating with colleagues on key documents at no cost above the ubiquitous browser.

Right now Google is promoting these in its usual low-key basis. No direct marketing and an emphasis on viral approaches.  And so the take up will be steady as the tools become stronger.

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