Beware of companies advertising based on suburb

JustLocal is about enabling people to find local businesses. That is businesses close to the area where they live, close to their work, or close to a location they wish to visit either for business or pleasure.

Today I found a legal company promoting themselves in Templestowe on the web. When I find a local company or business I add the site to the local search engine. The problem I find is many businesses tend mislead people as to the area they are located.

In this case the legal firm had set up sites covering different suburbs across Melbourne. Whilst it is possible they may have representation in each area, when checking out the site there were no contact details to indicate the location of the legal practice. There was a 1300 number and an email address different from the site domain. Using the email address domain I was able to track that the most likely owner of the site to be a Bourke Street based law firm.

It is very common practice on the internet for people to attempt to get as wide a coverage for their services as possible. There is nothing wrong in the practice as long as everything is done appropriately and the consumer is not misled. Ideally however the JustLocal approach is to make it easy as possible to find local businesses in the local area.

Next time your searching for a local business keep in mind  businesses will do what they can to get your business and you may end up with the extra time and inconvenience of their location not being where you expected.

With professional service firms also keep in mind they charge very high hourly rates and if they need to travel it will often be at your expense. I remember when working for a chartered accounting firm I'd travel an hour to the client, see the client for an hour and travel again for an hour to return to the office in St Kilda Road. The productive time for the client was an hour. The chargeable time was three hours plus car mileage. For some clients parking fees also applied. When looking for professional services it is prudent to consider travel time of the professional because it could end up being a considerable portion of the amount charged, as well as any out-of-pocket costs for the professional.

I personally feel tricking people into thinking they've found someone local is not the best way to get business and is something a professional firm should avoid. You want to deal with an ethical company and how they advertise is a reflection of their professional ethics.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

Myspace - An end of an era.

The Australian subsidiary of Myspace is about to close at the end of this month. A couple of years ago I watched the traffic graphs and witnessed Facebook passing Myspace and to this day Facebook continues to grow.

I'm personally not a fan of Facebook because I think people's privacy should be number one on the agenda. People should be able to opt to share their information and not have it shared for the benefit of commercial interests, but what I think isn't particularly relevant because Facebook continues to grow.

Myspace was the "big" social site a few years ago and it has now been blitzed by Facebook. In this article one of three founding staff members of Myspace Australia shares their views. I think getting the inside information from someone who has been there, is excellent information which can assist all of us in our own business in some way.

I appreciate Alex sharing his story and thought it may be of interest to JustLocal friends. Thank you Alex for sharing.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.JustLocal.com.au/

MyAnswers: Internet Explorer - Entering wrong site address goes to Google search results

The following MyAnswers solution 2061 is now available:

In Internet Explorer 8 when I type an web site address wrong by one character I end up with the Google search page. All I want to do is correct the wrong character in the address bar but now it contains a lengthy URL. How do I disable passing the option to show Google search results?

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz

MyAnswers: Spellcheck web pages using Opera browser

The following MyAnswers solution 2059 is now available:

This solution provides a handy technique to check the spelling in web pages on a site using the Opera browser.

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz

MyAnswers: Skype won't install on Android HTC mobile from Optus

The following MyAnswers solution 2057 is now available:

Why won't Skype install on my Android based HTC mobile phone from Optus?

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz

MyAnswers: How to delete a Vistaprint account.

The following MyAnswers solution 2054 is now available:

How do I delete my Vistaprint account? With Vistaprint you need to set up an account to determine the full price including delivery for free offers as you can't get a total price without an account.

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz

Word Check updated to provide spelling suggestions for misspelt words

Word Check provides the preferred Australian English spelling for words and until now provided the word was either found or not found. When a word is misspelt I've always wanted to provide a listed of suggestion words to help people using Word Check.

I've now completed an update to Word Check and now Word Check provides a list of suggested words which will often include the correct spelling of the word you've entered.

For the meaning or definition of words, I've now removed Wiktionary and provide links to a more authoritative resource. Using Word Check is still the best option to check words, as Word Check provides the preferred Australian English spelling. Spelling includes plurals and possessives, which are often not provided with many dictionaries, but often give us the most grief when it comes to spelling.

Please let me know if you find any problems. The dictionary is still evolving so if you find anything you feel needs to be reviewed, please don't hesitate to write to me and let me know.

Word Check is available via the main dictionary page and also directly at http://www.justlocal.com.au/clients/australian-dictionary/.

Thank you,

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

Downloading Skype on the iPhone.

I happily suggest to people to download Skype to their iPhone. It works pretty well when used with a wireless network. Lately I've been testing Skype on the Telstra 3G network. In my latest MyAnswers solution I provide an example of how I use Skype on an iPhone and how  to work out the cost of using Skype on a 3G service.

You can find more information in MyAnswers solution 2053.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

Home loan cal (calculations)

I was quite astonished to read on the News Limited site, the number of people now considering moving their loan to have reached 25%. The figures indicate of the estimated 4.4 million home loans over a million are being reconsidered.

If you're looking to refinance your home loan it would be a good idea to seek professional advice from a home loan broker. On the JustLocal postcode page for 6030 (Clarkson, Merriwa, Mindarie, Quinns Rocks, Ridgewood, Tamala Park - Western Australia) you can find Aussie Mortgage Masters and on my network group page you can find John Cosby from Hotline Homeloans who is based in Melbourne.

Perhaps one of your New Year's resolutions might be to review your home loan and consider the options.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

Tags: home loan calculations, home loan calc, home loan comparisons, repayments calculator home loan, refinance home loan

Warning: Telstra pre-paid mobile wi-fi stopped working after a month

I don't know why Telcos don't wish to make what they are offering clear. Surely the short term financial gain over loss of credibility with customers isn't worth it. I seem to find this with every telco I use, so I'm not singling out Telstra. It is just in this case I'm using them as an example.

I purchased a Telstra pre-paid mobile wi-fi hotspot device in early November. It cost $149 and I thought based on my enquiries it came with 5GB of data which expired in 90 days. I thought once the data had expired I'd then use their 10GB pre-paid plan which lasts for 365 days for $150.

I set up the device using the number provided which was a 125 number. My first surprise was I was charged a timed called costing a couple of dollars via Skype. I used Skype because it was convenient. I see no reason for Telstra to provide a number which could end up being a timed call just to set up their service.

I use the Telstra mobile wi-fi every now and then. A couple of weeks ago it stopped working. My gut feeling was it would relate to something to do with the 90 day offer.

I called support and the first person partly confirmed the offer was in addition to also paying for one of Telstra's pre-paid amounts. So you can't use the included data for 90 days unless you also pay one of the pre-paid amounts. This isn't clearly stated anywhere.

I just don't get why Telstra has to be almost deceiving in their approach. I'm buying their product for $149 and I'm lead to believe from their site I'd get 5GB of data to use for 90 days. I'm then happy to pay the $150 to use their service. Now I'm in two minds. I simply don't trust Telstra when they continuously do things like this.

The previous examples are they would let you know when your data bundle was expiring by sending an SMS message. Without any notification they dropped the facility which meant after your bundle expired you'd eat up your normal credit. Another example is they promoted the ability if you purchased one of their mobile phones to get access to email included for free. After spending over an hour on the telephone I ended up writing off the telephone as a bad experience. Telstra had installed so much crap in the mobile phone it was annoying to use.

I also want to share that to actually get the mobile wi-fi to work I spoke to four people in Telstra support taking about an hour to largely confirm what I expected. I'd already isolated that the wi-fi hotspot was physcially working and connecting to their service. All I need was confirmation that the problem was about how they charged and that in fact the 90 day offer wasn't the first 90 days of usage. If you buy the Telstra pre-paid mobile wi-fi ignore the 5GB data offer as though it doesn't exist. Then buy the data you need. Then consider the 5GB data a bonus if you end up using it. The people in the Telstra shop didn't know what they were doing. I believe I asked the questions and had it confirmed that the data would be available for 3 months and then I could recharge. I can't quite recall but I believe I called Telstra support to confirm so I felt I'd asked the questions I needed to ask. Something like this should be pretty basic and should just work as promoted.

So be careful of the potential for a charged call when you set up your pre-paid mobile wi-fi and also stick with the basics. Asking Telstra staff questions has little point and telephone support takes forever.

In comparison I purchased a 3 USB data stick for $149 with 12 months of data (12GB) and that is exactly what I received. It simply worked. As well they gave a 30 day 1GB bonus to get you started so you didn't have to use your data for the first 30 days. The only issue is obviously 3's coverage is not as good as Telstra's. But if you are in a good coverage area, consider your options. Telstra's wi-fi will end up being $149 plus $150 for 10GB of data, plus a bonus 5GB which lasts for 90 days. Roughly twice the price.

Hopefully this post will help others make a better informed decision when considering the Telstra pre-paid mobile wi-fi. At least you'll know what you are getting.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.onlineconnections.com.au/

Australian dictionary blog now live

Hi,

I've now set up an Australian dictionary blog to further share information relating to the Australian English dictionary products and services I produce. This will provide the following benefits:

• Dictionary related posts will now largely be contained within the Australian English dictionary blog.
• This will enable me to phase out the forum which is no longer used.
• News items for the dictionary pages on the site will now appear in the blog rather than on the individual pages.
• I aim to extend MyAnswers solutions to cover information I find of interest in the area of the preferred Australian English spelling.
• The dictionary pages will have their own news feed so if Australian English spelling is of interest to you, you can now subscribe to the blog using the RSS feed.

Until now I've not been able to publish many interesting aspects of our language as it would tend to overwhelm this blog. Now I should be able to share more information.

Kelvin Eldridge
The Preferred Australian English spelling

VistaPrint free premium business card offer.

I receive emails from Vistaprint regularly and this time I decided to follow the link for the free premium business card offer. I landed on the page, uploaded the graphic for my card I had designed for me and followed through the process provided. The end price was going to be $20.73. I'm not saying this isn't a very good price for 250 business cards, but it isn't free.

Before purchasing your "free" business cards from Vistaprint or any other company, you should review your needs. Next time when you need cards the offer won't be "free". Look at the bigger picture. In this case I had my card professionally designed. The same design can then be extended to be used across my business if required.

If you look at the Ideal Business Card offer for $159 your obtain a professionally designed card plus 1,000 business cards with printing on both sides and gloss on the front. If you purchased four lots of 250 cards over time for $37.49 (totalling a thousand cards) the price ends up around the same, but you only get matt cards, no professionally designed artwork and no opportunity to use the design across the rest of your business.

Next time you're thinking about a free offer, take a little time to think about what is in your interests right now, but also in the future. It might not be "free", but it may save you time and money in the long run.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.onlineconnections.com.au/

PS. As a Virtual Profit Sharing member I receive a profit share on any business that results from using the link for the Ideal Business Card. The opportunity to profit share is available for free to anyone who wishes to become a Virtual Profit Sharing member and help businesses to prosper by referring business.

UPDATE: Approximately 5 hours after writing this blog entry I received another offer for the free business cards. This time with my graphic displayed and again for free. When I checked it was now free but the graphic resulted in a price of $8.99. Not too bad I thought. Previously the graphic was discounted to under $2. I decided to proceed.

At the point of purchase you are given delivery options with the standard 14 days being $17.03. When working out your pricing watch out for the delivery charge and make sure you add it if you're making a comparison. Remember you will need to reorder at some stage and you'll pay the full price plus any other charges, such as the image upload and delivery fee. I've seen another company offer free cards only to see people unhappy to be charged for delivery and handling. To me free isn't free unless it costs you nothing, period. So I again decided not to proceed.

My thought is to put the money towards the full gloss cards I actually prefer and to purchase a quantity of a thousand. In addition I'd like to add some text on the reverse side. I can use The Ideal Business Card approach and obtain the cards faster and what I want for around the same price without any of the discounting offered by Vistaprint. It really is good to add in ALL costs including postage when making comparisons.

MyAnswers: Acrobat PDF file opening in Notepad instead of Acrobat Reader

The following MyAnswers solution 2035 is now available:

I've been playing with Border's digital eBooks and now when I go to open a PDF file it opens using Notepad. How do I fix this?

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz

MyAnswers: Google Web Preview

The following MyAnswers solution 2033 is now available:

How to stop Google search results from showing a snippet and the instant preview. (Agent string: Mozilla/5.0 (en-us) AppleWebKit/525.13 (KHTML, like Gecko; Google Web Preview) Version/3.1 Safari/525.13)

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz

How much power does an Apple iPhone 3GS use

I must admit I really like small technology and in particular the savings on electricity which can be had by using the convenience of a handheld device rather than leaving a desktop computer on all day.

I've found as soon as a person gets an Apple iPhone or Touch product their use of their computer goes down considerably because many of the background tasks like checking email, or social networking, can be done on a portable device. That means the main desktop computer often doesn't even need to be turned on.

Often when people turn on their desktop computer they also turn on a number of additional devices such as a connected printer which increases power usage. I found when I had a HP PocketPC I could turn it on and check my emails in around ten seconds so I didn't have to even turn the computer on until I was ready to start working on projects requiring the computer. However the PocketPC didn't keep up with technology and so I decided to get an Apple iPhone 3GS to use as a portable computer. Yes I don't even use it as a phone. I simply use it as a portable computer and with the right SIM and data plan, I get a portable computer which gives me internet access in many places for $149 a year plus the cost of the iPhone.

Every time I turn my iPhone on and use it instead of the desktop computer I know I'm saving electricity, but the question is how much electricity. I decided to measure the electricity and work out how much it costs me to run my computer using the Energy Cost Calculator. I used the power meter which is shown on the Energy Cost Calculator page.

From what I can see when charging the iPhone it consumes about 6 watts of power and slightly more if you are using it at the same time. Once the battery is full it uses about 1 watt if left on the charger. Charging takes about one to two hours and I often top up the iPhone battery each day. The cost to charge up my iPhone if it did take two hours a day is less than a dollar a year.

Click here to determine cost per year for charging assuming one hour per day. (Change hours to suit yourself.)

Click here to determine cost to run assuming 14 hours per day, exluding charging. (Change hours to suite yourself.

My desktop computer with a 17" LCD monitor uses around 110 watts of power. Without a handheld computer I'd probably leave the computer on from first thing in the morning until last thing at night. With the handheld computer it is possible that on weekends I wouldn't even need to turn the computer on. If I ran my computer every day, all day, the cost will be around $112 a year. The more I use a handheld computer instead of the desktop the more money I save.

Kelvin Eldridge
You can save up to 50% of your electricity bill with a few simple changes in behaviour.
www.justlocal.com.au/clients/energy-cost

Watch out for sites which copy content

If you have a site on the internet keep in mind whatever you write may be copied. If you are reading pages on the internet keep in mind the site you are reading the information on may not be the site which created the information.

Here is an example of a site which took an entire copy of my blog post and put it on their site. This isn't a rare one off situation and it isn't limited to overseas companys. I've seen in done buy an Australian and New Zealand company as well.

www.texascomputerdoctors.com/justlocal-computer-repair-melbourne-templestowe-templestowe-lower-bulleen-doncaster-doncaster-east-eltham-lower-plenty-montmorency/

In this case what the site gets out of it is material which as been created at someone else's cost, which of course it has no right to being a clear violation of copyright. They then wrap Google advertising around the material and make money when people click on the ads. Without Google providing the ads there would be no incentive for this type of site to exist.

If you see this type of site, or suspect a site is copying material, a search on Google will often find the originating site.

My main desire is to provide examples where readers and businesses can easily see how others are using material on the internet which would never be considered appropriate in the offline world. For a person putting in time and resources seeing what happens on the internet can help them better look after their interests and the interests of their readers.

Kelvin Eldridge
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

Google web preview appearing in logs

I noticed recently in my site logs an increasing number of browser agent strings with the term Google Web Preview so I decided to investigate. The reason I decided to investigate is in my logs all I see is my web page being used by another site, but not an actual visitor coming to my site. For anyone with a site that means someone is using their site information as part of their site and that means people stay at the other site instead of visiting your site.

One of the powerful features of the internet is the sharing of information, but what happens with some sites, is they come along and take a whole chunk of your information and display it on their site. That helps the other site as they get your content that has taken you time and resources to create for free and keeps visitors at their site and doesn't send them on to your site. They gain at your expense.

The question becomes what is a fair amount of material that another site should display. In my opinion is should be just sufficient to whet a person's appetite to find out more. Providing too much means they can read all they need on the site which is using another person's material. I find Slashdot is a good example of this. I can read large chunks of a site's material and not have to go to the source site's material. In my humble opinion they are providing far too much material from another site.

Now how does this relate to Google web preview appearing in my logs. From what I can see Google is now enabling people to preview a page from within Google's search results. That keeps the person searching in Google's pages which means Google ends up with people on their site longer, increasing the chances of people clicking on their ads. This isn't yet available in Australia from what I can see, but if you visit http://www.google.co.uk/ and perform a search you'll see a magnifying glass next to each result. Click on the magnifying glass and you'll get a preview of the page. The person no longer needs to go to your site to read about your information and what you have to offer. Bing provides a similar feature, but from what I see it provides a little more text, whereas Google displays your page as you designed it.

In the past if someone found your site via Google you had a chance of getting a visit and the person would take a few seconds to read your material and then click off your site, or stay on your site and read more. Google's new approach effectively embeds your information into their site meaning your site adds to their content.

My feeling is this isn't good. We've seen the major media companies getting really upset because of their content being included by others. With the media company's size they can at least negotiate a deal. For small businesses your only real choice is to accept how Google treats your information. I personally think it is going too far. I don't think many people would like their site to appear in a window on my site.

The good thing is I believe as Google incorporates more material from others' sites it creates an opportunity for a search engine which puts the site owner's interests as a top priority. It won't happen tomorrow, but I believe it will happen because it is our material that has made Google as strong as it is today. Linking is OK, but incorporating too much goes a bit too far.

For those with sites you may wish to check out your site by using the Google UK site and see how your site previews. With some clever thinking you may be able to rework the preview that appears to encourage people to check out your site. Whilst Google's aim is most likely to keep people on their site longer, your aim is to encourage them to visit your site using whatever clever design technique you may be able to come up with.

Kelvin Eldridge
JustLocal - Local advertising with a money back guarantee
http://www.justlocal.com.au/

New Years Resolution ideas

Without doubt losing weight especially after Christmas would be one of those New Years resolutions people make. I certainly will be aiming to lose a few kilograms. I'm always amazed at how many different ways companies market for people to lose weight when it can be done at almost no cost, with a small amount of time and no exercise. How do I know? I did it myself and worked out the maths behind losing weight. To show it could be done I set out to lose my excess weight (yes I was obese with a BMI over 30) and lost over 20kg. But not only that I decided to do it without exercising to show it isn't about exercise like others would have us believe.

I started with the BMI/BMR figures and worked from there. I've written a calculator to help others as well as a couple of interesting calculators which shows how much energy is used for doing different types of exercises and the real eye-opener, a calculator which shows how long you have to exercise should you decide to have a treat. You'll be amazed at how long you need to exercise, but once you realise the maths behind weight loss like I did, you'll know where to focus you energy to lose weight. You can find the calculators on JustLocal (http://www.justlocal.com.au/).

For those with different goals you may wish to consider Superlife, which is a program created by Gary Hipworth. Gary is an experience business coach and has distilled goal setting into a simple to follow program, so no matter what your goal is in life, you'll have a tool which will help you determine and achieve your goals.

Start the New Year on a positive note and this time when you make a New Years resolution, make it a reality. Make it happen. Then you can focus on your next achievement.

Kelvin Eldridge
The creator of The Preferred Australian English Spelling for Microsoft Office
Yes. That was one of my goals which now helps myself and many others.

Australia’s top Google searches 2010

If anyone has a finger on the pulse of what Australians are interested in it would be Google. My logs show Google is used by over 95% of Australians when searching. That puts Google in an unenviable position of being able to see trends as they're happening, which is an enormous advantage for Google.

Now whilst I'd love to be in Google's position of having the front seat when it comes to trends, and I'm sure most other business would too, Google makes available a whole range of historical information. One I find interesting to read is Google's Zeitgeist. I decided to check out Google's information for 2010. You can read Google's blog post at http://google-au.blogspot.com/2010/12/taking-pulse-australias-top-google.html and their summary information at http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2010/.

I consider myself to be an avid reader of technology and what's happening on the web, but even I hadn't noticed a couple of the services which feature prominently.

The one service which really stood out for me was Tumblr. Tumblr is a modern blogging service and it has an impressive growth curve. I'd not seen Tumblr mentioned in the press, but to see it made the top ten means there are a lot of people interested in Tumblr.

A service I hadn't seen is Omegle. When I checked it out I found it was like Chatroulette. These are services which enable you to talk to random strangers on the internet. Not exactly something that interests me, but obviously it is of interest to lots of others. Also interesting is when you compare the graph for Chatroulette with Omegle. Omegle shows progressive growth whereas Chatroulette had enormous growth earlier in the year and a large drop off rate.

Perhaps you'll find something useful in Google Zeitgeist to give you an idea and help your business.

Kelvin Eldridge
The Preferred Australian English Spelling For Office

MyAnswers: How I recovered data from a dead HP notebook.

The following MyAnswers solution 2031 is now available:

My notebook computer has died and I'd really like to get my important data off the hard disk. Can you do it for me?

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Kelvin Eldridge
www.MyAnswers.biz