Google Chrome

I like to keep Munny4Hunny readers informed of internet relates issues and software, and having long championed the Firefox cause, I can report that I have had my head turned by Google Chrome.

This browser is great to use, has some really smart features and is noticeably faster that other browsers I have used. I love the 'open a new tab' feature that opens with snapshots of recently browsed pages, more often than not, you click on a snapshot rather than having to finding it in 'favourites' or typing a URL. I haven't gone a bundle on add-ons in Firefox, but have already installed two add-ons into Chrome - I have one that checks my googlemail for me, and even pops up a little preview of emails as they arrive... and another that gives an instant SEO overview of the page I am viewing.

I have been using Chrome for about a week, but although I haven't actually marked it as my default browser, I think it won't be long before I do...

Depression

Depression is a very serious problem for many, and should not be treated lightly either by the sufferer or their friends and family. Once diagnosed, there are many forms of depression treatment available, but as always with medical conditions, the help of healthcare professionals should be sought. In some cases, symptoms of depression can be alleviated through diet, meditation and counselling rather than with medication.

Depression can have far-reaching effects, not only for the individual but also for family and friends. The best thing you can do for someone who is suffering is to listen to what they have to say, and guide them towards an effective treatment.

Term life insurance

Having the right type of insurance that meets your needs is vital, understanding all the terms is often a bit of a maze for the uninitiated...

For instance term life insurance is the type of insurance you have for a predetermined period, for example, during the term of a mortgage. This kind of cover pays out if the insured individual dies before the mortgage has been paid off, and provides mortgage protection for partner and family who might otherwise not be able to afford mortgage payments.

There are a number of points to consider before signing on the dotted line, namely:

• Before signing the insurance cover provided by your mortgage company, you should check if similar cover is available from a third-party insurer at a better rate.
• Consider whether you also need protection against critical illness and losing your job.
• Check whether other policies you have would provide sufficient cover.

Having more insurance than absolutely necessary may not be a bad thing, but for short term cover, it could be a waste of money.

Earnings June 2010

Profit in June was pretty much soaked up by my purchases when I bought my NAS (Network Attached Storage) from eBay. Not a bad month for blogging, in fact the second best so far this year.. and some welcome earnings from turning cassettes into CD's meant that I made enough to cover my eBay activity plus £2.73 profit!
I already have some paid to post blog earnings under my belt for July, and a few more cassettes done, so if I can keep off eBay, I should do alright this month!! I have a new project waiting to come online which may need an extra 'income' column. I am just finalising the website for this project and am working on marketing in the meantime - I am hoping that this will bring in some income that once complete, will allow me to just collect fees on an annual basis - more on this later...
I still have several other projects to iron out, hopefully they will all prove fruitful in their own way...

What's in a name?

Phentirmene, Phenylethylamine or Phentermine 37.5? How do you know the difference? and how will they affect you? In short, my internet searching tells me that Phenylethylamine can stimulate the central nervous system and is thought to promote pleasure. It can be combined with other substances (such as Phentirmene) to make them more effective.
On the other hand, Rx Phentermine is an appetite suppressant with some fairly risky side effects. If you are looking at self-medicating for dieting - make sure you find out a little about what you are introducing into your body.

Adult Acne

One of the most effective way in which the internet can be used for marketing products is when the prospective customer may require a degree of privacy or anonymity not provided by High Street shops. Certain medical conditions that may cause embarrassment, are ripe for this kind of marketing. For instance, it is probably far easier to sell adult acne treatments online than it is over the counter. However, the privacy issue can also give rise to other problems such as not wanting to cause a fuss if the product does not work as advertised.
For instance, if you bought a remedy for an embarrassing condition, the seller may feel safe to supply a bogus product because they assume you will not want to attract attention by taking legal action. My advice is to only deal with reputable companies online - preferably companies that have proper contact details and are properly certified to operate in their chosen field.

Late posting June earnings

My current projects are keeping me from compiling figures for June, and I have yet to compile a list of outgoings as yet.

My network attached storage device was the biggest purchase, but I am disappointed to report that some of the negative press I read about it (after I had bid on it!) have proved true. When I first had it, it would occasionally go 'missing' from the network, but just lately it seems not to want to appear on the network at all. My conclusion is that this particular model will be fine for occasional back-ups, but I would not trust it to host network files as each time I need to access it, I am needing to re-boot all the PC's on the network... I had attached my two USB drives to it, but now I am considering attaching them to single PC's where they will be available all the time...

In general, Paid to blog has continued to provide a background level of income leaving me free to concentrate on some of the many other projects that I hope will become long-term earners. Cassette to CD conversions have been scarce over the last few months, but there has been a bit more activity lately. I hope to be able to add to this income with some more projects that will come on line in a short while.

Slideshows

Whether you want to show off your holiday or children on Facebook or on a DVD to give to relatives, slideshows can be a geat way to do it. The latest software available for this comes from Smilebox.com - they provide a copy of their software for free download. You can then upgrade to the full-featured version later if you find the software useful and want to explore the additional features.

Marketing a software product this way is becoming increasingly popular because it allows the user to test a lot of the functionality without having to part with any money. The alternative limited trial period is sometimes not so effective because it assumes that you will have 30 days to play with the software, whereas in reality it may be only occasionally that you get the opportunity to try the software out properly. However, with the Smilebox slideshow software, you can still cancel the transaction up to 14 days after downloading the fully-featured version.

Getting on...

As I get older, I am finally starting to take a little more care over the things that I consume. I am not affected by weight problems in the slightest, which means that I have always been able to eat whatever I want. Unfortunately that probably means I have consumed all the wrong things without any obviously visible side effects.

I have had episodes where I have eaten more fruit, but in truth this is not a habit I have been able to sustain, however I have managed to ensure that I take more water and less coffee - which has to be a good thing.

I have yet to go down the route of natural protein powders or supplements, but if I don't make sure my diet is properly balance, I may even have to consider that sort of remedy.

I have always considered exercise as being more important than diet, and continue to get regular hard exercise a couple of times a week. It is the combined effects of bad diet and lack of exercise that gives us the real problems.

UK Weather

The reason that we British like to talk about the weather so much, is that it is always changeable - there is always something to say about the weather over here... Recently the nights have been too warm to sleep comfortably and no doubt sales of fans and sleep aids have responded accordingly.

I quite often leave windows open to allow a refreshing breeze in, but unfortunately, it also allows in the loud voices as people tumble out of house parties in the wee small hours. Shouts and laughter are all very well when you are being bundled into the taxi nicely inebriated after an evening with friends - not so amusing when you have just dropped off to sleep for the fourth time at 2am with the prospect of being woken by a small child just a few hours later...

Scanning software

I have long been running a 'paperless' office at home running the scanning software that came with my combi-printer. If you don't have suitable software for organising scans, then I can thoroughly recommend doing an internet search and seeing what is available. Using this software, I am able to record every document we receive and happily get rid of the original, safe in the knowledge that I have an electronic copy at my disposal 24 hours a day (fully backed up onto my new NAS network storage of course).
Due to privacy issues, we tend to destroy anything with personal information on it (even merely our address) making it essential that we are able to recall important documents at a couple of mouse clicks.
We actually burn all scanned documentation in an open fire, and if you think that is a bit extreme, my wife and I have been attempted victims of identity theft even before it was fashionable! Our data was taken from the electoral role - they were able to guess our age somehow, but importantly did not know our actual birth dates, so their information did not tie up properly. This is why I never give my correct date of birth except for things like tax and driving licence, insurance etc... If a website asks for my date of birth, I use a bogus date because they don't NEED to know, and I do NEED to keep that information private.

Streeeetched

'Stretched' certainly describes how I feel at the moment, not only by the demands of the day job, but by all the 'projects' that I have on the go...

I have an SEO project that I wanted to develop, I created the first site, but my intention was to develop 'sister' sites too in order to guage the impact of combined SEO techniques over a group of sites effectively 'supporting' each other... This is on hold due to pressures of other projects, plus the site I created is kind of self-sustaining now and will make a small profit even if I don't touch it... I still feel that I will come back to this at a later date - but even if I don't, I have definitely learned a few things.

I have some updates to do on older sites that I am still trying to make my mind up on - primarily this is a face-lift for the site, but I have used the opportunity to make some strategic changes which could see me split the site over several domains. The truth is that domains are cheap, and splitting a site up and cross-linking could give an SEO boost. Added to this, I have lost page-rank on this site in the past, nothing I have been able to do has restored it, so I may resort to just using a totally different domain and re-thinking the whole project. Linked into this, is a new project that I want to pursue (when I have the time) which will involve selling some open-source software and an associated PDF guide.

I have yet another project that is almost ready to launch (this is the one that has been occupying my time lately). It will be a service for building and hosting websites which I am going to aim at local businesses. If this attracts some interest, then it could potentially take up a lot of my time which will once more prevent me from pursuing the lapsed projects....

What it is teaching me (or maybe re-teaching me, as I have talked about this before) is to carefully discern which projects are worth spending time on, which projects are not working, and which projects could work if a totally new approach is taken. There are a couple of blogs that I have been blatantly neglecting - this tells me that they are off my radar a bit (and therefore I am justified in trying to sell the domains...)

Car Insurance

It is quite a while since I have been in the market for car insurance as I have been the grateful recipient of a company car. However, the emphasis of my work has shifted and I have less need for the car than I used to, in fact it would be more helpful for my wife to have use of a car during the week.

I am contemplating putting in an offer for my company car, so have been frantically looking for the cheapest car insurance that I can find. Unfortunately, they all seem to be incredibly expensive, but that could be because the car is probably in a high insurance group. Our alternative would be to spend the money on something a little more economical, but having the car we have had for the last few years seemed like a good idea.

Making Money by Saving Money

It has long been my motto that the fastest way to make money is to save money and I recently took to trimming my hair rather than pay for it to be cut by a barber. The results are a bit drastic, but I reckon I have used it about five times now saving me around £40 or so. The trimmer cost about £25 so I have already saved quite a bit and am looking at serious savings in the long term...
Munny4Hunny is mostly about making money from various internet activities, but it is worth making the point that a few good savings can be more effective than a couple of hours hard work..

World Cup updates

It has not been a great World Cup so far in that we have seen very few good performances, and some teams have really not lived up to expectations. England were expected to win all the games in their group, yet have only managed two draws. Spain have lost to Switzerland, Germany lost to Serbia and many of the teams have underperformed. Maybe it's the altitude, or maybe it's an indication that the 'lesser' teams are catching up.
Whatever the reason, I hope the games become a little more memorable, that some real stars emerge and most of all that somehow, England make it through at least the group stages....

TV on your PC

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of SeeSaw. All opinions are 100% mine.

I have been watching TV on my PC for a while now and I have used three different methods:

• The first was through a 'Freeview' box which is fed through a SCART to composite lead, and then a Pinnacle 'Dazzle' USB video converter. This works, but the solution involves some relatively expensive hardware, and the results in terms of picture quality are not really that great...

• The second way was through 'peer-to-peer' services which don't cost anything, but do involve downloading software (and seeing as the service is a bit on the 'dark-side' you wonder whether the software is trustworthy..). Once you have your software, there is quite a good choice of stuff to watch, but the time it takes to get a feed and the widely varying quality of broadcast can leave you very frustrated.

• The third way is a service called SeeSaw which offers both free and 'rented' broadcasts from broadcasters like the BBC and Channels 4 and 5 along with other independent studios. SeeSaw has a stunning Comedy Section with the likes of 'Only Fools and Horses', 'Men Behaving Badly' and 'Alan Partridge' on offer, they even have some World Cup content too.

Watching SeeSaw is perfectly safe and legal, which is more than can be said for peer-to-peer broadcasting, not only that, but the quality is far and above much of TV content that you can currently access online.If you are already using 4oD and Demand5, you can also pick up that content for free on SeeSaw, and you can then share what you watch with your friends on Facebook and Twitter. Suffice to say, that the Freeview box has been put to better use, and the peer-to-peer software has been uninstalled, as they are not a patch on the quality of viewing offered by SeeSaw.

Latest Gadgets

I am still playing with my new NAS that I bought from eBay, and so far have found that it works pretty much as I hoped. Access speeds are hardly blistering, but I only really want to use it for back-ups anyway...
I have installed to hard drives (400GB each) and set them up to be seen as a single disk. I am currently moving my current back-up files from my USB drives onto this new 800GB drive. Once these are safely done, I can wipe to old USB drives and then add them onto the NAS as extra storage space available to the network. My next task will be to configure my backup software to carry on backing up the various files that I need - I am also considering moving all my pictures onto the NAS so that they are available across my network and maybe backing them up onto one of the USB drives - I have already moved my music files (which I will also need to back up).

So as it stands, I have found two distinct uses for the NAS, firstly to back up files that I want to keep, and secondly to make certain files available across my network - where this has been done, another back-up will be required for which I will use the USB drives that the NAS has replaced. I have found the free back up software 'SyncBack' from '2brightsparks' to be perfectly adequate for my needs, so I will control most of the back-ups using this software, although I do have the option of the software that came with my Packard Bell external drive - this software is a lot quicker to set up, so I may try to see if it will work across the network.

The final task that I want the NAS to do for me is to provide a folder for other to access remotely with a password, this should be possible using the FTP server, but I haven't tried his yet and am not sure how it will work out.

Toys for all ages

At the weekend, we will be attempting to make room for new toys and making money to buy new toys by attending a car-boot sale. We are combining eBay and car-boot sales as a way to turn our old stuff into cash - mostly to buy new stuff!
We have done well with things such as stair gates and baby clothes, but have noticed that VHS tapes do not sell at all, although a few CD's have been sold.
For my own 'toys', I am completely reliant on my internet earnings - if there is something I want (such as my new NAS system - see last entry...) then I have to get stuck into some paid blogging or wait for an Adsense payout. On that note, I am due another payment now as I have just crossed the payment threshold again. I am keen to develop passive earnings, but am concentrating more on some other projects at the moment - the good thing about passive earnings is that even if you do nothing - they can just keep earning for you....

Latest Purchases

My quest for improving my PC set-up never ceases...which ends up costing me a bit, at least I rarely have to use my 'own' money as my internet earnings cover most of my purchases...
It's not like I have the latest CPUs and Motherboards, but I do like to build new systems from scratch using old components, then add big hard-drives and plenty of RAM... currently I have two socket 939 board systems, one with a 2.2GHz single core, and one with a 2.0GHz dual core. I have a USB back-up hard-drive on each machine, but they are both pretty much full now. There is a 250GB backup drive on one, and a 150GB backup drive on the other.
I spotted a NAS (network attached storage drive) system some time ago, and have been interested ever since. The NAS works as extra storage just like a USB drive, except that it is connected via the network router and is therefore available to the whole network. Not only that, but some of them have USB ports so that USB drives can be added, plus many of them offer options for remote access. I tracked some on eBay and ended up with the IcyBox (pictured) this one takes two SATA drives (I also got 2 x 400GB drives from eBay), plus it has two USB ports to accomodate my existing USB drives which will give ne a total storage solution of 1.2TB. You can set up the IcyBox to RAID settings so that one drive is backed up by the other, but my intention is only to use the system to back up my PC's, so I don't really need to back up my back up!
I intend to use the system as a server for some files that I want to share over the network, so it will be interesting to see if that will work as I want it to. I am also quite excited about the internet access features, particularly if I can use it to host files that I use for websites - in theory, I could place all my blog pictures on there which would mean that I no longer needed to upload pictures...
I will post about how this new 'solution' works out in practice, so far I can only report that the 'refurbished' model that I bought looks cosmetically pretty much perfect, and the English version of the manual is not the best translation I have ever seen - hopefully the product itself and it's associated software will be fairly intuitive and I won't need to refer to the manual much..

Online business

With the phasing out of older forms of payment like checks, one can't help wondering how far we are away from the truly cash-less society.
Suffice to say online businesses cannot really operate without some form of dedicated online credit card processing, and although there are other online payment services available, they do not really give the right professional impression - not only that, they can be a pretty expensive way to complete transactions online.
I am branching out into a couple of extra online ventures in the coming months, and will have to choose whether to team up with a dedicated online credit card processing service rather than continue to rely on the more common online transaction service used by bloggers and online auctions...