Tim Worstall

How to find a bargain holiday

For decades now I've been hearing about people who manage to find the most amazing holidays. They just go off to the airport with a passport and take the last unsold seat and go somewhere exotic for peanuts perhaps. Or they've known someone at the travel agents and get the phone call when someone can't fill that flight to Greece or hotel in Egypt.

The thing is though while I've heard about these holidays for those decades, I've never actually been able to snag one myself. I did manage to get on the British Airways courier list but that was long after they'd stopped paying for that task to be done and only offered a cheap ticket for you doing the work.

So, while I've been told that these bargain holidays, these late sales and immediate departures, do exist I never actually seen one in the flesh. Until now that is, I've finally actually found somewhere that lets me see what is on offer.

Of course, this is a site on the internet, that great unbundler (the technical term is "disintermediation") of all those special contacts and knowledge that you need in so many fields. All you need to do now is click through that link above and there you have, in sortable form, the bargains available from the airports of your choice in the near future.

Sure, maybe there's nothing there you'd like today, or tomorrow, but there are times when we all want to just take a break, get away for a bit. So check it out and perhaps bookmark it for when you do want to use it. The way this winter is going already I'll be ready in about three weeks for some sun I think……

by Tim Worstall November 2, 2011

Where to find an all inclusive holiday

We all know that all inclusive holidays exist out there. My problem has always been that I've never really known where to find them.

The idea of just being able to plonk oneself down and know, absolutely, what the whole thing is going to cost, food and booze included, has always rather appealed to me. But as I say, I've never really known where to find them. And which country do you go to? Which tour operator? Obviously not to a Muslim country where the wine will never run red (although there are plenty of Muslim countries where it does).

I've been able to find an interesting little site, that one linked above, which helps to solve all of these problems for me. Rather than thinking all these things out well in advance it offers a way to search for which deals are available right now. Or leaving tomorrow, or next week. Instead of agonising for ages over where to go just take off and go where it's possible to go with a day or two's notice.

This does rather appeal to me, as does the whole all inclusive idea itself. I've worked in enough restaurants over the years to know how to make the most of such an offer. As with buffets, you go for the expensive seafood and meats. Leave all the rice, potatoes and vegetables for when you're back home and broke. Load up on the most expensive proteins they're offering. Don't have a risotto, have a steak. Forget the crabsticks and devour the prawns.

As to the booze if you've got to pay a premium for it then stick with the beer or the house wine (which you probably won't have to pay for). If you don't have to pay for it, if you can drink whatever you like, then single malts and decent gins all the way.

But that's all about what you do if you do go all inclusive. The point of this post is to point you at that page which can tell you where you can go and when for an all inclusive.

by Tim Worstall November 1, 2011

How to find the appropriate webhosting

One of the things we've got to be aware of in business is the difference between "best" and "appropriate".

Another way of putting this is that "appropriate" means "best for this task".

This is true when it comes to discussing webhosting. We all know that as a business we've got to be online, on the web, these days. But there are any number of different business models we can follow. Maybe we're trying to be an entirely online business? Maybe we can't be such, we just want to provide a signpost to our meatspace one?

So, it's difficult for us to really say that there's something called "the best" hosting, either package or provider. What we really want is the appropriate one, the best for what we want to do. So we can have "best blog hosting" or "best budget hosting" but the very concept of "best hosting" is one that doesn't have a great deal of meaning.

Best at what? And as that's what we've got to decide about our own business, before we go online, once we have, then we can decide on what is the best appropriate host and or hosting package for our plans.

by Tim Worstall September 27, 2011

Where to get reasonably priced tickets

Or, where to get very reasonably priced tickets.

This is one of the things the internet has been great for: oldsters like me can remember the days you had to travel out to the venue the day that the tickets went on sale and maybe you got some and maybe you didn't. Nowadays, you can check the availability of Seigfried tickets, Rascal Flatts tickets, from the comfort of your own computer.

If those aren't quite to your taste, how about Celine Dion tickets? Trans-Siberian Orchestra tickets or Peter Pan tickets.

You young people just don't realise how lucky you are, the way that the world's been made easier for you by the hard work of your elders.

Or, if you'd like to put it another way, the deals we have to offer you, the ease with which we have to cater to your desires, as we attempt to offer you the pleasures of the entertainment world.

by Tim Worstall August 23, 2011

Dealfun: a new idea

Dealfun looks like an interesting new way to buy things on the 'net.

Here's a few people looking at it: on Yahoo, MSNBC. This isn't an entirely new idea. There have been sites that work this way before.

The thing about dealfun is that you purchase the right to bid. Tickets, coupons, bid points, call them what you like. You can then bid on the items, iPads, iPhones, Kindles, LCD TVs and so on, using the bidding points that you've purchased to do so.

As I say, this isn't an entirely new idea, there were several sites that worked the same way. However, the other sites, when you bid, at what looked like great prices, you had just used up the bid points that you had purchased.

What makes dealfun different is that this isn't what happens. Even if you don't win the bid your bidding points can still be used against the purchase price of the product at the regular site pricing.

Which is really rather interesting, both as a business model and for people using the site. It might be that you get one of the great deals, the bargains at incredibly low prices: but if not, everything is not lost. It's still possible to buy what you want with the money you're spending.

by Tim Worstall August 3, 2011

Buying blinds

As I mentioned above we've been sorting out this house in sunny climes and as part and parcel of that we've been looking into blinds. For of course part of the problem with being in sunny climes is that while you're indeed there for the sun, you don't want it inside with you all the time.

The middle of the day for example, you'd rather keep the sun outside: not just for temperature reasons but to avoid it fading all that furniture we've just so expensively put into the place.

And as is also normalin sunny climes, the houses aren't exactly built for the inevitable but short winter. There's not much heating in them, not a great deal of insulation (what there is being used to keep the summer heat out, not the winter heat in) so once again blinds are a both desirable and necessary addition.

I to have to admit that one of the things I really like about this modern world is that not only can we live and work here in these sunny climes, something the internet has made possible, we can also do our shopping from the comfort of my desk.

I can't think of anything worse than traipsing around looking at home furnishings (umm, well, OK, maybe shoe shopping) but being able to do it with a few clicks of the mouse is getting close to enjoyable.

by Tim Worstall June 16, 2011

Where to find UK broadband

Or rather, not where to find UK broadband but where to find a supplier of UK broadband? For of course broadband itself is available all over the country: the tricky bit is getting connected to it.

What we would of course like is to have one of those comparison or shopping sites: maybe even a site which explained all of the differences between the different offers? Fortunately, we do indeed have one of these sorts of sites that does this broadband comparison. You can find it by simply clicking through that link there.

The site takes you through the offers from the different broadband providers. What exactly is it that is on offer? You know, the claimed speed of downloads, how much traffic you're allowed, do you have to hire a phone line from someone? There are also, of course, all of the various free phone call offers to consider: this isn't a simple thing to do really.

The more phone calls you make then the more you need to consider what they're offering free. You also need to look at all of the contractual gubbins around the offers. How long do you have to stay with the provider, all that sort of stuff.

And finally you can compare mobile broadband. If you're only a light user this can actually work out cheaper. Download speeds are normally slower, traffics limits lower, but you obviously don't need to purchase the phone line rental as well: so, in fact, it can be cheaper if you're not a heavy user of the net. And, of course, you can also take your laptop off to hte park and keep working, something you can't do if you purchase the line broadband.

So, if you're looking for what will give you a deal on broadband, fortunately, someone's set up a site to tell you all about it.

by Tim Worstall September 26, 2010

How to get traffic for your blog or website

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

This is of course the most difficult part of the whole new media experience. Yes, you can create a great site, write the most superb articles, but there are also some tens of millions of other people out there doing exactly the same thing. So how can you actually get some of the hundreds of millions of web surfers to come by and see what it is that you''re doing?

You might, as some did, simply start blogging 8 years ago and thus be one of the well known and entrenched bloggers: or you might be a large company and thus get good traffic whatever you do. But for all the rest of us who aren't either of those, what is it that we can do?

Luckily, a great new resource is available to teach us all how to do these things.The Traffic Plus. It's rather worth checking it out for it does explain, in simple and easy language, how to get that traffic you desire.

The first and most obvious benefit is the amount of time you can save: instead of having to reinvent the wheel you can see which tactics have worked elsewhere and how you can use them yourself. Even more importantly, you can see what didn't work and thus what you shouldn't even bother trying.

Having been around a long time as a blogger myself the instructions do give you what you need to know so it's very definitely worth a look.

by Tim Worstall August 26, 2010

Finding that Middle East job

We all know that the jobs market has crashed here at home, don't we? You can send out 100 CVs and end up with nothing but yet another interview at a call sales centre. No one seems to be hiring, certainly not for a job which whill pay more than the barest minimum. But this isn't true of the rest of the world. While we may be stuck in a recession which might last for years the whole global economy is still chugging along quite nicely: growth is expected to be well over 4% this year for the whole planet.

What this means is that there are parts of the world that are crying out for experts: and prepared to pay very well indeed to get them.This is what makes the middle east jobs market so exciting. Yes, of course it's partly driven by the world's hunger for the region's oil and gas….and that global growth rate means they're only getting hungrier. But the money earned is being used to build a modern economy: this means there are jobs in many more sectors than just oil and gas.

For example, there's a thriving financial and banking sector: the pwers that be have correctly assumed that nothing can be built that will last without efficient finance. And of course, constructing any form of modern economy requires expading the IT sector as well as telecoms. The thing is that the local population simply doesn't have the necessary skills to do these jobs so the economy there depends on hiring people from outside to do them. And yes, they pay very well for such expertise, with very generous perks packages as well.

So if you're stuck, at a dead end, just cannot find that desired job, why not check out what's available in the mid east by clicking through that link?

by Tim Worstall July 22, 2010

More on webhosting

I've mentioned before here that the issue of website hosting is really rather important to us all. "Us all" meaning anyone trying to run a business in this uncertain modern world that is. It's just not possible to be working without a website for some kind or another: even just a simple site telling people where you and what you do will help. It's a little like having an entry in the telephone book was in earlier decades: a simple necessity.

But what you're actually going to do on your website is something you have to decide before you start to go build it. Are you just going to have that guide to who and where you are? Then the site can indeed be very simple indeed. Or are you going to be trying to actually sell from the site? In which case you're going to need to contract with a host that will offer all of the necessary ecommerce tools.

Or perhaps the business itself will be online? A series of forums for example? In which case it is uptime that is most important: nothing will get people fleeing faster than unreliable service. Maybe it's photography, or video? That means that bandwidth is your key need and you should be measuring your potential hosts by how much of that they offer.

So before you start building the site, decide what it is the site is to do and then choose who would be the best host to support you in those efforts.

by Tim Worstall June 23, 2010

Finding the best webhost

We have all, at least I hope we have all, realised by now that to get anywhere in this modern economy we need to have a website, somewhere that people can at the very least find out what it is that we do?

If you're in business, doing absolutely anything at all in business, this is the minimum now required. You don't have to sell a digital product, you don't have to be doing ecommerce, but at the very minimum you do need for people to be able to find you. a little like having an entry in the telephone book in earlier decades.

OK, but then we need to ask the question of where we get our site hosted for us. Fortunately, there's a good guide to webhosting, just click through for it. You can sort through all the various options by what it is that you actually want.

Is price most important to you? Bandwidth? Reliability? Linux hosting, Windows hosting? Whatever it is that is most important to you should be the driver of who you use as your host. And those guys can help you through that decision path.

by Tim Worstall June 23, 2010

On the subject of underfloor heating

As longtime readers will know we’ve been renovating two houses down here for the past couple of years. It’s all taken so long because we do some work, then go make some more money and then come back and do the next piece of work.

However, we are now cruising on the home straight and just doing the very last part of the second house: estate agents have already been alerted to the idea that the houses will be coming onto the market.

This last step is to put down the tiles and we’ve got to ask ourselves a final question before we do so: should we put down underfloor heating?

There are arguments against it, certainly. Like we’re in southern Portugal and thus don’t really need heating of any kind. For the perhaps one month of the year that you want to have heating a decent woodfire is usually enough. On the other hand, electric underfloor heating has become vastly cheaper in recent years, to the point where if you’re laying a new floor then the cost is almost an irrelevance.

Further, in that one month when you do want heating it would be nice to have that sort of ambient heating, rather than having to huddle around a fire.

Hmm, perhaps we should go for some sort of compromise? Just put it in the bathroom(s) where it will do the most good? Clearly and obviously we don’t have wood fires in them and given that they’re the rooms in the house where you’re most likely to be naked, they’re the ones where you’re going to want to be able to take the chill off the air.

It’s the mulling over these sorts of questions that has meant I’ve always enjoyed moving into houses that other people have built to be quite frank.

by Tim Worstall June 9, 2010